Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
by Antero Alli
Section 1: THEOREM
“What Is This Book?”
“Children of the Revolution”
“The Circuits: Leary, Wilson, & Alli”
“Metaprogramming”
“Paratheatre”
Section 2: PRAXIS
Week One: System Overview
Week Two: Circuits 1 and 5
Week Three: Circuits 2 and 6
Week Four: Circuits 3 and 7
Week Five: Circuits 4 and 8
Week Six: Chapel Perilous
Week Seven: Progress Evaluation and Week Eight: Review
Section 3: FORUM
Q & A Featuring inquiries from those who completed the
Praxis Course
Section 4: HOW I GOT THIS WAY
“A Neurological Autobiography”
“The Eight-Circuit Brain Interview”
“The Magus and the Mystic”
“The Cosmic Trigger Effect”
Artist Credits
Suggested Reading
Section 1:
THEOREM
WHAT IT IS
This book advances the material of my first book Angel Tech (Falcon Press,
1986), which tested and applied Dr. Timothy Leary’s 8-Circuit Brain model
through a heady mix of exercises, esoteric meditations, and rituals. After
twenty-plus years of research and experimentation it was time to update my
earlier findings and present this new body of work. This book has guts, a heart,
and a mind. The guts can be found in the PRAXIS section, which presents an 8-
week course of study and practice using the 8-Circuit model. The mind resides
in the THEOREM section where you can ruminate on this model’s basic ideas
and principles. The heart and soul are hiding in the back section, HOW I GOT
THIS WAY, where you can discover the open experiment I have made of
myself. As a bonus, I have also included the FORUM section featuring a
comprehensive Q&A between some of those enrolled in the Spring 2009
online “Angel Tech” course (sponsored by Maybe Logic Academy and me).
maybelogic.org
Last, but not least, this book is about you. The 8-Circuit Brain amounts to an
empty vehicle ready for its test drive or a space suit hanging in useless repose
until launch time. It is nothing without you. Whatever this book says may not
be as important as how its words and images act on you, the ideas it spurs in
your mind, the feelings it arouses in your heart, and the actions these internal
events inspire. At the end of the day it may not matter how much we know or
think we know, as much as how honestly we have lived our lives and how
openly we have loved, and been loved by, those who matter to us.
This book is a labor of love and a gift to those who put it to use.
— Antero Alli,
24 August 2009,
Berkeley, California
“Children of the Revolution”
“We Soared, We Crashed, We Burnt Out, We’re Tuning Back
In”
We are all walking through the pages of our own stories every day, stories that
intersect the stories of others, dead and alive, as chapters in the larger Book of
Life. If you are friends with writers, your story will probably end up in their
writings or in their books some day, whether you like it or not. Even if you
have never met the author of a book or read the book itself, your story is
probably already captured. This happens all the time. And no matter how much
certain authors write from their own personal experience, they cannot help but
also reveal the greater truths innate to the collective milieu we are all
expressions of. Some of these writers seem to have built-in broadband
antennae for picking up those signals and decoding them for the rest of us—
Timothy Leary was one of these big antennae writers.
Larger collective shifts have ways of grabbing our personal lives by the scruff
of the neck and tossing us about as if we were plastic action figure replicas of
ourselves. Sometimes these greater forces erupt from deep within our own
genetic make-up and shock us with diseases unexpectedly inherited from our
ancestors. Other times, we get lucky and the chaos gods of the zeitgeist decide
it’s our turn to win the lottery. Or when Aphrodite Love comes to town and
turns our lives upside down in the name of Polymorphous Rapture.
These “outside shocks” can be humbling to any naive ego still in denial of the
objective truths (and shocks) of Ecstasy, Uncertainty, Indivisibility, and
Impermanence. Thanks to Dr. Leary’s 8-Circuit Brain model I learned to see
these shocks as activation points for what he calls fifth, sixth, seventh and
eighth circuits, respectively. As it turns out, we all have antennas to pick up the
big signals. We have only to learn how to unwrap them from ourselves, our
self-absorption, and point them outwards again.
In video-blogger Brian Shields’ interview with Lisa Ferguson (2/8/2009,
Timothy Leary reunion party, 111 Minna Gallery, S.F.), she shares a startling
message from Leary himself, spoken to her personally three days before his
death. “We were right,” he told her, “all the ideas and dreams we had back
then, we were right. It’s time to tune back in.” Lisa took his message to heart
as a boost to complete her documentary film, Children of the Revolution.
Inspired by her own Millbrook childhood stories where her baby-sitters were
none other than Tim Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), the
film also features interviews with other sixties’ luminaries and what they are
tuning into today. Watch for it!
Those who were not alive to witness or participate in the sixties cultural
revolution firsthand may feel a sense of having missed out on something
important and/or harbor the more cynical belief that the world is worse off
thanks to the Baby Boomers’ self-indulgent delusions of entitlement that got
us into the mess we’re in today. As with many polarized views, the truth often
lies somewhere in between. It is now well documented that the American
media and government created and maintained the illusion that the sixties were
a failed experiment in drug abuse, sexual debauchery and impossible utopian
ideals. And in one sense they were right. Millions in this cultural experiment
soared, crashed, burnt out and lost all perspective by pursuing overly inflated,
narcissistic visions of changing the world with more peace, love, sex and LSD.
I can only assume that most utopian visions fail from apathy due to a lack of
the consistent self-discipline necessary to embody the vision and “become the
change we want to see in the world.” Any full-blown spiritual event, with or
without LSD, can naturally expose the futility of self-centered beliefs and the
illusion of ego. In a naive attempt to preserve spiritual revelation, many ego-
trashing dogmas were created. Taken to heart, any anti-ego hippie belief can
easily lead to a “why bother?” apathy masked by a “just mellow out and go with
the flow” fatalism.
As it turns out, a strong flexible ego is necessary to manifest our innermost
dreams in the external world at large. Any attempt to hold onto a dream,
without the self-work to embody it, keeps that dream alive in the mind alone.
We become legends in our own minds. In the sixties, LSD opened up millions
of minds and more specifically, millions of third eyes (sixth circuit). With all
that synapse-popping electromagnetic energy charging up all those nervous
systems, sex became the most direct outlet to anchor hallucinogenic psychic
experiences in the body. The psychedelic cultural revolution also catalyzed the
equally potent fifth circuit somatic hedonism in the sixties’ sexual revolution.
LSD does not make us horny; the circuit six psychic intelligence that LSD
activates makes us horny.
The sixties were not a failed experiment. The sixties wrote the first chapter in
the post-atomic bomb era of how culture transforms itself starting at the level
of the individual. In this justifiably self-centered chapter, for all new
beginnings naturally start with unbridled self-discovery, an all-encompassing
epiphany of self-awareness explodes in the brain and exposes the nature of
reality itself. This event can easily overwhelm the existing means to
contextualize, use, and apply this knowledge, especially if we are spiritually
starved and cannot stop eating the fruit from the tree of cosmic knowledge.
This is what happened in the sixties. We ate, we got laid back, we talked and
dreamt of future societies and then, we ate some more and talked some more;
we ate and talked and got more laid back. The more forbidden fruit we ate, the
more our minds expanded and the more enflamed our search for what it all
meant—ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
The use of LSD and other psychoactive agents not only shocks the ego with
exposure to the void but also shocks the very core of our being with a direct
experience of void as true nature, who we are at essence, a stunning revelation
brought to collective consciousness centuries ago by Gautama Buddha and
given collective context through the creation of various schools of Buddhist
meditation practice, doctrine and dogma. Buddhism saw a sudden expansion in
the west during the sixties for this very reason—it provided a context through
which to live with the expanded states of consciousness brought about by LSD.
We must also credit philosopher Alan Watts for simplifying the more complex
principles of traditional Buddhism for the western mind.
Though it is not yet fully accepted, I believe that Timothy Leary will eventually
earn the status of the MVP (Most Valuable Philosopher) of the 20th Century.
Like other great philosophers before him, it’s reasonable to assume that his
seminal contribution may take forty or fifty years to find its true collective
and cultural context. Even though Leary indirectly turned (literally) millions of
people onto LSD, that phenomenon was clearly beyond his control. LSD was
not his central contribution. His seminal offering would be his Eight-Circuit
Brain model, a user-friendly grid designed for anyone exploring higher
consciousness as a means not merely to get high, but to design and create new
contexts for their lives. At the heart of the 8-Circuit Brain model we find the
two most important questions any self-aware person can ask:
1) What is intelligence?
2) According to your definition, how would you increase this intelligence?
I first encountered Leary’s Eight-Circuit model in Robert Anton Wilson’s
groundbreaking book, Cosmic Trigger. Leary’s grid struck me with awesome
potential. Here was a way of redefining intelligence through eight different yet
related modalities that—when fully absorbed, integrated and transmitted—
might increase one’s intelligence; picture eight brains in a neurological
clusterfuck of Eternal Humming Delight. Staggered by this vision, I was
inspired to begin experimenting with ways to actualize Leary’s theories in a
more reality-based metaphysics by drawing on my own background in theatre,
ritual, and meditation (see “A Neurological Autobiography”; HOW I GOT
THIS WAY).
Berkeley, CA, 1979–1982. During one of Robert Anton Wilson’s many
Discordian Salons, I shared with him my passion for Leary’s system. I told him
I’d like to write a book about it and apply my background in theatre to create
rituals to help activate these “circuits” for the reader. Bob laughed and said it
was a great idea. He then proceeded to tell me that he was writing a book along
similar lines called Prometheus Rising and that it might be the most important
book he had written so far. I sat there dumbfounded as Bob’s gaze shifted away
from me and towards his good friend, Greg Hill (author, Principia Discordia)
who winked back at him.
The Famous Published Author was writing his next masterpiece while an
unknown theatre rat was in the wings scribbling notes for his, as of yet,
unwritten and unpublished first book. A confusion of emotions. How could I
feel so self-important and completely insignificant at the same time?
Operation mindfuck was in full swing. I went home that night and started
reading Leary’s book, Exo-Psychology. About seventy pages in, Circuit 3
intellect stuttered and choked before it finally shut down. Information
Overdose! So many theories, so little application. If I can’t apply knowledge in
some way, it feels useless to me.
For all of Leary’s brilliance and innovation, I was annoyed by what felt like a
serious imbalance between theory and praxis. I asked Bob about this and he
said “people might understand Tim better if they knew his nickname during
his Harvard days: Theory Leary; he had reams and reams of them.” I
decided that my book had to include numerous ways to substantiate a more
direct experience of what these “circuits” symbolized. Direct experience
trumps the armchair philosophy of abstract rationalizations. The Dogma of
Direct Experience. I found my new dogma, though I didn’t know it was a dogma
back then. Dogmas can be like that.
Four years later, Prometheus Rising is published. Bob’s encyclopedic
funhouse genius advances Leary’s theories by linking them to a web of
isomorphic systems, memes, and paradigms like Quantum Mechanics, B.F.
Skinner’s Behaviorism, Korzybski’s Semantics, Sarfatti’s Superluminal
Physics, Alan Watts’ Zen, Freud, Rattray Taylor’s Patrist/Matrist Sociology,
Toffler’s Third Wave. Bob also broke the Theory Leary barrier by slyly
inserting a series of tasks, word games, and exercises aimed at triggering a
more direct experience of the circuits. In this book, Bob begins the
advancement of Leary’s theories for the postmodern Western nervous system.
Bob’s breakthrough also meant that in writing my book I had to carry the ball
further into terra incognita, and descend deeper into the flesh and blood
embodiment of these ideas and memes. There was already enough talk about it,
maybe too much talk.
Though Timothy Leary is publicly credited with the creation of the Eight-
Circuit Brain model, he actually did not originate it but popularized his own
updated version of an ancient Eastern spiritual code and practice. In the
preface of his 1976 book, What Does WoMan Want?, Dr. Leary explains how
“Professor Adams,” a Hindu scholar from Rutgers University, arrived at his
Milbrook estate in the early sixties and initiated him to an esoteric praxis of
the Hindu Chakra System. Dr. Leary fully assimilated this new teaching by
replacing “chakra” with the modern term “circuit” and adding Western
scientific ideas plus recent breakthroughs in Genetics and Quantum Physics
towards the transmission of his opus, Exo-Psychology (Starseed Press;
updated to Info-Psychology, Falcon Press).
The ancient yoga of the Hindu Chakra system aims at trans-substantiating
consciousness through the energy centers aligned with the spinal column and
brain. From the coarsest, densest and slowest vibrational frequencies of the
Muladhara root chakra (the coccyx) to the most refined, subtle and fastest
vibrations of the Sahasrara crown chakra (the skullcap), a vertical pathway was
meticulously mapped out many centuries ago infusing a priori status to the
crown chakra as a final resting place for “The Enlightened.” Through years of
meditation and yoga practice, the yogi or yogini learns to ignite the fiery
kundalini coiled in the root chakra. When activated, its white-hot liquid fire
pulses and blissfully hisses its way up the spinal column, burning through each
chakra on its serpentine path to the crown where it explodes into a “thousand-
petaled lotus,” a luminous fountainhead of cosmic consciousness, establishing
spiritual Guru status for the aspiring yogi.
This Eastern process of trans-substantiation fixates consciousness beyond
the finite domain of the physical body towards communion with The Infinite
and sanctions a disembodied spirituality in the Guru/Sunyasin traditions. The
Guru’s expansive presence magnetizes scores of devotees who act as his
“anchors” in the material world to assist the business of daily survival and to
act as vessels for his vision, message and spiritual presence. A deep symbiotic
bond develops as a mutually embraced dependency; the guru needs disciples as
much as the disciples need the guru. Examples include Da Free John, Rajneesh
(Osho), Mutkananda, Maharaji Ji, and many others.
Far from these Eastern religious traditions of trans-substantiation, western
classical mythology points to the wily Titan Prometheus who steals fire from
chief god, Zeus and gives it away to mortals for their personal use. This
“stealing fire from the gods” story also appears in Native American tribal
dreams and myths. According to the Cherokees, when Possum and Buzzard
failed to steal fire, Grandmother Spider used her web to steal the fire, hiding it
in a clay pot. Fire was also stolen and given to humans by Coyote, Beaver, or
Dog. In Creek lore, Rabbit stole fire from the Weasels. Timothy Leary was a
Coyote figure who embodied the promethean mythos when he stole the fire
from the Eastern gods and passed it on to the materialistic, rebellious Western
mind.
Besides updating archaic terms to postmodern scientific terminologies, Leary
bridged the Eastern bias of trans-substantiation to the Wild West substantiation
bias of materialization of energies. He did this by basing his very definition of
intelligence on a dynamic process of absorbing, integrating and transmitting
information and/or energy, a process reflecting the tertiary function of the
most basic unit of biological intelligence, the neuron. Leary also suggested
that consciousness could evolve itself by the absorption, integration and
transmission of one’s experience through eight functions of Intelligence, as
symbolized by the Eight-Circuit Brain model.
Leary goes on to suggest that intelligence can remain latent or repressed to the
degree it is not fully integrated or, interpreted through the context and truth of
one’s own direct experience, i.e., according to each Central Nervous System.
Absorbing data or experience alone cannot advance intelligence. Who will
know how intelligent we are until we have integrated our experiences enough
to articulate them? When this trinary principle of—Absorb, Integrate and
Transmit—is applied to all eight functions of Intelligence, the implications are
unfathomable. What infuses this model with mystery and magick is its function
as an empty vehicle awaiting the living presence of the user, that’s you dear
reader, to define your terms according to how your own Central Nervous
System absorbs, integrates, and transmits your experiences.
I view perceptions as gambles. This outlook encourages my intuition to take
flight and not be too weighed down by the quest for rock solid certitudes,
proofs or dogmas. Though some perceptions can be very seductive and express
very strident tendencies, I still prefer to view them as tendencies. This reminds
me of something Robert Anton Wilson used to say: “The future is up for
grabs. It’s too late for anything but Magick.” I think what he meant by this
was what Joseph Campbell suggested years earlier when he said, “The best
was to predict the future is to create it.” The future does not belong to those
who predict it; the future belongs to those who create it. And to create, we
need energy. We need energy to revolt and to subvert whatever has been
undermining our innate integrity, autonomy, and authority.
To do this, we must summon the courage to expose and bypass the sources of
oppression and power loss in our lives. In doing so we restore and expand our
capacity for direct experience—our true source of integrity, autonomy, and
authority. This is also the overall arching aim of this book: to encourage and
challenge your integrity, autonomy, and authority. It’s too late for any
generalized analysis of the human condition. The world is burning and the
planet is alive and well. The planet does not need saving. We need saving; we
need saving from ourselves. It is time for the resurrection of the energetic
body to regenerate the power for dreaming ourselves awake. The future has
already happened. The future is now. Spread the word. Prometheus has risen.
Life itself is the guru.
“The Circuits: Leary, Wilson, & Alli”
Here we begin the review of the 8-Circuit model as it has developed through
the processes of three very different individuals—Leary the theoretical
philosopher, Wilson the social scientist, and Alli the esoteric ritualist. All
three approaches reflect the distinct biases of their interpreters and each one
offers a valuable and unique contribution to the whole.
Timothy Leary’s theories on the 8-Circuit Brain underwent a series of changes
and adjustments that he published in several obscure booklets before arriving
at his 1977 opus, Exo-Psychology (later updated to Info-Psychology). In
1983, Robert Anton Wilson’s Prometheus Rising stayed true to Leary’s basic
ideas but linked them to a web of isomorphic systems, memes, and paradigms
while introducing a series of exercises the reader could perform to activate
the circuits themselves.
In 1985, my book Angel Tech bypassed the theoretical route almost entirely by
plunging the reader into immersive experiences such as designing your own
Tarot, performing rituals, and doing psychic meditations, to directly engage
states of consciousness symbolized by the circuits. Beginning with Leary,
moving through Wilson, and ending with Alli, the Eight-Circuit Brain
undergoes its evolution from abstract theorem into embodied existential
praxis. We turn now to the following distillation of Leary’s interpretations of
the eight circuits in his own words and turns of phrase.
Part 1: TIMOTHY LEARY
“There is no death. Death is a Circuit Three symbol for fear. When the
body stops functioning, consciousness advances to the nervous system
where it belonged all the time. When the nervous system stops
functioning then, consciousness goes home (via the neuron cell) to the
DNA genetic code where it belongs.”
— Timothy Leary
Note: Leary claimed that this model explained the social conflict in the
1960’s where the mainstream of circuit 4 tribal moralists clashed with the
counterculturists, the circuit 5 individualists and hedonists.
Part 2: ROBERT ANTON WILSON
Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary were good friends whose written
correspondences of letters will hopefully be published someday soon. Though
Wilson remained true to Leary’s original circuit definitions as presented in
Exo-Psychology, his contribution also included finding correlations between
the circuits and Armenian philosopher and dance master Georges I. Gurdjieff’s
work with the Law of Octaves and “vibration numbers” (later transposed into
music by composer/pianist Thomas de Hartmann). The following parallels
between these two systems are excerpted from Wilson’s second most popular
book, Cosmic Trigger:
I’m not one of those people with their heads in the clouds;
I’m one of those whose entire body has been consumed by the clouds.
— Antero Alli
With my background in writing and directing for theatre and paratheatre (see
“Paratheatre” in this THEOREM section), my approach leans heavily towards
engaging a more embodied experience of the states of consciousness the
circuits symbolize. Another difference between my respected predecessors
and me can be seen in my overall ego-positive bias. Leary’s and Wilson’s bias
towards the first four circuits was ambivalent at best and often negatively
referenced with terms like “the robot” and “domesticated apes,” whereas I
suggest that we “make friends with the robot” and initiate a more positive
image of the body, the ego, and our basic survival needs and habits. In a section
of Angel Tech called “Mechanical Problems”, I present my analysis of how the
first four circuits can break down and how they can be fixed.
Wilson’s concept of Chapel Perilous, introduced in Cosmic Trigger, is played
forward in Angel Tech’s chapter on sermons for lost souls. The upper circuits
are given full experiential treatment while raising the entertainment value in
charisma training, designing your own tarot, psychic trance meditations, an
astrology primer, and rituals invoking the aboriginal dreamtime. What Leary
initiated as Primary Idea and Wilson expanded into Interconnected Systems, I
have ventured to bring home to the senses as direct firsthand experience. In the
book you are reading now, you will find new ideas and applications for specific
ways the upper and lower circuits act on each other (referred to hereafter as
“verticality” and “vertical connectivities”) and notes on the distinct nature of
outside shocks as they relate to upper circuit activations. Also included are
new extrapolations of my early theories on Chapel Perilous featuring new
rituals and other devices for escape.
“In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or
becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and
experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In
the mind, there are no limits.”
— John C. Lilly
“All human beings, all persons who reach adulthood in the world
today, are programmed biocomputers. None of us can escape our own
nature as programmable entities. Literally, each of us may be our
programs, nothing more, nothing less. Despite the great varieties of
programs available, most of us have a limited set of programs. Some of
these are built in. In the simpler forms of life the programs were mostly
built in from genetic codes to fully formed adult reproducing
organisms.
The patterns of function, of action reaction were determined by
necessities of survival, of adaptation to slow environmental changes
and of passing on the code to descendants. Eventually the cerebral
cortex appeared as an expanding new high-level computer controlling
the structurally lower levels of the nervous system, the lower built-in
programs. For the first time learning and its faster adaptation to a
rapidly changing environment began to appear. Further, as this new
cortex expanded over several millions of years, a critical size cortex
was reached. At this level of structure, a new capability emerged:
learning to learn.”
— John C. Lilly, Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human
Biocomputer
The term “paratheatre” was coined by the late Polish theatre director, Jerzy
Grotowski (Aug. 11, 1933–Jan. 14, 1999), to address a phase of his group
work executed indoors and in the forests of Poland between 1970 and 1978. If
you saw Louis Malle’s unique film, My Dinner with Andre, this work is often
mentioned by Andre Gregory whose firsthand experience of Grotowski’s
paratheatre transformed his life. Generally speaking, paratheatre refers to a
private, non-performance oriented physical process of group dynamics often
involving rigorous kinetic and vocal exercises and techniques. Without any
audience, the external pressures to perform are released and replaced by the
self-created pressures of performing actions with total commitment towards
the transformation and refinement of the human instrument.
“Gifted actors find by instinct how to tap and radiate certain powers;
but they would be astonished if it were revealed that these powers,
which have their material trajectory by and in the organs, actually
exist, for they never realized that these sources of energy actually exist
in their own bodies, in their organs.”
— Antonin Artaud
CAVEAT EMPTOR
This section was designed with the intention of real-time application of the
Eight-Circuit Brain through experiments of direct experience. If this is not
your intention, you may wish to skip this section. Or, if you wish, enter
anyway and proceed as a tourist. Either way, consider yourself warned.
Fnord.
Week One: System Overview
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
— Philip K. Dick
1. Hydration
Water is essential for physical survival and optimal brain function. The brain is
made up of 60% water and requires sufficient hydration to maintain memory
and swift processing of information. Don’t leave hydration to the sense of
thirst alone; the ability to notice thirst typically diminishes with age. The
amount of water required depends on each person’s physiology and daily
activity. Experiment with water.
7. Eat less
In recent years serving sizes have ballooned in restaurants. Many of us have
ballooned in weight and size by naively eating more than we actually need.
OBJECTIVES
The aim of doing these C-1 tasks is to increase the force of commitment and
restore self-trust. A negative example: if you promise yourself you will do
something that you personally approve of or want to do and then fail to follow
through, you lose some self-trust. The more self-trust we lose, the more we
fall back on a state of distrust, not only of ourselves but of others and the
world. Self-trust can be restored by proving to yourself that you can follow
through with the commitments you make. Follow-through does not mean doing
something perfectly. Making honest mistakes and correcting ourselves can
feed our integrity. Follow-through means doing something to the best of our
ability. The overall objective of the following tasks is to rebuild C-1 integrity.
C-1 Task #2: The Salt Bath Ritual (approx. 20–40 min.)
Draw a hot bath and add one to two cups Epsom salts (use approx. one cup salt
per 100 lb. body weight). Stir thoroughly, get naked and soak for fifteen to
twenty minutes. During this soak allow yourself to become as physically
passive as you can; slowly surrender to the experience. Remain conscious—
don’t fall asleep—during this process. Don’t stay in the bath longer than 30
minutes. Afterwards, drain the tub and take a fresh water shower. Dry off and
immediately enter a safe, dark place to lie down (secure this space beforehand
so that nothing can interrupt you). Minimize external interference. Turn off the
TV, radio, CD player, cell/telephone, etc.
While lying down in this safe space, simply feel and listen to the biological
processes of your own breathing, heartbeat, pulse, blood circulation, etc. If
your thoughts beg for attention, return your awareness to your breathing.
Watch your breath. If and when thoughts persist, simply say, “thinking”
whenever you see a thought, or use any other mantra for relaxing C-3 chatter.
Continue watching your breath. This rest period can be as long as you feel
necessary and can even lead to sleep. The chief aim of the salt bath is to
amplify a direct experience of pulsating biological intelligence after C-1
passive absorption.
C-1 Task #4: Stretch, Sweat & Cool Off (approx. 20 min.)
1) Wear clothes you can move freely in. For five uninterrupted minutes,
stretch your muscles. Do this in your own way; proceed gently and slowly (if
you already know yoga or other stretches from Pilates, Dance or Martial Arts,
apply these). As you stretch, breathe into the muscles. Seek out areas in your
body that you are either not feeling very much or feel numbness in and focus
the stretching and breathing into these areas. Your objective in these five
minutes is to feel the body deeply by stretching and breathing into the
muscles.
2) After your 5-minute stretch, use the next five minutes to perform any
physical activity that doesn’t cause you injury and achieves the result of raising
enough heat in your body to break a sweat. Pace yourself. Five minutes can
feel much longer to the body than it can to the mind.
3) After your 10-minute stretch and sweat session, take a 10-minute walk to
cool down.
WARNING:
Performing C-1 tasks with full commitment can result in spontaneous C-5
rapture and bliss.
Circuit Five Feature Article
“The No-Form Technique”
Gateway to the Internal Landscape
The void is, as a rule, pointless to talk, think, or write about. Its very nature is
not subject to categorization by ideas, images or anything conceptual mind is
capable of creating. There are no security, status, symbolic, or social rewards
given out for being nothing. Nobody wants to be a nobody. However, as all
self-governing bodies eventually realize, real power (not control), real
freedom (not ego-independence), and real creativity (not entertainment) stem
from ongoing personal rapport with the formless, invisible sources behind all
palpable, visible, and manifest effects. To continue interacting with void, we
must find ways to refer to it and invite its presence. This state of potential
energy will be referred to hereafter as No-Form.
Think of No-Form as a concept-free zone and the degree of comfort you can
feel for being nothing; for being nobody…for being nobody but yourself…for
just being. In this medium No-Form is approached in a standing position,
rather than the traditional Zazen sitting posture. The No-Form stance is a
position for cultivating profound receptivity to vertical sources. Through this
internal receptivity, we first become aware of this potential state and then with
practice we eventually realize that we are not separate from it, but an
expression of it. There is nothing to avoid; we are the void. Though No-Form
can never truly be willed or summoned directly, the following conditions may
prove conducive to its occurrence:
Internal and External Adjustments
This technique can be first learned in any standing posture that supports
vertical rest, as in standing with minimal effort. Certain physical adjustments
can be made to increase support and balance while standing: 1) unlocking the
knees, 2) widening the stance, 3) dropping the pelvis, 4) letting the spine drop
relaxed and suspended, and 5) focusing on the exhale, allowing the inhale to
come as a reflex. Eyes are either shut or open as a slit to minimize external
stimuli.
Once the physical mechanics of the No-Form stance are established, certain
internal adjustments can support No-Form: 1) withdraw the attention from any
identification with the external environment and reconnect it within, 2) relax
the desire to control the outcome of the experience, 3) relax the desire to
control, 4) relax the desire, 5) relax into the process of becoming or being
nothing, and 6) be nothing.
INTENT:
1) To access the forces of a ‘charged polarity’ in the Body
2) To balance these energies in the Body
Step 4. No-Form
After you break a sweat, stand in the center of the space. Adjust your stance to
support a position of vertical rest. Unlock the knees, let the pelvis drop, and
focus on the exhale. Begin your process of emptying, of approaching intimacy
with the Void of potential energy. Enter a state of internal receptivity, of being
nothing; empty. Don’t fret if this stage proves frustrating. No-Form takes (feel
free to refer to the Circuit Five Feature Article, “The No-Form Technique”
for tips and clues).
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”
— Anonymous
RITUAL INTENT:
1) To wander aimlessly until you actually become lost
2) To restore your sense of safety and orientation when lost
3) To remain open to the influx of fresh somatic experience (C-5)
This AIMLESS WANDERING ritual acts as a test to your C-1 self-
commitment and willingness to restore a sense of safety and orientation in the
face of honest disorientation. Any experience of wandering aimlessly through
unknown territory can naturally open the senses and excite states of elation
and bliss. With the influx of new information and experience, certain habits
and fixed beliefs that have been maintaining the illusion of certitude can also
begin to wobble and buck. This wobbling and bucking can increase the force of
anxiety in our bodies.
“The border between the Real and the Unreal is not fixed, but just
marks the last place where rival gangs of shamans fought each other
to a standstill.”
— Robert Anton Wilson
Circuit Two Feature Article
“The Emotional Plague”
“The emotional plague” is a term initially proposed by Wilhelm Reich for the
irrational insistence on beliefs and ideas that depend on dissociation of mind
from body. Reich also referred to it as “the neurotic character in destructive
action on the social scene.” Though this body/mind dissociation has plagued
humanity for centuries, it wasn’t until the “The Age of Reason” that intellect
was exalted to god-like status thanks to the immense success of Newton’s
theories and Descartes’ “Meditations”. Since then, the snowballing effect has
gripped the collective psyche with overly-literalist thinking made more dismal
by the diminishing presence of Imagination in the culture at large. Imagination
acts like a canary in the coal mine of the collective unconscious. Whether it’s
on the personal or collective levels, imagination death precedes the death of
the soul.
In the current Hypermedia Era, the body/mind fissure has been dramatized via
massive collective projection of vital physical, emotional, and sexual energy
into mentally absorbent mediums such as the Internet, VR technology, video
games, mass media advertising, and too much TV. If the emotional plague is
maintained by constant disassociation of mind and body, we can expose the
virus wherever we are mistaking the virtual for the real, or taking any image or
any idea of a reality for the reality itself.
The emotional plague in the Hypermedia Era has surfaced in these two ways:
1) an increasing trend towards depersonalization, and 2) a steadily decreasing
capacity for direct experience. As we lose trust and faith in the legitimacy of
firsthand experience, we can naturally become more vulnerable and compliant
to the dictates of external sources of authority and its endless cycles of
obedience, reward, and punishment. Without enough trust in our own innate
sensibilities, intuitions, and instincts we suffer from an absence of vital
information leading to a growing incapacity to distinguish the real from the
illusory, the true from the false, and what’s right from what’s wrong. Without
self-trust—trust in our own direct experience—we remain as timid children
dependent on parental approval and guidance for the way we live, work, create,
procreate, and die.
This fictitious body/mind split that was inherited from religious beliefs and
cultural norms acts on our daily lives in unconscious ways that feed the
emotional plague. When any fixed ideas, certitudes, and beliefs are imposed
over the fluid vitality of the organism, the body absorbs and contains these
invisible negations as muscular tension and armoring. The body never lies. It’s
as if the body knows better and naturally resists these mental and moral
impositions of a body/mind split by reacting with tension. As muscular
armoring accumulates, the capacity for direct experience diminishes.
Numbness gradually replaces what was once naturally heightened sensitivity.
Body-based therapies influenced by Wilhelm Reich, such as the work of Jack
Willis, Christopher S. Hyatt, and Stanislav Grof’s holotropic breathwork, all
aim to break down this muscular armoring to liberate the body’s vital forces
and restore the capacity for direct experience. Though their various methods
may differ, their purpose is the same: to bring the people back to life.
The Eight-Circuit Brain Course
Week Three: Circuits 2 & 6
Emotional anchoring of accelerating perception
INTRODUCTION
The real work of this course arrives through applying yourself to the tasks at
hand and recording your results in your Lab book (and the online Forum posts
for those who have set this up). This week we explore the C-2/C-6 vertical
connectivity in the emotional anchoring of accelerated perception and how
emotional honesty can lead to new ways of seeing.
WRITING ASSIGNMENT #1
Confessions of Negative & Positive C-2 Bias
Here is an opportunity to air your learned and inherited C-3 ideas and C-4
social moral judgments that carry the bias of distrust, negation, dismissal
and/or condemnation of the emotions AND also, those C-3 ideas and C-4
social experiences that convey a bias of trust, affirmation, inspiration,
enchantment and praise of the emotions.
WRITING ASSIGNMENT #2
C-6 Accelerated Perception or Paranoia?!
What do you know about the distinctions between accelerating perception
(perceiving more reality) and paranoia (you define it)? Include examples of
how you personally stimulate perception and how you personally notice and
curb unwanted paranoia.
WRITING ASSIGNMENT #3
Updating your terms for the three sub-phases
It’s time to adjust and update your own terms for these three phases to better
serve the processes of your personal style of intelligence increase. Examples:
1) engage, interpret, and convey, 2) immersion, organization, and articulation.
How does this process work for you?
I have been asked numerous times “how do I get more power for myself?” The
answer is simple. The process is difficult. The difficulties lie in repetition &
tolerating the restructuring anxiety, along with real world threats from other
monkeys. So here is the secret: “Power” as metaphor is divided unequally
between what Freud called the id, ego and superego. Keep in mind that Freud’s
labels are simply labels and do not exist in reality but only point to complex
structures and processes.
In most people, the contaminated id (masochism, self-damaging desires) is
controlled primarily by the superego (inculcated authority/cop). Hence, power
is expended in impulse and the counter impulse battle. How much power? I
would guess the average person expends more than 75% of their total energies
in the struggle between impulsive desire (id), and the self-flagellating
response to the desire (superego). Ego functions, i.e., rational and social
functions, represent about 25%.
This hypothetical model requires reversal. What does this mean? The superego
(whose very existence depends on social and native processes) must be
defused and its energy given to the ego. This contradicts Freud’s dictate, that in
the healthy person the id impulses will be replaced by the ego. Instead the
superego will be replaced by the ego and the contaminated id transformed back
to the primal id. The contaminated id must also be defused and the energy
given to the ego. This is the purpose and meaning of Undoing (see Undoing
Yourself with Energized Meditation and Other Devices, Falcon Press). In
practice, defusing the superego alone is not sufficient, as the contaminated id
will begin to run wild and get the person into practical trouble with the external
superego (the “authorities”).
Thus, the contaminated id must be defused at the same time. One problem is
that most monkeys cannot separate practical self-control from superego self-
control, due to conditioning at an early age to (external) authority. This
process is existential, in that the helpless infant deifies the adult caretaker
regardless of the caretaker’s qualities. Thus, the infantile processes of
deifying the caretaker/authority suffer from an absence of objective evaluation
and discrimination. Finally, the original superego is further built upon by other
adults, media, and social pressure, continuing the innate deifying process to
the grave.
