Ending the Apocalypse: Evading the Transcendental Object and Other Popular Belief Traps [[PART ONE]]

Ending the Apocalypse:
Evading the Transcendental Object and Other Popular Belief Traps,
or Braking Open the Head without Your Dogma Putting it Back Together Again

“Have you ever considered any real freedoms? Freedoms from the opinion of others... even the opinions of yourself?”
—Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, Apocalypse Now

“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”
—Socrates

“There is no reasonable, rational, or logical alternative to open minded skepticism.”
—Thomas Campbell

And once again…

“If you think you know what the hell is going on, you're probably full of shit.”
—Robert Anton Wilson

Dedicated to all Consciousness Explorers
and Conscious Consciousness Explorers too.

[[ PART ONE]]

[[ Introduction by Factoid ]]

Regarding the topic of humanness that will so be touched upon in the following sentences; the above image lifted from Tor Nørretranders’s wildly popular book (in Europe)“The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size” struck your bloviating essayist as terribly, nauseatingly appropriate—not merely as a spice for all the dishes on the forthcoming buffet, but far more grandly; the image is of deep relevance to all sentient human beings everywhere—ever. Why? Well the branches, letters, and numbers on the left represent the volume of data in bits per second that the average human being absorbs through physical sensory systems—which, in total (sight, sound, etc.) constitute 11 million bits of data per second. Sick, right? The downside of this is that little thoroughfare in the middle pointing to the words “16 BITS PER SECOND” represents the capacity for the human neocortex to process that data. So, out of a pool of data that is 11 million bits deep, which is refreshed every second, the brain is limited to 16 bits of that data. This means that for any one of us to evaluate the total data input of any second’s worth of physically sensed information, under the steam of our 16-bit Sega Genesis of a neocortex, and would take a few minuets shy of eight days.

Not to mention the fact that we have the illustrious competence to absorb no less than 1 percent of the available light spectrum. In essence, we are little boys and girls running in the extreme dim of the physical, and in my own humble estimation, a little too sure of ourselves while doing so…which is no doubt, probably, maybe, could be why we have the natural penchant to bump and scrape and hurt and kill right the hell into each other, as blindly as we do.

But—let’s not feel too bad, existence is an experimental exercise in growth…hell, Microsoft Word didn’t know ‘neocortex’ is, in fact, a word. Hey, believe it or not, this is a feel good essay! Not a feel good and dumb essay, but good…good nonetheless! You graduate from the introduction.

[[ The difference between Fashionable/Fundamentalist Skepticism, Open Minded Skepticism (Socrates a.k.a. scientific/philosophical or actual skepticism) and, “What is belief?” according to Jiddu Kirishnamurti (that really smart fellow) ]]

“And now prepare your throats.” —Titus Andronicus

Open minded skepticism (OMS) is the requirement for evidence and direct experience as the fundamental standard of knowing. It is a foremost necessity in understanding anything regarding existence in and of reality (which constitutes a lot of crosstalk). It is the standard of measure by which all other measurements are predicated upon; a tool for the critical evaluation of Claim and Phenomena in one’s individual subjective experience for the comprehension of what is real. It is also an endangered species in a sorts and it is quickly slipping away from the collective conscious experience in favor of belief systems, fashion, culture, and dogma. This is because today’s signals and massagers know how to hit hard. However, the very history of communication is the history of the evolution of how to get one to investigate or invest in a claim, a signal. If that executed claim is not investigated, than the message has probably been so invasive to the recipient that the will to investigate was washed over. Or the recipient is behaviorally and psychologically unfamiliar with critical evaluation. In other words, beliefful.

Yet, if skepticism becomes dogma, in that data is refused or not thoroughly investigated, which is the core purpose of skepticism (being evidence and direct experience), it equally degenerates into a belief system. Fashionable or Fundamentalist Skepticism practiced as practiced by the assured such as atheism, or the position maintained by most of the publications of Skeptical Inquirer, is a problem in that phenomena and evidence that does not fit into a preconceived, preprogrammed, assumptive reality tunnel (based on bias and outdated models) is refused and rejected regardless of the available evidence to the contrary and the will to investigate and thus, experience.

