Sex, Drugs & Magick Quotes

“Life is one, but consciousness is divided. It is the stress of the divided consciousness that every visionary is seeking to deal with.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick: A Journey Beyond Limits

“There can of course be no doubt that any sort of addiction, whether to opiates, barbiturates, or alcohol, is always an evil and always involves slavery. Society, however, when it shoulders responsibility for preventing such abuse, treads on very slippery ground. The real situation tends to become clouded by misconceptions, and legislation is often enacted which tends to aggravate the very evils it was intended to prevent. Robert DeRopp, M.D., Drugs and the Mind”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“Satori is the Japanese word, used in Zen Buddhism, for the highest type of unification experience. It is known as Samadhi (union with God) in Hinduism. According to Dr. John Lilly’s hypothesis, it is expansion of ego-awareness into those areas of the biocomputer that are usually unconscious or stored with rejected information. Christian theologicans call it union with the “totally other”. ~•~”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“This is precisely the sort of thing that occurs on an LSD trip. The difference is that the noise and newly created information is coming in at the tripper, not just through words on a page, but through each of the senses, including the 17 senses that modern science has discovered in addition to the traditional sight, sound, touch, smell and taste.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“If you hypnotized somebody and told him not to use the word “nose,” and then asked him to explain the sense of smell, you would get the same kind of drifting linguistic snow banks in his answers. Intellectuals, who have more abstractions stored in their biocomputers, are more skilled at this than most, but all can do it to some extent.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“It’s possible that a meteor will come hurtling in from outer space and wipe out this whole city.” And so on. The neutral and objective view that covered any other experience in Holy Out’s life just couldn’t reach the area of the first shot; that was permanently buried under everything he had ever read about the causes of deviant behavior.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“That kind of cliché, which used to be endemic in true-detective magazines and tabloids, is utter rubbish. Heroin addicts are always impotent; or, if there are any exceptions to this rule, they are few and far between. They never become “high” in the sense that pot smokers, speed freaks, cokeheads or even boozehounds become “high.” Basically, they behave like nobody so much as your Aunt Matilda since the doctor put her on heavy tranquilizers. Heroin is, indeed, a heavy tranquilizer itself.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“King Lamus draws the moral of the story, quoting from Crowley’s own Book of the Law, in which the goddess Nuit says, “To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet and be drunk thereof. They shall not harm thee at all.” After admitting that this might “tempt people to be foolhardy,” Lamus says: . . . if you read it carelessly and act on it rashly, with the blind faith of a fanatic, it might very well lead to trouble. But nature is full of devices for eliminating anything that cannot master its environment . . . The only excuse for using a drug of any sort, whether it’s quinine or Epsom-salt, is to assist nature to overcome some obstacle to her proper functions. The danger of the so-called habit-forming drugs is that they fool you into trying to dodge the toil essential to spiritual and intellectual development. But they are not simply man-traps. There is nothing in nature which cannot be used for our benefit, and it is up to us to use it wisely . . . And every man and every woman is a star. The taking of a drug should be a carefully thought-out and purposeful religious act. Experience alone can teach you the right conditions in which the act is legitimate, that is, when it will assist you to do your will.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“* This is mentioned so often in marijuana literature that some readers in the United States, where overeating is endemic, may wonder why it is important. Here’s why: Many pre-psychotics and psychotics actually do themselves considerable harm by complicating their mental problems with cases of malnutrition, due to a distaste for food. Getting them to eat again is often an important part of their therapy. (It is even believed by some advocates of the nutritional theory of psychosis that the loss of appetite is the modus operandi by which a disturbed person graduates to psychosis; the malnutrition may start the chemical processes that lead to paranoia or hallucination.) Others who need to have appetite stimulated include heroin addicts and “speed freaks” (abusers of the amphetamine drugs).”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“In India, recreational use of cannabis seems to go back to around 500 BC and one myth claims it was given to mankind by Shiva, god of sex, intoxication and mysticism; in other versions of this legend, Shiva is actually incarnate in the Indian hemp plant. From about that time to the present, Indian doctors have prescribed cannabis extracts for dysentery, sunstroke, indigestion, lack of appetite and other conditions. Shivites use it in their religious worship, and other sects believe it is useful as spiritual preparation for reading holy writings or entering sacred places.