Prometheus Rising Chapter 2 Hardware & Software The Brain and Its Programs

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Prometheus Rising Chapter 2. Hardware & Software The Brain and Its Programs

Author: Robert Anton Wilson Publisher: Grand Junction, CO: Hilaritas Press. Publish Date: 1983 Review Date: 2023-7-12 Status:📚

Annotations

Highlight(pink) - Location 333 We, as a species, exist in a world in which exist a myriad of data points. * Upon these matrices of points we superimpose a structure2 and the world makes sense to us. The pattern of the structure originates within our biological and sociological properties.3— Persinger and Lafreniere, Space-Time Transients and Unusual Events • * In our terminology, these data points are events or actions, i.e. verbs, not nouns. 2 In our terminology, models or maps, static things; nouns not verbs. 3 In our terminology, brain hardware and software. •

Highlight(pink) - Location 350 The Aristotelian idea that to understand something you must know what it is has been abandoned in one science after another, for the pragmatic reason that the simple word “is” introduces so many metaphysical assumptions that we can argue forever about them. In the most advanced sciences, such as mathematical physics, nobody talks about what anything is anymore. They talk about what model (or map) can best be used to understand whatever we are investigating.

Highlight(pink) - Location 359 The brain appears to be made up of matter in electro-colloidal suspension (protoplasm). Colloids are pulled together, toward a condition of gel, by their surface tensions. This is because surface tensions pull all glue-like substances together. Colloids are also, conversely, pushed apart, toward a condition of sol, by their electrical charges. This is because their electrical charges are similar, and similar electrical charges always repel each other. In the equilibrium between gel and sol, the colloidal suspension maintains its continuity and life continues. Move the suspension too far toward gel, or too far toward sol, and life ends.
Highlight(pink) - Location 364 Any chemical that gets into the brain, changes the gel-sol balance, and “consciousness” is accordingly influenced. Thus, potatoes are, like LSD, “psychedelic”—in a milder way. The changes in consciousness when one moves from a vegetarian diet to an omnivorous diet, or vice versa, are also “psychedelic.” Since “What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves,” all of our ideas are psychedelic. Even without experimenting with diet or drugs, whatever you think you should see, you will see—unless it is physically impossible in this universe.

Highlight(pink) - Location 370 All experience is a muddle, until we make a model to explain it. The model can clarify the muddles, but the model is never the muddle itself. “The map is not the territory”; the menu does not taste like the meal.

Highlight(pink) - Location 372 Every computer consists of two aspects, known as hardware and software. (Software here includes information).The hardware in a solid-state computer is concrete and localized, consisting of central processing unit, display, keyboard, external disk drive, CD-ROM, floppies, etc. The software consists of programs that can exist in many forms, including the totally abstract. A program can be “in” the computer in the sense that it is recorded in the CPU or on a disk which is hitched up to the computer. A program can also exist on a piece of paper, if I invented it myself, or in a manual, if it is a standard program; in these cases, it is not “in” the computer but can be put “in” at any time. But a program can be even more tenuous than that; it can exist only in my head, if I have never written it down, or if I have used it once and erased it.
Highlight(pink) - Location 379 The hardware is more “real” than the software in that you can always locate it in space-time. On the other hand, the software is more “real” in the sense that you can smash the hardware back to dust (“kill” the computer) and the software still exists, and can “materialize” or “manifest” again in a different computer. (Any speculations about reincarnation at this point are the responsibility of the reader, not of the author.)
Highlight(pink) - Location 383 In speaking of the human brain as an electro-colloidal biocomputer, we all know where the hardware is: it is inside the human skull. 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, and anybody and (to some extent) any-thing that has ever impacted upon my brain. This may sound strange, but that’s the way software (or information) functions.
Highlight(pink) - Location 389 Of course, if consciousness consisted of nothing but this undifferentiated tapioca of timeless, spaceless software, we would have no individuality, no center, no Self. We want to know, then, how out of this universal software ocean a specific person emerges. What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves.
Highlight(pink) - Location 392 Because the human brain, like other animal brains, acts as an electro-colloidal computer, not a solid-state computer, it follows the same laws as other animal brains. That is, the programs get into the brain, as electro-chemical bonds, in discrete quantum stages. 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.

Highlight(pink) - Location 399 In general, the primordial imprint can always over-rule any subsequent conditioning or learning. 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.
Highlight(pink) - Location 413 Each successive imprint complicates the software which programs our experience and which we experience as “reality.”
Highlight(pink) - Location 414 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.

Before the first imprint, the consciousness of the infant is “formless and void” — like the universe at the beginning of Genesis, or the descriptions of unconditioned (“enlightened” i.e., exploded) consciousness in the mystic traditions. 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.

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.

Highlight(pink) - Location 416 Following Dr. Timothy Leary (with a few modifications) we shall divide this brain hardware into eight circuits
Highlight(pink) - Location 418 Four of the circuits are “antique” and conservative, they exist in everybody (except feral children).
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Highlight(pink) - Location 429 The development of these circuits as the brain evolved through evolution, and as each domesticated primate (human) brain recapitulates evolution in growing from infancy to adulthood, makes possible gene-pool survival, mammalian sociobiology (pecking order, or politics) and transmission of culture.
Highlight(pink) - Location 431 The second group of four brain circuits is much newer, and each circuit exists at present only in minorities. Where the antique circuits recapitulate evolution-to-the-present, these futuristic circuits precapitulate our future evolution.
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 communication system suggested by physicists such as Bohm, Walker, Sarfatti, Bell, etc.

Highlight(pink) - Location 446 EXERCIZES 1. If you don’t already have a computer, run out and buy one. Then re-read this chapter. 2. To understand hardware and software (as applied to the human brain) perform the following meditation. Sit in a room where you will not be disturbed for a half hour and begin thinking, “I am sitting in this room doing this exercize because …“ and list as many of the “causes” as you can think of. For instance, you are doing this exercize because, obviously, you read about it in this book. Why did you buy this book? Did somebody recommend it? How did that person come into your life? If you just picked the book up in a store, why did you happen to be in just that store on just that day? Why do you read books of this sort—on psychology, consciousness, evolution etc.? How did you get interested in those fields? Who turned you on, and how long ago? What factors in your childhood inclined you to be interested in these subjects later? Why are you doing this exercize in this room and not elsewhere? Why did you buy or rent this house or apartment? Why are you in this city and not another? Why on this continent and not another? Why are you here at all—that is, how did your parents meet? Did they consciously decide to have a child, do you happen to know, or were you an accident? What cities were they born in? If in different cities, why did they move in space-time so that their paths would intersect? Why is this planet capable of supporting life, and why did it produce the kind of life that would dream up an exercize of this sort? Repeat this exercize a few days later, trying to ask and answer fifty questions you didn’t think of the first time. (Note that you cannot ever ask all possible questions.) Avoid all metaphysical speculations (e.g., karma, reincarnation, “destiny” etc.). The point of the exercize will be mind-blowing enough without introducing “occult” theories, and it will be more startling if you carefully avoid such overtly “mystical” speculations. 4. Pick up any household item—a spoon, a pen, a cup etc. Perform the same exercize as above—why is it here? Who invented it, if you can find out? How did the invention get to this continent? Who manufactured it? Why did they manufacture that instead of bird cages? Why did they become manufacturers instead of musicians? Why did you buy it? Why did you pick that object, of all the objects in your house, for this meditation?

Highlight(pink) - Location 465 ANSWER QUICKLY NOW ARE YOU YOUR HARDWARE, OR YOUR SOFTWARE? OR BOTH?

Notes

Amount: 5

🔮 The Cosmos