Tim Leary, Robert Anton Wilson and Developmental Psychology
The Starseed Signals (TSS) is wonderful and worthwhile — definitely a book in and of itself, and it got me more interested in the RAW web presence again. Then I saw Mike Gaithers’ recent essay on RAW and developmental psychology, and it motived me to take another look at the 8 circuit model and compare it the system of Clare Graves that I’ve been studying.
So, here’s a still very rough contribution inspired by TSS. I’m interested in feedback, or even a Discussion Group devoted to TSS in order to explore and refine some of these ideas.
Personal Journey
I was delighted to find TSS a deeper dive on the Leary partnership, which I had followed intensely in both Bob’s and Tim’s writings in the 1970’s.
Cosmic Trigger had a huge influence on me during my college years, reading Tarot cards, sampling Crowley magick, studying technology trends, and investigating Leary’s new publications. I felt like the 5th circuit described me pretty well, and I was expecting to advance at least to the 6th. Also, around the same time, I read and re-read Tim’s issue of Ken Kesey’s Spit in the Ocean journal, which he edited partly from prison. All of the articles Tim solicited were from young edgy scientists, in physics, biology and more. (I’m curious, did Bob know Kesey — especially now that I’ve learned his daughter Christina spent time with the Hog Farm, who were friends of Kesey.) And so, I had a path to try to immanentize the eschaton, but grounded I thought in science and technology. But it was painful to look around and find that the 60’s wave had passed and lots of my peers were keeping their heads down in the days of stagflation and disco.
I had been introduced in a workplace setting to the Internet as early as 1980 — when I accessed a Department of Energy computer in Washington D.C. remotely from a state government office in Colorado. At a professional crossroads — a budding environmentalist crushed by Reagan (goodbye Fed funded Internet access) — I looked into myself and my world view, shaped by Leary/Wilson, and started educating myself about satellite technology and spaceflight. At the same time, I discovered the Internet. This transition eventually turned into a family-supporting career in telecommunications technology, so thanks Bob and Tim!
In the mid-80’s, still following the Whole Earth hippie crowd, I was re-introduced to the Internet through the Well, the conferencing/bulletin board service. It felt millennial. That community also sync’d up with my favorite Teilhard de Chardin, whose The Human Phenomenon had given some meaning and direction to my altered states, and who now was a patron saint for this crowd. It seemed like the Internet was exactly what Teilhard had prophesied. (Disillusionment awaited, of course — I wrote a whole article about it recently — though maybe not wrong but premature. [1])
During this period, I was a little surprised to see Leary also re-appear as a counterculture fan of new tech — he had a CR-ROM game (remember CD-ROMs?) called Mind Mirror. And then he came out with a revision of Exo-Psychology called Info-Psychology. In his introduction, Leary blamed his years in prison for moving him to long for extraplanetary escape,
“My caged status may partially explain the earnest yearnings for extra-terrestrial flight, for O’Neill space colonies and for bird-like escape from this earth’s heavy gravity-well.” [2]
But I felt at the time such a revision was kind of a trendy exploitation of the new current trend. I was also disillusioned with space technology as I watched the era of the space shuttle become mostly freight trains for near-earth boring and/or military experiments. This all further undercut my interest in Leary’s space exploration predictions, but hey, I was pivoting as well.
Also, during this period, I was a little disillusioned with RAW’s later books. There were several deeper dives in themes from Cosmic Trigger that were worthwhile but not as life-changing, or life-informing, as his early stuff had been. (Although all along, I loved the Schrodinger’s Cat trilogy and the Historical Illuminatus Chronicles, and was an early Trajectories subscriber. I also did stuff like collect all of Frances Yates’ books, inspired by Bob. Years later, I even made a pilgrimage to the Warburg Institute, still there in London and still deeply scholarly and quirky.)
What had caught my eye in the 90’s was another system of evolutionary thought, popularly called Spiral Dynamics.
Developmental Psychology Since Leary
I was inspired by Mike Gathers’ recent essay, Freud, Jung and a Platypus Get an MRI, to take another look at the 8 circuit model (BTW, shout out to Mike in the 303 — I’m in Boulder.) Leary came of age professionally in the 1950’s, when psychology was undergoing an encounter with behavioral psychology, notably B.F. Skinner, and the reaction was humanistic psychology — Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and others. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has become iconic, but wasn’t the only such model.
