Diagram 008
Re talks: 48, 63, 66, 76 and 114
Diagram # 008 illustration
“There are literally within the brain, three distinct circuits. The development of which absolutely reflect the history of Man. The Three Circuits are drawn in Red, Blue, and Yellow, and they overlap. The First and lowest is the Red, or Primal Circuit; the second is the Mid, or Blue Circuit, and the top circuit is the Yellow — the Decisive Circuit. Note specifically, that all three touch each other and they overlap. Inside of you the circuits physically exist. Do not take this drawing or my description as simply a picturized parable. The circuits physically exist in every human nervous system. There are even parts of the structure of the nervous system that medical science knows in a different way, though with different names. Of course, science doesn’t see it the way in which I’m describing it. This physically and literally exists. When you were born, the Three Circuits, which I call the Primal, the Mid and the Decisive Circuits, were activated in a particular manner. It is the manner and extent of their activation that makes you recognizable, especially to yourself, as you. The point of overlap of the three are the points of communication. Thus you see that communication in all directions is possible — it doesn’t simply run in one direction given that the circuitry can be fed — impulses can enter the system — through any one of the Three Circuits. For instance, an emotion can be triggered by a sound, a sensation, or by hearing a certain word. Remember, I am putting certain flaws into this map. The only good map is one that’s alive, one that contains a willful error. But for the purpose of this discussion, information can enter any one of the Three Circuits and travel at the speed of light to the other two.
What I’ve actually been describing to you is the termination of electrical energy that supports each little thing that seems to be a thought, and it can run through an almost infinite number of possibilities. With this map, and with the one shortly to follow, I’m going to give you a new, dangerous way to define where “I” comes from — the whole sensation of what “I” seems to be. “I” seems, for the time being, to be a thought that you thought, something that, without further investigation, seemed to arise in the Yellow Circuit. So you say, “Yes, I thought it. I had that thought.” But that “thought” could have originated elsewhere and it could have run the communication gauntlet before “you” ever “thought” it. The combinations are limitless since the communication between the Three Circuits is continuous. I could simply refer to communication going from the bottom to the top, but don’t take that qualitatively. There is a certain quality to it, but just because the Yellow Circuit is higher in the system does not mean it’s better. To wit: the Primal Circuit has responsibilities which, if left to the Yellow Circuit, would ruin your life. You’d kill yourself. So don’t conclude that because the Primal Circuit is lower, that it is, per se, inferior. Each circuit serves its own function and without all three, you wouldn’t be human. Without all three developed to a certain degree, you’d not be doing This. Ordinary life requires that all three have to be activated enough to carry out their mechanical role. Neither you nor anyone else had responsibility for the manner in which thier circuits were activated, nor the way they mechanically operate. There was no way you could have affected it. By the time the circuits were mechanically as developed as they ever would be, you were grown. You were an adult, you were what Life needed you to be. That’s what growing up is. When the teenager becomes an adult, when he finally becomes settled and responsible, and more or less bored, that is the point at which his circuits are as activated as they ever will be. And under ordinary circumstances, that degree of activation will never change.
In this diagram, I’ve drawn a green field encircling all Three Circuits. I’m calling it the dampening field, because that is its function. It is an electrochemical sub-process, and it operates as a magnetic field. The dampener serves to modulate the system’s alternate modes of calm and excitement. We can also call it the E-C factor, and again, what it does is to dampen the continual need for the system to be excited and then calmed. Without the modulation, the control, of the E-C factor, no system would be stable.
In two-circuited creatures — dogs, lions, walruses — in closed system creatures, the E-C factor serves to keep them physically alive. By its operation, a lion is stimulated to the proper degree, by the proper information. It orients him physically, and thus the transfer of energy on that level is maintained.
In Man, the E-C factor serves an expanded and an expansive function. It is the operation of the E-C factor that makes further expansion possible. All ordinary human activity can be seen as energy, and further, as potential stimulus for excitement of the circuits. However, Life’s growth, and hence, man’s development is paced; it is contained. There must be growth and movement, but it must proceed at a stable pace. Anything that grows too fast — anything indiscriminately stimulated and excited — would simply eat itself up.
The dampening field, the E-C factor, resolves the communication between the Three Circuits. It modulates how much and what kind of excitement the system can tolerate, and likewise, the necessary degree of calm. If not for the dampener, the level of unbridled excitement experienced by children and teenagers would, relatively speaking, continue throughout your life instead of stopping at maturity.
For all practical purposes, the general excitement flowing through these Three Circuits has terminated by the time you reach the age of twenty one. The remainder of an ordinary human life — indeed all human activity — is the attempt to produce new excitement. Excitement does happen, but the level of excitement necessary to spark expanded activation of the circuitry is inaccessible at Line level. Your own system is concerned with maintaining its stability; your own system functions to keep you where you are. The possibility of excitement is there or Line-level consciousness would never move. The system has to be excited to a minimum degree simply to sustain life, to keep you moving through 60 or 70 natural years. But to undertake extraordinary expansion requires a tolerance and a need for expanded levels of excitement. In a sense, you have to not remember that you’re grown up. You, in a sense, must emulate or imitate the unbounded excitement of a child.
Each circuit has its own memory and memory serves to excite the system after the original energy transfer is long gone. It is again a sample of how Life uses and reuses all available energy. Remembering something excites the circuitry. And further, talking about memories provides a slightly different form of excitement. But the excitement provided by memories is empty calories. You can never extend yourself above the line by memory, especially by negative memory. You simply can not be hostile and do This. But realize how impossible it is in the ordinary world: negative emotions and hostility are, for ordinary man, the only source of excitement. To remember, “god damn, that was terrible,” does excite one of the circuits. But it won’t expand it. Such negative excitement makes Life bearable and it keeps the system safely stimulated, within the proper bounds. And it keeps growth alive from one generation to another. Look at how every generation tries to kick over the previous generation. Simply stated, youth is rebellion. One of the most obvious places to look is at music. Your father goes into raptures at hearing a Glenn Miller record, “Oh, that brings back memories! I can remember when I first met your mother, the time we had a half pint in the back seat of the car.” You listen to it, and you think, “You mean you people went out and had fun with this kind of music?” The music that excited your father’s generation — the information that excited his generation — is, for you, impotent. It’s no longer exciting; it will no longer produce growth. Your parents’ music was no better or worse than yours, but it is now noise. It’s meaningless. Your dad says, “Well, that’s the music that we used to fall in love to.” And you could say, “Well, I guess you had to be there.” And you would be right: you did have to be there. You always have to be there, at the scene of the freshest possible excitement. Memory won’t do. Music is only an example. Re-excitement keeps humanity’s circuits expanding at a stable, contained rate. But to expand the Yellow Circuit beyond the current limits, you must have fresh, unnatural excitement.
With this map, you can see that everything available to humanity at the ordinary level is an attempt to excite the circuitry, or on the other hand, to calm it. I’m telling you, it’s the same thing and you can see it in alcohol, television, spices, drugs, music, running, and reading. You can see that inside the upper circuitry there is always the need for excitement, but on a meaningless, impotent level.”