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Summary: Beautiful and full of wonder
Review: Gods i loved this book! The art is fantastic, the essay's RAW writes are AWESOME and thought provoking. Great trip! And if the part about his daughter does not play with your heart strings consider getting a new heart. Truly a great work!
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Summary: WARNING: MAY CAUSE THOUGHT.
Review: ...depending on who you are. If you are intelligent, curious, and possessed of a sense of humor, this book will do you great good: it's a very gently humorous and extremely HUMANE examination of All The Weird Things we've been living with these past few hundred years (or more), as filtered through one Robert Anton Wilson.However... if you respond to the book by slamming it closed and calling R.A.Wilson a liar/fraud/false prophet/agent of Satan/etc., etc., then you have completely missed the point. Wilson is not trying to convert anyone to his specific point of view, but is trying to awaken people to the possibility that their own point of view may simply be very, very small and incomplete. It's big universe out there, and to hide from it in a "dogmatic reality-tunnel" (his words) is, quite simply, counterproductive and stupid. It does not make SENSE to ignore the possibilities, or to smother them with regurgitations of unexamined prejudices. Wilson is doing something very daring here: he is trying to write a book which is NOT meant to be read by the "converted", but by everyone, really. G'wan, you Bible-pounders -- give it a shot. You could be right and you could be wrong. It's a big universe.
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Summary: Interesting, and pretty wacked out!
Review:
This book is a rambling account by R.A.W. that winds together accounts of the author's life in the 70's and his association with other 60s-70s drug and occult counter-culture figures (especially Timothy Leary) - to put forth a strange theory about aliens seeding life here on Earth and guiding our evolution (in consciousness) so that ultimately we can join them as immortal space beings. In the process of spinning this "theory" Wilson touches on everything from the Illuminati, mythology, religion, psychology, physics, the occult, etc. This is my first exposure to Wilson and in this book he comes across as highly intelligent and well read, but also very ego-centric and paranoid. Also, - he makes the excellent point about how our sensory perception is intricately associated with our specific chemical biology - thus hallucinagenic drugs (chemicals) alter our perceptive ability and open us up to perceiving reality in a whole new way. And it's hard not to agree with that up to a point because we, as physical beings, are awash in a cosmic sea of signals, and are only consciously aware of a tiny, tiny percent of all of that information that is around us. However, Wilson, at least in this book, never seems to question the validity of the extra information that is processed when you wack your brain out on drugs and every conceivable occult activity. Nor does he seem to question very seriously the bizarre conclusions he reaches based on this information received. And while acknowledging Leary's ideas regarding the dose, set and setting as having a strong effect on one's experience with psychedelics Wilson didn't seem to catch on that this whole UFO-alien scheme could simply have been the result of a bunch of overworked imaginations and wacked out perceptive abilities operating in a very free-thinking, government hating, ego-centric, paranoid "set and setting". This myopic approach also is evident to the reader in that Wilson seems to raise every coincidence in his life to the spiritually significant level of "syncronicity". For example, several times during the book he mentions that it is a meaningful coincidence of great import that his daughter's first menstrual cycle came on the same day that Timothy Leary was arrested in Afghanistan?! But he never mentions WHY this coincidence is meaningful. Similarly, he is convinced that "23" is an important number in his life so any day, date, book, time, place, story, picture, conversation, etc. that includes the number 23 in any way, shape or form is taken to have some special "meaning". And because 2 + 3 = 5, the number 5 is treated likewise - as are the numbers 33,333, 666 and others. A plethera of symbols are also given meaningful status (birds of prey, etc.) So it's not hard to see why Wilson can find sychronicities wherever he looks. It's also interesting to note that the book is packed with wild assertions about where science would be at the turn of the century (year 2000) such as people living hundreds of years, commuicating routinely via telepathy, and regular space travel via spaceships to other planets. These things, obviously having not occurred could be forgiven as overly optimistic imagining, but to the extent that they are all part and parcel of his alien theory they cast doubt on the validity of much of what he says. Wilson struck me as an intelligent, well-read, thinker with interesting perspectives on the meaning of life. His emotional state throughout the book seemed to oscillate between loving optimism and paranoia. And while I found his ideas a good springboard to thought, it was hard ultimately to take his conclusiond very seriously. And it was clear that, while writing this book, he was so wrapped up in his own conspiracy theories and wacky ideas that he couldn't properly step outside of that box in order to objectively evaluate them, which was strange given his obvious intelligence. Overall it's worth reading to get a strange perspective on things and I'll probably read some related material (Timothy Leary)
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Summary: Synchronicity, Sirius and Crowley or a little tab will do ya
Review: A mind altering read that I practically inhaled. His voice is genuine and he writes with a sense of humor about ideas that others have handled in very heavy handed manner. At last, my life long, unexplainable fascination with Mali, Africa has been illuminated.
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Summary: Tri-Lateralist Nonsense
Review: A whopping truckload of manure for the amusement of the simpleminded.
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Summary: Very interesting way to look at various belief systems
Review: After reading this book, I was hoping to be floored with the ideas presented in his book. I was impresseed but it did not meet my expectations. This book gives you a keen insight in how various beliefs systems share a common thread, and that a lot of what happens in life isn't just coincidence. I guess I was disappointed with his conclusion because I already have a better understanding of these issues but I must also remember that this book was written in the late 70's.
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Summary: An excellent book that will change your pattern of thought
Review: All I can tell you is that Wilson is a genious, this book has definately changed my life in many ways.
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Summary: This book changed my life!
Review: An ex-girlfriend once told me, "Don't ever let a book change your life." Soon thereafter I bought Cosmic Trigger and failed to heed her advice... thank goddess! It's an excellent mind-opener
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Summary: Cosmic Trigger : Final Secret of the Illuminati
Review: Andrew Daneman, does not know what he is talking about or even know what the Illuminati is about. And the remark about "Yes, the world is about to end, but it won't end like this. Try the Bible." The Bible doesn't say in detail what is going to happen but Cosmic Trigger : Final Secret of the Illuminati is a lot closer. Excellent book or you can be like Andrew Daneman. And have CNN spoon feed you on what they think you need to know about the Illuminati: New World Order.
Rating:
Summary: Third-eye opening, divulge and divine
Review: Consider this text as the beginning, not the end, of the reading list for mind-expansion and deprogramming, and, as such, it belongs on the reading list of every college freshman, every CEO (whether already corrupted or not), everyone doing domestic surveillance of his or her fellow citizens, each and every minister (especially the Primitive Baptists, and yes, I know that is a tautology and those who practice mind and money control in megachuches), and everyone else except those who are not living Westerners on this plane of existence. Others have written remarks about what this book is about and what it means/meant to them. But to see down the longest, straightest vector and to see even the sounds of wind chimes will take longer. Study the koans and practice breathing. Trust no one unless he or she merits this trust. And, yes, the whole business with the number 23 is very seriously as real as the weather. And one more "and": Tyrone Breadloaf (further down the reviewer list) may be correct in his assessment when the stars and planets align in certain patterns.
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