Category Archives: Symbols

Why the Army of Reality always needs more soldiers

by Jon Rappoport

November 7, 2019

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What we call Reality is a hall of mirrors. It reflects itself back and forth and builds up a consensus.

People do the same thing. They confirm with one another that the reality they believe is real is, in fact, real.

And having established that, they live out their lives and make the best of it.

But what happens if you defect? What happens if you’re not satisfied to live out the rest of your life inside the space of what everyone assumes is real?

More to the point, what happens if you’re not satisfied to live out the rest of your life inside the space of what YOU assume is real?

This is where a lot of people get off the train. They assert, with great assurance, that what they have discovered is the ultimate frontier. They’ve broken through the illusion. They’ve found out who is running the show from behind the curtain.

And with those discoveries in their pocket, they will live out their lives, confident in the knowledge that they can’t be fooled. They’ve won the prize.

Actually, peering behind the curtain and seeing what’s there is step one. The journey has barely begun.

No matter what degree of truth one has found, living out the rest of a life in that truth is going to be disappointing. It’s eventually going to be boring. It’s eventually going to be insufferable.

You want to lift that curtain, and you should. You should find out everything you can about who and what is behind it, and how they operate. But how long before you stop patting yourself on the back?

How long before you decide to create, with great passion and commitment, your own reality, the one you profoundly desire?

The process of creating reality never ends. It’s the ongoing voyage. It’s the reason things become new. It’s the reason boredom loses. It’s the reason you have no end. It’s the reason you can’t be stopped.

It’s the means by which you don’t decline. It’s the means by which you keep imagining something you haven’t imagined before.

It’s the reason you don’t “live out your life.”

It’s the reason “living out your life” seems about the worst thing you can do.

No excuses will suffice to rationalize staying in one place. No complaints will make you feel better. No “ultimate” space or time is good enough, as it is, to convince you that you should just play out the string inside it.

We are witnessing tech giants—Google, Facebook, You Tube, Twitter—hiding and de-listing news they deem “fake.” On one level, this is an obvious attempt to control political content. But on a much deeper level, this is an effort to shore up THEIR REALITY. They want to consolidate their Army of believers and expand its ranks. Outsiders and their ideas and analyses are a threat.

Outsiders, heaven forbid, might decide to launch other creative realities that bleed into the consensus and dissolve it.

The independent and free individual mind has its own immune system. It responds when it detects the intrusion of collectivist concoctions.

“Alert! Fake collective reality is showing up. Take action. Resist. Reject.”

Yes, but then?

The individual then has the power to invent his own future, according to his own vision. This is where the journey really gets interesting.

This is where new space and new time emerge, and the space of consensus shrinks and withers.

This is where the Army of Reality has no answer.

Each individual has his own invention of reality—a project and an enterprise that spills over the conventional boundaries.

Each enterprise is quite different. Each approach is quite different.

What’s similar is the available energy for the work.

Where does that energy come from?

It comes from the individual himself.

When imagination and the creative impulse are unleashed, energy appears in large quantities. New and fresh energy.

Frontier energy.

Cutting-edge energy that quite naturally and automatically begins to shred Army of Reality energy.

Life renews. Life begins again.

The fabric of old limiting ideas falls apart, and the individual steps out on to a unique launching platform.

His own.

This is the voyage that can never be stopped.

Because it doesn’t depend on the fake news and fake consensus and the fake illusion of power of The Group.

Exit From the Matrix

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

The hypnotic symbols of modern medicine

by Jon Rappoport

November 4, 2019

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There are four major symbols I want to take up here.

The important thing to remember is: these symbols conspire to produce a “view of self” in the patient.

The patient comes to see himself in a certain way, and this way implies a reduction of his own power.

Reducing his own power, he literally sees himself as smaller.

The cascade of effects continues. Seeing himself as smaller, he comes to believe he has no significant role in his own health and well-being.

And armed with that conviction, he comes to believe he is gradually deteriorating.

This belief is a perception, a view of self. This view, like a magnet, attracts and interprets events as further evidence of weakening and deterioration…

This reality is far from the only possible one, but it is the one the patient chooses.

The first symbol is SYMPTOM. The person sees and experiences feelings and physical manifestations, and in the doctor’s office, he learns these are symptoms that collectively MEAN SOMETHING. He has symptoms. These are not random, he is told. They are not transient. They cannot be ignored. They will not go away on their own. They are serious.

The second symbol is CONDITION. The doctor’s diagnosis of the symptoms makes it clear that the patient has a disease, an illness, a disorder. A label is applied. A name. There is no doubt that the patient has this named disease. This is a THING. An entity. It is not a passing phenomenon. It is solid and stable. It is singular.

The third symbol is TREATMENT. This is what the doctor tells the patient he must do. Take a medicine. Have surgery. The treatment will get rid of the condition. The treatment is specific. It is geared to address the condition. It is the solution to the problem.

The fourth symbol is the DOCTOR. He knows. Nobody else knows. He is the authority. He is in charge of recognizing the symptoms, which lead him to make the diagnosis of the condition, which is turn leads him to prescribe the treatment. This progression is lock-step. There no other factors to consider. The doctor has effectively ruled out all other possibilities.

