Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything

by Robert Anton Wilson

A once-in-a-lifetime audio meeting with The Illuminatus! Trilogy author Robert Anton Wilson- bringing you face-to-face with this unconventional and brilliant novelist, visionary, and "standup comic for the mystically inclined." Features Wilson on futurist psychology, the paranormal, God, political conspiracies (real and imagined), life extension and space migration, the origins of language, guerrilla ontology, and much more.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology, Nonfiction, Humor, Science, Cultural, Religion

Audio CD

First published January 1, 2001

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

[Tom Quinn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, here's a bit of Tom exposing his ignorance: I didn't know this was an audiobook, available only as a recorded interview series. I thought it was a regular printed book and I spent years looking for it in print form—checking my public library catalog and soliciting them to order it, requesting it from our university library and getting my request bounced back, searching online at Amazon and eBay and so forth but never finding anything. Then I finally looked a little closer at the description here on Goodreads and, lo and behold and fuck me sideways, it's an audiobook! A couple quick keystrokes later and I was on Youtube, listening to Old Bob ramble amiably on as a doddering old man (69 years old at the time of this recording).

RAW was something of a hero to me in my early 20s, when I was actively seeking answers to various Big Questions and doing a lot more drugs than I ought to admit to. Illuminatus! was my entry point to his wonderful works, and then Cosmic Trigger, and then all his wacky 1990s essay collections which I ordered online and read religiously (an adverb RAW would probably object to, given his staunch "religion is bullshit" viewpoint). He seemed to know a lot of secrets and I looked to him as a sort of shortcut to enlightenment, a way to get to "the good stuff" of his revelations without doing the psychic work of experiencing shit for myself.

4 stars out of 5. Don't start here, with a 6ish hour long and mostly rambling interview. No, you ought to read RAW's text publications first, internalize them, get to know and love him as a character, and then come back to this one. Because peering behind the curtain may well ruin some of his standalone titles for you (it did for me, sad to say) and what's more it repeats some info from Cosmic Trigger and the film Maybe Logic. But even so... Even so, it's always rewarding to listen to Bob speaking himself, in his charming, idiosyncratic brogue and with his trademark unfiltered stream of consciousness.

Fun quotes (and there's a lot of 'em):
"I don't mean to sound bitter against the Catholic church, I don't think it's the worst church in the world. I think it's one of the three worst, but not THE worst." (@around 25 minutes)

"I went from being a Playboy editor to being a self-employed freelance writer which resulted, after a year of using up my savings, it resulted in two years on welfare. Which I talk about quite commonly just because I sometimes engage in debates and I can always tell if the other guy is an asshole if he brings that up in order to put me down." (@about 37 minutes)

"I always felt, from childhood on, that I was supposed to write books. I don't know, when I started my freelance career—I don't know how many books I had in my head that I thought I was going to write, and I don't know how many of them I ever got around to writing. A freelance writer's career is not entirely self-determined. If a publisher appears with a big check and says 'Can you write a book on this subject for this check?' it turns out I can write a book on that subject and it will turn out sounding just like I thought of it myself by the time I'm through with it!" (@appx 40 minutes)

"I just want comfort, I don't need luxury...I think in this society there's no way to avoid worrying about money...I realized, if you only got a hundred million, a guy with four billion really makes you feel like an ant...At least, that's my explanation of why people with millions and millions are still trying to get more." (@about 44-46 minutes)

"[T]he idea of living in a space colony rather than on a planet face seemed very interesting to me. I think it's probably the future. I don't think we're gonna colonize other planets. If you climb out of a gravity well, why climb back down into another gravity well?" (@49ish minutes)

"I used to call myself a 'guerrila ontologist' which is a term I picked up from somebody in the 'Physics Consciousness Research Group' which I was a member of back in the 70s...And then I got bored with that after a while and I found two different books in which I was called a Postmodernist, and it was really hip to be a Postmodernist in the 80s so I started calling myself a Postmodernist. Then I read some more of the Postmodernists and found I disagreed with them on almost everything so now I just call myself a damned old crank." (@1:01 or so)

"I'm uncertain about almost everything, including my own uncertainty." (1:09 +/-)

"A lot of people can't understand Korzybski and I always tell them 'Well, read him while you're stoned' and then you begin to understand...Learning to accept neurological relativism I think is one of the great liberating discoveries of the 20th century." (1:11-13)

"'The CIA killed me and replaced me with a Robert Anton Wilson android' — and having read a lot of Philip K Dick I knew if that was true I'd be the last one to know it because as Philip Dick pointed out, a fully functioning android would have to believe it was whoever it was supposed to be acting like. So if I was an android pretending to be Robert Anton Wilson I would think I am Robert Anton Wilson. And, see, surrounded by epistimological quandries like that, how can my mental life ever cease? I've always got something to wonder about." (nearabout 1:28)

"Have a little fun, make a little money, do a little good. I think that's as good a life script as anybody can imagine." (1:34ish, quoting psychologist Alan Miller)

"Everything I say must be taken as an oversimplification...The map is not the territory. At a crude level: if you're dehydrated and about to die of dehydration, no matter how many times I say, 'Water! Water! Water!' you're still gonna go on being thirsty. The word is not the thing. The map is not the territory." (1:51-ish plus)

"Everything in the universe is a unique and distinct individual space/time occurrence. I am not myself from one day to the next. An electron is not itself from one nanosecond to the next." (2:04 and then some)

"Everybody knows Hitler was crazy but from the point of view of general semantics he was talking about millions and millions of people he never met, never looked at, never shook hands with, never looked in the eye, and he said he knew all about all these people?" (2:07+)

The Interviewer: "I guess the essence of my question was, can't we get almost absurd with the level of indeterminacy we'd be putting into our language? How far do you feel we really need to adjust how we're speaking in order to bypass a lot of problems?" Answer: "I discovered that when I talk about 'uncertainty' people assume that means 'total uncertainty' and you can't be sure of anything...You're not stuck in a void. You can make pretty good estimates. I know the sun does not 'come up' literally, but since I don't wanna be too finnicky let's just say 'the sun is gonna come up tomorrow morning' as a statement actually means 'the Earth is gonna continue revolving in a way that the sun will appear to come up in the morning' but, anyway, I'd accept the probability of that at around, uh, 9.999 at least. If you wanna go a few more decimal places I'll add a few more 9s on." (2:17ish)

"It seems to me one of Joyce's major motives consisted of trying to push Realism to the point where it refutes itself." (around 2:24)



*Got dang it, I can't even keep up - transcribing the quotes I love is taking longer than listening to it in the first place! Just give a listen and I'm sure you'll find something that resonates with you.

[Carac Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read a few Robert Anton Wilson books and listened to a few more. He's a rare thinker who is able to connect literature and drugs and UFOs and cultural history and physics. The way he makes these connections can be dazzling.

This is a good introduction to his thoughts. It's a fun, easy listen, that might get you wanting to learn more.

Carac

[Mack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Anton Wilson is my latest patron saint and this far-reaching conversation between him and Michael Taft is one of the best things I’ve heard in a long time. The guy was an encyclopedia constantly revising and questioning itself and he comes across so good humored and natured here. I feel like this is an ideal entry point into Wilson’s general thinking and, furthermore, the thinking of so many others.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is in interview format. As such it is a bit all over the place and spends a good amount of time regarding topics I am not interested in (e.g. RAW's youth, politics). I see no reason to read this over his other works, but if it's all you can get it's great.

[Tadas Talaikis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is AWESOME. Glad I had read RAW so long ago, he changed my life.

[Nicholas Whyte]

"http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1249985.html[return][return]I was really prompted to get this because LibraryThing kept recommending it to me. But I loved Robert Anton Wilson's fiction and non-fiction in my late teens and early twenties, and so was delighted to discover this audiobook of interviews and lectures - most of it a series of five long interviews from about 2000, and then a couple of lectures delivered in Boulder, Colorado, in earlier years. I'd heard or read most of it before, and have outgrown some of it, but his humorous, cynical, sceptical take on life, politics, literature, religion and the nature of reality was a refreshing break for me over the last few weeks (switching between this and the much less interesting METAtropolis). His Brooklyn drawl seemed to sharpen the humourous but deadly serious points he was making beautifully. (Though I was perplexed by the way he pronounced ""monotheism"" as ""m'NLTHyism""!)"

[Aleksandar · Rating 5 out of 5]

RAW continues the work of Huxley and Watts, but with a slight occult and paranoid tinge which might put some people off. Nonetheless, one of the most interesting and (currently) under-appreciated thinkers of his time. The map is not the territory.

[Ant · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful discussion of interconnected but surreally diverse topics from James Joyce through Neuro Linguistic Programming to conspiracy theories.

[Ira (SF Words of Wonder) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This ‘book’ is basically an interview with Robert Anton Wilson conducted by Michael W. Taft. Taft is a fantastic interviewer and really helps make this entertaining. Taft teases all sorts of information out of RAW. This is a data dump out of RAW’s brain and there is a lot in there. His history, writing, philosophy, his knowledge of history and current events, drugs, you name it RAW breaks it down. I think this would serve as a good introduction to Robert Anton Wilson.

[mono · Rating 5 out of 5]

sold me on Joyce.

