A Curious Launch

I found it amusing when Stan Grof said that using astrology appeared even more contentious (to the modern intellectual mind) than using psychedelics!

As it happens, they  won't use the traditional 'signs', during their course, that dominate trivial discourse of astrology.  Their main focus remains on the planets and the major transits.  

Let's face it, most people celebrate their 'birthday' (aka Solar Return - when the Sun returns to the same part of the sky as during our birth).  

Quite a lot of women (at least) remain aware of the Moon Cycle - when we call the 'opposition' of Sun and Moon a 'Full Moon' and you can clearly see it, even in a light-polluted city.  And the 'conjunction' of Sun and Moon has the label 'New Moon' (but this absence needs a bit more calculation).

So far, no real argument.  

Most of us have no knowledge of  'our' Venus Return (about once a year), or Mars Return (every two years or so), or Jupiter Return (every 11-12 years), etc, for instance.  And we don't care.  They actually signify as much (or as little) as your Solar 'birthday', but most us don't have time to calculate or discover such relationships.  We just use that handy 'calendar' thing (e.g. sometimes your Solar Return may actually happen a day before or after your 'calendar birthday', but hey, who cares, right?  People have their party on the nearest Saturday, or whatever.)

I find the slower-moving planets even more interesting (and that's most of what this course seem to cover).

Saturn Returns (29, 58, 84) relate to crucial moments.  As we approach 30, many people put away childish things and start to take life (and their possible future) more seriously.  At the same time, if they have committed themselves early on to things, that 'looming 30' can prove a moment when they kick off the limitations and start afresh.  You may get married, or divorced.

No, I am not saying "Saturn made me do it!"    These planetary cycles act more like clocks (think, the Sun and the Seasons, which appear indisputable).  The Jupiter Cycle of conjunctions happens every 12 years of so, and by coincidence (ahem!) my Jupiter conjunction happens on the 28th of this month, two days after the course starts.   I rolled back the clock to my previous conjunction, and found myself studying 'The Tale of The Tribe' with Robert Anton Wilson (October 2005).

Other Transits can come into account, too.  The outer planets move even more slowly, and we rarely complete cycles.  Uranus Return happens at about 81.   You may want to consider the 'opposition' transit point at age 42. And so on.

Once you get to Neptune and Pluto, their movements seem more accurately represented by cultural shifts, rather than human life cycles.  And this course intends to reveal the patterns that seem to correlate with such big correlations - like 'The Thirties', or 'The Sixties', or our current times.   Wouldn't you find it interesting if the current nonsense of Brexit and Trump revealed connections to earlier parts of similar cycles of cultural shifts?  

That it may then refer back to my own adventures (I was 21 in 1967) would prove a perk.

Easy Come, Easy Go

A parable from the Sufi as retold by Robert Anton Wilson

A man who had studied much in the schools of wisdom
finally died in the fullness of time and found himself
at the Gates of Eternity.

An angel of light approached him and said, "Go no further,
O mortal, until you have proven to me your worthiness
to enter into Paradise!"

But the man answered, "Just a minute now. First of all, can
you prove to me this is a real Heaven, and not just
the wild fantasy of my disordered mind undergoing death?"

Before the angel could reply, a voice from inside the gates
shouted:
"Let him in - he's one of us!"

People often ask me...

...who I studied with online for 3 years. If you have 7 minutes, this YouTube clip might give you a mind-bending sample of the tutor I so enjoyed studying with.

This YouTube piece came from the online course currently run by Bobby Campbell, one of my fellow students.

Robert Anton Wilson's polio came back towards the end of his life, and he couldn't go out on lecture tours any more, so he set up an online study group. We had the pleasure of his company for his last 3 years...

Strange Brew

You may wonder how an ageing library worker spends his time. Well, one way involves learning how online education works. Of course, as part of the job, he has to roll out staff training, etc – but the best way always seems (to me) to experience the role of student – so currently I find myself doing this course on Chapel Perilous.

Week 4 involves (among other mixed media) the ‘Ode to Joy’ from Beethoven (the first piece of recommended Beethoven I recognised). Of course, with no decorum, I aimed other students at the Beaker version from the Muppets.

Extraordinary to think I got to work with these comedy geniuses just as they decided to work on a ‘serious movie’ like The Dark Crystal – but I actually had Beaker on my hand for a brief sequence in Muppets Take Manhattan (part of my training period) leaning out of a bus going around Trafalgar Square.

That’s when you find out the power of the movies (filming late at night when there is little traffic, they had to negotiate to keep the fountains lit).

Following the link out on YouTube I then remembered us doing a memorial for Robert Anton Wilson at a Maybe Logic get-together in Amsterdam, when we ‘kept the lasagne flying” over the lake in Vondel Park.



And watching that took me to another YouTube upload – a film clip of some of us Star Wars buddies in a bar in Japan – the staff heard we were Star Wars ‘stars’ and that I worked as a puppeteer (on Jabba) so they brought me a rat puppet from behind the bar, to challenge me to bring it to life...


PS: no I didn't write my own Wikipedia entry (or the Wookiepedia entry, where it came from) .

Ouroboros

Ain't that creature/entity beautiful?

The 8 Circuit model
(check out my images from Jan 26th)

I try not to let my sub-personalities leak too much, but it doesn't take a lot of clicks to track them down.

In my Bogus Magus incarnation (intelligence increase, etc) I work on RAW/Leary/Antero Alli material - and found the lizard image while discussing the 8-Circuit Model with Dedroidify - I went to his blog...

In case you haven’t come across this mental model (!) I still recommend it (in my quiet way) as one of the best I have come across for not only understanding myself and others, but for plugging in further insights.

Dedroidify has launched one video, and has plans for another and fuller one, but he also linked to the vids that came from Bob’s meme-orial – with both Bob speaking his own words, and some great images. I’ll share them here, to save you one click, but I recommend exploring Dedroidify’s site for more info on the whole realm we have discussed…or search YouTube for RAW, or just come on over to visit Only Maybe, and use the Label '8 Circuits', to filter the posts.

Circuits 1-4 (terrestrial or 'normal' circuits - heh heh - 9 minutes or so)



Circuits 5-8 (7 minutes or so) the post-terrestrial or 'high' circuits



And then what?

SMI²LE (Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, Life Extension - 4 minutes or so)

Heading for 62 times around the sun

I get a 'birthday' next week (and I'll probably be at the 'day job') but what keeps me going (and pretty healthy and happy) are Julie, Dandy the dog, my children: Keili Olsen (Pentaphobe), Yolande Philpott and Matilda (my daughter and grand-daughter 'Tilda'), my daughter Finlay Pearl, my fellow conspirator in creativity Bobby Campbell, my fellow juggling madman Mr Jules, all the NoFit State crew (past and present), all the other Illuminauts, any fellow jugglers and magicians, the Cardiff Library crew (you know who you are), my sisters Julia (and all her children, and new grandchild) and Judith (& her son Luke), and all the people who gave me fun, hope, cheerfulness and optimism over the last few years...

Much thanks to my parents (long gone) and to anyone who touched my life and encouraged me to keep going...you know who you are...



For amusement - in reverse order (what else?)

The Mighty Boosh, Shameless, Skins, Spaced, Black Books, George Carlin, Monty Python, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, W.C.Fields, Buster Keaton, and so on and so on, back through all the fools in history....

And all the contemporary manifestations of such, from Crissie Trigger and the Raree Show to Franki Anderson and her Fool projects, Robert Anton Wilson and all the Maybe Logicians, from DJ Fly Agaric to Borsky the 'pataphysician, to anyone who doubts the simple realities they got offered in childhood...

Let's keep going with the 'blessings' of Bucky Fuller, and Bob Wilson, R.D.Laing and Maslow, Korzybski and all the weird Quantum Physicists - the passivist anarchists, the revolutionary pacifists of non-violence and non-resistance... all the crazy optimists and dreamers and futurists...

Peace.

Only Maybe

In continuation from previous post, I suspect that my shrug annoys people a lot, and they mistake my study group for a bunch of people who can't make up their minds!

The Maybe Logic Academy has nothing to do with indecisiveness ("Do you want to go to the party?" "Maybe, I'll see if I feel like it nearer the time" "Grrr, just say Yes or No!") and more to do with realizing that the world does not easily resolve into Good/Bad, Right/Wrong, Left/Right, etc, etc. The concerted attack on false certainty that we mount has more to do with preferring if people showed a little humility in their judgement, and accepted the possibility that other views might prove equally valid or more likely, etc.

"Maybe the evangelical religions start most of the wars"..."maybe human activity causes global warming" (it seems fairly likely that it contributes to it) "maybe smoking causes cancer"...

Stated that way, investigation and the assignment of probabilities becomes possible. "Maybe aliens visit our planet" "maybe the rich and powerful are actually giant lizards" (low probabilities, but not impossibilities, in my view). "Maybe there 'is' a God". Of course, then we have to query the word 'is'. Korzybski, and General Semantics, tackled this very subject.

You could also say 'in my opinion', or 'from my point of view' to acknowledge that looking out from your particular nervous system, with your own set of past experiences, and through the grid of your language and culture...such and such a thing may appear 'true' (well, very probable), to you.

A Chinese farmer had just one horse, and one day it ran away. The villagers all said how unlucky he was.

"Maybe," he said.

A few days later, his horse returned, leading a herd of wild horses into his corral.

The villagers all exclaimed how lucky he was.

"Maybe," he said.

Having so many horses around encouraged his rather reckless son to learn to ride, and he fell off and broke his leg.

The villagers told the man how unlucky he was.

"Maybe," he said.

Shortly after that a war broke out in a distant province, and all the able-bodied young men got sent off to fight. Thanks to the broken leg, the farmer's son was excluded from call-up.


