I just finished reading Robert Anton Wilson's book, Prometheus Rising. He makes a convincing case for technology, or, the spiritual project; more convincing than any case I might make against it. But nevertheless, having read his book, I remain here in my hermitage tapping out these words. He writes that reading is not enough, or, that reading books cannot get you where the spirit desires to go. At the end of each chapter of the book there are exercises which the reader is to perform if he/she is to experience the power of technology to transform the reader into a super-computer, or Superman.

I have always experienced a wave of ennui when presented with such technological tasks. For one who identifies him/herself with the reader, this feels like a temptation that will lure me out of the womb of the book and back into the reality from which I flee in reading. I am suspicious of the idea of the evolution of consciousness. The Promethean process is a process that begins with bio-computer circuit one and culminates in circuit eight. But what is, before and after the process? And if it is nothing but the process, then doesn't the culmination trigger the beginning again, again, again . . . . ? One climbs the mountain from base to peak, only to find that the peak is the base.

The idea is that death can be eliminated without eliminating the process. Except in the experience of dying, there is no memory of birth. A story without end is what a story is not.