193 - Alan Watts & friends The Houseboat Summit

Program Notes

Guest speakers: Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Allen Cohen

“The Houseboat Summit” was held in February 1967, and has been documented in several places on the Web. In addition to the quotes below, which are from this podcast, you can read a more complete transcript of this historic meeting here.

“I think that, thus far, the genius of this kind of underground that we’re talking about is that it has no leadership.” -Alan Watts

“What we need to realize is that there can be, shall we say, a movement, a stirring among people, which can be organically designed instead of politically designed.” -Alan Watts

“My historical reading of the situation is that these great monolithic empires developed, Rome, Turkey, and so forth, and they always break down when enough people, and it’s always the young, the creative, and minority groups drop out and go back to a tribal form.” -Timothy Leary

“Our educational system in its entirety does nothing to give us any kind of material competence. In other words, we don’t learn how to cook, how to make clothes, how to build houses, how to make love, or to do any of the absolutely fundamental things of life.” -Alan Watts

“That society is strong and viable which recognizes its own provisionality.” -

“And so when the essential idea of love is lost there comes talk of fidelity. Actually, the only possible basis for two beings, male and female, to relate to each other is to grant each other total freedom.” -Alan Watts

http://astore.amazon.com/matrixmasterscom/detail/0486233685“Increasingly, we’re developing all kinds of systems for verifying reality by echoing it.” -

“Drop out of the public schools. The public schools cannot be compromised with.” -Timothy Leary

“What are we saying when we say now, something is holy? That means you should take a different attitude to what you are doing than if you were, for example, doing it for kicks.” -Alan Watts

“Half the things I’ve done are wrong, mistakes [unintelligible]. The moratorium on pot and LSD a year ago is ridiculous. I shouldn’t have done that. I make a blunder at least one out of two times I come to bat.” -Timothy Leary

“In other words, when there is a game going on that’s on a collision course, and that this game obviously is going to lead to total destruction, the only way of getting people out of a bad game is to indicate that the game is no longer interesting. See, we’ve left this game and it bores us.” -Alan Watts, February 1967

“I would agree to change the slogan to
‘Drop out. Turn on. Drop in.’ ” -Timothy Leary

Matt Muirhead’s e(n)tymology

Transcript

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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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Well, it really is good to be back here with you in the salon again.

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Seems like I’ve been gone for more than three weeks.

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So how are you doing today?

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Well, I hope that you’re doing as well as I am right now,

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because until I was on the road for a few days, I didn’t really realize how much I needed a break, but now I’m

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finding it kind of hard to get back into a routine of any kind, so I had a great time. As you know,

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I recently attended the 23rd and final gathering of the Oracle at Dragonsphere Park in Washington,

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and after that, my wife and some friends of ours and I spent some time on a lovely little island in the San Juans

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where I stayed with my dear friends Kevin and Padoma

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and I want to send my thanks for their love, kindness

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and that of their friends who also joined us in an evening of food

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that came fresh from their gardens and a night of song around a fire

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that not only brought me back to life,

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but completely reinvigorated my soul.

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And so I send my love and warmest regards to Michael, Nina,

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and all of the staff and volunteers at the Oracle Gathering,

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and to Kevin, Kodoma, and all of you magical beings on my favorite island.

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You have done me a great service,

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and Kevin, I promise to keep on keeping on as you so kindly requested.

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In fact, I’m now thinking of this fifth year in the psychedelic salon

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as dedicated to all of you wonderful people in the Pacific Northwest.

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Thanks for being such incredible people

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and for all you are doing to make life on our little spaceship Earth

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more joyous for everybody.

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And I look forward with great anticipation

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to the next time that we’re all together again.

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Now there are also some other truly incredible people

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who also deserve my thanks.

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And I have to tell you that

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when I returned home a few days ago

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and checked my email,

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I was actually stunned at the number of donations that came in during a time when I wasn’t even producing any podcasts.

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I have to tell you guys that, well, you brought tears to my eyes when I learned of your generous donations to the salon.

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And these kind and generous souls include longtime friend of the salon and previous donor, Max T.

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Thanks again for everything, Max.

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And Max was joined by Caroline F., Eric D., Tony S., Toby O., Anthony D., Laurie W., and Andy H.

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Gosh, I really wish I could come up with a better way to thank all of you for your more than generous donations.

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All I can say is that, well, you’ve touched me very deeply.

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And as I promised Kevin, for sure you have another year of Salon coming your way.

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In fact, I’m even going to try to make up for the weeks I’ve missed by producing a few extra programs to be sure that we get a full

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52 podcasts in by our

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five year anniversary next year

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and I might also

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mention that several of today’s

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donors have also been with us

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in supporting the salon in various

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ways for almost all of that time

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and I’m here to tell

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you that it sure does feel good to

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get back with all of you once again here in the salon.

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It’s the thing that’s pulling me through sometimes

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and so, like you, it just feels good for us all to get together once in a while

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and we’ll make it at least once a week for the next 12 months or so.

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Now, there is one last thank you that I want to send along right now,

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and then I promise to get on with the show.

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But I would be remiss if I didn’t thank all of our fellow Saloners who attended the Oracle Gathering.

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I got to meet quite a few of you, but after looking at some of the emails I received before the gathering,

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I see that there were at least two of you that I missed connecting with,

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and I’m really sorry about that, because one of my main reasons for going was to connect with all of you, and if you were there and we missed connecting, well, I’m really sorry

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about that, and hopefully our paths in the default world will cross again sometime, where

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we’ll actually be able to spend a little time together.

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Until then, I am most definitely with you in spirit.

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Now getting on with today’s program,

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what I’m going to play today may not be of great interest to all of our fellow slauners,

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but for those of us who are actively thinking about and working on plans

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for ways that our descendants can live sustainable

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and joyous lives, well, this conversation may have some insightful moments for you.

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What we’re about to hear is a conversation that took place on Alan Watts’ houseboat

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one night in February of 1967. And Watts’ guests that night were Timothy Leary,

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And Watts’ guests that night were Timothy Leary, Gary Snyder, and Alan Ginsberg.

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Now, I’ll have a little bit more to say about why I selected this particular tape to play right now after we hear it, but thanks to Michael Horowitz, who digitized it, and to Dennis Berry and Bruce

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Dahmer for getting it to me for this podcast, we’re now going to hear what the utopian dreamers were dreaming about

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at the very beginning of the period that we now think of as the 60s.

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And I really, really do think that this is the beginning of the 60s

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because this conversation actually took place just a few weeks after the first human being

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where Dr. Leary so famously said,

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Turn on, tune in, and drop out.

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And it was in the flesh of that seeming victory for the hippies that this conversation took place.

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And among other interesting little tidbits here, and this was new to me, I’d never heard it before,

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but at the very end of this tape, we’ll hear how the good Dr. Leary thought that maybe his famous phrase should be revised.

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At least that’s what he thought at the moment.

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So anyway, without any further ado, let’s join them now and hear what the hippie elders were saying in February of 1967.

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This is Alan Watts speaking.

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And I’m this evening on my ferry boat,

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the host to a fascinating party

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which is our new underground paper,

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far outer than any far out that has yet been seen.

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And we have here Alan Cohen representing the paper, the oracle.

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We have Alan Ginsberg, poet, and rabbinic sadhu.

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We have Timothy Leary

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about whom nothing needs to be said

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and Gary Snyder

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also poet

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zen monk

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and old friend of many years

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everybody is all bugged

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because they think

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one

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the dropout thing

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really doesn’t mean anything

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it’s what you’re going to cultivate

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is a lot of freak out

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hippies

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goofing around

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throwing bottles through windows

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when they flip out

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on LST

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that’s their stereotype vision

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obviously a stereotype

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sounds like bullshit

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second

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no no

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it’s like

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it’s no different from the newspaper vision anymore.

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I mean, they’ve got the newspaper vision.

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And secondly, they’re afraid that there’ll be some sort of fascist putsch,

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like is rumored lately, everybody’s going to be arrested,

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so that the lack of organization among the, or the lack of community,

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the lack of communicating community among the hippies

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will lead to some concentration camp situation

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or lead, as it has been in Los Angeles recently,

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to a dispersal of what beginning of the community began.

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These are the old menopausal minds.

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There was a psychiatrist named Adler in San Francisco

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whose interpretation of the butte bien

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was that this is the basis for new fascism,

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when a leader comes along. And I sense from the activism movement the cry for a leader,

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the cry for organization. But they’re just as intelligent as you are on this fact. They know

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about what happened in Russia. That’s the reason that they haven’t got a big active organization,

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because they too are stumped by how do you have a community

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and a community movement

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and cooperation within the community

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to make life more

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pleasing for everybody

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including the end of the Vietnam War

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how do you have such a situation

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organized or disorganized

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as long as it’s effective without a fascist leadership

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because they don’t want to be that either

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they are conscious of the fact that they don’t want to be messiahs,

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political messiahs.

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Mr. Savio is particularly, he wants to go out,

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yesterday he was weeping,

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saying he wanted to go out and live in nature.

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So, I mean, he’s like basically where we are.

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Well, I think that thus far the genius of this kind of underground

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that we’re talking about

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is that it has no leadership.

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The Western world has labored for many, many centuries

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under a monarchical conception of the universe

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where God is the boss

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and political systems and all kinds of law

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have been based on this model of the universe

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that nature is run by a boss.

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Whereas if you take the Chinese view of the world, which is organic, they would

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say for example that the human body is an organization in which there is no boss.

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It is a situation of order resulting from mutual interrelationship of all the parts.

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And what we need to realize is that there can be,

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shall we say, a movement, a stirring among people,

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which can be organically designed instead of politically designed.

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It has no boss.

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And yet all the parts recognize each other in the same way as the cells of the body all cooperate together.

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It’s a new social structure.

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It’s a new social structure which follows certain kinds of

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historically known tribal models.

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Exactly, yeah.

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My historical reading of the situation is

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that these great monolithic countries

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that developed in history, Rome, Turkey, so forth,

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and they always break down, but enough people, as always the young, the creative, and the

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minority groups, drop out and go back to a tribal form. And I agree with what I’ve heard

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you say in the past, Gary, that the basic unit is travel. And what I envision is thousands of small groups

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throughout the United States, Western Europe,

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the rest of the world, is dropping out.

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What happened when Rome fell?

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What happened when Jerusalem fell?

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Precisely what do you mean by drop out then?

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Vincent, you haven’t dropped out.

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You dropped out of your job as a psychology teacher in Harvard.

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Now, what you’ve dropped into is,

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one, a highly complicated series of arrangements for lecturing

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and for putting on the festival.

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Well, I’m very confident.

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No, no, but you’re not dropped out of the very highly complicated

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legal constitutional appeals,

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which you feel a sentimental regard for, as I do.

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You haven’t dropped out of, like,

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being the financial provider for Millbrook.

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You haven’t dropped out of planning and conducting community organization and participating in it.

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And that community organization is related to the national community, too,

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either through the Supreme Court or through the very existence of the dollar that is exchanged

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for you to pay your lawyers or to take money to pay your lawyers in the theater.

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So you can’t drop

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out like drop out, because you haven’t.

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Well, let me explain.

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And so they think you mean like a drop out, like go live on Hedashbury Street and do nothing

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at all, even if you can do something like build furniture and sell it or give it away

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and barter with somebody else.

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You have to drop out in a group

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you drop out in a small tribal group

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well you drop out one by one

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but you know like you can join the subculture

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millions of millions

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drop out of what?

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Gary I think that you have something to say here

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because you to me

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are one of the most fantastically capable

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drop out people I’ve ever met

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I think that at this point you should say a word or two

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about your own experience of how to live on nothing,

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how to get by in life economically.

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And this is the nitty-gritty.

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This is where it really comes down to in many people’s minds.

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Where’s the bread going to come from if everybody drops out?

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Now, you know expertly where it’s going to come from,

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living a life of integrity and not being involved in a commute,

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this necktie strangle news scene.

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Well, this isn’t news to anybody, but 10, 15 years ago when we dropped out,

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there wasn’t a community.

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And there wasn’t anybody who was going to take care of you at all you were really completely

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on your own what it meant was cutting down on your desires and cutting down on

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your needs to an absolute minimum and it also meant don’t be a bit fussy about

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how you work or what you do for a living that meant doing any kind of work.

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Strawberry picking, carpenter labor, longshore.

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Well, longshore is hard to get onto.

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It pays very well.

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And shipping out, that also pays very well.

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But at least in my time, it meant being willing to do any goddamn kind of labor that came your way

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and not being fussy about it.

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And it meant cultivating the virtue of patience, the patience of sticking with a shitty job

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long enough to win the bread that you needed to have some more leisure, which meant more

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freedom to do more things than you wanted to do.

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And mastering techniques, all kinds of techniques that were really cheap, like getting free

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rice off the docks because the loading trucks sometimes fork the dock fork the rice sacks and and spill little piles of rice on

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the docks which are usually thrown away but i had it worked out with some of the guards down on the

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docks that they would gather 15 25 pounds of rice for me and also tea and uh i’d pick it up once a

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week off the docks and then i take it around and give it to friends and this was rice that was

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going to be thrown away otherwise you, you know, it’s just techniques

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like that.

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Second day vegetables from the supermarket.

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Yeah, we used to go around

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at one or two in the morning around the Safeways

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and Figgly Wigglies in Berkeley

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with a shopping bag and hit the garbage cans

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out in the back. And we’d get

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Chinese cabbage, cabbage, broccoli,

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lots of broccoli and

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artichokes that were thrown out because they didn’t look sellable anymore.

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So I never bought any vegetables for the three years I was a graduate student at Berkeley.

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And when I made it meat, it was usually horse meat from the pet store,

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because they don’t have a law that permits them to sell horse meat for human consumption in California like they do in Oregon.

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Doesn’t it make delicious horse meat soup yucky?

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like they do in Oregon.

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Doesn’t it make delicious horse meat soup yucky?

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Well, I want to add to this, Gary,

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that during the time when you were living this way,

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I visited you on occasion,

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and you had a little hut way up on the hillside

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on Homestead Valley in Mill Valley.

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And I want to say, for the record,

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that this was one of the most beautiful pads I ever saw.

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It was sweet and clean, and it had a very, very good smell to the whole thing.

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And you were living what I consider to be a very noble life.

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Now, then the question that next arises, if this is the way of being a successful dropout, which I think it is, it’s true,

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can you have a wife and

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child under such circumstances? Yeah, I think you can, sure. What about when the state forces

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you to send the child to school? You send it to school. Oh, no, come on. I don’t see

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this as a dropout at all. No, I want to finish what I was going to say. That’s the way it

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was ten years ago.

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Today, there is a community, a huge community,

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which when you drop out, when any kid drops out today,

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he’s got a subculture to go fall into.

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He’s got a place to go where there’ll be friends and people that will put him up

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and people that will feed him at least for a while

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and keep feeding him indefinitely if he moves around from pad to pad.

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But that’s just stage one.

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Stage one.

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The value of the Lower East Side or of the

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district in Seattle, the Haight-Ashbury, is it provides a first launching pad. But that

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must be seen clearly as a way station. I don’t think the Haight-Ashbury district is a place,

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any city for that matter, is a place where the new tribal… I agree with you…is

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going to live. So that I mean drop out. I don’t tribal… I agree with you…is going to live.

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So that I mean drop out.

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I don’t want to be misinterpreted.

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I’m dropping out step by step.

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Millbrook, by the way, is a tribal community.

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We’re getting closer and closer to the land.

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We’re working out our way of import and export with the planet.

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We consider ourselves a tribe of mutants,

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just like all the little tribes of Indians were. We happen to have our little area there, and we have to come

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to terms with the white men around us. So yes, there’s no…

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Okay, but now look, your dropout line is fine for all those other people out there. You

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know, that’s what you’ve got to say to them. But I want to hear what you’re building. What

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are you making?

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What are we building?

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Yeah, what are you building? I want to hear your views on building. What are you making? What are we building? Yeah, what are you building?

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I want to hear your views on that.

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Now, like it’s agreed we’re dropping out

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and there are techniques to do it now.

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What next?

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Where are we going now?

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I’m making the prediction

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that thousands of groups will

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just look around the

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fake prop television set up by society

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and just open one of those doors

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and when you open the doors they don’t even lead you out into the Garden of Eden which is this planet the fake prop television set up by American Society, and just open one of those doors.

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And when you open the doors,

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they don’t even lead you out into the Garden of Eden,

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which is this planet.

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And then you find yourself a little tribe wandering around.

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As soon as enough people do this,

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and as young people do this,

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it will bring about an incredible change in the consciousness of this country

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and of the Western world.

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Well, that is happening, actually.

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Yeah.

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But that Garden of Eden is full of rubber truck tires and of the Western world. Well, that is happening, actually. Yeah. But that Garden of Eden

00:18:45 ►

is full of rubber truck tires

00:18:47 ►

and tin cans right now.

00:18:49 ►

Parts of it are.

00:18:51 ►

Each group that drops out

00:18:52 ►

has got to use its two billion years

00:18:55 ►

of cellular equipment

00:18:56 ►

to answer those questions.

00:18:58 ►

Hey, how are we going to eat?

00:19:00 ►

Oh, there’s no more paycheck.

00:19:01 ►

There’s no more fellowship in university.

00:19:03 ►

How are we going to eat?

00:19:04 ►

How are we going to keep warm? How are we going to defend ourselves?

00:19:06 ►

What is very important here is that people learn the techniques which have been forgotten, that they learn new structures and new techniques.

00:19:16 ►

Like you just can’t go out and grow vegetables, man. You’ve got to know how to do it.

00:19:19 ►

You know, like we’ve got to learn to do a lot of things we’ve forgotten to do. I agree. That is very true, Gary.

00:19:26 ►

Our educational system in its entirety does nothing to give us any kind of material competence.

00:19:33 ►

In other words, we don’t learn how to cook, how to make clothes, how to build houses, how to make

00:19:38 ►

love, or to do any of the absolutely fundamental things of life. The whole education that we get

00:19:44 ►

for our children

00:19:45 ►

in school is entirely in terms of abstractions. It trains you to be an insurance salesman

00:19:49 ►

or a bureaucrat or some kind of cerebral character.

00:19:54 ►

Within the next five years, probably, a modest beginning will be made in subculture institutions

00:20:00 ►

of higher learning that will informally begin to exist around the country and will provide

00:20:04 ►

this kind of education without being linked to the establishment,

00:20:07 ►

to big industry, to government.

00:20:09 ►

Oh, it’s already happening.

00:20:10 ►

It’s already happening.

00:20:11 ►

I think there will be a big extension of that,

00:20:14 ►

employing a lot of potentially beautiful teachers who are unemployed at the moment,

00:20:18 ►

like there are gurus who are just waiting to be put to use,

00:20:22 ►

and also drawing people who are working in universities with a bad conscience off to join that.

00:20:26 ►

Exactly.

00:20:27 ►

But there is a whole new order of technology that is required for this, a whole new science,

00:20:33 ►

actually, a whole new physical science is going to emerge for this, because the boundaries

00:20:36 ►

of the old physical science are within the boundaries of the Judeo-Christian and Western

00:20:41 ►

imperialist boss sense of the universe that Alan was talking about. In other words, our scientific tradition is caught within the limits of that father figure Jehovah or Roman emperor model,

00:20:53 ►

which limits our scientific objectivity and actually holds us back from exploring areas of science which can be explored.

00:21:00 ►

So that really, you know, like a new technology goes with this.

00:21:02 ►

Exactly.

00:21:03 ►

It’s like the guy in Los Angeles who had a bad trip on LSD

00:21:06 ►

and turned himself into the police and wrote,

00:21:09 ►

please help me, signed, Jehovah.

00:21:13 ►

That’s what he did.

00:21:13 ►

Beautiful.

00:21:15 ►

That’s how he caught on, huh?

00:21:20 ►

But here, though, is this thing, you see.

00:21:24 ►

We are talking about all this,

00:21:26 ►

which is really a rather small movement of people

00:21:29 ►

involved in the midst of a fantastic multitude

00:21:33 ►

of people who can only continue to survive

00:21:37 ►

if automated industry

00:21:40 ►

feeds them, clothes them, houses them, and transports them by means

00:21:49 ►

of the creation of immense quantities of ersatz material.

00:21:56 ►

Fake bread, fake homes, fake clothes, and fake autos.

00:22:02 ►

In other words, this thing is going on. You know, this huge, fantastic numbers

00:22:07 ►

of people increasing, increasing, increasing. People think, you know, the population problem,

00:22:11 ►

something’s going to happen in five years from now. They don’t realize it’s right on

00:22:14 ►

us now. People are coming out of the walls.

00:22:16 ►

We got to start immediately putting the technology underground. I can think of different ways

00:22:21 ►

that we can do this symbolically. The solstice last April 21st,

00:22:25 ►

a group of us went out in front of the house in Millbrook

00:22:27 ►

and we took a sledgehammer

00:22:29 ►

and we spent about an hour breaking through the road.

00:22:33 ►

And we had this incredible piece of asphalt

00:22:35 ►

and rock about four inches.

00:22:39 ►

And then we said, hey, underneath this planet somewhere,

00:22:41 ►

there’s dirt.

00:22:43 ►

And it was really magical.

00:22:44 ►

And once you get a little piece taken out,

00:22:46 ►

it took about an hour to get one little piece,

00:22:48 ►

then you just go underneath it, and it begins to crumble.

00:22:51 ►

So I think that we should start a movement

00:22:53 ►

to one hour a day or one hour a week,

00:22:57 ►

take a little chisel and a little hammer

00:22:58 ►

and put a little hole in some of this plastic

00:23:03 ►

and just see some earth come up and put a seed there.

00:23:09 ►

I can foresee, and then put a little ring of, mandalic ring of something around it.

00:23:14 ►

I can see the highways, and I can see the subways, and I can see the patios and so forth.

00:23:22 ►

Suddenly, the highway department come along and say, there’s a rose growing

00:23:25 ►

in the middle of Highway 101.

00:23:26 ►

And then, then,

00:23:28 ►

the robot power group

00:23:30 ►

will have to send

00:23:31 ►

a group of the highway department

00:23:32 ►

to kill the rose

00:23:34 ►

and put the asphalt down

00:23:36 ►

on the gentle,

00:23:37 ►

naked skin of the soil.

00:23:38 ►

Now, when they do that,

00:23:39 ►

we’re getting to them.

00:23:41 ►

There’ll be pictures in the paper.

00:23:42 ►

And consciousness is going to change

00:23:44 ►

because we’ve got to get to people’s consciousness. We’ve got to let people realize what they’re doing to them. There’ll be pictures in the paper. And consciousness is going to change. Because we’ve got to get to people’s consciousness.

00:23:46 ►

We’ve got to let people realize what they’re doing to the earth.

00:23:49 ►

In that theory of poetry, you’re doing the earth.

00:23:53 ►

There we go.

00:23:54 ►

I’m the poet and you’re the politician.

00:23:55 ►

I’ve told you that for ten years.

00:24:01 ►

I mean, I know someone now at State who’s studying psychology.

00:24:06 ►

And he doesn’t know whether to drop out or not he’s pulled in two directions

00:24:08 ►

I think there are many people like this

00:24:09 ►

yes I think he should drop out

00:24:11 ►

and I want to be absolutely clear on that

00:24:13 ►

and the paper is that

00:24:14 ►

nobody wants to listen to that simple

00:24:17 ►

two syllable phrase

00:24:20 ►

it gets jargled and jumbled

00:24:22 ►

and I mean it

00:24:24 ►

now everyone has to decide how he drops out and when It gets jargled and jumbled, and I mean it.

00:24:27 ►

Now, everyone has to decide how he drops out and when,

00:24:31 ►

and he has to time it gracefully, but that’s the goal.

00:24:35 ►

Now, I can foresee that you might work for Susan Robux for six months to get enough money to go to India, but that’s part of your dropout.

00:24:39 ►

And what I’m doing today, Alan, is part of my dropout.

00:24:42 ►

I do have responsibilities and contracts,

00:24:44 ►

and I don’t

00:24:45 ►

think that anyone

00:24:45 ►

should violate

00:24:46 ►

contracts with

00:24:47 ►

people that they

00:24:48 ►

love.

00:24:48 ►

The contract

00:24:49 ►

with the

00:24:49 ►

university,

00:24:50 ►

fine,

00:24:51 ►

quit tomorrow.

00:24:52 ►

Therefore,

00:24:53 ►

I have to

00:24:53 ►

detach myself

00:24:54 ►

slowly.

00:24:54 ►

When I was

00:24:55 ►

in India

00:24:55 ►

two years

00:24:56 ►

ago…

00:24:56 ►

You know,

00:24:57 ►

the university

00:24:57 ►

has personal

00:24:58 ►

relations also.

00:25:01 ►

They’re not

00:25:01 ►

in contact

00:25:02 ►

with the

00:25:02 ►

university,

00:25:02 ►

they’re in

00:25:02 ►

contact with

00:25:03 ►

persons.

00:25:03 ►

Yeah.

00:25:05 ►

They can’t reject those persons necessarily.

00:25:07 ►

What is the favor you brought us up among those persons?

00:25:10 ►

You can, as Tim says, you can gracefully drop out at one time or another.

00:25:14 ►

Which I take to my own…

00:25:16 ►

I was teaching at Burgu last week. What do you mean drop out?

00:25:19 ►

You’ve got to do your yoga as a consciousness.

00:25:22 ►

You can do this.

00:25:23 ►

It’s part of the thing you’re going to have to go through. And after you do that, then you’ll shudder and run to the door.

00:25:29 ►

Surely the facts of the matter is that you can do this on a small scale,

00:25:33 ►

as an individual, where just a few people are doing this,

00:25:36 ►

as they always have done.

00:25:38 ►

There have always been a kind of elite minority who dropped out,

00:25:42 ►

who were the sages in the mountains.

