Prometheus Rising (35 page)

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

2j8 Prometheus Rising

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 (I
2
), 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

Prometheus Rising
279

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