Mike’s piece was especially interesting to me as I’ve been doing recent work on a developmental psychology system put forth by Clare Graves, also starting in the 50’s, and known under the popular title Spiral Dynamics. Graves taught psychology at Union College in Schenectady, NY, where he consulted in organizational psychology at General Electric’s world headquarters, and where I studied briefly with him as an undergraduate.
In particular, where Mike is focused at levels 1–4, which enabled comparisons to developmental systems from Freud, Jung and Erikson, the Graves system promotes a model that does predict emergence of higher levels, and indeed at least 8 levels. Unlike a lot of the humanists, Graves articulated both personal growth through the hierarchy, as well as societal growth, with societies occupying a stage manifesting the macro effects of a critical mass of that society’s population being at that level of personal growth.
Graves theory also is embodied in Ken Wilber’s better known Integral Theory. (It is interesting that during Leary’s incarceration, a group of psychologists including Wilber, who did research with psychedelics, formed an Association of Transpersonal Psychology — Leary was never a member that I am aware of, but it included other well-known psychedelic researchers like Stanislav Grof.)
And so, I have been doing a lot of thinking and writing about emergence in both individuals and societies over the last ten years, and really never thought to look back at the Leary/Wilson model, until now. It comes out looking better today than I thought it would.
Revisiting the Leary/Wilson Model — The Starseed Signals
The Starseed Signals (TSS) is a great view of the Leary/Wilson model taking shape in RAW’s mind while writing in 1974, even as Leary continued to develop it into the forthcoming Exo-Psychology,which saw print in 1977. Even the aspects that are embedded in the era are pertinent today — RAW noted that “second circuit politicians always beat their 3rd circuit counterparts” — the latter are too cerebral and don’t reach voters on a visceral level. He was talking about Nixon beating McGovern, but could just as well have been predicting Trump beating Hilary.
Early on, RAW sets the context for a development view by citing Leary’s definition, “Consciousness is the energy received and decoded by a structure.” And so, it makes sense that in a dynamic model, the “mind” changes as more energy (information) is received and decoded. Further, turning on new circuits then allows one to tune into larger amounts of energy/information available in that circuit.
RAW was incorporating Leary’s theories into his more general belief in the fluidity of the human mind when expanded by spiritual or philosophical systems and practices. He knew psychedelics were delivering a similar experience, and was already in agreement with Leary that psychedelics were a metaprogramming tool, similar to what pre-scientific mystics of eastern and western philosophy. Figure 1 is an image [3] from TSS summarizing the model.
Figure 1
Focusing on the “extraterrestrial” stages, here’s my short characterization of the state of the model in 1974, and which I’ll refer to subsequently as the Leary/Wilson model.
Neuro-somatic — RAW was all over this — marijuana, tantric sex, et al. I will revisit this in the Graves model, where it corresponds to Graves 6th level, the highest of those comprising what he called First Tier (somewhat corresponding to Leary/Wilson Larval circuits.)
Neuro-physical — The early versions of Circuit 6 are referred to as neuro-physical, not neuro-electric, but in any case, considered to be advanced from the more hedonic, inward practices of the Me decade. Neuro-electric was the stage activated by the psychedelic drugs. (Exo-Psychology actually uses both terms — I feel neuro-electric is a little more precise.)
Neuro-genetic — Circuit 7 is activated by reading DNA blueprints that we all have.
RAW correlates this stage to the archetypes of Carl Jung, and his collective unconscious — such concepts were considered accurate by RAW, but expressed in pre-scientific language. Circuit 7 mediates “within neurons and between neurons…at faster-than-light speeds.” It’s hard to discern exactly what mediates means, and it is less specific than Circuit 6 where LSD enables metaprogramming of mind and behavior within an individual lifetime.
