Bob and I saw an element that the MPT had been missing: namely, the strong human interface. My own experiments into “living book” production had shown me that a connection to the collective unconscious through a human medium was a powerful catalyst. Synchronicities also seem to emerge, multiply, and in fact lead the experiencer through the otherwise “random” data that comes out of these kinds of experiments. I have witnessed this multiple times in my own experiments. (Remember Saul-Paul Sirag’s account of the MPT experiment?) Also, with the outline and results of the MPT experiment, I had methods, proofs, and failures to refine my own models, which I was using as the framework for my Living Book experiment. These early experiments were much later to be adapted into the storytelling methods now known as alternate reality gaming and Transmedia, as well as being the basis for a few patents. But I digress. As I said earlier, I feel that the methods and history of the evolution of Living Book and Metamachine thinking should be documented and in that interest I will be updating and expanding Game Over? for a reissue under a different title.
To get back to our story: One day in my apartment, Bob and I were smoking hash while deliberating the connections between various quantum models for consciousness and a particular passage in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Bob interrupted my stoned soliloquy by pulling out a sheaf of Xeroxed papers from his bag.
“Ever see these before?” he asked.
I picked up the papers and looked them over. “No,” I replied. “Where did you get them?”
“Someone sent them to Felicia, anonymously,” he replied. Felicia was a media producer friend of ours from Marin County.
I looked them over. Upon first glance it appeared to be a fringe science catalog, selling books. I pointed to my bookshelves.
“I have tons of this kind of stuff. I’ve been collecting fringe science pamphlets and booklets for years.”
I then went to my bookshelf and pulled out a newly acquired copy of High Weirdness by Mail. I threw it down on the table.
“Look, someone even did a compendium of all the weird shit you can send away for,” I said. “Collecting this kind of stuff is a fairly popular wacko pastime.”
He snickered in the strange way that he had when he was being cryptically funny. “So Joe, the fact that you have an index and vast collection of this stuff on your bookshelf makes you one of the Alpha wackos?”
I laughed. “Yeah, I guess so!”
He pointed back to the catalog on the table. “Nick Herbert is implicated in this. It says he wrote some book that was suppressed. He told me he doesn’t remember writing it until he read about it in here, but now he’s beginning to question if he did.”
We both stood comfortably silent, as only the stoned can, and stared at the catalog for a while.
A few days later, I was at a party at the Soundmotion Garden studios and I cornered Felicia, partly because I was genuinely interested in the origin of the catalog and partly because I thought Felicia was a total “hotty” (Californian for “very attractive”).
“Hey, did you get a weird Xerox catalog of science books and give it to Bob?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah, that. Yeah,” she said.
“Where did it come from?” I asked.
“No idea, it came without a return address. How did you get it?” she replied.
“Bob...” I answered.
“Oh, yeah. Funny how all the books in that catalog are on your shelf, huh? I thought it might be from you...” she said, smiling coyly.
“Nope,” I said. “I see how you could think that, but no.”
I went inside where Bob was sitting in an overstuffed chair, holding wacko court as usual, with several Mondoids (followers of the radical publication Mondo 2000). I pulled him aside. “Still have that catalog you showed me the other day?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said as he reached into his bag and handed it to me. “Here. You can have it. I figure it’s more up your alley.”
I rolled it up and put it into my back pocket. I looked out the window and saw several attractive college-aged girls disrobing to enter the hot tub. I quickly went back out to the deck and forgot about the catalog folded up in my pocket for several days.
Days later, I pulled the catalog from my pocket as I prepared my pile of dirty clothes for the laundry. I read it as I waited for my laundry to finish. I was stunned. This was so clever! Someone had actually disguised a brilliant series of short stories as a crackpot book catalog! As a fan of Xerox crackpot lit, I could fully appreciate the methodology involved. I ran off copies on a Xerox machine and gave them to several people. Eventually, with the help of a friend who owned a mail order conspiracy book company, I sold a “Xerox for cost” edition. Individuals or other catalog companies ordered sets that we Xeroxed to order. I estimate that we distributed thousands of copies like this. At the time, I considered the documents a great joke in the tradition of Discordian or SubGenius culture jamming and I willfully played along. Later, when I began to look into the true background and origins of the material, I discovered that this was no “joke”. In fact, the documents may represent a signal that is being culturally transmitted in many different forms, whose full purpose I am yet to fully comprehend.
As you read the documents in the following pages, bear in mind that the catalog is not really a catalog; the brochure is not really a brochure. They are clever “enigma” codes that carry powerful symbolism, and a powerful message, which are merely disguised as a catalog and brochure.
Look no further than today’s popular media to see the signal as it is picked up.
A frequency, a signal, a message in a bottle?
Joseph Matheny
From somewhere in the Pine Barrens of New Jeresy
This catalog is a reproduction. This is not a commercial advertisement. Consider this an unusually complete bibliography to the story that unravels in the companion documents. Read this like a series of short stories and you will agree with us that it is in fact a coded message and not a book catalog at all.
I N C U N A B U L A
A Catalogue of Rare Books, Manuscripts & Curiosa
Conspiracy Theory Frontier Science & Alternative Worlds
Emory Cranston, Prop.
Incunabulum/cocoon/swaddling clothes/cradle/ incunae,
in the cradle/koiman, put to sleep/winding-sheet/koimetarium (cemetery)/printed books before 1501, hence by extension any rare & hermetic book...
INTRODUCTION
No book for sale here was actually printed before 1501, but they all answer to the description “rare and hermetic” — even the mass market paperbacks, not to mention the Xeroxes of unpublished manuscripts, which cannot be obtained from any other source!
The symbol INCUNABULA was chosen for our company for its shape-cocoon; egg-like, gourd-like — the shape of Chaos according to Chaung Tzu. Cradle: beginings. Sleep: dreams. Silken white sheets of birth and death; books, white pages, the cemetery of ideas.
This catalogue has been put together with a purpose: to alert YOU to a vast cover up, a conspiracy so deep that no other researcher has yet become aware of it (outside certain Intelligence circles, needless to say!) — and so dangerous that the “winding sheet” imagery in our title seems quite appropriate; we know of at least two murders so far in connection with this material.
Unlike other conspiracy theories, such as Hollow Earth, Men In Black, cattle mutilation, UFO, Reich & Tesla or what have you, the INCUNABULA Theory harmonizes with genuine frontier quantum mechanics and chaos mathematics, and does not depend on any quack nostrums, psuedoscience or ESP for proof. This will become clear to anyone who takes the trouble to read the background material we recommend and offer for sale.
Because of the unprecedented nature of the INCUNABULA File we have included short descriptions of some of the boo
ks, pamphlets, flyers, privately — circulated or unpublished manuscripts, ephemera & curiosa available through us. Some of this is highly inflammable and sexual in nature, so an age statement must be included with each order.
Cash (or stamps) only. No cheques or money orders will be accepted.
Thank You,
Emory Cranston, Prop.
1. Wolf, Fred Alan
Parallel Universes: The Search for Other Worlds
(New York, Simon & Schuster, 1988)
Written by a scientist for non-scientists, simplistic and jokey, makes you feel a bit talked-down-to. Nevertheless Wolf uses his imagination (or other scientist’s imaginations) so well he seems to hit accidentally on certain truths - (unless he knows more than he reveals). For example: the parallel universes must have all come into being simultaneously “at the beginning” in order for quantum uncertainty to exist, because there was no observer present at the Big Bang, thus no way for the Wave Function to collapse and produce one universe out of all the bubbles of possibility (p. 174). If an electron can disappear in one universe and appear in another (as suggested by the Everett/Wheeler material), a process called “quantum tunneling”, then perhaps information can undergo a similar tunneling effect. Wolf suggests (p.176) that this might account for certain “psychic phenomenon, altered states of awareness”, even ghosts and spirits! Actual travel between worlds must of course involve tunneling by both electrons AND information — any scientist would have predicted as much — but the mention of “altered states” of consciousness is extremely revealing! Elsewhere (p.204), Wolf speculates that a future “highly developed... electronic form of biofeedback” will allow us to observe quantum effects in the electrons of our own bodies, making the enhanced consciousness and the body itself a “time machine” (which is what he calls a device for travel between universes). He comes so close to the truth then shies away! For instance (p.199) he points out that the Wave Function has a value BETWEEN zero and one until it collapses. If the wave function does not collapse, the “thing” it describes exists in two universes simultaneously. How strange of him not to mention that fractal geometry also deals with values between zero and one! As we know the secret of travel between worlds is rooted in the marriage of quantum and chaos, particularly in the elusive mathematics of fractal tesseracts (visualize a 4-dimension Mandelbrot Set — one of the simplest of the trans-dimensional “maps” or “catastrophic topologies”). Wolf appears so unaware of this, we must sadly conclude that he’s not part of the conspiracy.
Particularly interesting — and not found in any other material — are Wolf’s speculations about schizophrenia. Are schizophrenics receiving information from other worlds? Could a schizoid observer actually observe (in the famous double slit experiments) a wave becoming two particles and then one particle? Or could such an observation be made by an extremely blank and simple-minded watcher (a sort of Zen simpleton perhaps)? If so, the perfect subject for parallel-worlds experiments would be a paradoxically complex simpleton, a “magnetized schizophrenic” who would be aware of the split into two worlds which occurs when a quantum measurement is made. Oddly enough, such a mental state sounds very close to the “positive schizophrenia” of certain extreme psychedelic experiences as well as the meditation-visualization exercises of actual travelers between worlds.
Despite its flaws, an essential work.
2. Herbert, Nick
Quantum Reality
(NAL,1986)
A masterful and lucid exposition of the different versions of reality logically describable from various interpretations of quantum mechanics. The Everett/Wheeler Theory is here given the clearest explanation possible in lay persons terms, given the authors awareness (at the time) of experimental verification.
3. ibid.
