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← Prometheus Rising Book Summary, Notes and Highlights

Prometheus Rising Chapter 12. The Collective Neurogenetic Circuit

Author: Robert Anton Wilson Publisher: Grand Junction, Colorado: Hilaritas Press. Publish Date: 1983 Review Date: Status:⌛️

ideas:

  • alaya vijnana
  • knowledge of the passing away and rebirth of beings
  • the ability to see devas
  • Psychedelic entities

Annotations

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2400 The sixth circuit of the brain kicks into action when the nervous system begins to receive signals from within the individual neuron—from the RNA-DNA “dialogue,” the neurogenetic feedback system. The entire nervous system, including the brain, has been designed like the rest of the body, by the “code” within the DNA molecule, which sends signals via messenger RNA molecules to tell the organism what to do: Grow red hair. Have blue eyes. Stand up and walk now. Start to talk. Find a mate. Etc. Our entire mental lives—our brain hardware and software—exist within the perimeters of this DNA master-tape. With neurogenetic consciousness, these DNA archives become accessible to brain scanning, while awake. (They are always accessible, as archetypes of the Jungian “collective unconscious,” during dreaming sleep.)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2406 The first to achieve neurogenetic awareness, a few thousand years ago, spoke of “memories of past lives,” “re-incarnation,” “immortality,” etc. That these neurological adepts were speaking of something real, in the best language of their day, is indicated by the fact that many of them (especially Hindus and Sufis) gave marvelously accurate poetic vistas of evolution millennia before Darwin and foresaw Super-humanity before Nietzsche.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2409 The Greeks called this “the vision of Pan,” the Chinese “the great Tao,” Hindus “Atman consciousness.” The numinous, awful, sublime “God” “Goddess” and “Demon” figures who appear in the initial stages of this Awakening are Jung’s “archetypes of the collective unconscious” and are recognized as “victors from dream-time” by primitives, as “them from Sidde” by witches, as the Weird People in a thousand folk-traditions.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2413 The visions of past and future evolution described by those who have had trans-time experiences during close-to-death or “clinical death” trauma also describe the Circuit VI neurogenetic reality-tunnel.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2417 Specific exercizes to trigger neurogenetic imprints are not to be found in yogic teaching; it usually happens, if at all, after many years of expertise in the kind of advanced rajah yoga that develops Circuit V somatic bliss. Heavy does of LSD, of course, always trigger temporary Neurogenetic vistas.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2419 The neurogenetic circuit is best considered, in terms of current science, as the genetic archives activated by excitement of anti-histone proteins—the DNA memory coiling back to the dawn of life and containing also the genetic blueprints for the future of evolution.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2424 Here dwell primordial archetypes, far older than language yet newer than tomorrow, Personifying this circuit as a being, Crowley tells us:  … The “Babe in the Egg of Blue” [cf., the final image of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey—R.A.W.]  … represents the Higher Self … The connection is with the symbolism of the dwarf in mythology … In his absolute innocence and ignorance he is “the Fool”; he is the Savior … the “Great Fool” of Celtic legend, the “Pure Fool” of Act I of Parsifal … he is also the Green Man of spring festivals … So we see him fully armed as Bacchus Diphues, male and female in one. the bisexual Baphomet, and … Zeus Arrhenothelus, equally bisexual … [He is shown in this full form in the Tarot Trump XV, “The Devil”] … But the “small person” of Hindu mysticism, the dwarf insane yet crafty of many legends in many lands, is also this same … Silent Self of a man, or his Holy Guardian Angel. These images are not poetic whimsies by Crowley. They reappear in the dreams of individuals (the personal myth of the night), in the myths of all peoples (the impersonal dreams of the species), and, of course, over and over in UFO contact stories.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2467 The neurogenetic circuit is probably located in the right neocortex and is more recent than the neurosomatic circuit in the back sections of the right cortex.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2441 The “language” of this circuit is the multi-level language of Finnegans Wake, where Finnegan is Finn-again, Finn Mac Cool of Irish legend reborn and Huck Finn again also, sailing down “Missus Liffey,” both the river Anna Liffey in Ireland and Huck Finn’s Mississippi; where Mark the Wan is King Mark, cuckolded by Tristan, but Mark the Twy is Mark Twain, married to a wife he called “Livvy” just like the Irish river, and Mark the Tris is cuckolded Mark and cuckolding Tristan in one; while Marcus Lyons is all of them, plus Mark the apostle, his emblematic lion (always shown with him in medieval art), Leo the lion, Leo in the zodiac and all associated fire-signs, and one of the Four Old Men (Matt Gregory, Marcus Lyons, Luke Tarpey and Johnny McDougall) who haunt the dreamer all night long, symbolizing the four evangelists, the four bedposts surrounding the sleeper, the four antique circuits, the four suits of Tarot or ordinary playing cards, the four elements of the ancients, and all the other fours that Jung has found omnipresent in the “collective unconscious.” To parallel the evolution of the first four circuits in human (and mammalian) history,
  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2452 This archetypal circuit is replete with what Jung called synchronicities—meaningful coincidences—which he attributed to the circuit’s roots in what he called the “psychoid” level, below the personal and collective unconscious, where “mind” and “matter” are not yet differentiated—the royal highway of the DNA-RNA-CNS (central nervous system) telegraph, in Tim Leary’s metaphor. Such synchronicities are a sure sign that you are dealing with the neurogenetic circuit. For instance, in a Finnegans Wake study group, we were all convulsed with laughter when noticing that “Toot and Come Inn” is not just a parody of American cutesy-pie motel names but another of Joyce’s countless puns on Tutankhamen. At this point, my wife entered the room to enquire what was so funny. When we explained, she said, “That’s a synchronicity—I was just watching a TV program about Tutankhamen.” And. of course, Joyce put the boy-king into the dream because the main theme of Finnegans Wake, the main theme of the neurogenetic circuit, is the survival of genetic memory through time, symbolized by the Resurrection myth; and Tut was dug up (resurrected) synchronistically, just after Joyce started work in this epic.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2461 As Joyce explains the logic of the neurogenetic circuit, “This ourth of years is naught save brickdust and being humus the same returns” (the earth gives back, in new forms, what is buried) since “on the bunk of our breadwinning lies the cropse of our seedfather” (comment superfluous, to those who know The Golden Bough) and “Phall if you but, will rise you must.” The seed, the genetic code, and the egg, cellular wisdom, sends the signal down the aeons; in the similar metaphor of Nobel geneticist Hebert Muller, “We are all giant robots manufactured by DNA to make more DNA.”

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2465 To the individual, the breaks in the chain of life/death /life/death/life/death are all-too real and painful; to the seed-and-egg wisdom of the neurogenetic circuit, the seamless unity of lifedeathlifedeathlifedeathlife is the greater reality.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2468 Circuit VI neurogenetic consciousness allows you to “converse” with the evolutionary architect who designed your body—and billions and billions of others since the dawn of life around 3-4 billion years ago. This “architect” is the greatest designer on this planet, as Bucky Fuller has often commented. No human architect has yet equaled Her efficiency or Her esthetics in such routine products as roses, eggs, insect colonies, fish etc. She (or He) can be personified in modern terms as Mother DNA or Father Nucleic Acid. The Rationalist immediately objects that such personification, however inescapable it is to all who have encountered the Architect directly on this circuit, is illegitimate, because She or He is unconscious. The rebuttal, given by all Circuit VI adepts in all cultures and all ages, is that She or He is not unconscious but intoxicated, and it is a divine intoxication.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2475 Less poetically, whether we “humanize” this “architect” into a Big Momma or Big Daddy, or “animalize” it into a jackal-headed being like the Egyptian, or “insectualize” it into a divine Preying Mantis like one African tribe, or “spiritualize” it into something totally abstract like Hindus and Christian Scientists, we are only depicting one cross-section of this 3-4 billion-year-old Being. When we ‘‘moleculize’’ it as DNA we are also only seeing one cross-section—the most useful cross-section for scientific analysis. That is all that needs to be said, or should be said, for the “scientific materialist” chemicalization of the biosphere, and it is no contradiction of direct experience of the Being itself via Circuit VI yogas, biological or chemical. Indeed, the direct experience undoubtedly can and has helped many scientists get a wider, more holistic view of what is going on in evolution, which they have brought down to Circuit III in better linguistic models. Teilhard de Chardin is one, but not the only, example of a scientist whose evolutionary model has been improved by such direct Circuit VI experience.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2483 For those who have not yet had Circuit VI experience—and most of humanity will possess the technology to turn on this circuit at will, within the next twenty years—this evolutionary perspective might, possibly, be conveyed by a series of quantum jumps in perspective, thus: The individual can make mistakes, even fatal ones. Consciousness of Circuits I-V is far from infallible; we all get into messes, and sometimes they kill us. The gene-pool can make mistakes, but less frequently. Most gene-pools have a life-span far beyond any individual, by a factor of many thousands. Obviously, if we judge intelligence by survival, gene-pools—made up of the information of many million individuals—are more “intelligent” than any individuals, even geniuses. (Einstein was not as smart as the Jewish people collectively. He created Relativity and was smart enough to escape the Nazis. The Jews, historically, created dozens of ideas as important as Relativity and survived hundreds of pogroms.) The species is even more intelligent than the gene-pool. It lives millions of times longer than any individual, many thousand times longer than any gene-pool. The biosphere—Gaia—the DNA script—is more intelligent than all individuals, gene-pools and species. It has survived everything thrown at it for nearly 4 billion years, and is getting smarter all the time. It is on the edge of achieving immortality; through the sixth circuit it has a better eye to see itself and judge its trajectories than ever before; it is getting ready to leave this planet and expand across the universe.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2495 Beethoven, to cite him one more time, said “Anybody who understands my music will never be unhappy again.” That is because his music is the song of the Sixth Circuit, of Gaia, the Life Spirit, becoming conscious of Herself, of Her powers, of Her own capacities for infinite progress.
  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2497

EXERCIZES

  1. List at least 15 similarities between New York (or any large city) and an insect colony, such as a bee-hive or termite hill. (If you can’t think of at least 15, read Edward Wilson’s Sociobiology.) Contemplate the information in the DNA loop, which created both of these enclaves of high coherence and organization, in primate and insect societies.

  2. Read the Upanishads and every time you see the word “Atman” or “World Soul,” translate it as DNA blueprint. See if it makes sense to you that way.

  3. Contemplating these issues usually triggers Jungian synchronicities. See how long after reading this chapter you encounter an amazing coincidence—e.g., seeing DNA on a license plate, having a copy of the Upanishads given to you unexpectedly, seeing an image like Crowley’s Pan or Great Mother in a work of popular art etc.

  4. Explain such a synchronicity, when it occurs, in Circuit III Rationalist terms—mere coincidence etc.

  5. Psychologist Barbara Honnegger explains synchronicities by saying that the right brain hemisphere (where this circuit is located) moves you in space-time to the place where the synchronicity will occur, while the Rationalist left brain invents rationalizations to go there. Synchronicities are a language through which this circuit communicates with the left brain, in this theory. Try explaining coincidences by that theory. What messages is your right brain trying to send to your left brain?

  6. Jung and several of his disciples (e.g., Coleman, Steiger, Fiedler) have suggested that UFOs are messages from this collective DNA circuit to the left brain. What do such messages mean? What is the right brain trying to tell us?

Notes

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