Neuro-atomic (meta-physiological) — The highest circuit is “electrolocalized and magnetic=gravitational.” That is, it requires no localized body- platform. Quoting Leary, “Mind you, I don’t say metaphysical. Metaphysical is a dumb word used by people who don’t understand Einstein yet. I’m talking about a quite specific electromagnetic-gravitational field in which mind can manifest without organic bodies. That’s the eight circuit and the highest possible evolutionary slot within this galaxy.” [4]
In summary, RAW writes
…we do not possess one ‘mind’ — a delusion by conditioning which directs our attention in socially demanded directions. We are also thinking bodies, thinking cells, thinking molecules[that are] 3 ½ billion years old, and thinking atoms as old as the cosmos. God is inside us, say the mystics. [5]
Gathers’ focus is only the first 4 stages, but also calls up Freud and Jung, both of whom were pushed aside in mid-century by the “scientific” approach of B.F. Skinner and the advocates of psychiatric drugs to treat mental conditions. One might think that Leary was trying to reclaim the humanistic along with Maslow and others, but Leary as a scientist also looked for biomarkers or neural correlates of the stages. He once vaguely referred to higher stages being physically present in DNA and biological structures, where they were “masked by histones”, but this is not elucidated further and appeared to be a passing idea never explored further.
In terms of other applications of the model to mystics of our time, RAW noted that Leary had recommended examining the neurology of UFO contactees, which might have shown receptivity to electro-magnetic signals (a la the theories of RAW’s friend Jacques Vallee), instead of administering written psychology tests to try to find a clinical disorder to classify them within.
At the end of the day, RAW’s bottom line, later included in Cosmic Trigger, was that “We are not the chemicals but the pattern. You might say the formula for immortality is Cybernetics + DNA. But DNA is itself Cybernetics, the first application of cybernetic information — theory to biology. DNA is entirely and information system, a programming system. Cybernetics is the key, the realization that we are programmed and can be reprogrammed.” [6]
Revisiting the Leary/Wilson Model — Exo-Psychology
Exo-Psychology was one of several books written by Leary while in jail, first published in 1977. For me, having spent a couple years exploring the lessons of LSD following the Kesey method (almost the opposite of Leary’s set and setting), I was looking for analysis that would give my personal revelations some context. Exo-Psychology seemed to explain so much.
Figure 2
This table format leaves out the Tarot and Zodiac correspondences of RAW’s, although astrological signs do appear elsewhere in the text. (Maybe the thoughts of migrating to the stars led Leary to keep them in for their pre-scientific predictive aspect. Or maybe he left them in because astrology was still big for his 70’s readership.) This table uses Neuro-physical for Circuit 6, like TSS, but Tim uses Neuro-electric elsewhere in this same edition. Overall, this book is tightly organized and beautifully designed. (See illustration included later in this article. [7]) Along with autobiographical works What Does Woman Want and the Game of Life, Exo-Psychology in 1977 gave me hope for a 60’s re-awakening. Shortly thereafter, alas, I got Reagan instead.
Leary’s Info-Psychology
Ten years later, Leary re-published the book as Info-Psychology, at the dawning of the digital era. (At least, the CD-ROM, game cartridge phase of the digital era.)
Figure 3
He changes “Neuro” to “Cyber”, as was au courant as influenced by William Gibson’s popularization of “cyberspace.” At the time, I frankly found it a betrayal of the satellite fantasies I had moved forward on, and for the rest of his life I regarded Leary kind of an aging vaudevillian (for example his college tour debating G. Gordon Liddy, the Nixon dirty tricks guy who surveilled Leary at Millbrook.) In looking at this Info-Psychology material again, I have to say I turned out to be totally wrong. In fact, given developments in the intervening 30 years, Tim (and RAW) look more like prophets than ever.
First, I noted that Leary wasn’t merely being trendy, but was indeed elaborating on what was already in the Exo-Psychology model for circuits 5–8. Some summary notes below.
Cyber-somatic — neurosomatic updated to add indulgence in the artificial worlds of gaming. There is also reference to reception of electronic information “uncensored by government imprints”. (I recall Leary palling around with John Perry Barlow at the time, when Barlow was co-founding the Electronic Frontier Foundation.)
Cyber-electronic — a tweak from neuroelectric, but de-emphasizing the LSD.
“Sixth circuit consciousness, however, is crystal clear, radiant, electric, frictionless, unencumbered by material inertias. It is understandable that a period of self-indulgent playing with raw, direct, smooth humming energy would occur.”
