This is a preliminary(update 5/6: Final, submitted) version of a paper presented April 25th at the 4th Black Metal Theory Symposium: Mors Mystica and soon to be published in the book of the same. I've already started expanding it, and maybe it will be a book of its own one of these days…..
________________________________
MYCELEGIUM
James Harris
(I have severely questioned the worth
of these moments. To no soul have I named them, lest I should be building my
life upon mere phantasies of the brain...but it was in the most Real seasons
the Real Presence came, and I was aware that I was immersed in the infinite
ocean of God. The incommunicability of the transport may be the key to all
mysticism, and these things may seem to you delusions or truisms, but for me
they are dark truths, and the power to put them into even such words as these
has been given me by an ether-dream.)[i]
(In
the twilight zones arise abstract galaxies
The magic eye unveils the blackened
skies
It is a foregone conclusion that
humans can't survive bodily death to tell the tale, but considering some 50-70
billion cells die every day on their own, perhaps the meat dying is trivial? We
may have no model for the sensation of physical death, but we have an
exceptional complex of models of non-existence ranging across a great variety
of categories, from Zen and Tao to vegetative states, from autism to mysticism.
This Mycelegium[iv] (a portmanteau of florilegium and
mycelia) is a mushroom-cutting to explore the interstices of these states in
the wake of psilocybin, the primary psychoactive compound found in the
tryptamine “magic” mushroom.[v] In illuminating an entheogenic
phenomenology of non-existence, I contend that the primary effect of psilocybin
is to enact a stable opening of the attention, via the virtual annihilation of the observer, that can
be practiced outside the hallucinogenic experience in order to utilize the
entire brain in every calculation, in order to see with both eye and mind's eye
stereoscopically aligned. This task is made easier in harmonization with a
cosmic form of black metal, whose lyrical content attempts and often succeeds
at description beyond ineffability, and Dzogchen, a Buddhist method of
orientation in non-ordinary realities.
[Grasping the liquid glass, shaping
my own sight
Here, I am considering something
well beyond the threshold of what is commonly referred to as the
"recreational dose." What we are after is an ecstatic, breathless
experience that opens a bit more every time the limits of Being. Not access to
a superficial drunken haze, melting walls, breathing furniture - but access to
the regions of cognition that are free fields for the projection of unconscious
content. Not mere synesthesia, but volitional combinatory sensing. Beyond drift
into spectral emotional geometry that consistently resolves into manifestations
-in the plane of Art- of perpetual creation, a demonstration of the necessity
of death, and the self-evidence of immortality. Beyond freedom from the known
into the eternity of the standing now. This paper will detail a progression in
the mushroom experience from biological novelty to transperceptual abilities,
culminating in a quasi-death state and a sustained split from
Self-representation. Many arduous paths threaten annihilation, but psilocybin
promises, even to the skeptic, “a naked soul, smashed apart.” [vii]
Several simple molds and slimes work
in concert in the cattle's dung, in the deer corpse under the pine boughs, in
the peat bog. Over 200 species from a variety of climates across 6 continents,
but a shared beginning. Erupting in the aftermath of swarming bacterial
murmurations of rot and insectile aeration, a cleansing occurs. From the inside
out, these mold-infections metabolize impurities within precursor
material then die themselves, laying the nutritional-groundwork for the higher
mushroom in their own corpsing, evolved to fit a peculiar niche - that their
putrescence provides the physical and biochemical space necessary for the
tryptamine mushrooms' mycelium to colonize this dead substrate at the precise
point of intersection of entropy and novelty. Incredibly fine wisps of
root-nets building and building atop decomposition that can boast more
connections per cubic inch than the human brain. As the mushrooms' own death
and putrefaction in combination with fortuitous encounters with dead matter
enriches the system further, it offers its bodies as sacrifice to the mycelium
in order to heighten conditions for novelty, and thus “locates in the very permanence
of protocol the capacity to exceed it.”[ix]
[Cadaverous and spirited; I work
Composite and uniform; I sacrifice.
Earthbound forces united with the
Sorrow of Being.
O this Now is the hour of death. By
taking advantage of this death, I will so act for the good of all sentient
beings, peopling the illimitable expanse of the heavens as to obtain Perfect
Buddhahood by resolving on love and compassion to them, and directing my entire
effort to the Sole Perfection.]
