Robert Anton Wilson

From The Book of THoTH (Leaves of Wisdom)

Robert Anton Wilson or RAW (b. January 18, 1932) is an American novelist, essayist, philosopher, psychologist, futurologist, anarchist, and conspiracy theory researcher.

Wilson was born in Methodist Hospital, downtown Brooklyn, New York, and spent his first years in Flatbush, moving with his family to Gerritsen Beach around the age of 4 or 5, where they stayed until he turned 13.

On June 22, 2006, Huffington Post blogger Paul Krassner reported that Robert A. Wilson is currently under hospice care at home with friends and family. [1] On 2 October 2006 Douglas Rushkoff reported that Wilson was in severe financial trouble.[2] As of 3 October the front page of rawilson.com contains an appeal for funds. Slashdot also picked up on the story, linking to Rushkoff's appeal.

1 Writings
2 Bibliography
3 See also
4 Reference
5 External links

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Writings

His best-known work—The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975), co-authored with Robert Shea—humorously examined American paranoia about conspiracies. These books mix true information with imaginative fiction to engage the reader in what Wilson called "Operation Mindfuck". (Much of the odder material derived from letters sent to Playboy magazine while Shea and Wilson worked as editors of the Playboy Forum.) It was advertised as "A fairy tale for paranoids." Although Shea and Wilson never partnered on such a scale again, Wilson has continued to expand upon the themes of the Illuminatus! books throughout his writing career.

In Cosmic Trigger I: Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977) and other works, he made Discordianism, Sufism, Futurology, Zen Buddhism, Dennis and Terence McKenna, the occult practices of Aleister Crowley, the Illuminati and other esoteric or counter-culture philosophies accessible to larger audiences. He is also a proponent of Timothy Leary's eight circuit model of consciousness and neurosomatic/linguistic engineering, which he writes about in Prometheus Rising (1983, revised 1997) and Quantum Psychology (1990), books of practical techniques to break free of one's "reality tunnels". With Leary, he helped promote the futurist ideas of Space Migration, Intelligence Increase (enhancement), and Life Extension (SMI²LE); he is arguably a more cogent and persuasive exponent of Leary's "imprinting circuit" theory of psychological development than Leary himself. Wilson was an advocate of the many of the utopianistic theories of Buckminster Fuller, as well as those of media theorist Marshall McLuhan and Neuro Linguistic Programming co-founder Richard Bandler who he has co-taught workshops with. Wilson has also been a proponent of life extension and the use of smart drugs. He is also an admirer of James Joyce and has written commentary on Finnegans Wake.

Ironically, considering Wilson has long lampooned and criticized new age beliefs, his books can often be found in bookstores specializing in new age material. He has claimed to have had encounters with magical 'entities,' and when asked whether these entities were 'real,' he answered they were 'real enough,' although 'not as real as the IRS' since they were 'easier to get rid of.' He warned against beginners using occult practice, since to rush into such practices and the resulting 'energies' they unleash can lead people to go 'quite nuts.' Instead, he recommends beginners start with NLP, Zen Buddhism, basic meditation, etc., before progressing to more potentially disturbing activities.

In a 2003 interview with High Times magazine, RAW described himself as a "Model Agnostic" which he says "consists of never regarding any model or map of Universe with total 100% belief or total 100% denial. Following Korzybski, I put things in probabilities, not absolutes... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory." More simply, he claims 'not to believe anything,' since 'belief is the death of thought.' He has described his approach as 'Maybe Logic.' Wilson wrote articles for seminal cyberpunk magazine Mondo 2000.

RAW holds the post of American director of the Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal (CSICON) and has appeared at Disinformation events. He has summed up his attitude towards life as one of optimism, cheerfulness, love, and good humor.

Maybe Logic: The Lives and Loves of Robert Anton Wilson, a documentary featuring selections from over twenty-five years of Wilson footage, was released on DVD in North America on May 30, 2006.<ref>Maybe Logic</ref>

Wilson's writings connect to the madcap satirical fiction of Flann O'Brien in a several ways, including his free use of O'Brien's character De Selby. The views of De Selby, a would-be obscure intellectual, are the subject of long pseudo-scholarly footnotes in Wilson's novels as well as O'Brien's. This is entirely fitting, because O'Brien himself made free use of characters invented by other writers, allegedly because there are already too many fictional characters as is. O'Brien was also known for pulling the reader's leg by concocting elaborate conspiracy theories, and for publishing under several pen names.

On June 22, 2006, Huffington Post blogger Paul Krassner reported that Robert A. Wilson is currently under hospice care at home with friends and family. [3] On 2 October 2006 Douglas Rushkoff reported that Wilson was in severe financial trouble.[4] As at 3 October the front page of rawilson.com contains an appeal for funds.

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Bibliography

Playboy's Book of Forbidden Words (1972)
Sex and Drugs: A Journey Beyond Limits (1973)
The Sex Magicians (1973)
The Book of the Breast (1974)
The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975) (with Robert Shea)
- The Eye in the Pyramid
- The Golden Apple
- Leviathan
Cosmic Trigger I: Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977)
Neuropolitics (1978) (with Timothy Leary and George Koopman)
The Game of Life (1979) (with Timothy Leary)
The Illuminati Papers (1980)
Schrödinger's Cat trilogy (1980-1981)
- The Universe Next Door
- The Trick Top Hat
- The Homing Pigeon
Masks of the Illuminati (1981)
The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles
- The Earth Will Shake (1982)
- The Widow's Son (1985)
- Nature's God (1991)
Right Where You Are Sitting Now (1983)
Prometheus Rising (1983)
The New Inquisition (1986)
Wilhelm Reich in Hell (1987)
Natural Law, or Don't Put a Rubber on Your Willy (1987)
Coincidance (1988)
Neuropolitique (1988) (with Leary & Koopman) [revision of Neuropolitics]
Ishtar Rising (1989) [revision of The Book of the Breast]
Semiotext(e) SF (1989) (editor, with Rudy Rucker and Peter Lamborn Wilson)
Quantum Psychology (1990)
Cosmic Trigger II: Down to Earth (1991)
Reality Is What You Can Get Away With: An Illustrated Screenplay (1992)
Chaos and Beyond (1994) (editor and primary author)
Cosmic Trigger III: My Life After Death (1995)
The Walls Came Tumbling Down (1997)
Everything Is Under Control (1998)
TSOG: The Thing That Ate the Constitution (2002)
Email to the Universe (2005)