Stanislaw Lem and Philip K. Dick, the Polish view

Stanislaw Lem, Polish science fiction writer and Philip K. Dick fan. 

Yesterday was the birthday of Stanislaw Lem (1921-2006), the famous Polish science fiction writer.

Lem's interactions with Philip K. Dick, a writer many Robert Anton Wilson fans also enjoy, were interesting, as this article from last year by Matt Davies from Culture.pl recalls. 

Lem was famously hostile to American SF, insisting to the point of absurdity that it was all junk. (In hindsight, this feels like jealousy that he was ignored in the U.S. for years while becoming famous in the rest of the world. His resentment, if that's what was happening, seems understandable). The one exception Lem allowed was Dick. Lem thought Dick was "A Visionary Among the Charlatans," as Lem put it in an essay.

Dick repaid this praise by writing a crazy letter to the FBI in 1974, revealing to the feds that Lem, “probably a composite committee rather than an individual," was the main force behind a Communist conspiracy to control American minds.

Even then, it was pretty easy to figure out that Lem was an actual person. It's also an odd conspiracy that depends upon getting Americans to read a Polish science fiction writer in translation. I made a point of reading some Lem and enjoyed his work, but I doubt most American SF readers bothered. Science fiction fans with literary inclinations did read him, but I never saw any sign that Lem developed a mass following in the U.S.

Dick also made crazy accusations about Thomas M. Disch, as this piece notes. 

Cosmic Trigger online reading group, Week 23!

Charter members of the Fundamental Fysiks Group: Jack Sarfatti, Saul-Paul Sirag, Nick Herbert, Fred Wolf

By Charles Faris, Cosmic Trigger reading group guest blogger

Welcome to lucky week 23 of the RAWIllumination Cosmic Trigger Reading Group. This week we take a look at ERP and Bell’s Theorem (193) and “see what modern physics has to offer.”

Esalen Institute co-founders Michael Murphy and Dick Price

Of course, what Bob called “modern physics” in the mid 1970’s is not what we would call modern physics today. And of course, like Bob, I am not a physicist. The Author’s primary sources for information on the relationship between physics and consciousness were members of the Fundamental Fysiks Group, which included Jack Sarfatti, Nick Herbert, Fred Wolfe, Fritjof Capra, and Saul-Paul Sirag. Many of the members of this group also made up the Physics-Consciousness Research Group, which was founded by Sarfatti and Michael Murphy (of the Esalen Institute) and funded in part by Werner Erhard of EST fame.

Fritjof Capra

Werner Erhard

At the time that Bob was writing Cosmic Trigger the PCRG approach was white hot, and best-sellers such as Space-Time and Beyond (1975—Fred Wolfe), The Tao of Physics (1975—Capra), and The Dancing Wu-Li Masters (Gary Zukav—1979) were high in the public consciousness. The Zukav book in particular, partially ghost written by Sarfatti, Bob’s primary source for New Physics in CT, was a big hit and set the tone for the popularization of anything that mixes Quantum Mechanics and Eastern Mysticism into a frothy stew. Today we have Deepak Chopra, Amit Goswami, and Michio Kaku, all of whom are prone to much more Pronouncement and much less Model Agnosticism than Bob, which could explain a bit about his life-long financial struggles (but I digress).

Gary Zukav

Deepak Chopra

Amit Goswami

Michio Kaku

Of course there was also a lot of push-back from The Skeptics, led by The Amazing Randi and his famous million dollar prize, which has yet to be collected, although this is hardly surprising given that PSI, ESP, and Telepathy etc. seem to operate more in a Quantum Chaos throw the dice manner, whereas Randi wants proof that looks more Newtonian Classical, like “put that damned particle through the left slot EVERY TIME, dammit.” Again, not much Model Agnosticism going on.

The Amazing Randi

Since The Author wrote Cosmic Trigger a lot has changed as far as interpretations of Quantum Mechanics go, and there are now at least 13 competing (and perhaps commingling) interpretations currently.

