Exo-psychology defines eight levels of Revolution-revelation:[2]
8.1.Nuclear Revelation (quantum time) 7.2.Genetic Revelation (DNA time) 6.3.Electronic Revelation (brain time) 5.4.Hedonic Revelation (body time) 4.5.Cultural-s.e.xual Revolution (hive-domestication power) 3.6.Technological Revolution (mechanical power) 2.7.Political Revolution (musculotonic power) 1.8.Violence Revolution (viscerotonic power) Exo-psychology also defines eight social groupings: 8.1.Fusion with nuclear structure 7.2.Symbiosis 6.3.Telepathy; cyborg fusion 5.4.Somatic fusion; tantra, nature communes, s.p.a.ce colonies 4.5.Cultural-ethical groupings (hive, tribe) 3.6.Technical-professional-occupational groupings 2.7.Political-territorial groupings 1.8.Bio-survival groupings; military-medical [1]This book is being written in prison under the well-publicized threat of a.s.sa.s.sination by extremists of both left and right. This ma.n.u.script has, at best, an even chance of getting published. Exo-psychology is not an armchair philosophy of abstractions; it has been forged in the dangerous realities of larval existence on this planet.
[2]Revolution is change or mutation in material externals. Revelation is change or mutation in neurological-extra-terrestrial energies. Revolution without revelation is tyranny; revelation without revolution is slavery.
THE EVOLUTION, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.
9. A Neurological Epistemology: Truth is Subjective, Fact is Social.
This book presents a neurogenetic epistemology -- a theory of what is subjectively true and what is consensually factual.
There are eight levels of truth.
1.Bio-survival viscerotonic truth: the neural signals mediated by the First Circuit which define vegetative-cellular safety and danger. (My toothache.) 2.Emotion-locomotion truth: the neural signals mediated by the Second Musculotonic Circuit which define territorial status-dominance-helplessness. (My emotion.) 3.L.M. Symbolic Cerebrotonic truth: the neural signals mediated by the laryngeal-manual Third Circuit which discriminate and connect my artifacts and my symbols.
4.Cultural-domestic truth: the neural signals mediated by the Fourth Circuit imprint which define soc-s.e.x role. (My socio-s.e.xual values.) 5.Neurosomatic truth: somatic-sensory. signals, free of larval-survival cues, directly registered and mediated by the Fifth Circuit. (My pleasure, my beauty.) 6.Neurophysical truth: all the neural signals registered as bio-electric impulses received by the brain. (My synaptic transmissions.) 7.Neurogenetic truth: signals sent by DNA-RNA to the brain. (My DNA memories and forecasts.) 8.Neuro-atomic truth; atomic-nuclear-quantum signals registered and mediated by the brain.
Each nervous system creates its own island realities. Truth is defined by the wiring of the individual nervous system-genetic, imprinted and conditioned. The "fact" is that the human brain deals with a reality of several billion signals a minute - changing patterns of vibrations - mediated by the eight circuits. Whatever interpretations the individual"s imprinted-conditioned symbol systems impose on these energies is "true" - although it may not be "true" for others. John"s First Circuit toothache is the Dentist"s Third Circuit "clinical problem."
Children imprint the survival cellular tastes, the emotional muscular reflexes, the L.M. symbols and the soc-s.e.x models of their parent-culture. This socialization of larval imprints and conditionings makes consensual communication possible. The island-realities of the child overlap the island realities of the parents and the local tribal group. The child learns the movements of the laryngeal muscles and the manual muscles that create the appropriate symbols. Epistemological games are thus learned. These social reality-islands contain names for labelling energy cl.u.s.ters and relating them. The L.M. symbols, labels and learned sequences of a.s.sociation are a.s.signed "factual" semantic meaning. Facts exist only within the limited framework of the parochial game. Social reality-islands set up criteria for determining fact and error, right and wrong, which may or may not have any relationship to what is experienced by the individual as "true" or "false."
THE EVOLUTION, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.
10. A Neurogenetic Domestic Ethic: Good is Subjective, Virtue is Social.
There are 12 larval soc-s.e.x roles which can be imprinted by either male or female.[1] These roles are valued as consensually "virtuous" or "sinful" depending on their meaning to the domestication-style of the society and its sub-cultures. These roles are valued subjectively as "good" or "bad" on the basis of the Fourth-Circuit imprint.
The Fourth Circuit imprint, determined by genetic s.e.xual-templating and the accidental proximities of adolescence, determines domesticated s.e.x role. The style and object of gender expression-inhibition, s.e.xual impersonation. "Good" is what triggers off the imprinted s.e.xual response. "Good" is what excites and attracts; causes the s.e.xual-domestic juices to flow. "Good" is what provokes the experience - "Ah, there! Now I am at home!" This can be genital penetration-incorporation. It can be parental, protective contact. It can be reception of signals indicating collective security, social approval, applause, patriotic symbols. It can be sado-m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic contact. It can be laryngeal-manual rhythmic fusions. "Bad" is what turns-off or threatens a soc-s.e.xual reward. To the domesticated primate (human), "good" and "bad" are subjective s.e.xual expressions (genital, parental or sublimated-displaced). Usually secret, often unconscious.
Virtue and Sin are consensual-social. Each cultural group sets up its rules for virtuous behavior, sanctifies actions which contribute to the preservation of the hive. Society is based on the control and direction of socio-s.e.xual behavior. The particular soc-s.e.x virtues of the group-emotional, symbolic, and stylistic - are usually determined early in the group"s history by dominant leaders who impose their fourth imprint s.e.xual eccentricities on the culture. St. Paul didn"t like women. Mohammed was polygamous-exploitive. Luther was paternal. Since most modern societies have been codified by menopausal, power-oriented men, the moral systems tend to be prudish, exploitive and chauvinistic. Social reponsibilities thus determine virtue and sin - which are always s.e.xual in origin.
The relationship among the 12 s.e.x roles is the basis of civilization.
Various sub-cultures sanctify certain soc-s.e.x roles and proscribe others, building elaborate ethical codes around the predilections of the mammalian politicians who seize power.
Disastrous personal and social conflicts (guilt, shame) occur because the subjective, private "good" does not usually coincide with soc-s.e.x "virtue."
[1]These 12 roles are also stages of development, described in Part II of this Manual. While each human evolves through these 12 stages in the course of individual development - each of us is genetically programmed to emphasize one of the 12 roles which, when interfaced, makeup the 12-element human-social molecule.
THE EVOLUTION, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.
11. A Neurosomatic Aesthetic: Beauty is Natural, Art is Artificial.
There are eight levels of pleasure. The four larval circuits provide rewarding, rea.s.suring signals that the survival lines to the island-realities are secure. The four post-larval pleasures come from direct awareness of natural energy signals - the Biological equipment, freed from larval imprint, harmoniously mediating natural energies.
This book presents a neurological Zen-aesthetic - defining beauty as natural. Natural as beauty. Here again we distinguish between subjective-psychosomatic pleasure and imprinted-learned reward.
The first four circuits limit consciousness to the wiring of the imprinted and conditioned, and focus upon what is physically, emotionally, mentally and socially rewarding. The larval body is imprint-wired and trained to perform goal-directed game oriented robot sequences in Newtonian s.p.a.ce. The billions of signals per minute which flood into the nervous system from the body and its sense receptors are censored from awareness, tuned out from consciousness at a brain-stem reflex level. The survival tactic is obvious. The body is a trillion-cell, poly-organ bio-survival instrument. If the four-brained individual tunes into the myriad symphonic waves of polymorphous signalry flashed by the senses, SHe could not attend to larval survival responsibilities.
The brain, of course, "knows" every precise detail about the anatomy and physiology of the body and monitors millions of signals per second, but the larval robot mind is "slave-wired" to reflex reaction, unable to decipher or consciously control its own equipment.
