David: Yes, I remember that day very well! We saw a horse corpse lying in the valley, as we were hiking over a hill. All of the hills were covered with brown grass, except for the bright green ring around the remains of the horse. So you see death as only transformation?
Carolyn: Continuous transformation into different forms. Nature’s technology, or the forces that be. We are really the tools of evolution, you could say. We are the instruments of something that we can’t even possibly conceive of, that makes everything keep moving. In that happening, the next form would just be another form of life.
Rebecca: So if death is just another part of the life cycle, why is there so much fear of death? I think that it’s like Stephen was saying, it’s not that we’re going to loose ourselves, we’re going to realize who we truly are—and it’s just part of this evolving beautiful cycle. Why is there so much fear?
Nina: I think that it’s because we identify with our body.
Nick: It also has to do with science I think. The nature of science demands a repeatable experiment and this is doomed. (laughter) •
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Techno & Psyche: Mavericks of the Mind Live! 2
Rebecca: I’d like to start by going around and asking the panelists what they consider the purpose of technology to be. Let’s begin with Timothy.
Timothy: There is, of course, the problem of definition here. There is technology like the bow and arrow, which uses natural substances. There is metal technology, and technology that uses fire, coal, and oil. There’s the thermodynamic industrial society, and then, gloriously, in the last hundred years, a new kind of technology—electric. You can actually send thoughts at the speed of light around the world, and package your ideas to be received. First there was the telegraph, when Great Western dropped that across the Atlantic in 1886. And then we had radio! Messages could be sent around the world. And in the ‘20’s we had film. Soon every household in the technological world had access to television. So, there’s industrial technology, electronic technology, and now we have digital technology. I think that the digital technologies, and the electric technologies, are very related to the psychedelics, because the brain lives on light. The food of the brain is electricity. That’s why television is so popular. I’m interested not in the old fuel, material technologies, but in the clean, pure, fast, light technologies.
Rebecca: Do you think that there is a common purpose with all this technology? I hear communication being mentioned a lot. Does that seem like something you would see as a common purpose, to communicate with each other, faster and more efficiently?
David: You mentioned bows and arrows first, as a weapon.
Rebecca: Do you think that it developed to protect us from the environment, or is there no common purpose that you can see behind all this technology?
Timothy: You’re talking about material technology. Bows and arrows are made of wood to strike flesh and bone, and cause blood. But light, waves, strobes, digital screens, and radio waves—bombarding your ears and eye balls—can’t break your bones. However, they can certainly scramble your head—and that’s where we’re developing. I’m sorry that my partners aren’t here tonight, but we’re developing techniques to use video and virtual reality to jumble up minds. We tell an audience like this, “We’re going to put you in a mild trance. If you don’t like it you should leave right now. Here are the products we’re going to advertise—your brain, chaos, and complexity.” Yes, it’s the electric technology that is psychedelic, and it’s the material technology that we hated back in the ‘60’s.
David: What about you Nina, do you think that there is a common purpose behind technology?
Nina: Well, I disagree with Timothy. What I can’t quite agree with is your (looking at Timothy) emphasis on the brain, because my concept is that the brain is but an instrument, like a telephone receiver, and that true communication comes from the mind. I know that sounds very dualistic, but that’s how I see it. In my concept, when there is something wrong with somebody’s brain that doesn’t mean there is something wrong with his mind; it’s just that there’s something happening physiologically in his brain. I like your distinction of regarding today’s technology as electrical—something insubstantial, and not heavy metal. I can agree that that is certainly a step forward from the bow and arrow kind of technology. However, it seems to me like the purpose of technology has been to control and master nature. And that’s developed to a point now that I find very hard to handle. I’d like to see less mastery and control, and more compassion for the Earth.
David: How about you Carolyn, do you see a common purpose in technology?
Carolyn: I happen to agree with Timothy and Nina, even though I’m a maverick, and that’s not usual for me. I’d like to go from there and say that when you think of technology, on a totally basic level, we are the highest technology that exists. Our very beings are the highest technology around. If we start with our cells, then one could say, “What is the purpose of our
cells?”, rather than seeing them as a manifestation of themselves. Maybe we could say that everything that is made visible was before, either invisible, or simple primitive movements. We’re putting the higher design into a material form. So we’re putting our cells, basically—as well as our bodies, our consciousness, and our minds—into a manifestation in the visible world, which hitherto would have been invisible. So you could say that once you see something, and you start to interact with it, you are capable then of expanding your consciousness and your knowledge. This is because you’re dealing with it as a physical object. When you interact with it on the physical level your knowledge grows and your understanding of the universe expands.
