THE 8-CIRCUIT BRAIN
AND OTHER BRIGHT IDEAS: PART 1
Antero Alli interviewed by Mike Gathers; 10/10/07.
MG: The program I'm engaged in at Naropa has, in addition to an academic and experiential side, a third component of contemplation, in that we are required to study and practice a form of vipassana meditation. One of the goals of this type of meditation focuses on developing awareness or consciousness of our unconscious processes. This process of making the unconscious conscious seems like a common theme among various traditions of self work, yet I'm struggling to see where it might specifically tie into the 8-Circuit Brain model. Do you see a connection or am I getting too involved with mixing models?
AA: The complex conditioning received from infant imprints, our culture at large, early childhood and parental influences, peer pressure, teachers in our public education systems, and the mass media all serve to shape the definitions of the individual experience of Physical, Emotional, Conceptual and Social survival and intelligence. From my view, these bottom four circuits represent patterns of behavior, habit and response that remain for the greater part in most of us, unconscious.
Though it is commonly assumed that we operate consciously and awake in all these four "survival" levels, contradictions to that assumption arise and persist in the face of any serious, ongoing self-observation. The 8-Circuit Brain model can be used in the process of "making the unconscious conscious" once the assumption that we are "awake and conscious" is relaxed and replaced with a spirit of inquiry into the very nature of consciousness itself and more specifically, the distinction between what is mechanical and what is alive; what is preconceived and what is spontaneous, what is habitual and what is truly natural.
MG: Understood. What I was groping at, but not articulating clearly was how experiences from the mindful state might be categorized according to the 8CB model. After further thought, I would say that in a mindful, therapeutic setting, I have had a few C6 "felt" experiences that uncovered unconscious C2 emotional-territorial patterns and brought them into awareness. In the days that followed these C6 experiences, I started to recognize the C2 patterns as they arose through the inner robot and was able to work with these patterns in a more conscious and deliberate manner. It seems that a practice of mindfulness creates space for C5-8 insights, but as you state, there are prerequisites before the upper four circuits truly flourish.
AA: Mindfulness, presence of mind, accelerated perception...all these phrases relate to my experience with the 8-Circuit Brain model as fifth and sixth circuit consciousness events. Fifth circuit somatic intelligence ignites when mind and body start yoking, coming into union, as in yoga; bringing mind to body. The body expresses that aspect of ourselves always in present time, whereas the mind often wanders into imaginary and projected realms of past and future. When they come together as a conscious act, the mind begins a transformation and the body develops more confidence to keep living. The body also expresses that aspect of ourselves that always knows it's going to die.
When the conceptual mind (circuit three) is humbled into service to life itself, that is to say, to attune its attention to the body as teacher, as guru, as source of life and guidance, then we have the start of a kind of somatic enlightenment process. Body wisdom becomes exalted over intellectual cleverness. How circuit three intellect is humbled differs for each of us but usually it involves some kind of direct experience of unity, of the shocking objective reality of unity, the interconnectedness of all life.
Before such a shock, the intellect typically functions exclusively (and often dogmatically) in dualistic modes of comparison and deduction. The direct experience of unity, the shock of unity, blows the mind. And the mind is forced to reassess its purpose and place in relation to all things. Or, flip out on some ego-tripping bender of insanity.
Eventually this yoking, or body/mind yoga, naturally blossoms into sixth circuit "second attention". When body and mind work together, perception of reality is released. This perception expresses an awareness not linked to thinking or the assignment of meaning, as with circuit three "first" attention, but with presence, energy and phenomena. It is a kind of seeing, rather than merely looking or judging, and also a kind of "seeing through" whatever illusions of separation the ego works to maintain and buffer itself against the objective reality of unity.
MG: As you may have noticed from my posts on tribe recently, I've been hung up on modeling the 8CB more a system of four intelligences (physical, emotional, conceptual, and social) that have two components two them which, as best as I can describe it, are a state of ordinary consciousness (C1-4) and a state of transpersonal consciousness (C5-8). I'm really simply taking your shock and anchor methodology a step further and suggesting that, for example, C1 and C5 are part of the same intelligence, but that we normally operate on C1 and sometimes make a quantum shift of sorts onto C5.
If anything, conceptualizing it in this way simplifies the model in such a way that I find it easier to understand and work with, and I try to keep in mind that I should toy with the idea, but not get to the point where I force the territory to fit the map. Do you notice anything in your work with the 8CB that might contradict this notion of four circuits with two modes each of operating, versus a
model of eight distinct circuits?
AA: I agree with your assumption here regarding the upper four circuits acting like outgrowths of the bottom four. It's like with clairvoyance being merely an amplification and acceleration of regular perception; clairaudience and the sense of hearing, clairsentience and the sense of touch, etc. However I have found that the upper four don't sprout very well until the ground of the lower four circuits have been well tilled, fertilized and tended with care. This amounts to a complete overhaul of their definitions so as to replace the culture's images with images developed from one's own direct experience. And before that can happen, there has to be some way or method or self- work or spontaneous enlightenment to dismantle the old paradigms and the wherewithal to endure the transformation into one's truer, more innate self.
MG: I have a few disagreements with your view of the model as you present it in your encapsulated 2007 summary at your website. Specifically, I suspect that early linguistics and the assignment of meaning (first attention) are more of a C2 process. The toddler in C2 goes through a phase of identifying first, What is this? and second, Is it mine? that seems to tie into the C2 notion of developing the me/not me territorial boundaries. Yet higher level conceptualizing still belongs to C3 while the lower level labeling is a C2 territorial process. As I understand it, this also puts the first attention on C2 which ties in nicely with the second attention on C6. Any thoughts here?
AA: Having seen three of my own daughters grow into circuits one and two, I have to stand by the notion that C-3 is where the linguistic labeling really starts, the naming and the nick-naming, the comprehensible words (to C-3 savvy adults) assigned to events and objects. However, I have noticed a kind of C-2 pre-verbal gurgle-talk that some mothers can miraculously understand and translate into C-3 for the dumfounded, astonished fathers.
I disagree with first attention assigned to C-2, no matter how neatly it fits into the whole sixth circuit association with second attention. I use the term "first attention" for its specific attributes of automatically assigning meaning to thoughts and words and also as a kind of attention that is really inseparable from thinking. C-2 engagement rarely involves thinking as it's usually too busy emoting and testing a person's strength, boundaries and status (pecking order) in primarily nonverbal instinctual ways.
An important side note. I know the borders between these circuits and what they represent to as blurry and with many messy overlays. They are not so clear cut. I think if we can keep this Mess Factor in mind, it may help minimize that hopelessly nerdy tendency for trying to squeeze the putty of real life too tightly into the cookie cutter ideas of our hungry minds.
MG: Your side note is well taken. With this paper, I set out to draw strong correlations between C1-4 and modern understanding of psychological and neurological development stages. The project quickly turned into a tangled mess with far too much complexity for this assignment. It does however lead me to my next notion. Both Leary and Wilson conceived of the bottom circuits as imprinted at acute, random moments in childhood and adolescent development. I simply do not see the biological basis for such small windows of imprinting.
Certainly birth is the primary C1 imprinting process and the universal trauma that all humans undergo, but I suspect it only accounts for roughly 30 to 80% of the C1 imprint depending on the individual and the circumstances of birth. It seems that C1 imprinting starts in the womb and continues well into the first several months of life. C2 emotional imprinting corresponds well to the development and maturation of the limbic system of our brain, but this period of vulnerability occurs over several months. I am starting to suspect that C3 and especially C4 imprinting occurs over a period that could be as long as several years and I find it hard to agree with Wilsonís notion that the entire C4 imprint is taken on at the moment of first orgasm. Any thoughts on this based on your experiences?
AA: I question the phrase "birth trauma"; what birth is not traumatic ? If all birth is labeled traumatic, perhaps it is more like standard to the experience and not the exception. My experiences parallel Wilson's and Leary's here regarding the early childhood imprints of the first four circuits. Once imprinted, however, there are years and decades of affirmative conditioning that fortify and maintain those imprints, habits that can run throughout the rest of our lives and can run or rule the rest of our lives. Though C-1 imprinting does start with the infant dependency event with the mother, or surrogate mother, I think circuits two through four (especially C-4) can remain "un-imprinted" for years to come differing, of course, with each person and their circumstances.
As for the entire circuit four imprint occurring with the first orgasm, this sounds ridiculous to me. If only it were that simple and easy yet circuit four has proven to be anything but easy and simple. It's not just me; look at the world, look at our human history of warfare, genocide and social tragedy. Other equally complex imprints such as religious upbringing, courtship rituals, woman and manhood rites of passage, pregnancy, and parenting also inhabit the web of fourth circuit realities.
MG: I suspect that development of morality falls more into C3 as we develop our conceptual maps of right and wrong during the C3 imprinting period of among other things, innocent sex play, whereas C4 consists more of a sense of, "What is my identity within the tribe?" Comments?
AA: Look to real life examples for these answers. Look at friends of yours with the highest C-3 IQ or the ones with over-emphasized intellects and ask yourself if they have developed any real sense of right and wrong. Maybe they can tell the difference between a "correct" answer and an "incorrect" answer or whether it's morally wrong to cheat on a test but the whole area of ethics demands something greater than intellect; it demands conscience. As for tribal identity, that won't happen unless you know the code of the tribe and can prove yourself worthy of it. That code would probably express how that tribe defines right and wrong.
MG: Again, point well taken. My question stemmed from a desire to correlate psychologist Erik Erikson's third stage of development initiative vs. guilt with C3 imprinting and development, and for now, I will simply ride with the Mess Factor.
Final inquiry. Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan stated, "For me there is only the traveling on the paths that have a heart, on any path that may have a heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge for me is to traverse its full length. And there I travel--looking, looking, breathlessly." In my own hopelessly nerdy tendencies, I admire the 8CB model and how Leary and Wilson cast it in terms of modern psychology and neuroscience (for the time), but I often lose sight of how heart can be brought into the model. In fact, there has been a growing body of research into the existence of a heart-mind. Do you have any words of wisdom on working with the 8CB model as a path with heart?
AA: The term "heart" has been tossed about so much in pop psychology and other areas as to almost lose meaning. I define "heart" in terms of courage. Fighters have heart; great fighters have great hearts. Heart is not just about peace and love and flowers. It's also about the courage to become vulnerable and to show compassion for your naked self. Heart is about facing life as open as the empty sky with the seriousness of a child at play.
Heart plays a pivotal role in the integration process of the 8-Circuit Brain model. It's one thing to understand the model, its basic definitions of intelligence and internal correlations and, it's an altogether different thing to realize, to embody, your participation in the experience that the circuits act as symbols for. It takes a lot of heart to live nakedly enough to discover one's most direct experiences and responses to the realities represented by each circuit. It takes a lot of heart to discover direct experience, period.
NOTE: This interview is continued in PART TWO.
8-Circuit Brain Links
Synopsis of the 8-Circuit Model
On circuit definitions and correlations
Something About SHOCK
On the nature of shock in relation to the eight circuits
NeuroPharmacy of the Eight-Circuit Brain
Revisions the circuits as "trances" and "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