IsayUsaySsay

Name   : Henk Ellerman
Time   : 19:30-21.00 hours (Balie Theatre)
Subject: From Cyberspace To Neurospace
Date   : Friday 19 January 1996

Neurospace refers to experiences induced by the body, and Cyberspace is just an illusion, the latter cannot replace the former.

When, near the end of his speech, Peter Lamborn Wilson was asked what it is he tries to accomplish, he told us that it was the liberation of pleasure from everything that restricts it. Examples of the latter are the state, the police, the church and many other authoritarian organisations. Since he held a plea for the use of drugs, LSD and the many products that can be derived from mushrooms, the impression that trance and pleasure are at the very least closey related in the mind of Wilson, is not fully ungrounded. Liberation by drugs, freedom by living in Neurospace, i.e. the set of experiences we might call mind, consciousness and what lies beyond this. The body is the transducer needed to reach Neurospace. Since the body is the instrument here, and because it, obviously, also runs on food, Wilson makes the logical step to dispose of any clear borderline between drugs and food.

He claims that large parts of the history of our society are closely related, perhaps at times even determined, by the way authorities related themselves to the use of drugs and the experiences induced by them. Ever since christianity came to play its major role on the stage of western history, this attitude has been negative. This contrasts clearly to most other cultures. But drugs never disappeared completely from the scene and there always was a desire to transcend the bounds set by, or in name of, the church. Neurospace has never been out of the mind of western people.

Although Wilson discussed the history of psychedelics, his voyage through the history of mankind made an halt at the notion of Cyberspace. Cyberspace, to many, has acquired a similar flavour as Neurospace. But there is a difference. Cyberspace is, according to Wilson, a disembodied experience. In Cyberspace there are no bodies. Neurospace is an embodied experience. If for pleasure a body is needed, then Cyberspace may be just one step too far on the road to the elimination of what seem to be restrictions. The elimination of the body may just be that step: Cyberspace is not Neurospace.

But Wilson is not a dogmatic person. It may, after all, turn out to be that Cyberspace is a force the liberates the really human from the societal systems that enslave him. But the chances are slim. He sees no reason to believe that the Internet will not, in the end, be just another tool for those who already are in power. In that case we need to move on: from Cyberspace to Neurospace.

Henk Ellerman