Robert Anton Wilson

Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson is for those interested in doing some personal consciousness experiments. You can get it here: http://www.whale.to/c/Prometheus Rising.pdf

Here is a small taste:

As Dr. Leonard Orr has noted, the human mind behaves as if it were divided into two parts, the Thinker and the
Prover. The Thinker can think about virtually anything. History shows that it can think the earth is suspended on the backs of infinite turtles or that the Earth is hollow, or that the Earth is floating in space; comparative religion and philosophy show that the Thinker can regard itself as mortal, as immortal, as both mortal and immortal (the reincarnation model) or even as non-existent (Buddhism). It can think itself into living in a Christian universe, a Marxist universe, a scientific-relativistic universe, or a Nazi universe—among many possibilities.

As psychiatrists and psychologists have often observed (much to the chagrin of their medical colleagues), the Thinker can think itself sick, and can even think itself well again.

The Prover is a much simpler mechanism. It operates on one law only: Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves.

Quantum Psychology

The follow up to Prometheus rising. More excercises to play with your brain!

Cosmic Trigger pt1 - Final Secret Of The Illuminati
An autobiographical exploration of consciousness.

[i]"Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, "My current model" — or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel — "contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised." In terms of the history of science and of knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude."


"As the late, great H.P. Lovecraft might begin this narrative: It is now nearly 13 years since the ill-fated day when I first began investigating the terrible legends surrounding the enigmatic Bavarian Illuminati, an alleged conspiracy that some people believe rules the world. Like a Lovecraft hero, I embarked on my research with no suspicion of the perils awaiting me: I thought I was just investigating a notable case of political paranoia and expected to find only some insight into the psychology which causes otherwise sane individuals to subscribe to such absurdly ridiculous conspiracy theories.

Eventually, in collaboration with Robert J. Shea, I wrote a three-volume satirical novel on the conspiracy, Illuminatus! Completing such an exhaustingly long book should have terminated my interest in the subject, but my researches continued nonetheless, evidently propelled by some mysterious momentum. (Rising organ music, please.) I had become psychically hooked to the Illuminati. Like a tarantula in the bedsheets or the laugh of a woman you once loved, the accursed Illuminati simply could not be forgotten or ignored. This was most annoying to the Skeptic, who is one of the 24 selves who live within me and the only one who usually possesses veto power over all the others."
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Plenty of reviews and links here

Schrödinger's Cat trilogy e-book
The Robert Anton Wilson official website

The Illuminatus Trilogy

The cult classic that got me interested.

[i]"The Purple Sage opened his mouth and moved his tongue and so spake to them and he said: The Earth quakes and the Heavens rattle; the beasts of nature flock together and the nations of men flock apart; volcanoes usher up heat while elsewhere water becomes ice and melts; and then on other days it just rains. Indeed do many things come to pass." [/i]

RAWilsonFans.org

Check out the essays page in particular.

The Map Is Not The Territory: The Future Is Not The Past

Alfred Korzybski memorial lecture

Everything Is Under Control
With Miriam Joan Hill

THANK YOU SO MUCH !!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH !!!

You are very welcome. 

One of those truly rare people, who could induce his readers to see things from a completely different perspective and get them to laugh at themselves.
Often at the same time.

One of those truly rare people, who could induce his readers to see things from a completely different perspective and get them to laugh at themselves.
Often at the same time.

The ride through chapel perilous is dangerous to the ego. Your only defense is a good sense of humour!

I loved that read brian, thanks!

I could definitely relate to the talk of circuits, as I have experienced the type of consciousness described, quite possibly up to number V or VI. This was I believe, developed through my own experiences of doing the 'work' with a gurjieffian group for around 5 years and having the goal of helping humanity to evolve, which seemed to lead me to develop a strong inner will and strength. I have not been involved in that group for a number of years because of my growing concerns of a cult-like dynamic. Interestingly enough, I experience more type II or III consciousness now and hardly any of the higher ones, along with much much more self doubt and negative experiences. Perhaps that is  because I no longer believed in the 'work and had rubbished it away. After reading Prometheus Rising, I am now questioning whether I threw out the baby with the bathwater regarding some of the concepts described!

I am now questioning whether I threw out the baby with the bathwater regarding some of the concepts described!

That is so easy to do.  I could do with a Wilson booster right now because I have sunk back into "either A or B" mode where I used to instinctively try different angles to see how things look from other perspectives.  keep at it diverdown - the gull that flys highest sees farthest! (Richard Bach - Jonathon Livingston Seagull)

I had wrote something that wasn't really related to your answer as I misinterpreted it, so I've edited a part of my post, but yes, this 'struggle' of consciousness we both describe, might be the same thing as what Gurjiieff talked about.

For a little bit of context for the reader, I will discuss the some of the concepts involved.


One of the essential ideas in the Gurdjieff 'work', is that humans are automatic machines that react to external influences and have no will of their own. The idea is to 'crystallise' or build a strong enough will that has more freedom to interact in the world. You could say that will is the same thing as what we commonly define as consciousness. So this building of the consciousness from Gurdjieff is quite possibly the same thing as that Robert Anton Wilson describes in his book, Promethus Rising, when talking about Type III consciousness or Type IV consciousness. 

So to give an example of how to build this consciousness up, is to imagine a situation that you would react in normally and do the opposite. Lets say that you are quick to anger about your coffee order being wrong at the cafe, so you get angry and lash out at the barista, exclaiming that he always gets it wrong and is an idiot. The work, which is about doing what your automatic, mechanical consciousness doesn't like to do, would have you struggling and actively acting against this urge. So in this situation, you may instead show empathy to the barista about the wrong order as he may have just had a bad day and to sincerely apologise about your outbursts. This change of 'scene', relative to what your mechanical self would normally do, conserves the subtle energies that exist, according to Gurdjieff. This conversion of energy gives a sort of joy, as one realises that they are freer to act any way that they wish. This actually would result in experiences that feel like a 'jump' in consciousness, everything would look different/clearer and the sudden inburst of energy that allows one to feel relaxed yet strong at the same time. Like you are one step ahead of the curve, similar to being in the 'zone'. Freedom perhaps.

This is a small fragment of the teachings, but one that helps the reader to understand a little where these concepts can be applied in real life. When I was involved with the Gurdjieff group, every single thing about you was analysed to discover what your machine would react to, usually by giving people 'scratch tests'. This led to 'mirrors' about someones self, showing them parts of themselves that they cannot bear to see. It was very very difficult and very strict. However, I DID gain an incredible amount of personal power, applicable in the real world, from being involved in this group. As I mentioned before, I 'lost' much of this 'power', due to being concerned of some of the group dynamics and have mainly been experiencing a consensus reality for the past few years, not having the 'magic' that I used to experience.


Actually, summing it up, you could say that the thinker thinks and the prover really does prove, as I have switched between extremely different world views many times now! 

Overall, I'm still drifting between different world views, seeing the contradictions and trying to live with them. I don't quite believe that any system has all the answers anymore!

From Cosmic Trigger:

In the seminars on Exo-Psychology which I teach thesedays, I dramatize this point by having the entire class visualize the hall they came through in entering the seminar room.  Then I ask how many people visualize five distinct items, ten, fifteen ... When we find the person with the largest number of distinct signals in memory storage, we list the elements of that person's hall on the blackboard. We call this number X.  Then we collect all the signals from the rest of the class that were not on the list, X. The new list is always higher than 2X.  That is, if the memory champ of that class had 14 signals in the hall, the total class had 28 or more.  This illustrates that one way to double your practical intelligence (awareness of detail) is to try to receive as many signals as possible from other humans, however wrong-headed their reality-map may seem, however dumb or boring they might sound at first. Our usual habit of screening out all human signals not immediately compatible with our own favorite reality-map is the mechanism which keeps us all far stupider than we should be.