Each of the four larval circuits has its imprinted reward-pain cues which are limited and stereotyped: food preferences, emotional cues, L.M. symbolic reflexes, s.e.xual-domestic comforts. When the "mind" discovers that the "body" is a polymorphous, psychosomatic Zen-pleasure-laboratory designed for zero-gravity floating, with trillions of cells merrily copulating every second, imprinted rewards seem pale, static, and second-hand. The activating of "natural body consciousness" is a dramatic step in evolution. The Hedonic Resurrection of the Body is the first step towards extra-terrestrial existence, a profound philosophic discovery, none the less "spiritual" because it occurs in the context of anti-social hedonic behavior, forbidden to the domesticated terrestrial.
We have called this emergence of the Fifth Circuit a "hurtling of the hedonic gap." With the four neuro-umbilical lines retracted, the "mind" discovers that the "natural is the beautiful," that the source of intensified pleasure is somatic function, that there is no social reward or terrestrial gratification which can compare with body consciousness. We have called the Zen experience of the Fifth, somatic Circuit rapture. The body freed from terrestrial attachments, ready to navigate in the zero gravity of interstellar existence.
The existence of the Fifth Circuit and the natural rapture experience has always been a taboo topic proscribed by larval social law because it is instinctively recognized that if the human being discovers a source of pleasure and revelation within Hir body, the commitment and dedication to terrestrial social rewards will diminish. This is the genetic predisposition to escape from the social imprints. Historically it is no accident that the aesthetic, rapturous experience was accepted by affluent aristocracies who are "above and beyond" social sanctions.
We have seen that each neural circuit as it emerges tends to regard the preceding stage as immature. The suckling infant is immature to the walking child. The post-p.u.b.escent flushed with the new experiences and secret discoveries of the "boy-girl-game" looks with amused tolerant scorn at the symbol-manipulations of the pre-adolescent.
It is also true that each of the imprinted "minds" looks with anxious disapproval upon newly emerging realities which tend to disrupt its stability.
We speak here of "neurogenetic politics." Metamorphic chauvinism. The transition periods in the individual"s growth, as new circuits emerge, are stormy, unsettling, and vulnerable. It is well known that adolescence is such a period of sturm and drang. The emergence of a new person, a new tunnel-reality-ident.i.ty, is based on complex bio-chemical changes, intricate new live-wiring of millions of neural fibres, the development of and taking-over by higher neural centers, the ascendance of new imprints, and new bio-electrical patterns. The fragility of these neuro umbilical transitions is not well understood. The pa.s.sage from a First Circuit state, with its emphasis on pa.s.sive security, to the second state of mobility and power exposes the nervous system to frightening vulnerability. The babe leaves the mother"s arms to face the play yard. The adolescent facing with a newly-activated s.e.xual body the pressure to develop a social ident.i.ty.
The delicacy of this process and the permanence of the new imprint "fix" is both awesome and awefull. A new person is created as each circuit of the nervous system emerges.
The new extensions of the reality-island must be hooked up without disturbing the earlier "realities." The new "person" must be integrated.
The human being is at present a confused, frightened, embryonic creature, mutating from Circuit 4 to Circuit 5, from terrestrial to extra-terrestrial existence. Humans would be well advised to treat each other gently at this stage in evolution because mutation is a lime of uncertainty and fragility. Indeed, since the individual recapitulates evolution in Hir own life it would be helpful if, at each larval stage, the child were given accurate information about the neurological changes that are occurring. The facts of metamorphosis explained.
Unfortunately the different demands of the different imprints are externalized as politics, dogma and ethics. Neurological differences "exst.i.tutionalized" as social conflicts. The dread which the child and the larval adult feels in response to the pressure to change, the suspicion of different conceptions of reality, the inability to adapt to change, are caused by the most basic larval insecurity - a loosening of the neuro-umbilical imprint connections.
