The evolutionary function of the seventh circuit and its evolutionary, aeon-spanning tunnel-reality is to prepare us for conscious immortality and interspecies symbiosis.
VIII. The neuro-atomic circuit. Hold on to your hats and breathe deeply — this is the farthest-out that human intelligence has yet ventured:
Consciousness probably precedes the biological unit or DNA tape-loop. “Out-of-body experiences,” “astral projection,” contact with alien (extraterrestrial?) “entities” or with a galactic Overmind, etc., such as I’ve experienced, have all been reported for thousands of years, not merely by the ignorant, the superstitious, the gullible, but often by the finest minds among us (Socrates, Giordano Bruno, Edison, Buckminster Fuller, etc.). Such experiences are reported daily to parapsychologists and have been experienced by such scientists as Dr. John Lilly and Carlos Castaneda. Dr. Kenneth Ring has attributed these phenomena to what he calls, very appropriately, “the extraterrestrial unconscious.”
Dr. Leary suggests that circuit VIII is literally neuro-atomic — infra, supra and meta-physiological — a quantum mechanical communication system which does not require a biological container. The attempt to construct a quantum model of consciousness and/or a conscious model of quantum mechanics by the turned-on physicists discussed previously (Prof. John Archibald Wheeler, Saul-Paul Sirag, Dr. Fritjof Capra, Dr. Jack Sarfatti, etc.) indicates strongly that the “atomic consciousness” first suggested by Leary in “The Seven Tongues of God” (1962) is the explanatory link which will unite parapsychology and paraphysics into the first scientific empirical experimental theology in history.
When the nervous system is turned on to this quantum-level circuit, space-time is obliterated. Einstein’s speed-of-light barrier is transcended; in Dr. Sarfatti’s metaphor, we escape “electromagnetic chauvinism.” The contelligence within the quantum projection booth is the entire cosmic “brain,” just as the micro-miniaturized DNA helix is the local brain guiding planetary evolution. As Lao-tse said from his own Circuit VIII perspective, “The greatest is within the smallest.”
Circuit VIII is triggered by Ketamine, a neuro-chemical researched by Dr. John Lilly, which is also (according to a wide-spread but unconfirmed rumor) given to astronauts to prepare them for space. High doses of LSD also produce some circuit VIII quantum awareness.
This neuro-atomic contelligence is four mutations beyond terrestrial domesticity. (The current ideological struggle is between circuit IV tribal moralists-or-collectivists and circuit V hedonic individualists.) When our need for higher intelligence, richer involvement in the cosmic script, further transcendence, will no longer be satisfied by physical bodies, not even by immortal bodies hopping across space-time at Warp 9, circuit VIII will open a further frontier. New universes and realities. “Beyond theology: the science and art of Godmanship,” as Alan Watts once wrote.
It is therefore possible that the mysterious “entities” (angels and extraterrestrials) monotonously reported by circuit VIII visionaries are members of races already evolved to this level. But it is also possible, as Leary and Sarfatti more recently suggest, that They are ourselves-in-the-future.
The left-lobe terrestrial circuits contain the learned lessons of our evolutionary past (and present). The right-lobe extraterrestrial circuits are the evolutionary script for our future.
Thus far, there have been two alternative explanations of why the Drug Revolution happened. The first is presented in a sophisticated way by anthropologist Weston LaBarre, and in an ignorant, moralistic way by most anti-drug propaganda in the schools and the mass media. This explanation says, in essence, that millions have turned away from the legal down drugs to illegal high drugs because we are living in troubled times and many are seeking escape into fantasy.
This theory, at its best, only partially explains the ugliest and most publicized aspect of the revolution — the reckless drug abuse characteristic of the immature. It says nothing about the millions of respectable doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc., who have turned away from second circuit intoxication with booze to fifth circuit rapture with weed.
Nor does it account at all for the thoughtful, philosophical sixth circuit investigations of persons of high intelligence and deep sensibility, such as Aldous Huxley, Dr. Stanley Grof, Masters-Houston, Alan W. Watts, Carlos Castaneda, Dr. John Lilly and thousands of scientific and lay researchers on consciousness.
