Robert Anton Wilson

SLEEP-WALKING AND HYPNOTISM by Robert Anton Wilson Buddhists, semanticists and hypnotists know that we not only use words but are also easily mesmerized by them. Hypnotists in real life seldom have to use glittering jewels or shining mirrors as they do in films; the ordinary domesticated primate can be hypnotized quite quickly and easily with words alone, spoken in proper cadence and with abundant repetition. Advertisers try to hypnotize us all the time, and judging by the fees they collect from satisfied clients, they are doing very well at it. Having used hypnosis in my psychological seminars for nearly 20 years now, I am-quite prepared to agree with G.I. Gurdjieff and Colin Wilson that most people can be said to be hypnotized most of the time, and that the professional hypnotist only switches them from their habitual trance to a different trance.
In fact, when I first started using hypnotism I was astounded that so many people went into deep trance quickly when I was only attempting to induce light trance. It was many years before I understood fully Gurdjieff's insistence that most people are sleep-walking in a deep trance state most of their lives. Now I am only astounded that many people actually come out of their trance often enough to remember, occasionally, what they intended to buy at the supermarket.
.....I have always dreaded both Ideology and Theology, because they make people cruel. It now appears to me that ordinary men — and occasionally ordinary women — do monstrous things for their Ideologies and Theologies only because politics and religion function largely, like advertising, through hypnotism and self-hypnotism.
.....Every Theology and every Ideology, it seems to me, is an endeavor in hypnotism and self-hypnotism. If there is one thing that everybody knows in common sense — when they are in "their right minds" and not hypnotized — it is that "all generalizations are hazardous" and that individual cases are each unique. The function of Theological and Ideological hypnosis is to forget this common sense and follow a robot-program that evades the responsibility of thinking and feeling anew in each unique situation. It is not just the other gang's Theology or Ideology that is nefarious: all Theology and Ideology is nefarious. It is a form of sleep-walking in which we can do monstrous things because we are not alive, awake and aware of who we are, where we are and what is going on around us.

Christianity is alone in thinking that sex is entirely the Devil's business and an offence to God, This is a strange doctrine and almost implies that God and the devil must have collaborated on the creation of humanity, God working above the belly button and the Devil below(166).

The average American male reaches orgasm in one and a half minutes, and usually performed in a dark room, so that it ca be finished furtively before the sex-hating Christian God has time to notice what is going on(167).

Much of the alchemical literature of Europe now appears to be a coded tradition of drug-and-sex programming.....This code is especially notable in The Chemical Marriage of Christian Rosycross (1615), which forms the visible link between traditional alchemy and modern Rosicrucianism. The mystical rose and cross from which the Rosicrurians take their name are, in fact, no more or less than the vagina and the penis, respectively...(For the curious, here is the rest of the traditional symbolism, as given by Louis T. Culling in his Manual of Sex Magich Cucurbit—the vagina; retort—the same, during copulation; eagle—the vagina, or the female mouth, depending on the context; lion—the penis; transmutation—the sexual "peak experience"; elixer of life—the semen; quintessence—the semen as transmuted by ritual and ecstasy.) ----Sex and Drugs by Robert Anton Wilson p66

"The only way to stave off boredom, in a complex domesticated primate like humankind, is to increase one's intelligence. This is not appealing to the average primate, who instead invents emotional games (soap opera and grand opera dramatics)."--Robert Anton Wilson

"It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea."--Robert Anton Wilson

"We're living on the Planet of the Apes. Is that funny or serious?"--Robert Anton Wilson

According to the latest [wobbly] figures, since Gush and Bore each got the vote of [roughly] 25% of the eligible voters, and Nobody got the vote of [roughly] 50%, then Nobody won. Adding the "protest votes" for Nader, Browne etc., Nobody won even bigger, around 55%. since in this carefully rigged system, third party votes are, in effect, votes for Nobody. The people who voted for those "minority" candidates certainly didn't expect them to win; they just expressed their contempt for the 2 Lying Bastards more actively than those of us who just stayed home, got stoned and looked at Three Stooges videos.

I celebrate the majority with Whitmanesque rhapsody. The so-called Elite-- specifically, the 1/2 of 1% who own damn near everything, especially the politicians and the media -- spent THREE BILLION DOLLARS on this malign fiesta and still couldn't convince most of us that a choice between two over-rouged old whores like Gush and Bore matters a damn. http://www.rawilson.com/prethought.shtml

"The major open functions of Mystical Tsarism now are the Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA] and the Food and Drug Administration [FDA.] You all know about the DEA and its vast army of snoops and informers -- a vision to gladden the heart of Pobedonostsev himself. The FDA operates similarly but with less publicity; it was described in these terms by Saul Kent of the Life Extension Foundation: "The FDA's strong-arm tactics are used to intimidate and terrorize Americans into toeing their police-state line on health care and medicine." In 1957, the FDA burned all the books of dissident physician Wilhelm Reich, M.D., smashed his laboratory equipment with axes, and threw him in jail, where he died."--Robert Anton Wilson

How, how, how did we ever get ourselves in a predicament where an Oriental-style despot controls American medicine and most doctors fear to prescribe what they think best for their patients?

Faith and docility are the bulwarks of Tsarism; any hint of scientific knowledge, rationality or even plain "horse sense" among the serfs are its major worries, and it blocks them every way it can. No Tsar will ever lavish such praise on scientists or other professional skeptics as McCaffery lavishes on the faithful and the sheep-herders who lead and fleece them.

Whoever speaks a sentence to another human may pronounce a blessing or a curse without even intending this. Remember this the next time you get angry.

My perennial candidate, Nobody, scored another stunning victory. The majority of citizens simply ignored the Gush/Bore/TSOG Control Machine, and "voted for Nobody," i.e. didn't vote at all. Unlike alienated artists of the past, I belong to the majority party -- the millions who looked over the candidates and decided they trusted Nobody.

Robert Anton Wilson:

I regard "ideology" and "morality" as the two most dangerous forces on this planet. About "ideology" I have expressed my suspicions elsewhere; here I will only mention John Adams's verdict that shortening "ideology" to "idiocy" would save some space and add a great deal to clarity. He had the French Revolution in mind, but "ideologists" haven't changed much since then, have they?

As for "morality" -- or "moralic acid" as Nietzsche called it -- I consider it the major cause of almost all the major atrocities not caused by "ideology." This wonderful invention, "morality," allows people -- normal, ordinary people -- to do things so cruel and violent that they could never bring themselves to do them for selfish reasons. What the sociopath and sadist do for fun, the "moralist" does on behalf of "duty" or "justice." "Morality," today, allows Moslems to stone women to death, as it once fuelled the Christian witch-hunts. "Morality" has excused every war, and glorified some of them. "Morality" constantly plots to subvert the Constitutional guarantee of free speech. "Morality" inspires gay-bashing and the bombing of women's clinics. Why, without "morality" we might all suddenly go stark staring sane.

My vision of Utopia would include a hell of a lot more kindness and mercy than we have now, and a hell of a lot less "morality.' http://www.rawilson.com/prethought.shtml