Timothy Leary’s Neurological Theory
“To understand neurological space, Dr. Leary assumes that the nervous system consists of eight potential circuits, or “mechanisms,” or mini-brains. Four of these brains are located in the left lobe, which is usually active, and have to do with our terrestrial survival; four are extraterrestrial, reside in the “silent” or inactive right lobe, and exist to be used in our future evolution. This explains why the right lobe is normally inactive at this stage of our development, and why it becomes active when a person ingests psychedelics.
We will explain each of the eight “brains” briefly.
The four terrestrial circuits
I—The bio-survival circuit. This invertebrate brain was the first to evolve (2 to 3 billion years ago) and is the first to be activated when a human creature is born. It programs perception into a kind of pigeonhole divided into good-nutritious things (toward which one feels attracted) and dangerous-toxic things (from which one flees or which one attacks).
II—The emotional circuit. This second and more advanced biocomputer was formed when vertebrates appeared and began to compete for territory (perhaps 500,000,000 years BC). In the individual, this enormous reality tunnel is activated when the master DNA tapes trigger the metamorphosis from crawling to walking. As all parents know, the child who begins to walk is no longer a passive creature (oriented toward bio-survival) but a political mammal, full of physical (and psychic) territorial demands, quick to meddle in family affairs and in decision-making.
III—The dexterity-symbolism circuit. This third brain was formed when hominids began to differentiate themselves from other primates (about 4–5 million years BC), and it is activated when the child, now older, begins to handle tools and to emit/receive laryngeal signals (human units of speech).
According to popular speech, the reality tunnel of the first circuit is generally called “consciousness” per se: the sensation of being here and now, in this body, oriented toward bodily survival. (When one is “unconscious,” the first circuit is anesthetized, and doctors can perform surgery on you or enemies can attack you, and you will not be able to evade them or flee.) The second circuit, in the same common language, is called “ego.” The so-called “ego” is the second mammalian sensory circuit of status (importance-unimportance) in the group or tribe. The third circuit is what we generally call “mind”—the capacity to receive, integrate, and transmit signals produced by the hominid hand (artifacts) or by the 9 hominid laryngeal muscles (speech).
The imprinting of those three circuits determines, at approximately the age of three and a half, the basic degree and style of trust/distrust that will color “consciousness,” the degree and style of aggression/submission that will determine the status of the “ego,” and the degree and style of skill/clumsiness with which the “mind” will handle instruments or ideas.
In evolutionary terms, “consciousness” or the first brain is basically invertebrate, floating passively toward feeding and protection from danger. The “ego” or second brain is mammalian, always struggling for status within the tribal order of the group. The “mind” or third brain is Paleolithic, clinging to human culture and facing life through a matrix of human-made tools and human-created symbolisms.
The fourth brain is post-hominid, specifically characteristic of Homo sapiens, the “domesticated” man-woman. This is:
IV—The socio-sexual circuit. This fourth brain was formed when hominid groups evolved into societies and programmed specific sexual roles for their members, about 30,000 years BC. It is activated at puberty, when DNA signals trigger the glandular release of sexual neurochemical products and the metamorphosis to the adult state begins. The first orgasms or mating experiences imprint a characteristic sexual role that, again, remains biochemically fixed and remains constant throughout life, unless some form of brainwashing or biochemical reimprinting alters it.
In common language, the imprints left by the fourth circuit and its reality tunnel are known as the “adult personality.”
Those four circuits normally constitute all the brain networks that one manages to activate. With this, it should be clear why Leary calls them terrestrial. They have evolved and have been shaped by the gravitational, climatic, and energetic conditions determining survival and reproduction on this type of planet orbiting this variety of G-type star.
The fourth brain, dealing with the transmission of tribal or ethnic culture through generations, introduces the fourth dimension, time.
Since each of those reality tunnels consists of biochemical imprints or matrices in the nervous system, each of them is specifically activated by neurotransmitters and other substances.
No terrestrial substance changes the basic biochemical imprints. The behaviors that are triggered are those that were recorded in the nervous system during the first stages of vulnerability to imprinting. Circuit II, the “ego,” exhibits the games or conditioning learned from parents in childhood. The circuit III “mind” never goes beyond the permutations and combinations of the originally imprinted reality tunnels, or of abstractions associated with the imprints through subsequent conditioning.
