***UPDATE – a slightly more polished and beautifully type-set version is part of the SYSTEMICS II book.
(made available to read online for free once-in-a-while or generally with a donation based password.)
since the most recent developments here have led to informal meetings with the management of my local library (a hi-tech-architecture-media-learning-centre chain) and a crazy illuminating clash with a gestapo-resembling security in the basement of the british library, i felt the open letter to the former deserves to enlighten the general public.
while the outcome of the latter means that i’m now not only intellectually removed from the ‘archive’ of all british publications (the british library is proud to call themselves rather an archive that has ‘everything’), but also personally and physically. ironic, isn’t it, that they have william blake’s rendering of isaac newton imposingly bolstering the entrance to the temple of today’s intelligentsia and at the same time shut their doors to quite possibly the only surviving voice in the position to carry on those magnificent men’s underlying gnostic beliefs and traditions. were the predicament of the general public not so tragic, this would be really hilarious. on the other hand, isn’t every decision and act, regardless of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ ultimately, only shedding further light into what is truly righteous and what’s crooked and underhanded? meaning, either way, all outcomes are welcome and useful / helpful in the long run)
so for your delectation, please find the following open letter. may it help you getting ever more clear on things. and if you hold some position of power, may it perhaps melt the stone(s) in your heart and allow you to open up a bit. it’s just words and images, isn’t it? we’re still in a grey zone. and we’re only one email and phone call away and always happy for an opportunity to meet and talk over a cup of white, green or black tea).
What is a Librarian?
[ an open letter to the management of the london public library chain ‘ideastore’]
Dear Sergio (and by the nature of open letters, Dear Judith and Barbara as well),
We’ve had the honour and a couple of things have been spoken about, ‘discussed’. I don’t want to say more about persecution, beliefs, censorship or ‘conspiracy’ (as Barbara called it) since my work, particularly draft magazine, has been speaking about this at length and in depth. Yet, a few thoughts popped-up concerning your framework ‘local library’ and my framework ‘local writer’ that might as well serve as appropriate closing words for our open and direct encounter.
Now, if I say ‘local writer’, then obviously if at this stage you feel that the standard of my work as either a) Writer, b) Philosopher, c) Scholar, d) Artist (tick or untick boxes where appropriate) wouldn’t meet the required standard for even the weakest content within your library framework, then, of course, there’s no need to read through the following outpourings. ‘T was nice to meet you and hope all works out well. Remember, empires come and go and all those endowed with real power are (and have always been) operating behind the scenes. Only the so-called “useful idiots” (revealed by KGB defector Yuri Brezmenov) are ignorant enough to be most conveniently taken for a ride by those knowing higher truths. While at the same time, all Alexander the Greats and Djengis Khans (even Maos) are the ones ‘divinely’ chosen – within their mortal time allotted – to fulfil all those cosmic schemes that are significantly larger than life.
If you’re still here, I’d like to say at this stage that after having left little ‘notes’ around your premises for the past three years or so, it was a real pleasure for me to finally get in touch officially. While with you, Sergio, I felt a strong connection by the fact alone, that on one hand we’re both intellectuals (rational people who’ve read a lot and have the compassionate heart to sense man’s dire predicament while been given the mental faculties to advance humanity towards something hopefully ‘better’) and on the other we’ve both been growing-up from a similarly wisecracking, psuedo-sophisticated turf that to me is the continental art scene. Yet, I could also sense a more personal bond that not only comes from the fact that you seemed to be a cool guy who understands quite well how ‘lucky’ it is to be given such a position of power as yours, in such a tragically short life, during such troubled times as the ones we’re presently facing.
Judith, I haven’t had the pleasure to meet you in person. I hope you liked those two little presents I left for you. I sincerely apologize for having addressed you with a seemingly pretentious ‘Jude’ in the cover note. I got confused with the Southbank Centre director’s name Jude Kelly whose assistant I’ve been talking to the day before. Being the ‘other half’ of Sergio, so to speak, I can only assume you to be equal in terms of character as well. (For the ‘character’ bit here – I’m using this as a notion that greatly differs from the one held by anyone instilled with ‘party’ or ‘equal opportunity’ culture (which is communist, lol) . The way I’m using it refers to how cultivators use it. It refers to someone’s mind and heart nature, the part that is being cultivated through the earnest discernment of upright teachings or ‘laws’. I’ll explain a bit later).
