Prometheus Rising Read Online Free PDF Page B

applied to the
    human brain) perform the following meditation.
    Sit in a room where you will not be disturbed for a half hour
    and begin thinking, "I am sitting in this room doing this exercize
    because..." and list as many of the "causes" as you can think of.
    For instance, you are doing this exercize because, obviously,
    you read about it in this book. Why did you buy this book? Did
    somebody recommend it? How did that person come into your
    life? If you just picked the book up in a store, why did you
    happen to be in just that store on just that day?
    Why do you read books of this sort—on psychology, consciousness,
    evolution etc.? How did you get interested in those
    fields? Who turned you on, and how long ago? What factors in
    your childhood inclined you to be interested in these subjects
    later?
    Why are you doing this exercize in this room and not elsewhere?
    Why did you buy or rent this house or apartment? Why
    are you in this city and not another? Why on this continent and
    not another?
    Why are you here at all—that is, how did your parents meet?
    Did they consciously decide to have a child, do you happen to
    know, or were you an accident? What cities were they born in? If
    in different cities, why did they move in space-time so that their
    paths would intersect?
    Why is this planet capable of supporting life, and why did it
    produce the kind of life that would dream up an exercize of this
    sort?
    Repeat this exercize a few days later, trying to ask and answer
    fifty questions you didn't think of the first time. (Note that you
    cannot ever ask all possible questions.)
    Avoid all metaphysical speculations (e.g., karma, reincarnation,
    "destiny" etc.). The point of the exercize will be mindblowing
    enough without introducing "occult" theories, and it will
    be more startling if you carefully avoid such overtly "mystical"
    speculations.
    Prometheus Rising 43
    4. Pick up any household item—a spoon, a pen, a cup etc.
    Perform the same exercize as above—why is it here? Who
    invented it, if you can find out? How did the invention get to this
    continent? Who manufactured it? Why did they manufacture that
    instead of bird cages? Why did they become manufacturers
    instead of musicians? Why did you buy it? Why did you pick
    that object, of all the objects in your house, for this meditation?
    ANSWER QUICKLY NOW
    ARE YOU YOUR HARDWARE,
    OR YOUR SOFTWARE?
    OR BOTH?
     
    CHAPTER THREE
    THE ORAL BIO-SURVIVAL
    CIRCUIT
    Genes, like Leibnitz's monads, have no windows; the higher
    properties of life are emergent.
    — Edward Wilson, Sociobiology
    45
     
    Few of our ancestors were perfect ladies or gentlemen; the
    majority of them were not even mammals.
    Any multi-cellular organism must, if it is to survive, contain a
    hard-wired bio-survival circuit, which very simply programs an
    either-or choice: GO FORWARD to the nourishing, the protective,
    or GO BACK, away from the threatening, the predatory.
    Any mammal hooks the bio-survival circuit to the first
    imprinted bio-survival object: the teat. Bio-survival and orality
    are deeply blended in all mammals, including domesticated
    primates (humans). This is why, despite the Cancer Terror, an
    estimated 30,000,000 Americans still smoke cigarettes... Others
    chew gum (spearmint, juicy fruit, even sugar-free: something for
    every taste), bite their fingernails, gnaw their knuckles, scrunch
    pencil stubs, eat more than they need (Potato chips, anyone? a
    Mars bar maybe? pretzels, peanuts, cashews, do you want the
    cheese and crackers with your beer, Mac? And do try the
    canapes, Mrs. Miller). Some chew their lips, gobble tranks and
    uppers, even munch their mustaches. What goes on in the
    bedroom is known to the Kinsey Institute and anyone who has
    seen a porn film.
    How important is this oral imprinting? We read of a baby
    giraffe whose mother was accidentally killed by a jeep immediately
    after birth. The neonate, following hard-wired genetic
    programs, "imprinted" the first object that