John Steele - Memory

The first minute or two, the sound is a little raw, but it gets cleared up real fast.

So don't worry about the initial sound quality.

John Steele, on memory, KPFK Los Angeles.

Okay, we have ignition.

We're going to explore a vast array of stuff which has come to me over the years

through various channels with no names.

And I'm really going to speak my mind.

I'm going to think it out so it's not in any set form.

But there is an order I want to go through.

And it will be kind of a look at different elements of contracted mind and extended mind

so we can begin to see the juxtaposition of the two, how each one defines the other.

So the element of contracted mind I'd like to look at first, before the extended mind aspect.

And for those of you who heard me last year, I'll briefly capitulate this idea of the Kali Yuga

as a set piece before I launch into the specifics.

The Kali Yuga is the age that we live in, in terms of East Indian chronology.

There are four great yugas of time.

There is, roughly speaking, a golden age, a fat yuga, and then a silver age, and then a bronze age,

and then an iron age, each one of varying durations.

We won't get into the cosmological mathematics because they're up for grabs.

Allegedly, the age that we live in now is the end of the cycle.

Each of these four ages is part of a cycle called a Maha Yuga.

The Kali Yuga is the dark age.

It's the iron age.

It's the age of Kali.

Kali is a goddess, goddess of dissolution of time and structures.

She clears the way for those impediments of evolution that have arisen.

Now, in the Kali Yuga, what occurs is, in terms of time, very interesting,

because the Tibetan translation for Kali Yuga literally means the dregs of time.

The dregs of time, what does that mean?

It means the bottom of the barrel of time.

It means that time has reached a density, a certain temporal density,

and this temporal density can actually be felt somatically in the body.

Now, what is the definition of temporal density?

Temporal density means we have too many events per unit of time

to fully assimilate in our everyday life.

That means that you've got to pay the bills and take the kids out

and go to the doctor and wash the clothes and put out the cat and, you know, do everything.

It's an unending array of tasks that have to be accomplished.

And just when you think you've finished them all, new ones magically arise.

You are never finished.

Now, so the Kali Yuga has this idea of a temporal density,

and I want to explore that in several different ways here.

One of the things that occurs in the Kali Yuga, one other aspect,

which is an interesting concomitant to the temporal density,

is that there is a seasonal disequilibrium.

In other words, the climate and the seasons go out of whack.

Rain doesn't fall at the right time.

Snow doesn't fall at the right time.

There's a seasonal imbalance.

This is one of the aspects in terms of the Kali Yuga,

this climatic disequilibrium.

And what I'm pointing to is when you get a high temporal density,

there is at least a correspondence to a climatic fluctuation.

And as people like Padmasambhava and other great teachers have said,

this climatic disequilibrium is part of the Kali Yuga.

Now, one of the aspects in terms of, again, of Eastern thought

that occurs in the Kali Yuga is a, how shall we say,

is a time window narrows in this kind of density scenario.

And so what happens, last night the Miller Lite beer ad was mentioned.

I will mention another beer ad, which may bring back some memories.

Quite a few years ago in America, there was a Schlitz ad,

Schlitz beer of Milwaukee.

And it showed these macho guys on the sailboat and the spray coming out.

And it said, you only go around once in life,

so grab all the gusto you can.

And so the idea was, since, you know, this was it,

you had to have as good a time as possible right now.

So the idea encapsulated in this ad is many different values.

First of all is the idea that there are no past lives

and there are no future lives.

This is it.

And therefore, you've got to hedonistically explode in the moment

and just really grab everything possible.

Now, this, the value inherent here is that you'll go for short-term games

and to hell with anything possible long-term.

So this means rip off anyone, have war,

as long as you profit in the immediate moment.

Grab all the gusto you can.

Now, back to Buddhism for a moment.

In the, one of the sutras, the La Kavantara Sutra,

one of the Buddhist sutras,

there is a wonderful teaching.

And this is not Tantric Buddhism, it's Mahayana Buddhism,

but it's still the same basic set.

And one of the teachings in there goes as such,

for those of you who, my work is on memory,

so I have this great interest in the subject.

It says, when the triple world is surveyed,

that's past, present, future, by the Bodhisattva,

he perceives that its existence is due to memory

that has been accumulated since the beginningless past,

but wrongly interpreted.

Now, it is this concept of memory that is wrongly interpreted

that I want to take a good hard luck at here.

And before we get into that, a few more notes.

The word memory in Sanskrit comes from the word vasana,

V-A-S-A-N-A,

and it's a beautiful word because it has several different nuances.

It means a memory which is transmitted from one life to another,

either consciously or unconsciously, usually unconsciously.

Memories, habit patterns that are generated within one life

are called samskaras.

It's different from the vasana.

Vasanas have a cross-life connection.

Now, one of the secondary meanings of this word vasana

is very appropriate to one of my other interests,

and that is fragrance,

because the secondary meaning of the word vasana means

if you have an empty perfume bottle,

even if it's completely empty,

the smell always remains of that scent in that bottle.

In other words,

the scent pervades even when the vessel is empty.

And this is what the, in the Sanskrit language,

very mixture of great technical precision

and great poetic insight,

you have this idea that a past life memory

is like the smell which goes through time,

the smell memory goes from one life to another,

even though the bottle is empty.

Now, this word also means habit energy.

Vasana means habit energy.

And this word habit energy in Tibetan,

bakchag, is the term for it.

It's like a trace,

like the smell, like the trace.

And the teaching in the sutra

is that these traces,

they build up after a while

to the extent where we begin to nucleate

an ego around them,

like I get up every morning

and I do this and I eat that.

And you get this whole kind of,

an axis of a moment,

what the Buddhists call,

an axis of the moment begins to generate.

This I, this subject,

begins to generate from habitual action.

Repetitive, automatic, hypnotic,

you know, action.

Now, the,

therefore, one of the ways,

one of the strategies

to deal with this nucleation

around this moment of subjectivity

is to learn how to,

shall we say,

die to oneself.

And this is in the perennial philosophy

and the mystical philosophies

known as the tradition of unknowing,

of unknowing,

like the 14th century English mystic work,

The Cloud of Unknowing.

And this whole process

I want to look at in a moment.

I just wanted to set that out.

Now, with the idea of memory

wrongly interpreted,

we can begin to look at

a bit of present time

through this filter.

You see,

we live in an age

at which

we are virtually hoarding memory.

Computers are based

on the idea,

like,

you look at women

in terms of their vital measurements,

where you look at computers

in terms of their vital measurements,

in terms of their memory capacities.

This one has so many bits,

and this one has more bits,

and this one can process

those bits faster and faster.

The memorial capacity

is really the key

to the strength

of a computer.

Now,

the trouble is with this

is that

there is,

and I'm generalizing,

much of what computers do

is wonderful.

I'm not putting down

computers per se.

But there is an emphasis

on the acquisition

of memories

that can be stuck

into the computer.

And what

too many memories do

after a while,

whether they are in a,

because if they're in a computer,

even if they're in a computer,

they have to be

in a programmer's mind

even in a real chunked style.

There has to be

some level of recursiveness

even in the programmer's mind.

Now,

how much he offloads

into the computer itself,

there has to be

some level of memory

of what's inside.

So the more

that's inside the computer,

the more there has to be

in the mind

of the programmer.

It's a great reduction.

But still,

you begin to set up

a great array of memories

that is auxiliary

to what would be needed

for ordinary life.

Now,

what begins to happen

is that

with this tremendous array

of memory storage,

and we have,

you begin to clog a system.

A system becomes constipated

by actual,

too much hoarding of memory.

Now,

this hoarding of memory

sets up a kind of

psychological density.

and as the system

becomes clogged,

it becomes brittle.

That is to say,

it cannot react quickly

to crisis situations

because it is overloaded

with choices

and information.

There's too much information.

Every time that something

happens now

in the modern world,

the reaction time

is stunted

to such a point

by the vast array

of information processing

technology

technology,

that people cannot react

like that anymore

in real critical decisions.

Everything is so rationally

displayed in terms

of its memorial capacity.

And yet,

with all this memorial capacity

and all this incredible

telecommunications,

the world is coming apart

at the seams.

I mean,

it's,

we're balanced,

and as the Tibetans say,

we're licking honey

from the razor's edge

in terms of our

information acquisition.

It's actually,

and this is memory

wrongly interpreted,

this vast collection

of memory

as though more

is better.

That's the assumption

that we're working under.

Now,

the more memory

that you accrete,

you see,

paradoxically,

you set yourself up

more for what

in systems terms

we call

the likelihood

of a runaway system.

A runaway system

is like a snowball

going down a hill

getting bigger and bigger

and more progressively

out of control.

And the more

you develop memory

wrongly interpreted

in terms of

vast acquisition,

the more likely

you are

to go into

a runaway system

because your reaction

time is cut.

Your direct perception,

your direct,

unmediated

by vast information

technology

is cut

and

this likelihood

of a runaway system

occurs.

And this is what

happens,

you see,

in things like

all this

contragate stuff.

You have this

incredible

information technology

of the NFC

computers

and the CIA

computers

and the DIA

computers

and all these

things.

And what happens

is that you

lose control

of who's,

you know,

who's in charge.

Ollie North

is running the

ball this way

and Colby's

running the ball

this way

and everyone's

kind of what

we call

in systems

theories again.

You begin

to generate

institutions

within institutions.

years of the

overview.

Now,

what further

begins to

happen

is that

this memory

wrongly

interpreted

begins to

generate,

this is a

footnote,

there are two

types of

unconscious mind

I want to

point out here.

One is what

I would call

unconscious

and that's

when you're

asleep at the

wheel,

it's like

you're dead

drunk,

it's like

you're numbed,

there's no

sensation.

Okay,

that's

unconscious

unconscious.

Then,

contrasted to

that,

there's

conscious

unconscious.

Now,

the link

of conscious

unconscious

is really

shamanic

consciousness.

It's where

there is a

bridge between

the conscious

mind and

the unconscious

mind.

It's what

Jung would

call the

transcendent

function.

There's a

bridge

between

these two

realms.

Now,

most people

are walking

around,

as all

the

perennial

philosophies

say,

we're in

a state

of sleep.

We're walking

around in

a state

of unconscious

unconscious.

It's what

Gurdjieff

calls we're

all asleep.

We're

sleepwalkers.

This

unconscious,

what happens

then is

there's an

unconscious

mental

mass is

generated

by memory

wrongly

interpreted.

In other

words,

what begins

to happen

is,

conversely to

what Terence

was talking

about last

night,

the idea

of a

living

conscious

memory.

What gets

generated

is what

William Burroughs

would call

language as

virus is

generated.

You see,

this is where

language goes

out of

control.

It's just

the opposite

to a

living

language.

And it's

what I call

an unconscious

mental mass

proliferates

in the

environment.

And it

means that

there's

all these

kind of

invisible

habit

patterns

and

invisible

kind of

runaway

systems

linguistically

on a

sub-vocal

voice in

the

environment.

And

as

one of my

teachers

has said

that at a

certain point

habit patterns

become

solidified in

the

body.

Now,

this is

something that

and this is

from the

Tibetan

point of

view.

This is

something

actually that

Norbu said

that habit

patterns get

solidified and

the great

illustration of

this in terms

of, for

example,

tantric

thought is

there's a

great Indian

Mahasiddha,

Saraha,

who was

the arrow

maker.

and he

taught the

idea that

memory, it

can exist in

many states.

It's like

water.

Water can be

very fluid

and that at a

certain point

it can become

ice and

become solidified.

Now, that's

the shift from

natural mind

and natural

memory to

memory wrongly

interpreted when

it solidifies.

when it

solidifies,

the mind

stops, it

gels like

that.

And that's

where this

sensation of

ego comes

from, this

nucleation.

So, this

idea of an

unconscious

mental math,

the idea of

language as

virus, is

something that

we kind of

have to be

aware of.

it's the

idea that

words have

a life of

their own.

It's like

people's minds,

the sub-vocal

voice, oftentimes

you think, well,

I'm in charge, and

the sub-vocal

voice is going, I

want this, I

want this, what

the Buddhists

call monkey

mind.

It's like it's

going here and

here and here

and you are

saying, I

don't really

think that, but

something else,

and that's this

automatic mind

is going off,

and that's this

language as

virus, memory

wrongly

interpreted, gone

inorganic.

