The Liminalist: The Podcast Between

Return conversation with James Howard Kunstler, on Living in the Long Emergency, on the decline of community, morality, & humanity in times of immersive dishonesty and death wish culture.

Part One: Riding the Long Emergency (0 – 27 mins)

Making out in Hope, BC, riding the long emergency, parallel worlds, a frontier town, villages in Europe, the future of Europe, the shifting economy, rebuilding local communities, an agricultural county, industrial dairy farming in Washington county, New York, artisanal changeover, Living in the Long Emergency, covid-19 shutdown, Amazon’s effect on authors, extinction of the music business, the fate of movie houses.

Part Two: Emergent Societies & Emergent Pathologies (27 – 53 mins)

Business and community, the interrelationship of community parts, the acceleration of energy supplies, emergent societies, economic & social roles, human tendency towards hierarchy, the natural order of disorder, when parts of an interdependent system fail, human pathologies & pathological societies, from history to mythology, difference between growing up in the UK in the 1970s and the US in the 50s, an existential solution, the pervasion of dishonesty, education & medicine rackets, college loans & debt saves, race & gender hustling, the covid contraction, hostages of the healthcare system.

Part Three: Death & Eternity (53 mins – 1 hr 23 mins)

Perversions and inversions within institutions, macro-perversity, morality vs. spirituality, right relationship to reality, conscious life force, a death wish culture, immersive ugliness of the US   landscape, entropy made visible, agencies of death, terror management theory, the driving force of nihilism, death & hyper-activity, an absence of grace-notes, the degeneration of high-art, Samuel Beckett’s dictum, the comedy of unhappiness, contemplating the eternal, the astonishment of existence, the elasticity of time, Jim’s disciplines, Kunstler’s astrology, the top-heavy human, a tale of two cats.

Part Four: A Still Moment (1 hr 23 – 1 hr 45 mins)

Monastic life as solution for civilizations in trouble, the preservation of culture, The Canticle of Leibowitz, the fall of the Roman Empire, a time of great quietness, utopian communities of the 19th century, sexual & financial problems in communities, bundling Shakers, Fourier’s phalansteries, social organization of numbers, the question of hierarchy, the inverse hierarchy of monasteries, the measure of authority, rank presidential candidates, the president’s new clothes, how to make authority credible, becoming a reality-based person, constructing a coherent consensus, a common culture, an economic crack-up, the pain of deceleration.

Part Five: The Shale Oil Miracle (1 hr 45 mins – end)

The oil situation, peak oil, Gail Tverberg, prices dropping, demand destruction, shale oil, debt to cover oil production costs, an orgy of lending, the shale oil miracle, fracking, up to 13 million barrels a day, the evaporation of capital, the final contraction, stopping the pumping, Saudi & Russia, metroplex mega-cities, human gerbils.

Jim Kunstler's Blog 

Autographed copies of Living in the Long Emergency

Songs: “Pirates” by Entertainment for the Braindead; "Primitive" by The Groupies; “The Great Indoors,” by Dead Cinema; "Swing Gitane" by The Underscore Orkestra; ...

Conversation with Moe Bedard for Gnostic Warrior, unaired at time of posting.

Part One: Rendering unto Caesar (0 – 32 mins)

Early years, growing up in Yorkshire, from Hollywood to sorcery, a sense of dissociation, ancestral alcoholism, following the wound back, the father’s compromise, rendering unto Caesar, getting rooted in reality, the thrift store business, community capitalism, a lost model of business, the red herring of money, covid-19 and essential businesses, Bible prophecies, living in the end times, the disembodiment curve, surrendering to machine intelligence, a narcissistic dream world.

Part Two: Dead Babies and Occultism (32 – 56 mins)

Counting the ages, the sixth age, when gods become diseases, primed for Aleister Crowley, stealing The Book of the Law, dead babies and occultism, a toxic pipe, Vice of Kings, an alignment with superculture, an invisible Masonic architecture, the pedophilia question, the methods of the ruling elite, Crowley and the path of transgression, the Abbey of Thelema, a dust-up with Peter Levenda.

