Program Notes
Guest speaker: Jonathan Talat Phillips
This podcast features a talk given by Jonathan Talat Phillips in Vancouver sometime earlier this year. In it, Jonathan tells the story of how, after a devastating loss as countercultural activist, he embarked on a mystical initiation involving underground ayahuasca ceremonies, kundalini awakenings, DMT cowboys, shapeshifting extraterrestrials at Burning Man, miraculous healings, and an international movement trailblazing visionary ways to help our planet in crisis. Along the way he uncovers the lost rites of the Christian mystery schools and secret “electric” messages for personal and global transformation.
Jonathan is the author of “The Electric Jesus: The Healing Journey of a Contemporary Gnostic.” He co-founded the cutting edge web-magazine Reality Sandwich and The Evolver Network, coordinating 40+ regional Evolver communities. He is a religion blogger for “The Huffington Post,” the creator of “The Ayahuasca Monologues: Tales of the Spirit Vine,” a Reiki Master and Bioenergetic Healer.
The Starck Project
The Starck Project on Kickstarter
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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.
00:00:23 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:29 ►
And to our dear fellow salonners who either purchased a copy of one of my books or who made direct donations to the salon, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
00:00:34 ►
I truly appreciate your support. It really means a lot to me.
00:00:39 ►
So, for today’s program, which is a day or so late this week,
00:01:13 ►
So for today’s program, which is a day or so late this week, I’m very pleased to be able to bring you a talk given by fellow salonner Jonathan Tlok Phillips, who is someone that is well known by many of our fellow salonners for his longtime commitment to building our community, both online and in many other ways. As you most likely know, Jonathan co-founded both Reality Sandwich and the Evolver Network, where he’s now coordinating over 40 Evolver communities, regional ones.
00:01:25 ►
Additionally, Jonathan is the creator of the Ayahuasca Monologues, Tales of the Spirit Vine, which is now in its fifth year and will be held on the 4th of October in New York City.
00:01:29 ►
And I’ll link to that announcement in the program notes for today’s podcast.
00:01:36 ►
As if all of that wasn’t enough, Jonathan is also a religion blogger for the Huffington Post and is the author of a book titled The Electric Jesus, The Healing Journey of a Contemporary Gnostic,
00:01:43 ►
which is the focus of his talk that I’ll be playing for you momentarily.
00:01:48 ►
Now, in about ten minutes, you’re going to hear Jonathan mention that a friend once said to him,
00:01:54 ►
you need to take some MDMA and get your butt on the dance floor, which, in my opinion, is always good advice.
00:02:00 ►
But I want to challenge you with a little historical trivia about taking MDMA and dancing all night.
00:02:08 ►
Now, when you think about the combination of MDMA and electronic music,
00:02:13 ►
have you ever wondered how it all got started?
00:02:16 ►
Well, maybe you’ve heard the version where Genesis P. Orridge heard some house music on a trip to Chicago
00:02:22 ►
and then took it back to the UK, where it was combined with MDMA and Braves were born.
00:02:29 ►
But there was a time and a place where MDMA, electronic music, and a Burning Man-like club scene was going strong, long before Genesis P. Orridge first visited Chicago.
00:02:41 ►
The time and place that I’m talking about is Dallas, Texas,
00:02:46 ►
and the Stark Club in the early 1980s.
00:02:49 ►
And right now you can watch a short video about the Stark
00:02:53 ►
on their Kickstarter page,
00:02:54 ►
where the last $40,000 is being raised
00:02:57 ►
to finish the production of a movie titled The Stark Project.
00:03:01 ►
And it’s been in the making for several years now.
00:03:04 ►
In fact, in next week’s
00:03:05 ►
podcast, I’ll try to remember to tell you about my interview for this film. But right now, if you
00:03:11 ►
have any interest at all in the history and origins of the worldwide dance scene, then check out their
00:03:16 ►
video on the Kickstarter page, which I’ll put a link to in the program notes for this podcast.
00:03:21 ►
And as you know, you can get to that via psychedelicsalon.us.
00:03:25 ►
And just to whet your historical appetite a little more, here’s a brief description of that wild time and place.
00:03:33 ►
And I quote from their Kickstarter page.
00:03:36 ►
Dallas was the epicenter for 1980s counterculture.
00:03:40 ►
The heartbeat of the city was the Stark Club.
00:03:57 ►
The heartbeat of the city was the Stark Club. Shangri-La for the rich, the famous, the uber-hip, movie stars, rock stars, sports celebrities, Dallas debutantes, politicians, and anyone else who had the attitude the fire. Stark was the earthquake that would shake the world
00:04:06 ►
with the emergence of the new progressive subculture
00:04:09 ►
that would soon be known from Los Angeles to Detroit to London to Ibiza as Rave.
00:04:15 ►
End quote.
00:04:16 ►
Next week, I’ll tell you about the interview that I did for the film,
00:04:21 ►
which may be included as a bonus material on the eventual DVD.
00:04:25 ►
Right now, the working title of my interview is
00:04:28 ►
Confessions of an Ecstasy Dealer.
00:04:32 ►
But that’s enough of those stories for now.
00:04:34 ►
Just go check out the Stark Project’s Kickstarter video
00:04:38 ►
and you’ll get a better idea of what I’m talking about.
00:04:41 ►
Now, getting back to our featured talk this week,
00:04:45 ►
as the recording begins,
00:04:46 ►
you’ll hear Jonathan thanking Sobe for keeping the space,
00:04:51 ►
which also gives me the chance to give a shout-out
00:04:53 ►
to my dear friend Sobe,
00:04:55 ►
who has been keeping the space
00:04:56 ►
for a large portion of the dance community
00:04:58 ►
and for our tribe for many years.
