Words and World
NLP in Text, Online and Off
November 5
Philip H Farber
Our ancestors once had to hunt for words in libraries and bookstores. Today, vast torrents of words pour into our homes via modems and networks. The new familiarity with flowing, scrolling text gives many of us a new ease with words - and yet we rarely lift the lid on the word machine to learn what makes them effective, how we respond to language patterns, and what distinguishes fantastic and inspiring prose from ordinary efforts.
Words and the World will explore the structure of textual interaction to gain insight into how to get the most from our own words. In the process, we'll highlight how our minds use words to create beliefs, belief systems and the models that we sometimes mistake for "reality."
In the meatspace, offline that is, NLP is taught in seminar settings that emphasize face to face interaction. That's an awesome way to gain skills - to use offline. Increasingly, though, our business, pleasure, education, and enlightenment can be found in e-mail, on the web, on networking sites, blogs, IMs and online forums.
Come prepared to participate in the online equivalent of an NLP seminar. We will put our skills to practice with found text and with each other. Exercises will address linguistic use in chat, web pages, forum debate, academic writing, fiction and much more. Enroll now to develop powerful text skills, flexible enough to keep pace with the online info-flow. Newbies as well as experienced cybernauts, writers, and NLPers will have some linguistic thrills to hone their interactive skills.
SubGenius Initiation
Church of the SubGenius
October 1
Ivan Stang
$120
This online course offers two very different and distinct parts, running simultaneously for 6 weeks.
CULT CREATION AND MANAGEMENT is the interactive, participatory part, with several live chatrooms sessions each week. Students who want to create their own cults --- either funny or serious, or both -- work with Rev. Stang and each other to develop their ideas and bring them to life in the form of websites, publications, etc., just as The Church of the SubGenius did in its early days. By the end of the 6 weeks, students who want to will have developed their own proto-cult, ready for the market.
THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF THE SUBGENIUS is a truly huge stash of downloadable multimedia, including practically everything created by The SubGenius Foundation (and friends) except for the three main SubGenius books that are still in print.
Prometheus Rising
Prometheus Rising
September 10
David Jay Brown
$100
This six week course will examine Robert Anton Wilson's unusually insightful (and often hilarious) book Prometheus Rising. Described by Wilson as an "owner's manual for the human brain," this interactive, experiential, exercise-driven book is one of Wilson's best-loved and most popular creations. Profoundly entertaining and immensely practical, in Prometheus Rising Wilson masterfully explains how the human mind works on different levels, and he builds upon Timothy Leary's 8-circuit model of the brain, to help teach us how to get the most benefit out of that hundred billion cell neural mass that we have sitting on our shoulders.
Using clever exercises designed by Wilson and others, this course will examine the process of psychological and neurological imprinting, models for understanding interpersonal dynamics, as well as how different aspects of social mind control and "brainwashing" work. There will be lively discussions about how psychedelic drugs may be used as self-metaprogramming and re-imprinting tools, and how these controversial substances affect the brain, as well as an examination of breathing techniques, meditation, flotation tanks, and other non-pharmacological methods for expanding consciousness and reprogramming the mind--with the goal of helping to transform unhealthy habits, establish new patterns of behavior, and create designer personalities in accordance with our highest visions.
David Jay Brown is the author of The New Science of Psychedelics: At the Nexus of Culture, Consciousness, and Spirituality, to be published by Inner Traditions in 2013. He is also the coauthor of four bestselling volumes of interviews with leading-edge thinkers, Mavericks of the Mind, Voices from the Edge, Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse, and Mavericks of Medicine. Additionally, David is the author of two science fiction novels, Brainchild and Virus, and he is the coauthor of the health science book Detox with Oral Chelation. He holds a master’s degree in psychobiology from New York University, and was responsible for the California-based research in two of British biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s books on unexplained phenomena in science: Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home and The Sense of Being Stared At. David’s work has appeared in numerous magazines, including Wired, Discover, and Scientific American, and he is periodically the Guest Editor of the MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) Bulletin. David writes a popular weekly column for Santa Cruz Patch called “Catch the Buzz,” about cannabis and psychedelic culture in Northern California, and in 2011 he was voted “Best Writer” in the annual Good Times “Best of Santa Cruz” poll. His news stories have been picked up by The Huffington Post and CBS News.
Schrödinger’s Cat
A Chronotransduction
November 19
Eric Wagner
$100
“Some have even proposed that Schrödinger’s Cat is actually a manual of shamanism in the form of a novel, but that opinion is, almost certainly, exaggerated.” - Schrödinger’s Cat, pg. 12
I first discovered the genius of Robert Anton Wilson through his three part novel Schrödinger’s Cat in 1982. Thirty years later it remains my favorite book, one which I think repays deep inspection and contemplation. This class will examine the book as “a manual of shamanism,” using it as a tool for transforming our nervous systems and our realities. Bob wrote this book after the greatest crisis of his life, the murder of his daughter Luna. In the novel characters deal with tragedy, attempting to alchemically transmute the lead of their lives into gold. Novelist Paul Chuey called this book “a pornographic quantum mechanics textbook.” In the 1980’s I thought of it as a modernAlice’s Adventures in Wonderland, with the reader in the role of Alice, his or her reality warped by Wilson’s hologrammatic prose. The tools Bob found useful for reimprinting the nervous system, pranayama, Joyce, magick, Beethoven, etc., each play a dynamic role in the novel, opening pathways for discovery for the attentive reader.
"Well, Schrödinger's Cat an attempt to write a new kind of science fiction. New Scientistmagazine, I'm happy to say, called it the most scientific of all science-fiction novels, which really pleased me very much. It pleased me so much I quote it every chance I can.
What I was trying to do with Schrödinger's Cat: Instead of going as far out as I could in my imagination, I tried to follow where modern physics is going (what are the main lines of interpretation of the universe in modern physics?) and just write about a universe that fits modern physics. And that is so mind-blowing it seems crazier than anything a science-fiction writer could invent. As a matter of fact, a lot of it does sound like science fiction."
-Robert Anton Wilson
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