On January 8, 1932, Robert Anton Wilson was born - author of the Illuminatus trilogy! and the creator of quantum psychology
He was widely recognized as an expert on conspiracy theory. Probably knew everything about conspiracies. Perhaps that is why he slightly squinted and smiled slightly when he spoke about them. And not only about them.
Rumor has it that he himself was the head of the mysterious Illuminati. And the creator of twenty-three more secret societies. It is known for certain that adherents of at least two religions honor him as a pontiff.
But that's not all. In some incomprehensible way, mere acquaintance with his ideas can cause strange phenomena. Perhaps, in the very near future, amazing coincidences, mysterious signs, the number 23 and white rabbits are waiting for you.
Don't panic. You are in a conspiracy. But this conspiracy is good. He will save you from a bad conspiracy. Of which you are hardly even aware of yourself as a victim.
There is no blank space between this and the previous paragraph. It has photons, bosons, some dust, and a one-word title.
No, it is not white. The thing is that you are programmed to ignore this word. But it does. Subconsciously. After all, you read it, and you felt uneasy. Even if it isn't. This word is depressing, but it is necessary. Otherwise, you will start thinking correctly and free yourself. Then civilization will collapse and complete chaos will ensue. The rulers cannot allow this. They insert an ominous word everywhere, preventing people from seeing the world as it is.
Give up hope, everyone who enters here
Promotional video:
While you are still terrified (even though you deny it), I will hasten to reveal the truth to you. After all, fear introduces people into a state of imprint vulnerability. In this state, they are able to believe anything. Especially if you feed them well later. Robert Anton Wilson discussed this in his book Prometheus the Risen, or The Psychology of Evolution. There he told that each of us lives in his own tunnel of reality. Through which we perceive the world around us. Your narrow and rigid tunnel of reality prevents you from seeing the ominous word.
I am programming you to purchase this book.
In fact, there are no nouns. There are some verbs. The world consists of constant processes of interaction, in which everything is impermanent.
This is not yet true. So, warm up. The truth is, there really isn't any “really”. And even this cannot be asserted with absolute certainty.
Nor is it worth arguing that there is anything at all or that it is something. Everything can only seem to be something at a certain moment. Something about this is written in another book by Robert Anton Wilson - "Quantum Psychology". Visit some online store, order a book, relax on banners.
Ontological guerrilla
Schrödinger's quantum paradox. World conspiracy of the Illuminati. General semantics of Korzybski. Faith Healing. Telepathic contacts with Sirius. Anarchism. Cthulhu. Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions. Two-meter white rabbit named Puka.
Anyone who is interested in all these phenomena at once is easily suspected of insanity. And as a writer who can fit this into one book, and even more so. However, Robert Anton Wilson was distinguished by such extraordinary sanity that, next to him, even titled fighters against pseudoscience sometimes seemed like lunatics.
The variety of epithets that critics have endowed Wilson with already speaks volumes: "super genius", "worthy of the Nobel Prize for rationality", "deluded evil fanatic." It's all about him. Wilson owes the latter characterization to the Scientific Investigation Committee for Reports of the Paranormal (RPCRC).
RAU agnosticism spread far beyond religious beliefs. Any dogmatism was for him a manifestation of stupidity, leading to delusion. Including scientific. The RAU itself preferred to call itself an “ontological partisan”, undermining the foundations of any established picture of the world.
Portrait of an agnostic in his youth
Wilson said his first lesson in agnosticism was in a Catholic school run by sadistic nuns. The paranoid atmosphere of prohibitions, secrets and lies oppressed the obedient boy. Already in early childhood, Robert Edward (that was his real name) faced the most global conspiracy.
“I felt that they were hiding something from me. It was scary, - Wilson recalled before his death. “I was seven or eight years old when the adults informed me that Santa Claus didn’t exist. Barely recovering from the shock, I thought: maybe soon they will say that there is no God either”?
Once a conspiracy almost killed little Robbie with the hands of … doctors. When Bob was about ten, he contracted polio. The state of medicine in the first half of the 20th century did not inspire optimism - by no means have invented vaccinations for all terrible diseases. Wilson was condemned to a lifelong wheelchair. No, better put it this way: he was sentenced by the American Medical Association.
But the parents did not obey the scientific experts and applied to the patient the healing method of Elizabeth Kenny, branded by doctors as quackery. For the next 60 years, Wilson did not need a wheelchair.
