A 1970s Illuminati research book that said we would be immortal by 2004. We are not. Still a pretty humorous, hip 70s style look into the Egyptian occult, Crowley, the Templars and even JFK.

The most fascinating part was the author was the first person to elect to FREEZE his murdered daughter’s brain to one day resurrect her. Sadly, we’re still a little behind on that research. Fun read.

This is definitely the most out there book of RAW's I've read yet. Similar to Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Cosmic Trigger describes phenomena and experiences that defy rational explanation. This is made all the more unsettling given how intelligent, eloquent, and sincere the person who experienced them seems to be. It's hard to believe Robert Anton Wilson legitimately went insane or schizoid—he's far too cogent and agnostic of a thinker for that. For that matter, he seems to have never really "broken" at any point, nor did he fall completely into a certain delusion. But that begs the question: what do you make of all this stuff he went through in the '60s and '70s? Thankfully, he provides you with a multitude of models to view his story through and I'd guess he'd be as interested in our own interpretations as any of his. While I'm still a pretty skeptical person and plenty of the predictions in this book feel pretty hopelessly dated, I'm more than willing to admit: things are much stranger than we want to believe and anyone who thinks they've got this universe really figured out at all is either an idiot or a liar.

This is the kind of book you aren’t expecting to read. That is, if you, like me, had your head somewhere else than all conspiracy-lovers and occult seekers had. For this is the a book about someone not refusing the existence of weird phenomena, but embracing the kaleidoscope of possible explanations and the many people behind such quests.

This is also a compilation of small essays about different topics. This, notwithstanding the bizarreness of the topic at times, allows you have a enough breathe room to find your own pace without losing too much between reading sessions.

If you are already familiar with occult topics and weird phenomena, I imagine that this book does not add much to what you already know or believe. But if you, like me, happen to fall on this by accident and find yourself enjoying RAW’s style and wittiness, this book may hold a pleasant surprise for you.

The Cosmic Trigger series is my favorite RAW material. One of those books I turn to when my faith wavers, it reminds me of the greatness of a world self-created.

Feel like I should have read this after I read “Illuminatus!” I loved that book but I can hardly remember any of it’s details. There’s a bunch of overlapping and far-reaching conspiracies that are bent on controlling the world and reality and something or other. I remember it being fun and that I had to look up a lot of the references. Those references lead to other books and soon I was spiraling in a conspiracy/new-age rabbit hole. Cosmic Trigger reads like the personal reflections of the author of “Illuminatus!” on the myriad concepts he touched on in that novel. Perhaps with some vague conclusiveness? I dunno. Basically, citing not so much proofs but alternatives to conventional thought like Tim Leary, Gurdjieff and space aliens, Wilson seems to say that we create our own realities and can therefore change shit on a whim. Also the notion of god or aliens or a higher power may ultimately stem from our ancestors penchant for psychedelic mushrooms. It’s hard to sum up and more fun to just let wash over you. RA Wilson is a wonderful narrator. Like a crazy uncle that’s actually pretty smart but just way beyond you and your parents’ level. Key takeaway is we should all take more drugs.

Read with a receptive mind and benefit of the doubt, then hang on to your sanity. It can be hard on many occassions not to dismiss his ideas and stories as foolish. At times I thought he might be a charlatan. The agnosticism he espouses along with his advice to analyze and absorb other's mental models comes from a sensible place and I think is the key to reading this book as intended.

Zany, unique, and wittily written, Wilson weaves a web of seemingly random connections between information as he playfully proposes the wildest conspiracy theories. Even as he runs away with your imagination and succeeds in convincing you, at the same time he mocks himself and reveals his own cynicism towards his assertions.

After having read Prometheus Rising three times, I was recommended this. I enjoyed it, but it's a repetition of Robert Anton Wilson's ideas, I was left with the impression of having read a prototypical Prometheus Rising.
Wilson's hopeful optimism mixes with integral human fears and becomes difficult to disentangle.
Why talk so much of transcendent ideas and then swoon about physical immortality?

If you enter Cosmic Trigger remembering that Wilson states (many times!) he does not fully believe in anything, even some of the stories he tells, then you will have a much better experience with this book. I loved being taken on a journey through Wilson's mind, and even though some of his predictions were a bit ambitious, I'd prefer that to a lack of imagination. His views on consciousness and attainable levels were also extremely interesting.

Connects the various mythos and tries to explain the psychonauts journey of exploration into the multiverse. Higher intelligence is either angelic or demonic, or perhaps just faery magic. Communication on the astral plane with Sirius, the dog star (plural, it is a binary star system).

I found the book enlightening. Having read Crowley and known about Leary et. al.

It's a fascinating time capsule into the 60s and 70s, with boundless optimism for the future, for the development of mankind, for immortality and psychic powers. It's also, of course, extremely dated, and wrong in most of its predictions. The biographical notes weave in and out of the narrative but it never really becomes a RAW biography - and that's to its advantage.

Audio note: It's engagingly read but has a couple of audio mistakes with redone lines.

Worth your while if you have some familiarity with Timothy Leary, occult ideas, and psychedelics. Read this book near a computer and check the facts, because the author's citations are pretty weak and inconsistent. Many of his proudest ideas are founded on debunked pseudoscience, but there are still diamonds of philosophy, life experience, and just the life and times of a 1970s counterculture/occult intellectual.

He does take a skeptical view to a lot of hippy-dippiness, and to the Freemasons. Like Kafka, Wilson makes a satire out of systems--"the State." His minor philosophical works ride the coattails of his Illuminatus Trilogy.

In the intro he says he gets asked about Cosmic Trigger more than all his other works put together. Why? It doesn't give you tips on how to live, like Prometheus Rising. It is way more anecdotal. I was not pleased to see exposed con-man Uri Geller appear respectably in this book several times.

Cosmic Trigger is half as good as Prometheus Rising, but it does flesh out two characters of that book: Tim Leary and Aleister Crowley. It put me in a good position, reading this book, because I wanted to learn more about both of them but didn't really want to read a book about either of them. You get good quotes and anecdotes. And cool occult art: You know, naked chicks and penis demons.

My personal anecdote in favor of this book: Wilson had the Burroughs obsession with 23, and at one point he is piling on coincidences about flying and going to Bermuda, and tops it off saying he turns on the TV and the first words are for a movie preview, Airport 77--"Flight 23 down in Bermuda!" I rolled my eyes... then thought, you know what? I got on Youtube, and the preview was there! The line was real, just like he said. OK, that kind of floored me.

If you do decide to read the book, you'll be better off for it. You may get queasy hearing assertions about UFOs and immortality (very sick of that subject) but make it all the way to the end, and there is an unexpected gravity to the book--it is more personal than you realize.