Week Thirty, Cosmic Trigger Reading Group, Final Entry

Amoeba Design artwork

By Charles Faris, Cosmic Trigger online reading group guest blogger

I’m sitting in a little corner coffee shop in a green leafy neighborhood of an old-suburban/new-urban section of a major American city, surrounded by mothers and children. Lots of toddlers, pre-toddlers, and post-toddlers. The majority of the mothers’ time is taken up in the task of clipping the rough bristles of wildness from their children. It is easy to see the varying levels of wildness allowed each child according to age, development, and parental proclivity, and to notice that the older the child is, the less “correcting” they need. This is a very liberal neighborhood in a famously liberal city, so I don’t see any physical force being used, and i don’t hear any harsh tones, sharply raised-voices. I do hear a lot of sh-sh-sh’s, and a lot of redirecting, both gentle physical redirections and soft verbal ones, and I notice that every parent has a distinct style of correction and level of wildness allowed.

I also notice age-related energy-level differences. Infants are relatively inert when they aren’t eating, crying, or pooping, and the older they get the more active they get, until somewhere around the age of five, by which time most children have a team of professional socializers on their case. As they get older of course, they also begin to socialize teacher other.

Interestingly, this process of stripping away the inborn wildness begins with emotional socialization— note the emote in emotional. As children begin to move around their environment physical socialization comes into play, with toilet training being one of the most deeply intimate of these ritualized behavior-modification projects. Note the use of the word training — we are domesticated apes indeed. What monkey would teach its children how to properly poop?

Such is my state of mind after seven months of being immersed in the mind-fuck that is Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati (with a heavy dose of Quantum Psychology thrown in during months 3 &4). I can now state with confidence that the 23rd secret of the Illuminati is that immersing yourself in Cosmic Trigger, deeply, obsessively, over an extended stretch of time, is guaranteed to grant you an extended tour of Chapel Perilous. As Hermann Hesse would say, “Welcome to the Magic Theater. Price of admission: your mind!”

Everywhere around me I see these subtle and not so subtle cues to acceptable behavior. Political news is a great place to look, especially right now with the extreme polarizations playing out across Planet Earth. Sometimes I think that if I found the right pair of magic sunglasses I would be able to look out at the world and see hordes of people wearing signs on their chests reading Tell Me What To Think! And a group of people wearing signs that read I’ll Tell You What To Think!. Of course, most of those people would be wearing one of the Tell Me What To Think Signs as well. It really is at the point where I think the highest form of art is in the expression of non-coercion and the refusal to Tell Me What To Think!

Which brings me again to Cosmic Trigger, which actually takes that highest form of art one step higher, floating six inches above the top run of the ladder, as it were, due to its inherent nature, aim, and purpose, which is to assist the reader in taking off one damned sign and not putting on the other. That he succeeds in his aim is on the one hand a miracle of sorts, and on the other an indication of the powerful alignment of will and action Robert Anton Wilson had attained by the time he finished writing Cosmic Trigger. What else would one expect from a writer who once recommended reading Ulysses 40 times to improve one’s prose style?

Looking back then at the beginning of this extended journey into the heart and mind of RAW, I come back to the notion of maps, the reading of and the creating of, as well as keys to open the various doors to the various rooms in the chapel of Bob. If I had to choose between one and the other, I would take a nice sets of keys over the most complete and accurate collection of maps available — you don’t have to open very many doors in this chapel to find yourself lost in uncharted territory where the only accurate map is the one you make yourself (and even that is provisional). It’s a shifting landscape, in other words, which would be obvious about everything if we where accustomed to thinking in terms of space-time rather than acting as if physical space were actually separate from time. Been to the old neighborhood lately?

And so herewith are a few of the keys that I have been using in this journey (as always I’m really looking forward to reading about your own keys, as well as any maps you have managed to create in the process of reading Cosmic Trigger “one more time”).

The first and most valuable key for me is Bob’s use of various personality types to describe himself. Rather that the typical I, me, mine, the Author of Cosmic Trigger uses 34 different personality descriptors to indicate the actions of his “self.” This conceit offers the reader a tightly packed clue to of the state of mind the Author was acting from during the incident described, as well as gradually revealing that the Author is more than an author, that he is a mystic, a father, a robot, a poet, and a crazy pauper — note how this engages the self with time in a similar way that space-time engages space with time. Note also that it’s not just Bob who operates this way.

The stars of the show are the Skeptic and the Shaman. The Skeptic makes 25 appearances; the Shaman makes 23.The Materialist (15) is a strong supporting actor, along with the Libertarian (9), and the unholy triad of the Reporter (6), the Numerologist (6), and the Fool (6) make their presence known. The Suspect, the Wizard, and the Investigator are among the personalities that act as faces we recognize, showing up 3-5 times in the course of the tale, while the Mark, the True Failure, and the Libertarian Hedonist fall in the collection of aspects we only see once or twice.

The use of the 34 personalities certainly makes Bob’s actions and motivations more understandable and thereby adds a helpful depth to the reading. It also turns out handy in parsing the actions and motivations of pretty much anyone you run into, including yourself. Just to be complete, I’ll post a full list of the personalities in comments, including page numbers and number of occurrences.

The next key I’ve been using is a list of themes, which is necessarily incomplete and idiosyncratic. Looking at CT through the lens of these themes has added a rich level of dimensionality to this particular reading. Some of these themes function as story arcs such as the “process of deliberately induced brain change through which [Bob put himself] in the years 1962-1976,” some as educational projects such as Which Drug Does What?, or Against Attributing Objective Reality to Magickal (or any other) Acts. Many of them, such as 8 Circuit Theory, Programming and Meta-Programming in the Human Bio-Computer, and Synchronicity/Coincidance show up in Bob’s work time and time again. All of them can be utilized to bring a rich level of dimensionality to the felt experience of our lives as well. As with the personalities, I’ll include a list with page numbers in comments.

Timothy Leary 

A third key that really broke down the wall between the book and my life was the incredible list of people who contribute to this story one way or another. Some of these people are major players in Bob’s life: Timothy Leary whom I identified early on as Virgil to Bob’s Dante, and Alan Watts, who gets credit for pushing Bob into the study of Aleister Crowley. Others, like Crowley, who has a profoundly magical effect upon the Author in his numerous incarnations, and Buckminster Fuller, whose techno-optimism shines through in all of Bob’s work, influence RAW through their writings.

