Obama, Hanuman and the Unknown Nine

On Revelations, I explained my theory to William Henry that the strange ritual behavior we've seen with Barack Obama is based in the same feelings of anxiety that fuel ritual behaviors in people with OCD. 

Obama is well-versed in mythology and history and the photo ops at the Temple of Hercules, the Great Pyramids and the Victory obelisk speak to a need to soak in that ancient energy. Not unusual in public life, though Obama's choices are a bit more exotic than usual. 

 Then there's the Hindu connection. From a Trinidadian opinion column:

In fact, US President Barack Obama talks about his upbringing and how he was exposed to different faiths and cultivated the need for openness. In The Audacity of Hope, he writes: “I was not raised in a religious household. For my mother, organised religion too often dressed up closed-mindedness in the garb of piety, cruelty and oppression in the righteousness. However, in her mind a working knowledge of the world’s great religions was a necessary part of any well-rounded education.”

Obama as Shiva

(Obama) continued: “In our household the Bible, the Koran and the Bhagvat Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology.” Obama carries the lucky charm of Lord Hanuman in his pocket and is familiar with the Hindu popular scripture, the Ramayan.

But it seems that as well as being versed in mythology, Obama's penchant for lucky charms also speaks to a more obsessive impulse. This is from the recent post on Obama's celebration of Diwali:

Maybe now we can shed new light on Obama's Hanuman charm. Some saw this as proof of Obama's pagan-Muslim-communist-Nazi treachery, but others took a different view, one that takes on a whole new significance in light of this weekend's festivities:

In any event, one can't help but think of the famous description of Arjuna given in Bhagavad-gita: "At that time Arjuna, the son of Pandu, seated in the chariot bearing the flag marked with Hanuman, took up his bow..." (1.20)

Vaishnava commentators have expressed the significance of the Hanuman emblem on Arjuna's chariot.

"The emblem of Hanuman on the flag of Arjuna is another sign of victory," Srila Prabhupada writes in his purport to this verse, "because Hanuman cooperated with Lord Rama in the battle between Rama and Ravana, and Lord Rama emerged victorious."

But the whole appearance of Hanuman takes us further back to a topic we explored months before Obama was elected, that being the interesting parallels between the image Obama was projecting during the election and Deep Space Nine's Captain Sisko. 

That brought us back to one of the most enigmatic episodes in the High Weirdness canon:

Let's stop to ponder all of this for a second- In The Stargate Conspiracy, Picknett and Prince argue that a disincarnate group of alien beings called the Council of Nine were psychically channeled by a group of trance mediums in the 1970s, and have since had/have a powerful grip on some of the most influential people in the US, if not the world. 

Sounds crazy, right? I'm starting to wonder. There's no doubt that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry worked directly with the group claiming to channel the Council of Nine. Now we see that there were nine major characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation, there was Deep Space Nine and now the 1999 divorce of the actress who played "Seven of Nine" on Voyager might be ultimately responsible for the election of the next US president.

Tangential, certainly, but that election did transpire even if the image we have now of Obama is almost diametrically opposed to the one we had during the election. But that's par for the course for the twist-filled Nine story. 

But not only do we have the Seven of Nine link (Seven being the biggest star by far of the Star Trek sky since Jean Luc Picard), Obama's Hanuman lucky charm provides us with yet another powerful link to the Nine saga. 

First, a bit of background is in order. Now, Picknett and Prince's Stargate Conspiracy is filled with bizarre leaps, endless axe-grinding and an extremely impeachable star witness in the person of Ira "Unicorn Killer" Einhorn. 

They connect everything and anything back to the Nine, often using several tenuous degrees of separation to hurl accusations and dream up conspiracies amongst disparate researchers whose biggest crime seems to be selling more books than they do.* 

In fact, the Nine are relatively obscure compared to other channeling figures like Ramtha and Seth. Attempts to publicize Lab9's work were extremely low-key; I don't recall hearing of them until a few years back, even though I've had my eye on the weirdness and new age scenes since the early 80s. 

 But the biggest pitfall in Stargate Conspiracy is that perhaps eyeing the burgeoning conspiratainment market, Picknett and Prince present the Nine as another 70s cult/mind-control gambit cooked up for the sheeple, overlooking the fact that Puharich and company were involved with whatever phenomenon they took to be the Nine for a mind-boggling 25 years before they went public (with Stuart Holroyd's Briefing for the Landing on Planet Earth).

 

 Of course, Puharich initially went public a couple years before Briefing with his rapturous descriptions of the Nine in his book Uri, which you can read online here. It's very hard to argue that Puharich wasn't a true believer in the Nine at the time, given the fact that he shoehorns his devotion to them in his account of his time spent with Israeli "psychic" Uri Geller. 

