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When Plato tells the story of Theuth in the Phaedrus, the god offers his invention as a gift to humankind. King Thamus declines, with the warning that writing will “implant forgetfulness” and give only “the appearance of wisdom.” The common accusation against AI writing—that it weakens thought, produces imitation rather than understanding, and severs authorship from the living speaker—is the latest form of the same worry.

Derrida’s famous reading of the Phaedrus reframes Thamus’s fear. Writing is not simply a tool added to speech; it is a supplement, both addition and substitute. It appears to aid memory, but only because speech itself is already dependent on spacing, iteration, and deferral—the conditions Derrida names arche-writing. The supplement therefore exposes that the supposed origin (the speaking, remembering subject) was never self-sufficient. Writing does not corrupt presence; it reveals that presence is already trace.

From a neurological perspective, writing does of course literally re-wires the brain. It recruits visual and spatial circuits that oral culture used differently, redistributing the part of the labour of memory from the hippocampus to the page. In this sense, Plato’s complaint is empirically true: writing does change us. But the change is not necessarily degeneration—it can be seen as the exteriorization of the same operation that already structures memory internally. Derrida’s arche-writing here meets Clark and Chalmers’s “Extended Mind”: cognition and recollection extend into the environment through inscriptions that function as parts of the cognitive loop. The notebook, the screen, or the archive is not outside the mind but part of its system of traces.

What AI systems do is generalize this exteriorization. They no longer merely store traces; they process and generate them. The writing machine remembers, recombines, and returns language to us in new configurations. In functional terms it is another layer of the extended mind: a dynamic tertiary retention, in Stiegler’s phrase, that supplements human thought. As alphabetic writing once externalized static memory, AI writing externalizes and increases memory as process: it actively constructs what we call ideas. This extension into process suggests a greater difference than there may actually be. The same structure of the supplement recurs: the aid that threatens to replace, the prosthesis that transforms what it extends.

Each stage—speech, writing, AI—alters neural, social, and cultural patterns, yet none of these abolish the structure of arche-writing itself. The trace remains the constant; the embodiment of the trace shifts. The human, then, is not displaced by technology but continually re-inscribed by it. The history of media is the history of arche-writing writing itself through new substrates—from mouth, to hand, to code. The question is not whether AI will change us (it will) but how we will inhabit the new spacing it opens in the field of memory.

But this is too simple. The notion that the same phantasy or concern exists between speech to writing and writing to AI writing is valid, yet to reiterate Plato was empirically correct in a sense and likewise expressions of concern are likewise correct, because it will alter the human. The issue concerns what it is exactly we think a human is. From a materialist perspective there is little issue here; likewise from a Deleuzo-Guattarian perspective (which is not necessarily materialist) there is also a lack of problem here —humankind simply extends its becoming other possibilities.

This thinking more concerns the phenomenology of the human as it takes itself to be in an incoherent coherence as opposed to its deconstructed coherent incoherence. The incoherent coherence is that of a being of a certain autonomy, possessing its own thoughts and feelings. To place these outside of it have a sense that undermines its sovereign importance. This tension is what is felt (currently) and brings the AI anxiety; literally a threat to perceived human ontology.

There is one more issue, which arguably is more potent than the above. This is that Derrida actually misreads or at least flattens Plato. Derrida treats Plato’s notion of memory more as a cognitve function, but arguably Plato means by anamnesis something much more spiritual. If the Platonic memory is more akin to Bruno’s art of memory, then Plato warns against the loss of a channel further back into being in an unambiguously magickal form. Neural rewiring in this sense is ontologically more than simply a change of cognitive functioning. Likewise then, the more recent shift in which process itself becomes externalised, can be seen as yet more damaging still to this access. From that perspective, every exterior inscription—whether written or algorithmic—is a distraction from the inner act of remembering the Good. If Derrida and Clark show that thought is always already technical, Plato reminds us that it may also be more than technical: a form of recollection that no prosthesis can perform on our behalf.

Without an absolute moral register, we cannot privilege the inner motion or the outer motion. The problem is thus ethico-ontological: the choice concerns not only what we ought to do, but what we choose to be. Ethics comes into play here in the sense of a choice, where we must consider from various angles which one constitutes what we wish to be—the autonomous subject whose access to Being is internal and effortful, or the re-inscribed human whose becoming is always already mediated by the technical trace. The history of media is the history of this ongoing ethical negotiation over the very boundaries of the human self.