00:25:43 ►

We’re talking a drama

00:25:50 ►

you’re not talking about you know anthropological realities the anthropological reality is the human beings in their nature want to be in touch with what’s real in themselves and in the universe

00:25:55 ►

and that for example the longshoremen with their automation contract in san francisco

00:26:01 ►

a certain number of them have been laid off for the rest of their lives with full pay. And some of them have been laid off already for five years

00:26:07 ►

with full pay by their contract. Now, my brother-in-law’s a longshoreman. He’s been telling me about

00:26:12 ►

what’s happened to these guys. Most of them are pretty illiterate. A large proportion

00:26:16 ►

of them are Negroes. The first thing they all did was get boats and drive around San

00:26:20 ►

Francisco Bay because they have all this leisure. Then a lot of them got tired of driving around boats that were just like cars,

00:26:28 ►

and they started sailing.

00:26:29 ►

Then a few of them started making their own sailboats.

00:26:32 ►

They move into and respond to the possibility of challenge.

00:26:36 ►

Things become simpler and more complex and more challenging for them.

00:26:39 ►

The same is true of hunting.

00:26:40 ►

Some guy says, I’m going to go hunting and fishing all the time

00:26:42 ►

when I have my leader, by God.

00:26:44 ►

And so he goes hunting all the time. Then then he says i want to do this in a more

00:26:48 ►

interesting way so he takes up bow hunting yeah then the next step is and this has happened he

00:26:53 ►

says i’m going to try making my own arrowheads and he learns how to flake his own arrowheads out

00:26:57 ►

now human beings want reality that’s i think part of human nature and uh television and drinking

00:27:04 ►

beer and watching television

00:27:05 ►

is what the working man laid off of us for the first two weeks.

00:27:08 ►

But then in the third week he begins to get bored.

00:27:11 ►

And in the fourth week he wants to do something with his body,

00:27:13 ►

with his mind, with his senses.

00:27:14 ►

I think that automation in the affluent society,

00:27:17 ►

plus psychedelics, plus a, for some curious reason,

00:27:22 ►

a whole catalytic spiritual change or bend of mind that seems to be

00:27:29 ►

taking place in the West today especially is going to result can result ultimately in a vast leisure

00:27:35 ►

society in which people will voluntarily reduce their number and because human beings want to do

00:27:42 ►

that which is real simplify their lives like the

00:27:45 ►

whole problem of consumption and and marketing is radically altered if a number of people a large

00:27:51 ►

number of people voluntarily choose to consume less and people will voluntarily choose to consume

00:27:55 ►

less if their interests are turned in another direction if what is exciting to them is no longer

00:27:59 ►

things but states of mind that’s true now what is happening now is that people are becoming

00:28:02 ►

interested in states of mind and things are really substitutes for states of mind. That’s true. Now, what is happening now is that people are becoming interested in states of mind, and things are really substitutes

00:28:05 ►

for states of mind.

00:28:07 ►

So what I visualize

00:28:07 ►

is a very complex

00:28:09 ►

and sophisticated

00:28:10 ►

cybernetic technology

00:28:11 ►

surrounded by thick

00:28:13 ►

hedges of trees

00:28:14 ►

somewhere, say,

00:28:14 ►

around Chicago,

00:28:15 ►

and the rest of

00:28:16 ►

the nation a

00:28:16 ►

buffalo pasture.

00:28:17 ►

That’s very close.

00:28:18 ►

With a large number

00:28:19 ►

of people going

00:28:20 ►

around making

00:28:20 ►

their own arrowheads

00:28:21 ►

because it’s fun,

00:28:22 ►

but they know

00:28:22 ►

better.

00:28:23 ►

They know they

00:28:23 ►

don’t have to make

00:28:24 ►

them.

00:28:25 ►

Now, this is interesting.

00:28:26 ►

Our utopian visions are coming closer together.

00:28:28 ►

I say that the industry should be underground.

00:28:30 ►

You say it should be in Chicago.

00:28:32 ►

Yeah, but that’s the same idea.

00:28:34 ►

But, you know, like those who want to be technological engineers will be respected and allowed to do that.

00:28:39 ►

And the other thing is, like, you can go out and live close to nature or you can go back and…

00:28:43 ►

But you won’t be allowed to drive a car outside this technological…

00:28:47 ►

Well, you won’t want to.

00:28:48 ►

Right.

00:28:49 ►

You know, like, that’s the difference, baby.

00:28:50 ►

It’s not that you won’t be allowed to, it’s that you won’t want to.

00:28:52 ►

That’s where it’s got to be at.

00:28:54 ►

Because it’s the same thing when we get down to, say,

00:28:56 ►

the fundamental questions of food.

00:29:00 ►

More and more, one realizes that the mass-produced food is not worth eating.

00:29:05 ►

And therefore, in order to delight in things to eat,

00:29:08 ►

you go back to the most primitive processes of raising and preparing food,

00:29:14 ►

because that has taste in it.

00:29:16 ►

And I see that there will be a sort of flip,

00:29:20 ►

that as all the possibilities of technology and automation

00:29:24 ►

make it possible for everybody to

00:29:26 ►

be assured of having the basic necessities of life they will then say oh yes we have all that now

00:29:32 ►

let’s uh we can always rely on that but now in the meantime while we don’t have to work let’s go back

00:29:37 ►

to making arrowheads and to um raising the most amazing. And what would be so funny would be is that

00:29:45 ►

they would all get so good at it

00:29:46 ►

that the technology center

00:29:48 ►

in Chicago would rust away.

00:29:49 ►

Right.

00:29:50 ►

Right.

00:29:50 ►

They’d forget they needed it even.

00:29:53 ►

That’s exactly what’s going to happen.

00:29:56 ►

The psychedelic dropouts

00:29:57 ►

are going to be having so much fun.

00:29:59 ►

They’re going to be so much

00:30:00 ►

obviously healthier.

00:30:01 ►

Do you see any indication

00:30:02 ►

among people who are

00:30:03 ►

personally really turned on

00:30:05 ►

that they

00:30:07 ►

are cultivating

00:30:10 ►

this kind

00:30:10 ►

of material

00:30:11 ►

competence?

00:30:12 ►

Now,

00:30:13 ►

I haven’t

00:30:13 ►

seen too much

00:30:14 ►

of it yet.

00:30:15 ►

I went to…

00:30:15 ►

Some of those

00:30:16 ►

kids at

00:30:16 ►

Big Sur

00:30:16 ►

have got it.

00:30:18 ►

Yeah,

00:30:18 ►

maybe you’re

00:30:19 ►

right.

00:30:19 ►

They’re learning.

00:30:21 ►

Like a few

00:30:21 ►

years ago,

00:30:22 ►

they used to

00:30:22 ►

go down to

00:30:23 ►

Big Sur

00:30:23 ►

and they

00:30:23 ►

didn’t know

00:30:23 ►

how to

00:30:24 ►

camp or

00:30:24 ►

how to

00:30:24 ►

dig latrines. But, you know, like what Martine has been telling me, they used to go down to Big Sur and they didn’t know how to camp or how to dig latrines.

00:30:25 ►

But, you know, like what Martina’s been telling me

00:30:28 ►

and what I’ve seen down there lately

00:30:29 ►

is that they’re getting very sharp about what together that’s edible,

00:30:32 ►

how to get sea salt, what are the edible plants, the edible seaweed.

00:30:36 ►

And the revolutionary technological book for this state is

00:30:39 ►

A. L. Kroger’s Handbook of the California Indians,

00:30:41 ►

which tells you what’s good to eat.

00:30:43 ►

Oh, that’s what I wanted to bring out.

00:30:46 ►

But the thing is this, look, so many people I know who…

00:30:49 ►

And also what to use for Tampax.

00:30:51 ►

Milkweed fluff.

00:30:57 ►

And diapers made of shredded cedar bark.

00:30:59 ►

The whole thing is all there.

00:31:03 ►

Ale Kroba.

00:31:04 ►

Ham wicker the all there. A.L. Kroger. Handbook of the California Indians.

00:31:07 ►

Beautiful.

00:31:08 ►

But the thing that is this,

00:31:09 ►

I found so many people who, you know,

00:31:11 ►

are of the turned-on type.

00:31:14 ►

And the circumstances and surroundings

00:31:16 ►

under which they live

00:31:17 ►

are just plain cruddy.

00:31:20 ►

You would think that people who had seen

00:31:22 ►

what you can see with the visions of psychedelics

00:31:27 ►

would reflect themselves in forms of life and art that would be like Persian miniatures,

00:31:35 ►

because obviously Persian miniatures, Moorish arabesques,

00:31:38 ►

are all reflecting the state of mind of people who have turned on.

00:31:42 ►

And they are rich and glorious beyond belief.

00:31:45 ►

Majestic.

00:31:46 ►

Majestic, yeah.

00:31:47 ►

Well, now, why doesn’t it so occur?

00:31:49 ►

It is slowly beginning to happen,

00:31:51 ►

because I’ve noticed that recently

00:31:53 ►

all turned on people are becoming more colorful.

00:31:56 ►

They’re wearing beads and gorgeous clothes

00:31:59 ►

and so on and so forth.

00:32:00 ►

And it’s gradually coming out

00:32:01 ►

because you remember the old beatnik days

00:32:03 ►

when everybody was in blue jeans and ponytails and no lipstick and a drab and crummy

00:32:10 ►

and now something is meaning to happen there wasn’t quite that bad but we were mostly

00:32:16 ►

concerned with not being consumers then yes i know now i see it beginning to happen

00:32:21 ►

uh timothy here instead of wearing his old whatever it was that he

00:32:26 ►

used to wear has now got a white tunic on with gold and colorful

00:32:34 ►

gilding on it it’s very beautiful and he’s wearing a necklace and all that

00:32:43 ►

kind of thing and color is at last coming into the scene.

00:32:47 ►

Well, okay.

00:32:47 ►

Well, now let’s get back to the roundheads and before Cromwell.

00:32:50 ►

Yes, it is.

00:32:51 ►

Let’s get practical here.

00:32:53 ►

I think we’re all concerned about the increasing number of people who are dropping out

00:32:59 ►

and wondering where to go from there.

00:33:05 ►

Now let’s come up with some practical

00:33:07 ►

suggestions which we might

00:33:10 ►

hope could unfold in the next few months.

00:33:12 ►

There’s three categories.

00:33:13 ►

Wilderness, rural, and urban.

00:33:16 ►

Yeah.

00:33:20 ►

Like there’s going to be bush people, farm people,

00:33:22 ►

and city people. Bush tribes,

00:33:24 ►

farm tribes, and city tribes. Beautiful tribes, farm tribes, and city tribes.

00:33:25 ►

Beautiful. That makes immediate sense to myself.

00:33:30 ►

How about beach people?

00:33:32 ►

The word is evil and technology.

00:33:35 ►

Somehow they come together.

00:33:37 ►

And when there’s an increase in technology and technological facility,

00:33:40 ►

there’s an increase in what we usually call human evil.

00:33:43 ►

I wouldn’t agree with that, no.

00:33:44 ►

No, there’s all kinds of non-evil technologies.

00:33:48 ►

Can I ask a clarification?

00:33:50 ►

Like a Neolithic obsidian flaking is definitely a technology.

00:33:56 ►

But on an advanced stage, it produces evil.

00:34:00 ►

Yes, but what you mean, I think, is this, that when you go back to the great myths about the origin of evil, actually the Hebrew words which say good and evil, as the knowledge of good and evil being the result of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge,

00:34:21 ►

the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

00:34:24 ►

These words mean advantageous and disadvantageous,

00:34:27 ►

and they’re words connected with technical skills.

00:34:31 ►

And the whole idea is this,

00:34:34 ►

which you find reflected in the Daoist philosophy,

00:34:37 ►

that the moment you start interfering

00:34:40 ►

in the course of nature

00:34:41 ►

with a mind that is centered and one-pointed and

00:34:46 ►

analyzes everything and breaks it down into bits

00:34:49 ►

The moment you do that you lose contact with your original know-how

00:34:54 ►

By means of which you now color your eyes and breathe and beat your heart

00:34:59 ►

And for thousands of years mankind has lost touch with his original intelligence.

00:35:06 ►

And he has been absolutely fascinated by this kind of political godlike controlling intelligence.

00:35:13 ►

And analyze things all over the place.

00:35:17 ►

And he has forgotten to trust his own organism.

00:35:21 ►

Now the whole thing that everything is coming to be realized today

00:35:26 ►

not only through people who take psychedelics

00:35:29 ►

but also through many scientists

00:35:30 ►

they’re realizing that this linear kind of intelligence

00:35:35 ►

cannot keep up with the course of nature

00:35:38 ►

it can only solve trivial problems

00:35:41 ►

when the big problems happen too fast

00:35:43 ►

to be thought about in that way.

00:35:46 ►

And so those of us who are in some way or other through psychedelic, through meditation, through

00:35:53 ►

what have you, are getting back to being able to trust our original intelligence,

00:35:59 ►

are suggesting an entirely new course for the development of civilization.

00:36:04 ►

suggesting an entirely new cost for the development of civilization. Well, it happens that civilization develops with the emergence of specialization in labor.

00:36:11 ►

Yes.

00:36:12 ►

And the emergence of a class structure.

00:36:15 ►

A class structure can’t survive or can’t put across its principle and expect people to

00:36:20 ►

accept it if they believe in themselves if they believe individually one by

00:36:26 ►

one that they are in some way god-like or buddha-like or potentially illuminati so that it’s

00:36:32 ►

almost ingrained in civilization before he said this you know a civilization has a neurosis that

00:36:37 ►

that the part of the nature of civilization is that it must put down the potential of every

00:36:43 ►

individual development.

00:36:49 ►

And this is the difference between that kind of society which we call civilized and that much more ancient kind of society,

00:36:51 ►

which is still viable and socialized, which we call primitive,

00:36:54 ►

in which everybody is potentially achieved,

00:36:57 ►

and which everybody, like the Monaco Manchee or the Sioux,

00:36:59 ►

everybody in the whole culture was expected to go out

00:37:02 ►

and have a vision at one time in his life to in other

00:37:06 ►

words to leave the society to have some transcendental experience to have a song and a

00:37:11 ►

totem come to him which he need tell no one ever and then come back and live with this double

00:37:17 ►

knowledge in society in other words through he of having had his own isolation, his own loneliness, and his own vision.

00:37:25 ►

He knows that the game rules of society are fundamentally an illusion.

00:37:30 ►

And then the society not only permits that, the society is built on that.

00:37:34 ►

Is built on that.

00:37:35 ►

Right.

00:37:35 ►

But now that he has no society…

00:37:37 ►

A society which has been out of it.

00:37:38 ►

That society is strong and viable, which recognizes its own provisionality.

00:37:43 ►

And no one who ever came in contact with the Plains Indians didn’t think they were men.

00:37:47 ►

Didn’t think what?

00:37:48 ►

They were men.

00:37:49 ►

They were men.

00:37:49 ►

Every record of American Indians, from the cavalry, the pioneers, the missionaries, the

00:37:55 ►

Spaniards, says every one of these people was men.

00:37:58 ►

In fact, I was reading this the other day, talking about the Yurok Indians, an early

00:38:02 ►

settler up there, no, an early explorer early explorer to comment on their fantastic self-confidence so every indian has this fantastic self-confidence

00:38:09 ►

and they laugh at me he said they laugh at me and they say aren’t you sorry you’re not in india

00:38:15 ►

poor wretched indians fellow said well that that is because every one of them has gone out and had

00:38:21 ►

this vision experience has has been completely alone with himself and face-to-face with himself,

00:38:26 ►

and has contacted powers outside of anything that society could give him.

00:38:30 ►

And society expects him to contact powers outside of society in those cultures.

00:38:34 ►

Yes, every healthy culture does.

00:38:36 ►

Every healthy culture provides for their being non-joiners.

00:38:41 ►

Sannyasi, hermits, tramps, drop the next step. Every healthy society has to tolerate this. A society like the Comanche or the Sioux demands that everybody go out there and have this vision and incorporates it and ritualizes it. Then a society like India, a step more civilized, permits some individuals to have these visions, but doesn’t demand it of everyone.

00:39:06 ►

We have to wonder why some people

00:39:08 ►

are more ready to drop out than others.

00:39:10 ►

It may be explained by theory of reincarnation

00:39:12 ►

that people that don’t want to drop out,

00:39:14 ►

can’t conceive of living on this planet

00:39:16 ►

outside of the prop television studio,

00:39:18 ►

are just unlucky enough to have been born into this sort of thing,

00:39:22 ►

maybe the first or second time.

00:39:23 ►

They’re sort of tranced by all of the man-made props.

00:39:28 ►

But there’s no question that we should, I think we should consider how more and more

00:39:34 ►

people who are ready to drop out can drop out.

00:39:35 ►

If there is a value in being a dropout, that is to say being an outsider, you can only

00:39:40 ►

appreciate and realize this value if there are, in contrast with you, insiders and squares.

00:39:48 ►

The two are mutually supportive.

00:39:52 ►

Yeah, if someone says to me,

00:39:54 ►

I just can’t conceive of dropping out,

00:39:56 ►

I say, well, you’re having fun with this?

00:39:59 ►

Let’s go around in?

00:40:01 ►

Fine.

00:40:02 ►

Yes.

00:40:02 ►

We’ve all done that many times in the past.

00:40:03 ►

But the two groups, the insiders and the outsiders.

00:40:06 ►

The whole thing is too vague.

00:40:07 ►

It doesn’t say drop out of work precisely.

00:40:09 ►

What everybody is dealing with is people.

00:40:11 ►

It’s not dealing with institutions also,

00:40:14 ►

but also dealing with people,

00:40:16 ►

working with them,

00:40:17 ►

including the police.

00:40:19 ►

Like you have to be able,

00:40:20 ►

if you’re going to talk this way,

00:40:21 ►

you have to be able to say,

00:40:22 ►

specifically say to someone

00:40:23 ►

in Wichita, Kansas,

00:40:27 ►

who says, I’m going to drop out.

00:40:27 ►

Yeah.

00:40:28 ►

What do you advise?

00:40:30 ►

How do you advise me to stay living around here in this area? Let’s be practical.

00:40:31 ►

Let’s be less historical now for a while.

00:40:33 ►

Let’s be very practical about ways in which people who want to find the tribal way.

00:40:38 ►

Well, this is what I’ve been telling the kids all over Michigan and Kansas.

00:40:41 ►

For example, I’ve had this question.

00:40:43 ►

I tell them, first of all, do you want to live here or do you want to go someplace else?

00:40:47 ►

Good.

00:40:48 ►

All right, they say, I want to stay around where I am.

00:40:50 ►

I say, okay, get in touch with the Indian culture here.

00:40:53 ►

Find out what was here before.

00:40:54 ►

Find out what the mythologies were.

00:40:56 ►

Find out what the local deities were.

00:40:58 ►

Get all of this out of books.

00:41:00 ►

Go and look at your local archaeological sites.

00:41:02 ►

Beautiful.

00:41:02 ►

Pay a reverent visit to the local American Indian tombs

00:41:05 ►

and also the tombs of the early settlers.

00:41:07 ►

Find out what your original ecology was.

00:41:08 ►

Is it short grass prairies or long grass prairie here?

00:41:12 ►

Beautiful.

00:41:13 ►

Go out and live on the land for a while.

00:41:15 ►

Set up a tent and camp out and watch the clouds

00:41:16 ►

and watch the water and watch the land

00:41:18 ►

and get a sense of what the climate is here

00:41:20 ►

because since you’ve been living in a house all your life,

00:41:22 ►

you probably don’t know what the climate is.

00:41:23 ►

Beautiful.

00:41:25 ►

Then decide how you want to make your living here. since you’ve been living in a house all your life you probably don’t know what the climate is. Beautiful. Yeah.

00:41:26 ►

Then decide how you want to make your living here.

00:41:28 ►

Do you want to be a farmer or do you want to be a hunter and food gatherer?

00:41:33 ►

You know, you start from the ground up.

00:41:35 ►

And you can do it in any part of this country today, cities and all.

00:41:41 ►

You suggest…

00:41:42 ►

But for this continent, I take it back to the Indians.

00:41:44 ►

I agree with you

00:41:45 ►

completely

00:41:45 ►

find out

00:41:46 ►

what the

00:41:46 ►

Indians

00:41:46 ►

were up to

00:41:47 ►

in your

00:41:47 ►

own area

00:41:48 ►

whether it’s

00:41:48 ►

Utah or

00:41:49 ►

Kansas

00:41:50 ►

that is a

00:41:51 ►

stroke of

00:41:51 ►

cellular

00:41:52 ►

revelation

00:41:52 ►

and genius

00:41:53 ►

Gary

00:41:54 ►

that’s one

00:41:55 ►

of the

00:41:55 ►

wisest

00:41:56 ►

things I’ve

00:41:56 ►

heard anyone

00:41:56 ►

say in

00:41:57 ►

years

00:41:57 ►

exactly how

00:41:58 ►

it should

00:41:58 ►

be done

00:41:59 ►

I do

00:42:00 ►

see the

00:42:00 ►

need for

00:42:00 ►

transitions

00:42:01 ►

though

00:42:01 ►

and you

00:42:01 ►

say that

00:42:02 ►

there will

00:42:02 ►

be city

00:42:03 ►

people as

00:42:03 ►

well as

00:42:04 ►

country people and mountain people,

00:42:06 ►

I would suggest that for the next year or two or three, which are going to be nervous, transitional, mutational years,

00:42:14 ►

where things are going to happen very fast, by the way,

00:42:17 ►

that the transition could be facilitated if every city set up little meditation rooms

00:42:26 ►

and little shrine rooms

00:42:27 ►

where the people

00:42:29 ►

in transition

00:42:29 ►

dropping out

00:42:30 ►

can meet

00:42:30 ►

and meditate together.

00:42:33 ►

It’s already happening

00:42:33 ►

at the Psychedelic Shop.

00:42:35 ►

It’s happening in New York.

00:42:36 ►

I’ve seen a reason

00:42:37 ►

though why there shouldn’t be

00:42:37 ►

10 or 15

00:42:39 ►

or 20 such places

00:42:40 ►

in San Francisco.

00:42:41 ►

They’re already on there.

00:42:42 ►

Yeah, I know.

00:42:43 ►

But let’s encourage that.

00:42:44 ►

Yeah.

00:42:44 ►

I was just in Seattle

00:42:45 ►

and I was urging the people there.

00:42:47 ►

Hundreds of them

00:42:47 ►

crowd into coffee shops

00:42:49 ►

and there’s this beautiful energy.

00:42:52 ►

They are liberated people,

00:42:53 ►

these kids,

00:42:54 ►

but they don’t know where to go.

00:42:56 ►

And they just need,

00:42:57 ►

they don’t need leadership,

00:42:59 ►

but they need, I think,

00:43:00 ►

a variety of suggestions

00:43:04 ►

from people who have thought about this, giving

00:43:07 ►

them the options to move in any way.

00:43:08 ►

Well, I’d like to see the…

00:43:09 ►

Just a minute.

00:43:10 ►

Yeah.

00:43:10 ►

The different meditation rooms can have different styles.

00:43:13 ►

One can be Zen, one can be macrobiotic, one can be bhakti chanting, one can be rock and

00:43:18 ►

roll psychedelic, one can be lights.

00:43:20 ►

If we learn anything from ourselves, we learn that God delights in variety.

00:43:26 ►

They’ve got to meet each other and form these tribal

00:43:27 ►

I would say reincarnation groups

00:43:29 ►

because the people who are ready

00:43:32 ►

to drop out and turn on will come to

00:43:34 ►

these centers and they’ll wander around

00:43:36 ►

and they’ll form natural cellular groups

00:43:37 ►

and they’ll leave the city

00:43:39 ►

I would suggest a practical step number two

00:43:41 ►

that the human being

00:43:42 ►

in San Francisco be

00:43:45 ►

a model we’ve all tried different models of summer schools and institutes and

00:43:50 ►

research projects and individual dropouts and psychedelic celebrations

00:43:56 ►

and so forth and the Avalon and Fillmore and so forth I would say that the human

00:44:00 ►

being was was a tremendously important thing in the consciousness of San Francisco.

00:44:06 ►

Now, that thing could happen in

00:44:07 ►

every large city in the country.

00:44:09 ►

And again, the beautiful thing about the being was

00:44:11 ►

it had no leadership,

00:44:14 ►

it had no big financing,

00:44:15 ►

it would just grow automatically.

00:44:16 ►

Yeah, but we’re accused of being leaders.

00:44:19 ►

We’re talking, you know,

00:44:20 ►

what were we doing up on that platform?

00:44:21 ►

That’s a charge that doesn’t matter to me at all.

00:44:23 ►

There were 50 people up on that platform,

00:44:25 ►

and every one of them was a leader.

00:44:26 ►

So were the people in the audience.

00:44:27 ►

The reason was that nobody came out and said,

00:44:30 ►

we are the leaders.

00:44:30 ►

No, nobody said that.

00:44:31 ►

Because that’s bullshit.

00:44:32 ►

Nobody claims to be a leader.

00:44:33 ►

But I remember sitting up there.

00:44:34 ►

They can say, every time they say,

00:44:36 ►

every time they say, you’re a leader,

00:44:38 ►

you point the snider.

00:44:39 ►

Well, now look here.

00:44:40 ►

You see?

00:44:40 ►

I do that anyway.

00:44:42 ►

Yeah, I know.

00:44:42 ►

But the press has a leadership complex.

00:44:45 ►

Yeah.

00:44:45 ►

They keep calling Gary my disciple.

00:44:47 ►

Oh, they want to find ringleaders.

00:44:49 ►

Can I have you blowing his catch horn?

00:44:51 ►

One of the four philosophical questions is who started it.

00:44:55 ►

And whenever the police or the press barge into a situation,

00:44:58 ►

they want to know who started it.

00:45:00 ►

In other words, because they’re still thinking about God and the first cause,

00:45:03 ►

and they want to know who’s in charge and so on.

00:45:07 ►

But you know, let’s get back to a fundamental thing.

00:45:10 ►

I think that what you are really, all of you are having the courage to say,

00:45:15 ►

is that the absolutely primary thing is that there be a change of consciousness in the individual,

00:45:21 ►

that he escape from the hallucination that he is a separate ego in

00:45:28 ►

an alien universe, and that we all come to realize primarily that each one of us is the

00:45:33 ►

whole works.

00:45:36 ►

Each one of us is what is real and has been real for always and always and always and

00:45:41 ►

will ever be.

00:45:43 ►

And although the time language may not be appropriate here,

00:45:47 ►

but nevertheless, we are that.

00:45:49 ►

And to the extent that it can be spread around,

00:45:54 ►

that that’s what you and I are.

00:45:57 ►

And we lose our anxieties and we lose our terror of death

00:46:00 ►

and our terror of unimportance and all that kind of thing.

00:46:04 ►

That this is the absolutely essential ingredient,

00:46:08 ►

which if we get hold of that point,

00:46:10 ►

all the rest will be added unto you, you know,

00:46:15 ►

in the sense of seek you first the kingdom of God

00:46:18 ►

and all these things shall be added to you.

00:46:20 ►

Isn’t that what you’re saying?

00:46:21 ►

I mean, isn’t that absolutely basic?

00:46:23 ►

That even if this is only realized in a statistical minority,

00:46:27 ►

nevertheless, it’s immensely powerful.

00:46:29 ►

It affects consciousness.

00:46:30 ►

It affects everybody.

00:46:32 ►

I would add to practical step number two

00:46:35 ►

that more celebrations be set up over the Morabians.

00:46:39 ►

The practical details,

00:46:42 ►

the model of it is something like the Mahalila.

00:46:45 ►

Like you’re asking, how is it going to work?

00:46:47 ►

Well, now, the mahalila is a group of about three different families

00:46:51 ►

who have sort of full resources, none of which are very great.

00:46:56 ►

But they have decided to play together and to work together

00:46:59 ►

and to take care of each other.

00:47:01 ►

And that means, like all of them, are doing ways,

00:47:04 ►

have ways of getting a small amount

00:47:06 ►

of bread, which they share, and other people contribute a little money when it comes in.

00:47:11 ►

And then they work together on creative projects, like they’re working together on a light show

00:47:14 ►

right now for a poetry reading that we’re going to give. And they consider themselves

00:47:18 ►

a kind of extended family or clan. And like when they went to the biennium, they had a

00:47:22 ►

banner which said, Mahalila. Like that was their clan banner.

00:47:24 ►

I saw that

00:47:25 ►

that’s the model

00:47:26 ►

and the model for the time is that

00:47:29 ►

breaking out of the

00:47:31 ►

smaller family organization

00:47:33 ►

we work in slightly larger structures

00:47:36 ►

like clan structures

00:47:37 ►

in which people do work at various jobs

00:47:39 ►

and bring in whatever bread they can from various jobs

00:47:41 ►

but they’re willing to pool it and share it

00:47:43 ►

and they learn how to work and play together. And then they relate that to a larger sense

00:47:49 ►

of the child, which is also loose. But for the time being, everybody has to be able from

00:47:54 ►

time to time to do some little job. But the reference is, the thing that makes it different

00:47:59 ►

is that you don’t bring it home to a very tight individual or one monogamous family

00:48:04 ►

unit, but you bring it home to a very tight individual or one monogamous family unit,

00:48:05 ►

but you bring it home to a slightly larger unit

00:48:07 ►

where the sharing is greater.

00:48:09 ►

I think that’s where it starts.

00:48:10 ►

No, I think that’s very important.

00:48:11 ►

Extended family.

00:48:12 ►

The extended family, I think, is where it starts.

00:48:14 ►

And my own particular hobby horse on this

00:48:15 ►

is that the extended family leads to matrilineal descent.

00:48:18 ►

And when we get matrilineal descent,

00:48:20 ►

then we’ll have group marriage,

00:48:21 ►

and when we have group marriage, we’ll have the economy linked.

00:48:23 ►

Because with the group marriage, capitalism is doomed, and civilization goes out.

00:48:28 ►

Practical step number three, which I would like to see happen…

00:48:35 ►

Go on, Tim.

00:48:37 ►

…is…

00:48:38 ►

You’re really up to the occasion. You’re really up to the occasion. That’s practical

00:48:43 ►

step number three. I think we should encourage extended families everywhere.

00:48:54 ►

Well, it’s very practical to encourage extended families

00:48:57 ►

because the present model of the family is a hopeless breakdown.

00:49:03 ►

Because, first of all, the family is an hopeless breakdown because first of all the family is an

00:49:05 ►

agrarian culture institution which is not suited to an urban culture because

00:49:11 ►

all the family consists in is a dormitory where a wife and children are

00:49:17 ►

located and a husband engages in a mysterious activity in an office or a

00:49:22 ►

factory in which neither the wife nor the children have any part nor interest,

00:49:27 ►

save that he brings home an abstraction called money,

00:49:30 ►

and where there are lots of pretty secretaries,

00:49:32 ►

then the scene in which he actually works, exactly.

00:49:34 ►

And so they have no relation whatsoever to what he does.

00:49:40 ►

And furthermore, the awful thing about the family as it exists at the moment

00:49:44 ►

is that the husband and the wife both feel guilty

00:49:47 ►

about not bringing up their children properly.

00:49:50 ►

And therefore they live for their children

00:49:52 ►

instead of living out their own lives and doing their own interesting work

00:49:56 ►

in which the children would automatically become interested

00:49:59 ►

as participants and watchers on the side.

00:50:02 ►

As it is, they’re doing everything.

00:50:04 ►

They say, we live, we work, we earn our money for you, darlings.

00:50:08 ►

And these poor darlings feel all this thing thrown at them

00:50:11 ►

and they don’t want to do with it.

00:50:14 ►

And then they are sent away to school,

00:50:16 ►

shrilled after school, as Dylan Thomas put it,

00:50:20 ►

and to be educated for everything and nothing.

00:50:22 ►

By strangers.

00:50:23 ►

By strangers.

00:50:25 ►

Who are dubious.

00:50:25 ►

Who will teach them all sorts of purely…

00:50:28 ►

Spiritual, intellectual, and sexual characters.

00:50:29 ►

Right.

00:50:31 ►

Abstract formulations and things they’ll learn,

00:50:34 ►

and the family has no reality.

00:50:37 ►

And the greatest institution today in the American family

00:50:40 ►

is the babysitter.

00:50:42 ►

Someone to just take the children out of our consciousness

00:50:46 ►

while we enjoy ourselves.

00:50:48 ►

And the death sitter to take the old people out of the consciousness.

00:50:51 ►

And the death sitter, exactly.

00:50:53 ►

And even death has been taken from the people.

00:50:54 ►

Yes.

00:50:55 ►

Everything has.

00:50:56 ►

The courtesy of the mortician.

00:50:58 ►

Yes.

00:50:59 ►

A good death.

00:50:59 ►

A good death is no longer possible, practically.

00:51:03 ►

So, I have a four-stage thing.

00:51:08 ►

American Indian technologies.

00:51:10 ►

Practical now.

00:51:11 ►

Meditation centers.

00:51:14 ►

Group marriage.

00:51:15 ►

And periodical gatherings of the tribes.

00:51:18 ►

I don’t agree with group marriage.

00:51:21 ►

We are a tribal people.

00:51:26 ►

You know, anthill sexuality.

00:51:29 ►

Wait a minute.

00:51:30 ►

Every woman is all woman.

00:51:33 ►

If you can’t find all women in one woman, it’s your problem.

00:51:36 ►

I do think it’s possible for some of us to have found all women in one woman.

00:51:40 ►

I want to get back at you.

00:51:41 ►

Let me just get something with him.

00:51:44 ►

Infidelity means denying your commitments.

00:51:49 ►

Now, if your commitments are within a group marriage,

00:51:52 ►

then fidelity is being true within your group marriage.

00:51:55 ►

And infidelity is being unsure or dishonest outside of that.

00:51:59 ►

Now, there are some cultures in South America

00:52:01 ►

in which all forms of marriage are permitted.

00:52:04 ►

There are group marriages, polyamorous marriages, polygamous marriages, and monogamous marriages.

00:52:08 ►

Why group marriages? Just a moment. Let’s get a question of definition here.

00:52:11 ►

Okay, a group marriage is where a number of people, as a group, whatever the number is,

00:52:15 ►

announce, a marriage is a social announcement of commitment,

00:52:19 ►

announce that we will be responsible for the children we produce and for each other.

00:52:23 ►

we will be responsible for the children reproducing for each other.

00:52:27 ►

In other words, all males and all females in this group can be in mutual intercourse with each other.

00:52:31 ►

But not outside the group.

00:52:32 ►

Outside the group.

00:52:34 ►

You make rules to take care of that.

00:52:36 ►

I’m not making rules.

00:52:37 ►

I’m just telling you what the anthropological precedences are.

00:52:40 ►

Yes, yes, yes.

00:52:42 ►

It happens in this South American culture

00:52:44 ►

that the majority of the marriages are monogamous.

00:52:47 ►

But it also happens that there are some polyanders,

00:52:49 ►

some polygamous, and a few group ones.

00:52:51 ►

And I think that what we can allow

00:52:54 ►

is people to combine in whatever combinations they wish.

00:52:57 ►

Oh, I certainly would agree with that.

00:52:58 ►

When people, just as Lao Tzu said,

00:53:01 ►

when the great Tao lost,

00:53:03 ►

there came talk of duty to man and right conduct.

00:53:06 ►

And so when the essential idea of love is lost, there comes talk of fidelity.

00:53:11 ►

That actually, the only possible basis for two beings, male and female, to relate to each other is to grant each other total freedom.

00:53:22 ►

And say, I don’t put any bonds on you you don’t put any bonds

00:53:26 ►

on me because I want you I love you the way you are and I want you to be that

00:53:32 ►

the minute you start making contracts and bonds and signing on the dotted line

00:53:36 ►

you are wrecking the whole relationship and you just have to trust to the fact

00:53:41 ►

that human beings should be legally allowed to trust each other

00:53:46 ►

and to enter into a fellowship that does not involve a contractual arrangement.

00:53:49 ►

I think we all agree with that.

00:53:52 ►

You know, because if you don’t do that, you’ll kill it.

00:53:55 ►

In primitive cultures, marriage is not a contractual arrangement, but what it is, is it’s a public

00:54:01 ►

announcement.

00:54:02 ►

Yes.

00:54:03 ►

What it amounts to.

00:54:04 ►

It’s a relationship which is made public.

00:54:07 ►

Who was your fourth point, Gary?

00:54:09 ►

Occasional gatherings of the tribe.

00:54:12 ►

Tribes?

00:54:14 ►

That wasn’t an activity.

00:54:18 ►

Well, it seems to me then…

00:54:20 ►

So you say rather than group marriage, extended families.

00:54:24 ►

Extended cooperation structures,

00:54:26 ►

in other words.

00:54:28 ►

American Indian technologies,

00:54:29 ►

meditation centers,

00:54:30 ►

extended cooperative clan type

00:54:32 ►

or extended family type structures

00:54:34 ►

with much more permissiveness

00:54:36 ►

in the nature of the family structure

00:54:37 ►

than is permitted, say,

00:54:39 ►

in Judeo-Christian tradition.

00:54:41 ►

And gatherings of the larger tribes

00:54:44 ►

periodically.

00:54:45 ►

Well, practical suggestion number six.

00:54:49 ►

I suggest that we have meetings in cities April 21st.

00:54:53 ►

I suggest we have, say, national meetings, or one national meeting perhaps June 21st,

00:55:00 ►

and that we start moving through Europe to the east so that we would, in September 21st,

00:55:09 ►

be on the door between India and China with as many Indians or Westerners

00:55:12 ►

or people that we picked up on the way.

00:55:15 ►

I think that’s the quickest way to end racial prejudice

00:55:17 ►

and war in Vietnam.

00:55:18 ►

Some cultures aren’t going to understand this.

00:55:20 ►

You can get more than 20,000 people.

00:55:22 ►

That was done anyway all the way around

00:55:25 ►

there.

00:55:25 ►

And that was

00:55:25 ►

done anyway by

00:55:26 ►

Shankaradeva,

00:55:27 ►

and he got

00:55:27 ►

stopped at the

00:55:28 ►

border of

00:55:28 ►

Burma.

00:55:30 ►

But, you know,

00:55:30 ►

the Chinese

00:55:32 ►

wouldn’t let him

00:55:32 ►

through, and the

00:55:33 ►

Indians were

00:55:34 ►

upset.

00:55:34 ►

There’s a social

00:55:35 ►

and historical

00:55:35 ►

problem here, and

00:55:36 ►

one is that

00:55:36 ►

California is the

00:55:37 ►

only place that’s

00:55:37 ►

ready for this

00:55:38 ►

problem.

00:55:38 ►

Right.

00:55:39 ►

San Francisco is

00:55:39 ►

the only place.

00:55:40 ►

Like, you

00:55:41 ►

couldn’t do this

00:55:42 ►

in Japan.

00:55:42 ►

It’s already

00:55:43 ►

done that.

00:55:43 ►

Now let’s move

00:55:44 ►

it out.

00:55:44 ►

No, but you

00:55:44 ►

can’t do it yet

00:55:45 ►

a great percentage of the world

00:55:48 ►

is going to have to move through the drama

00:55:51 ►

of western culture and technology

00:55:53 ►

in some accelerated way

00:55:54 ►

before they’re ready for this

00:55:55 ►

like America is the only culture

00:55:57 ►

in which a number of people have seen

00:56:00 ►

through it and are able to go beyond it

00:56:02 ►

Japan isn’t ready to for example

00:56:04 ►

it would be

00:56:07 ►

incredibly eccentric to them. Nobody’s ready to try that.

00:56:10 ►

I question that. I think that if you look at the spread of American ideology,

00:56:15 ►

France is just now starting its super drug stores.

00:56:25 ►

you must not fail to realize the authentic, deep American spirit behind this.

00:56:30 ►

And I think that if it’s taken 15 years

00:56:33 ►

for France to accept the super drugstore,

00:56:38 ►

why not six months to accept the bien in San Francisco?

00:56:41 ►

Well, because…

00:56:43 ►

The way they spread drugs or Pepsi Pepsi-Cola, or Coca-Cola,

00:56:46 ►

was they…

00:56:48 ►

When Coca-Cola first showed up in the Grand Canal in Venice,

00:56:52 ►

or Coca-Cola first showed up in Pakistan,

00:56:54 ►

it was considered eccentric.

00:56:55 ►

But if Pepsi-Cola can do it,

00:56:58 ►

the energy and the cellular connectivity,

00:57:02 ►

which started here, can move much more quickly

00:57:03 ►

because it’s talking to deeper things in the human being than Pepsi-Cola.

00:57:09 ►

I think this thing should start moving.

00:57:10 ►

But these people are, so many of these people in African Asia are caught up in the drama of progress.

00:57:17 ►

They want nothing more than to come to America and get a large apartment, a large apartment and a large car.

00:57:24 ►

This is really, this is part of the paradox.

00:57:26 ►

We can tell them.

00:57:28 ►

I feel the same way about the problem with the American Negro.

00:57:33 ►

Does he have to become a middle-class white

00:57:36 ►

before he can then go on and leave that?

00:57:39 ►

I don’t think we have to go through these historical periods.

00:57:45 ►

I think it’s possible to move it faster.

00:57:46 ►

Well, I hope it’s possible to accelerate it.

00:57:48 ►

But you can’t take it around the world this year or next year.

00:57:51 ►

Like, the drawing is changing.

00:57:53 ►

Like, what people are interested in is not things and states of mind.

00:57:56 ►

Like, that’s the cultural shift.

00:57:58 ►

Now, this is a very important state of business.

00:58:00 ►

Really?

00:58:01 ►

Yes.

00:58:02 ►

We’ve turned a corner.

00:58:04 ►

It’s a bigger corner than

00:58:05 ►

the reformation

00:58:05 ►

probably

00:58:07 ►

it’s a corner

00:58:09 ►

on the order

00:58:10 ►

of the change

00:58:11 ►

between

00:58:11 ►

Paleolithic

00:58:11 ►

and Neolithic

00:58:12 ►

and it’s

00:58:15 ►

like one of

00:58:16 ►

the three or

00:58:17 ►

four major

00:58:17 ►

turns in the

00:58:18 ►

history of man

00:58:19 ►

not just

00:58:20 ►

culture but

00:58:20 ►

man

00:58:21 ►

right now

00:58:22 ►

an enormous

00:58:23 ►

number of

00:58:24 ►

people go

00:58:24 ►

into the heart of New York every day

00:58:26 ►

for no other reason than to shop.

00:58:30 ►

There are, to a large extent, frustrated women living in these wretched dormitories.

00:58:36 ►

Their husbands are working and the women go in

00:58:37 ►

in order to get some kind of sense of existence, of being, by buying things.

00:58:44 ►

Now, supposing it happens

00:58:45 ►

that instead of that

00:58:46 ►

they change their state of mind,

00:58:48 ►

instead of going out

00:58:49 ►

and buying something,

00:58:51 ►

they change their state of mind

00:58:52 ►

sitting where they are

00:58:53 ►

in the first place.

00:58:54 ►

Then Bonwit Teller,

00:58:55 ►

everything in the middle of town

00:58:57 ►

simply collapses.

00:58:58 ►

Lord and Taylor and so on.

00:58:59 ►

There’s no more reason for existence.

00:59:01 ►

It’s like Market Street

00:59:02 ►

in San Francisco

00:59:03 ►

where everything is

00:59:04 ►

slowly falling apart

00:59:05 ►

because it’s so ridiculous to park there

00:59:07 ►

and you can’t get out of the place anyhow.

00:59:11 ►

So where are people going to buy their eurotape machines

00:59:13 ►

and their non-grows?

00:59:14 ►

Suppose they don’t want them.

00:59:15 ►

Pardon me?

00:59:16 ►

Suppose they don’t want them.

00:59:17 ►

Well, we all have them.

00:59:18 ►

We’ll buy them from people.

00:59:19 ►

We’re transitional figures.

00:59:22 ►

Suppose it’s decentralized.

00:59:24 ►

No, like, we don’t need them.

00:59:25 ►

Like, I would be happy to hear Larry Bird sing his corn dance and his buffalo dance,

00:59:31 ►

and I don’t want to take that.

00:59:32 ►

I’ll hear it, and that’s in my mind for the rest of my life.

00:59:36 ►

Right.

00:59:37 ►

I mean, the problem here is that, like, there’s a withering away of the state.

00:59:41 ►

But advanced electronics…

00:59:43 ►

It’s called, let the state disintegrate.

00:59:44 ►

Yeah, but in advanced

00:59:46 ►

technologies

00:59:47 ►

as we’re talking about

00:59:47 ►

unless you can

00:59:48 ►

magically transform it

00:59:49 ►

into some

00:59:49 ►

Buckminster Fuller

00:59:51 ►

box

00:59:51 ►

you know

00:59:51 ►

each individual tribe

00:59:52 ►

can operate

00:59:53 ►

and create

00:59:53 ►

whatever it needs

00:59:55 ►

other than that

00:59:57 ►

there’s the technology

00:59:58 ►

as we know it

00:59:58 ►

now

00:59:59 ►

I think that the technology

01:00:00 ►

a large electronic network

01:00:02 ►

I think that the technology

01:00:04 ►

where there’s a way

01:00:04 ►

as people learn

01:00:05 ►

to do it themselves.

01:00:06 ►

Like, it’s more interesting

01:00:07 ►

to do it yourself

01:00:08 ►

at home with your friends.

01:00:08 ►

Like, sit around

01:00:09 ►

and blow the buffalo horn

01:00:10 ►

and blow the contour

01:00:11 ►

and then turn on the television.

01:00:13 ►

And then turn on the television.

01:00:14 ►

And not turn on the television.

01:00:15 ►

But that was like

01:00:16 ►

conditions that were possible

01:00:17 ►

for when the continent

01:00:19 ►

held 15 million Indians.

01:00:20 ►

Yeah.

01:00:21 ►

But now the continent

01:00:22 ►

holds a great many more.

01:00:23 ►

And that’s still

01:00:24 ►

what’s most interesting. But to do what you can do yourself.

01:00:27 ►

The whole problem is reproduction.

01:00:29 ►

It’s not only the reproduction of the species in a second, but reproduction as we are now

01:00:35 ►

reproducing what we are saying on tape.

01:00:38 ►

Because if supposing this conversation were very turned on and far out, I don’t know whether

01:00:43 ►

it is or not, people would say, oh, what a pity that didn’t get recorded.

01:00:48 ►

See, because it didn’t really happen unless it was recorded.

01:00:51 ►

And increasingly we are developing all kinds of systems

01:00:53 ►

for verifying reality by echoing it.

01:00:56 ►

Well, trained minds remember,

01:00:58 ►

and the words of the Buddha were all remembered.

01:01:00 ►

Yeah, oral tradition.

01:01:02 ►

And the words of the Buddha came down for 200 years

01:01:04 ►

before anybody put it in writing,

01:01:06 ►

because people were paying attention to what he said.

01:01:09 ►

And only then did they start embellishing it.

01:01:11 ►

Yeah.

01:01:12 ►

But Krishnamurti would argue that remembering it was already a fallacy.

01:01:17 ►

Well, he’s very pure.

01:01:22 ►

Tim, Alan said he was a bridge builder, that he wanted to be a bridge builder.

01:01:26 ►

Now, that stalled car.

01:01:29 ►

We’re all going to be bridge builders in one sense, I think, perhaps.

01:01:33 ►

He was stalled in Haight-Ashbury amongst the acid heads,

01:01:36 ►

and no one gave him a Porsche.

01:01:38 ►

If we’re telling the kids they’re doing something holy,

01:01:41 ►

they have to, to a certain extent, we have to be a little bit holy.

01:01:45 ►

Holiness is giving, and we have to us to a certain extent we have to be a little bit holy we and holiness is given and we have to we have to learn to give um the um the the diggers uh have said that since

01:01:54 ►

the being on january the 14th thousands and thousands of kids who don’t really know where

01:01:59 ►

they’re at but they’re attracted because they want to know where they’re at have come to the city

01:02:03 ►

but they come to the city and they don’t quite know whether to be defiant.

01:02:08 ►

They don’t know what to be.

01:02:12 ►

And unless they can become bridges for themselves,

01:02:16 ►

each person a bridge for themselves,

01:02:17 ►

so they can show that what they have got is something giving,

01:02:23 ►

the message doesn’t get across.

01:02:25 ►

The car should be pushed. Exactly. It’s not enough to tell

01:02:28 ►

them that what they’re doing by dropping

01:02:29 ►

out is right. That’s

01:02:31 ►

the point I’m trying to get at. Yes, well, that’s very important.

01:02:34 ►

We’ve got to become saints.

01:02:37 ►

Well, at least that’s good.

01:02:37 ►

It’s not even a silly thing to say.

01:02:40 ►

It’s not. Exactly.

01:02:41 ►

They’ve got to be told that they’re pursuing

01:02:44 ►

the holiest road of life.

01:02:46 ►

But they have to understand what that means.

01:02:48 ►

Well, there should be.

01:02:49 ►

Again, if we have these meditation centers in all cities,

01:02:52 ►

there would be centers where the Gita would be read,

01:02:55 ►

where the ancient sutras would be read,

01:02:57 ►

where they would be reminded.

01:02:59 ►

This is not teaching.

01:03:00 ►

What we need is personal example all over the place.

01:03:03 ►

Right.

01:03:03 ►

But I would suggest that in these meditation centers

01:03:07 ►

there be some program of readings,

01:03:10 ►

not in the sense of educating or teaching facts,

01:03:13 ►

but just reminding young people

01:03:17 ►

and any person who drops out and turns on

01:03:20 ►

that they are part of an ancient profession, the only holy profession.

01:03:27 ►

The profession has kept the flame going, and it certainly should express itself in pushing

01:03:32 ►

the Mercedes.

01:03:34 ►

Do you think it’s practical to try to get some sort of meditation in the public schools?

01:03:43 ►

No.

01:03:43 ►

Drop out of the public schools.

01:03:44 ►

The public schools cannot be compromised with.

01:03:48 ►

No.

01:03:48 ►

No.

01:03:54 ►

We’re not compromising with IBM

01:04:03 ►

or with General Electric.

01:04:06 ►

We’re simply saying, as Gary has said that part of man’s

01:04:09 ►

karmic heritage is the ability

01:04:11 ►

to do incredible things

01:04:13 ►

with his hands and his

01:04:14 ►

analytic mind

01:04:16 ►

but they should be holy things

01:04:18 ►

it’s a question of right occupation

01:04:21 ►

and right conduct

01:04:21 ►

it’s not like that technology is bad

01:04:24 ►

or that schools are bad

01:04:24 ►

well now look here.

01:04:25 ►

What are we saying

01:04:26 ►

when we say now

01:04:27 ►

that something is holy?

01:04:31 ►

That means you should

01:04:32 ►

take a different attitude

01:04:33 ►

to what you’re doing

01:04:34 ►

than if you were,

01:04:35 ►

for example,

01:04:35 ►

doing it for kicks.

01:04:38 ►

Now, there’s a

01:04:38 ►

curious thing here.

01:04:41 ►

I have noticed

01:04:41 ►

with Alan Ginsberg

01:04:43 ►

that when he chants Hindu

01:04:45 ►

sutras,

01:04:47 ►

he doesn’t do it in a

01:04:49 ►

pious way.

01:04:53 ►

Right. There’s a

01:04:53 ►

joyousness and there’s a feeling of delight

01:04:56 ►

to doing this chant that has more

01:04:58 ►

zip to it than anything we knew in the past

01:04:59 ►

was being holy.

