Life in the Labyrinth
by E.J. Gold
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Life in the Labyrinth
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La vida en el laberinto
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This second book in the The Labyrinth Trilogy is the classic work on new-shamanism. E.J. Gold penetrates the secrets of traditional esoteric practice, particularly alchemy and shamanism, and presents techniques for expanded perception and attention that work in everyday contemporary life.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
Unknowingly we voyage in a labyrinth, a macrodimensional maze of living electrical force, cloaked by a thick layer of ordinary life. Our most serious obstacle is the uncontrollable urge to convert everything to the familiar, to reduce it all to the level of the primate brain; to reject the living, breathing reality of the totality of all possible attention.
2. MAZE BRIGHTNESS
When we awaken a higher learning process, we no longer exhibit confusion and disorientation in the macrodimensions. Through special internal processes which we can learn, we are able to penetrate far beyond the ordinary spectrum, into the macrodimensions, resembling consensus reality in form, but radically different in other ways, perceivable only with long, difficult training of the non-machine attention.
3. THE ULTIMATE PUZZLE
The labyrinth, as could any maze, has puzzle-like characteristics; obeying the rules of puzzle-solving should, if the laws of the maze are understood and the signs are read correctly, enable us to voyage consciously as well as remembering previous passages and having a connected overview which takes into account everything we have ever learned in the maze.
4. THE KEYS TO ELEGANT VOYAGING
The keys to elegant labyrinth voyaging are generally those little, nagging, insignificant items which we would ordinarily dismiss as inconsequential; one such key is the rudder with which we steer ourselves through the labyrinth.
5. NEURAL NETWORK PROJECTIONS
Our knowledge of the environmental world is entirely dependent upon synaptic processing of organic perceptions which come to us at the speed of light; still, this is not fast enough to be in the present; bypassing these organically bound perceptions can provide us with the possibility of direct unfiltered views of the real world, unencumbered by the brain and its significances.
6. THE ILLUSION OF TIME
As we upscale into the macrodimensions, we soon discover that what really prevents us from living macrodimensional life in the timeless, eternal state is our extreme psychological dependence upon the ordinary flow of time as measured by clocks; it is hard to accept time as a function of space and not a linear flow through events.
7. THE MYSTIC VISION
The veil is not in the mind, but in the heart. Only the heart will lift the veil. When this happens, when we have softened and ripened, we will find ourselves to be at the very heart of the labyrinth, for which we have longed all our lives.
8. LIGHTNING HANDLERS ALWAYS CRACKLE
We work to develop what remains after personal annihilation, because only that is truly able to work. To understand love is to dissolve the self and the subjective mysteries of appearances into it.
9. THE ART AND SCIENCE OF INVOCATION
All macrodimensional invocation is focused on the activation of corresponding resonators between chambers until they vibrate in sympathetic unison. We also have the ability as a being to self-invoke, to expand our morphology into a space where we are not.
10. DATA RETRIEVAL IN THE HIGHER DIMENSIONS
Shamanism was first developed thousands of years ago to satisfy macrodimensional needs, something rejected because it is not focused on common primate goals, subject only to higher laws beyond the reach or ken of the human world.
11. SHAPESHIFTING UP THE TOTEM
Voyaging back and forth between the human and other dimensions, using powerful mental and emotional equations to produce a tangible construct, a totemic ladder, a dimensional elevator, the voyager shapeshifts through the totemic morphologies up, down or both at once.
12. ENCOUNTER WITH THE SIMURGH . A SCHOOL EXPERIMENT
In the course of several centuries, it is only rarely that a large group of individuals may be able to openly organize penetrations into macrodimensions and explorations of sectors of the labyrinth ordinarily inaccessible to individuals or small groups.
13. THE INITIATION OF THE ABSOLUTE
The Absolute is fragmented into an infinite number of parts which take the shape of a multi-dimensional labyrinth. The Absolute in the form of the Creation is the labyrinth through which we are voyaging. The Great Work is an attempt to bring the corpse of Creation to the most profound state of livingness.
14. THE LABYRINTH VOYAGER.S QUATRAIN
All phenomena is illusion.
Neither attracted nor repelled,
Not making any sudden moves.
My habits will carry me through.
15. GOING MACRODIMENSIONAL
Often when we think that we are at our best, we are at our worst, and when we believe we're at our worst, we are at our best, bat we can be assured that if we are in the macrodimensions with presence and attention, always and automatically our functioning in the Work chamber conforms to law; we cannot help but be correct.
