A Dharmic Critique of the Movies Dune, Avatar and Don’t Look Up: The Spiritual Practice of Reading Movies as a Sacred Text of Culture: First Visions of Intergalactic Love Stories In Response to the Meta-crisis

One Mountain Oral Essays Volume 27

A Dharmic Critique of the Movies Dune, Avatar and Don't Look Up: The Spiritual Practice of Reading Movies as a Sacred Text of Culture: First Visions of Intergalactic Love Stories in Response to the Meta-crisis | One Mountain Many Paths Oral Essays Volume 27 | Dr. Marc Gafni

In this time between worlds and time between stories, we stand poised between a potential dystopia and an unimaginably beautiful future. Only a new Story of Value as a context for our diversity can change the vector of history towards a possible utopia.

Movies are often the channel through which the voice of culture discloses itself. Hidden in the public texts of culture is a movement towards a new human and a new humanity. Reading the hidden text of She—woven into the fabric of our public stories—is a key part of this new Story of Value.

This volume explores three recent movies: Dune, Don’t Look Up, and Avatar.

In Dune we explore the necessity and dangers of charismatic spiritual and political leadership as well as the need for—and potential horror of—a new Messianic religion. The move is both a clarion call and a cautionary tale as we are in desperate need of Homo sapiens to triumph as Homo amor, the fulfilment of Homo sapiens.

Don’t Look Up vividly critiques our current society, including our dysfunctional media landscape—what Marc Gafni calls our broken information ecology. In order to survive and in order to address the meta-crisis, we must not be afraid to “look up”—as they spectacularly fail to do in the film.

In Avatar we depict the first expressions of Homo amor, the new human and the new humanity. Avatar reaches for the heavens in cosmocentric and even intergalactic levels of intimacy and consciousness. In our capacity to love beyond egocentric and ethnocentric boundaries, we directly participate in the evolution of love.

Cinema (and culture in general) has a beautiful and necessary role in transmitting and expressing this new story—both in what it portrays, and especially in the ways that it falls short. In these movies, we can hear the hidden whispers of culture showing us the ways that we are not living into the new Story of Value, rooted in First Principles that our civilization so desperately needs.

Published by World Philosophy and Religion Press in conjunction with Integral Wisdom Publishers. 

Book details:

Title: A Dharmic Critique of the Movies Dune, Avatar and Don’t Look Up: The Spiritual Practice of Reading Movies as a Sacred Text of Culture: First Visions of Intergalactic Love Stories in Response to the Meta-crisis
Author: Dr. Marc Gafni
Series: Oral Essay Series – Volume 27
Publisher: World Philosophy and Religion Press in conjunction with Integral Wisdom Publishers.
ISBN-13: 979-8888340691
Formats: Paperback, e-book, audiobook.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE    DECODING DUNE: A REVELATORY EXPLORATION—A DIALOGUE BETWEEN DR. MARC GAFNI AND AUBREY MARCUS

  • What Is This Tale of Dune? A Prescient Narrative Went Big In Culture
  • Psychedelics and a Weaving of Lineages That Generates
  • The Master Who Ends the Trance of Time
  • Omniscience, Prophecy, and Jihad
  • The Thanos Move: Jihad as the Only Path to Save Humanity
  • An Omniscient Position That Suspends First Principles and First Values
  • Dune Has No Clear First Principles and First Values
  • A Critique of Charismatic Leadership Dissociated From the Field of Value
  • A Prophetic Voice That Ends Conversation: Today’s Jihad
  • True Jihad Is the Wrestling of the Heart—With the Goddess, With Nature, With the Desert
  • The Bene Gesserit Have Taken Love Out of the Equation
  • Spice-Psychedelics Expand the Political
  • The Very Real Possibility of an Elite Enhanced Human: We Need Democratization
  • The Medicine Needs the Dharma, and the Dharma Needs Medicine
  • Can We Have a Medicine of the Heart to Avoid War (As Much As Possible)?
  • We Need to Stand for the Field of Value
  • We Need the Articulation of a New Story of Value
  • We Need a Democratization of Messiahs, Medicine, and Dharma
  • We Need to Trust in the Sincerity of Power
  • Power in Trinity With Love and Value, a Remedy to Tyranny
  • Love Is Power—Power Is Love
  • Power Is Noble and We Are Afraid of It
  • Love Is Potent and Fierce
  • A Beautiful Cosmoerotic Vision Is What We Need
  • Reality Needs a New Great House
  • Let’s Do It All Together and Honor Everyone at the Table

CHAPTER TWO    A DHARMIC CRITIQUE OF THE MOVIE DUNE, PART 1: SETTING THE STAGE FOR THE SPIRITUAL PRACTICE OF READING STORIES IN PUBLIC CULTURE

  • It’s Only a New Story That Changes the Vector of History
  • The Story of Dune as a Reflection of Culture
  • Evolutionary Love Code: We Need Dharma In Dialectical Relationship to Messiahs
  • Dune Is a Messiah Story
  • Dune Figures, Background, and Story
  • How to Read a Story of Culture: Setting the Context
  • Dune Themes Drawing From Christianity, Islam, and Judaism
  • Understanding Dune
  • Five Components of the New Story for the Evolution of the Source Code
  • Prayer: We All Participate Directly in the Stature of Messiah

CHAPTER THREE    A DHARMIC CRITIQUE OF THE MOVIE DUNE, PART TWO: THE SEVEN PILLARS OF CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION THROUGH THE LENS OF DUNE—HOW TO CREATE A BETTER WORLD

  • Dharma for Dune
  • The Overwhelming Moral Imperative of This Moment Is to Articulate a New Story
  • Evolutionary Love Code: A Community of Democratized Messiahs Animated by Authentic Leaders
  • Jesse/Jessica: Messianic Agitation to Birth the One
  • Dune Plotline
  • How Do We Create a Better World?
  • The Fourth Big Bang: Evolution of Homo Amor
  • Democratized Messianism Needs Powerful Leadership
  • 1 – We Need to Stop Crucifying Charismatic Leaders
  • 2 – The Leader Needs to Be Purified
  • 3 – There Are Moments of Opportunity for a Leader to Step Into His/Her Destiny
  • 4 – We Must Be Aware of the Potential Corruptions of Leadership
  • 5 – The Leader Is Always an Imperfect Vessel for the Light
  • 6 – Potential for Corruption in Leadership
  • 7 – Everyone’s Waiting for the Messiah
  • 8 – Political Leadership and Psychedelic Leadership Need to Come Together
  • 9 – Unique Self Symphony: Collective Messiahship
  • 10 – All That Exists in All Worlds Comes From You
  • Evolutionary Love Code: You Are the Freakin’ Messiah, And So Am I, and So Are We

CHAPTER FOUR    DON’T LOOK UP: WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT, WHAT THEY GOT WRONG, AND WHY IT MATTERS SO MUCH

  • Don’t Look Up: What They Got Right, What They Got Wrong
  • The Nature of Existential Risk
  • We Live Within the Internal Source Code of a Story
  • The Current Story: Rivalrous Conflict Governed by Win/Lose Metrics
  • The Postmodern Deconstruction of Value Leads to the Rejection of First Principles in Mathematics
  • Universal Grammar of Value Allows for Global Coordination
  • To Effectively Intervene in the Vector of Existential Risk, We Need The Resources to Tell the New Story of Homo Amor
  • To Become Homo Amor Is to Realize That It’s Our Collective Hero’s Journey
  • Evolutionary Love Code: Only First Principles and First Values Embedded In a Story of Value Have the Capacity to Respond To the Second Shock of Existence
  • The First Shock of Existence: It’s Only Death That Turns Life Into a Genuine Option
  • The Second Shock of Existence: The Death of Humanity
  • Fact Itself Is a Value, and If You Deconstruct Value, Then Facts Can’t Stand
  • It’s Only When I Realize Value That I’m Willing to Die for That I’m Actually Alive
  • Prayer: We Know We’re Not Alone

CHAPTER FIVE    DON’T LOOK UP: WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT, WHAT THEY GOT WRONG AND WHY IT MATTERS SO MUCH, PART TWO

  • For the First Time In History, the Fall of a Civilization Means Existential Risk
  • Two Forms of Existential Risk
  • The Death of Our Humanity: Undermining Free Will for Profit Through Peer-Group Profiling of Mined Personal Data
  • We Need a New Story of Value Rooted in First Principles and First Values
  • Evolving the Source Code to Enact a Memory of the Future
  • Texts of Culture Are Powerful
  • The Hidden Theme Behind “Free Snacks”
  • The Billions of Micro-Actions We Take Are Formed by the Story We’re Living In
  • In the Absence of First Principles and First Values, All That’s Left Is Power
  • We Need to Name First Values and First Principles
  • Articulating a New Vision of Value
  • Responsibility to the Future Is a First Principle and First Value
  • Unless We Understand There’s Meaning Beyond Death, We Won’t Be Responsible for the World Beyond Death
  • Meaning and Value Are Intrinsic to Cosmos

CHAPTER SIX    THE MOVIE AS AN ARTIFACT OF CULTURE: DON’T LOOK UP, PART THREE

  • Don’t Look Up Tells a Failed Story of Modernity and Postmodernity
  • Evolutionary Love Code: Only First Principles and First Values Embedded In a Story of Value Can Respond to Existential Risk
  • Mapping the Relationships Between Characters in the Movie
  • Desire in the Valley of the Shadow of Death
  • A New Narrative of Desire
  • Need, Desire and Rights
  • The Mother and the Child Theme In Don’t Look Up
  • Who Is the Mother?
  • The Current Story: Rivalrous Conflict Governed by Win/Lose Metrics
  • The Postmodern Deconstruction of Value Leads to the Rejection of First Principles in Mathematics
  • Universal Grammar of Value Allows for Global Coordination
  • To Effectively Intervene in the Vector of Existential Risk, We Need The Resources to Tell the New Story of Homo Amor
  • To Become Homo Amor Is to Realize That It’s Our Collective Hero’s Journey
  • Evolutionary Love Code: Only First Principles and First Values Embedded In a Story of Value Have the Capacity to Respond To the Second Shock of Existence
  • The First Shock of Existence: It’s Only Death That Turns Life Into a Genuine Option
  • The Second Shock of Existence: The Death of Humanity
  • Fact Itself Is a Value, and If You Deconstruct Value, Then Facts Can’t Stand
  • It’s Only When I Realize Value That I’m Willing to Die for That I’m Actually Alive
  • Prayer: We Know We’re Not Alone

CHAPTER SEVEN    “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE”: THE KEY SEVEN INNER KNOWINGS OF IMMORTALITY THAT ARE ESSENTIAL IN RESPONDING TO EXISTENTIAL RISK—DON’T LOOK UP, PART FOUR

  • Our Yes Echoes the Yes of the Big Bang
  • My Ecstatic Yes Recognizes the Intrinsic Value In Cosmos
  • Intrinsic Value Can’t Be Commodified
  • We Are Here to Tell the New Story of Value
  • Theme of Death in Don’t Look Up
  • At the Root of Our Fear of Nothingness Is the Realization of Our Immortality
  • At the Root of Our Fear of Accountability Is the Realization That We Matter
  • Empirical Evidence for Life After Death and a Philosophical Analysis of Dualism and Materialism
  • The Lived Realization of the Continuity of Consciousness
  • Justice and Fairness Are Not Worked Out Within the Context of One Lifetime
  • Accessing Eternity by Stepping Into the Fullness of Reality
  • When I Don’t Have an Experience of My Own Eternity, the Only Thing Left Is Win/Lose Metrics

CHAPTER EIGHT    DON’T LOOK UP, PART FIVE: DEATH STANDS BEFORE ETERNITY AND SAYS ONLY YES

  • Outrageous Love Is the Heart of Existence Itself
  • Our Intention Is to Respond to the Global Intimacy Disorder by Telling a New Story of Value
  • There’s Something Broken in the Essential Narrative of The World Today
  • How We Respond to Death Tells Us Who We Are
  • Don’t Look Up: The Realization of Death
  • Philip’s Response to Death: The Betrayal of Love
  • Life Without the Stress of Living
  • Technology Is No Longer a Tool—It Has Become an Environment
  • The Business Model of the Web Is to Sell Your Data to Manipulate You
  • The Power Is Not With the President—It’s With the Success Story
  • There’s Nothing More Dangerous Than Utopianism Without First Principles and First Values
  • The Human Being Has the Capacity to Exercise Free Will and to Transform
  • The Elite Walk Out on Planet Earth
  • “Tell Me I’m Going to Die”—Commodifying Existential Risk for the Purpose of Pseudo-Eros
  • Win-Lose Metrics Create the Conditions for Existential and Catastrophic Risk
  • “Angels Soar to the Heavens”
  • Why Did You Do That? I Liked You
  • “Let’s Go to Dinner”
  • The Sweetness Scenes
  • Three Levels of Consciousness: Submission, Separation, and Sweetening
  • Evolutionary Love Code: The Universe Is Partial to Love
  • Flowers: The Seduction of Beauty for the Sake of Life
  • Our Sacred Creed Is What We Say at the Moment of Our Death
  • The Universe Is a Love Story

CHAPTER NINE    THE LAST SUPPER RESURRECTED—PRAYER RELOADED: DON’T LOOK UP, PART SIX

  • Gathering the Sparks of the Sacred From the Broken Vessels
  • It’s Our Job to Tell the New Story
  • A World Religion Means a Shared Universal Grammar of Intrinsic Value
  • It’s Only the Telling of a New Story That Changes the Vector of History
  • Evolutionary Love Code: The Three Faces of God
  • Prayer: Reclaiming the Second Person of God
  • The First-Person Principle of Reality
  • First Person Never Lives Without Second Person
  • We Have All Been Crucified
  • Don’t Look Up: Four Clips On Prayer
  • When We Leave the Field of Value, Even the Mother-Son Relationship Is Broken
  • Every Prayer Matters

CHAPTER TEN    IS VALUE REAL? THE ORACLE OF OPEN AI, AVATAR AND THE FIELD OF VALUE: A MEMORY OF TWO FUTURES

  • We Need Global Resonance With Each Other
  • Our Uniqueness Connects Us to the Whole
  • Open Your Hearts
  • Remembering David Ray Griffin
  • Reality Speaks in Stories
  • The Oracle of OpenAI
  • Asking AI: Is Value Real?
  • We Participate in an Objective Field of Value
  • Ask AI: Is Love Real?
  • Avatar 1: Pandora Is Pandora’s Box and the Garden of Eden
  • The Feeling Tone of Reality
  • AI Needs the Field of First Principles and First Values

CHAPTER ELEVEN    VISIONS OF THE INTERGALACTIC HOMO AMOR: AVATAR AS AN INTERSPECIES LOVE STORY

  • Revolution: Reclaiming First Principles and First Values
  • The New Story of Value in Public Culture
  • AI Is Disconnected From the Field of Value Inherent in Cosmos
  • Avatar as an Alternative to AI
  • Our Love Story Has to Be an Intergalactic Love Story
  • Beyond the Fence of Being Human
  • Avatar Is a Cosmoerotic Love Story
  • The Temporary Defeat of Ethno-Humanism
  • The Emergence of the Ethno-Na’vi Moment
  • Spider Is the Embodiment of a New Possibility
  • An Intergalactic Homo Amor Needs to Emerge
  • Evolutionary Love Code: The Universe Feels Love
  • Mohammad Mehdi Karami and Seyyed Mohammad Mosseini—We See You

CHAPTER TWELVE    LOVE IS A PERCEPTION—THE COSMOEROTIC HUMANISM OF AVATAR: I SEE YOU = I LOVE YOU

  • Evolutionary Love Code: Love Is a Perception
  • See What They See
  • I See You Means “I Love You”
  • When the Enemy Is No Longer the Enemy: Spider Sees Miles Quaritch
  • Lo’ak, the Renegade Son: Seeing Through the Otherness
  • The Cosmos: A Love Story
  • Cleansing the Doors of Perception
  • To Be Loved By a Human Being Is to Have Your True Nature Seen
  • To Love God Is to Let God See With Your Eyes

CHAPTER THIRTEEN    STANDING FOR VALUE: AVATAR AS AN INTERGALACTIC LOVE STORY POINTING TOWARDS HOMO AMOR CONSCIOUSNESS

  • Symphony of the Revolution
  • Love Is a Perception
  • The Need to Stand for Value Is an Essential Human Need
  • Evolution of Value Is Evolution of Love
  • Premodern Value: Value Is Real, but Whose Value?
  • Modern Value: The Source of Value Is No Longer Clear, but Value Evolves Nonetheless
  • Postmodern Value: Value Is Deconstructed, but All the Excluded Are Included
  • Postmodernity Against Modernity
  • We Need to Realize That Everyone’s Got a Seat at the Table
  • We Need to Articulate an Intergalactic Consciousness of Homo Amor
  • The Structure of Cosmos Is Eros and Intimacy
  • Avatar Transcends the Postmodern Understanding and Stands for a Cosmocentric Vision of Homo Amor
  • Homo Amor Love Song
  • Egocentric Intimacy
  • Ethnocentric Intimacy
  • Worldcentric Intimacy
  • Cosmocentric Intimacy
  • Every Song Has a Place In the Unique Self Symphony
  • The Human Being Becomes Divine When No One Is Left Out of My Love Story
  • No One Is a Stranger to the Divine
  • Are We Willing to Cross to the Other Side?
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About the Authors:

Dr. Marc GafniDr. Marc Gafni is a leading public intellectual and teacher impacting the source code of global culture.

Gafni is a visionary thinker, social activist and passionate philosopher. He is known for his “source code teachings”, including Unique Self theory and the Five Selves, the Amorous Cosmos, A Politics of Evolutionary Love, A Return to Eros and Digital Intimacy.

He is author of twenty five books, of which the first ten have been published, including the award-winning Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment.

He holds his doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University, as well as Orthodox rabbinic ordination.

He teaches on the cutting edge of philosophy in the West, helping to evolve a new ‘dharma’ or meta-theory of Integral meaning that is helping to re-shape key pivoting points in global consciousness and culture, with the aim of participating in the articulation of what Dr. Gafni together with Dr. Zak Stein and colleagues are calling CosmoErotic Humanism.

At the core of CosmoErotic Humanism is what Dr. Gafni and Dr. Stein are calling ‘First Principles and First Values’, Anthro-Ontology and a “Universal Grammar of Value”.

This is the ground of a new shared universe story and a new narrative of identity for the new human and the new humanity. This is what they are calling the emergence from Homo sapiens to Homo Amor.

This shared story rooted in First Principles and First Values can then serve as the matrix for a global ethos for a global civilization.

Gafni is considered by many to be a kind of Einstein of Philosophy who is leading a team of thinkers articulating a new vision of meaning for the world.

Dr. Gafni is the Co-Founder together with Ken Wilber and Sally Kempton of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion where he serves as its co-president. Together with Dr. Zak Stein, they are co-leading a team of thinkers, articulating a new vision of meaning for the world.

In 2014 Dr. Gafni co-initiated the Success 3.0 Summit and Rise Up movie, whose method and movement is to bring together key thought leaders and change-agents to collaboratively evolve a bold new Integral vision of Success, rooted in the entrepreneurial values of Wake Up, Grow Up, Show Up, and Outrageous Love.

Over the past 30 years, Dr. Gafni has developed evolutionary and activist programs rooted in his commitment to what he has termed “participating in the evolution of love.” Together with author and social innovator Barbara Marx Hubbard, he is working on a series of new works revolving around Evolutionary Spirituality.

Read more… 

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