Now, one of

the aspects

of why there's

this great

accumulation of

memory is

the idea, the

illusion is, that

the more memory

we have, the

more control and

manipulation and

prediction of

reality we will

have, if we

can manage

memory and

keep it, you

know, on

tap, so we

can push a

button, therefore

we'll be able to

manipulate reality

better with all

this memory that

we've got there

and the external

forms of computer

banks and books

and everything

else.

And we begin to

hoard memory

because we feel

it will give us

prediction and

control and

manipulation of

reality.

The central

intelligence agency,

stop and think

of that for a

moment, central

intelligence agency,

what does it do?

It gathers

information about

everything in the

world except the

natural intelligence

of the people who

are in the

organization.

There's nothing to

do with self

knowledge.

Intelligence of

the other, not of

self-knowledge.

Now, the idea of

this memory wrongly

interpreted brings us

to an interesting

model here.

Again, in the

Buddhist framework,

we talk about

that thought or

memory, as the

teaching goes, as

Saraha teaches in

his, what he calls

the royal song, the

Dohas.

And these are kind

of like poetic

teachings.

He teaches that

memory arises from

emptiness, abides in

emptiness, and then

dissolves back into

emptiness.

Or, as he teaches,

memory arises from

non-memory, what he

calls non-memory, abides

in non-memory, and

then sinks back,

dissolves into

non-memory.

Now, this cycle of

arising, abiding, and

dissolving is the

cycle of all thought.

And this cycle is

also two other

analogs that we can

give to it.

It is the basic

nature of today, what

Prigajin calls

dissipative systems.

Things arise, they

abide, and they

dissolve.

And they arise in a

slightly different

form, and then they

abide in a slightly

different form, and

they dissolve.

Now, dissipative

systems, a footnote

on this, is much

more ancient than

Prigajin, when all

he's done is brought

it into a

contemporary mode.

In the early forms

of my interest of

archaeology, we find

it embodied in the

idea of the triple

goddess.

That is to say, the

triple goddess is

exemplified by the

three phases of the

moon, and that is to

say, there's a new

moon, there's a full

moon, and then

there's the waning

moon.

And then they go

back to a fourth

phase, which people

rarely, really

recognize, and that is

the state where the

moon is not visible

at all.

That is really the

true emptiness.

And this dissipative

cycle is mirrored in

the arising of

thought, abiding of

thought, and dissolving

back into.

Now, the reason I

bring this up is the

following, is that in

the paradigm of

memory, as it's

looked at in the

twentieth century,

memory is looked at

primarily, from the

point of view of

Western psychology,

only in one of these

three phases.

That is to say, it's

looked at principally in

the middle phase, the

abiding phase.

We do not look at

where memory comes

from, or where it

goes to.

Only in a

psychoanalytical sense

we look at your

childhood memories and

stuff like that.

But we do not really

consider the idea of

emptiness, or of

non-memory, as an

origin point.

We look at this kind

of psychoanalytic

history as our way,

but not as real

emptiness.

So we have a focus

only on one phase, the

abiding phase, that is

the phase of how do

memories operate in the

ordinary, everyday,

visible world.

How do we operate in

that form?

This is where memory

wrongly interpreted

generates itself and

proliferates, right in

this gap of only

looking at the middle

phase of the

dissipative cycle.

Because you neglect

the arising and

dissolving, you begin to

get an overbalance,

and that's why it gets

brittle, that's why it

gets constipated, because

the cycle is looked at

in only one part of

it.

Okay, now the next

thing that I would

like to look at is the

idea that one of the

characteristics of the

Kali Yuga, another one

besides this temporal

density, is the whole

concept, and this is

something I've been

developing from my

doctoral thesis for

years, but it

progressively comes into

more focus, is the idea

of object proliferation.

Object proliferation.

Now, let me give you a

brief history of

objects to put you in the

picture.

The first man-made

objects that we have are

three million years old.

These first objects are

found in Africa, and they

are very small, they are

like hand axes and pounding

tools and things like

that, with a minimal of

modification to them, very

minimally modified.

And as an archaeologist, I

happen to study this in great

detail, the kind of

generation of tool making.

And what progressively

begins to happen after

another million and a

half years of no new and

improved models, can you

imagine, you know, any

car industry with the same

models for a million and a

half years?

What begins them, the first

innovation is symmetry.

That's the first innovation

in tool making, is the

idea of some degree of

symmetry.

And then you begin to get

into chipping and flaking

as sharpening, and

gradually you finally

begin to get into what

we call microgeometry tools.

You get into very, very

small tools that are very

precise and the kind of

needlepoint stuff and very,

very finely made things

about 30,000, 40,000

years ago.

And it's about 30,000 or

40,000 years ago, again,

where you begin to

generate the first symbolic

objects.

That's where you go from

functional to symbolic

objects.

And when you make this leap,

language is, you know, a

foot, as soon as you begin

to get symbolic objects.

And with symbolic objects

and language, everything

begins to escalate.

Because in the scenario of

objects, as it were, what

begins to happen is roughly, we

have the Neolithic

Revolution, which is about

9,000, 10,000 B.C.

Some people put it a few

thousand years earlier or

later, but it's irrelevant.

In the Neolithic

Revolution, essentially, before

we were hunter-gatherers, we

were nomads.

We followed herds of different

animals, the caribou and the

deer and the bison and the

mammoth.

We followed the seasonal

growth of plants to wherever

they occurred.

We followed nature.

And we did not own nature.

Now, what gradually began to

happen in the Neolithic

Revolution, someone had a

bright idea.

And that is that we could

domesticate crops and animals.

We did not have to follow.

We could take something and

plant it.

And with this planting, we

could stay in one place.

We would not be at the kind

of whims of this grand

seasonal variation.

And our animals, we could

domesticate animals.

That is to say, we did not

have to go hunting all the

time.

We would begin to domesticate

cows and keep them in pens

and sheep and goats and

things like that would begin

to occur.

And, you know, it's a

wonderful invention for many

people, the idea of stopping

this nomadic life.

Others were not so sure that

this was a great idea because

there was a great virtue in the

nomadic life in many ways as

well.

But history rolled on and

what began to happen is, as

you begin to settle and to

nucleate, you began to generate

objects for the first time in a

different scale than just hand

axes and cutting tools, just the

bare essential tools.

You began to make tools, more

permanent holding tools now.

Instead of transporting water and

ostrich eggs that were biodegradable

in a very neat sense, you would

begin to make longer lasting

objects of clays and potteries.

And in other words, the half life

of your objects would begin to

increase.

The idea of permanent objects

instead of kind of a throwaway

culture began to accrete.

And as these objects began to

accrete, you began to gradually

through the years to make

decorations on them and art on

the objects.

And this made the objects more

valuable, quote unquote,

whatever that meant at the time.

And these objects had the very

strange effect on people's minds

as they acted like an attractor

matrix for the human mind on

which to see even further

possibilities for the proliferation

of even more objects.

That is to say, once you made a

bowl, well, we can make a better

bowl and a bowl with a spout and

then a bowl with a this on it and

one with greater capacity and

then so on and so forth.

Object proliferation began to

form.

It began to be a mirror to which

the mind could say, well, we've

done this, but we can do this

better.

Before you extracted from nature,

now you were on this kind of

reflection process.

So that was one dynamic that

began to occur.

Object proliferation and the

generation of even more objects.

Now, I should say at a footnote

right now.

Object proliferation and the

way to determine the

before I go on

with the scenario

the average home

has in it today

300,000 objects in it.

Put that in your pipe

and smoke it.

And that means

that you have to deal

with the location

and function

and care

of all these objects.

So therefore

a lot of your mental activity

is tied into this

object array environment.

Okay?

Now, what happens

let's go back to the Neolithic

for a moment.

You see, then we have

very few objects.

It's gone from

a few pots and bowls

and a few digging sticks

and spears

and what have you

and furs and beads

and things like that

to 300,000.

I mean, the proliferation

that has to go with that

you see, the concomitant

proliferation is

the secret of this process

is when you begin

to generate objects

you have to have

a concomitant

and corresponding memory

for every object

that you own

whether it's online

or not.

It is.

The point is

that we don't keep

the 300,000 memory

online all the time.

It's, um,

we chunk things.

We say it's in the garage,

it's in the bedroom,

it's in the den,

it's in the kitchen.

We have a chunking

by, by spatial

kind of labeling.

But on the whole,

uh, what happens is

as soon as you have

an object,

you have to have

a memory of that object.

Otherwise, the object

is useless to you.

You don't, you don't know

where you put it

and therefore you can't use it.

So you have to have

some corresponding memory.

Now, in terms of ownership,

what begins to happen

is very interesting.

As soon as you begin

to have this object

proliferation,

you begin to have

to have the generation

of a noun,

a linguistic noun

has to come into being

for the generation

of that object.

This is a spear thrower.

This is, you know,

my, uh, uh,

water bowl.

This is, uh,

this is my fur

to keep me warm.

This is, uh,

my, uh, talisman.

Whatever it is.

You have to have

a corresponding noun

for every object

that is generated.

Uh, now,

with this kind of

generation of noun,

the converse of this,

the most curious thing

begins to happen is,

is, is the generation

of pronouns.

N begins to occur.

This is my object.

This is your object.

This is his object.

This is their object.

When you were in nature,

there was no pronouns.

There was just this vast,

undifferentiated

participation mystique.

No differentiation

of subject and object.

Therefore, no pronoun.

So, pronouns are generated

from nouns.

And nouns are generated

from objects.

So, you get this

linguistic matrix

beginning to occur.

And it occurs in this

kind of unconscious

proliferation.

Again, language is virus.

Now, uh, what begins

to happen is, again,

the, the possibility

of, um, runaway systems.

And as, uh,

Morris Berman,

a cultural historian,

pointed out recently,

you begin to get

what we, he calls

commodity fetish, fetishism.

The idea now,

in the old days,

when objects, for example,

certain totemic things

in the Indian Northwest

were made,

they were meant to

degenerate with weather

after they were, uh,

made.

The masks and the,

and the things like that

were left to weather

and disintegrate,

to dissolve in the

dissipative cycle

back into nature.

They arise,

they abided,

and they dissolve.

They were not kept

as objects of art.

You see,

what we have done

is taken these objects

and got into

the abiding phase,

memory wrongly interpreted,

and we fixate there.

And we, we keep that going.

So, you get this very

kind of, um,

interesting, uh,

scenario, uh, arising.

Now, let's take a look

at this in terms

of the, the media,

how this can be put

to us in a very

entertaining

and, uh,

insightful way.

Um, there was a film

that was made, um,

I don't know,

maybe seven,

eight years ago.

Uh, something,

I don't know,

maybe it was more than that

ten years ago,

uh, called

The Gods Must Be Crazy.

How many of you

saw this film?

I figured a lot of you

weren't.

Uh, I'll, I'll give you

a brief recapitulation

of this film

because it's a wonderful

teaching film.

The, basically,

the scenario happens,

there's an airplane

flying over Africa

and two of the guys,

and one of them

is drinking Coca-Cola

and he takes,

finishes the bottle

and he throws it

out of the plane.

They're over the middle

of nowhere.

He throws it out

and it lands

near a Bushman

hunting party,

as chance would have it.

And the Bushmen

then, um,

see this bottle

and it is

the introduction

of a new

and novel object

into the culture.

When this object

comes in,

first it is met

with wonder

and awe

and the multifarious

uses of it

are then discovered.

first of all,

you could put things

in it

as a container

that was very durable.

It was a wonderful

container for water.

Second of all,

you could roll things

out like a roller.

Then you could blow in it

and make wonderful

sounds with it.

Then you could,

you know,

all these objects

were generated,

all these uses

for the object

were seen.

But what began to happen

is that everyone

wanted to use it.

All the pronoun

thing began to arise

as soon as this object

was introduced.

And what began to happen

in this little world

where there was peace

and harmony

was discord.

Tremendous sense

of discord.

I want it.

No, it.

Fights began to break out

over who was going

to use this Coca-Cola bottle.

Exactly.

Dis-Coca-Cola.

Dis-Co-Cola

had occurred.

So, the thought was,

and this is brilliant,

the Bushman wisdom

still prevailed.

They thought,

the gods must be crazy

to have given us

this object.

It causes havoc

in this society.

So, one of them

was given the task

to take this Coca-Cola bottle

to the edge of the world

and get rid of it.

Get this object

out of here.

We've got enough objects.

That's essentially

what they were saying.

Okay, so in a microcosm

in this film

is this wonderful teaching

about how an object,

a single object

in this case,

can take a very

harmonically based culture

and throw it out

the window.

Jung said,

speaking of our current era,

knowledge of the internal

world of the psyche

was eclipsed

by the external world

of objects.

The very same insight.

The more we got hooked

on objects,

the more that we began

to lose the

kind of internal world.

Now,

it's interesting

that in terms of

the very first writing

ever discovered

is a favorite

kind of point

that have come up

archaeologically,

is not some mystical

writing about

Mu or Lemuria

or channeling

or anything like that.

The first writing

ever discovered

is a Sumerian

tax receipt.

Okay?

It's 4500 B.C.

and it's a tax receipt

because what it is saying

is you have dealt

with these objects

and we want to keep

a record of them

so that

we can

find out

what the

as it were

the karmic trajectory

of this object.

Now,

this is what begins

to happen with objects.

Record keeping

grows as an industry.

You have to keep

a memory for every object.

Record keeping grows

in proportion

to object proliferation.

Today,

the biggest industry

on the face of the earth

is record keeping.

That's what computers

do more than anything else

besides their creative uses.

They do more than anything else

is inventory.

It's record keeping.

And they're doing it.

They're keeping track

of objects

and events

connected with objects.

The transactions

and interactions

and transformations

of objects.

That's what is being

kept records of.

So record keeping

grows out

of this proliferation

of this object array.

So,

in a sense,

you see,

you get an extended mind,

an unconscious

extended mind

is generated

through this

generation of objects.

objects.

And what it begins

to generate then

is the idea

of,

shall we say,

a left-brain memory.

Now,

a left-brain memory,

you see,

corresponds

to the middle phase

of the dissipative cycle.

That is to say,

the abiding phase

of memory.

Memory in the world

that we can see.

And this,

again,

is the realm

where,

if you overload it,

memory wrongly interpreted

begins to proliferate.

Now,

let's take a little bit,

a closer look

at this idea

of the,

um,

uh,

kind of the metaphysical

arising of the way

that we see the world.

The density of objects,

the density of objects

in the environment

creates a corresponding

density of memory

that you,

through record keeping.

And in turn,

this density of memory

generates the density

of time.

Temporal density

is a function

of memorial density.

And memorial density

is a function

of object density.

You will notice

that those cultures

that have the fewest objects

live in the dream time.

You look at

the Australian aborigines

with their minimal

object array.

And you see that

they live in a completely

different time frame.

They live in a dream time.

The Bushmen,

the same.

As your,

uh,

object density,

uh,

memorial density,

temporal density occurs,

it sets out

this extended,

unconscious

array of time.

Time is generated.

And,

um,

uh,

this generation

of,

of time,

the density of time,

um,

has a further,

aspect to it

which is very interesting.

Because of the,

uh,

transactions

and accounting

for all these objects,

the emphasis

is,

is placed on,

ever,

on short-term memory

because there are

more objects

and more transactions

and interactions.

Therefore,

the short-term memory,

where did I put this

and what did I do

with this

and what happened here,

because there are

more things,

your short-term memory

has to be more active.

and your short-term memory

has to be more active,

uh,

also in terms of

crisis situations,

uh,

whenever you have

a potential crisis

going on,

which is now

pretty much non-stop

in the world

at large.

So,

uh,

the short-term memory

has to keep track

of everything.

And,

again,

the short-term memory

takes place

in this middle phase.

Your short-term memory

has to be more active,

uh,

also in terms of

crisis situations,

whenever you have

a potential crisis

going on,

which is now

pretty much non-stop

in the world

at large.

So,

uh,

the short-term memory

has to keep track

of everything.

And,

again,

the short-term memory

takes place

in this middle phase

of memory abiding

in this middle phase.

And this means

that memory arising

and then redissolving,

this is right-brain memory.

This gets left out.

And this means

that far memory,

memory of past lives,

that's where the

Schlitz ads comes in.

You only go around

once in life.

Well,

that's smack

in the abiding phase

of the dissipative cycle

again.

You see?

Uh,

if you,

if,

object proliferation,

um,

short-term memory

in terms of,

oh,

I,

I've looked at memory,

I've read so much

material on memory

for the past ten years

on the experimental

psychology aspects

of memory,

just to see

what's in these

people's minds.

They're looking

at ever,

at smaller and smaller

increments

of memory.

Short-term memory

is like really

where it's at

for many people.

Uh,

short-term memory

is like a paradigm

in itself.

There's a,

it's like corresponding

to the search

for,

uh,

the atom

as the lowest

common denominator

in the physical world.

Short-term memory

is the lowest common

denominator

in the memorial world.

You,

you look for

the,

the accuracy

and the way

that short-term memory,

um,

uh,

works

as a,

as a kind of,

a hypothesis

that contributes

to reality.

Now,

I should say

as a footnote

to that,

the idea

of what is known

in the memory trade

as STML,

short-term memory loss,

which is,

uh,

the,

one of the signal,

uh,

attributes

of altered state.

Uh,

this is one of the first

thing that happens

to memory

is short-term memory loss.

Now,

many people

in the,

uh,

investigation of memory

look at,

uh,

the,

the real traditionalists

in memory research

look at short-term memory loss

as pathological.

You lose your short,

your mind,

you're losing your mind

if you lose

your short-term memory.

Watch out.

Keep control.

Stay in the abiding phase

where it's safe.

Let's accumulate,

let's stay in control.

It's all that kind of thing.

Don't let go.

Whatever you do,

don't let go

of your memory

or you will just

melt,

you'll evaporate.

But the real secret is,

is that,

that's the ploy.

Stay with memory

because memory is control.

The point,

that's how the CIA

looks at it

and all intelligence agencies

that look at memory

as control.

But the fact,

the secret is

of the perennial philosophies

that if you die

to yourself,

that if you unknow,

learn the art

of unknowing,

that if you learn

the art in Tibetan

which is called

trom meh,

which is non-memory,

what happens then

is that you do not

lose your mind.

Actually,

you come into

what Jill was talking

about yesterday,

primordial mind

or nature of mind.

This has no pronouns,

you see.

This has no hooks

of personality to it.

So,

memory is used

as a control device.

That's why

when you take

classes at school

you're asked

to regurgitate

in early school.

Rote mnemonic

because see,

this is a way

of hooking you

into control

and predictability

is kind of

give me back

what I gave you

now,

give that right back.

No, nothing new,

just give that right back

to me.

This is,

you will get

the highest marks

on your test

for regurgitation.

So,

the idea

of short-term memory

loss

as a gateway,

it is actually

a gateway

into a different dimension.

the dimension

of God,

the dimension

of the over mind,

of the over self,

whatever you want

to call it,

Atman,

Brahman,

it doesn't matter,

it's different spelling

for the same phenomena.

The same phenomena

is primordial mind.

It really doesn't matter

what you call it.

But if you

control short-term memory

as a kind of

a sphincter

and you don't let

anyone through that

or yourself through it,

you're lost

in this abiding phase.

When you go

into the rabbit hole

as it were

of short-term memory

through short-term memory

loss,

but you've got to

go through it

with awareness

if you go through

it unconscious,

unconscious,

you're finished.

I mean,

you're drunk,

you're stoned,

you can kill yourself

in that form.

You have no awareness,

you have no clarity.

But if you go through

with awareness

or clarity,

that is the entrance

to,

as I say,

the two phases

of the dissipative cycle

that are neglected,

the arising

and the dissolving aspects.

you begin to see

the entire dissipative

nature of the mind.

Now,

one other thing

about the objects here

is that

if you stay

on the object level,

you see objects

fixate attention.

They fixate attention

and they generate

kind of reactive

automatic mind

that is memory

wrongly interpreted.

So you fixate

or you crystallize

attention

through your objects.

This is my Mercedes

and I'm going to put

an alarm system

on it.

No one's going

to get this

and people begin

to build up

a paranoia

about their

valuable objects,

you see.

They become

object hooked

in that sense.

Another aspect

of this

in terms

of our

particular time

is that

people tend

to get into

hoarding

this time

in this age

that we live.

These 300,000 objects

we have become

temporal pack rats

in a sense.

We are hoarding

all these objects

in a sense.

We don't need

all these objects

you know

because all these

300,000 objects

we hoard them

and one of the reasons

that we hoard them

from a psychoanalytic

point of view

is that we think

that these will be

a buffer

between us

and death

between us

and extinction

that if we hoard

things

that they

are a substitute

for living time

these objects

and

compulsive hoarding

and also

a lot of people

hoard when they

get older

actually

is a representative

of trying to

stave off death

that the

people who are

very rich

often accumulate

tremendous arrays

of things

not just for pleasure

but to actually

keep the idea

of extinction

at bay.

