Corridor of Madness

Mind,

Have you considered the possibility that this alien consciousness you are picking up on your radar might be our very own bona fide, alien organ: the brain ? Certain outside shocks have been known to trigger awakenings of the Central Nervous System to itself; a self-aware CNS and the brain aware of itself. Any authentic experience of chaos can act as an evolutionary trigger. Some of the rituals we participated in come to mind; perhaps you recall certain points of chaos that might have awakened CNS to itself ?

A passing thought.

Antero

Antero Alli?

I'm the author of the above statement, and yes I think there is just as good a chance that such incoming signals are coming from my own brain, ancient or perhaps untapped circuits getting activated. :-)

Perhaps these thoughts and feelings may simply be thoughts and feelings...
-conceptual fabrications projected into 3 Dimensional holographic tactile hallucinations made of fairy dust and chameleons for your entertainment.

ARE WE HERE YET? *yif

AWHY:

Whether the signals are translated as fairy dust or holographic tactile hallucinations may be your own brain's interpretations of itself. Whatever it is that we are capable of receiving merits further reflection if only to sift and test the results enough to determine whether or not we are capable of picking up signals originating beyond what the mind creates itself. Like the search for interplanetary extraterrestrial life (SETA), it's not what's on the screen that matters, as much as, perhaps whether the antennae is clean and not wrapped around itself.

Just a thought.

AAA

First, an apology to Paul Hughes if his quote's attribution wasn't clear. Hopefully now the issue is corrected.

Antero: Indeed I also entertain that possibility, and I do remember moments of chaos that might have opened brief windows of CNS self awareness.
One of them was while I was resting on the floor after a particularly "heated" exertion in one of the rituals. As I was relaxing tensions all over my body, it struck me that the tensions seemed to be some kind of map of my current chosen reality perception. The (physical) tensions were invisibly but quite directly connected to certain (emotional) moods in me, that in turn were the response to an (intellectual) abstraction summarizing the basic qualities of the space I was in.

In other words, my body was investing considerable energy in maintaining particular perceptual choices regarding the world around me. And those choices were the brain's choices, quite arbitrary, and — more importantly — unconscious ones... or at least they had been until that moment. Suddenly I knew that in the course of my daily life I am not aware of my own brain, as it quietly makes decisions about reality. I habitually mistake an interpretation of something for the thing itself, the subjective for the objective. I constantly attribute qualities to people, circumstances and places around me, which by itself would be fine... but I tend to do it unconsciously, and therefore I end up believing that the qualities I project are objective realities. Last but not least, I don't get to consciously choose what to perceive, because I forget that I even can. Some circuit is not functioning properly, or simply off most of the time.

Relaxing (literally!) my grip on maintaining a particular reality seemed to be key to this realization, along with the rare state of heightened physical awareness I was in (caused by the ritual warm-up).

As far as what Paul Hughes was saying in the quote, I think it had a slightly different focus. I agree that memes use and hack us, shaping our perceptions and propagating themselves through us... and I would add that much of our vulnerability to this kind of "hacking" derives directly from the lack of awareness I mentioned above. There seems to be something "out there", but the process of deciding what is there is entirely in here. And the more we are asleep to this fact, the more we will be unconsciously influenced by any random information we absorb.

Just a bunch of passing thoughts. :)

A little note to Antero - I read and enjoyed your book Angel Tech back in 1987 when I purchased it. I also enjoyed that it had my full name in the credits, but alas you were referring to a different Paul Hughes ( i think! :-)

Another way I like to look at this dichotomy of whether these realities are internally generated or externally experienced, is to see the human form as a magnificent instrument that we have barely begun to understand. As Tim Leary once wrote as part of his Exopsychology title, "How to use the Human Nervous System by the manufactuers".

I think seeing the human brain as an instrument like we would use a telescope is a fun metaphor but I also think it is a limited one ultimately. When we get into areas like Leary's circuit 8 - quantum mechanical, non-local processes, I'm prone to think that consciosuness itself is a fundamental component of the existence. That being said, A LOT of what we can experience incarnated as human beings is VER?Y LARGE, but infinitely small compared to what exists in potential-space... which I think is infinite.

Paul --

what you call potential-space, i assume is non-local in nature, touching everything at once. in the paratheatrical rituals that Mindwarp writes about early on in this blog, there is an access point to this state that we call No-Form. Note: this is not a concept but rather a concept-free zone, a kind of intimacy with nonlocality via the all-encompassing void...the delicious black hole center of singularity...

Know what I mean ?

: ^ )

antero

Yes Antero, I know exactly what you mean! Finding/operating from no-form is fundamental to my magick... thanks to you in part. :-)

Hi, just wanted to say great blog.

I added a trackback ping for this from Techoccult, since I referred to it a while back on that site.