'Liminal Currents' podcast interviews Rasa about RAW

Episode 23 of the Liminal Currents podcast features an  interview with Rasa. "On this episode he shares many interesting stories about RAW, his concepts and a bit about Timothy Leary as well!" I have not had time to listen yet, but I will check it out soon. I have linked to the Apple podcasts site, but it appears to be available at many of the usual podcasting locations and apps. The host apologizes for accidentally referring to Rasa as "Robert" in the podcast. 

The Liminal Currents podcast appears to have other episodes that might be of interest to sombunall RAW fans.

Mike Gathers on his planned book on the Eight Circuit model

Mike Gathers. Photo from the Mike Gathers Coaching website. 

Mike Gathers, known to many of you as the founder of the RAWilsonFans.org website and the host of the Hilaritas Press monthly podcast, is hard at work on his planned new book on the Eight Circuit model of consciousness invented by Timothy Leary and promoted by Robert Anton Wilson.

That's the news in his latest Substack newsletter, Intelligence Increase, his first newsletter in just over two years. 

Mike has some other writing topics he wants to pursue, but the Eight Circuit project is the main focus of the newsletter, which details how he has worked with Grok 3 to get going. 

"I went from fleshing out ideas that were half baked to generating a detailed outline of the book. I have been feeling recent pressure to write this book and haven’t made much progress in the six or so years I’ve been 'seriously' thinking about writing a book, but I have made a huge amount of progress in the last month," he writes.

The newsletter has an outline of many of the ideas Mike has come up with for the book, and more writing via Substack is promised soon. The newsletter is free. 

An Eight Circuit podcast

 

 

While Hilaritas Press released a new edition of Beyond Chaos and Beyond on Feb. 23, the podcast released the same day deserves some attention, too.

"In this episode, Hilaritas guest host Zach West chats with Rachel Turetzky, Doug Wingate, and David Jay Brown about their new book with Original Falcon Press, Eight Circuit Ascension: A Guide to Metaprogramming the Multidimensional Self."

Here is the official website for the book. You can buy the book on Amazon.   You can also look at the Original Falcon Press page for the book, where you can buy the book directly if you don't want to go through Amazon, or you want to buy an ePub rather than a Kindle ebook. 

As for the new book, here is my review of the original edition. 

New from Hilaritas: 'Beyond Chaos and Beyond,' new podcast

One of my favorite posthumous Robert Anton Wilson works, Beyond Chaos and Beyond, has been issued in an enhanced new edition by Hilaritas Press. In the newsletter announcing the reissue, Rasa explains, "This new edition is essentially the same written material, but it features enhanced photographs and many upgraded design elements."

As Rasa explains, the book has an excellent biographical essay about RAW penned by Scott Apel and reprints a great deal of RAW material, including writings from the newsletter Trajectories that Apel and RAW put out. It also has a particularly good interview with RAW, maybe my all-time favorite, dating back to 1977.

Also announced today, a new podcast: "Hilaritas guest host Zach West chats with Rachel Turetzky, Doug Wingate, and David Jay Brown about their new book with Original Falcon Press, Eight Circuit Ascension: A Guide to Metaprogramming the Multidimensional Self." 

I will have more on the podcast and the new book. 

Mike Gathers interviewed on the Eight Circuit model

 

 

As promised in an earlier announcement, the latest Hilaritas podcast, above, features Mike Gathers as the person being interviewed, by guest host Zach West. It's the Maybe Day release. The topic is the Eight Circuit model, as created by Timothy Leary and developed by Robert Anton Wilson and Antero Alli; Mike relates in the course of the interview how he's studied it for years. I thought the podcast was quite interesting. 

Mike is a therapist who says the model's main usefulness for him is as an overarching framework that he can use in incorporating the various psychological theories and forms of therapy he has studied. (As an aside, I enjoyed the description of what it was like to attend Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.) Listening to the podcast, I better understood why Mike is such a Grateful Dead fan.  There was no discussion of James Heffernan's book, and I wondered if Mike had read it. 