Robert Anton Wilson expressed all this a lot more clearly than I can - both in his writing and in interviews. Here's a sample:

Maybe Logic is a label that got stuck on my ideas by filmmaker Lance Bauscher. I decided it fits. I certainly recognize the central importance in my thinking -- or in my stumbling and fumbling efforts to think -- of non-Aristotelian systems. That includes von Neumann's three-valued logic [true, false, maybe], Rappoport's four-valued logic [true, false, indeterminate, meaningless], Korzybski's multi-valued logic [degrees of probability.] and also Mahayana Buddhist paradoxical logic [it "is" A. it "is" not A, it "is" both A and not A, it "is" neither A nor not A].

But, as an extraordinarily stupid fellow, I can't use such systems until I reduce them to terms a simple mind like mine can handle, so I just preach that we'd all think and act more sanely if we had to use "maybe" a lot more often. Can you imagine a world with Jerry Falwell hollering "Maybe Jesus 'was' the son of God and maybe he hates Gay people as much as I do" -- or every tower in Islam resounding with "There 'is' no God except maybe Allah and maybe Mohammed is his prophet"?

The Snafu law holds that, the greater your power to punish, the less factual feedback you will receive. If you can fire people for telling you what you don't want to hear, you will only hear what you want. This law seems to apply to all authoritarian contraptions, especially governments and corporations. Concretely, I suspect Bozo knows factually less about the world than any dogcatcher in Biloxi.

The Cosmic Schmuck law holds that [1] the more often you suspect you may be thinking or acting like a Cosmic Schmuck, the less of a Cosmic Schmuck you will become, year by year, and [2] if you never suspect you might think or act like a Cosmic Schmuck, you will remain a Cosmic Schmuck for life.

Credit Crunch

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana

The overspend of the last few years, the enormous debt of the West living way beyond its means, has finally started to come unravelled in the UK.

Of course, as money is entirely a confidence game (in both meanings of the word) 'they' will continue to talk up the situation (to try to avoid further panic) but it sounds less and less convincing all the time.

I don’t write this merely as a hippie anarchist anti-capitalist (whatever that might mean) but as someone who doesn’t even believe in money (or what Robert Anton Wilson calls bio-survival tickets). That doesn’t mean I can survive long without them, of course, but I don’t have to believe in them. Bucky described wealth in terms of the number of future days it would 'buy' you.

"Wealth is our organized capability to cope effectively with the environment in sustaining our healthy regeneration and decreasing both the physical and metaphysical restrictions of the forward days of our lives."

Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth - Chapter VI Bucky Fuller

Just before Bob died we invented a currency for him - called 'Patatows, for various obscure reasons to do with Irishness and Joycean puns - RAW patatows, in fact. The most excellent Bobby designed them, and we put some into circulation. They have any value that his fans might give them. [see the RAW Deal blog posting - for other cash whimsy, from Duchamp to Boggs, from Warhol to Emperor Norton]

Ultimately, the bill is not a dollar at all, at most a representation of it. The bill is real, but the dollar itself is an abstraction… just like God. Indeed, it is remarkable how fundamentally modern monetary systems are grafted onto religion. According to Boggs the invention of both money and God date from the same era, and the traces are still visible in our own days. Just think of the double meaning of words like "redeem," or the root of the word "credit"--it is a direct derivative of the Latin word for believing. The side of Dutch coins reads "God Is With Us," while "In God We Trust" is printed on American bills.

BoB (as treasurer) even signed a few rare notes, and auctioned them on eBay (to help pay his rent and medical bills). It doesn’t seem that bizarre to me. I sign photos and trade them for small profit. However, most people seem to believe (even in this day and age when cash hardly comes into most transactions) that money exists in some sense. You might as well try to disillusion them as tell the Judeo-Christian-Muslim lot that not only do they all worship the same book /story, but that God is a concept, by which we measure - pain. My philosophical/religious education (say the word ‘spiritual’ and I reach for my metaphorical revolver) came entirely from teaching tales, folk tales, parables, myths, legends, and all the tools of the storyteller’s trade.

Somewhere in a cave, Ug borrows three rocks…and promises to bring them back later. As Ig has a lot of rocks (and therefore a lot of friends) Ug scratches three slashes in a soft piece of clay, for Ig to keep as a reminder.

Later on, Ig is playing knucklestone with OOg and as he didn’t bring all his rocks with him, trades the little clay tablet for his bet.

And so off it wanders, this little clay promissory note, wandering down the years and across the plains. In the desert it seems high value (no rocks around here, I’ll give you a camel for it!) Eventually, an Eskimo, who needs some rocks to hold down the edge of his tent, tries to cash it in for rocks. No rocks on an iceflow! Ug is long dead, and the rocks have all ground to sand.

So this morning, we see the first ‘run on the bank’ at Northern Rock. People queuing around the block, to be handed yet another piece of paper! It would seem laughable if it didn’t seem so serious…not quite hyperinflation yet...(when burning banknotes to keep warm is easier than trying to buy fuel). Bizarrely, you can see pictures of the queues of desperate people on the front of every daily paper in the UK, but their website stays up calmly offering to lend you vast sums of money, that you can pay back over the next 25 years. heh. Magic, or indeed magick. Those 'economists' and market players (a voodoo 'science' at best) continue to try to shore up the levees, or hold the card castle together, but it sounds more and more vacuous to me.

Of course, most people don’t think pension schemes spend all their money on skyscrapers with smoked glass walls, and then go bankrupt. Most people don’t think Insurance firms could just turn around and refuse to pay (Act of God! Oh, you smoke, that invalidates your claim…) or that banks (having lent out over ten times what they actually ‘own’) could go broke.

And then the good news. When we find ourselves up to our knees in flood water (water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink) some guy has invented a portable bottle with an incredibly fine filter, that even stops viruses passing through. I guess you end up with pure water, with no chemicals like chlorine or iodine. They go on sale next week, (Thanks to Keili for that story). LifeSaver Systems.

Will it never end?

I flipped to the letters page of The Guardian today only to (sigh) find people discussing atheism and religion. Myself, having never had a god to get rid of, lose faith in, or deny, etc - I don't even define myself as an a-theist. Why would I describe myself in the negative? I'm not an a-Muslim, a-Christian, a-Zeus, a-Voudoun or anything like that. Just a sane, uncluttered modern human being. I don't even claim 'humanist' because that seems like human chauvinism (I don't think of us as the 'crown of creation' at all).

That doesn't make me a skeptic, a fundamentalist materialist, etc. I accept that universe still contains many mysteries...but I prefer to retain my capacity to accept that fact, rather than dash to some reassuring explanation with little evidence. In that sense, I agree with Dawkins (that the mysteries that science has explored and revealed seem sufficiently glorious for me, especially as they always lead to furthr mysteries) but I can see why his humourless zeal in trying to stop people 'being religious' puts some people off. It's that "I am right, and you are wrong" thing that zealots of both sides have.

Delightfully, one of the Guardian correspondents quoted something I often paraphrase in this situation:

Suppose one were to assert: The gostak distims the doshes. You do not know what this means; nor do I. But if we assume that it is English, we know that 'the doshes are distimmed by the gostak.' We know too that 'one distimmer of doshes is a gostak.' If moreover, the 'doshes are galloons,' we know that 'some galloons are distimmed by the gostak.' And so we may go on, and so we often do go on.
-- from "The Meaning of Meaning" by C.K.Ogden and I.A.Richards

And he concludes: That's Theology.

I found the quote quickly online at this rather wonderful collection of Paul McGuire's, who says:

So now that we have inferred that 'one distimmer of doshes is a gostak,' and that 'some galloons are distimmed by the gostak,' do we really know any more than we did at the start?

And although I don't believe in Gostak, I certainly don't waste my time calling myself an Agostak, and arguing with people who claim to believe in doshes, gostaks, galloons - and even more improbably attribute personality, intent, and the creation of the world to them! And murder people who don't share their belief.

I find all that behaviour quite incredible, but remember that Robert Anton Wilson always said we were living on The Planet of the Apes, and to be careful not to rile them up by challenging them.

Though Hitchens, Dawkins and Dennet seem to have put themselves in the front line, I liked Jonathan Miller's tv series best, of recent attempts to explain the sort of position I hold.

And if you remain unfamiliar with the work of Robert Anton Wilson (who manages to retain his sense of humour while ploughing through these issues, and avoids zealots of every persuasion of certainty) you will find him echoing The frammisgoshes should be distimmed in this piece of his on Wilhelm Reich.

Information Overload

I seem to have gotten busier and busier this year. I have less time to sit a read a book, and realise that some people have virtually no time to really read, or browse, or research, or click-through when on the Web.

I decided I needed a web presence (to grow old disgracefully) back in 2000 - and working in the library, and as content manager on a website, and studying in an online 'university', and teaching remotely (library staff), etc - means that I have become fairly fluent at navigating.

It doesn't mean I have improved my design and layout. The website has become the equivalent of a box of memorabilia in the attic - having started out with just a FrontPage 2000 template, and grown as I learned things. It is more like a coral reef of dead shells, with just a crust of new growth on the surface. To completely rebuild it would need a month off work! Now that I have a 4 Gb memory stick hanging around my neck, I can't even keep that organised (sigh).

Anyway - my assumption that people follow links, and click around may well prove unfounded.

Assume Nothing!

So, some people may remain completely unaware of the blog I use for my magic notes, or the Circus Arts Forum that I work on, or the creative group at the MLA that I have studied and worked with for the last three years (particularly Bobby Campbell - who I have collaborated with on some projects - and whose amazingly prolific output you can see samples of here)


Of course, like many people on the web, I have cultivated some sub-personalities (avatars) but I haven't tried to hide my trail or anything.