00:05:01 ►
In fact, Sobe is one of the people
00:05:03 ►
who even kept the Palenque Norte lectures
00:05:06 ►
at Burning Man alive way back in its second year. And without his involvement, that series
00:05:11 ►
might have died on the vine after its first appearance in 2003. And in case you’ve forgotten,
00:05:18 ►
this podcast is a direct result of that lecture series. So on behalf of us all, Sobe, thanks for keeping our flame alive. And now let’s
00:05:27 ►
join Sobe and some of his friends at a location in Vancouver, where
00:05:31 ►
Jonathan Tlaloc Phillips is talking about what I think of as his
00:05:35 ►
mystical adventure that includes Jesus, aliens, and ayahuasca.
00:05:43 ►
Okay, so it’s great to be here, guys.
00:05:46 ►
Sobi, I’ve got to thank Sobi
00:05:48 ►
for holding the space
00:05:49 ►
for, gosh, like two years now, right?
00:05:52 ►
Over two years.
00:05:54 ►
Just like, you know, holding
00:05:55 ►
monthly spores, really
00:05:57 ►
activating things here in Vancouver.
00:06:00 ►
I’m hoping some of you folks, we’re going to talk
00:06:01 ►
about what Vancouver’s been up to, maybe
00:06:03 ►
get involved and help make some awesome things happen.
00:06:07 ►
I really think Vancouver should have an ayahuasca monologue this year.
00:06:10 ►
That would be really fun.
00:06:12 ►
It would be one of our best events in New York City.
00:06:14 ►
Can you speak up?
00:06:15 ►
Oh, yeah.
00:06:16 ►
I can speak up.
00:06:17 ►
I realize I’m only talking to the front row here.
00:06:21 ►
So, yeah, thank you, Sylvie.
00:06:23 ►
Thank you, Vanden Books.
00:06:24 ►
And thank you, everybody, for coming.
00:06:26 ►
I’m always getting on the Sporganizers.
00:06:28 ►
We have 40 sports in the U.S. and abroad.
00:06:31 ►
And one of the two requirements we have is we’ll host a monthly event, tell us how it goes,
00:06:38 ►
and then we ask them to have an e-mail sign-up sheet.
00:06:41 ►
And I’m always saying, did you guys pass out an e-mail sign-up?
00:06:44 ►
Because we’re
00:06:45 ►
building a transformational network here.
00:06:48 ►
So if you want to receive
00:06:49 ►
announcements of awesome things, of what’s going
00:06:51 ►
on here, and through Evolver,
00:06:54 ►
please sign up.
00:06:56 ►
And just one last thank you.
00:06:58 ►
I would like to thank my brother
00:07:00 ►
here, Drew.
00:07:02 ►
One, for taking care
00:07:04 ►
of me while I’m here,
00:07:07 ►
but also for letting me write about the family very honestly in the book
00:07:10 ►
and supporting me in this.
00:07:12 ►
This book is, a lot of it is about healing.
00:07:16 ►
I’m sure there are plenty of people here
00:07:18 ►
that have things in their family lines to heal.
00:07:21 ►
There’s a horrible healer joke that says,
00:07:24 ►
oh God, I don’t know if you guys have
00:07:26 ►
heard this. What is a healer called in fucked up childhood? Initiation. So we’ll talk a
00:07:37 ►
lot about healing and maybe you guys have healing questions, things you’re going through later, I welcome you to talk about them.
00:07:48 ►
So anyways, if you told me like six or seven years ago that I would be here
00:07:51 ►
talking with you guys about Jesus, aliens,
00:07:56 ►
and ayahuasca, I would
00:08:00 ►
have laughed my ass off. And this is how I start off the book, is saying that.
00:08:04 ►
I was a skeptical, rational, materialist, political activist working to change the world.
00:08:12 ►
But I had been the Burning Man, which meant I was doing it a little more flamboyantly
00:08:16 ►
than some of my other anarchist friends at the time. And the way I was doing this was
00:08:23 ►
it was in 2004 when George W. Bush was
00:08:26 ►
running for the second election. He was coming to New York City, where I was from. I had
00:08:31 ►
actually been working for the September 11th Fund, and so many of them were just really
00:08:35 ►
upset about how they were exploiting September 11th for political gain and to create this
00:08:41 ►
war to basically pay back Halliburtton’s and Bechtel’s and all
00:08:45 ►
those people that had financed his campaign.
00:08:48 ►
So I was really angry about that.
00:08:49 ►
They were coming to New York to exploit the tragedy, and so we created an American revolution
00:08:55 ►
against King George and his corporate tyranny.
00:08:58 ►
And what this meant is we dressed up as very flashy patriots, like 1776 patriots.
00:09:08 ►
It was like Benjamin Collins and Bootsy Franklin. If you put Bootsy, no, I mixed those up. Benjamin and Franklin. If
00:09:13 ►
you got Benjamin Franklin and you got Bootsy Collins and you put them together, this is
00:09:18 ►
what you would have. It was very flamboyant, very flashy, lame this, shiny that, you know.
00:09:23 ►
And it was kind of the Marilyn Manson approach.
00:09:25 ►
The shinier the costume, the more headlines you make.
00:09:28 ►
And so we did these flamboyant media stunts.
00:09:31 ►
We did a Paula Revere’s ride on Horsicle, half bike, half horse,
00:09:36 ►
boarding New York.
00:09:38 ►
The Republicans are coming!
00:09:40 ►
We did that.
00:09:41 ►
We did a crossing of New York Harbor.
00:09:45 ►
Do you know the crossing of the Delaware, that picture of Washington and stuff?
00:09:50 ►
So we did that.
00:09:51 ►
We did a crossing of New York Harbor on the Staten Island Ferry
00:09:55 ►
with all the stunned Staten Island commuters.
00:09:58 ►
It was a crossing of New York Harbor, yeah.
00:10:02 ►
A Declaration of Independence, this 30-foot long scroll. And we actually
00:10:08 ►
had more grievances than the original document against George II. We did these media stunts
00:10:15 ►
and were really successful for a group of 30 people. We were on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, da-da-da-da-da.
