tony wright on the human condition

Tony Wright talks to Joanne Harcourt-Smith about his research into the human condition including his symbiotic theory of human origins and also our species wide insanity.  The story begins with his own experiences after he switched to a raw food 'primate like' diet including a lot of tropical fruit.  He noticed that his perceptions including visual, began to change.  At one point he awoke in the night with a a very different although familiar sense of self also experiencing pins and needles in his right side, indicating that the left hemisphere was not fully operational.  After substantial research and shamanic exploration he concluded that  something has happened to the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex which limits its function, whilst also causing it to be dominant (cerebral dominance) so that right hemisphere function is effectively restrained too.

He believes that humans have the innate capacity by their nature to live in a perpetual state of wonder and awe, in divine rapture.  The very fact that we, as humans, have devised techniques to access this state indicates this.  We have largely lost this on a day to day level, and living in fear, the most fearful (not the most illuminated) dominate.

Tony uses the analogy of lenses to describe the way the hemispheres of the brain facilitate conscious awareness.  At one time they worked together rather like lenses in binoculars but this is not longer the case and we live in a split sense of self.

Tony sees the steps we need to take as follows:

1. rebuild and restore the neural system

2. inhibit the sense of self from the lens that is not working so well i.e. left hemisphere through methods such as reducing speech and sleep deprivation

3.stimulate the right hemisphere with complex tasks such as music, singing and things that are too complicated for the left to deal with.

4, Compensate for loss of neurochemistry with neurochemical analogies including the plant medicine tradition.

We need a holistic approach. Our DNA is read optimally in the presence of tropical forest biochemistry.  We were plant-human hybrids.  We are now in a position to fly tropical forest foods around the globe.

Religion as we know it emerged as we shifted from the experiential to the conceptual and we began to run ourselves and our lives with belief systems.

We have a window of time to sort out our dilemma before the right hemisphere too degenerates.

Of all Tony's many recorded interviews this is the one I would currently recommend to anyone fairly new to his work as it covers the initial ground so clearly step by step.

split solution

Teachers of the mysteries (Gnostics) told many many generations ago of a time that would come when there would be some kind of parting of the ways, some kind of split solution, in Greek, diorthosis.  This is not to be confused with some great day of judgement where are judged by some outside patriarchal authority figure.  This is more of a choice, whether we choose to engage with the source of our life on this planet, or make other plans....my paraphrasing.  While of course, there is a cosmic source or originator, on this planet our immediate source of physical life is the Earth herself, Gaia, known on the mysteries as Sophia.  The Sophianic vision story is the story about her and us, where we came from and where we are going. It's an open-ended story for us to actively participate in.  It does not tell us how to love, we are loving creatures by nature already, rather we bring our love to the story and then the magic begins.

Mythology brings us this story of bifurcation and also, strangely and helpfully science is bringing us a complementary message. Research into the brain over the last few decades is revealing more about the split sense of self within us.  It also signposts a fork in the road for humanity.  We have a choice about whether to follow a increasingly degenerating road, at odds with our environment and own sanity or take active steps to change the biochemical balance in our whole system so that our  DNA blueprint from divine intelligence can be read according to its full potential, affecting the development of our bodies and brains and even ultimately our sense of self.  Not only can this take us to revolutionary levels of  health and happiness (words that seem mild to describe what is possible!) but can also reveal what now are considered extraordinary abilities, faculties we see glimpses of in peak states.

Bifurcation might easily be interpreted as some humans go one way and the rest another way and indeed ultimately this might be the case.  But before that it seems to manifest as an extraordinary and intense internal split in our own psyches, also experienced by those around us.  Sometimes this can bring excruciating sensations into our relations with those close to us as sometimes they can seem with us and at other times they seem to be in another camp altogether.  The reality we live in is dual source, one is natural from the Earth herself and cosmic intelligence.  The other is artificial, unfeeling and having no real purpose only really capable of imitation.  Identifying and separating out the two in our awareness is a step in choosing which way we want to go.

Through various techniques such as entheogenic nutrition, attunement to nature and various shamanic practices it is possible even now, to experience something very different to what is considered a normal state of consciousness, a way of  being that feels, simply put, much nicer, more connected, more connected to the source of our lives.  Activities and goals of the the other unsatisfied and unsatisfiable state then may seem less attractive and less of interest. Instead desire may focus on being in that connected state more of the time and to a greater degree.  When we find out that ultimately we could live in that state sustainably, that this could be said to be the natural human state then it could be asked what else would we do?  So we have the parting of the ways.

There is a separation in the storyline now, whether to go with the ever more beautiful dream of a paradise on Earth or further develop the worn out gimmicks of the past in some kind of archontic (artificial and delusory) nightmare.  The chasm is widening and it is increasingly difficult to live in both.  Yet it is not so much about a choice of location (though of course being connected to the Earth and natural word is so part of it) or a choice of people to be with (although that will come into it), that would make it so simple  but about a choice in our way of being and what we are engaged with.  With the knowledge we now have the potential to live in the dream is greater than ever.  At the same time the antihuman nightmare seems to be reaching new levels of dementia and lack of feeling and human friendliness.  Patching up the problems that arise from this situation seems increasingly tiresome and ineffective.  Maybe its time to move attention elsewhere.  Although the manifestations of this anti-humanness seem very real and still in operation they are degenerating.  Although this makes them seem worse, as they struggle and fight for survival, ultimately they are losing force.  The elements of the paradisiacal dream are embryonic and require our imagination and faith, but they are growing, faster by the day.  There is an illusion of safety in the familiar but the life force is much stronger than any of our institutions, beliefs, sufferings, addictions and attachments.  The power of the archontic nightmare is largely in its capacity to distract us from the dream and the real power and magic that comes through connection to nature and the our planetary mother.

The shift in consciousness in question is not so much about increasing our awareness of what is going on in current reality but more a move into magical consciousness and a release in the power of  imagination to co-create a future of beauty, that we really want.

There are clues about the two senses of self that we experience in many places, from spiritual and mythological traditions to science.  In some spiritual traditions there is talk of a higher and lower self.  We hear about the nagual and tonal about mundane and magical states of consciousness.  In real sky astrology there is the endowment which is gifts from the entire human species versus the ego, there is the socially and culturally programmed mind and the natural genius mind.  There is a sense of suffering and victimhood as a human on this planet or there is a sense of human potential and the capacity for ecstatic bliss, we can be focussed on the past, or the future.

Research of recent decades is indicating that due to biochemical imbalance the left hemispheres of our brains fail to develop to their full potential causing a rift between the two hemispheres while the left is dominant (cerebral dominance)  keeping us perceptually in a mundane and limited sense of self.  The left hemisphere it seems has little sense of feeling and a reliance on conceptualisation and programming, while the right hemisphere retains full human cognitive capacities, latent, it can feel and it can feel pleasure and joy.  If the right hemisphere is stimulated or the left hemisphere calmed we are more likely to feel a sense of presence more than us. Only the right hemisphere responds to psychotropic plant medicines and substances.  The right hemisphere needs less sleep than then left so is more easily accessed during sleep deprivation or dreams at night. It might be imagined that in the right hemisphere state we know about this situation but in the left hemisphere state we are ignorant of the greater possibilities.  This is reflected in modern mythology in the story of the Andromedan doubles  where the control group of  doubles on M31 know about us but we don't know about them.  Both these narratives describe our experiences as humans in the dream and in the nightmare, waking or otherwise.
http://www.metahistory.org/dynamyth/translations/preface.php

Through understanding a little about this split sense of self and how it can be healed I think we will get more clues about how we can get into the state we truly want to be in.

footnote: archontic phenomena  are  artificial, deceptive, mimicing, which always lie and  do not deliver what is promised

tree and well

Odin

http://www.metahistory.org/guidelines/TreeAndWell.php

"Nordic mythology presents the same eternal image in the story of the poet-shaman Odin (or Woden), who must hang on the cosmic tree for nine days and nine nights to receive a sublime revelation. He ascends the Tree to surrender to the streaming of cosmic currents through its leaves and branches. Through this ordeal he acquires the runes, a secret alphabet composed of divinatory symbols. The runes represent the generative formulas of all possible languages, the bases of all verbal and written expressions in which human knowledge can be captured and transmitted. By his ordeal the "tree-hung" shaman acquires the magical power of language, but still needs access to the transcendent wisdom that will use language for its instrument. 

For this second endowment, Odin must descend into the underworld, to the root of the Tree, and drink from the miraculous Well of Mimir. The name Mimir is related to the Latin memor, hence Mimir’s Well has been called the “well of remembrance”. Ralph Metzner explains:
• It was said that to drink from this well would give one knowledge of the beginnings and origins of things — of humans, of life, of the worlds... In German translations, the term used to describe Mimir’s well is marchenreich, “filled with stories” — a clue that to drink from the well was an experience that involved both visioning and storytelling. Stories tell us about our past, and visions tell us about our future. To drink from Mimir’s well, then, is to enter into a state of consciousness of recollection, where we can remember our evolutionary origins, our relatedness to the realms of animals and plants, and our primordial nature as children of Earth...

. . Nordic myth says that when Odin came to the Well of Mimir, he was confronted with a test by its guardian. The giant demanded an act of surrender before allowing Odin to drink at the Well. To gain illumination by mystic memory, Odin must surrender one of his eyes. Hence this shaman became known as the One-Eyed Seer. 


The myth teaches that we must surrender our one-sided way of seeing and understanding, the preclusive rational mentation of the left brain, in order to realize the poetic-visionary faculties of the other eye, the right brain awareness. Curiously, the left-brained mentality, when surrendered, does not go away. According to the Icelandic Eddas, “when the giant Mimir, or other gods of knowledge-seeking shamans, drank from the well, they would see Odin’s eye looking back at them.”  Sunk to the bottom of the well, the sacrificed eye (the rational faculty, Odin's left eye) keeps seeing. 
ac
At this point it would appear that the higher teaching of the myth proposes an arresting thought: if we peer deeply enough into the well of ancestral wisdom, the rational, left-brain thinking with which we are so identified and in which we invest the sole validity for knowing how the world works, will be there peering back at us. Here the myth conveys a key survival lesson:rationality is not precluded from the deep-level transrational knowing of ancient seership, even though the rational limits of cognition must be surpassed for that deeper knowing to become experiential. This paradox was uniquely understood in the tradition of the Gnostics, pagan spiritual teachers who asserted the basic complementarity of rational and visionary knowledge.

John Lamb Lash

tpv radio interviews tony wright

In this latest interview, Tony describes how a change from our archaic forest diet, which supported our incredible neurology, affected the build of the brain and led to the human condition that we experience today.  He talks about the way in which the left hemisphere has been affected detrimentally whilst ironically it now dominates our sense of self and experience.  This is what Tony describes as the 'biological origins of the fall from grace'.

If you are new to Tony's work this is definitely worth a listen.  I have a feeling that as time goes on these ideas will be increasingly accepted as self-evident.