Since he was apparently Bob’s primary source in the writing of Cosmic Trigger, I contacted Jack Sarfatti and asked him to bring us up to date on the information presented in this chapter. Bearing in mind that the following is Jack’s particular reality tunnel, it may perhaps be best to utilize this chapter as a historical view—if anyone has a well-written contemporary piece of similar intent and agnostic attitude, please let us know!

Herewith is my email interview of Sarfatti regarding the info in ERP and Bell’s Theorem:

CF: ERP “proves” that if Quantum Mechanics is “true” this requires instantaneous contact between some particles, even if at opposite ends of Universe.

JS: Not accurate. Back when it was written it was plausible, but no longer.
Quantum entanglement is very fragile, and for particles out in space, the initial entanglement will almost certainly be destroyed by collisions with other particles.
Even if it was not, it is of very little consequence since actual message using entanglement alone is not possible in quantum mechanics.

CF: BELL’s theorizes 3 possible interpretations of the ERP effect—QM fails, OBJECTIVITY fails, LOCALITY fails.

JS: Not accurate. Back when it was written it was plausible, but no longer.

We now know through the work of Yakir Aharonov, Huw Price, Ken Wharton, and Rod Sutherland, that the only way to correctly understand quantum theory is through OBJECTIVE LOCALLY REAL RETROCAUSALITY in which future "destiny" causes post-determine what happens in the present in addition to the common sense past "history" causes. OBJECTIVE LOCAL RETROCAUSALITY is the only way to understand quantum entanglement without violating Einstein's special and general theories of relativity.
FASTER-THAN-LIGHT NONLOCALITY never happens directly. It is a mirage, the effect of OBJECTIVE LOCAL RETROCAUSALITY as probably first explained in the 1950s by O. Costa de Beauregard as the "zig-zag" also used by John Cramer in his "transactional interpretation." Indeed, so long as the entanglement is not destroyed by environmental decoherence, the statistical correlations do not depend on the space-time separation between the localized strong measurements on each particle in the entangled network.

Quantum uncertainty (e.g. Heisenberg) in the present is only because we must integrate over all possible future destiny causes. Therefore, our quantum theory using only past causes is incomplete as Einstein correctly thought. When one includes future destiny causes "God does not play dice with the universe." However, because quantum theory does not allow stand-alone quantum entanglement messaging, the usual Heisenberg uncertainties apply as a pragmatically useful effective description for simple scattering experiments on dead matter. This situation changes for those degrees of freedom responsible for life and consciousness in open complex systems with long-range quantum coherence (as first discussed by Herbert Frohlich). The situation changes for living matter, which is a POST-QUANTUM THEORY effect.

CF: If QM fails, then we have a Whole New Ball Game—I assume we are not at this juncture.

JS: Yes, we are. QM fails for living matter. We now have a Bohmian Pilot-Wave/Beable Post-Quantum-Theory PQM that explains living matter. It solves the "hard problem" of David Chalmers i.e. how our conscious "qualia" fit in with laws of physics and it opens up the door for new kinds of super-technology.

CF: If Objectivity fails we might have an Observer-Created World, which would allow for Psychokinesis, and/or Many World’s Model, which allows for Time Travel without paradox.

JS: No, the "observer-created world" is largely a fantasy. It's the same as believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. One does not need to sacrifice objectivity to allow for psychokinesis, and time travel to the past without paradox. That is a wrong idea that was plausible in the 1970s when Bob wrote Cosmic Trigger, but no longer.

CF: If Locality fails we have Superluminal Information Transfer, which allows for ESP and Extra-Terrestrial Communication, and/or Synchronistic Acausal Connections, which is like a Jungian World.

JS: No, again this is muddled. There is never Superluminal Information Transfer SIT - that is Fool's Gold that we all bought for a long time. What we have is PQM OBJECTIVELY LOCALLY REAL RETROCAUSAL ENTANGLEMENT MESSAGING THAT ZIG-ZAGS IN SPACETIME AND WHICH IS MISTAKEN FOR SIT. It's AS IF there is SIT, but in fact it is BACK FROM THE FUTURE PQM messaging.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.00039.pdf

above is picture of the objective locally real but back-from-the-future retrocausal zig-zag that explains the MIRAGE the Fool's Gold of FTL spooky action

it's really BACK FROM THE FUTURE SPOOKY ACTION - that does not violate Einstein's relativity.

Bottom line—everything R A Wilson wrote over 40 years ago was how we thought back then, but no longer.
We have advanced significantly since then.

Other useful links are

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0AipdgHRtI

https://vimeo.com/171013596

https://vimeo.com/171178181

If you would like to see how Jack writes when he is not trying to be simple, this is worth a look: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/progress-post-quantum-theory-consciousness-augut-27-2016-sarfatti?articleId=7008179474198465064

If this subject is of particular interest to you I recommend How the Hippies Saved Physics, which is mentioned quite a few times right in this blog. Nick Herbert’s Quantum Tantra blog is also a good place to explore if you are interested in a contemporary gloss on this sort of thing, and his book Quantum Reality is still a good look at Quantum Mechanics from the more psychedelic POV, even if it is 30 years old. Jack Sarfatti is active on Facebook and has an active blog as well. [You can also follow @JackSarfatti on Twitter — The Management.]

Okay — that’s about it as far as the physics goes. If anyone has any interesting insights into this intellectually challenging area please share them with the group. Next week we change tack and look at the Leary 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness with Tunnel-Realities and Imprints (201).

RAW ambition

John Higgs

Back in July, British author John Higgs, just endorsed in the New York Times by Alan Moore,  kindly did a guest posting for our ongoing Cosmic Trigger online discussion group, and wrote about how Daisy Campbell faced a difficult problem in her stage adaptation of the book — how to explain the eight circuit theory without bogging down the action of the play. As he demonstrated with a video clip, she took a daring but successful approach:

"Yeah, that’s right, she turned it into a song and dance number with the personal dramas of other prisoners utilised to illustrate eight circuit theory, and she threw in a Beastie Boys reference to keep it light. She basically had a creative problem that was extremely difficult, and she solved it by making her task much harder. This is similar to the approach Alan Moore took with the chapters in the last third of his epic novel Jerusalem, where he designed every chapter to be essentially impossible to write in order to keep things interesting, for himself as much as for his readers. Sometimes wild ambition is the only sensible approach."

Later in the piece, Higgs returns to the idea:

"Do we lack the intelligence to imagine a future worth building? Here I think Daisy Campbell’s staging of this chapter, and Alan Moore’s approach to writing, can help us. When you have a difficult path ahead, intelligence alone isn’t enough. You need ambition too. Leary knew that, when he took the baton from Crowley.

"When you look over Bob’s work, it is striking that no book he wrote was easy – both in terms of explaining what it is about, as well as the challenge of actually writing it. There was a level of ambition to his books, which raised them above the general tone of the 70s counterculture and which is why we are still talking about them today. You can see why Tim Leary like Bob Wilson so much."

I wanted to note here that Robert Anton Wilson's most popular work, Illuminatus!, also was his most ambitious. It was so ambitious that Dell didn't know what to do with it at first after buying it, and finally cut it and divided it into three pieces. One of my other favorites, and the favorite of many of Wilson's readers, The Widow's Son, also is quite ambitious in structure, with an unusual use of footnotes that cite spurious sources as well as real ones.

Saturday links

Just because: Crater lake photo in Ecuador Tweeted by Charles Davis. 

Beyond Psychedelics, a conference that starts in the Czech Republic on Sept 30. (Fixed, after a commenter noted my mistake.)

The United States is carrying out airstrikes in six countries. 

Philosophically, open borders is a moderate position. 

Peter Thiel on "this year's most important political lesson." 

"On Compulsive Diarists, of Which I Seem To Be One." (Michael Johnson).

Alan Moore in the New York Times

Alan Moore

One of my favorite bibliophile features anywhere is the New York Times' "By the Book" feature, in which a famous person is quizzed, using pretty much the same set of questions, about what they like to read.

Modern literary culture being as vast as it is, usually the persons interviewed have interests that verge from mine, although of course I enjoyed the Nick Offerman piece.  But the latest is an interview with Alan Moore, and it turns out I like a lot of the same authors he does (besides Robert Anton Wilson).  Bless him for mentioning how great John Higgs is, and here are some of his favorites: "Pynchon; Coover; Neal Stephenson; Junot Díaz; Joe Hill; William Gibson; Bruce Sterling; Samuel R. Delany; Iain Sinclair; Brian Catling; Michael Moorcock (his currently underway “Whispering Swarm” trilogy is astonishing); Eimear McBride; the remarkable Steve Aylett for everything, and in particular for his indispensable and quietly radioactive “Heart of the Original”; Laura Hird; Geoff Ryman; M. John Harrison; screenwriter Amy Jump."

Moore doesn't mention Robert Anton Wilson, but the interview focuses largely on living writers, so that's apparently why.

Hat tip, R.U. Sirius on Twitter.

A really good Adam Gorightly interview

Adam Gorightly

Over at Secret Transmissions, Jeff Wolfe does an interview with "crackpot historian" Adam Gorightly about the Manson cult, conspiracy theories, Donald Trump, and other topics. This is a long, thorough interview, and everyone who reads this blog should look at it. I particularly liked Adam's explanation of the conspiracy theory scene in the 1960s and how Wilson and Shea used those theories in writing Illuminatus! Adam also appears to have discovered where Donald Trump gets many of his conspiracy theories.

In his intro, Jeff writes, "What makes Gorightly stand apart is his keen sense of humor and healthy skepticism. After suffering through much hysteria myself, it was refreshing to come across a researcher unbent by a political or religious agenda. What I've found in his writing is a curious man, fascinated by the truly unbelievable synchronicities that lay right there just beneath the surface of some of histories most arcane events." This is true, but I would also add that I admire Adam's hard work when he researches a topic, and his modesty about expressing an opinion when he hasn't done the research. See for example this question and answer:

JEFF: What did you make of Gov. Jerry Brown overturning the California review board’s decision to grant Leslie Van Houten parole?  Do you think Brown really believes that she poses “an unreasonable danger to society” or more that she deserves to die in prison because of her crime? Or is the decision purely a safe political move for him to make?

ADAM: It’s hard to answer that without looking at what evidence was presented at the parole hearing, and admittedly I didn’t review any of that, so I probably can’t give a fair assessment if keeping her locked up was justified.

Just viewing it from a distance, I would doubt Van Houten is much of a threat at this point, but it’s become such a political hot button issue still after all these years, and what Governor wants to be remembered as the guy who approved the release of one of the notorious Manson Family members?

Michael Johnson, on asthma, mystics and artists

Aleister Crowley, asthma sufferer 

I was on vacation last week, and as part of that, I tried to avoid staring at my computer and smartphone for hours every day. Consequently, I am trying to get caught up on items I missed.

One of them was Michael Johnson's piece on the relationship of asthma to creativity; it turns out that many artists and mystics have suffered from asthma (as does Michael, who in addition to being a writer also is a musician who plays the guitar and gives guitar lessons.) Interesting piece, with good contributions in the comments. And it was Charles Faris' ongoing Cosmic Trigger pieces here that got him going.

German public radio plans RAW documentary

The German equivalent of the BBC or National Public Radio is the ARD, which has both TV and radio broadcasts. ARD is an abbreviation for "Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland." (Consortium of public broadcasters in Germany.) 

A German radio journalist is traveling to California in a few weeks to work on a planned German public radio documentary on Robert Anton Wilson.

The journalist's name is Maximilian Netter. He has lined up interviews with Adam Gorightly, Richard Rasa, Christina Pearson and Douglas Rushkoff, so he has good sources.

More Adam Gorightly news soon.

In other German news, Rasa reported in the latest RAW Trust newsletter, "We feel saddened but honored to take a moment to mention the passing of Dieter Hagenbach, the first publisher of Bob's books in German. As the founder of Sphinx Publishing he also brought to the German language the works of Joseph Campbell, H.R. Giger, George Gurdjieff, Jean Houston, Timothy Leary, John Lilly, Terence McKenna, Alan Watts, and others. Working closely with his friend Albert Hofmann, Dieter was a life-long proponent of the intelligent use of psychedelics. Farewell to a kind soul."