now

if we look

at

objects

from another

point of view

that is to say

from the

one point

is

shall we say

the

participation

mystical

participation

that is to say

when there is

no difference

between subject

and object

in primitive

societies

participation

mystique

versus

the idea

of the

Buddhist

or tantric

teachings

of detachment

from objects

and I want to

go into that

for a moment

we have a very

interesting

kind of what

Ken Wilber

calls the

pre-trans fallacy

you begin to

separate two

things which

look the same

but they are

really not

in the

participation

mystique

there is a

kind of

fusion of

subject

and object

in the

Zen tradition

in the

Eastern

kind of

sense

you are

taught to

detach yourself

from objects

not buying

their whole

seeing them

as they are

but not

becoming

totally

involved

with them

and there is

a subtle

difference

in this

as

Hui Nang

the six

patriarchs

Zen

patriarchs

said

not to

be

defiled

by external

objects

this is

to be

one

with the

unconscious

and that's

capital U

it's

conscious

unconscious

he means

that

that is

to be

detached

from objects

so they are

present

in consciousness

when all

thoughts

are discarded

consciousness

is cleared

off

from all

its

defilements

so

on one

hand

you have

this

fusion

of subject

and object

and the

other

one

you have

detachment

like this

not getting

attached

to objects

okay

now there are

some similarities

between these

two states

in the

participation

mystique

you may not

become attached

but you don't

consciously become

detached

there's a subtle

difference

now if we go on

with this a little

bit it becomes

interesting

because what

Jung refers to

as this

or in the

Zen tradition

this epistemological

detachment

the translation

for it

of Hui Meng

of this

unconscious

is the

word

Wu Nian

and Wu

means

no

and Nian

means

literally

it has

several

nuances

to it

it means

no memory

or no

habit patterns

it's most

traditionally

translated

as no memory

so Wu Nian

means

no memory

now

in other words

unconscious

with a capital

U

or conscious

unconscious

means

a state

of no memory

but

what this

no memory

is

and it's

very important

is that

it is

a temporary

suspension

it is not

an obliteration

of memory

non-memory

is

what Lang Changpa

one of the

great

masters

of Tibetan

Vajrayana

thought

said

the spontaneous

wizardry

of the mind

takes place

out of

emptiness

or out

of non-memory

the spontaneous

wizardry

and again

the obvious

by the very

terms that he

uses

akin to

shamanism

right there

with the term

wizardry

non-memory

is something

that

you see

a computer

is very

interesting

a computer

cannot

unknow

this is a

very important

thing

it cannot

go into

the unknowing

mode

if you

clear a

computer's

memory

it's no

temporary

suspension

that's it

the little

I know

about computers

if you

wipe the

disk

clean

that's it

you don't

just say

okay

forget this

and then

see what

happens

this is a

uniquely

human

function

the ability

to suspend

and then

see what

happens

now

non-memory

you see

is

it teaches

us

the

it shouldn't

be cultivated

for itself

it should be

cultivated

in conjunction

with

memory

that is to

say

just because

you've given

up the

abiding

cycle

and looked

at the

arising

and dissolving

that's to

substitute

one thing

for another

you need

the whole

cycle

the middle

phase

is

conservation

of memory

the others

are the

arising

and

dissolution

of memory

so

for memory

to be

its highest

form

you have

to have

conservation

and

dissolution

you need

the dance

between

non-memory

and memory

it's like

saying the

left brain

is bad

that's

ridiculous

the left

brain

has a

vital

function

it's

what

enables

us

to

communicate

and

to

exist

in

this

world

in

that

amnesia

sets

in

and

then

a

runaway

system

begins

and we

go out

of

control

that's

the

dynamic

of it

so

this

non-memory

we have to

learn how

to look at

it

to

oscillate

it

and

in

sitting

practice

one of

the most

valuable

things

that

I have

learned

from my

altered

states

is

the

oscillation

of

memory

and

non-memory

the

oscillation

of

attention

and

the

release

of

attention

and

realizing

and I

always see

them

in an

infinity

cycle

I

always

see

them

in

this

form

like

this

I

don't

know

why

my

mind

always

takes

it

to

this

just

this

dance

like

this

because

it

moves

to

like

memory

and

then

it

shifts

the

dissipative

cycle

and

in

mathematics

and

eight

actually

is very

interesting

this is a

footnote

eight

is a

number

of

Isis

the

goddess

and

eight

the

goddess

is

the

great

as it

were

the

primordial

mind

the

last

thing

about

objects

that

I

would

like

to

introduce

now

is

that

again

objects

in

themselves

are

not

negative

at

all

it

is

our

reference

to

them

that

it

is

this

unconscious

mental

mass

this

linguistic

flux

invisible

flux

that

makes

them

what

they

are

or

aren't

you

see

because

there's

a

tremendous

tradition

in my

research

and memory

I was

astonished

to find

I looked

under

the folk

tales

concerned

with

memory

there

is

a

tremendous

array

of

folk

tales

concerned

with

magical

objects

that

restore

memory

there

is

the

magical

stone

the

magical

drink

the

magical

feather

the

magical

flower

the

magical

kiss

the

footstool

there

are

things

which

actually

are

encoded

as

awakeners

in the

environment

and this

idea of

awakening

in the

environment

is a

very

interesting

one

what it

pertains

to

is the

idea of

the

conscious

impregnation

of the

environment

of

mind

specifically

to

awaken

people

in future

states

when they

go by

or

interact

with

this

object

and

to

use

Rupert's

framework

this

is the

setting

up

of

a

morphic

framework

around

an

object

if

you

take

an

object

and

you

sit

with

it

and

you

meditate

it

and

you

sleep

with

it

and

you

dream

with

it

and

you

use

it

in

ritual

it

begins

to

absorb

in

psychometry

we

see

that

these

vibrations

are

absorbed

every

object

we

have

absorbs

some

of

our

field

that's

why

psychometrists

can

take

a

ring

or

a

belt

in a

very

unusual

way

one

of

the

ways

this

is

done

in

the

for

example

in

the

Gurdjeev

tradition

is

you

take

a

place

or

an

object

and

a

good

thing

that

I

use

in

many

of

the

classes

that

I

taught

is

you

take

a

doorway

and

you

say

to

your

class

or

those

people

that

you're

dealing

with

every

time

you

pass

this

doorway

you

should

wake

up

be

mindful

it's

like

the

bell

going

off

in

the

meditation

retreat

every

time

then

the

art

becomes

to

impregnate

an

environment

with

conscious

objects

and

then

as

you

begin

to

impregnate

your

environment

you

begin

to

set

up

an

extended

mind

field

in

the

environment

which

you

react

with

when

you

go

out

into

it

and

this

is

why

for

the

American

Indian

and

the

Taoist

and

all

the

other

aboriginal

people

that

their

environment

was

a

conscious

environment

that

Gaia

was

alive

and

all

these

ancestors

the

rainbow

serpents

and

the

great

whales

and

all

the

totemic

beings

you

were

reminded

that

you

were

part

of

this

dream

time

of

Gaia

of

this

living

entity

anyhow

let's

stop

here

I've

got

another

subject

let's

break

for

about

you

another

subject

a

very

valuable

one

that

we

should

look

at

and

that

is

one

of

the

counters

to

the

state

of

waking

sleep

or

this

runaway

system

this

memory

wrongly

interpreted

one

of the

principal

counters

to

it

is

to

develop

something

called

cross

state

retention

cross

state

retention

I've

talked

about

this

before

but

I've

done

a

cross

state

retention

or

CSR

is

based

on

the

idea

that

most

of

the

time

when

we

are

in

an

altered

state

whether

it's

psychomimetically

induced

or

dream

or

emotional

when

we

go

back

to

an

ordinary

state

we

don't

remember

there's

a veil

of

forgetting

between

going

from

state

to

state

this

is

Rowan

Fisher

calls

it

state

bound

experience

in

classical

memory

parlance

it's

called

state

specific

memory

that is

to

say

if

you're

one

of

the

classic

things

for

example

in

Sufi

story

is

Nasruddin

he loses

his

key

while he's

drunk

wakes up

the next

morning

can't

find it

and he

says

what am

I

going

to

do

and

he

says

well

I'll

get

drunk

again

and

he

stumbles

off

into

the

bushes

again

and

finds

the

key

because

he's

in

the

same

state

this

is

just

an

example

by

parable

of

the

way

that

it

works

now

again

in

the

dissipated

cycle

the

abiding

section

the

center

one

there's

the

arising

abiding

and dissolving

in the

abiding

cycle

that's

where

state

specific

memory

in

current

research

is

focused

in

this

area

right

here

and

between

dissolving

and

arising

you

don't

look

at

the

transitions

you

see

in

contemporary

memory

research

you

only

look

at

this

abiding

phase

and

some

psychoanalytical

history

of early

childhood

now

cross-state

retention

is

most of

us

know

when we

have

dreams

unless

it

is

an

exceptionally

vivid

dream

when we

wake

up

we

know

that

we

have

dreamed

but

the

dream

disappears

like

the

bubbles

of

a

wave

going

out

after

they

affect

different dimensions. There are yogas of dream recall taught in the Tibetan tradition. There

are yogas taught in African systems of shamanism that I know of for dream recall. There are many

aspects of cross-state retention taught in many different esoteric traditions. In fact,

I would say that cross-state retention is the essence of all shamanic and esoteric ways of

thinking at heart. For example, Eliade teaches that the shaman is the man who goes into the

other realms or the woman who goes into other realms but he is able to bring it back. You see,

this is what differentiates him from other beings. He's able to bring it back. Many people have

altered state experiences and they're, wow, the next morning, I really can't elaborate on

quite what happened, but I know it was fantastic. It's what we call the limbic system flash. You know

that it happened and you have a rush, but you can't elaborate it. Now, the idea of cross-state

retention, first of all, is never taught to us in school. I want to bring this to a basic everyday

life. We're never taught any idea of cross-state retention. You're taught state-specific regurgitated

memory. You are not taught the idea of remembering from one. You're not even taught that you've got

other states, let alone remembering between them. Now, the idea of this kind of shamanic sense

can be taught in many different ways. It can be taught in, for example, the idea of what is called

holy reversals is one way in which cross-state retention is taught. For example, in the peyote

ceremonies, when the Huichols go to the highlands, is it pronounced Wirakuta? When they go,

there's a certain point in distance where everything must be reversed in terms of language and act and

symbol. If you are right-handed, you do everything with the left hand. If this is your friend, you refer to

him as your enemy. If you're walking along and it's a beautiful sunny day, you'll say,

gee, isn't the moon lovely tonight? The reversals are a way of jarring the attention from fixated

patterns, and this inculcates an unusual quality to the attention so that it is remembered differently

because of the reversal. So this quality of reversal is done in many different traditions

throughout the world. That's just one in particular. In fact, I recall one that Rupert told me about

once, and that is the tradition of holy in India. Isn't there a reversal between master and servant?

Yes. That's rather interesting. And I think this probably arose not from just kind of sense,

some sense of equality, but from some sense of awakening. The name itself might have something

to do with that. Now, if we look at another aspect of this cross-state retention,

to operate it fully, it requires a notion of the entire dissipative cycle, how things arise,

how they abide, and how they disappear. And a knowledge also that there is always, no matter what

phase you're in, apparently that primordial mind is there, no matter what phase is showing its face,

whether it's the abiding phase, or the dissolving, or the arising, the primordial sense is always there.

And if you have that sense, the idea of cross-state retention is vastly made much more easy. But in

practical terms, really, let's get, you know, non-theoretical for more practical terms, the best

way for cross-state retention to work is the following. You see, attention in the modern world,

because of all the objects that we've got in it, attention slides across the surface of the mind,

of objects. It just slides. We never go in deep. It slides across the surface of the world.

Now, how do we counter that? Well, for one of the ways in the traditional schools, like in the

Gurdjieff tradition that is done, there's a tradition called self-remembering. And self-remembering

literally means that you, just like in mindfulness, you take a moment, any moment, you take this moment,

for example, and you make it special by investing it with an inordinate amount of intention.

And you see, just in a footnote to this explanation, the sequence goes, intention, attention, retention.

If your intention, if your will is clear that you want to remember, you will pay attention,

and therefore your retention will be clear. Intention, attention, retention. That's how it works.

Now, if you want to raise consciousness by this cross-state retention manner, you take a moment,

and it can be any moment. And you encode your, all of your five senses' response to that moment.

In other words, you take one minute, like right now, you take a minute, and first of all, you look

around you, and you don't try to encode everything. This is something I've learned. You look at a number

of key objects, three, four, five. The mind can only chunk five plus or seven plus or minus two

objects at a time. So don't try to chunk, say, more than five to nine objects. You look around,

say, at people. You see what they're wearing, just generally. Then you look at your, what you're

sitting on, and you feel it, and you see what is this texture feeling, like so. And then you do your

smell, like I can smell tiger lily over here. And then you can look into the sense of taste, what kind

of taste in your mouth, perhaps from breakfast, or the coffee that you're just drinking, or whatever

it is. And what here, what you stop for a moment, and you hear, hear the flies, you hear the birds,

you hear the sound, you encode that. And you begin to multi-sensory encode over a one-minute period.

And the way that it works in the phone, you begin to encode all of those things. And the way that it

works is, the more things that you can encode a memory in sensorially, the easier it will be to

recall the entire memory. That's really it in a nutshell. So if you're able to have in these

five sensory modes, it's very different than if you only, if you just saw someone, you only have a

visual sensory mode to recall from. But you see, the senses reinforce each other. And if you can

reinforce them by your attention, you're set. Now, after the 10 years I've been working on my memory

thesis, I can put it down to a nutshell what it's all about. Memory is a function of attention.

That's it. It's the whole thing. It's the name of the game. If you don't pay attention, you don't

remember. It's that simple. It's that simple. And of course, if you don't have an intention,

you don't have an attention. So it's that intention, attention, retention is the memorial cycle.

So what we do is we take that minute, and you have to know how to trigger yourself in that

moment. I usually, when I give classes or something, do it in a way which is,

do you want to say something? Okay. The sense of encoding is done by like a theme. For example,

the theme of water is given. I'll say to a class, we're going to meet next Thursday, but next Tuesday,

I would like you, or any time before that, any time that you see water in any form, be it rain or washing

up liquid or flushing the toilet or taking a bath, any time you see water, I wanted to remind you to

take a moment, one moment and stretch it out and do that multi-sensory sensing. And then I'm going to

ask you all to tell your story of that moment. I have them all tell stories. And of all these moments,

and you get these, and see, what I'm about is slices of life. Every moment is special,

but it's only special because of the attention invested in it. And I've had them, I mean,

these housewives that I taught adult education in England for a while, these housewives who said,

well, I was washing the dishes and I remembered the water and I looked around and there was the full

moon and she just got excited. And, you know, and then my husband came home and the dog barked and,

you know, and this little old moment became special. And many people did this. We did this

with all kinds of themes. All I'm saying is that this cross-state retention is developed by multi-sensorial

attention within, say, a minute's framework. And you have to be able to trigger yourself.

The point is we're too lazy. We walk through the world and we go like this, but we never just go

like that. That is to say, you're walking by a beautiful flower. I mean, I do this all the time.

And all of a sudden it catches my attention and I'll sit with it. I'll smell it and I'll see the

ground that is coming out. I'll hear it. I'll let that be a cue. Anything can be a cue for you.

And you go into that mode. Now, one of the other things about cross-state retention that I'd like

to say, and this really relates to the theme of the extended mind, is the idea, first of all,

just the idea of cross-state involves extension, right in itself, right to begin with. The idea,

there are two types of cross-state retention that I'd like to look at. And one of them is,

it's purely associative, like this idea reminds me of this idea reminds me of this idea,

and it's this kind of glass bead game type of thinking, okay? And that is one type of cross-state

retention goes auto-catalytic after all. It begins to breed more and more insights. And it's like the

opposite of memory wrongly interpreted, it's like memory rightly interpreted when it goes cross-state.