Part Three: The Dharma of Evil (56 mins – 1 hr 19 mins)

Crowley researchers evasion, forms of complicity, the Crowley house of cards, Levenda, an ideological edifice, the strategy of transgression, an ancient virus, unconscious carriers, the serpent in the Garden, King parasite-worm, the ritual with Neuberg, the dharma of evil, the rule of Antichrist, the original flinch, Christ & the power of empathy, an affinity for evil & the impossibility of othering, abuse culture, Hollywood superculture.

Part Four: (1 hr 19 mins – end)

Low level abuses, secret societies, the body as evidence, water damage and mold, spirits & alcohol, how people are possessed, child sacrifice & circumcision, poison containers, the psychological mechanism for child abuse, positive encounters with police, infighting of the elite, the liberty of the plebs, pride as virtue, an inverted culture, Satanic pride, a history of violence, the samurai code, holding a space for anger.

Gnostic Warrior

Maps of Hell campaign.

Songs: “Pirates” by Entertainment for the Braindead; “Ill Take My Leave” by Lee Maddeford; “Of Unknown Origin” by Philo & the Wraymen; "9 Show Your Face Toothface" by We Is Shore Dedicated; “Changes” by Short Hand.

Liminalist # 239.5: What's Your Purpose?

Highlights from Liminalist live meet, with Suzie, Mari, Jeff, and Cedomir (Hugo left early) 

Think of Dave Oshana and me as the two hands of a clock, one for hours and one for minutes. Our movements are letting you know what time it is, but they aren’t creating time or causing it to move forward. The third hand, confusingly enough, is the second hand: it measures the basic unit of time. This hand is harder to follow and you may not even notice it at all. Yet without it, the other two hands do not move at all.

This third hand that is the second hand is neither Dave nor I but what happens: what the field says. You, the reader, can only refer to your field, that is, to everything going on around you that synchronizes, and synchronizes with, what these other hands (Dave and I) are telling you.

As the heavier, clunkier hour hand, I want to refer not only to Dave (the faster-moving minute hand) but to what happens in my field, which is the second hand, during the days, hours, and minutes preceding this blogpost. What information enters into my awareness during the week that seems to echo, and thus amplify, the signal coming downstream to me from the minute hand (Dave)?

Keep in mind, as you read this, that seconds, minutes, and hours do not exist anywhere outside of a (time-and-place-) specific cultural configuration of the human mind. The real flow of information—what happens—is not measurable as words or pictures, but only directly experienced through the senses, inner and outer, that are arising in your body, as you read these words and look at the pictures.

A photo of a clock cannot tell you what time it is; it can only tell you what time the photo was taken.

The subject of the last online Oshana event was accessing Heaven and uniting humanity. The two ideas may be synonymous. Both relate to discovering and living our purpose as human beings.

Like a tortoise with its shell, we are carrying our purpose with us wherever we go. We came into this life with it, but we soon lost it. What prevents us from living our purpose is ancestral: the fear of being burned at the stake or crucified for letting on who we really are. The emperor’s many minions affirmed the beauty of his new set of clothes because everyone around them was doing the same. Only a child—the pure fool—had the courage to point out the emperor was naked.

Peer pressure is relentless and mostly invisible, like water around a fish. As teenagers we take drugs to barricade ourselves against the world, in order not to come alive, to avoid the pain of being the odd one out. When we eat the right food and give our bodies what they want, on the other hand, our senses come alive. But there can be a terrifying social isolation in coming alive in the land of the dead.

The idea of Heaven is so strong that we will join any cult that comes along, in order to get a ticket in. None of them know the way to Heaven, any more than MDMA can get us to a state of ecstasy. We substitute a living connection to purpose for a sense of belonging in a group of peers who are all making the same mistakes. And because of the collective lack of sensitivity, and an ever-growing menu of misconceptions and preconceptions, we mistake the goal for the destination.

Then we say we are “on the path.”

But like the commenter who advised me to shun the light, this “path” has no correspondence with reality. Is this a path I see before me? Then I am walking in someone else’s footsteps.

We didn’t come here to get enlightened. We were supposed to be enlightened already,

Conversation with Cedomir on why all the enlightenment in the world hasn't changed the world one iota, the forces of counter-enlightenment, the vale of soul-making, and the question of what constitutes humanity.

Part One: Whistling to the Gallows (0 – 32 mins)

A credulous skeptic, whistling to the gallows, faith in the face of torture, rumors of enlightenment, Krishnamurti’s dying claim, a counter-force to enlightenment, what collective awakening might look like, a social movement, covid-19 and a planetary something, nonplayer characters, a viral phenomenon, why there are no enlightenment pride parades, unremitting darkness in the Kali Yuga, conquering death, a guiding light, being outnumbered.

Part Two: Causal Agent of Enlightenment (32 – 58 mins)

The nature of the world, Keats’ gravestone, the vale of soul-making, Christ’s torturous process, what went wrong, a purpose to the wrongness, Dave Oshana as causal agent of enlightenment, questioning the transmission, attending a free event, not-a-guru, working with large numbers, moving from mind to senses, becoming less burdened, enlightenment transmission and individual life force, the price Jesus paid, spreading enlightenment on a numerative basis, accessing the life force, a refracting system, shards of the human soul.  

Part Three: Where Empathy Begins (58 mins – 1 hr 31 mins)

Mind-skepticism that becomes obsolete, prosthetic limbs of humanity, the false myth of humanity, compassion & frustration for the lost, interacting with humans in the thrift store, those beyond saving, non-sentient bodies, the identity as energy drain, investing in images, the original discordant note, a growing knot, conception vortex and diminishing life force, the image of distortion, ancestral conditioning, acknowledging an anti-human force, Satan’s asshole, discerning who to help, misery junkies, where empathy begins, showing up for loved ones.

Part Four: A Serbian Warrior (1 hr 31 mins – end)

The center of the self, Dave’s head-hunting, an invisible team, a self-selective process, the guru scene, a more passive process, the solution to being born in Hell, the procedure when everything’s been coopted, mapping an endless tunnel, seeing the light, the pseudo-solution of “spirituality,” mass-produced fake-awakenings, turning away from enlightenment, the value of a skeptic’s testimony, a Serbian warrior.

Songs: “Pirates” by Entertainment for the Braindead; "Jagode" by Bitipatibi; “Isijavanje” Srce Male Rode II

This is the audio version of my YouTube improv (see below) as there have been some problems with that video buffering.

Transcript of first 15 mins or so (more to come possibly):

This is a sharing of observations about the situation. I could say the global situation but I'm not able to observe the global situation, I'm only able to observe a local situation in a small town called Hope. I thought I could use this as a microcosm. I have the Hope Standard  here and this is one of the things that prompted me to want to really go on record about this, because the cognitive dissonance becomes quite intense when I look at what the mainstream media's reporting in my town. This is just a local rag that I've even appeared in, and written a letter for, and anyone can get into the Hope Standard, although probably not currently, and certainly I don't imagine that something I might have to say about the situation would make it in there. It seems to me that, whatever's going on globally, the best but possibly the only way for us as individuals to try and get to grips with it is by taking a blood sample, a holographic fragment of the collective planetary experience, and analyzing that.

We have a pretty rich opportunity for doing that because we are running a local business, a thrift store that my wife and I own and currently we are the only people who run it. We had three staff members and two of them were encouraging us to close so rather than close we reduced our hours and laid off our staff and said we'll take the risks, we'll take the hits, we'll man the ship in this crisis in this storm.

So we've reduced the hours and the days, from seven days a week 9:30 to 5:00 p.m. to 5 days a week 11:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. What we've discovered is the profits have not reduced; there was a rocky patch for about a week where it seemed like it was pretty bad but it was still worth staying open. And since that time I'd say our sales have gone back to normal, even if you don't adjust them for the reduced hours, as in we're making the same in a shorter day, more or less on average, as we were with a longer day. To me this suggests that things are evening out; people are adapting to the changed hours and shopping in a more condensed time. Perhaps because all the other shops, including thrift shops, are closed, we're picking up some of the slack, although I don't really notice many new customers. And many of the shops in town are not open, so people who just want to have a shopping experience and interact with people have the opportunity to do so.

At the thrift store they have an unusual opportunity for interacting because we're not imposing any kind of social distancing and I've noticed that customers aren't really observing it either and we could care less frankly. In the supermarkets, I’ve noticed that there's a certain amount of tension between the customers and the checkout people, nothing major but still, it's there. So our thrift store is acting as something of a hub of sanity, though others might say irresponsibility, but so far nobody has, and this is one of the sources of cognitive dissonance for me: how come we're not getting a lot of flack for staying open and for not particularly observing the rules and for not taking the coronavirus seriously?

And we've been able to observe by talking to our customers what the general view is: if we ask a customer first of all: do you know anyone who's got sick. there seems to be a general “No,” with a few qualifications. And then with a little probing, how seriously you take this, or what do you think is going on, it's almost unanimous that our customers believe that this whole thing is exaggerated, if not entirely fabricated, and that something else is going on entirely. Almost all of our customers do not believe the mainstream accounts, the numbers; they do not believe that we're involved in a pandemic.

Return conversation with Steven Snider (Recluse) for the release of his first book, Strange Tales of the Parapolitical.

Part One: The Strategy of Tension (0 – 35 mins)

The genesis of Steve’s book, Naomi Klein’s shock doctrine, Colonia Dignidad, the strategy of tension, a unifying principle of social control, trauma in the mystery traditions, how covid-19 got started, the state of the EU, the use of propaganda, colonel James Monroe, the American Security Council, James Jesus Angleton, Michael Aquino, Rupert Murdoch and Son of Sam, JFK, phase one and phase two narratives, the many narratives around covid-19, creating unbridgeable divides, ruling elite and organized crime syndicate, Philadelphia mob war, the death of David Rockefeller.

Part Two: A Hall of Mirrors (35 mins – 1 hr 10 mins)

A replicating virus behind global control, a nonhuman intelligence, Babylon 5, two ancient races, a shadow duality, what fills a cognitive vacuum, the Christian perspective, when nuance gets lost, the Kubrickon, why conspiracy theory is demonic, Michael Aquino, a hall of mirrors, neo-Nazism & UFOs, the demonic finger trap of trauma, self-isolation, mass alienation, as the pressure builds, the need for human community, the curse of social media, re-enacting trauma vs re-experiencing it, mapping the global trauma, returning to human interaction, musical community, spirituality & storytelling.

Part Three: Sons of the Aristocracy (1 hr 10 – 1 hr 34)

Steve’s Epstein book, turning one’s life into fiction, Vice of Kings, the aha moment, seeking the anomalies, Prisoner of Infinity, making the body conscious, the global lockdown and the internal lockdown, learning to relax, a trauma-based identity, British child-rearing, sons of the aristocracy, a protective shell, killing empathy, Patrick Melrose, upper class lessons in distrust, when the senses are fully open, permanently contracting the nervous system.

Part Four: Parasites Within the Global Village (1 hr 34 – end)

Molding children to perpetuate empire, affective empathy & cognitive empathy, Ted Bundy, advanced theory of mind, being cut off from our senses, the hunger for validation, the pressure of legacy, from the gods on down, the story of hierarchy, Christianity & humanitarianism, ant colonies, a re-emergence of the Hindu caste system, the problem with equality, total interdependence, square pegs into round holes, what society values, the mortality rate of garbagemen, what makes a community, , return to regionalism, the loss of certainty, local food sources, victory gardens. 

Recluse's site (VISUP)

Songs: “Pirates” by Entertainment for the Braindead; “I Hate You" by Norman Fagg; "Answer Me" by The Apartment; "Song for a Secret" by Jim Reid; “Changes” by Short Hand.

Feedback from this event:

Couldn't fall asleep after the event, but I did notice the despair and sadness I had experienced all day had vanished, not to return (so far)...

far more revelatory than I had anticipated, and I find it difficult to put into words how.  A couple times throughout the event, I had a significant ringing in my ears, which happens very rarely, and gave me a sense of calm I'd forgotten about, as I testified near the end.  It's still resonating with me today, and I feel a veil has been lifted of sorts. 

I did feel happy after meeting and throughout the evening so something went on there. 

great meetup, very cathartic, even though we were talking about the shenanigans afoot in the world I wasn’t really “thinking” about it, or maybe I was just responding to it in a more productive way, i.e., participating and connecting with like-minded souls.

Feedback from previous event, "Spring-Break to Infinity."