The transition from the Fourth to the Fifth Circuit is complicated because it has been viewed as anti-social. The perils of hedonism! The socially dangerous discovery of the rapture circuit: "My natural bodily sensations arc more pleasurable and more interesting than territorial social-rewards. I want to stay loose and high. Mundane affairs are robot."
During the 1960"s both Presidents Johnson and Nixon clearly recognized that the American work-aesthetic was threatened by hedonism. While young men lost interest in fighting on far-flung foreign sh.o.r.es, ominous comparisons were made in State of the Union speeches to the "fall of the Roman Empire." The misguided implications were that Hedonism corrupted the Empire and, that if Decadence could be checked, the Empire would continue expanding.
The static moralism of Johnson-Nixon fails to perceive the evolutionary cyclical nature of history. Just as blossom follows bud so does virtuous republic (Stage 11) become centralized empire (Stage 12) and empire flower into somatic hedonism (Stage 13). It is to slow this trend that the socialisms ban rock-and-roll.
In the past, hedonism invariably led to the collapse of empire. Imperial Capture could not compete with private rapture. Hedonism has, therefore, never been recogonized by larval historians as an evolutionary advance, but as a social threat. When the somatic nervous system can be attached to and detached from larval imprints at will the first step away from imprinted-robothood has been taken. The Fifth brain begins to transceive directly the first language of nature - the metacultural biochemistry of the body. When the individual begins to attain control of neurosomatic function, can dial and tune the pleasures of the body, SHe is taking the first step towards control of the nervous system.
In the book The Principles and Practice of Hedonic Psychology,[1] a crude attempt was made to encourage a science of neurosomatics, a systematic study of the psychology of pleasure. Hedonics is not an end-point, but must be seen as a transitional phase in the evolution towards extra-terrestrial existence.
The emergence of Hedonic Psychology in the 1960"s was greeted with official scorn and persecution. Larval politicians correctly saw the cultural perils of hedonism. The neurosomatic perspective frees the human from addiction to hive rewards which are now seen as robot) and opens up vistas of natural satisfaction and meta-social aesthetic revelation. The revelation is this: "I can learn to control internal, somatic function, to select, dial, tune incoming stimuli, not on the basis of security, power, success, or social responsibility, but in terms of aesthetics and psychosomatic wisdom. To feel good. To escape from terrestrial pulls."
Since the Neurological sixties we have seen an efflorescence of consumer sensuality and body interest. Ma.s.sage, sensory awakening, yoga, martial art, diet, health-food-fads, erotic performance. The "new hedonics" is a manifestation of the first beginnings of Circuit 5 Zen Consciousness.
The triggering causative factor in this Fifth Circuit mutation was, of course, the discovery of neurosomatic drugs. In the 1960"s people in technological societies discovered that neurosomatic chemicals "turn-on" the body and provide escape from mundane reality-islands. The moment of this discovery is, for most, an ethical detonation. Bodily revelation has been routinely condemned as immoral by every larval social-ethical system at the same time it has been eloquently praised by those aesthetes who have tuned into the somatic network. But the problem of neurosomatic rapture is that it is a post-larval reaction, and has mixed survival value for terrestrial existence.
The ability to receive, integrate, and transmit somatic sensations, to control the body as time-ship, is necessary in extraplanetary existence but can be a dangerous distraction for mundane life. The drug culture of the 1960"s produced millions of en-raptured hedonists, Hippies, sensualists, nature-lovers floating free of social ties but with no place to go. Some Zen philosophers cynically make a virtue out of this navigational uncertainty. Werner Erhart, for example, glorifying the meaningless of life.
Activation of the Fifth Circuit marks the infancy of interstellar existence. Hippies and Zen adepts are grounded b.u.t.terflies, neurologically ready but technologically unprepared for flight. Instead of being hailed as harmless heralds of a mutation to come, they were predictably derogated and forced underground.
Musicians, poets, artists, aesthetes have traditionally been the exponents of neurosomatic consciousness and of drugs which enhance sensory experience because the Fifth Circuit defines the aesthetic level of reality. The Einsteinian relativity of direct sensuality, of the natural. The Zen insight. "That"s the way it is: beautiful."
Beauty lies in the neurosomatic "I" of the beholder.
Each circuit of the nervous system has its own imprinted criterion for "pleasant" or "rewarding." At Circuit 1 Mother"s ap.r.o.n or the gun can be pleasant. Safety is beautiful. Circuit 2 welcomes stimuli promising dominance and mobility. At Circuit 3 L.M. symbolic rewards appear beautiful. A hundred dollar bill. At Circuit 4 there is the sperm-egg stimulus - "the girl"s underpants" memorialized by Kurt Vonnegut. These positive cues are sought for their imprint-conditioned reward and not for the aesthetic pleasure of the natural "seen" as it is.
Larval reward-pleasure has been inst.i.tutionalized in the form of "show-business" and social "art." The skillful artist unconsciously selects the stimuli which social conditioning has a.s.sociated with safe-dangerous, powerful-weak, competent-stupid and s.e.xually arousing. The criteria for what is considered artistically successful are stylized, socially conditioned, learned in terms of larval symbols. Fifth Circuit rapture, however, is the response of the sense organs to natural stimulation, divorced from terrestrial conditioned meaning.
In advanced civilizations of the past, the Fifth Circuit was attained by adepts and hedonists who created the disciplined tradition of sensual-delight. Somatic art is the Zen aesthetic of the naked-natural. Direct stimulus by-pa.s.sing symbols. Neurosomatic art gets the body high.
The origin of much social art is somebody"s neurosomatic signal which has been socialized-imprinted and learned as "artistic."
At the present time our scientific knowledge of bodily function combined with our technical affluence (especially birth control devices) has brought us to a point of Fifth Circuit breakthrough. Humans are devoting more time to body-consciousness, learning how to tune into somatic conversations, master somatic yogas which provide precise control of bodily function.
However, beauty and rapture are not evolutionary ends in themselves, but antic.i.p.atory preparations on the part of a neurogenetically evolving species for extra-planetary existence.
[1]Abstracted in the January 1973 issue of Psychology Today.
THE EVOLUTION, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.
12. Neurogenetic Ontology: There are Eight Anatomical Levels of Reality.
This book presents a neurogenetic ontology - a theory of eight levels of reality and their interaction.
All realities are neurological-patterns of impulses received, stored and transmitted by neural structures. Consciousness is defined as energy received by structure. Intelligence is defined as energy transmitted by structure. For the human being the structures are neural circuits and their anatomical connections. Please re-read the last three sentences.
For thousands of years ontologists have speculated futilely about the nature of reality. There can be no more room for debate. Surely the nervous system determines every aspect of human reality. What is "real" is what is registered by nerve endings, coded in neural memory banks, and transmitted by nerve fibres.
The ontological question is so easily resolved we wonder why there was ever any confusion. After all, the circulation of the blood was understood four centuries ago. The structure of the nervous system, the fibrous wiring of the sense organs, and the connections to the brain are so anatomically obvious that one is puzzled at the inability of earlier anatomists and physiologists to understand that the nervous system is the seat of consciousness and thus the solution of many ontological questions that have vexed and confused man"s thinking. We face here, perhaps, another contrived, deliberate stupidity, a protective myopia, a species taboo which shrouds attempts to explain consciousness and intelligence-expanding processes. The facts about the nervous system are too robot embarra.s.sing, too challenging to larval theological and political systems. It is just too early on the evolutionary clock for the species to face the neurological facts, for the robots to decipher their own circuitry.
Consider the sad fate of Julien Offray de Lamettrie, whose futique genius caused him to be dismissed from his medical posts and exiled to Holland: Lamettrie demonstrated by comparative methods the relationship between man and other living beings, and proceeded to a theory of the evolution of organisms. He stated that psychical life is observable already on the lowest level of evolution. Investigating the functions of the brain, Lamettrie tried to discern various stages of its formation which are of primary importance in the development of mental life. Also he protested against an evaluation of the moral character of men which depends on the acceptance of religious doctrines. Although Lamettrie was described as a crude materialist, he also influenced idealist philosophers.
This "scapegoat of 18th century materialism" has been blamed and despised by many who had not read a single page of his books.
He is best known for L"Homme Machine.
Four-brained humans cannot accept a scientific neurogenetic ontology which places reality within the changing flux of the nervous system and not in the comforting solidity of the imprinted-conditioned reality-islands. "Man the machine" is an unbearable concept to those who are not ready to mutate beyond the lower, robot circuits.
One cannot evolve from one"s robothood until one realizes how totally one has been robotized. A succinct presentation of this point will be found in Gurdjieff"s comments on mechanization quoted by Ouspensky: In Search of the Miraculous.
Exo-psychology suggests that there are as many realities as there are neuro-anatomical structures for transceiving signals. As the seven neuro-anatomical circuits unfold, so do seven broad cla.s.ses of reality.[1]
1.The First Reality, Bio-cellular, is the imprinted-conditioned world of the infant perpetuated in the viscerotonic survival techniques of the adult.
2.The Second Reality, Locomotor-muscular, is the imprinted-conditioned world of the crawling, brawling, walking child perpetuated in the emotional-political techniques of the adult.
3.The Third Reality, mediated by the left cortex, is the imprinted-conditioned world of the child learning to manipulate L.M. symbols and perpetuated in the linguistic-technology of the adult.
4.The Fourth Reality is the imprinted-conditioned world of social-s.e.xual, domestic responsibility.
5.The Fifth Reality, Body Consciousness is the reception by the body of direct, natural signals uncensored by survival imprints and selectively aware of the demands of gravity.
6.The Sixth Reality is the imprint of the nervous system of and by and unto itself. Einsteiman consciousness no longer frozen to larval circuits or to the body. Brain reality is a relativistic, changing Niagara of millions of bio-electric signals flashing around a thirty-billion cell network. The statement "consciousness is no longer frozen" is not metaphorical; it refers to biochemical-electrical changes at the synaptic level which liberate the flow of signals from routine patterns. The term "static, imprinted-conditioned world" refers to neural-wired programs hooked to reality-islands.
7.The Seventh Reality is the reception by the nervous system of RNA signals from DNA molecules within the cell. Genetic messages leading to symbiotic inter-species telepathy. Since reality is energy registered by neural structure, we can "see" only what we are ready instrumentally and conceptually to receive. At the Seventh Circuit DNA-RNA signals are monitored.
[1]The Eighth Reality is meta-physiological, meta-biological and involves contelligence projected out from the Quantum Projection Booth. See the publications of the Physics Consciousness Research Group by Sarfatti, Sirag, Herbert et al.
THE EVOLUTION, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.
13. An Interstellar Neurogenetic Teleology.
Exo-psychology defines an Interstellar Neurogenetic outlining the DNA pre-programmed course of individual and species evolution.
A complete philosophic system generally includes: 1.A cosmological explanation about where we came from and how it got started 2.A political theory explaining the factors involved in the destructive and harmonious expressions of territorial autonomy, control, freedom, restraint, mobility 3.An epistemological theory defining truth-falsity and right-wrong 4.An ethic defining good-bad, virtue-sin 5.An aesthetic defining beautiful-ugly, artistic-unartistic 6.An ontology defining the spectrum of realities 7.A genetic teleology explaining where biological evolution is going and how it will all turn out, and 8.An ultimate metaphysiological neuro-atomic eschatology explaining what happens when consciousness leaves the body.
The aim of Life is: S.M.I2.L.E.