The seventh monthly video Q&A is now online, exclusively for I, Universe readers and/or Patreon supporters. Topics covered this month are Aleister Crowley and Thelema; the fictional nature of the “self”; how to maximise happiness.
Access the video using the “Vlog” link at the top, then click “Secret Videos.” (Instructions regarding the password are under “How to Access.”)
I spent some time over the past month putting my video editing skills to use in the creation of a trailer to help promote my book. A lot of book trailers are little more than image slideshows, but I wanted to aim a lot higher and craft something professional. Here’s the result. Please share!
This is an audio recording of an essay I wrote for Graham Hancock’s website, when I was selected as Author of the Month for June 2019.
I’ve been selected as Author of the Month for June 2019, on Graham Hancock’s website. The administrator asked me to contribute a 2,000-word essay. I could have extracted something directly from “I, Universe,” but decided to write something new instead. You can read it here: Rediscovering Magic Through Science.
A few days ago, I was the guest on episode 227 of the Trans Resister Radio podcast. The host, Aaron Franz, and I chatted for a hour on all kinds of esoteric topics: religion, death, non-duality, the meaning of life, paranormal phenomena, and more. You can access the show at the link below (available as an MP3 download or through services like iTunes, Spotify, and others). Enjoy!
http://www.theageoftransitions.com/podcast/183-darryl-sloan-interview-i-universe-trr-227
As always, I ,Universe is available from online bookstores everywhere, including…
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1910098043
Amazon USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1910098043
I was quizzed on the content of my new book I, Universe as a guest on the Occulture podcast. Here’s a segment from the interview, where I discuss parapsychology and magic with the host. The full talk is over an hour long, available to patrons of the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/occulture
My book deals with many topics on theme of “question everything,” so here’s another trailer, this time on the issue of mind control, particularly in relation to the first seven years of our lives, when we are like sponges soaking up information with no critical thinking:
[ Link ]
I’m inclined to think there’s something more than wishful thinking to the notion of dream interpretation. I’ve had a few bizarre ones in my day, and upon waking, I’ve been able to see direct synchronicities with things in my life. One such dream was about me cooking a dog (alive) in the oven, followed by me about to be caught in the act by my mother. The factor that ties this dream to reality is not the specific details, but the themes of guilt and shame – specifically something I was dealing with at the time of the dream. Isn’t it strange that our subconscious presents these challenges to us encapsulated in such bizarre symbolism? I certainly hadn’t been cooking a dog!
Last night I had a dream that involved something so weird that, immediately upon waking, I had the urge to commit the details to memory. First, I’m dreaming that I’m having an enjoyable bike-ride in the countryside with a woman (someone from real life that I happen to like a lot). My bike has no handlebars, so I can’t brake (probably a reference to my bike in real life that is in need of a little maintenance, including new brake-blocks). I almost fall off a few times as I encounter the corners at speed. My bike actually takes air at one point, but the laws of physics are a little funky and I manage to land safely and stay on course. This part of the dream finishes with one bend in the road that is a little too sharp, and I go spinning through the air doing multiple summersaults. I don’t recall an impact. Now, here’s the weird bit coming up: suddenly I’m at my house, standing alone, entering through the front door. As I close the door behind me, I notice three butterflies on the doorframe, near the top, sitting still, close together.
Now, I’m not going to jump to any wild prophetic conclusions. But it just strikes me as totally weird that my subconscious should insert something as out-of-place as butterflies inside the house. I’m not a nature-lover and I never think about butterflies. And here are some very specific details: there are three. They are not flying but resting together in a huddle on the inside of my doorframe – doing something I’ve never seen butterflies do; they’re not pack animals, after all.
I looked up some dream interpretation dictionaries online, but it’s hard to know when you’re being taken for a ride by these things.
The book Secrets of Dreams by Caro Ness mentions that butterflies can be seen as “symbols of transformation”, or as “accurate and startling affirmations of rebirth into a newer, brighter, and more illuminating existence …”
Interesting. The only thing I can say with confidence is that to dream of butterflies appears to be a very positive thing. Got to be better than oven-baked canine!
The intellectual and spiritual journey I’ve been on for the past year has been powerful and life-changing. It shows no sign of fading. In fact, the whole picture has gotten clearer and clearer as time has progressed.
I’m really glad I blogged about it all, because I now have a permanent record of what is probably the most important transition of my life. For a while, I’ve been considering turning the past year’s blog entries into a physical book, but I think I need to start afresh and introduce the insights from a more effective angle than the haphazard way that they occurred to me at the time.
I put an outline together today, penned an introduction and the first chapter, totaling some 3,000 words. I’m really happy with the results so far.
I’m not sure how much or how little a book of this kind is going to interest the folks who visit here. I just feel passionately about, so I’m going to do it.
The working title is Reality Check, which is a perfect fit thematically, but is a bit common. I’m sure those words have already been used as titles before now. I’m all ears for an alternative title.
I would like the cover to feature a kitten playing with its reflection in the mirror (i.e. not fully understanding reality), but how I’m going to get a photo of that I’ve no idea.
I want to thank everyone who posted challenging comments to my blog entries over the past year. It’s good to be kept on your toes and also helps me to notice my failure to communicate at times.
The journey is, of course, not over, and probably never will be. I haven’t reached any sort of ultimate conclusion, and I doubt there’s a point where I will say, “I understand it all now. Job done.” So, when is a good time to write a book about the nature of reality? Might as well be now.
