Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati - Softcover

Book 1 of 3: Cosmic Trigger

Robert Anton Wilson

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9780941404464: Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati

Synopsis

From the date of first printing to the present, I have received more mail about Cosmic Trigger than about anything else I ever wrote, and most of the mail has been unusually intelligent and open-minded. For some reason, many readers of this book think they can write me intimately and without fear, about subject officially Taboo in our society....The new edition presents an opportunity to answer the most frequent questions and to correct the most persistent misunderstandings. It should be obvious to all intelligent readers (but curiously is not obvious to many) that my viewpoint in this book of one of agnosticism. The word "agnostic" appears explicitly in the Prologue and the agnostic attitude is restated again and again in the text, but many people still think I "believe" some of the metaphors and models employed here. I therefore want to make it even clearer than ever before that I DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING .... Cosmic Trigger deals with a process of deliberately induced brain change through which I put myself in the years 1962-76. This process is called "initiation" or "vision quest" in many traditional societies and can loosely be considered some dangerous variety of self-psychotherapy in modern terminology. I do not recommend it for everybody, and I think I obtained more good results than bad ones chiefly because I had been through two varieties of ordinary psychotherapy before I started my own adventures and because I had a good background in scientific philosophy and was not inclined to "believe" any astounding Revelations too literally. Briefly, the main thing I learned in my experiments is that "reality" is always plural and mutable. --- excerpts from Preface to the New Edition

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From the Author

"I don't see how to take death seriously. I look forward without dogmatic optimism, but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying." 

About the Author

Author of some 35 books including Cosmic TriggerPrometheus RisingSchrodinger's Cat Trilogy, and co-author of the Illuminatus! Trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson was a futurist, author, lecturer, stand-up comic, guerrilla ontologist, psychedelic magician, outer head of the Illuminati, quantum psychologist, Taoist sage, Discordian Pope, Struthian politician . . . maybe. He said Model Agnosticiam consists of never regarding any model or map of the universe with total 100% belief or total 100% denial. Bob's Maybe Logic inspired the creation of the Maybe Logic Academy. Timothy Leary, who contributed a Foreword to this book in 1977, was a world-renowned psychologist, a defrocked Harvard professor, a relentless champion of brain change, a reputed drug guru, a stand-up philosopher, and a prisoner of the Nixon administration. He was called "the most dangerous man in America" by President Richard Nixon.

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