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SuperM – M-pYre of SUPER SYNERGY

SuperM – M-pYre of SUPER SYNERGY
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Материалът на български виж ТУК.

NCT: Neo Culture Technology
or about dreams which transform reality

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Written by Ralie Blag
Translation: Neil Scarth
The material is addition to the publication “Bright Sparks in the Aura of Bulgaria
(Download pdf of the book for free  /+ addition booklet HERE.)

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NCT shares dreams. Each has a tone in their dream. The tones become one and turn into music. We empathize in our dreams. All over the world we can share dreams with NCT. NCT is a group focused on accessibility and expandability with no limitations on group members and thus allows various combinations. What connects NCT is dreams. We can always meet in dreams, empathize in our dreams, and become one with music. * Everything is possible here, in my dream. * Now we will enter NCT’s dreams using our visualizing operators [the band members]. While dreaming a chain reaction[1] is happening in our brain. Dreams are affected by expressions of unconsciousness, past experiences and daily experiences. And we enter deeper into the dream…’

~ NCTmentary video series, episode 1, Dream Lab

‘I felt pressure on my chest. I thought it was sleep paralуsis. When I opened my eyes, I saw a huge Eye watching me right in front of me. I kept staring at that Eye and the Eye was filled with flower petals. The look in the Eye was so calming and from that moment on I wished that dream would never end… Multiple versions of me all drown into The Eye… A feeling as if the limitations of reality have disappeared…’[2]

~ NCTmentary video series, episode 4, Synchronization of Dreams

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Once I had discovered EXO for myself, with every following step towards them the intensity of my astonishment increased, along with my exhilaration about what was presented by them or learnt by me… Logically, for quite some time I hadn’t the least desire to find out about and take a liking to any other K-pop group, even if that group was BTS :) Of course there was no way I couldn’t find out a little about them in their role as the main rival to EXO for the hearts of millions of admirers of Korean pop around the world. I liked some of their songs and videos, as well as their characteristic vocal sound-styling, when rap is not the main emphasis. Maybe N.O. (2013) amongst the songs with a music video appealed most of all to me on all criteria. It’s powerful. And the message in it affects me. Besides which it reminds me a little in stylistic terms of Wolf [3] (by EXO :) ). But in terms of music, choreography and image I like Fake Love (2018) most – everything in the video is done exceptionally finely and it’s only the content part that doesn’t reach me, because it’s intellectual in an ordinary way, as is the meaning of their name[4], although it is cool within the bounds of ‘regular’. The latter also applies to an even greater extent to their other exceptionally beautiful song with a music video – Blood, Sweat and Tears (2016), and for this reason I only play it fairly occasionally. With similar reservations, DNA (2017) and Fire (2016) are also in my list of favourites, while thanks to Idol (2018) I learnt about the distinction prevalent in Korea between idol and artist and in this connection I read about Baekhyun from EXO and his public challenge (2017 or earlier, if I’m not mistaken) to change the negative attitude to idols by proving himself as an artist. I also found several fresh and fun songs of theirs like Anpanman, Go-Go and Airplane, as well as the recent Dionysus, which all once again, though, show the same mindset. “I’m not a superhero, but I can be your hero (Anpanman) in contrast to We all are superhumans[5] by NCT. Also Dionysus here is the regular wine-drinker and not the mystical Bacchus, who wields the resurrection. In short, in the aura that BTS radiate, the social element and rebellion are strongly present, but what’s missing is The Path – the leading out of the labyrinth and woes of earthly existence. (Which is something missing from pop-culture in general, actually :) ) I feel proud of their achievements and the superb quality of what’s presented when I happen to share my enthusiasm for K-pop somewhere, but there isn’t the conceptual world and an aura with the sense of other dimensions of reality which the output of my favourites immerses me in with its call for an ascent above the earthly realm. The music, the choreography and the aura of EXO attracted me instantly and unconditionally and they fill me with joyful admiration continuously. Likewise with a sense of quiet longing and meek acceptance in the songs with a minor-key mood such as Miracles in December, Sing for You, or Beautiful Goodbye by Chen and my newest absolute favourite by EXO-CBXPaper Cuts (I offer my warmest thanks to everyone who participated in the creation of this work of art, while for the performance in Japan[6], respect!)…

In the video reaction on the YT (YouTube) channel Classical Musicians React in connection with Call Me Baby by EXO one of the boys points out something which formulates very well the difference between the auras of the two groups: “While BTS is a bunch of individuals who work really well as a group, I feel EXO is as a group, a single unit – a very good single unit.” This assertion for me is a real expression of the leading idea manifested even in EXO’s slogan: WE ARE ONE – and this unity may be perceived on many levels – a group of two subdivisions (EXO-K and EXO-M) promoting their songs separately and jointly; performer and fans; we as humanity; God and Man.

And so, while I was searching and researching the legacy of EXO, accumulated over the years, constant ‘notifications’ on YT about the newly-released videos of this group NCT started to attract my attention ‘annoyingly’. I wondered what these Korean groups were, continually using incomprehensible combinations of letters as a name, and I determinedly avoided checking out this NCT, until one day I noticed a title along my favourite metaphysical lines, namely the song The 7-th Sense. I can wholeheartedly admit that I was (un)pleasantly charmed by their music and choreography, but the video itself at least could not measure up to or be compared in terms of cinematographic mastery, the world created in it and the visual effects, with those of EXO – it struck me as enigmatic in its aura, but too simple in places, too trite. Hence I could let myself like them too, without any concerns that they’d suddenly overshadow my admiration for my top favourites 😉 I watched Dream in a Dream and Without You after that and I must admit that I liked them once again, well I’ll be darned :) – especially the specific mood of the second one, which sounded to me like a reverie about a long-awaited meeting, only really realised years later and in fact it actually is something exactly like this because the characters in the song meet in their dream as a continuation of The 7-th Sense… I can’t remember how I noticed that there is also an NCT Dream formation of teenagers, which started to strike me as suspiciously closely themed and added a smidgeon to my already awakened interest and curiosity… (There is even a member with the Chinese name Kun, which sounds similar to ‘dream’ in Korean, who subsequently became the leader of the Chinese outfit WayV, whose slogan is WE ARE YOUR VISION. Also, I recently found out that Ten – now also from WayV+SuperM – in its basic transcription 天 in Japanese actually means ‘Heaven’ and in Chinese it has a similar meaning with nuances of ‘day, heavens, divinity, nature’ depending on the combination with other pictograms. The fact that in English it’s the number 10 is another matter :) I started reading around in the commentaries under the videos in YT and to my surprise I became aware of the revolutionary strand in the messages in The 7-th Sense, conveyed by the choreography (with movements like a wave, the jumping over of the barricades formed by their arrangement); emphases in terms of colour (‘the Red Force’, the opponent of EXO in their conception, here from the very start of the video floods the screen signifying the metaphorical revolutionary cultural wave already begun, I presume, alternating with the luminescent blue, symbolizing the coldness and alienation between people, which we have to overcome by means of the culture of new dimensions in our world view) [7], the musical details (with sounds as if of shooting); visual allusions to the literary classic 1984 by Orwell; fiery flames, smoke, broken (invisible) glass barriers and so on.

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With growing enthusiasm I looked up translations of the songs, I found video commentaries by the boys from the group explaining with casual asides some of the ideas involved, also mentioning the movie Inception’… and I was already clear about the fact that there was nothing accidental in the images and symbols I’d noticed. But when I discovered the two series of videos providing an introduction to the NCT’s concept, I was left dumbfounded with astonishment – if someone even reads just a few of the titles it is indicative enough: Dream Lab, Switch, Empathy, Synchronization of Dreams, Back to the RealityI couldn’t believe there might exist such a music industry in the world! I was particularly impressed by parts like: ‘Dream. At some point Reality became a world with limits. In Reality our imagination and endless possibilities became trapped within these limits. Beyond the synchronization of dreams there is a deeper dream. At this stage the dream can influence reality. We call this Dream in a Dream. Reality after the deeper dream isn’t quite the same as the Reality before the deeper dream. A state to make dreams come true. This Dream lab is created to break the limits of Reality and to bring the Dreams into Reality.[8] Isn’t it astounding what a conception a pop group has!!

