» The
Thinker and The Prover
» 1.
The Bio-Survival Circuit
» 2.
The Emotional-Territorial Circuit
» 3.
The Time-Binding Semantic Circuit
» 4.
The "Moral" Socio-Sexual Circuit
» 5.
The Holistic Neurosomatic Circuit
» 6.
The Collective Neurogenetic Circuit
» 7.
The Meta-Programming Circuit
» 8.
The Non-Local
Quantum Circuit
The Thinker and The Prover
William James, father of American psychology, tells of meeting an old lady who told him the Earth rested on the back of a huge turtle.
"But, my dear lady", Professor James asked, as politely as possible, "what holds up the turtle?"
"Ah", she said, "that's easy. He is standing on the back of another turtle."
"Oh, I see", said Professor James, still being polite. "But would you be so good as to tell me what holds up the second turtle?"
"It's not use, Professor", said the old lady, realizing he was trying to lead her into a logical trap. "It's turtles-turtles-turtles, all the way!"
Don't be too quick to laugh at this little old lady. All human minds work on fundamentally similar principles. Her universe was a little bit weirder than most, but it was built up on the same mental principles as every other universe people have believed in.
As Dr. Leonard Orr has noted, the human mind behaves as if it were divided into two parts, the Thinker and the Prover.
The Thinker can think about virtually anything. History shows that it can think the earth is suspended on the back of infinite turtles or that the Earth is hollow, or that the Earth is floating in space; comparative religion and philosophy show that Thinker can regard itself as mortal, as immortal, as both mortal and immortal (the reincarnation model) or even as non-existent. It can think itself into living in a Christian universe, a Marxist universe, a scientific-relativistic universe - among many possibilities.
The thinker can think himself sick, and can even think himself well again.
The Prover is a much simpler mechanism. It operates on one law only: Whatever the Thinker thinks; the Prover proves.
If the Thinker thinks that the sun moves around the earth, the Proves will obligingly organize all perceptions to fit that thoughts; if the Thinker changes its mind and decided the earth moves around the sun, the Prover will reorganize the evidence.
If the Thinker thinks "holy water" from Lourdes will cure lumbago, the Prover will skillfully orchestrate all signals from the glands, muscles, organs, etc. until they have organized themselves into good health again.
Of course, it if fairly easy to see that other people's minds operate this way; it is comparatively much harder to become aware that one's own mind is working that way also.
It is believed, for instance, that some men are more "objective" than others. Businessmen are allegedly hard-nosed, pragmatic and "objective" in this sense. A brief examination of the dingbat politics most businessman endorse will quickly correct this impression.
Scientists, however, are still believed to be objective. No study of the lives of the great scientists will confirm this. They were as passionate, and hence as prejudiced, as any assembly of great painters of great musicians.
In the long run, we are hopefully approximating closer and closer to "objective Truth" over the centuries.
In the short run, Orr's law always holds:
"Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover will prove."
Imprints and Bio-Circuits
Imprints are more-or-less hard-wired programs which the brain is genetically designed to accept only at certain points in development.These points are known, in ethology, as times of imprint vulnerability.
1. The 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.
Any multi-cellular organism must, if it is to survive, contain a hard-wired bio-survival circuit, which very simple programs an either-or choice: GO FORWARD to the nourishing, the protective, or GO BACK, away from the threatening, the predatory.
Any mammal hooks the bio-survival circuit to the first imprinted bio-survival object: the teat.Bio-survival and orality are deeply blended in all mammals, including domesticated primates (humans).This is why, despite the Cancer Terror, an estimated 30,000,000 Americans still smoke cigarettes ... Others chew gum, bite their fingernails, gnaw their knuckles, scrunch pencil stubs, eat more than they need.Some chew their lips, gobble tranks and uppers, even much their mustaches.
How important is this oral imprinting?We read of a baby giraffe whose mother was accidentally killed by a jeep immediately after birth.The neonate, following hard-wired genetic programs, "imprinted" the first object that roughly fit the giraffe archetype - the jeep itself.He followed the machine around, vocalized to it, attempted to suckle from it, and, when adult, tried to mate it.
Similarly, Konrad Lorenz tells of a gosling who accidentally imprinted a ping-pong ball and spent his adult life, indifferent to female geese, attempting to sexually mount ping-pong balls.
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.
Radical pediatricians insist, with good evidence, that childbirth by conventional means in a conventional hospital is almost always traumatic for the newborn - creates a bad imprint, in our language.
Our child rearing methods are also far from ideal, adding bad conditioning on top of bad imprinting. And the general violence of our societies to date keeps the first circuit of most people in an emergency state far too much of the time.
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.
Of course, the imprint is made by chance - by the circumstances at the moment of imprint vulnerability. Some imprint bravery, inquisitiveness and the exploratory drive; others imprint timidity; infophobia (fear of the unpredictable) and withdrawal of which the extreme case is the sad imprint called autism or childhood schizophrenia.
All of which is robotic, UNTIL one learns how to reprogram and reimprint one's own brain circuits. In most cases, such meta-programming skill is never acquired. It all goes by in a flash, on mechanical auto-pilot, in zero time. "I just found myself doing it", says the soldier as he is being court-martialled for cowardice or decorated for bravery.
On top of the hard-wired imprinting of the bio-survival circuit comes "softer" conditioning. This allows the safe-space perimeter to be generalized outward from the mother's body to the pack or tribe - the "extended family".
A modern man or woman doesn't look for bio-survival security in the gene-pool, the pack, the extended family. Bio-survival depends on getting the tickets. "You can't live without money", as the Living Theatre troop used to cry out in anguish. If the tickets are withdrawn, acute bio-survival anxiety appears at once.
In traditional society, belonging to the tribe was bio-security, exile was terror, and real threat of death. In modern society, having the tickets (money) is bio-security; having the tickets withdrawn is terror.
In extreme cases - persons who take their heavies imprint on the first (oral) circuit - tend to be viscerotonic, because this imprint determines lifelong endocrine and glandular process. Thus, in extreme they are "baby-faced" in adult life, never lose their "baby-fat", are plump and round and gentle, etc. They are easily "hurt" (threatened: terrified) by disapproval of any sort because in the baby-circuit of the brain, disapproval suggests extinction by loss of the food supply.
All of the most successful reimprinting techniques (therapies) for this kind of chronic anxiety work on the body first, not on the mind. A bad bio-survival imprint can only be corrected by working on the biological being itself, the body that feels perpetually vulnerable and under attack. Even NLP (and hypnotherapy) begins by inducing the patient to relax and breathe easily.
The bio-survival imprints, especially traumatic ones, are all-over-the-body, frozen in chronic muscle and gland mechanisms.
If you can't understand somebody's irrational behavior, start by observing their breathing. You will very quickly get an idea of what is bothering them. That is why all schools of yoga - Buddhist, Hindi or Sufi - place such emphasis on restoring natural breathing before trying to move the student on to higher circuits or wider consciousness.
This is of more than "psychological" import. 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. People are strangling their inner organs every day because they are afraid.
Anthropologist Ashley Montagu has collected numerous statistics on children who were deprived of maternal love at the crucial point of imprint vulnerability in infancy. They not only died younger than the national average, but were sicklier all their lives and even grew up to be several inches shorter than the average adult height for their sex.
Christian Science - or any other religion that dogmatically insists that "God" wants us to be happy and successful - can cure such conditions "miraculously". What the Thinker thinks the Prover proves. Absolute faith that "God" is supporting you, beamed out from the brain all day long, day after day, signals the muscles to relax, and natural buoyancy and health returns.
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. More about this later on.
2. The 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.
The second circuit, the emotional territorial circuit is concerned entirely with power politics.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 on what happens in the environment, this circuit will organize itself into a strong, dominating role in the pack (or family) or a weak, submissive role.One can observe this mammalian imprinting process in any litter of puppies: it is very quickly determined who is TOP DOG and who is BOTTOM DOG.
Most mammals mark their territories with excretions, domesticated primates mark their territories with ink excretions on paper.
The standard "authority" reflex on the emotional-territorial circuit is to swell the muscles and howl.The standard "submission" reflex is to shrink the muscles, lower the head, and "crawl" away.
If the first (bio-survival) circuit is chiefly imprinted by the mother, the second (emotional-territorial) circuit is chiefly imprinted by the father.
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, prediction and transmitting signals across generations are its functions.
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.
In ordinary language, the semantic circle is usually called the mind.Many existentially thinkable thoughts are socially unthinkable, since (a) everybody in a given society has roughly the same semantic imprint and (b) this is reinforced daily by assumptions that are mechanically taken for granted.
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).
In closing, let us be reminded that Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for teaching that the earth moves.Was he guilty or not?
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, adult-parental personality (sex role) and nurture of the young.
This socio-sexual circuit is activated and imprinted at adolescence, when the DNA signal awakens the sexual apparatus.The teenager becomes the bewildered possessor of a new body and a new neural circuit oriented to orgasm and sperm-egg fusion.The pubescent human, like any other rutting animal, lurches about in a state of mating frenzy, every call gasping for the sexual object.
Most sexual dysfunctions are hooked into the nervous system at these adolescent moments of acute imprint vulnerability.
We can tell precisely at what period in time a person was sexually imprinted by noting which fetishes continue to turn him or her on.
Primitives (so-called) know these facts and surround all the points of imprint vulnerability with rituals, "ordeals", "rites of passage", etc. well designed to imprint the desired traits of a well-integrated member of that tribe at that time.
The fourth circuit can almost be called the guilt circuit: almost everybody, almost everywhere, is quite busy hiding their real sexual profile and miming the "accepted" sex role for their gender in their tribe.
There is one omni-purpose taboo which exists in every tribe.That taboo stipulates that sexuality shall not be unregulated by the tribe.That is, even though no other taboos are universal, the taboo against living without taboos remains constant.
