It really is as though, from a planetary point of view, what has happened is: an enzyme system—called the human species—was deputized into an information-gathering mode, sent out as a kind of prodigal subsystem (a kind of episome of the social environment) to cognize the organization of the natural world through a process called human history, or the historical advance of understanding toward a sufficiently complete modeling of the ground that closure could occur.
From the point of view of an extraterrestrial looking down on the surface of the planet, there are not discrete organisms, there is simply a gene swarm. And through transmission of viruses and numerous non-genetic ways in which genes are transformed, the previously imagined sharp declensions between species are actually somewhat illusory. So that, really, within the confines of my body, the unfolding of gene expression and the molecular assembly of enzyme systems and proteins and that sort of thing is simply under a tighter regimen of control than are the same kind of processes which are going on between people. We are really a loosely regulated organism that has a tendency to ever tighten the control between its subunits. So that you can see the evolution of language, the evolution of technology (and its being at the service of media), the rise of cities, oral poetry, all of these things—we seem to strive for greater and greater cohesion, greater and greater free-flow of thought among ourselves.
What we’re looking toward is a moment when the artificial language structures which bind us within the notion of ourselves are dissolved in the presence of the realization that we are a part of nature. And when that happens, the childhood of our species will pass away and we will stand tremulously on the brink of, really, the first moments of coherent human civilization.
The unconscious is actually a kind of neurotic excuse for not getting our act together as a species. It is a kind of infantilism; a giving of permission by each of us to all of us to not get our act together. And the way in which the unconscious is eliminated is by turning the language machinery back upon itself and reflecting on the process of attention. This is what Buddhism is all about: attention to attention. Awareness of the modality of the cognitive process. Don’t be fooled by yourself! Don’t be made a sucker of by yourself. Just rise above that possibility by paying attention. Attention to attention causes the light of language to fall into these dark and unilluminated corners where infantilism is tolerated in the individual personality.
The act of conscious self-inspection creates more conscious people, which create a more conscious society, which erodes the possibility of the poisonous and toxic effects of ideology. This is what psychedelics were and are about in terms of their social position and their legal position in society. Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third-story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behavior and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong. And, you know, government and society spend a lot of money educating you into being a loyal worker, consumer, debt payer, and citizen.
Attention to attention (or paying attention to the nuances of cognition) is a psychedelic way of being.
I think it’s about attending the minute particulars as a kind of practice. It may not get you anywhere for several years. But if you attend the minute particulars, cultivate an ongoing stream of self-description, telling yourself what is happening, get used to the idea that mind can penetrate the immediate surface of being and reveal the tactile density of it as a manifold whose measure cannot be immediately taken by the eyes. That it’s deep, it’s connected, it’s complex. Everything holds within itself the anticipation and the memory of everything else.
As we take control of our genetic heritage, as we take control of the process of manufacturing culture, we are going to become what we dream we are. And we have never really explored consciously what it is we dream we are. But very shortly this will become a major part of the cultural agenda, because we are going to be able to do anything.