Just as (when I performed) I used my real name (unlike actors, who pretend to be someone else, variety acts pretend to be themselves) - so I tend to let people make the connections, if they choose to. This does lead to bizarre cross-overs, for instance, when Star Wars fans work out from research that I have a connection to NoFit State Circus, so send me mail at the circus PO Box address (I do wish they'd stop doing that, as mail can easily go astray in a long chain). On my front page I offer an email address to jabbahutt@gmail.com. I am not hard to contact!

At the same time, please remember that I have a low paid job in a library, and have no desire to pay for pictures, mail costs, etc., just to keep other people happy. I'm not driving an SUV around my ranch, just because I had 6 weeks work on a film in 1982, and I don't work in show-biz any more, and don't have a publicity budget!

If people want a signed picture, I consider it reasonable that they at least cover the costs (and bear in mind I also have to go queue up at the Post Office, etc) even if they don't want to actually pay me for my signature! I agree it's a bizarre thing to do, but at the same time my sig goes on eBay for anything between £10-£60, so sending me (say) four pix to sign for free seems a bit pushy, expecting me to send them back at my own expense...some such communications I just ignore.

Sorry if I sound mean-spirited to some enterprising youth with a get-rich-quick scheme like blagging free pictures from all the Star Wars actors and selling them online! Sorry, kids, it's been done before, and we all got a bit wary. I don't even feel sure about the charity requests I get, either...even when I have sent a bunch of free pictures in the past I haven't had a word of thanks, which does make me suspicious...

I do get into a frivolous or generous mood at times, but sometimes not.

Jabba? Generous? I think not...

At the same time, I do make friends easily, I enjoy chatting and trading with people...and happily swap pictures for information, or old magazines, or DVDs of maiking-of, etc

Refreshed and Relaxed

Well, I may have felt grumpy about the organisation at the Star Wars convention (they still haven't paid me, although the contract said "within seven working days" - sigh) but I can't fault the organisation of the Maybe Logic Academy Euro Meetup.

We had a fantastic time. I don't want to duplicate the posts, but you can see a brief summary over in the Only Maybe blog (linked to my Academy activities). Ah um, perhaps I should give you the direct link, as the blog rolls on, and you may read this in some other spacetime (i.e. later)
MLA Euro Meetup
And here you can find notes from our host, Borsky.

Away with the Fairies

Well, I managed to abandon this blog for three months!

I find so many inert blogs that I have always tried to keep mine moving, but recent changes have squeezed this one out.





First of all, I got a job as content manager for an Arts Council Circus Arts Forum, which takes up an hour or so a day.




Then, Julie went and bought a dog, a Labradoodle called Dandy, who takes up a good hour or two most days




I also find myself on the Board of Trustees for NoFit State Circus, and that doesn’t just mean popping in a couple of times a year, but has involved quite a flurry of meetings to deal with the rapid changes in the business – caused by success, let me point out!

Finally, I have been trying to wrap up the three years study I have done at the Maybe Logic Academy. I also maintain their blog called Only Maybe. Long may it thrive, but I feel I have to take a sabbatical (at least) and possibly even ‘graduate’. I started on July 23rd 2004 (first of the Dog Days) so I hope to meet up with some fellow students this July 23rd (in a little trip to Belgium and Holland), then take a break to write (maybe).

I also have plans to finally meet up with all the Jabba crew at once, at Celebration Europe. I’ve met them all one by one, but this could be our only chance for a complete get-together.


Somewhere in here I seem to have neglected this blog (!)

Actually, I also haven’t got down to see my daughter and grand-daughter this year, which I regret, but dogs add to the complications of travel (for non-drivers like me). And the 'boy wonder' continues to wander, but we have loose connections via web interfaces...

I missed Jay’s “Will You Still Need Me” party through sheer shortage of time and sleep. Sorry Jay!


I have changed from the Philip K Dick beard and short hair of a couple of years ago, to the clean-shaven long-hair of today.


And I'd enjoy having enough time to actually pursue my magic hobby - I started a magic blog to put interesting links together, but practicing magic is time-intensive and I don't have any time...quite when I can finish writing a book I don't know!

I think of myself as a lazy person, but I find myself on a treadmill...

A Quiet Week

Well, sorry, it all went quiet for a week. Apart from my birthday (which passed serenely) I helped launched a new website on Wednesday, so have anxiously nursed that along for a few days. Circus Arts Forum. A little freelance work for Arts Council of England. I remember when I used to work as solely as a freelance (all 32 years of it) - and 'they' didn't consider circus as an art requiring funding, respect and support back then. Things changed (but too late for my own performing career).

