Tricks, Gimmicks, and Games

Prometheus Rising


By Robert Anton Wilson

Most of the occult literature of the world—aside from the
95% of it that is sheer rubbish—consists of tricks, gimmicks and
games (which the Hindus call upaya, "clever ways") to trigger
meta-programming consciousness. This generally means leading
the student "all around Robin Hood's barn" as many times as are
necessary, until the poor victim discovers that he has created the
barn himself.

For instance, a popular game with California occultists—I do
not know its inventor—involves a Magic Room, much like the
Pleasure Dome discussed earlier except that this Magic Room
contains an Omniscient Computer.

To play this game, you simply "astrally project" into the
Magic Room. Do not ask what "astral projection" means, and do
not assume it is metaphysical (and therefore either impossible, if
you are a materialist, or very difficult, if you are a mystic). Just
assume this is a gedankenexperiment, a "mind game." Project
yourself, in imagination, into this Magic Room and visualize
vividly the Omniscient Computer, using the details you need to
make such a super-information-processor real to your fantasy.

You do not need any knowledge of programming to handle
this astral computer. It exists early in the next century; you are
getting to use it by a species of time-travel, if that metaphor is
amusing and helpful to you. It is so built that it responds immediately
to human brain-waves, "reading" them and decoding their
meaning. (Crude prototypes of such computers already exist.)
So, when you are in this magic room, you can ask this Computer
anything, just by thinking of what you want to know. It will read
your thought, and project into your brain, by a laser ray, the
correct answer.

There is one slight problem. The computer is very sensitive to
all brain-waves. If you have any doubts, it registers them as
negative commands, meaning "Do not answer my question." So,
the way to use it is to start simply, with "easy" questions. Ask it
to dig out of the archives the name of your second-grade teacher.
(Almost everybody remembers the name of their first grade
teacher—imprint vulnerability again—but that of the second
grade teacher tends to get lost.)

When the computer has dug out the name of your second
grade teacher, try it on a harder question, but not one that is too
hard. It is very easy to sabotage this machine, but you don't want
to sabotage it during these experiments. You want to see how
well it can be made to perform.

It is wise to ask only one question at a time, since it requires
concentration to keep this magic computer real on the field of
your perception. Do not exhaust your capacities for imagination
and visualization on your first trial runs.

After a few trivial experiments of the second-grade-teacher
variety, you can try more interesting programs. Take a person
toward whom you have negative feelings, such as anger, disappointment,
feeling-of-betrayal, jealousy or whatever interferes
with the smooth, tranquil operation of your own bio-computer.
Ask the Magic Computer to explain that other person to you; to
translate you into their reality-tunnel long enough for you to
understand how events seem to them. Especially, ask how you
seem to them.

The Poet Prayed:
Oh would some power the giftie gie us
To see ourselves as others see us

This computer will do that job for you; but be prepared for
some shocks which might be disagreeable at first.
This super-brain can also perform exegesis on ideas that seem
obscure, paradoxical or enigmatic to us. For instance, early
experiments with this computer can very profitably turn on
asking it to explain some of the propositions in this book which
may seem inexplicable or perversely wrong-headed to you, such
as "We are all greater artists than we realize" or "What the
Thinker thinks, the Prover proves" or "mind and its contents are
functionally identical."

This computer is much more powerful and scientifically
advanced than the rapture-machine in the neurosomatic circuit. It
has total access to all the earlier, primitive circuits, and overrules
any of them. That is, if you put a meta-programming instruction
into this computer; it will relay it downward to the old circuits
and cancel contradictory programs left over from the past. For
instance, try feeding it on such meta-programming instructions
as:
1. I am at cause over my body.
2. I am at cause over my imagination.
3.1 am at cause over my future.
4. My mind abounds with beauty and power.
5.1 like people, and people like me.

Remember that this computer is only a few decades ahead of
present technology, so it cannot "understand" your commands if
you harbor any doubts about them. Doubts tell it not to perform.
Work always from what you can believe in, extending the area of
belief only as results encourage you to try for more dramatic
transformations of your past reality-tunnels.

This represents cybernetic consciousness; the programmer
becoming self-programmer, self-metaprogrammer, meta-metaprogrammer,
etc. Just as the emotional compulsions of the
second circuit seem primitive, mechanical and, ultimately, silly

to the neurosomatic consciousness, so, too, the reality maps of
the third circuit become comic, relativistic, game-like to the
metaprogrammer.

"Whatever you say it is, it isn't, " Korzybski, the semanticist,
repeated endlessly in his seminars, trying to make clear that
third-circuit semantic maps are not the territories they represent;
that we can always make maps of our maps, revisions of our
revisions, meta-selves of our selves.

"Neti, neti" (not that, not that), Hindu teachers traditionally
say when asked what "God" is or what "Reality" is.

Yogis, mathematicians and musicians seem more inclined to
develop meta-programming consciousness than most of humanity.
Korzybski even claimed that the use of mathematical scripts
is an aid to developing this circuit, for as soon as you think of
your mind as mind1, and the mind which contemplates that mind
as mind2 and the mind which contemplates mind2 contemplating
mind1 as mind3, you are well on your way to meta-programming
awareness. Alice in Wonderland is a masterful guide to the metaprogramming
circuit (written by one of the founders of mathematical
logic) and Aleister Crowley soberly urged its study upon
all students of yoga.

R. Buckminster Fuller illustrates the meta-programming circuit,
in his lectures, by pointing out that we feel puny in comparison
to the size of the universe, but only our bodies (hardware)
are puny. Our minds, he says—by which he means our software—
contain the universe, by the act of comprehending it.