Toward the end, Mike mentions wanting to write a book about the model. I hope he does. I hope someone offers him a book contract, or that he offers himself a contract, so to speak, and gets to work. I would buy it. 

Here are some Mike Gathers links.   And also here is a playlist for Mike's Eight Circuit videos posted on YouTube. 

New Hilaritas podcast will turn tables on Mike Gathers

The first episode of a Mike Gathers video series on the Eight Circuit Model of Consciousness, about 18 minutes long. 

Mike Gathers is usually the guy asking the questions when the Hilaritas Press podcast is released every month. But when Maybe Day is celebrated on July 23, next week, he'll be on the podcast answering questions.

"Our next podcast,  coming on Maybe Day July 23rd,  will feature Zach West interviewing Mike Gathers about the 8 Circuit Model," Rasa reports. "They had an amazingly good discussion on the subject."

Rasa also says he's been looking at videos on YouTube on the Eight Circuit Model of Consciousness, and says the ones by Mike are reliably good. Here is a playlist. 

As for the other videos, Rasa remarks, "Some are certainly better than others, but it’s interesting to see the differences." Here is one of the others. 

'The Periodic Table of Energy,' a lost RAW-Leary book

The Periodic Table of Energy is an unpublished book that apparently was a collaboration between Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson. 

Prop Anon, who has been posting many RAW-related documents since completing his biography of Robert Anton Wilson, which is being brought out by Strange Attractor, has published an article on his Chapel Perilous website, "The Periodic Table of Energy--RAW's 1st article about 8 Circuits!"

Prop describes the piece as RAW's first piece on the Eight Circuit model, and the intro for the piece in the Berkeley Barb makes it clear that it's a collaboration between the two friends, Wilson and Leary. 

The editor's note/intro to the 1975 piece from the Berkeley Barb, written by someone named Steve Long, says:

Wilson is currently writing The Starseed Signals, a book based on Leary’s scientific development from 1957 to the present: “I’m hoping to demonstrate that, as usual, the man most persecuted by society is its greatest genius,” he said.

Bob Wilson summarized The Periodic Table of Energy as follows: “The basic idea is that the human nervous system can evolve through 24 stages, turning on to new signals at each stage, tuning in to new gestalts, and therefore literally developing new circuits or new ‘brains.’ And the nervous system has been preprogrammed to through this evolution.” 

Elsewhere, The Periodic Table of Energy excerpted in the Barb has been treated as an unpublished Leary book. Here is my 2012 post about the manuscript being auctioned off.  Here is the Boing Boing piece, by Mark Fraunfelder, about the auction. You can read the press release about the auction, 

I don't know who bought it, what happened to the manuscript, or if anyone is going to bring it out; I will make inquiries. Maybe Prop knows something? 

First week's RAW assignment for '8 Dimensions of Mind'

This has been a good last few weeks for material becoming available from Robert Anton Wilson's old Maybe Logic Academy courses. Prop Anon has now posted Wilson's class assignments for the first three weeks of RAW's "Tale of the Tribe" course at Chapel Perilous, Prop's new website.

And now, from Vincent Murphy, I can post the first week of class assignment's for RAW's 8 Dimensions of "Mind" at Maybe Logic Academy. Here is an interesting sentence about an Aleister Crowley ritual RAW posted: "PLEASE NOTE  that I suggested that you 'contemplate' this ritual, NOT that you perform it. Unless you have at least 10 years experience in Magick ritual of the Thelemic sort, you should not try performing any invocation of Horus. Reasons exist why occultists call him the Lord of Force and Fire."

Thanks, Mr. Murphy!

Eight Circuit resources on YouTube

Some suggestions from Mike Gathers, who has written about the Eight Circuits model of consciousness and is the host of the Hilaritas Press podcasts.

Mike has two suggestions. One is to watch the 8 Circuit Cafe series on YouTube. The first episode is above.

"I think they do a good job," Mike comments. "The last episode focused on the 3 sub-stages of the circuits and I really enjoyed it.   Not much original or innovative, but a good discussion on what's been written by Leary-Wilson-Alli."