I didn’t get to The RAW Wake last weekend (all over the planet people did farewell events for Robert Anton Wilson – “who RU calling a cult?”) because my subconscious slept through the alarm to catch the train, perhaps resisting the idea of a day-off with heavy drinking, so I had a doze under the duvet for Bob instead. :-)

[UK news] Even a right-wing, conservative paper like the Daily Express has finally realised (acknowledged) that theoretical (notional) house prices do not really mean true wealth. If you own your house, and house prices go up, then you really could consider yourself better off (assuming you sell at the high point) but if you have promised to pay for it indefinitely then (in my mind) you don’t own it until you paid it off. This becomes significant when House Prices go up so much that your monthly payments go through the roof! Far from getting ‘richer’, you actually end up trying to buy a house beyond your means…or, as the Express had it:

“Mortgage Costs Are Crippling”.

Hilarious! It will hardly stop so long as everyone buys (sic) the idea that property values display the wealth of the country. You can’t lower the interest rates without people borrowing more, and demand going up. Someone has to reverse it – the music stops, you end up living on your current step in the ladder – and you stop paying out ¾ of your take-home pay just for a roof.

Imagine going into the bookshop for a book costing £10, and then before you can get out the door they tell you what a bargain you have as that book now has a value of £23, so would you mind paying the other £13 before you go?

What else this week? Ah, I just got invited to join some creative team to continue developing the Maybe Logic Academy campus/collage/complex/website/thing.

You Become Your Secrets

Growing up in the 50s meant that psychology either saw you as a Behaviourist rat (army training, school indoctrination, etc) or as some murky realm of unconscious horrors that would need endless therapy to disentangle (Freud started that).

A Third Force in psychology had started in the USA, studying healthy people rather than damaged ones, looking at our potential not our flaws, and when I bunked off school to read imported books in Foyle’s bookshop I came across Maslow, Jourard and others who sounded immensely attractive, modern and realistic to me. I even figured I would go on to university (as my mother hoped) to do Psychology and Philosophy, but at the interview for Bristol University it became clear that they didn’t have any sympathy with all that Californian nonsense about Zen and humanism…so we went our separate ways (I dropped out, along with many in my generation). My later attraction to Leary and Wilson comes from this interest in human potential rather than human damage and limitation...

This came up today because I realise that sometimes in these diaries I may occasionally make disclosures that could make others uncomfortable. I edit myself a lot, but if I edit people out of my everyday life I create an illusion and an untruth.

However uncomfortable, I still carry an idea I got from Sidney Jourard, in The Transparent Self, when he said that we tended to become our secrets. In short, all the grooming in the world, and smiling, won’t hide twisted insides from others (George Bush, anyone?) And equally, some people who appear to live in dire circumstances, and may even ruefully put themselves down, have an inner glow. He concluded that it seemed healthier to admit our faults and flaws to others, and hide our good deeds. And when he talked of ‘confessing’ he didn’t mean secret absolution like the Catholic confessional, but declaring your weaknesses before your fellows, as he claimed early Christians had done, and as Alcoholics Anonymous (and all the other such groups) do. Equally, he said, most of us try to cash in our good deeds for merit points (I gave a homeless man ten pounds today) rather than simply do them and ‘store up our treasure in heaven’.

I also liked the idea that before Huichole Indians take peyote they have to ‘clear the air’ by passing around a string and and tying a knot in it for each of their failings and sexual transgressions admitted before the tribe. They then burn the string. No-one wants weird vibes when taking psychedelics, and paranoia often comes from getting lied to…telepathy (if we can say such a thing exists) can only happen between people who do not hide behind their lies.

Of course, having said I prefer honesty and straightforwardness, I often fail – and have even found myself cheating or lying on tiny insignificant things for no apparent reason. (Freud may come in handy here, or the Behaviourists!) And equally, people can misuse this ‘honesty trip’ to merely act in a cruel way - “I am telling you this for your own good!” - but the general principle of not bullshitting people still seems good to me (especially around the young), and equally “doing good by stealth” still gives me a little glow (I could hug myself) that often sustains me better than telling people about it, in the hope they’ll think I am kind and generous – not easy to do without sounding like showing-off!

I quite like the models of Random Acts of Kindness – (Pass It Forward) – because such acts rarely come back to reach the ears of your friends and family, and you can savour the secret glow. You can even consider the possibility that such stuff may come back to you by another route (if you still believe in the ‘karma’ inherent in a ‘whole system’ worldview).

Information wants to be free. Stewart Brand

Yet another incarnation

On June 23rd 2004 the Academy threw open the doors to Robert Anton Wilson fans, and Bob started running four online courses simultaneously. I did three of them, and felt tired, he said he felt like a "one-armed wallpaper hanger"!

Still - we had loads of fun. I have spent more than two years here, now, and other tutors have arrived. We have a hardcore of longterm students, some oldies who come and go, plenty of new people.

Of course, I realise that few people have even heard of RAW (sadly) and although his influence permeates modern media he gets little credit for it. Hey ho - he died a couple of weeks ago, so he could care less!

