Robert Anton Wilson Quotes – Exploring Consciousness and Belief Systems

Robert Anton Wilson Quotes - Exploring Consciousness and Belief Systems | Third Monk image 2

Robert Anton Wilson was a philosopher and author of several books dealing with such themes as quantum mechanics, the future evolution of the human species, weird unexplained phenomena, conspiracy theories, synchronicity, the occult, altered states of consciousness, and the nature of belief systems.

His books explore the relationship between the brain and consciousness, and the link between science and mysticism, with wit, wisdom, and personal insights.

I have learned more from Robert Anton Wilson than I have from any other source. – George Carlin

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The function of public education consists of killing curiosity, encouraging docility, and preparing mindless drones to work for corporations. – Robert Anton Wilson

 

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Pot-heads develop a certain inevitable alienation from society. They begin to feel like one-eyed men in The Kingdom of the Blind. – Robert Anton Wilson

 

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I have never experienced another human being. I have experienced my impressions of them. – Robert Anton Wilson

 

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My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything. – Robert Anton Wilson

 

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If you think you know what’s really going on, you’re probably full of shit. – Robert Anton Wilson

 

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The only way to stave off boredom, in a complex domesticated primate like humankind, is to increase one’s intelligence. This is not appealing to the average primate, who instead invents emotional games (soap opera and grand opera dramatics). – Robert Anton Wilson

Funny Church Signs – Sexual Innuendo (Photo Gallery)

Funny Church Signs - Sexual Innuendo (Photo Gallery) | Third Monk image 18

The quickest way to enlightenment is to lighten up. Let’s take a moment to laugh at some funny church signs with racy implications.

O_O

funny church sign

Good Advice

funny church sign 1

Skills

tongue play

Unconditional Love

size doesn't mattter

Right Where it Belongs

funny

I Give and I Give and I Give

until it hurts

Cant’s Stop, Won’t Stop

keep on hoeing

Knee Pads For Everybody

on her knees

You Know Who To Call…and It’s Not The Ghostbusters

who touched you

Next Time Try To Behold a Little Longer

not too quick

And Here I’ve Been Walking On My Two Feet Like a Jackass

on your knees again

*Shakes Head*…LOL

hold on next time

Sounds Like This Sermon is Going To Be A Deep One

peter in where

Price of Admission

entry fee

And It’s Not Oil Based

smile, lube up

Great for Who?

great things

What if You’re Ambidextrous?

pleasures forever

Commerce and Religion Are the Biggest Failures of Society – George Carlin

Commerce and Religion Are the Biggest Failures of Society - George Carlin | Third Monk image 4

george-carlin-religion-money-bullshitComedian George Carlin explains how money and religion have taken a big shit on human potential:

The Wrong Turn

I realized that I really didn’t care about the outcome on this planet, I didn’t care what happened to the human species. This is a species that was given great gifts and had great potential and squandered them. I think this species squandered them.

I think it choose poor ways of organizing itself, socially and politically. I think it made a wrong turn when it came to buying the okidoke that the spiritual leaders gave, the high priest. We turned it over to the high priest and the traitors.

It’s commerce and religion that have ruined and spoiled the potential of this species. And in this country the same two things are true, but this country is the leader in the decay of the soul.. if you will.. I use that metaphorically, I just don’t care what happens to this country.

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Hypnosis of False Promises

Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky, who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do.

And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer and burn and scream until the end of time.

But he loves you. He loves you and he needs money. That kinda shit is very limiting. It’s very limiting for this brain we have.

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Alan Watts – Is the Bible Used to Manipulate Self Worth? (Video)

Alan Watts - Is the Bible Used to Manipulate Self Worth? (Video) | Third Monk

Alan Watts provides a philosophical analysis of the bible.

Alan Watts – Notable Excerpts

The Gospel of Jesus, which of course was hushed up since its inception, was that, wake up everybody and find out who you are.

Is it not written in your law,  “I have said ye are gods.” And if that is what the scripture says it can’t be denied. So why do you tell me I blaspheme because I say, “I am a son of god.”