A more plausible theory, devised by psychiatrist Norman Zinberg out of the work of Marshall McLuhan, holds that modern electronic media have so shifted the nervous system’s parameters that young people no longer enjoy “linear” drugs like alcohol and find meaning only in “non-linear” weed and psychedelics.
This is certainly part of the truth, but it is too narrow and overstresses TV and computers without sufficiently stressing the general technological picture — the ongoing Science-Fiction Revolution of which the most significant aspects are Space Migration, Increased Intelligence and Life Extension, which Leary has condensed into his S.M.I2.L.E. formula.
Space Migration plus Increased Intelligence plus Life Extension means expansion of humanity into all space-time.
S.M. + I2. + L.E. = ∞.
Without totally endorsing Charles Fort’s technological mysticism (“It steam-engines when it comes steam-engine time”), it is obvious that the DNA metaprogram for planetary evolution is far wiser than any of our individual nervous systems — which are, in a sense, giant robots or sensors for DNA. Early science-fiction pulps; the crudities of Buck Rogers; the sophisticated science-fiction of brilliant writers like Stapledon, Clarke, Heinlein; Kubrick’s 2001 — all were increasingly clear DNA signals transmitted through the intuitive right lobe of sensitive artists, preparing us for the extraterrestrial mutation.
It is scarcely coincidental that mainstream “literary” intellectuals — the heirs of the Platonic-aristocratic tradition that a gentleman never uses his hands, monkeys with tools or learns a manual craft — despise both science-fiction and the dope culture. Nor is it coincidental that the Whole Earth Catalogs — created by Stewart Brand, a graduate of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters — are the New Testament of the rural dropout culture, each issue bulging with tons of eco-technological information about all the manual, dextrous, gadgetry know-how that Plato and his heirs consider fit only for slaves. Not surprisingly, Brand’s latest publication, Co-Evolution Quarterly, has been largely devoted to publicizing Prof. Gerard O’Neill’s space-habitat, L5.
Nor is it an accident that dopers seem to prefer science-fiction to any other reading, even including the extraterrestrial-flavored Hindu scriptures and occult-shamanic circuit VI-VIII trip-poets like Crowley and Hesse.
The circuit VI drugs may have contributed much to the metaprogramming consciousness that has led to sudden awareness of “male chauvinism” (women’s liberationists), “species chauvinism” (ecology, Lilly’s dolphin studies), “type-G star chauvinism” (Carl Sagan), even “oxygen chauvinism” (the CETI conference), etc. The imprinted tunnel-realities which identify one as “white-male-American-earthian” etc. or “black-female-Cuban” etc. are no longer big enough to enclose our exploding contelligence.
As Time magazine said on November 26, 1973, “Within ten years, according to pharmacologists, they will have perfected pills and cranial electrodes capable of providing lifelong bliss for everyone on Earth.” The 1960s hysteria about weed and acid was just the overture to this fifth circuit breakthrough. Nathan S. Kline, M.D., predicts real aphrodisiacs, drugs to speed up learning, drugs to foster or terminate any behavior. Those who were burned or jailed at the beginning of the 17th century (Bruno, Galileo, etc.) were forerunners of the Revolution of Outer Technology. Those who were jailed or beaten by cops in the 1960s were forerunners of the Revolution of Inner Technology.
Star Trek is a better guide to the emerging reality than anything in the New York Review of Books. The life-support and defense-system engineer, Scotty (circuit I), the emotional-sentimental Dr. McCoy (circuit II), the logical
science-officer Mr. Spock (circuit III) and the alternately paternalistic and romantic Captain Kirk (circuit IV) are perpetually voyaging through our future neurological history and encountering circuit V, VI, VII, and VIII intelligences, however crudely presented.
In short, the various levels of consciousness and circuits we have been discussing, and illustrating, are all biochemical imprints in the evolution of the nervous system. Each imprint creates a bigger tunnel-reality. In the Sufi metaphor, the donkey on which we ride becomes a different donkey after each imprint. The metaprogrammer continually learns more and is increasingly able to be aware of itself operating. We are thus evolving to intelligence-studying-intelligence (the nervous system studying the nervous system) and are more and more capable of accelerating our own evolution.
Leary now symbolizes intelligence-studying intelligence by the mark, I2.
On the lower levels, you see with one “I,” so to speak.