3) The Task:
a) Make a choice to stop doing things you personally disapprove of.
b) Make a choice to hold yourself to actions you personally approve of. Note:
This task may be of special value for those of you suffering overly critical
attitudes towards others by projecting your own standards onto them without
the integrity of holding yourself accountable to those very standards. Defining
and enacting your Code of Honor increases emotional integrity and overall C-
2 intelligence.
WINNING/LOSING;
TRIUMPH/DEFEAT;
SUCCESS/FAILURE;
STRONG/WEAK;
IMPORTANCE/INSIGNIFICANCE;
DOMINANCE/SUBMISSION;
INDEPENDENCE/DEPENDENCE;
WORTHLESS/VALUABLE
Overall aim
To increase emotional flexibility, or ego strength, by accepting and engaging
contrary sides of your nature. For example, are you STRONG enough to be
WEAK? Do you have enough status to endure insignificance? Can you win by
losing sometimes? Does your definition of success include failure?
Specific ritual objective
To gain equal access to both sides of your chosen polarity. To enter each side
of the polarity as a source of energy, rather than your concepts and judgments
about that energy. If you cannot escape C-3 chatter or C-4 judgments, I suggest
giving them the attention they crave by exploring one of these polarities first:
CRITIC/PARTICIPANT or ORDER/CHAOS.
REALITY SELECTION
The absorption phase of C-6 awareness—the second attention—allows us to
perceive the existing conditions of the first five circuits as they are, without
fantasy or fear or delusion; no big deal, existence is seen for what it is. What
we can see within ourselves, we are also able to perceive in others. C-6 also
shifts identification away from the physical body and towards the energetic
body, which the CNS/Brain acts as the neurological sheath and conduit for.
This first C-6 absorption stage heralds an emergence of the self-aware Brain
and CNS. C-6 becomes integrated as we find our own way to manage and
navigate our lives as the energetic body. C-6 transmission occurs with various
stages of telepathy, from nonverbal communication with others to interspecies
communication, and onto the C-7 matrix of interacting with the living
planetary entity (more on this in Circuit Seven).
The activated C-6 enables a new capacity for perceiving parallel existences of
multiple realities as equal in value, something Bob Wilson called Reality
Selection. When perception floats free from identification with C-1
fear/safety survival issues, C-2 status and territorial agendas, C-3 theories and
rationalizations, C-4 social considerations and moral judgments, and C-5
hedonic pursuits, we may be more free to observe the existing conditions of
our lives as they are. This C-6 perception of simultaneity initiates the process
of metaprogramming, the conscious redefining and implementation of new
personal realities throughout the first five circuits, if that is what we want.
C-6 is not bias-free but expresses a relativistic bias for perceiving
simultaneous realities as equal in value. Einsteinian relativity becomes a new
way of seeing. The danger here is that C-6 can seem as if it has no bias. This
can easily lead to a false assumption of pure objectivity and a disastrous loss
of C-2 anchoring and its incumbent threat to emotional and mental health. If
we become overly convinced of how relative everything is—without also
realizing how some things are actually more important to us than others—we
clearly delude ourselves. If this self-delusion continues, we become Card-
Carrying, Fence-Sitting Relativists suffering from Bias Ignorance.
The escalating states of uncertainty common to some C-6 psychic experiences
can shock C-2 into craving more certainty. The certitude of our innermost
convictions becomes necessary for emotional strength and ego resiliency. Yet
how much certitude we actually need to anchor C-6 experiences differs for
each person and each CNS. Human beings are clinging creatures. To stay
emotionally anchored, we need at least one sure thing we can count on. What
or who can you call your “one sure thing”?
The sooner we identify the source of our convictions, the sooner we can relax
the tendency to unconsciously invest C-2 emotions into C-6 psychic events.
Sensationalizing psychic stuff is a popular buffer to authentic psychic
experience. Spook films produced by the Hollywood dream machine
effectively confuse psychic phenomena with horror with tremendous great
commercial success. This has had the regretful effect of hyping the idea of
psychic stuff with terror in the mainstream mind. Whether the hype around
clairvoyance is pro or con, it’s still hype and has nothing to do with the actual
experience. In this spirit, I suggest approaching all C-6 processes with a
certain nonchalance: don’t make it a big deal. The less self-involved you are,
the greater your chances for C-6 to open up and do its work for you. Lack of
self-investment accelerates perception.
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a severe, chronic brain disorder that usually strikes in late
adolescence or early adulthood and is marked by hallucinations and delusions.
Sufferers may hear voices or believe that other people are controlling them or
reading their minds. Such experiences can be terrifying and can cause
fearfulness, withdrawal or extreme agitation. People with schizophrenia have
reduced brain receptors for the dopamine messenger. They may not make
sense when they talk, or they can appear to be perfectly fine and normal until
they are asked what they are really thinking. Treatments can be effective, but
most people have some residual symptoms that can stay with them for life.
Bipolar Disorder
Bipolar disorder, or manic depression, is marked by unusual shifts in mood,
energy, activity levels, and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks. Like
schizophrenia, bipolar disorder often manifests itself in late adolescence or
early adulthood, although it may not be diagnosed for many years. The ups and
downs are different from the normal ones that everyone experiences and they
can result in damaged relationships, poor performances in school and jobs and
even suicide. Sometimes a person with severe episodes of mania or depression
has psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations or delusions, such as believing
that he or she is famous or has lots of money.
C-6 TASKS
C-6 TASK #1: ENGAGING THE SECOND ATTENTION
Review Circuit Six Feature Article, “The First and Second Attentions”.
NOTE: Do not attempt engaging the second attention while driving a car or
operating machinery.
STEP 2) Space-forming
Throughout the day make choices to only pay attention to the spaces between
things and people. Do not allow your attention to fixate on any one thing or
person. Let your attention drift through the space between and around people
and things. Navigate the pathways defined by the space between things and
people. See if you can do this for five minutes and then, ten minutes, and for
longer stretches of time. Experiment and record your results in the Lab book.
THE SETTING
Any quiet room with no external interruptions. Candlelight or low illumination
suggested. Room temperature moderate and/or unnoticeable. A stable and
comfortable chair with a firm back. A glass of water and a piece of candy, fruit,
or chocolate (save treats for after the exercise). Preferred time of day:
anytime after sunset. Wear comfortable clothes. Practice this technique for
the first time in silence; feel free to add ambient music after you learn the
technique if you like.
Information wars are not fought over physical turf but over the internal
landscapes of the psyche itself. Those who are not busy learning new ways to
keep learning and thinking for themselves are becoming Info-War casualties
without knowing it. World Entertainment Wars exist at the level of mind.
Information warfare implements massive infiltration of gorgeous images and
catchy buzzwords upstaging personal and collective imaginations with
externally produced images and fantasies. War is hell. The horror of the
information wars begins when imaginations are over-stimulated, numbed, and
replaced by corporate designer replicas.
Imaginations corroded by TV Overdose, Video Game Debauch, Internet
Addiction, and Advertising Bulimia suffer withering slow deaths. To what
extent have our minds become over saturated with slick simulations of
realities that no longer represent anything we can actually experience or create
in real time? Are we losing our capacity to care about whether or not our
dreams and fantasies are actually our own or the tentacles of a larger octopus
of mass-produced dreams designed by Corporate Imagination Killers?!
Dampen a person’s power for imagining their own futures and you wash away
the internal psychic environment and home to a living soul. Imagination loss
precedes the death of soul.
“He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God. He who sees the Ratio
only sees himself only.”
— William Blake
C-3 INTRODUCTION
C-3 symbolic intelligence depends on duality-based intellectual processes of
comparison, association, and deduction. In the initial stages of C-3 we
passively absorb the ideas of others from books, media, schools, and wherever
else we gather data. C-3 integration occurs by thinking for ourselves and by the
interpretations we assign to whatever data we absorb. If we skip this second
interpretive phase, we automatically absorb data but fail to truly think about it
or communicate anything beyond parroting, or quoting sources of said data,
rather than saying anything original. Without this second integration stage—
thinking for yourself and assigning meaning and context to data—whatever
content we absorb busies the mind with the inner chatter of unprocessed data;
the mind gets lost in the mind as an endless circuitous C-3 loop. Being logical
is not the same thing as thinking. As C-3 continues absorbing and gathering
data for its own sake—without bothering to integrate or interpret any of it—
the mental regurgitation of all the unassimilated content turns into food for
Monkey Mind, the name I assign any loopy C-3 intellect that has lost its
vertical C-7 connection.
2) The Talkfast
Don’t talk for a day. Pick any day this week that you can hold yourself to not
verbalizing. If and when you interact with others socially or at work, bring a
pad and pen to explain yourself. The intent of this Talkfast is to expose 1) the
nature of your internal dialogue and 2) the effect of silence on C-3.
INTRODUCTION TO E-PRIME
E-Prime (short for English-Prime) is a modified form of the English language
which eliminates all forms of the verb to be: “be”, “is”, “am”, “are”, “was”,
“were”, “been” and “being”. Sentences composed in E-Prime seldom contain
the passive voice, which in turn may force writers or speakers to envisage
things differently than they might otherwise. To understand E-Prime, consider
the human brain as a computer. (Note that I did not say the brain “is” a
computer.) The wrong software guarantees wrong answers. Conversely, finding
the right software can “miraculously” solve problems that previously appeared
intractable.
For our purposes here, we will only concern ourselves only with the word,
“is”, as a cause of formulaic and dogmatic thinking, writing, and speaking.
Consider how the word “is” reflects the mathematical sign for “equals” (=), the
central symbol in all mathematical equations and formulas and you may get the
idea. Formulaic thinking and writing exalts our most literal interpretations
while taking the wind out of Imagination’s sails and slowly sinking C-3 chances
of C-7 linkage.
C-3 TASK #1
E-PRIMING YOUR LAB BOOK
To encourage more imagination, creativity and insight through your thinking
and writing processes, conduct the following 3-step experiment: 1) examine
your written lab reports up to this point and circle the word “is” wherever you
find it, 2) from this point onward, hold yourself to writing your Lab reports
without the word “is” or keep its use at a minimum, 3) at the end of this week’s
Lab reports, write down any changes in your processes of thinking, writing, and
speaking as a result of eliminating or minimizing the word “is”.
C-3 TASK #2
ON DEFINING SANITY/INSANITY
In your own words and contexts, define SANITY and then define INSANITY.
Do not parrot dictionaries or medical journals or your psychologist friends.
Use your own words as if your peace of mind depended on it. As with other
examples of self-definition, these parameters can change over time with the
influx of new information and experience. Define yourself or be defined.
Record your results in your Lab book.
C-3 TASK #3
THE DISAPPEARING MONKEY ACT (Meditation)
Step 1. When C-3 runs on automatic motor-mouth mode, the internal chatter
casts an illusion that these thoughts might be continuous, as in an unbroken
stream. If you pay close attention you may begin to see this illusion for
yourself. Pay attention to the tiny sparks of silence between these mental
constructs. Watch these tiny gaps of silence until you can witness the so-called
stream of thoughts as fragments, bits and pieces—quanta—with gaps of
silence emanating between them. This fragmentation of thought expresses a
distinct pattern and symptom of Monkey Mind. The silence between the gaps
expresses our deep self, beyond the comprehension and analysis of Monkey
Mind. Rest your attention in these silences and watch Monkey Mind disappear.
Further Notes: When a thought distracts your attention, just say “thinking” and
return to witnessing the gaps of silence. Keep paying attention to these gaps
until they start expanding in your awareness. Let them expand until you
experience more space than thoughts. Find out how long you can sit with this
expansive silence. Write down your results.
C-3 TASK #4
NON-DIRECTIONAL AND DIRECTIONAL JOGGING
Intent: to relax and regulate the C-3 monkey grip over the body. This task
happens while jogging and takes 10–20 minutes. If you cannot find an open
indoor space of approx. 1000 square feet, do this ritual outdoors. Wear clothes
you can run comfortably in and rubber-soled shoes. This ritual can appear
somewhat odd to outsiders. If you do not care about what other people think of
you, this won’t be a problem. If you do care, do this ritual whenever and
wherever nobody is watching.
1) Stretch your muscles for five minutes and then start jogging at a
comfortable pace.
2) Begin relaxing the grip you have on your body while jogging. Let your head
bob along with the rest of your body; jog loosely, as a rag doll or puppet, with
minimal grip on your body. Discover your point of optimum abandonment of
this grip without falling or injuring yourself.
3) After a minute or so of this non-directional jogging, start getting a grip on
your body again. Determine the precise form, speed, tension and style of your
jog. This is your “directional” jog. Take as much control (grip) over your
physical instrument as you can. Gradually take this directional state to the hilt
to find your own extreme expression of grip and control.
4) Pick a moment to release this grip and return to the nondirectional state of
letting your body jog freely on its own impulses and rhythms without the grip
of control.
5) At your own pace, shift between nondirectional and directional jogging,
giving yourself enough time in each to know and express their distinct
qualities equally.
6) Now, find a jog that effectively combines both nondirectional and
directional styles towards a dynamic balance of these contrary forces in your
body.
7) Hone this jog down to a pedestrian walk that maintains both nondirectional
and directional qualities, without drawing any attention to yourself. Make it
normal.
Circuit Seven Feature Article
Hakim Bey’s Moorish Weather Report
“Then said the weather god to the queen goddess: ‘We must act at
once! We shall perish of hunger!’”
“The Hittite Myth of Telpinu”
(“The Disappearing God Type”)
T.H. Gaster’s THESPIS
If the Earth is a living being, what constitutes her skin? The Hermetic “natural
philosophers” elaborated the Hesiodic cosmogony whereby Chaos, Eros,
Earth, and Old Night, make up the original pantheon of becoming. The
Hermeticists understood that we live and walk on the pelt of an animate body
—just as Chinese mythographers called humans the fleas or lice on the body
of the cosmogonic chaos-figure, Pan Ku. We are Earth’s symbiotes—or
parasites—or (Allah forbid) her germs.
The old Hermeticists also seemed to believe that atmosphere pervaded the
entire universe; if they envisioned flights to the Moon or stars, for example,
they never imagined the need for “spacesuits” to protect them against a
vacuum. Air was everywhere. Cyrano de Bergerac dreamed of a way to reach
the Moon by attaching to his body many sealed crystal vials of dew, which was
believed to fall from and return to the Moon. Unable to escape from the
vessels, the dew would lift Cyrano on rays of lunar attraction. Thus weather
itself was—at the very least—sublunar in scope.
Meteorological phenomena or sky-events, from rain to clouds to comets, were
not seen as parts of Earth’s body, but rather as evidence that the universe is
also alive. Thus every culture perceives a mating of Earth and Sky—an erotic
reciprocity with the universe—which fecundates the planet. Weather spirits or
deities belong to that sphere which is precisely not the Earth. Sky or “heaven,”
which includes what we call “space”—the aether which fills the universe and is
also alive—expresses its sexual relation with Earth in the form of weather. For
the early agriculturalists weather is the sperm of the spirits. One of the signs
of this meteorological eros is the mushroom which (as John Allegro pointed
out) has no seed but is planted direct from heaven by lightning bolts—an
almost universal belief.
Charles Fourier described the Aurora Borealis as the flickering remnant of a
once-great “aromal ray” whereby Earth in former times held sexual congress
with other planets and stars. Unfortunately, due to the malign influence of
Civilization, which has degraded even meteorological phenomena, the
“Northern Crown” no longer serves its proper function. If we could overcome
Civilization and establish social Harmony, we’d see the Boreal Crown shoot
forth a coherent laser-like 1000-hued ray of pure aroma, or stellar jizm, and
simultaneously we would receive similar rays projected at us from other
planets like sunbeams but even more concentrated and fruitful.
No matter what “science” tells us, this viewpoint will remain valid to the extent
that weather, as a sensuous event, really does come to us from “outside.”
Looked at this way, the skin of the Earth is her dirt-surface, her water-surface,
and her stable biota such as plants (her “hair,” etc.). The motile biota constitute
an in-between zone or ambiguous third term between Earth and Sky. Humans,
the upright pivots of this intermediate realm, are precisely the mediators
between Earth and the weather, controlling rain by sacrifice or dance, and
interpreting the falling stars.
The Etruscans catalogued eleven varieties of lightning as auguries; weather has
meaning, but the meaning is vaporous and evanescentas weather itself. The
Taoists saw pictographic characters written in the clouds—but for the most
part only spirits could read them. Even in modern meteorology the weather
retains an uncanny ability to express itself in mysterious glyphs which seem to
hover on the edge of meaning, like the Lorentz “Butterfly Attractor” which
describes the ultimate unpredictability of weather in the form of a mathematic
“writing” in the shape of a butterfly. In some way, weather always appears to us
as an “Other.”
However, science no longer believes that dew rises to the Moon and falls again
with moonbeams. Earth is surrounded by “hard vacuum” (a nice paradox) which
may be virtually universal. We’ve seen photographs of the Earth which seems
to recreate the visions of shamans in flight, and we have noticed that weather is
a very local phenomena. At first it might seem that the weather (clouds, blue
sky, etc.) makes up Earth’s cloak, a kind of close-fitting hallucinatory
opalescent kinetic garment of atmosphere and moisture. But on further
contemplation a more accurate metaphor occurs: weather is not the cape but
the skin—the peau sensible—of the living Earth.
None of us can escape this new world view. Even though as individuals we
continue to experience weather coming to us from Outside, we must now
superimpose upon this symbolism another and perhaps complementary
symbolic structure. In this second view, we humans are no longer precisely the
ambiguous between Earth and Sky. Our relation with Earth has become much
more intimate. We are inside her skin. We are part of the weather itself, her
kinetic flesh, her kaleidoscopic nudity. How we ourselves seem somehow
much more permeable, such that clouds and blue sky, rain and lightning, might
well move in us and through us, as much parts of our skin and organs bones as
we in turn are parts of the skin organs bones of Earth. We are ourselves
meteorological events, not unlike rain or falling stars.
