Right Where You Are Sitting Now

by Robert Anton Wilson

Discusses consciousness, the nature of God, sexuality, human knowledge, robots, and the future.

Robert Anton Wilson, best known as the chronicler of the Illuminatus conspiracy, is a leading futurist, author and guerilla ontologist. In this controversial classic he probes: Emic reality, Negative Entropy, Witch Hunters of the Scientific Establishment, The Jumping Jesus Phenomenon, Is God a Dope, Have Fun with Your Head, and The Reality Labyrinth.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Essays, Spirituality, Psychology, Occult, Conspiracy Theories

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Robert Anton Wilson was an American author, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson helped publicize Discordianism through his writings and interviews. In 1999 he described his work 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". Wilson's goal was "to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone but agnosticism about everything."
In addition to writing several science-fiction novels, Wilson also wrote non-fiction books on extrasensory perception, mental telepathy, metaphysics, paranormal experiences, conspiracy theory, sex, drugs, and what Wilson called "quantum psychology".
Following a career in journalism and as an editor, notably for Playboy, Wilson emerged as a major countercultural figure in the mid-1970s, comparable to one of his coauthors, Timothy Leary, as well as Terence McKenna.

Reviews

[Zack · Rating 5 out of 5]

For whatever reason, with the exception of that play I reviewed, so far I've never really gotten into Robert Anton Wilson's fiction--but his nonfiction I love especially. "Right Where You Are Sitting Now" raises points about the gap between scientific achievement and public knowledge or use of it--citing interesting statistics, like we only use one tenth of the earth's resources deespite all the talk of armageddon, and that infinite multiple realities per person are a proven FACT according to quantum mechanics. It also introduces the concepts of closed-system thought (our resources are limited to earth) vs. open-system thought (our resources are the unlimited universe), in a literal sense as well as a figurative one. This book sort of degenerates toward the end into an exposition of cut up technique a la Burroughs and Gysin--which is still good, better, in fact, than when Burroughs does it, but I prefer the straight dope from Wilson. Most infuriatingly, he drops whole paragraphs of that stuff into the general cut-up soup, causing you to wonder which parts are which and get all muddled up, which I guess in a way is his point (making you think for yourself), so I can't complain.

[Kitap Yakıcı · Rating 4 out of 5]

The function of This Department is to seek precise, comprehensive, synergetic, ethnomethodological, sociobiological, neurogenic, quantum-mechanical models that will prove useful to both Behaviorists and poets.

We operate here by the precisely calculated juxtaposition of idea and image, rapidly altering focus from myopia to presbytopia, looking now through the telescope and then through the microscope... (29)

Satirical, SF short stories bookend (are juxtaposed with) a collection of short essays, interludes, asides, and experiments in cut-up/surrealist techniques. This is one of the better of R.A.W.'s books. Scratch that. This is neither one of the better of R.A.W.'s books, nor is it not one of the better of R.A.W.'s books. What would I have learned from his ontological anarchy if I implied that I had that level of absolute knowledge, as to which of his books was good, better, best for all readers in all places at all times? Instead I can honestly say that, at this time and place in my life, in the context of other things I am reading/watching/doing/listening to/learning from, I enjoyed and got more from this book more than I have some of R.A.W.'s other works. Even the cut-up stuff, which tried the patience of other reviewers, went from being tiresome to stimulating, even engaging, after enough (pharmacologically enhanced?) persistence.

[T]he human nervous system, properly programmed, can edit and orchestrate all experience into any gestalt it wishes. We encounter the same dismal and depressing experiences over and over because they are repeating tape loops in the central programmer of our brains. We can encounter ecstasy over and over by learning the neurosciences that orchestrate all incoming signals into ecstatic tape loops. The contact has already happened right where you are sitting now. Whether it is tuned-in or not-tuned-in depends on your skill as metaprogrammer. (182)

As a work of futurism, now written 30+ years ago, some of the predictions seem a bit too optimistic (e.g., still no space colonies, life extension, or flying cars--we don't even have alternatives to fossil fuels worked out) but others, especially those involving information technology, are spot on or even conservative in retrospect.

