“Leslie White spoke of culture as an "organism" with life and death cycles of its own. But the cultural effect, by which we are conditioned, blinds us to a primary process that is our true source of communion and social being. Each of us is born with a "life scheme" that is masked, inhibited, and finally dominated by the process of acculturation. For all intents and purposes, this primary program, which is our birthright, becomes nonexistent through acculturation. Once our primary program is masked into noncognizance, culture emerges as the dominant meta program in our organism. Once this meta program of culture becomes dominant, it shapes our experience into an arbitrary and parallel counterfeit of that which is real. Once this meta program takes over our perceptual apparatus, it is the only mode we have for interacting with reality. Once that happens we can't question our culturally conditioned state, since that is our only reality experience.”

— Joseph Chilton Pearce

Source: Exploring the Crack In the Cosmic Egg (1974), p. 9-10

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Joseph Chilton Pearce 7

American writer 1926–2016

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