Prometheus Rising exercise and discussion group, episode 66, Chapter 11

Photo by Maria Lupan on Unsplash

In Chapter 11, Robert Anton Wilson talks about various ways to activate the fifth of the eight circuits, the neurosomatic circuit, including tantric sex, cannabis, yoga and pranayama. Apuleius Charlton in his recent post seemed to have a good understanding of the subject matter, and I won't attempt to top him here. 

But I did want to offer a few notes on one of Wilson's observations. He seems to think that music can help activate the circuit. More specifically, he is interested in talking about the music of Beethoven.

Beethoven comes up quite a bit in this chapter. Beethoven is said by RAW to be "genetically inclined to right brain activities, that is, to sending coherent wholes, to plunging into neurosomatic bliss almost 'at will,' and to sensory-sensual raptness and rapture. Everybody 'knows' that the Sixth Symphony is 'pantheistic,' but whether Beethoven was an ideological pantheist or not, that way of responding to nature is normal and natural right-brain Circuit V functioning."

Wilson also writes that Beethoven could communicate his Circuit Five experiences, "which is precisely what the ordinary 'mystic' cannot do."

Wilson also writes about obtaining control of the neurosomatic circuit, a progression "from primate emotion to post-hominid tranquility," and says of this "Next Step" that "you can hear it in most of Beethoven's later, major compositions."

You will see that there is more about this in Chapter 12, including this paragraph:

" 'I am He that was, and is, and shall be,' a sentence from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, in hieroglyph and in his own handwriting, was found on the desk where Beethoven composed the Ninth Symphony and all his later, aeon-spanning 'evolutionary' music. One judges from this, and from the music itself, that Beethoven had opened the neurogenetic circuit."

However you judge such passages, certainly it is true that there are RAW fans such as Eric Wagner and myself who have a major Beethoven habit. 

Anyone interested in this way of looking at Beethoven's music should read the short piece "Beethoven As Information" in The Illuminati Papers.  I almost hate to excerpt it -- RAW is on fire from beginning to end in this three-page piece -- but here is one bit:

" 'Anyone who understands my music will never be unhappy again'," Ludwig is alleged to have said. Some biographers doubt the source from which we get this; but it doesn't matter. If he didn't say it, he might as well have; the music certainly says it for him. It is the music of a stubborn individual who is willing to suffer anything, pay any price asked, to achieve greater organic vision than has existed in the world before him.

"To be blunt about it, what went on inside Beethoven's head was more important, in the long run, than everything going on outside that head in those years."