The skepticism that is necessary when investigating existence, reality, and information (Signal) is a skepticism that demands evidence, repeatability, direct experience, and if possible, a theoretical framework: a model. The Socratic approach is characterized by an observer being in full possession of the reality of the matter that is one’s limited perception and ability to apprehend; to know. Furthermore the observer questions, interrogates, demands, not just the internal objective phenomena but the internally subjective as well. If Socrates was having drinking with Descartes and Descartes passed the time with the infamous "Cogito, ergo sum," “I think therefore I am,” signal, Socrates would no doubt ask Descartes to prove it. Socrates would probably more likely agree with the suggestion of Berkeley "Esse est percipi,” “To be is to be perceived.” Berkley’s notion is more radically simplistic and fundamental than Descartes notion in that “to think” is “to be an Am” is impenetrable, as one’s subjective experience is entirely different from another’s experience; yet, Berkley’s notion “to be is to be perceived” is far more accessible (in that two may share perception of a thing—even if they are each “reading” different photons bouncing of a given thing) and more accurate to the crisis of being and non-being in the pursuit of Knowing. And even then Socrates would no doubt naturally question both “being” and “perceived.”

NASA/DoD physicists and consciousness researcher Thomas Campbell describes a Socratic school of approach to reality and experience he dubs “open-minded skepticism,” which suggests flexibility in one’s ability to drop old models in light of new information/evidence gathered under proper scientific protocol and solidified as more actual, or more authentic, via one’s direct, individual direct experience. We might refer to this as Logic. “There is no reasonable, rational, or logical alternative to open minded skepticism.” It only makes all the sense in world.

Atheism or Fashionable Skepticism as practiced by devotees of Skeptical Inquirer (both of which are not skeptical but rather rigidly assumptive, expecting, beliefful, etc.), are often unable or unwilling to accept certain evidence/information that does not fit into their preconceived, preprogrammed models of reality and experience. The majority of literature pumped out by the Fashionable Skeptics is often characterized with argument, anecdote, and inflammatory attack that in, presentation and conclusion, isn’t vastly different from the body of literature authored by one Ann Coulter, with the minor distinction of utilizing a more powerful command of language—yet both political opinion junkies and Fashionable Skeptics adhere, not to finding the “truth” presented by the results of scientific procedure and direct experience, but to a degenerative samsara of short-sighted instant gratification within the body of themselves and their adherents.

Antitheism, for example, isn’t necessary the result of dogmatic Fashionable Skepticism or the OMS, but actually a moralist philosophy which recognizes that dogma, cultural programming, and religious assumption results in the creation of divisions (in-groups and out-groups: the holy and the profane, the proper and the infidel, the saved and the damned, the Scientologist and their Fair Game, etc.) and the inevitable, sometimes genocidal violence that such dogma and division engenders. Antitheists aren’t necessarily atheistic—however, the antitheist realizes that theism is often rigidly stagnant in assumption, belief, programming, and potentially violent. Cultural assumptions, and reading into division, as well as the sensation of separation that has now been refuted by physicists, is equally prone to violence.

Fashionable Skeptics observably demonstrate a false skepticism that is classically epitomized in the statement by PhD and one-time devotee of Fashionable Skepticism Willis Harman “I wouldn’t believe it even if it were true!” [1] This denial was Harman’s knee-jerk reaction to his colleagues’ paradigm-shifting research (Targ and Puthoff of SRI International) regarding the nonlocal data-gathering phenomenon of a learned operational conscious awareness that has been referred to as “remote viewing.” His reaction was a dogmatic reaction, a programmed reaction, and illustrates the propensity that exists in individual psychologies, no matter what their level of education or background may be, to dwell in the pseudo-comfort zone of yesterday’s discoveries, models, ideas, and perspectives even in the shadow of newly discovered, repeatable phenomena that can de apprehended via direct experience.

On the nature of belief, one deeply Socratic OMS, and explorer of consciousness, the modern philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, stated the following:

“What do we mean by belief? Why do we have to have belief? Belief implies acceptance, trust, faith in something inward or outward. Belief gives assurance, confidence, a sense of security, and the more that you believe in something, the greater the security. To be psychologically without a belief is very disturbing, is it not? Fear and belief ever go together; they are inseparable, they are the two sides of a coin. Belief comes into being when the mind is seeking security, certainty; it creates belief as a means of self-protection or takes on the belief of others; or it projects its hopes and fears into the future, into time, making them as the ideal, and disciplines itself according to its projections in order to achieve security, a refuge where there is no disturbance of any kind.”

”This factor, the desire for security, for refuge, breeds different forms of beliefs according to environmental and psychological influences. You believe in God, another does not; you are a Hindu or a Muslim, a Christian or a nonbeliever, and so on. Thus, belief divides, setting man against man. The desire to be psychologically secure creates divisions, as mine and yours, and thus gives vast significance to secondary values, to sensory values.”

”See what belief has done to man and so to the world. Politically or religiously, man is torn apart; the belief in many contending schemes and blueprints is causing conflict and enmity; organized religious beliefs in the name of God and peace are setting man against man; man is destroying man because of his belief in his country, in his security, in his God. Belief invariably breeds more belief, more conflict, more confusion, more antagonism. Belief is the result of the hidden demands of self-fulfillment. Happiness is sought through self-fulfillment, which is through belief, and there is no happiness in things made by the hand or by the mind. If you seek happiness through something, then the thing becomes all-important and not happiness.”

”What do we mean by confidence? Trust or faith in something. Assurance or confidence gives a certain trust in oneself, as practice on an instrument gives. From this continued and sustained assurance there is a kind of self-aggression. Confidence in the self is another form of self-fulfillment.”

”Now, there is another kind of confidence which comes through self-knowledge. I am using confidence for the lack of a better word. To be aware of every thought and feeling and to follow them through completely brings joy; in understanding the many layers of consciousness - the superficial and the hidden - there is freedom whose joy is wholly different from the self-expanding assurance.”

”When there is an understanding of the poison of the hindrances, then there is freedom; when the activities of the self are explored and understood, then there is imperishable ecstasy. This exploration is not based on any belief, on any formulation of the mind. Discovery based on belief ceases to be the true; experience based on belief is the self-projected continuation, and so experience is ever binding. When the mind is aware, its cunning tricks are known, then it knows itself as its own creator. Then, when it ceases to create, there is creation.”

"The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear."

Belief and fear are ipso facto, both deeply rooted, stubborn refusals to grow, change, and evolve based on the presence or persistence of new data.

Moving on now, to the great gig in the mind…

[[ The Value of the Psychedelic Episode and The Utility of Socratic Energy ]]

What does the psychedelic episode offer consciousness (consciousness defined as a system of willful information; that is, input (experience), recall, processing, and self-modification) whether or not the consciousness in question is either dogmatic or skeptical? Does the experience have value or utility? In the sense that it engenders a wholly other “non-ordinary” data stream, in deed, it is. However, whether or not the revelations brought on by the pharmacological compound’s temporary intertwining with one’s neurochemistry, and thus the interface of consciousness, is the only mean by which these “non-ordinary” data streams can be accessed and experienced is now in question and will be addressed in the following section on scientifically validated metaphysics.

For the skeptic or the dogmatist, the psychedelic experience may be worth investigation if one is curious. One can’t anticipate the psychedelic episode by any length of the imagination. It is far too alien in contrast to the “ordinary” state of operational conscious awareness that consists of the foundation of one’s very experience. It is, so popularly described, as waltzing into another dimension, so to speak. During the psychically abrasive, hardcore, balls-to-the-walls, download—one may experience not just a profoundly altered perception, or a “non-ordinary” data stream, but also that which feel like the death of the Ego; in which one’s conception, abstraction, image of the self is thoroughly shot to shit that in its stead one is then characteristically filled and awed by a sensation of a kind of theophany or Union With All—a node in a network of many nodes, simultaneously comprehended. To some this is useful.

Francis Crick received a signal on LDS that revealed the double helix structure of nature and subsequently received a Nobel Prize. An entire generation put their effort into ending a war. Others have degenerated.

Post-download, one often discovers the cosmic experientialist in a half trance of deep revaluation. What is revaluated is often the totality of one’s sentient enterprise, the entirety of one’s life experience, prior to and in relation to this new episode. Many neurons are firing in strange new ways. Old, closely defended thought patterns are suddenly up for intense scrutiny and often outright dismissal. A bold attitude of questioning is embedded in our psychonaut. “What is real?” is the mantra. If one didn’t question anything beforehand, one certainly has no alternative than to question now. Belief dies.

That moment of theophany, which so often characterizes a psychedelic episode (a decent one) is, though the temporal bustle of living humanly, more or less forgotten or dismissed as was the pre-psychedelic cultural programming. Drag. One’s deepest felt experience becomes a shadow, which is sometimes remembered, but generally poorly. William James describes this as a Transient Theophanic episode. The Enlightenment traditions refer to this as, a non-abiding awakened state (or Adyashanti’s “I got it/I lost it” phenomenon of spiritual awakening).

Though the psychedelic experience and all it includes is radically other in contrast to anything remotely resembling “ordinary” consciousness; the value it offers is a wholly alternative means of perceiving and experiencing to which then may compare and contrast (Timothy Leary’s notion of Intelligence ²). The deeply Socratic attitude is soon swept under the conscious rug by the re-invasion of cultural operating systems (money, debt, servitude), peer pressure, conformity, expectation, belief and so on. The propensity to question may be totally lost, until of course, some wonderful something reignites the fire. Either one has a total psychological revolution, a spiritual awakening, or one begins to explore meditation, compassion, physics, philosophy, psychology and so on. Others dig into Acretypes, Divination, Astrology, and other methodologies.

The great lesson of psychedelics is: the elasticity of Reality; the elasticity of Mind; the stupidity of conditioned humanity. There is great value in this. The fact that there is far more reality than one can see with conditioned eyes. The problem of psychedelics arrives in their compromising of coordination during a nonphysical experience and their inefficient at totally eradicating belief systems.

In some cases psychedelics encourage belief. If one saturates their theater of experience with certain imagery, thought patterns, and behavior the psychedelic voyage may, and often will, incorporate that criteria—thus, the criteria is considered to be authenticated, given its arrival within the sphere of the psychedelic. Belief is resurrected. Today there exists such a propensity.

[[ The Psychedelic Apocalypse Now—The Rise of Mystical Dogmatism in Modern Psychedelia and the notion of Apocalypse / Evolutionary Omega / Extra-dimensional Referees / 2012 McKenna vrs. Mayans / The Transcendental Object at The End of Time (or “The Totally Totally Novel Thing Ahead Whose Flight Will be Arriving for Next Next Christmas”) / The Destruction of Choice, Volition, Free Will, and Intent]]

The psychedelic community is on the verge of falling into a system of belief trap—the very same sort of system of belief traps that temporarily liberated the psychedelic consciousness from the cultural programming of their first few bon voyages into the unknown. A re-devolution of consciousness via assumption, expectation, belief, and dogma is being engendered. The fetishization of tools, symbols, and processes—the propensity to engender apotheosis in the Means, are too problematic. These means are valueable, even scientifically so yet beliefs, deification, and assumptions abound. Is the computer sacred? Or is it just energy transuded to be human-friendly and visa versa? The Love for the Means, rather than Love of the Experience of Being that may be actualized cia the Means is the problem; it is the generator of much conflict and ignorance.

One massive trip trap was largely constructed by a personal favorite, Terrence McKenna. Though it is easy to love and admire McKenna, he too fell into the problem of belief, assumption, and expectation. That assumption, that belief was the Larger Reality of Consciousness can only be hacked via pharmacological agents. He rested a lot of stock in the physical chemical compounds that do indeed hurl individuals into the Larger Reality for a brief time was only the means by which to experience and participate in the larger reality of consciousness beyond physical matter reality. The problem with this is like training wheels. Psychedelics are a kind of booster. They give one an opportunity to experience a heaping blast of reality but they become as he himself said “The only game in town.” This is not Socratic.

The only game in town is not psychedelics; the only game in town is consciousness. These “non-ordinary” states, though valuable, have a propensity, even in their revelation, to create belief systems in their wake. We have now an entire generation of chemically based consciousness explores that alternate between investigating the nonphysical through pharmacological agents and festooning their mind with occult or mystical literature as if the labyrinthine symbolism will somehow evolve their consciousness only upon condition that a complex network of data is assimilated, simultaneously activated, and the frilly practices properly enacted upon the equinox come to fruition. This kind of thinking is as equally dogmatic as the organized religions and little picture science the psychedelic community has come to abhor.

However, the far less Socratic notion was not psychedelics were the only game in town (in deed they certainly come across that way) but the notion of Omega has been the real clincher, over-hyped, and his least important idea. The Stoned Ape Hypothesis is a far more powerful and more likely notion than the Transcendental Object at the End of Time (TOET).

The problem of Omega is that it is an assumption, a belief, an expectation – when the very notion of true OMS is to reduce the presence of such behaviors (in essence: psychological patterns) to furthest possible minimum, in favor of direct experience/evidence. The counter argument is that McKenna experienced the TOET during psychedelic psychosis, which was later confirmed by the I Ching algorithm that constituted the architecture of his Timewave Zero software.

Keep in mind this line: “An expectation is a premeditated resentment.”

The radically genius postmodern artist/writers the Wachowski Brothers distill the problem of epistemology via Hume via a video game…

Ghost:
“Hume teaches us that no matter how many times you drop a stone and it falls to the floor, you never know what'll happen the next time you drop it. It might fall to the floor, but then again it might float to the ceiling. Past experience never proves the future.”

Niobe:
“So?”

Ghost:
“So…you never know.”

"...you never know." This is the essence of the Socratic approach – the OMS that regards belief, assumption, and expectation as a problem. Why? Belief is an imposition of surety and Authority (whether it is external or internal Authority). Belief attempts to snuff the universal constants with faith and dogmatism: that is, uncertainty and non-security. It is an attempt to tell reality what it is (in effort to quell the above), rather than listening to reality speak for itself.