NCT2018-mini

Intrigued, I got down to familiarising myself with NCT in detail, collecting impressions in continual amazement, but somehow I wasn’t able to write any material about them, in contrast to that about EXO which poured out spontaneously even before I’d found out about the phenomenon called Hallyu – the Korean wave – and before I’d realised who lies behind things, namely the founder of SM Entertainment, that is SM or SME for short – Lee Soo Man, the (God)father and mastermind behind[9]… In the beginning, I hadn’t even noticed that the name of the group unpacked is not NEW Culture Technology, but NEO Culture Technology!! ‘New’ is the label for the overall strategy of SM Entertainment, but for the group a direct allusion to the film, ‘The Matrix’ with the leading character Neo is used, while the debut album of NCT U Empathy starts with the opening intro Neo Got My Back and ends with the outro Vision.

Luckily, this group too, like EXO, turns out to offer me a full package to like – some of their choreographies are even a touch more virtuoso in terms of technical difficulty, with an impressively killer synchronisation (Cherry Bomb is truly a bomb from the legendary choreographer Tony Testa), including when it comes to the teenage formation NCT Dream. The performers (visualizing operators 😉 – are more than attractive, as if there was any need to ask. Taeyong and Doyoung immediately stood out for me… likewise Lucas, Taeil… and then almost all of the little dreamers entered my top list right after EXO (and Taeyong! to be precise :) ) The music of NCT is specific, especially some of my favourite songs like LimitlessSimon SaysWakey-WakeyThe 7-th SenseBossRegular [10], YestOdayEnd to the StartBlow my Mind, BoomStrongerGo119… Mad City is also interesting and unusual for me, being almost all rap, but with a very pleasant musicality and rhythm: NCT, N-City, the place I’m located, Soul City[11] :) I don’t know whether anyone has paid any attention likewise to how interestingly Wе Go Up by NCT Dream is constructed – musically, visually and lyrically – it’s something like a kaleidoscope of all the other songs – like a dream in which fragments of experienced reality are gathered together in a new way. There is, of course, also the usual variety in the moods of the songs with major-key sounding, joyful and fresh in a child-like way, like TouchSwitchWelcome to My PlaygroundChewing GumDream RunBest Friends… as well as those in a minor scale, respectively.

When I watched the video for Boss, certain things reminded me symbolically of the Russian Boot and Russia in general, while after I’d heard that the video was shot in Ukraine, the political nuance of clashing in the song became clear to me, with the metaphor for the military conflict there between Russia and Ukraine. I also noticed the Dome, under which the reconciled parties in the conflict gather, while the studio commentary of NCT confirmed the symbol for me: that we all become one in Him, but I’d missed the detail about conjunction with the stretched out hands along the axis Mark-Doyoung before the final frames. With Cherry Bomb and Fire Truck I also made immediate political associations, for which I didn’t discover commentaries to confirm them for me, but in the first song I definitely find allusions to the Second World War with the atom bomb in the relations between America and Japan, while in the second there is no way I can’t associate it with Europe and its problems, including the threat of the Muslim refugee wave, while the Korean ‘guardian angels’, in the form of NCT, stealthily help and keep watch :) America always pats itself on the shoulder, like ‘I’m the biggest hit on the stage’ (Cherry Bomb) – i.e. they are the hit on the political and economic stage, but the song, of course, also has the nuance that NCT are a bomb and a hit launched onto the stage… Thanks to the newest video commentaries of WayV it also finally dawned on me why we very often see all the groups in all kinds of variations on army uniforms with and without epaulets (or completely in white) – because apart from everything else they are the soldiers of a New cultural wave, a Heavenly Host (but why a marine is constantly present I still have no clue).

And so, I amassed impressions without writing until the next ‘upgrade’ appeared – SuperM, the super team of SM Entertainment, with the involvement of Baekhyun and Kai from EXO, Taeyong and Mark from NCT, Lucas and Ten from WayV and as a centre, the senior figure in the industry, although not in terms of age – Taemin from SHINee, who I also knew about already, since he has been a really close friend of Kai’s right from the time of their training in SM, although he made his debut a full four years before him. In an old interview I’d also seen Mark and Lucas share that they are very close and here we are: now we see them brought together once again. And once I’d found out about the start of the project and the involvement of Baekhyun in it, my first thought was ‘At last!’, because I’d already been waiting impatiently and hoping that they’d do something about the question of a genuine outlet to the West. I even recall a TV programme[12] in which Baekhyun shares the fact that when his mother went to a fortune-teller, about him she was told that he would be successful to the extent that he would promote overseas too. At that time he connected the prediction with the success of their hit Growl (2013) after which they did actually start touring abroad and also had concerts in America (2016/2017) but my feeling was that this wasn’t all. Because EXO in the West are not the touchstone that they are in Korea and Asia for the time being and I wondered more and more how this situation would change once BTS had already established themselves in our region as a touchstone. Being a late fan of the Korean wave, I had the opportunity to observe in real time the immense and very rapid growth in the popularity of BTS all over the world, thanks to their breakthrough on the American market with the remix of their song MIC Drop (2017)[13]. Bearing in mind the meaning it contains[14], it is no accident that precisely this song became the trigger for the triumph of BTS on the world music stage, but they are not after all the bearers of the ideas which gave rise to the phenomenon. BTS, as well as the female group Black Pink, following up on their global success, building on the performance formats developed over time by SM Entertainment, but they are interpreters of the present as the ultimate achievement in terms of content. While the essence of the Korean wave is in the innovations and the inward gaze – in the messages about a renewed reality with the drawing forth of the potential inherent in the human being, i.e. of the divinity. There is a reason why SM Entertainment is famous for not only searching, as a music company, for accomplished talents but also for looking into the available potential. This is exactly how Xiumin of EXO was discovered, for example: he was quite chubby in his childhood years[15] and before he took part in SM’s competition he had been at an audition at JYP (another of the three big music companies in Korea today), but there he was rejected. The story goes that Xiumin decided to give SM’s competition a try thanks to his friend, who had told him exactly this – that this music company seeks for potential, which he has, and that he should go and show it to them. The other interesting story is that Chen and Baekhyun had only been trained for 4 months when they were chosen as the lead singers of EXO, and it’s a well-known fact that if someone disputes the vocal qualities of the Korean idols, then this never applies to what’s known as ‘the power house’ of EXO‘s vocal line. Their uniquely good voices are universally acknowledged and this also applies to their rap line. Their rap line is questioned in terms of rapping but here it’s a matter of preferences and taste, because it’s exactly what’s different about them – their more singer-like sound – which appeals to me and many others. Chanyol, Sehun, Kai – they have simply unique timbres. They introduce a sonorousness, which for me at least is a true delight. I think that I can also include the voice of Lucas as part of their sound.

