Final Secret of the Illuminati

by Robert Anton Wilson

  “And how do the anthropologists explain that?” I asked.

  “They don’t,” Saul Paul said with a Groucho Marx grin. “It’s regarded as a mystery.” Saul Paul, who was a theologian before he became a physicist, is also the author of a hilarious theological-psychedelic novel called Jumped by Jesus. He is an even more advanced case of Aggravated Agnosticism than your humble narrator, and loves data that won’t fit into anybody’s theories.

  I quickly obtained a copy of Temple’s book from England, and was staggered by it.5 Temple’s evidence, which we will summarize later, could be interpreted to indicate the arrival of people from Sirius who had come here in a physical space ship around 4500 B.C. According to Temple, information about this had been passed on through various initiatory orders in the ancient Mediterranean and in Africa to the present time. But the evidence could also be interpreted to mean that methods of interstellar telepathy between Earth and the Sirius system had been discovered back then and that many have been tuning in on that channel ever since. In other words, through Crowley’s secret teaching, I might have tuned in on a nearly 6,500-year-old cosmic dialogue, after all.

  Chapel Perilous, as I said before, is tricky that way. When you think you’re out of it, you’re just in another hall of illusions painted to look like the safe forest outside; and when you think you’re inside again, you’ll suddenly discover you’re actually walking on the road back home. As the traditional Zen saying sums it up:

  First there is a mountain,

  Then there is no mountain,

  Then there is.

  In this context, we don’t expect anybody to believe in the Sirius transmissions just because the author seems like an honest guy. Richard Milhous Nixon once seemed like an honest guy, at least to the folks who voted for him. We are emphatically not competing for the True Believer Market with Nixon (or Erich von Daniken). We hope to show, with objective and documented evidence, that something is going on. Something more physical and palpable than hallucination.

  The semanticist raises his eyebrows and mutters that the expression “something more physical and palpable than hallucination” does not convey a very precise idea; one might as well talk of something more tangible and objective than reverie. We will become more specific as we proceed, but at this stage we must define our god-awful ignorance explicitly before we dare to propound our speculations. It is important to state unambiguously that our data are not in conflict with “science,” as the naive will imagine — in fact, we will provide several scientific explanations for all of it, in Part Two — but it is, grotesquely and awkwardly, in total conflict with common sense. It is perverse, paradoxical and preposterous. One might say, “It’s damned funny” and if a child asked innocently, “Do you mean ‘funny-haha’ or ‘funny-peculiar’?” I’d have to answer, “Both.”

  Let us illustrate with an example of the kind of mystery we will be confronting — the Case of the Pancakes from Outer Space. Like a pig with wings, this is definitely funny; we leave it to the reader to decide whether to consider it funny-haha or funny-peculiar.

  Joseph Simonton of Eagle River, Wisconsin, claims that a flying saucer landed in his back yard one day and an extraterrestrial got out and gave him some pancakes.

  There were no other witnesses to this remarkable occurrence, so it is certainly tempting to say that Simonton must have been hallucinating. There is no reason to think that he was consciously perpetrating a hoax, however. He has not tried to commercialize on his encounter in any way and seems to be baffled by the whole experience, just as you would be.

  Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a skeptical astronomer, who explained other UFOs as “swamp gas,” was sent by the Air Force to investigate the Simonton mindfuck. Dr. Hynek took some of the damnable pancakes back to the Dayton Air Force base, where the UFO investigation is headquartered, and scientists there determined that the pancakes were perfectly normal and contained nutritious wheat germ, perhaps indicating that the Space Brothers are Ralph Nader fans. Dr. Hynek himself says he thinks that Simonton was telling the truth, i.e., he believed in his experience.

  Dr. Jacques Vallee also investigated this case and says that he too is convinced that Simonton is honest.

  Simonton himself has no idea why he, of all the people on Earth, was singled out for this perplexing gift.6

  If Simonton merely hallucinated the whole episode, where did the accursed astral pancakes actually come from? Answer me that, O ye skeptics. On the other hand, if the flying saucer was really there in the yard, why in the name of all the pot-bellied gods of Burma did the extraterrestrials decide on this occasion to present a human being with a gift of pancakes? The story is equally bizarre and unsatisfying however we interpret it.

  Simonton’s adventure is more characteristic of UFO contacts than readers who are unfamiliar with the subject will realize. The newspapers and TV generally cover only a tiny fraction of UFO reports and usually publicize only the contactees who establish quasi-religious movements around themselves, based on doctrines of peace and pop ecology allegedly transmitted by the UFOnauts. Such messianic accounts are comfortable reading, since most of us secretly would like to believe that benevolent Space Brothers are trying to save this planet from the various disasters that seem to threaten it, but they are a minority. The Simonton pancakes are much more typical.

  One classic Contact involved two Naval Intelligence officers of high probity. There was also a “coincidental” (but highly mysterious) radar blackout of the whole area — almost as if Chapel Perilous in this case was using a technology that renders itself invisible to radar. The officers seemed to have contacted a benevolent being from the planet Uranus. The naive believer in loving Space Brothers will rejoice at such a yarn, especially since the communications received included the usual peace propaganda. The more analytical will detect the pig-with-wings element in the facts that (a) Uranus is almost certainly incapable of supporting life and that (b) the communicating entity gave a name which sounds suspiciously like a joke at the expense of any student of Cabala who studies the transcript. The name was “AFFA,” which in a Cabalistic language called “angelic” means nothing or the void. The Contact, in this case, was 99% “telepathic,” as in my Sirius experience, but the officers were given a view of what looked like a real spaceship outside their window at the climax of the experience. And that was the point in time when the radar blackout “coincidentally” occurred in the area.7

  Others have had classic “hallucinatory” or “psychotic” experiences with the Space Brothers, such as meeting Jesus on a flying saucer or being taken a hundred light years and back in a half-hour; so that the hurried investigator would be inclined to dismiss such yarns as imaginary. Unfortunately, these people often have ambiguous but definite evidence that something happened — independent witnesses saw a UFO at the same time, or there were weird mechanical failures in the neighborhood; Once two people involved in different Contacts hundreds of miles away from each other and a year apart told the same absurd details. Each alleged a visit to a planet named “Lanalus,” where all the natives are humanoid and go naked. This yarn was told by both a West Virginia salesman and a Washington, D.C. law student, independently of each other.8 In such a case the most ardent reductionist can’t reduce what happened to less than a hallucination shared by telepathy, which is staggering in itself. (How many independent witnesses have to be involved before any event can no longer be dismissed as shared hallucination? As Berkeley, Hume and others have indicated, it is logically impossible to prove that our everyday experience isn’t all fantasy. Since only telepathy can explain the shared space-journey in this particular case, data may be called shared hallucination by the determined skeptic even when witnesses are independent of each other. That way lies solipsism, if not paranoia.)

  To claim that both witnesses were liars would be convenient, of course, but one has the uneasy feeling that it is a weird coincidence for two liars to independently invent the same lie. You could reject any data that way, including any la
boratory experiments you don’t like. For instance, those who reject even telepathy have reached the point where they are impugning either the honesty or the sanity of several thousand scientific researchers on all major continents over a period of decades. Such expedient ways of disposing of data are shared only by the most ardent anti-Evolutionists among the Fundamentalist sects.

  Please note that we promised several scientific explanations of our data, not one explanation. There is, at this point, no single theory that will account for all of the Damned Things we are going to bring forth and parade for your inspection. To give you some perspective in advance, let us list a few of the ideas that have passed through this investigator’s mind in the course of his journey into and out of Chapel Perilous.

  Either . . .

  (a) the evidence assembled here can be explained by Bell’s Theorem, a breakthrough in physics suggesting a basic indivisibility of all things. Bell also allows for three sub-models we shall be discussing: (1) the observer-created universe; (2) parallel universes; (3) information-without-energy;

  and/or

  (b) some human beings of highly evolved psychic powers (“the Illuminati”) are playing head-games with other human beings, sometimes passing themselves off as (c) or (d) below;

  and/or

  (c) we really are being contacted, experimented upon or otherwise manipulated by Higher Intelligences from Outer Space, probably from Sirius (or the Illuminati are creating a simulation of such extraterrestrials);

  and/or

  (d) we have always shared this planet with another intelligent species, which can either remain invisible or manifest to us in any form it chooses. UFO researcher John Keel calls these hypothetical entities “ultra-terrestrials.” Earlier ages called them fairies, angels, demons, the weird people, etc.

  and/or

  (e) we are all evolving into the use of new neurological circuits, which will make us superhuman in comparison to our present average state. The activation of these new circuits creates a great deal of temporary weirdness until we learn to use them properly. This is the theory of such scientifically oriented yogis as Sri Aurobindo and Gopi Krishna, and of Dr. Timothy Leary.

  and/or

  (f) a combination or permutation of the above is going on simultaneously.

  Some of our data fit one of the above theories better than another; some fit equally well into two or three theories; some don’t fit any theory yet. The multi-theory approach (or, as it is called in physics, the multi-model approach) is the only way to deal adequately with all the facts. Any single-theory approach is premature and causes a truncation of our intelligence; it forces us to ignore or belittle parts of the data that might be crucial.

  The multi-model approach began in sub-atomic physics and is chiefly due to Nobel laureate Niels Bohr. In dealing with certain mysterious entities on that quasi-astral plane, physicists had found hard evidence that these entities were particles. Good. Unfortunately, other evidence, equally persistent, showed that the entities were really waves. Not so good. Some physicists held to the particle theory, and insisted that all evidence supporting the wave theory would eventually be explained away. Others, however, accepted the waves and rejected the particles. Still others, somewhat facetiously, began talking of “wavicles.” Bohr suggested that the search for one correct model was medieval, pre-scientific and obsolete. We can best understand sub-atomic events, he said, if we accept the necessity of allowing for more than one model. As Marshall McLuhan has pointed out, in The Mechanical Bride and other works, the multi-model approach has now influenced all the sciences and even appears in modern art (e.g., cubist paintings show several views at once; Joyce’s Ulysses describes the same day in various styles — epic, dramatic, journalistic, subjective, naturalistic, etc.). McLuhan has even proclaimed, in his usual apocalyptic style, that the multi-model approach is the most important, and most original, intellectual discovery of the 20th century. Count Alfred Korzybski said that it marked the transition from Aristotelian civilization (dogmatic, monistic, authoritarian) to non-Aristotelian civilization (relativistic, pluralistic, libertarian).

  For convenience, all of the models discussed above and to be discussed as we proceed can be summed into two metamodels. (1) It is all done by our own nervous systems. As we advance toward Higher Intelligence, our brains can increasingly affect the universe, by quantum inseparability, creating first coincidences, then Jungian synchronicities, then seemingly external Superhuman Beings, who are really masks of the greater selves we are evolving into. (2) It is not all done by our nervous systems. As we advance toward Higher Intelligence, our brains can increasingly contact other Higher Intelligences. By Bell’s quantum monism, this includes contact with advanced adepts who are both human and inhuman terrestrial and extraterrestrial, and located temporally throughout what we call past, present and future.

  But such Philosophical questions can best be postponed until after we have examined the chrono-log of my own adventures in Chapel Perilous. Remember: it is tricky in there. Some of the time we will not seem to be passing through the Gates of Mystery but merely wandering about in a Fun House at a rather seedy Amusement Park.

  Part I:

  The Sirius Connection

  The Sirius Connection:

  INTRODUCTORY FABLES

  (Let’s stretch those mental muscles a bit, fellers.)

