How to Tell your Friends from the Apes

The avant garde one-third of the intellectual world, in all nations, currently acknowledges that specialization has become outmoded, boring and possibly menacing; that we need more unified and holistic views of our predicament in space-time; that the division of our learned world into the Two Cultures of Arts and Humanities on one side and Science on the other, separated as if by an epistemological Iron Curtain, is undesirable and nefarious; and, above all—this is our version of the Grail Quest—that a New Paradigm or even a New Aeon is necessary, desirable and long overdue. It should not seem grandiose then but only an attempt to answer the demands of the Zeitgeist, if I offer in these notes my own best attempt to provide the largest possible Synthesis visible from my window in history.

I begin where the Buddha, that master psychologist, began, 25 centuries ago: “All that we are is the result of all that we have thought” (Dammapada, first sentence.) In contemporary and somewhat ironic terms this has been reformulated by Leonard Orr, founder of the Theta Seminars, in the simple proposition that the human mind behaves as if divided into two parts, which Orr calls the Thinker and the Prover. The Thinker can think virtually anything; it can think it is mortal (materialist view) or immortal (theological view) or both mortal and immortal (reincarnation model.) It can think its way into creation of a Christian uni-verse, a Marxist universe, a Nazi universe, a nudist universe, a vegetarian Lesbian universe, etc. ad, infin. The Prover is a much simpler mechanicism and operates on the simple rule: What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves. If the Thinker decides to become an anti-semite, the Prover will prove that Jews are evil; if the Thinker becomes a Marxist, the Prover will prove that Capitalists are evil; if the Thinker becomes a Womans Liberationist, the Prover will prove that men are evil, etc. and ad. infin. again. Conversely, if the Thinker thinks all people are basically decent really, the Prover will prove that, and if the Thinker decides that holy water from Lourdes will cure its lumbago, the Prover will often prove even that, to the astonishment of medical doctors.

As the psychologists Persinger and Lafreniere note in Space-Time Transients and Unusual Events, “We as a species exist in a world in which exists a myriad of data points. Upon these matrices of points we superimpose a structure and the world makes sense to us. The pattern of the structure originates within our biological and sociological properties.” In other words, the data points do not come before dangling little labels that say “matter,” “idea,” “space,” “time,” “reality,” “appearance,” “hallucination,” “good,” “evil” etc.; it is we, in accord with our biological-sociological properties, who affix those labels and give meaning to the universe. This is why Nietzsche said we are all greater artists than we realize, a witticism that grows more meaningful in proportion to how far one has traveled from one’s birthplace; the further one travels, the more obvious it becomes, e.g. the Irish Catholic, the Iranian Moslem Fundamentalist, the Chinese Maoist, the Samoan tiki-worshipper, the Cambridge University agnostic etc. are all living in distinctly different universes, each of which has been manufactured out of thoughts and opinions.

The human brain—a solid object easily findable in space-time—seems to be the hardware that generates the thoughts and opinions that, when organized, become the structures that cause the world to “make sense to us.” Let us assume, fashionably, that the brain is similar in many ways to a computer; and please note that we do not say the brain “is” a computer—a metaphysical proposition that would start a thousand arguments and not shed further light on real space-time structures. If the brain acts like a computer, the hardware must require software. According to the best psychological-neurological data available in 1984* the software of the brain comes in three types: imprinting, conditioning and learning.
* The phrase “in 1984” will be repeated in these notes, several times, to remind us all (the author included) that the Synthesis here offered cannot predict future discoveries and consists only of the best possible view “from my window in history,” a point often overlooked in the heat of rhetoric.

Imprinting occurs only at special moments of “imprint vulnerability,” when the nervous system is especially open, vulnerable and receptive. Imprinted software requires one expose only (if it occurs at such a vulnerable moment) and then becomes fixed, almost as if it were biological hardware.

Conditioning is a longer, slower process and requires many repetitions before the conditioned software becomes part of the brain’s normal functioning.

Learning is even “softer” and vaguer than conditioning.

The sum total of imprinting, conditioning and learning at a date make up the software, or filter, through which we “see” existence. It is what our Thinker thinks and our Prover mechanically edits experience to fit this grid and keep us content that we “understand” what is happening, i.e. that the world “makes sense.” Any case in which the world does not fit our grid provokes alarm and disorientation, and we experience body symptoms ranging from sweats, dizziness, heart palpitations etc. on to migraine or other chronic complaints, or else neurosis or even psychosis.

