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PROMETHEUS

RISING

Robert Anton Wilson

Introduced by

Israel Regardie

NEW FALCON PUBLICATIONS

TEMPE, ARIZONA U.S.A.

COPYRIGHT © 1983 ROBERT ANTON WILSON

All rights reserved. No part of this book, in part or in whole, may be

reproduced, transmitted, or utilized, in any form or by any means,

electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any

information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing

from the publisher, except for brief quotations in critical articles, books

and reviews.

International Standard Book Number: 1-56184-056-4

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 83-81665

First Edition 1983

Second Printing 1984

Third Printing 1986

Fourth Printing 1987

Fifth Printing 1989

Sixth Printing 1990

Seventh Printing 1992

Eighth Printing 1994

Ninth Printing 1997

Second Revised Edition (Tenth Printing) 1997

Eleventh Printing 1999

Twelfth Printing 2000

Cover by Stan Slaughter

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed

Library Materials Z39.48-1984

Address all inquiries to:

NEW FALCON PUBLICATIONS

1739 East Broadway Road Suite 1-277

Tempe, Arizona 85282 U.S.A.

(or)

320 East Charleston Blvd. • Suite 204-286

Las Vegas, NV 89104 U.S.A.

email: info@newfalcon.com

website: http://www.newfalcon.com

DEDICATED

To

Timothy Leary

&

William S. Burroughs

dove sta memora

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The eight-circuit model of consciousness in this book and much

of its future-vision derive from the writings of Dr. Timothy

Leary, whose letters and conversations have also influenced

many other ideas herein. I also owe great debts to Dr. O.R.

Bontrager, for introducing me to semantics and communication

sciences generally; to R. Buckminister Fuller, for general sociological

technological perspectives on current problems; and to all

of the following: Barbara Hubbard, Alan Harrington, P.M.

Esfandiary, Dr. Paul Watzlavik, Dr. Eric Berne, Dr. Paul Segall,

Dr. Israel Regardie, Alvin Toffler, Phil Laut, Dr. Sigmund Freud,

Dr. Carl Jung, Alan Watts, Alfred Korzybski, and Aleister

Crowley. The members of the Physics/Consciousness Research

Group (Dr. Jack Sarfatti, Dr. Nick Herbert and Saul Paul Sirag)

have contributed more than is indicated by my few brief references

to quantum theory in these pages; they clarified my whole

comprehension of epistemology.

None of these persons are responsible for my mistakes or

over-statements.

CONTENTS

Preface to the Second Edition 11

Introduction 17

1. The Thinker & The Prover 23

2. Hardware & Software: The Brain & Its Programs 33

3. The Oral Bio-Survival Circuit 45

4. The Anal Emotional Territorial Circuit 61

5. Dickens & Joyce: The Two-Circuit Dialectic 85

6. The Time-Binding Semantic Circuit 93

7. The Time-Binding Dialectic: Acceleration & Deceleration 105

8 The "Moral" Socio-Sexual Circuit 121

9. Mindwashing & Brain Programming 149

10. How To Brain-Wash Friends & Robotize People 161

11. The Holistic Neurosomatic Circuit 177

12. The Collective Neurogenetic Circuit 195

13. Introduction to the Metaprogramming Circuit 207

14. The Meta-Programming Circuit 217

15. Different Models & Different Muddles 227

16. The Snafu Principle 239

17. Quantum Evolution 253

18. The Non-Local Quantum Circuit 265

19. Prometheus Rising 271

Appendix 283

PREFACE

TO THE SECOND EDITION

Screw the government!—

Legends of the Fall

Screw the middle class!

— Evita

Like most of my books, this text emerged only partly from my

conscious design and partly from suspicious accidents. It actually

began as a Ph.D. dissertation called "The Evolution of Neuro-

Sociological Circuits: A Contribution to the Sociobiology of

Consciousness," which I wrote in 1978-79 for an alternative

university called Paideia. At that time, Paideia ranked as State

Approved, the highest rating given to alternative universities in

California, where we have alternatives to everything and the

state feels required to classify the alternatives on a scale of

"experimental" to totally bonkers. Alas, Paideia, having achieved

relative respectability as an "alternative," later joined with a

much more radical and Utopian outfit, Hawthorn University, and

lost its top rank among counter-culture educational contraptions

in California, falling from Approved to Authorized, a much

lower rating. The whole megilla then joined into several flakey

outfits loosely allied, none of which were recognized at all by the

state, which suited the new honchos perfectly, since they did not

recognize the state either.

In Ireland in 1982, stuck with a dissertation which I liked a lot

and a Ph.D. diploma which, due to the collapse of Paideia,

looked less impressive, I decided to rewrite the manuscript in

more commercial form. The first change consisted of removing

all the footnotes (about two of them per sentence) which gave the

original a truly academic stink but would annoy the average

77

12 Prometheus Rising

reader. Then I expressed myself a little more bluntly (and

perhaps snidely) in many places, adding much to the humor and

nothing to the good taste. I also wrote a few more chapters,

created all the exercizes, and sketched out diagrams for the

illustrations.

I then, with craft and cunning, removed most of the references

to Dr. Timothy Leary from the early parts of the book and only

let his name begin to appear frequently after about the middle. I

had good reason, based on experience, to feel rather strongly

that, just as Dr. Tim was blacklisted by Establishment publishers

at that time, any book openly and blatantly based largely on his

ideas would also get thrown in the junk heap.

I thought I now had a "popular" book, and maybe I almost

did. The first publisher to whom I submitted it, Jeremy Tarcher,

held it for a full year of meditation before rejecting it; his only

explanation for the rejection concerned the mixture of technologese

and "counter culture" slang that has since become my most

frequent style in nonfiction. (It's based on the way I actually

speak.) When I tried Falcon next, they accepted it within 48

hours, and I received the advance check within the next 48 hours.

"Oh frabjous day!"

A month later, I heard from Tarcher again: he had changed his

mind and decided he wanted the book after all. I was in one of

my periods of acute poverty then (something that happens periodically

to all freelance writers) and it was with great effort that I

refrained from telling Mr. Tarcher to go fuck himself. I just told

him I had a contract with another publisher.

With Falcon as publisher, I then inserted the acknowledgments

page, giving Leary the credit he deserved right up front,

and added a dedication to him. Falcon, as I expected, did not

object. Falcon has always served as an alternative to Establishment

publishing, just as Paideia once served as a similar alternative

to the academic Establishment.

Prometheus was one of Falcon's first books and, I think, the

first done with computerized typesetting; as usual with such

pioneering efforts, it emerged with a phalanx of typos that have

embarrassed me considerably over the years. (When the San

Francisco Chronicle first computerized they had similar problems.

I remember one story in which the Chief of Police,

Prometheus Rising 13

denouncing drugs, rambled off into a sentence about the thrill of

meeting Mickey Mouse and Goofy. I assume that line came from

another story but it made the Chief sound as if he had gotten into

some weird chemicals himself.) In this edition, I have corrected

these errors, where I could find them; I know too much now to

think I found all of them. (Wilson's Tenth Law: no matter how

many times a writer proofs a book, hostile critics will always

find at least one error that he missed.)

I have also updated every place where I thought updating

seemed necessary. I even added a few new ideas (which, of

course, seem brilliant to me just because they are new) and some

new jokes and generally gave the text a badly-needed face-lift. It

is still one of my favorite books, and seems to rank high in the

estimation of most of my fans.

In Germany-Switzerland-Austria in the late 1980s, three

German versions existed simultaneously—a deluxe edition from

Sphinx Verlag of Zurich, a mass-market paperback from Rowalt

Verlag of Hamburg, and an even cheaper pirate edition from the

busy troglodytes of the unterwelt. The last, of course, paid no

royalties but, by indicating that I had three audiences at three

economic levels, persuaded me feel like a very popular writer in

Mitteleuropa.

As I contemplate this tenth printing of a "far out" or "freaked

out" book that began its career back in 1978, I feel only mildly

embarrassed by the predictions that proved over-optimistic. (I

have revised them, of course, in keeping with my current knowledge

and best guesses). I feel much more astonished, and

pleased, that many of the predictions now seem much less shocking

than when I first published them. Indeed, the wildest and

most "Utopian" future-scans in here are precisely the ones that

have had the greatest scientific support in the 1990s. To see two

decades ahead, even in a few areas, counts as some sort of success

in the Futurism game. And every bulletin from the embattled

MIR space station reminds me that if my space forecasts

projected "too much too soon," part of what I expected does in

fact already exist and the rest is obviously evolving.

I feel more chagrined about my lyrical evocation of Intelligence

Intensification. In the 1970s, I simply did not recognize

the extent to which the 1960s "youth revolution" had terrified

14 Prometheus Rising

our ruling Elite, or that they would try to prevent future upsurges

of radical Utopianism by deliberately "dumbing down" the

educational system. What they have produced, the so-called

Generation X, must rank as not only the most ignorant but also

the most paranoid and depressive kids ever to infest our Republic.

I agree with outlaw radio star Travis Hipp that the paranoia

and depression result inevitably from the ignorance. These kids

not only don't know anything; they don't even want to know.1

They only realize, vaguely, that somebody has screwed them out

of something, but they don't have enough zest or bile to try to

find out who screwed them and what they were screwed out of.

Fortunately, this Age of Stupidity cannot last very long.

Already, most people know that if you want a good TV or VCR,

you buy Japanese; for a good car, Japanese or German, etc.

Eventually, in order to compete, the Elite will have to allow a bit

more education for American youth, before we sink fully to the

level of a Third World nation.

The other day I saw a film called The Edge, which I regarded

as the best thing to come out of Hollywood since The Silence of

the Lambs. Perhaps not coincidentally, this flic also starred

Anthony Hopkins. In one scene, Hopkins and his co-star, Alec

Baldwin, seem in an absolutely hopeless situation, lost in the

Arctic, stalked by a hungry bear, without weapons, seemingly

doomed. Baldwin collapses, and Hopkins has a magnificent

monologue, talking Baldwin out of his despair. The speech runs,

roughly, like this: "Did you know you can make fire out of ice?

You can, you know. Fire out of ice. Think about it. Fire out of

ice. Think. Think."

This riddle has both a pragmatic and symbolic (alchemical)

answer. The pragmatic answer you can find in the film, explicitly;

and it might prove useful if you ever get lost in the north

woods; and the alchemical, or Zen Buddhist, answer is also in

the film, implicitly, and only perceptible to those who understand

One of the spokespersons for Gen X, named Shann Nix, has a talk

show on KGO, one of the most powerful radio signals on the West

Coast. On one show, she announced that the Vatican is not a State.

On another, she proclaimed that Jury Nullification was a recent

invention by the far right. Etc.

Prometheus Rising /5

the dense character Hopkins plays in the story. It might prove

useful whenever despair seems to overwhelm you.

So, to those who at the end of this book still can't understand

or sympathize with my Nietzschean yea-saying, I quote again: "Fire out of ice. Think. Think." Who was that Prometheus guy and why did he give us fire in

the first place? Robert Anton Wilson

On the Internet at http://www.rawilson.com

INTRODUCTION

By Israel Regardie

The ability to create a synthesis of diverse points of view, scientific

and social and philosophical, is a rare gift. Not many are

there who dare even to attempt such a task.

Imagine anyone trying to make sense of an amalgam of

Timothy Leary's eight neurological circuits, Gurdjieff s selfobservation

exercises, Korzybski's general semantics, Aleister

Crowley's magical theorems, the several disciplines of Yoga,

Christian Science, relativity and modern quantum mechanics,

and many other approaches to understanding the world around

us! A man is required with an almost encyclopedic education, an

incredibly flexible mind, insights as sharp as those whom he is

trying synthesize and mirabile dictu, a wonderful sense of

humor.

For several years—ever since I first became familiar with the

writings of Robert Anton Wilson—I have been struck with his

ever-present sense of bubbling humor and the wide scope of his

intellectual interests. Once I was even so presumptuous as to

warn him in a letter that his humor was much too good to waste

on hoi polloi who generally speaking would not understand it

and might even resent it. However this effervescent lightness of

heart became even more apparent in Cosmic Trigger and more

latterly in the trilogy of Schrodinger's Cat. I have sometimes

wondered whether his extraordinarily wide range of intellectual

roving is too extensive and therefore perplexing to the average

reader. Be that as it may, the humor and synthesis are even more

marked in this brilliant ambitious piece of writing, Prometheus

Rising.

l8 Prometheus Rising

Even if your reading has already made you familiar with some

of the concepts employed by Wilson in this book, nonetheless his

elucidation even of the simplest, the most basic, is illuminating.

At this moment, I am referring to the "imprint" theory which he

makes considerable use of. Much of the same is true of his references

to and explanation of Leary's eight neurological circuits.

We become familiar with them all over again, as if they had not

been introduced to us before.

Moreover I love the subtle and almost invisible use of mystical

dogma that permeates all his writings. For example, consider

the opening of Chapter Six. It quotes a particularly meaningful

sentence from William S. Burroughs. There is no mention—nor

need there be—of any anterior teaching regarding this Law of

Three, as it may be called. But one doctrine that emanated from a

medieval mystical school philosophizes that there are always two

contending forces—for the sake of convenience labeled Severity

and Mildness—with a third that always reconciles them. It is

paramount to this doctrine, which has been stated and stated

again in a dozen or more different ways throughout the centuries,

culminating finally in the idea enunciated by Burroughs and of

course used by Wilson.

There are dozens of similar seeds of wisdom sown throughout

Prometheus Rising that are bound to have a seminal effect

wherever and whenever the book is read. This is one of the many

virtues of Wilson's book; it will leave its mark on all those who

read it—and those seeds will surely take root and bloom in the

most unlikely minds—as well as in the more prosaic. Tarot

advocates will find the most unusual and illuminating

interpretations of some of their favorite cards when he falls back

on the basic neural circuits. I found them all illuminating as

providing a new viewpoint which had to be integrated into my

general view of such matters.

The only area where I was reluctantly inclined to be at odds

with Wilson was in what I considered to be his addiction to a

Utopia—which he eloquently enough expresses as "the birth

pangs of a cosmic Prometheus rising out of the long nightmare of

domesticated primate history." The history of mankind is also

the history of one Utopia after another, being enunciated with

enthusiasm and vigor, calling upon all the facts of faith and

Prometheus Rising 19

science (as they existed at that moment in space-time) to corroborate

the fantasy. A decade or maybe a century elapse—and the

fantasy is no more. The Utopia has gone down the drain to join

all the other Utopias of earlier primates. However, I sincerely

hope that Wilson is right in this case.

Now I am not unmindful of the fact that the Utopia of which

Wilson speaks, echoing many of the best scientific and philosophic

minds of our day, is a distinct possibility at some time, but

that it could occur within the next decade seems rather improbable

to me. It seems improbable of course only in terms of the

current state of world enlightenment, or lack of it, and because it

implies a "miracle" occurring in vast numbers of living primates

simultaneously—whatever semantic theories are involved in the

meaning of the word "simultaneously."

Anyway, this is a minor point considering the seminal brilliance

of the greater part of this enlightening book.

In a previously written book, Wilson wrote that

[in] 1964, Dr. John S. Bell published a demonstration that still

has the physicists reeling. What Bell seemed to prove was that

quantum effects are 'non-local' in Bohm's sense; that is, they

are not just here or there, but both. What this apparently means

is that space and time are only real to our mammalian sense

organs; they are not really real.

This writing reminds me so much of the Hindu concept of

Indra's Net. The latter is sometimes described as being a great

net extending throughout the whole universe, vertically to represent

time, horizontally to represent space. At each point where

the threads of this Indra's net cross one another is a diamond or a

crystal bead, the symbol of a single existence. Each crystal bead

reflects on its shining surface not only every other bead in the

whole net of Indra but every single reflection of every reflection

of every other bead upon each individual bead—countless,

endless reflections of one another. We could also liken it to a

single candle being placed in the centre of a large hall. Around

this hall tens of mirrors are arranged in such a manner that, when

the candle was lit, one saw not only its reflection in each individual

mirror, but also the reflections of the reflections in every

other mirror repeated ad infinitum.

2O Prometheus Rising

One of the several virtues of Prometheus Rising is that Wilson

using Leary's neurological circuits believes that a new philosophical

paradigm is about due. In reality, this is really Wilson's

answer to my proposed criticism of his Utopian fantasy. It may

not be within a decade that we shall realize whether it is true or

false. But that is not important. What is clear is that thanks to the

insights of many modern thinkers, major new intellectual findings

do not come solely from the slow drip and grind of tiny new

discoveries, or from new theories simply being added to our present

armamentarium of time-honoured truisms. Rather, quantum

leaps, in outlook ala Teilhard de Chardin, occur with a fantastic

jump to a new horizon or level of perception. This insight usually

comes from a revolutionary overview which realigns or transforms

former thinking into a new and more enlightening frame

of reference.

This dovetails with his equally fascinating thesis that everything

alive is really alive in the fullest and most dynamic sense

of the word. It twitches, searches, throbs, organizes and seems

aware of an upward movement. Twitches seems almost the right

word, recalling to mind the myoclonisms of Wilhelm Reich's

vegetotherapy which, at sometime, are infinitely disturbing to the

patient on the couch who, because of them, feels he is falling

apart, being shattered into a thousand pieces. He isn't really. It is

as though the organism were gathering itself together for an

upward or forward leap into the unknown, to a higher order of

looking at things.

The transition to a higher order of functioning—or hooking

on to a higher neural circuit—is often accompanied by considerable

anxiety or a turbulence in personal life which seems as if the

organism were falling apart or breaking up. This phenomenon of

instability is really the way that every living organism—societies,

human primates, chemical solutions, etc.—shakes itself, as

it were, by myoclonisms or similar convulsions into new combinations

and permutations for higher and new levels of development.

So perhaps the space-time Utopia of a new area of primate

exploration has some validity after all, as indicating that the

more vigorous the disturbance or myoclonism the greater the

quantum jump into a higher neurological circuit. This is one

Prometheus Rising 21

reason why I firmly believe that the transition to the next spiral

will not be smooth nor without much suffering and chaos.

All of which suggests, with Wilson and Leary, that the brain

is considerably more sophisticated than any of us previously had

imagined. It is quite possible that it operates in dimensions so

beyond the lower neural circuitry that it occasionally "throws us

a bone" every day so that we can continue to function in the

make-believe world of everyday status quo. In the meantime, it

is a multidimensional structure at ease in far more than the

narrow primate world we have been programmed to live in. It

may interpret waves and frequencies from other dimensions,

realms of "light," of meaningful unrestricted patterned reality—

that are here and now—and which transcend our present myopic

tunnel realities of our rigid perceptions and conceptualizations of

space and time.

If so, then the title of this book Prometheus Rising is representative

of more than a catchy title to a profound fascinating

book. It becomes a title, instead, to the very attempt which we

are now making to reach beyond ourselves with a quantum leap

into a new world which has been envisaged only by a very few.

Wilson is one of this group who are preparing themselves and if

we allow them, the rest of us, to take our place in the New Aeon.

I will close with a quote from Wilson,

We are all giants, raised by pygmies, who have learned to

walk with a perpetual mental crouch. Unleashing our full

stature—our total brain power—is what this book is all about.

Israel Regardie

Phoenix Arizona

July 1983

WARNING

Wilson describes himself as a 'guerrilla ontologist,' signifying

his intent to attack language and knowledge the way terrorists

attack their targets: to jump out from the shadows for an unprovoked

attack, then slink back and hide behind a hearty belly

laugh.

— Robert Sheaffer, The Skeptical Inquirer

CHAPTER ONE

THE THINKER &

THE PROVER

All that we are is the result of all that we have thought. It is

founded on thought. It is based on thought.

— Buddha, The Dhammapada

William James, father of American psychology, tells of meeting

an old lady who told him the Earth rested on the back of a huge

turtle.

"But, my dear lady," Professor James asked, as politely as

possible, "what holds up the turtle?"

"Ah," she said, "that's easy. He is standing on the back of

another turtle."

"Oh, I see," said Professor James, still being polite. "But

would you be so good as to tell me what holds up the second

turtle?"

"It's no use, Professor," said the old lady, realizing he was

trying to lead her into a logical trap. "It's turtles-turtles-turtles,

all the way!"

Don't be too quick to laugh at this little old lady. All human

minds work on fundamentally similar principles. Her universe

was a little bit weirder than most but it was built up on the same

mental principles as every other universe people have believed

in.

As Dr. Leonard Orr has noted, the human mind behaves as if

it were divided into two parts, the Thinker and the Prover.

The Thinker can think about virtually anything. History

shows that it can think the earth is suspended on the backs of

infinite turtles or that the Earth is hollow, or that the Earth is

floating in space4,1 comparative religion and philosophy show

that the Thinker can regard itself as mortal, as immortal, as both

mortal and immortal (the reincarnation model) or even as nonexistent

(Buddhism). It can think itself into living in a Christian

universe, a Marxist universe, a scientific-relativistic universe, or

a Nazi universe—among many possibilities.

As psychiatrists and psychologists have often observed (much

to the chagrin of their medical colleagues), the Thinker can think

itself sick, and can even think itself well again.

The Prover is a much simpler mechanism. It operates on one

law only: Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves.

To cite a notorious example which unleashed incredible

horrors earlier in this century, if the Thinker thinks that all Jews

are rich, the Prover will prove it. It will find evidence that the

1 Millions of people believe that (including the present author).

25

2(5 Prometheus Rising

poorest Jew in the most run-down ghetto has hidden money

somewhere. Similarly, Feminists are able to believe that all men,

including the starving wretches who live and sleep on the streets,

are exploiting all women, including the Queen of England.

If the Thinker thinks that the sun moves around the earth, the

Prover will obligingly organize all perceptions to fit that thought;

if the Thinker changes its mind and decides the earth moves

around the sun, the Prover will reorganize the evidence.

If the Thinker thinks "holy water" from Lourdes will cure its

lumbago, the Prover will skillfully orchestrate all signals from

the glands, muscles, organs etc. until they have organized themselves

into good health again

Of course, it is fairly easy to see that other people's minds

operate this way; it is comparatively much harder to become

aware that one's own mind is working that way also.

It is believed, for instance, that some men are more

"objective" than others. (One seldom hears this about women...)

Businessmen are allegedly hard-nosed, pragmatic and "objective"

in this sense. A brief examination of the dingbat politics

most businessmen endorse will quickly correct that impression.

Scientists, however, are still believed to be objective. No

study of the lives of the great scientists will confirm this. They

were as passionate, and hence as prejudiced, as any assembly of

great painters or great musicians. It was not just the Church but

also the established astronomers of the time who condemned

Galileo. The majority of physicists rejected Einstein's Special

Relativity Theory in 1905. Einstein himself would not accept

anything in quantum theory after 1920 no matter how many

experiments supported it. Edison's commitment to direct current

(DC) electrical generators led him to insist alternating current

(AC) generators were unsafe for years after their safety had been

proven to everyone else.'

Edison's pigheadedness on this matter was partly the result of his

jealousy against Nikola Tesla, inventor of AC generators. Tesla, on

the other hand, refused the Nobel Prize when it was offered to him

and Edison jointly because he refused to appear on the same platform

with Edison. Both of these geniuses were only capable of "objectivity"

and science in certain limited laboratory conditions. If you

Prometheus Rising 27

Science achieves, or approximates, objectivity not because the

individual scientist is immune from the psychological laws that

govern the rest of us, but because scientific method—a group

creation—eventually overrides individual prejudices, in the long

run.T

o take a notorious example from the 1960s, there was a point

when three research groups had "proven" that LSD causes

chromosome damage, while three other groups had "proven" that

LSD has no effect on the chromosomes. In each case, the Prover

had proved what the Thinker thought. Right now, there are, in

physics, 7 experiments that confirm a very controversial concept

known as Bell's Theorem, and two experiments that refute Bell's

Theorem. In the area of extra-sensory perception, the results are

uniform after more than a century: everybody who sets out to

prove that ESP exists succeeds, and everybody who sets out to

prove that ESP does not exist also succeeds.

"Truth" or relative truth emerges only after decades of experiments

by thousands of groups all over the world.

think you have a higher "objectivity quotient" than either of them,

why haven't you been nominated for a Nobel prize?

28 Prometheus Rising

In the long run, we are hopefully approximating closer and

closer to "objective Truth" over the centuries.

In the short run, Orr's law always holds:

Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover will prove.'

And if the Thinker thinks passionately enough, the Prover will

prove the thought so conclusively that you will never talk a

person out of such a belief, even if it is something as remarkable

as the notion that there is a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical

heft ("GOD") who will spend all eternity torturing people who

do not believe in his religion.

EXERCIZES

Sad as it is to say, you never understand anything by merely

reading a book about it. That's why every science course

includes laboratory experiments, and why every consciousnessliberation

movement demands practice of yogas, meditations,

confrontation techniques, etc. in which the ideas are tested in the

laboratory of your own nervous system.

The reader will absolutely not understand this book unless he

or she does the exercizes given at the end of each chapter.

To explore the Thinker and the Prover, try the following:

1. Visualize a quarter vividly, and imagine vividly that you are

going to find the quarter on the street. Then, look for the quarter

every time you take a walk, meanwhile continuing to visualize it.

See how long it takes you to find the quarter.

2. Explain the above experiment by the hypothesis of "selective

attention"—that is, believe there are lots of lost quarters

everywhere and you were bound to find one by continually looking.

Go looking for a second quarter.

3. Explain the experiment by the alternative "mystical"

hypothesis that "mind controls everything." Believe that you

made the quarter manifest in this universe. Go looking for a

second quarter.

If the reader is a scientist, be not alarmed. This refers not to you but

only to those benighted fools in the opposite camp who refuse to recognize

that your theory is the only reasonable one. Of course.

Prometheus Rising 29

4. Compare the time it takes to find the second quarter using

the first hypothesis (attention) with the time it takes using the

second hypothesis (mind-over-matter).

5. With your own ingenuity, invent similar experiments and

each time compare the two theories—"selective attention"

(coincidence) vs. "mind controls everything" (psychokinesis).

6. Avoid coming to any strong conclusions prematurely. At

the end of a month, re-read this chapter, think it over again, and

still postpone coming to any dogmatic conclusion. Believe it

possible that you do not know everything yet, and that you might

have something still to learn.

7. Convince yourself1 (if you are not already convinced) that

you are ugly, unattractive and dull. Go to a party in that frame of

mind. Observe how people treat you.

8. Convince yourself (if you are not already convinced) that

you are handsome, irresistible and witty. Go to a party in that

frame of mind. Observe how people treat you.

9. This is the hardest of all exercizes and comes in two parts.

First, observe closely and dispassionately two dear friends and

two relative strangers. Try to figure out what their Thinkers

think, and how their Provers methodically set about proving it.

Second, apply the same exercize to yourself.

If you think you have learned the lessons of these exercizes in

less than six months, you haven't really been working at them.

With real work, in six months you should be just beginning to

realize how little you know about everything.

10. Believe it possible that you can float off the ground and

fly by merely willing it. See what happens.

If this exercize proves as disappointing to you as it has to me,

try number 11 below, which is never disappointing.

11. Believe that you can exceed all your previous ambitions

and hopes in all areas of your life.

"Believe" or "convince yourself mean to do what an actor does:

pretend until the pretense begins to feel real. Or, as Jazz musicians

say: "Fake it until you make it."

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ALL MODELS ARE SUBJECT TO REVISION AS THIS BOOK

GOES ALONG. THEY ARE ALSO SUBJECT TO REVISION

AFTER THE BOOK IS FINISHED — BY THE AUTHOR OR BY

THE READER

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Tentative Model #1: The perceived universe is a mixture of the

"real universe" and our own "Thinker"—proving its pet beliefs.

CHAPTER TWO

HARDWARE &

SOFTWARE:

THE BRAIN & ITS

PROGRAMS

We, as a species, exist in a world in which exist a myriad of data

points.1 Upon these matrices of points we superimpose a structure2

and the world makes sense to us. The pattern of the structure

originates within our biological and sociological properties.3

— Persinger and Lafreniere,

Space-Time Transients and Unusual Events

' In our terminology, these data points are events or actions, i.e. verbs,

not nouns.

^ In our terminology, models or maps, static things; nouns not verbs.

3 In our terminology, brain hardware and software.

33

We will, throughout this book, consider the human brain a kind

of bio-computer—an electro-colloidal computer, as distinct from

the electronic or solid-state computers which exist outside our

heads.

Please note carefully and long remember that we have not

said that the human brain is a computer. The Aristotelian idea

that to understand something you must know what it is has been

abandoned in one science after another, for the pragmatic reason

that the simple word "is" introduces so many metaphysical

assumptions that we can argue forever about them. In the most

advanced sciences, such as mathematical physics, nobody talks

about what anything is anymore. They talk about what model (or

map) can best be used to understand whatever we are investigating.

In general, this scientific habit of avoiding "is" can be profitably

extended to all areas of thought. Thus, when you read

anywhere that A is B, it will clarify matters if you translate this

as "A can be considered as, or modeled by, B."

When we say A is B, we are saying that A is only what it

appears within our field of study or our area of specialization.

This is saying too much. When we say A can be considered as B,

or modeled by B, we are saying exactly as much as we have a

right to say, and no more.

We therefore say that the brain can be considered as a computer;

but we do not say it is a computer.

The brain appears to be made up of matter in electro-colloidal

suspension (protoplasm).

Colloids are pulled together, toward a condition of gel, by

their surface tensions. This is because surface tensions pull all

glue-like substances together.

Colloids are also, conversely, pushed apart, toward a condition

of sol, by their electrical charges. This is because their electrical

charges are similar, and similar electrical charges always

repel each other.

In the equilibrium between gel and sol, the colloidal suspension

maintains its continuity and life continues. Move the suspension

too far toward gel, or too far toward sol, and life ends.

Any chemical that gets into the brain, changes the gel-sol

balance, and "consciousness" is accordingly influenced. Thus,

potatoes are, like LSD, "psychedelic"—in a milder way. The

35

Prometheus Rising

changes in consciousness when one moves from a vegetarian diet

to an omnivorous diet, or vice versa, are also "psychedelic."

Since "What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves," all of our

ideas are psychedelic. Even without experimenting with diet or

drugs, whatever you think you should see, you will see—unless

it is physically impossible in this universe.

All experience is a muddle, until we make a model to explain it. The

model can clarify the muddles, but the model is never the muddle

itself. "The map is not the territory"; the menu does not taste like

the meal.

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Every computer consists of two aspects, known as hardware

and software. (Software here includes information).

The hardware in a solid-state computer is concrete and localized,

consisting of central processing unit, display, keyboard,

external disk drive, CD-ROM, floppies, etc.—all the parts you

can drag into Radio Shack for repair if the computer is malfunctioning.

The software consists of programs that can exist in many

forms, including the totally abstract. A program can be "in" the

computer in the sense that it is recorded in the CPU or on a disk

which is hitched up to the computer. A program can also exist on

a piece of paper, if I invented it myself, or in a manual, if it is a

standard program; in these cases, it is not "in" the computer but

can be put "in" at any time. But a program can be even more

tenuous than that; it can exist only in my head, if I have never

written it down, or if I have used it once and erased it.

The hardware is more "real" than the software in that you can

always locate it in space-time—if it's not in the bedroom, somebody

must have moved it to the study, etc. On the other hand, the

software is more "real" in the sense that you can smash the

hardware back to dust ("kill" the computer) and the software still

exists, and can "materialize" or "manifest" again in a different

computer.

(Any speculations about reincarnation at this point are the

responsibility of the reader, not of the author.)

In speaking of the human brain as an electro-colloidal

biocomputer, we all know where the hardware is: it is inside the

human skull. The software, however, seems to be anywhere and

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everywhere. For instance, the software "in" my brain also exists

outside my brain in such forms as, say, a book I read twenty

years ago, which was an English translation of various signals

transmitted by Plato 2400 years ago. Other parts of my software

are made up of the software of Confucius, James Joyce, my

second-grade teacher, the Three Stooges, Beethoven, my mother

and father, Richard Nixon, my various dogs and cats, Dr. Carl

Sagan, and anybody and (to some extent) any-thing that has ever

impacted upon my brain. This may sound strange, but that's the

way software (or information) functions.

Of course, if consciousness consisted of nothing but this

undifferentiated tapioca of timeless, spaceless software, we

would have no individuality, no center, no Self.

We want to know, then, how out of this universal software

ocean a specific person emerges.

What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves.

Because the human brain, like other animal brains, acts as an

electro-colloidal computer, not a solid-state computer, it follows

the same laws as other animal brains. That is, the programs get

into the brain, as electro-chemical bonds, in discrete quantum

stages.

Each set of programs consists of four basic parts:

1 . Genetic Imperatives. Totally hard-wired programs or

"instincts."

2. Imprints. These are more-or-less hard wired programs

which the brain is genetically designed to accept only at certain

points in its development. These points are known, in ethology,

as times of imprint vulnerability.

3. Conditioning. These are programs built onto the imprints.

They are looser and fairly easy to change with counter-conditioning.

4. Learning. This is even looser and "softer" than conditioning.

In general, the primordial imprint can always over-rule any

subsequent conditioning or learning. An imprint is a species of

software that has become built-in hardware, being impressed on

the tender neurons when they are peculiarly open and vulnerable.

Imprints (software frozen into hardware) are the non-negotiable

aspects of our individuality. Out of the infinity of possible

Prometheus Rising 39

programs existing as potential software, the imprint establishes

the limits, parameters, perimeters within which all subsequent

conditioning and learning occurs.

YOUR HARDWARE IS LOCALIZED:

BRAIN CELLS RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.

YOUR SOFTWARE IS NON-LOCAL:

POINT-EVENTS EVERYWHERE, EVERYWHEN.

Before the first imprint, the consciousness of the infant is

"formless and void"—like the universe at the beginning of

Genesis, or the descriptions of unconditioned ("enlightened" i.e.,

exploded) consciousness in the mystic traditions. As soon as the

first imprint is made, structure emerges out of the creative void.

The growing mind, alas, becomes trapped within this structure. It

identifies with the structure; in a sense, it becomes the structure.

This entire process is analyzed in G. Spencer Brown's Laws

of Form; and Brown was writing about the foundations of mathematics

and logic. But every sensitive reader knows that Brown

is also talking about a process we have all passed through in

creating, out of an infinite ocean of signals, those particular

constructs we call "myself and "my world." Not surprisingly,

4O Prometheus Rising

many acid-heads have said that Brown's math is the best description

ever written of an LSD trip.

Each successive imprint complicates the software which

programs our experience and which we experience as "reality."

Conditioning and learning build further networks onto this

bedrock of imprinted software. The total structure of this braincircuitry

makes up our map of the world. It is what our Thinker

thinks, and our Prover mechanically fits all incoming signals to

the limitations of this map.

Following Dr. Timothy Leary (with a few modifications) we

shall divide this brain hardware into eight circuits for convenience.

("For convenience" means that this is the best map I know

at present. I assume it will be replaced by a better map within 10

or 15 years; and in any case, the map is not the territory.)

Four of the circuits are "antique" and conservative, they exist

in everybody (except feral children).

1. The Oral Bio-Survival Circuit. This is imprinted by the

mother or the first mothering object and conditioned by

subsequent nourishment or threat. It is primarily concerned with

sucking, feeding, cuddling, and body security. It retreats

mechanically from the noxious or predatory—or from anything

associated (by imprinting or conditioning) with the noxious or

predatory.

2. The Anal Emotional-Territorial Circuit. This is imprinted

in the "Toddling" stage when the infant rises up, walks about and

begins to struggle for power within the family structure. This

mostly mammalian circuit processes territorial rules, emotional

games, or cons, pecking order and rituals of domination or

submission.

3. The Time-Binding Semantic Circuit. This is imprinted and

conditioned by human artifacts and symbol systems. It "handles"

and "packages" the environment, classifying everything according

to the local reality tunnel. Invention, calculation, prediction

and transmitting signals across generations are its functions.

4. The "Moral" Socio-Sexual Circuit. This is imprinted by the

first orgasm-mating experiences at puberty and is conditioned by

tribal taboos. It processes sexual pleasure, local definitions of

"right" and "wrong," reproduction, adult-parental personality

(sex role) and nurture of the young.

Prometheus Rising 41

The development of these circuits as the brain evolved

through evolution, and as each domesticated primate (human)

brain recapitulates evolution in growing from infancy to adulthood,

makes possible gene-pool survival, mammalian sociobiology

(pecking order, or politics) and transmission of culture.

The second group of four brain circuits is much newer, and

each circuit exists at present only in minorities. Where the

antique circuits recapitulate evolution-to-the-present, these futuristic

circuits ^recapitulate our future evolution.

5. The Holistic Neurosomatic Circuit. This is imprinted by

ecstatic experience, via biological or chemical yogas. It processes

neurosomatic ("mind-body") feedback loops, somatic-sensory

bliss, feeling "high," "faith-healing," etc. Christian Science, NLP

and holistic medicine consist of tricks or gimmicks to get this

circuit into action at least temporarily; Tantra yoga is concerned

with shifting consciousness entirely into this circuit.

6. The Collective Neurogenetic Circuit. This is imprinted by

advanced yogas (bio-chemical - electrical stresses). It processes

DNA-RNA-brain feedback systems and is "collective" in that it

contains and has access to the whole evolutionary "script," past

and future. Experience of this circuit is numinous, "mystical,"

mind-shattering; here dwell the archetypes of Jung's Collective

Unconscious—Gods, Goddesses, Demons, Hairy Dwarfs and

other personifications of the DNA programs (instincts) that

govern us.

7. The Meta-programming Circuit. This is imprinted by very

advanced yogas. It consists, in modern terms, of cybernetic consciousness,

reprogramming and reimprinting all other circuits,

even reprogramming itself, making possible conscious choice

between alternative universes or reality tunnels.

8. The Non-Local Quantum Circuit. This is imprinted by

Shock, by "near-death" or "clinical death" experience, by

OOBEs (out-of-body-experiences), by trans-time perceptions

("precognition"), by trans-space visions (ESP), etc. It tunes the

brain into the non-local quantum communication system suggested

by physicists such as Bohm, Walker, Sarfatti, Bell, etc.

These circuits will be explained in detail as we proceed.

42 Prometheus Rising

EXERCIZES

1. If you don't already have a computer, run out and buy one.

Then re-read this chapter.

2. To understand hardware and software are (as applied to the

human brain) perform the following meditation.

Sit in a room where you will not be disturbed for a half hour

and begin thinking, "I am sitting in this room doing this exercize

because..." and list as many of the "causes" as you can think of.

For instance, you are doing this exercize because, obviously,

you read about it in this book. Why did you buy this book? Did

somebody recommend it? How did that person come into your

life? If you just picked the book up in a store, why did you

happen to be in just that store on just that day?

Why do you read books of this sort—on psychology, consciousness,

evolution etc.? How did you get interested in those

fields? Who turned you on, and how long ago? What factors in

your childhood inclined you to be interested in these subjects

later?

Why are you doing this exercize in this room and not elsewhere?

Why did you buy or rent this house or apartment? Why

are you in this city and not another? Why on this continent and

not another?

Why are you here at all—that is, how did your parents meet?

Did they consciously decide to have a child, do you happen to

know, or were you an accident? What cities were they born in? If

in different cities, why did they move in space-time so that their

paths would intersect?

Why is this planet capable of supporting life, and why did it

produce the kind of life that would dream up an exercize of this

sort?

Repeat this exercize a few days later, trying to ask and answer

fifty questions you didn't think of the first time. (Note that you

cannot ever ask all possible questions.)

Avoid all metaphysical speculations (e.g., karma, reincarnation,

"destiny" etc.). The point of the exercize will be mindblowing

enough without introducing "occult" theories, and it will

be more startling if you carefully avoid such overtly "mystical"

speculations.

Prometheus Rising 43

4. Pick up any household item—a spoon, a pen, a cup etc.

Perform the same exercize as above—why is it here? Who

invented it, if you can find out? How did the invention get to this

continent? Who manufactured it? Why did they manufacture that

instead of bird cages? Why did they become manufacturers

instead of musicians? Why did you buy it? Why did you pick

that object, of all the objects in your house, for this meditation?

ANSWER QUICKLY NOW

ARE YOU YOUR HARDWARE,

OR YOUR SOFTWARE?

OR BOTH?

CHAPTER THREE

THE ORAL BIO-SURVIVAL

CIRCUIT

Genes, like Leibnitz's monads, have no windows; the higher

properties of life are emergent.

— Edward Wilson, Sociobiology

45

Few of our ancestors were perfect ladies or gentlemen; the

majority of them were not even mammals.

Any multi-cellular organism must, if it is to survive, contain a

hard-wired bio-survival circuit, which very simply programs an

either-or choice: GO FORWARD to the nourishing, the protective,

or GO BACK, away from the threatening, the predatory.

Any mammal hooks the bio-survival circuit to the first

imprinted bio-survival object: the teat. Bio-survival and orality

are deeply blended in all mammals, including domesticated

primates (humans). This is why, despite the Cancer Terror, an

estimated 30,000,000 Americans still smoke cigarettes... Others

chew gum (spearmint, juicy fruit, even sugar-free: something for

every taste), bite their fingernails, gnaw their knuckles, scrunch

pencil stubs, eat more than they need (Potato chips, anyone? a

Mars bar maybe? pretzels, peanuts, cashews, do you want the

cheese and crackers with your beer, Mac? And do try the

canapes, Mrs. Miller). Some chew their lips, gobble tranks and

uppers, even munch their mustaches. What goes on in the

bedroom is known to the Kinsey Institute and anyone who has

seen a porn film.

How important is this oral imprinting? We read of a baby

giraffe whose mother was accidentally killed by a jeep immediately

after birth. The neonate, following hard-wired genetic

programs, "imprinted" the first object that roughly fit the giraffe

archetype—the jeep itself. He followed the machine around,

vocalized to it, attempted to suckle from it, and, when adult, tried

to mate with it.

Similarly, Konrad Lorenz tells of a gosling who accidentally

imprinted a ping-pong ball and spent his adult life, indifferent to

female geese, attempting to sexually mount ping-pong balls.

As Charles Darwin noted:

In our maturer years, when an object of vision is presented to

us which bears any similitude to the form of the female

bosom...we feel a general glow of delight which seems to

influence all of our senses...

The ancients pictured the great mother goddess Diana of

Ephesus with literally dozens of breasts and St. Paul reports

hearing her worshippers chanting rapturously "Great is Diana!"

There is virtually no great artist who has not left us a portrait, or

many portraits, of the nude female form, especially the breasts;

47

48 Prometheus Rising

and even in non-human scenes, curves are introduced wherever

possible. Architects break the Euclidean straight line to introduce

such curves at the slightest pretext—arches, Moorish domes, etc.

