Prometheus Rising (25 page)

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-

2O2 Prometheus Rising

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