Robert Anton Wilson - 3
Neither term qualifies as operational science, but the Freudian and Jungian records at least alerted other psychologists to pay attention to non-ego information systems. LSD, again, accelerated progress. Finding that vast floods of non-ego information from past ages appeared in LSD sessions, Leary, at Harvard, posited a "neurogenetic circuit". Grof, in Czechoslovakia, posited a "phylogenetic unconscious" and other researchers made up other labels orjust recorded the data without trying to name it. The first scientific model of this system appeared in Dr. Rupert Sheldrake's " A New Science of Life". Where Leary and Grof, like Jung and Freud, assumed the non-ego information, not known to the brain, must come from the genes, Sheldrake, a biologist, knew that genes cannot carry such information. He therefore posited a non-local field, like those in quantum theory, which he named the morphogenetic field. This field communicates between genes but cannot be found "in" the genes -- just as Johnny Carson "travels" between TV sets but cannot be found "in" any of the TV sets that receive him. It will probably take a long, long time before we learn the art and science of using the morphogenetic system for fun and profit. Nonetheless, those who have the most experience of this system all seem to agree with Jung (and Leary); this information system contains not only the memories of the past but distant trajectories of the future. The morphogenetic system may serve as a kind of evolutionary "radar" preparing us for future quantum jumps in consciousness by showing us the records of past mutations.
8. The Non-Local Quantum System (described by modern physics in the last chapter) appears in the reports of a few shamans, yogis and poets in almost every century since the dawn of history. Parapsychologists have made the beginnings of a scientific study of how this non-spatio-temporal system interacts with our other "selves", but largely lacked the operational vocabulary to make their work precise and scientifically crisp. The recent developments in quantum mechanics now open the way to much more rapid progress in understanding "paranormal" and "transcedental" states. When the "self" operates on the non-local system it becomes a different "self" again, just as always happens whenever we move up from one of these systems to another. The non-local "self" -- beyond time and space -- and also beyond "mind" and "matter" -- has not yet survived translation into left-brain linear verbalism. It transcends all either/ors and, as Buddhists know, we cannot even properly call it a "self". The Chinese, who seem to have had more experience with this system than anybody else (more than the Hindus, even), define non-local experience in negatives -- "not mind", "not self", "not doing", "not existence", even "not non-existence". The same super-synergy appears in Dr. Bohm's attempts to describe his implicate order in words. However clear his math, his words begin to sound Chinese when he says the implicate order does not consist of "mind", but that it has "mind-like qualities". Obviously, it will take us years to get a scientific handle on this level of quantum psychology. Meanwhile, we at least have learned from the Copenhagenists that whatever model we make of non-local experience, the model will always contain less than the experience itself. That should save us from the dogmatism, and the gibbering incoherence, of most writers who have tried to discuss the non-local Self. I would consider it the height of intellectual laziness and mental incompetence to invoke the word "God" to cover the limitations of my imagination and vocabulary. Instead, I will conclude with the wise words of Aleister Crowley. When asked to define the Tao, he said:
The result of subtracting the universe
from itself.