The list of remarkable people mentioned in Cosmic Trigger (and indexed, thankfully) includes those who show up again and again, such as Wilhelm Reich, psychologist and sex-economist, Alfred Korzybski, whose work in General Semantics is vital to all of Wilson’s work, and John Lilly, fearless explorer of human consciousness. It also includes quite a few cameo players such as H. P. Lovecraft and Brian Barritt, who show up only once or twice in it’s pages, yet are obviously pointed to as Subjects for Further Study. As above, I will includef a list of People Bob Likes in the comments. If you have any experience delving into the writings of these Bad Hombres, please do chime in below. I know that my own world view has been and continues to be greatly influenced by the writings of people I discovered from reading Cosmic Trigger.

The final key that I will mention here is the number of books referred to in these pages. There are too many to mention here, although I do think that The Principia Discordia deserves special mention, as does The Sirius Mystery. As above, list in comments, your experiences with books from CT greatly desired.

Okay — that’s it for me. It’s been a very “real” experience! I definitely paid a deep visit to Chapel Perilous. And I’m definitely very happy to be back home. I think the final secret of the Illluminati (which I interpret as “Come back with all the positive energy you have”) is very helpful when traversing that tricky landscape. I hope you have found this collection of posts and commentary helpful as well.

Charles Faris

Cosmic Trigger Reading Group, Week 29, featuring Saul-Paul Sirag

Welcome to week 28 of the Cosmic Trigger Reading Group. This week we are working with the afterwords by Saul Paul Sirag (247 Hilaritas), and we are lucky enough to have a guest post by Saul-Paul himself. I found this post to be informative, heartwarming, and full of the spirit of Robert Anton Wilson. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. — Charles Faris

Saul-Paul Sirag in 2007 (Facebook photo) 

Cosmic Trigger After 39 Years 

By Saul-Paul Sirag (30 Sept. 2016)

In 1977 Robert Anton Wilson asked me to write an “Afterward” to Cosmic Trigger, which was his wildly ranging personal Odyssey.

Those who have been deeply moved by RAW and his astounding biography, may be interested in an update to my “Afterward.”

I wrote about the things that I had discussed with Bob and Arlen and the off-beat folks I met at his home. This included especially: Uri Geller, Extraterrestrials, Quantum Theory, and Arthur Eddington’s approach to physics.

Since 1973 I had been living at the Institute for the Study of Consciousness and working as research assistant to Arthur Young, the founder of this institute (and the preceding Journal for the Study of Consciousness). This institute was only a few blocks from where Bob was living on College Avenue in the Elmwood district of Berkeley. So I visited Bob frequently and took Nick Herbert and other friends to meet him.

By 1977, Bob was living up in the Berkeley hills, so I had to take a bus to visit him, but I continued to go there as often as I could. There were, of course, other complementary activities to occupy my attention: The Fundamental Physics Group at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the Physics Consciousness Research Group in San Francisco. You can read about these activities in David Kaiser’s book How the Hippies Saved Physics (2011, Norton).

Bob also participated in some of the PCRG activities. He usually presented his inimitable take on Timothy Leary’s SMI2LE program (Space Migration, Intelligence Increase and Life Extension).

I didn’t have a television, but I enjoyed watching TV with Bob. He was constantly switching channels between say, Star Trek and some old movie like King Kong. Or between All in the Family and D.W. Griffiths’ Intolerance. He always found that they had thematic correspondences. For example the problem of communicating with alien intelligence as in Star Trek and King Kong.

Bob was fascinated by my stories about Uri Geller and Andrija Puharich both of whom I had met in 1973, in Berkeley and on their home turf of New York (See Uri by Puharich, 1974). Their tales of ET contact resonated with some of Bob’s experiences, and those of Timothy Leary and John Lilly.

The account I wrote in the “Afterward” is the closest I have come to some semblance of the ET reality. See also my “Notes on Contact” published in Jack Sarfatti’s Destiny Matrix (2002).

As Jacques Vallee has emphasized, there is a large psychic component to the ET experience. Certainly this is true of the Uri/Puharich experiences. Also, in accord with Vallee’s ideas, I believe that the ET contact is not from a long distance away but from a hyper-dimensional realm.

The reality of physical hyperspace (10d, 11d, 12d, and 26d, all interrelated) is a necessary aspect of present-day string theory. See my recently published book, ADEX Theory: How the ADE Coxeter Graphs Unify Mathemetics and Physics (World Scientific, 2016). For a review by Nick Herbert, see:

http://quantumtantra.blogspot.com/2016/07/saul-paul-sirags-new-math-book.html

Nick Herbert. Photo from his blog, Quantum Tantra. 

Quantum mechanics was a big part of discussions with Bob, especially when Nick Herbert was present. His book Quantum Reality (1985) is still in print and is one of the best descriptions of the kinds of things we discussed with Bob back in the mid-to-late 70s, when John Clauser’s experiments at Berkeley were still fresh. Clauser was a key member of the Fundamental Physics Group, so we interacted with him frequently.

My own take on Quantum theory and the human mind is best expressed in my Appendix paper in Jeffrey Mishlove’s book, The Roots of Consciousness, 2nd Ed. (Hawthorne, 1993). This Appendix article is titled: “Consciousness: a Hyperspace View.”

There I explained the Von Neumann/Wigner interpretation of Quantum mechanics, which is an elaboration of the standard Copenhagen interpretation. This makes the Observer indispensible to the structure and application of QM.

This interlock between the observer and the observed was also a central theme of Arthur Eddington’s take on Quantum theory, as expressed in the two quotes from Eddington in my Cosmic Trigger “Afterward.”

In my ADEX Theory book I also quote from Eddington’s Philosophy of Physical Science, (1939) p. 150:

“The recognition that physical knowledge is structural knowledge abolishes all dualism of consciousness and matter. Dualism depends on the belief that we find in the external world something of a nature incommensurable with what we find in consciousness; but all that physical science reveals to us in the external world is group-structure, and group- structure is also to be found in consciousness. When we take a structure of sensations in a particular consciousness and describe it in physical terms as part of the structure of an external world, it is still a structure of sensations. It would be entirely pointless to invent something else for it to be a structure of.”