00:10:22 ►
And I was even on the cover of New York Magazine. And I think
00:10:27 ►
like the 500 other, 500,000 other people that had participated in the largest protest ever
00:10:33 ►
against the political convention, we thought that political action alone could save the
00:10:38 ►
day. And as you all know, that did not happen. When Bush won the second election, some people say he took it, stole it.
00:10:50 ►
I think he won it, which was actually more disturbing to me.
00:10:54 ►
Because we actually re-elected someone that brought us to war on false pretenses.
00:11:01 ►
That’s a really heavy thing to live with in your country, right?
00:11:05 ►
And so, I just remember my activist friends at the time, they’re like,
00:11:09 ►
if Bush wins this election, there is going to be riots in the street, non-stop.
00:11:14 ►
It’s going to be total chaos.
00:11:17 ►
What happened is, we were all depressed.
00:11:21 ►
Nobody did anything.
00:11:23 ►
Like most of us stayed in bed.
00:11:26 ►
There was even a New York Times article,
00:11:28 ►
because it was just like this horrible drizzle we’re in along the East Coast for like two weeks.
00:11:31 ►
And it was talking about how the weather was just like
00:11:33 ►
everyone within the East Coast.
00:11:35 ►
We were just depressed.
00:11:37 ►
And we felt isolated in the country.
00:11:39 ►
We felt lost.
00:11:39 ►
Like, why are we even part of this thing called the U.S.?
00:11:42 ►
You know?
00:11:43 ►
And I was in bed, just depressed, looking at an entire lost year of my life, gone.
00:11:53 ►
And then I started looking at the planetary situation.
00:11:57 ►
We’re in what’s called the sixth great extinction right now,
00:11:59 ►
with three species dying every hour.
00:12:02 ►
So by the end of this presentation, there may be a few less friends among us.
00:12:09 ►
And it just hit me that this is way too big
00:12:12 ►
for politicians to figure out.
00:12:15 ►
Whether I voted Democrat or Republican,
00:12:18 ►
it was not going to help our Earth
00:12:21 ►
that’s just in so much crisis right now.
00:12:23 ►
And what somehow occurred to me is
00:12:25 ►
we needed a paradigm shift.
00:12:30 ►
And I also want to kind of point out something that
00:12:32 ►
I realized, because I started wondering,
00:12:35 ►
where did things get so messed up?
00:12:37 ►
Where did it go wrong?
00:12:38 ►
There had to be something here,
00:12:39 ►
some underlying thing that created all of this.
00:12:44 ►
And I was always interested in revolution. Sexual, psychedelic,
00:12:48 ►
you know, French, American, all of this. But all of a sudden, I was
00:12:52 ►
obsessed with empire. And I felt like this comes from
00:12:56 ►
empire. And I just started following empires back throughout history.
00:13:01 ►
American, British, German,
00:13:04 ►
Roman, Greek, back, back, back, back, back.
00:13:07 ►
And then I got to the weirdest place of all.
00:13:10 ►
And I’m not a religious guy, but it was the Garden of Eden.
00:13:14 ►
And I was looking at this myth, realizing that this myth seemed to sum up a historical leap in our planetary culture, if you will.
00:13:27 ►
Because in this, you have a tribal model of existence.
00:13:31 ►
Adam and Eve, living with the birds and bees and nature.
00:13:34 ►
It’s kind of this tribal culture.
00:13:37 ►
And then there’s this rift that happens.
00:13:40 ►
There’s a bite of knowledge.
00:13:43 ►
And then suddenly you have this separation from God.
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You have patriarchy and I think you have
00:13:48 ►
the most damaging thought
00:13:49 ►
virus on the entire planet,
00:13:51 ►
which is original sin.
00:13:54 ►
You were born bad. God doesn’t
00:13:55 ►
love you. You are not worthy. You have to prove
00:13:57 ►
your love and even though you prove it, it’s never
00:13:59 ►
going to be good enough. Shame. Blame.
00:14:03 ►
And if you
00:14:03 ►
look at the next chapter
00:14:06 ►
in the Bible, right after
00:14:08 ►
that, what do you have? You have
00:14:10 ►
civilization. You have agriculture.
00:14:12 ►
You have Cain and Abel
00:14:13 ►
domesticating animals and toiling
00:14:16 ►
in the fields. And we all know
00:14:18 ►
how that worked out, right?
00:14:19 ►
The old Cain and Abel story. And I think
00:14:21 ►
that mythology of
00:14:24 ►
the agricultural revolution,
00:14:26 ►
which it happens right in the Fertile Crescent,
00:14:29 ►
spreads across the planet and creates a pretty traumatic situation for us
00:14:34 ►
as far as collective consciousness goes.
00:14:38 ►
So I was looking at that and thinking, oh my God,
00:14:40 ►
we need a paradigm shift.
00:14:43 ►
We need a Galileo-type paradigm shift
00:14:46 ►
where we just see the world in an entirely different way.
00:14:51 ►
And I mean, I know Copernicus kind of discovered it first,
00:14:53 ►
but Galileo really popularized this idea of,
00:14:57 ►
guess what?
00:14:58 ►
The universe does not revolve around us.
00:15:01 ►
We revolve around the sun,
00:15:02 ►
and everything’s relational in a different way
00:15:05 ►
than we once thought. And it didn’t just change the way we kind of look at the sky, it changed
00:15:09 ►
the way we look at each other in our world. So as a defeatist, defeated activist, temp
00:15:18 ►
worker, I started doing this looking for a paradigm shift, right? Which, you know, I
00:15:24 ►
wasn’t a visionary scientist or philosopher or anything,
00:15:27 ►
which seems like a little foolhardy to do.
00:15:29 ►
And I looked for months and months.
00:15:31 ►
And then in the book, I describe the story in much more detail,
00:15:35 ►
but you guys know that Chinese course, May You Get What You Wish For.
00:15:40 ►
Yeah, well, that’s what happened to me.
