MIND CONTROL FOR DUMMIES:
Cultural Countermeasures for Psychophysical Freedom
http://mindcontrolfordummies.50megs.com/
by Iona Miller, 2007
An Online Book
Reverse Engineering Your Psychophysical Control Systems
An Online Book
Reverse Engineering Your Psychophysical Control Systems
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PARADIGMS, PARAPSYCHOLOGY, PARAPHYSICS, PARANOIA, PSIONICS, PSYCHOTRONICS, PSYCHIC ESPIONAGE, PARANORMAL, PARAPOLITIX
"Control follows awareness." - Special Ops maxim
"Man is free the instant he wants to be." - Voltaire
PSY-STRAT for Modern Living: Breaking through Collective Deceptions
POSITIONING YOURSELF IN THE BATTLE FOR YOUR MIND:
STEALTH, HEALTH & WEALTH
THE RE-EVOLUTION WILL BE INTERNALIZED
WITH TV, HYPNOSIS BECAME OBSOLETE; WITH HAARP, DRUGS BECAME OBSOLETE, AT LEAST FOR MASS MIND CONTROL.
Paranormal * Altered States * Cryptocracy * Espionage * SpyFi * Digital Drugs * PsiSpy * Occulture * Ritual * Subliminazis * Neurotheology * Brain Code * Beliefs * Neurohacking * Paradigm Shift * Psi Wars * Mind Control * EMF * Psychotronics * Manipulation * Countermeasures * Persuasion * Personality Cults * PsiFi * Disinformation * UFOs * PSY-STRAT * Wizards, Spooks & Psiwarriors * Mind Reading * Spiritual Warfare * Thought Injection * Invisible War * Soft Kill * Intelligence * Deep Politics * Cults * Collective Deceptions * Political Witchcraft * High Weirdness * DMT * Metacognition * Conspirituality * Remote Viewing * Nonlethal Weapons * Targeted Individuals * Beamers * Stealth & Health * Bioenergetics * MPD * False Memories * Memory Code * EM Hypersensitivity * NLP * V2K * Reprogramming * Torture * CIA Family Jewels * Thinktanks * SRI * MRU * Tavistock * Holosonics * Hyp-Gnosis * Psychic Self-Defence * Fear Media Propaganda * ELF * HAARP * Scalar Weapons * Synthetic Telepathy * Brain-Computer Interface * Cultural Engineering * Constraints * Counterculture * Subcultures * Internet * Convictions * Mind Shift * Consciousness * The Watchers * Archetypes * New Age * Geomagnetics * Sensory Dep * Ceremonial Psychodrama * Meditation * Self Hypnosis * Brainwaves * Zombies * Neurotransmitters * Assurance * Leadership * Religion * Mind Maps * Strategy * Psychetypes * Disguise * Neurofeedback * Brain Fingerprinting * Confidence Rackets * Initiation * Indoctrination * Censorship * Virtual Reality * Rapport * Manipulation * Transhumanism * Self Talk * Myth * Entrapment * Ideology * Brainwashing * Manchurian Candidate * Groupthink * Subpersonalities * Obsession * Compulsion * Consensus * Coercion * Trance * Paranoia * Taboo * Bondage * Fetish * Seduction * Thrall * Enchantment * Romance * Love * Ecstacy * Magic * Magick * Signs & Portents * Telepathic Hypnosis * Mind Traps * Images, Illusions & Motives * Denial * Self-Delusion * Infiltration * Profiling * DID * Divided Mind * 5-minute Remedies to Mental Poisoning * Distraction * Deprogramming * Deconditioning * Glossary
"Man is free the instant he wants to be." - Voltaire
PSY-STRAT for Modern Living: Breaking through Collective Deceptions
POSITIONING YOURSELF IN THE BATTLE FOR YOUR MIND:
STEALTH, HEALTH & WEALTH
THE RE-EVOLUTION WILL BE INTERNALIZED
WITH TV, HYPNOSIS BECAME OBSOLETE; WITH HAARP, DRUGS BECAME OBSOLETE, AT LEAST FOR MASS MIND CONTROL.
Paranormal * Altered States * Cryptocracy * Espionage * SpyFi * Digital Drugs * PsiSpy * Occulture * Ritual * Subliminazis * Neurotheology * Brain Code * Beliefs * Neurohacking * Paradigm Shift * Psi Wars * Mind Control * EMF * Psychotronics * Manipulation * Countermeasures * Persuasion * Personality Cults * PsiFi * Disinformation * UFOs * PSY-STRAT * Wizards, Spooks & Psiwarriors * Mind Reading * Spiritual Warfare * Thought Injection * Invisible War * Soft Kill * Intelligence * Deep Politics * Cults * Collective Deceptions * Political Witchcraft * High Weirdness * DMT * Metacognition * Conspirituality * Remote Viewing * Nonlethal Weapons * Targeted Individuals * Beamers * Stealth & Health * Bioenergetics * MPD * False Memories * Memory Code * EM Hypersensitivity * NLP * V2K * Reprogramming * Torture * CIA Family Jewels * Thinktanks * SRI * MRU * Tavistock * Holosonics * Hyp-Gnosis * Psychic Self-Defence * Fear Media Propaganda * ELF * HAARP * Scalar Weapons * Synthetic Telepathy * Brain-Computer Interface * Cultural Engineering * Constraints * Counterculture * Subcultures * Internet * Convictions * Mind Shift * Consciousness * The Watchers * Archetypes * New Age * Geomagnetics * Sensory Dep * Ceremonial Psychodrama * Meditation * Self Hypnosis * Brainwaves * Zombies * Neurotransmitters * Assurance * Leadership * Religion * Mind Maps * Strategy * Psychetypes * Disguise * Neurofeedback * Brain Fingerprinting * Confidence Rackets * Initiation * Indoctrination * Censorship * Virtual Reality * Rapport * Manipulation * Transhumanism * Self Talk * Myth * Entrapment * Ideology * Brainwashing * Manchurian Candidate * Groupthink * Subpersonalities * Obsession * Compulsion * Consensus * Coercion * Trance * Paranoia * Taboo * Bondage * Fetish * Seduction * Thrall * Enchantment * Romance * Love * Ecstacy * Magic * Magick * Signs & Portents * Telepathic Hypnosis * Mind Traps * Images, Illusions & Motives * Denial * Self-Delusion * Infiltration * Profiling * DID * Divided Mind * 5-minute Remedies to Mental Poisoning * Distraction * Deprogramming * Deconditioning * Glossary
CULTURAL ILLUSION
MIND CONTROL FOR DUMMIES
THINGS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM
Mind Control Vectors
Conventional Mind Control
Esoteric Mind Control
Psychological Countermeasures
Tavistock Invents Mind Control
Cultural Engineering Thinktanks
WHO DO THESE THINGS SERVE?
Cryptocracy
Paradigm Shift
Hidden Agendas - The Big Lie
Media & Paramedia Ecology
Ritual Murders
Autocratic Archetypes
Fairy Tales
Bliss Bunnies, Blue Hairs, WooWoos & OM-ers
Mind Blowing Counterculture
New Age Thought
UFOs and Mind Control
MIBS
HYP-GNOSIS
Neurotheology
Neurohacking
Metaprogramming
Brain Drivers & Resonance
Schumann’s Resonances
Parapsychology
Electromagnetism & the Mind
HYPNOTORIOUS
Russian Psychotronics
Military Applications
US Psychotronics & Psiops
Media and Mass Mind Control
Electronic Warfare
Directed Energy Weapons
Psychopolitical Strategies
Knowledge Management (KM)
Perception Management (PM)
Semiotics
HAARP and Mind Control
Psionics, V2K, The Voice
Synthetic Telepathy
Divination
Psychotropic Drugs
Digital Drugs
Sensory Deprivation
Remote Controlled "Zombies"Secret Societies
Occult ESPionage
Utopian Idealism & Progressiveness
Ceremonial Psychodrama
Signs, Symbols & SigilsControl Your Energy Body Energy Vampires
Victim/Victimizer
Malignant Narcissists
Depressive Energy Rip Offs
Stress Management
Observer Self
Mind vs. Naked Awareness
Meditation & Healing
Self Hypnosis & Higher Self
Trances People Live
Victimization
Symptomatology
Targeted Individuals (TIs)
Psychic Self Defense
Deconditioning Consciousness
Waking Up!
Alpha to Zitterbewegung
THINGS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM
Mind Control Vectors
Conventional Mind Control
Esoteric Mind Control
Psychological Countermeasures
Tavistock Invents Mind Control
Cultural Engineering Thinktanks
WHO DO THESE THINGS SERVE?
Cryptocracy
Paradigm Shift
Hidden Agendas - The Big Lie
Media & Paramedia Ecology
Ritual Murders
Autocratic Archetypes
Fairy Tales
Bliss Bunnies, Blue Hairs, WooWoos & OM-ers
Mind Blowing Counterculture
New Age Thought
UFOs and Mind Control
MIBS
HYP-GNOSIS
Neurotheology
Neurohacking
Metaprogramming
Brain Drivers & Resonance
Schumann’s Resonances
Parapsychology
Electromagnetism & the Mind
HYPNOTORIOUS
Russian Psychotronics
Military Applications
US Psychotronics & Psiops
Media and Mass Mind Control
Electronic Warfare
Directed Energy Weapons
Psychopolitical Strategies
Knowledge Management (KM)
Perception Management (PM)
Semiotics
HAARP and Mind Control
Psionics, V2K, The Voice
Synthetic Telepathy
Divination
Psychotropic Drugs
Digital Drugs
Sensory Deprivation
Remote Controlled "Zombies"Secret Societies
Occult ESPionage
Utopian Idealism & Progressiveness
Ceremonial Psychodrama
Signs, Symbols & SigilsControl Your Energy Body Energy Vampires
Victim/Victimizer
Malignant Narcissists
Depressive Energy Rip Offs
Stress Management
Observer Self
Mind vs. Naked Awareness
Meditation & Healing
Self Hypnosis & Higher Self
Trances People Live
Victimization
Symptomatology
Targeted Individuals (TIs)
Psychic Self Defense
Deconditioning Consciousness
Waking Up!
Alpha to Zitterbewegung
Mind Control
"The problem of authority and obedience is inseparable from the quest for identity. If there is no private independent personal substance such has always occupied the thoughts of the sages, then all matters of authority and obedience are frivolous, all services and disservices indifferent and equal. If there is no personal identity, indefeasible and intransient, then human society can only be the "Penal Colony" evoked by Franz Kafka."~ McLuhan, Take Today.
"Parapsychology can be harnessed to create conditions where one can alter and manipulate the minds of others." ~Hans Ulrich Dresch, PhD
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able
to entertain a thought without accepting it." ~Aristotle ''We already have a technology that cheaply, effortlessly controls people,'' said Koch. ''It is called television.''
The price of eternal vigilance is indifference.
- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media
"We're witnessing today the deployment of a new, global tele-surveillance system whose impact will be far more profound than that of the traditional television."~Paul Virilio
"Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.""SINGULARITY: the postulated point or short period in our future when our self-guided evolutionary development accelerates enormously (powered bnanotech, neuroscience, AI, and perhaps uploading) so that nothing beyond that time can reliably be conceived."-- Vernor Vinge at the 1993 NASA VISION-21 Symposium; 1986 "For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes." Umberto Eco
A PEEK INSIDE
SEVEN SINS OF MEMORY:
Memory Distortion: Misattribution, Suggestibility, Bias, Persistence
Forgetting: Transience, Absent-Mindedness, Blocking
Belief Engine:Our brains and nervous systems constitute a belief-generating machine, a system that evolved to assure not truth, logic, and reason, but survival. The belief engine has seven major components (Alcock).
1. The learning unit
2. The critical thinking unit
3. The yearning unit
4. The input unit
5. The emotional response unit
6. The memory unit
7. The environmental feedback unit.
NEURAL CODE
The neural code is arguably the most important remaining scientific mystery. It is the software, set of rules, syntax, that transforms electrical pulses in the brain into perceptions, memories, decisions. A solution to the neural code could – in principle – give us almost unlimited power over our psyches, because we could monitor and manipulate brain cells with exquisite precision by speaking to them in their own private language. The neural code is a dauntingly complex, technical topic so, until recently a complete decoding of the brain seemed impossibly remote, because researchers had limited means of probing the microcircuitry of living brains. But just in the past decade researchers have begun crafting arrays of microelectrodes that can eavesdrop on hundreds and even thousands of separate neurons simultaneously, and they have acquired ever-more-powerful computers and algorithms for analyzing data. (Horgan) In 2007, DARPA claimed it quit trying to decode the brain, but that probably just means the project became clandestine.
WORLDVIEW
A world view is a set of presuppositions (or assumptions) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously) about the basic makeup of our world. Everyone has a world view, whether he can explain it or not. It can be likened to a pair of glasses through which one views the world. It is important to have the right prescription, or reality will be distorted. Modem man is faced with a supermarket of world views; all of them claim to represent reality, but they are points of view about reality -- mental constructs, beliefs. Psy-Strat is more interested in the potential effects of beliefs than doctrines or worldviews.
EVOLUTION OF BELIEF PARADIGMS
Stage 1: Archaic: Survival, the Ground Zero of Existence. Self-preservation, isolation; antisocial. Paranoid or idiosyncratic beliefs.
Stage 2: Tribal: Truster/Trickster. Social; love, belonging. Self-sacrifice vs. selfishness. Transgression; taboo. Ethnocentric magical and superstitious beliefs.
Stage 3: Egocentric: Power; Esteem; Autonomy, heroic. Unscrupulous Competition/Hero. Shame vs. honor. Exploitation vs. Respect. Mythic beliefs.
Stage4: Moral/Patriotic. Rules; Initiative. Shame and guilt vs. conformity and conventionality; purpose, virtue. Systematized truths. Emotional, nostalgic beliefs.
Stage 5: Materialist. Reasoning; mental analysis. Rational beliefs, truth; goodness; consumerism, greed. Head vs. heart. Progressive if rewarded, compulsive, workaholic. Perspective. Rational beliefs.
Stage 6: Wise Empath. Service, rapport, intimacy, empathy. Politically correct.. Inner wisdom, meaning. Self-actualization. Intuitive, mystical beliefs.
Stage 7: Distancer/Self. Paradoxical; individuated, reclusive; universalist. Deconstruction and Synthesis, gestalt, the big picture. Integral, synergetic beliefs.