I have been studying Eddington’s works since high school, when my younger brother, David, and I and a close friend had a kind of club studying Relativity Theory by way of Einstein’s writings and especially Eddington’s Space, Time, and Gravitation (1920).

Then starting in 1973, when I began working with Arthur Young at the Institute for the Study of Consciousness, I read all of Eddington’s books. Arthur was a great fan of Eddington and his group theory approach to physics. Eddington’s approach was denigrated by physicists who wanted to eliminate the “group pest” from physics. Since then, of course, group theory in physics has become central to our understanding of many aspects of physics, especially the all-important study of particles and forces. String theory has only magnified the role of group theory. So Eddington was on the right track, but too far ahead of his time.

Incidentally, my Eddington influenced paper “A combinatorial derivation of the proton-electron mass ratio” was published in Nature Vol. 268 (28 July 1977).

Note that the reference in my “Afterward” is not correct, and I had not been able to get it corrected in subsequent printings of Cosmic Trigger.

Sir Arthur Eddington 

Much of what Eddington conjectured has turned out to be wrong. For example in The Philosophy of Physical Science (p. 112), Eddington disparaged the existence of neutrinos. These particles had been conjectured by Wolfgang Pauli and named by Enrico Fermi in 1932. So Eddington, writing in 1939, was decrying the plethora of papers building on this conjecture. However, the physics community by 1939 had made neutrinos an important ingredient of the weak-force theory of the radio-active decay of chemical elements.

Because neutrinos have no electric charge and practically no mass, they are very hard to detect. It wasn’t until 1956 that neutrinos were detected in a convincing experiment. So the long wait from 1932 to 1956, left room for doubts such as those of Eddington, who died in 1944 and did not live to see the neutrino idea confirmed.

However, Eddington’s emphasis on group theory as fundamental to the understanding of the physical world has turned out to be prescient, even if the particular groups that Eddington favored were not able to point the way forward.

Coda

The following piece is what I wrote to be read by Nick Herbert at Robert Anton Wilson’s Memorial in 2007. Nick was not able to fit my piece into the very packed schedule at Bob’s memorial. So I am appending it here as my tribute to RAW and his fascination with 23 and 17.

In Memory of Robert Anton Wilson (1932 – 2007)

As we all know Robert Anton Wilson gleefully observed synchronicities — especially those involving the number 23. I remember Bob telling me that Alan Watts turned him on to the importance of both 17 and 23 throughout history; and thus these numbers thread through Bob's Cosmic Trigger autobiography.

I happen to favor the number 137, since the inverse of this number very closely approximates the probability that any two electrons will exchange a photon at any time. In other words, if you could interview all the electrons in some room (or even in a tiny portion of that room) and ask:

“Are you electrons at this instant either emitting or absorbing a photon?”

One out of 137 electrons would say "Yes." This number, therefore, describes the strength of the electromagnetic force. As Richard Feynman has said, "Every good theoretical physicist puts this number up on his wall and worries about it."

When I met Bob in 1976 and learned about his fascination with 17 and 23, I wondered if 137 could be fit into the grand conspiracy of these numbers. After all so much of physical reality depends on the electromagnetic force and therefore on 137.

In 1980, while I was talking with Bob on one of my many visits to his home in the Berkeley hills, I mentioned the hot new mathematical scheme called public key cryptography. These schemes depend on a trap-door feature described as easy-to-fall-in but hard-to-climb-out. Thus we have a scheme for easy encoding, and nearly impossible decoding without the secret numbers. John James, a computer programmer who was present, immediately showed me an article in ROM magazine that spelled out the algorithm for a version of public key cryptography called RSA. It depends on the extreme difficulty of finding the prime factors of large numbers. Any message can be considered as a number, as for instance this entire sentence codes as a binary number in any computer. OK, take that number, call it M (for message) and multiply it by itself x times. Call x the encoding power. Now take the huge number, M to the x power, and divide it by the product of two prime numbers, p times q. (For secure trap-door coding, these prime numbers p and q would have around 100 decimal digits each.) Throw away everything but the remainder in this division of M to the x power by p times q. Label this remainder C, and call it the encoded message.

How can we decode this message? We will need a secret decoding number called y, which we can apply to C by multiplying C by itself y times. Then we can recover the message M by dividing C to the y power by p times q, and again keeping only the remainder. This remainder is guaranteed to be the original message M — provided that we have created a certain (very important) relationship between x and y. It must be set up that x times y leaves the remainder 1, when we divide x times y by (p minus 1) times (q minus 1). We must keep p and q secret also, so that the secret decoding power y could not be calculated. The encoding power x and the product of p and q should be made public in this Public-Key Cryptography scheme.

Got that? OK don't worry, I'll show you an example — actually the very first example I tried on my pocket calculator. With no concern for security, but merely wanting to see this magic trap-door scheme in action, I used Bob's 17 and 23 as my two prime numbers p and q — you knew they were going to pop up about here in my story! Then I set up my favorite number 137 as the only message I wanted to send on this very first test. I had to choose an encoding number, so I chose 5 (for the Discordian Law of 5). Actually, as it turned out, I could have chosen any odd number and gotten the same startling encoded message. So take 137 and multiply it by itself 5 times, and divide by 17 times 23. Throw away the answer except the remainder. The remainder — big surprise! — comes out as 137.

So the message 137 codes as itself — transparent to the trap-door coding scheme of the secret prime numbers 17 and 23.

I showed this wonderful synchronicity of numbers to Bob, and he just roared his gleeful laugh.

I have to think that Bob in his last year of life had many gleeful chuckles over the discord among astronomers in naming the 10th planet —first named Xena by its discoverer in 2005, but later designated a dwarf planet in 2006 and named – of all possible names – Eris!

Farewell, Bob – to Eris – and beyond!

Okay, that’s (almost) a wrap! One quick note regarding Saul-Paul’s post—the good folks at Hilaritas have now (39 years later!) corrected the reference to Saul-Paul’s Eddington influenced paper in all future editions of Cosmic Trigger. As always, comments are welcome and actually necessary to bring in the additional dimensions necessary to make this group reading of Cosmic Trigger string theory compliant. Next week, the full-on wrap-up. No reading necessary, although a quick review of the text of CT, these 28 blog posts and the commentary couldn’t hurt! — Charles Faris

Cosmic Trigger Reading Group, Week 28

The Via Dolorosa

Welcome to week 28 of the Cosmic Trigger Reading Group. This week we are working with the final 2 chapters (233-244 Hilaritas) of Cosmic Trigger (not counting the afterwords by Saul Paul Sirag, about which more later), and if you haven’t read those chapters I advise you not to read this post. Cosmic Trigger is a mostly spoiler-free book, and that is not the case here.

