Program Notes
Guest speaker: Nick Sand
In this program, Nick Sand, one of the original psychedelic guides from the Millbrook commune, alchemist, yogi, spiritual practitioner, and drug war victim, discusses the psychological states encountered as an underground chemist, a fugitive, and his five years in prison. The topics dealt with will be how attitude, intention, and time, reveal the reality of true inner freedom.
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Transcript
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3-Dimensional Transforming Musical Linguistic Objects
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Delta Shades
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Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.
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This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
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Before I introduce today’s talk,
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I want to thank all of you who have sent emails recently.
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It’s always great to hear from you,
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and you can be sure that I’m reading your messages,
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even though I haven’t had time to respond to them.
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So thanks for your suggestions.
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I particularly like that excellent one about coming up with a better way
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to number these programs so that they are easier to manage
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on a portable MP3 player player i’m going to work
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on that one first along with cranking up the volume a bit so keep those suggestions coming
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and we’ll do our best to improve by the way in case you missed it we’ve now opened an amazon
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store on our main site matrixmasters.com so if you plan on buying any electronics or software
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or books or other stuff like that from amazon we’d really appreciate it if you plan on buying any electronics or software or books or other stuff like that from Amazon,
00:01:05 ►
we’d really appreciate it if you did it through the Amazon store link at flankeynorte.org or matrixmasters.com.
00:01:12 ►
All those purchases on Amazon that are made through our affiliate links earn us a whopping 4%.
00:01:19 ►
And believe it or not, that goes directly to paying for disk space and bandwidth for the psychedelic salon.
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To those of you who have already been doing that, hey, a great big thank you to all of you for your support.
00:01:31 ►
We really appreciate it.
00:01:34 ►
Now on to today’s program.
00:01:42 ►
As promised, this is the talk that Nick Sam gave at the MindStates2 conference in Berkeley at the end of May in 2001. The conference actually began on a Friday,
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and the talk you’re about to hear came on Sunday afternoon,
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on the last day of the conference.
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In fact, the program that day actually began at noon.
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At a late start that day, I think there was excellent planning on John Hennest’s part.
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And if you were at any of the numerous parties the night before, you know what I mean.
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It was really a great crowd.
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In fact, it was a sellout, and I guess there were probably over 600 people there.
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I can’t say for sure, but definitely it was a major tribal gathering.
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First thing on that day’s program, actually, was the elders panel,
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which included Michael Horowitz, Laura Huxley, Rosemary Woodruff Leary, and Cynthia Palmer.
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Both Ann and Sasha Shulgin were on it, as were Houston Smith and Myron Stolaroff.
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And following that panel, I gave my psychedelic thinking speech,
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which you can hear in podcast number one of the Psychedelic Salon.
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And after my talk came Nick, or Saint Nick, as some of my friends call him.
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Until that day, I hadn’t met him in person, but like everybody who lived through the 60s,
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whether you were involved in the psychedelic scene or not, you heard about four-way hits of Orange Sunshine.
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In fact, one of my great disappointments in life is that I never got to taste that version of vitamin A myself.
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But I’ve heard from a very wide variety of sources that next to the original Sandoz acid, that orange sunshine had no equal.
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And it was Nick Sand who was the alchemist behind this legendary medicine.
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Since then, Nick and Busha have become good friends of my wife and I, and I can personally attest to the fact that they are the real McCoy, two of the most enlightened people I’ve ever met.
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and Reel McCoy, two of the most enlightened people I’ve ever met.
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To be honest, if I’d gone through the horror and torture that the screwheads in the U.S. so-called justice system put them through,
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I’d probably be a bitter, bitter person.
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It’s an amazing story Nick tells here,
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and it may be the only time since this insane war on consciousness began
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that a U.S. federal prisoner was allowed to give a major speech of any kind,
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let alone at a conference dedicated to consciousness expansion.
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Actually, I’ve always thought of this talk by Nick as a truly historic moment,
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maybe even a small turning point in the way the system is beginning to evolve
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a better attitude about these sacred medicines.
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Or at least so I hope.
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So now let’s listen to the one and only Nick Sam.
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Hi, everyone.
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I’m very glad to be able to be here with you.
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Much better here than where I’ve been for the last six years.
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Can you all hear me?
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Good.
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And I would like at the outset to thank the BOP,
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my case manager in the Oakland Halfway House,
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for allowing me as a federal prisoner to come and speak to you today.
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Thank you.
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Suddenly, there is a flash of bright lights and brazen shouting.
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Stand for count.
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Get up for breakfast, whether you want it or not. A wave of desolate terror sweeps over me as another day of dread begins. The smell of urine from the drunks and vomit from the
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junkies assails my nose as a hot, burning wave of fear crawls along my skin.
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Busted again after so many years,
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as I wonder if this claustrophobic jail horror will go on for the rest of my life.
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Perhaps few of you understand the difference between jail and prison.
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Jails are places for temporary incarceration,
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while the authorities sort out whether or not they’ve arrested the right person or if they have, whether they feel they want to allocate the resources necessary to obtain a conviction.
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Of paramount importance is the question of bail.
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Nowadays, in most important cases, bail is denied or granted only for what must be considered ransom. Progressively,
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the enormity of this insidious trap begins to dawn and dawn and dawn yet again. Conditions
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in the jails are abominable. One tolerates it by hoping for bail and trying to remain
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as calm as possible in the meantime. The guards are abusive, exercise in fresh
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air, often non-existent, conditions extremely overcrowded with a typical space of 25 feet
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by 40 feet, having around 30 men with three toilets and one shower, and steel tables and
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benches for eating. At peak times on weekends, the population can rise to 40
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or 45, which happens by putting mattresses between the bunks and on the tables until
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there is almost no room to walk and even little air to breathe. Since bottom bunks go to people
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who have been in the unit for a while, the top bunks go to the newly arrived,
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many of whom are junkies,
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in instant withdrawal,
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unless they have smuggled some heroin.