Anyway - his legacy - an intelligent, mostly courteous online forum - has gone through various experimental stages, it has generated a magazine and a blog, and it now has reached version 4.0 - which includes an area where members of the public can come in, look around, eavesdrop on the regulars, etc.

So why not come and visit us? MLA Forum v.4.0

Diwrnod Santes Dwynwen Hapus i chi’i gyd!

Happy St. Dwynwen’s Day to you all!

People who know me realise that I don't have a religious bone in my body, so may feel puzzled at my celebrating a Saint's Day (Catholic!)

Recently in Wales people have begun celebrating this day more than St Valentine's - as St. Dwynwen has the role of patron saint of lovers (and sick animals).

When I looked her up, I found her quoted as saying something that sounded exactly like my favourite author, humourist and thinker (who just died) - Robert Anton Wilson. It seemed appropriate.

Nothing wins hearts like cheerfulness

RIP RAWing

I got involved in a flurry of other stuff, mostly arising from hearing of the death of my favourite author – Robert Anton Wilson.

It still seems amazing to me that he appears so little known. I didn’t think I belonged to a cult!

He wrote on such a wide range of subjects that it baffles me that his funny sci-fi writing doesn’t put him up with Douglas Adams, and Kurt Vonnegut, his paranoid modern fiction doesn’t align him with (say) William Gibson, Neal Stephenson or Philip K Dick, and his psychology texts, his Joycean work, his Fortean material, his quantum speculation, doesn’t get him any kudos. The whole Holy Blood thing, the Dan Brown schtick, the 9/11 and Diana conspiracy material, the X-Files – have clear roots in his earlier works.

Perhaps the mainstream see him as New Age, but the New Age see him as a sceptic/cynic/debunker. Half the conspiracy buffs think he started the revelations, the other know he spent his time teasing True Believers, etc.

Surprise! = Information!

Funny thing. I really love surprise. My favourite DJ doesn’t play my favourites, but plays stuff I never heard before. I still miss John Peel. Now I have DJ Bob Dylan to surprise me, and make me listen to stuff I never tried before.

My favourite authors offer me words I never heard before, or familiar words in surprising combinations, or both. Robert Anton Wilson edged me into Ezra Pound and James Joyce, and my respect for him made me work at it, give it time, overcome my pre-judgements, and try to get the context, the intent, the 'feel'.

Bob Dylan has turned up to open my ears (not with his own music, but music that he loves, and influenced his development) but the young things around me can’t even listen to his DJ voice, and his stories, and his musical anecdotes – and probably flip channels as soon as he plays something their prejudice says they don’t like.

Bob Harris used to do a great show for eclectic stuff, but ‘They’ let him go eventually.

He has turned up on the BBC again, and nowadays plays Country & Western (and even my hackles go up at the idea) and yet he finds all kinds of stuff I like. I keep saying ‘does this belong in that category? How come I like it?'

Hey ho. I grew up with voices (my dad did all the voices for his puppets, my mum sang and taught actors how to use their voices). I love vocal tones. For that reason (among others) I love W.C.Fields (a master of the drawl) and Bob Dylan (a master of vocal tones, like a great actor – I didn’t say he could ‘sing’ but few people can beat his delivery of his own material). I don’t have any musicianship, but even if I don’t like smooth tones (Sinatra, etc) I can appreciate phrasing and timing and delivery.

I like to feel surprised.

Robert Anton Wilson has pointed out that Information = Surprise (the very slogan of his online academy), but I won’t go into that now.

We just lost James Brown. How about him for a total package of show-biz, phrasing, rhythm, tones, and all?

Ah me, and back to the bland, and safe, and familiar world – no challenge, no surprise, no new information. Nothing to shake up yer world view, or stretch yer brain, as Chinese music did mine, or the Oud, or Flamenco, or just about anything I never heard before.

I don’t really care if no-one much shares my tastes around here. I can find people with equally weird tastes on the Internet.

Hello to all my long-distance friends old and new, and not yet met. Enjoy!

Be Seeing You!

Happy Christmaas!

I have had a minor reprimand for neglecting this blog - I didn't think anyone read anything much of mine online (and no-one adds Comments) so I just thought of it as another of my 'experiments'.

I started a webpage because I had stopped travelling with my freelance circus work, and had settled into one city and one proper job (!) at the age of 51 (for the first time ever) - so wanted to collect my thoughts, find my children, publish what traces I had left of my parents (at least the children might find it interesting) and so on.

Well, my kids got in touch, (and a few of my parents' students, too) and I got a couple of gigs out of it all, but eventually the website (made with FrontPage 2000 templates) just ground to a halt. I occasionally proofread a page, and get rid of dead links (or update them) but already it feels like a major project to overhaul it.

A couple of years ago I heard that my favourite author (OK, one of my favourite authors) had decided to do tutorials online. I knew he had done talks and lectures and classes but I dived in (one of the first 15 I believe) and for the last couple of years did workshop/tutorials with him, supported and encouraged the online Academy, etc.