The Dark Companion

Bob does a formal invocation of Hadit, whom Crowley identifies with Sirius, and a week later Time magazine runs a full-page review of Temple’s The Sirius Mystery. He finds the lack of conclusiveness to be infuriating. When Rolling Stone runs an ad for a German rock group with a singer named Winifred (ala Illuminatus!) Bob finds this “even more suggestive and even less conclusive.”

Saul-Paul Sirag suggests that sometime the first experiments with a time machine will be conducted sometime in the 1990’s, with resulting odd effects creating all of the “occult” events that Cosmic Trigger has chronicled. These time machines might require the use of the Dark Companion of Sirius, the nearest dwarf star to Planet Earth.

Via Dolorosa

Straight out let’s note that Via Dolorosa, the Way of Pain, Grief, or Suffering, is the name of a street in Old Jerusalem that Jesus is held to have walked down on the way to his crucification. It also ties in to the Gurdjieffian concept of Intentional Suffering as a high powered method of scraping away the chaff and getting closer to one’s Original Essence, which Bob relates to Circuit 8 in the Leary Octave of Consciousness. So the Way of Suffering is revealed as (one of) the most powerful ways to expand your consciousness and climb the ladder of personal development. Be careful what you wish for.

G.I Gurdjieff

Speaking of Gurdjieff, watch how Bob hides the final secret of the Illuminati right out in the open, right at the end, just like Mr G did in his (much longer and more difficult to digest than Cosmic Trigger) epic Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson.

In September 1976 Bob enters alpha during a group brain-wave harmonization and gets a flash that his son Graham would die soon.  He immediately utilizes “concentration methods learned from Crowley” to banish fear and anxiety. He also sets out on a course of rituals to protect his son and, based on his awareness that “this might only deflect the calamity slightly,” the rest of his family as well. Remember that on pages 101 and 137 Bob has already written about a couple of other interesting psychic events involving Graham, one of which involved creating a protective “cone of power” around him.

Then he drops the bomb and tells us about the last time he told his daughter Luna how much he loved her, and then the jumble of events following her death. This section seems unhinged from time and space, a sort of mini-Chapel Perilous, as Bob hears about her death from a police officer with “the most pained eyes I have ever seen, ” and spins in and out of grief and gratitude, rationalization and uncontrollable sobbing, finally emerging to find himself surrounded by a network of unbelievable love and support as the immortality community rallies around him and jumps through the million and one hoops necessary to cryonically preserve Luna’s brain.

One line in particular, at the bottom of page 241, reveals this Chapel Perilous period of time: “I often found myself in a room, going somewhere, without knowing how I had gotten there, or what I was looking for.” Compare this to the famous description of Chapel Perilous on page 5 (Hilaritas): “You might think that you are just…wandering from room to room looking for your cigarettes…”

It is that Network of Love that eventually shows Bob out the door of Chapel Perilous into a world more connected than the one he had inhabited before. he takes a new imprint: “I entered a belief system in which the Network of Love was not one hypothesis among many but an omnipresent Reality.”

This is the chapter that can be read a million times, although I always face it with dread. It’s like the camel that actually makes it through the interminable squeeze through the eye of the needle to come out on the other side, as shiny and radiant as the golden apple of Eris, as new as a fresh dewy morning, connected, revealing, as Bell’s Theorem does to Saul-Paul SIrag (241) that “there is no true separation anywhere.”

Timothy Leary 

And it finishes with Tim Leary rapping that “positive energy is as real as gravity,” and answering the final question in a book full of questions: “What do you do, Dr. Leary, when somebody keeps giving you negative energy?”

“Come back with all the positive energy you have.”

And so Bob “finally learned the final secret of the Illuminati,” which is you and me and everyone else who employs that secret to the benefit of ourselves, each other, this entire struggling planet, and all of Universe.

Next week we have a special update to his Afterwords by Saul-Paul Sirag. You won’t want to miss it. As always, please chime in with your own thoughts regarding Bob’s final 2 chapters of Cosmic Trigger.

Daisy Eris Campbell on Cosmic Trigger, the Play

Daisy Eris Campbell with the cast of the Cosmic Trigger play  (Jonathan Greet photo, taken from http://cosmictriggerplay.com/)

By Daisy Eris Campbell, special to RAWIllumination.net.

[Welcome to week 27 of the RAWIllumination Cosmic Trigger Reading Group. This week we have a special post by Daisy Eric Campbell, creator of Cosmic Trigger: The Play. Read on for much humor and illumination about her very special relationship with Cosmic Trigger (the book), her father Ken Campbell (who staged the massive 18 hour Illuminatus play in London on November 23, 1976), and Carl Gustav Jung. Much more than that, however. Enjoy. -- Charles Faris]

I want to take you back to a moment I experienced about eight years ago.

Snapshot of Ken Campbell by Richard Adams (Creative Commons photo)

It's a few weeks after my father, Ken Campbell's, sudden and untimely death.

I'm standing on the corner of two cobbled streets in Liverpool in the rain.

Carl Jung

And I'm looking at a bust of CG Jung.

And that's kind of weird because right at that moment I'm half way through an essay about Carl Jung for a master's degree I'm doing.

But that's not why I'm there.

Stood next to me is Prunella Gee, Chris Langham and a guy called Peter O'Halligan. We're all looking up at this bust of Carl Jung.

It's there because Carl Jung had a dream about Liverpool and he wrote about it in his book, Memories, Dreams and Reflections. He said he thought it may be the most important dream he'd ever had. And he realised that in his dream, Liverpool was the Pool of Life.

I'm writing this essay about Jung's ideas of the collective unconscious and synchronicity, a phrase he coined, and now I find myself looking at this bust of his head. And that bust has only been erected because of the tireless campaigning of Peter O'Halligan, who's standing next to me. Because Peter O'Halligan is sure that this very spot is the exact spot that Jung dreamt about.

But just to the side of this bust is another unusual thing, it's a plaque, set into the wall, which commemorates The Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun.

This has also only been erected due to the tireless campaigning of Peter O'Halligan.

