The Joy of Being Eaten: Journeys into the Bizarre Sexuality and Private Love Lives of the Ancient Layers of the Human Brain

Copyright © 2014 by Lawrence Vandervert.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014920596

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4990-7454-3

                Softcover        978-1-4990-7455-0

                eBook             978-1-4990-7456-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocxopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stocxk imagery provided by Thinkstocxk are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stocxk imagery © Thinkstocxk.

Rev. date: 01/28/2015

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

671525

CONTENTS

Foreword

Prologue

Chapter 1 Naked Images from the Brain

Chapter 2 My Inner Body Is Black?

Chapter 3 A Thing of Beauty

Chapter 4 The Nano-soft Lecture: Dinosaurs Live in Our Brains

Chapter 5 The Walking Dead and Planet of the Apes

Chapter 6 Living Windows

Chapter 7 Flight to Eternity: Talking Boxes in Nonspace

Chapter 8 Two Romantic Dinners at Once

Chapter 9 The Journey 1: Into Nonspace and the Joy of Being Eaten

Chapter 10 The Journey 2: Caress Me—The New World Order

Afterword

Many Different Worlds,

Many Different Titles

The Joy of Being Eaten offers new themes of science and science fiction that will be wholly new to people around the world. It is important to recognize that while people all over the world have similar interests and tastes in science and science fiction, the different themes running through The Joy of Being Eaten will have slightly different meanings and levels of appeal in different historical and cultural contexts. For this reason the title of this book emphasizes different themes in different countries. These country-aligned book titles include the following:

The Joy of Being Eaten (United States and Western Europe)

Living Windows (South Korea)

The All Time (India)

Brain-Mate (United Arab Emirates)

Reptilian Ecstasy (Japan)

In Full View (China and Indonesia)

JOURNEYS IN THE ALL TIME-2044 (Russia and Eastern Europe)

The Forever Time (United Kingdom)

The All Time (Australia)

The Answer (Tibet)

No matter what the title or the country, The Joy of Being Eaten reveals how the unconscious human mind came to be, and how we can soon journey back through those times that were both amazingly shocking and amazingly beautiful.

FOREWORD

Something Amazing is Happening in Science Fiction

In 1955, the famous brain scientist Wilder Penfield gave a report on how he was able to stimulate the brain so that people would remember past experiences as if they were happening again. He concluded that everything we have ever experienced is perfectly recorded deep in our brains. Then, in the late 1990’s William Dobelle successfully put artificial vision directly into the brain of a blind patient. Amazingly, these researches show that our complete mental experience can be accessed by computer systems. Now, in 2015, brain researchers at the University of California in Berkeley are using MRI’s to read visual images going on in the brain. See more about this new research that literally reads minds below and on the Internet at http://gallantlab.org/.

When added to the already existing advances in how the brain produces our holograms of experience and artificial intelligence (intelligent machines and androids), all three of the above startling scientific mind-reading advances are about to change the relationship between science and science fiction. Advances in science are now so stunning, they are catching up with the speed of the human imagination. Will they soon be running ahead of the human imagination?

The Joy* builds directly on all of this fascinating new research to describe how even the self can come to life in a huge, 3D Fullview computer monitor. Thus, we can now read the complete human story that was recorded in our minds across millions of years. As we read the minds of two young women, we are taken back through the ancient history of the dinosaurs (which is the most ancient history of our minds), and of Homo erectus humans who lived 2 million years ago.

A New Level of Science Fiction is Emerging

There have been at least three major revolutions in science fiction: 1. Evolution (the latest and most interesting are the Planet of the Apes films); 2. Einstein stuff (the best was Star Trek’s warp drive that took us beyond the speed of light); 3. Artificial Intelligence (the most fun were the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO in Star Wars).

2015: Reading Minds: An Emerging 4th Revolution in Science (and therefore a new revolution in science fiction)

Brain researcher Professor Jack Gallant and his team at the University of California at Berkeley have recently developed computer software that uses brain-imaging data to reconstruct actual images from the brain. See it at: http://gallantlab.org/.** I believe this technology will eventually allow us to see every detail of what people are thinking, to actually read minds! And then, with more development, to record the entirety of a person’s thinking, personality, and feeling. What was once science fiction will be completely REAL! However, this wonderfully imaginative new research does not address a way to get the living, thinking individual (you) out of the brain and into the form of a non-biological computing system.

The 4th Revolution in Science Fiction: The Joy of Being Eaten**

However, there is a way to take the images that Professor Gallant is beginning to put the entire living, thinking person into a holographic electronic flux. This can enable you or anyone else to actually live in two systems (two realities) at once, one biological and one machine, or whichever one serves your long-rage purposes. The Joy of Being Eaten is the story of how that was first accomplished and the amazing journeys that await all of us deep inside the brain. In The Joy of Being Eaten, science and science fiction are exactly the same thing!

Lawrence Vandervert, Ph.D.

PS: If you are a student (or a professor), you will find that this novel enjoyably and intricately combines psychology, anthropology, paleoanthropology, computer science, artificial intelligence, the physics of Albert Einstein, how the brain produces holograms, and brain-imaging in ways that make you feel right at home.

Questions? Please visit me at my website: www.larryvandervert.com

Betty Jean Vandervert directed the lab where experiments leading to sections of this novel were conducted. Betty Jean also kindly edited the lab results for this book.

PROLOGUE

San Francisco (Late, 2013)

As I stood on the deck of my yacht, the Ti Amo, I looked out across San Francisco Bay. The fog was dispersing, and it was beginning to rain. Two computer scientists who, like me, knew the eminent neuroscientist Karl Pribram were about to arrive at my slip at Pier 39. Pribram had shown the world how the brain makes holograms, the 3-D pictures we see, think, and dream about. The scientists were coming to meet me, the recently famous Colonel Edythe Peachey. They want to try to talk me into going to Nano-soft’s headquarters up in Seattle. I won’t go; I love having breakfast every morning on my Ti Amo too much! But I will let them talk to me—I also love having company.

The first drops of the morning rain pelted my hand, as I thought about how, a couple of decades ago, brain researchers in Utah had discovered that simply stimulating the surface of the visual areas of the brain caused people to see light patterns. I recalled the days back in 2009 when we had begun to put visual images directly into the brain. Our mission was to give sight to the blind. Following revolutionary artificial vision techniques pioneered by William Dobelle, we were gently pressing electrode arrays directly onto the delicate, gelatinous surface of the brains of several blind patients.

A 2009 picture I have on my desk in the Ti Amo shows the miniature video camera attached to the frames of a regular but lensless eye glasses that fed scenes we had set up in our lab to a small laptop computer. The computer then fed dotted patterns of electrical jolts representing the scenes directly to the array of electrodes pressed against the brain. Like dozens of tiny matches going off in the brain, these mild pulses of electricity gave light to brilliant phosphene pictures in the darkness of our blind patients.

Our patients could easily interpret these pictures, enabling them to read large letters and to navigate around objects we had set up in our lab. This was a mammoth advance from a world of darkness to a simple electrode pattern that would light up the world of sight for our patients! Our blind patients could see! What our patients saw through their miniature video cameras was also displayed for us in our large ball-shaped 3-D computer monitor we called Fullview.

Refinements in what our patients were able to see had come right along on a regular basis. One of our patients, who had lost his sight in an accident at age fourteen, told us that our electrode arrays, which contained 1,024 light points or pixels of moving scenes, were as good as a video version of an Etch A Sketch drawing toy. I remember his excitement; he was a typical boy and wanted to use his newfound vision to learn to create video games. Then through rapid advances in our ability to selectively microstimulate the brain, in early 2013, we were able to put television-quality programming into the brains of our patients. Of course, we were also observing these wonderful, high-quality scenes in Fullview as the patients moved their miniature video cameras through the lab during vision tests. Because we knew from Karl Pribram’s work that the brain saw things as holograms, our next step was to put the lab scenes into Fullview in the form of actual holograms.

But the very speed of our progress was propelling us toward a huge snag. The television-quality pictures streaming into the brain from the electrode array was something totally new to the dark world of our patients and began to mix and compete with the patients’ own ongoing thoughts. The patients reported that this sudden mixing of images was like awakening from a dream and not knowing what was real. Of course, these dreamlike, image-mixing experiences were extremely confusing and frightening for the patients. The image-mixing was so frightening, it threatened to shut down our research.

But, still, a few of the blind patients are mentally strong and willing. We continue to carry on with them at our Palo Alto lab.

CHAPTER 1

Naked Images from the Brain

(Palo Alto, January 14, 2014)

Jay Headley, our lab training coach, connected Pauline’s brain electrodes to the miniaturized video camera mounted on her lensless eyeglass frames. Pauline, an attractive young blind patient, was smiling as always. Through the electrodes, the miniaturized camera sent scenes of the lab directly into Pauline’s brain. Headley was a tall, thin thirty-three-year-old with a severely hooked nose and an attitude to go with it.

The scene showing the lab’s testing area popped brightly onto the Fullview computer display. There in Fullview were the usual three chairs we would arrange as obstacle courses, two mannequins that our blind patients would learn to dress, and on the far wall, some standard tests for visual acuity. The scene in the Fullview monitor told us Pauline’s camera was pulsing images into her brain and that she was seeing everything in the lab okay.

Pauline, did you just mess around with your video camera? Headley snapped with a slight smile. You know I don’t like patients doing that without telling me.

"No, I didn’t do anything, Jay, Pauline replied. I haven’t moved even a tiny muscle."

Huh, that’s fun… ny, said Headley, his voice trailing off, as he peered intently into the Fullview monitor. A shadow or something just moved across Fullview.

