Gysin himself reflected on the type of vision engendered by the use of dreamachines: I think it scares people... | www.permuted.org.uk |
In contrast to the ordered nature of permutation, the cut-up is a process which involves a deliberate abdication of responsibility and control on the part of the author. It is an invocation of randomness, and a tribute to chaos. Psychologically these are important distinctions. The cut-up was most brilliantly co-opted by Burroughs and there is no doubt that as both a literary and magical tool it is extremely efficient, if one allows for the element of random non-linearity that it induces. Although Gysin readily gave away the cut-up, he was almost proprietorial about the permutation and the dreamachine. In the literary form, meaning is unravelled to its unitary point, just as psychologically one might delve into the roots of being, or in scientific terms dissect the DNA coil. Far from being a means of escape from the self, it is a way of complete exploration which leaves no stone unturned. There is no randomness and no place to hide. There is no room for doubt, and there can be no possibility of fearing what it is one might truly be. In the language of the occultist, the Gysinian route is that of Crossing the Abyss, of a genuine and wholehearted willingness to dispense with the demands of ego and identity.
Gysin was not unaware of the risks involved. He is quoted as saying: ‘I have often been in doubt about it and written a number of poems in which I attempt to disassociate my I from my Me. Without pushing this to the point of schizophrenia, I have always felt rather doubtful about my Me.’ This is the classical goal of mystical ecstasy, the atomisation of the ego, the blasting of the personality so that it becomes quite ‘other’.
Gysin himself reflected on the type of vision engendered by the use of dreamachines: I think it scares people...
Gysin’s recognition of permutation, and his preference for it over and above the cut-up, raises another point. Elsewhere I referred to the random nature of the cut-up, the way in which it mimics life and allows external elements to be introduced. The permutation is, in contrast, self-inclusive and self-contained. Its use as a trance inductor is highly controlled. The cabalists believed that the core text contains its own root meaning which not only can never be lost, but which, with continued permutation, literally integrates itself into the psychic reality or physicality of the brain.
What you permutate you become.
The cabalistic image of letters strewn upon the ground in a circle, being made to stand erect, and then to interconnect overhead gives something of the correct flavour. As you permutate you create the circle, wall and interlaced ceiling; you inscribe your psyche with a precise set of images. It is these that are explored and it is with these that entire worlds can be created.
Gysin said we are ‘here to go’ and he consciously left behind various tools for us to attempt to follow the path he carved. One of these is the permutation; another is the dreamachine. As Brion was all too aware, we are makers of our own dreams, our own fantasies, our own delusions and our own way out.
He believed that we should rub out the word, that language was both the prison and the key. In the dreamachine he left a device that bypasses language. With it we can become creators of worlds and the destroyers of illusion. No-one can deny us the opportunity to begin the process. There is literally everything yet to be discovered.
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Text copyright Paul Cecil, 1996