Technoccult

Mutate Your Mind

Show menu Hide menu

TagBrain Hacking

Antero Alli interview, plus: don’t forget Invisible Forest showings

June 4, 2008 /

This series of conversations is on the topic called the 8 Circuit Brain model. It is something that Timothy Leary first brought into the western consciousness, and later Robert Anton Wilson in his book Prometheus Rising gave it a more wide spread appeal. It was further developed by Antero in his book ‘Angel Tech’

This conversation covers the following topics:

History and introduction to the 8-circuit brain model
Absorb, Integrate, Transmit: Intelligence Increase
Embracing humility, flaws & paradox on the human journey
Circuit 1: Bio-Survival intelligence
Circuit 2: Emotional-Territorial intelligence
Direct experience
Meeting the needs of the second circuit

Listen to or download interview

(via Dedroidify)

To learn more about the 8 circuit model from Antero himself, be at Esozone

And don’t forget, you can see Antero’s new film Invisible Forest:

Thursday June 5, 9pm: DIVA Center, Eugene OR $5.
Friday June 6, 9:30pm: Hollywood Theatre, Portland OR $6.50
Sunday June 15, 2pm: NW Film Forum, Seattle WA. $8.
Wed. June 18, 8:30pm: Pickford Cinema, Bellingham WA $7.50
Friday June 27, 7pm: Shiny Object, West Sacramento. $5.

Here’s Erik Davis’s review of Invisible Forest:

Like a lot of heads, I first encountered the Finish wizard Antero Alli through his playful, prophetic, and handy books. If you are looking for a real-deal reality programming manual with just the right amount of Discordian spice, you can hardly do better than his classic debut, AngelTech. […] I’ve seen most of Alli’s movies, and they keep getting better. The Invisible Forest, Alli’s latest, is the strongest yet,

Full Story: Techngnosis

Psychedelic Research

May 31, 2008 /

There’s a new psychedelic blog called “Psychedelic Research”. It’s author is Matthew Baggott who is a graduate student in neuroscience at UC Berkeley and a research associate at California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute.

His reasons for starting the blog:

“This is a blog to track research and events relating to the scientific study of hallucinogens and consciousness. I hope that documenting my readings here will be interesting or even helpful to others. My writing goals with this blog are relatively modest: I primarily aim to provide abstracts from papers, linking to them whenever possible, with occasional brief comments about what interests me.

Most hallucinogen research still takes place with a pharmacology context. But increasingly, people are using research tools from other domains, such as neuroscience. As a result, I think our understanding of hallucinogens and human consciousness may both be improved. Although science has yet to fully realize this promise, there are many studies that contain gems of insight. Hopefully this blog can help reveal these gems.”

(Psychedelic Research. h/t: Drug Monkey)

Neuroscientists Take Important Step toward Mind Reading

May 30, 2008 /

Legions of science-fiction authors have imagined a future that includes mind-reading technology. Although the ability to play back memories like a movie remains a distant dream, a new study has taken a provocative step in that direction by decoding neural signals for images.

Neuroscientist Kendrick Kay and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, were able to successfully determine which of a large group of never-before-seen photographs a subject was viewing based purely on functional MRI data. By analyzing fMRI scans of viewers as they looked at thousands of images, Kay’s team created a computer model that uses picture elements such as angles and brightness to predict the neural activity elicited by a novel black-and-white photograph. Then the researchers scanned subjects while showing them new snapshots. Most of the time Kay’s model could single out which image the subject was viewing by matching its prediction of brain activity to the actual activity measured by the fMRI scanner, although very similar pictures tended to baffle the program.

Full Story: Scientific American

(via Tomorrow Museum)

Dennis McKenna interview

May 29, 2008 /

dennis mckenna interview

Originally from High Times

What we were doing was not science – it was magic. We thought we were doing science but we didn’t know anything about science at the time. We set up what we called an experiment, but what we should have really called a ritual. Honestly it was a ritual but we had the idea that if we took a large dose of mushrooms, along with ayahuasca and heard this sound, that we could generate this standing wave form and that we could actually transfer that into the body of a mushroom in a stable way so that it would be outside the body and it would be sustained by it’s own superconducting circuitry, and you would be able to see it and be it at the same time. It would be, in a sense, an artifact from beyond that you generate out of your own head. It would be a super, transbiological artifact, translinguistic matter that would be meaning itself fixed into a biological matrix.

RAK> And do you think it succeeded, the experiment?

DENNIS> (hesitates)… No… (laughs) No, not exactly… What we were trying to do, essentially, if I can harken back to the basis of this in myth and history, I mean the closest analogy to it is the Philosopher’s Stone. We were trying to recreate the Philosopher’s Stone, which in some ways is the ultimate artifact. That thing that exists and is both mind and matter and responds to thought and is you and can do anything you can imagine, literally, anything you can imagine.

Full Story: Undergrowth

Dennis McKenna will be keynoting Esozone: the Other Tomorrow in Portland, OR this October.