Now, the other aspect of it is a Greek term called anamnesis, A-N-A-M-N-E-S-I-S, anamnesis,

or any way you want to pronounce it. But anyhow, anamnesis has, again, two meanings to it.

In the classical Greek sense, it means to be able to remember your karmic trajectory, as it were,

your past lives back, like Pythagoras could remember when he was a butcher and a candlestick

maker and a this and a that. Pythagoras was known for his ability to trace his karmic trajectory back,

and this is the idea of anamnesis. It is used today in psychoanalysis when talking about the patient's

past history. They talk about a patient's kind of psychoanalytic anamnesis, tell me about your early

childhood, that type of thing. But you see, at a certain point, anamnesis, just going back with,

I was a dishwasher, and I was a princess, and I was a channeler, or whatever, an ice skater.

This goes back and back and back. And after a while, see, Buddha's first realization, as it were,

his pari nirvana beneath a bow tree, when he became enlightened, it began when he started going back in

this karmic trajectory. He went back 500 lives. And he was a this, and a king, and a queen, and a this,

and a this. And he was cool, and he was happy, and he was delightful, and he was sad.

But what he saw in his great genius was not the fact that he could go back life to life to life to

life, as it were. What he saw is that every one of these lives was, in a sense, an illusory pearl

on the necklace of primordial mind. That is, every one of these lives, although appearing separate,

was arising from primordial mind. It was apparently separate life. But in this dream kind vista, it

wasn't separate. There was only one life. There was only one mind. There was only this one primordial

being. And it put on different clothes from time to time in the apparent world. So this is the way

that the idea of a deeper anamnesis is not just to go life to life to life, but to go to source.

When people play the past life game, I was a this, I was a that, you were a this, very rarely do they

go back to source. And that's the root. The final anamnesis is back to source, to emptiness itself,

to source, to God, to over self, whatever you want to call it. And this is anamnesis depth,

as opposed to, and it's a type of cross-state retention to source, as opposed to associative

cross-state retention extended-wise. So you go to depth, and you go to breadth. Now these two things

will trigger each other off. You see, what constantly goes through my head, and I'll look at

things in breadth. The mind will go, this relates to this, and this relates to this, and this relates

to this. It always happens, funnily enough, or many times when I'm walking by a big apartment building

in the city or something. You look at a room, a window, an arbitrary window, and you know that

somewhere in that apartment, a drama is going on, a life drama is going on in that apartment.

And you realize, in that apartment, there's another drama in this apartment,

this apartment. Every one of it, there's millions of dramas going on. And you speed up the mind a

billion-fold, and to all the dramas that are going on the face of the earth, until you go like that,

and you put them, then you collapse the wave front, as it were, into just an instant. And you realize

that, yes, they're all going on, but it's all now as well. It's not just the extension, but it's the

collapse of the extension into the primordial moment. And it's that oscillation between the

extension of this glass bead game type of thinking, and you go on, you think it could go on forever,

infinity. But you have to go back to its source, as well, which stops everything in a moment.

And then there's this vast sense of interrelatedness. And these two things have to properly

interact with each other in a kind of a mystical framework. If you get stuck just on the proliferation,

you'll go crazy. If you get stuck just on the primordial mal, you'll kind of, this is what they

call dead void heretics in the Zen tradition. You just become, I'm deeply in the void, don't bother

me, you know, just leave me alone and let me sit. So you have to be able to go from these two kind of

states. And that's that dance, that oscillation, which is really key. Now, other ways in which we

tend to miss out on cross-state retention and on 20th century life is the idea of the elimination of

rites of passage. Any types of rites of passage from childhood to adolescence, adolescence to manhood.

I mean, the vestiges that we have left don't really do the job in our culture. Rites of passage

are more seen on what kind of salary you're getting. You know, this is a big rite of passage. Marriage,

on the whole, so many marriages aren't conscious marriages. So many children, I mentioned this to

Jill. Yes, there are so many children that are born maybe are not consciously, you know, looked at as a

process of birth. But rite of passage is a way of going from one state to another state. And if you

don't have that awareness built into your culture, you lose. You lose the dissipative cycle. You lose the

big mind picture at that point. So that is an important thing. Another aspect about cross-state retention

is the idea that transitions, that's why I said reversals, they encourage cross-state retention.

The solstices and the equinoxes, for example, are points of temporal transition from balances of

night and darkness. And these points of transition are ideal times to plant a seed in the mind to say,

remember now, at this axis of time, this nexus of time, really remember what you're all about in the

cycle. Because every solstice and equinox is a point on the dissipative cycle of the year. And you

should use these axis points, these kind of focal points, as points to plant suggestions for integration

into the environment, to make the environment conscious, as it were.

What we have to become then, in a sense, is what I would call psychic amphibians. You have to be,

you see, an amphibian is an animal or a being that can go from water to land. It's a cross-state animal,

you see. So we have to become kind of psychic amphibians, in a sense. And this will really begin to

get us into the mode of cross-state retention. Cross-state retention would, if taught in this kind

of way, would have a tremendous kind of revolution in education, which I want to mention at the very

end here. Now, one last thing on cross-state retention. Actually, two. There is, first of all,

the idea of, in Jung's theory of synchronicity. That's very interesting. He says, in synchronicity,

we have two types of temporal events. One occurs on a causal chain, causal sequential chain.

This happens. And as a consequence, this happens. And as a consequence, this happens. Primary,

secondary, tertiary effects. Then, he says, on the other hand, there may be a kind of meaningful

cross-connection. Now, it's from this idea of cross-connection that, incidentally, that he borrowed

from Schopenhauer, from an essay called, On the Apparent Design and the Fate of the Individual. An

interesting analogy there, Schopenhauer took a world globe model, and he took the meridian of the model

to be the causal chains of events. But the parallels, he said, these were the cross-connections

that happened in life. And this is how Jung built his theory of synchronicity from this geographical

analogy of Schopenhauer. Now, it's interesting that synchronicity means the simultaneous occurrence

of the psychic state, an internal psychic state, and a corresponding external event occurs, which kind

of mirrors or cross-connects to this state. Can you see? So any idea of synchronicity, we get not a,

we don't get a temporal density, we get a temporal fluidity, begins to occur at this time. And this

is where magical thinking is born. This is where all the magical memory systems, like Bruno's magical

memory system, take their heart out, this kind of correspondence between all these symbolic objects

and the corresponding psychic states that go with them. Now, the last method of, in this framework,

all aspects of divination. Divination is like throwing the I Ching, reading coffee leaves, throwing coca leaves,

reading the oracle bones, looking at clouds, reading the flight of birds. These are all processes of divination.

Divination means to become godly or have a godly insight, a godly knowledge into something. Now,

the essence of all divination is to connect the unconscious to the conscious. It is a cross-state

bridge. That's what it's about. When you divine something, so that you throw a mo in the Tibetan

tradition, you throw the cards, you read the tarot, whatever it is, it's a cross-state. You're using these

symbols. You're using this as a medium, as it were, to go from the unconscious to the conscious and to

facilitate this kind of cross-state communication. And again, when I say cross-state, it has the

implication of extended communication or of an extended mind concept goes with the idea of cross-connection.

Now, finally, in this, to bring it down to a literal sense in this whole kind of cross paradigm,

incidentally, one of the great general systems theorists, James Miller, a biologist,

talks about, he said, there are many people who do systems analysis.

That is to say, you take a business and you analyze how it works every little bit of it. He said,

but the much deeper way to operate is what he calls the cross-level hypothesis,

when you begin to mix things from different levels, symbolic levels.

On a mundane term, what's going on with athletics and aerobics and fitness is rather interesting,

because there is a new type of training going on now. And this new type of training is called

cross-training. It's called cross-training. There's a lot of people going to triathletes,

the Iron Man stuff, where you swim and then you run and then you bicycle. And what people are doing,

reading from an article, it says, first associated with triathletes and needed to be prepared for

running, swimming, and biking. Cross-training has been adopted by other athletes and now the general

public. Skiers are alternately roller skating, lifting weights, and running before the first snow

falls. Runners are swimming and doing low-impact aerobic dancing.

And in the same way, beginning exercises are swimming, riding stationary bikes, or taking

stretching classes, etc. But what it does is interesting. Cross-training appears to cut down

injuries because various muscle groups are strengthened by the different forms of exercise. So you see,

I'm making an analogy between physical cross-training and psychic cross-training. You exercise

different as it were psychic muscles by this kind of cross-state interest. Finally, an obvious way of

inducing cross-state memory and perception is to be taught in a way in school or in education,

which the very last thing I'll say is going to focus on that. Now, one last subject before the final last

subject. This one won't be that long. There is a reader, a great thinker that I would like to honor

for a moment in the general systems theory framework. It's someone that I knew personally and I know that

Karen's knew, and that's Eric Yonch. And Yonch was a real, he was a mathematician and a musician and a

systems man in every dimension. His works are like, they're kind of like the glass bead game in a certain

sense. They roam in so many different arenas. And I talked to him about, you know, my work and thesis

and stuff like that on several occasions. And there's a term of his which caught my eye, which I would like to

bring to front now, which I have found to be, along with the non-memory concept in my thesis, one of the

central things that I'm going to be using. And that is what he calls holistic system memory, HSM,

holistic system memory. And essentially, he remarks here, he says, in evolving systems,

systems, or systems with history, with history, that is to say, all dissipative systems. Each system

state depends on the past development of all subsystems. There exists, therefore, a system

memory in terms of the entire system. In other words, there is some system memory, no matter what

phase you're in of the dissipative cycle, whether it's arising, abiding, or dissolving, there is some

holistic system memory, which has got all the pieces, no matter which phase you're in. There's

something which has got it all. That's the way I can put it. Call it an overmind, if you will, for

easy visualization. So this holistic system memory, he goes on to say, each system with history,

that is, a dissipative system, remembers the total development itself of its whole. In other words,

it's an amnesis, its karmic trajectory, and is therefore capable of what he calls religio,

with its own origin. Now the word religio is from religion. Religion means to reconnect with,

really to reconnect with the source, as its original intent. So a holistic system memory operates by

reconnecting to the source of the system. So with that in mind, I'd like to just look at a very

interesting dynamic here. What it means is you start from this, say, this is point A. You start here.

Now by reconnecting to your source, it means you go backwards to your source. That means backwards to

your, like Buddhist, the emptiness at the end of all those lives, the source, the primordial mind.

You're back to that point. Now at this point, a curious thing happened, and it happened to Buddha as

well. After you go back to source, you get a feed forwards into the future of an unexpected,

unanticipated range of insight. But you have to go back to ground zero in order to go forward.

It's the old French, you draw back to leap forward. Now, this model I have found operative in

so many different forms in shamanic ecstasies, in psychoanalysis, in personal insight and creativity.

It is this idea of going back to source, this temporary suspension of non-memory, you see,

and then there can be a leap forward. But there has to be a prepared mind before you go back to source.

Many people just think, oh, I'll be quiet and I'll get creative. First, you have to fill the mind with

intense creativity in terms of a search. There has to be this intent. Then you have to release totally,

and you go back. Now, this idea of holistic system memory incorporates then both the idea of, shall we say,

cross-state retention at the beginning, going back to non-memory, and then you get this leap into the

unknown, which takes you to some other cross-state insight. But I'm doing it very succinctly here,

because it's a subject which I could take a lot more time with. But I just wanted to give you a flavor

of this. It's like in shamanic tradition. It's the idea of a shaman takes a psychedelic, for example,

and then goes through a state of dismemberment, the idea of the body is seen to be dismembered

by some spirit animal, for example, eaten by a great bear or an eagle or a jaguar or what have you.

And then it goes back, it goes back as it where you see this dismemberment takes you to ground zero.

You go back to source, to where the allies, the spirits can take you and remake you, remake you. And

then they throw you into the future like that, and you fly on the wings of the unknown. And you come

back with this gift from the unknown at that point. But you have to go through the dismemberment before

the rememberment of the psyche. There is that kind of cycle. And it's interesting that in many of the

Greek myths, for example, in one of the Greek myths of the sixth century BC, there is a cave in Greece

called Cophonius, the cave of Cophonius. Cophonius was the god of dreams and sleep. But you would go into

this cave, and you would first sit on what they call the chair of forgetting, the chair of lethe.

