Higher States of Connsciousnes

Keeks

With all the debates about drugs on this form recently, It reminded me of similar debates that were had on BBS in the early 90s. This is an article leeched from the disk mag Grapevine that was released cira 1992. I do not vouch for the accuracy of any on the information on this page or even made an attempt to check if it is true. It was only put here for informational purposes only.
This is not my opinion or my belief ot such. So don’t come back attacking me over inaccuracies or some idea that seems different/threatens your own.

Enjoy

Keeks

[From Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the
Illuminati]

TIMOTHY LEARY'S EIGHT CIRCUITS OF CONSCIOUSNESS





To understand neurological space, Dr. Leary assumes that the nervous system
consists of eight potential circuits, or "gears", or mini-brains. Four of
these brains are in the usually active left lobe and are concerned with our
terrestrial survival; four are extraterrestrial, reside in the
"silent" or inactive right lobe and are for use in our future evolution.
This explains why the right lobe is usually inactive at this stage of our
development and why it becomes active when the person ingests pyschedelics.

We will explain each of the eight "brains" briefly.


THE BIO-SURVIVAL CIRCUIT

This invertebrate brain was the first to evolve (2 to 3 million 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 attitude of
trust or suspicion which will ever after trigger approach or avoidance.

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 passive (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 behaviour or submissive, cooperative behaviour. 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.

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, determine 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.

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. To activate the first brain take an
opiate. Mother Opium and Sister Morphine bring you down to cellular
intelligence, bio-survival passivity, 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 quantity 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: "ass 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 pubescence and flows
volcanically through the bloodstreams of adolescents.

None of these terrestrial drugs change basic biochemical imprints. The
behaviours 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
associated 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:


THE NEUROSOMATIC CIRCUIT.

When this fifth "body-brain" is activated, flat Euclidean figure-
ground configurations explode multi-dimesionally. Gestalts shift, in
McLuhan's terms, from linear VISUAL SPACE to all-encompassing SENSORY
SPACE. A hedonic turn-on occurs, a rapturous amusement, 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-
class 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 electro-
encephalograms that this circuit represents the first jump from the
linear left lobe of the brain to the analogical 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 practised 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 are 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 "spaced-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, bumper
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 Mitchell, 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. Previously this mutation has been achieved
"artificially" by yogic or shamanic training or by the fifth circuit
stimulant, cannabis. Surfing, skiing, skin-diving and the new sexual culture
(sensuous massage, vibrators, imported Tantric arts, etc.) have evolved at
the same time as part of the hedonic conquest of gravity. The Turn-On
state is always described as "floating," or, in the Zen metaphor,
"on foot above the ground."


THE NEUROELECTRIC CIRCUIT

The sixth brain consists of the nervous system becoming aware of
itself apart from imprinted gravitational reality-maps (circuits
I-IV) and even apart from body-rapture (circuit V). Count Korzybski, the
semanticist, called this state "consciousness of abstracting." Dr.
John Lilly calls it "metaprogramming," i.e., awareness of programming one's
programming. This Einsteinian, relativistic contelligence
(consciousness-intelligence) recognizes, for instance, that the
Euclidean, Newtonian and Aristolelian reality-maps are just three among
billions of possible programs or models for experience. I turned this
circuit on with Peyote, LSD and Crowley's "magick" metaprograms.

This level of brain-functioning seems to have been reported first around 500
B.C. among various "occult" groups connected by the Silk Route (Rome-
North India). It is so far beyond the terrestrial tunnel-realities that
those who have achieved it can barely communicate about it to ordinary
humanity (circuits I-IV) and can hardly be understood even by fifth
circuit Rapture Engineers.

The characteristics of the neuroelectric circuit are high
velocity, multiple choice, relativity, and the fission-fusion of all
perceptions into parallel science-fiction universes of alternate
possibilities.

The mammalian politics which monitor power struggles among terrestrial
humanity are here transcended, i.e., seen as static, artificial, an
elaborate charade. One is neither coercively manipulated into another's
territorial reality nor forced to struggle against it with reciprocal
emotional game-playing (the usual soap-opera dramatics). One simply
elects, consciously, whether or not to share the other's reality-model.

Tactics for opening and imprinting the sixth circuit are described and rarely
experienced in advanced rajah yoga, and in the hermetic (coded) manuals of
the medieval-Renaissance alchemists and Illuminati.