00:15:41 ►
My girlfriend at the time, she called me up and she’s just like,
00:15:46 ►
look, you’re turning 30, you’ve been talking, bitching about, you know,
00:15:51 ►
paradigm shifts in politics for months.
00:15:53 ►
You need to take some MDMA and get your butt on the dance floor.
00:16:01 ►
And I was like, you know what?
00:16:07 ►
There’s going to be a lot of talk about drugs. It’s a good thing we didn’t bring Blake.
00:16:11 ►
I was going to say, your coffee might give you scars.
00:16:14 ►
When he hits about 21, I think I might have a little talk with him.
00:16:18 ►
So, take some MDMA and get your butt on the dance floor. And then something, you know, some of the critics of my book have already said,
00:16:28 ►
oh, this guy took a pill and he thinks it’s mystical experience, and da-da-da-da, he doesn’t
00:16:32 ►
know about Jesus, you know.
00:16:33 ►
It’s like, wait a second.
00:16:36 ►
This is the most ancient thing that we’ve done, and it works really well.
00:16:41 ►
Cultures across the planet for centuries, since the dawn of human existence,
00:16:46 ►
have been taking consciousness-altering substances, dancing, drumming, to create altered states
00:16:54 ►
of consciousness, to create transformation for the individual and the collective as a
00:16:58 ►
whole. And that’s what happened to me as I got out of my head, I got into my heart, and then a series of amazing consynchronicities, which I describe in the book, line up, and poof, the lights turn on.
00:17:13 ►
And suddenly, I can see energy fields around people, around furniture, around everything. And I realized that we are not separated, isolated, protoplasmic beings only.
00:17:29 ►
That we are actually, you know, all interconnected energetically.
00:17:34 ►
And, um, which can actually be a little disturbing when you’re on a New York subway.
00:17:39 ►
Everyone is actually all part of one and they don’t know it.
00:17:44 ►
And it also isn’t really great for your day job, starting to see energy fields.
00:17:49 ►
I had this temp job.
00:17:50 ►
I thought I was going crazy.
00:17:52 ►
People would come in, and they’d be like,
00:17:55 ►
this needs to be done by 5 o’clock, da-da-da.
00:17:57 ►
And meanwhile, there was this perfect white background behind them,
00:18:00 ►
and I could just see this giant aura.
00:18:02 ►
I’d be like, wow, you know, I really don’t care about the FedEx right now.
00:18:07 ►
And so
00:18:07 ►
I got fired.
00:18:13 ►
And I was
00:18:13 ►
moping around the East Village, which you do
00:18:15 ►
unemployed in New York City, in my
00:18:17 ►
temp clothes, you know, the khaki outfit
00:18:19 ►
and that whole thing. And
00:18:21 ►
just feeling like I was crazy,
00:18:23 ►
I was broke. Bush is in office,
00:18:25 ►
he’s the freaking president now. What is this about? And then, you know how people say,
00:18:32 ►
have you found Jesus? This is the moment where, probably to my parents’ joy, that Jesus found
00:18:39 ►
me. And it was a form of this poster on a construction site.
00:18:48 ►
You know, it was a normal-looking hippie Jesus with a hand out to help you.
00:18:53 ►
But around him was exactly what I was seeing.
00:18:59 ►
And I remember kind of sacrilegiously saying to myself,
00:19:01 ►
Holy shit!
00:19:03 ►
Halos really exist.
00:19:06 ►
And the skeptical, rational, know-it-all me had to eat a lot of like,
00:19:13 ►
I don’t know the word for that, but I had to suck it up a little bit and admit I was wrong.
00:19:18 ►
That I didn’t know everything. That there was a whole mystical universe,
00:19:22 ►
and that visionary artists and mystics throughout time
00:19:26 ►
had been messaging this, and I felt like they had a message to me in this image of saying,
00:19:30 ►
you are not crazy. Other people are going through this. Follow, follow the clues if
00:19:37 ►
you want to find your way home, and what this is about. And so strangely enough, I started studying Jesus, early Christianity, and what I found out was it was just so much more marvelous than what we’ve been told.
00:19:54 ►
We’ve been like regurgitated this literalist version that’s extremely boring.
00:20:01 ►
Early Christianity was diverse. It was mystical. I think the evidence is pretty
00:20:05 ►
overwhelming that it stemmed from the Mediterranean mystery schools, which had initiatory rites
00:20:10 ►
of passage. Early Christians, I believe, were using spiritual energy. They were using energy
00:20:16 ►
just like every mystical tradition, pretty much, whether you’re talking ki, chi, mana,
00:20:21 ►
prana. But the Gnostics would have called it, in the early mystical Christians,
00:20:27 ►
Pneuma, spiritual energy and spiritual breath.
00:20:30 ►
Those that were deeper initiates were called pneumatics.
00:20:33 ►
They were full of spiritual energy.
00:20:36 ►
The study of the Holy Spirit is called pneumatology.
00:20:40 ►
And there are scenes in the New Testament where Jesus will actually go
00:20:43 ►
and deliver the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to his disciples through breath work.
00:20:48 ►
It’s like an energetic transmission.
00:20:53 ►
The healings, like Reiki people, they’re obsessed with Jesus.
00:20:56 ►
I don’t know if you’ve noticed that.
00:20:57 ►
Because he’s like the ORM, original Reiki master, right?
00:21:02 ►
He’s just going around doing hands-on healing.
00:21:05 ►
If you see the images of Jesus,
00:21:07 ►
there’s always this energy glowing off of him
00:21:09 ►
and healing people.
00:21:11 ►
There’s lines in the Bible of like,
00:21:14 ►
there’s this woman who’s been suffering
00:21:17 ►
from like menstruation for,
00:21:18 ►
I don’t forget if it’s 12 years or 12 months,
00:21:21 ►
either way, not great.
00:21:23 ►
And she touches Jesus and the power drains
00:21:28 ►
out of her and into him and it heals her. And they actually use the word the power.