I felt that you were able to bring back awareness to the Eternal and tuning into the special guidance that is available to us at all times during certain points of the discussion that understandably was fraught with concerns about participants lives at this time. The end was nicely done. It was uplifting to not leave the meeting on a downer but for the reason we came to the meeting in the first place

It came at a really beneficial time and has helped me not feel so alone and isolated during this time.

Thoroughly enjoyed that. Which TV show were you talking about?

"18 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I was 18" (Video)

Songs: “Pirates” by Entertainment for the Braindead; "Sheets," by Damian Jurado; "Beat the Devil's Tattoo" by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club; “Changes” by Short Hand

Return conversation with Martin Jolly on viruses, end-times, Oshana, angry sperm, becoming what we are and unshackling the life force from human interference.

Part One: Reorganization of the Global Mind (0 - 33 mins)

Self-quarantined in Finland, a culture in transition, 12 Monkeys, Extinction Rebellion’s dream, identifying the problem, businesses in jeopardy, being suspended, feeling apocalyptic, a reorganization of the global mind, turning humans into currency, biometric solutions, shoehorning humans into machines, the China solution, human self-destruction, Dave Oshana’s viewpoint, the specter of nuclear destruction, living in the end-times, the dehumanizing effects of technology.

Part Two: Softening the Boundaries (33 mins - 1 hr)

Family disconnection, the evolution of a belief in apocalypticism, society as oppressor, the world ends in a whimper, studies in consciousness, the transhumanist goal, the denial of the unconsciousness, technological dependence, Watchmen’s eschaton, a flood of interdimensional, softening the boundaries, Oshana’s language, reducing time-fixation, history as concept, infecting our thinking, shuffling concepts, the revelation of God. 

Part Three: An Experimental Life (1 hr - 1 hr 36 mins)

Describing the island retreat, a feeling of suction & constant disruption, in free fall, merging outwards, the Dave-point, the special thing, the space between meaning, converging to a point, being in not knowing, a feeling of what-now, the choice to wait, the pitfalls of narrative, the confines of being human, adventures with Jasun’s cat, a quarantined libido, the life force’s agenda, a continuity of awareness, the body as aperture, the preceding light, the liberation of human awareness, shit-work, ancestral build-up. 

Part Four: A Remarkable Non-Event (1 hr 36 mins - 1 hr 59 mins)

A nightmare of sorting the seeds, an endless cycle of rage, angry sperm, a constellation, an ancestral line of male anger, red herrings, a nonlinear intention of community, clearing out the implants of identity, the perils of perpetual catharsis, following the thread back to the original trauma, life force and identity, the relaxation key, clearing out toxins, a remarkable non-event, the threshold of suffering, letting go of the past & returning to what we are.

Part Five: The Dave Vacuum (1 hr 59 mins - end)

The accusations of cult behavior, the defenses of materialists, cult classification for intervention, John de Ruiter cult, the Dave vacuum, back to the retreat, an experience of not being in possession, the opposite of mind control, the lack of being reminded to control the life force, the expression of something inexplicable, an echo of inconceivability, a liminal space, the opposite of a problem.

Songs: “Pirates” by Entertainment for the Braindead; "Stranger" by I Am Oak; "My Blood Will Talk to You Out of the Ground" & "The Years Tire On" by Micah P. Hinson; “Le Petit Martien” by  Bigott; “Changes” by Short Hand

Saturday’s "Spring-Break to Eternity" was the most densely populated Liminalist event to date and covered a range of topics, from Dave Oshana to the human and sociopolitical adaptations to the so-called Corona Virus. The above podcast is a collection of dialogues on that last subject.

As a separate audio, here’s a clip in which I discuss my interest in Dave Oshana and why your interest in Dave matters to me:

https://boxes.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/wp-content/uploads/On-Dave-Spring-Infinity.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:34 — 15.5MB)

The last Dave event was a joyous and vibrant affair; watching back my own event from the day before, I couldn’t help but be humbled by the contrast in the levels of life force energy and sheer exuberance on display in Dave’s presentation compared to my own. I suppose some people don’t respond to someone as obviously alive and filled with joy as Dave is, however. I seem to attract souls who are struggling with heavy loads, as I have myself over the decades. And of course, ebullience isn’t necessarily correlative with life force or joy.

There are people who are quite ebullient but also thoroughly obnoxious and gratingly inauthentic at the same time. And I know that, when I try to be more “up,” it often causes my energy to become abrasive and distorted; when I am contained, however, even subdued, something subtle and bright can often shine through that.

Probably, my appreciation of Dave's joyfulness is contingent on getting to know Dave well enough, over twelve years, to see past the ebullient cockney persona, to the essence beneath it, and then to re-see that surface personality as something, like a small child, quite astonishingly genuine and not at all forced or affected. My impression of Dave is that he really is in a state of joy most of the time, and that this is what the life force looks like, fully landed in human form...

*

Dave started Sunday meet talking about how our life is spent in boxes, from the crib or cradle (or sock drawer, in his case) that we are placed into as babies, to the coffin we go out in. And yet we come from a womb and into a Nature in which no right angles can be found.

He called a number of witnesses to his “case.” The first was “a thing called a person, because I don’t think they exist.” He mentioned how our joints alert us to coming tsunamis, and then called a second witness: words.

Science is rhetoric, he said, persuasive argumentation. When we hear words, however, we are hearing the sounds of our brains, like fax machines firing off coded information. As he encouraged us to tune into the feeling of the marrow inside the bones, once again, I was struck by the irony that Dave’s enlightened consciousness seems focused on almost infinitesimal things that are of so little interest, or even conceivability, to the logical mind. Is this what a body feels like to infinite consciousness, I wonder: a never-ending source of information and meaning? What else would we expect? Aliens, gods, and shiny spaceships?

Everything that ever happened in our bodies is still happening there, over and over again, re-looping. What if we start to study the loops and see what they are constructe...

Return conversation with Ann Diamond on the literary world, the rock n' roll industry, and MKULTRA's archetypal hijacking.

Part One: The MKULTRA Key (0 – 26 mins)

A dream of Ann Diamond, MKULTRA past, piecing together a fragmented past, a memory block, Ted Hughes, Ann’s mentor, modeled on Sylvia Plath, a sexual initiation, meeting Hughes as a child, the literary industry, an archetypal template, a world of dark magic, the occult path, The Iron Man, a mess of fragments, researching Sylvia Plath, the next J.D. Salinger, the MKULTRA key, Hughes’ sister & literary executor.

Part Two: Robotized Humans (26 – 49 mins)

Acknowledging memories, MKULTRA dreams, Masonic geography of downtown Montreal, university days, the architecture of English literature, the doll that says no, escaping slavery, finding joy, from mysticism to facts, the turquoise princess syndrome, Cinderella mind control, Lucifer programming, Ewen Cameron’s twin aspects of psychic driving, good cop & bad cop inside the skull, Peter Sellers’ pathology, mother-father imprinting, complexity of culture vs simplicity of nature.

Part Three: An Operator & a Salesman (49 mins – 1 hr 13 mins)

A university course with Andrew Loog Oldham, Rock Dreams, The Rolling Stones & Satanic Majesties, Stones vs The Beatles, dead Paul McCartney, killing rock stars, selling the soul to the devil, copying the gods, Oldham’s openness to paranoid critical theory, 1950s UK, rubble in the streets, a freak for show business, an operator & a salesman, grokking The Who, Stones in Montreal in 1965, generations in Hell, embracing Satan, wise as serpents, harmless as doves.

Part Four: Works in Progress (1 hr 13 mins – end)

The trap of the past, letting go of the drive, half in & half out of MK-culture, a Christian at heart, penetrating the dark, creative tension, individual vs. collective enlightenment, Dave Oshana on success & self-sabotage, audiences small & large, connecting with a salesperson, being blocked as a writer, the downfalls of a wider audience, The Stones’ followers, the ones who lived, when teachers stay small, Leonard Cohen’s Roshi, leaving the door open, Oldham’s descent, we are all works in progress.

Ann Diamond's Blog (essay on her Jaggger-connection)

Songs: “Pirates” and "A Smile" by Entertainment for the Braindead; "Trois Je T'Aime" by  Bigott; “The Husbands Somewhere Out There” by Nina Hynes; “Changes” by Short Hand