In the course of working on a Maybe Day article, I had a question about the Leary-Wilson Eight C'ircuit model of consciousness. It's obvious which RAW book one should read to learn about the model, e.g. Prometheus Rising, but which Timothy Leary title should one read? I posed the question to a couple of people who had done a lot of research on the model, and I'm sharing their answers here.
Joseph L. Flatley is the author of a new book, The Occult Timothy Leary: The Tarot, Magical States, and Post-Terrestrial Evolution. (See this interview). When I asked him to suggest a Leary title on the model, he replied:
"Obviously the best introduction to the 8 circuit model is Prometheus Rising. As for Leary's work, I would recommend Neuropolitique, which is a collection of articles written around the time of his release from prison. A lot of them refer to the eight circuit model and are very readable. Even the articles that don't refer to the circuits provide a great introduction to the Leary worldview. His two major reference books on the 8th circuit model, Infopsychology and The Game of Life are really hard to get through and I wouldn't necessarily recommend them to beginners."
Many of you know Mike Gathers from the Hilaritas Press podcast, and he is busy working on an article on the Eight Circuit model, about which more below, but first, here is Mike's answer:
"Good question. Info-/Exo-psychology is weird. Like Bucky Fuller on Freud and LSD. Game of Life is just... super weird. Not my thing. Flatley led me to appreciate it, but not my thing. You can find PDFs of Neurologic out there pretty easily. There are two different versions that appear to be two different 1973 printings of the same 'edition.' It runs 40-60 pages depending on the printing. Higgs felt it was Leary's best presentation of the model."
"The 44 page version of Neurologic can be found here:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/2350894/NeuroLogic-by-Timothy-Leary
https://www.scribd.com/doc/17278486/NeuroLogic-by-Timothy-Leary
https://mirror.explodie.org/Timothy%20Leary%20-%20Neurologic.pdf
"I have a 74ish page version that I think is the original, full printing, but I don't see it up on the interent anyway for public access."
As for Mike's upcoming article: "The 8 Circuit Ascencion people are putting together an anthology. So I have a 4-8000 word chapter that will be a "Then and Now." Half history of the model and half bringing it up to 2026. I'm thinking I will do a Leary vlog/pod that goes into more detail. We'll see what follows. I seem to have found some motivation on the whole thing and am basically retired (or on a one year sabbatical, depending on my mood) and doing what I want. The deadline for the chapter is 10/31. "
(Footnote to the above: Despite a similarity in titles, Neurologic and Neuropolitique are separate Leary titles. Neuropolitique is actually a revision of an earlier book, Neuropolitics: The Sociobiology of Human Metamorphosis.
Also, I have been trying to post fewer links to Amazon -- not an anti-Amazon jihad, just a preference to promote actual bricks and mortar bookstores -- but I could not find a Barnes and Noble link to Neuropolitique and opted to post a useful link. I just bought the ebook of Neuropolitique.)
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