THE PRISON OF THE SCHOLAR

WHAT IS A LIBRARIAN?

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 unit below the basement of the british library, i felt the open letter to the former deserves to enlighten the general public as well. 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 intelligentia and at the same time shut their doors to probably 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 slash helpful in the long run :)

so for your delectation, dear listener and reader, 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 :)

——-

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) Gnostic Scholar, d) Interdisciplinary 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 deemed ‘bad’ people are ignorant enough to be most conveniently ‘used’ by those knowing any higher truths. While at the same time, all Alexander the Greats and Djengis Khans (even Maos) are the ones carefully ‘chosen’– within their mortal time allotted – to fulfil all 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, ‘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 really 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 head on.
Judith, I haven’t had the pleasure to meet in person. I hope you liked and cherish those two little presents I left for you. I sincerely apologise for having addressed you with a seemingly pretentious ‘Jude’ in the cover note. I got merely 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 almost certainly differs from the one held by anyone imbued with a ‘party’ and ‘equal opportunity / political correctness’ culture. The way I’m using it refers to how cultivators use it, in other words, 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 or the ‘elected’ 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 public’ isn’t allowed to know much about, much less worry about. For the ‘ruling’ system, this ‘works’.
Which brings us to the 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 statement at all. Which system in power wouldn’t claim the same? Nazi Germany felt that way and the Soviets 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 at stake. That the ‘game’s stakes’ are so much higher than even ‘survival’, not even the ‘perpetrators’ 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 invigorating dynamics of a process group rather than let it fizzle out into fatigue through keeping it in the state of only being a task- and aim-geared activity group. (More on this in our latest draft magazine ‘Maintenance’ issue :). My visiting your Bow IDEAstore three times, to give 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’.
Three – I don’t know what makes you think that I have a problem with what you’re doing. You’re doing what your doing and I’m doing what I’m doing and we both, regardless of beliefs, face retribution in terms of cause and effect. Of course, if an original axiom is based on the quicksand of ‘lies’, the effect will be related to that. How much money is needed to uphold a lie? How many (how much) need(s) to be killed? 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 effect of retribution be only about ignoring (and thus, given your stature of either granting official acknowledgement or doom into rejection, actually killing) ‘pitiful’ small-fry?

Well. 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 increasingly giving everyone still clinging to lies a hard time. In your case, it is manifesting most noticeably like this: Owing to the nature of standardised, centralised content supply, you are, like nearly everyone else in the book and media ‘industry’ – knowingly or unknowingly – unleashing a ‘one voice’ system on the general populace. 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. You’re rather, psychologically speaking, panicking or afraid for this to be the truth.
Generally speaking, my books and draft magazine address such a frightening flaw within the present system 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’. (Haha, that’s more precisely the proclaimed invention of writing through the Egyptian God Thoth who became, through his Greek avatar Hermes Trimegistus, within so-called Pagan Gnosticism the main source of cultural and intellectual nourishment for all great poets and thinkers from Hesiod to Plato and within the so-called Hermetic Tradition, the root of all Western Esoteric and Masonic teachings up until today). This ‘tradition’ constitutes a Common Ground for all Beliefs. It allows for the Discernment of Ultimate Reality and True Human History among Jewish Gnostic (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 (and collected in libraries, like the one in the Vatican) as a perfect way to encode true knowledge to be decoded by those ‘initiated’ according to their level of Spiritual Attainment. As more mystic traditions (many of whom include cultivation / transformation of the human body by doing certain exercises), they’ve been passed on only orally (with the exception of some occasional hilarious 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 and Immortality or 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 firm secular, scientific foundation to back up all of this through studying ‘high-level’ Psychology (high-level meaning having been initiated into the deepest depths of the 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, among the so-called White Indians, the founders of Brahmanism that originally was also a Buddha-worshipping religion. Hasn’t the srivatsa, or sun-wheel, the Buddhist visualisation of the ten-directional cosmos (analogous to the Daoist conceptualisation through their Taiji) been unearthed in Greece, South America, India and China?).
In other words, if you were to only pick out the book The Language of Growth – a canon for systemic astrology from all my literary works, you could probably consider this to be a kind-of 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 up with state-of-the-art Western Psychology and Psychotherapy 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’) 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’ (a term that makes new sense after reading our little magazine :) 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 designer jackets and esteemed, hyped and worshipped in masses, and the pearls dressed to look like worthless lumps of clay and – strategically – largely ignored? 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 – visions that I might’ve unconditionally shared during my days at university where making it into the finals of competitions involving awfully prestigious collaborations between Man-machine Interactive New Media Labs and Elitist Augmented Reality Architecture (figureheaded by notorious media-octopus Prof. Weibel and coop / himmeblau boss Prof. Prix, for instance) for an outrageously utopian shopping-mall-of-the-future proposal into the hands of the biggest Austrian book store chain unmistakably seemed like a divine call for greatness. Now, of course, blurred visions and delusions have been cleared away tremendously.
So back to the roots. Form versus content. What is a librarian? Someone giving you a number to call so that you can talk on the phone to the other adviser 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 confinements? Someone who’s really pleased with themselves that the deals for new content this year have been so convenient and quite 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 neatly staged and happening within an otherwise hopeless landscape of dehumanising game-theory agendas and under the compulsory group canons of all-pervading evolutionist indoctrination that both are, from their very root, devoid of any genuine, authentic tradition of art, craft, writing and apprenticeship aka ‘employment’?

