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MAYBE LOGIC: THE LIVES AND IDEAS OF ROBERT ANTON WILSON -- ILLUSTRATED INTERVIEW |
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BOB: As Ezra Pound writes in one of the latter cantos, 'The water-bug's mittens show on the bright rock below him.' DUH! Interaction. You know how the water bug's mittens on the bright rock, without the water bug, the rock, and the sun to cast a shadow, and of course you need a planet that will produce a water bug and a rock, and you need human eyes to see it all. That's Tao-Duh, interacting processing. One of the introductory koans in Zen Buddhism is "Who is the great magician who makes the grass green?" Who is the great magician who makes the grass green? Who creates every reality? The word "yoga" means "union." Yoga comes from the same root as the English yoke: two things hitched together. You need a human brain -- dogs see grass differently -- you need the human brain and the grass, hitched together to make the yoga which we call the greenness of the grass. Everybody thinks it's very hard to be a mystic -- you gotta go through a helluva lot of effort to realize your union with everything -- but actually you're experiencing your union with everything all of the time. Otherwise, you wouldn't be experiencing anything. You make the grass green. You make your highs and you make your lows. But you don't make it alone. You are making it out of your union with the universe. And so everything is a coincidence of contraries, a coincidence of you being there, and the universe being there. And everything is one at the same time, because there's no green without the grass and there's no green without you. So the greenness is a transaction that ties you and the grass together. There's an infinite expanse of signals flooding into our nervous systems and being processed by our higher neural centers in the brain. We're all organizing and orchestrating according to our own particular life history, our genetic background, our early imprints, our conditioning, our learning, or any re-imprinting techniques we may have learned since then. So we're all living in different worlds. It's astonishing that we can communicate at all. You are the co-creator of the sights you see, the sounds you hear, and your general impression of the universe. Our experiences are generated out of us. We're not generating it out of nothing, but we are generating it. We are creating the reality tunnel we are experiencing moment to moment. So this total unity between you and the universe, whether you are aware of it or not, the universe you live in is your creation. You're not doing it consciously. When you have seen the one who makes the grass green, it's like meeting your own father in a crowd -- you'll have no doubt whatsoever. Nasruddin went galloping through Baghdad one day on his donkey. He went up every street and into every alley and across every plaza. Every place he goes, an unending race, a hunt and search. Everybody got curious, everybody came out of their houses, and they were all yelling, "Nasruddin, Nasruddin, what are you looking for?" He said, "I lost my donkey, and I'm looking for it." The donkey represents what everybody is looking for, which is a mystical school. It's the answer to all the riddles of the universe. And you hunt for east, west, north, south, up, down, everywhere you can imagine, and all the time it's carrying you around. It's the human nervous system which takes out of the infinity of the universe the little reality tunnel that you consider reality, which is your creation, which you think is the whole of the universe, unless you went to a Sufi school, or studied General Semantics, or did a lot of Zen meditation, or dropped LSD once or twice. Then you realize the universe is much bigger and more complicated than any little map we can make of it. The map is not the territory. The words that describe the map are not the territory, are even further from the territory. What I've been trying to do is put the donkey on your back in such a way you'll never forget the master, the great magician who makes the grass green, the one who creates the whole universe you live in.
Interacting processing. Tao Duh! That's all I tune in. Interacting processing. No nouns anywhere. I never met a noun yet. I often thought of myself in terms of that old Chinese proverb, "The wise become Confucian in good times, and Buddhist in bad times, and Taoist in all days." And I've always had a lot more sympathy for those three religions, in quotes, than for any of the Occidental ones, like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all of which seem to me fanatical, intolerant, or violence prone. The Judaeo-Christian monotheistic trip has been the worst nightmare this planet ever endured. They just never stop killing one another. Meanwhile, the Confucians, the Taoists, the Buddhists, each in their own way have tried to create a peaceful and amicable society. And what I like in Buddhism is the basic idea of forgiveness, because nobody realizes how wonderful it is to develop some talent at actually doing it. Because, the more you forgive, the less burden you got to carry around with you. When you reach the point where you can forgive everybody, you're almost entirely free from burdens.
What's important to me at this point in my life? Making really sure that I have forgiven anybody who has ever hurt me or seems to be an enemy, and making sure that I have nothing but forgiveness for everything. I think it's a very liberating experience to realize how little you really know and how much of the time you're just guessing. One thing that makes forgiveness easier, and believe me life without forgiveness ain't worth living, mostly it keeps you from acting like too much of a damn fool if you're not really sure. People who are really sure all act like damn fools at least half of the time. Maybe more than that. I haven't really studied that closely. I'll have to think some more about that. How often does being sure about everything make you act like a damn fool? I'm now going to commit a federal crime. You want to see a federal crime committed? This is a pain killer provided by the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana. It keeps my legs from hurting me too much. NOTICE: "On September 18, 2002 in Santa Cruz, California, city officials gave their blessing to a protest against the federal government's war on some drugs. City leaders allowed WAMM, a local medical marijuana collective to distribute marijuana to its members on the steps of city hall. They endorsed the pot giveaway as a protest against a recent federal raid on the medicinal marijuana collective." Q. Tell me why you are here today, and what you hope to achieve? A. Well, in the first place, I hope to get my medicine so my leg won't go on hurting the way that it's been since I got off my ____. That is the immediate existential fact. I am in pain. I want medicine. The second reason I'm here is I happen to believe in State's rights. I believe in the Tenth Amendment, which most people have never heard of. Look in the back of your dictionary. you'll find the document called The U.S. Constitution, has nothing to do with the way this government is operating under George Bush. The way it's supposed to operate under the Tenth Amendment is all powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states respectively or to The People. Now the State of California and the People of California are behind me. And the federal government has no right to condemn me to a life of constant pain, which is what they're trying to do. I don't know what kind of sadistic sonofabitch George Bush is, why he wants to leave people in pain like this, but I don't approve it, I don't like it. I'm ready to fight for my right to be free of pain. If you're going to be in pain most of the day, you're not going to enjoy your life much. And George Bush insists that God has appointed him to make sure that I spend the rest of my life in pain without any relief. And I say, "Fuck you, George Bush. You should have these pains in your goddamned legs." I know it doesn't sound very -- I'm a Buddhist most of the time -- but today I'm too angry. I'll get back to being a Buddhist tomorrow. Q. Anything else you want to add? Any final thoughts today? A. Yeah, I'm sorry for my bitterness against George Bush. He is equally empty, equally ___ and equally becoming Buddha. The trouble is the asshole doesn't know it. "I'd like to introduce Robert Anton Wilson, who is 72, who has post-polio syndrome." I am indeed Robert Anton Wilson, I do indeed have post-polio syndrome, but I am not 72, I am only 70. And I will go get my medicine after saying, "I like that sign." I will pick up my medicine after saying, "Of all of the signs out there, the one I like best is the one telling the government to read the Tenth Amendment. The Tenth Amendment says that all powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states respectively or to The People. Nowhere does it say a goddamned czar will be in charge of my medical care and interfere between me and my doctor. Anybody in Philadelphia in the 18th century who suggested putting something like that in the Constitution would have been considered a raving lunatic. This Constitution was not created to establish a czarist tyranny, it was established to create a free society. I think my writing comes out of anger and optimism. Anger at the stupid, maniacal, corrupt crowd that's running the world, and optimistic about the opportunities that are so real. This is, as I say, the result of my outrage, my horror, my grief and my anger at the way the world's been going lately, and my continued optimism that maybe enough people can wake up in time to change the direction we're going. So I've got both optimism and anger, which I think is a good mixture. It keeps me busy anyway. I have a lot of hope. I may be the last optimist left on the planet for all I know. But at the same time, I see really terrible problems and injustices and violence all over the place. I just think we're heading for a point at which that will no longer be viable. Somehow, we're going to have to figure out a more decent form of society if we're going