Prometheus Rising (3 page)

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 space
4
,
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).

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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

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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?

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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.

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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 yourself
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(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.

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