The mushroom is the originary form
of Philip K. Dick's Physician[x], taking the apocryphal addition to
the Hippocratic oath "Primum non
nocere" as axiom: No element of its life cycle imposes itself. As
a primary decomposer, it negates Death to produce conditions for Life: as the
yogini is friendly with Death, because Death is more intimate than
Life. This peeling away and rejecting the false confusion of decay shares
roots with Dzogchen Buddhism, as from this point of view, what's perplexing is
"this life", not what lies "beyond" life. The penultimate yogini,
it has no organs to move the world: it has learned the role of stillness and
silence, of ceasing the motion of prana through the body. It takes nothing from
the living and converts entropy into knowledge, literally dripping with neurotransmitters. Meditating
like a corpse, in a corpse - as “a corpse is already meditating in every
meaningful sense.”[xi]
[Self-Liberation through the Appearing of
Appearances]
[A re-visioning of the spectrum of
visionary experiences through the lens of modern synesthesia research has lead
me down a path toward the idea that the basic sensory components of the
mystical experience contain, or may be entirely, some form of synesthesia. To
understand this, a quick swim into hastily elucidated neuroscience...]
The outer cortical layer of the
brain, the "Default Mode
Network" (DMN), is the part of the brain concerned with self-reference
and introspection, the subjective perspective. It is often considered analogous
to the ego, as well as being the primary location of the 5-HT2A serotonin
receptors.[xii]
The “Task-Positive Network” (TPN) of
the brain is a system of regions that activate in the face of a task or event
requiring active awareness. During performance of attention-intensive tasks,
prefrontal and parietal structures comprising the task-positive network are
characterized by activation. In contrast, default mode network structures,
including posterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortices, are characterized
by decreased activity. In self-reflective modes, this is reversed. In normal waking consciousness these
networks are competitive in metabolic terms: when one turns up, the other turns
down. Constrained by this pair of networks are key subcortical regions devoted
to temporal, sensorial, and spatial mapping and memory storage - the historical
narrative: the hippocampus, amygdala, and cerebellum.
Interwoven in this proto-cybernetic
mesh, sensorial and cognitive signaling is shunted in standard directions by an
equally complex array of hubs that also function as gates.[xiii] Through observing the effects of
psilocybin on the hub systems we discover that these structures are
progressively deactivated, or relaxed, through the introduction of increased
serotonin, wherein they cease directing and filtering sensory input and reflection
on these inputs into the "proper" channels for basic cognition and
begin distributing the signals more freely, triggering various types of
constructive synesthetic responses - responses in which a stacking of a single
perceptual quality occurs across multiple sense inputs giving an innate
awareness of the novel condition. Physical and psychological stress and
sickness cause the body to release cortisol and adrenaline (both interfere with
serotonin uptake) which in exceptional cases can trigger a strangely mirrored
version of synesthesia, an improper signaling pattern leading to what I call
‘constrictive synesthesia’, wherein the subject can no longer successfully
interpret incoming signals due to their being diverted from their normal path
into “inappropriate” regions. This results in a confusing and disorienting
blurring of the senses. Several major types of "system-overlap" are
common, such as the primary five senses in nearly any combination, sensorial
representations of active self-reflection, emotion, memory and the sense of
time, facial recognition and spatial awareness. A number of normally autonomous
brain networks become essentially continuous under the influence of serotonin
or psilocybin not by virtue of their being brought to a defined or definable
state of action, but by flattening the repulsive affect between the two larger
arrays, effectively bringing them together into a cohesive unit which prevents
the back and forth motion that is standard. We see the principle of the 2nd law
of thermodynamics in an expansion toward entropy – “in a way, we have a model
of brain death in the psychedelic state.”[xiv]
The effects of psilocybin are
extremely subjective and can fluctuate wildly, remaining rarely constant or
consistent, but a few attributes seem to be persistent and common to both the
mystical and the psychedelic.
