Success Quote by Robert Anton Wilson

The line lands like a Zen slap: if you go shopping for an "Enlightened Master", you are already volunteering for the leash. Robert Anton Wilson is needling the spiritual marketplace and the wider American hunger for certified authority, where personal uncertainty gets outsourced to someone with a robe, a title, or a podcast mic. The wit is in the inversion. "Master" and "Slave" are an old hierarchy; Wilson drags it into the self-help age and points out the hidden transaction: the disciple buys relief from doubt at the price of agency.

His word choice does extra work. "Ideal" mocks the aspirational tone of seekers; it's not that masters are fake, it's that the fantasy of the master is the trap. "Benighted" is a sharp, almost antique insult, implying not just ignorance but a chosen darkness. You're not merely misled; you are collaborating with your own dimming. Wilson's broader project, across his countercultural nonfiction and fiction, was to puncture reality tunnels - the stories we live inside and defend as truth. Gurus are one of the most socially acceptable tunnels because they come dressed as liberation.

The subtext is political as much as spiritual. Any system that sells salvation via obedience rehearses the logic of authoritarianism: one mind elevated, everyone else submitting. Wilson isn't arguing against learning from others; he's warning against the psychological coup where "guidance" becomes abdication. The punchline is bleakly funny because it's accurate: the master is often the student's alibi for not becoming responsible.