HYPERDIMENSIONAL DESIGN
THE INFUSION OF BELIEF AND THE CITY IN THE SKY
FOREWORD: This article will have two voices. One is more or less rational and is careful with connecting ideas; read it like non-fiction, if such a thing even exists. Another is more bold; adventurous, like the perception of a fictional writer or a poet on a rationally induced trance state. It is necessary. Just a head’s up.
In many traditions throughout the planet we can find traces of the worship of fetishes. Fetishes are objects considered to hold supernatural power. These objects — they can be statues, dolls, even elements of the natural world — are believed to have an existence beyond its mere physical materiality. They are omens, signs of the supernatural, of greater abstract forces that we, small limited humans, can only perceive by symbolic and divinatory means. These traditions often employ a specific individual, like a shaman or an elder, who is adept at interpreting the signs of this intelligence and relaying the knowledge to the rest of the community.
You may be thinking that this is all foolish; that we, as cultured globalized peoples of a 21st century, blessed by progress and boundless science have moved past such childish ways of looking at the world.
In this article I’ll argue that is not the case; the world is not made of dead objective facts. In this article, a creative and subjective ontology will be outlined. It is a worldview that operates through the lens of myth, and that is immensely empowering for the process of psychic and collective individuation. In other words, I’ll argue that the world is alive, and creators, being among the few who can perceive it, have therefore incredible power and responsibility.
Through the goggles of myth, we can become as strong as heroes, and life becomes meaningful. This article is a call for creators, seekers, poets and dreamers of all walks of life to step forward, heed to the call of true progress: wake up — myth is back from its long slumber.
CREATORS and SHAMANS
In our technological and globalized society, there exist individuals who could be said to embody the shamanic archetype. Today’s “techno” shamans, I’ll argue, are the creators, the dreamers and the poets.
These are the people who often engage in a conscious practice of reorganizing belief. Put simply, the craft of a creator is to conduct transactions of emotional and intuitive value. The creator’s job is the government of diverse levels of attention and of diverse levels of belief. “Belief”, as we use it here, should be understood as the accepted and self-evident connections between the individual and the world. Think of all kinds of designers, musicians, filmmakers, architects and thinkers. People who have to ask the question “what if” very often in their daily life.
What these people have in common with shamans is the power to allocate belief-energy.
They manipulate the force field of belief around reality, and therefore they manipulate reality itself. They’re talented at asking “what if”. Notwithstanding varying degrees of intensity and distinct contexts throughout the creative fields, the essential process is the same: asking “what if…?”.
Their creations can create distortions in the fabric of the real. They have an ontological gravitational field. Around these artifacts, reality about ourselves, about existence and about the world changes. Consensus trance dissolves. Things become… other things.
Let me give you a few concrete examples of speculative shamanic and creative practices, in order to make apparent what they have in common.
1) THE SHAMAN
Picture a shaman sitting beneath a tree, in a meditative state. The shaman sees a rare, beautiful white bird nearby in particularly intense moment of meditative immersion. He does not interpret this apparition according to the frame that says: “that is a bald eagle of the H. leucocephalus species who just happens to be coming by because of a distinctive pattern in its seasonal migratory patterns”. No. He has no place in his reality tunnel for the approved interpretations of others, whomever they may be (scientific, religious, media, political and academic establishments). His eyes and his reality is his own.
The frame he uses to interpret this apparition is one relating to his own psychic life. In the trance, this apparition was pregnant with meaning; a powerful synchronicity of outer and inner events. The specific significance he attributed to the bird (good luck, bad luck, divine revelation, death, good crops, etc.) is circumstantial; but the essential fact is that the faculty of attribution of meaning was radically and non-compromisingly his own.
This should not amount to an inability do live in the social world. Quite the opposite, it can imply a tremendously perceptive and open way of interacting in society.
It represented an apprehension of worldly events at the utmost intimate level. Its validation was utterly independent of outer sources of approval — the shaman asked no scientist, no priest and no psychologist what the bird meant. He knew it himself, for he interpreted the synchronicity at a deeply personal level. This is something important for the point of this article; the shaman is the person capable of an effective allocation of belief-energy. By means of great psychological integration (in a Jungian sense) and intellectual honesty, the shaman is able to provide meaning for his own life by himself, independent of other sources of validation and “reality”.
He builds his own reality tunnel through synchronicities. This is creative, constructive pareidolia, pursued in good faith and in good measure. And that is the timeless, magical skill of shamans, which will be so important for our future.
2) THE FILMMAKER
Now picture a filmmaker, editing footage of a white bird for his next movie. The scene is deeply emotional and a highlight of the whole movie; it involves a preparation where a man leaves his village, a buildup of intensity where the man sits beneath a tree, anxious and distressed, and then a climax of emotional release when the white bird brings insight and newfound meaning. After, there is a final state where tension becomes resolved and the man goes back to the village.
In his craft, the filmmaker does the same thing as the shaman, except on a different intensity and setting. Throughout the duration of the film, the spectator is taken into a special mental place where the rules of reality — the frame by means of which you connect the dots and ground yourself in your sense of self are changed. Through a virtuous concoction of immersion, setting, emotional stacking, framing intuitions and other tactics, you are led to voluntarily suspend disbelief, (which equates to saying that you voluntarily believe). “I want to believe” can be an empowering motto; it renders us capable of feelings and perceptions that, according to externally validated reality, are reserved for movie stars, the temperamentally exceptional and historical figures. This is not true.
I believe therefore I become, and I only become in the measure that you I am capable of belief.
This is the same thing the shaman did when he sensed meaning in the bird’s apparition. Pay no mind to the mental voice which says that “this is just a movie in a screen”; in the movie, the emotional and psychic consequences of the film’s action are just as real as if they were happening in “real” life. They are the more real the more belief-energy you impart onto them. Sigmund Freud mentions in the book “Civilization and its Discontents” that “The substitutive satisfactions, as offered by art, are illusions in contrast with reality, but they are none the less physically effective, thanks to the role which phantasy has assumed in mental life.”
A filmmaker is a mediator of shamanic experiences. They occur through a screen and according to a vocabulary and a set of tools particular to film, but are nevertheless significant distortions in the fabric of reality. A movie has ontological gravity. Immersed the movie, you practice “belief” according to another reality tunnel, one that is concocted by the filmmaker and by yourself. He invokes emotions and intuitions coming from beyond the limits of conscious scrutiny, manages and packages them with vision, sound, narrative and beyond, so as to produce a meaningful creation. And you go with it, opening your heart in a humble leap of faith wherever you may be taken, trusting that whatever harm may come to you from this will be worth the trip.
3) THE MUSICIAN
Now, picture a musician. Seriously, imagine one of your favorite artists. This individual releases tracks every once in a while and people like the music he produces. This person prides itself on creating things that take listeners somewhere else for the duration of each track. For the most imaginative listeners, music has the power to create pleasurable aesthetic experiences — invoking moments, places, people, moods and subtle feelings.
For some listeners, for those to whom the act of musical evocation triggers a knee-jerk intuitive instinct, a wonderful thing happens: a temporary switch in reality tunnels. For a few moments, probably fleeting and small, you’re ominously somewhere else. In this new world, and through these musical goggles, a new network of significance becomes evident. One that is unbound by logic, by traditional names, by traditional power relations and traditional ways to conduct interactions in the outer world. This way of being is instead akin to a ritualistic shamanic trance.
Music is the key ingredient which, among many, make a nightclub a place for trance states (however mediocre some may be), because it sets the narrative tone and mood; music immerses you.
With your headphones on, a trip on a subway is no longer banal; it becomes, for the techno shaman, a mirror of flourishing inner life. The outside and the inside merge and the world is saturated with sense. Maybe the white bird outside the window is no longer meaningless.
Creation and Shamanism are, in this respect, one and the same thing: the active government of belief.
TRANCE
It can be said that these states involve a sharp and acute perception of the “real” — what some people call flow, others deep trance, others ego-death. There occurs an extreme syntonization, harmonization and synchronization between the wavelength of outside events and our inside perceptions about them.(1) A heightened perception of things, where time dies, self dissolves, effort disperses and the world becomes rich with life and wonder — the four characteristics of the flow state. That is where space-time is bent and pierced by the talented magician. The narrative slips through. From this beautiful edge of nowhere, I say we can glimpse a new myth for our age.
The shaman interprets visions of Agartha, the legendary inner city. This is El Dorado, home to the parallel civilization, occupying the very same square foot as ourselves. And the creator is the transistor, the bridge builder, the person who infuses their creations with a special Godly substance: the ethereal essence of the eternal fountain. This essence, mythological in nature, elusive to Man, is tangent to Death Herself and has the power to bend reality according to its will. Objects and people infused by it bewilder, confuse and fascinate the tribes of Man, because they are not from this world. Their power has been such that their apparitions are like hinges, focal nodes in the historical process.
Beyond the anxiety that is inherent to every shamanic leap of faith, one finds this essence, omnipresent but occult to unclean eyes; nonexistent for peddlers of coal and burnt things, but real for those who wield true power. The fountain of all things can be found within, by the practice of imagination, and it has always been Her providence that has given Humanity the tools to build its greatest wonders.
For Man is small and the Universe is infinite; and like Benjamin Franklin said, only a fool would trade freedom for security — as he would end up getting neither. Only a fool would believe the Universe can be known safely, within the bounds of reasonable thoughts; he will learn nothing and he will be haunted by what he does not seek out. Therefore be brave like the shaman, and launch forth into the deep. Heed to the voice crying “What if…?”, pay attention to those cries from parallel realities beyond the wormhole. Pry the fourth dimension! The ground may shake outside, but it will not inside, for this is the science of becoming an inner Emperor. The beatings will make you wise.
THE ROAD TO THE CITY
Okay; back to reasonable 3D.
For the argument that I want to make in this article, it can be said that belief can be concocted by means of immersion and presence in a narrative. Creators maneuver frames of conceptual, intuitive and emotional power relations, which mediate our rapport with the world. This is a fundamental truth of creative action. A designer’s proposed visual image for a book mediates your rapport with the book. An architect’s spatial structure mediates your experience in space. A musician’s work mediates your subtle emotional and intuitive experience of the now. We’re not talking about art, or in any way involving ourselves in the discussion of what art is; the subject here is immersion, transcendence, experience and the nature of the “real”. For this, creators need to be more like shamans.
Let’s pierce the threshold. Meet Cerberus like the hero you are. Die in the cross, count to three and be reborn. Dive into the rabbit hole; you know what this means, deep inside. Lose yourself.
As for how to do this, do it however it suits you the most. Some meditate. Some draw, some surf, and some think. Some make videos; some write. Some make music, some dance, some sweep floors. Some talk and brainstorm, and some do nothing. It does not matter what you do; the only thing that matters is that you infuse each moment with enough reverence and belief-energy so that it too becomes alive, and tells you stories about lands far, far away — almost as far away as right now.
Dive into the story and you are the story, you enact the story, you live in the world of that story. The reality of your experience, of the thoughts pertaining to your experience becomes a tremendously, often overwhelmingly fertile stream of information. Religious fervor through self induced narrative immersion, that leads to momentary apotheosis — a creative death practice of sorts, where you forget who you are “below” and remember who you are “above”. Time stops, as it is perceptively too complicated a thing to subsist in the selfless flow state. You’ve felt glimpses of this, I’m sure. Stack these moments on top of the others, respectfully, and the Universe will no doubt unfold before your eyes. Bring back enough jewels and build yourself a crown. Claim thy birthright, my King.
And the thing here is that no matter how much other people want to ignore the meaningful nature of every random fact, it WILL find us. This may be pleasant or scary. What we are talking about is not a matter of creators living outside of the “real world”, escaping into their imaginations. It’s a matter of creators voluntarily and honestly learning to see latent meaning in things and events before everyone else.
“For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light.” — Luke 8:17
Meaning abounds everywhere and it is in the process of unfolding. It will find you, so don’t close your heart to its meaning. If you don’t seek it creatively and voluntarily with a good heart, it will unfailingly find you. Jung went so far as to say that latent unconscious meaning habitually repressed would eventually creep up unexpectedly in other forms, among which could be found neurosis, depression, nihilistic tendencies, paranoia and emotional imbalances. Collective Humanity has for far too long repressed unconscious content as well, and collective pathologies of all sorts are its symptoms. There are not few — there is no one who cannot name a few. Everyone senses this, especially the younger generations, and for a very good reason; the pathology is real. People point at the mental health epidemics, the environmental catastrophes continuously wrought upon Mother Earth, slavery, human traffic, the hourly genocide of meat-producing animals, fascism and the repression of freedoms, emotional sleight of hand and extortion by the media, nihilism and depression, war, poverty, hunger, hypocrisy, lies, manipulation… We’re paralyzed by our folly because we, individuals, find it hard to look to ourselves and find these vices creep up inside ourselves; and so we outsource them to the outside where they will fester and grow and burn the whole world down. All for the sake of keeping us safe from facing an overgrown Cerberus.
If you choose not to look at it, it will become your weakness, you’re Achilles’ heel, and the basis on why you are predated upon by institutions and half-dead people. Lack of honesty is where we die. Pareidolia will betray you, and scream unspeakable horrors even as as you close your eyes in fear and wake up in a cold sweat at night. But it’s always darkest before dawn…
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” — Gospel of Thomas
This is the reconquering of inner sovereignty, of true Author-ity over the Real. This is a long process; Jung called it individuation, and like a lighthouse in a storm he penetrated this mystery far and deep. Seek honestly and you shall find. Do not seek, and it will haunt you. Integrate your shadow, he said. Become whole and regain the power that is rightfully yours; to own and create reality. Perform psychic sanitation. Swim.
“The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.” — Joseph Campbell, Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research
You’re probably wondering what these tangents have to do with design. The fact is that every creation is, whether we know it or not, a double gesture. It creates within as well as without. As we design our tools they design us in return. The law of reciprocity states that that as above so below — and this is key to design. Only like this can we aspire towards true Techno Shamanism, towards influencing the world through our design as if we were creating silver bullets.
