Prometheus Rising
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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.
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Theologians are vexed by questions like: Can an omnipotent God create a rock so heavy He Himself cannot lift it? (If he cannot, he is not omnipotent; and if he can, he is also not omnipotent.)
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Word-magic? Schizophrenia? The average person, not a vegetarian, will respond positively to “tender juicy filet mignon” on the menu; but not to “a piece off of a dead castrated bull.” But the two expressions mean the same thing.
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“I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pigheaded fool.” (“I am daring and original. You are pretentious. She stinks.” “I am flexible. You bend with the wind. They’re a bunch of opportunists.”)
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Wilson believes that life extension techniques and intelligence raising drugs will be discovered in this decade, and will be widely available by 2010. Less radical than Dr. Silverstein, Wilson does not expect immortality to be achieved until the middle of the next century — but he expects life-extension drugs will keep him around until then.
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Wilson expects most of humanity will have migrated off Earth into space cities by 2028.
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For instance, in the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, the agent had to develop a capacity to see godless communists everywhere.
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The same would apply to a Dominican inquisitor in the middle ages who lacked the capacity to “see” witches everywhere.
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They must attempt to do the seeing, hearing, smelling, etc. and all the thinking and evaluating for the whole pyramid.
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But a man with a gun (the power to punish) is told only what the target thinks will not cause him to pull the trigger (write the pink slip, order the court-martial). The elite, with their burden of omniscience, face the underlings, with their burden of nescience, and receive only the feedback consistent with their own preconceived notions and reality-tunnels.
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It is easier to cease to notice where the official tunnel-reality differs from existential fact.
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We also propose that “national security” is another semantic spook, an Empedoclean knot; that the search for national security is the chief cause of national insecurity and a potent anti-intelligence mechanism.
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Secrecy is the original sin. Fig leaf in the Garden of Eden. The basic crime against love . . . The purpose of life is to receive, synthesize and transmit energy. Communication fusion is the goal of life. Any star can tell you that. Communication is love.
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The third movement is the growingly obvious warfare between those who would program all of us, and those of us who wish to become our own Metaprogrammers.
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1. Start collecting evidence that your phone is bugged.
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2. Everybody gets a letter occasionally that is slightly damaged. Assume that somebody is opening your mail and clumsily resealing it. 3. Look around for evidence that your co-workers or neighbors think you’re a bit queer and are planning to have you committed to a mental hospital.
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What is man? A bridge between the ape and the Superman — a bridge over an abyss. — F.W. Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra
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The average Man or Woman of 1997 will be as obsolete in 2007 as the medieval serf is now.
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Instability is not always bad: in fact, it is absolutely necessary for evolution to occur. Insect societies are highly stable and have not evolved at all in several million years. Human societies are highly unstable and are in continuous evolution.
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In what are called “out of body experiences” (OOBEs) by parapsychologists, awareness seems to escape the confines of the nervous system entirely.
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There are no isolated systems: every particle in the universe is in “instantaneous” (faster-than-light) communication with every other particle.
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First is asana, which consists of holding a single posture (usually sitting) for prolonged periods of time. This is an attempt, in our terminology, to stabilize the bio-survival circuit by drowning it in monotony. You sit, and sit, and sit, and sit. Eventually, an “internal peace” is reached, which signifies the atrophying of all background levels of “unconscious” or unnoticed bio-survival anxiety.
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The second step in classical yoga, according to Patanjali, is pranayama
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(It will already be seen that yoga, like brainwashing, begins from the bottom up, working on the more primitive and older circuits first.)
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The third step in yoga is dharana or mantra. Dharana consists of concentrating on a single image, such as a vividly imagined red triangle, and ruthlessly pushing aside any other images, verbalizations or impressions that cross the mind’s screen. In practice, this is beyond the powers of most students, so the majority of yoga teachers substitute mantra, which is concentration (by repetition) on a single sentence, usually nonsensical, such as “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare” or “Aum Tat Sat Aum” or whatever.
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Either practice, dharana or mantra, stops the third-circuit “internal monologue,” if persisted in for...
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When the student has acquired sufficient detachment from first-circuit anxieties, second-circuit emotions and third-circuit reality-maps, by way of asana, pranayama and dharana or mantra, Patanjali recommends the practice of yama. This includes, but is not limited to, celibacy. The ultimate of yama is to lose all interest in both the social and sexual aspects of the fourth circuit; to cease to care at all about family, tribal or societal matters.
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An alternative, for those not attracted to either celibacy or becoming hermits, is Tantra, invented in northern India around the time of Patanjali. This simply transmutes the fourth circuit by ceremonial, physiological and “magick” (self-hypnotic) explosion of the (prolonged) sexual act into fifth-circuit neurosomatic rapture.
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The sixth step in yoga, according to Patanjali, is dhyana, which means “meditation” only in the roughest way. Dhyana means actually union with the object on the mind’s screen, i.e., realization of the total meaning of the proposition that mind and its contents are functionally identical, i.e., opening the metaprogramming circuit.
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The seventh step in yoga is Samadhi, from sam, (union; cognate of Greek syn) and Adhis, the Lord (cognate, Hebrew Adonai, Greek Adonis). Here Patanjali and his successors are in violent dispute, some claiming there is only one Samadhi, others claiming two or three or many.
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the eighth circuit cosmic information network can also be imprinted, making union not just with all sentient beings and some emblematic archetype of the DNA master program, but with the inorganic universe as well.
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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.
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In summary, Intelligence Intensification is desirable, because there is not a single problem confronting humanity that is not either caused or considerably worsened by the prevailing stupidity (insensitivity) of the species: badly wired robots bumping into and maiming and killing each other.
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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.
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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.
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Approximately 50% of the human race has not evolved fully into the third circuit yet.
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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.
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Another 20% are neurosomatic adepts. Fourth-circuit Moralists denounce them as “mystics,” “space cases,” “nuts,” “the Me generation,” “irresponsible hedonists,” etc.
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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...
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By the time the Consciousness Revolution peaks, the Longevity Pill is widely available, cloning is normal and all the ideas in this 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.
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THE FUTURE EXISTS FIRST IN IMAGINATION, THEN IN WILL, THEN IN REALITY
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1. The helpless infant (Circuit I). 2. The walking-struggling-competing child (Circuit II). 3. The word-and-tool-using older child (Circuit III).
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4. Imprinting-conditioning the sexual circuit (IV) into domesticated parenthood. 5. Reproduction and . . . the cycle continues . . . “ . . . their weatherings and their marryings and their buryings and their natural selections . . . — James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
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