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THE COSMIC DOWNLOAD: Creative Infusion From The Stars?

 

We remember the late 60ties as the time of student movement, which fundamentally changed the world we live in.  It was furthermore the time of psychedelic experience and psychedelic art, which left its trace in many ways. Transpersonal experience was hot during these days. It was the days of the first landing of the moon and before that one of the cornerstones of film history was released: Stanley Kubrick’s 2001.

The opening of the science fiction epic deals with the awakening of mankind when moon watcher, an ape man, learns how to use a bone as a weapon.  However that “learning” is triggered by the mysterious black monolith, an otherworldly device, which has influence over the development of mankind.

British researcher Robert Poole revealed in a recent science conference how Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke were  influenced at the time of the development of the 2001 script (which was subject of many changes)  from anthropological research. From that point of view Kubrick’s introduction could be interpreted as a pessimistic comment about the human condition: man has progressed technically but is still driven by animalistic impulses.

Seen from today there is also a fascinating parallel: The opening sequence with the “creative infusion” triggered by the black monolith in 2001 is in some ways a good metaphor for developments in the era the movie was done. It was indeed a time of substantial change in the psyche.

Do we really know the origin of these changes in society or what exactly does start a new development  – or a revolution – in human evolution? We usually agree on social factors like a struggle between generations or injustice or political tensions as a starting point. However the development of the late 60ties in particular had so many facets, it feels from some distance indeed as been influenced by a “creative infusion” from somewhere. At least internet, the digital age and unusual architecture have their roots in the late 60ties .

This is of course a very controversial subject since once of the achievements of 18 century enlightenment is that we know we are responsible for our destiny.

But we aren’t obliged to see “creative infusion” necessarily in the sense of certain religions.

If it is possible that there is something which erupts like magma from the Otherworld into our world at certain times and at some places, which maybe communicates and influences with us on a more subconscious level in the first place, we can think of many possibilities.

Recently Werner Herzog said in his highly appreciated documentary “The Cave Of Forgotten Dreams” about paintings in a stone age cave in Southern France that scientists discovered that during that time there was obviously a period of 5000 years where no human development or change happened, then, suddenly, things changed.

We don’t really know a lot about the history of man.

 

These interventions are not only happen in a large scale but also in very individual circumstances. We know from many tales that in the The Forest Dark there are not only timeframes but also places, which work like devices. People go into the woods and are not the same when they come back.

 

 

 

 

Dark Matter

In one of its last flights NASA’s space shuttle brought 2011 an incredible instrument to the International Space Station: the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer ASM-02. This high tech observatory can do nothing less than change the course of our civilization, if it finds that scientist’s ideas about the structure and nature of our universe have to be revised. The instrument is supposed to find proof for a phantom nobody has seen or detected so far but which is (simplified) necessary to explain why galaxies seem to rotate at their outer boarders faster than they should according to physic’s laws. The only explanation is a huge amount of matter in the Universe, which can’t be seen – the so called dark matter. But what if dark matter isn’t there? We will have to fundamentally rethink some ideas about laws in nature.

For a long time only philosophers and writers questioned our ideas of reality. Now we seem in a time of transition where also very rational scientists raise a lot of fundamental questions.

Maybe, this will lead to the end of a hundred year long fight between believers of a more metaphysical view of the world on one side and defenders of a strict rationalistic view of the world  and supporters of fact and figure based science on the other side.

We are on a journey to understand the world  we live in and the universe around us and we haven’t gotten very far. Indeed this might be the time of entering  new territories in the collective journey of our civilization.

I am quite sure there is dark matter out there. However I am not so sure what it really is. Like The Forest Dark I interpret dark matter as a metaphor for something yet unknown but what will finally be revealed.

In May 2012, Waleed Abdalati, NASA’s chief scientist said during a conference in Berlin about the future of space travel that we are the transition point.  We stand in the doorway.

Maybe we will soon know what’s behind the door.