The First Religion

THE FIRST RELIGION

 Philip Wagner, a prominent member of the Boulder Creek BistroScene, is now busy painting landscapes in Moab, Utah.

Quantum Tantra Revealed

 QUANTUM TANTRA REVEALED

This post was originally published in 2002 by Frank Thomas Smith in his remarkable SouthernCross Review. It's never yet appeared on this quantum tantra blog and New Year 2025 seemed like a good time to expose these raw speculations anew.

Quantum tantra is physics-assisted deep union with nature

Like the Newtonian physics it replaced, quantum physics grows out of a worldview that sees nature as separate from man, as a dangerous Other to be tamed and controlled by scientists who have decoded her (mostly mathematical) rules. Despite lip service payed to "quantum wholeness" most physicists still view the world as Us versus It, as conscious mind confronting mindless particles. Though their methods differ radically from Newton's, modern physicists regard quantum mechanics as just that, a new type of mechanics--subtle and strange, to be sure--but at base as soulless and impersonal as Newton's gravity-driven celestial machine.

Despite statements in some quantum texts that Observer and System form an inseparable whole, I know of no physicist that has ever merged with his apparatus: the relationship of the modern scientist to his quantum System is every bit as aloof as that of a pre-quantum Victorian scientist to his pendulum clocks and meter sticks. Despite their nominal belief in the "undivided wholeness" of the quantum world (described especially well by David Bohm), physicists, in the name of "scientific objectivity" hold themselves apart from the nature they are examining and practice dispassionate "observation" rather than merging. Such aloof inquiry results, predictably, in a picture of nature that, despite its quantum strangeness, is essentially dead and lifeless.

Can it be that quantum mechanics has limited itself unnecessarily by thoughtlessly maintaining old mechanistic and separatist notions inherited from its Newtonian past? Feminist critics of science such as Evelyn Fox Keller and Sandra Harding see physics as blinded by "patriarchal biases" and look toward a more clear-sighted "successor science". Can we find a radically new way to approach science that is more in tune with the way the world really is, the way quantum theory hints it might actually be?

"Quantum Tantra" attempts to blaze a new pathway for science by incorporating previously discarded and marginal ways of thinking into a new synthesis. Two non-mechanistic, non-separatist traditions are of particular interest for this purpose: Western alchemy and Eastern tantra. Alchemy is based on the notion of a partially psychic chemistry in which the mind of the alchemist merges with the material cooking in his alembic. Tantra teaches that the universe is not mere motion of dead matter but the sexual play of two divine beings and seeks techniques to directly participate in that holy play. The goal of "QuantumTantra:" is to initiate an entirely new direction of research by approaching quantum theory and its paradoxes as if they were incomplete fragments of a "successor science" based on tantric and alchemical principles.

For instance, what kind of science would result if we regarded the world not as a collection of dead objects but, in the manner of certain Sufi mystics (practitioners of 'ilm al-qulub or "science of hearts"), as the very body of the Beloved? What could be learned about nature and ourselves if, instead of treating her as an object to be passively observed, we begin looking for ways to "woo her", to become actively involved in natural processes? And suppose our attempts at wooing and deeper involvement were guided, not by vague myths of pre-scientific peoples, but by powerful insights, bold hunches and inspired guesses gleaned from three centuries of math-enlightened physics? What is the deepest kind of union with nature that twentieth-century minds can envision? What is the deepest kind of union we can actually achieve?

Western religion sees the world as a job completed by a lone omnipotent being (traditionally male) long ago in the past, an event in which humans played no part. Practitioners of tantra, on the other hand, consider the world to be created anew each moment, as the love play of two divine beings, Shiva and Shakti, and believe that humans can participate to some extent in that union, in partnership with another being, performing a kind of "cosmic physics" in a soft laboratory of entangled muscle and mind. Which is the better world-myth? Is the universe more like an ancient one-man job or present-moment two-part joy?

Along with much else of deep human concern, science has tamed and sanitized sex as a mere psychobiological process, like breathing or digestion. Sex in the West has been subject to glaring scrutiny, in hundreds of books, thousands of magazine articles and millions of pornographic images, but in spite of massive scientific and media exposure, sex continues to fascinate us with its primitive mystery. Each of us, no matter how sophisticated, senses that he or she could still be sexually surprised.

Mystics of many persuasions, using ecstatic introspection as tool have attempted to examine this world's deep reality from inside and claim, like quantum physicists, that truth at that level strains human powers of description. Most mystics are solitary, but, alongside these one-person paths, a more social way of exploring the inner world in couples and small groups has also existed, a yoga-for-two calling itself "tantra" from the Sanskrit word for "weaving".