00:21:34 ►
So I think he was, they were working with energy for transformation and healing, just
00:21:39 ►
like Sufis, Buddhists, shamans, you know, the whole deal. And the word, I think a lot of the original words that we’ve been told are inaccurate.
00:21:48 ►
Like sin, it’s hamartia, it means missing the mark.
00:21:52 ►
You fell off your path, come back online.
00:21:54 ►
Repent, which, you know, Pat Robertson uses that one so strong.
00:21:58 ►
Repent, repent for your sins.
00:22:00 ►
It means to have a change of consciousness, right?
00:22:03 ►
People meet Jesus, a higher vibrational being of love, universal compassion. They have a change of consciousness. People meet Jesus, the higher vibrational being of love,
00:22:07 ►
universal compassion,
00:22:08 ►
they have a shift in consciousness.
00:22:10 ►
They have a change of mind.
00:22:11 ►
That’s repent.
00:22:12 ►
Metanoia.
00:22:13 ►
Totally different.
00:22:15 ►
And the word soter,
00:22:17 ►
savior.
00:22:19 ►
Soter means bestower of health,
00:22:21 ►
or one who makes whole.
00:22:23 ►
He’s healing this rift of separation.
00:22:27 ►
This Garden of Eden rift that I
00:22:28 ►
had been exploring. And the Gnostics were
00:22:30 ►
obsessed with the Garden of Eden myth, and
00:22:32 ►
Jesus kind of like, this solution
00:22:34 ►
for it, coming in and reminding
00:22:36 ►
us of our spiritual heritage,
00:22:38 ►
of being divine sons and daughters.
00:22:43 ►
Yeah, and so the book goes
00:22:44 ►
into quite a bit of depth
00:22:45 ►
of early Gnostic texts,
00:22:46 ►
but I try to make it really fun
00:22:48 ►
because I find a lot of Gnostic books are,
00:22:51 ►
you’ve really got to drink the coffee
00:22:52 ►
if you want to get through it all.
00:22:54 ►
But I go into a lot of the Nag Hammadi library,
00:22:58 ►
into what the Gnostics and early Christians were doing,
00:23:01 ►
and it’s just really beautiful stuff.
00:23:04 ►
How many people here have read the Gospel of Thomas? Let’s just really beautiful stuff. How many people here have read
00:23:05 ►
the Gospel of Thomas?
00:23:06 ►
Let’s just see some hands.
00:23:09 ►
All right, homework for like everybody
00:23:10 ►
in this room is,
00:23:12 ►
it’s like reading the Tao Te Ching.
00:23:14 ►
It’s just such a poetic,
00:23:17 ►
visionary look at ecstatic experience
00:23:19 ►
and this universe we live in.
00:23:22 ►
It’s a beautiful text.
00:23:24 ►
A lot of the New Testament quotes, I think,
00:23:26 ►
come from the Gospel of Thomas.
00:23:28 ►
They have found fragments of Thomas
00:23:30 ►
that date it before Mark,
00:23:31 ►
the earliest text of the Synoptic Gospels.
00:23:33 ►
So, pretty old.
00:23:35 ►
40 AD is where they think it was.
00:23:39 ►
Yeah.
00:23:40 ►
So I get into that,
00:23:42 ►
but also I get into this,
00:23:43 ►
one of my favorite elements of this book is it’s a mystical detective novel.
00:23:47 ►
And how many mystical detective novels are out there?
00:23:51 ►
I know one, The Cosmic Serpent with Jeremy Narby.
00:23:54 ►
I think that’s a good mystical one.
00:23:55 ►
It gets into DNA and the serpents you find across the globe and the form.
00:24:00 ►
And my book does that, but it does it with energy.
00:24:03 ►
And I believe they didn’t have science and certain technologies to describe energy, so they had myth and storytelling
00:24:10 ►
and symbolism. And there are symbols I just find in mystical cultures across the globe.
00:24:17 ►
The tree of life, the energetic tree of the body, the world tree of life, the interconnected
00:24:21 ►
web of us all, the serpent, double helix, the Kundalini Serpent, the Dove, the Eagle.
00:24:28 ►
The Merkava, Star of David.
00:24:30 ►
You find these in so many cultures.
00:24:32 ►
And I think the book reveals some really remarkable secrets about what they’re hinting at
00:24:37 ►
and what this transformation of consciousness could be.
00:24:40 ►
So I think that’s one of the pleasures if you guys pick up the book.
00:24:43 ►
You’ll enjoy that.
00:24:46 ►
But, like I said, I’m not
00:24:48 ►
a Gnostic academic.
00:24:49 ►
I’m a Gnostic. I mean, if you guys
00:24:52 ►
are here, you’re probably a Gnostic. You want
00:24:53 ►
Gnosis, that direct experience.
00:24:56 ►
You know? And the thing about
00:24:57 ►
Gnosis is, it’s like,
00:24:59 ►
no one can tell you about it. Like, I could
00:25:01 ►
tell you Paris is great.
00:25:03 ►
It’s got, I don’t know, 7 million people, they really like croissants there and their coffee, but the only way to
00:25:09 ►
really know Paris is to go there yourself and experience it directly. And the Gnostics
00:25:14 ►
would say it’s the same about the kingdom of heaven. And for me, I wanted these Gnostic
00:25:18 ►
experiences with these different symbols, and it just leads me on a detective journey with adventure story with,
00:25:26 ►
let me see, with like a kundalini awakening, which I really screw up pretty badly. You know,
00:25:33 ►
initiatory processes can be very dangerous when you’re first going through them. People die in
00:25:37 ►
initiation. We forget that. And, you know, I get pretty close to that a couple times in the book,
00:25:42 ►
but I made it through. I’m a lot more careful now.
00:25:49 ►
But Kundalini Awakenings, Prankster Spirit Guides,
00:25:51 ►
Out-of-Body Experiences, Past Life Stuff. I didn’t believe in any of this until I experienced it firsthand.
00:25:56 ►
And what else?
00:25:59 ►
DMT Galactic Cowboys.
