Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson was an American author of 35 influential books, became, at various times, a novelist, philosopher, essayist, editor, playwright, futurist, civil libertarian and self-described agnostic mystic.
 * "Now imagine these gigabytes of information entering your brain not in two years, but in two nanoseconds, and radiating not just from this page but from the fruit on the table, the wall paint, the pencil, the cars passing in the street..... and the furthest stars. That's why LSD has altered the world for so many of us in the last 60 years. Like English poet William Blake we have found "infinity in a grain of sand" and the deeper we look, the deeper the abyss grows. And like Nietzsche, we often suspect that as we gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into us......"


 * "LSD seems to suspend the imprinted and conditioned brain circuits that normally control pereption/emotion/thought, allowing a flood -- an ocean -- of new information to break through. The experience will seem either very frightening or exileratingly educational, depending on how rigidly you previously believed your current map contained "all" the universe. Since I learned that no model equals the totallity of experience long before I tried LSD, I never had a bad trip; but I have seen enough anxiety atttacks and downright wig-outs in cases of the naive and dogmatic that I have never favored or advocated LSD's promiscuous use by the general population. As J.R. "Bob'' Dobbs says, "You know how dumb the average ccitizen is? Well, mathematically, by definition, half of them are even dumber than that.""


 * "While splashing about and trying not to drown in this ocean of new information, you generally experience a second LSD surprise: an explosion of newfound energy within your own body. Whether you call this kundalini or bio-electricity or orgone or libido or Life Force, it can trigger muscle spasms, unbridled Eros or just "warm and melting" sensations -- or all three in succession, or all three almost simultaneously -- usually followed by something loosely called "near-death experience" or "out of body experience." Again, this can seem either psychotically terrifying or "religiously" ecstatic, and can imprint short-or--long-term tendecies toward paranoia ["everything wants to destroy me"] or metanoia ["everything wants to help me."] In either case, one tends to retain a heightened awareness of those peculiar coincidences that Jung called synchronicities and Christian conspiracy buffs attribute to hostile occult forces."


 * "In my case, after a few years I found myself seemingly forced to choose, not between paranoia and metanoia -- both by then appeared pitiful oversimplifications -- but between mysticism and agnosticism. I solved that problem, for myself anyway, by choosing agnostic mysticism in the tradition of Lao-tse: Something unknown, unspeakable,/ before Earth or sky,/ before life or death,/ I do not know what to call it /So I call it Dao"


 * "What do I think we should do with Dr. Hoffman's "problem child"? Well, no commodity becomes safer when its manufacture, sale and distribution all fall into the hands of professional criminals; and prohibition, of alcohol and all other drugs, inevitably has that effect, followed by police corruption and public cynicism. Maybe governments should leave this arena entirely and let professional scientists, medical and otherwise, write the guidelines?" -- LSD, Dogs and Me


 * "LSD seems to suspend the imprinted and conditioned brain circuits that normally control perception/emotion/thought, allowing a flood – an ocean – of new information to break through." -- http://www.lsd.info/en/quotes.html