And, “the neuro-electric child plays with the electromagnetic signals. The next step is the intelligent integration and reconstruction of the new energy forms.” And “[t]he Brain, freed from the body and four terrestrial imprints, operates as a neurocomputer. Self-definition as a bio-electric computer, self-indulgent use of electronics.” (That reference reminds me of John Lilly’s Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer, where Lilly agreed with the Leary/Wilson identification of LSD as a metaprogramming agent.)
Cyber-genetic — “This stage imprints the DNA code, receiving integrating and transmitting RNA signals, thus operating at species-time, making possible biological immortality, and symbiosis with Higher Life forms. DNA consciousness.”
Cyber-atomic — “access to atomic information through nano-technology.” (Again, pretty trendy. [8])
Circuits 7 and 8 seemed no more specific than they had been 10 years earlier, at least as I read it then. But wait! — “the Seventh [circuit] Brain learns to control, integrate, organize Neuro-genetic signals and manipulate Chromosomes.” Emphasis mine — well hello CRISPR gene editing, 20 years later!!
RAW references Isaac Asimov in both TSS and Cosmic Trigger. Asimov observed a 60 year lag between first understanding of new scientific principles and applications that transform the world. [9] He expected genetics would follow that trajectory — starting from 1944, then 2004 would see biological breakthroughs based on DNA structure. Hmmm.
And then, for Circuit 8, “The Cyber-atomic stage imprints sub-nuclear quantum-physical and gravitational signals, thus transcending biological existence. Quantum Consciousness.” Locating a higher intelligence within the atomic nucleus might seem teleological and speculative. But it is interesting that starting in the 1990’s, no less a figure than Nobel prize winning physicist Roger Penrose, with co-author Stuart Hameroff, have posited that consciousness literally arises via quantum level interactions inside brain structures known as microtubules. [10]
And then consider a few other contemporary observations related to Circuit 6, e.g. “the neuroelectric child plays with electromagnetic signals.” In the current day, I’m doing some work with neurotechnology, based on recent great advances in the ability to transceive information to and from the brain. Increasingly portable EEG devices or implants (see e.g. Elon Musk’s Neuralink), might have led Tim back to the original “neuro” prefix if he was around today.
Also it’s worth noting, with respect to the original impetus for Circuit 6, that after the brief thawing of pot laws in the 70’s was shut down by Reagan, we now have legalization not just of cannabis but psychedelics themselves. There are even venture funds for psychedelic business plans. Far out, man…
One final quote from Info-Psychology — “[we are beginning] a mutational quantum leap in the course of human evolution which is now preparing the species for migration from the planet and mutation to become a cyber-species inhabiting the info-worlds of the future(s).
This idea has now entered the mainstream with Yuval Harari’s coinage of Homo Deus. [11]
Revisiting the Leary/Wilson Model — Quantum Psychology
Maybe for completeness, note that RAW was always willing to revise and extend his own thinking. The 8 Circuit model was re-presented and further investigated in Prometheus Rising and then Quantum Psychology. (See Figure 4.)
Figure 4
While metaprogramming still makes sense as a tighter label for Circuit 6, even RAW is tripped up by trendiness. Rupert Sheldrake’s morphogenetic theory was very big the 1980’s, and quickly had become a new age article of faith, a biologist’s apparent confirmation of some kind of etheric field of consciousness and reproduction. That theory has not found much scientific confirmation. (Although Sheldrake has had a decent career of publishing in the New Age, or Body Mind Spirit book category.)
One other less prophetic note — RAW had maintained his belief that Bell’s theorem in physics allowed in theory lots of psi phenomena like precognition or remote viewing. Despite Dean Radin and other contemporary folks banging that drum, essentially nothing has happened since to validate macro-physical effects, as far as I have seen. Then again, nor have any new theoretical developments precluded the possibilities that fascinated RAW (and me.)
Graves and Leary/Wilson
Now return with me to developmental psychology, forty years after the heyday of humanistic and transpersonal psychology, and interest has waned. Somewhat troubling, in a recent visit to Clare Graves teaching home at Union College to seek support for establishing a Graves archive, I was referred to a Psychology professor as the school expert on developmental psychology. She informed me, alas, that she now spends most of her time on gender studies. So it goes.