Some people think of eternity as a line with no beginning and no end. In church, I’ve heard preachers say things like “Way back in eternity past …” It’s as if God were on his own forever until he decided to make the universe. Likewise, we are led to believe that we, as individuals, had a beginning but will not have an end – that we will simply go on collecting experiences forever, both on earth and in heaven. But I think we misunderstand the nature of eternity. It is not a line with no end. We’ve misunderstood the whole nature of time itself. Infinite Consciousness (my preferred term for what you might think of as God) does not experience time in the way that we (that is, our individual egos) do because it knows the end from the beginning. There is no value for Infinite Consciousness in travelling along a never-ending line where it always knows what’s coming.
Infinite Consciousness exists in eternity, which is not a never-ending time-line; it’s a realm of no-time or all-time – a realm where free will, deductive thinking, and decision making do not exist, because all is known, all is complete. Time as we understand it is merely a construct. Infinite Consciousness created time as a means of fragmenting itself, of experiencing incompleteness, for reasons known only to itself. The consciousness within me is Infinite Consciousness. The consciousness within you is Infinite Consciousness. We are the same being. We have simply been placed into an arena where we cannot access the full awareness of what we are. Just beyond my subconscious mind is Infinite Consciousness holding me here – holding itself here. Likewise, just beyond your unconscious mind is Infinite Consciousness holding you here. We are one and the same being; we have simply been forced into a state of amnesia, because that amnesia is the only way to experience what it’s like for there to be something other than you. To be human is to leave eternity and enter time – to deliberately forget what you are and undergo a period of learning filled with thrills and spills, joys and sorrows.
I experienced a sudden moment of clarity recently. It came like a bolt from the blue when I was out cycling one evening, travelling along a route that I had cycled since boyhood. I was reminiscing about what it had felt to be here doing this when I was a teenager, playfully imagining I could ride through a time-warp and suddenly be that person again, re-living those memorable school days. And it suddenly hit me: “There is no time. You are not moving forward through time. You are Infinite Consciousness, and there is only this one eternal moment – the NOW. Time is an illusion that is playing through you. You are standing still. There is only NOW.” I had read these ideas before, but never understood them until this strange moment when the pieces of the jigsaw clicked. I suddenly got a new perspective on the question “What happens to my soul when I die?” Or as Christians would say: “Where will you spend eternity?” I’m not heading for anywhere, heaven or hell. I’m standing still. The events of time move towards me and play through me, and it’s all a construct. It’s like time is a DVD and you’re the laser reading it, standing still in the now while the movie plays through you. If I could tear the veil of time away, the full knowledge of what I am would flood my consciousness – and time would disappear. When I had this moment of clarity, I just started to laugh joyously (good job I was alone). It was a wonderful moment of intuition that added another layer of clarity to the intuitive journey I’ve been on for the past year.
I have heard the analogy that we are like droplets of water and collectively we make up the ocean. It’s a limited analogy, because we’re still inclined to identify ourselves with the droplet (the ego) and not the ocean. The truth is you are the ocean. Yes, little you. You are Infinite Consciousness. The awareness inside you is the awareness of God, if you like. The only reason you don’t already know that is because the experience of human individuality makes you forget it. It’s the only way the human experience can work. If you suddenly awoke to your true magnitude, you couldn’t function here in this place as an individual. Here at this human level we are individuals. We may still be individuals are a higher level. But at the highest level, you and I are the the same being. In simple terms, imagine two people dying at the same time, suddenly realising they are the same person with two sets of memories (the truth is likely more complex than that, but I hope you get the idea). We are only lulled into thinking that we are separate by “ego.”
Some people who embrace this kind of thinking seem to favour the idea of reincarnation. Now, reincarnation might be true on one level, but at the same time, it’s just another part of the time construct, and we have to get beyond that. Even if my indivudal “soul” has lived a hundred lives before now, on a higher level of awareness, my soul and your soul are the same person. Reincarnation strikes me as just another way to perpetuate the human ego into “eternity to come,” when the whole point is the realisation that ego is a construct, and the future is a construct. There is only ONE existing in the NOW.
The whole universe is an expression of Infinite Consciousness undergoing an experience of separation. And humans are only a small part of that. The three-dimensional physical nature of the universe is nothing more than a holographic projection which allows human and animal life to interact via five senses. In its fundamental essence, way beyond the atomic level, it is pure energy. And all of it is a projection of Infinite Consciousness.
Well, that’s what I think. Crazy as it may sound to some ears, this is the view of life that resonates most clearly to me. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest that I can’t stand in line with a whole bunch of people and call myself a Christian or an atheist or whatever. The world is full of people patting each other’s backs and assuring each other that they’re on the right track. There is a massive section of the population that believes strongly in something that is in direct opposition to the strong beliefs of another massive section of the population, and only one of them can be right. Or maybe neither! The sheer scale of each opposing herd leads me to put no faith whatsoever in the herd mentality. The truth is not found in following the archetypal belief systems of those around us.
Have you ever noticed how someone can say “I’m an atheist,” or “I’m a Christian,” and no one will laugh. But if you should say, “I am Infinite Consciousness. I am everything that ever was, is, and will be,” the person you are talking to might think you are mentally ill. This is how much we are infected with the herd mentality. It doesn’t matter if one herd says something in complete contradiction to another herd. As long as it’s a herd, we give it respect. But when someone stands up and says something different, the ridicule begins (David Icke, circa 1991, anyone?).
We refer to ourselves as “human beings,” but it might be more accurate to call ourselves “human becomings.” None of us are existing in a state of being. The experience of life in a body is the experience of continual change as we move through time. There is only one that possesses being outside of time: Infinite Consciousness. I intuitively believe that this Infinite Consciousness is the awareness inside every one of us. The experience of being propelled through time is just an illusion, born out of our disconnection from the full awareness of the vast being that we collectively are.
Darryl Sloan 