01:05:01 ►

Now when he was doing something holy in the past,

01:05:03 ►

if you had to put on a solemn expression

01:05:05 ►

saying, we are doing this, but it hurts,

01:05:07 ►

but it’s good for us.

01:05:09 ►

He’s not doing that when he chants that.

01:05:11 ►

He’s not saying it hurts,

01:05:12 ►

and therefore it’s good for me.

01:05:12 ►

He’s saying it’s good for me because I enjoy it.

01:05:15 ►

It’s gorgeous.

01:05:15 ►

I’m going right in there,

01:05:17 ►

and I’m going to say

01:05:18 ►

all these Om Hari Rama Krishna Rama

01:05:22 ►

Hari Rama Hari, etc.

01:05:24 ►

You see?

01:05:24 ►

He’s turning himself on

01:05:25 ►

and I told

01:05:26 ►

right

01:05:27 ►

and I told some nuns

01:05:29 ►

a little while ago

01:05:29 ►

where the Mother Superior came

01:05:31 ►

and they were all talking about

01:05:32 ►

the reform of the liturgy

01:05:33 ►

and how the Catholic Church

01:05:35 ►

has gotten itself in a mess

01:05:36 ►

by translating the Latin liturgy

01:05:37 ►

into terrible English

01:05:39 ►

and all the magic has gone out of it

01:05:41 ►

and I said

01:05:42 ►

you should come and listen to

01:05:43 ►

Alan Ginsberg chant the sutras because then you’d know

01:05:45 ►

how to celebrate mass properly.

01:05:47 ►

So when we’re talking about something

01:05:49 ►

being holy, we’ve got to be

01:05:51 ►

very careful. We’re saying

01:05:53 ►

now, Gary, you were saying, all right, people have got to be saints

01:05:56 ►

and you said, well, that’s not just

01:05:57 ►

a joke to say this.

01:06:00 ►

But it’s got to be saints in an entirely

01:06:01 ►

new sense. Not this masochistic

01:06:03 ►

kind of sainthood whereby I am holy because I hurt,

01:06:08 ►

and the amount of personal hurt that I’ve piled up

01:06:11 ►

is the measure of my holiness.

01:06:14 ►

Well, that’s the Judeo-Christian way

01:06:16 ►

where it says that the cross is at the center of the universe.

01:06:18 ►

What about India, where we do have a giant sacerdotal community

01:06:23 ►

and many tribal groups and tribal gatherings which serve as a model for our own?

01:06:28 ►

What kind of material system is that?

01:06:30 ►

Would that be acceptable to marry a Zambian?

01:06:32 ►

Sure, it’s acceptable.

01:06:34 ►

So what do you think of Swami Bhaktivedanta’s plea for the acceptance of Krishna in every direction?

01:06:39 ►

Oh, it’s a lovely positive thing to say Krishna.

01:06:42 ►

Yeah.

01:06:43 ►

You know, like Krishna, it’s a beautiful mythology,

01:06:45 ►

it’s a beautiful practice.

01:06:46 ►

It should be encouraged.

01:06:47 ►

He feels it’s the one uniting thing.

01:06:50 ►

He feels it monopolistically.

01:06:51 ►

The one thing he feels this,

01:06:55 ►

is that it is,

01:06:58 ►

the manshams, the images of Krishna,

01:07:00 ►

have in this culture,

01:07:03 ►

no foul associations

01:07:06 ►

the word God

01:07:08 ►

is contaminated

01:07:09 ►

so Tilak would say

01:07:10 ►

the ground of being

01:07:11 ►

instead of God

01:07:12 ►

anything except saying God

01:07:13 ►

the word

01:07:14 ►

get down on your knees

01:07:16 ►

and be humble

01:07:17 ►

before your heavenly father

01:07:18 ►

that gives everybody

01:07:19 ►

the creeps

01:07:21 ►

it’s just awful

01:07:22 ►

to say something like that

01:07:23 ►

you see

01:07:24 ►

because all these

01:07:25 ►

Christian images

01:07:26 ►

have horrible

01:07:27 ►

associations attached to them

01:07:28 ►

whereas when somebody

01:07:29 ►

comes in from the Orient

01:07:30 ►

with a new religion

01:07:31 ►

which hasn’t got

01:07:32 ►

any of these associations

01:07:33 ►

in our minds

01:07:34 ►

all the words are new

01:07:35 ►

all the rites are new

01:07:36 ►

and yet

01:07:37 ►

somehow it has

01:07:38 ►

feeling in it

01:07:39 ►

and we can get with that

01:07:41 ►

you see

01:07:41 ►

and we can dig that

01:07:42 ►

and it can

01:07:44 ►

do something for us that it can’t do in Japan.

01:07:46 ►

For example, in Japan, when young people hear the Buddhist sutras chanted, they think,

01:07:51 ►

oh, don’t let’s hear that thing, because they associate all that with fogism.

01:07:57 ►

Here in the Buddhist churches, in the Nisei, they can’t stand it when the priests chant

01:08:03 ►

the sutras in Sino-Japanese

01:08:05 ►

language for the oldsters. They want to hear, Buddha loves me this I know for the

01:08:09 ►

sutra tells me so. They want to look as much as they can like Protestants because that’s exotic to them.

01:08:17 ►

We’re writing our new myth. Yes, but we all do it. We have to in our sessions relive the

01:08:24 ►

Christ thing, the Buddha thing, the Christian thing.

01:08:26 ►

But we are creating a new myth.

01:08:28 ►

Right, you are, Tim.

01:08:29 ►

And we won’t have saints.

01:08:31 ►

But we do.

01:08:31 ►

We do it in our own way.

01:08:33 ►

Everybody on his own discovers the immemorial truth which has been handed down.

01:08:38 ►

And that’s the only way you can get it.

01:08:40 ►

Because you can’t follow the truth as other people have taught it.

01:08:43 ►

You can’t imitate it.

01:08:44 ►

You can only discover it out of your own thing and by doing your own stuff you keep repeating the

01:08:49 ►

eternal pattern and uh this probably is the sort of situation we have well you think because an

01:08:58 ►

egg was thrown at me at santa mara oh i’m not just talking about egg. I’m talking about the throne issue in Laredo.

01:09:07 ►

That worries me not at all.

01:09:09 ►

No, well, that’s as it should be.

01:09:11 ►

In game activity, when I wander into the television studio

01:09:14 ►

and try to do things,

01:09:15 ►

if I can bat 50%, 500%,

01:09:18 ►

it’s incredible.

01:09:20 ►

Half the things I’ve done are wrong, mistakes.

01:09:22 ►

I’m sorry I did them.

01:09:23 ►

Moratorium on pot and LSD a year ago is ridiculous.

01:09:25 ►

I shouldn’t have done that.

01:09:26 ►

Well, we all make fools of ourselves occasionally.

01:09:29 ►

Good God.

01:09:30 ►

I make a blunder at least one or two times I come to bat.

01:09:35 ►

These celebrations were a mistake.

01:09:38 ►

The first four were great.

01:09:40 ►

They were spontaneous religious outbursts.

01:09:43 ►

But then it became a success.

01:09:44 ►

And people said, yes, you’ve got to keep them going. You’ve got to take it around the countrys. But then it became a success. And people said,

01:09:45 ►

yes, you’ve got to

01:09:45 ►

keep them going.

01:09:46 ►

You’ve got to take it

01:09:46 ►

around the country

01:09:47 ►

and so forth.

01:09:48 ►

That was a mistake.

01:09:49 ►

It was a mistake

01:09:49 ►

to make it commercial.

01:09:50 ►

Mistake to have it

01:09:51 ►

in a theater.

01:09:52 ►

Mistake to charge

01:09:53 ►

admission.

01:09:55 ►

Mistake to keep

01:09:56 ►

a static form going.

01:09:57 ►

And we’ve dropped

01:09:58 ►

out of it.

01:09:59 ►

What are you going

01:09:59 ►

to do with the celebration?

01:10:00 ►

It was beautiful,

01:10:00 ►

though.

01:10:00 ►

The first four

01:10:01 ►

celebrations were

01:10:03 ►

articulation.

01:10:08 ►

Have you any way of finding a ritual for celebration,

01:10:12 ►

or are you making use of the established rituals or the historical knowledge that’s been coming out lately on ritual

01:10:16 ►

to make a celebration which is really communal and beautiful?

01:10:22 ►

The idea in San Francisco was…

01:10:24 ►

I think that… The hype was… I think that…

01:10:25 ►

And every time I talked

01:10:27 ►

since that day

01:10:28 ►

and I said,

01:10:29 ►

listen, we’re dropping out

01:10:30 ►

of the theater celebrations.

01:10:33 ►

Goodbye show business.

01:10:35 ►

Robert Oppenheimer

01:10:37 ►

is reported to have said

01:10:38 ►

quite recently

01:10:38 ►

that obviously

01:10:41 ►

the world is going to hell.

01:10:44 ►

And the only way that it could be stopped

01:10:47 ►

was not to try to prevent it from happening.

01:10:51 ►

That’s pretty far out.

01:10:53 ►

In other words, when there is a game going on…

01:10:56 ►

That’s the atomic bomb.

01:10:58 ►

When there is a game going on that’s on a collision course

01:11:01 ►

and that this game obviously is going to lead to total destruction,

01:11:13 ►

the only way of getting people out of a bad game is to say to indicate that the game is no longer interesting right see uh we we’ve left this game and um it deposes and uh we’ve we’ve got

01:11:21 ►

something going on over here which is where it’s at you know

01:11:25 ►

that’s the point

01:11:26 ►

and this is where it’s at

01:11:27 ►

and everybody who’s playing this game

01:11:29 ►

you know

01:11:29 ►

in that plane going

01:11:31 ►

on the mark you know

01:11:33 ►

suddenly they realize

01:11:34 ►

that that’s not where it’s at

01:11:35 ►

something people are doing over on the other side

01:11:38 ►

and they go

01:11:39 ►

what’s going on there

01:11:40 ►

let’s go out to the Haight-Ashbury

01:11:43 ►

and see what’s happening over there

01:11:44 ►

because maybe something’s happening over there because

01:11:45 ►

maybe something’s

01:11:45 ►

happening.

01:11:46 ►

Instead of

01:11:46 ►

the emphasis

01:11:49 ►

on the

01:11:49 ►

dropping out,

01:11:51 ►

I think in a

01:11:51 ►

sense it’s

01:11:52 ►

more to the

01:11:53 ►

point to say

01:11:53 ►

there’s something

01:11:54 ►

else going on.

01:11:55 ►

Yeah.

01:11:56 ►

It didn’t

01:11:57 ►

sound

01:11:57 ►

alliteratively

01:11:58 ►

correct.

01:12:00 ►

It’s an

01:12:00 ►

intern on

01:12:01 ►

this.

01:12:03 ►

He’s got

01:12:04 ►

to,

01:12:05 ►

unless his language is interpreted

01:12:07 ►

in a way which is understandable

01:12:09 ►

and acceptable.

01:12:11 ►

Well, that’s a much more equally poetic

01:12:13 ►

finding a euphonious formula.

01:12:16 ►

If it had been…

01:12:17 ►

If it had been tuned in,

01:12:18 ►

tune in.

01:12:20 ►

If you don’t need it.

01:12:20 ►

If you don’t drop out, tune in.

01:12:22 ►

But he really means drop out,

01:12:23 ►

he keeps saying,

01:12:23 ►

and then finally we just bring the

01:12:25 ►

transistors back in all the time.

01:12:27 ►

People like Mario Savio are offended by the word drop out because it offends their bodhisattva

01:12:32 ►

feeling of compassion.

01:12:33 ►

Yeah, very definitely.

01:12:35 ►

And because it’s negative rather than positive in its overturns.

01:12:39 ►

That’s the last of three.

01:12:41 ►

Well, now look here, Tim, at that thing in Santa Monica.

01:12:44 ►

You made two points.

01:12:45 ►

One was,

01:12:47 ►

A, you can’t stay high all the time

01:12:49 ►

because when you finally come down

01:12:53 ►

from the high,

01:12:55 ►

you realize that the ordinary state of consciousness

01:12:57 ►

is one with the high state.

01:12:59 ►

This to me has been the most fantastic thing

01:13:01 ►

in all my LSD experiences,

01:13:03 ►

that the moment I come down

01:13:04 ►

is the critical moment of the whole experience. I suddenly realize been the most fantastic thing in all my LSD experiences, that the moment I come down is

01:13:06 ►

the critical moment of the whole experience. I suddenly realize that this everyday world

01:13:10 ►

around me is exactly the same thing as the world of the Pacific vision. Now, then, how

01:13:18 ►

do you integrate that realization with the dropout?

01:13:22 ►

All right, we’ll change the slogan.

01:13:27 ►

See, I’m completely with Mark McFluin.

01:13:29 ►

Everything I say is just a probe.

01:13:30 ►

I’m trying to get people to… Yes, I get that.

01:13:31 ►

I do the same thing.

