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The four evolving future 'brains' are:
V.
The
NEUROSOMATIC CIRCUIT
When this fifth
"body-brain" is activated, flat Euclidean figure-ground
configurations explode multi-dimensionally. Gestalts shift, in McLuhan's terms, from linear VISUAL
SPACE to all-encompassing SENSORY SPACE. A hedonic turn-on occurs, a
rapturous amusement, a detachment from the previously compulsive mechanism
of the first four circuits. I turned this circuit on with pot and Tantra.
This fifth brain began to appear about 4,000 years ago in the first
leisure-class civilizations and has been increasing statistically in recent
centuries (even before the Drug Revolution), a fact demonstrated by the
hedonic art of India, China, Rome and other affluent societies. More
recently, Ornstein and his school have demonstrated with
electroencephalograms that this circuit represents the first jump from the
linear left lobe of the brain to the analogical right lobe.
The opening and imprinting of this circuit has been the preoccupation of
"technicians of the occult"—Tantric shamans and hatha yogis.
While the fifth tunnel-reality can be achieved by sensory deprivation,
social isolation, physiological stress or severe shock (ceremonial terror
tactics, as practiced by such rascal-gurus as Don Juan Matus or Aleister Crowley), it has
traditionally been reserved to the educated aristocracy of leisure
societies who have solved the
four terrestrial survival problems.
About 20,000 years ago, the specific fifth brain neurotransmitter was
discovered by shamans in the Caspian Sea area of Asia and quickly spread to
other wizards throughout Eurasia and Africa. It is, of course, cannabis.
Weed. Mother Mary Jane.
It is no accident that the pot-head generally refers to his neural state as
"high" or "spaced-out." The transcendence of
gravitational, digital, linear, either-or, Aristotelian, Newtonian,
Euclidean, planetary orientations (circuits I-IV) is, in
evolutionary perspective, part of our neurological preparation for the
inevitable migration off our home planet, now beginning. This is why so
many pot-heads are STAR TREK
freaks and science fiction adepts. (Berkeley, California, certainly the
Cannabis Capital of the U.S., has a Federation Trading Post on Telegraph
Avenue, where the well-heeled can easily spend $500 or more in a single
day, buying STAR TREK novels, magazines, newsletters, bumper stickers,
photographs, posters, tapes, etc., including even complete blueprints for
the starship ENTERPRISE.)
The extraterrestrial meaning of being "high" is confirmed by
astronauts themselves; 85% of those who have entered the free-fall zero
gravity describe "mystic experiences" or rapture states typical
of the neurosomatic circuit. "No photo can show how beautiful Earth
looked," raves Captain Ed Mitchell, describing his Illumination in
free-fall. He sounds like any successful yogi or pot-head. No camera can
show this experience because it is inside the nervous system.
FREE-FALL,
AT THE PROPER EVOLUTIONARY TIME, TRIGGERS THE NEUROSOMATIC MUTATION, Leary
believes.
Previously
this mutation has been achieved "artificially" by yogic or
shamanic training or by the fifth circuit stimulant, cannabis. Surfing,
skiing, skin-diving and the new sexual culture (sensuous massage,
vibrators, imported Tantric arts, etc.) have evolved at the same time as
part of the hedonic conquest of gravity. The Turn-On state is always
described as "floating," or, in the Zen metaphor, "one foot
above the ground."
VI.
The
NEUROELECTRIC CIRCUIT
The sixth brain
consists of the nervous system becoming aware of itself apart from
imprinted gravitational reality-maps (circuits I-IV) and even apart
from body-rapture (circuit V).
Count Korzybski, the semanticist, called this state "consciousness of
abstracting." Dr. John Lilly calls it "metaprogramming,"
i.e., awareness of programming one's programming. This Einsteinian,
relativistic contelligence (consciousness-intelligence) recognizes, for
instance, that the Euclidean, Newtonian and Aristotelian reality-maps are
just three among billions of possible programs or models for experience. I
turned this circuit on with Peyote, LSD and Crowley's "magick"
metaprograms.
This level of brain-functioning seems to have been reported first around
500 B.C. among various "occult" groups connected by the Silk
Route (Rome-North India). It is so far beyond the terrestrial
tunnel-realities that those who have achieved it can barely communicate
about it to ordinary humanity (circuits
I-IV) and can hardly be understood even by fifth circuit Rapture
Engineers.
The characteristics of the neuroelectric circuit are high velocity,
multiple choice, relativity, and the fission-fusion of all perceptions into
parallel science-fiction universes of
alternate possibilities.
The mammalian politics which monitor power struggles among terrestrial
humanity are here transcended, i.e., seen as static, artificial, an
elaborate charade. One is neither coercively manipulated into another's
territorial reality nor forced to struggle against it with reciprocal
emotional game-playing (the usual soap-opera dramatics). One simply elects,
consciously, whether or not to share the other's reality-model.
Tactics for opening and imprinting the sixth circuit are described and
rarely experienced in advanced rajah yoga, and in the hermetic (coded)
manuals of the medieval-Renaissance alchemists and Illuminati.
No specific sixth circuit chemical is yet available, but strong
psychedelics like mescaline (from my 1962-63 "sacred cactus,"
peyotl) and psilocybin (from the Mexican "magic mushroom," teonactl) open the nervous system
to a mixed-media series of circuit
V and circuit VI
channels. This is appropriately called "tripping," as
distinguished from straight-forward fifth circuit "turning on" or
"getting high."
The suppression of scientific research in this area has had the unfortunate
result of turning the outlaw drug culture back toward fifth circuit
hedonics and pre-scientific tunnel-realities (the occult revival,
solipsism, Pop Orientalism). Without scientific discipline and methodology,
few can successfully decode the often-frightening (but philosophically
crucial) sixth circuit metaprogramming signals. Such scientists as do
continue to study this subject dare not publish their results (which are
illegal) and record ever-wider tunnel-realities only in private
conversations—like the scholars of the Inquisitorial era. (Voltaire
announced the Age of Reason two centuries too soon. We are still in the Dark
Ages.) Most underground alchemists have given up on such challenging and
risky self-work and restrict their trips to fifth circuit erotic tunnels.
The evolutionary function of the sixth circuit is to enable us to
communicate at Einsteinian relativities and neuro-electric accelerations,
not using third circuit laryngeal-manual symbols but directly via feedback,
telepathy and computer link-up. Neuro-electric signals will increasingly
replace "speech" (hominid grunts) after space migration.
When humans have climbed out of the
atmosphere-gravity well of planetary life, accelerated sixth circuit
contelligence will make possible high-energy communication with
"Higher Intelligences," i.e., ourselves-in-the-future and other
post-terrestrial races.
It is charmingly simple and obvious, once we realize that the spaced-out
neural experiences really are extraterrestrial, that getting high and
spacing out are accurate metaphors. Circuit V neurosomatic rapture
is preparation for the next step in our evolution, migration off the
planet. Circuit VI is
preparation for the step after that, interspecies communication with
advanced entities possessing electronic (post-verbal) tunnel-realities.
Circuit VI is the "universal translator" often imagined by
science-fiction writers, already built into our brains by the DNA tape. Just as the circuits of the
future butterfly are already built into the caterpillar.
VII.
The
NEUROGENETIC CIRCUIT
The seventh brain
kicks into action when the nervous system begins to receive signals from WITHIN THE INDIVIDUAL NEURON, from the DNA-RNA dialogue. The first to
achieve this mutation spoke of "memories of past lives,"
"reincarnation," "immortality," etc. That these adepts
were recording something real is indicated by the fact that many of them
(especially Hindu and Sufis) gave marvelously accurately poetic vistas of
evolution 1,000 or 2,000 years before Darwin, and foresaw Superhumanity
before Nietzsche.
The "akashic records"
of Theosophy, the "collective unconscious" of Jung, the
"phylogenetic unconscious" of Grof and Ring, are three modern
metaphors for this circuit. The visions of past and future evolution
described by those who have had "out-of-body" experiences during
close-to-death episodes also describes the trans-time circuit VII
tunnel-reality.
Specific exercises to trigger circuit VII are not to be found in yogic
teaching; it usually happens, if at all, after several years of the kind of
advanced rajah yoga that develops circuit
VI facility.