But all this Pavlovian-Skinnerian robotism changes drastically and dramatically when we turn toward the right lobe, the future circuits, and the extraterrestrial chemical substances.
The four circuits of future evolution
The four “brains” of future evolution are:
V—The neurosomatic circuit. When this fifth “body-brain” is activated, a hedonistic connection occurs, an ecstatic amusement, a detachment from all the previous compulsive mechanisms of the first four circuits. I connected this circuit with weed and Tantra.
This fifth brain began to appear about 4,000 years ago in the first leisure civilizations, and has been increasing statistically in recent centuries. More recently, Ornstein and his school have demonstrated with electroencephalograms that this circuit represents the first leap from the linear left lobe of the brain to the analog right lobe.
The opening and imprinting of this circuit has been the concern of the “technicians of the occult”—tantric shamans and hatha yogis. While the fifth reality tunnel can be reached through sensory deprivation, social isolation, physiological stress, or severe imprinting, it has traditionally been reserved for the educated aristocracy of leisure societies that have solved the four terrestrial problems of survival.
About 20,000 years ago, the specific neurotransmitter for the fifth brain was discovered by shamans in the Asian area of the Caspian Sea, and it spread rapidly to other sorcerers throughout Eurasia and Africa. It is, naturally, cannabis.
The extraterrestrial significance of being “high” is confirmed by the astronauts themselves; 85% of those who have experienced the free fall of zero gravity describe “mystical experiences” or states of ecstasy typical of the neurosomatic circuit. “No photo can show how beautiful the Earth looks,” enthuses Captain Ed Mitchell, describing his Enlightenment in free fall. It sounds like any successful yogi or marijuana user. No camera can show this experience because it is inside the nervous system.
Leary believes that free fall, at the right evolutionary moment, triggers the neurosomatic mutation. Previously, this mutation has been achieved “artificially” through yogic or shamanic training or through the stimulant of the fifth circuit, cannabis. Surfing or scuba diving, skiing, and the new sexual culture (sensual massage, vibrators, imported tantric arts, etc.) have evolved at the same time as part of the hedonistic conquest of gravity. The state of being connected 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 being conscious of itself, independently of the gravitationally imprinted reality maps (circuits I-IV), and even independently of bodily ecstasy (circuit V). Count Korzybski, the semanticist, called this state “the consciousness of abstracting.” Dr. John Lilly calls it “metaprogramming,” that is, consciousness of programming one’s own programming. This Einsteinian, relativistic contelligence (consciousness-intelligence) recognizes, for example, that Euclidean, Newtonian, and Aristotelian reality maps are simply three out of billions of possible programs or models to experience. I connected this circuit with peyote, LSD, and Crowley’s “magickal” metaprograms.
This level of brain functioning seems to have been noted for the first time approximately 500 years BC among various “occultist” groups connected thanks to the Silk Road (Rome-Northern India). It is so far beyond terrestrial reality tunnels that those who have reached it can barely communicate it to ordinary humanity (circuits I-IV) and can hardly be understood even by the Ecstasy Engineers of the fifth circuit.
The characteristics of the neuroelectric circuit are high speed, multiple choice, relativity, and the fission-fusion of all perceptions into science-fiction parallel universes of alternative possibilities.
The mammalian politicians who control the power struggle among terrestrial humanity are here transcended, that is, they are seen as static, artificial, or an elaborate farce. One is not coercively manipulated into another’s territorial reality nor forced to fight against it with a reciprocal emotional game (the usual melodrama). One simply chooses, consciously, whether or not to share another’s reality model.
Tactics for opening and imprinting the sixth circuit are described and rarely experienced in advanced raja yoga, and in the (coded) hermetic manuals of medieval and Renaissance alchemists and Illuminati.