Philosophies all tend to be nostalgic, stoic, cyclical, or existential, she said. They long for a past Golden Age, or they tell us to endure without telling us why, or they say it has all happened before and will all repeat again endlessly, or they just tell us to create our own meaning in a meaningless universe. None of them are future-oriented. None of them answers our cosmic yearning, like those religious visionaries who, in Hubbard's term, remember the future. (38)

In his inimitable, polymathically perverse style, Wilson plays the Gonzo journalist and takes on the Three Mile Island meltdown, the "Transition 21" futurist conference, and an American Association for the Advancement of Science inqui(sition)ry into the pseudoscience-by-definition of parapsychology . He explores the power of language and metaphor in shaping reality, especially in relation to pornography, freedom, and censorship. He ponders the "neurogeography of conspiracy," the transhuman possibilities of genetic engineering, life extension and space migration. He is interviewed about conspiracies and paranoia. He waxes poetic, in free verse. He espouses a heart-breakingly honest and compassionate credo. He even has salient things to say about religion and God, beyond his usual (and wonderful) model agnosticism:

Thus, IT [God] can be metaphorically be considered as an intelligence and even as possessed by "personality" (or the cosmic analog of "personality"), in the manner of the traditional theist; or IT can be considered as a giant machine, as the traditional materialist prefers; IT can be seen as a mesh of energy or four-dimensional grid of energy of a "dance" of energy, which are metaphors from early 20th century physics; or IT may be visualized as an Information System, which is the current model I happen to like; but in any of these cases, we are in the realm of metaphor, and we are talking only about A, what we understand (or think we understand) now, and we haven't included, and can't include B which is by definition what we don't understand yet. (132)

To the extent that you need scapegoats, you simply have not got your brain programmed to work as an efficient problem-solving machine. (124)

Of course, I still believe that we are in the current global financial crisis in large part due to the machinations of a small group of finance capitalists, but I wonder if that is scapegoating or empiricism...

I think of this book as a machine, in the sense that Le Cobusier described a house as a "dwelling machine." These lines of words and images are a mechanism, a crafted tool, to disconnect the user from all maps and models whatsoever. The machine doesn't care who you are or what you think. Plug it in and it does its job. The job here is to put you in the head space where an ouija board predicts the future; where you are living in a foreign country and it all begins to seem normal to you, so that a visitor from your home country suddenly looks alien and strange; where a new scientific theory begins to make sense; where a work of art that had seemed a hoax or a barbarism abruptly becomes beautiful and full of meaning; where you are first waking up and can't remember who you are or where you are ...

The machine does its job. It doesn't care whether you like the trip or not. (122)

It definitely does not care about my feelings in the section on "Pop Ecology" and "eco-mysticism," which pushed my buttons more than any other chapter (with the exception of the cut-up stuff). I am apparently a firmer believer in Malthus, the Club of Rome, and the Limits to Growth people than was R.A.W. Partly, this is because I am neither as optimistic as him, nor am I as much a believer in human ingenuity. I agree with his argument that "known resources" are not given by nature, but are instead a function of nature plus human brilliance, creativity, and inventiveness. That said, my other reading (e.g., Richard Heinberg, John Michael Greer, and Dmitry Orlov) suggests that there might be more inflexible natural limits--specifically the lack of an energy source to replace fossil fuels on the scale we have come to expect--to our possible trajectories than we anticipate, regardless of our innovation and ingeniousness. Nonetheless, R.A.W. makes a very good point which must be taken seriously by those of us who consider ourselves Green or ecological:

[T]his ideology [of settling for lower expectations] has one major social effect: people who are living in misery and deprivation, who might otherwise organize to seek better lives, are persuaded to accept continued deprivation, for themselves and their children. (138)

Reading this section definitely makes me want to investigate the works of R. Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller and to learn more about his notion that "it is now possible to be a success, for everyone."

On [t]his planet, the domesticated primates maintain pack-taboos by barking and snarling at those who violate the semantic grids that control thoughts, feelings, and (apparent) sense impressions. (189)

[W]e have a hundred years of social science that demonstrates that any model of the universe will make sense eventually if we share space-time and conversation with people who believe in that model. (193)

Fast forward.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robert Anton Wilson made a career out of the literally fabulous or what Michael Miley calls "high wierdness." Conspiracy theories and the like are great sellers and Wilson is always fun, but his standards of scholarship and style are low.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Considerably easier to read than most R.A.W. books, with less sex/violence to boot.On the other hand, I got much more out of Cosmic Trigger.

