It is a crucial period in which I learnt the deepest lesson of my life: how we are controlled and programmed by our culture, our families, and everything around us through our very physiology. It was a lesson which drove home for me in an unequivocal way, how it can be that humans are asleep or hypnotized. Until you have awakened, you simply cannot know the difference between being asleep and awake...
Well, telling this part of my story is, to say the least, painful. To talk about my own programming, and how difficult it was to even come to the awareness that I was as programmed as everyone is, and what was required to overcome it, is not a subject that I relish. But there is no other way to give an exact meaning of what it means to be asleep. It’s all fine and good for Castaneda to write about how the Predator gave us its mind; for Gurdjieff and Ouspensky to write about the Evil Magician who hypnotizes his sheeple; for the Cassiopaeans to tell us that we are all programmed and hypnotized; but until you have experienced awakening, or at the very least, have had a graphic description of the state before and after, you simply cannot grasp it.
Not only was I planning to talk about this most basic and cunning of programs, I was planning to present some of the latest and most amazing scientific research on the subject from the fields of psychology, psychiatry, neurophysiology and neurochemistry that would give you, the reader, a huge edge on dealing with these issues in your own life and mind.[...]t’s pretty hot material because I am sure that the Control System does not want this kind of information right out there in plain view. Because, in fact, this information is at the heart of the Alchemical transformation process. Awareness and application of these matters will enable any individual who truly and deeply seeks transformation in a literal sense, to achieve it.[...]
But, what is this Predator’s mind exactly? It is the way our brains and nervous systems are set up – as delineated by our DNA – which includes certain early periods of where our circuitry and thinking processes are established at an age and under conditions over which we have no control.
This is called imprinting...human beings also develop certain characteristics only at certain times in their growth process. These sequences are something over which we have no control.[...]
We are all programmed. Our programs are written in the circuits of our brains by those around us in our formative years, just as their programs were written during their formative years, and so on back into the mists of time. Each generation just adding a few more lines of code.
It is our ideas that shape our children. We provide what we may consider to be the ideal environment for the child, but our own programming determines what we may consider to be the proper environment. Once we have provided the environment, we then want our children to like it, to approve of it, to agree with us that it is right. And our ideas come from our culture. And our culture is created by … what? A Control System?
There is considerable evidence that agreement is also in the genes. There seems to be a genetic drive toward communion with others, for speech and preferences and disposition. As newly born human beings, it seems we come into the world with intent to be in agreement with others. But the details of how we go about being agreeable is related to the imprints we receive at the various stages of childhood development.
Everyone carries in their genes, it seems, deep archetypes that are very much like a database program just waiting for someone to input data. The thing is, this database is only open to input for a limited period of time, and whatever data is entered during that time determines how all other data will be evaluated forever after. It will produce over and over again the same response to any set of stimuli that have one or more items that have been organized by the database. Anything that is not found in the database is discarded. If the database is not utilized and no data is entered during the period of readiness, or imprinting, that possibility goes dormant and diminishes.[...]
It seems that, according to research, the older brain structures – those necessary for basic survival, such as the brain stem – are imprinted in the earliest stages of development, and that the newer structures, such as the mid-brain and cortex develop superimpositions upon the more primitive imprints. However, the earlier parts of the brain and their imprints form the foundation for how later imprints are responded to and continue to function after the higher thinking modes are developed.
In other words, if you are traumatized as an infant at a crucial point of imprint perceptivity, it doesn’t matter if you grow up to be the President of the United States, you will still be ruled by the imprint.[...]
The first stage, or circuit, is the oral-passive-receptive, and is imprinted by what is perceived to be the mother or first mothering object. It can be conditioned by nourishment or threat, and is mostly concerned with bodily security. Trauma during this phase can cause an unconsciously motivated mechanical retreat from anything threatening to physical safety....The first circuit is concerned with what is safe and what is not safe.[...]
The second stage, or circuit, the famous “anal phase,” is concerned with keeping or letting go of experiences in interactions with others. This second circuit determines how an individual will expand their identity to include others. The drive of the second phase is to interact with other selves. It is this drive that either brings about the congregation of groups, or results in paranoid withdrawal from anyone who is different. Trauma in the formation of this circuit (generally from 12 months to 24 months) can result in a lack of social feeling, a tendency to manipulate and exploit others for one’s own gain, and cruelty to others, whether conscious or unconscious.[...] It is at this stage that most of our complex belief systems are formed. Everything that surrounds him is raw material for the child. The matrix is created by the guiding actions and responses from the other minds around him. This matrix is, in reality, a gigantic conditioning system. And we insert our children into it through our own actions.[...]
...keep in mind the idea that an infant “shows a strong desire to participate in a world of others. Eventually his willingness for self-modification, necessary to win rapport with his world, is stronger than his desire for autonomy.” It is very important, and we will come back to it.
Those with strong positive second circuits imprints are able to feel for others in terms of a sense of concern or identity by association. They are willing to reach out and acknowledge the being of another.
However, due to the most common imprinting of our society, which is negative, most of this reaching out is in the context of territory, which involves emotional con games, pecking order, rituals of domination or submission.
The reality structure of the second circuit is the prevailing mode of modern society, which is why most issues end in confrontations that bring out both bullying and cowardliness – hallmarks of second circuit trauma.
The third circuit is charmingly referred to as phallic...
So, essentially, we find that the third stage has to do primarily with time and spatial concepts – with what is the real world and what is not.
The part of the brain that is developing during this phase is the cerebellum and it is supposed to coordinate the lower brain functions with possible action. This part of the brain and its imprinting determines our ability to change and adapt...In most people, however, due to traumatic or too early potty training during the anal phase, this part of the brain becomes a slave to the emotions of the second and first circuits. That doesn’t mean that it cannot work and do its work well in terms of scanning, categorizing and coding information; but if there is trauma, depending on the severity, it can be very difficult for this part of the brain to function as the coordinator it is meant to be. The intellectual function can be scholarly as all get out, but there is no possibility of development of higher emotions.