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As a result of being deathly ill and therefore immobilized while undergoing extreme nausea,
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they often can’t make it to the toilet.
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Those on the floor or bottom bunks
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may be subjected to cascades of vomit.
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This is not an infrequent occurrence.
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In all my cases, bail has always been denied.
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The food is horrible, the TV on for almost 24 hours a day,
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loud and blazing, and everyone is in a terrible headspace,
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yelling over the din of the TV.
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The jails, while nominally set up as short-time housing,
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actually turn out to be long-term torture chambers
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to force you to enter in a plea of guilty
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just to get out of the jail
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so you can experience the relative humanness of the prisons
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if you decide to fight your case
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which I always have
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your time in jail is vindictively lengthened
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my first time in jail fighting the Orange
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Sunshine case was 14 months. The second time, 24 years later, I was in jail 30 months. During
00:07:54 ►
this time, I was never let out for any time except for infrequent visits to the gym or
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trips to court bound up in handcuffs, belly chains, and shackles,
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as though a pacifist alchemist would spring at his captors with bared teeth.
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The outrageous vengefulness of my captors,
00:08:18 ►
because of an intellectually and spiritually inspired act of civil disobedience,
00:08:24 ►
because of prohibition of psychedelic sacraments bordered on the insane. During this time of things going
00:08:27 ►
from bad to worse, while days turned into weeks and weeks into months, with no conceivable relief
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in sight, I became hopelessly depressed. Gone was my home. Gone were my loved ones. Gone was my
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ability to move myself physically from a worse place to a better one.
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I was trapped physically, socially, and emotionally. In every direction that I turned,
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I saw despair. My money was gone. My beautiful laboratory was gone, stolen in auction to a
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motorcycle gang for a song. I was reduced to a plastic jumpsuit on a thin mattress in a small
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dark corner surrounded by hostile demons, an incessant din and nothing to do but think and
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think and think. The inexorable horror that this could be forever was looking more and more certain
00:09:20 ►
as the months crept by. The only anchor I had was my beloved Usha, who waited
00:09:27 ►
patiently and loyally for the five long years that we were to be separated. As time went
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by, I became despairing and depressed. I became very overweight. Eating the greasy food and
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not getting exercise and fresh air was also to blame. When I noticed that I could not go up a flight of stairs without wheezing,
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I became seriously alarmed.
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I realized that during these months in jail,
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I had done little but read trashy novels and go over in my head
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all the errors and mistakes that had led to my arrest and incarceration.
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I repeatedly fell into the woulda, shoulda, coulda syndrome
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as I futilely reenacted the past in a vain attempt to extricate myself
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from the frustrating self-blame I was experiencing.
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Around and around and around,
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as I wound myself up into greater and greater decrees of despair.
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This was indeed a dark night of the soul.
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I realized that I had to do something
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to break out of this self-destructive cycle.
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When you graduate from the grade school of jail
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and move on to college level,
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you have made it to prison.
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The food is still bad, although considerably better.
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The guards are often more polite
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and, given a chance, even friendly.
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Quarters are still overcrowded, but conditions are decidedly improved. The headspace of your
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fellow convicts is less confused, and the terrible uncertainty of not knowing what will happen
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is gone. The most dramatic change is being able to go outside and feel the sun and the wind and to see the stars once again.
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There is a library, a school, a hospital, and the possibility of dental care.
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These rights have been won by prisoners filing cases over decades
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to bring conditions to light so that judges force minimal standards of decency
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in the federal prisons, although not in most of the state prisons,
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where conditions are infinitely more horrible, I hear.
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In the prisons, you almost always have a yard where you can walk,
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run on the track, lift weights, or do any kind of exercise that you want.
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The worst part is over.
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You have made your mistakes,
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acknowledged to varying degrees your responsibility, and now get down to doing your time. These are the major differences between jail and prison.
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I realized that I had to get out of my circular, repetitive and stultifying headspace or I would be in even worse trouble than jail.
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Accordingly, I asked Usha to send in a book on yoga and I began to diet and do 20 minutes a day of yoga, which soon became 30 minutes, then an hour and eventually 3 hours a day.
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My disposition brightened and became more positive. I lost weight and altogether started to feel much better Usha started sending in books on ethnobotany
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anthropology, psychology
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and most important, the works of the enlightened masters
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and after so many years of working
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I was finally able to catch up on my reading
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I realized that freedom was the burning issue in my life,
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and that even though my physical freedom had been eliminated, my ability to trip inwardly
00:12:53 ►
was completely my choice. Naturally, I was regarded as an oddball. My customary acceptance
00:13:01 ►
of people without regard to race or religion and my conversations with anyone at all was regarded by many of the other whites as treasonable.
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And I was told that in jail this was possible, although not acceptable.
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But in prison, I would have to join up with my own kind or suffer the consequences when I got into trouble.
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I replied that I hadn’t seen these
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people helping me much and didn’t think I would need that kind of help. I was told that I would
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see. I agreed. In prison, the racism was rife, both among prisoners and staff, as it is on the
00:13:38 ►
outside also. But the microcosmic viewpoint made the divide-and-conquer techniques of the people in control much more apparent.
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Racial issues everywhere always obscure the more fundamental issues of human and civil rights.
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I continued to relate to any friendly person whom I could help or relate to in prison also.
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This had the effect of alienating some people, but in the long run, I was accepted by everyone because I would simply not eat out of the dish of racism, and I stood my ground.