“Son of” in Hebrew and in Arabic means of the nature of. When we call someone a son of a bitch, we mean bitchy. And so if you call someone a son of god, you mean divine.

What happened was, that this being blasphemous for the Jews. It became blasphemy for the Christians for anyone else than Jesus to say it.

They said, “Ok baby it was so with you, but there it stops. No more of this business.” And as a result of that Jesus was made irrelevant by pedestalization, by being kicked up stairs! In spite of the fact that he’s said greater works than these, that I do, shall you do; oh no, upstairs with you baby…because we just can’t have that sorta thing going on in a monarchical universe. We are not gonna have democracy in the kingdom of heaven.

This is why the gospel is impossible, because we’re suppose to follow the example of Christ…where he says for example, “Be not anxious for the morrow. Do not worry about what you shall eat, what you shall drink and what you shall wear. God will take care of you! Doesn’t he take care of the birds? Don’t the flowers grow? And they’re wonderful, they’re crazy, they’re great. What are you worrying about? I’ve never heard a sermon preached on that…never. Because it’s totally subversive the economy would crash! So they say, “That’s all very well, but that was the boss’s son!” See he had that colossal advantage… 

He had an unfair advantage. So how can you ask us to follow the example of Christ. But supposing he didn’t have an unfair advantage. Supposing that was true about Jesus as a son of god is true of us.

Why talk about this? Is it interesting? Is it important for the human being to realize that in some sense of the word, whatever it means, he is god or one with god?

The importance of it is this. To know that you are god is another way of saying that you feel completely with this universe. You feel profoundly rooted in it and connected with it. 

If you don’t know that. If you don’t feel that. Well naturally you feel alien. You feel a stranger in the world and if you feel a stranger you feel hostile. And therefore you start to bulldoze things about to beat it up and to try and make the world submit to your will.

You obviously can blame someone and say, “I didn’t ask for this! Take it away!” And yet very few people are all too ready to take it away. Camus said that the only serious philosophical problem is whether or not to commit suicide. And if you don’t, if you don’t say take it away. What are you gonna do? You really gotta assume responsibility for it, you have to say yes to what happens.

The real meaning of Karma, the word in Sanskrit means simply: doing. And if I say of an event, “it is your karma”, it is saying, “it is your doing.”

So the exposition, a book which would expound karma, would be not so much a who done it? But, a you done it. But that seems, fantastic.

George Carlin – Creation of the Ten Commandments Was a Marketing Decision (Video)

George Carlin - Creation of the Ten Commandments Was a Marketing Decision (Video) | Third Monk

George Carlin makes fun of the ten commandments and gives the list a needed revision in this clip from his stand up comedy special When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops (2004)

George Carlin – Ten Commandments Transcript

I have a problem with the Ten Commandments. Here it is: Why are there ten? We don’t need that many. I think the list of commandments was deliberately and artificially inflated to get it up to ten. It’s clearly a padded list.

Here’s how it happened: About five thousand years ago, a bunch of reli­gious and political hustlers got together to figure out how they could control people and keep them in line. They knew people were basically stupid and would believe anything they were told, so these guys announced that God— God personally—had given one of them a list of Ten Commandments that he wanted everyone to follow. They claimed the whole thing took place on a mountaintop, when no one else was around.

But let me ask you something: When these guys were sittin’ around the tent makin’ all this up, why did they pick ten? Why ten? Why not nine, or eleven? I’ll tell you why. Because ten sounds important. Ten sounds official. They knew if they tried eleven, people wouldn’t take them seriously. People would say, “What’re you kiddin’ me? The Eleven Commandments? Get the fuck outta here!”

But ten! Ten sounds important. Ten is the basis for the decimal system; it’s a decade. It’s a psychologically satisfying number: the top ten; the ten most wanted; the ten best-dressed. So deciding on Ten Commandments was clearly a marketing decision. And it’s obviously a bullshit list. In truth, it’s a politic; document, artificially inflated to sell better.

I’m going to show you how you can reduce the number of commandments and come up with a list that’s a bit more logical and realistic. We’ll start with the first three, and I’ll use the Roman Catholic version because those are the ones I was fed as a little boy.

I AM THE LORD THY GOD, THOU SHALT NOT HAVE STRANGE GODS BEFORE ME.

THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD THY GOD IN VAIN.

THOU SHALT KEEP HOLY THE SABBATH.

Okay, right off the bat, the first three commandments—pure bullshit “Sabbath day,” “Lord’s name,” “strange gods.” Spooky language. Spooky language designed to scare and control primitive people. In no way does superstitious mumbo jumbo like this apply to the lives of intelligent, civilized human in the twenty-first century. You throw out the first three commandments, am you’re down to seven.

HONOR THY FATHER AND MOTHER.

This commandment is about obedience and respect for authority; in other words it’s simply a device for controlling people. The truth is, obedience and respect should not be granted automatically. They should be earned. They should be based on the parents’ (or the authority figure’s) performance. Some parents deserve respect. Most of them don’t. Period. We’re down to six.

Now, in the interest of logic—something religion has a really hard time with—I’m going to skip around the list a little bit:

THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.

THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS.

Stealing and lying. Actually, when you think about it, these two com­mandments cover the same sort of behavior: dishonesty. Stealing and lying. So we don’t need two of them. Instead, we combine these two and call it “Thou shalt not be dishonest.” Suddenly we’re down to five.

And as long as we’re combining commandments I have two others that be­long together:

THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY.

THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR’S WIFE.

Once again, these two prohibit the same sort of behavior; in this case, mar­ital infidelity. The difference between them is that coveting takes place in the mind. And I don’t think you should outlaw fantasizing about someone else’s wife, otherwise what’s a guy gonna think about when he’s flogging his dong?

But marital fidelity is a good idea, so I suggest we keep the idea and call this commandment “Thou shalt not be unfaithful.” Suddenly we’re down to four.

And when you think about it further, honesty and fidelity are actually parts of the same overall value. So, in truth, we could combine the two honesty commandments with the two fidelity commandments, and, using positive lan­guage instead of negative, call the whole thing “Thou shalt always be honest and faithful.” And now we’re down to three.

THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR’S GOODS.

This one is just plain stupid. Coveting your neighbor’s goods is what keeps the economy going: Your neighbor gets a vibrator that plays “O Come All Ye Faithful,” you want to get one, too. Coveting creates jobs. Leave it alone.

You throw out coveting and you’re down to two now: the big, combined honesty/fidelity commandment, and the one we haven’t mentioned yet:

THOU SHALT NOT KILL.

Murder. The Fifth Commandment. But, if you give it a little thought, you realize that religion has never really had a problem with murder. Not really. More people have been killed in the name of God than for any other reason.

To cite a few examples, just think about Irish history, the Middle East, the Crusades, the Inquisition, our own abortion-doctor killings and, yes, the World Trade Center to see how seriously religious people take Thou Shalt Not Kill. Apparently, to religious folks—especially the truly devout—murder is ne­gotiable. It just depends on who’s doing the killing and who’s getting killed.

And so, with all of this in mind, folks, I offer you my revised list of the Two Commandments:

First:

THOU SHALT ALWAYS BE HONEST AND FAITHFUL, ESPECIALLY TO THE PROVIDER OF THY NOOKIE.

And second:

THOU SHALT TRY REAL HARD NOT TO KILL ANYONE, UNLESS, OF COURSE, THEY PRAY TO A DIFFERENT INVISIBLE AVENGER THAN THE ONE YOU PRAY TO.

Two is all you need, folks. Moses could have carried them down the hill in his pocket. And if we had a list like that, I wouldn’t mind that brilliant judge in Alabama displaying it prominently in his courthouse lobby. As long he in­cluded one additional commandment:

THOU SHALT KEEP THY RELIGION TO THYSELF!!!

George-Carlin-ten-commandments

Psychedelics is Our Bond to a Living Planet – Excerpts From Terence McKenna’s Food of The Gods

Psychedelics is Our Bond to a Living Planet - Excerpts From Terence McKenna's Food of The Gods | Third Monk image 1

Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution by Terence McKenna explains how the ancient ritual use of psychedelic plants altered our states of consciousness.