Mike also recomments the Sit With It videos on YouTube. I've linked to the channel's playlists.

"This channel has some really interesting stuff blending his yoga practice with upper circuit exploration and bringing in some solid modern psychology and neuroscience into the lower circuits," Mike explains. "(Three different playlists - full talk, highlights, and core ideas....)"

Mike hopes to post his own videos soon, based on his Maybe Day writings of the last two years. 

Eight Circuits music lessons offered

Zach West (Facebook photo)

The Musical Circuits Curriculum website, offered by Colorado musician Zach West,  offers instruction in what West calls I2C2 Music, with lessons in four circuits for kids and lessons in eight circuits for adults. (The I2 stands for "Intelligence Increase" while the C2 stands for "Creativity Cultivation.") Lessons cost $35 for a half hour sessions, $60 for an hour and $400 for a Musical Circuits package for adults. More here. 

Heffernan's Eight Circuits book

 

Earlier this year, I read James Heffernan's book on the Eight Circuit model, Nonlocal Nature: The Eight Circuits of Consciousness. I can't seem to find the time to do a long book review, but here are some notes:

1. I gave it four stars in Goodreads. I thought it was interesting and well written. There as nice sentences such as, "If you can walk away from this book feeling that the light reflecting from the page and hitting your eye is not ordinary, then I am happy." 

2. Rather than aimed at the general reader, the book seems aimed mainly at people who have learned about the Eight Circuit model from Robert Anton Wilson and who want to learn more or get an additional take on it. There isn't much of an explanation of where the model came from and the history of discussion about it. Heffernan kind of assumes people know what it is and will welcome discussion. Perhaps a new edition could include an introduction to the concept and reach out to people who are not already familiar with it. 

3. I am never quite sure how seriously to take the Eight Circuit model, and this book does not move the needle very much for me one way or the other. I don't know what to make of sentences like, "As I have noted previously, having seventh circuit awareness is like having access to the uncollapsed quantum wavefunction of the brain."

4. Heffernan seems to mostly stick pretty closely to RAW's ideas, so it's noteworthy when he differs from RAW. He isn't big on space migration and writes (other passages could be cited) "Space migration is at best a distant goal, and it appears that, with technology as it is, especially pertaining to propulsion technologies, it could be many, many decades before serious space migration is remotely possible." Obviously the space migration dreams of RAW were premature, but I'm still more of an optimist than Heffernan.

5. The paperback is $30 but the Kindle is only $4, so it's affordable to get an ebook and draw your own conclusions. Amazon also allows Kindle owners to loan their copy to other readers who use a Kindle. 

How RAW helped Eric Wagner

[ Mike Gathers recently asked on Facebook how Robert Anton Wilson's books discussing the Eight Circuit model helped people and how they changed their lives; here is Eric Wagner's answer, reprinted by permission. 

In other "Eric Wagner news," the new and updated edition of his Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson apparently will be released soon; I will have a full announcement on this blog when I know more. -- The Management.]

Eric Wagner: I bought Prometheus Rising in 1985. My roommate Jai said, "This book seems perfect for you." I started looking for quarters and did some of the exercises in the book. Around 1988 I did most of the exercises I hadn't already done. Some I repeated many times. I spent a few years focusing on chapters from the associated day on the first 19 days of each month. (On the fifth of the month I would work on chapter five, etc.) I have found these exercises and the book in general very useful in understanding myself and my world and in changing my behavior. In the late 90's I started to translate the book into E-Prime, but just after I started I got a copy of Bob's revision of the text. He didn't put the whole thing into E-Prime, but I think he did radically improve the text. I struggled with Exo-Psychology when I first tried to read it around 1982. I came to love it, and I loved the revision Info-Psychology even more. I loved how WIlliam Gibson, etc., helped Leary's thought to evolve. I did a lot of the exercises in "Game of Life" and I found it very useful. I loved Neuropolitics and its revision Neuropolitque. I enjoyed Antero's books and I did a number of the exercises in them.

