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MAYBE LOGIC: THE LIVES AND IDEAS OF ROBERT ANTON WILSON -- ILLUSTRATED INTERVIEW |
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The greatest relief I get from pain is marijuana brownies made by a wo/men's collective of people with muscular dystrophy, post-polio syndrome, AIDS, cancer, and a few other problems which are very clearly and obviously helped by marijuana brownies. And when the federal government announces that they've canceled the 10th amendment, and the states have no right to legalize anything the federal government is against, I am naturally furious. They are threatening me with a life of steady pain until I die. That's what they're threatening me with. Of course I'm pissed off at them. And it's not only for my own sake, it's for the sake of all the AIDS patients, all the cancer patients, all the other people for whom life is bearable because they can get some marijuana in one form or another. It is one of the best pain killers known, and it's not addictive, and it has an extra added benefit, the high, which is what T.S.O.G. (tsarist occupational government) is afraid of. They don't want anybody to get high because people who are high get happym and people who get happy get ambitious and uppity and rambunctious. They want everybody to be depressed. But the high is part of the cure. I think every goddamned disease in the world is improved by feeling happy and good, and any compound that not only relieves pain but makes you feel happy and cheerful and think of funny things is helping your cure. And the remnants of the cannabis muffin that I had around 6:00, God's own medicine, nothing is bothering me. Around 6:00 the light was starting to bother me again, now nothing is bothering me.
"Ambitious, uppity and rambunctious" Robert Anton Wilson, stoned-out on "God's own medicine" (Cannabis) Most of today I spent on the couch, listening to the atmospheres channel. That's New Age music. I don't know why, sometimes I look for some Classical, but today I was in the mood for atmospheres. I was doing visualizations. Yeah, I was following the rhythm of the music. I had lights flowing up through my body trying to cure the pain in the legs. Between that and the muffins, I finally got rid of the pain. But it took a long time. Sometimes it's quicker than others. I think pain is a mistake. If I'd been around at the Creation, I would have had a lot of helpful suggestions, as Mencken said. And I would have said, "We don't need pain. Just put a little neon light on the forehead that lights up and says 'See a doctor.' 'Hey, your sign is on, go see a doctor.' You don't need pain to tell you. You know, seriously, what I'm getting at is I think pain can be abolished. I don't see any reason why all forms of pain can't be abolished with the proper drugs. And I think the Government's attempt to control drug research out of fear that people may feel too good is the last dying gasp of the dinosaur age. I think we are governed by Tyranosaurus Rex and Raptors and types like that. I really think the abolition of pain is the noblest goal we can aim for. Also, clean water for everybody. And enough food. I think these are quite attainable goals, if society would say these would be our goals. Spread clean water, adequate food and the absence of pain all over the planet, and who would want to become a terrorist? What would they be angry about? What would they be mad about to start throwing bombs at somebody else? Q. What about the eye in the triangle? It's rather inconspicuous. I just want to point out how often the eye in the triangle is there. It pops up frequently. And this, of course, is the symbol of the Illuminati, the alleged secret society, that controls the whole world according to a lot of occult theories, and you'll find it on the back of your dollar bill. It's great to see all of your faces out there, ladies, gentlemen, and narcs. Everybody look around and see if you can spot the narcs. They are the ones who look like hippies. JAVIER K. CANEEDA II
Q. For an expert in conspiracy, you're probably the least paranoid person I've ever met. You have all of the data, but none of the fear that most everybody else who is involved in conspiracy theories ... A. Well, my belief is I don't believe in one big conspiracy that runs everything. I prefer to think that there's at minimum, at any given time, there's about 24 conspiracies afoot. And as far as I've been able to discover in all my years of being involved, more or less unwillingly, in this field, I cannot find any proof of any conspiracy that really existed, was really brought into court and convicted, that lasted more than ten years before everybody double-crossed everybody else and the conspiracy fell apart. To redefine the power elite as somebody else, I regard that as a loser script. I define the power elite as myself and my friends. And that's a winner script. And the way to accomplish things is with a winner script. I define myself as a winner. I define my program as winnable. And I count down the stupidity of whoever seems to be in power to undo them eventually because as I said, every conspiracy has a natural life span, every conspiracy collapses through double-crosses from within or by superior cleverness by rival conspiracies. And stupidity has a definite evolutionary function. I am all for abolishing stupidity, but before it goes, while there's still a lot of it around, we should pay tribute to it. The strongest conspiracy on the planet is the conspiracy of the stupid to prevent schools from educating their children, because they want their children to be as dumb as they are, to prevent television from putting anything intelligent on, as much as possible. Q. What is it about the human psyche that seems to be drawn towards these conspiracy theories? Is it some love of the unknown, or some idea that there may be forces out there that are controlling our destiny? A. Well, I think there are three factors. A, nobody likes to take the blame for their own problems, so they look for somebody else to blame. And if you can find a big enough group, you've explained everything in your life that doesn't work. Q. Like parental conspiracy theories. A. Yeah, it's not your fault, or your parents, it's the Jesuits, the Freemasons, the Jews, the Bilderbergers, the Council on Foreign Relations. And you have a wide choice