Prelude
This topic seems strange at first glance, and also might seem untoward to experts of various esoteric and mystical traditions, as this topic puts a different face on things that have always been mislabeled and misused as ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ realities. It’s not that these things aren’t true, they aren’t happening, but they are both more powerful, but more innocuous and definitely
mislabeled and weaponized.
Spirituality and Religion are often a cargo cult!
Here’s what Meta.ai has to say:
“Cargo Cults: A Fascinating Phenomenon Born in WWII
Cargo cults originated during World War II in the Pacific Islands, particularly in Melanesia (present-day Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands). These cults emerged as a response to the sudden and mysterious arrival of foreign goods, known as “cargo,” brought by Allied forces.
The Context
During WWII, the Pacific Islands became a crucial battleground. Allied forces, primarily American and Australian troops, established military bases and airfields on various islands. The locals, who had limited exposure to Western technology and culture, were amazed by the abundance of goods and supplies that seemed to magically appear.
The Emergence of Cargo Cults
As the war progressed, some islanders began to believe that the cargo was not just a product of human labor but rather a supernatural phenomenon. They thought that the cargo was being sent by their ancestors or spirits, who were trying to provide for them.
To tap into this perceived supernatural power, islanders started to mimic the behavior of the Allied soldiers. They built makeshift airstrips, constructed wooden airplanes, and even created mock radios to try and contact the spirits. They believed that by replicating the actions of the soldiers, they could attract more cargo and improve their lives.
Characteristics of Cargo Cults
Cargo cults shared several key characteristics:
- Mimicry: Islander mimicked the behavior of Allied soldiers, including their uniforms, rituals, and technology.
- Supernatural explanations: Cargo cults attributed the arrival of goods to supernatural forces rather than human agency.
- Expectation of material benefits: Cult members believed that by appeasing the spirits, they would receive more cargo and improve their material well-being.
Legacy of Cargo Cults
Cargo cults declined after WWII, as the Allies withdrew, and the islanders began to understand the true nature of the cargo. However, the phenomenon has had a lasting impact on our understanding of cultural exchange, colonialism, and the power of symbolism.
The term “cargo cult” has also been used metaphorically to describe situations where people blindly imitate others, often with unrealistic expectations of achieving similar success or benefits.”
Overview
Humans have always been a pretty excitable bunch, and they like to imagine that they are the ‘center of the universe, that unusual events are ALL ABOUT THEM, when oftentimes they might not understand the actual things happening have little or nothing to do with them;
just like those cargo cults.
I want to make a very strong point to begin here, to ensure that you don’t misunderstand.
As so happens, humans ARE a very special sort of being most precious. Why? Humans are innate story tellers and have the capability to interact DIRECTLY with POTENTIALITY and AWARENESS, as they are in fact MADE FROM POTENTIALITY and AWARENESS.
But on the other hand, humans themselves are ALSO humble creatures, rather like a small processing node that is part of a truly humongous reality-spanning network. To ‘Mind at Large’ as Bernardo Kastrup would call it, the processing occurs in large swatches of humans, and individual humans rarely rise to the level of notice. For example, in the human body, our liver organs are composed of millions of individual liver cells; but individual liver cells come and go, and seldom are noticed. That doesn’t mean individual cells aren’t important, far from it. But this is all a matter of perspective that should be kept in mind.
Dream-Substance Generation Nodes
There’s a lot going on with human beings; for example, POTENTIALITY, AWARENESS and ‘Consciousness’ all have hooks into the human body. This is a large subject. However, one known, but rarely discussed publicly thing about the human body, is that it (in Platonic Surrealistic terms) is a ‘dream generator’. It produces ‘dream substance’. It produces a lot of it.
Some people confuse this ‘dream substance’ with their ‘souls’, but that’s not a good characterization. In Jeffrey K. Kripal’s book, How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else, Chicago Press [2024], I wrote in chapter three about ‘tulpa substance’ and wrote that humans are ‘tulpa generators. And so, they are. But a better characterization for our purposes is to say, dream substance’, not ‘tulpa substance’.
As REALITY at large is a complex information matrix, it shouldn’t be unusual to note that ‘consciousness itself’ is rather like a ‘substance’ in such a framework. Now, for you materialists and dualists out there, the tendency would be to scoff. But in PS there is no atter/energy/consciousness’ schism. It’s all the same stuff.
This dream substance is actually a coin of the realm; a REALITY-wide common currency.
You can ‘summon UFOs with it’. You can feed ‘Fae folks’ with it. You can also contribute to a post-death world of your choice; for example, some people build ‘Christian afterlives’ with it, some people build ‘Pure Lands of Buddhism’ with it; some build the ‘Faerie Realm’ with it.
(The Neolithic peoples before modern civilization, the precursors to the Tuatha De Dannon of the old Celtic lands; the Pre-Indo-European Peoples, Etc., generated the first ‘Otherworld’ here in this Human-centric Cluster of the many worlds of REALITY, and as a more pure source; as they lived closer to nature, and weren’t actively destroying their ecosystem, that’s why the Fae Realm, for those who get to visit it, is of unparalleled beauty.)
How it Works, and Why Modern Forms are Often Negative and Corrupted
When AWARENESS lodges in a human body, if that body/mind system is open like an Infant, the functions of AWARENESS are not constricted, and may ‘flow’ ‘in and out’ relatively unimpeded.
But if you carry tension in your body/mind system, the ‘flow’ of AWARENESS doesn’t just get gentle modifications as it freely flows ‘in and out’, but rather those tensions in the body/mind cause it to ‘clump up’ and become, more often than not, ‘toxic’.
So, you wind up with ‘skandhas’ from Buddhism (tendencies); or you can call it ‘karma’ from Hinduism, or if you are a shaman, occultist, tantric practitioner or Kundalini yoga yogin, you PURPOSELY trap the ‘dream substance’ ‘against its will’ and cause it to be greatly concentrated or modified. Some people even create what might be called ‘the diamond body’ in Tantric Buddhism
or a ‘baby Aeon’ or ‘child of Shiva and Shakti’, depending on your tradition.
Now, if you know what you are doing, and it’s done lovingly and with full consciousness, it can be a beautiful thing; rather the maxim human potential to be a storyteller; using your own body to its fullest capability.
But in general, this causes problems, if you aren’t a master of the process.
You would be prone to ‘create negative entities’ or toxic ‘UFO’s’
In particular, one of the most famous practices from yoga is called a “Mula Banda lock’, also known as the ‘root lock’ in Kundalini yoga. In short you ‘lock’ your Kegel muscles, which causes a ‘restriction in the flow’ and you get this ‘abnormal pooling’, that in concert with a variety of other steps, can result in a ‘Kundalini awakening’, or as discussed previously, it can be used for various metaphysical purposes.
Now most people don’t know the practices, and even if they knew the words, it’s not likely that they could get into trouble with it.
But here’s the ‘Divine Joke’.
The ‘Divine Joke’
In our modern world, hardly anyone knows about this topic, wouldn’t tend to believe it, and certainly wouldn’t do the practices.
HOWEVER.
Ask any ‘uptight white man’, or most modern people who don’t live in harmony with the world, and if they are honest, they will admit that they ‘scrunch up their butt muscles’ when stressed, which is most of the time. It’s almost like our society has trained us to be in a state of permanent stress’, and THIS has turned us all into “unknowing UFO summoners, tulpa creators and unconscious metaphysicians”.
In Platonic Surrealism we say, “All roads lead to Rome”, in that ‘Life at Large’ gets what it wants, whether we know it or not, believe in it or not.
Modern materialists want nothing to do with this stuff, and yet, against their knowledge or will, they are dream substance nodes the same as anyone else.
“Life at Large” has all this stress happening in our world; we scrunch up our bodily muscles in our body/mind system and “Life at Large” plays us all like musical instruments.
It’s not nefarious. We don’t have the right to complain. A single liver cell has no reasonable excuse to complain; we have no right to complain. It’s one of our places in the Universe.
Kevin Cann
12/15/2024