Antigravity Live

Biblical Angels and Celluloid Fantasies

2009-02-18T18:50:00.012-05:00

Perhaps this is an image of actress Naomi Watts testing her Antigravitarian powers:

Or maybe it's just another altered photo of a Hollywood dream girl.

Either way, why doesn't this image shock? Why does it seem almost natural to portrait a beautiful movie star in a supernatural pose?

Because, I think, we've developed a subconscious tendency to replace, to some degree, the angels of our religious traditions with the celluloid fantasies of today. Certainly it's not that much of a stretch between heavenly messengers who visit earth and earthly luminaries who look just heavenly.

See what I mean? The main difference being, of course, that Ms. Watts is here displaying a lot more leg than your traditional presentations of Biblical angels. Which will strike many observers as a pretty good thing.

Of course, not every winged star possesses such visual charms. I don't mean to pick on Tiny Fey, but . . .

Antigravity Dreams in Contemporary Chinese Cinema

2009-02-18T09:35:00.015-05:00

Humanity's communal dream life is haunted by a sense of flying. Yes, you must be able to remember those nightly visions in which your body has floated free of gravity, letting you soar through the sky with a magical power that's both thrilling and taken for granted.

As has been pointed out by any number of observers, experiencing films shares a good deal in common with dreaming dreams, so it should come as no surprise that floating and flying feature largely in contemporary cinema. For reasons related to their long obsession with mystical martial arts, the Chinese are particularly likely to portray the human body as an Antigravitarian object.

I'll allow stills taken from one recent Chinese martial arts movie to represent and dramatize this trend. The movie is Zhang Yimou's Hero, which was released in 2002 and stars a perfect cast that includes Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Maggie Cheung, Jet Li, and Zhang Ziyi.

Here in Hero, the special effects suggest that you can slough off gravity at will, as you might dead skin, which always makes for a very satisfying fantasy experience:

Unfortunately, fascism appears to triumph at the end of Hero, which mars the movie badly. For fascism is not an Antigravitarian form of government. In fact, it's got the worst kind of gravity written all over it.

A Little Light Doggerel

2009-02-17T11:40:00.011-05:00

If you act like St. Jerome,
beating heart with nasty stone,
you will never be happy,
wretched child of gravity.

Rise up, then, and greet the day,
throwing nasty stone away.
Let your heart and lips both smile.
Play with Antigravity a while!

Fashion World in Hair-Raising Struggle Against Gravity

2009-02-17T10:43:00.011-05:00

Today'sTimes tells the tale
with pictorial precision:

Well, this is a consolation, I suppose.
The stock market may be down,
but feminine hair is enjoying
an unexpected ascendancy,
proving that the struggle
against gravity persists,
even in hard times.

An Infernal Problem

2009-02-16T10:10:00.012-05:00

If death is the most potent manifestation of gravity on earth, then the general resurrection at the end of time is the most potent manifestation of Antigravity. Here is one portrayal of that resurrection by Hieronymus Bosch, as painted in the year 1485:

Of course, the story of the last judgment continues to develop from the moment captured by Bosch, for the reanimated bodies that are here seen rising from their graves have yet to be assigned to their eternal dwelling places in either heaven or hell.

Heaven, as we know, represents the great goal and ultimate reward of all spiritual striving. But what about hell? Isn't it enough that we have to age and die? Do some of us really have to face the prospect of ceaseless damnation?

Alas, in the cruel vision of almost all world religions, some of us do. Yes, hell waits for unrepentant sinners, and for them gravity will carry a force far more malignant than any ever experienced on earth. Down, down, down (it is said) they will go, and from hell there is no exit or return. Thus Hans Memling's painting of the year 1472:

The social psychology behind hell is pretty obvious. Once certain kinds of organized religion gets their hooks into you, they count on your fear of hell to keep you where you are -- in a weak, fearful, and submissive faith. And that's why you should never trust anyone who aims to gain control over your life by exploiting your fear of eternal punishment.

The fact is, our great concern in this lifetime should be to ameliorate earthly hells, not to become obsessed with visions of postmortem infernos.

But doesn't the very existence of earthly hells suggest that visions of Satan's realm represent something very real? I would answer that question by echoing a bit of medieval Christian mystical wisdom: "Nothing burns in hell but the ego."

And when the illusory nature of the ego is finally and universally realized, hell will just have to close up shop. It and all its horrors will -- poof! -- be gone forever.

Now that, by my lights, is the real true faith.

Antigravity Mania

2009-02-15T12:02:00.035-05:00

THIS JUST IN!

Antigravity Mania Sweeps
Judeo-Christian Tradition!

Feast for the Eyes
With Guaranteed Full-Color
Semi-Exclusive Illustrations!

Wide Variety of Pious
Antigravitational Poses!

See Floating Figures
(No Strings Attached) in
Cosmic Drama Stretching From
Creation of World to End of Time!

Key Points in Salvation History
of Planet Earth Represented
in Chronological Order!

No Commercial Interruptions
or Requests for Donations!

(For Best Viewing, Kindly Click on These
Smaller Images to Reveal Larger Images.)

Michelangelo's "Third Day of Creation"
(detail, Sistine Chapel)
Genesis 1: 11-13

Giordano's "Dream of Solomon"
I Kings 3: 5-13

Angeli's "Elijah Taken Up in a Chariot of Fire"
II Kings 2: 11

Giordano's "Fall of the Rebel Angels"
Isaiah 14: 12-15, Revelation 12: 7-8

Lorenzo Lotto's "Anunciation" (detail)
Luke 1: 35 (& elsewhere)

Raphael's "Transfiguration"
Matthew 17: 1-3 (& elsewhere)

Chagall's "White Crucifixion"
(detail, with extra-canonical
figures floating above cross)
Matthew 27 (& elsewhere)

Gruenewald's "Resurrection"
Matthew 28 (& elsewhere)

"Ascension" from Saint Honore
de Thuison Monastery, Abbeville, France
Acts of the Apostles 1:9 (& elsewhere)

Michelangelo's "Conversion of St. Paul" (detail)
Acts of the Apostles 9: 3-8

Charonton's "Coronation of the Virgin"
(unattested in Scripture)

Memling's "St. John the Evangelist
on the Isle of Patmos"
Revelation 1: 9-11 (& throughout)

Bosch's "Last Judgment"
Book of Revelation 20: 11-13
(with a lot of extra nuts & bolts
thrown in for good measure)

That's all for today, folks!

The Sweet Lightness of Valentine's Day

2009-02-14T15:31:00.013-05:00

When covering the Antigravity beat, you're bound to encounter messiahs, angels, gods, and saints, and this being St. Valentine's Day, I thought it wise to trot out the appropriate figure, with Antigravitational angels in attendance.

This image then, painted by Jacobo Bassano in or around 1575, shows St. Valentine baptizing St. Lucilla:

Admittedly, this is not everyone's idea of a romantic interlude, but let it be noticed that the angels hovering over this scene are extremely cupid-like (see my post of 12/25/08 by clicking here), and though Valentine did not, as near as we can tell, lead a sexually indulgent life before embarking on his career as a model of Christian virtue, his feast day, which the world has adopted as a celebration of earthly love, is said to mark the beginning of mating season for birds.

The latter claim holds some local interest for me, since I heard the mourning doves in my lady love's garden start cooing just two days ago--for the first time this year. Such song would suggest that some billing and other intimate behavior have begun to happen here in the borough of Brooklyn, as they may well have done in your neighborhood as well. At least in the northern hemisphere, the days lengthen, and the building of nests and the flowering of crocuses cannot be far away. So thanks again, St. Valentine: You do make a happy marker on our calendars.

As for St. Lucilla, she seems to have been a fairly run-of-the-mill martyr, which doesn't necessarily mean that her soul ascended to heaven in a run-of-the-mill sort of way. Martyrdom, let us remember, was considered a great blessing during Christianity's early centuries, for it guaranteed eternal life in celestial realms. (Does any of this sound familiar?) To reach back a bit to the mourning doves and the lyrics to a sentimental 19th-century song, Lucilla must have been happy to feel her spirit "pluming for flight."

Farewell gravity, hello heaven. What more could you ask for?

P.S. Sweet greetings to lovers everywhere. Please remember that true love is forever kind and courteous, speaking no word in callousness or wrath.

Has Antigravity Been Writ Large in the Sky?

2009-02-13T09:03:00.018-05:00

The year 2001 saw the publication of British journalist Nick Cook's bestselling book The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology.

"Inside" was a bit of an overstatement, since antigravity technology is one of the most classified areas of U.S. government defense-related research, and it is questionable whether anyone is entirely "inside" it, given that its hypothetical advances are shielded in so many ways from so many eyes. Probably not even the president, if he cared to take an interest, would be capable of accessing every corner of whatever super-sensitive developments are taking place in this field.

Nick Cook claims, and it is a hard claim to refute, that the power of antigravity, if harnessed to serve human purposes, would completely revolutionize every area of technological progress, not just our military capabilities.

Altered sources of clean energy would abound. Our methods of constructing tall buildings would utterly change as our present hoisting cranes disappeared from the skyline, to be replaced by antigravitational devices that would float the most massive materials from ground level to upper floors with ridiculous ease.

The shape of our aircraft would be transformed from modified bird forms to perfect disks, and unidentified flying objects would become a thing of the past as our own identifiable saucers filled the sky. Such vehicles would whisk us across our great oceans in minutes and, possibly, open nearby galaxies to our astronauts as antigravitational force was used to propel our spacecraft to the speed of light.

Is there any actual evidence that real breakthroughs have been made in this field? Well, perhaps. Over the years Nick Cook has pursued a number of leads in this almost impenetrable subject area, and if you read his book you'll discover some interesting hypotheses about what might be forthcoming in the field of antigravity. But you must prepare yourself to be more mystified than enlightened.

The state of antigravity studies is revealed by the questions surrounding the photograph above (not from Cook's book), which was apparently taken of the skies over southern England and shows what may or may not be the contrail of a hypersonic vehicle that may or may not employ antigravity technology to push its speed far beyond that of any officially recognized aircraft. What's certain is that the pictured contrail is unlike any that most of us have ever seen, since the engine or engines creating it seem to be pulsing out energy in a way that's entirely different from what we're accustomed to.

This entire area remains highly problematical (you might say Area 51-ish), and our understanding of it is further complicated by the fact that many effects (like magnetic levitation) which mimic antigravitational states be can actually be explained by conventional technology. Still, speculation about scientific concepts of antigravity can be fascinating, and there is nothing in the world that will ever stop it or even slow it down.

When Gravity Dreams

2009-02-12T11:37:00.004-05:00

9/11: The Triumph of Fanaticism, Fire, and Gravity

2009-02-11T18:47:00.020-05:00

But the abyss of gravity shall be
forced to release our dead,
and light supernal shall
shine upon them.

Another Compelling Reason to Become a Devout Antigravitarian

2009-02-10T20:52:00.008-05:00

If the force of gravity should
suddenly double, something like
this would begin to happen:

This particular vision is the English artist
John Martin's as he painted it in 1853.
(Warning: Clicking on this image will
magnify a number of very gory details.)

Love Conquers Gravity

2009-02-10T17:43:00.004-05:00

Yet another image showing how the power
of love can overcome the force of gravity:

The Flight of the Firebird

2009-02-09T07:58:00.012-05:00

Here's another clue about
what's happening on this
sometimes mysterious blog:

(This image is worth clicking on
to examine close up, for it chiefly
consists of a photograph of the rather
gorgeous gilded phoenix that appears
in low relief on the facade of the
main Brooklyn [NY] Public Library.)

From our friends at Wikipedia:

“A phoenix is a mythical bird with a tail of beautiful gold and red plumage (or purple and blue, by some sources. It has a 500 to 1,000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of cinnamon twigs that it then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix or phoenix egg arises, reborn anew to live again. The new phoenix is destined to live as long as its old self. The bird was also said to regenerate when hurt or wounded by a foe, thus being almost immortal and invincible — it is also said that it can heal a person with a tear from its eyes and make them temporarily immune to death. The phoenix is a symbol of fire and divinity . . . [It eventually became] a symbol of Christ representing His resurrection, immortality, and life-after-death.”

"Sunrise" by Giangiorgio Cresponi

A Message of Hope for the Ages

2009-02-08T16:39:00.006-05:00

Arjuna and the Lord Krishna

In the world-renowned Sanskrit scripture known as the Bhagavad Gita, the Lord Krishna, who is Hinduism's supreme manifestation of the deity, extends a message of great hope to his close friend, the warrior Arjuna.

Whenever life on earth grows bleak because ignorant men have filled the nations with violence and greed, Krishna teaches, God is once again incarnated among us as the savior of humanity. Since this is so, darkness can never achieve a decisive victory over the light, and gravity can never overcome the power of Antigravity.

Whether this business about the incarnation of divinity is literally true or not, the symbolic significance of Krishna's words is so sublime that they should never be forgotten.

Yes, the counsel is clear: When things look bleakest, and you are tempted to despair, help is on the way. "Hope springs eternal in the human breast," as Alexander Pope put it. So may it spring in yours!

New Realms of Beauty

2009-02-07T21:20:00.005-05:00

With the advent of technologies
that allow us to prevail over gravity,
we have entered entirely
new realms of beauty.

Higher Vistas and Lower

2009-02-06T12:07:00.012-05:00

Joseph Campbell in Myths to Live By :

"I have noticed . . . when flying -- particularly over oceans -- that the world of sheerly physical nature, of air and cloud and the marvels of light there experienced, is altogether congenial. Here on earth it is to the lovely vegetable nature-world that we respond; there aloft, to the sublimely spatial . . .

". . . with each expansion of the horizon, from the troglodytal cave to the Buddhist temple on the hilltop -- and on now to the moon -- there has been, as there must inevitably be, not only an expansion of consciousness, in keeping with ever-widening as well as deepening insights into the nature of Nature (which is of one nature with ourselves), but also an enrichment, refinement, and general melioration of the conditions of human physical life."

A little commentary on Campbell:

What this means is that our minds are expanding whether we want them to or not, and so our more conventional thoughts are just as doomed to obsolescence as the worldview of medieval people. There is, therefore, no immortality in going along with the crowd and lazily believing what everyone else believes.

If you would avoid becoming a ridiculous little footnote to a worldview that is disappearing even as you continue to dedicate your life to it, if you would avoid being erased and nullified by the continuing evolution of human consciousness, then you have no choice but to rise up above the gravitational pull of the mass culture of your time -- you have to choice but to embrace Antigravity.

2009-02-06T11:49:00.006-05:00

The Great Seal of
the State of Antigravity

In order for the eye to focus
and see far, it must
detach itself and
rise upward from the
gravitationally fixed base below.

To Fly or to Die

2009-02-04T19:39:00.014-05:00

Yes, sometimes it's actually that stark,
the choice between maintaining the power of
flight or perishing with the weight of gravity
pressing down on your useless wings,
as we can learn from the story of
the feathered but flightless dodo bird.

The dodo evolved from a normal flying pigeon
and settled into flightlessness because
it encountered no natural predators
after it had flown across the Indian Ocean and
taken up residence on the island of Mauritius,
which is found off the east coast of Africa.

Dodos tended to become overweight,
with adult birds eventually tipping
the scales at around 50 pounds.

In spite of that, dodos were doing pretty
well until some unnatural predators in
the form of dogs, pigs, and cats eventually
arrived in the company of the Portuguese
and Dutch sailors who reached Mauritius
for the first time in the 16th and 17th centuries.

No chance then to fly away to live another day!
Instead, with its limited locomotion and its
offspring vulnerable in nests on the ground,
the dodo's eventual doom was sealed.

Not even its inclusion in Lewis Carroll's
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
could bring the dodo back to life,
but the bones of the birds are still
being discovered and studied,
so that, although the dodo is extinct,
we know more about it today than
at any other time in history.

Unfortunately, that's not much of a
consolation prize when you've lost
the battle to survive. If I'd been
a dodo, I'd rather that my lineage
remain alive, and my choice would
have been not to die but to embrace
the Antigravitational solution,
which is to fly, yes, to fly.

Open Skies and Wonder

2009-02-01T12:07:00.007-05:00

One reader writes:

The eloquent little cartoon
in the corner of this message
brought to my mind something
that William Blake wrote in a poem
called "The Marriage of Heaven & Hell":

". . . man has closed himself up,
till he sees all things through
narrow chinks of his cavern."

Sadly, being closed up is pretty
much the human condition
in a commercial era like the one
that we inhabit, so it should come
as no surprise when we yield
to the force of gravity and find
ourselves missing a sense
of closeness to God.

How, then, can we open back up?
How can we restore ourselves
to our birthright, which is to
experience the joy of living in
an endlessly fascinating universe?

In order to do that, we have to notice
that life is going on everywhere
around us, and that most of it
is sweet and even astonishing
in its richness and spontaneity.

When we widen our vision,
we see open skies and wonder,
and we understand that the dread
and loneliness that we sometimes
feel is only a mood that
overtakes us when we lose
the power of spiritual vision.

Fortunately, the psyche tends
to be a self-correcting system,
and sooner or later we begin
to remember that our blessings
far outweigh our troubles.

If I had to reduce this bit
of encouragement to several sentences
that would fit on a note card,
I'd guess I'd come up
with something like this:

And maybe if we rallied our forces
and shook ourselves awake,
we'd quit staring at our knees
and start to focus on something
that's far more interesting
than our smaller selves
and their earthly cares.

Such things abound--you know?

Of course you know!

The First & Second Births

2009-01-31T09:33:00.004-05:00

Giotto's vision of St. Francis
ascending into heaven:

The first birth is into gravity.

The second birth is out of gravity, into Antigravity.

For gravity is of the flesh,

but Antigravity is of the spirit.

Make More Room on Your Plateau

2009-01-30T08:27:00.009-05:00

You gain spiritual power

by understanding and accepting
the tenets of Antigravity,
but gaining spiritual power
entails grave responsibilities,
and you must work harder
than ever before to maintain
your center and help others
to rise to the same plateau,
to enjoy the same new vistas,
that you have yourself reached.

This is the very reason why
religious teachers have always
stressed the importance of
a disciplined approach
to spiritual striving.

These teachers tell us that
feeling a new lightness in your life,
a sense that you've risen
above your habitual problems,
is not enough, for your sense
of transcendence may be more
the result of the inflation of your ego
than your soul's connection to
the great truths of the spirit,
and inflated egos exist mainly
to become deflated egos.

We all know about adolescent-
type personalities who float away
into their own private worlds because
they have little or no regard for others.

But Antigravity is about
the kind of transcendence
that never fails to keep
the interests of
other people
in mind.

To put it in a more graphic way:

If you're floating because
you've got a big head, a big ego,
then you shouldn't be floating.

If you're up, up and away
because your hard work
has raised you high
above the others, then
by all means float on!

Upward to Imagination

2009-01-29T12:52:00.009-05:00

With some help from the sword
of young David, the head of
Goliath prepares to surrender
to the force of gravity
(as painted by Michelangelo on the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel, Vatican City):

We like stories that have suspense.
Such stories keep us suspended,
up in the air, eager to hear more.
Such stories free us
from gravity,
allowing us to float
up into the realm
of the imagination,
where all things
are possible,
up there
in the
air.

Barack Obama, Antigravitarian

2009-01-28T16:44:00.007-05:00

Barack Obama, it's safe to say, is
America's first Antigravitational president.

What a perfect moment for such a man to appear.
After being weighed down for
eight years by gross misgovernment,
we need all the lift that Obama can give us!

The Lazarus Effect

2009-01-28T12:41:00.006-05:00

It's very fine to speak
triumphantly of Antigravity,
yet the question of death,
(you may want to point out)
still looms like an open grave
at our feet, emitting dank vapors
and muffled shrieks of terror.
No darkness could possibly
be more mystifying, or
more vexatious.

Still, there is consolation
in ten thousand images
that show the power of death,
great as it is, being overcome
by the greater power of life.

So don't be afraid.
Rest in the good hope
that you will escape
the gravity of whatever
confronts you as you lie
on your deathbed.
If my hunch
(which echoes a huge
majority of human opinion)
is correct, then death is the
greatest Antigravitational
phenomenon of all.

"The Death of the Good Old Man" by William Blake

Gravity's Crueler Cuts

2009-01-26T23:56:00.012-05:00

Here are some lines from
Robert Frost's poem, "Provide, Provide!"

The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag,
Was once the beauty Abishag,

The picture pride of Hollywood.
Too many fall from great and good
For you to doubt the likelihood.

Die early and avoid the fate.
Or if predestined to die late,
Make up your mind to die in state.

Make the whole stock exchange your own!
If need be occupy a throne,
Where nobody can call you crone.

Think gravity's not your enemy,
that your fate's different from Frost's Abishag?

Then consider another example of fallen pride,
Brigitte Bardot before and after
an extra fifty years of gravity:

And then there's an old guy
named Arnold Schwarzenegger,
who was once as tall and muscled
as Conan the Barbarian:

Sad to say, even his carefully colored
hair can't completely hide the ravages of time.

Which is not to neglect the fact that
some younger people are also feeling
gravity's less smiling aspects:

As for finding a throne or
making the whole stock exchange
your own--forget about it!
In the long haul, the only answer
to the assaults of gravity is to cultivate
a soul, preferably an eternal one.
In short, embrace the Antigravitational
solution for all its worth.
Because, like it or not, that's what
life is really all about.

Out of the Dust

2009-01-26T23:40:00.009-05:00

Over the course of
our lives, which tend
to grow longer with
each passing decade,
the great existential
problem for most of us
is not mental anguish
but the phenomenon of
physical pain, which can
overtake us on any day of
our lives and make us feel
as though we should never
have been born.

This recognition
is not a joyous one,
but its does demand
our attention.

Soon or later
the body betrays
the Spirit within it.
That is why it's so vital
to develop Antigravitational
capacity, to rise out of the dust
that the body is slowly becoming, and
to find a new home for our hearts and minds
in a cosmos that God has been building
(we hope) to host us for eternity.

Ghost Story

2009-01-26T08:16:00.009-05:00

Space, time, and gravity will all fall away--
it matters not how deeply trapped
we are in them today.

The English war poet Wilfred Owen
shortly before his death in late 1918

While Wilfred Owen was serving in the trenches as a Royal Army infantry officer during World War I--and simultaneously winning great fame as a young war poet--his brother Harold became a naval officer. Harold was aboard a Royal Navy ship in the Atlantic off Africa when he heard in November of 1918 that the war had come to an end, but at first he found no relief in the good news: "It bothered me that I could not, to myself, account for my restless unease. I felt horribly flat."

He quickly recovered his spirits, however: "I stared out over the incredibly blue expanse of glittering sea, and perhaps something in the limitless stretch of water and sky affected me. I realized with a surge of happiness that the war had not broken my own family. My brother Wilfred must be all right now; he was safe, and so was I."

Wilfred Owen may well have been safe, but the place that provided him with safety was no longer a part of the reality that the living share from minute to minute and day to day. Shortly before the war ended, he had been killed by the Germans at the front, a fact that did not, apparently, stop his spirit from traveling through the ether to visit Harold Owen on his ship.

Harold carefully recorded his experience of ghostly visitation:

"I had gone down to my cabin to write some letters. I drew aside the door curtain and stepped inside. I felt shock run through me with appalling force. I did not rush towards him but walked jerkily into the cabin--all limbs stiff and slow to respond. Looking at him I spoke quietly, 'Wilfred, how did you get here?'"

For there Wilfred was, sitting in his brother's chair at his brother's desk in his brother's shipboard cabin. Harold Owen recounted the scene with such detail and clarity that it seems impossible to dismiss it as a dream:

"He did not rise and I saw that he was involuntarily immobile, but his eyes which had never left mine were alive with the familiar look of trying to make me understand; when I spoke his whole face broke into his sweetest and most endearing dark smile.

"I felt no fear--I had not when I first drew my door curtain aside and saw him there; only exquisite mental pleasure at thus beholding him. All I was conscious of was a sensation of enormous shock and profound astonishment that he should be here in my cabin . . .

"I must have turned my eyes away from him; when I looked back my cabin chair was empty. I felt another power in senseless, absolute loss. I knew with certainty that Wilfred was dead."

Harold wasn't able to confirm the paranormal perception that his brother had been killed until days later when his ship arrived in England. But dead? Isn't "dead" a rather strange word to use in this context? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Wilfred Owen had slipped the bonds of flesh and gravity and found the freedom to move through time and space at will, rushing along the spiritual pathways of his compassion to bring a message of conquest over death to those whom he loved best?

The Lift of Love

2009-01-25T12:08:00.005-05:00

Cupid is a kind of angel,
though an angel that's more
closely associated with the world
and the flesh than those fully fledged
creatures who descend to us from above.

This little fellow's lower status
is suggested by the stubbiness
of his wings and the fact that
he never seems to stray far
from the affairs of our lower anatomy.

Nevertheless, it would be hard
to exaggerate his importance.
Archangels like Michael and Gabriel
help guide the destiny of us all
by fighting wars in heaven
and announcing earthshaking events,
but it is Cupid who keeps
the human race going.

And in the experience of most of us,
there's no Antigravitational force that lifts
the human heart as high and as fast as the kind
of love that is intensified by the inclusion
of a powerful sexual component.

Cupid rules because
love validates life,
and if you have no love
your life remains unvalidated.

The Love That Is Not Love

2009-01-25T11:46:00.006-05:00

The love that is full of light is the hope and glory of the world. It is the love that comes freighted with gravity and egotism that is destructive, the love that is no real love, the love in the name of which endless crimes have been committed.

Henry Fuseli, "The Nightmare," 1781

Sunrise with Om

2009-01-25T11:27:00.005-05:00

When the power of Antigravity is enclosed in a single sound, that sound is symbolized by this Sanskrit letter-word:

There is a special chanting pronunciation for this word, a deep and drawn-out drone that can be represented, if a little ridiculously, by this string of letters in English: Ahhhooohhmmm.

People who repeat this sound correctly or learn to chant mantras in which "Om" holds a central place are well on the way to rising to the highest
realm of spiritual experience.

Om is, in short, a proven gravity-buster, for it was the sound that hummed through the primordial universe before gravity came into being and everything was still light.

Riding the Winds

2009-01-24T21:32:00.012-05:00

While previous civilizations

rode the winds in their imaginations . . .

(Leonardo's sketch for a flying machine, around 1490)

. . . we ride the winds in reality.

But that doesn't mean that we're allowed
to shut down our imaginations.
No, now more than ever,
we need to experience
the pleasures of mental flight.

Henry Fuseli, "Ariel," around 1805

Don't Worry About the Darkness

2009-01-24T21:05:00.010-05:00

The very remarkable filmmaker
David Lynch in his book entitled
Catching the Big Fish:
Meditation, Consciousness, & Creativity :

"Negativity is like darkness. So what is darkness? You look at darkness, and you see that it's really nothing: It's the absence of something. You turn on the light, and darkness goes.

"But sunlight, for instance, doesn't get rid of negativity. It gets rid of darkness, but not negativity. So what light can you turn on that removes negativity the way sunlight removes darkness? It's the light of pure consciousness, of the Self--the light of unity.

"Don't fight the darkness. Don't even worry about the darkness. Turn on the light and the darkness goes. Turn up that light of pure consciousness: Negativity goes.

"Now you say, 'That sounds so sweet.' It sounds too sweet. But it's a real thing."

The Return of the Repressed

2009-01-23T19:33:00.006-05:00

Antigravity is
the return of the repressed
in an age of materialism:
"It will flame out," will flame out.

In spite of the heavy spirit
of the age in which we find ourselves,
Antigravity isn't particularly
shy about manifesting itself.
Strike a match,
you will see the heat rise.

Remember:
The power of Antigravity dwells
in your heart and mind like
fire dwells in a match.
All you must do
is strike it,
and the dark
chill of an impersonal
world will be driven far away.

Remember also:
Once you have kindled
this fire, you must be quick
to share it with others,
lest the flame die while
still being born.

Fire from Heaven

2009-01-23T18:35:00.009-05:00

Lines from "God's Grandeur"
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil . . .
Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil . . .

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

With Wings or Without?

2009-01-22T19:55:00.000-05:00

From the beginnings of civilization and back into prehistory, divine beings were often depicted with wings to show that, like the birds, they were creatures of the sky who observed humans from on high and could hide and frolic among the clouds. Their wings also allowed them to move rapidly from place to place, which explains why one devotee could experience their divine presence at one location and another devotee, far away, could apprehend the same divinity only a short time later.

However, in the Western tradition God's powers are seen to be so overwhelmingly great that he defies gravity at will, as dramatized on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Michelangelo fresco known as "The Creation of the Sun and Moon." Our Father, according to this vision, is definitely in heaven, but he needs no bird-like appendages to keep him there; wings are for lesser beings like angels, not the Lord of the Universe. Obviously, this article of faith has evolved far beyond the one that likened the gods to glorified eagles.

The absolute difference between human beings who are earthbound and a transcendent God who floats about in ultra-reality at will is a reminder that we should cultivate humility. Michelangelo's magnificently famous "Creation of Adam," also on the ceiling of the Sistine, may reveal the Creator and his human creation as approximately the same size, but there's no question about which one claims immortality, keeps celestial companions, and possesses the life-giving touch--and which is an utterly dependent creature without clothing, shelter, full consciousness, or, as yet, a single companion.
>

A Change in Your Day

2009-01-22T19:51:00.000-05:00

A little Antigravity can
make a great change in your day.

What's Wrong with Gravity?

2009-01-21T10:40:00.000-05:00

Do you think it's strange to diss gravity,
to make it the villain of a universal melodrama?
Do you wonder what could be wrong with the
gravitational glue that holds the universe together?
If so, you haven't considered black holes.

Blacks holes are the perfect symbols of everything that denies us life and freedom because their gravity is so intense that not even light can escape from their overwhelmingly massive interiors. All things that approach them, even entire galaxies, are sucked into oblivion, into an extinction beyond the darkness of death. They provide the best example of why we are and ought to be Antigravitarians.

Black holes are far and away the most formidable and frightening things in the universe. They are the ultimate in death imagery, and they represent the unfathomable disaster that occurs when gravity goes unchecked by Antigravity, which is the force that holds the universe in balance and allows us to live and not die.

Closer to home (which is to say, our home planet), gravity erodes and eventually destroys entire civilizations. While the 19th-century painting of the destruction of Sodom (below) by the English artist John Martin makes the end of an ancient city look like the work of a nuclear holocaust, the actual historic process that reduces entire civilizations to stark stones and dust and ashes is gradual yet still phantasmagorical, and the ultimate result of decadence and defeat is dramatized around the world by the presence of splendid but desolate ruins where there were once thriving metropolises.

Jerash, Jordan (Photo by Robert Teague)

These are the ruins of a Roman city
that once flaunted its high roofs at the sky.
Thus the power of gravity,
of which we need to be aware,
of which we need to beware.
:

Lighten & Rise

2009-01-21T10:26:00.013-05:00

If you ever need proof of humanity's distrust of gravity, consider the billions of dollars that Americans spend annually on weight-reduction products.

We use terms like "beer belly," but the real force that presses down on the extra weight that we carry around from consuming beer or comfort food or sweets or whatever is gravity.

Losing weight is not just a matter of making ourselves more attractive. "Slenderizing," becoming slender, is a mass cult, and reveals the central human desire to lighten and rise. Fat may help us float when we're swimming, but the ocean that we'd really like to be more comfortable in is the ocean of air.

Think of all the young athletes and dancers you've seen whose feet have kissed the earth goodbye, whose lithe bodies rise in long, lovely arcs. Yeah, to float like that, to lose enough weight to float like that. Yeah, look homeward, angels.

The rest of us just have to suck it up!

On the Fly

2009-01-20T22:38:00.000-05:00

Eternity is Antigravitational.

The opposite of eternity is time & space,
which is ruled by gravity and can only
express eternity in fits & starts.

Anything that possesses eternity
possesses Antigravity and has
a tendency to rise up & float away.

You must catch it on the fly!

Uplift at the Corners

2009-01-20T22:31:00.000-05:00

We strike another mortal blow

against gravity every time we lift

the corners of our mouth in a smile.

Admiring the World

2009-01-20T21:56:00.000-05:00

When down under gravity,
consider these uplifting quotations:

"Stand up straight. Admire the world."
--John Cheever

"Keep a green tree in your heart and
perhaps a singing bird will nest in it."
--Chinese proverb

"Self-pity is not box-office."
Hollywood proverb

"We have no right to have no hope,

because if we have no hope,
there is no hope."
--Jacques Monot

"Noble deeds and hot baths are
the best cures for depression."
--Dodie Smith

"True serenity comes
after knowledge of pain."
--Marya Mannes

"Anything awful makes me laugh.
I misbehaved once at a funeral."
--Charles Lamb

"No life that breathes with human breath
has ever truly longed for death."
--Lord Tennyson

"Surviving meant being born over and over."
--Erica Jong

"It's never too late to have a happy childhood."
--Tom Robbins

What Antigravity Is & Is Not

2009-01-19T18:37:00.000-05:00

Antigravity is a mystery,

but it is not mysticism.

For unlike the revelations
that are accorded to mystics,
Antigravity can readily be
conveyed in words and images,
all sorts of words and images.

Antigravity is able to continue

one of the world's greatest traditions
because the Word still dwells
among us and lifts us up in spite
of our dismal materialism.

The promise of this blog is that it can raise us into a realm of spirit that we haven't glimpsed in a very long time (perhaps not since childhood), for Antigravity is neither a fantasy nor an illusion.

Its light and hope possess more reality than the earth beneath our feet, and though we may be tempted to believe that magic has escaped from the world, humanity can radiate the supernatural and the beautiful as much now as ever before, and with a little effort on our part we can rise above gravity--even if our efforts are confined to reading the words on this screen and absorbing the lessons of the images presented here.

Antigravity Live

2009-01-18T22:44:00.000-05:00

Premise One:

There is an illness
that runs riot around the world,
breaking hearts & ravishing lives
as it goes, & that illness is
what we call depression.

Premise Two:

Depression is caused by
what we may term "emotional
gravity," which is the kind
of gravity that this blog
chiefly sets out to disperse
& dispel, so that we may
once again live & breathe
without the weight of the world
sitting crushingly on our shoulders,
so that we may once again
breathe as freely as we were
meant to breathe.

Premise Three:

Darkness is dispelled as
the lights come up & a voice says:

Whatever it is that you deeply believe in,
here is something new to energize your faith,
something new to lift you up above the dread
of your days and unite you with your true self.
Announcing the slow, sweet and continuing
revelation of the mystery that dwells
in the name and reality of Antigravity.

A mystery, then. And that is good,
because mysteries intrigue.
But how do you get the hang of this mystery?

Just one thing, really, is required:
You have to keep coming back,
back here, back to this blog.