Quotes from Robert Anton Wilson

1. We can say it is waves. 2. We can say it is particles. 3. We can say it is both waves and particles, i.e. either of the first two will serve, at different times. 4. We can say It is neither waves nor particles, i.e. the models are our metaphors; the Etic non-verbal event remains — unspeakable.

Whenever one of these groups is busted for possession of a drug, though, the newspapers generally headline the event, "Manson-style cult raided," and ma and pa in the suburbs shiver with images of knives glittering in their heads.

This, of course, is the traditional Buddhist logic — It is X, it is not-X, it is both X and not-X, it is neither X nor not-X

But, even if this explanation be granted, the wonder and the beauty of some of these images continue to haunt the drug experimenter. As Jung himself has said, "It is pointless to deny the gods, when confronted with forces that act just as the gods are supposed to act.

Ex-Catholic," he said. "Very ex. I don't give a damn for all that misty-mystic blah-blah. I go to the Episcopal church here occasionally, but just for appearances. The atomic theory explains all the philosophical questions I ever wanted to ask.

To Buddhist Tibet, this is the unity of yab and yum; to Taoist China, the unity of yin and yang. The Occident perennially seeks to repress this thought, and perennially is haunted by half-awareness of it.

We can talk meaningfully about the tuned-in but not about the not-yet-tuned-in.

Sebastian's homosexuality, we eventually learn, had resulted from his mother's attempts to enforce the neurotic condition she calls chastity upon him. (This type of cannibalism by parents upon children is, of course, the chief feature of organized religion, and the principle theme of most of Williams' works.)

If by some miracle I have managed to make sense out of this issue, where physicists themselves seem to have trouble understanding one another, the basic point of Copenhagenism seems to be similar to my own Nietzschean-existentialist view that the nonverbal or preverbal world never contained meters or kilograms or ergs of energy or photons or good or evil or beauty or meaning until primate nervous systems (human minds) put them there as systems of classification.

Too old and too respectable to be considered sinister, Louis T. Culling has headed a sex-occult group called the G.B.G. (Great Body of God) since the 1930s. In A Manual of Sex Magic, published in 1971, Culling frankly admits his debt to Crowley's teachings. Only in an appendix does he grant that some find that this magic works even better with marijuana, and then he adds that the G.B.G. does not recommend this since it involves breaking the law.

Moral: Hang on to your Elmyrs, folks. They, too, may become Historical Curiosities. And remember: a counterfeit dollar, hung in a museum as found art by Andy Warhol, will have a value in the hundreds of thousands, whereas a "real" dollar, blessed by the Wizards in the Federal Reserve, will retain its meager face value until inflation reduces it even further.

Dr. Leary was sentenced to 37 years imprisonment in 1970 for alleged possession of one cannabis cigarette, a crime then usually punished in the States by six months. He was released in 1976, amid a carefully orchestrated rumor campaign claiming he had become an informant for the FBI. He is now engaged in the manufacture of computer software. LSD has become, like heroin, a monopoly of the CIA and the Mafia.

It is amusing (or bemusing) to note that binary and I Ching are not only isomorphic to FW but also, as Martin Schoenberger has noted, to the genetic code. The full details are explained in Dr. Schoenberger's The I Ching and the Genetic Code; for our purposes here it is enough to note the following:

Pessimism is for lightweights There is no straight white line It's the bumps and curves and obstacles That make this road yours and mine Pessimism is for lightweights This road is never easy or straight And living is all about living alive and lively And love will conquer hate

We begin to realize that, once these issues are raised, it doesn't really matter whether a man believes in God or not. God, after all, is just a short-hand symbol for our attitude toward the nature of the universe.

Indeed, the East which accepts the unity of good and evil, yin and yang, with such equanimity, has never forgotten that if the evil is omnipresent, why, then, so must be the good.

We are beginning to have that technology. For instance, biofeedback makes it possible to get into yoga meditation and tranquillity very easily compared to what yoga used to be. It used to be years to make any progress at all. With biofeedback you can make a lot of progress in two or three weeks.

But this later bit of bilocation-by-editing (Welles in Paris prompting Elmyr in Ibiza) also blatantly reminds you of what the editing room suggests: Orson has orchestrated everything to create, not a "normal" documentary, but a satire on the mind-set that believes in documentaries. Just like the "war of the worlds" satirized those who believe in official media versions of the news.

And Norma Jeane, the neurotic woman who created and became Marilyn Monroe? She grew up with a typically American adoration of Abraham Lincoln, a perfect father-symbol for orphans everywhere; I suspect that when she climbed into bed with Jack Kennedy she really thought she was climbing into bed with Lincoln and history. Nobody had warned her that History is a blood sport, and the only one in which innocent bystanders are the principal victims.

Social fields are real enough that, as psychologists have demonstrated, people react visibly when you come within their personal space: they become defensive or nervous. Social fields are not real enough to remain constant, as physical fields do, or usually do. They vary from culture to culture. An American reacts nervously when you get within one foot of him, but a Mexican wants you that close and becomes nervous if you stay further away.

Similarly, the Russians discovered, in the 1920s, that an actor ordered to show no emotion as he looks out a window will seem to show any emotion the director wishes, if in the editing we, the audience, see something outside the window. Do we see a dying child? The expressionless actor seems to project grief so deep it cannot find expression yet. A dog playing? The same actor with the same non-expression seems to project quiet amusement . . .

In Buddhist Logic, then: Social fields are real. Social fields are not real. Social fields are both real and not-real. Social fields are neither real nor not-real.

A field that depends on what people believe is unthinkable to a Fundamentalist Materialist, but social studies seems to need such fields.

And any domesticated primate alpha male, however cruel or crooked, can rally the primate tribe behind him by howling that a rival alpha male is about to lead his gang in an attack on this habitat. These two mammalian reflexes are known, respectively, as Religion and Patriotism. They work for domesticated primates, as for the wild primates, because they are Evolutionary Relative Successes. (So far.)