Faster Than Light: Superluminal Loopholes in Physics
(NAL,1988)
Some of the theorists who touch on the Many-Worlds “hypothesis” place too much emphasis on time distortions and the implication of “time travel”. These of course seem present in the theorems, but in practice have turned out (so far) to be of little consequence. Chaos Theory places much more emphasis on the temporal directionality than most quantum theory (with such exceptions as R. Feynman and his “arrow of time”), and offers strong evidence for the past-present-future evolution that we actually experience. As K. Sohrawardi puts it, “the universe is in a state of Being, true, but that state is not static in the way suggested by the concept of ‘reversibility’ in Classical physics. The ‘generosity’ of Being, so to speak, is becoming, and the result is not reversibility but multiplicity, the immeasurable resonant chaos — like fecundity of creation.” Nevertheless, Herbert’s second book is a brilliant speculative work — and it led him directly to a certain circle of scientists and body of research concerned with dimensional travel, rather than “time travel”, with the result that his third book (see next item) finally struck pay-dirt.
4. “Jabir ibn Hayaan” (Nick Herbert).
Alternate Dimensions
(publication suppressed by Harper & Row,1989)
bound uncorrected galleys,179pp.
While working on Faster Than Light Herbert came into contact with one of the “travel cults” operating somewhere in California, perhaps one with a sufiistic slant (“Jabir ibn Hayaan” was a famous 10th century sufi alchemist); according to the preface of Alternate Dimensions, which is irritatingly vague and suggestive, this group seems to have trained him and sent him on at least one trip to America2. Herbert suggests that he already had so much experience of altered states of consciousness and ability to visualize complex space/time geometries that only a minimum of “initiatic” training proved necessary.
In any case, despite its vagueness and brevity, this book is the most accurate and thoroughly-informed work on travel between worlds in our entire collection. So far we have been unable to obtain any deep theoretical work, and only a few papers dealing with practical aspects — but Herbert provides a magnificent overview of the entire field. Written for the lay person, with his usual clear and succinct approach to theory, Herbert’s is the first “popular” study to make all the basic links: the Everett/Wheeler hypothesis, Bell’s Theorem, the E/R Bridge, fractal geometry and chaos math, cybernetically-enhanced biofeedback, psychotropic and shamanic techniques, crystallography, morphogenetic field theory, catastrophe topology, etc.
Of course he’s strongest in discussing the quantum aspects of travel, less sure when dealing with the math outside his field, and most inspiring when describing (pp. 98-101) visualization techniques and “embodied ecstasy” (ex-stasis, “standing outside” the body; hence embodied ecstasy paradoxically describes the trans-dimensional experience).
Herbert makes no claim to understand the traveling itself, and goes so far as to suggest that even the (unnamed) pioneers who made the first breakthroughs may not have completely understood the process, any more than the inventor of the steam engine understood Classical physics (p. 23). This definitely ties in with what we know about the persons in question.
Unfortunately the six illustrations promised in the table of contents are not included in the galleys — one of them was a “Schematic for a Trans-dimensional Express” which might be worth killing for! — and the publishers claim that Herbert never supplied the illustrations. They refuse to say why they suspended publication of Alternate Dimensions and in fact at first denied ever having handled such a title! Moreover Herbert has apparently dropped out of sight; if he hasn’t met with foul play, he may have returned permanently to Earth2.
We regret having to sell copies of a flawed book for such an outrageous price; we’d like to publish a mass-market edition affordable by all — but if Harper & Row ever find out what we’re doing, we’ll need the money for court costs and lawyers’ fees! So get it while you can — this is THE indispensable background work for understanding the Conspiracy.
5. Thomsen, Dietric
k E.
“A Knowing Universe Seeking to be Known”
(Xerox offprint from ScienceNews, Vol. 123, 1983)
Unwittingly demonstrates the resonance between quantum reality theory and the sufism of (for example) “the Greatest Shaykh” Ibn’Arabi, who discusses in his Bezels of Wisdom a saying attributed to God by Mohammad (but not in the Koran): “I was a hidden treasure and I wanted (lit. ‘loved’) to be known; so I created the universe, that I might be known.”
5a. We also have a few off-prints (at the same price) of Thomsen’s witty “Quanta at Large:101 Things To Do with Schroedinger’s Cat” (op. cit,129,1986).
6. DeWitt, Bryce S. & Neill Graham.
The Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
(Princeton, NJ, 1973)
The standard (and far from “easy”!) work on the Everett/Wheeler hypothesis — a bible for the early pioneers.
7. Cramer, John G.
“Alternate Universes II”
(Analog, Nov. 1984)
A popularization of the Theory by a prominent physicist — no knowledge of the Conspiracy is detectable. We’re selling copies of the Sci-Fi mag itself for $10 each.
8. Greenberg, D.M., ed.
New Techniques & Ideas in Quantum Measurement Theory
(Vol. 480 Annals of the NY Academy of Sciences, 1986)
Contains the valuable if somewhat whimsical article by D. Z. Albers, “How to take a Photograph of Another Everett World”. Also the very important “Macroscopic Quantum Tunneling at Finite Temperatures” by P. Hanggi (we suspect him of being a Conspiracy member).
9. (Anonymous).
Course Catalogue for 1978-79, Institute of Chaos Studies and Imaginal Yoga
(no address); Xerox of mimeographed flyer, 7pp
An in-house document from the Institute where the first breakthrough was attained (probably in the late winter or early spring of 1979) — therefore, although it makes no overt mention of Travel or the Egg, the Catalogue is of prime importance for an understanding of the intellectual and historical background of the event.
