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The Choreography of the Soul a Psychedelic Philosophy of Consciousness

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The Choreography of the Soul a Psychedelic Philosophy of Consciousness The Choreography of the Soul A Psychedelic Philosophy of Consciousness by Ed D’Angelo ©Ed D’Angelo 2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword . ii Preface . ix Introduction . 1 Chapter I. OBJECTS AND BODIES . 16 A. The Metaphysics of Objects . 16 B. The Genealogy and Psychology of the Metaphysics of Objects . 20 C. The Cosmology of Bodies . 32 Chapter II. NIETZSCHEAN-MATRIARCHAL PHILOSOPHY AND PLATONIC-PATRIARCHAL PHILOSOPHY . 40 A. Nietzsche at Eleusis . 41 B. The Death of God and the Spiral Dance . 50 Chapter III. SYSTEM X and SYSTEM Y . 88 A. Nietzsche’s Genealogy and Physiology of Consciousness . 93 B. The Neuropsychology of System X and System Y . 109 C. The Neuropsychological Development of System Y: A Mask is Born . 132 Chapter IV. DIVINE-KINGSHIP AND TRANCE EXPERIENCE . 151 A. Symbolic Thought and Ego-Directed Thought . 155 B. The Sun’s Journey to the Underworld . 160 C. The Song and Dance of Divine-Kingship . 182 Conclusion . 206 Bibliography . 210 i Foreword This work is a recently revised version of my dissertation, submitted to the Graduate School at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy. The original title was The Choreography of the Soul: Recursive Patterns in Psychology, Political Anthropology and Cosmology. The dissertation was presented to the dissertation committee at my defense held in December of 1987 and was published by University Microfilms International in May of 1988. The Dissertation Director was Robert C. Neville (1939- ), an American systematic philosopher, metaphysician, theologian, Confucian, Calvinist, and ordained Methodist pastor. Also on the committee was Hugh J. Silverman (1945-2013), a Continental Philosopher who specialized in deconstruction and postmodernism, and Edward S. Casey (1939- ), a Continental Philosopher who specialized in phenomenology and Freud. John A. Schumacher (1945-1999), a philosopher, metaphysician, anarchist, hippy, and Director of the Department of Science, Technology and Society at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, served as the outside reader. Prof. Schumacher had also served as the advisor for my Master’s thesis at Rensselaer. He was my friend and mentor. In this Foreword I would like to tell the story behind my dissertation. I came to Rensselaer in 1976 to study mathematics and engineering, not philosophy. I had studied Thoreau in high school and like most members of my generation I had been exposed to the counterculture through friends and the media. But my interest in philosophy did not become serious until I took a class with John Schumacher in the spring of 1977 titled Telepathy, Buddhism and the Universe. Prof. Schumacher had studied mathematics at Rensselaer before getting his doctorate at Oxford in philosophy. He was well versed in both the humanities and the sciences. In fact, he knew the great physicist David Bohm and taught Bohm’s (1980) ii holographic theory of the universe. The question Prof. Schumacher posed to us in his class was, assuming that telepathy and other paranormal phenomena are real, how would you explain it? What theory of the universe can you create that would explain non-local causation (that is, immediate action at a distance)? To this day I don’t know if Prof. Schumacher believed that telepathy was real or if he just wanted us to learn how to construct metaphysical systems, but a highlight of the class was a visit by a local psychic, a blind man with a bald head who didn’t need eyes to see. Relativity theory would seem to prohibit any such non-local connections since they would require information to be transmitted at superluminal speeds. Einstein disliked quantum physics because at least on some interpretations of quantum physics, such as Bohm’s holographic interpretation, and even on the standard Copenhagen interpretation, it does seem to allow for non-local connections. Indeed, Bell’s theorem in quantum physics, published in 1964, was believed to be a proof of non-local causation, especially by a circle of young, countercultural physicists in the 1970s in Berkeley, California (see Kaiser, 2011). These ideas spread throughout the counterculture, especially among those who were more scientifically literate, because they seemed to explain exactly the sort of “mystical” or occult experiences that members of the counterculture were having, sometimes after ingesting psychedelics. In Prof. Schumacher’s case, there was a political motive, too, because he wanted to debunk the individualistic, atomistic view of human society that pits people against one another in a competitive struggle to rise in a hierarchical system. If people were in fact immediately connected to one another across distances (and time), such as they are when they seem to communicate telepathically, then the atomistic view of human society would not be based in reality. In the fall of 1977 I took another philosophy class that left a lasting impression on me, this one taught by Prof. Lou Hammer, on the great German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. Although I was only a college sophomore, Prof. Hammer taught the class like a graduate seminar. Once a week a small group of us would gather around a table in the iii newly constructed library overlooking the Hudson Valley and talk about what we had been reading. It was a thrilling intellectual experience. From that point on I used all my electives to take courses in philosophy, including ones on existentialism, Buddhism, Indian philosophy, and metaphysics. In 1980 I graduated summa cum laude with degrees in both philosophy and computer & systems engineering. I worked at IBM one very cold winter in Poughkeepsie, New York, and in the summer after I graduated, after obtaining a secret security clearance, I worked for a defense contractor in McLean, Virginia. But what I really wanted to do was to solve the riddle of existence. So I returned to Rensselaer to study philosophy for two years. After the completion of my studies in philosophy, I attempted to return to engineering, but my heart wasn’t in it. Stony Brook offered me a fellowship to study philosophy and it had a strong Continental department. So off to Stony Brook I went—not, however, with any serious intention of making a career out of philosophy, but in search of Truth. After applying to Stony Brook I received a letter from the American Philosophical Association warning me that there were no jobs for graduates of doctoral programs in philosophy. No matter; if I had wanted a practical career I would have remained in engineering. It was in my final year at Rensselaer when I attempted to return to engineering but spent most of my time reading Freud and Derrida and Deleuze that I first experimented with LSD. I didn’t do LSD again until the fall of my second year at Stony Brook, in October of 1984. However, that experience proved to be the most powerful of my life. I spent the remainder of my time at Stony Brook doing research in Stony Brook’s vast library in the humanities, social sciences, and medical sciences, trying to understand what I had experienced. My dissertation was the culmination of that research. The LSD trip I experienced in October of 1984 was, like most trips of its kind, largely an unanticipated accident. One of my roommates had come upon blotter acid that was touted to be twice the strength of the typical “hit” at that time. The blotter was imprinted with the image of a Christian cross overlaid on a triangle, symbolizing death iv and rebirth. I didn’t believe it was double strength so I took two hits. It came on strong. There were the usual body rushes that I had experienced before, similar to an orgasm but lasting much longer and spread throughout the body instead of being confined to the genital area. Then came the waves of laughter, until my roommate and I were rolling on the floor. And then all of a sudden the world was gone and I found myself in another reality. In this alternate reality there was no space and no matter, only consciousness. It was a reality out of time; a reality that has always been and always will be. Therefore my trip to this alternate reality was not so much a “trip” at all but a return to a “place” where we have always been. It was not so much a new experience as a recollection, a Déjà vu experience, similar to Plato’s recollection of the forms. Nor was I alone in this alternate reality. There were others: discrete personalities. Since there was no space or matter to come between us, we were able to communicate directly—telepathically—as if we were parts of one mind. Although we were out of time and space, there was, paradoxically, great movement. I led the others in a spiral dance performed according to precise rhythms, round and round in tighter circles. With each rhythmic pattern a new emotion arose, each of which was extremely intense—in fact, unbearably, dangerously intense— and extended out to fill the universe. The emotions I experienced alternated between positive and negative in apparent dialectical fashion, with conflict and resolution, cosmic doom and cosmic orgasms. This went on for hours. For hours there was nothing— absolutely nothing—but the dance of emotions. I was convinced that if I didn’t continue dancing the universe might be annihilated, and it would all be my fault. As leader and instigator of the cosmic circle dance I bore a terrible responsibility. Until the dance did end, and there was just peaceful emptiness. And then I awoke, back in the kitchen where I had disappeared from the world. What a relief! The world isn’t gone and I haven’t destroyed it! It’s still here and I’ve returned.
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