Empyrean: The Empyreal College
Mission statement and explaining the name. Creating a school, a city—a fire to illuminate the world. 🔥🔱🔥
— Δ —
and I, , will be writing here now, alongside our personal stacks; using Greek letters to differentiate authorship. I will attempt to be more professional here, and focused. Those working with Empyrean will appear on podcasts and join as writers as we go along, these may be topic specific or more open ended group discussions which align to the overall goal(s) of this project—which is what?— Ψ —
It is the most covetous privilege to dream into being. The long forgotten skillset of intention and extension; discernment and love; unifying sovereignty with devotional service. A skill that is long overdue for a revival after centuries of miscarriages. The fear of rejection is a basilisk, the dreamer is petrified—made half hearted in their efforts, for fragile hope runs risk of breaking. It is easier to kill that hope, keeping fantasies unrealized.
I am haunted by this dream though I am not its origin, it seeks expression through me, and perhaps through you—if you let it.
Peoples unconscious activities form a cloud, a mist, they are not hidden, but lack acknowledgement and expression. The self is obscured by their surroundings, wafted along with the breeze, reactionary and unstable. They become diluted by manipulative systems, “fitting in”, until their vitality is lost—polluted until they become themselves pollution. Discover again who you are. The fog between us will clear out, distilling clouded ideas into streams of conscious connection.
This project, with The Institute as its placeholder name, was what I dreamed, perhaps hallucinated after ingesting the bittersweet distillate of a thick misted and chaotic bunch. In essence, it is what we discontent intelligentsia have yearned for. That unreachably distant fantasy, the lack of which has lead to half measured replacements—addiction instead of connection. It need not be fantasy much longer.
The institute announced itself to me in that spontaneous churn of ideas and people, I was only lucky enough to witness it, introducing these ideals to anyone who would listen. When the devas and asuras decide to act through you, you must engage that dance correctly; know your place, the next step. You must be lucid enough to know your role and play in proper timing—some of us realize this and jump in with faith and courage—while others spectate and critique the event. And so my dream is shared by those creative misfits who were brave enough to dream, to risk ruination and derailment; for how could any born in a world like this, expect to cultivate such beauty without a bit of change themselves. Transform, rise up to dream again.
— Δ —
I arrived late to the party with Sai having connections already established among interesting people, I was then happened upon and “recruited” in similar manner. These ideas were boiling in me separately, alone, connected to the underlying vision of this project as something to cast into the future, a space in which to commune with the best and brightest (Constantinople, a hub) to do real work; those who think alike form a gravity well of attention and intention, we have all been wrapped into that orbit.
There are many things about reality which I have become aware of, which many are not privy to in what we call physics(how we model reality today), I will extrapolate on this later formally in essays as I have in my personal writing. I say this now only to mention the oddities of my perception and how these inform my communicated thought. Why is it important for me, and all who engage with this process, to analyze and express their depths of self? Our intricacies, why is it important that you take yourself seriously? I want you to wean off of the machine methods of modern institutions, you are not a specialized cog to be replaced so casually—there is life in you, something beyond comprehension. I do not believe this project exists outside of me, but is an emanation from all who dream of it. The fruit is contained in the seed, life is a strange loop taking the appearance of linearity… but perception can come to transcend appearance.
What this means in practical terms is simple: we desire a home, an ecosystem to suit us. In all that we do we persist in that image. We will a space to Be, where we may unfold, unpack that zip file of potential. Learning is an act of remembrance, growth, expansion, you come equipped already—all that you need is available to you… that is our vision, and it will come to pass. First embodied in our minds, discussed, planned, and imbedded to form “in the world”.
This aligns to talk of a new renaissance or “industrial” revolution, we haven’t a name for the age we are entering but may look back and define one. There is great potential energy, many jump to disaster becasue they interpret this energy as anxiety and not excitement—they prefer thoughts of war and conflict, destruction, these are their fantasies and they warp new information to that narrative. Be stable in your optimism and the world will conform, this is simply how the world works. Yes, I do argue, that the evils we see and the problems we face are the result of our wanting they happen—untrained, the mind strangles itself.
Though I’m not much a fan of the series, I’ve called it futurist Hogwarts, as that paints a nice image—not the cringe larping, but much of this is akin to magic. Is developing the soul through education anything less?