This grid, which edits the experience to conform to the Thinker’s expectations, can be called our reality-tunnel.

Our previous, somewhat rhetorical statement that the Samoan tiki-worshipper and the Chinese Maoist are not living in “the same universe” as the Irish Catholic or the Cambridge agnostic can not be more precisely and less polemically restated as: these people are not living in the same reality-tunnel. Each reality-tunnel is the Prover’s editorial work in structuring existence to conform to the Thinker’s requirements. This process creates meaning and this creates “good” and “evil.”

Following the American psychologist Timothy Leary we propose that the imprinting-conditioning-learning of a reality-tunnel can be divided, for convenience, into eight stages, each of which creates a presumed different “circuit” in the nervous system (including the brain.) We will first name and then describe these presumed circuits. They are: 1. the Oral Bio-Survival Circuit; 2. the Anal Emotional-Territorial Circuit; 3. the Semantic Time-Binding Circuit; 4. the Socio-Sexual Circuit; 5. the Neurosomatic Circuit; 6. the Neurogenetic Circuit; 7. the Meta-programming Circuit; 8. the Non-Local Quantum Circuit.

It seems in 1984 that the Oral Bio-Survival Circuit is the oldest and most primitive circuit; something like a rough sketch of it appears even in amoebas. This circuit is hardwired to go FORWARD toward nourishment and retreat BACKWARD away from threat (the predatory or noxious.) The points vulnerable to imprinting in the infant human are the oldest parts of the brain (Carl Sagan’s so-called “reptile brain”) and the autonomic nervous system, extending throughout the whole body. The last point explains why experience on this circuit is felt throughout the entire organism and why the reflexes on this circuit involve the organism-as-a-whole. This is the mechanism of both “psychosomatic” illness and also “psychosomatic” health. Anything which threatens, or seems to threaten, the survival of the bio-organism is mediated through this circuit and may create imprint vulnerability which, through the autonomic nervous system, will leave permanent patterns on endocrine, glandular and respiratory functions.

Since this circuit is oriented toward nourishment, the imprinting-conditioning-learning that occurs on it makes up what Freud called the oral stage of consciousness. This circuit is also called such names as “the sensational faculty” (Jung), “the movement center” (Gurdjieff), “the natural child” (Berne) etc. Reprogramming it for more efficiency is the first stage in most forms of psycho-therapy and more total reprogramming is the aim of such martial arts as karate, kung fu, akido etc.

Since “what the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves,” a heavy RETREAT imprint on this circuit will forever be justified by finding evidence of hostility and threat everywhere; conversely, a FORWARD imprint will be justified by finding that “all seeming evils are possibilities for good.”

The Anal Emotional-Territorial Circuit dates back probably to the first vertebrates. Imprinting-conditioning-learning in the human occurs mostly in the thalamus of the brain and in the voluntary nervous system and muscles; the first imprint is taken when the infant becomes a “toddler,” exerts FORCE against gravity and begins walking about the house and up and down in it and struggling for a role in the family power-structure. Freud calls this circuit “the anal stage of consciousness,” Jung calls its “the feeling faculty,” Sagan calls it “the mammalian brain,” Berne calls it “the Adapted Child,” and Gurdjieff calls it “the false emotional center” (the polemical word “false” is used because Gurdjieff was eager to move people onward to higher and newer circuits.) The main function of this circuit is to acquire territory and to find a precise position in the hierarchy of the local mammalian pack, or in humans, in the local tribe or town. All emotions are the subjective sensations of body-language which is mammalian signalling indicating Status and Need. People decide who is TOP DOG and who is BOTTOM DOG and who is in-between on the basis of this body-language, as automically as other mammals do, and any verbal disputes are secondary to this primary biological signalling system.

Freud’s identification of this circuit with anality was correct, but this is not, as he thought, because the circuit is formed in the toilet-training stage of development; it is rooted in the fact that all mammals mark their territories with excretions. All that humans, or domesticated primates, have added to the traditional mammalian game of sociobiological struggle is the ability to mark the claimed territories with ink marks on paper. When the marks are disputed, the old mammalian anality comes forth at once, which explains the omnipresent excretory metaphors in political and ideological debate.

