Bob was sort of this kind of rock and roll philosopher right like he was very dionan he certainly knew how to turn a phrase reality is what you can get away with only the madman is absolutely sure we're receiving more stimuli than ever before through communication Technologies but a byproduct of that
could be paranoia and Wilson really really does a service to humanity by exploring this Shadow aspect of the human psyche what Wilson's drawing attention to is that we have this capacity to constantly fool ourselves he's asking people to develop a more nuanced state of mind but you're not
going to get caught in the gobbly book you're going to gain more Attunement you're going to gain more awareness of how your own perceptual grid Works he seems to fit in the category with authors like Philip K dick James Joyce himself painter Van go they were so far ahead of their time it's high time for
him to be rediscovered he knew that in a way he accepted that and might take some time for his stuff to ultimately hit well hello everyone it's Jim oosi with yet another infinite Loops today's guest is shares a passion with me my guest today is Gabriel Kennedy the author of Chapel perilous the life and
thought crimes of Robert Anton will Wilson and I say shares a passion with me because I discovered Wilson later in life and when I read the first book which I think was Prometheus Unbound or uh Quantum psychology my mind literally was officially blown and so I had to go
and find everything he had ever written went through it all have been through it all several times like this guy is almost a Nostradamus in that things he was writing about like 40 50 years ago are now finally coming into better focus in today Gabriel welcome thank you Jim thanks for having
me here so for the benefit of people listening and watching uh who don't know who Bob Wilson is why don't you take us why don't you give us a little biographical uh sketch of Bob and and also why why the urge to write about Bob the man because a lot of his writing like he he's really an open kimono uh
with a lot of his own life story but I will tell you I loved your book and I learned a lot of things about Bob the man that I didn't know for sure thank you Jim yeah uh Robert Anon Wilson uh was a you know a uh a late uh 21st century into the 21st century uh American novelist uh of high satirical
content and value um he's most known as being the co-author of uh you know one of the most notorious mind-bending uh books of uh you know American literature uh the illuminatus trilogy um he uh is a Cornerstone of the you know kind of 1960s counterculture uh ethos if you will an approach to uh the
world right the world view but he's also sort of an early warning radar system being that he is sort of a Visionary artist uh you know um he's anticipating in his work uh trajectories and trends that are now unfolding and happening today and uh one of his most useful metaphors I guess that he used was a
chapel peralis uh and and this being a place where um all this crazy stuff is happening and we're not quite sure if it's the product of uh some Supernatural event or you know uh our own imagination but regardless um there's crazy things happening within one's environment and
um collectively I think the world is going through a chapel peralis right now uh uh and then individually I think people across the board are going through their own Chapel paralyses especially since Co and uh so Wilson uh during his career was um you know while he was a contemporary to a lot of major
writers that we all know and thinkers you know so people like William S Burrows Philip K dick the the late Tom Robbins uh was actually inspired by Wilson um you know people like Timothy ly these huge names um from that era the the 60s 70s and 80s um you know Wilson was there but
didn't quite get the attention that he I guess you know deserved so um now we have a chance you know years later to kind of pull back the frame and see Wilson in the mix in the milu he was you know at the Forefront of of uh these generational movements so uh he's a writer he's an activist he's a teacher
uh and all around could be the most interesting human alive or at the time or most interesting human in the last you know 50 years if you will and um and because of that you know he was a person that produced over 30 books and over a 40-year career hardly ever having any
institutional uh uh you know backing if you will besides a short career at Playboy magazine uh Wilson uh as an artist found a way to to be constantly productive and you know never let his circumstances get in the way of uh producing this art that he was so passionate about and uh his art was
exploring the antipodes of the mind if you will the you know the the psyche of of of uh the human in the late 20th century and you know one of the things that human beings have encountered more and more probably thanks to the increase of uh communication Technologies is the
uh paranoia uh and Wilson uh is a master at exploring you know paranoia from political to personal to uh Collective if you will and and because of that uh he is a very important voice right now um we have you know we live in an exponentially increasing time with you know communication Technologies computer
Technologies and you know essentially you know cameras uh we see images and people see us more than ever before but a byproduct of that as I said could be paranoia and Wilson really really uh does a service I go so far to say is does a service to humanity by exploring this Shadow aspect of of the human
psyche and all of his work and doing so fantastically so uh Wilson is just a you know I think a very important thinker uh and someone who is vital to read right now and a lot of fun to read and um I was a fan of his work since I first read uh illuminatis Trilogy in high school
and the p passion for his work you know grew over the years and um uh I I met and I interviewed uh Wilson in uh uh 2003 uh uh and then I joined uh this thing called the maybe logic Academy in 2004 which was his remote learning asynchronous website which is uh uh sort of a you know looks prototypical of what
most colleges use today for asynchronous remote learning um and uh for the last three years of his life he was involved in that and I was uh a active member of that website and uh we studied a lot of his work and a lot of other writers works and so since he passed away I just
kind of made it my own little mission to write something about him and it and it turned into this a biography Chapel perilous yeah and uh you know Wilson is so preent in so many regards that uh we have an inhouse Ai and essentially what I did was I had it dump virtually everything I have on
Wilson in there and and you can map it it's it's usually a 30 to a 40y year leg where Wilson is first talking about it things like virtual reality he he wrote about that in 91 and he's like it's kind of a techno Zen Buddhist Paradise because you can shift realities and and you know that whole Buddhist idea of
attachment to what you currently believe is real you can see how easily you can switch realities in virtual reality but he's writing this like 40 years ago and and now we're beginning to see it um let's get back briefly to Chapel Paralis because that I always loved the term and
I love the way he used it obviously he's borrowing it from The artherion Legend where you know know what it was an actual place where Knights had to go and and face perilous tests of bravery and will determine their fate for Bob it was a psychological State as well where you know your existing beliefs when you
enter Chapel bar peralis really start to unravel under the weight of paradox's inexplicable experiences kind of a Lial Zone again a Lial Zone we we use term now and everyone understands what it means because we now have ai that is able to look into to limal zones but back when Bob was writing it
like there was no such ability to do so and and it they create what he calls reality tunnels and where these reality tunnels Collide right and and so one of the things that I often wondered was like what what's his solution I have my ideas but he I I did come up with a list of things that he
might recommend for you know making it through Chapel perilous because we all end up in there one way or another oh heck yeah I mean I I I say that that would be Wilson's um another great contribution to I guess uh the cannon if you will is this exploration of uh um for him yeah was the state of
mind but within this Mythos of uh you know arthan Legend um you know which is uh you know this exploration of uh the the kind of magical mindset of the you know if you will the quote unquote Western mind right like uh um you know King Arthur is a a Celtic uh uh King you know the king of the brones you know
before the Anglo-Saxon uh uh tribes came in if you will right and he's around in the you know Legend says around in the fifth or sixth Century he's him and his Knights are are uh holding down uh England town if you will and um the and you know this this how the story continues uh throughout uh uh
European history uh but you know mostly say through you know the UK and France but um this is like a connection though you know and Wilson Taps into to this like the the Arthurian Legend is is the magical mindset of you know the you know the the Western mind if you will right
