Program Notes
Guest speaker: Alan Watts
Alan Watts’ son sent the following message requesting that his father’s talks be removed from the Psychedelic Salon … bye bye Alan!
Mark Watts Said,
Lorenzo if you leave the Alan Watts materials up you will be sued before this month is out.
Lorenzo, my father’s talks are copyright protected. Please don’t post any more of his talks on your podcast and remove the ones you have in the archive.
If you want to listen to this talk you will have to pay his son for the privilege. … Too bad, I thought information wants to be free. I wonder what Alan would say about this?
… although, if you Google “alan watts mp3 torrent” you can find thousands of Web sites that provide free downloads of Watts material.
Also, you will find many hours of free Alan Watts videos on YouTube. … So maybe it is only the Psychedelic Salon that Mark objects to.
[NOTE: All quotations are by Alan Watts.]
“So we have to think again and try and find out, think deeply, what is fundamentally taboo in this culture and perhaps in other cultures as well. What information, in other words, would really let the cat out of the bag and give away the show?”
“But you see, the trouble about deep secrets is they can’t be repressed indefinitely.”
“And we don’t even think that we had anything personally to do with the fact that our fathers once had an evil gleam in their eyes, but that evil gleam was you … coming on.”
“And so underneath the opposition, or the polarity, between self and other or between any other pair of opposites you can think of there is something in common.”
“This is the description of anxiety: Anxiety is the fear that one of a pair of opposites might cancel the other … forever.”
“So one of the problems of the various chemicals which can change the human mind in certain ways so that it becomes apparent that inside and outside go together is that they do rather give the show away. And people who take these chemicals and see through the human game cannot be trusted.”
“What you do is what the universe does, and what the universe does is also what you do.”
“When you are told, from childhood, that you are expected and commanded to behave in a way that will be acceptable only if you do it voluntarily you remain permanently mixed-up.”
“You can’t have pleasure in life without skill, but it isn’t an unpleasant task to learn a skill.”
“It’s very bad form if an actor always acts the same way. That’s what’s called a Star, as distinct from an actor. A real actor can become anything.”
“LSD is simply an exploratory instrument, like a microscope or a telescope, except this one’s inside you instead of outside you. And according to your capacity and knowledge, you can use a microscope or a telescope to advantage. So in the same way, according to your capacity and your knowledge you can use an interior instrument to your advantage … or just for kicks!”
“The thing that we’ve learned from history is nobody ever learns from history.”
“Any law which in a way tries to enforce by the power of the state its private morals, or your own business in looking after your own nervous system, is in a fact an unenforceable law.
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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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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
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And, like I usually do, I would like to begin today’s program by thanking fellow salonners Justin S. and Nigel B.
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for their very generous donations that will be used to help pay the costs of producing and distributing these podcasts.
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So, hey, thank you very much, Justin and Nigel. I really appreciate your support. Now, you may wonder what motivated me to get this week’s podcast out so early.
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Well, you know, like most everybody else these days, I have my ups and downs, and yet each week
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I discover more and more little things falling into place,
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little synchronicities every day almost, and that’s how it was with today’s talk.
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Just before I began to preview it, I discovered that the people that were providing the service that hosted the comments on my matrixmasters.com site had given up,
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and that my ten years of comments were all gone now.
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Now, I won’t say what my first few thoughts were,
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but I quickly realized that I had to do something right away to keep that old downward spiral
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that we all seem to have, keep it away at bay somehow.
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So I started listening to this Alan Watts talk, and gee, it was exactly what I needed to hear just then.
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Now, I can’t promise the same experience for you.
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In fact, I hope you’re not in a place where I was and actually need to hear something that resonates with the real you,
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the person you are when you’re at your best.
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But even if you’re in a good place right now, I think you’re going to enjoy this talk.
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As I just said, it’s by Alan Watts,
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and it was sent to me by fellow salonner Michael H.,
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along with several other talks by Watts.
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But after checking some of the titles,
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I discovered that many of them were talks that were being sold
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by one or another of the companies that hold
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many of his copyrights, so those were off-limits.
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But I did discover this one tape that no one seems to be selling, probably because of the
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topic, which is LSD.
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And you know how that subject scares the robot people.
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And so let’s get back into an alchemist state of mind once again,
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because like a recent Terence McKenna talk I played not long ago,
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right now we are going to hear Alan Watts begin his lecture about LSD
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by telling another alchemist story.
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So let’s join him now.
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I wonder how many of you have ever read a romantic Victorian novel called Zanoni.
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It was written by Bulwer-Lytton.
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And it’s the story of an alchemist, an aristocratic, very good-looking man called Zanoni,
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very good looking man called Zanoni, who was several hundred years old, living in Naples shortly before the French Revolution.
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And he was several hundred years old because he had discovered the elixir of life, which
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was of course supposed to be the quest of all alchemists all over the world,
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not simply something that would turn lead into gold and give one indefinite riches,
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but the secret of immortality.
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And this was the quest of alchemy both in the West and in the Far East.
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And many of the great emperors of China died
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because the Taoist priests gave them mysterious concoctions
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purporting to be the elixir of life.
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Zanoni had an apprentice.
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And one day while the master was out,
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the apprentice could not resist taking a very close look
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at some certain crystal bottles hidden in the depths of his cupboards.
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And this was the elixir.
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And he removed the stopper and took just a slight sniff.
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And then suddenly there appeared before him an absolutely monstrous being.
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an absolutely monstrous being.
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And trembling, he put the stopper back into the bottle and faced this appalling apparition,
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which is called the dweller on the threshold.
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The something or other one has to come to terms with
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before crossing the border into immortality.
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crossing the border into immortality. Now today, we are living in an age which is quite peculiar,
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because in the world of science there are no longer any secrets,
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because the method of science requires that all scientists be in communication with each other.
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And therefore that every scientist as soon as he has discovered something or got a good idea, he rushes into print.
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And it’s important for him to do so because some other scientist somewhere else in the world might be thinking about something on the same lines
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and would be stimulated in his work by this man’s speculations,
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even if not by discoverers.
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And so the whole scientific world tries to remain in communication.
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And for this reason, it was absolutely impossible to keep atomic energy a secret.
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In former ages, that might have been managed
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because there were many secrets once upon a time.
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And people were not admitted to these secrets
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unless they were in some way tested
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and found capable of handling them without running amok.
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We live in such a dangerous age
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because all the secrets are out in the open
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and anybody can run amok with them.
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And that’s just the situation we have to face
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and that is just the situation we have to handle.
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It is too late to stop it
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because that would be, as they say,
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locking the door after the horse has bolted.
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The vice president of an extremely important corporation
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in the United States, very progressive and very vital,
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a few months ago said,
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there are two major forces operating in the world today,
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for good or for evil.
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One is Red China, the other is LSD.
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And there is a certain reason why such a thing as a certain chemical, which is capable of opening people’s minds in a certain way,
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should be something extremely disturbing.
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Because this particular chemical, in common with a number of others that have been known for centuries,
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but have been rather played cool through those centuries,
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but have been rather played cool through those centuries
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is capable
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of doing something
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which simply cannot be tolerated.
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That is to say,
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capable of letting
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properly prepared individuals
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or sometimes improperly prepared individuals
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in on a secret
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which is very closely guarded
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and which is as a matter of fact
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the deepest and most fundamental
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of all our social taboos.
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I have just finished writing a book
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which I have had
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with a sort of tongue-in-cheek attitude had the temerity to call the book and it is subtitled the book you see on the taboo against knowing who you are because that is really the thing that cannot be let out.
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out. Sex is not really a serious taboo in our culture. If you are initiating a young person into life and you realize that your son or daughter is going to college and that you ought
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therefore to have a serious talk with them, they’ll laugh at you and say, all this thing you’re telling
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us about sex we knew years ago and we know more about it than you do. So that is not a subject
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for a serious initiation talk to a young person. So we have to think again and try and find out,
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think deeply, what is fundamentally taboo in this culture and perhaps in other cultures as well.
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in this culture and perhaps in other cultures as well.
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What information, in other words,
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would really let the cat out of the bag and give away the show?
00:09:39 ►
Now, quest around a bit.
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Ask yourself this.
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For what reason would a person be considered hopelessly insane?
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What sort of claims must a person simply not make?
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Well, there is one.
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And that is if anybody claims that he is God. That simply isn’t done. Certainly not in our culture, although it’s very frequent in India. But
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in our culture, that is simply not allowed because we, most of us from a Christian background and if not that from a Jewish background and there’s a great deal in common.
