I thought I'd give the cap'n'cap treatment to
Christopher Hyatt. I recently pulled his book
The Tree of Lies off the shelf a few weeks back and enjoyed revisiting it. Seemed like good company for Trek caps. So! Here we are.
I came to Hyatt's work via
"Illuminati" has connotations these days, and
Illuminatus is certainly chockful of secret folks manipulating the world through a complex system of wealth, occult symbolism, and magick, but it's better described as a metaphysical black comedy or a drugged-and-sexed-up
adventure story steeped in historical and 20th
century conspiracy theory (as well as Atlantis, Lovecraft, Crowley, Jung,
Nazis, and a talking dolphin.)
In one of the appendices (if memory serves) one of the characters sums up his philosophy as "you are attached to what you attack." This nondualistic thinking had a profound effect on me when I first read it in late adolescence. Following up on it is what led me to the late Christopher Hyatt, among other things.
You've probably seen the bumper sticker "An eye for an eye leaves the world blind." It's a little like that. Another way to put it: there is no such thing as a one-sided coin. There's a political and social engineering aspect to it, as well, which I find equally fascinating. It's by no means summarized by these examples, but I'm just going for General Vibe here. Beyond opposites - opposites are lies.
Bob Dylan had what I consider a nondualism phase, best expressed in an anecdote from Jerry Rubin's
Do It. The Berkeley antiwar movement asked if he would lead their protest parade. He agreed, so long as no one had the word "war" on any signs. (He suggested they hold up pictures of apples instead.) No one knew what to make of these ideas at the time, but it's easy to see once you know where/ how to look: Dylan, no slouch in the abstract thinking department, was protesting the war in a nondualistic way.
Some people get really angry if you hold up a picture of an apple (or Ace Frehley) when you're invited to a
Duck Dynasty rally, and hey, more power to them. "Do as thou wilt" is also a big part of this nondualism stuff. If this ain't your thing, no worries. Just giving you the background of where Hyatt was coming from:
I'm sure everyone mentioned above would completely disavow this preamble. Trust no one.
All text from Dr. Christopher Hyatt's
The Tree of Lies, Rebels and Devils, and
The Psychopath's Bible for the Extreme Individual. Hyatt uses "Become who you are - there are no guarantees" as recurring motif throughout
The Tree of Lies, so I decided to do the same for this blog.
Let us begin.
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