This will be immense, we are not founding an office building. It will be a sort of campus, an estate, a monastery, a great many things, all woven into the One, to support whatever needs we might grow into. R&D labs, engineering departments, commercial, agriculture, involving the trades, STEM, and “the humanities”. A great museum, library, likely to have a city sprout around it. A carefully cultivated environment of bustle and drive in union with reflection and germination. Imagine a college town where people are actually educated, classically so, refined in their most fundamental attributes. It would attract tourism of a sort, but remain exclusive enough to prevent decay.
We will make architectural posts in the future laying out designs and potential location, but for now our focus is on networking and building the foundations of a community. Any involvement is appreciated.
We seek to accrue capital, human and financial, until we can build a physical location. Donations, subscriptions, patrons of all sorts are welcome—whether this is your time or other resources. Our primary goals to begin are of becoming self sufficient, not needing patronage, and providing for ourselves and others as a functional set of businesses. All while avoiding the pitfalls of corruption! Sounds easy enough.
— Ψ —
We reject parasitism and the corruption of standards, we will not live on scraps in a world that could flourish. Growth, adaptation, and clarity are our first principles—abandon the scarcity mindset. We are living organisms and our creation is likewise alive. Indeed, to cultivate anti-fragility in the institute we need to cultivate it within ourselves first, this is an explicit goal moving forward. There is no coalition separate from the characteristics of its constituents, we must be holistic, building living systems, not dead corporations.
Modernity assumes that zero-sum equations govern every aspect of the universe, when we are in fact in an infinite game—we get up every day and keep playing, all destinations are subordinate; imbedded in this. We are left brained and negating, seeing scarcity where it isn’t; hallucinating out of fear. All explorations into the real indicate its effulgence, life in continual generation. We have come to this belief in scarcity through deceptive proclamations and brow-beating into quiet desperation, there are those who benefit from the majority living in fear. At one end is poverty and war, the other bread and circus; they perpetuate a system of despair, a closed system within which false dichotomies form. You fall prey to illusion. They divide and conquer, justifying their ruthlessness and self interest. We’ve grown accustomed to this racket, but entropy has its counterweight to keep the scales in balance; you have always had the freedom to embrace your vitality.
The logical and moral implications of zero-sum or negative-sum equations are what really drive the decay we see all around us. We frame the world as a prison and it generates parasites, vampyres, stealing the fire from others because they cant make their own—thus Empyrean, that great fire that no one can steal. We disavow generation and destruction, culturally shaming Eros the world loses its juice, flavor, we become tasteless; we transform the world into the dull grey we see today. The only real way to achieve anything is to steal it from someone who has, because we disempowered could never create, nor can we be rid of what ails us. We are a culture of theft and of coping, we seethe with our treatments refusing the cure—because in some way we realize that we are in part the disease, and in order to change, we must change ourselves. No pill will save us, we must put in the work. This paradigm breeds resentment, in a zero-sum game, others’ victory implies your loss, plain and simple. This is also what drives people to dead eyed ruthlessness—you must fight for every scrap or you’ll be cheated, afraid and fragile, we do what we must to survive... so the story goes.
In the negative-sum, the ultimate black pill for all us zoomers and zoomettes: everyone’s a loser anyway. Why try at all? You either give up and kill yourself or you attempt self destruction, numbness and delirium. There are no bootstraps left to tug at.
The past is the ground we spring out from and must therefore redeem, it is not to be forgotten. These abusive paradigms emerge because they make highly efficient production machines instead of societies, and highly specialized cogs out of people. We are efficient for efficiency’s sake, societies made into great recursive machines that go nowhere. Instead of looking at the infinite and modeling our creations after it, we have attempted to model the infinite after our current finite tools, calling it the last word on the matter out of dedicated, incentivized ignorance.
We will be attempting to break out of this stubborn blindness; to evolve past our paradigm; to be agentic, users with mastery over tools instead of slaves to our once useful creations.
— Δ —
Institutions today are corrupt, our incentives and value structures likewise. Governments extort the people, education dulls the mind, religions sequester the spirit—we are tyrannized by a great bureaucratic leviathan. Those who don’t know this are naive, ignorant or willfully so; stupid. The powers that be are weak and scheming, yet continue to get in our way due to our failure to unite in visions for the future. War, poverty, the failures of healthcare and education, being screwed by big banks and corporations—the so called elite. How long will you support these corrupt agendas?