The specific circuit VII neurotransmitter is, of course LSD. (Peyote and
psilocybin produce some circuit VII experiences also.)
Circuit VII is best considered, in terms of 1977 science, as the genetic
archives, activated by anti-histone proteins. The DNA memory coiling back
to the dawn of life. A sense of the inevitability of immortality and
interspecies symbiosis comes to all circuit VII mutants; we now see that
this, also, is an evolutionary forecast, since WE STAND RIGHT NOW ON THE DOOR-STEP OF EXTENDED LONGEVITY LEADING
TO IMMORTALITY.
The exact role of the right-lobe circuits and the reason for their
activation in the 1960s cultural revolution now becomes clear. As
sociologist F.M. Esfandiary writes in UPWINGERS, "Today when we speak
of immortality and of going to another world we no longer mean these in a
theological or metaphysical sense. People are now traveling to other
worlds. People are now striving for immortality. Transcendence is no longer
a metaphysical concept. It has become reality."
The evolutionary function of the seventh circuit and its evolutionary,
aeon-spanning tunnel-reality is to prepare us for conscious immortality and
interspecies symbiosis.
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 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 or races already evolved
to this level. But it is also possible, as Leary and Sarfatti more recently
suggest, that They are ourselves-in-the-future.
The left-lobe terrestrial circuits contain the learned lessons of our
evolutionary past (and present). The right-lobe extraterrestrial circuits
are the evolutionary script for 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 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 SMI²LE formula.
Space Migration plus Increased Intelligence plus Life Extension means
expansion of humanity into all space-time. SM + I² + LE = infinity.
Without totally endorsing Charles Fort's technological mysticism ("It
steam-engines when it comes steam-engine time"), it is obvious that
the DNA metaprogram for 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 of brilliant writers like Stapledon, Clarke,
Heinlein; Kubrick's 2001—all were increasingly clear DNA signals
transmitted through the intuitive right lobe of sensitive artists,
preparing us for the extraterrestrial mutation.
It is scarcely coincidental that mainstream "literary"
intellectuals—the heir of the Platonic-aristocratic tradition that a
gentleman never uses his hands, monkeys with tools or learns a manual
craft—despise both science-fiction and the dope culture. Nor is it
coincidental that the WHOLE EARTH CATALOGS - created by Stewart Brand, a graduate
of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters—are the New Testament of the rural drop-out
culture, each issue bulging with tons of eco-technological information
about all the manual, dextrous, gadgety know-how that Plato and his heirs
consider fit only for slaves. Not surprisingly, Brand's latest publication,
CO-EVOLUTION QUATERLY, has been devoted to publicizing Prof. Gerard
O'Neill's space-habitat, L5.
Nor is it an accident that dopers seem to prefer science-fiction to any
other reading, even including the extraterrestrial-flavored Hindu
scriptures and occult-shamanic circuit VI-VIII trip-poets like Crowley and
Hesse.
The circuit VI drugs may
have contributed much to the metaprogramming consciousness that has led to
sudden awareness of "male chauvinism" (women's liberationists),
"species chauvinism" (ecology, Lilly's dolphin studies),
"type-G star chauvinism" (Carl
Sagan), even "oxygen chauvinism" (the CETI conference), etc.
The imprinted tunnel-realities which identify one as
"white-male-American-earthian" etc. or
"black-female-Cuban" etc. are no longer big enough to enclose our
exploding contelligence.
As TIME magazine said on November 26, 1973, "Within ten years,
according to pharmacologists, they will have perfected pills and cranial
electrodes of providing life-long bliss for everyone on Earth." The
1960s hysteria about weed and acid was just the overture to this fifth
circuit break-through. Nathan S. Kline, M.D., predicts real aphrodisiacs,
drugs to speed up learning, drugs to foster or terminate any behavior. ...
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 the which we ride becomes a different donkey
after each imprint. The metaprogrammer continually learns more and is
increasingly able to be aware of itself operating. We are thus evolving to
intelligence-studying-intelligence (the nervous system studying the nervous
system) and are more and more capable of accelerating our own evolution.
Leary now
symbolizes intelligence-studying-intelligence by the mark, 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.
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