Cosmic Trigger online reading group, Week 22

Image of Dagon 

By Charles Faris, Cosmic Trigger online reading group guest blogger

Welcome to week 22 of the RAWIllumination Cosmic Trigger Reading Group. This week we are diving into the first chapter of PART TWO: Models and Metaphors (185), including FURTHER FABLES AND ALLEGORIES, and The Sirius Evidence. 


PART TWO opens just as PART ONE did so many weeks ago, with an awesome John Thompson illustration of a quote by Aleister Crowley illustrating, in more poetically concise language this time around, the Author’s notion of Model Agnosticism and the power of Doubt to refresh itself eternally while Faith always inevitably suffers and dies at the hands of newfound evidence.Bob then goes on to offer three fables which flesh this notion out, just in case you need him to slip you a convincer.

From the Sufi we discover that Doubt belongs to Eternity, From the Jewish we learn that Logic can lead to a sore nose, and From the German we learn something about the limits of our Knowledge. The stage thus set, the Author now goes about recapitulating The Sirius Evidence.

The Sirius Evidence

The question is this: “Have real honest-to-God extraterrestrials from Sirius been meddling in the affairs of this backward planet?” Because we’ve all theoretically read the previous 200 pages, and because this chapter is relatively short, I am going to stick to little things I have noticed that may shed some light or perspective on this little Summation of Evidence.

Jim Garrison

Page 189—Is Bob’s use of Garrison’s term “propinquity” (which word actually refers to physical or psychological proximity, as in "he kept his distance as though afraid propinquity might lead him into temptation" and which according to Google hit peak popularity in 1926 and began a steep decline in use beginning in, wait for it, 1973) a hidden code that all of this “coincidence” may be just that, meaningless coincidence? Recall that all of Garrison’s evidence never added up, and ultimately contributed to the downfall of Kerry Thornley.

Page 190—Bob asks, "Is it possible that the French anthropologist who collected the Dogon legends about Sirius — Professors Griaule and Dieterlen – – are a pair of hoaxers?” A few other possibilities—the Dogon were goofing on Temple, and had obtained knowledge of Sirius b from earlier anthropologists…which is the Carl Sagan stance, although that actually seems more far-fetched to me than some of the more “outrageous” ideas.

Interesting to note here the Dogon/Dagon connection, which ties in H.P. Lovecraft, whose name is the 5th “word” of this book! And for those interested in how the Pope’s hat figures into all of this…

Page 191—"Over and over," Bob writes, "one wishes that Temple had read a little in modern occultism to supplement his seven years of research into the Egyptian and Babylonian mysteries." If Temple had done his homework then Bob would have had much less to offer to the conversation!

Assyrian image

191—Temple surmises physical contact in Sumeria ca 4500 B. C., and traces this tradition via secret societies etc through Egypt, the Near East, and Greece until the 5th century AD and the neoplatonist Proclus.

191—Bob surmises telepathic contact and connects it to “the secret tradition of Tantra and sex magick in the West, the tradition of which Crowley was the latest public representative.”

192—nifty chart

193—Bob links the Crowley and Gurdjieff traditions back to that same 4500 B. C., including contact with Sirius, and decides that the most economical explanation of all this seems to be that an Earth-Sirius communication has occurred at least once, probably several times.

I have to think that Bob also pondered on many a dark and star-filled evening—“How the hell did I tap in to this channel?”

So what do you think? Does Bob make a good case? Did it seem so when you first read Cosmic Trigger? Does it seem so with 40 years under the bridge?

Next week we look at ERP and Bell’s Theorem (193) and “see what modern physics has to offer.”

New print Quantum Psychology, new RAW memorabilia auction

A photograph of the new print edition of Quantum Psychology, in northern California

Hilaritas Press, the publishing imprint of the RAW Trust, has just issued the new print edition of Quantum Psychology. The announcement is in the latest RAW Trust newsletter, available here. 

For those of you who tuned in late, RAW's estate has been publishing new, definitive editions of his works, both in print and as ebooks. So far, Cosmic Trigger I, Prometheus Rising and Quantum Psychology have been issued, in both formats. 

