MindStar

by Michael A Aquino

  misunderstanding have withered and grown weak.

  Unless they are nursed back to health, man will despair

  106 Winkler, Franz E., For Freedom Destined: Mysteries of Man’s

  Evolution in the Mythology of Wager’s Ring Operas and Parsifal.

  Garden City, NY: Waldorf Press, 1974, pages #54-55.

  - 192 -

  of life and eventually throw it away in a mass suicide by

  nuclear destruction.

  But how can we care for what we no longer

  comprehend?

  Modern science, admirable in its achievements on a

  material plane, has proven ineffectual in the

  understanding of intangible values. This limitation,

  while freely admitted by the small number of truly

  creative scientists, seems to elude the average

  intellectual. And the failure to recognize this limitation

  adds to the delusion that natural science in its present

  form can be the judge of religious or spiritual truth.

  Making modern man’s plight even more serious is

  the fact that his materialistic delusion of himself not

  only deprives him of wisdom and happiness, but acts

  also as a pattern in whose dreary image he tends to

  reshape his nature. Consequently more and more

  personalities emerge who think and act virtually like

  robots. They know no happiness and have no

  perception of objective morality.

  We have grown wise in the analysis of the material

  world, have expanded the scope of our perception to

  outer space and to the world beneath the atom. But

  objective inner experience has faded almost entirely

  away, and it has left us groping in the dark for the true

  image of ourselves. 107

  It is a function of the Temple of Set, as of the ancient

  Egyptian priesthoods, the Pythagorean Brotherhood, and

  the Platonic Academy before it, to inspire the Elect of

  humanity to awaken to that knowledge which is latent

  within their consciousness and needs only to be

  appreciated as such. 108 Winkler rightly points out that,

  107 Ibid., pages #19-21.

  108 Within initiation the term “Elect” identifies an individual who has

  not merely been chosen for this transformative adventure, but who

  intrinsically possesses the intelligence, vision, and ambition to

  pursue it successfully. It is thus both an active and a passive

  qualification.

  - 193 -

  the more highly initiated one becomes, the more one can

  experience such prerogatives of Xeper. But this is a

  matter of perspective and proportion, not of the quality of

  immortality itself.

  D. Emperor of Dreams

  I don’t make things up, and I can’t write stories. I

  daresay that if I tried to do either, the results would be

  awkward, clumsily and self-consciously [in the banal

  sense] artificial. So what are these books of mine that are

  casually labeled “fiction”?

  Simply: SUs outlined and shared in print. And they

  exemplify the flexibility of SU-creation from little if any

  OU-modification - Secret of the Lost Ark, Grail Mission,

  We Break the Sword, and Ode to Esmé - to near-

  complete disassociation: Morlindalë, FireForce.

  Often - and I confess somewhat mischievously - I

  enjoy pranking the reader with OU-facts that appear

  fantastic, as well as SU-constructs that have every

  appearance of OU-substantiation. 109

  This is not just an attentiveness- and credibility-

  challenge to the reader, but a very serious representation

  of how, when we assume we perceive and interact with

  the OU daily, the reality is that each individual creates

  and indwells a SU interpretation of the OU, sufficient to

  render it intelligible and practical for physical

  functioning.

  Beyond each personal SU and the OU are also several

  Collective SUs (CSU) (C#1.E), constructed by groups of

  109 There wasn’t really an article in the Los Angeles Times about the

  discovery of an ancient city of lizard-beings beneath L.A. Or was

  there? Robert Fulton didn’t really build the first Nautilus for

  Napoleon. Or did he? The secret SS records of the Atlantis expedition

  aren’t really on decaying microfilm reels in the U.S. National

  Archives. Or are they?

  - 194 -

  entities in which we participate, both voluntarily or

  necessarily. As we have seen herein, many such CSUs -

  ideological, profane-religions, etc. - insist that they are

  not CSUs but indeed the OU: an image they deem

  essential to their effectiveness.

  Once, like Her-Bak, you are awakened to and begin to

  understand this “matrix” of interleaved, interlocking

  universes, you become their controller and manipulator,

  not their blind, ignorant slave.

  At the end of this “Mind- trilogy”, as the Afterword to

  FindFar, appears “The Prince and the Magician”, a

  rarely-noticed incidental in John Fowles’ The Magus. It is

  a Black Mass, a “red pill”, or as Fowles terms it,

  “disintoxication”.

  MindStar is also such a disintoxication. The Preface

  predicted that it would expose you to nothing whose truth

  you don’t already know: anamnesis.

  That turned out to be the case, yes?

  E. The End of the Beginning

  MindStar has endeavored to take its subject to the

  limits of conventional exposure and expression. 110

  Religious eschatology myths and contemporary

  science-fiction re-attempts like 2001 characteristically

  fall silent at precisely the moment when the subject

  becomes most interesting: Once you are re-created as a

  disincarnate, immortal being, freed from both your

  material body and the OU to which it was permanently

  chained during your incarnation, what’s next?