Courtesy of Talking Raven Quarterly Winter 1993, Seattle WA and The Mad
Farmer’s Almanac
C-7 Mythogenetic Intelligence
Earth Surrender, Numen of Archetypes, the Anima and the
Animus
numinosity
The condition or state of being numinous
numinosum
1. Revealing or indicating the presence of a divinity; spiritual: “Many
religious practices and performances are carried out for the sole purpose
of calling forth the power of the numinosum at will by invocation,
incantation, sacrifice, etc.”
2. Relating to the experience of the divine as awesome and/or terrifying;
designating that which governs the subject outside of his or her own will.
During the first half of the 20th century the term “archetype” was introduced
to the collective consciousness by psychologist Carl G. Jung as an inherited
pattern of thought or symbolic imagery derived from the past collective
experience and present in the individual unconscious. Decades later during the
pop psychology revolution of the 1960’s, the word ‘archetype’ became very
popular and was applied to numerous contexts, perhaps too many contexts.
Certain words can lose meaning with redundancy and misinterpretation and I
think “archetype” may be one of those words.
I use the word “archetype” to address the numen of an undeniably autonomous
presence of Otherness. At its originating point, numinosity emanates a
presence that sometimes appears in our night dreams by taking the form of
recognizable personal images, behaviors, situations, and characters, depending
on the complexes defining the individual psyche (more on this later).
Archetypes also reside in the hidden heart of stereotypes and clichés—
predictable and mechanical roles, movements, behaviors, self-images,
personalities—as oversimplifications and cultural parodies as demonstrated by
the commercial icons and stories in Hollywood films. Clichés may be
archetypes distorted through the corruption of excessive redundancy.
Stereotypes convey a banal sense of familiarity, rather than any numen of
Otherness, yet conceal a grain of the deeper archetypal truth. Every cliché can
be traced back to and linked with its archetypal origins.
According to Jung, the impersonal archetypes interface with the individual
personality in a particular psychological complex, or fixation. Archetypes take
on human imagery—Anima/Animus, Hero, Senex, Puer, Crone, The Shadow,
The Self, etc.—depending on the psychological complexes sustained by unmet
childhood needs, traumas, fetishes and fixations and whatever obsessions are
shaping the individual psyche. For example, the mother complex expresses an
active component of everyone’s psyche shaped by experiences of the personal
mother, then by significant contacts with other women, and on out to
collective assumptions and biases around women in general. For men, the
mother complex links to the archetype of the Anima, the erotic feminine ideal
within the man’s psyche.
For women, the father complex runs a similar course towards linking with the
originating archetype of the Animus, the masculine ideal as heroic protector,
which can dramatize externally as a longing for older father-figure types as
potential mates.
Archetypal forces are not subject to any propriety; they do not and cannot
belong to anyone. They are also not subject to our control. Archetypes come
and go autonomously, much like our night dreams do, and operate at a much
higher level of intelligence than intellectual comprehension. Though we may
not be able to control or understand them, the archetypes can be experienced
firsthand.
Because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to doesn’t
mean they don’t love you with all they have.
— Anonymous
THE ANIMA/ANIMUS
RITUAL PREPARATION
The Setting
This ritual can occur in any indoor or outdoor area of at least 10 ft × 10 ft or
more of open space free of any external interruption by others, phone calls,
etc. Have a bottle of drinking water nearby to hydrate yourself. Wear clothes
you can move freely in. Remove all mirrors from the space. If you want music,
select the tracks that support the psychic or emotional climate of your ritual.
Dominion
Put the force of your territorial instincts to work by owning this ritual space,
including the space above you. Discover how you personally go about
physically, emotionally and psychically taking charge of the ritual space in
order to feel completely SAFE AND ALONE there.
THE ANIMA/ANIMUS
RITUAL STRUCTURE
THE PHYSICAL WARM-UP
Before attempting to access the archetype, it is imperative to stabilize your
energies. You can do this by whatever supports your process of FEELING
YOUR BODY DEEPLY. Include stretching, flexing the spinal column, yoga or
Pilates, and any movement that breaks a sweat. This physical warm-up should
last fifteen to twenty minutes. When you’ve raised your physical energy
enough to break a sweat, you are ready for the next phase (the Warm-Up cycle
in the Circuit Five Solo Polarization ritual can work well here).
NO-FORM
The integrity of this ritual depends on the integrity of “No-Form” (see Circuit
Five Feature Article, “The No-Form Technique”). This point cannot be
overstated, as the ego can easily trick us with its own self-made images and
preconceptions of the Archetype. No-Form dissolves preconceptions and
cultivates receptivity to the archetype. No-Form charges the ritual.
POLARIZATION
Divide the ritual space into two areas, designating each side to one part of an
emotional polarity that holds strong charge, or personal excitement or
resistance. Examples: chaos/order; good/evil; severity/mercy; love/fear;
acceptance/rejection (the more personal the polarity, the better). Note: the
rest of this stage is identical with the C-5 Solo Polarization Ritual. When
you’re done with the polarization, step outside the circle and return to No-
Form.
INVITATION
Begin the ritual by standing in No-Form outside the parameters of the shrine,
with your back to the shrine. Do not face the shrine. While dropping down to
deeper gradations of No-Form, invite the archetype to visit the shrine behind
you. Continue dropping into deeper degrees of No-Form.
Note: Assume this archetype already exists within you as an autonomous
presence or spirit; you don’t have to make it up. The archetype cannot be
summoned by our beck and call. The autonomous archetypes of the Anima and
the Animus are more likely to respond to invitation, than to a command.
IMMERSION
From No-Form, back into the shrine. Allow yourself to become an empty
vessel for the Anima or the Animus. Stand there and absorb the presence of the
archetype. If and when you feel the force of the archetype moving through you,
yield to its direction (if nothing happens, wait a few moments. If no response,
return to No-Form and re-enter the space). Surrender to Him or Her with your
entire body and soul. Follow its directions, its impulses and its rhythms. Give
your body over to Him or Her as a vessel. Let yourself momentarily merge
with the Anima or the Animus. Let this immersive merging carry you, transport
you, around this space and in relationship with the shrine itself. Let the
archetype move you in whatever ways it wills; “not my will but thine”…
EXTRACTION
After you feel satiated with the previous immersion, extract yourself. It is time
to stop being the archetype and time to start relating with Him or Her. Find
someway of releasing the Anima or the Animus from your body. Extract
yourself from Him or Her and let its autonomous spirit float freely about the
shrine. Begin establishing a relationship with Him or Her. Physically move and
dance with the Anima or the Animus. Find gestures, movements, and sounds
that communicate this relationship. Ask the Anima or the Animus questions.
What purpose does it serve in your life? What is your name? How shall I call
you? Keep these questions simple, direct and personal to your own needs.
Neither Anima nor Animus is simple-minded; you are the one who may need
more directness in relating with this archetype.
CLOSURE
When you feel complete, say goodbye to the Anima or the Animus. Give
thanks to the shrine before returning to No-Form. This particular return to No-
Form is very important as a time to disidentify with any residual archetypal
identification that can only leave you confused and inflated. No-Form allows
you to become nothing, again, releasing any attachment to the Anima or the
Animus. No-Form discharges the ritual by defusing any lingering identification
with the archetype and thus allowing closure.
This ritual feels as both success and failure…but I experienced a lot and got
something out of it so I put it here. I wanted to call it failure because the
energies in it are so raw, brutal and “a bit too much drama” I think. I felt
embarrassed of the experienced and yet so powerful and in rapture when
performing it. It felt too risky for me to put it on the forum, so I will tell you
instead.
I began the normal warm-up, stretching and meditation. I had forgot to set up
the shrine beforehand, so I went and got thing that I associate with the animus:
a microphone, a painting made by me of my boyfriend, a design book, a book
about sexual quickies and a bracelet with nails symbolizing aggression and
boundaries held. I felt that I owned my own space and I felt afraid as well…
I entered No-Form and got an immediate sense of balance. I had chosen (the
polarity of) freedom/duty and asked where I was needed the most and got
dragged to duty. I made a violent noise, slapped my hands and hammered on the
floor and felt my arm go up like holding a gun and pointing it, saying “there, I
want to go there” and I felt the duty transformed to will combined with that I
must. I was so happy and felt immediately so free that I got confused thinking
that I wasn’t supposed to feel free over here in the duty department, so I just
continued anyhow and the aggression came up again and I spat on the floor and
hammered and tramped with my feet.
When I felt done I went to the other side I felt like a little girl and jumped a bit
and then just stood there and saw a picture of me at last narchspiel, feeling
wonderfully free and lustful. Smiling. I went back and forth two more times
and then I felt the need to unite the two so I swirled and swirled and changed
the space from black and white to a scale that I could move upon. I then went
into the No-Form and emptied myself real fast!
Animus: I waited in front of the shrine and said that I was here and that I was
afraid. Then I felt a pull to come nearer in my body and my heart, so I went
closer and then even closer. I started touching myself and asked him to make
physical contact with me and I was really turned on and got chills all over my
body. I stood there touching myself and I saw pictures of Lestat and the band
Deathstars; this Is my animus. I pinched myself and hit my boyfriend’s face on
the painting. I sensed violence, brutality, mercilessness and pure egotistical
satisfaction. I was a bit scared with the almost torturing like pleasure I felt and
wondered if this was not a part of my shadow; the brutality and need to inflict
pain. Animus embraced me and we wavered together, he was holding me from
behind…it was wonderful and exciting I felt like I had an amazingly fascinating
man there with me which was so close to me and my mentor, lover all at once.
We danced like for real and then we lay down on the floor and I asked him
some questions:
* I asked what I needed to do with my boyfriend: “end it, end it!”
* What about the band we have started together? “it is a dead end…you are
afraid of having nothing without him, just end it.”
* What should I do to feel fuller, to not feel alone? “make choices based on
what you just sense is what you want, like when you just took the call of
making poster for Artifact. You knew you wanted it immediately. Take more
choices based on what you know and sense without thinking, just do it! Also
when you need me you can masturbate imagining that it is me or in the form of
the Deathstars band or Lestat.” I smiled and thought it was reeeally funny
* What can I do to have better sex? “Have sex with more men.” I got the
insight that the reason why I’m so turned on with Carlo is because he has this
ravaging sexuality of sweeping over women and the same with my boyfriend…
that is a projection.
* When I felt done I went to the shrine and said goodbye kissing my books
and spitting on my boyfriend. I said thank you and went back to the No-Form
space and thanked the space and pulled my finger to it, smiling a cunning
smile. We both got the humor and he said goodbye, I bowed to the shrine in my
minds eye and closed my eyes and entered No-Form. I felt a relief coming
over me when I made full contact with myself again and tingling in my whole
body, like joy all over. My body was happy I was back.
Week Five: Circuits 4 and 8
The Social Personality, Ethics, and Transcendence
“Don’t let yourself be victimized by the Age you live in. When you put
the blame on society, you end up turning to society for the solution.
There’s a tendency today to absolve individuals of moral responsibility
and treat them as victims of social circumstance. You buy that and you
pay with your soul. It’s not men who limit women, it’s not straights who
limit gays, it’s not whites who limit blacks. What limits people is lack of
character. What limits people is that they don’t have the fucking nerve
or imagination to star in their own movies, let alone direct them.”
— Tom Robbins (from Still Life With Woodpecker)
Circuit Four Feature Article
Sex and the Eight-Circuit Brain
Polymorphous Sexuality in Circuitland
The eight-circuit grid can be used to track, read, and otherwise discover the
great variety of human sexual response. As long as we remember that sex, like
Life itself, is messy at best—and will never conform to any mental construct
we impose upon it—we are free to speculate. As we examine the first four
survival-oriented circuits, we’ll see how our sexuality has been, and can be,
experienced physically, emotionally, conceptually, and socially—in isolation
and in conjunction with each other. When we envision the second four post-
survival circuits, we can imagine and maybe experience how sexuality might
act as a vehicle for higher consciousness and unfathomable realities beyond
our wildest fantasies in and out of our bodies!
Inside a magician’s black bag, two mirrors were facing each other in a game of
infinity when the magician asked,
“What did one mirror say to the other?”
OVERVIEW
This week marks the final task-heavy week of this course. For those who feel
left behind, this 8-week course was designed to allot its final two to three
weeks for catching up to speed. Feel free to move between all the circuit tasks
according to your available time, energy and commitment levels. This week we
start examining how C-4 Social Intelligence incorporates the previous three
circuits into a complex web of personal behaviors, habits, and tendencies in an
attempt to fit into tribal and collective realities. We’ll also look at how the
first four circuits represent stages of ego-development. We will also examine
the vertical connections between C-4 and C-8, including the shocks of
impermanence, void, and non-locality.
Task #1 Ritual:
Make an attempt to start one new friendship this week. If you fail, fret not;
what matters is that you make an attempt.
“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should
make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened
by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
— Charles Bukowski
Circuit Eight Feature Article
The End of the World As I Want It
An Incantation (to be read out loud)
O GOD OF THE END OF THE WORLD, I am afraid to take you seriously; tell
me you’re only kidding, show me how to be a greater fool than I already am by
making me laugh at death without forgetting my mortality.
O GODDESS OF BEAUTY IS BETTER THAN TRUTH, I am embarrassed by my
need to be right all the time. Send me your most gorgeous drop-dead image,
the Mother of All Visions, the vision that outgrows and destroys all other
visions including itself, so I can see through myself when I am lying.
O WRATHFUL DEITIES OF DOOMSAYING EVANGELICALS & DOGMATIC
LITTLE BIGOTS, I am bored to tears with my intolerances. Grant me the
enchantment to be entertained by the hidden pixie agendas behind all dreary,
dismal grey-faced warnings so I can stop taking myself more seriously than the
life I am actually living.
O DEMIGOD OF POETIC TERRORISM, I am utterly and royally confused.
Make me go crazy in the name of Creation, not Destruction, so I may freely
sabotage the literalist virus immobilizing my imagination and learn to incite
riots in the minds asleep to your splendor and glory.
O GODS & GODDESSES OF EVERYBODY’S HOLY GUARDIAN ANGEL, I
am fucked up beyond all recognition. Trick me into not knowing whether I am
really a good person or really a bad person. Give me the wisdom to never
believe my own PR and what other people think of me, no matter how much
money they pay me. Deepen my gratitude for being a nobody in a world of
wannabe somebodies and other hungry ghosts, so I can be touched in the head
by your benevolence and tell your truths without wanting the credit.
— AHMEN and AH!WOMAN!
C-8 Tasks
INTRODUCTION
Anyone seriously dedicated to expanding their consciousness using the 8-
Circuit Brain model can, over time, achieve palpable results. Two after-
effects I have noticed over two and a half decades of experimentation are:
1) Acceleration of perception results in perceiving more reality and becoming
more sensitized to the subtle energies within and around us. These upper
circuit openings require lower circuit support.
2) Once certain doors of perception are opened, there can be no reversing the
process or turning back. Not everyone we meet can, should, or will understand
you or join us in this journey. As a result, we can count on social alienation as
part of the territory of consciousness research. In this light, your circle of
friends (C-4) remains a critical support system for anchoring C-8 experience.
The masses that maintain the narcotic hallucination of consensus reality will
not follow us. Those exploring and manifesting higher consciousness must
bear a moral responsibility to themselves and to those they care about. Moral
responsibility means becoming fully accountable for yourself. As Gurdjieff
suggests, “become a man or a woman without quotation marks.” As we
expand our consciousness, we can perceive more reality and discover what we
actually do and do not care about. Consciousness expansion leads to
conscience. We sharpen our conscience, our compass, by asking ourselves big
questions and mustering up the courage to address and/or answer them.
What is worth fighting for? What makes my life worth living? What am I living
for? Who am I? Without conscience we remain chained to family and societal
moralities, and carry the cross of inherited guilt complexes that are based
upon rules and regulations we never approved of or created in the first place.
NOTE: The following C-8 tasks do not promise C-8 activation. Their
effectiveness depends on your state of readiness for the experience and the
existing conditions of C-4 social support in your life.
Closure
Write down your experiences and/or talk about them with others. This can help
integrate the intuitive “depth experience” and your interpretive, conceptual
mind. It can also provide a transition from the dreamtime back into the
daytime. No-Form expresses an essential transition and bridge between the
dreamtime and daytime, without which you may just wander around under the
influence of the dream state.
NOTE: Do not drive a car or operate machinery under the influence of the
power of dreaming.
C-8 TASK #3: THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING
The Setting: any indoor or outdoor space that allows for uninterrupted time
of approx. 15 to 30 minutes. Instigate the standing No-Form technique and add
the following physical adjustments:
1) adjust your stance to relax and drop the spine into the pelvic basin
2) unlock your knees, let arms drop to sides, palms facing in
3) find your position of vertical rest, so that each part of your body from head
down to feet rests upon the part below it, with the soles of the feet resting on
the floor or ground below
Continue standing in No-Form while maintaining these physical adjustments
for approx. two minutes. Project a cloud slightly larger than your body size at a
45 degree angle, about five feet above and behind your head. Designate this
as The Cloud of Unknowing. When you feel receptive enough in No-Form,
invite the cloud to drift down and envelop your entire body. Do not drag or
direct or bring the cloud down with your will. Simply put the invitation out
there and let The Cloud drift down in its own way, on its own time. Stay the
course with No-Form. When the cloud completely envelops your body, merge
with the cloud. Become the cloud, so no division exists between you and the
cloud. Stay the course of this merging. There is nowhere to go, nothing to do
and nobody to be. When you feel done, you are done. When it’s over, do
something to break trance. The meditation is over.
“The myth is the public dream and the dream is the private myth. If
your private myth, your dream, happens to coincide with that of the
society, you are in good accord with your group. If it isn’t, you’ve got
an adventure in the dark forest ahead of you.”