According to an unreliable source (see ESCAPE FROM EARTH PRIME!,#15 in this list), the Institute was located somewhere in Dutchess County, New York, where the founder and director, Dr. Kamadev Sohrawardi, was employed by IBM in the 1960’s, “dropped out” and began investigations into “consciousness physics”; it is also claimed that Sohrawardi was a Bengali of mixed English, Hindu and Moslem origin, descended from an old Sufi family, and initiated into Tantra. All this disagrees with clues in other sources and is perhaps not to be trusted. Other groups take credit for Breakthrough, and Sohrawardi may have been a fraud — but we’re convinced that the Catalogue is authentic and Sohrawardi’s claim the most certain.
At first glance, the Catalogue appears an example of late-hippy/early-New-Age pretentiousness. Thus there are courses in “Visions of Color & Light in Sufi Meditation”, “Inner Alchemy in Late Taoism”, “Metaphysics of the Ismaili ‘Assassins’”, “Imaginal Yoga & the Psychotoplogy of the Imagination”, “Hermetic & Neo-Pagan Studies”, (apparently based on Golden Dawn teachings), “Visualization Techniques in Javanese Sorcery”, “Stairways to Heaven: Shamanic Trance & the Mapping of Consciousness”, “Stirner, Nietzsche & Stone age Economy — An Examination of Non-Authoritarian Hunter/Gatherer Societies”, and — interestingly enough! — “Conspiracy Theory”.
The “shamanic” course may have been a blind for research in psychotropic drugs, including such exotica asahuasca (yage, harmaline), ibogaine, yohimbine, Telepathine and Vitamin K, as well as the more standard psychedelicatessan of the late 70’s.
However, the Catalogue also contains amazing courses in frontier science, any combination of which could have provided the key or final puzzle-bit to the Breakthrough: apparently Sohrawardi taught or supervised most of them. Thus “The Universe in a Grain of Sand” promised information on models of brain activity, cybernetically-enhanced feedback, Sheldrake’s morphogenetic field theory, Rene’ Thom’s Catastrophic Theory as applied to consciousness, lucid-dreaming research, John Lilly’s work on “altered states” and other mind-related topics. Then in “Strange Attractors & the Mathematics of Chaos”, Sohrawardi discussed matters unknown outside of the margins of academia till the mid-80’s, and made the astounding prediction that Chaos in the macroscopic world somehow be found to mirror Uncertainty in the microscopic or Quantum World, a truth still unrecognized in “official” scientific circles today. He felt that n-dimensional strange attractors could be used to model the quantum behavior of particles/waves, and that the “so-called collapse of the wave function” could actually be mapped with certain bizarre ramifications of Thom’s catastrophic topology. Making references to work by Ilya Prigogine which was still being circulated in private “preprint” or samizdat form at the time, Sohrawardi suggests that “creative chaos” (as opposed to “deterministic” or entropic chaos) provides the link that will unify Relativity, Quantum, Complexity and consciousness itself into a new science.
Finally in his “Advanced Seminar on Many Worlds”, he states baldly that the alternative universes predicted by Relativity (Black Hole Theory) are the same as the many worlds predicted by Quantum, are the same as fractal dimensions revealed in Chaos! This one-page course description is the closest thing we have to an explanation of why travel to other worlds actually works. Hence the Catalogue is an indispensable document for the serious student of the Conspiracy.
10. Beckenstein, J.
“Black holes & Entropy”
(Xerox offprint from Physical Review,Vol. D7,1973; 28pp)
An early (pre-Breakthrough) speculation with suggestive hints about quantum and chaos-as-entropy — although no knowledge of actual Chaos Theory is demonstrated. This paper was referred to in an in-house memo from the Inst. for Chaos Studies & Imaginal Yoga, believed to have been composed by K. Sohrawardi himself (see #9).
11. Sohrawardi,Dr Kamadev.
“Pholgiston & the Quantum Aether”
(Off print from the J. of Paranormal Physics,Vol. XXII, Bombay, 1966)
An early paper by Sohrawardi, flooded with wild speculations about quantum and oriental spirituality, probably dating from the period when he was still working for IBM, but making visits to Millbrook, nearby in Dutchess Co., and participating in the rituals of the League of spiritual discovery under Dr. T Leary, and the psychedelic yoga of Bill Haines’ Sri Ram Ashram, which shared Leary’s headquarters on a local millionaire’s estate. The basic insight concerns the identity of Everett/Wheeler’s “many worlds” and the “other worlds” of sufism, tantrik Hinduism and Vajrayana Buddhism. At the time, Sohrawardi apparently believed he could “prove” this by reviving the long-dead theories of phlogiston and aether in the light of quantum discoveries! (Phlogiston Theory — based on the thinking of the sufi alchemist Jabir ibn Hayaan — the original Jabir — was propounded seriously in the 18th century to unify heat and light as “one thing”. ) Totally useless as science, this metaphor nevertheless inspired Sohrawardi’s later and genuinely important work on alternate realities.
