The Illuminati Papers Robert Anton Wilson

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Science Fiction Review

Interview 2

Science Fiction Review: Could you tell us something about the authors and ideas that have influenced you? Are you a long-time science-fiction/fantasy fan? A neopagan or occultist?

Wilson: My style derives directly from Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Raymond Chandler, H. L. Mencken, William S. Burroughs, Benjamin Tucker, and Elephant Doody Comix, in approximately that order of importance. Chandler has also influenced my way of telling stories; all my fiction tends to follow the Chandler mythos of the skeptical Knight seeking Truth in a world of false fronts and manipulated deceptions. (Of course, this is also my biography, or that of any shaman.) The writers who have most influenced my philosophy are Aleister Crowley, Timothy Leary, Alfred Korzybski, and Karl R. Popper. Korzybski and Popper (and a few logical positivists) are absolutely necessary for epistemological clarity, especially when you get to the growing edge of science, where the hot debates are going on, and even more if you wander into the occult. Sci-fi and fantasy are my favorite forms of fiction; I think the so-called “naturalists” and “social realists” have committed high treason against humanity by selling their gloomy perspective as the “real” reality. A book that lacks the element of heroism is a crime against the young and impressionable, in my opinion. A book full of anger and self-pity is another crime. Needless to say, as a libertarian I don’t mean literally that these are crimes to be punished in court. The only final answer to a bad, sad book is to write a good, funny book. (I love debate and hate censorship. Accuracy of signal and free flow of information define sanity in my epistemology. I should have included Norbert Wiener among the primary influences on my thinking.)

As for neopaganism and the occult: I’m an initiated witch, an ordained minister in four churches (or cults), and have various other “credentials” to impress the gullible. My philosophy remains Transcendental Agnosticism. There are realities and intelligences greater than conditioned normal consciousness recognizes, but it is premature to dogmatize about them at this primitive stage of our evolution. We’ve hardly begun to crawl off the surface of the cradle-planet.

The most advanced shamanic techniques—such as Tibetan Tantra or Crowley’s system in the west—work by alternating faith and skepticism until you get beyond the ordinary limits of both. With such systems, one learns how arbitrary are the reality maps that can be coded into laryngeal grunts by hominids or visualized by a mammalian nervous system. We can’t even visualize the size of the local galaxy except in special high states. Most people are trapped in one static reality map imprinted on their neurons when they were naive children, as Dr. Leary keeps reminding us. Alas, most so-called “adepts” or “gurus” are similarly trapped in the first postrapture reality map imprinted after their initial Illumination, as Leary also realizes. The point of systems like Tantra, Crowleyanity, and Leary’s Neurologic is to detach from all maps—which gives you the freedom to use any map where it works and drop it where it doesn’t work. As Dogen Zenji said, “Time is three eyes and eight elbows.”

SFR: Would I be right in saying you probably lean more toward the rightwing form of anarchism than the classical leftist variety?

Wilson: My trajectory is perpendicular to the left-right axis of terrestrial politics. I put some of my deepest idealism into both the Left anarchism of Simon Moon and the Right anarchism of Hagbard Celine in Illuminatus!, but I am detached from both on another level.

Politics consists of demands, disguised or rationalized by dubious philosophy (ideologies). The disguise is an absurdity and should be removed. Make your demands explicit. My emphasis is on whatever will make extraterrestrial migration possible in this generation. The bureaucratic state, whether American, Russian, or Chinese, has all the clout on this planet for the foreseeable future. The individualist must fulfil his or her genetic predisposition to be a pioneer, and the only way one can do that today is by moving into space faster than anyone else. I think the maverick Seed is included in the DNA scenario to serve that function in each epoch. I’m leaving Earth for the same reason my ancestors left Europe: freedom is found on the expanding, pioneering perimeter, never inside the centralized state. To quote another Zen koan, “Where is the Tao?” “Move on!”

SFR: You’re involved in an organization called the DNA Society which is interested in biological engineering and immortality, the creation and exploitation of higher forms of consciousness. How serious are you about this? How close are we to achieving this on a broad scale?

Wilson: Let me refer the reader to The Prospect of Immortality and Man into Superman by Ettinger, The Biological Time Bomb by Taylor, The Immortality Factor by Seger-berg, Terra II by Dr. Leary and Wayne Benner, and the writings of John Lilly and Buckminster Fuller.

With that documentation, I assert that the basic longevity breakthrough will occur before 1990. Segall, Bjorksten, or Froimovich, among others, may be very close to it already. The basic principles of reimprinting or metaprogramming the nervous system, as discovered by Leary and Lilly, will be accepted and used in daily practice by around 1985. A neurogenetic quantum jump in life expectancy, intellectual efficiency, and emotional equilibrium (or, as Leary calls it, hedonic engineering) will be revolutionizing human life before the twenty-first century. Some of us will be alive when the Immortality Pill is found.

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