These four symbols lead the patient into a state of obedience. And in that state, he realizes his own power is beside the point and is irrelevant.

Of course, this is not the first time he has been to the doctor’s office. This is not the first time he has been put through this progression of the four symbols. Therefore, the effect on him, over time, is magnified.

Each successive visit to the doctor confirms he can and does develop new sets of symptoms—and each set implies a new condition.

As the conditions pile up, the patient is more convinced than ever that he is composed of diseases that appear “out of nowhere.”

He views himself as a set of symptoms which indicate a condition and imply a treatment. This is, in a sense, who and what he is.

Over time, his conditions tend to be more serious.

He never imagines that the toxic treatments he is taking are contributing to, or causing these more serous conditions—because each disease has a separate name, as if it exists in a vacuum. The doctor handles each diagnosis in that fashion. “Now you have this…and now you have that.”

When the patient reaches a point where he views himself as BEING these symptoms and conditions and very little else, he simply waits for the next arrival of the next set of symptoms and the next condition.

This is how powerful symbols can be.

In a better world, people would be educated in the use and effects of symbols, before succumbing to them.

Some would say, “What do you mean, symbols? The doctor is real, I do have physical problems, the doctor really does make a diagnosis, and I do take real medicines. Why are you talking about symbols?”

Because what locks a person in is what happens in his mind. And what happens in his mind is this parade of symbols. That’s what forms the basis of HIS VIEW OF HIMSELF. He rolls these symbols around in his mind and accepts them and locks himself in, and he sees himself as deteriorating.

“I am a deteriorating person. That’s who I am. That’s what I am. I’m waiting for the next round of symptoms and the diagnosis and treatment from the doctor. Any other ideas about what I am and what I can do are beside the point. No reason to entertain them. I have the potential to be more than a deteriorating person? What does that even mean? It makes no sense.”

The person doesn’t understand symbols, doesn’t understand how he is dealing with them, and so he closes the book on his life and future.

This process is not necessary, but he doesn’t grasp that.

Am I claiming that everything is in the mind? Nothing else possibly matters? No one ever really gets sick? No. But I am saying a shocking amount of what turns out to be a person’s future or non-future flows from how he recognizes, or doesn’t recognize, symbols and how he reads them and interprets them, how he accepts or rejects them, how he choose to surpass them or succumb to them.

Yes, there is a doctor. Yes, there is such a thing as physical illness. Yes, the doctor is delivering a diagnosis and calling it a condition. But these factors are not in the mind, unless the physical doctor can squeeze himself into the patient’s head. In the mind, there are symbols of these elements—and that is what the patient is dealing with, for better or for worse.

And over the long-term, for most patients, it’s worse.

The Matrix Revealed

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Celebrities as symbols

by Jon Rappoport

October 25, 2019

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I recently found a 2013 article I wrote about celebrities and symbols. As we veer into the election season, I’m reposting it as a reminder about how symbols work, how they are made to stand in for real people. You can supply your own examples from 2019…

Let’s start here: A museum. A show of photographs of celebrities. If you didn’t know who they were, if you hadn’t been “prepped,” most of the photos would barely register. You’d yawn and walk past them.

But because you have separate knowledge, the photos mean something. They refer to a whole host of material and background on famous people.

“Oh. That’s Jay Leno eating ice cream.”

Again, subtract that material and background and the photos are meaningless.

“That’s some guy eating ice cream. So what?”

The photos are symbols, in the sense that they refer, they point to something that isn’t there.

The photos have power because YOU make the jump from symbol to meaning. You’re doing it.

“Oh, look at that photo. That’s Jay. Tonight Show. Tells jokes. He and Letterman compete for ratings. Jay replaced Johnny Carson.”

Then there are your opinions and feelings. More background.

“Jay’s not that funny. They should have stayed with Conan. Television, what a waste of time. A distraction for the masses.”

You make the simple jump from an image to what it means.

And all these photos have something in common. They refer to someone who is famous.

You could say, “Wait a minute. Let’s make a distinction here. The photos don’t refer. The photos don’t refer to anything. They’re just sitting there, inside frames, hanging on the wall.”

And that’s true. You do the referring. You connect the photo to meaning, to background.

But this is equally true of all symbols. A photo of an American flag doesn’t really refer, either. It just sits there. You make the connection to 50 states, the Constitution, the country, etc. The photo doesn’t step down from the wall and tap you on the shoulder and talk to you about itself.

People INVEST power in a photo of John Lennon sitting on a porch smoking a cigarette. However, people believe the photo itself HAS power.

Now, we’re talking about the trick involving symbols. They’re basically empty. You fill in the emptiness.

All this becomes more interesting when you realize there are PR people and propagandists working around the clock to make you impart particular meaning to symbols. They’re not satisfied to have you supply your own meaning. No.

For example, the last thing they want is you supplying your own references to photos of Hillary Clinton. They want you to think: distinguished leader, much experience, first woman president, above party politics, brilliant mind, great sympathy for the plight of the less fortunate, etc.

They want to make the symbol of Hillary as specific as possible.

This is really why the speeches of politicians are so empty. Their handlers don’t want actual information to get in the way of how the symbol is being crafted. PR people, if they could, would have a presidential candidate come up to a microphone, stand there, smile, and say nothing.

They, the PR handlers, are already shaping the symbolic meaning of the image of the candidate. That’s all they care about. That’s the difference between winning and losing.

Just as television shows are really the breaks between commercials, an election campaign is just a break between symbol-manipulations for the masses.

A scholar could write a compelling and important history of the human race based entirely on how symbols are given meanings by propagandists.

Rulers and other leaders are celebrities. Their symbolic value is established and shaped. The whole idea is to get followers to invest meaning A,B,C in the image of the celeb, rather than meaning E,F,G.

In this case, what does meaning mean? Thoughts and feelings. Strong feelings.

“Bush will restore the republic.” Feel, feel, feel.

“Obama will bring unity to all peoples.” Feel, feel, feel.

But THEY (the propagandists) aren’t doing it to YOU in a vacuum. You’re consenting to the ploy. You’re injecting desired meaning. You’re not a helpless victim.

Here’s the kicker. If you know you’re injecting meaning, you know you’re creating something. So why not open that door wide?

Why not create with power? Why not create what you most profoundly want to?

Bottom line: everybody is an artist. So why not do something with that fact, instead of playing the symbol game?

This isn’t about withdrawing to a theoretically safe distance where you can refrain from injecting symbols with meaning. It’s about expressing your own energy and power in the world.

A final word about the amusing, wild, and wooly world of “channeling.” This is a perfect example of symbolism. The lecturer is purportedly obtaining all his information and wisdom from some entity in another dimension. The entity is the celebrity.

The audience is prepped to understand this relationship between the lecturer and the entity. So now, when the lecturer (medium) speaks, everything he says automatically has greater and higher meaning.

The symbolic reference to the entity is supplied by whom? The audience. They inject the “super-meaning.”

What would happen if the lecturer dispensed the same information, minus the prior assertion that he was getting it from a higher source? His audience would shrink to minimal size. People would walk out of the hall.

They would have no reason to stay. They aren’t being asked to inject that added dimension to the lecturer’s words. It’s a dud.

No gloss. No glitz. No celebrity. No deal.

And now, a final, final word. Who is the greatest celebrity in the universe?

God.

I don’t care whether you believe in God or don’t believe in God. I don’t care whether you believe in Him on Sundays or every day of the week.

But the symbols of God, all the symbols that exist—these are the work of organized religions. They put out and promote and flash those symbols, for one reason: they want you to connect to God through their network and mesh of symbols.

Otherwise, they’d be out of business.

They don’t want you to connect to God through your own private faith. That would be a disaster for them. They have to have all those symbols. They have to get you to inject those symbols with their meaning. Because, then, you’re part of their club. You belong. You’re in their group.

So…do symbols have power? Is this serious business?

Is the Pope Catholic?

power outside the matrix

(To read about Jon’s collection, Power Outside The Matrix, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Finally, the Truth about Symbols

by Jon Rappoport

October 23, 2019

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“The last time we saw her, him, or it, the winged figure, there were great shapes scrawled in the sky left behind, and then a single thought slowly falling to Earth like a light snow. The thought was: if these sky shapes had meaning, what would it be? And if each of you could decide independently, what would happen?” — Auntie Mime, Reality Disruptor

“The only menace is inertia.” — St. John Perse

The red knight said to the blue knight, “I’m departing for unknown shores. Here I give you the seal of my empire. Hold it close. When the hour of the new year strikes, open it and view the symbol contained therein. It carries esoteric meaning that will usher you into my lands.”

The blue knight was staggered. “Is this really true?” he said.

“I’ll reply with a riddle. Listen. It’s true if you’re a fool.” — Auntie Mime, Reality Disruptor

In land far-far or near-near, the people had symbols. For many centuries, symbols had been imposed on them.

This is not a hard thing to do. For example, you build a tower and place art around the joint and you play droning music and you dim the lights and you hold services, and the high priest hopefully has a rich mellow voice, a good baritone…and at the appropriate moment, he lapses into silence, waits, and then leans forward and pronounces the name of the symbol…maybe he holds up an illuminated stick with the symbol at the end.

Then he describes the meaning of the symbol.

And it sinks in.

Squish.

With enough time, enough good prep, enough symbols, you can put a whole populations under hypnosis and lead them around by their collective nose.

Well, in this land, the people eventually got tired of that crap, and so they sank the tower in the sea and started over.

From that moment on, symbols were OPEN.

Symbols were contemplated, now and then, and people could derive (imagine) whatever meanings they preferred. Each person could do that.

Then they would hold informal meetings, and after a few comedians loosened things up, people would stand, one at a time, and present their experience with the symbol of the month. Do their riffs. The only rule—don’t be boring.

The funny thing was, after a few years of this sort of meeting, the very language of the people began to expand…new words, new phrases, new ideas, new images…even new constructions.

It was a language, more and more, infiltrated by imagination.

And what do you know, the people became freer and more energetic. They sensed their language was coming into line with their creative impulse—whereas in many societies, the creative impulse comes into line with the language.

The people called this a major discovery, and they celebrated it by building a new tower. They discussed what to call it. After a few days, they said HOLD ON, THIS IS RIDICULOUS, and burned it down.

Every year, they build a new tower and burn it.

