In your mind you have capacities you know
To telepath messages through the vast unknown
Please close your eyes and concentrate
With every thought you think
Upon the recitation we’re about to sing
Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary most
extraordinary craft
Klaatu
Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft
The Danger of Self-Deception
Another reason to adopt moderate skepticism concerns the very
real danger that we might be deceiving ourselves in our beliefs, even when we think our beliefs are based on sound evidence.
One way in which this can happen is well captured by a lyric from “Nowhere Man.” We are told that the Nowhere Man is blind because he “just sees what he wants to see.”
To some degree or another, probably all of us suffer from this problem, a point that the Beatles note by saying of the Nowhere Man, “isn’t he a bit like you and me?”
People tend to notice those cases in their perceptual environment that conform to their beliefs, and simply not to notice cases that stand as evidence against those beliefs. 1
The Beatles and Philosophy
Nothing You Can Think That Can’t Be Thunk
Here, am I nowhere now?
David Bowie
No Plan
Here’s a little ghost for the offering
R.E.M.
Man on the Moon
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
living for today
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
living life in peace, you
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be
as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
sharing all the world, you
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Fantasy fills my mind
To leave this place before my time
Release myself from earthly care
My dream may be your nightmare
Blue Öyster Cult
Take Me Away
I did not believe the information
I just had to trust imagination
Peter Gabriel
Solsbury Hill
Indeed, imagination, linked to the right brain, is one of the central pillars of the esoteric tradition. As the historian of esotericism Antoine Faivre writes, imagination is “a kind of organ of the soul, thanks to which humanity can establish a cognitive and visionary relationship with an intermediary world,” what Faivre’s fellow esoteric scholar Henry Corbin called the “Mundus Imaginalis,” the “Imaginal World,” an inner yet nonetheless objective symbolic territory, having its own rules and inhabitants. 3
Gary Lachman
The Secret Teachers of the Western World
Slip inside the eye of your mind
Don’t you know you might find
A better place to play
Oasis
Don’t Look Back In Anger
Come with me and you’ll be
In a world of pure imagination
Take a look and you’ll see
Into your imagination
Willy Wonka
Pure Imagination
The heavens declare the glory of God;
and the firmament sheweth his handywork. 4
Psalms 19:1
Let it be know,
there is a fountain
That was not made
by the hands of men
Grateful Dead
Ripple
If you could see it then you’d understand
Oh, when you see it then you’ll understand
Coldplay
Speed of Sound
Humans for the most part don’t have a clue.
They don’t want one or need one either.
They’re happy.
They think they have a good bead on things.
Why the big secret?
People are smart, they can handle it.
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.
Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe.
Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat. 5
They had to imagine the sun as something that does not move in relation to the earth and the earth even as something moving. 6
Rudolf Steiner
Don’t ask if they are real
The men in black,
their lips are sealed
Blue Öyster Cult
Take Me Away
Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.
Men In Black
I realized quickly
when I knew I should
That the world was made up
of this brotherhood of man
4 Non Blondes
What’s Up?
Notes & References:
- The Beatles and Philosophy-Nothing You Can Think That Can’t Be Thunk
That is I Think I Disagree: Skepticism and Epistemology in the Beatles
David Detmer
↩︎ - Wernher von Braun: Support for the Imaginary Arts
↩︎ - The Secret Teachers of the Western World
↩︎ - Psalms 19:1
↩︎ - Men in Black
↩︎ - Rudolf Steiner
Human History GA 61
VIII. Copernicus and His Time in the Light of Spiritual Science
15 February 1912, Berlin
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA061/English/eLib2016/19120215p01.html
↩︎
Songs:
Klaatu – Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft
David Bowie – No Plan
R.E.M. – Man on the Moon
Blue Öyster Cult – Take Me Away
Peter Gabriel – Solsbury Hill
Oasis – Don’t Look Back In Anger
Willy Wonka – Pue Imagination
Grateful Dead – Ripple
Coldplay – Speed of Sound
4 Non Blondes – What’s Up?
Coldplay – 42
IMAGINE. (Ultimate Mix, 2020) – John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band (with the Flux Fiddlers) HD
You thought you might be a ghost
You didn’t get to Heaven,
but you made it close
Coldplay
42
