The Gurdjieffian Roots of Leary's Eight-Circuit Model of Consciousness

An examination of the correspondences between Gurdjieff's centers and Leary's Eight-Circuit Model of Consciousness

In this time of Chaos Magick, it pays to seek out concepts that can serve as points of stability in the new sea of flux. The eight-circuit model of consciousness was drawn up by Timothy Leary and then popularized by Robert Anton Wilson, but its roots are found in the works of the mystic Gurdjieff as reported by his student Ouspensky in the book In Search of the Miraculous.

Gurdjieff divided his system into two levels, the Lower Centers and the Higher Centers. Notice however that this division is not identical to that of Leary's Terrestrial and Extra-Terrestrial Circuitry.

Lower centers:

The first of these centers is the Instinctive center which controls involuntary processes. In medical terminology, this is the autonomic nervous system.

The next is the Moving center which consists of those learned physical processes whose mechanisms have become subconscious, such as walking, eating, driving, etc.

Next is the Sexual center. This controls sexual function but it is also the source of the imagination.

Then we have the Lower Emotional center.

The final lower center is the Lower Intellectual center.

Higher centers:

The Higher Emotional center. It allows one to experience states of self-consciousness, self-awareness, and other deep feelings.

The Higher Intellectual center. It allows one to experience states of objective consciousness and superior intellect.

So let's see how these match up to Leary's system.

The bio-survival circuit, with its possibility of moving towards pleasant stimuli and away from unpleasant stimuli, seems to be a good match for the Moving center.

The muscular-political circuit, with its direction of up for domination and down for submission, likely corresponds to the Lower Emotional center.

The symbolic-laryngeal circuit matches the Lower Intellectual center.

The socio-sexual circuit is probably identical to the Higher Emotional center.

The artistic-pleasure circuit would seem to go with the Sexual-Imagination center, which Gurdjieff claimed functioned as a higher center when accessed in the proper manner.

The meta-intelligence circuit is undoubtedly the same as the Higher Intellectual center.

Finally, we are left with the Instinctive center and the genetic-consciousness circuit, which don't seem to be identical so much as lower and higher octaves of a single aspect of existence. It is as though the Gurdjieff sequence runs Do Re Mi Fa So La Si, while the Leary sequence runs Re Mi Fa So La Si Do.

The next circuit is the quantum consciousness circuit which doesn't have a corresponding center as Gurdjieff's system had only seven centers, still, much like the previous circuit, it can be seen as related to the circuit/system one octave lower, which is the bio-survival circuit /Moving center. The lower center/circuit is concerned with keeping the body alive, the higher circuit/center is concerned with expanding consciousness beyond the physical limits of time and space. So, once again, while the Gurdjieff sequence runs Do Re Mi Fa So La Si, the Leary sequence is one note longer and is offset by one, running Re Mi Fa So La Si Do Re. 

Understanding Life Under Cthulhu

The event depicted in the meme has come to pass as the forces of Satan were vanquished by an even worse deity, Cthulhu.

In the last election in the U.S. the choice was clear, Satan on the Left or Cthulhu on the Right. Satan stood for business as usual while Cthulhu represented the unleashing of the Kraken, releasing a force of pure chaos that sees humanity, if it perceives us at all, as an inconsequential form of life beneath consideration, except perhaps as a source of grease for lubricating the gears of time.

Such a comparison seems overly melodramatic and lacking in any real world significance, but there is more to this matter than is apparent at first glance. 

Behind the Trump campaign was the mysterious Alt-Right movement whose member utilised both the symbolism and technology of Chaos Magick.

Aleister Crowley is seen by many as the father of Chaos Magick. Consider his warning at the opening of his book Magick in Theory and Practice:

“In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.” ― Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice

Crowley was of the opinion that it wasn't the actual rituals that had true magickal power, rather it was the excited neural state of the participant that mattered. Still, he worked within the symbolic framework as reconstructed within the ceremonial rituals of the Golden Dawn with their mixture of Egyptian, Hermetic, and Renaissance traditions.