When Quantum Psychology came out, I formed a group which started the book. Then I started another group that did the whole book, and then a few years later I formed another group that worked through the whole book. I started an online group with Bob Wilson that worked through the first few chapters, and then Tom Jackson formed a group I participated in which did the whole book online. I found the exercises useful especially in seeing how differently Bob's readers interpret his ideas and how to implement them.

Cosmic Trigger 2 memes

New from Rasa. Restatements of the eight circuit model.

A naysayer on Leary and Wilson's theories

A fellow named Joshua Scott Hotchkin, who has a blog named Advanced Dank Unicorn, recently posted a piece called "Why You Should Be Skeptical of Timothy Leary’s SMI2LE Formula." This is a followup, of sorts, to Hotchkin's other recent piece, "The Eight Circuit Model of Consciousness Is An Egotistical Abstraction," which he claims is "fraught with issues, even as an analogy."

Hotchkin has been using Facebook to propagate his theories, and as you might imagine, it hasn't gone down well with many Leary/Wilson fans. Richard Rasa ventured some criticisms, and found himself blocked by Hotchkin.

It seems to me that the Eight Circuit model remains alive, at least in the sense that people still find it useful, as I've documented on this blog here and here. As for SMI2LE, there are plenty of Silicon Valley libertarian types who are trying to make space migration, intelligent increase, life extension and all of the rest of it a reality, and spending real money to do so. A blog post by a fellow in Iowa doesn't change that.

Rather than address Hotchkin's points, arguably not worth my time, I want to make a general point about models: As RAW would say, you use them insofar as they are useful. To put it in Buddhist terminology (from one of the Pali sutras), a raft is for getting across a river, not constructed to serve as a burden to carry around indefinitely.

As I write this, the disease model for dealing with opioid addiction has become popular in the U.S., because it solves certain problems. It removes the stigma from getting treatment, it allows people to focus on solving the problem rather than discussing the alleged failings of the person with an addiction, etc. No doubt there are points where the disease model might fail, or at least could be debated, but it remains alive because it is useful.

More Eight Circuit news

Mike Gathers

The Eight Circuits of Consciousness model developed by Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson continues to attract attention, and not just because of the new book by James Heffernan that I blogged about earlier. 

Mike Gathers, who played an important role in the collection of material at the RAWilsonfans.org website (see Michael Johnson's introduction to the Hilaritas Press edition of Email to the Universe) is a Colorado coach and therapist.

He recently gave a presentation on the Eight Circuits to a group of transpersonal counseling students at Naropa University and reports that it went really well.  Mike also shared a paper he had written, "Supporting Spiritual Emergency under the Framework of Dr. Timothy Leary's Eight Circuit Brain Model: Using the Lower Circuits to Absorb Transpersonal Shocks." Mike then realized he could write a book on the subject, and other RAW fans have been urging him to go forward.

Mike gave me permission to report on all this after discussing the matter in a private email group, and also said it was OK to post his paper (see the link above.) He also gave me a statement to use for this blog:

"I wrote this paper almost 10 years ago during my first year as a master's student in Naropa's Transpersonal Counseling Psychology program.  The previous semester I wrote a much shorter paper in which I interviewed Antero Alli as part of the assignment which included interviewing a subject matter expert.  I'm proud to say that Antero ended up including that interview in his book, The Eight Circuit Brain, Navigational Strategies for the Energetic Body._  I dusted this paper off when I was recently invited to do a guest lecture at Naropa on the Eight Circuit Brain - I hadn't thought deeply about the model since I wrote that paper 10 years ago.   Based on the students' enthusiastic response to the material I presented, and my own reflections on that experience, I realized that I have a book in me on this subject.   The time is right to update the model with modern developmental psycho-biology and share my own experience of working with the model as a tool for personal growth and development.   So that's the plan for 2018."