Stage 8: Global Village. Complex Dynamic Beliefs. Post-Metaphysical Integrative Spirituality. “Express Self Now, but not at the expense of Others or the World, so that Life May Continue.” Integrative Sustainable beliefs.
PSYCHOTRONICS: Czech term for “parapsychology” (excluding the study of survival), but embracing certain phenomena that are not now generally accepted as parapsychological. According to (the late) Larissa Vilenskaya (1983, p. 107), the term was first proposed with the analogy of “bionics” in mind, to refer to “the field dealing with the construction of devices capable of enhancing and/or reproducing certain psi phenomena (such as psychokinesis in the case of ‘psychotronic generators’ developed by Robert Pavlita) and later embraced some other phenomena.” [Dale & White, 1977] The science and discipline of how life functions; includes the study of how technology interacts with the human mind, spirit, and body; science, mathematics, philosophy, metaphysics, and esoteric studies are united through the study of psychotronics; it would also include other realities and how we interface with other dimensions of existence; psychotronic devices use radionic tuning to transmit brain waves and are used as mind. The first Psychotronic Conference was held in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in June of 1973.
Neurotheology, the electromagnetics and neurology of biorapture; covers spiritual experiences of phenomena which are the basis of beliefs, built from four key interconnected components: perceptions, emotions, cognitions, and social interactions.
"Parapsychology can be harnessed to create conditions where one can alter and manipulate the minds of others." ~Hans Ulrich Dresch, PhD
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able
to entertain a thought without accepting it." ~Aristotle ''We already have a technology that cheaply, effortlessly controls people,'' said Koch. ''It is called television.''
The price of eternal vigilance is indifference.
- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media
"We're witnessing today the deployment of a new, global tele-surveillance system whose impact will be far more profound than that of the traditional television."~Paul Virilio
"Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.""SINGULARITY: the postulated point or short period in our future when our self-guided evolutionary development accelerates enormously (powered bnanotech, neuroscience, AI, and perhaps uploading) so that nothing beyond that time can reliably be conceived."-- Vernor Vinge at the 1993 NASA VISION-21 Symposium; 1986 "For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes." Umberto Eco
A PEEK INSIDE
SEVEN SINS OF MEMORY:
Memory Distortion: Misattribution, Suggestibility, Bias, Persistence
Forgetting: Transience, Absent-Mindedness, Blocking
Belief Engine:Our brains and nervous systems constitute a belief-generating machine, a system that evolved to assure not truth, logic, and reason, but survival. The belief engine has seven major components (Alcock).
1. The learning unit
2. The critical thinking unit
3. The yearning unit
4. The input unit
5. The emotional response unit
6. The memory unit
7. The environmental feedback unit.
NEURAL CODE
The neural code is arguably the most important remaining scientific mystery. It is the software, set of rules, syntax, that transforms electrical pulses in the brain into perceptions, memories, decisions. A solution to the neural code could – in principle – give us almost unlimited power over our psyches, because we could monitor and manipulate brain cells with exquisite precision by speaking to them in their own private language. The neural code is a dauntingly complex, technical topic so, until recently a complete decoding of the brain seemed impossibly remote, because researchers had limited means of probing the microcircuitry of living brains. But just in the past decade researchers have begun crafting arrays of microelectrodes that can eavesdrop on hundreds and even thousands of separate neurons simultaneously, and they have acquired ever-more-powerful computers and algorithms for analyzing data. (Horgan) In 2007, DARPA claimed it quit trying to decode the brain, but that probably just means the project became clandestine.
WORLDVIEW
A world view is a set of presuppositions (or assumptions) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously) about the basic makeup of our world. Everyone has a world view, whether he can explain it or not. It can be likened to a pair of glasses through which one views the world. It is important to have the right prescription, or reality will be distorted. Modem man is faced with a supermarket of world views; all of them claim to represent reality, but they are points of view about reality -- mental constructs, beliefs. Psy-Strat is more interested in the potential effects of beliefs than doctrines or worldviews.
EVOLUTION OF BELIEF PARADIGMS
Stage 1: Archaic: Survival, the Ground Zero of Existence. Self-preservation, isolation; antisocial. Paranoid or idiosyncratic beliefs.
Stage 2: Tribal: Truster/Trickster. Social; love, belonging. Self-sacrifice vs. selfishness. Transgression; taboo. Ethnocentric magical and superstitious beliefs.
Stage 3: Egocentric: Power; Esteem; Autonomy, heroic. Unscrupulous Competition/Hero. Shame vs. honor. Exploitation vs. Respect. Mythic beliefs.
Stage4: Moral/Patriotic. Rules; Initiative. Shame and guilt vs. conformity and conventionality; purpose, virtue. Systematized truths. Emotional, nostalgic beliefs.
Stage 5: Materialist. Reasoning; mental analysis. Rational beliefs, truth; goodness; consumerism, greed. Head vs. heart. Progressive if rewarded, compulsive, workaholic. Perspective. Rational beliefs.
Stage 6: Wise Empath. Service, rapport, intimacy, empathy. Politically correct.. Inner wisdom, meaning. Self-actualization. Intuitive, mystical beliefs.
Stage 7: Distancer/Self. Paradoxical; individuated, reclusive; universalist. Deconstruction and Synthesis, gestalt, the big picture. Integral, synergetic beliefs.
Stage 8: Global Village. Complex Dynamic Beliefs. Post-Metaphysical Integrative Spirituality. “Express Self Now, but not at the expense of Others or the World, so that Life May Continue.” Integrative Sustainable beliefs.
PSYCHOTRONICS: Czech term for “parapsychology” (excluding the study of survival), but embracing certain phenomena that are not now generally accepted as parapsychological. According to (the late) Larissa Vilenskaya (1983, p. 107), the term was first proposed with the analogy of “bionics” in mind, to refer to “the field dealing with the construction of devices capable of enhancing and/or reproducing certain psi phenomena (such as psychokinesis in the case of ‘psychotronic generators’ developed by Robert Pavlita) and later embraced some other phenomena.” [Dale & White, 1977] The science and discipline of how life functions; includes the study of how technology interacts with the human mind, spirit, and body; science, mathematics, philosophy, metaphysics, and esoteric studies are united through the study of psychotronics; it would also include other realities and how we interface with other dimensions of existence; psychotronic devices use radionic tuning to transmit brain waves and are used as mind. The first Psychotronic Conference was held in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in June of 1973.
Neurotheology, the electromagnetics and neurology of biorapture; covers spiritual experiences of phenomena which are the basis of beliefs, built from four key interconnected components: perceptions, emotions, cognitions, and social interactions.
- The perception that space/time orientation ceases; "spaced out"
- NDE; ego death
- Fear, alienation and self-consciousness dissolve
- Nature mysic experiences or spiritual awe; bliss
- Creativity and connection with Source
- Ego submits to will of Self
- DNA memory coiling back to the dawn of life
- Sense of immortality and interspecies symbiosis
- Oneness with the universe
- Ecstatic trance; self-transcendence; psychophysical rapture
- Sudden enlightenment, stabilizing over time
- Altered States of Consciousness; temporal lobe visions
- Pure Awareness; Illumination
- Increase of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine DMT levels in the 1000 Petalled Lotus or Pineal Gland.
POSITIONING YOURSELF IN THE BATTLE FOR YOUR MIND
SELF-REGULATION: The antidote to groupthink, to the new conformity of the NOT-SEES, to political and media mind control is self-care and self-regulation. Take a break daily from consensus reality, the lowest common denominator of consciousness. Creative physics leads to a new paradigm for human survival technology, beyond our wornout mechanistic worldview. New media creates the environments of the future, the cultural ground. The "doors of perception" between Reality and the Imaginal are sprung wide open. Immersive Virtualities will soon make "real fantasy" possible.
Is the search for the “holy grail” of Truth the ultimate Quest, a journey rather than a goal, as so many philosophers imply? It has taken humanity through the physical rigors of horizontal exploration, and accompanied us on our trips down the rabbit hole of conceptual and spiritual exploration. But, as we know, there is ‘truth’ and ‘Truth’. It is the same drive that motivates both scientist and spiritual seeker to bite off an experiential piece of the Great Unknown..
Is Truth primary or emergent? What is Truth? We may know nothing about truth but presume it knows everything about us. Our concept of truth is actually pretty flimsy. Metaphysical truth is by definition beyond observation, beyond the physically observable, yet perhaps available by deduction or inference.
The very first and foundational inner experience in Kabbalah (the art of being fully human) is the Vision of the Mechanics of the Universe, in order to foster a critical eye toward Reality and its underlying physical laws. How can you possibly comprehend yourself if you don’t know the fundamental laws of physics and psychobiology? A common existential “mistake” is viewing ourselves primarily as a solid meatbody, rather than as an electromagnetic wavefront in space that science suggests. If you are wrong about the fundamental truth of your own existence, how distorted will your other notions be?
We should take care that our protocols and resulting theories have a sound rational basis, taking the best from both ancient and modern worlds. The brain can register the same result for a simulated or real event; that is a double-edged sword that leads many to faulty conclusions. Can Truth be extracted from Cosmos; will the Truth ever come out? And if so, where is it hiding? All we know right now about the primary groundstate of human existence is that it is Pure Nothing (vacuum fluctuation; ZPE).
Later, we will explore the physical and metaphysical roots of different kinds of Truth, relative and Absolute. They will include physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimensions; scientific and metaphysical truth. We will also explore different domains of truth and how they relate to the Big Picture, adaptation and human survival. Even beautiful and convincing explanations can be wrong. Science often doesn’t know if it is ‘true’ and that is why ‘falsifiability’ is a keystone of the scientific process.
We have various forms of truth but they are not reliable for understanding ourselves or Cosmos in the sense of a final and absolute Truth. We try to obtain the most accurate explanation we can at the moment. Still, we cannot say there will never be an absolute Truth. Yet partial truths remain approximations. But this very lack of absoluteness keeps the future open. What most attracts our concern is often at the creative frontier of the mind.
Our understanding and definitions are refined as data are refined and our perceptions become more enlightened. It doesn’t change what is true, but it doesn’t mean we can never comprehend an Absolute Truth that is currently beyond our ability. We can’t really know. But expansion of our previous understanding doesn’t change the reality or truthfulness of existence. In black and white: what exists and true and what does not is false or a lie. Our perceptions can be wrong and sensible. Reality can be strongly counterintuitive or contain hidden options at the point of observation.
Truth fits happier with philosophy, but should not be confused with probability, as shown in the nature of paradox. Seemingly obvious truths are often not correct at all. We all harbor unwitting biases that distort the signals received by our senses and generated in our own psychophysical systems. Experiments in sensory deprivation have exposed the intense power of inner-generated imagery/feeling states. We can’t remove this distorting prejudice from our viewpoint so Truth remains elusive, if not completely partial and relative.
Defined truths do not help us achieve an absolutely true sense of ourselves or universe. Mathematical and scientific truths come closer in this regard, but even statistical analysis is less than perfect and often not applicable to our unique case, certainly not experientially. Even if we misinterprete it, our experience remains our experience, but we can learn to sniff out our own distortions with critical thinking and reflection. The same is true for the laws of physics which work better for understanding universals than ourselves.
Explanations are always being tested and improved, but can never provide perfect, total descriptions. Likewise for facts, data, and evidence which are partial by nature. There is no completely general notion of truth we can define scientifically. But there might be specific absolute truths. But facts do not mean that all truths are relative.
A statement is true only if it applies to reality. In science, what was once heresy can become established as a new orthodoxy by further experimentation. But if we stop looking for the improbable, beneath our current beliefs, we will stop discovering deeper truths. Our truths are often the most accurate undestandings we have have in existence. Less accurate explanations often often circulate at the same time and are embraced by some. The joke is the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.
Plato said poetry was nearer to vital truth than history. Myths were the original explanations and they are still with us, albeit in new forms. We still mythologize about our selves and bodies, about the arc of relationship and what is fair and what we think we deserve, we dream and grieve if we lose that dream. We concoct intellectual myths that we embrace passionately perhaps to counterbalance personal emotional disappointments, and a whole supermarket of spiritual beliefs and technologies with various goals and levels of access to deep reality. They also carry less obvious secondary-gains. Modern myths are the strange attractors of our day causing us to “worship” or reify what the culture admires, mostly notably celebrity.
If this essay makes you bristle with objections, realized or unrealized before, and raises only one question that takes you beyond where you presently stand, then my work is done. I only seek to disrupt whatever position you occupy, to perturb, to rototill the fertile soil of your own mind and send you caroming off to your own next real-I-zation. But don’t stop there. I want to plant the seeds of doubt, because therein lies the seed of your future’s fruit, the creativity and individuation that is your unique contribution.
I will ask far more questions than I can answer; perhaps yours will be among them. At least I can say I have recounted mine throughout my life, with or without an audience, in my writing and artwork. How can I be disillusioned? Let me count the ways. With my own body, with my own psychophysical emotions and relationships, with my own cherished concepts, ideas, ideals and spiritual beliefs…may I always welcome and learn from it.
This search is embodied in the practice of critical thinking, but we know from our experience that sometimes we just have to stand in the Mystery. There are limitations to our understanding, though we like to fill in the blanks for security. We think we have chipped away at pre-scientific explanations that filled the lacuna of the Great Unknown in our earlier history. But is our modern discernment any clearer or more functional in terms of human survival technology?
We can’t even accurately remember our own childhoods. Are we not as provincial and superstitious as ever? We bristle at things that go bump in the night. We look expectantly for signs with personal roots and build stories around the meaningful probability shocks of synchronicity, when the environment mirrors our psyches. We rely on astrology more than psychology and anxiously try to divine our futures. How far have we come in 50,000 years?
We are fascinated at the prospect of developing or experiencing our paranormal abilities often when we haven’t even developed our conventional talents or made a firm foundation by healing our early wounds. It might be a compensation for feeling powerless in an overwhelming, rapidly changing technological nightmare. We are numb with futureshock, endlessly learning new protocols in the rapidly changing electronic environment.
We cleave together in self-validating subcultures where we share compatible warm-fuzzy viewpoints. Our view of nature and the environment is still based largely on only one sense, on sight, and our propensity to believe what we see. Hubble has shown us the galactic nursery at the dawn of time.
