Metaprogramming Department http://www.johnclilly.com
Preface to the Second Edition.
All human beings all persons who reach adulthood in the world today are
programmed biocomputers. No one of us can escape our own nature as
programmable entities. Literally, each of us may be our programs, nothing
more, nothing less.
Despite the great varieties of programs available, most of us have a limited
set of programs. Some of these are built-in. The structure of our nervous
system reflects its origins in simpler forms of organisms from sessile
protozoans, sponges, corals through sea worms, reptiles and proto-mammals to
primates to apes to early anthropoids to humanoids to man. In the simpler
basic forms, the programs were mostly built-in: from genetic codes to
fully-formed organisms adultly reproducing, the patterns of function of
action-reaction were determined by necessities of sunival, of adaptation to
slow environmental changes, of passing on the code to descendants.
As the size and complexity of the nervous system and its bodily carrier
increased, new levels of programmability appeared, not tied to immediate
survival and eventual reproduction. The built-in programs survived as a
basic underlying context for the new levels, excitable and inhibitable, by
the overlying control systems. Eventually, the cerebral cortex appeared as
an expanding new high-level computer controlling the structurally lower
levels of the nervous system, the lower built-in programs. For the first
time Learning and its faster adaptation to a rapidly changing environment
began to appear. Further, as this new cortex expanded over several millions
of years, a critical size of cortex was reached. At this new level of
structure, a new capability emerged learning to learn
When one learns to learn, one is making models, using symbols, analogizing,
making metaphors, in short, inventing and using language, mathematics, art,
politics, business, etc. At the critical brain (cortex) size, languages and
its consequences appear.
To avoid the necessity of repeating learning to learn, symbols, metapbors,
models each time, I symbolize the underlying idea in these operations as
metaprogramming. Metaprogramming appears at a critical cortical size - the
cerebra computer must have a large enough number of interconnected circuits
of sufficient quality for the operations of metaprogramming to exist in that
biocomputer.
Essentially, metaprogramming is an operation in which a central control
system controls hundreds of thousands of programs operating in parallel
simultaneously. This operation in 1972 is not yet done in man-made
computers-metaprogramming is done outside the big solid-state computers by
the human programmers, or more properly, the human metaprogrammers. All
choices and assignments of what the solid-state computers do, how they
operate, what goes into them are still human biocomputer choices.
EventualLy, we may construct a metaprogramming computer, and turn these
choices over to it.
When I said we may be our programs, nothing more, nothing less, I meant the
substrate, the basic substratum under all else, of our metaprograrns is our
programs. All we are as humans is what is built-in and what has been
acquired, and what we make of both of these. So we are one more result of
the program substrate - the self-metaprogrammer.
As out of several hundreds of thousands of the substrate programs comes an
adaptable changing set of thousands of metaprograms, so out of the
metaprograms as substrate comes something else the controller, the
steersman, the programmer in the biocomputer, the self-metaprogrammer. In a
well - organized biocomputer, there is at least one such critical control
metaprogram labeled I for acting on other metaprograms and labeled me when
acted upon by other metaprograms. I say att one least one advisedly.
Most of us have several controllers, selves, self-metaprograms which divide
control among them, either in time parallel or in time series in sequences
of control. As I will give in detail later, one path for self-development is
to centralize control of one's biocomputer in one self - metaprogrammer,
making the others into conscious executives subordinate to the single
administrator, the single superconscient self-metaprogrammer. With
appropriate methods, this centralizing of control, the elementary
unification operation, is a realizable state for many, if not all biocomputers.
Beyond and above in the control hierarchy, the position of this single
administrative self-metaprogramrner and his staff, there may be other controls
and controllers, which, for convenience, I call supraself metaprograms. These
are many or one depending on current states of consciousness in the single
seLfmetaprogrammer. These may be personified as if entities, treated as if a
network for inforrroation transfer, or realized as if self traveling in the
Universe to strange lands or dimensions or spaces if one does a further
unification operation on these supraself metaprograms, one may arrive at a
concept labeled God, the Creator, the Starmaker, or whatever.