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Adam Curtis is well known for espousing the notion that modern society (especially the West) has no notion of where it is heading, or even of how it could be heading somewhere or even what it would mean for it to head anywhere. Western societies cannot imagine anything other than more of the same — more capitalism, maybe slightly stranger capitalism, with AI augmentations, but still weirdly the same. As Nietzsche understood, this doesn’t actually satisfy the the spiritual(a new word is probably needed but it will have to do) nature of the human. Christianity — brutal as it was — offered structure and purpose. Without that scaffolding, we are adrift. Individually, we seem to bear the existence of staring into the void and keep going. Collectively, it tears us apart.

Mark Fisher called this capitalist realism: the pervasive sense that “there is no alternative.” Capitalism presents itself not as one system among others, but as the only imaginable frame. We may dislike aspects of it, even hate it, but we can’t picture a coherent beyond. The future, if we dare to imagine it at all, looks like a more intensified version of the present — just stranger, faster, weirder. Jean Baudrillard gestured in a similar direction: culture untethered from any ground, spinning in loops of simulation, losing orientation.

The problem, though, is even worse. Pneuminous theory, or chaos magick (they are similar projects), doesn’t rescue us from this malaise. It extends the nihilism. It shows that not only rational structures, but even magickal, symbolic, and esoteric frameworks are contingent accretions — pneuma infecting vectors, conscious doubles arising by intention. The abyss doesn’t shrink when one embraces occultism; it expands. There is no final ground, only shifting layers of contingency.

Which leaves us with a somewhat grim recognition: powerful people who manufacture myths and control structures are, in a sense, right to do so. Without myth, societies collapse into conspiracy, nostalgia, or despair. The real question is: can there be an ethical control myth — one that binds without domination, one that acknowledges the possibility of paranormaityl without relegating it to fringe counterculture or totalising it into religion?

Maybe this is where a new myth must be conceived — the Myth of Ur. Ur not as an ancient city, but as a beginning, a foundation that knows itself as contingent. It would say: we are something like multidimensional pneuminous beings, layered, accreted, entangled in vectors of meaning and possibility. We cannot (at least in regular consciousness, know if paranormality actually obtains, but we cannot deny the possibility either. We live inside the disjunction, thus rather than being opposing agents we should dwellers on the threshold so to speak.

Furthermore, the possibility of the actuality is what we should bet on. Even in recognising the agnostic disjunction, we should act as if the fluid-paranormality were real, as it is this side that makes reality truly interconnected hand invokes our responsibility. Like Pascal’s wager: live as if God exists, because it is the safer bet. Our wager is ontological: live as if we are pneuminous beings. Not because it is proven, but because this orientation does the least violence to the complexity of our condition.

These kinds of rules could be examples that might be part of such an ethical ontology:

  • Live as if the world is layered and multidimensional in the most literal sense.
  • Direct power toward preserving openness, not closing it down.
  • Treat technology and capital as the contingent manifestations of the second centre they are: new accretions, not ultimate horizons or grounds.
  • Play seriously with meaning: enact, invent, but never deny fragility.
  • Care for others as beings whose pneuma you inevitably entangle.

This horizon entails the understanding of the accretions as process in a more active sense. This is the wager, the new Myth of Ur: a transparent myth that everyone knows is made (contingently accreted), but which we agree to live inside because it is better than the void. Not salvation, not certainty, but a collective as if — a horizon we can orient toward, even knowing it may be provisional. It doesn’t solve things in the way we might think of a solution, because thinking in that way cannot give an answer. However the acceptance of the radical nature of reality coupled with a deeper understanding of its impermanence may be part of our ability to overcome the place we have become stuck.

