RAW was a dystopian who could put Atlantis, UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, the number 23 (I googled this and it ranks right up there with the number 13 for superstition value), the Virgin Mary sightings and so forth all in one book. He meant to challenge people, not conjecture that all these alternate realities were true. He was far more a skeptic scientist than a supernaturalist. When you read him, the metalevel is one of open skepticism, not one of closed belief.

(from Wikipedia: Robert Anton Wilson (born Robert Edward Wilson, January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007) became, at various times, an American novelist, essayist, philosopher, polymath, psychonaut, futurist, libertarian, and self-described Agnostic Mystic. He described his work as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations—to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps and no one model elevated to the Truth." "My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything." )

In this book he is merely describing all the weird Fortean events that people talk about, the urban legends that we often want to believe are true. He does not deny that there might be something true and he does not believe that a something that might be true is anything we could begin to understand. He was a great proponent of neural reprogramming and believed that we all live in a kind of one dimensionality tunnel vision of our own devising. Each person's world is highly irrational and of our own making, and RAW believed there might be a way to break free of this with all its attendant neuroses and false belief systems. ( )

A great read. In spite of their mystic insights and cosmic aspirations, RAW and Leary were vulnerable human beings living in a dark age. Wilson provides a surprisingly graphic glimpse of life as the sixties became a memory and the backlash began; the onset of the troubling karmas which are still with us. But even more amazing is the revelation of the great heart and holy spirit by which we are empowered to rise above it all. The final secret is that love, truth, intelligence and the good humor of friendship ultimately outshine all difficult and oppressive conditions. ( )

Robert Anton Wilson pulls another number on our collective heads. ( )

Robert Anton Wilson is a very strange man. Here he writes about all
sorts of things, conspiracies, magic, the occult, weird happenings and
how lots of things like this tie together and are meaningful. The other
funny thing is the whole numerology bit, where the number twenty-three
is seen as being very important, and turns up in all sorts of places.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2006/12... ( )

The quintessential Robert Anton Wilson book. I really need to read it again. ( )