What are the psychodynamics of trauma and how do they pertain to alien abduction lore?“A Life Full of Holes: Daimonic Defense & National Security” (PDF), “The Ardures of Atheism” & “Space is the Place” (MP3s) are now up, at http://crucialfictions.com
Please take the time to participate.
Thanks, Jasun.
Meanwhile, here’s some feedback from Mr. Panda and my responses, as before, CAPS for Mr. P’s comments, italics for original quotes, bold for my responses.
I LIKE THE IDEA OF “ATTRACTION TO THE LACK”. THE NOTION THAT WE INSTINCTIVELY HONE IN ON GAPS IN KNOWLEDGE. WE CAN SENSE A VOID WHERE NECESSARY INFORMATION IS NEEDED. FOR SOURCING INSPIRATION AND NOVELTY A GOOD WRITER, SCIENTIST OR ARTIST NEEDS A RELATIONSHIP WITH THAT WHICH DOESN’T EXIST (YET).
Which is paradoxical. It brings back to mind a thought I had recently, that if there are no ‘things,’ only relationships, then what exactly is there that is relating?
Prisoner of Infinity is about seeking a secret that we keep from ourselves, knowing that it’s inevitable we will turn that seeking into a way to conceal the secret, because that’s just what we do. The trick is to spot the ways that we are deceiving ourselves – to see the blind spot by seeing how things aren’t adding up – and hopefully before we get blind-sided by the Universe.
…Strieber bridges this apparent gulf by suggesting that “the close encounters were real, and that they involved literally breaking through into another level of reality in order to escape the hell I was enduring in this one.”10 Yet what Strieber is describing is classic dissociation; even if the encounters were psychically real, it ignores the fact that his body was still being submitted to equally real physical and psychological abuse while the supposedly “transcendental” lessons were taking place. Unless, that is, he believes he was physically taken away by these beings.
COULD THE ACT OF “BREAKING THROUGH INTO ANOTHER LEVEL OF REALITY” OUT OF DESPERATION, HAVE A PARALLEL TO THE ACT OF RAPE? AN UNINVITED INTRUSION.
On the new “Space is the Place” mp3, we talk about how, for Strieber, the reality of the experience revolves around having his body penetrated. This may be a universal requisite, that only when something that is outside of us enters inside us and becomes us do we experience it as fully “real.” The relationship, in other words, has to be intimate (Biblical knowing), even if that entails violation (or self-violation). Trauma is the alpha and omega of consciousness.
…Put more baldly: I propose, for the sake of argument, that there is a socio-political agenda using a combination of “traditional” beliefs with newly created ones, or new arrangements and interpretations of old ones, for the creation of a “scientistic religion.”
SLIGHTLY BESIDE THE POINT, BUT, I FIND IT INTERESTING TO NOTE THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE STORY OF CREATION IN THE BIBLE AND THE BIG BANG THEORY (“AND THEN THERE WAS LIGHT”). BOTH HELPFULLY NEGATE THE CONCEPT OF INFINITE TIME AND THE ASSOCIATED FEARS IT CAN INSPIRE. MOST PEOPLE CAN ONLY VISUALISE INFINITY IN TERMS OF ENDLESS REPETITION. ENDLESS VISUAL NOVELTY? NOT SO MUCH.
Only the body can know the eternal – never the mind, because the mind is designed to categorize, and the infinite can’t be segmented.
…This agenda includes the psychological manipulation of individuals (possibly from an early age) in an attempt to access and harness the human potential for psychism, while in the process creating leaders, teachers, and spokespeople for the new paradigm. Finally, most disturbing of all, the basis of this (hypothetical) socio-political agenda, or at least one primary aspect of it, would appear to be the appliance of trauma as the means to activate the psychic centers of the human brain, ushering in a new evolutionary stage for the species that (it is hoped) will act as a socially acceptable (i.e., manipulable) surrogate for authentic (full body) spiritual enlightenment.
FULL BODY SPIRITUAL ENLIGHTENMENT IS DEATH, WE ALL GO THROUGH IT. ANYTHING ELSE IS JUST A PREVIEW*
*this response just popped onto the page fully-formed. I didn’t think about it, I’m not sure if I fully agree with it.
I don’t agree with it, in fact I vehemently disagree. The body is eternal delight, Eros. Mind is Thanatos. The body can’t know death, only the mind can. Maybe that’s even what it’s for. To become fully identified with the sword, the instrument of death/segmentation? To sever the connection to the group mind (matrix pod life, thanatos) so the body can experience full surrender to universal flow (eros).
This is losing one’s life to gain in – experiencing full mind/identity death while the body lives. Otherwise we take our illusions with us, without even having a body to set us straight.
Those holes are inevitably filled by other energies, and whether they come from the environment or from our own unconscious—or as is generally the case, both at once—those energies have their own agendas. Identifying what sort of energies have filled the holes and what their agendas might be was
WHERE WOULD THE GENERATION OF WHITLEY’S ALIEN INSIGHTS FIT INTO THIS PICTURE? IF THE INSIGHTS WERE SELF-GENERATED WOULD IT BE A CASE OF A HIGHER INTELLIGENCE BEING HIDDEN WITHIN A MIND OF LOWER INTELLIGENCE?
Can you rephrase the question?
Auticulture 
off the top of my head …i`m enjoying the mind/body dialogue….nteresting take jake namaste` derm….nothing to add
I could not agree more…”the body is eternal delight”. Blake would nod approvingly too. “Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that called Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.”
And…O. Brown in “Loves Body” p. 249 chapter Freedom – “Knowledge is carnal knowledge, a copulation of subject and object, making these two one. Coginitio nihil aliud est quam coitio quaedam cum suo cognobili – ‘Sex becomes not only an object of thought but in some sense an imaginative method of comprehension.’ Polymorphously perverse sexuality, in and through every organ of perception:
‘If in the morning sun I find it, there my eyes are fix’d
In happy copulation.'”
“Knowlege is carnal knowledge. A subterranean passage between mind and body underlies all analogy; no word is metaphysical without its first being physical; and the body that is the measure of all things is sexual.”
I think this could also be stated as knowledge is sensory. Or as you suggest, it is akin to biblical knowing.
If the body could feel trauma healed, would it feel like en-lighten-ment? A weight lifted, a soul shining clearly through without any need for protection any longer?
A mid-14th century Indian ecstatic mystic poet, Lalla may have the words:
“The soul, like the moon,
is now, and always new again.
And I have seen the ocean,
continuously creating.
Since I scoured my mind
and my body, I too, Lalla,
am new, each moment new.
My teacher told me one thing,
live in the soul.
When that was so,
I began to go naked,
and dance.”
(from Naked Song, translated by Coleman Barks, Pilgrims Publishing 1992)
Circling back to your original chapter theme. Trauma is delivered through the senses, through pain or deprivation or both. Strieber’s accounts of the meetings are always filled with extremely detailed sensory information. On some level, he had to have experienced something like what he describes for it to be so detailed. Whatever his childhood may have been, I don’t get the impression that he played easily. And I don’t think he dances yet, even today. He needs more time with Eros.
Whitley dances into a state of wild ecstasy for the visitors, I think in Transformation. I always found it one of his more outlandish accounts.
Hi Jason, long time no see/hear/read – your comments on a Jeremy Vaeni blog brought me here. I’m glad they did, it was intensely interesting and enjoyable to read your writings on crucialfictions.com – as always there is an odd connecting thread.
Something I’ve wondered lately… what is the nature of the pleasure that comes from mental activity, such as theorizing and postulating and that sort of thing? From trying many methods to “stop thought” I’ve come to notice the great satisfaction I enjoy from spinning those wheels. Is it ultimately physical in nature, like a dancing of the brain? Or is it a pleasure that originates in dissociation, rather like watching television? It has a taste of either (or both) at times.
This may be an irrelevant observation to your current subject, but it seems to be one of the many players standing at the crossroads of the mind/body drama.
Hi Brandon
curious that was how you found your way here – you were among those I invited to participate in the CF project some weeks back, whether or not you received the invite. I checked out Vaeni after reading an article about Budd Hopkins. Now I see that I posted my comment right after your comment, so maybe that was why I went there?
The mind is a plaything and a playground both. It’s mostly distraction, like you say; but even TV provides moments of real insight.
Writing and even thinking can be like dancing – an expression of eros – I suppose that only happens when the whole body (and life force) gets involved.
Strange, I never received that invite – or rather, I probably did and it slipped through the cracks
Regardless, I’d be interested in participating in some way.