Timothy Leary's Eight Circuit Model of Consciousness
Aquarius Moon Explains Being
Timothy Leary was quite a character- On January 21, 1970, Leary received a ten year sentence for marijuana possession, with a further ten added later while in custody, for a previous [marijuana possession] arrest in 1965, twenty years in total to be served consecutively. When Leary arrived in prison, he was given psychological tests that were used to assign inmates to appropriate work details. Having designed some of the tests himself (including the “Leary Interpersonal Behavior Test”), Leary answered them in such a way that he seemed to be a very conforming, conventional person with a great interest in forestry and gardening. As a result, Leary was assigned to work as a gardener in a lower security prison, and in September 1970 he escaped.
No surprise, then, to learn that Timothy Leary was a Libra with an Aquarius Moon.
President Richard Nixon (a Capricorn, and square Leary’s Sun) had earlier labeled him “the most dangerous man in America” for giving LSD to America’s hippie youth and expecting the aggro-dominant aspect of USA patriarchy to just evaporate. The judge at his remand hearing remarked, “If he is allowed to travel freely, he will speak publicly and spread his ideas.”
Leary believed that the brain had 8 neurosemantic circuits by which the personality operates. The first four are essentially developed for basic survival in a social group, the last four had an extra-material and perhaps spiritual purpose. The eight circuits are:
The Bio-survival Circuit is concerned with the earliest modes of survival and the basic separation of objects into either harmful or safe. This circuit is said to have first appeared in the earliest evolution of the invertebrate brain. It is the first to be activated in an infant's mind. Leary says this circuit is stimulated by opioid drugs. This circuit introduces a one-dimensional perception: forward and backward (i.e., forward towards food, nourishment and that which is trusted as safe, and backwards -- away from danger and predators).
The Emotional Circuit is concerned with raw emotion and the separation of behavior into submissive and dominant. This circuit appeared first in vertebrate animals. In humans, it is activated when the child learns to walk. Leary associates this circuit with alcohol. This circuit introduces a second dimension, up-down, linked with territorial politics and tribal power games (up, as in swelling ones body in size to represent dominance, and down, as in the cowering, tail-between-the-legs submissive stance).
The Symbolic Circuit is concerned with logic and symbolic thought. Leary said this circuit first appeared when hominids started differentiating from the rest of the primates. Leary believed this circuit is stimulated by caffeine, cocaine, and other stimulants. This circuit introduces the third dimension, left and right, related to the development of dextrous movement and handling "artefacts". (Also called by Leary the The Dexterity-Symbolism Circuit; called by Robert Anton Wilson the Semantic Circuit.)
The Domestic Circuit. This circuit is concerned with operating within social networks and the transmission of culture across time. This circuit is said to have first appeared with the development of tribes. Leary never associated a drug with it, but later writers have associated it with MDMA . This fourth circuit deals with moral-social/sexual tribal rules passed through generations and is the introduction to the fourth dimension -- time. (Also called by Leary and Wilson the Socio-Sexual Circuit).
The Neurosomatic Circuit is the first of the right-brain, "higher" circuits which are inactive in most humans. It allows one to see things in multi-dimensional space instead of the 4 dimensions of Euclidean space-time, and is there to aid in the future exploration of outer space. It is said to have first appeared with the development of leisure-class civilizations around 2000 BC. It is associated with hedonism and eroticism. Leary says this circuit is stimulated by cannabis and tantric yoga, or simply by experiencing the sensation of free fall at the right time.
The Neuroelectric Circuit is concerned with the mind becoming aware of itself independent of the patterns imprinted by the previous five circuits. It is also called "metaprogramming" or "consciousness of abstracting". Leary says this circuit enables telepathic communication, and that this circuit is impossible to explain to those who have only left-brain activity and is difficult to explain to those with active fifth circuits. It is said to have appeared in 500 BC, in connection with the Silk Route. Leary associates this circuit with peyote, and psilocybin. (Robert Anton Wilson called this circuit The Metaprogramming Circuit.)
The Neurogenetic Circuit allows access to the genetic memory contained in DNA. It is connected to memories of past lives, the Akashic Records, and the collective unconscious, and allows for essential immortality in humans. This circuit first appeared among Hindu and Sufi sects in the early first millennium. This circuit is stimulated by LSD, and Raja Yoga. (Robert Anton Wilson called this circuit The Morphogenetic Circuit.)
The Psycho-atomic Circuit allows access to the intergalactic consciousness that predates life in the universe (characterized as God, the Overmind and lets humans operate outside of space-time and the constraints of relativity. This circuit is associated with Ketamine and DMT by Leary. (Called also by Leary The Neuro-Atomic Circuit or The Metaphysiological Circuit, Robert Anton Wilson called this circuit The Quantum Non-Local Circuit.)
Many Aquarius Moons look at authoritarian constructs as dangerous and threatening aspects of a panoptic prison earth, as opposed to comforting pillars of strength and lawfulness. Aquarius Moon Patrick McGoohan made a whole TV series on this concept, The Prisoner. Watch an episode here. Aquarius is the sign of anti-establishment counterculture and in the moon a person feels that it is morally ‘good’ to let a freak flag fly in the face of the authoritarian work and reward system of conservatism that is reliant on violence. Not the most emotional moon sign, it has a tendency to see the facts and create a worldview based on fighting the power rather than self-advantageous courtesies and customs.
Leary believed that cyberspace and the internet could be used to live forever in a new tribal space, free of the absolutes of the material earth. In many ways, this is true, but of course I myself am an Aquarius Moon. From promising to die by suicide on the internet to creating video games based on William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Leary almost did not choose to exist in the material world, perhaps because of his experience finding out how difficult it is to challenge authoritarian power during Republican regimes.
Nixon created drug scheduling which made possession of marijuana equal to possession of crack cocaine and punishable by lengthy prison sentences. If, in an alternate timeline, Leary’s consciousness expansion had won out over Nixon’s blanket criminalization of drugs, would we really have an environment full of drug addled danger, or, perhaps, would we not freely associate expanding consciousness with economic folly and homeless or unemployable status?
Similar to Libra Sun FM-2030’s treatise Upwingers, futurism and transhumanism played a large part in Leary’s conceptualizing the future ( soon present), and, when one sees developments like Facebook, Trans identity, and anti capitalism rising in the ‘land of the free’, was he really that far off?
Timothy Leary made a cameo in the Blind Melon video, “Galaxie”. Blind Melon was lead by Shannon Hoon, yet another Libra Sun, who died on his Saturn Return. Just as Saturn’s emissary Richard Nixon imprisoned Leary for two joints.
..and could be found arguing with christian fundamentalism like any living Aquarius Moon might. Fundamentalism is violence for the Aquarius Moon, and ‘God’ a kind of socially accepted mass delusion: