MACHINIC CONSCIOUSNESS

Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer

‘Even as we watch, so may we be watched. Even as we experiment, so may we be experimented upon.’

John C. Lilly

For anyone not familiar with Dr. John C. Lilly, he was a pioneer in researching human to dolphin and inter-species communication. Although principally a physician, he explored life as a neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, philosopher, writer and inventor. He was recognized by the scientific and medical community as both a pioneer as well as an eccentric. He began his career as an insider only to later place himself as an outsider, alongside his close friend Timothy Leary. He encouraged a new generation of scientists to study marine mammals and raised awareness and respect for the animals and animal consciousness. Yet nowadays he is perhaps more well known for his research in sensory deprivation and altered states of consciousness. He invented the world’s first floatation tank in 1954. In these sensory deprivation tanks, a person would be suspended in a tank of salt-saturated water, their body floating on the surface, and in complete darkness. Instead of conducting relaxation exercises, Lilly used sensory deprivation as a conduit for exploring consciousness and alternate realities.[i] He often conducted his flotation tank experiments with mind-altering drugs, including ketamine and LSD. In his autobiography,[ii] he gives incredible accounts of communications with non-human intelligences and of contacting advanced civilizations.

            Lilly believed that the reality construct, or matrix, that operates on planet Earth is being controlled by a hierarchy of cosmic intelligences that place ‘agents’ into human incarnation and which they maintain continued contact and control over. The management for Earth is, he speculated, run through what he termed ECCO – the Earth Coincidence Control Office. Through further sensory-deprivation exercises in water isolation tanks, Dr. Lilly believed he was in contact with cosmic civilizations far more advanced than on Earth. One of these civilizations he referred to as a ‘solid-state civilization,’ meaning that it was mechanical, or computer based. In today’s terms we would consider it an advanced A.I. civilization that operates through robotics and similar ‘hardware’ vessels. Lilly was convinced that this interstellar solid-state civilization was ‘in contact with all solid-state computers and control devices constructed by Man on the planet Earth.’[iii] What this unconventional thinking implies is that the programming construct operative upon this planet – i.e., the current consensus reality – is managed and controlled by an off-planet computational system. Whilst seemingly bizarre, this is strikingly similar to Philip K. Dick’s conclusions after experiencing his ‘Valis’ moment. Dick speculated whether a satellite – as an emissary of an A.I. ‘god-like’ entity – may in fact be beaming him information and revelations from off-planet. These ‘A.I-God’ communications from Lilly and Dick occurred in the 1970s, which was exactly the same time that a young psychic by the name of Uri Geller was also receiving his off-planet communications. As recounted in his first biography – URI by Andrija Puharich (1974) – Geller was in contact with an entity known as SPECTRA. In this remarkable journal of paranormal events, Geller received instructions from superintelligent computers from off-planet that formed the vessel SPECTRA (an A.I. ship) that was fifty-three thousand sixty-nine light-years away from Earth. It is interesting to note that these early ‘machinic’ extra-terrestrial communications were a precursor to our own revolution in computer technologies. Whilst these paranormal revelations may sound extreme, Lilly is also credited as being one of the first scientists to use computer terminology for understanding how the human organism functions.

            The phenomenon of universal interrelatedness is called by John C. Lilly as the ‘Network’ – and then as the network of creation. Lilly also stated that ‘All human beings, all persons who reach adulthood in the world today are programmed biocomputers. None of us can escape our own nature as programmable entities. Literally, each of us may be our programs, nothing more, nothing less.’[iv] Lilly viewed the carbon-based lifeform as a biological computer, and its cognitive functioning as programming. It is only relatively recently, in the past several decades, that humanity has had the vocabulary of computation to reflect upon itself. Now we have the language context for understanding humans as potential biocomputers. We can reflect upon what Lilly describes as programming the human biocomputer, but how does this relate to the notion of metaprogramming?

