| Info-Psychology | Timothy Leary |
Some say that the Post-terrestrial Age was inaugurated in 1926 when a group of German visionaries formed the Verein fur Raumschiftfahrt (Association for Space Travel).
The V.f.R. held meetings, published research papers and performed rocket experiments. The group, unaffiliated with government, operated with the free dedication of a medieval alchemical fraternity. It was disbanded after the accession of Hitler. The goal of the V.f.R. was to arrange chemicals in the correct geometric order to produce the escape velocity to leave the planet.
The exo-psychological goals of V.f.R. were coopted by the Nazis, who used the V-1 and V-2 rockets for larval purposes.
At the same time, atomic physicists were seeking the correct arrangements of pure elements to fission the atom. The success of the Fermi alchemical team in Chicago can be seen as another exo-psychological landmark. The fission of the uranium atom provided the energy source to propel the interstellar, post-Einsteinian rockets which the primitive, chemically-fired Newtonian rockets of von Braun were forecasting.
The neurological revolution of the 1960's provided the biological counterpart of the Einsteinian point of view. The principles of exo-psychology were first presented (1963) in a paper mysteriously titled "The Religious Experience - Its Production and Interpretation."[1] This essay, which was widely reprinted and anthologized, accurately predicted that the languages and perspectives of science would provide the theology, ontology, cosmology of the future and systematically laid down the foundations of exo-psychology except that the inevitability of extra-planetary migration was not pointed out.
The co-option of nuclear energy, electronics and rocket-research by the military blocked the interstellar perspective and the subsequent 1960's disillusion with science encouraged the vague maxim "look within."
The resulting fascination with oriental quietism, shamanism, and pop-cult yoga produced a systematic anti-intellectualism, a calculated sucrose stupidity, a bland, smiling self-indulgent floating detachment which is personified as "The Hippy" (Stage 13) and "The Yogi" (Stage 14).
"The Hippy" and the "Yogi-Body Engineer" represent the first two of twelve post-terrestrial stages, transitional stages of "wingless butterflies," evolved beyond terrestrial attachments, no longer hooked to mundane symbols. The one-G earth and its survival routines are no longer "real," The Hippie-Zen adept is no longer reflexively reactive to emotional status cues, is unmotivated for dexterous success and unmoved by the virtue-shame systems by which society domesticates its workers; but has not yet evolved to the mastery of the newly activated circuits. The true post-terrestrial is shame-less.
The word "Hippy" is a generic term for the first post-larval stages describing those who genetically (Zodiac type), neurologically (imprint) or historically (hedonic/sub-cultures) get trapped in passive-receptive hedonic life styles. Transcendental Masturbation.
The first post Hiroshima generation has produced millions of Zen "Hippies" who have evolved from the mundane but do not realize that they are extra-terrestrial.
The problem is, in part, one of historical linguistics. The only languages, the only symbols provided by primitive psychology for extramundane experiences were "larval religious." The new reality of the Hippy is symbolized by vague, mystical terms.
A communication vacuum develops. On the one hand, The Hippy, Yogi and Tantric realizes that SHe has evolved somehow. On the other hand, the five-brained person, detached from larval symbols, lurches around grasping at any transcendental straw - magic, occultism, chanting, witchcraft, telepathy, guruism, mystical Christianity, Hassidism, experimental evangelism, the endless varieties of oriental charlatanism.
The trap of body-consciousness and sensory consumerism has been well summarized by Federico Fellini:
"People are losing faith in the future. Our [larval] education, unfortunately, molded us for a life that was always tensed towards a series of achievements - school, military service, a career and, as a grand finale, the encounter with the heavenly father. But now that our tomorrows no longer appear in that optimistic perspective, we are left with a feeling of impotence and fear. People who can no longer believe in a "better tomorrow" logically tend to behave with a desperate egotism. They are preoccupied with protecting, brutally if necessary, those little personal gains, one's little body, one's little sensual appetites. To me this is the most dangerous feature of the '70's."
Five-brained persons flopping around sporadically detached from mundane imprints, lacking a vocabulary and a methodology for extra-terrestrial movement, fall back on larval concepts of transcendence. Caterpillar fantasies about what post-larval life will be like.
A warning is in order. Many five-brained Hippies and Yogis are the most vehement opponents of extra-terrestrial evolution. They use three bland sets of cliches to resist practical plans for interstellar migration:
Underlying all three of these occultist postures is a revulsion against science, technology, evolution and intellectual competence. Implicit in the occultist theory is the assumption that there is nothing left to learn except to rote-memorize some Hindu chants, to rote-recite some glib theosophical dogmas, to quiet the restless, inquiring mind.
The three stages of the neurosomatic circuit - 13. Hippy, 14. Yogi, 15. Tantric - are body-oriented and involve a deliberate symbol stupidity. It is understandable that the five-brained person reacts against the insectoid-cyborg materialism of larval technology, the scientism that produces plastic consumerism, military-industrialism, assembly-line anonomie, and polluted over-population. But the rejection of scientific inquiry becomes a know-nothing smugness. Occultists become longhaired rednecks. The evidence from astronomy, bio-chemistry, genetics, nuclear-physics, defines the true frontier of philosophy and religion. Scientific American is more "far out" than any occult magazine, the Periodic Table of Elements more prophetic than the Tarot deck. The nucleus of the atom is a realm more mysterious and omniscient than any theological fantasy. The cosmology of an expanding-universe-riddled-with-Black-Holes more bizarre than the eschatologies of Dante, Homer and Ramayana.
Despite this noble rejection of the artificial, the Hippie-Yogi-Tantric establishment is an entrenched, self-indulgent block to evolution - a transitional stage preparatory to planetary migration.
We see the limitations of neurosomatic contelligence most clearly in the teachings of don Juan. Castaneda's warrior sorcerers are admirable in their dignified, humorous, disciplined attempts to retract social imprints. Don Juan has worked out an accurate, metaphorical neurologic. He precisely defines the larval-imprint reality-island (tonal) and the direct experience of the nagual.
But don Juan's philosophy is pessimistic: "There are no survivors on this earth." It fails to evolve to Stage 15 neurosomatic linkage: "And then I was alone," is the bleak conclusion.
The first post-Hiroshima generation was truly a lost generation. Liberated from yokel imprints but with no place to go beyond body geography. The cynicism and malaise of the 1970's is the result of this disillusion.
For these reasons the exo-psychologist must speak with caution in communicating with the members of the "Woodstock" generation. They have imprinted their bodies but are too old and set in their ways (at age 25-35) to receive the neurophysical signals for extra-terrestrial migration.