Antero Alli - Sex and the Eight-Circuit Brain: Polymorphous Sexuality in Circuitland

Another excerpt from the recent book by Antero Alli, posted at Reality Sandwich. This is an interesting developmental model, and using it to look at sexual expression is useful in many ways. If I remember correctly, the eight-circuit model is based on the work of Timothy Leary.

Sex and the Eight-Circuit Brain: Polymorphous Sexuality in Circuitland

Antero Alli

The following is excerpted from The Eight-Circuit Brain: Navigational Strategies for the Energetic Body (Vertical Pool Publishing).

The eight-circuit grid can be used to track, read, and otherwise discover the great variety of human sexual response. As long as we remember that sex, like Life itself, is messy at best -- and will never conform to any mental construct we impose upon it -- we are free to speculate. As we examine the first four survival-oriented circuits, we'll see how our sexuality has been, and can be, experienced physically, emotionally, conceptually, and socially -- in isolation and in conjunction with each other. When we envision the second four post-survival circuits, we can imagine and maybe experience how sexuality might act as a vehicle for higher consciousness and unfathomable realities beyond our wildest fantasies in and out of our bodies!

The Four Survival Circuits and How They're Integrated

C-1 Physio-Biological Intelligence; the will to survive
How it’s integrated: degree of confidence earned and maintained to assure physical survival

C-2 Emotional-Territorial Intelligence; the will to power
How it’s integrated: degree of emotional confidence earned
and maintained to assure personal worth

C-3 Symbolic-Conceptual Intelligence; the will to reason
How it’s integrated: degree of mental confidence earned
and maintained to assure peace of mind

C-4 Social-Moral Intelligence; the will to socialize
How it’s integrated: degree of social confidence earned
and maintained to assure sense of belonging

The Four Post-Survival Circuits and Their Sources

C-5 Somatic Intelligence of Body Wisdom and Five Senses
Sources: whatever triggers the experience of rapture, communion with nature, tantra (yoga, meditation, ritual), charisma, second wind, falling in love (endorphins) and the expanding presence of being here now. The Shocks of Ecstasy and Bliss (absence of suffering)

C-6 Intuitive-Psychic Intelligence of the Brain, Spine, & CNS
Sources: whatever triggers the experience of the energetic body or aura, the second attention, intuition, clairvoyance and other psychic abilities, ritual magick, reality selection, direct perception of a relative nature of reality. The Shocks of Uncertainty and Freedom (absence of false assumptions, certitudes and dogmas)

C-7 Mytho-Genetic Intelligence of DNA and the Planetary Entity
Sources: whatever triggers the experience of ancestral and past life memories, autonomous archetypes, synchronicity, planetary (Gaia) mind, cosmic consciousness.
The Shocks of Indivisibility and Cosmic Unity (absence of dualistic consciousness)

C-8 Quantum-Nonlocal Intelligence of Subatomic interactions
Sources: whatever triggers the experience of near death, out of body states, the dreambody and dreamtime, lucid dreaming, communion with Void, the mystery of singularity. The Shocks of Death and Impermanence (absence of ego identification).

C-1 Visceral Sex

Picking up the invisible, subtle scent of sex pheromones in others, we can elicit instantaneous reactions of visceral sexual attraction. This can happen so swiftly, literally under our noses, that we have no time to moralize (C-4), think (C-3), or have feelings (C-2) about it. Acting on the scent of pheromones alone, without considering circuits two, three, or four, can drive us into the heat of impulsive, spontaneous visceral sex. As these impulses gain momentum in action they can accelerate and combust into explosive, volatile, and even violent sex. Some male homosexuals may know more about sexual violence than heterosexual men. In researching his book, You Are Going To Prison (Loompanics Press, 1994), Jim Hogshire discovered that twice as many men are raped inside American prisons each year than women are raped on the outside. C-1 sex is hard-wired to our most basic life and death survival instincts -- self-preservation, aggression, "going into heat" and procreation.

The growth hormone testosterone exists in both men and women, yet testosterone levels are twice as high in most men than in women. Researcher June Reinisch of Rutgers University discovered that increased testosterone levels in the body produce immediate aggression. Physiologist Julian Davidson performed a study on males with low sex drives. When given more testosterone, all showed an increase in sexual fantasy and desire leading Davidson to conclude that testosterone is "the biological substrate of desire, at least in men." Consistent overemphasis in C-1 sexuality alone, without incorporating the other circuits, can be dangerous and even fatal.

C-2 Emotional Sex

In those sexual encounters where we are left feeling attached to the lover, C-2 has been engaged. Emotions express a powerful animistic force not always subject to the comprehension of C-3 intellect or the approval of C-4 morality. When emotions are stirred, they mobilize and travel into the lover's astral body, just like spirits. If this sounds like voodoo love that's because emo-sex can be like that. It puts you on pins and needles. Emo-sex always comes with emotional investment whether we want it or not. Emotional sex can satisfy unmet needs for status, security, power, and loyalty. Emotions dwell in our body until they're aroused by another body showing profound receptivity to ours. If you're physically absent from somebody that you are emotionally attached to you may find yourself pining -- irrationally longing for them -- when, in fact, it may be the spirits of your own displaced emotions you're missing. Emotions have a life of their own and don't usually bend to the dictates of C-3 reasoning or C-4 ethical considerations.

Emotional sex can also serve the purpose of establishing an attachment to someone, regardless of romantic ideals or images regarding the "perfect partner" or "dream lover", if only to feel needed. Emo-sex can hide a desperate attempt to establish meaningful connection with someone as a coping mechanism for enduring an otherwise meaningless life -- you may not want the attachment but you may need it. C-2 sex can also fuel a mutual dynamic of sadomasochism and bondage resulting in creative or destructive outcomes, depending on how consciously the master/slave roles are played out, and how much care and attention is paid to each other's limitations and needs. Being tied up and physically immobilized can produce a profound sense of internal security to those whose early infantile needs were never met, given that these power rituals are performed in a climate of total mutual trust. In this way, conscious C-2 Power Sex can also enable greater emotional honesty and intimacy.

Heavy emotional involvement can produce an assumed familiarity with the lover, as if we've known him/her for a long time, though we may have only recently met. For some, this assumed familiarity can feel invasive or annoying, leading to boundary problems. Emo-sex can also excite the taboo-laden incestual lust of sibling love, a kind of familial romance with someone who feels like our big brother, or little sister, or the nurturing mother, or the good father. Incestual love, not to be confused with literal incest, can also trigger the negative emotions of animosity, sibling rivalry, and other C-2 territorial power struggles. These kinds of infantile passions can make lunatics of us all if personal boundaries are overlooked and traded down for the loss of oneself in the other. Losing self-respect can corrode even the most strident confessions of love. Significant emotional bonds also develop without warning between lovers shouldering traumas together -- miscarriage or abortion, extramarital affairs, domestic violence, divorce, death of parents, etc. -- and between soldiers at war or with police officers bonding amidst criminal adversity and danger.

C-3 Mental Sex

Sexual experiences that leave you chatty, by either talking to yourself or chewing the ears off lovers who'll listen, have activated C-3 conceptual intelligence. Watch for a lot of phone. A propensity towards mental sex suggests that you may need more communication before you are sexually turned on. C-3 dualistic intellect can be attracted to sexual ambiguities, a quality some may interpret as bisexuality. Ambiguity, however, is not a bisexual condition but a human condition regardless of sexual orientation. If you're aroused by ambiguity or androgyny, the promise of confounding complexity may arouse you. Those who find ambiguity erotic may naturally shy away from commitment in lieu of staying open to the options of their fickle fancy.

C-3 mental sex can also mean that thinking, talking, and fantasizing about sex can be more scintillating than the actual experience. The tease and the chase may prove a greater turn-on than actually getting caught and nailed. Sometimes talking about sex can also act as a protective measure to inhibit the lovers from engaging in "dead sex" when their relations have gone underground and become temporarily stagnant. Without sexual heat, it may be wiser to read in bed together or take in a movie. Talking about sexual fantasies, writing erotic stories, and engaging in phone sex are all obvious examples of C-3 mental sex.

C-3 sex represents the sexual polarity of exhibitionism and voyeurism: the thrill of physical distance, strong visual stimulus, and being seen or seeing another engaged in a sexual act. If you are turned on by the reality or the fantasy of watching someone else enjoying sex with him/herself or with another, you are aroused by voyeuristic passions. If you are turned on by the reality or the fantasy of others watching you having sex with yourself or with another, you are feeling exhibitionistic passions. Both sides of this C-3 mental sex polarity ­­- being seen and seeing -- act on the body in erotic ways. When the sense of sight plays such a clearly dominant role, the C-3 mind drives the sexual drama.

C-4 Sexual Tribes and Customs

The most commonly used terms for sexuality -- heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, pansexual, asexual, transsexual -- act as sociopolitical labels to categorize and organize personal and tribal needs for security, status, sociopolitical identity, and a sense of belonging. Each of these sociopolitical labels represents a different sexual tribe claiming its own distinct customs, rituals, fetishes, icons, codes, and overall force of culture, subculture, and micro culture. As most people are openly heterosexual, they form the dominator sexual culture around which all other sexual tribes compete and struggle for autonomy and equality for legal rights taken for granted by heterosexuals, i.e. marriage, welfare, child rearing, etc.

Sexual orientation holds no prerequisite for tribal identity.

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Tags: Psychology, brain, sexuality, consciousness, Timothy Leary, Antero Alli, Sex and the Eight-Circuit Brain, Polymorphous Sexuality in Circuitland, Reality Sandwich, The Eight-Circuit Brain, Navigational Strategies for the Energetic Body, books