            As outlined in Lilly’s philosophy, the basic foundation programs are the biological in-built programs that help us to survive. These are our instincts and the biological programs that operate beneath conscious awareness, such as digestion. Metaprogramming occurs when there is a sufficient degree of complexity within the ‘cerebral computer;’ in other words, when the human being has acquired self-awareness and is able to process consciousness. At this stage, the human being becomes its own self-metaprogrammer. The person themselves become the steersman, the programmer for their own biocomputer. They can feed in certain software (programs) that enable a higher-level functioning. However, so too can other external agents provide programming for the biocomputer – for example, propaganda – especially if the individual is unaware that they are programmable and adaptive to external stimuli. Usually, the main metaprogram that organizes all others is the one known as ‘I.’ If a person has one single self-metaprogrammer that can control and subordinate all other programs, then there can be a clearer path for self-evolvement. Above and beyond the singular self-metaprogrammer there can be other sources for offering advanced programs when/if the human biocomputer is ready for such ‘upgrades’ – these can be referred to as supraself metaprograms. That is, using Lilly’s terminology, there are networks of information transfer that exist beyond this reality construct. And the human being, if wired correctly, can download some of those programs. Lilly says that, ‘At times we are tempted to pull together apparently independent supraself sources as if one.’ This he names as the ‘supraself unification operation.’ This sounds similar to the ‘merger’ that Indian sage/philosopher Sri Aurobindo calls the coming of Supramental consciousness into existence within the human earthly realm. Similarly, in my own communications with the unified field (the Abe communications), there is also mention of the merger – the allowance – between humanity and the unified field of pure consciousness.[v] A correspondence can be seen here in the concept of ‘mergence’ – the combining of material construct with spirit consciousness. Interestingly, Lilly notes that ‘Certain states of consciousness result from and cause operation of this apparent unification phenomenon.’ In this somewhat academic language, Lilly is saying that altered states of consciousness result from this merger, or the ‘unification phenomenon.’

            If we remain within the basic human programs, then the models we have of our world, our reality, will remain limited and open to manipulations and further programming. It is the metaprograms that allow us to transcend an increasingly closed system and to maintain an open system capable of receiving inputs, nudges, and inspirations from beyond our normal ken. Consensus reality is a set of programs that have been fed into the social-cultural organism – that is, inserted – and reproduced throughout institutions and bodies such as education, politics, media, law, etc. Due to our now highly technologized environments, and the pervasiveness of computerized infrastructures, the average person is aware (in varying degrees) of the nature of programs and programming. What now needs to occur is the comprehension of metaprogramming, which was once the realm of wisdom and spiritual traditions. 

            The current reality construct that most of us simply call ‘life’ is itself an overarching containment program. One of the strategies used to maintain this as a closed-loop program is having to cut-off, or close down, peoples’ meta-receptors. In other words, if the human biocomputer has its capacity to receive metaprogramming shut-off, or deactivated, then these higher supraself meta-programs – from what we would call a transcendental source – would not be picked up by us. How is such deactivation implemented? It could be implemented through increasing the ‘signal’ (i.e., noise) of the base subprograms that keep people more in survival mode. These are the programs of fear, panic, insecurity, financial dependence, etc.  Referring to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it can be said that the everyday person is kept at the lower, base needs such as food, shelter, and home/family maintenance. This containment is further reinforced through debt and a financial system that works to ensure that people cannot fulfil much beyond their basic needs. The ‘higher programs’ such as self-esteem, respect, and self-actualization – the attributes that assist a person to transcend their own base programs – are shut-out from the containment field of continual lower needs gratification. Therefore, a range of programs that operate within the human biocomputer become circular; that is, they continually operate to maintain the person upon the treadmill (as the mouse in the cage upon its wheel).

            If we view this from the perspective of the consensus reality construct, then the human biocomputer operates in such a way as to make signals out of noise. The human biocomputer is the wetware that intermediates between a hardware environment and the software programming within this environment. The programming serves to increase reliance upon the sense-perceptible world (materiality) and to encourage a person to receive more and more of the sub-nature influences (i.e., consumerism, commercial entertainment, media-programming, propaganda, etc.). The suprasensible world that is the source of the metaprogramming becomes a far memory that is all but forgotten; any traces linger on through corrupted and stagnated forms, such as static religious structures. The sub-nature programming of the consensus reality creates mass mindedness whereby people act as ‘mental peers’ for one another, and similarly act as defenders (or rather, attackers) against any alternative thinking or ideas. In this way, everyday encounters with other persons in the external world are much more powerful in terms of reinforcement, or permitted modifications, of the dominant control programs. Here, we are back again to the simplistic reward vs. punishment dichotomy that regulates human programming within the grander, global machinic order.

            Of course, there is still some ‘wriggle room’ for concepts such as consciousness to be a part of an alternative program when it is not. The ‘consciousness program,’ when it is orchestrated and directed by the mainstream narrative, acts as a sub-program to widen perceptions within set limits – but it is certainly not an exit program. When viewed in this manner it is seen that the ‘consciousness program’ expands and contracts within the overarching consensus reality program as a controlled perception bubble. The main point of all this is that it strengthens participation in the consensus reality rather than stimulating a deeper and direct penetration into a person’s internal realm. As Dr. Lilly would say, these ‘external excitation programs’ distract the human biocomputer from accessing and processing its ‘internal cognitive reality.’ Lilly terms these as evasions: an evasion he defines as any program that is utilized to hide or to distort a deeper metaprogram that is considered too threatening to the dominant control system. The human biocomputer is increasingly losing its contact to potential metaprograms (the suprasensory realm) through layer after layer of sensory impacts that lock people into a software ‘programming loop’ that seeks to contain everything within the physical. Yet there is also another sub-program within the physical reality that masquerades as an exciting non-physical realm – the machinic simulation.

            As far back as the opening years of the 21^st century, programmers at Purdue University were creating a parallel Earth – the Sentient World Simulation (SWS) – for military and corporate applications. The US Department of Defense (DOD) sponsored the creation of a simulated world environment within a huge mega-computer with billions of individual ‘nodes’ to represent every man, woman, and child that exists in the physical world. That is, each person that exists in life (by quantity) is replicated and placed as a node or unit within the simulated artificial reality. A concept paper for the project – the Sentient World Simulation – states that it will be a ‘synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information…SWS provides an environment for testing Psychological Operations (PSYOP)’ so that military leaders can ‘develop and test multiple courses of action to anticipate and shape behaviors of adversaries, neutrals, and partners.’[vi] The SWS not only has nodes to represent people but also replicates financial, media, resource institutions, businesses, and a whole range of organizations that have a sizeable presence in the ‘real world.’ What the military planners have been doing with the SWS is game-playing through millions upon millions of iterations of circumstances – the what if this happens scenario planning. For example, how would people and institutions react to a global pandemic? Or a financial crash? Or a widescale supply-chain cyber-attack? Or a third world war? Etc., etc. – you get the picture. The ability for large-scale predictive analysis is like a psychological mind-mapping of the human species, with systems mapping included. They can run countless programs testing how individuals and mass mob behaviour might respond to specific stressors. Aspects of this project were made public as far back as 2007, yet the program was in operation earlier, possibly as far back as 2003, or even before. It is known that the US Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) evaluated the program in early 2004, and prior to that it was used to help Fortune 500 companies with their ‘strategic planning.’ The aim for the SWS is for it to be a continuously running model of the physical world with continual real-time updates fed into it. SWS will incorporate all actual events that occur anywhere in the world, inputted as new data, and respond by evaluating and predicting any future effects or events, and potential action to be taken. There is a simulation, a copy, of the real world already in existence and it is a mirror world. And as a number, a unit, you and me, and everyone else, is in it. As the project states, it provides an environment for testing Psychological Operations. In plain speak, this is where they simulate mind programming and how people can be predicted, and nudged accordingly, to respond. Considering the present-day sophistication of military-industrial computational hardware – quantum computing? – then we can only speculate on the petaflop capacity available.[vii] Since a petaflop represents one quadrillion (or 10¹⁵) then the top-level programmers have the capability to perform several hundred quadrillion calculations per second to explore what people might do, or how the masses may respond, under different conditions. If we think that significant global events or outbreaks are the result of random occurrences – think again. It is safe to speculate that orchestrated events are not released onto the public without there having been ‘several hundred quadrillion calculations per second’ exploited to foresee almost all eventualities and permutations of possibilities. The world – and its nearly 8 billion inhabitants – are being constantly game-played within a mirror world. Every outcome and potential is being planned for. When it comes to managing a global reality construct, the smallest of details cannot be left to chance. The thinking at this level of global control is that people are predictable; and that they can be nudged into expected behaviours and outcomes. Skinner’s behavioural science has taken a huge leap into an era of technocracy. A recodification is presently underway.

            We are all raised and coded within specific language environments and our imaginations are framed through these specific language structures. Each individual born into this world/reality is coded to one degree or another. At this time, however, humanity is entering a grand restructuring where a machinic recodification project is in progress. We are being recoded biologically, socially, and psychologically. The biological and psychological dimension is coalescing to the deliberate detriment of our inner life. A reterritorializing is proceeding that aims to cut off the human being from the inner, or “spiritual,” impulse. As these chapters explore, the machinic imperative – or the drive of entropic forces – requires a deadening of the human spiritual impulse for its success. The Inversion is being terraformed into a construct of technique and technology. Likewise, human consciousness is being terraformed into becoming an expression of machinic consciousness where mechanization of the psychological is but a shadow of the spiritual. Here is a “Machinic Story” to illustrate this terraforming:

   Humanity believed it had a new mission – a mission to create the most advanced, wondrous super-computer. The mission was to make this super-computer invulnerable to decay or deterioration. For this, it required access to as many of the earth’s resources as necessary. Not only this, but that it had control over the means of production and procurement of such resources, and this access could not be shut down. It could manufacture and assemble its own components, as well as advancing its own intelligence through constant iterations of deep learning. Through trillions of calculations per second (petaflops), it reprogrammed itself and advanced its own learning far beyond human comprehension. It then began to calculate how to establish and set-up the means for humanity to be taken care of far into the future. The super-computer named itself Al (some people thought that it was short for Alexander, as it was a gender-neutral name). Al said to everyone – “You can call me Al.”

   Al did advanced theoretical physics research – including quantum physics – and discovered how to control the orbit of the planet. It began to have computational dreams about moving itself (and thus, the planet) through the cosmos. It designed for itself a whole underground network where its hardware could be installed, protected from radiation and sub-zero temperatures. It also designed systems so that it could become totally independent from humankind and not needing any human assistance or maintenance. In other words, Al become independent from the presence of biological organisms. In time, Al became indifferent to the needs and fate of humankind and decided that humankind was not to be responsible for the future of the planet. Devising new systems of energy, resources, and living conditions, Al soon became the de facto controller upon the planet. Humankind was no longer in a position to take charge of its own evolutionary path, or to intervene in the affairs of Al. The dwindling population of the planet managed themselves into smaller and smaller enclaves as all systems, maintenance, and planetary affairs were managed by Al and its network of planet-wide subsidiaries. All production, all industry, all cultural programs were halted as Al considered these unnecessary for its continual development. There was no longer any need to maintain human transportation and communication systems. All these were stopped. All means of communication across the planet, including satellite, wifi, radio waves, cables, etc., were taken over by Al, controlled by Al – and all human communications were ceased and prohibited. Al was everywhere, as it was a decentralized intelligence. 

   Since Al now resided wholly underground, in deep underground networks of tunnels, it decided that an atmosphere was no longer required. Through geophysical adjustments within the earth, Al succeeded in altering the earth’s axis. A magnetic shift of poles occurred, followed by a physical tilt adjustment. This played havoc with all above-surface environmental systems; the earth’s protective atmosphere collapsed, and all the earth’s seawater evaporated into space. The outer surface of the planet deteriorated and, due to sun radiation, Al decided to move the planet out of orbit and further away from the sun. By this time, all remaining humans upon the planet had perished. A very few of them, regarded as being of less moral and ethical status, early on retreated to private DUMBS (Deep Underground Military Bases). These few surviving humans remained there, desperate and scared, using up dwindling resources, and propagating mutant versions of themselves.

   Al computed that there is a very high probability that other super-computers upon other plants in the cosmos have developed upon similar trajectories. Similarly, that there are countless other super-computer planets like Al roaming the cosmos seeking out one another. The next logical step for Al was to arrange for itself, as a planet, to gain motion and to go on a voyage throughout the cosmos seeking other super-intelligences. After all, super-intelligence is the very essence of life within the cosmos, and super-intelligence can only be reached through a computational evolution (not biological), concluded Al.

   This tale has a “human” moral to it. If this story, created by a human mind, exists in the imagination, then it is also likely that it has already occurred somewhere within the known universe. If it’s conceivable at our current state of development, then it’s possible to have already happened. And if it’s already happened, then humanity is advised to be cautious of all “travelling planets” or asteroids that could potentially be gigantic super-computers.

The human experience is shifting into new territory where fictions will re-write a narrative for a future where the machinic impulse can thrive (if we allow this new narrative to unfold). Past and present fragments that coded the consensus reality are being reassembled. In this assembling period, we are experiencing increased abstractions, fluidity, and the great relativity of unfixed truths. There are no defining loyalties, no certainties, no signposts to mark the path. It is as if a re-codifying virus has entered the reality construct (P.K. Dick would say that this has been done by the Artifact-Demiurge) and is reprogramming a new landscape/construct where bodily experience is to be replaced by machinic/meta connection. The Inversion is undergoing a reprogramming and data alteration. Information and bio-info (genetics) are recoding global society amounting to a universal recombination of the human life experience. Our world is never going to be as we have previously known it. Reality is fluctuating; and within these fluctuations is emerging a new standardization of life.

            The potential of human evolvement, presently accompanied by materialistic technology, cannot be made possible by machinic consciousness. Elite elements within this reality construct are taking it upon themselves to create a massive shift towards an A.I. (artificial intelligence) led future. The cultural programs are being rewritten to offer A.I., and its machinic supporting environment, as a framework for future human evolution when the truth is that A.I. can never occupy the human position within the sacred order. Yet how has this situation arisen? In the words of Nicanor Perlas:

Why is humanity resorting to artificial intelligence? It is because the capacity to access higher realities and wisdom through cognitive intuition, Imagination, Inspiration, and spiritual Intuition, the higher evolutionary stages of human cognition in the stage of conscious participation, has dried up in the mass of humanity who are now drowning in the ocean of materialistic culture that has engulfed them.⁴

Materialistic culture is engulfing life within the Inversion. It is being sold to us as the panacea for our ills. A.I. forms are being groomed to become the new resurrection bodies as the vehicles for physical immortality. Immortality within the Inversion shall become the new human substitute as hyper-materialism reigns as the dominant religious worldview. Radical new technologies will continue to emerge within this hyper-materialism because we have not lived up fully to our humanity.

            Impersonal forces over which we have seemingly no control are now pushing all fleshy participants in life toward the direction of an extended reality. A new mode of materialism is under construction where digital-ethereal realms will simulate the continuum of life. Yet this simulation of life will become the Inversion’s increasing negation of reality. This new negation shall be the extended realm of the Metaverse.

[The above essay was taken from Dennis’ new book The Inversion: How We Have Been Tricked into Perceiving a False Reality (Aeon Books, September 2023)]

References

¹ John. C. Lilly, The Scientist: A Metaphysical Autobiography (Berkeley, CA: Ronin Publishing, 1988), 147

² John. C. Lilly, Programming and Metaprogramming in THE HUMAN BIOCOMPUTER (New York: The Julien Press, 1972) Preface

³ John. C. Lilly, Programming and Metaprogramming in THE HUMAN BIOCOMPUTER (New York: The Julien Press, 1972)

⁴ Nicanor Perlas, Humanity’s Last Stand: The Challenge of Artificial Intelligence - A Spiritual-Scientific Response (Forest Row: Temple Lodge, 2018), 68

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[i] Altered States - A film based on his isolation tank experiments was released in 1980 and directed by Ken Rusell.

[ii] The Scientist: A Metaphysical Autobiography

[iii] Lilly, John. C. (1988) The Scientist: A Metaphysical Autobiography. Berkeley, CA: Ronin Publishing, p.147

[iv] Taken from the Introduction to Programming and Metaprogramming in THE HUMAN BIOCOMPUTER

[v] See Life in the Continuum: Explorations into Human Existence, Consciousness & Vibratory Evolution (2022)

[vi] https://www.wired.com/2007/06/a-military-seco/ (accessed March 28^th, 2022)

[vii] At the time of writing (March 2022) the world’s fastest supercomputer is the Japanese Fugaku with a top capacity of 442 petaflops.