The Puppet Masters

Fellow blogger and general gadabout E. Keith Boyne tipped me off to this cool service called "WOWIO." You may have already known about it, but it's free books, legally. You can read them with a web browser. I read The Puppet Masters by Heinlein the other day. Today I'm going to delve into something about the relationship with my HGA, and I'll be using that story to illustrate my points. Click the title to read the story if you want more context for the post. It's relatively short, and Heinlein writes easy.

Ok, so the story line is this: aliens invade and take over people, riding them like mules, only without consent. Being a Heinlein novel, it's fairly sexist, but with an eye towards radical femininism (no, not feminism; there's a difference). He's always got the hero metamorphisizing from an observant, pragmatic, but weak underling into a Juggernaut of right action. There's always a Father Figure who oversees the initiations and development of the hero, and when the metamorphosis occurs, it is the Father Fgure usually who identifies it and acknowledges it. In this story, it takes the Father Figure to point out to the Hero that the metamorphosis had even occurred.

Metamorphosis. It's one of the first five-dollar words they teach kids. They come home and carefully pronounce it and tell you about pupa (poo-pa-... and much giggling ensues), and crsya-crysa-chrysalises. Their eager faces are thrilled, and they can hardly belive what they learned themselves. And they crown it off with the shining medallion, "That's Me-ta-mor-pho-sis."

How important is progressive metamorphosis to us as spiritual beings if even the secular atheist scientists that design the school curriculum insist on teaching that big old word so young? They don't teach a-biogenesis first, even though you'd think that was more important since life supposedly sprang from not-life. No, they start with metamorphosis. It's something the kids understand and have experienced, and it sets the scene for what's to come. It's also the fundamental process of Natural Law.

In our relationships with our HGA, a spiritual metamorphosis is going on. We start out like the main character in the Puppet Masters. He's a servant of a shadowy intelligence gathering organization that reports directly to the President. An agent. He takes orders and does his job. The details of his life are foggy, as he shifts from identity to identity with each passing job. He can't even remember what he originally looked like. He goes by Sam, the name his boss gives him for most of the book. Much later we learn his name was "really" Elihu, although he ultimately becomes Sam.

As we get to know our HGA, we go through some shit. Not pleasant and happy shit. In the story, the shit was the aliens. They were basically a goo that attached to the back of a human and took over through the nervous system. They made the host totally submissive, and thoughts from the entities seemed like their own thoughts, and were obeyed without question.

That's us. We're ridden by our nepheshim. It's the Master that must be obeyed, no matter what. The HGA comes along and tells us that we're slaves, and we can be reborn as free men, if we're willing to overthrow the Master and take control ourselves. And he helps us get there.

Fast forward over a lot of important stuff, and you've recognized the problem, and learned a lot about the enemy, and you've got some good ideas about fixing it. The people around you are jabbering away about shit, and not doing what has become obvious to you as a result of your experiences with the HGA. You stand up in a moment of frustration and say the obvious, and all eyes turn to you. You've solved the problem, and not only that, something else has changed.

In the story line, the Hero hits this point and the Old Man steps aside, and hands the mantle of authority to the younger man. He recognizes that he has been replaced in the leadership role of the battle when Sam comes up with a brilliant solution to the problem while he stood there unable to do it himself.

Sam had no clue, and didn't want the responsibility, but at that point it was too late. The Old Man knows when the time has come to pass on the crown, as it were.

In our relationship with the HGA, I think we go through similar stages. In the beginning, we get awoken by the HGA. We're basically trying our best to stumble around after its voice, like walking in someone else's house at night trying to find the bathroom. Eventually we learn to see, and can guide ourselves without bashing our shins on the coffee tables. The HGA teaches us, trains us, and tunes us to the frequencies of the higher spheres. It paves the way upwards, gets you in good with the other angels, and even watches your ass when the demons come prowling.

Then, when you're ready, it steps out of the way and demonstrates that you're the one who is the Man, made in God's Image to be a cohort and friend.

Metamorphosis. Progressive sanctification. Transformation. Trans-Abyssal Technologies. Living in the knowledge of who you are and what you are. Contemplating your (divine) Race and (eternal) Value.

And then Returning to the Earth in Great Power, as the Emerald Tablet says. Me, I try to exist at the fulcrum between the macrocosm and the microcosm, and then go to whichever end of the "lever" I need to at the moment. I suspect a Buddhist may posit that there is no fulcrum, no lever, and no macro to this micro -cosm.

Which is one of the many reasons I'm not a Buddhist. I've seen behind the illusions, yet the illusions remain... AS IF THEY SERVED A PURPOSE. And me, I've found that purpose through my Work with my HGA. It's still being refined, metamorphing into what it will become, and that's alright with me.