Very classical beauty for these your Met-Art Nudes of the Week!
Jan
31
Nudes of the Week!
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Jan
30
After years of packing around a well-worn copy of Character Analysis, by Wilhelm Reich, I finally sat down and read the thing and thought I’d share some thoughts on the man and his work. I first encountered Reich through William S. Burroughs, who through many of his books had been a strong supporter of Reich’s science of Orgonomy. Reich was an Austrian psychoanalyst, and for a time had been the star pupil of none other than Sigmund Freud, whom he later broke with over Reich’s ideas concerning the primacy of sex in therapy. Reich was one of the most radical and most maligned figures of early psychology, and though his work is still influential, he is mostly remembered as a quack or a madman.
Reich began to run afoul of the psychoanalytic and scientific establishment with his “discovery” of what he called the Orgone. This according to Reich is the universal life energy, blue in color, that radiates from the Sun to the Earth. All living things are dependent on the Orgone and its pulsations. Reich had come across this discovery in the course of treating neurotics for sexual issues, and their experience of “streamings” of energy as neurotic blocks were loosened. Reich eventually developed a pseudo-scientific framework around his Orgonomy and started treating patients for everything from hysteria to cancer. His supposed cures of cancer, which he effected with orgone accumulators, i.e. boxes of alternating layers of iron and organic material, were what brought him to the attention of the FDA, who eventually imprisoned him and burned all of his books.
He sounds at this point like a crank, and it would be reasonable to be skeptical of the man’s claims. The current arch-skeptics of the rationalist materialist scientific movement are quite fond of lambasting Reich’s supporters to this day. I would argue however that it was not his work that was the man’s major problem, it was his ego and personality issues that prevented him from communicating his ideas in a rational and scientific manner.
One of Reich’s major problems was his need to take personal credit for the discovery of his Orgone, in fact much of his writing is what I would consider tooting his own horn, or patting himself on the back for being such a great scientist. Reich was also prone to taking credit for the work of other psychologists in his work group at the psychoanalytic institute. If he had bothered to search for parallels to his work, or previous evidence in the literature available at the time, he may have been able to make a convincing argument that could have at least kept him out of prison. Franz Anton Mesmer had become famous almost two centuries earlier, for describing and using therapeutically, the same force that Reich had encountered. Mesmer, also remembered as a crank, called his discovery “animal magnetism,” and noted the same connection to the metal iron, as well as its therapeutic effects. Unavailable to Mesmer, but readily available in Reich’s day, was all the previous theorizing on Prana and Chi by oriental mystics. This force had actually been discovered at least 5,000 years earlier and “sciences,” such as Yoga and Tai-Chi, had already been developed for its proper application and use. This dismissal by western scientists of the work of mystics, who are actually more personally acquainted with these forces continues well in to current times.
Reich also seemed to suffer from a personality flaw that Burroughs liked to call the “Right Virus,” meaning the overwhelming need to prove oneself right, even while running counter to logic. Reich developed his own alternative to the scientific method that he titled Functional Identity, which severely damages the credibility of his scientific work. In order to be “righter” than the scientists who criticized his theory, he abandoned the notion that correlation does not equal causation, instead adopting the view that if two things look very much alike they must be functionally identical. In applying this idea to his discovery Reich throws science to the wind and jumps right in to sympathetic magic where “like affects like.”
His “rightness,” and his security in his own genius, ultimately led to his own downfall, and the aura of disrepute that still clings to his work. When Reich was taken to trial for quackery by the FDA, he insisted on defending himself, and refused to recognize the court’s investigation into his work, because he thought them incapable of judging scientific fact. This attitude, rather than a recognition he should justify his claims, is what landed him in prison, where he died less than a year later. Thankfully Reich did have the foresight to insert all of his books into the trial record, which made them a public document, and the only way they survived into the present day.
I do not feel that Reich’s work should be dismissed based on the man’s personal flaws. Reich’s whole life had been an exercise in tragedy, including the suicides of both parents and the persecution of the Nazis, and culminating in a wrongful imprisonment. Reich had in fact stumbled upon a mystical force and attempted to make it intelligible to science. He sacrificed everything to continue communicating his discoveries. He was very aware that he was running afoul of society, and expected persecution, based on the reactions he had encountered while trying to express his ideas. He had entitled these reactions the Emotional Plague, and felt that the majority of society was ill and in need of help, and these were the natural responses of armored individuals to the life energy.
Reich was a pioneer. blazing a path into territory that science was just beginning to discover, and deserves a little latitude in our judgment of his work. He continues to have an influence in Gestalt therapy, and primal therapies, and there are therapists practicing orgonomy today. My reading of some of his other works like the Function of the Orgasm, and Children of the Future, led me into the field of psychology, and in these works are fertile ground for scientifically grounded explorations. Still today one might find it difficult to get funding for research along these lines, owing in large part to the damage that Reich did to his own reputation. I heartily recommend all his books, though to be taken with the proverbial grain of salt, and his life can be taken as a warning that strong claims require strong proof.
CC image courtesy of the Freebase entry on Wilhelm Reich
Jan
16
Once upon a time, in a railway bar, two blocks from the platform at the edge of eternity. A golden-haired young man, (let’s call him God) looked up from his beer and saw a singularly beautiful older woman. Raven-haired with perfect skin she glanced at the young God and he sat there transfixed. A few moments earlier he had believed himself alone in this dusty watering hole, and drinking in her figure he felt his blood begin to rush. Furiously cogitating the perfect pick-up line to make this tasty damsel, he got up and awkwardly approached. “Hi, m.my n.name’s God,” he stammered, “mind if I tell you a joke?” “Well God,” she replied with a knowing twinkle in her eye, “I’m Chaos, and I’d love to hear your joke, I haven’t heard a good one in Ages.” Chaos relaxed back on to her bar stool with a smirk playing around her sparkling eyes, not too cruel, but well aware of the mannish boy’s intentions. “Well,” God began and launched nervously into his set-up. He was a funny youth, and earnest, but not knowing any real jokes, he was ad-libbing this one off the cuff. It was long and over-detailed, dirty, and convoluted. Being inexperienced (and probably a virgin) he was trying to lead into some sort of double entendre, like 0+2=1, or some such nonsense, but as he talked he over-thought things and the punchline seemed to get farther and farther away. Luckily for our young God, Lady Chaos knew where he was going with this, and he was in fact still telling his silly joke when they got back to her place, and she started to disrobe. The raven-haired beauty was already quite taken with the young man, and stopped his nervous babble by pulling him into her bed, plotting her own punchline to his nonsensical monologue. They made passionate love, both coming repeatedly, each one more explosive than the last, and for every orgasm, a little universe was created in her womb, all based on one line or meaningless detail of God’s meandering joke. Overly-detailed, dirty, and convoluted, our universe is one of them, in Chaos’ womb, teeming with untold trillions of fetal gods, waiting to be born.
In homage to William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin’s All-Purpose Bedtime Story
Jan
03
Both these beauties have the most striking blue eyes, and doesn’t the blonde above look oh so much like Twin Peaks’ Laura Palmer? I thought so, and that’s why these two are your Met-Art Nudes of the Week!
Jan
03
I just discovered a fascinating series of 18 videos on youtube that comprise a lecture and Q&A session with a Dr. Thomas Campbell discussing his Theory of Everything. Apparently Dr. Campbell was a physicist that stumbled into research on OOBE’s or Out-of-Body-Experiences, which led him after many years to develop a grand unified theory. My own attempts to arrive at a TOE have led me in similar directions and I found his talk quite stimulating. What Dr. Campbell describes is a conscious super-reality that envelops our own universe and others. He builds on the work of some physicists that I was only dimly aware of and describes the universe as a digital virtual model. Luckily his description is closer to the Buddha’s than The Matrix. As usual I have some criticisms, beginning with the use of OOBE’s as the primary data set. The techniques Dr. Campbell recommends are similar if not identical to the occult practice of skrying, or New Age astral projection. This method is notoriously unreliable at furnishing concrete verifiable facts. Crowley was a big proponent of this technique, but he recognized the need for a system of fact checking and so developed his 777, a giant table of religious and magickal cross references, in order to toss out unreliable data (visions). In skrying the contents of the vision are directly impacted by the contents of the personal mind, so much so that seemingly “objective” information like seeing something at a distance, may be wholly a projection of what the skryer wanted to see, or some twisted movie of an unexamined part of the mind. Dr. Campbell, at least in these talks, seems come down with the position that these visions are more real or at least as real as our universe.
My second big criticism is that for a physicist, Dr. Campbell fails to produce any physical results. If this is truly the Theory of Everything, it needs to generate testable phenomena outside of the minds of those practicing his techniques. It is all well and good to go surfing the cosmos internally, but if consciousness controls the laws of physics, we ought to be able to effect a measurable physical change in the environment, using only the mind. I think this is possible, but the burden of proof lies on Dr. Campbell for making the claims. Dr. Campbell has a website and community for his supporters and I have put some of these questions to the forums. Hopefully I can get some sort of factual reply. I applaud Dr. Campbell’s efforts in examining OOBE’s with some scientific rigor, and for theorizing based on his data, but at this point it sounds more like philosophy than science. There is nothing wrong with constructing a theory this way, but it then needs to be tested with greater rigor so it can be confirmed, modified, or tossed out. Like I said above the videos are fascinating and great fodder for thought, do check them out, but be prepared for more mysticism than physical science.
Dec
20
Particularly dramatic photos for these your, Met-Art Nudes of the Week!
Dec
20
Well I finally got my hands on the Star Wars force trainer from Uncle Milton and I thought I’d follow up with some first impressions. First off this thing is cool, I can’t believe our technology has advanced to the point where a children’s toy can read brainwaves. It uses dry sensor EEG tech to measure beta waves traveling over the skin, which has been correlated with concentration and alertness. This is basically a home EEG with a wireless headset that lists for under $70 at Amazon. The Star Wars tie in, and using “The Force” to levitate a ball is pretty entertaining, though I have a feeling that for kids, the novelty would wear off pretty quickly. This is definitely a geek toy. More than that this is a neuro-geek toy, for those who already have the notion that they would like to control their brainwave states. In that sense the Force Trainer is a little disappointing, at least right out of the box. The toy is only set up to reward its user for generating beta states, and only has one game. Most neurofeedback users would rather learn to cultivate alpha waves, associated with relaxation, or deeper theta and delta states, associated with trance. Beta states are less pleasant, used in driving in traffic or working, which most people get enough of already. The Force Trainer purports to be teaching concentration as its justification for promoting beta waves, but the sense I get while using it is that it really measures a sort of tension. It has a similar feel to home biofeedback units that I have tried in that it responds instantly to changes in the level of tension and relaxation, but when I tried to raise the little ball by focusing on rotating three-dimensional shapes in my mind, a standard concentration exercise, the ball didn’t move at all. In fact moving the ball up and down was easier when focusing on my posture, and stiffening or relaxing it as needed. In that sense, it was promoting a sort of concentration, on posture, but not for purely mental or abstract tasks. This may be more revealing about the state of neurofeedback in general than any limitation of the toy itself, and it is just a toy after all.
My real interest in the Force Trainer is in its potential hackability. Having cheap access to a fully functional EEG for home neurofeedback training, is the dream of a lot of neuro-geeks. Typically these would cost thousands of dollars to construct at home, and require a lot of technical skill. One round of neurofeedback training from a psychologist is typically at least $3,000. With the Force Trainer the price of hardware has dropped into the realm of feasibility. I’m hoping that sometime soon someone posts an Instructable, or an easy step-by-step for rigging this up to a palm pilot or graphing calculator. With homebrew brain tech you could easily train yourself to generate any brainwave state desired at will, including deep states of meditation and relaxation. This technology dropped into the hands of consumers has the potential to be revolutionary. I hope some skilled hardware hacker hears this call to action, and unlocks the potential of this toy. Meanwhile, I’ll be playing with Yoda learning how to tense and relax.
Dec
13
After just finishing Colin Wilson’s The Occult, and recently Richard Cavendish’s The Black Arts, I find myself thinking, not about the evidence they present of high weirdness in our world, but about how it seems as adults we have lost most of our capabilities for childlike wonder and awe. I can remember how close to the surface the real magic was back then, it sometimes took only a whiff of some spring perfume or moldering leaves to transform the world completely into a vibrant buzzing harmony in which I somehow had more control of my reality. There was a feeling of safety and health and a knowledge that the universe knew me and cared about me. It is interesting to reflect on the fact that for me these experiences involved a connection to nature, and never occurred in structured and artificial environments like school, or God forbid church, which I found far from spiritual. In my opinion mysticism and occultism are intimately tied up in this type of experience of wonderment that we have as children. This is perhaps why, for the majority of adults there seems to be no magic in the world. Our culture and maybe civilization in general are anti-magic, our institutions seem maliciously designed to crush our spirits.
This is why we turn to magic. Magic and mysticism are the pursuit of the individual and in a very real sense anti-social, their paths are the paths of rebellion against a dull-gray democratic, bureaucratic, hive-mind directed towards the lowest common denominator. Somehow in civilizing ourselves we have traded the security of food, water, and shelter for the masses, against true, direct experience of our world. With all the material resources civilization has managed to liberate from the earth, the delights we manufacture for ourselves seem tawdry and dishonest when compared against a breath of fresh clean air, or collapsing in exhaustion on a warm beach after a swim in the lake. Television, as it spews out pixelated methadone, manufacturing our consent, and darkening our vision with the cheapest most insulting caricature of our reality it can purchase, seems to be the logical course for a society that must crush the individual spirit in the service of security for most.
As mystics we must fight for freedom. Luckily, the great freedom that we win through turning inward and changing our perceptions is difficult to take away. Until the thought police master the techniques of locking down what is within our skulls, we can continue the pursuit of greater vistas though we find ourselves in prisons. The door to higher realities is internal, if you seek it you will find it. Chase that bliss and joy, when it slips away turn back and remember how you lost it. Cultivate your sense of wonderment and mystical connectedness, remember that society is the enemy. The world may offer enticements or blandishments, remember that your aims are larger than the world. Please remember magic, it is the road to freedom.
photo from stuant63’s flickr stream
Dec
13
In a little departure from our normal protocol, we present two photos from the same set this week. I thought that these pics in addition to being beautiful, had a very nice gothic feel perfect for Senseworld readers. So enjoy, your Met-Art Nudes of the Week!