Just to remind themselves about what can happen when everyone behaves like an android and allows meaning to emanate from one point.

Their language is now 1000000000 times its former size.

Oh, off in a corner of a dim bar, a few guys reminisce about the good old days when things were normal and they knew what “the spiritual universe” consisted of. They wish it would all come back. The music, the snoring, the hypnotic ceremony, the closed symbols. They really love those closed symbols.

They’re even trying to build their own permanent tower out at the end of town by a tire recapper and a collapsed warehouse. Others, of the new generation, will go down there on a Saturday morning, stand around, and chip in advice.

“Put more mud on that side.”

“Make the holes for the windows a little bigger.”

Much amusement.

One universe, many universes, take your pick.

The Matrix Revealed

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Finally, the Truth about Symbols

by Jon Rappoport

September 4, 2018

(To join our email list, click here.)

“The last time we saw her, him, or it, the winged figure, there were great shapes scrawled in the sky left behind, and then a single thought slowly falling to Earth like a light snow. The thought was: if these sky shapes had meaning, what would it be? And if each of you could decide independently, what would happen?” — Auntie Mime, Reality Disruptor

“The only menace is inertia.” — St. John Perse

The red knight said to the blue knight, “I’m departing for unknown shores. Here I give you the seal of my empire. Hold it close. When the hour of the new year strikes, open it and view the symbol contained therein. It carries esoteric meaning that will usher you into my lands.”

The blue knight was staggered. “Is this really true?” he said.

“I’ll reply with a riddle. Listen. It’s true if you’re a fool.” — Auntie Mime, Reality Disruptor

In land far-far or near-near, the people had symbols. For many centuries, symbols had been imposed on them.

This is not a hard thing to do. For example, you build a tower and place art around the joint and you play droning music and you dim the lights and you hold services, and the high priest hopefully has a rich mellow voice, a good baritone…and at the appropriate moment, he lapses into silence, waits, and then leans forward and pronounces the name of the symbol…maybe he holds up an illuminated stick with the symbol at the end.

Then he describes the meaning of the symbol.

And it sinks in.

Squish.

With enough time, enough good prep, enough symbols, you can put a whole populations under hypnosis and lead them around by their collective nose.

Well, in this land, the people eventually got tired of that crap, and so they sank the tower in the sea and started over.

From that moment on, symbols were OPEN.

Symbols were contemplated, now and then, and people could derive (imagine) whatever meanings they preferred. Each person could do that.

Then they would hold informal meetings, and after a few comedians loosened things up, people would stand, one at a time, and present their experience with the symbol of the month. Do their riffs. The only rule—don’t be boring.

The funny thing was, after a few years of this sort of meeting, the very language of the people began to expand…new words, new phrases, new ideas, new images…even new constructions.

It was a language, more and more, infiltrated by imagination.

And what do you know, the people became freer and more energetic. They sensed their language was coming into line with their creative impulse—whereas in many societies, the creative impulse comes into line with the language.

The people called this a major discovery, and they celebrated it by building a new tower. They discussed what to call it. After a few days, they said HOLD ON, THIS IS RIDICULOUS, and burned it down.

Every year, they build a new tower and burn it.

Just to remind themselves about what can happen when everyone behaves like an android and allows meaning to emanate from one point.

Their language is now 1000000000 times its former size.

Oh, off in a corner of a dim bar, a few guys reminisce about the good old days when things were normal and they knew what “the spiritual universe” consisted of. They wish it would all come back. The music, the snoring, the hypnotic ceremony, the closed symbols. They really love those closed symbols.

They’re even trying to build their own permanent tower out at the end of town by a tire recapper and a collapsed warehouse. Others, of the new generation, will go down there on a Saturday morning, stand around, and chip in advice.

“Put more mud on that side.”

“Make the holes for the windows a little bigger.”

Much amusement.

One universe, many universes, take your pick.

The Matrix Revealed

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Why the Army of Reality always needs more soldiers

by Jon Rappoport

November 22, 2017

(To join our email list, click here.)

What we call Reality is a hall of mirrors. It reflects itself back and forth and builds up a consensus.

People do the same thing. They confirm with one another that the reality they believe is real is, in fact, real.

And having established that, they live out their lives and make the best of it.

But what happens if you defect? What happens if you’re not satisfied to live out the rest of your life inside the space of what everyone assumes is real?

More to the point, what happens if you’re not satisfied to live out the rest of your life inside the space of what YOU assume is real?

This is where a lot of people get off the train. They assert, with great assurance, that what they have discovered is the ultimate frontier. They’ve broken through the illusion. They’ve found out who is running the show from behind the curtain.

And with those discoveries in their pocket, they will live out their lives, confident in the knowledge that they can’t be fooled. They’ve won the prize.

Actually, peering behind the curtain and seeing what’s there is step one. The journey has barely begun.

No matter what degree of truth one has found, living out the rest of a life in that truth is going to be disappointing. It’s eventually going to be boring. It’s eventually going to be insufferable.

You want to lift that curtain, and you should. You should find out everything you can about who and what is behind it, and how they operate. But how long before you stop patting yourself on the back?

How long before you decide to create, with great passion and commitment, your own reality, the one you profoundly desire?

