The Medium is the Message
This is an example of a certain facet of how the 'transcendental function' operates in the process of individuation/regeneration/the fourth way. There are different names for the same process.
"The medium is the message."
I'd never read or heard the words anywhere before the first time I met them. That was only about 6 years ago, in 1999 or thereabouts. When I turned the television on they were the first image on a black screen that was just like the silent movie screen, white words on a black background. This was the first time I had seen that technique on television but later it became fashionable. I was curious about what 'The Medium is the Message' meant, so I sat down on the end of my bed. The show was Murder, She Wrote, an Agatha Christie mystery. The story was about a murdered psychic, a 'medium'. I watched the story, curious about exactly where the words "The Medium is the Message" fit in to the plot. The story unfolded but other than the vague connection between a psychic and 'medium' the words seemed incongruous, out of context, even absurd. There wasn't any connection to the plot.
Then I wondered why I was concerned about the relevance of the words to the plot. That's not typical. After the show the words lingered in my mind. Very much mental activity took place, my mind seemed stuck on the words: "The Medium is the Message". For some reason some factor independent of my will was at work in my mind and it didn't want to give up those words.
The words "The Medium is the Message" bothered me for a time then gradually I noticed that their original context vanished. I didn't think about the show or why the words didn't make sense in the context of the program. The words plagued me without a history then another meaning emerged, wafted into words is a better way to describe what happened.
They were re-directed so to speak into another context and this process of re-direction happened in a visible way. The meaning of the words drifted towards an almost 15 years long 'string of events' that had happened ( since 1984) that I'd been trying to describe. After a time the words fitted into the context of relating to a pattern I'd noticed when I was a very young girl. By then I'd read books that indicated that this pattern is often experienced by 'mystics, poets, shamans,' And I'd become aware that Martin Luther had one when he was on the privy in the tower(!!!??). I'd been reading almost every spare moment
One book The Greeks and the Irrationals by E. Dodds had surprised me very much because I'd not understood what the 'irrational' itself was although I'd been told many times throughout my life that I was it. The book came to me at a time when the information in it meant something; it explained that there were two causes for the loss of 'reason'. One was the result of life circumstances the other was the result of actions by the 'gods'. The 'double bind' I was in then and the 'mixed signals' I'd begun to feel in my body made me think that 'signals' may be difficult to pick up except when there are 'mixed signals'. Only a drastic and fairly sudden change from normal to something different can make 'normal' visible in a way it was not when there wasn't any difference. I was confused by two parallel understandings when this event happened, I had no way to know which was real, I just knew that one was my former 'normal' and the new band of understanding was distinctly colored with a kind of 'tonal marker' that identified it as how my husband experienced me, and certain experiences he had. There was a kind of 'mirroring' between us that had become so distinct to me that I felt like I was invisible myself, what he 'saw' as me, was a part of himself. I learned that the hard way, how the mechanism of 'projection' in that phase created self observation, turned around form seeming to be 'me' to being 'not me'. What had reflected inner content was now still reflecting but through an external object: me. Paranoia can follow that stage on a continuum marked at first by visibility of inner content when it meets its exact match in the exterior world (deja vu, but inner content is prior). The next phase is about 9 years in duration and it's a strange phase of hearing and seeing doubleness, everywhere. It seems as though everyone and every thing tht happens is aimed directly to private thought and inner content that has never been said aloud or written anywhere, at least that's how it began with me. By 1988 I was able to be curious about what my body was doing, having already become aware it was doing things, saying things that I didn't understand. But I was finally curious about my own lack of volition and what was 'driving' me.
The words "The Medium IS the message." linked up to a lot of information I'd learned about in my life, but overall it was related to P. D. Ouspensky's comment about an experience he'd had after some experiments: "I realized that for centuries and thousands of years, something has been circling and circling in human thought that has never been successfully expressed..."
(I had also been talking into a tape recorder trying to create a kind of diary for my family about certain experiences I'd had with my husband during our life together. It was an event that had happened to him when he was in his late teens that I knew set the conditions in our life that literally brought about the 1984 'event'. I felt driven to do almost everything, there was a kind of motor that never stopped operating after it was fully initiated in 1984. That was when I had my first major 'mindquake'. It was primarily a retrieval of memories from my past and my life with my husband. Secondarily it was much, much more than that. It was an experience created systematically emerging like a movie that was being assembled from bits taken from every day life. After 1989 I had some evidence this was being created by some intelligence I didn't know existed in 1984. But whatever it's real source, it was not my husband or his past, it was in Time itself and it had 'informed' Hesiod who wrote about the 'muses' who could say what is true or what seems to be true, while he tended his flocks in an ancient Greek era. It was old, nothing new, this kind of experience, by 1999 I knew that much for certain. What I had been trying to find words to describe was sending me the words I needed, as I discovered to my astonishment and I was trying to talk and write about it for my family. At first it was all written material, beginning on an old manual typewriter and finding out I couldn't type even one word correctly for some reason. I lost skills, many skills that had made life somewhat possible but with the loss of those skills every moment was difficult. A word processor made it possible to screen my writing somewhat, but hen home computers and 'software' became available (1984) and that change was somehow part of my inner worlds content!!!!! When I began to make my 'family diary' I used a tape recorder discovering I could not say words that I wanted to say, they were in my thought, but I was somehow driven to try to do just that, say them aloud!!!! It was a task that would not seem formidable or strenuous but climbing Mt. Everest blindfolded might be easier that my task. It was a task I didn't know about until I had achieved capturing one word of certain of my thought and holding it in mind long enough to write it down!!!!
Then camcorders came along and by then I'd accumulated quite a lot written material, they were repetitious, extremely repetitious but they were attempts to leave some evidence that would explain (and justify) the great change in how I was after about 1981. I noticed some new material eased into my repetitions at times, that was interesting. I was reading compulsively, as I always had done but I was compelled to read non-fictions, not fictions which I had always read. I felt compelled to read books that had no meaning to me at all, yet somehow something in my mind was using material I read, systematically and efficiently! That became obvious.
The new kind of 'event' had begun outside of my personal life at about that point in Time in1981, only a few at first and as I've said I thought I had brain damage. My mind was so different after 1981; I couldn't read and remember anything I read, that was a most noticeable change. But my 'inner content' had changed after 1984, and then again in 1989 my understanding of everything changed, after a 'second stage' event happened. That's when I knew the 1984 event had been only the first stage, like the palimpsest in Carl Sagan's book, Contact. I had learned quite a lot about what was going on in my 'head' between 1984 AND 1989 and I'd been an employee at Boeing since 2-11-1985 where many things were happening that folded somehow perfectly into my 'thought world'. Many 'events' happened during that time that gradually fitted together somehow but not by my own efforts or as a result of my own intentions. I watched and tried to understand, then at times I 'got the message' because it was impossible not to. The perfect timing was so distinct.
These events did not seem adequately explained by the word 'meaningful coincidence',. or 'synchronicity', which I had become aware are other terms for psychiatric terms: 'ideas of reference/thought broadcasting/magical thinking', and others. These terms are some of the psychiatric terms I'd become aware of myself, but I had actually become 'informed' from 'this kind of event', the very symptoms themselves!!
F. David Peat had described synchronicity as an interactive 'force' in his book, Synchronicity, The Bridge Between Mind and Matter. That it's an interactive force was true in my opinion from experiencing as a 'force', but it was also an information generating process! It was even a language, creating a way to understand it's own form of conveying information! It seemed to be some kind of 'chemistry' at work, and it always involved something outside of my body to create the 'words' it used. )
The definition of 'ideas of reference' is 'getting personal messages from irrational sources', at least that's the first definition I found after I read the term on a medical record of mine. It is one of those unexplainable aspects of my life that I did not ask a psychiatrist that I was seeing then, what 'irrational sources' meant, because then, I didn't know anything about 'irrational' in a context that would 'convey a message'.
I'd had so many 'unusual' (to me) experiences by then that I would not be able to explain briefly why I felt these words as they began to link up with the idea that a pattern that was very old was moving through Time, and that somehow it's steady movement through Time, marked it more distinctly as a 'form', but also as a kind of 'signal'. It was a real world pattern, experienced by individuals but since it was old, very old, and my experiences were such that the pattern took on an unexpected attribute, only one of which was of being like a signal, moving steadily through Time. It was an 'identification' of a person, because it also carried information that was somehow linked to a persons unique memory and particular way of understanding anything. Because this pattern was well known, it was even known to ancients although I had not known about it's way of manifesting in the mind/thought;/brain/body myself until my personal life turned very uncomfortable and very different, that attribute of being a signal, was difficult to discern. The words and the idea were being 'given' to me, I will use the word 'transmitted', and that in this way I 'received' it by understanding (getting the message) the new context.
Overall there was an attribute of "it'' being a kind of voice, it's words were 'borrowed' so to speak, literally from another source, but a visible process had illustrated it's own way to create my new understanding of what the words made reference towards. I was surprised, and mortified at what an audacious idea it was, considering how difficult it would be for me to have any credibility.
Because this pattern was so old, its very extension through time, even though it changed with the passage of Time, marked it as a carrier, a 'medium' of conveying the message that I'd received in 1984, in huge package of information about my life as it was then. This 'packet' of information had as I understood it more and more every day, been moving through Time, long before even the Greek 'ancients' made any reference to the 'god within' that tell us about our universe'. (Sheldon Cheney, Men Who Have Walked With God; Socrates.)
I don't believe I would have ever thought of these words myself, they 'came to me' in this form, beginning with words on a television screen then, I watched the process of their drifting towards a different context. This had happened several times by then, each time was unexpected but I had become aware of this unusual 're-use' or 'regeneration' in the 5 years between 1984 and 1989. "The Medium is the Message" as I later found out was originally used by Marshall Mac Luan.
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Understanding this kind of mental purposefulness required years of experiences that were painfully confusing for me. This pattern was very old and like a 'line of thought', it was like a 'signal' basically, even though it changed and altered at points because it was steadily moving through Time. I had begun to believe this pattern was a basic component in at least the masculine mind, and in my life it was basically acquired through an intimate 'bond', in a real world relationship that unexpectedly went into a much different kind of superfical relationship than we'd had until both of us neared middle age. I had never heard the word 'male' linked to 'menopause', even once in my life when I was 48 years old, but one day I chanced to read a chapter in a book about Male Menopause, and immediately felt the problem between my husband and I were due to what obviously was a pattern, even if I'd never heard about it. There were distinct reasons this pattern was a decent explanation for our problems, and I tried to get him to read the paragraphs that contained words that were literally words he'd said to me one day, word for word basically! The 'change of life' was not just a female change. It was a binary unit that formed from a kind of 'role reversal' between us, in a particular kind of 'mixed signals'/'double bind' situation that included many people in our life at that time. It was a painful condition in which what I saw included me, in a new 'sense' that altered also how I heard myself, other people and objects that use words, everything outside of my body was somehow changed in this condition that added a new form of observation. My habits changed some of which made it nearly impossible to not recognize we'd had a kind of 'role reversal', and this is not easy to describe without getting very, very personal, in every detail of our life, as well as the lives of people we know at that point in Time.
The change in perception caused the kind of event to happen, that I experienced in many instances as 'coincidence', but in other events there were other attributes, such as in this incident noticing a new context formed from words that had been abstracted out of their original context. This is not a lot different than how any author seems to experience ideas they read in books.
Although it was a pattern, one I had begun to think of as the God Complex it was moving steadily, continuing to extend itself in Time, building new content and eradicating old content, but always moving steadily as a kind of 'signal' carrying information that was in a sense grasped by the visibility of subtle mental interactions, and of changes that altered 'thought' content itself. .There have been points of change that are distinct only because I remember certain things that happened, for instance how I heard and related to my own 'thought content' in a few incidents during the 9 years prior to 1984, and then the 9 years after 1984. Within the past few years, I've felt 'watched', observed, controlled and moved about by a will other than my own and that is not a delusional system that I devised myself, it's part of the pattern.
Beginning in the few years prior to 1984 I 'felt weird' at times, only a few times at first. Then incidents began to happen when ordinary words, or situations involving other people had an effect on my body, somewhat akin to a shock. When I chanced to turn the television on, more than a decade of experiences after 1984 had built of a sense of getting information that slowly accreted through those expereinces.
It was this seemingly insignificant event, building on experiences of a life time that caused me to consider for the first time, this 'signal-like' attribute. "The medium IS the message." I hesitate to write it, but the idea emerged that this could be considered as a real 'perpendicular' not like height, width, breadth in our physical world, but a 'depth of mind' that was attached to the pattern, carrying forwards at least in the biological realm, it's aims, goals and purposes.
A very distinct 'literalness' was one attribute of this broad in scope change. This 'literal sense' created among other effects, a sense of self reference, and one attribute of this new sense was of being 'talked to'. That attribute was evident eventually after many incidents of this kind happened when such 'abstractions' as the words 'The medium is the message." were 'morphed' into their new relationship to ideas evolving, visibly in my thought. "Morphing" is a word that many people can understand now, because they've seen it in special effects in movies and many people use the technique in photographs.
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Because the date 1984 had a unique meaning that was related to a book that was published in 1948, an unexpected significance to the subtitle of the book emerged: Big Brother Is Watching You. It's 2006 now and many people are aware that as the 'proles' in that book were constantly under observation everywhere, and were constantly assaulted with statistics, so are we.
The sense of being 'observed' is one that is most difficult to describe because it's a only one phase on a continuum that begins with a different kind of perception. The sense of looking at my self, and what was in my mind as I had looked at what was outside of my body had been the first phase, but even that's difficult to describe. It was almost 9 years long with a two years long period at beginning and end that was a gradual 'phase in', and then 'phase out' into a different phase. It's like seeing within, all the material that happened in the 1984 'mindquake'; then seeing how what was within altered what was outside of the body, how everything sounded and looked different (at about the time leftright brain functioning began to be a popular topic). The mechanism of 'projection' is related to 'detection' and decisions of what is 'me/not me', which may result in 'rejection' of self material and then in some circumstance that I don't believe have been recognized, it results in ejection of that self material to another individual. The condition has a name, 'folie aux duex', or participation mystique.
This particular kind of event in which words that I needed came from something I heard had to happen many, many times before I could accept it as a 'description that I needed', that was provided just when I could understand it. The timing was precise. Multitudes of 'strings' of experience related to many ideas that I had not known about most of my life were drawn together in my 'understanding', in a visible process, one that can be described but not easily. The words I heard were 'redirected' into a personal context and the context was my very personal memory reservoir.
I recognized that words I needed but had not been able to think of myself were coming to me in this 'redirection'. Words that I heard or read somewhere, or words that occurred into my mind as a result of something in front of me, as I thought about it, lingered afterwards in my mind, until I realized they were being 'held' in front of me, for a reason. A mechanism of mind that operates like a 'switch', creates 'self reference', for a period of time that I believe is about 7 to 9 years, and then it gradually changes. The new phase alters the direction from 'self reference' to 'other reference', seeming to be 'out there', rather than within the mind. This is difficult to deal with without some point of reference in the past, which I had without knowing it, acquired. In fact real life experience with someone whose 'switch' from 'self reference' to 'other reference' had happened, and even been mentioned in off hand remarks that made no sense when they were made. The changes from 'self reference', to 'other reference' to 'not me' at all, occurred over a period of about 27 to 30 years.
In my real life there were ,situations that I could have to write a large book about, that caused me to understand how this 'inner effect' can be so nearly impossible to detect. Except in those seemingly absurd off hand remarks. "I have a problem. I cannot help you, I have problems of my own." turned towards 'There's a problem in the family." and then "I have no problem, the problem is yours. You have a problem. And at that point it was.
I believe the myth of Narcissus and Echo is really a 'storied' version of the psychological mechanisms of mind that I became aware of, but nly when I had experienced a continuum of them myself, and had a fairly decent memory of the past so that points of change in perception could be recognized.
There was a point when what had seemed to be "Mountains become molehills." that is a worried mind switched to one completely free of concern about anything and it happened fairly rapidly. I suspect that if a person has not developed or maintained some kind of continuous memory of the past, this is always devastating for someone that has a good memory
The first and only example of how this mechanism operates that I've found is in Theodore Reik's book, Fragment of A Great Confession, in the chapter titled, In Small Packages. The title of the chapter is in itself, an appropriate description of how these 'bits of information' are selected, in small packages, as he thought about a bridge game. There were points when words seemed to linger in his mind, hovering and developing what he called a 'double bottom', a secret meaning. These words actually did have a relationship to his real life, but he did not 'get the message' because he was a psychiatrist and he recognized this kind of 'association' as 'magical thinking'.
His relationship to his wife was literally being 'told' to him, said back to him, 'echoed' in these words that mind/brain 'selected' and held captive in his mind for some time, in the same way The Medium is the Message. switched into "The Medium IS the Message." and the idea that a pattern can be a 'signal' emerged. I don't believe it's delusional thinking, nor is it 'magical thinking', it was very purposefully done, and I watched it, but did not myself cause it to happen.
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The workings of my mind had become as visible to me by 1999, as visible as any object outside of my body but this happened gradually.
It's a busy place with lots going on but the 'objects' are 'thought' of quite a variety as well as mechanisms that alter thought, memories some of which, seemed to re-emerge occasionally for no reason I could see, just to give a few examples of mental content. I don't dream very often so dreams haven't been as significant in my life as they have to other people.
By 1999 I had become familiar with a surprisingly purposeful busy-ness of my own mind, and it took a long time to realize 'it', this 'busy'ness was intending, even striving relentlessly to convey something to me by retrieving memories from my past, which in some way had a symbolic relationship to what I was doing 'now', at the moment. Why would a memory of my first trip into an automated car wash have any significance? Why would memories of myself as a young girl, preparing fruit and vegetables for my mother and grandmother to can for winter use begin to plague me? I was in 'therapy', in the early 1980's and I could find no words of my own to describe these unexplainable retrievals that bothered me day after day and sometimes night after night. My faltering attempts produced this result one day when Dr. Terrance Chinn responded: "It sounds like you are trying to describe something...is it a 'process'? Is process the word you are wanting to use?"
It was the word that conceptualized what a car wash does, and what 'preserving food for later use' is. The word 'process' came from the 'other' person, as in almost every incident of this kind, the 'other' was a participant. I'd begun to read a book, The Origin Of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes and there were many new ideas in it, relating to concepts. This 'kind' of thinking, in 'concepts' not in 'details' was slowly developing, 'bit of information by bit of information', in many areas of every day life, especially in challenge level square dance lessons where we were learning 'concept calls', This 'new level' that required visualizing or tracking one's own body in the set, constantly moving and interfacing with other real bodies. But, and this is where my mind began to be 'boggled', there were imagined 'others', who were phantoms that had to be tracked also. The phantoms in the set opened up a need to operate in the 'imaginary world' literally, very literally, because I wanted very much to do challenge level dancing. There were only two small groups of people who really wanted to do the 'hard stuff', finding it pleasurable which mainstream level dancers very much avoided.
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There have been several events in which I've experienced my mind seemed to 'redirect' the normal meanings of certain every day events into an other completely unrelated context. This had happened several times in such a distinct way I couldn't avoid noticing it. This 'switch' was always utterly surprising and unexpected when it happened, revealing something that I could not have noticed or thought about myself.
My mind had changed radically in the early 1980's, and new 'mental stuff' (different thoughts) had begun to seep into my life already but I'd barely noticed it. . My body felt different so this change had begun, unannounced at that point in Time almost 20 years before 1999. By the time the millennium approached, I had become aware of my attention having been diverted from the outer world and it's events to 'watching/listening' to what was going on in my 'head'. Without warning, I was looking into my mind/brain and it's contents, (which were very different than I had normally experienced) in about the same way I 'looked at, listened to, and tried to find words to describe' the kinds of activity that was going on outside of my body.
I was aware by 1999 that I was actually looking at two landscapes, one outside my body and one inside my head, which I had named the inscape. I had not read or heard that word anywhere when that name came to me, I thought it was my own discovery. Blush. I felt compelled to describe something that was so nearly invisible, that the only way to see it was to feel it. My body felt 'up tight', literally, I felt 'bottled up', really.
This 'viewing' of what was in my head in the same way as I had always viewed, listened to and named what was outside of me was still new to me. My mind had been 'thoughtless' but that had changed radically. After I had lived 5+ decades with a 'thought' less mind now it was 'thought' filled, constantly.
A few events had caused me to notice there was a relationship between what was 'in my head' as a rather vaguely sensed 'thought content' to what was 'outside of my body'. I seemed to feel a kind of 'referencing' to some specific memories that stood out, marked by their unexplainable reoccurrence in my thought, for decades, before I even wondered to myself about them! I named them 'ghost riders along the backroads of my mind'. Those words came to mind automatically I'm sure, influenced by my father's favorite song: Ghost Riders In The Sky
There were objects that somehow attracted me for no reason I could see in the mid 1980's. One example is the moebius band. Jonas Salk's The Anatomy of Reality had a 180 degree moebius band in a form that I recognized on the jacket so I bought the book, and struggled through it. This was not typical for me but the image of the moebius band on anything caught my attention. I recognized the moebius band and only that caused me to buy the book.
I'd made my first one when I was 9 years old when an impulse had caused me to discover it's hidden secret. The impulse was just a 'thought' a kind of instruction to do something, which without hesitation I did do. the impulse was a thought, but it 'spoke' .twice. I had made a simple moebius band with a 180 degree turn in it and wondered what the use of such a thing could be. Then the impulse, it was just a thought: : "Cut it around it's center length." and after I'd done that, it repeated: "Cut it around it's center length." I was surprised at that result! There were two separate bands joined forever, but also separate. This idea has 'morphed' into an explanation of how changes in 'mindsets' can occur, in Time if there is a moebius like continuum attached to this pattern. There are points of change of direction and orientation on that continuum that I've experienced, the results of which causes me to think of myself as a viewing point, moving along that continuum. That's a simplistic way to describe a complexity almost beyond belief except that living it, causes one to have to trust it and accept the results.
Isaac Newton seems to have understood there is Divine Providence, and that it was supposed to become distinct when one man was born who made reference constantly to a 'kingdom of heaven' and that it is 'within you'. The word 'you' is both singular and plural.
Plural thought, a form such as this quotation in the Bible: "Let US make man in OUR image." uses, was new to me, but it seems to be 'normal' to many. The 'binariness' of all relationships was made evident in The Anatomy of Reality by Jonas Salk, which I would never have noticed except that it had the third form of the moebius band on it.