  You’ll think of something. As Walt Disney said, “It’s

  kind of fun to do the impossible.”

  The common feature of all the old superstitions -

  whether Hebraic, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, or etc. -

  110 At least, hopefully, without scaring the cats.

  - 195 -

  was that you’re in big trouble: if not just from your own

  sinfulness, that of great+grandparents Adam & Eve. Your

  whole life is spent trying to get out of the Very Bad

  Eternity this promises.

  Or, if you shucked that all off, the Big Black Sack.

  Isn’t it nice to punt all of this?

  Millennia of foggy fablisms have also left Hereafters

  surprisingly unexplored. Well, the Egyptians had Amenti

  and the Tuat nicely mapped out, including where not to

  step if you didn’t want your ba-foot eaten by Apep.

  No guidebook was need for the Jewish Sheol; it’s a

  divine dump, a celestial cesspool for rephaim refuse.

  At least Christians could throw dice for Dante’s Divine

  Comedy (!) of Paradise, Purgatory, or Inferno, for which

  Hieronymus Bosch and Francisco Goya were only too

  happy to offset Michelangelo and da Vinci.

  Upon deactivation of your physical body, the khat

  ceases to be the “default” emanation, re-centering your
>
  “sense of self” in the ba. Extension from the ba is

  thereafter effortless: for instance into the ka for a SU

  manifestation of 4D displacement for travel throughout

  the OU or other SUs. The khabit reaches across the SU/

  OU boundaries if you wish varying types of “visits” from

  delicate inspiration to full-fledged ghost or house-

  haunter.

  At the onset of the American Civil War, a Union

  soldier came closer than Aragorn to anticipating the

  khabit, writing to his wife:

  ... But oh! Sarah: If the dead can come back to this

  Earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall

  always be near you in the gladdest days and in the darkest

  nights - always, always.

  And if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall

  be my breath; as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it

  shall be my spirit passing by.

  - 196 -

  Sarah, do not mourn me dead. Think I am gone and

  wait for thee, for we shall meet again. 111

  Queen Tera knew well from her own initiation how to

  escape the perils of her original time. 112 Upon the precise

  culmination of the ceremonial, incantational, and

  astronomical alignments combined to send her khabit

  unobtrusively into the 19th-Century body of Margaret113

  Trelawny, whose own khat had been conjured into a

  physical double of the Queen’s, therein to blend delicately

  and willingly with the khabit of Margaret:

  In the autumn Margaret and I were married. On the

  occasion she wore the mummy robe and zone and the jewel

  which Queen Tera had worn in her hair. On her breast, set

  in a ring of gold make like a twisted lotus stalk, she wore

  the strange Jewel of Seven Stars which held words to

  invoke the neteru of all the worlds.

  At the marriage the sunlight streaming through the

  chancel windows fell on it, and it seemed to glow like a

  living thing.

  The graven words may have been of efficacy; for

  Margaret holds to them, and there is no other life in all the

  world so happy as my own.

  111 Letter, Sullivan to Sarah Ballou, July 14, 1861. One week later, on

  July 21, Sullivan was killed at the First Battle of Bull Run.

  112 The XI [Theban] Dynasty (2134-1991 BCE) was dominated by the

  Priesthood of Amon. The only child of Mentuhotep III, Princess Tera

  took the throne in 1998, reigning for seven years under the male

  name of “Mentuhotep IV”.

  Tera’s father, fearing that her youth and sex would cause her

  assassination, had sent her to the Delta for initiation into the

  Priesthood of Set at Hwt-nen-nesu (Gr . Herakleopolis Magna), 20

  miles from the successor Tanis of the Setian XX Dynasty.

  Queen Tera’s Arts indeed protected her, but upon her death (said

  to be by her own Arts] she was entombed “namelessly” in the “Valley

  of the Sorcerer” and her reign erased, shown on the Turin Papyrus as

  “7 empty years”. No “Mentuhotep IV” tomb has ever been found.

  113 Reverse the last four letters.

  - 197 -

  We often think of the great Queen, and we talk of her

  freely. Once, when I said with a sigh that I was sorry she

  could not have waked into a new life in a new world, my

  wife, putting both her hands in mine and looking into my

  eyes with that far-away eloquent dreamy look which

  sometimes comes into her own, said lovingly:

  “Do not grieve for her! Who knows, but she may have

  found the joy she sought? Love and patience are all that

  make for happiness in this world, or in the world of the

  past or of the future; of the living or the dead. She dreamed

  her dream, and that is all that any of us can ask!” 114

  Upon rising to Neter-Xertet, your MS can be as

  neteru-harmonious or Set-creative as you wish, whether

  it is fulfillment of such a gentle and modest dream as

  Queen Tera’s, or the magnificent grandiosity of a Clark

  Ashton Smith. Assume your ka and explore galaxies [with

  your friends along], toss Esmé a seaweed cigar, discuss

  straightening-out Earth’s wobbly axis with Adolf Hitler,

  or go back a few Ages to revisit it as Arda. Don your

  khabit and kiss your still-incarnate Beloved [or settle

  some scores with those in need of nightmares]. Join

  Princesses Ozma of Oz and Dorothy Gale for red-tinted

  Quadling tea on the terrace of Glinda’s palace. Later

  perhaps enjoy a glass of sherry with Barnabas Collins at

  the Old House. Frolic with everyone ever in your furmily

  at the Rainbow Bridge. Re-go-out on every date you ever

  screwed up and get it right this time. Snap your fingers

  and transform a revived Christopher Reeve from

  wheelchair to [the real] Superman; the planet definitely

  needs him!

  Oh, and if you’re having any trouble figuring out

  Plato, just conjure up a sphinx and a chimæra to help.

  Ascending into the radiant æthyr, among the

  immortals, you shall be yourself a god.

  - Pythagoras, Golden Verse #37

  114 Stoker, op.cit. , pages #255-6.

  - 198 -

  - 199 -

  Afterwords: The Sphinx and the Chimæra

  On May 30, 1975 in Santa Barbara,

  California, a sphinx and a chimæra were evoked

  to manifestation in order to explore certain

  esoteric implications of the Dialogues of Plato.

  Placed upon the altar: The Collected Dialogues of

  Plato , Hamilton & Cairns (Ed.), Princeton

  University Press, 1961. This conversation was

  recorded, transcribed, and annotated by Michael

  A. Aquino.

  The Sphinx: I think it essential to preface any

  discussion of a single Platonic dialogue with two

  major qualifications. The first is that, to be treated

  without distortion, Plato’s philosophy must be

  appreciated in its entirety. Emphasis upon any

  single dialogue or group of dialogues carries with it

  a certain unfairness to the author.

  The Chimæra: Yet our span of materialization is

  limited, and we cannot hope to treat the entire

  range of Plato’s thought in the time available to us.

  The Sphinx: True, and so let us focus first upon The

  Sophist, which illustrates many of the points most

  important to this investigation.

  - 200 -

  The Chimæra: But what is your second qualification?

  The Sphinx: There is the problem of understanding

  what Plato “really meant”. This is an issue against

  which I am powerless to defend myself. I am of

  Khem and not of Hellas; I am bilingual only in

  English and hence must depend upon my

  understanding of Plato as he is translated into the

  English language. The dialogues center much of

  their discussion around terms whose final

  definitions are elusive at best, even in

  conversations carried out at intellectual planes

  below that of Plato. Then, too, there is always the

  spectre of imprecise translation from the Greek to

  the English. And Plato himself could not anticipate

  this.
>
  The Chimæra: Your qualifications are entirely

  acceptable. Proceed.

  The Sphinx: The initial question raised by The Sophist

  is its raison d’être. Why should Plato have felt it

  necessary to include such a dialogue as this in his

  philosophy at all? Was it truly because the

  included lines of argument required exposure? Or

  did Plato intend the document rather as a gauntlet

  of sorts to be flung before the Sophists

  themselves?

  The Chimæra: I sense that the editors of this book

  ventured one explanation. Grasping it with a

  forepaw, he turns to page #958. Yes, here it is:

  The argument is hung on the figure of the

  Sophist quite arbitrarily. No real picture is given

  of the men who were the professional

  instructors of Greece for many years. All Plato

  - 201 -

  does is ascribe to them every notion he

  disapproves. He detested the whole band of

  Sophists. To him they were shallow-minded,

  pretentious, superficial, mercenary - they were

  really doing what Socrates was charged with,

  corrupting the minds of the young.

  And this appears to be reinforced by the dialogue’s

  concluding statement, which seems to be little

  more than an outright vilification of Sophistry. He

  turns to page #1016 and quotes:

  The art of contradiction-making, descended

  from an insincere kind of conceited mimicry, of

  the semblance-making breed, derive from

  imagemaking, distinguished as a portion, not

  divine but human, of production, that presents a

  shadowy play of words - such are the blood and

  lineage which can, with perfect truth, be

  assigned to the authentic Sophist.

  The Sphinx: Obviously that is not an objective

  philosophical statement. It is a deliberate insult

  reached through a dialectical process which, in

  retrospect, seems a transparent parody of Plato’s

  more serious argumentative style. In most of the

  Platonic dialogues one feels that Socrates is not

  “managing” the conversation towards an end that

  he has conceptualized beforehand. But every twist

  and turn of The Sophist is designed only to

  channel the conversation into providing a part of

  that final statement.

  The Chimæra: But how would you have Plato compose

  such a definition, save by a summary of the

  component arguments preceding it?

  - 202 -

  The Sphinx: I quarrel not with the final assembly