Mentalists and magicians have exploited this ambiguity between Truth and amazement for centuries to make their illusions convincing. A good contemporary example is Chris Angel, “Mind Phreak”. And yet we “know” that they are tricks, tricks of the sensorium and mind, misdirections which our thinking processes can also play on ourselves. There is no insight, but rather a hollow echoing of our own misperception. Knowing this does not make us immune to bedazzlement. Does the Abyss not continue to stare wryly back at us, frightening us with the prospect of our own mortality, taunting our faith in nature, God or Goddess, and man?
We are probably our own greatest source of misinformation, as expert testimony in court shows. There is no insight, but rather a hollow echoing of our own misperception. Knowing this does not make us immune to bedazzlement. Does the Abyss not continue to stare wryly back at us, frightening us with the prospect of our own mortality, taunting our faith in nature, God or Goddess, and man?
TRUTH OR DARE
Is there ANY truth in us? Can we honestly believe our own propaganda or defend ourselves with philosophical denial? Can we believe we have “grokked” the situation as good as or better than the great minds that have come before us with an “archaic revival”? Can we stand in this existential “no man’s land” and survive emotionally? Has selective, eclectic borrowing of Taoist, Hindu or Buddhist beliefs of the East or the Red Road of Native Americans resolved the scientific questions of our naked awareness? Clearly not, at this point in time.
Is nihilistic disbelief a reason to stop searching or the fuel of desire to continue at an ever-deeper level? That would be a self-recursive dead end somewhere in limbo between the Knower and the Known. Can modern man really get by on faith alone, and a promise of “pie in the sky”? I’m certainly not the first to ask from a heartfelt place, nor shall I be the last. I’m not the greatest philosopher and can’t quote them at will, like some grand professor. I’m sure there is much that has been chewed on in that arena that I gnaw again here. But then what seeker doesn’t?
In the X-Files, the most prominent item in Mulder’s office was his poster of a UFO with the inscription “The Truth Is Out There” and the retort, “I Want to Believe”. He sought to chase Truth down from the incongruent bits of so-called evidence and reports that came his way, which became his own experiential database, his personal interactions and memories. But how reliable were those perceptions; isn’t truth related to the ability to trust what we know and what we think we know and how we know it? In THE MATRIX, our misperceptions were more overt. These are the great ontological and epistemological questions of philosophy.
Can the search for Truth in the universe and in ourselves ever bear fruit? I looked for truth in the self-reflective narcissism of youth and drugs, I looked for truth in spirituality; I looked for truth in magick and the ancient Hermetic arts, I looked for truth in depth psychology and cutting-edge science. I looked for it in the hypnotic wisdom of spiritual Masters. I looked for truth in bleeding-edge art and beauty; I inadvertently sought it in the black hole of conspiracy theory culture. I sought it in spiritual, medical, and technological meditation and self-regulation. I sought it in mentoring from some of the world’s greatest minds, in ruthless self-knowledge, and in my compassionate fellow human beings.
I must confess I haven’t found it anywhere, though seeing through to the distortions of each provided the greatest revelations. It may be even more disturbing when mentors suggest you “get it”, even perhaps “better” than they do themselves. Can I badger my own Witness, my own Observer self? The answers I’ve consistently fed myself have often come back up from the extradimensional wormhole of Truth, recycling with each generation of seekers, or in my own as concerns move beyond family and work to the issues of later life.
I have found love and compassion present, but generally with blunt self-serving interest as the bottom line, once the niceties are stripped away. They make us feel better, somehow, but isn’t that just psychochemical manipulation in the end, mental masturbation in the name of good will? The humanities describe our condition without illumination. Yet, can we be fully human without the realization of Truth, even about ourselves? Are we stuck with this as the human condition?
TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE
Truth IS stranger than fiction, as they say. But when I bring it up here I don’t mean what it generally implies that our experience is weirder than anything we can make up, even though it is. I mean that TRUTH, itself, as a concept is perhaps one of the most difficult to define with any degree of satisfaction. In fact, what the pursuit leads to is an infinite continuum of “satisfictions”, reassuring only to those who naively buy into them. The Truth is out there, all right; WAY out there.
In our age we’ve been taught through the process of groupthink, generally known as education and corporate media, to trust the veracity of science and the political insights of our leaders. Despite our best efforts at deciphering ourselves and Nature, truth remains a philosophical problem. Personal and collective truth depends on what groups we identify with, and how large and influential they are.
Are we more than the sum of the parts of nature and nurture, spiritual propaganda, powerful persuasive rhetoric, cultural memes, and trends? How much Truth does it take for us to overturn our own cherished beliefs and desire to fit in? What do conversion experiences say about our ability to make a philosophical 180-degree turn? Can we ever empathically walk a mile in another’s shoes?
The postmodern era reconditioned some of us to “believe” we should reject all metanarrative, and that any existing so-called truths could only be relative; glosses of relative diversities of opinion. Science, looking deeper into the nature of so-called Reality without consensus, has had to relinquish any solid ground for our existence. After about 350 years of the scientific method, it has virtually admitted that it has become a Natural Philosophy once again.
Which truth are we supposed to believe about our fragile existence on our rather delicately poised planet? Religious Truth; cultural truth; political truth; scientific truth; conspiratorial truth? Is spiritual truth any better guide to life than humanistic truth? New Age “magical thinking” alleges we create our own reality by the way we perceive and that we can exert a mysterious agent called “intentionality”. It is not without reason we say that the road to hell is paved with “good intentions”. How can we even presume to know what is good for the collective, even presuming we are one holomovement?
HEALING FICTION
An intention is the same as a goal; intentionality is goal-directed behavior, a conscious choice of the ego. “Intentionality” is a mystification of the word into a nonlocal holistic goal, a waveform analog of point-directed volition to improve our collective reality, but in many ways is indistinguishable from wishful thinking.
Intentionality still implies changing the script in an ordered direction. It may or may not include invoking some forms of divine intervention. But isn’t that arguably another belief with a few missing links in a chain that is called nonlinear to skirt the conundrum? Who among us can distinguish what ‘choices’ are unconscious, preprogrammed or intentional volition. We can blame a seeming match of volition and result with a nonobservable “resonance” or “entrainment”, which may or may not exist. When the environment mirrors our desires, it often doesn’t mean we did it, and to declare it so is often considered a sign of mental illness as in schizophrenic magical thinking.
We intuitively have two contradictory gut feelings: we are convinced that we can mentally deliberate to make actual what now only exists in potency as one of many futures and choose the one that really will make a difference in our future lives. But we also know that ultimately, it was based on how comfortable we felt with the choice, an affective consideration hopefully reflecting the truth value of our decision.
Even if I form an active intentionality to affect your or my own health at some quantum level and have engaged in intentional development of my extended sensory system, and/or notice certain synchronistic, placebo, or other changes in my own or another’s subsequent state it doesn’t mean I did it, or my intentionality led to healing.
It may just be a control-fantasy, a people-helping fantasy, a fantasy of self-declared healing “mastership”, though there are demonstrable psychosocial shamanic effects. Conscious self-care is another matter altogether because self-regulation is definitely possible and stress and immune function can be modulated with diet and lifestyle.
Narrative glosses are no reliable sign of an agent’s active control over an event. In fact, it is just as plausible that the belief is an indication of a trance-like mindset or self-induced mind control, motivated by a variety of circumstances, secondary gains, and unconscious dynamics. Internal misinterpretation of self, others and world is a potent for of disinformation, which can be nevertheless validated by cultural viewpoints. Yet, who among us today believes a fakir can defy the laws of gravity climbing up an unsupported rope. You might say “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it”. In science, it is called observer bias.
Any ability to augment or “broadcast intention” could have many more plausible psychosocial mechanisms than mind-over-matter nonlocal perturbation. It isn’t entirely ruled out but is certainly difficult to separate in a non-controlled setting. But what kind of control does the agent have over guidance and and regulatory aspects? When are we able to chose or not between alternate scenarios? Can they be modified in the execution phase? Do results stand up to scrutiny? How can they be distinguished from self-renewal?
If we want to believe we will. We will say things like, “What about people who are healed who don’t know they were worked on?” I say this fully aware that experiments by credible M.D.s have been done showing the power of prayer over bacteria, for example. I still don’t feel that those results generalize universally, though some of the results suggest remarkable things.
I’m not trying to disabuse you of your belief, but challenge your intellect not to accept “intentionality” as little more than a popular buzzword. As a word it doesn’t explain anything; it has become a knee-jerk response. Maybe “expert” focused human intention has the possibility of creating robust effects on physical reality, and maybe not. It is definitely a popular notion right now with roots in shamanic phenomena and what Jung called it the mana personality. Even the possibility of seeing the Doctor can spike blood pressure in a phenomenon known as “white coat syndrome”.
Declaring oneself a “healer” is a way of acquiring personal power and cashing in socially and financially, even in an unconscious well-meaning way on the gullibility of others. It might even short-circuit someone seeking more conventional treatment. But few people other than debunking skeptics are willing to say the emperor has no clothes, though plenty of pseudo-scientific rhetoric has been brought to bear on the subject. Certainly, no one will assert that all “healers” are created equal.
The same may hold true for the popular notion of “healing the planet”, which from outside the New Age mindset looks more like a compensatory wishful thinking to counteract the degradation of the environment. Wouldn’t it be potentially more effective to take collective active political and social action instead of driving around in your gas-guzzling SUV dreaming of a better world for your soccer-playing kids?
To me it seems like a “confusion of the planes”, like invoking the Undines to save a drowning child instead of jumping in for the rescue. Whether it is human impact or due to natural cycles, the temperature keeps warming, the ice is melting, the ocean pump is breaking down, natural and forced extinctions are accelerating, and wishing it away isn’t likely to do anything constructive.
Arguably, neither neurology nor consciousness studies has found any indication of so-called “free will”. Positing an extradimensionality just mystifies the whole process again without saying anything definitive. Quantum theory is often cited as the bridge, but this is a functional theory, not a description of ultimate reality. It is just our best current concept that allows us to make predictions and do work.
KNOW THYSELF
Shouldn’t we really be digging below the onion layer of our own human belief systems to determine why we believe and act from what we believe? We build our identifications, self-image and style around them; what we accept and violently reject.
Global wars in the name of religion, with their roots in the Middle Ages and before, bring our beliefs about ourselves and our fellow travelers on Spaceship Earth into question more than ever in that magically eternal moment we call Now. We could dismiss this puerile question of truth as one to mull over in college if it weren’t desolating our planet. We have separated the academic question from everyday life to our degradation.
Heavens forbid we should ever learn “the truth”, even about ourselves. We staunchly defend our own self-images in a denial that would make the biggest addictions seem tame. You cannot make a more severe attack on a person than one against the self-image, which will be defended absolutely. Even our best friends have to agree to disagree, to remain silent in their personal dissenting observations.
Yet psychology and consciousness studies have failed to turn up this elusive integrated “self” that we defend to the death in some cases. We can display consistent character and self-imposed limitations, but we can also be wildly inconsistent, even in non-adaptive, self-defeating ways. Are we each a house of cards based on no more than a collection of randomly adopted whims and chaotic accidents of upbringing and genetics?
In hypnotherapy, we have the concept of subpersonalities, inner figures (inner Judge, Rebel, Child, etc.) with competing agendas that can hijack out lives for their own goals. Likewise, Jungian archetypes, transpersonal dynamics represented in ancient times as gods and goddesses can also effect our notions of Truth. Each form has a different truth, acting like a lens for the mind focusing it on certain thing over others. They influence our “self talk”, persuade you toward ‘their’ view of reality.
The basis of the human psyche seems to be a collective of selves--a multimind in a multiverse. Independent and autonomous, they relate with one another mostly unknown to the outer awareness. The extreme form of splintering seen in Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) simply reflects an extreme form of multiplicity with conflicting perspectives. The "multistate paradigm" of human nature extends toward a psychology and spirituality that is polytheistic, even pantheistic.
http://asklepia.tripod.com/Chaosophy/chaosophy7.html
"We conceptualize self in terms of dynamic multiplicity of relatively autonomous I positions in an imaginal landscape. The I has the possibility to move, as in a space, from one position to another in accordance with changes in situation and time. The I fluctuates among different and even opposed positions. The I has the capacity to imaginatively endow each position with a voice so that dialogical relations between positions can be established. The voices function like interacting characters in a story." (Hermans, Kempen & van Loon, "The Dialogical Self")
Fictional virtual realities are constructed by aspects of the self as imaginal conversations. Imaginal dialogues play a central role in our daily lives, existing alongside actual dialogues and interactions. The dialogical self can be seen as a multiplicity of I positions or possible selves, with a decentralized, polyphonic character. This view dissolves the sharp "self-not self" boundary. Attractors work at the edge of chaos to form our existential hologram.
Ecological fundamentalism has sought absolute truth in nature, but nature rejects this naivete. The notion of "relativity" implies that there is no absolute truth, therefore, no absolute self. Thus arises the notion of "radical pluralism", which is reflected in our chaotic modern society as exposure to virtually every religious belief, every political view, and a myriad of social values. There is no central belief system in a pluralistic society.
The social construction of reality is up for grabs. The whole concept of reality has been called into question by a variety of ideologies and lifestyles. There are widening splits within traditional belief systems. There is transition in human cultural evolution, with the new paradigm in dialogue with the old, seeking a new synthesis. The move is toward a substitution of "story" for Truth, reflecting that sense of movement, change, flow.
Perhaps the hallmark of Post-Modern philosophy has been disbelief or skepticism of all "metanarratives." The breakdowns of the story lines of religions, ideologies, even science has led to chaotic social change. We are beginning to realize, individually and as a world-wide culture that "realities" are all human constructions. The task becomes one of "catching ourselves in the act" of creating our own "reality" from the flow of events.
Human truth is always an engagement of mind with experience. The sociological message of Chaos Theory is that we don't have to fear the collapse of what we think we are. We don't need to fear the collapse of our personalistic belief system, nor our belief in absolute truth.
THE SPECTACLE
COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS: Wyndham Lewis wrote that all "living art is the history of the future". The formula is we become what we behold. What our culture compels us to behold is the holographic ICONOSCOPE: all the new media that both virtually surround and contain, as well as permeate our lives, and comprise an intrinsic part of our environment. Debord called it a Society of the Spectacle, emphasizing it's visual nature. Spectacle as a commodity is embodied in so-called Reality TV. The War on Terror is a materialized ideology, fighting an Idea. Ideology is the problem, not the solution to human survival technology.
