Shapeshifting, Consciousness & The Edge of Science

Guest writer Colin Magee shares with us his thoughts on the nature of consciousness.

In his essay on life after death when he was discussing consciousness Paul asked if rocks could be conscious. I've always found this line of speculation fascinating.Hans Moravec in his book Robot-Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind has the following to say: "Given the right playbook,the thermal jostling of the atoms in a rock can be seen as the operation of a complex, self-aware mind.How strange. Common sense screams that people have minds and rocks don't. But interpretations are often ambiguous....We can see levers and springs in animal limbs, and beauty in the aurora: our "mind children" may be able to spot fully functioning intelligences in the complex chemical goings on of plants, the dynamics of interstellar clouds, or the reverberations of cosmic radiation. No particular interpretation is ruled out, but the space of all of them is exponentially larger than the size of individual ones, and we may never encounter more than an infinitesimal fraction. The rock-minds may be forever lost to us in the boggingly vast sea of chaotic rock-interpretations. Yet those rock minds make complete sense to themselves,and to them it is we who are lost in meaningless chaos. Our own nature, in fact, is defined by the tiny fraction of possible interpretations we can make, and the astronomical number we can't."

I'd like to go one further and propose the following-is it conceivable that inanimate objects could have some degree of consciousness? I remember reading in the book Space-Time and Beyond by Jack Sarfatti, Fred Wolf, and Bob Toben something to the effect that even a spoon is conscious. I don't recall the exact quote unfortunately. In the book To Seek out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek by Dr. Athena Andreadis she discusse shapeshifters that are able to impersonate inanimate objects. She mentioned a character from Deep Space Nine named Odo who impersonated a wine glass.In the essay she stated that it violated various laws of physics and biology and stated that shapeshifters are impossible. If I was a scientist I think I would be inclined to say something along these lines: "According to our current and limited understanding of the laws of physics and biology it would appear at this time that shapeshifters are improbable." This of course leaves open the possibility that as our knowledge expands the concept of shapeshifters could indeed be plausible. Is it conceivable that some advanced civilization using some advanced form of technology such as femtotechnology or picotechnology (or some other technology not yet conceived of by our current understanding of the laws of physics) could impersonate an inanimate object for cloaking purposes,for instance to avoid predators. There are certain insects for example that impersonate leaves to evade predators (of course I know that this is a form of camouflage and that they don't actually "turn into a leaf"). Still it is an interesting idea to consider.Ideas such as shapeshifters of course bring up all kinds of issues in epistemology,ontology,metaphysics, and philosophy of science particularly when it comes to the nature of "impossibility." For instance,when is something truly impossible? And how many different degrees/types of impossibility are there - i.e. logically impossible, physically impossible, metaphysically impossible, etc.?

In the Bible Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt as a form of punishment. If karmic law exists, is it then conceivable that a person could be reincarnated as an inanimate object as part of their karmic decisions? On the surface I suppose that most people would consider this theory ludicrous and would probably question the sanity of the person proposing it. I threw this out somewhat tongue-in-cheek yet somewhat seriously as a hypothesis to a good friend of mind and she felt that it was something that someone on acid might have thought up. Still as a firm believer in the "guerilla ontology" of Robert Anton Wilson I feel that no ideas should be taboo or off limits particularly in philosophy and science.

There are five quotes which I think are relevant when considering and evaluating "outlandish" hypotheses:

1.) "Reality is not only stranger than we imagine,but stranger than we can imagine" - J.B.S.Haldane

2.) "Your theory is crazy,but not crazy enough to be true" - Neils Bohr

3.) "When an elderly but distinguished scientist says something is possible he is very probably correct,when he says something is impossible he is very probably wrong"- Arthur C.Clarke

4.) "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

5.) "There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy Horatio" - Shakespeare

That being said when proposing theories and hypotheses which are considered "outlandish" what is the apropriate balance between freedom and discipline? Is this subjective or are there objective criteria? Does this depend on the area/discipline in which the speculations are being made? What does epistemology, metaphysics, ontology, and philosophy of science have to say regarding this? These are not easy questions to answer especially when dealing with issues that are considered fringe by the majority of scientists.

I guess until we have a firm definition of consciousness (if that's even possible-which may not be) we won't be able to answer what entities, objects, etc. are conscious or not. Furthermore, it seems to me that any definition of consciousness will be anthropomorphic. I think that we'd be like the scientists in Stanislaw Lem's novel Solaris-anytime we try to gain insight into something truly extraterrestrial/alien are we really just projecting our own theories, preconceived ideas, etc. onto something we may never be in a position to know?

Are there many science fiction stories that deal with the idea I've been discussing? I understand that there are a lot of fantasy stories that deal with the concept of shapeshifters but was wondering how much this theme is explored in science fiction. I'm a firm believer that even so called outlandish ideas can stimulate thinking about old ideas in a new light and can also stimulate thinking in new and innovative directions. With that in mind I was wondering how many people have read the books The New Inquisition by Robert Anton Wilson and Space-Time Transients and Unusual Events by Michael A. Persinger and Gyslaine F.Lafreniere. I've found these books very interesting and mind expanding. Another book which I was curious about is called "The Secret Life of Inanimate Objects" by Lyall Watson. Do you know anything about this book. I'd be interested in any feedback positive or negative regarding this idea.

nice to be meeting myself

For 15 minutes I was living in two worlds at once.

Or at least two moments in the same space separated by 13 years or so. It was the same white electric stove, the same old buzzing fridge, and the same worn spanish tiles (though perhaps a bit more worn than last time). This was the house where my mind and soul met and shook hands. Where Crowley, and Leary, and McKenna, and Bob Wilson all took hold of me amidst an endless whirling of psychedelics and empathogens.

For some time we had a tent set up in the living room, hung with christmas lights, for safety meetings and ecstacy huddles. On a couch 5 friends and I sustained 20 minutes of telepathy listening to "Blues for the Rainforest" in the dark, our pineal glands awash in the hyperdimensional electricity of ayahuasca. One night my nervous system and organs exploded right out the top of my skull, eyes bulging with lighting bolts shooting from my brain. It was sudden and existentially shocking, but really alright too. In that moment, my fingers clutching at the living room carpet, the voice of the mushroom spoke to me briefly, directly, and intentionally, like it was hanging on the air just behind my ear.

These thoughts played across the screen of my perception, transparent and overlaid like a film strip on the walls of the B40 house now packed thick with humans talking and drinking, bumping and bouncing, stuffed into the living room and packed around the band percolating in the corner. Probably the best rager ever thrown here. The house has been more or less in the same hands for 15 years, moving from friend to friend of a friend. Those who've lived and loved within it's walls have always been able to return. Being there tonight reinforced the bond just a little bit deeper. Indeed, the For Sale sign on the front drive has been duly dismantled and hurled into the adjacent eucalyptus grove.

Dwellings are vessels. They absorb and contain the energy of the living held between their walls. I always smudge when I move into a new location, just to clear it out some. The B40 house was swollen tonight with the honey of the years, glowing and amber among the faces new & old. Most of the people there I didn't even know, but I was glad they were picking up the vibe and amplifying it a bit higher.

Glancing at faces, peering into eyes, it strikes me that each person is a piece of myself, forgotten and lost, looking back at me and seeking the point of overlap, of timeless contact. Old friends feel warm and close, like part of our bodies are shared, astrally familiar. Others are new and different, forgotten awaiting memory and a recollection of unity. We all marinate together in the magick and spirit uniquely crafted in this home and painted on the walls in ultraviolet and invisible ink. Heiroglyphs of experience cover every surface, like that 5am morning when electric acid patterns crawled across the walls and couches and carpets and faces, thick and rich and perfectly real.

I imagine this place as a pulsing red bead on the web of energetic manifestation. Human electrons streaming in and out, energy states shifting and jumping. A node in the matrix, as it were, yet plainly alive and organic - more like a neuron than a terminal. A moment of spacetime echoing forward and backwards through the continuum, like a stone dropped into a calm pond. Waves radiate outward from it's locus. Those waves have helped carry me to the exact spot I'm at right now, and will likely power my passage further on through the night, under sun and moon, day in and day out, across the seas of time until the porous ship is too laden with experience and memory to hold against the tugging waters. When my drop becomes the pool once again, these thoughts and memories will dissolve like sugar and sweeten the oceans of consciousness.

Maybe if chance has it so, such power spots are truly eternal and the next wave of residents, realtors, and developers will find themselves smiling more often, prone to curious inquisition, and unable to resist the tug of music in the interstices of imagination.

The Actual is the New Virtual: Alex and Bruce Keynote SXSW

More great stuff from our WorldChanging Pals. Bruce Sterling and Alex Steffan laid it all out on the line as to what we need to do over the coming decade to bring the world to global sustainability.

Burning Man Photos

Just wanted to let you all know, that I've created a Burning Man section with photos for several years. If you want to add your photos here, please let me know.

Is There Life after Death?

Why or why not?

I find this to be one of the most facinating questions, not because of any particular answer one might give, but all the lines of reasonsing one might muster to answer it. Even people who take the safe agnostic position have their own intricate line of reasoning about why to them this question is unanwerable. So what are the challenges or insights that help us tackle this problem? Can it ever be answered? Why or why can't we answer it, and what if anything could we ever know about the nature of consciousness? Is consciousness ultimately beyond the reach of objective science? Can science grow to include subjective experience in such a way that it still remains a valid scientific enterprise? Will the material paradigm have to give way to a more expanded scientific paradigm, in which consciousness itself is a tool in a scientist toolbox? Are out of body experiences (OBE's) just illusions created by the brain, or is consciousness ultimately not limited by a material container? Is consciousness a fundamental component of the universe, perhaps the only thing that really exists? Can rocks or tress be conscious? Is conciousness a strictly material thing, that cannot exist beyond a material container? Is consciousness only something humans have, and/or that requires a minimal amount of complexity to even exist? Is everything consciousness?

**Please go the forums to weigh in on your opinion.

Thought Experiments On The Nature Of Identity

These experiments are fun to try on family, friends and strangers. The implicit dualistic materialism is a feature, not a bug.

First hypothetical. Imagine two healthy individuals, A and B, swap brains. That is, A’s brain will be removed from A’s body and placed in B’s body, B’s brain will be placed in A’s body. Where is "A"? Virtually everyone will conclude that A is now in B’s body and vice versa. Where my brain goes, "I" go.

The interesting thing about this is that it demonstrates fairly convincingly that most people believe that they are not their bodies. In this scenario A survives in Bs body and vice versa. A variation might involve the creation of a cloned body, or transplanting the brain into a cybernetic body, or a brain in a jar. Most people would agree that even if the body were dispensed with entirely, as long as the brain is either intact or adequately simulated, "I" have survived. Although most people would have some trepidation, I suspect that the resistance to such a procedure would be largely the result of technical concerns, not ontological ones. This bodes well for cybernetics.

Second hypothetical, same as the first, except that in the brain transplant procedure, A will suffer complete and permanent retrograde amnesia, that is, all of A's memories up to that point will be totally and irretrievably wiped out. Is A in B’s body? Or someone else?

Now it starts getting interesting. I have found that most people are still fairly comfortable in their belief that A has survived in B's body. Another way of considering the same issue: would a person who completely lost their memory still be the same person? Most people conclude that the loss of memory, while difficult, would not fundamentally affect selfhood. In fact, I recall in one circumstance an acquaintance becoming quite agitated at the very suggestion that the loss of memory would impact selfhood.

Note however, that this feels quite a bit different from the first hypothetical. Something important about "me" has been lost - my history. The loss would be a painful one, emotionally significant, but I submit that most people would not consider it ontologically significant. It would appear, then, that most people seem to conclude that "I" am not my memory, in other words, I am not my past. If I lost every memory I had, I would still be here, the real me would still be present and continuing.

An interesting and important issue at this point is - what is it that remains? The remainder seems to me to consist largely of habits - habits of thought, likes and dislikes, emotional tendencies, and the like. One could imagine, for example, waking up one morning without any memory whatsoever (and assume no way to reconstruct the past), and trying to discovery who one was, what one was like. Am I introverted or extroverted? Do I like music? What types? What foods do I like? Am I rational? Emotional? Intuitive?

All of these aspects of ourselves seem to exist in some way independently of our memory, although perplexing questions immediately arise. What's my favorite song if I have no memory of every hearing it before? Would I even like it, or does its context in my past determine its appeal? What about beliefs? If I can’t remember ever hearing anything about UFO’s, do I believe in them? Perhaps I would have an inclination to believe in them, though no belief per se.

Consider that such a break from the past, though disturbing, would also be extremely liberating, allowing me to look with fresh eyes at myself and the world, allowing me to see with the “Beginners Mind” of Zen. Certain rituals and other metaprogramming techniques have as their goal, a variation on this precise theme, the abandonment, as it were, of one’s past. To be “born again” or to be initiated is to separate one from one’s past, affecting a kind of liberation. The “true self” is unaffected and in fact is liberated from the constrictive repression of the past.

In my experience, most people seem to accept as true the proposition that I am not my past.

Third hypothetical, A and B switch memories, everything else remains the same. A and B retain all of their habits, inclinations, likes and dislikes (for convenience I refer to this as “personality”). Which is A and which is B?

This is a tough one because it sets the sense of self derived from our memories in opposition to that derived from our mental habits. My experience is that most people conclude that memories tell us who we were, but “personality” tells us who we are, and that therefore A is in B's body.

This seems to me an interesting conclusion, because it signals a belief that my tendencies, my personality, is what is most associated with “me.” The sum total of my experiences may have made me who I am today, but if my memory of them is taken away, I am still the same person, and in this sense "I" am more closely identified with the collection of habits, propensities, aptitudes, dispositions and so on that exist even absent any memory of the past. In effect, as long as my future life is likely to proceed in a more or less contiguous fashion from past, that seems to be enough for me to identify my "self." In effect, if my future memories will be consistent with my past ones, I still consider myself to be continuous with the past self that I can no longer remember. It is a curious situation that most people seem willing to accept that the self is not memory, and yet our identity seems so constrained by what we have done in the past.

Fourth hypothetical; A’s memories are intact, but A’s “personality” is replaced by a random personality. Is A still A or someone else? What if A’s “personality” is replaced by a similar but somehow augmented or improved personality. The first is brainwashing, the second metaprogramming. Oversimplifying, one’s old habits are abandoned in favor of new ones. Many rituals of various kinds aim at this type of personality substitution.

The question “is A still A” seems more relevant in this situation than for the amnesia victim. I feel that if I lost my memory, I would still be me, however, if my personality changed, then would I really still be me? Has something fundamental about “me” been taken away? I believe most people will conclude that although I have different qualities, different mental habits, the essence of “me” has not been affected. For one thing, I feel that I am the same I that I was in childhood. However, my personality is totally different. Our personalities are slowly evolving day by day, year by year. The process is slow but inexorable. However, I consider myself the same I. My personality has changed, but my I am still me. Similarly, if I am brainwashed, the transformation is more rapid, but I am still me. Ontologically, I have not been affected. Most people, I have found, tend to reach similar conclusions.

Note that just as memory is fundamentally a identification of selfhood with the past, personality is essentially an identification with predictions about the future. Intuitions about the type of person I am translate into predictions about future experiences i am likely to have and how I will react to them at the time. If our memories are the wake that we leave behind us, our personality is the course we have charted.

In advanced metaprgrammatic activities, the “personality” may become malleable, and be dramatically transformed at will. But transformed by who’s will? Something essential seems to have survived, something continuous with my prior self, a more liberated, freer, higher self. If someone says “ever since you started doing meditation, you’ve changed” my response would be, my personality might have changed, but “I” haven’t changed. I’m still who I have always been, perhaps even more so. The metaprogrammer, in turn has a “personality”, core beliefs setting the parameters of the metaprogramming activities. See Super Free Will: Metaprogramming & The Quantum Observer These may be superceded in turn. Note that as Paul points out, at each level, the activities of the personality seem robotic and automatic to the meta-level. This is the problem that Descartes overlooked. “I think therefore I am” is all well and good until you see that “you” didn’t think, the thought happened to you, was programmed, but you assumed you were responsible for it. Descartes cogito therefore turns from a thinking thing into a perceiving thing.

The fact that my “self” can be understood as “having” a personality suggests that I believe that I am not identical with my personality. The personality is, in this respect, something that I have, the way same that I have a body, not something that I am. This is particularly strongly felt when we have actively participated in modifying our personality. It is my prediction that most people if pressed would conclude that “I” am not my personality. The initial conclusion may be that I am really some metapersonality, but that in turn gives way and ultimately there is no permanent (i.e. temporally enduring) hyper-metaprogram that persists and with which I can identify.

Now, finally, assume that A and B swap memories and personalities. Assume no intervening period of unconsciousness, the operations are instantaneous. Where is A and where is B? Some people will conclude that A and B have swapped bodies, just as in the brain swap. But if identity is not affected by the loss of memory, and identity is not affected by the loss of personality, and if there is no interruption of conscious awareness, it would seem to follow that A has received a new memory and A has received a new personality, but that A persists.

The interesting question is, if that is the conclusion, what is the “I” that persists; what self has remained continuous, the self that had A’s memory and personality but now has B’s memory and personality. I conclude that there is something that continues, something, in fact, quite fundamental. The observer, bare attention, consciousness without an object, pure consciousness, Big Mind.

And note what we have done: by taking away identification with memory and personality, we have stripped identification with the past and the future. We are left only with the present. Without a past or a future, who am I? The answer seems to be, I am bare attention, I am pure consciousness. The experiencer. Atman. Note that this “self” is itself unexperienceable.

Moreover, this identity is essentially impersonal. That is, it would be the same in A as in B. What I really am is the same as what you really are. Only the admixture of time in the form of personal history and future expectation distinguishes us from each other. Accordingly, it would be quite rational to conclude that in the final hypothetical A and B actually have switched bodies, despite the continuity of conscious awareness. If only something non-personal has persisted, something which is identical in both individuals, then the total personal identity has been in effect swapped and reconstituted. An impersonal bare awareness can’t really be “me” in any standard sense of the word. Thus, if I am not my past (memory), or my future (personality) or awareness, perhaps I am not anything.

Note that this hypothetical situation might also be created in the case of a person (1) abandoning identification with their past and (2) abandoning identification with any given set of mental habits or expectations. Try it and see what happens!

Warning, this line of reasoning may cause extreme agitation, use with caution.

Roger Dean's Retreat Pods

This is a follow up to Pleasure Domes and Orgasmatrons.

While writing this article, I was trying very hard to dig up information on Roger Dean's retreat pods. I couldn't find any, so I published it as is. Roger Dean, for those of you who don't know, did a lot of album cover art for groups like Yes, and Asia. I love his art, and I bought one of his books back in the 80's filled with his work, architecture and zanny inventions. One of these was his retreat pod pictured above. The idea is to have one of these to escape into, kind of like a floatation tank, but with room for two, and filled with all sorts of stimulating devices.

Here is the full-text article from the Daily Telegraph Magazine in the early 1970's.

[Thanks to Paul Sanderson for the images and info].

David Bowie: The Laughing Gnostic

I remember watching David Bowie's video 'Major Tom' in 1981, during the first few weeks of MTV being on the air. MTV was really something back then, nothing like it is now. I've been a fan of his ever since, not so much for his music (some of it I really like), but for his vision. I never guessed thought just how far-out and intelligent he really was until around 1987, when I was listening to an interview with him on radio.

When I first tuned in I had no idea it was him. The interviewer asked him about what he thought UFO's might be, and he said something like (paraphrased),

"A friend and I were travelling in the english countryside when we both noticed a strange object hovering above a field. From then on I have come to take this phenomona seriously. I believe that what I saw was not the an object, but a projection of my own mind trying to make sense of this quantum topological doorway into dimensions beyond our own. It's as if our dimension is but one among an infinite number of others."

I was amazed at his use of language, and then even more suprised to disocver it was David Bowie who was speaking.

Peter R Koenig is working on a book about David Bowie, and he's provided a preview of his work here:

The Laughing Gnostic: David Bowie and the Occult

Future Hi Wiki

Our site administrator George has been hard at work getting a wiki up and customized. I've been a fan of wikipedia, and I'm hoping we can create something similar here, but around psychedelic futurism. I've just created some sections to get the basic layout going, so if you're good with making wiki pages, feel free to start tweaking away at it.

Future Hi Wiki

A Prayer

I find that I want to pray, but not to the deadbeat God of my childhood; that reckless progenitor forever tossing down rules and promises but never apologies, and never explanations.

What use has Immortal perfection for offspring? Amusement? A balm to loneliness? The child of a sheep grows up to be a sheep. The child of a human being grows up to be a human being…

Life moves directionally through time. It must renew and replace itself. It bootstraps itself from lower order singularity to higher order singularity through multiplicity. It’s what this machine does. It evolves.

I cannot be made to worship a higher power whose engendering and birthing is but a pale mockery of our own; a god who cannot create something greater than itself, or who fears to, and must content itself with mud golems endlessly enacting a tragic farce scripted in the inexorable fall of matter.

To whom then am I to address my prayers? To the deaf Logos? Should I broadcast my dreams and my soul’s unrest wideband hoping to chance upon the frequency of some benevolent intelligence?

My great-great-grandmother was the last of her line taught to pray to her ancestors; the last born free before the change and not indoctrinated by the victor’s violent, fearful and self-hating memes. While I cannot bring myself to expect succor from the dead, I find that I do resonate with the impulse to call back to that life of which I am the natural fruit. Therefore, Grandmother, I address my prayer to you. Perhaps it will come as sudden thunder after four generations of silence. In truth I expect to be heard by no one but myself, but there may yet be some link of identity between you and I unbroken by time’s transforming illusion.

I am your daughter.

You were successful. You passed the torch of life into the future as your ancestors did before you. It is now incumbent upon me. I am the body of life. I see now the infinite gift that this is, and also the burden, so heavy it can only be born by my own children. I see the tunnel of life as it points away into the insentient past. I see all the travails of those who manifest on the event horizon separating Math and Story. I see the fire of language kindled and multiplying out of itself like a thing alive. I see the drumming breaking out in Africa, the rhythm, the rhythm, the rhythm patterning the blank template mind. More and more the thought matrix bound us; made us possible. We ask; What are we? Why continue in this absurdity? Why bear this life, it’s sweetness and savagery, the infinite indignity of it, the irony, the wild joys that take us and are taken from us? Why do we die for our children?

Yes, it is the Impulse to Life; that song which called us down from our ancestral trees and points us towards the stars. The desperate insensate drive to continue it. To be! To be! To be! It is this that brings human beings together in ecstasy amid death.

Oh Grandmother! I reached the age of understanding and I did not understand! I was raised amongst lost souls imprisoned by their own elevating symbols. I thought myself filthy and I was, weak and I was, powerless and I was.

I am your daughter and I have been made to feel ashamed of being a woman. I have been ashamed of my humanity. I was raised in a culture that perverted the worship of the spirit into a weapon of fear to extract tribute and impose control.

I am your daughter and I find myself made manifest in a time of crisis. Here the fetus has begun to soil the womb. Here we must catalyze the metamorphosis or be reabsorbed by the Mother to await a more perfect incarnation. We are great with our pregnancy; with our fullness and our fear. Our expectancy. Clearly it is a time that must give birth to heroes.

The eternal myths that the fractal pattern has enfolded everywhere within itself are of course as much prophesy as history. The time has come again for true avatars of the Impulse to Life to step forward and challenge the Great Sea, or rather to accept it’s awesome challenge with the courage and passion born of necessity.

We have all been told legends of past glory, past victories of the human spirit against overwhelming odds. We say to ourselves, “Had I been in that story, I would have done likewise. I would have left my family and my lovers and borne great hardship and done terrible battle!” I see now that I am in the same story and have always been so. I am living in the story that began with the Word and will end with the Silence, the only tale there is to tell. Here has been the endless pageantry of human enterprise. Here millions upon millions have chosen to give themselves into the service of that which they were collectively above that which they were individually; again and again sacrificing even experience itself in order to advance a flag or promote an ideology.

If ever within the divine play some struggle within the plot merited the dedication of the actor’s lives, surely it approaches the irrelevant when held up against the effort to transform the collective consciousness in time to insure the very continuation of the tale itself! Will we survive into our racial adulthood and carry our story on to hundreds of worlds for millions of years, or will we founder and die, unfit to survive? The events of the coming century will bear heavily upon this question.

I am your daughter and I have been denied my rights of passage. How can we mark the end of our cultural adolescence when we each remain unconfirmed as individuals, our allegiance to the human cause unsworn? How can we free ourselves from superstition if we cannot bring ourselves into accord with the truth about our existential predicament?

Here we are. That’s what it comes down to. Again and again here we are. Again and again we are ourselves; suffering, ephemeral, bound up in a universe that defies expectation and transcends metaphor. So be it. Our only tenable position is to say yes to it, whatever it is.

Very well, then. I’ll take it! It’s what there is. I accept those terms of existence that I cannot change. I give my retroactive consent and take up my adult status of my own free will. Bring it on! I find that I do not yet resonate with the desire to end the cycle of birth and death. Life is more than a bridge between nothingness and nothingness. It is the perfect figure that dances upon that perfect unmanifest ground. It is what is before me and I will seize it with both hands. I am a part and product of this life, no more stuck inside of it than it is stuck inside of me.

I am alive at the turn of the Millennium! What great spirit has ever walked the Earth who would not have traded places to be me? Staggering miracles are my daily fare. Here I am, on stage for the climax. (A climax, anyway) The luckiest of the luckiest of the lucky! It is unbecoming of me to complain about anything ever, really. I have only to try to be worthy of this greatest honor.

Grandmother, Impulse to Life, Logos, Creator, Inner Self, this is my prayer. Help me to free myself from the bondage of self-centered and inefficient thinking. Help me to transcend the useless fear that has shackled my spirit. Help me to conquer my ignorance, apathy and cowardice. Grant me the perspective, focus and dedication requisite to the task at hand. Inspire me. Wash me with love. Let me be undaunted by the overwhelming complexity of it all, and the seeming uslessness of individual action. Remind me that I am never alone. Remind me that the tale has it’s own inner artistry and probability is not what it appears to be. We shall surely succeed, for all that action is needful to make it so. Grant me faith.

Thank you, Grandmother, for sending life into the future. Everything that I have and will experience, richness beyond counting, beauty unimaginable, these gifts have passed through you to me. In gratitude, indeed in reverence, I wish to help insure that the flame does not gutter and die at this crux, but burns on. It is yet possible that all this may come to an aesthetic conclusion.

Perhaps one day a young woman will stand with her feet firmly rooted in the soil of another planet, and she will call back to me across time with a joyful and impassioned voice, crying “I am your daughter! I am Cheiftess of a free people! I have reached the age of understanding and I do understand! Thank you for my life!” I need no more reason than this to persist; the beauty that I experience and the beauty that my experience makes possible.

It is sufficient.

Glory be to our Mothers and Fathers as it was in the Beginning, is Now, and Ever shall be, worlds without end.

Walking Between Worlds

I've recently published a collection of writings called Walking Between Worlds. Culled from LVX23, Key23, Future Hi, and Barbelith, the collections spans the last 2 years or so. I mainly wanted to just be able to have an actual book to put on my shelf with the other books I love. But now that it's on Lulu anyone can buy a copy. Only $9.26 for 167 bound pages.

Musings & visions of nature, politicks, and magick. Thoughts on transcendence, communion, singularity & memetics, deities and rites, arcanum and numagicks. Paths I've trod, dropping breadcrumbs for any who might choose to follow, or simply stumble upon. Gossamer strands of mind stretched from within my skull out through vast digital networks and nodes, bound in syntax and dripping with crimson. Morsels of captured transience and persistent ideations alive and kicking through the mirrored halls of time.

The Shaman, The Monk, The Fool, and the Transhuman

The Archetype of the Shaman

Many years ago, I became increasingly fascinated with the archetype of the Shaman, the fearless explorer, the intrepid adventurer, testing the limits of body and mind in the quest for glimpses of the highest peaks and deepest jungles of the psychic landscape. Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna and John Lilly became for me the heroes that set the standard for the essential and perennial human endeavor. I read of their experiences as those of an earlier age must have read of Lewis and Clark and Swen Hedin.

These men (all were men, odd that) became my heroes and my inspiration. I wanted to emulate them and in a small way I recapitulated some of their exploits, though never anything close to the experiences I read about so passionately. But I emulated them as best I could. The heroic nature of their adventures always inspired me, and does to this day. I wanted so much to be one of the fearless. One of those who could surf the big waves of the most extreme mental states, the Mavericks of the mind. To be one of those who could endure the most, soar to the highest heights and dive to the deepest depths. I always took more than those around me, more often, more combinations. I always wanted to be the alpha tripper.

I recall walking out of a Grateful Dead show one night (the Oakland Coliseum Earthquake benefit show 12/6/1989 to be precise) and walking behind a couple of veteran Deadheads who just blew me away. These guys were the real deal. When they walked by me I could see their eyes dilated like dinner plates. I could almost feel how far gone they were just being next to them. I could tell from their conversation that they were both veteran Deadheads, that this was what they did and who they were. I could tell from their demeanor, the way they moved, the look in their eyes and the expressions on their faces, that these guys were totally at home out in the billows where I was afraid to swim. They were Shamans, postmodern sadhus living on the fringes not just of society, but of reality.

I couldn’t get those guys out of my head for years. Whether they actually were who I thought they were doesn’t really matter, although chances are they weren’t. The thing was, to me they were archetypal, they represented a kind of ideal I had built for myself compared to which I was always lacking. My life was hopelessly mundane by comparison. I was struggling through school, recently married, working full time. I worried about spending too much money on concerts, I worried about getting home and to bed so I wouldn’t be too wiped out the next day, secretly hoping that the encore didn’t go on too long. I despaired at the prospect facing the reality of another work day, another school day, a cranky spouse, an irritating boss. All the burdens of householder consciousness lying like a blanket of fog between me and the Clear Light of the Void.

The Archetype of the Monk

At some point, I began to develop a different, I would say broader, perspective on the parable of surfing on the waves of the mind. The initial seed came from a very unlikely source. Having spent a truly inspirational night at the home of a friend, I was despairing the fading of the glow and my descent from the heavenly realms to the sub-ecstatic world. A long time acquaintance, then with a hundred dollar a day heroin habit that would soon reach several hundred a day and eventually claim his life, told me “you have to be able to deal with coming down.”

That line stuck with me. I came to understand this as a kind of quintessential heroic journey in and of itself. The art of the graceful fall from grace. The art of making a friend of despair, the openhearted resignation toward not being enough. The yoga of embracing loss, failure, not with hope or optimism, but with simple acceptance.

Presently, I realized that the essential skill of embracing planetside consciousness was not essentially psychedelic; what I had stumbled on was really a kind of deeply meaningful personal symbol for dukkha, for all the painful aspects of the entirety of life. I came to see the art of coming down as an embodiment of what in Buddhism was called “skillful means,” the art of living in a way that minimizes suffering to myself and others.

I constructed for myself another archetype, one that stood not so much in opposition to, but in contrast to, the Shaman: the archetype of the Monk. Where the Shaman has the skillful means to navigating the high energy realms, the Monk has the skillful means to navigate the planetside realms, the realms of dirty dishes, grocery shopping, parents, siblings, traffic, of life and eventual death. The Shaman is Prometheus, risking not just his life but his very soul, wresting fire from the Gods themselves and bringing to the village, only to suffer the agonies of having his liver eaten by vultures. The Monk is Sisyphus, struggling with the dreary toils of mundane existence, sighing as he turns to pace mindfully down the hill once more, perhaps taking in the view until the burden is shouldered once again.

Far too often, the Shaman scouts the same vistas again and again, but the work of personal transformation is never undertaken. The ecstacies glimpsed are never integrated, no lessons are learned, old patterns reassert themselves.

San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I have known many who never seem to take anything of value from their nonordinary states other than temporary escape (not to be dismissed too lightly, admittedly). They return over and over to the well, but as the days pass, the memories fade and they are left as before, looking to the next trip for solace.

The Archetype of the Fool

As time passed I concluded that the Shaman opened doors but that the Monk walked through them. The Shaman left the earth, floated up into another dimension to view life from the above but after a few hours, it was the Monk who had to blaze the trail, making for the psychic landmarks the Shaman had spotted from the higher dimension. The work of the Shaman is terrifying, that the Monk, arduous. Where the core virtue of the Shaman is courage, the core virtue of the Monk is perseverance.

For those few with both courage and perserverence, a synthesis appears to be possible, but though many aspire to it, few realize it. This archetype finally coalesced for me when I began to study Tarot, revealing itself in the symbolism of the Fool. The Fool has a foot in each world. He maintains enough ego to negotiate the world of Maya, but the ego is his servant not his master. In contrast to the Monk, the Fool feels the burdens of the world lightly, fairly floating off the ground.

The true men of old
Knew no lust for life,
No dread of death.
Their entrance was without gladness,
Their exit, younger,
Without resistance.
Easy come, easy go.
They did not forget where from,
Nor ask where to,
Nor drive grimly forward
Fighting their way through life.
They took life as it came, gladly;
Took death as it came, without care;
And went away, yonder,
Yonder!

Minds free, thoughts gone
Brows clear, faces serene.
Where they cool? Only cool as autumn.
Where they hot? No hotter than spring.
All that came out of them
Came quiet, like the four seasons.

Chuang Tzu, translated by Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu

The archetype of the Fool contains the path of integration of the ecstatic states into our lives generally. The Fool represents the summit, spied from afar by the Shaman, hard won by the Monk. The Great Work, the path of transformation, of integration, is great, and it is also work.

Transhumanism and The Way Forward

The Emerald Tablet of Hermes, one of the most ancient and revered foundational documents of the Western Mystery schools, offers the following insight: as above, so below. Only recently did it dawn on me that this is an ancient realization that reality is fractal. What appears at one level, reappears on other levels. We are each a Mandelbrot set, embedded within a larger Mandelbrot called culture, in a Mandelbrot Gaia.

As a transcendental and fundamentally mysterious future looms, many of us feel its pull. The prospect of an escape from the mundane is exhilarating, the temptation to put aside the mundane and abandon ourselves to the rapture compelling. I see intimations of this in the explosion of end times thinking around us. The prospect of walking away from our mundane lives, no strings attached, is an appealing one. There is a sense of freedom in the abandonment of the past.

BLAINE FAULKNER: I know how crazy this is going to sound, but...
I want to be abducted by aliens.

BLAINE FAULKNER: I hate this town. I hate... people. I just want
to be taken away to someplace where I... I don't have to worry
about finding a job.

X-files episode 3.20, Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' (the one with Charles Nelson Riley)

The prospect of a transhuman “forward escape” feels exhilarating. But the escapist element feels uncomfortably familiar. I suspect that in our impending transhuman condition, we are entering into a condition not unlike that of the Shaman: higher energy, more extreme, unpredictable, magickal. But I suspect that the wisdom of Hermes will still apply: as above, so below. Our transhuman future may be much more akin to our present situation than we care to realize - because we will be there, we take ourselves with us. Where we are, there also is dukkha. The work of the Monk must continue if our transhumanist future is to realize its promise. The transhuman singularity evokes the cliff that the Fool appears poised to walk right off. If we are to avoid a brilliant plunge into the abyss, our humanity must not be abandoned.

New Writers for Future Hi

I am very pleased to announce that Future Hi has two new writers of immeasurable talent and experience. The first is Jason Schaumberg, who is new to the writing world, but has tremendous perspective and insight that will be a welcome addition to our site. The second is Jessica Simon, who I was blessed to meet last year. Her intense wisdom, compassion, insight and charm are sure to open your mind and heart as much as she has mine.

New material from both of them coming your way soon.

Future Hi Book Project

As some of you may know I've been working on a book. I began it early last year, and along the way started this website. The website has been loads of fun because I get instant feedback on my ideas. Writing a book on the other hand can be lonely work. The combination of work and school has also taken up most of my time.

If possible I want to finish the book this year. This will mean sacrificing my time in other areas, specifically Future Hi, which is why I've been trying to get some more writers on board to pick up the slack. So if you're interested, please come forward. Also, if you know of any female writers, please let me know.

~~~

The book I'm writing is wide-ranging. The theme of the book is just like Future Hi itself. It's totally, unapologetically optimistic and utopian. It states unequivocally that this utopian, joyous, infinitely expanding future can be ours if were willing to build it. It's no longer a matter of possibility; it’s a matter of willingness and commitment. As a reader recently said in the forums, (sorry I can't remember your name), the most radical act one can do today is stake out a positive future. This book does this in abundance.

I've divided it into two parts. Part 1 will start from the present and move forward to the dawn of radical I² (i.e. the singularity), Part 2 - I² and beyond (after the singularity).

Although I don't necessarily believe in the 2012 date, or the singularity as it is often conceived (it's a bit too monotheistic for me), it is clear that change is accelerating, and when greater-than-current-human levels of intelligence are exceeded, when I² starts bootstrapping itself, it's impossible from our current level of intelligence to speculate much what happens after that. That's not going to stop me from trying however! That's half the fun, and will occupy much of part 2.

Here is a very brief and cursory glance at some topics covered and already written for both parts:

~~~Part 1 (pre-singularity)