Maybe it was a smudge on my camera lens or maybe just a fly, Pauline suggested.

Impossible, Headley responded. I meticulously clean these camera lenses before each session, and nobody’s seen a bug in this lab for the last two years you’ve been coming here! Hey, Dr. Peachey, come over here a minute, would you?

I had overheard Pauline and Jay’s little commotion about the camera and was already on my way over to see what the problem was. As I approached, I caught a movement on the Fullview monitor out of the corner of my eye. The movement was very strange because Pauline was absolutely motionless. Normally, the monitor would only show the camera picking up how the blind patient was moving their hands while moving a chair around or putting a hat on one of the mannequins.

"Now what the hell was that?" said Headley, sounding a little startled and at the same time irritated.

Headley and I exchanged a quick, puzzled glance and became silently transfixed on the computer monitor.

Headley, be a dear and go get Dr. Vandervoort—pronto! I blurted out.

I am on my way, Edythe, replied Headley as he shot up from his chair.

Ah, never mind Headley, here he comes now, said Peachey.

Headley fell back into his chair, his eyes fixed on the monitor.

What’s going on? asked Pauline. "Is that my hand in there? It can’t be. I’m not doing anything."

I didn’t know what was going on. A shadowy, hand-like object was moving here and there in the Fullview monitor. It seemed to be reaching and grasping toward one of the mannequins in Fullview’s lab scene. As we watched, the hand emerged more fully. It seemed to be suspended on a small, spindly arm. Professor Vandervoort came into the lab and slipped into Headley’s chair, gently pushing Headley out the other side. Vandervoort could do that; it was his way, and besides, he was the lab chief and the only neurologist on the staff.

"Professor, what the goddamn hell is that?" asked an obviously freaked-out Headley, who was peering over Vandervoort’s shoulder.

Vandervoort sat staring at the arm and hand as they moved among the mannequins in Fullview. He didn’t say a word for what seemed a full minute. Headley and I looked quizzically at each other several times.

Pauline, Vandervoort said, finally breaking the silence, what are you thinking about?

I don’t know, Pauline replied. I guess I was just thinking about picking the hat up from the floor and putting it on the small mannequin, and right now, I am getting ready to get up and actually do it.

My god, Vandervoort quietly muttered, I never would have believed it possible.

Do you realize what that is, Edythe? he added, not taking his eyes off the computer monitor.

Is it some kind of feedback overlay or reflection? I replied, shrugging my shoulders as I continued to watch the monitor.

Vandervoort continued to look at the hand moving about in the monitor as he stroked pensively across his neatly trimmed moustache and goatee.

Come on, you guys, both of you know that each of us has a complete, detailed copy of our body inside of our brain—anybody who’s taken Psychology 101 should know that, Vandervoort gently scolded us while smiling over at me. "It’s the inner body that causes all of our movements, and it feels everything for us. When we move, it moves. When we run, it runs. When we are caressed, it feels pleasure. When we stub our toe, it feels the pain. When we have sex… well, you get the idea—it’s having all the fun. It’s our real body, where we actually do everything and really feel everything we do. It’s a copy of our body laid out in nerve tracks inside our brain."

Coming out of the blue, Dr. Vandervoort’s suggestion of an inner body sounded bizarre. But then I slowly began to recall the motor-sensory homunculus from psychology classes that I had taken many years ago at Stanford.

Yes, I said, quickly picking up on Professor Vandervoort’s impromptu little lesson about the inner body. I remember my psychology professor at Stanford ran around his podium, waving his arms and telling us that a duplicate body existed inside our brains and that it felt and did everything for us. Even when we dream, he told us, it’s the ‘you’ that does and feels everything. And that this inner body is the only reason you are able to do things in dreams even though our body is motionless! And then he said something I will never forget. He told us, ‘In fact, it’s the real you, the real you that’s looking out through your eyeballs!’ That was maybe the most memorable lecture from my university days—the real ‘me’ was actually separated from my external body—it was an impulse pattern living in the circuits of my brain!

Little did I know at the time the incredible truths that this fact from my days at Stanford would reveal in the months to come.

"So, Professor Vandervoort, you guys are saying that that’s Pauline’s own arm and hand moving around in the Fullview monitor? Headley asked in a smart-aleck but nervous disbelief. That’s Pauline’s ‘inner’ hand in there?"

Yes, that’s the hand of Pauline’s motor-sensory homunculus, I interjected. "That is what you’re saying, isn’t it, Hans?"

Yep, replied Vandervoort. That’s exactly what I am saying!

Pauline, Vandervoort said, would you please imagine reaching out with both hands and picking up the hat and putting in on the little boy mannequin?

Two huge hands on spindly little arms thrust themselves forward in Fullview; the back of a large head with small shoulders followed them into view.

Holy Christ, yelled