Program Notes
Guest speakers: Dr. John Lilly, Laura Huxley, and others
This podcast begins with a short clip of Alan Watts speaking about human consciousness. Then we join Dr. John Lilly, Laura Huxley, and a few other friends who are discussing the life of Alan Watts a few months after his death in November 1973.
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:19 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.
00:00:24 ►
And you may have been wondering where I’ve been lately, but I haven’t been out partying,
00:00:29 ►
and in fact, I haven’t even gone out to buy a single holiday gift yet.
00:00:33 ►
What happened was that as I was doing some research for my next book,
00:00:38 ►
I suddenly had a little wisp of inspiration and became so deeply involved in working out a new twist in the plot that I just couldn’t focus on anything else. Thank you. that I realized that if I don’t do this podcast soon, I’ll have to spend the entire program thanking people.
00:01:06 ►
Not that that wouldn’t be an excellent podcast, by the way, particularly if we could hear some of their stories as well.
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However, the next best thing I can do is to give my sincere thanks to 11, that’s right,
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11 wonderful saloners who have sent some of their very hard-earned cash to help us with getting these podcasts out to like-minded souls all around the world.
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And these people are…
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Elko V.
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Cole T.
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Elliot W.
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Roger B.
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Stephen B.
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Michael DeCircio.
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Homayun K.
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Phil B,
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Jared S,
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Andy H,
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and our old friend Michael M,
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otherwise known as Dime Short.
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I really can’t thank all of you
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and the rest of our supporters enough
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for your ongoing support and love
00:01:59 ►
throughout these past four and a half years.
00:02:02 ►
In fact, several of this week’s donors
00:02:04 ►
have been making contributions to the salon for several years now,
00:02:08 ►
and although I’ve never met you in person, I feel as if we’re old friends,
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and when we finally do get to meet, I’m sure we’ll find that we’ll just pick up a conversation
00:02:17 ►
as if we’ve been getting together all our lives.
00:02:20 ►
And that’s the way it often is with the psychedelic community.
00:02:24 ►
While most of my closest friends today and I have known each other only for a few years now,
00:02:30 ►
it feels as if we almost grew up together.
00:02:33 ►
And in a way, I guess that’s kind of what we’re all doing here,
00:02:37 ►
just sort of growing up in our spiritual lives.
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So thank you again, one and all, for your over-the-top support of the salon.
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I’ll certainly remember you forever.
00:02:48 ►
Now, as for today’s program, I’m going to do something a little different.
00:02:53 ►
In the background these past couple of weeks,
00:02:55 ►
I’ve slowly been reading Sybil Bedford’s brilliant biography of Aldous Huxley.
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Not only is the subject matter something I’m quite interested in,
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the writing itself is as good as I’ve ever encountered in a biography. And one of the main things I’m taking
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away from her book, however, is what a difficult life the Huxleys had, at least from my perspective.
00:03:18 ►
You know, poor Aldous and Maria had to struggle mightily just to maintain their lives in a way they wanted to.
00:03:28 ►
Now, granted, from the perspective of where and how I grew up,
00:03:30 ►
Aldous had a charmed life. But now that I’m seeing the minute details of that life,
00:03:34 ►
I have to admit that I wouldn’t have wanted it for myself.
00:03:38 ►
But it’s this intimate look behind the scenes
00:03:41 ►
that is now adding a completely new perspective
00:03:44 ►
from which I can understand his work, which brings me to today’s podcast.
00:03:49 ►
For a long time now, I’ve been searching for more public domain recordings of Alan Watts,
00:03:54 ►
who is someone whose writing and speeches have had a big influence on me.
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But outside of some of his comments in my podcast 193, The Houseboat Summit,
00:04:06 ►
we really haven’t heard from him. And then I received an email from Tim Hardwick, and it read in part,
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Hey Lorenzo, thanks for getting back to me. I hope you can make use of this audio. It’s
00:04:17 ►
very interesting to get a perspective on Alan Watts from close friends and like-minded psychedelic
00:04:22 ►
luminaries. He was a wise, warm, and humane rascal indeed.
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I especially liked the comments on some of his LSD experiences
00:04:31 ►
and his ability to wordify anything.
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He certainly had the mind of a genius,
00:04:37 ►
the sort that can spin an association between any two apparently disparate subjects
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and thereby bring them together.
00:05:07 ►
A true reflection of the interconnectedness of all things, Thank you. But I always get a sense of closeness whenever I listen to your podcast. All the best, and do let me know how you get on with the audio.
00:05:10 ►
Well, thanks a lot for sending this audio, Tim.
00:05:16 ►
And like you said, it really is interesting to hear about him from some of his closest friends.
00:05:24 ►
Over the past few years, I’ve heard quite a few stories from Gary Fisher about dinners at the Huxleys’ house when Alan Watts was there.
00:05:45 ►
And Gary’s stories have definitely brought out another side of Watts for me. Gary Fisher the lectures of Alan Watts, so I stripped the audio from a short piece of his that is available on YouTube, and I’m going to play that first to sort of set the Alan Watts tone.
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Then when we listen to his friends talking about him not too long after his death, it’ll
00:05:55 ►
be a little easier to keep the man they are talking about in mind.
00:06:00 ►
So first now we’re going to hear a few minutes of Alan Watts speaking about human consciousness,
00:06:06 ►
and that will be followed by an impromptu memorial tribute that was held at Dr. John Lilly’s house
00:06:11 ►
about two months after Alan Watts died in November of 1973.
00:06:22 ►
Let me try from the first to indicate the point that we’re aiming at.
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The point is this, that human consciousness is at the same time as being a form of awareness and sensitivity and understanding, it’s also
00:06:47 ►
a form of ignorance.
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The ordinary everyday consciousness that we have leaves out more than it takes in. And because of this,
00:07:06 ►
it leaves out things that are terribly important.
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It leaves out things that would, if we did know them,
00:07:15 ►
allay our anxieties and fears and horrors.
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And if we could extend our awareness, you see, to include those things that we leave out, we would have a deep interior peace.
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Because we would all know the one thing that you mustn’t know, you know, according to the rules of our particular social game. One thing you mustn’t know, that’s really not allowed, that is the lowdown on
00:07:47 ►
life. And the lowdown on the one hand means the real dirt on things, but the lowdown is
00:07:53 ►
also what is profound, what is mysterious, what is in the depths, and the something left
00:07:59 ►
out. And our everyday consciousness screens this out in the same way that when you
00:08:09 ►
say you have weaving you have say on this rug here in front of us when the
00:08:19 ►
black finishes here the black threads will go underneath and then appear again
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over here and they’ll go underneath the white go underneath and then appear again over here, then they’ll
00:08:26 ►
go underneath the white and then they’ll appear again over here, you know?
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So that the back will be the obverse pattern of the front.
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Now the world is like that.
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Our sense organs are selective.
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They pick out certain things.
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They’re receptive.
00:08:48 ►
For example, we have a small, small band of what we might call a spectrum of light, of sound, of tactile sensation and so on, to which the human organism is sensitive. But we know that outside that small band, there is a huge range of
00:09:06 ►
vibrations to which we have built instruments that are sensitive. Things like cosmic rays,
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ultraviolet rays, gamma rays, hard x-rays, and so on. They’re all outside the band of
00:09:20 ►
our spectrum. And obviously, there are things that are outside the range of our instruments.
00:09:28 ►
We may build new instruments someday which will evoke, bring into our consciousness other orders of vibration altogether.
00:09:38 ►
But as yet we don’t know about them.
00:09:41 ►
So you could imagine, you see, the universe is a vast, vast system of vibrations
00:09:50 ►
and has infinite possibilities. All these vibrations, you know, are like the strings
00:09:58 ►
on a harp. And the harps that the angels are supposed to play in heaven are really this huge possibility.
00:10:07 ►
See, when you play the harp, you select strings.
00:10:11 ►
You don’t play all the strings.
00:10:12 ►
It’s stupid to just run your finger along the whole edge of the harp,
00:10:15 ►
back and forth, back and forth, and go…
00:10:17 ►
What you do is you pick out with your fingers, select just like on the piano,
00:10:23 ►
you don’t go…
00:10:24 ►
You pick out certain notes, and these make the patterns.
00:10:29 ►
But at the same time as you pick out, you reject what you don’t pick out.
00:10:48 ►
a fundamental continuity, the kind of continuity of the thread as they go up to the back of the woven material and make up the obverse of the pattern that’s on the front.
00:10:53 ►
Now, the question that is absolutely basic for all human beings is, what have you left out, you see?
00:11:09 ►
beings is what have you left out? You see? You are focused on certain things that constitute what you call everyday reality. Look, you single out people and you see them sitting,
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sitting, sitting all around. And you know there are things that are really there. And and then behind the people are the houses or whatever we live in,
00:11:29 ►
and the earth, and behind all that the sky, and so on.
00:11:34 ►
But we see the world as a collection of rather disjointed events and things.
00:11:45 ►
And I might say to you as you came in here today,
00:11:48 ►
now, my goodness, you all forgot something.
00:11:52 ►
What did you forget?
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And you think, my goodness, did I put my pants on?
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Did I wear a sweater?
00:12:00 ►
Did I put my glasses and my hair on and all my wig or whatever?
00:12:04 ►
And no, no, it’s none of that.
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It’s something you’ve forgotten.
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See, everybody’s forgotten something.
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You left it out.
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You just missed it.
00:12:14 ►
See, see.
00:12:16 ►
And so I can bring this out,
00:12:18 ►
what you’ve forgotten,
00:12:19 ►
if I ask you,
00:12:20 ►
who are you?
00:12:22 ►
Well, you say,
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I’m Paul Jones or whatever your name happens to
00:12:28 ►
be I said oh no no don’t give me that stuff who are you really and you think
00:12:38 ►
come whoa of course I’m just I’m just me no I don’t give me that I don’t want to
00:12:43 ►
hear all that nonsense you’ll’re playing a trick on me.
00:12:48 ►
Really, deep down, who are you?
00:12:51 ►
I don’t know.
00:12:54 ►
Well, that’s the thing to find out.
00:12:55 ►
That’s the thing that’s been forgotten.
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See, that’s the underside of the tapestry.
00:13:00 ►
The thing that’s been left out.
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They can’t.
00:13:11 ►
What we are carefully taught to ignore
00:13:26 ►
is that every one of us fundamentally
00:13:29 ►
deep deep inside
00:13:31 ►
let’s put it that way
00:13:33 ►
is a
00:13:36 ►
an act of
00:13:37 ►
a function of
00:13:38 ►
a performance of
00:13:40 ►
a manifestation of
00:13:41 ►
the works
00:13:42 ►
the whole blinking cosmos with all its galaxies and forever and ever
00:13:50 ►
and ever whatever it is beyond that. What you might call God in the Western tradition or Brahman
00:13:58 ►
in Hindu philosophy or Dao in Chinese. Every one of us is really that, but we are pretending we aren’t.
00:14:09 ►
And we are pretending with tremendous skill
00:14:14 ►
and deception.
00:14:20 ►
The man, Alan Watts, in memoriam.
00:14:26 ►
A few close friends and admirers have gathered around the fireplace with frankincense burning,
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and we have come together at John and Tony Lilly’s ranch in Malibu
00:14:42 ►
to observe what would have been his 59th birthday.
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Great teacher and illuminated soul that he was,
00:14:50 ►
he taught us many things,
00:14:52 ►
amongst which was the knowledge of the void.
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How were we to know that with his passing,
00:15:00 ►
with the stilling of his voice,
00:15:02 ►
that we would then know and understand all too well
00:15:05 ►
the meaning, the intense meaning of the void.
00:15:10 ►
The Associated Press and the other news services have what they call a morgue,
00:15:15 ►
and in it there is a folder under W, Watts, Allen,
00:15:20 ►
and very matter-of-factly is listed who he was and what he did.
00:15:24 ►
He was born in England.
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In the course of his coming of age, he was drawn to religion and philosophy,
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becoming first an Episcopalian priest until 1950,
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and then as he devoted his time to writing and lecturing and teaching,
00:15:39 ►
he was attracted to the religions of the East,
00:15:42 ►
and particularly to Zen Buddhism,
00:15:44 ►
of which he was the greatest and most influential teacher in this country.
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He was the author of The Way of Zen and Psychotherapy East and West,
00:15:53 ►
and many other books.
00:15:56 ►
Perhaps it was not accidental.
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Maybe he had some premonition of his end,
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that in the last couple of years or so,
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he published his autobiography in my own way.
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So let me tell you out there,
00:16:12 ►
who all are here to experience together the void,
00:16:15 ►
to share together our sense of loss
00:16:17 ►
that his passing has brought about.
00:16:20 ►
John Lilly, scientist and physician.
00:16:24 ►
Tony Lilly, artist and psychotherapist
00:16:28 ►
Laura Huxley, writer
00:16:30 ►
Virginia Dennison, teacher of yoga
00:16:34 ►
Oliver Andrews, sculptor and professor of arts
00:16:39 ►
and myself, Herschel Lyman, communicator and student of religion
00:16:44 ►
His daughter could not be with us today and myself, Herschel Lyman, communicator and student of religion.
00:16:51 ►
His daughter could not be with us today, but meant a part of herself.
00:16:55 ►
Joan Watts Tabernick.
00:17:02 ►
I’d known him for 35 years and two days.
00:17:06 ►
It’s hard to remember anything but fleeting glimpses into the past,
00:17:07 ►
back to our beginning.
00:17:12 ►
He told me many times with an affectionate pat on my rear end and a twinkle in his eye
00:17:13 ►
that I was conceived on the common green in Chislehurst.
00:17:18 ►
He was always playful, joyful, a rascal.
00:17:22 ►
We’d dance in the living room, bounce on his knees to nursery rhymes,
00:17:25 ►
be tickled by his whiskers and giggle at the fantastic monsters,
00:17:30 ►
Buddhas and animals he would draw for us.
00:17:33 ►
He taught me how to get inside my favorite carved teak box.
00:17:40 ►
Once I lived in Chislehurst with his parents.
00:17:43 ►
I have fond memories of high tea, apple pasties,
00:17:46 ►
and doorsteps of bread smothered with Lyle’s golden syrup.
00:17:50 ►
There were beautiful hedges in the garden
00:17:52 ►
named Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary.
00:17:55 ►
They were pruned that way.
00:17:57 ►
There were rose trees,
00:17:59 ►
and Henny Penny was my favorite hen.
00:18:02 ►
I quite often rode the common greens of Chislehurst on horseback with my schoolmates.
00:18:08 ►
There were hard times, family trauma, divorce.
00:18:13 ►
Somehow he always maintained a sense of humor.
00:18:16 ►
When I grew older, he told me what it was like to make love.
00:18:21 ►
I moved out of his life for many years.
00:18:23 ►
He became a stranger. I would see him once every life for many years. He became a stranger.
00:18:26 ►
I would see him once every one or two years
00:18:29 ►
and have to share him with followers, admirers, and disciples.
00:18:35 ►
Several years ago, I moved back into his daily life,
00:18:39 ►
shared his friends, many my childhood acquaintances.
00:18:45 ►
A gathering was always an opportunity for a party,
00:18:48 ►
gaiety, laughter, wine and food.
00:18:52 ►
I felt a little uneasy with his way of life.
00:18:56 ►
Our differences gradually became intense to me.
00:19:01 ►
I was one of the new Puritans.
00:19:04 ►
He made it very clear that he enjoyed what he was doing and would die doing so.
00:19:09 ►
I would have no one interfere with his enjoyment of life.
00:19:14 ►
I never said another word about his forms of enjoyment.
00:19:19 ►
It was very difficult to watch him age so quickly.
00:19:22 ►
He became tired and weighted with responsibility.
00:19:27 ►
Life was interfering with his work.
00:19:30 ►
Nine days after returning from a hectic lecture tour in Europe,
00:19:34 ►
he died, peacefully in his sleep.
00:19:37 ►
I hadn’t seen him since his return.
00:19:41 ►
By the time I reached his home after hearing of his death,
00:19:44 ►
his body had been removed
00:19:46 ►
and Ajari was making arrangements
00:19:48 ►
for his cremation.
00:19:51 ►
With goma,
00:19:52 ►
which is a fire ceremony,
00:19:55 ►
his body was reduced
00:19:56 ►
to a small box of ashes
00:19:57 ►
which I carefully wrapped
00:19:59 ►
in a furoshiki.
00:20:02 ►
A furoshiki is a kind
00:20:03 ►
of Japanese scarf
00:20:04 ►
to carry him to his funeral at the Zen Center. in a furoshiki. A furoshiki is a kind of Japanese scarf.
00:20:07 ►
To carry him to his funeral at the Zen Center.
00:20:14 ►
There, with great thunder and fire chanting, his spirit was set free.
00:20:17 ►
Alan, Dai Yuin,
00:20:21 ►
great courageous hero, founder of religious space.
00:20:26 ►
Yu-zan-myo-ko, profound mysterious mountain of subtle transforming light.
00:20:33 ►
Dai-zen-jo-mon, great samadhi gate.
00:20:38 ►
Outside the Buddha hall we stood in the rays of the setting sun,
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chilled and sad, and heard him laugh.
00:20:46 ►
On the ferry boat that evening during Goma, another fire ceremony for his spirit, my sister
00:20:52 ►
and I fed him rice and beans, tea and oranges, and a bottle of rum.
00:21:15 ►
I’ve known Alan about 22 years, since about 1951, when he first came to California from Northwestern, where he’d been chaplain, Pacific School of Asian Studies, which was then being run by my friend
00:21:27 ►
and Alan’s old friend, Frederick Spiegelberg.
00:21:31 ►
And Alan arrived to take over this particular job
00:21:37 ►
and did all of those things
00:21:40 ►
that the head and director of a large school has to do, as well as raising
00:21:47 ►
money and organizing curricula and all those kinds of things.
00:21:51 ►
At that time, Alan was dressed in a very straight business suit, and believe it or not, he had
00:22:00 ►
a crew cut.
00:22:01 ►
he had a crew cut.
00:22:05 ►
Those of you who know him from his most recent manifestation
00:22:09 ►
with his hair and his beard
00:22:10 ►
and his staff and his beads.
00:22:12 ►
When he became a later day saint.
00:22:14 ►
Yeah.
00:22:15 ►
That’s been very interesting
00:22:16 ►
and amusing.
00:22:19 ►
For me to see this transformation
00:22:21 ►
of Alan and all during these
00:22:23 ►
20 or so years.
00:22:26 ►
And I knew him in New York
00:22:29 ►
and we did things together in New York
00:22:30 ►
and I went to Japan with him in 1963
00:22:33 ►
and we experienced that.
00:22:35 ►
And one of Alan’s great qualities
00:22:37 ►
was always being there.
00:22:40 ►
He was always completely there
00:22:42 ►
wherever he was.
00:22:44 ►
He was always completely there, wherever he was. He was always doing the appropriate, sometimes wildly inappropriate,
00:22:51 ►
but at the same time it was really the appropriate thing to do.
00:22:56 ►
So he always fitted and made the moment his own.
00:23:00 ►
And many of the people that I’ve talked to since Alan has died
00:23:06 ►
have had a great feeling of his presence in whatever way, I don’t know.
00:23:15 ►
But it makes me confident that in his new state, in his present state,
00:23:20 ►
Alan has a great future.
00:23:24 ►
That’s nice.
00:23:28 ►
How about you, Virginia?
00:23:30 ►
What are your earliest memories of Alan?
00:23:33 ►
Well, my earliest memories were when I was married to Henry Denison,
00:23:36 ►
and we used to read Alan’s books, and we could never find him.
00:23:39 ►
He was like a myth, because at that time he wasn’t as well-known
00:23:44 ►
and didn’t lecture as much.
00:23:46 ►
And we kept trying and finally one time found him at Bixom Review.
00:23:51 ►
And that was the beginning of our relationship with him.
00:23:55 ►
And he was, as Oliver says, always present.
00:24:01 ►
And there was that quality that he had of joyousness.
00:24:05 ►
And life was always an adventure.
00:24:07 ►
Whatever he did with Alan
00:24:09 ►
took on a
00:24:11 ►
particular quality
00:24:13 ►
of vitality.
00:24:20 ►
John?
00:24:22 ►
Oh, I’m just a
00:24:24 ►
recent acquisition.
00:24:25 ►
I think Tony and Laura have come to me.
00:24:28 ►
When did you meet him, Tony?
00:24:31 ►
Well, I’ve known Alan.
00:24:33 ►
I say I’ve known him because I feel his presence is still here.
00:24:38 ►
And I suppose it’s gone back about ten years.
00:24:43 ►
Right after the funeral that we attended up in San
00:24:47 ►
Francisco, I remember an incredible feeling of loss and my wanting to ask Elsa for something
00:24:57 ►
of Alan’s to bring home with me. We were practically in Los Angeles when I realized that there was a package in the back of the car,
00:25:07 ►
and that scarf that John was talking about, and the picture that we had used during the ceremony with his ashes in front of it,
00:25:16 ►
was in the car, and I could hear Alan laughing.
00:25:20 ►
And I felt his presence very strongly for the last month.
00:25:29 ►
Laura?
00:25:30 ►
Well, I met Alan with Aldous, and it must have been probably 1957 or 58.
00:25:39 ►
We were in San Francisco, and we went to dinner in some extraordinary place.
00:25:43 ►
You know, you always had a special place and special food. And I remember all this in Ireland. There were just like two
00:25:51 ►
intellectual acrobats, you know, jumping all over the place and having a wonderful time.
00:26:00 ►
I just look at them, you know, as I looked at the show, because they were their frame of reference.
00:26:08 ►
It was so much wider than mine.
00:26:10 ►
But the feeling on that was the beautiful thing,
00:26:14 ►
this brilliancy, this vitality.
00:26:17 ►
And when Aldous died, Adam was so gentle with me,
00:26:22 ►
so wonderful and so understanding.
00:26:24 ►
I always remember the letter that he wrote me.
00:26:27 ►
And he was always like that.
00:26:29 ►
I feel him that, I don’t know if everyone,
00:26:35 ►
but he gave a friend tremendous support.
00:26:40 ►
And to a woman, he always was able to make her feel
00:26:45 ►
a femininity
00:26:46 ►
all the time
00:26:47 ►
and that lightness
00:26:53 ►
that he had in everything
00:26:55 ►
he had a lightness
00:26:56 ►
I was thinking there is a word in French
00:26:59 ►
panache
00:27:00 ►
which I have not been able to find
00:27:02 ►
the translation exactly
00:27:04 ►
in English we use it also in Italy.
00:27:07 ►
Panache actually means only a plume, a feather in a hat. And whatever his mood was when I would,
00:27:15 ►
at least when I saw him, which was maybe three or four times a year or so, whatever his mood was, he always had that chevalier way,
00:27:26 ►
somebody that has a magnificent hat with plumes
00:27:29 ►
and would not ever impose on other people if he had any difficulty, of course, everybody else.
00:27:41 ►
He would always take it lightly because he was capable of
00:27:45 ►
looking at himself and laugh, which is such extraordinary quality.
00:27:54 ►
John?
00:27:56 ►
I met Alan as a sort of a voluntary act.
00:28:02 ►
I’d read his book, Man, Nature, and Woman, wasn’t it?
00:28:08 ►
Man, Woman, and Nature.
00:28:10 ►
Nature, Man, and Woman.
00:28:12 ►
And I read it at a time when I needed exactly what he had to say in that book.
00:28:18 ►
So I was very grateful to him.
00:28:20 ►
When I came to Esalen in 1968,
00:28:24 ►
I made sort of a tour of the San Francisco area
00:28:27 ►
and called him up just out of the blue and went to visit him at his request
00:28:34 ►
on his boat in Sausalito, the SS Vallejo.
00:28:39 ►
And we had about two hours together alone.
00:28:49 ►
two hours together, alone, and it was probably among the most intense two hours that I’ve ever spent with anybody.
00:28:53 ►
We exchanged ideas about LSD and its effect on our culture. We talked about his other book on the joyous cosmology and his experiences.
00:29:13 ►
And I was currently at that time planning a book, which later came out as The Son of
00:29:19 ►
the Psychon.
00:29:21 ►
So we hit it off beautifully.
00:29:27 ►
And then I decided to tell him a story.
00:29:31 ►
And it is a puzzle.
00:29:34 ►
We call it the surgeon story.
00:29:37 ►
And I put him through this surgeon story.
00:29:44 ►
And it’s a particularly hard test of a given person.
00:29:51 ►
Most people have to have their diet present in order to solve it at all.
00:29:55 ►
In other words, a man and a woman solve it much faster than either a man or a woman alone.
00:30:02 ►
Alan took the better part of about 40 minutes to solve it at all.
00:30:07 ►
In other words, a man and a woman solve it much faster than either a man or a woman alone.
00:30:13 ►
Alan took the better part of about 40 minutes to solve it.
00:30:19 ►
But when he finally solved it, he then introduced me to his wife and said, This man is as ruthlessly rational as I am, and possibly even more so.
00:30:28 ►
With a very light, laughing kind of approach to it.
00:30:35 ►
Alan and I, from that point on,
00:30:36 ►
we discovered at that particular meeting
00:30:39 ►
that he was born 40 minutes ahead of me.
00:30:44 ►
So, as we said at that time, he earned the beard.
00:30:51 ►
So he wore a beard and I didn’t.
00:30:53 ►
So he was your senior.
00:30:55 ►
Right.
00:30:56 ►
And I felt he was, it was sort of like meeting a brother
00:31:00 ►
that you didn’t know you had, or a twin.
00:31:04 ►
And one who had taken very different
00:31:06 ►
paths, and yet intellectually we’d come out at very similar places.
00:31:12 ►
And it was rather startling to know, to see this.
00:31:17 ►
Then the next, there were several important meetings we had together.
00:31:22 ►
The next most important meeting was a lecture that he gave in Los Angeles,
00:31:27 ►
which I attended,
00:31:29 ►
with a number of people.
00:31:32 ►
And to see approximately a thousand people
00:31:34 ►
with him holding them spellbound on the stage
00:31:39 ►
at the Beverly Hills High School
00:31:41 ►
was really something to watch.
00:31:45 ►
It was just so beautiful.
00:31:47 ►
And after this particular lecture,
00:31:50 ►
I was invited to the house of somebody I didn’t know.
00:31:54 ►
And on the way, the car I was riding in had a flat tire,
00:31:57 ►
so I didn’t get there until about 1 a.m.
00:32:00 ►
And I walked into the living room of this particular house.
00:32:05 ►
And by this time, Alan had gone home.
00:32:07 ►
But sitting in the foyer of this room, it’s a very large foyer,
00:32:12 ►
was this striking woman.
00:32:17 ►
And that’s when I met Tony.
00:32:22 ►
The next time, we then just, three days later we started living together and we haven’t been apart since.
00:32:30 ►
Did you realize I was responsible for that?
00:32:33 ►
I was at the lecture with Alan and we were going to this party and I looked over and saw John standing in the foyer there of the
00:32:46 ►
school and I said, oh, aren’t you
00:32:48 ►
going to invite John to go to the party?
00:32:50 ►
And Ellen said, oh, but of course, of course.
00:32:52 ►
And so he said, well, then
00:32:54 ►
he would be up later and
00:32:55 ►
before we left, why,
00:32:57 ►
John called and said he was going to be
00:33:00 ►
delayed because he had a flat tire.
00:33:02 ►
And then all of this happened.
00:33:04 ►
It was such a strange situation.
00:33:05 ►
Well, I’ll take this opportunity to thank you publicly.
00:33:09 ►
And I hope I can carnically do the same for you sometime.
00:33:12 ►
So, Virginia, you didn’t realize it, but you were the deus,
00:33:15 ►
or shall I say the dea ex machina in that particular scene.
00:33:20 ►
With a flat tire.
00:33:23 ►
The machina had a flat tire. Then there was a higher force, a higher power.
00:33:27 ►
Well, anyone that’s ever been to a party with Alan present
00:33:30 ►
knows his incredible enjoyment of having people together
00:33:35 ►
and his appreciation of women especially was really extraordinary.
00:33:41 ►
He really paid a compliment to women.
00:33:44 ►
Oh, it was elegant
00:33:45 ►
one time he brought some flowers
00:33:47 ►
to the house
00:33:48 ►
and I picked the flowers
00:33:51 ►
and the way that he said
00:33:53 ►
don’t touch it
00:33:55 ►
it’s just right
00:33:56 ►
it was the greatest thing
00:33:58 ►
it was just a subtle
00:33:59 ►
way of admiring a person
00:34:03 ►
which was very beautiful.
00:34:06 ►
Well, you could feel dimensions of yourself that you had not experienced before.
00:34:11 ►
That’s right.
00:34:11 ►
I would always get into my Mediterranean vibration,
00:34:16 ►
and I could see myself from that point of view much more clearly.
00:34:24 ►
John, when you related that surgeon
00:34:25 ►
story, I can reminisce and say that’s
00:34:28 ►
my first introduction to you
00:34:29 ►
at that workshop at Esalen.
00:34:31 ►
And I remember how that story baffled
00:34:33 ►
all of us. I’d like to reminisce
00:34:35 ►
a little about my knowledge
00:34:37 ►
of Alan and my acquaintance
00:34:39 ►
with him. I didn’t know
00:34:41 ►
him as well as all of
00:34:43 ►
you, but I used to attend some of his workshops.
00:34:48 ►
The first workshop I attended was at Kairos near San Diego. And at first I thought he
00:34:56 ►
was a very austere man because of his stage presence and he was kind of frightening because
00:35:02 ►
of the way he appeared
00:35:05 ►
and the way he spoke with such authority.
00:35:08 ►
He spoke with the wrath of God at his beck and call.
00:35:12 ►
And yet, afterwards…
00:35:16 ►
Yes, I never saw him.
00:35:18 ►
But afterwards…
00:35:20 ►
Herschel tends to protect that image.
00:35:22 ►
Well, Herschel tends to protect that image.
00:35:32 ►
But afterwards, I was so pleased to discover that he was kind and he was gentle and he was a delight to be with.
00:35:34 ►
And the last time I saw him was at the supermarket.
00:35:38 ►
I bumped into him at the supermarket at Sunset Boulevard, Pacific Coast Highway.
00:35:44 ►
And he was showing a part of himself that I had never seen before.
00:35:49 ►
He was just commenting with a certain weariness
00:35:53 ►
about the responsibilities that were his.
00:35:56 ►
He had a number of economic responsibilities,
00:35:59 ►
and he had to write more books, and he had to do more lecturing.
00:36:03 ►
The week before, I had the pleasure of driving
00:36:07 ►
him from his workshop in Santa Barbara to Malibu to his friend Herman Lewis’s home and
00:36:15 ►
I had a lovely time with him driving. I brought something here which I put from Rolling Stone.
00:36:23 ►
I brought something here which I clicked from Rolling Stone.
00:36:27 ►
There’s an article by his friend Gene Marine,
00:36:33 ►
and I’d just like to read a few things that he says about Allen. He reminisces about the early days when Allen was involved in broadcasting for station KPFA,
00:36:42 ►
which was the first station of the Pacifica stations.
00:36:46 ►
KPFK came subsequently, WBAI in New York, and the station in Houston.
00:36:54 ►
And he describes his first contact with Allen.
00:36:59 ►
He said, as he saw him, who’s the mafia type?
00:37:03 ►
And he’s one of our stars.
00:37:08 ►
Talks about oriental religion and stuff like that.
00:37:10 ►
The little old ladies eat it up.
00:37:11 ►
Names Alan Watts.
00:37:17 ►
Studio A was and is about the size of the extra toilet in an affluent home. One chair, one table, an old coffin-shaped carbon mic hanging down from the ceiling.
00:37:22 ►
And there was this guy with his hair in his eyes,
00:37:25 ►
Undertaker’s black suit,
00:37:28 ►
string tie,
00:37:30 ►
cigarette in the corner of his mouth
00:37:32 ►
like a bad imitation of Bogart,
00:37:34 ►
talking in what sounded like
00:37:36 ►
a Midwesterner’s impression of a British accent.
00:37:39 ►
He looked like somebody sent out from Detroit
00:37:42 ►
for a hit job.
00:37:45 ►
And then he goes on to tell what a genius he was at doing a program.
00:37:51 ►
He was scheduled to broadcast.
00:37:55 ►
Then the little light would go on more or less at 8 o’clock, and he’d talk.
00:37:59 ►
No script, no notes.
00:38:02 ►
Yesterday’s news story or last week’s discovery in biochemistry that he had
00:38:06 ►
somehow learned about, or a dirty joke he’d heard somewhere, he’d weave it all together with Lao Tzu
00:38:13 ►
and the Tao, and with incisive political comment. He was tougher politically when he was younger,
00:38:20 ►
and with that droll Lord Peter whimsy, and with his truly astonishing erudition.
00:38:28 ►
And at 8.30, an eye would flick to the clock
00:38:30 ►
and at exactly one minute to the second,
00:38:32 ►
he would put it all together and you’d say watching,
00:38:35 ►
my God, did he do that off the top of his head?
00:38:39 ►
Yes, he did.
00:38:41 ►
And students of writing could use transcripts
00:38:43 ►
of those broadcasts as models of composition.
00:38:48 ►
One night over a glass of the Irish that Wally kept around for favored broadcasters,
00:38:53 ►
I asked him how he did it.
00:38:56 ►
It’s the kind of mind I have, he shrugged.
00:38:59 ►
I remember everything I read.
00:39:01 ►
I learned from the Orientals a sense of how everything fits together,
00:39:06 ►
so I can relate any two things
00:39:08 ►
I happen to run into.
00:39:11 ►
And what I found is surprisingly rare.
00:39:14 ►
I can remember what I’ve just said.
00:39:17 ►
So I just ramble,
00:39:19 ►
and when I look up
00:39:19 ►
and there’s a minute to go,
00:39:21 ►
I say something about
00:39:22 ►
how it all fits together,
00:39:24 ►
and that wraps it up.
00:39:26 ►
Nothing to it.
00:39:27 ►
Try it sometime in precisely 29 minutes and 30 seconds.
00:39:33 ►
Then he goes on to say,
00:39:35 ►
we did some programs together,
00:39:36 ►
panel discussions on theological subjects,
00:39:40 ►
and Alan would sit back, cigarette dangling,
00:39:43 ►
and ask some damn fool question like,
00:39:44 ►
what do you think is God’s responsibility to man? and Alan would sit back, cigarette dangling, and ask some damn fool question like,
00:39:47 ►
what do you think is God’s responsibility to man?
00:39:50 ►
Then he’d flick a glance at me,
00:39:53 ►
and I’d come in with my best poor boy mission district accent and some adolescent question like,
00:39:55 ►
how can God send somebody to eternal damnation
00:39:58 ►
for eating a lamb chop on the wrong day?
00:40:02 ►
And somehow we would move in on the poor man from two sides because
00:40:05 ►
I knew what Alan wanted me to do. He’d put it together after an exchange or two, and
00:40:11 ►
it took the erudite Dominican five programs to figure out that we were jobbing him. It
00:40:19 ►
wasn’t for enlightenment. Neither of us believed really that such programs enlightened anybody. It was for fun,
00:40:25 ►
like charades, and it was the intellectual fun we had together that I will miss.
00:40:31 ►
Little by little after that, Alan Watts went up in the world. For a while, he did a show on KQED,
00:40:37 ►
San Francisco’s public TV station, and I grin again as I think of him doing on television
00:40:43 ►
exactly what he had done on radio,
00:40:46 ►
except that he was surrounded by exotic shrubbery, wore a kimono,
00:40:51 ►
how did he pronounce that?
00:40:52 ►
Kimono.
00:40:53 ►
Kimono.
00:40:55 ►
And sat in the lotus position while he talked.
00:40:58 ►
No cigarette, poor guy.
00:41:02 ►
Without Alan, there would have been no Zen-oriented beatniks, no Beatles going off to the
00:41:08 ►
Himalayas, no 15-year-old god in a roles to become Rennie Davis’s basilisk. And without Alan Watts,
00:41:17 ►
we would all be a long way back in our understanding that there is a genuine culture in a part of the world where skins are neither
00:41:27 ►
white or black but others can deal with that better better than i to me he was a solid sensual
00:41:34 ►
swinging guy i liked a lot who had a ball doing some shows on kpfk 22 years ago i don’t think
00:41:42 ►
there was a greater showman than alan Watts, and where he got it,
00:41:46 ►
I don’t know.
00:41:48 ►
I recall at his workshops,
00:41:50 ►
he would ask the question,
00:41:52 ►
what is reality?
00:41:54 ►
After a long discussion of that subject,
00:41:56 ►
what is reality?
00:41:59 ►
And then all of a sudden… sudden. And that he would chuckle in his own inimitable way and he would say, and that
00:42:19 ►
is reality. And who can say that it is not? What professor can say it is not?
00:42:23 ►
and who can say that it is not what professor can say it is not.
00:42:28 ►
John, Tony was mentioning to me before that Alan had an incredible understanding of modern science and physics
00:42:35 ►
and you being a scientist of the first order.
00:42:40 ►
Did you know of this understanding on his part
00:42:43 ►
or how he incorporated the whole thing in his philosophy?
00:42:46 ►
I thought essentially he was an artist.
00:42:48 ►
He seemed to know everything.
00:42:50 ►
He was, in a sense, like a Renaissance man.
00:42:53 ►
Would you comment on his knowledge of science?
00:42:58 ►
Well, Alan is sort of polymorphous.
00:43:04 ►
He appears to each of us in an entirely different light.
00:43:08 ►
He appears to Tony in that particular way.
00:43:11 ►
To me, of course, and he would also tend to reflect you.
00:43:17 ►
And he was so polite, and his formalism was so elegant,
00:43:22 ►
that he would never encroach in any region
00:43:25 ►
in which he felt that you didn’t want him to encroach.
00:43:30 ►
And since I was a scientist, he never discussed science with me.
00:43:35 ►
And since I knew him as a Buddhist, I never discussed Buddhism with him.
00:43:43 ►
So we mutually stayed out of one another’s territory
00:43:47 ►
in a very elegant sort of dance, as Tony can tell you.
00:43:52 ►
When I did workshops on his boat, for example,
00:43:56 ►
Alan very discreetly would get in the background
00:44:00 ►
and then start bouncing ideas off me
00:44:04 ►
and allow me plenty of space.
00:44:07 ►
See, I would start presenting something
00:44:08 ►
and then I would hear this very sharp,
00:44:12 ►
succinct, condensed comment
00:44:14 ►
or a magnificent pun from Alan.
00:44:18 ►
And he was a catalytic agent at these workshops.
00:44:20 ►
It was an incredible show that he would put on in that way.
00:44:25 ►
There’s no doubt of his er that way. There’s no doubt
00:44:26 ►
of his erudition
00:44:26 ►
and there’s no doubt
00:44:27 ►
of the incredible speed
00:44:29 ►
of his associations.
00:44:32 ►
It’s just beautiful
00:44:32 ►
to watch him
00:44:33 ►
in Miami, for instance.
00:44:36 ►
That lecture he gave.
00:44:37 ►
Oh, he was incredible.
00:44:37 ►
Yeah.
00:44:38 ►
Absolutely incredible.
00:44:39 ►
Wonderful.
00:44:39 ►
The audience was spellbound.
00:44:41 ►
There were thousands of people
00:44:43 ►
just hanging on
00:44:43 ►
his every word.
00:44:44 ►
And probably they did not understand a word.
00:44:46 ►
No, I think that he did.
00:44:47 ►
He said later in our room that he didn’t know what was coming out next.
00:44:50 ►
Yes, he did.
00:44:51 ►
I think, I just came to my mind,
00:44:53 ►
there is another point in common between you and Alan.
00:44:55 ►
You both are theater men.
00:44:59 ►
Showmen.
00:45:00 ►
Yes, the showmen.
00:45:01 ►
He’s more of the actor and you are more of the…
00:45:05 ►
He’s more of the actor and you are more of the… He’s more the performance
00:45:07 ►
and you are more the stage,
00:45:09 ►
you’re the lighting.
00:45:11 ►
You know, you’re the lighting
00:45:12 ►
and the sounds
00:45:13 ►
and the strips and everything.
00:45:16 ►
But he’s right there
00:45:17 ►
in front of the stage
00:45:18 ►
and enjoying it.
00:45:19 ►
Oh, yeah.
00:45:19 ►
He was a star right out in front.
00:45:22 ►
But I mean, can you imagine
00:45:23 ►
usually people train and train
00:45:25 ►
to have that possibility of speaking like that fluently.
00:45:29 ►
Well, since we were born 40 minutes apart,
00:45:32 ►
neither one of us believed in astrology at all.
00:45:35 ►
But as Alan said when he discovered that we were 40 minutes apart,
00:45:38 ►
he says, almost enough to make me believe in astrology.
00:45:41 ►
He had made a great study of astrology when he was young.
00:45:44 ►
Right, and he abandoned it.
00:45:45 ►
Yeah.
00:45:46 ►
He didn’t make it to the end.
00:45:47 ►
No, I did the same thing.
00:45:48 ►
The only problem that I find with astrology,
00:45:50 ►
and Alan found exactly the same problem,
00:45:52 ►
you can pinpoint the position of the constellations
00:45:56 ►
right down to the last nanosecond,
00:45:59 ►
but you cannot pinpoint the variables inside the human being
00:46:03 ►
to the degree of accuracy at all.
00:46:05 ►
And so we see projections and expectations and hopes and fears put on people by the astrologers.
00:46:14 ►
But it was marvelous to see John and Alan together.
00:46:17 ►
It really was a treat because the two of them would do a kind of word dance,
00:46:25 ►
is the only way I could explain it.
00:46:27 ►
And Alan had the facility to take a word and stretch it
00:46:34 ►
and sort of throw it up in the air, a sentence,
00:46:37 ►
and come down in a form that you just didn’t expect.
00:46:42 ►
And that word dance that the two of them would do together
00:46:46 ►
was really a treat.
00:46:48 ►
A mutual friend of ours was telling me
00:46:50 ►
about an LSD trip they took with Alan.
00:46:53 ►
And Alan began speaking and speaking hour after hour,
00:46:57 ►
and the friend couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
00:47:00 ►
And he said all of a sudden,
00:47:02 ►
Alan became transformed in his very sight into a golden tongue.
00:47:08 ►
And that was the image that he had on this particular psychedelic experience.
00:47:14 ►
Well, he could speak, you know, no matter what he ingested.
00:47:18 ►
And there were a lot of scientific studies that were based on his observations during some of his trips.
00:47:27 ►
And he could speak no matter what.
00:47:29 ►
That’s true.
00:47:30 ►
I want to get back to Oliver here.
00:47:33 ►
Oliver was the one who crashed those Tibetan symbols,
00:47:36 ►
and he brought them along because these were some of the props that Alan used,
00:47:40 ►
besides his dress, his kimono.
00:47:43 ►
And what were the other props that Alan would use, Oliver?
00:47:48 ►
Well, Alan liked to make instruments out of all kinds of contemporary things.
00:47:53 ►
As much as he loved the very rare and super refined,
00:47:58 ►
and even better if it was a little bit spooky and Fu Manchu-ish.
00:48:03 ►
and bitter if it was a little bit spooky and Fu Manchu-ish.
00:48:09 ►
So he had many marvelous, actually beautiful, rare instruments that he had collected in his travels, which he played with great glee.
00:48:13 ►
But he also had things made of blocks of wood,
00:48:19 ►
which had been hollowed out by his friend Roger Summers.
00:48:21 ►
And then he had a selection of instruments all made of oxygen cylinders and those kind of cylindrical liquid oxygen tanks that are used on rockets,
00:48:33 ►
which he had sliced in half, built stands for, and used with much of the same effect
00:48:39 ►
with which he used the ancient traditional instruments.
00:48:44 ►
with which he used the ancient traditional instruments.
00:48:50 ►
And it all seemed to me typical of the widespread of Alan’s interest that he was able to combine these things which were junk with these things which were very rare and ancient.
00:48:56 ►
And he used them all with great glee because just as his voice was a magnificent tuned instrument,
00:49:08 ►
so he had a great appreciation of sound and how it can be used
00:49:14 ►
and has a great magic quality of sound for turning people on.
00:49:19 ►
He used to love to play with his own voice.
00:49:20 ►
Yeah.
00:49:20 ►
Doing all of the sounds.
00:49:22 ►
Yeah.
00:49:23 ►
Do all of the sounds.
00:49:24 ►
Oh, yeah, I remember, too. Do you remember? Yeah. voice yeah yeah do all the sounds oh he used to do that and then that laugh which we’re talking
00:49:34 ►
about i remember one time i was sitting around at alan’s and uh feeling kind of down and he said
00:49:41 ►
well um how’s your um how’s your spiritual discipline coming along?
00:49:46 ►
Have you done any yoga lately?
00:49:49 ►
And I said, well, yes.
00:49:51 ►
At this time, I was learning quite a lot of yoga from Virginia.
00:49:55 ►
And I said, well, yes, I learned some new positions the other day,
00:49:57 ►
and they’re pretty good.
00:49:58 ►
He said, well, I think I have one.
00:50:00 ►
I just invented a new one.
00:50:02 ►
Would you like to try it?
00:50:03 ►
I said, oh, sure, yes.
00:50:04 ►
I really would like to further my spiritual discipline and so I said I
00:50:09 ►
stand up now straighter pull your stomach in head up that’s right feet
00:50:15 ►
together toes apart now put your arms down at the side of here that’s right
00:50:20 ►
line your thumbs up all All right. Now laugh.
00:50:25 ►
I said, what? He said, laugh. And with that, first he gave out a sort of belly laugh and then a kind of a tremendously guttural comic peel of laughter.
00:50:38 ►
And then a sort of a girlish titter and then a kind of incredibly
00:50:46 ►
lascivious snicker
00:50:48 ►
and then a peal of the most
00:50:51 ►
pure, heavenly, joyous
00:50:53 ►
laughter you’ve ever heard.
00:50:54 ►
He was his own mood synthesizer.
00:50:56 ►
He really was.
00:50:58 ►
I think some of that laughing is on one of his records.
00:51:00 ►
It is on one of his records.
00:51:02 ►
This is it, isn’t it?
00:51:04 ►
Would you say that Alan was isn’t it? Yeah. This is it.
00:51:05 ►
Would you say that
00:51:06 ►
Alan was a happy man?
00:51:08 ►
Sometimes.
00:51:11 ►
I don’t think he was
00:51:12 ►
ever down, really,
00:51:15 ►
for any length of time.
00:51:16 ►
He certainly didn’t
00:51:17 ►
want other people to see it.
00:51:19 ►
But he was never really
00:51:20 ►
oppressed by them
00:51:22 ►
for any length of time.
00:51:23 ►
I think he had
00:51:24 ►
He could bounce, let’s say. He went down a very long time. He could bounce.
00:51:25 ►
He went down just like everybody else, but he bounced back.
00:51:28 ►
Between himself and what was happening.
00:51:31 ►
And he had such enjoyment of everything,
00:51:33 ►
sound and whatever he would see, he would touch, he would taste.
00:51:39 ►
His perception was so keen and such a pleasure to him
00:51:42 ►
that I think that was one of the reasons that he could be…
00:51:44 ►
Yes, and as Oliver said earlier, that he was always present.
00:51:48 ►
Oh, present.
00:51:48 ►
You know, totally there for whatever was happening.
00:51:52 ►
So it gave him the capacity for appreciating all of these things.
00:51:57 ►
Yeah.
00:51:57 ►
Because nothing passed him by.
00:51:58 ►
His sense of responsibility was really tremendous.
00:52:01 ►
Yes.
00:52:02 ►
What did he tell me when you talked about his sense of responsibility?
00:52:05 ►
I sensed that, too, in his own integrity,
00:52:07 ►
but how did you see it?
00:52:10 ►
Well, towards his family
00:52:11 ►
and towards anyone that he felt…
00:52:14 ►
Curtis’ family.
00:52:16 ►
Oh, yes, as a friend, it was superb.
00:52:18 ►
It was.
00:52:19 ►
Yes, I remember I sent him
00:52:21 ►
the manuscript of this timeless moment
00:52:24 ►
before it was published because I would have liked
00:52:29 ►
to have his reaction. Within 24 hours he called up on the telephone and he was very sweet. He said,
00:52:37 ►
while you were in my day I was going to pack today. I have to go away tomorrow and here I
00:52:41 ►
cannot leave this book. But I mean he was so gentle and so beautiful, you know,
00:52:45 ►
giving very generously.
00:52:47 ►
I mean, who can take a book and read it right away, you know,
00:52:51 ►
whatever, leaving aside what happened and what has to be done.
00:52:55 ►
And so he was very touching to me.
00:52:57 ►
He was very gracious.
00:52:59 ►
He was a generous friend.
00:53:01 ►
He was a supporting friend.
00:53:01 ►
He was a generous friend.
00:53:04 ►
He was a supporting friend.
00:53:10 ►
I remember once I took him the manuscript of a book that a young anthropology student who was a friend of mine
00:53:12 ►
had written at UCLA,
00:53:14 ►
who had given it to me for his looking at.
00:53:17 ►
And I said, Alan, this is really a remarkable book.
00:53:23 ►
I know this person has never written anything before,
00:53:26 ►
but it really describes some of the experiences that you really know about.
00:53:32 ►
And I know you’re very busy, but would you have time to look through it?
00:53:36 ►
I gave it to him, expecting to get it back in a week.
00:53:40 ►
That night, as everybody slept slept Alan read this book
00:53:45 ►
and in the morning as I left
00:53:49 ►
he gave me the manuscript
00:53:51 ►
completely interleaved with comments
00:53:53 ►
that he had made on this entire book
00:53:55 ►
I took it back to its author
00:53:58 ►
who appreciated it very much
00:54:00 ►
and that book was
00:54:02 ►
eventually The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda
00:54:07 ►
really Oliver you as an artist and as professor of art this is sculptor know
00:54:20 ►
something about Alan’s knowledge and appreciation of art. Could you tell us about it?
00:54:26 ►
Well, Alan had a great sympathy, I think,
00:54:31 ►
for the art of all ages and times of his own,
00:54:34 ►
and of course a particular appreciation of calligraphy
00:54:40 ►
and the arts of the East and the art of India,
00:54:45 ►
which he particularly loved.
00:54:48 ►
And I think the whole concept of Indian cosmology
00:54:51 ►
is represented by the great frescoes of Ajanta
00:54:55 ►
and the caves at Elephanta and so on
00:54:57 ►
were particularly beautiful and meaningful to him.
00:55:01 ►
But he also had really very lively appreciation
00:55:04 ►
of the art of our time. In 1969,
00:55:07 ►
I did a show at UCLA. I collected a lot of artists who were then using the most modern
00:55:13 ►
technology available to make electric art, art with light, art with magnetism, that sort
00:55:19 ►
of thing. And I asked Alan to write the introduction to the catalog that I wrote. I remember I phoned him from Chicago and he was, I forget where,
00:55:28 ►
and he immediately did this and wrote this, I thought,
00:55:31 ►
very interesting, penetrating article of art criticism
00:55:36 ►
and in a marvelous way predicted a lot of the things that have happened in art.
00:55:42 ►
He predicted an art which used light,
00:55:47 ►
in which used people,
00:55:49 ►
in which the means of the art would disappear,
00:55:51 ►
in which the window would disappear
00:55:53 ►
and open you out into nature,
00:55:55 ►
in which nature and life and man
00:55:59 ►
would all become a really continuous expression of art
00:56:03 ►
rather than art being isolated objects and isolated incidents.
00:56:09 ►
And in a strange way, that is one of the courses
00:56:11 ►
that art has taken in the last few years.
00:56:16 ►
I understand some of you attended his funeral.
00:56:19 ►
What was it like?
00:56:21 ►
Zen Buddhist ceremony.
00:56:24 ►
What happened?
00:56:26 ►
To me, the most striking thing about it was the incredible mixture of a kind of magnificent
00:56:33 ►
bareness and austerity with an incredible richness.
00:56:38 ►
There was this enormous barn, which was really the Zendo, And there was nothing in it except a Buddha at one end,
00:56:46 ►
an enormous drum at the other,
00:56:48 ►
a small dais in the center on which Alan’s remains
00:56:52 ►
and a photograph of him were placed.
00:56:55 ►
And then in walked the monks of the Zen center,
00:56:59 ►
all dressed in somber black.
00:57:03 ►
But behind them, Roshi Baker dressed in a magnificent gold brocade gown
00:57:09 ►
with a million butterflies and scarlet birds
00:57:12 ►
and with a high gold helmet on his head.
00:57:17 ►
And he proceeded to chant and to talk about Alan
00:57:22 ►
and addressed Alan directly,
00:57:31 ►
saying, you, Alan, showed us this way and that way and so on.
00:57:35 ►
One of the most incredibly moving parts of that ceremony is after the chanting, which was all extremely measured,
00:57:39 ►
and the drum beats, which were also very composed.
00:57:43 ►
Suddenly, at the high moment of the ceremony,
00:57:45 ►
Dick Baker let out a blood-curdling shriek.
00:57:50 ►
Just absolutely broke everyone up.
00:57:55 ►
He’s like, don’t hang around here anymore.
00:57:57 ►
Get off of that chaplain’s list, you know?
00:58:04 ►
I had a sort of
00:58:05 ►
peculiar private experience
00:58:07 ►
during that ceremony
00:58:08 ►
I felt very much
00:58:11 ►
in contact with
00:58:12 ►
Alan, with his essence
00:58:15 ►
and I could hear him laughing
00:58:17 ►
and he said
00:58:19 ►
if the Buddha
00:58:21 ►
were to walk into this room
00:58:23 ►
he would say,
00:58:25 ►
I am not a Buddhist.
00:58:32 ►
That’s marvelous.
00:58:34 ►
I don’t know where it came from.
00:58:38 ►
It seemed to come from Allah.
00:58:39 ►
He has a message.
00:58:40 ►
He’s right on.
00:58:41 ►
Yes, he’s right on.
00:58:45 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,
00:58:48 ►
where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
00:58:54 ►
Okay, so I’m just going to have to add one more story about Alan Watts,
00:58:58 ►
and it’s one you’ve already heard.
00:59:01 ►
Myron Stolaroff told it in one of the Lone Pine Stories podcast,
00:59:07 ►
and in it, Myron tells about the time when he returned from Mexico after visiting Timothy Leary, where he and Gary Fisher
00:59:13 ►
and some others were having an adventure down in Zihuatanejo, and then reporting back to Al Hubbard
00:59:19 ►
about the goings-on down there. And Hubbard’s response was that something had to be done to quiet that group down a bit.
00:59:27 ►
And so Al and Myron went up to consult with Alan Watts
00:59:31 ►
about it on his houseboat,
00:59:32 ►
the same one where the Houseboat Summit took place some years later.
00:59:36 ►
Well, what was decided was that Alan would travel to New York,
00:59:40 ►
where the Leary entourage had by then settled at Millbrook,
00:59:44 ►
and try to talk Timothy Leary into laying low
00:59:47 ►
and taking a more underground approach to the newly evolving LSD scene.
00:59:52 ►
And I’ll never forget Myron’s response when I asked him how that trip to Millbrook worked out.
00:59:57 ►
When I asked the question, Myron just smacked his brow with his palm and said,
01:00:03 ►
it was like throwing gasoline on a fire.
01:00:06 ►
Alan went native and joined them.
01:00:08 ►
And we all know the rest of the story, I guess.
01:00:11 ►
Although in some cases, like mine and yours, that story is still playing out.
01:00:17 ►
And it seems to get more interesting and Baroque each day.
01:00:21 ►
And speaking about Baroque, or at least out of the ordinary for a guy like me,
01:00:26 ►
here is part of an email I received a while back from longtime salonner and donor Ido H.
01:00:33 ►
And Ido, my guess is that you wouldn’t object to my using your full name here, but I’m not
01:00:38 ►
quite sure how to pronounce it, and I don’t want to mangle it. So anyway, here is part
01:00:42 ►
of what Ido had to say. Now is also a time to tell you
01:00:46 ►
about my recently, and first ever, published book, Technomistica, Consciousness in the Age of
01:00:53 ►
Technology. It was published last July in Hebrew and has an extensive section about psychedelics,
01:00:59 ►
a recurring topic which occurs throughout the book. Actually, to my knowledge, it’s the most
01:01:04 ►
extensive text to have been written and published in Hebrew about psychedelics. The book references Thank you. added a few lines about the site. So you are now a part of my book. Well, Ido, I am truly honored.
01:01:26 ►
And as far as I know,
01:01:28 ►
yours is the very first citation of the Psychedelic Salon in any book anywhere.
01:01:33 ►
And to have the first citation in the ancient Hebrew language is a double honor.
01:01:38 ►
Even though I won’t be able to read it myself, I should add.
01:01:41 ►
Anyway, Ido goes on.
01:01:43 ►
I also thought you might be interested in knowing that I am currently working on a paper about the psychedelic philosophy of science,
01:01:50 ►
following the works of Robert Anton Wilson and McKenna.
01:01:53 ►
In fact, most of the sources I use for the McKenna parts are taken out of the podcast on the Psychedelic Salon.
01:02:00 ►
So again, thank you.
01:02:02 ►
Also, I would like to ask you if you might be able to tell me at which year some of the recordings on the site were made,
01:02:08 ►
so I can use this info in my analysis.
01:02:10 ►
I would specifically like to know at which year number 180 and number 166 were recorded.
01:02:16 ►
Might you have that information?
01:02:18 ►
Thank you for everything.
01:02:20 ►
Warm regards from Tel Aviv, Idaho.
01:02:23 ►
I wish I could help you with the date information you’re looking for,
01:02:27 ►
but there are no clues in my very scanty records about either of those talks.
01:02:32 ►
However, the chances are high, no pun intended, by the way,
01:02:35 ►
but the chances are high that a couple of our fellow salonners
01:02:39 ►
maybe were actually present at those talks and let us know when they took place.
01:02:44 ►
So if you were one of those people, or if you happen to know the answers,
01:02:47 ►
it’d be very cool if you went to our blog and posted the answer in the comments section for those two podcasts.
01:02:53 ►
And again, there are podcasts number 180 and 166 that we’re wondering about.
01:02:59 ►
And I’ve also received several announcements about other podcasts that some of our fellow salonners are involved in,
01:03:04 ►
either as guests or hosts.
01:03:07 ►
And I’ve actually been able to at least spot check most of them, and I find that their creativity and wide range of interests is quite compelling.
01:03:16 ►
And if you are looking for some new podcasts yourself, or if you have one that you want to announce,
01:03:21 ►
that you want to announce,
01:03:23 ►
my recommendation is to surf over to thegrowreport.com forums
01:03:25 ►
where you’ll see, first of all,
01:03:27 ►
a list of all the fantastic programs
01:03:29 ►
that are available at dopetheme.co.uk
01:03:33 ►
on the Dope Themes Cannabis Podcast Network.
01:03:36 ►
And right below that
01:03:37 ►
is a listing of more great podcasts,
01:03:40 ►
which includes links to and discussion about
01:03:44 ►
KMO Sea Realm, The Salon, and Black Light in the Attic, among others.
01:03:50 ►
And by the way, Lita just returned this week after a little hiatus, so welcome back, Sancho and Cody.
01:03:57 ►
And following that is a listing for other podcasts of interest,
01:04:00 ►
and there you can learn about the new Visionary Artist podcast by Ostrich,
01:04:05 ►
and on whose show I’ll be appearing sometime early next year.
01:04:09 ►
So if you just got your new MP3 player and are looking for a wide range of music, comedy,
01:04:15 ►
and serious stuff all lumped together, you won’t find a better place to begin your search
01:04:19 ►
than on the forums at thegirlreport.com, for which we have Xandor and Mrs. Z to thank
01:04:26 ►
for providing to our community as a way of finding the others.
01:04:30 ►
I know I don’t say this often enough,
01:04:32 ►
but Xandor and Mrs. Z,
01:04:34 ►
hey, you guys are making a really positive difference in this world,
01:04:38 ►
and we’re all in your debt on many levels,
01:04:40 ►
so much love to you both.
01:04:43 ►
Well, I’d like to go on, but the
01:04:46 ►
plot of my new novel is thickening
01:04:48 ►
as we speak, and so I’d better go
01:04:49 ►
close this podcast and get back to
01:04:52 ►
stirring the pot some more.
01:04:54 ►
But first I’ll again
01:04:56 ►
remind you that this and
01:04:57 ►
most of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon
01:05:00 ►
are freely available for you to
01:05:02 ►
use in your own audio projects
01:05:04 ►
under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike 3.0 license.
01:05:09 ►
And if you have any questions about that,
01:05:11 ►
just click the Creative Commons link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage,
01:05:16 ►
which you can find at psychedelicsalon.org.
01:05:19 ►
And if you’re interested in the philosophy behind the Psychedelic Salon,
01:05:23 ►
you can hear all about it in my novel, The Genesis Generation,
01:05:27 ►
which is available right now only as an audiobook,
01:05:30 ►
and you can download that at genesisgeneration.us.
01:05:35 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo, signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
01:05:40 ►
Be well, my friends.