Did not review when first read

Imagine trying to make sense of an amalgam of Timothy Leary's eight neurological circuits, G.I Gurdjieff's self-observation exercises, Alfred Korzybski's general semantics. Aleister Crowley's magical theorems, and the several disciplines of Yoga; not to mention Christian Science, relativity, quantum mechanics, and many other approaches to understanding the world around us! That is exactly what Robett Anton Wilson does in Prometheus Rising. In short, this is a book about how the human mind works and what you can do to make the most of yours.

'Bob has done it again for the first time ever! This book is everything I ever wanted to write in a practical guidebook on how to get here from there, and he's-as usual-first in print again! Just the exercise on finding quarters has paid for the book many times over.'-E.J. Gold

'Robert Anton Wilson speaks for that tiny but indispensable minority who are changing the way we think. To read him is to learn what the future holds, how to be part of the future and how to help create the future.'-Robert Shea

'The man's glittering intelligence won't let you rest. First he shocks, then he enlightens. One is never the same after reading him. With each new book I wlecome his wisdom, laced with his special brand of crazy humor.'-Alan Harrington, author of The Immortalist

Novelist, teacher and former Playboy Editor Robert Anton Wilson is the author of the Cosmic Trigger trilogy; Quantum Psychology; The wall Came Tumbling Down; The New Inquisition; The Illuminatus! trilogy (with Robert Shea); Reality Is What You Can Get Away With; Ishtar Rising; Wilhelm Reich in Hell; Sex & Drugs; Chaos & Beyond and other works.

Contents

Preface to the second edition
Introduction
1 The thinker and the power
2 Hardware & software: The brain and its programs
3 The oral bio-survival circuit
4 The anal emotional territorial circuit
5 Dickens & Joyce: The two-circuit dialectic
6 The time-binding semantic circuit
7 The time-binding dialectic: Acceleration & deceleration
8 The 'moral' socio-sexual circuit
9 Mindwashing & brain programming
10 How to brain-wash friends & robotize people
11 The holistic neurosomatic circuit
12 The collective neurogenetic circuit
13 Introduction to the metaprogramming circuit
14 The meta-programming circuit
15 Different models & different muddles
16 The snafu principle
17 Quantum evolution
18 The non-local quantum circuit
19 Prometheus rising
Appendix

This book does a good job of presenting the circuits operating in the brain, based on Timothy Leary's models and is as convincing as any offered by Freud, Jung and subsequent theorists though influenced too by these. Its account of the process of brainwashing is also convincing. Wilson is good company as a writer, lacing the theory with informal humour and thought provoking exercises where he is arguably more insightful than most academic thinkers. But he loses me a bit in the last three circuits. It's not that I would deny totally that these exist but am not sure how influential they are. I'm willing to admit the right-brain where these are located plays a part in brain function that's not fully understood but a lot of what Wilson states is largely speculative. The positive effects of yoga I believe are overstated. Many of his predictions for the future haven't been realized but it still reads entertainingly as a prognosis from his situation at the time. I enjoyed the eclectic mix of Leary, Crowley and Joyce. Where else would you get it? Maybe Colin Wilson mined similar territory. Robert Anton was certainly an open-minded thinker. A lot of his readers seem to come to him as bright teenagers but I don't think I'm too old to learn something from him! ( )

Eye opening read. ( )

Interesting way of looking at personalities - possibly somewhat Freudian? Any grid-based "map" of existence is generally useful, but the mind keeps wandering back to this one. ( )