00:26:01 ►
It’s got a lot of fun stuff in there to check out.
00:26:06 ►
And I’ll read a little bit of it to give you an idea of that stuff.
00:26:10 ►
And also,
00:26:12 ►
I’m tracking, this book starts
00:26:14 ►
in 2004, and what
00:26:16 ►
I start tracking is this consciousness culture
00:26:18 ►
that’s really starting to rise up
00:26:20 ►
with like Dirty Man, Permaculture
00:26:22 ►
people, open source
00:26:24 ►
platforms,
00:26:26 ►
this whole thing that’s coming up.
00:26:27 ►
And now I think we’re really starting to see it,
00:26:29 ►
especially like with Occupy just taking off.
00:26:32 ►
It feels like a lot of these ideas.
00:26:34 ►
But what’s great is like Occupy,
00:26:35 ►
when I’m an activist,
00:26:36 ►
you couldn’t even talk about this stuff hardly.
00:26:38 ►
They have a consciousness committee in New York
00:26:42 ►
where they get together and they talk about,
00:26:44 ►
we’re going to do this meditation flash know, we’re going to do this
00:26:45 ►
meditation flash mob and we’re going to do these things.
00:26:48 ►
We’re going to have a healer night
00:26:50 ►
where the healers come down and heal the people that have been
00:26:52 ►
well, when they were living in Zuccotti Park.
00:26:54 ►
It’s like a whole different ballgame going on right now
00:26:56 ►
because people are seeing that consciousness
00:26:58 ►
and political action, they really need to
00:27:00 ►
connect if you want to create change.
00:27:02 ►
Because otherwise, if you’re just doing the old activism,
00:27:04 ►
you’re stuck. You’re stuck in that old paradigm, the fight, the friction.
00:27:09 ►
But if you’re just doing the new agey, off in the cloud with the angels and the fairies,
00:27:14 ►
you’re not grounded. There’s no real change going on. And that’s what I see with a lot
00:27:17 ►
of us. It’s like, we’re grounded, we’re here, we’re real, and we’re tapped into. And we’re
00:27:23 ►
healing along the way.
00:27:30 ►
The huge thing is, like, the 60s, you didn’t hear people talk about healing so much.
00:27:34 ►
You know, it was like, drop in, tune out, you know, do the electric collated acid test,
00:27:35 ►
which is great.
00:27:37 ►
It was the first initiatory step.
00:27:41 ►
But I think we’ve matured a lot along these ways, and we understand the profound work that’s being done right now, and also the profound play as well.
00:27:44 ►
I don’t want to make it sound like it’s all tough.
00:27:47 ►
But a lot of it is.
00:27:49 ►
I mean, ayahuasca ceremonies.
00:27:51 ►
Let’s see, how many people out here have tried ayahuasca?
00:27:53 ►
Let’s just see.
00:27:55 ►
Wow.
00:27:56 ►
When we first did the ayahuasca monologue in New York in 2005,
00:28:01 ►
we asked that question to the audience.
00:28:02 ►
How many of you have done ayahuasca?
00:28:04 ►
The speakers raised their hand.
00:28:06 ►
That was it.
00:28:07 ►
You know, this year we did it, and I think three-fourths of the audience raised their hand.
00:28:11 ►
Well, those of you who have done ayahuasca, you know.
00:28:14 ►
It’s just like you’ve got to face your shadow stuff.
00:28:16 ►
You may be in a puke bucket the whole night, you know, puking out that childhood or whatever it is.
00:28:23 ►
And people keep coming back.
00:28:24 ►
We keep facing the fear.
00:28:26 ►
We keep illuminating these shadows
00:28:28 ►
that really need that help.
00:28:31 ►
So I’m really proud of us
00:28:33 ►
and the work we’re doing.
00:28:34 ►
I think it’s just the beginning.
00:28:38 ►
One of the things in the book
00:28:39 ►
I finally got into,
00:28:41 ►
and I didn’t want to admit it,
00:28:47 ►
and it wasn’t until Daniel Pinchbeck,
00:28:52 ►
who edited this book, the author of 2012, The Return of Quetzalcoatl, he took me aside.
00:28:56 ►
Well, in his typical Daniel way, he’d actually, it was already picked up, and he goes, Jonathan,
00:29:07 ►
this is unpublishable in its current form. I was like, oh, God. And he’s like, you have to be honest about everything.
00:29:12 ►
Your relationships, your journey, your thoughts, what you’re feeling.
00:29:13 ►
Bring the shadow out.
00:29:15 ►
And everything.
00:29:18 ►
And I’m really grateful for that.
00:29:21 ►
Because he did make me be totally honest about my life.
00:29:23 ►
The messy parts, the beautiful parts, it’s all in this book.
00:29:25 ►
You know, it’s like, it’s a human story of human story of what I was going through, and I’m not
00:29:27 ►
glossing it over like you just see so many
00:29:29 ►
folks do when they’re talking about these experiences.
00:29:32 ►
It’s all good. It’s all bunnies.
00:29:33 ►
Not all bunnies.
00:29:38 ►
But it’s got aliens.
00:29:40 ►
And that was
00:29:41 ►
the one
00:29:44 ►
thing I refused to come out of the galactic closet with, because…
00:29:49 ►
I remember when I was like 21 years old, working at some coffee shop in Denver,
00:30:00 ►
listening to Tom Waits, reading Bukowski, smoking way too many cigarettes,
00:30:04 ►
and drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon.
00:30:06 ►
This was pre-hipster days,
00:30:07 ►
but I was well on the hipster world.
00:30:11 ►
This woman in a coffee shop started talking to me
00:30:14 ►
about quantum physics and molecular biology
00:30:17 ►
and how it affected our emotions
00:30:19 ►
and even a little bit about string theory.
00:30:21 ►
And I was fascinated by this stuff
00:30:23 ►
because she was talking to me scientifically but kind of had this spirit of consciousness bent,
00:30:27 ►
and I hadn’t really heard someone talk about that too much.
00:30:31 ►
Fascinated with talking with her for like 40 minutes, until she said,
00:30:35 ►
oh, the aliens are here to help us.
00:30:43 ►
First of all, I discounted everything she had just told me was now bullshit.
00:30:48 ►
And I was completely angry.
00:30:50 ►
Now I understand what an energetic fireball is.
00:30:53 ►
But back then I didn’t.
00:30:54 ►
And I pretty much just sent that at her.
00:30:56 ►
And this woman, just like defeated, deflated, walks out.
00:31:01 ►
And it was one of these horrible Colorado thunderstorms.
00:31:04 ►
You know these things.
00:31:05 ►
In the afternoon, they just…
00:31:06 ►
They just dump.
00:31:08 ►
And this woman flees, like without a coat,
00:31:11 ►
into this thunderstorm to get away from me.
00:31:14 ►
So I know the damage of coming out of the galactic closet.
00:31:18 ►
People can take kundalini awakenings, yoga, spirit guides.
00:31:22 ►
As soon as you drop the A-bomb, they’re gone, right?
00:31:24 ►
awakening, yoga, spirit guides, as soon as you drop the A-bomb, they’re gone, right?
00:31:31 ►
But you know, that made this book so much richer, because the truth is, in this journey,
00:31:33 ►
I was having galactic guidance.
00:31:35 ►
It was a first step.
00:31:38 ►
And it’s a really delicious, fun one.
00:31:38 ►
It’s creative. And I think the experience of, I think that whole abduction storyline is just so old hat. And I got to
00:31:47 ►
tell you, I’m running into people all across the Evolver network. Like they start saying
00:31:51 ►
these things and I just finally, I’ll pull them aside at a party and say, okay, this
00:31:55 ►
gets a little weird, but do you have any galactic connections? And then they’ll say, oh yeah,
00:31:58 ►
this one time I was taking shrooms and I saw my friend’s shape shift into this thing or
00:32:02 ►
you know, a lot of stories across the network.
00:32:08 ►
And I kind of come up with a theory in this book that
00:32:08 ►
maybe we do come
00:32:12 ►
from other places, just like your
00:32:14 ►
German, Scottish, Jewish,
00:32:15 ►
you know. We may have
00:32:18 ►
other lineages that we come from.
00:32:19 ►
If you can buy into like incarnation
00:32:21 ►
and these things. And it might
00:32:23 ►
be the galactic cavalry is here to remember,
00:32:26 ►
to wake up, to like, kind of,
00:32:30 ►
it’s like the neighbors coming in to wake up
00:32:32 ►
to the real intergalactic dance party
00:32:34 ►
that we’ve all been waiting for.
00:32:39 ►
And it goes into this idea of there may have been
00:32:41 ►
early avatars that knew this awakening experience.
00:32:46 ►
And whether they were cosmic implants, mythological figures, actual historical ones, I kind of
00:32:52 ►
become obsessed with the Axial Age. Do folks know this time period? It was like 800 BC
00:32:58 ►
to 200 BC. But of course I extend it to 0 BC, because what’s 200 years?
00:33:05 ►
And then I can put Jesus in there.
00:33:07 ►
Because I apparently am obsessed, and now I’m a Christian.
00:33:10 ►
I never thought I’d say I’m a Christian. I’m a Christian. I’m just a weird one.
00:33:15 ►
And this age was where you had all these spiritual masters coming to the planet,
00:33:22 ►
delivering a message of love.
00:33:24 ►
It was the golden rule,
00:33:25 ►
whether it was Buddhist, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Jesus.
00:33:29 ►
It was that golden rule of
00:33:30 ►
love thy neighbor as you would love yourself,
00:33:33 ►
or treat thy neighbor as you would treat yourself,
00:33:34 ►
which is a really tricky one,
00:33:36 ►
because everyone always hears that first part of like,
00:33:38 ►
oh, I’ve got to be nice to my neighbor.
00:33:40 ►
Oh, but wait, it actually means I have to love myself.
00:33:44 ►
And that often is the really hard one
00:33:46 ►
and it’s this energetic exchange
00:33:49 ►
and honesty that happens through that teaching
00:33:52 ►
and it’s a heart teaching
00:33:53 ►
because you see that self in everyone
00:33:56 ►
and I kind of see them as the first
00:34:00 ►
like they’re the marines coming into earth
00:34:02 ►
the spiritual celestial marines, these guys.
00:34:05 ►
And now we’re all waking up to this truth as well
00:34:08 ►
and carrying that message.
00:34:10 ►
So anyways, I thought it would be fun here
00:34:13 ►
to read one of the more E.T.-type chapters.
00:34:18 ►
If that’s okay with folks.
00:34:22 ►
So this is at Burning Man. Let’s just see, how many folks here have been at Burning Man.
00:34:25 ►
Let’s just see, how many folks here have been at Burning Man?
00:34:27 ►
Raise your hand.
00:34:29 ►
That’s pretty good.
00:34:31 ►
How many people believe there might be aliens out there?
00:34:36 ►
Cool. I like to see questions like that.
00:34:38 ►
One more question.
00:34:38 ►
How many people believe the aliens are already here?
00:34:42 ►
About the same, really.
00:34:44 ►
All right.
00:34:45 ►
I at least believe are already here. About the same, really. All right.
00:34:52 ►
I at least believe in Burning Man. Yeah, so this is a Burning Man.
00:34:53 ►
This is back in the day where Bass Nectar
00:34:55 ►
was still doing warehouse parties and stuff,
00:34:57 ►
and he was DJing.
00:34:59 ►
Now Bass Nectar does entire festivals on islands.
00:35:02 ►
It’s just amazing to see your friends suddenly rise up
00:35:06 ►
and really spread their art to many more people.
00:35:09 ►
It’s been really fun to watch Daniel Pinchbeck do that, too, over the years.