[Me · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was actually an interview with the author. Interesting guy

[Halvor (Raknes) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have this on audio cassettes. I think I started listening to it, but I don't remember anything, so probably I didn't get very far. My normal life was completely dissolving at this time. Currently I don't have a cassette player. I also haven't read his Quantum Psychology beyond a couple of chapters. Still, Prometheus Rising remains one of my favorite books. I also have a video recording of a lecture called "How To Tell Your Friends From the Apes" which is absolutely amazing (I'm also amazed that it hasn't made it onto the web yet. I have it on VHS tape and I'm just waiting for an opportunity to do it myself.)

[Mitch Olson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best thing about this “book” is that it has introduced me to a man whose ideas I want to explore further in his writings. The worst part is that it’s just an interview of the man that left me interested but not wowed in any way. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone

[Grigory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great guy

[jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

For fans only. Heavy. Man.

[think blue count two · Rating 5 out of 5]

i listen to this every year or two, and have since ~2015 when i first heard it.

wilson really flipped my lid when i first encountered him through this recording and it's no surprise why. he's in top form, near the end of his life, a highly proficient and rehearsed speaker, covering a lot of the "greatest hits" of his career. high information density. even when he's talking about things i don't care about (james joyce, vatican conspiracies) his enthusiasm and skill as a raconteur are undeniable.

it can feel masturbatory to go back to stuff like this over and over. i have a year(ish)ly wilson phase and a similarly timed terence mckenna phase. i found them both at the same time and both seemed like they had all the answers (though wilson professed to have NONE, and mckenna obviously didn't have any actionable suggestions besides "take drugs"...which is solid advice!). this was at the beginning of a still ongoing semi-self-guided worldview shift. it's been bumpy. and disappointing. i check back in with these guys hoping to refuel on some of the excitement that got me started. i am a really burnt out do-nothing guy (i shouldn't be saying that in a review of anything wilsonian, he explicitly warns against the Life Script "i am a no-good shit") so the couple years of exuberant curiosity i had in my mid 20s are really important to remember, i guess. it keeps me going. but it's a total nostalgia trip and, as i said above, feels masturbatory. i try to be critical and catch myself being wack and falling into snares. nostalgia is a pretty big snare.

i knew a guy who was a big wilson venerator. his general outlook on life seemed to be taken from a 90s cyberpunk time capsule. he lived his life like y2k was right around the corner. he was on a big fat stupid nostalgia trip. i think i'm a little better off by admitting i am largely stuck in the past, but i am totally guilty of this as well.
hearing my (now former, incidentally) buddy talking about wilson with the same robotic excitement and reverence with which he would describe Coil as the bleeding edge of music (the members were both dead for over a decade) really depressed me. "jesus christ, am i this badly stuck, too?"
verdict: idunno. probably not.
why'd i bring this up? it felt relevant. i think it’s worth being skeptical about ourselves, being critical of the things we keep returning to. i think there still is a lot to get out of this after all. going into it for maybe the 8th time, i was doubtful that i’d get anything out of it. if nothing else i can say it was refreshing this time around. even though he's optimistic for a future we probably aren't going to see after all, his optimism is contagious. the "amor te hilaritas" is contagious. i am still not too jaded. i can still feel it. that assurance alone is VERY worthwhile for me currently (and maybe i shouldn't be so hard on my old friend who i accused of nostalgia tripping).
i feel also like some of the political-anxiety slime that has built up in my brain got drained off while i was listening, and i am VERY thankful for that.

[Gregory Kuchmek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely essential! After you have read MOST (or ALL) of his books, go to youtube and watch ALL the videos you can, and then listen to this! MANY hours of joy to be had! If you don't understand by the end, start over.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Audiobook Only (As far as I know)**

Makes a great companion piece to Cosmis Trigger series. RAW touches on much of the same things w/in Cosmic Trigger but these interviews provide some additional context & an entirely unscripted Bob.

[John Thornborrow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great to hear old Uncle Bob answering all sorts of interesting questions with his splendid insights.

[Mauricio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great introduction to RAW! Hilarious and profound.

[Irene · Rating 2 out of 5]

one or two stars kinda boring

[Dan · Rating 1 out of 5]

*Sigh* Settle down grandpa, the CIA and Catholics can't get you in the nursing home.

[JEFFERY VERNETTI · Rating 4 out of 5]

Will listen to again. I need to find a copy of the transcript.

[James Kendall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was a fantastic interview.

[Lourvens Pierre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Conspiracy theorist, anarchist, psychologist and a philosopher. If he was still alive I would try to give him a piggyback ride 😁. Rip based king 👑

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Anton Wilson is a clear thinker, his knowledge is vast, and he has opinions.