Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.
~~ Darwi Odrade [1]

With the advent of the World Wide Web, "consensus reality" died around 1996. "Consensus Trance" - the common "frames of reference" (schema) or mindsets by which mass society perceives the world – is another matter.

At its surface level, "consensus trance" is readily observable throughout Late Capitalist societies. The manifestations, on a sociocultural level, are legion: the "false consciousness" created by advertising and out-of-control consumerism; the atomization of the individual within groups; societal addiction to euphemisms; the restaging of early traumas through assassinations, political campaigns and wars; and the manipulation of the masses via religiopolitical ideologies as a substitute for facing human alienation.

These manifestations fostered the growth of the Frankfurt School of social theorists and Secular Humanists, and found exoteric expression in the work of Gurdjieff, Adi Da Samraj (with some important caveats in a Missionera Protectiva sense), Sufism and Robert Anton Wilson (whose "reality tunnel" exercises have introduced many readers to the prospect of "reality" being a verb).

Psyche-respecting philosophies and religions have been part of many different cultures throughout history. The tumultuous upheavals of the 1960s gave rise to the Transpersonal Psychology school, and some of my favorite researchers include Charles T. Tart, Ken Wilber, Peter Russell, Riane Eisler and Arthur Deikman.

Glimpsing The Real World

I first encountered this idea through the writings of Gurdjieff and Peter Ouspensky, the Russian journalist, mathematician and philosopher. Although I had explored various secular philosophies and religious belief systems, my first insight came whilst reading Eric Tamm's book Robert Fripp: From King Crimson to Guitar Craft (Boston MA: Faber & Faber, 1990).

One passage in Tamm's book attracted my immediate attention, begging further inquiry. During the recording sessions for King Crimson's album Red (1974), Fripp came across some writings of John Godolphin Bennett that reflected Gurdjieff's argument that humanity wanders through life asleep in a kind of perpetual hypnotic state. In asking the question "Is there 'life' on Earth?" Bennett was challenging his readers to examine their unconscious cultural programming, distorted perceptions, and unquestioned belief systems. In a sense, Bennett was a forerunner of memetic engineers and other contemporary de-programmers of the psyche.

The effect on Fripp was immediate and catastrophic. Tamm quotes Fripp explaining the test to Melody Maker writer Alan Jones circa 1979:

I had a glimpse of something . . . The top of my head blew off. That's the easiest way of describing it. And for a period of three to six months it was impossible for me to function . . .My ego went. I lost my ego for three months. We were recording Red and Bill Bruford [King Crimson drummer] would say, "Bob - what do you think?" And I'd say, "Well - " and inside I'd be thinking how can I know anything? Who am I to express an opinion? And I'd say - "Whatever you think, Bill. Yes, whatever you like." . . . It took me three to six months before a particular kind of Fripp personality grew back to the degree that I could participate in the normal day-to-day business of hustling.

Fripp was experiencing more than "cognitive dissonance", more than the Existentialist Absurdity that confronts our subjective meaning and values (Jean-Paul Sartre explored this scenario in Nausea). But I didn't grasp the subtlety of what transpired until many years afterwards.

Intrigued, I purchased a copy of Ouspensky's The Fourth Way: A Record of Talks and Answers to Questions Based on the Teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff (1957), devoured it in a single weekend, grasped some of its more obvious concepts (dis-identifying with negative emotions), and promptly 'forgot' about it.

Learning How To Learn

Several weeks later I got my first glimpse of "consensus trance" as more than an intellectual idea: a forceful reality that also overwhelmed my emotions. I was in a Cinema Studies class that was introducing a new paradigm a week, drowning in a dizzying onslaught of information (on average we can process seven bits of information at once) and vastly expanded sensory-data boundaries. The lecturer was a 'fan' of Michel Foucault and Herbert Marcuse. I soon noticed that these 'hypno-words' were more effective to gain attention than spontaneous thoughts. I had not yet "learned how to learn" about different cognitive processing strategies. I did not encounter "representational systems" and "chunking information" techniques until years later.

My first act of university antinomianism, in another class, was to discover that Brian De Palma had been influenced by Jean-Luc Godard as well as Alfred Hitchcock, disproving my lecturer's thesis.

The Orphic Netherworlds of Cultural Programming

"Cosmic Love is absolutely ruthless and highly indifferent: it teaches its lessons whether you like/dislike them or not."
~~ Dr. John Lilly

Whilst relatively easy to discern in the media and political realms, "consensus trance" can nimbly evade your self-awareness. We must 'observe' and 'study' ourselves to see the psychopathology within everyday life. Transactional Analysis, Reality Therapy, Cognitive Therapy (formulated by Aaron Beck) and Rational-Emotive Therapy have proven useful for the self-re-scripting of social roles that we unconsciously learned and then internalized from families, groups and institutions.

One hazardous aspect of personal mutation practices, like playing carelessly with dangerous chemicals, is that you may experience a "conceptual distance" from society as the veils to self-knowledge are lifted away. Intensive self-change processes can also become uncomfortable and harrowing. The ultimate aim is to experience a sense of Freedom, Sovereignty and Objective Conscience.

Exercises and References:

1. George Gurdjieff once said: "Man is a machine; he has no will." This meme has influenced the trajectory of post World War II military R&D that underpins virtual reality and similar technologies, fast-learning strategies, and the human bio-computer models of Dr. John Lilly, Timothy Leary, and Robert Anton Wilson. Do you agree with the Teacher of Dances? What theoretical evidence and practical observations do you have to support your reasoning? Could he have been lying? Why or why not?

2. One of the results of Robert Fripp's experiences with the Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, and Bennett teachings was his solo album Exposure (Polydor, 1979), which is partly an exercise in self-remembering. Fripp tweaks with the parameters of intelligent rock music, creating a self-referential artistic document that is intentionally challenging and jarring in places for the serious listener (embodying particular Gurdjieff Work concepts).

3. Take a lesson in Milton Erickson's self-hypnosis techniques, or go to see a good clinical hypno-therapist for a session. Alternatively, an evening spent with a good stage magician will reveal how the mind and perceptions can be tricked by timing, misdirection, and aesthetic factors.

4. "Consensus trance" has been depicted in many films. Some of my favorites are the jury deliberation scenes explored in 12 Angry Men (1957), the military-information society in WarGames (1983), the alien Republicans and subliminal messages of They Live (1988), the Burning Times and scapegoating in The Crucible (1996) and the social hysteria analyzed in The Siege (1998).