He exposes the roots of commercialism and how governments have followed a basic set of strategies to promote alcohol, coffee and tobacco as mainstream drugs over mind expanding psychedelics. 

Mckenna wanted to make people curious about the role of psychoactive plants in human development, here are selected excerpts from his epic work:

Psychedelics Dissolve the Ego Culture

Terence Mckenna

How, specifically, might the consciousness-catalyzing properties of plants have played a role in the emergence of culture and religion?

What was the effect of this folkway, this promotion of language using, thinking, but stoned hominids into the natural order?

I believe that the natural psychedelic compounds acted as feminizing agents that tempered and civilized the egocentric values of the solitary hunter-individual with the feminine concerns for child-rearing and group survival. The prolonged and repeated exposure to the psychedelic experience, the Wholly Other rupture of the mundane plane caused by the hallucinogenic ritual ecstasy, acted steadily to dissolve that part of the psyche which we moderns call the ego. Wherever and whenever the ego function began to form, it was akin to a calcareous tumor or a blockage in the energy of the psyche.

The use of psychedelic plants in a context of shamanic initiation dissolved, as it dissolves today, the knotted structure of the ego into undifferentiated feeling, what Eastern philosophy calls the Tao. This dissolving of personal identity into the Tao is the goal of much of Eastern thought and has traditionally been recognized as the key to psychological health and balance for both the group and the individual. To appraise our dilemma correctly, we need to appraise what this loss of Tao, this loss of collective connection to the Earth, has meant for our humanness.

 

Western Dominator Religion Numbs the Soul

Terence Mckenna

We in the West are the inheritors of a very different understanding of the world. Loss of connection to the Tao has meant that the psychological development of Western civilization has been markedly different from the East’s. In the West there has been a steady focus on the ego and on the god of the ego, the monotheistic ideal.

Monotheism exhibits what is essentially a pathological personality pattern projected onto the ideal of God: the pattern of the paranoid, possessive, power-obsessed male ego. This God is not someone you would care to invite to a garden party. Also interesting is that the Western ideal is the only formulation of deity that has no relationship with woman at any point in the theological myth. In ancient Babylon Anu was paired with his consort Inanna; Grecian religion assigned Zeus a wife, many consorts, and daughters. These heavenly pairings are typical. Only the god of Western civilization has no mother, no sister, no female consort, and no daughter.

Modern religion in the West is a set of social patterns, or a set of anxieties centered on a particular moral structure and view of obligation. Modern religion is rarely an experience of setting aside the ego.

Since the 1960s, the spread of popular cults of trance and dance, such as disco and reggae, is an inevitable and healthy counter to the generally moribund form religious expression has taken on in Western and high-tech culture. The connection between rock and roll and psychedelics is a shamanic connection; trance, dance, and intoxication make up the Archaic formula for both religious celebration and a guaranteed good time.

The global triumph of Western values means we, as a species, have wandered into a state of prolonged neurosis because of the absence of a connection to the unconscious. Gaining access to the unconscious through plant hallucinogen use reaffirms our original bond to the living planet. Our estrangement from nature and the unconscious became entrenched roughly two thousand years ago, during the shift from the Age of the Great God Pan to that of Pisces that occurred with the suppression of the pagan mysteries and the rise of Christianity. The psychological shift that ensued left European civilization staring into two millennia of religious mania and persecution, warfare, materialism, and rationalism.

Woody Harrelson – Thoughts From Within, a Stoner Poem on Society (Video)

Woody Harrelson - Thoughts From Within, a Stoner Poem on Society (Video) | Third Monk

Woody expresses his stoner observations on the world, our environment, the government and his hope for change.

Morality is legislated
prisons over-populated
religion is incorporated
the profit-motive has permeated all activity
we pay our government to let us park on the street
And war is the biggest money-maker of all
we all know missile envy only comes from being small.

I sometimes feel like an alien creature
for which there is no earthly explanation
Sure I have human form
walking erect and opposing digits,
but my mind is upside down.
I feel like a run-on sentence
in a punctuation crazy world.
and I see the world around me
like a mad collective dream.

An endless stream of people
move like ants from the freeway
cell phones, pc’s, and digital displays
“In Money We Trust,”
we’ll find happiness
the prevailing attitude;
like a genetically modified irradiated Big Mac
is somehow symbolic of food.

Morality is legislated
prisons over-populated
religion is incorporated
the profit-motive has permeated all activity
we pay our government to let us park on the street
And war is the biggest money-maker of all
we all know missile envy only comes from being small.

Politicians and prostitutes
are comfortable together
I wonder if they talk about the strange change in the weather.
This government was founded by, of, and for the people
but everybody feels it
like a giant open sore
they don’t represent us anymore
And blaming the President for the country’s woes
is like yelling at a puppet
for the way it sings
Who’s the man behind the curtain pulling the strings?

A billion people sitting watching their TV
in the room that they call living
but as for me
I see living as loving
and since there is no loving room
I sit on the grass under a tree
dreaming of the way things used to be
Pre-Industrial Revolution
which of course is before the rivers and oceans, and skies were polluted
before Parkinson’s, and mad cows
and all the convoluted cacophony of bad ideas
like skyscrapers, and tree paper, and earth rapers
like Monsanto and Dupont had their way
as they continue to today.

This was Pre-us
back when the buffalo roamed
and the Indian’s home
was the forest, and God was nature
and heaven was here and now
Can you imagine clean water, food, and air
living in community with animals and people who care?

Do you dare to feel responsible for every dollar you lay down
are you going to make the rich man richer
or are you going to stand your ground
You say you want a revolution
a communal evolution
to be a part of the solution
maybe I’ll be seeing you around.

~ Woody Harrelson

Carl Sagan – Human Conceit, We Are Not the Center of the Universe (Video)

Carl Sagan – Human Conceit, We Are Not the Center of the Universe (Video) | Third Monk

Philosophy and religion cautioned that the gods (or God) were far more powerful than we, jealous of their prerogatives and quick to mete out justice for insufferable arrogance. At the same time, these disciplines had not a clue that their own teaching of how the Universe is ordered was a conceit and a delusion.

Every other proposal, and their number is legion, to displace us from cosmic center stage has also been resisted, in part for similar reasons. We seem to crave privilege, merited not by our work, but by our birth, by the mere fact that, say, we are humans and born on Earth. We might call it the anthropocentric—the “human-centered”—conceit. This conceit is brought close to culmination in the notion that we are created in God’s image: The Creator and Ruler of the entire Universe looks just like me. My, what a coincidence. How convenient and satisfying! –Carl Sagan

Terence Mckenna – Free Yourself From Ideology, Nobody is Smarter Than You Are (Video)

Terence Mckenna - Free Yourself From Ideology, Nobody is Smarter Than You Are (Video) | Third Monk

In my humble opinion, ideology is only going to get in your way. Nobody understands what is happening. Not Buddhists. Not Christians. Not government scientists. Not… you know. No one!… understands what is happening. So, forget ideology. They betray. They limit. They lead astray. Just deal with the raw data and trust yourself.

Nobody is smarter than you are. And what if they are? What good is their understanding doing you? People walk around saying ‘Well, I don’t understand quantum physics but somewhere somebody understands it’. That’s not a very helpful attitude towards observing the insights of quantum physics.

Inform yourself. What does inform yourself mean? It means transcend and mistrust ideology. Go for direct experience.

What do YOU think when YOU face the waterfall?

What do YOU think when YOU have sex?

What do YOU think when YOU take psilocybin?

Everything else is unconfirmable rumor, useless, probably lies.

So, liberate yourself from the illusion of culture.

Take responsibility for what you think and what you do.

The Problem of Evil, As Described By Epicurus Circa 300 B.C.

The Problem of Evil, As Described By Epicurus Circa 300 B.C. | Third Monk

Epicurus is generally credited with first expounding the problem of evil around 300 B.C., and it is sometimes called “the Epicurean paradox” or “the riddle of Epicurus”. It was translated by David Hume in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion:

If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to
Then He is not omnipotent.

If He is able, but not willing
Then He is malevolent.

If He is both able and willing
Then whence cometh evil?

If He is neither able nor willing
Then why call Him God?