to survive at all. You can only write about what has impinged upon your nervous system strongly enough to leave a powerful imprint. And when I was 12 years old, they opened the Nazi annihilation camps. I think it's a very vulnerable age for imprints. I grew up feeling like I was living in a race of monsters. And I've lived all through the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and a lot of other tragedies, personal and otherwise, and I can't write fiction without violence, because violence is so much part of the world I've lived in. It's obvious they are getting closer and closer to the edge where they can cure anything. Meanwhile the world is moving closer and closer to the edge where they can kill us all. It's very interesting: science is going in one direction and politics is going in the other. I'm still an optimist. I think when people give up doing stupid things, it's like walking into a wall, eventually you start looking for the door and you do something intelligent. The human race has to do something intelligent in the next 10-20 years. It just can't go on screwing up everything. We're living among infinite possibilities. And the prevalent philosophies of post-modern pessimism that come out of the universities are really a major tragedy. The opportunities for progress and change of a positive nature are absolutely tremendous, and anybody who tells you that we are running out of resources or in a terrible mess -- they are idiots! We can't run out of resources. Resources exist when the human mind sees how to use something. To say we're running out of resources is like saying we're running out of brain cells. I don't know why so many people spend so much time in a pessimistic reality tunnel. It's a miserable place to live. But some people feel that if they leave it, they feel guilty. If you're not in a pessimistic tunnel, you're not responsible. But once I got out of it, I never wanted to go back into it. As far as I know, I'm the only survivor of the 60's who is just as angry and just as optimistic as I was then. Besides, until I die, I may as well be an optimist. Every day you've got choices to make, and the more optimistic you feel, the more likely you are to make charitable and kindly choices rather than angry ones. If you want to be the most depressed person in the world, get up every morning, and remind yourself that George Bush is still in the White House. And then listen to CNN for an hour, and you'll find out that American bombers are pounding on another part of Afghanistan. If you think about George Bush, and other gloomy things every day, eventually you'll get pessimistic enough that you eventually can overdose on a sedative your doctor gave you to control your depression. If you want to become a concert pianist, do it every day. You want to be a writer, do it every day. You want to become depressed, think depressing thoughts every day. You want to become an optimist, think a cheerful thought every day. Do it every day. I think over the course of my life, I have evolved from basically a rational person to a basically intuitive person, without completely losing my reason, I hope. And intuitive people do tend to live in the future. I don't believe in Golden Ages. I don't believe in the past. But I do think the Golden Age is possible in the future, and I want to try for it. I think Barnard Shaw called it "The Life Force." I got this tremendous drive to try and do what I can to add my contribution to making a much better future in our history of human ideas and up until the present. And I think the joy of art is trying to convey what you perceive so that other people will perceive it more or less the same way. Art is a form of seduction. I mean, there are rapists in the intellectual world. They become politicians. The seducers become honest. We try to seduce people into our reality tunnels instead of leading them there with a gun. But we are trying to get them into our our reality tunnel, or our reality labyrinth, or whichever it is. In my case, it's a reality labyrinth. PAUL KRASSNER
"Uh, Bob is a wise man, and that's the way he is in person, and that's the way he is in his writings, and that's the way he is on stage. At events where Bob was the speaker, I've seen people come up to him and be grateful to him for having awakened them. I think he has served the purpose of being an alarm clock of people's psyches, and they appreciate that because the whole culture seems to be aimed at lulling them to sleep. And so a human alarm clock is a very welcome sound and sight." BOB: When I call the universe infinite, I do not assume it is infinite in space-time. But it has infinite aspects. Which means that anybody who looks out will see something different, but anybody else who looks out will come back a day later and look at it again and it will still be different. William Blake said, "I see infinity in a grain of sand." And you can, if you're open enough. Everything