it's it's an access point to go deeper into the magic that that can exist there right and so um Wilson uh you know takes the the the phrase from um you know TS Elliott uh his poem The Wasteland that was uh published in the uh I think it was the 20s or the 30s um and uh so you
know Wilson is so you know such a fan of modernist poetry that that he he you know recognizes this this uh this amazing metaphor that exists here that there's this space where a person you know must travel through on their heroic Journey uh to the Holy Grail right uh within the original uh telling of the
tale uh it comes from you know the perilous chapel chapel perilous comes from uh uh this poet uh named Thomas uh uh delori I believe and uh uh the the death of Arthur that was published in the 15th century and this individual um you know was just continuing the tale that was already uh you know in
existence uh that uh you know uh was sort of like a an open source uh you know access point that people could just you know delve into this mythical mindset right and so the the chapel paralus is uh a location that um everything you fear is waiting for you with slaving Jaws says Wilson and within
the Legend um it's a place where Lancelot uh Ventures to to you know find a piece of cloth or clothing uh from a a Fel Knight who you know got uh caught there before him also along Ong his path to find the holy grail and when Lancelot gets this you know piece of clothing of
course before he gets it he faces all these Horrors and terrible things within this you know a perilous chapel and um he is able to heal his fellow Knight when he returns with this piece of cloth right so the uh the the uh interpretation there if you will is that to venture into a dark and scary place
we can receive sort of healing power if you will and that power can be utilized to help you know your fellow Intrepid traveler your fellow uh you know Journey along this path you know uh someone else who's searching for the Holy Grail right and um I I think there's a lot of power
in that uh uh myth if you will and you know so did Wilson and so did many other people and um as I said Wilson probably heard the term came across the term through TS Elliott and TS Elliot was uh majorly inspired by a a book called uh from ritual to romance which came out a year before Elliot put out his book and
that book is really cool because it uh looks at or frames or contextualizes the oran Legend as um and especially you know the the quest through the chapel peralis as um not just an initiation right but uh an initiation to see if you're ready for the initiation so it's
a test before the initiation uh which is very wilsonian in a way you know cuz he liked to use that phrase from Crawley uh you know true initiation never ends right um but it is good to have you know uh you know goals or or levels that we can reach along the way of these initiations I guess um so uh this place
is a is a is a scary terrible place and it's a place where you could lose your mind it's a place where everything can go wrong wrong you know Murphy's Law is the law of the land within Chapel's perilis chapel perilis and uh for Wilson of course he's so interesting he takes this and he applies it to you know like
I said like a sort of psychological State of Mind for him Chapel perilous is a uh it's a personal state where uh a person is undergoing a lot of uh kind of personal uh um introspection uh through maybe Young in Psychology uh theic Magic you know or you know the Western esoteric tradition
uh Zen meditation high doses of psychedelics uh which is what Wilson was doing all at the same time in the mid 70s when he had this sort of magical breakthrough and entered what he said was a chapel perilous um and when he was in this as you you could phrase it a very sort of Lial State um
where uh liino being that place where there's you know mass amount of potentia and potential for yeah and and he observed that uh these strange things that were happening to him defied the laws of you know kind of known physics if you will uh remote viewing um sort of intuitive psychic uh uh moments um all
in this era of the mid and it led him to believe or question are these the cause of these events uh Supernatural or you know is my thinking that it's supernatural just the product of my own imagination um and of course Wilson approaches anything with like a extremely questioning and and skeptical
mind so it's a lot of fun reading his work as he explores this in himself like is he in his own Chapel Paralis and what does that mean and so uh and you know he encapsulates that wonderfully in his book Cosmic trigger volume one and um I after sort of examining his life and uh
in the end of that book you know he he he's a nice he's a great writer so the end the book is a happy ending he exits Chapel Paralis in Cosmic trigger volume one but uh studying his life a little bit um you know I mean it's also a metaphor Wilson was a beacon of Light Within Chapel
peralis he he was someone who stepped right outside Chapel perilous but hung out there at the right at the exit with the like the hermit in the Tarot deck with a you know with a light shining helping people you know see their way through he's a you know he took the Buddha SATA vow that he would not you
know enter the uh nironic Paradise until he helped his you know fellow humans come through right he Wilson he he was very interesting he when it came to his work he was very much like a knight he was someone who you know had a all of his magic led to the development
and opening of his heart and increasing his compassion and empathy for for human beings and himself you know so um what a wonderful uh person to study when it comes to that then right um when uh exploring these Realms of human potential um Bob's voice is a is a nice one to hear and so um yeah just the way
way that he explored this whole concept of Chapel perilis um and now I mean where we we live we've been living in this era for the last 10 years where the this seeming um uh uh boundary between imagination and and and physical reality has seemingly gotten more and more porous where look around I mean there's
magicians everywhere uh some might argue that you know the current president is a magician for How could a failed real estate uh developer you know reach the highest offices in the land not once but twice there's got to be some kind of magic going on and of course other presidents
believed in sort of you know magic or you positive and new thinking so um Wilson made it his mission to explore this as well and he and he did so wonderfully and um I just wanted to um you know this is the first biography of Robert Anton Wilson um I I think it's a perfect time for people who to learn
more about this individual those who already know his work um you know I think that I've I've gotten a lot of nice feedback where they felt really good returning to you know his line of thinking through my book and then the book is also accessible for people who've never really encountered Bob
before but they want to just learn about a very unique individual uh and as Shane mcgallen once said a man you don't meet every day so that was Bob Wilson yeah and uh the the effect on people of Chapel perilis is an interesting thing to me CU because Bob would say that like look it can either
make you incredibly anxious and paranoid uh because it's going to manifest a you know chronic sense of Doubt but then he was like or you can Revel in it and revel in the insights of creative breakthroughs that it allows he sort of talked about it as a work in the road you can go to become a stone cold
paranoid right and everything you're going to believe everything or you can be a raving agnostic which is what Bob chose obviously um you know one of the things that I think is really amazing about him is his determined battle for all of his career against either or yes
no 0 100 uh sort of deterministic thinking right um you know he had and what a he certainly knew how to turn a phrase reality is what you can get away with only the madman is absolutely sure I don't believe in anything but I have many suspicions you know he he was a real enemy of certitude right because
his notion was if you are literally certain that your current map of reality reflects all of reality as it really is um well you're probably incredibly mistaken uh but but more importantly you're also descending into a sort of brain death of Dogma because if you believe that you have the absolute truth um
you're going to get really put out by people who disagree with your version of absolute truth and you know you mentioned uh who he took a lot of his um inspiration from that was one of the first things I me I I noticed when I started reading all of his stuff I already loved TS Elliott I already loved
quantum physics I already loved a ton of the things nii for example he goes on at Great length you know nii's uh observation that we are all great greater artists than we believe or know and what he was talking about there was essentially we create our own world to a
large extent we are co-creators of all these you know the millions of bits of uh information Hing our perception filters um we organize those and and make sense of them and create our own reality tunnel he had that great quote where you know the sad man lives in a sad world the happy man lives in a happy
world the angry man lives in an Angry World and at the end of the valley of decision there is always a choice yeah I love that that's a great that's a great quote I love that Jim thank you man yeah um we are all greater artists than we realize yes um that was a great that Bob would uh source that
from nii a lot too and um yeah I like that um I think that you know that was a great thing about Bob was that he was this kind of zany Stoner intellectual you know Fringe uh I found most of his books at the Tower Records and not really in the bookstore too much right and which uh you know all added to what
made Tower Records cool you know uh Bob was sort of this kind of rock and roll philosopher right like he was very dionan his books went with music more than uh stuffed shirts and you know long boring dry sentences you know Bob was was Joe Strummer on the on the on the
you know the typewriter on the keypad you know is drummer as Strummer talked about punk rock you know the point of it is to get to the heart of the matter you know right away get right to it which is what Bob did uh he was uh so literate so well read he you know was born in I should have said earlier
1932 uh born right during the the the heat of the Great Depression his family was greatly affected uh you know he's a his he's a second generation American uh his father's family he came from Ireland his mother's family came from triest uh you know now I guess that's in
Italy right and um and uh Wilson was you know like he he had no time for to to waste you know he he was born poor in the South Shores of Brooklyn you know uh and um he had he was born at two years old he contracted polio and then he never really received a cure from polio he was born and got the disease virus
before uh the vaccine was was created so uh his mother and relied on like an alternative medicine that that offered him some uh form of relief for for decades right and but my point is that uh with for that alternative medicine you know he had to activate his muscles and constantly move um and you know
Bob's from Irish Stock the Irish had to learn over generations to move they had to move from their Homeland and keep in moving and make money and send money back and just keep working you know like Bob still has this uh he's born with this the just grit this kind of South
Brooklin grit and he's constantly moving he's constantly pushing himself and part of that is he's constantly learning and he's learning to open his his mind and his heart eventually more and more uh you know and I I say that not as a poetic metaphor but I believe you know
the heart is the second muscle excuse me the heart is the second brain uh there's s there's you know many books on that today so Wilson learned how to um you know speak these dual languages the language you know the language of the mind and the language of the heart right uh but this is part of the education of
a writer you know if you want to be a really good writer you got to learn how to write poetry man you know you got to swing with you got to get musical you got to get lyrical you know and uh Wilson was uh just he comes from a generation then where um his literary Heroes were like
rock stars in the American uh pop culture you know so he wanted you know to be a writer was to be like you know that was hardcore you're you're really pushing the envelope forward for culture that's so he revered the art form it wasn't like uh just throw some words together and then you know let's do some pictures
for the book no he the book itself every sentence you can tell when you read it is this Rich dripping uh uh the distilled fine wine of his thought you know some writers they write just from you know the the top of their you know cerebral cortex right they haven't distilled it the coffee hasn't tripped
through the bean yet and you haven't gotten the good cup of Cupa Java yet but that's like some actors they filter the character all the way through their being you know and Wilson filtered his words through his whole being when he was writing as uh people who he enjoyed
like people like Henry Miller right that's someone who I enjoyed I should say but um you know the these are writers who grab hold of your attention when you're when you're reading the book it's not just some you know quick you know documentary if you will and um as such you know being so you know
Hemingway was a big influence on him tseliot years later the modernist uh writers all of them you know um and of course Wilson lands on Ezra pound and James Joyce James Joyce especially as uh his main literary influence um and like passion to go deeper in learning about and so just as we study uh uh you know
Robert Anton Wilson uh Robert Anon Wilson was studying James Joyce right uh as people wanted to read Wilson's books you know years in later in his life he would host these reading circles and people wanted to read his books at the reading Circle but he made everyone read James Joyce you know which was pretty
funny and then they read his stuff but so um and as such you know I mean you know James Joyce especially in finigan Wake um I mean that is the textbook for a map of a Lial zone I'll join you here and um it's it it takes place uh finans WG takes place in a dream state you know
whereas Joseph Campbell described it uh that's a non- Arista tilian State uh you know the the rules of uh a rational Universe where a causes B gravity Etc does not exist within a dream state and then therefore you know we we we neither does aristan logic and uh what what Wilson did was he basically in his
eyes he saw that non-ar restian logic does not really hold much weight in our you know current day and age uh he was uh greatly influenced by another you know thinker huge influence of his this guy named Alfred ksky count ksky who wrote as you know that big giant book uh science and Sanity um where ksky
essentially wanted to kind of use language to kind of clarify uh you know thought a little bit more um he he thought that uh Western culture you know got caught up in the sort of trap of thinking by applying Aristotle's uh notion of the excluded middle uh to uh you know our reality so often so so
meaning we will say basically that a person or an object most we'll just focus on a person say um Joe Joe down the block always mean we think every time we see Joe he has an essential mean quality to him people have an essential quality to them uh but in reality uh that's just Joe at that time of day uh
you know we're we're always changing our Natures are always changing in relation to the environment and you the the things within that environment that we encounter so that's pretty major because that coincides with you know everything we're uh looking at with quantum physics
today essentially we don't have an essential sort of essentially we don't have an essential nature uh but we have an existential nature we have existential relationships you know and these relationships is what bring out our aspects of ourselves right so um we are always in a limal state right so um
in order to really move through say the chapel peralis with this uh state of mind looking at the world uh through uh a flux right uh and and not um anything definite uh if you will um we can sort of realize that you know we are in a Lial state does this make sense right
now like um I I want to touch on everything that you were you were just kind of speaking on like and and really put the the jewel of what Wilson was was forwarding and that is basically um we should just like before we take a definite action based on a certitude that we think is real but maybe fooling
ourselves we should just take a breath for a second and analyze the scene a little bit before taking a definite action and um Wilson's approach really just sort of coincides with uh bainian probability which is that you know we take in uh every step of the way we just kind of assess where we're at you know
um and then respond as such um yeah and I'll just leave it at that I hope that was somewhat clear totally totally and kitki uh obviously famous for the the the map is not the territory the menu is not the meal uh pointing out these ideas that we we sometimes confuse the symbol
that we use or the map that we use to guide us through a certain space of reality with the actual territory and in fact it is not and and thus that gave birth to uh Bob's insistence on um you know vanon nyman's thirdd category of maybe right maybe it's this way but we really
need to ask questions another thing that I find about him that I think is really interesting is that he seems to fit in the category with authors like Philip K dick James Joyce himself um you know painter Van go uh they they were so far ahead of their time that you know to use Bob's own example of the the idea of
being either tuned in or not tuned in right he he said you know essentially the microscopic world was not not extant before we had microscopes it's just that we weren't tuned in we didn't have the ability to tune into the microscopic world and and it's a lot of his work I I see the same thing he and I go back to
him so often because like he's talking about things decades literally decades before in much the same way that like people didn't understand Joyce's novels because they were the first of their kind and and Van van go the the paintings like he's he sold one during his own Lifetime
and it took Society many many years to catch up with his vision and and get tuned in as it were and you know Bob did did that with like everything his book the new Inquisition irrational rationalism in the Citadel of science like that predates a lot of what the arguments you hear happening today in
terms of you know the materialists world viw of science is being assaulted from virtually every kind of Avenue and yet they hold firm they are like no the the world is what you see the world is out there uh and and it's all kind of slowly coming apart but he also sort of was the
first to see that a lot of emotional plagues I call them mind viruses uh are are always acting on us right and and yet the only way for people to understand that is to understand that there are these things called Mind viruses and that you are being infected by them and the only way
you can understand that you're in prison and enslaved is to realize that this is happening and that most people like don't want to realize that because it's too scary right and the other thing about him that I find really interesting is you mentioned Joe down the block right that is very consistent with like
ancient dos Tales uh there's one where a farmer decides that the neighborhood kid is a thief because he can't find his coin purse and every time he sees the kid he sees the thief he sees it in his eyes he sees it in the way he skulks away he sees it in all of these things
and then his wife finds the purse behind a bureau and he sees the neighbor's son as just a little boy again and these types of observations um he he just did a fabulous job in in bringing them to life in terms of helping people understand that they exist right and that more importantly that you there's a way out
you can reframe things I I did a thread on Twitter called The Thinker and the prover which was inspired by Bob um and a lot of people have come back to me and they're like wow you know I I found that so freeing because like one friend he did a simple thing like uh he realized
that uh he just hates peas and but he felt that he always had to eat them because of his imprinting as a youth Bob also talked quite a bit about imprinting and he got that from Timothy L and basically he he would now this is this will show you how how old the language is you know he said before you
even have the ability to consent to being imprinted you are imprinted by your parents by your siblings by your friends and and two of the immediate imprints in early life are you're either imprinted as a top dog or a bottom dog or a winning script or a loser script uh
talk a bit about how Bob helped people a realized that and then how he some of his suggestions for uh getting free of it for sure yeah Jim uh great points you just raised especially I love that story too with the uh the story of the supposed thief and the you know the farmer sees the the kid I think I
remember encountering that in Quantum psychology uh Wilson tells that story um and he's illustrating um you know the the role of you know self-fulfilling prophecies um and um I think that he his work is so great for um kind of you know shining you holding a mirror to to the to the
reader the reader self you know which is the the role of great art you know George Bernard Shaw I think said that uh you know it is the role of the artist to reveal mankind onto himself or unto herself and you know he applied that to theater and the great you know how actors are able to uh reflect the
emotional states of other humans and and then for people to to see other human beings emoting like that they actually learn uh more of what it's like to be human and uh you know you gain a deeper education of of your own humanity and um you know I I really sought to frame my book Chapel perilous the life and
thought crimes of Robert Anton Wilson within this long view of a story of humanity you know as we uh stand on the the cusp and the precipice of and it seems to be here uh AI is not just knocking at the door it's kicking down the door right and uh and Wilson to study his life and his approach to Art
and and uh philosophy I think is is it's a vital book to read it's vital to read him it's vital to read my book about him to to gain an understanding of um how we got here in the last hundred years if you will and um in terms of uh learning how the the the human mind and body
psyche works is we have to get a full understanding of the you know the the light and the shadow if you will and um you know Wilson being essentially an autodidact uh you know he's self-taught for the most part I mean he did attend myu uh Teachers College for a brief amount of time I mean he did go to
college he definitely you know he only left uh that teacher College after he met arand and started his family in the late 1950s arand you know being his wife but um you know he he loved knowledge right he the way of knowledge was his path uh he was a philosopher you know Pho Safi he was a lover of knowledge
right and um those people are always great to read and uh his so in terms of doing what he thought right was his job as a philosopher it's to um have a uh the readers come to a realization and preferably a self-realization uh it's always easier to see the shadow in other people but to
see it in oneself is way more difficult and um for artists to lead people closer to themselves again I think they're doing their job uh but not every artist is doing that job and Bob was one of those artists that did that job hence I think making him uh such a vital personality
to learn about uh how he was able to stay dedicated to this kind of transcendent path as an artist and keep you know at least with the approach of his his his work open like keep his heart open while he was writing all this as he was going through I mean he was he didn't receive much financial success
throughout his uh writing career uh when he left Playboy in 1971 after working there for five years as a associate editor one of the most highest paying jobs at a magazine at the time uh he one of the reasons why he left you know I discussed this in my book is uh you know he wanted to pursue the life of a
freelance uh writer in America and um and he thought that was you know easier said than done even though he knew what was how hard it was he didn't realize that it would be that hard you know just waiting for the wheels of the industry to grind and move because uh um it took
forever for Illuminati Trilogy to be published five years uh and and that's really what started his career in his 40s right um which today it's different you know that you know it's great you in your 40s you Kickstart going things going but like you know in the in the 70s that was you know he's he's a rookie
at at at 40 42 but you know he's he really is uh a greatly discovered former underground journalist now finally being discovered a little bit in the 70s by the the heads the counterculture heads and now we're in this age 50 years later of uh it's high time to ReDiscover Bob
right and some of the other contemporaries too especially John C ly I think there's some confusion in in on the web these days about John C Lily um and uh but Robert Anon Wilson you know um you know and one of it's high time for him to be rediscovered because as you said he's ahead of the curve man and
um and and that's his he he knew that in a way he he he accepted that uh uh he swallowed that pill that um might take some time for his stuff to ultimately hit he he hoped that people would get it immediately um and uh but you know sort of like Philip K dick his contemporary
uh you know the irony of Phil K dickas he got so famous like a year after he died you know and then so Bob it's taken a few more years but you know the water is percolating uh Orson Wells his favorite uh you know art one of his favorite artists once said one of Bob's favorite artists once said about Ernest
Hemingway uh that you know no one knew about everyone completely forgot about Hemingway for about 10 years after he died he was completely out of the conversation uh but then he noticed after 10 years there was this explosion of uh you know awareness and celebration of Ernest Hemingway um and uh I think
the same goes for Bob you know uh Wells said it was about 10 15 year clip so it's been Bob died in 2007 so it's been 17 years I think that we're approaching a time of you know uh re rediscovery of of you know Wilson's work and insight because is it a rediscovery or a discovery of someone who was writing you
know as an early warning radar system 50 years ago so for instance he's talking about quantum entanglement uh throughout most of his work um but he's not calling it quantum entanglement that's not the popular phrase yet you know he's calling it Bell's theorum uh you know based just
literally calling it you know based off of the paper written by John as Bell the Irish physicist who uh you know successfully challenged the epr Paradox paper uh that was you know published by Einstein Podolski and Rosen this uh huge awesome you know physics paper that said
that uh uh you know the the uncertainty in in in quantum physics is impossible right and then they they wrote that in the 30s and then 1964 John S Bell writes his amazing pap on the Einstein Podolski roles in Paradox which establishes the test now to to test what they were talking about which itself was
revolutionary right and then uh Wilson is writing about all of this stuff in you know 74 75 76 10 years after uh John Bell's paper um as uh David Kaiser writes in his book How The hippie save physics um nobody was talking talking about uh quantum entanglement uh in the
1970s right it was just Bob hanging with these wild eyed uh particle physicists in Berkeley who uh people like sa Paul sarag uh Jack sarfati uh Fred Allen wolf Nick Herbert uh a number of other physicists and they were part of this whole crew uh called the you know fundamental physics uh group and then
that group had all these other groups but this was a whole generation of physicists in Berkeley in the mid-70s who were finally questioning the ontological implications of all these Quantum discoveries that were made in the 30s you know by the greats like schroer Einstein and then of course John
Bell's paper which that changed everything that changed the game so today John Bell's paper and quantum entanglement is according to kaer like the most referenced one of the most referenced scientific papers of all time you know so Bob is hip right Bob was there at the jump Bob was with quantum
physics before it was cool man you know what I mean like and and so this is what is so valuable about him and and of course the way he writes is so funny and fun and it's like if you're you know he may not be for everybody his tone and his mood and the way he writes but if if
you are like if you like that sort of thing he's he's like George Carlin on the on the keys right he's uh he's you know fabulously inex exibly funny you're always finding jokes but within those jokes you're finding real philosophical Jewels like for instance that whole notion of um you know gaining awareness
of your own emotional plague or like you said mind virus I I like that that that metaphor too and and of course the metaphor of the emotional plague is so powerful um and uh Wilson was majorly uh impacted or influenced by the work of willhelm Reich um I think one reason was
because uh in 1959 willhelm Reich had late 50s yeah I think it was 59 he had all of his books and scientific equipment destroyed uh because the FDA uh you know said that he broke the law by sending you know equipment through the mail that said that it could you know heal cancer uh so they put him in
jail and willhelm Wright died in jail of a heart attack and his books were you know banned for a while and this added this uh you know real sort of uh Rebel appeal for for for Bob to to check out this guy willhelm Reich and uh and you know Bob is part of a generation that discovers the work of Wilhelm Reich you
know there are other writers that were hugely influenced by Reich you know or enthused by his ideas Norman mailer of course and uh a whole generation I mean reich's notion is two main uh metaphors you know the character uh the character armor right uh which is um this notion
that we have armored spaces on our body because our we're not aware of of that that part of our body anymore we're actually kind of shut off if you will and um and to gain access to this part of our body we could you know heal parts of our mind uh there was a great book um well you know that was
that was reich's approach in a way that like our subconscious existed within our our physical body so if you could heal that you could heal parts of your subconscious if you will and um and you know he's got a great book about the the I think it's called character analysis that's the book so about the you know
one's body armor but then also this notion of the emotional plague which is that people are all armored up we have this body armor character Armor All Around because the armor obvious uh you know forms through trauma you know we have we have we're traumatized through life you know even from birth trauma on
where you know human beings we like to think we're very tough and you and whatnot but we're really fragile you know hurt little like beings out here in this big world in a way right like like the within this way of looking at things like and it's popular today everyone is
traumatized right and of course if you're reading Bob that's one way of looking at it like he called it the wooden leg syndrome in a way like or the walking wounded like and yeah we all have wounds even just from birth right um and so to like I guess look at your own stuff right without a to cast a colder eye
right to to not get too wrapped up in The Narrative of how hard it is but and just observe it everything like a scientist which is what I think Bob was seeking to to bring to a reader's awareness of observing your own I guess Shadow or emotional plagues or areas where you're
stuck or your mind viruses or you know just looking at yourself a little bit utilizing a little introspection um with compassion right I think that's pretty uh a major part of Bob's work you know uh with with humor um he called it the cosmic schmuck realizing when you yourself are a cosmic schmuck um but
that's not to say that it's this is not you know as you mentioned a winner script and and and a loser script you know Wilson considered himself having like a winner script right this coming from the transactional psychology movement this idea that we could walk around with interior dialogue all day
saying like you know loser script is I suck they suck she sucks we suck you know and the winner script is like I'm good they're good we're good we could work this out and um you know when when you are aware of your awareness right you see how powerful it is and um you know many people report having
psychedelic experiences where they become come very aware of how their you know the the how their concentration and focus shapes the moment that they're in just like when you're a little kid you little you see pictures all the time or like videos little kids fall flat on
their face I remember this but you get up and you look around and if you know people feel some compassion but if you're not like if you laugh little kids laugh too like you you can easily just sort of uh it's your approach to life your your the the choice that you make
as you say you know at the end of the sentence right and this is powerful American existential uh existentialism you know Jean Paul sarch that that was a major part of his work is that you know it all comes down to freedom and responsibility right uh make a choice uh we we live in a Lial State sure things
are always in potential um but we we also you know uh um you know exist in this Lo physical location where you have to make choices right you could stand in the middle of road all day looking up at the great sky but as a bus comes thering jettison down the down the block you
have to make a choice you're either going to stay in the street or you're going to move and uh Wilson I think you know he's very clear he's asking people to develop a more nuon state of mind but you're not going to get caught in the gobbly G you're going to gain more Attunement you're going to gain more
awareness of um how your own perceptual grid works if you are I'd say you you know moving beyond a naive wilsonian approach because some criticisms of Wilson I they come across I don't quite know how people could come to this conclusion but when they're just throwing it out there it's like oh yeah
maybe logic and that's a you read you read Prometheus rising and whatnot and it's you're just supposed to get to this kind of middle State and you're not going to do anything and it's like no that's completely not what it's about you know it's about gaining way more uh specific understanding of the detail and
nuances you know it's like if you look at a van go painting if you look at it from 20 feet away or you get closer up and you look at the finer detail of Van Go's paint strokes and you see you could gain a deeper understanding of you know the whole painting if you're able to see
it right I mean this was an I wonder how true this is but I think this was even in that it was in a movie it could have been the secret but this this idea this notion that when uh the Conquistador first came over to America you know the Native Americans some of them didn't even see the ships I've heard this
before I don't know how true the story is right uh but and the point but only some of them could literally see the ships because they never seen a ship before and so this is seemingly impossible how could this thing exist and so if that story is true isn't that amazing that our our own you know
perceptual an individual's perceptual grid could literally block out the stimuli of an approaching ship right and uh and and this is Wilson's uh Jewel again he gets right into it in Prometheus Rising right at the very beginning and that is our our our the stimuli that we receive all the time is
is stupendous it's tremendous the amount of information we're always taking in but the human uh biological mechanism seems to be all about you know closing the aperture we can't let in that much light it's just it's too much right um and so Wilson's role then is to you know
teach people to just like let in a little bit more and more light a little more and more awareness more you know a yogic approach and um it is quite yogic right um uh and he is uh pushing people in his work to push themselves to gain a deeper understanding uh a better a better um uh uh almost more efficient
way to perhaps um gain more self-awareness um uh the emotional plague again is is one of those areas that metaphor another one is to understand yeah self-fulfilling prophecies which is essentially how our preconception how our map of something could could then you know lead to a
false conclusion a false negative or a false positive right like uh so we see that punk ass kid walking down the street with a skateboard and a backwards hat of course he stole my newspaper that that jerk and I bet he's been doing it every freaking day for a year you know but little do we know it's the cute
little poodle or Pooch from next door that just likes to play with you and steal your newspaper but we don't you know and so when you see that kid he's a punk ass you know but little do we know this kid is helping his grandma stay alive you know in that house etc etc and
um isn't it wonderful when we learn more things about people it actually makes them you know better you know nice are awesome more awesome people when we learn this about each other and and uh I think Wilson's to I didn't touch on the imprinting yet uh but tying that in say to the notion of imprinting
um yeah we an imprint is essentially uh according to Wilson and ly like this moment in a person's life and of course between the ages of like zero and six when you our brains are most malleable uh and you know for instance like children can learn second or third languages at that age way better than
any other adult could ever learn right because there's something going on with the neuroplasticity of the brain at that age and during that time uh we uh for instance you know we imprint a uh what he called a neophobic or a uh uh a Neo uh what is it filic you know uh approach
to the world you know uh you know one where we want to explore the world or one where we want to retreat back to to to Mommy or whatnot and um and then of course then that's the first circuit then this is activated at you know in during infancy in the second circuit where you get the top dog bottom dog uh
phenomenon going on this is the emotional territorial circuit which I guess according to Wilson and L forms at about the age of two right so um they're putting together sort of a very loose interesting map of uh development you know uh individual and then maybe Collective right but um uh it's it's a
model and they're very clear on that and Wilson expected that science would one day you know supersede the model that they laid out and you know coming from 50 years ago uh the fact that they were uh Wilson and ly were were speaking about this stuff and and and zeroing in on this uh notion of imprinting um you
know imprinting is kind of accepted today as as this is this is what happens in the in developmental psychology only they don't use the word imprinting today uh they use the term critical activation period uh imprinting is associated with uh Conrad Conrad Loren who was the you
know the ethologist or the biologist uh some kind of olist who studied you know geese and animals these awesome little creatures and basically he he discovered how a baby goose would uh attach itself to a human as if that human were uh his or her mother uh uh when the Mother
wasn't around so there was an imprinting period going on uh and uh but uh Loren's I think he won a Nobel Prize but he he and of course this was his discoveries were all coming out in the 70s so this is why ly attached he used that term um but since then I think things came out about he might have been involved with
the Nazi party or something like that so he's not popular Conrad Loren today nor is his terminology and so the the the term now is critical activation period and of course it's a more nuanced and you know than the way liri and Wilson break it down but when you're encountering a Lian Wilson book at at
the back of Tower Records uh and you know after maybe maybe not smoking some weed in the parking lot you know and going in and reading this stuff you know like next to the rock and roll magazines right you're gaining a very good education in contemporary science and
that was something that was great about Wilson and and ly if you will and the new Falcon uh Publications was that these books were found in places like record stores you know like today it's different everything's online you know but at that time and you know that you know his Wilson's Cosmic trigger volume
one was first sold by uh the the or orali brothers who you know they started out as a head shop in in Berkeley like uh you know this was all part of a wider culture you know and and the counterculture education which was a cooler understanding of things and and Wilson wasn't just blowing proverbial
smoke I mean this guy could hold his own with uh major thinkers of his day um and uh and one of the things reasons why people still poo poo him today was like well well he who was he no one knew who he was he must not have been that smart you know it's like yeah cool like who
you could say that about how many other Geniuses that we now know today you know and so I think it's such a great period a great time to discover Wilson's work all of his work uh the new position you mentioned I mean gez that's that's such a great read and of course you know Wilson gets some things wrong and of
course the eight circuit model of intelligence I mean he doesn't even call it the eight circuit model by the end of his life but you know uh of course there are things that are wrong right like you you're not going to you know L love to use the baseball metaphor you know a
hitter is a great hitter when he bats over 300 I mean you're only getting three to four hits out of every 10 times you're up at bat you're gonna strike out a lot man you know but even uh not paraphrase not quite sure who said this but like you know the notion we must always reach beyond our grasp we much
always strive for something that exceeds our reach you know it's not in getting it that's that's powerful it's the fact that we are reaching for it you know that we're going for it that's the most important thing and Wilson was able to document that he was able to be a voice
for that he was at least I get that from him I'm sure you get that from him he's an inspiring voice to get you going in the chapel perilous right he's very clear you know like as as uh uh GFF used to say um you know the uh what is it the the Geri call it the Terror of the situation you know Wilson flipped it and
call it the horror of the situation you know we as Buddhists uh monks used to say you know when it comes to meditating like you live in a burning house we're not this isn't a calm Placid island of existence that we live on and life isn't that we're in a constant flux and flow
we're like on a little sinking rock on on magma on a volcano that's that just spewed forth you know great terrible existence you know existence that can burn you alive but it's creating the Earth at the same time we are in a myth we live in a myth you are a myth you know in in the Mythic hero we are the
most powerful you know beings that we could think of and we're also totally fragile small little like Leaves of Grass and we are both so strong and so fragile at the same time and Wilson is constantly aware of this Paradox that's why he is an agnostic Gnostic uh that's
why he is a you know an ultra skeptic and like an open eyed believer in you know the most positive uh projection of humanity I mean he he he liked to explore for all the rooms of his mind if you will you know he opened a lot of doors and his value is in his ability to document all of his interior travels if
you will and and the way that he's able to document say again his exploration of quantum entanglement and quantum physics and even his uh criticisms of um scientific materialism um that's the value you know as because he had his own unique fun funny way of of of writing about these
things and uh truly a you know a philosophical comedian or a comedic philosopher you know like him and George Carlin hand in hand you know so um yeah there there's so much to discover uh with with Bob so much to tune in if you will right and uh and um I really sought to um get it all in there you know get
as much as I could about his life and his work into my book uh and and to to present it you know in the vein of of Wilson and you know which is like to be as iridite as imagistically uh uh uh you know focused as possible you know get to the point with every every sentence every line um and and try to
elucidate these really sort of far out Vistas and and and uh philosophies that Wilson explored but he already did such a great job himself of say taking like highly jargon ised material say uh science and Sanity that corsky book which is just filled with these wild calculus equations and hyphenated words
you know organism as a whole interacting with environment um and you know Wilson said he read that giant book an 800 page book in a weekend at the age of 16 when he took it from the New York Public Library that's really impressive right if we're to believe that and then he
said that he read it every year since right just as like a tuneup um that's a guy that I'm going to read some more right this is he's he has he said he had an a Very analytical mind said Wilson right like uh my mind was more artistically inclined Wilson's mind is like an engineer and uh that's why he's
like well so before I go much further uh to to to just kind of you know put a a cherry on the top of this um I think that's the great thing about Bob is um discovering his influences and he's so open about it he'll tell you who who influenced this line of his thinking and
then in that regard he's a he's a great teacher because he introduces you to so many great minds from Joyce to Buckminster Fuller to Alfred ksky even Ilia progan like holy never heard of that person before dissipative structures you know you're reading about dissipative structures again in the back
of Tower Records you're doing something right you know so wow so yeah that that is quite a tour to force of all of the various influences you know from from Bell uh with his uh uh quantum entanglement now of course they're testing actual Quantum physicists are testing whether something call
retrocausality is possible in other words can the future uh influence the past uh you you see uh you mentioned Loren's Man meets dog was a classic uh book uh that I read when I was a kid um and one of the other things that I also love about Wilson is the introduction to a tremendous number of thinkers that um
I I might have been marginal aware of but then after reading him extensively went and actually read them as well and so it really opens your perception filter you know you mentioned the probably apocryphal story about the the natives not seeing the ships uh coming and and Bob wrote something along the
lines of you know uh we we say that uh seeing is believing but actually it's the reverse we very seldomly see what we don't already believe and and he was really clear on our beliefs determine what we see which is sort of the lead into the idea The Thinker and the prover
right where you know you're free to think any thought you want you can be like the Mad Queen in Allison Wonderland and have six impossible thoughts before breakfast um and but then he points out once you've decided right on something this is a sad world or a mad a bad world or a good world you you stop thinking
and you kick it over to What's called the prover um and the PR's job is much more simple the PR's job is to prove to you that whatever belief you have no matter how crazy it is is the correct belief right so what does the prover do it screens out all information that is opposed to this particular
belief of yours you know classic example with the Flat Earth folks right you you can you can even take them up in a balloon and uh they will just simply reinforce oh this is just an OP this is my mind playing a trick on me and and the the thing that I find so refreshing about his thinker prover uh idea is
there is a way out right and and that the way out is to intentionally turn your prover off intentionally look at information that might conflict with what you currently believe and and really I I sort of believe right that your mental models should make predictions right that's what they do we
are prediction machines we human beings and uh why would you want a better mental model well you would want a better mental model to make better predictions and if you're making better predictions like the truth ought to be predictive right so the closer the outcome matches to your predicted
outcome the the better calibrated your mental models and one of the things I learned very much from Wilson and others is you've got to Forever challenge what your current me mix of mental models are because most of them are probably wrong and if you can get comfortable with that
um it opens your aperture to a point where um you you can relearn you can rethink and the way you approach it is on that idea okay well what you you mentioned the cosmic schmuck uh line I love that line I think the quote was if you occasionally think to yourself I wonder
if I'm just a cosmic schmuck you have if only for a moment made yourself a little less of a cosmic schmuck in other words you have to constantly remind yourself that you're probably wrong and it doesn't hurt for you to constantly challenge your beliefs because you really they create what you can see
right and and they hypnotize you in a way that they they make seeing that sh on the horizon impossible if if you can't conceive of what a ship uh on the horizon H happens to be of all the thinkers that that um uh you mentioned who who do you think influenced Bob Wilson the most that's kind of a tough question um
it's tough because Wilson was so great at uh taking you know taking what he wanted and leaving the rest if you will um and you know he wasn't afraid to so say take for instance Ezra pound right Ezra pound uh you know recognized as you know one of the greatest Poets of the 20th
century right um but Ezra pound is also a fascist right like and uh I mean he was probably till the day he died you know uh a fascist maybe not though but I'm guessing yes um not a good look uh however uh and also an anti-semite you know during many many years of his career that needs to be said and um but
uh you know Wilson was very clear like you know and he wrote about it as well you know he was like I think that Ezra Pal's poetry is absolutely amazing and it it struck me so well I've learned so much from it but I think his political views as a fascist and anti-semite are
absolutely disgusting and horrible um we don't live in an age like that right now right right we we live in this constant age of gotcha and you suck and you piece of you know uh like um you know take take uh it could be anybody you know your favorite pop singer from the 80s uh it turns out to
also be a anti-semite or fascist or whatever and uh or even worse you take Diddy right someone who created such funny fun music dancing around like a goofball on stage little did you know he was having these Diddy parties and you know really taking advantage of people and we you know and
um uh Picasso etc etc um what do you do with that what do you do with these these terrible aspects of of people and are you able to you know take a jewel that they offer and then you know kind of see the truth in it and and digest it through your own your own reality tunnel
if you will and and Wilson did that with Ezra pound um uh is I don't think Ezra pound is the biggest influence on Wilson but my point is that um he was able to take the good parts from Ezra pound and create it make it part of his voice and vision you know uh to borrow a phrase from you know martial arts you know
Wilson created he had a Bushido you know he created his own style and I think that's what so great about his work too is that that shines through and I think he inspires readers he inspired me anyway to create your own style you know wear your influences on your sleeve uh you know uh present an homage and it
might be ironic for some people to hear me say that because many of his novels were you kind of pasti and you know homages to other writers and and and and uh novelists and whatnot but I I my argument is that even when he was like doing a James Joyce impression if you will or a a flan O'Brien uh you know
omage you know it was still wilsonian you know there was still the wilsonian flavor right and so um so there's a long list of influences uh but if I had to just zero in and just right now I guess like the largest influence I mean I'm tempted to say Joyce but I I I think ksky yeah I think I think Alfred ksky I
think uh General semantics um had a major influence on Wilson's philosophical approach to life you know uh General semantics uh and what what they propose is I guess would get kind of categorized today as a you know linguistic determinism right so that the you know the thoughts as you
said you know to that seldom do we and this has being from Bob right seldom do we see the things that we don't uh already believe right um and the power of our own perception and that's Wilson's power as a writer and of course there are other writers and you know more and more today I mean this was a
huge Market probably in the a right where you know from eart toll down the line you know the power of the moment the power of perception and the power of your perception in the moment um you know again it's just the way that Wilson writes is so appealing to me um you know
and the way that he's able to you know the Thinker and the prover uh it's not even a metaphor because I I'm listening to you describe it as Wilson describes it and it's like yeah of course that's amazing like I it's I don't ever want to forget this right and I've been reminded so many times that
what Wilson is drawing attention to and he even borrows that phrase from somebody else you know was like a it's in it's in uh Prometheus ryzen uh you know but he he's he's like a DJ right he's he's sampling but he's attributing because it's sad but there are many writers who will basically plagiarize
you know they're their friends and like act like that's their voice right and they when they could easily just attribute someone and Bob follows a rule that is uh a rule for today and he's doing it uh prehensive uh which is always a tribute right um and especially now more and more because you know where
are we getting these ideas from you know we're we're we're open channels man and there's more and more communication channels than ever before there's we're receiving more and more uh um signal to noise uh than ever before you know I don't want to call it all noise right
because there's information within you know we're receiving more stimuli than ever before uh through communication Technologies you know and um uh so Wilson is a DJ that's you know to use that mapor attributing people as he's writing but then making it his own because what he does with the Thinker
and the prover is just brilliant because uh he's able to kind of elucidate this uh this aspect of the human mind that uh and this is what's nice about him is is that you could see that he's working towards something in in most of his non-fiction work and that's him saying like look we might be able to do these
things we might be able to have ESP that could be potentially within us um what I'm saying is is we don't have scientific metaphors yet we don't have scientific theories for this for these uh uh actions that we're observing you know a nice contemporary of his in that regard is you know rert sheldrake who I
believe you've interviewed yeah and you spoke with and you know he left a great impression on Wilson with the notion of the morphic fields and um you know where does you know causality come from you know if you will and um just the idea that we are able to um constantly prove
a a a preconception is seems like that shouldn't be that revolutionary you know that that shouldn't be that revolutionary of a concept yet yet it is because what Wilson's drawing attention to I guess much like you know the Buddha if you will is that we have this capacity to
constantly fool ourselves you know to constantly mistake a map for the territory we're we're we're you know map making uh uh creatures you know we're pattern recognizing creatures this is just the way our makeup Works um and so in doing that in seeking to find patterns we always want to make
predictions right and uh and we're you know again Wilson is clear like we're we're constantly evolving you know homo sapien sapien like this this always this fact always amazes me that our brains the gray matter that we have especially the you know the the you know lower brain
not the neocortex the lower brain is older than Homo sapiens sapiens you know we we are the carriers of this this gray matter material that is older than our evolutionary form right now we're on a planet that is constantly changing in a galaxy that is constantly changing in a human form that we call human which is
going to change and uh Wilson is and I really make a point to present this in the book is that you know Wilson's whole philosophy is a really nice you know process philosophy right he's just drawing constant attention to the fact that we're constantly in flux and we're
always moving you know but uh how important it is to never lose sight of context you know uh and and in order to do that your mind needs to be Sharp and you need to as much as possible understand as many Sciences as possible and understand how science works you know uh so you could get to the point of
discussing you know quantum physics um without sounding like a new AG like fool you know like because the there's a real you know uh discussion going on and to learn that is essential right and um and I think Wilson inspires uh he he can inspire people more uh than he as as all good artist
than than he was able to accomplish right in his own life too because um you know Wilson points people in the direction of probability and like even basian probability though he never mentions basian probability though that's a lot of what he's doing um you can I mean I never thought of it but it
makes total sense like uh like when when you told me that you were a fan of Bob and you already have this huge career in finance and you know that's all predictive you know bainian sort of probability so it makes total sense right like and this is another great endorsement for for reading Wilson you
know it's like you can see the importance of constantly appraising where you're at and like recreating the map uh and I mean you know not everyone reads Wilson in in that regard and I that's the way I love reading Wilson I think it makes sense if the first encounter with Wilson is quantum
psychology because he really is in the groove at that moment you know he's really really presenting his philosophy really well you know and it's that we are in this flux we we need to come up and and recognize patterns it's just part of this you know world that we're in um but recognize that we're part of a
larger thing that's in flux right and so we are cosmic SCH but understanding context it's not wise or healthy for you to walk around thinking that you're a cosmic schmuck all day especially when you're encountering some real Schmucks who can't even realize that they're Cosmic
Schmucks and part of being a schmuck sometimes or a jerk is to make other people feel like Schmucks so you don't have to look at your own schmuck and Bob is not a wimp Bob is actually you know like the the you know walk in the way of uh the the fellow who started iido in a way you know the the I can't remember
his name it's hard to pronounce but you know his whole path was the guy who started iido was he was a deadly uh uh you know martial artist uh but then he came to the realization that like the best fighting is no fighting at all right and so he's not fighting not because he's a wimp but he's not
fighting because he understands the greater the greater good of it all and that's the message that Wilson is putting out there I think he he reaches for that as as a writer as a thinker he's always trying to keep that in context that you know uh you know great men look at themselves great great women
great people look at themselves you have to examine yourself you have to realize when you are a cosmic schmuck but when you go out there in the world that makes you stronger that makes you more of a leader to be able to check yourself so you're not going to be some indecisive
wimp in the corner you know uh unless you're going through that phase but most likely you're going to be highly attuned and you know have a good understanding and knowledge that the map is not the territory and that everyone's voice on this ship is important you know and to
realize like you're at the hull What do you see you're up there what do you see cuz we're in this together we're on spaceship planet Earth to you know borrow the phrase from Buckminster Fuller and um how's it looking right now it doesn't look very good it looks like the people who are steering the ship are
creening it towards a fast exit for for for the rest of us that's of course when I realize that I am putting out a perception right that's one way to describe what's going on in this world another way is how Bob said it he's like I look at me and my friends as we are the you know the change agents if you
will we're the ones that are going to make things better so it's all about understanding you know context um you know and I think Wilson's work kind of really does a good job at at helping people to stay present right in in in every in every sort of situation location and
moment that they're in you know well I could uh talk about uh him and your book all day long and my producers are now hitting up my uh they have a little rake that they pull me off air with uh Cu uh there I like time flies when you're talking about things that you love uh
Gabriel I I love the book uh it where can people find it and buy it thanks Jim yeah uh so uh right now the book Chapel peralis the life and thought crimes of Robert Anon Wilson uh you could go directly to my website uh which is Chapel peril. us um and on there are just some links uh you know you can find
the book on Amazon uh.com and also on Lulu press um and yeah again it's the you know Chapel perilis the life and thought crimes of Robert Anon Wilson and also uh you could check out my substack which is uh Gabriel Patrick Kennedy .s substack domcom and uh that's where you will find most of the news about the
book fantastic book I loved it and Gabriel if you've uh heard the podcast before you know that uh our final question is not really a question it is we are going to wave a magic wand and we're going to make you the emperor of the world uh you can't you can't kill anyone you can't put anyone in a
re-educate tion camp but what you can do is we're going to hand you a magical microphone and you can say two things into it and you are going to incept all 8 billion people on the planet with what the two things you say are they're going to wake up whenever their morning is and
they're going to say you know I just had two of the best ideas and unlike all of the other times I'm actually going to act on both of the these ideas what what two things are you going to incept in the world's population that's a heavy that's a heavy subject every question two words doesn't have to be words it could
be two sentences I love it um I don't know make everyone a billionaire free AI robots for everyone yeah I mean I guess take a breath uh try to be more kind to others and yourself I'll leave it at that you leave it at that I love the last one if we could all really internalize that one
the world might be a a much much better place well Gabriel this has been super fun for me congratulations on the book as I said I loved it I hope everyone listening and watching will get a copy and read it because Bob is a fascinating fascinating thinker and writer thanks so much for joining me Gabriel thank you Jim