Is the search for the “holy grail” of Truth the ultimate Quest, a journey rather than a goal, as so many philosophers imply? It has taken humanity through the physical rigors of horizontal exploration, and accompanied us on our trips down the rabbit hole of conceptual and spiritual exploration. But, as we know, there is ‘truth’ and ‘Truth’. It is the same drive that motivates both scientist and spiritual seeker to bite off an experiential piece of the Great Unknown..
Is Truth primary or emergent? What is Truth? We may know nothing about truth but presume it knows everything about us. Our concept of truth is actually pretty flimsy. Metaphysical truth is by definition beyond observation, beyond the physically observable, yet perhaps available by deduction or inference.
The very first and foundational inner experience in Kabbalah (the art of being fully human) is the Vision of the Mechanics of the Universe, in order to foster a critical eye toward Reality and its underlying physical laws. How can you possibly comprehend yourself if you don’t know the fundamental laws of physics and psychobiology? A common existential “mistake” is viewing ourselves primarily as a solid meatbody, rather than as an electromagnetic wavefront in space that science suggests. If you are wrong about the fundamental truth of your own existence, how distorted will your other notions be?
We should take care that our protocols and resulting theories have a sound rational basis, taking the best from both ancient and modern worlds. The brain can register the same result for a simulated or real event; that is a double-edged sword that leads many to faulty conclusions. Can Truth be extracted from Cosmos; will the Truth ever come out? And if so, where is it hiding? All we know right now about the primary groundstate of human existence is that it is Pure Nothing (vacuum fluctuation; ZPE).
Later, we will explore the physical and metaphysical roots of different kinds of Truth, relative and Absolute. They will include physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimensions; scientific and metaphysical truth. We will also explore different domains of truth and how they relate to the Big Picture, adaptation and human survival. Even beautiful and convincing explanations can be wrong. Science often doesn’t know if it is ‘true’ and that is why ‘falsifiability’ is a keystone of the scientific process.
We have various forms of truth but they are not reliable for understanding ourselves or Cosmos in the sense of a final and absolute Truth. We try to obtain the most accurate explanation we can at the moment. Still, we cannot say there will never be an absolute Truth. Yet partial truths remain approximations. But this very lack of absoluteness keeps the future open. What most attracts our concern is often at the creative frontier of the mind.
Our understanding and definitions are refined as data are refined and our perceptions become more enlightened. It doesn’t change what is true, but it doesn’t mean we can never comprehend an Absolute Truth that is currently beyond our ability. We can’t really know. But expansion of our previous understanding doesn’t change the reality or truthfulness of existence. In black and white: what exists and true and what does not is false or a lie. Our perceptions can be wrong and sensible. Reality can be strongly counterintuitive or contain hidden options at the point of observation.
Truth fits happier with philosophy, but should not be confused with probability, as shown in the nature of paradox. Seemingly obvious truths are often not correct at all. We all harbor unwitting biases that distort the signals received by our senses and generated in our own psychophysical systems. Experiments in sensory deprivation have exposed the intense power of inner-generated imagery/feeling states. We can’t remove this distorting prejudice from our viewpoint so Truth remains elusive, if not completely partial and relative.
Defined truths do not help us achieve an absolutely true sense of ourselves or universe. Mathematical and scientific truths come closer in this regard, but even statistical analysis is less than perfect and often not applicable to our unique case, certainly not experientially. Even if we misinterprete it, our experience remains our experience, but we can learn to sniff out our own distortions with critical thinking and reflection. The same is true for the laws of physics which work better for understanding universals than ourselves.
Explanations are always being tested and improved, but can never provide perfect, total descriptions. Likewise for facts, data, and evidence which are partial by nature. There is no completely general notion of truth we can define scientifically. But there might be specific absolute truths. But facts do not mean that all truths are relative.
A statement is true only if it applies to reality. In science, what was once heresy can become established as a new orthodoxy by further experimentation. But if we stop looking for the improbable, beneath our current beliefs, we will stop discovering deeper truths. Our truths are often the most accurate undestandings we have have in existence. Less accurate explanations often often circulate at the same time and are embraced by some. The joke is the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.
Plato said poetry was nearer to vital truth than history. Myths were the original explanations and they are still with us, albeit in new forms. We still mythologize about our selves and bodies, about the arc of relationship and what is fair and what we think we deserve, we dream and grieve if we lose that dream. We concoct intellectual myths that we embrace passionately perhaps to counterbalance personal emotional disappointments, and a whole supermarket of spiritual beliefs and technologies with various goals and levels of access to deep reality. They also carry less obvious secondary-gains. Modern myths are the strange attractors of our day causing us to “worship” or reify what the culture admires, mostly notably celebrity.
If this essay makes you bristle with objections, realized or unrealized before, and raises only one question that takes you beyond where you presently stand, then my work is done. I only seek to disrupt whatever position you occupy, to perturb, to rototill the fertile soil of your own mind and send you caroming off to your own next real-I-zation. But don’t stop there. I want to plant the seeds of doubt, because therein lies the seed of your future’s fruit, the creativity and individuation that is your unique contribution.
I will ask far more questions than I can answer; perhaps yours will be among them. At least I can say I have recounted mine throughout my life, with or without an audience, in my writing and artwork. How can I be disillusioned? Let me count the ways. With my own body, with my own psychophysical emotions and relationships, with my own cherished concepts, ideas, ideals and spiritual beliefs…may I always welcome and learn from it.
This search is embodied in the practice of critical thinking, but we know from our experience that sometimes we just have to stand in the Mystery. There are limitations to our understanding, though we like to fill in the blanks for security. We think we have chipped away at pre-scientific explanations that filled the lacuna of the Great Unknown in our earlier history. But is our modern discernment any clearer or more functional in terms of human survival technology?
We can’t even accurately remember our own childhoods. Are we not as provincial and superstitious as ever? We bristle at things that go bump in the night. We look expectantly for signs with personal roots and build stories around the meaningful probability shocks of synchronicity, when the environment mirrors our psyches. We rely on astrology more than psychology and anxiously try to divine our futures. How far have we come in 50,000 years?
We are fascinated at the prospect of developing or experiencing our paranormal abilities often when we haven’t even developed our conventional talents or made a firm foundation by healing our early wounds. It might be a compensation for feeling powerless in an overwhelming, rapidly changing technological nightmare. We are numb with futureshock, endlessly learning new protocols in the rapidly changing electronic environment.
We cleave together in self-validating subcultures where we share compatible warm-fuzzy viewpoints. Our view of nature and the environment is still based largely on only one sense, on sight, and our propensity to believe what we see. Hubble has shown us the galactic nursery at the dawn of time.
Mentalists and magicians have exploited this ambiguity between Truth and amazement for centuries to make their illusions convincing. A good contemporary example is Chris Angel, “Mind Phreak”. And yet we “know” that they are tricks, tricks of the sensorium and mind, misdirections which our thinking processes can also play on ourselves. There is no insight, but rather a hollow echoing of our own misperception. Knowing this does not make us immune to bedazzlement. Does the Abyss not continue to stare wryly back at us, frightening us with the prospect of our own mortality, taunting our faith in nature, God or Goddess, and man?
We are probably our own greatest source of misinformation, as expert testimony in court shows. There is no insight, but rather a hollow echoing of our own misperception. Knowing this does not make us immune to bedazzlement. Does the Abyss not continue to stare wryly back at us, frightening us with the prospect of our own mortality, taunting our faith in nature, God or Goddess, and man?
TRUTH OR DARE
Is there ANY truth in us? Can we honestly believe our own propaganda or defend ourselves with philosophical denial? Can we believe we have “grokked” the situation as good as or better than the great minds that have come before us with an “archaic revival”? Can we stand in this existential “no man’s land” and survive emotionally? Has selective, eclectic borrowing of Taoist, Hindu or Buddhist beliefs of the East or the Red Road of Native Americans resolved the scientific questions of our naked awareness? Clearly not, at this point in time.
Is nihilistic disbelief a reason to stop searching or the fuel of desire to continue at an ever-deeper level? That would be a self-recursive dead end somewhere in limbo between the Knower and the Known. Can modern man really get by on faith alone, and a promise of “pie in the sky”? I’m certainly not the first to ask from a heartfelt place, nor shall I be the last. I’m not the greatest philosopher and can’t quote them at will, like some grand professor. I’m sure there is much that has been chewed on in that arena that I gnaw again here. But then what seeker doesn’t?
In the X-Files, the most prominent item in Mulder’s office was his poster of a UFO with the inscription “The Truth Is Out There” and the retort, “I Want to Believe”. He sought to chase Truth down from the incongruent bits of so-called evidence and reports that came his way, which became his own experiential database, his personal interactions and memories. But how reliable were those perceptions; isn’t truth related to the ability to trust what we know and what we think we know and how we know it? In THE MATRIX, our misperceptions were more overt. These are the great ontological and epistemological questions of philosophy.
Can the search for Truth in the universe and in ourselves ever bear fruit? I looked for truth in the self-reflective narcissism of youth and drugs, I looked for truth in spirituality; I looked for truth in magick and the ancient Hermetic arts, I looked for truth in depth psychology and cutting-edge science. I looked for it in the hypnotic wisdom of spiritual Masters. I looked for truth in bleeding-edge art and beauty; I inadvertently sought it in the black hole of conspiracy theory culture. I sought it in spiritual, medical, and technological meditation and self-regulation. I sought it in mentoring from some of the world’s greatest minds, in ruthless self-knowledge, and in my compassionate fellow human beings.
I must confess I haven’t found it anywhere, though seeing through to the distortions of each provided the greatest revelations. It may be even more disturbing when mentors suggest you “get it”, even perhaps “better” than they do themselves. Can I badger my own Witness, my own Observer self? The answers I’ve consistently fed myself have often come back up from the extradimensional wormhole of Truth, recycling with each generation of seekers, or in my own as concerns move beyond family and work to the issues of later life.
I have found love and compassion present, but generally with blunt self-serving interest as the bottom line, once the niceties are stripped away. They make us feel better, somehow, but isn’t that just psychochemical manipulation in the end, mental masturbation in the name of good will? The humanities describe our condition without illumination. Yet, can we be fully human without the realization of Truth, even about ourselves? Are we stuck with this as the human condition?
TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE
Truth IS stranger than fiction, as they say. But when I bring it up here I don’t mean what it generally implies that our experience is weirder than anything we can make up, even though it is. I mean that TRUTH, itself, as a concept is perhaps one of the most difficult to define with any degree of satisfaction. In fact, what the pursuit leads to is an infinite continuum of “satisfictions”, reassuring only to those who naively buy into them. The Truth is out there, all right; WAY out there.
In our age we’ve been taught through the process of groupthink, generally known as education and corporate media, to trust the veracity of science and the political insights of our leaders. Despite our best efforts at deciphering ourselves and Nature, truth remains a philosophical problem. Personal and collective truth depends on what groups we identify with, and how large and influential they are.
Are we more than the sum of the parts of nature and nurture, spiritual propaganda, powerful persuasive rhetoric, cultural memes, and trends? How much Truth does it take for us to overturn our own cherished beliefs and desire to fit in? What do conversion experiences say about our ability to make a philosophical 180-degree turn? Can we ever empathically walk a mile in another’s shoes?
The postmodern era reconditioned some of us to “believe” we should reject all metanarrative, and that any existing so-called truths could only be relative; glosses of relative diversities of opinion. Science, looking deeper into the nature of so-called Reality without consensus, has had to relinquish any solid ground for our existence. After about 350 years of the scientific method, it has virtually admitted that it has become a Natural Philosophy once again.
Which truth are we supposed to believe about our fragile existence on our rather delicately poised planet? Religious Truth; cultural truth; political truth; scientific truth; conspiratorial truth? Is spiritual truth any better guide to life than humanistic truth? New Age “magical thinking” alleges we create our own reality by the way we perceive and that we can exert a mysterious agent called “intentionality”. It is not without reason we say that the road to hell is paved with “good intentions”. How can we even presume to know what is good for the collective, even presuming we are one holomovement?
HEALING FICTION
An intention is the same as a goal; intentionality is goal-directed behavior, a conscious choice of the ego. “Intentionality” is a mystification of the word into a nonlocal holistic goal, a waveform analog of point-directed volition to improve our collective reality, but in many ways is indistinguishable from wishful thinking.
Intentionality still implies changing the script in an ordered direction. It may or may not include invoking some forms of divine intervention. But isn’t that arguably another belief with a few missing links in a chain that is called nonlinear to skirt the conundrum? Who among us can distinguish what ‘choices’ are unconscious, preprogrammed or intentional volition. We can blame a seeming match of volition and result with a nonobservable “resonance” or “entrainment”, which may or may not exist. When the environment mirrors our desires, it often doesn’t mean we did it, and to declare it so is often considered a sign of mental illness as in schizophrenic magical thinking.
We intuitively have two contradictory gut feelings: we are convinced that we can mentally deliberate to make actual what now only exists in potency as one of many futures and choose the one that really will make a difference in our future lives. But we also know that ultimately, it was based on how comfortable we felt with the choice, an affective consideration hopefully reflecting the truth value of our decision.
Even if I form an active intentionality to affect your or my own health at some quantum level and have engaged in intentional development of my extended sensory system, and/or notice certain synchronistic, placebo, or other changes in my own or another’s subsequent state it doesn’t mean I did it, or my intentionality led to healing.
It may just be a control-fantasy, a people-helping fantasy, a fantasy of self-declared healing “mastership”, though there are demonstrable psychosocial shamanic effects. Conscious self-care is another matter altogether because self-regulation is definitely possible and stress and immune function can be modulated with diet and lifestyle.
Narrative glosses are no reliable sign of an agent’s active control over an event. In fact, it is just as plausible that the belief is an indication of a trance-like mindset or self-induced mind control, motivated by a variety of circumstances, secondary gains, and unconscious dynamics. Internal misinterpretation of self, others and world is a potent for of disinformation, which can be nevertheless validated by cultural viewpoints. Yet, who among us today believes a fakir can defy the laws of gravity climbing up an unsupported rope. You might say “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it”. In science, it is called observer bias.
Any ability to augment or “broadcast intention” could have many more plausible psychosocial mechanisms than mind-over-matter nonlocal perturbation. It isn’t entirely ruled out but is certainly difficult to separate in a non-controlled setting. But what kind of control does the agent have over guidance and and regulatory aspects? When are we able to chose or not between alternate scenarios? Can they be modified in the execution phase? Do results stand up to scrutiny? How can they be distinguished from self-renewal?