that gets into your brain affects your reality tunnel, your world view, or your belief system, which I abbreviate B.S. The three main things I've been trying to teach in all of my books is, "Never believe fully in anybody else's B.S." I don't care if it's Rajneesh, the Pope, L. Ron Hubbard, George Bush, I don't care who it is, don't swallow all of their belief system totally. Don't go with all of their bullshit, all the B.S. The second rule is likened to the first: "Don't believe totally in your own B.S." Which means that, as Bucky Fuller said, "Universe consists of nonsimultaneously apprehended events." Universe is non-simultaneously apprehended. What? Nonsimultaneously ... universe is non-simultaneously apprehended. What? Universe is nonsimultaneously apprehended events. Which means whatever belief system or reality tunnel you've got right now has to be revised and updated as you continue to apprehend new events later in time. Nonsimultaneously. You can't apprehend, you can't comprehend, you can't perceive, you can't understand the whole universe at once. That requires some thought, and some repetition: "Universe is non-simultaneously apprehended." We go through our life, minute by minute, second by second, day by day, but we're never seeing the same universe that we've seen. If we are, it's because we start paying attention. That's why you get bored, because you're not paying attention. We can't comprehend the whole universe just right now. All space-time, how it takes 90 years for signals to get here from Sirius, even, think how long it would take to get here from the other end of the furthest galaxy. So, you know, in terms of our general relativity, it's not the same time everywhere. So the universe is non-simultaneously apprehended. That means at any particular time we only know part of the universe; tomorrow we'll know more. Maybe not much more; maybe a lot more. Who knows? I might turn on CNN tomorrow morning and find the greatest scientific discovery of the last five million years has just been announced. Who knows? And then, again, it may take 20 years for a breakthrough of that magnitude. But scenario universe is nonsimultaneously apprehended, which is why we need Maybe Logic. Our maps of the universe, our ideas should be changing all the time, too. People who claim, "I've got the truth" just don't realize they've comprehended the whole universe simultaneously. It can't be done. It can only be comprehended as part of it. They haven't comprehended everything up to date either because most of them don't know everything that happened up to today. I don't know everything that happened up until this date. And the people who are most sure of themselves know even less than I do in most cases, which means they are really dumb. This is the natural functioning of the human brain. It's the way children's brains form before they are wrecked by the school system. It's the way that all great scientists and artists work. But once you have a belief system, everything that comes in either gets ignored that doesn't fit the belief system, or gets distorted enough so that it can't get into the belief system. You gotta be continually revising your map of the world, or you lose more and more contact with reality. Anybody who has a belief system that covers the whole universe, that would be the Roman Catholics, Orthodox Islam, Scientologists, CSICOP, the Marxists, the Objectivists, and most of the assholes, well, what happened is, their brain stopped receiving new signals. Or to the extent that new signals do get in, they all have to be edited to fit into the belief system. Now, I've shown you, you can't say all about anything. You can't say all about the Universe. You can't know all about this room. You can't know all about this! And yet we think we know ourselves. What you really are is totally unknown, and by definition, infinite, because you can't experience all of it at one time, and you can never know it all at one time. Everyday you can find new aspects to yourself, if you allow yourself to change and grow. And the best way to allow yourself to change and grow is to realize how little you know, and to pay more attention to what's going on around you. Three years ago, I couldn't get off the couch. A few months ago I could walk three paces. I can now walk the whole length of the apartment without falling down, I hope. I want the audience to see the truth of what optimism can do. Hooray for the optimists! The end. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Robert Anton Wilson has written 35 books and published over 1,500 articles. For five years he was Associate Editor of Playboy Magazine (1966-1971). Since 1971, he has worked as futurist, playwright, screenwriter, poet, lecturer, and stand-up comic. In 1957, he married Arlen Riley with whom he raised four children. He currently resides in Santa Cruz, California. Maybe.
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