Prometheus Rising

Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising is a popularization of Timothy Leary's "eight circuit theory" of the brain, which describes the functioning of the brain as having eight connected areas of thought and behavior. The first circuit is associated with "horizontal" approach-avoidance behavior, seen in everything from bacteria to higher life forms, the second circuit defines our "vertical" dominant-submissive behavior. The other circuits get more complex, and I have to admit that circuits five through eight are confusing.

Wilson offers a number of different exercises that help us identify and tune these circuits, and always does so in a humorous, non-pendantic way. It would be a mistake to read this as a piece of serious non-fiction. I got a lot more out of it but thinking of it as an entertaining, insightful, and pretty useful way of viewing human behavior. Like Terrance McKenna, Wilson is at his best when he challenges the things I believe in so strongly that I didn't even realize there was another way of looking at them. Link