Perilous Passage (The Nervous System and the Universe in Other Words)

Perilous Passage is an account of Terry Wilson’s lifetime apprenticeship under the master shamanic practitioner, Brion Gysin, the hidden master of the avant-garde, of whom William Burroughs said, “He is the only man I respect.” The book focuses on events as they developed just prior to and after Gysin’s death in 1986 and details the extreme psychic ‘Third Mind’ eff ects known as ‘The Process.’ Perilous Passage is a cautionary tale about the uses and abuses of power, a paranoid espionage thriller that includes transcribed audio hallucinations, notes, cutups, interview format, and collaged material. Like Gysin and Burroughs, Wilson treats language itself as a parasitic invader which must be resisted, broken up and reassembled. This book is about how Gysin’s magic was passed on and is being carried into the future.