Anecdotal evidence across mystical
and psychedelic literature combined with personal research suggests to me that
the amount of visual brightness or light or color intensity triggered by a
perception in this state may be correlative to the novelty to the brain of the
new signaling pattern. My theory is that the truly novel perception or set of
perceptions, when diverted through the memory in the synesthetic state,
triggers a neuronal map of representations that include the sun, as the
"tutelary genius of universal vegetation"[xvii] is the most easily
"visualized" common conception of origin and therefore a prime symbol
of the divine and the unknown. This causes incredibly intense glowing patterns,
intensified further by further novel insights and perceptions. As the visionary
state deepens, its trajectory continues through an aggregation of symbolism of
myth and religion most represented in memory being activated in the
thoughtstream as if the memory and the DMN collaborate in an attempt to
integrate this new experience by comparison, starting at the
"beginning", the easiest, or most open possible conceptions. As if
the search for any way to represent the new stimuli patterns in active
consciousness came up linguistically and
logically empty, forcing the growth
of new representations. This would explain why visions of god, angels,
aliens, infernals, and all manner of oddities show up even in primitive stages
of these experiences, often seeming to be perceptibly connected to the primary
sensorial component in direct but strangely-mirrored contrast with the
mythological convictions held by the subject. I think that this also implies
that the overwhelming aspect of the light, or what I judge to be the automatic rebound through self-reflection of
a novel perception (and thus the natural movement through pre-existing
prejudices and ideology) can be "practiced away" or properly ignored,
until the new sensing pattern can be assimilated practically within abstract
thought, which Vajrayana practitioners call prabhāsvara, or luminosity.
[The pure light in a moment of
awareness in your mind is the Buddha’s essence within you. The
nondiscriminating light in a moment of awareness in your mind is the Buddha's
wisdom within you. The undifferentiated light in a moment of awareness in your
mind is the Buddha's manifestation within you. The subtlest level of mental
activity (Mind), which continues with no beginning and no end, without any
break, even during death and even into Buddhahood is individual and constitutes
the mental continuum of each Being. It is naturally free of conceptual
cognition, the appearance-making of true existence.][xviii]
The marvels and mundanities of
existence then become equally wondrous or fearful because they do not
automatically get swept into pre-formed epistemic categories and channels of
thought. This gives the impression that everything around is equally profound
and worthy of reverence. Unlike subjects
suffering from psychotic or psychophysical disorders, however, subjects who
experience drug-induced synesthesia can often immediately recognize the
nonphysical nature of their perceptual disturbances with a rudimentary
application of attention, which I posit stems from the constructivity of this
variety of synesthesia. That stacked phenomenal properties -move together- give
the lie to perceptions that span multiple senses, and allow us to tell false
perceptions from true. When the signaling is constricted and erratic there
seems to be a much greater difficulty in assessing the subjective nature of
these hallucinations. At many levels of the psychedelic experience each
individual sensory input is perceived as a separate “channel” and their
collation into ordinary reality itself is also perceived as its own individual
channel. Without this knowledge, the many strands and strings of inputs are
often seen simply as chaos.
[I saw no God nor heard any, in a
finite and organized perception, but my senses discovered the infinite in
everything.[xix] I assented my eyes on the face of
the crucifix…after this my sight began to fail, and it was all dark about me in
the chamber, as if it had been night save in the Image of the Cross whereon I
beheld a common Light, and I wist not how. All that was away from the Cross was
of horror to me as if it had been greatly occupied by the fiends.][xx]
Conversely, the perceptible
blackening or blurring of perceptions within (at least) the audiovisual field in
these modes of non-ordinary reality, while sometimes being accidentally
perceived as a feature of the object or representation in question or a defect
of perception itself, seems to be representative of the distance between
perception and reflection, i.e.: how much “signal decay” or filtering occurs
between direct sense input and attentive perception. While this in no way gives
novel information to the subject, it freely exposes the dimensions of the rift
between thought and Being. As tis rift is immeasurably vast, the warpings and
wildings of perception in even the lowest regions of the psychedelic state are
just as vast.