00:14:12 ►
As the yoga kicked in during my first year, I also started catching up on the newest books on transcendent consciousness, both Eastern and Western.
00:14:22 ►
During this time also, quite spontaneously and irresistibly,
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I began to write.
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Every morning, my hand picked up the pen
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and dragged me to the table and made me write.
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So there was my day,
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three to four hours of writing in the morning,
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yoga in the afternoon,
00:14:39 ►
and study in the evening.
00:14:40 ►
This was really good for me,
00:14:42 ►
and I began to realize
00:14:43 ►
that whining about my situation was
00:14:45 ►
idiotic, and I would be much better served by learning how to do my time. Instead of mourning
00:14:53 ►
over my situation and bleak prospects for the future, I learned to see that no one exists in
00:14:58 ►
misery who cannot find someone who has had a worse deal of the cards. In fact, we are all doing time in the jail
00:15:05 ►
of life as long as we don’t stay completely present, responding to each situation as it
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arises. Reliving the past to regret and depression or worrying about the future are unreal activities
00:15:19 ►
that have no relevance to the present. The advice of the old-timers in prison is to do one day at a time. And so I moved
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into this timeless mode, and the days passed with increasing tranquility, while my position
00:15:34 ►
vis-a-vis my legal situation worsened daily. First, my lawyer, Peter, went into a total emotional
00:15:41 ►
breakdown, and most of the remaining money I had disappeared with him.
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That finished my chance for immediate bail.
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Then the authorities figured out who I was, and the U.S. filed extradition papers
00:15:53 ►
to serve my old 15-year sentence and a new 5-year sentence for absenting myself in 1976.
00:16:01 ►
The charges in Canada were not looking very good either, and kept increasing and worsening.
00:16:08 ►
In addition, my cattle were being stolen, my ranch under fire by unscrupulous employees,
00:16:13 ►
my machinery was being stolen, and sources for legal funds were drying up. My new lawyer, Ian,
00:16:20 ►
was a prince who dismissed my concerns over his fee and still came for hours every week to
00:16:25 ►
console me or discuss my options. As each of these heavy blows came to pass, a wave of despair and
00:16:32 ►
depression would crash over me. It was at this point that I realized that every calamity that
00:16:39 ►
befell one in life was governed by a compensatory mechanism. Within each dark cloud there really was a
00:16:46 ►
silver lining, if only one would look for it with enough diligence. As I looked deeply
00:16:52 ►
into each misfortune, I realized I was looking at my expectations and attachments. If I let
00:17:00 ►
go of them, I could see I was undergoing no misfortune at all. It was just my mind.
00:17:07 ►
The reality of the situation was that, in fact, I had no problems. I had free living
00:17:13 ►
quarters and food, hot water and light. My clothes were provided for. Great books were
00:17:19 ►
being sent in by my beloved. If I simply accepted the life of a monk, there were no problems at all.
00:17:26 ►
If everything went wrong, I would still be cared for by existence. If not, I would still be cared
00:17:32 ►
for by existence. If I got convicted, I would be living inside prison. If not, I would be living
00:17:39 ►
outside prison. The point was that I would still be alive and vital in the world.
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The point was that I would still be alive and vital in the world.
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My heart would beat, my eyes would see, I could still be surprised.
00:17:55 ►
I could still have revelations, I could still love.
00:18:02 ►
In these simple abilities, I could find all the most satisfying things in life.
00:18:06 ►
When one looks at one’s situation as a calamity,
00:18:13 ►
even if you are being preyed upon by a parasitic system, you are allowing this form by unconscious mental intention. It is important to realize that the participation in the feeling of victimization
00:18:20 ►
is the engagement of one’s person as that very victim. By participating in this
00:18:27 ►
process, the host that is oneself is now made vulnerable to the parasitic system.
00:18:34 ►
Letting go of these feelings is the doorway to internal freedom.
00:18:39 ►
Once you are free inside, external freedom is extraneous and illusory.
00:18:52 ►
I began to see that this life could be seen as an intentional dedication to a purifying monastic life in which one renounces all worldly pleasures and material involvement.
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All I had to do was to make this intention, and all my activities would be experienced as a purely spiritual life.
00:19:09 ►
Indeed, it was the life of a sadhu or wandering monk.
00:19:12 ►
During my six years of imprisonment,
00:19:14 ►
I was moved through 16 different institutions
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and had my quarters changed 41 times.
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That’s a total of 57 moves of sleeping location in 72 months. That’s a move every six
00:19:27 ►
weeks or so with concomitant loss of personal possessions and allowed items changing at each
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location. I even had to hide contraband pieces of dental floss in my legal papers so that I could
00:19:41 ►
practice dental hygiene. Dental floss is considered a weapon or escape
00:19:46 ►
paraphernalia. Naturally, arrival at each institution was accompanied by extreme paranoia
00:19:53 ►
and suspicion by the hosting prison and the usual testing by prison guards. Because of the frequent
00:20:01 ►
goading or bullying, these people were routinely referred to as pigs by the inmates,
00:20:05 ►
who also had their own access to grind.
00:20:08 ►
Embittered by life and having few opportunities,
00:20:11 ►
they were in the revolving door of perpetual return to prison for increasingly longer times as repeat offenders.
00:20:19 ►
The guards, too, came from similar origins of limitation,
00:20:23 ►
and almost to the man had basically the same values and attitudes.
00:20:27 ►
Often guards came from the same neighborhoods as their wards.
00:20:32 ►
Nevertheless, the roles of guard and convict,
00:20:35 ►
captor and captured, master and slave,
00:20:38 ►
create a perpetual enmity with social rules and protocol
00:20:42 ►
which must be observed, lest the prisoner be thought of as a snitch
00:20:45 ►
or the guard’s position be compromised
00:20:48 ►
as a breach of security priorities.
00:20:52 ►
Within this custom is a constant testing
00:20:55 ►
guard to guard, guard to prisoner, prisoner to prisoner.
00:20:59 ►
No one’s position is secure
00:21:01 ►
and the watchword is constant suspicion and skepticism.
00:21:07 ►
This creates a miasma of gloom and negativity, which is a prerequisite to a relatively peaceful life in prison. Some
00:21:14 ►
of the rules are never talk to guards, don’t talk to anyone not of your own race unless
00:21:19 ►
it is for business, always greet everyone you pass. Don’t ask questions. Don’t smile or talk too much.
00:21:28 ►
It took me a long time to overcome these attitudes and the insulting behavior of those around me as
00:21:33 ►
I followed my own set of rules for respect and interaction and sidestepping the inherent double
00:21:40 ►
binds. I adopted an attitude of total acceptance of what was going on around me
00:21:46 ►
while I remained completely aloof and aware. If unreasonable demands were made of me,
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I did whatever was necessary without getting involved in conflict or negativity.
00:21:57 ►
I observed and rooted out impulses to react in anger or fear and allowed all external probes to pass through me without getting caught.
00:22:07 ►
There’s no energy was being generated by the reaction. There was no place to focus.
00:22:13 ►
Continued negativity and the issue would then evaporate. This act of transparency was effective
00:22:19 ►
with both guards and inmates and as long as I didn’t allow them to feed on my negativity
00:22:25 ►
and also didn’t participate in feeding on anyone else’s,
00:22:29 ►
the whole question of combativeness and reactive behavior dropped away.
00:22:36 ►
All of this type of activity is at that point seen as a total waste of time.
00:22:43 ►
Not participating in this popular pastime gave me much more energy
00:22:47 ►
and time, and I began to move into two or three hours unmoving meditations, which were quite
00:22:53 ►
surprising, as meditating more than 40 minutes had previously always given me a backache.
00:22:59 ►
Now, nothing of the kind occurred. Meanwhile, years had passed, and for a while things on the legal scene became quite horrible.
00:23:08 ►
After a couple of years, I was finally returned to the States
00:23:12 ►
to do the old 15-year sentence and stand trial for bail jumping.
00:23:16 ►
The old hanging judge,
00:23:17 ►
who had given us outrageously long sentences back in 1974,
00:23:22 ►
was miraculously resurrected
00:23:24 ►
to give me the maximum five-year sentence
00:23:27 ►
consecutive to the 15-year sentence.
00:23:30 ►
Twenty years in all, a total of about 12 to 14 years more of real time.
00:23:37 ►
As I was approaching 60 years old, this was tantamount to a life sentence.
00:23:42 ►
Nevertheless, my resolve to move into my inner freedom
00:23:46 ►
continued to strengthen despite the illusory clamor of demons
00:23:51 ►
vying for my attention and despair.
00:23:55 ►
All of a sudden, even though I had completely accepted all that was happening,
00:24:00 ►
miracles, according to the lawyers and consultants, began to take place. In slow
00:24:06 ►
motion my nine year sentence in Canada disappeared. The appeal court threw out the bail jumping,
00:24:12 ►
effectively making me immediately eligible for parole. I was told not to be disappointed
00:24:18 ►
if parole were denied. At my first hearing I was granted parole. During this time, I was writing to Eckhart Tolle.
00:24:28 ►
He read one of my letters and commented to Usha that I would be getting out even earlier than I expected.
00:24:34 ►
When Usha relayed this message to me, I asked why he said that.
00:24:39 ►
He said it was because I had completely surrendered.
00:24:43 ►
Now I was perplexed.
00:24:46 ►
said it was because I had completely surrendered. Now I was perplexed. I had already been recommended for parole. I was only waiting for approval or denial of the examiner’s recommendation.
00:24:52 ►
Two months later it came. I had been approved for parole, but the unheard thing was that another
00:24:57 ►
six months had been cut from my sentence. No one had ever heard of this happening before.
00:25:03 ►
The last miracle.
00:25:09 ►
We live in a many-layered, psychosocially recreated reality,
00:25:13 ►
manifesting on many different planes simultaneously.
00:25:19 ►
On the individual level, it can affect our immune system and life expectancies.
00:25:29 ►
On the social plane, we participate in a wash of reciprocal expectations that reflects an atomistic and separated view of reality.
00:25:35 ►
The unit of tide of evolution in which we are all moving is not noticed.
00:25:40 ►
It seems that we are like the two amoebas caught in a vast tidal flow.
00:25:46 ►
One amoeba turns to the other and asks, where shall we go today? It is in this individually limited and separated view where we find the real prison. The escape from this prison is the concern
00:25:54 ►
of all spiritual work, and what it seems is that the direction in which evolution as a macro
00:26:00 ►
universal force is taking us. As I spent the next few months waiting for the bureaucratic process to catch up with itself,
00:26:09 ►
I spent my time in meditation and walking the fence line.
00:26:13 ►
By this time, I was seeing the fence as an illusion that separated the outside world from the world of prison.
00:26:21 ►
In reality, there are two prisons, the obvious one inside the fence, wherein
00:26:26 ►
a microcosm of the customs of the outer world may be more easily observed. The outer world
00:26:33 ►
of language and custom and culture into which we are conditioned before we have any say
00:26:38 ►
in the matter, any awareness of it, is harder to perceive. Caught up by complex currents of ambition and expectation,
00:26:47 ►
clinging in loneliness, as we strive to maintain a separate identity, we remain imprisoned
00:26:53 ►
in the illusion of need and survival, playing an unconscious role in an unsuspected play
00:27:01 ►
of vast proportions. From the time we are born, we are imprisoned in language and expectation.
00:27:08 ►
Then we are handed over to the schools to be molded by robots,
00:27:12 ►
unaware of his or her own imprisonment.
00:27:15 ►
When we are finally allowed to be released after a 12-year sentence in grade school,
00:27:19 ►
we enter blindly into another jail of marriage and parenting,
00:27:24 ►
careers and roles, and more schools,
00:27:27 ►
until we finally die wondering poignantly what we missed
00:27:30 ►
and why there is this vague dissatisfaction and unrequited yearning.
00:27:35 ►
That yearning is the desire for freedom and oneness.
00:27:40 ►
Only by going beyond our boundaries and limits
00:27:43 ►
into the vast field of consciousness,
00:27:45 ►
beyond word and time, will we find that beauty of love and unity and total freedom.
00:27:52 ►
Until that time, as they say in prison, we are all doing time.
00:27:57 ►
But it is this very time, this time out,
00:28:01 ►
that by simple and exacting intention can function like a Gajifian stop
00:28:05 ►
exercise and allow you to move into that inner space where your mind stops and you move into
00:28:11 ►
the essence that we share with all existence.
00:28:15 ►
One of the things I felt as I realized that once again I had lost everything I had built
00:28:20 ►
up on the material plane for 20 years was a burning feeling all over my body. It was the
00:28:26 ►
realization that everything I had been clinging to for some support, some transient trite reward,
00:28:33 ►
was gone. The work was gone, my distractions were gone, and all that remained were my attachments,
00:28:41 ►
burning up in a blaze of purification. And when this was over and I could laugh about
00:28:46 ►
it again, I realized that I had regained my freedom and that every activity I found myself
00:28:52 ►
in was a meditation in motion. And I was very grateful that I was lucky enough to have been
00:28:58 ►
ripped loose from everything but beauty and truth and love. Janis Joplin expressed this exactly when she sang,
00:29:06 ►
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.
00:29:09 ►
So I had this gigantic gift of time to reassess and reevaluate
00:29:14 ►
the most important things in life,
00:29:16 ►
to see that the multifoliate visions that we experience in our life
00:29:21 ►
need time and love to integrate and prepare for the next steps. The psychedelic vision
00:29:27 ►
can be used to see all the possibilities of crafting consciousness, especially when all
00:29:33 ►
that you have loved and cherished is suddenly gone. It is like a near-death experience on many
00:29:39 ►
levels. Not only are you broken from all your attachments, but you must be very respectful and walk softly
00:29:46 ►
as you move around other suffering inmates.
00:29:49 ►
For the specter of death looms around every corner.
00:29:53 ►
And in the far distance also death waits
00:29:56 ►
at the end of a long empty life of unfulfilled desire
00:30:00 ►
to taste and love and dance under the stars,
00:30:03 ►
to walk in the woods and to have sweet
00:30:05 ►
moments with your beloved. Great perspective and so much time to catch up on all these inner plans
00:30:13 ►
for growth that we keep putting off until a time when we are not so busy chasing the illusions of
00:30:19 ►
the world. This is the chance once and for all to choose joy over misery and to make that decision
00:30:26 ►
that yes I am going to choose joy as my goal
00:30:29 ►
and whatever horrors I am surrounded with
00:30:31 ►
I will transform into beauty
00:30:33 ►
that as an alchemist
00:30:35 ►
I will choose the soul as my laboratory
00:30:37 ►
and love as my stone
00:30:38 ►
in this place where I realized
00:30:41 ►
that I had no real choice in life
00:30:43 ►
I was going to utilize the illusion of
00:30:46 ►
choice to opt for transformation. It is just amazing what you can do with intention.
00:30:52 ►
One of the most important stories I heard during this time was about the meeting of an old Tibetan
00:30:58 ►
man trapped in a deserted village, up in the Himalayan wilderness, by crippling arthritis, when asked how it was having
00:31:10 ►
to live, trapped, alone, and immobilized, he replied, perfect, especially since I have no choice.
00:31:19 ►
This was a great key for me, a teaching that showed me that whatever we are given is always embedded
00:31:26 ►
in the choicelessness of existence. We think we make choices, and I suppose we do after
00:31:32 ►
the fact with our rational minds, but the beauty of the gift of life is that all you
00:31:37 ►
have to do is see the choicelessness and realize the importance of the love that we are here
00:31:42 ►
to share. So I began slowly to see how everything that occurs in life can be seen as love,
00:31:49 ►
and that the trick was really to see that everything that occurs through that transforming vision.
00:31:56 ►
A young man is driving through the countryside,
00:32:00 ►
and he sees a field full of very beautiful, ripe, lush pumpkins.
00:32:06 ►
He thinks to himself, hmm, well, I’ve never done a pumpkin.
00:32:09 ►
So he gets out of the car, he walks over, finds himself a beautiful young pumpkin,
00:32:14 ►
pokes a little hole in it, starts working away.
00:32:18 ►
Unsuspected, a policeman walks up behind him.
00:32:23 ►
Officer Brenda Scott says, sir, do you realize you’re screwing a pumpkin?
00:32:28 ►
Quickly thinking, he looks down at the pumpkin and he says,
00:32:31 ►
Is it midnight already?
00:32:32 ►
Is it midnight already?
00:32:39 ►
It’s really all about transformation
00:32:41 ►
and putting these myths to work for us
00:32:44 ►
as we free ourselves from conditioning.
00:32:50 ►
Although we can choose the realness of negativity and skepticism,
00:32:54 ►
in the end it seems that through the gift of time and space we are given the opportunity for self-transformative intention.
00:33:03 ►
Every misfortune that comes our way is a wake-up call.
00:33:07 ►
It is a reminder from existence not to miss doing this dance,
00:33:11 ►
not to miss doing this dance between deaths.
00:33:15 ►
Every time we fall asleep, it is like a small death,
00:33:18 ►
and when we awake the next day, we have the chance to experience the delight
00:33:23 ►
that this brief visit into the play of
00:33:25 ►
form, the dance of illusion that this life gives us to move into beauty. I am reminded of the story
00:33:33 ►
of the Zen master on his deathbed, his disciples around him, knowing he was going, they asked him
00:33:39 ►
to tell them the secret. Looking up at the ceiling, he said,
00:33:48 ►
Can you hear the sound of the squirrels running on the roof?
00:33:54 ►
This precious jewel of life, so pointedly brilliant in its setting of death,
00:33:58 ►
is what we are given to see the beauty around us and to use this vision to move into love.
00:34:01 ►
And as we do, we feel existence.
00:34:05 ►
Take us by the hand to bring us home again.
00:34:09 ►
Thank you all for your generous support and kind wishes.
00:34:12 ►
It has been a big part of why I am able to be here with you today.
00:34:23 ►
Thank you very much. Hi.
00:35:01 ►
Does anyone have any questions?
00:35:02 ►
Questions?
00:35:03 ►
Hi. Does anyone have any questions?
00:35:12 ►
Similarity between a child’s consciousness and altered states of consciousness.
00:35:18 ►
Well, it’s been a while since I’ve been a child.
00:35:22 ►
About half an hour.
00:35:25 ►
But I’ll try to get back that far. I think that there is a certain similarity
00:35:32 ►
to when you start moving into an altered state of consciousness,
00:35:37 ►
I think you are revisiting that time
00:35:39 ►
before all of the conditioning was laid down.
00:35:43 ►
I think you do have that kind of like uncluttered view of reality
00:35:48 ►
and direct perception of beauty.
00:35:50 ►
I think the accumulation of all the conditioning
00:35:54 ►
lays down many screens between you and what you’re perceiving,
00:35:59 ►
many filters and many categories.
00:36:01 ►
So that’s why I think that one of the reasons that when you do get high
00:36:06 ►
and you do go through altered states of consciousness
00:36:09 ►
for many reasons,
00:36:11 ►
you look at flowers or a rose or a child
00:36:15 ►
or the countryside
00:36:17 ►
and you’re seeing incredible colors and beauty.
00:36:21 ►
I don’t think these are hallucinations.
00:36:23 ►
I think that a lot of what’s
00:36:25 ►
going on in the way you perceive things is being refreshed by having the screens of conditioning
00:36:31 ►
removed from your vision. Oh, sure, sure. I know Satcham Nadeem. I’ve spoken to him over the telephone. He’s a good friend of my beloved Usha’s.
00:36:47 ►
We actually were in the same prison.
00:36:51 ►
I may even have been living in the same bed
00:36:53 ►
that he had been in a few years before.
00:36:56 ►
I guess part of what I’m asking is,
00:36:59 ►
would you take back a line of it,
00:37:01 ►
or are you happier now to have the realization
00:37:04 ►
and have gone
00:37:05 ►
through the experience? And part of what I’m asking, I guess, is, is there a way to show
00:37:12 ►
that to people without them having to go through that?
00:37:16 ►
I don’t think so. I think that adversity brings out the nobility in everyone and that those people who manage to go through life
00:37:25 ►
untouched by adversity have missed something. I think it really makes life much deeper.
00:37:34 ►
I wouldn’t have given up any of it. Yes?
00:37:37 ►
Do you have any suggestions of how those who are in this group who see usefulness and good in psychedelics,
00:37:46 ►
how we can influence our government to see what the beauty is in it.
00:37:56 ►
Well, I think that a vision of freedom…
00:38:04 ►
See, the function of governments and institutions is to maintain control.
00:38:11 ►
And I think in some degrees that’s very important.
00:38:15 ►
There are definite functions that are critical.
00:38:19 ►
As we move toward our destiny, our evolution, things are speeding up faster and faster and faster.
00:38:27 ►
And I think the psychedelics have served as the midwives of change.
00:38:32 ►
But I think that also the governments are having a lot of trouble keeping up with the rapid change in consciousness that we’re undergoing.
00:38:44 ►
And I think psychedelics are just a small part of the problem. in consciousness that we’re undergoing.
00:38:47 ►
And I think psychedelics is just a small part of the problem.
00:38:50 ►
It’s the nature of control.
00:38:52 ►
It’s the nature of rapid change.
00:38:54 ►
It’s hard to keep up with everything when everything is changing so rapidly.
00:38:56 ►
How do you keep standing
00:38:57 ►
when the sands of change
00:39:00 ►
keep shifting faster and faster under your feet?
00:39:04 ►
Does that answer your question at all?
00:39:05 ►
Could fighting rapid change be something that might be useful, sir?
00:39:09 ►
What?
00:39:10 ►
Could fighting rapid change itself be something that was somewhat useful?
00:39:14 ►
I don’t think we have a choice about that.
00:39:16 ►
I don’t think we have a choice about hardly anything.
00:39:18 ►
When you buy every trinket that’s on the market,
00:39:20 ►
that’s influencing the process to continue.
00:39:24 ►
Well, that’s not really the change I’m talking about.
00:39:28 ►
I understand what you’re saying.
00:39:30 ►
The change I’m talking about is a vast process of consciousness evolution that is going on
00:39:37 ►
right now all around us.
