Several years ago in conversation, editor and writer Ashley Crawford lamented that the neuro-semantic revolution (Hedonistic Engineering and Development division) promised in the 1960s had not yet come to pass.

Crawford's offhand comment reminded me of a late 1970s picture-book that I once had which depicted a city with two alternative futures: a smog-engulfed hell with gasmask-wearing inhabitants, or an Eden-like environmental paradise. The reality is that a range of futures is always available, even in the face of true ambiguity. The neuro-semantic revolution partly suceeded and was partly eclipsed.

Oh Lord, How Long?

One by one, the tribal elders and global overseers--William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary--had departed us for The Western Lands, never to return. The Challenger disaster had thwarted early Space Migration plans. Cryogenic technology was more likely used for freezing racing engines, rifle and gun barrels, electronics and refrigeration, not the related field of cryonics (freezing people). The personal computing boom overtook the floatation tank micro-trend. Your local community health center will probably not be offering LSD psychotherapy anytime soon (ditto for medical marijuana and GHB).

The early 1990s nootropics fad was quickly assimilated, dumbed down, and repackaged as energy drinks (containing taurine and guarana). Anyone can get a bellybutton ring, but what does your average mall rat know about Genesis P-Orridge and body modification practices?

Subcultures wax and wane all the time. Allegiances shift as people pass through different life-stages. Fashionable geeks are in decline, with goth and rave subcultures also possibly affected.

So given that the revolution did not come to pass, what current opportunities are there for becoming more human?

1. E-Prime. We may be living in the 21st century, but our language still has remnants of Middle Ages thought. Alfred Korzybski created E-Prime to abolish the "Is-of-Identity" ("X is Y"), and this was extended by D. David Bourland Jr. in 1949 to all forms of "is" or "to be" in the English language. Korzkybski's insights were adopted by Albert Ellis, the influential humanistic psychotherapist.

Korzybski and E-Prime influenced William S. Burroughs and A.E. Van Vogt; its extension of cause-effect language and thinking into non-Aristotelian and post-Newtonian vistas was 'stolen' by L. Ron Hubbard.

E-Prime and Korzybski has more relevance today than its roots in obscure 1930s theory or 1950s science fiction novels might suggest. The Institute of General Semantics and the Society of Neuro-Semantics continue to explore Korzkybski's legacy and share research findings with the world. Dr. L. Michael Hall and Dr. Bobby G. Bodenhamer have integrated E-Prime, throuugh the Institute of Neuro-Semantics and Crown House Publishers, with NLP and other treatment modalities.

Most revolutions promise the earth, yet the trains don't even run on time. E-Prime promises you a world without arguments, and it delivers.

2. Chronobiology and Hypnosis. Popular misunderstandings and Televangelist scams have obscured some riveting advances in chronobiology (the study of biological rhythms) , including clinical applications for depression, sleep disorders and the related field of neuroendocrinology (the connection between human behavior and hormones). These insights were integral to the Bektashi and Naqshbandi Sufi Orders, which may have transmitted certain practices to the Gurdjieff Work.

The Hassan bin Sabah of the hypnotic realms was Milton Erickson, an influential psychotherapist who developed many techniques for embedded commands. Stephen Wolinsky and Tad James have developed specific applications, respectively, for quick psychotherapy and ethical business conduct.

One of the most intriguing people to continue Erickson's research is Dr. Ernest L. Rossi, who has focused on the mind-gene connection (which might also explain memetics). His key works include Mind-Body Therapy: Methods of Ideodynamic Healing in Hypnosis (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1994), which outlines the field; the advanced textbook The Psychobiology of Mind-Body Healing: New Concepts of Therapeutic Hypnosis (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1993); and Twenty-Minute Break: Using the New Science of Ultradian Rhythms (Palisades Gateway Publishing, 1991), which divulged why a 20 minute biological rhythm is a "hidden influence" on our everyday life.

3. The Floatation Tank: In his Book of Floating: Exploring the Private Sea (New York: William Morrow & Co, 1984), Michael Hutchison likens the self-change potential of the floatation tank to the just-occurrung personal computer boom. Yet the floatation tank never reached the 'tipping point' and crossed-the-chasm into the mainstream, perhaps because countercultural fascination was informed more by lurid tales of Dr. John Lilly's Ketamine and LSD-fuelled trips and the film Altered States (1980) than the methods of transpersonal psychology research.

Jospeh Chilton Pearce observed: "Language activity becomes a survival necessity and roof-brain [neocortex] chatter forms a stable semantic background continually reinforcing the social world." [1]

The floatation tank provides an immersive environment that "pattern-interrupts" this stable semantic background, and amplifies each individual's cultural feedback loops. Whereas James Joyce used sub-vocal "stream of consciousness" speech primarily as a literary device, the flotation tank enables the practitioner to become more self-aware of the mind tape-loops that operate just below the threshold of our conscious awareness. Anxieties and fears can be self-observed, confronted and reintegrated into the psyche.

The early Church of Satan contended that much of Theosophy and post-Enlightenment occultism was a form of symbol sickness: a "category mistake" of distinguishing between magic-mythic symbols (Jean Piaget's representational-mind) and conceptual-logic thought (Piaget's formal-operations). Philip K. Dick's novels also explore this trap, notably his 1954 novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldtritch. The ability of Homo Sapiens to generate subjective visions and act "as-if" dislodges the mind from bodily-awareness and the external world, jamming our cultural-cognitive abilities within a vicious circle (just think of the PR statements by your favorite dotcom executive). We can escape this trap by focusing upon the structure of our subjectivity amd how this overlaps with the objective world.

When combined with the linguistics work of Alfred Korzybski, Hans Vaihinger and Gregory Bateson, the floatation tank can assist the practitioner in arcing the gap between conventional and post-conventional worldviews. In "Sociocultural Evolution", Ken Wilber's 1983 reply to Dick Anthony's critique, Wilber wrote of an aim relevant to floatation tank work:

Nobody has transcended culture by means of 'rationality' rather, thought-operating-on-thought can become more aware of its own cultural settings and the relative nature of many of its own perspectives, precisely because it can be more reflectively aware of the structure of its own operations (some aspects of which, by comparison, can be seen to be qausiuniversal). [2]

Endnotes:

[1] Joseph Chilton Pearce. Exploring the Crack in the Cosmic Egg: Split Minds & Meta-Realities. New York: Pocket Books, 1974. p. 123.