12. ibid. “Zero Work & Psychic Paleolithism”
East Village Other, Vol. IV #4
(Dec. 1968); Xerox reprint, single sheet 11 1/2 x 17
Unfortunately no scientific speculations, but a fascinating glimpse into the political background of the inventor of Travel (or rather, one of the inventors). Making reference to French Situationist and Dutch “Provo” ideas which helped spark the “Events” and upheavals of Spring ’68 all over Europe and America, Sohrawardi looks forward to a world without “the alienating prison of WORK”, restored to the “oneness with Nature of the Old Stone Age” and yet somehow based on “green technology and quantum weirdness.”
Wild and wooly as it is, this text nevertheless poses a fascinating scientific question in the light of the author’s later accomplishments — a question still unanswered. All the “First Breakthroughs”
we know of with any degree of certainty (those in New York, California, and Java — the actual sequence is unclear) without exception entered parallel worlds without human inhabitants, virtual forest-worlds. Most science fiction predicated other worlds almost like ours. Populated by “us”, with only a few slight differences, worlds “close” to ours. Instead — no people!
Why?
Two possible explanations: (1) We cannot enter worlds containing “copies” of ourselves without causing paradox and violating the consistency principle of the “megaverse” — hence only wild (or feral) worlds are open to Travel. (2) Other worlds exist, in a sense, only as probabilities; in order to “become fully real” they must be observed. In effect, the parallel universes are observer-created, as soon as a traveller “arrives” in one of them. Sohrawardi wanted a Paleolithic world of endless forest, plentiful game and gathering, virgin, empty but slightly haunted — therefore, that’s what he got! Either explanation raises problems in the light of what actually happened; perhaps there is a third, as yet unsuspected.
13. (Anonymous).
Ong’s Hat: A Color Brochure of the Institute of Chaos Studies
(photocopy of the original color brochure)
Note — This is one of the RARE pamphlets from this series that I have been able to procure. It is included in the next chapter of this book. — Joseph Matheny
This bizarre document, disguised as a brochure for a New Age health retreat, reveals some interesting information about the activities of Sohrawardi group or a closely-associated group. A fairly accurate description of the Egg is provided, as well as a believable account of the first (or one of the first) Breakthroughs. However, everything else in the pamphlet is sheer disinformation. The New Jersey Pine Barrens were never a center of alternate-worlds research, and all the names in the text are false. A non-existent address is included. Nevertheless, highly valuable for background.
14. “Sven Saxon”.
The Stone Age Survivalist
(Loompanics, UnLtd., Port Townsend, WA 1985), Pb
“Imagine yourself suddenly plunked down buck-naked in the middle of a large dark forest with no resources except your mind,” says the preface. “What would you do?”
What indeed? and who could possibly care? — except a trans-dimensional Traveller! Loompanics specializes in books on disappearances and survival involving a good deal of escapist fantasy — but as we know, this situation is all too real for the Visitor to Other Worlds.
Part I: Flint-knapping, an excellent illustrated handbook of Paleolithic tool-production; II Zero-tech hunting and trapping; III, Gathering (incl. a materia medica); IV, Shelter; V, Primitive warfare; VI, Man & Dog: trans-species symbiosis; VII, Cold weather survival; VIII, Culture (“Sven” recommends memorizing a lot of songs, poems and stories — and ends by saying “Memorize this book — cause you can’t take it with you”. Where is “Mr. Saxon” now, we wonder?).
15. Balcombe, Harold S.
Escape From Earth Prime!
(Foursquare Press, Denver, Colo., 1986), Pb
This — unfortunately! — is the book that blew the lid off the Conspiracy for the first time. We say “unfortunately” because ESCAPE!, to all appearances, is a piece of unmitigated paranoid pulp tripe. Written in breathless ungrammatical subFortean prose, unfootnoted and nakedly sensationalistic, the book sank without trace, ignored even by the kook-conspiracy fringe; we were able to buy out unsold stock from the vanity press which published it, just before they went out of business and stopped answering their mail.
Balcombe (whom we’ve been unable to trace and who may have “vanished”), is the author of one other book we’ve seen — but are not offering for sale — called Drug Lords from the Hollow Earth (1984) in which he claims that the CIA obtained LSD and cocaine from Dero-flying-saucer-nazis from beneath Antarctica. So much for his credentials. How he got hold of even a bit of the authentic Other Worlds story is a miracle.
According to Balcombe, the first breakthrough was due not solely to K. Soharawardi — despite his importance as a theoretician — but also a “sinister webwork of cultists, anarchists, commies, fanatical hippies and renegade traitor scientists who made fortunes in the drug trade” (p. 3). Balcombe promises to name names, and out of the welter of rant and slather, some hard facts about the pioneers actually emerge.
Funding (and some research) emanated in the 70’s from a “chaos cabal” of early Silicon Valley hackers interested in complex dynamical systems, randomicity, and chance, and — gambling! — as well as a shadowy group of “drug lords” (Balcombe’s favorite term of abuse), with connections to certain founders of the Discordian Illuminati. Money was channeled through a cult called the Moorish Orthodox Church, a loose knit confederation of jazz musicians, oldtime hipsters, white “sufis” and black moslems, bikers and street dealers (see “A Heresologist’s Guide to Brooklyn”, #24 in this list) who came into contact with Sohrawardi in Millbrook in the mid-60’s.
