Quantum Psychology: Weekly assignments

Welcome. Together we will explore Maybe Logic and Quantum Psychology with the goal of teaching us to know a great deal less and suspect a great deal more, as we move from unreal certitudes to existential uncertainty.

Week One

THE DEATH OF TSARISM: Faith-based vs. research-based orientations

The end of certitude as indicated by physics, pragmatism, existentialism, ethnmomethodology, general semantics, instrumentalism, and transactional psychology. In the Course Discussion Forum, practise in writing e-prime instead of English.

Do some online research into the schools of thought listed above and discuss your findings and observations in the Quantum Board.

Readings:
Quantum Psychology: Fore-Words pg. 11-21; E and E-Prime pg. 97-110

We only have one rule in this area of cyberspace —
If you can’t achieve tolerance, at least attempt courtesy.

Open your neurons, take a deep breath, and come on in.

–Robert Anton Wilson


Week Two

Read BLACK MAGICK AND CURSES
and discuss in Board

Read chapters 1-3 of Quant Psych & do the exercizes

Skip exercizes at end of chapter 3. Replace with:

For 5 minutes Monday try to sense all experience as
occuring within yr pineal gland [“third eye”]
Increase to 6 minutes Tuesday & Wednesday
increase to 10 minutes Thursday Friday Saturday
If panic or anxiety result, STOP at once

Discuss exercizes in Quantum Board


Week 3

First of all, consider the notion that you don’t really
have a head. Use the method of Radical Empiricism
pioneered by the Scots philosopher David Hume [whom this method led
to doubt the existence of David Hume.]

Most people will tell you that you do have
a head, but empiricism condemns that as hearsay.

You can see your head in a mirror? You can see dozens
— scores — hundreds of heads, in various sizes
and colors, in various kinds of mirrors,
including “distorting” mirrors in Fun Houses. How do you know
which mirrors “distort” the most? Such “evidence” creates
confusion, not conviction. Or will you go back to majority
opinion [hearsay]?

You can reach up and feel your head? You can only grope
around a nonverbal event, lumpy in front and usually hairy
in back which opinion and hearsay dub a “head.”
Opinion and hearsay once pictured Earth as flat.

If you haven’t lost faith in your “head” yet, recall the
exercize in which we found all impressions seemed
to reduce to tingling sensations in the pineal gland. Or read
ON HAVING NO HEAD: ZEN AND THE REDISCOVERY OF
THE OBVIOUS
by Douglas Harding, Inner Directions, 2002

Now read chapters 4, 5 and 6 and do such exercizes
as do not require thee group to meet in one room in
geospace. I strongly recommend adapting Exercize 4 in
Chapter 4, using 13 items found around the house

For those with the fortitude to attempt 2 books in 8
weeks, read pp 1-50 of THE EARTH WILL SHAKE
and try to list ALL the unquestioned assumptions
that inspired Sigismundo Celine’s decision to murder
Carlo Maldonado. When [and only when]
totally convinced that the
list runs to infinity, you may stop.
If quantum theory has not profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it.
–Niels Bohr

Your theory sounds crazy, but I don’t think it’s crazy enough to be true.
–Niels Bohr


Week 4

Read Chapters 1 & 2 of Quantum Reality by Nick Herbert

Read Chapters 7-10 of Quantum Psychology

Do exercizes: chapter 7 Exercize 11; chap 8, all; 9, all; 10,1.
Cuss and/or discuss in Quantum Board

Other questions for discussion:

Which of Dr Herbert’s 8 models makes more sense to you?
Why?

Which of his 8 models seems craziest?
Why?
Whatever you say a thing “is,” it is not.
–Alfred Korzybski

Thee menu is not the meal.
–Alan Wilson Watts


Week 5

Read & discuss chapters 11 to 13 of Quantum Psychology.
Try whatever exercizes appeal to you

Read & discuss THE DEADLY DONUT

For those who want more work:

Continue THE EARTH WILL SHAKE to page 233
and discuss how the Spanish, English & French reality-tunnels expand Sigismundo beyond the Neapolitan reality-tunnnel into a “quantum” reality-labyrinth.


Week 6: BUT I SAW IT WITH MY OWN EYES

This week I want to emphasize why I call this course Quantum PSYCHOLOGY, not Quantum Philosophy.
I suggest — no, I urge and implore — that you all re-read my essay on blessings and curses, before going ahead and then reading Chapters 14 to 17 of Quantum Psychology.

Contemplate these questions:
Do all perceptions contain conceptions?

Nietzsche considered us all artists; how about considering us all magicians?

Do ideas, emotions and perceptions exist in different “worlds”

[as they do in traditional occidental neurosemantics]

or do they function as seamless parts of one circular feedback system of the organism-as-a-whole?

Discuss these perspectives and whatever exercizes in QP 14-17 seem worth your time.

Think of analogs to the farmer and the thief in your own experience, or in books or movies.


Week 7: INFINITY IN A GRAIN OF BRAIN

The Door of the Law conceals Schrodinger’s Cat?!
And Einstein’s Mouse??!
And even Wigner’s Friend!!!!??

Read text and do Exercizes in chapters 18-20 of Quantum Psych.
ESPECIALLY the exercize for Chapter 19

read pp 1-50 of INFO-PSYCHOLOGY.
Cuss and/or discuss.


WEEK 8: Subtracting from the Universe

First, I’d like to thank you all. This has seemed the brightest class so far, and I’ve enjoyed you and your contributions.

This week finish Quantum Psychology and discuss the last chapters. Also, feel free to discuss anything else from the text or course.

Consider if two or more of the quantum models might work better than one of them alone. I myself find it easy to combine the Non-local model with the Copenhagen Interpretation, in the sense that the Non-local model seems the best right now but, I still remain a Copenhagenist in the sense that the best model as of 2005 will probably not seem the best model in 2010, in 2050 or 2100.

My last sentence in Quantum Psychology [from Crowley] defining Dao as the result of subtracting the Universe from itself now appears to me less useful than defining Dao as the result of subtracting the hardware of the Universe from the Software. What do think? And how does this apply to Info-Psychology?

For those of you who would like to finish Info-Psychology and The Earth Will Shake, please do so and discuss as you see fit in the Forum.

I love you guys and gals –
Uncle Bob

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