Cosmic Trigger online reading group, Week 24

New edition of Prometheus Rising 

By Charles Faris, Cosmic Trigger online reading group guest blogger 

In 1973 Johanna Leary published Neurologic, a little book that introduces the concept and basic structure of Timothy Leary’s 8-Circuit Theory. In his biography of Timothy Leary John Higgs mentions  the profound affect that book had on RAW. After reading, re-reading, and absorbing the implications of this thin little volume Bob was a changed man. He pretty much dove into direct collaboration with Tim (Neoropolitics, The Game of Life, etc) in order to “get the word out,” or something like that. I cannot believe the zeal was anything less than that of John the Baptist, although Bob did for the most part manage to keep his head. [Does that make Johanna Mary Magdalene?]

In Tunnel-Realities and Imprints (201) Bob takes his first big stab at using words to describe something which by its nature cannot be understood by the rational mind, using the model to explain the meta-model as it were. RAW has been building up to this point for 200 pages. If the final secret of the Illuminati has yet to be revealed, 8-Circuit Theory may be the puzzle that points to that final epiphany. Bob affords it that space in the structure of this book that changes people’s lives.

New edition of Quantum Psychology 

This mystery of mysteries is the gift that keeps on giving apparently. Bob can’t seem to stop talking about it. It serves as a scaffolding for all of his subsequent work; the biggest, widest, wildest tunnel that he is ever blessed to view from, continually expanding and morphing not unlike Universe, impossible to pin down because it won’t stay damned still.

Over the course of his career post-Illuminatus! RAW kept coming back to 8-Circuit Theory, re-naming, re-ordering, and refining his understanding (and that of his readers). The chart below details a bit of this expanding/contracting/morphing—the shift in naming and ordering between 1977 and 1990.

Digging into this initial iteration of The System/Circuits According to Raw, I am faced with 2 frustrations. The first is my attempt to “understand.” Given that the system itself describes and advocates the use of 8 different “modes of being” it doesn’t make a lot of sense to obsess on grasping it solely through the use of my “thinking facilities,” and yet it is so hard not to. That’s what my thinkers like to do—figure things out! The solution I have developed in that regard is to simply view the system as a tool for discovering how to operate my nervous system. A map, and nothing more. Pull it out, have a look, fold it back up and put it away. Now go play in the territory. Of course, having a good map is quite useful when navigating unfamiliar territory, and quite useless in Chapel Perilous, which is by definition that place where none of your maps is accurate.

The awesome thing about 8 Circuit Theory, the System that is not a System (said Ouspensky on his deathbed), is that it is not just a map. It is also a telescope and a microscope and perhaps the most awesome mental multi-tool ever. As such, it is designed to be USED more than UNDERSTOOD, played with more than figured out. So the solution to my first frustration is to play with it (which includes, apparently, feeling free to re-name and re-order (and re-make/re-model) at Will), use it to look deeper into the world as well as to step back and get a broader perspective. Swiss Army Knife.

My second frustration lies in finding a more helpful way of viewing and working with Circuit/Systems 5-8 than through the terrestrial/extra-terrestrial lens. All Reality Tunnels have their limits and given my Earth-Bound Existence that particular dialectic hasn’t really served me for something like 25 years. It’s like waiting for the dog-mad Eschaton to bleeping Immanentize already! I can’t live in that space!

What I’m doing now is viewing THIS as the time of systems 5-8. I see this in how the on-line world, the social-media, are actively transforming our culture—the culture wars are being fought on-line, in the Neuroelectric/Meta-Programming circuit. As people self-select culturally, they are also then creating new gene-pool swarms. We can see how the Morphogenetic system pulls people of various DNA configurations toward each other. 

Well anyway, that’s my game. What’s yours?

Be here next week for more of this craziness: The Octave of Energy (214) and The law of acceleration (219).

Michael Johnson on the Fifth Circuit

If you are interested in the Eight Circuit Model of Consciousness as conceived by Timothy Leary and developed and popularized by Robert Anton Wilson, have a gander at Michael Johnson's "Improvisations Off Leary and Wilson's 5th Circuit," over at his blog. (Michael modestly calls his piece "improvisations," but everything he posts seems to be based on books by Harvard professors, stacks of articles, out of print books that stuff in the shelves of his personal library, etc.)

See also the comments, where Eric Wagner talks about activating the Fifth Circuit with classical music.