  From the Sufi:

  Mullah Nasrudin once entered a store and asked the proprietor, “Have you ever seen me before?”

  “No,” was the prompt answer.

  “Then,” cried Nasrudin, “how do you know it is me?”

  From the ancient Babylonian:

  It was the sad time after the death of the fair young god of spring, Tammuz. The beautiful goddess, Ishtar, who loved Tammuz dearly, followed him to the halls of Eternity, defying the demons who guard the Gates of Time.

  But at the first Gate, the guardian demon forced Ishtar to surrender her sandals, which the wise men say symbolizes giving up the Will. And at the second Gate, Ishtar had to surrender her jeweled anklets, which the wise say means giving up Ego. And at the third Gate, she surrendered her robe, which is the hardest of all because it is giving up Mind itself. And at the fourth Gate, she surrendered her golden breast-cups, which is giving up Sex Role. And at the fifth Gate, she surrendered her necklace, which is giving up the rapture of Illumination. And at the sixth Gate, she surrendered her earrings, which is giving up Magick. And finally, at the seventh Gate, Ishtar surrendered her thousand-petaled crown, which is giving up Godhood.

  It was only thus, naked, that Ishtar could enter Eternity.

  From the Zen tradition:

  A monk who had meditated long in search of Illumination finally received a great flash of insight. Rushing to his roshi (Zen Master), the monk cried out, “I have it! I have it! That rock there is inside my head.”

  “You must have a big head,” the Master replied, “to hold a rock that size.”

  The Door to Chapel Perilous

  I was born into a working-class Irish Catholic family in Brooklyn at the brutal bottom of the Great Depression. As a child I seem to have had no odd psychic abilities and I remember no weird experiences. The only religious event of my childhood — my first Holy Communion — was a total failure; I experienced none of the rapture and contact with God which the nuns had promised me.

  At 14 I became an atheist, and in college I majored originally in Electrical Engineering, switching later to Mathematics when I realized my basic temperament was analytical rather than practical. In my twenties I underwent three forms of psychotherapy in order to clear up the remaining conflicts between my atheistic hedonism and the Catholic indoctrination of my childhood.

  Once at the age of 18 I had a strange experience of coming unstuck in time, like Billy Pilgrim in Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. Again, at 24, I had a kind of spontaneous Satori, a sudden awakening to the immanent divinity of all things. I had regarded both of these experiences as hallucinatory and was so ashamed of them
that I never discussed them with any of my three psychotherapists.

  Then in 1962, at the age of 30, I began to experiment with mind-altering drugs. This area is only a little less controversial than nuclear power plants, to put it mildly, but let us remember that there are three schools of scientific thought about those chemicals.

  I. Some regard these potions as psychotomimetic: that is, the altered consciousness they produce is considered an imitation (mime) of psychosis.

  II. Some regard them as hallucinogens: that is, the new mental state created by ingestion is considered a hallucinatory experience, but not quite a psychosis.

  III. Some regard them as psychedelics (a word coined by Humphrey Osmond, M.D.) or as metaprogramming substances (coined by John Lilly, M.D.); that is, the new state is considered one in which we can reorganize or re-imprint our nervous system for higher functioning.

  Science will eventually determine which interpretation is most correct through future research. This decision will unfortunately not be reached by any amount of verbal debate or throwing the dissenters into jails, no matter how loud the denunciations or how many heretics are imprisoned. This is very inconvenient for the government, which always wants to settle every issue by outlawing disagreement, but that is not how science works.

  I originally got interested in mind-altering drugs due to an article in the most conservative magazine in the U.S.A., the National Review, edited by Roman Catholic millionaire William Buckley, Jr. Later, of course, Buckley and his magazine would attack drug experiments with neo-Inquisitorial fury, but back in innocent ’60 or ’61, they naively printed an article, by conservative historian Russell Kirk, reviewing Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, in which Huxley recounted how he had transcended time and space and experienced “Heaven.”