To me, 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 Olympian mountaintop of knowledge dissemination. A true librarian, to me is someone who loves books more than anything (except people, of course :). Someone who can probably write very well themselves, so that they really understand what is needed in order to have anything ‘tangible and valuable’ to say, other than merely add fuel to the fire of utter confusion by the inflated circulation of vanity whinings and petty strives for attention that are – mind you – all happening within an instigated Struggle for Relevance (courtesy of our Anti-Pope’s ‘Sefish Gene’ bible and a multimillion copies and pounds array of other sinister fairy-tale shite :).
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 ‘content’ on an info-screen upon 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.
And that’s it for me on this. Over and out.
(As a final note on the side, then, 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 ‘individuals’ whose only aim was to be Growing in Wisdom?)

As to my ‘case’ – I’ll just, plain and simple, continue journeying on my path, that is in the background forging ahead vigourously 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, being persecuted or 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 in draft magazine lately. There would be absolutely no way to do such a project, to even have gotten it off the Epsons, if powers of unimaginable heights wouldn’t have ‘sanctioned’ this. The entire process of making this authority approval ‘official’ – or openly visible for ‘everyone’ – is one that is an intrinsic part of the project itself (it’s probably best, at this stage, to put it this way).
(Quick ‘secret’ history lesson: The perception-managed grid of the so-called New World Order (or World Government) has been tested through both Hitler’s and Stalin’s framework and been rolled out and perfected globally since the 50’s. For the past thirty years or so, it has been absolutely impossible for anyone to do anything without ‘greater authorities’ knowing all about it.)

For you, I think it 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 through ‘insight’ for themselves, 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 guys, were it not otherwise.
Summoning up, as e) publisher and f) cultivator, I feel that the least you could do in order to tackle ‘your’ flaw (one that I’m well aware that you don’t really want to have and one that I hope you’re also aware I’m certainly not someone to blame you for having), is telling Steve (I think that was his name, wasn’t it?) to purchase the full range of ‘our’ 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 ‘freely’ have access to the content, rather than let them happen to stumble upon it in some dark corner one day in a hundred years.
And if you’d try to really do justice to what I’m actually doing and how this is being reflected within the system at large, I feel it would be very sweet and fairly ‘unobtrusive’ or ‘non-interfering’ to also have those cute little stands and their tiny  cards (the ones I left with you, Sergio, would be great to have them back, actually) 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 …

Yours sincerely,

Reinhard Schleining

+44.(0)795.135.8787
11 white church lane, E1 7QR, london
reinhardschleining@gmail.com

http://www.reinhardschleining.com
http://www.draftmagazine.net

cc:

– General Enquiries @ IDEAstore & local IDEAstore notice boards
– Frances Brindle @ British Library
– Editors @ Epoch Times
– Reception Desk @ Buechereien Wien

BITS AND PIECES OF TROOF

a more elaborate rationale of POEMS & SNIPPETS

Like all my other work, the POEMS & SNIPPETS are very responsible about maintaining what I’d like to call a ‘thread of righteousness’. The sheer amount of information available today makes it virtually impossible (unless one cultivates an upright teaching of ‘The Law’) to discern straight from crooked, aboveboard from underhanded, righteous from wicked or, simply put, ‘good’ from ‘bad’. The whole conspiracy scene, for instance, has been infiltrated by yet higher conspiracies and those again of even higher ones in order to establish a covering of tracks and a climate of utter confusion, leading to deception within deception, without the hope to see any light amidst an endless loop of digging in dirt. The ‘Powers’ (let’s call them that way for now) have essentially used any possible flaw of human frailty and its tragic pettiness to lead them astray from true history, the truth about the human body and any true human heritage. The goal of this undertaking is essentially something everyone is supposed to enlighten to for themselves and shall thus be labeled – in here at least – ‘unspeakable’.

The ridiculous theory of evolution is a good example of how such large-scale deception can take place. I was indoctrinated myself as a kid in school. Charles Darwin had been timid, apparently, when he was putting it forward (one could almost say he was ‘bullied’ into publication by dark forces around him). It also had, it must be repeated, an embarrassing racist innuendo to start with. He, like most people of his social sphere, honestly believed that black people were an evolutionary link between humans (them) and monkeys. They glossed that over later on, after Hitler and during (hypocritical) bouts of ‘political correctness’. But regardless, there was and is up until today not a single piece of evidence for any intermediate species although the geological column as well as the present world should be flooded with exactly those forms of life, if any reasonable logic is to be put into tangible practice. Later ideas to tackle this problem like Elliott Gould’s ‘hopeful monster’ or anti-pope Richard Dawkins’ snobby adult children fairly tales simply take the piss for those who do know. Which is not to say that those authors haven’t actually lost the plot themselves (due to their flawed an used attachments for fame and glory perhaps) to be ‘earnestly’ wallowing in such complete delusion. Anyway. Charles Darwin, after there still haven’t been unearthed any fossils to prove ‘his’ theory,  was in great doubt about it in his later years. But for the higher purpose to be achieved –  to separate the human reasoning from the dignified notion of ‘design’ to be led into the black hole of ‘randomness’ and ‘meaninglessness’ –  the machinery was already rolling out impeccably at that stage. Information about all of this does exist, but within the established mud-pit is really not easy to be extracted aboveboard and righteously (‘The Evolution Cruncher’, behind its creationist packaging, is maybe as concise as it gets …).

Meanwhile, the cultivation community, (Gnostics, Hermeticists, Qabalists, Freemasons, religious scholars, yogis, etc), essentially everyone higher up in the food chain of ‘knowledge’, is obviously well aware of this. One just has to look into the infamous ‘protocols’ from the British library to realise the disdain of those well-versed in the Human Tradition towards ‘ordinary’ human beings, or the ‘mob’ (also known as the Hypcrites or the Ignorants), who’re deemed to be devoid of any kindness, human reasoning or virtue – and any student of history would agree on them having a point there. Why is this so? Until our present day, all of human history is essentially shrouded in mystery entirely. Why has the teaching of re-incarnation or transmigration mainly been passed on through the Wicca tradition in the West, for example? Why is almost everyone lying and seemingly, on the surface, even rewarded for it? Why are there still people left then, despite this prevailing ignorance, mediocrity and darkness, who’re still upholding and even cherishing truth, virtue and kindness? Why are we born into suffering all along and die not knowing anything for most part. “Like a dog”, as G. I. Gurdjeff has aptly put it.

In this light, segregation from the contaminating dye vat of a ‘mob’ that just mindlessly follows any however ludicrous flights of fancy or wherever they’re sheepishly being led astray by tapping into their petty ‘flaws’, makes a lot of sense as cultivators everywhere and at all times were very aware of. Following the crowd, although giving the fake-impression of safety, doesn’t resolve any of our core problems. To be answering the ultimate question of “why am I here?” is solemn and requires our utmost attention, solitude and dignity. Does it need bravery as well? In a hyped-up stream of vanity, pretending to not die, perhaps. Or while being entangled in ridiculous games or power struggles among each other or between the sexes. Or while being busy with finger-pointing at various ‘authority’ figures to put our blame for any twitching unease. The true tragic, perhaps, of human existence might as well be that by trying to fool someone or something – fate, friends, god(s), society, life, the system, whatever – we’re only fooling ourselves, really, and the only one to blame for this ‘notional habit’ is again, only ourselves. While the loss and the regret might as well be eternal beyond the mere cycle of transmigration (if, let’s say, the Asura realm Buddhism talks about does indeed exist – the nine layers of heaven forming the three-realms of our perceptual confines: Heaven, Earth and Netherworld).

This is getting quite large now but just to conclude, coming back to deception, I’d like to use modern science as another example. Any trail of thought is based on axioms or working models. If the axiom at some stage turns out to be not valid anymore then the whole building, however vast, crumbles like a giant deck of cards. It is thus, that science follows ‘avenues’. The avenue that the ancient Greeks followed was different than the avenue that the civilisation who came to build the first pyramids in Egypt. And the Chinese human body science leading to things like acupuncture, say, followed a different trail altogether again.

What cultivation is, essentially, is the ‘highest science’. Why it has been kept ‘secret’ for most part is a question that touches pretty high levels. Like, why has the Divine created this environment in the first place? Certainly not because the Gods were bored. The Gnostics, Qabalists, Alchemists, etc were all studying ancient scriptures to learn. Knowledge was primarily encoded in stories as they provide the amazing ability to be passed on through centuries on one hand, and on the other hand offer the initiates to decode them according to their own level of understanding while concealing their message to those ‘unworthy’ of knowing.

Even more secret teachings involved the human body and the magic arts – elixir, the philosopher’s stone, the third eye, chakras, apertures, etc. What is widely known as ‘meridians’ in Chinese medicine is only the very tip of an iceberg of knowledge that has been passed on secretly over millennia through Daoist cultivation practices, for instance, who talk about ‘small heavenly circuit’ and ‘great heavenly circuit’ or about the Microcosm of the human body being equally vast than the Macrocosm of the universe outside of it. Studying the human body, life and nature directly is consequently a much more advanced science than the geeky probing for smaller particles through the prosthetics of clumsy machinery or the stretching of one’s imagination through mathematical formulas relating to the origin of the cosmos –  while all-the-while ignorantly taking oneself out of the picture. “It’s a particle if you look at it and a wave if you don’t” (Quantum physics). Right.

Molecules that are constantly moving (waves), connected with everything else in the cosmos through mysterious intricate rotating mechanisms are rendering a three-dimensional animation for our equally molecular flesh eyes that we have been taught to call, perceive and regards as ‘tangible reality’, that’s the true situation, isn’t it? Meanwhile, the theory of gravity is only yet another theory. Doesn’t sand actually fly off a plate when we spin it?

So much so well. Happy digging with an upright mind and a compassionate heart.

Hope you enjoy the show :)

Reinhard Schleining
London, 5th July 2012

© 2012, all rights reserved

GODDESSES & DEMONESSES

so here are the new drawings that i’ve been promising people for a while – the series of nudes dedicated to gustav klimt’s 150th birthday. in terms of content and style they’re very much representative of what i’m now doing in my visual work. in terms of the larger and deeper reverbrations they’re probably some sort of seed spread to achieve some sort of insight. they actually felt like coming  to life while i’d carve them out of the paper. ah – and they’re not ‘good’ and ‘bad’, for sure. whether goddess or demoness, they’re both a deity. particularly in this case, they’re all sweet and i guess rooted into the ‘law’, if only metaphorically :)

as to the packaging and presentation, i herewith grant license to download and print them in the below form of publication. i also use them this way as promotional stickers on the street etc in a nicely laminated piece to peel off and collect or re-stick. what i’ve tried to do with the coloured corner tag is to turn the table on purchasing and pricing policies / strategies / habits and raise two questions at once:

how much would we freely pay for an item like this, for content, craftmanship, artistic value, cultural impact, gnostic wisdom, impact of subject matter –  and last not least, as a future / investment / option?

and

how much is really ‘needed’ for us to buy into anything that we desire to obtain / possess – a car, a travel card, a pint of bitter, gas, ice cream,  the internet – up to an apartment, country, sex, husband or wife?

there is of course also the issue on the spiritual level: how can one possibly ever pay for truth and true knowledge and true values or in other words anything coming form the depth of the heart … anyway,  you get the idea.

to put money where the mouth is i’ve set up a paypal interface here

>>> + <<<

if you’re happy to look and click, then have fun, rejoice and enjoy!

i’m back to finishing those three novels now …

london, july 2012

ASTROLOGY

so the ASTROLOGY BOOK finally did happen. that’s always how it goes, isn’t it, the bigger  and more ambitious the project, the more adversities pile up attempting to make it falter. but it came through the other day, eventually, and it does look fantastic, i’m well pleased.

i’d like to leave some brief words for the record on this occasion: this project brings to a closure the study of the whole esoteric tradition (aka mysticism) and the human emotional workings (aka psychology) that i’ve been involved with since i was a child. in hindsight, i find it rather strange but back then i just started to read up everything i could get hold of about the world of magic and mystery and the insanely intricate workings of the human psyche – i’d say, ever since about the age of 12. leaving aside gaps during more engaging ‘live involvements’ with people (relationships in other words), this quest for knowledge and understanding has usurped my conscience throughout most of what i’ve been doing. ‘truth’ was simply too fascinating and life thus too serious to possibly miss the whole point.

as i confidently say in my pitch on the back, this book, in the process of unfoldment for more than ten years, finally contains the entire wealth of the western tradition right at your fingertips.

hope you cherish and enjoy  :)

london, autumn 2011

CITY OF GOLD

finally new work again. feels great. as i’ve been saying to my friends that ever since finishing the astrology book, i feel like starting my whole life anew. part of this is redefining my stance to art and illustration. somehow the ultimate test and opportunity came along through an inspiring ‘call for entry’ by STERZ, an austrian literature magazine …

we have my ‘old’ style handing over to my ‘new’ style here in this surreal double-spread clash of filmic imagery. colours are not longer needed, at least for the time being. the ink layer and tracing paper (which always reminded me of condoms for some mad reason) are now gone as well, freeing up more time and thus lessening my karmic burden, i guess. what’s left is a more thorough and sensual treatment of lines into the actual matter of paper.

as to the story, i originally had the idea of contrasting an unredeemably depraved babylon with a ‘golden city of jerusalem’ from scriptures. and then there was the association with a woman being like a city, in a way (again we have babylon there and also frank miller/ willl eisner’s ‘spirit’ which also references such gnostic metaphors). it all went from there. hope you like and feel inspired. there’s plenty to look at and to discover for those who are looking and able to see :)

london, autumn 2011

CHILDREN

the matrix booklet is now also available for portable readers on amazon. very exciting. i’ve never found myself having come up with a product that would’ve caused such defense mechanisms in people. but i just love the cute little thing and very much enjoyed re-editing over its details.

looking at it with a bit of the distance that comes with time (i started working on it back in 2004), the underlying content is, i suppose, fairly devastating to all those living in complete denial. as my poet friend paul said the other day, “all the ugliness and ignorance in this world can be brought down to child abuse, really. everything else are just the glittering sparkles on the surface of a lake.”

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it’s £ 1 £/ $/ € (plus vat, strangely enough for ebooks!) depending on where you live. i’ve also used this opportunity to experiment a bit with pricing policies. generally i feel that books shall keep their value, preferrably increase them (they do, as abebooks and some of the specialised vintage market-stalls run by true ‘gnostics’ prove). the tendency to inflate them with ridiculous print runs and distribution and marketing frenzies obviously can’t do justice to the true value of knowledge and wisdom. with ebooks, the situation changes only insofar as there are no print and dsitribution costs but the value of information still stays the same. so to stay about 20 – 50 % below the hardcopy sales price makes a lot of sense to me.

on the other hand, some products are just special and perhaps can be easily priced rather metaphorically in such an electronic environment. that’s why i’ve chosen the 1 ‘unit’ option for now. let’s see …

 

london, 31st may 2011