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PROMETHEUS RISING OTHER TITLES FROM NEW FALCON PUBLICATIONS Undoing Yourself With Energized Meditation Secrets of Western Tantra Christopher S. Hyatt, Ph.D. The Enochian World of Aleister Crowley Aleister Crowley, L.M. DuQuette, and C.S. Hyatt Pacts With The Devil Urban Voodoo S. Jason Black & Christopher. S. Hyatt, Ph.D. Eight Lectures on Yoga The Heart of the Master Aleister Crowley Game of Life The Intelligence Agents Timothy Leary, Ph.D. Zen Without Zen Masters Camden Benares The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic What You Should Know About the Golden Dawn Israel Regardie Metaskills: The Spiritual Art of Therapy Amy Mindell, Ph.D. Astrology & Consciousness Rio Olesky Breaking the Illusion: Tools for Self-Awakening Ric Weinman Conversations With My Dark Side Shanti Ananda Soul Magic: Understanding Your Journey Katherine Torres, Ph.D. The Alchemy of Opposites Rodolfo Scarfalloto A Soul's Journey: Whispers From the Light Patricia Idol The Eyes of the Sun: Astrology in Light of Psychology Peter Malsin And to get your free catalog of all of our titles, write to: NEW FALCON PUBLICATIONS (Catalog Dept.) 1739 East Broadway Road, Suite 1-277 Tempe, Arizona 85282 U.S.A. And visit our website at http://www.newfalcon.com PROMETHEUS RISING Robert Anton Wilson Introduced by Israel Regardie NEW FALCON PUBLICATIONS TEMPE, ARIZONA U.S.A. 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 Cover by Stan Slaughter The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984 Address all inquiries to: NEW FALCON PUBLICATIONS 1739 East Broadway Road Suite 1-277 Tempe, Arizona 85282 U.S.A. (or) 320 East Charleston Blvd. • Suite 204-286 Las Vegas, NV 89104 U.S.A. email: [email protected] website: http://www.newfalcon.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 socio- logical technological perspectives on current problems; and to all of the following: Barbara Hubbard, Alan Harrington, P.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 refer- ences 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 11 Introduction 17 1. The Thinker & The Prover 23 2. Hardware & Software: The Brain & Its Programs 33 3. The Oral Bio-Survival Circuit 45 4. The Anal Emotional Territorial Circuit 61 5. Dickens & Joyce: The Two-Circuit Dialectic 85 6. The Time-Binding Semantic Circuit 93 7. The Time-Binding Dialectic: Acceleration & Deceleration 105 8 The "Moral" Socio-Sexual Circuit 121 9. Mindwashing & Brain Programming 149 10. How To Brain-Wash Friends & Robotize People 161 11. The Holistic Neurosomatic Circuit 177 12. The Collective Neurogenetic Circuit 195 13. Introduction to the Metaprogramming Circuit 207 14. The Meta-Programming Circuit 217 15. Different Models & Different Muddles 227 16. The Snafu Principle 239 17. Quantum Evolution 253 18. The Non-Local Quantum Circuit 265 19. Prometheus Rising 271 Appendix 283 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 megilla 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 77 12 Prometheus Rising 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 technolo- gese 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 peri- odically 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 acknowledg- ments 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 Establish- ment publishing, just as Paideia once served as a similar alterna- tive 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 prob- lems. I remember one story in which the Chief of Police, Prometheus Rising 13 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.