Zen for pop-eyed
By the early 60s of the last century, our planet began to prepare for joining the intergalactic community. Exotic teachings, as well as top secret knowledge, previously available only to cave monks and the founder of general semantics, Alfred Korzybski, poured into Western civilization in a powerful stream.
It was necessary to rethink all this in the context of old European traditions and combine it into one and only true religion. The creators of Discordianism (or Discordianism), named after the goddess of discord, brilliantly coped with this task.
Discordianism spearheaded a good conspiracy. The basis was formed not only by monotheistic religions with their funny hierarchical and dogmatic apparatuses, but also occultism and exotic spiritual traditions. The Discordians sometimes called their religion “Zen for the Big Eyes,” and the central concept, like the emblem, was almost entirely borrowed from Taoism.
In this religion there are no dogmas - absolute beliefs. There are only katmas - relative beliefs. The central Katma of Discordianism says: “Any statement is in some sense true, in some sense false, in some sense meaningless, in some sense true and false, in some sense true and meaningless, in some sense that sense is false and meaningless. And if you say this 666 times, you will attain supreme enlightenment. In a sense."
I have already said that Robert Anton Wilson seemed like a pontiff (or pope) to adherents of two religions. So, the first of these religions was Discordianism.
Illuminatus
By this time, RAU had managed to get a technical education, incurably fall ill with skepticism and make general semantics a table teaching.
Feeling strong support from the Discordian fraternity, Wilson left his freelance career and infiltrated the editorial staff of Playboy magazine. His responsibilities included handling readers' correspondence.
Robert Anton (then he had already changed his middle name so as not to pursue the Catholic past) was horrified by the scale of the global conspiracy itself. A nation traumatized by the assassination of John F. Kennedy cried out for salvation. For example, from the editorial mail, Wilson learned that human civilization is threatened: Freemasons, communists, Zionists, Illuminati, strange blacks with saxophones, Aldebaran kidnappers of Christmas turkeys and neighbors rustling in their sockets.
Fortunately, Robert long ago allowed himself to use alternative medicine (his childhood experience affected) and quickly patched up his aura. But he could not cope with the flow of threatening signals alone. A colleague came to the rescue - Robert Shay, who also once escaped from the Catholic tunnel of reality. Wilson and Shay took advantage of the official position to make scientific inquiries on the topic of global conspiracies. Puffing on quality unconventional medicine, they tackled the magnum opus, designed to tell people the true truth about the present state of affairs.
The result was a huge tome titled Illuminatus! Published in 1975, it snatched several people from the clutches of the most global conspiracy. The problem is that almost all of the world's printing presses are ruled by rulers.
The authors of Illuminatus! they did not waste time on trifles and all conspiracies were reduced to an ontological conflict between the forces of order and disorder. The idea doesn't look particularly original, but since Discordianism was chosen as the conceptual basis, the novel sparkled with charm.
Discredit
Frightened by the truth about itself, the most global conspiracy was forced to resort to cunning. The rulers launched a grandiose campaign to finally discredit the very topic of global conspiracies. Dan Brown's bestsellers are vivid evidence of this. Now simple-minded people believe that the global conspiracy is something about Christ, to whom nothing human was alien.
The film "The Matrix" leveled the scale of the global conspiracy to the level of the problems of alien energy. And pseudo-documentaries like "The Spirit of Time" make us believe that the main trouble of humanity is the botanists from the Bilderberg Club, who sometimes get together to play Monopoly.
Wilson understood that it was useless to fight this muddy shaft openly and give people the truth head-on. Therefore, I preferred to encrypt messages between the lines:
“I don't believe in one global conspiracy. This resembles monotheism, but polytheism is more interesting. I like to think that there are 8. No, 24.
Why do people so want to believe in a global conspiracy? There are three reasons for this.
First, few people like to blame themselves for their own problems. It is obvious. If something goes wrong in your life, pick a sufficiently representative group of conspirators - Jesuits, Freemasons, or Bilderberg members - and blame them. This is a loser's scenario. I prefer to consider myself and my friends as the world elite. Secondly, the world today is changing faster and faster. Many do not have time to understand what is happening in general. And they find sinister explanations for the change. And thirdly, there are really a lot of global conspiracies around."
A lost place
In his books, RAU analyzed in detail the psychological mechanisms that cause paranoia and dogmatism of any kind. He said, for example, that the state of uncertainty is extremely uncomfortable for our psyche, and therefore we tend to form hard ideas about reality and filter out a huge number of signals that do not fit into these ideas. However, this property of the psyche, which is extremely useful for survival, does not always allow creating a sufficiently adequate model of the surrounding world. The blind faith inherent in paranoids and fanatics of any kind is evidence of the extreme narrowness and rigidity of their "tunnel of reality" (that is, a system of ideas about the world, formed mainly unconsciously). Galileo, in principle, could not convince religious fanatics that there are spots on the Sun. Even if they saw them through a telescope,they would think it was Satan's work.
According to RAU, no model of reality can fully correspond to reality itself. It is important to try to constantly reduce the discrepancy. And remember that the map will never become the territory itself.
The RAU itself went through a state called chapel perilous. "Dangerous Chapel" is an image from the legend about the search for the Holy Grail. (In the Russian translation of the autobiographical book "The Cosmic Trigger" it is listed as "Bad place." Something spoke to Robert Anton Wilson.
At first, he decided that it was an alien intelligence (because, after making inquiries, he discovered that on July 23 the ancient Egyptians celebrated the Day of the Dog Star - Sirius). This puzzled him. But not as much as many years later, when he learned that Monica Lewinsky was born on July 23, 1973.
Perplexed, Wilson continued telepathic communication with Something, while consulting with non-traditional specialists along the way.
“One psychic said that I was actually connected to an ancient Chinese sage. Another said that I was actually talking to a medieval Irish bard. Then I read a lot on neuroscience, so I decided to dwell on the fact that this is my right hemisphere that talks to the left. Later I moved to Ireland and found out that, most likely, my interlocutor was a two-meter rabbit named Pooka from County Kerry."
RAU managed to avoid both conversion to the New Age faith, and psychosis - saved by skepticism. He got out of his lost place without even thinking about creating a Sirian channeling sect - he was quite satisfied with the status of the Discordian pope. Not all contactees are distinguished by such modesty. Many take their chance and delight the esoteric departments of bookstores with their psycho products.
Everyone has their own black place. Someone gets stuck in children's complexes for a long time, someone is cut off on the spiritual path and becomes a pompous pseudo guru. Those who are not at all lucky end their days in mental hospitals or blow themselves up in public places to go to heaven.
White Rabbit
Perhaps Elvis Presley, lost between the worlds, tried to talk to Wilson. But it is not important. It is important that when Wilson thought about his space mission as a contactee, he was attacked by the same global conspiracy. It is so global that it even extends beyond the ordinary, boring, dull tunnels of reality.
This has been fully experienced by consumers of what you think about. In the 60s, it served mainly the purpose of a good conspiracy. And it served very effectively. However, the rulers quickly banned it, thereby penetrating into those very spaces. And people began to throw themselves out of the windows in panic.
I brought up this topic because Wilson is adored by psychonauts. So much so that he often began his lectures like this: “Glad to see you here, ladies, gentlemen and narcotics. (Laughter in the audience.) Look around and see if you can identify the narcs. Narcs are like hippies."
Wilson really knew this topic. He was friends with both Timothy Leary and Albert Hoffman, who invented the most famous one. "Albert Hoffman loves my books," Bob boasted, "and I love his drugs."
But Robert Anton Wilson was by no means a propagandist. He outlined his position as follows:
“There are many different levels of reality, and psychedelic is one of the most exciting and fun. I highly recommend it to those over 40. I will not repeat Leary's mistake and recommend psychedelics to everyone. But if you are over 40, you are already quite independent and responsible for your actions. So don't blame me if something happens."
Triumph of optimism
The most global conspiracy did not leave Robert Anton Wilson alone almost until his death. But Wilson was an implacable optimist. Like Timothy Leary, he sincerely believed that there was absolutely no point in pessimism.
So when polio returned at 70, Wilson was not upset.
Although there were enough unpleasant moments. The hospital staff reminded him of nuns from early childhood. Completely insolent, the doctors told the pontiff of two religions what to do!
And the rulers tried to deliver the final blow to Wilson through what he called "the fight against some drugs."
But in 2002, the authorities of the California city of Santa Cruz went against federal law and organized the distribution of an unconventional drug to everyone in need.
“I honor the 10th amendment to the US Constitution, which most of our citizens have probably never heard of. It has nothing to do with the way Bush runs the country. Under the 10th Amendment, the federal government does not have the power to condemn me to life in constant pain. I don't know what kind of sadist this son of a bitch George W. Bush is and why he wants people to suffer. But I am ready to fight for my right to live without pain."
Exposure
The time has come to reveal the long-awaited and commonplace secret.
"The most global conspiracy is the conspiracy of human stupidity."
Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007).
Oh yes! That same ominous word is fnord. But only the rulers know how it is actually spelled.