On the higher levels, you see with many “I”s.
And space-time shifts from three Euclidean dimensions to non-Euclidean multi-dimensionality.
The Octave of Energy
The Law of Octaves was first suggested by Pythagoras in ancient Greece. Having observed that the eight notes of the conventional Occidental musical scale were governed by definite mathematical relationships, Pythagoras proceeded to create a whole cosmology based on 8s. In this octagonal model Pythagoras made numerous mistakes, because he was generalizing from insufficient data. However, his work was the first attempt in history to unify science, mathematics, art and mysticism into one comprehensible system and as such is still influential. Leary, Crowley and Buckminster Fuller have all described themselves as modern Pythagoreans.
In China, roughly contemporary with Pythagoras, the Taoists built up a cosmology based on the interplay of yang (positive) and yin (negative), which produced the eight trigrams of the I Ching, out of which are generated the 64 hexagrams.
In India, Buddha announced, after his illumination under the Bodhi tree, the Noble Eightfold Path. Patanjali subsequently reduced the science of yoga to eight “limbs” or, as we might say, eight “steps.”
The game of chess appeared, somewhere in the East, with a grid based on 8 x 8 (64) squares.
Kepler discovered the laws of planetary motion serendipitously, while trying to make the planets fit into the Pythagorean octave.
In the 1860s, English chemist John Newland showed that all the chemical elements fall into eight families. Since Pythagorean mysticism was unfashionable at that time, Newland was literally laughed at and rejected by the Royal Chemical Society. In the 1870s, with much more detail than Newland, the Russian chemist Mendeleyev proved once and for all that the elements do, indeed, fall into eight families. His Periodic Table of the Elements, an octave of hauntingly Pythagorean harmony, hangs in every high-school chemistry class today. (The Royal Society later apologized to Newland and gave him a Gold Medal.)
We have already seen that Nikola Tesla, in the visions from which he deduced the mechanism of alternating current, also intuited a basic Law of Octaves governing universal energy.
Modern geneticists have found that the DNA-RNA “dialogue” — the molecular information system governing life and evolution — is transmitted by 64 (8 x 8) codons.
R. Buckminster Fuller, in his Synergetic-Energetic Geometry, which he claims is the “co-ordinate system of Universe,” reduces all phenomena to geometric-energetic constructs based on the tetrahedron (4-sided), the octet truss (8-sided) and the coupler (8-faceted with 24 phases). Fuller argues specifically that the 8-face, 24-phase coupler underlies the 8-fold division of the chemical elements on the Mendeleyev Periodic Table.
In 1973, unaware of Fuller’s coupler — which I called to his attention later — Dr. Leary began to divide his 8 circuits into a 24-stage Periodic Table of Evolution (see diagram). Leary also began attempting to correlate this with the Periodic Table of Elements in chemistry.
The eight families of elements are:
Alkalis.
Alkalines.
Borons.
Carbons.
Nitrogens.
Oxygens.
Halogens.
Noble gases.
The first four families, Leary' argues, are terrestrial; that is, they are heavy and tend to fall to Earth. The second four families are extraterrestrial: that is. they tend to float off into space. Similarly, he says, the first four circuits of the nervous system are terrestrial; their function is to control survival and reproduction at the bottom of the 4,000-mile gravity well in which we presently live. The second four circuits, then, are extraterrestrial; they will come into full play only when we live normally in zero-gravity — in free space.
If the higher circuits have been appearing (partially and in rare mutants) for a few thousand years, this is because the DNA blueprint is gradually modifying us for future evolution. If higher circuit functions are increasing at an accelerating rate — as many parapsychologists think — it is because we are now mutating rapidly toward extraterrestrial migration.
In the above diagram, read from the bottom up. Every infant begins at “The Newborn”; every adult arrives at least at “Centralized Socialism” (although the Control Center or major input may be back at “The Toddler” or “The Fighting Child” or in any slot). So-called geniuses, mystics or weird people with wild (psionic) talents are post-larval and may reach any slot from “Centralized Socialism” to “Cosmic Fusion.”
Mathematically, the first four circuits are Euclidean-Newtonian, orienting us to the 3-dimensional space and 1-dimensional time of planetary life. The second four circuits are Fullerian-Einsteinian, orienting us to interstellar zero-gravity.
It is possible to see the development of an individual (if s/he evolves all the way to the 8th circuit) and the development of life itself as the working out of this Octave of Evolution. Thus:
But this is strikingly similar to the teachings of Gurdjieff (which may be according to many, the secret inner teachings of Sufism). The Gurdjieff vibration numbers and the levels of consciousness, as named by Gurdjieff, fit the table as follows:
Leary began to divide the 8 circuits into 24 phases when he became convinced that each circuit has an input phase, a decision-making phase, and an output phase. (On the synaptic level, this appears as dendrites, receiving signals; cell-bodies, making decisions; and axons, transmitting signals.) This 24-stage chart can be correlated with the Hebrew alphabet, thereby casting new light on the Cabala; with the Tarot cards (a Sufi invention, it is claimed); and with the Zodiac (if we allow 12 extraterrestrial types to complete the 12 terrestrial types of traditional astrology). These correlations are not indicated on the diagram; a full explanation will be found in two later books.*
~•~
* The Periodic Table of Evolution, Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson, 88 Books, San Diego, 1977; The Game of Life, Leary and Wilson, 88 Books San Diego, 1977.
~•~
Working independently of Leary and myself, Prof. Peter Flessel of the University of San Francisco has begun developing correlations between the 8 x 8 codons of the genetic code and the 8 x 8 hexagrams of the I Ching, which he will be publishing soon. It is to be hoped that in further work on the Leary Periodic Table, Flessel’s correlations and Fuller’s 24-phase geometric coupler, science will eventually find a “Rosetta Stone” by which the traditional symbols of occultism can be decoded in modern, operational, scientific categories.
It will be seen by the thoughtful reader that this emerging synthesis evades entirely the usual dichotomy of “spiritual” versus “material,” being purely geometric-energetic. It is thus in the same philosophical category as the unitary systems of the East (Zen, Taoism, Vedanta, etc.) and outside the dualisms of Greek logic and Christian theology. Any attempt to describe this octave as “mystical” or as “materialistic” misses the real point of Leary’s work.
The law of acceleration
In the 1890s, Henry Adams became convinced that technol
ogy was following a geometric or exponential law. That is, basic advances do not follow a linear sequence such as:
2 - 4 - 6 - 8 - 10 - 12 - 14 - 16 - etc.
but rather an exponential sequence like:
2 - 4 - 8 - 16 - 32 - 64 - 128 - 256 - etc.
Adams calculated that, projecting forward the acceleration from Galileo’s time to his own, we would have infinite energy at our disposal in the 1920s. Obviously, he was somewhat inaccurate in his calculations.
But he was not entirely wrong. Korzybski, Buckminster Fuller, Alvin Toffler and others have shown, with countless examples, that many things in technology are advancing exponentially, and the one general tendency is clearly that there will be more basic breakthroughs (both in scientific theory and in technological applications) in each generation than in any previous generation.
As Toffler in particular emphasizes, there are more scientists alive in the 1970s than in all previous history added together. Thus, this generation should witness more breakthroughs than all previous history added together. In this context, Leary’s SMI2LE scenario (Space Migration + Intelligence2 + Life Extension) is only the overture to a planetary (and extra-planetary) Awakening that we can only dimly begin to discern.
This, indeed, is the thesis of a remarkable book offering the final set of models and metaphors which we shall be discussing — The Invisible Landscape, by Terrence L. McKenna and Dennis J. McKenna.89
The McKenna brothers, who between them have a background that includes anthropology, biology, chemistry and botany, conducted a metaprogramming experiment in the Upper Amazon Basin, using the local “magic mushroom,” which contains psychedelics in the psilocybin family. For 37 days they experienced a high level of ESP, the usual intensification of coincidence-synchronicity, and the presence of an “alien” insectoid entity which seemed to be an anthropologist from the future. Twentieth century history appeared as a frantic (although unconscious) effort to build a craft to escape Earth and return to Galactic Center. This occurred in March of 1971. (Leary and Benner received the Starseed transmissions, urging return to Galactic Center, in July-August 1973. Since the McKennas did not publish an account of their experience until 1976, it could not have influenced Leary and Benner.)
Final Secret of the Illuminati Page 24