Info-Psychology Timothy Leary
THE EVOLUTION, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM
3. Life Unfolds in Mutational Phases From Terrestrial-Collective to Post-Terrestrial (Cyber).

It gives us pleasure and increases our sense of freedom to believe that the species known as home sapiens is evolving through an eight phase life-cycle. Four of these phases involve collective thinking on the womb planet. The four more advanced phases are designed for navigation through Info-space and beyond.

Info-psychology is a theory of Neurogenetic evolution based on the following assumptions:

  1. There are millions of solar systems in our galaxy which have planets upon which organic life breeds and evolves.
  2. Since our planet is at the mid-point of the evolution of a G-type sun (five billion years) it is assumed that half of the planets in our galaxy upon which life is to be found could be more advanced in the evolutionary sense than life on our planet.
  3. These more advanced cultures numbering, perhaps, in the millions, represent the future of our own evolution. They exist ahead of us in genetic time. "They" are "us" in the future.
  4. The same chemical elements and physical-chemical processes occur on all star systems in the known universe.
  5. Life as it exists on planet earth is not unique. We could be as alike to our inter-stellar neighbors as "peas in a pod." ("We" in this cliche refers to all life forms on this planet.) We could find only early and more advanced versions of ourselves. We are the alien life forms.
  6. Planets have a predictable life span. They are destroyed in the late "red-giant" phase of their suns. It is logical to suppose that Life migrates from planets before they are destroyed by aging suns or before their biological resources are exhausted.
  7. The Neurogenetic theory suggests that Life is not designed to remain on the planet of birth, but to migrate throughout the galaxy.
  8. Life is seeded on young planets in the form of amino acid templates. These genetic blueprints contain the multi-billion year design of evolution. The basic tactics of evolution are metamorphosis and migration. We have probably been seeded on millions of other planets.
  9. The DNA code is literally a message outlining the course of evolution. On planet earth about half of this evolutionary blueprint has unfolded. The future half, blocked by histones, exists in quiescent form waiting to be activated -- just as the chromosomes of a tadpole contain the future frog form. As the human embryo of four months contains the form of the neonate. Or the neonate the form of the pubescent teen-ager.
  10. The human species is now completing a fourth phase of its larval development. Think of the earth as a womb. Life so far on this planet is embryonic. When life leaves the planet it adopts post-fetal, post-larval existence.
  11. It is convenient to describe larval life on earth as Newtonian -- concerned with the gravity-bound mechanics of survival. And to describe extra-terrestrial existence as Einsteinian. Gravity selective.
    The four Newtonian circuits of the nervous system are concerned with mastery of the four umbilical attitudes necessary for terrestrial survival.
    1. ventral-dorsal
    2. vertical (up-down)
    3. two-dimensional (left-right)
    4. protective-incorporative (for survival of the species)
    The four Einsteinian circuits of the nervous system are designed for survival in post-terrestrial space and involve mastery of:
    1. the body as time-vehicle and info-system
    2. the nervous system as self-directed bio-electric computer
    3. the genetic code as molecular intelligence
    4. meta-physiological, quantum mechanical, nuclear-gravitational force-fields (nano-technology)
  12. The metamorphosis of human species from terrestrial to extra-terrestrial existence was signalled by the almost simultaneous discoveries of neuroactive drugs, electronic instruments, DNA code, sub-atomic nuclear energies, quantum physics, computers, electronic communication.

Each of the eight periods of individual human life involves gross alterations in morphology, behavior, physiology, and most important, neurology. In spite of the fact that these changes are obvious, even to the most untutored observer, the psychological-philosophic implications of these phases have not been understood by larval scientists and philosophers. This may be due to the possibility that the human species itself is evolving through the same eight phases and, until recently, has been almost exclusively preoccupied with the four basic, collective, survival processes (vegetative, political, technological, social).[1]

By analogy, a society of water-bound tadpoles would be neurologically inhibited from recognizing that the amphibious frog is a later version (both phylogenetically and individually) of itself.

The scientific facts about the nervous system, the creation of reality by imprinting, our position in the galaxy, re-programming via neurotransmitter drugs, Einsteinian relativity, the DNA code -- now available in any junior-college text -- can be understood by an open-minded adolescent. These facts, however, are so alien to the Judeo-Christian-Marxist conceptions of human nature that they have been repressed. Unconscious resistance to patent observations and scientific findings is a routine process in the evolution of human knowledge. We are familiar with the tendency to place under taboo facts which disturb orthodox religious dogmas (See Undoing Yourself). The taboo phenomenon is genetically determined. Premature intimations of future metamorphosic stages would be dangerously confusing and demoralizing to a larval species.

Discovery of the serial imprinting capability of the nervous system, of bi-lateral (past-future) asymmetry in the cortex, the probability of advanced life forms on millions of planets in our local galaxy, the information universe, digital communication and recognition of the longevity implications of the unused half of the DNA code, is producing a mutational quantum leap in the course of human evolution which is now preparing the species for migration from the planet and mutation to become a cyber-species inhabiting the info-worlds of the future(s).

[1]Rudimentary recognition of the larval, cyclical nature of contemporary human existence has been sporadically attained in earlier civilizations which have temporarily reached the necessary level of biological, political, technological, and reproductive security. In ancient China, India, Ceylon, Crete, Babylon, Greece, Islamic Damascus, Egypt, Renaissance Europe, a few neurologically elite, premature evolutes have used leisure (i.e. the time) and available technology to develop bodily hedonic, erotic, aesthetic expressions, science-fiction speculations and botanical methods of expanding neurological function beyond survival imprints.