If we want to believe we will. We will say things like, “What about people who are healed who don’t know they were worked on?” I say this fully aware that experiments by credible M.D.s have been done showing the power of prayer over bacteria, for example. I still don’t feel that those results generalize universally, though some of the results suggest remarkable things.
I’m not trying to disabuse you of your belief, but challenge your intellect not to accept “intentionality” as little more than a popular buzzword. As a word it doesn’t explain anything; it has become a knee-jerk response. Maybe “expert” focused human intention has the possibility of creating robust effects on physical reality, and maybe not. It is definitely a popular notion right now with roots in shamanic phenomena and what Jung called it the mana personality. Even the possibility of seeing the Doctor can spike blood pressure in a phenomenon known as “white coat syndrome”.
Declaring oneself a “healer” is a way of acquiring personal power and cashing in socially and financially, even in an unconscious well-meaning way on the gullibility of others. It might even short-circuit someone seeking more conventional treatment. But few people other than debunking skeptics are willing to say the emperor has no clothes, though plenty of pseudo-scientific rhetoric has been brought to bear on the subject. Certainly, no one will assert that all “healers” are created equal.
The same may hold true for the popular notion of “healing the planet”, which from outside the New Age mindset looks more like a compensatory wishful thinking to counteract the degradation of the environment. Wouldn’t it be potentially more effective to take collective active political and social action instead of driving around in your gas-guzzling SUV dreaming of a better world for your soccer-playing kids?
To me it seems like a “confusion of the planes”, like invoking the Undines to save a drowning child instead of jumping in for the rescue. Whether it is human impact or due to natural cycles, the temperature keeps warming, the ice is melting, the ocean pump is breaking down, natural and forced extinctions are accelerating, and wishing it away isn’t likely to do anything constructive.
Arguably, neither neurology nor consciousness studies has found any indication of so-called “free will”. Positing an extradimensionality just mystifies the whole process again without saying anything definitive. Quantum theory is often cited as the bridge, but this is a functional theory, not a description of ultimate reality. It is just our best current concept that allows us to make predictions and do work.
KNOW THYSELF
Shouldn’t we really be digging below the onion layer of our own human belief systems to determine why we believe and act from what we believe? We build our identifications, self-image and style around them; what we accept and violently reject.
Global wars in the name of religion, with their roots in the Middle Ages and before, bring our beliefs about ourselves and our fellow travelers on Spaceship Earth into question more than ever in that magically eternal moment we call Now. We could dismiss this puerile question of truth as one to mull over in college if it weren’t desolating our planet. We have separated the academic question from everyday life to our degradation.
Heavens forbid we should ever learn “the truth”, even about ourselves. We staunchly defend our own self-images in a denial that would make the biggest addictions seem tame. You cannot make a more severe attack on a person than one against the self-image, which will be defended absolutely. Even our best friends have to agree to disagree, to remain silent in their personal dissenting observations.
Yet psychology and consciousness studies have failed to turn up this elusive integrated “self” that we defend to the death in some cases. We can display consistent character and self-imposed limitations, but we can also be wildly inconsistent, even in non-adaptive, self-defeating ways. Are we each a house of cards based on no more than a collection of randomly adopted whims and chaotic accidents of upbringing and genetics?
In hypnotherapy, we have the concept of subpersonalities, inner figures (inner Judge, Rebel, Child, etc.) with competing agendas that can hijack out lives for their own goals. Likewise, Jungian archetypes, transpersonal dynamics represented in ancient times as gods and goddesses can also effect our notions of Truth. Each form has a different truth, acting like a lens for the mind focusing it on certain thing over others. They influence our “self talk”, persuade you toward ‘their’ view of reality.
The basis of the human psyche seems to be a collective of selves--a multimind in a multiverse. Independent and autonomous, they relate with one another mostly unknown to the outer awareness. The extreme form of splintering seen in Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) simply reflects an extreme form of multiplicity with conflicting perspectives. The "multistate paradigm" of human nature extends toward a psychology and spirituality that is polytheistic, even pantheistic.
http://asklepia.tripod.com/Chaosophy/chaosophy7.html
"We conceptualize self in terms of dynamic multiplicity of relatively autonomous I positions in an imaginal landscape. The I has the possibility to move, as in a space, from one position to another in accordance with changes in situation and time. The I fluctuates among different and even opposed positions. The I has the capacity to imaginatively endow each position with a voice so that dialogical relations between positions can be established. The voices function like interacting characters in a story." (Hermans, Kempen & van Loon, "The Dialogical Self")
Fictional virtual realities are constructed by aspects of the self as imaginal conversations. Imaginal dialogues play a central role in our daily lives, existing alongside actual dialogues and interactions. The dialogical self can be seen as a multiplicity of I positions or possible selves, with a decentralized, polyphonic character. This view dissolves the sharp "self-not self" boundary. Attractors work at the edge of chaos to form our existential hologram.
Ecological fundamentalism has sought absolute truth in nature, but nature rejects this naivete. The notion of "relativity" implies that there is no absolute truth, therefore, no absolute self. Thus arises the notion of "radical pluralism", which is reflected in our chaotic modern society as exposure to virtually every religious belief, every political view, and a myriad of social values. There is no central belief system in a pluralistic society.
The social construction of reality is up for grabs. The whole concept of reality has been called into question by a variety of ideologies and lifestyles. There are widening splits within traditional belief systems. There is transition in human cultural evolution, with the new paradigm in dialogue with the old, seeking a new synthesis. The move is toward a substitution of "story" for Truth, reflecting that sense of movement, change, flow.
Perhaps the hallmark of Post-Modern philosophy has been disbelief or skepticism of all "metanarratives." The breakdowns of the story lines of religions, ideologies, even science has led to chaotic social change. We are beginning to realize, individually and as a world-wide culture that "realities" are all human constructions. The task becomes one of "catching ourselves in the act" of creating our own "reality" from the flow of events.
Human truth is always an engagement of mind with experience. The sociological message of Chaos Theory is that we don't have to fear the collapse of what we think we are. We don't need to fear the collapse of our personalistic belief system, nor our belief in absolute truth.
THE SPECTACLE
COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS: Wyndham Lewis wrote that all "living art is the history of the future". The formula is we become what we behold. What our culture compels us to behold is the holographic ICONOSCOPE: all the new media that both virtually surround and contain, as well as permeate our lives, and comprise an intrinsic part of our environment. Debord called it a Society of the Spectacle, emphasizing it's visual nature. Spectacle as a commodity is embodied in so-called Reality TV. The War on Terror is a materialized ideology, fighting an Idea. Ideology is the problem, not the solution to human survival technology.
CYBORGS
The important historical story of MRU/MRF has never been documented as it has for the West Coast equivalent, Stanford Research Institute (SRI). Even insiders know few of the other players and their role in the overall story, since business was proprietary and conducted on a need-to-know basis, often in remote locales.
Perhaps the biggest accusation leveled at Dr. Schleicher is that he was the "Father of the Cyborg", the original Manchurian Candidate, developed under the direction of infamous Sidney Gottleib for MK Ultra, probably the most notorious blackops program ever developed. When this project was outed and investigated by Congress, most of the original documents were destroyed or disappeared so we may never know the true history and extent of this heinous program, which has even deeper historical roots. Several universities and disconnected researchers were involved as fronts for the program.
Schleicher certainly had extensive knowledge of and interest in all the mind control techniques, technology and protocols we now know were employed. The backgrounds of known colleagues demonstrate this now. We know he included similar lines of investigation in his MRU prospectus and developmental repertoire. Yet, time and again, when confronted with the accusations he flatly denied it and was preparing to sue over allegations at the time of his death from a highly dubious source.
Even Schleicher's confidantes disagree among themselves over the extent of his possible involvement with this project and certain government agencies and which agencies. SRI has admitted CIA links publically, but Schleicher absolutely denied it. Everyone agrees Carl had done clandestine operations for the military during his active service. This ambiguity follows the man throughout his life and unconventional career. Still, if we look at the current career-tracks of his contemporaries, there is little reason to presume he was much different.
Many of Carl's colleagues, their secret projects now declassified, are edge-celebs in the 'weird science' category. They draw large crowds on the speaking circuit, talking new physics, conspiracy, remote viewing and a host of other subjects on which they offer workshops and even schools.
If he were alive today, the same would likely be true for Dr. Schleicher. In fact, the basic structure of MRF, is an original sort of alternative university/clinic offering superlearning, self-regulation techniques, and a variety of complementary rehabilitation and therapeutic treatments.
Perhaps his greatest failure was not succeeding in generating a meaningful cash flow from his endeavors during his lifetime. Big commercial success eluded him, though MRF had begun incorporating franchises in other states, such as California and Texas. Others, such as the Lozonov schools of Accelerated Learning, went on to employ these techniques and actualize his vision successfully.
But in his case and that of MRF, this "California-style" self-development center or mind spa he envisioned always had a "dark edge" that can never really be ignored nor dismissed. At it's heart, it was undeniably shadowy as mankind's deepest subconscious. It must have been an ethical struggle, a battle of mind and heart, reconciling a background in coercive psychophysical tactics with a futuristic humanitarian optimism - the essentially destructive with the constructive.
But what is known or revealed can now be told of this long cold war. It will still be up to you to connect the dots and decide what it all means. Is there any direct connection between MKU->MRU->MRF?
It is necessarily only a relative truth value we can assign to any portion of the story. Marshall McLuhan points out this is nearly always the case: "The old journalism had aimed at the objectivity by 'giving both sides at once.' The new journalism seeks, rather, to immerse the reader in the total situation, using the resources of imaginative fiction to provide a multileveled experience. The new journalism is quite prepared to urge that 'news' is necessarily a form of fiction or making."
Perhaps the biggest accusation leveled at Dr. Schleicher is that he was the "Father of the Cyborg", the original Manchurian Candidate, developed under the direction of infamous Sidney Gottleib for MK Ultra, probably the most notorious blackops program ever developed. When this project was outed and investigated by Congress, most of the original documents were destroyed or disappeared so we may never know the true history and extent of this heinous program, which has even deeper historical roots. Several universities and disconnected researchers were involved as fronts for the program.
Schleicher certainly had extensive knowledge of and interest in all the mind control techniques, technology and protocols we now know were employed. The backgrounds of known colleagues demonstrate this now. We know he included similar lines of investigation in his MRU prospectus and developmental repertoire. Yet, time and again, when confronted with the accusations he flatly denied it and was preparing to sue over allegations at the time of his death from a highly dubious source.
Even Schleicher's confidantes disagree among themselves over the extent of his possible involvement with this project and certain government agencies and which agencies. SRI has admitted CIA links publically, but Schleicher absolutely denied it. Everyone agrees Carl had done clandestine operations for the military during his active service. This ambiguity follows the man throughout his life and unconventional career. Still, if we look at the current career-tracks of his contemporaries, there is little reason to presume he was much different.
Many of Carl's colleagues, their secret projects now declassified, are edge-celebs in the 'weird science' category. They draw large crowds on the speaking circuit, talking new physics, conspiracy, remote viewing and a host of other subjects on which they offer workshops and even schools.
If he were alive today, the same would likely be true for Dr. Schleicher. In fact, the basic structure of MRF, is an original sort of alternative university/clinic offering superlearning, self-regulation techniques, and a variety of complementary rehabilitation and therapeutic treatments.
Perhaps his greatest failure was not succeeding in generating a meaningful cash flow from his endeavors during his lifetime. Big commercial success eluded him, though MRF had begun incorporating franchises in other states, such as California and Texas. Others, such as the Lozonov schools of Accelerated Learning, went on to employ these techniques and actualize his vision successfully.
But in his case and that of MRF, this "California-style" self-development center or mind spa he envisioned always had a "dark edge" that can never really be ignored nor dismissed. At it's heart, it was undeniably shadowy as mankind's deepest subconscious. It must have been an ethical struggle, a battle of mind and heart, reconciling a background in coercive psychophysical tactics with a futuristic humanitarian optimism - the essentially destructive with the constructive.
But what is known or revealed can now be told of this long cold war. It will still be up to you to connect the dots and decide what it all means. Is there any direct connection between MKU->MRU->MRF?
It is necessarily only a relative truth value we can assign to any portion of the story. Marshall McLuhan points out this is nearly always the case: "The old journalism had aimed at the objectivity by 'giving both sides at once.' The new journalism seeks, rather, to immerse the reader in the total situation, using the resources of imaginative fiction to provide a multileveled experience. The new journalism is quite prepared to urge that 'news' is necessarily a form of fiction or making."
CLASSIC PSYOP TEXT - THE MIND HAS NO FIREWALL
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/USAWC/Parameters/Articles/98spring/thomas.htm
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/USAWC/Parameters/Articles/98spring/thomas.htm
The Mind Has No Firewall
TIMOTHY L. THOMAS
From Parameters, Spring 1998, pp. 84-92.
"It is completely clear that the state which is first to create such weapons will achieve incomparable superiority." -- Major I. Chernishev, Russian army[1]
The human body, much like a computer, contains myriad data processors. They include, but are not limited to, the chemical-electrical activity of the brain, heart, and peripheral nervous system, the signals sent from the cortex region of the brain to other parts of our body, the tiny hair cells in the inner ear that process auditory signals, and the light-sensitive retina and cornea of the eye that process visual activity.[2] We are on the threshold of an era in which these data processors of the human body may be manipulated or debilitated. Examples of unplanned attacks on the body's data-processing capability are well-documented. Strobe lights have been known to cause epileptic seizures. Not long ago in Japan, children watching television cartoons were subjected to pulsating lights that caused seizures in some and made others very sick.
Defending friendly and targeting adversary data-processing capabilities of the body appears to be an area of weakness in the US approach to information warfare theory, a theory oriented heavily toward systems data-processing and designed to attain information dominance on the battlefield. Or so it would appear from information in the open, unclassified press. This US shortcoming may be a serious one, since the capabilities to alter the data- processing systems of the body already exist. A recent edition of U.S. News and World Report highlighted several of these "wonder weapons" (acoustics, microwaves, lasers) and noted that scientists are "searching the electromagnetic and sonic spectrums for wavelengths that can affect human behavior."[3] A recent Russian military article offered a slightly different slant to the problem, declaring that "humanity stands on the brink of a psychotronic war" with the mind and body as the focus. That article discussed Russian and international attempts to control the psycho-physical condition of man and his decisionmaking processes by the use of VHF-generators, "noiseless cassettes," and other technologies.
An entirely new arsenal of weapons, based on devices designed to introduce subliminal messages or to alter the body's psychological and data-processing capabilities, might be used to incapacitate individuals. These weapons aim to control or alter the psyche, or to attack the various sensory and data-processing systems of the human organism. In both cases, the goal is to confuse or destroy the signals that normally keep the body in equilibrium.
This article examines energy-based weapons, psychotronic weapons, and other developments designed to alter the ability of the human body to process stimuli. One consequence of this assessment is that the way we commonly use the term "information warfare" falls short when the individual soldier, not his equipment, becomes the target of attack.
Information Warfare Theory and the Data-Processing Element of Humans
In the United States the common conception of information warfare focuses primarily on the capabilities of hardware systems such as computers, satellites, and military equipment which process data in its various forms. According to Department of Defense Directive S-3600.1 of 9 December 1996, information warfare is defined as "an information operation conducted during time of crisis or conflict to achieve or promote specific objectives over a specific adversary or adversaries." An information operation is defined in the same directive as "actions taken to affect adversary information and information systems while defending one's own information and information systems." These "information systems" lie at the heart of the modernization effort of the US armed forces and other countries, and manifest themselves as hardware, software, communications capabilities, and highly trained individuals. Recently, the US Army conducted a mock battle that tested these systems under simulated combat conditions.
US Army Field Manual 101-5-1, Operational Terms and Graphics (released 30 September 1997), defines information warfare as "actions taken to achieve information superiority by affecting a hostile's information, information based-processes, and information systems, while defending one's own information, information processes, and information systems." The same manual defines information operations as a "continuous military operation within the military information environment that enables, enhances, and protects friendly forces' ability to collect, process, and act on information to achieve an advantage across the full range of military operations. [Information operations include] interacting with the Global Information Environment . . . and exploiting or denying an adversary's information and decision capabilities."[4]
This "systems" approach to the study of information warfare emphasizes the use of data, referred to as information, to penetrate an adversary's physical defenses that protect data (information) in order to obtain operational or strategic advantage. It has tended to ignore the role of the human body as an information- or data-processor in this quest for dominance except in those cases where an individual's logic or rational thought may be upset via disinformation or deception. As a consequence little attention is directed toward protecting the mind and body with a firewall as we have done with hardware systems. Nor have any techniques for doing so been prescribed. Yet the body is capable not only of being deceived, manipulated, or misinformed but also shut down or destroyed--just as any other data-processing system. The "data" the body receives from external sources--such as electromagnetic, vortex, or acoustic energy waves--or creates through its own electrical or chemical stimuli can be manipulated or changed just as the data (information) in any hardware system can be altered.
The only body-related information warfare element considered by the United States is psychological operations (PSYOP). In Joint Publication 3-13.1, for example, PSYOP is listed as one of the elements of command and control warfare. The publication notes that "the ultimate target of [information warfare] is the information dependent process, whether human or automated . . . . Command and control warfare (C2W) is an application of information warfare in military operations. . . . C2W is the integrated use of PSYOP, military deception, operations security, electronic warfare and physical destruction."[5]
One source defines information as a "nonaccidental signal used as an input to a computer or communications system."[6] The human body is a complex communication system constantly receiving nonaccidental and accidental signal inputs, both external and internal. If the ultimate target of information warfare is the information-dependent process, "whether human or automated," then the definition in the joint publication implies that human data-processing of internal and external signals can clearly be considered an aspect of information warfare. Foreign researchers have noted the link between humans as data processors and the conduct of information warfare. While some study only the PSYOP link, others go beyond it. As an example of the former, one recent Russian article described offensive information warfare as designed to "use the Internet channels for the purpose of organizing PSYOP as well as for `early political warning' of threats to American interests."[7] The author's assertion was based on the fact that "all mass media are used for PSYOP . . . [and] today this must include the Internet." The author asserted that the Pentagon wanted to use the Internet to "reinforce psychological influences" during special operations conducted outside of US borders to enlist sympathizers, who would accomplish many of the tasks previously entrusted to special units of the US armed forces.
Others, however, look beyond simple PSYOP ties to consider other aspects of the body's data-processing capability. One of the principal open source researchers on the relationship of information warfare to the body's data-processing capability is Russian Dr. Victor Solntsev of the Baumann Technical Institute in Moscow. Solntsev is a young, well-intentioned researcher striving to point out to the world the potential dangers of the computer operator interface. Supported by a network of institutes and academies, Solntsev has produced some interesting concepts.[8] He insists that man must be viewed as an open system instead of simply as an organism or closed system. As an open system, man communicates with his environment through information flows and communications media. One's physical environment, whether through electromagnetic, gravitational, acoustic, or other effects, can cause a change in the psycho-physiological condition of an organism, in Solntsev's opinion. Change of this sort could directly affect the mental state and consciousness of a computer operator. This would not be electronic war or information warfare in the traditional sense, but rather in a nontraditional and non-US sense. It might encompass, for example, a computer modified to become a weapon by using its energy output to emit acoustics that debilitate the operator. It also might encompass, as indicated below, futuristic weapons aimed against man's "open system."
Solntsev also examined the problem of "information noise," which creates a dense shield between a person and external reality. This noise may manifest itself in the form of signals, messages, images, or other items of information. The main target of this noise would be the consciousness of a person or a group of people. Behavior modification could be one objective of information noise; another could be to upset an individual's mental capacity to such an extent as to prevent reaction to any stimulus. Solntsev concludes that all levels of a person's psyche (subconscious, conscious, and "superconscious") are potential targets for destabilization.
According to Solntsev, one computer virus capable of affecting a person's psyche is Russian Virus 666. It manifests itself in every 25th frame of a visual display, where it produces a combination of colors that allegedly put computer operators into a trance. The subconscious perception of the new pattern eventually results in arrhythmia of the heart. Other Russian computer specialists, not just Solntsev, talk openly about this "25th frame effect" and its ability to subtly manage a computer user's perceptions. The purpose of this technique is to inject a thought into the viewer's subconscious. It may remind some of the subliminal advertising controversy in the United States in the late 1950s.
US Views on "Wonder Weapons": Altering the Data-Processing Ability of the Body
What technologies have been examined by the United States that possess the potential to disrupt the data-processing capabilities of the human organism? The 7 July 1997 issue of U.S. News and World Report described several of them designed, among other things, to vibrate the insides of humans, stun or nauseate them, put them to sleep, heat them up, or knock them down with a shock wave.[9] The technologies include dazzling lasers that can force the pupils to close; acoustic or sonic frequencies that cause the hair cells in the inner ear to vibrate and cause motion sickness, vertigo, and nausea, or frequencies that resonate the internal organs causing pain and spasms; and shock waves with the potential to knock down humans or airplanes and which can be mixed with pepper spray or chemicals.[10]
With modification, these technological applications can have many uses. Acoustic weapons, for example, could be adapted for use as acoustic rifles or as acoustic fields that, once established, might protect facilities, assist in hostage rescues, control riots, or clear paths for convoys. These waves, which can penetrate buildings, offer a host of opportunities for military and law enforcement officials. Microwave weapons, by stimulating the peripheral nervous system, can heat up the body, induce epileptic-like seizures, or cause cardiac arrest. Low-frequency radiation affects the electrical activity of the brain and can cause flu-like symptoms and nausea. Other projects sought to induce or prevent sleep, or to affect the signal from the motor cortex portion of the brain, overriding voluntary muscle movements. The latter are referred to as pulse wave weapons, and the Russian government has reportedly bought over 100,000 copies of the "Black Widow" version of them.[11]
However, this view of "wonder weapons" was contested by someone who should understand them. Brigadier General Larry Dodgen, Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Policy and Missions, wrote a letter to the editor about the "numerous inaccuracies" in the U.S. News and World Report article that "misrepresent the Department of Defense's views."[12] Dodgen's primary complaint seemed to have been that the magazine misrepresented the use of these technologies and their value to the armed forces. He also underscored the US intent to work within the scope of any international treaty concerning their application, as well as plans to abandon (or at least redesign) any weapon for which countermeasures are known. One is left with the feeling, however, that research in this area is intense. A concern not mentioned by Dodgen is that other countries or non-state actors may not be bound by the same constraints. It is hard to imagine someone with a greater desire than terrorists to get their hands on these technologies. "Psycho-terrorism" could be the next buzzword.
Russian Views on "Psychotronic War"
The term "psycho-terrorism" was coined by Russian writer N. Anisimov of the Moscow Anti-Psychotronic Center. According to Anisimov, psychotronic weapons are those that act to "take away a part of the information which is stored in a man's brain. It is sent to a computer, which reworks it to the level needed for those who need to control the man, and the modified information is then reinserted into the brain." These weapons are used against the mind to induce hallucinations, sickness, mutations in human cells, "zombification," or even death. Included in the arsenal are VHF generators, X-rays, ultrasound, and radio waves. Russian army Major I. Chernishev, writing in the military journal Orienteer in February 1997, asserted that "psy" weapons are under development all over the globe. Specific types of weapons noted by Chernishev (not all of which have prototypes) were:
In summary, Chernishev noted that some of the militarily significant aspects of the "psy" weaponry deserve closer research, including the following nontraditional methods for disrupting the psyche of an individual:
Solntsev's research, mentioned above, differs slightly from that of Chernishev. For example, Solntsev is more interested in hardware capabilities, specifically the study of the information-energy source associated with the computer-operator interface. He stresses that if these energy sources can be captured and integrated into the modern computer, the result will be a network worth more than "a simple sum of its components." Other researchers are studying high-frequency generators (those designed to stun the psyche with high frequency waves such as electromagnetic, acoustic, and gravitational); the manipulation or reconstruction of someone's thinking through planned measures such as reflexive control processes; the use of psychotronics, parapsychology, bioenergy, bio fields, and psychoenergy;[14] and unspecified "special operations" or anti-ESP training.
The last item is of particular interest. According to a Russian TV broadcast, the strategic rocket forces have begun anti-ESP training to ensure that no outside force can take over command and control functions of the force. That is, they are trying to construct a firewall around the heads of the operators.
Conclusions
At the end of July 1997, planners for Joint Warrior Interoperability Demonstration '97 "focused on technologies that enhance real-time collaborative planning in a multinational task force of the type used in Bosnia and in Operation Desert Storm. The JWID '97 network, called the Coalition Wide-Area Network (CWAN), is the first military network that allows allied nations to participate as full and equal partners."[15] The demonstration in effect was a trade fair for private companies to demonstrate their goods; defense ministries got to decide where and how to spend their money wiser, in many cases without incurring the cost of prototypes. It is a good example of doing business better with less. Technologies demonstrated included:[16]
This article has used the term data-processing to demonstrate its importance to ascertaining what so-called information warfare and information operations are all about. Data-processing is the action this nation and others need to protect. Information is nothing more than the output of this activity. As a result, the emphasis on information-related warfare terminology ("information dominance," "information carousel") that has proliferated for a decade does not seem to fit the situation before us. In some cases the battle to affect or protect data-processing elements pits one mechanical system against another. In other cases, mechanical systems may be confronted by the human organism, or vice versa, since humans can usually shut down any mechanical system with the flip of a switch. In reality, the game is about protecting or affecting signals, waves, and impulses that can influence the data-processing elements of systems, computers, or people. We are potentially the biggest victims of information warfare, because we have neglected to protect ourselves.
Our obsession with a "system of systems," "information dominance," and other such terminology is most likely a leading cause of our neglect of the human factor in our theories of information warfare. It is time to change our terminology and our conceptual paradigm. Our terminology is confusing us and sending us in directions that deal primarily with the hardware, software, and communications components of the data-processing spectrum. We need to spend more time researching how to protect the humans in our data management structures. Nothing in those structures can be sustained if our operators have been debilitated by potential adversaries or terrorists who--right now--may be designing the means to disrupt the human component of our carefully constructed notion of a system of systems.
NOTES
1. I. Chernishev, "Can Rulers Make `Zombies' and Control the World?" Orienteer, February 1997, pp. 58-62.
2. Douglas Pasternak, "Wonder Weapons," U.S. News and World Report, 7 July 1997, pp. 38-46.
3. Ibid., p. 38.
4. FM 101-5-1, Operational Terms and Graphics, 30 September 1997, p. 1-82.
5. Joint Pub 3-13.1, Joint Doctrine for Command and Control Warfare (C2W), 7 February 1996, p. v.
6. The American Heritage Dictionary (2d College Ed.; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982), p. 660, definition 4.
7. Denis Snezhnyy, "Cybernetic Battlefield & National Security," Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, No. 10, 15-21 March 1997, p. 2.
8. Victor I. Solntsev, "Information War and Some Aspects of a Computer Operator's Defense," talk given at an Infowar Conference in Washington, D.C., September 1996, sponsored by the National Computer Security Association. Information in this section is based on notes from Dr. Solntsev's talk.
9. Pasternak, p. 40.
10. Ibid., pp. 40-46.
11. Ibid.
12. Larry Dodgen, "Nonlethal Weapons," U.S. News and World Report, 4 August 1997, p. 5.
13. "Background on the Aviary," Nexus Magazine, downloaded from the Internet on 13 July 1997 from www.execpc.com/vjentpr/nexusavi.html, p.7.
14. Aleksandr Cherkasov, "The Front Where Shots Aren't Fired," Orienteer, May 1995, p. 45. This article was based on information in the foreign and Russian press, according to the author, making it impossible to pinpoint what his source was for this reference.
15. Bob Brewin, "DOD looks for IT `golden nuggets,'" Federal Computer Week, 28 July 1997, p. 31, as taken from the Earlybird Supplement, 4 August 1997, p. B 17.
16. Oliver August, "Zap! Hard day at the office for NATO's laptop warriors," The Times, 28 July 1997, as taken from the Earlybird Supplement, 4 August 1997, p. B 16.
17. Ibid.
Lieutenant Colonel Timothy L. Thomas (USA Ret.) is an analyst at the Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Recently he has written extensively on the Russian view of information operations and on current Russian military-political issues. During his military career he served in the 82d Airborne Division and was the Department Head of Soviet Military-Political Affairs at the US Army's Russian Institute in Garmisch, Germany.
Reviewed 25 February 1998. Please send comments or corrections to [email protected]
The Mind Has No Firewall
TIMOTHY L. THOMAS
From Parameters, Spring 1998, pp. 84-92.
"It is completely clear that the state which is first to create such weapons will achieve incomparable superiority." -- Major I. Chernishev, Russian army[1]
The human body, much like a computer, contains myriad data processors. They include, but are not limited to, the chemical-electrical activity of the brain, heart, and peripheral nervous system, the signals sent from the cortex region of the brain to other parts of our body, the tiny hair cells in the inner ear that process auditory signals, and the light-sensitive retina and cornea of the eye that process visual activity.[2] We are on the threshold of an era in which these data processors of the human body may be manipulated or debilitated. Examples of unplanned attacks on the body's data-processing capability are well-documented. Strobe lights have been known to cause epileptic seizures. Not long ago in Japan, children watching television cartoons were subjected to pulsating lights that caused seizures in some and made others very sick.
Defending friendly and targeting adversary data-processing capabilities of the body appears to be an area of weakness in the US approach to information warfare theory, a theory oriented heavily toward systems data-processing and designed to attain information dominance on the battlefield. Or so it would appear from information in the open, unclassified press. This US shortcoming may be a serious one, since the capabilities to alter the data- processing systems of the body already exist. A recent edition of U.S. News and World Report highlighted several of these "wonder weapons" (acoustics, microwaves, lasers) and noted that scientists are "searching the electromagnetic and sonic spectrums for wavelengths that can affect human behavior."[3] A recent Russian military article offered a slightly different slant to the problem, declaring that "humanity stands on the brink of a psychotronic war" with the mind and body as the focus. That article discussed Russian and international attempts to control the psycho-physical condition of man and his decisionmaking processes by the use of VHF-generators, "noiseless cassettes," and other technologies.
An entirely new arsenal of weapons, based on devices designed to introduce subliminal messages or to alter the body's psychological and data-processing capabilities, might be used to incapacitate individuals. These weapons aim to control or alter the psyche, or to attack the various sensory and data-processing systems of the human organism. In both cases, the goal is to confuse or destroy the signals that normally keep the body in equilibrium.
This article examines energy-based weapons, psychotronic weapons, and other developments designed to alter the ability of the human body to process stimuli. One consequence of this assessment is that the way we commonly use the term "information warfare" falls short when the individual soldier, not his equipment, becomes the target of attack.
Information Warfare Theory and the Data-Processing Element of Humans
In the United States the common conception of information warfare focuses primarily on the capabilities of hardware systems such as computers, satellites, and military equipment which process data in its various forms. According to Department of Defense Directive S-3600.1 of 9 December 1996, information warfare is defined as "an information operation conducted during time of crisis or conflict to achieve or promote specific objectives over a specific adversary or adversaries." An information operation is defined in the same directive as "actions taken to affect adversary information and information systems while defending one's own information and information systems." These "information systems" lie at the heart of the modernization effort of the US armed forces and other countries, and manifest themselves as hardware, software, communications capabilities, and highly trained individuals. Recently, the US Army conducted a mock battle that tested these systems under simulated combat conditions.
US Army Field Manual 101-5-1, Operational Terms and Graphics (released 30 September 1997), defines information warfare as "actions taken to achieve information superiority by affecting a hostile's information, information based-processes, and information systems, while defending one's own information, information processes, and information systems." The same manual defines information operations as a "continuous military operation within the military information environment that enables, enhances, and protects friendly forces' ability to collect, process, and act on information to achieve an advantage across the full range of military operations. [Information operations include] interacting with the Global Information Environment . . . and exploiting or denying an adversary's information and decision capabilities."[4]
This "systems" approach to the study of information warfare emphasizes the use of data, referred to as information, to penetrate an adversary's physical defenses that protect data (information) in order to obtain operational or strategic advantage. It has tended to ignore the role of the human body as an information- or data-processor in this quest for dominance except in those cases where an individual's logic or rational thought may be upset via disinformation or deception. As a consequence little attention is directed toward protecting the mind and body with a firewall as we have done with hardware systems. Nor have any techniques for doing so been prescribed. Yet the body is capable not only of being deceived, manipulated, or misinformed but also shut down or destroyed--just as any other data-processing system. The "data" the body receives from external sources--such as electromagnetic, vortex, or acoustic energy waves--or creates through its own electrical or chemical stimuli can be manipulated or changed just as the data (information) in any hardware system can be altered.
The only body-related information warfare element considered by the United States is psychological operations (PSYOP). In Joint Publication 3-13.1, for example, PSYOP is listed as one of the elements of command and control warfare. The publication notes that "the ultimate target of [information warfare] is the information dependent process, whether human or automated . . . . Command and control warfare (C2W) is an application of information warfare in military operations. . . . C2W is the integrated use of PSYOP, military deception, operations security, electronic warfare and physical destruction."[5]
One source defines information as a "nonaccidental signal used as an input to a computer or communications system."[6] The human body is a complex communication system constantly receiving nonaccidental and accidental signal inputs, both external and internal. If the ultimate target of information warfare is the information-dependent process, "whether human or automated," then the definition in the joint publication implies that human data-processing of internal and external signals can clearly be considered an aspect of information warfare. Foreign researchers have noted the link between humans as data processors and the conduct of information warfare. While some study only the PSYOP link, others go beyond it. As an example of the former, one recent Russian article described offensive information warfare as designed to "use the Internet channels for the purpose of organizing PSYOP as well as for `early political warning' of threats to American interests."[7] The author's assertion was based on the fact that "all mass media are used for PSYOP . . . [and] today this must include the Internet." The author asserted that the Pentagon wanted to use the Internet to "reinforce psychological influences" during special operations conducted outside of US borders to enlist sympathizers, who would accomplish many of the tasks previously entrusted to special units of the US armed forces.
Others, however, look beyond simple PSYOP ties to consider other aspects of the body's data-processing capability. One of the principal open source researchers on the relationship of information warfare to the body's data-processing capability is Russian Dr. Victor Solntsev of the Baumann Technical Institute in Moscow. Solntsev is a young, well-intentioned researcher striving to point out to the world the potential dangers of the computer operator interface. Supported by a network of institutes and academies, Solntsev has produced some interesting concepts.[8] He insists that man must be viewed as an open system instead of simply as an organism or closed system. As an open system, man communicates with his environment through information flows and communications media. One's physical environment, whether through electromagnetic, gravitational, acoustic, or other effects, can cause a change in the psycho-physiological condition of an organism, in Solntsev's opinion. Change of this sort could directly affect the mental state and consciousness of a computer operator. This would not be electronic war or information warfare in the traditional sense, but rather in a nontraditional and non-US sense. It might encompass, for example, a computer modified to become a weapon by using its energy output to emit acoustics that debilitate the operator. It also might encompass, as indicated below, futuristic weapons aimed against man's "open system."
Solntsev also examined the problem of "information noise," which creates a dense shield between a person and external reality. This noise may manifest itself in the form of signals, messages, images, or other items of information. The main target of this noise would be the consciousness of a person or a group of people. Behavior modification could be one objective of information noise; another could be to upset an individual's mental capacity to such an extent as to prevent reaction to any stimulus. Solntsev concludes that all levels of a person's psyche (subconscious, conscious, and "superconscious") are potential targets for destabilization.
According to Solntsev, one computer virus capable of affecting a person's psyche is Russian Virus 666. It manifests itself in every 25th frame of a visual display, where it produces a combination of colors that allegedly put computer operators into a trance. The subconscious perception of the new pattern eventually results in arrhythmia of the heart. Other Russian computer specialists, not just Solntsev, talk openly about this "25th frame effect" and its ability to subtly manage a computer user's perceptions. The purpose of this technique is to inject a thought into the viewer's subconscious. It may remind some of the subliminal advertising controversy in the United States in the late 1950s.
US Views on "Wonder Weapons": Altering the Data-Processing Ability of the Body
What technologies have been examined by the United States that possess the potential to disrupt the data-processing capabilities of the human organism? The 7 July 1997 issue of U.S. News and World Report described several of them designed, among other things, to vibrate the insides of humans, stun or nauseate them, put them to sleep, heat them up, or knock them down with a shock wave.[9] The technologies include dazzling lasers that can force the pupils to close; acoustic or sonic frequencies that cause the hair cells in the inner ear to vibrate and cause motion sickness, vertigo, and nausea, or frequencies that resonate the internal organs causing pain and spasms; and shock waves with the potential to knock down humans or airplanes and which can be mixed with pepper spray or chemicals.[10]
With modification, these technological applications can have many uses. Acoustic weapons, for example, could be adapted for use as acoustic rifles or as acoustic fields that, once established, might protect facilities, assist in hostage rescues, control riots, or clear paths for convoys. These waves, which can penetrate buildings, offer a host of opportunities for military and law enforcement officials. Microwave weapons, by stimulating the peripheral nervous system, can heat up the body, induce epileptic-like seizures, or cause cardiac arrest. Low-frequency radiation affects the electrical activity of the brain and can cause flu-like symptoms and nausea. Other projects sought to induce or prevent sleep, or to affect the signal from the motor cortex portion of the brain, overriding voluntary muscle movements. The latter are referred to as pulse wave weapons, and the Russian government has reportedly bought over 100,000 copies of the "Black Widow" version of them.[11]
However, this view of "wonder weapons" was contested by someone who should understand them. Brigadier General Larry Dodgen, Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Policy and Missions, wrote a letter to the editor about the "numerous inaccuracies" in the U.S. News and World Report article that "misrepresent the Department of Defense's views."[12] Dodgen's primary complaint seemed to have been that the magazine misrepresented the use of these technologies and their value to the armed forces. He also underscored the US intent to work within the scope of any international treaty concerning their application, as well as plans to abandon (or at least redesign) any weapon for which countermeasures are known. One is left with the feeling, however, that research in this area is intense. A concern not mentioned by Dodgen is that other countries or non-state actors may not be bound by the same constraints. It is hard to imagine someone with a greater desire than terrorists to get their hands on these technologies. "Psycho-terrorism" could be the next buzzword.
Russian Views on "Psychotronic War"
The term "psycho-terrorism" was coined by Russian writer N. Anisimov of the Moscow Anti-Psychotronic Center. According to Anisimov, psychotronic weapons are those that act to "take away a part of the information which is stored in a man's brain. It is sent to a computer, which reworks it to the level needed for those who need to control the man, and the modified information is then reinserted into the brain." These weapons are used against the mind to induce hallucinations, sickness, mutations in human cells, "zombification," or even death. Included in the arsenal are VHF generators, X-rays, ultrasound, and radio waves. Russian army Major I. Chernishev, writing in the military journal Orienteer in February 1997, asserted that "psy" weapons are under development all over the globe. Specific types of weapons noted by Chernishev (not all of which have prototypes) were:
- A psychotronic generator, which produces a powerful electromagnetic emanation capable of being sent through telephone lines, TV, radio networks, supply pipes, and incandescent lamps.
- An autonomous generator, a device that operates in the 10-150 Hertz band, which at the 10-20 Hertz band forms an infrasonic oscillation that is destructive to all living creatures.
- A nervous system generator, designed to paralyze the central nervous systems of insects, which could have the same applicability to humans.
- Ultrasound emanations, which one institute claims to have developed. Devices using ultrasound emanations are supposedly capable of carrying out bloodless internal operations without leaving a mark on the skin. They can also, according to Chernishev, be used to kill.
- Noiseless cassettes. Chernishev claims that the Japanese have developed the ability to place infra-low frequency voice patterns over music, patterns that are detected by the subconscious. Russians claim to be using similar "bombardments" with computer programming to treat alcoholism or smoking.
- The 25th-frame effect, alluded to above, a technique wherein each 25th frame of a movie reel or film footage contains a message that is picked up by the subconscious. This technique, if it works, could possibly be used to curb smoking and alcoholism, but it has wider, more sinister applications if used on a TV audience or a computer operator.
- Psychotropics, defined as medical preparations used to induce a trance, euphoria, or depression. Referred to as "slow-acting mines," they could be slipped into the food of a politician or into the water supply of an entire city. Symptoms include headaches, noises, voices or commands in the brain, dizziness, pain in the abdominal cavities, cardiac arrhythmia, or even the destruction of the cardiovascular system.
In summary, Chernishev noted that some of the militarily significant aspects of the "psy" weaponry deserve closer research, including the following nontraditional methods for disrupting the psyche of an individual:
- ESP research: determining the properties and condition of objects without ever making contact with them and "reading" peoples' thoughts
- Clairvoyance research: observing objects that are located just beyond the world of the visible--used for intelligence purposes
- Telepathy research: transmitting thoughts over a distance--used for covert operations
- Telekinesis research: actions involving the manipulation of physical objects using thought power, causing them to move or break apart--used against command and control systems, or to disrupt the functioning of weapons of mass destruction
- Psychokinesis research: interfering with the thoughts of individuals, on either the strategic or tactical level
Solntsev's research, mentioned above, differs slightly from that of Chernishev. For example, Solntsev is more interested in hardware capabilities, specifically the study of the information-energy source associated with the computer-operator interface. He stresses that if these energy sources can be captured and integrated into the modern computer, the result will be a network worth more than "a simple sum of its components." Other researchers are studying high-frequency generators (those designed to stun the psyche with high frequency waves such as electromagnetic, acoustic, and gravitational); the manipulation or reconstruction of someone's thinking through planned measures such as reflexive control processes; the use of psychotronics, parapsychology, bioenergy, bio fields, and psychoenergy;[14] and unspecified "special operations" or anti-ESP training.
The last item is of particular interest. According to a Russian TV broadcast, the strategic rocket forces have begun anti-ESP training to ensure that no outside force can take over command and control functions of the force. That is, they are trying to construct a firewall around the heads of the operators.
