The Analysis

8 circuit model - This is what the Robert Anton Wilson book Prometheus Rising delves into. Now it’s a weird model and it’s certainly not a mainstream but it has been around since the 60's and is born from the mind of Timothy Leary. Who admittedly was locked in jail for possession of a couples joints of Marijuana? He was a Harvard psychology professor at the time, gone a little wild.

A lot of strange and innovative ideas were spawned from his work. However he advocated the use of certain illicit drugs which make some of his work more creative fiction then research fact. Which is why I like using it in my blog as a model because it’s more fun and also has an opposite bias then mainstream psychology? That is its pro-hedonistic pursuit. He argued for a society of more leisure and pleasure time, a hedonic society. Well I think there is some value in his ideas; however there are no doubt the hippy communes and utopian dreams that his thinking provided grounding for did not really work out so well. Mainly because all it took was a psychopathic individual to take advantage of these communities based on trust and freedom. Other reasons as well like the need to do hard work to achieve anything...
Nonetheless the 8 circuit model covers all aspect of consciousness. Why is consciousness so important in personnel development? Because conscious defines us. Consciousness is what is interacting with other people. To be conscious is parallel with alertness and awakeness. The more alert or awake we are the more connected we are to what is happening around us. Expanded consciousness is expanded awareness of reality around us. A greater consciousness means more opportunities in every moment to live and experience life. The exact definition is:

"The state of being conscious; awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings"

If I ever had time to do research it would be around measuring the level of consciousness within people and understanding their moment to moment experience of life.

So naturally if you subscribe to this notion. You may attribute a more fulfilling life to having a greater and more aware consciousness of reality. Well if that’s the case we can go and take lots of drugs. So that’s what Leary and his followers did. Indeed it provided access into newer realities and innovation. Hell you have the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix - through to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (though it’s denied now). This is not me trying to advocate illicit drugs, because I believe in purity of mind to gain consciousness expansion. (I.e. as little artificial substances as possible to alter consciousness) so yes I would legalise marijuana but never smoke it. However I’m pointing out that they were used to expand consciousness in some individuals and it had a definite result in the result of their world or reality - likewise consciousness expansion can take a person to more unwelcome darker realms of experience in reality - Paranoia and skitzoprehnia.


One day I want to get into some the ideas around Flow - (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) and optimal thinking states - it’s hard for me to test these because I’m not close to being a genius like Tim and Mihaly. Suffice to say - paranoia & fear - mind consciousness are not close to effect states of mind for doing anything much. Yet I know a clam mind is infinitely more efficient and effect for getting anything done.

Psychopathy links into the 2. Circuit of the model - The Emotional-Territorial or Freud's Ego.

Freud used the word ego to mean a sense of self, but later revised it to mean a set of psychic functions such as judgment, tolerance, reality-testing, control, planning, defence, synthesis of information, intellectual functioning, and memory

---- Again discussing why ego can get in the way of things is very important - yet being western and having a sense of self is very important or is it?

Psychopathy has an extreme ego distortion associated with it - they see themselves as gods or something of an extreme nature. However this for most part is delusional. The delusion is so badly out of kilter to reality that they forcible proceed use their will to break down reality in others and put their stamp reality into minds of others. But it is the method that they use to do this...that is to abuse and use other people in a callous relationship of victimisation.

Sometimes success is achieved and instead of being psychopathic the individual is then recognised as the ego they so badly want to be. This is actually what Magick is about, achieving god like status. However one need not be psychopathic to achieve their idealised self.

It is hard to know when one starts down such a dark path. I think a good thing to do at the end of each day is sit and mediate on what people one has helped or hurt during the course of that day and ask forgiveness as is standard practise.