An American President may not marry his own sister (if he wants to get re-elected); an Egyptian Pharaoh had to marry his own sister. Both the President and the Pharaoh are expected to obey local rules.
The principle function of the socio-sexual circuit, in the higher primates, is to form an adult personality - a parent.By definition, the parent is one who cares for the young of the species; by genetic necessity, the parent also cares about the young.In symbolizing humans, this means planning, hoping and having aspirations.In the language of the mystics, this means being "attached" and "trapped" on the wheel of karma"; the first effort in most mystical traditions is to break this fourth-circuit attachment by taking a vow of celibacy.
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.
The phenomena of "faith healing", "regeneration", "rejuvenation", bliss, ecstasy, rapture, etc. have been occurring for many thousands of years, in all known cultures.
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.
Pranayama (controlled breathing) creates neurosomatic turn on: sensory enrichment, sensual bliss, perceptual delight, and a general laid-back Hedonic "high".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.Hindus, who are professionals at pranayama, claim a great deal more, such as: immunity to pain of all sorts, Samadhi ("union with God"), levitation, etc.
The lives of the saints are full of stories which seem "miracles" to the four-circuited majority, or are rejected as "lies, hoaxes, yarns" by the three-circuited dogmatic rationalist, but which seem perfectly normal from the viewpoint of five-circuited polymorphous consciousness.The saint says he is in rapture, and full of gratitude to God, for giving him such a feast for dinner as - plain bread and water. The guru comes into the room and his bio-energy has such a charge that a cripple jumps up and is "healed"; the cripple merely acquired neurosomatic turn-on by contact, as some people get "contact high" when others are on drugs.
The fifth circuit is"non-linear" and "global".It is not limited by the one-thing-at-a-time sequences of the semantic circuit; it thinks in Gestalts.This is why it is so often connected with "intuition", which is a way of thinking between and around data-points on the perceptual screen - sensing what total field the points must be part of.
It is quite easy to determine if the Fifth Circuit has been activated successfully or not.How often does a person go to a doctor?If a mind researcher is "glowing" rather than grayish, "bouncy" rather than craggy, if he or she has a "sparkle" - and if he or she virtually never goes to a doctor - the neurosomatic circuit has been mastered.
The body became the flexible clay and the awakened (illuminated) brain became the sculptor.
In general, fourth circuit problems take the form of guilt; third circuit problems take the form of perplexity; second circuit problems take the form of bullying or cowardice; first circuit problems take the form of body symptoms.
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.
There is nothing supernatural about the fifth circuit.It merely appears "supernatural" by comparison to the earlier circuits.
6. 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.
Circuit VI neurogenetic consciousness allows you to "converse" with the evolutionary architect who designed your body.
7. The Meta-programming 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 conscious choice between alternative universes or reality tunnels.
In the province of the mind what is believed true is true or becomes true within limits to be learned by experience and experiment.These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.In the province of the mind there are no limits.
The meta-programming circuit, known as White Light, simply represent brain becoming aware of itself.Most of the occult literature of the world consists of tricks, gimmicks and games 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.
For instance, a popular game with California occultists involves a Magic Room, which contains an Omniscient Computer.
To play the game, you simply project yourself, in imagination, into this Magic Room and visualize vividly the Omniscient Computer, using the details you need to make such a super-information-processor real to your fantasy.
You do not need any knowledge of programming to handle this computer.It exists in the next century; you are getting to use it by a species of time-travel, if that metaphor is amusing and helpful to you.It is so built that it responds immediately to human brain-waves, "reading" them and decoding their meaning.So, when you are in this Magic Room, you can ask this computer anything, just by thinking of what you want to know.It will read your thought, and project into your brain, by a laser ray, the correct answer.
There is one slight problem.The computeris very sensitive to all brain-waves.if you have any doubts, it registers them as negative commands, meaning "Do not answer my question".So, the way to use it is to start with "easy" questions.
It is wise to ask only one question at a time, since it requires concentration to keep this magic computer real on the field of your perception.Do not exhaust your capacities for imagination and visualization on your first trial runs.
Remember that this computer cannot "understand" your commands if you harbor any doubts about them.Doubts tell it not to perform.Work always from what you can believe in, extending the area of belief only as results encourage you to try for more dramatic transformation of your past reality-tunnels.
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 perception ("precognition"), by trans-space visions (ESP), etc.It tunes the brain into the non-local quantum communication system suggested by physicists such as Bohm, Walker Sarfatti, Bell, etc.
The highest varieties of shamanic and yogic consciousness seem to begin from dilation beyond the immediate and dilate, rapidly and dizzily, much further, to union with the smallest and the largest - the "Cosmic Mind" in short.
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.
From Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson
Prometheus Rising
Robert Anton Wilson
The author states that this book is about unleashing our full stature. His book delves into the tunnel vision of our brains for the most part. That is, it explores the tunnels of reality which we create.Every chapters completes itself with a list of several comprehension exercises that give you a bona fide feel for "tunnel vision."