Nobody claims, however, that it’s easy to be selected to make a debut. The training the future idols undergo is pitiless. Baekhyun has more than once shared the fact that he shed plenty of tears at the beginning when he couldn’t quite manage to do something the way it should be done, but he says he worked with the attitude ‘Do or die’. (And he’s in no way the only one, of course). Sometimes a vague hunch comes over me that he was discovered so late by SM Entertainment[16] because the most precious thing in him is his character and it was important for him to be safeguarded in his freedom while he grew and developed. Such a character is truly a rare diamond. All of this breaking and shattering of walls, barriers, borders and the releasing of the creator in us, which is the leitmotif of SME, is actually embodied by Baekhyun and he naturally manifests it in all its power. In his aura the borders between people melt away and spontaneous life begins to bubble up. There is a moment in the documentary video ‘SuperM – The Beginning’, when they are in their training hall in Hollywood and they start as usual with a bit of a warm-up at the beginning. At some point Baekhyun kneels down propping himself up with his palms out in front and his head bowed down, after which we see Taeyong, amused, come over to him to ‘warm up’ and to ‘do some stretching’ in the same ‘extremely tiring’ manner. Finally, Baekhyun sprawls out on his back on the floor ‘exhausted’ from such an effort, at which point Kai joins them with a laugh, using Baekhyun as a pillow, followed by Taeyong on the other side and in a little while we see how they all pile up around him one by one, lying down with their heads on each other for them ‘to have a rest’ too. After some seconds Taeyong jumps up jokingly with the idea that this could be their introduction to the song ‘I Can’t Stand The Rain’ (metaphorically – the difficulties in someone’s relationships). It was so funny to watch… My thought is that in this dynamic of relationships everyone can say everything without offending anyone or getting upset. And when they announced SuperM’s debut, I waited eagerly for interesting comments about Baekhyun on the part of his new bandmates and these, to my delight, weren’t long in coming at all! Taemin at once shared his sincere gratitude that in his anxieties around this responsible project Baekhyun had very quickly managed to introduce a mood of calm amongst them all and with ease had taken the burden of tension off his shoulders while in their subsequent ‘lives’ it was already completely clear that none of them had ever met until that moment such an amazing bundle of fun as him (although many of them are truly entertaining themselves, especially Lucas and Ten!).[17] Taemin shared the fact that he had experienced a veritable culture shock when on the film set they’d all tried to be serious like true professionals, but Baekhyun in all kinds of ways just made them laugh. There were even moments when they simply couldn’t continue filming because they couldn’t stop laughing. In this connection Kai remarks that it’s something normal and ordinary for him to see Baekhyun in this light, but observing in amazement his effect now on the new members, he was rediscovering how unique their ‘hyung’[18] is in fact. With his figure on the world stage a leitmotif from the Gospel often occurs to me: ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such[19] as these.’ (Mathew 19:14)

But the truly beautiful thing is that all of the rest are like smart and talented children and they constantly win me over with their frankness, cheerfulness, and their affable air when interact with the fandom or speak in interviews. Recently, I’ve been especially impressed by Taemin and Taeyong in this regard, with Kai also striking me as more vivacious and chatty, while Sehun even surprised me with his unusually intense exuberance and public expression of affection towards everyone. Ten and Renjun (from NCT Dream) for their part really delighted me with their talent as visual artists because this branch of the arts is also at the top of my list of particular favourites.

After the stunning emergence of SuperM on the American market (they are already the first Korean group with a solo concert in Madison Square Garden, New York, which completely sold out in a little over a month after their debut), there are fans of BTS who are greatly unsettled, of course, and constantly repeat how their favourites have grown naturally to reach number one (whereas SuperM are ‘manufactured’, i.e. an artificially created mega formation) and that it’s their heroes who ‘paved the way’ to the West for everyone after them, something everyone ought to know. There’s nothing wrong in them claiming (let’s not say rubbing in 😉 this – the boys really have managed to make a massive breakthrough in America with the song mentioned and from then on their appearances in such cult show programmes as America Got Talent, The Voice, The Ellen Show, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon… have launched them in no time to the top of the global music charts, because they have something to show and thanks to them more and more people are becoming fans of Korean pop.

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And yet G-Dragon is the one about whom we can say that he really paved the way. My viewpoint is that it’s BTS and Black Pink themselves who introduced the Korean wave to the Western public en masse, because they are closer to the Western approach to music, visual imagery and content, including in addition the unique aspects of the Korean spirit as an aura. They have unconsciously emerged as a nexus in their capacity as a supreme expression of the spirit of the Fifth root race. In this sense I would also highlight Ailee from the top Korean solo artists, who besides the enchantment of Korean culture has a predominantly Western charm in terms of voice, image and message and could be very successful globally if she is presented well in the US. I think that it’s her aura that also appeals to me the most (after BoA) because she brings me the feeling of full-bloodedness with her appearance and her voice – her presence is powerful without it being a ‘role’ for a concrete ‘concept’, with a really pleasant, natural femininity. In terms of music and content, though, the songs of IU (from ‘I You’) hold my attention more – especially Love Poem and Above the Time, although they as well don’t convey to me the spark of the new. In fact they are a wonderful expression precisely of the beautiful lost past – of the ‘broken relation’ with which the whole sorrow of our existence in earth-bound awareness comes. G-Dragon, though, is an innovator with an exceptional presence and artistry, even giving me the feeling that he goes beyond the limits of present times in terms of world-view or at least that in him a genuine, powerful emotional searching has been awoken.[20] I see in his songs the idea of self-sacrifice in the name of love (Haru Haru, Blue, Let’s not Fall in Love by BIGBANG, but actually he writes their songs in the main, simply win you over), which is an essential step towards liberation from the limitations of the ego. And yet what the phenomenon really brings into global mass culture as an innovation – ‘the restoration of the connection’ and the return of Joy is embodied in the creative work of SM Entertainment. It is the source and energy which have given birth to the Wave itself and its essential content. And being born of a collaboration of the highest calibre in the music industry, SuperM actually subsumes a multitude of precisely those aspects and ideas originally instilled in the phenomenon.

First and foremost we see in SuperM the leitmotif of SME with the presence of the group SHINee – in the very naming itself we have an emphasis on the greatness in the human being, i.e. the inner radiance (‘shine’ with the addition of the Korean suffix ‘ee’; while the very name of the group’s representative Taemin I found to be translated as ‘great people’). In their song, ‘Sherlock’, apart from the specific choreography underlining the spreading out like a wave (by Tony Testa!) it is clearly said:

I won’t miss even a single trembling breath of yours
The jewel of the heart that I’ve secretly been aiming for

SHINee

After which we have EXO – Unity realised, NCT – the unfolding like a wave, WayV – the path of victory (i.e. the Way, leading to the Truth and Life, or to the Resurrection ;)[21]… And all of this in a band with the abbreviation SM – cunning, isn’t it? But the bringing forth of the super potential in the human being (the superman 😉 is what’s important, as is the unprecedented synergy: ‘M’ stands for Matrix & Master, implies the ‘Super’ synergy of the members, we’ll read in the presentation of their debut album bearing their name. And that’s not all. On September 25, 2019, Lee[22] Soo Man took part as a lecturer in the World Forum of Knowledge taking place in Seoul. He talked of the future of technologies and of how they could be applied in the entertainment industry in future. He mentioned SuperM too, emphasizing that the group could introduce synergy between East and West. A collaboration with Marvel was also announced, although with the parameters unspecified.

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And so, SYNERGY between East and West – popularity is not the goal, but a consequence of the intention. That’s why I can see that SuperM is the western EXO. (It should be borne in mind that this is a mega formation, which jointly promotes all of the initial groups without them losing their identity – just like the superheroes of Marvel have their own stories, but they gather together in another movie for a shared mission.) They are the leader in the ideas about the future – as their slogan WE ARE THE FUTURE states. An interesting detail is that in the debut video of SuperM, entitled with the newly-created word – Jopping, giving a name to the new level in their performances, we see a scene with Taemin on the motorway, with the road-sign behind him showing the direction South-East and the destination ERUTUF, i.e. the mirror image of FUTURE is spelt out. And having in mind the whole conceptual greatness of New Culture Тechnology, where co-operation and interaction between the individually distinct entities is continually sought[23] – with the overcoming of ego-boundaries for us to see ourselves as a whole from a higher perspective, the infantile speculations about how SM Entertainment has created SuperM purely and solely to achieve the success of BTS and to overshadow them, sound not like forgivable illiteracy, but the very height of ignorance.[24] It’s enough just to mention the fact that the gradual expansion – precisely like a Wave with Seoul as its centre, is the main concept of SME, starting its innovative realisation with their group Super Junior (2005) and visibly refined in the formation of NCT (whose slogan is WE TO THE WORLD), but present as an intuitive impulse probably from the very beginning in the creative work of Lee Soo Man. With just a quick run-through the lyrics of the songs which I already know, we can extract messages like the one from the collaboration Beyond by Xiumin.

Follow my heart constantly filled with excitement
till the place that calls for us.
Everyone gather here from the East to the West,
with more brilliant music in your heart

Or from Limitless by NCT U:

Oh, baby, its you
The sign of eternity scattering to infinity from East to West
The shadows that yearned for light now dance in the dark
This voice, this song – resonating together to their best
We become one

And something else too. Humanity today is struggling to love itself (and that’s why the concept, ‘Love Yourself’, by BTS is acknowledged as a supreme achievement of modern times), but the future requires us after that to overcome the self factor in order to see ourselves as one within the Whole. The self is the boundary which needs to be erected during individuation but which after that becomes an obstacle which we have to surmount. Just as the chick, in order to hatch, needs to break the shell which until then has protected it. The world concerns itself predominantly with social issues, because these are what constantly afflict us, but the Korean wave in essence draws out the metaphysics of another existence, in which the problems are solved on a higher level of consciousness. And SuperM comes in order to express precisely this on a global scale, in my opinion. It can be no accident that this is borne in collaboration between East and West and not, as usually is the case – a one-off or sporadic partnership between artists.

The genius of the approach in the creative output of SME includes leaving the doors open for many-faceted interpretations. Whether it’s going to be The 7-th Sense or Limitless by NCT, Overdose, The Eve or Ко Ко Bop by EXO, Take Off by WayV… we could perceive the songs on a quite trivial level in the usual mold of love anguish, sexy temptations and even getting stoned or high… In Jopping, in his couplet ‘Let’s go out to Paradise; Cheers to a better life, Kai winks playfully and makes a gesture as if taking a slurp from a glass, followed by the others, and then as if getting stoned or snorting (in Ko Ko Bop, Chen is the one who makes a similar gesture). But if we start to take a proper look, so many other aspects and nuances emerge that the songs literally have the qualities of dreams, which mark multi-layered psychological realities and it’s us who choose which reality wе’ll bring into manifestation.

The only thing which is left for the Korean scriptwriters to become aware of is that the Moon, which the Asian peoples love so much, is an active power in the Atlantean period of our earthly evolution, because it is the image of our astral existence (when we have descended, or claimed,  from our inner heights/depths of the mental and astral spheres into earthly being), but the future is the Sun with its fiery power. ‘The human being is the future inhabitant of Jupiter’ is what we’ll read in Vaklush Tolev’s treatment of the subject ‘Shambala – Academy of Initiation and Knowledge(see an extract at the end of this material), where it is said quite clearly that we will not be in need of external sources of light because we ourselves will shine. And the interesting thing in this case is that science speaks about Jupiter as an unrealised Sun, though it may actually still become one in future! Because Hermes has already ‘informed’ us that the Sun is a gathering together of (shining) beings who have completed their evolution. And as far as sun-spots goes, Vaklush has hinted with a smile about what they are due to, commenting that every evolution has its dark spots too, i.e. these are the beings who have been left behind in their development.

Perhaps it’s no accident – a little after the rumour that SME was preparing to launch a new boy group (or NCT unit) – I dreamed that this group will lead us towards the Atlantean era, but I hope in its contemporary dimension. Because the direct knowledge of things and magicality, along with the sense of unity and connectedness in our Atlantean existence is a foregoing stage, when the veil of the mind has not yet descended. It is only with the Work of Christ in our earthly evolution that the veil of the mind was finally torn – and not only for the initiated but for all of humanity. Moreover, it’s the veil preceding the Holy of Holies – the super-mental, the sacral, and not merely the intellectual and astral in terms of planes, which we visit anyway, even if only in sleep, but for what’s higher than this we have neither refined enough senses nor an awoken consciousness. The breaking of the Seven Seals in the human being is a deed of the accomplished Consubstantiality in its earthly manifestation, when God in Man is already awoken, freed and working… This is why with the Spiritual Wave of Wisdom the Way towards the Tree of Immortality is finally open and conceptually the human being is a god in evolution. The Children of the Day as a hierarchy are those who will be able to eat of the fruits of the Tree of Life and its healing leaves (which we see in the debut video of EXO – МАМА, in Wolf, in The One by EXO-CBX…; whereas in the videos of GD the first Tree is logically present – HeartbreakerCOUP D’ETAT, A Boy, in a visibly powerful urge and need to be superseded – with the fruits of which our earthly saga begins, i.e. becoming aware in the flesh and starting the gradual cultivation of the awoken mind, about which it is clearly stated in Genesis 3:5 22: ‘For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.), i.e. humanity is moving towards a hierarchy of consciousness for which God is not only an external power, but a power within us, which we awaken and bring forth in order for it to shine through us and our deeds… So ‘Let’s just wake up this world’, as NCT sings in all manner of variations, and let’s bring forth its inner light… (SuperM, assemble! Your M-pYre is waiting 😉

The ideas are spreading and we see new concentric circles in the creative work of other musical companies. In 2017 JYP Entertainment launched a new boy group Stray Kids, whose concept is self discovery and they start off with songs like Awaken and 3-rd Eye; while BTS’s company BigHit Entertainment came out in 2019 with their new generation of youngsters under the name TXT (Tomorrow X Together), who already have their albums The Dream Chapter: Star and Magic, and BTS – released Map of the Soul (à la Jung, as is The Shadow by BoA, but in a completely different interpretation). In 2019 1TEAM of LiveWorks also started up, with extremely pleasant entranced songs like Make This or Not Afraid. I would also mention C9 Entertainment’s recently launched group CIX, although it can be seen from the video for My New World that they also, just like the others, embody the viewpoint from below to above (from outside to within) – i.e. the interpretation is in the spirit of our Fifth cultural race. But the important thing is that there is after all a moving towards the consideration and confirmation of values, as I find quite a lot good songs which are impactful in their own way. From the newest and much-lauded hit group X1, also created 2019 (via a TV reality show), though, nothing appeals to me, apart from the performers themselves – their debut album follows the trend with the title Emergency: Quantum Leap, but there is nothing of the real energies in it. I don’t wonder that Paul Thompson (@MZMC), whose team are the ones behind EXOs Overdose, Let Out the Beast, Love Shot… (and they’ve worked for BTS too) has recently shared in his insta-story that K-pop has become boring these days with songs which sound alike and concepts which have already been done, adding that: ‘Every new group is just a repackage of a legacy one that did it better. Half the agencies in Korea ask me to make their groups sound like EXO. How about you new agencies stop being lazy and unoriginal – EXO is EXO. Your group will not be them. Be creative K-pop!’ Others started to copy BTS

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There are probably people who are wondering why I’m including articles about the Korean pop and the Korean cultural wave in this book without any visible link to Bulgaria, so I’ll give an explanation – because the Spiritual Wave of Wisdom, springing forth from Bulgaria, should and can find alike-minded people everywhere in the world. At least I personally see the Vision of Kinship, even if only in what Vaklush had been mentioned: ‘There is no Asian Culture that does not have Bulgarian roots.’ And just as the theme ‘The battle within us’ from the volume ‘The Way to Resurrection’ concludes – a new Spiritual empire awaits us to spread its wings. It’s an interesting fact that the members of SuperM gather together in their debut music video Jopping from different directions with different means of transport in order to show – in their words – that we can all have our own colour, strong sides, different professions, origin etc, but with the bringing forth of the light which we bear within ourselves in essence, we come together magically and step over into a new world.

NCT recently set off on the Highway to Heaven, while WayV, flying out of the earthly orbit with Take Off, literally landed in the City of God with Moonwalk, from whence ‘they create everything new’ :) EXO though are like gods descended here from their heights in order to teach us how to overcome earthly gravitation or various forms of addiction (i.e. Obsession). In the meantime SuperM with Jopping will urge us:

Everyone, hear that sound
Of the frame dare to step out
Thus a new world open, united

_________________________

[1] When I saw the boys from NCT in their studio commentary for their debut song The 7-th Sense emphasising chains as an accessory in their styling, it immediately became clear to me that it was no accident and that they were hinting at the chain reaction in the spreading out of the Korean wave, for example, and after that I saw too that they literally had a song like this – Chain, as well as another one with this terminology – Switch, and an album Empathy.

[2] The conception of the group is the joining of an unlimited number of members with the creation of new formations like a wave moving towards the world with Seoul in the center as a spring. NCT U (U for United) is the first formation, in which every member from any of the sub-groups at all can take part – for a specific project. The next formation is NCT 127, with the figure being taken from the geographical longitude of the capital Seoul. NCT Dream is the youth formation and the idea is that after they reach the age of 20 the members will leave this group for other sub-groups and make way for new youngsters. The next group formed has been created under the name WayV for promotion in China, taking four of the members already active in NCT and including three new ones. In the video for their song Moonwalk (2019), we see the heading NEO BOY on the back of one of the boys so that the unbroken link is clear, while the video itself is an awe-inspiring masterpiece and a true work of art, as is, for example, the video by Lay for his song NAMANANA. Sometimes I find it a pity that they aren’t watched as much as the productions of their Korean brethren (or at least when it comes to the uploads on Youtube, which China has limited the access to on its territory) because they deserve it! And after all WayV have become the first and only Chinese group for the moment who have entered, for the second time (with their second EP), the iTunes Worldwide Album Chart at #1.

[3] The song is translated as ‘Beauty and the Beast’ in the Chinese version, i.e. a metaphor for EXO and EXOLs :) I’ve observed that SM often introduces such a symbolic nuance about relations between the artist and his public into apparently ordinary songs with love as the subject matter, this being only part of the possible range of interpretations.

[4] BTS is an acronym of the Korean expression Bangtan Sonyeondan, translated into English as Bulletproof Boy Scouts. It’s interesting that in the middle of 2017 they declared the phrase Beyond the Scene as the way to read their name from now on, this being part of creating a new identity, obviously adapted to their emergence onto the global music market and to incorporation of more metaphysical content.

[5] ‘We all are superhumans’ – this is how the message of their song Superhuman from the album ‘we are SUPERHUMAN’ was presented in the media – for us to draw forth the potential in us as supermen, while in the lyrics it specifically says:

Break the limits that you can no longer stand,
so to wake up and reveal your inner true self
The set up standards – go and break them
You know it could be a dangerous undertaking
but it’s to find within you а real, true gem

That’s why in the Korean version of Regular, which represents a worthwhile dream about the achievement of success with hard work and the bringing forth of our own light, (while in the English one the unworthy life goal of pursuing purely material success with its external glitter is described), it is sung:

We don’t chase after the won (KRW), be the one one one…
I have my dreams grasped in my hand
My imagination shines bright into my head
The money pile up pile up but I’m still not satisfied
Of course it’s on the regular, I’m not typical – irregular

We make the world go (Do-do…)
Higher, higher (Do-do…)

I’m so pure and so fresh
I shine like a crystal chandelier – I burst, flash
Diamonds are those on my neck
But you know I glitter more than them

Our melody is a wave, do it a way

EXO (and Baekhyun), on the other hand, have a song Diamond, (Diamond Crystal is by EXO-CBX), as well as there being a diamond logo for the album Love Shot. With Super Junior (and SHINee) I also noticed similar nuances of the logo and especially amongst the new variants there was no way my attention could fail to be drawn to ‘the serpent’ – (the wisdom of) awoken Kundalini around the vertical axis, while recently I stated to see here or there also the presence of Saturn – the planet of wisdom and responsibility (astrological ruler of Bulgaria, which is under the sign of Capricorn).

[6] What’s envisaged is the performance, released on DVD, of EXO-CBX from their concert in Japan (2019), where this and other songs are symbolically dedicated to Xiumin in his farewell to the group and fans for two years of fulfilling his duty by enlisting in the Korean army and when the boys turned around towards their friend at a key moment in the lyrics, after the emotional prelude by Chen, Baekhyun loses his voice for a few seconds, overcome by feeling.

[7] That is: here the symbolism of the colours is reversed, because the polar forces in nature are mutually necessary in balance and harmony, finding unity in the colour white around them in the Korean flag, which strikes me as one of the most mystical ones. Just as the conception of the female group Red Velvet is Joy and happiness with the girls’ stage names like Joy in English, IrenePeace in Greek, Seulgi – a very popular Korean name with the meaning of Wisdom… Isn’t it unique?! But in their concept there is a darker side of happiness, which can be discovered even in the most apparently cheerful songs and they all have a flavor of incantations with allusions to fairy-tale and mythological plots. (P.S. Their pre-Christmas song Psycho is magnificent; I like everything about it and it reminds me in terms of its effect of WayV with their new album – beautiful and somehow transported to other worlds, in an awe-inspiring way!). Polar viewpoints are necessarily present with SM, and knowingly at that. In the Monster video and the Love Shot photo session by EXO we see scenes in which the lighting has been done in such a way that the boys cast two shadows at the same time – a blue and a red one, which is hardly just accidental playing around. Also worth noting is the fact that between the video conceptions of the two songs there are definitely connecting elements. In Obsession we see both polarities presented together – as a blue and a red version, but when Sehun shoots at his bad version, the arrow actually pierces his own heart, because ‘we are one’. Jekyll from the album expresses so beautifully the woe of the neglected darker side locked inside of us, while Butterfly Effect speaks about how we can bring about change – with warmth, support and love, which changes the whole aura and overcomes alienation. Day After Day is kind of about the beautiful time before the ‘separation’, which has passed, and so on. Here is the place to mention my favourite commentator on YT recently, Ben (Deacs Channel), who alone of all those I follow paid attention to the concept of Obsession and deciphered it without having watched or read anything promotional before the music video. He even saw before me that in Moonwalk on Xiaojun‘s back was written NEO BOY. And not long ago he posted this: “Six years ago today, I left my inhibitions behind and discovered my ultimate passion by uploading my first video to YouTube. November 22nd might not mean a whole lot to most of you, but to me, it’s probably more important than my actual birthday. On 11/22/13, I stopped listening to peers & superiors and listened to my heart instead. That one decision has ultimately led me to today.” Well, I would have said that for me these numbers are really cool – the two master numbers, the 11 of inner vision and the 22 of accomplished materialisation + 13 of Wisdom, to top it all. There is energy here, Ben, definitely 😉

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[8] From the series NCTmentary, Episode 5 – ‘Back to the Reality’, in the comment sections of which we can find more than one post in a spirit like this: ‘me after watching nct: you know, im something of a scientist myself’. No wonder that in their team there are a lot of Aquariuses, in NCT 127 there are three of them: Jaehyun, Johnny and Doyoung.

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[9] 1995 is often cited as the year when SM Entertainment was founded, but this is to miss the fact that 1989 was actually the year when Lee Soo Man created his SM Studio (which was later renamed), i.e. the year when the ‘New Era’ of democracy came to us in Bulgaria. That same year he released his albums New Age 2 and New Age 1 – precisely in reverse order. In 1992 the song I Know by Seo Taiji & Boys, which is a mix of the modern Western styles (in contrast to the ballads and pop-folk which had been usual at the time), caused an about-turn in the musical trends of South Korea. This group fell apart in 1996, but the same year Lee Soo Man’s first genuine K-pop group H.O.T. (‘High Five of Teenagers’ made up of five boys), who by that time had already developed his internal system for the care and training of their artists in all sorts of aspects. H.O.T.’s first album was entitled We Hate All Kinds of Violence and even then we see the inherent balance of moods and messages – strongly social, emotional, with ideas of the future meta-groups in embryo, as well as being cheerful in a child-like way. I managed to find translations of their emblematic songs (from beginning to end meaningful and energy-filled!) like We Are the Future, part of which EXO performed at the Golden Disk Awards 2013, and I will quote just this from it: ‘I’m going to change the old ways of the world… Inside me a new world is waiting to grow, now I’ll develop it on my own…’ Or here’s this from Line Up: ‘Leave the greed and look at the sky. Can you feel this gaze at you by Тhe Eye?’ (Tang Ra – the Sky, which sees all.) I can’t not mention another song as well, one which made a great impression on me – I yah! Musically, it is like a mosaic of diverse melodic lines and starts with my favourite, Mozart’s 25th Symphony! In terms of content, it is devoted to an incident with a fire in a kindergarten, similar to our case with the children who perished in the discotheque, ‘Indigo’.  The topic is similar on a global scale – where is the care and responsibility for the future of humanity in the shape of the children, and besides that, the children of the future with an allegorical nuance – the indigo children or the children of fire in the Korean version.

[10] Every time I watch the videos for this song and I see Haechan stopping in a crowd of people and looking upwards, I recall the ending scene of ‘The Matrix’, when in exactly this way Neo stops and looks up, after which he takes flight, in defiance of the limitations of the ‘system’, with the words: ‘I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. The video by WayV for the Chinese version of the same song is literally an introduction to The Matrix – it’s a masterpiece, it’s awe-inspiring! Elements of the Neo concept can be seen with EXO too, of course – in the Chinese version of MAMA for example Kris flies off from a skyscraper (because flying is his superpower) and the stage recalls the moment when Morpheus (the god of dreams ;) tests Neo to see whether he’ll manage to fly.

[11] The lyrics of the song – a play on words via the pronunciation of the group’s name and the capital Seoul, so that in English NCT and the place where they are come to be the City of the Soul. P.S. From the recent appearance of EXO on Radio Star we found out that Sehun could’ve had a stage-name pronounced like the capital, but he ended up with his own name, just spelt like the capital.

[12] Incidentally, when I started to look at everything I’ve discovered about EXO, I didn’t pay attention to the fact that in the television programme Star Show 360 (2016), in the video materials prepared especially and in advance, Kai does origami – a little paper plane, but I watched the programme again recently and while I was listening to what he was explaining, I noticed that he very precisely makes reference to ideas which by now are familiar to me as conceptions. He called the little plane a white eagle, for example, and it was said to be able to fly off very far away to lead us wherever we want, while at the start of the video for the Korean version of the song Regular by NCT 127 a piece of graffiti with a white eagle is specifically zoomed in on after Mark’s appearance while spreading his hands in the shape of a cross, similarly to WinWin before; Taeyong on the other hand has a ring with a serpent on it. I see the Eagle and the Serpent very often even in the choreographies – around the middle of Wakey-Wakey there is a moment when Jaehyun makes a movement as if he will take flight and then a coloured visual effect appears like a bird with its wings spread; in Love Shot by EXO, Chen right from the beginning makes rapid movements like a cross and after that he curls his arms upwards like wings in the form of the letter V; Taemin has a similar moment in Jopping after the ace rap-segment by Mark and Taeyong with the cool stamping, while at the end of the MV, the cult scene with Ten it’s exactly like Chen’s, but in a martial variation; once again in Love Shot we see everyone making a movement with their arms like a snake, just before the scene with Suho as a pulsating heart in the centre; in Jopping Baekhyun arches himself like a snake in his cult scene with the high note, while the others sing that they will set this stage on fire; towards the end of the Japanese video version of Limitless there is a moment with Taeil, who is leaning back against the other boys behind him with the same movement of arms spread wide and straight after that there follows a scene with a ‘fiery serpent’ from something ablaze, winding around in the air; even in the new video Obsession I saw images – this time it was Chanyeol with the eagle and the cross (actually all of them, but consecutively, like an echo), while the serpent was writhing in the blazing fire and so on. I’m absolutely awe-struck by the things I’ve noticed because they show the subtlety of real knowledge and input energy… Let’s return to Kai’s little plane-eagle – it seemed to me a suspicious coincidence, but I would have passed it over if it hadn’t popped up to me two days after the lyrics video for the song Paper Plane by NCT 127. And here they are: two lines from the text: ‘I fly through the sky to heaven like a paper plane; The higher and higher I fly, the further it leads me to a new world.’ Then I paid attention that the child in The Origin video by NCT lunches as well such a paper plane to fly. Now comes the moment for me to mention that the female group Girls Generation (SNSD) debuted with the song Into the New World and the video starts with the flying off of a little paper plane, with there being a real aeroplane too, one that Taeyeon manages to repair for flight! An interesting ‘coincidence’ is that at the end of 2011, when EXO were already promoting their forthcoming debut, Girls Generation came out with the song The BOYS, the video for which begins with a futuristic landscape and the discovery of something like the crystal meteor of EXO – one of the girls sees it and when she takes it in wonder, the crystal rises in her palm. Youtube offered me the song in the euphoria around the announcement of SuperM, as if to point out to me once again that the creative output of SME is connected. In its allegorical nuance the text immediately sounded to me like a call for the EXO ‘boys’ to come out finally onto the stage, following the leadership of the ‘girls’, who are Athena number 1, spreading wisdom around, check this out… We bring the boys out… All these boys who will lead the world, no doubt. And this way to be shined a light over all the main ideas, only hinted at until then – for which courage is needed, as it says in the song too. (The conception of EXO in reality met quite a lot of rejection and mockery at the start, with them even being called SME’s ‘biggest mistake’, just as SuperM too were received with quite polarised reactions.) And so, as if to confirm that there really is something true in my assumption, under the lyrics video for the Korean version of The BOYS a similar feeling is expressed in a significant, funny and top-liked comment by lala elizabeth, written a year ago: SNSD: b-bring the boys out; manager: okay boys, get out, before they get mad; *pushing super junior, exo, shinee, nct* :)

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[13] For comparison, at the start of 2017, BTS were overall almost twice as far behind EXO in terms of sales; at the start of 2018 they were still around 2 million behind and by the end they had surpassed them. Wikipedia: After 2017 BTS emerged onto the international music market, leading the Korean wave in the States and breaking a multitude of sales records, thus becoming the first Korean group to receive recognition from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) with their remix-single ‘MIC Drop’. MIC Drop is part of the B-side of their sixth EP, entitled Love Yourself and after a remix by the American DJ Steve Aoki with the involvement of the rapper Desiigner it was released at the end of the year (2017) as a single with a video, turning into a world-wide hit.

[14] At the press conference to promote their album, the leader RM (Rap Monster) and main rapper of BTS explained that the song is inspired by the gesture of the American president Barack Obama throwing the microphone at the end of his speech saying farewell to the White House in 2016. This gesture of a deliberate, demonstrative dropping of the microphone at the end of a public speech or so, has established itself as an expression signalling triumph at the end of a successfully concluded event – of the feeling of satisfaction with your own performance.

[15] In this connection he has subsequently shared that: ‘The training wasn’t difficult for me in itself. But I really love to eat well and losing weight was a real challenge for me.’

[16] Having finished school and being 19 years old already, Baekhyun went to apply for the Seoul Institute of Arts and while he was out there singing and rehearsing to get into his voice, an agent of SME spotted him and gave him a business card so he could get in contact with the company. Before that he auditioned here or there a few times without result. Likewise, Chen was practicing for two years with a voice teacher to apply also for Seoul Institute of Arts, but not being accepted, on the recommendation of his teacher he attended an audition for SME, where he and Baekhyun actually met each other and they even had a lunch together. Nowadays whatever song the two of them sang as a duet in the Korean show programmes, their performance went for me straight into the category ‘musical magic’. Alongside D.O. they were called the Holy Trinity of the vocal line in EXO. And so… destiny :) Incidentally, Sehun, Suho, Chenyeol, Lay, D.O. and Luhan of EXO were also discovered by agents of the company – sometimes straight from the street, as is the case with Taeyong of NCT, in school or at a singing/dancing competition or contest.

[17] In their first Insta-live each of the members answered the question: ‘Who of your bandmates in SuperM has turned out to be the most different from your first impression of him or from what you expected?’, to which Taeyong admitted: ‘For me that is Baekhyun.’ Then Kai joins in, laughing: ‘He was even more extra than you expected? It was beyond anything you could imagine?’ and Baekhyun quickly agrees: ‘I turned out to be even more out of control than you’d thought is possible.’ Taeyong answers: ‘What you guys are saying is exactly right. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone this fun and chipper in my entire life.’ After which Kai clarifies with a smile that EXO have been experiencing this for eight years straight. Then Ten too joins in with his answer, obviously with Baekhyun in mind once again. ‘You senior members have always looked so cool in your performances on stage and I have always followed your appearances. When we started training together though I was very surprised. You were so funny and entertaining the whole time and were constantly joking with each other about something…’, to which Baekhyun playfully retorts: ‘Ten probably really did get a big surprise. He probably thought I was someone who really worked hard.’ Baekhyun then adds that when he was resting in the practice room, the NCT members often came around to support him with the words ‘You can do it!’ :) The other unique thing about Baekhyun, which really amazed them, is his way of memorizing the dances. They all repeat the movements after the choreographer but he just stay and observe, after which he dances right along with them. Actually, his bandmates in EXO had shared the same thing years before – having been selected for EXO-K’s debut at the last moment, to everyone’s astonishment, he learnt the choreography in exactly one day just from his communications with the members. And so, although it was Taemin who’d initially been considered to be the leader of the group, which is apparent from the trailers and everything else, in the afore-mentioned Insta-live he enthusiastically gives up this role in favour of Baekhyun and after hearing his arguments, the others unanimously give their agreement. In this connection I read in www.kpopstarz.com a smile-inducing comment: ‘Baekhyun was chosen for this position to maintain the joyful spirit of the team and to bring calm to the overall atmosphere with his innate ability to be like a ray of sunlight for the others.’ I found it especially charming to hear by Baekhyun himself on their #TwitterBlueLIVE that he’s fond of his new role because in this way he has permission for direct contact with teacher Lee Soo Man. What’s more, I’ve noticed that he doesn’t fail to mention him with sincere enthusiasm, having even suggested SooManies as a name for SuperM’s fandom – in gratitude to their founder, but also with the additional meaning of ‘so many admirers’, for example, with which he provoked a smiley rejection of the idea and a wave of funny net comments. Incidentally, the title ‘teacher’ for Lee Soo Man is exceptional even in Korea as a term of address for a boss, director, founder of a large company, and about Baekhyun we know in principle how much he respects and admires clever, knowledgeable people, that’s why he really likes the byname given to him by the fans, Genius Idol, or better to say Artist. He’d even mentioned – in some of the earliest EXO’s TV appearances, that at school – to the question about what he’d like to be, he’d written ‘scientist’ (despite the fact that he’d already dreamed of being a singer), since his best friend was the smartest child in the class and he wanted to be like him. I don’t know whether it has anything to do with the topic but once again as a schoolboy he’d wanted to wear glasses so much that in the end he’d had to and probably that’s why in some of EXO’s first photo sessions we see him with glasses, like the very image of the clever-swot in the class :)

[18] ‘Hyung’ is the Korean expression which in principle denotes, for men, someone who is senior in age.

[19] The translation is exceptionally specific – ‘belong to such as these’ and not ‘is theirs’… , i.e. the essential thing is the character and the mindset, not the age.

[20] It made an impression on me that he is always running after something – seeking, longing, even going berserk :), but either he doesn’t reach it or doesn’t manage to keep it for long. In any case the music of BIGBANG and especially his happen to impress me to the extent that I’ll follow him in future since he’s just discharged his military service now and is expected to return to the stage. It also was very interesting for me to find out that he was discovered by SME – actually PERSONALLY by Lee Soo Man, at the age of only 8. While he was skiing with his family, he took part in their dance competition which he won, and was then trained for five years but chose to leave when he was 12 in order to go his own way. He radiates a strong and magnetic charisma and his name expresses this wonderfully. G-Dragon is a translation of his real name, Jiyong, which I would formulate as ‘Dragon of the Mind’. The ‘dragon’ in him really does work, although within the boundaries of the mind – a fire within is felt, although one not yet mastered :) He is at the doorstep of the cathartic virtues in the scale of Plotinus, that make one child of the gods as an hierarchy (see more on p.186 of ‘Bright Sparks in the Aura of Bulgaria’). And let me mention that he keeps reminding me in some of his visuals and styling of Xiumin, i.e. there is something present in him too of the child-like purity (in this case of the mind) personifying EXO. (I discovered later, that I’m not the only one to have noticed the resemblance – there are video-clips in YT on the topic.) Taehyung (V) of BTS for his part is often compared visually with Baekhyun, so expectedly – in his name and character a lot of levity and smiles are to be seen, and that’s why it wouldn’t be surprise if it’s him who carries the real energy for the popularity of their group. Together with Junkook maybe. The two of them seem to me like Indian and Egyptian princes simultaneously – every time I take a proper look at them, this thought occurs to me. Yet Baekhyun has certain looks in his everyday life which remind me every time of the figure in my consciousness of this somewhat tricky teacher of martial arts which you cannot recognise in the beginning – ‘the drunken little old man’ who apparently knows nothing, but manages to fend off every attack from his opponent seemingly without wanting to – I envisage the drunken staff, drunken fist Kung Fu styles. (Although Baekhyun is renowned for not drinking and good for him, Kai, Suho and all the others who choose to be in a good mood with lively minds, and not while getting unconscious, hehe; for whoever doesn’t know – alcohol merely frees the physical body from the control of mental activity, but it is important for the mind to be cultivated in such a way that it has no need of being put to sleep in order for us to experience the higher planes, i.e. the profound energies within us :) I had a look at the meanings of the names of almost everybody – of RM it’s ‘the genius from the South’, J-Hope – ‘the name will spread to the whole country’ (which shows inherent popularity, but doesn’t mark out the character unlike in the case of V), Jimin – according to the way its transcribed is something like ‘my wisdom will be higher than the sky’, yay! (Jimin is really the most profound, it seems to me, amongst them, and it doesn’t surprise me that he is the one who is very close to Kai, while RM is the leading figure creatively and the story of how when 14-15 years old he learnt English made a strong impression on me – as if fate had prepared him, whether he wanted it or not, for the forthcoming communication with the world; the serial ‘Friends’ had apparently made a big splash then and his mother had got him to watch all the seasons one after another, so that he saw them 3 times – with Korean subtitles, with English subtitles and finally just listening) and so on… There in the East the ancient tradition has definitely been preserved of instilling something about the person’s path in the name, something which in the era of Western civilization has literally been lost. It’s not at all clear, for example, what my name means, apart from a type of flower (Delphinium consolida in Latin) and since I didn’t find any information I finally dreamt with poetic allegories that it means something like ‘light within the mind’, i.e. ‘intuition’, for instance. Of course, what nuances amongst the vibrations of the name will be embodied always depends on the individual personality.

G-DRAGON3a

ШУМИН4b

P.S. I finished the material but continued exploring the songs of G-Dragon and I came across the self-referential A Boy (after which SuperstarDivina Comedia – one of my favourite allegorical films, ‘The Truman Show’, is mentioned, YAY! – but I am not quite sure whether he has caught, after all, the conceptual affinity b/w it and ‘The Matrix’, with both movies coming out simultaneously and the post-production work even being done in one and the same studio), where he sings that from age 13 he hasn’t stopped to have a rest and how he remembers ‘back in that day’ his glorious dream, when the boy shouted out to the world with his cool voice ‘shine a light’… but despite his life of a star, the sorrow just grew and loneliness didn’t pass through… At that moment, almost in tears, I thought that SME ought to take back this precious gem and return him to Joy (with the knowledge of Wisdom, nothing more). A thought that he was probably a potential member of SHINee by fate also crossed my mind and it pained my heart to think of Jonghyun, who went beyond before his time, just like the two girls from the music industry who have followed him in the last two months or less. After a brief pondering, I alleviated my emotion with the idea of some kind of collaboration between G-Dragon and SuperM – if SM make an album about the transformation of suffering into radiance and include a song with him – Wow!! ‘Pain, which has not become wisdom is suffering; pain, having become wisdom, is radiance.’ /Vaklush/ About GD I am constantly put in mind of The Message of Vigilance by Vaklush, given in 2003, which transforms one’s view, stating: ‘Know, the Day of the enslaver has ended, our hour of responsibility has come. It is not the prodigal son who will return, but the son who will find the Father!’ – where Vigilance is insight, and the enslaver – corporeality, which fetters us and returns us to the starting line until we roll away the stone of Sisyphus (karma) enough so that we may bear the circumstantial world in our palm :) Listening to song after song and especially COUP D’ETAT I can’t help being awe-inspired by the feeling of a real catching and refraction of the ‘Wave’ through the personal viewpoint – ‘The Revolution will not be televised, the revolution is in your mind. The revolution is you.’ – the intuitive images there, in Heartbreaker and especially in A Boy are speaking precisely of breaking the earthly mentality with the rhythm of the inner life, with the rhythm of the heart. * At that point it occurred to me to look at Tony Leggett’s palm-reading and once again it astonished me how accurate the characterisations given by this man were. He has just taken a look at the Dragon’s palms (2015) and he starts off with ‘Wow, this guy is Mr. Personality. He loves what he does, he loves himself – there is a strong ego here, but it’s not bad ego. Some people had bad ego, controlling people; others have good egos and he attracts people to him. He is very confident in who he is. He is here on a karma…’ and so on. He also mentioned that he loves there to be money revolving around him but with age this is fading away, i.e. is getting more sublimated. Curiosity led me to check out about his bandmate Seungri too, because of the investigation which sprang up this year in K-pop circles with him at the fore, and Tony said it as early as the spring of 2017! He warned that he often had the wrong idea about things, but that he couldn’t admit it because of his ego, and that he should beware – especially with drugs and alcohol, adding that it’s good for him to open his eyes more in order for the light to enter and so he is helped from Above to get out of this. Well, it’s just as if I was listening to the lyrics of NCT from Regular or Wake Up about the unsound, unworthy dream and the need to wake up for a new world view :) Here I would add that not long ago Baekhyun posted a picture of his palm on twitter with wonderful resolution and on his Mount of Apollo a beautifully formed star with long rays and a dot in the centre can clearly be seen. Someone had published a picture with Korean inscriptions in reaction and an automatic translation along the lines that the star shows popularity in service of the Universe, which seems to me to be connected to the other interesting thing from Tony Leggett about Baekhyun (2016) – that thinking, understanding are truly powerful in himhe sees things. And about Chen I noticed an interesting connection – the phrenologist from Star Show 360, apart from the hidden strength of his chin, also mentions that once he has passed his fifties he’ll have a lot of employees and it would be wonderful for him to direct himself towards his own business, while Tony Leggett says straight that he will withdraw from the music industry and will start a clever and very successful business of his own.

[21] Thanks to Classical Musicians React I found out that the name of WayV transcribed in Chinese (威神V) means Almighty divinity (‘way’ is read in the same way in Chinese), with the boy explaining that it is not the one and only God Almighty which is intended, but after he’d read the Chinese title of the song Moonwalk too – 天选之城 – which is translated as Heavenly City (or Temple of God) he corrected himself saying that this could after all be the meaning it’s imbued with. Listening to the song he remarked that the lyrics are impressive. The simplicity in filming of their song Love Talk is a perfect and tender visualisation of the Way, on which they walk (climb) and which is like a cubic mechanism of stone, arranging itself at the end with the inscription V on it in the ‘heart’ of the Heavenly City, which is actually the light pouring out of the centre of heaped clouds. The interesting thing is that even in this beautiful bewitching song the sound of breaking apart glass barriers is heard, which we otherwise see in the MVs continually – and this sound comes together with the phrase: ‘I can here it CALLING from where you are…’ Incidentally in the video presentations based on the footage of everything around the album, Kun shows us especially one of his rings with the words that this is not actually a ring but a snake and more precisely his own pet, which was something like an extraterrestrial pet :) Ten and YangYang also mention ‘the serpent from Greek mythology’ as part of the conception. We also understand that they have arrived in a new world and are like gods and a Heavenly Host at the same time in both their stylings – white and black-violet… And they don’t know what awaits them, so that they will encounter challenges – as EXO sing in El Dorado. The location of their shots is Athens – with the specification ‘under the water’. ‘Under the sea(starts at 2:33 – I chose this video by Ben exactly because it’s a truly great fun! :) they said and I don’t doubt that there is a reason because even before they debuted, NCT did an adaption of their song of the same name for Disney, and then Jaehyun sang A Whole New World from ‘Aladdin’ at the Mickey Mouse Club event, where, already having ‘the vision’, we can read the lyrics in new dimensions. In the same way I saw the lyrics of the song Wind of Change by the Scorpions in a new light, when Chenyeol performed it in a concert in Berlin (2018) especially in the part ‘When the children of tomorrow dream in the wind of change’… And with what a voice and feeling he sang it…- I simply adore the musical wealth of the chiaroscuro/light-and-shade in his voice.

[22] The name is one of the third most common amongst Korean surnames and is either transcribed like ‘Ee’ or most often as ‘Lee’. That is we see the link with the newly-formed word for the name of the group SHINee.

[23] This is to do with the explicitly announced approach of seeking to liaise with companies at the local level when gaining an outlet abroad, as well as the special platform SM Station, created for musical collaborations of all types. In 2016 NCT was launched, while EXO set foot in America, but there wasn’t the WOW factor for them to consolidate their position. Obviously something more is needed in order to head the global stage not in the style of the present, but of the future. And SuperM is the offspring of a collaboration with the American brand of Universal Music, Capital Records. During their trip to Japan in 2017 the director Steve Barnett realised that their business lacked a division and that was one promoting K-pop artists. After researches and contacts, encouraged by the company itself, they chose without hesitation to work with SM Entertainment on the creation of a super group in the spirit of the American cinema-superheroes. In this business contact the meeting of internal and external reality for joint realization can definitely be seen. Now the needed factors were present and SuperM debuted at #1 in the Billboard 200 and in a whole load of other rankings like Artist 100, World Albums, World Digital Song Sales, Top Album Sales and so on, with the declared intention of taking K-pop to a new level. This musical formation is the ideal expression of what the world in principle has to do – uniting under the rhythm of the Spirit with retaining the identity. And the fact that it was Baekhyun precisely spontaneously chosen as a leader – who is a brilliant mood-maker and easily brings joy into the atmosphere, setting a shared elevated rhythm – communicates the fact that with the appearance of SuperM things are falling into place. The dream of unity, sung so many times in the most various forms, will be a reality, which at least in art finds good routes to embodiment.

[24] The Teacher of Wisdom, Vaklush Tolev, emphasises with aphoristic brevity the difference: illiteracy is a permitted lack of knowledge, while ignorance is unpermitted knowledge. You can be illiterate and learn, but when you claim that you know, but you speak untruths – your knowledge is ignorance.

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In Shambala the conducting of the development of the human being of the Fifth Race has been fixed while in the Revelation of John is given the mystery of existence within existences – Shambala is the Academy of Knowledge, which educates, trains and initiates the representatives of the fifth sub-race as parents of the Fifth Root Race, while Revelation speaks of the great mystery of the sixth sub-race and the Sixth Root Race. There a great mystery is uttered: not only that there will be no need of light but of why this is so. That light will shine from which the world is woven, that ‘Fiat Lux’, ‘Let there be light!’. When the spirit was clothed in the garments of the flesh, the Sun helped it, the Moon helped it, but when the spirit will shine they will no longer be present. And then the mystery of what the Sun is will be understood: the aggregation of past souls who have concluded one evolution.
You yourselves will shine together with God: behold the great mystery! And this light is actually that which the ancients called the light of Kundalini – the Snake-Fire, and what Christianity calls the Holy Spirit. He who measures his time with sunsets and sunrises is still the human being of the Fifth Root Race. It is only when Adam comes (i.e. the Fourth Root Race of Atlantis) that the Sun and night are given to him so he may determine the yearly and daily times. Freedom from the day as time, freedom from existence as planetary being, because the human being of the Sixth Root Race is a guest not only of this planet, he is the future inhabitant of Jupiter and Jupiter is the Lord. This is the principle of the princes, this is the need for a ruler who you must have within you, Divinity.” ~ Vaklush Tolev, extract from ‘Shambala: the Academy of Initiation and Knowledge’

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