In Chaos Magick there is no longer any need to be tied to any single traditional magickal system. All that matters is the resulting neural state.

Chaos Magick Sigil

The man forever linking Crowley with Chaos Magick was Kenneth Grant, who drew a connection between Thelma, the magickal system developed by Crowley, and the works of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft.

While Crowley was busy managing orgies slash developing rituals for contacting entities from other dimensions, Lovecraft was writing tales in which he described beings from other dimensions straining at the gates between the worlds, gates sealed aeons long past, but by seals weakened through age and the clumsy fumblings of the deluded worshippers of Cthulhu, forever foolishly intoning the syllables of some forgotten language.

https://cz.pinterest.com/karguello85/frightening-creatures/

Grant used the fact that Lovecraft publically acknowledged drawing inspiration for his stories from his dreams as evidence that both Lovecraft and Crowley were using material from a realm which he called the Mauve Zone.

The dream is all we may know, normally, of the fourth dimension while we are embodied three-dimensionally. But we are not so embodied while dreaming. We are then already a step ahead, even although we are still viewing the scene from another dimension, an inner dimension, which differs from dreamless sleep in that it is not totally formless and void. This extra dimension is the Mauve Zone. Surrealists, futurists, cubists, abstractionists, were groping towards its expression.

Kenneth Grant in Outer Gateways

Once you open up the system to Cthulhu, then why bother with the old "legacy" magick of the Golden Dawn with its mixture of Egyptian, Hermetic, and Renaissance tradition? Why not import any system you want? Why not Pepe the frog?

Chaos Magick is based on the idea that all is relative. All Truth is relative and whatever values exists are those which we ourselves have assigned. There can be no absolute truth because to know that, we would have to step outside of the system and since we can't, all truth is relative and arbitrary.

This leads to both a magickal system employing symbolism from the Illuminati card game and a now President-elect, then Presidential Candidate, having the following discussion with MSNBC's Chris Matthews:

MATTHEWS: Well, why would you — why wouldn’t you just say, “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about nuclear weapons. Presidents don’t talk about use of nuclear weapons”?

TRUMP: The question was asked — we were talking about NATO — which, by the way, I say is obsolete and we pay a dis —

MATTHEWS: But you got hooked into something you shouldn`t have talked about.

TRUMP: I don’t think I — well, someday, maybe.

MATTHEWS: When? Maybe?

TRUMP: Of course. If somebody —

MATTHEWS: Where would we drop — where would we drop a nuclear weapon in the Middle East?

TRUMP: Let me explain. Let me explain. Somebody hits us within ISIS — you wouldn`t fight back with a nuke? …

MATTHEWS: OK. The trouble is, when you said that, the whole world heard it. David Cameron in Britain heard it. The Japanese, where we bombed them in 45, heard it. They`re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president.

TRUMP: Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?

[MSNBC, March 30, 2016]

Here we have the Cthulhu candidate talking about the use of nuclear weapons, an idea which, since the creation of the MAD or mutually assured destruction doctrine, has been literally unthinkable. The spectre of nuclear war had long since been banished. Only Chaos means there are no unthinkables, there is nothing its agents won't bring to the table in their battle for domination. Cue Putin's unveiling of Russia's new uber-missile, Satan II.

The same with dog-whistle politics. According to Wikipedia, dog-whistle politics is political messaging employing coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has an additional, different or more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup.

The reason they employ such silent dog-whistles is they are afraid to communicate their typically racist messages overtly because the general audience would likely take notice which would cause unpredictable future outcomes with potentially negative repercussions. 

Cthulhu thrives in chaos, so there's no need anymore for dog whistles, just say what you want and slap a swastika on the end of it. It's all good.

The acolytes of Cthulhu also managed to undermine confidence in the media which projected a major win for team Satan. There are no more names you can trust. 

All is in flux.

And yet, there is hope. Even within the chaos, there are patterns that repeat, relationships that form in spite of the relativists and their denials.

For a deeper examination of these hidden patterns and their significance you might consult The Gnostic Notebook: On Plato, the Fourth Dimension, and the Lost Philosophy.