The Mind Parasites

July 4, 2005 | Share/Save

More later, this is just a quick link:

“In the last chapter of Castaneda’s last book involving his relationship with Don Juan, a chapter entitled ‘The Mud Shadows,’ Don Juan takes Castaneda out into the desert and helps him to shift into the second attention. From the second attention Castaneda can see what Don Juan calls ‘the flyers,’ shadowy worm like creatures that feed off of human energy and have the ability to insert their mind into the minds of average, susceptible people. The physical description of these ‘flyers’ sound remarkably like the ‘rods,’ the very high seed flying organisms that have been video taped by Jose Escamilla (see roswellrods.com). Consider the poem by William Blake at the beginning of this essay and the ‘The invisible worm/That flies through the night.’

Don Juan is not the only one to suggest that there might be parasites, as there are microbiologically, that have an ability to insert their mind or will into a host. In the novel, The Mind Parasites, it is suggested that certain diabolic individuals like Hitler and the Marquis De Sade (who encouraged the dark sexuality of the sort we see near the parasitic deities in Alex Gray’s vision) are puppets, zombies who have been hollowed out by the parasites and are now entirely under their control. When Jung met Hitler he described him as ‘a psychic scarecrow,’ and some very evil figures have been described as having blank, doll’s eyes and to be on a kind of automatic pilot like mechanical puppets. When they asked one serial killer what he was thinking about when he stalked young women in preparation for torturing and killing them he replied matter of factedly, ‘Takin’ care of business.’ Maybe that’s the one thought rattling around in George W’s hollowed out head: ‘Takin’ care of business.’ I’m going to quote a long passage from The Mind Parasites to give you a feel for how Collin Wilson describes it,

‘ In a few cases, the vampires have been able to completely take over a human mind and use it for their own purposes. For example, I am almost certain that De Sade was one of these ‘zombis’whose brain was entirely in the control of the vampires. The blasphemy and stupidity of his work are not, as in many cases, evidence of demonic vitality, and the proof of it is that De Sade never matured in any way, although he lived to be 74. The sole purpose of his life work is to add to the mental confusion of the human race, deliberately to distort and pervert the truth about sex.

As soon as I understood about the mind vampires, the history of the past two hundred years became absurdly clear. Until about 1780 ‘most art tended to be life enhancing, like the music of Hayden and Mozart. After the invasion of the mind vampires, this sunny optimism became almost impossible to the artist. The mind vampires always chose the most intelligent men as their instruments, because it is ultimately the intelligent men who have the greatest influence on the human race. Very few artists have been powerful enough to hurl them off, and such men have gained a new strength in doing so—Beethoven is clearly an example; Goethe another.

And this explains why it is so important for the mind vampires to keep their presence unknown, to drain man’s lifeblood without his being aware of it. A man who defeats the mind vampires becomes doubly dangerous to them, for his forces of self-renewal have conquered. In such cases, the vampires probably attempt to destroy him in another way’by trying to influence other people against him.’

A couple of pages later and Wilson makes a very interesting speculation. He suggests that the parasites may seek out species that are on the brink of a quantum evolutionary leap, but still in the highly energetically charged, vulnerable position of not yet having emerged on the other side of that leap.

‘ Now I suspect that these mind vampires specialize in finding races who have almost reached this point of evolution, who are on the brink of achieving a new power, and then feeding on them until they have destroyed them. It is not their actual intention to destroy ‘ because once they have done this, they are forced to seek another host. Their intention is to feed for as long as possible on the tremendous energies generated by the evolutionary struggle. Their purpose, therefore, is to prevent man from discovering the worlds inside himself, to keep his attention directed outwards. I think there can be no possible doubt that the wars of the twentieth century are a deliberate contrivance of these vampires. Hitler, like De Sade, was almost certainly another of their ‘zombis’. A completely destructive world war would not serve their purposes, but continual minor skirmishes are admirable.’

A few paragraphs later Wilson states the intuition I had long before I read Mind Parasites—that the parasites, seen from a sufficiently encompassing evolutionary vantage, are revealed to be symbionts in that they challenge an evolving host to become far more conscious in order to shake off the threat. Frank Herbert, in his fourth Dune novel, God Emperor of Dune, seems to have had a similar idea. The God Emperor who is following his ‘Golden Path’ (apparently his personal revelation of an evolutionary Tao), makes himself into a supreme predator or parasite that dominates the human species for millennia. He does not enjoy being an oppressor, but is doing it purposefully so as to paradoxically create mutants who will be so resistant to oppression that they will able to lead their species out of bondage forever. In the I Ching it is said that some things do not fully blossom or unfold unless they are fully compressed (or oppressed). Wilson writes,

‘I have another theory, which is so absurd that I hardly dare to mention it. This is that the mind vampires are, without intending it, the instruments of some higher force. They may, of course, succeed in destroying any race that becomes their host. But if, by any chance, the race should become aware of the danger, the result is bound to be the exact opposite of what is intended. One of the chief obstacles to human evolution is man’s boredom and ignorance, his tendency to drift and allow tomorrow to take care of itself. In a certain sense, this is perhaps a greater danger to evolution—or at least, a hindrance—than the vampires themselves. Once a race becomes aware of these vampires, the battle is already half won. Once man has a purpose and a belief, he is almost invincible. The vampires might serve, therefore, to inoculate man against his own indifference and laziness”

Elsewhere, Colin Wilson compares the insidious effects of the mind parasites to ‘radar jamming.’ This is a metaphor or analog to their apparent ability to obfuscate, to generate confusion, wild dangerous rumor (as happened to me on the 13th) and otherwise make it hard for the host species to wake up. Mayan scholar John Jenkins and I had a dialogue very recently concerning the deceptive Dreamspell fad, and its obfuscation of authentic Mayan calendar and prophecy. (See ‘Zap on Dreamspell’ —-Jonathan Zap’s Pavilion at alignment 2012.com) Everyone has noticed that whenever a creative cultural trend tries to get started, any time a new scene, a new bohemia tries to get going, corrupt commercializers rush in to produce a degraded, counterfeit version that sucks all the life out of it. If a new visionary band appeared on the music scene they would probably be found advertising disposable Burger King cups by the end of the month. If a mutant is discovered they can be either repressed or imprisoned (like what the feds did to Wilhelm Reich), or they can be promoted into a celebrity where they will be hollowed out by projections and parasitic temptations until they become a ‘zombis’ for the Matrix.

Potential mutants may be exactly the ones taken over by the mind parasites as Collin Wilson suggests. The school shooters, particularly the Columbine kids—Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are all male adolescents, usually good looking. John Lee Malvo seems to be another one. Their terrifying actions seem very intelligently and precisely directed so as to create the richest harvest of fear and negative emotion in the collective.”