The Pharmacratic Inquisition documentary free on Google Video

May 28, 2008 /

Documentary from Gnostic Media

How deep does the rabbit hole go? Gnostic Media is proud to present the official online edition of The Pharmacratic Inquisition 2007. If you enjoyed ‘Zeitgeist – The Movie’, you will love this video; the creators of this video are listed as one of the sources for the Zeitgeist Movie. The Pharmacratic Inquisition 2007 is a video version of the book, ‘Astrotheology & Shamanism’ by Jan Irvin & Andrew Rutajit. The painstakingly detailed and heavily footnoted research in the book comes to life in this video and is now available to you for FREE! For further research of the claims made in this video, please read AstroTheology & Shamanism – this book is available to order as a combo with the DVD. Thousands of years ago, in the pre monarchic era, sacred plants and other entheogenic substances where politically correct and highly respected for their ability to bring forth the divine, Yahweh, God, The Great Spirit, etc., by the many cultures who used them. Often the entire tribe or community would partake in the entheogenic rites and rituals. These rites were often used in initiation into adulthood, for healing, to help guide the community in the decision process, and to bring the direct religious experience to anyone seeking it. In the pre literate world, the knowledge of psychedelic sacraments, as well as fertility rites and astronomical knowledge surrounding the sun, stars, and zodiac, known as astrotheology, were anthropomorphized into a character or a deity; consequently, their stories and practices could easily be passed down for generations. Weather changes over millenniums caused environmental changes that altered the available foods and plant sacraments available in the local vicinity. If a tribe lost its shamanic El-der (El – God), all of the tribe’s knowledge of their plant sacraments as well as astronomical knowledge would be lost. The Church’s inquisitions extracted this sacred knowledge from the local Shamans who were then exterminated…It is time to recognize the fact that this Pharmacratic Inquisition is still intact and destroy it.

(via Dedroidify)

The Orgasmic Mind: The Neurological Roots of Sexual Pleasure

May 17, 2008 /

neuroscience of orgasm

Sexual desire and orgasm are subject to various influences on the brain and nervous system, which controls the sex glands and genitals.

The ingredients of desire may differ for men and women, but researchers have revealed some surprising similarities. For example, visual stimuli spur sexual stirrings in women, as they do in men.

Achieving orgasm, brain imaging studies show, involves more than heightened arousal. It requires a release of inhibitions engineered by shutdown of the brain’s center of vigilance in both sexes and a widespread neural power failure in females.

Full Story: Scientific American

(Thanks Bill!)

Ayahuasca tourism article in the Houston Chronicle

May 15, 2008 /

They each have paid $1,680 to spend nine days at Souther’s Blue Morpho lodge in the Peruvian jungle and to sample the plant potion for themselves.

But this is not some Amazonian Kool-Aid Acid Test and these are not Merry Pranksters.

LSD and other recreational drugs are not for them, and many shun alcohol. Ranging in age from early 20s to late 50s, they work as university professors, marketing executives and environmental activists. Then there’s Heather, a tall, muscular woman who competes in Ironman races.

With the help of ayahuasca, they hope to address persistent emotional, physical or psychological afflictions that Western medicine has failed to alleviate. Others seek more spirituality in their lives.

Full Story: Houston Chronicle

(via Daily Grail)

Glass armonica: banned musical instrument “causes insanity”

May 12, 2008 /

Above: Vera Meyer performs various songs on a glass armonica.

glass armonica

The glass armonica’s ghostly notes will cause insanity in its musicians and listeners! At least this is what was thought to be true in the 18th century. People were frightened by the armonica’s sound due to it’s strange interactions with the human brain and ears (more on this later). Benjamin Franklin invented the glass armonica (above) in 1761 after being profoundly moved by the sounds of the glass harp (below).

[…]

The glass armonica’s sound is perceived by human ears differently than other instruments because its range is between 1,000 and 4,000 hertz. When sounds are below 4,000 hertz, the human brain compares ‘phase differences’ between the left and right ears to triangulate the origin of the sound rather than comparing volumes. This causes hearing disorientation and a ‘not quite sure’ feeling about where the sound is coming from.

Full Story: the Oddstrument collection

(via Grinding)

Simply Put

May 9, 2008 /

Julian Walker is doing an interesting series on his blog called Simply Put which is based on his “21st Century Spirituality model”:

“My 21st Century Spirituality model is an attempt to offer a contemporary alternative to old world religious metaphysics and new age magical thinking. As such the model asserts three key principles:

* critical thinking (and cognitive/intellectual self-development)

* inquiry-based (as opposed to faith-based) practice

* shadow-work (depth-oriented psychological honesty).

Simply Put is a distilled statement of critical thinking based truths that have inquiry-based practice application in conjunction with shadow-work. The first three installments will be a re-run from earlier this year and thereafter I plan to add more installments to this series. This time around I will add an extended commentary in the comments section below and video blogs offering elaboration and meditation instruction – this is just the beginning.”

(Simply Put #1. First Commentary on Simply Put. Simply Put #1: Meditation Video)

(Julian Walker’s Blog)

You Are the River: An Interview with Ken Wilber

May 9, 2008 /

“Ken Wilber may be the most important living philosopher you’ve never heard of. He’s written dozens of books but you’d be hard-pressed to find his name in a mainstream magazine. Still, Wilber has a passionate — almost cultlike — following in certain circles, as well as some famous fans. Bill Clinton and Al Gore have praised Wilber’s books. Deepak Chopra calls him “one of the most important pioneers in the field of consciousness.” And the Wachowski brothers asked Wilber, along with Cornel West, to record the commentary for the DVDs of their “Matrix” movies.

A remarkable autodidact, Wilber’s books range across entire fields of knowledge, from quantum physics to developmental psychology to the history of religion. He’s steeped in the world’s esoteric traditions, such as Mahayana Buddhism, Vedantic Hinduism, Sufism and Christian mysticism. Wilber also practices what he preaches, sometimes meditating for hours at a stretch. His “integral philosophy,” along with the Integral Institute he’s founded, hold out the promise that we can understand mystical experience without lapsing into New Age mush.”

(via Salon. h/t Julian Walker’s Blog)

Older posts Newer posts

Archive by Subject

Archive by Date

© 2026 Technoccult

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