1) Instructor's Introduction
Timothy Leary's 8-Circuit Brain model for Intelligence Increase represents an extraordinary adventure on the high plains of consciousness research for anyone willing to use this map to gain real-time access to its multidimensional territory. This unique course offers no armchair philosophy or pat answers but a scientific approach to testing all its theories by experiment in the lab of real life. That is to say, the existing conditions of the life you are actually living, rather than the life you could or should or would be living if only this, that or the other were different. As with many worthy endeavors, what you get out of this course depends entirely on what you put into it.
During my six years of writing "Angel Tech" (1980-86) I developed and tested each of its many applications, meditations and rituals many times over. In doing so, I discovered how the actual processes of increasing intelligence required a certain humility for confessing ignorance where it existed and an audacity for engaging the direct experience (or lack thereof) with my own Physical, Emotional, Symbolic, Social, Somatic, Psychic, Mytho-genetic and Quantum intelligences. This Angel Tech course will require the same from you.
Faux rebels beware! My authority bias stems from the autonomy of direct experience, not from empty ideas and/or ungrounded assumptions. Throughout this course I vow to respect your own autonomy and integrity as your final authority, while questioning any assumptions and preconceptions, mine and yours, that impede firsthand knowledge. I look to the expansion of consciousness as our guide and your own responses as the compass.
Research Tasks suggested throughout this course require no special mechanical, artistic or aesthetic talents. Performance, function and execution matter more than the form or appearance they take on to demonstrate the principles presented. Those with special talents are also encouraged to use them.
Lab Reports. I ask participants to maintain a personal journal to document their tasks and experiments. Due to the subjective and objective nature of this process, I ask that you develop the habit of using first-person pronouns, rather than the faux objective "you" or "most people", when addressing personal experiences. Besides increasing self-honesty, this adjustment can also simplify your communications with others while building a social context for your ideas.
The primary reading material will be provided on my private web pages, which I ask that you not share with anyone else. In addition, I will assign readings from "Angel Tech", Leary's "Info-Psychology" and Wilson's "Prometheus Rising".
Warning! Like the sign over the entrance to Herman Hesse's The Magic Theatre (in his book, "Steppenwolf"), this course is Not For Everybody. If you are looking to merely stuff your brain with more "cool content," look elsewhere. This task-oriented course aims to catalyze a dynamic process of learning through direct experience and how you interpret, or integrate, and communicate those results. How we learn something may be more important at times than what we learn. |