Sohrawardi was a naive idealist and somewhat careless about his associations. He received clandestine support from people who were in turn connected to certain Intelligence circles with an interest in psychedelic and fringe mind-science. According to Balcombe this was not the CIA (MK-ULTRA) but an unofficial offshoot of several groups with Masonic connections! The Conspiracy was penetrated almost from the start, but was actually encouraged in the hope of gleaning useful information about parallel worlds, or at least about the “mental conditioning techniques” developed as part of the basic research.
By the mid-70’s, Sohrawardi and his various cohorts and connections (now loosely referred to as “the Garden of Forked Paths” or GFP) had become aware of the Intelligence circles (now loosely grouped as “Probability Control Force” or PCF) and had in turn planted double-agents, and gone further underground. In 1978 or 79 an actual device for trans-dimensional Travel, the “Egg” (also called the Cocoon or the Cucurbit, which means both gourd and alchemical flask) was developed in deepest secrecy, probably at Sohrawardi’s institute in Upstate New York, certainly not at a branch lab supposedly hidden away in the NJ Pine Barrens near the long-vanished village of Ong’s Hat (see #13 in this list), since no such lab ever existed, nor does it exist now, despite what some fools think.
The PCF were unable to obtain an Egg for several years and did not succeed in Breakthrough until (Balcombe believes) 1982. The California groups, however, began Egg production and broke through (into “BigSur2”) in early 1980 (again, Balcombe’s chronology). (Balcombe clearly knows nothing of the situation in Java.)
It remains unclear whether the East Coast and West Coast groups both entered the same alternate world, or two different but similar worlds. Communication between the two outposts has so far proved impossible because, as it happens, the Egg will not transport non-sentient matter. Travellers arrive Over There birth — naked in a Stone Age world — no airplanes, no radio, no clothes...no fire and no tools! Only the Egg, like a diamond Faberge Easter gift designed by Dali, alone in the midst of “Nature naturing”. Balcombe includes a dim out-of-focus photo of an Egg, and claims that the machine is part computer but also partly — living crystal, like virus or DNA, and also partly “naked quantumstuff”.
Eggs are costly to produce, so the early pioneers had to return after each sortie and forego permanent settlement on E2 until a cheaper mode of transport could be discovered. However, emigration via the Egg proved possible when the “tantrik” or “double-yolk” effect was discovered: two people (any combination of age, gender, etc.) can Travel by Egg while making love, especially if one of the pair has already done the trip a few times and “knows the way” without elaborate visualization techniques and so forth. Balcombe has a field day with this juicy information and spends an entire chapter (VIII) detailing the “perversions” in use for this purpose. Talent for Travel ranges from brilliant to zero — probably no more than 15% of humanity can make it, although the less — talented and even children can be “tran
slated” — and extensive training methods have somewhat improved the odds. California2 now contains about 1000 emigrants scattered along the coast, and the eastern settlements add up to 500 or 600. A few children have been born “over there” — some can Travel, some can’t, although the talented percentage seems greater than among the general population of Earth-prime. And being “stuck” on E2 is no grave punishment in any case!, unless you object to the Garden of Eden and the “original leisure society” of the Paleolithic flintknappers.
Balcombe claims that the PCF was severely disappointed by the sentience “law” of Travel, since they had hoped to use the parallel worlds as a weapons — delivery system! Nevertheless they continued to experiment, hoping for a more “mechanistic” technique; meanwhile they devote their efforts to (a) suppressing all information leaks, (b) plotting against the independent GFP and infiltrating the E2 settlements, (c) attempting to open new worlds where technology might be possible. They are however handicapped by a shortage of talent: the kind of person who can Travel is not usually the kind of person who sympathizes with the “patriotic discipline of the PCF” and rogue Masonic groups, but some of these end up defecting and “doubling”, and anyway most of them are much too weird for the taste of the rigidly reactionary inner core of PCF leadership, who wonder (as does Balcombe) whether these agents are “any better than the scum they’re spying on?”
More worlds have been discovered — E3 and E4 are mentioned in ESCAPE! (and we know that E5 was opened in 1988) — but all of these are “empty” forest worlds apparently almost identical with E2.
In summary, Balcombe’s style is execrable and attitude repulsive, but his book remains the most accurate overview of the Conspiracy to date. If you’re only going to order one item from us, this is it.
16. (Anonymous)
“Bionic Travel: An Orgonomic Theory of the Megaverse”
(Xerox of unpubl. typescript headed “Top Secret Q Eyes Only”; 27pp)
If this paper emanates from PCF sources, as we believe, it indicates the poor quality of original research carried out by the enemies of Sohrawardi and the GFP, and may explain the PCF’s relative lack of progress in the field (especially considering their much larger budget!). The author attempts to revive W. Reich’s Orgone Theory, with “bions” as “life-force particles” and some sort of orgone accumulator (Reich’s “box”) as a possible substitute for the Egg. An unhealthy interest is shown in “harnessing the force of Deadly Orgone” as a weapon for use on other worlds. References are also made to Aliester Crowley’s “sex magick techniques” of the Ordo Templi Orientis even speculations on human sacrifice as a possible source of “transdimensional energy”. A morbid and crackpot document, devoid of all scientific value (in our opinion) but affording a fascinating insight into PCF mentality and method.