What every creator and seeker does is they extract life from dead matter in the form of new significance, because meaning is life itself, and it is ultimately sustained by belief. If belief is, in fact, an ethereal substance pervading all things at all moments, then creator is the one who breaks seals; the creator releases belief from its dead prisons of common associations and socially approved meanings. The creator breathes life into things. Like snakes, belief is made to shed its old skin and transform itself, again and again and again, morphing like a living spirit occupying different material vessels.
Some do it to create aesthetic delight, like some musicians. Some to create new useful ways to interact with space, like architects, designers and all kinds of strategists. Some to invent new countries, like the American founding fathers, whose mythography still today influences the whole world. Some do it to imprison others within self-serving belief systems, often for a profit, as you can see commonly in media culture. (2)
Creators are in and of themselves transistors between the gods and the realm of matter. Creators breathe life into dead rocks through the mystery of believing they truly can mean something. Real, first hand, honest-to-god Belief is literal life-force. It is the ultimate human psychic power. To build above is to build below, and to build below is to build above. That is how living meaning generates itself.
This is hyperdimensional design, design that exists in more than one plane. These are the gestures that will truly create this new century.
THE RETURN OF THE MYTH KING
We are still a fetishistic, animistic species. We don’t need to move beyond myth and superstition, that’s preposterous. What we need is to learn how to virtuously and wisely use myth and superstition for our benefit. To manipulate belief is the greatest of all powers, because to manipulate belief is to manipulate reality. To believe with agency is to create.
And that’s the blessing of the digital age and of our position in history; we know this. We don’t have to follow the truth of another about ourselves, we can find out in person. Belief can be an intimate experimental process, not something requiring external validation. That stage of history is coming to an end. Exterior validation is crumbling. And its Empire will fall.
Pioneered by techno-shamans, mankind will learn to walk a road self-chosen, self-discovered, self-initiated. We don’t have to partake in a ritual because of a tradition, social norms, culture or peer pressure. Now can do it consciously, with a growing degree of awareness of the effects and implications of our attribution of belief.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clarke
As for how this will happen practically in the world today? Well, before we had shamans and priests, guiding the souls. Now we have many more creators, placing signs and indications in the psychosphere, the Techno Shamans. What before was called religious fervor can now be called optimal immersion. What used to be called an Apparition can now be called Presence. Creative acts have never ceased to have religious implications, as they’ve always walked hand in hand with the architecture of belief. It is appropriate and sensible to approach creation as such — as the psychological art of belief, the religion of the self.
Visionary Erik Davis said in “Technopagans”, his article for Wired way back in 1995, before the advent of the digital age’s full might, that “Our technological environment may soon appear to be as strangely sentient as the caves, lakes, and forests in which the first magicians glimpsed the gods.” Let us approach them with agency, with choice and with power. This is the meaning of inner sovereignty; this is the gubernatorial science of belief.
The millions of associations our mind makes with our environments ever nanosecond are the bricks of the ethereal edifice of our minds. These associations — these millions of invisible threads of mind and soul that bind us to the world — from our notions and perceptions about the world, to our likes and dislikes to our choices of words… all the way to our very grasp of being, to the core of our existence, to the belief that we ourselves are something instead of nothing; these are all held together by the mortar of belief. And this belief sustains grand cities in the sky, made of clouds, wind and sunlight.
Behold! There is a brave new world upon us. This beacon is like a shining city upon a hill; a vast new realm made of beauty and glow, full of wonders and mystery. This city in the sky is the fountain of all birds of prophecy. And the techno shaman is the wielder of the astrolabe, charting the steps of its allocation of belief according to these special moments. This is an empire made of thin air. We are its children; the Digital Age is its time and place. Tracing our way back towards New Jerusalem. This is the century of the creators, of the Techno-Shamans. We are Magicians.
“He replied “As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters”-Luke 22:10
My name is Daniel Fraga, I’m an Experience Designer, Researcher, Virtual Reality Creator and (post) Architect. Check out my website at www.fraga.space, and thanks for reading!
(1) The ancient world had many archetypal roles. Many among these also manifest these characteristics of extreme synchronization with the moment, like the holy warrior. The warrior has similarities to the shaman in that they both ride the rift that opens in states of deep trance; and in this void, the warrior would become the fiercest of fighters, as if blessed by the Gods of war themselves. Many cultures boasted warrior-shaman variants, like the viking Berserkers, the highest levels of the Aztec Eagle Warriors, or the Islamic Hashashins. Blessed by immersion, although in a different craft than that of the shaman (and consequently of our Techno Shaman), the warrior would also have a place in the sacred practices of the ancients.
(2)Julian Assange said recently that a news article is a piece of “weaponized text”. And in fact, there is a war going on in the psycho-sphere, an occult battle for human belief, being fought far far away from collective conscious awareness. Some call it the real “Star Wars”. But that is perhaps to be discussed another time.