Conclusions
At the end of July 1997, planners for Joint Warrior Interoperability Demonstration '97 "focused on technologies that enhance real-time collaborative planning in a multinational task force of the type used in Bosnia and in Operation Desert Storm. The JWID '97 network, called the Coalition Wide-Area Network (CWAN), is the first military network that allows allied nations to participate as full and equal partners."[15] The demonstration in effect was a trade fair for private companies to demonstrate their goods; defense ministries got to decide where and how to spend their money wiser, in many cases without incurring the cost of prototypes. It is a good example of doing business better with less. Technologies demonstrated included:[16]
- Soldiers using laptop computers to drag cross-hairs over maps to call in airstrikes
- Soldiers carrying beepers and mobile phones rather than guns
- Generals tracking movements of every unit, counting the precise number of shells fired around the globe, and inspecting real-time damage inflicted on an enemy, all with multicolored graphics[17]
This article has used the term data-processing to demonstrate its importance to ascertaining what so-called information warfare and information operations are all about. Data-processing is the action this nation and others need to protect. Information is nothing more than the output of this activity. As a result, the emphasis on information-related warfare terminology ("information dominance," "information carousel") that has proliferated for a decade does not seem to fit the situation before us. In some cases the battle to affect or protect data-processing elements pits one mechanical system against another. In other cases, mechanical systems may be confronted by the human organism, or vice versa, since humans can usually shut down any mechanical system with the flip of a switch. In reality, the game is about protecting or affecting signals, waves, and impulses that can influence the data-processing elements of systems, computers, or people. We are potentially the biggest victims of information warfare, because we have neglected to protect ourselves.
Our obsession with a "system of systems," "information dominance," and other such terminology is most likely a leading cause of our neglect of the human factor in our theories of information warfare. It is time to change our terminology and our conceptual paradigm. Our terminology is confusing us and sending us in directions that deal primarily with the hardware, software, and communications components of the data-processing spectrum. We need to spend more time researching how to protect the humans in our data management structures. Nothing in those structures can be sustained if our operators have been debilitated by potential adversaries or terrorists who--right now--may be designing the means to disrupt the human component of our carefully constructed notion of a system of systems.
NOTES
1. I. Chernishev, "Can Rulers Make `Zombies' and Control the World?" Orienteer, February 1997, pp. 58-62.
2. Douglas Pasternak, "Wonder Weapons," U.S. News and World Report, 7 July 1997, pp. 38-46.
3. Ibid., p. 38.
4. FM 101-5-1, Operational Terms and Graphics, 30 September 1997, p. 1-82.
5. Joint Pub 3-13.1, Joint Doctrine for Command and Control Warfare (C2W), 7 February 1996, p. v.
6. The American Heritage Dictionary (2d College Ed.; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982), p. 660, definition 4.
7. Denis Snezhnyy, "Cybernetic Battlefield & National Security," Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, No. 10, 15-21 March 1997, p. 2.
8. Victor I. Solntsev, "Information War and Some Aspects of a Computer Operator's Defense," talk given at an Infowar Conference in Washington, D.C., September 1996, sponsored by the National Computer Security Association. Information in this section is based on notes from Dr. Solntsev's talk.
9. Pasternak, p. 40.
10. Ibid., pp. 40-46.
11. Ibid.
12. Larry Dodgen, "Nonlethal Weapons," U.S. News and World Report, 4 August 1997, p. 5.
13. "Background on the Aviary," Nexus Magazine, downloaded from the Internet on 13 July 1997 from www.execpc.com/vjentpr/nexusavi.html, p.7.
14. Aleksandr Cherkasov, "The Front Where Shots Aren't Fired," Orienteer, May 1995, p. 45. This article was based on information in the foreign and Russian press, according to the author, making it impossible to pinpoint what his source was for this reference.
15. Bob Brewin, "DOD looks for IT `golden nuggets,'" Federal Computer Week, 28 July 1997, p. 31, as taken from the Earlybird Supplement, 4 August 1997, p. B 17.
16. Oliver August, "Zap! Hard day at the office for NATO's laptop warriors," The Times, 28 July 1997, as taken from the Earlybird Supplement, 4 August 1997, p. B 16.
17. Ibid.
Lieutenant Colonel Timothy L. Thomas (USA Ret.) is an analyst at the Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Recently he has written extensively on the Russian view of information operations and on current Russian military-political issues. During his military career he served in the 82d Airborne Division and was the Department Head of Soviet Military-Political Affairs at the US Army's Russian Institute in Garmisch, Germany.
Reviewed 25 February 1998. Please send comments or corrections to [email protected]
Dr. Nick Begich US Electromagnetic Weapons and Human Rights � by Peter Phillips, Lew Brown and Bridget Thornton Advanced Neural Implants and Control � DARPA. Soviet and Czechoslovakian Parapsychology Research � Defense Intelligence Agency Paraphysics R & D Warsaw Pact � Defense Intelligence Agency Controlled Offensive Behavior � USSR Defense Intelligence Agency Science & Technology for New DoD Capabilities Interactive Neuronal and Nanoelectronic/photonic Circuits Darpatech 2002 Symposium � Transforming Fantasy Synthetic Telepathy and the Early Mind Wars by Richard Alan Miller USSR Hypnosis at a Distance Defense Intelligence Agency DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY ~ OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY SECNAVINST 3900.39D _ HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION PROGRAM
Why Microwave Auditory Effect Crowd-Control Gun Won't Work Experts say you'd fry before you heard anything By Monica Heger / July 2008
22 July 2008— New Scientist magazine recently reported that Sierra Nevada Corp., based in Sparks, Nevada, plans to build what it calls a nonlethal microwave ray gun with the ability to beam irritating sounds into people’s heads. But experts in the underlying biophysics say it cannot work: the device would kill you well before you were bothered by the noise.
The gun, which is being built by Lev Sadovnik at Sierra Nevada, would take advantage of a phenomenon known as the microwave auditory effect. When microwaves are delivered in short pulses, the cochlear tissue in the ear expands. That expansion is heard as an audible click to anyone receiving the radiation, a sound much like that of two rocks being hit together underwater. The company says that the device, called MEDUSA (for ”mob excess deterrent using silent audio”), could be used for crowd control.
However, experts say the gun wouldn’t work as advertised. There is no way the ray gun could deliver sound loud enough to be annoying at nonfatal power levels, says Kenneth Foster, a bioengineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania who first published research on the microwave auditory effect in 1974.
”Any kind of exposure you could give to someone that wouldn’t burn them to a crisp would produce a sound too weak to have any effect,” Foster says.
Bill Guy, a former professor at the University of Washington who has also published on the microwave auditory effect, agrees. ”There couldn’t possibly be a hazard from the sound, because the heat would get you first,” Guy says.
Guy says that experiments have demonstrated that radiation at 40 microjoules per pulse per square centimeter produces sound at zero decibels, which is just barely in hearing range. To produce sound at 60 decibels, or the sound of normal conversation, requires 40 watts per square centimeter of radiation. ”That would kill you pretty fast,” Guy says. Producing an unpleasant sound, at about 120 decibels, would take 40 million W/cm2 of energy. One milliwatt per square centimeter is considered to be the safety threshold.
”There’s a misunderstanding by the public and even some scientists about this auditory effect,” says Guy.
Theoretically, the gun could be used by the military, says James Lin, professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois. ”With any weapon, the intent is to do damage,” he says. In this case, Lin says, the gun would be more likely to cause tissue damage, brain damage, or nerve cell damage than an auditory annoyance.
Sadovnik’s project received a grant from the U.S. Navy Small Business Innovation Research several years ago. The Navy awards grants in phases, and the MEDUSA failed to receive a grant beyond the first phase. Now Sadovnik is working on the project at Sierra Nevada. He declined to comment for this article.
22 July 2008— New Scientist magazine recently reported that Sierra Nevada Corp., based in Sparks, Nevada, plans to build what it calls a nonlethal microwave ray gun with the ability to beam irritating sounds into people’s heads. But experts in the underlying biophysics say it cannot work: the device would kill you well before you were bothered by the noise.
The gun, which is being built by Lev Sadovnik at Sierra Nevada, would take advantage of a phenomenon known as the microwave auditory effect. When microwaves are delivered in short pulses, the cochlear tissue in the ear expands. That expansion is heard as an audible click to anyone receiving the radiation, a sound much like that of two rocks being hit together underwater. The company says that the device, called MEDUSA (for ”mob excess deterrent using silent audio”), could be used for crowd control.
However, experts say the gun wouldn’t work as advertised. There is no way the ray gun could deliver sound loud enough to be annoying at nonfatal power levels, says Kenneth Foster, a bioengineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania who first published research on the microwave auditory effect in 1974.
”Any kind of exposure you could give to someone that wouldn’t burn them to a crisp would produce a sound too weak to have any effect,” Foster says.
Bill Guy, a former professor at the University of Washington who has also published on the microwave auditory effect, agrees. ”There couldn’t possibly be a hazard from the sound, because the heat would get you first,” Guy says.
Guy says that experiments have demonstrated that radiation at 40 microjoules per pulse per square centimeter produces sound at zero decibels, which is just barely in hearing range. To produce sound at 60 decibels, or the sound of normal conversation, requires 40 watts per square centimeter of radiation. ”That would kill you pretty fast,” Guy says. Producing an unpleasant sound, at about 120 decibels, would take 40 million W/cm2 of energy. One milliwatt per square centimeter is considered to be the safety threshold.
”There’s a misunderstanding by the public and even some scientists about this auditory effect,” says Guy.
Theoretically, the gun could be used by the military, says James Lin, professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois. ”With any weapon, the intent is to do damage,” he says. In this case, Lin says, the gun would be more likely to cause tissue damage, brain damage, or nerve cell damage than an auditory annoyance.
Sadovnik’s project received a grant from the U.S. Navy Small Business Innovation Research several years ago. The Navy awards grants in phases, and the MEDUSA failed to receive a grant beyond the first phase. Now Sadovnik is working on the project at Sierra Nevada. He declined to comment for this article.
Terminology note:
Today Mind control or brainwashing in academia is commonly referred to as coercive persuasion, coercive psychological systems or coercive influence. The short description below comes from Dr. Margaret Singer professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley the acknowledged leading authority in the world on mind control and cults.a short overview
Coercion is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as:To force to act or think in a certain mannerTo dominate, restrain, or control by forceTo bring about by force.Coercive psychological systems are behavioral change programs which use psychological force in a coercive way to cause the learning and adoption of an ideology or designated set of beliefs, ideas, attitudes, or behaviors. The essential strategy used by the operators of these programs is to systematically select, sequence and coordinate many different types of coercive influence, anxiety and stress-producing tactics over continuous periods of time.In such a program the subject is forced to adapt in a series of tiny "invisible" steps.
Each tiny step is designed to be sufficiently small so the subjects will not notice the changes in themselves or identify the coercive nature of the processes being used. The subjects of these tactics do not become aware of the hidden organizational purpose of the coercive psychological program until much later, if ever. These tactics are usually applied in a group setting by well intentioned but deceived "friends and allies" of the victim. This keeps the victim from putting up the ego defenses we normally maintain in known adversarial situations.
The coercive psychological influence of these programs aim to overcome the individual's critical thinking abilities and free will - apart from any appeal to informed judgment. Victims gradually lose their ability to make independent decisions and exercise informed consent. Their critical thinking, defenses, cognitive processes, values, ideas, attitudes, conduct and ability to reason are undermined by a technological process rather than by meaningful free choice, rationality, or the inherent merit or value of the ideas or propositions being presented.How Do They Work?The tactics used to create undue psychological and social influence, often by means involving anxiety and stress, fall into seven main categories.
TACTIC 1
Increase suggestibility and "soften up" the individual through specific hypnotic or other suggestibility-increasing techniques such as:Extended audio, visual, verbal, or tactile fixation drills, Excessive exact repetition of routine activities, Sleep restriction and/or Nutritional restriction.
TACTIC 2
Establish control over the person's social environment, time and sources of social support by a system of often-excessive rewards and punishments. Social isolation is promoted. Contact with family and friends is
abridged, as is contact with persons who do not share group-approved attitudes. Economic and other dependence on the group is fostered.
TACTIC 3
Prohibit disconfirming information and non supporting opinions in group communication. Rules exist about permissible topics to discuss with outsiders. Communication is highly controlled. An "in-group" language is usually constructed.
TACTIC 4
Make the person re-evaluate the most central aspects of his or her experience of self and prior conduct in negative ways. Efforts are designed to destabilize and undermine the subject's basic consciousness, reality awareness, world view, emotional control and defense mechanisms. The subject is guided to reinterpret his or her life's history and adopt a new version of causality.
TACTIC 5
Create a sense of powerlessness by subjecting the person to intense and frequent actions and situations which undermine the person's confidence in himself and his judgment.
TACTIC 6
Create strong aversive emotional arousals in the subject by use of nonphysical punishments such as intense humiliation, loss of privilege, social isolation, social status changes, intense guilt, anxiety, manipulation and other techniques.
TACTIC 7
Intimidate the person with the force of group-sanctioned secular psychological threats. For example, it may be suggested or implied that failure to adopt the approved attitude, belief or consequent behavior will lead to severe punishment or dire consequences such as physical or mental illness, the reappearance of a prior physical illness, drug dependence, economic collapse, social failure, divorce, disintegration, failure to find a mate, etc.
These tactics of psychological force are applied to such a severe degree that the individual's capacity to make informed or free choices becomes inhibited. The victims become unable to make the normal, wise or balanced decisions which they most likely or normally would have made, had they not been unknowingly manipulated by these coordinated technical processes. The cumulative effect of these processes can be an even more effective form of undue influence than pain, torture, drugs or the use of physical force and physical and legal threats.
How does Coercive Psychological Persuasion Differ from Other Kinds of Influence?
Coercive psychological systems are distinguished from benign social learning or peaceful persuasion by the specific conditions under which they are conducted. These conditions include the type and number of coercive psychological tactics used, the severity of environmental and interpersonal manipulation, and the amount of psychological force employed to suppress particular unwanted behaviors and to train desired behaviors.
Coercive force is traditionally visualized in physical terms. In this form it is easily definable, clear-cut and unambiguous. Coercive psychological force unfortunately has not been so easy to see and define. The law has been ahead of the physical sciences in that it has allowed that coercion need not involve physical force. It has recognized that an individual can be threatened and coerced psychologically by what he or she perceives to be dangerous, not necessarily by that which is dangerous.Law has recognized that even the threatened action need not be physical.
Threats of economic loss, social ostracism and ridicule, among other things, are all recognized by law, in varying contexts, as coercive psychological forces.Why are Coercive Psychological Systems Harmful?Coercive psychological systems violate our most fundamental concepts of basic human rights. They violate rights of individuals that are guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and affirmed by many declarations of principle worldwide.
By confusing, intimidating and silencing their victims, those who profit from these systems evade exposure and prosecution for actions recognized as harmful and which are illegal in most countries such as: fraud, false imprisonment, undue influence, involuntary servitude, intentional infliction of emotional distress, outrageous conduct and other tortuous acts.
