Transhuman Erotic Freedom

0.1 Worship Erotic Joy

Drukpa Kunley, The Divine Madman

For more on A Course in Immortality…

Click here for 0.0 A Course in Immortality
También en español
The underlying fundamental absolute of the universe in which we live is the power we recognize in the desire to do good to others, which we properly name Love.

Love is expressed in and bestowed upon every level of universe reality, from the most perfected, absolute, or final, to the most primitive human-like person able to make moral decisions.

Love is expressed and perceived differently at each level of progressive maturation and perfection, in a manner uniquely significant and appealing to the esthetics and values of each level.

Many prominent mystics have elaborated on the possibility of developing an inner and intimate relationship with the person of deity.

The phrase “Bride of Christ” has long been purified, interpreted as a metaphor for the church or the body of believers. This interpretation overlooks a deeper, more personal, and individual connotation of the relationship between a person who lives the Truth and that person’s inner recognition of Truth as a person like themselves.

If divine love is manifest on every level of being, then it must be apparent in our direct, sensory, physical world, and not be limited to the domain of the super consciousness.

Where is this?

The most direct, basic, physical manifestation of the reality of Love is experienced in erotic joy, in the intense experience of neurological orgasm, in which the stimulated sensorium explodes with joy as the individual consciousness briefly impinges on the reality of absolute Love.

And what should be our attitude towards this experience of momentary contact with maximum joy? Certainly not fear, though that is the reaction of far too many who have been told and/or come to believe that they are unworthy of pleasure.

What is the appropriate action of any person confronted with a vast goodness beyond any other human sensory experience? There can be only one answer.

Worship.

Worship erotic joy.

Worship the living experience of orgasm.

Worship the most basic sensory experience of Love.

Worship is the conscious act of surrendering one’s mind, one’s will, to the object of worship. Worship makes the worshiper more like that which is worshiped.

Worship of the orgasmic spirit of Love defeats barriers to interpersonal expression of Love through service. Worship opens the door of the mind to Truth, which directs our action.

Hieronymous Bosch—The Garden of Earthly Delights

Through erotic worship the human spirit is progressively attracted to higher levels of understanding, enjoyment, and service.

Those who would deny this first great step, this open and personal acceptance of a physical gift of Love, place a barrier between the human state and the progressive expression and experience of Love.

When worship of Love is only invoked in the abstract or in deep meditative states, extreme focus is required to experience enlightenment. By comparison, when the first step in the path of Love recognition and worship is taken in the erotic, growth of the consciousness to experience greater enlightenment is simplified and expedited for most people.

All humanity knows erotic joy. The time has come for all humanity to acknowledge the supremacy of erotic joy and join in worship of this amazing, far too long ignored, gift of Love to humanity.

Join me today and forever in the worship of the power of erotic joy.

Click here for 0.2 On This Foundation

 

0.0 A Course in Immortality

For more on A Course in Immortality…

También en Español VenusPlusX initiates a special series of short articles that will explain how anyone can develop personal consciousness of their true transhuman immortality.

Many of the longer articles in our continuing series on Transhuman Erotic Freedom have dealt with aspects of this powerful opportunity for service and growth.

We have highlighted issues of personal and social belief and action that reinforce our intergender interpretation of human erotic behavior.

This new series today is an explicit, prescriptive guide to navigating the paths of individual and collective erotic destiny.

These prescriptions are based on examining and integrating rational human knowledge and understanding effective mental and spiritual technologies.

“Reverse engineering” the process can explain how personal immortality comes to be, can provide motivation to engage confidently the process, and show us what to expect.

Reverse engineering is the technique of analyzing a product or process to determine exactly how it works and why it is designed to work a certain way.

The benefit of reverse engineering is that, if you understand how a system is put together and works, what principles are involved in its operation, you can use it more intelligently, as well as potentially improve its operation or repurpose it.

Although manufacturers generally try to discourage reverse engineering of products in which they have a proprietary intellectual interest, no such conflict exists with the cosmic government of the universe.

Spiritual technology is something quite different from proprietary products and processes—it is a gift of Love to humankind.

We know, or think we know, a great deal about faith, even lack of faith, as an experience, but those insights portray imagined products of spiritual development without providing any convincing explanation of the how or why.

These articles are meant to correct that misunderstanding.

We believe based on our own and observed experience that, if you understand how spiritual growth technology actually works in the universe, you will be more willing and able to participate in the important work ahead of us as a global society.

We will start by presenting the results of reverse engineering of the spiritual life—of the experience of personal salvation and immortality.

We will explain how each person can enter and traverse successive circles of super conscious (psychic) understanding.

We will ground this experience in the rational extrapolation of erotic joy in human experience.

We will show you how this leads to the knowledge of personal immortality, to a life of action in service to your fellow humans, and to personal survival of super consciousness from avatar death.

We will explain the purposes of the universe as they relate to human beings.

We will explore ramifications of the cosmic government.

We will prepare you to become a part of the greatest adventure in all Earth’s history.

Hand in hand with our cosmic associates, and through your personal engagement and support, we will partake in the successful reformation of human society.

Let 2012 be the year the social order is reformed.

Let 2012 be the year in which humankind discovers the worship of erotic joy.

Let 2012 be the year our worldwide family rejoins the great universe of Love.

In time, our embrace of erotic fellowship will grow and amplify our desire and ability to genuinely love and serve others.

Join me today and forever in the worship of the power of erotic joy.