[We
now know that only a fraction of the estimated 38,000 trillion operations per second processed by the brain finds
its way to consciousness. This means that experience, all experience, is
profoundly privative, a simplistic caricature of otherwise breathtakingly
complex processes...The metabolic costs associated with neural processing and
the sheer evolutionary youth of human consciousness suggest that experience
should be severely blinkered: synoptic or ‘low resolution’ in some respects,
perhaps, but thoroughly fictitious otherwise.][xxi]
This has two major effects that are
explicated in great detail in several psychedelic trip reports[xxii] that bring a competitiveness with
the mystical state to the table. One, as everything seems to become altered in
some way, a fear or anxiety about nothing being true or known occurs - the
ungrounding; second, the subject feels an ecstatic feeling of awe at the true
size and complexity of the mysterious. This second effect relaxes the first as
a desire to understand that
transcends the assumption of never understanding,
but that these positions can freely overlap and shift also results in
kaleidoscopic physical sensations and visual effects as the connections between
the brain and the autonomic nervous system are assaulted with the
electrochemical fallout of these extreme emotions. In this stage is where the
most frequent divergences into "bad trips" occur as the emotions and
feelings evoked feel tremendously physical and seem to operate similar to
feedback looping, wherein a phenomenal state 'speeds up' and deepens as it is
focused upon. The fact that psychedelic drugs induce a greater sensitivity to
these oscillations can speed up the influx of impressions from deeper levels of
consciousness and raises the immediate question of how these energies can be properly
understood and handled. According to Yoga philosophy, the most spiritual and
powerful aspect of human's nature is the faculty of attention or consciousness.
The most fundamental aspect of man's free will is the choice as to what he
allows his attention to dwell upon. The attention always has to be on
something, but we can choose what we allow it to dwell upon. The goal of all
Yoga practices is to discover and directly experience what the attention or
faculty of consciousness in man is. The yogi seeks to know that principle by
which all else is known. This goal is achieved by observing the observer or placing the attention upon the attention
itself.
[Night-sight is bliss : the darkness
shines and illuminates the abyss
Bless her, this uplifting splendor
Whose brightness gives birth this
shadow and discovers the gulf
A world where you embrace the
opposite.
Like a voluptuous and endless flash,
showing nothing other than that there is something one does not see.
To follow this flash as beacon, as initiation into the exploration of the
darkness. To “intellectually navigate the negativity binding thought and being,
to definitively illuminate the darkness of one’s relation to the real.”][xxiii]
[wiring diagrams]
[The sea and the mountains, and the
fire and the sword,
All these together, I live in their
midst.
The mountain, he'll not leave me,
who has seized
Deeper into this chemical
integration, a visual synthesis of our abstracted view of human biology with
the possibilities of non-existence develops that seems to be related to a
de-linking or muting of self-reflective capabilities as the DMN begins to lose
its top-down control over the memory and historical narrative. This synthesis
gives us a glimpse of the "intuitive mapping protocol" of memory and
spatial determination, often seen as the classic visual geometry of the
psychedelic. This visualization of symbolic schemata exposes the calculatory
procedures that are used to construct visible reality, and is equivalent to a
set or stack of subjective wiring diagrams. Mathematical form is the first
reflection and most pure image of our subjective activity. Then follows number,
having a close relation to linear conception. Hence mathematical form with
number supplies the fittest system of symbols for orderly representation of the
spiritual evolution of life, plane after plane.
Or, as Philo says, “Number is the mediator between the corporeal and the
incorporeal.” When overlaid on incoming sensation, these diagrams explicitly
show how incorrectly we assimilate perceived data, as the geometry of accurate
perception aligns with that of accurate cognitive interpretation. Reality of
realization felt first in connection with external things, appearances, is
gradually perceived more and more interiorly as consciousness develops through
succeeding stages, until finally Truth is perceived as the only reality. These
processes can be tracked to a high degree and in fact lend themselves to this
tracking, as they can be profoundly beautiful and otherworldly, and thus draw
the attention away from the Self and toward this intuitive apperception.
Imagining the visual cortex as a
screen and perception as the video source, we can trace the buildup of
perceptual feedback in a monotonic fashion in order to both remain aware of
shared reality and follow this progression toward the near-infinite variety of
sense data that is generally filtered out by active consciousness. Huxley's
Pure Interval, is in this regard, analogous to inhabiting the position within
this visual feedback loop where all perceptions and images are "in
phase" and stable, without the
observer to decompose or block formation of image stability and infinite
recursion. The concept this presses to the fore is that of perspective and pattern without observer,
in all dimensions as memory and the thoughtstream becoming highly active in the
visual field. At this moment of self-loss, a seemingly supra-physical,
sensorially apparent, boundary is crossed and every sense input in addition to
the thought stream are activated in every component structure of the physical
brain and synesthesia becomes effectively totalized. Whether virtual or actual,
every point in the brain becomes electrochemically connected to every other
point in the brain. This experience is often recalled as a feeling of
connectedness to all lifeforms, of "everything is everything" - a
complete breakdown of the subject-object dynamic as the vast array and
complexity of the sense stream completely overwhelms any ability to recognize
the Self and subjectivity vanishes. Suddenly, input and output are perceived
simultaneously across all senses. When this barrier has been passed, the
subject ceases to perceive images from the exterior world, being left only with
their symbolic representations. “If one is able to orient at all without the
direct support of these images, they will find themselves in a state of
reverie, and then in the dream state, in which the energization of the
imaginary activity, dissociated from the external senses, is accompanied by
further reduction and emptying of consciousness of Self…when that alienation
increases…consciousness is abolished. Farther beyond lie trance, lethargy, and
the cataleptic state. Farther still, when the separation is complete, one
enters into a state of apparent death, and finally into the state of the
dissociation of the
[Feel the heartbeat of the earth,
[Lightless voyage, blinding speeds
Abstract shapes, enigmatic design.
Don't fight it, you'll only
Whirl up all mass hysteria
In your thousandfold self
Certain; I'll stay the distance
shake down withering poison and die.
I understand a substance consisting
of an infinity of attributes,
This is universally expressed as an
experience of the death of the Ego, a sustained breaking of the correlationist
circle, and an immediate manifestation of the mental trappings of death in
several powerfully analogous and metonymous forms, as death is the most readily
available, most powerful, and most distinctly coherent symbolic representation
of the loss of self across literature, media, and history perhaps both despite
and because of its ineffability. Such that when the self is cognitionally
"lost" the entire death-symbolic memory repertoire activates,
pressing a primordial or emergent idea of death and loss to the front of the imagination
and forcing it to construct a conceptual representation that is then dumped
unceremoniously into the senses. As the Self expects to feel the loss for and
of itself, the expected sorrow of death never touches
the Perception, having been split from the Self. Instead, the feeling
of hyperconnectedness via synesthetic response persists despite the perception
of the death of the "I", lending it rather a significantly positive
emotionally integrated component as the Perception is surprised, in awe of, and
ultimately relieved to find itself surviving a death-experience by virtue of
remaining in this connected, aware state. A death-like silence felt more
intensely than any experience within common shared reality.
[The delusion of ignorance becomes
the wisdom of reality. The spirits cut his head open and took out his brains,
washed and restored them. They planted barbed hooks on the tips of his fingers
to enable him to seize the soul and hold it fast; and lastly
they pierced his heart with an arrow to make him full of sympathy for
the sick and suffering.][xxix]
[All is present in every particular,
the absolute in every relative. And associated with this obscure knowledge may
come a new mode of apprehension, in which the ordinary subject-object relationship
is somehow transcended and there is an awareness of self and the outer world as
being one. Such propositions as "god is love" are realized with the
totality of one's being, and their truth seems self-evident in spite of pain
and death.][xxx]
[When my last sign of humanity will
be heaved
When I'm finally alone with no one
to speak to
I'll pass away without regret,
without fear in this endless cosmos
As I'll have lived everything from
deception to deception
I'll leave without sorrow, without
hate, without fright in front of the mouth of death
My destroyed dreams will then reveal
mightier gain.
Close your eyes, sense the below
Torment and separation points ahead.
But tonight
I'm Houdini
[iv] Mycelegium describes a technique in
which the cut-up method is applied to a set of dead text to draw out living
thought from the rupturings and suturings.
‘When you cut into the present the future leaks out’ W. Burroughs, Break Through in Grey Room (Sub Rosa Records 2001). Complete list of source material follows.
[v] Psilocybin is metabolized in the
body to psilocin, an alkaloid with a remarkably similar chemical structure to
serotonin.
[x] “Out of itself the Brain has
constructed a physician to heal it. This subform of the Macro-Brain is not
deranged; it moves through the Brain, as a phagocyte moves through the
cardiovascular system of an animal, healing the derangement of the Brain section
after section. We know of its arrival here; we know it as Asklepios for the Greeks and as the Essenes
for the Jews; as the Therapeutae for the Egyptians; as Jesus for the
Christians.” -P.K. Dick Tractatus
Cryptica Scriptura section of VALIS (Boston: Mariner 2011)
[xii] Studies have consistently suggested
that 5-HT2A receptor activation of cortical neurons is responsible for
mediating signaling patterns and behavioral responses between systems (Presti & Nichols, 2004; González-Maeso
et al., 2008; Nichols & Nichols, 2008). Serotonin can serve both as an inhibitory
and an excitatory neurotransmitter in different regions of the brain (Lee & Roth, 2012), which explains
the seemingly conflicting findings that hallucinogens work by increasing neural
activity as well as by decreasing neural activity.
[xiii] The largest of these, the corpus
callosum, is a massive bundle of nerves that connects each point on the cortex
to the mirror-image point in the opposite hemisphere.
[xiv] R. Carhart-Harris Brain Imaging Studies with Psilocybin and
MDMA 2014 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNR4o5JZEi0)
[xvii] A. Pike Morals and Dogma: Scottish Rite in Freemasonry (Charleston: Forgotten
Books 2008) :176
[xxi]R. Scott Bakker (https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/essay-archive/outing-the-it-that-thinks-the-collapse-of-an-intellectual-ecosystem/)
[xxii] Excellent examples include [Zanti.
"Rotating Space, Topological Games: An Experience with Mushrooms - P.
cubensis (ID 86904)". Erowid.org. Dec 2, 2012. erowid.org/exp/86904]
and [Hiab-x. "Psychohedron: An Experience with Mushrooms (P. semilanceata)
(ID 15902)". Erowid.org. Aug 21, 2002. erowid.org/exp/15902]
[xxiii] Enslaved “Night-Sight”(Nuclear Blast 2010)/Blut Aus Nord “VI”(Debemur Morti 2013)/N. Masciandaro Paradisical Pessimism (Qui Parle: Critical
Humanities and Social Sciences Volume 23, Number 1, Fall/Winter 2014)
:183-212
[xxviii] Enslaved “Raidho”(Nuclear Blast 2010) /Arcturus “For to
End Yet Again”(Ad Astra 2002)/Lurker
of Chalice “Piercing Where They Might”(Total
Holocaust 2005)/Blut Aus Nord “Henosis”(Debemur Morti 2014)
[xxxi] Mutiilation “Ravens of My Funeral”(Drakkar 1995)/Enslaved “Axioma”(Nuclear Blast 2010)/Arcturus “Ad
Absurdum”(Ad Astra 2002)
[xxxii] Thank you E, P, S, B, N, M+M
nighthawking, body-snatching: raw
meaterial
G. Bataille
Inner Experience (New York: SUNY Press
1988)
J.
Krishnamurti Lectures (https://www.youtube.com/user/KFoundation/videos)
T.
McKenna The Ethnobotany of Shamanism 1988
Lecture Transcription (http://www.curezone.org/upload/PDF/tatuoscuro666/TMK_Ethnobotany_of_Shamanism_by_Terence_McKenna.pdf)
T.
McKenna A Freely Evolving Topology of
Light and Sound (http://www.matrixmasters.net/salon/2014/04/podcast-396-a-freely-evolving-topology-of-light-sound/)
T.
McKenna The Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of
Knowledge | A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution (New York: Bantam 1993)
A. Huxley
Moksha (Rochester: Park Street Press 1999)
U.
Weithaus Ecstatic Transformation (Syracuse: Syracuse Univ Pr 1995)
R.
Negarestani Cyclonopedia (Victoria: re:press 2008)
W.Y
Evans-Wentz The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1960)
T. Morton
Thinking the Charnel Ground (The Charnel Ground Thinking):
Auto-commentary and Death in Esoteric Buddhism (GLOSSATOR 7 2013) :73-94
Brogaard/Gatzia
Psilocybin, LSD, Mescaline and
Drug-Induced Synesthesia (Victor R. Preedy (ed.) Neuropathology of Drug Addictions and Substance Misuse, Academic Press, Elsevier, In Press 2015)
R.
Carhart-Harris Brain Imaging Studies with
Psilocybin and MDMA 2014 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNR4o5JZEi0)
Nagarjuna Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā: Fundamental Wisdom of
the Middle Way tr: Gudo Wafu Nishijima (Jackson: Monkfish 2011)
N.
Masciandaro Paradisical Pessimism
(Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences Volume 23, Number 1,
Fall/Winter 2014)
L. Cook Geometrical Psychology or The Science
of Representation; an Abstract of the Theories and Diagrams of B.W. Betts (London: Redway 1887)
W.
Sellars The Scientific Image of Man
taken from Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul Ltd 1963) :1-40
D.
Hofstadter I am a Strange Loop (New York: Basic Books 2007)
A.
Watts What is Zen? (San Francisco: New World Library 2000)
