Monthly Archives: October 2011

I have never had the experience, but my Cambodian wife frequently saw shape shifting phenomena when she lived alone in the jungle. She has not only seen “apparitions” before, one helped her when she was in the jungle. She nearly severed her achilles tendon on a shard of metal and a “nyetah” appeared before her and told her how to dress and treat the wound. She didn’t consider it in any way “miraculous.” Other dimensions are as real to her as this one.

Wm. Blake's Beast of the Apocalypse: David Icke isn't the first person to believe in shape shifting reptilians

David Icke is another person who has seen and/or believes in alternative perceptions of reality enough to have incorporated them into his personal world view. I find him to be one of the most fascinating and, in his way, informative public figures around today because he exposes so many of the matrices of illusion so many of us are caught up in. His explanation for the state of virtual slavery we live in is that we are under the thrall of shape shifting reptilian aliens who manipulate us in hundreds of subtle ways.

Alfred Korzybski was quite a bit more pragmatic than David Icke, but he, too, understood that as a species, we tend to be out of touch with reality and live in a state of illusion. I’m no Korzybski scholar, so take the following with a grain of salt, but this is what I have learned from him:

1. The language of mathematics is the only language that accurately reflects physical reality.
2. Languages always distort reality. Words have as many shades of meaning as there are speakers or writers. In fact, the same speaker or thinker can and does unconsciously change the meaning of words regularly.

Korzybski proposed some changes in our use of language that he felt would help free us from the tyranny and divisiveness of language. He called these, “extensional devices.” For accuracy’s sake and to save time, I’ve copied and pasted this quote from the Institute of General Semantics website:

To achieve the coveted consciousness of abstracting, more appropriate evaluations, etc., techniques were taken directly from modern physico-mathematical methods, the use of which has been found empirically effective and of most serious preventive value, particularly on the level of children’s education. Korzybski calls the following expediencies extensional devices:

• Indexes to train us in consciousness of differences in similarities, and similarities in differences, such as Smith1, Smith2, etc.
• Chain-indexes to indicate interconnections of happenings in space-time, where a ’cause’ may have a multiplicity of ‘effects’, which in turn become ’causes’, introducing also . environmental factors, etc. For instance, Chair1-1 [NOTE, read chair “one” “one”] in a dry attic as different from Chair1-2 in a damp cellar, or a single happening to an individual in childhood which may color his reactions (chain-reactions) for the rest of his life, etc. Chain-indexes also convey the mechanisms of chain-reactions, which operate generally in this world, life, and the immensely complex human socio-cultural environment, included.
• Dates to give a physico-mathematical orientation in a space-time world of processes.
• Et cetera (etc., which can be abbreviated to double punctuation, such as ., or .; or .:) to remind us permanently of the second premise “not all”­to train us in a consciousness of characteristics left out; and to remind us indirectly of the first premise “is not”­to develop flexibility and a greater degree of conditionality in our semantic reactions.
• Quotes to forewarn us that elementalistic or metaphysical terms are not to be trusted and that speculations based on them are misleading. [In this article single quotes are used for this purpose.]
• Hyphens to remind us of the complexities of interrelatedness in this world.

That’s a lot to memorise and I think we would fall into the trap Korzybski is trying to get us out of if we committed it to memory and took it as “gospel” anyway. Years ago, when I first stumbled across his work, I came away with this “extensional device”:

Always be aware that any conviction or belief is opinion, not necessarily absolute fact.

While “2 + 2 = 4″ is a useful and generally acceptable “fact” and falls under Korzybski’s definition of mathematical veracity, on a quantum or other level of reality it may or may not be true or relevant. I accept it as truth in my daily life, but I don’t feel existentially bound by it.

Similarly, I love David Icke’s shape shifting reptilian aliens theory, but don’t accept it as gospel. For me, it is a great way to see through the matrix we live in. What better way to understand how we have come to believe that:

• money that is created out of thin air has value
• chemical medications are superior to plant-based ones
• we are threatened by terrorists
• we are engaging in humanitarian wars
• we live in a democratic society
• Newtonian science is the only reality
• Darwin presented us with facts, not just a theory

These are just a few of the illusions we buy into, but there are signs of awakening.  We are so accustomed to learning from others, though, that we have a tendency to fall into their matrices of illusion. Put another way: we trade one limiting matrix for another.

I think we sometimes get too carried away when we begin to believe in or see “alternative realities.” I think it might be better to think of them as “alternative illusions.” Shape shifting reptilians believe in their own illusions, too. That may be the ultimate secret to overcoming them. As David Icke’s book title says: Infinite Love Is the Only Reality: Everything Else Is Illusion. We have the capacity for love. Those who wish to enslave us do not have that capacity or choose not to exercise it, I’m not sure which. At any rate, I feel no kinship with them: they feel alien to me and even I have had the occasion “hallucination” that a public figure has shape shifted into a reptilian form.

In my opinion, the more we explore the meaning of the word love, the more liberated (or enlightened, if you prefer) we become. This opinion may be my personal illusion, but it works for me. What else is there that binds us together, nourishes us, heals us and helps us grow?