THE MULTI-BIND

"I do not love man-made laws and i abhor the traditions that our ancestors left us. This hatred is the fruit of my love for the sacred and spiritual kindness which should be the source of every law upon the earth; for kindness is the shadow of God in man. I know that the principles upon which i base my writings are echoes of the spirit of the great majority of the people of the world, because the tendency toward spiritual independence is to our life as the heart is to the body. "
-Kahlil Gibran

           Robert Anton Wilson liked to elaborate on the concept of the double bind, and how the double bind is exploited by authoritarians to establish and maintain control of their victims.
In our society the general dictum can be boiled down to "You are not allowed to live, but you are not allowed to kill yourself , either". In both cases , you go to hell. The psychological effect on the subject of such cruel and kafkaesque, paradoxical orders can be debilitating.

       The concept of the double bind can be extended to that of the multi-bind, which i think is a more accurate way of describing the situation. In the multi-bind , everything is bound to everything else , in an infinitely complex living web. Since the web is infinite, there are no walls or external objects for the web to be tied to , or blocked by, and so total mobility is guaranteed both for the web as a whole and for each "thing" that is part of the web. Instead of being immobilised by being bound in all directions, each unit in the web can experience total freedom as part of the web which is in itself totally free to move , change shape and form in any direction , and experience infinite love and life flowing through itself and all that constitutes it. The will of the web as a whole is not different to the true will of its individual parts who can only really function as such when they are conscious of the multi-bind. The key to the nature of the multi-bind and how it appears to each of us is consciousness.

     Since each mind is modelled on the human overmind, it is natural for each mind, that does not perceive the web of life it is part of, to construct webs of its own , webs of meaning and relationship. These webs inevitably become traps if consciousness does not emerge to manifest the greater picture. And hence the self-created web is ultimately experienced as an infinite prison, the prisoners tied down in all directions. But in fact, it is the prisoners that create the prison, it is the prisoners that become the prison guards.

"Only when free will kicked again in did they stop running obstacle courses of their own construction"
Kilgore Trout

     Today we experience a sense of encroaching darkness, an evil matrix threatening to swallow up all life on the planet and turn it into a code run by machines. And this experience may be the magical results of minds that have long been spinning their own little webs out of a desperate fear to NOT be absorbed by the greater whole , a fear of life and a fear of death, resulting in lack of both , a zombie-like state.

         But i digress! I have long felt that one of the purposes of Tantra and similar practices is to willingly allow oneself to become totally tied up -and thus totally liberated- enmeshed in the multi-bind, the great living, intelligent web of life, and to breathe love , life and consciousness into it, which at the same time is the true body and Self. This is the marriage of spirit and matter , or reversing the flow of entropy. Or .

         And, although i know it in my heart that quoting The Matrix films is lame, i cannot help but recall the end of the 3rd (and hopefully last) film when Neo (clean shaven as ever) becomes absorbed by the Agents. It can be argued that there was no other way to go to finish that game and that he did that on purpose. At the end of the day Neo represents life and the Agents don't, they're just spooks. (In a much more twisted view, at the end of David Lynch's monumental Twin Peaks TV series Agent Cooper -the shamanic all-round Good Guy- remains in the White Lodge and is replaced in this reality by an evil doppelganger, but we won't go there for now!)

       Which brings us to the internet, of course. From a somewhat pessimistic point of view (or perhaps realistic), the web is simply a technological mental simulacrum of the true web of life - as can be experienced with ayahuasca. It is the latest extension of cultural imperialism. And all the anonymity and freedom of speech it offers now will be gradually taken away as it becomes a tool for further social control and surveillance. As many have predicted, as history shows, the "terrorist threat" becomes bigger and bigger, and more measures are needed. It is a one-way street, and there is no turning back unless the people declare en masse total disbelief in all terrorist AND anti-terrorist propaganda. Instead of regurgitating second-hand opinions , everyone ought to say "we're being conned here, we don't buy any of this!"

        Otherwise, the internet will be taken under the control of those to whom it really always belonged. Like someone said , the web is the home of the spider. In the meantime , it is a useful tool for distraction of the population, and for dissemination of all kinds of disinformation. As a chaos magician noted , the big bad system has thrown out some dice and decided to play with chaos, and they (the chaos magicians) intend to give them (the spooks) more than they bargained for!

      I remain skeptical, and believe the internet is already sold out and the supposed information revolution little more than hype. Most of the "information" is spam and mis-info, making for an extremely low signal to noise ratio. These spooks can never even think of chaos. The only real revolution can only be psycho-biological.

     Often the internet seems like an extension and fancy repackaging of American culture , the dreaded "global village" delivered to your head for only $9,99 a month (plus tax). Why talk to your neighbours and feel awkward when you can remotely chatter idly with complete and remote strangers in the safety of your own home, and without any embarrassing body odours or actual closeness and intimacy? The latest stage in alienation. Unique facial expressions reduced to emoticons. (i guess the people who come up with these terms are called geeks).

       Here you can finally transcend the body in an abstracted datasphere and impress others with your greatness and the important things you have to say. Without any chance of eye contact. Here you can show The World who you are (as long as they are online). And when everyone shows everyone who they are , online , we will have a wonderful global village where "information" is freely available and we're all good mates and we can all have video chats with each other. This parody of human community is really begging for our disbelief. Lets isolate everyone from everyone else and then sell them a connection! And then we can know exactly what goods to try to sell them , and whether they are terrorists or not.

       Part of the daily struggle for soldiers and Marines in Iraq is communicating with civilians and suspected insurgents. Few military personnel have enough fluency with Iraqi Arabic to be easily understood, and field translators are in short supply.
But technology may help close that communications gap. A hand-held voice translator device developed by Integrated Wave Technologies, already in use in other parts of the world, converts simple English commands into Iraqi Arabic or 15 other languages.
When the soldier says a simple phrase -- for example, "keep kids back" -- the Voice Response Translator (VRT) matches that command to a more complex phrase in Arabic. In this case: "Keep your children back from us or we will take action against you.
"Integrated Wave Technologies President Tim McCune says simple communications like these can save lives, both among Iraqi civilians and military personnel. "This removes pulling the trigger as the first option in dealing with foreign nationals," he says.

    Pulling the trigger has historically been seen as the first option in "dealing with foreign nationals". One way to look at history is as the continuous, and increasingly lethal, war of rival and increasingly secret terrorist gangs over control of resources, to preserve themselves and what they righteously think as theirs. If no-one wanted to own the resources so they can have an easier life, at the expense of others, there wouldn't be all this hassle.

         But, no, what we have instead is the insane double bind of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Because if THEY are armed, then we better be armed too, JUST IN CASE. Just in case they decided to come and get us. And if they have WMD then we'd better cook up some fuckin' WMD as well. Keeping up with the Joneses. In this way world war tries to bring itself back in the foreground. And so we see that most of us human beings in the civilised world have not really become aware of the extremely high cost of living as we do.

         We have become totally dependent on a system of fear, exploitation and violence for our physical survival. Without the system and its economy , there would be no juice, and without juice, many millions of people in the city, and probably most of everyone in the country , would suffer and starve to death, or go mad and kill each other and themselves. Economy literally means "Law of the house" and it seems that most of us are under the law of someone else's house. There is no easy way out of this in any foreseeable way. It boils down to No War = Game Over. And we like the game far too much to quit it now. Or so we are supposed to think.

        We are supposed to think that we do really need this toxic technological nightmare for our survival, that this is civilisation, without which we would just revert to barbarism. And we are trained and conditioned to become heartless monsters that cannot behave in anything but the most selfish way, that are totally cut off from their natural instincts and so necessitate an increasingly large amount of technology and control for their own safety and the safety of others. Without the police looking after us we'd all kill and rob each other. And if we didn't, somebody would.
Ultimately this seems like cowardice. To surrender one's freedom out of fear . Fear of life, fear of death, leading to , as i said, a zombie-like state.

          From a karmic point of view things appear equally hopeless. Apparently we are fucked, and so are our children, and their children's children! Or perhaps we are always in the position to get out? In the multi-bind, whatever one makes of the situation, whatever philosophy of life they adopt or come up with, even their mystical experiences, it is all almost entirely a result of their particular conditions and conditioning, which includes how they make their living, a result of what they don't see perhaps more than of the little that they do see.

          The joyful Book of Revelation is perhaps the product of a sexually and nutritionally starved male ascetic who hated life? And likewise many Holy Books the products of twisted men hating and denying the body, sensuality and the feminine? It is said that the ancient Athenians could get the time to indulge in their philosophies because they had slaves doing the hard work for them ? (and weren't they pedophiles anyway?) And so a person or a people who has never really had to eat shit can come up with a certain outlook on life . And another who has had to eat a lot of shit can come up with another. And so the answers become more questions , once the first question has been asked, and there is no way out.

         The hippies did not mince their words when they said GO WITH THE FLOW. The flow of life and death can be experienced and learned in our own body. Becoming aware of natural cycles like Tension-Charge-Discharge-Relaxation is a key to going with the flow. This can be easily felt by breathing and meditating on the feelings that come by clenching the fists and facial muscles really hard for a while, then slowly releasing them- or doing the same with the base chakra.

        When one commits oneself to expanding their consciousness in an embodied, sustained way, it becomes important , i think, to recognise the cycles one goes through and not to try to hold on to any particular state. There really is nothing to fear , and fear itself is a spook. Freaking out, not shedding old skins, not listening, not being receptive , firmly grounded and genuine, ignoring the signs in favour of magic mirrors, smokescreens and carrots on sticks - these are mistakes.

       The goodness always radiates from the heart and embraces all, like a soft , juicy light.
       Laughter begins as that knot in the belly is tickled. The rest is what the Borg said.

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