Everything about Robert Anton Wilson totally explained
Robert Anton Wilson or RAW (born
Robert Edward Wilson,
January 18,
1932 –
January 11,
2007) was an
American novelist,
essayist,
philosopher,
psychonaut,
futurologist and
libertarian.
Wilson described his writing as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations—to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps and no one model elevated to the Truth." . . . "My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized
agnosticism, not agnosticism about
God alone, but agnosticism about everything."
Life
Wilson was born Robert Edward Wilson in
Methodist Hospital, in
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. He suffered from
polio as a child and was treated with the method created by
Elizabeth Kenny. Polio's effects remained with him throughout his life, usually manifesting as minor muscle spasms causing him to use a cane from time to time until 2000, when he experienced a major bout with
post-polio syndrome that would continue until his death.
He attended Catholic grammar school, most likely the school associated with Gerritsen Beach's Resurrection Church. He attended
Brooklyn Tech for high school to remove himself from the Catholic influence. While working as an ambulance driver he attended
New York University, studying engineering and mathematics.
He worked as engineering aide, salesman, and copywriter and was associate editor for
Playboy magazine from 1965 to 1971. He adopted his maternal grandfather's name, Anton, for his writings, at first telling himself that he was saving the "Edward" for when he wrote the Great American Novel and later finding that "Robert Anton Wilson" had become an established identity.
In 1979 he received a
Ph.D. in psychology from
Paideia University in California, an unaccredited institution that has since closed. The reworked dissertation was published in 1983 as
Prometheus Rising.
He married the freelance writer Arlen Riley in 1958; they'd four children. Their daughter Luna was beaten to death in an apparent robbery in the store where she worked in 1976 at the age of 15. Luna Wilson's brain was preserved by the
Bay Area Cryonics Society. Arlen Riley Wilson died in 1999 following a series of strokes.
Writings
Wilson wrote 35 books, and many other works.
His best-known work, the cult classic
The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975), co-authored with
Robert Shea and advertised as "a
fairy tale for paranoids," humorously examined American
paranoia about conspiracies. Much of the odder material derived from letters sent to
Playboy magazine while Shea and Wilson worked as editors of the Playboy Forum. The books mixed true information with imaginative fiction to engage the reader in what Wilson called "
Operation Mindfuck." The trilogy also outlined a set of
libertarian and anarchist axioms known as
Celine's Laws (named after Illuminatus! character Hagbard Celine), concepts Wilson revisited several times in other writings. It included a subplot about
biological warfare in which a
pimp contracts a deadly form of experimental
anthrax. While the pimp is able to elude agents of the
US Government — which reacts to the crisis by overriding the
Bill of Rights — the pimp is eventually tracked down by operatives associated with Hagbard Celine. The story also gives a detailed account of the
John F. Kennedy assassination, in which no fewer than five snipers, all working for different causes, were prepared to shoot Kennedy as he passed in his
motorcade. The book's climax occurs at a rock concert in
Ingolstadt where Hagbard Celine tries to rescue the audience from an Illuminati plot to make them victims of a massive human sacrifice.
Illuminatus popularized
Discordianism and the use of the term "
fnord." It also incorporated experimental prose styles influenced by
William S. Burroughs,
James Joyce, and
Ezra Pound. Although Shea and Wilson never partnered on such a scale again, Wilson continued to expand upon the themes of the
Illuminatus! books throughout his writing career. All of his later fiction contains cross-over characters from
The Illuminatus! Trilogy, which won the Prometheus Hall of Fame award for science fiction in 1986, has been reprinted in many countries, and was adapted for the stage by
Ken Campbell into a ten-hour epic drama. It has been adapted into a
Steve Jackson role-playing card game called
Illuminati and a trading-card game called . A comic book version was first produced by Eye N Apple Productions, then by
Rip Off Press.
Wilson also wrote a play called
Wilhelm Reich in Hell, which has been performed at the
Edmund Burke Theatre in
Dublin, and two illustrated screenplays:
Reality is What You Can Get Away With and
The Walls Came Tumbling Down (1997).
In (1977) and other works, he examined
Discordianism,
Sufism,
Futurology,
Zen Buddhism,
Dennis and
Terence McKenna, the occult practices of
Aleister Crowley and
G.I. Gurdjieff, the
Illuminati and
Freemasons,
Yoga, and other
esoteric or
counterculture philosophies. He advocated
Timothy Leary's
eight circuit model of consciousness and neurosomatic/linguistic engineering, which he also wrote about in
Prometheus Rising (
1983, revised
1997) and
Quantum Psychology (1990), books containing practical techniques intended to help one break free of one's "
reality tunnels." With Leary, he helped promote the futurist ideas of
space migration,
intelligence increase, and
life extension (
SMI²LE).
The New Inquisition is quite a serious but very entertaining book arguing that reality is much weirder than we commonly imagine, and citing, among other things,
Bell's theorem and Alain Aspect's experimental proof to suggest that mainstream science has a strong materialist bias, and that in fact modern physics has already disproved materialist metaphysics.
Wilson also supported many of the
utopian theories of
Buckminster Fuller and the theories of
Charles Fort (he was a friend of
Loren Coleman), media theorist
Marshall McLuhan and
Neuro Linguistic Programming co-founder
Richard Bandler, with whom he'd taught workshops. He also admired
James Joyce, and had written commentary on
Finnegans Wake and
Ulysses, and wrote extensively about him in his book
Coincidance.
Ironically, considering Wilson long lampooned and criticized
New Age beliefs, his books can often be found in bookstores specializing in New Age material. He was a well-known author in occult and
Neo-Pagan circles; he wrote about
Aleister Crowley and his ideas, and used him as a main character in his novel
Masks of the Illuminati. Elements of
H. P. Lovecraft's work are also found in his novels. He claimed to have perceived 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 totally nuts."
Wilson also criticized scientific types with overly rigid belief systems, equating them with religious fundamentalists in their fanaticism. In a 1988 interview, he was asked about his recent book
The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science. Wilson commented: "I coined the term irrational rationalism because those people claim to be rationalists, but they're governed by such a heavy body of taboos. They're so fearful, and so hostile, and so narrow, and frightened, and uptight and dogmatic... I wrote this book because I got tired satirizing fundamentalist Christianity... I decided to satirize fundamentalist materialism for a change, because the two are equally comical... The materialist fundamentalists are funnier than the Christian fundamentalists, because they think they're rational! ...They're never skeptical about anything except the things they've a prejudice against. None of them ever says anything skeptical about the
AMA, or about anything in establishment science or any entrenched dogma. They're only skeptical about new ideas that frighten them. They're actually dogmatically committed to what they were taught when they were in college..."
In a 2003 interview with
High Times magazine, Wilson described himself as a "Model
Agnostic" which he says "consists of never regarding any model or map of the 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 intelligence." He has described his approach as "Maybe Logic." Wilson wrote articles for seminal
cyberpunk magazine
Mondo 2000.
While he'd primarily published material under the name Robert Anton Wilson, he'd also used various pen names associated with the
Bavarian Illuminati, which he allegedly revived in the 1960s.
In one interview he was asked the first thing he'd do if he became President of The United States of America. Robert Anton Wilson gave the simple and curt answer "Resign!"
Other activities
Robert Anton Wilson and his wife Arlen Riley Wilson founded the
Institute for the Study of the Human Future in 1975.
In 1976 Robert Anton Wilson founded the
Starflight Network, a society to propagate the
philosophy of Dr.
Timothy Leary. The group met at Wilson's home in
Berkeley, California.
John Draper was a member of the group. Discussions at the group centered on how to practically implement the futurist ideas of
space migration,
intelligence increase, and
life extension (
SMI²LE) that were three central concepts of Leary's philosophy. One of the activities of the group was setting up and manning tables to sell Dr. Timothy Leary's and Robert Anton Wilson's books at
Star Trek conventions. Also, a
color chart called
The Periodic Table of Evolution (by Timothy Leary) and a diagram called "The Octave of Energy" (Robert Anton Wilson) were distributed which were summaries of the eight circuit model of consciousness.
From 1982 until his death, Wilson had a business and social relationship with the
Association for Consciousness Exploration, with the organization hosting his first on-stage dialog with his life-long friend
Timothy Leary, in 1989, entitled
The Inner Frontier. Wilson's book
The New Inquisition is dedicated to the co-directors of A.C.E., Jeff Rosenbaum and Joseph Rothenberg.
Wilson was also a member of the
Church of the SubGenius, who referred to him as Pope Bob. He was a contributor to their literature, including the book
Three-Fisted Tales of "Bob", and shared a stage with Rev.
Ivan Stang on several occasions. Wilson also founded the
Guns and Dope Party and its corresponding
Burning Man theme camp.
As a member of the Board of Advisors of the
Fully Informed Jury Association, Wilson worked to inform the public about
jury nullification, the right of jurors to nullify a law they deem unjust. He was a supporter of
E-Prime, a form of English lacking all "be" verbs, and preferred "maybe logic".
He coined a new word, sombunall (some but not all), which never quite caught on. In response, he coined another word, mosbunall (as in "mosbunall humans wouldn't know an awesome new word if it bit them in the ass."). This word caught on even less.
A decades-long researcher into drugs and strong opponent of what he called "the war on some drugs", he participated in the weeklong 1999 Annual
Cannabis Cup in
Amsterdam. He was photographed receiving
medical marijuana at a 2002 demonstration in
Santa Cruz to curb his chronic pain from
post-polio syndrome.
Wilson was a founder and primary instructor of the Maybe Logic Academy, named for his agnostic approach to all knowledge. Fellow instructors include
Patricia Monaghan, Rev.
Ivan Stang,
Philip H. Farber,
Antero Alli,
Peter J. Carroll,
Starhawk,
R. U. Sirius,
Douglas Rushkoff,
Lon Milo Duquette, and
David Jay Brown.
Death
On
June 22,
2006,
Huffington Post blogger
Paul Krassner reported that Robert A. Wilson was under
hospice care at home with friends and family. On
2 October 2006 Douglas Rushkoff reported that Wilson was in severe financial trouble.
Slashdot,
Boing Boing, and the
Church of the SubGenius also picked up on the story, linking to Rushkoff's appeal. As his webpage reported on
10 October, these efforts succeeded beyond expectation and raised a sum which would have supported him for at least 6 months. Obviously touched by the great outpouring of support, on October 5 of 2006 Wilson left the following comment on his personal website, expressing his gratitude:
"Dear Friends, my God, what can I say. I'm dumbfounded, flabbergasted, and totally stunned by the charity and compassion that has poured in here the last three days.
To steal from Jack Benny, "I don't deserve this, but I also have severe leg problems and I don't deserve them either."
Because he was a kind man as well as a funny one, Benny was beloved. I find it hard to believe that I'm equally beloved and especially that I deserve such love.
Whoever you are, wherever you are, know that my love is with you.
You have all reminded me that despite George W. Bush and all his cohorts, there's still a lot of beautiful kindness in the world.
Blessings,
Robert Anton Wilson
"
On January 6, he wrote on his blog that according to several medical authorities, he was likely to have only between two days and two months left to live, closing his message with "I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying. Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd." He passed on peacefully five days later, on
January 11 at 4:50 a.m. Pacific time. His remains were cremated on
January 18 with his family holding memorial services on
February 18,
2007. His ashes were scattered at the same spot as his wife's - off the
Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in
Santa Cruz, California.
A one-off tribute show was staged in London as a part of the Ether 07 festival held at the
Queen Elizabeth Hall on March 18th 2007, featuring
Coldcut,
Mixmaster Morris,
Ken Campbell,
Bill Drummond and
Alan Moore.
Documentary
Maybe Logic: The Lives and Ideas 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.
Works by Robert Anton Wilson
Partial discography
A Meeting with Robert Anton Wilson
Religion for the Hell of It
H.O.M.E.s on LaGrange
The New Inquisition
The H.E.A.D. Revolution
Prometheus Rising
The Inner Frontier (with Timothy Leary)
The Magickal Movement: Present & Future (with Margot Adler, Isaac Bonewits & Selena Fox)
Magick Changing the World, the World Changing Magick
The Self in Transformation
The Once & Future Legend (with Ivan Stang, Robert Shea and others)
What IS the Conspiracy, Anyway?
The Chocolate-Biscuit Conspiracy with The Golden Horde (1984)
Twelve Eggs in a Basket
Robert Anton Wilson On Finnegans Wake and Joseph Campbell (interview by Faustin Bray and Brian Wallace - 1988)
Secrets of Power
robert anton wilson explains everything: or old bob exposes his ignoranceFurther Information
Get more info on 'Robert Anton Wilson'.
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