Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy

THERE IS NO GOVERNOR ANYWHERE

Hugh Crane served his contempt-of-Congress sentence at Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary, the "gentleman's club" as the Maf calls it, where the government incarcerates those ritzy felons who are not likely to shiv a guard or climb a wall.

He worked in the library with Alger Hiss. They both watched the famous "Checkers" speech on the TV in the rec room. This was a masterpiece of primate oratory in which a vice presidential candidate named Richard Nixon argued that huge sums of money given to him by various businessmen were not intended as bribes and were not expected to result in reciprocal favors on his part.

"As an old carny man," Mr. Hiss asked Mr. Crane, "what do you think of that performance?"

"The dog shtik was very good," Crane said professionally. "But he left out Mother."

Another distinguished guest at Lewisburg that year was the aging Idaho poet and folk singer Ezra Pound, who was also in for Un-American Activities. He and Crane never got along well, because Pound, who had seldom been outside Idaho, distrusted all easterners.

Crane performed yoga exercises every day in his cell. The Illuminati, of course, subsequently scanned the notes he kept on these neurophysiological experiments. The most interesting items were the following:

April 23, 1952-It helps if you identify each letter of AUM with one of the three gods of the Hindu trinity. A is Brahm, the Creator: let it explode upward from the diaphragm, like the big bang of creation itself. U is Vishnu, the Preserver: hold it so long that it vibrates, like the rhythm of life, the Big Beat of Beethoven's Seventh. M is Shiva, the Destroyer: close the lips in a decisive bite of "This is the way the world ends" as you enter the silence.

May 1, 1952-Today, unexpectedly, pure dhyana. It was so much simpler than I ever guessed, and it is obviously a matter of practice. No wonder the yogis say that it's dangerous to do this without a guru: I am no better or worse, morally, and no wiser or more "spiritual." Repetition is the whole key. Force the nerves and muscles and glands, force them day after day, and it happens. The chief function of the guru is to ensure that you don't take advantage of the new freedom too quickly and get yourself in trouble with the authorities. The guru doesn't help it happen at all (as the honest ones admit); you do all the work yourself. The guru just makes sure that the rapture flows into "safe" (domesticated?) channels. Without such a moral watchdog, I am free to do as I bloody please.

I just realized why all the real occult schools are so damned secretive, why the ordinary seeker is given a lot of double-talk and ejected out the same door wherein he came. If everybody could do this, the whole world would be in continuous revolution.*

May 27, 1952-Another successful dhyana. There's nothing to it, really. The brain obviously operates on the same principle as those fellows in The Hunting of the Snark: "What I tell you three times is true." (Three million times is more accurate.) It was marvelous-better than the first time-and I'll never identify with "Cagliostro the Great" or "Hugh Crane" or even "me" or the perpendicular pronoun, ever again.

I can see more and more clearly why all this is "sealed with seven seals" and hidden behind all kinds of mystification. Society as we know it is based on torture and death, or the threat of torture and death. I am in here to be tortured, although the authorities will never admit that. (What they do with heretics in other countries is torture; what we do here is penology.) The cage experience is profoundly punishing to the average human, as to any primate; it is the form of torture our society countenances. It is no torture to me only because I have learned certain neurological arts every stage magician learns.

But if everybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled-by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses.

*Terran Achives 2803: Dhyana was the Sanskrit name, used by the Hindic primates, to describe the opening and imprinting of the neurosomatic circuit. The term, and the techniques of inducing it, became Ch'an in China and Zen in Japan. It was always supervised by an alpha male for the reasons Crane suspected. It represents the dawning of post-primate consciousness and the HEAD Revolution, thereby rendering the biot independent of the primate dominance-submission hierarchy.

Ten people who know what I know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.

July 23, 1952-I can hardly write. Today I reached Samadhi. It makes dhyana look like nothing by comparison. All my certainty is gone. I should be terrified, but instead I'm ecstatic. If this is possible, anything is possible.*

These notes were not published when Hugh came out of prison. Instead, he brought forth a book cheerfully titled There is No Governor Anywhere, which explained some-not all-of his magic escapes, and set this in the context of a philosophy which declared every individual a creator of his own universe. The polemics against government and organized religion were tactless, to say the least, for a performer depending upon public goodwill; Crane did not hesitate to identify his outlook bluntly as atheism and anarchism.

To everybody's surprise, including Crane's, the book became a best-seller, and he became the most controversial man in the United States. Even in the fearful fifties- even with American Legion and John Birch chapters constantly reminding everyone of his drug arrests, his sex arrests, and the documented fact that prison authorities had delayed his parole because of his homosexual seduction of a younger inmate-Hugh Crane acquired a new following. TV gingerly tested him on the egghead ghetto of Sunday afternoon, then promoted him to the late-late talk shows.

*Terran Archives 2803: Samadhi was the Hindustani name for the opening and imprinting of the sixth (metraprogramming) circuit in the frontal lobes of the post-primate brain. Most of those who achieved it before the HEAD Revolution were just as bewildered as Crane and could say only that the experience was "ineffable."

He managed to end every appearance with the words "There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free."

And around then-to the vocal dismay of press and clergy-a club owner decided he was a "freak" act ("They'll hate him but they'll come") and Crane was able to work as a magician again. The crowd overflowed into the street and many were turned away. Cagliostro introduced a new escape, from a lead box that had been welded closed in view of the audience. "There is no restraint that cannot be escaped," he told them in an intense tone. "We are all absolutely free."

A pudgy Broadway columnist named Benny Benedict, who was just starting to get a following, interviewed him the next day. "How the hell did you manage that welded-box escape?" Benedict asked bluntly.

"I used real magic," the Great Cagliostro pronounced.

"Come off it," Benedict said. But Cagliostro merely grinned at him impudently.