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Date: Tue Sep 16 21:59:50 EDT 1997
From: Moderator
Welcome to the Robert Anton Wilson Show! What better name for this very special edition of High Strangeness on Prime Time Live? The irrepressible RAW is my guest tonight; my name is Patrick Huyghe and I will be the Moderator for this chat about two-headed pigs, reality tunnels, and RAW's new book "The Walls Coming Tumbling Down"...
For those unfamiliar with the man or his oeuvre, Robert Anton Wilson is
a futurist, author, former editor at Playboy, and a stand-up
comic. He is the author of the "Cosmic Trigger" trilogy,
and the coauthor, with Robert Shea, of the underground classic "The
Illuminatus!" trilogy. His other writings include the "Schrodinger's
Cat" trilogy, called "the most scientific of all science
fiction novels," by New Scientist, and several nonfiction
works of Futurist psychology and guerilla ontology, such as "Prometheus
Rising" and "The New Inquisition." Wilson
has also made a comedy record (Secrets of Power) and a punk rock record
(The Chocolate Biscuit Conspiracy), and his play "Wilhelm Reich
in Hell" was performed at the Edmund Burke Theatre in Dublin,
Ireland. Wilson's web page is located at http://www.rawilson.com
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:00:33 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
A boy has never wept nor dashed a thousand kim. Mother is the best bet
and don't let Satan draw you down too fast. Hobo and Pobo and dog biscuit.
If he's happy he doesn't get snappy.
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:01:02 EDT 1997
From: Moderator
"The Walls Came Tumbling Down," published by New Falcon,
is actually the script for a film. On the surface the film is about a
CSICOP-type physicist named Mike Ellis who undergoes a "reframing"
experience after taking a drug combo for a tooth attack. Deep down it
really deals with the scary things that happen to those who stumble into
a borderless or otherworldly consciousness without any intent to go there
and without any preparation or Operating Manual to tell them how to navigate
when the walls tumble, the doors of perception fly open, and the bottom
falls out of their mental filing cabinet...
Welcome, Bob. Your book is about reality tunnels -- what people perceive
as being real -- and how the walls of those tunnels often collapse on
people. When did the walls of your own reality tunnel first come crashing
down on you?
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:03:46 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
It started
slowly in the 50s when I got interested in perception psychology and general
semantics. It accelerated in the 60s when I found ethnomethodology and
LSD.
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:04:30 EDT 1997
From: Moderator
You mention that you saw your FIRST flying saucer back in 1947-8, right
at the beginning of the UFO era. I thought this might have been the event
that got you started.
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:06:21 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
That actually felt minor. I didn't know what I saw -- swamp gas, space
ship, sundog, weather balloon. What impressed me was my parents' fear
of reporting the sighting. I realized that even in our allegedly rational
age many things remain unspreakble -- damned, blasphemous. George Carlin
can't do his comedy on networks because the comedy depends on taboo words.
We remain governed by taboo to an astounding extent.
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:08:33 EDT 1997
From: Moderator
You point out that more and more people are experiencing High Weirdness
of one type or another -- UFOs, ESP, past lives, OBEs, etc. -- whether
the Establishment likes it or not. But the Establishment prefers to bury
its collective head in the sand, denying it all the way to China. What
is hell IS going on?
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:10:58 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
The same as
all the rest of history, only faster this time. The establishment always
rejects the first dawning of the new paradigm. That is the function of
the establishment. The function of the heretic is to create new paradigms,
some of which will surive if the heretic is lucky.
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:12:21 EDT 1997
From: Moderator
Can the heretic ever win? Are there enough of them to make things change
faster?
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:14:39 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
Heresy always wins. All establishments grow rigid and ossified and die
off. The individual heretic may play a role in the new paradigm or may
just serve as comedy relief, i.e. appear as nutty to the future as to
the current establishment. Heresy is no game for securityseekers.
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:16:38 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At
I suppose heretic are what you also call infophiles and the establishment
is run by infophobics. And it's a constant fight between the two, isn't
it? Even more so these days it seems.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue Sep 16 22:19:13 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
I see the conflict as comic and recurrent. Joyce shows it that way in
Finnegans Wake, and he's my major historical theorist. Shem and
Shaun never stop their war, their comedy act, their dance - whatever you
call this dialectic.
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:20:01 EDT 1997
From: Moderator
We live in an age when tunnel walls of all types are falling in on the
head of people who least expected it. What are some of the most recent
examples, in your observation?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue Sep 16 22:22:21 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
The collapse of the Soviet Union. The racial equality in S. Africa. The
Palestinian state. The sudden re-mergence of the labor unions in U.S.
The growing use of alternative medicine. The eerie success of Michael
Jackson.
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:23:55 EDT 1997
From: Moderator
Yes, but many of these things seem very temporary.