Because just over 30 years previously, which is when O'Halligan first found this illustrious Jung-Dream site, he also noticed that the building on the corner of these two streets — just along from where the Beatles first performed — was derelict. And so he adopted it, set up a caff, and called it The Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun.

And the first production to be staged in a room above the caff, was an eighteen hour epic called Illuminatus, directed by my father Ken Campbell, starring (amongst many many others) my mother, Prunella Gee as Eris, Goddess of Chaos and Confusion, and co-adapted with Chris Langham from a novel by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.

And there we all are now, and I say "It's weird because right now I'm in the middle of an essay about Jung", then I realise that, although I'm doing a distance-learning masters degree, I am actually studying at John Moores University, based in Liverpool.

And Peter O' Halligan tells me that John Moores knew my dad's dad, my grandfather, who I never met, they were both from just outside Liverpool, and John Moores offered my grandfather the opportunity to get involved with his new business venture, but my grandfather declined. It was the football pools. Which made John Moores a multi-millionaire, which was how come he'd had enough money to build a whole university, where I was right now studying Carl Gustav Jung.

Prunella Gee in The Wilby Conspiracy

And my head was starting to spin, then my mother, said "and you know you were conceived in that building?".

I said, "What? Surely you were both too were busy staging The Greatest Show on Planet World". And she said, "well it was an eighteen hour production. There were a few dull bits."

So I'm standing on the spot where I was conceived, which was also the site of Jung's most important dream, looking at a bust of Jung, whilst writing an essay about Jung at a university built with money that would have been mine, were it not for my paternal grandfather's lack of business acumen, where my mother played the Goddess of Chaos and Confusion and my father staged an epic which was to change the lives of everyone involved. And Eris is my middle name.

And they say there's nothing to this synchronicity lark?

***

The funny thing was that growing up I knew all about the legends surrounding the production of Illuminatus, but my dad was more than a little cagey about going into too much detail with me.

Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, as depicted in Daisy's play (Oliver Senton, left, and Tom Baker)

So it wasn't until I was in my early twenties, twenty-three to be exact, that I got around to actually reading Illuminatus. And – how can I describe it? It was like being initiated into a magical order that almost everyone I knew was already an initiate of. I suddenly found that I could speak the language of my tribe. I could spot 23s with the best of them, I understood the ancient battle between Discordians (Hail Eris!) and the Illuminati. I understood why you can never trust any government, the true meaning of the eye in the pyramid symbol on every dollar bill, why communication is only possibly between equals, and why you should never whistle while you're pissing. I began to see connections, and synchronicities everywhere. Life became too meaningful. And I began to understand the foolishness of giving your only daughter the middle name, Eris. I flipped out, and found myself in a very plush loony bin somewhere in Kent.

The morning after I arrived with rainbow knickers on my head (for important cosmic reasons) the inmates gathered to see what new nutters the night had blown in. They asked why I was there, and I told them “Synchronicity has led me here”. So completely trusting was I in the various signs that I felt I was being given, that I told them the answer to why I was there would be in that magazine — and I pointed to a magazine one girl was clutching, Soap Opera Magazine. I said I would open it at a random page, and there would be my answer.

So I did. And the huge pink headline read, "Daisy must lose some of her passion."

So that's what Daisy did, and ten years later, I honestly thought I had put a lid on that old crazy-maker, Eris.

Now the wonderful and possibly worrying thing about Illuminatus, is that almost everyone I know who has read and loved that book, has got a pretty similar story to tell. Some are less extreme. Some more. But tales of bizarre synchronicity are pretty much par for the course, and very often there are tales of some kind of spiritual emergency, as Stanislav Grof would call them, or temporary psychosis, as the rest of the medical establishment would have it.

These experiences are what Robert Anton Wilson, in his book, Cosmic Trigger, refers to as a journey through Chapel Perilous, a dangerous crossing point from which one can only emerge agnostic — or paranoid.

Incidentally it was only after reading Cosmic Trigger, that I understood what my dad was really on about when he used to say, “Now Listen Daisy, Don’t believe in anything — nothing which is the product of the human mind is a fitting subject for your belief — but you can suppose everything - and in fact you should. Supposing as much as poss is mind opening mind widening. Suppose God. Suppose flying saucers. Suppose fairies.

I suppose you could suppose that one of the big religions had got it right – down to the last nut and bolt! But, Daisy. Don't believe it.” Or as Wilson more succinctly puts it, "Convictions cause convicts."

That's the great thing about coming across fellow Wilson fans, is that you can relax, because you know that they're very likely to be agnostic — they'll be open to a bit of supposing. Although you have to be a bit careful, because occasionally they are not agnostic, they’re really really paranoid…

But usually they are what my dad called Yes-and people. When he was hanging out at the Royal Court Theatre with a bunch of new-wave playwrights, he couldn't help noticing what a depressed lot they all were — how any bright ideas were greeted with the phrase, ‘no-but.’ Then for one reason or another he got invited to a science-fiction convention and discovered a whole world of Yes-and people.

And that's what Illuminatus feels like as a novel. It's the ultimate Yes-and! novel. Especially since it was co-written by Wilson and his best mate Bob Shea, while they were both working at Playboy magazine. You can just hear them: "So should the rebels all live on a yellow submarine?" "Yes, and they should be able to talk to Dolphins" "Yes, and that can be achieved by the world's most advanced computer!" "Yes, and they'll go to Atlantis!"

Here’s the original policy statement Ken wrote to the British Arts Council when he was creating The Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool:

So I was in this loony bin somewhere in Kent with the rainbow knickers on my head – what I was actually attempting to do was to regulate the flow of cosmic pronoid synchronicities that I was experiencing (you know about pronoia, right? The creeping sensation that everyone everywhere is out to help you). I believe Paranoids favour tinfoil — but I was pronoid, so rainbow knickers seemed more apt. I knew from moment to moment if I was Eris or Daisy as there was always either a flower motif somewhere or an apple — or sometimes just any fruit —but anyway in the words of Hakim Bey, I had become a pirate for all signs and meanings.

I was holding forth one day, and I was telling everyone about my dad's notions about Artist's Choice. It goes thus:

Choice one: you can distract, entertain and deceive about the true state of things and thus help to sustain the status quo

Choice two: you can pose as exposing wrongs, but in fact deceive and therefore help to sustain the status quo.