We are in many ways an occupied nation, those entrenched in old power simply see us as cattle. Divide and conquer with toxic command hierarchies that orient our society toward death, a small price to pay for those who can abandon us at any time—we are no more than a warehouse of souls to be sold to the highest bidder; not a nation. This land is not free and you’ve been sold a lie.
There may be righteous individuals in most groups, but the systems themselves are corrupt, often working as intended to our detriment. Malevolence and incompetence go hand in hand, both can surely be blamed. What are we doing for the benefit of generations, for people all over the world? The holistic vision expands to all people, for all time—it is a living evolutionary spirit.
I see many propagandists and sophists, but few patriots; I mark this as an American endeavor, for now—we are to consciously develop an American identity. Freedom and responsibility, love and wisdom, clarity and honor. Where have the noble gone? Have we all been sold out and forced to survive as wage slaves? Indebted to healthcare and education, both of which screw us for fun. Our celebrities are not heroes, our “elites” are charlatan puppets maneuvered by unseen hands… but in this I ask you to nourish the good, the true, and the beautiful. To protect the innocent and engage with the curious, those still alive or who regained their integrity from the clutches of the systems they got lost in. We seek to foster true elites, aristocrats, the best; well raised, trained, and fully blossoming exemplars of humanity.
Consider this a new strain of the American experiment:
We start with the adults, already developed, those who slipped through and survived more or less in tact, who regained their innocence. Their Soul/Self, that essence sacrificed to the machine. To the degree they were able to—some may have thrived but those that are wise will see things must change, we may squabble over how and discuss. Politely as with sparring.
We are to create officers, generalists, polymaths, those who may later be employed to lead groups in their respective fields of interest. This is a community for those of courageous intelligence, truly high class and transparent, honest, genuine; this relates back to Soul. Holistically educated men and women who not only can do things, but are sovereign. Capable and competent, able to make their own decisions and act as “generals in the war” against the collapse of complex societies. Training specialized cogs in a machine is antithetical to life, to what humanity is capable of—we are to foster that antidote within us and be a light in the darkness.
Children come later once we’re more established, God help them persist until then. Do not dare claim they’re fine, I’ve seen the war behind their eyes, the rates of suicide and lashing out. No more. Those who do well are leveraged as proof that the abuse is not ongoing. We must be for them what we did not have. In due time. We have much work to do before we’re ready to pass on the culture we’re cultivating, but steadily we hope to trickle into the surrounding culture(s) and learn and teach as we are able.
Set an example, do the prerequisite work.
We nourish each other and think, developing further and healing those wounds the world gave us—those notches cut into us to fit in to spaces unfit for human dignity—call them masks if you’d like, our subtle self harm, the deadening of life to fuel the machine. The world should work better than it does, but that is how a child thinks; we must create that world we wish to live in. So here I am, I look forward to working with you. We each are where we are but come together for this project, there will be a learning curve, much R&D of culture and methods of being. Metaculture not monoculture, life has a rhythm to it, a pattern, imbedded in which is a blueprint for society; this involves fractals and holography, holons, and several things nestled together in this broader concept of the sovereign way. I’ll not speak on this now, just know there’s a way that works well.
First we have to get ourselves working properly, as man is the model by which all our creations come flowing—you may notice our brain is divided, and if not, read McGilchrist. I am the key piece of the prerequisite work, speaking to you I to I. Without this self analysis and mastery, there is no hope for great works external to that source—if the stream is polluted so too will be the crops.
Our convergence on the name: Empyrean
— Ψ —
“Pramantha” is a term from ancient Indian mythology and Vedic texts, referring to a fire-drill or a tool used to generate fire through friction. In Vedic rituals, the pramantha stick was rotated to produce the sacred fire through friction. It symbolizes creation and the dynamic process of life. The concept also has mythological significance, often associated with Agni, the primordial fire god, and represents the generation of divine energy.
The word can be broken down as pra-mantha. Here, the former part of the word relates to the PIE word for the seat of a fire, “paewr”, a word cognate with the Greek “pyr”. It is also a common prefix in Sanskrut that means “before-”. The latter part of the word manthana refers to the process of churning, and evokes the action of separation and purification through the churn. The same kind of mechanism as the fire-stick has been used in India to separate butter from buttermilk since ancient times. In one of our ancient myths, it is used by devas and asuras to churn the primordial ocean in order to bring forth divine gifts from it.
In a broader sense, the symbolism of the pramantha, the tool, and that of the pramanthana, the act, evokes the spark of consciousness- the primordial churn bringing divine gifts with it. An origin of cosmic energy envisioned in a purifying fire.
[Em-pyrean means “into” or “from” the same paewr from PIE, referring to that which resides in or comes from the primordial fires]
— Δ —
These words are not exact translations of the other, but that ability to come to similar conclusions and pick up on running themes is quite important.
I am relating to this word as that most high place of spiritual fire, I am not Christian but am steeped in it and the surrounding eurospheric heritage. I am seeking to set an example of an American spirit, one which will hopefully have competitive cooperation with many other world views(identities); there are of course, many already existent, but I consider identity formation today as a mostly unconscious endeavor—people are as they are because they are as they are. How often do you fiddle with the dials of reality and identity, the so called rules and laws within these great big games we’re playing.
We accept reality as a given, even our rebellions are within a preset frame.
The eventual physical location and the society which inhabits it will be a nexus of Heaven and Earth, where God and Man are One: yoga, alchemy, theosis. You may assume I mean heaven and earth in ways different from the ways most do, those of you not also steeped in magic; though if you’re reading this you’re likely a sample set of minds outside the norm. While the lay interpretations are not wrong, they are low resolution. I leverage many words from other worlds with hope, not to corrupt them, but to embrace them in my ideas; I steal as an artist does, my canvas is the soul—the mind—psyche.
This word also allows for some funnies like saying Empyreal like “imperial”, or referring to it as “The Empire”, etc. silly things like that. Imperialist maxxing. That did not lead to my selecting this word, but in post it will surely be abused by me.
I independently came up with this name as a suggestion, and it was accepted—providing a western correlate to Pramantha without having known of that word until now. My life has been full of synchronicities like this, and I expect more to come; good luck and happening upon, bringing voice to ideas whirring in the minds of those around me. Being a voice for the people begins with your friends, if we don’t have a cohesive group identity, how will we set an example for more to embody?
Does this imply my desire to lord over others, corrupt their will with my own? No. Does this imply we will be cut from the same cloth and expected to agree on everything? Definitely not, that would radically decrease productivity and happiness. It would erode the living system and become a corpse, a machination of top down enforcement—above all it would become incoherent. But we will over time develop a culture, a way of being and interacting, perhaps being picked up by broader society; because the ways of the world today are most corrupt and we cannot achieve greatness if we persist in these methods; I will get into this more in the next section. This is one arena in which democracy can flourish; because a democracy can only function well within an aristocracy; among the best. To vie for rule by the people requires the people excel, unless you desire, as most governments today do, a chaotic storm of inefficiency and suffering. We seek to be eternally overthrown, to educate those who outdo us—as all parents strive to lift the next generations above them. I live to outdo myself, to grow and help others. For a high trust society which expands into trust for our neighbors, integrity, generosity, freedom.
We must be strong in ourselves and strong around others, not a facade of strength but in actuality, healthy and resplendent life. The ways that have been cannot persist, let us find new ways.
A message on identity formation; cults and culture
Identity formation is something Sai has formally “tasked me with”, to develop it as a curriculum of sorts; have it brewing in my mind as we push on, to write a book/series of articles. Most of what I’m to be doing are things I already was doing, now given space to expand. We are partners in Empyrean but I will defer to her when necessary; while I had inklings of similarly developing a school, this is more her project. She has right to veto me, but I am rather persuasive, transparent, and often indifferent. You will see our influence throughout, and others will become prominent as they express themselves. My Will is granted a container, and we work toward ends greater than ourselves; are held in alignment, balanced by each other. We approach things in different ways and I’m sure our interests will deviate, will align to different people/ideas in different ways etc.
Finding people to balance the energies is important in forming a coherent world. The people, the location, the focuses chosen all work to create a field. Environmental world building, this implies narrative, which is how we get into cultural studies.
