Prometheus Rising

by Robert Anton Wilson

The Whole System, even the parts that are separated by cosmic distances, functions as a Whole System.

Walker suggests that what does move faster than light, and holds the Whole System together, is “consciousness.” We may eventually be forced to accept this, in which case physics will have justified pantheism or at least panpsychism. The other alternative, proposed by Dr. Jack Sarfatti, is that the medium of Bellian transmissions is information.

Imagine that your brain is a computer, as modern neurology suggests. Now imagine that the whole universe is a big computer, a mega-computer, as John Lilly has proposed. Then imagine that the sub-quantum realm, the realm of what Dr. David Bohm calls ‘hidden variables’ is made up of mini-mini-computers. Now, the hardware of each ‘computer’ — the universe, your brain, the sub-quantum mechanisms — is localized. Each part of it is somewhere in spacetime, here not there, now not then. But the software — the information — is non-local. It is here, there and everywhere; now, then and everywhen.

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.

We are extending ourselves in Space and Time not because of capitalism or socialism but in spite of them. The Right/Left Capitalist/Socialist establishments are psychologically unprepared for our emerging situation in Time and Space. — F.M. Esfandiary, Upwingers

According to Patanjali, there are seven “limbs” to yoga, or as we would say seven steps or stages. 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. In other schools, since asana is so monotonous and slow-working and because war (second-circuit mammalian struggles over territory) is so common among domesticated primates, an alternative method of stabilizing the bio-survival circuit is used: martial arts. Akido, judo, karate etc. all emerged from yoga-like mystic schools, as bio-survival reprogrammers. The second step in classical yoga, according to Patanjali, is pranayama. We have already commented on the efficiency of this breathing technique in quieting and mellowing-out second-circuit emotional programs.

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.

Either practice, dharana or mantra, stops the third-circuit “internal monologue,” if persisted in for long enough periods each day.

The Western mystical equivalent is Cabala, the most complicated “Jewish joke” ever invented. Briefly, Cabala exhausts the third, semantic circuit by setting it to solve intractable numerological and verbal problems. The Far Eastern equivalent is the Zen Koan, which serves the same function in a less maniacally systematic way than Cabala, e.g., “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Zen koans are always combined with zazen (sitting Zen), which combines the first-circuit-clearing asana with second-circuit-mellowing breath-counting (a weaker pranayama).

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. This is accomplished b...

Some take a short-cut at this point, discovered after Patanjali or not known to him, by having themselves locked up in caves. Such isolation, as indicated earlier, helps vastly in bleaching out all four hominid circuits. 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, physiologi...

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. One can make dhyana on anything; yogis talk of making dhyana on a tree or a dog, just as don Juan Matus, the Mexican shaman, talks of becoming one with a coyote or a star in the books of Castaneda.

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. Since this corresponds with the opening and imprinting of the neurogenetic circuit, we must opt for the opinion that there are many Samadhi, depending on which or how many of the Godly archetypes of the genetic archives are imprinted.

pantheists of all sorts, in all traditions, emphatically agree with Canadian psychiatrist, R.M. Bucke who said after his own Eighth-Circuit Samadhi that the universe “is not a dead machine but a living presence.”

As we have already mentioned an exact measurement of the extent of stupidity among the learned is provided by the fact that every scientific revolution takes one generation. Elderly scientists hardly ever 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.

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.

Maurice Nicoll, 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 need more mentations, less munitions. The second-circuit mammalian political games are a million years obsolete.

It takes no great imagination to foresee that such chemicals will allow us greater control over our neural tunnel-realities 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.

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 metaprogramming vistas and neurogenetic awakenings popularized by the outlaw LSD culture and its gurus.

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.

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 metaprogramming (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 (I2), 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 m...

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...

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 wa...

Approximately 50% of the human race has not evolved fully into the third circuit yet.

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.

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,...

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 metaprogramming 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 est...

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.

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 .

The neurogenetic script, upward-spiraling aspect: 1. Primitive organisms; recapitulated in infancy. 2. Vertebrate struggle, recapitulated in childhood. 3. Semantic-technological learning, recapitulated in school. 4. Socio-sexual domesticity. 5. Neurosomatic rapture, pre-capitulating zero-gravity and Space Migration. 6. Neurogenetic vision, pre-capitulating Longevity-Immortality. 7. Metaprogramming skill, pre-capitulating Intelligence Intensification. 8. Meta-physiological cosmic vision, pre-capitulating . . . WHAT?

“If you think you know what the hell is going on, you're probably full of shit.”

I think Tim saw the reawakening of the body coming first (circuit five). Next the brain reawakened (circuit six - metaprogramming). Then the DNA reawakened (circuit seven - DNA consciousness). Finally the quantum world reawakened (circuit eight). He saw smaller and smaller units reawakening - body, brain, DNA, subatomic realm.

While Tim attached each circuit’s control of larger spatial regions to gradually smaller physical structures — C5 body, C6 nervous system, C7 DNA, C8 quantum waves and particles — Bob’s focus seemed to be looking at each circuit as a stage in an expanding definition of self. C5 frees the body, opens the senses, and the self feels connected to all of Nature. The C6 Neurogenetic Evolutionary Visionary connects the individual self to all other selves past, present and future. The C7 Metaprogrammer realizes that all selves are illusory, and in Circuit 8 the Metaprogrammer becomes an illusion, merging into the infinity of quantum connectedness. Maybe. Bob must have had some reason for shifting Circuits 6 and 7.

the metaprogrammer awakes and you begin to perceive-create infinite realities where before there was only one static jail-cell “reality” in which you were trapped . . . The “soul” or Circuit VII is constant, because it is, as the Chinese say, void or no-form . . . It is the “creative Void” of the Taoists. - Prometheus Rising: (C7 - Metaprogramming circuit)

LSD showed the majority of psychologists and neuroscientists that rapid changes in human brain functioning could occur easily, given the right techniques . . . Dr. Timothy Leary sounded like a nut (to most people) when he said, nearly 30 years ago, "You can change your self as easily as you change the channel on a TV.” Now, even though Dr. Leary still suffers from media slander and misrepresentation, the avant one-third of the population understands very well what Leary meant, viz — A. No "essential self" or static ego exists; B. We can metaprogram our nervous systems for a variety of "selves”, many of them evolutionarily far in advance of the present Terran average. - Quantum Psychology: (C6 - The Metaprogramming System)