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“Masters of Tantric yoga are said to be able to continue the act of love for seven or eight hours or longer. This has nothing at all to do with supposed “secrets of muscle control” allegedly known only to the master yogis, or similar rumors and myths that are published in occult magazines. It is just a mental set, based on the “no orgasm” rule and the attitude taught by Masters and Johnson to their therapeutic subjects. According to Louis Culling, practitioners of traditional sex rituals of European occultism easily learn to prolong the act to two or three hours before allowing the orgasm to take place. (Culling admits that a little cannabis helps in acquiring the proper meditative or trancelike attitude.)”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“Whether or not one drinks the elixer from the “consecrated Chalice,” this basic concept is always the same as the Roman Catholic Mass, except that one is seeking communion with a goddess, not a god, and the physical body of the beloved female partner forms the “magical link” through which the divine presence begins to manifest itself. The ultimate is not merely communion with the divinity, but actual union, and (no matter how skeptical one may be in advance, or think that one is) this happens fairly easily with the right programming (ritual) and especially with a good grade of hashish.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“Nobody can take an acid trip more than about once a week, whatever you may have read in the tabloids. This is becausd LSD has an unusual “tolerance” effect, which comes on quickly and goes away just as quickly. In general, anyone who takes a dose of acid within three of four days of their last trip will get no effect at all. A waiting period is, therefore, built into the drug.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“* Perhaps, in the year 2598, some historians will claim that there never were “hippies,” while others will claim that hippies existed but didn’t actually smoke marijuana, and a third group will insist that the hippies, always stoned out of the skulls on belladonna, ran through the streets attacking innocent bystanders.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“These “green revolutionaries” do not believe that we must forever impotently fall short of the bull’s-eye. They refuse to admit original sin, or inborn neuroses, or even the theosophists’ “Lurker at the Threshold” (one who supposedly eats the heads of those people rash enough to invade the higher planes without an invitation). They will not accept the perpetual barrier between desire and reality lamented by T.S. Eliot in his poem “The Hollow Men.” According to Eliot’s quite orthodox Christian view, there is a “Shadow” that always falls between “the idea and the reality,” “the desire and the spasm,” “the motion and the Act.” This Shadow is, of course, Original Sin and by definition no man or woman can remove it.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“It is common underground lore that repeating a consoling mantra (such as the famous Om Munnee Pudmeh Hom! or even a prayer from one’s childhood in Sunday school) often quiets such an anxiety attack. It is also known that holding, cuddling or petting with a loved person also has this sedative effect. Many trippers, therefore, might have found themselves praying and balling, without any knowledge that this is an old tradition, but just to stave off paranoid and frightful feelings.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“While on the staff of a large magazine a few years ago, I wanted to print the fact that four grams of niacinamide (Vitamin B-3) will abort most bad LSD trips. The editors rejected this because “it might encourage kids to think they can take acid without risks.” Now, that argument may be valid, but it reminds me of the old assertion that automobiles should not have safety belts because such protection would just encourage drivers to be more careless. People who are going to be damn fools probably can’t be stopped no matter what restrictions are placed on them, but those who want to minimize risks should have safety information available to them.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“Years later, Dr. John Lilly was to write of certain types of transformations produced by LSD: For a time, the self then feels free, cleaned out. The strength gained can be immense; the energy freed is double . . . Adult love and sharing consonant with aspirations and reality (outside) gain strength . . . Humor appears in abundance, good humor . . . Beauty is enhanced, the bodily appearance becomes youthful . . . These positive effects can last as long as two to four weeks before reassertion of the old program takes place.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“Did something unique happen physically, or was it “only” psychological? As long as the experience was truly overwhelming for the participants, what purpose can such a question serve? (After all, happiness, bravery, zest and all the other desirable qualities can also be explained away as “only” psychological.)”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“(1) until the future arrives, the outcome is uncertain, so Doomsday scenarios, however popular, are not definitive and, for intellectual honesty and clarity, deserve to be criticized and challenged;”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“A popular fallacy holds that there are no non-objective realities: that objective reality is the “only” reality. The error of this view can clearly be seen when one contemplates the range of non-objective realities encountered and endured by different people on ordinary days, without any occult operations being performed at all:”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“As Count Bismarck once said, “Laws are like sausages: you have much more respect for them if you haven’t actually seen how they’re made.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“I do not dare assert that the "one" is actually a conscious mind in the same way that each of us is a conscious mind. It is found through the unconscious, and unconscious it probably is in essence. I can understand why many, bowled over by this experience, call it "God," but I still feel that all ideas of God are only symbols of the experience itself.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick: A Journey Beyond Limits

“1. Thou shalt not force thy neighbor to alter his consciousness. 2. Thou shalt not prevent thy neighbor from altering his consciousness.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“This is not a reification of the “one”; I do not dare assert that the “one” is actually a conscious mind in the same way that each of us is a conscious mind. It is found through the unconscious, and unconscious it probably is in essence. I can understand why many, bowled over by this experience, call it “God,” but I still feel that all ideas of God are only symbols of the experience itself. Certainly, this is true in the more anthropomorphic and less transcendental visions, when a very man-like god or womanlike goddess appears.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“Life is one, but consciousness is divided. That is, all of our unconscious bodily functions, such as breathing, digestion, the beating of our hearts, the biochemistry of our metabolism, and so on, are part of a seamless web that does, indeed, include the whole universe. More locally, we are cells in an explosion of protoplasm on this planet that began 3 billion years ago. (This is the key to Dr. Leary’s cryptic epigram, “Your body is 3 billion years old.”) The “body of Buddha,” as Buddhists call it, is, at any moment, in cybernetic contact with each of its parts. This does not involve anything spooky or metaphysical; what I have in mind can be illustrated by the experience of Dr. Ross Ashby, who tried to build an analog computer that would be a model of a generalized animal organism. Dr. Ashby found that such a machine could no more be designed than one could divide by zero in mathematics. It cannot be designed because the feedbacks, the information Bow channels, are not all inside the animal; many are in “the environment.” Dr. Ashby ended by designing his “homeostat,” widely used in biology and cybernetics classes. This is not a model of an animal; it is a model of an-animal-in-an-environment.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“By the same token, it is reasonable to suggest that perhaps people really do need religious experiences, whatever such experiences consist of. It is well-established, in LaBarre’s Ghost Dance, that a large number of people think they need such experience, and actively seek after it, whenever society faces a crisis that it cannot rationally understand. An earthquake alone will not necessarily trigger such a response, because an earthquake can be explained, more or less, within some traditional framework of ideas. But when the gods are mocked by missionaries of false and foreign gods, and take no revenge; when the sacred taboos are violated on all sides, and the gods still do not respond; when military defeats and other disasters occur in this perplexing context; when a man’s children are sold into slavery or his wife forcibly enwhored by the conquerors – then, some extraordinary explanation is needed, and it is at this point in time that the vision quest begins.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“Man needs dreams, as recent sleep research has well-documented. If you wake people up each time they start to dream (which is revealed by their rapid eye movements, which has led scientists to speak of REM sleep, meaning sleep with rapid eye movements and dreams), they will, within a few nights, become neurotic, irritable and slightly paranoid. No reputable researcher has continued this experiment for more than a few nights, because the evidence indicates real risk that the subjects might actually go totally mad. It doesn’t matter how much sleep they have had; if they aren’t able to dream, the same neurotic and near-psychotic behavior will appear.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“There might be something in what the man says, even if he is a Hindu mystic. He was once Dr. Richard Alpert, clinical psychologist, after all – and some of Washington’s explanations of the war in Vietnam and more recent wars have sounded, at least to me, suspiciously like Tyrone’s notions concerning the worldwide plot against his balls.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits

“Many of our Government officials drop amphetamine pep pills at a fantastic rate, especially those who have to jet around the world for conferences every week. They think they’re using it only to keep alert, but many of them really have the habit. The American people should seriously consider the extent to which our entire international policy is shaped by people who are chronic users of a drug known to produce paranoia and irrational hostility.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits