The Starseed Signals

A RAW Perspective on Timothy Leary

Robert Anton Wilson

Hilaritas Press 2020

Pb, 504pp, £17.99, ISBN 9781952746079

Robert Anton Wilson’s The Starseed Signals is primarily a study of the famed counterculture figure, specifically Timothy Leary’s hypothesised “eight circuit model of consciousness”. Yet the book also touches on various other RAW hallmarks: agnosticism, life extension, space travel, politics, culture and consciousness studies.

Leary’s eight circuit model is somewhat complex, and Wilson elucidates it in a manner that is arguably more accessible than in his New Age guidebook Prometheus Rising (1983). Put simply, the first four circuits address terrestrial existence, while the last four concern human existence in outer space, together with an exploration of various states of altered consciousness, including, but not limited to, psychic powers, mysticism, psychedelia and enlightenment. Each model follows the other as an advancement from an animalistic, primitive, “robotic” consciousness to that of complete transcendence, a “quantum consciousness” in Leary’s description, either naturally or chemically induced, that very few are ever able to achieve.

The Starseed Signals, however, is not limited to an explication of Leary’s eight circuit model. Written in 1974, and published for the first time, it represents one of Wilson’s earliest texts, composed prior to his numerous fictional trilogies, which arguably present a more refined approach to similar subject matter. In fact, Wilson is here equally inspired by US President Richard M Nixon’s 197172 political attacks on Leary, whom Nixon called “the most dangerous man in America”. Explored in detail is Wilson’s relationship with Leary during this politically charged era. This quasijournalistic approach makes this one of his most intimate works, and therefore something of a curiosity in his oeuvre. As such, it has an immediacy and energy missing from his somewhat similar The New Inquisition (1986), which addresses more generally attacks upon those theories that fail to adhere to the “Fundamental Materialism” of the scientific Establishment. Indeed, one of the many strengths of The Starseed Signals is its firsthand account of the political and social disorder out of which Wilson developed his audaciously nonconformist body of work, an accurate summary of which might be a question he poses: “What is the precise difference between government and criminal conspiracy?” As one progresses from the lowest to the highest rungs of Leary’s eight circuits, Wilson argues, the false gods and criminal whims of the Establishment are exposed, leaving one better equipped to recognise the existence of the incorporeal and to find the God within.

Entertaining, accessible, thoughtprovoking – if somewhat dated – The Starseed Signals should prove equally satisfying for RAW devotees and acolytes alike.

Eric Hoffman

★★★★