Excellent interview with one of my favorite subversive philosophers, Robert Anton Wilson, on the topic of self-directed consciousness change, or “meta-programming the bio-computer” as Wilson often refers to these techniques.
As usual with Wilson, the topics range freely across many disciplines from psychedelic drugs to yoga to quantum physics to Sufi mystics and CIA brainwashing conspiracies. This is an excerpt from the full audio program, “Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything“.
I found this audio clip while searching for a good primer on Robert Anton Wilson for my brother. I had been suggesting he read “Cosmic Trigger” for many years, and now that he finally made the move to do so, I decided to read it again myself. I recalled it really affecting me back in college. But I discovered upon re-reading it that the sections I recalled (Crowley’s “Not I” experiment, Wilson’s theory of mystical and occult experiences being perhaps direct encounters with the right hemisphere of the brain, etc.) were such a small and minor aspect of the overall book that I must have, over the years, conflated that book (being his most famous besides “The Illuminatus Trilogy“) with the countless other books of his I read subsequently.
I’m currently of the opinion that the book I should have suggested to my brother is Wilson’s “Quantum Psychology” (which I am currently re-reading), and perhaps as a followup the similar but more technical “Prometheus Rising” (which I will read next). This interview with Wilson, however, touches on many of the salient points in Wilson’s bag of tricks. He gets into the idea of Reality Tunnels and his version of Leary’s Eight Circuit Model of Consciousness. It sets the stage for Wilson’s perspective on the world, and you’ll know if he’s an author you need to read more of — or less of — from this audio clip.
The Overthinker 