July 17, 1997: Encyclopedia of Conspiracies - Robert Anton Wilson | Remote Viewing Training - Ed Dames
Wilson shares his experience of being falsely declared dead on the Internet, a hoax that spiraled into theories about CIA assassination and android replacement. The two discuss the consolidation of media ownership, the suppression of alternative energy technologies by petroleum interests, and Buckminster Fuller''s principle of doing more with less. Wilson describes nanotechnology as the coming revolution that could rebuild the rainforest in 48 hours and make everything practically free. He expresses optimism that increasing information flow, despite the chaos it creates, will ultimately lead to greater prosperity.
Callers press Wilson on topics ranging from the Priory of Sion and Oriental Masonry to the murder of Pope John Paul I and the Tesla conspiracy. Wilson recommends his three Cosmic Trigger volumes for readers interested in secret societies and maintains that the unpredictability of modern life stems not from hidden conspiracies but from the accelerating speed of information itself.
Key Moments
How Illuminatus! was born from Playboy crank mail: Wilson explains the origin of the Illuminatus! trilogy: as Playboy's associate editor in the 1960s, he and Bob Shea sorted civil-liberties letters from people who claimed the government was conspiring against them. The credible ones went to the Playboy Foundation; the wildest ones Wilson collected as folklore, until he and Shea realized they could weave them into one fantastic novel - and 'it's very hard to say which theories are really crazy, because some of the craziest ones turn out to be the most plausible.'
Wilson's favorite conspiracy: the Priory of Sion: Asked his favorite conspiracy, Wilson names the Priory of Sion - a real organization of French aristocrats, he says, that has helped author and seed contradictory books about itself: descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene through a son named Merovay, products of human-Sirian extraterrestrial mating, Atlantean colonizers, contacts with a hollow-earth race. The bluff is the point.
Dames releases the public Remote Viewing training tapes: Dames announces that after long delays, Module 1 of the Psi-Tech remote viewing training has finally shipped to the public. He admits he didn't have time to think through the ramifications of giving the skill away, calls it 'a little bit scary now,' and says the cat 'is more than out of the bag.'
Dames bets the bank: global ecological collapse, late spring 1998: Dames says Psi-Tech has observed a milestone marker for the global economic collapse they predicted - seabirds starving along the Pacific Northwest. He puts the center of mass of the collapse in late spring 1998, says Africa will be hit first roughly seven months out, and answers Art's 'how sure are you' with: 'I'm willing to bet the bank that I'm right. … 100 percent likelihood.'
Dames' Roswell: an orchestrated crash undone by time travel: Dames lays out Psi-Tech's Roswell finding from remote viewing: the Greys are real, perhaps 100 million years ahead of us. They orchestrated the crash, debris and bodies were physically present for about two Earth hours and partially loaded onto vehicles, then the Greys went back in time and stopped the event from happening. Memories remain indelibly etched, but no physical evidence can ever be recovered, because the timeline was overwritten.