Click here for 0.1 Worship Erotic Joy

 

Why Privileged Elites Cynically Oppose Erotic Freedom

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

También en español In my last post Who Are You Calling an Anarchist? we examined the important distinction between anarchy, as a legitimate and proven approach to governmental organization, and terrorism, a deliberate technique of chaotic social disorganization, that social elites deliberately and falsely equate to the wholly legitimate practice of anarchy. Now we can examine the tools of hierarchical governmental violence directed against its citizens, recognizing that the chief of these tools, invisible to the oppressed, is sexual repression through false religions, failed ideas of government, and corrupt concepts of commerce. In short, we will show how every aspect of organized human endeavor is corrupted at its origin by the universal practice of sexual and erotic repression, revealing the results throughout all phases of human society today to be worthless superstition reinforced by ignorance and compelled by violence.

The Garden of Earthly Delights

It would take volumes to discuss the sorry history of erotic freedom in the United States, one of the most oppressive of all modern human societies. Let us examine but one chain of events in the 19th century that became the foundation of organized anti-sexism throughout the 20th to see how great social failures come to celebrated as great triumphs for freedom when, in fact, they were nothing of the sort. The historically erased heroes of this story are Victoria Woodhull and her sister, Tennessee Clafin. The villains of this piece are names our warped US history celebrates as great social leaders of the 19th century—Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others deluded by visions of power which had displaced genuine human ideals in their consciousness and behavior. Although the actual disgrace occurred at the hands of men like Karl Marx and Anthony Comstock, the Americans who claimed to speak for equality but who opposed Woodhull were simply fascist butchers of reality, empowered by elites, who fought for false and appallingly limited visions of freedom and equality.

The cause of anarchy is linked closely to issues of sexual freedom, for without erotic freedom, anarchy cannot be a stable system of government. Nowhere in US history is the violent suppression of sexual freedom more evident than in the story of the brave social reformer Victoria Woodhull. The International Workingmen’s Association (IWA), later identified by triumphant Marxists as their First International, was founded in 1864 as an international organization which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialistcommunist and anarchist political groups and trade union organizations that were based on the working class and class struggle. The leadership eventually polarized around Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin, representing communists and anarchists respectively. Finally, in 1872, Marx succeeded in expelling his rival anarchists, including Woodhull, from the organization.

Victoria and her sister Tennessee were born into the Clafin family of Homer, Ohio,which included a fair number of carnival workers and professional psychics. Vicky and “Tennie” were trained by their parents in techniques of cold reading. Tennie also mastered psychic reading using techniques based on “frontier wisdom,” a persistent form of neo-paganism that pervaded otherwise nominally Christian communities, of which the early followers of Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith may have been the most notable. Vicky married and divorced an abusive drunkard named Woodhull and thus acquired her surname in history. The sisters traveled across the country plying their trade for the entertainment and seduction of the masses.

Settling in New York, they established a psychic salon and Cornelius Vanderbilt became their sponsor through Tennie’s psychoerotic healing skills. Building on their own success as Wall Street brokers, using Vanderbilt money, they led their entire community into active participation in the IWA. In fact, they became the major proponents in the United States for socialist reformation of the government. They published an extremely liberal journal for six years, advocated the legalization of prostitution, and were the first to publish the Communist Manifesto in English in the United States. They differed strongly from Marx, however, as they advocated free love and other sociosexual changes that were abhorrent to Marx, an emotionally constipated Victorian era German prude obsessed with personal power. The anarchists, led by Bakunin, were friendly to the American perspective; however, after Vicky ran for President of the United States, Marx considered this essentially confirmatory act of established government to be so abhorrent to the emerging international socialist cause that he unilaterally dismissed ALL Americans from further participation in the IWA, declaring them to be anarchists and unacceptable as supporters of the International (which they were, if you think about it). But the persecution of Vicky did not stop there.

Up to her Presidential nomination, Vicky had been arguably the leader and primary spokesperson for female rights and liberties. Vicky bitterly resented Beecher’s refusal to endorse her nomination and carried out her threat to make public his extramarital affair, which she, as a free love advocate, thought ought to be public anyway. Although these interpersonal disagreements disrupted the inner circle of emerging feminism, a few years later she was, essentially, expelled from the suffragist movement she had helped found because of her advocacy for sexual freedom. Stowe, Stanton, Anthony, and others came to believe that getting the vote for women was the important issue and that fighting for sexual freedom (which they had supported in the past) would turn public opinion against them.

Arrest of Woodhull and Clafin

Government opportunists, led by Anthony Comstock, then Postmaster General, seized the magazine and imprisoned the sisters for distributing obscene material in the mail. None would rise to their defense. Vicky was also a spiritualist leader and became entangled in a dispute with some sexually repressed bigots who joined the group and drove her from her position by distorting the meaning of her advocacy for free love. Once free of legal entanglements, the sisters moved to England and resumed their trade in lectures and publications. Vicky married a wealthy banker who supported her cause. Tennie married a Portugese nobleman, the First Viscount of Montserrat, of whom Queen Victoria created the Baron Cook. “Very good family.”

Blake’s Take on British Sexual Repression

What was it about free love that created such a major issue for this broad spectrum of individual attitudes from Karl Marx to Henry Ward Beecher to Susan B. Anthony to Anthony Comstock? The common factor is certainly not socialism or capitalism or women’s rights or social purity. Although all these legacy ideas apply to parts of the spectrum, there are too many exceptions to each classification. You can guess what my answer is—erotophobia—that deeply seated, invisible but all-pervading, blind, screaming, and insanely raging fear to embrace the one thing in your material life that can actually save you from meaninglessness and give power and value to your life experience.

Erotic experience is the simplest inspiration of awareness of transcendent love that erases all conscious objection. Personal and shared erotic experience demands trust and rejects violence. Anarchy requires that there exist no need for government violence against citizens. The balance required for successful and stable anarchy can only be maintained when society is pervaded by the atmosphere of mutual love and trust between all people.