Again, what the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves: those who have heavily imprinted a DOMINANT or Top Dog role on this circuit will find abundant evidence that other people want or need to be given orders and those who have imprinted a SUBMISSIVE or Bottom Dog role will find evidence that “everybody is so unreasonable” that it is best to bear patiently with injustice. Others specialize in what Nietzsche called resentiment, which Berne calls Winning By Losing: this consists of Submission accompanied by an ideology or religion that assures one that those who Win by Winning are all immoral and certainly Damned. All of the emotional “games” or “cons” listed in manuals of Transactional Analysis are techniques for maneuvering into a temporarily comfortable position on this perilous and quarrelsome circuit.

The Semantic Time-Binding Circuit seems to be exclusively human although evidence in 1984 indicates that chimpanzees can be taught a form of it and that cetaceans (whales and dolphins) may have a similar circuit. In humans, this is located in the frontal sections of the left brain hemisphere and has feedback loops to the larynx, tongue and hands. All higher mammals manipulate the world to a great extent, but only Semantic Systems allow us to map the world by creating a symbolic reality-tunnel, then manipulate the world more effectively by employing the applying map’s predictions, and then improve the map by the results of the manipulations, then manipulate further, etc. The Semantic Circuit also allows us to pass maps (reality-tunnels) across generations and thereby update them with the results of the latest manipulations. All this results from the feedback loop between mouth-larynx (verbal center) and hands (manipulation center.)

Since this circuit is relatively new (perhaps 100,000 years old) it is easily over-ruled by the older Oral Bio-Survival and Anal Territorial circuits which are more intimately connected to the organism-as-a-whole and especially to the glands. Thus, the time-binding function, whereby maps are improved over generations, is often perverted and a map or reality-tunnel may be rigidly retained despite all existential-experiential evidence against it. Again, “What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves.” The Time-Binding Circuit allows us to improve and enlarge our reality-tunnels, but it does not compel us. By deliberate and calculated abuse of the semantic function such groups as theologians, ideologists or advertisers can cause us to become existentially blind to what is directly “in front of our noses” while we are hypnotized by fantasies of their manufacture.

The Semantic Time-Binding Circuit is heavily imprinted and conditioned during what Freud called “the latency period;” learning, at least potentially, can continue throughout life, if not blocked by Dogma. This circuit is called “the rational faculty” by Jung, the “Adult” or “Computer” by Berne, “the human brain” by Sagan and “the false intellectual center” by Gurdjieff (who is still eager to move us on to higher, newer circuits.)

It is comparatively easy to see that other people’s Semantic Circuits are mechanically obeying the law that “what the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves.” It is much more difficult to see that this is true of oneself. We all tend to think that we and our friends (those who have been through the same imprinting, conditioning and learning as ourselves) have the one true True Religion, the only sensible Politics, the best economics etc. This is heavily rein-forced by the biological imprinting of the first two circuits (which connect the glands and blood pressure to experience, including the experience of hearing new ideas) and is further potentiated by the peculiar history of the fourth circuit, to be discussed now.

The fourth, Socio—Sexual Circuit can be traced back to the dawn of life, of course, but its peculiar human form is perhaps no more recent that 30,000 B.C. The circuit goes into operation at the point when the organism is mature enough to mate; but with the development of the Semantic Circuit, priests and kings and other power elites discovered that, whatever the imprinting of the circuit, heavy conditioning could enforce at least on the majority whatever reproductive Game seemed desirable. In this way sexuality ceased to be purely biological and becomes sociological; people could be trained to be polyandrous, polygamous, monogamous etc. and the inventions of the concepts of “good” and “evil” made these games part of the Semantic Circuit.

Since imprinting is more or less, accidental, being triggered by whatever is present at the point of imprint vulnerability, there were always deviants who could not be conditioned into the local tribal game; these deviants made excellent scapegoats and their punishment was a warning to others, reinforcing the existing conditioning techniques. This is why even today one cannot use the word “morality” without most people thinking primarily of sexual behavior and only later of such things as slavery, oppression, war, murder etc. Since imprinting (to say it again) is accidental, “the State is concentric but the individual is eccentric” (James Joyce) and nobody is quite the “good” sexual robot moralists wish; thus the fourth circuit has functioned, through most of history, as the Guilt Circuit.

Freud calls this circuit “the genital stage;” Jung and Sagan ignore it; Berne calls it “the Parent,” since most societies condition it into parenting roles; and Gurdjieff ironically calls it “the False Personality,” since it wears the mask of conventional virtue.

