Prometheus Rising

Robert Anton Wilson

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 Robert 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.

status Copy #1 (1809): checked out
Copy #2 (1965): in
Copy #3 (7226): checked out
genre Magic » Chaos Magic
publisher New Falcon Publications
publish date September 1, 1992
popularity checked out 36 time(s)

Reviews

  • By Future Man -

    This book accompanied me on a month long hitch-hiking trip and changed the entire way that I see my experience of living in my own brain.

    Each chapter moves step by step through the eight neural circuits theorized by Timothy Leary, explaining how each one functions and then giving you guidelines for experiments to perform on yourself to play with your own programming to modify the ways that your brain processes its inputs and natural reactions.

  • By David Zhang -

    This book totally blew my mind in high school. A great tool for people who want to fine tune their experience of reality.

  • By Matthew Gilmore -

    I don’t know where to start on how this book has impacted me. I’ve been dealing with a lot of trauma-related issues and a desire to actually understand them lately, trying to rationalize how my brain responds to things and how better to interact with others when the trauma brain has a mind of its own. Learning more about how the brain steps through its assessment of needs and which needs are being attacked or seemingly being attacked in a traumatic response has really helped me to quiet the mental chatter constantly telling me I’m not good enough, that I’m only destined to hurt people, or that I’m actively hurting people in the present simply by merit of existence. It’s helped me identify times in my past that I was particularly sensitive to the opinions of others and how those interactions at the time shaped my confidence in my own reasoning and those around me. I also appreciate the attention to a diverse set of influences on the mind, not only parents and teachers, but environmental factors, health, drugs, and isolation. I had been avoidant of trying to understand any of my trauma for so long because I convinced myself (as a result of that trauma!) that I couldn’t make good choices regarding my mental health, that I was literally incapable of doing anything regarding my own state that wouldn’t just amount to being an awful person or going down a dark path. Absurd, I know, and Robert Anton Wilson helped show me precisely how absurd it is to think such negative things about yourself constantly when they’re just the voices of other folks still living in your head, telling you who you are, how you are, and what you are and aren’t capable of. I know it’s cliche, but this book has shown me that we are capable of anything we put our minds to, even unraveling 20+ years of mental spaghetti. I recommend this book to anyone struggling with understanding trauma, how that relates to others, and how to identify sources and put them in perspective rather than grasping at straws for an explanation in the moment. I’m learning more and more how important it is to recognize what tools are available for understanding the mind, and that we don’t have to do it alone, or worse, transfer the problem to someone else by not understanding our own needs, boundaries, imprints, or psychology. Let Wilson remind you how great you are for existing, for persevering in the face of an absurd world, and how important it is to understand the nuances of your own mental workings!

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