The process of creating reality never ends. It’s the ongoing voyage. It’s the reason things become new. It’s the reason boredom loses. It’s the reason you have no end. It’s the reason you can’t be stopped.

It’s the means by which you don’t decline. It’s the means by which you keep imagining something you haven’t imagined before.

It’s the reason you don’t “live out your life.”

It’s the reason “living out your life” seems about the worst thing you can do.

No excuses will suffice to rationalize staying in one place. No complaints will make you feel better. No “ultimate” space or time is good enough, as it is, to convince you that you should just play out the string inside it.

Right now, we are witnessing tech giants—Google, Facebook, You Tube, Twitter—hiding and de-listing news they deem “fake.” On one level, this is an obvious attempt to control political content. But on a much deeper level, this is an effort to shore up THEIR REALITY. They want to consolidate their Army of believers and expand its ranks. Outsiders and their ideas and analyses are a threat.

Outsiders, heaven forbid, might decide to launch other creative realities that bleed into the consensus and dissolve it.

The independent and free individual mind has its own immune system. It responds when it detects the intrusion of collectivist concoctions.

“Alert! Fake collective reality is showing up. Take action. Resist. Reject.”

Yes, but then?

The individual then has the power to invent his own future, according to his own vision. This is where the journey really gets interesting.

This is where new space and new time emerge, and the space of consensus shrinks and withers.

This is where the Army of Reality has no answer.

In my private consulting practice, I’ve worked with a number of clients, each of whom has his own invention of reality—a project and an enterprise that spills over the conventional boundaries.

Each enterprise is quite different. Each approach is quite different.

What’s similar is the available energy for the work.

Where does that energy come from?

It comes from the individual himself.

When imagination and the creative impulse are unleashed, energy appears in large quantities. New and fresh energy.

Frontier energy.

Cutting-edge energy that quite naturally and automatically begins to shred Army of Reality energy.

Life renews. Life begins again.

The fabric of old limiting ideas falls apart, and the individual steps out on to a unique launching platform.

His own.

This is the voyage that can never be stopped.

Because it doesn’t depend on the fake news and fake consensus and the fake illusion of power of The Group.

Exit From the Matrix

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

If football were canceled, would America go insane?

If football were canceled, would America go insane?

by Jon Rappoport

September 28, 2017

College football is a frenzy of student fans and local supporters, who in some cases extend to a whole state (e.g., Alabama).

The players are heavily recruited, and most of them hardly qualify as “student-athletes.” They’re at the school to play football and they hope to enter the NFL, where the money is.

The players make extraordinary amounts of $$ for the colleges, but none for themselves (excluding under the table cash and gifts).

The illusion is: the players are part of the college or university.

They’re not. They’re budding professionals who, because of the rules, aren’t paid salaries or bonuses.

But the fans think of them as “their own.”

“The players on my team are mine. They’re my school.”

No. Not really.

But no one cares. Through a combination of idol worship and “school spirit,” the illusion holds.

And holding that symbol in the mind is everything.

A loss on a Saturday afternoon is like a rebuke from a priest who supposedly holds the keys to the gates of heaven.

And what about school spirit? What does that actually mean?

If a student is there to learn, does he automatically develop pride in his college? How does that follow?

There are, in fact, a whole series of illusions that pile up. Some students, after graduation, donate money to their alma mater. For years on end. They become boosters. They join alumni associations. They come back for football games and wear school colors.

The football players come and go. They are the college’s hired guns, on zero salary.

Consider the situation at U Cal Berkeley. Recent insane politics aside, the school had to renovate its football stadium, because the State Regents determined it was “seismically unsafe.” It sits on an earthquake fault. The project blossomed out to a 300-400 million-dollar effort, depending on whose estimate you believe.

The chief minds at Berkeley asserted that a major football program was essential to corralling future donations and philanthropy. The University’s overall budget wouldn’t be met without those donations.

Now, with the new stadium, college officials are trying to figure out how to pay off the long-term debt. Lawyers, financial wizards, and faculty argue about that. “Our plan is foolproof.” “Our plan is a hideous unworkable mess.”

Must have football, though, come hell or high water.

That’s called a bind.

If securing philanthropic gifts to the University depends on maintaining a high-profile football program, it’s a testimony to the mental status of the donor alumni. What did they really learn while they were there as students?

Were the illusions of team, spirit, hired hands (the players), wins and losses on the field their main takeaways from four years of education?

As the NFL kneeling story expands, some teams’ fans, enraged, are burning their jerseys. Their identification with “team” was total, and so the downside is bitter. The players wouldn’t stand for the National Anthem and the flag. Betrayal. The team was supposed to be patriotic. But they aren’t.

Lack of patriotism cancels out total undying fan loyalty.

How shallow are those ideals?

Many of those enraged fans have been paying tax dollars that helped build the stadiums their holy teams are playing in. That’s an acceptable trade-off?

What would happen if, magically, football in America disappeared overnight? Would the whole country go stark raving mad?

Is identifying with a team that powerful?

“My life and sanity depend on having a team to root for. If you take that away from me, I’m lost. I have nothing left.”

What’s wrong with having heroes to look up to? Well, the whole idea of having a hero is: inspiration for the individual, so he, like his hero, can dream his own dreams and rise up and strive to achieve something great in his own life. If it turns out the inspiration isn’t there, and the striving isn’t there, and hero worship is the entire story, now and forever, then illusion is king.

There are football illusions and political-leader illusions and religious illusions and romantic illusions. They all share the same element: “I give you everything and I have nothing.”

“The power I give to you could be my own, but it isn’t. I surrender it. I invest it all in you. I wouldn’t know how to use it myself.”

On the great gridiron, the teams march up and down, the heroes execute dazzling plays, they kneel for the Anthem or they stand up and salute, they protest or they don’t protest, and whatever they do triggers automatic reactions in the fervid parishioners in the stands and at home. And the meaning of this Pavlovian exchange is meaningful and profound.

Or so we’re told.

Alabama won this week. The Dallas Cowboys won. I’m inside the pearly gates. I’m walking on clouds. But next week, we will once again “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor,” in the hope we will succeed.

We pray for that success.

THIS is what we kneel for.

Exit From the Matrix

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Trump/NFL political theater: who’s winning?

Trump/NFL political theater: who’s winning?

by Jon Rappoport

September 27, 2017

Who’s protesting what?

Players are standing up with arms locked, they’re sitting, they’re kneeling, they’re staying in the locker room during the National Anthem, a few owners have come out of their high offices to join with the players on the field, the networks are suddenly airing the pre-game Anthem because TV viewers want to see the protests and it’s all about ratings and ad revenues; viewership for the games is down, one quarterback who stayed with his team in the locker room confessed he wanted to be out on the field and didn’t want to be known for protesting the Anthem, Trump praised fans in the stands for booing the players, it’s a party, a circus, it’s theater, so who’s winning?

According to counts and a survey, 70% of NFL players are black, and 83% of NFL fans are white.

One biracial player, Colin Kaepernick, started the whole business by kneeling during the National Anthem, to protest police brutality against black people.

Colin Kaepernick’s original message, whatever you may think of it, has exploded into pieces all over the landscape. Now people are talking about the flag, the Anthem, patriotism, the veterans, ungrateful millionaire athletes, “unity,” the League, the Commissioner, racism in general, and Trump as a slavemaster according to Jesse Jackson.

But don’t worry. We’re assured these football protests are part of engaging in a “national dialogue on race.”

How many times have we heard that one before?

What dialogue? The whole country is going to assemble in the geographical center of America and begin talking earnestly to one another?

Yes, Trump is “energizing his base,” as they say. But he’s also gleefully attacking the NFL team owners, some of whom were/are his pals. He likes that kind of theater. He’s sticking the owners with the nasty job of defending the players. If the owners remain silent and go away and hide, they’ll be seen as racists. That’s not a good look. So a few of them appeared on football fields Sunday, “standing in solidarity” with their teams. Now they can run away and hide.

“Jeeves, tell my pilot to gas up the jet. I’ve done my duty. We’re heading to the Cape. Let the staff know they’ll have to open up the summer house again…”

Trump also wants his enemies everywhere to understand he’s willing to attack anyone, even the rich owners of NFL franchises. Fallout, no fallout, he doesn’t care.

So today, a Pittsburgh Steeler offensive tackle few people have ever heard of, a decorated ex-Army Ranger, Alejandro Villanueva, is the most popular player in the League, because he didn’t stay in the locker room with the rest of his team during the playing of the National Anthem. He came outside and made himself visible on the field. Suddenly, his jersey has shot up to number one on the best seller list of NFL merchandise.

That 80% of white fans are buying it.

This is supposed to be part of the “national dialogue,” too?

(Update: Villanueva has now apologized for standing alone and “throwing his teammates under the bus.” What’s the policy on returning NFL merchandise?)

The strategic winner in this big NFL story, so far, is Trump. His America-first rhetoric is making a bigger impact than all the NFL protests.

Joe Scarborough, MSNBC: “This may be unpopular but it is a political reality. Every NFL player refusing to stand for the national anthem helps Trump politically.”

Oops.

Of course, the rest of the politically Left media echo chamber refuses to acknowledge that. The echo-chamber denizens always try to convince themselves they’re creating and owning and controlling the narrative.

“If we say the NFL player protestors are smacking Trump down, the American people will believe us.”

Yes, just as people believed the echo chamber when they elected Trump over Hillary “nothing is my fault” Clinton.

Of course, the echo chamber has to drown out a few voices. For example, a player many think is the greatest NFL athlete of all time, hall of famer Jim Brown: “I’m going to give you the real deal: I’m an American. I don’t desecrate my flag and my national anthem. I’m not gonna do anything against the flag and national anthem. I’m going to work within those situations. But this is my country, and I’ll work out the problems, but I’ll do it in an intelligent manner.”

Hmm. That doesn’t work for the preferred narrative, so put it on the back page.

Where is the wild NFL-Trump-media theater piece heading? It’s obvious, isn’t it? More supporters for Trump. More voters on his side.

And who wants that?

The Russians! Yes. Now we see the light. Vladimir Putin is behind all these NFL player protests because, as a chess player, he understands the end game: Trump wins.

Putin somehow manipulated Colin Kaepernick into staging his original kneel during the National Anthem. That’s the op.