The idea that Evolution or Fundamental Process has a goal in the context of “the perfect state,” Übermensch, the living god, the perfect organism, Omega, the total accruement of all possible complexity into some Transcendental Object eradicates free will, intent, and choice. The Fundamental Process of action within reality is then not the engendering ever-more profitable states of being by reorganization, but to arrive at some temporally-based, predetermined finish line (2012).

If Omega, or lets really call give it a name more relative to what its actual function, The Wall of All– if The Wall of All is real, in that novel, evolutionary complexifaction has a fixed goal, goal as in terminal state of in the total possibility of complexity (that being Omega), than one is a mere puppet following a script. One has no free will; one’s intent is meaningless. If one has a final state, predetermined state one is moving towards, one may do anything on the road to that end—meaning is meaningless. The existence of a novelty/existence/being-wide Terminus is a total assumption, in that the notion of The Final is an invention of humanity and has not been seen in Nature outside of the biological “failure”* of species. (*Viruses appear to be a kind of self-replicating “failure” yet they are incredibly robust and common entities).

Has the universe stopped since it “started” (if it started)? Why assume that this (reality) has a destination - that and “you” (reality) have a destination other than a more profitable state of conscious awareness? If so, one is then, in a sense, a total slave to the overripe novelty that constitutes the notion of Omega or the Transcendental Object at The End of Novelty—which may have been nothing more than Mckenna gloriously, psychedelically apprehending his own consciousness moving towards love.

Prophecy is dangerous business because it is an expectation that pulls one from direct contact with experience. It is an anchor for a ship that is most valuable when moving. In stead one degenerates into a slate of happenings that are compared and contrasted to the notions of that prophecy as one hunts for the undercurrent of meaning relating to the elements strictly to the elements of that prophecy. 2012 may be little more than hype generated by the remarkable insight of suppositious astronomers from all walks of life that could observe from this little blue orb at the ass-end of the clock’s hour hand (the Milk Way), that we all would in the very far future, approach the glow-in-the-dark tic mark, designating an out-of-the-ordinary celestial lineup; one that may or may not wreck some havoc with the planet’s magnetic poles. The problem with these assumptions, expectations, and beliefs is their promotion of misdirection and lethargy.

Misdirection from what?—the evolutionary processing system, which constitutes one’s existence; that we have come to designate “CONSCIOUSNESS.” That is the mystery worth laborious investigation. Sheer sentience is what’s worth one’s time and energy and love and, dare one suggest, devotional exploration. Not all these deeply fascinating labyrinthine ideas, notions, and stuff – but the thing, the media that is actually apprehending this stuff and imbuing it with meaning. That is what existence comes down to anyway - consciousness.

As for Lethargy—Well that’s easy to account for, and terribly dangerous, and also, nothing new in the human endeavor. The expectation that something will happen that will change everything is a dangerous expectation. It promotes the idea that one need not work in anyway to evolve consciousness – that it’ll just happen. No effort will be necessary on the conscious entity’s part. “One day we’ll all wake up” is a beautiful sentiment, and in deed possible, but to assume that this happening will coincide with Messiah, Aliens, transcendental entities, time, what have you in your Santa Claus bag of possibility, is a fretful, notion in that they are all external authorities.

We are to grow. We are to evolve. We are to expand our potential decision space in effort to amplify the effect of our knowledge and volition. We are to do this under our own steam, in our own way, in our own time. Otherwise reality is predetermined, and predestined, free will isn’t free, and everything is enslaved to the swirling, drain-like event horizon of Omega—or as Agent Smith, the wonderfully illustrated postmodern incarnation of the Nietzschean Übermensch Zarathustra states all too perfectly; under the shadow of Omega, The Final State, “We are not here because we are free. We are here because we are not free.”

Could there really be a transcendental Omega at the end of novelty, or could this be an interpretation by an extremely literate individual as they beheld the very real origin of the manipulation of the body—a nonphysical consciousness? We can never know, as it is the arena of the subjective.

[1] Harman, W. Global Mind Change: The Promise of the 21st Century. Berrett-Koehler Publishers; 2 ed. 1998. p 61.

END OF PART ONE

PART TWO WILL INCLUDE

[[ Epistemology and Scientifically Validated Metaphysics (AND YOU CAN TOO!) ]]

[[ How to Break Open the Head on a more Proactive, Continuous Level: Meditation as a Necessary and Destructive Act for the Liberation of C.O.O.C.’s (Conscious Observers of Consciousness) from Thought Patterns and Dogma You Didn't Even Knew You Had! ]]

[[Conclusion and Recommended Reading]]

Keep it up!