Tantra begins with the surprising claim that sex is not only holy, but that it is in some sense a direct participation in the creation of the world, an event which Western science and religion assert to have happened in the far distant past. Tantrikas also claim that the universe results from the playful union of two divine beings and that this divine union can be directly experienced in the sexual act. Though there are many tantras (tantric scriptures) they all agree that the truth of these statements is not to be taken on faith but must be directly experienced. If tantra can be regarded as a science, it is the kind of science that values experiment more highly than words.

Tantric adepts (tantrikas) use sex neither for recreation nor procreation but for exploration of deep reality, as a kind of hands-on, wide-eyed descent into Being. In the past these intuition-inspired sexual explorations of deep inner nature were carried out within cultures that knew almost nothing about the deep structure of matter as seen from without. Likewise our math-guided understanding of outer nature has been achieved in a vacuum of spiritual knowledge. "Quantum Tantra" will for the first time weave these two methods of probing reality together by merging the insights of tantrikas with the insights of physicists. In addition "Quantum Tantra" will explore the possibility of a new style of scientific inquiry based on the strengths of both tantra and physics.

"Quantum Tantra" will explore the possibility of a sacred sexuality enriched by the metaphors of modern physics as well as the possibility of a new tantra-inspired style of doing physics. The central mystery of physics is how possibilities become actual; the central mystery of tantra is deciding what to do next.

Quantum tantrikas are particularly inspired by a wholly quantum form of connection called "phase entanglement''--the type of connection responsible for the voodoo-like direct influence proved by John Bell to underlie the world's everywhere local phenomena. Three "physics icons" in the quantum tantra book of natural wonders include: a single quantum system entangled in its own mirror image (Drexhage experiment); Bell's much-studied quantum twosome (EPR experiment); and a recently concocted quantum threesome (GHZ experiment) each of which illustrates important features of the peculiar quantum style of connection.

These three examples of matter quantum-entangling with other matter prepare us to think about the more unconventional and exciting possibility of human minds quantum-entangling with matter in new forms of union. These new styles of directly experiencing nature will involve our quantum parts (oscillating possibilities) rather than our computer-like Newtonian parts (actual particles), will involve giving up control, yielding to matter's way, relaxing, being moved by, being penetrated by and taking in nature, letting "nature measure us" rather than "us measuring her", will involve scientists taking turns in the "male" and "female" roles rather than staying stuck in the single pose of "objective observer" (which we can always return to with fresh insights)

Most likely these new forms of entanglement with matter will be practiced first not by conventional scientists but by ordinary people with less old-fashioned conceptual baggage to overcome. Stuck-in-the-past scientists may be the last to enjoy the benefits of this quantum-inspired, physics-assisted deep union with nature. Quantum tantra, with unique labs in every household, may be a true people's science, its wisdom passed on privately mouth-to-mouth; 

 See also Opening Night and Elements of Tantra.

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The IllumiNation Interview

Nick Herbert & August O'Connor

THE ILLUMINATION INTERVIEW

 

In 2006, August O'Connor and I became involved in the passing of celebrated author and speaker Robert Anton Wilson along with many of his friends attending group readings at his bedside, charming him with Celtic music and acting as hospice helpers for his final crossing to the other side. One of our most memorable experiences with Bob was watching a video of Fionnula Flanagan's one-woman performance of "James Joyce's Women" accompanied by Joyce scholar Robert Anton Wilson's informed and spirited commentary. August prepared some of Bob's favorite foods and kept him amused in his last days. There is a good chance that August may have ignited Robert Anton Wilson's final cigarette, the night before his passing.

August lighting up Bob Wilson

Interest in Bob's accomplishments is rising today due to the publication of many of his books in brand new format by Hilaritas Press and by the recent release of his first biography: "Chapel Perilous: the Life and Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson" by Gabriel Kennedy.

To celebrate the release of "Chapel Perilous", the RAW IllumiNation blog is publishing interviews with his friends of which he had many. Nick's name came up and he agreed to be interviewed by John Wisniewski, who is a colleague of the shadowy Joseph Matheny.

Here are the questions John asked me:

 

John Wisniewski: Nick, what did Robert Anton Wilson "steal" from you?

JW: When and how did you meet Robert?

JW: When you were searching for what quantum physics really was, were there those who suggested that you don't look into this?

JW: Did you begin to experiment with mind altering substances during the 1960s? Did you see anything in this?

JW: How can we determine what Quantum Reality is?

