Quotes from Robert Anton Wilson

Unless you stop to ask what coincidence means. I think it means two incidents are associated: co-incidence: coordination of incidents. So, then, to explain two associated incidents (prayers for rain followed by rain) by saying coincidence is to say that the two incidents were associated because the two incidents were associated. That may be soothing enough, but it is hardly analytical.

A social field might be considered a type of energy-field that is highly variable.

THE GREAT RITE – at the end of each Sabbat Rite, the ancient ones had to "Earth" the power that had been raised within the Circle so that the power raised would not remain in the atmosphere afterwards. They earthed the power by committing the "Sex Act," which brought them down from the mystical to the material level. Each Sabbat Rite ended with this act and it was called "The Great Rite.

You, a male, have to have a business meeting with a Feminist who expects all, not sombunall, men to act unfairly or brutally. You try to remain calm and judicious, but her attitude annoys you more and more. Eventually, her hostility keys off your hostility. A prophecy has fulfilled itself: you have proven to her that her view of men as dangerous creatures has just had itself confirmed one more time.

Around the world today are millions living in the Marxist reality-tunnel, the vegetarian reality-tunnel, the Buddhist reality-tunnel, the nudist reality-tunnel, the monetarist reality-tunnel, the Methodist reality-tunnel, the Zionist reality-tunnel, the Polynesian totemistic reality-tunnel etc.

My good friend Joel Fort, M.D., a rare bird who is both a psychiatrist and a sociologist, repeatedly tells me, when I recount such tales to him, that there is no scientific proof of cause-and-effect LSD influence in these transformations. "There is no proof," he repeats, "that a drug alone causes such changes. All the evidence suggests, rather, that the ideas that are fashionable in the drug-using world are the causative factor in such conversions.

Or: you, an Afro-American, confront a cop who knows all, not sombunall, Afro-Americans are violent and dangerous. He uses excessive force. You get angry and fight back. You have just confirmed your suspicion about white cops — and he has confirmed his suspicion about Afro-Americans.

None of Dr. Leary's most important studies have either suffered refutation or enjoyed confirmation, because enacted law — statutes enacted after and because of Dr. Leary's research — makes it a crime for any other psychologists or psychiatrists to replicate such research. I know you've heard that the Inquisition ended in 1819, but in many areas of psychotherapy and medicine, the U.S. government has taken up where the Vatican left off.

The information in a message equals the negative of the probabilities that you can predict what will come next every step of the way. The easier you can predict a message, the less information the message contains.

In summary: the bio-survival circuit is DNA-programmed to seek a comfort-safety zone around a mothering organism. If a mother isn't present, the closest substitute in the environment will be imprinted. For the orphan giraffe, a four-wheeled jeep was chosen to stand in for the four-legged mother. The gosling who could not find the round, white body of the mother-goose fixated a round, white ping-pong ball.

I refer the cynical reader back to the 31-year-old scientist quoted earlier who said "I can feel myself actually fusing with the other person – it is difficult to know even anatomically what part of myself is me and what part is the woman." He was not even using ritual programming to get that result; the drug alone led him there, and it was only comparatively weak marijuana, not the stronger hashish.

That's the kind of question that got Carl Jung thinking about synchronicity (universal resonance) which is a little bit like Sheldrake's morphogenetic field and also, coincidentally, a little bit like the non-local effect in quantum mechanics.

When the San Francisco Chronicle first computerized they had similar problems. I remember one story in which the Chief of Police, denouncing drugs, rambled off into a sentence about the thrill of meeting Mickey Mouse and Goofy. I assume that line came from another story but it made the Chief sound as if he had gotten into some weird chemicals himself.)

Norbert Weiner once simplified the meaning of this equation by saying that great poetry contains more information than political speeches. You never know what will come next in a truly creative poem, but in a George Bush speech you not only know what will come next, you probably could predict the whole speech, in general, before he even opens his mouth.

Medical researchers know that every innovative therapy produces its best results when new, and some therapies only produce results when new. For instance, the once-touted cancer cure, Krebiozen produced several notable cures in its early days, but nobody has reported any cures with Krebiozen in around 30 years now. In cases of this sort, the enthusiasm of the researchers somehow communicates itself to the patients, who then give themselves permission to get well.

Behind the Arab influence, it is now agreed by historians of mysticism, was an Indian tradition known as Tantra – the yoga of touch, which includes the yoga of sex and inspired the famous erotic temples that every American tourist photographs to astonish his friends. It is within Tantrism that we must seek the transformation by which this sexual mysticism evolved from naive fertility magic (a rite to make the crops grow) and became a form of consciousness expansion.

Under the magnification of LSD, this kind of neurotic racing-the-clock becomes impossible; since every moment is eternity, there is no possibility of rushing anything.

Researchers don't do certain kinds of research because they don't want to get thrown into San Quentin, as happened to Dr. Leary.

To the extent that we remain conscious of this process of superimposing structure (programming our emic reality) we will behave liberally and will continue learning throughout life. To the extent that we become unconscious of this process, we will behave Fundamentalistically or Idolatrously and will never again learn anything after the hour at which we (usually unconsciously) elevate a generalization into a dogma and stop thinking.

Nobody knows who they were or what they were doing, but they left a legacy. — This Is Spinal Tap

The same magnification effect probably explains why some users have found that, for them, LSD is a sexual turn-off, an anaphrodisiac. Under this lens, such persons confront their own negative attitudes toward sex in expanded and enlarged form, and with no possibility of hurrying past them at a blind gallop. If such remnants of puritanism are strong enough, sexual interest is quite overwhelmed by them. This may even be the beginning of a memorable bad trip.

Don't you think we all go a little mad sometimes? —Psycho

The results are astonishing. Over 70 percent of all dysfunctioning couples – where one or both have not had an orgasm in years – often achieve climax within two weeks after starting this Tantric program. The explanation, according to Dr. Masters, is that anxiety about orgasm is the principal cause of failure, and once the anxiety is removed, the natural happens by itself, spontaneously – tsu-jan, "of its own nature," as a Taoist would say.

Only 18 scientists in the whole country had the intellectual integrity to protest this book-burning when it occurred in 1957. You can decide for yourself whether the silence of the rest of the scientific community represents hundreds of thousands of unrelated individual cases of moral cowardice and insensitivity to civil liberties, or if it collectively represents a "social force.