Prometheus Rising (27 page)

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.

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"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

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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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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

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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

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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