— Joseph Campbell
CHAPEL PERILOUS CINEMA
Films That Look, Feel & Sound Like Chapel Perilous
Think back to the last time you exclaimed, “I can’t believe this is
happening!” in response to the very thing that was happening to you.
Sometimes the most difficult thing to believe can be the very thing that is
happening to us. When we’re in the center of an experience we are often
unaware it, or in the case of new experiences, have yet to label it or form a
belief about it. So it is with Chapel Perilous. How can one tell when they’re
inside? Though the journey in and out of Chapel Perilous differs for each
person and circumstance, threads of commonality have been shared by artists,
writers, musicians, and poets with the wherewithal to intuit their placement and
the talent to communicate it. Sometimes being in Chapel Perilous can feel as
if you’re in a movie. The multi-leveled textures of cinema can lucidly mirror
the multidimensional experiences common to those visiting or residing in
Chapel Perilous and why I believe so many film genres exist—noir, horror,
zombie, psychological thrillers, dark fantasy, and even documentaries—to
channel these visions.
NOW PLAYING
ERASERHEAD by David Lynch
ANGEL HEART by Alan Parker
STALKER by Andrei Tarkovsky
BARTON FINK by the Coen brothers
THE SACRIFICE by Andrei Tarkovsky
LESSONS OF DARKNESS by Werner Herzog
HOUR OF THE WOLF by Ingmar Bergman
THE ELEMENT OF CRIME by Lars Von Trier
INLAND EMPIRE by David Lynch
JULIEN DONKEY-BOY by Harmony Korine
TIDELAND by Terry Gilliam
SYNECDOCHE NY by Kaufman
ORPHEUS by Jean Cocteau
JULIET OF THE SPIRITS by Frederico Fellini
THREE CROWNS OF THE SAILOR by Ruiz
THE HOUR-GLASS SANATORIUM by Wojciech Has
NORTHFORK by The Polish brothers
JACOB’S LADDER by Adriane Lyne
THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE by Krzysztof Kieslowski
THE PASSENGER by Michelangelo Antonioni
CATCH-22 by Mike Nichols
JULIET OF THE SPIRITS by Frederico Fellini
SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT by Wojciech Has
BLADE RUNNER (director’s cut) by Ridley Scott
BLUE VELVET by David Lynch
EL TOPO by Alejandro Jodorowsky
APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX by Francis Ford Coppola
HEART OF GLASS by Werner Herzog
The Eight-Circuit Brain Course
Week Six: Chapel Perilous
The Bardo Limbo Place Between Places
“Chapel Perilous, like the mysterious entity called ‘I’, cannot be located in
the time-space continuum: it is weightless, odorless, tasteless, and
undetectable by ordinary instruments. Indeed like the Ego, once you’re
inside it there doesn’t seem to be any way to ever get out, again, until you
suddenly discover that it has been brought into existence by thought and
does not exist outside of thought.”
— Robert Anton Wilson
The Front Door, the Back Door, and the Trap Door
Obsession can sometimes launch us into the Chapel. Some obsessions
accumulate such a heavy force of inertia that our force of will can become
overwhelmed with immobilizing indecision. These inertia-generating
obsessions entrench us in the day-in-day-out redundancies of familiar routines
that lead directly to the back door of Chapel Perilous. This back door path of
inertia maintains itself by the sinking comfort of Familiarity Trance and can
last for months, years, and decades. A very different type of obsession comes
with the acceleration of novelty—of too many new experiences and
information to assimilate—that spins us out into manic episodes of rapid
burnout. Like moths to a flame, these fiery obsessions are often short-lived,
unbearably exhilarating and typically end in disintegration. These are the
neophiliac obsessions that lead straight through the Chapel’s front doorway.
There’s another way of entering Chapel Perilous that’s a bit more mysterious.
It’s neither obsession with novelty or habit but a kind of serendipitous luck of
the draw that I call “freefall.” Freefall usually involves some out-of-the-blue,
brick-in-the-back-of-the-head, sucker punch that suddenly drops us down
through the Chapel Perilous trap door. The bottom falls out in freefall as we
drift disconnected through the abyss.
In my travels and travails these are the three basic ways I have seen myself and
others find Chapel Perilous and often when we weren’t looking for it. I have
entered through the Front Door of Novelty flying by the seat of my pants on
fire. I have crawled through the Back Door of Inertia up to my ears in the
sludge of stagnation. When the Trap Door of Freefall dropped out from
beneath me, I was just another babe in the abyss sucking my thumb on the way
to nowhere. No matter how we get in, or which door we pass through, all who
enter Chapel Perilous achieve Initiation.
A chapel is a place of worship; perilous means fraught with danger. Chapel
Perilous is a place where a certain kind of danger has become a point of
worship. Whether or not that danger is accidental or intentional depends on
your relationship, or lack thereof, with Chapel Perilous. Are you waking up
inside the Chapel or did you fall asleep during the sermon? Do you recognize
anyone here or do these haunted faces belong to complete strangers? Do you
know where you are? Does your mother know where you are?
Patron Saints of Chapel Perilous
WAYNE NEWTON
Honorary Back Door Patron Saint of Chapel Perilous
Status: Clergy
MIKE TYSON
Honorary Trap Door Patron Saint of Chapel Perilous
Status: Paranoid Heretic
“Iron Mike,” the most dangerous boxer in history at his prime, also fought
many heroic battles with the inner demons of alcohol, drug and sex abuse,
parasitical sycophants, and wrongful lawsuits, which scarred his psyche
with paranoia.
WHERE I?
This woman cannot live more than one year.
Her growing death is hidden in a hopeless place,
Her death is like a child growing in her,
And she knows it, you see it shine in her face.
She looks at her own hands and thinks “In a year
These will be burnt like rags in the crematory.
I shall not feel it. Where I? Where I? Not anywhere.
It is strange, it gives to her face a kind of glory.
Her mind used to be lazy and heavy her face,
Now she talks all in haste, looks young and lean
And eager, her eyes glitter with eagerness,
As if she were newly born and had never seen
The beauty of things, the terror, pain, joy, the song.
Or is it better to live at ease, dully and long?
— Robinson Jeffers
There is a key that unlocks the Chapel gates in Bob’s final phrase. Chapel
Perilous was brought into existence by thought and does not exist outside of
thought. Those who discover how to use the mind to see through the mind, to
see beyond the products of the mind, can also be free of this mind. I believe
this type of “seeing through”—the mind seeing through and beyond itself—
expresses a function of C-6 second attention (see Circuit Six Feature Article,
“The First and Second Attentions” and C-6 tasks). For those contemplating
escape and seeking clues for the means to make that possible, I offer the
following Chapel Perilous Tasks. Good luck and godspeed.
Chapel Perilous Tasks
“Exit Strategies of the Three Powers”
Review
Catching Up to Speed Towards Course Completion
PROGRESS EVALUATION QUESTIONNAIRE
1) Review the First Week’s SYSTEM OVERVIEW and reflect on how your
understanding of this material has changed and/or remained the same since
starting the course.
2) Check your Lab book for the first week’s assignment of how you measured
your experience and integration of each of the eight circuits, on a scale of 1–
10. Update these measurements to coincide with the research results of your
experiments over the first six weeks of this course; write down the new
measurement.
3) Of the experiments, rituals, and meditations you actually completed, which
ones resulted in the greatest success and/or surprises, and which ones resulted
in little or no noticeable change or, felt to you like a failure or incomplete?
4) List the circuit(s) you feel need more integration and the one(s) that you
feel integrated enough for the time being. Are there any circuits that you have
not been able to access in any way whatsoever? What are they? Also report
your frustrations, lack of motivation and/or need for more experience.
5) Has your definition of Intelligence changed since first addressing these
questions in the first week? Update any changes to synchronize closer with
your present time experiences.
6) Throughout this journey through the 8-CB, was there any one circuit that
remains with you as a favorite place to either hang out in and/or to explore
further? If so, please describe what, why, and how.
7) Was there any one circuit that you found yourself unusually and/or
unexpectedly stuck in? If so, please explain what, why, and how. Also, offer
possible actions or adjustments that might serve to mobilize or circulate the
energies there. Would you consider this an area that you could use some
outside guidance in?
8) To what extent has this course lived up to your expectations and/or
delivered what you wanted or needed from it? Also, how did this course’s
content and presentation work, or not work, for you? Give examples.
Review
Catching Up to Speed Towards Course Completion
Q&A
Featuring inquiries from those who completed
the Praxis Course
THE PRAXIS FORUM
The following forum material was excerpted from a private eight-week online
version of The Eight-Circuit Brain course as featured in the PRAXIS section. I
include their anonymous contributions here for their honesty, candor and
courage. I also believe that their processes and inquiries, and my own
responses to them, might be illuminating to those already committed to the
PRAXIS course in this book. I have also included a few offerings and
responses from various online communities where I have found resonant
inquiries. Each of the italicized sections of text, between the non-italicized
sections of text, represents the views, processes, and questions of a different
person. My responses are preceded by my initials, AA.
On the 8-Circuit course material in general
I think I grasp all the circuits, and am moving towards integrating them, but
I don’t know that I’m doing it right. My life has always been this desire for
balance, and when I came across this model in Angel Tech, I was astounded
at how well it resonated with my own research and experiments. Yet, are we
to try to equally and incrementally grow in each circuit? I don’t feel like we
should focus on one over others, but then what if one needs more work?
How does one know which circuit needs more work? If we focus too much on
the first four, will its corresponding “higher” circuit give us a shock? If a
higher circuit is overemphasized, is there a counter shock from its “lower”
correspondence signifying that anchoring needs to occur? If all your
circuits are fucked, are you in Chapel Perilous, or the Robot Junkyard?
AA: Your questions and concerns as legitimate. Since each CNS (Central
Neural System) differs, each person engages the processes in this course at
their own pace and according to what they are willing and/or unwilling to do.
Individual integrity and autonomy count for a lot here. We are using the 8-CB
as a diagnostic to discover the existing conditions of our internal and external
lives, rather than idealize this system as any kind of Nietzschean super hero
yoga, though for some this remains their preferred self-delusion. In working
through each circuit we invariably discover strengths and weaknesses and
where work is most needed. These exposures of “what needs work” and also
“what can rest” become obvious over time. What is required more than
anything else is self-honesty and a willingness to commit to actually doing the
work, as opposed to thinking about doing the work.
A big part of self-work is learning how to increase the force of our
commitment. Commitment as a force can be increased at will when you know
how and is addressed in the I.P. (Integrity Point) technique of WEEK TWO.
WEEK ONE is about exposing our preconceptions, expectations, and existing
knowledge of the 8-Circuit model. This preliminary ideational phase provides
an important base to be tested against the truths of more direct experience and
adjusting our map to better serve the real life territories we’ve encountered. In
regards to the Robot Junkyard, I say be kind to the robot; s/he is your friend.
On Apathy
It is my view that in committing to self-work one will inevitably be
confronted with their own (and others’) patheticness. Other than general
inadequacy and powerlessness, what is the true nature of something
pathetic? What causes patheticness?
AA: I think part of any real self-work will expose us to the limitations of what
we actually can and cannot do, that is, if we are totally honest with ourselves.
For example, I think it’s natural to feel helpless in the face of any apparently
insurmountable odds. The trick is not falling prey to Poor Baby self-
victimization by confusing our feelings of helplessness for actually being
helpless. This confusion easily brings us to the bended knees of patheticness
squared.
Apathy expresses a symptom of the immobilization of the will and can result
after any outside shock that delivers a serious blow to our self-confidence.
Apathy signals a “why bother?” loss of self-confidence and energy so
necessary to facing life’s challenges and the solving of our own problems.
Apathy can also be instructive by the perception and receptivity it can bring
unless, of course, this apathy is also tainted by negative emotions such as
cynicism, bitterness, avarice, envy, resentment, guilt, etc. Some kinds of
apathy can simply result from an increasing awareness of powers far greater
than our ego, whether that be big government or big religion or big spiritual
experiences, coloring our personalities with pathos. The exception to this
pathetic disposition may be the degree we have accepted the absurdity of life
and can laugh at our so-called ‘spirituality.’
On Paranoia
Personally, for almost a year now, I have become aware that in social
situations, I catch people staring at me more often than not. I’m talking
about strangers here. It usually happens like this—I will scan the room of
people, and almost immediately make eye contact with another person
staring at me. Then I will move on, and make eye contact again. Also, I often
look up at a particular random person as they simultaneously look up into
my eyes, with no apparent reason for doing so. This happens across
distances and in crowded rooms. It’s not the case that I’m always being
watched, but more often that not, if I look around, there is someone staring
at me. Its no longer a big deal to me, but I’ve come to feel that I am, in a
way, being watched. I don’t mean this in a malicious way, and I don’t think
it’s a paranoid notion. I have felt the paranoia beckoning.
AA: As you may know, we have entered an era of unprecedented change made
obvious by the fluctuating and collapsing global economic structures. Due to
the massive investment of collective consciousness in C-3 symbolic reality of
money, all that consciousness cannot help but destabilize as these structures
wobble and break apart. Collective consciousness is now in a state of shock
and wavering and adrift in its own kind of collective limbo bardo or, “Chapel
Perilous”, if you will, until it restabilizes at a higher level of awareness than
before.
As a result of this “crisis in consciousness” people from all walks of life are
currently undergoing various stages of inner awakening. We see flickers of
awareness and precognition but without full cognition yet about what is
happening and/or how to best manage those energies. I remember walking the
streets the morning after a big earthquake and looking into the eyes of people.
Everybody was still in shock yet we were all strangely alert and open to each
other, looking fresh into each other’s eyes without the usual baggage of biases
and judgments so often clouding our jaded alligator eyes. It had this
miraculous utopian feeling about it, like, why can’t we stay open to each other
like this all the time?
I had some paranoia about manifestation and external/internal influences.
I worried that, because I was getting good at manifestation that there was
no way for me to know if I was creating the information I was perceiving, or
if it was being presented to me by the external world. A friend of mine, when
I asked her about it, asked me back, “Does it matter?” And I said, “Oh. No,
I guess not.” I figure that no situation is created by a single person and that
helps keep me from being paranoid.
AA: “Does it matter?” Yes and no. You raise an interesting point about the
origin point of creation. I have been creating theatre and films for most of my
life and even though the closing credits at the end of each film reads “Directed
by Antero Alli,” a part of me knows it’s a lie. Filmmaking is not only a
teamwork process but an internal creative process involving genuinely
mysterious forces that do not belong to me. I call them muses. Though I must
earn everybody’s trust on the set as “the director,” I quietly proceed as an
impostor who knows the truth: it’s not me that creates. At best, I can make
myself into a worthy vessel for the expression of creation through me. At the
end of the day what matters to me is how well I served creation.
On Shock
About the ‘shocks and anchors’ idea. I’m comfortable enough with the
lower circuits acting as ‘anchors’ for the upper, but does ‘shocks’ generally
refer to a checking/cautionary experience sent from the upper circuit to the
lower (so to speak) to let you know one of your lower circuits is lacking
integration? This was the sense I originally gleaned from the readings, but
you refer to the 5th circuit shock as ‘rapture,’ which is presumably a more
‘positive’ or desirable experience. I suppose I’m just asking for
clarification on the idea of ‘shocks.’
AA: The term “shock” gets a lot of bad press. I use the word for specific events
that catalyze growth, mobility and transformation of some sort or another. I do
not view shocks as innately negative or positive but neutral. I see that how we
respond to a given shock can determine the degree we enhance (positive) or
diminish (negative) ourselves. Using the 8-Circuit model, I can track four
types of shock: Ecstasy, Uncertainty, Indivisibility, and Impermanence. For
example, 5th circuit shock of ecstasy can be positive for some and negative
for others, depending on how we respond to more pleasure, happiness or joy
than we’re accustomed or “allowed” to. I see C-5 bliss as our natural somatic
state when we’re free of the burdens of unresolved survival anxiety, power
issues, over-thinking, moral judgments and familial guilt complexes—innate
to the first four circuits, respectively—that can crimp our bliss capacity
accordingly.
On No-Form
In the practice of the standing No-Form, would you recommend eyes open
or closed for this?
AA: At first eyes closed or open just a slit. This is to minimize external
stimulus and allow the attention to be redirected within. Later as one becomes
more proficient with one’s No-Form practice, eyes open or closed doesn’t
matter as much (but this is usually after much practice).
Would you see any downside to practicing it in spare moments in your day
so you get better at entering it for when you’re doing rituals? It feels like
something I could do to some extent even walking around, but more so
sitting on the bus and things like that.
AA: I do this all the time. This is actually a very good way to build a casual
relationship with No-Form. Casual is key so that No-Form does not become a
big deal. No point in making nothingness a big deal.
Within the rituals, esp. when doing no form before a polarity, would it make
sense to resist the first urges to go on to the polarity in favor of making
sure you get to the bottom of no form first (pun intended)? I found in the
Anima Shrine task that I wasn’t sure if I’d really achieved no form yet but
felt pulled towards my polarity so just went with it. But maybe I should have
stuck it out more.
AA: From No-Form, sense the presence of the energies projected into the
space until you feel its ‘pull,’ rather than the inner urge or push to enter. This
gives credence to a presence beyond ego urge. There is also no achieving total
No-Form which represents a process of an infinite experience. One can only
deepen the No-Form receptivity by degrees until one reaches a certain limit
where one can go no further (until maybe the next attempt). A key here is “no
effort.” Any trying to deepen No-Form results in only trying. Let No-Form act
on you as a solvent, a gentling force of dissolution. I have been at it 30 years
and am still at Beginner’s Mind.
This is the vaguest question: it’s about the technique and/or intention
applied when doing no form. I’m seeing it so far as a deep listening down
into myself to create internal space. I’m not sure how to apply words to this,
but would you say the approach is largely ‘intentional’: i.e., you’re
wordlessly saying to yourself ‘I am nothing’ and waiting for that to
manifest in your experience? An easier way to put it might be just to ask if
you’re able to flesh out how to ‘do’ no form?
AA: The process starts out intentional and voluntary; we make a choice to
empty, to be nothing, etc. At some point, the experience takes over. This
usually happens when that part of us that actually IS nothing steps forth and
replaces the previous intentionality. It steps forth after the conscious mind
sanctions and thus, invites, its presence by choosing to “be nothing.”
On Synchronicity
How do you differentiate synchronicity from precognition? Generally
speaking, does precognition concern thoughts correlating with reality as we
experience it, while synchronicity is more about outside events correlating
with each other?
AA: I use the word ‘synchronicity’ to refer to the perfect timing of what is
already happening all the time within and around us, whether we are aware of it
or not. From the vantage of C-7, synchronicity is the standard time zone of the
cosmos at large. As we get closer to our true centers and aligned or
synchronized with our true selves, I think we become more aware of the
phenomena of synchronicity; it becomes more obvious. Precognition is a word
for the inner knowing that sometimes enables us to be cognizant of something
about to happen before it actually happens, like thinking of someone and then
they telephone you. I don’t see precognition as a function of thought but of
intuition and second attention.
On Metaprogramming
Do you have any thoughts on Robert Anton Wilson’s perspective on
Metaprogramming and why he thought it was a Circuit 7 activity? In my
experience it is clearly a Circuit 6 phenomena. Why do you think he saw it
as C7? Perhaps using the Autonomous Will of C6 to arrange C1–5 issues
but with the energy and current of C7?
AA: Good question. My speculation here is that Bob had an abrupt and
powerful C-7 awakening, maybe with a very strong dose of LSD, and was
exposed to that chain of biological command where DNA manufactures (and
thus controls) the Brain & CNS which, in turn, control the Body. If during such
a powerful C-7 activation his ego identified with the DNA matrix, I could see
how he might come out of this experience pegging C-7 as the
metaprogramming circuit. He also saw C-7 linked with genetic engineering
which can be seen as a type of metaprogramming. I think if Hitler had studied
the 8-CB model, he also would have pegged C-7 as the metaprogramming
circuit but with obviously very different motives. Beyond genetic engineering,
I don’t think we can “program” C-7 or C-8, which to me signify states of
consciousness so far beyond ego volition they border on the absurd. I think
ego volition stops with C-6. I also think C-1 through C-6 can be self-modified
and even transformed through the Autonomous Will and Vision of C6 but only
after it’s sufficiently anchored in C-2 (and aligned with the imperatives and
bias of the emotional body to keep things “real”).
On Chapel Perilous
Do you find similarities between chapel perilous and Gurdjieff ’s
explanation of the moon or Castaneda’s relationship with the eagle’s
emanations?
AA: The experience of Chapel Perilous can differ for each person as much as
the ideas and thoughts that separate us from each other. Castaneda’s ‘eagle’s
emanations’ reflect the cultural imagery of the shamanic tradition he was
absorbing and/or inventing, just as Gurdjieff’s explanation of being ‘food for
the moon’ reflected his Armenian cultural bias around the Feminine which, in
some cultures, is deemed inferior to the ‘Sun Absolute.’ I think Chapel
Perilous represents the crosscurrents where our cultural reality tunnels
intersect with our own conceptual maps and where our individual egos are
entangled in the cross hairs. I think escaping the Chapel Perilous involves
extracting our identification (our egos) from the cultural matrix we live in and
strengthening the warp and the weave of our own tapestry. And with our hard-
earned autonomy, we can learn to weave in and out of the cultural cloth with
minimal entanglement.
About the Confession, Prayer and Breaking Trance: How does one know if
portions of themselves are “stuck” in C.P.? Also, is it always a negative
thing to have parts of ourselves “lost” or missing? Can we ever really
become “whole” in this space/time continuum and, better yet, do we want
to, meaning; are there or could there be benefits to having aspects of
ourselves in other places (C.P.), provided we are functioning fairly well
without calling these portions of ourselves back “home”? I’m amazed at
the thinking processes this course has awakened in me, and will continue to
work with the material you have presented here.
AA: Typically, you can notice parts of yourself in CP by a certain vacancy
within yourself. In Angel Tech, there’s a section called “Mechanical Problems”
(pp. 64–124) with a sub-section called “Pretty Vacant” that details how you
can identify those pieces. Sometimes we have to get lost before we can be
found. By the way, you may want to eliminate the word “always” from your
vocabulary unless you really believe this word applies to anything real.
“A Neurological Autobiography”
“The Eight-Circuit Brain Interview”
“The Magus and the Mystic”
“The Cosmic Trigger Effect”
“A Neurological Autobiography”
A Personal Chronology of Outside Shocks and Hedonic
Upgrades
Like many others, I have survived a series of real life shocks, all of which
have coincided with specific turning points on my path. I have chosen to
frame these turning points as a personal chronology of hedonic upgrades,
shocks and imprints, from birth to present time. As you read through these
episodes, see if you can identify the specific circuits activated along the way
and the shocks that triggered them. You may notice that I have refrained
from using the word “circuits” in my personal story. Oddly enough, I don’t
naturally use this word in the ways I privately think, speak, or write about
myself. I tend to focus more on actual experiences first and then, see if and
how they might be symbolized later. — A.A.
Helsinki, Finland, shortly after sunrise, November 11, 1952. I was born
drunk. My mother told me she drank brandy to relax her muscles and ease the
pain during her labor with me. I asked her if she thought I was born drunk and
she said, “Probably.” If this is true, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, I
count intoxication as my first infant imprint (which may help explain a few
things). Though I really didn’t start drinking alcohol until I was forty, I’ve
always felt a deep-rooted emotional need to get high. When I don’t meet that
basic hedonic need, my emotional tank drains and when it’s running on vapors,
depression sets in. Depression is not the problem, whereas not meeting my
needs can become very problematic.
Fulfilling my basic emotional need to get high has meant doing whatever it
takes to alter my consciousness towards an exalted state. This need is not
unique to me but historically reflects one of the oldest human rituals we know
of. For tens of thousands of years we humans have been extremely resourceful
in finding and creating all kinds of ways for getting high. Whether it has been
to escape the dismal drudgery of mundane existence or the dreariness of
cultural ennui or simply to expand the outer limits of our consciousness, we
humans are hard-wired to get high.
MY WORLD ON DRUGS
As a rebellious teen growing up in the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley
during the late sixties, drugs were not just a recreational habit—they were my
world. Drugs were available everywhere. My drugs of choice were pot,
shrooms, and acid, plus a few regretful detours into the rubber room zones of
PCP and the chattering jitters of bennies. Back then, pot and acid were first
rate and very inexpensive. Throughout high school, I did just enough dealing to
keep a steady supply for myself and my friends. At fifteen, a shattering
epiphany accompanied the peak of my first LSD trip. In a flash I realized that
nothing I was learning in High School, except maybe typing class and Drama
101, could ever help me survive in the real world. Up until then I was a shy
straight-A student trying my best to do the right thing. I decided that the New
and Improved Right Thing was achieving the minimal grade point average
necessary to graduate. This revelation marked my first renunciation of
culturally imposed values, an imprint and a shift that would gather steady
momentum in the coming decades.
One thing I learned from Bob was how a certain kind of writing could, with
enough imagination and will, act just like magick. With this in mind I decided
to write myself out of Chapel Perilous by scripting a two-act stage play about a
nonstop catastrophic romance between a Man, a Woman, the Anima of the
Man, and the Animus of the Woman. After writing the play in Carmel, I
traveled north to the quiet farming town of Petaluma where a cluster of theatre
friends let me couch surf for a few months. I ended up casting three of them in
the play and cast myself as “Anton” the Animus (in homage to Bob). In January
of 1983, “Chapel Perilous: Dreaming Phases for Lovers” premiered at
Petaluma’s Cinnabar Theatre and Studio Eremos in San Francisco. Chapel
Perilous” was ritual magick disguised as theatre. Judging by audience
response, it was also good theatre. The invisible soul-retrieval ritual worked
well enough and I walked scot-free out of the dark wood, at least for the time
being…
Ten years ago I discovered Robert Anton Wilson and the 8-Circuit Brain
model, and began devouring whatever I could find online and in used book
stores. Early in that journey, a copy of Angel Tech found its way into my
possession. I never got very far into the book; I was not ready for what it
offered, or rather what it demanded.
Several years later I came to know Antero through his posts on the 8-Circuit
Brain discussion group at tribe.net, where his authoritarian posting style often
rubbed me the wrong way. Years of reading Wilson and participating in Wilson-
inspired Internet discussions had reinforced my natural anti-authoritarian
tendencies. Just who did this Alli guy think he was?
Yet behind his delivery I found wisdom, forthrightness, and a spirit of inquiry
that demanded my attention. Eventually I understood that Antero’s tone did not
emerge from an overdeveloped sense of false security, but rather from
someone who has courageously explored the mystery and lived to tell about it.
Antero writes from the authority of direct experience and the sanity of
someone who has integrated frontier explorations with a solid grounding in
self.
This interview originally took place in two parts. During the in-between period,
I spent 48 hours with Antero when he invited a few of his virtual acquaintances
to stay with him in Berkeley for the cast and crew screening of his latest film,
The Invisible Forest. Despite having never met before, I immediately felt at
ease in his warm, open presence. He had an unexpectedly nerdy, playful quality
about him, which I found delightful and endearing. I felt intimidated only once
when he asked if we had any interest in a game of chess. Having played a
handful of times since childhood, I declined the offer.
In between paratheatre labs and with his film all but wrapped up, we enjoyed a
largely quiet time spent with good coffee, good conversation, and casual walks
about the Berkeley underground. After my brief time there, I left with a lasting
impression of a man who lives life one hundred percent on his own terms.
Although the opportunity never presented itself, he had a gleam in his eye and a
cackle in his laugh that told me we could get into a lot of mischief together.
And next time, I will take him up on that game of chess. — Mike Gathers
MG: The process of making the unconscious conscious seems like a common
theme among various traditions of self work. How does mindful awareness
tie into the 8-Circuit Brain model??
AA: The complex conditioning received from infant imprints, our culture at
large, early childhood and parental influences, peer pressure, teachers in our
public education systems, and the mass media all serve to shape the definitions
of the individual experience of Physical, Emotional, Conceptual and Social
survival and intelligence. From my view, these bottom four circuits represent
patterns of behavior, habit and response that remain for the greater part in most
of us, unconscious.
Though it is commonly assumed that we operate consciously and awake in all
these four “survival” levels, contradictions to that assumption arise and persist
in the face of any serious, ongoing self-observation. The 8-Circuit Brain
model can be used in the process of “making the unconscious conscious” once
the assumption that we are “awake and conscious” is relaxed and replaced with
a spirit of inquiry into the very nature of consciousness itself and more
specifically, the distinction between what is mechanical and what is alive; what
is preconceived and what is spontaneous, what is habitual and what is truly
natural.
MG: Does a mindfulness practice such as sitting meditation create space
for insights into the upper circuits?
AA: Mindfulness, presence of mind, accelerated perception…all these phrases
relate to my experience with the 8-Circuit Brain model as fifth and sixth
circuit consciousness events. Fifth circuit somatic intelligence ignites when
mind and body start yoking, coming into union, as in yoga; bringing mind to
body. The body expresses that aspect of ourselves always in present time,
whereas the mind often wanders into imaginary and projected realms of past
and future. When they come together as a conscious act, the mind begins a
transformation and the body develops more confidence to keep living. The
body also expresses that aspect of ourselves that always knows it’s going to
die.
When the conceptual mind (circuit three) is humbled into service to life itself,
that is to say, to attune its attention to the body as teacher, as guru, as source of
life and guidance, then we have the start of a kind of somatic enlightenment
process. Body wisdom becomes exalted over intellectual cleverness. How
circuit three intellect is humbled differs for each of us but usually it involves
some kind of direct experience of unity, of the shocking objective reality of
unity, the interconnectedness of all life.
Before such a shock, the intellect typically functions exclusively (and often
dogmatically) in dualistic modes of comparison and deduction. The direct
experience of unity, the shock of unity, blows the mind. And the mind is forced
to reassess its purpose and place in relation to all things. Or, flip out on some
ego-tripping bender of insanity.
Eventually this yoking, or body/mind yoga, naturally blossoms into sixth
circuit “second attention.” When body and mind work together, perception of
reality is released. This perception expresses an awareness not linked to
thinking or the assignment of meaning, as with circuit three “first” attention,
but with presence, energy and phenomena. It is a kind of seeing, rather than
merely looking or judging, and also a kind of “seeing through” whatever
illusions of separation the ego works to maintain and buffer itself against the
objective reality of unity.
MG: Lately, I have conceptualized the 8-Circuit Brain model as a system of
four intelligences (physical, emotional, conceptual, and social) that each
has two distinct modes of operation—ordinary consciousness (C1–4) and
transpersonal consciousness (C5–8). For example, I conceptualize C1 and
C5 as polarities of the same intelligence where we normally operate on C1
and sometimes shift into C5. Does this align with your findings in working
with the model?
AA: I agree with you here regarding the upper four circuits acting like
outgrowths of the bottom four. It’s like with clairvoyance being merely an
amplification and acceleration of regular perception; clairaudience and the
sense of hearing, clairsentience and the sense of touch, etc. However I have
found that the upper four don’t sprout very well until the ground of the lower
four circuits have been well tilled, fertilized and tended with care. This
amounts to a complete overhaul of their definitions so as to replace the
culture’s images with images developed from one’s own direct experience.
And before that can happen, there has to be some way or method or self-work
or spontaneous enlightenment to dismantle the old paradigms and the
wherewithal to endure the transformation into one’s truer, more innate self.
MG: I suspect that early linguistics and the assignment of meaning (first
attention) belong more to C2 emotional intelligence than C3 conceptual
intelligence. The toddler goes through a phase of asking first, “What is
this?” and second, “Is it mine?” that seems to tie into C2 development of
the me/not me territorial boundaries. Higher level conceptualizing still
remains with C3 while the lower level labeling falls under C2 territorial
processes. This also puts the first attention on C2, which ties in nicely with
the second attention on C6. Your thoughts?
AA: Having seen three of my own daughters grow into circuits one and two, I
have to stand by the notion that C-3 is where the linguistic labeling really
starts, the naming and the nicknaming, the comprehensible words (to C-3 savvy
adults) assigned to events and objects. However, I have noticed a kind of C-1
pre-verbal gurgle-talk that some mothers can miraculously understand and
translate into C-3 for the dumfounded, astonished fathers.
I disagree with first attention assigned to C-2, no matter how neatly it fits into
the whole sixth circuit association with second attention. I use the term “first
attention” for its specific attributes of automatically assigning meaning to
thoughts and words and also as a kind of attention that is really inseparable
from thinking. C-2 engagement is usually busy emoting or testing personal
strength, boundaries and status (pecking order) in primarily nonverbal ways.
An important side note. I know the borders between these circuits and what
they represent to as blurry and with many messy overlays. They are not so
clear cut. I think if we can keep this Mess Factor in mind, it may help minimize
that hopelessly nerdy tendency for trying to squeeze the putty of real life too
tightly into the cookie cutter ideas of our hungry minds.
MG: Both Leary and Wilson wrote that the bottom circuits imprinted at
acute, random moments in early childhood and adolescence, but I do not
see the biological basis for such small windows of imprinting. Certainly
birth is the primary C1 imprinting event and the universal human trauma,
but I suspect it only accounts for roughly 30 to 80% of the C1 imprint
depending on the individual and the circumstances of birth. It seems that
C1 imprinting starts in the womb and continues well into the first several
months of life. I suspect that C4 imprinting occurs over several years, and I
struggle with Wilson’s assertion that the entire C4 imprint is taken on at the
moment of first orgasm. What are your thoughts on imprinting?
AA: What birth is not traumatic? If all birth is labeled traumatic, perhaps it is
more like standard to the experience and not the exception. My experiences
parallel Wilson’s and Leary’s here regarding the early childhood imprints of
the first four circuits. Once imprinted, however, there are years and decades of
affirmative conditioning that fortify and maintain those imprints, habits that
can run throughout the rest of our lives and can run or rule the rest of our lives.
Though C-1 imprinting does start with the infant dependency event with the
mother, or surrogate mother, I think circuits two through four (especially C-4)
can remain “un-imprinted” for years to come differing, of course, with each
person and their circumstances.
As for the entire circuit four imprint occurring with the first orgasm, this
sounds ridiculous to me. If only it were that simple and easy yet circuit four
has proven to be anything but easy and simple. It’s not just me; look at the
world, look at our human history of warfare, genocide and social tragedy.
Other equally complex imprints such as religious upbringing, courtship rituals,
woman and manhood rites of passage, pregnancy, and parenting also inhabit the
web of fourth circuit realities.
MG: Could the development of morality fall under the C3 imprint as we
build our conceptual maps of right and wrong, whereas C4 imprinting
involves the development of our individual identity within our tribe?
AA: Look to real life examples for these answers. Look at friends of yours
with the highest C-3 IQ or the ones with overemphasized intellects and ask
yourself if they have developed any real sense of right and wrong. Maybe they
can tell the difference between a “correct” answer and an “incorrect” answer or
whether it’s morally wrong to cheat on a test but the whole area of ethics
demands something greater than intellect; it demands conscience. As for tribal
identity, that won’t happen unless you know the code of the tribe and can prove
yourself worthy of it. That code would probably express how that tribe defines
right and wrong.
MG: Carlos Castaneda’s don Juan said, “For me there is only the traveling
on the paths that have a heart, on any path that may have a heart. There I
travel, and the only worthwhile challenge for me is to traverse its full
length. And there I travel—looking, looking, breathlessly.” How can we
work with the 8-CB model as a path with heart?
AA: The term “heart” has been tossed about so much in pop psychology and
other areas as to almost lose meaning. I define “heart” in terms of courage.
Fighters have heart; great fighters have great hearts. Heart is not just about
peace and love and flowers. It’s also about the courage to become vulnerable
and to show compassion for your naked self. Heart is about facing life as open
as the empty sky with the seriousness of a child at play.
Heart plays a pivotal role in the integration process of the 8-Circuit Brain
model. It’s one thing to understand the model, its basic definitions of
intelligence and internal correlations and, it’s an altogether different thing to
realize, to embody, your participation in the experience that the circuits act as
symbols for. It takes a lot of heart to live nakedly enough to discover one’s
most direct experiences and responses to the realities represented by each
circuit. It takes a lot of heart to discover direct experience, period.
MG: Could you define ego in terms of the 8-Circuit brain? Do you see a
distinction between ego and self?
AA: In context to the 8-Circuit Brain model, the first four circuits symbolize
specific developmental stages of the ego personality as our physical,
emotional, conceptual and social survival strategies and defenses. However,
until these levels or circuits can be experienced firsthand and redefined for
oneself, our survival strategies and defenses tend to run, more or less, on
automatic. Running on automatic means a life defined and driven chiefly by the
unconscious parental and societal conditioning we were raised with, rather
than a life dictated by our own innate sensibilities, values and ethics as an
awakening human being. This shift from automatic living to awakening
parallels Carl Jung’s Individuation, Dada Bhagwan’s Self-realization, Dr.
Abraham Mazlow’s Self-Actualization, G.I. Gurdjieff’s Self-Work and other
related approaches to differentiating the innate being from the unconscious
complexes we have mistaken for identity.
The 8-Circuit Brain can offer useful guidelines for revisioning these four
survival modes, according to one’s own discovery of what each one means and
how they interact with each other, towards the maturing of a strong, supple and
flexible ego. How the term “ego” differs from “self” should remain an ongoing
inquiry. In shorthand, ego refers to any self-image or idea we have become
emotionally invested in protecting, defending and preserving; for whatever
reasons. The term “self”, for me, represents a process not a goal; self as a verb,
ego as a noun.
Our experiences are mediated by our bias, beliefs, ideas, ideals, etc. When
these mediations can be minimized we can open up to a more direct
experience of whatever is happening. As we experience life more directly, or
with minimal mediation, a new kind of self develops…one that must stay open
and flexible to persist, rather than the ego tendency for fixating on a set image
or idea of who we are or what is happening. Again, self as verb, ego as noun.
Since the ego is made up of ephemeral image-stuff, it is naturally insecure and
understandably covets the idea of being in control or the boss of it all. Even
though deep down we may know it’s an illusion to feed the ego’s fantasy, we do
it anyway. That’s sleepy human. We also forget that ego is a fantasy and end up
taking it way too seriously. Dreaming humans. The process of selfhood, on the
other hand, seems more guided by experience itself where the situation
becomes the boss. When we become fully engaged, the ego completely
disappears into the experience itself. Ah! The awakening human!
MG: Where do the “upper” process-oriented circuits 5–8 fit in?
AA: Whereas the first four circuits symbolize a hierarchy of survival needs,
circuits five through eight represent states of consciousness and functions of
intelligence operating with, what I call, transpersonal post-survival agendas.
These agendas push and stretch human consciousness to their outermost limits
and can be thought of as evolutionary triggers. Upper circuit experiences are
often triggered by specific types of shocks, such as fifth circuit shock of
ecstasy, sixth circuit shock of uncertainty (or relativity), seventh circuit shock
of unity and eighth circuit shock of impermanence.
When I use the word ‘shock’ here I mean these experiences are only shocking
to the ego-personality that remains naive to, or in denial of, the objective
realities of ecstasy, uncertainty, unity and impermanence. Cultural
conditioning, or cultural trance, keeps us asleep to these innate realities until
we are ready to become aware of and live with more reality. As we know, real
life delivers these types of shocks all the time. We do not need to study
psychology or the 8-Circuit brain or meditation to experience them. However,
these examples also represent methods and systems through which the outside
shocks of our lives can be integrated and even transformed towards productive
ends, rather than leaving us devastated victims of circumstance.
How the “upper” process-oriented circuits 5–8 fit in is as a kind of language or
grid to help us organize our perceptions around those unsettling, yet
consciousness expanding, experiences that don’t always come with their own
explanations, instructions or descriptions. The 8-Circuit brain model provides
a context through which to view and apply the transpersonal experiences of our
lives in more personal ways.
MG: Does the shift from goals to processes necessitate the activation of
these upper circuits?
AA: Though this shift you mention can increase the probability of activating
these upper circuits, I don’t think it’s guaranteed. Circuit five opens naturally
enough through any somatic experience and practice such as tantric sex, yoga,
Tai Chi, or creative dance, as well as, more spontaneous events such as the
chemistry of falling in love or the joyous culture shock of traveling in a
favorite foreign country. However, activation of circuits six, seven and eight
rarely avails itself to the assertion of our personal efforts. An exception to this
might be the ingestion of certain psychoactive substances, which I, for the
most part, do not recommend due to their tendency to force the circuit open. I
am more biased towards the disciplined alchemy of simmering low heat or
gradual opening, than white light/white heat blowtorch tactics.
It seems that the further consciousness extends into the transpersonal, the less
personal effort or ego is required to sustain the experience. This is where the
notion of Gurdjieff’s “outside shocks” comes in; they are outside of the ego’s
control and comprehension. And as I mentioned earlier, outside shocks happen
all the time. What protects us from the awareness their objective realities is
what Gurdjieff called kundabuffers, the buffers of our conditioned beliefs,
ideas, ideals and assumptions that over-mediate our experiences. As these
buffers relax or fall away, the upper circuits become more activated. These
buffers are often there for good reason and why their forced elimination or
disintegration using high-octane drugs can become traumatic in and of itself.
MG: Can the lower, goal-oriented circuits be experienced as processes?
AA: I think the lower, goal-oriented circuits can be experienced as processes
after we discover the post-survival context their survival agendas can or could
serve. For example, attaining security for the sake of security alone is results
in a kind of cul de sac, dead end life. We are animals who need to nest, breed
and sustain our shelter but we are also more than animals and will become
bored, frustrated and even violent if denied our higher human need for fifth
circuit ecstasy, for instance. A life lived solely for security, as it turns out, is
not enough for some of us. This is why the 8-Circuit brain model and the
exploration of higher consciousness are not for everybody.
This is not a populist system nor is pursuing post-survival agendas a viable
mainstream objective. I do see specific ways the lower and higher circuits can
be linked to serve both survival and post-survival agendas in harmony, given
there is enough commitment and self-motivation to realize such a Promethean
enterprise. The bottom four survival circuits, once integrated as fulfilled
needs, act as anchors to stabilize the shocking experiences transmitted through
the upper four circuits in these specific combinations: 1/5, 2/6, 3/7 and 4/8.
When basic 1st circuit security needs such as food, shelter and safety are
actually met, we become free from survival anxiety and move naturally towards
5th circuit bliss. When 2nd circuit emotional needs for status, territory and
power are genuinely fulfilled, we naturally grow more empowered and able to
permit more uncertainty, supporting a 6th circuit relativistic position allowing
greater simultaneity of multiple views. When 3rd circuit intellectual needs for
problem solving, communication with language and creative thinking are met,
we are better equipped to find or invent the symbols and images to represent
and anchor 7th circuit impressions of ineffable unity and boundless
indivisibility with all of existence.
When 4th circuit social needs for getting along with people, making friends
and forming clans are met, we find a sense of belonging that allows us to live
with the awareness of 8th circuit experiences of our mortality, impermanence
and intimacy with the all-encompassing abyss of existence. Thus ends a brief
summary of how the lower, goal-oriented circuits can be experienced as
dynamic processes when linked with the upper circuits in more purposeful
ways.
MG: Earlier you mentioned that physical, emotional, conceptual, and social
survival strategies compose our ego, but that ego also refers emotional
investment in protecting, defending and preserving self image. Does it then
stand that ego is not necessarily our various survival strategies
themselves, but more so our C2 emotional investment in these strategies?
AA: The way I use the term “ego” is more like a metaphor to help me
understand the human needs for security, boundaries, sanity, love and morality.
All these reflect distinct survival criteria of the first four circuits,
respectively. There are other needs but these can help explain how the first
four circuits symbolize a kind of hierarchy of needs that, when met and
fulfilled, nurture the development of a unique personality and distinct ego.
And then, there is that level of ego that expresses an emotional investment and
attachment to a particular self-image, an image often justified by our proven,
and unproven, talents, skills and/or means of employment, i.e., since I read
astrology charts for a living, I must be an “astrologer.” As this attachment to
self-image persists, we demonstrate defensive behaviors when confronted by
anybody who decides that we are not who we think we are or posing as a fraud
or impostor. “How dare you!” Emotional investment under this duress reveals
itself as “hurt feelings” until we lighten up, laugh it off and realize we were
simply taking ourselves—our self-image—too seriously. The real crisis of
ego lies with forgetting that it’s just an image.
It is my experience that ego becomes more and more refined as the
personality develops and matures. As we learn to fulfill our personal security,
status, intellectual and social needs we become more well-rounded as
personalities and, we can easily take pride in that. We pride ourselves as being
a “good person” (C-4 ego), or a “smart person” (C-3 ego), or an “important
person” (C-2 ego) or a “stable person” (C-1 ego) and become invested in these
self-images; that’s a lot of ego. As the ego becomes more well-rounded and
refined, new problems arise. You see, the refined ego is more difficult to
track, identify and expose than let’s say, a louder, more obnoxious and obvious
ego. A sufficiently refined ego can easily masquerade as “no ego,” as
demonstrated by the countless spiritual gurus whose ultra-slick egos went by
unnoticed until scandals of one sort or another eventually caught up with them.
These are not necessarily bad people, just as “ego” is not necessarily bad, but
people who mistakenly bought into the illusion of their own more esoteric,
slippery self-image. They confused a part of themselves for the whole self.
Our actual survival strategies can act separately from ego. We are all animals
and like our four-legged friends, much of our planetary survival tactics
function as pure instinct. However, as humans we suffer from self-
consciousness and that ego causes suffering. We suffer differently from all the
other animals. Most of the suffering I see in the world is self-imposed
suffering and often, unconsciously so. It is a kind of cheap suffering with no
payoff beyond bitching and moaning about trivial drivel.
I think there can exist, at the most primordial levels of each circuit, a very pure
expression of intelligence relatively free of fixation on image, pride and/or
false propriety. However, to access this purity and to maintain it in this society
is almost impossible. I mean, we can hold it as an ideal but practically
speaking, I think it’s the lesser of two evils to just accept the ego, remain
vigilant of one’s own egotistical tendencies and try not to have too many ideas
about who you are. My own ego-image is about minimizing ideas about myself
—or not to take any of them too seriously—as they just get in the way of
direct experience. Besides, there are far more interesting uses for ideas than
to cake them onto myself.
MG: Setting the tangled thing called ‘ego’ aside, the emotional investment
and attachment to self-image strikes me as a function of identification,
which contrasts against the C6 shock of relation. Does the C2/C6 verticality
lie in a shift from identification to relation? Does the process of relating
suggest more awareness, more choice, and thus the capability for “reality
selection?”
AA: It’s true, when we have become completely identified with something or
someone, it becomes nearly impossible to relate with that thing or person due
to a lack of spatial awareness. Relating requires space. Like the synapse gap
between interacting neurons, I don’t think there can be any authentic relating or
communicating without an increase of spatial awareness. This literally means
assigning value to one’s own personal space and the personal space of others.
The parameters of one’s personal space differs for each of us but usually it’s
the three to five feet of actual space around one’s physical body that I refer to.
Once this space can be honored and respected, then we all have more choices
about who to let in and how to navigate within the sphere of our own exclusive
energy field. Honoring personal space also allows for more trust that this
space won’t be as easily violated or invaded.
In terms of C2/C6 verticality, I see the fixed idea you are attempting to impose
—that identification belongs to C-2 and relating to C-6—over what is
essentially a fluid and unpredictable state. But people can and do get fixated or
overly-identified in C-6 in ways that are not C-2 involved, that do not involve
the emotions. This happens often enough with those training to become
psychic or clairvoyant who forget to anchor (or ground) their newly opening
third eye and its relativistic outlook in the body itself, in emotional honesty. In
the extreme, they become emotionally disconnected and their previous
clairvoyance, or clear seeing, turns into a clear cruelty to others and
ultimately, themselves.
‘Reality selection’ is a C-6 term I use for an attribute of perception that allows
for the simultaneous existence of multiple realities sharing equal value. This
C-6 attribute carries a strong relativistic bias where no status or prioritization
of realities has been assigned yet. Pure awareness. Reality selection is made
possible by the relaxation of the first attention and the activation of the second
attention. This can happen by accident, as with certain outside shocks to our
attention, and/or it can occur with conscious training.
The first attention is that awareness linked to thinking, language and the
automatic assignment of meaning to what is being observed. The second
attention is that awareness linked to presence, energy and phenomena without
any projection of meaning involved. The second attention is what Carlos
Castaneda wrote about in his “don Juan” books when we referred to “seeing.”
Many of us look but do not see, in other words. Reality selection is a metaphor
for the process of dialing into the different bands of the spectrum of realities
opened up by the second attention. What you do, or can do, with that vision
depends on how well anchored C-6 is with C-2 emotional reality, or how
engaged you actually are with your feelings, passions and the motivation to
make things happen.
MG: In my own experience, I can “see” the differing perspectives (realities)
of various individuals, but I have trouble integrating all those
perspectives; I struggle to “dial into” them as you suggest. Tim Leary used
to say, “you can be anyone, this time around,” but that has not been my
experience.
AA: When you talk about integrating all those perspectives you’re really
reaching towards C-7 experiences of cosmic unity but that magnum of
indivisibility cannot be forced, contrived or “integrated” as any conscious act.
To do so expresses the C-3 ego arrogance of attempting some unified field
theory by imposing conceptualizations over something that remains essentially
unfathomable to intellectual scrutiny: the underlying interconnectedness of all
existence.
C-7 intelligence lives with and knows the existing unity weaving all those
perspectives together. They are already integrated. The trick is anchoring this
experience of unity—which is at essence beyond words and beyond duality—
with C-3 intellect using symbols, language and images that can communicate
that somehow. Those of us opening up to C-7 also become responsible for
maintaining our sanity which involves maintaining our communication lines
with other minds. Without this C-3 anchoring, our consciousness drifts far and
away beyond the body and mind and, from the bodies and minds of others.
Many assigned to our mental asylums are actually C-7 casualties who never
found or created C-3 anchors. Their ghost ships sail the high seas of eternity,
forever and alone.
As for Timothy Leary, he was perhaps the most misunderstood famous person
of the 20th century. I think what Leary meant when he said, “you can be anyone,
this time around,” was that through conscientious use of LSD one could re-
imprint their nervous system and, if you were willing to die to your old self
and be reborn anew, transform your life accordingly.
MG: Earlier you mentioned experiencing firsthand and redefining the
circuits for one’s self. Could you say more about the process of defining
one’s own terms?
AA: It feels like maybe you have hit a frustration point here, of not finding
what you were either looking for or hoping to find. I have found your line of
inquiry up to this point to be incisive and thoughtful. Your question about the
process of defining one’s own terms is a big question, and may be too general
for me to address but I will try. This process of defining one’s own terms
reminds me of a C-1/C-5 process we explore in the paratheatre work around
expanding what we call our “movement vocabulary.” As animals, we all express
a distinct movement style, an instinctive way we move through space or how
we enter a room for the first time without thinking about it. This personal style
forms the basis of an entire movement vocabulary made up of a set of specific
patterns of motion in the way we walk, crawl, run, and otherwise move across
the floor through space.
In paratheatre work, we strive to expand and stretch our movement vocabulary
beyond the comfortable and habitual so as to discover entirely new ways of
expressing the physical instrument. On a C-1/C-5 level this amounts to
defining the terms of our physical self-expression. But to do this, we first
must expose the existing conditions of our limitations, where we are in a rut
and mechanically repeating the same old movements over and over, again. And
so that marks the first stage of this process. After we become familiar enough
with our particular rut, we explore what we call ‘movement taboos’…moving
in ways we normally wouldn’t due to shame, or fear or embarrassing exposure
of some kind. Breaking our movement taboos opens up the playing field for
redefining our movement vocabulary and liberating a wider, more dynamic
range of motion. I think we can apply this same principle of defining and
redefining our terms to the other circuits, as well, given that we remain true to
the distinct integrity of each one, i.e., their emotional, conceptual and social
realities.
MG: So defining and redefining our terms isn’t so much a simple C3
exercise of labeling each of the circuits and what they mean to you, but
rather a much more rigorous practice of determining one’s “comfort zone”
in the context of the reality or medium of that particular circuit, and then
moving past that comfort zone into a new areas of experience?
AA: Exactly. There’s a reason why self-work is called self-work; it’s actually
difficult and requires effort, rigor and diligence. When we’re defining C-3
terms it can be as simple as renaming, labeling and making any symbolic
adjustments necessary to change the lines on a map. But when addressing the
other seven circuits, we really have to yield to their innate values, properties
and attributes or we’re fooling ourselves. Each circuit has its own code, or
language, that can be detected and learned by any illuminated C-3 intellect that
has outgrown its tyranny for imposing its conceptual code onto everything
else. An illuminated mind gives off more light of perception, allowing greater
receptivity to the signals, patterns and codes originating in the other centers,
or circuits.