The curves of the suspension bridge are necessitated by

Newton's laws ("Gravity's rainbow," in Pynchon's phrase) but,

still, these double catenary curves are esthetically pleasing for

the reasons Darwin suggests. As for music—where did we first

hear it, who sang or hummed to us, and against what part of her

body were we held?

Mountain climbers are reduced, like Mallory, to saying

"Because it's there," when trying to explain their compulsion to

ascend those conic peaks.

Our eating utensils (oral gratification tools) tend to be

rounded or curved. Square plates or saucers look "campy" or

strange.

UFOs come in a variety of shapes, but the most popular are

the oval and conic.

Freudians suggest that opiate addiction is an attempt to return

to the womb. In keeping with our theory, it is more likely that

opium and its derivatives return us to the "safe space" on the biosurvival

circuit, the warm, snug place of bio-security; opiates

may trigger neuro-transmitters' characteristic of breast-feeding.

In summary: the bio-survival circuit is DNA-programmed to

seek a comfort-safety zone around a mothering organism. If a

mother isn't present, the closet substitute in the environment will

be imprinted. For the orphan giraffe, a four-wheeled jeep was

chosen to stand in for the four-legged mother. The gosling who

could not find the round, white body of the mother-goose fixated

a round, white ping-pong ball.

The "wiring" of this circuit, in primitive form, occurred in the

first organisms, between three and four billion years ago. In the

modern human, this structure remains in the brain stem and in

the autonomic ( "involuntary ") nervous system, where it is interconnected

with the endocrine and other life-support systems.

This is why disturbances on this circuit act "all over the body at

' Neuro-transmitters are chemicals which alter the electro-colloidal

balance of the brain and hence change the perceptual field. Brainchange

agents.

Prometheus Rising 49

once" and generally take the form of physical symptoms rather

than "mental" symptoms and usually get referred to the M.D.

instead of the psychiatrist.

It must be stressed that we are still in a primitive stage of

evolution and conditions on this planet are quite brutal. Radical

pediatricians insist, with good evidence, that childbirth by

conventional means in a conventional hospital is almost always

traumatic for the newborn—creates a bad imprint, in our language.

Our child-rearing methods are far from ideal also, adding

bad conditioning on top of bad imprinting. And the general

violence of our societies to date—including wars, revolutions,

civil wars and the "undeclared civil war" of the predatory criminal

class in every "civilized" nation—keeps the first circuit of

most people in an emergency state far too much of the time.

In 1968, a U.S. Public Health survey showed that 85% of the

population had one or more symptoms that we would call bad

first-circuit imprinting or conditioning. These symptoms

included dizzy spells, heart palpitations, wet palms and frequent

nightmares.

This means that 85 out of the next 100 people you meet

should be regarded as, more or less, "the Walking Wounded."

This is the first level of meaning in our brutal, cynical

proposition that most people are almost as mechanical as sci-fi

robots. A man or woman entering a new situation with the anxiety

chemicals1 of a frightened infant coursing through the brain

stem is not going to be able to observe, judge or decide anything

very accurately.

And this is why Gurdjieff said, in his own jargon, that people

are asleep and having nightmares.

"FAIRNESS? DECENCY? HOW CAN YOU EXPECT

FAIRNESS OR DECENCY ON A PLANET OF SLEEPING

PEOPLE?"

— G.I. Gurdjieff

This was the viewpoint of the earliest Christians, later condemned

as heretics (Gnostics) by the Roman bureaucrats. The

We especially refer to adrenaline and adrenalutin, which signal the

whole organism to prepare to fight or flee.

jo Prometheus Rising

Gospel of Truth, first century, says bluntly that history is a

nightmare:

... as if (mankind) were sunk in sleep and found themselves in

disturbing dreams. Either (there is) a place to which they are

fleeing...or they are involved in striking blows, or they are

receiving blows themselves... sometimes it is as if people were

murdering them...or they themselves are killing their

neighbors...

To these first Christians, as to the Buddhists, awakening literally

meant coming out of this nightmare of terrifying fantasies.

In our terminology, it means correcting the editing that cause us

to behave and perceive like very badly (inappropriately) wired

robots and suddenly seeing the unedited world.

It must be emphasized that this circuit, being the oldest in

evolutionary development, is the most mechanical, and the most

rapid. One is not conscious of time at all on the bio-survival

circuit. Observe the speed of your dog's reaction at the first

sound of an intruder: the threatening bark, and the movement of

the whole body to alert status, is automatic. Then the dog starts

taking in other cues, to determine how this particular intruder

should be treated.

As Robert Ardrey reports the remarks of primatologist Ray

Carpenter, to understand this part of your brain...

Imagine that you are a monkey and you're running along a

path past a rock and unexpectedly meet face to face another

animal. Now, before you know whether to attack it, to flee it,

or to ignore it, you must make a series of decisions. Is it

monkey or non-monkey? If non-monkey, is it pro-monkey or

anti-monkey? If monkey, is it male or female? If female, is she

interested? If male, is it adult or juvenile? If adult, is it of my

group or some other?... You have about one fifth of a second

to make all these decisions, or you could be attacked.

The bio-survival program first attaches to the safe space

around the mother (oral imprint), and then with age moves

further and further out, exploring what is safe and what is not.

Without hard-wired genetic programs (i.e., automatic programs)

this second stage would be impossible, and no mammal would

ever leave the teat. The hard-wired programs act automatically

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(UNCONSCIOUSLY) because if you had to stop and think out

each situation, you would be eaten by the first predator.

Of course, the imprint is made by chance — by the circumstances

at the moment of imprint vulnerability. (Recall the

gosling who imprinted the ping-pong ball.) Some imprint bravery,

inquisitiveness and the exploratory drive; others imprint

timidity, infophobia (fear of the unpredictable) and withdrawal,

of which the extreme case is the sad imprint called autism or

childhood schizophrenia.

All of which is robotic, until one learns how to reprogram and

reimprint one's own brain circuits. In most cases, such metaprogramming

skill is never acquired. It all goes by in a flash, on

mechanical auto-pilot, in zero time. "I just found myself doing

it," says the soldier as he is being court-martialled for cowardice

or decorated for bravery.

It's safe out here!

52 Prometheus Rising

Of course, on top of the hard-wired imprinting of the biosurvival

circuit comes "softer" conditioning. This allows the

safe-space perimeter to be generalized outward from the

mother's body to the pack or tribe—the "extended family."

Every social animal has, in addition to the Darwinian

"instinct" (genetic program) of self-preservation, a similar

"instinct" to protect the gene-pool. This is the basis of altruism,

and social animals could not survive without it.

Wild dogs (and wolves) bark to warn the rest of the pack that

an intruder is coming. Your domesticated dog identifies you as a

pack-leader; he barks to warn you that an intruder is coming. (He

also barks, of course, to warn the intruder that he is ready to fight

for his territory.)

As civilization has advanced, the pack-bond (the tribe, the

extended family) has been broken. This is the root of the widely

diagnosed "anomie" or "alienation" or "existential anguish"

about which so many social critics have written so eloquently.

What has happened is that the conditioning of the bio-survival

bond to the gene-pool has been replaced by a conditioning of

bio-survival drives to hook onto the peculiar tickets which we

call "money".

Concretely, a modern man or woman doesn't look for biosurvival

security in the gene-pool, the pack, the extended family.

Bio-survival depends on getting the tickets. "You can't live

without money," as the Living Theatre troop used to cry out in

anguish. If the tickets are withdrawn, acute bio-survival anxiety

appears at once.

Imagine, as vividly as possible, what you would feel, and

what you would do, if all your sources to bio-survival tickets

(money) were cut off tomorrow. This is precisely what tribal

men and women feel if cut off from the tribe; it is why exile, or

even ostracism, were sufficient punishments to enforce tribal

conformity throughout most of human history. As recently as

Shakespeare's day the threat of exile was an acute terror signal

("Banished!" cries Romeo, "the damned use that word in Hell!")

In traditional society, belonging to the tribe was bio-security;

exile was terror, and real threat of death. In modern society,

having the tickets (money) is bio-security; having the tickets

withdrawn is terror.

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Welfare-ism, socialism, totalitarianism, etc. represent attempts,

in varying degrees of rationality and hysteria, to re-create

the tribal bond by making the State stand-in for the gene-pool.

Conservatives who claim that no form of Welfare is tolerable to

them are asking that people live with total bio-survival anxiety

and anomie combined with terror. The conservatives, of course,

vaguely recognize this and ask for "local charity" to replace

State Welfare — i.e., they ask for the gene-pool to be restored by

magic, among people (denizens of a typical city) who are not

genetically related at all.

On the other hand, the State is not a gene-pool or a tribe, and

cannot really play the bio-survival unit convincingly. Everybody

on Welfare becomes paranoid, because they are continually worrying

that they are going to get cut off ("exiled") for some minor

infraction of the increasingly incomprehensible bureaucratic

rules. And in real totalitarianism, in which the bogus identification

of the State with the tribe is carried to the point of a new

mysticism, the paranoia becomes total.

Real bonding can only occur in face-to-face groups of reasonable

size. Hence, the perpetual attempt (however implausible in

industrial circumstances) to decentralize, to go back to the tribal

ethos, to replace the State with syndicates (as in anarchism) or

affinity-groups (Reich's "Consciousness III"). Recall the hippie

crash-pad of the sixties, which lives on in many rural communes.

Back in the real world, the tickets called "money" are the biosurvival

bond for most people. Anti-Semitism is a complex

aberration, of many facets and causes, but in its classic form (the

"Jewish Bankers' Conspiracy") it simply holds that a hostile

gene-pool controls the tickets for bio-security. Such paranoia is

inevitable in a money economy; junkies have similar myths

about who controls the supply of heroin. Thus, as anti-Semitism

has declined in America, the "Bankers' Conspiracy" lives on in a

new form. Now the villains are old New England WASP families,

the "Yankee Establishment." Some Leftists will even show

you charts of the genealogies of these WASP bankers, the way

anti-Semites used to show Rothschild genealogies.

54 Prometheus Rising

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C.H. Douglas, the engineer and economist, once made up a

chart, which he showed to the MacMillan Commission in 1932

when they were discussing money and credit regulation. The

chart graphed the rise and fall of interest rates from the defeat of

Napoleon in 1812 to the date the Commission met in 1932, and

on the same scale, the rise and fall of the suicide rate in that one

twenty-year period.

The two curves were virtually identical. Every time the interest

rate went up, so did the suicide rate; when interest went

down, so did suicide. This can hardly be "coincidence." When

interest rises, a certain number of businessmen go bankrupt, a

certain number of workers are thrown out of their jobs, and

everybody's bio-survival anxiety generally increases.

Marxists and other radicals are urgently aware of such factors

in "mental health" and hence scornful of all types of academic

psychology which ignore these bio-survival issues. Unfortunately,

the Marxist remedy—making everybody dependent for

bio-survival on the whims of a State bureaucracy—is a cure

worse than the disease.

Bio-survival anxiety will only permanently disappear when

world-wide wealth has reached a level, and a distribution, where,

without totalitarianism, everyone has enough tickets.

The Hunger Project, the idea of the Guaranteed Annual

Income, Douglas' National Dividend plan, etc. represent groping

toward that goal. The ideal can only be achieved in a technology

of abundance.

Extreme cases—persons who take their heaviest imprint on

the first (oral) circuit—tend to be viscerotonic, because this

imprint determines lifelong endocrine and glandular processes.

Thus, in extreme they are "baby-faced" in adult life, never lose

their "baby-fat," are plump and round and gentle, etc. They are

easily "hurt" (threatened: terrified) by disapproval of any sort,

because in the baby-circuit of the brain, disapproval suggests

extinction by loss of the food supply.

We all have this circuit and need to exercize it periodically.

Cuddling, sucking, hugging etc. and daily playing with (a) one's

own body (b) another's body and (c) the environment, are perpetually

necessary to neurosomatic-endocrine health. Those who

deny such primordial functions because of rigid imprinting on

5<5 Prometheus Rising

the Third (rationalistic) or Fourth (moralistic) circuit tend to

become "dried up," "prune-faced," unattractive, "cold," and

muscularly rigid.

The baby-functions of playing with one's own body, another's

body and the environment continue throughout life in all

animals. This "playfulness" is a marked characteristic of all conspicuously

healthy individuals of the sort Maslow calls "selfactualizers."

If this initial imprint is negative—if the universe in general

and other humans in particular are imprinted as dangerous,

hostile and frightening—the Prover will go on throughout life

adjusting all perceptions to fit this map. This is what is known as

the "Injustice Collector" syndrome (in the language of Dr.

Edmund Bergler). The female members of this imprint goup

become Radical Feminists; the male members are less organized

and can be found in fringe groups of the extreme Left and

extreme Right.

Such a pattern is unconscious in three ways. It is unconscious

because automatic: it happens without thought, as a robot program.

It is also unconscious because it began before the infant

had language and hence it is pre-verbal, inarticulate, felt rather

than considered. And it is unconscious because it is all-over-thebody-

at-once. Specifically, it is characterized by the Respiratory

Block first noted by Wilhelm Reich: a chronic muscular armoring

that prevents proper, relaxed breathing. Popular speech

recognizes this state as "being up-tight."

All of the most successful reimprinting techniques (therapies)

for this kind of chronic anxiety work on the body first, not on the

"mind." The Reichians, Rolfers, Primal Scream therapists, Orr's

"rebirthers," Gesaltists, etc. all know, whatever specialized

jargons they may use, that a bad bio-survival imprint can only be

corrected by working on the biological being itself, the body that

feels perpetually vulnerable and under attack. Even Neurolinguistic

Programming (NLP) begins by inducing the patient to

relax and breathe easily.

As Gregory Bateson has pointed out. Konrad Lorenz acquired

his marvelous insights into the imprinting process—for which he

won the Nobel prize—by consciously imitating the body movements

of the animals he was studying. Watching Lorenz lecture,

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one could "see" each animal he discussed, because Lorenz would

dramatize or "become" that animal, in the manner of a Method

Actor.

Even earlier, Wilhelm Reich discovered that he could understand

his patients with remarkable clarity by imitating their

characteristic body movements and postures. The bio-survival

imprints, especially traumatic ones, are all-over-the-body, frozen

(in Reich's metaphor) in chronic muscle and gland mechanisms.

If you can't understand somebody's "irrational" behavior,

start by observing their breathing. You will very quickly get an

idea of what is bothering them. This is why all schools of yoga—

Buddhist, Hindu or Sufi—place such emphasis on restoring natural

breathing before trying to move the student on to higher

circuits and wider consciousness.

This is of more than "psychological" import. Every study of

the psychosomatic aspects of cancer and asthma, for instance,

finds this pattern of chronic muscular contraction (subjectively

felt as anxiety) among the predisposing factors. What the

Thinker thinks, the Prover proves. People are strangling their

inner organs every day because they are afraid.

Mary Baker Eddy may have been exaggerating slightly when

she said, "All illness is manifested fear;" but holistic medicine

more and more recognizes that if that damned word "all" is

replaced by a more tentative "most," Mrs. Eddy was close to the

facts.

Even old-fangled M.D.s who won't consider holistic ideas for

a minute, admit that some persons are mysteriously "more susceptible"

to disease than other persons. What is this metaphysical

"susceptibility"? Anthropologist Ashley Montagu has collected

numerous statistics on children who were deprived of maternal

love at the crucial point of imprint vulnerability in infancy. They

not only died younger than the national average, but were sicklier

all their lives and even grew up to be several inches shorter than

the average adult height for their sex.

What makes for "susceptibility" (aside from possible genetic

factors) can only be such an anxiety imprint (muscle tension) on

the first circuit.

Christian Science—or any other religion that dogmatically

insists that "God" wants us to be happy and successful—can

55 Prometheus Rising

cure such conditions "miraculously." What the Thinker thinks the

Prover proves. Absolute faith that "God" is supporting you,

beamed out from the brain all day long, day after day, signals the

muscles to relax, and natural buoyancy and health returns.

Throughout human life, when the bio-survival circuit senses

danger, all other mental activity ceases. All other circuits shut

down until the bio-survival problem is "solved," realistically or

symbolically. This is of crucial importance in mind-washing and

brain-programming.

To create a new imprint, first reduce the subject to the state of

infancy, i.e., bio-survival vulnerability. We will enlarge upon this

later.

In pre-neurological terms, the bio-survival circuit is what we

usually call "consciousness," per se. It is the sense of being herenow,

in this vulnerable body, subject to the raw energies and

forces of the physical universe. When we are "unconscious," the

bio-survival circuit is turned off and doctors may cut us up without

our attempting to flee or even crying out.

EXERCIZES

1. Determine to enjoy this primitive circuit fully from now on.

Play with yourself and others and the environment shamelessly,

like a newborn baby. Meditate on "Unless ye become as a little

child, ye shall in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

2. Never mind your diet—you will reach the optimum weight

for your height when your brain is operating properly. Enjoy one

really sweet and gooey desert every week. Diabetics, of course,

should buy this goody in the non-sugar section.

3. Get "high" (on marijuana if this is permissible to your

superego, or on ginseng, which is legal everywhere and recommended

by many holistic physicians) and then go to a health spa.

Enjoy a good swim, a massage and a sauna. Repeat every week,

forever.

4. Take a course on kung fu or karate for at least three

months, then re-read this whole chapter. You will be surprised at

how much more every sentence will mean.

5. Lie on your back and pant rapidly to the count of 20. (Each

exhale-inhale cycle counts as one, not as two.) Panting means

breathing rapidly through your mouth, as forbidden by almost all

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experts on health, but this is only an exercise, not a full-time

practice. When you reach 20, stop and resume nose-breathing, in

the slow, rhythmic manner recommended by yogis, to the count

of 20. Then repeat the panting to the count of 20. Then repeat

proper yoga breathing.

This is known as the "breath of fire" in Tantric yoga. The

results are most amusing and enlightening. Try it!'

6. Visit an aquarium and observe very closely. Try to see the

bio-survival circuit of the fish brain in operation and recognize

when and how that circuit in your own brain has operated

throughout your life.

7. If you don't have a baby, or haven't had one for many

years, play with somebody else's baby for an hour. Then reread

this chapter.

Like opiate use, this exercize seems to trigger neuro-transmitters

similar to mother's milk; i.e., it takes you back to the snug security of

breast-feeding. And it is not addictive.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE ANAL EMOTIONAL

TERRITORIAL CIRCUIT

Run, puppy, run!

Run, puppy, run!

Yonder comes the big dog —

Run, puppy, run!

— Children's rhyme

61

The second circuit, the emotional-territorial networks of the

brain, is concerned entirely with power politics. This "patriotic"

circuit is built into all vertebrates and is perhaps 500 million to

1000 million years old. In the modern human it seems to be

centralized in the thalamus—the "back brain" or "old brain" and

is linked with the voluntary nervous system and the muscles.

This circuit appears in each newborn when the DNA master

tape sends out RNA messenger molecules to trigger the mutation

from neonate to "toddler," which involves first of all standing

erect. Walking, mastering gravity, overcoming physical obstacles

and learning to manipulate others politically are the vulnerable

points at which imprinting and heavy conditioning occur. The

muscles that perform these power functions are quickly programmed

with what become chronic, life-long reflexes.

Depending as always the accidents of the environment—what

happens at points of neurological vulnerability—this circuit will

organize itself into a strong, dominating role in the pack (or

family) or a weak, submissive role. Without going into the

jungles with the ethologists, one can observe this mammalian

imprinting process in any litter of puppies. It is very quickly

determined who is TOP DOG and who is BOTTOM DOG.

Status in the pack or tribe is assigned on the basis of preverbal

signaling system (kinesics) in which these muscle reflexes

are crucial. All of the emotional games or cons listed in the

popular psychological game-manuals of Dr. Eric Berne and the

Transactional Analysts are second-circuit imprints, or standard

mammalian politics.

To quote from my novel Schrodinger's Cat:

Most of the domesticated primates of Terra did not know they

were primates. They thought they were something apart from

and "superior" to the rest of the planet.

Even Benny Benedict's "One Month to Go" column was

based on that illusion. Benny had actually read Darwin once,

in college a long time ago, and had heard of sciences like

ethology and ecology, but the facts of evolution had never

really registered on him. He never thought of himself as a

primate. He never realized his friends and associates were

primates. Above all, he never understood that the alpha males

of Unistat were typical leaders of primate bands. As a result of

this inability to see the obvious, Benny was constantly alarmed

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and terrified by the behavior of himself, his friends and associates

and especially the alpha males of the pack. Since he didn't

know it was ordinary primate behavior, it seemed just awful to

him.

Since a great deal of primate behavior was considered just

awful, most of the domesticated primates spent most of their

time trying to conceal what they were doing.

Some of the primates got caught by other primates. All of

the primates lived in dread of getting caught.

Those who got caught were called no-good shits.

The term no-good shit was a deep expression of primate

psychology. For or instance, one wild primate (a chimpanzee)

taught sign language by two domesticated primates (scientists)

spontaneously put together the signs for "shit" and "scientist"

to describe a scientist she didn't like. She was calling him shitscientist.

She also put together the signs for "shit" and

"chimpanzee" for another chimpanzee she didn't like. She was

calling him shit-chimpanzee.

"You no-good shit," domesticate primates often said to

each other.

This metaphor was deep in primate psychology because

primates mark their territories with excretions, and sometimes

they threw excretions at each other when disputing over territories.

One primate wrote a long book describing in vivid detail

how his political enemies should be punished. He imagined

them in an enormous hole in the ground, with flames and

smoke and rivers of shit. This primate was named Dante

Alighieri.

Another primate wrote that every primate infant goes

through a stage of being chiefly concerned with bio-survival,

i.e., food, i.e., Mommie's Titty. He called this the Oral Stage.

He said the infant next went on to a stage of learning mammalian

politics, i.e., recognizing the Father (alpha-male) and

his Authority and territorial demands. He called this, with an

insight that few primates shared, the Anal Stage.

This primate was named Freud. He had taken his own

nervous system apart and examined its component circuits by

periodically altering its structure with neurochemicals.

Among the anal insults exchanged by domesticated primates

when fighting for their space were: "Up your ass," "Go

shit in your hat," "You're full of shit," and many others.

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One of the most admired alpha-males in the Kingdom of

the Franks was General Canbronne. General Canbronne won

this adulation for the answer he gave when asked to surrender

at Waterloo.

"Merde," was the answer General Canbronne gave.

The word petard means a kind of bomb. It comes from the

same Olde English root as fart.

General Canbronne's mentality was typical of the alphamales

of the military caste.

When primates went to war or got violent in other ways,

they always said they were about to knock the shit out of the

enemy.

They also spoke of dumping on each other.

The standard "authority" reflex on the emotional-territorial

circuit is to swell the muscles and howl. You will find this

among birds as well as mammals, and in the Board meeting of

your local bank. The standard "submission" reflex is to shrink

the muscles, lower the head, and "crawl away." You will find

this among dogs, primates, fowl and employees who wish to

keep their jobs everywhere.

If the first (bio-survival) circuit is chiefly imprinted by the

mother, the second (emotional-territorial) circuit is chiefly

imprinted by the father—the nearest alpha male. It has been

proposed, by sociologist G. Rattray Taylor that societies swing

back and forth between "Matrist" periods, in which motherly

66 Prometheus Rising

oral values predominate, and "Patrist" periods, in which fatherly

anal values are in ascendance.

THE STANDARD AUTHORITY REFLEX

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Taylor's table of the characteristics of these "Matrist" and

"Patrist" periods is as follows:

Whether or not societies wobble between these extremes as

Taylor claims, individuals certainly do. These are merely the

consequences of (a) having the heaviest imprint on the oral

(Matrist) bio-survival circuit or (b) having the heaviest imprint

on the anal (Patrist) territorial circuit.

In pre-ethological terms, the emotional-territorial circuit is

what we usually call "ego." Ego is simply the mammalian recognition

of one's status in the pack; it is a "role" as sociologists

say, a single brain circuit which mistakes itself for the whole

Self, the entire brain-mind apparatus. The "egotist" behaves like

"a two year old," in the common saying, because Ego is the

imprint of the toddling and toilet-training stage.

The question of how human an animal is (especially a pet dog

or cat) never ceases to divide scientists from laypersons—and

one scientist from another. In terms of the present theory, the

differences between domesticated primates (humans) and other

domesticated animals are virtually nil, as long as we are talking

only about the first two circuits. (Since most people spend most

of their time on these primitive circuits, the differences are often

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much less obvious than the similarities.) Real differences begin

to appear when the third, semantic circuit enters the picture.

MOST MAMMALS MARK THEIR TERRITORIES WITH

EXCRETIONS. DOMESTICATED PRIMATES MARK THEIR

TERRITORIES WITH INK EXCRETIONS ON PAPER.

For instance, novice dog-trainers always make the mistake of

using too many words. Because the dog is so "human" in so

many ways (canines, like primates, are great mimics), the novice

imputes too much "humanity" to them. The average dog has a

vocabulary of around 150 words, and within that semantic

universe is quite bright. It is very easy to teach a dog the meaning

of "Sit," "Stay," "Attack," etc.; and the dog will learn the

meaning of "walk" and "food" even without your trying to teach

him. The problem begins when the novice expects the dog to

understand something like "No, no, Fritz—anywhere else in the

bedroom, but not on the bed." Even a non-English-speaking

human would not grasp that, except vaguely. The dog gives up

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on such sentences and guesses what he can from your mammalian

(and unconscious) body-language.

Understanding these distinctions can vastly improve primatecanine

communication. For instance, my wife, a sociologist,

trained our dog, Fang, not to beg at the table in the most direct

mammalian language possible. She simply growled at him the

first few times he approached her while she was eating. (She had

been reading ethology, of course.) Fang understood fully; he

soon learned to avoid the table while the Pack-Leaders (my wife

and myself) were eating. His genetic programs told him we were

the Big Dogs, or as close to the Big Dogs as he could find in that

environment; dogs, like wolves, have a genetic program about

not annoying the Big Dogs while they're eating. The growl told

him all he needed to know about the local parameters of that

rule. Fang, incidentally, was a Dachshund-Labrador mix, and

strange-looking to most humans. People would stop me on the

street while I was walking him and ask, "What...IS.. .that???"

Persons (extreme cases) who take the heaviest imprint on this

territorial-emotional circuit tend to be musculotonic. That is,

they hold most of their attention and energy, in the muscular

attack-defense systems and grow up medium weight—heavy

enough to be hard to knock down, light enough to be quick and

sinewy. Often, they become body-builders, weight-lifters etc.

and have an extraordinary absorption in demonstrating their

strength. (Even shaking hands with them, you get the message

that they are not exchanging amity but demonstrating power.)

Most societies shunt these types into the military where their

propensities are put to proper ethological use, defending the

tribal turf. The anal orientation of this circuit explains the oddity

of military speech first noted by Norman Mailer: "ass" means

one's whole self and "shit" means all surrounding circumstance.

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IMPRINTING AFFECTS THE WHOLE NERVOUS SYSTEM.

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AFFECTS THE WHOLE BODY.

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The second, emotional-territorial circuit, creates a two-dimensional

social space in conjunction with first-circuit advance-retreat.

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The grid of Circuits I and II creates four quadrants. Note that

Hostile Strength (the tyrant) is inclined to paranoid withdrawal; he

must govern, but he is also afraid. Cf. the careers of Hitler, Stalin,

Howard Hughes, etc. and the inaccessible Castle and Court in

Kafka's allegories. Note also that the dependent neurotic is not in

retreat at all; he or she advances upon you, demanding fulfillment

of emotional "needs" (imprints).

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These four quadrants have been known since the dawn of selfconsciousness.

For instance, in the terminology of the medieval

psychology of "humours," these four imprint-types are known as:

Clockwise, the Sanguinary type (friendly strength) was identified

with the Lion archetype and the element, fire. The Lion,

because of the dignity of these big cats, represents "good"

strength, and the fire represents power. The Phlegmatic type

(friendly weakness) was identified with the Angel archetype and

the element water: these people are "too sensitive to fight" and

"go with the flow." The Choleric types were identified with the

Bull archetype (truculent suspicion, paranoia) and the element,

earth, standing for sluggish pseudo "stupidity." (This is the traditional

stance of defeated races dealing with their conquerors.)

The Bilius types (hostile strength) were identified with the Eagle

archetype (symbol of Imperial Rome, the German royal family,

etc.) and the element air, air probably means sky, because these

types seem "high and mighty."

These symbols go back a long way; Cabalists find them in the

Old Testament (where, indeed, the lion-angel-bull-eagle appear

in Ezekiel). They are found constantly in Catholic art, associated

with the four evangelists (Matthew-angel, Mark-lion, Luke-bull,

John-eagle)1 and run all through the design of Tarot card decks,

medieval and modern.

1 These are the Four Old Men in Finnegans Wake. Matt Gregory,

because his last name contains ego equals the angel; Marcus Lyons

equals the lion; Luke Tarpey equals taur, the bull; Johnny McDougal

equals ougal the eagle.

74 Prometheus Rising

In the clever language of the fashionable Transactional Analysis

system, these four imprint types are categorized as the four

basic life scripts, to wit:

It is the Phlegmatic (friendly weakness; dependent neurotic)

type who generally turn up in the psychotherapist's office seeking

reimprinting voluntarily. They are not-okay, but they have

great faith that the therapist is okay.

The Bilius (hostile strength) and Choleric (hostile weakness)

arrive in therapy, if at all, only because their associates or families,

or more commonly, a law court, has ordered them to try to

reimprint their compulsive hostilities.

The Sanguinary (friendly strength) type virtually never comes

for psychotherapy. He or she is satisfied with his or her life, and

so is the rest of society. Alas, they nonetheless can get to the

position where they need therapy of some sort, simply because

they may take on too much responsibility and carry too many

burdens. They will generally arrive at the therapists only if sent

there by an M.D. who has intuited where their ulcers came from.

This system is not meant to be rigid or to imply that there are

only four types of humanoid robots. The later circuits, still to be

discussed, modify all this considerably: some imprints are wobbly

(cover two or more quadrants partly); and we are all capable

of sudden brain change. It is also important to realize that the

four archetypes are for convenience only—and they are convenient,

as witness their reappearance in Transactional Analysis,

where their historical connection with Lion-Angel-Bull-Eagle

isn't even recognized. But each quadrant can be subdivided

much more sharply, if necessary for diagnostic purposes.

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For instance, the most widely used psychological test in this

country the Leary Interpersonal Grid (1957) divides the four

quadrants into sixteen sub-quadrants and allows one to grade

each in terms of moderate-to-excessive tendency to behave that

way. In the grid on which the Leary categories are drawn, the

moderate imprints are in toward the center and the excessive or

extreme cases are out toward the perimeter, but what is being

measured is still basically the way the first two circuits (oral-biosurvival

and anal-territorial) are imprinted.

To clarify this a bit further, imagine that four babies were all

born at the same instant in John J. Boscowitz Memorial Hospital,

Enny Town, planet Earth. We come back twenty years later and

we find that each of them has a separate personality and life-style

(a problem for the astrologers, but let that pass). To make things

easier for us, they have actually landed in our four quadrants.

Subject #1 is Responsible/Over-Conventional (Sanguinary).

Everybody agrees that SHe (she or he) is usually a beloved

community leader—helpful, considerate, friendly and solidly

successful. Some may even say SHe spoils people with kindness,

forgives anything, agrees with everybody and actually enjoys

governing those who cannot govern themselves. The noble Lion.

This person may be (and probably is) a total robot. That is, if

SHe can never give orders in a strict way, is never able to doubt

others, is never ego-centered, etc. then SHe has mechanically

imprinted the First Quadrant, "friendly strength." On the other

hand, if SHe is able to move out of the First Quadrant in appropriate

situations (exercizing hostility against the marauder or

predator, admitting weakness when overwhelmed), SHe has an

imprinted-conditioned predilection for "I'm okay, you're okay,"

but is not totally robotized by it.

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LEARY'S INTERPERSONAL GRID

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THE FOUR QUADRANTS HAVE BEEN RECOGNIZED IN

MANY AGES AND EXPRESSED IN MANY SYMBOLS.

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Subject #2 has, after the same twenty years of imprinting and

conditioning, landed in Quadrant 2 friendly weakness (Phlegmatic).

SHe is self-critical, shy, timid, easily led, "spineless," and

always looking for somebody to Take Charge and Give Orders.

The unearthly Angel, or in modem symbolism, the Flower Child.

Again, this imprinting-conditioning may be totally robotic, or

there may be enough flexibility for the person to jump to another

quadrant when necessary.

Subject #3 had landed, with total robothood or with some

small flexibility, in Quadrant 3, "Hostile Weakness" (Choleric).

She distrusts everybody, rebels against everything, speaks constantly

in sarcasms, complains chronically and is generally bitter,

resentful and (to some extent) paranoid. The sullen Bull.

Subject #4 has landed in Quadrant 4, "Hostile Strength"

(Bilius), and is regarded as "bossy," cold, unfeeling, dictatorial,

self-important, boastful etc. but still in the judgment of most, "a

good leader." The imperial Eagle.

The irony and the tragedy of human life is that none of these

subjects are aware at all of their robotry. Each will explain to

you, at great length and with great conviction, why each of these

robotic, endlessly-repeated reflexes are caused by the situations

around them, i.e., by the "bad" behavior of other people.

WHAT THE THINKER THINKS, THE PROVER PROVES.

Thus, if you put these four primates on a desert island, you

can predict, with virtually as much certainty as a chemist telling

us what will happen if four elements are compounded, that

Subject #1 and #4 (Friendly Strength and Hostile Strength) will

both try to take over—#1 to help the others, #4 because SHe

can't imagine anybody else in control. #1 will submit to #4

because #1 wants things to run smoothly for the good of all, and

they never will run smoothly if #4 is not TOP DOG. #2, Friendly

Weakness, will not care whether #1 or #4 rules, just so long as

somebody else is making the decisions. And #3 will complain

(and complain, and complain), no matter who is in charge, while

skillfully avoiding any action that would require taking personal

responsibility.

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The same political decisions would be made by four chimpanzees

or four dogs, if they have the four imprint quadrants

equally divided as in our hypothetical example.

Sociobiologists, who are very aware of these four quadrants in

both human and animal societies, claim that each organism is

born with a genetic predisposition to play one of these roles.

Critics of sociobiology, who are dogmatic Liberals, denounce

this idea as monstrous. We will not attempt to decide that difficult

question here, since any attempt to decide what aspects of

behavior are genetic and what are learned after birth always

descends into ideological metaphysics in the prevailing absence

of real data. We say merely that, whether or not you or I were

born with a predisposition for one quadrant, all organisms are

born with a predisposition for imprint vulnerability, and the

imprint, once set in the neural circuitry, acts as robotically as any

genetic hard-wiring.

How imprints can be changed will be discussed as we

proceed. The exercizes in each chapter are intended to make

imprints a little less rigid, a little more flexible.

The top two quadrants of the Leary grid—Friendly Strength

and Hostile Strength—correspond roughly to what Nietzsche

called Herrenmoral, the ethics of ruling classes. Indeed, Hostile

Strength is the embodiment of Nietzsche's "Blond Beast," the

primitive conqueror-pirate type we find at the dawn of every

civilization. This is what Nietzsche also called the "animal" or

"unsublimated" form of the Will to Power.

(Friendly Strength on the other hand does not correspond,

except very slightly, to Nietzsche's "sublimated Will to Power."

To find that we will have to wait until we come to the Fifth

[Neurosomatic] Circuit—the stage of Conscious Evolution.)

The bottom two quadrants—Friendly Weakness and Hostile

Weakness—correspond to Nietzsche's Sklavmoral, the ethics of

slaves, serfs and "lower"-caste or "lower"-class persons

everywhere. Nietzsche's concept of "resentment"—the hidden

revenge motive within "altruistic" philosophies—claims there is

an element of hostility within even the Friendly Weakness side

of the grid; i.e., in conventional "Christian ethics," as typified by

the image of "gentle Jesus, meek and mild." This paradox—the

Friendly Weakling is a Hostile Weakling in disguise, the Flower

So Prometheus Rising

Child a potential Mansonized robot-killer—reappears in modern

clinical parlance as the concept of "passive aggressive."

Occultists in their strange jargon describe these types as

"psychic vampires."

This is why Nietzsche claimed that St. Paul had destroyed the

evangel (good news) of Jesus and replaced it with a dysangel

(bad news). The evangel of Jesus, as Nietzsche saw it, was the

sublimated Will to Power, the path of conscious evolution to

Superhumanity. The dysangel, the bad news, created by St. Paul

was traditional Sklavmoral—"Slaves, obey your masters," but

nourish your resentment with the firm belief that you are "good,"

and they are "evil," and you will eventually have the pleasure of

watching them burn in hell forever. In Nietzsche's analysis, all

Marx added to this was the idea of burning and punishing the

Master Class here and now instead of waiting for "God" to

attend to the matter post mortem.

The same analysis appears in e.e. cummings' unforgettable

couplet on the Communist intelligentsia of the 1930s:

every kumrad is a little bit

of concentrated hate

It is interesting, in this connection, that Nietzsche dropped

"psychological" language from his books as he went along and

replaced it with "physiological" language. For instance, in his

later works, such as The Anti-Christ, the "resentment" within

slave-morality (conventional Christianity) is diagnosed as a

physiological reaction characteristic of certain physical types.

Nietzsche was on the right track, but lacking neurology he

looked for the physical basis of these processes in genetics alone.

Imprinting theory suggests, on the contrary, that such physiological

Bottom Dog reflexes are created by specific triggers at early

moments of imprint vulnerability.

But they are nonetheless all-over-the-body-at-once and hence

physiological. Any Method Actor knows this and his body will

swell physically if he is playing a strong character and shrink if

he is playing a weakling. Rod Steiger, in particular, actually

seems taller or shorter depending on whether he is playing a Top

Dog or a Bottom Dog.

Prometheus Rising 81

Remember again that all these categories are for convenience

and that nature has not employed the sharp boundaries that we

use in our models of nature. Thus, with Leary's 1957 schemata,

we can further sub-divide our 4 types into 16 types with 4

degrees of each, for a total of 64 sub-types.

In the next section, to simplify what may be growing too

complex, we will reduce everything again just to the interactions

of the first two circuits.

Any system for describing human behavior should be flexible

enough to be extended indefinitely, and should also still contain

meaning when reduced back to its fundamentals.

Since we all contain a territorial-emotional circuit we need to

exercize it daily.

Playing with children is one good exercize—especially if you

play with large groups, in which case you will have to referee

mammalian territorial disputes. Swimming, jogging or whatever

else appeals to you is good, to keep the muscles from feeling you

are trying to starve them. Trying to "psych out" somebody else's

emotional state is one of the best exercizes for this circuit, and is

very educational in general. It activates the old mammal centers

in the thalamus where body-language communicates emotional

signals.

A good General uses this circuit to "psych out" what the

enemy General is planning. A good mother uses it, vice versa, to

figure out what baby's howl means in each particular case.

Advanced work with this circuit, involving some hazards in

personal relations, would involve such games as learning to bully

somebody if you've never been able to do that before, learning to

submit docilely if you've never been able to do that before, and

learning to express anger appropriately and letting go of it when

it is no longer necessary.

It will be observed by the thoughtful or visually-oriented

readers that each "extreme" type can be expressed on the Leary

Grid as a very off-center pie-slice:

82 Prometheus Rising

Obviously, an ideally "balanced" person—that is, one not

robotized and able to adjust to circumstances as they arise—

would not be so off-centered. Such a person would be able to

move a little bit into each quadrant "according to the times and

seasons" as the Chinese say, but would basically maintain a

centered detachment between all of them. She or he could be

graphed as a circle:

The dark inner circle would represent the adamantine individuality

of this ideally detached person—detached from robot

imprints. The grey circle would represent the ability to move out

into each quadrant in times when that was necessary.

Circles of this sort, called mandalas, are widely used for

meditation in the Buddhist tradition. Often they are cornered by

four demons who evidently, like the Occidental lion, bull, angel

and eagle, represent the extremes to be avoided.

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.. .being humus, the same returns.

— James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

EXERCIZES

1. Whenever you meet a young male or female, ask yourself

consciously, "If it came to hand-to-hand combat, could I beat

him/her' ?" Then try to determine how much of your behavior is

based on unconsciously asking and answering that question via

pre-verbal "body language."

2. Get roaring drunk and pound the table, telling everybody in

a loud voice just what dumb assholes they all are.1

3. Get a book on meditation, practice for two fifteen-minute

sessions every day for a month, and then go see somebody who

always manages to upset you or make you defensive. See if they

can still press your territorial retreat buttons.2

4. Spend a week-end at an Encounter Group. During the first

half-day, try to intuit which quadrant each participant is coming

1 Opiates and small does of alcohol seem to trigger neuro-transmitters

characteristic of Circuit I breast-fed tranquillity. Large doses of alcohol

often reverse this and trigger neuro-transmitters characteristic of

territorial struggle. Note the anal vocabulary of hostile drunks as their

alcoholic intake increases.

2 A good book on Meditation is Undoing Yourself With Energized

Meditation & Other Devices, by Christopher S. Hyatt, Ph.D., (New

Falcon Publications).

84 Prometheus Rising

from. At the end, see if any of them have become less robotized.

See if you have become less robotized.

5. Go to the Lion House at the zoo. Study the lions until you

feel you really understand their tunnel-reality.

6. Rent a video of the kind of comedy that small children

like—the Three Stooges, Abbott & Costello, etc. Observe carefully,

and think about what function this humor serves; but don't

neglect to laugh at it yourself.

7. Spend all day Sunday looking at animal shows on TV

(getting stoned on weed, if this is permissible to you). Then go

into the office the next day and observe the primate pack hierarchy

carefully, like a scientist.

CHAPTER FIVE

DICKENS & JOYCE:

THE TWO-CIRCUIT

DIALECTIC

That why all parks up excited about his gunnfodder. That why

ecrazyaztecs and crime ministers preaching him mornings.

— James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

THE GRACIOUS GODDESS AND THE

TERRIFYING GIANT HAUNT OUR

LEGENDS AND OUR LITERATURE.

Hearasay in paradox lust.—

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

86

The shock and dismay of the infant when the harshness of traditional

toilet training introduces the anal-Patrist second-circuit

values into the previously blissful oral-Matrist continuum is

conveyed with great artistry in Dickens' David Copperfield. So

overt is this sequence, indeed, that it is hard to believe it was

actually written half a century before Freud's clinical writings.

Dickens describes an idyllic infanthood in which David lives

with a widowed mother who can safely be characterized as a

human embodiment of the bona dea (good goddess) of the

ancients (who lingers still as the "fairy godmother" in children's

tales). Onto this happy scene intrudes the horrible step-father Mr.

Murdstone whose "Jehovah complex" makes him an avatar of

the punishing father-god. There is no way of obeying all of

Murdstone's rules; there are too many of them, and they are

mostly unstated and implicit anyway. David undergoes some

monumental lashings on the buttocks (for his own good, of

course, although Dickens emphasizes in a quite Freudian way the

obvious enjoyment Murdstone obtains from these sessions).

Quite naturally, David begins to internalize this anal system of

values and imagines he is quite a guilty little wretch and richly

deserves this torture. Then Dickens inserts the following scene,

when David returns from a year at school:

I went in with quiet, timid step. God knows how infantile the

memory may have been that was awakened in me at the sound

of my mother's voice in the old parlour when I set foot in the

hall. I think I must have laid in her arms and heard her singing

to me when I was but a baby. The strain was new to me but it

was so old that it filled my heart brimful like a friend come

back from a long absence.

I believed from the solitary and thoughtful way in which

my mother murmured her song that she was alone, and I went

softly into the room. She was sitting by the fire, suckling an

infant whose tiny hand she held against her neck. Her eyes

were looking down upon its face and she sat singing to it. I

was so far right that she had no other companion. I spoke to

her and she started and cried out. But seeing me she called me

her dear Davy, her own boy: and coming half way across the

room to meet me, kneeled down upon the ground and kissed

me, and laid my head down on her bosom near the little

creature that was nestling there, and put its hand up to my lips.

88 Prometheus Rising

I wish I had died. I wish I had died then, with that feeling

in my heart. I should have been more fit for heaven than I have

ever been since.

The dream of return to oral bio-security is too overt to require

commentary.

Similarly, in Joyce's monumental novel of the mind of a man

asleep, Finnegans Wake, the Father and the Father-God are

always associated with war and excretion, as Joyce scholar

William York Tindall has noted. As "Gunn, the Farther," the

terrifying anal monster combines pistol, deity and flatulence; as

"Delude of Israel," he is the jealous (territorial) Old Testament

"Lord of Hosts," i.e., of battles. His insignia, the hundred letter

thunder-word which recurs ten times in the dream, always combines

Fatherhood, menace, defecation and war: for instance, in

its first appearance on page 1, it is:

bababalalgharaghtakamminaronnkonnbronnton

nerronntounnthunntrovarrhounawnskawn

toohoohoondenthurnuk

Here we find Baba (Arabic, father), phonetic Abba (Hebrew,

father), phonetic Canbronne (the general who so appropriately

said merde when asked to surrender the territory), phonetic

Gaelic scan (crack: of thunder or of the anus), ronnen (Germanic,

excretion), the suggestive orden implying both Germanic

medal for valor and English ordure, etc. The terrifying Father-

God elsewhere "Makes his manuvres in open ordure" and

preaches all the anal-authoritarian values: "No cods before me...

Thou shall not commix idolatry... Love my label like myself."

He is the villain of the "goddinpotty" (garden party)—the trickster-

god who set the baited trap in the Garden of Eden; the ego

internalized in toilet-training (potty); the god of thunder and

wrath (god-din).

Fleeing him, the "unhappitants of earth" always seek his

opposite, ALP (German, dream; also the root of the first letters

of the Greek and Hebrew alphabets—alpha and aleph, the

source, the beginning)—Anna Livia Plurabella, when her name

is written in full: the waters of life combined with all beautiful

women. She is as oral and loving as "the Omniboss" is anal and

threatening:

Prometheus Rising 89

...with a beak, with a spring, all her rillringlets shaking, rock

drops in her tachie, tramtokens in her hair, all waived to a

point and then all inuendation, little oldfashioned mummy,

little wonderful mommy, ducking under bridges...as happy as

the day is wet, babbling, bubbling, chattering to herself,

deloothering the fields...

This amniotic river-woman is the perfect mother of infantile

dream memory and the Great Goddess of the ancients, the ideal

bio-survival safe, warm place and to her Joyce offers his most

fervent prayer:

In the name of Annah the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the

Bringer of Plurabilites, haloed be her eve, her singtime sung,

her rill be run, unhemmed as it is uneven!

Humanity, in Joyce's view as in Rattray Taylor's, is forever

leaving her to follow the Hero (Father) to "the bluddlefilth of

Waterloo" (battlefield of Waterloo with blood and excrement

superimposed to reveal the anal-territorial roots of war) and then

returning, temporarily chastened, "to list, as she bibs us, by the

waters of babalong."

In Chapter Three of Finnegans Wake, the "offenders"

(invaders) and "defenders" (natives) get so thoroughly mixed up

that all that remains is a composite "fender" who takes the blame

for everybody.

This cyclical view of history, whether in Joyce, Rattray

Taylor, Vico (Joyce's source), Hegel-and-Marx, etc. is only part

of the truth, but it needs to be stressed because it is the part that

most people fearfully refuse to recognize. Whether we speak in

terms of Taylor's Matrist-Patrist dialectic, Vice's cycle of

Divine, Heroic and Urbanized ages, the Marx-Hegel trinity of

Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis, or any variation thereon, we are

speaking of a pattern that is real and that does repeat.

But it only does so to the extent that people are robotized:

trapped in hard-wired reflexes.

When the accumulated facts, gimmicks, tools, techniques and

gadgets of neuro-science—the science of brain change and brain

liberation—reaches a certain critical mass, we will all be able to

free ourselves from these robot cycles. It is the thesis of this book

that we have been approaching that critical mass for several

go Prometheus Rising

decades now and will reach the crossover point faster than you

expect.

The current rampages of territorial-emotional pugnacity

sweeping this planet are not just another civilization falling, Vico

fashion.

They are the birth-pangs of a cosmic Prometheus rising out of

the long nightmare of domesticated primate history

Of course, these are genetic/historical generalizations which

do not precisely match any specific family. The gracious goddess/

hostile giant archetypes are not activated in cases where the

mother is cold, rejecting, embittered etc. and the father is the

warm, supportive figure. The imprints on the first and second

circuits are statistically deviant in such families and anything

may result—a shaman, a schizophrenic, a genius, a homosexual,

an artist, a psychologist, etc.

EXERCIZE

In terms of the theory so far developed, analyze the following

characters:

;'•>

l.ScarlettO'Hara

2. King Kong

3. Odysseus

4. Hamlet

5. Bugs Bunny

6. Portnoy

7. Leopold Bloom

8. Richard M. Nixon

9. Thomas Jefferson

10. St. Paul

11. Donald Duck

12 lago

13. Jane Eyre

14. Josef Stalin

15. Joan of Arc

16. Timothy Leary

17. Aleister Crowley

18. The Author

19. Mao

Prometheus Rising

20. Carl Jung

21. The Secret Chiefs

22. Hannibal Lecter, M.D.

23. You

CHAPTER SIX

THE TIME-BINDING

SEMANTIC CIRCUIT

It says that when you put two minds together, there is always a

third mind, a third and superior mind, as an unseen collaborator.

— William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, The Third Mind

93

HUMAN BEINGS ARE TIME-BINDERS

The third semantic circuit handles artifacts and makes a "map" (realitytunnel)

which can be passed on to others, even across generations.

These "maps" may be paintings, blueprints, words, concepts, tools

(with instructions on use transmitted verbally), theories, music, etc.

94

Human beings (domesticated primates) are symbol-using creatures;

which means, as the pioneer semanticist, Korzybski, noted,

that those who rule symbols, rule us.

If Moses, Confucius, Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus and St. Paul

can be considered living influences—and they are: look around

the world—this is only because their Signal has been carried to

us by human symbol systems. These systems include words, artworks,

music, rituals and unrecognized rituals ("games") through

which culture is transmitted. Marx and Hitler, Newton and

Socrates, Shakespeare and Jefferson, etc. continue to "rule" parts

of humanity in the same way—through the semantic circuit.

We are ruled even more, and even less consciously, by the

inventors of the wheel, the plow, the alphabet, even the Roman

roads.

Since words contain both denotations (referents in the

sensory-existential world) and connotations (emotional tones and

poetic or rhetorical hooks), humans can be moved to action even

by words which have no real meaning or reference in actuality.

This is the mechanism of demagoguery, advertising and much of

organized religion.

The bio-survival circuit only divides experience into two sets:

that which is good for me or nourishing, and that which is bad

for me or threatening. The emotional-territorial circuit also

divides the world into two halves: that which is more powerful

than me (higher in the pecking order) and that which is less

powerful than me (lower in the pecking order). On this basis

socio-biological systems evolve and animal "societies" of truly

human complexity have been studied.

The semantic circuit allows us to sub-divide things, and

reconnect things, at pleasure. There is no end to its busy-busybusy

labeling and packaging of experience. On the personal

level, this is the "internal monologue" discovered by Joyce in

Ulysses. On the historical level, this is the time-binding function

described by Korzybski, which allows each generation to add

new categories to our mental library—connecting new things,

separating new things, reclassifying and reshuffling forever. In

this time-binding dimension. Einstein replaced Newton before

most of the world1 had heard of Newton; simple arithmetic gave

1 Most of the world was illiterate until the 1970s.

95

g6 Prometheus Rising

birth to algebra, which brought forth calculus, which produced

tensor calculus, etc. Haydn and Mozart prepared the way for

Beethoven, who broke into the realms that the Romantics and

Wagnerians took over, which gave birth to what is called music

today.

So-called "future shock" has always been with us, since the

semantic circuit began functioning somewhere in pre-history. In

a symbolizing, calculating, abstracting species, all times are

"times of change." The process is however accelerating faster as

time passes, because the symbolizing faculty is inherently selfaugmenting.

In ordinary language, the semantic circuit is usually called

"the mind." (As psychologist Robert Ornstein said in a recent

radio show, when we say someone "has a good mind," we generally

mean they have a good mouth, i.e., they use the semantic

circuit well.)

In terms of Transactional Analysis, the first (oral) circuit is

called the Natural Child, the second (emotional) circuit is called

the Adapted Child, and the semantic circuit is called the Adult or

Computer. In Jungian terms, the first circuit mediates sensation,

the second circuit feeling, and the third circuit reason.

The neurological components of the first circuit go back to the

oldest parts of the brain; Carl Sagan called these functions "the

reptile brain." These neural structures are at least billions of

years old. The second circuit structures appeared with the first

amphibians and mammals, somewhere around 1000 million or

500 million years ago; Sagan called them "the mammalian

brain." The semantic circuit appeared perhaps 100 thousand

years ago; Sagan called it "the human brain." It should be no

surprise that most people, most of the time, are controlled more

by the older reptilian-mammalian circuits than by the human

semantic (rational) circuit, or that the semantic circuit is so easily

perverted into false logics (bigotries, intolerant ideologies, fanaticisms

of all sorts) when the bio-survival circuit signals threat to

life or the emotional circuit flashes threat to status.

Cynics, satirists and "mystics" (circuit V-VIII types) have

told us over and over that "reason is a whore," i.e., that the

semantic circuit is notoriously vulnerable to manipulation by the

older, more primitive circuits. However much the Rationalist

Prometheus Rising 97

may resent this, it is always true in the short run—that is, to use

one of the Rationalist's favorite words, it is always pragmatically

true. Whoever can scare people enough (produce bio-survival

anxiety) can sell them quickly on any verbal map that seems to

give them relief, i.e., cure the anxiety. By frightening people

with Hell and then offering them Salvation, the most ignorant or

crooked individuals can "sell" a whole system of thought that

cannot bear two minutes of rational analysis. And any domesticated

primate alpha male, however cruel or crooked, can rally

the primate tribe behind him by howling that a rival alpha male

is about to lead his gang in an attack on this habitat. These two

mammalian reflexes are known, respectively, as Religion and

Patriotism. They work for domesticated primates, as for the wild

primates, because they are Evolutionary Relative Successes. (So

far.)

The emotional-territorial or "patriotic" circuit also contains

the pack's status programs or pecking order. Working in tandem

with first-circuit bio-survival anxieties, it is always able to

pervert the functioning of the semantic-rational circuit. Whatever

threatens loss of status, and whatever invades one's "space"

(including one's ideological "head space"), is a threat to the

average domesticated primate. Thus, if a poor man has one status

prop in his life—"I'm a white man, not a goddam nigger" or

"I'm normal, not a goddam faggot" or whatever—any attempt to

preach1 tolerance, common humanity, relativism, etc. is not

processed through the semantic circuit but through the emotional

circuit, and is rejected as an attack on status (ego, social role).

The attentive reader will remember that the grid of the first

two circuits puts the pre-verbal child in a two-dimensional

world, which in the simplest of our diagrams looked like this:

Of course, preaching itself is bad second circuit politics, since it puts

you one-up on the person preached-at. You are not one-up unless

imprinted as such by being an alpha male in the same gene-pool or

conditioned as such by being a "boss" or other authority-figure. The

counter-culture of the 1960s, like many other idealistic movements,

failed because it did so much preaching from a morally one-up position

when nobody had been imprinted or conditioned to accept it as

one-up.

98 Prometheus Rising

SUBMIT

The third, semantic circuit seems intimately connected with

three dimensionality (although our binocular vision, of course,

also plays a role here). Specifically, right-handedness is a

human, or at least a primate, trait. Other mammals show no

right-hand preference; they are ambidextrous.

Recent neurology has shown that our right-handedness is

intimately connected with our tendency to use the left hemisphere

of the brain more than the right. (The left-handed minority

are discussed below). Indeed, we use the right hemisphere so

little in ordinary life that for a long time it was called "the silent

hemisphere."

Thus, there is a genetic (hard-wired) preference, in most

humans, for right-handed manipulations and left-brain mentations.

Now these connections seem intimately involved with our

verbal, semantic circuitry, because the left brain is the "talking"

brain. It is linear, analytical, computer-like and very verbal.

Thus, there is a neurological basis for the linkage between mapping

and manipulating. The right hand manipulates the universe

(and makes artifacts) and the left-brain maps the results into a

model, which allows for predictions about future behavior of that

part of the universe. These are the distinctly human (postprimate)

characteristics.

The left-handed, on the contrary, specialize in right-brain

functions, which are holistic, supra-verbal, "intuitive," musical

and "mystical." Leonardo, Beethoven and Nietzsche, for

instance, were all left-handed. Traditionally, left-handed people

have been the subject of both dread and awe—regarded as weird,

Prometheus Rising 99

shamanic, and probably in special communication with "God" or

"the Devil."1

There is thus a cross-over which makes for a left-right polarity

in both brain-functioning and hand-functioning, each being a

reverse mirror image of the other:

This double (and reversed) right-left polarity places us neurologically

in three-dimensional space. Rearranging our diagram

and adding the third circuit, we can illustrate the mind-field as

follows:

To visualize this two-dimensional sketch of a three-dimensional

system it is necessary to imagine that the advance-retreat

1 Aleister Crowley knew about this pragmatically, before modern neurology.

He taught his pupils to learn to write equally well with both

hands, thereby forcing the dormant right brain to spring to activity.

IOO Prometheus Rising

axis is at right angles to the others—that is, "see" it coming out

of the page at you.

This is "Euclidean" space. It is obvious, in this context, why

Euclidean space was the first kind of space discovered by mathematicians,

and by artists, and why it still seems "natural" to us;

why some have great difficulty in imagining the non-Euclidean

kinds of space used in modern physics.

Euclidean space is a projection outward of the way our nervous

systems stacks information on the bio-survival, emotional

and semantic circuits.

Thus, the imprint sites of this circuit are located in the left

cortex and closely linked with the delicate muscles of larynx and

the fine manipulations of right-handed "dexterity." The cortex

itself is so recent in evolution that it is often called "the new

brain"; it is found only in the higher mammals and is most developed

in humans and cetaceans (dolphins and whales).

Those extreme cases who take their heaviest imprint on the

third circuit tend to grow up cerebrotonic. They are tall and

skinny, because energy is perpetually drawn upward from the

body into the head. The caricatured evil genius, Dr. Syvlanus in

Superman, who was virtually all head, represents the extreme

toward which this type seems to be evolving. Popular speech

calls them "eggheads."

Almost always, these cerebrotonic Third-Circuit types ignore

or are hostile to their first and second circuit functions. Playfulness

puzzles them (appears silly or eccentric) and emotions both

baffle and frighten them.

Since we all contain this circuit, we all need to exercize it

regularly. Make up a schematic diagram of your business or

home and try to streamline it for more efficiency. Design a chart

that explains the whole universe. Every few years, study a

science you know nothing about, at an Adult Education center.

And don't neglect to play with this circuit: write poems, jingles,

fables, proverbs or jokes.

REMEMBER, MR. CROWLEY SAID:

YOU TOO ARE A STAR

P.S. HE ALSO SAID:

DO NOT LUST AFTER RESULTS

Prometheus Rising IOI

THE NEUROLOGICAL IMPRINT IS THE BLUEPRINT

FOR THE ENTIRE ORGANISM.

IO2 Prometheus Rising

As with the earlier circuits, the semantic circuit builds all of

its conditioning and learning onto a bedrock of hard-wired

imprinting. Thus, many existentially thinkable thoughts are

socially unthinkable, since (a) everybody in a given society has

roughly the same semantic imprint and (b) this is reinforced

daily by assumptions that are mechanically taken for granted.

Thus, a genius is one who, by some internal process, breaks

through to Circuit VII—a minor neurological miracle loosely

called "intuition"—and comes back down to the third circuit

with the capacity to paint a new semantic map, build a new

model of experience. Needless to say, this is always a profound

shock to those still trapped in the old robot-imprints, and is

generally considered a threat to territory (ideological head

space). The long list of martyrs to free enquiry, from Socrates

onward, shows how mechanical this neophobia (fear of new

semantic signals) is.

As Thomas Kuhn showed in The Structure of Scientific

Revolutions science itself—the apotheosis of third-circuit

semantic rationality—is not free of this neophobia. Kuhn

demonstrated, at length, that each scientific revolution took one

full generation to turn over the old world view. And Kuhn

further showed that the older scientists never are converted to the

new semantic paradigm. They are, in our terminology,

mechanically hooked to their original imprints. The revolution is

complete, as Kuhn shows, only when a second generation, not

hooked to the old imprint, is able to compare the two models and

decides rationally that the newer one really does make more

sense.

But if science, the most self-correcting of all information

processing third-circuit functions, has this one-generation time

lag, what can be said of politics, religion, economics? Time-lags

of centuries, or even millenniums, are common there.'

We commented earlier that in bio-survival neurology, there is

no time. "I just found myself doing it," we say after passing

through an automatic reflex on the bio-survival circuit.

This only refers to other people's politics, religions and economics,

needless to sag. The reader's own opinions on these subjects are the

only reasonable and objective ones. Of course.

Prometheus Rising 703

Emotional-territorial circuit actions begin to include time as a

factor. Dominance signals may not "work": the seemingly

weaker mammal may offer a counter-challenge. Two dogs will

walk around each other for several minutes growling and sniffing

(the chemical secretions of each reveals its actual degree of fear

to the other) before Top Dog and Bottom Dog becomes clear.

On the human level, we often agonize over emotional

decisions, becoming acutely conscious of time as we hesitate. As

every suspense writer knows, the principle way to increase

emotional tension is to set a time limit on a difficult or dangerous

decision. (See any Star Trek script; the time-limit is never

missing. Or see any of Irving Wallace's bestsellers. Suspense is

always increased, of course, if the time-limit is abruptly

shortened just before the climax.)

On the third circuit, time becomes conceptualized as well as

experienced. We know ourselves as creatures of time; the "tale

of the tribe," the totem pole, the Odyssey of Homer, the Old

Testament, the Vedas, etc. tell us what came before and often

contains prophecies of what will come later. Science expands the

third circuit into contemplation of time-spans that stagger our

imaginations. The very use of written languages and other

symbols like mathematics creates the time-binding sense of

Korzybski: we know ourselves as receivers of messages sent by

sages "of olde" and as potential transmitters of messages that

may be scanned ages in the future.

The fourth circuit causes us to be even more involved in, and

pressured by, time.

In closing this chapter let us be reminded that Giordano Bruno

was burned at the stake February 18, 1600, for teaching that the

earth moves. Was he guilty or not?

EXERCIZES

1. If you are a Liberal, subscribe to the National Review, the

country's most intelligent (and witty) conservative magazine, for

a year. Each month try to enter their reality-tunnel for a few

hours while reading their articles.

2. If you are a Conservative, subscribe to the New York

Review of Books for a year and try to get into their head-space

for a few hours a month.

IO4 Prometheus Rising

3. If you are a Rationalist, subscribe to Fate magazine for a

year.

4. If you are an occultist, join the Committee for the Scientific

Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and read their journal,

The Skeptical Inquirer, for a year.

5. Buy a copy of the Scientific American and read any article

in it. Ask the following questions: Why do they sound so sure?

Does the data support dogmatism at this point, or is dogma a

primate habit (defending head-space)? Will these theories still be

believed in 2011? In 2593?

6. Get into a discussion of philosophy with an educated

Marxist, an intelligent Moslem and a Japanese businessman at

the first opportunity.

7. Buy some ZOOM or LIFT (two names for the same caffeine-

high stimulant) at a Health Food Store. (This gives a close

approximation of the effects of illegal cocaine.) When you are

Zooming or Lifted and your mind is racing, find a victim and explain

the universe to him or her, until they are able to escape you.

What you experience in this "speed rap" is what the head of

the compulsive Rationalist is always like. This is the verbal

circuit gone wild and totally oblivious to information coming in

on any other circuit. It explains why most people cannot stand

Rationalists. "Speed" drugs evidently trigger neuro-transmitters

characteristic of the verbal centers of the left cortex.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE TIME-BINDING

DIALECTIC:

ACCELERATION &

DECELERATION

In the dialectic between nature and the socially constructed world,

the human organism is transformed. In this dialectic man produces

reality and thereby produces himself.

— Berger and Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality

105

The first and second circuits are Evolutionary Stable Strategies.

They have worked, in more or less the same form, not just for

primates but for other mammals, and for many other species,

over vast aeons of time.

The third, semantic circuit is an Evolutionary Unstable Strategy.

It could very accurately be called revolutionary rather than

evolutionary.

The first two-circuits are based on negative feedback, in the

biological sense. They maintain hotneostasis —that is, they

return, over and over, to the same ecological-ethological balances.

The function of negative feedback is to return to such a

steady state.

The time-binding semantic circuit is not based on such

steady-state positive feedback. It is a mechanism of what cyberneticists

and biologists called positive feedback. It does not

return to a steady state, but constantly seeks a new equilibrium at

a higher energy level. (Negative feedback returns to a fixed

point, like a thermostat. Positive feedback seeks a moving goal,

like a guided missile.)

The first two circuits maintain that which is (more or less)

constant in human affairs. They are totally cyclical, and relate

directly to the cycles found in history by Vico, Hegel and similar

philosophers.

The third circuit has always been hemmed-in and heavily

sanctioned with rules, laws, prohibitions, taboos, etc. because it

breaks up such cycles. It leads, if unleashed, to an upwardhurtling

spiral.

In societies where .the third, semantic circuit has been partially

unleashed—it has never been totally freed in any society—the

upward spiral immediately appears. This used to be known as

"progress," before that word became unfashionable.

The upward spiral (whether we call it "progress" or not) is

characteristic of what Karl Popper calls Open Societies. These

are secular, humanistic societies—cultures relatively free of

taboo and dogmatism.

Such freedom, up to and including the present, is only relative,

because many taboos are unconscious and pass themselves

off as "common sense" or "common decency," etc. Whoever

challenges them is by definition a "heretic," by definition a

"traitor," or by definition "an irresponsible nut."

707

IO8 Prometheus Rising

(Rationalists, who dominate in relatively Open Societies, also

have their own taboos, as we shall see.)

It was historian Henry Adams who first conceived the idea

that there might be a mathematical expression describing the rate

of change of human societies.

Under the influence of Newton's physics, Adams suggested—

and he was very tentative about this: a fact to be remembered by

those who ridicule his "naivete"—that the utilization of energy

might move forward as the inverse square of time just as

Newton's gravity functions as the inverse square of distance.

Accepting the anthropology of his day, Adams assumed

humanity in its present form was about 90,000 plus years old. He

then reckoned that it took most of that time to arrive at Galileo,

the scientific method, the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution,

and the great leap forward in energy utilization characteristic

of the "modern" age, or the Open Society.

Since 300 is the inverse square of 90,000, Adams assumed

that the next great leap was happening while he was writing,

around 1900—300 years after Galileo. Looking about him, he

decided this next jump to higher energy was occurring in the

researches of the Curies, :who had discovered radioactivity. As

many commentators have noted, it is impossible to read Adams

on this subject without feeling that he is very accurately forecasting

the Atomic Age.

Adams went further, with the exhilaration of a great idea.

Since 17 plus is the inverse square of 300, he predicted that the

next great evolutionary stage would begin in 1917 plus. And,

since the inverse square of 17 is 4 plus, he predicted the next step

in around 1922. By then, he said, we should have infinite energy

at our disposal. It didn't quite work out that way.

Nevertheless, Henry Adams was on the right track. His math

was just over-simplified.

Also "on the right track" was Henry's brother, Brooks, who

was also looking for "laws" in history. Brooks observed a pattern

which may or may not be entirely true but is as approximately

true as the similar generalizations of Vico, Hegel, Marx and

Toynbee. Every civilization, Brooks Adams proposed, goes

through four stages:

Prometheus Rising 109

1.The monopolization of knowledge by priests. E.g., the

Egyptian priests kept written language a secret among themselves,

as did the May an priests.

2. The monopolization of military power by conquerors who

made themselves States or governments. E.g., "a French bastard"

(Tom Paine's description of William the Conqueror) lands on the

shore of England with a superior technology—warriors on horse

versus native warriors on foot—and he becomes King. His relatives

and sycophants become Lords-of-the-land.

3. The monopolization of the land by these land-Lords. The

extraction of tribute ("rent") from those who live on the land.

4. The monopolization of the issue of currency by National

Banks. The extraction of tribute ("interest") for each piece of

currency put into circulation.

Most civilizations seem to have gone through at least three of

these stages, not always consecutively. Some have passed

through all four.

Brooks Adams also noted that centralized capital (the accumulation

of wealth in the hands of a few inter-related families)

seems to have been moving steadily West throughout recorded

history. The first major accumulations are to be found in Sumer;

the center of money-power then shifted to Egypt, to Greece, to

the Italian peninsula, to various parts of Germany, and then to

London. At the time Brooks Adams was writing (c. 1900) he saw

the balance teetering between London and New York, and he

predicted that the decline of the English Empire would shift the

balance to New York within the first half of the 20th Century. He

seems to have been right. Brooks Adams had no theory as to why

this Westward movement of wealth had been going on for 6000

years. He merely observed the pattern.

The shift is still continuing, in the opinion of many. For

instance, Carl Oglesby in The Cowboy vs. Yankee War, sees

American politics since 1950 dominated by a struggle between

"old Yankee wealth" (the New York-Boston axis, which

replaced London after 1900) and "new Cowboy wealth" (Texas-

California oil-and-aerospace billionaires). As of 1997, it looks

like the Cowboys are winning; which is what one would expect

if there were a real "law" behind Adams' East-West migration of

capital.

no Prometheus Rising

One night in 1919, Count Alfred Korzybski awoke from a

vivid dream, tears of joy streaming down his face, with a vivid

sense that the passing of signals from generation to generation—

the third circuit time-binding function—was what distinguished

us from the other primates.

Korzybski originally suggested that time-binding could be

defined mathematically. He dropped this idea later—his math

was as inadequate as Henry Adam's—but it is worth looking at

for a moment, to retrace the steps by which the actual Law of

Acceleration was discovered.

What Korzybski assumed at first was that if all the inventions,

discoveries, etc. of some hypothetical first generation of humans

could be represented by P, and the rate by which the second

generation could surpass this by R, then, mathematically, the

sum total of inventions, discoveries etc. at the end of the second

generation would be PR. Quite true, algebraically. Then, after a

third generation, the stockpile would be PRR. And after four

generations, PRRR.

Generalized, this becomes PRt, where (t) is the number of

generations from whatever generation you have picked as your

base-line.

The curve of PRt, if you put it on graph paper, ascends more

rapidly with each generation. Korzybski was looking straight at

what Alvin Toffler later called "Future Shock" and was trying to

write a mathematical formula for it.

Many variables in economic-technological history do, in fact,

fit Korzybski's PRt function; but others do not. The math, again,

was too simple; and everything does not change at the same rate.

Nonetheless, Korzybski, like Henry Adams, was groping toward

the truth: acceleration is real, and it is intimately connected with

time-binding, the passing of signals between generations.

What underlies the accelerations noted by Henry Adams and

Korzybski is nowadays known as the selection of negentropy out

of stochastic processes. Our understanding of this is chiefly due

to almost-simultaneous discoveries (1946-48) by quantum physicist

Erwin Schrodinger, mathematician Norbert Weiner and an

electronics-communication expert at Bell Laboratories, Claude

Shannon.

Prometheus Rising in

A stochastic process is a random series, but it is a special kind

of random series. In a stochastic process, some agent or agency

is making selections—picking out of the randomness a pattern

that is not random.

A pattern that its not random is known mathematically as

information.

Information can also be defined as organization, or as coherence.

Gregory Bateson has defined information as "differences that

make a difference."

Information—coherence—"differences that make a difference"

—Korzybski's Time-Binding—these are all aspects of the

unpredictable. If you know something already, or can predict it

easily on the basis of what you do know, it is not information for

you. Conversely, if you don't know something, or can't predict

it, it is information.

The dynamism of evolution, we repeat, is the selection of

information, coherence, out of a random series of events. The

emergence of information can be illustrated crudely by the

following three poemlets:

Roses are red

Violets are blue

Sugar is sweet

And so are you

Unless the reader has lived in relative isolation from American-

English folk-culture, this poem had very little information

for him. You could guess what was coming every step of the

way. But consider by contrast:

Roses are red

Ink is black

Do me a favor

Go sit on a tack

This crude jest (of grade school origin) has more information

for more readers, because it is less predictable. Another leap in

information-content occurs in Steve Alien's:

Roses are red

Violets are blue

You think this will rhyme

But it ain't gonna

H2 Prometheus Rising

The humorous unpredictability of this poem gives it, mathematically,

a higher information level than the predictable Valentine

poem we started with. If this is still obscure, try it in terms

of Bateson's elegant simplification: "Information is difference

that makes a difference."

Information is also known mathematically as negative entropy

or, in a widely used abbreviation, negentropy.

Entropy is a measure of the deadness of a system. Negentropy

or information is a measure of the liveliness of a system.

Evolution is always a matter of at least two stochastic processes,

each one acting as "selector" of the other(s). That is, in

non-living systems, where no such "selection" is involved,

entropy (lack of coherence) steadily increases, as stated in the

famous Second Law of Thermodynamics. In living systems, due

to stochastic co-selection, negentropy (information) steadily

increases. In Schrodinger's phrase, "Life feeds on negative entropy."

Life is an ordering, selecting, coherence-making process.

Without getting embroiled in metaphysics, life (evolution)

behaves as if it were always aiming at higher coherence, i.e.,

higher intelligence.

This process accelerates because it is, as Shannon demonstrated

mathematically, logarithmic. Logarithmic processes are

such that if you put them on graph paper, the curve rises more

and more all the time.

Hence, the accelerations noted by Adams and Korzybski are

human increments in a process that has been innate in evolution

all along.

The human increment accelerates faster than pre-human evolution

because through the third, semantic circuit and its symbols

(words, maps, equations etc.) we are able to pass information

(negative entropy: coherence) from generation to generation.

World-wide wealth in terms of "Real Capital" (plants in

operation, actual known resources etc.) has been doubling every

generation since economists started collecting statistics in the

18th Century.

Where does this wealth come from'? According to orthodox

economists it comes from land, labor, and capital. According to

Marxists, it comes from land and labor alone, and the capitalist is

a thief who has inserted an artificial bookkeeping system into the

Prometheus Rising 7/3

process. Both are wrong. Land and labor alone, and land, labor

and capital together, can't produce new wealth if they are all

organized by a fallacious idea, such as searching for oil where oil

is not. The real source of wealth is correct ideas: workable ideas:

that is, negative entropy—Information.

The origin of these coherent (workable) ideas is the human

nervous system. All wealth is created by human beings using

their neurons intelligently.

A neurotic young man once went to a Zen Master and asked

how he could find peace of mind.

"How can you lack anything," the Roshi asked "when you

own the greatest treasure in the universe?"

"How do I own the greatest treasure in the universe?" asked

the young man, baffled.

"The place that question comes from is the greatest treasure in

the universe," said the Master, being more explicit than is

common for a Zen teacher.

Of course, as a Buddhist, the Master had taken a vow of

poverty and did not mean exactly what we mean here. But he

knew that the brain produces all that we experience—all our pain

and worry, all our bliss states and ecstasies, all our higher evolutionary

vistas and trans-time Peak Experiences, etc. It is also "the

greatest treasure in the universe" in the most materialistic economic

sense: it creates all the ideas which, socially employed,

become wealth: roads, scientific laws, calendars, factories, computers,

life-saving drugs, medicines, ox-carts, autos, jet planes,

spaceships...

If you are not alone in the wilderness, lift your eyes from the

page and look about. All that you see, whoever theoretically

"owns" it, is the time-binding product of the materialized or

manifested ideas of creative men and women. It is all negative

entropy. Coherent order.

And it is moving toward higher and more coherent order at a

faster rate-of-change all the time.

Of course, if you are alone in the wilderness, you will also see

coherent order, but in this case, the rate-of-change toward higher

order is much slower. That is, those stochastic processes which

we call genetic drift, evolution etc. are co-selecting higher order

at a different time rate than those stochastic processes which we

114 Prometheus Rising

call human thought, invention, culture etc. (This is why it is so

hard to reach agreement about whether the natural processes are

intelligent or not. As Bateson points out, if we accept any ordering

process as intelligent, then the biosphere is indeed intelligent;

but if we save the word "intelligence" only for those ordering

processes that move at the same speed as our brains, then Nature

is merely mechanical, not intelligent. To an extra-terrestrial with

a different time-sense than ours, this question would not arise at

all.)

Most of what we perceive in the human environment is made

up of concretized ideas, in the above sense. Look again at a

human community; you are seeing the historical human mind

manifesting itself.

All ideas are not equally good, of course.

All manifested ideas (human creations in the biosphere) are,

therefore, not equally good.

This is why John Ruskin, a century ago, tried to introduce a

distinction between wealth and illth. This distinction did not

become accepted and incorporated into our language because

people, at that time, were not ready for it.

Wealth, in Ruskin's sense, consists of all those artifacts

(concretized ideas) which enhance human life, or life generally.

Illth consists of those artifacts which destroy, demean or degrade

life. A factory that pollutes the air or water is illth in this sense;

so is a bomb, a sword, a pistol, a tank of nerve-gas.

The Westward migration of Capital noted by Brooks Adams

was a migration of both wealth and illth.

Obviously, under primitive planetary conditions—finite space

and finite resources—the illth was perceived as necessary to

protect the wealth. Territorial politics are much the same among

domesticated primates as among other mammals; the primates

are just smarter at building more omni-lethal weapons faster.

This was originally a survival trait, an Evolutionary Relative

Success, because primates are born without the physiological,

inbuilt weaponry (lethal teeth, claws, horns etc.) of other

mammals.

Since the Age of Reason in the 18th Century, the exponential

increase in wealth (life-enhancing ideas manifesting) has led to

more and more Utopian yearnings. At the same time, the equal

Prometheus Rising

and opposite increase in illth has led to more and more dystopian

and apocalyptical fears.

CAPITAL HAS MOVED STEADILY WESTWARD BECAUSE

NEW IDEAS ALWAYS APPEAR ON THE EXPANDING WAVE

One's expectations about the future—Utopia or dystopia—are

always based on what one thinks is the dominant force in evolution.

This whole book, not just the present chapter, is based on

the belief that an overview of evolution shows beyond all doubt

that wealth-producing faculty (the search for higher coherence)

is the deciding factor. The illth-producing faculty is an archaic

mammalian survival system rapidly becoming obsolete.

The highest historical concentration of wealth (real capital,

and ideas generating new capital) now co-exists with the highest

concentration of evolutionarily advanced nervous systems.

Il6 Prometheus Rising

In California, Oregon, Alaska, British Columbia. Arizona,

Texas, the Hawaiian Islands, Japan and all around the Pacific,

where East meets West, the world of 2000 and 2010 and 2050 is

being created by persons who are veterans of a gigantic Neurological

Revolution—the psychedelic pioneers of the 1960s, the

graduates of the Consciousness Movement of the 1950s-70s, the

synthesizers of modern psychology and ancient Oriental mindsciences.

These persons are called the Aquarian Conspiracy by

Marilyn Ferguson, one of their spokespersons. They are

denounced as the Me Generation by Tom Wolfe, a time-traveler

from New York, i.e., from the neurological past, from a culture

crystallized before 1950.

This "Me Generation" is the temporary high water mark of

the time-binding function. Moving steadily Westward—away

from Tradition, away from Dogma—they are the products, as

Edmund Burke said of the first Americans, of "the dissidence of

dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestants." Every heresy

that left Europe produced newer, wilder heresies in the Eastern

Seaboard, 1600-1800. Those that were "too far out" had to move

further West and produced the 1000 Utopian communities

(anarchist, evangelical, free-love, etc.) that were attempted in the

mid-West during the 19th Century. Those who were even further

"out"—out of the traditional mode—moved further Westward in

the last 30-70 years.

All of the fallout of this migration seems weird to the Eastern

states, and even weirder to Europeans.

It all became much weirder still when it hit the Pacific and

began to interact with Oriental neuro-sciences and brain-change

arts, like yoga and Taoism and Zen.

It swallowed the Oriental lessons whole, without becoming

Oriental entirely. It remained Western—the dissidence of dissent

etc.—and it has been gaining momentum and direction for two or

three decades now.

It aims at Higher Coherence and Higher Intelligence.

This is the new Power Elite.

As youngsters, these Aquarian Conspirators made the Youth

Revolution of the 1960s, which—whatever its excesses and

blunders—permanently changed and improved student-administrator-

teacher feedback in our universities; liberated our Puritan

Prometheus Rising ilj

culture for some healthy hedonism; imported a dozen varieties of

Oriental neuro-science (and two dozen varieties of Oriental

humbug, alas); launched the ecology movement (the first planetwide

perception of the difference between wealth and illth);

recreated a true love of the wilderness and of wild creatures:

pioneered flex-time and other liberations from economic robothood;

1 launched Women's Lib, Gay Lib, Child Lib and generously

supported Black Lib; ended the Vietnam War; spread

holistic medicine throughout our culture; etc.

The same group is now leading the computer revolution;

spearheading the drive toward Space Migration; supporting the

Hunger Project, which will abolish starvation in our lifetimes;

leading the Longevity revolution and the search for immortality;

etc.

And they are all very conscious of being part of the Intelligence

Intensification explosion which is the major topic of this

book.

This type of "Western progressivism" (or Utopianism) came

out of the mid-East and is the distinct contribution of the Jews,

which is why all reactionaries are intuitively anti-Semitic. As

William Blake wrote of this tradition:

The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked

them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spoke to

them; and whether they did not think at the time that they

would be misunderstood & so be the cause of imposition.

Isaiah answer'd: 'I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite

organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in

everything, and as I was then persuaded & remain confirmed

that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared

not for consequences, but wrote.'

This vision of the infinite in everything is common to East

and West; what is distinctly Western, out of the Jews, is the

voice of honest indignation against every institution which

would deny or demean the infinity within each human soul. The

release of our full human potential—to let the light of Prometheus

shine everywhere—is the distinctly Western mystic tradi-

Virtually all the computer manufacturing firms in Silicon Valley (the

peninsula south of San Francisco) have flex-time. The employees

choose their own working hours.

Il8 Prometheus Rising

tion and does not appear in Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism or any

Eastern religion.

Thomas Jefferson developed his view that "all men are created

equal" from the perception of the infinity within each of us,

which he learned from the Scottish philosophers, Reid and

Hutcheson. (It was also from Hutcheson that Jefferson got his

idea of "unalienable rights," which Congress in the interest of

stylistic elegance altered to "inalienable rights.") The Scottish

Enlightenment, like the French and English Enlightenment, was

the beginning of the materialization and manifestation of the

Judeo-Christian vision of the Heavenly City.

It was also this 18th Century Illuminati circle which introduced

the concept of progress—the conscious formulation of the

symbolism of Prometheus. This vision has been under so much

attack in recent decades that to defend it at all will seem archaic

and eccentric to many readers.

Nonetheless, evolution is real: quantum jumps do occur

throughout the biosphere and throughout human intellectual

history. We are riding a mounting tidal wave of rising consciousness

and expanding intelligence which is accelerating whether

we like it or not.

By and large, most people—and especially most ruling

elites—have not liked this acceleration factor. The migration of

capital (i.e., ideas) Westward has been largely a flight from

oppression, an escapist movement—as critics today describe

Space as "escapist." Everywhere, everywhen, the rulers of society

have tried to put a brake on the third circuit, to decelerate the

acceleration function, to establish limits on what was printable,

discussable, even thinkable.

The Greek myth of Prometheus Bound—the Titan who

brought Light to humanity and is eternally punished for it—is the

synecdoche, the perfect symbol, of how the third circuit has been

handled in most human societies.

The peculiar way most societies have imprinted the fourth,

socio-sexual circuit—the weird taboos which restrain us all, in

every tribe, however technologically "advanced"—is part of the

acceleration-deceleration dialectic.

Prometheus Rising

The fourth circuit has been largely imprinted to serve as a

brake, holding back the free activity of the time-binding semantic

circuit.

This is the historical function of taboos and "morality."

EXERCIZES

1 . Compare Greece in the 4th Century BC, Rome in the First

Century AD, Southern Europe at the beginning of the Renaissance,

England c. 1600-1900, New York c. 1900-1950, and California

today. Note the accumulation of wealth corresponding to

the accumulation of heresies, innovations, cults, kooks, pioneers,

inventors etc.

2. Imagine you put a penny on the first square of a chessboard,

two cents on the second square, four cents on the third,

etc. How much will you have to put on the sixty-fourth square'?

This is how time-binding works, in relatively Open Societies.

3. Read the denunciations of Galileo by the orthodox of his

time.

4. Read the denunciations of Beethoven, of Picasso, of Joyce

by those who knew in advance what music, painting and novels

should be.

5. Are the most important scientific ideas of 1997 going to be

published in Scientific American in 1997, or in 2017?

6. Research how many years passed between the publication

of Einstein's paper on Special Relativity and the acceptance of

the idea by the majority of physicists.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE "MORAL" SOCIOSEXUAL

CIRCUIT

As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so

the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.

— William Blake, Marriage of Heaven & Hell

121

The socio-sexual circuit is activated and imprinted at adolescence,

when the DNA signal awakens the sexual apparatus. The

teenager becomes the bewildered possessor of a new body and a

new neural circuit oriented to orgasm and sperm-egg fusion. The

pubescent human, like any other rutting animal, lurches about in

a state of mating frenzy, every call gasping for the sexual object.

