Table Of ContentP
ROMETHEUS
R
ISING
Robert Anton Wilson
Introduced by
Israel Regardie
Afterword by
Richard Rasa
Copyright © 1983 Robert Anton Wilson
All rights reserved. No part of this book, in part or in whole, may be reproduced, transmitted, or utilized, in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except for brief
quotations in critical articles, books and reviews.
International Standard Book Number: 1-56184-056-4
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 83-81665
First Edition 1983
Second Printing 1984, Third Printing 1986
Fourth Printing 1987, Fifth Printing 1989
Sixth Printing 1990, Seventh Printing 1992
Eighth Printing 1994, Ninth Printing 1997
Second Revised Edition (Tenth Printing) 1997
Eleventh Printing 1999, Twelfth Printing 2000
Thirteenth Printing 2001, Fourteenth Printing 2002
Fifteenth Printing 2003, Sixteenth Printing 2004
Seventeenth Printing 2005, Eighteenth Printing 2006
Nineteenth Printing 2007, Twentieth Printing 2008
Twenty-first Printing 2009, Twenty-second Printing 2010
Twenty-third Printing 2012, Twenty-fourth Printing 2013
eBook Version 1.0 – 2016, Hilaritas Press
Cover Design by amoeba
eBook Design by Pelorian Digital
Hilaritas Press, LLC.
P.O. Box 1153
Grand Junction, Colorado 81502
www.hilaritaspress.com
DEDICATED
To
Timothy Leary
&
William S. Burroughs
dove sta memora
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The eight-circuit model of consciousness in this book and much of its
future-vision derive from the writings of Dr. Timothy Leary, whose letters and
conversations have also influenced many other ideas herein. I also owe great
debts to Dr. O.R. Bontrager, for introducing me to semantics and communication
sciences generally; to R. Buckminister Fuller, for general sociological
technological perspectives on current problems; and to all of the following:
Barbara Hubbard, Alan Harrington, F.M. Esfandiary, Dr. Paul Watzlavik, Dr.
Eric Berne, Dr. Paul Segall, Dr. Israel Regardie, Alvin Toffler, Phil Laut, Dr.
Sigmund Freud, Dr. Carl Jung, Alan Watts, Alfred Korzybski, and Aleister
Crowley. The members of the Physics/Consciousness Research Group (Dr. Jack
Sarfatti, Dr. Nick Herbert and Saul Paul Sirag) have contributed more than is
indicated by my few brief references to quantum theory in these pages; they
clarified my whole comprehension of epistemology.
None of these persons are responsible for my mistakes or over-statements.
CONTENTS
Preface to the Second Edition by the author Introduction by Israel Regardie
1 - The Thinker & The Prover
2 - Hardware & Software: The Brain & Its Programs
3 - The Oral Bio-Survival Circuit
4 - The Anal Emotional Territorial Circuit
5 - Dickens & Joyce: The Two-Circuit Dialectic
6 - The Time-Binding Semantic Circuit
7 - The Time-Binding Dialectic: Acceleration & Deceleration
8 - The “Moral” Socio-Sexual Circuit
9 - Mindwashing & Brain Programming
10 - How To Brain-Wash Friends & Robotize People
11 - The Holistic Neurosomatic Circuit
12 - The Collective Neurogenetic Circuit
13 - Introduction to the Metaprogramming Circuit
14 - The Meta-Programming Circuit
15 - Different Models & Different Muddles
16 - The Snafu Principle
17 - Quantum Evolution
18 - The Non-Local Quantum Circuit
19 - Prometheus Rising
Appendix
Afterword by Richard Rasa
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
Screw the government!
Legends of the Fall Screw the middle class!
—
Evita Like most of my books, this text emerged only partly from my
—
conscious design and partly from suspicious accidents. It actually began
as a Ph.D. dissertation called “The Evolution of Neuro-Sociological
Circuits: A Contribution to the Sociobiology of Consciousness,” which I
wrote in 1978-79 for an alternative university called Paideia. At that time,
Paideia ranked as State Approved, the highest rating given to alternative
universities in California, where we have alternatives to everything and
the state feels required to classify the alternatives on a scale of
“experimental” to totally bonkers. Alas, Paideia, having achieved relative
respectability as an “alternative,” later joined with a much more radical
and Utopian outfit, Hawthorn University, and lost its top rank among
counter-culture educational contraptions in California, falling from
Approved to Authorized, a much lower rating. The whole megillah then
joined into several flakey outfits loosely allied, none of which were
recognized at all by the state, which suited the new honchos perfectly,
since they did not recognize the state either.
In Ireland in 1982, stuck with a dissertation which I liked a lot and a Ph.D.
diploma which, due to the collapse of Paideia, looked less impressive, I decided
to rewrite the manuscript in more commercial form. The first change consisted
of removing all the footnotes (about two of them per sentence) which gave the
original a truly academic stink but would annoy the average reader. Then I
expressed myself a little more bluntly (and perhaps snidely) in many places,
adding much to the humor and nothing to the good taste. I also wrote a few more
chapters, created all the exercizes, and sketched out diagrams for the
illustrations.
I then, with craft and cunning, removed most of the references to Dr.
Timothy Leary from the early parts of the book and only let his name begin to
appear frequently after about the middle. I had good reason, based on
experience, to feel rather strongly that, just as Dr. Tim was blacklisted by
Establishment publishers at that time, any book openly and blatantly based
largely on his ideas would also get thrown in the junk heap.
