The Eight-Circuit Brain
Fixations, Anchors, Catalysts and Shocks
© 2007-09 Antero Alli -- updated 19 June 2009
THE FOUR SURVIVAL CIRCUITS
THEIR FIXATIONS AND ANCHORS
Each of the first four “survival circuits” are driven by variations on the primary will to survive. Fixations refer to any concentration and investment of consciousness in specific events and experiences that activate a given circuit. Fixation also demonstrates how consciousness can become fixed, or “stuck”, in one circuit over another by over-emphasis. Anchors refer to how we know a circuit has been earned and integrated and, ready to serve as a stabilizing influence, or anchor, for absorbing the shock from its higher overtone function, i.e., 1 & 5, 2 & 6, 3 & 7, 4 & 8.
C-1 Physio-Biological Intelligence; the will to survive
fixations: food, shelter, self-preservation, material goods, safety and security
anchor: degree of confidence earned and maintained to assure physical survival
C-2 Emotional-Territorial Intelligence; the will to power
fixations: self-defense, territoriality, status, ego-strength, emotional honesty
anchor: degree of emotional confidence earned and maintained to assure personal worth
C-3 Symbolic-Conceptual Intelligence; the will to sanity
fixations: thinking, problem solving, analysis, semantics, system theories
anchor: degree of mental confidence earned and maintained to assure peace of mind
C-4 Social-Moral Intelligence; the will to socialize
fixations: friendship, domestication, sexual rites and tribal identity, ethical codes, religions
anchor: degree of social confidence earned and maintained to assure sense of belonging
THE FOUR POST-SURVIVAL CIRCUITS
THEIR CATALYSTS AND SHOCKS
Catalysts refer to whatever triggers and stimulates the specific energy, or current, innate to a given circuit. Shocks refer to how the specific impact of these currents and energies stimulate growth and evolution in their corresponding survival circuits, i.e., 5 & 1, 6 & 2, 7 & 3, and 8 & 4.
C-5 Somatic Intelligence of Body Wisdom and Five Senses
Catalysts: whatever triggers the experience of rapture, communion with nature, tantra (yoga, meditation, ritual), charisma, second wind, falling in love (endorphins) and the expanding presence of being here now.
The Shocks of Ecstasy and Bliss (absence of suffering)
C-6 Intuitive-Psychic Intelligence of the Brain, Spine, & CNS
Catalysts: whatever triggers the experience of the energetic body or aura, the second attention, intuition, clairvoyance and other psychic abilities, ritual magick, reality selection, direct perception of a relative nature of reality
The Shocks of Uncertainty and Freedom (absence of false assumptions, certitudes and dogmas)
C-7 Mytho-Poetic Genetic Intelligence of DNA and the Planetary Entity
Catalysts: whatever triggers the experience of ancestral and past life memories, autonomous archetypes, synchronicity, planetary (Gaia) mind, cosmic consciousness.
The Shocks of Indivisibility and Cosmic Unity (absence of dualistic consciousness)
C-8 Quantum-Nonlocal Intelligence of Subatomic interactions
Catalysts: whatever triggers the experience of near death, out of body states, the dreambody and dreamtime, lucid dreaming, communion with Void, the mystery of singularity.
The Shocks of Death and Impermanence (absence of ego identification)
THE THREE SUB-PHASES
HOW INTELLIGENCE CAN BE INCREASED
These eight functions of Intelligence can be accessed through any experience allowing for the full absorption, integration and transmission of each level. These three sub-phases reflect the funtioning of our most basic biological unit of intelligence: the neuron (alternative terms: receive/digest/eliminate, experience/process/communicate, study/interpret/articulate). All three stages are necessary for the advancement of intelligence. If you only absorb, nothing is integrated; if nothing can be integrated, we regurgitate and parrot whatever we are absorbing. Each of the eight levels express distinct ways in which this 3-stage process can occur, ways that do not necessarily apply to other levels. For example, C-2 emotions do not follow the same “logic” as C-3 ideas and visa versa.
SHOCKS, ANCHORS AND VERTICAL CONNECTIVITY
Each of the eight functions exist within each individual at various degrees of expression and latency. They can be viewed and approached in a linear sequential "evolutionary" way and/or in a nonlinear "radial" way; both vantages carry their own values. I think it would be erroneous to assume any one circuit to be "better" or "worse", or "higher" or "lower" than any other, if they symbolize simultaneously existing states of consciousness working together as a dynamic changing whole.
To view them hierarchically, by positing any circuit as superior or inferior than any other, only perpetuates the emotional plague, a term proposed by Wilhelm Reich for the psychological syndrome marked by irrational insistence on beliefs and ideas that depend on dissociation of mind from body. Reich also refered to it as "the neurotic character in destructive action on the social scene".
Though there are countless ways these eight functions interact and/or act on each other, the area I have found most interesting so far addresses how the first four "survival" circuits and the second four "post-survival" circuits act on each other in very precise two-way vertical connectivities. I specifically refer to how the upper circuits act on the lower circuits as distinct shocks and how the lower circuits act on the upper circuits as stabilizing anchor points, or the absrobtion and integration of those shocks.
1/5; 2/6; 3/7; 4/8
The Vertical Connectivities
Without a supple and resilient foundation (circuits 1-4 integrated), any significant force of expanded consciousness (circuits 5-8) can leave us destabilized at varying degrees of personality disintegration and disassociation. Once the survival circuits can be more fully experienced, integrated and embodied, they can also better serve to (re)stabilize the personality to better absorb and integrate the shocks delivered by any activation of the post-survival circuits.
Upper circuit post-survival shocks stimulate growth and development in the four survival circuits, just as the survival circuits (once integrated) can help substantiate the more ephemeral and subtle states symbolized by circuits five through eight. If monitored and tended to, all eight circuits can be made to work together in more meaningful ways to serve the dynamic changing whole they are expressions of. By tending to the specific verticalities shared between upper circuit shocks and lower circuit anchors (1/5; 2/6; 3/7; 4/8), the 8-Circuit Brain model can offer safer and more creative guidelines to the high seas adventures of consciousness research.
excerpted from
THE EIGHT-CIRCUIT BRAIN
Navigational Strategies for the Energetic Body
by Antero Alli (Vertical Pool; release date: October 1st, 2009)
LINKS TO MORE 8-CIRCUIT BRAIN MATERIAL
THE 8-CIRCUIT BRAIN -- THE DVD (2009)
Angel Tech (book on the 8-circuit brain)
by Antero Alli; Original Falcon Press
ANTERO'S PODCAST INTERVIEWS
On the 8-Circuit Brain and ParaTheatrical ReSearch
Antero interviewed on the Eight Circuits
by Mike Gathers, 10/10/07 and 3/1/08
Something About SHOCK
Ideas on the nature of shock in relation to the eight circuits
The NeuroPharmacy of the Eight-Circuit Brain
Antero revisions the circuits as "trances" and their catalysts
Tim Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, Gurdjieff
multiple translations of this model
an overview of multiple interpretations
courtesy of Steve Mizrach and The MindWarp
The Origins of the 8-Circuit model
where and who Leary inherited it from
ANTERO ALLI
click for bio
Books in print and Films on dvd