[Weathervane · Rating 4 out of 5]

True, the automatic writing and exquisite corpses grows tiresome near the end, but the essays are wonderful fun. I learned a lot, including a few tidbits about the weirdness of quantum mechanics.

A book that lives up to its claim to disconnect the reader from paradigms and demolish mental walls.

I need to venture into discordianism.

[Meredith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wish I could give an extra half point for the best shout out to a wife ever.

The material is dated, but he was right about a lot of things. There are experimental passages in the book. A lot of them.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I might have to reread the Illuminatus Trilogy. 😄

[John Defrog: global citizen, local gadfly · Rating 2 out of 5]

From the man who helped turn the Illuminati into a household name (or close enough as makes no odds), a collection of essays, cut-up experiments, and whatnot from the early 1980s. Results are mixed, but Wilson usually has a few interesting ideas worth pursuing. Highlights include snippets of future predictions, the bias of “proper” science against parapsychology, and how sex has evolved from unhygienic procreation to hygienic recreation separate from the reproductive process, and where it could conceivably go from there (bearing in mind this was written before AIDS became a pandemic).

[Cynthian Leather · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably my least favorite of RAW's works to date. Several chapters of cut-ups that, to me, held little value. One chapter was a review of a conference that took place decades ago. Many predictions about the future, none of which came true. I read this because I decided I wanted to read all of his published work. For the casual reader, stick with the classics like Illuminatus!, Schrodinger's Cat, and the Cosmic Trigger.

[Jocelyn Beane]

This one is really heavy on cut-up technique so just don't be surprised how much of it there is.

If you like Cosmic Trigger, you will probably like this.

[Kormak · Rating 3 out of 5]

An uneven collection, but I loved the parts about Bucky Fuller and interviews.

[John Freeman]

Very entertaining and thought provoking.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like sombunall of Wilson’s other books, this one is dedicated to Philip K. Dick and William S. Burroughs. Reading it (them--Wilson's books, I mean), one sees that the dedication does not necessarily imply a personal relationship between this author and those writers. Rather, the subjects about which Wilson writes suggests that he sees himself as carrying on the kind of work Dick and Burroughs did. While Dick and Burroughs are generally known for writing fiction (most of Dick’s novels are science fiction; Burroughs is somewhat more difficult to classify, but he’s typically thought of as a satirist), much of Wilson’s work is nonfiction (the significant exceptions are his Illuminatus! Trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid/The Golden Apple/Leviathan and his Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy). Right Where You Are Sitting Now is mostly nonfiction, and while a discussion of alternate universes is one of the phildickian subjects on which Wilson comments, many more of the themes and techniques Wilson deploys here are evocative of Burroughs’s work. Wilson’s writings on human longevity and space travel, for instance, resonate with Burroughs’s ideas in The Job - Interviews with William S. Burroughs by Daniel Odier, as does his essay on the possible effects technological advances may have on the sexual revolution. In terms of approaches to writing, in some chapters Wilson employs Burroughs’s “cut-up” method (actually the innovation of Brian Gysin, but generally associated with Burroughs); moreover, the texts Wilson cuts up include not only passages from his novel s and passages from other chapters of Right Where You Are Sitting Now, but also passages from the last words of Dutch Schultz, a transcript with which Burroughs worked in some of his writing, most famously in his The Last Words of Dutch Schultz: A Fiction in the Form of a Film Script.

Generally (although generally generalizations should be avoided, as should passive voice), Wilson writes as both satirist and futurist. There is a chapter on architect/ mathematician/ philosopher/ fellow futurist Buckminster Fuller. There are chapters analyzing the relation of contemporary political structures to, for instance, capital, and to something Wilson terms “pop ecology” (which latter has since come to be termed “the green movement”). There is a particularly good chapter analyzing primate behavior at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The book includes some humorous telegrams, amusing (fictional, I suppose) instances of channel-surfing, and a quiz; in these, and in much of the rest of the book, Wilson calls attention to the relations among language, consciousness and reality (another theme, btw, that is the kind of thing Burroughs writes about.

I would not say that this is one of Wilson’s best non-fiction works; it is worth reading, but for me, his very best (with respect to those titles of his I have read) are works like Coincidance: A Head Test and Cosmic Trigger 1: Final Secret of the Illuminati.

Acquired Jun 7, 2010
Powell's City of Books, Portland, OR

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I began reading this book just before summertime in my 3rd year of high school. My brother gave me his copy because he was getting rid of many of his old books. I wasn't sure what to expect at all because I had never heard of this book or the author. I started reading it one day and I was instantly hooked by the first chapter. I learned that _Right Where you are Sitting Now_ was a collection of short stories, rants, and thoughts by the writer and philosopher Robert Anton Wilson. Each chapter transformed my thinking and expanded my mind. I often related certain chapters of this book to my friends or teachers. For this reason, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone one of my friends who thinks in a similar way that I do. Because it is not a single story, it can be read in chunks or out of order. It is a good book to start with for those that want to get into Robert Anton Wilson.

[Adam Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and as always was introduced to many new ideas and many older ones from Wilson's books I've read were presented in a different manner. In this book Wilson presents several chapters which are largely independent, you could read them in nearly any order and it wouldn't matter, a lot of the content was funny as well. I don't have as much to say about this one since I like Prometheus Rising so much more and most of the material was in that book as well but this one did have enough new material to keep it interesting and went into more or maybe just different material on some of the more familiar subjects. This one was published in 1982 and made several predictions for the near future which was interesting to look at as well and compare to what has actually happened, much of it was predicted 80's - 2020's. Goes into greater depth on language and its influence on emic reality.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was great but the automatic writing got old after a while. I did actually read it all and I saw the repeating patterns. I'm sure it was RAW trying to reprogram my semantic reality tunnel as in if you read "patterned" gobbly guk long enough it will eventually start to make sense.

I loved the first short story and there were some very cool entries. The problem with reading something like this that's written 30 years ago is that he makes a lot of predictions and it's really disappointing when "it would have been great" but here you are 30 years later and we're nowhere near being there. It's like reading -Fear and Loathing- and hearing about the "high water mark" that was reached before the revolutionary waters sank back to a level of banality acceptable to a majority of the populace.

So it's definitely worth a read but you might want to skip the guk.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting blend of fiction and non-fiction from RAW. Instead of choosing one or the other, each chapter alternates between a completely incoherent fiction tale, and the usual intellectual jargon found in many of RAW's non-fiction books. I can't say it lives up to The Illuminatus! Trilogy or Cosmic Trigger, but I feel like it's right up there with Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy. Definitely a great book, but won't be entirely memorable in the long run.

[evil_ariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will boggle your mind. It's one of those books that makes you feel smarter even though you can't really put your finger on why. It's hilarious, it's poignant, and it's insightful. This book will make you think. Parts of it are like a workbook with exercises that oddly resemble self-improvement exercises. It's a must read for any fans of RAW and for people looking to take care of head.

[keys · Rating 4 out of 5]

has the best written interpretation of the jumping jesus phenomenon i have seen. (as opposed to the spoken word ones i have heard a few of). some other really insightful articles as long as you can get through all of the cut up articles included.

[Joseph Inzirillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Half randomly generated words, half discourse on why language drives perception, Wilson once again makes my brain question reality.

I don’t even know how to summarize it so I’m leaving it like this.

Just read it and you will see.

[Cab · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is incredible really his insight into where our society would be. I started reading his books when I was in high school 30 years ago. I recently got this one, which was copy written in 1982. It is a Version of the life I see everywhere in Northern California.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Life is but a dream. Have fun with yr imagination and see what you can manifest here and now. love- me

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Straight up Bad Ass! Blew my mind 15 years ago;)

[Stefan Rhyner]

Another book full of ideas how to deal with reality in a more relaxed way than before...

[Geoff Gander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best of RAW's works, but a number of his essays are thought-provoking, and therefore worth reading.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Anton Wilson's writing has helped me develop into a better human being. I wish more people would read his writing, it does wonderful things for an open mind.

[Joe Dangelo]

Profound. IF one lacks intuition of the innate....don't trouble your mind..you'll never grasp the intent