In my interview with Antero Alli, I discovered one of the most interesting minds I have encountered on these pages and in my life.  Here is my short review of his excellent book, The Eight Circuit Brain.

“I am here to support the individual in restoring the lost capacity for direct firsthand experience as a primary source of integrity, autonomy, and authority. I view anything less as walking backwards into the nightmare of history from which we all struggle to awaken. If there is to be any real transformation, I think it must happen within the individual first and then, through clusters of such self-governing entities — evolutionary agents — discovering and designing new models of intimacy, collaboration, and collective life that honors the integrity of the individual. Since I have no political agendas, beyond the body politic of each person to define themselves, I suppose I am suggesting a kind of spiritual anarchy. Define yourself or be defined, I say.”

How we, as individuals, can wake up and learn to live with more truth about ourselves, amidst a society gone mad, may depend on how much compassion we can show our selves and each other. Truth alone will not set us free. Truth without compassion, looks and feels like cruelty to me. True transformation begins with vanquishing self-denial while embracing total self-acceptance. This kind of total radical action cannot occur without courage and a whole lot of heart.

~ Antero Alli

Antero Alli’s brilliant new book The Eight Circuit Brain is his contribution to the model originally developed by Timothy Leary and later expanded on by Robert Anton Wilson and goes one step further in grounding the ideas of Leary and Wilson in the body. This distinction makes his work the most accessible and valuable to readers.

Alli’s background as an actor, playwright and film director have enabled him to create a book based on years of working with individuals in what is called Paratheatre, in which individuals look at the internal and external conditions of their lives and through his process of participation rather than performance, resolve what is not working for them. The book presents the model and the tools he uses to work with students that include accessing and experiencing the realities and states of consciousness that the circuits merely symbolize using rituals, exercises, meditations, and tasks he developed over five years. He then published Angel Tech to explore these ideas and recently updated it with The Eight Circuit Brain.

Alli describes the circuits as representing eight functions of Intelligence, with each one carrying its own innate “laws” or agendas, existing within each person at various degrees of latency and expression. Very broadly, these eight circuits are called: 1) Physical Intelligence 2) Emotional/Political Intelligence 3) Symbolic Intelligence 4) Social/Moral Intelligence 5) Somatic/Tantric Intelligence 6) Psychic-Intuitive Intelligence 7) Mythogenetic Intelligence and Quantum Nonlocal Intelligence.”

“The lower four circuits represent preoccupations with meeting our various survival needs, whereas the upper four circuits symbolize more post-survival, evolutionary imperatives. I don’t buy into any upper/lower circuit hierarchy. I relate with all the circuits as equal in value. The first four circuits can anchor or stabilize the upper four, while the upper four can catalyze growth and development in the lower four. With increasing self-acceptance, all the circuits can be embraced and learn to work together in more meaningful and creative ways.”

When he works with his paratheatre groups, there is no mention of circuits or any kind of symbolic system. “In this very physical and kinetic approach, we are working towards a kind of concept-free zone of direct experience of the energies in the body itself and then, learning how to subject ourselves to these forces as a personal ritual of self-surrender. However, in my new book, THE EIGHT-CIRCUIT BRAIN, I have included certain basic principles and techniques of Paratheatre as a means to access the realities and states of being that the circuits symbolize.”

There is so much more to explore  in this amazing multidimensional book that it seems futile to try and give NPD subscribers more than he brief glimpse I have outlined above. If the description of the work has not piqued your interest, then the book is certainly not meant for you. If, on the other hand you are at a point in your life when you are willing to examine and confront your history, habits and cultural and emotional biases, this book may be one of the most valuable low cost tools you will find among the thousand of self help books available today. You can learn more by reading my full interview with Antero on this site and/or purchase a copy of The Eight Circuit Brain as well as his visionary films and learn more about Paratheatre, a three times a week, three month process available by application at his site, www.verticalpool.com. There, you will also find the wonderful music of his wife Sylvie. And if you’d like a signed copy, you can go to this page, http://verticalpool.com/8cb-book.html