And this chair of lethe, as it were, you were given what I reckon to be a psychomimetic mushroom brew.

And then, after this took effect, then you were placed on another chair called the chair of memory.

And after you were wiped clean from the chair of forgetting of who you were, you were dismembered

psychically through the psychedelic, then you sat on this chair of remembering. And the new information

came through you. Now again, this is the same way that the cloud of unknowing works. You have to unknow

before you come to God. You have to dismantle all your names, labels, places, categories, and concepts.

And only through unknowing can you be filled with a different spirit, the Spirit of God. But you have to

release first. Now, this idea of holistic system memory is quite a key one. I really haven't done it

justice now, but in a...

you

re-education process and that's the last thing I want to spend a few minutes on

it is where I would put a lot of emphasis you see the way that our memory works

today we spend a lot of time exercising rote mnemonics in terms of you know

like all these memory systems are based on wind friends and influenced people by

this fabulous memory system and all this type of thing but that's quantitative

memory it has nothing to do with quality of memory quality of memory has

to do with being able to touch source being able to touch origin and then this

leap of the unknown out of it and I would like to see in some type of

educational situation for children I'm really talking about I see I've taught at

university level and I've taught at adult education level the area that

interests me the most now is that it's at the children level because I cannot see

that the sense of going twenty years and then telling a kid look you got it all

wrong you're neurotic we're going to have to send you to a psychoanalyst and to

de-school someone after twenty years I can't see the sense of it it's totally

counterproductive if you give someone an education which is cross-state or

extended to begin with that is to see you are taught the good cross-state

analogy is the glass bead game in a sense you see the relationship of a volcano to a

symphony to a star and you begin to extend the mind through all these

different categories you don't just teach children state specifically this is

mathematics and this is history and this is biology and you never teach how they

cross you never look at the parallels in the analogy of the globe so this is what

I would really emphasize in education and I would also educate in terms of

senses as I've said before here I really think you have to take each sense and you

have to teach each sense in detail you want a master of each sense you want a

master of sight smell touch hearing sound and set all of the senses a master to be

for the kids to be taught sequentially by each one of these and then you teach

them after the sequential thing how to integrate all these different masteries

of the senses and then you will get cross-state perception and when you get

cross-state perception you will get cross-state retention that's really in a

nutshell how it works now one of the things in the way that we're kind of

exposed to life and consciousness in terms today is we are every technology as

McLuhan says and I'll quote him the main influence of any technology is not

exercised consciously through concepts and opinions but rather unconsciously by

altering the sense ratios of patterns of perception you see it's not just the

technology with everything itself the technology alters our sense ratio and our

sense ratios have been pushed so that the visual thing is where it's at and I

have nothing against vision per se but I'm just saying the sense of all the other

senses are secondary to vision which is 70 to 80 percent of the way we sense the

world if another opportunity arises I'll share with you I have with many of you

before my interest in the sense of smell I think is another thing that could be

emphasized very strongly so we have to learn how to get our way out of this

what I call sensory amnesia which we really have for many of the senses now the

idea of as I said this kind of cross-state amphibians is a very very

very important one and I think that you have to learn in being cross-state

amphibians and from the altered state experience one of the biggest things

that I've ever learned is as I was trying to say to point out last night in my

question to Terence you know so many people can't bring them back alive it's

just they know they had the feeling that limbic flash of emotional yeah I got it

aha rush but they really don't have the content and the trick you see is the

following that I found after my own voyages into these realms is to learn to

pay attention while you are in the state of what is going on to a very precise

degree in other words to imprint at the moment of recognition a moment which says

aha this is how it works I see this goes to move to this this is important I

will put a beacon in my mind at this point I will light a bonfire so that later

tomorrow when I wake up I will see that bonfire in my mind and that bonfire will

remind me of that insight that beacon you see what you're doing as that one

teacher EJ gold one of the workers and the good chief workers said what you're

doing is you're building beachheads in the fourth dimension by this technique what

you're essentially doing is you are learning to imprint your attention your

intention to remember at the moment of recognition you have to imprint that

intention to to hold it isn't enough just to have it you know as you said

before it's not enough just to how did you say you've got to not not you're not

just looking how do you say you've got to face the thing that's already there in a

sense it's not just a question of confronting something else and this

idea of imprinting at the moment because you see these ideas that we have in

altered states I'll put it very graphically have an extremely short

half-life they go like that like that like that like that like that and they're

coming all over the place especially and when time becomes liquid they come at

you from omni-direction as Terence said you're dealing with hyperdimensional

idea complexes and the way that if you cannot imprint this will this intention

to to recall in an in the ordinary state you lose it now the way that my mind

works in these states and in this kind of extended runs my mind works in these

kind of bifurcations one thing reminds me of another thing reminds me of another

and da da da da da but unless I make a moment for recapitulation while I'm in the

state I'll lose it you have to be able to do that even for a microsecond or else

you lose it you see because what it is is attention you are investing some more

attention at that moment into the idea so attention is the way that you that you

can develop your cross-state retention is the development of attention really

develop that sense of attention anyhow for then and really in summing all this up

for the the idea of a an extended mind is this idea of going cross-state is

extending but to do that you have to learn the simple art of attention and you

have to realize that objects are attention traps if you are unconscious and they

will fixate your attention and track them you will be hooked unto what happens to

your Mercedes or what happens to your beautiful house if you let yourself go to

that extent conversely you shouldn't pay you know no attention to them at all

there has to be a balance between paying too much and too little attention there

has to be that kind of sense of right effort of attention but this idea of an

extended paradigm I think going over the idea of the object proliferation and the

attention and the cross-state retention are different ways that I can see that kind

of contribute to this this overall idea of an extended mind paradigm so I'm gonna

shut up now and I'd like to if you have any questions or discussion or

something like that you know go over some of these things the trick that I use is

when something happens that I want to remember I imprinted as John said but then

10 minutes later I tell it to myself again yeah and 40 minutes after that you

cannot simply mark it in your mind and 24 hours you have to hand it from the

deeper levels to the slightly less deep levels to the more shallow levels and

finally into consciousness and this doesn't fail if you do that you'll get it

out yeah that this is a it's a good point it's called rehearsal yeah and it's a it is

a way of of of memory transfer yeah good point I was very interested by the way in

which the themes the two of the themes that are striking me a lot in the course of

these discussions are the habit versus novelty dichotomy and morphic resonance is a

system of habit formation and have it reinforcement and Terence's novelty wave

running through history the opposite of it as novelty increases and one way of

looking at what it is that decreases is habit and those novelty decreases what

increases habit so one can see the novelty wave as a kind of interplay of

habit and novelty and I thought that you took this for me anyway you took suggested

several new aspects of this way of looking at things because through the loss of

short-term memory and which you say precedes many altered states and which is

also surely a characteristic of dreams and it means that you're apparently as it

were sathing on the advancing novelty wave and so you're and it you know what

happened you keep forgetting what's happened and any object that's there now in

the present can turn into something else because there's sort of no habitual

inertia and this also is like the kind of Terence's theory of the origin of

language that he told us last night where people sort of babble in a kind of

zoom a glossy way and sort of surfing on the breaking wave of novelty the whole time

and somehow transmitting that to others and but without the language yet having a

whole series of built up and established habitual meanings and conventions and so

and and it seemed to me that your notion of cross-state retention and it's really it's it's partly and building up fields which embrace and

I mean it seemed to me implicit in all you were saying sometimes explicit was a kind of

hierarchical field model of these things said what you call or what the end called

holistic systems memory would happen when you have a large-scale field with other

subsystems within it each with their own fields and that even if individual systems

come into being and pass away the larger field that's right and somehow retains a

memory of them and the primordial mind could perhaps be considered the ultimate

larger field within which all fields come into being and pass away and so it seems to me to play to fit quite well with the sort of habit view and the proliferation of objects

which give us the ultimate sense of habit because in a sense the solid state of matter

which is what most of our objects are made out of iron metal originally stone and but then these other things derived from the earth and from rocks like steel and aluminium and and so forth and solid objects like rocks from which they are derived endure for extremely long time and matter in the solid form is at its

most fixed in the liquid form less fixed in the liquid form less still in the gaseous and as a

fluid plasma there's a total flux the whole time and it's but in the solid form in the crystalline form in other words it takes on a particularly rigid set of habits and I think one of the ways that we think about reality depends on what we take as the basic paradigm for reality and I think there's no doubt that solid objects are the basic paradigm for mechanistic science

because solid matter the atoms are considered the ultimate small solid objects they're impenetrable I mean talking about the old style atoms of atomism as of course atoms have turned out not to be like this at all but the way they were thought of was as enduring solid objects

and I think that astronomy had a lot to do with that because the astronomical model of reality is that the sun and moon and things endure indefinitely but when they disappear below the horizon they haven't vanished they're enduring in where we can't see them that these solid objects persist indefinitely

we live in a world which is conditioned by solid objects persisting for millions of years far beyond human time spans so we have the idea of astronomical time and a kind of solid object paradigm both of long-term time and of the endurance of objects in this world which is very different from the biological paradigm of reality which I suspect is well I'm fairly sure is Terence's leading one to a larger extent my own biological model is that and the model you brought out is that things come from

they come into being they stay around they stay for a while or develop for a while and they pass away this is the biological model seeds germinate plants grow and they die babies are conceived they grow as embryos they're born people grow up and grow old and they die and this is true of all things in the biological realm they come into being and they pass away what we have now is a model of the universe where the biological model of the universe and the evolutionary universe where the universe comes into being the hatching of the cosmic egg or the

the big bang grows and grows and expands and may in due course die or come to some kind of culmination or transition but that isn't the model that either astronomy gives us or mechanistic physics which is based on eternal laws and eternal matter there isn't this perpetual flux of growing coming to being and passing away and if we have a biological model then that fits with both what you said about memory arising and persisting and falling back into non-memory

then flips into what something terence said very evocatively last night was this kind of whole biological psychedelic reality behind the world of dreams which is behind the world of the physical world in which all of which things are coming into being and enduring and passing away and things that come into being repeatedly become increasingly habitual and things that if we make an abstraction from the most habitual of things namely crystals

we arrive at the idea we arrive at the idea of permanently enduring matter as the basic reality rather than the coming into being of forms and patterns and their passing away and their recurrence

yes I thought it was very interesting what you said about the proliferation of objects causing the increasing densification of the temporal dimension it seems to me that I was saying this to Rupert at the braid that

it's almost as though there is a transcendental object at the end of time and that every object that is created is an effort to approximate the felt presence of the transcendental object so that either and I wondered as you spoke if perhaps we haven't passed

we haven't passed the apex of the apex of the object proliferation phenomenon perhaps around 1900 or so and that now there actually are fewer and fewer objects in our lives as computers and things like that become multipurpose objects that combine in themselves or objectify in themselves the ability to be many many different kinds of objects

and when we have an extrapolation of physical objects within the subject of the subject that we come into every object to be the world and that object to be met

So while we take an extrapolation of that I can see the object as part of the historical advance the objects beginning to be fewer and fewer it's a kind of aesthetic taking hold with the ultimate result being

single object in the world, and that object would be the contrescent and objectified mind

of the species, because every object is essentially a trap for mind, a frozen portion of the mental

universe, so that one can... and it fails always, because it's only an approximation of the

perfect object, but the... and this, to me, this kind of idea ties in with the notion of the flying saucer.

The flying saucer, which haunts time like a ghost, has a curious relationship to an axe head.

It is, in fact, probably a manifestation of the same thing, so that we can see that mind is trying to

manifest itself wholly and completely, and a notion like the philosopher's stone is the notion,

a curious blending of mental and physical qualities, where something behaves like an idea, but is made of

matter, and has the enduring qualities of matter, but the transforming qualities of thought.

So, I guess what I'm saying is, I think that we could almost measure our distance from the transcendental

object at the end of time by the proliferation of objects in our mutually created world, and so that

was very useful, that connection of objects to the density of time, to my own notion of a transcendental

object, which is drawing things through time toward us. It can be extrapolated further. I mean,

it's not only that all objects are attempts to realize the eminence of the felt object at the end

of time, but all messiahs are trying to be the messiah. Religions are trying to be the religion. It's that what

being in history is, it seems to me, is a series of attempts to approximate transcendental objects

that are felt to be outside of time, and of course, memory is very important in this.