01:13:33 ►

Seattle, you know,

01:13:34 ►

we were banned from Seattle,

01:13:35 ►

and I went up there

01:13:36 ►

and talked about menopausal mentality

01:13:37 ►

and dropout

01:13:38 ►

and all the cocktail parties

01:13:40 ►

and regime, dropout, menopausal,

01:13:42 ►

menopausal mentality,

01:13:43 ►

what does it mean, dropout?

01:13:44 ►

I would agree to change the slogan to dropout, turn on, drop in.

01:13:51 ►

You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,

01:13:53 ►

where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.

01:13:59 ►

And there it is, in Timothy Leary’s own voice,

01:14:03 ►

his new and revised call to arms,

01:14:07 ►

drop out, turn on, drop in.

01:14:10 ►

And unless I miss my guess, that is exactly what you and I are doing right this very minute.

01:14:16 ►

Because unless you’ve already dropped out and turned on,

01:14:19 ►

and I don’t mean turn on by taking something,

01:14:23 ►

I’m talking about turning on your mind and taking charge of running it yourself.

01:14:27 ►

So we’ve dropped out of our emotional attachments to the madness of the default world,

01:14:34 ►

even though we still have to live among those who are still trapped in its deadly embrace.

01:14:39 ►

But we’ve dropped out of our attachments to a life of conspicuous consumption

01:14:43 ►

and turned on our minds to the wonderful possibilities of life.

01:14:47 ►

And now we’re dropping into the salon and to dozens of other podcasts

01:14:52 ►

like KMO’s Sea Realm and the Dope Fiends Cannabis Podcast Network of Podcasts.

01:14:58 ►

And we’re turning on to our friends in cyberspace

01:15:01 ►

and dropping in, if we’re lucky, to one or two members of the tribe who actually live nearby.

01:15:07 ►

But whether you get together with the tribe in person or only through the net, my personal

01:15:12 ►

feeling is that it’s really important right now to join your voice in conversation with

01:15:17 ►

others in the psychedelic community and to do some serious talking about the future.

01:15:22 ►

After all, who is better situated to formulate plans for the future of our species

01:15:28 ►

than us people who are actually interested in the continuing evolution of human consciousness?

01:15:34 ►

My personal hunch is that this time civilization is going to spring from the bottom up

01:15:39 ►

and not the top down.

01:15:41 ►

As my character Will says in the Genesis Generation, like you I have no clear idea of what

01:15:48 ►

is coming. Possibilities range from a complete collapse of civilization to a gradual disintegration

01:15:54 ►

and reorganization, much as what took place in the fall of the Roman Empire. But no matter what

01:16:00 ►

happens within that overly broad range, the one thing that we can count on is the strength of the psychedelic community

01:16:07 ►

to hold our species together, not unlike mycelium in a forest.

01:16:13 ►

And it seems that thoughts like that have been occurring to us psychonauts for a long time now.

01:16:20 ►

In fact, my first thought on hearing the conversation between Watts, Leary, and the others just now was that it could have been held last night, even though it actually took place over 40 years ago.

01:16:32 ►

As my dear sainted mother sometimes said, everything’s changed, but nothing’s different.

01:16:53 ►

Now, one of the reasons I selected this tape to play today is because their conversation about how empires seem to fade away when the young, the creative, and other minority groups drop out and go back to a tribal form.

01:17:06 ►

And, by the way, Kevin, you and your wonderful friends are doing a perfect job of that, creating a civilization of earth-loving, fun-loving, high-tech beings who are wonderfully human in every respect.

01:17:10 ►

And I actually know of quite a few other little clans like this that are scattered all over the planet.

01:17:12 ►

You would never know about them from outward appearances,

01:17:15 ►

but they seem to be springing up everywhere.

01:17:17 ►

You know, people starting small gardens, paying more attention to the night sky,

01:17:22 ►

people taking responsibility for raising and educating their own children,

01:17:26 ►

not just pushing them off on some corporate daycare place.

01:17:30 ►

They don’t have big houses or flashy cars,

01:17:33 ►

and they often are living on the financial edge,

01:17:36 ►

but their lives are considerably more fulfilling and joyous

01:17:40 ►

than the way I spent almost all of my adult life,

01:17:43 ►

which was commuting to a job I didn’t like

01:17:46 ►

and still struggling to break even to pay the bills

01:17:48 ►

for stuff I didn’t get to use every month.

01:17:51 ►

Now there are options to that way of life,

01:17:53 ►

but unfortunately it often takes a trauma of some kind

01:17:58 ►

to force us to move away from a tolerable status quo.

01:18:02 ►

But fortunately, if you’ve made some contacts with the psychedelic community over the years,

01:18:08 ►

you now have a few safety nets.

01:18:10 ►

You probably noticed that Gary Snyder said, and this was over 40 years ago, remember,

01:18:16 ►

but he said that when somebody drops out today, there’s a subculture to catch them, unlike

01:18:21 ►

in the late 50s.

01:18:23 ►

Now, this subculture may not be as visible today

01:18:26 ►

as it was during the hippie years, but it’s still there, just under the surface all over the world.

01:18:33 ►

And I guess it’s called a tribe by most of us, and I guess that’s probably more of a feeling

01:18:38 ►

than an actual entity. But a lot of people I know sure do think it’s real. Now, if I may express just a little criticism of their conversation,

01:18:47 ►

however, it would be that there was not much talk of the feminine there.

01:18:51 ►

It was definitely an old boys’ club back then,

01:18:54 ►

and I think that was one of the weaknesses of the hippie movement,

01:18:58 ►

if there was one, and there were probably many.

01:19:02 ►

Unfortunately for me, I was a flower child who slept through the hippie

01:19:05 ►

age. I was in Vietnam doing my military duty during those days. Anyway, I guess I better

01:19:13 ►

sign off here, but there are still two quick things that I need to cover. And the first

01:19:18 ►

one is to repeat what I said a while back about being careful about anyone who contacts

01:19:23 ►

you through Facebook. As I said when I

01:19:26 ►

first set up an account there, some of my friends are there from, oh, as far back as high school,

01:19:32 ►

and others are former business associates, but by far the majority of my Facebook friends are

01:19:38 ►

fellow salonners who I’ve never met in person. So, first of all, I hope that you just don’t

01:19:43 ►

contact everybody on my friends list

01:19:45 ►

and ask them to be your friend or whatever

01:19:47 ►

because well first of all

01:19:49 ►

I can’t vouch for everyone and secondly

01:19:51 ►

I think it’s kind of rude

01:19:53 ►

but now there’s a further concern

01:19:56 ►

that comes to me from a very

01:19:57 ►

close friend of mine who also happens

01:20:00 ►

to be a Facebook friend

01:20:01 ►

and here’s what she had to say

01:20:03 ►

I want to check in with you about something that has transpired

01:20:08 ►

since I joined the Psychedelic Salon Facebook group.

01:20:11 ►

Almost immediately I started getting friend invites

01:20:14 ►

from a handful of men I did not know.

01:20:16 ►

I’m not quick to get paranoid,

01:20:18 ►

but there was an odd similarity shared by most of them

01:20:21 ►

that made me think that something might be a little off.

01:20:24 ►

They were all male, married, and about the same age, in their 30s. shared by most of them that made me think that something might be a little off.

01:20:28 ►

They were all male, married, and about the same age, in their 30s.

01:20:34 ►

They did not fit the typical profile of the type of guy who randomly hits on girls on the Internet to build his virtual harem.

01:20:37 ►

I can’t put my finger on it, but something made me wonder

01:20:40 ►

if some of them might be law enforcement guys.

01:20:43 ►

When I checked out their profiles, something seemed a little weird,

01:20:47 ►

like they didn’t quite fit in with the community of people I’m used to seeing.

01:20:51 ►

Their profiles didn’t contain much information, and they were really alike,

01:20:55 ►

mostly from Texas and New Jersey.

01:20:58 ►

Has anyone else reported a similar experience?

01:21:01 ►

I mention it just in case you want to put a little reminder out there

01:21:04 ►

to remind folks to be extremely careful about what they discuss with strangers online, just in case the non-others might be paying attention too.

01:21:15 ►

Well, until I received this email, I just kind of assumed that I was the only one who was constantly being pinged by these knuckle-draggers from the DEA and other goon squads.

01:21:25 ►

It’s really laughable, some of the email I get.

01:21:28 ►

These guys keep sending me emails claiming they are desperate to find a drug connection

01:21:34 ►

because their children are dying and things like that.

01:21:37 ►

But their attempts are so clumsy that it’s quite obvious

01:21:41 ►

that the only thing they know about substances is the misinformation the government puts out.

01:21:46 ►

So I just ignore all of them, and you should do the same.

01:21:50 ►

As I said early on in these podcasts,

01:21:53 ►

when I decided to become a more or less public spokesperson for psychedelic medicines,

01:21:59 ►

I had to consciously break off all of my connections with the underground.

01:22:04 ►

I gave my entire stash away

01:22:05 ►

and made a point of not knowing where to find any illegal substances. Now, I may leave the

01:22:12 ►

jurisdiction of the United States once in a while and partake in a sacred ceremony, but here inside

01:22:17 ►

the borders of the empire, I only talk about these things. So I recommend that you follow my method

01:22:23 ►

for dealing with strangers,

01:22:25 ►

and that is, whenever someone asks me

01:22:28 ►

if I know where to find an illegal substance,

01:22:31 ►

I immediately assume that she or he

01:22:33 ►

is a government informant or agent of some kind,

01:22:37 ►

and from then on out, I never trust them again.

01:22:40 ►

I simply don’t give second chances,

01:22:42 ►

because, hey, if they aren’t a narc,

01:22:44 ►

then they’re certainly too loose-lipped and immature to be trusted anyway.

01:22:49 ►

So, the end of lecture.

01:22:51 ►

Now, let’s get on with a more pleasant topic on which to close today’s program,

01:22:57 ►

and it’s about synchronicities.

01:22:59 ►

You know, it seems like every week somebody tells me about how one or more synchronicities

01:23:04 ►

seem to be taking place in their lives.

01:23:06 ►

And the same is true for me.

01:23:09 ►

So I thought I would pick out one of them to pass along here just to give you a flavor of things that you might want to be looking for in your own life.

01:23:18 ►

This comes from fellow salonner Matt Meyerhead, who writes in part,

01:23:22 ►

salonner Matt Meyerhead, who writes in part,

01:23:28 ►

I wanted to relate to you an amazing experience that happened to me while listening to the podcast of your book, The Genesis Generation.

01:23:30 ►

I settled down, as I often have, to listen to your delicious podcast and was amazed to

01:23:36 ►

hear you quote from a page of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer.

01:23:40 ►

I’m an artist, Lorenzo.

01:23:42 ►

That evening had been a busy one.

01:23:44 ►

I had just returned from hanging a series of my paintings at a local coffee shop.

01:23:49 ►

The theme of the show had to do with the written word and insects and typewriters.

01:23:54 ►

The images are all of typewriters that are transforming in different ways.

01:23:58 ►

They include text, and here is the amazing thing.

01:24:02 ►

I had copied text almost at random, sentences that I found to be beautiful or interesting,

01:24:07 ►

and screen printed into my paintings.

01:24:10 ►

The page you read included two of the quotes I had chosen.

01:24:14 ►

We must search for fragments, splinters, and let the dead eat the dead.

01:24:20 ►

I’m a huge Henry Miller fan.

01:24:23 ►

Ford knows he’s popular.

01:24:24 ►

But the odds of you quoting that passage right before I’d hung my show I thought were staggering.

01:24:30 ►

Well, I hope you enjoy the synchronicity.

01:24:33 ►

And then he gives me links to a gallery of images from his show and from a performance by his girlfriend who also inspired those quotes.

01:24:42 ►

And I’ll put those links in our program notes for this podcast.

01:24:47 ►

And then he concludes by saying,

01:24:49 ►

And if you send me an address, I will send you one of the paintings which contain the quotes.

01:24:54 ►

Well, thank you so very much for sending that story along, Matt.

01:24:58 ►

And thank you also for your kind offer to send one of the paintings.

01:25:02 ►

That’s overly generous.

01:25:04 ►

And by the way, I did go out and take a look at them.

01:25:06 ►

It is pretty amazing synchronicity.

01:25:09 ►

But it also gives me the chance to let the rest of our fellow salonners know that as

01:25:15 ►

much as I appreciate all of your kind offers to send me a gift of your work, I must decline,

01:25:20 ►

but with deep gratitude.

01:25:23 ►

And my reason is that I’m working quite diligently to reduce my physical possessions to what Thank you. I feel good in knowing that in my own small way, somebody else’s life is enhanced by your art.

01:26:08 ►

Well, I guess that’ll do it for now.

01:26:23 ►

And so I’ll close today’s podcast again by reminding you that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon are freely available for you to use in your own audio projects under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 3.0 license.

01:26:29 ►

And if you have any questions about that, just click the Creative Commons link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage,

01:26:33 ►

which you know you can find at psychedelicsalon.org.

01:26:38 ►

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

00:00:00 ►

Be well, my friends.

⚗️ alembic

Explorer

193 - Alan Watts & friends The Houseboat Summit – 1967″

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Program Notes

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