The human mind behaves as if it were divided into two parts, the Thinker and the Prover. The Thinker can think about virtually anything. The Prover is a much simpler mechanism. It operates on one law only: Whatever 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 programs existing as potential software, the imprint establishes the limits, parameters, perimeters within which all subsequent conditioning and learning occurs. Following Dr. Timothy Leary (with a few modifications) we shall divide this brain hardware into eight circuits for convenience.
EXERCIZES
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.
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?
The Bio-Survival Circuit
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.
EXERCIZES
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."
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.
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.
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.
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 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!
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.
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.
The Emotional-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.
EXERCIZES
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."
Get roaring drunk and pound the table, telling everybody in a loud voice just what dumb assholes they all are.
Go to the Lion House at the zoo. Study the lions until you feel you really understand their tunnel-reality.
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.
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.
The Semantic Circuit
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 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.)
Mindwashing & Brain Programming
Human society as a whole is a vast brainwashing machine whose semantic rules and sex roles create a social robot.
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.
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 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.
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. 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. 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".
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 a perpetual mental crouch. Unleashing our full stature--our total brain power--is what this book is all about.
Rationalism
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 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.
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. 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 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
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.
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.
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.
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?
The Holistic Neurosomatic Circuit
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.
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. 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.
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.
EXERCIZES
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?
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"?
The Collective Neurogenetic Circuit
Specific exercizes to trigger neurogenetic imprints are not to be found in yogic teaching; it usually happens, if at all, after 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Explain such a synchronicity, when it occurs, in Circuit III Rationalist terms--mere coincidence etc.
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 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?
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?
The Metaprogramming Circuit
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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. 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
Witnesses have testified that Jim Jones (like a few other professional faith-healers) used skills part of the time, a shill 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?
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."
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.
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?
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?
Different Models & Different Muddles
"Reality" is the temporary resultant of continuous struggles between rival gangs of programmers.
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 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 dharana 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.
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. 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. This the meaning of the notion that mind and its contents are functionally identical.
The Snafu Principle
Communication is only possible between equals.
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.
EXERCIZES
Try living a whole week with the program, "Everybody likes me and tries to help me achieve all of my goals."
Try living a whole month with the program, "I have chosen to be aware of this particular reality."
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?"
Try living forever with the metaprogram, "Everything works out more perfectly than I plan it."
The Non-Local Quantum Circuit
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.
The highest varieties of shamanic and yogic consciousness seem to begin from dilation beyond the immediate ("out-of-body-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.
EXERCIZES
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).
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.
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?