Imprint vulnerability is acute, and the first sexual signals to

turn on the adolescent nervous system remain fixed for life and

forever define the individual's sexual reality.

We should not be surprised, therefore, at the various fetishes

that are so easily acquired at these sensitive moments.

In fact, we can tell precisely at what period in time a person

was sexually imprinted by noting which fetishes continue to turn

him or her on. Black garters, booze, cool jazz, and crew cuts

define the sexual signals of one imprint group (generation) just

as rigidly as sleeping hags, marijuana, heavy rock and tight

jeans define another.

As Masters and Johnson have pointed out, most sexual dysfunctions

are hooked into the nervous system at these adolescent

moments of acute imprint vulnerability; their archetypal case is

that of a male who, about to mate for the first time, in the back

seat of a car, was traumatized by a policeman flashing a light on

him and his paramour. The imprint of that ghastly moment was

hooked for decades: the male remained impotent until reimprinted

by Masters and Johnson in their clinic.

The choices of heterosexuality or homosexuality, brash promiscuity

or timid celibacy, etc. are usually imprinted by exactly

similar accidents at points of imprint vulnerability. Just as biosurvival

anxiety or security are imprinted by accidents in the

nursing period, emotional domination or submission by accidents

in the toddling period, symbolic dexterity or "stupidity" by

the accidents of the learning environment.

Primitives (so-called) know these facts and surround all the

points of imprint vulnerability with rituals, "ordeals," "rites of

passage," etc. well designed to imprint the desired traits of a

well-integrated member of that tribe at that time. Relics of these

imprint ceremonies survive in Baptism, Confirmation, Bar Mitzvahs,

Marriage Ceremonies, the Masonic "raising," etc.

723

124 Prometheus Rising

It is important to realize that chance, genetics and malice

(anger) are among the "accidents" that create imprints at the

points of vulnerability.

Most humans do not, due to accidents of this sort, imprint

exactly the socio-sexual role demanded by their society. The

fourth circuit can almost be called the guilt circuit: almost everybody,

almost everywhere, is quite busy hiding their real sexual

profile and miming the "accepted" sex role for their gender in

their tribe.

In ordinary language, the imprint on the socio-sexual circuit is

generally called "the mature personality" or the "sexual role." It

is "the Parent" in the jargon of Transactional Analysis.

It is amusing to note that Freud recognized the first circuit as

the oral stage, the second as the anal stage and the fourth as the

genital stage. He did not notice the third, semantic circuit—

perhaps because as an obsessive Rationalist he was so absorbed

in verbal and conceptual programs that they were invisible to

him, as water may be to fishes. Similarly, Jung described the first

circuit as the sensational faculty, the second as the feeling

faculty, the third as the rational faculty—and skipped the sociosexual

circuit entirely. (There may be a clue here as to why Jung

could not abide Freud's fourth-circuit emphasis and built a

separate, less sexual psychology of his own.) Jung then went on

to lump all the higher circuits under the rubric of the faculty of

intuition.

It is the function of the nervous system to focus, to select, to

narrow down; to choose, from an infinity of possibilities, the

biochemical imprints which determine the tactics and strategies

that ensure survival in one place, status in one tribe.

The infant is genetically prepared to learn any language,

master any skill, play any sex role; in a very short time, however,

he or she becomes mechanically, robotically, fixated to accept,

follow and mimic the limited offerings of his social and cultural

environment.

In this process, each of us pays a heavy price. Survival and

status mean forfeiting the infinite possibilities of unconditioned

consciousness. The domesticated primate, inside the social reality-

tunnel, is a trivial fragment of the potentials for experience

Prometheus Rising 125

and intelligence innate in the 110,000000,000-cell human biocomputer.

As Robert A. Heinlein wrote:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an

invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, conn a ship, write a

sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the

dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve an

equation, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a

computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.

But as long as we remain on the antique circuits we are not

very different from the insects. That is, just as the insects repeat

their four-stage program (egg, larvae, chrysalis, adult) from

generation to generation, we repeat our four-stage cycle also.

The antique circuits are genetically conservative. They ensure

the survival and continuation of the species, but do no more. For

future evolution we must look to the futuristic circuits.

SPECIALIZATION IS FOR INSECTS

126 Prometheus Rising

It is sometime mistakenly stated that there are no universal

sexual taboos. This is not true. There is one omni-purpose taboo

which exists in every tribe.

That taboo stipulates that sexuality shall not be unregulated

by the tribe. That is, even though no other taboos are universal,

the taboo against living without taboos remains constant. Every

tribe has its own set of verbots and thou-shalt-nots, but no tribe

allows the individual to choose his or her own set.

An American President may not marry his own sister (if he

wants to get re-elected); an Egyptian Pharaoh had to marry his

own sister. Confronted by this moral relativism, many social

scientists have failed to notice the invariable: both the President

and the Pharaoh are expected to obey local rules. So are the

Samoan, the Russian, the Eskimo and the Cuban.

Why is there this taboo against sexual self-definition and selfactualization?

Why is it that, while no two societies can agree on

what is sexually "good" and sexually "bad," every society thinks

that it must make some definition?

1 The Gurdjieff titles are deliberately negative, since he was trying to

get people off these primitive circuits and into the futuristic circuits.

Prometheus Rising I2J

The answer is that our first humanoid (symbolizing and conceptualizing)

ancestors were very ignorant, but not at all stupid.

They were ignorant of the laws of genetics, but they were smart

enough to suspect that such laws exist. Sperm-egg fusion is surrounded

by violent taboos and fierce tribal conformity because

the survival and future evolution of the gene pool depends upon

which particular spermatozoa reaches which particular ovum.

Etymologists confirm the Freudian theory that there are

ancient linkages between the words for the sacred, the erotic, the

obscene, the awe inspiring, the awe-ful, the divine, the

"thrilling." All of these are primitive, powerful physiological

responses to the mysteries of sexual attraction, mating, reproduction,

inheritance, genetic drift, future evolution. The earliest

god-forms found by archeologists are pregnant goddesses and

ithyphallic gods. The most intolerant, bigoted and recalcitrant of

all prejudices—the very last to fade away after cosmopolitanizing

contact with other tribes having different values—are the

taboos concerning the right way to reproduce. If one nation

insists that the head of state must marry his sister, and another

insists that he must not, both are acting on the assumption that

the right way must be found and rigorously enforced.

There are unknowns in the area of sexual attraction—He likes

Her, but She doesn't like Him.

There are unknowns in the area of mating—a young couple

can make love once, and the woman becomes pregnant, yet

another couple make love for three years and the woman remains

barren. Very puzzling and frightening for primitives, in New

Guinea or New Jersey.

128 Prometheus Rising

GODS AND GODDESSES ARE SEXUAL AND GENETIC

PROGRAMS EXPRESSED IN PRIMITIVE SYMBOLS

Prometheus Rising 729

There are unknowns in the area of reproduction—why twins?

Why three boys in one family and three girls in another? Why

miscarriages and stillbirths?

There are unknowns in the area of inheritance—"Why doesn't

my son look like me?" many a domesticated primate has wondered

uneasily, leading to a great deal of paranoia and male

chauvinism.

There are unknowns in the area of genetic drift—modern

researchers recognize twelve or more variables, but still have

more questions than answers.

There are unknowns in the area of future evolution—"Where

do we come from, what are we, where are we going?", the title

of Gauguin's greatest painting, is the basic ontological question;

the totem-pole, like the treatise on sociobiology, is an attempt to

answer.

Amid all these unknowns—of sexual attraction, mating reproduction,

inheritance, genetic drift, future evolution—the shamans

of every tribe try to establish guide-posts to tribal (gene-pool)

survival.

Thus "morality" is invented.

Sexual attraction, mating, reproduction, inheritance, genetic

drift and future evolution are all stochastic processes. (That is,

processes in which, out of a random series, some "intelligence"

or something that can be metaphorically conceived as an intelli-

/JO Prometheus Rising

gence, is selecting a final outcome.) That these stochastic processes

overlap, as shown in our diagram, is intuitively obvious;

and it is also obvious that the future is being "selected" every

step of the way.1 Taboo and morality are tribal attempts to govern

the random element—to select the desired future.

"Morality" attempts to control the stochastic evolutionary

process at two points—interfering between sexual attraction and

sexual consummation (Mating) by taboos and commandments,

or else interfering between mating and reproduction. The latter

case is represented by infanticide a widespread birth-control

measure always justified by the local shamans on magical

grounds, e.g., the infants selected for sacrifice are breach births,

or birth-marked, or twins, or in some way stigmatized by the

"gods." The actual function of such practices, of course, is population

control; and such customs are most common on isolated

islands where runaway population would be a disaster. Similarly,

the Judaic taboos functioned to channel all sexuality into

increased population, since the ancient Jews were surrounded by

large and pugnacious Empires eager to conquer them; they

needed more boys for soldiers and more girls to breed soldiers.

The most "idiotic" and "superstitious" taboos, from the

Rationalist viewpoint, always had some function when invented.

For instance, the most "pointlessly" elaborate (non-genetic)

"incest" taboos, in which virtually everybody in the tribe

becomes unavailable sexually to everybody else, force exogamy

(marriage outside the tribe). This creates affectional alliances

(family ties) between tribes and decreases warfare. Something

like this primitive exogamy survived into very recent times, in

the custom of marrying one royal family to another.

Every form of "morality" is, of course, irksome on some level

to everybody, because no individual ever has exactly the sexual

imprint desired by the tribe. The more sophisticated totem-cults

(the "higher" religions, so dubbed by themselves) take account

1 That the whole chain is "intelligent" or manifests "intelligence," is the

Lamarckian heresy which Darwinians have never quite been able to

kill; every time it is buried, it rises again in new form. Two most able

recent arguments of the neo-Lamarckian or meta-Lamarckian

position, which the reader is cordially urged to read, are Timothy

Leary's The Game of Life and Gregory Bateson's Mind and Nature.

Prometheus Rising

of this by the doctrine of atonement. In one form or another, this

allows the individual to be ritually "forgiven" periodically for

not being the perfect sexual robot decreed by tribal morality.

This becomes hilarious only when one realizes that most of

what domesticated primates are asking their priests to forgive

them for consists of what Kinsey so accurately called "normal

mammalian behavior."1

Time-binding (the transmission of symbols and tools across

generations) begins on the third circuit. Acute consciousness

time is, however, intensified on the fourth circuit.

1 This only refers to the silly and inferior religions of other people, of

course, and has no reference to the Sublime Truths of the reader's

own religion.

7J2 Prometheus Rising

The principle function of the socio-sexual circuit, in the

higher primates, is to form an adult personality—a parent.1 By

definition, the parent is one who cares for the young of the

species; by genetic necessity, the parent also cares about the

young. In symbolizing humans, this means planning, hoping and

having aspirations. In the language of the mystics, this means

being "attached" and "trapped on the wheel of karma"; the first

effort in most mystical traditions is to break this fourth-circuit

attachment by taking a vow of celibacy.

The fourth circuit is located in the left neo-cortex—the newest

part of the left hemisphere of the brain It is linked neurologically

with the genitalia and the breasts (fucking-hugging-embracingprotecting

circuitry).

Persons who take their heaviest imprint on this circuit are

beautiful. That is, their entire body has received so many sexual

neurotransmitters from the brain that they are constantly radiating

the "attractive" mating signals that make up our perception

of what is "beautiful" in a human being.

According to accidents of imprinting, they can be coldly calculating

exploiters, totally repressed Puritans or carry some other

negative traits but they always look like (send the signals of) the

ideal fucker-lover-protector.

Once formulated, "morality" serves as not only a check on

genetic drift but a brake against Circuit III innovation. The

1 Homosexuality (like left-handedness) is probably included in the

genetic script to serve auxiliary functions. In most primitive societies,

the homosexuals (and the left-handed) are shunted into shamanic

roles. In more complex societies they are (like spinsters and heterosexual

bachelors) usually shunted into intellectual or artistic roles,

which have quasi-shamanic functions of making, breaking or transforming

cultural signals. Those who claim any perennial sexual variation

is "against nature" are underestimating nature's variety, diversity

and economy. The "mutation" of Leonardo de Vinci, a left-handed

homosexual, was needed to break up the signal of the dying medieval

reality-tunnel and remake our perceptions into the reality-tunnel of

post-Renaissance scientific humanism. His success is registered by

the fact that a Leonardo painting is still the "norm" of what we mean

by realism, i.e., most people (including right-handed heterosexuals)

are living in the scientific-humanist "space" this man invented.

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shamans, priests etc. define which ideas are "moral" and which

are "immoral." Anything new — anything that will break the

tribal cycle, i.e., take us out of cyclical mythic "time" into linear,

progressive, revolutionary "time" — is usually defined, very

quickly, as "immoral."

To say that religion and priestcraft have played a conservative

role in history is an understatement. One might as well say that

bubonic plague has killed a few people, or that Hitler was a little

bit strange. The chief role of religion has always been reactionary.

This is its evolutionary function, in the dialectic of the

circuitry of the brain.

Circuit III, unchecked, is like a cocaine monologue. You can't

remember anything, because everything is changing too fast.

This is profoundly disorienting to the average domesticated primate,

so the tribal moralists keep stability and tranquility by

acting as decelerators,

The average person, similarly, is philosophically most "open"

and "curious" before the adult sex role of parenthood is elected.

After reproduction, there is little time for Circuit III speculations,

and (because of the sanctions every tribe places upon "heresy,"

i.e., new ideas) there is also little inclination.

Thus, Circuit III tends to take us out of tribal cyclical time

into linear progressive time; but Circuit IV loops us back into the

cycle again.

Homosexuals may or may not be the chief creators of cultural

innovation, as some Gay Pride advocates claim; but it is certainly

true that they have done more than their share. The reason? They

are not trapped into parent roles.

These four circuits are coded, with four permutations of each,

into the "court cards" of the Tarot deck.

Thus the Knight of Discs, representing earth/earth according

to the occultists, is the pure First-Circuit type — all sensation, all

oral demand, all viscerotonic. Behind their alchemical, Cabalistic,

theosophical jargon, most books on Tarot are describing this

type when they discuss this card. The pure undiluted "Momma's

boy."

134 Prometheus Rising

IMPRINTING THE SOCIO-SEXUAL CIRCUIT

A and B represent socially "good" and socially "bad" sex, according to

the tribe, Al, A2 and A3 represent individual imprints—personally

"good" sex (what the individual is imprinted to like)—and Bl, B2 and

B3 personally "bad" (what the individual doesn't like). If Axis A1-B1

is only slightly tilted, the individual is fairly "normal" (in that society).

If A2-B2 is tilted more; the individual is "neurotic" (in that society). If

A3-B3 is tilted much further; the individual is a "pervert" (in that

society).

Prometheus Rising 755

The Queen of Discs, or earth/water, is a mixture of first and

second circuit traits—sensational-viscerotonic-oral and emotional-

egotistic-political. You better be damned careful to call

her Ms.

The Prince of Discs, or earth/air, is a blend of first and third

circuits—oral demand and rational calculation. Probably, a very

sharp and sharkish lawyer.

The Princess of Discs, or earth/fire is first-circuit orality

mixed with fourth-circuit sexuality. This fusion of exhibitionism

with enflamed eros means she's probably starring in porn

movies. In all Disc cards, the first circuit predominates over the

others.

The Queen of Cups, or water/water, is emotion and territorial

demand. Nelson Algren had her in mind when he said, "Never

bed down with a woman who has more problems than you."

The Knight of Cups, water/earth, is emotion plus sensation.

The pure predator, marauder, thief, rapist or sociopath.

The Prince of Cups or water/air is emotion plus reason. The

humanist, humanitarian, liberal; an ideal Unitarian minister.

The Princess of Cups is water/fire: an explosive mixture of

egotism and sexuality. Scarlett O'Hara. The femme fatale.

The Prince of Swords is air/air: all pure undiluted intellect.

His feet never touch the earth; he lives amid floating abstractions.

The monk-scholar.

The Knight of Swords is air/earth: reason and oral exhibitionism.

The actor, orator, demagogue—sometimes the artist.

The Queen of Swords is air/water; reason plus emotion. The

greats in science and art are generally of this imprint group.

The Princess of Swords is air/fire: reason and sexuality. The

good parent; usually the Puritan, but sometimes the crusader for

"sexual freedom." In any case, the motivating drive is an attempt

to impose abstract reason upon the genetic imperatives of the

mating urge.

The Princess of Wands is fire/fire: sexuality at its most powerful.

These types are usually, but not necessarily, quite promiscuous;

sometimes they pour all their erotic energy into one mate

and raise huge families, parenting being a strong part of the

fourth circuit; e.g., J.S. Bach, who may have written the sexiest

music in history, had twenty children.

136 Prometheus Rising

The Knight of Wands is fire/earth: sexuality and sensationalism.

The Playboy. Reich's "Phallic Narcissist."

The Prince of Wands is fire/air: sexuality plus reason. These

types are likely to get involved in the kind of empirical mysticism

that is not tolerated by the local Authorities—e.g., the

Tantrists in India, the Knights Templar and witches in medieval

Europe, Aleister Crowley and Wilhelm Reich most recently.

(Crowley said this card was a portrait of his "True Self.")

The Queen of Wands is fire/water: sexuality and emotional

politics. The law courts have a steady parade of this type passing

through every day.

The clever Cabalists who designed this pictorial key to the

four primitive circuits included a clue to higher consciousness.

For they teach that each element in traditional alchemy (earth,

air, fire, water) corresponds to one of these Tarot suits (discs,

swords, wands, cups) and to one of the letters in the Holy

Unspeakable Name of God—YHVH. The correspondences are

as follows:

Y fire wands CIRCUIT IV

H water cups CIRCUIT II

V air swords CIRCUIT III

H earth discs CIRCUIT I

The logic of this imagery is quite clear to the unconscious

mind, and these associations appear frequently in dreams, as

Jung documented in Psychology and Alchemy.

Prometheus Rising 137

The aim of the Cabala is to make the microcosm mirror the

macrocosm"; that is, to make the human being a perfect image of

"God." This means putting together the four "alchemical" elements

symbolized by the letters Y, H, V, H. In other words,

bringing the four circuits into balance.

This is the same lesson as taught in the Buddhist mandalas

with four demons at the corners and the circle representing

awakening in the middle.

The "married look," "the "Mom and Dad look," etc., which

are not scientific concepts but which everybody can recognize at

once, have to do with an acute time-sense. The parent is concerned

not just with acquiring bio-survival tickets for personal

nurture, but with acquiring tickets for the young, and for the

future.

Behaviorists tell us wonderful stories about the intricate patterns

that can be conditioned into experimental animals. See they

say we have, by selective reinforcement, trained this rat so that at

the sound of a bell, he runs up a ladder, presses button A, races

across a plank and down another ladder, presses button B, dashes

across the cage and waits at the food-slot for his meal to arrive.

Lest anybody think this book is written from a perch of superiority,

consider the similar, but more complex, behavior which

the author followed for twenty years. He would set an alarm

Prometheus Rising

clock before sleep every night. When the alarm woke him, he

would breakfast hurriedly, rush off to catch a bus, ride to a

subway, change to the train, ride to an office building, rush

through the lobby, board an elevator, ride to a certain floor, enter

an office, and toil at repetitious (and generally pointless) tasks

for eight hours. This behavior sequence had been shaped, as B.F.

Skinner would say, by reinforcement delivered every second

week in the form of bio-survival tickets (money). These tickets

were necessary to the bio-survival of four dependent children.

The reader of this book can probably remember, somewhat

dimly, the imprinting and conditioning of each of these circuits.

We all began as infants in a one-dimensional world, orally

hooked to Mommy. The further away from Mommy we crawled,

the greater was our bio-survival anxiety, and we generally

returned to Mommy as quickly as possible. The key imprint

incidents of this period, together with associated conditioning,

determine, concretely, how much we currently exhibit of:

ANXIETY OR SELF-CONFIDENCE

ROOTEDNESS OR EXPLORATIVENESS

DEPENDENCY OR INDEPENDENCE

Then, when the DNA sent the appropriate RNA messenger

molecules to the glands, endocrine system, etc. a mutation occurred.

Our gross morphology — our whole body — changed, and

our "minds" changed in the process. That is, our reality-tunnel

dilated into two-dimensions, when we rose up and began to walk

about the house, and started learning who we could dominate,

who could dominate us, who could be dominated (emotionally

bullied) at some times and not at others, etc. We developed out

of amorphous bio-survival consciousness into stubborn individual

ego. We were imprinted and conditioned with a particular

style of emotional-territorial "politics."

At this stage we were imprinted and conditioned for:

Prometheus Rising 139

DOMINANCE OR SUBMISSION

SELF-CONFIDENCE OR SELF-DOUBT

STRONG EGO OR WEAK EGO

HIGH PACK STATUS OR LOW PACK STATUS

GIVING ORDERS OR TAKING ORDERS

"HERRENMORAL" OR "SKLAVMORAL"

We were subsequently conditioned to switch between these

reflexes depending on whether the person we were dealing with

was Higher in the pecking order or Lower in the pecking order.

(Middle-class people, e.g., Reagan conservatives, John Birchers,

etc. will always revere those Higher in the pecking order; and,

equally, will always have some reason to persecute—peck at—

the poor, who are Lower in the pecking order. Hence, they will

say and even believe, that they are being robbed by the poor on

Welfare—who get about 4% of the tax dollar—and never

"notice" that the military-industrial complex is getting 72% of

their tax dollar. This is normal mammalian sociobiology.)

After this second-circuit reality-tunnel is wired in, the organism

molts and mutates again into the verbal stage, and a third

circuit style of mentation imprinted. That is, on top of protoplasmic

consciousness and mammalian ego, we acquire human

mind, which is created by and creator of human artifacts and

speech.

Feral children, who survived in isolation from human society

(artifacts and speech), have .no "mind" in the human sense;

which is why they are called feral.

In the semantic stage of imprint vulnerability we acquire

either:

FLUENCY OR INARTICULATENESS

DEXTERITY OR CLUMSINESS

"GOOD MIND" OR "DUMB MIND"1

Why do we say "dumb" (mute) for stupid? Because "a good mind

means a good mouth," and the human mind is a verbalizing circuit.

140 Prometheus Rising

At puberty, another DNA trigger fires and RNA messengers

initiate another morphological mutation of body-mind. The

"adult personality" is imprinted and conditioned. We become:

"MORAL" OR "IMMORAL"

ROBOT-OBEDIENT OR ROBOT-DISOBEDIENT

SOLID CITIZEN OR SEXUAL OUTLAW

"PARENT" OR ANARCHIST

Lack of understanding of these morphological changes, and

their persistence in imprint circuits in the brain, is responsible for

most failures in communication, and for the general sense of

exasperation with which we too often confront each other. Since

everybody's imprints are a little bit different—the average is that

which nobody totally is1—we all feel at times like the legendary

Quaker who told his wife, "All the world is mad but me and thee,

and sometimes I wonder about thee."

Reichians, disciples of Dr. Spock and the Summerhill School,

etc. have called attention, with some impatience, to the brutality

and stupidity of many of our traditional child-rearing methods.

These methods are "brutal" and "stupid" only if, like the abovementioned

heretics, one regards the goal of child-rearing as the

production of a sane, balanced, creative [NOT CRATED] human

being. THIS HAS NEVER BEEN THE GOAL OF ANY SOCIETY

IN THE REAL WORLD. The traditional childrearing methods are

quite logical, pragmatic and sound in fulfilling the real purpose

of society, which is not to create an ideal person, but to create

[CRATE] a semi-robot who mimics the society as closely as

possible—both in its rational and its irrational aspects, both as

the repository of the wisdom of the past and as the sum total of

all the cruelties and stupidities of the past. Very simply, a totally

aware, alert, awakened (unbrainwashed) person would not fit

very well into any of the standard roles society offers; the damaged,

robotized products of traditional child-rearing do fit into

those slots.

1 James Joyce justified anarchism on the grounds that "the state is

concentric and the individual is eccentric."

Prometheus Rising 141

That is, there is a neuro-sociological "logic" to the illogical.

Are traditional schools very much like mini-prisons? Do they

stifle imagination, cramp the child physically and mentally, and

run on various forms of overt or covert terrorism? Of course, the

answer is an unambiguous yes; but such schools are necessary to

train people for roles in the ordinary office or factory or profession,

which are also very much like mini-prisons, stifle imagination,

cramp the person physically and mentally and run on terror

(threat of loss of bio-survival tickets, in the form of pay-checks

or tenure).

The permissive movement in child-rearing appeared only

when it did, and has succeeded only to a limited extent, because

society has always needed and still thinks it needs human robots.

Utopian child-rearing will advance further, necessarily, only as

society itself evolves out of authoritarianism. That is, as the

accelerated changes now occurring propel us into the most rapid

period of social evolution in all human history, we will then need

citizens who are not robots, who are creative; who are not

docile, who are innovative; who are not narrow-minded bigots,

who are explorers in every sense of the word.

Traditional child-rearing began to falter only when society

began to enter into the present period of accelerated change and

technological omni-transformation of all traditional values.

Failures in communication generally derive from sending a

message to the wrong address. That is, your husband has an ego

problem and you send a message to his mind. Adapting a

diagram from Transactional Analysis what has happened is this:

142 Prometheus Rising

The message is addressed from Circuit I to Circuit IV. It

means "I feel weak; help bolster me up." If the answer comes

back from Circuit III to Circuit III, "Well, let's analyze the

problem..." there has been a Wrong Address.

Of course, this example is deliberately untypical, although not

impossible. It is untypical because women traditionally are

trained not to make this kind of mistake—to be "emotionally

sensitive," to be "supportive," etc. It is much more likely, statistically;,

that this kind of Wrong Address will go the other way—

husband to wife. That is, the wife signals "Help!" and the

husband on Circuit III says, "Let's analyze the problem..."

We have said that the imprinting of the circuits contains a

large element of accident (within genetic parameters). Society,

everywhere, without understanding this theory, understands

enough pragmatically about imprinting processes to attempt to

program each individual for his or her assigned role. Hence,

traditional girl-rearing is different from traditional boy-rearing,

so that women will have more Circuit II "sensitivity." Again

Women's Liberation, like modern child-rearing, arrived only

when we were evolutionarily ready or nearly-ready for it. The

traditional system worked in traditional societies.

Similarly, class structure, like the caste structure in an insect

hive, works to produce the "right" imprints in each class. The

third circuit of the servile class or proletariat is imprinted chiefly

for manual dexterity, while the same circuit in middle-class or

ruling-class children is imprinted for verbal, mathematical or

other symbol-using skills

Democracy has been less than a total success—and the intellectual's

half-shamed cynicism about democracy is justified—to

the extent that traditional society did not need, could not use, and

in many ways discouraged the development of high verbal

("rational") skills in the majority of the population. That is,

concretely, most people are not encouraged to be very smart, and

are rather heavily programmed to be comparatively stupid. Such

programming is what is needed to fit them into most traditional

jobs. Their bio-survival circuitry works as well as that of most

animals, their emotional-territorial circuitry is typically primate,

and they have little third-circuit "mind" to verbalize (rationalize)

with. Naturally, they usually vote for the charlatan who can

Prometheus Rising 143

activate primitive bio-survival fears and territorial ("patriotic")

pugnacity. The intellectual looks at the dismal results and continues

to believe in "democracy" only by an act of Blind Faith

similar to the way beliefs in Catholicism or Communism or

snake-worship are maintained.

Again, the traditional system works, for traditional society. A

mass made of people who have intense curiosity about why

Beethoven went in for string quartets after the Ninth Symphony,

or whether Kant really refuted Hume satisfactorily, or what the

latest quantum theories mean in relation to Determinism and

Free Will, is not a mass that will easily be led into dull, dehumanizing

labor at traditional jobs.

Why did Adlai Stevenson lose to Ike Eisenhower, George

McGovern to Tricky Dicky Nixon, etc.? It was the Wrong

Address problem again. Stevenson, McGovern and other darlings

of the intelligentsia were speaking to the third circuit, which is

not very highly developed in most domesticated primates yet.

Eisenhower in his Fatherly way, and Nixon in his bullying Big

Brother way, knew just how to push the right Second-Circuit

emotional-territorial buttons to get a mob of primates to follow

them. They were genetically programmed alpha males, in ethological

terms.

Similarly, the Moralist (i.e., the Adult Personality who has

imprinted heavy Ethical imperatives on Circuit IV) is often totally

unable to communicate with the scientist or technologist. The

Moralist may even decide—many already have—that the scientist

per se is "inhuman." In fact, morals are fairly irrelevant to

the Third Circuit analytical mind, which is the brain function the

average scientist has imprinted most powerfully. To the third

circuit, the only morality is accuracy, the only immorality is

sloppy thinking.

Again, the rise in "social conscience" among scientists is happening

only when it was evolutionarily necessary that it happen,

i.e., after Hiroshima. If it doesn't seem to be happening widely

enough and quickly enough, well, the same can be said—also in

error, I think—about modernizing education and childrearing,

about Women's Liberation, about racism, etc. The rebellion

against all the follies of the past is succeeding, and will continue

to succeed, only as we evolve into a society which needs each

144 Prometheus Rising

human to function well on all circuits. We are moving with everincreasing

speed, into such a society.

What the impatient radical forgets is that many of the

"injustices" of the traditional primate society were not even

perceived as such by the best minds of 1000 years ago or 100

years ago, or in the case of institutionalized sexism, even 30

years ago. If we can see injustice and absurdity in many age-old

institutions, it is only because we are evolving out of robothood,

at precisely the point in evolution when it is necessary for us to

become smarter and more sensitive on all circuits.

Each of us has a "favorite" circuit—that is, a circuit that has

been more heavily imprinted than the others. Miscommunication,

misunderstanding and general misjudgment of one another is

vastly increased by the fact that few of us know about these

levels of circuitry, and we all tend to assume that the person we

are interacting with is on the same circuit we are.

Thus, there are narcissistic (oral) first-circuit types in every

social group. Present them with a problem and they will immediately

look for somebody else to handle it, since the oral stage is

robotically imprinted for dependency. (Or, if they have imprinted

hostile weakness instead of dependent weakness, they will

explode into anger—infantile tantrum—raging that a problem

exists and that it has been imposed on them.)

A second-circuit type, in the same situation, will attempt to

frighten the problem away by barking and blustering at it,

mammalian-fashion.

A third-circuit type will try to reason out the problem. This is

the best approach only with problems that are themselves rational,

i.e., "How do you make this machine work?" It can be blind,

and futile, when the "problem" is another human being acting

out one of the more destructive second-circuit rage programs.

("The liberal is the one who leaves the room when the fight

starts," somebody once said. Third-circuit types are most confused

and feel impotent when second-circuit mammalian politics

takes over the scene.)

A fourth-circuit type will try to be rational (third circuit) and

to sense the emotional dimensions of the problem (second

circuit) but will basically try to impose a moral solution: "Now

this is the decent, fair thing to do..." This may or may not make

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sense to the third-circuit Rationalist, looking for objective

justice; and it will usually make no sense at all to the totally

second-circuit type dominated by emotionalism and territoriality.

What is true of the group is true of the individual. While we

all have our favorite circuit, and tend to see that circuit as

"superior" to all the others, we can be pushed out of it by shocks

or stresses, in which case we jump to another circuit.

The most robotic Rationalist will descend to the first circuit,

eventually, if threat to bio-security is forcibly enough presented

on the screen of consciousness. And, if prevented from "leaving

the room when the fight starts," the Rationalist will even descend

to second-circuit mammalian howling and barking, under sufficient

pressure. (Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to this as "the

hydrostatic principle in controversy," whereby the fools drag

everybody down to their own level.)

The most robotic Emotionalist may also move up to the third

circuit, temporarily, if a problem remains intractable to every

form of emotional bullying or con-artistry.

All of us will move into fourth-circuit Parent role or Super

Ego—even little children will do it, imitatively—if it seems that

the only way to get what one wants is to appeal to tribal morality:

"Why, it would be positively, indecent not to do it the way

Grandfather would..."

"Give us the child until he is five, and we will have him for

life," bragged some 18th Century Jesuit. The Jesuit order of that

time, as Aldous Huxley later noted sardonically, educated

Voltaire, Diderot, and the Marquis de Sade; obviously their techniques

of brain-programming were not perfect. Nonetheless,

most people in most societies do grow up as fairly accurate replicas

of the previous generation. Most children educated by the

Jesuits have remained Catholics. Most children of Democrats do

not become Republicans. Etc.

Considering the wide variety of philosophies available to any

of us—nudism and Buddhism, scientific materialism and snake

worship, Communism and vegetarianism, subjective Idealism

and Existentialism, Methodism and Shinto, etc.—the fact that

most people remain in the same reality-tunnel as their parents,

does indicate that acculturalization is a mind control process. We

are all giants, raised by pygmies, who have learned to walk with

146 Prometheus Rising

a perpetual mental crouch. Unleashing our full stature—our total

brain power—is what this book is all about.

There is a Zen story (very funny—ha-ha) about a monk who,

having failed to achieve "enlightenment" (brain-change) through

the normal Zen methods, was told by his teacher to think of

nothing but an ox. Day after day after day, the monk thought of

the ox, visualized the ox, meditated on the ox. Finally, one day,

the teacher came to the monk's cell and said, "Come out here—I

want to talk to you."

"I can't get out," the monk said. "My horns won't fit through

the door."

/ can't get out...

At these words, the monk was "enlightened." Never mind

what "enlightenment" means, right now. The monk went through

some species of brain change, obviously. He had developed the

delusion that he was an ox, and awakening from that hypnoidal

state he saw through the mechanism of all other delusions and

how they robotize us.

EXERCIZES

1. Recreate vividly in imagination your first orgasm. To what

extent do you still use the same accessories (stimuli) to turn you

on?

2. Try to change your sexual imprint. See if you can reach

orgasm by some method that has been taboo or unthinkable to

you before.

3. Imagine that you are Rev. Jerry Falwell. Explain to an

imaginary homosexual why his sexual imprint is "sinful" and

should be changed at once. Include instructions on how to

change it.

4. Imagine that you are a Gay man or Lesbian. Explain to

Rev. Falwell why you will not or can not change your sexual

imprint to please him.

5. Read Margaret Mead's Sex and Temperament in Three

Primitive Societies. Then write a five-page proof that the taboos

in our tribe make more sense objectively than the taboos of the

tribes she studied. Be serious about it!

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6. Choose the viewpoint of the Samoans in Dr. Mead's book

above. Write a five-page proof that their taboos make more sense

than those of our society. Be serious about it.

7. Re-read the paragraphs about the giraffe and the gosling.

What does this tell you about your sexual imprint? What is your

jeep or your ping-pong ball?

CHAPTER NINE

MINDWASHING & BRAIN

PROGRAMMING

We have certain preconceived notions about location in space

which have come down to us from ape-like ancestors.

— Sir Arthur Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation

149

The greatest Utopian possibility before us is also the greatest

dystopian terror.

We are learning more and more about the pragmatics of brain

change: how to alter anybody's brain so as to set them in a totally

new "reality." Visions of 1984 and Brave New World lurk in

this very concept.

But we are also learning how to change our own brains—

learning to use them for fun and profit rather than for misery and

robothood. Visions of Super-Humanity are implicit in any perception

of what this means.

The brain can be tuned, like a TV, to turn off any channel, and

to bring in a new channel. This is what the veterans of the 1960s-

1970s Neurological Revolution know. This is the major threat,

and the major promise of our time.

Consider the alternatives.

CYANIDE AND SYNCHRONICITY

In November 1978, I was in Seattle to see the 10-hour play

which Ken Campbell had made out of the three Illuminatus!

novels by Bob Shea and myself. In the course of the drama came

a scene Shea and I had almost forgotten writing in the seven

years since the books were finished in 1971. The scene concerned

a lunatic messiah who orders 3300 of his robot disciples

to commit suicide by drinking cyanide. The mindless automatons

obey and each drinks his cyanide cocktail.

Shea and I had written that bizarre sequence to illustrate the

extremes to which brainwashing can go. We both regarded it as

an extravagant fantasy, for satirical purposes—an exaggeration

of our serious theme.

Yet while the actors on the stage were depicting this "fantasy"

every TV and newspaper in the land was discussing the exact

same species of mass zombie behavior. Our fictional maniac

guru was Adolph Hitler; in November 1978, while our play was

being performed, another maniac-guru, Jim Jones, had played the

whole sequence out in reality. In Guyana, he had ordered 900 of

his robots to drink cyanide and they had all obeyed.

It was particularly interesting to me that Jones had staged his

Gotterdammerung while our play was having its American

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premiere. It was even more interesting that the tool of mass

suicide, in our fiction and in Jones' reality, had been cyanide.

Carl Jung, the psychologist, and Wolfgang Pauli, the physicist,

had a name for peculiar coincidences of that order of eeriness.

They called them synchronicities and said they represented

an acausal and/or holistic principle in nature that acts outside the

linear past-present-future of Newtonian time.

Pauli, like most quantum physicists, was aware that subatomic

events cannot be understood in Newtonian terms and must

require some sort of acausality (indeterminism) or holism (superdeterminism)

to explain them. In either case, the distinction

between "observer" and "observed" breaks down. (About that,

more later.)

Jung, in turn, had observed that such synchronicities—weird

coincidences—tend to occur when certain deep structures in the

psyche are activated. He assumed that these structures were at

what he called "the psychoid level," below the collective unconscious,

where mind and matter are not yet distinct—the quantum

foam out of which matter and form and consciousness hierarchically

emerge.

Wait. It gets weirder..; »

HEIRESS TO BANK ROBBER

When Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation

Army on February 4, 1974, she was a "normal" young

heiress. She was attending a normal college, had a normal live-in

boyfriend and smoked a normal amount of weed for a young

heiress of that time. 57 days later, she had become a new person,

with a new name—Tania—and was living in a new realitytunnel.

Where Patty had been heterosexual, Tania was bisexual.

Where Patty largely accepted the Hearst family tunnel-reality

with only a few "liberal" modifications typical of her age group,

Tania was a violent and fanatic revolutionary. Where Patty had

been respectful to her parents, Tania denounced them as

"corporate liars" and castigated them as being involved in a

capitalist plot to "murder" the poor people of the U.S. "down to

the last man, woman and child." Where Patty had been "nice"

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and polite and certainly non-violent, Tania had her photo taken

holding a tommy-gun and assisted in at least one bank robbery

and perhaps other felonies.

What had happened? When Patty-Tania was captured and

brought to trial, the defense claimed that she had been

"brainwashed." The jury either did not understand or did not

believe this; they sentenced Patty to prison for the crimes Tania

had committed. Debate about this case continues to the present,

since some people think Ms. Hearst was "responsible" for the

consciousness change she underwent while held captive by the

SLA and others are just as sure she was not "responsible."

Leaving metaphysical questions of "responsibility" aside for a

moment, it seems obvious that a young lady of Hearst's class and

background would almost certainly not have taken up bank

robbing if she had not first been kidnapped and incorporated by

the SLA.

Since the SLA called itself an army, let us compare it to an

army; this may prove illuminating.

One does not get kidnapped into an army the way Hearst got

kidnapped into the SLA, but the process is not entirely dissimilar.

U.S. Army recruiters do not break into a young man's house

in the middle of night with guns, as the SLA did with Patty: they

simply send the young man a notice in the mail. Nonetheless

coercion is there; the young draftee knows that if he ignores the

letter, government agents will be around to seize his body in a

short while, (unless he flees the country.) He will then either go

into the army or into jail. Thus, whether we are speaking about

the S.L. Army or the U.S. Army, the subject is reduced to infantile

helplessness: other people are deciding what is to be done to

his or her body. One is pushed to the neonate position of being

one foot high in a six foot tall world, as it were. Like the small

child, one is learning that the first rule of survival is to obey.

Most people (except nudists) are shy about appearing naked

in public—and this is the most common of all nightmares,

"There I was with no clothes on!" (Joyce made this the central

incident in the dream that is all dreams, Finnegans Wake.) The

first step in leaving the civilian reality-tunnel and being initiated

into the Army reality-tunnel is, thus, the physical examination, in

which the subject is stripped naked and made to march around a

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large building with other naked victims while the fully-clothed

Army personnel give the briefest possible orders: "Stand up. Sit

down. Go there. Come back here," etc. The Masonic initiation,

which only removes part of the clothing of the subject, is a

milder version of the stripping away of previously secure social

parameters.

What is really being "stripped away" is more subtle; it is the

whole social system in which one has lived before being

snatched by a U.S. or an S.L. Army. When the doctor tells the

naked draftee, "Bend over. Spread your cheeks," so-called

normal reality has ended as totally as if the victim had been

incorporated into a surrealist movie. If an employer becomes too

obnoxious, one can always find a new job. You cannot walk out

on the U.S. or S.L. Army that way, because acute first-circuit

helplessness is being imprinted.

When the Russian mathematician, Ouspensky, was first

studying with Gurdjieff, he had great trouble understanding

Gurdjieff s insistence that most people are machines and totally

unaware of the objective world around them. Then, one day,

after World War I had begun, Ouspensky saw a truck full of

artificial legs. These artificial legs were being sent to the frontline

hospitals, for soldiers whose legs had not even been blown

off yet, but whose legs would be blown off. The prediction that

these legs would be blown off was so certain that the artificial

legs were already on their way to replace the natural legs. The

prediction was based on the mathematical certainty that millions

of young men would march to the front, to be maimed and murdered,

as mindlessly as cattle marching into a slaughterhouse.

In a flash, Ouspensky understood the mechanical nature of

ordinary human consciousness.

( "I can 't get out — my horns won 'tfit through the door. ")

Initiation into the "Manson family" is not dissimilar. Lynette

Fromme was much like Patty Hearst — a "normal" American

young woman, with less money than Hearst, but no special

proclivity for criminal behavior. After passing through General

Manson' s basic training, Lynette had become Squeaky Fromme

and was convicted for pointing a gun at the U.S. President with

seeming intent to assassinate him.

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In the next chapter we will explain further how being captured

("drafted") by an army is the model of all brainwashing experience.

Human society as a whole is a vast brainwashing machine

whose semantic rules and sex roles create a social robot.

The concept of "washing" is, of course, unscientific and

crude. The brain is not a dirty garment but an electro-colloidal

information processor—a living network of over 110 billion

nerve cells capable of (102733000) interconnections, a number

higher than the total of all the atoms in the universe. In this

elegant, micro-miniaturized biocomputer more than 100,000,000

processes are programmed every minute.

From the viewpoint of neuro-sociology, how I perceive

"myself and "my world" depends on how each circuit has been

wired in my brain. Society has always known how to wire children;

the process is called acculturalization; it explains why children

of Catholics tend to become Catholics, children of Samoans

fit into Samoan society, children of Communists become good

little Communists, etc. Each generation "brainwashes" the next.

Christianity, Buddhism and Islam, between them, are the most

potent brain-programming institutions on this planet. Approximately

half the art and philosophy of the human race—the architecture,

the music, the paintings, the literature, the educational

ideals, the "great ideas"—has been influenced by and/or nurtured

by these three great systems of theology. This is not to denigrate

the contributions of Confucianism, Judaism, Hinduism, modern

science, etc., but merely to emphasize the extent to which the

higher civilizations have been shaped by the four creators of

these three omni-religions: Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus and St.

Paul. What did these four men have in common?

As Aleister Crowley points out, "No point of doctrine, no

point of ethics, no theory of a 'hereafter' do they share, and yet

in the history of their lives we find one identity amid many

diversities."

Buddha was an ordinary Hindu nobleman, and then he

experienced a rapid brain-change, after which he became a great

Teacher.

Mohammed was a humble camel-driver, with no sign of

exceptional intelligence or ambition, and then he experienced a

156 Prometheus Rising

rapid brain change, after which he became Teacher, Conqueror,

Law-Maker and Prophet.

We hear nothing of Jesus (save a few fables) until the age of

30, when he experiences a rapid brain-change, and puts forth a

doctrine that is to overturn the Roman Empire and influence

Western Civilization until the present.

St. Paul, who took the teaching of Jesus and turned it into a

militant movement, suffered an extreme form of brain-change, of

which he tells us that he was temporarily struck blind and lifted

up into the heavens where he beheld things "of which it is not

lawful to speak."

On all else but the experience of Illumination they disagree.

Buddha insisted that his enlightenment was perfectly natural—

"Are you a God?" he was once asked.

"No."

"Are you a saint?"

"No."

"Then what are you?"

"I am awake."

Mohammed informs us that he "spoke" to the Angel Gabriel,

Jesus that the "Father which is in heaven" spoke through him,

and St. Paul that he saw the lights and wonders above mentioned.

Making every possible reservation about fable and myth, we

get this one coincidence: A nobody experiences rapid brainchange

(consciousness dilation) and abruptly becomes very

much a historical Somebody. Much of the human race is still

living on the legacy of these four bio-electrical "illuminations,"

for good and for ill.

Most people (the present author included) would consider

what happened to Patty Hearst "bad" and what happened to

Buddha "good." It needs to be emphasized that both the "bad"

and the "good" brain change experiences are functionally the

same. The process is modeled, on a small scale by any design

such as the following:

Prometheus Rising /57

If you have seen this only one way, look at it again. There are

two opposite ways of seeing it.

When your whole world, not just a design on a book-page, is

transformed this way, you are experiencing the kind of brainchange

that can turn a rich heiress into a bank robber, an obscure

carpenter into a Messiah, or an ordinary bank teller into a mental

patient...

Similar forms of major brain-change underlie all revolutionary

breakthroughs in the arts, and in science as well. Neurosociology

is a history of massive brain changes, as we quantumjumped

from "tribal" reality to "feudal" reality, from "feudal"

reality to "industrial" reality, and now are jumping to Future

Reality.

Consider the revolution against death, if you think you

haven't been brainwashed.

Not all people have accepted mortality. Mystics, of course,

have always insisted there is a species of "spiritual" immortality,

but aside from that, Taoists in China and alchemists in Europe

spent hundreds of years seeking the elixir of life that would

allow for physical immortality. Paracelsus, for instance, left

behind some of his sperm with directions to a student on how to

revive or recreate him out of it. (He seems to have had a crude

and inaccurate idea of cloning.) In the 1780s, both Benjamin

Franklin and Condorcet, in America and France, wrote that

medical science would eventually conquer death along with

every other disease.

The modern immortalist movement began with physicist

R.C.W. Ettinger who published The Prospect of Immortality in

1964. Ettinger, who had entered a reality-tunnel different from

the imprinted consensus-reality of our tribe, said bluntly that we

could be the generation that abolished death and we should start

working for that goal.

158 Prometheus Rising

Since then, research on life-extension and longevity has quantum

jumped rapidly. Numerous books have come forth carrying

the same basic message as Ettinger's. Among them have been:

The Biological Time Bomb, Taylor, 1968

The Immortalist, Harrington, 1969

The Immortality Factor, Segerberg, 1973

Here Comes Immortality, Tucille, 1974

Prolongevity, Rosenfeld, 1976

No More Dying, Kurtzman, 1978

The Life Extension Revolution, Kent, 1980

Dozens of societies have been founded for anti-aging

research, to lobby for more research, or just to publicize the

possibility before us—the enormous evolutionary jump from

mortality to immortality. Among these groups are: Committee

for the Elimination of Death, San Marcos, CA.; Bay Area

Cryonics Society, San Francisco, CA; Prometheus Society,

Baltimore, MD.; Long Life, Chicago, IL.; Alcor Foundation, San

Diego, CA; Foundation for Research Against Disease and Death,

New York, NY, etc. Now consider the cover of a recent book on

this topic: Conquest of Death Alvin Silverstein, Ph.D. The front

jacket says, in bold type but timid words:

A Controversial Look at the Revolution in Medicine and

Why We May Be the Last Generation to Die

Note the pessimistic implications: immortality is coming, but

not for me and you. We are still condemned to death. Our horns

won't fit through the door.

This fatalistic version of Dr. Silverstein's message must have

seemed necessary to the publishers because they felt that saying

we don't have to die would be too shocking to the ordinary

reader. What? You and I live forever? Nonsense! Our realitytunnels

have all been imprinted to end with the dying of the light.

Inside the jacket, a more accurate version of what Dr. Silverstein

is saying appears:

We Need Not Be the Last Generation to Die—

We Can Conquer Death in Our Time

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Evidently, putting this on the front of the book would have

been too much of a "Neurological Revolution" for the average

reader—at least in the publisher's estimation.

One has to reach page 189 of the book to find Dr. Silverstein's

own estimate of the probable chronology of immortality,

which is:

GOOD NEWS FOLKS

c. 1983 We begin to halt the aging process

c. 1989 Life span prolonged indefinitely

c. 1999 Conquest of disease and death

Well, he was over-optimistic: but we've definitely reached the

first step (1997).

Who told you that you had to die? Were they any more infallible

than the people who programmed Patty Hearst, etc.?

"But—but—the Immortalists are only a minority..." (So were

the Einsteinians in 1910.)

"But—but—Reverend Jones told me to drink the cyanide and

he knows what's right..."

"But—but my horns won't fit through the door...

EXERCIZES

1. Imagine yourself into the reality-tunnel of the far-right

group known as the John Birch Society. Believe for a while that

the U.S. government is 85% under covert United Nations (UN)

control and an open UN dictatorship will be declared soon. Turn

on the TV in that frame of mind and look for all the evidence that

each newscaster is either a conscious or an unconscious dupe of

the UN conspiracy.

2. Imagine yourself into the Head Space of a dogmatic Rationalist.

Analyze the Jim Jones-cyanide-Illuminatus synchronicity

as "mere coincidence."

3. Imagine yourself into the Head Space of an occultist.

Analyze the Jim-Jones-cyanide-///Mmmam.y synchronicity as an

Omen. What does it mean? Jungians say synchronicities contain

"messages" from the deep structure of the collective mind. What

is the message ?

160 Prometheus Rising

4. Enter the Immortalist head-space for a few minutes. Imagine

you invest only $1000 at normal bank interest, compounded

annually. What will you have in 100 years? In 200 years?

(Nobody has used this conservative path to investment and

gotten rich on it before because nobody has lived long enough.)

5. Why are you not a nudist (if you aren't)? Make up five

good reasons, then go find a nudist and explain them to her (or

him).

6. Become a Nazi for thirty three minutes. Believe that all

politics is a matter of strength, stealth and treachery: that all

liberalism is hypocrisy or folly. Plan a campaign to take over the

world by force and fraud.

7. Go to a Fundamentalist revival meeting where faith-healings

are performed. Or watch Jerry Falwell on TV. Remember

all the time that lim lones started out with that routine. See if

you can get into the head space of the Believers and decide

whether or not they would drink cyanide if their HOLY MAN

told them to.

CHAPTER TEN

HOW TO BRAIN-WASH

FRIENDS & ROBOTIZE

PEOPLE

There is no government, no industrial-military complex, no economic

system, no mass media that can ever reduce us to puppets

and robots as thoroughly as the biological and environmental dictatorships

have.

— P.M. Esfandiary, Upwingers

As noted earlier, when the bio-survival circuit flashes danger, all

other mental activity ceases.

There is no "time" on the bio-survival circuit; reflexes act

without emotional ego, rational mind or adult personality participating:

"I just found myself doing it."

All the martial arts—judo, akido, kung fu, etc.—are reimprinting

techniques for the bio-survival circuit. They are intended

to ensure that what happens mechanically ("without thought")

really does serve bio-survival, since the reflexes imprinted accidentally

on this circuit are not that dependable.

The mechanical nature of the bio-survival circuit is of key

importance in brainwashing. To create a new imprint, reduce the

victim to an infantile state, i.e., first-circuit vulnerability.

As pointed out in the last chapter an army begins this process

with the draft notice, which informs the subject that his body no

longer belongs to him but to the government. The S.L. Army,

seeking quicker brain change, began the conversion of Patty into

Tania by taking her at gun point, but the message was the same:

"We can do what we want with your body from now on." Firstcircuit

bio-survival instincts thus become hooked to obeying

those who have this awesome power—just as the infant learns to

hook its bio-survival circuitry to the parental figures.

Patty's ride in the trunk of a car (after being taken at gunpoint)

is a classic rebirth ritual; the trunk is even womb-like in its

contours. When the trunk opened, she was reborn into a new

reality-tunnel, that of her captors. Similarly, where the earliest

forms of masonic initiation survive and have not been diluted

(Note the Adeptus Major Ritual in the Complete Golden Dawn

System of Magic, by Israel Regardie, Falcon Press 1983.) the

candidate is thrown into a well, and then "raised" as a newborn

Freemason. Total submersion, the form of baptism preferred by

Protestant fundamentalists, imitates this, but without the real

anxiety that made traditional masonry and the SLA so effective

as brain change agents.

All brainwashers empirically know (without in most cases

ever having read Leary's eight-circuit model of the brain) that

the oral bio-survival circuit seeks bonding with a mothering figure.

To increase panic and imprint vulnerability, then, the

subject, after being seized by the brainwashers (U.S. or S.L.

Army, "secret police," or whoever they may be in a given case)

163

164 Prometheus Rising

is isolated from all those to whom bonding had previously been

established. The draftee is sent to boot camp and sees no loved

ones (wife, girlfriend, parents, etc.) for a number of weeks or

months. The political prisoner is thrown into a dungeon. Patty

Hearst was locked in a closet as soon as she was "rebirthed" out

of the trunk of the car.

Experiments in isolation by the U.S. Marine Corps, Dr. John

Lilly and others—and the records of shipwrecked sailors, as

summarized by Lilly in Simulations of God—show that only a

few hours of pure isolation may be necessary before hallucinations

begin. These hallucinations, like those of psychedelic

drugs, indicate the breaking down of previous imprints and the

onset of vulnerability to new imprints.

The need to bond the bio-survival circuit to somebody (or

some thing) is indicated by the giraffe who imprinted on the

hunter's jeep as a mother-substitute. Similarly, children without

siblings, especially those in remote rural areas, often invent

imaginary playmates, which can become "real" enough to

frighten the parents into suspecting the onset of psychosis. Dr.

Lilly's records of sailors and explorers in isolation show that

such "guides," "companions" or "holy guardian angels" reappear

quickly even in adulthood when normal social contact is

removed. They also come promptly to those undergoing the

mysterious state called "near-death" or "out of body experience,"

(e.g., when the heart stops on the operating table.)

The first human being who appears to the subject after this

isolation can easily become bonded as the mother-substitute, or,

next best, as a father-substitute. This explains why people held

prisoner by terrorists (e.g., on hijacked airplanes) often develop a

"paradoxical" sympathy for those who are threatening to kill

them. It also explains why the draftee begins to look on his kidnappers

as protectors as well as captors, and why the brainwash

victim begins to please, gratify and eventually "respect" the

brainwasher.

In all cases, since the bio-survival circuit is keyed to nourishment,

those who bring food become possible subjects for bonding.

The political prisoner, the draftee, the subject kidnapped by

terrorists, all move somewhat closer to identification/bonding

with their captors as they are fed regularly. Again, this is

Prometheus Rising 165

imitated crudely by various religions (without the terror that

creates true imprint vulnerability) by following baptism/rebirth

rituals with a communal meal or Holy Eucharist.

Adaptations of these principles can be applied even to those

who walk into the brainwashing environment voluntarily at first,

as in People's Temple, the Manson Family, and similar organizations.

The first step, once the victim is inside the territory

(commune), is to begin isolation by cutting off all communication

with the outer world and its conflicting reality-tunnels.

Meanwhile, a parental-protective atmosphere is quickly created

(sometimes called "love-bombing") and food is provided.

Whether the subject has entered voluntarily as in these communes,

or has been kidnapped or arrested (as in police states),

the next stage is to break down the second-circuit emotionalterritorial

imprints. That means that the subject continues to be

fed (maintaining first-circuit oral dependence) while the secondcircuit

ego is attacked in every manner possible. A point-bypoint

comparison of the techniques of a Synanon "gamer" and

U.S. Army drill sergeant, for instance, would show astonishing

similarities, since the basic message is dozens and dozens of

variations on "You are all wrong. We are all right. It is extremely

unlikely that somebody as wrong as you will become right, ever,

but we will try to teach you." The anal vocabulary of territorial

status is, of course, employed extensively. The ideal subject may

almost forget his or her name and become conditioned to answering

to "You asshole, come here."

The sense of bottom dog helplessness can be escalated by

periodic doses of real terror. One of Charlie Manson's famous

sayings was "Fear is the great teacher," and every brainwasher

would agree ardently. In communist countries (as dramatized in

Costa-Gravas's fine and factual film, The Confession) a favorite

trick is to take the subject out of his cell, march him to a courtyard,

place a noose about his neck, and convince him he is about

to be hanged. The relief, when this turns out to be a bluff, creates

ideal imprint vulnerability. A variation in my novel Illuminatus!

has the victim persuaded he has been poisoned, dumped in a coffin

and the lid slammed upon him. Those who have been initiated

as Mark Master Freemasons will recognize at once that the same

technique is the "mark that you will carry to your grave."

166 Prometheus Rising

Among the Zuni Indians, the male at adolescence is kidnapped

by masked "demons" who carry him away from the tribe

(away from mother and other imprinted security figures.) He is

dragged out into the desert and threatened with whips. Then the

masks come off, revealing his maternal uncles, and in that

moment of imprint vulnerability the tribal "secrets" (the local

reality-tunnel) are explained in a way that leave an indelible

mark on his consciousness. Similar rites of passage are found in

all tribes, few as cleverly designed as this one. Symbolic and

diluted versions survive in Bar Mitzvahs and Confirmation

ceremonies in our local mega-tribes.

The rebirthing of the second circuit is (relatively) complete

when the Bottom Dog subject begins to seek, sincerely (not

hypocritically) to win the approval of the Top Dogs. This, of

course, only begins as play-acting; the skilled brainwasher

knows that, and does not really object. With subtle reinforcement

the play-acting becomes more and more genuine. Edmund Burke

noted long ago, and every Method Actor knows, that you cannot

make three dramatic gestures of rage in a political speech, without

beginning to feel some real rage. You cannot make three

gestures of submission without beginning to feel really submissive.

(This is the psychology of the "company man," who truly

identifies with his employer after years of obedience.)

The draftee first tries to please the sergeant, to avoid further

humiliation and punishment. Gradually, he genuinely wants to

please the sergeant, i.e., to prove he is not all wrong and is "good

enough" to be a soldier. Patty Hearst undoubtedly pretended to

accept the SLA reality-tunnel at first, and gradually found the

presence becoming more and more real.

This process is accelerated by a system of occasional rewards,

as the subject more and more often emits (as the Behaviorists

would say) the desired behaviors. Since people are more complicated

than Behaviorists know, it is necessary to vary this with

occasional punishments for "insincerity," or "backsliding," so

that the subject learns that after the initial stage, it is not enough

to pretend to accept the new reality-tunnel; to escape further

humiliation, ego-loss, terrorism and permanent Bottom Dog

status, one must begin to accept it sincere/y. After the imprint of

helplessness had been made, this conditioning and learning will

Prometheus Rising 167

proceed fairly smoothly, especially if the Chief Brainwasher's

confederates reinforce it with encouragement, support, and

general "reward" (for sincere submission) and contempt, disappointment

and general rejection (for insincerity or backsliding.)

Reimprinting the third semantic circuit can now follow easily.

The human brain is capable of mastering any symbol-system if

sufficiently motivated. Some people can even play Beethoven's

late piano music, although to me this is as "miraculous" as any

feat alleged by psychic researchers; people can learn French,

Hindustani, differential calculus, Swahili, etc. ad. infinitum—if

motivated. When the first circuit security needs have been

reimprinted and second-circuit ego-needs have been hooked to

mastering a new semantic reality-tunnel, that tunnel will be

imprinted.

At this point a certain amount of arbitrary nonsense is of great

value. That is, the new reality-tunnel or symbol-system (like the

old one) should contain pitfalls (gross violations of previous reality

tunnels and common sense) so that the subject can be accused

of backsliding (being "all wrong," after all) and thereby incited

to try harder to become part of the new reality-tunnel.

Thus, Jehovah's Witnesses may not accept blood transfusions,

even if their life depends on it: harder still (since all mammals

have an instinct to protect their young) they must reject blood

transfusions for their children, even if the children die of this

neglect. A Roman Catholic woman may not be divorced even if

her husband comes home drunk every night, beats her up and

gives her VD. In the U.S. Marines, a recruit who commits the

hideous crime of calling a rifle a "gun" must walk around the

base with his rifle in one hand and his penis in the other reciting

to everybody he meets, "This is my rifle/This is my gun/This is

for fighting/This is for fun." Theosophists were once required to

believe that there is a hole at the North Pole going down to the

center of the earth; Manson required his followers to believe the

hole was in the Mojave Desert. Nazi Party members were asked

to believe that the lion is an Aryan animal and the rabbit non-

Aryan. Etc.

The neurological and sociological function of such

"nonsense" (which makes the Rationalist gasp in shock) is to

sharply segregate those within the new reality-tunnel from those

168 Prometheus Rising

outside. This makes for group solidarity, group-reinforcement,

and a strong sense of alienation and discomfort when on rare

occasions it is necessary to talk at all with those outside the

brainwasher's semantic system. The group must ensure, of

course, that this alienation is experienced as "superiority." Those

who are outside the reality-tunnel must be perceived as "all

wrong"—just as the subject was, before being brainwashed.

Drugs can be, and have been, used to fine-tune these processes,

but the general neurological principles are powerful enough

that it is quite likely that many famous cases of brainwashing

were accomplished as above described, without any drugs at

all—e.g., the American soldiers who confessed to war crimes

which they evidently had not committed, the loyal Communists

who confessed to Trotskyite conspiracies which seemingly never

existed, etc. It takes very few weeks for most armies, without

drugs, to convert a civilian into a soldier, even though the two

species are as different as Roman Catholics and Shintoists.

In one of my Immortal Novels I describe a religious cult

called Loonies, founded by one Neon Bal Loon, in which members

pray in pig-Latin while standing on one leg like storks. This

is considered satire, but any would-be messiah who understands

the above principles could create such a cult easily; and the

members would soon have a quite sincere sense of superiority to

those outside that reality-tunnel.

Cults and outlaw terrorists generally follow the above procedures

by further rewiring of the fourth, socio-sexual circuit.

(Governments usually leave that circuit alone, since government

agents are largely puritanical-authoritarian and afraid to get

involved at all with raw Eros.) It is no secret that the most

powerful secret society of the middle ages, the Knights Templar,

forced recruits to participate in both blasphemy and sodomy. Just

as the deliberate nonsense of all cultish third-circuit semantics

isolates the group from the rest of society, this initiation separated

the Templars from the rest of Christendom; the alienation

could easily be conditioned into a sense of superiority. The Mau-

Maus in Kenya also insisted on one act of homosexuality to

break the new member's previous conditioning toward heterosexuality

and monogamy. Other cults, some quite well known,

Prometheus Rising 169

attempt to repress sexuality entirely—another way of breaking

the statistically normal imprinting of the fourth circuit.

The Manson Family insisted on what might be called, oxymoronically,

compulsory free love. The Army serves normal amative

bonds and casts the subject into a world where compulsory

celibacy alternates with whore-house adventures and, quite often,

the rape of enemy women, with homosexuality as an everpresent

hidden option. A current American guru, Da Free John,

imprints his subjects for lifelong monogamy, almost like the

outside U.S. culture, but is indifferent as to whether these pairings

are heterosexual or homosexual. Whatever variation the

cult-leader may choose, what makes for successful "separate

reality" is that it be in some respect outlandishly different from

that of the major society.

The easiest way to get brainwashed is to be born. All of the

above principles then immediately go into action, a process

which social psychologists euphemistically call socialization.

The bio-survival circuit automatically hooks onto or bonds to the

most appropriate mother or mothering object; the emotionalterritorial

circuit looks for a "role" or ego-identification in the

family or tribe; the semantic circuit learns to imitate and then use

the local reality-grids (symbol systems); the socio-sexual circuit

is imprinted by whatever mating experiences are initially available

at puberty.

The subjects may not come out of this process ready to

murder women and children, like the graduate of boot camp, or

even willing to believe that Charlie Manson was both Jesus and

Satan simultaneously, or willing to spout New Left slogans while

robbing banks. The subjects come out of normal "socialization"

depending on where and when they were born as Eskimo

totemists, Moslem fundamentalists, Roman Catholics, Marxist

Leninists, Nazis, Methodist Republicans, Oxford-educatedagnostics,

snake worshippers, Ku Kluxers, Mafiosos, Unitarians,

IRA-ists, PLO-ists, orthodox Jews, hardshell Baptists, etc. etc.

The universe or existence, is obviously large enough and

complex enough and the ego self-centered enough, that all of

these reality-tunnels are capable of "making sense," to some

degree, to those imprinted/conditioned to accept them. It is also

obvious that most of these reality-tunnels contain elements so

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absurd that everybody not imprinted/conditioned by them looks

at them with astonishment and dismay, wondering "How can a

rational person (or peoples) believe such rubbish?"

What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves... whether you are

living in a Christian reality-tunnel, a Mansonoid reality-tunnel,

an Immortalist reality-tunnel, a vegetarian reality-tunnel, a

Rationalist reality-tunnel...

Everybody has the only true true religion.

Earlier, we quoted some words from Persinger and Lafreniere:

We, as a species, exist in a world in which exist a myriad of

data points. Upon these matrices of points we superimpose a

structure and the world makes sense to us. The pattern of the

structure originates within our biological and sociological

properties.

Prometheus Rising 171

It is to be hoped that this makes more sense to the reader now

than it did at the beginning of our enquiry.

The function of the domesticated primate brain, insofar as we

have described it up to this point and leaving out the higher,

newer circuits, is to serve as an "organ of adaptation" in Freud's

phrase. Specifically, the oldest, most primitive, most mechanical

centers serve simple bio-survival. The more recent (500,000,000

year-old, roughly) emotional territorial centers serve to maintain

pack identity, habitat-space and hierarchy. The distinctly hominid

semantic circuit (100,000-year-old?) makes maps and

models—reality-tunnels—which we tend to confuse with reality

itself, and, worse yet, with "all" of reality. The (30,000? year

old) moral-social circuit creates the domesticated adult personality,

or parent-role, or super-ego.

Now, obviously the third, semantic circuit works with and for

these other antique circuits. The maps and models it makes are

tools of adaptation, and what they adapt us to is social roles in

domesticated primate society. Thus, a Midwestern Methodist is

not "misusing his brain" as Arthur Koestler thinks in constructing

a Midwestern Methodist tunnel-reality; that is precisely what

his brain is for, to adapt him to the Midwestern Methodist tribal

system—to impose the structure of Midwestern Methodist ideology

upon the myriad of data-points he encounters in his lifetime.

The Chinese Maoist, the Iranian Moslem, the New York

Feminist, the Marin County Hedonist, etc. each has a similar,

equally arbitrary, equally complex reality-tunnel. Each tunnel is

also equally absurd when seen from outside.

The problems of the modern world arise from the fact that

these reality-tunnels are no longer isolated from each other.

Throughout most of human history and up to 100 years ago—up

to 20 years ago, in some parts of the world—a man or woman

could lead their entire life snugly within the cocoon of the local

tunnel-reality. Today, we all constantly collide with persons

living in wildly different tunnel-realities. This creates a great

deal of hostility in the more ignorant, vast amounts of metaphysical

and ethical confusion in the more sophisticated, and growing

disorientation for all—a situation known as our "crisis of

values."

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The average person has a deluge of contradictory and conflicting

reality-tunnels impinging on him or her, with little training in

either cultural or neurological relativism. Speed of travel has

increased by a factor of 1000 since 1900, and speed of communication

by a factor of 10,000,000, according to J.R. Platt. The

deluge is accelerating and intensifying. One symptom is the fact

that TV Guide has been taken over by a band of terrified conservatives,

who cannot understand and can only dread this downpour

of "alien" signals; instead of being merely a guide to what

is on the tube, TV Guide has become a continuous wail that the

tube's tunnel-reality is wider, stranger and more varied than the

narrow tunnel-vision of the small-town WASP.

There has also arisen a profession of "deprogrammers," socalled.

These are neuro-technicians who will, for a fee, kidnap a

child (even a "child" over 21) who has wandered off, departed

the parental reality-tunnel and been brainwashed into the competing

reality-tunnel of some new (i.e., not established—not

acceptable yet) "cult." This is known as restoring the victim to

normalcy.

Prometheus Rising 173

It is all hypocrisy and neurological ignorance, of course. The

"de-programmers" are actually re-programmers. The parental

tunnel-reality is as arbitrary (and, to an outsider, as bizarre) as

that of any "cult." A special system of tricky semantics allows

most people and some courts to ignore these facts. Just imagine

what would happen if a wayward child of Methodist parents had

wandered into the Roman Catholic Church, say, and the parents

attempted to have that child coercively "de-programmed" (reprogrammed)

into Methodism; or if the child had joined the U.S.

Army, like Calley, and the parents kidnapped him and tried to reprogram

him into civilian reality-tunnels.

These problems will not go away; and the abrasions they

cause, as various brainwashed robots continue to collide with

each other, will accelerate. Speed of travel and of communication

are still continuing to accelerate.

Fortunately, higher circuits are forming in the human brain

and offer broader vistas than the narrow tunnel-visions of the

antique circuits. That is the topic of our concluding chapters.

Since everybody "prefers" one circuit over the others, there

are people in each society who are easily recognizable as Narcissists

(first-circuit robots), Emotionalists (second-circuit robots),

Rationalists (third-circuit robots) and Moralists (fourth-circuit

robots).

Rationalist robots, like the other robots, may be totally mechanized

or may have some slight flexibility, or "freedom" built

into their circuitry. The totally robotized make up the vast horde

of the Fundamentalist wing of the Materialist church and the

other True Believers in the scientific paradigms of 1968, 1958,

1948 or whenever their nervous systems stopped taking new

imprints.

These are the people who are perpetually frightened and dismayed

by the large portion of human behavior mediated through

Circuit II mammalian politics. They think that because this territorial-

emotional ("patriotic") behavior is not Rational, it should

not exist. They accept Darwin as dogma, but are nervous about

"Darwinism" (because it accepts mammalian politics as an

Evolutionary Strategy that has worked thus far) and are repulsed

by the data of ethology, genetics and sociobiology. They don't

like the rest of the human race much, because it is not guided by

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their favorite circuit, and they are uneasily aware that the rest of

the human race does not like them much.

These Rationalist robots are also very uncomfortable with the

newer circuits—and some of them spend most of their lives

writing articles and books devoted to "proving" that the newer

circuits do not exist and that all scientists who have recorded the

behavior of these newer circuits are liars, fools, bunglers, charlatans

or some manner of Damned Heretics.

Like the Emotional robot, the Moralistic robot, the Narcissist

robot etc., the Rationalist robot cannot be "argued" out of his

narrow reality tunnel. We can only emphasize, one more time,

that each and every reality-tunnel created by a domesticated

primate brain is a finite cross-section of that brain's personal

history; and each such finite reality-tunnel is as "personalized" as

the music of Bach or Beethoven, the paintings of Rembrandt or

Picasso, the novels of Joyce or Raymond Chandler, the comedy

of the Three Stooges or Monty Python, the religions of Roman

Catholicism or Zen Buddhism, the politics of Libertarianism or

the IRA, the architecture of St. Peter's or Disney land...

And each of these art-works seems like "reality" to the people

who have created them and live in them. Rationalism is just

another such group art-work, a little less tolerant than most, a

little more useful to technologists than any other, a little stupid

when it can no longer transcend the last paradigm it has created.

The totally robotized Rationalist, the one whose nervous

system has stopped growing entirely, can be recognized by two

signs:

He or she is constantly trying to prove that much of the daily

experience of the rest of humanity is "delusion," "hallucination,"

"group hallucination," "mass hallucination," "mere coincidence,"

"sheer coincidence," or "sloppy research."

And he or she never thinks that any of his or her own experience

would fit into any of those categories.

EXERCIZES

1. Become a pious Roman Catholic. Explain in three pages

why the Church is still infallible and holy despite Popes like

Alexander VI (the Borgia Pope), Pious XII (ally of Hitler), etc.

Prometheus Rising 775

2. For those of you who remember Mai Lai, become Lt.

Galley. Say aloud, and really feel and believe, "The Army comes

first. I'm for the Army all the way." If you don't remember try

Jerry Falwell. Say aloud, and really feel and believe, "Help us

fight moral decay, send your checks in today."

3. Refute this whole book. Demonstrate that everybody else

has been brainwashed but you and your mother (father) has the

one, real, objective view of the universe.

4. Accept this book, if not in whole at least in general outlines.

Assume you have been brainwashed. Try to learn as much

from every human you meet about their separate reality-tunnel

and see how much of it you can use to make your reality-tunnel

bigger and more inclusive. In other words, learn to listen.

5. James Joyce said he never met a boring human being. Try

to explain this. Try to get into the Joycean head space, where

everybody is a separate reality-island full of mystery and surprise.

In other words, learn to observe.

6. Read Aldous Huxley's The Genius and the Goddess. Note

how the Circuit III scientific Genius reverts to Circuit I helpless

infant when his wife leaves him.

7. After experimenting with the Nazi reality-tunnel, the

Catholic reality-tunnel etc., re-enter your "normal" reality tunnel.

Does it still seem totally objective, or do you begin to recognize

how much of it is your own software and hardware running

programs?

8. Finally, explore the tunnel-busting reality of Christopher S.

Hyatt' s book titled Undoing Yourself With Energized Meditation

and Other Devices. What tunnel-reality is he selling and how

sincere is he about his writing? Also, do you think he has read

my work and I his, or is this last statement a gimmick of the publishers

played on two innocent authors and the trusting public or

even worse did I write his book, or could it be, that we are one

and the same?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE HOLISTIC

NEUROSOMATIC CIRCUIT

But there is also in us an aspiration for the mastery of Nature...

Health, strength, duration, happiness and ease, liberation from

suffering, are part of the physical transformation which.. .evolution

is called upon to realize.

— Sri Aurobindo, The Future Evolution of Man

177

THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY NEED NOT BE

POSTPONED UNTIL AFTER DEATH. IT CAN HAPPEN

AT ANY MOMENT.

This is a copy of Crowley's inspired drawing. For his original

see The Book of Thoth or study his Tarot deck.

The beast with four heads represents the antique circuits; the

hedonic "laid-back" nude is neurosomatic rapture. The serpent is

"the rising of the kundalini serpent," a Hindu metaphor for

imprinting this Circuit V neurosomatic bliss-control.

Calling all downs. Calling all downs to dayne. Array!

Surrection! ... It is just, it is just about to, it is just about to

rolywholyover.

— James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

I78

The word "psychosomatic" has been around long enough to be

generally understood; unfortunately, it is another semantic

spook. The concept of "psyche" or "soul" was borrowed from

the theologians, who, being bankrupt, are in no position to lend

anything.

What we know and experience—our tunnel-reality—is what

registers on the brain and nervous system.

The phenomena of "faith healing," "regeneration," "rejuvenation,"

bliss, ecstasy, rapture, etc. have been occurring for many

thousands of years, in all known cultures. In the pre-scientific

language of yesterday's psychology we would refer to such

events as "psychosomatic." In our deliberately modernistic and

almost sci-fi jargon, we prefer to call them neurosomatic.

The neurosomatic circuit of the brain is much more recent

than the antique circuits previously discussed. It does not manifest

in all human beings, and appears late in life, usually, to those

who do activate and imprint it.

Temporary neurosomatic consciousness can be acquired by

(a) the yoga practice of pranayama breathing and (b) for those

who can handle it, by ingestion of Cannabis drugs, such as

hashish and marijuana, which trigger neurotransmitters that activate

this circuit.

Of the former device, pranayama, Aleister Crowley—certainly

the most skeptical of all mystics—writes forcefully:

For mind and body alike there is no purgative like pranayama,

no purgative like pranayama.

For mind and body alike, for mind and body alike—

alike!—there is, there is, there is no purgative like pranayama

—pranayama!—pranayama! yea, for mind and body

alike there is no purgative, no purgative, no purgative (for

mind and body alike) no purgative like pranayama!

If this is not emphatic enough, Crowley adds elsewhere:

Pranayama is notably useful in quieting the emotions and

appetites... Digestive troubles in particular are very easy to

remove in this way. It purifies both the body and the mind and

should be practiced certainly never less than one hour daily by

the serious student.

To which he adds a footnote:

Emphatically. Emphatically. Emphatically. It is impossible to

combine pranayama properly performed with emotional

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thought [second-circuit reflexes—R.A.W.]. It should be

resorted to immediately, at all times during life, when calm is

threatened.

This is very strong stuff from the mystic who filled his books

with jokes and jeers, and who always told his students, not

"Believe me," but "Don't believe me." About pranayama, for

once in his life, Crowley was serious.

In the experience of this author, pranayama will remove all

forms of depression, including profound grief and bereavement;

it will soothe anger and remove resentments; it seems beneficial

to all minor health problems and—occasionally—major health

problems. Hindus, who are professionals at pranayama, claim a

great deal more, such as: immunity to pain of all sorts, Samadhi

("union with God"), levitation, etc.

Most notably, pranayama creates neurosomatic Turn On:

sensory enrichment, sensual bliss, perceptual delight, and a

general laid-back Hedonic "high." Similar effects are produced

by voluntary isolation in a Lilly tank, by zero-gravity (the

astronaut's "mystical" experiences are all of this neurosomatic

variety) and, for the judicious or lucky, Cannabis drugs, as said

above. ; *

Negative neurosomatic circuit effects are experienced by

amateur yogis, by many pot-heads, and by a large number of

schizophrenics. The neurosomatic feedback loop, in these unfortunate

cases, reverses the above description. Sensory experience

becomes unpleasant (any sound or touch is painful), sensuality

turns into acute discomfort with the entire body, perceptions

warp into nightmare, and general anxiety is imprinted. Light is

particularly terrifying and painful, often associated with Hell or

with "mind-control" manipulated by unscrupulous enemies.

Gopi Krishna, a Hindu bureaucrat who took up yoga originally

only for health reasons, was abruptly catapulted into a

negative neurosomatic state for several years. All sensations were

so painful that he many times thought he would die. The details,

in his autobiography, Kundalini, are pathetic, and sound much

like schizophrenia. He came out of this finally, entered a positive

neurosomatic state, and has been writing blissful books about the

Perfection of the All, typical of this circuit, ever since.

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Nikola Tesla, the Yugoslav genius, went through the same

"Hell" or schizoid state, without yoga, in his teens. He came out

of the horrors with the scientific theory of alternating currents

worked out, a belief in extra-sensory perception, a superhuman

memory, and a streak of visionary humanitarianism that led him

into continuous conflicts with the corporations that financed his

more-than-100 major electrical inventions. (He earned over

$1,000,000 before the age of 30, at a time when $1,000,000 was

a lot of money, and he died broke, trying to sell an invention he

said would abolish poverty.)

Most shamans, and many mystics, have been through similar

negative-to-positive neurosomatic sensitization. Christian Scientists

call it "chemicalization." St. John of the Cross called it,

poetically, the Dark Night of the Soul. Cabalists call it "crossing

the Abyss."

In Kazanzakis' The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, Odysseus

sees a statue which seems to him urgently meaningful. The statue

was Kazanzakis' symbol for the evolution of these circuits,

which have been known (more or less) in various symbolisms for

a few thousand years. E.g., the "seven souls" of the Egyptians,

the ten "lights" of the Cabalists, etc.

The Kazanzakis statue shows an animal (Circuit I), a warrior

above the animal (Circuit II), a scholar above the warrior (Circuit

III), a lover (Circuit IV), a face in agony ("chemicalization" the

"Dark Night of the Soul", the "crossing of the Abyss" which

equals the entry to Circuit V the hard way), a face in bliss

(successful Circuit V reimprinting) and a man turning into pure

spirit (Circuit VII). Circuit VI is missing in the schemata, as

Circuit IV is missing in Jung, and everything above Circuit III is

missing in Carl Sagan.

Some lucky souls jump to Circuit V bliss without passing

through the horrors of "chemicalization" and the "Dark Night of

the Soul."

The neurosomatic circuit is "polymorphous perverse," in

Freud's unappetizing terminology. This merely means that the

nervous system itself, taking over as driver, is now directing the

rest of the body. "Every act (becomes) an orgasm," said Aleister

Crowley, giving his own Tantric emphasis to the polymorphous

nature of this circuit.

182 Prometheus Rising

The lives of the saints are full of stories which seem

"miracles" to the four-circuited majority, or are rejected as "lies,

hoaxes, yarns" by the three-circuited dogmatic Rationalist, but

which seem perfectly normal from the viewpoint of five-circuited

polymorphous consciousness. The saint says he is in rapture, and

full of gratitude to God, for giving him such a feast for dinner

as—plain bread and water. (Of course, many a pot-head will

understand that degree of neurosomatic rapture...) The guru

comes into the room and his bio-energy1 has such a charge that a

cripple jumps up and is "healed"; the cripple merely acquired

neurosomatic turn-on by contact, as some people get "contact

high" when others are on drugs. The fire-walkers in many

shamanic traditions walk on the fire, as they tell enquiring

anthropologists, to prove their control over "the spirit"—i.e., to

demonstrate to themselves and others that they have achieved

high-quality neurosomatic tuning.

One faith-healer told the present author, "Most people die of

adrenaline poisoning." In our terminology, most people have too

much first-circuit anxiety and second-circuit territorial pugnacity

for their own good. They are literally struggling for survival, as

no other animals do, despite Darwin. Most animals simply play

most of the time, solve problems of survival when they have to,

or die of not solving the problems; only humans are conscious of

struggling, and hence worried and depressed about the Game of

Life.

The faith-healer went on, "What cures them is realizing that

I'm not afraid." That is, contact with a fifth-circuit personality, a

person who controls his or her own Circuit II adrenaline-trips,

can be a catalyst, throwing the sufferer upward into a personal

fifth-circuit experience.

The avant-garde 20% of the population, due to the

Consciousness Movement (a secularization of much ancient

shamanic wisdom), already understands every "wild" idea in the

last few pages. They have had enough neurosomatic experience

By which we mean nothing "mystical." It is now known that many

physical energies radiate from the body, and that even chemical

effects can be transmitted (experienced as emotional "vibes") from

one person to another, the chemicals acting as stimuli to trigger

neurotransmitter actions in the second person.

Prometheus Rising 183

to know that they were once totally robotized (as most people

still are) and are knowingly engaged in acquiring more neurosomatic

know-how. When this reaches 51% of the population, a

major historic al revolution will have occurred, as profound as

the Life Extension Revolution.'

In McLuhan's terms, the fifth circuit is "non-linear" and

"global." That is, it is not limited by the one-thing-at-a-time

sequences of the semantic circuit; it thinks in Gestalts. This is

why it is so often connected with "intuition," which is a way of

thinking between and around data-points on the perceptual

screen—sensing what total field the points must be part of.

The great musician has developed a remarkable feedback

between fifth-circuit Gestalt-ing and the third-circuit function of

coding such "coherent structures" into the inspired symbolism of

music. Music always leads to some right-brain activity in listeners,

and the fifth circuit is almost certainly located in the right

brain hemisphere.

Beethoven, we remember, was left-handed. Since the left

hand is neurologically linked to the polymorphous right brain,

one might say he was genetically inclined to right brain activities,

that is, to sensing coherent wholes, to plunging into neurosomatic

bliss almost "at will," and to sensory-sensual raptness

and rapture. Everybody "knows" that the Sixth Symphony is

"pantheistic," but whether Beethoven was an ideological pantheist

or not, that way of responding to nature is normal and natural

right-brain Circuit V functioning. That is, anybody on the Fifth

Circuit will "talk like a pantheist" whether or not he has developed

a "philosophy" about pantheism. The miracle of Beethoven

is not that he felt the universe that way—a few thousand fifthcircuit

types throughout history have also felt and sensed nature

that way—but that he mastered the third-circuit art of music with

such skill that he could communicate such experiences, which is

precisely what the ordinary "mystic" cannot do.

The neurosomatic circuit probably began to appear around

30,000 years ago. (That is the conclusion of Barbara Honnegger,

who has made a profound study of European cave paintings,

coming to the conclusion that many of them show exercizes to

Please re-read this sentence, and think about it.

184 Prometheus Rising

increase right-brain activity similar to those still used in surviving

shamanic and yogic traditions.)

This fifth circuit is bonded into the right cortex and neurologically

linked to the limbic (first circuit) system and the genitalia.

These neural links explain the sexual metaphor of "kundalini" or

"serpent" energy used to describe this circuit in systems as

varied as Indian Tantra, Gnosticism and Voodoo, and the

Chinese yin yang (male-female) energies associated with it.

Prolonged sexual play without orgasm always triggers some

Circuit V consciousness.

It is quite easy to determine if the Fifth Circuit has been activated

successfully or not. How often does a person go to a

doctor? If a mind researcher is "glowing" rather than greyish,

"bouncy" rather than craggy, if he or she has a "sparkle"—and if

he or she virtually never goes to a doctor—the neurosomatic

circuit has been mastered. As Mary Baker Eddy once wrote

(thereby making herself hugely unpopular with those who love to

talk of matters mystical but have no empirical knowledge):

"The Word was made flesh." Divine Truth must be known by

its effects on the body as well as on the mind.

There is no tribe known to anthropology which doesn't have

at least one neurosomatic technician (shaman). Large-scale outbursts

of neurosomatic consciousness have occurred frequently

in all the major historical periods, usually being stamped out

quickly by the local branch of the Inquisition or the A.M.A.;

other outbursts have been co-opted and diluted.

As we read in the New Testament:

And when he had called into him his twelve disciples, he gave

them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to

heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease...

And as ye go, preach, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at

hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out

devils: freely ye have received, freely give.

— Matt 10: 1-8

It may or may not have happened exactly like that; as Mark

Twain would say, there might be a few stretchers in there. But

something like this, however much the evangelist may exaggerate

it, must have happened to account for Christianity's rapid triumph

over other, but probably less effective, systems of opening

Prometheus Rising 185

the fifth circuit. Mithraism, the Eleusinian cult at Athens, the

Dionysian cults, etc. all had age-old shamanic techniques for

inducing neurosomatic rapture; Christianity (at first) seems to

have been superior in creating neurosomatic control. In St.

Paul's metaphor, the "Old Adam" (Circuits I-IV) got bleached

out, and the "New Adam" (Circuit V) took over as the center of

consciousness and self-government. In another metaphor, the

body became the flexible clay and the awakened (illuminated)

brain became the sculptor.

In general, fourth-circuit problems take the form of guilt; "I

cannot do what I am supposed to do." Third-circuit problems

take the form of perplexity; "I cannot understand how I got into

this mess, or how to get out of it, or what is expected of me," etc.

Second-circuit problems take the form of bullying or cowardice:

"I will force them, or I will surrender and let them force me."

First-circuit problems take the form of body symptoms: "I feel

rotten all over" gradually centering in, under enough stress, on

one acute disabling symptom.'

Fifth-Circuit neurosomatic consciousness bleaches out all

these problems at once. The disappearance of first-circuit

"physical" illnesses only seems more "miraculous" than the transcendence

of second-circuit emotionalism, third-circuit perplexity

and fourth-circuit guilt. It is the Cartesian mind/body dualism

that makes us think of such first-circuit "physical" cures as

somehow stranger or more spooky than any rapid improvement

on the other circuits.

One of the intents of our terminology is precisely to transcend

that Cartesian dualism, making all the circuits equally comprehensible

within one context.

The robotized Rationalist fears and resents Circuit V rapture

and its holistic intuitive faculties (just as the robotized Emotionalist

fears and resents Circuit III reason). Thus, when the neurosomatic

circuit feedback begins to function, and the mutated Circuit

V person tries to describe his or her rapture and at-oneness,

the Rationalist hastily mutters that this is "merely subjective."

This last is Eric Berne's "Wooden Leg" game, which asks to be

relieved of social participation or interaction on the grounds of being

physically hors de combat.

186 Prometheus Rising

Misery is "merely subjective," too, but that doesn't keep it

from hurting. The neurosomatic skill of transmuting all experience,

so that one is high and happy in a situation where the fourcircuited

majority would be miserable, is worth learning for the

very simple, egotistic reason that it's more fun to be happy than

to be in agony. It is also socially beneficial, because, as Tim

Leary often said, "You can't do good until you feel good." Just

as misery loves company, the high and happy want everybody

else to be high and happy. (This first lesson the fifth-circuit adept

has to learn is to control this upsurge of altruism and not make a

nuisance of oneself by trying to force everybody to be happy...)

The Rationalist is even more alarmed by the results of prolonged

fifth-circuit bliss, which includes the ability to heal a

wide variety of diseases both in oneself and in others. Even the

well documented current research on endorphins—which gives

us the beginning of a neuro-chemical explanation of how such

healings operate—is regarded with discomfort or hostility by the

more robotized Rationalists. It all sounds "metaphysical" and

therefore it cannot exist.1

There is nothing supernatural about the fifth circuit. It merely

appears "supernatural" by comparison to the earlier circuits; but

the third circuit, of which the Rationalist is so proud, undoubtedly

appeared "supernatural" when it first appeared. (The

Egyptians attributed speech and writing, third-circuit functions,

to divine intervention by the god Thoth.) The fifth circuit, like

the earlier circuits, is just another evolutionary mutation, necessary

to us as we move toward a more complex neuro-social level.

"It's just like ordinary life, except that you're always a foot

above the ground," says an old Zen proverb.

This "floating" aspect of the fifth circuit is preparing us for

extraterrestrial migration.

One of the most interesting neurosomatic adepts in all history,

from the viewpoint of the present theory, was Mary Baker Eddy.

Precisely because Mrs. Eddy was fundamentally naive and

1 Endorphins are neurotransmitters that trigger Circuit V. They can be

activated by cannabis drugs, psychedelics, meditation, pranayama, or

visualization of white light. The last is the most common system used

by "faith-healers" and was known to the medieval Rosicrucians.

Prometheus Rising

unaware of most of philosophy, she never realized that you

cannot speak or write about the Ineffable. She therefore wrote

about it at length. If her writings are hard to decipher, if they

often sound like "the ravings of a disordered mind" (Aleister

Crowley's description of mystic writings, including his own),

they also have moments of astonishing lucidity. For instance, she

knew and wrote with total clarity that illness is fear and love is

its cure. Most psychologists are just beginning to comprehend

that today, over 100 years later.

"Perfect love casteth out fear" and that is how neurosomatic

awakening cures disease.

As Mrs. Eddy told one enquirer, "Love, love, love! That's all

you have to know to be a healer." Sixty years later, unheeded by

most of his profession, a Scottish psychiatrist, lan Suttie, wrote

that "The physician's love heals the patient."

Another quote from Mrs. Eddy is appropriate at this point:

When understanding changes we shall gain the reality of life,

the control of soul over sense... This must be the climax,

before harmonious and immortal man is obtained and his

capabilities revealed.

To the ordinary scientifically-educated reader, this is metaphysical

gibberish. Let us try to re-translate it into our own

neurological metaphors:

When the brain develops its full potentials we shall gain a new

view of life and the control of neurosomatic bliss over lowercircuit

guilts, perplexities, emotions and 'body symptoms'...

This is evolutionarily scheduled to occur before sixth-circuit

evolutionary awareness and physical immortality are achieved.

We suggest that Mrs. Eddy, having activated a large part of

the right brain hemisphere, was able to think in Gestalts as well

as serving as transmitter of neurosomatic "healing" to others.

She was looking down the DNA highway to the scientific breakthroughs

of the decade in which we now live.

Many have turned on the neurosomatic circuit due to prolonged

illness, especially if they grow impatient with doctors and

resort to self medication and/or faith-healing. The bathroom of

Nietzsche, according to Stefan Zweig, looked "like a pharmacy

shop," due to the large number of drugs and medicines with

188 Prometheus Rising

which the philosopher treated his chronic migraines. Gurdjieff

employed cocaine, hashish and yoga techniques (probably

including pranayama) to treat the incessant and increasing pains

resultant from his war wounds and two car accidents. The

"harshness" of these two philosophers, their contempt for ordinary

human suffering, their visions of the superhuman state

beyond emotion and pain, all probably derived from neurosomatic

Turn Ons alternating with acute pain. That is, they experienced

the whole of evolution from the lower circuits to the full

development of neurosomatic bliss, and were expressing chiefly

contempt for their own relapses into less-than-blissful consciousness.

In the East, the control of the neurosomatic circuit is known

as dhyana, cha 'an or Zen\ the state is sometimes called "Buddhamind"

or "Buddha-body." To the ancient Greeks, where rituals to

achieve it with psychedelic drugs were performed yearly at

Eleusis, those who accomplished the ritual successfully were

called digenes, "twice-born." The metaphor lingers in the "born

again" terminology of charismatic Christianity, and is symbolized

by the myth of the Resurrection of the Body.

Freud recognized this, state, vaguely, as the "oceanic experience."

Gurdjieff calls this circuit the Magnetic Center.

Faith-healers and adepts of a few yogic schools seem to live

in neurosomatic consciousness permanently; most who have

achieved it at all tend to have it only in flashes, as noted by Ezra

Pound:

Le Paradis n'est pas artificial

but is jagged

For a flash,

for an hour.

Then agony,

then an hour.

This "Paradis," this condition of neurosomatic ("mindbody")

peace, should be considered a new brain circuit toward

which all humanity is evolving, slowly and painfully, out of

mammalian antique circuits. This progression, from primate

emotion to post-hominid tranquility, from "man" to "super man."

is the Next Step that mystics forever talk of; you can hear it in

most of Beethoven's later, major compositions.

Prometheus Rising 189

As mentioned before, governmental brainwashers are generally

too puritanical to handle, or manhandle, the socio-sexual

circuit and content themselves with mind-washing and brainprogramming

on the bio-survival, emotional and semantic circuits,

while outlaw bands like the SLA or Mansonoids go further

and reimprint the socio-sexual circuit also.

It is necessary to note that some cults presently active on this

backward planet go even further than that and engage in neurosomatic

brainwashing.

A permanent neurosomatic circuit can only be imprinted by

prolonged practice of one of the yogic, Tantric or related

sciences, and perhaps good genes, good environments and good

luck generally.

Neurosomatic brainwashing—the most powerful form of

robotization—consists in temporary activation of the neurosomatic

circuit by the brainwasher, together with assurances that

only the brainwasher (or the "god" who "acts through him") can

turn on this circuit.

For full effect, this is, of course, proceeded by normal brainwashing,

The victim is first isolated from his or her previous

environment and trained to hook the bio-survival circuit onto the

"guru" and/or the Ashram or commune. The emotional circuit is

bent and broken by continuous attacks upon status (ego), until

the only emotional security left is found in Total Submission to

the group reality-island. The re-infantilized victim is then ready

to imprint any semantic circuitry desired, from EST to Krishna to

People's Temple, etc. The socio-sexual circuit can then easily be

programmed for celibacy, for free love, or for whatever sexual

game the guru has selected. Then, and only then, the neurosomatic

buttons are pushed and ecstasy is "given" to the subject

"by" the guru.

Marjoe Gortner, a long-time practitioner of this science,

commented ironically in a film made after abandoning it for a

different career, "The marks never realized they could do it"

(push the neurosomatic buttons) "for themselves. They all think

they need me jacking them off!" Gortner is, nowadays, unusually

honest. The average charismatic insists that the victims can never

learn to do it for themselves.

Prometheus Rising

One of the greatest historical practitioners of this neuroscience

was Hassan i Sabbah, who used relatively simple techniques,

including, evidently, a time-release capsule invented by the Sufi

College of Wisdom in Cairo.

As I describe Hassan's technique — based on historical

records — in my novel, The Trick Top Hat: Two young candidates

dine with Hassan; the food is laced with a time-release

capsule. When asleep the candidates are taken to Hassan's

famous "Garden of Delights." The capsule had released a heavy

does of opium and they were quite thoroughly unconscious and

unaware of their surroundings.

The garden — of officially known as the "the Garden of

Delights" — covered several acres. Here candidates were prepared

for admission to the Order of the Assassins: they were to become

the most feared and legendary professional killers in history. But

here also, in this same garden, were prepared candidates for

admission to the Brotherhood of Light, the Illuminati. The candidates,

in fact, were prepared the same way. They themselves

selected, unknown to themselves, which order they would

enter — the political Assassins or the mystic Illuminati.

Both young men were conveyed into the Garden of Delights

and placed several acres apart from each other. In a short time,

the second stage of the time-release capsule began to work;

cocaine was released into their bloodstreams, thereby overwhelming

the traces of the soporific opium and causing them to

awaken full of energy and zest. At the same time, as they woke,

hashish also began to be released, so they saw everything with

exceptional clarity and all colors were jewel-like, brilliant,

divinely beautiful.

A group of extremely comely and busty young ladies —

imported from the most expensive brothel in Cairo — sat in a

circle around each of the young candidates, playing flutes and

other delicately sweet musical instruments. "Welcome to

heaven," they sang as the awakening men gazed about them in

wonder. "By the magic of the holy Lord Hassan, you have

entered Paradise while still alive." And they fed them "paradise

apples" (oranges), far sweeter and stranger than the earth-apples

they had known before, and they showed them the animals of

paradise (imported from as far away as Japan, in some cases),

Prometheus Rising 191

creatures far more remarkable than those ordinarily seen in

Afghanistan.

"This is heaven!" the first young man exclaimed, in ecstasy.

"Great is Allah, and great is the wise Lord Hassan Sabbah!"

But, twenty acres away, surrounded by similar lovely ladies

and other wonders, the second young man merely gazed about

him, smiled in contentment, and said nothing.

And then, in both cases, the houris of Paradise, as promised in

the Koran, began to dance, and as they danced, they discarded

one by one each of their seven veils. As the veils were thrown

off, more and more hashish was released from the capsules and

the young men saw with greater clarity, felt with deeper intensity,

experienced beauty and sexual joy in a way completely

unknown in their previous earth lives.

Then, as each young man sat entranced by the beauty and

wonder of Heaven, the houris finished the dance, and nude and

splendid as they were, rushed forward in a bunch, like flowers

cast before the wind. And some fell at the candidate's feet and

kissed his ankles; some kissed knees or thighs, one sucked raptly

at his penis, others kissed the chest and arms and belly, a few

kissed eyes and mouth and ears. And as he was smothered in this

hashish-intensified avalanche of love, the lady working on his

penis sucked and sucked and he climaxed in her mouth as softly

and slowly and blissfully as a single snowflake falling.

In a little while, there was no more hashish being released and

more opium began to flow into the bloodstream, the young

candidates slept again; and in their torpor, they were removed

from the Garden of Delights and returned to the banquet hall of

the Lord Hassan.

There they awoke.

"Truly," the first exclaimed, "I have seen the glories of

Heaven, as foretold in Al Koran. I have no more doubts. I will

trust Hassan i Sabbah and love him and serve him."

"You are accepted for the Order of Assassin," said Hassan

solemnly. "Go at once to the Green Room to meet your superior

in the order."

When this candidate had left, Hassan turned to the second,

asking, "And you?"

792 Prometheus Rising

"I have discovered the First Matter, the Medicine of Metals,

the Elixir of Life, the Stone of the Philosophers, True Wisdom

and Perfect Happiness," said he, quoting the alchemical formula.

"And it is inside my own head!"

Hassan i Sabbah grinned broadly. "Welcome to the Order of

the Illuminati!" he said, laughing.

Hassan i Sabbah was not the first or last student of the ways

in which sexuality can be transmuted into fifth-circuit rapture.

Further to the East, there were Tantric schools within Hinduism,

Buddhism and Taoism, which taught techniques by which

prolongation of the genital embrace could explode into dramatic

brain-change. In the West, underground cults of Gnostics,

Illuminati, alchemists and witches kept similar techniques as

closely guarded secrets, for if the Holy Inquisition ever learned

of such practices the participants would be denounced as devilworshippers

and burned at the stake.

In our own time, there has been a revolutionary upsurge of

these ancient neurological secrets, with an admixture of more

modern techniques. Tantric teachers are available in many cities.

Masters and Johnson use quasi-Tantric practices to treat sexual

dysfunctions. As early ..as 1968, a poll by McGlothlin showed

that 85% of the pot-smokers in the country said their chief interest

in the Weed was its function as enhancer of erotic sensation.

Vibrators and other sexual toys proliferate; Gays come out of the

closet; philosophers of a culture without repression (Norman

Brown, Henri Marcuse, Charles Reich) become best-sellers.

Saul Kent, a writer on medical science for general audiences,

has even suggested that electronic sexual surrogates can and will

be manufactured in the near future. (Your own Marilyn Monroe

doll!) Instead of joining Tom Wolfe and the neo-puritans in

throwing up our hands in horror at such an idea, let us consider it

for a moment. Let us see if we can peek outside our imprinted

conditioned reality-tunnel.

If a sexual android is possible in 2005 or 2050 or whenever,

why not a totally programmed sexual environment? Let us call

this, in memory of Herman Hesse, the Magic Theatre. We start

with what is concurrently available in high-priced brothels in the

hedonic Sun Belt section of America.

Prometheus Rising 193

Massage, a first-circuit tranquilizer, has all the advantages of

the opiates without being habit-forming. Our Magic Theatre,

then, would include computerized body-relaxers-and-energizers

better than current massage techniques.

Porn movies are available, for stimulation, in the better

brothels. Our Magic Theatre would have them in 3D on all four

walls, obviously.

Marijuana and stimulants like cocaine or speed are available

in brothels everywhere. Our Magic Theatre would have better

chemical rapture-agents.

One can go on adding details, according to personal fantasy,

until one has created a room in which bliss can be extended in all

dimensions, indefinitely.

A strange thing has happened in constructing this cyberneticized

brothel. We seem to have gone beyond sex to something

that might be called meta-sex. While specific genital pleasure

might still be fun, it is hardly as important as it seemed to us

before we came into the multi-dimensional Pleasure Dome

where all senses are stimulated to ecstasy.

And the most peculiar thing about this bawdy science-fiction

projection is that we don't even need to build a Magic Room. It

is built into our brains already. We have been describing the

positive neurosomatic consciousness which Freud called

"polymorphous perversity" in one of his Puritan moods and "the

oceanic experience" in one of his mystical moments. This is

what the neurosomatically turned-on brain feels like.

In alchemy this was known as "the multiplication of the first

matter" or "the Philosopher's Gold," which was unlike ordinary

gold in that it could not be spent or used-up, since it perpetually

multiplied and renewed itself. It is the "Third Eye" of the Illuminati

tradition, which transforms all it sees; the eye of which Jesus

speaks in his gnomic aphorism,

"The light of the body is the eye; if therefore thine eye be

single, thy whole body will be full of light."

— Matt 6:22

EXERCIZES

1. Get the lesson book from the local Christian Science Reading

Room and read the lessons for a month.

194 Prometheus Rising

2. Attend a Sufi week-end seminar.

3. Acquire my book Sex & Drugs: A Journey Beyond Limits

(New Falcon Publications) and try the Tantric exercizes there

described.

4. Learn how to do pranayama properly, from an expert. (I

have tried describing this elsewhere, and have found there is no

way to prevent gross errors in verbal transmission of this nonverbal

knowledge. Get a Hindu to show you.)

5. Da Free John, an American guru, says you can reach

Illumination by constantly asking, "Who is the One who is living

me now?" Well—is it Circuit I consciousness, Circuit II ego,

Circuit III mind, Circuit IV sex-role, Circuit V Gestalt-field, or a

higher circuit?

Who is it? Where is it? How old is it?

6. Dr. Aiden Kelly has suggested that the so-called "unconscious"

is more conscious than the so-called conscious mind.

That is, the "unconscious" contains all the feedbacks of the

neurosomatic circuit and the other circuits that maintain life.

Consider this idea. Is this the "One who is living you now"?

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE COLLECTIVE

NEUROGENETIC CIRCUIT

It is no longer only the Right that is conservative. The entire Left is

also suddenly conservative. The liberal and the radical Left have

fallen behind.

— P.M. Esfandiary, Upwingers

195

The sixth circuit of the brain kicks into action when the nervous

system begins to receive signals from within the individual

neuron—from the RNA-DNA "dialogue," the neurogenetic feedback

system.

The entire nervous system, including the brain, has been

designed like the rest of the body, by the "code" within the DNA

molecule, which sends signals via messenger RNA molecules to

tell the organism what to do: Grow red hair. Have blue eyes.

Stand up and walk now. Start to talk. Find a mate. Etc. Our

entire mental lives—our brain hardware and software—exist

within the perimeters of this DNA master-tape.

With neurogenetic consciousness, these DNA archives

become accessible to brain scanning, while awake. (They are

always accessible, as archetypes of the Jungian "collective

unconscious," during dreaming sleep.)

The first to achieve neurogenetic awareness, a few thousand

years ago, spoke of "memories of past lives," "re-incarnation,"

"immortality," etc. That these neurological adepts were speaking

of something real, in the best language of their day, is indicated

by the fact that many of them (especially Hindus and Sufis) gave

marvelously accurate poetic vistas of evolution millennia before

Darwin and foresaw Super-humanity before Nietzsche.

The Greeks called this "the vision of Pan," the Chinese "the

great Tao," Hindus "Atman consciousness." The numinous,

awful, sublime "God" "Goddess" and "Demon" figures who

appear in the initial stages of this Awakening are Jung's

"archetypes of the collective unconscious" and are recognized as

"victors from dream-time" by primitives, as "them from Sidde"

by witches, as the Weird People in a thousand folk-traditions.

Gurdjieff calls this circuit the True Emotional Center.

The "akashic records" of Theosophy, the "phylogenetic

unconscious" of Dr. Stanislaus Grof, the "Gaia hypothesis" of

biologists Margulis and Lovelock—which holds that the

biosphere of this planet is one intelligent organism—are three

modern metaphors for this circuit. The visions of past and future

evolution described by those who have had trans-time experiences

during close-to-death or "clinical death" trauma also

describe the Circuit VI neurogenetic reality-tunnel.

Specific exercizes to trigger neurogenetic imprints are not to

be found in yogic teaching; it usually happens, if at all, after

797

ig8 Prometheus Rising

many years of expertise in the kind of advanced rajah yoga that

develops Circuit V somatic bliss. Heavy does of LSD, of course,

always trigger temporary Neurogenetic vistas.

The neurogenetic circuit is best considered, in terms of

current science, as the genetic archives activated by excitement

of anti-histone proteins—the DNA memory coiling back to the

dawn of life and containing also the genetic blueprints for the

future of evolution.

"I am He that was, and is, and shall be," a sentence from the

Egyptian Book of the Dead, in hieroglyph and in his own handwriting,

was found on the desk where Beethoven composed the

Ninth Symphony and all his later, aeon-spanning "evolutionary"

music. One judges from this, and from the music itself, that

Beethoven had opened the neurogenetic circuit.

Here dwell primordial archetypes, far older than language yet

newer than tomorrow, Personifying this circuit as a being,

Crowley tells us:

...The "Babe in the Egg of Blue" [cf., the final image of

Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey—R.A.W.] ...represents the

Higher Self... The connection is with the symbolism of the

dwarf in mythology.., In his absolute innocence and ignorance

he is "the Fool"; he is the Savior...the "Great Fool" of Celtic

legend, the "Pure Fool" of Act I of Parsifal...he is also the

Green Man of spring festivals... So we see him fully armed as

Bacchus Diphues, male and female in one, the bisexual

Baphomet, and...Zeus Arrhenothelus, equally bisexual... [He

is shown in this full form in the Tarot Trump XV, "The

Devil"]... But the "small person" of Hindu mysticism, the

dwarf insane yet crafty of many legends in many lands, is also

this same... Silent Self of a man, or his Holy Guardian Angel.

These images are not poetic whimsies by Crowley. They

reappear in the dreams of individuals (the personal myth of the

night), in the myths of all peoples (the impersonal dreams of the

species), and, of course, over and over in UFO contact stories.

STUDY THE NEXT TWO IMAGES CAREFULLY

Prometheus Rising 199

Circuit VI neurogenetic consciousness: This symbolizes a pan-like

god, displaying the concept of genetic memories symbolized by the

human-animal seed-forms in the testicles.

200 Prometheus Rising

Another archetype from the neurogenetic archives ("collective

unconscious"). The Great Mother symbolizing the genetic

memories as illustrated by the flower, bird, etc.

Prometheus Rising 2OI

The "language" of this circuit is the multi-level language of

Finnegans Wake, where Finnegan is Finn-again, Finn Mac Cool

of Irish legend reborn and Huck Finn again also, sailing down

"Missus Liffey," both the river Anna Liffey in Ireland and Huck

Finn's Mississippi; where Mark the Wan is King Mark, cuckolded

by Tristan, but Mark the Twy is Mark Twain, married to a

wife he called "Livvy" just like the Irish river, and Mark the Tris

is cuckolded Mark and cuckolding Tristan in one; while Marcus

Lyons is all of them, plus Mark the apostle, his emblematic lion

(always shown with him in medieval art), Leo the lion, Leo in

the zodiac and all associated fire-signs, and one of the Four Old

Men (Matt Gregory, Marcus Lyons, Luke Tarpey and Johnny

McDougall) who haunt the dreamer all night long, symbolizing

the four evangelists, the four bedposts surrounding the sleeper,

the four antique circuits, the four suits of Tarot or ordinary

playing cards, the four elements of the ancients, and all the other

fours that Jung has found omnipresent in the "collective

unconscious." To parallel the evolution of the first four circuits

in human (and mammalian) history, Joyce also offers the four

stages of the development of the "Gracehoper" (egg, larvae,

chrysalis, adult) and such dream-logical quartifications as

"eggburst, eggblend, eggburial, and hatch-as-hatch can," "their

weatherings and their marryings and their buryings and their

natural selections," "a human (pest!) cycling (pist!) and recycling

(past!) and there he goes (pust!) again," etc.

This archetypal circuit is replete with what Jung called

synchronicities—meaningful coincidences—which he attributed

to the circuit's roots in what he called the "psychoid" level,

below the personal and collective unconscious, where "mind"

and "matter" are not yet differentiated—the royal highway of the

DNA-RNA-CNS (central nervous system) telegraph, in Tim

Leary's metaphor.

Such synchronicities are a sure sign that you are dealing with

the neurogenetic circuit. For instance, in a Finnegans Wake study

group, we were all convulsed with laughter when noticing that

"Toot and Come Inn" is not just a parody of American cutesy-pie

motel names but another of Joyce's countless puns on Tutankhamen.

At this point, my wife entered the room to enquire what

was so funny. When we explained, she said, "That's a synchro-

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nicity—I was just watching a TV program about Tutankhamen."

And, of course, Joyce put the boy-king into the dream because

the main theme of Finnegans Wake, the main theme of the

neurogenetic circuit, is the survival of genetic memory through

time, symbolized by the Resurrection myth; and Tut was dug up

(resurrected) synchronistically, just after Joyce started work in

this epic.

As Joyce explains the logic of the neurogenetic circuit, "This

ourth of years is naught save brickdust and being humus the

same returns" (the earth gives back, in new forms, what is

buried) since "on the bunk of our breadwinning lies the cropse of

our seedfather" (comment superfluous, to those who know The

Golden Bough) and "Phall if you but, will rise you must." The

seed, the genetic code, and the egg, cellular wisdom, sends the

signal down the aeons; in the similar metaphor of Nobel geneticist

Hebert Muller, "We are all giant robots manufactured by

DNA to make more DNA."

To the individual, the breaks in the chain of life/death

/life/death/life/death are ail-too real and painful; to the seed-andegg

wisdom of the neurogenetic circuit, the seamless unity of

lifedeathlifedeathlifedeathlife is the greater reality.

The neurogenetic circuit is probably located in the right neocortex

and is more recent than the neurosomatic circuit in the

back sections of the right cortex.

Circuit VI neurogenetic consciousness allows you to

"converse" with the evolutionary architect who designed your

body—and billions and billions of others since the dawn of life

around 3-4 million years ago.

This "architect" is the greatest designer on this planet, as

Bucky Fuller has often commented. No human architect has yet

equaled Her efficiency or Her esthetics in such routine products

as roses, eggs, insect colonies, fish etc.

She (or He) can be personified in modern terms as Mother

DNA or Father Nucleic Acid. The Rationalist immediately

objects that such personification, however inescapable it is to all

who have encountered the Architect directly on this circuit, is

illegitimate, because She or He is unconscious. The rebuttal,

given by all Circuit VI adepts in all cultures and all ages, is that

Prometheus Rising 203

She or He is not unconscious but intoxicated, and it is a divine

intoxication.

Less poetically, whether we "humanize" this "architect" into a

Big Momma or Big Daddy, or "animalize" it into a jackalheaded

being like the Egyptian, or "insectualize " it into a divine

Preying Mantis like one African tribe, or "spiritualize" it into

something totally abstract like Hindus and Christian Scientists,

we are only depicting one cross-section of this 3-4 billion-yearold

Being. When we "moleculize" it as DNA we are also only

seeing one cross-section—the most useful cross-section for

scientific analysis. That is all that needs to be said, or should be

said, for the "scientific materialist" chemicalization of the

biosphere, and it is no contradiction of direct experience of the

Being itself via Circuit VI yogas, biological or chemical. Indeed,

the direct experience undoubtedly can and has helped many

scientists get a wider, more holistic view of what is going on in

evolution, which they have brought down to Circuit III in better

linguistic models. Teilhard de Chardin is one, but not the only,

example of a scientist whose evolutionary model has been

improved by such direct Circuit VI experience.

For those who have not yet had Circuit VI experience—and

most of humanity will possess the technology to turn on this

circuit at will, within the next twenty years—this evolutionary

perspective might, possibly, be conveyed by a series of quantum

jumps in perspective, thus:

The individual can make mistakes, even fatal ones.

Consciousness of Circuits I-V is far from infallible; we all get

into messes, and sometimes they kill us.

The gene-pool can make mistakes, but less frequently. Most

gene-pools have a life-span far beyond any individual, by a

factor of many thousands. Obviously, if we judge intelligence by

survival, gene-pools—made up of the information of many

million individuals—are more "intelligent" than any individuals,

even geniuses. (Einstein was not as smart as the Jewish people

collectively. He created Relativity and was smart enough to

escape the Nazis. The Jews, historically, created dozens of ideas

as important as Relativity and survived hundreds of pogroms.)

204 Prometheus Rising

The species is even more intelligent than the gene-pool. It

lives millions of times longer than any individual, many thousand

times longer than any gene-pool.

The biosphere—Gaia—the DNA script—is more intelligent

than all individuals, gene-pools and species. It has survived

everything thrown at it for nearly 4 billion years, and is getting

smarter all the time. It is on the edge of achieving immortality;

through the sixth circuit it has a better eye to see itself and judge

its trajectories than ever before; it is getting ready to leave this

planet and expand across the universe.

Beethoven, to cite him one more time, said "Anybody who

understands my music will never be unhappy again." That is

because his music is the song of the Sixth Circuit, of Gaia, the

Life Spirit, becoming conscious of Herself, of Her powers, of

Her own capacities for infinite progress.

EXERCIZES

1. List at least 15 similarities between New York (or any

large city) and an insect colony, such as a bee-hive or termite

hill. (If you can't think of at least 15, read Edward Wilson's

Sociobiology.) Contemplate the information in the DNA loop,

which created both of these enclaves of high coherence and

organization, in primate and insect societies.

2. Read the Upanishads and every time you see the word

"Atman" or "World Soul," translate it as DNA blueprint. See if it

makes sense to you that way.

3. Contemplating these issues usually triggers Jungian

synchronicities. See how long after reading this chapter you

encounter an amazing coincidence—e.g., seeing DNA on a

license plate, having a copy of the Upanishads given to you

unexpectedly, seeing an image like Crowley's Pan or Great

Mother in a work of popular art etc.

4. Explain such a synchronicity, when it occurs, in Circuit III

Rationalist terms—mere coincidence etc.

5. Psychologist Barbara Honnegger explains synchronicities

by saying that the right brain hemisphere (where this circuit is

located) moves you in space-time to the place where the synchronicity

will occur, while the Rationalist left brain invents rationalizations

to go there. Synchronicities are a language through

Prometheus Rising 205

which this circuit communicates with the left brain, in this

theory. Try explaining coincidences by that theory. What

messages is your right brain trying to send to your left brain?

6. Jung and several of his disciples (e.g., Coleman, Steiger,

Fiedler) have suggested that UFOs are messages from this

collective DNA circuit to the left brain. What do such messages

mean? What is the right brain trying to tell us?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

INTRODUCTION TO THE

METAPROGRAMMING

CIRCUIT

It is the human situation that is basically tragic. Right and Left

revolutionaries cannot alter this basic dilemma. For instance, the

most radical Left-wing group has no program to overcome death.

The entire Right-Left establishment is still death oriented.

— P.M. Esfandiary, Upwingers

207

CAN 100,000 PEOPLE HALLUCINATE AT ONCE?

How else do you explain history?

208

I once saw a cartoon—I forget where—that seems to me to

summarize the central fact of neurological relativism.

A cat approaches a dog and says "Meow." The dog looks

confused. The cat repeats, "Meow!" The dog still looks confused.

The cat repeats, more emphatically, "MEEOW!!!" Finally,

the dog ventures, "Bow-wow?" The cat stalks away indignantly,

thinking "Dumb dog!"

Of course, human communication, and our great philosophical

debates, cannot be on this primitive level. Of course!

Nonetheless...

Between May and October, 1917, in Fatima, Spain, occurred

the best documented series of "miracles" in modern history. As

everybody knows, it began when three illiterate peasant girls had

a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Please note at once that it is

easy, and tempting, for the Rationalist, and the non-Catholic

generally, to treat this first incident as "merely" hallucination.

Note next how hard it is to make that explanation stick as the

subsequent details are narrated.

At the second "visitation of the Virgin" in June there were

fifty witnesses. All agreed that they heard an explosion and saw a

puff of smoke. (Only the three girls on this and subsequent occasions

ever saw the Lady.) Shall we assume now that, in addition

to hallucinating girls we must add a practical joker with a smoke

bomb, to make sense of what was going on?

At the third visitation in July there were 4500 witnesses. All

of them heard an explosion again, at the Lady's departure, and

most of them claimed they heard humming and buzzing noises

while the children spoke to her. (This humming and buzzing is

common in later UFO stories...)

On August 13, there were 18,000 witnesses, who saw, or

hallucinated a symphony of weirdities, including flowers falling

out of the sky, another explosion, bright flashes of light on the

clouds and on the ground (crimson, pink, yellow and blue) and a

luminous globe spinning through the sky, just like a modern

UFO.

On September 13, there were 30,000 witnesses. All saw the

luminous "UFO" again, and there was another downpour—not

flowers this time, but glistening globules of light that got smaller

as they descended and "melted" near ground level. Dr. Carl

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Sagan would have solemnly told you, with his bare face hanging

out, that all 30,000 witnesses were hallucinating simultaneously.

October 13, the last "miracle" was witnessed by 70,000 at the

scene, and 30,000 others for hundreds of miles around claimed

to see some of the phenomena. Some said that the sun plunged

directly toward the earth, but others that a globe "big and bright

as the sun" had appeared and did the plunging. This was accompanied

by flashes of red, violet, blue and yellow, together with a

"heavenly" perfume permeating the air.

It is claimed that "thousands" of people were converted to

Catholicism by these events. Please note that if it had all happened

50 years later in 1967, many of these people would have

been converted to the newer mystique of the Space Brothers.

Nietzsche once said, "We are all greater artists than we realize."

It is a function of the above record (and this book as a

whole) to make that obscure joke totally clear to every reader.

But, but, but—All 100,000 witnesses who saw some of the

phenomena associated with the last Fatima "miracle" must have

been hallucinating, of course. This is the most comfortable and

conservative way of dealing with such events, and one does not

have to be as narrow as Dr. Sagan to prefer such a simple explanation.

Still...if 100,000 people can hallucinate simultaneously,

and if, as history assures us, many millions can share a

"religious" or political delusion simultaneously, only a man as

rigidly dogmatic as Sagan can avoid asking the most disturbing

questions about the origin of his own beliefs and perceptions.

Cromwell once addressed the Irish rebels, saying, "I beseech

you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you might be

wrong." History does not record that Cromwell ever addressed

the same remark to himself.

Each of us is trapped in the reality-tunnel (assumptionconsumption)

his or her brain has manufactured. We do not

"see" it or "sense" it as a model our brain has created. We

automatically, unconsciously, mechanically "see" and "sense" it

out there, apart form us, and we consider it "objective." When

we meet somebody whose separate tunnel-reality is obviously far

different from ours, we are a bit frightened and always disoriented.

We tend to think they are mad, or that they are crooks

Prometheus Rising 211

trying to con us in some way, or that they are hoaxters playing a

joke.

Yet it is neurologically obvious that no two brains have the

same genetically-programmed hard wiring, the same imprints,

the same conditioning, the same learning experiences. We are all

living in separate realities. That is why communication fails so

often, and misunderstandings and resentments are so common. I

say "meow" and you say "Bow-wow," and each of us is convinced

the other is a bit dumb.

According to reliable statistics, over 100,000,000 citizens of

the U.S. "believe in" UFOs and at least 15,000,000 have seen a

UFO. The system of ideas, rumors, myths, hopes etc. clustered

about the UFO phenomenon may be the most powerful sociological

force for change currently acting upon our society, as Dr.

Jacques Vallee recently stressed in an address to a special United

Nations committee on the UFO mystery.

The UFO debate, or quarrel, hinges upon the two categories

which we find central to our thesis—the innocent-looking ideas

of "inside" and "outside." Broadly speaking, the UFO "skeptics"

are those who claim the UFO is "inside" the UFO observer

("hallucination," misidentification, etc.), while the UFO

"believers" claim the UFO is "outside" (objectivity).

As the semanticist Alfred Korzybski often warned, when we

split verbally that which is never split existentially we introduce

fallacies into our thinking. Korzybski's favorite example was the

matter of "space" and "time"; for in experience, we never

encounter "space" without "time" or "time" without "space," i.e..

a year measures the space the Earth moves around the sun, and

the space the Earth travels in one orbit gives us the time we call a

"year." The verbal separation of "space" and "time" became

such a problem in late 19th Century physics that paradoxes and

contradictions multiplied endlessly; and this was only resolved

when the genius of Einstein went back before the verbal categories,

realized we had created them, and started physics over

from the ground up on the simple existential fact that we never

encounter "space" or "time" separately but only the undifferentiated

"space-time continuum."

Applying this Einsteinian operational orientation to the UFO

problem, we observe that we never hear of a UFO without a

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human observer. In fact, even the UFOs "seen" on radar become

UFOs (unidentified, rather than identified, flying objects)

through processes of evaluation in the nervous system of the

radar operator.

It is, therefore, the Einsteinian and operational approach to

accept the seamless unity of UFO-observer and cease to separate

them into "UFO" and "observer."

The types of "critters" who appear in human-UFO experiences

include the following:

Black men, blue men, green men, black-faced men with green

bodies;

Fish-scaled men, hairy dwarfs, huge-headed bald dwarfs,

armless humanoids;

Dwarfs with three fingers, dwarfs with eight fingers, clawhanded

men, one-eyed men;

Elephant-eared men, long-haired sexless WoMen, man-apes,

man-birds;

Robots, beer-can shaped entities walking on fins, headless

things, dwarfs in Nazi uniforms;

Sinister "Greys" who engage in sexual and/or genetic tamperings

with humans.

This is only a partial zoology of the UFO experience.

The craft favored by this odd crew includes big blobs of light,

little blobs of light, clusters of lights, hard metallic ships, flatbottom

discs, conic discs, coin-like discs, domed discs, ovals,

spheres, spheroids, cigar-shaped craft, cubes, tetrahedrons, crescents,

"eggs," teardrop shapes, boomerangs. This is also a partial

list.

"We are being invaded by beings from dozens of galaxies,"

said Otto Binder, a believer in the extraterrestrial theory of

UFOs, when this list was shown to him.

One consistency does appear in this confusing picture: those

who have had Close Encounters show marked personality

change afterwards. At one extreme we find paranoid and

schizophrenic breakdowns or acute anxieties requiring hospitalization;

at the other, "illuminations" similar to those of Buddha,

Mohammed, Jesus, St. Paul. In the middle we find a great deal of

messianic fanaticism typical of vulgar religiosity everywhere.

Prometheus Rising 2/j

Other statistical clusterings can be found in the literature.

Blinding lights are very common—do we recall St. Paul and the

thousands at Fatima? And drumming and humming noises are

also common—as in shamanism everywhere, at Fatima, and

even in so sophisticated a brain-change system as Tibetan

Buddhism.

Let nobody underestimate this phenomenon just because it is

irrational. It is equally irrational for 900 people to drink cyanide

because a paranoid on pep-pills tells them to, and Nazism and

the Holy Inquisition were equally irrational. As Dr. Jacques

Vallee told the UN committee on UFOs,

It is the third aspect o/the UFO phenomenon which deserves

full attention... The third aspect is the social belief system

which has been generated by...the expectation of space

victors. This belief...is creating new religious, cultural and

political concepts of which social science has taken little

notice. [Italics in original.]1

Rationalism—a philosophy for which we have great sympathy,

as for a backward relative—wants to take UFO "observers"

by the collar, shake them vigorously and shout in their ears,

"Look you so and so. It never happened!—you got it, buddy?"

Well, maybe it didn't—and then again maybe it did. In either

case, UFO-observers are all better artists than they realize.

It should also be obvious that the Rationalist is a better artist

than he realizes. Amid millions of people who have or create

such experiences every day in every city on the planet, the

Rationalist has created a separate reality in which such things

never happen—to him.

Flying saucers and ESP (not to mention Fatima and its

"miracles") may seem far removed from Patty Hearst's

Dr. Carl Jung has compared the UFOs in general and Close Encounters

in particular with the "signs and wonders" that accompanied the

breakdown of Roman paganism and the rise of Christianity. It is

ironic to remember that the Rationalists of that time—the Stoics,

Epicureans and other heirs of the Greek philosophical-skeptical tradition

—regarded Christianity with as much contempt as the modern

Rationalist has for UFOs. They simply refused to look at what was

happening, until their society was overcome by the paradigm shift to

the new reality-tunnel.

214 Prometheus Rising

"decision" to become a bank-robber. We are trying to show that

there is an intimate connection between all the weirdities of

consciousness.

The process by which we construct a kitchen chair out of a

whirl of atomic energy is just as creative (artistic) as the processes

by which Patty Hearst turned her father from a beloved parent

into a Pig Imperialist.

Your whole world has been constructed that way. You are

"reconciled" to death because you have been told, all your life,

that everybody must die. Only the Extropian minority—which

can be found wherever scientists, science-fiction fans, Futurists

and space enthusiasts gather—is living in the separate reality that

claims we no longer have to accept this axiom of despair.

The revolutionaries of any decade will become the reactionaries

of the next decade, if they do not change their nervous

system, because the world around them is changing. He or she

who stands still in a moving, racing, accelerating age, moves

backwards relatively speaking. Thus, there are hundreds of

"Thanatological" seminars available in the once revolutionary

but now-reactionary Consciousness Movement. These seminars

are designed to reconcile people to death, and are about as reactionary

as seminars c. 1860 designed to reconcile Black people to

slavery.

Only one offshoot of the Consciousness Movement, the Theta

Seminars of Leonard Orr, are designed to prepare people for our

oncoming immortality.

EXERCIZES

1. Buy a copy of Christian Science Sentinel and read all the

faith healings reported that month. Note that each "miracle" is

attributed to the correct teaching as transmitted by Jesus Christ

and Mary Baker Eddy.

2. Buy a copy of The Peyote Cult by anthropologist Weston

LeBarre which attributes the same effects to auto-suggestion.

3. Read Brain/Mind Bulletin for any recent year, and observe

that similar healings are reported regularly and attributed to

endorphins in the brain.

4. Witnesses have testified that Jim Jones (like a few other

professional faith-healers) used skills part of the time, a shill

Prometheus Rising 2/5

being a person who pretends to be ill and pretends to be cured, in

order to get the audience in the right frame of mind. Re-read all

the miracles in the New Testament, using each of these filters:

Jesus had the correct teaching; Jesus was using auto-suggestion;

the sufferers' brains unleashed endorphins when Jesus gave them

positive auto-suggestion; Jesus was a con-man using shills.

Since you weren't there at the time, does your choice among

these theories, or your combination of them, tell more about

Jesus or more about your own favorite reality-tunnel?

5. Did you ever really give a good trial to our exercize, "I can

now exceed all of my previous hopes and ambitions?" Try it; and

at the same time, try, "I can be healthier than I have ever been

before."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE METAPROGRAMMING

CIRCUIT

Man is ignorant of the nature of his own being and powers, Even

his idea of his limitations is based on experience of the pad. There

is therefore no reason to assign theoretical limits to what he may

be, or what he may do.

— Aleister Crowley, Magick

2/7

According to Alfred Korzybski, any "idea" or mental state is a

brain circuit which the brain itself can contemplate, thereby

having an idea about the idea, or a mental state about the mental

state, etc. There is no theoretical or real limit to the higher-ordering

process; it is the "Infinity Within" of which mystics speak.

Dr. John Lilly says, "In the province of the mind what is

believed true is true or becomes true within limits to be learned

by experience and experiment. These limits are further beliefs to

be transcended. In the province of the mind there are no limits."

Mind and its contents are functionally identical: My wife

only exists, for me, in my mind. Not being a solipsist, I recognize

the converse: I only exist, for her, in her mind. Lest the reader

exclaim, like Byron of Wordworth, "I wish he would explain his

explanation!", let us try it this way: If I am so fortunate as to be

listening to the Hammerklavier sonata, the only correct answer,

if you ask me suddenly, "Who are you?" would be to hum the

Hammerklavier. For, with music of that quality, one is hypnotized

into rapt attention: there is no division between "me" and

"my experience."

In heavy meditation, when I think of me, I am me; when I

think of me and you, I am me and you; when I think of you

alone, I am not there anymore; when I think of God, I am God.

What I see with my eyes closed and with my eyes open is the

same stuff: brain circuitry.

Mathematician J.W. Dunne puts the matter in a parable. A

painter, who had escaped from the asylum to which he was

(justly or unjustly) confined, decided to paint the field in which

he found himself. Finished, he looked at the result and realized

that something was missing: namely, himself and his canvas,

which were part of the field. So he started over and painted

himself and his canvas in the field. But, examining the results

with philosophical analysis, he realized that something was still

missing: namely, himself and his canvas on which he was

painting himself and his canvas in the field. So he started a third

time.. .and a fourth....ad infinitum.

We think of the paintings of M.C. Escher at this point: Or we

recall the old folk-tale of the farmer who set out to market with

ten donkeys, on one of which he rode. After a while, he began to

wonder if any of the donkeys had strayed and he began counting

there seemed to be only nine. Disturbed, he dismounted and

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220 Prometheus Rising

walked around the herd, counting carefully—and there were ten

after all. So he remounted and went on riding, until worry beset

him again. So he counted another time.. .and there were nine. So,

once again, he dismounted and walked about counting carefully

to find ten. The process is repeated until he finally solves the

problem, carrying one donkey on his back and driving the other

nine before him.

The "disappearing donkey" trick is the epitome of ideas about

ideas about ideas, paintings of paintings of paintings, etc. The

disappearing donkey is a synecdoche of the meta-programming

circuit of the nervous system.

The meta-programming circuit—known as the "soul" in

Gnosticism, the "no-mind" (wu-hsin) in China, the White Light

of the Void in Tibetan Buddhism, Shiva-darshana in Hinduism,

the True Intellectual Center in Gurdjieff—simply represents the

brain becoming aware of itself. The artist seeing himself in his

painting, seeing himself seeing himself in his painting... In the

Zen metaphor, it is a mirror that reflects anything, but does not

hold onto anything. It is a conscious mirror that knows it can

always reflect something else by changing its angle of reflection.

This is analyzed mathematically in G. Spencer Brown's Laws

of Form; an analog, using not Brown's math but Godel's, and

employing illustrations from the music of Bach and the paintings

of Escher, is Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach.

Most of the occult literature of the world—aside from the

95% of it that is sheer rubbish—consists of tricks, gimmicks and

games (which the Hindus call upaya, "clever ways") to trigger

meta-programming consciousness. This generally means leading

the student "all around Robin Hood's barn" as many times as are

necessary, until the poor victim discovers that he has created the

barn himself.

For instance, a popular game with California occultists—I do

not know its inventor—involves a Magic Room, much like the

Pleasure Dome discussed earlier except that this Magic Room

contains an Omniscient Computer.

To play this game, you simply "astrally project" into the

Magic Room. Do not ask what "astral projection" means, and do

not assume it is metaphysical (and therefore either impossible, if

you are a materialist, or very difficult, if you are a mystic). Just

Prometheus Rising 221

assume this is a gedankenexperiment, a "mind game." Project

yourself, in imagination, into this Magic Room and visualize

vividly the Omniscient Computer, using the details you need to

make such a super-information-processor real to your fantasy.

You do not need any knowledge of programming to handle

this astral computer. It exists early in the next century; you are

getting to use it by a species of time-travel, if that metaphor is

amusing and helpful to you. It is so built that it responds immediately

to human brain-waves, "reading" them and decoding their

meaning. (Crude prototypes of such computers already exist.)

So, when you are in this magic room, you can ask this Computer

anything, just by thinking of what you want to know. It will read

your thought, and project into your brain, by a laser ray, the

correct answer.

There is one slight problem. The computer is very sensitive to

all brain-waves. If you have any doubts, it registers them as

negative commands, meaning "Do not answer my question." So,

the way to use it is to start simply, with "easy" questions. Ask it

to dig out of the archives the name of your second-grade teacher.

(Almost everybody remembers the name of their first grade

teacher—imprint vulnerability again—but that of the second

grade teacher tends to get lost.)

When the computer has dug out the name of your second

grade teacher, try it on a harder question, but not one that is too

hard. It is very easy to sabotage this machine, but you don't want

to sabotage it during these experiments. You want to see how

well it can be made to perform.

It is wise to ask only one question at a time, since it requires

concentration to keep this magic computer real on the field of

your perception. Do not exhaust your capacities for imagination

and visualization on your first trial runs.

After a few trivial experiments of the second-grade-teacher

variety, you can try more interesting programs. Take a person

toward whom you have negative feelings, such as anger, disappointment,

feeling-of-betrayal, jealousy or whatever interferes

with the smooth, tranquil operation of your own bio-computer.

Ask the Magic Computer to explain that other person to you; to

translate you into their reality-tunnel long enough for you to

222 Prometheus Rising

understand how events seem to them. Especially, ask how you

seem to them.

The Poet Prayed:

Oh would some power the giftie gie us

To see ourselves as others see us

This computer will do that job for you; but be prepared for

some shocks which might be disagreeable at first.

This super-brain can also perform exegesis on ideas that seem

obscure, paradoxical or enigmatic to us. For instance, early

experiments with this computer can very profitably turn on

asking it to explain some of the propositions in this book which

may seem inexplicable or perversely wrong-headed to you, such

as "We are all greater artists than we realize" or "What the

Thinker thinks, the Prover proves" or "mind and its contents are

functionally identical."

This computer is much more powerful and scientifically

advanced than the rapture-machine in the neurosomatic circuit. It

has total access to all the earlier, primitive circuits, and overrules

any of them. That is, if you put a meta-programming instruction

into this computer; it will relay it downward to the old circuits

and cancel contradictory programs left over from the past. For

instance, try feeding it on such meta-programming instructions

as:

1. I am at cause over my body.

2. I am at cause over my imagination.

3.1 am at cause over my future.

4. My mind abounds with beauty and power.

5.1 like people, and people like me.

Remember that this computer is only a few decades ahead of

present technology, so it cannot "understand" your commands if

you harbor any doubts about them. Doubts tell it not to perform.

Work always from what you can believe in, extending the area of

belief only as results encourage you to try for more dramatic

transformations of your past reality-tunnels.

This represents cybernetic consciousness; the programmer

becoming self-programmer, self-metaprogrammer, meta-metaprogrammer,

etc. Just as the emotional compulsions of the

second circuit seem primitive, mechanical and, ultimately, silly

Prometheus Rising 22 3

to the neurosomatic consciousness, so, too, the reality maps of

the third circuit become comic, relativistic, game-like to the

metaprogrammer.

"Whatever you say it is, it isn't, " Korzybski, the semanticist,

repeated endlessly in his seminars, trying to make clear that

third-circuit semantic maps are not the territories they represent;

that we can always make maps of our maps, revisions of our

revisions, meta-selves of our selves.

"Neti, neti" (not that, not that), Hindu teachers traditionally

say when asked what "God" is or what "Reality" is.

Yogis, mathematicians and musicians seem more inclined to

develop meta-programming consciousness than most of humanity.

Korzybski even claimed that the use of mathematical scripts

is an aid to developing this circuit, for as soon as you think of

your mind as mind1, and the mind which contemplates that mind

as mind2 and the mind which contemplates mind2 contemplating

mind1 as mind3, you are well on your way to meta-programming

awareness. Alice in Wonderland is a masterful guide to the metaprogramming

circuit (written by one of the founders of mathematical

logic) and Aleister Crowley soberly urged its study upon

all students of yoga.

R. Buckminster Fuller illustrates the meta-programming circuit,

in his lectures, by pointing out that we feel puny in comparison

to the size of the universe, but only our bodies (hardware)

are puny. Our minds, he says—by which he means our software

—contain the universe, by the act of comprehending it.

The seventh, meta-programming circuit is the most recent in

evolutionary time and seems to be located in the frontal lobes.

That is why the traditional Hindu exercize to activate it is to fix

the consciousness in the front of the forehead and hold it there,

hour after hour, day after day, year after year, until the metaprogrammer

awakes and you begin to perceive-create infinite realities

where before there was only one static jail-cell "reality" in

which you were trapped.

As said above, this circuit is the "soul" of the Gnostics, as

distinct from the self. The self seems to be fixed and firm, but is

not; that is, whatever circuit you are operating on at the moment

is your "self at that moment. If I point a gun at you, you go to

Circuit I consciousness at once, and that is your "self at that

224 Prometheus Rising

instant. But if you are sexually attracted to somebody, you go to

Circuit IV and that is your "self until you are orgasmically

satisfied (or hopelessly frustrated). Most of the preliminary exercizes

in Sufi and Gurdjieff schools consist in making you aware

that the "self is not constant but shifts back and forth between

the imprints on the various circuits.

The "soul" or Circuit VII is constant, because it is, as the

Chinese say, void or no-form. It plays all the roles you play—

oral dependent, emotional tyrant, cool rationalist, romantic

seducer, neurosomatic healer, neurogenetic Evolutionary Visionary

—but it is none of them. It is plastic. It is no-form, because it

is all forms. It is the "creative Void" of the Taoists.

If this begins to sound like nonsense, that is inevitable on this

level. As Lewis Morgan notes, in books on linguistics there

always comes a point at which the prose itself becomes wildly

incomprehensible, disintegrating into nonsense.

The same happens, Morgan notes, beyond a certain point in

modern mathematics:

Godel's Theorem was once explained to me by a patient, a

gentle mathematician, and just as I was taking it all in,

nodding appreciatively at'the beauty of the whole idea.. .it all

turned into nonsense inside my head.

It happens in both linguistics and mathematics, because it

happens in consciousness itself, language and math are just

models of consciousness.

"Mind" is a tool invented by the universe to see itself; but it

can never see all of itself, for much the same reason that you

can't see your own back (without mirrors). Or as Alan Watts

liked to say, because the tongue ultimately cannot taste the

tongue.

Ideas about ideas—mathematics about mathematics (Godel)

—language about language—consciousness of consciousness—

the whole seventh circuit brings us into what Hofstadter calls

Strange Loops. Like the legendary ko-ko bird, we follow our

own tail around in ever-narrowing circles, but unlike that mythic

bird we never complete the process by flying up our own

rectums and disappearing. It just seems like we're about to selfdestruct

in that colorful way, and we decide that what we have

been reading, or thinking, or perceiving, must be "nonsense."

Prometheus Rising 225

It is not nonsense. We are merely confronting infinity where

we least expected to encounter it—in our own lonely selves.

Physics joined linguistics, mathematics and psychology in this

mete programming hall of mirrors when Schrodinger demonstrated

that quantum events are not "objective" in the Newtonian

sense. For fifty years since then, physicists have been struggling

to build a system that will get them out of this Strange Loop. The

results have been as funny as a Zen koan.

For instance, Niels Bohr proposed the Copenhagen Interpretation,

which merely says, in the manner of Godel, that our

equations do not describe the universe really. They describe the

mental processes we have to put ourselves through to describe

the universe. True enough—and this whole book is a Copenhagen

Interpretation of psychology and owes everything to Dr.

Bohr, but we are still in a Strange Loop, and most physicists

want to get out.

Dr. John von Neumann proved that there was no way out.

This is technically known as Von Neumann's Catastrophe of the

Infinite Regress, and it merely shows that any device that will

get us out of the first Strange Loop (the Copenhagen collapse of

objectivity) will just lead us into a second Strange Loop; and any

way out of that will lead to an inexorable third Strange Loop;

and so on, forever.

Everybody is still trying to refute von Neumann; but nobody

has been successful.

"I can't get out—my horns won't fit through the door.

The meta-programming circuit is not a trap. As Joyce would

say, it only looks as like it as damn it. Simply accept that the

universe is so structured that it can see itself, and that this selfreflexive

arc is built into our frontal lobes, so that consciousness

contains an infinite regress, and all we can do is make models of

ourselves making models...

Well, at that point, the only thing to do is relax and enjoy the

show.

This is what the Hindus call Shiva-darshana, or the divine

dance. You are still in life, or life is in you, but since there are

infinite aspects to everything, especially to the "you" who is

observing/creating all these muddles and models, there are no

limits.

22(5 Prometheus Rising

The only sensible goal, then, is to try to build a reality-tunnel

for next week that is bigger, funnier, sexier, more optimistic and

generally less boring than any previous reality-tunnel.

And once you have built that bigger, funnier, happier universe

of thought, build a bigger and better one, for next month.

EXERCIZES

1. If all you can know is your own brain programs operating,

the whole universe you experience is inside your head. Try to

hold onto that model for at least an hour. Note how often you

relapse into feeling the universe as outside you.

2. Consider the belief system or reality-tunnel of an educated

reader 1200 years ago—in 797 AD. How much of that tunnel

still seems "Real"? How much in our reality-tunnel was unknown

or invisible then?

3. Consider the reality-tunnel of an educated person 1200

years from now—in 3197 AD. How much of our reality-tunnel

will still seem "Real"? How much of the 3197 AD reality-tunnel

is unknown or invisible to us?

4. Re-read Moses' encounter with I AM WHO I AM in

Deuteronomy. Try the theory that Moses was talking to his own

meta-programming circuit.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

DIFFERENT MODELS &

DIFFERENT MUDDLES

It1 is not just a riot of blots and blurs and disjointed jottings linked

by spurts of speed... it only looks as like it as damn it.

— James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

1 Presumably the input (software) or the brain (hardware). Or both.

227

"REALITY" IS THE TEMPORARY RESULTANT OF

CONTINUOUS STRUGGLES BETWEEN RIVAL GANGS

OF PROGRAMMERS.

And every moment is a new and shocking

Transvaluation of all we have ever been.

— T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

228

When a paradigm shift occurs—when we go from seeing things

one way to seeing them another way—the whole world is

remade. All that we "know" is what registers on our brains, so

what you perceive (your individual reality-tunnel) is made up of

nothing but thoughts—as Sir Humphrey Davy noted when selfexperimenting

with nitrous oxide in 1819, and as Buddha noticed

by sitting alone until all his social imprints atrophied and

dropped away.

The Copernican Revolution in astronomy, the Darwinian

revolution in biology, the Relativity and Quantum revolutions in

physics, have all been as shocking to those who lived through

them as the Immortalist Revolution is today.

You can live in the reality-tunnel imprinted upon you by

environmental accident or you can choose your own. You can go

through brain changes as radically bad as those of Patty Hearst

and Rusty Galley, as transcendentally beautiful as those of

Buddha and Jesus, as epistomologically revolutionary as those of

Darwin and Einstein.

You can join those who have already entered the Immortalist

Reality Tunnel, the Scientologist Reality-Tunnel or the Communist

Reality-Tunnel.

"There are a lot of different realities going around these

days," Abby Hoffman once said. Evolutionary acceleration is

forcing us to the point where each will have to take responsibility

for which reality we accept.

Fifteen million Americans are waiting, trustingly, for the

Space Brothers to come down in their UFOs and enforce World

Peace.

The UFO is the, or an, extreme case. In general, everything we

see is inside our heads.

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2JO Prometheus Rising

This is demonstrated by the well-known optical diagram

encountered in every high-school physics class:

The light rays from the external object are reflected through

the lens of the eye onto the retina, and reversed in the process.

The brain obligingly interprets the picture, turning it right-sideup,

and editing it in other ways more subtle.

What is true of vision is true of the other senses. What we

know is what registers on the brain. This is the answer to the

famous Zen Buddhist koan (riddle), "Who is the Divine Being

who makes the grass green?"

The brain, in the routine course of the before-mentioned

100,000,000 programs per minute, takes in, edits, orchestrates,

organizes, packages, labels etc. all raw "existential" experience

and classifies it according to the neurological Dewey Decimal

System. This system varies from society to society; hence,

cultural relativism—what is "real" to the Eskimo is not quite the

same as what is "real" to a New York taxi-driver.

To review: Each individual has a neurological system, or

game, different from other members of the same society. In

accord with Einstein's physical relativism, and anthropology's

cultural relativism, we call this neurological relativism.

The vegetarian does not "see" (experience) meat on a rack in

the butcher shop the same way the meat-eater sees it. The racist

does not see a member of another race as, say, that person's

parents do. More generally, as the Poet tells us: "The Fool sees

not the same tree that the Wise Man sees."

Among the many editorial tasks of the brain, performed so

rapidly and smoothly that we do not notice it, is the classification

of the separate quanta of perception into "inside" and "outside."

That this neat system does not accord with brute fact we learn

from optics and neurology; that it can be abolished entirely, with

Prometheus Rising 237

great profit in terms of insight, we learn from the type of metaprogramming

experience called dhyana in the Hindu and

Buddhist traditions.

Crowley says of the dhyana experience:

In the course of our concentration we noticed that the contents

of the mind at any moment consisted of two things, and no

more: the (external) Object, variable, and the (internal) Subject,

invariable, or apparently so. By success in dharana1 the

object has been made as invariable as the subject.

Now the result of this is that the two become one. This

phenomenon usually comes as a tremendous shock.

In our words, "mind" (whatever that is) and its contents are

functionally identical. The usual system of classifying the contents

as "me" (part of "mind") and not-"me" ("outside") can be

abolished—not just by meditation, but by certain well-known

drugs—and the unity of the field of perception is then recognized.

We become Metaprogrammers.

This is what we might expect from the triumphs of field

theory and general systems theory in sociology, anthropology,

quantum theory etc. It still comes as a distinct shock when it is

experienced not just talked about. When "I" and "my world"

(field of perception) become one, "I" am transformed utterly, as

in "in a refiners' fire," as the mystics say.

This sounds a bit puzzling to the average person without experience

in brain-change games. Try this illustration: Assuming

you are reading this in your own home, look around the room.

Note that everything in your field of vision—furniture, paintings

or posters on the walls, stereo set or absence of same, rugs, TV

or not TV, etc.—is, in a sense, your creation or co-creation. You

and/or your spouse or room-mates(s) selected everything that got

into the room. You also selected or co-selected that particular

room, out of the millions of rooms on this planet where you

might otherwise live. The tunnel-reality of that room, then, in a

very real sense has been "created" or "manifested" by you, out

of a universe of infinite possibilities.

Silent meditation on one object for many weeks, like the Zen monk

with the ox.

232 Prometheus Rising

Of course, only the most fanatic Freudian or Buddhist mystic

would claim your whole life history has been similarly

"selected" by you. But, stop and think a moment: the life-history

you think you have, the part that is stored in your brain as

"memory," has certainly been selected. You can't even remember

everything that happened in the last five minutes. If you try

to be inwardly silent (passive; non-verbal) and notice everything

happening in your field for one minute, you are overwhelmed by

thousands of impressions that you cannot catalog and retain.

Conclusion: who you are, and what you think you are, is a

creation edited and orchestrated by your brain.

Everybody you meet is an "artist" who has made a similar

creation.

And these creations are, all of them, as diverse and idiosyncratic

as the musical styles of Bach, Beethoven, Rock, Wagner,

Vivaldi, Bizet, Orff, Chopin, John Cage, Soul, the Beatles, Harry

James, Disco, Scotch folk-songs, African chants...

As for the universe "outside" you: of course, you didn't create

that. But just because you didn 't create it, you can never know

it...except approximately. What you do know, and consider "the

universe outside" is another, part of your brain, which has made

of its circuits a model which you identify with the universe

outside.

These models are as varied and miscellaneous as the paintings

of Botticelli, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Picasso, Paul Klee, Wyeth,

Dali, Monet...

This the meaning of the notion that mind and its contents are

functionally identical.

Consider the old folk-rhyme:

I saw a man upon the stair,

A little man who wasn't there.

He wasn't there again today;

Gee, I wish he'd go away.

This little man is a semantic spook; he exists only in the

language, and yet once the language has invoked him it almost

seems to make sense to wish he would go away.

Recent advances in semantics, semiotic, linguistic analysis,

foundations of mathematics, logic, etc. have demonstrated that

Prometheus Rising 233

our conceptual field—our symbolic environment—is haunted by

many such "spooks."

There are Empedoclean paradoxes, of which the classic is:

Theologians are vexed by questions like: Can an omnipotent

God create a rock so heavy He Himself cannot lift it? (If he

cannot, he is not omnipotent; and if he can, he is also not omnipotent.)

Philosophers and physicists are still bothered by: what

happened before Time began? Somebody is supposed to have

remarked, "I'm glad I don't like cauliflower, because if I liked it,

I'd eat it, and I hate the stuff." Alice in Wonderland, and any

treatise on mathematical logic, will provide hundreds of examples

of similar mind-benders.

A Zen saying sums it all up:

"To think that I am not going to think of you anymore is still

thinking of you. Let me then try not to think that I am not

going to think of you."

Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead attempted to

resolve all such conundrums with a mathematical proposition

known as the Theory of Types. Unfortunately, it was quickly

pointed out that either (a) the Theory of Types refers to itself, in

which case it limits itself by its own terms, and does not solve all

our semantic problems, or (b) the Theory of Types does not refer

to itself, in which case there are propositions to which it does not

refer, and it is again limited, and we are left with our problems.

These third-circuit perplexities are of more than technical

logical and philosophical import. Many situations in real life take

the form of our being haunted by our own semantic spooks. For

instance, the popular novel, Catch-22, deals with a very real

Empedoclean knot: the hero can escape from the war if he can

prove his is crazy, but if he attempts to do this it will prove he is

sane, since it is sane to escape a dangerous situation.

The logic of the dream-world of Finnegans Wake is not so far

from real life, either. A patient, of German birth, at St. Elizabeth's

hospital, would not walk through doors, explaining "Da

fressen mich die Turen." (The doors will eat me.) This makes

234 Prometheus Rising

perfect sense phonetically, since it is identical in pronunciation

with "Dafressen mich die Tieren. " (The animals will eat me).

Word-magic? Schizophrenia? The average person, not a vegetarian,

will respond positively to "tender juicy filet mignon" on

the menu; but not to "a piece off of a dead castrated bull." But

the two expressions mean the same thing.

We all tend to conjugate sentences in the manner caricatured

by Bertrand Russell: "I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pigheaded

fool." ("I am daring and original. You are pretentious.

She stinks." "I am flexible. You bend with the wind. They're a

bunch of opportunists.")

The magic of poetry creates "real toads in imaginary gardens,"

it has been said. When Robert Burns writes:

The wan moon is setting behind the white wave

And Time is setting with me, oh

it is hard not to feel that the abstraction "time" has become as

real as the physical moon and wave—or the little man upon the

stair.

Consider the following table:

Any phrase in column I can describe persons or events that

might very well be described, by a different speaker, with the

corresponding phrase in column II. Now the reader may feel that

some of the phrases above are so pejorative, so loaded with prejudice,

that only the most ignorant or bigoted would use them; but

that is irrelevant. What needs to be noted is that it is easy to see

the bias in somebody else's semantic maps, but not so easy to see

the bias in one's own semantic reality-tunnel. If the reader were

born in Arkansas in the 1920s, item 1 in Column I might seem

Prometheus Rising 235

the natural, accurate, normal way to refer to the first NAACP

worker to appear and try to organized the Blacks.

These matters are symbolic, but more than linguistic. For

example, the proverbial Englishman who dressed for dinner

every night in his lonely tropical hut was no fool. He was keeping

an English third-circuit reality bubble around him, to avoid

becoming engulfed in the reality-bubble of the natives. See what

happens to Kurz in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness when the

African reality-tunnel overwhelms his European reality-tunnel.

It only takes a few weeks in prison to become "a convict,"

whatever your definition of yourself was before, it only takes a

few weeks in the Army to become a "soldier."

These remarks are another elucidation of our earlier statement

that mind and its contents are functionally identical. The symbolizing

process is such that, once set in motion, it is virtually

impossible (without subtle neurological know-how) to escape

from a reality-tunnel one has created for oneself or had foisted

upon one by the environment.

Kurt Saxon is the author of The Poor Man's James Bond, a

manual that tells you everything you could ever want to know

about practical techniques of murder and mayhem, The Survivor,

a four-volume extension of the same libretto, telling where to

acquire any possible type of weapon, Root Rot, a diatribe against

Alex Haley for implying that slavery was unfair to Black people,

and several similar books. Mr. Saxon does not get reviewed in

the Liberal magazines that decide which authors are important,

but he has a wide readership among the Apocalyptical sects of

the right-wing end of the political spectrum.

Mr. Saxon wrote in the 1970s that the United States would be

destroyed almost totally by 1982. This is because the government

has driven the "competents" out of business by excessive

taxation and has subsidized 30 million "incompetents" on Welfare

and another 30 million "incompetents" on Social Security.

This country has thus become, Saxon says, "a Disneyland for

dummies."

By 1982, Saxon said, the whole economy would collapse.

"Millions of taxpayers will be unemployed... Millions who are

now on Valium or other tranquilizers will go insane when they

cannot get more. Drug addicts (will) swarm over pharmacies

236 Prometheus Rising

looking for dope, ruining everything they don't steal..." We will

be helpless against Russian attack because "our politicians have

so devoted themselves to nurturing...incompetent dependents

that further industrialization to put our nation on a war footing

will be unaffordable. Even if it were not, our present unionspoiled

and demanding work force cannot be expected to

perform the way our parents did in the war plants of the late

1930s and early 1940s." The only solution, Saxon informs us, is

to buy farms, order his books on how to kill people efficiently,

and stockpile every type of weaponry, to fight off the "drooling

imbeciles and parasites" who will flee the doomed cities and try

to steal your crops.

Mr. Saxon believed that these are objective predictions based

on hard "laws" of sociology and economics which he learned

from the writings of Ms. Ayn Rand. He did not believe that this

apocalyptical reality tunnel in which he lives is in any way an

artistic creation expressing his own emotional anxieties and

hostilities.

John White believes that the earth will shift on its axis some

time before 1999. There will be "massive loss of life" and civilization

will be almost totally destroyed. The only hope you

have, he says, is to retreat to a farm (a la Mr. Saxon) where you

will probably be wiped out anyway but have some advantage

over city-people in that you won't have tall buildings falling on

you when the Pole Shift sets off earthquakes everywhere.

Mr. White believes that these are objective predictions based

on eternal "laws" of karma which he learned from various

occultists and gurus. He does not believe that the apocalyptical

reality-tunnel in which he lives is in any way an artistic creation

expressing his own emotional anxieties and hostilities.

Mr. White also believes that many UFOs are actually demons,

and that after the Pole Shift kills us off, most of us will go to

"Hell," which is not eternal, fortunately, but only "timeless."

If we confront the world without ideas we see only a muddle,

the formless void that existed before "God" (intellect) started to

create a universe (a system) in Genesis.

Once we become the "image of God" by making our own

universe, we have a model of the muddle. The model is very

Prometheus Rising 237

convenient—we could not be human without it—but it is also

very misleading whenever we forget that we have created it.

None of the reality-models discussed in this chapter, however

bizarre they may seem to some readers, are any more arbitrary

than the official reality-model known as consensus-reality, which

is a statistical average and not nearly consensual as it seems.

Travel 100 miles in any direction, and the consensus begins to

crumble. Travel 1000 miles and very little consensus is left...

"The peoples of the earth are islands," said the late Clement

Atlee, "shouting at each other over oceans of misunderstanding."

Each island is a separate reality-tunnel created by (a) our culture,

(b) our sub-culture and (c) by the myth-maker or artist in each of

us who is the adamantine individuality that makes you and me

unique human selves not replicable units like the ants in a hive.

Robert Anton Wilson is the author of Cosmic Trigger, Schrodinger's

Cat, Sex & Drugs and several other books. Like Mr.

Saxon and Mr. White, Wilson does not get reviewed in the

Liberal magazines that decide which authors are important, but

he has a wide readership among science-fiction fans, political

Libertarians and veterans of the Consciousness Revolution.

Wilson believes that life extension techniques and intelligence

raising drugs will be discovered in this decade, and will be

widely available by 2010. Less radical than Dr. Silverstein,

Wilson does not expect immortality to be achieved until the

middle of the next century—but he expects life-extension drugs

will keep him around until then.

Wilson expects most of humanity will have migrated off

Earth into space cities by 2028. He expects that with higher

intelligence and longer lives than past humanity, these postterrestrials

will gradually become Superhuman by comparison

with our historical average.

Wilson believes that these are good guesses based on scientific

probabilities, but he does not think there are any hard

economic or karmic laws guaranteeing them. He recognizes that

this reality-tunnel was generated by his own brain, that he is the

artist who created it, and that it expresses his own hopes and

desires, as well as scientific probabilities. It is, he knows, the

reality-tunnel that keeps him happy, creative, busy and full of

zest for life.

Prometheus Rising

He doesn't think it is any crazier than anybody else's realitytunnel,

and he claims it is a lot more fun than any other.

EXERCIZES

1 . Using the four circuit model, try to guess which specific

imprints created Mr. Saxon's reality-tunnel.

2. Apply the same analysis to Mr. White and Mr. Wilson.

3. Apply the same analysis to Jesus, Hitler, Walt Whitman

and your own father and mother.

4. Write a criticism of this chapter from the viewpoint of

Christian Fundamentalism.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE SNAFU PRINCIPLE

...the peculiar nature of the game...makes it impossible for

[participants] to stop the game once it is under way. Such situations

we label games without end.

— Watzlawick, Beavin, Jackson,

Pragmatics of Human Communication

239

COMMUNICATION IS ONLY POSSIBLE BETWEEN EQUALS

DOMINANCE

"HERRENMORAL"

This is second-circuit neuro-politics.

They shall come to know good.—

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

240

Mammalian sociobiology, rooted in the antique neural circuits of

the old brain, contains many factors opposing the evolution of

domesticated primates into true freedom and objective intelligence.

The chief of these "reactionary" factors was described in my

novel Illuminatus! as the Snafu Principle or Celine's Law. It

holds that communication is only possible between equals.

This was an over-simplification for fictional (satirical) purposes.

More precisely, this proposed "law" would read:

Adequate communication flows freely between equals. Communication

between non-equals is warped and distorted by

second-circuit Domination and Submission rituals perpetuating

communication jam and a Game Without End.

Political power, as a typical alpha male once said, grows out

of the barrel of a gun. This is metaphorically as well as literally

true. The "gun" may be symbolic and fairly abstract, consisting

of ritualized social expectations ("Don't talk back to your

father") or concrete in a non-violent but deadly way, e.g., the

capacity to remove bio-survival necessities by cutting off the

ticket supply in a Capitalist society ("One more word and I'll fire

you, Bumstead!").

Under the primate second-circuit socio-biological rules,

everybody tends to lie a little, to flatter or to evade displeasure,

when exchanging signals with those above them in the packhierarchy.

Every authoritarian structure can be visualized as a pyramid

with an eye on the top. This is the typical flow-chart of any

government, any corporation, any Army, any bureaucracy, any

mammalian pack. On each rung, participants bear a burden of

nescience in relation to those above them. That is, they must be

very, very careful that the natural sensory activities of being

conscious organisms—the acts of seeing, hearing, smelling,

drawing inferences from perception, etc.—are in accord with the

reality-tunnel of those above them. This is absolutely vital; pack

status (and "job security") depends on it. It is much less

important—a luxury that can easily be discarded—that these

perceptions be in accord with objective fact.

For instance, in the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, the agent had

to develop a capacity to see godless communists everywhere.

Any agent whose perceptions indicated that there were actually

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242 Prometheus Rising

very few godless communists in this country at that time would

experience cognitive dissonance—his or her reality-tunnel was at

variance with the "official" reality-tunnel of the pyramid. To talk

about such perceptions at all would be to invite suspicions of

eccentricity, intellectual wiseacreing or of being oneself a

godless communist.

The same would apply to a Dominican inquisitor in the middle

ages who lacked the capacity to "see" witches everywhere. In

such authoritarian situations, it is important to see what the Top

Dogs (alpha males) see; it is inconvenient, and possibly dangerous

to see what is objectively happening.

But this leads to an equal and opposite burden of omniscience

upon those at the top, in the eye of the pyramid. All that is

forbidden to those at the bottom—the conscious activities of

perception and evaluation—is demanded of the Power Elite, the

master class. They must attempt to do the seeing, hearing,

smelling, etc. and all the thinking and evaluating for the whole

pyramid.

But a man with a gun (the power to punish) is told only what

the target thinks will not cause him to pull the trigger (write the

pink slip, order the court-martial). The elite, with their burden of

omniscience, face the underlings, with their burden of nescience,

and receive only the feedback consistent with their own preconceived

notions and reality-tunnels. The burden of omniscience

becomes, over time, another and more complex burden of

nescience. Nobody really knows anything anymore, or if they do,

they are careful to hide the fact. The burden of nescience

becomes omnipresent. More and more of sensory experience

becomes unspeakable.

As Paul Watzlawick notes, that which is objectively repressed

(unspeakable) soon becomes subjectively repressed (unthinkable).

Nobody likes to feel like a coward and a liar constantly. It

is easier to cease to notice where the official tunnel-reality

differs from existential fact. Thus SNAFU accelerates and rigiditus

bureaucraticus sets in—the last stage before all brain activity

ceases and the pyramid is clinically dead as an intellectual entity.

We also propose that "national security" is another semantic

spook, an Empedoclean knot; that the search for national security

Prometheus Rising 243

is the chief cause of national insecurity and a potent anti-intelligence

mechanism.

As Leary writes:

Secrecy is the original sin. Fig leaf in the Garden of Eden. The

basic crime against love... The purpose of life is to receive,

synthesize and transmit energy. Communication fusion is the

goal of life. Any star can tell you that. Communication is love.

Secrecy, withholding the signal, hoarding, hiding, covering up

the light is motivated by shame and fear.

As so often happens, the right wing is half right for the

wrong reasons. They say primly: if you have done nothing

wrong, you have no fear of being bugged. Exactly. But the

logic goes both ways. Then FBI files, CIA dossiers, White

House conversations should be open to all. Let everything

hang open. Let government be totally visible. The last, the

very last people to hide their actions should be the police and

the government.

What my eminent colleague states so poetically can be stated

more functionally as follows:

Every secret police agency must be monitored by an elite

corps or secret-police-of-the-second-order. This is because

(a) infiltration of the secret police, for purposes of subversion,

will always be a prime goal of both internal subversives and

hostile foreign powers and (b) secret police agencies acquire

fantastic capacities to blackmail and intimidate others, in and out

of government. Stalin executed three chiefs of the secret police

in a row because of this danger. As Nixon so wistfully said in a

Watergate transcript,

Well, Hoover performed. He would have fought. That was the

point. He would have defied a few people. He would have

scared them to death. He had a file on everybody. [Italics

added.]

Thus, those who employ secret police agencies must monitor

them, to be sure they are not acquiring too much power.

Here a sinister infinite regress enters the game. Any elite

second order police must be, also, subject to infiltration, or to

acquiring "too much power" in the opinion of its masters. And so

it, too, must be monitored, by a secret-police-of-the-third-order.

244 Prometheus Rising

In brief, once a government has n orders of secret police

spying on each other, all are potentially suspect, and to be safe, a

secret police of order n plus 1 must be created. And so on,

forever.

In practice, of course, this cannot regress to mathematical

infinity, but only to the point where every citizen is spying on

every other citizen or until the funding runs out.

National Security, in practice, must always fall short of the

logically Empedoclean infinite regress it requires for perfect

"security." In that gap between the ideal of "One Nation under

surveillance with wire taps and urine tests for all," and the

strictly limited real situation of finite resources and finite funding,

there is ample encouragement for paranoias of all sorts to

flourish, both among the citizens and among the police.

THE BURDEN OF OMNISCIENCE

or: Why you can't reach the Court

or the Castle in Kafka's allegories

Thus, the USSR after 62 years of Marxist secret police games

reached the point where the alpha males were terrified of painters

and poets.

Prometheus Rising 245

In spying-and-hiding transactions, worry leads to more worry

and suspicion leads to more suspicion. The very act of participating,

however unwillingly, in the secret police game—even as

victim, or citizen being monitored—will eventually produce all

the classic symptoms of clinical paranoia.

The agent knows who he is spying on, hut he never knows who

is spying on him. Could it be his wife, his mistress, his secretary,

the newsboy, the Good Humor man?

If there is a secret police at all, in any nation, every branch

and department of government, and institutions which are not

even admitted to be parts of government, becomes suspect in the

eves of cautious and intelligent people as a possible front for, or

tunnel to, the secret police. That is, the more shrewd will recognize

that something bearing the label of HEW or even International

Silicon and Pencil might actually be the CIA or NSA in

disguise.

In such a deception network, conspiracy theories proliferate.

Rumor is necessary, it has been found, when people cannot find

"official" news sources that can be trusted to tell them what is

really going on. The present author, having worked in the civil

rights movement, the anti-war movement, the legalize-pot

movement and other dissident causes, has repeatedly been

approached by friend A with dire warnings that friend B is

almost certainly a secret police agent, only to be told later and

independently by friend C that friend A is a secret police agent.

It requires delicate neurological know-how to keep one's sense

of humor in the secret police matrix.

The more omnipresent the secret police, the more likely it is

that intelligent men and women will regard the government with

fear and loathing.

The government, on discovering that growing numbers of

citizens regard it with fear and loathing, will increase the size

and powers of the secret police, to protect itself.

The infinite regress again appears.

246 Prometheus Rising

SUSPICION LEADS TO MORE SUSPICION

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The only alternative was suggested sarcastically by playwright

Bertolt Brecht (who was hounded by U.S. secret police as

a communist and by East German secret police, later, as not

sufficiently communist). "If the government doesn't trust the

people," Brecht asked innocently, "why doesn't it dissolve them

and elect a new people?" No way has yet been invented to elect a

new people, so the government will instead spy on the existing

people with increased vigor.

Every secret police organization is engaged in both the collection

of information and the production of misinformation, euphemistically

called "disinformation." That is, you score points in

the secret police game both by hoarding signals (information

units)—hiding facts from competitors—and by foisting false

signals (fake information units) on the other players. This creates

the situation I call Optimum SNAFU, in which every player has

rational (not neurotic) reasons for suspecting that each and all

may be trying to deceive him, gull him, con him, dupe him and

generally misinform him. As Henry Kissinger is alleged to have

said, anybody in Washington who isn't paranoid must be crazy.

Maybe the UFOs really exist objectively—or maybe the

whole UFO phenomenon is a cover for a secret police disinformation

ploy. Maybe there are Black Holes where space and time

implode—or maybe Black Holes were invented to befuddle

Russian scientists and send them into "little man who wasn't

there" semantic spookery. Maybe Jimmy Carter really exists—or

maybe he is, as National Lampoon once claimed, an actor named

Sidney Goldfarb trained to project an attractive down-home

"image." Perhaps only three alpha males at the top of the

National Security pyramid really know the answers to these

questions—or perhaps these three are being deceived by certain

subordinates, as Lyndon Johnson was deceived about Vietnam

by the CIA.

Such is the neuro-sociological "logic" of a Disinformation

Matrix. It is, as Paul Watzlawik has demonstrated, the logic of

schizophrenia.

Less than ten years after the secret police game was established

here by the National Security Act of 1948, the books of

Dr. Wilhelm Reich were burned in a New York incinerator by

government order. This was a shocking sight to some of us, who

248 Prometheus Rising

remembered that we had recently fought a long war against Nazi

Germany for, among other things, their crime "against civilization"

of burning books. Shortly thereafter, Dr. William Ivy,

former head of a department at Chicago Medical School, was

subjected to ten years of legal harassment for espousing a radical

cancer cure. More recently, Dr. Timothy Leary was sentenced to

38 years imprisonment for espousing controversial ideas about

neurotransmitter chemicals and reimprinting the nervous system.

Now there is a war on against holistic physicians.

It does not matter whether any or all of these "heretics" were

right or wrong. Scientific truth is only determined after a generation

or more of research; it is not determined by throwing the

dissenters in prison or burning their books. The point is that the

secret police game immediately creates the social context for a

return to the mechanisms of the Holy Inquisition.

The intelligence of the whole society—the communication

networks through which information is received, decoded and

transmitted—is the first casualty.

"I feel great and I send fraternal greetings to Dr. Andrei

Sakharov in Russia," said Dr. Leary on emerging from prison,

registering the fact that the mechanisms of the police state are the

same everywhere, as are the myths that protect them. "Good

Russians" believed Dr. Sakharov was a half-crazed alcoholic,

just as "Good Americans" believed Dr. Leary was a half-crazed

dope-fiend.

I once proposed in a magazine article that the UFO is caused

by some unusual electromagnetic or gravitational field fluctuation;

and that this geophysical anomaly creates (a) real energy

disturbances—jumping furniture, electrical failures, ball-lightning

making odd lights in the sky, etc. and (b) disturbance in the

brain functioning of animals and humans in the afflicted area,

causing the well-documented animal panics and the rather obvious

human hallucinations occurring in such areas.

Statistical support for this theory will be found in Persinger

and Lafreniere who have run computer-analyses of common

patterns in 1,242 UFO cases and 4,818 other "abnormal" reports

—"poltergeists," "teleportations," "miracles" and "mysteries" of

all sorts. This data demonstrates that both UFOs and other

energy anomalies tend to cluster along earthquake faults with

Prometheus Rising 249

some peaking before earthquakes. Persinger and Lafreniere also

suggest that the geophysical forces at work create both real

oddities (jumping furniture, etc.) and hallucinations, so that it is a

job of nice and exquisite discrimination to attempt to find out

what was really going on.

It has also been proposed, by the learned Dr. Jacques Vallee,

astronomer, cyberneticist and physicist, that the UFO phenomenon

is being created by a secret police agency as an elaborate

"cover" for a complex disinformation system.

A combined Wilson-Persinger-Lafreniere-Vallee theory,

probably fitting more of the data than the separate theories,

would suggest that the UFO phenomenon is the synergetic product

of some geophysical oddity which created weird energy fluctuations

and brain-change experiences in humans on the scene,

and is being manipulated after the fact by one or more

"intelligence" agencies, or by groups even more esoteric.

Consider this scenario:

Something weird happens. Assume that it is the geophysical

abnormality and brain-change trauma we posit, but grant also

that it might be the alien spaceship beloved by folk-myth. The

following events are equally likely, whatever the weirdity "really

was."

As soon as the witnesses start talking, All Interested Parties

converge on the area. Intelligence Agent Moe comes to conceal

evidence that it might have been a spaceship—that is the policy

of his agency, for their own reasons. Intelligence Agent Joe also

arrives to plant evidence that it was a spaceship—that is the

policy of his agency, since they are doing just what Dr. Vallee

suspects. (The British Double Cross Bureau, in World War II,

engaged in equally complex and absurdist dramas, seemingly

totally unrelated to their actual work, but serving as disinformation

screens for that work.) Philip Klass and other Skeptics

arrive, too, trying to reduce everything to "hallucination," even if

eyes are burned, cars wrecked, etc. The Space Freaks, who may

or may not be infiltrated by associates of Intelligence Agent Joe,

are soon there, too, to get the facts to fit their Benign Space

Brothers reality-tunnel. Various occultists are there, too, to fit it

all into their own mythos of angelology, demonology, etc.

250 Prometheus Rising

What we are saying is that every conspiracy regards itself as

an affinity group—men and women who share the same goals

and work together well. When you and I do it, it is just an affinity

group. When that gang over there does it, it is a damnable

conspiracy.

True conspiracy does exist when a group conceals evidence,

spreads deliberate misinformation and coerces or terrorizes witnesses.

Any affinity group approaches such behavior to the

extent that members reinforce each other's participation in the

group reality-tunnel, especially concerning such crucial epistemological

matters as what is important enough to notice and

discuss as against what is trivial and better ignored. How coercive

do we have to be to intimidate witnesses? Most people, as

our Snafu Principle explains, are easily led to reporting what an

Authority Figure wants to hear.

But let us consider the UFO syndrome further, as illustrating

the whole spectrum of brain-change, and brain-programming.

UFO contactees frequently show positive neurosomatic turn

on, the bliss-out experience; some even become faith-healers or

leaders of occultist groups. Others show negative neurosomatic

effects—light is unbearable, 'as in schizophrenia, anxiety attacks

may require hospitalization, etc.

Meta-programming consciousness (the ability to choose

between alternative reality-tunnels) is also reported, in crude

metaphors about "parallel universes," "other realities," occultish

jargon.

Neurogenetic (Jungian "collective unconscious") visions are

common, ranging from demons, hairy dwarfs etc. to the Space

Goddess or Lady of the Stars of ancient and Catholic iconography.

Even meta-physiological (quantum-level) experience is

reported in the UFO literature, ranging from trans-time trips and

"out-of-body experiences" to seeming, or alleged, teleportations.

It must be emphasized most strongly that both positive and

negative visions on all these circuits are common in UFOlogy. It

seems that if the Programmers mean us well, they are accidentally

doing ill to many: and if they mean us ill, as Dr. Vallee

thinks, they are accidentally doing well to some of us. But this is

true of all brain-change technology.

Prometheus Rising 251

It seems that Vallee's monistic conspiracy theory is inadequate,

as monistic conspiracy theories are inadequate in politics.

It is more likely that the UFO experience, like the other brainchange

experiences we have studied, are sometimes spontaneous

and sometimes programmed; and that there are rival gangs of

programmers with radically different goals in mind for

humanity.

When Dr. Leary and I first published a neurological analysis

of the Patty Hearst case in OUI magazine, the editors introduced

it with a dramatic headline:

The fight for Patty Hearst's mind is the overture to a worldwide

battle for the control of consciousness.

Not quite. The Hearst case would more appropriately be considered

a bar near the end of the second movement of the Mind

War symphony. The first movement was the primitive neuroscience

of ancient and medieval tyrants who acquired a great

deal of pragmatic know-how about the effects of isolation, terror

and intimidation; and of shamans and occultists who learned how

neuro-chemicals can alter perceived reality-tunnels. The second

movement began with modern psychology, with Freud, Pavlov,

Jung, Skinner etc., climaxing with the LSD revolution and the

discovery by millions that reality-tunnels could be radically

mutated—temporarily and sometimes permanently—by neurochemistry.

The third movement is the growingly obvious warfare

between those who would program all of us, and those of us who

wish to become our own Metaprogrammers.

EXERCIZES

1. Start collecting evidence that your phone is bugged.

2. Everybody gets a letter occasionally that is slightly damaged.

Assume that somebody is opening your mail and clumsily

resealing it.

3. Look around for evidence that your co-workers or neighbors

think you're a bit queer and are planning to have you

committed to a mental hospital.

4. Try living a whole week with the program, "Everybody

likes me and tries to help me achieve all of my goals."

252 Prometheus Rising

5. Try living a whole month with the program, "I have chosen

to be aware of this particular reality."

6. Try living a day with the program "I am God playing at

being a human being. I created every reality I notice." Assume

that "GOD" is the answer to Da Free John's question, "Who is

the one who is living you now?"

7. Try living forever with the metaprogram, "Everything

works out more perfectly than I plan it."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

QUANTUM EVOLUTION

What is man? A bridge between the ape and the Superman—a

bridge over an abyss.

— F.W. Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

253

Another perspective on domesticated primate evolution is provided

by Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave.

For convenience Toffler reduces the muddle of human history

into a model of three waves. It would be more accurate to refer

to these "waves" as quantum jumps in energy-coherence level.

The First Wave, Toffler says, took millennia to occur, but it

finally transformed the larger part of humanity from the tribal

stage (simple hunting-gathering primates) to the stage of largescale

agricultural-feudal civilizations.

The Second Wave came much faster and, in a few centuries,

transformed almost all of humanity from feudal-agricultural

cottage economy to industrial-urban-market economy.

The Third Wave, Toffler says, continues the trend toward

acceleration and will happen in only a few decades. We call it

"the information explosion," "the post industrial economy," etc.

Each wave is faster, by a factor of 10, than the previous wave.

And each wave is more total in that it changes more people,

changes them more completely, and in the process transforms

our concept of human nature and human society.

Each wave that Toffler describes can be considered a new

quantum state, with energy levels and reality-dimensions lacking

in the previous state and totally unpredictable from the previous

state.

The First Wave mutated tribal men and women into serfs (or

into Lords and Ladies). It created a whole new social manifold

that is so subtle and pervasive that anthropologists and sociologists

can spend years studying its invisible aspects. And yet this

transformation is so enormous that it is also visible to the most

untrained eyes: you can't confuse a tribal human with a feudal

human anymore than you can confuse a dog with a donkey.

So, too, the Second Wave created what Toffler wittily calls

"indust-reality," manifesting as industrial men and women who

are visibly, tangibly, as different from feudal or tribal humans as

dolphins are from rose bushes or armadillos.

The Third Wave, which began when Shannon and Wiener

defined information and Von Neumann designed the first programmable

computer, is well under way already. Home computers

became as common as TV sets by the mid-1980s. Now the

Net—computers "talking to" computers—is doubling every four

months. This transformation, again, will be total: it will create a

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256 Prometheus Rising

whole new "man," a new "woman," a new "child," a new "self,"

new "society," a new concept of "work" and "energy" and

"reality," etc.

The average Man or Woman of 1997 will be as obsolete in

2007 as the medieval serf is now. What we consider normal jobs,

normal social roles; normal "humanity" will be as archaic as a

horde of alchemists, smithies, Town Criers, courtiers and barbersurgeons

arriving in our midst today.

Of course, Toffler does not claim that the computer is the

whole of the Third Wave, but merely that it is the synecdoche or

paradigm of what is happening. In this sense, the factory was the

synecdoche of the Second Wave. It was not merely the agent by

which "indust-reality" spread across the world and multiplied

our collective wealth (and illth); it also became the model for

everything else. Our schools are mini-factories or models of

factories because their main job was, when they were founded, to

prepare people for factory work. The schools, in fact, were

necessary because, while feudalism does not require literacy of

the masses, industrialism does. Similarly, offices were modeled

on factories, and kept factory-hours, even when this had little or

nothing to do with how ,.the offices could most efficiently be

managed. And in general, "indust-reality," the reality of the

industrial age, moved everybody into the robot lockstep of the

factory system.l

"Indust-reality" is still so pervasive that it is, as McLuhan

noted, mostly invisible. For instance, the feudal age never

progressed beyond chamber music—trios, quartets etc. The

modern symphony, with its huge orchestra, its Promethean

themes, its god-like conductor ("capitalist"), its concert-master

(foreman), its string section moving in harmony with its brass

section, etc. is a beautiful artistic expression of modes of mass

A free-lance writer can obviously work any hours, but the very

successful (and very excellent) John D. MacDonald said in a recent

interview that he always writes from nine to five, because it seems

"natural" to him. The factory time-clock has gotten into Mac-

Donald's neurons. The present author, after 20 years in factory-like

offices works any hours of the day or night when "the spirit" moves

him, but never starts at nine or stops at five, to avoid relapsing into

the habits of his past.

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human organization appearing usually in less beautiful forms in

the factory assembly-line. (The factory also demanded cities—

massive concentrations of labor in one place—which made the

symphony economically possible. The aristocrat could not

afford, and/or could not conceive, keeping more than the very

few musicians necessary for chamber music.)

Beethoven's "cosmic optimism" not only expresses the Age

of Reason out of which indust-reality emerged; the very

orchestras he wrote for were paradigms of industrial styles of

organization.

Of course, industrialism (the Second Wave) produced much

illth along with its new wealth; and most of the wealth was extor

appropriated by a minority. However much this may pain

socialists, it was inevitable in a domesticated primate species. A

few alpha males can always see their own advantage more

clearly than the majority can see their collective interest.

Nonetheless, as indust-reality has spread, socialism has

followed in its wake. Whether the reader likes this or not (and

the author, being up-front about his prejudices, admits that he

does not like it), this also is inevitable. When huge wealth is

palpably being created in vaster accumulations than ever before

in history, there is sure to be increased grumbling against the

alpha males, and more attempts to seize what they have selfishly

ap- (or expropriated. Even among baboons this pattern has

been observed: the alpha male who is too obnoxious gets beaten

up by a coalition of younger males and thrown out of the pack to

forage alone.

Neither capitalist indust-reality nor socialist indust-reality

have been able to give humanity what most of us really want:

liberty and justice, freedom and the abolition of poverty, continued

growth and continued security. In looking at capitalism vs.

socialism, we are always confronted with a dilemma, not a

choice.

The Third Wave can, and will, transcend this problem within

industrialism. The Third Wave will be neither capitalist nor

socialist, nor some milkwater blend of the two. It will demand a

whole new economy, just as feudalism created an economy

unknown to tribal humanity and industrialism created the two

competing economies of capitalism and socialism, both

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unguessed and unpredictable from the perspective of the feudal

stage.

In 1977, Dr. Ilya Prigogine won the Nobel prize in physical

chemistry.

Perhaps he should have won a Nobel prize for intelligent

optimism.

Dr. Prigogine 's work deals with the processes we have been

discussing — the emergence of negative entropy (coherent order)

out of stochastic processes — but he has taken a giant leap beyond

the pioneering insights of Schrodinger, Weiner, Shannon and

Bateson.

Any organized system, according to Prigogine, exists in

dynamic tension between entropy and negentropy, between

chaos and information. The more complex the system, the

greater is its instability. Prigogine demonstrated this mathematically,

but in everyday terms, what he means is that, for instance,

it is easier to lead two children through a department store than

twenty children. Or: A toothpick "house" of 101 pieces is less

stable than a smaller toothpick "house" of 10 pieces.

Instability is not always bad: in fact, it is absolutely necessary

for evolution to occur. Inse'ct societies are highly stable and have

not evolved at all in several million years. Human societies are

highly unstable and are in continuous evolution.

Prigogine demonstrates the evolutionary value of instability

by his concept of the " dissipative structure. "

A dissipative structure is highly complex and therefore highly

unstable. The more complex it is, the more unstable it is, mathematically,

certain/v; and the more unstable, the more likely it is

to change — to evolve.

All dissipative structures are teetering, perpetually, between

self-destruction and re-organization on a higher level of information

(coherence).

If that sounds grim, it isn't really. Prigogine's math is highly

optimistic, He shows that the more complex structures — such as

our world-round human society today, midway between Second

Wave indust-reality and the emerging Third Wave — are mathematically

more likely, much more likely, to "dissipate" into

higher coherence than into self-destruction.

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In other words, in the intellectual conflict between Utopians

and Dystopians, the mathematical odds actually are on the side

of Utopians. Our human world is so information-rich (coherent)

that it is almost certain to "collapse" into even higher coherence,

not into chaos and self-destruction.

Prigogine is the mathematical demonstration of McLuhan's

intuition that many seeming symptoms of breakdown are actually

harbingers of breakthrough.

A note to confirmed pessimists: Prigogine's analysis is based

on probability-theory and, hence, is not certain. Thus, if you

have found these lyrical pages unduly alarming, take comfort in

the thought that, although human success is highly probable,

there is still a small chance that we can blow ourselves up or that

your favorite apocalyptic scenarios might still occur, despite the

general trend toward higher coherence and higher intelligence.

Meanwhile, of course, even if humanity seems condemned to

overall success, you can still mess up your personal life. Nothing

in this book is an attempt to prevent the really resolute miseryaddicts

from continuing their pursuit of frustration and failure.

The latest cosmological evidence indicates that our sun and its

planets, including Earth, condensed out of a cloud of galactic

dust and gas about five or six billion years ago.

It appears that the first forms of unicellular life—the first

dawnings of Circuit I bio-survival "consciousness"—appeared

about 3.4 billion years ago.

Vertebrates began to appear—with Circuit II emotional-territorial

consciousness—about 0.5 billion years ago (500 million

years ago).

The emergence of Circuit III human intelligence—language

and "thought"—seems to have begun about 100,000 years ago.

The fully human domesticated primate, Homo Sapiens, with

Circuit IV "moral" consciousness may be about 30 thousand

years old, or even more recent. Circuits V-VIII have appeared

within historical times.

All of these figures are subject to revision as science advances,

but the rough proportions between them are not likely to

be changed much, and these proportions are staggering.

As has often been pointed out, if we condense this evolutionary

scenario into a 24-hour day, beginning at midnight, life itself

26o Prometheus Rising

does not appear until a little before noon, and all of human

history (from the grunting, club-wielding ape men of Africa to

Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon) occurs in the last half

of the last second before midnight strikes again and the day ends.

This model is misleading in that it assumes the present is an

"end," which is highly unlikely. Even without Space Migration,

the life span of earth's biosphere is expected to be somewhere

between 10 and 15 billion years more, before the Sun ceases to

support life here. Taking the Sun's expected life span of about 20

billion years as our model to be mapped onto a single day, we

find that it's now around eight in the morning. Life has been

mostly unconscious until now—operating on auto-pilot, as it

were—but in the last million years (the last few seconds on this

model) signs of consciousness and Awakening are beginning to

appear.

"The universe is so constructed as to be able to see itself,"

Spencer Brown once noted. The emergence of the neurosomatic,

neurogenetic and meta-programming circuits is the universe's

way of "seeing itself ever more clearly and totally, to decide

where it is going.

Dr. Isaac Asimov notes1 in his Genetic Code that there seems

to be a 60-year cycle between the first understanding of a new

scientific principle and the transformation of the world by that

principle.

For instance, Oersted discovered electromagnetic equivalence

—the fact that electricity can be converted to magnetism,

and magnetism to electricity—in 1820. Sixty years later, in 1880,

electrical generators were in wide use and the Industrial Revolution

had peaked; the telegraph and telephone were already

invented, and our age of Mass Communication was dawning.

Similarly, in 1883, Thomas Edison first noted the so-called

"Edison effect"—the key to electronic, as distinct from electrical,

engineering. 60 years later, in 1943, electronic technology

was appearing everywhere; its primitive form in the entertainment

sphere, radio, had enjoyed a 20-year triumph and was about

to be phased out by television.

In 1896, Becquerel noted the radioactivity of uranium. Sixty

years later, two cities had been destroyed by atomic bombs and

Prometheus Rising 261

nuclear plants were beginning to be built. (This was a contribution

to illth, not wealth.)

In 1903, the Wright Brothers got their monoplane off the

ground for a few minutes. Sixty years later, in 1963, jetliners

carrying over 100 passengers were normal.

Assuming, gambling, guesstimating that this 60-year cycle is

normal, we can predict:

Shannon and Weiner created the mathematical foundations of

cybernetics in 1948. Sixty years later, in 2008, cybernetization of

the world, as complete as the electrification of the 19th Century,

will have jumped us to a new energy-level, a new social reality,

as Toffler predicts.

Hoffman discovered LSD and the chemical control of consciousness

in 1943. Sixty years later, in 2003, every alteration in

consciousness imaginable will be possible by ingesting the

proper chemicals.

McKay had the first success in expanding life-span of laboratory

rats in 1938. Sixty years later, in 1998, longevity pills may

be routinely available in all drugstores.

DNA was identified in 1944. Sixty years later, in 2004, every

type of genetic engineering should be as routine as electronic

engineering is today.

The latest attempt to estimate the rate of information acceleration

—the manifestation of coherence—was made by French

economist Georges Anderla for the Organization for Economic

Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 1973.

Anderla arbitrarily assumed that all the bits of information

possessed by humanity at the beginning of the Christian Era

(1 AD) could be considered his unit of measurement. He made

that information pool one unit in our fund of knowledge.

It took until 1500 AD, Anderla discovered, for the accumulation

of bits of information to add up to two units in our "fund."

It required only 250 years more (to 1750) for our bank of

knowledge to double again, to four units.

The next doubling took 150 years and by 1900 humanity had

8 units in its information capital account.

The next doubling took only 50 years and by 1950 we had 16

units.

262 Prometheus Rising

The next doubling took only 10 years and by 1960 we had 32

units.

The next doubling took seven years and by 1967 we had 64

units. (This was coincidentally the height of the first Youth

Revolution, when reality maps began breaking down everywhere

on the planet and wild new maps were hurtling at us from all

directions.)

In the next six year period (1967-1973), our intellectual bank

account again doubled, to 128 units. At this point, Anderla completed

his study.

Dr. Alvin Silverstein has estimated that, if Anderla's graph is

projected ahead seventy years human knowledge should increase

a million/old. That is, we should have 128,000,000 times more

knowledge than we had in the year of Jesus' birth.

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Longevity drugs will probably arrive in time for you to live

through the biggest evolutionary quantum jump of all.

It is only reasonable to assume that the higher circuits of the

nervous system—neurosomatic holistic awareness, neurogenetic

evolutionary vision, meta-programming flexibility—are developing

to allow us to cope with this deluge of higher information

and potential higher coherence.

Toffler's Third Wave is only the sociological aspect of a

mutation that is also biological and "spiritual."

We are going to live a lot longer than we have expected, and

we are going to get a lot smarter.

A whole new reality will emerge from those mutations.

EXERCIZES

1. Make a list of ten areas in which your thinking-feeling is

conservative. Guess how soon the world will change so totally

that those ideas will seem not merely conservative but irrelevant

(as the theological debates of 300 AD now seem irrelevant).

2. Make a list of ten areas in which your conceptualizing is

radical. Guess how soon the world will change so totally that you

will seem conservative in those areas.

3. Accept the longevity hypothesis. Imagine you are going to

live at least 300 years. How much of that time do you want to

spend loafing? How many different jobs would you like to work

at? How many sports, arts or sciences you never had time for,

would you then find the time to enjoy?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE NON-LOCAL

QUANTUM CIRCUIT

The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr. Deasy said. All

history moves toward one great goal, the manifestation of God.

— James Joyce, Ulysses

265

A domesticated primate philosopher on an oxygen-supported

carbon based planet circling a Type G star—namely, the present

author—was once asked, "How do we think?"

"Well, we have a built-in bio-survival circuit which distinguishes

nourishment-giving Things from predatory Things..."

"But can that circuit do all our thinking?"

"Well, no, but then there's an emotional-territorial circuit..."

"But, but, but—"

"It's circuits-circuits-circuits all the way," I said.

What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves.

We have made a beautiful (we hope beautiful) model of

consciousness in terms of brain hardware and software. Now we

need to remember again that, while the brain can be modeled by

a computer, the model is never the whole system. The modelmaker

or metaprogrammer is bigger than the model or program.

In what are called "out of body experiences" (OOBEs) by

parapsychologists, awareness seems to escape the confines of the

nervous system entirely.

Such experiences are routinely triggered by advanced yoga

practice, and they also occur spontaneously during what is called

"near-death" or "clinical death" in which the patient appears to

die, by all medical standards, but is revived by modern resuscitation

techniques.

OOBEs also occur with heavy does of LSD and with ketamine,

an anesthetic with strange psychedelic side-effects. They

are also reported in shamanic traditions all over the world and by

many "occultists" in our own society.

Example: One day in 1973, during a neuro-programming

experiment, I "saw" something happening to my son at exactly

that time in Arizona, over 500 miles away.

We can process this datum in various ways. We can say that

my "astral body" actually traveled to Arizona; this is the occultist

theory. We can more conservatively say that I developed extrasensory

perception and "saw" Arizona without "going" there;

there are many parapsychologists who prefer this third-circuit

map of the Sth-Circuit experience. We can try to aver that I only

"happened" to think of that scene while it was happening, by

synchronicity; this is the Jungian approach. Or we can sweep it

under the carpet by muttering "mere coincidence" or "sheer

coincidence;" which is the traditional Rationalist approach.

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268 Prometheus Rising

We prefer to say, in accord with earlier writings of Timothy

Leary and the present author and the speculations of the Physics/

Consciousness Research Group in San Francisco that such cases

illustrate a special working of what is called in quantum mechanics

Bell's Theorem.

Bell's Theorem is highly technical, but in ordinary language it

amounts to something like this: There are no isolated systems:

every particle in the universe is in "instantaneous" (faster-thanlight)

communication with every other particle. The Whole

System, even the parts that are separated by cosmic distances,

functions as a Whole System.

Now, such faster-than-light communication seems to be

forbidden by Special Relativity, which makes a problem. Bell's

Theorem, however, is inescapable: a theorem in physics is not a

mere "theory"; it is a mathematical demonstration which must be

true, if the mathematics contains no flaw, and if the experiments

on which it is based are replicable. Bell's Theorem contains no

mathematical flaw, and the experiments are replicable and have

been replicated several times.

And yet we cannot dispense with Special Relativity either,

because the mathematics there is equally flawless and the experiments

are legion that confirm it.

Two solutions have been proposed and both assume that the

"communication" involved in Bellian transmissions does not

involve energy, since it is energy that cannot move faster than

light. Dr. Edward Harris Walker suggests that what does move

faster than light, and holds the Whole System together, is "consciousness."

We may eventually be forced to accept this, in

which case physics will have justified pantheism or at least panpsychism.

The other alternative, proposed by Dr. Jack Sarfatti, is

that the medium of Bellian transmissions is information.

Pure information, in the mathematical sense, does not require

energy; it is that which orders energy. It is the negative of

entropy, that which brings disorder to energy systems.

Dr. Sarfatti explains his theory as follows:

Imagine that your brain is a computer, as modern neurology

suggests. Now imagine that the whole universe is a big computer,

a mega-computer, as John Lilly has proposed. Then

imagine that the sub-quantum realm, the realm of what Dr.

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David Bohm calls 'hidden variables' is made up of mini-minicomputers.

Now, the hardware of each 'computer'—the universe,

your brain, the sub-quantum mechanisms—is localized.

Each part of it is somewhere in spacetime, here not there, now

not then. But the software—the information—is non-local. It

is here, there and everywhere; now, then and everywhen.

The highest varieties of shamanic and yogic consciousness

seem to begin from dilation beyond the immediate ("out-ofbody-

experience") and dilate, rapidly and dizzily, much further,

to union with the smallest and the largest—the "Cosmic Mind"

in short. This seems to be what would necessarily happen if the

brain turned on to the non-local information system proposed by

Sarfatti and implicit in Bell's Theorem.

The meta-physiological circuit, then, is this cosmic Information

System. The synchronicities of circuits V to VII are just the

dawning notes of the symphony of all inter-related harmonies

revealed to those who have experienced Circuit VIII in action. It

is hard to avoid hyperbole when talking of such matters, but

everything one can associate with the idea of Oneness With

God—or Oneness with "Everything"—is part of what is experienced

in the vistas, beyond space-time, of this meta-physiological

circuit.

Mystics stammer, gibber and rave incoherently in trying to

discuss this. Beethoven says it for all of them, without words, in

the fourth movement of the Ninth Symphony. The words of

Schiller's "Ode to Joy," which Beethoven set to this virtually

superhuman music, are a linear third-circuit map conveying only

a skeleton key to the multi-level meanings of the 8-circuit

"language" of the melodic construction itself, which spans all

consciousness from primitive bio-survival to meta-physiological

cosmic fusion.

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THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS A WHOLE SYSTEM

THE METAPHYSIOLOGICAL CIRCUIT

Wheels within wheels within'wheels...

Dr. Sarfatti's computers within computers within computers...

Consciousness or information perceived as coherent Intelligence

expanding to infinity in all directions.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

PROMETHEUS RISING

We are extending ourselves in Space and Time not because of capitalism

or socialism but in spite o/them. The Right/Left Capitalist/

Socialist establishments are psychologically unprepared for our

emerging situation in Time and Space.

— P.M. Esfandiary, Upwingers

271

According to Patanjali, there are seven "limbs" to yoga, or as we

would say seven steps or stages.

First is asana, which consists of holding a single posture

(usually sitting) for prolonged periods of time. This is an

attempt, in our terminology, to stabilize the bio-survival circuit

by drowning it in monotony. You sit, and sit, and sit, and sit.

Eventually, an "internal peace" is reached, which signifies the

atrophying of all background levels of "unconscious" or unnoticed

bio-survival anxiety.

In other schools, since asana is so monotonous and slowworking

and because war (second-circuit mammalian struggles

over territory) so common among domesticated primates, an

alternative method of stabilizing the bio-survival circuit is used:

martial arts. Akido, judo, karate etc. all emerged from yoga-like

mystic schools, as bio-survival reprogrammers.

The second step in classical yoga, according to Patanjali, is

pranayama. We have already commented on the efficiency of

this breathing technique in quieting and mellowing-out secondcircuit

emotional programs.

(It will already be seen that yoga, like brainwashing, begins

from the bottom up, working on the more primitive and older

circuits first.)

The third step in yoga is dharana or mantra. Dharana consists

of concentrating on a single image, such as a vividly imagined

red triangle, and ruthlessly pushing aside any other images,

verbalizations or impressions that cross the mind's screen. In

practice, this is beyond the powers of most students, so the

majority of yoga teachers substitute mantra, which is concentration

(by repetition) on a single sentence, usually nonsensical,

such as "Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare

Hare" or "Aum Tat Sat Aum" or whatever.

Either practice, dharana or mantra, stops the third-circuit

"internal monologue," if persisted in for long enough periods

each day.

The Western mystical equivalent is Cabala, the most complicated

"Jewish joke" ever invented. Briefly, Cabala exhausts the

third, semantic circuit by setting it to solve intractable numerological

and verbal problems. The Far Eastern equivalent is the

Zen Koan, which serves the same function in a less maniacally

systematic way than Cabala, e.g., "What is the sound of one hand

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2J4 Prometheus Rising

clapping?" Zen koans are always combined with zazen (sitting

Zen), which combines the first-circuit-clearing asana with second-

circuit-mellowing breath-counting (a weaker pranayama).

When the student has acquired sufficient detachment from

first-circuit anxieties, second-circuit emotions and third-circuit

reality-maps, by way of asana, pranayama and dharana or

mantra, Patanjali recommends the practice of yama. This

includes, but is not limited to, celibacy. The ultimate of yama is

to lose all interest in both the social and sexual aspects of the

fourth circuit; to cease to care at all about family, tribal or societal

matters. This is accomplished by self-denial, which is easier

for those skilled in asana, pranayama and dharana, but still

requires intense determination.

Some take a short-cut at this point, discovered after Patanjali

or not known to him, by having themselves locked up in caves.

Such isolation, as indicated earlier, helps vastly in bleaching out

all four hominid circuits.

An alternative, for those not attracted to either celibacy or

becoming hermits, is Tantra, invented in northern India around

the time of Patanjali. This simply transmutes the fourth circuit by

ceremonial, physiological arid "magick" (self-hypnotic) explosion

of the (prolonged) sexual act into fifth-circuit neurosomatic

rapture.

For those following the orthodox path of Patanjali, the fifth

circuit is imprinted by niyama, which signifies "super-control" or

"no-control," being the paradoxical state of being spontaneous

deliberately. You cannot be taught niyama; you can only learn it

by personal experience. We hypothesize that the bio-energies

have to discharge somewhere, and then when one has driven

them out of the first circuit by asana, out of the second circuit by

pranayama, out of the third circuit by dharana or mantra, and

out of the fourth circuit by yama, they are driven explosively

upward into fifth-circuit neurosomatic illumination.

The sixth step in yoga, according to Patanjali, is dhyana,

which means "meditation" only in the roughest way. Dhyana

means actually union with the object on the mind's screen, i.e.,

realization of the total meaning of the proposition that mind and

its contents are functionally identical, i.e., opening the metaprogramming

circuit. One can make dhyana on anything; yogis

Prometheus Rising 275

talk of making dhyana on a tree or a dog, just as don Juan Matus,

the Mexican shaman, talks of becoming one with a coyote or a

star in the books of Castaneda.

The seventh step in yoga is Samadhi, from sam, (union;

cognate of Greek syn) and Adhis, the Lord (cognate, Hebrew

Adonai, Greek Adonis). Here Patanjali and his successors are in

violent dispute, some claiming there is only one Samadhi, others

claiming two or three or many. Since this corresponds with the

opening and imprinting of the neurogenetic circuit, we must opt

for the opinion that there are many Samadhi, depending on

which or how many of the Godly archetypes of the genetic

archives are imprinted. Catholic mystics make Samadhi on the

Virgin, Sufis on Allah, Aleister Crowley on Pan, etc.; and, above

all this, the eighth circuit cosmic information network can also

be imprinted, making union not just with all sentient beings and

some emblematic archetype of the DNA master program, but

with the inorganic universe as well. It was from this second order

or meta-physiological Samadhi that Gandhi said, "God is in the

rock, too—in the rock!" and pantheists of all sorts, in all traditions,

emphatically agree with Canadian psychiatrist, R.M.

Bucke who said after his own Eighth-Circuit Samadhi that the

universe "is not a dead machine but a living presence."

This planet is, to put the matter baldly, populated and largely

controlled by domesticated primates who are not in all respects

reasonable men and women. Voltaire may have been exaggerating

when he said that to understand the mathematical meaning of

infinity, consider the extent of human stupidity; but the situation

is almost that bad. Millions have been murdered by stupid leaders

or stupid mobs, for stupid reasons, in every century; and the

bizarre (accidentally imprinted) reality-tunnels which make this

possible continue to rule us and robotize us.

Nor is stupidity the exclusive possession of one group or

another; you do not need a "vocation" for it as you do for the

priesthood. It seems to be a contagious socio-semantic disturbance

which afflicts all of us at one time or another. Notorious

examples can be found in the lives of the great. As we have already

mentioned an exact measurement of the extent of stupidity

among the learned is provided by the fact that every scientific

revolution takes one generation. Elderly scientists hardly ever

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accept a new theory, however good it is, and the revolution is

only completed when a second generation, free of the old imprints,

with vulnerable neurons, imprints the new reality-map.

But if science, the paradigm of rationality, is infested with

enough stupidity to cause this general one-generation time-lag,

what can we say of politics, economics and religion? Time-lags

of thousands of years seem to be "normal" in these areas. Indeed,

it was through contemplation of religious history that Voltaire

was led to his conclusion that human stupidity approximates to

the infinite. The study of politics is hardly more inspiring. Let us

just summarize the matter by saying that stupidity has murdered

and imprisoned more geniuses (and more ordinary people),

burned more books, slaughtered more populations, and blocked

progress more effectively than any other force in history.

It may be no exaggeration to say that stupidity has killed more

people than all the diseases known to medicine and psychiatry.

Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit

information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at

any point. Bigotry, ideologies etc. block the ability to receive;

robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate

new signals; censorship blocks transmission.

If intelligence could be increased, obviously solutions could

be found more quickly to the various Doomsday scenarios

threatening us.

If each scientist working on the energy-resources problem

could double or triple his or her intelligence, work that would

require 20 years might be done in six.

If human stupidity in general decreased, there would be less

opposition to original thinking and new approaches to our old

problems, less censorship and less bigotry.

If stupidity decreased, less money would be wasted on vast

organized imbecilities such as the Arms Race, and more would

be available for life enhancing projects.

There is nothing rationally desirable that cannot be achieved

sooner if rationality itself increases. This is virtually a tautology,

but we must consider the corollary:

Work to achieve Intelligence Intensification is work to achieve

all our other sane and worthwhile goals.

Prometheus Rising 277

Maurice Nicholl, physician, psychiatrist, student of Jung,

Gurdjieff and Esoteric Christianity, wrote that "the only purpose

in work on consciousness is to decrease the amount of violence

in the world." This is Public Health Problem Number One in the

nuclear age, the age of overkill.

We are not talking about mere increase in linear IQ—thirdcircuit

semantic cleverness. We are talking of also the kinds of

right-brain intelligence that Nicholl acquired from Jungian

neurogenetic research and Gurdjieff's meta-programming techniques.

We are talking of, say, Beethoven's intelligence, which

so disturbed Lenin, who could not bear to listen to the Appassionato

(Sonata 23) because it made him "want to weep and pat

people on the head, and we mustn't pat them on the head, we

must hit them on the head, hit them hard, and make them obey."

More of Beethoven's intelligence is needed, desperately, to

create a signal that the current Lenins cannot ignore, that will

make them weep, and stop hitting heads.

We need more mentations, less munitions. The second-circuit

mammalian political games are a million years obsolete.

Dr. Nathan Kline has predicted that soon we will have drugs

to improve memory, drugs to erase unpleasant memories, drugs

to increase or decrease any emotion, drugs to prolong or shorten

childhood, etc. It takes no great imagination to foresee that such

chemicals will allow us greater control over our neural tunnelrealities

than ever before. Obviously, people will use and abuse

these potions in many ways, but the most intelligent will use

them in the most intelligent way, namely to increase and intensify

their intelligence in every direction possible on our spectrum of

eight circuits. Chiefly, they will use them to increase neurological

freedom, to debug and reprogram obsolete reality-maps,

to generally expand consciousness and sensitivity to signals and

information.

The potential for a neurological revolution—planetary Intelligence

Intensification—should be quite clear to anyone who has

even a slight knowledge of so primitive a psychedelic as LSD.

One of the least known facts about the LSD research in the

1960s was that the longest single research project with LSD, at

Spring Grove Hospital, Maryland, showed an average 10%

increase in linear IQ alone as well as the meta-programming

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vistas and neurogenetic awakenings popularized by the outlaw

LSD culture and its gurus.

And there is a direct feedback loop between neuro-pharmacology

and other brain sciences. As William Burroughs says,

"Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other

means." Yoga plus bio-feedback produces detachment from old

imprints quicker than yoga alone; hypnotism and mind-drugs

produce synergistically more than either produces without the

other; John Lilly has duplicated LSD effects in his isolation

tanks; etc.

It is commonplace for alarmists to warn us that the full

armory of synergistically interacting neurosciences now evolving

will allow unscrupulous tyrants to brainwash us more totally than

ever before.

We need to realize that the same technology, wisely used by

intelligent men and women, can free us from every form of

neurotic and irrational rigidity, to dial and focus our nervous

systems as easily as we dial or focus our TV, turning any channel

or circuit off and on as we choose. This is what meta-programming

(cybernetic) consciousness means.

Why be depressed when you can be happy, dumb when you

can be smart, agitated when you can be tranquil? Obviously,

most people are depressed, dumb and agitated most of the time

because they lack the tools to repair and correct damaged, defective

circuits in their nervous system. We are acquiring the tools,

and this Intelligence Intensification has the Pleasure Principle to

fuel it. That is, the more internal freedom you achieve, the more

you want. It is more fun to be happy than sad, more enjoyable to

choose your emotions than to have them inflicted upon you by

mechanical glandular processes, more pleasurable to solve your

problems than to be stuck with them forever.

In brief, Intelligence Intensification means intelligence-studying-

intelligence (I2), and the first thing discovered by intelligence-

studying-intelligence (the brain studying the brain: metaprogramming)

is that the more types of intelligence you have, the

more fun it is to try to develop even more subtle, sensitive,

futique levels of awareness; higher intelligence still.

In summary, Intelligence Intensification is desirable, because

there is not a single problem confronting humanity that is not

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either caused or considerably worsened by the prevailing stupidity

(insensitivity) of the species: badly wired robots bumping into

and maiming and killing each other.

Intelligence Intensification is attainable, because modern

advances in neuroscience are showing us how to alter any

imprinted, conditioned or learned reflex that previously restricted

us.

Intelligence Intensification is hedonic, because the more freedom

and consciousness you achieve, the more you want; the less

willing you are to slip back to dumb, blind, mechanistic circuits.

Intelligence Intensification can accelerate our progress toward

abolition of war and poverty; find cures for cancer and schizophrenia;

achieve space migration and life extension (giving us

space enough and time enough to achieve even more cosmic

levels of awareness); or accomplish any other worthwhile goals.

Like death and poverty, stupidity has been around so long that

people cannot imagine human life without it, but it is rapidly

becoming obsolete. However many special interest groups (intelligence

agencies so-called, advertisers, tyrants, clergy, etc.) may

profit from stupidity, humanity as a whole will profit more for its

abolition.

Approximately 50% of the human race has not evolved fully

into the third circuit yet. That is, although they can exchange

primitive signals and handle primitive artifacts, they are still

mostly operating on the mammalian emotional circuit and the

pre-mammalian bio-survival circuit.

Newt Gingrich is their current leader in the United States.

Third-circuit types cannot understand this and regard it as sinister,

but it is simple mammalian herd-behavior. Gingrich is the

typical primate leader; the noises he makes, which appear

meaningless to the third circuit Rationalist, are urgently meaningful

to the territorial-emotional-patriotic minds of the majority

of primates.

Another 20% are "responsible, intelligent adults" with fully

developed third and fourth circuits. They spend most of their

time worrying, because the predominantly primate parameters of

human society seem absurd, immoral and increasingly dangerous

to them.

280 Prometheus Rising

Another 20% are neurosomatic adepts. Fourth-circuit Moralists

denounce them as "mystics," "space cases," "nuts," "the Me

generation," "irresponsible hedonists," etc.

Most of the fifth-circuit adepts (aquarian conspirators) have

learned Joyce's arts of "silence, exile, cunning": they are invisible.

Others have turned their talents to "faith-healing" or various

occult gimmicks of that sort, and very carefully do not tell their

clients that the local ideology, morality and reality-tunnel is what

made them ill in the first place. They give "good energy" and

sensibly avoid conflict with the moral ideological "authorities."

Another 5% have neurogenetic consciousness, and function as

Evolutionary Agents—servants of the Life Force, in Shaw's

terminology. Their "God" is Pan (life), and their goal is immortality.

Another 3% have mastered the meta-programming circuit and

make up what Gurdjieff called "the Conscious Circle of humanity."

They are Free Masons, in the original meaning of that

debased term: co-creators of future realities.

Only 2% are neuro-quantum adepts and beyond space-time

categories entirely.

All these estimates are approximations.

The newer circuits (neurosomatic bliss, neurogenetic "Atman"

consciousness, meta-programming reality-games, non-local

"cosmic" awareness) must have some function.

We can only assume they are preparing us for our new situation

in space-time, after Space colonization, after longevity and

immortality, after the Acceleration Factor accelerates even faster.

Engineers rate an engine in revolutions-per-second. Looking

at human history in terms of this metaphor we clearly see that:

In the Old Stone Age, the acceleration factor was just slowly

beginning to operate. We could estimate change then in, perhaps,

revolutions per 10,000 years.

With the neolithic revolution and urbanization soon after, the

pace began to pick up. We can speak from that point on in terms

of revolutions-per-millennium.

After Galileo, revolutions-per-century became the normal rate

of change.

In this century we have moved into revolutions-per-generation.

Prometheus Rising 281

We are now obviously moving into an acceleration of revolutions-

per-decade.

By the time the Consciousness Revolution peaks, the

Longevity Pill is widely available, cloning is normal and all the

ideas in the book, including the most wild and radical ones, seem

quaint and old-fashioned—i.e., about 2005—we will probably be

growing accustomed to thinking in terms of revolutions-per-year.

There is no reason to accept the tunnel-reality of this book as

final. If you really understand the message, you will invent a

bigger and better Future than I have suggested. As Barbara Marx

Hubbard says:

THE FUTURE EXISTS

FIRST IN IMAGINATION,

THEN IN WILL,

THEN IN REALITY

APPENDIX

The neurogenetic script, cyclical aspect:

1. The helpless infant (Circuit I).

2. The walking-struggling-competing child (Circuit II).

3. The word-and-tool-using older child (Circuit III).

4. Imprinting-conditioning the sexual circuit (IV) into

domesticated parenthood.

5. Reproduction and.. .the cycle continues...

"...their weatherings and their marryings and their buryings

and their natural selections...

— James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

283

284 Prometheus Rising

The neurogenetic script, upward-spiraling aspect:

1. Primitive organisms; recapitulated in infancy.

2. Vertebrate struggle, recapitulated in childhood.

3. Semantic-technological learning, recapitulated in school.

4. Socio-sexual domesticity.

5. Neurosomatic rapture, pre-capitulating zero-gravity and Space

Migration.

6. Neurogenetic vision, pre-capitulating Longevity-Immortality.

7. Meta-programming skill, pre-capitulating Intelligence

Intensification.

8. Meta-physiological cosmic vision, pre-capitulating... WHAT?