Robert Anton Wilson wore many academic hats, which included futurology, anarchy, and conspiracy theory research. He was also a prolific American writer, whose career spanned thirty-five years. His best-known work was the Illuminatus Trilogy (co-authored with Robert Shea), a satire about American conspiracy theories. Most of his work covered a wide berth of New Age topics, such as UFOs, crop circles, occult practices, etc.

Wilson didn’t believe in beliefs, but rather in probabilities. “Belief is the death of thought,” he once said.

In fact, he shunned dogmatic beliefs because he felt that they led to fascist behavior. In his book, Cosmic Trigger III: My Life After Death, he used the example of militant feminism to demonstrate how dogmatic adherence to any belief system can result in intolerant and even dangerous ideologies.

On October 2, 2006, Douglas Rushkoff appealed to the blogosphere for donations to Wilson, who was in severe financial trouble due to ailing health. Slashdot, Boing Boing, and the Church of the Subgenius wrote about Wilson’s plight. By October 10th, their efforts succeeded in raising enough money to support Wilson financially for at least 6 months.

Sadly, this generosity couldn’t help Wilson’s health which continued to deteriorate. Doctors gave him between two days and two months to live. Robert Anton Wilson died yesterday at age 74 from post-polio syndrome. Five days earlier, he closed his final message on his blog by saying, “Please pardon my levity, I don’t see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.”

You will be able to create anything the mind can imagine, change the environment even change your own appearance, have a chat with Abraham Lincoln or fly to the Grand Canyon.

Charles Hamel wrote a great article about How to Have a Lucid Dream, which drew comments from scores of readers. According to him, you can alter the course of your dreams.

“Dreams are the language of our souls. The sights, sounds, and sensations we experience in our dreams speak directly to us, and for us, while we’re unconscious. While it is mysterious, and sometimes even frightening, this intensely personal, private, and intimate dream world ultimately provides a way for us to make sense of our conscious, waking lives.”

Topics covered include:

An excerpt from Visionary Articles from Rosemary Ellen Guiley

We already have evidence of spontaneous occurrences of tunneling. Besides teleportation, tunneling may explain some (but not necessarily all) mysterious disappearances, invisibility, UFO abductions, Men in Black, fairy abductions, Bermuda Triangle disappearances, mediumistic apports (objects materialized by mediums), Bigfoot, Mothman, and a wide range of Fortean phenomena such as sudden appearances of strange creatures, rainfalls of frogs and other oddities.

In the November 2001 issue of FATE, author Scott Corrales writes about “Nonpeople From Nowhere,” in which odd people claiming to be from unknown places suddenly appeared somewhere, and just as mysteriously disappeared. And, entire lands, like the Hesperides Islands, have seemed to exist and not exist.

These cases have been documented throughout history and around the world. I think spontaneous tunneling may be the cause.

Tunneling may also account for some ghost experiences. Some ghosts may be remnants or recordings impressed in psychic space, but others may involve living people. Perhaps someone in another place in time doesn’t come through entirely, and so we see an apparition instead of something solid.

This article doesn’t talk about the traditional sci-fi method of time travel, but time travel through our higher consciousness. Fascinating stuff.