I thought I now had a “popular” book, and maybe I almost did. The first
publisher to whom I submitted it, Jeremy Tarcher, held it for a full year of
meditation before rejecting it; his only explanation for the rejection concerned
the mixture of technologese and “counter culture” slang that has since become
my most frequent style in nonfiction. (It’s based on the way I actually speak.)
When I tried Falcon next, they accepted it within 48 hours, and I received the
advance check within the next 48 hours. “Oh frabjous day!”
A month later, I heard from Tarcher again: he had changed his mind and
decided he wanted the book after all. I was in one of my periods of acute poverty
then (something that happens periodically to all freelance writers) and it was
with great effort that I refrained from telling Mr. Tarcher to go fuck himself. I
just told him I had a contract with another publisher.
With Falcon as publisher, I then inserted the acknowledgments page, giving
Leary the credit he deserved right up front, and added a dedication to him.
Falcon, as I expected, did not object. Falcon has always served as an alternative
to Establishment publishing, just as Paideia once served as a similar alternative
to the academic Establishment.
Prometheus was one of Falcon’s first books and, I think, the first done with
computerized typesetting; as usual with such pioneering efforts, it emerged with
a phalanx of typos that have embarrassed me considerably over the years. (When
the San Francisco Chronicle first computerized they had similar problems. I
remember one story in which the Chief of Police, denouncing drugs, rambled off
into a sentence about the thrill of meeting Mickey Mouse and Goofy. I assume
that line came from another story but it made the Chief sound as if he had gotten
into some weird chemicals himself.) In this edition, I have corrected these errors,
where I could find them; I know too much now to think I found all of them.
(Wilson’s Tenth Law: no matter how many times a writer proofs a book, hostile
critics will always find at least one error that he missed.) I have also updated
every place where I thought updating seemed necessary. I even added a few new
ideas (which, of course, seem brilliant to me just because they are new) and
some new jokes and generally gave the text a badly-needed face-lift. It is still
one of my favorite books, and seems to rank high in the estimation of most of
my fans.
In Germany-Switzerland-Austria in the late 1980s, three German versions
existed simultaneously — a deluxe edition from Sphinx Verlag of Zurich, a
mass-market paperback from Rowalt Verlag of Hamburg, and an even cheaper
pirate edition from the busy troglodytes of the unterwelt. The last, of course,
paid no royalties but, by indicating that I had three audiences at three economic
levels, persuaded me feel like a very popular writer in Mitteleuropa.
As I contemplate this tenth printing of a “far out” or “freaked out” book that
began its career back in 1978, I feel only mildly embarrassed by the predictions
that proved over-optimistic. (I have revised them, of course, in keeping with my
current knowledge and best guesses). I feel much more astonished, and pleased,
that many of the predictions now seem much less shocking than when I first
published them. Indeed, the wildest and most “Utopian” future-scans in here are
precisely the ones that have had the greatest scientific support in the 1990s. To
see two decades ahead, even in a few areas, counts as some sort of success in the
Futurism game. And every bulletin from the embattled MIR space station
reminds me that if my space forecasts projected “too much too soon,” part of
what I expected does in fact already exist and the rest is obviously evolving.
I feel more chagrined about my lyrical evocation of Intelligence
Intensification. In the 1970s, I simply did not recognize the extent to which the
1960s “youth revolution” had terrified our ruling Elite, or that they would try to
prevent future upsurges of radical Utopianism by deliberately “dumbing down”
the educational system. What they have produced, the so-called Generation X,
must rank as not only the most ignorant but also the most paranoid and
depressive kids ever to infest our Republic. I agree with outlaw radio star Travis
Hipp that the paranoia and depression result inevitably from the ignorance.
These kids not only don’t know anything; they don’t even want to know.* They
only realize, vaguely, that somebody has screwed them out of something, but
they don’t have enough zest or bile to try to find out who screwed them and what
they were screwed out of.
Fortunately, this Age of Stupidity cannot last very long. Already, most
people know that if you want a good TV or VCR, you buy Japanese; for a good
car, Japanese or German, etc. Eventually, in order to compete, the Elite will have
to allow a bit more education for American youth, before we sink fully to the
level of a Third World nation.
•
*
One of the spokespersons for Gen X, named Shann Nix, has a talk show on KGO, one of the
most powerful radio signals on the West Coast. On one show, she announced that the Vatican is
not a State. On another, she proclaimed that Jury Nullification was a recent invention by the far
right. Etc.
•
The other day I saw a film called The Edge, which I regarded as the best
thing to come out of Hollywood since The Silence of the Lambs. Perhaps not
coincidentally, this flic also starred Anthony Hopkins. In one scene, Hopkins and
his co-star, Alec Baldwin, seem in an absolutely hopeless situation, lost in the
Arctic, stalked by a hungry bear, without weapons, seemingly doomed. Baldwin
collapses, and Hopkins has a magnificent monologue, talking Baldwin out of his
despair. The speech runs, roughly, like this: “Did you know you can make fire
out of ice? You can, you know. Fire out of ice. Think about it. Fire out of ice.
Think. Think.”
This riddle has both a pragmatic and symbolic (alchemical) answer. The
pragmatic answer you can find in the film, explicitly; and it might prove useful if
you ever get lost in the north woods; and the alchemical, or Zen Buddhist,
answer is also in the film, implicitly, and only perceptible to those who
understand the dense character Hopkins plays in the story. It might prove useful
whenever despair seems to overwhelm you.
So, to those who at the end of this book still can’t understand or sympathize
with my Nietzschean yea-saying, I quote again: “Fire out of ice. Think. Think.”
Who was that Prometheus guy and why did he give us fire in the first place?
Robert Anton Wilson On the Internet at www.rawilson.com
