Cut-ups

Cut-Ups: A technique invented by Brion Gysin and refined by William S. Burroughs by which the painter's technique of collage can be applied to the written word. Passages of text can be cut into ribbons and rearranged randomely (by use of a hat, perhaps?) in order to discover new and occult meanings hidden within the words.

The Temple of Psychic Youth (TOPY) applied the cut-up technique to behaviour in order to maximize psychic potential. Brain synapses are forced out of their habitual patterns of firing by presenting the individual with novel rearrangements of symbols, or by seeing the ordinary in a non-ordinary way.

One example of behavioural cut-up that springs to mind is the "reve-dirige" of the surrealists. By wandering randomely through the city at night, the mundane world is transformed into a magical place in which anything can happen. This has the effect of eventually breaking down habitual modes of perception and opening the organism to percieving what is actually before it, bypassing the usual projection/transferrence that makes up most of what we usually sense.