Prometheus Rising: How we filter reality

Leary's Circuits of Consciousness

In 1967, Timothy Leary coined the term “Reality Tunnels” to explain why two people can see the same exact objective events and have perceive a totally different version of reality.

Leary was a Harvard psychology professor who was an early advocate of LSD, friends with Richard Alpert/Ram Dass, and counterculture figure known for the phrase “Tune in. Turn on. Drop out.”, among other things.

In 1973, he theorized the Eight-Circuit Model of Consciousness to identify the distinct layers through which we each filter reality, mostly due to our upbringing.

In 1983, his friend Robert Anton Wilson adapted the 8-circuit model into a guidebook called Prometheus Rising.

In 2020, in the middle of lockdown, I was lent a copy of this book and it changed the way I look at reality forever.

I made an episode on it, and it was my most downloaded episode that year.

One of the listeners was my future wife, who decided she liked me after that. We eventually got married and had a couple kids.

In 2024, she recommended I republish it, since I’m on “paternity leave”.

So yeah. My kids can thank Leary for dropping acid in the 60’s otherwise, or maybe they wouldn’t have been born.

Enjoy.

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