Fortunately, Graves model has been updated by Dr. Don Beck, who trained a number of practitioners under the brand Spiral Dynamics. More impactful in terms of numbers was the adoption of Graves model by Ken Wilber, an early associate of the Transpersonal Psychology Association, and who is something of a current-day guru under the rubric of Integral Theory. The Wilber system, which he calls a meta-theory, is beyond my scope here, except in some ways he echoes Leary/Wilson’s focus on personal development, while Graves system is more often applied by contemporary practitioners to social dimensions such as business or politics.
Figure 5
As seen in Figure 5, the categories don’t quite line up at first glance, but we’ll return to that point shortly. In their approaches, Graves and Leary/Wilson show several significant correspondences.
Dynamics/Applications — Beck’s version of Graves, Spiral Dynamics, emphasizes that it is a dynamic model — people aren’t classified once and left in that slot. The Leary/Wilson system also emphasizes a model where the individual is in motion up the circuits. All circuits are present — they just may be inactive, as depicted in Figure 6 from Exo-Psychology, but are still “available for re-hook up at will. In the Leary/Wilson model circa 1974–77, imprints and conditioning can only be changed bio-chemically — a 60’s thing for sure. 60’s kids who went for marijuana and LSD were in a position to see the flaws of current state (Circuit 4) and had the luxury to try dropping out. When they dropped back in, they were (Circuit 5) although sometimes stuck there in a hedonistic state.
Figure 6
Periodicity — Gathers didn’t focus on discussion of the higher levels, but he did cite Antero Alli:
“In his books, Alli draws clear and functional connection between corresponding upper and lower circuits in 1/5, 2/6… fashion. I don’t have a good take on the acceptance of this paradigm, but many of my “old school” Leary-Wilson peers do not seem as intrigued by this as I am, while many other folks I’ve encountered online seem to readily accept the concept. I note that in Neuropolitique, (p. 94), Leary himself seems in agreement with Alli when he states:
Think of it like this: The higher right-lobe circuits (V-VIII) raise to higher consciousness and other time dimensions on the corresponding, more primitive left-lobe circuits (I-IV). Thus, Circuit V centers on the same body centered sensory-somatic loops as Circuit I…”
Periodicity is also core to Graves model (he calls it “Cyclical”), which distinguishes it from Maslow and other of his contemporaries. The full name of Graves theory was The Emergent-Cyclical, Double-Helix Model of Adult Biosocial Systems Development Levels.
One key Graves observation is that the stages alternate between a fundamental behavior of Express Self (e.g. empires, conquest, investment bankers) and Sacrifice Self (e.g. tribal, universal human rights/values).
We find this in the Leary/Wilson material. Leary and Wilson kept talking about periodic table — periodicity — Leary’s Exo-Psychology titled the presentation The Periodic Table of Energy (echoing the Periodic Table of Elements.) What was delightful for me was to find in The Starseed Transmissions not only a grasp of the periodicity but RAW’s spiral illustration, shown in Figure 7. [12]
Figure 7
Much of Wilson’s work at the time was trying to integrate the many mystical systems — Kabala, Tarot and others — he had explored. Figure X shows those progressive systems alongside Leary’s circuits, derived by RAW using a synthesis of contemplative techniques. He felt the DNA helix figure came to him in a sort of Circuit 7 genetic communication. [13]
Below is an illustration of Graves’ system and it’s cyclical, double-helix nature.
Figure 8
So, the periodicity and the resemblance to DNA structure appealed to Graves, and he also liked how it sometimes appears to an individual that they are moving “backwards” (right to left) within a given level, but when seen from a broader perspective it is also a necessary “creative destruction” as part of the move upward to the next level.
Modes Within Levels — Both Leary/Wilson and Graves describe similar modes within each circuit or stage, speaking to the dynamic nature of the levels. These are emphatically not levels where an individual (or society) is classified in one and can only be there for their entire life. The Leary/Wilson system is more explicit about there being three states within each circuit, see Figure 9, and sometimes talk about a 24 stage model (Exo-Psychology presents this 24 stage scheme.)
Figure 9
Quantum Jump from First to Second Grouping of Levels — Graves calls the higher levels (7 and 8 in his system) the Second Tier levels, as opposed to First Tier. This corresponds very well with what Leary/Wilson differentiated as Larval vs. Extra-terrestrial. Both theories were a little arbitrary about circuits/levels they were already perceiving as present in current society, and those they predicted as belonging to an emerging category. In fact, Graves called the emergence of a Second Tier to be a “momentous leap,” certainly a serviceable correspondence to an extra-terrestrial mode. See Figure 10.
Figure 10
Thus, the Second Tier of Graves and Extra-terrestrial of Leary don’t quite match up, but they do seem to come together at the 8th and final stage or level. Graves didn’t give much detail to characterize that state, but he suggested there were some intuitions of the highest stage, including the noosphereof Teilhard de Chardin, a thinking layer around the earth, a collective consciousness.
In Info-psychology, Leary refers to collective consciousness and observes that several circuits reflect collective energies.
At each chronological stage of species evolution, new imprints for collective-governal realities emerge. These socially-consensual neural-programs determine the positive-negative magnetic poles for culturally conditioned members of the gene-pool. Good/evil. Taboo. Collective consciousness was needed to accomplish the embryonic states of evolution. A fetus or a larval form cannon branch out on hir own. [14]
In Graves cyclic model, “these collective-governal realities” appear as “sacrifice-self” values.
One more model to include for reference, just because it’s more well known, is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as shown in Figure 11. For the discussion above, Self-Actualization might be classified as a Second-tier or post-terrestrial stage. Maslow added a Self-Transcendence level in 1971, which might correspond to the highest level in both Leary/Wilson and Graves. Maslow had stressed the importance of peak experiences to reaching Self-Actualization. It seems likely the Self-Transcendence level may indeed have been Maslow’s response to the transcendental experiences of thousands of LSD users in the 1960’s.
Figure 11
Maslow and Leary did not collaborate but were acquainted, and Maslow had invited Leary to participate in some academic meetings on peak experiences. [15] (Incidentally, Maslow was also one of the founders of the Transpersonal Psychology Association.) It’s mildly interesting how the color schemes from Maslow match up with Graves/Beck — in neither case were the colors selected arbitrarily. I wonder if Leary would have gone in for color schemes if not limited to low-budget publishing during his prison years.
There is a large body of literature on applications of the Graves model. For example, Graves disciple Don Beck spent a lot of time in South Africa in the 1980s and 90s helping both the apartheid government and the Mandela-led liberation movement find the ground for peaceful change. The recent movie Invictus illustrates one of these Gravesian tactics explicitly — one side speaking to the other in language they can understand. This is a caution that Graves offers — lower stages literally can’t see the higher. This is a condition that, in today’s world, helps perpetuate nationalism, whose followers can’t see the benefit of collaborative, cross-border values.
Just the same, while I aspire to higher circuits and stages, I have had only brief experiences of them. This is one area where Wilber drew the helpful distinction of states of consciousness — where you get a glimpse; and stages — where you live day-to-day and your center of gravity is located.
Leary and RAW talked about the states but were more interested in the stage goal — higher intelligence is us in the future — both figurative and literal — aspirational and inspirational.
So, thanks Tim Leary, thanks Clare Graves and thanks RAW. (And Hilaritas Press!)
Keep the lasagna flying, but keep your eyes on the prize as well.
[2] From Introduction to Info-Psychology, 1987.
[3] The Starseed Signals, p. 215.
[4] TSS, p. 257
[5] TSS, p. 95–96
[6] TSS, p 267.
[7] Credited to Cynthia Marsh — https://cynthiamarsh.myportfolio.com/cynthia-marsh-about
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engines_of_Creation
[9] TSS, p. 258
[10] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.1998.0254
[11] Yuval Harari, Homo Deus, 2017.
[12] TSS, p. 272
[13] TSS, p. 272.
[14] Info-Psychology, p. 11
[15] The radical potentials of human experience: Maslow, Leary, and the prehistory of qualitative inquiry Head, James Christopher; Quigua, Fernando; Clegg, Joshua W. Qualitative Psychology Vol. 6, Iss. 1, (Feb 2019).