17. Corbin, Henry.
Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn’Arabi
(trans. by R. Mannheim; Princeton, NJ,1969)
One of the few books mentioned by title in the Catalogue of the Inst. of Chaos Studies & Imaginal Yoga (see #9 in this list). The “mundus imaginalis”, also called the World of Archetypes or the “Isthmus” (Arabic, barzakh), lies in-between the World of the Divine and the material World of Creation. It actually consists of “many worlds”, including two “emerald cities” called Jabulsa and Jabulqa (very intriguing considering the situation on Java2!). The great 14th-century Hispano-Moorish sufi Ibn’Arabi developed a metaphysics of the “Creative Imagination” by which the adept could achieve spiritual progress via direct contemplation of the archetypes, including the domains of djinn, spirits and angels. Ibn’Arabi also speaks of seven alternate Earths created by Allah, each with its own Mecca and Kaaba! Some parallel-universe theorists believe that Travel without any tech (even the Egg) may be possible, claiming that certain mystics have already accomplished it. If so, then Ibn’Arabi must have been one of them.
18. Gleick, James.
CHAOS: Making a New Science
(Viking Penguin, NY, 1987) 254pp
The first and still the most complete introduction to chaos — required reading — BUT with certain caveats. First: Gleick has no philosophical or poetic depth; he actually begins the book with a quote from John Updike! No mention of chaos mythology or oriental sources. No mention of certain non-American chaos scientists such as Rene Thom and Ilya Prigogine! Instead, alongside the admittedly useful info, one gets a subtle indoctrination in “deterministic chaos”, by which we mean the tendency to look on chaos as a weapon to fight chaos, to “save” Classical physics Q and learn to predict the Stock Market! (As opposed to what we call the “quantum chaos” of Sohrawardi and his allies, which looks on chaos as a creative and negentropic source, the cornucopia of evolution and awareness.) Warning: we suspect Gleick of being a PCF agent who has embedded his text with subtle disinformation meant to distract the chaos science community from any interest in “other worlds”.
19. Pak Hardjanto.
“Apparent Collapse of the Wave Function as an n Dimensional Catastrophe”
(trans. by “N.N.S.” in Collected Papers of the SE Asian Soc. for Advanced Research, Vol. XXIX, 1980), 47pp, xerox of offprint
An early paper by the little-known scientific director of the Javanese “Travel Cult” which succeeded in breakthrough, possibly in the year this essay was published or shortly thereafter. Hardjanto is known to have been in touch with Sohrawardi since the 60’s; no doubt they shared all information, but each kept the other secret from their respective organizations. The pioneers of Java2 became known to the GFP and PCF only around 1984 or 85.
This article, the only scientific work we possess by Hardjanto, shows him to be a theoretician equal or even superior to Sohrawardi himself — and if Hardjanto is also the anonymous author of the following item, as we believe, then he appears a formidable “metaphysicist” as well!
“Apparent Collapse”, while certainly not a blueprint for Egg construction, nevertheless constitutes one of the few bits of “hard” science published openly on our Subject. Unfortunately, its theorems and diagrams are doubtless comprehensible only to a handful of experts. The topological drawings literally boggle the mind, especially one entitled “Hypercube Undergoing ‘Collapse’ Into 5 — Space Vortex”!
20. (Unsigned, probably by Pak Hardjanto).
A Vision of Hurqalya
(trans.by K. K. Sardono; Incunabula Press, 1988), Pb, 46pp
The Indonesian original of this text appeared as a pamphlet in Yogjakarta (E.Java) in 1982. We ourselves at Incunabula commissioned the translation and have published this handsome edition, including all the illustrations from the original, at our own expense.
If one knew nothing about the Conspiracy or Many-Worlds Theory, A Vision would seem at first to be a mystical tract by an adherent of kebatinan, the heterodox sufi influenced freeform esoteric/syncretistic complex of sects which has come to be influential in GFP circles, inasmuch as the idea of “spiritual master” (guru, murshed) has been replaced by “teacher” (pamong); some kebatinan sects utilize spontaneous non-hierarchical organizational structures.
However, in the light of our knowledge of the material existence of other worlds, Vision takes on a whole new dimension Q as a literal description of what Hardjanto and his fellow pioneers found on Java2.
They discovered another uninhabited world — but with one huge difference. The author of Vision steps out of his “alchemical Egg” into a vast and ancient abandoned City! He calls it Hurqalya (after a traditional sufi name for the Other World or alam-e-mithal). He senses his total aloneness — feels that the City’s builders have long since moved on elsewhere — and yet that they still somehow somewhere exist.