At times we are tempted to pull together apparently independent supraself
sources as if one. I am not sure that we are quite ready to do this
supraself unification operation and have the result correspond fully to an
objective reality. Certain states of consciousness result from and cause
operation of this apparent unification phenomenon. We are still general
purpose computers who can program any conceivable model of the universe
inside our own structure, reduce che single self-metaprogrammerr to a micro
size, and program him to travel through his own model as if real (level 6,
Satori +6: Lilly, 1972.
This property is useful when one steps outside it and sees it for what it
is an immensely satisfying realization of the programmatic power of one's
own biocomputer. To overvalue or to negate such experiences is not a
necessary operation. To realize that one has this property is an important
addition to one's self-metaprogrammatic list of probables.
Once one has control over modelling the universe inside one's self, and is
able to vary the parameters satisfactorily, one's self may reflect this
ability by changing appropriately to match the new property.
The quality of one's model of the universe is measured by how well it
matches the real universe. There is no guarantee that one's current model
does match the reality, no matter how certain one feels about the high
quality of the match. Feelings of awe, reverence, sacredness and certainty
are also adaptable metaprograms, attachable to any model, not just the best
fitting one.
Modern science knows this: we know that merely because a culture generated a
cosmology of a certain kind and worshipped with it, was no guarantee of
goodness of fit with the real universe. Insofar as they are testable, we now
proceed to test (rather than to worship) models of the universe. Feelings
such as awe and reverence are recognized as biocomputer energy sources,
rather than as determinants of truth, i e, of the goodness of fit of models
vs. realities.
A pervasive feeling of certainty is recognized as a property of a state of
consciousness, a special space which may be indicative or suggestive but is
no longer considered as a final judgement of a true fitting Even as one can
travel inside one's models inside one's head, so can one travel outside or
be tbe outside of one's model of the universe, still inside one's head (see
Lilly 1972 level or state +3, Satori +3). In this metaprogram it is as if
one joins the creators, unites with God, etc. Here one can so attenuate the
self that it may disappear.
One can conceive of other supraself metaprograms farther out than these,
such as are given in Olaf Stapledon's The Starmaker (Dover, New York, 1937).
Here the self joins other selves, touring the reaches of past and future
time and of space' everywhere. The planet-wide consciousness joins into
solar systems consciousness into galaxy-wide consciousness. Intergalactic
sharing of consciousness fused into the mind of the universe finally faces
its creator, the Starmaker. The universe's mind realizes that its creator
knows its imperfections and will tear it down to start over, creating a more
perfect universe.
Such uses of one's own biocomputer as the above can teach one profound
truths about one's self, one's capabilities. The resulting states of being,
of consciousness, teach one the basic truth about one's own equipment as
follows:
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes
true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally
These limits are further beliefs to be transcended In the mind, there are no
limits. (Lilly, 1972).
In tbe province of tbe mind is the region of one's models, of the alone
self, of memory, of the metaprograms. What of the region which includes
one's body, other's bodies? Here there are definite limits.
In the network of bodies, one's own connected with others for bodily
survival-procreation-creation, there is another kind of information:
In the province of connected minds, what the network believes to be true,
either is true or becomes true within certain limits to be found
experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be
transcended. In the network's mind there are no limits.
But, once again, the bodies of the network housing the minds, the ground on
which they rest, the planet's surface, impose definite limits. These limits
are to be found experientially and experimentally, agreed upon by special
minds, and communicated to the network. The results are called concensus
science.
Thus, so far, we have information without limits in one's mind and with
agreed-upon limits (possibly unnecessary) in a network of minds. We aLso
have information within definite limits (to be found) with one body and in a
network of bodies on a planet.
With this formulation, our scientific problem can be stated very succinctly
as follows:
Given a single body and a single mind physically isolated and confined in a
completely physically-controlled environment in true solitude, by our present
sciences can we satisfactorily account for all inputs and all outputs to and
from this mind_ biocomputer (i.e., can we truly isolate and confine it?)?
Given the properties of the software-mind of this biocomputer outlined
above, is it probable that we can find, discover, or invent inputs-outputs
not yet in our concensus science? Does this Center of consciousness
receive-transmit information by at Present unknown modes of communication?
Does this center of consciousness stay in the iisolated confined biocomputer?
In this book I try to show you where I am in this stretch and research. In
previous books I have dealt with personal experiences. Here I deal with
theory and methods, metaprograms and programs.
*Quoted in entirety from John C. Lilly
Simularions of God: A Science of Belief.
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