The new edition of Quantum Psychology features a new introduction by David Jay Brown, and also an index of names and bibliography by Charles Faris, who is currently leading our online discussion of Cosmic Trigger I. 

Email to the Universe is planned as the next volume. 

The newsletter also has an announcement that a new auction is planned for some of Robert Anton Wilson's personal effects, including clothes that he wore, books that were in his library, art objects from his home, and so on. No date for the online auction has been announced, but see these details from Christina Pearson.  I will post an update when it becomes available. 

Timothy Leary's speech on the radio

I recently finished Jesse Walker's excellent Rebels on the Air, his alternative history of radio broadcasting in America, which devotes a great deal of space to community radio stations, a "third way" instead of commercial stations and government stations such as NPR. One of the stations he discusses is KRAB, formerly (1962-1984) a community station in Seattle.

Jesse forwarded me a recent email listing additions to the online KRAB archive, and one of them is a recording of a 1963 speech by Timothy Leary, "Beating the Game."  You can listen online. Here is part of the blurb:

"Timothy Leary speaking at the 2nd Annual Symposium on American Values at Central Washington State College, Ellensburg. His subject is the "Individual In The College Community - His Commitments and His Work". This was recorded just before Leary was fired from Harvard, and well before his Mexican misadventure. The slightly edited speech was later published in The Politics of Ecstasy, where it was retitled American Education as an Addictive Process and Its Cure.

"This recording was incredibly popular on KRAB, played at least eight times between 1963 and 1979, after which it disappeared. There was so much interest that someone at KRAB transcribed it and made copies available for $1.00 each."

A quick look at the archives reveals material from Alan Watts, more Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Tom Robbins, Thich Nhat Hanh and other persons of possible interest.

Did RAW ever appear on any community radio stations, and are there relevant archives?

Robert Anton Wilson's personal tech ecosystem

I am interested in how people use technology, so I enjoyed reading Tyler Cowen's recent blog post, "My personal tech ecosystem, updated." He hates texting, carries his iPad wherever he goes, doesn't use his smartphone very much.

Robert Anton Wilson working on his 2000 Orange Jelly iMac. Photo courtesy Rasa. 

This naturally made me wonder what RAW's personal tech ecosystem was in the last few years of his life, so I made inquiries. Here is what I learned.

From Rasa:

Bob was very enthusiastic about new technology. He loved the idea and potential of Internet. Sadly, he never had enough money to really explore new tech products. His computer from 2000 on was a 2000 Orange Jelly iMac. I don’t remember what he had before that, but it was also a Mac. I remember one day visiting Bob and Arlen in their Brommer St apartment in Capitola in 1995. I think Bob had just gotten his first email account, but he was having trouble getting it to work. I checked his email settings, and they seemed okay. The next day I got this email from him:

Dear Rasa,

This is just a test. If they don't send it back, then I finally
got your email address right and I'll send a letter that
has gotten rejected for wrong address twice now...

the mgt
Hide quoted text

As a reply, I sent him a list of famous people’s answers to "Why did the chicken cross the road?” Bob was one of the famous people in the list which was diverse to say the least. Some of the other famous people were: Machiavelli, H.P. Lovecraft, Douglas Adams, Aleister Crowley, Carl Jung, Buddha and Werner Heisenberg. The entry someone wrote for Bob was not very inspired:

Because agents of the Ancient Illuminated Roosters
of Cooperia were controlling it with their Orbital
Mind-Control Lasers as part of their master plan to
take over the world's egg production.

Maybe Bob liked it, but in any case, instead of offering his response to the question, he sent the following email:


From mgt Mon Mar  6 15:09:17 1995
Subject: Re: Mrs Hahn
To: the mgt
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 95 15:09:10 PST
From: the mgt
Cc: rasa@hamp.hampshire.com
In-Reply-To: ; from "the mgt" at Mar 6, 95 2:18 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL0]


Dear Rasa:

Thanks for the chicken jokes. A few more I thought of:

Thomas Jefferson: All hens are endowed by Nature and Nature's God
with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life,
liberty and the pursuit of the other side.

