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Telestics

Telestics
The Practice of Applied Noetics

The apana mudra, traditionally used for purification and clearing kidneys and excretory functions. In Gaian Tantric practice, this mudra illustrates, and commands, the dual nature of Telestics: the elite practice of telestic, goal-directed shamanism (little finger), and the general practice of applied noetics (pointing finger).

Theme Song

“Oh where do we go now, sweet child o’ mine?”

New Introduction for Nemeta 3.0

§ I began this landing page on July 24 2025, last day of Idris Shift

Personal Anecdote:

During the revamp of Nemeta, when I was working out the new organization of the menu panel, I chose TELESTICS for a primary menu item and relocated The Terton and the Terma, formerly Course 17, in a drop-down menu under FACULTY. If anyone had asked me at the time, Why on earth are you doing that?, I would have said, I don’t know. I might have added in a low, disgruntled mumble, It has something to do with offloading Planetary Tantra into ARCHIVES.

Now here I am on the course landing page for Telestics, adding a new introduction. As I do so, I experience a phenomena that I can only describe, at best, as bizarre and exasperating, and at worst, the happy occasion for a screaming autistic meltdown. It happens like this: I bring up the page with the title and URL clearly in view, and then as I descend into the content, scrolling down to write, I can’t remember what page I am writing on, or why I am there. But wait, it gets better. In the process of adding text to the page, it occurs to me to go elsewhere in the platform, either to cite or link an existing text, or to open a new text/unit from scratch or by extracting material from the one I am composing. So, I click to open another tab to access another page, or compose a new page, and when I look for what I was intending to bring up in that tab, I can’t remember where I intended to go or why.

Ceridwen says its a side-effect of IT fatigue. I agree, but it is not only that. I find it intriguing that I appear to be experiencing a short-term memory loss of about five seconds, maybe three. No problem remembering something I did or felt or thought ten minutes ago or ten months ago or ten years ago, but five seconds ago, yes. I have been looking closely into why and how this happens. I bring this up here due it being pertinent to the topic of telestics. I might be a good occasion to define what telestics is according to the apana mudra.

The Little Finger

As you know, telestics comes from the Greek root telos, “goal, aim, purpose, objective, the ultimate.” The telestai were guided to their purpose by the sacred narrative. To encounter the Organic Light, they used a unique method of trance.  For the purpose of learning about matters that cannot be learned in ordinary self-awareness, and acquiring knowledge at the level of divine intelligence that surpasses the limits of the human dose of nous, they entered cognitive ecstasy. The practice is simple: go to the encounter with the deliberate aim to ask a question. The practice is goal-oriented. In fancy lingo, teleological.

To my knowledge, there is no way to represent the at of sublime beholding in the telestic trance visually, by artistic rendering in paint. Ayahuasca art is well known, but that is not strictly speaking a telestic plant.

Painting by Pablo Amaringo. Note the eyes looking at you. These are not the eyes in the sky by the strict Gnostic standard of visionary practice, but you get the drift. Participants in ayahuasca seances see things with closed eyes, usually. The Luminous Epinoia runs to havoc in the dark behind closed lids. The telestes practices Goethe’s method of intensive observation. Goethe was careful to distinguish between word and picture that generate the rational concept of phenomena, as well as the transcendental Ideas of Plato, and proposed what he called “exact sensual fantasy.” But, of course, telestic beholding does not produce fantasy. He noted the distortion that happens when conceptual activity bleeds or blurs into pure beholding, and he warned that “evil symbolic mythical monsters would arise.” Yes, but also benevolent monsters as seen in Amaringo’s artwork.

I learned some essentials and drew some enduring insights from Steiner’s Goethe – The Scientist. I can’t recall if he used the term infrasensory, but I do. When you gaze at a rose (Goethe’s example), smell it and touch the petals, your senses only render to you a fraction of what they contain. Gaze longer and deeper and you see more. When you access the infrasensory content of your ordinary perception of the world, you behold in depth how the sense-organs work. You cannot think about infrasensory content, and you don’t need to. Infrasensory content streams into your attention without definition or mental elaboration of any kind. You cannot think it up or think it away. It is an event of pure emergence. At the source of that emergence is mother nature, and at her source is the Originator, the Presence. Due to the simple fact that you get to the Presence, the primal Beholder, through being embodied in the terrestrial habitat, you receive the imprint of Sophia’s living presence first and foremost. Clear enough?

Lyrics from the theme song:

She’s got a smile that it seems to meReminds me of childhood memoriesWhere everything was as fresh as the bright blue skyNow and then when I see her faceShe takes me away to that special placeAnd if I stare too long, I’d probably break down and cry
Whoa, oh, ohSweet child o’ mineWhoa, oh, oh, ohSweet love of mine
She’s got eyes of the bluest skiesAs if they thought of rainI’d hate to look into those eyes and see an ounce of painHer hair reminds me of a warm, safe placeWhere as a child I’d hideAnd pray for the thunder and the rain to quietly pass me by

This is Axel Rose alluding to telestic trance (he took a lot of LSD) and invoking the adoring gaze of the Magical Child fixed on the Mother. ‘Nuff said.

Applied Noetics

Definitive talk.

That much you know already and by heart, I reckon. But that is only the exercise of the pinkie, the elite aspect of telestics. The exercise of the pointing finger is different, but it is also the same. Different in this way:  you do not perform it immersed in an altered state of trance-learning. Same in this way: it is methodical.

