The eight circuits of consciousness

The eight circuits of consciousness are a model by the American author Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007), which goes back to work by Timothy Leary. It describes human consciousness as a sequence of layers: each level adds a new capacity without abolishing those beneath it. We present it here as a worldview model of ordering – as a map, not as a measuring procedure.

Expressly, before anything else: this model orders states, not people. Each of us moves through several levels in a single day – while eating, at work, in an argument, in stillness. It serves for placing oneself; as a measure of the worth of other people it does not serve, and it is not meant that way here.

The eight levels in outline

1. Survival. The most elementary: eating, breathing, reproducing. It steers us wherever safety and provision are at stake – and goes on doing so long after any real want has passed.
2. Territory and rank. Marking out an area of one’s own, and the question of who stands above whom. It shapes competition, matters of status, and many a conflict ostensibly about the issue at hand.
3. Thought and language. Tools, concepts, plans, the passing on of knowledge. Here what is properly human begins – and with it the possibility of talking oneself into error.
4. Social order. Rules, roles, morality, institutions. This level is what makes living together in large numbers possible at all. It is therefore valuable, and not merely a constraint.
5. Self-responsibility. A person begins to observe their own reactions instead of merely following them. Here belong meditation, self-examination and any serious work on one’s own perception – with a model such as transactional analysis, for instance.
6. Deliberate change. Someone who knows their own patterns can rewrite them rather than suffer them. Knowledge alone does not suffice for this – it must be practised.
7. Connectedness. The experience of being part of a larger living context. Enmity loses its sense here, because the other no longer appears as the alien.
8. Unity. The experience that the accustomed boundaries of space, time and person become permeable. Little of use can be said about it; the traditions of every culture report it in images.

Levels five to eight describe experiences that cannot be measured. We render them as what they are: a worldview, shared by a great many people across cultures and millennia – not a scientific finding.

Why the levels do not supersede one another

A common misunderstanding would be to regard the lower levels as overcome. They remain fully in force. Someone who is hungry thinks less well; someone who feels threatened defends their territory, however much they may have meditated. The model is therefore not an ascent to be completed but a description of what happens to be leading.

From this follows its practical use. The question is not Which stage am I at? but Which level is deciding here – and is it the fitting one? A conflict supposedly about the matter at hand, but in fact about rank, will not be resolved by arguments about the matter.

Why what is new meets resistance

Wilson describes – at times very sharply – how the order of the fourth level wards off everything that points beyond it. In substance he catches something true: anyone who changes something meets resistance almost every time.

We read that resistance differently than he does, however. As a rule it is not malice but concern: someone who is afraid passes the fear on, often in the form of warnings and mockery. That is unpleasant, but it is something other than enmity – and the distinction helps. Anyone who constructs an opponent binds their strength to him (see fear). And anyone choosing a path other than the one around them should keep in mind: the others have just as much right to theirs.

Giants raised by dwarves

From Wilson comes the saying that we are “giants who were raised by dwarves and have therefore grown accustomed to walking about with a stoop.” It describes how early people learn to stay below what they are capable of (see imprinting).

The saying is an image, not a verdict on those who raised us. As a rule they passed on what had been taught to them. Anyone taking it as evidence of their own superiority has merely exchanged the stoop for a different bad posture.

What does this mean in practice?

• Ask which level is at work – not Who am I? but What is deciding here?
• Basic needs first. On an empty stomach and without sleep, none of the upper levels is to be had (see self-care).
• Do not take resistance personally. It is usually concern passed on.
• Apply the model to yourself. As a label for others it does damage.
• It remains a model. A map orders the terrain; it is not the terrain (see consciousness and mind).

By D. Harald Alke