James Joyce: An ova eggspressed! Mrs. Hahn, Cock's wife,
flapped up a stormin drang (one louve, one fear) and, like
any tennis son, charged like a lewd brigade, clucking
and clacking like a horsenfifer, nobirdy avair soar
anywing like that load allmarshey.

Bart Simpson: I will not use the school chicken as a frisbee.
I will not use the school chicken as

Oscar Wilde: This chicken problem has many depths,
but all of them are equally shallow.

Weekly World News: Nostradamus predicted chicken/UFO horror!

Charles Fort: Of course, I have heard of the "fourth dimension" but
whatever is wrong with me has not advanced to the point where I will
offer it as an explanation in a case like this. Maybe the damned
chicken just wanted to see the other side.
Maybe.

Hannibal Lecter: I ate her liver. With fava beans.
And a fresh cranberry sauce.

the mgt
Hide quoted text

Bob took very quickly to email, and his list of a little more than 20 friends expanded to about 40. That group became known as the GroupMind. I’m not sure who coined the name, perhaps Dr. Foo. 

Before the iPhone, probably at the end of 2002, I got a Palm Tungsten T5 where you could write out text by hand. It wouldn’t be translated into editable text, but at that time seeing your handwriting on your Palm device was pretty cool. In this photo I was showing Bob the new Palm and he was delighted to see his handwriting on the screen. 

"Here’s Bob’s second to last computer, the 2000 Orange Jelly iMac, now sitting in my office." Photo courtesy Rasa. 

"As far as video, Bob had a TV, a cable box and a VCR. This is a photo of the wall across from his couch in his Park Ave, Capitola apartment." Photo courtesy Rasa.

"Here’s a photo of Bob’s video shelf, turned sideways so you can more easily read the titles. Not the best photo. This one and the one above were used when we set up the auction some years ago." Photo courtesy Rasa.

When Bob became very weak, and Doug Rushkoff asked Bob’s fans to help him out financially, some of the money went to getting Bob a new laptop, a 17in Macbook Pro. It was a bit of a monster in Bob’s lap as he sat up in bed to use it. He didn’t do a lot on that machine, aside from surfing, he used it to send out his last few messages to family, friends and the world. Bob’s son Graham ended up getting that computer.

Apparently, he never had a cell phone. From Rasa, again:

As far as I know he did not have a cell phone. I think he really didn’t need one, and in the last months he was not going anywhere. In any case, a new bill arriving each month was probably not an option. I hate to paint such a sad picture concerning his finances. After Arlen died, he lost a lot of interest in the mundane aspects of life, like paying bills and taxes. Getting such a crappy deal from New Falcon Publications certainly didn’t help. He could get grumpy in the face of it all, but Christina once told me that at one point Bob had a realization. He saw himself being grumpy, and also saw his health declining. He told Christina, "Why would anyone want to help me if I’m being an ass?” He made a conscious decision to change his attitude. I’m sure he had many moments of deep sadness after the loss of Arlen, but with his friends he let his magnificent intelligence and generosity of spirit shine brightly.

Eric Wagner weighs in:

I only visited Bob's home once, an apartment in Southern California in 1989. My cousin CJ and I picked up Bob and we had lunch. I planned to visit Dublin in a few months, and Bob drew a map of Dublin for me and made some suggestions about things to do on my trip. Bob had a computer then, but he felt scared of email because of potential viruses. He did enjoy playing sound clips - Monty Python, etc. - on his PC. He switched to Apple products a few years later and he said he preferred them.

I remember the wonderful emails Bob would send out to the Groupmind. Reading the Tail of the Tribe document reawakened those memories. Man, Bob would send out multiple emails every day. I remember when the Maybe Logic Academy started Bob said he would cut down on his emails. I mentioned to him how much I would miss them, so he arranged for me to take one of his Maybe Logic classes for free.

I remember Bob had an AOL email account, but he got blocked for something he posted. They said they would reactivate his account, but he felt censored and switched email accounts. I remember he had at least one fake email - Mark Chan. He would use it to make comments at alt.fan.rawilson and on our online Quantum Psychology group read.