The author compares Hurqalya to the ancient ruined city of Borobadur in E. Java, but notices immediately that there are no statues or images — all the decoration is abstract and severe — but “neither Islamic nor Buddhist nor Hindu nor Christian nor any style I ever
saw”. The “palaces” of Hurqalya are grand, cyclopean, almost monolithic — far from “heavy” in atmosphere, despite the black basalt from which they seem to have been carved. For the City is cut through by water... it is in fact a water-city in the style of the Royal Enclave of Yogjakarta (now so sadly derelict) — but incomparably bigger. Canals, aqueducts, rivers and channels crisscross and meander through the City; flowing originally from quiescent volcanic mountains looming green in the West. Water flows down through the City which is built on a steep slope gradually curving into a basin and down to the placid Eastern Sea, where a hundred channels flow dark and clear into the green salt ocean.
Despite the air of ruin — huge trees have grown through buildings, splitting them open — mosses, ferns and orchids coat the crumbling walls with viridescence, hosting parrots, lizards, butterflies — despite this desolation, most of the waterworks still flow: canal-locks broken open centuries ago allow cascades, leaks, spills and waterfalls in unexpected places, so that the City is wrapped in a tapestry of water sounds and songbird voices. Most amazingly, the water flows at different levels simultaneously, so that aqueducts cross over canals which in turn flow above sunken streams which drip into wells, underground cisterns and mysterious sewers in a bewildering complex of levels, pipes, conduits and irrigated garden terraces which resemble (to judge by the author’s sketches) a dreamscape of Escher or Piranesi. Viewed from above, the City would be mapped as an arabesque 3PD spiderweb (with waterbridges aboveground, streams at ground level and also underground) fanning out to fill the area of the basin, thence into the harbor with its huge cracked basalt block docks.
The slope on which the City is built is irregularly terraced in ancient SE Asian style — as many staircases as streets thread their way up and down, laid out seemingly at random, following land contours rather than grid logic, adding to the architectural complexity of the layer of waterways with a maze of vine encrusted overpasses, arched bridges, spiraling ramps, crooked alleyways, cracked hidden steps debouching on broad esplanades, avenues, parks gone to seed, pavilions, balconies, apartments, jungle choked palazzos, echoing gloomy “temples” whose divinities, if any, seem to have left no forwarding address ... all empty, all utterly abandoned. And nowhere is there any human debris — no broken tools, bones or midden heaps, no evidence of actual habitation — as if the ancient builders of the City picked up and took everything with them when they departed — “perhaps to one of the other Seven Worlds of the alam-e-mithal” — in other words, to a “higher dimension.
Thus ends the Vision of Hurqalya — raising more questions than it answers! There is no doubt that it describes exactly what was discovered in Java2 in 1980 or 81. But if the “observer-created” theory of other-worlds Travel is true, “Hurqalya” represents the “imaginal imprint” of what Hardjanto (or whoever) expected to find. Yet again, if that theory is false ... who built Hurqalya? One current explanation (arising from time distortion theorems which have so far remained unsolvable) suggests that the Builders “moved” in prehistoric times to Earth-prime and became the distant ancestors of the Javanese (“Java Man”). Another guess: the Builders have indeed moved on to a “distant” alternate universe, and eventually we may find them.
A small settlement now exists in Hurqalya. Once the American groups heard of the City’s existence, members of both the GFP and PFC were able to visualize it and Travel to it from America (the Javanese can do the same from Java-prime to America2). Since 1985 all three groups have expanded most of their exploratory effort on “opening up” new worlds in the Java series. Apparently Indonesian sorcerers and trance adepts are very good at this, and we believe they have reached Java7 — without, however, finding replications of the City or any trace of the Builders — only more empty forest.
21. Von Bitter Rucker, Dr R.
“The Cat Was Alive, But Looked Scared As Hell”: Some Unexpected Properties of Cellular Automata in the Light of the Everett-Wheeler Hypothesis”
(Complex Dynamical Systems Newsletter no. 8, 1989),offprint
Who is this man and what does he know? No other serious mathematician has so far made any connection between cellular automata and the Many Worlds. Tongue-in-cheek (?), the author suggests that Schroedinger’s poor cat might be both alive and dead, even after the box is opened, IF parallel universes are “stacked” in some arcane manner which he claims to be able to demonstrate with a piece of software he has hacked and is selling for an outrageous sum; we have also seen an ad for this program in a magazine called MONDO 2000, published in Berkeley and devoted to “reality hacking”. We’d love to know what certain members of the Conspiracy would make of this bizarre concept!
22. Kennedy, Alison.
“Psychotropic Drugs in ‘Shared-World’& Lucid Dreaming Experiments”
(Psychedelic Monographs & Essays, Vol. XIV, no. 2, 1981, offprint)
This writer appears to have inside information. The notion of a drug-induced hallucination so powerful it can be shared by many (in a proper “blind” experiment) and can actually come into existence, into material reality; the idea that drug-enhanced lucid dreaming can be used to discover objective information from “other ontological levels of being”; and finally the “prediction” that “a combination of these methods utilizing computer aided biofeedback monitoring devices” will actually make it possible to “visit ‘other’ worlds in ‘inner’ space” (which suggests that the author adheres to the “observer-created” theory of parallel universes) — all this leads us to believe that the author is probably a member of one of the California Travel Cults — as well as an expert bruja!
Ong's Hat: Incunabula Page 3
