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 :)
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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
REINHARD SCHLEINING - Read Better 