Mesmeric

Reflections on the Challenge

When you notice someone behaving intensely, try to identify something unique about them and add more intensity to whatever you are doing. Speak a few words inwardly to someone who has passed away, and consider any synchronicity which may recently have occurred.

• Experiences

  A few days before, L had met a disabled man whilst walking home, who asked for help carrying a guitar to a higher floor. On a previous occasion, this man, who was of intense character, had said he recognised L from hundreds of years before, though L had no recollection of this. L inwardly spoke to his late father. Later, on a walk to see the sunset, L noticed a banner reading “Sunset Club” and saw a group gathered there. A Google search revealed the club posed questions to prompt social interaction, including one about speaking to the dead. This synchronicity seemed allied to the challenge.

  

  N had been saddened by the recent death of French actor Alain Delon, whom N had admired for his intensity in acting and business success, despite a difficult childhood and challenges in his personal life. His ability to maintain a striking presence throughout his life stood out. N had planned to mention Delon at a talk, but an earlier speaker made exactly the point that N was planning to make, that people are their own brand. N felt the timing was extraordinarily synchronistic.

  T had noticed people gazing at their phones intently on the train, and she in turn looked out more intently out of the window at the beautiful sunset, which nobody else saw. She had become aware of the contrast between light and shadow, noting how the darks seemed darker, and the lights brighter. The sharpness of the shadows had left a visual memory, with distinct squares of shadow standing out in her recollection.

• Responses

  L found the synchronicity in N’s experience interesting, particularly the notion that thoughts might be floating around. L referenced the philosopher Gad Saad, who discusses a similar concept in his book The Parasitic Mind. According to Saad, beliefs can spread like diseases, existing independently of individuals.

Beelzebub’s Tales, Chapter 32

• Passage

  ... thanks to the fact that at this period most of the learned beings there had already become learned beings of new formation they sat upon this new revival so firmly that before the poor thing had time to develop, it soon found its way into their common what is called ‘rubbish heap.’ ...

  This particularity of the learned beings of the Earth of new formation is called 'pecking to death'.

• Discussion

  N said that sometimes new ideas got "pecked to death", but more often new things never come about because people got too much invested in the past.

• Passage

  of new formation had in general become mechanized to do, he was, according to the custom there, very meticulously ‘pecked to death.’

  For instance, all the books now existing there on the question of this hypnotism—and of such books there are thousands there—always begin by saying that this Mesmer was nothing more nor less than a rogue with an itching palm and a charlatan of the first water, but that our ‘honest’ and ‘great’ learned beings very soon saw through him and prevented his doing any kind of mischief.

  The more the learned beings of recent times of this peculiar planet are themselves personally, in the sense of ‘idiotism,’ ‘squared,’ the more they criticize Mesmer and say or write concerning him every possible kind of absurdity to bring him into contempt...

• Discussion

  T drew a parallel to how Elon Musk was facing similar public scrutiny, noting that some individuals today were being “pecked to death” in various ways for expressing ideas that governments might not be sympathetic to.

• Passage

  As this Frenchman also made practical experiments, not in the usual fashion there, for the elucidation of the details of his discovery, other contemporary learned beings thereupon also manifested toward him that same particularity of theirs—‘to peck him to death.’

  This terrible disease is called there ‘cancer.’

  ...there will never proceed in the presences of the three-brained beings of this ill-fated planet Earth of yours what is called the sacred ‘Antkooano,’...

  that process of perfecting the Objective-Reason ...

  As a rule, everywhere on those planets of our Great Universe upon which three-brained beings breed, the perfecting of Objective-Reason can proceed in them only from personal conscious labors and intentional sufferings.

• Discussion

  T suggested that cancer could be a metaphor for obstruction and internal decay within systems that resist innovation. N said similarly it brought to mind systems which forght themselves, and L gave the example of ever higher taxation to prevent change to a status quo, which then became more expensive.