Robert Anton Wilson

Years before he was famous as the co-author of the Illuminatus trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson was writing astute essays about the evils of authoritarianism, prejudice, puritanism, and exploitation. The essays and interviews in this book span 45 years, from 1960 to 2005, responding to events from the Bay of Pigs invasion to the War on Terror. Along the way, they will introduce you, or re-introduce you, to the thinkers who influenced Wilson the most-Spooner, Tucker, Proudhon, Warren, Reich, Fuller, Korzybski, and others. Calling for liberty, tolerance, and compassion, Wilson was loyal to neither the political left nor the political right - he preferred to call his ideas "non-Euclidean." These writings deviate from traditional Euclidean models of the political spectrum where the ideological landscape is easily mappable. Here, politics are as complex, multidimensional, and unconventional as the human mind. - - - "Say what you like about the principles of anarchism, Robert Anton Wilson said it earlier, better, and funnier." - Ken MacLeod, author of The Star Fraction and Beyond The Hallowed Sky "An encyclopedic scholar of human folly, or maybe simply the folly of being human." - Andrei Codrescu, author of The Disappearance of the Outside: a Manifesto For Escape "Wilson understood that true freedom requires breaking everyone's chains, not building higher walls around private compounds." - Mark Frauenfelder, co-founder of Boing Boing "The imagination, wit, and humanity evident in these essays animated Robert Anton Wilson's politics and writing." - Revd Jonathan Harris, High Priest of Church of Burn "A unique combination of compassion and erudition that will light up your neural pathways like Times Square on New Year's Eve." - Lewis Shiner, author of Glimpses "A volume of priceless wisdom from a multi-dimensional intellect." - Victor Koman, author of The Jehovah Contract and Kings of the High Frontier

Chelovecheskie mysli, tsennosti i pravila povedenija vsegda nakhodilis v silnoj zavisimosti ot jazyka i gospodstvujuschikh vozzrenij na ustrojstvo Vselennoj. S pojavleniem kvantovoj mekhaniki, teorii otnositelnosti, neevklidovoj geometrii, nearistotelevskoj logiki i obschej semantiki nauchnoe miroponimanie sdelalo gigantskij shag vpered. No chelovecheskoe myshlenie do sikh por ostaetsja gluboko ukorenennym v srednevekovoj kosmologii. "Kvantovaja psikhologija" zastavljaet chitatelej po-inomu, na urovne XXI veka, vosprinimat samikh sebja i Vselennuju. Odni kritiki, ne ponjavshie etu knigu, nazyvali ee materialisticheskoj, drugie - misticheskoj. Na samom dele ona predlagaet put vykhoda za predely etoj izvechnoj chelovecheskoj poljarnosti. Ee avtor Robert Anton Uilson - izvestnyj sovremennyj pisatel, filosof i publitsist.

For over a decade (1987-1997), Robert Anton Wilson published a quarterly newsletter, Trajectories: The Journal of Futurism and Heresy with editorial and publishing expertise from his wife, Arlen Riley Wilson, and his friend, D. Scott Apel. Scott describes the newsletter as, "full of original articles, unpublished fiction, and outrageous opinion." Chaos and Beyond features the best essays from the first five years of the newsletter. Mostly written by Robert Anton Wilson. Guest appearances by Arlen Wilson, D. Scott Apel, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Timothy Leary, Ph. D. Linus Pauling, Ph. D., Robert Newport, M. D., Edward Kellogg III, Ph. D., Peter Russell, George Carlin, and Ed McMahon." This compendium serves as Bob's book of everything. At once a time capsule of an era's leading reality-busting techniques and technologies, an origin story for our current state of consciousness, and a map for how to retrieve the spirit that must inform these practices if humans are going to come along for the ride." - Douglas Rushkoff, author of Team Human and other great books "Robert Anton Wilson was a multidimensional genius who wrote with penetrating insight, razor-sharp intellect, and a pronounced sense of the preposterous. This collection of rare writings from the first decuple of his Trajectories newsletter should prove that beyond an elephant of a doubt " - D. Scott Apel, author, media critic & editor of Beyond Chaos and Beyond"Roll up for this smorgasbord of scientific utopian possibilities with a side order of acerbic antiauthoritarian commentary. For dessert, we have lucid deconstruction of conspiracy theory and musings on the necessity of uncertainty. This is Bob and his collaborators actively engaging in the fecund period of the late '80s and early '90s when the tech revolution seemed promising, the freaks seemed poised to take over and anything was possible. And there's RAWs literary flare. He's a master of logic and a maestro of puckish surreal illogic, an enigma wrapped in a sheet of blotter baked into a flying lasagna. Read on " - R. U. Sirius, writer, editor, musician and cyberculture celebrity

This eclectic collection presents a series of articles outlining Robert Anton Wilson's unique perspective on the notorious scoundrel and mystic, Aleister Crowley - the Man, the Mage and his life's work. The centerpiece, "Do What Thou Wilt," recently liberated from the archival depths of Harvard University, is published here for the first time ever. In this, until recently unknown manuscript, Wilson examines and contrasts the pragmatic and theoretical revelations of Crowley's system, Thelema, with various other contemporaneous scientific research into expanded consciousness. Lion of Light is fleshed out with an introduction and foreword by Lon Milo Duquette and Richard Kaczynski respectively, along with four additional pieces by seasoned explorers that shed light on the relationship of these two Masters, Wilson and Crowley. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Like many of my generation, I was steeped to magical maturity in a technicolor broth stirred by the Holy Trinity of Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, and Robert Anton Wilson. But when the subject is Aleister Crowley, I cannot possibly imagine a more informed, brilliant and insightful commentator than Robert Anton Wilson. Love is the law, love under will." - Lon Milo DuQuette, author of The Magick of Aleister Crowley"Two of the twentieth century's most provocative thinkers - Robert Anton Wilson and Aleister Crowley - meet in this career-spanning collection of Wilson's essays on magick and Thelema. RAW and AC go together like peanut butter and shrooms." - Richard Kaczynski, author of Perdurabo and The Weiser Concise Guide to Aleister Crowley

THE GREATEST MOVIE NEVER MADE ? No director could capture it, no film could contain it, coming soon to the mind's eye within you: The Walls Came Tumbling Down - A modern American story about the terror of accidentally stumbling into the cosmic circus of other-worldly consciousness, with no map or clue how to navigate the abyss and safely return home. What's your exit strategy for Chapel Perilous? What will you do when the walls tumble, the doors of perception fly open, and your brain is suddenly free from the limits of "mind"? What's the real truth about reality? Read on and get some clues . . ." Robert Anton Wilson limped out through the wall into the fire, into the simultaneous party of eternity, into the splendid, timeless funfair of a life that he has somehow managed to survive with thirty-five books weaving his ideas in their spectacular diversity, weaving his luminescent consciousness into the intellectual DNA of our painfully slow-developing society and dancing somewhere with his wife, back when he could still dance and she was still alive. " - Alan Moore"With his humorous rapier, Wilson pokes and prods our misconceptions, prejudices and ignorance. A quantum banquet." - Ray Tuckman, Broadcaster, KPFK Radio"The most important philosopher of this century" - Timothy Leary, Ph. D

For decades, right-wing anti-Semites have been incensed by the ZOG, or Zionist Occupation Government, that they believe ruled America. Wilson parodied that by imaginatively seeing America's Drug Tsar as the direct successor of the Russian Tsars, ignoring the US constitution, and leading a Tsarist Occupation Government. Indeed, the story of a Nazi spy with ties to Mystical Tsarism becoming the CIA's major asset in fighting the cold war with the Soviets begins this tale of America in 2002, at the start of America's linguistically-challenged "War on Terrorism." "Humans at war with ideas" sits at the heart of this amusing and disturbing volume where absurdity comes face to face with insanity. In one chapter, Wilson considers why mass murderer Hannibal Lecter would make a better president than George W Bush. In examining the corroding effects of the American military-corporate juggernaut, Robert Anton Wilson notes, "Some may think I regard the Constitution as an almost sacred text. Not at all: I admit it has a few defects and blemishes. I just consider it a hell of a lot better than the system we have now.""When it comes to intelligent dissent, Wilson is the motherload. More importantly, he's funnier than a barrel of monkeys reciting the pledge of allegiance on the capital steps." - RU Sirius, Editor, Mondo 2000"The master satirist shines light on the recent parapolitical history of the TSOG-the Tsarist Occupation Government-that now masquerades as the U. S. political and cultural leadership. It's all here with familiar humor and new insight. Like the Id-creature in Forbidden Planet, Wilson's brilliance reveals the outline of the monster right now chomping on America."- Kenn Thomas, Steamshovel Press"I have learned more from Robert Anton Wilson than I have from any other source." - Comedian George CarlinThe Official Hilaritas Press Edition authorized by the Robert Anton Wilson Trust

In Natural Law, Robert Anton Wilson tackles reality itself, and lays the groundwork for his future writings on Model Agnosticism. - - -Every perception is a gamble, in which we see part, not all, (to see all requires omniscience) and "fill in" or project a convincing hologram out of minimal clues. We all intuitively know the obvious and correct answer to the Zen koan, "Who is the Master who makes the grass green?" - Robert Anton Wilson, Natural LawThe "Natural Law" debate has been raging around anarcho-libertarian circles for some time now. Well folks, it's all over. "Natural Law" died an unnatural death, murdered ("executed" if you insist) by notorious stand-up comic Robert Anton Wilson. If you enjoyed pamphleteering in the old sense of the word, unabashed rhetorical mud-slinging on a high intellectual level, you will want to examine the murder weapon: Natural Law; or Don't Put A Rubber On Your Willy. - Hakim Bey An appropriately savage attack on the "natural law" doctrines of certain "libertarian" pundits. - The Egoist Today is Maybe Day, a day inspired by the late writer Robert Anton Wilson. It was his hope that on this day people of all creeds and beliefs would come together and chant, "Jesus is the only son of God, maybe" "Hear O Israel, the Lord thy God is one, maybe" and "There's no God but Allah, maybe, and maybe Mohammed is his prophet." At this point the world would suddenly become a far saner place. - John Higgs, writing in The GuardianThe Robert Anton Wilson Trust Authorized Hilaritas Press Edition

Det var ett dödligt misstag. Joseph Malik, redaktör för en radikal tidskrift, grävde djupt i rykten om en hemlig orden som visade sig vara aktiv fortfarande. Nu har hans kontor bombats, han saknas, och fallet har landat hos en tuff och cynisk New York-detektiv. Saul Goodman vet att han har snubblat över något stort men till och med han kan inte ana hur långt in i maktens toppar denna onda konspiration har nått. Illuminatus-trilogin är fylld med sex och våld in och ut ur tid och rum men är bara delvis fantasi. Den tar itu med nedtystade delar av vår tid från vem som verkligen sköt Kennedy till varför det finns en pyramid på dollarsedeln och föreslår en häpnadsväckande sanning.