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  1. Nearly every word in the esoteric/occult lexicon is overly accreted with layers that distort the possibiity of a renewed sense of an understanding of the territory.
  2. The basic premise of a loving (in a very broad sense of acceptance) force which underpins everything is taken as basically correct.
  3. The suggestion that a modern understanding of this as quantum information is also reasonable. This provokes something of split insofar as to use such terms it must be acceptable to understand them at the level of explanation (a kind of heuristic) and not necessarily to have to understand the underpinning maths and physics. In a way, these only reify and confuse the matter —yet have ironically been necessary to bring the notions to the rational mind.
  4. Whether then we call it a Hilbert space or not, this means there is a hyperdimensional space which for want of a better word, collapses into this one somehow.
  5. A phenomenology of this reality is an equally good place to start to create possible inferences about this collapse-interaction.
  6. This space would be like the reticulum mentioned elsewhere in this site, though maybe also the umbratic —reimagined.
  7. Misunderstandings occur when it is taken to be the case that once the (Hilbert Space hyperdimension) HCE has collapsed into this reality, it then behaves in a materialist manner. The phenomenology of this reality contradicts this by the manifestation of the many pneuminous anomalies that appear: ghosts, ufos, fairies, synchronicities, precognitive dreams etc etc.
  8. The failure to understand these phenomena does not signal their non-ontological status |(though the agnostic disjunction accounts for the ability to see them through materialist lenses), rather it only signals that their presence comes, at least partially, from the irregular (to our normal selves) interaction with the phenomenon we call time.
  9. These various phenomena represent no doubt different kinds of interactions which may suggest some of the different ways in which the general system works (though of course they may only supply a limited picture).
  10. We, insofar as we are the conscious body controlling aspects of whatever it is we are, exist in the pneuminous layers. We are stuck, embedded in them. These are the layers of conceptual information (pneuma) that lay over something like a substrate but interact with it.
  11. Here is one of the issues that confuses the most. The emphasis on seeing beyond the rational struture of words and reification means we fail to recognise that the concepts are not simply some epiphenomal attempt to understand a substrate, but rather are living accretions of a kind of ‘substance’ (pneuma). Each word binds, creates knots, which may make accretions.
  12. Hence the map is not the territory is correct, however the map is in general life what we are dealing with and the actual territory is only the goal of esoteric practice.
  13. This hails back to the point about the occult lexicon. We are awash in ancient and obscure terms, holy books, systems, each one with the power to confuse.
  14. Power is real. It is related to energy in the sense often used in occult sciences. This is no doubt related to ones access to the HCE. Energy is the emanation, power is its use.
  15. All traditions agree that the silencing of the mind is part of the path to the HCE. The mind is the endless parade of accretions through the local pneuminous space of the human.
  16. Silencing the mind opens the gates to the pneuminous layers below, The HCE is a long way down. This is what Buddhism realises and why one (in Buddhism) should not pay attention to the manifestations on the way. The Gods live in here, even Yahweh etc exist as vast overlapping accretive layers.
  17. Do autonomous spirit entities exist? The evidence seems ambiguous. Lack of consistency is against them, however there does seem to be some hubris in believing we have made up (accreted) the entire spritual world. Yet through projected feedback mechanisms this may be exactly what has happened. The possibility certainly exists that there might be or have been other pneuminous spheres with equally rich environments. The Lovecraftian reality thesis is in this region.
  18. Here it will be understood that spiritual world is the free floating debris of accretive pneuminous powers that have acquired a kind of autonomy from previous belief systems. In this sense they are as real as a human ego, possibly moreso. A second use of spiritual world can pertain to the recognition of then pneuma for what it is. As pure information it may be the quantum informational HCE itself, however it is constantly employed in finite capacity to describe concepts at our level.
  19. Two kinds of interaction appear to be happening. The organism has a primary ontological collapse as surviving being in an environment that must obtain energy and shelter, hence the putatively external structure is either stable in itself or their are built in conceptual projections (like in Kant) that literally stabilise reality. This still leaves vast swathes of being unaccreted. The second interaction would be the conceptual apparatus that the organism develops. These pneuminous manipulations spread across vast vector regions of existence and by reifying feedback loops tie reality into being the things we attribute it to be. The fluid potential of pneuma is bound in conceptual service.
  20. This is somewhat akin to our usage of electricity (and probably they are related as powers). The accretion ‘electricity’ as an incoherent name for a controllable force fails to acknowledge the sheer mystery of it —David Lynch knew this.
  21. If this is correct, it makes this reality less a solild projection from the HCE but rather it is constantly shot through with it, which we perpetually collapse into forms that we can think we can comprehend. The common appearance of the incoherent coherence pervades the everyday without our realising the actual presence of the coherent incoherence.
  22. Sideways or orthogonal interactions from various accretive forms, conscious or otherwise constantly intrude upon the quasi stable form. These are variously repressed and not understood. These orthogonal interactions are a real part of the whole and suggest at its simplest that the system folds round on itself in various temporal manners. More likely there are complex interactions from the different accretive layers which, according to the levels of power present either in an individual here or sometimes in the accretion itself may result in highly anomalous occurences.
  23. It should be remembered that our conscious and unconscious selves (to some extent at least) are accretive structures and that we are co-created by each other. As such we are (as stated) not more real than entities that live in the pneuminous debris.
  24. The reality of the accretive forms as being literally spirits or concepts (any concepts) and their existence in the pneuminous space, and its perpetual collapse into this, means the connections between concepts are not psychological but real. Orthogonal interaction is exactly this. The piece of litter, road sign, number plate that seems to tell you something can actually be doing so, as bent around connection within the pneuminous space. However it also true that it can be not doing so. If you then project upon it that it is doing so, you forge the connection, though it may be slight. Power comes into play here as to what might happen from here.
  25. The silencing of the accretions liberates the organism to interact with power because the accretions likely block the flow, or absorb it into themselves. Greater power acts as a kind of gravity which then encourages bends in the pneuminous space and can increase orthogonal interaction. This is difficult to get beyond because the orthogonal interactions are so fascinating that they distract from moving beyond them.
  26. The phenomenology of our existence suggests fate like structures seem to exist. These may be natural fluctuations in the general system. Astrology etc attempted to tap into these, possibly with some success. There are moments when things are possibly for individuals and then they are not possible. Removing accretive layers likely increases possibilities. The gravity like force may bend opportunities in the individuals favour. This is the manifestation effect that sometimes works, activated by will power. Ultimately this is what has been referred to as low or black magick as the person does not realise what they have played with and merely acquired more accretive layers.
  27. The point of the problems of the occult lexicon are reinforced by the usage of black magic as a term. Clearly there is nothing here to suggest one kind of action is better than another. This is an interesting feature. Unless value can be derived from the HCE in concreted sense then the only value that exists is the value created as pneuminous construct.
  28. The accretive layers will instruct humanity in what is best for them if asked. They will produce more holy books/rules. Determining the use of these is difficult, however we need to get past the point where they are accepted without question, whilst at the same time understanding that we still live in the pneuminous layers. We are shot through with the debris cf Nietzsche.

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An interesting phenomenon can be noted by observing the natural pneuminous correlates of living beings on what we call the material plane. The phenomenon in question is how the conscious awareness of beings is in an inverse relation to its unconscious awareness or spiritual correlate.

What do we mean by this? Human’s have, even with Gurdjieffian notions of sleep aside, a considerable amount of awareness. We seem to have some sense of awareness, reflection etc upon what we are doing. We have some ability to control instincts, passions, compulsions, we can think deeply about matters and contemplate to come up with solutions to problems and we can observe beauty, sublimity, be amazed. These abilities (and other similar) are parts of our awareness that we have access to.

Beyond this realm is the dark underside. The pneuminous structures here operate outside of the realm of awareness. Functioning without awareness as it does, unless brought into the light it’s operations are entirely opaque. It’s logic sometimes fathomable by persons who can read its signs but often it is entirely incomprehensible. It’s nature is amorphous and dispersed. This dispersed chaotic nature is what it’s pneuminous structure is like. That is, the spiritual/pneumious dual form of the human possesses no ‘I’ like structure as such.

Observations have shown that non-human animals, whilst on a vast scale of variability are in all instances less capable of this full-range of conscious awareness faculties. Correlative to this though is that they have an increase in the awareness of their spiritual/unconscious other part. The well-known spirit animals of the shaman for instance are partially conscious accretions and not simply dispersed chaos. These ‘spirits’ can speak/communicate, they have some continuity of awareness though they are still highly formed by and connected to an amorphous chaos of unconscious pneuminous accretive structures.

When we observe the vegetable kingdom the picture becomes clearer still. The pneuminous double of each plant is a discrete spirit, that whilst always connected to the plant, may wander freely from it, sometimes visible to certain human eyes. The level of consistency and discretion is so clear that some simple forms of social interaction occur between these beings. What we call the physical plant is the unconscious to them, their awareness of it may actually be low. Of course to us, the phyiscal plant appears the real or indeed only component of the organism. This part we deem to have extremely low conscious awareness. Of course plants communicate in many fascinating ways yet their nature is more of an unconscious nature than many animals. Insects and many smaller creatures (e.g. slugs and snails) have ethereal correlates similar to those of plants, though these correlates are still of lesser awareness than their plant equivalents.

From here on there are complications but the picture of increasing awareness in the spiritual realm continues. Bacteria, viruses whilst not individuated to each unit have highly aware pneuminous correlates. People have sometimes called these evil spirits. The various elemental masses of earth, air, fire and water teem with highly discrete pneuminous entities (elementals). These beings may have names, continuous memories and even social structures. What we call the physical part of these is their subconscious. The correlate of these bodies as various wholes e.g. seas, mountains, volcanos, the underground, are of course Gods.

There is naturally some debate as to how much the human, as pneuminous processor par excellence, has contributed to these formations and how much they exist in themselves. Plants no doubt have discrete pneuminous bodies, but humans have accreted various extra attributes to these beings in terms of appearance and nature. This action, at the level of the pneuminous is ontologically effective for them. This is also true of elementals; there may be something to the notion that their true perceptual nature (rather than as dwarf etc) is more like blobs of light/energy, but who can say? Faeries in general are likely the product of human accreted formations over the pure pneuminous bodies of plants/elements.

This problem is also true of God formations as these are often formed upon non-discrete vector regions e.g. the sea. Does the totality of the sea automatically form a God consciousness or is it formed in conjunction with the humans who perceive it thus? It would seem highly likely there must be a kind of dual creation going on there. As low in physical conscious awareness, such masses of earth, sea etc, necessarily have a highly developed and self-aware pneuminous structure (as discussed above), however with no necessarily nature border (where does the mountain end?) it seems likely these consciousness are split by human pneuminous actions and reaccreted to their purpose.

This suggests that highly developed pneuminous consciousnesses are different from physical embedded ones. Possibly the awareness does not entail strong identity so that parts of it can be incoherently sequestered and reaccreted as human spirits/Gods.

Lastly we must of course point out as we get smaller in our analysis of matter, thus these components must necessarily have correlates of greater and greater conscious awareness as their pneuminous doubles. It is hard to understand how these atomic and small particles differ from the phenomenological Gods and spirits of the elements as phenomena, and yet in a sense they must. At this level the physical awareness is so minimal that the conscious awareness is cosmically vast.

The end point of this is of course an actual all encompassing God like intelligent awareness, whose correlate is the most perfect physical void.

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The Centre for Experimental Ontology is going to sleep, maybe only for a short while, maybe forever. This concludes phase 2 of its existence.

Below you can find a rough summary of what this phase dealt with, where the CEO is now and where it might potentially go in the future —Gurdjieff has been pointing to some interesting correlates/directions.

1) Pre-ontology: The notion of a pre-ontology was not explore sufficiently but remains an ongoing concern. The central idea is whether it is cogent to conceive of a way in which existence can occur without an ontology excluding certain modes as possible. The emphasis of the thought is on conceiving of magickal phenomena as totally naturalised on a contiuum with all other phenomena.

2) Pneuminous Accretions: The pneuminous accretions remain at the heart of the general system. Materialised conceptuality (or at least the grammatical cogency of it) enables magick and completes philosophy in all directions.

3) Vector Field: Equally central to the system is the vector field. Meant in the sense of a ‘carrier’, the ability of vectors to host the pneuminous accretions is the counterpart to the accretions that completes the magickal explanation (of philosophy). A vector that houses a concept and suits it is the ordinary usage of the same force that we call magick (we don’t call it magick but the same operation occurs). A vector hosting an accretion that it would not normally house will find influenced/altered on a magickal level (what we tend to mean when we say magick).

4) Different Occult Endgames: The Castaneda system highlights this already suspected possibility. The reality or metaphor of the assemblage point illustrates how there is no necessity to some kind of occult achievement (that could be considered final) over another. Even the notion of ‘freedom’ in CC’s system can be contrasted against other possibilities of immortality. It is the extension of the lack of divine teleology into a vastly increased notion of what exists (which includes the occult possibilities).

5) Memetics: The disbanded science of memetics is highly commensurate with the pneuminous accretive theory. The only addition required is external existence of the memes i.e. whilst created by human activity they do no necessarily need it to continue to exist.

6) Susan Blackmore’s work present’s a considerable challenge to many aspects of esotericism. What she does is highlight the extreme ontology needed for it to be ‘real’ and not purely psychological. Pneuminous accretive theory is a good fit for such an ontology however at least one additional caveat is needed. The notion in question is one of something like levels of reality or consciousness. This is something mentioned both in Castaneda and Gurdjieff. In Castaneda, Don Juan will say that ordinary people would literally not be able to see the anomalies, though they are perfectly real, likewise certain statements are unintelligible unless one has sufficient ‘power’ to understand them. Gurdjieff says likewise that unless one obtains a certain level of consciousness, certain things are not visible and certain teachings incomprehensible. This is not a matter of cognitive ability but something else. This something else is what such an ontology would require, likewise it would say that the whole psychological edifice that Blackmore works in, amazingly admiral though it is to desire to not be fooled, can only return negative results, explainable in terms of neuroscience. This does not mean she has not encountered many frauds, but also it means that there is a certain letting go necessary for the actual encounter.

7) Plato, Castaneda, Laruelle: The most productive discussion in the last phase of the CEO concerned a kind of synthesis of these figures that overcomes that manifestation problem. The manifestation problem is simply this: if all ontologies (manifestations) compete equally to inhabit us, how do we understand an ontology that can account for this without lapsing into one more model. The pre-ontological investigations are related to this. Castaneda claims an absolute mode of perception that sees things as they are. This is the perception of the world as ‘energy’, though this accretion (energy) itself contaminates this perception. The reduction of the allness of everything to an endless series of fibres of light was called the reticulum. Gurdjieff has a similar message though there is less mention of energetic perception, rather he talks of ‘objective perception’, to again mean a perception of things as they are.
This line of thinking reinforces that what we mean by saying occult practices gives the completion of philosophy. To learn to perceive the pneuminous accretions as they are, to perceive the deep layers of the vector field. This possibility (?) undercuts Laruelle by granting access to the one, yet agreeing that philosophy (manifestations) is hopelessly inadequate to make any progress. The one is accessible only through deep struggle. This in turn makes sense of Plato but not as empty epistemology. The struggle out of the cave is a real struggle that we all must undertake and that necessarily most of cannot achieve -I include myself in this number.
But again this all relates to the point about ‘different occult endgames’. What Castaneda and Gurdjieff talk about may well not be the same thing, furthermore there are many different stations in this realm. Gurdjieff talks about ‘right results’ but maybe there are other kinds of ‘results’.

8) The vector field does have a certain incoherence. It is the imagined perceptual residue devoid of concept (pneuminous accretion). Even if this is not cogent, the idea functions a) transcendentally as a necessary condition for the possibility of an object and b) as a heuristic by which we can understand the structure of things. This heuristic dimension is particularly relevant with regards to certain occult technologies. In Gurdjieff for instance, there is a technique related to self-remembering which involves dividing the psyche into a potential real ‘I’ and the personality (often named after the person). The named being is the accreted (neurotic self or selves) and the real ‘I’ is something that comes with the organism. It is this part that the esoteric practices seek to access. Does this division make great sense? Not particularly; the separation of the personality from a putative underlying ‘essence’ is a highly confusing notion analytically. However as an occult instruction, or guidance, it has power. Conceive of yourself in this way and it helps to disclose pointless, repetitive, petty parts of your behaviour. A deeper layer of the human vector, stripped close to the vector field itself.
This whole notion of how far down the vector field goes is a fascinating one that requires further thought.

