#3 - MED - Guidelines for decoding the Mandela effect
Hello once again to each and all. You've reached John Lash on Mandela Effect decoded. Now let's see if I can reach you.
This is talk number three in the Gnostic investigation that I'm proposing. And I'm calling this talk “Guidelines for Decoding the Mandela Effect”. To start I'd like to draw your attention to a new feature that I've added to my website, metahistory.org. Generally speaking, links to a talk or documentary on YouTube are presented in the description below, and I will of course follow that normal protocol. But I've added a page to MetaHistory entitled the tracking page and with this page you will be able to track the whole course of this investigation talk by talk.
So I will put in the description each time at the top of the description the link to the tracking page. You can actually click on that and read the tracking page if you like while you're listening to the talk. The talks are numbered and they will appear in chronological sequence on the tracking page. So you can scan through them or you can pull up any particular numbered talk by simply clicking to the number on the index at the beginning of the page.
Also, I'd have you note that there's a link on the page to my mailing list, so if you'd like to be on that, just sign on. Now, I'm not going to go into further explanation right now. Probably talk number four will be an orientation talk describing how to follow this investigation, how to stay on board with me, and that would be a very brief talk in which I would outline the structure that I have set up so that you can participate in this investigation. The tracking page is a tool designed for just that purpose.
You will note on the tracking page in the entries that I've posted so far that I refer to corrections I've made where I've misspoken, as occasionally happens, or I've said, for instance, in talk number two, New Earth Catalog, when I meant to say Whole Earth Catalog. So you can consider the contents of the tracking page to be something like study notes to accompany these talks.
Coherence and continuity are extremely important in the success of this investigation. I would be really pleased to keep you on board with me as closely as I can as we proceed. So I will do a short talk on orientation to the tools and structure I've set up to assist you in following this investigation.
Also I'd like to point out or to introduce a couple of topics that will come up soon in the breakdown phase of this investigation. One of these is Flat Earth Theory and the other is the general topic of conspiracy theories, for instance, the conspiracy theories surrounding 9-11 or the assassination of JFK. I'd like to advise you, and I really mean this in strong terms, I'd like to advise you not to confound and mix up the study of the Mandela Effect with either Flat Earth Theory or other long standing conspiracy theories.
The investigation needs to proceed independently on its own terms. There is nothing to be gained by bringing in flat-earth theory. And, as far as conspiracies go, the Mandela effect is not a conspiracy. It is a paranormal event. It is an inexplicable event happening in the lives and minds and memories of many people in the world and happening as well in the medium of the Internet.
So it is a real phenomenon, a baffling phenomenon with paranormal features, and it does not need to be approached by any reference whatsoever to conspiracy theory. Now I know that the footage of the JFK assassination has been proposed as an example of the Mandela effect. I will address that particular issue on its own terms when the moment comes. So thank you for your patience.
So with that said, let's go directly to the topic of this talk, and if you like, you can go down to the description, click on tracking page, scroll down, and open up the text on MetaHistory which corresponds to this talk, Decoding the Mandela Effect, a Gnostic Investigation by John Lash introduction. Now I'm not going to go over every single point in this introduction. I'd like to concentrate on a couple of highlights, but I will lightly scan it and you can follow along on the screen following the text if you'd like to do so.
You notice that I begin with a visual cue or clue showing an illustration of a magic mirror. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? This of course is a much discussed Mandela effect, one of the first that I encountered, perhaps one of the first that many of you have encountered. And so the dialogue from that film changes to Magic Mirror on the Wall. Of course, it's not only dialogue from the film, it's also dialogue going all the way back to the, what, beginning of the 19th century. Does it go back to the famous collection of Grimm's fairy tales? I think so. So you can find residue, as it's called, or evidence of this line in textual material that's over a hundred years old and of course you also find it in the cinematic evidence as it were.
I'll just make a little comment in passing about the mirror. You may recall that I said that part of the Gnostic education in how your mind works involves a study and even a mastery or command of the three attentions. This Gnostic intel on the three attentions is a product, you could say, it is the fruition of Gnostic practices undertaken today. You won't actually find the three attentions outlined and described in surviving Gnostic materials. You will, however, find them discussed in the works of Carlos Castaneda and you will find a link to that association, to that allusion, on the tracking page.
Castaneda spoke of the first attention, the second attention, and the third attention. What I've been able to do over the last ten years, working sometimes alone, working sometimes with shamanic apprentices, is to expand the definition of the three attentions and to describe how they operate both in ordinary and non-ordinary states of awareness. How does all this relate to the mirror illustration at the head of this essay?
Well, the third attention, which is the most mysterious of the three, is also called the mirroring attention. The second attention is called the dreaming attention. And the first attention is simply called the first attention. So what are examples of these three attentions?
Well, it's simple and easy to find examples because in fact you are using these three attentions all the time. They have been given to you in the natural design of the human animal. For instance, you use the first attention when you observe anything, when you make a list of groceries and then you go to the grocery store and you walk down the aisles with a basket and you check the list and you pick out the things that are on the list. You are using your first attention. It's simply the power of observation.
Second attention, or the dreaming attention, is the power of fantasy and imagination. So when you are perhaps driving to the supermarket to buy your groceries, but you are thinking about going on vacation in Hawaii, you picture a beach, you picture a place say that you already know and you fantasize about going there and you picture yourself doing things there. You're using the second attention, which is called the dreaming attention because it operates in dream life. And I would point out a crucial element of Gnostic Intel, that your memory is a sub-function of the second attention.
Memory is actually a sub-function of imagination. So, for instance, if you're driving to the supermarket to get your groceries and you're using your first attention to stay on the road, and you're going to use it when you get in the supermarket to pick out the things on your list, right? You may be remembering on your way there, you may be recalling an incident that happened to you when you were in high school. You might be for some reason recalling an old girlfriend or boyfriend you had. Something that happened, either externally or internally, cued you to that memory. It cued up the memory in your memory circuit. You see that? There has to be a trigger or stimulus that acts on the second attention cues the second attention to start running a memory but actually when you're remembering something you're actually reconstructing it with the power of imagination.
Now the human creature can do many many things with the power of imagination, fantasies of a positive and negative kind and also create a wide range of creative acts. So the uses of the second attention or dreaming attention are vast. But when the second attention is dedicated solely to memory, then it turns into memory. So you can say that memory is a mode or sub-function of the second attention.
The third attention you use all the time as well without actually knowing that you use it. It's just as if you turned on, you turned the key in the ignition of your car, the generator has to act in order to start your car. But you don't know how the generator works, yet you're using the generator to start your car.
Likewise, you use the third attention frequently, it has some deeply mysterious aspects, but the most obvious way that you use it is in what can be called kinesthetic translation. An example of kinesthetic translation, which simply means thought interaction, is playing the piano. Now suppose you come home with your groceries, you've been driving in the car on the way to the store when you used your first attention, you indulged in a fantasy about going to Hawaii with your second attention, and on the way back you remembered an old girlfriend or boyfriend so you engaged the memory function of your second attention and then when you get home and you put your groceries away, using your first attention to be sure that you put them in places where they are routinely kept, because the first attention has an ordering function, well then you can sit down and relax and maybe go over to the piano and play a piece of Chopin.
You sit down on the piano and in front of you is the musical score. It is symbols written on a page. You sit down and then you begin to play, to move your hands across the keyboard of the piano. That is kinesthetic translation. You are translating the symbols and the musical score that you see in front of you into action. The translation of thought and language into action is the function of the third attention. Why is it called the mirroring attention?
Well, quite simply because the movement of your hands on the piano mirrors the musical score in front of you. But obviously it's not the kind of mirroring you get when you stand in front of a mirror in the bathroom. It's a translation of one thing into another, but the two things mirror each other. The motion of your hands mirrors the musical score, and the musical score mirrors the motion of your hands. So that's a brief introduction to the three attentions which come into play vividly and intimately in the workings of the Mandela Effect.
So if you know how the three attentions are working, then you can see what the Mandela Effect is doing directly. If you don't know, then it will be difficult for you to comprehend how the effect is actually operating on you and in the world at large. Proceeding on with a scan of the written text corresponding to this talk, you'll see that I introduce the subject of the Archons, and there's a link there to some material on MetaHistory which describes in detail these alien mind parasites. Now, hold on to your booties here for a moment, folks. I don't want anyone to go off the handle and assume that I am ascribing the Mandela Effect to the Archons. You can absolutely rule that out at the beginning.
But it is important to know about the Archons. I'll talk about them from time to time, as they are relevant to this investigation. I was the individual, by the way, who introduced the term Archon to the Internet around fifteen years ago, and I would simply point something out to you, a cautionary note. When I introduced Archon, I used the background of the Gnostic teaching derived from the Greek Coptic materials of Nag Hammadi and the sacred narrative of the Gnostic schools or mysteries as the story frame to explain who the Archons are.
