Prometheus Rising

Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson, surprised to be the first to mention him in this thread, but in high school his ideas changed how I think about everything from mysticism to subjectivity to how I engage with ideas and being wrong.

I'm reluctant to even mention it, but I'll bite. :-) I found the first half of "Prometheus Rising" by Robert Anton Wilson to be incredibly useful for understanding human dynamics -- I use the framework presented there every day. The core of this is in my opinion just a very straightforward computer-focused analogy that gives me insight into the behaviour of other people and myself that I haven't found elsewhere. Of course, outside the core is a LOT of wild new age, Crowley-Leary-Regardie syncretism that provokes strong negative throw-the-book-across-the-room reactions in most people. A lot of very reasonable people would look at the wikipedia page or the cover of this book and not only think that the book is crap, but also that I'm a crazy hippie for even considering reading it.

Prometheus rising was such an instrumental book for me. At that point of my life I was dabbling into the occult which is why I ended up getting the book. In made me realize that there are multiple side to any story and you can easily get stuck in echo chambers that re-inforce your own pre-conceptions. Ironically it's the book that drove me away from the occult. It also create a lot of uncertainty in my life, which at times even today, 20 years later bothers me. I am never 100% sure about anything, because it's all a "maybe". It has also led to a constant evolution of my thinking process because I am always open to new ideas and mindsets. I remember the last section of the book was totally unrelatable to me. Still own the book, I should probably re-read it, twenty years later.

Most books by Bob Wilson, particularly Prometheus Rising, which set off a world of self-discovery when I picked it up first in high school. Nowadays, on weird books or ideas, I’d say: * The technique of Focusing by Eugene Gendlin * Shinzen Young’s writing on his See-Hear-Feel noting meditation technique * Or, similar to focusing but much, much weirder: Jack Willis’s Reichian Therapy for Home Use (available free on the internet) Every single book here has its own issues, but they all elaborate on listening to the body, and the subtle ways we hold stress in our bodies. They’ve helped me understand too that there’s a difference between being emotionally fat and emotionally expressive: the former is like a McDonald’s meal, the latter like a fine dining meal. I’ve struggled with generalized anxiety all my life, and this stuff has really helped me deal with it without pushing it away. On the actual real reduction-of anxiety I still feel fairly clueless.

Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson

Probably Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger or Prometheus Rising back in 2010. The “reality tunnel” concept has defined much of my personal and intellectual exploration of the past 10 years. “ When we meet somebody whose separate tunnel-reality is obviously far different from ours, we are a bit frightened and always disoriented. We tend to think they are mad, or that they are crooks trying to con us in some way, or that they are hoaxers playing a joke. Yet it is neurologically obvious that no two brains have the same genetically-programmed hard wiring, the same imprints, the same conditioning, the same learning experiences. We are all living in separate realities. That is why communication fails so often, and misunderstandings and resentments are so common. I say "meow" and you say "Bow-wow," and each of us is convinced the other is a bit dumb.”

I second the recommendation of Intuition Pumps. To that, I would add Metamagical Themas by Douglas Hofstader & Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson. (Wilson gets a little hippieish, but he does a better job of knocking down unjustified tunnel-vision than Hofstader or Dennett do.)

RAW's Cosmic Trigger and Prometheus Rising for me: I read both when I was 13 and was a recently-converted Southern Baptist. I quickly shifted my entire understanding of epistemology and the nature of reality.

That's pretty much what I thought about Prometheus Rising also. First few chapters were very interesting, but the rest was just okay.

Decrypting Rita, the graphic novel I've been working on since April 2011. http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/ I made a major mistake in the prepress process and had to eat it, losing all profits from the Kickstarter from the second volume. It has also gotten kind words from more than one Hugo winner. On a productive month, its Patreon is starting to pay about half of my rent; I feel like the push of publicity for the final volume (somewhere around April 2014 if all goes well) will do some pretty interesting things to my career as a comics creator, with my bills quite possibly being paid entirely by the fraction of my fan base that chooses to support me on Patreon somewhere around next winter. Assuming they don't vanish en masse when I start the next project, which will be very different in tone and subject matter... I know you were mostly looking for books to read. But none of the fiction or non-fiction I've read this year has really done much of anything to my worldview. I think the last one that did that was probably Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising, which basically turned me into an occasional magician.

It was meant to be humorous. I enjoyed the book.

Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson - http://www.amazon.com/Prometheus-Rising-Robert-Anton-Wilson/... (http://www.amazon.com/Prometheus-Rising-Robert-Anton-Wilson/dp/1561840564) A proposition offered by Wilson on the nature of the human mind - "Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves." "Of course it is fairly easy to see that other peoples minds operate this way; it is comparatively much harder to become aware that one's own mind is working that way also." Realize that when you think X, all of your successive thoughts attempt to reconcile or solidify the notion of X. In this way, we are the artists of our realities, everyone's reality being different than others since all of it is based on conceptions. Your conceptions and ideas rule you, from who you think you are to what you think the world or your environment is about. It is how you make sense of all sensory data. Not everyone organizes their reality in the same way you do, because they all went through a difficult accumulation of sense data (and subsequent reaction to and organization of said data) throughout their lives to get to where they are. More: http://deoxy.org/wiki/The_Thinker_and_the_Prover…

Reality Tansurfing 1: The Space of Variations "Choosing" your own reality, positive mind frames, philosophy and actionable steps for goal attainment (no "Secret" wish fulfillment). http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1846941229/ref=as_li_ss_tl?... (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1846941229/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=xlracom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=1846941229) " Some of Zeeland's techniques are very simple and practical; e.g. his methods of combining rational thinking with intuition for making practical decisions. Other "tools" require a high degree of control over one's thoughts and/or emotions. Zeeland also advocates reducing the amount of mental self-talk in favour of listening to one's intuition, which has some similarity with the teachings of Eckhart Tolle [[2]]." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vadim_Zeeland The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062508342/ref=as_li_ss_tl?... (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062508342/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=xlracom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=0062508342)…

Prometheus Rising - Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson's "Illuminatus Trilogy", "Prometheus Rising". Aleister Crowley's "Book of lies"

- What the Dormouse Said, John Markoff - Alongside Night, J Neil Schulman, - Prometheus Rising, Robert Anton Wilson - Anything by Doug Rushkoff, Get Back in the Box is a good one for business/entrepreneurship - The Dubliners, James Joyce - The Elements of Typographic Style, by Robert Bringhurst