eight circuits of consciousness

a considerable theory -ssumed by the philosopher timothy leary. the way leary saw it, the nervous system consists of 8 potential circuits, or “gears”. four of these circuits are located in the usually active left lobe of the brain and are concerned with our terrestrial survival; the four on the right side are “extraterrestrial”, reside in the usually inactive right lobe, and are for use in our future evolution.

this explains why the right lobe is usually inactive, and why it becomes active when one injests psychedelic drugs.

to better understand this theory, here’s an in depth explaination of each circuit:

i. the bio-survival circuit
this invertebrate brain was the first to evolve (2 to 3 billion years ago) and is the first activated when a human infant is born. it programs perception onto an either-or grid divided into nurturing-helpful things (which it approaches) and noxious-dangerous things (which it flees, or attacks). the imprinting of this circuit sets up the basic att-tude of trust or suspicion which will ever after trigger approach or avoidance.

ii. the emotional circuit
this second, more advanced bio-computer formed when vertebrates appeared and began to compete for territory (perhaps 500,000,000 b.c.). in the individual, this bigger tunnel-reality is activated when the dna master-tape triggers the metamorphosis from crawling to walking. as every parent knows, the toddler is no longer a p-ssive (bio-survival) infant but a mammalian politician, full of physical (and psychic) territorial demands, quick to meddle in family business and decision-making. again the first imprint on this circuit remains constant for life (unless brainwashed) and identifies the stimuli which will automatically trigger dominant, aggressive behavior or submissive, cooperative behavior. when we say that a person is behaving emotionally, egotistically or ‘like a two-year-old,’ we mean that s/he is blindly following one of the tunnel-realities imprinted on this circuit.

iii. the dexterity-symbolism circuit
this third brain was formed when hominid types began to differentiate from other primate stock (circa 4-5 million b.c.) and is activated for the linear left-lobe functions of the brain, determines our normal modes of artifact-manufacture and conceptual thought, i.e., third circuit ‘mind.’

it is no accident, then, that our logic (and our computer-design) follows either-or, binary structure of these circuits. nor is it an accident that our geometry, until the last century, has been euclidean. euclid’s geometry, aristotle’s logic and newton’s physics are meta-programs synthesizing and generalizing first brain forward-back, second brain up-down and third brain right-left programs.

iv. the social-s-xual circuit
the fourth brain, dealing with the transmission of tribal or ethnic culture across generations, introduces the fourth dimension, time.

since each of these tunnel-realities consists of biochemical imprints or matrices in the nervous system, each of them is specifically triggered by neuro-transmitters and other drugs.

notice how drugs that stimulate the first four circuits, which are already activated, tend to be dangerously addictive, roughly ordered ascending from the first circuit. -deoxy

to activate the first brain take an opiate. mother opium and sister morphine bring you down to cellular intelligence, bio-survival p-ssivity, the floating consciousness of the newborn. (this is why freudians identify opiate addiction with the desire to return to infancy.)

to activate the second tunnel-reality, take an abundant quant-ty of alcohol. vertebrate territorial patterns and mammalian emotional politics immediately appear when the booze flows, as thomas nashe intuitively realized when he characterized the various alcohol states by animal labels: “-ss drunk,” “goat drunk,” “swine drunk,” “bear drunk,” etc.

to activate the third circuit, try coffee or tea, a high-protein diet, speed or cocaine.

the specific neurotransmitter for circuit four has not been synthesized yet, but it is generated by the glands after p-b-scence and flows volcanically through the bloodstreams of adolescents.

none of these terrestrial drugs change basic biochemical imprints. the behaviors which they trigger are those which were wired into the nervous system during the first stages of imprint vulnerability. the circuit ii drunk exhibits the emotional games or cons learned from parents in infancy. the circuit iii “mind” never gets beyond the permutations and combinations of those tunnel-realities originally imprinted, or abstractions -ssociated with the imprints through later conditioning. and so forth.

but all this pavlovian-skinnerian robotism changes drastically and dramatically when we turn to the right lobe, the future circuits and extraterrestrial chemicals.

the four evolving future ‘brains’ are:

v. the neurosomatic circuit
when this fifth “body-brain” is activated, flat euclidean figure-ground configurations explode multi-dimensionally. gestalts shift, in mcluhan’s terms, from linear visual sp-ce to all-encomp-ssing sensory sp-ce. a hedonic turn-on occurs, a rapturous amus-m-nt, a detachment from the previously compulsive mechanism of the first four circuits. i turned this circuit on with pot and tantra.

this fifth brain began to appear about 4,000 years ago in the first leisure-cl-ss civilizations and has been increasing statistically in recent centuries (even before the drug revolution), a fact demonstrated by the hedonic art of india, china, rome and other affluent societies. more recently, ornstein and his school have demonstrated with electroencephalograms that this circuit represents the first jump from the linear left lobe of the brain to the -n-logical right lobe.

the opening and imprinting of this circuit has been the preoccupation of “technicians of the occult”—tantric shamans and hatha yogis. while the fifth tunnel-reality can be achieved by sensory deprivation, social isolation, physiological stress or severe shock (ceremonial terror tactics, as practiced by such rascal-gurus as don juan matus or aleister crowley), it has traditionally been reserved to the educated aristocracy of leisure societies who have solved the four terrestrial survival problems.

about 20,000 years ago, the specific fifth brain neurotransmitter was discovered by shamans in the caspian sea area of asia and quickly spread to other wizards throughout eurasia and africa. it is, of course, cannabis. weed. mother mary jane.

it is no accident that the pot-head generally refers to his neural state as “high” or “sp-ced-out.” the transcendence of gravitational, digital, linear, either-or, aristotelian, newtonian, euclidean, planetary orientations (circuits i-iv) is, in evolutionary perspective, part of our neurological preparation for the inevitable migration off our home planet, now beginning. this is why so many pot-heads are star trek freaks and science fiction adepts. (berkeley, california, certainly the cannabis capital of the u.s., has a federation trading post on telegraph avenue, where the well-heeled can easily spend $500 or more in a single day, buying star trek novels, magazines, newsletters, b-mper stickers, photographs, posters, tapes, etc., including even complete blueprints for the starship enterprise.)

the extraterrestrial meaning of being “high” is confirmed by astronauts themselves; 85% of those who have entered the free-fall zero gravity describe “mystic experiences” or rapture states typical of the neurosomatic circuit. “no photo can show how beautiful earth looked,” raves captain ed mitch-ll, describing his illumination in free-fall. he sounds like any successful yogi or pot-head. no camera can show this experience because it is inside the nervous system.

free-fall, at the proper evolutionary time, triggers the neurosomatic mutation, leary believes.