to pick who to blame. Q. Rich white men ... A. Yeah, as long as you don't have to blame yourself. That's one motive. And another motive is that we are living in very weird times. The world is changing faster and faster, which I think is due to the acceleration of information flow. Information is increasing, and the transmission of information is going faster and faster, due to Internet and the whole computer revolution, which means that most people are living in a world they can't understand. And when people can't understand something, they tend to go for sinister explanations of it: somebody is manipulating things in a way that I don't like. That's the way people feel when things change too fast and they can't understand it. And the third reason, of course, is that there are lots of conspiracies around. Nonsimultaneously apprehended; apprehended nonsimultaneously interacting processes. Interacting processes apprehended nonsimultaneously. JEFFREY MISHLOVE
Q. Let me switch gears with you a little bit. I'd like to talk about your interest in occultism. You've been a student, quite a student I think, of writings and teachings of Aleister Crowley who was a writer about occult magical rituals. And I believe you participated in a variety of magical rituals. What's that about? A. Well, the background is I believe that what we perceive is based on the culture of our parents, and our teachers, and the people around us, and the language we speak. And I'm interested in ways of changing perception. And I have a lot of exercises I've tried for changing my ways for perceiving the world and myself. Crowley's system of magic, his system of fucking with your brain until the impossible becomes possible, and you get out of your imprinted reality tunnel into an infinity of mirrors where anything is possible, I think the major thing you can learn from Crowley is how to change your focus, and how to look through different grids, different reality tunnels as Leary would say. GIORDANO BRUNO Bruno represents the point in our culture where science and mysticism were allied. They were both attempts to find out what the hell was going on in this universe. And by experimental method and by trust in the ability of the individual to figure out what the hell is going on just through the method of experiment. And anyway, the background is experiments on altering consciousness and perceived reality tunnels. In Bruno's day, the three terms were divided up differently. You had science and mysticism on one side, and religion on the other side. Science and mysticism were allied in their struggle against religion. Science and mysticism were both based on experience, and they were both based on respect for the individual. The idea of science and mysticism was to go out and discover for yourself, find out what works, find out how the universe is actually structured, and how you relate to the structure of the universe. And so there were basically two areas of scientific exploration: the external and the internal. But they both pursued the same method, the experimental method.
Originally I was just trying to find out what the hell is a mystical experience. But then I very soon got the idea of re-imprinting, and then I got the idea of using Crowley's magic along with the re-imprinting. A ritual is to the internal science what an experiment is to the external science. Mysticism understood in that way is basically a branch of science, a branch of neuro-science, what Timothy Leary calls "neurologic" as distinguished from orthodox neurology which involves dissecting animals, or dissecting corpses or something. Neurologic is studying the nervous system directly by varying the parameters on which your nervous system functions. There are different levels of reality, obviously, and the psychedelic level is one of the most fascinating ones, one of the most erotic, and above all one of the funniest. I recommend it highly to everybody over 40. I'm not going to repeat Leary's mistake. I don't recommend it to anybody under 40. Over 40 you're on your own, you're responsible for yourself. Don't blame me for what happens.
R.U. SIRIUS
The name R.U. Sirius comes directly from Robert Anton Wilson. Actually, the book, Cosmic Trigger, in which he goes into the Sirius mysteries. It's also one of the great books for just raising your level of clarity, and intelligence, and psychedelic humor, and everything you could possibly want from a book. Cosmic Trigger was the motherlode.
DisinfoCon Those of you who have read my book Cosmic Trigger note -- oh, a lot of you! -- oh, that's nice -- hey, that's very flattering! You all know what happened on July 23, 1973. That was the day I achieved contact with an extraterrestrial from Sirius and started hallucinating like mad, depending on which way you want to look at it. I've varied between both theories over the years. But I just found out recently, since I'm still into synchronicity -- this one really struck me -- July 23, 1973 was also the birthday of Monica Lewinsky. Around 1973, I became convinced for a while that I was receiving messages from outer space. But then a psychic reader told me I was actually channeling an ancient Chinese philosopher, and another psychic reader told me I was channeling a Medieval Irish bard. And at that time, I started reading neurology, and I decided it was just my right brain talking to my left brain. And then I went to Ireland, and I found out it was actually a six foot tall white rabbit. They call it the Pookah, and the Irish know all about it. So it depends on who I'm talking to which views to explain where these weird patterns come from, that jump out of the books and take hold of the readers and change their lives. It's not me, it's a six foot tall white rabbit from County Kerry. While looking back, I accept that metaphor as pretty accurate. All writers are channelers in some sense. Faulkner talked about the demon that dictated his books to him. Norman Mailer talks about the navigator in the unconscious. William Blake said the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah dictated his poetic prophetic books to him. Most artists traditionally have talked about the muse. And for people in County Kerry, it's a six foot tall white rabbit. For me, it was an extraterrestrial from Sirius. There are different metaphors for the experience.
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