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Because both Christians and Jews are deeply concerned about somebody called Jesus Christ.
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Both Christians and Jews are in a way followers of Jesus Christ in different ways.
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He is a problem to both because he
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was the man who came out and discovered he was God and that simply is
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impermissible. The Jews handled it in one way. The Christians handled it quite as
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effectively in another way. christians handled jesus
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perfectly even more tactfully than the jews by putting him on a pedestal and saying this was
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the only man who ever was god and nobody else was really so before and certainly nobody can be so afterwards. Stop right there.
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Put him on the altar,
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bow down to him,
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worship him,
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so that everything he had to say will be null and void.
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And it worked beautifully.
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But you see, the trouble about deep secrets is
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they can’t be repressed indefinitely.
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As a certain president of the United States once remarked,
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you can fool some of the people some of the time,
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but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
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But you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
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And we human beings have been systematically fooled by ourselves. It isn’t as if there was some deep dark conspiracy with somebody else to blame.
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For quite a number of centuries into the notion that we are strangers in the universe.
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That the world that lies beyond the border of our skins is not ourselves.
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And is some quite alien mechanical contraption into which we arrived.
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And from which we will disappear.
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And we really have nothing very much to do with it.
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It’s something about which we can take an objective point of view.
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We can look at it.
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We can measure it.
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We can calculate it.
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But it all turns out in the end to be some sort of stupid mechanism
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in which we are involved because as bodies we are part of it.
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But it is common sense for most individuals that they themselves aren’t even their bodies.
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They are alienated spooks, which have bodies like people have cars,
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which have bodies like people have cars,
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and in which they go around and confront the external world
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as if it was something in which you were trapped.
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And children can say to their parents,
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I didn’t ask to be born
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just because of your funny love affairs and all that.
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I got mixed up in this world and you are responsible and we don’t even think that we had anything personally to do with the fact that our
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fathers once had an evil gleam in their eyes but that evil gleam was you coming on only you see by Coming on.
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Only you see, by this idea of our own identity that we have,
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we’re able to disclaim responsibility for all kinds of things.
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And say, no, it was my parents.
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See if there’s a fellow taken in juvenile delinquency.
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And he knows a little Freud.
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He can say, well, I couldn’t help it because I was psychoanalytically fouled up when I was a baby even before
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perhaps I was born my mother had all sorts of complexes and then if he gets
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away with that the people in the press say for juvenile delinquents the the
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kids should not be punished but the parents and the parents say hey wait a
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minute we got fouled up by our parents and the parents say hey wait a minute
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we got fouled up by our parents
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and we’re pretty bad parents
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we admit
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but our parents before us
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brought us up in a certain way
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that we’re hopelessly neurotic
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and we can’t really raise children
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but we have to
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so everyone can pass the buck
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all the way down the line
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the woman that thou gavest me
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she tempted me and I did eat.
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And then when God wagged his finger at the serpent.
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Serpent didn’t say anything.
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Because the serpent knew the answers.
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He knew the thing which must not be admitted.
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That the left hand
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goes with the right hand
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that black goes with white
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and that you wouldn’t know what white was
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unless you knew what black was
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and that you wouldn’t know what is was
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unless you knew what isn’t is
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and you wouldn’t know
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what here is unless you knew what there is. And you wouldn’t know
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what you meant by self unless you knew what was meant by other. And that is so simple,
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but everybody contrives to ignore it. Now here’s the problem, you see, that there are certain processes, goes with white and self goes with other.
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And as this becomes clear to you, it’s rather shaking.
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Because, look, if what you define as you is inseparable from everything which you define as not you, just as front is inseparable from back,
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then you realize that deep down between self and other there is some sort of conspiracy.
00:17:09 ►
if these things always occur in combination and look very different from each other and feel quite different nevertheless the feeling of difference between them allows each one to exist
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and so underneath the opposition or the polarity between self and other or between any other pair of opposites you can think of, there is something in common as there is, for example, between figure and background.
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You can’t see a figure without a background.
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You can’t have an organism without an environment.
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Equally, you can’t have a background without a figure or an environment without organisms in it
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or without things in it.
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You can’t have space which is unoccupied by any solid.
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You cannot have solids not occupying some space.
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This is absolutely elementary and yet we don’t realize it
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because for example, the average person thinks that space is nothing.
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That it’s just a sort of not-there-ness in which there are things.
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And we are slightly afraid that not-there-ness, that nothingness, that darkness,
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that the negative poles of all these oppositions will win. That they will eventually
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swallow up every kind of being and every kind of there-ness. But when you catch
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on to the game you realize that that won’t happen. Because what is called not
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existing is quite incapable of being
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there without the contrast of something called existing it’s like the crest and
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the trough of a wave you can’t have a wave that is all trough and no crest
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just as you can’t have a wave which is all crest and no trough such a thing has
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never been manifested in the physical universe. They go together.
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And that is the secret. There really is no other secret than that. But it is thoroughly
00:19:15 ►
repressed. And therefore, we are all educated to feel that we’ve got to fight for the white because the black might
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win we’ve got to survive you must survive that’s the great thing we’re all
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working under and pounding it up day after day in anxiety because this is a
00:19:41 ►
description of anxiety anxiety is the fear that one of a
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pair of opposites might cancel the other. Forever. And if by any chance, by any means,
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you find out that that is not so, you have an entirely new attitude to what human beings
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are doing. Which may be very creative, but which also may be
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very dangerous. You see through the game, the game called white must win, because you Because you know that neither black nor white are going to win.
00:20:27 ►
Because they belong to each other.
00:20:38 ►
So one of the problems of the various chemicals which can change the human mind in certain ways.
00:20:43 ►
So that it becomes apparent that inside and outside go together.
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Is that they do rather give the show away and people who take these chemicals
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and see through the human game
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cannot be trusted.
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They may decide to be good sports
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and go back into the game and play it
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as if it were for real, or they may not.
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And if they don’t, what’s going to happen?
00:21:10 ►
Wowee, that’s pretty serious.
00:21:15 ►
Now, you see, what is, let me speak specifically for a moment,
00:21:18 ►
I said the subject of this is LSD.
00:21:22 ►
LSD is one such chemical
00:21:24 ►
that does produce this curious effect of making
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you aware of the polarity of things. It does lots of other things. It does lots of rather
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unessential and trivial things. And these, of course, in all the publicity in the various
00:21:42 ►
national magazines about LSD, get thoroughly emphasized. In other words when somebody says something’s real psychedelic they mean bizarre
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and when the national magazines try to illustrate the effect of these chemicals with various
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photographs they come on with blurred photographs of all sorts of things higgledy-piggledy messed together.
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Naked girls seen through prisms and people going like this.
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You know?
00:22:12 ►
In Life magazine, they had a whole series of photographs of people like this.
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And you turn over a few pages and here were the wives of the astronauts in front of the
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television when their husbands were out there in space.
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They were going like this.
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You couldn’t tell any difference if you didn’t read the headlines
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well that’s absolutely nothing to do with it
00:22:35 ►
if you wanted
00:22:38 ►
some sort of appropriate illustration
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for a Life magazine article
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on the effects of LSD,
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you would have one very simple solution.
00:22:47 ►
You would publish the most gorgeous color reproductions
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of Persian miniatures and of Moorish arabesques
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and of the illuminations of Celtic manuscripts.
00:23:01 ►
That would give you the story.
00:23:03 ►
So far as changes in human sensation are concerned.
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But there would be one thing very difficult to put across in pictures,
00:23:14 ►
because the people who looked at them,
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if they didn’t get the point of view, wouldn’t see it.
00:23:20 ►
And that is what I will call the sensation,
00:23:23 ►
as well as the intellectual understanding, of polarity.
00:23:29 ►
That is to say, that the inside and the outside, the subjective and the objective, the self and the other, go together.
00:23:41 ►
In other words, there is a harmony
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an unbreakable harmony
00:23:48 ►
when I’m using the word harmony
00:23:49 ►
I don’t necessarily mean something sweet
00:23:51 ►
I mean absolute
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concordant relationship
00:23:56 ►
between what goes on inside your skin
00:23:59 ►
and what goes on outside your skin
00:24:01 ►
it isn’t that what goes on outside
00:24:04 ►
is so powerful that it pushes around and controls what goes on outside your skin. It isn’t that what goes on outside is so powerful
00:24:06 ►
that it pushes around and controls what goes on inside,
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equally so.