Barbara, haha, great talking to you. You’re holding a really iron lady stance there, as a ‘manager’. I could clearly see you being torn and fluctuating between ‘persona’ and ‘individual’, though. It’s certainly not easy to always remain truly oneself. And with success, it becomes even more difficult since the higher the rank, the bigger all expectations from the outside are getting to adhere to the stereotype that they’d adamantly desire to see you in. Yet – the self-employed are often in the position of attaining quite significant power exactly by not having such internal conflict in the first place. They’re experienced by the outside as consistent and natural throughout. Of course, looked at it deeper, it’s still just another act and it can be coached or trained to perfection. (Kennedy apparently studied James Dean’s on-screen expressions to improve his own). In other words, one way or the other, more genuinely or awkwardly, we’re all acting. And we’ve all been conditioned to present ourselves in certain ways. Such mysterious phenomena are looked at in group psychology, something the general public isn’t allowed to know much about, much less worry about. For the ruling system, this works very well.
Which brings us to the only real argument you delivered in our meeting: “the system works for us and it’s your problem if it doesn’t work for you”. I’m afraid, while this might’ve helped to successfully get rid of me, this isn’t a striking argument at all. Which system in power wouldn’t claim the same? Nazi Germany felt that way and the Soviet ‘Union’ as well. China feels that way right now despite having to torture and kill kind and true people by the thousands, even millions, in order to prove it. The banks feel that way, don’t they? Including yours, when you’re on the street one day, perhaps. Global supermarket chains feel it and property development tycoons. The fattening surveillance contractors and the winning parties of any given government, however corrupt or crooked, self-righteous or idealistic. They all feel the same like you do. For us, it works. Only the jobless and starving complain. Or better, they’ve meanwhile been weakened and disenfranchised to the point that they don’t even know what it means to complain – or even if they could, where to address their complaints to? They don’t know anything anymore except that their own survival is very much at stake now. That in reality, the larger game’s stakes are so much higher than even the mere survival – that’s something not even the puppet masters and social engineers of their misery are allowed to know. That’s one.
Two – of course, every system has a flaw, you already know that. Group psychology for example teaches that what you aim for in a healthy system is to introduce the invigorating structure of a so-called ‘process group’ rather than let it fizzle-out into fatigue by only being a task- and aim-geared ‘activity group’. My visiting your Bow IDEAstore three times, to give you an example, resulted in achieving this transformation to the effect that the poor staff at the reception got so confused as to having to openly lie to me and even hide. From activity (game theory coached rhetoric) to process (think for themselves and re-evaluate purpose and conscience as well as re-confirm given briefs and tasks to accomplish).
Three – I don’t know what makes you think that “I have a problem with what you’re doing”. You’re doing what you’re doing and I’m doing what I’m doing and we both – regardless of beliefs – face natural retribution in terms of Cause and Effect. Of course, if an original axiom is based on the quicksand of lies, the outcome will be related to those. Cause and Effect. How much money is needed to uphold a lie? How many need to be killed / silenced? What if the ant talking to the elephant turns out to be not just a regular ant but the disguised delegate of much, much bigger elephants? Would the whole retribution thing be only about ignoring pitiful small-fry? Surely in one of your books on the shelves you’ve read the story of Daoists sometimes assuming a scabby beggar’s appearance to test the hearts of men in front of them …?
Well, well – in finally coming to our present discussion … I’d like all of the following to be viewed in the light of a widening disparity between Form and Content – which is giving everyone still clinging to lies increasingly a hard time. In your case, it’s manifesting most noticeably like this:
Owing to the nature of the standardized, centralized content supply that you employ, you’re unleashing a dangerous ‘one voice’ system on the general public. If that statement causes defence shields to go up on your side then I’d have to tell you that you haven’t done your homework properly to be completely rational about this, no? You’re afraid for this to be the truth.
Generally speaking, my books and draft magazine address exacly such a frightening flaw within the present system. I’m using humour, integrity and an appropriately down-to-earth, accessible voice of common sense. I don’t point any fingers, I don’t throw any blames, I don’t want to change the world. I’ve merely been finding myself to be perhaps the only one carrying forth a tradition that has been passed down in the West among scribes and priesthood since the ‘beginning of time’. This tradition constitutes a common ground for all types of beliefs. It allows for the Discernment of Ultimate Reality and True Human History among Jewish Gnostics (Kabbalists, etc), Christian Gnostics (Essenes, etc.) as well as Muslim Gnostics (Sufis, etc.). They can all talk about the same things and have common ‘tales’ or ‘myths’ that have been recorded as a perfect way to encode true knowledge to be decoded by the ‘initiated’ according to their level of spiritual attainment. As more mystic traditions (some of whom include transformation of the human body by doing certain exercises), they’ve been passed down only orally (with the exception of some occasional books on Alchemy that even scholars as proficient as Sir Isaac Newton had absolutely no way of deciphering). This latter oral tradition has been known in the West as the Philosopher’s Stone, the Great Work, Alchemy or Magic – in short – Cultivation, with the ultimate goal of Enlightenment, Immortality and Ascension.
All of this knowledge, including Astrology, over the years, I’ve been given ‘on the side’, so to speak. More officially, I’ve meanwhile been establishing a secular, scientific foundation to back up all of this through studying high-level Psychology (high-level meaning having been initiated into the depths of a rather hard-core therapy-scene in Post-Freud Vienna).
At the same time, particularly over the past couple of years, I’ve also been building a bridge to the wisdom of Eastern esoteric traditions like the thousands of years old Dao school (which has been, at baby level, reiterated by the latest achievements of quantum physics), and the equally ancient Buddha school (which is definitely not confined to what most people regard as the teachings of The Buddha – Tathagata Shakyamuni. There are many Buddhas and even the Greek gods, in Gnostic circles are said to be the founders of Brahmanism that originally was also a Buddha-worshipping religion. Hasn’t the srivatsa, or sun-wheel, the Buddhist visualization of the ten-directional world, been unearthed in such far-apart places like Greece, South America, India and China?).
All of which is to say – if you were to only pick out my book The Language of Growth from all my other works, you could probably realize this to be a distilled essence of the lost Library of Alexandria that reconciles all this knowledge with any upright Gnostic teachings that have occurred since then, backs it all up with state-of-the-art Western Psychology and subsequently transcends all this knowledge towards the highest-level teachings from the East that are to be found today in Dafa, the Great Law, a Law that encompassed both orthodox traditions of Buddhahood and Dao cultivation.
Crazy, isn’t it? Believe it or not. Even if you don’t believe it, the book is still one great book that could without the shadow of doubt be put next to any other book on astrology to be found in your library. Chances are, no book will come even near the knowledge contained within, as the BBC has been instructed after WW II (just as a quick example of how perception management is being practised in reality) not to mention anything about serious astrology. Which brotherhood behind present multinational companies, the community of secret services, the worldwide banking consortium and the handful of grey eminences and think-tanks behind figurehead premier-dictators would not diligently study serious astrology, with the aim to know how to accurately predict ‘cosmic changes of climate’?
Anyway, you get the idea. All other books of mine are, each in its own right, similarly profound. Beliefs, psychology, art, cultivation, gnosticism, philosophy and the spiritual – mostly embedded, in true Gnostic tradition, in easily accessible works of ‘fiction’.
The stark contrast between the above tradition of writing and what’s available on your shelves brings us back to our original concern of Form versus Content. Of course, the trap is devilish. Who today could genuinely pick out the pearls from among the fish-eyes? Particularly if the fish-eyes are wrapped in sparkly desiged covers and hyped and worshipped in masses while the pearls look like worthless lumps of clay. Haven’t even Gods as great as Zeus been cheated by such a test and got so uptight upon finding out that they chained the poor guy who did it (Prometheus) to a rock for all eternity?
Plotting this to the matter at hand, I’d like to finally ask the following:
What is a Librarian?
I’m putting this question forward, knowing that you’ve had quite far-reaching visions, Sergio, about the future of libraries. They’re visions that I might’ve actually shared during my days at university where making it into the finals of a competition involving awfully prestigious collaborations between man-machine interactive new-media labs and elitist augmented-reality architecture (spearheaded by Prof. Weibel and Prof. Prix) for an outrageously utopian shopping-mall-of-the-future proposal into the hands of the biggest Austrian book store chain (Libro, now Thalia) seemed like a divine call for greatness. Now, of course, blurred visions and delusions have been cleared away tremendously. No useful idiot no more, lol.
Form versus Content, Sergio, Judith and Barbara. What is a librarian? Someone at a reception desk giving you a number to call so that you can talk on the phone to the other adviser (librarian) standing right next to you at the same counter? (Happened to me in Bow last time). Someone putting search terms of pigeonhole tags into an electronic engine to ‘offer’ you their recommended readings? Someone who can sort out wireless compatibility issues when trying to connect to Wikipedia and Google for further ‘education’ within the library’s Wifi confines? Someone who’s really pleased with themselves that the deals for new stock content this year have been so convenient and cheap in comparison to last year? Someone who can offer additional courses for knitting or creative writing within the framework of their library – yet all staged within a hopeless landscape of dehumanizing game-theory and all-pervading evolutionist indoctrination of which both are intrinsically devoid of genuine, authentic tradition, art, craft, writing and apprenticeship aka ‘employment’?
I’ll give you my answer. After everything’s been said and done now, a true librarian is someone who genuinely treasures Knowledge and Truth and who knows and always desires to know more about Tradition. At the same time, they’d be carrying, within their hearts, all due respect and appreciation for what it ultimately takes to be writing, as a perhaps ‘new voice’ within this ancient Olympian mountain-top of knowledge dissemination that’s the discipline of ‘literary writing’. A true librarian to me is someone who loves books more than anything. Someone who can probably write quite well themselves, so that they really understand what is needed in order to have anything valuable to say, other than merely add fuel to the fire of mind-numbing confusion by all the inflated circulation of vanity whinings and petty strives for attention.
A true librarian, to me, is even someone who still cherishes the tangible object of a book, the process it takes to making it, the craftsmanship of typography, illustration and typesetting, and the whole editing, packaging and binding procedure. Rather than getting tail-waggingly happy by the sudden, sexy availability of supposed ‘content’ on an info-screen after entering a couple of vacuous search terms into the server. It consequently is also someone who feels sincere compassion, if not alarming concern, for anyone trying to still make real books in the face of China-glued, cheap hundreds-of-thousands world-wide-marketed and contractually, automatically and instantly globally distributed print-runs.
This is a librarian. Always has been and always will be. The soul of any library. The point of contact. The guiding hand for intellectual and cultural advancement. The consoling voice in the face of confusion.
And that’s it for me on this. Over and out.
As some final notes on the side – talking about Utopia … would computers have greatly enhanced the experience of life and the acquisition of knowledge in, let’s say, Pythagorean communes of truth-seeking, art-practising, healthy, confident and dignified people whose only aim was to be growing in wisdom?
And with regards to my case – I’ll just, plain and simple, continue journeying on my path, that is in the background forging ahead in the discernment of Great Primordial Dao, while in the foreground I’m running the enterprise of creation, marketing and distribution of my work. Owing to cultivation matters, hardships of any kind don’t put me off or would never be taken personally in any way. The persecution bit, I’ve been quite explicit about in draft magazine. Everything we Dafa students are doing is happening under duress. What we truly accomplish is hard to see but can be discerened by people who’ve still got the heart to see it.
In terms of draft magazine, conisdering the profound issues it touches upon – there’d be absolutely no way to do such a project, to even have gotten it off the Epsons, if powers of great heights wouldn’t have ‘sanctioned’ this (including New York subways flooded the day I held the first issue in my hand).
Quick (secret) history lesson: The perception-managed grid of the so-called New World Order has been tested through both Hitler’s and Stalin’s social framework and then rolled-out and perfected throughout the world since the 1950’s. For the past thirty years or so, it’s been absolutely impossible for anyone to do anything without greater authorities knowing all about it.
For you guys, I think the whole episode is far beyond only being a matter of ‘embarrassment’. While increasingly more and more people come to know what I’m doing and have a chance to understand the extent of deception, the tables of power have – contrary to appearances – in fact already turned a while ago. I’m too rational and too psychologically schooled in dynamics of power to be officially approaching and communicating with you were it not otherwise.
Rounding up, as e) Publisher and f) Cultivator, I feel that the least you could do in order to tackle your flaws, is telling Steve (I think that was his name, wasn’t it?) to purchase the full range of my books as well as all back and future numbers of draft magazine as soon as possible so that they can finally attain their deserved visibility and availability at the IDEAstore chain. If you’d try and make up for losses, you’d probably do your best to also find a way to present all of this in a manner that allows people to have access to the content readily, rather than let them happen to stumble upon in some dark corner one day in a hundred years.
And if you’d try to really do justice to what I’m doing, I feel it would be very sweet and fairly unobtrusive to also have those cute little stands and their tiny cards placed where people are checking in or out in the library, something that the Southbank Centre’s Poetry Library and The London Review Bookshop have already done in an extremely respectful way. More potential affiliates and associates are being approached with them as we speak.
I guess, I’ll end it here. Hope you appreciate any if not all of this …
cc:
– General Enquiries @ IDEAstore
– Frances Brindle @ British Library
– Editors @ Epoch Times
– Reception Desk @ Buechereien Wien
[ Winter 2013 ]
[ tags: books, writing, art, tradition, scribes, gnosticism, psychology, architecture, libraries, frameworks, computers, new media, knowledge, distribution, responsibility, general public, vision, utopia, publishing, presenting, sharing, hiding, persecution, suppression, … ]