I think the symbol of the, all the fascinations. The fascination with crystals seems to me to be a signature of this theme, that we're,

the crystal of the diamond body, which is the ultimately enduring, ultimately transparent jewel, which lures us

onwards to supreme order and matter which, once chaotic, is in its state of supreme order, is ultimately luminous and transparent.

So that would view the current interest in crystals as a kind of symbolic fascination. This is my position.

Yes.

Glad that I didn't say it.

Yes, I think you're right. That why the crystals are fascinating is not for any imagined power that they possess,

but because they are the embodiment of an ideal, quite obviously.

This is what I meant before. I've got this thing here. About impregnating conscious objects in the environment,

and crystals would definitely be, you know, the primary aspect of a conscious object. You thought that they can heal and respond to consciousness and stuff like that.

So it is. It's a very good, specific example of a conscious environment, and I would, I think you're somewhat optimistic to think we passed the apex.

I think that we will pass it, only to the degree that we go through some kind of very large-scale bifurcation point.

Some, there's going to be some radical change. I don't think it's just going to be, okay, everybody, let's get rid of all your objects.

Obviously, it's not going to be like that. I think the computer can save a lot of, as you say, multipurpose work and tasks,

but, you see, capitalism as it stands now is based on the generation of objects, and that's what I mean.

And so, everyone wants to make that buck, because you only go around once in life, you see.

The point is, once we get rid of that, you only go around once in life scenario, then the object proliferation will begin to diminish,

because then you'll have a dream time kind of consciousness, and if you can have an electronic dream time,

this is something that Andrew's talking about, you can begin to do that by using a computer, you know, type of reality, as it were.

Don't you think maybe the hopeful sign is that, though we don't necessarily follow it in our daily lives,

that the dominant, I believe I can say this, I'm not sure, that the dominant aesthetic in the West is an anti-clutter.

We really appreciate vast, empty spaces, and clean lines, and white walls, and receding perspectives,

where our Victorian grandmothers, you know, like to hang plants in small gloomy rooms, with tables covered with tchotchkes.

I agree, but by the same token, I think that a lot of the architecture is actually impoverished today.

You look at the same street corner in Paris a hundred years ago, and today, and you see what's there,

and these clean, streamlined lines don't have the elegance, they don't have the beautiful curvilinear sense that represents the arising and dissolving aspect.

I know what you want to say, but I can't go completely, the idea that we want to be anti-clutter,

because I find more, and I find that clutter is proliferating itself.

I wish I could say that it was going the other way, where awareness, the awareness of clutter is here, yes,

but I don't find that, I mean, you take a culture like Morocco, or in American Indian culture,

where you have this beautiful, you have a teepee, or you have a mosque, or, you know,

a beautiful, simple, curvilinear lines, and not too many objects.

I don't know, I think we've got a ways to go before we reach that aesthetic.

How many people here?

I think the Japanese are interesting, because they are the masters of space,

the masters of no clutter, and objects for them have always been very few,

and each material has been understood in its very essence,

and that essence has become the object in all its manifestations,

but now they're in this extraordinary role of providing us,

of feeding the West with every kind of electronic objects.

Yeah, and there's always new desires,

and for instance, I was thinking of, like, simple things like coffee makers, you know,

that it's not, you know, a few years ago it was a big innovation to have, like, a drip coffee,

Mr. Coffee kind of thing, but now you have to have an espresso machine,

and then you have to have the thing with the steamer, you know,

and it's not enough just to have a TV, you have to have a VCR,

and then you have to have a special timing device that will catch your show when you're not home,

and play it back, and you have to have a pasta maker, and on and on, all these things.

It's like, I see that it is proliferating,

but I think what you might be talking about is that it's miniaturizing.

The technology is getting smaller in a sense, but it's not particularly less objects.

And the other thing I thought of when you were saying that was the movie 2001,

where that whole theme of the object, actually the tool, is so explicitly stated,

where the ape is with the bone hitting the first tool, and he throws it up in the air in ecstasy,

and it comes down as this spaceship.

And in a sense, Hale 9000 is that ultimate tool,

and that's one of the main subplots of that movie,

that it does do everything that you want an object to do,

that it, in some sense, does approximate this omnipotent power,

but something goes wrong and goes haywire.

Well, the curious thing about these lines of progression

as they now surface in the computer industry

is that the product which the computer industry is dealing is the self.

That's what they're selling.

And so, aren't you interested in buying in to the self?

How can you be without it?

It's the ultimate product.

I mean, they say,

you will be more powerful.

Your memory, your plans, your wishes, your intentions.

They have, out of dealing us all kinds of garbage,

they have finally centered in on the ultimate product,

the thing that everybody wants as much of

as they can possibly get their hands on,

and they're just packaging it up furiously and getting it out to us.

But perhaps we have closed some sort of cycle

with the realization that the ultimate product can be the self.

Now let's just make that conscious,

get money out of the cycle,

and suddenly we will turn into a very different kind of civilization.

The other thing I was thinking about in there is

Terence, when I visited him,

recommended this book called Neuromancer,

which basically,

to follow that proliferation of objects into a fused whole,

what this then posits is a not-too-distant future reality

where there's a collective consensual reality called cyberspace.

In other words, the computer opens out this consensual hallucinogenic reality

that you then enter into.

I'm not sure where I want to go with that,

except that that does become,

that is a sense and object,

but then that also, in a sense,

becomes a state of consciousness as well.

And it's a form of an extended mind that everybody shares in.

Yes, computers then become doorways rather than machines.

I don't know how many of you have used the Macintosh operating system,

but the genius of this operating system is,

let's say you're in a program like Full Paint,

and you need a pencil,

you must go to this thing called the toolbox

and get the pencil

and bring it back to the desktop

and then use it.

And when you're through using the pencil,

you put the pencil away.

So all these conventions of ordinary three-dimensional space

have been written into this operating system.

So you need know nothing about computers.

The computer has disappeared,

and the ordinary set of reflexes,

go get, pick up, use, put back,

are all operating.

And you can see in 20 years what this is going to lead to.

It's going to lead to,

these are walk-in worlds

that will be made as user-friendly as three-dimensional space.

That's the goal, obviously, conceivably.

But it seems to me that I'm doing a particular materialized aspect

of something that seems to obtain at every realm of reality.

Because my experience of psychedelic realms

is one of a wild proliferation of forms and shapes and patterns

and limitless proliferation.

And biological evolution shows the same kind of seemingly limitless proliferation

in over a million species of insects

and tropical rainforests

with tens of thousands of plant species in them.

And there's just this kind of wild proliferation,

which presumably happens when the novelty wave gets loose for a while,

as it does again on Monday.

And this wild proliferation seems to be part of the very nature of things.

And the thing about habit is that at least it has a kind of stabilizing effect

on some of these proliferations.

I mean, why should one want to bring anything back

from the psychedelic experience

or even from the Amazon jungle?

And in a sense, you know,

when one's got it back,

it becomes a kind of object,

a herbarium specimen,

it has a name,

it's sort of,

it becomes part of the kind of objectified,

materialized world.

But one of the things that overwhelms me a lot of the time,

it's a kind of feeling that I find hard to put to words,

is just the overwhelming...

variety of objects. The fact one could, if one wished, pay attention to almost anything.

When I was in India, I was employed to work on the physiology of pigeon-pea plants, which

are very much to my taste. They're a plant of my own size, and I like them very much.

I know them better than any other plant, I think. But, in a sense, there's infinite

levels, you know, the anatomy of the pigeon-pea. I know you can cut open any leaf or stem,

and put it on the microscope and see layers of cells, and order within cells. Then there are

thousands of varieties of pigeon-pea plants. We had them growing in our fields. There's thousands

of different things you could look at in each variety, and thousands of measurements you could

make in these experiments. And that's just one plant within a genus which has something like

twenty other species, and that's part of a family with thousands of other species within it.

They seem quite arbitrary. I could equally well, if some did, ask me to be more likely

on another plant in the species. There's this kind of arbitrary element to attention.

The same with books. You go into a library, and there are thousands and thousands of books,

or a bookshop, all on potentially fascinating topics. And you know, why should one read one

rather than another? And that seems to be the big problem. If one is going to try and make

cross-state pretensions, or if one is going to try and bring things back, why that rather

than something else? Because we live in this wildly proliferating world.

Well, that's a good question. You know, why that rather than something else? I think the whole

thing hinges on how meaningful it is at the moment to the person, meaning is in the eye of the beholder.

And, you know, something that is hyper-dimensional to Terence or myself might be different to anyone else here.

But the point is usually, as you go up the node in these kind of hyper-dimensional complexes, the ones up high,

those are the ones, when you bring them back, are going to have the most extensive communicable aspect to all people at the most basic level.

You see, if you pick from too low a level, you'll only be able to communicate to a super-specialist.

But you want to get those ideas of ultimate generalization, yet ultimate simplicity and ultimate power.

And those are the ones, those are the rare animals, the rare plants, that when you bring them back, you can say something to a few people,

and they don't have to have great training, they'll have the most impact.

I think that's what it's about, the highest communicability.

Kind of hyper-dimensional complexes, the ones up high, those are the ones, when you bring them back,

are going to have the most extensive communicable aspect to all people at the most basic level.

You see, if you pick from too low a level, you'll only be able to communicate to a super-specialist.

But you want to get those ideas of ultimate generalization, yet ultimate simplicity and ultimate power.

And those are the ones, those are the rare animals, the rare plants, that when you bring them back,

you can say something to a few people, and they don't have to have great training, they'll have the most impact.

I think that's what it's about, the highest communicability.

Yes.

Of course, Terence is on to a rather simple topic, in a sense,

because if every one of the tropical species of the Amazon took one into a totally different psychedelic realm,

they're kind of arbitrary, qualitative.

There does seem to be a manageably small number of known hallucinogenic plants.

Although not a manageable number of hallucinogenic images.

No.

But there's a manageable number of hallucinogenic creodes.

That's true.

And in a sense, anyone who has the DMT experience and the mushroom experience is traversing a path,

or at least they're getting a ticket to a realm, you know, they're checking in to a flight to a realm where others have been before.

It's nominal on the proliferation of language.

For instance, as we go back in time, the tools get simpler and simpler.

Throw it.

Do all these things.

But you notice that it could do some things better than others.

Mm-hmm.

And you said, we scrape, therefore we need a scraper.

Mm-hmm.

We slash, therefore we need a slasher.

Mm-hmm.

And these verbs were translated in their functions became objects.

Okay.

It's a good point.

What happens in this type of thing is you get the co-evolution of language and objects.

In other words, as your objects develop language, your language develops objects.

And you get this kind of oscillation between language and objects.

So by developing a hyperdimensional object or language, can we force the development of the others?

I wouldn't say you would force it.

It would come.

Yes.

So it is, in fact, the same enterprise.

The evolution of a hyperdimensional language is nothing less than the project to create

a hyperdimensional object and vice versa.

In a sense, I would say so.

If you get this incredible, you know, psychedelic vision that you have and you're able, you know,

and you call that a transcendental object, then the idea is you will begin to get a hyperdimensional

language to begin to make that communicable or else it stays.

That's what I mean by bringing it back.

By bringing it back, all I mean is by making it communicable so that it is useful to other people.

I don't mean to bring it back and stick it in a zoo and say,

this is a hyperdimensional object from the Amazon and it's one from Africa.

It's got to have functional, useful evolution.

It's what I call, it has to have a potential, what I call an evolutionary next message quality to it.

It really has to have that quality.

It's not just object for the sake of object.

But then words which are beheld are much closer to being things than words which are merely heard

because like things they are seen.

So there's a migration toward a single trans-linguistic, if you will, state where objects and words are suddenly found to be the same thing.

And this would be the entry out of history and into a magical dimension where words and things are seen to be the same.

This is it. This is dream time.

This is this total participation mystic.

This is like in many, for example, the American Indian traditions.

They talked about there was a time when men could become animals and animals could become men.

And there was one language that was common to all beings.

This is this is the time when when this you can hyper dimensional trans-linguistic, whatever you want to call it.

There was one language and you could go from species.

The idea of what we have of the Nagual of a shaman going to one animal.

I think it was much more common in ancient times.

But I think.

So this is the realm of the extended mind.

That's right.

In the extended mind, words and things are two sides of the same coin.