16. LIFE IN THE LABYRINTH
We work to overcome our fears of seeing the horror of the situation and to achieve the Heart of the Labyrinth where we are able to perform a special kind of work, view the Creation as a whole, and put life into it, if only momentarily.
17. BRINGING CREATION TO LIFE
The effort to bring Creation to life is never-ending. At first distant, the actual possibility of performing this task will be achieved again and again during our work in the labyrinth. This talk is a reconstruction of a successful group voyage.
EPILOGUE: THE POWER OF ATTENTION
Having made several attempts at penetrating the labyrinth, we will return to our starting point, asking ourselves what the shamanic voyager's secret is. The answer is simple . everything depends upon attention. It is a tool which we all possess; the rest is up to us.
AUTHOR'S AFTERWORD
APPENDIX I: MACRODIMENSIONS: A MATHEMATICAL MODEL -- by David Christie
APPENDIX II: MACRODMENSIONS: A PHYSICAL PERSPECTIVE -- by Dr. Claude Needham
AUTHOR'S FOREWORD -- A SERIOUS WARNING TO THE READER
Should we put references in the text to see appendix? If this were a university text, I might consider it; a course of abstract study and abstract interest... but this book is for serious voyagers, those who rea11y do intend to use these ideas, who aren't going to read a paragraph or two, nod thoughtfully, wander off to some coffeehouse and tear it apart along with Kant and Hegel for a few hours, then wander back home in time for the late night movie.
Further, I don't consider it my responsibility to rectify the failures of whatever education system you might have had the misfortune to endure in your forrnative years as a young, upcoming primate.
Having spent two miserable semesters teaching remedia1 third grade elementary leve1 English to adult university students who should have been exploring the mysteries of Beowulf in the origina1 text, singing the Song of Roland, softly chanting the Canterbury Tales, arguing first folio and second quarto alterations in Hamlet and following the intricacies of Philip Jose Farmer, Ezra Pound and Dorothy Parker, I feel that I've more than paid my debt to society, and you're welcome to it.
I am by laws much higher than any primate law, constrained to introduce these ideas to those who come to me in genuine necessity, but nothing in the rule-book says it has to be spoon-fed in monosyllabic, monocultura1 and mono-fonous truck-driver language... so it isn't.
In studying these ideas as presented here, you would be wise to be armed with a dictionary and a healthy education, although nothing in this material is beyond second-year college level English, and the few literary, mythological and philosophical referents – which were intentionally kept to a minimum except where necessary to the sense, germane to the concept or alexipharmic to the destruction of an elegant pun – are well within the grasp of the average high school graduate. If they aren't, perhaps you ought to consider returning to the high school from whence you came, and registering a complaint or enrolling in a night course, whichever seems most a propos... that's borrowed French for copacetic.
Admittedly, this text is a formidable prospect for those with an unsure grasp of the English language, for who the idea of a athalete with a perculator whose on his way irregardless to a realitor because he want's to avoid nucular conflict is a whole nother thing.
If you found the previous paragraph disturbing, this book is probably for you; if it looked a11 right, maybe you should consider curling up with a good Harlequin novel... if one can be found.
CHAPTER 1: Lost in a Mazement
Unknowingly we voyage in a labyrinth, a macrodimensional maze of living electrical force, cloaked by a thick layer of ordinary life. Our most serious obstacle is the uncontrollable urge to convert everything to the familiar, to reduce it all to the level of the primate brain; to reject the living, breathing reality of the totality of all possible attention.
From previous efforts and understanding, we have established a new relationship between the nonbiological essential self and the human biological machine, and have already demonstrated to our satisfaction that the human machine does indeed provide us with the means of transformation; we clearly see the path which we must take.
Knowing that it is necessary to awaken the machine before we can do anything of objective consequence, we have hopefully achieved some stable results.
By this time, we realize that we are now in need of further instructions to incorporate our present knowledge and take us a step further toward our ultimate aim, the formulation of which may not yet be very exact.
It ought to be obvious that we are only at the very beginning of our path, and we are anxious to take further responsibilities as beings, but before we can take effective steps toward fulfilling these responsibilities, we must first understand just precisely where we are, and what we are, in the general scale of things, and where we stand in relation to the Absolute so we can develop a method of work within this context.
We can now come to understand the essential self in its work-role as eternal voyager, exposed to perils and opportunities, purpose and distraction, fatal attraction and ultimate destruction in the nearly infinite immensity of the labyrinth.
In this quest, we lift our gaze from its firm fixation upon the world of the primate, working from this nonhuman perspective wherever we may discover ourselves to be.
In the first book of the Labyrinth Voyager Series, The Human Biological Machine as a Transformational Apparatus, the analogy of a fish tank was invoked to establish an approximate description of the human situation relative to higher dimensions which we will from now on refer to as the macrodimensions.
The animal kingdom will once again be of service, providing us with a point of view that we can easily see, understand, and relate to.
A few minutes of simple observation of a rat in a maze will clearly demonstrate to even the densest scientist that it doesn't know that it's in a maze... it's simply aware that it can't get at what it wants and that it doesn't know its way, nor – in the absence of sufficiently compelling motivators – does it much care.
It may also dimly suspect that it can't escape; backwards, forwards, sideways – a11 apparent possible directions maintain the maddening slavery of the maze.
The trapped rat has no way of knowing the overall shape and configuration, rules and functions of the maze, but it may – under the influence of a sudden, unexpected, and unusual traumatic jolt – become somewhat aware of the fact of its imprisonment, if not of its precise nature.
When it comes to mazes, human primates are every bit as predictable as rats, but without the perceptual and emotional clarity, keen attention and intelligence of their hairier cousins.
A lot can be learned about mazes by experimenting with and testing rats. By altering a maze, for example, but keeping the basic clues the same, we see that the rat will follow old clues rather than the new layout of the maze – but after sufficient rewards of the edible variety, it learns to relearn. When hunger strikes, the inconvenience of synaptic restructuring becomes affordable.
With even the most rudimentary understanding of motivational reprogramming concepts, we can develop for ourselves a series of practical persuasions in user-interactive learning games which encourage intuitive, deductive and inductive reasoning and new learning.
Along these same lines, we may begin to make serious inquiries in the realms of repetitive mazes, alternating mazes, mazes that change suddenly and in unexpected ways in mid-game through interactive variables, relative constants and the absence of objective, or absolute, constants.
We ought to be easily able to make the rather feeble conceptual leap from simple observation of rats encumbered with a fairly primitive intelligence, to ourselves, totally unencumbered by intelligence, bound by artificial limits of memorized educational patterning which functions relative only to a known, oversimplified cultural environment, by which we have learned to apply old responses to cope with new stimuli.
Well, enough philosophy, already; the fact is, both rats and human primates tend to experience essentially the same problems of stress and social pressure, and possess – prior to cultural conditioning and psychoemotional imprinting, which is to say, the usual deep-brain impulse-responsive pain and pleasure formatting – precisely the same initial intuitional innocence largely through the inattention which can only come from lack of self-motivation in the absence of environmental and biological stimuli, and the general perceptual occlusion which results from environmental alienation, a hazy uncaring withdrawal which is symptomatic of deep-seated unexamined fears about things I'd rather not think about just now.
If we are to produce a potent method for our excursions into the macrodimensions, we need only recognize that one rat can be encouraged to venture outward into dark and unknown territory, while another rat cannot bring itself out of its mechanically imposed inertness, no matter what the provocation.
Still, this doesn't actually ensure that anything will come of it; after all, even the most experienced rat is still subject to the maze, still a prisoner, a laboratory animal subject to outside whim, and in this sense – but only in this sense – the rat is not free.
Freedom is a subtle and elusive intangible which lies in an unexpected direction, far beyond the bounds of biological slavery and hard-edged walls, as we will soon discover.
Never could understand why – given the same training, the same opportunities, the same and even additional exposure to the maze – nine out of ten rats never seem to be able to extricate themselves from the pleasant robotic muck of animal life.
The labyrinth: a macrodimensional maze camouflaged by the fabric of biological boundaries. In ordinary life, no matter what we do or accomplish, no matter where we go or who we become, we find ourselves ultimately a prisoner of the rigid rut and, submerging ourselves in a nonstop self- invoked bombardment of daily pressures, distractions and self-pity, manage somehow to successfully avoid all real help.
If we know how to look, we can seize the opportunity to work our way through the passages, pitfalls and primrose paths of the macrodimensional maze; but we don't know how ;o look, and in the beginning we work to fathom the reality :hat we can be in the maze and yet be completely unaware of it.
Voyagers – which is what we really are – seldom understand or are aware, and can easily fail to recognize the labyrinthine quality of what they are experiencing, because they lack the power of serious, rooted and undistractable attention behind the physical senses with which to view it.
We fail to recognize that we have passed this way many times before, that we have made this or that turn. And, more importantly, we fail to recognize the futility of everything we have done in the trivial pursuits of primate life.
But futility is the name of this game; we learn young to flow downstream, toward some awesome, unknowable end, some great, all-engulfing cosmic septic system.
We have thoroughly bought into the cultural norm, perpetuating a pathetically passive posture in relation to the maze – at the same time experiencing all the frustration, anger and fear of any lost, frightened and hungry rat.
Immersed in sleep and stunned by fear, we automatically assume that our house is all in order; that everything is always exactly the same as we expect it to be.
In our preoccupation with trivial distractions of the biological machine, our superficial attention races quickly, almost in embarrassment, past the majestic vistas of macrodimensiona1 events, which we evidently feel compelled to translate immediately or sooner, into the most pedestrian of all possible worlds.
We are neither amused, astonished nor amazed. This translation into the primate is a genuine sickness, as clinical as any commonly accepted medical condition.
Because the essential self with its qualities of attention and presence is able to view things differently, it, on the other hand, is able to perceive crossover into direct maze- perception when it takes place.
Imagine driving a car and, contrary to our customary habit, viewing the car as stationary, the road actually surrounding and being absorbed by the vehicle, more precisely the vehicle's windscreen, sliding past the side windows, spewing itself out the back, after which, it recycles and comes out of a tiny hole in front, expanding and flowing around the car once again.
This is the nature of our whole experience in macrodimensions. We have been trained to compartmentalize our experiences, to isolate their connectors, thus overlooking the subtle continuity amidst apparent change and discontinuity. We have a flip-flop perception of events; where there is change, we see stability; where there is stability, we see change. What we believe is real is definitely illusion, and what we believe is illusion is probably real.
Compulsive primate hallucinations constantly impose an artificial grid of time and space on our purely sensory and mental experience.
We view our passage through Creation from the point of view of an artificially decided upon direction of space and time in direct contradiction to what we already know from geometry, mathematics and physics, periodically updating our perception of events with slight changes in our space- time model, although carefully avoiding the full consequences of what we really know from these disciplines.
I don't mean to complain, but we act as if the primate world really exists, as if we have a direct interface with it, as if there is an absolute certainty and tangible quality to it, when in fact none of it exists – in the sense that we take it to exist – even remotely. We have walled ourselves into a veritable Garden of Familiarity and now we are trapped in it with no hope of escape.
Knowing our propensity for self-illusioning, it isn't at all surprising to find that we have developed a mythology of banishment from the same garden in which we are forced to live out the remainder of our days.
The majority of those voyagers who happen to accidentally find themselves momentarily wandering in the macrodimensions are unaware of the change, and should they somehow become aware of this unaccountable alteration in reality-perception, may end up explaining their experience to someone with a Ph.D. and two hefty orderlies to protect them.
We can always emulate our fellow barely-upright- primates, shuffling aimlessly through the maze oblivious to the subtly clamorous experiences that present themselves to us, or we can awaken to our surroundings and direct ourselves with intelligence and understanding.
Being rather reluctant voyagers, human primates have, through none of their own intention, formed a preconceived idea of the way things should be, and therefore refuse obvious choices; if given the opportunity to follow their natural inclinations, most humans will obey the cultivated rut of brain and body, wherever they may lead.
As popular as it may be, blind, robotic, slavish obedience to habit is considered by the experienced labyrinth voyager a very inelegant method of macrodimensiona1 functioning.
We learn the maze by rote, voyaging in typical human mechanical fashion, and even occasionally arrive accidentally by this method at the heart of the labyrinth, and so long as we remember to do everything exactly the same, and no aberrations of our routine occur, we will seem as if maze- bright, until something happens which isn't exactly on the menu....
Someone really soaked in the wine of primate life, who may have wandered seventy trillion and two times through the same macrodimensiona1 sector will fail to make the Palladian connection; the tendency is to lose contact with the macrodimensiona1 state of consciousness.
Numberless primates have been and seen... yet, through some strange vagary of the mind, blissfully forgotten; many more there are, who didn't see, whose occlusion indicates that they were just plain perceptually inept.
All this can lead any outside observer to conclude that a bizarre form of culturally-induced schizophrenic alienation occurs between maze consciousness and consensus human reality, agreed upon by convention, which in relation to macroconsciousness can hardly be considered to represent consciousness.
Human primates
Evidently think
They are all alone
In their sector,
And they should be.