The process of identifying our various comfort zones in the various circuits is
key to understanding the nature of formidable forces of habit, inertia and
redundancy there. When our various physical, emotional, conceptual and social
habitual comfort zones can be exposed, I think we stand a greater chance of
stepping outside those parameters and going against the grain, you know,
rattling our cages a bit more. Sure it can be uncomfortable; genuine growth
usually is. Sleep is comfortable. Invest a priori status on comfort or living a
comfortable life, and you will go to sleep. If that suits you, then you can be
content with that. But you will not grow or evolve beyond whatever habits
maintain your comfort zones.
“The Magus and the Mystic”
Journal Entries of an Empirical Mystic
When I was about sixteen, I made a private vow never to become anything or
anybody when I grew up. This private pledge was a heartfelt response to what I
saw as a vapid persona problem plaguing most of the teenagers I knew who
seemed hypnotized by the spell (promise?) of premature adulthood. It seemed
most kids my age were in a big rush to become somebody. Whether that
somebody was the “self-image” of their own creation or the public image of
what others expected from them, the very idea put me off. There was a
vulgarity in trying to encapsulate the mystery of their being into some
understandable concept that seemed absurd to me. In high school they called it
an “identity crisis.” To me, it was a ridiculously white Judeo-Christian mental
construct to shroud the embarrassing fact that they did not know how to live
their lives yet. Who could blame them? Nothing in high school taught us how
to survive in the real world. When I realized this, I also realized that I was on
my own.
This vow to “be nothing” inadvertently initiated a specific self-defining
perspective through which the rest of my life would gather momentum and
focus. By not becoming anything, I was naively yet sincerely confessing my
fervent adolescent devotion to what ancient Kabbalists call “ayn sof,” what
Buddhists call the “Illuminated gate of the Void,” and what the Book of Tarot
names “The Fool.” In other words, the mystical impulse had made a home in
me. A primary long-term effect of this impulse has convinced me that the very
core of my being may be made of this nothingness. The fertile void as true
nature? Yes. I know my center as pure potential energy—void of form, shape,
or color. Another side effect has been this sense of ordinariness about this
revelation: I am nothing and it is not a problem.
Spring 1979; Berkeley, CA. I’m playing my electric guitar when the phone
rings. The nervous voice on the other end introduces himself as Larry, a
former Air Force Lieutenant Colonel with a kundalini problem. We don’t know
each other but he heard through some grapevine that I knew about kundalini
problems. I ask him to explain the circumstances around the spontaneous
eruption of the hot spinal fluid and he goes on about his discovery of an
encampment of extraterrestrials near Edwards Air Force Base deep in the
Mojave Desert. “Extraterrestrials? You mean, like UFO people?” I ask. “Yes,”
he says, “and that there were a lot of them using the earth’s energy out there as
some kind of fueling station.” OMFG.
I asked him if he had been able to talk to anyone else besides me about his
experience and he said, no. I told him that I thought he might be undergoing
some kind of kundalini krack-up. I explained how his neck was linked to his
throat chakra, where the kundalini met up with resistance. Seeing how he was
avoiding communicating his experience to anyone, the energy had nowhere to
go but implode in his neck. He was silent for a moment and then told me that I
was probably right and that he would call back after he thought about what I
said some more. We hung up and I went back to playing my 1975 blonde, semi-
hollow body six-string Rickenbacker.
A week later Larry calls back, except now I am calling him Scary Larry in my
mind. He wants me to join him and a group of psychics on a trip out to you-
know-where, deep in the Mojave Desert. His plan, as he spelled it out, was to
get all these clairvoyants out there to validate his life-shattering experience so
that he could get on with his life. He invited me to a pre-trip meeting with him
and the psychics. I told him I’d attend the meeting but didn’t know whether or
not I’d join them in the desert.
Five days later I’m standing in Scary Larry’s living room with about a dozen or
so bug-eyed psychics eyeballing each other and wisecracking about the
upcoming extraterrestrial trip to the desert. In this group I met Geri
DeStefano, a large and ebullient Italian-American woman radiating enough
shakti for ten men. She asked me if I was going and I told her, probably not.
Then she asked me if I would participate in a remote viewing experiment when
they were out there and I said, sure. We got to talking and she asks me “What
else do you do besides read auras?” I told her I was scripting my next play, a
psychic soap opera called As the Worm Turns, but that I was suffering writer’s
block. She laughs loud and long after hearing the play’s title and then tells me,
“There’s someone I want you to meet. His name is Bob. He’s a writer. He
writes books.” I ask, “What kind of books?” She laughs and waves her hand as if
I were asking her an impossible question.
Scary Larry took Geri and all the psychics out to the Mojave Desert while I
stayed home concentrating on that remote viewing experiment. I had played a
little with R.V. during my training with Michael Symonds so I figured I could
get the process going. After entering trance I couldn’t see any extraterrestrials
but I did see a raucous group dancing and partying under the desert moon. It
didn’t make any sense to me so I broke trance and went to sleep. A few days
later Geri calls me up and tells me about their desert adventure. Since they
didn’t see any UFO people out there, she decided to get Larry good and drunk
on lots of tequila. She even convinced him to eat the worm. A grand old time
was apparently had by all.
I told Geri about my remote viewing experiment and she laughed that big laugh
of hers and said, “You’re good. You’re for real.” She asked me how my stage
play was coming along and I told her it wasn’t; damn writer’s block. She said
she had just the thing for me and invited me to a private “salon” up in the
Berkeley hills hosted by Bob and his wife Arlen. It wasn’t until after hanging
up the phone that I realized the book I had been reading for the past month,
Cosmic Trigger, was also authored by someone named Bob—Robert Anton
Wilson. Probably just a coincidence.
Two weeks later and I am sitting on the couch in Robert Anton Wilson’s living
room, dumbfounded by the rapid-fire laughter and brainpower of the
intelligencia bouncing off the walls around me. At 26, I was clearly the
youngest person in the room, the baby of these illuminati of scientists,
authors, mathematicians, magicians, and discordians. Geri and her husband
David were also there. The person who stood out beyond all the other lights in
the room was Arlen Wilson. Bob’s wife Arlen struck me as almost mythic,
wizened yet totally human, a full-bodied woman with a bawdy sense of humor
and an astonishing literary intellect. There was also something about Arlen that
was peculiar and complex, simultaneously severe and merciful and very kind.
Arlen was also clearly Bob’s muse.
A serene, elegant looking fellow with a well-clipped beard walked over to me
and introduced himself as a Discordian. He shook my hand, saying, “Greg
Hill.” I remembered his name from Cosmic Trigger as the author of the
infamous Discordian manifesto, Principia Discordia. He asked me why I was
there. I told him I didn’t know yet, but that Geri had invited me after telling her
about my writer’s block. He asked me what I was writing. I shared a few plot
details from As the Worm Turns and he cracked up and walked over to where
Bob was sitting. I couldn’t hear what they were saying over the buzz of words
ricocheting off the walls like so much flying lasagna, but Bob was laughing.
I felt lightheaded. My gaze drifted over to the window and the night sky
beyond. That’s when I saw it. A slowly moving point of light, paralleling the
horizon, took a sudden ninety-degree vertical turn straight up and kept
climbing. I sat there transfixed when I heard my name called… “Antero.
Antero.” It was Bob. “Greg says you’re writing a psychic soap opera. Any
chance we can give it a virgin reading at the next salon?” My jaw must have
dropped because my words came out sounding funny. “Yes, I can definitely can
have the first draft ready in a month.” My gaze drifted back over to the window
and there was that light again, only this time it was blinking. Or rather,
winking… at me. Now I knew why they called UFO’s unidentifiable flying
objects. I didn’t know what it was and that somehow made me feel very, very
happy.
A month later As the Worm Turns was finished, just in time for Bob’s next
Discordian salon. I was stoked. My new play was scheduled for a virgin reading
with Pope Bob himself. I also became a certified Pope that night, at least
according to the little yellow card Greg Hill gave me when I arrived with seven
copies of my play stuffed under my arm. There I was again, sitting on a couch
in Robert Anton Wilson’s living room wondering whether I would see another
UFO but mostly just plain wondering. The place was hopping. Jack Sarfatti and
Saul Paul Sirag, two cutting edge quantum theorists, were riffing on something
traveling faster than a speeding photon. They were jazzed about a superluminal
theory that claimed information traveled faster than the speed of light. A wiry
heavily bearded, bespectacled Saul reminded me of Allen Ginsburg’s younger
brother. Jack struck me as some kind of medieval science fiction wizard—
brilliant, mercurial, totally present, and not completely there. I sat there
dumbfounded in the crossfire of the superluminal highway.
Later that night Bob was in fine form reading excerpts from his upcoming
book, The Trick Top Hat, from his Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy. I sat there
astonished by the highly compact, information-rich writing style he had
developed. It was as if every other word triggered a different chemical in my
brain. Bob had this unique way with words that acted on my ear-brain loop just
like drugs. I remember thinking to myself, “This is what writing is all about!
Writing is all about magick.” After the initial round of quantum banter and
raucous limericks died down (Bob loved them naughty Irish limericks), Arlen
asked me to assign roles in my play to those who wanted to read. I assigned her
the role of Sylvia, the trance medium who channeled the ghost of Marilyn
Monroe. I gave Bob the part of Frank, her droll husband in charge of putting
Sylvia into a trance and after the spook left her, bringing his wife back into her
body. They both got a big kick out of that idea, maybe bigger than I’ll ever
know. The reading went far beyond my heightened expectations and after a
short break, the subatomic socializing fired up again.
At this point, I should mention that Bob and Arlen’s previous salon inspired me
to create, with my limited cartoon-panel talent, an entire deck of neo-tarot
cards based on the premises of Greg Hill’s book, Principia Discordia,
specifically on the wildly decentralizing central principle of the “Holy Chao”
(pronounced “cow”); a ‘chao’ represents a single unit of chaos. I called the
Zero card “No-Form” and named the number 1 card “Holy Chao” and the 1.5
card “The Chaoboy”. I showed my cards to Greg. Nodding his head while
slowly flipping through the deck he mumbles, “You’re one of us.” He then
showed me a tarot spread he called 5-card Catma, a kind of discordian five-
card stud or, evolutionary poker, where the winner was decided by the best
creation story told using your final five cards. I asked Greg how he could tell
which one was the best story. His pause created a big moment for me. He said,
“You’ll know; it’ll be obvious. Sometimes the best story is the funniest,
sometimes it’s the saddest one, other times it’s the most bizarre but usually
people know right away which story is best.” I asked him, “But what if there
are two best stories?” He laughed outlaid and said, “I suppose then we enter
sudden death.”
Certain books can change your life and Cosmic Trigger changed mine. Though
it was not the first book to blur the lines between “reality” and “fantasy,” it was
the first one to suggest that no such lines existed beyond my beliefs in those
lines. It was the first book to challenge my beliefs about beliefs, period. Bob’s
way with words acted like drugs on my brain and reading this book set off a
chain reaction of time-release psychic explosions lasting many years to come.
Cosmic Trigger was also where I first discovered Timothy Leary’s Eight-
Circuit Brain model.
The Bob Wilson I came to know (circa 1979–86) was at the peak of his game.
As far as I could tell, this game was initiating his readers—in books and in
person during his many worldwide lectures—to the most operational
Einsteinian language possible and to do this in the most entertaining ways his
imagination could conjure. I was, and still am, bewildered by how he was able
to recontextualize quantum physics through the interactions of his fictitious
characters and labyrinthian plot designs in The Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy and
Masks of the Illuminati.
Though Bob was clearly a master of this game, I never saw him treat actual
living people as characters, or their interactions as games. He knew the
difference and took the time to show others that he knew. Bob was very soulful
that way. He seemed to simultaneously belong to two generations; the
Caregivers of the World War Two era and the Hedonic Seekers of the Sixties. I
suddenly saw Bob as a psychedelic mensch with a genius IQ, which for me was
as hilarious as it rang true.
As I continued attending Bob and Arlen’s Discordian salons, now at their new
home in a San Francisco condo, I began to notice a change in my attitude.
Though my presence remained one of a gleeful fly on the wall that
occasionally buzzed agreement, I also began to see important differences
distinguishing Bob’s views from my own. I did not voice these at first for dread
of appearing arrogant or stupid but I did not disregard them either. One of the
down sides of being in the personal presence of people with more brains and
heart than yourself is a kind of gorgeous oppression that took the form, for
me, of wanting to be just like Bob or wanting to write just like Bob. At the next
salon Bob announced, “Disciples are assholes looking for a human being to
attach themselves to.” That was the moment I knew there would be no guru
worship at Bob’s house and that Bob would never wish that kind of oppression
on anyone.
Though I never felt any oppression from Bob personally, I do recall struggling
in his presence with my own unmet and often unconscious childhood needs for
a father figure (I never knew my real father). As with many other young fans,
my own star struck projections oppressed me more than anything else. That he
never encouraged or accepted these projections enabled me to eventually
release them and observe him closer, as he was, with little or no emotional
investment. What I saw was a man fully inhabiting a world of his own creation
—a sophisticated, entertaining and byzantine network of reality tunnels where
his consciousness traversed and cross-referenced with astonishing artistry and
humor.
Whether he was high or sober I noticed that whenever anyone questioned Bob,
a consistent delay of silence followed. It was as if he was so abstracted into his
internal labyrinth that it took him a few moments to gather his response and
surface with it into present time. I began to wonder whether Bob had lost the
capacity for direct experience and spontaneous response by living so
profoundly in the multiple reality tunnels of his epic mind.
Funny thing about Bob and emotions. I never heard him say a good word about
emotions, which he humorously dismissed as “territorial signals” and
“barnyard politics and soap opera antics.” If Bob professed a certain freedom
from territorial signals, they acted out anyway whenever he felt his publishers
were withholding royalties or that his books were not getting the recognition
they deserved. Bob seemed very emotionally invested in his legacy as a writer.
He also showed strong emotion whenever he protested any form of
government oppression of the people. All of these personal protests revealed
his humanity to me. Something else. Despite all of his so-called
extraterrestrial communiqués with the Sirius star system and his own
Pookaville of invisible rabbits, Bob consistently struck me as one of the most
genuinely sane people I had ever met.
Spring 1981, Berkeley, CA. My presence at the Discordian salons began to
wane, as I grew more aware of certain key differences between my views and
Bob’s. The main difference had to do with The Body. I decided that Tim and
Bob overlooked The Body when writing their tomes on the 8-Circuit Brain.
Though they certainly wrote “about” The Body, their language was still steeped
in the language of the mind, of spelling things out in rational and scientific
terms that stimulated the intellect but failed (in my opinion) in its appeal to the
senses. This awareness marked a critical weaning stage for me.
Summer 1984, Boulder, CO. My bohemian California lifestyle ground to a
halt. I had unwittingly become a parody of myself and was desperate for a big
change. For me, this meant getting serious about my 30-year-old life. I
migrated to Boulder, Colorado. Within a year, I was married and soon
afterwards, a father. In the summer of 1985, I co-produced Bob Wilson’s first
visit to Boulder to talk about one of his favorite topics, “Anomalies,
Coincidence & Synchronicity.” I remember Bob reveling in the exquisite irony
and high humor staged by the venue we booked him in: a church, complete with
stained glass windows, a multi-tiered altar and rows and rows of stained wood
pews. I opened with a brief solo mime shtick and then Bob the Pope of Chapel
Perilous preached to the choir; a rollicking good time was had by all.
November 1985, Boulder, CO. Five years after starting my book Angel Tech, I
hit a massive writer’s block and decided to throw in the towel. That I was
overcome with doubts and insecurities was the least of my problems; my
marriage was also falling apart. As beautiful and gracious a person as my wife
was, a significant conflict between our separate values surfaced exposing the
folly of having wed too soon. I was at a total loss for direction and wandered
the streets aimlessly as I’m apt to do when I don’t know where I am going. Wu
wei; aimless wandering. That’s when I noticed a poster on a telephone pole
announcing a lecture by Timothy Leary on November 11th, my 33rd birthday,
at the University of Colorado just five blocks from our basement apartment.
The topic was The Eight-Circuit Brain.
Up until then I had only seen Dr. Leary once in person at Berkeley’s Keystone,
a former rock club where he was the opening act for several bands. He
performed his live wire, standup comic philosopher act as a ruse for delivering
rapid-fire jolts of high octane data on the human brain, species evolution and
fascism in America; I believe this was 1980 or 1981. I wondered if the stoned
out rockers knew what to make of Tim. I was astonished by the clarity of pure
signal transmitting from this man. I could have sworn I saw a bolt of blue light
shoot right out of his third eye, hitting mine. And now he was scheduled to talk
on my 33rd birthday about the 8-Circuit Brain. Aimless wandering led me
straight into The No Coincidences Dept.
November 11th, 1985, University of Colorado. No longer playing the fool,
Tim now embodied the cool academic charisma of a seasoned philosophy
professor. His lecture on the Eight-Circuit Brain was electrifying. I thought of
approaching him afterwards but couldn’t bring myself to saying, “Hello Dr.
Leary, I am writing a book on your 8-Circuit Brain theory. Would you care to
look at it?” Right. Who was I kidding? Stumbling out of the lecture hall I
drifted across the snow-covered Boulder streets that night, my brain on fire. I
could not sleep. I was too busy destroying my writer’s block with fresh hot
inspiration for completing my book.
Spring of 1986 Angel Tech celebrated its first “black cover” edition of 300
copies self-published under Vigilantero Press. This first edition was not
typeset on a computer. Each page was typed on an IBM Selectric II typewriter
and these pages became the original masters for the printer. This first edition
came out to a hefty 367 pages (later reduced to 242 pages for the 1986 Falcon
first edition after the publisher told me we had to minimize print costs; oh
well). I decided to mail Timothy Leary a copy of this first edition in the hopes
he might, as a long shot, approve. Several months later I received a letter from
Los Angeles containing a computer print out signed by Dr. Leary that said: