Prometheus Rising Quotes

“When we meet somebody whose separate tunnel-reality is obviously far different from ours, we are a bit frightened and always disoriented. We tend to think they are mad, or that they are crooks trying to con us in some way, or that they are hoaxers playing a joke. Yet it is neurologically obvious that no two brains have the same genetically-programmed hard wiring, the same imprints, the same conditioning, the same learning experiences. We are all living in separate realities. That is why communication fails so often, and misunderstandings and resentments are so common. I say "meow" and you say "Bow-wow," and each of us is convinced the other is a bit dumb.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“Human society as a whole is a vast brainwashing machine whose semantic rules and sex roles create a social robot.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“The easiest way to get brainwashed is to be born. All of the above principles then immediately go into action, a process which social psychologists euphemistically call socialization.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“All that we "know" is what registers on our brains, so what you perceive (your individual reality-tunnel) is made up of nothing but thoughts—as Sir Humphrey Davy noted when self-experimenting with nitrous oxide in 1819, and as Buddha noticed by sitting alone until all his social imprints atrophied and dropped away.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“In summary, Intelligence Intensification is desirable, because there is not a single problem confronting humanity that is not either caused or considerably worsened by the prevailing stupidity (insensitivity) of the species: badly wired robots bumping into and maiming and killing each other.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“Nothing in this book is an attempt to prevent the really resolute misery addicts from continuing their pursuit of frustration and failure.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“As Dr. Leonard Orr has noted, the human mind behaves as if it were divided into two parts, the Thinker and the Prover.

The Thinker can think about virtually anything.
(...) The Prover is a much simpler mechanism. It operates on one law only: Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves. To cite a notorious example which unleashed incredible horrors earlier in this century, if the Thinker thinks that all Jews are rich, the Prover will prove it. It will find evidence that the poorest Jew in the most run-down ghetto has hidden money somewhere. Similarly, Feminists are able to believe that all men, including the starving wretches who live and sleep on the streets, are exploiting all women, including the Queen of England.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“There is a Zen story (very funny — ha-ha) about a monk who, having failed to achieve “enlightenment” (brain-change) through the normal Zen methods, was told by his teacher to think of nothing but an ox. Day after day after day, the monk thought of the ox, visualized the ox, meditated on the ox. Finally, one day, the teacher came to the monk’s cell and said, “Come out here — I want to talk to you.” “I can’t get out,” the monk said. “My horns won’t fit through the door.” I can’t get out . . . At these words, the monk was “enlightened.” Never mind what “enlightenment” means, right now. The monk went through some species of brain change, obviously. He had developed the delusion that he was an ox, and awakening from that hypnoidal state he saw through the mechanism of all other delusions and how they robotize us. EXERCIZES”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“Bio-survival anxiety will only permanently disappear when world-wide wealth has reached a level, and a distribution, where, without totalitarianism, everyone has enough tickets.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“Believe it possible that you can float off the ground and fly by merely willing it. See what happens.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“Every authoritarian structure can be visualized as a pyramid with an eye on the top. This is the typical flow-chart of any government, any corporation, any Army, any bureaucracy, any mammalian pack. On each rung, participants bear a burden of nescience in relation to those above them. That is, they must be very, very careful that the natural sensory activities of being conscious organisms — the acts of seeing, hearing, smelling, drawing inferences from perception, etc. — are in accord with the reality-tunnel of those above them. This is absolutely vital; pack status (and “job security”) depends on it. It is much less important — a luxury that can easily be discarded — that these perceptions be in accord with objective fact.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“In speaking of the human brain as an electro-colloidal biocomputer, we all know where the hardware is: it is inside the human skull. The software, however, seems to be anywhere and everywhere. For instance, the software “in” my brain also exists outside my brain in such forms as, say, a book I read twenty years ago, which was an English translation of various signals transmitted by Plato 2400 years ago. Other parts of my software are made up of the software of Confucius, James Joyce, my second-grade teacher, the Three Stooges, Beethoven, my mother and father, Richard Nixon, my various dogs and cats, Dr. Carl Sagan, and anybody and (to some extent) any-thing that has ever impacted upon my brain. This may sound strange, but that’s the way software (or information) functions.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“Imagine that you are a monkey and you’re running along a path past a rock and unexpectedly meet face to face another animal. Now, before you know whether to attack it, to flee it, or to ignore it, you must make a series of decisions. Is it monkey or non-monkey? If non-monkey, is it pro-monkey or anti-monkey? If monkey, is it male or female? If female, is she interested? If male, is it adult or juvenile? If adult, is it of my group or some other? . . . You have about one fifth of a second to make all these decisions, or you could be attacked.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“We all have this circuit and need to exercize it periodically. Cuddling, sucking, hugging etc. and daily playing with (a) one’s own body (b) another’s body and (c) the environment, are perpetually necessary to neurosomatic-endocrine health. Those who deny such primordial functions because of rigid imprinting on the Third (rationalistic) or Fourth (moralistic) circuit tend to become “dried up,” “prune-faced,” unattractive, “cold,” and muscularly rigid. The baby-functions of playing with one’s own body, another’s body and the environment continue throughout life in all animals. This “playfulness” is a marked characteristic of all conspicuously healthy individuals of the sort Maslow calls “self-actualizers.” If this initial imprint is negative — if the universe in general and other humans in particular are imprinted as dangerous, hostile and frightening — the Prover will go on throughout life adjusting all perceptions to fit this map. This is what is known as the “Injustice Collector” syndrome (in the language of Dr. Edmund Bergler). The female members of this imprint group become Radical Feminists; the male members are less organized and can be found in fringe groups of the extreme Left and extreme Right.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“To understand hardware and software (as applied to the human brain) perform the following meditation. Sit in a room where you will not be disturbed for a half hour and begin thinking, “I am sitting in this room doing this exercize because . . .“ and list as many of the “causes” as you can think of. For instance, you are doing this exercize because, obviously, you read about it in this book. Why did you buy this book? Did somebody recommend it? How did that person come into your life? If you just picked the book up in a store, why did you happen to be in just that store on just that day? Why do you read books of this sort — on psychology, consciousness, evolution etc.? How did you get interested in those fields? Who turned you on, and how long ago? What factors in your childhood inclined you to be interested in these subjects later? Why are you doing this exercize in this room and not elsewhere? Why did you buy or rent this house or apartment? Why are you in this city and not another? Why on this continent and not another? Why are you here at all — that is, how did your parents meet? Did they consciously decide to have a child, do you happen to know, or were you an accident? What cities were they born in? If in different cities, why did they move in space-time so that their paths would intersect? Why is this planet capable of supporting life, and why did it produce the kind of life that would dream up an exercize of this sort? Repeat this exercize a few days later, trying to ask and answer fifty questions you didn’t think of the first time. (Note that you cannot ever ask all possible questions.) Avoid all metaphysical speculations (e.g., karma, reincarnation, “destiny” etc.). The point of the exercize will be mind-blowing enough without introducing “occult” theories, and it will be more startling if you carefully avoid such overtly “mystical” speculations.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“If I am so fortunate as to be listening to the Hammerklavier sonata, the only correct answer, if you ask me suddenly, "Who are you?" would be to hum the Hammerklavier.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“Beethoven, to cite him one more time, said “Anybody who understands my music will never be unhappy again.” That is because his music is the song of the Sixth Circuit, of Gaia, the Life Spirit, becoming conscious of Herself, of Her powers, of Her own capacities for infinite progress.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“This cyclical view of history, whether in Joyce, Rattray Taylor, Vico (Joyce’s source), Hegel-and-Marx, etc. is only part of the truth, but it needs to be stressed because it is the part that most people fearfully refuse to recognize. Whether we speak in terms of Taylor’s Matrist-Patrist dialectic, Vico’s cycle of Divine, Heroic and Urbanized ages, the Marx-Hegel trinity of Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis, or any variation thereon, we are speaking of a pattern that is real and that does repeat. But it only does so to the extent that people are robotized: trapped in hard-wired reflexes.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“One faith-healer told the present author, "Most people die of adrenaline poisoning." In our terminology, most people have too much first-circuit anxiety and second-circuit territorial pugnacity for their own good. They are literally struggling for survival, as no other animals do, despite Darwin. Most animals simply play most of the time, solve problems of survival when they have to, or die of not solving the problems; only humans are conscious of struggling, and hence worried and depressed about the Game of Life.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“If you think you know what the hell is going on, you're probably full of shit.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“Of course, industrialism (the Second Wave) produced much illth along with its new wealth; and most of the wealth was ex-(or ap)-propriated by a minority. However much this may pain socialists, it was inevitable in a domesticated primate species. A few alpha males can always see their own advantage more clearly than the majority can see their collective interest.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“What we are saying is that every conspiracy regards itself as an affinity group — men and women who share the same goals and work together well. When you and I do it, it is just an affinity group. When that gang over there does it, it is a damnable conspiracy.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“I feel great and I send fraternal greetings to Dr. Andrei Sakharov in Russia,” said Dr. Leary on emerging from prison, registering the fact that the mechanisms of the police state are the same everywhere, as are the myths that protect them. “Good Russians” believed Dr. Sakharov was a half-crazed alcoholic, just as “Good Americans” believed Dr. Leary was a half-crazed dope-fiend.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“Adequate communication flows freely between equals. Communication between non-equals is warped and distorted by second-circuit Domination and Submission rituals perpetuating communication jam and a Game Without End.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“He doesn’t think it is any crazier than anybody else’s reality-tunnel, and he claims it is a lot more fun than any other.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“The vegetarian does not “see” (experience) meat on a rack in the butcher shop the same way the meat-eater sees it. The racist does not see a member of another race as, say, that person's parents do. More generally, as the Poet tells us: “The Fool sees not the same tree that the Wise Man sees.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“There are a lot of different realities going around these days,” Abbie Hoffman once said. Evolutionary acceleration is forcing us to the point where each will have to take responsibility for which reality we accept.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“And once you have built that bigger, funnier, happier universe of thought, build a bigger and better one, for next month.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“Remember that this computer is only a few decades ahead of present technology, so it cannot “understand” your commands if you harbor any doubts about them. Doubts tell it not to perform. Work always from what you can believe in, extending the area of belief only as results encourage you to try for more dramatic transformations of your past reality-tunnels.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

“Dr. John Lilly says, “In the province of the mind what is believed true is true or becomes true within limits to be learned by experience and experiment. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind there are no limits.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising