THE HUMAN BIOCOMPUTER by John Lilly LSD Psychology THE HUMAN BIOCOMPUTER a book by John Lilly Preface to Second Edition Preface to First Edition METATHEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS Introduction 1. Use of Projection-Display Techniques in Deep Self-Analysis with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD-2 5) Corporeal Face Blank Screen Zero Level External Reality Definition of Evasion of Analysis of Metaprograms Inner Cognition Space Practical Considerations Definition of a General Purpose Self-Metaprogram 2. Summary of Experiments in Self-Metaprogramming with LSD-25 Experiments on Basic Metaprograms of Existence Metaprogrammatic Results of Belief Experiments 3. Personal Metaprogrammatic Language: An Example of Its Properties 4. Metaprogramming in the Presence of a Fixed Neurological Program (Migraine): Example of Perception and Belief Interactions 5. Note on the Potentially Lethal Aspects of Certain Unconscious, Protohuman, Survival Programs 6. Choice of Attending Persons During LSD-2 5 State Used for Self-Analysis 7. Behavioral, Non-Isolation Replay of Protohuman Programs: The Problem of Repetitive Unconscious Replay 8. Basic Effects of LSD-25 on the Biocomputer: Noise as the Basic Energy for Projection Techniques Growth Hypothesis 9. Summary of Basic Theory and Results for Metaprogramming the Positive States with LSD-25 10. Coalitions, Interlock and Responsibility 11. Participant Interlock, Coalitions with Individuals of Another Species Retreats from Interlock Metaprograms for Interspecies Interlock Observations with Tursiops-Human Interlock: Mimicry as Evidence of Interlock 12. Summary of Logic Used in this Paper: Truth, Falsity, Probability, Metaprograms and Their Bounds 13. Hardware, Software Relationships in the Human Biocomputer 14. Problems 15. Metaprogramming the Body Image 16. Brain Models 17. Excerpts from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoygvsky Summary Acknowledgements Glossary Major Metaprograms Key to Categories in References and Bibliography References Categorized Bibliography Abstract Preface to Second Edition * *Quoted in entirety from John C. Lilly, Simulations of God: A Science of Belief, in preparation, 1972. All human beings, all persons who reach adulthood in the world today are programmed biocomputers. No one of us can escape our own nature as programmable entities. Literally, each of us may be our programs, nothing more, nothing less. Despite the great varieties of programs available, most of us have a limited set of programs. Some of these are built-in. The structure of our nervous system reflects its origins in simpler forms of organisms from sessile protozoans, sponges, corals through sea worms, reptiles and proto-mammals to primates to apes to early anthropoids to humanoids to man. In the simpler basic forms, the programs were mostly built-in: from genetic codes to fully-formed organisms adultly reproducing, the patterns of function of action-reaction were determined by necessities of survival, of adaptation to slow environmental changes, of passing on the code to descendents. As the size and complexity of the nervous system and its bodily carrier increased, new levels of programmability appeared, not tied to immediate survival and eventual reproduction. The built-in programs survived as a basic underlying context for the new levels, excitable and inhibitable, by the overlying control systems. Eventually, the cerebral cortex appeared as an expanding new high-level computer controlling the structurally lower levels of the nervous system, the lower built-in programs. For the first time learning and its faster adaptation to a rapidly changing environment began to appear. Further, as this new cortex expanded over several millions of years, a critical size of cortex was reached. At this new level of structure, a new capability emerged: learning to learn. When one learns to learn, one is making models, using symbols, analogizing, making metaphors, in short, inventing and using language, mathematics, art, politics, business, etc. At the critical brain (cortex) size, languages and its consequences appear. To avoid the necessity of repeating learning to learn, symbols, metaphors, models each time, I symbolize the underlying idea in these operations as metaprogramming. Metaprogramming appears at a critical cortical size — the cerebral computer must have a large enough number of interconnected circuits of sufficient quality for the operations of metaprogramming to exist in that biocomputer. Essentially, metaprogramming is an operation in which a central control system controls hundreds of thousands of programs operating in parallel simultaneously. This operation in 1972 is not yet done in man-made computers — metaprogramming is done outside the big solid-state computers by the human programmers, or more properly, the human metaprogrammers. All choices and assignments of what the solid-state computers do, how they operate, what goes into them are still human biocomputer choices. Eventually, we may construct a metaprogramming computer, and turn these choices over to it. When I said we may be our programs, nothing more, nothing less, I meant the substrate, the basic substratum under all else, of our metaprograms is our programs. All we are as humans is what is built-in and what has been acquired, and what we make of both of these. So we are one more result of the program substrate — the self-metaprogrammer. As out of several hundreds of thousands of the substrate programs comes an adaptable changing set of thousands of meta-programs, so out of the metaprograms as substrate comes something else — the controller, the steersman, the programmer in the biocomputer, the self-metaprogrammer. In a well-organized biocomputer, there is at least one such critical control meta-program labeled I for acting on other metaprograms and labeled me when acted upon by other metaprograms. I say at least one advisedly. Most of us have several controllers, selves, self-meta-programs which divide control among them, either in time parallel or in time series in sequences of control. As I will give in detail later, one path for self development is to centralize control of one's biocomputer in one self-metaprogrammer, making the others into conscious executives subordinate to the single administrator, the single superconscient self-metaprogrammer. With appropriate methods, this centralizing of control, the elementary unification operation, is a realizable state for many, if not all biocomputers. Beyond and above in the control hierarchy, the position of this single administrative self-metaprogrammer and his staff, there may be other controls and controllers, which, for convenience, I call supraself metaprograms. These are many or one depending on current states of consciousness in the single self-metaprogrammer. These may be personified as if entities, treated as if a network for information transfer, or realized as if self travelling in the Universe to strange lands or dimensions or spaces. If one does a further unification operation on these supraself metaprograms, one may arrive at a concept labeled God, the Creator, the Starmaker, or whatever. At times we are tempted to pull together apparently independent supraself sources as if one. I am not sure that we are quite ready to do this supraself unification operation and have the result correspond fully to an objective reality. Certain states of consciousness result from and cause operation of this apparent unification phenomenon. We are still general purpose computers who can program any conceivable model of the universe inside our own structure, reduce the single self-metaprogrammer to a micro size, and program him to travel through his own model as if real (level 6, Satori +6: Lilly, 1972). This property is useful when one steps outside it and sees it for what it is — an immensely satisfying realization of the programmatic power of one's own biocomputer. To overvalue or to negate such experiences is not a necessary operation. To realize that one has this property is an important addition to one's self-metaprogrammatic list of probables. Once one has control over modelling the universe inside one's self, and is able to vary the parameters satisfactorily, one's self may reflect this ability by changing appropriately to match the new property. The quality of one's model of the universe is measured by how well it matches the real universe. There is no guarantee that one's current model does match the reality, no matter how certain one feels about the high quality of the match. Feelings of awe, reverence, sacredness and certainty are also adaptable metaprograms, attachable to any model, not just the best fitting one. Modern science knows this: we know that merely because a culture generated a cosmology of a certain kind and worshipped with it, was no guarantee of goodness of fit with the real universe. Insofar as they are testable, we now proceed to test (rather than to worship) models of the universe. Feelings such as awe and reverence are recognized as biocomputer energy sources rather than as determinants of truth, i.e., of the goodness of fit of models vs. realities. A pervasive feeling of certainty is recognized as a property of a state of consciousness, a special space, which may be indicative or suggestive but is no longer considered as a final judgement of a true fitting. Even as one can travel inside one's models inside one's head, so can one travel outside or be the outside of one's model of the universe, still inside one's head (see Lilly 1972: level or state +3, Satori +3). In this meta-program it is as if one joins the creators, unites with God, etc. Here one can so attenuate the self that it may disappear. One can conceive of other supraself metaprograms farther out than these, such as are given in Olaf Stapledon's The Star-maker (Dover, New York, 1937). Here the self joins other selves, touring the reaches of past and future time and of space, everywhere. The planet-wide consciousness joins into solar systems consciousness into galaxy-wide consciousness. Intergalactic sharing of consciousness fused into the mind of the universe finally faces its creator, the Starmaker. The universe's mind realizes that its creator knows its imperfections and will tear it down to start over, creating a more perfect universe. Such uses of one's own biocomputer as the above can teach one profound truths about one's self, one's capabilities. The resulting states of being, of consciousness, teach one the basic truth about one's own equipment as follows: In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the mind, there are no limits. (Lilly, 1972). In the province of the mind is the region of one's models, of the alone self, of memory, of the metaprograms. What of the region which includes one's body, other's bodies? Here there are definite limits. In the network of bodies, one's own connected with others for bodily survival-procreation-creation, there is another kind of information: In the province of connected minds, what the network believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits to be found cxperientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the network's mind there are no limits. But, once again, the bodies of the network housing the minds, the ground on which they rest-, the planet's surface, impose definite limits. These limits are to be found experientially and experimentally, agreed upon by special minds, and communicated to the network. The results are called concensus science. Thus, so far, we have information without limits in one's mind and with agreed-upon limits (possibly unnecessary) in a network of minds. We also have information within definite limits (to be found) with one body and in a network of bodies on a planet. With this formulation, our scientific problem can be stated very succinctly as follows: Given a single body and a single mind physically isolated and confined in a completely physically-controlled environment in true solitude, by our present sciences can we satisfactorily account for all inputs and all outputs to and from this mind — biocomputer (i.e., can we truly isolate and confine it?)? Given the properties of the software-mind of this biocomputer outlined above, is it probable that we can find, discover, or invent inputs-outputs not yet in our concensus science? Does this center of consciousness receive-transmit information by at present unknown modes of communication? Does this center of consciousness stay in the isolated confined biocomputer? In this book I try to show you where I am in this search and research. In previous books I have dealt with personal experiences. Here I deal with theory and methods, metaprograms and programs. J.C.L. February, 1972 Los Angeles, Calif. Preface to First Edition This work is the result of several years of personal effort to try to understand the various paradoxes of the mind and the brain and their relationships. It is felt that the basic premises presented in this work may help resolve some of the philosophical and theoretical difficulties which arise when one uses other viewpoints and other basic beliefs. Some of the major philosophical puzzles are concerned with existence of self, with the relation of the self to the brain, the self to the mind, and self to other minds, the existence or non-existence of an immortal part of the self, and the creation of and the belief in various powerful phantasies in these areas of thought. In Man there is a basic need for imagining wish-fulfillments. Man's wishful thinking becomes interwoven among his best science and even his best philosophy. For the intellectual and the emotional advancement of each of us we need certain kinds' of ideals. We also need ways of thinking which look as straight at the inner realities as at the physical-chemical-biological outer realities. We need truly objective philosophical analysis inside ourselves as well as outside ourselves. This work is a summary of a current position in progress to try to attain objectivity and impartiality with respect to the innermost realities. One might well ask where is such theory applicable? Once mastered, it may be directly applied in self-analysis. If one remembers that one's self is a feedback-cause with other human, beings, one can start at this personal end of the system and achieve beginnings of interhuman analysis by analyzing one's self first. If successful, one may see one's self operating in improved fashions with other people, as judged by one's self and, much later, as judged by others. The reflections of one's intellectual and emotional growth later may begin to be distributed and are then seen operating in one's interhuman transactions — with one's wife, children, relatives, colleagues, and professional and business contacts. The persons who can understand and absorb this kind of theory need understand over a broad intellectual and emotional front. Each one needs understanding and training in depth in multiple fields of human endeavor. Those persons who probably can understand it best are the general scientists.* Among those in this group to whom I have presented the theory, there was immediate understanding and an immediate grasping of the basic fundamentals and of the consequence of the theory. * A general scientist (as defined for purposes of this discussion) is a person trained in the scientific method and trained in watching his own mind operate and correcting his scientific as well as philosophical and pragmatic errors. In a sense he is a scientist who is willing to study more than just one narrow speciality in an attempt to grasp as much knowledge-as he can under the circumstances from other fields than his own. He has a grasp of symbolic logic and of mathematics which he can apply to problems other than his own scientific speciality. A second group who have no difficulty with the computer aspects but who may have difficulty with the subjective aspects is that large group of young people who are becoming immersed more and more in computers, their use and programing. A few of these may have the necessary biological and psychoanalytic background to understand this viewpoint. Additional training may be given to these few in self-analysis itself. Several members of a third group may find it useful with further study, the classically trained psychoanalytic scientists. The psychoanalytic group may have difficulties in that very few are trained in the general purpose types of thinking involved in general purpose computers. There are difficulties in the way of a multidisciplinary group, as a group, to use this theory. It seems necessary that each individual absorb the necessary kinds of thinking and kinds of motivations involved in each of the fields represented. Members of such groups can motivate one another to do individual learning in these areas and can help one another learn in these various areas. It is up to each responsible individual to absorb enough to gain understanding on the levels presented. As with most, insights into the innermost realities, it is felt that many of the advantages of this viewpoint cannot be seen directly until this way of thinking is absorbed into one's mind. The thinking machinery itself is at stake here. Once absorbed and understood I have found it possible to see that the properties and the operations of one's mind in many different states can be accounted for somewhat more satisfactorily. With the resulting increased control over conscious thinking and preconscious computations, with the newly enhanced respect for one's fixed unconscious (as if built-in) programs, the integration of one's self with the deeper inner realities becomes more satisfactory. The theory is phrased in definite statements. However, it is not intended that the reader take this version as definitive, final, completed, or closed. Each of these definite statements is to be accepted only as a working hypothesis as currently presented by the author. My aim is not to make a new final philosophy, a new religion, or a new rigid way of approaching man's intellectual life. My aim is to increase the flexibility, the power, and the objectivity of our currently limited mind and its knowledge of itself. We have come a long way from the lowly primate to our present level. (However, we have a long way to go to realize the best obtainable from ourselves.) One has only to look at the inadequacies of Man's treatment of Man, and see how far we must go if we are to survive as a progressing species with better control of our battling animalistic superstitious levels. It is expected that this theory will be useful in understanding and in programming not only one's self but other minds as well. Enhancement of the very human depths of communication with other minds may be approached. The current limits and the attainable limits for education, for reprogramming, for therapy and for cooperative efforts of all sorts between men, may be aided in the terms here presented. This is at least a hope of the author. Only time and use of this kind of thinking can test out the further working hypothesis. One fact which must be appreciated for applying this theory is the essential individual uniqueness of each of our minds, of each of our brains. It is no easy work to analyze either one's self or someone else. This theory is not, cannot be, a miracle key to a given human mind. It is devilishly hard work digging up enough of the basic facts and enough of the basic programs and metaprograms controlling each mind from within to change its poor operations into better ones. This theory can help one to sort out and arrange stored information and facts into more effective patterns for change. But the basic investigation o… truncated (229,419 more characters in archive)