Choice three: you can expose wrongs and bring about change. Unfortunately this choice is not possible, because if you really knew what was going on – you can be sure they’ve got something on you —

But perhaps there is a fourth choice which might just be possible:

"To pose as exposing wrongs, but in fact deceive, but with a wilful mix of truth and lie, research and fantasy, so inscrutably compounded as to send the status quo hunting for needles that nobody's lost, in haystacks that don't exist, diverting attention from the ensuing release of hitherto imprisoned forces, which will bring about change, but of an unpredictable nature."

And there's a surly young guy stood back from everyone else scowling at me, and he says, "How long have you been stuck up your father's arsehole?"

I look him in the eye, then after a pause I say, "I don't know."

***

So it's fifteen years since I'm in the plush loony bin reading "Daisy must lose some of her passion," and eight years since I'm standing looking at a statue of Jung, and Eris is well stuffed back in her box. Then I get a phone-call from someone to ask for a meeting to discuss the possibility of staging Illuminatus. And I remember my dad's worried face any time anyone mooted that possibility, and I remember the rainbow knickers, and I also remember that I'm meant to be trying to get out of my father’s arsehole. So I decline.

Then that same week I get another phone-call to discuss the possibility of staging Illuminatus. From someone else entirely, who has no idea about the first phone-call. And I think: oh, here we go. Illuminatus-related synchronicities are back - and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to out-run them this time.

But I knew I didn't want to stage Illuminatus again, and I wondered what was the logical next piece in this jigsaw puzzle?

Well, what was the book that Robert Anton Wilson wrote immediately after Illuminatus? It was Cosmic Trigger; a non-fiction book he felt compelled to write about what actually happened to him as a result of writing Illuminatus. And given what had happened to me simply as a result of reading it, you may begin to imagine the kind of strange-ness this book contains.

Then I realized: this book was born as a direct result of Illuminatus — and so was I! This book and I are siblings. It all became clear: I had to do a stage-adaptation of Cosmic Trigger.

Scene from Cosmic Trigger, the Play 

And picking up my father’s thoroughly battered copy of Cosmic Trigger, I was reminded that it is actually dedicated to Ken Campbell and The Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool, and that on page 223 (the same page, you may recall as Jung’s dream of Liverpool), Wilson writes about meeting my dad when he comes to the opening of Illuminatus at the National Theatre and is dared to do a naked cameo in the black mass scene.

So my dad could be a character in it!

KEN (coming out of audience onto stage)

Yeah, alright. That’ll do for now. Go and learn your lines.  I’ve got to talk to this filmmaker chap.

The actors come off stage, talking in English accents and wander off to various perches to look over their scripts or chat quietly.

KEN

Right, I haven’t got long. I’m just slinging on an 18 hour epic with no money. What do you want to know?

FILMMAKER

Well, I suppose – er - how you came to be putting on this production?

KEN

I get this phone call from a Liverpudlian poet chap, Peter Halligan, to say he’s been reading Jung’s book Memories, Dreams and Reflections and on page 223 he – Jung – talks about this dream he’s had about Liverpool being the pool of life. There’s a little fountain and whatnot.

Anyway Jung reckons this is one of his most important dreams. So this poet chap, Halligan, makes it his commission to find the exact spot. So he’s phoning me to say that he’s found it. It’s on the corner of Mathew St, right near the Cavern Club where the Beatles first performed. Anyway the building on the corner of this most holy spot turns out to be derelict, so Halligan claims it. He’s telling me that he's set up a caff in the basement and he wants to know if I’ll come and stick something on for him. He’s called it The Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun.

So I pop along to Compendium bookshop to scout out some possible ideas for this show, and I pick up a few fairly interesting looking bits and pieces, and then I come across this book and on the cover is a Yellow Submarine.

So I decide to test it. I thought: Jung’s dream was on page 223 of Memories, Dreams and Reflections so I’ll turn to page 223 of this Submarine book and if interesting, I’ll stick on an adaptation of that. So I turn to page 223 and – I’ll read it to you.

John! John get the cloth out of your ears – grab that copy there will you?

Right, read out the bit from page 223.

JOHN

Where is it, oh yeah. It's a quote from Robert Putney Drake: "Do you know what Jung-

The FILMMAKER looks up surprised.

that old Chinese sage disguised as a psychiatrist, answered? “You are diving, but she is sinking”.

KEN

Yeah. That stopped me in my tracks. So I phone back Peter Halligan and say “Yeah Peter I’ve got the show for you – It’s called Illuminatus."

So here we all are in a derelict cinema in Liverpool. First thing the company had to do was fit the toilets.

The FILMMAKER cuts.

FILMMAKER

That’s great, Ken.
KEN

So how did you come to be making a film about us in your cardigan?

FILMMAKER (flustered)

Well urm. I heard about it from a friend back in London.

KEN

Who?

FILMMAKER

Urm Brian Gilbert

KEN

Oh that burk. Yes?

FILMMAKER

Yes, and well I put in an application to the arts council and got the go ahead.

The cast winces as the filmmaker says this

KEN

You got funding from the arts council?
FILMMAKER

Yes.

KEN

They won’t fund the greatest show on Planet World, but they’ll fund some prick who’s heard about it from his burky mate in a pub?

The filmmaker is laughing along nervously

NEIL CUNNINGHAM (to himself, covering his eyes)

Oh God, don't laugh you stupid fucker.
KEN

You think I’m joking? You know what funded is don’t you? Fun Dead. You and your arts council funded camera are sucking the fun out of the true geniuses. Fun Dead. A conspiracy of mediocrity.  Go on you can fuck off and tell that Brian burk not to send any more pillocks up to Liverpool . Go on, fuck off out of here.

The filmmaker realises he’s deadly serious and bundles his stuff and himself out of there.

FILMMAKER (safe distance)

Fine, Ken. You carry on up your own arsehole.

KEN

Yes, I fucking well will. And I’ll find the whole secret of the Great Cosmic Joke up there, right up inside my arsehole - and you can beg for Arts Council funding to come in and have a look…

FILMMAKER exits

So I got to work.

But then I was floundering about with the first draft and wondering if the whole thing was a bit daft and a bit cosmic for modern sophisticates, and if there was really an audience for Robert Anton Wilson-related theatre out there anymore, when as synchronicity would have it I was introduced by my own mother, to the wonderful John Higgs, whom she had met incidentally because John was procuring a picture of her as Eris, and he said “yes! There is an audience and I know where to find them!”