No specific sixth circuit chemical is yet available, but strong pyschedelics
like mescaline (from my 1962-63 "sacred cactus," peyotl) and
psilocybin (from the Mexican "magic mushroom," teonactl) open the nervous
system to a mixed-media series of circuit V and circuit VI channels.
This is appropriately called "tripping," as distinguished from
straight-forward fifth circuit "turning on" or "getting high."
The suppression of scientific research in this area has had the unfortunate
result of turning the outlaw drug culture back toward fifth circuit
hedonics and pre-scientific tunnel-realities (the occult revival,
solipsism, Pop Orientalism). Without scientific discipline and methodology,
few can successfully decode the often-frightening (but philosophically
crucial) sixth circuit metaprogramming signals. Such scientists as do
continue to study this subject dare not publish their results (which are
illegal) and record ever-wider tunnel-realities only in private
conversations - like the scholars of the Inquisitorial era (Voltaire
announced the Age of Reason two centuries too soon. We are still in
the Dark Ages). Most underground alchemists have given up on such
challenging and risky self-work and restrict their trips to fifth circuit
erotic tunnels.


The evolutionary function of the sixth circuit is to enable us to communicate
at Einsteinian relativities and neuro-electric accelerations, not using
third circuit larynegeal-manual symbols but directly via feedback,
telepathy and computer link-up.Neuro-electric signals will
increasingly replace "speech" (hominid grunts) after space migration.

When humans have climbed out of the atmosphere-gravity well of planetary
life, accelerated sixth circuit contellgence will make possible high-
energy communication with "Higher Intelligences," i.e., ourselves-in-
the-future and other post-terrestrial races.

It is charmingly simple and obvious,once we realize that the spaced-out
neural experiences really are extraterrestrial, that getting high
and spacing out are accurate metaphors. Circuit V neurosomatic
rapture is preparation for the next step in our evolution, migration off
the planet. Circuit VI is preparation for the step after that, interspecies
communication with advanced entities possessing electronic (post-verbal)
tunnel-realities.

Circuit VI is the "universal translator" often imagined by science-
fiction writers, already built into our brains by the DNA tape. Just as
the circuits of the future butterfly are already built into the
caterpillar.

THE NEUROGENTIC CIRCUIT

The seventh brain kicks into action when the nervous system begins to
receive signals from within the individual neuron, from the DNA-RNA
dialogue. The first to achieve this mutation spoke of "memories of past
lives," "reincarnation," "immortality," etc. That these adepts
were recording something real is indicated by the fact that many of
them (especially Hindu and Sufis) gave marvelously accurately poetic vistas
of evolution 1,000 or 2,000 years before Darwin and foresaw
Superhumanity before Nietzche.

The "akashic records" of Theosophy, the "collective unconscious" of Jung,
the "phylogentic unconscious" of Grof and Ring, are three modern metaphors

for this circuit. The visions of past and future evolution described by
those who have had "out-of-body" experiences during close-to-death
episodes also describes the trans-time circuit VII tunnel-reality.

Specific exercises to trigger circuit VII are not to be found in yogic
teaching; it usually happens, if at all, after several years of the kind
of advanced rajah yoga that develops circuit VI facility.

The specific circuit VII neurotransmitter is, of course LSD.
(Peyote and psilocybin produce some circuit VII experiences also.)

Circuit VII is best considered, in terms of 1977 science, as the genetic
archives, activated by anti-histone proteins. The DNA memory coiling back
to the dawn of life. A sense of the inevitability of immortality and
interspecies symbiosis comes to all circuit VII mutants; we now see that
this, also, is an evolutionary forecast, since we stand right now on
the door-step of extended longevity leading to immortality.

The exact role of the right-lobe circuits and the reason for their
activation in the 1960's cultural revolution now becomes clear. As
sociologist F.M. Esfandiary writes in UPWINGERS, "Today when we speak of
immortality and of going to another world we no longer mean these in a
theological or metaphysical sense. People are now traveling to other
worlds. People are now striving for immortality. Transcendence is no
longer a metaphysical concept. It has become reality."

The evolutionary function of the seventh circuit and its evolutionary,
aeon-spanning tunnel-reality is to prepare us for conscious immortality
and interspecies symbiosis.

THE NEURO-ATOMIC CIRCUIT

Hold on to your hats and breathe deeply - this is the farthest-out that
human intelligence has yet ventured:

Consciousness probably precedes the biological unit or DNA tape-loop.
"Out-of-body experiences," "astral projection," contact with alien
(extraterrestrial?) "entities" or with a galactic Overmind, etc., such as

I've experienced, have all been reported for thousands of years, not
merely by the ignorant, the superstitious, the gullible, but often
by the finest minds among us (Socrates, Giordano Bruno, Edison,
Buckminster Fuller, etc.). Such experiences are reported daily to
parapsychologists and have been experienced by such scientists as Dr.
John Lilly and Carlos Castaneda. Dr. Kenneth Ring has attributed these
phenomena to what he calls, very appropriately, "the extraterrestrial
unconscious."

Dr. Leary suggests that circuit VIII is literally neuro-atomic-infra, supra
and meta-physiological - a quantum model of consciousness and/or a
conscious model of quantum mechanics by the turned-on physicists discussed
previously (Prof. John Archibald Wheeler, Saul-Paul Sirag, Dr. Fritjof
Capra, Dr. Jack Sarfatti, etc.) indicates strongly that the "atomic
consciousness" first suggested by Leary in "The Seven Tongues of God"
(1962) is the explanatory link which will unite parapsychology and
paraphysics into the first scientific empirical experimental theology in
history.

When the nervous system is turned on to this quantum-level circuit, space-
time is obliterated. Einstein's speed-of-light barrier is transcended;
in Dr. Sarfatti's metaphor, we escape "electromagnetic chauvinism." The
contelligence within the quantum projection booth IS the entire cosmic
"brain," just as the micro-miniaturized DNA helix IS the local
brain guiding planetary evolution. As Lao-tse said from his own Circuit VIII
perspective, "The greatest is within the smallest."

Circuit VIII is triggered by Katamine, a neuro-chemical researched by Dr.
John Lilly, which is also (according to a wide-spread but unconfirmed
rumour) given to astronauts to prepare them for space. High doses of LSD
also produce some circuit VIII quantum awareness.

This neuro-atomic contelligence is four mutations beyond terrestrial
domesticity (The current ideological struggle is between circuit IV tribal
moralists-or-collectivists and circuit V hedonic individualists). When our
need for higher intelligence, richer involvement in the cosmic script,
further transcendence, will no longer be satisfied by physical bodies, not
even by immortal bodies hopping across space-time at Warp 9, circuit VIII
will open a further frontier. New universes and realities. "Beyond
theology: the science and art of Godmanship," as Alan Watts once wrote.

It is therefore possible that the mysterious "entities" (angels and
extraterrestrials) monotonously reported by circuit VIII visionaries
are members or races already evolved to this level. But it is also
possible, as Leary and Sarfatti more recently suggest, that they are
ourselves-in-the-future. The left-lobe terrestrial circuits contain the
learned lessons of our evolutionary past (and present). The right-lobe
extraterrestrial circuits are the evolutionary script for out future.

Thus far, there have been two alternative explanations of why the
Drug Revolution happened. The first is presented in a sophisticated way by
anthropologist Weston LaBarre and in an ignorant, moralistic way by most
anti-drug propaganda in the schools and mass media. This explanation
says, in essence, that millions have turned away from the legal DOWN drugs
to illegal HIGH drugs because we are living in troubled times and many are
seeking escape into fantasy.

This theory, at its best, only partially explains the ugliest and
most publicized aspect of the revolution - the reckless drug abuse
characteristic of immature. It says nothing about the millions of
respectable doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc., who have turned away
from second circuit intoxication with booze to fifth circuit rapture with
weed.

Nor does it account at all for the thoughtful, philosophical sixth
circuit investigations of persons of high intelligence and deep
sensibility, such as Aldous Huxley, Dr. Stanley Grof, Masters-Houston,
Alan W. Watts, Carlos Castaneda, Dr. John Lilly and thousands of scientific
and lay researchers on consciousness.

A more plausible theory, devised by psychiatrist Norman Zinberg out of the
work of Marshall McLuhan, holds that modern electronic media have so
shifted the nervous system's parameters that young people no longer
enjoy "linear" drugs like alcohol and find meaning only in "non-linear" weed
and psychedelics.

This is certainly part of the truth, but it is too narrow and overstresses
TV and computers without sufficiently stressing the general techonological
picture - the ongoing Science-Fiction Revolution of which the most
significant aspects are Space Migration, Increased Intelligence and
Life Extension, which Leary has condensed into his S.M.I^2.L.E.
formula.