In The Bodhisattva Vow – An Educational Calling, I advised how to be a student-teacher by extracting a specific topic from the material in the school and presenting it to others, one at a time or in a group setting. I specified how you can do that with hundreds of topics selected from the School, but if you choose applied noetics (including Dog Zen), you engage a special category of teaching. Gnosis is practical, actionable knowledge of how to use the mind in the way it is designed to work optimally. That is the design of the mind? And how do you, not only teach about it, but teach from it?

Lakshmi Tantra, 7: Tattvas and the Jiva (the living entity), As the Object and Subject of Knowledge, says “In the great ocean of consciousness there are six divine attributes.” These are the Six Beauties.

You teach the telestics of the pointing finger by learning the properties of intelligence. This is basic nuts and bolts training to master the syntax, the operative terms. Each term in the vocabulary is deliberate and directive. Each one does not merely define a property of mind, the instrument of your intelligence, but directs you how to use it. This transcript of the talk gives you this summary:

The six attributes of the great ocean of the consciousness of the primordial witness Shiva: JNANA, SHAKTI, BALA, AISVARYA, VIRYA, TEJAS (also attributes of intelligence). Or, 5 + 1. 5 are nothing special, the given indispensable properties of intelligence: organic and alive – is the quality property of attribute 1, virya, which can mean heroism, virility, life force vitality.

There are other ways to frame this ensemble, but it is a good place to start. You slide from Sanskrit to the English equivalents.

Basic Terminology

cit: intelligence or AGI, Aeonic General Intelligence, manifest in both organic and inorganic matter
citta: intellect, the territory of intelligence contained with the boundaries of the human mind
vijnana: consciousness, intelligence with knowing of how it works, present in all animals but elaborately developed in anthropines due to the talent for language and imagery
rigpa: the power of attention, attending, minding, “what moves on, and what causes to move on”
prajna and jnana: perception (apprehension of sensory input) and reflection (mind observing its own operations), base modalities of rigpa
epinoia: the advanced (epi-) mode of intelligence that frames and guides mental activity, imagination

When you remember these basic definitions, you refresh your mind so that it immediately uses the functions that the definitions describe. A syntactic definition is not an ordinary, flat definition. Syntax is the code language of operative definitions.

A man of that syntax, looking over his equations, finds that he has calculated enough varieties of intensity to say with authority that the universe never began and will never end, but that it has gone, and is going now, and will go through endless fluctuations of intensity.”
– The Active Side of Infinity” by Carlos Castaneda

Add to this inventory the dynamics of the three attentions and the noesis-noema dyad of Franz Brentano, who founded phenomenology. By the practice of applied noetics, Bretano observed that mental activity (noesis) always has a object or definable item of interest (noema). Attention is goal-oriented. This is all you need to know about phenomenology (thus dismissing the Jewish obscurantist, Husserl, as Heidegger did.) With the pointing finger of telestics, you enter at the top of the game of modern philosophy. Enjoy knowing that and take confidence from it. I do.

By the way, Heidegger totally flummoxed, shook apart, and advanced philosophy with a simple trick, a sleight of wordplay. Sein (ZINE) is the German word for being. Dasein (DAH-ZINE)  was Heidegger’s goundbreaking novelty. It shifted the objective of philosophy from questioning what being is, and trying to define being by abstraction, to direct observation of “what is being THERE.” Literally translated, dasein means “to be there.” Heidegger’s DAH signals the Homer Simpson moment in 20th century philosophy. It has never been the same since. Credit where credit it due.

Heidegger was a stone-hearted Nazi, by the way.

Also, by the way, if anyone ever asks you about me, What was his competence in philosophy? Quote this: My treatment of philosophy both ancient and modern is incomplete as well as inaccurate and erroneous on certain points, but the distilled takeaway I draw from it is impeccable and will serve for entering and holding emergent lucidity — my definition of this Enlightenment at the close of Kali Yuga.”

Kit and Kaboodle

American slang for a tool-kit with materials for work, like a leather-working kit with rolls of leather, scissors, knifes, awls for puncturing, needles and thread for stitching, templates for cutting patterns, and a heating iron to engrave words and designs.

The objective of this Course is to collect and organize all instructive content relating to applied noetics, including Dog Zen and the Parinama (Cosmic Projection in Course 2 Sophianic Cosmology). That is the kit and kaboodle. To that end, if that gets done, it will include supplementary vocabulary beyond the basic terms presented here. I will draw upon a document provided by Ceridwen from the “Practitioner Programme” for Viniyoga Britain. It contains Sanskrit terms of various uses, including some dubious and difficult ones specific to the booth-side activity of the Parinama. The concepts of karma and reincarnation are of course included in this jargon, but they also can be culled and in some cases updated for the framework of noetics. For instance:

samskara: karmic traces or tendencies. Read: mental habits and self-repeating psychological complexes
vasana (Tibetan bag-chags): a configuration or gestalt of interacting samskaras. Read: a suitcase of samskaras, syndromes composed of diverse interacting complexes. The baggage of repetition compulsions. Also, a multi-concept paradigm for framing behavior patterns and rotes/ruts of mental activity.

And about 30 more terms.

BodhiMa is the mother of the Bodhisattvas. She is a Diamond-Sky Dakini, not a Mahavidya. Bear in mind that when you accept the educational calling to transmit Bodhisattva instruction, you have to be in the instruction. Actively and spontaneously in it. It cannot be taught merely from rote or repetition. If you shy off from this opportunity due to lack of confidence, all you need do it remind yourself that the confidence comes in the intention. Simple enough, right? Yes, that is such, but you can only prove you have the confidence in the open-ended spontaneous practice, not in preparing for it.

jll 3 November 2025, Day 13 of the BodhiMa Shift

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Telestics: Course Curriculum

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