By approximately age 15, all four of these circuits have been imprinted and heavily conditioned; any subsequent learning tends, in most cases, to be restricted rigidly to the parameters allowed by this imprinted-conditioned reality-tunnel. The inability of most people, most of the time, to escape from this “social hypnosis” explains why the majority of children of Catholics remain Catholics, the majority of children of Russian Communists remain Communists, the majority of children of African witch-doctors believe in the efficacy of witchcraft, etc. Such rigid reality-tunnels constrict and restrict us to a narrow range of thoughts/feelings/perception, which is what Buddhists mean by maya (illusion) and what Gurdjieff meant when he said we are “sleep-walking.”

The fifth, Neurosomatic Circuit has only appeared sporadically thusfar in history and remains latent or only appears in occasional flashes in most humans. It seems to be located primarily in the right brain hemisphere, with a feedback loop to the genitalia. (This loop is the origin of the metaphor of kundalini or “serpent power” in systems like Tantra, Ophite, Gnosticism and Voodoo.) Training methods to induce the Neurosomatic Circuit to leap into action are known in many yogic and occult schools and include: meditation, pranayama (heavy, rhythmic breathing), cannabis drugs, fasting, prayer and, in many “initiatory” orders a kind of ritualized Shock that may well be a re-imprinting experience. (All of these Shocks, whether found in tribal shamanism or in systems as sophisticated as Tibetan Tantra, are basically similar in structure to the Shocks of Masonic initiation: the candidate is led through a heavily symbolic ritual to a moment of stunning emotional crises.)

Whereas the reality-tunnels of the first four circuits are linear and mechanical, and build up a strong sense of separateness (hyper-egotism), perception on the fifth circuit is global, non-linear, holistic and tends to blur the previously acute sense of division between Self and World. At the same time, the conditioned sense of separateness between “mind” and “body” is also blurred or loosened. The general feeling is one of being “at home in the universe,” “high” or “floating” and part of a web that extends far beyond the material organism; the sense of lonely Darwinian “struggle for survival” is temporarily or permanently abolished. Freud called this “the oceanic experience,” Gurdjieff calls it “the magnetic center,” and in traditional Christian terminology the enlarged self on this circuit is “the new Adam,” as distinguished from “the old Adam,” the isolated self formed by the rigid reality-tunnel of the first four circuits.

It seems that art is a neurosomatic circuit function, even though expressed or communicated through third circuit symbols (words in poetry, musical forms, paintings etc.) There is hardly any artist who has not recorded mild-to-ecstatic Neurosomatic Circuit experiences, usually deepening with age, and most artists frankly attribute the artistic drive to the desire to communicate these “high” moments or “peak experiences.” The quarrel in our Occidental culture in recent centuries between Art and Science—i.e. between some artists and some scientists—is largely a dispute over the comparative values of third circuit linear analysis and Neurosomatic Circuit holistic apprehension. The present theory suggest that the full development of the human being involves maximum development of both of these circuits in combination with maximum development of subtlety and flexibility on the other six circuits also.

The Neurogenetic Circuit is even more alien than the Neurosomatic to most conventional scientists in 1984. The names given to this circuit in other systems indeed indicate how strange it seems to those constricted by four-circuit tunnel-realities: Jung calls it “the collective unconscious” (although it may become conscious); Theosophy calls it “the akashic records;” Stanislav Grof has named it “the phylogenetic unconscious;” Buddhism calls it “the treasury mind;” Dr. Rupert Sheldrake has recently named it “the morphogenetic field.” All these are regarded by conservative scientists as “mystical” and unscientific concepts, because what they all describe cannot be explained in mechanistic biology. It seems in 1984 that Sheldrake’s “morphogenetic field” is the best name for what is involved here since Sheldrake frankly admits that his “field” cannot be reduced to mechanical laws but operates as a resonance through time. On this circuit, to be blunt, one seems to have access to the experience of all of one’s ancestors, including those who have been dead for thousands or hundreds of thou-sands of years. (Experience of this circuit explains the belief in “reincarnation.”)

Whether or not the Neurogenetic Circuit exists latently in the unconscious of all, as Jung and Grof posit, it only becomes conscious after many years of slowly-increasing Neurosomatic sensitivity, usually accompanied by work in some yogic or shamanic discipline. At this point, consciousness, having become less linear and more global (synergetic), gradually begins to experience depth in time. The Hindu concept of the Atman or world-soul is then not an idea but a lived experience. In Dr. Leary’s more modern metaphor, one experiences oneself as a giant robot programmed by the DNA to do specific work in a specific evolutionary niche, and one has increasingly clear “memory” or intuitive understanding of the vectors of the evolutionary drama. Vast tolerance and a certain Nietzschean amorality blended with Buddhist compassion also appear here: one sees all other organisms as similar aspects of the “world-soul” or as similar robots programmed by the same evolutionary vector or Life Force. No organism seems “totally wrong” in the sense of conventional Socio-Sexual Circuit “morality;” some organisms merely appear to be mechanical or unconscious of their evolutionary role and potential.

The seventh Metaprogramming Circuit is even more recent, and statistically more rare, than Neurosomatic or Neurogenetic awareness: one can hardly write about it without being accused of being either a satirist or a mental case. It consists of the conscious, controlled ability to draw energy out of any previous reality-tunnel and to pour that energy into the construction of a new reality-tunnel; that is, to consciously choose which circuits one is operating on and how the information tapped by that circuit will be organized into Gestalts. This makes possible what theologians fallaciously claim all human beings already possess: the ability to exercize meaningful choice (“free will”) and autonomy in the true sense. This can easily in degenerate into megalomania, and many cases it has, and thus this circuit is not very “safe” unless monitored by great sophistication and subtlety on the other circuits, especially the Semantic (mapping-and-manipulating) circuit. Talking too frankly about this circuit can also be hazardous to health, in most traditional societies, as illustrated by the Sufi dervish, Mansur el-Hallaj, who bluntly declared “I am the Truth and there is nothing within my turban but God” and was stoned to death for his “blasphemy.” In general statements like “I am God” and “I created all this” are inescapable on this circuit, but make severe problems if not balanced by the other circuits and a considerable sense of humor. This circuit is called Shivadarshana in Hindusism—the the dance of Shiva, god of intoxication and death—is also called “crossin the Abyss” in Cabala.

Concerning the final circuit known in 1984, the Non-Local Quantum Circuit, one must be even more gnomic. When this circuit is activated, the conventional conditioned-imprinted reality-tunnels called “me” and “my world” are even more expanded than on the 5th, 6th and 7th circuits; one appears to blend into Something which most languages have no word. The Chinese wisely call that something wu-hsin which means “no mind” and is perhaps, the class of all minds—which is not itself a mind for the same reason that e.g. the class of all chimneys is not a chimney. In modern science, the closest approximation to wu-shin is the Implicate Order suggested by quantum physicist Dr. David Bohm; from this Implicate Order are projected non-local forms which create the space-time continuum we normally experience. It maust be stressed that non-local in this context means also non-causal and non-energetic. If one cane imagine a kind of software that co-exists with and is prior to the hardware of the universe, then that is wu-shin or the Implicate Order.

Accidental entry to this circuit occurs in serious trauma of the sort called “near death” or “clinical death” experience and is then limited to “astral body” or “out-of-body” experiences. At full intensity, this non-local circuit accesses all the information of the cosmos and experience of it is called Illumination; invocation of the word “God” generally seems at that point a rather small, provincial and human-chauvinist metaphor for what is happening, but “union with God” is the only term in the normal vocabulary for such information-rich and non-localized awareness.

We cannot say in 1984 what new circuits are forming or are still potential in he human brain.

It appears that the simple Aristotelian idea that we are either conscious or unconscious (asleep or awake is inadequate. We have seen a whole spectrum of consciousness; it seems clear that each level of consciousness opens many possibilities for reality-tunnels, and that consciousness has evolved, and it is still evolving; we absolutely cannot predict what we might become and what we might know after the next evolutionary leap. In particular, the seemingly net intractable problems of life on this planet—such as injustice, exploitation, crime and, above all, war—seem to be maintained by rigid reality-tunnels which prevent further learning or which “hypnotize” us so that we do not see who were or what we are doing. But such mechanical stupidity or maya, or “sleep-walking” is, in this perspective, an early evolutionary state out of which we are, as individuals and as a species, slowly growing toward higher and higher levels of awareness.