I enjoyed rereading Bob's comments on the Cantos in The Tail of the Tribe. It brought back memories of typing in each Canto to mail out to our reading group, which included Bob Wilson and Mike Johnson.

RAW's desert island recordings

Iron Butterfly in 1969 

Eric Wagner once asked Robert Anton Wilson to write down his 10 favorite musical recordings. He couldn't lay hands on it when I asked to see it, but Michael Johnson tracked down his copy, so sharing it with you is a team effort.

1. Beethoven's 9th
2, Beethoven's 7th
3. Vivaldi: Four Seasons
4. Carmina Burana
5. Brandenburg Concertos
6. Goldberg Variations
7. Mozart's Piano Concerti
8. Beethoven's Piano Concerti
9. Joplin's rags on harpsichord
10. Iron Butterfly

I did not know there were recordings available of Scott Joplin's music on harpsichord; that sounds interesting.  I wish I could ask RAW what his favorite Mozart piano concertos were; I like #20, #21 and #24. I like Beethoven's Seventh Symphony a lot.

I'm going to say that Iron Butterfly is the surprise on this list.

More from Michael:

In Trajectories #12, Spring 1993, RAW mentions how great Gould's Goldberg Variations sounded as used in Silence of the Lambs.

In notes for MLA Sept/Oct 2004 someone asked RAW about his favorite music and he listed Beethoven's 9th, the Emperor Concerto, Four Seasons and Goldberg Variations.

New Libertarian, Sept 5, 1976: RAW writes, "Beethoven's 9th and his last quartets, Bach, Bizet, Orff, Vivaldi, the less popular and more experimental stuff by Stravinsky."

In the Dr. Jeffrey Eliot interview: jazz as American contribution to world music: "I think the Modern Jazz Quartet will some day be looked back at in the same way we look back at Vivaldi."

In Chaos and Beyone, p.166 RAW mentions listening to Bach and Ravel while testing out mind machines.

I asked him if he listens to his favorite music when he writes, and he said he'll have on the "light classical" station that he got through his TV package, but that his favorite stuff is too engrossing; it compels him to quit writing and listen.

In Everything Is Under Control, RAW writes he thinks West Irish music sounds African (p.355). In a letter to Kurt Smith RAW writes about West Irish music, genes, schizophrenia and music.

In TSOG, RAW quotes Nietzsche: "How good bad music and bad reasons sound when one marches against the enemy!" - Dawn, 1881

There's a lot more, or course. I think RAW's most articulate writing on music in in the Historical Illuminatus Trilogy, and I really love his phenomenological approach, almost always Siggy's nervous system speaking to us.

Also, as you both know, there are a handful of lines scattered throughout his books on jazz and pot. In addition to MJQ, he's mentioned Bird and Monk.

In Masks, p.108, use of "voodoo drums" adds to tone of Sir John Babcock's paranoid state, and I always think this bit was related to a film both RAW and I love: I Walked With A Zombie.

From Eric Wagner:

When Bob gave a talk in Phoenix in 1988 he came to my house for our Thursday Finnegans Wake reading group. He asked me to play Beethoven's Emperor Concerto and then Beethoven's Triple Concerto, but at the time I didn't have a CD of the Triple Concerto. Then for a change of pace he asked me to put on the Goldberg Variations. Over at rawilsonfans they have a list I asked Bob to make of his ten favorite CD's.

Rasa weighs in:

I heard him talk more about Beethoven than any other artist. He did like jazz but was curious about anything that might tickle his senses. We regularly gave Bob our new Starseed CDs, and I know he liked it when I brought my sitar and Marlis brought her tamboura over to his house. I don’t know how much he listened to our CDs, but he did write a wonderful near-Haiku about our peculiar sound,

"This music - intricate yet melodic as Bach,
 austere as a Zen shrine, sensory as a massage
 - seems like aural eroticism to me."

In the piece "Credo," in Right Where You Are Sitting Now, Wilson writes, "I believe in Bach, the creator of heaven and earth, and in Mozart, his only begotten son, and in Beethoven the mediator and comforter; and inasmuch as their gods have manifested also in Vivaldi and Ravel and Stravinsky and many another, I  believe in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of error and mind everlasting."