JW: How did you feel about experimentation during the 1960's as far as opening the doors of consciousness?

JW: Are there any prominent figures that you met during the 60s and maybe 70s that you felt you learned something from?

JW: Has your book  Quantum Reality become outdated?

 

You can read Nick's answers to JW's questions here at RAW Illuminations.

 

Enjoy.

Tabloid Democracy

 TABLOID DEMOCRACY 

(Election Day 2024)

 

 I'd like to vote the issues

But I never get the chance

The mud from my TV set

Is creeping up my pants.

 

Which one held the pistol?

Which one held the bag?

Which one smoked Merrywanna?

Which one is the fag? 

 

Which one armed the Moslems?

Which one dressed in drag?

Which one peed his trousers?

Which one shoots up skag?

 

Which of them is antiSemite?

Which of them is antiGoy?

Which one hates the constitution?

Which one loves an altar boy?

 

Which one sleeps with bimbos?

Which one burnt the flag?

Which one voted socialist?

Which one's on the rag?

 

Through the magic of the ballot

The dirt has all dispersed.

We may not choose the best ones

But we're flushing out the worst.

 

 

The Stag at Samhain

The Celtic Stag

THE STAG AT SAMHAIN

For several years Kim Fulton-Bennett and the late August O'Connor performed Irish music as a duo called "Dobhran" (Gaelic for "Otter") which later doubled in size to form "Blarney". Most of their tunes are traditional but a few are original compositions including one by August that she called "Samhain Damh" (Gaelic for ""The Stag at Samhain"). She intended this tune to evoke the mood of the Celtic season of Samhain (pronounced "sow-win") which we in America celebrate as Hallowe'en.

August and Kim performing as "Dobhran"

On Samhain the veils between worlds are supposed to become thinner and the Samhain Stag can be seen as either a guide or a ride between these world. When she was young, August imaged a stag with golden antlers and silver hooves that would appear at her bedroom window some nights and carry her wherever she wished to go.

The "worlds" this Samhain stag might take you to include not only the world of departed saints and sinners but also perhaps the mythical Celtic Otherworld called "Annwyn", a kind of Earthly paradise mentioned in the Welsh Mabinogion and in the Arthurian legends.

In these legends, the stag is often seen as leading brave men and women on quests of great importance, so if you are looking for adventure, this Samhain season might be a good time to request that Quest you've always wanted to be called upon to carry out.

This recording of "Samhain Damh" is taken from Dobhran's CD "Otter's Holt" and features August O'Connor on guitar and Kim Fulton-Bennett on Irish wooden flute and penny whistle.

Metaphase Typewriter 2.0: a Preposterous Proposition

Nick Herbert: who will be first to heed his proposition?

  Metaphase Typewriter 2.0: A Preposterous Proposition

In the early 1970s I designed and built the Metaphase Typewriter, a machine intended to communicate with spirits, based on the assumption that somehow consciousness, human or otherwise, arises at the quantum level and that an open quantum channel producing human speech or text might be able to be “possessed by some discarnate entity" in a manner similar to the way trance mediums can be taken over by alternate personalities. The Metaphase Typewriter was inspired.by Jane Roberts's Seth books. I actually communicated through a friend with Jane's Seth entity asking if Seth could recommend some physics-savvy beings on the other side that might be motivated to speak through my new quantum-based channel. Perhaps some discarnate physicist might even aid in improving the typewriter's design. Seth replied that he was interested only in people not machines. No help there. 

 

Metaphase Typewriter 1.0

Pictured above, the MT 1.0 consisted of radioactive Thallium 204 exciting a Geiger counter (both inside yellow plastic tube) plus hardware (and software) to link the Geiger counts to a Data General Eclipse minicomputer, vintage 1974 (not shown).

As recounted in my Elemental Mind and David Kaiser's How the Hippies Saved Physics, we operated the MT in several “high psychic energy” environments, inviting notable local psychics to influence its pseudo-random text outputs, inviting a few recently deceased friends who knew about the Typewriter to reconnect if they could. An all-day session on a borrowed computer at UC San Francisco Medical School on Parnassus Ave was held on the 100th anniversary of Harry Houdini's birth, inviting the famous escape artist to perform one final trick via the new quantum channel we had supposedly opened up. Several remarkable synchronicities occurred during some of our sessions which suggested we might be on the right track but never did any understandable text or speech appear in the hundreds of pages of MT output. A taste of our metaphase efforts can be found here and here. And a typical MT printout looked like this:

WIRN OF ACERIONINE SE IND BE B WHAD ATHE OROVESSOUNDRO MAT PIND ASPAS HESUN UR D T CORE G LVIDESPANOUMO BIMARNAGLES HSTEAF NNAN A AITHIDIF PUTAMSUBENES T QUALOA ASELOTNULARE INE T THAPE ALLIGACAZOF WANE HT F A T G R ATHE FOVA WHISERDEM INOT ACRYRYIVESSTHENEMBOFO OR W WO WOMAD FORDISP AS HE WHA CO T T PLE F T OWRUS INIAIDITHE COR NITAL PIS D BEANSTO ARERS THESITIVENOVERLASESTEWONM IST MIGHIPOF A DUNKISHENT ISEAD RIENDUBE THERROIN.

It almost looks here as if coherent text is just about to emerge. But nothing like that ever happened.

From time to time during the fifty years since the Houdini Breakout Challenge I had wondered how the Metaphase Typewriter might be improved. Recently I was inspired to take up this question again after reading Irreducible, a new book by Federico Faggin (FF) who is famous for designing and building one of the first computers on a chip. In this remarkable book, Faggin does not merely vaguely speculate that consciousness is somehow quantum, he devises an explicit system in which Consciousness Is First and creates both matter, living systems and everything else for the purpose of experiencing, expanding and loving the One Big Wholeness out of which emanate humans and all other conscious beings. A very ambitious book, Mr Faggin.

Irreducible by Federico Faggin

Faggin distinguishes two level of conscious being. There are simple beings that possess only subjective experience whom he calls “thought forms” that play little part in the cosmic drama. Then there are beings, called Consciousness Units, or CUs, who possess, in addition to subjective experience, Seity and Agency. Seity (rhymes with deity) is a sense of selfhood and Agency is the ability to freely act, primarily by exchanging symbols with other Seities. Such conscious beings, possessing selfhood and agency (of which you and I are examples) are busy putting this world together, bit by bit, each in our own particular way.

So far, these conjectures are all fairly abstract but then Faggin gets specific by identifying each CU with its own quantum state. FF's conjecture reminded me of my own speculations along these lines inspired by Heisenberg's description of the quantum wavefunction as a “possibility wave”, half way between an idea and a fact. Consciousness does seem to feel like fuzzy waves of possibility that now and then condense into a definite fact. Faggin compares quantum statistics with the letter statistics of a language and notes that the meaning of an utterance is not in the statistics but in the unique utterance itself. In Faggin's model, the world is, in effect, spoken into being by many little quantum minds, which was the exact notion I invoked as inspiration to build a quantum-operated typewriter.

The quantum part of the MT is a sample of radioactive Thallium 204 emitting beta rays (fast electrons) into a Geiger counter. The statistics of the intervals between counts are combined with second order English language statistics to generate something that approximates English text. But I have often wondered whether my source was really “quantum enough” to connect with souls. 

First of all, a collection of decaying Thallium atoms is not a coherent quantum system such as the brain might be but is merely an accidental collection of independent actors who say one word on stage and then die. Better (more quantum?) would be some complex system that stayed on stage and could be interrogated again and again.

Secondly, the decay of an isotope does not fit the textbook model of a quantum measurement of how something (still mysterious) called a "measurement" turns quantum possibility waves into a single classical actuality.

A textbook measurement works like this. Given a particular unobserved quantum system you cannot simply ask “what's happening now?” because most quantum attributes cannot be simultaneously known. To do a quantum experiment you must choose a particular question: asking for position means you can't ask for momentum, and most other quantum attributes are as equally mutually exclusive or more so, than position and momentum. Choosing to measure this means you can't measure that. This necessary choice of what to measure is called the Heisenberg Choice.

Now that you've chosen what question to ask (and deployed the physical machinery necessary to ask it), then Nature's response to your question is called the Dirac Choice. If you asked about position, the wavefunction contains many possible positions, only one of which can be actualized, in a still mysterious (to physicists) process we call “the collapse of the wavefunction.” 

The decay of a collection of radioactive isotopes does not seem to follow this two choice format except perhaps in the sense that Nature might have already asked the Heisenberg question: At what particular time will this Thallium atom decay into Lead? And Nature answers the Dirac question  too by choosing, for each atom, one particular decay time. In the literature also, "time" is regarded by some as a dubious quantum attribute.

Borrowing Faggin's terminology, I was inclined to regard radioactive atoms as mere "thought forms" rather than small quantum souls possessing seity and agency. 

So for several such reasons, I remained unhappy about my choice of a radioactive source as the “quantum part” of the spirit typewriter. Atomic decay, I suspected, was simply "not quantum enough" to connect with the quantum souls that underlie ordinary reality. But I was never so imaginative to concoct a better quantum alternative nor so lucky to find a ready-made source that consisted of several coherent quanta that could be treated as a "seity" in Faggin's sense--a single quantum seity that could be interrogated (measured) again and again in the textbook style of making Heisenberg and Dirac Choices.

Until just a few days ago. Then motivated by reading the words of Federico Faggin, I suddenly realized that there already exists a perfect example of a system that precisely fits my specifications, a system that appears "quantum enough" to drive a very much improved metaphase typewriter.

Here is a photograph of such a real and presently operating physical system located not far from where I (NH) live, which houses a beautiful, robust and “fully quantum part” seemingly made in heaven to work as the “beating quantum heart” of Metaphase Typewriter 2.0. Thank you, Google, your plasmon-based 53-qubit Sycamore quantum processor is about as "quantum" as you can get in 2024.

Coogle's quantum computer

Nick's preposterous proposition is the conjecture that today's quantum computers are not really computers at all (sure, they can--noisily--compute) but these systems may actually be better suited to operate as easy gateways to new kinds of quantum soul to soul connections. connections that are difficult today for us to even imagine, so deeply hypnotized are all of us by the materialism-is-everything trance. The interfacing will certainly be a bitch, but your children will appreciate the essential part you played in transforming their humdrum lives into complex experiences beyond present human recognition.

With new orifices, apertures, holes, 

new meanings, new purposes, goals, 

we've opened our hearts

and our new private parts
to an invisible network of souls 

 

with our tantric antenna array 

we find new things to hear and to say 

to our lovers in bed

to the recently dead

to old minds with new kinds of play.

The Caveman's Lament

 THE CAVEMAN'S LAMENT

 

me think about her when sun rises

me think about her when sun sets

me say to her how much me love her

she tell me love invent not yet

me make cave all warm and cozy

me lie bearskin on cave floor

me play song of love on bone flute

she choose cave of Tim next door

 

me no more go out hunt mammoth

me throw spear too short or long

me sit in cave me paint her picture

she say me get perspective wrong

 

me cook meal to show me love her

diplodocus with fried beans

she say food anachronistic

me not know what this means

 

stone age mighty hard for lovers

you rub two flints look what you get

small sparks lead to big inferno

but she say love invent not yet

                         BRIAN BILSTON

 

Brian Bilston has gained a reputation as "the poet laureate of Twitter". This gem appears in his "Alexa, what is there to know about love?" (2021)

Down the Rabbit Hole

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

Bold Alice was keen to explore

Reality's sweet inner core

Her doors of perceiving

Completely receiving

She found out what Nature is for.

CHURCH OF THE ORDINARY

Breakfast Eucharist

THE CHURCH OF THE ORDINARY

When you sweep the floor

Gather your daily regrets into the pan

Release them into the afternoon sun

And let the dust of sorrow plant new dreams

When you wash the dishes

Scrub away the debris of mind

Let each bubble reveal the emptiness

Of your original face

When you cook food

Let your whole heart pour into every simmer and stir

Let every spice and kernel and grain

Contain

Your holy devotion

To this brief human Life

When you eat

Chew your own Love

Swallow the arms of the Mother

Let them wrap around your belly

With infinite compassion

Let every bite

Be an act of worship

When you bathe

Let your hands become healers

Strip the body of its tensions and confusions

Pour the water of suppleness back into your bones

Baptize yourself into holy presence

Let your skin drink the nectar of open delight

Let your fingernails scratch open 

Your tired old wounds

Until your wholeness is revealed

Beneath the static

When you walk

Let each toe pressing into earth

Be a thank you note

To the gift of ground

When you breathe

Let each inhale be a love letter to God

And every exhale a blessing to the trees

This is the sacred mundane

You are living prayer

And magic in motion

The church of the ordinary

Is the secret of secrets

For it is in these tiny places

That kindness lives

And this kindness

Is the doorway

To God.

 

 

----Maya Luna

OMEGA; Feral Secrets of the Deep Feminine

The Art of Parting

 THE ART OF PARTING

Even tho there are parts of the Earth

I never would have seen

Were it not for you

 

Even tho there are parts of the Music

I never would have heard

Were it not for you

 

Even tho there are parts of the Sea

I never would have smelled

Were it not for you

Even tho there are parts of me

I never would have tasted

Were it not for you

 

Even tho there are parts of you

I never would have touched

 

Were it not for you

 

Were it not for you

I never would have learned

Were it not for you

I never would have learned

I can live without you.