Is WikiLeaks going to play a role? We don’t know yet. Stay tuned.

I’m sure James Comey will fit right in. He can return and testify before Congress:

“Well, we know Ivanka Trump met with Putin eighteen months ago. At the time, he expressed an interest in buying the Dallas Cowboys, with gold bars he found in a Venusian UFO that crashed in Siberia. But then the conversation turned to the possibility of triggering player protests, as a way of garnering support for Donald Trump…”

Putin is also behind Black Lives Matter, Antifa, incidents of violence, riots, cops being shot, because all that, too, will swing support over to Trump.

Note to John McCain: Get moving, John. Put together the Committee hearings on the Hill. We’ve got our man. Putin. We’ve got the tiger by the tail…

Exit From the Matrix

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Trump goes to war with NFL: what happened

Trump goes to war with the NFL: what happened

by Jon Rappoport

September 25, 2017

There is a ton of news about what the current NFL protests mean, politically speaking. For the moment, I’m leaving that out. I want to take a different angle.

The first thing to know is that Donald Trump once played a key role in an upstart pro football league called the USFL, which lasted three seasons (1983-85) before it collapsed.

As the owner of the New Jersey Generals and the most powerful force in the League, Trump went up against the NFL. He wanted the USFL to schedule its games opposite the NFL starting in the fall, not the spring. Trump was a key player in suing the NFL for monopolistic practices.

The USFL won that suit, and was awarded the grand sum of…three dollars. Yes.

So The Donald has held a grudge against the NFL for a long time.

His recent tweets and statements, urging the league to take action against players disrespecting the National Anthem, urging teams to fire protesting players…all this has a history.

But there is a deeper story, and it emerges at a time when television ratings for the NFL have already been declining, and the television networks—especially ESPN—are carrying massive billion-dollar contracts with the NFL for the rights to broadcast games.

On top of that, ESPN features show-hosts who are firmly in the Colin Kaepernick, pro-protest camp. These talking heads are politicizing sports every day, and many fans don’t want that.

What do they want from ESPN and from the NFL games they watch? They want sports, competition, heroics on the field. They want their favorite teams to win and the teams they hate to lose. Period.

In theater, there is a phrase, “breaking the fourth wall.” It’s used to describe plays that address the audience directly and shatter the illusion of viewing a self-contained world on stage.

This is where the deeper story of football enters the scene. For fans, the political/sports commentary and the protests on the playing field are breaking the fourth wall.

They can’t watch the games in a trance.

They can’t enjoy the vicarious thrills and chills.

The same thing is happening in the television news business. During the Obama presidency, there was the (promoted) mainstream illusion that White House business was being conducted in the usual hermetically sealed container. It was a controlled stage play—and people could sit in front of their television sets in a popcorn trance and watch it unfold. All in all, with major exceptions, the hypnotic spell held. For a while.

But then along came Trump. He broke the fourth wall. He laughed at the press. He called them idiots. He attacked them mercilessly. He said they were fake.

This was quite disturbing to many news fans. It certainly was disturbing to the major news networks. They make their living by hypnosis.

And now it’s happening to one of the nation’s most cherished institutions of distraction: football.

It isn’t football anymore. It’s a mixed drink. With serious political overtones. What people want to get away from on Sundays, Monday and Thursday nights is what they’re being forced to swallow.

And Trump is making it much worse. He’s lighting the alcohol in the cocktail. He doesn’t care.

Where can millions of trance-seeking Americans go to get their fix? It’s a problem.

The protests have spilled over into the NBA and it looks like Major League Baseball may suffer the same indignity, thanks to Trump.

Here’s a piece of cognitive dissonance for you. At the beginning of yesterday’s NFL games, fans in several stadiums booed players for kneeling during the national Anthem. It’s hard to maintain a hypnotic spell in the middle of that contradiction.

What’s a “normal American” to do? Stay home and guzzle a six-pack while watching Sunday cable re-runs of Cops?

“Give me back my fourth wall!”

When people complain these days that they’re triggered by the contentious political scene in America, when they seek professional help for their disturbed mental state, in many cases they’re simply asking to return to simpler times.

“I want the news to lie to me as it’s always lied to me, and I want to believe. Let me concoct my old fantasies…”

In ancient Rome, it was bread, blood and circuses. Now it’s sponsors like Budweiser and Ford, concussions, and kneeling.

In order to corral millions of people in a news trance or a football trance, you need transmissions without disruptions.

Trump is escalating the disruptions.

Whether people are for or against his tweets about the NFL, the spell is being torn apart.

“I want my football! I want my fourth wall!”

Trump talks about building one wall on the southern border, and he’s ripping the “football wall.”

Aside from making business deals, disruption has always been Trump’s game.

In a nutshell, the major pastime of America, in modern times, is hypnosis. That sport appears to be falling apart.

This is the bigger issue. It comes down to: what is the individual going to do? What is he waking up to? What does he want others to wake up to?

Can the sleeper, jostled in his bed, forced to put his feet on the cold floor, build a better reality? Or will he look for another spell to fall under? Can he recognize he has been sleeping all this time?

Does he think his favorite trance, which is under attack, is the only reality that counts?

Waking up may be hard to do, but these days it is called for.

Think about this: On one side, we have people who love the flag, who support the veterans, who support US wars of empire in any far-flung place, who support the massive destruction of life in Iraq and Afghanistan, who support the government with its unending Surveillance State. On the other side, we have people who want to blame the basic conditions of inner cities on police, who want to avoid talking about gangs and shootings and drugs and the failed war on poverty and race baiters and the theft of jobs by Globalists.

Entering either of these realms is entering a trance. It may be an active trance, but the game is still hypnosis.

“If you can keep your head when all [those] about you are losing theirs…”

Controllers are in the business of pitting one trance against another, for profit, advantage, and power.

power outside the matrix

(To read about Jon’s collection, Power Outside The Matrix, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

The hypnotic symbols of modern medicine

by Jon Rappoport

September 24, 2017

(To join our email list, click here.)

There are four major symbols I want to take up here.

The important thing to remember is: these symbols conspire to produce a “view of self” in the patient.

The patient comes to see himself in a certain way, and this way implies a reduction of his own power.

Reducing his own power, he literally sees himself as smaller.

The cascade of effects continues. Seeing himself as smaller, he comes to believe he has no significant role in his own health and well-being.

And armed with that conviction, he comes to believe he is gradually deteriorating.

This belief is a perception, a view of self. This view, like a magnet, attracts and interprets events as further evidence of weakening and deterioration…

This reality is far from the only possible one, but it is the one the patient chooses.

The first symbol is SYMPTOM. The person sees and experiences feelings and physical manifestations, and in the doctor’s office, he learns these are symptoms that collectively MEAN SOMETHING. He has symptoms. These are not random, he is told. They are not transient. They cannot be ignored. They will not go away on their own. They are serious.

The second symbol is CONDITION. The doctor’s diagnosis of the symptoms makes it clear that the patient has a disease, an illness, a disorder. A label is applied. A name. There is no doubt that the patient has this named disease. This is a THING. An entity. It is not a passing phenomenon. It is solid and stable. It is singular.

The third symbol is TREATMENT. This is what the doctor tells the patient he must do. Take a medicine. Have surgery. The treatment will get rid of the condition. The treatment is specific. It is geared to address the condition. It is the solution to the problem.

The fourth symbol is the DOCTOR. He knows. Nobody else knows. He is the authority. He is in charge of recognizing the symptoms, which lead him to make the diagnosis of the condition, which is turn leads him to prescribe the treatment. This progression is lock-step. There no other factors to consider. The doctor has effectively ruled out all other possibilities.

These four symbols lead the patient into a state of obedience. And in that state, he realizes his own power is beside the point and is irrelevant.

Of course, this is not the first time he has been to the doctor’s office. This is not the first time he has been put through this progression of the four symbols. Therefore, the effect on him, over time, is magnified.

Each successive visit to the doctor confirms he can and does develop new sets of symptoms—and each set implies a new condition.

As the conditions pile up, the patient is more convinced than ever that he is composed of diseases that appear “out of nowhere.”

He views himself as a set of symptoms which indicate a condition and imply a treatment. This is, in a sense, who and what he is.

Over time, his conditions tend to be more serious.

He never imagines that the toxic treatments he is taking are contributing to, or causing these more serous conditions—because each disease has a separate name, as if it exists in a vacuum. The doctor handles each diagnosis in that fashion. “Now you have this…and now you have that.”

When the patient reaches a point where he views himself as BEING these symptoms and conditions and very little else, he simply waits for the next arrival of the next set of symptoms and the next condition.

This is how powerful symbols can be.

In a better world, people would be educated in the use and effects of symbols, before succumbing to them.

Some would say, “What do you mean, symbols? The doctor is real, I do have physical problems, the doctor really does make a diagnosis, and I do take real medicines. Why are you talking about symbols?”

Because what locks a person in is what happens in his mind. And what happens in his mind is this parade of symbols. That’s what forms the basis of HIS VIEW OF HIMSELF. He rolls these symbols around in his mind and accepts them and locks himself in, and he sees himself as deteriorating.

“I am a deteriorating person. That’s who I am. That’s what I am. I’m waiting for the next round of symptoms and the diagnosis and treatment from the doctor. Any other ideas about what I am and what I can do are beside the point. No reason to entertain them. I have the potential to be more than a deteriorating person? What does that even mean? It makes no sense.”

The person doesn’t understand symbols, doesn’t understand how he is dealing with them, and so he closes the book on his life and future.

This process is not necessary, but he doesn’t grasp that.

Am I claiming that everything is in the mind? Nothing else possibly matters? No one ever really gets sick? No. But I am saying a shocking amount of what turns out to be a person’s future or non-future flows from how he recognizes, or doesn’t recognize, symbols and how he reads them and interprets them, how he accepts or rejects them, how he choose to surpass them or succumb to them.

Yes, there is a doctor. Yes, there is such a thing as physical illness. Yes, the doctor is delivering a diagnosis and calling it a condition. But these factors are not in the mind, unless the physical doctor can squeeze himself into the patient’s head. In the mind, there are symbols of these elements—and that is what the patient is dealing with, for better or for worse.

And over the long-term, for most patients, it’s worse.

The Matrix Revealed

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.