Prometheus Rising

by Robert Anton Wilson

The software, however, seems to be anywhere and everywhere. For instance, the software “in” my brain also exists outside my brain in such forms as, say, a book I read twenty years ago, which was an English translation of various signals transmitted by Plato 2400 years ago. Other parts of my software are made up of the software of Confucius, James Joyce, my second-grade teacher, the Three Stooges, Beethoven, my mother and father, Richard Nixon, my various dogs and cats, Dr. Carl Sagan, and anybody and (to some extent) any-thing that has ever impacted upon my brain.

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.

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.

YOUR HARDWARE IS LOCALIZED: BRAIN CELLS RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW. YOUR SOFTWARE IS NON-LOCAL: POINT-EVENTS EVERYWHERE, EVERYWHEN.

As soon as the first imprint is made, structure emerges out of the creative void. The growing mind, alas, becomes trapped within this structure. It identifies with the structure; in a sense, it becomes the structure.

Each successive imprint complicates the software which programs our experience and which we experience as "reality. ”

Conditioning and learning build further networks onto this bedrock of imprinted software. The total structure of this brain-circuitry makes up our map of the world. It is what our Thinker thinks, and our Prover mechanically fits all incoming signals to the limitations of this map.

1. The Oral Bio-Survival Circuit. This is imprinted by the mother or the first mothering object and conditioned by subsequent nourishment or threat. It is primarily concerned with sucking, feeding, cuddling, and body security. It retreats mechanically from the noxious or predatory — or from anything associated (by imprinting or conditioning) with the noxious or predatory.

2. The Anal Emotional-Territorial Circuit. This is imprinted in the “Toddling” stage when the infant rises up, walks about and begins to struggle for power within the family structure. This mostly mammalian circuit processes territorial rules, emotional games, or cons, pecking order and rituals of domination or submission.

3. The Time-Binding Semantic Circuit. This is imprinted and conditioned by human artifacts and symbol systems. It “handles” and “packages” the environment, classifying everything according to the local reality tunnel. Invention, calculation, predict...

4. The “Moral “ Socio-Sexual Circuit. This is imprinted by the first orgasm-mating experiences at puberty and is conditioned by tribal taboos. It processes sexual pleasure, local definitions of “right” and “wrong,” reproduction, a...

5. The Holistic Neurosomatic Circuit. This is imprinted by ecstatic experience, via biological or chemical yogas. It processes neurosomatic (“mind-body”) feedback loops, somatic-sensory bliss, feeling “high,” “faith-healing,” etc. Christian Science, NLP and holistic medicine consist of tricks or gimmicks to get this circuit into action at least temporarily; Tantra yoga is concerned with shifting consciousness entirely into this circuit.

6. The Collective Neurogenetic Circuit. This is imprinted by advanced yogas (bio-chemical - electrical stresses). It processes DNA-RNA-brain feedback systems and is “collective” in that it contains and has access to the whole evolutionary “script,” past and future. Experience of this circuit is numinous, “mystical,” mind-shattering; here dwell the archetypes of Jung’s Collective Unconscious — Gods, Goddesses, Demons, Hairy Dwarfs and other personifications of the DNA programs (instincts) that govern us.

7. The Metaprogramming Circuit. This is imprinted by very advanced yogas. It consists, in modern terms, of cybernetic consciousness, reprogramming and reimprinting all other circuits, even reprogramming itself, making possible cons...

8. The Non-Local Quantum Circuit. This is imprinted by Shock, by “near-death” or “clinical death” experience, by OOBEs (out-of-body-experiences), by trans-time perceptions (“precognition”), by trans-space visions (ESP), etc. It tunes the brain into the non-local quantum communicatio...

Any multi-cellular organism must, if it is to survive, contain a hard-wired bio-survival circuit, which very simply programs an either-or choice: GO FORWARD to the nourishing, the protective, or GO BACK, away from the threatening, the predatory.

In summary: the bio-survival circuit is DNA-programmed to seek a comfort-safety zone around a mothering organism. If a mother isn’t present, the closest substitute in the environment will be imprinted.

The “wiring” of this circuit, in primitive form, occurred in the first organisms, between three and four billion years ago. In the modern human, this structure remains in the brain stem and in the autonomic (“involuntary”) nervous system, where it is interconnected with the endocrine and other life-support systems.

