Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson or R. A. W. (born January 18, 1932) is a futurist thinker, libertarian, and author of the Schrödinger's Cat trilogy (1979), a complex spoof of conspiracy theories. He also co-authored (with Robert Shea) the Illuminatus! trilogy (1975), which humorously examined American paranoia about conspiracies. These books mix true information with imaginative fiction to engage the reader in what Wilson called "Operation Mindfuck". (Much of the odder material was derived from letters sent to Playboy magazine while Shea and Wilson were working as editors there.) In Cosmic Trigger I: Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977), he made Discordianism, Sufism, futurism, the Illuminati and other esoteric or counter-culture philosophies accessible to larger audiences. He is also a proponent of Timothy Leary's eight-circuit brain model and neurosomatic/lingustic engineering, which he writes about in Prometheus Rising (original copy, 1977, most recent, 1997) and Quantum Psychology (1990), books of practical techniques to break free of one's "reality tunnels". With Leary he helped promote the futurist ideas of space migration, life extension, and intelligence enhancement technologies; he is arguably a more cogent and persuasive exponent of Leary's "imprinting circuit" theory of psychological development than Leary was himself. Other fictional books by Wilson include The Historical Illuminatus series - The Earth Will Shake (1982), The Widow's Son (1985), and Nature's God (1991) - and the screenplay Reality Is What You Can Get Away With (1996). His nonfiction books include Quantum Psychology, The New Inquisition (1994), and two other volumes of Cosmic Trigger. He co-wrote Everything Is Under Control: Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-Ups (1998), an encyclopedia of conspiracy theories, with Miriam Joan Hill. In a 2003 interview with High Times magazine, R.A.W. described himself as a "Model Agnostic" - a term physicists use to describe someone who is not committed to any one model of how the world works. Wilson says that he is the first to apply this to the social sciences.

External links and references

\n*Wilson maintains his own website, which includes thoughts of the month, jokes, and many links to obscure and informative Internet sites.\n*Documentary movie about Robert Anton Wilson maybe logic - The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson\n*BlackCrayon.com: People: Robert Anton Wilson\n*Wilson and Miriam Joan Hill also maintain Blackops, a website of conspiracies which invites visitors to add their own.\n*Robert Anton Wilson Online Library - has every RAW interview and text on the web.\n*Smoley, Richard and Jay Kinney, "Doubt!: The Gnosis Interview with Robert Anton Wilson", Gnosis No. 50 (Winter 1999).\n*Krassner, Paul, A Paul Krassner Interview With R. A. W - High Times, 2003.\n*Wilson, Robert Anton booklist from New Falcon Publications\n*Robert Anton Wilson's political party Wilson, Robert Anton\nWilson, Robert Anton\n