Space Migration plus Increased Intelligence plus Life Extension means
expansion of humanity into all space-time. S.M. + I^2. + L.E. = infinity.

Without totally endorsing Charles Fort's technological mysticism ("It
steam-engines when it comes steam-engine time"), it is obvious that the
DNA metaprogram for planetaryevolution is far wiser than any of our
individual nervous systems – which are, in a sense, giant robots or
sensors for DNA. Early science-fiction of brilliant writers like
Stapledon, Clarke, Heinlein; Kubrick's 2001 - all were increasingly clear DNA
signals transmitted through the intuitive right lobe of sensitive
artists, preparing us for the extraterrestrial mutation.

It is scarcely coincidental that mainstream "literary" intellectuals -
the heir of the Platonic-aristocratic tradition that a gentleman never uses
his hands, monkeys with tools or learns a manual craft - despise both
science-fiction and the dope culture. Nor is it coincidental that the "Whole
earth catalogues" - created by Stewart Brand, a graduate of Ken Kesey's Merry
Pranksters - are the New Testament of the rural drop-out culture, each issue
bulging with tons of eco-technological information about all the manual,
dextrous, gadgety know-how that Plato and his heirs consider fit only for
slaves. Not surprisingly, Brand's latest publication, "Co-Evolution
quarterly", has been devoted to publicizing Prof. Gerard O'Neill's
space-habitat, L5.

Nor is it an accident that dopers seem to prefer science-fiction to any other
reading, even including the extraterrestrial-flavored Hindu
scriptures and occult-shamanic circuit VI-VIII trip-poets like Crowley and

Hesse.

The circuit VI drugs may have contributed much to the
metaprogramming consciousness that has led to sudden awareness of "male
chauvinism" (women's liberationists), "species chauvinism" (ecology, Lilly's
dolphin studies), "type-G star chauvinism" (Carl Sagan), even "oxygen
chauvinism" (the CETI conference), etc. The imprinted tunnel-realities
which identify one as "white-male-American-earthian" etc. or "black-
female-Cuban" etc. are no longer big enough to enclose our exploding
contelligence.

As TIME magazine said on November 26, 1973, "Within ten years, according to
pharmacologists, they will have perfected pills and cranial electrodes
of providing life-long bliss for everyone on Earth." The 1960's
hysteria about weed and acid was just he overture to this fith circuit
break-through. Nathan S. Kline, M.D., predicts real aphrodisiacs, drugs to
speed up learning, drugs to foster or terminate any behaviour. Those who
were burned or jailed at the beginning of the Revolution of Outer Technology.
Those who were jailed or beaten by cops in the 1960's were forerunners of
the Revolution of Inner Technology.

"Star Trek" is a better guide to the emerging reality than anything in the
"New York review of books". The life-support and denfence-system engineer,
Scotty (circuit I), the emotional-sentimental Dr. McCoy (circuit II),
the logical science officer Mr. Spock (circuit III) and the alternately
paternalistic and romantic Captain Kirk (circuit IV) are perpetually
voyaging through our future neurological history and encountering
circuit V, VI, VII, and VIII intelligences, however crudely
presented.

In short, the various levels of consciousness and circuits we have
been discussing and illustrating, are all biochemical imprints in the
evolution of the nervous system. Each imprint creates a bigger tunnel-
reality. In the Sufi metaphor, the donkey on the which we ride becomes a
different donkey after each imprint. The metaprogrammer continually learns
more and is increasingly able to be aware of itself operating. We are
thus evolving to intelligence-studying-intelligence (the nervous
system studying the nervous system) and are more and more capable of
accelerating our own evolution.

Leary now symbolizes intelligence-studying-intelligence by the mark,
I^2.

On the lower levels, you see with one"I," so to speak. On the higher
levels, you see with many "I"s. And space-time shifts from three
Euclidean dimensions to non-Euclidean multi-dimesionality.



end.



[This message has been edited by Keeks (edited 25-03-2001).]

bugler

I turned
this circuit on with pot and Tantra.

I got to there and then stopped .
I dunno,i think that there are a million wacky and varied theories about the effects/uses of drugs,and this seems like another...one.hehe.Not alot more.
I doubt too many will read all that,however.