I call myself Bogus Magus (apologies to the games player in Japan who chose the same name). I have written for the online magazine, Maybe Quarterly, and maintain the online blog, Only Maybe.

I have indexed (rather imperfectly) the content we have provided for this insatiable internet environment)...lost interest in my own projects, slightly.

Perhaps things moved again. RAW(Robert Anton Wilson for the uninitiated) became too ill this year to run his course 'Tale of the Tribe' (the great summing up of 20th Century human intelligence) and we students floundered for a bit. Fortunately the Academy has attracted an extraordinary group of tutors, so it may well roll on, but I can't replace my first year of trying to complete 3-4 RAW courses simultaneously. I thought I had taken on too much, but I had dropped one (crucial) course. If I thought I put a lot of work in, Bob said he felt like a one-armed wallpaper hanger. I still thought of him as the man of infinite energy, so to realise just how hard he worked to make all that happen astounds me even now.

Last year (still teaching) he fell down in his house and no-one found him for 24 hours. I don't say that to dramatise the situation beyond saying that none of this leaked out to us at the time - it came out as rueful comedy!

So anyway. This year it became clear that Post-Polio Syndrome, his age, the loss of his wife, who knows - circumstances had got the better of him - the course got cancelled and they gave us our cash back. I didn't want it, but got it any way.

From then on we either wanted him to get back up, and run the course we all so eagerly anticipated, or we knew we had to let him go in peace. When we heard he couldn't afford his rent and medical bills a whole bunch of people around the planet made sure he didn't die penniless and homeless and destitute (like too many of my heroes) and a wonderful Internet event sorted the situation in an astounding 3 days (I reckon Douglas Rushkoff deserves most thanks for the coverage he gave to the situation - but everyone who sent $5 - or $500 - became my friend at least). I went from helplessness and despair to belief in my fellow humans again. That doesn't seem like a trivial matter.

Oh. Why did I say Happy Christmas so early? Most people have me down as this atheist/humanist/anarchist. At Christmas they call me a curmudgeon, and mumble "Bah Humbug" at me, as they spend more than they (or the planet) can afford, complain about visiting their relatives, etc. You can check it out in The Archives if you really care (does anyone read this stuff?)

If you want to buy crazy presents go here, to Grand Illusions.

This year I decided not to buy goats for people, or sulk, or anything. I have decided to act unnaturally cheerful (whatever happens) and transmit "Goodwill to all men/people/humans/entities/sentient beings" IF IT KILLS ME.

Happy Christmas everyone!

Passing the hat at the end of the show...

I mostly keep my sub-personalities apart, but any lightweight researcher could easily compile a profile as I spend very little time hiding behind avatars. I never felt the actor's need to hide behind a mask, a different name, etc.

Still, in exceptional circumstances we have to break our own rules. Apart from working as a juggler and circus worker and film puppeteer I have spent much of my life reading. If I had followed through on my school work I might have ended up doing Psychology or Philosophy or Anthropology or something. As the physical jobs of the vaudeville/variety world often appeal to less wordy people than me, it often surprises people to find out just how introverted I act at times.

Anyway, for the last two years I have worked with an amazing group of people in an online forum - the Maybe Logic Academy - mostly under the tutorship of the founder, one of my favourite authors - Robert Anton Wilson - someone it would prove hard to categorise in a few words (or even a few books!)

Suffice to say that I had recently prepared myself for yet another brain-stimulating course with 'Bob' or 'RAW' as we sometimes call him, when I heard he had become very ill. At the age of 74, confined to a wheelchair with Post-Polio Syndrome he has remained cheerful and optimistic to an incredible degree, but it seems as though he may have knocked on Death's Door recently. I don't think he got an answer. However, the course got postponed indefinitely, and now he racks up medical bills that (in spite of his many books still in print) could prove just as crippling. His student group have rallied around, to support and publicise attempts to cover the costs.

He has begun auctioning items on eBay...the first one seems to have done well so far, with bidding up to $500, and if you don't do those kind of Red Nose Day things then you can simply send cash and good wishes to him directly through PayPal - account olgaceline@gmail.com

[UPDATE: 8th July: that link went to Driftless Music's eBay, but Bob has his own profile now, and our latest scam involves inventing our own currency and getting Bob to sign them. For more details on the art/satire/revolutionary aspects of printing your own money see the links here - or dig through RAW's books, which contain quite a lot of commentary on the 'magic' of the Treasury...]

Of course, if you haven't read any of the books (or even heard of him) then you can ignore this, or rush out and start a fun adventure - with his books on everything from conspiracy theory (stuff he covered in the 1970s - 30 years before the f'ing Da Vinci Code) to Quantum Psychology, and essays on libertarianism, economics, James Joyce, etc. Eclectic stuff - all lucidly written and often hilarious.

For more links to the online Academy he set up, to his website, and related fan sites, etc - just go over to the Only Maybe blog which we started a year ago for updating people outside the Academy walls...