Consequently, over many years, the term archon has been picked up by people, and in most cases today, in almost all cases, unfortunately, in my opinion, people who use the term Archon do not refer it back to the story frame or to the background and foundation of the Gnostic materials where the term originates. And that's unfortunate, so I would warn you about that. I don't know, has anyone yet blamed the Mandela effect on the Archons?
I haven't heard that yet. I suppose it's inevitable that someone will. There are certainly a good number of people, mainly in the Christian community, who are blaming the Mandela effect on Satan or Lucifer. In this investigation we'll have occasion to look very carefully at the various attributions to the cause of the Mandela effect, and of course, it’s obvious to many of you that some people think it’s the work of the devil himself, for instance, changing the holy word of God, changing the scriptures, or of Lucifer, and the terms Lucifer and the devil are often confounded and confused.
So, if you are so inclined, because this subject is crucial to the orientation to this investigation, if you are so inclined, go to Mythofrenia on Metahistory.org and listen to some of the talks about the Great Deception and about the Gnostic clarification of the true identity of Satan on the one hand and Lucifer on the other. I'm not going to reiterate any of that here because it's my intention to keep these talks brief each time, but I will point out the essential purpose of those talks. There are three talks regarding Lucifer, three talks regarding Satan in the ten-pack on Mithophrenia.
The purpose of those talks was to enable you to delete files in your mind that are completely corrupted and are no longer of any value. Just about everything you've ever been told about Satan and Lucifer is wrong. Just about everything you’ve been told about the supernatural is wrong. Now that's quite a claim to make, isn't it? But hold on just for a second, stick with me just for a moment.
If it is true, if it turns out to be true that the Mandela effect is actually due to a supernatural agency or supernatural cause, then wouldn't it make sense that your mind needs to be clear to comprehend what the supernatural really is? If the Mandela effect is bringing you into direct contact with something supernatural, if something supernatural is reaching you, signaling you by this phenomenon, then you would be well advised to clear from your mind all corrupt files, information, belief systems, inferences, references and associations of Lucifer and Ahriman and Satan, Ahriman being another name for Satan, which are not correct and will not serve you in the course of this investigation.
So I put, I laid down, you could say, a course as a foundation course which could benefit you for orientation to this investigation we're undertaking. So proceeding now to scan over the written material, there's one paragraph worth reading which introduces some essential terminology. I will be introducing some terminology in the course of this investigation and it starts right here.
My studies show that a small sampling about 10 to 15 percent of all presumed cases of the Mandela effect are genuine to the extent that they can be proven to show how the effect works and even what causes it. Please consider that qualification closely. I do not mean to imply that the vast majority of cases are not genuine and should be disregarded. Not at all. As I will explain, the premium cases, which is 5 to 10, maybe 15 percent of the total inventory so far, carry a message of universal scope, directing the human mind toward a transcendent perspective of life in this world.
While the others and the vast majority have the function of capturing human attention but not directing it in any specific manner. I call these two kinds of cases premium and propitious. Propitious means giving or indicating a good chance of success, favorable.
If you notice the propitious cases, you have a good chance of learning to detect the premium cases. So more on this crucial distinction as the investigation unfolds. So to translate all that in plain English, just imagine that you are in a room somewhere, this scene often happens in films, you're locked in a prison somewhere, you're locked in a dungeon cell. But there's somebody in the cell beside you and they want to get in touch with you so that you can both escape. So what do they do?
Well, at some point you hear knocking on the wall of the cell. You hear someone knocking with their hand or with a piece of wood and you hear this tapping. That's a signal that gets your attention. That's a propitious signal. Now, the individual in the other cell, let's say, has something to say to you, but they cannot communicate with you merely by tapping on the wall. There has to be some system of communication. So, suppose they use Morse code.
If I tap randomly on the wall of the cell next to yours to get your attention, that's one thing. Then you know I'm there. Then we're engaged. Something interesting is happening. But if I tap in Morse code, that's even better. That's premium. That means that we can communicate with each other. So some of the instances of the Mandela effect, which are genuine, can be compared to tapping on the wall simply to get your attention. Other instances can be compared to tapping that carries a signal or a code.
So moving on through the text and rounding out this talk, you see that I cover a couple of well-known instances of the effect. The Sally Field, Sally Field's signal, let's call it a signal, okay, and the Laurel and Hardy's signal. Of the many examples that I could discuss at the beginning of this little adventure of ours, I choose these because they illustrate the strange feature, a strange feature of the Mandela effect, which has to do with the simultaneous presentation of text and talk, written material and spoken material in which the effect occurs only in the spoken material and not in the written material. Have you noted that?
For instance, I describe at some length here the uh... another fine mess you've gotten me into or is it another nice mess. Well this is a well-known line from the those comedians that comedic team Laurel and Hardy and it's remarkable to investigate this incident of the effect because it shows that the spoken record can be changed while the written record is unchanged.
So, if you go back and listen to some Laurel and Hardy skits you will find the line, it's another nice mess you've gotten me into. Whereas many people remember it as having been another fine mess. Well some diligent investigator, as I show here, found a US patent request filed in 1993 to register another fine mess for release on t-shirts.
You have to say that the diligence of some people investigating this effect is remarkable. So this is called, as you know, residue. So, there is textual residue in the form of a US patent document proving that the line was another fine mess. But actually the recording as you hear it today says another nice mess.
Similarly you'll find with Sally Field or Fields the same ambiguity, the same strange use of the textual and the spoken material to reveal the effect. I believe that in the case of Sally Field, there are clips from late night interview programs in which she has introduced as Sally Fields. And that's how I remember it, that is the occluded memory. I'll explain this term in more detail in the next talk. Sally Fields is the occluded memory and Sally Field without the S is the way her name is found in the current record.
But likewise with Sally Field or Fields, there is a discrepancy between the recorded residue and the written residue. And this is a remarkable fact of the Mandela effect. It's a significant fact that tells something about the way the effect is operating. There's a great deal to be learned from a close study of these variations between textual and spoken material. Okay, fine, I'm winding up here.
I would have you note my qualification, namely, quote, I do not imply that the Mandela effect is largely due to digital manipulation, either of written text or of recorded voice, or some inconceivably baroque form of IT trickery. Not at all. But I do advise caution on those instances where it may be falsified in this manner.
So there's an exercise in scrutiny and discernment contained in the study of the Mandela effect. The necessity of distinguishing genuine from erroneous or falsified cases is paramount to this study, and you will see that I am as careful as I can possibly be in that regard as the investigation proceeds.
So now finally I'd like to come around to the main point, the consummating point of this introduction in closing this talk. I advise you to consider that there is a saying that goes along with the investigation of the Mandela effect. It's a saying that's commonly used in the circle of my friends and students and those who follow my elaboration of the Gnostic material and other matters derived from experimental mysticism and exploration of the paranormal. All the clues in the world don't count if you don't know what crime has been committed. I talk a lot about cuing and cluing, off and on, all through this investigation.
And what I would like to do in concluding this talk is leave you with five clear points resonating in your mind. Reading from the introduction you will find on metahistory.org. I think a proper introduction requires an orientation to the subject matter based on a clear definition of purpose. That way we can be on the same page going in. Do you really want to know what causes the Mandela effect and how it works? If so, I will assume that you really mean to learn its purpose. To that end, an initial working definition of the purpose can serve as what is called a hermeneutic device. And here goes.
The Mandela Effect is a complex signal designed to guide human attention in five distinct ways. At the beginning of this essay, I call the Mandela Effect a directional vector in the awakening event of our time. That directional vector is signaling into the human mind from an unknown source. What I am stating here at the conclusion of this essay is the five purposes that the signal achieves, the five purposes working through the signal.
All of these five purposes are designed to guide human attention in a certain direction, in a certain way. To guide your attention toward something, and these are the five instances:
One: to guide your attention toward the source of the effect itself. The signal contains a certain component out of the five that actually refers back to itself.
Two: to guide your attention toward the process of decoding. This particular vector is specific to investigators. The effect has a source and a purpose, but it cannot accomplish its purpose without the work of investigators who can decode it based on their recognition of that source. You see the logic there?
The three remaining vectors: the Mandela effect has the purpose of guiding your attention toward a collective defect in the human mindset. Whatever is the source of the signal, it understands the human mind well enough to access the mind and it also sees what is wrong in the human mind, what is defective.
The fourth vector: it guides your attention toward a pattern of engagement unique to each observer and that is revealed in the personal relevance of the cues and clues. And finally, it guides your attention toward where it's going, what comes in later expressions of the effect, and I sum that up by the mysterious phrase, the super learning event.
So I'd like to close right there rather on a suspenseful note, if you don't mind, and pick up soon with a short talk on the technique, the notations, and the specific tools I'm offering for this investigation. By then we should have 224 entries to the exam, and so you can expect to see the first report on the exam coming up right around the bend. Until then, may your attention be rewarded by the truth.