00:24:11 ►
It isn’t that what goes on inside is so strong
00:24:14 ►
that it often succeeds in pushing around
00:24:16 ►
what goes on outside.
00:24:18 ►
It is very simply that the two processes,
00:24:23 ►
the two behaviors are one.
00:24:26 ►
What you do is what the universe does.
00:24:30 ►
And what the universe does is also what you do.
00:24:35 ►
Not you in the sense of your superficial ego,
00:24:39 ►
which is a very small, little tiny area of your conscious sensitivity, but you in the sense of your total
00:24:49 ►
psychophysical organism
00:24:51 ►
conscious as well as unconscious
00:24:54 ►
This is not something that arrived in the world from somewhere else altogether that confronts an alien reality
00:25:02 ►
What you are
00:25:11 ►
an alien reality. What you are is the universe, in fact the works, what there is and always has been and always will be forever and ever, performing an act called a John Doe. And this
00:25:19 ►
is such a subversion of common sense. But that fact matter of fact something if you
00:25:26 ►
stop to think about it that is completely obvious only everything
00:25:31 ►
conspires to prevent you from seeing that obvious thing because when you were
00:25:36 ►
babies practically all your parents and your teachers and your aunts and uncles
00:25:42 ►
and your older brothers and sisters got together and they told you who you were.
00:25:47 ►
They defined you as Johnny, who is just Johnny.
00:25:54 ►
And don’t you come on too strong, Johnny, because, no, you’ve got elders and betters around here.
00:26:00 ►
But you’re responsible.
00:26:03 ►
You’re a free agent.
00:26:04 ►
You’d better be.
00:26:08 ►
And so when you are told from childhood
00:26:11 ►
that you are expected and commanded
00:26:14 ►
to behave in a way that will be acceptable
00:26:16 ►
only if you do it voluntarily,
00:26:19 ►
you remain permanently mixed up.
00:26:25 ►
That, if anything, is permanent brain damage.
00:26:33 ►
But that’s the idea, you see, because that’s the game we’re playing.
00:26:36 ►
You started it.
00:26:38 ►
I didn’t.
00:26:40 ►
See?
00:26:41 ►
That’s the game we’re playing.
00:26:43 ►
And we can make all kinds of complexities out of that that and really, in a way, have enormous fun.
00:26:49 ►
But once anybody sees through that, well, we are frightened.
00:26:56 ►
Once you get this sense of polarity, of your inside being the same process as your outside
00:27:04 ►
and your ego being one and the same
00:27:07 ►
process as the whole universe going on. Then we are afraid that people may say, well, good
00:27:15 ►
equals bad, and we can do anything we like, and we needn’t in any way be further subject
00:27:22 ►
to the ordinary rules of human conduct.
00:27:25 ►
And we can wear what clothes we like or no clothes at all.
00:27:29 ►
We can have what sexual life we like.
00:27:31 ►
We can do anything.
00:27:33 ►
And we are going to generally, because the world is being rather oppressive towards us,
00:27:37 ►
challenge the whole thing and run amok.
00:27:40 ►
And a lot of people are doing just exactly that. So I want to introduce into this whole problem some ancient wisdom.
00:27:49 ►
I have really two things to talk about.
00:27:52 ►
How cultures which always did know in some way,
00:27:57 ►
among whom a large number of people always did know this secret, handled it.
00:28:03 ►
And then I want to make some observations about how we are
00:28:05 ►
trying to handle it and how it’s not going to work. Among the Hindus and among
00:28:16 ►
the Buddhists, this view of the real identity of a human being has always been known at least by a very influential minority
00:28:29 ►
the central doctrine of the hindu way of life i call it that rather than a religion is in
00:28:36 ►
sanskrit tatvamasi you’re it put it in a kind of colloquial way you’re it
00:28:42 ►
to put it in a kind of colloquial way you’re it
00:28:44 ►
and it
00:28:46 ►
is the which than which there is no
00:28:48 ►
whicher which they call the brahman
00:28:50 ►
or the atman with a
00:28:52 ►
capital A meaning the self
00:28:54 ►
you are
00:28:58 ►
only just kidding that you’re just
00:29:00 ►
poor little me
00:29:01 ►
see the function of a guru
00:29:03 ►
that is to say a spiritual teacher in India,
00:29:06 ►
is to give you a funny look in the eye
00:29:09 ►
because you come to him and say,
00:29:11 ►
Mr. Guru, I have problems.
00:29:16 ►
I suffer and it’s a mess
00:29:18 ►
and I can’t control my mind
00:29:20 ►
and I’m miserable and depressed and so on.
00:29:22 ►
And he gives you a funny look.
00:29:25 ►
And you feel a bit nervous about the way he looks at you.
00:29:29 ►
Because he thinks, you know, he’s reading your thoughts.
00:29:33 ►
And this man is a great magician.
00:29:34 ►
He can read everything that’s in you.
00:29:36 ►
He knows right down into your unconscious.
00:29:38 ►
And you know all the dreadful things you’ve thought
00:29:40 ►
and all the awful desires you have.
00:29:43 ►
And you are rather embarrassed that this man looks right through you and sees them all that’s not what he’s looking at he’s giving you
00:29:51 ►
a funny look for quite another reason altogether because he sees in you the brahma the godhead
00:30:01 ►
just claiming it’s poor little me and he’s going to eventually by all sorts of subtle
00:30:06 ►
techniques that are called in Sanskrit upaya that in politics means chicanery and in spiritual
00:30:13 ►
education means skillful pedagogy he’s going to try and kid you back into realizing who you really
00:30:21 ►
are that’s why he gives you a funny look.
00:30:27 ►
And why he seems to see right through you.
00:30:29 ►
As if to say,
00:30:31 ►
Shiva, old boy, don’t kid me.
00:30:33 ►
I know who you are.
00:30:36 ►
But you’re coming on beautifully in this act.
00:30:39 ►
That you’re somebody else altogether.
00:30:41 ►
And I congratulate you.
00:30:42 ►
You’re doing a wonderful job playing this part, which you call the person, my person.
00:30:48 ►
You know, a person is a fake.
00:30:50 ►
The word means a mask.
00:30:51 ►
So if you read books on how to be a real person, you’re reading books on how to be a genuine fake.
00:30:57 ►
The word persona, as you know, means a mask, worn in Greco-Roman drama.
00:31:04 ►
So if you come on to the guru
00:31:06 ►
and say, well, he asks you who you are.
00:31:09 ►
Sri Ramana Maharshi,
00:31:10 ►
when anybody came to him
00:31:12 ►
and they said to him, as people do,
00:31:13 ►
who was I in my last incarnation?
00:31:15 ►
Or will I be reincarnated again?
00:31:17 ►
He always replied,
00:31:18 ►
who’s asking the question?
00:31:21 ►
And everybody was irritated
00:31:22 ►
because he wouldn’t give them answers
00:31:23 ►
about what they were in their former lives
00:31:25 ►
he just said who are you
00:31:27 ►
and he looked at you have you looked at photographs of this man
00:31:32 ►
I keep a photograph of him close by because of the humor in his eyes
00:31:37 ►
they’re looking at you with a dancing twinkle
00:31:40 ►
saying come off it
00:31:42 ►
now then saying come off it. Now then, in these Asiatic traditions it is well recognized that people who
00:31:57 ►
get the knowledge that you’re it may very well run amok. And therefore they always couple any method of gaining this,
00:32:07 ►
whether it is yoga, whether it is smoking something or drinking something,
00:32:11 ►
or whatever is the method,
00:32:13 ►
they always couple it with a discipline.
00:32:16 ►
Now I know the word discipline isn’t very popular these days.
00:32:20 ►
And I would like to have a new word for it.
00:32:29 ►
Because most people who teach disciplines don’t teach them very well.
00:32:32 ►
They teach it with a kind of violence.
00:32:37 ►
As if a discipline was something that is going to be extremely unpleasant.
00:32:39 ►
And that you’re going to have to put up with.
00:32:43 ►
But that’s not the real secret of discipline.
00:32:48 ►
I would prefer to use the word skill. Discipline is a way of expression. Say you want to express your feelings in stone.
00:32:59 ►
Now stone doesn’t give way very easily. It’s tough stuff. And so you have to learn the skill
00:33:05 ►
or the discipline of the sculptor in order to express yourself in stone. And
00:33:09 ►
so in every other way, whatever you do, you require a skill. And it’s enormously
00:33:15 ►
important, especially for American people, to understand that there is absolutely
00:33:19 ►
no possibility of having any pleasure in life at all without skill. Money doesn’t buy pleasure.
00:33:28 ►
Ever. Look, if you want to get stoned drunk and go out and get a bottle of bourbon and
00:33:39 ►
down it, you can’t do that except for people who have practiced the distillers art.
00:33:47 ►
You can’t even make love without art.
00:33:51 ►
Where I live in Sausalito, we have a harbor full of ever so many pleasure craft, motor
00:33:57 ►
cruisers, sailing boats, all kinds of things, and they never leave the dock.
00:34:04 ►
All that happens with them is their owners have cocktail parties there on Saturdays and Sundays
00:34:08 ►
because they discovered, having bought these things,
00:34:11 ►
that the discipline of sailing is difficult to learn and takes a lot of time.
00:34:16 ►
And they didn’t have time for it, so they just bought the thing as a status symbol.
00:34:22 ►
So, in other words, you can’t have pleasure in life without skill
00:34:27 ►
but it isn’t a unpleasant task
00:34:31 ►
to learn a skill
00:34:32 ►
if the teacher in the first place
00:34:36 ►
gets you fascinated with it
00:34:37 ►
there is immense pleasure in learning
00:34:41 ►
how to do anything skillfully
00:34:43 ►
to make carpentry things, to cook, to write, to calculate It’s an immense pleasure in learning how to do anything skillfully.
00:34:49 ►
To make carpentry things, to cook, to write, to calculate, anything you want.
00:34:53 ►
It can be immensely pleasurable to learn the discipline.
00:34:56 ►
And it is completely indispensable.
00:35:01 ►
Because look, you may be a very inspired musician.
00:35:05 ►
I’m not a musical technologist, you see, and I regret it, but I’m a word technologist. But I can hear in my head all kinds of symphonies and all kinds
00:35:12 ►
of marvelous compositions, but I don’t have the technique to write them down on paper
00:35:16 ►
and share them with somebody else. Too bad. Maybe next time around.
00:35:28 ►
But you see,
00:35:30 ►
so far as words are concerned,
00:35:32 ►
I can express ideas because I have studied language
00:35:33 ►
and I have worked very hard.
00:35:36 ►
Not that I didn’t like it,
00:35:38 ►
I intensely enjoy
00:35:39 ►
the work of writing a book,
00:35:41 ►
although it is difficult,
00:35:43 ►
but it’s fascinating
00:35:44 ►
to say what can never possibly be said. The work of writing a book, although it is difficult, but it’s fascinating.
00:35:47 ►
To say what can never possibly be said.
00:35:55 ►
So, do you see what’s happening?
00:36:03 ►
What you have to do, you have inspiration, but then you have to have technique to incarnate, to express your inspiration.
00:36:08 ►
That is to say, to bring heaven down to earth.
00:36:11 ►
And to express heaven in terms of earth.
00:36:14 ►
Of course, they are really one behind the scenes.
00:36:20 ►
But there’s no way of pointing it out unless you do something skillful.
00:36:24 ►
You see, we are all at the moment absolutely in the midst of the beatific vision we are all uh one with the divine or some i don’t like that sort of wishy-washy language but
00:36:32 ►
we are all there but we are so much there that we’re like fish in water they don’t know they’re
00:36:38 ►
in water like the birds don’t know they’re in the air because it’s all around them and the same way
00:36:43 ►
we don’t know what the color of our eyes is i don’t mean whether you’ve got blue or brown eyes but the
00:36:47 ►
color of the lens of your eye you call that transparent no color see because you can’t see it
00:36:53 ►
but it’s basic to being able to see anything so in order to find out where you are there has to
00:37:01 ►
be some way of drawing attention to it and that involves skill upaya
00:37:06 ►
in sanskrit skillful means so it’s all very well anybody can have ecstasy
00:37:15 ►
anybody as a matter of fact can become aware that he is one with the eternal ground of the universe.
00:37:28 ►
But since that’s what you are anyway,
00:37:30 ►
I’m going to ask, so what?
00:37:34 ►
When a hero goes on an adventure and he leaves his people
00:37:36 ►
and is going to a strange land,
00:37:38 ►
he can go away and just hide himself around the corner
00:37:41 ►
in an obscure house
00:37:42 ►
and then appear a year later
00:37:44 ►
and say, I’ve been on a year later and say i’ve been
00:37:45 ►
on a heroic journey and tell all sorts of tales and they say prove it because they expect him to
00:37:51 ►
bring back something something which nobody has seen before then they believe you’ve been on the
00:37:57 ►
journey so in the same way exactly anybody who goes on a spiritual journey must bring something back because if you
00:38:07 ►
just say oh man it was a gas anyone can say that now this is why in the
00:38:17 ►
doctrines of Buddhism there is a differentiation between two kinds of
00:38:22 ►
enlightened beings.
00:38:30 ►
They are both forms of Buddha, which is to say the word Buddha means somebody who has awakened,
00:38:33 ►
who has discovered the secret behind all this.
00:38:39 ►
In other words, all this thing we call life with its frantic concerns is a big act,
00:38:46 ►
which you, in your unconscious depth depth are deliberately setting up.
00:38:51 ►
So you can do one of two things when you discover this.
00:38:53 ►
You can become what’s called a pratyeka buddha.
00:38:55 ►
That means a private buddha who doesn’t tell anything.
00:38:59 ►
Or you can become a bodhisattva.
00:39:03 ►
A pratyeka buddha goes off into his ecstasy
00:39:06 ►
and never is seen again.
00:39:09 ►
Bodhisattva is one who comes back
00:39:12 ►
and appears in the everyday world
00:39:14 ►
and plays the game of the everyday world
00:39:17 ►
by the rules of the everyday world.
00:39:20 ►
But he brings with him upaya.
00:39:22 ►
He brings with him some way
00:39:23 ►
of showing that he’s been on the journey,
00:39:26 ►
that he’s come back,
00:39:28 ►
and he’s going to let you in on the secret too.
00:39:31 ►
If you, if, if, if, you’ll play it cool
00:39:34 ►
and also come back
00:39:36 ►
to join in the everyday life of everyday people.
00:39:43 ►
Because this is the rule.
00:39:46 ►
If the world is dramatic if the world as the Hindus say is a big act put on by the divine self
00:39:51 ►
one of the rules of coming on stage is that you don’t come on as yourself you
00:39:57 ►
come on as the part that you’re going to play it’s very bad form if an actor
00:40:03 ►
always acts the same way that’s what’s called a star as form if an actor always acts the same way.
00:40:06 ►
That’s what’s called a star as distinct from an actor.
00:40:09 ►
A real actor can become anything.
00:40:15 ►
And so, but in private life, well, he’s just Mr. Jones.
00:40:22 ►
And but he doesn’t come on the stage that way so in the same way if you know that behind the scenes
00:40:27 ►
in the depths fundamentally you are it you don’t come on that way it always comes on as something
00:40:34 ►
else that’s the rule of the stage because without that there wouldn’t be a play. There would only be reality.
00:40:46 ►
No illusion. And the whole point of life is illusion.
00:40:50 ►
From the word Latin ludere, to play.
00:40:55 ►
Showbiz.
00:40:57 ►
The show must go on, so don’t give it away.
00:41:01 ►
But truth has a way of leaking.
00:41:07 ►
It gets out. But then the important thing is, you see,
00:41:10 ►
when the truth gets out,
00:41:13 ►
those who catch hold of it
00:41:19 ►
must find a way of staying in contact
00:41:23 ►
with what society calls reality.
00:41:30 ►
That is to say, if you have a radio,
00:41:33 ►
you don’t only need an antenna, you also need a ground.
00:41:39 ►
So what happens in the world of mysticism,
00:41:43 ►
of psychedelic visions and so on, needs to be grounded.
00:41:48 ►
So then there are always two directions in which such a discipline works.
00:41:54 ►
One, preparatory.
00:41:57 ►
In other words, those who taught disciplines for awakening in the Orient
00:42:01 ►
were always careful to screen, first of all to screen those who applied
00:42:06 ►
and then after screening them to make them sensible so that they knew how to handle
00:42:15 ►
the game and of ordinary human existence and play it by the ordinary human rules
00:42:20 ►
in other words that they had strength of character and were not the sort
00:42:29 ►
of people who would be wiped out because they had no strength of character by an overwhelming
00:42:34 ►
experience. Then they let them in. But there are certain disciplines, such as Zen, where you get into the essential secret very early on in the discipline.
00:42:48 ►
And after that, they are concerned with much more training in showing you how to use it.
00:42:56 ►
How to use the power to use the vision which you have acquired.
00:43:04 ►
and so it is with the current what we will call LSD scene
00:43:07 ►
that is raging through the United States
00:43:10 ►
it unfortunately lacks discipline
00:43:16 ►
and I’m not trying to say this in a kind of
00:43:20 ►
severe authoritarian paternalistic way
00:43:23 ►
but only that it would be so much more fun if it had it
00:43:28 ►
in other words when people try to express what they have seen in this kind of changed state
00:43:38 ►
of consciousness they show five movies going on at once, projected upon torn bed sheets, with stroboscopic lights
00:43:48 ►
going as fast as possible at the same time, and 11 jazz bands playing. And they’re going to blow
00:43:55 ►
their minds, baby. And everybody else who hasn’t seen this thing look around and say
00:44:05 ►
well it’s a mess
00:44:06 ►
I don’t like the looks of it
00:44:09 ►
let’s suppose that while you were very very high
00:44:12 ►
on LSD
00:44:13 ►
you looked into a filthy ashtray
00:44:15 ►
and you saw the beatific vision
00:44:17 ►
which is of course the case
00:44:20 ►
because wherever you look
00:44:22 ►
if your eyes are open
00:44:24 ►
you will see the face of the
00:44:25 ►
divine then you come out of your ecstasy with the dirty ashtray and say to
00:44:32 ►
everybody here it is
00:44:40 ►
no there is a possibility if you are an extraordinarily skillful painter or even photographer of
00:44:52 ►
presenting the dirty ashtray so that everybody else will see almost what you saw in it.
00:44:58 ►
But you will have to have a technique which will translate every grain of ash into a jewel because that’s what you actually saw
00:45:07 ►
but that requires mastery of an art
00:45:11 ►
and I’m afraid people think
00:45:16 ►
that all it’s necessary to do
00:45:18 ►
is just throw out any old thing
00:45:23 ►
because under that transformed state of consciousness
00:45:26 ►
any old thing is the works.
00:45:30 ►
But nobody else can see it
00:45:31 ►
if they haven’t shared that point of view.
00:45:36 ►
So then,
00:45:37 ►
this becomes for us in the United States
00:45:42 ►
an extremely important social problem.
00:45:47 ►
The cat is out of the bag. We are living in a scientific world where secrets cannot be kept.
00:45:53 ►
And anyone, anytime, can pick up something which will short-circuit
00:46:02 ►
all the ancient religious techniques, yoga practice, meditation, etc., etc.
00:46:08 ►
This is all very embarrassing, but it will happen, not for everybody, but for a lot of people.
00:46:13 ►
And they will see what all those sages and Buddhas and yogis and prophets saw in ancient times.
00:46:23 ►
And it will be very clear.
00:46:23 ►
And prophets saw in ancient times.
00:46:24 ►
And it will be very clear.
00:46:28 ►
So you see, you can say,
00:46:34 ►
look at all these people who haven’t seen it.
00:46:37 ►
This is a temptation.
00:46:40 ►
Look at them all going about their business,
00:46:46 ►
earning money and grinding it out at the bank or the insurance office or whatever it is every day and how serious they look all about it and they don’t really
00:46:50 ►
know it’s a game. And you can cultivate a certain contempt for people like that. But
00:46:57 ►
it’s very, very bad to do that. Because, of course, don’t forget they have a certain contempt for you you see always the nice people in town who live in the best residences
00:47:13 ►
they know that they’re nice because there are some people on the other side of the tracks who
00:47:21 ►
are not nice and so at their cocktail parties they have a lot to say of the tracks who are not nice. And so at their cocktail parties,
00:47:26 ►
they have a lot to say about the people who are not nice
00:47:29 ►
because that boosts their collective ego.
00:47:34 ►
There would be no other way of doing it.
00:47:36 ►
You don’t know that you’re a law-abiding citizen
00:47:38 ►
unless there are some people who aren’t.
00:47:41 ►
And if it’s important to you
00:47:42 ►
to congratulate yourself on being law-abiding you therefore have
00:47:47 ►
to have some criminal classes outside the pale of course of your immediate associates
00:47:51 ►
on the other hand the people who are not nice they have their parties
00:47:56 ►
and they boost their collective ego by saying that they’re the people who are really in
00:48:02 ►
whereas these poor squares who deliver the mail faithfully
00:48:06 ►
and who carry on what you call responsible jobs,
00:48:10 ►
they’re just dupes.
00:48:13 ►
Or when they earn their money,
00:48:15 ►
all they do is they buy toy rocket ships with it
00:48:17 ►
and go roaring around and so on.
00:48:19 ►
And they think that’s pleasure.
00:48:22 ►
So the people who are not nice boost their collective ego in that way neither of them realizing that they need the other just as much as a flower needs a bee and
00:48:31 ►
a bee needs a flower so you when you see the people who you think are not in on the secret
00:48:42 ►
you if you really understand,
00:48:45 ►
you have to revise your opinion completely
00:48:47 ►
and say that the squares
00:48:49 ►
are the people who are really far out.
00:48:53 ►
Because they don’t even know where they started.
00:48:58 ►
See, an enlightened Hindu or Buddhist
00:49:02 ►
looks at the ignorant people of this world
00:49:04 ►
and says,
00:49:07 ►
my respects. Because here I see the divine essence having altogether forgotten what it is
00:49:15 ►
and playing the most far out game of being completely lost.
00:49:21 ►
Congratulations. How far out can you get so if you understand that
00:49:32 ►
you don’t start a war
00:49:34 ►
with people you might say are square
00:49:36 ►
don’t challenge them
00:49:39 ►
don’t bug them
00:49:40 ►
don’t frighten them
00:49:42 ►
the reason is not because they are immature because they are babies and you mustn’t scare
00:49:48 ►
babies, it’s nothing to do with that.
00:49:50 ►
You mustn’t frighten them because they are doing a very far out act.
00:49:54 ►
They are walking on a tightrope, miles up, and they’ve got to do that balancing act and
00:50:00 ►
if you shout they may lose their nerve.
00:50:04 ►
See that’s what we call the responsible people of the world are doing.
00:50:08 ►
It is an act, it’s a game, just like the tightrope walker.
00:50:10 ►
But it’s a risky one.
00:50:12 ►
And you can get ulcers from it.
00:50:14 ►
And all sorts of troubles.
00:50:16 ►
But you must respect it.
00:50:19 ►
And say congratulations on being so far out.
00:50:27 ►
So now. and say congratulations on being so far out so now this is the whole essence you see of seeing if you really see into this secret
00:50:36 ►
that the world doesn’t contain any serious threats in it because it’s all the basic you running up behind itself and saying boo to see if you can get yourself to jump
00:50:48 ►
out of your skin if you see that be cool
00:50:59 ►
that’s the whole art of Zen you you know, is cool Hinduism.
00:51:08 ►
The Hindus come on a little strong.
00:51:10 ►
When someone like Sri Ramakrishna or openly, pretty much openly announces that he’s the godhead,
00:51:16 ►
that’s a little tough.
00:51:18 ►
And when Sri Ramana accepts the puja of all the followers
00:51:23 ►
and Sri Aurobindo sits every day for darshan,
00:51:26 ►
it’s coming on a little strong. Well, the Zen people feel that that’s just a bit too much.
00:51:34 ►
And the way they come on is they’re ordinary. And they say when two Zen masters meet each other on the road
00:51:45 ►
they need no introduction
00:51:47 ►
when thieves meet they recognize each other instantly
00:51:50 ►
so they don’t say anything
00:51:58 ►
don’t make any claims
00:51:59 ►
as a matter of fact
00:52:01 ►
so far from making claims
00:52:02 ►
all good Zen masters say
00:52:04 ►
they have not attained anything they have nothing to teach as a matter of fact so far from making claims all good zen masters say they they don’t they
00:52:05 ►
have not attained anything they have nothing to teach and that’s the truth
00:52:13 ►
because anybody who tells you that he is some way of leading you to spiritual enlightenment
00:52:20 ►
is just like somebody who picks your pocket and sells you your own watch
00:52:24 ►
enlightenment is just like somebody who picks your pocket and sells you your own watch of course if you didn’t know you had a watch that might be the only way of getting you to realize
00:52:30 ►
now
00:52:39 ►
so then
00:52:42 ►
if though the people who do
00:52:49 ►
by one means or another
00:52:51 ►
prepared or unprepared
00:52:52 ►
disciplined or undisciplined
00:52:54 ►
get into this kind of interior secret
00:52:57 ►
about the nature of the universe
00:52:58 ►
and they have hitherto been insecure about themselves
00:53:01 ►
they’re going to use this secret
00:53:03 ►
as some way of creating trouble
00:53:06 ►
and stirring things up and of boosting their own inadequate
00:53:10 ►
character structure which is a word i prefer to use instead of ego then there’s trouble
00:53:19 ►
because those people who are out there on the tightrope are going to get pretty scared
00:53:21 ►
who are out there on the tightrope are going to get pretty scared.
00:53:25 ►
And they’re going to call in the police
00:53:27 ►
and say this has got to stop.
00:53:33 ►
So then we have a situation
00:53:35 ►
right like that now.
00:53:38 ►
And I want to make a few comments about it.
00:53:44 ►
First of all
00:53:45 ►
the major group
00:53:47 ►
it seems to me that are crying panic
00:53:50 ►
about LSD
00:53:51 ►
are psychoanalysts
00:53:55 ►
to them this sort of thing is extremely threatening
00:54:00 ►
because psychoanalysis in its theory
00:54:04 ►
whether it be Freudian or whether it be Jungian
00:54:06 ►
has a theory of the unconscious which is not unrelated to the general philosophy of science
00:54:15 ►
of the 19th century which is that the unconscious called the libido by the Freudians is totally uncivilized blind lust for the
00:54:35 ►
unions it may be something even more dangerous than that because they have
00:54:41 ►
not settled for the idea that it’s a sexual unconscious. It may be much more sinister than that.
00:54:48 ►
Deep down there is the spider mother.
00:54:52 ►
There are the screaming memes at the bottom of that pit.
00:54:56 ►
And Esther Harding in her book Psychic Energy says that civilization is a mere veneer over the abysmal depths of primeval slime.
00:55:04 ►
is a mere veneer over the abysmal depths of primeval slime,
00:55:08 ►
in which there are the great serpents and appalling influences just waiting for a chance to get up there and raise hell.
00:55:13 ►
So if you are psychoanalytically oriented,
00:55:16 ►
you are necessarily terrified of the unconscious.
00:55:19 ►
But you’ve learned a trick.
00:55:21 ►
They say the old-fashioned Christians,
00:55:23 ►
they discipline the unconscious with a club.
00:55:28 ►
Bible and birch rod.
00:55:30 ►
See?
00:55:31 ►
And they knocked it down.
00:55:32 ►
The Freudians said, no.
00:55:34 ►
This is a very dangerous creature, but you’ve got to train it in a different way, like a good horse trainer.
00:55:38 ►
Doesn’t use the whip, but lumps of sugar.
00:55:42 ►
But it’s still the same animal.
00:55:47 ►
sugar. But it’s still the same animal. In other words, this whole philosophy of Western man as it crystallized in the late 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries is that what we call
00:55:53 ►
humanity, consciousness, spirituality, values is simply a veneer. The real thing underneath,
00:55:59 ►
the gutsy thing, is a terrible monster. And watch for that so anything that happens that might let that creature loose is looked upon by psychoanalysis as terrible I don’t
00:56:10 ►
know I’m not going to accuse them of worrying about LSD because they think
00:56:13 ►
you’re going to be put out of a job I don’t think that LSD is an automatic
00:56:19 ►
psychotherapy at all it needs if you’re going to use it for that purpose, you need psychotherapy
00:56:26 ►
in the ordinary way along with it. LSD is simply an exploratory instrument, like a microscope or
00:56:32 ►
a telescope, except this one’s inside you instead of outside you. And according to your capacity
00:56:38 ►
and knowledge, you can use a microscope or a telescope to advantage. So in the same way,
00:56:43 ►
according to your capacity and your knowledge, you can use an interior instrument to your advantage or just for kicks but when these
00:56:53 ►
people you know really feel threatened by this thing they start sending around messages and
00:57:00 ►
public utterances which sound exactly as if they had taken LSD, had had a bad trip with it, and were coming on paranoid.
00:57:11 ►
And so they are spreading subtle rumors
00:57:14 ►
that this substance causes permanent brain damage
00:57:18 ►
and utter destruction of the superego.
00:57:24 ►
There are people in New York likewise
00:57:28 ►
who are spreading around the idea that you see
00:57:30 ►
once this thing has touched you,
00:57:32 ►
you are as if you’ve had a prefrontal lobotomy.
00:57:38 ►
You are somebody who ought to be put in a concentration camp
00:57:41 ►
because you’ve lost your conscience.
00:57:44 ►
You’re out of order.
00:57:45 ►
And nothing more can be done about it.
00:57:47 ►
Now, do you see how alarming that could be in our day and age?
00:57:50 ►
Think that your brother, your aunt, has got permanent brain damage?
00:57:54 ►
Took some LSD?
00:57:56 ►
You see, the situation is exactly powerful.
00:57:59 ►
You know, the thing that we learn from history is nobody ever learns from history.
00:58:04 ►
Consider, just go back a few
00:58:06 ►
hundred years to the days of the Inquisition and realize that the theologians of the church
00:58:15 ►
were in those days accorded the same kind of respect that we now accord to the professor
00:58:20 ►
of pathology at the University of California Medical School or to the professor of pathology at the University of California Medical School, or to the professor of physics at Caltech.
00:58:28 ►
We think those people are real authorities.
00:58:31 ►
They know it works.
00:58:33 ►
They’ve experimented.
00:58:34 ►
They have knowledge.
00:58:35 ►
They are the wisest people in our society.
00:58:37 ►
All right, a few hundred years ago, so were the theologians.
00:58:41 ►
And they had the same sense of responsibility towards the community
00:58:44 ►
that our great scientists
00:58:46 ►
and physicians have today and they knew there was a thing called heresy going around that was
00:58:55 ►
not only capable once you caught heresy making you damned to hell forever and ever and ever to the most unimaginable tortures that would
00:59:08 ►
go on without end but that it was infectious and one heretic would soon make other heretics
00:59:16 ►
so those entirely humanitarian and merciful church fathers got together
00:59:22 ►
said what are we going to do to stop this?
00:59:27 ►
Well, now they knew there is an eternal life beyond the grave.
00:59:35 ►
And so perhaps, just in the same way as if you’ve got a cancer and that’s something terrible because it might spread and destroy the whole body,
00:59:38 ►
cut it out, even burn it out if you have to.
00:59:43 ►
And a little pain on the part of the patient and several months on the end of tubes won’t be too bad for if you get rid of it.
00:59:45 ►
So they said, we’ve got to torture these people because they might, in the middle of this extreme experience,
00:59:50 ►
recant.
00:59:51 ►
And if they won’t recant, we’ll burn them
00:59:53 ►
because there’s just the chance
00:59:54 ►
that in the agony of burning at the stake,
00:59:57 ►
they will say at the end,
00:59:58 ►
oh God, forgive me for my sins and it’ll be all right.
01:00:08 ►
Now realize the absolutely merciful intent behind the Inquisitors. Perfectly responsible, acting on the best knowledge that they had in
01:00:14 ►
their day. Don’t you see how that can happen again anytime? Permanent brain
01:00:20 ►
damage. People lost their sense of social responsibility, utterly destroyed by taking the wrong kind of drug.
01:00:27 ►
Now, dear friends, there is absolutely no evidence
01:00:30 ►
for this kind of thing whatsoever.
01:00:32 ►
The only brain damage that has,
01:00:35 ►
I’ve just checked this out with the most eminent authorities
01:00:38 ►
in this area on the subject,
01:00:40 ►
that the only permanent damage that’s been perpetrated,
01:00:44 ►
and even that wasn only permanent damage that’s been perpetrated, and even that wasn’t permanent,
01:00:46 ►
was on some cats,
01:00:47 ►
who were given doses that would be equivalent to a human being
01:00:52 ►
to over 2,000 micrograms of LSD,
01:00:54 ►
the normal dosage for a human being being about 1 to 200.
01:01:01 ►
But give a cat the equivalent for a human being of 2000 micrograms, there will be synaptic
01:01:10 ►
defects that are called acute as distinct from chronic.
01:01:14 ►
That means they will disappear after a little while.
01:01:19 ►
This has been worked out carefully. And there is no evidence whatsoever of any serious neurological damage
01:01:30 ►
to a human being, except in cases where A, they may have taken an absurdly large dose,
01:01:38 ►
or B, taken it in conjunction with some other form of drug, An amphetamine, a barbiturate,
01:01:46 ►
or something like methadone, a narcotic,
01:01:50 ►
which did indeed cut off the oxygen supply to the brain
01:01:54 ►
and therefore cause some damage.
01:01:58 ►
So this scare talk is simply without foundation.
01:02:03 ►
But nevertheless, there are certain reasons
01:02:05 ►
to be cautious and for those who understand the operation of these
01:02:10 ►
chemicals to issue certain clear warnings and this I want to talk about
01:02:16 ►
quite seriously
01:02:21 ►
now this class of psychotropic chemicals, which includes LSD, mescaline, and its original form, peyote, psilocybin, cannabis, and so on,
01:02:33 ►
which is a very mild psychotropic, these do not, in moderation and proper use, in any way harm the physical organism nor form such
01:02:48 ►
habits that you can’t get rid of them without unpleasant withdrawal symptoms
01:02:54 ►
but if you take them in absurdly large doses you are in for trouble I knew a
01:03:01 ►
Methodist minister who was a very violent teetotalitarian and became extremely
01:03:06 ►
sick from drinking too much milk. So after all, if you sit down and you buy a bottle of whiskey,
01:03:13 ►
which you can get at any store anywhere, perfectly legit, and you consume the one quart of whiskey
01:03:20 ►
in one hour, you can expect trouble. So in the same way if you’ve got lsd or
01:03:26 ►
something of that kind and you take a thousand micrograms because some friend of yours took 500
01:03:30 ►
and you want to one-up him uh watch out you’re being just stupid furthermore you’re being rather
01:03:38 ►
stupid if you buy the kind of lsd that is currently being circulated in the black market.
01:03:48 ►
Because, for two reasons.
01:03:50 ►
You don’t know what else is in it,
01:03:53 ►
and you don’t know how much is in it.
01:03:57 ►
There are two sorts of producers of LSD on the black market.
01:04:00 ►
One is the enthusiastic graduate student in chemistry,
01:04:03 ►
who wants to turn the whole world on.
01:04:07 ►
And his product is apt to be
01:04:08 ►
pretty good
01:04:09 ►
but excessive
01:04:10 ►
in dosage.
01:04:12 ►
And what says
01:04:13 ►
100 micrograms
01:04:14 ►
may well be 300.
01:04:17 ►
There is another
01:04:18 ►
kind of producer
01:04:19 ►
who wants to make
01:04:21 ►
a good thing out of it
01:04:22 ►
or who wants to
01:04:24 ►
give you a big jazz but he’ll mix it with amphetamines?
01:04:28 ►
There’s another more sinister kind of producer who leave a cut the amount or mix it with heroin or
01:04:35 ►
Anything any other substance maybe?
01:04:38 ►
Again amphetamines or whatever so get you hooked on it
01:04:44 ►
So you there is no control of the quality of what is being circulated.
01:04:48 ►
None whatever.
01:04:50 ►
And you just don’t know what you’re getting.
01:04:54 ►
Now this situation is the result of the fact that the United States never learns from history.
01:05:04 ►
It is the same old story
01:05:06 ►
of prohibition
01:05:07 ►
to think the naive notion
01:05:09 ►
that you can control
01:05:11 ►
something that might turn into a social
01:05:14 ►
evil by handing it over to the police
01:05:16 ►
now after all who pays the police
01:05:20 ►
you do
01:05:20 ►
and if you can’t control yourself the police won’t control you either.
01:05:29 ►
But in lieu of controlling you, they can suppress you. Now, in all conscience, the police have
01:05:36 ►
enough to do. Not only to control the traffic, which gets worse every day by virtue of Parkinson’s
01:05:43 ►
law, but also
01:05:45 ►
all the possibilities of robbery, violence, murder, and so on and so forth, which is a
01:05:50 ►
full-time job.
01:05:52 ►
But to ask the police to go and look for people who have LSD or marijuana or heroin or opium
01:06:00 ►
or whatever, or who are living irregular sex lives, or who have a gambling joint or
01:06:05 ►
a whorehouse, this is to ask the police to act as officers of the state in service of
01:06:11 ►
the church, uniformed ministers.
01:06:16 ►
And that’s not their job.
01:06:18 ►
And when the police are asked to do that, they are put by lawmakers into a position which brings them into public disrespect as it
01:06:27 ►
did in the days of prohibition it is not fair to the police because if you send the police to hunt
01:06:35 ►
out lsd it is a far more tough job than looking for a needle in a haystack lsd can be disguised as anything whatsoever. It can be mixed with gum and put on an envelope.
01:06:48 ►
It can be entirely absorbed, vast quantities of it, into a piece of Kleenex.
01:06:53 ►
The alcoholic base is then allowed to evaporate,
01:06:56 ►
and nobody would know it from any other dirty piece of Kleenex that somebody stuck away in his pocket.
01:07:00 ►
It can then be reactivated.
01:07:02 ►
It can be made into lacquer to coat pins with.
01:07:06 ►
Anything. It can be disguised as peanut butter, orange juice, aspirin, just sugar, anything you
01:07:13 ►
want. And it’s very difficult indeed to detect. So when you try to suppress that sort of thing by
01:07:21 ►
law, you leave the gates wide open for every kind of blackmail
01:07:25 ►
you want to get rid of your wife or your unfortunate business competitor
01:07:30 ►
just slip them some and then arrange by a roundabout way to tip off the cops
01:07:36 ►
the senator you don’t like political rival
01:07:43 ►
you see any law of this nature any law which in a way tries to enforce by the power of the state private morals,
01:07:51 ►
or your own business in looking after your own nervous system, is in effect an unenforceable law.
01:07:59 ►
And all unenforceable laws lead to blackmail and to public demoralization.
01:08:08 ►
The only way to handle a thing of this kind is to bring it all out into the open.
01:08:16 ►
Nothing can be controlled when it’s driven underground.
01:08:19 ►
It ought to be controlled.
01:08:21 ►
Just in the same way as we have learned how to control automobiles we license people to drive
01:08:25 ►
them so in the same way we don’t sell liquor to minors we expect them to have some kind of
01:08:33 ►
education and grown-up responsibility before they go boozing around so in exactly the same way
01:08:39 ►
society has got to face the fact that it’s going to have to license people for certain spiritual adventures
01:08:47 ►
or perhaps just plain pleasures if that’s what you want to call it after all you can’t even join
01:08:53 ►
some churches without can’t join the catholic church without taking a course of instruction
01:08:57 ►
that takes a few weeks and then they put you through an initiation
01:09:01 ►
and you may say when you get through that well
01:09:05 ►
what was all that preparation for I didn’t feel anything
01:09:11 ►
but so in exactly the same way with this it is completely urgent in other words
01:09:16 ►
that we prevent the occurrence of a very serious socially destructive criminal situation
01:09:26 ►
created by law. You’ve heard of iatrogenic diseases. That means diseases
01:09:32 ►
caused by physicians. There are nomogenic diseases or shall we say nomogenic
01:09:38 ►
crimes. Like somebody said the only serious side effect of marijuana is that you may go to jail.
01:09:48 ►
This is a nomogenic crime.
01:09:50 ►
In other words, it is a ritual crime.
01:09:55 ►
In exactly the same way that when the early Christians refused to burn incense in front of the Roman gods,
01:09:57 ►
in whom the Romans themselves didn’t believe,
01:10:01 ►
they were guilty of a crime. It was a ritual crime.
01:10:02 ►
And they refused.
01:10:05 ►
A reasonable man like the Emperor Marcus Aurelius said to the christians now come off it really do you have to refuse to burn incense
01:10:09 ►
they said yes we’re serious about it
01:10:15 ►
so these are ritual crimes and so in the same way, various ritual crimes exist, and our police, poor devils, are supposed
01:10:28 ►
to enforce it.
01:10:29 ►
And if they don’t, they’re going to get it from the politicians.
01:10:31 ►
Because the politicians have made all the old ladies up in Glendale scared, and Pasadena,
01:10:37 ►
and so on.
01:10:38 ►
They’re all just terrified about this.
01:10:40 ►
And so the politician gets the votes of those old ladies.
01:10:48 ►
And the police have to do what the politician tells them to do.
01:10:52 ►
And you know, the police, they’re just people.
01:11:00 ►
It’s a terrible thing to put the police in a position where they’re going to earn public disrespect.
01:11:07 ►
By enforcing or trying to enforce unenforceable laws.
01:11:27 ►
So I would say in general, to sum up, substances like LSD which give away a secret about the nature of the social game the human game
01:11:29 ►
and what underlies it
01:11:30 ►
are
01:11:33 ►
potentially dangerous
01:11:35 ►
of course
01:11:37 ►
like any good thing is
01:11:39 ►
electricity is dangerous
01:11:40 ►
fire is dangerous
01:11:41 ►
cars are dangerous
01:11:43 ►
planes are dangerous
01:11:44 ►
but not so
01:11:45 ►
dangerous as driving on the freeway. The only way to handle danger is to face it. If you
01:11:55 ►
start getting frightened of it, then you make it worse, because you project onto it all kinds of bogies and threats which don’t exist in it at all.
01:12:08 ►
So this is also a rule.
01:12:10 ►
And please, anybody here who’s a psychotherapist,
01:12:13 ►
if he doesn’t know this already, take note.
01:12:16 ►
If you get someone thrown on your hands
01:12:19 ►
who as a result of taking any psychotropic drug
01:12:22 ►
is in a psychotic state,
01:12:26 ►
don’t be frightened.
01:12:29 ►
Because the moment you’re afraid,
01:12:31 ►
your patient will pick up your fear
01:12:33 ►
by kind of osmosis
01:12:37 ►
and get worse.
01:12:39 ►
The rule about all terrors,
01:12:41 ►
going back to where I started from,
01:12:43 ►
the dweller on the threshold,
01:12:46 ►
the rule for all terrors is head straight into them. When you are sailing in a storm, you don’t let a wave hit your
01:12:53 ►
boat on the side. You go bow into the wave and ride it. So in the same way old folklore says,
01:13:03 ►
this is an old wives tale with a lot of truth in it
01:13:07 ►
whenever you meet a ghost
01:13:08 ►
don’t run away
01:13:09 ►
because the ghost will capture
01:13:13 ►
the substance of your fear
01:13:14 ►
and materialize itself out of your own substance
01:13:17 ►
and will kill you eventually
01:13:20 ►
because it will take over all your own vitality
01:13:23 ►
so then whenever confronted with a ghost walk straight into it and it will take over all your own vitality so then whenever confronted with
01:13:26 ►
a ghost walk straight into it and it will disappear and so in the same way
01:13:32 ►
when people stir up the depths of the unconscious and are confronted with
01:13:37 ►
their own monsters or with the terrors of discovering that they’re in a
01:13:41 ►
relativistic world where black implies white and white implies black so who’s in charge you know grandfather’s dead father’s dead too this leaves me who’s the
01:13:52 ►
authority see when you get that that sense of terror go right at it don’t run away explore
01:14:06 ►
feel fear
01:14:07 ►
as completely as you can feel it
01:14:08 ►
head straight into it
01:14:10 ►
and just it so happens
01:14:11 ►
that these things give you the property
01:14:13 ►
and the opportunity
01:14:14 ►
let me put it that way
01:14:15 ►
the opportunity
01:14:16 ►
to go into
01:14:17 ►
some of your
01:14:19 ►
very very
01:14:20 ►
most closely kept skeletons
01:14:22 ►
and the result of that is invariably beneficial.
01:14:30 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,
01:14:33 ►
where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
01:14:39 ►
Head into your fears and the results will be very, very beneficial.
01:14:44 ►
Actually, I think it was Mark Twain
01:14:46 ►
who once said, the fear of death follows from the fear of life. And I highly recommend thinking
01:14:53 ►
about that on your next acid trip or in your next quiet moment. It may open a few doors that have
01:15:00 ►
been closed off for a while. Now, as I said earlier, Michael sent me over a dozen talks by Alan Watts, and I’ll go through
01:15:08 ►
the others and see if I can find a couple more that we don’t have copyright issues with
01:15:12 ►
and get those out to you.
01:15:14 ►
But for today, I’ve got a couple of quick announcements, and then I’ve got to get going.
01:15:18 ►
The first one comes from Raymond of Spirit Plants Radio, who contacted me through the
01:15:24 ►
forums over at thegrowreport.com.
01:15:27 ►
And he says,
01:15:28 ►
Hey Lorenzo, so we just finished webcasting the recent McKenna six-part salon shows.
01:15:34 ►
I wanted to thank you personally for putting these on.
01:15:37 ►
McKenna is one of those rare souls who is just as profound and provoking in print and on stage.
01:15:43 ►
It gave me utmost pleasure to help get his words out there a little more
01:15:47 ►
and to promote the salon along the way.
01:15:50 ►
We’re doing the Huxley show this coming weekend, another gem.
01:15:54 ►
Huxley remains one of my heroes.
01:15:57 ►
Thanks again for your hard work and good spirit.
01:15:59 ►
Raymond, Spirit Plants Radio, and you can find them at spfradio.yage.net
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So if you get a chance, you may want to check out this 24x7 radio station.
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I’ve stopped by several times now and always found something interesting being played,
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and so I want to thank you, Raymond, and thank you for being part of the salon as well.
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Okay, now for some shameless promotion of a family member.
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Haven’t done that before.
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On this coming Friday night, that’s the 12th of February, 2010,
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a band called The Soft Pack will make their national television debut on The Letterman Show.
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Softpack will make their national television debut on The Letterman Show.
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Now, for full disclosure, their lead singer, Matt Lampkin, was not only once a neighbor of mine,
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he is also a shirttail relative.
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But all that aside, I really love their full-out, straight-ahead rock and roll energy.
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And in a minute or two, I’m going to play a cut from their latest album, but first I want to let our fellow salonners in Europe know about where they can see the soft pack in person.
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As I said, they’ll be on the Letterman Show here in the States on the 12th of this month,
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which is February 2010, in case you haven’t been keeping up lately.
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But since that show’s actually being pre-taped today, they won’t be in the U.S. on that Friday night. Instead
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they’ll be appearing in London at
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HMV Borderline.
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But I’m afraid that show’s already
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sold out. However,
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they will also be appearing in
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Southampton, Brighton, Bristol,
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Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool,
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Newcastle, Glasgow,
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Edinburgh, Leeds, Nottingham,
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Birmingham, Cologne, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Hamburg, and Berlin,
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all between the 13th of this month and the 7th of March.
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And you can find the locations of the venues on their page at myspace.com slash T-H-E-S-O-F-T-P-A-C-K, The Soft Pack.
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T-H-E-S-O-F-T-P-A-C-K, The Soft Pack.
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And actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of our fellow slaunters saw them on their last swing through the UK,
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where they played on one of the stages at Glastonbury, among other gigs.
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And if you do attend one of their shows, be sure to ask Matt Lampkin, the lead singer,
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what his niece, who is also my granddaughter, calls him.
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And then email the answer to me here via Lorenzo at MatrixMasters.com, and I’ll send you a code for a free copy of my book, The Genesis Generation.
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Of course, I forgot to tell Matt that I was going to do this the last time I saw him,
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which was at KMO and Neil Kramer’s Trans Alchemy
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Salon in L.A., by the way.
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But he may wonder what the heck you’re talking about at first if you’re the first one to
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ask him.
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But don’t be shy.
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Matt’s as down-to-earth as you can get, and I’m sure he’ll be cool about it and think
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it’s funny.
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So now, as to what I’d like to do is to play one of their songs. And it was kind of hard for me to pick one of my favorites, so I took the easy way out.
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And I’m going to play their song titled Come On.
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And it’s from their self-titled album, The Soft Pack.
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And it’s also currently a free download on iTunes.
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But if you go to their MySpace page, you can sample a few more of their songs.
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And so now ends my shameless plug. But if you go to their MySpace page, you can sample a few more of their songs.
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And so now ends my shameless plug.
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And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space. Be well, my friends. We’ll be right back. I have to say, now your town could be the next big thing.
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Don’t bother, we’ll just plant the seed.
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We’ll tell the crows into a tree.
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Find what it means.
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Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines.
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I come on.
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I come on.
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I come on.
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I come on. Nowhere to shoot, nowhere to aim
01:20:28 ►
No one to gun, no one to blame
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No one with shame, no one blazed
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To get what they deserve
01:20:34 ►
Don’t take a look, don’t take a glance
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Don’t take a hook, don’t take a chance
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Find what it means
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Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines
01:20:45 ►
Oh, come on, oh, come on
01:20:50 ►
Oh, come on, oh, come on guitar solo Come on Bye.