Yes.

At the highest level of it.

Yes.

The very highest level.

In the beginning was the word.

And then everything proceeded from that point.

And I think there is.

And in magic, magic is based on the idea that you can, by intentional visualization, you can create an object.

I mean, I just say this as an anecdote.

I was once doing a test with a biofeedback with a friend of mine, Jeff Blundell, in England.

And he had this thing all hooked up to him.

And we were sitting around about 15 of us.

And he said, I want you to put this coin under one of the books in front of you in a circular table.

And somehow I'll be able to sense when I'm at the place and the lights were gone and this machine, the mind mirror and all of that.

And he found it four out of four times where the coin was when he just went by.

And then I said to myself, hey, okay, enough of that.

And I said, I don't have the coin, but I'm going to create a virtual object underneath my book.

I'm going to visualize the bloody coin.

And so I did.

I put the coin.

And he went by me.

And his bells went off.

And he says, you've got the coin.

I said, no way.

And he said, I know you've got the coin.

I said, no way.

And he said, let's back down to the book.

And he said, what?

And I said, what did you do?

And what that was just an illustration of was just magic.

It's simple.

It's not magic.

It's just the power of the extended mind.

You can just actually place something by intention and attention in the environment that will have that effect.

But it really is magic.

Well, it is.

It is, in a sense, yeah.

Yeah, please.

To what degree is science and the scientific paradigm just creating this?

This hyper-meta-space.

And that the creation of, let's say, DNA, first as a thought system and then as a creation of something that's manipulated.

And then it's genetic structure.

And then we can, given that information, have the ability to hang out in our genetic structure,

as that is the metaphor of our extended mind, like you were talking last night,

our genetic structure going back and our genetic structure going forward.

This is historical access of a group mind phenomena at the scientific base.

So where is the nub of your question?

How does this sort of mirror what the alternative experience that you're talking about,

in terms of the border crossings around going into, let's say, plant or animal phenomena,

is entering a kind of world that we haven't experienced enough yet to know that?

The science is, let's say, up on this level of the ladder and we can start accessing each other genetically across the room,

but we just haven't figured out that that's how we're doing it.

Well, what I'd first say is what Terence said before.

We've done all that in the past, in our genetic past.

We've been able to go into plants and animals and rocks and the entire,

that's what, again, what the dream time is all about, the animated Earth.

It's not just that the Earth was alive.

It's just that we animated it by our interaction with it.

It's not just this being, the Earth hanging out.

It's what, to really get into it, it's what we call the development of the geopsyche

that's different than the Gaia field, which is the mind and the being of the planet itself.

But the geopsyche is the interaction of the collective mind of humanity, or of a tribe, with the Gaia field.

And that's when you begin to get the most interesting kind of hybrid going on.

And I think what science has done, at a certain level, science is, as Rupert has said,

and we are really an object-based science.

We don't look so much at the invisible nature of things in terms of this arising and dissolving kind of dissipative paradigm.

And I think that until we get a science which incorporates the object world, you don't want to dismiss that,

but as well as to see the kind of, the magic, this magical element.

In other words, you see, like Fridjof Capra developed the new physics, or once they developed and made it popular,

and Rupert the new biology.

And what each of these guys has done, as I see it, is add the dimension of mind to a classical scientific discipline.

I, in my own sense, I'm an archaeologist, and what I've tried to do is add the dimension of mind to archaeology.

So, essentially, what we're doing is, we're restoring a dimension that was written out of the program,

but it was always there in the earliest of times.

And, again, what Rupert says, I mean, I have to, you know, listen to, is the idea, yes, this object proliferation is part of history.

It's not a negative thing, there's tremendous diversity.

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with object proliferation.

I'm just saying that when we become attached to the objects, that our minds become attached to them

and create this unconscious kind of mental virus, as it were, and we become fixated at that level.

But there are the phases.

There's the time for object proliferation, and there's the time for, you see, in music, for example.

There's a thing, something I'll never forget, the musician John Cage, who used to play what he called a prepared piano.

You take a piano and you stick shoes in it and small alligators and marbles,

and you get all these weird sounds when you're playing the piano.

Now, one of the things that he said about it, and this is a general systems principle, he said,

in talking about atonal music, you know, that's that kind of Schoenbergian kind of, you know, non-rhythmical stuff,

he says, at a certain point, spontaneity begins to neutralize itself.

And this is so important in composition and evolution.

At a certain point, what may be very good for a time actually becomes detrimental to a system.

Cancer, for example, is something which is, you know, you have a spontaneous movement, but then it's out of control.

You get positive, positive feedback, and you're gone.

You have to have these kind of governor, these oscillations of kind of, like Rupert said,

of some degree of habit, which is positive habit and positive action, and then you have free flow.

And then some habit comes back.

There's this oscillation.

To me, the biggest lesson I've learned in all of this stuff is the oscillation between,

form and emptiness.

And then to know that they are ultimately the same thing.

But you have to understand between memory and non-memory is a dance.

And between object and objectlessness is also a kind of a dance.

Let me just, before, is there anyone else who hasn't said anything that might want to add anything?

I just wanted to ask, and the novelty wave, the evolutionary thrust.

Well, I'll say a little bit and then Terrence can, I mean, go on.

I mean, in a sense, the, I mean, in one, how would you define, I'll get to it right a bit,

in one, in like a sentence, how would you define novelty wave so everyone knows what we're talking about?

Following Rupert's formulation, I think I would call it the ebb and flow of the interaction between habit and novelty.

Okay.

So, in a sense, you see, this is very much the same thing between the ebb and flow between habit and knowledge.

There's what I call the oscillation between memory and non-memory.

You see, memory is habit-based, it's conservation-based.

And non-memory is, and even Saraha says this, this is where creativity emerges from.

So, in a sense, the relationship between intention and the novelty wave, and it's a good question,

is that, you see, without, intention decides the point where you will shift from one state to another,

from memory to non-memory.

Now, the way I look at this, for example, is in meditation practice, for example, if I'm sitting,

and you take a tennis ball, and you throw it up, and the first bounce, right at the very top of the bounce,

there's the point in mathematics, it's the x by dt, the rate of change equals zero.

It's just that point right there, where it's at the height of the bounce.

That, and then it bounces again, and a little lower, and it reaches that point again, and again, and again.

Now, the point is, each one of those points, when they occur in consciousness, when the rate of change equals zero,

it's the optimum time to shift gears.

That's the time, if I'm doing a sitting practice, and I'm focused into one-pointedness.

There's a certain point where one-pointedness becomes difficult to hold.

It starts to wander around the edges.

So, what I've learned to do is, right at that point, I shift into no-pointedness.

I give it rain.

And that there's a certain point where no-pointedness begins to get too diffuse.

And at that point, when the ball's again, you go back into the one-pointedness.

And you have to learn those points of where that ultimate, optimum rate of change is, where to shift.

But to go with the shift.

Don't do it against it.

Say, no, I'm doing a one-pointed sitting, and I'm going to do that, and by God, I'm going to torture myself.

I have found, for me, that's not the way.

I'm like this, and when it begins to go, I'll go like that.

And then when that weakens, I go like this.

And that way, you see, it's the transition from one state to another actually awaken intention and awaken you.

When you go from one state to another, it awakens you.

And one last point to this, about the intention, is that the, I've said before, the cycle is intention, attention, retention.

Actually, behind that intention is another memory.

And it is a memory, it's this holistic system memory.

It's the one that knows the whole show.

In other words, there is something behind that, because to intend something, you say, okay, I want this to really be focused.

You have to have an idea, an image of what focused is, and you don't know where you get that from.

And you get that from some holistic base, which is even before the intention.

Okay, any other points that people want to raise, or just before we go have lunch, or comments, or anything?

I just briefly wanted to raise something about names and forms.

Because we talked about the fact, with Terence, that to some extent objects and their names are the same.

But the interesting thing, and of course in Hindu systems, you get this hyphenated word, Nama Rupa, where the name and the form are somehow equivalent.

But the interesting thing is that so many forms don't have names.

As you say, when venturing through these realms, one's in the realm of the unspeakable, much of the time.

Forms without names.

And to bring them back, they have to be named.

And however many you name, there's millions more that won't be named.

And it will pass away, perhaps, forever.

And I think that it just occurred to me, we have very much, this is a living reality in the world today, with the conservation thing.

The Amazon jungle is full of species of insects and plants that have never been named.

In other words, they're unknown to science, to use the conventional phrase.

When they're named, it's announced in the taxonomic journals as a new species to science.

In other words, they're not known until they're named.

And what's exercising a lot of people at the moment is that a lot of these species are going to become extinct before they're known.

And a lot of people think it's not so bad if they become extinct after they've been known.

So you send in a collecting trip, and so you can name them all and have them all in queue, herbarium, pressed on sheets, and somehow recorded and photographed.

And then at least you've done that, even if they become extinct.

But somehow the idea that they could just pass away without being named is an actual reality of the world at the moment.

This is not just in the psychedelic realms, but there are lots of unspeakable plants, in the sense unnameable plants of men.

Because nobody's been there to name them yet.

So although in a sense some things become part of our mental world through being names and forms,

the psychedelic experience and the Amazonian jungle and lots of other things show us that there are many forms without names.

Clouds are another example.

We don't even bother to look at most of them because they have forms, they sometimes remind us of things,

but usually we just assume these are unnameable forms.

As I say, in this model everything arises out of this emptiness, this primordial mind is infinitely spewing out new names and forms.

And I don't think you can ever, you say millions of them, you may never be lost forever.

I don't think they're lost forever.

Any time you tap that dream time, that primordial mind, nothing ever truly ever disappears from that realm.

It's there, it's contactable by the state that you put yourself into to access it.

Isn't that that it's so vast that you can never be sure that you'll pass precisely that place again?

But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

All you can really say is that if you were given the opportunity to, as it were, to imprint and bring it back,

and it didn't come back with you, it wasn't right for it.

I mean, it didn't have its communicability was not for that purpose.

I really wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't worry about that element.

Where that came from...

Well, but I think artists are the people who do worry about that,

who keep trying to go into it and bring out as much as they can and feel the tension.

They want to speak the unspeakable.

They want to sculpt the unsculptable, paint the unpaintable.

And every time they succeed, a step forward is taken.

It is.

But just to round things kind of finely off,

it's like what we were just saying the other day about tribal art and canonical art,

like the Tonkas and things like that.

You see, for them, everything was accessible through certain canons and frames of reference and geometry and form,

because it would awaken within you the new states.

What we're saying on this other level, the artist stuff,

it is this pursuit of a novelty wave.

Like, if I don't get it, it's gone forever.

And it's very different from the traditional ways of canonical art,

being able to arise in the mind something.

And in surrealism, when it arose in the early part of this century,

the surrealist artists and painters and poets,

what they were all into when they started getting and smoking hash

and hanging out in cafes and absents and all of that kind of stuff,

what they really got into was the idea that we can pull out images that no one has ever gotten before,

and the Dali's and all those kind of people, Magritte and et cetera.

But what, after a couple of years, I did a study of this,

what they found disappointed them profoundly.

Because the further they went out into the unknown,

to get back the unsculptable and the unpaintable,

they found that archetypes of patterns were coming up,

that as far as they went to become individualized,

they kept on hitting archetypes.

As far as they went.

And that's what, see, all these artists who want to be individual,

are the unpaintable and sculptable.

They'll come up against this.

Surely the whole point is that if you have habit, you have novelty.

And yet the extreme of novelty is habit.

In a sense. And what you want to do, though, as we said before,

is to have a balance between the best of habit and the best of novelty.

That's really, that's what the novelty wave, this ebb and flow of the two,

and between memory and non-memory.

You need that, the yin and the yang, to continually redefine each other,

to keep each other, to awaken each other.

Or the role of ego, intention, as opposed to the novelty wave.

And it seems to me it's a situation like the old saying in Protestant hermeneutics,

man proposes, God disposes.

Intentionality is the act of proposing.

The novelty wave disposes of the intention in whatever way that it can at that moment.

That's it. This is KPFK Los Angeles, and we've heard the end of John Steele speaking on memory,

a discussion with Terence McKenna, Rupert Sheldrake, and Jill Peirce,

who is Mrs. Rupert Sheldrake.

I should say Jill Peirce and Rupert Sheldrake, who is Mr. Jill Peirce.

Thank you.