Topic: by Lenny
or
Magick and Neuroscience
note: Statements in italics are quotations from n essay by Robert Anton Wilson. All other statements (especially the idiotic) are mine and to be taken as such.
By the neuro-semantic field I mean the total vocabulary, grammar, syntax, logic etc. by which an extremely rapid system of feedbacks synergetically links the verbal centers of the brain to the neuro-muscular, neuro-chemical, neuro-immunological, neuro-respiratory etc. systems of the organism-as-a-whole. In other words, I explicitly reject, not only the traditional verbal division between "magick" and "communication," but the equally fictitious splits between “mind” and “body,” between “reason” and “emotion,” between “thought” and “reflex” etc.
Students of the occult, physics, pop science and psychology have been hit repeatedly with a certain notion: namely, that all one experiences is a product of their mind. You do not see, feel, or hear anything: data is transmitted, received by your brain and coded into representations, "sight," "sound," "taste," "touch."
All words transmitted as sonic or visual signals --
sound waves or light waves --
rapidly become photons,
electrons,
neurotransmitters,
hormones, colloidal reactions,
reflex arcs,
conditioned or imprinted "frames."
physiological responses
etc.
as they impact upon the
total
synergetic organism.
"Perception" consists of a complex series of codings and decodings as in-form-ation trans-forms itself through succcessive sub-systems of the organism-as-a-whole.
The human mind-body organism is constantly creating: cells, hormones, neurotransmitters… everything that is in the human mind-body exists as a product of the human mind-body. Science and medicine are just beginning to understand how human thought/emotion can impact the brain just as strongly – or subtly – as outside interference can. And just as autonomic nervous system functions are beyond one’s awareness (but nonetheless very real) perhaps other influences that exist outside one’s conscience awareness (including beliefs and attitudes) can exert as much control.
We never experience "thoughts," "feelings," "perceptions," "intuitions," "sensations," etc. We invent those categories after the fact. What we experience, nanosecond by nanosecond, consists of continuous synergetic reactions of the organism-as-whole to the environment-as-a-whole, including incoming verbal signals from others in the same predicament. These incoming verbal signals also produce in us reactions of the organism-as-a-whole sometimes culminating in a return signal.
Either you understand, or you don’t. Either you have had the drug experience, the mystical revelation or the healthy imagination to really understand what it means when someone says “it’s all in your head” or you think I am crazy for even bringing it up.
Think of it like this… sitting at the kitchen table here there are two cats. The one on the left is orange. How do I know this? Because light waves reflect off the animal and are picked up by my eyes, which transmit the data into the brain and create visual representation. A hologram, if you will.
On the right there is another cat. It is black, but the general idea is the same.
Now, the image of the cat is the generated by the brain as the result of outside stimulus – that is, of light and something for it to bounce off. The technology does not exist (or does it, Philip K. Dick fans?) for this stimulus to be convincingly simulated, but if it did… if you saw two cats on the table, and one image was the product of outside stimulus (a cat off of which light bounces) and the other the result of brainside stimulus (brain programming that creates the visual image of a cat where there exists no third party cat-object), which would be more “real?” I would say that, to the viewer, neither. Now, having a cat, or a car, or a girlfriend, that is real only to you and no one else would be very confusing, to say the least. But that is a different discussion altogether.
Now, let’s take Lenny’s Cat and add programming for sound, taste and touch to the equation. Now just how real is that damn cat?
I propose the theory that Magick… with it’s arcane, subjective but essentially reproducible results, can be described as mind programming on a significant plateau. Sure, nobody knows why it works, but those who have experimented sufficiently know that it does work. Magick seems to “hijack” one’s perceptions. Now, whether or not the one doing the hijacking is inside the Magickians body or not is anybody’s guess…
That much seems simple neurobiological savvy.
Posted by mediafaction
at 12:01 AM EST