00:39:39 ►
It was what I meant in that little joke about the two amoebas, you know, turning to each
00:39:43 ►
other and saying, well, where are we going to go today?
00:39:45 ►
Well, I mean, the tide is so big, we can’t see how fast and how rapidly and how inexorably
00:39:52 ►
that change is going on, even when while we are being swept away by it,
00:39:57 ►
we’re not perceiving it, because everything is moving.
00:40:00 ►
It’s like you don’t feel how the planet is turning.
00:40:03 ►
And I don’t think you feel how that consciousness change is occurring either.
00:40:07 ►
And you don’t really have time to think sometimes with the speed of change, too, I think.
00:40:12 ►
Well, I don’t think thinking really affects change a whole lot.
00:40:17 ►
I think change affects thinking.
00:40:21 ►
affects thinking.
00:40:24 ►
Do you feel called upon in any way to be a poster boy for surviving
00:40:29 ►
in those circumstances?
00:40:34 ►
I’m not really sure I understand
00:40:36 ►
what that would mean.
00:40:36 ►
Well, in the sense of writing a survivor’s letter?
00:40:41 ►
What’s that?
00:40:42 ►
No, I mean for prisoners.
00:40:44 ►
Or do you feel called upon to try to work with,
00:40:47 ►
in any way, with prisons
00:40:48 ►
to try to make the situation more productive?
00:40:54 ►
There have been friends of mine
00:40:56 ►
who have gone down and they’ve gotten out
00:40:59 ►
and they’re working for prisoners abroad.
00:41:02 ►
And institutions like that.
00:41:06 ►
I think their work is very good and I support it wholeheartedly.
00:41:09 ►
It’s not really what I do.
00:41:12 ►
But anything I can do to help, I would do.
00:41:16 ►
You’ve talked about the harshness of the prison experience
00:41:19 ►
and the environment and the psychology of the people that are there.
00:41:22 ►
A huge number of people that are there are also prisoners of prohibition, essentially.
00:41:29 ►
Did you find solidarity there, or were you able to find others like yourself
00:41:34 ►
who had found a way out of the conditioning of the prison experience?
00:41:41 ►
Every place I went, I found a few brothers. It usually amounted to about
00:41:49 ►
one-tenth of one percent of the population, people who could see through the illusion
00:41:56 ►
of it all, with varying degrees of debilitating skepticism and hostility for the system.
00:42:07 ►
Because as long as you get to my way of thinking,
00:42:11 ►
as long as you’re getting reactive to it, you’re letting it get to you.
00:42:14 ►
And you’ve got to really distance yourself and see what’s going on,
00:42:19 ►
not as your enemy.
00:42:22 ►
Even if it’s functioning as your enemy, you can’t see it that way.
00:42:25 ►
And there’s very few people in the prison
00:42:27 ►
where every day, you know,
00:42:29 ►
there’s something happening to bring you down
00:42:32 ►
that can handle that kind of vision.
00:42:35 ►
But there are some.
00:42:38 ►
And they are a salvation.
00:42:41 ►
You mentioned meditation
00:42:42 ►
as being important to you at times.
00:42:47 ►
Would you see any usefulness in fusing this movement
00:42:49 ►
into a religious movement
00:42:50 ►
to involve religious credo
00:42:53 ►
within the movement
00:42:54 ►
as a way to protect
00:42:55 ►
from the problems
00:42:57 ►
religiousness
00:42:59 ►
with some sort of credo
00:43:01 ►
which lays out
00:43:02 ►
things which shouldn’t be done
00:43:04 ►
and things that are all right.
00:43:06 ►
Well, you see, the problem with credos and rules and protocols, laws,
00:43:16 ►
is that they have momentary utility.
00:43:20 ►
And the problem is, you know, they just keep building up and building up and building up,
00:43:26 ►
and there doesn’t seem to be any mechanism for removing the obsolete rules,
00:43:33 ►
credos, institutions of religion, whatever.
00:43:37 ►
They become old and stale, out of date, and as the change continues,
00:43:44 ►
especially the increasing rapid rate of date, and as the change continues, especially the increasing rapid rate of change,
00:43:49 ►
not just speed of change going on,
00:43:51 ►
but this constantly accelerating rate of change,
00:43:55 ►
it’s really hard to find anything to hold on to.
00:43:59 ►
You just really have to swim with it.
00:44:01 ►
But we have religions that survive thousands of years, sir.
00:44:04 ►
The creedos survive. They don’t get thrown in jail. It’s not a question of whether they don’t
00:44:11 ►
get thrown down or not. It’s a question of are they doing the job that they started out Where does law enforcement have a legitimate role in drug enforcement?
00:44:31 ►
In other words, are there any legitimate uses for the criminal justice system
00:44:34 ►
in approaching drug use and drug abuse?
00:44:37 ►
Where should they step in in a perfect society?
00:44:41 ►
Wow, you know, this is a really, that’s a really perplexing question.
00:44:49 ►
Kind of the way I’ve always approached life is
00:44:52 ►
to love everyone I meet as I move along
00:44:57 ►
and to find within myself
00:45:00 ►
the ways of conducting myself
00:45:02 ►
vis-a-vis my fellow man
00:45:04 ►
so that I don’t need an outside agency.
00:45:07 ►
I don’t need to give up my responsibility to humanity to someone else with a gun to go shoot someone by mistake
00:45:19 ►
because he misinterpreted what was going on, you know, in some dark alley where someone was taking a pee.
00:45:27 ►
I just don’t know. I think that there might be some justification somewhere, but it’s not really
00:45:32 ►
where I’m coming from. Yeah, when I was up in Canada, I met this old guy. He was a really
00:45:39 ►
roly-poly, jolly kind of guy, And he was always inviting me into, you know,
00:45:45 ►
his cell to, you know, smoke a joint with him
00:45:48 ►
and this kind of thing.
00:45:49 ►
Things are much more reasonable in Canada.
00:45:53 ►
And he would tell me about how he would be
00:45:58 ►
making this kind of a drug
00:45:59 ►
and it would not come out too well
00:46:01 ►
and they had made the tablets too hard
00:46:03 ►
and so they couldn’t sell them to the gay people anymore,
00:46:06 ►
so then they sold them to the blacks because, well, who cared about the blacks,
00:46:09 ►
and all this kind of stuff, and I was sitting there absolutely appalled.
00:46:16 ►
I was really disgusted by his whole attitude toward what he was doing.
00:46:20 ►
The only justification I could see in anyone manufacturing a drug illegally
00:46:26 ►
is that they are taking up a job that should be done by the government to produce something
00:46:35 ►
which people are going to take, inevitably going to take. They don’t have any, there’s
00:46:41 ►
no way to stop, you know, when I was Goddard, you know, one of the former heads of the DEA said,
00:46:47 ►
I’m resigning, you can’t stop this thing,
00:46:50 ►
it’s like sweeping back the ocean with a broom.
00:46:54 ►
So if that is the situation,
00:46:57 ►
then why doesn’t the government manufacture pure psychedelics
00:47:03 ►
and give them to the people,
00:47:04 ►
so that when you go into something like a psychedelic trip,
00:47:08 ►
you’re not worried that,
00:47:10 ►
oh my God, oh, everything’s dissolving.
00:47:12 ►
Everything is, oh God, what’s going on?
00:47:14 ►
Am I dying? Am I alive?
00:47:16 ►
All your limits and boundaries start to disappear.
00:47:19 ►
Have I been poisoned?
00:47:22 ►
Now this is a really big thing,
00:47:23 ►
especially when something as sensitive as
00:47:25 ►
like a psychedelic drug, which is a very psychological kind of thing. And all of a sudden, you know,
00:47:32 ►
you don’t really know. And it’s part of that set and setting. So if you have, you know,
00:47:38 ►
some confidence and the government, you know, has been doing what it should be doing and
00:47:43 ►
making sure that you do have good psychedelics to take,
00:47:47 ►
I think that that would be a better thing.
00:47:57 ►
Hi.
00:47:58 ►
Hi.
00:47:59 ►
I’d like your comment.
00:48:01 ►
The last two comments about, well, don’t we need some religion?
00:48:06 ►
Don’t we need some cops?
00:48:08 ►
I have a feeling that you created a space so vast and so open that it has made some people nervous.
00:48:15 ►
I would like your comment on how we are about total freedom.
00:48:21 ►
about total freedom.
00:48:23 ►
And when it makes us nervous and when we sort of look over our shoulder and say,
00:48:25 ►
gee, I don’t know if I could make it all by myself
00:48:29 ►
floating here in free space.
00:48:31 ►
Maybe I need a cup and someone to tell me what to do.
00:48:36 ►
I don’t think I have much to add to that.
00:48:38 ►
I think you’ve said it right there.
00:48:40 ►
Thank you.
00:48:41 ►
Thank you.
00:48:54 ►
Okay, I was wondering if you thought that it is the responsibility of capable clandestine chemists to supply the people with pure pharmaceutical-grade drugs, psychedelics,
00:49:00 ►
as long as the government decides not to.
00:49:04 ►
Well, I don’t really think that’s an appropriate question for me to answer right now.
00:49:12 ►
Good answer.
00:49:22 ►
Ah, what a story, huh?
00:49:25 ►
I can still remember the feeling that went through the room that day
00:49:28 ►
when he was about midway through his talk
00:49:30 ►
and Nick was talking about having lost every material possession he ever had in the world
00:49:35 ►
and on top of that, you know, losing his own freedom on top of that.
00:49:39 ►
And he said something like,
00:49:41 ►
I was very grateful that I was lucky enough to have been ripped loose from everything but beauty and truth and love.
00:49:48 ►
Wow.
00:49:49 ►
Then a little later, when asked if he thought that adversity, all that adversity he’d gone through was worth it,
00:49:55 ►
he said something like he thought it really made life deeper and that he wouldn’t have given up any of it.
00:50:00 ►
Wow.
00:50:01 ►
I have to tell you, it was just an electrifying moment.
00:50:04 ►
Everybody commented on it afterwards.
00:50:07 ►
I guess that was when a few of my friends, and not really in jest, began calling him St. Nick.
00:50:12 ►
Of course, now when I hear someone call Nick that, I have a little jollier image.
00:50:19 ►
I like to think of him dressed up like Santa Claus and sliding down chimneys
00:50:23 ►
with a big bag loaded with these really brightly glowing oranges. You gotta admit that a thought like that can get you
00:50:30 ►
in a Christmas mood even in May. You know, in one of the recent podcasts, Terrence McKenna
00:50:36 ►
said something to the effect of, the only time you meet idealistic criminals is when
00:50:42 ►
you meet psychedelic chemists and the people who distribute
00:50:45 ►
their wares actually i wish terence had used the word outlaw instead of criminal using the
00:50:51 ►
word criminal it seems to me it just gives the screwheads more authority than they deserve
00:50:55 ►
al capone was a criminal robin hood was an outlaw so my fellow outlaws I guess it’s time once again to bring this program to an end.
00:51:07 ►
I really appreciate you being here, and I look forward to seeing you the next time
00:51:10 ►
when we get together here in the psychedelic salon.
00:51:14 ►
For now, this is Lorenzo, signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
00:51:19 ►
Be well, my friends.