David: So, basically, you’re saying that our bodies are a form of technology, and that what we develop as technology is just an extension of our bodies—in order to make what is invisible visible?
Carolyn: Yes, what we create is part of us. Everything that we see out there that’s mechanical is a reflection of our inner selves. Being a painter, what I create is through another media—of paints, for instance, inks, or whatever. What I’m doing there is expressing my own consciousness through that media, which is also a form of technology.
David: John, how about you? What purpose do you see?
John: First of all, let’s define what science is and then what technology is. Science is the attempt on the part of the most intelligent human beings to find out what God does, and technology is how he does it. Then, from that point on, the purpose is to turn the knowledge we get from science and technology back into our own minds. I wrote a book called Programming and MetaProgramming the Human BioComputer. This seems to me to solve most of the problems, the technical problems at least, of how the mind operates and where it operates. I did extensive studies on the brain, in addition to the mind. I did a lot of psychoanalytic work and so on.
The whole thing is so vast that I have to go back to Franklin Merrell-Wolff’s study called The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object. This precedes the creation of the universe, and it precedes the creation of all our life. Out of the void came the consciousness which then developed material matter, biological matter, and so forth. So, the purpose that we have has to be looked at against that background. This is the background for our further studies. The psychedelics reveal a good deal of this, and I personally have seen the evolution of the universe in the isolation tank, for example, on LSD and ketamine. This is the ketamine molecule (John points to a chemical model on his hat), a technological development. Technological development suggests that you learn to appreciate all of these things. Get some Ketamine from a veterinarian, or an anesthesiologist. Get into an isolation tank, do a hundred milligrams of Ketamine, and then you’ll see the universe as it really is.
Oz: Let’s wait a minute after that. I have to settle down after that one. No, I’ll try to follow you, easy-like. A couple of years ago I wrote
a poem—now, don’t get worried—and it seemed particularly apt for this evening. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to read it to you. Oddly enough, it’s about technology.
Considering That Mind May Just be Very Complicated Brain:
Some Furtive Afterthoughts
Said technology, letting down his defenses
The reason I’m getting so tense is
It’s perplexing to find
There is more in my mind
Then ever got in through my senses
If I were to take the position
Being conscious is but a condition
I’d be forced to admit
There’s no more to it
Than measles or malnutrition
But in contemplating the latter
I could go as mad as a hatter
And to save my poor mind
I’ll leave reason behind
And prepare to intuit the matter
The alternative isn’t too keen
To be plagued by a ghostly machine
And a brain playing host
To an erasable ghost
Doesn’t do much to brighten the scene
So here’s to the health of the Deus ex machina
Please, techno, don’t put a crack in her
And the trade is unfair
For some soft and hard ware
So! Let’s put the old spirit back in her!
Timothy: Oz is Allen Ginsberg’s cousin. Poets run in the family.
Rebecca: Laura, what do you think the purpose of technology is? Laura: There are a hundred purposes. It’s like asking what is the purpose of a human being? Technology itself doesn’t have a purpose, except what we give to it. However, one of the purposes of technology, it seems to me, is to have a few very intelligent people construct extraordinary machines. Then
the people who are not so intelligent can go and push the buttons and feel very good. That is one of the purposes isn’t it? (Laughter) We sit in our room, we push the button, and we go to the moon. And, oh, it’s so easy! But I think that it may even be too easy. I have an addiction—well, maybe more than one—to catalogues.
I receive all of these fantastic catalogues. One of them, which I have here, shows a young boy slouching in an executive chair. The boy is about twelve or thirteen years old, and he can push a button and be in the sky, or under the Earth—and do everything that he wants, just by pushing buttons. Now compare that to a boy that escalates a mountain, at his own risks, and takes the danger of going up. He exercises his muscles, gets disciplined, and puts himself at risk in order to have that same experience that the boy slouching in the chair has. Now which one of those two people will be a more lively human being, a more useful human being, or a more conscious human being? The choice is yours.
David: Timothy, as technology has developed, one could easily make the argument that it has made us more comfortable—but has it actually made us better human beings in any way? Do you think that technology has contributed to making us smarter, more conscious, more empathic, or in any way superior to the way that we used to be?
Timothy: This is absolute gibberish babble to me! What the fuck do you mean by “have we become better human beings in any way?” What technology are you talking about? The bow and arrow? The microscope? Penicillin?
David: I just mean technology in general.
Timothy: (Reading the questions for the panelists) “What is the evidence for
and against this?” Now we’re in a courthouse!
Rebecca: Maybe you could just talk about the technological progress of the last two hundred years, say since the Industrial Revolution, where it’s really taken off like wildfire. Do you see that as actually having improved our lives as human beings?
Timothy: When you say the word “our,” that’s a predatory pronoun. I just despise it when people ask ‘should we bomb Iraq?’ I just feel like, what the fuck you talking about white man? Keep me out of that!
David: Let’s put the question this way, Timothy, are there any technologies that you think have made us smarter, more empathic, or better human beings?
Timothy: How do you define a ‘better human being’?
David: More empathic, more intelligent, more conscious, more ecologically-aware, more creative, more imaginative, kinder, and more compassionate.
Rebecca: Timothy, you define it! You’re the one that we want to hear from. Timothy: What do these words mean? There’s no question that mechanical technology has made it possible to move around easier. Are you going to walk home tonight, Laura? Climb the mountain up there? (Laughter)
Laura: I have not decided yet.
Oz: It’s a full moon.
Laura: Well then, yes.
David: Timothy, you’re such a rascal! Okay, let’s put it this way. Towards the end of Aldous Huxley’s life someone asked him what he had learned about improving the human situation, and what wisdom he could pass along. Aldous said something like, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this, but after all my many years of study and thought, the best advice that I offer is that I wish that people would just be a little kinder to each other.
Timothy: That was a beautiful statement. I think of that very often, Laura.
David: Timothy, do you think that technology has contributed to doing that in any way? Has any form of technology, in your opinion, contributed to making us a little kinder to one another?
Timothy: Who’s using it? It all comes down to individual interactions between interpersonal people. Everyone that I’m working with in this field—and there are many of them in this room here this evening—is kind, and we’re all in touch with each other. We’re communicating at rates that are much higher than most people. We feel that thrill of breaking through. I can’t generalize about the human race, and all that, but I can tell you that I know hundreds and hundreds of people in the new generation—under the age of thirty—who are very skeptical of all this stuff about the past and compassion.
It’s talk, talk, talk. You can talk about compassion all you want. But the new generation is high-tech, and they’re using technology to bring people closer. We’re working on programs that will allow people to be multi-linguistic, able to speak many languages—a global language, a global village. Yes, we’re going to bring the world together. It all goes back to Marshall McLuhan saying that we’ve got to make the global village with the new, inexpensive digital programs.
By the way, did you know that there is something like seven million electronic bulletin boards out there, in every country of the world? It’s mainly young people communicating with each other. There are thirty or forty million people communicating right now. Yes, we are learning how to use electric technology. I’m talking electrons and digital. Rebecca: How do you feel that electric technology has improved your life?
Timothy: I talk to my brain all the time, and she tells me, “Oh, Timothy, when you started using LSD that was great! You woke me up from my slumber.” Brains love light. Brains love to be stimulated. We’ve got a new concept now that I call RPM, which means ‘revelations per minute’. 25,000 years ago it would be one revelation a month, or maybe even a lifetime. The average ten year old kid in America today is watching T.V., just flipping around, has got fifty channels, maybe 500 channels. There’s more history that happens in one hour on the T.V. than a hundred years of the past. Then that kid goes down to the video arcade, and the video arcade is loaded with trillions and trillions of bits of information. Yes, my brain is happier. I’m happier. And the people that I work with, we’re operating at a much higher communication rates than most other people.
David: So you’re saying that it accelerates your mind, keeps you more informed, speeds up communication, and, for a certain subset of people, is changing their lives.
Timothy: It puts us incredibly in touch. We can be hundreds of miles away. It’s just like the telephone did for the ears. We can do it now with graphics.
David: Did you want to say something, Carolyn?
Carolyn: Yes, t
he electric technology goes beyond space and time. It makes you capable of doing things instantaneously, and doing a myriad of things at the same time. It speeds everything up to the higher frequencies. Again, it’s making something visible that we can do metaphysically.
Rebecca: We’ve heard from Timothy about a generation of high-tech people, skeptical about compassion. He’s talked about the speed of communication and stimulating the brain. The question was, although technology may have made us more comfortable, in your opinion, has it contributed to making us smarter, more conscious, or in any way superior to the way we used to be?
Mavericks of the Mind: Conversations with Terence McKenna, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, John Lilly, Carolyn Mary Kleefeld, Laura Huxley, Robert Anton Wilson, and others… Page 46