Prunella Gee as Eris 

It's a very particular challenge, trying to write a drama about Yes-and people, because mostly they all agree! So I'm pioneering the new Yes-and narrative structure, where the drama is to be found in what happens when you keep saying yes-and long after all the neophobes have dropped away with their no-buts.

So anyway we’re going back nearly three years now, and the first draft is written, the second draft is underway. And my attention turned to how I might fund the bugger, especially given my father's strong views on Arts Council Funding.

I was pondering this, when my partner said, "Isn't the clue of how to fund it contained within the last scene?

WILSON'S HOME - 2007. He is an old man now.

A letter plops through a letter box. He slowly maneuvers himself to pick it up.

WILSON

In 1975 I lost the ability to know when something was about to come through the door. It wasn’t all that useful a skill anyway. It’s a cheque for $23. How funny.

Another letter plops through the letterbox. He opens it.

It’s another cheque for $23.

And another.

And another.  OK there’s something fishy going on. Time to consult the oracle.

He reaches for his laptop.

Type in Robert Anton Wilson 23 dollars.
And…magick.

(reading)

Ok guys, time to support cosmic thinking patriarch Robert Anton Wilson, whose infirmity and depleted finances have put him in the precarious position of not being able to meet next month's rent or his medical costs. His last wish is to die in his home, but he cannot afford this option. 

Robert Anton Wilson will one day be remembered alongside such literary philosophers as Aldous Huxley and James Joyce. (I don't know about that.)

 But right now, Bob is a human being in a rather painful flesh-suit, who needs our help. I refuse for the history books to say he died alone and destitute, for I want future generations to know we appreciated Robert Anton Wilson while he was alive.

If Bob Wilson changed your life, send him $23 dollars now.

Another envelope plops in, followed immediately by another, and another, they are clogging in the letter box; then the whole door starts to strain - eventually bursting open - and an avalanche of envelopes pours into the room.

Bob, all white long beard and twinkly eyes, stares in delighted disbelief.

After the night of October 23rd 2013, when I first told this tale, £23s began to roll in, and we went on to raise over £23,000. Enough to stage the whole four-hour epic seven times in Liverpool and London in 2014, and to create The Find the Others Festival of Robert Anton Wilson and his ideas. (The name was inspired by Timothy Leary’s answer to an earnest seeker: “What do you do after you’ve turned on, tuned in and dropped out?” Dr Leary: “Find the Others”.

Since then the Others have gathered from all over the country and beyond. Festival 23 this summer was a celebration of all things RAW and Discordian. Fanzines, books, magazines are flying off the press as a direct result of RAW’s inspiration. Giant puppets of Burroughs, Watts and Leary stalk the land; Discordian cabarets, rituals, parties and talks are popping up all over the place.

Daisy Eris Campbell 

And for the ten-year anniversary of Bob’s death next year in 2017, we plan to pilgrimage to Santa Cruz where the mayor declared 23rd July, Robert Anton Wilson Day.

What we are proposing is this:

In the next couple of weeks we launch a website — ForTheLoveOfBob.net — the premise of which is simple, yet heroic: It is a list of every single thing the production will need to go ahead, with a space for someone to pledge their name next to each thing.

By this approach, we believe we'll bring more than the show – we believe we’ll bring the magick. Asks will range from performers/musicians to set-builders, anecdote providers, flyer-deliverers, a sofa to put someone up, food bringers, folk with a spare wig, or a talent for make-up or lighting etc etc...

We’ll be the Grit if you’ll be the Pearl. Yes, And! We can do this: For the love of Bob.

***

Bust of Carl Jung with rainbow knickers, from The Daily Grail. 

After the first night of Cosmic Trigger in Liverpool, a group of us pilgrimaged to the bust of Jung, and some blokes who really should have known better hoisted me up to place a pair of ceremonial rainbow knickers upon his head. And I cried out, “May our minds be blown – but just right!”

And as I looked up at the be-knickered bust of Carl Gustav, I realized why the dream of Liverpool was so important: It was the moment he realized he was finally out of Freud’s arsehole.

[Next week we are back on track with the final chapter of Cosmic Trigger, Via Dolorosa (235). As always, comment frequently, and with good humor. —Charles Faris.]

Cosmic Trigger reading group, Week 26!

Robert Shea

By Charles Faris, Cosmic Trigger online reading group guest blogger 

PART III: Trigger

The frontispiece for this chapter is the first not to use a quote by Aleister Crowley. There is an astrological chart of some sort, the cosmic baby from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the John Dunne Quote that launched a million graduation speeches: Each man’s death diminishes me for I am involved in humanity.

Over it all stands Nuit, graceful and impassive.

Is this where Bob experiences a cosmic rebirth?

Trigger: A Final Fable

From the Egyptian

Bob retells the story of Isis and Osiris, emphasizing the help of Thoth in stopping “the wings of time,” as well as a mysterious Black Rite which contains a certain Secret of Secrets which is not 100% fathomable by Earthbound humans and will only be reveal when we ditch the planetary nest and get interstellar.

Sirius Rises Again

The Author recounts three recent Sirius related tales. He introduces us to another 1973 Sirius Contactee, then reveals that the 5 pointed star of Freemasonry, which weaves in and out of the history of the Sirius Mystery from Aleister Crowley to the ancient Egyptians, absolutely for sure on very good reliability represents Sirius, before asking the big question: Am I pulling a cosmic triggerO

Being as The Skeptic is also the Starry Eyed Optimist he goes on to proclaim that “we are all pulling a cosmic trigger.” I love that vision that Bob had back in 77. I lived inside it from 1979 to 1989; space cities and genetic mutation to order—my eighties experience! Is it any wonder that the subtitle of Cosmic Trigger II (1990) is Down to Earth?

Blood of the Gods

If revealing the context of the title is a marker of sorts, a pre-climax perhaps, Blood of the Gods sets a certain ominous tone and then starts out as a sort of “catch-up with Bob” session, in which our hero reports with glee that he is suspected of being an inter-stellar hybrid except he has the wrong blood type, and then tells us the story of the 18 hour stage production of Cosmic Trigger in Liverpool on November 23, 1976. (More about this in a bit.)

Interesting here Bob’s statement the he and Bob Shea wrote Illuminatus! with the express aim of “trying to do to the state what Voltaire did to the Church—to reduce it to an object of contempt among all educated people.” I have to say that this is probably Bob’s greatest hit; public trust in government hovers around 23% (it’s true!) and people are so disgusted that they are seriously considering voting for joke candidates and a carny con man for president! Note that to Bob this production is a ritual disguised as a play, just as Discordianism is a new religion disguised as a complicated joke.

Bob catches us up some more: he reveals that he is “still living in Jung-land” as he tells us a tale of UFO’s in the Bermuda Triangle, and fills us in on his correspondence with 4 (possibly 5!) Real Heads of the Illuminati.  I’d love to read those letters!

Antonin Artaud

The last big hunk of this chapter is devoted to a description and discussion of Antonin Artaud’s 1933 one act play There is no more firmament, in which Sirius approaches the Earth and destroys the image of “the firmament’ in the thought patterns of humanity, and chaos descends.

The chapter closes with a nice riff on sanity and insanity, told in The Author’s droll and cynical voice, a nice counterpoint to the previous chapter’s credulity-stretching optimism. (Although I was there in the late 70’s—there was High Magic in the air and we were in the habit of thinking up 5 impossible things before breakfast. I’m fond of the notion that Bob saw the McKenna 2012 scenario as equally probable as interstellar flight to Sirius, High Orbital Mini Earths, and Physical Immortality. He was very invested in the Jumping Jesus phenomenon in those days, and for compelling reasons as we shall explore soon.)

So how about a nice session of “catch-up with everyone?” Where are you all at in your Cosmic Trigger journey? Look back at the past six months please and catch us up! What triggers are you pulling?

Ken Campbell

Next week a special interstitial post by Daisy Eris Campell on how the Illuminatus! ritual staged by her father Ken Campbell led to the birth of her own Cosmic Trigger: The Play as well as how Cosmic Trigger (the book) is her twin, and much more of humor, wit, and positive spirit.

Cosmic Trigger online reading group, Week 25!

Image of the Buddha

By Charles Faris, Cosmic Trigger reading group guest blogger 

Welcome to week #25 of the Cosmic Trigger Reading Group, in which we wrap up PART TWO: Models and Metaphors. This week we are looking at The Octave of Energy (214) and The law of acceleration (219), the first of which seems like the final pitch for the biggest of the big ideas in Cosmic Trigger (8-Circuit Theory) and the second of which provides that essential ingredient for suspense and engagement — the sense that time is speeding up or running out (“immanentize the eschaton” anyone?).

The Octave of Energy

Patanjali

This little chapter is a very concise attempt to tie a lot of things together — cabala, tarot, astrology, I Ching, yoga, evolution, physics, chemistry, oh my. As noted on page 218, The Game of Life gives an exhaustive view of this glass bead game of correlations; here we just get a taste.

Pythagoras

Bob does a lot of name dropping here — Pythagoras, Leary, Crowley, Buckminster Fuller, Buddha, Patanjali, Kepler, Mendeleev, Gurdjieff — and attempts to correct a historic injustice (John Newline being laughed out of the Royal Chemical Society for daring to think up 8 families of chemicals a decade before Mendeleev), all while attempting a sort of “support by association” case for that big idea of 8 brain circuits and all that they imply (terrestrial/post-terrestrial existence, etc.).

Timothy Leary

Lots of “idea dropping” as well — Octaves, I Ching, Noble Eightfold Path, 8 limbs of yoga. planetary motion, Periodic Table of Elements. Interestingly, Bob doesn’t really dive into music here, although it is certainly one of the most potent examples of the use of octaves, and interfaces extremely well with all of the states of consciousness explicated herein.

Kepler and his octave of planets

RAW also finishes with a salvo in the direction of his own brand of tantric non-dualism — “Any attempt to describe this octave as 'mystical' or as 'materialistic' misses the real point of Leary’s work.” (219)

Dmitri Mendeleev

A quick story about Mendeleev. When he broke Church rules and remarried without the standard 7 year cooling off period, Tsar Alexander III is reputed to have said—“Mendeleev has two wives, yes, but I have only one Mendeleev.” Unfortunately for Timothy Leary, official sentiment for his breakthroughs was not quite so enthusiastic.

The law of acceleration

This riff is certainly familiar with any regular reader of RAW, and while it is certain that there is acceleration of some sort playing out globally, in this local Universe everything didn’t go “jackpot around A. D. 2012.” Of course, neither Tim nor Bob nor Terence lived to see that fantastic non-occurrence. (I wonder how Dennis McKenna feels about that?)

Robert Anton Wilson

So—what happened? Of course, it could be that the idea was nothing more than a good idea, without real legs to move it along to fruition. Then again, maybe there is something to that notion that “most of the world falls in the category between 100% proven or 100% disproven. And we live among millions and millions, or as Carl Sagan would say, billions and billions of maybes, and only a few definite yes’s and no’s here and there. And they’re usually only temporary.”

And what of the possibility that the Grand Triumvirate of Trippers — Leary, Wilson, McKenna —weren’t wrong, only a bit naive about the strength of the power structures on Planet Earth, and the inability of living scientists, politicians, business moguls etc to wrap their heads around something just a little too far-out. Such that only the ARTISTS could grok it. And of course there was the crack-down on psychedelics, which pulled the advance edge back to circ5.

Of course, the Law of Octaves doesn’t describe a smooth and even course, as we can see on the musical scale in the difference in navigating from A to B and from B to C. And there is still a lot in here to dig out, even 40 years later with no BINGO in sight.

Terence McKenna

And even today, Bob’s writing is so compelling and speaks to a desire for the sort of Chaotic Harmony that dissolves the barriers between Mysticism and Materialism, Liberalism and Conservatism, the Eristic Illusion and the Aneristic Illusion that, just like Fox Mulder in The X-Files, I Want To Believe. Then I look at my calendar and think “maybe that’s what belief will get you.” Ah well, 40 years ago it was closer to the bone when RAW wrote: “As the McKennas say, it is hard to avoid hyperbole in trying to contemplate what this means.” And then the acid supply got dialed way down.

Okay — that’s it for this week. Next week we begin PART THREE: Trigger, from A FINAL FABLE (225) through Blood of the Gods? (229).