In George Nolfi’s adjustment of Philip K Dick’s short story, “The Adjustment Bureau” is an organisation that makes sure “The Plan” is executed. Congressman David Norris accidentally sees hat-wearing “case officers” adjusting the fate of himself and his entourage, after running into his soul mate – a woman he is not supposed to see as “the Chairman” of the Adjustment Bureau believes that if they find love, “The Plan” he has outlined for the world will not come to fruition.
The paradigm of the movie is that free will and chance are antagonists, with the Bureau making sure that free will does not result in holocausts and world wars, but that it is instead curtailed – which is why there is a Plan. However, the key message is that The Plan is only that: a plan. And on occasion, things like true love – for Love Conquers All – are not only allowed to occur, but seem to be pushed so powerfully that it will change the course of planned history. But also that “Free will is a gift that you only use when you have to fight for it.”
The story therefore captures the beautiful dichotomy of destiny and free will. The dichotomy is most famous when it comes to astrology, whereby the story goes that we are moved by the planets – or at least that at the moment of birth, there is a cosmic imprint made upon us, which is our destiny. This is what will happen to us, unless we use our free will properly. It was one of the greatest astrologers and minds of all times, the Renaissance scholar Marsilio Ficino, who said that the true magus ruled his stars, rather than being ruled by the stars.
When we delve into accounts of people who have accessed past lives and life in between lives –Michael Newton has catalogued his research in a number of books – we hear consistent accounts that before our birth, we do agree to a plan: a map of as to how our life will unfold, with milestones planned in, very much like a project plan; that we want to see certain important things accomplished by certain dates/ages. Newton and others make it clear that this plan will guide a person’s development – his destiny – though adjustments to the plan can be made at any moment in time (though it rarely happens).
Take this idea out of the imaginal, otherworldly realm, and you end up with The Adjustment Bureau, in which angels are case officers and magical powers are only acquired if one wears a hat. What the movie perfectly illustrates, too, is that the Chairman really is God; that They have created a dichotomy which is at its core, an illusion, so that we would really press hard for the rights of free will and use it to meet our true destiny. And this is where The Adjustment Bureau echoes Hermetic material, as the possibility to use Free Will is vey much like a Grail Quest: it is placed at our disposal, but David Norris needs to fight hard for it, and enter the Bureau Headquarters, to win the right – very much like the Grail knight needs to enter the Grail Castle and prove his worth.
Of course, in Newton’s and Hermetic thought, there is no real stand-off between destiny and free will. And this is why the Hermetic tradition also provides a path not mentioned in the movie, which is the path of surrender, in which the seeker entrusts the path in the hands of God. This Plan is the unity of free will and destiny, in which total faith and trust in God is given over to the Chairman – it is maybe what makes you an Adjuster.
Our Los Angeles home is in Porter Ranch, a residential area in “the Valley”, making up the north of Los Angeles. Hardly a day goes by when we don’t have to cross streets like White Oak Avenue, while Brasilia Drive is locally notorious for the house on the corner with Reseda, whose Halloween display attracts thousands of local visitors each year. None of these streets will ring a bell with anyone – not even most people from the Valley – as they are nowhere near as famous as other “real L.A.” streets like Sunset Boulevard or Rodeo Drive. But this area of Porter Ranch is where many of the scenes of Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.” were filmed. It is why Porter Ridge Park, at the top of Reseda, is better known amongst locals as “E.T. Park” than under its real name.
“E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” is a movie that is remembered for all the right reasons. It left an imprint on an entire generation. Shortly after we had moved in, Giorgio Tsoukalos came to our home and we related the E.T.-connections of this area. He explained how as a child, he had identified with Elliot, but as he grew up, he realised that he was Peter Coyote’s unnamed character, but nicknamed “Keys” because of the keys he has on him. Though for many he is the nemesis of Elliot, “Keys” tells Elliot that he has waited to see an alien since he was ten years old. What is happening – alien contact – is therefore a dream come true for both of them.
The vision of E.T. was Spielberg’s, who developed an imaginary alien creature as his personal companion when he was a child himself, after his parents had divorced. The movie is largely autobiographical, on an imaginary scale. But living in Porter Ranch, driving up Reseda at night and seeing the lights of the Valley below you (as in the movie) or driving along White Oak and imaging Elliot take off on his bike are a magical dimension laid onto this landscape by Spielberg. The crew spent only eleven days filming here, but its legacy on Porter Ranch is – three decades later – still alive.
Porter Ranch thirty years ago was being built – as is apparent in many of the scenes. The police car chase ends with a view of Mission Peak and its surrounding area, a view we can see from our home which was not yet built at the time. Today, Porter Ranch is residential and known for it. The only somewhat weird activity that occurs in Porter Ranch and which is visible to residents is geocaching, but imagining NASA personnel walking through the streets with Geiger counters in search of extra-terrestrial beings is something where your mind wanders to because of the movie. For E.T. is so… real. It is like a layer laid upon reality, but touchable – and I guess to some extent it is, for you only need to put the movie into your DVD player and there it is.
What happens in Porter Ranch is to me a 20th century version of an ancient shamanic landscape. The shaman saw not only the land with his physical eyes, he always so it with his mind, as a result of which he saw spirits, demons, the ancestors, each and all of which he could connect with. The movie E.T. is like a film (pun intended) that is placed over Porter Ranch. Always there, as soon as you are aware that this is the landscape where E.T. was filmed. It is that knowledge that gives the eyes to see…
If E.T. was a religious experience, the sites immortalised on celluloid would have been marked with oratories and churches –to some extent that is what has happened. When the Porter Ridge Park playground was to be refurbished, there was a campaign to make sure that the caterpillar remained, as it was so linked with ET. It had become a landmark and when you go on film buff websites, you will find it is an important destination for those doing an ET pilgrimage to Porter Ranch. For them, the area has become sacred… Why? Because it is not so much that the gods walked here, but because it is a landscape where magic and emotions were experienced, and for which we want it to be remembered. The History Channel’s slogan is that history is made everyday. So are sacred places…
While reading my friend Mark Pilkington’s excellent book “Mirage Men”, I came across a paragraph in which he relates a short quote of Karla Turner, a “UFO abductee” and author of “Into the Fringe” – she also wrote “Taken”. Mark refers to her mention of floating silver spheres – UFOS – which she sees, but which to her are “repositories… where human souls are somehow recycled.” She further believed that inside the spheres, these souls were implanted into women’s wombs, a procedure that she described as both surgical and spiritual.
Most UFO abduction writers take most things extremely literally, which is how we have come to the point where extra-terrestrial – apparently malevolent – creatures are abducting human beings and engineering our DNA. But Turner goes beyond that and suggests that the aliens even interfere with our souls?
The same trend is apparent in Whitley Strieber’s relatively recent novel “2012”, subtitled “The War for Souls”. Strieber has mixed his horror-writing expertise with autobiographical accounts of his own anomalous, in his interpretation, extra-terrestrial abduction encounters and argues that “the war” the aliens are fighting is to harvest our souls – in some Luciferian apocalyptic plot.
I don’t want to spend too much space pointing out that abductions to other realms didn’t begin with the arrival of the UFO phenomenon – it is well-documented in fairy lore and other cultures and goes back hundreds if not thousands of years.
What I do want to spend time on, is the notion that we might be an “alien” soul in a human body. All of us. Not just “some” of us. It is something that was expressed for thousands of years and was written down in the Corpus Hermeticum. Seeing the Corpus was a synopsis of the Ancient Egyptian religion, it can be argued that this is also what the Ancient Egyptians believed and knew: that we had a body, but that our soul was somehow “alien” – from elsewhere. Today, we might indeed call it alien, or extra-terrestrial, but I prefer to call it stardust. Part of the Divine Spark.
In the Corpus, it is said that a human being has several levels of intellectual and spiritual existence, somewhat on par with the three levels of the brain that science has uncovered. The Hermeticists believe(d) that a human body had an intelligence of its own, but that this began a co-operation with a spirit that somehow came from elsewhere and entered it around the moment of birth. The end result is you, and me, and all of us.
As bizarre as this may sound, Michael Newton’s “Journey of Souls”, which describes case studies of people that he has hypnotised so that these people can describe the life between lives. The book is very much in agreement with the Hermetic assessment of how souls enter our body. The soul speaks of utilizing the body and that they don’t control the human mind as such, but try to elevate it.
Newton has reached these insights practically, through hypnotising people and analysing their stories. Indeed, in the West, we often think that religion was somehow either divinely inspired by the likes of Jesus or Mohammed or fabricated by the Church, but there is also the practical exploration of the mind, and from those observations, the creation of a framework. Thus, it is entirely possible that in our distant past, people experimented with the mind, reached the same conclusion as Newton, and wrote it down.
So where does this leave Karla Turner? Her observations might be totally correct, but her interpretation of these things being a purely extra-terrestrial affair, might be too small of a framework. But in the final analysis, we might indeed be alien minds occupying human bodies, and we don’t even know it ourselves.
The Mayans and Hopi believe that we live in the Fourth World (though some traditions list it as the Fifth World). The previous eras were considered to be all about human evolution on a physical level, while the present world – which began in ca. 3000 BC and will come to an end in 2012 AD – is about psychological – or to be more precise spiritual – evolution.
Though some civilisations date back to 10,000 BC, mostly, civilisation as we define it today started in Europe, the Middle East, Northern Africa, Asia and pockets of the New World in ca. 3000 BC. Civilisation was a global event, often happening independent from each other, from ca. 3000 BC onwards… as if it was a cosmic imperative.
How civilisation came about is not truly the point. But it is clear that civilisation has brought us to the 21st century, where all of these civilisations have melted into one global civilisation,
creating a global village where everyone is connected via phone networks, millions of flights crisscrossing our skies and an economy on a global scale. We are all connected. Whether we like it, or not.
Most of these changes, or at least radical revolutions, have occurred in the last two decades. This, too, is in accordance with the prophecies of the Mayans, who singled out the period of 1993 to 2012 – the final “mini-era” of the 5000 year cycle – as a time of great change. We are, as they say, in “the thick of it”.
With great periods of change comes great uncertainty if not fear. An old world is disappearing and a new one is born. What does the future hold for us? “We don’t know” is the answer… but it is also up to us to define it! The central legends of the Mayans state that at the turning point of each Age, “leaders” – selected individuals – convene to define the fate of the New Age with the gods. Though the general trend (e.g. that it is of a spiritual nature) of such a change is predetermined, specifics are left to be worked out. It is therefore an interesting combination of predetermination and free will.
The general trend of all ages is about evolution and human development. The general trend of this age will obviously be further human integration and spiritual growth. At the same time, each turning point has a review of the previous Age, where appropriate conclusions are drawn.
If we look at the world today, we might say it is in bad shape. Switch on any news channel and you will be told that the world is allegedly a very bad place. Indeed, it could be better. But look upon it from the perspective of 5000 years and make a conclusion based on that and a totally different picture emerges, I think.
5000 years ago we were largely individual tribes, going on an adventure that should be described as “tribal” or “national”. Today, we still have nations, but we also have come to the understanding that we are one world. However much some political parties feel they have to play the isolationist card – that “out there” there are “those” who are “out to get us” – the fact of the matter is that we are working together and working together is the only way forward. There is no alternative and anyone who pretends there is, is either stupid or a demagogue. Or both.
We ARE a global village and we have become global citizens. That is the FutureMankind. This comes with tremendous challenges and problems, which frustrate and infuriate many. But is that such a bad thing?
The challenge of the New Age is therefore to embrace this even further, and work on some of the outstanding agenda from this age that is not yet fulfilled. Don Alejandro, a Mayan elder, sees the world post 2012 as a world in which we can fly on airplanes without passports. Indeed, borders and the insistency in keeping them “solid” – including “Fortress America” – have no future. Reality is that borders are not solid (and never were) and they are in many cases total illusions – take for example most borders drawn in Africa or in the middle of a sea. But they continue to be the biggest contributor to division, death and war, for no real reason other than “national interests”, which truly have become another illusion too. There are no more “national interests”. In truth, there only ever was, is and will be “human interest” and our challenge is to understand to the fullest as soon as possible. That is FutureMankind.
Prince wrote that Orion’s Arms were “wide enough to hold the both of us”. The ancient Egyptians linked the constellation with their god Horus (not Osiris) and the Mayans saw Orion’s Belt and its Nebula below as the “Fire of the Sky”, where a New Fire was lit at the beginning of the Fifth World – the one to end on December 21, 2012.
Imagine my surprise, therefore, to find that right now, Betelgeuse, one of the brightest stars in the sky but also a principal definer of the constellation of Orion might stage-manage and star in the greatest show in the sky!
For some time now, Betelgeuse has been losing mass, indicative of a collapse. It could go super-nova at any time, though no-one has been able to put a definitive timeline on it. It could be a few years, or a few hundreds of thousands of years. But when Betelgeuse does go supernova, for a few days or even weeks, it will light up the sky to such an extent that it would be very visible, as luminous at least as the moon – the nights would not be like anything we know right now.
There is tremendous speculation about 2012 and the catastrophes that should occur at the end of the Mayan calendar. Nothing in the Mayan cosmology, however, speaks for the physical destruction of the world, though there are references to days being thrown off, somehow, by a cataclysm. Most quickly interpreted as an earthly cataclysm, Betelgeuse’s explosion – or a similar event in the sky – would have an identical effect. Indeed, such stellar displays would be far more prominent on the ancient Mayans mind when describing a catastrophe.
The Mayan ceremonies to do with the endings of these cycles of time also involve the Nine Lords of the Underworld killing the Thirteen Sky Lords. In Egyptian mythology, this balance of order and chaos was specifically linked with Horus – Orion! But now we learn – whether slowly or quickly – that the hero – a word derived from the name Horus – is dying, but will surely be born again, for that too is part of every creation myth!
The Orion Nebula is a huge complex of gas and dust where massive stars are forming; a stellar nursery – a perfect description for a “hearth”, as described in the Mayan cosmology! Though the Nebula and Betelgeuse are only visibly linked – in reality they are hundreds of light years apart – isn’t it a wonderful coincidence one of the greatest stellar nurseries exists visually near one of the most famous dying stars – and hence constellations?
Betelgeuse is the shoulder of the constellation Orion. When it disappears, will we compose myths that relate how Orion was wounded in the shoulder, or lost an arm in battle, no doubt in efforts to conquer chaos? Will it, in short, become the material of myths, just like similar events in the sky became part of ancient myths?
The latest scientific findings on the Nebula were taken by Igor Chekalin, who participated in the Hidden Treasures 2010 astrophotography competition, with this entry. Though the Nebula is visible with the naked eye, when seen through powerful telescopes, the innate beauty of the universe and this stellar nursery is simply overpowering.