That is, every rigid or dogmatic reality-tunnel is a remnant of our mammalian ancestry. The earlier circuits are more mechanical; the later circuits are more “voluntary” or self-regulating. If human life often looks like a spectacle of improperly-wired robots bumping into each other and knocking each other apart, this is because we are not finished as a species: we have the potential of evolving to more subtle and more sensitive functioning. In contrast to a vast over-simplification by H.G. Wells—who said “Modern history is a race between education and catastrophe”—we can say at this point that modern history is a race between higher consciousness and catastrophe.

We have all lived through the fall-out from a vast Neurological Revolution that began with the accidental discovery of LSD in 1943, peaked with the bizarre “drug culture” of the 1960s and then mutated into dozens of new evolutionary vectors in the 1970s and early 1980s. Its become known to literally millions of social scientists, physical scientists, artists, writers, and ordinary people that consciousness can be radically altered, that many old reality-tunnels can be outgrown, that many new reality-tunnels can be imprinted and learned, and that the control of our consciousness is increasingly in our own hands. “Whatever can be accomplished by chemical means,” as William S. Burroughs says, “can be accomplished by other means.” In retrospect, psychedelic drugs were only the initial Shock which our culture needed to begin mutating into a new stage of evolution, a stage for which we have no word and for which I have suggested the symbol, I².

I² means I-observing-I or the mind studying the mind; it also means intelligence studying Intelligence. On a third level of reference, I² also means Information, or the vast information explosion being ushered in by micro-process ors and the world-wide electronic net-work which is creating what Fuller and McLuhan called “a global village.”

Through direct brain stimulation, through Lilly’s isolation tanks, through continuous breakthroughs in organic chemistry and neurology, through scientific investigation of the mechanisms of yoga and Zen, through research into so-called ESP and “out of body experience” (7th and 8th circuit functions), through each advance in computer technology, through research on intelligence-raising drugs and vitaminic compounds, etc. we are learning more and more about how rigid reality-tunnels are imprinted and how expanded and “cosmic” reality-tunnels can be induced. We are like sleeping beings who are just learning how to wake ourselves up. In a sense we are just discovering that the “missing link” between the ape and True Humanity is ourselves; but we are also learning how to accelerate evolution within our own brains, and how to become what in vanity we once thought we already were: free and responsible beings not limited by mammalian mechanical reflexes.

In a fascinating book on research into longevity, The Conquest of Death, Dr. Alvin Silverstein quotes some impressive figures from the French economist Georges Anderla, showing how the third circuit semantic function has increased our information about the universe since the birth of Christ. Taking all known scientific facts of 1 A.D. as his unit, Anderla calculated how long it took that amount of information to double. The answer is that took 1500 years—a millenium and half. But the next doubling was much faster, took only 250 years, and was complete by 1750. The next doubling took only 150 years and was complete by 1900. The next doubling took only 50 years and was complete by 1950, and the next doubling took only ten years and was complete by 1960. The next doubling took seven years and was complete by 1967. Etc. This acceleration is still continuing and some Futur-ists suggest that knowledge will soon be doubling every year, since micro-processors are accelerating the acceleration.

While we as a species are passing through this “information explosion” which is doubling knowledge each decade at a rate that only occured in milleniums during the Stone Ages, we are also participating in the aforementioned Neurological Revolution, whereby we are learning more and more about the functions of the other non-symbolizing circuits of our brain. To grasp the whole picture of what is now happening, one must think simultaneously of both the Information Explosion and of the Neurological Revolution—of both the new facts being processed and the new potentials of consciousness being explored.

It seems to me now, in 1984, that only rigid and dogmatic (or unconsciously unquestioning) adherence to a narrow atheism or futilitarianism—to what Nietzsche caricatured as Idolization of “least possible effort and greatest possible blunder”—can dismiss as “mere coincidence” this conjunction of rapid information increase and rapid consciousness expansion which I call I². It would be the blackest of black jokes if all this sudden coherence, this emerging of new potentials within us, were just the prologue to the final tragedy; of nuclear holocaust. Rather, I suspect it is precisely the evolutionary quantum leap that is demanded of us at this time to bypass and transcend such Doomsday scenarios, to continue the evolutionary ascent to higher and higher levels of awareness, even to levels which we cannot begin to guess or imagine at present.
 

How to Tell your Friends from the Apes, the video lecture

How to Tell your Frieds from the Apes
by Robert Anton Wilson appeared in Magical Blend, Issue 12 (1985).