Cybernetics & Entheogenics: From Cyberspace to Neurospace

Lecture by Peter Lamborn Wilson held during the "Next Five Minutes" Conference on Tactical Media Amsterdam, January 19, 1996

The term "Neurospace" I learned from the Kiev artist Vladimir Muzehesky, through Geert Lovink. What I immediately thought he meant by it was a comparison of that space which is posited as belonging to the computer with the neural space or the inner-body experience, that comes, for most of us, largely through psychedelic drugs—neurospace as the space of hallucinations, for example. I would like to compare and contrast, as they used to say in school, cyberspace and neurospace. There are similarities and differences.

I remember some years ago, when virtual reality suddenly appeared with a big whizbang on the scene, going to a conference in New York where Timothy Leary, God bless him, appeared with Jaron Lanier and couple of other cybernauts. Tim was wearing the goggles, he was on stage and he said, "Oooh, I have been here before." So right from the start there was this connection set up between virtual reality and the LSD experience—or as some us prefer to call it "the entheogenic experience," which is just a fancy way of not using the word psychedelic because it alerts the police. Actually, " entheogenic" means the birth of the "Divine Within. "I am able to use this term that is meaningful for me even though I am not a theist in the strict sense of the word. I don't think you have to believe in God to understand that there can be an experience of the Divine Becoming Within.

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