JiayoJames

Hi. I thought it'd be interesting to see what you guys think of Robert Anton Wilson. Here is a video... ...if you want to spend a lot of time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RVAfT7D5-w ...if you don't want to spend a lot of time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEZtw1yt8Kc I like this guy! I tend to agree with many of the things he says. I used to agree with Objectivism quite closely, so I'd be interested in hearing how you interpret his words.

There was once a man who looked at a tree through a window. His mind wandered into thought. He saw the tree outside but he knew that the experience of perceiving that tree was created in his mind. If the perception existed in the mind then were was what he was looking at... was it outside or in his head? Perhaps it was in the glass. So he was looking at a tree outside, but the experience of seeing was created in his mind... if the sight was a part of him, was the tree him? But what about the tree that existed outside... where there two trees now? This is gibberish, thought the man, snapping out of his semi trance. The following day the man bumped into a mathematician entering a church and they began a conversation about evolution. The first life on this planet had been simple, following basic reactionary processes. Slowly, over many many generations the organisms had increased in complexity as they adapted or died. Eventually what we might call consciousness had emerged. But what, asked the mathematician, was the difference between reaction and consciousness? Well, the man replied, surely it is the capacity to experience. What is experience but a complex reaction? The man was not sure he fully understood the question... instead of replying he added more requirements: thought, he said, and self awareness... these are more than reaction. And what of atoms? asked the mathematician. What? At this point the man ended his conversation. That night the man had a dream. He dreamed of the creation of the universe. Out of the initial chaos particles began to form, and soon the universe came to light as photons came into being. There were no atoms yet, indeed it was an age before hydrogen began to form... but the man's dream-time was accelerating and soon stars were bursting to life, clusters of stars, spirals with many billions of them... and in the heart of the stars different atoms were taking shape... slowly one of the galaxies began to expand to soak up all of his awareness... it began to shift and distort. And then it was no longer a galaxy but it had become a tree, and from the end of the branches of that tree grew a fruit, and the fruit was people. One of the fruit-people opened their mouth and out of it came a clockwork model of a solar system. But it did not last long as the dream consciousness was moving again, it flowed towards the fruit-person and into their eyes, through there eyes into a tunnel. The tunnel went on for what seemed like forever until finally and suddenly, as if passing a threshold, it shattered into the big bang of creation. And now there was a rhythm, a drumbeat... steady and grounding... but soon it was no longer a drumbeat, it took on a shrill edge and shifted towards the high pitched periodic buzz of a bedside alarm. A few days later the man went to see a psychologist at the circus. He recounted his experiences. Perhaps you are picking up psychic signals, the psychologist jibed. The psychologists words had an effect on the man's mind. As a result of this effect, a certain pattern of neuron interaction ensued, resulting in an electrical signal being sent to certain of the man's muscles, which proceeded to contract in an intricate pattern, which caused waves of vibration in the air, in travelled into the psychologists ears, where they transferred the vibration into particularly tiny bones which in turn stimulated an electrical signal to be sent to the psychologist's brain, where there was a pattern of neural activity, and it was interpreted and experienced as a sound, but more than a sound for other area's of his brain and knowledge further decoded the sound to discover that there was a complex code in the vibrations that formed words, concepts, meaning. There's no such thing as telepathy, heard the psychologist. Next day, the man met a neuroscientist at Stonehenge. They talked for some time about various things, and afterwards the man decided to remain to think some more. The brain is physical. Conciousness arises from the brain. It is somehow in the brain. Likely the mind, experience, is a field... some kind of standing wave... so I'm a standing wave? Or am I my body? Is there more than one me? Who is asking this question, and to who? Just then an alien spaceship descended from the heavens and he was abducted. In their spaceship the aliens began dissecting his body and strange visions ran through his mind. first there was a brain and beside it a mirror, slowly the two began to get closer and closer together... he noticed that as this happened the brain seemed to be increasing inside and it became apparent to him by some intuition that it was developing and becoming more complex.... after what seemed like an eternity the brain and the mirror came into contact. Suddenly white turned to black and black to white and the brain and the mirror were no longer a brain and a mirror but was instead a camera pointing at a television set, and on that television was the chaotic formation of intricate patterns characterised by a video feedback loop. and the patterns said: Am I the screen or the camera? There was once a man who looked at a tree through a window. He had forgotten that consciousness was in the light all along.