The bio-survival program first attaches to the safe space around the mother (oral imprint), and then with age moves further and further out, exploring what is safe and what is not. Without hard-wired genetic programs (i.e., automatic programs) this second stage would be impossible, and no mammal would ever leave the teat. The hard-wired programs act automatically (UNCONSCIOUSLY) because if you had to stop and think out each situation, you would be eaten by the first predator.

All of which is robotic, until one learns how to reprogram and reimprint one’s own brain circuits. In most cases, such metaprogramming skill is never acquired.

As civilization has advanced, the pack-bond (the tribe, the extended family) has been broken. This is the root of the widely diagnosed “anomie” or “alienation” or “existential anguish” about which so many social critics have written so eloquently. What has happened is that the conditioning of the bio-survival bond to the gene-pool has been replaced by a conditioning of bio-survival drives to hook onto the peculiar tickets which we call “money”. Concretely, a modern man or woman doesn’t look for biosurvival security in the gene-pool, the pack, the extended family. Bio-survival depends on getting the tickets.

Bio-survival anxiety will only permanently disappear when world-wide wealth has reached a level, and a distribution, where, without totalitarianism, everyone has enough tickets.

We all have this circuit and need to exercize it periodically. Cuddling, sucking, hugging etc. and daily playing with (a) one’s own body (b) another’s body and (c) the environment, are perpetually necessary to neurosomatic-endocrine health. Those who deny such primordial functions because of rigid imprinting on the Third (rationalistic) or Fourth (moralistic) circuit tend to become “dried up,” “prune-faced,” unattractive, “cold,” and muscularly rigid.

Every study of the psychosomatic aspects of cancer and asthma, for instance, finds this pattern of chronic muscular contraction (subjectively felt as anxiety) among the predisposing factors. What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves. People are strangling their inner organs every day because they are afraid.

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.

1. 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.” (paraphrase of Matthew 18:3)

The second circuit, the emotional-territorial networks of the brain, is concerned entirely with power politics. This “patriotic” circuit is built into all vertebrates and is perhaps 500 million to 1000 million years old. In the modern human it seems to be centralized in the thalamus — the “back brain” or “old brain” and is linked with the voluntary nervous system and the muscles. This circuit appears in each newborn when the DNA master tape sends out RNA messenger molecules to trigger the mutation from neonate to “toddler, ” which involves first of all standing erect. Walking, mastering gravity, overcoming physical obstacles and learning to manipulate others politically are the vulnerable points at which imprinting and heavy conditioning occur. The muscles that perform these power functions are quickly programmed with what become chronic, life-long reflexes.

Depending as always on the accidents of the environment — what happens at points of neurological vulnerability — this circuit will organize itself into a strong, dominating role in the pack (or family) or a weak, submissive role.

Another primate wrote that every primate infant goes through a stage of being chiefly concerned with bio-survival, i.e., food, i.e., Mommie’s Titty. He called this the Oral Stage. He said the infant next went on to a stage of learning mammalian politics, i.e., recognizing the Father (alpha-male) and his Authority and territorial demands. He called this, with an insight that few primates shared, the Anal Stage. This primate was named Freud. He had taken his own nervous system apart and examined its component circuits by periodically altering its structure with neurochemicals.

If the first (bio-survival) circuit is chiefly imprinted by the mother, the second (emotional-territorial) circuit is chiefly imprinted by the father — the nearest alpha male. It

Whether or not societies wobble between these extremes as Taylor claims, individuals certainly do. These are merely the consequences of (a) having the heaviest imprint on the oral (Matrist) bio-survival circuit or (b) having the heaviest imprint on the anal (Patrist) territorial circuit.

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.

How imprints can be changed will be discussed as we proceed. The exercizes in each chapter are intended to make imprints a little less rigid, a little more flexible.

4. Spend a week-end at an Encounter Group. During the first half-day, try to intuit which quadrant each participant is coming from. At the end, see if any of them have become less robotized. See if you have become less robotized.

7. 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.

people are robotized: trapped in hard-wired reflexes. When the accumulated facts, gimmicks, tools, techniques and gadgets of neuro-science — the science of brain change and brain liberation — reaches a certain critical mass, we will all be able to free ourselves from these robot cycles. It is the thesis of this book that we have been approaching that critical mass for several decades now and will reach the crossover point faster than you expect.

The third semantic circuit handles artifacts and makes a “map” (reality-tunnel) which can be passed on to others, even across generations. These “maps” may be paintings, blueprints, words, concepts, tools (with instructions on use transmitted verbally), theories, music, etc.

If Moses, Confucius, Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus and St. Paul can be considered living influences — and they are: look around the world — this is only because their Signal has been carried to us by human symbol systems. These systems include words, artworks, music, rituals and unrecognized rituals (“games”) through which culture is transmitted. Marx and Hitler, Newton and Socrates, Shakespeare and Jefferson, etc. continue to “rule” parts of humanity in the same way — through the semantic circuit. We are ruled even more, and even less consciously, by the inventors of the wheel, the plow, the alphabet, even the Roman roads.

The semantic circuit allows us to sub-divide things, and reconnect things, at pleasure. There is no end to its busy-busy-busy labeling and packaging of experience. On the personal level, this is the “internal monologue” discovered by Joyce in Ulysses.

In terms of Transactional Analysis, the first (oral) circuit is called the Natural Child, the second (emotional) circuit is called the Adapted Child, and the semantic circuit is called the Adult or Computer. In Jungian terms, the first circuit mediates sensation, the second circuit feeling, and the third circuit reason.

The neurological components of the first circuit go back to the oldest parts of the brain; Carl Sagan called these functions “the reptile brain.” These neural structures are at least billions of years old. The second circuit structures appeared with the first amphibians and mammals, somewhere around 1000 million or 500 million years ago; Sagan called them “the mammalian brain.” The semantic circuit appeared perhaps 100 thousand years ago; Sagan called it “the human brain.” It should be no surprise that most people, most of the time, are controlled more by the older reptilian-mammalian circuits than by the human semantic (rational) circuit, or that the semantic circuit is so easily perverted into false logics (bigotries, intolerant ideologies, fanaticisms of all sorts) when the bio-survival circuit signals threat to life or the emotional circuit flashes threat to status.

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 mani...

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.

the left brain is the “talking” brain. It is linear, analytical, computer-like and very verbal. Thus, there is a neurological basis for the linkage between mapping and manipulating. The right hand manipulates the universe (and makes artifacts) and the left-brain maps the results into a model, which allows for predictions about future behavior of that part of the universe.

Make up a schematic diagram of your business or home and try to streamline it for more efficiency. Design a chart that explains the whole universe. Every few years, study a science you know nothing about, at an Adult Education center. And don’t neglect to play with this circuit: write poems, jingles, fables, proverbs or jokes.

Thus, a genius is one who, by some internal process, breaks through to Circuit VII — a minor neurological miracle loosely called “intuition” — and comes back down to the third circuit with the capacity to paint a new semantic map, build a new model of experience. Needless to say, this is always a profound shock to those still trapped in the old robot-imprints, and is generally considered a threat to territory (ideological head space). The long list of martyrs to free enquiry, from Socrates onward, shows how mechanical this neophobia (fear of new semantic signals) is.

The revolution is complete, as Kuhn shows, only when a second generation, not hooked to the old imprint, is able to compare the two models and decides rationally that the newer one really does make more sense.

We commented earlier that in bio-survival neurology, there is no time. “I just found myself doing it,” we say after passing through an automatic reflex on the bio-survival circuit. Emotional-territorial circuit actions begin to include time as a factor. Dominance signals may not “work”: the seemingly weaker mammal may offer a counter-challenge. Two dogs will walk around each other for several minutes growling and sniffing (the chemical secretions of each reveals its actual degree of fear to the other) before Top Dog and Bottom Dog becomes clear. On the human level, we often agonize over emotional decisions, becoming acutely conscious of time as we hesitate.

In the dialectic between nature and the socially constructed world, the human organism is transformed. In this dialectic man produces reality and thereby produces himself. — Berger and Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality

The first and second circuits are Evolutionary Stable Strategies. They have worked, in more or less the same form, not just for primates but for other mammals, and for many other species, over vast aeons of time. The third, semantic circuit is an Evolutionary Unstable Strategy. It could very accurately be called revolutionary rather than evolutionary.