9) Wittgenstein and Laruelle point to the same place. This is because ‘language’ itself is a use word. It cannot be the ‘real’ noun that designates something. It all emanates from what can reasonably grammatically be called the one, or the human. No statement escapes. Language only speaks as language when it has been accreted, without this it is the vector region that the concept language is applied to (consider discussion two organisms communicating and asking ‘are they using language?’). One cannot understand the world beyond the accretions from within them. The only possibility of a greater comprehension comes from the possibility of something like a different consciousness being possible. This possibility remains agnostic disjunctive, at least from the level of regular thought.

10) Regular thought exists in a band that cannot seriously conceive of the world other than as it appears: solid, continuous. Agnostic disjunction functions at this level of thought. It renders anomaly as a possibility that cannot be dismissed but cannot be established. The only way out of agnostic disjunction is by the possibility of something like Gurdjieff describes as ‘objective consciousness’. This of course brings in the problem of ‘levels of consciousness’ which again cannot be verified in any way other than through the circular achievement of a ‘higher’ or ‘altered level’.

11) Gurdjieff makes a particularly interesting statement concerning art. He divides it into objective and subjective. Subjective art is that art we create when we allow powers to flow through us. Whereas objective art is created by a consciousness that is in control of its various parts and actually deliberately creates the work. Such a work, he says, will not generate subjective impressions of interpretation but rather will impose its meaning upon us all.
The last century and indeed this one, has made much of the discovery that we are not in control of the cultural, conceptual powers (pneuminous accretions/memes) that flow through us. Art controls the artist, we are but a vessel. Our general likes/dislikes and determinations are simply a product of these cultural forces. The CEO has played with this language calling it agenthood and utilised the phrase ‘who do you work for?’ to describe how we work for such forces —philosophers work for ontologies, they are agents for them, this explains their stubbornness of defending positions that are no better than those of enemy agents.
The occult endeavour again highlights the possibility of escape from these forces. The possibility that the ‘being-possessed’ by these powers is a contingent condition that we can potentially escape from -though not without serious effort. The death of the author is true but the author may also exist in some circumstances.

12) The double in Castaneda is the second body in Gurdjieff. This is largely the aim of both systems. The transference of consciousness from the feeble disparate exterior to a unified and separable (from the physical body) interior. He makes a fascinating comment that the kingdom of heaven in Christianity is just the development of the second body. Only when the second body is developed is survival beyond death possible. Even this though is finite —equally fascinating as again it suggests, not an eternal beyond, but simply another negotiable realm.

13) The Moon in Gurdjieff devours our awareness, we only can stop this by the development of ‘objective consciousness’. This is very similar to the ‘Eagle’

14) All adornments (job,clothes, language, hair styles etc) are a semiotic system that displays ones alignment to various powers. Some are imposed, some are chosen. Liberation from these powers leaves a vacuum we must somehow fill with a curious control. If we simply remove them, more accretions will take their place. This aids flexibility but not control itself.

15) Magnetic centres are what we develop and activate when we trigger synchonicity. Our fascination with this at the wrong level easily burns the centre out. We can reactivate it, but our modern consciousness means making contact through the centre is almost impossible. We have no choice but to attempte solitary activity and experiment.

16) Gurdjieff suggests that the mystery schools were/are not complete in their questionings. He indicates they continued to conduct experiments on subjects concerning consciousness. Some products of these are fakirs that one may encounter performing incredible feats. He suggests such people are sometimes simply failed experiments of mystery schools. This suggests a very scientific attitude (that one would not get past an ethics committee) towards their relation to consciousness. Ouspensky mentions an anecdote in which a sheep was brought to full consciousness. When he asks ‘What did they do with it?’ Gurdjieff replies ‘They ate it.’

17) Prevous CEO terminology called the human vector the ‘regional processor’. The ‘neurotic’ or ‘self accretion’ plugged into this to make the NARP.

18) The Hyperqabalah remains and ongoing concern. It is the development of a diagrammatic system in which each path of the previous tree of life is transformed into a sephiroth (node) or the levelled up system. It is a partial product of accident. In the process of forming sigils for each regular tree of life path they were as scribed numbers 1-22 as single symbols. This meant that if this was a new based system, it was necessarily base 23, i.e. the equivalent of 10 could only be achieved after the 22 single sigils. The cultural accretive weight of 23 makes this seem highly appropriate. Much work has been done on this but the nature of the paths between the nodes still needs establishing.