In 1974, Robert Anton Wilson wrote a book about the ideas and tribulations of his friend, Dr. Timothy Leary. Intriguingly, this book would not be published until some 46 years later, having been put aside and then lost for decades. In 1986, RAW wrote The New Inquisition which had as a partial focus the persecution of Timothy Leary and Wilhelm Reich. In some respects, The Starseed Signals seems like an earlier attempt to address that same kind of injustice, as the book was written while Leary was experiencing an inquisition, a victim of the Nixon administration and the general punitive zeitgeist. In his introduction to the book, John Higgs writes, "What's remarkable about this previously lost and unpublished-until-now manuscript is not only that RAW puts forward the case for Leary's ideas, but he does so at the time when Leary's reputation was at its lowest. The sixties were over, and the paranoia of the 70s had begun. Leary was yesterday's man, lost somewhere deep within the American prison system, denounced by former friends and rumoured to be snitching on the entire counterculture." RAW addresses Leary's troubles with insights that will intrigue historians, while also offering delights for those who value Leary's many contributions to various fields in the social sciences. Of particular note is RAW's early description of the Eight Circuits Model of Consciousness, which we learn had been a collaborative effort between the two friends. The Starseed Signals stands as a unique title in the Robert Anton Wilson canon, offering a revealing and very personal look at the tumultuous early years of the 1970's. As John Higgs notes, "You get the Timothy Leary you deserve, as we know. But perhaps we also deserve the Timothy Leary that Robert Anton Wilson got."

"For Bob, nothing was sacred and nothing was set in stone - except maybe the idea that fundamentalism is a dangerous dead end. Like Alfred Korzybski's Science and Sanity, Robert Anton Wilson's The New Inquisition seeks to rescue science from fundamentalist materialism, and the rest of us from the broader implications of this approach. It is at once a philosophical treatise and an act of cognitive defiance . . . His message is more important right now than it was when he wrote it. Our digital fundamentalists see human beings as an engineering problem to be solved. Behaviors and thoughts that do not conform to our algorithmically generated profiles are to be eliminated, and humans shepherded into the reality tunnels that obey the laws of rationality alone. We are right now being programmed by the very fundamental materialists RAW is warning us about on these pages." - from Douglas Rushkoff's Introduction to The New Inquisition

"And herein lies both Wilson's typically mischievous nature and serious intent -- in its original, weaponized form, the book that became 'Ishtar Rising' is nothing less than a mytho-feminist screed masquerading as an antique stroke book; a brilliant, compact summary of 'matrist' attitudes, their cruel demotion and degradation, their struggle for survival, and their hoped-for triumphant restoration."'Ishtar' is a book of revealing -- the undressing of the Goddess as she descends into the Underworld, where, shorn of the accoutrements of Divinity, she must confront her True Naked Being to survive the ordeal. It speaks also of the return of the repressed. The journey of the now-enlightened Goddess back from the murk and mysteries of the Nether World to Get Some Shit Tidied Up. It speaks from its rear-view mirror times of a still-overdue resurgence of connectivity, kindness, sex-positivity, respect for Nature and for Life. It wonders what a world ruled by the Goddess would look like, in contrast to those Dark Satanic Mills and centuries of slaughter presided over by an unforgiving God.- Grant Morrison, from his Introduction to Ishtar Rising

Throughout history, secret societies have played a crucial role in shaping events that have created our world. Only an inner circle of power elite know the full extent of the influence of the conspiracy. It is Paris, 1772, and Sigismundo Celine knows he is destined to play an important part in this history-behind-history. The masons, the English nobility, the Jabobites, the Rosicrucians, the ruling clique of pre-Revolution France: these are but a few of the factions involved in the machinations and intrigue in which Sigismundo has become enmeshed. Thrown into the Bastille, shot at, assaulted by assassins, tortured, and brutally interrogated, he knows only what he is and what he must do to become the one spoken of in the old texts. But what he doesn't know could kill him: the secret powers of Maria, the Italian beauty who has become an English Lady; the Irish fisherman, Moon, who stumbles across the inner workings of an unsuspected cult; and the question they keep asking: the identity of The Widow's Son." The real history of Western Civilization, where our heroes (and anti-heroes), the Illuminati, roam the night." - Jonathan Sellers, Antiquities of the Illuminati "A masterful satirist who views history as an open question." - Brad Linaweaver, Atlanta Constitution"More important than Ulysses or Finnegans Wake." - Timothy Leary