As I have explained in an earlier post, Becoming and Being an Avatar—Uploading Salvation, it is our total rejection of the false myths foisted upon us by religion, society, government, and commerce that free us to find true salvation—freedom from indecision about the loving and true behavior that enables us to participate in the reality called the Kingdom of Heaven.

In a very real sense, universal sexual freedom similarly offers salvation to society—removal of fear and violence as the determinative factors in social development and human progress. Such freedom will, in time, empower true anarchy—the final and ideal form of human government.

The most basic way of achieving and maintaining such love and trust begins and ends with the physically erotic. Certainly people can establish matured bonds of love, trust, and affection without erotic engagement, but those who choose to begin their interpersonal engagement with this ideal, and are sincere in their approach, may look forward to enjoying the realization of the intellectual and spiritual potential that will grow from such engagement if desired.

Erotic engagement is the first real step from the purely material-physical-sensory into the domain of spirit. The joy one experiences is indeed a gift from the cosmic source that leads us onward to higher levels of inspiration. By denying the legitimacy of this first step on the “highway to heaven” the historic oppressors of society would make it virtually impossible for most people to ever engage the path of love and truth, the path of light, their own personal pursuit of happiness, which is unacceptable to the oppressors because it this is the only true path to personal and societal freedom which necessarily dilutes the power of the elite. By trapping humanity in such darkness, religions, governments, and commerce have conspired to destroy all human hope of progress by harnessing human effort for the advantage of a greedy few.

Thus we see that erotic freedom, the foundation of all freedoms, is also the most direct entry for modern humans to the pathways of love, truth, goodness, and beauty. Free love, pan-eroticism, and collective social reversion—the continuing experience of comprehensive personal joy, apart from social and economic duty—are keys to human activity celebrating truth, the active gift of love. And this unity of experience eventuates in the emergence of the brotherhood of all people, and leads to the kind of social network that eventually stabilizes the most desirable form of anarchy.

 

Who Are You Calling an Anarchist?

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

También en español “I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe– ‘That government is best which governs not at all’; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which we will have.”

—Henry David Thoreau, American Anarchist

Gunpowder Plot Conspirators

Remember, remember the 5th of November…an appropriate date to consider current events in the Occupy movement in relation to traditional concepts of minimalist governance. Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators, though opposed to the reigning government, were not anarchists. They were terrorists, who would have created chaos had they succeeded in blowing up Parliament and killing King James I in 1605. Those who benefit from the status quo encourage public fear of true anarchy by calling it “chaos,” a concept quite opposed to anarchy.

Anarchy is an approach to the organization of society without permanently established titular leadership. Mon-archy is rule by one person. Tetr-archy is rule by a group of four. An-archy is rule by no person. Many political philosophers, acting as water-carriers for depraved elites, have pretended that social chaos will be the final result of anarchic government; however, history shows that anarchy can be highly effective and anything but chaotic. Unfortunately, such successes are never celebrated by the established elites, including those who report and write history, because they disprove the fallacious principles on which command-oriented society is based. Invariably some conspiracy of challenged elites steps in and violates all principles of human decency and constitutional law to suppress such groups, as we see now happening in many Occupy locations.

Guy Fawkes was no anarchist. The purpose of the Gunpowder Plot was to bring the Roman Catholic church back into control of the English monarchy. That would have been a step backwards into rigid and brutally authoritarian control of every element of English society. Guy Fawkes is more akin to today’s false religionists of fundamentalism who today work to make the United States into a mock-christian theocracy. Fawkes was a simple terrorist, bent on creating as much chaos as possible without rational purpose or valued outcome.

How times and popular images have changed. Once a kind of post-Halloween bogeyman to be hanged and burned in effigy on the fifth night after All Hallows’ Eve, “the old guy” gradually became a more popular and sympathetic image in the public mind. Children’s books were written. The Fawkes legend grew in the direction of his being a positive rebel against the ruling elites, and now the Occupy movement uses a modern caricature of his image to represent the 99%.

At the same time the idea of social chaos was conflated in the public mind with social organization based on anarchist principles—the most basic of which is that government is precluded from using violence against its own citizens. Such would surely be a far cry from the massive ongoing, and allegedly Federally facilitated, conspiracy of urban police to terrorize citizens exercizing their right of protest.

Anarchists, not Terrorists

Anarchy is a viable and effective form of government to the extent that citizens freely embrace principles of mutual respect, freedom of expression, and social equality. Not all people are equal in intellect, knowledge, social capacity, and leadership ability. Anarchy does not attempt to suppress the contributions of such people, but integrates them into the larger fabric of society, helping good ideas succeed. But this will not work well in a world where people refuse to work together across class and social lines to address real challenges and refuse to acknowledge a social duty to provide protection to the most vulnerable.

The problem is basically lack of love between people—of mutual trust. When people refuse to love others, but mistrust them or even abuse them for personal gain or for the egotistical satisfaction of a failed self-image, there must be some means of conflict resolution. Conventionally this is done by appeal to a higher authority. Some may appeal to their idea of god; however, those who seek a defined and prompt material or legal remedy will probably appeal to human governmental power. In a functional anarchy, this appeal would come before the local, voluntary, communal “administration” governed by group wisdom. There is no need for oppressive human governmental power in a society founded on love and mutual trust as opposed to greed and mutual fear. Government as it exists today promotes government interference, itself producing litigatable or regulatable conflicts, and creating more job opportunities for those who relish imposing arbitrary groupthink nonsense on their fellow humans.

The ideal state, in which the collective community is dynamically self-governing, does not require rigid administrative, judicial, or legislative compartments. When the collective is required to react it develops any governmental structures needed using methods appropriate to specific situations. Such structures persist only until task is done. They work to find as complete as possible solutions to real problems and shun cowardly incrementalism when larger change is required. They are the antithesis in organization and function of the myriad agencies of traditional human governments, including many of the United States.

A Vision of New Harmony

This vision of a perfected human society is what is actually meant by anarchy. Anarchy has long been viewed as the ideal form of government by those who oppose coercive aspects of social regulation. Although a few anarchist societies have flourished, they have invariably been violently suppressed by all other political groups—capitalist, fascist, catholic, communist, protestant, socialist, christianist, republican, islamist, democratic, imperialist, etc., all of which depend on physical and psychological violence directed against their own constituents to maintain their power and privilege.

There is no component of our society that does not fear the rise of successful anarchy. And this is the cause of the systematic suppression of erotic freedom by elites, for erotic freedom is the key to the final expression and realization of a truly anarchic society.

In our next post, we will explore in depth how sexual freedom is becoming the true foundation of a new social system based on liberty, justice, freedom, and equality for all who will embrace love, live truth, do good, and make beauty.

 

A Transhuman Views the Singularity Summit 2011

Last weekend (10/15-16/2011) it was my pleasure to attend Singularity Summit 2011, an event presented annually by the Singularity Institute since 2006. As much as Arse Elektronika celebrated the freedom of citizen science and engineering in pursuit of more fun and joy for everybody, so Singularity Summit celebrated actual and potential financial success and public welfare enhancement from emerging technologies.

Noisebridge—Mecca for Hackers

It seems to me, as an activist and advocate for real time living, based on transhuman ideals, including especially intergender forms of self-expression, that both these events were worthy explorations of important social territory; however, the logistic and organizational differences were striking and illuminated an undesirable dichotomy in the community of Transhumanists.

Arse Elektronika was held in various San Francisco hangouts and groovy venues,  including the Chez Poulet gallery, Carol Queen’s Center for Sex and Culture, and Noisebridge, a well-known cooperative hacker lab. A four day ticket cost $50. While there were certainly people talking about having sex with machines, there were also a lot of people who are more interested in the idea of building machines people would want to have sex with. Their machines become proxies for their erotic organs. Very transhuman. Very sexy. Very real.

Kaufmann Concert Hall

Singularity Summit was held in the 92nd Street Y in midtown Manhattan, in a richly paneled auditorium that seated a bit over 900 people. Golden letters above the stage proclaimed “DAVID, MOSES, ISAIAH” and were flanked in equal grandeur by “WASHINGTON” and “JEFFERSON.” A two day ticket cost $560, including two light buffet meals each day. The great men of the day (Ray Kurzweil, John Thiel, et al.) put in appearances long enough to give rah-rah speeches and promptly went back to real work. The ideals of social justice were served by an outstanding presentation from Jaan Tallinn, a founder of Skype and Kazaa. I cannot recall any discussion of sex, except when I was explaining the VenusPlusX vision to some innocent bystander. Very transhumanist. Very male, wealth-oriented, and NYC. Another reality.

The difference in privilege represented by these two communities would be overwhelming when applied to social issues, except that most of the world doesn’t seem to care much about the opinions of either one of them. One community is empowered by vast “new money” from development of innovative technologies that have made valuable improvements to the lives of billions. The other community is empowered by grasping and trying to live the truth as they feel in their innermost being and by “having nothing left to lose.” Yet each represents something that is missing from the other vision. And while neither group would wish to live and be the other, there is an essential common thread of unified purpose that can transcend fear and bring unity to the collective purpose of enabling and accelerating the emergence of the New Age.

The mega-capitalists who came to Singularity Summit present themselves as a highly ethical group, well aware of their responsibilities to the earth and its peoples for the wise stewardship and utilization of their wealth. Let us expect that each will genuinely and personally commit to uphold and support rational short and long-term enhancements to technology and society. Let us further expect that they will forego opportunities for egocentric, exploitative, and bullying behavior, even though this might give them greater apparent power and prestige.

Many social objections to the innovative visions of Transhumanists, including much work described at the Singularity Summit, will only be overcome by changing public attitudes towards adventure and risk taking for the improvement of the human condition. Grassroots activists and friends of sex, such as the folk from Arse Elektronika and a host of other organizations and activities, are undermining social attitudes of erotic repression, changing hearts and minds and supporting the transformation of religion, government, and business required to free humanity from its unfortunate and inhibiting past.

As a transhuman observing the behavior of these groups seeking transcendence through technology and the commercialization of technology, it seems to me that both groups are missing essential elements by focusing on the “scientific” and “materialistic” to the exclusion of other ways of knowing, understanding, and living that represent a much greater stream of the collective human consciousness.

To the comfortable capitalists, society is a great machine that produces ideas, creative geniuses, and lots of workers building good things for other workers and buying good things from other workers. Investors who appreciate the opportunities born of invention will take risks that uplift the common good. But there is an intuitive side of human socialization that may provide answers to problems not amenable to frontal assault through material technology. There are intellectual factors of communication and education, which this conference tried to address, as well as spiritual factors of human motivation, which this conference ignored.

To the sexy socialists, society is a system that assures fairness and equality of opportunity to every person. It is expected that the gifted and unusually successful children of such a community will give back to the society a measure of help and assistance as they are able. Though these pioneers may be driven by the desire to give people more and better orgasms, and intuitively understand the benefits, they have yet to understand the new age frontier in which erotic techné can combine with spiritual techné to make erotic joy even better and truly spiritually uplifting.

The time has come to begin the unification of these two disparate approaches to social organization and liberation of the future. Investment and serious development of erotogenic technologies can only occur by overcoming the social stigma that attach to anything suggesting hedonism. VenusPlusX proclaims a new vision of the future to humanity—a future in which physical, mental, and spiritual joy are all accepted as worthy human pursuits and gifts from god, finally to be unified in the individual happy person. To quote the gospel according to Goldilocks:

  • Eros without agape is too hot.
  • Agape without eros is too cold.
  • Eros and agape together are just right!

Only by beginning human liberation with sincere erotic transcendence can a new and secure foundation for human development be laid. This needn’t involve conflict, nor any misconceived battle between human and divine, or between body, mind, and spirit. We can all agree: erotic sensation and the joy of orgasm are fundamental and desirable aspects of human experience. For those who dare, combining this power, this divine gift, with the quest for personal growth and personality integration will lead to full participation of the individual in the supreme harmonies of life.

A sane and happy people will embrace the promise of the future with open arms and a whole heart. And through spiritually deployed erotic technology the chains will fall away from all lesser forms of human achievement.

What is the Kingdom of Heaven?

Aphrodite, god of Love

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

También en español The Name of God has been a subject of superstition and speculation throughout human history. Much confusion has arisen from an inability to imagine a deity of sufficient power, presence, and knowledge to consistently satisfy all humanity’s putative requirements for a god to satisfy. We have revealed that the single word “Love” is the best description of absolute deity. We have also shown that the existence of Love makes possible the activation of a divine function best described and named as “Truth”—the finite function of deity that creates Goodness and Beauty. And this active god of the finite universe is the true meaning of the phrase The Word of God.

Hermaphroditus, god of Truth

With these names we have abandoned an ancient idea of Judeo-Christian pastfathers that envisioned god as a blend of an elderly patriarch and the fiery demon of Mount Sinai, who, according to myth, personally consorted with the legendary Moses. We have also abandoned the image of the broken body of a blameless human murdered by barbaric crucifixion being in any way representative of the active face of deity at work creating the finite universe. We have suggested that classical pagan images (Aphrodite and Hermaphroditus) can equally well portray the true meanings of the upholding of Love and the creativity of Truth, who is the “son” of Love—the active response to the desire to do good to others.

Humans have been equally obsessed by the idea of a perfected world, a “heaven” that exists in some transcendent reality or in the distant future, where everything “has gotten better.” One of the key ideas of religions is the notion of survival of death to be repersonalized in such a world. Like the name of god and the word of god, this idea has been burdened with so many myths, misconceptions, and total misinterpretations as to be rendered fantastic and absurd to the rational mind of modern humans. It is time to set aside this antique jargon, which imparts a false sense of sanctity and, like the other common terms we have explored, leads to serious misunderstanding, miscommunication, and impairment of spontaneous personal growth.

At its root, the experience of the Kingdom of Heaven is the experience we have previously described as salvation from uncertainty. The core function underlying human behavior is the constant need to decide what to do next. Many functions of this sort are fully (heartbeat) or partially (breathing) automated, and we are unconscious of these. There is a stream of consciousness in which our self-identity must constantly make more-or-less conscious choices of action. Again, many of these are obvious and merit little attention; however, there arise occasions on which higher mind functions must be invoked when no guidance or contradictory guidance comes from lower mind functions.

Finally, such choices may reach a level of importance that requires recognition of personal responsibilities to others and analysis of personal abilities to address those responsibilities. This is the domain of moral choice, a living theater in which, regardless of our self-opinion or our rhetoric, we demonstrate the values that motivate our lives, that define the nature of our souls. When we feel unable to reach a decision, or find ourselves faced with a deep moral conflict, we are actually face-to-face with a choice that will strengthen or weaken our attachment to certain ideals and ideas in ways we cannot anticipate, and may rightly fear should our choice be an inappropriate one.

And this is the great uncertainty from which every wise and caring person seeks salvation. For many it is simply ignored or reduced to the final conscious moments before death. Such only seek salvation from death and may obtain whatever afterlife may be available to them. But the individual who lives a life of obedience to Truth, a life of supreme integration, finds that they know what to do and often simply do the right thing automatically, and this is true salvation from moral uncertainty as well as the key to understanding of one’s permanent role in the universe—the recognition that one’s mortal body becomes an avatar for an immortal soul obedient to truth in the expression of love. Experience of the Kingdom of Heaven, however, is not just about an inner state of confident salvation, but about the results in one’s life as one constant reaffirms that state, for the result is a coordination of one’s own actions, even relatively mechanical actions, with the actions of one’s environment, so that everything either works better or works for the good. In a free and truth recognizing society everyone appreciates this motivation toward cooperation and unity of purpose, while tolerating all constructively diverse expressions of personal will.

Personally entering this state is far easier than making sense out of my attempts to explain. John Mark recalled that Jesus taught:

Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of Heaven. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of Heaven as a little child, he shall not enter therein. (Mark 10:14-15)

The point is that openness, acceptance of truth, freedom from cynicism and skepticism, freedom from myth and superstition—all natural attributes of the child untutored in the delusions and fears of the past fathers—are the necessary human attitudes for the achievement of true happiness, the realization of complete sanity, and the progressive perfection of the human state as we enter and progress through the New Age of realized love, truth, goodness, and beauty; of liberty, freedom, justice, and equality for all.

 


What is the Word of God?

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

También en español In my recent post What is the Name of God? I explained that one must recognize two concepts of deity. One is the absolutely perfect omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent deity (the omni-cubed god), whose acts in infinite space and eternal time are necessarily uniform and invisible, who putatively makes possible and upholds everything that is or can ever be. We recognize that Love is the best descriptive name we have for this deity. Though no physical image can embody all this represents, an image of Aphrodite/Venus, the classical god of Love, provides a convenient symbol.

Aphrodite, god of Love

The second deity is the agency of both cause and necessity in an evolving universe of space and time. This is the god that creates and shapes the development of finite reality. This is the ongoing expression of the fully integrated deity that in some Transhumanist visions of destiny (Frank Tipler‘s Omega Point or Martine Rothblatt‘s Terasem or the Supreme Being of The Urantia Book) stands at the end of time as a fully integrated mind encompassing all prior consciousnesses of supreme value in the universe, and reaching back through time to assure its own emergence. From the viewpoints of origin rather than destiny, this is the ongoing expression of the creative power that gives rise to all events and occasions that come into being and develop their destinies towards a final supreme culmination in evolved perfection.

John Zebedee was the youngest of Jesus’ inner circle of male disciples (the 12 apostles of Christian legend). He called himself “the disciple Jesus loved best” and much has been made over the exact meaning of this statement, especially in view of Jesus’ other close male associations (John the Baptist, Lazarus, and the youth John Mark, who came to play a major role in the spread of Jesus’ vision in both Rome and Egypt). In any case, of the four authors of the “canonical” legends of Jesus’ life, John Zebedee seems to have most fully grasped the transcendent nature of the divine power he believed incarnate in the human Jesus, as reflected in this opening of his biography of the Jesus he knew and recalled.:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. (KJV John 1:1-3)

And that pretty well sums up the nature of the finite deity I have identified with the descriptive name Truth. Love is the desire to do good to others. Truth is the power of effective action that takes the inspiration of Love and accomplishes Good and makes Beauty. John identifies the Word as the aspect of total deity represented to earthborn humanity by the person of Jesus as he writes:

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, … full of grace and truth. (KJV John 1:14)

Though no physical image can embody all this represents, I have suggested that the meme of Hermaphroditus, the classical divine two-sexed child of Aphrodite/Venus and Hermes/Mercury, may provide another convenient symbol for the reality of cosmic Truth as the supreme finite deity, the coordinator of Goodness for the creation of Beauty. I submit that such an image more fairly symbolizes the physical cosmic Truth, the genuine Word of god than any conventional image of a cruelly murdered divine avatar.

Hermaphroditus, god of Truth

Most assume that Truth knows no gender. Nothing could be further from the truth, for Truth must encompass all genders, all sexes, and all possible actions, manifestations, and phenomena that are Good manifestations of Love, even objects of Beauty.

The classical deity Hermes/Mercury is the god of action. In Hermaphroditus, the powers of the god of Love are united with the god of action to embody an objectively androgyne deity able to shape action through will, through Word, to the service of Good. And this same Hermaphroditus is naturally portrayed as androgyne. I have explained in my rather long paper, Why We Are All Transgender, why the cosmic forces that govern our planet and commune with our persons are perceptible as intergender, transgender, or pan gender influences—that is, having the nature we recognize as androgyny—the combining of masculine and feminine forms of conventional gender expression.

Thus the meme of Hermaphroditus serves as an image of Truth, reminding us of the need to acknowledge the unification of all dual things, to transcend meaningless dichotomy, and to function both as a receiver and giver of True Love in all its forms. Furthermore, this meme represents a genuine cosmic reality that, even today, breaks out in the intergender impulses of people most sensitive to the intuitive appreciation of the full character of Truth and its potentials for expression in human lives. And that sensitivity is the great liberator that has always given us the true leaders of society, the Lesbian, the Gay, the Bisexual, and the Transgender, who seek to incarnate the nature of Truth.

Though Truth is a deity of action, finding expression of the desires of Love in doing Good and making Beauty, Truth is also the True Will of Love. Truth is the singular expression of the True Will, the Word, of God to our universe. Thus, Truth is the best descriptive name for the deity of finite time and space, and this deity is the Word of Love to our universe, the expression in time and space of the will of Love.

 

Arse Elektronika: Come for science!

Jack Diehl, Alison Gardner, and Dan Massey contributed to this article.

VenusPlusX attended the Arse Elektronika conference in San Francisco (September 29 – October 2), hosted by the Austrian “art-technology-philosophy groupMonochrom. This energetic collective has run the European AE for many years, and this is the fifth year in a row they have brought its parallel to San Francisco. The call for entries last February gives some insight to what unfolded.

This year’s theme was Sex and Technology. It was hard to know what to expect from the schedule of four days of programming over three different venues, with intriguing titles like “Phallic Home Economics,” “Make your own Mind Controlled Dildo,” and “It’s Wankie Time!” But we are not complaining, we had to see it.

The entire conference had a natural leftist perspective, expressed in the sub theme, “Screw The System.” Kink was commonly understood, appearing quite abundantly in many presentations and all over the walls of the San Francisco Center for Sex and Culture, one of the 3 venues. Technology, the Internet, and hacking were also well represented. The last day of Arse Elektronika was held at one of the country’s biggest hackerspaces, Noisebridge. (Here is Jack’s brief video walk-through of Noisebridge.)

The first night was at author-rac0nteur Chicken John‘s legendary warehouse, a multi-media opening introduction made up of summaries of the previous 5 conferences in San Francisco, previews of talks to come during the following days, lots of high jinks, and some very enjoyable entertainment from “song a day guy” Jonathan Mann (who has made a song everyday for the last 1,000+ days.)

What Does It Mean To Love A Machine? (buy for $1)
Until The Vulcans Call (free download)

The presentations were extremely wide-ranging, and showed the creativity possible as a new age of sexual freedom emerges. Each one incrementally stretched the group or “hive” mind in real time.

Among the dozen+ offerings, we heard from Kitty Stryker in her frank talk, “Sex Work, Disability, and Stigma”  and Maymay presented “A Class Analysis of Social Status in the BDSM Scene” (also available on YouTube). David Fine, who vaguely describes himself as “a Sex Robot from the 25th century” spending his time in our era guiding technology in useful, or at least interesting, directions, brought us his reimagining of the Mindflex kids’ toy (available on Amazon) which he modified to activate a vibrator, simple and perhaps the first attempt we’ve seen to apply an EEG headset  to a sex toy; The future possibilities are endless.

Most expressive of the intersection of sex and technology, though, is the impressive work and activism of Ned and Maggie Mayhem.  Their  PSIgasm (that’s Pounds per Square Inch, pronounced, sci-gasm) is one of the first legitimate, fully engineered entries into the nascent science of teledildonics. As they describe it . . .

PSIgasm was conceived in 2010 by an HIV prevention specialist and an experimental physicist, both of whom moonlight as queer porn performers and are active in the Bay Area sex positive scene. The project revolves around measurement devices that can be used as sex toys, simultaneously getting people off and monitoring physiological responses correlated with arousal and orgasm.

PSIgasm

Considering themselves citizen scientists, the Mayhems prompted the assembled to start thinking about other commercial grade sex toys that might emerge and use their application and the sensors they’ve engineered in this device, and the ways that data on your heart rate, anal contractions, other statistics recorded during orgasm will prove beneficial.

Besides the PSIgasm project and being so damn cool, the Mayhems are HIV and sex educators, and among many useful things for society that they advocate for, they  campaign to empower others to produce and star in ethical and sex positive pornography to escape financial hardship. The pair are coming to DC in March to participate in the Momentum conference, and hold other events we will be promoting soon. For now, they are headed to the next phase of substantial testing and data collection for the PSIgasm under their slogan, “Come for Science.”

Overall, we assert that the teledildonics field hasn’t received the attention it deserves. These breakthroughs will lead to better and safer sex practices and extend to people often excluded from traditional social connections.

The toys being made right now are mostly DIY (do-it-yourself), and have very little financial backing. Technology will continue to be applied to sex, and as society grows out of its strangling sexual repression and we move further into an interconnected world, there is no doubt in our minds that the future of teledildonics will be exciting. Want to contribute yourself? Check out The Sex Prize, a new competition announced at this year’s conference challenging entrants to develop open source teledildonics software for f#^king machines. Entries will be judged by a Turing Test, meaning your program has to preform so well that it is indistinguishable from a human operator. With countless people willing to test such devices, we can’t wait to see what people come up with.

What is the Name of God?

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

También en español In his 1953 sci-fi story, The Nine Billion Names of God, Arthur C. Clarke imagined a Tibetan monastery where monks labored ceaselessly to list every permutation of letters in their alphabet and thus to list every possible name of god, fulfilling their destiny and bringing about the end of the universe. With the help of a computer (in 1953!) they finish the job in three months instead of 15,000 years, after which…

Ten emanations of deity

Humanity has long been preoccupied with knowing the name of god. Priests, magicians, and other charlatans tell the gullible that knowledge of the name gives power. For priests, it gives the power to tell the faithful to believe the priests are uniquely able to speak to god on their behalf, both to solicit the boons of providence and atone for past transgressions. For magicians, it gives the power to summon and direct divine forces and influences, as if, by knowing the name, one could forge god’s signature on an order to a company of angels. And, just to make sure the rubes don’t figure out the scam, the unholy are forever barred from ever uttering the name on penalty of eternal damnation. Isn’t it odd that so many people have blindly accepted this kind of bulshyte?

The ancient cultures of the levant had many gods with many names—El Shaddai, El Elyon, Yahweh, Elohim, El, and more—all of which finally collapsed into the tetragrammaton, YHVH, in Romanized Hebrew. With no vowels, like most written semitic languages, the letters merely indicate a spoken word already known to the reader. More to the point, with so many possible vowel substitutions, nobody has any idea (unless informed by an oral tradition) of how to correctly pronounce the word. And, of course, be it prayer or magic, everybody knows that god won’t pay attention if you don’t get the inflection of his name exactly right. Of course, YHVH is pretty much the way you’d write Yahweh if you left out the vowels, except it’s an improved form and you can’t be sure the old vowels really work to get the old guy’s attention anymore. In the meantime, the variant Jehovah or Jehovih has been accepted widely in fundamentalist, evangelical, pentecostal, and some other really batshit crazy cults.

Christianity, like Judaism and Islam, features a singular omni-cubed deity presiding over a legendary cosmic horde that somehow takes care of whatever happens on earth (and maybe elsewhere if there is an elsewhere). Although this idea is usually called God, that is a presumptive description, not a personal name. Cults that have a Christian origin frequently use the term Father, which derives from Jesus’ use of the term during his ministry, as recorded in the Christian gospels, as well as the prior beliefs of the Jews. And Christians further identify Jesus with the Father, since Jesus is said to be the Son of God. And he was called Yehshweh or Joshua, written as YHShVH. And of course mystical significance is attributed to the appearance of the Sh, symbolic of the spirit, in descent at the precise midpoint of the YHVH. Wow!

Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury

To name God, we must define God. Unless we know who or what we are talking about, have identified him or it, there’s no point in asking for a name. Around 1070, Anselm of Canterbury framed the idea of God as “that than which a greater cannot be thought” in his famous Ontological Proof of the existence of God. While most philosophers today accept the validity of the proof, with some qualifications, it clearly does not prove the existence of God, unless you accept Anselm’s definition, which is basically that of an omni-cubed deity that is totally all-pervasive and totally involved in the dynamic upholding of everything we perceive as finite reality as well as (probably) a great deal more. Thus, if this presumptive deity is to treat all creation equally, we will not find this God personally intervening in the affairs of individuals, except by providence. In effect, although one may choose to believe in the existence and power of the omni-cubed deity, one is forced to admit that there is no objective way to directly and unambiguously observe that God’s existence in Real Life.

Suppose we clarify Anselm’s term “greatest” to be “perfectest.”Ahhh, we are not allowed to compare perfections (at least not in conventional English language). Rather, we say things are imperfect, partially perfected, or completely perfect as a first approximation to the relativity of perfection. So we might say God is “that which is absolutely perfect in all respects.” But Anselm’s simple logic doesn’t make sense here, because our ability to imagine such a thing is questionable and perfection is an absolute reality outside space and time towards which the finite universe is evolving. We can only utter a sound offered as a name, but we cannot properly describe or conceive of such perfection. The absolute deity is, from the viewpoint of time and space, irrevocably committed to upholding the causal consistency and realizing the inevitable destiny of the finite universe as it evolves towards final perfection.

Venus, god of Love

So, in reality, we see the possibility of two concepts of complete deity. First is the absolute deity outside the finite universe who is committed completely to keeping the framework of finite reality intact and ongoing, along with a lot of other universe activities. Second is the supreme force of destiny manifested by its influence over space-time affairs and its interactions with volitional beings of its own creation and evolution.

The first, absolute deity, is thus the existential foundation of all that can be and is. Uniform in power throughout space and time, this first deity gives all that there is to the realization and support of a universe populated with potentially deified identities. If we seek to name such a power, a stable form that gives meaning and consistency to our universe experience, we would have to call it “Love.” And if you stop thinking “God” with all the craziness your culture has attached to that word, and think “Love” instead, you will soon be developing a healthier viewpoint and attitude. In the final analysis, Love is the desire to do good to others, and Love is the best name for God that we have.

Hermaphroditus

The second, finite deity, is thus the source of the evolution-driving force of destiny that bends finite sequential linear factual causation to the arc of destiny’s fulfillment. Love inspires action, but action cannot be satisfied unless good is actually being done. It is necessarily the work of this second, finite deity to arrange orderly evolution of the universe towards a goal of finite perfection, akin to the absolute perfection of Love, but evolved in time from initial existence to final perfection. If we name such a power, a dynamic influence that shapes our Love-inspired actions to maximize the accomplishment of good, we would call it “Truth.” And, if you stop thinking “what do I do now” with all the confusion of everyday life and act in the spirit of “Truth” instead, you will soon be developing an easier, more orderly, and much more effective approach to life. We have called this god “Truth,” the guidance of will in the application of action to the doing of good and the realization of beauty. We will explore this concept more fully in our next post, “What is the Word of God?”

When you think about what kind of God might mean something to yourself, remember that the omni-cubed existential absolute and perfect deity is unnoticeable unless one seeks to find a cause to explain the existence of the universe. We affirm that such a God is known to us through recognition of Love as the upholding structure of reality. On the other hand, the active, evolving, self-perfecting deity manifest as the force of destiny acting in time and space we can observe as we draw on Truth to direct our actions of will in the doing of good. Truth is the name of the active, saving deity that saves us from the uncertainties of right and loving action in seeking to do good and make beauty.

 

Why Trans Life is a Necessary Cosmic Reality

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

También en español At the end of the last post I admitted that  I certainly cannot prove that this higher level of Transcendent Life (Trans Life) exists beyond Real Live (RL) as RL exists beyond Second Life (SL). If it exists, then there is surely a path of transition from RL to Trans Life that is similar to the SL to RL transition, and our destiny is to transcend RL and occupy this new level by following the path of living truth.

Follow me now into a domain of rational speculation and let me explain why I believe Trans Life is a universe reality.

In the post Where Did All This F*cking Evil Sh%t Come From? we explained how the presence of evil in the universe is in contrast to the presence of good. There is no reality in evil; however, good has not yet fully permeated the entire finite universe. If the final state of the finite universe is destined to be completely permeated by good, then a process must exist in time and space for the generation of good to fill the gaps of apparent evil. This process is the action of individual beings satisfying the desire of love to do good to others as an act of free will guided by truth.

Where are the beings to come from who perform the great task of filling the universe with the true goodness born of perfected love? We might speculate that an initially empty finite universe comes into existence with some minimum capability or imperative to satisfy the universal desire of love to do good. We can further speculate that this capability has been sufficient to bring into existence a partially developed and populated universe in which a large number of planets are populated with communities of physical creatures, who are endowed with similar abilities and characteristics as ourselves.

Now we may ask what would be the purpose in populating a RL universe with limited, finite beings destined to decay and disappear after a few decades of productive life? Is it reasonable to speculate that such beings could progressively transfer the seat of their personal consciousness from RL to Trans Life? Looked at from the viewpoint of destiny, would it not be necessary for these finite beings to finally participate in Trans Life, where they could continue to develop as individuals and as doers of good?

The exhaustion of all potentials of finite development will equate to the full expression of love throughout the universe and the full personal development of every person to Trans Life. If RL persons did not survive in Trans Life, there would be no path to the inevitable finality of destiny, the complete emergence of the unified consciousness of all mind, standing at the end of time and drawing all events towards its generation and fulfillment.

To summarize this speculation, if free will personalities aren’t going to live forever as citizens of Trans Life, there will be no way to fully populate the finite universe at the finality of destiny, nor would a corps of beings associated with the finality exist to eventuate identities and provide the tools of transcendence to the citizens of the infinite (post-finite) universe that they will construct, beings we imagine might develop a bit like we have imagined avatars in SL.

True Transhumans, everyone who embraces physical, intellectual, and motivational technologies that provide transcendence, are personally destined to serve truth, as the focal exercise of the true will, for eternity. Transhumans experience the joy of participation in creation and continued existence to satisfy love by doing good to others, guided by the spirit of truth.

Survival of the human consciousness in Trans Life is necessary to provide for full realization of all the potentials of the universe, the true multiverse.