The culture of the group will naturally grow out of those in the group, we’re looking for core members to be foundational pillars in this network; this will become a gradient of influence and our hope is to expand out from the inner circle and immerse ourselves into the broader community. You may point to Sai and I now as this most influential origin, but we are influenced by others and will continue to add more ingredients to the stew as we grow. This is a project that will outlive us, and I am tasked in part to raise Empyrean up into a self sufficient entity—if speaking about creations as alive bothers you, I suggest you learn more. A culture is a literal culture, cultivating a specimen on an agar plate until it’s strong enough to introduce to the world; we run programs of personality and politics in an evolutionary manner. There is a feedback loop, and we are never separated in full from the world around us, but we do have boundaries within which we experiment; we advance and develop stronger boundaries, able to experiment on fissile material without nuking the world with unstable identities—I believe “woke” to be something like this, there are several cases of ideology virus escaping containment, intentional or accidental, weapons being leveraged by terrorists. As nuclear is to energy, energy being necessary but the method is up for debate, so too is culture a necessity and the method is up for debate. I am to head R&D of this and formalize it as science—as many have attempted in the pre-scientific past—they were grasping for what I seek to do now.
We transition from shoddy survival conditions into a laboratory of creative genius in regard to culture; going meta. This is usually a half conscious process unless the cultural superstructure(metaculture) within which all fractals of culture reside, refers to itself and becomes self aware. It is my interest to advance the science of culture as technology—that which we are, that which we grow within, is deeply alterable. Root level access to the psychic operating system is gated to most, this is where yoga, magic, psychology and every permutation of self mastery comes into play.
Culture is, in a way, a perceptual organ by which the world sees. Man is not an individual but a node connected into a network of neurons in a great extended field.
I’m not seeking to make a corporate culture, to HRify the space. That’s disgusting, perhaps there will be some legal things to become aware of, but ultimately corpse culture is disgusting. I don’t want this cookie cutter robot nonsense infecting anything ever again, this globohomo managerial cult. Leviathan, The Cathedral ™️. My work is that of cult resistance training, resistance, awareness, discernment; freedom and right to choose requires intelligence; developing strong healthy boundaries with our personal identity and expanding that vigor outward into the community as it grows. The through line of my work is to develop sovereignty, awareness, integrity.
I want you to be real and alive, holding space for you to expand. Constraints come into play if necessary, there must be rules of a sort, codes of conduct to experiment with. You cannot encroach on the freedoms of another, for example, unless necessary. Mutual agreement, transparent social contracts… Empyrean will be what a university should be, that space to cultivate and refine your being in a genuine futurist/progressive diversity of identities in a great arena. We are here to spar and competitively cooperate for the empowerment of self and other.
I don’t want you to be “like me”, or set a rigid path for others to follow; who am I? I am in constant evolution, striving every moment for something more. Through many ways we find The Way. It is that fire we embody, that transformational energy; Empyrean is to house that evolutionary sun that calls us all to strive—in that way it is a kind of temple as well as a school. We aim to be many things.
Not all will strive at equal pace, but perhaps being here, in a space such as this, you will be caught on the updraft and inspired to grow. To flourish as you are, not as someone tells you to be.
We are thankful to those already supporting us or who have pledged support, and we look forward to the project going forward! Look for new writers in the space as we flesh out our team, upcoming podcast(s), and discourse within our developing community.
Comment or @ us with feedback or topics you wish us to touch on in the future.
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finally, a manifesto i can get behind.
go read this immediately.
99% of the benefits of university is simply putting smart people in the same space. Human beings need each other. If you take away all the professors, the textbooks, the computers, and you just put smart people in the same space, good things happen. The key is seducing smart people to take the risk of putting themselves in a new environment.
In the 1960s, the foundations of modern academia were retooled and rebuilt. Whether you think that was liberating or horrifying, it can be done. It just requires faith and talent. Everything good requires sacrifice.
In 2021, I drove around the country to 47 states and met 50 people from the internet. From this I made dozens of individual friends, but I also put together a solid collective of 7 people who meet digitally every week, and we've been doing that now for 80 weeks straight. It's an incredibly rewarding experience, but there's so much more that could be done.
Substack is an incredible platform. It has changed my life -- and I haven't even met anyone in real life from here yet, but I hope to someday. "Futurist Hogwarts" is a beautiful phrase. If you build it, they will come!