No specific chemical for the sixth circuit is yet available, but strong psychedelic substances like mescaline (extracted from the “sacred cactus,” peyotl) and psilocybin (from the Mexican “magic mushroom,” teonanacatl) open the nervous system to intermingled series of channels of circuit V and circuit VI. This is what is appropriately called “tripping,” distinguishing it from the direct “connecting” or “being high” of the fifth circuit.
The suppression of scientific research in this area has had the unfortunate result of driving the illegal drug culture back toward hedonism and the pre-scientific reality tunnels (the rebirth of the occult, solipsism, pop orientalism) of the fifth circuit. Without scientific discipline and methodology, few can successfully decode the often terrifying (but philosophically crucial) metaprogramming signals of the sixth circuit. Scientists who continue to study this subject do not dare to publish their results (which are illegal), and communicate their ever-widening reality tunnels only in private conversations—like scholars of the inquisitorial era. (Voltaire announced the Age of Reason two centuries too soon. We are still in the Dark Ages.)
When human beings have climbed out of their atmospheric-gravitational well of planetary life, the accelerated contelligence of the sixth circuit will make possible high-energy communications with “Higher Intelligences,” that is, with ourselves-in-the-future and other post-terrestrial races.
Once we realize that intensified neural experiences are truly extraterrestrial, it becomes charmingly simple and obvious to state that being “high” and “launched” are appropriate metaphors. The neurosomatic ecstasy of circuit V is a preparation for the next step in our evolution, the migration off the planet. Circuit VI is the preparation for the next step, interspecies communication with advanced entities that possess electronic (post-verbal) reality tunnels.
Circuit VI is the “universal translator” often imagined by science-fiction writers, already incorporated inside our brains by the recorded tape of DNA. Just as the circuits of the future butterfly are already incorporated in the caterpillar.
VII—The neurogenetic circuit. The seventh brain goes into action when the nervous system begins to receive signals from inside the individual neuron, by means of the DNA-RNA dialogue. The first to achieve this mutation spoke of “memories of past lives,” “reincarnation,” “immortality,” etc.
The “Akashic records” of Theosophy, the “collective unconscious” of Jung, and 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 near-death episodes also describe the reality tunnel of the transtemporal circuit VII.
Specific exercises to trigger circuit VII cannot be found in yogic teachings; they usually occur, if they occur at all, after several years of the type of advanced raja yoga that develops facility for circuit VI.
The specific neurotransmitter for circuit VII is, of course, LSD. (Peyote and psilocybin also produce some experiences corresponding to circuit VII.)
Circuit VII is most appropriately considered, in terms of 1977 science, as the genetic archive, activated by antihistone proteins. The memory of DNA spiraling backward to the dawn of life. A sense of inevitability and immortality and symbiosis between species comes to all circuit VII mutants; now we can see that this is, also, an evolutionary anticipation, since we find ourselves right now on the threshold of a prolonged longevity that leads to immortality.
The exact role of the right-lobe circuits and the reason for their activation in the cultural revolution of the 60s is now clear. As sociologist F. M. Esfandiary writes in Upwingers, “Today, when we speak of immortality and reaching other worlds, we no longer say it in a theological or metaphysical sense. People are now traveling to other worlds. People are now striving toward immortality. Transcendence is no longer a metaphysical concept. It has become a reality.”
The evolutionary function of the seventh circuit and its evolutionary reality tunnel, which spans eons, is to prepare us for conscious immortality and symbiosis between species.
VIII—The neuroatomic circuit. Hold onto your hats and take a deep breath—this is as far as human intelligence has ventured so far:
Consciousness probably precedes biological unity or the spiral record of DNA. “Out-of-body experiences,” “astral projection,” contact with strange (extraterrestrial?) “entities” or with a galactic supermind, etc., such as those I have experienced, have all been described for thousands of years, not only by the ignorant, the superstitious, the gullible, but often by the best minds among us (Socrates, Giordano Bruno, Edison, Buckminster Fuller, etc.). Parapsychologists are informed daily of such experiences, and they have been experienced by scientists such as Dr. John Lilly or Carlos Castaneda. Dr. Kenneth Ring has attributed such phenomena to what he calls, very appropriately, “the extraterrestrial unconscious.”
Dr. Leary suggests that circuit VIII is literally neuroatomic—infra, supra, and meta-physiological—a communication system based on quantum mechanics that does not require a biological container. The attempt to build a quantum model of consciousness and/or a conscious model of quantum mechanics by physicists who have experimented with psychoactive substances, and whom we have already mentioned (Professor John Archibald Wheeler, Saul-Paul Sirag, Dr. Fritjof Capra, Dr. Jack Sarfatti, etc.) clearly indicates that “atomic consciousness,” suggested first by Leary in “The Seven Tongues of God” (1962), is the explanatory connection that will unite parapsychology and paraphysics into the first scientific, empirical, and experimental theology in history.
When the nervous system is connected to its quantum-level circuit, space-time is eliminated. The Einsteinian barrier of the speed of light is transcended; in Dr. Sarfatti’s metaphor, we escape “electromagnetic chauvinism.” The contelligence inside the quantum projection booth is the entire cosmic “brain,” just as the micro-miniaturized helix of DNA is the local brain guiding planetary evolution. As Lao-tzu said from his own circuit VIII perspective, “The greatest is within the smallest.”
Circuit VIII is activated by ketamine, a neurochemical researched by Dr. John Lilly, which is also administered (according to a widely circulated, but unconfirmed rumor) to astronauts to prepare them for space. High doses of LSD also produce some quantum consciousness of circuit VIII.
This neuroatomic contelligence is four mutations beyond terrestrial domesticity. (The ideological struggle is currently between the moralists-or-collectivists of circuit IV and the hedonistic individualists of circuit V.) When our need for a higher intelligence, for a richer involvement in the cosmic design, for further transcendence, are no longer satisfied by our physical bodies, not even by immortal bodies hoping to jump through space-time by grid 9, circuit VIII will open new frontiers. New universes and realities. “Beyond theology: the science and art of becoming God,” as Alan Watts once wrote.
It is therefore possible that the mysterious “entities” (angels and extraterrestrials) monotonously referred to by circuit VIII visionaries are members of races already evolved to that level. But it is also possible, as Leary and more recently Sarfatti suggest, that They are ourselves-in-the-future.
The terrestrial circuits of the left lobe contain the lessons learned from our evolutionary past (and present). The extraterrestrial circuits of the right lobe are the evolutionary blueprint of our future.
Without fully endorsing the technological mysticism of Charles Fort (“The steam engine will arrive when the time for the steam engine comes”), it is obvious that the DNA metaprogram for planetary evolution is much more sagacious than any of our individual nervous systems—which are in a sense large robots or sensors of the DNA. The science fiction pulps; the crudities of Buck Rogers; the sophisticated science fiction of brilliant writers like Stapledon, Clarke, Heinlein; Kubrick’s 2001—all these are increasingly clear signals from the DNA transmitted through the intuitive right lobe of sensitive artists, preparing us for the extraterrestrial mutation.
As Time magazine said on November 26, 1973: “Within ten years, according to pharmacologists, pills and cranial electrodes will have been perfected capable of providing ecstasy lasting a lifetime for the entire population of the Earth.” The hysteria of the sixties over weed and acid was only the overture for the breaking of that fifth circuit. Nathan S. Kline predicts authentic aphrodisiacs, substances that accelerate learning, substances to favor or end any behavior pattern. Those who were burned or imprisoned at the beginning of the 17th century (Bruno, Galileo, etc.) were the forerunners of the Exterior Technology Revolution. Those who were imprisoned or beaten by police in the sixties were the forerunners of the Interior Technology Revolution.
In brief, the different levels of consciousness and circuits that we have been discussing, and illustrating, all constitute biochemical imprints in the evolution of the nervous system. Each imprint creates a larger reality tunnel. In the Sufi metaphor, the donkey on which we ride becomes a different donkey after each imprint. The metaprogrammer is constantly learning more, and is increasingly capable of being conscious of itself, of its mode of operation. Thus, we are evolving toward “intelligence-studying-intelligence” (the nervous system studying the nervous system) and we are more and more capable of accelerating our own evolution.”
Robert Anton Wilson
(Excerpts from Cosmic Trigger I)
Translation and adaptation: Juan José García Piñeiro