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:26:40 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
From a geological persepctive all human history looks temporary. What
I mean to convey is the acceleration of chaotic (unpredictible) events
in the last decade. Information and chaos are shaking everhting loose.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue Sep 16 22:27:35 EDT 1997
From: Moderator
Speaking of chaos in reality tunnels, what is your reaction to the world's
reaction to the death of Princess Di?
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:29:54 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
It astounds me. To me the most important recent deaths were Tim Leary,
Wm Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. The media barely covered them. Then they
go into a frensy over a woman whose chief claim to fame is that she married
a very very rich man and took him for millions in the divorce. Now it's
Mother Thresa who went all over Africa, wher the major problem s are AIDS
and starvation, and told them not to use condoms. I think I got off on
the wrong planet. Beam me up Scotty, there's no rational life here.
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:34:42 EDT 1997
From: Moderator
And speaking of irrational life ... Some aspects of your script reminded
me of the recent movie MIB. Do the tabloids know the truth, but most of
us intellectual types are too stoopid to real-eyes it?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue Sep 16 22:36:35 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
It's not either/or. You have to read the tabloids one way (Jungian/anthropological)
and the intellectuals another way (primate status games.) And you gotta
read the scientists a third way. We need to understand more than one language.
Looks like nobody turned up but you and me. Anybody out there?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue Sep 16 22:38:14 EDT 1997
From: Moderator
Do you think that science is crapping out on the hard stuff - ESP, UFOS,
past lives, etc. -- or that it's right for it to ignore these subjects?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue Sep 16 22:39:44 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
Crapping out. These subjects are all worthy of more careful study. Very
careful study.
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:40:02 EDT 1997
From: Moderato
(I don't know if they opened up the chat to outside questions. Hope there
is someone out there!)
So how do you get orthodox science to have a reframing experience?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue Sep 16 22:42:31 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
It happens every generation. Wait for the old farts to die off, and the
young turks will open up every lad they tried to screw shut.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue Sep 16 22:43:08 EDT 1997
From: Moderator
What do you see in your crystal ball for the future of CSICOP (Committee
for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal) and their
not-always-lovable fanatic anti-fanatics?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue Sep 16 22:43:36 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
That should be "lid" not "lad" but let's give the
Freudians a thrill, what the hell.
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:44:44 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161
I agree. Beep Beep. Kaneepsheep!
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:45:22 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson At
Well, when the old farts die off, the new leaders may actually dare to
do scientific investigation of claims of the paranormal instead of just
writing establishment agit-prop.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue Sep 16 22:46:56 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161
Yea, but these guys have a lot of power in the US. The world, thank God,
has not been infected by them yet.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue Sep 16 22:47:35 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
Anyway, I love CSICOP, the way Swift must have loved Partridge. For those
of satiric bent, some targets seem sent by Divine Love to give us fuel
for our humor.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue Sep 16 22:48:59 EDT 1997
From: Moderator
They are clownish, but the media for the most part doesn't realize it
and takes their taboos seriously.
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:49:25 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
They don't have a lot of power; they just make a lot of noise. Without
them the art of slapstick would die off, like the 3 stooges without Moe.
Anybody who still believes in the media must have been in a coma for the
past 30 years.
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:51:11 EDT 1997
From: Moderator
Change of subject ... You were just "reframed" -- You just appeared
in a movie for the first time in your life. What was it and what was it
like for you?
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:53:12 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
The move is called "23." It's about Karl Koch,the kid who burrowed
into all of the U.S.'s top security systems from his home in Hanover.
He was a fan of my books, and I play myself, giving a lecture on freedom
of information and autographing a a book for Karl.
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:54:05 EDT 1997
From: Moderator
Do you believe everything you write (and say)?
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Date: Tue Sep 16 22:56:14 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
I don't believe anything I write or say. I regard belief as a form of
brain damage, the death of intelligence, the fracture of creativity, the
atrophy of imagination. I have opinions but no Belief System (B.S.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue Sep 16 22:57:25 EDT 1997
From: Moderator
Time is running out. So plug your next book. What is it? (And why do you
have your books published by New Falcon Publications, a small house in
Arizona, when your work could certainly command the attention and bucks
of some big New York publishing house?)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue Sep 16 22:59:37 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
Next book, "Everything Is Under Control," an "encyclopedia
of conspiracy theories," for Harper Collins, due next summer. Most
of my books come from Falcon because NY publishers were not interested
when I wrote them. Those ideas have only become fashionable 10 or 15 years
after I wrote them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue Sep 16 23:00:37 EDT 1997
From: Moderator
Welcome to the Fashionable World, Bob. Now you're in big trouble! Thank
you very much Robert Anton Wilson for a delightful reframing experience.
I urgue everyone to check out "The Walls Come Tumbling Down"
and Bob's web site at http://www.rawilson.com. For High Strangeness, this
is Patrick Huyghe. Goodnight!
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Date: Tue Sep 16 23:02:14 EDT 1997
From: Robert_Anton_Wilson
Good God, we were the only ones on line. Ah wilderness
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