It may be that Puharich was telling tales out of school in Uri, which necessitated a PR campaign as damage control.† And again, the efforts to publicize Lab9's beliefs were minimal compared to more obvious mind control cults like the Unification Church, EST, and the People's Temple. 

Compared to the big kahuna of mass mind control - the EvangeliCIAl movement- the Nine were practically invisible. And not only invisible, but extremely elitist. From Peter Levenda's Sinister Forces:

Andrija Puharich expanded his circle of like-minded associations by surrounding himself with select members from his Round Table Foundation, who would ascend in occult prominence as, The Nine. 

This impressive roster of the US’ earliest pedigreed families included Henry Jackson, Georgia Jackson, Alice [née Astor] Bouverie, Marcella DuPont, Carl Betz, Vonnie Beck, Arthur Young [Bell Helicopter], Young’s wife, Ruth Forbes Paine Young and Puharich himself.

These are the shepherds, not the sheeple. Whatever they thought they were accessing in this work, they seemed to want it all to themselves. 

After a brief flurry of activity in the late 70s, the Nine set up camp at Esalen and created considerable tension between Institute cofounders Dick Price and Michael Murphy before they vanished once again. Not much of substance has been heard of Lab9 or the Nine since Puharich's death in 1995 (Puharich was also involved in the Law of One channeling sessions following his break with Lab9 in the early 80s). 

So what does this have to do with Obama? Well, let's go back to the Hanuman charm. It seems that the Hindu monkey god played a very important part in the story of the Nine:

Some months later, on June 7, 1953, the night of the full moon, Puharich gathered around him what was to be a core group of the Round Table Foundation for another session with Vinod…

The séance proceeded in the following fashion: Dr. Vinod sat on the floor, the nine members of the group in a circle around him, with a copper plate on his lap, prayer beads in his hands, and a small statue of “Hanoum,” a Hindu god that the author believes to be Hanuman, the Monkey King.

 Hanuman is also a central figure in the celebration of Diwali. Recently we saw video of the Obama's taking part in Diwali celebrations in India, but here we also see a Diwali celebration in the White House as well as a Diwali message from Obama from last year. 

 Now there's a lot of talk that Obama is a secret Muslim, but longtime Secret Sun readers are familiar with Knowles' First Law, which states that any time there is a controversy over symbols in the media it is actually camoflaging a different - and usually opposite- meaning. I think it's just as likely that Obama is a secret Hindu, or perhaps even an adherent to some sect or cult arising from the Indian subcontinent.

 It's no surprise to Secret Sun readers that Obama would throw in his lot with India, perhaps signaling a move away from the China/Bush Family/Saudi axis. Despite the power of Hindu fundamentalism in India, there is still a deep distrust of religious extremism among many Indians, particularly those in the educated classes. As I wrote last year:

India may well turn out to be the major technological superpower of the coming century. Their schools are turning out engineers at a rate that dwarfs US and Europe combined. 

They've launched their own space program and recently landed a probe on the Moon. And if this recent editorial in The Economic Times newspaper is any indication, their religious and cultural traditions may be more receptive to the idea of extraterrestrial life than those in the West.

But could there be something even deeper lurking beneath the surface here? Having read Briefing for the Landing on Planet Earth and The Only Planet of Choice I've come away with the distinct impression that there are two Nines- the material that was released to the public during the PR campaign starting in the mid 70s and another Nine that was for elite consumption only. 

Why? Well, I simply can't imagine that the material printed in those books would keep the heavy hitters involved in Lab9 interested for 25 years. I have trouble spending more than 25 minutes reading them. Are there actually two Nines- public and private?

This question takes straight back in the World of Weird. David Hatcher Childress writes:

In occult lore, the Nine Unknown Men are a millennia-old secret society founded by the Indian Emperor Asoka c. 270 BCE. According to the legend, upon his conversion to Buddhism after a massacre during one of his wars, the Emperor founded the society of the Nine to preserve and develop knowledge that would be dangerous to humanity if it fell into the wrong hands.

And here's the kick in the head, when you're talking about camouflage:

The Nine were also charged by Asoka with manipulating the culture of India to present an image of a backwards and mystically-oriented people to the outside world in order to conceal the advanced scientific knowledge that was being accumulated within. 

Some versions of the story include an additional motivation for the Emperor to conceal scientific knowledge: remnants of the Rama Empire, an Indian version of Atlantis, which according to Hindu scripture was destroyed by advanced weaponry 15000 years ago.

The Nine Unknown Men are residents in good standing of the Netherworld, having entered the culture through the work of authors whose work blurs the lines between the occult and fictional realms:

Numerous figures who straddled the line between occultism and science fiction writing, most prominently (and apparently first) Louis Jacolliot, Talbot Mundy, and later Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier in their Morning of the Magicians, propagated the story of the Nine claiming that the society occasionally revealed itself to wise outsiders such as Pope Sylvester II who was said to have received, among other things, training in supernatural powers and a robotic talking head from the group.

Among conspiracy theorists the Nine Unknown is often cited as one of the oldest and most powerful secret societies in the world. Unusually for the conspiracist subculture, the image of the group is largely though not entirely benign. Theosophists also believe the Nine to be a real organization that is working for the good of the world.

And here's an even more stunning description of this other Nine:

Each of the Nine is supposedly responsible for guarding and improving a single book. These books each deal with a different branch of potentially hazardous knowledge. The books are said to cover the following subjects: 

1. Propaganda and Psychological warfare. 

2. Physiology, including instructions on how to perform the “touch of death. 

3. Biology, Microbiology, and, according to more recent speculation, Biotechnology.

4. Alchemy, including the transmutation of metals. 

5. Communication, including communication with extraterrestrials. 

6. Gravitation, instructions necessary to build a vimana, sometimes referred to as the “ancient UFOs of India.”" 

7. Cosmology, the capacity to travel at enormous speeds through spacetime fabric, and time-travel; including intra- and inter-universal trips. 

8. Light, the capacity to increase and decrease the speed of light, to use it as a weapon by concentrating it in a certain direction etc. 

9. Sociology, including rules concerning the evolution of societies and how to predict their downfall.

So if the Obama Muslim rumors are meant to disguise his secret Hinduism, could the Lab9 PR campaign be a cover for the Nine Unknown? Or is it the other way around? 

Could both the Nine and the Nine Unknown be masks for yet another group altogether? I can't answer that but I can offer that this presidency has some very strange fingerprints on it. 

Never mind the fact that the UFO and AAT issues have heated up like no time since the late 70s, when Lab-9 were playing footsy with the mainstream. Between all of the aliens on TV and at the movies, and all of the stories of exoplanets and sightings, the UFO topic is being mainstreamed like no other time in history. 

You can even feel the resolve of the professional media skeptics starting to waver. The more the media signals that this is a permissible topic of conversation, the more likely it becomes that very strange ideas like the Nine- or the Nine Unknown- will follow. It could well be that there are people in power who are way ahead of the curve here.

UPDATE: A reader brought up the Obama basketball injury, which actually got me back on this topic although I didn't make reference to it in the post. I had initially regarded the injury as just another sign of Obama's misfortunes, but the reader points us to this bit from Wiki, explaining the etymology of Hanuman's name (In Sanskrit, "injured jaw").

As a child, believing the sun to be a ripe mango, Hanuman pursued it in order to eat it. Rahu, a Vedic planet corresponding to an eclipse, was at that time seeking out the sun as well, and he clashed with Hanuman. 

In the nature of Rahu, the Tamas Guṇa predominated. To convey a message to the universe that Satva Guṇa always prevails, Hanuman goes to take sun in his abode.^[7] Indra, king of devas, was approached by Rahu with disappointment, enraging Indra, who responded by throwing the Vajra (thunderbolt) at Hanuman, which struck his jaw 

He fell back down to the earth and became unconscious. Upset, Vayu went into seclusion, taking the atmosphere with him. As living beings began to asphyxiate, Indra withdrew the effect of his thunderbolt, and the devas revived Hanuman and blessed him with multiple boons.^[8] A permanent mark was left on his chin (हनुः hanuḥ "jaw" in Sanskrit), explaining his name. 

Note that in this picture Obama is clutching his jaw although the report has it that he split his upper lip. Note the absence of blood as well. 

The Secret Sun Institute of Advanced Synchromysticism is waiting for you to take the next step in your synchro-journey. Come level up.

And don't forget the all-night 90s lotus party over at SHRR. We're presently up to 1998.

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†A face-saving PR campaign would account for Gene Roddenberry's hiring for the never-produced promotional film. Roddenberry's time with Lab9 seems to have inspired his cynical God Thing screenplay, which later became the basis for the "Project Blue Beam" hoax. 

He obviously got a lot of story ideas from his time with Lab9, but it seems he wasn't exactly impressed with the group's work.* For instance if I were to follow P/P's methodology, I could write a book arguing that they were just a couple of Masonic shills, seeing as how The Templar Revelation is nothing but a regurgitation of bog-standard, speculative Masonic tropes about Jesus and John the Baptist. Or how I could point out the tenuous connections between the book and The Da Vinci Code and weave a conspiracy out of that. 

But I still believe in the rules of journalism. It's one thing to speculate - meaning "ask questions"- on a blog, it's another entirely to skirt the frontiers of libel in a book claiming a conspiracy among researchers whose work I don't like. After all, seeing how Picknett resorts to all of the prefab media logical fallacies when asked about aliens I could just as easily say she was just another media intel asset straight out of Tavistock. But that's not how I roll here on the Sun.