00:35:13 ►
I remember when he talked about this book 2012, back in 2004,
00:35:17 ►
and I was like, you are crazy.
00:35:19 ►
People are not going to be into that.
00:35:35 ►
Wow, is he right? Okay. So this is at Bass Nectar on the dance floor. Okay. I ingested, and Jade is my girlfriend in the book at the time.
00:35:42 ►
I’d ingested only a dash of Jade’s chocolate treats. Can you guys hear me back there?
00:35:46 ►
Okay, great.
00:35:47 ►
I’d ingested only a dash of Jade’s chocolate treats
00:35:50 ►
and felt a light, pleasant buzz.
00:35:52 ►
Usually I had to be pretty blasted
00:35:53 ►
before my self-proclaimed guides would show up.
00:35:56 ►
These are kind of the galactic guides.
00:35:58 ►
But now, under the glow of the towering sunflower,
00:36:01 ►
they announced themselves, giggling in my ear,
00:36:03 ►
humming tunes that suggested hexagonal patterns in my mind’s eye, in sync with Bates-Nectar’s low metallic
00:36:09 ►
pulses. I welcomed them. They asked me to close my eyes while I traced Jade’s dance
00:36:14 ►
moves. She knows how to follow the energy, they told me. You’re still learning.
00:36:20 ►
Behind my eyelids, I saw a computer-animated scene of Earth back in its boiling volcanic days,
00:36:25 ►
three to four billion years ago,
00:36:27 ►
when a single-celled creature magically appeared on the planet’s harsh surface.
00:36:32 ►
And fast forward, I watched this cell multiply and spread,
00:36:35 ►
mastering the art of photosynthesis,
00:36:37 ►
before dividing into more geometrically complex eukaryotes,
00:36:42 ►
then into early sponge-like animals,
00:36:44 ►
stretching out into the segmented skeletons of fish,
00:36:48 ►
crawling and gasping as rubbery amphibians onto land,
00:36:53 ►
morphing into lumbering dinosaurs,
00:36:56 ►
dissolving into furry mammalian rodents that would grow and shapeshift into apes and chimps,
00:37:01 ►
finally straightening their backs as homo sapiens,
00:37:04 ►
who could raise
00:37:05 ►
up the electric antenna in their spines through their crown chakra to receive the higher frequencies
00:37:10 ►
of the cosmos.
00:37:13 ►
While viewing this Cliff Notes version of evolution, I continued to swerve along with
00:37:18 ►
Jade’s sinuous hips, concentrating on connecting with the energy, flow from my heart to my
00:37:24 ►
second chakra.
00:37:25 ►
concentrating on connecting with the energy flow from my heart to my second chakra. I realized how much I fought being present and became aware of this planet’s difficult and dense three-dimensional vibrations.
00:37:32 ►
Cowboy, so the guides always called me Cowboy.
00:37:36 ►
Cowboy, you know the great thing about grounding yourself and unifying your heart with the lower chakras?
00:37:41 ►
My guides whispered in my ear.
00:37:43 ►
What’s that? I asked. It’s really,
00:37:46 ►
really fun, they cheered. With those words, I got beamed from above with a purple tubular light.
00:37:52 ►
The effect was so powerful, I looked up to see if a flying disc covered above the dance floor,
00:37:56 ►
but I saw nothing except the starry night and a tiny moon sliver. The beam stayed with me as I
00:38:02 ►
stepped away from Jade. My crown and root chakras filled with white light. The energy poured into
00:38:07 ►
my electrospiritual system from above and below, circulating
00:38:11 ►
through my heart chakra. Immediately, my back straightened as if
00:38:16 ►
tugged by a puppeteer, allowing the pneuma to follow its natural course,
00:38:20 ►
activating my chest area. With my heart center
00:38:24 ►
suddenly glowing brightly, a gray energetic
00:38:27 ►
curtain began to lift from my eyes to reveal a beautiful luminous latticework of electrified
00:38:32 ►
prana stretching across the dance floor, out to the deep playa, and into infinity. I saw a complicated
00:38:39 ►
gridwork of white light connecting us all in the deliciously high bright vibrations of love.
00:38:42 ►
of white light connecting us all in the deliciously high bright vibrations
00:38:43 ►
of love. Not a hippie naive
00:38:46 ►
love, this was rigorous and
00:38:47 ►
mathematical, full of
00:38:49 ►
intricate geometrical
00:38:52 ►
relationships that
00:38:54 ►
swirled the energy in immaculately
00:38:56 ►
constructed designs.
00:38:58 ►
At that moment, I remembered a passage
00:39:00 ►
from the Gospel of Thomas.
00:39:01 ►
The Father’s kingdom is spread out upon the earth
00:39:04 ►
and people don’t see it.
00:39:06 ►
The veil had been temporarily removed from my eyes,
00:39:10 ►
and I could see the interconnected white patterns
00:39:12 ►
pulsing through Jade, the DJ, the dancers, and myself,
00:39:16 ►
as we participated in this cosmic drama
00:39:19 ►
in our physical manifestations.
00:39:21 ►
With the illusion stripped away,
00:39:23 ►
I could see that we were part of an ocean of light.
00:39:25 ►
We are light flowing, moving, and transmuting shape, similar to the way that water morphs into
00:39:31 ►
steam and ice and snow. I understood Jesus’s line about loving your enemies. From this perspective,
00:39:37 ►
we were all divine Shakespeare’s, creating and playing the roles of muscled heroes and conniving villains,
00:39:50 ►
pious saints and debauched sinners, corrupt CEOs and disinterested temp workers.
00:39:53 ►
Watching this immeasurable light, as the Gnostics called it,
00:40:00 ►
I suddenly realized that I had one man to thank for my journey into this sudden mystical awareness.
00:40:04 ►
And that man happened to be George W. Bush.
00:40:11 ►
I sent him a prayer of thanks, wishing him well and finding his way to the light.
00:40:19 ►
So then we walk across the playa, the deep, like the desert, basically,
00:40:21 ►
to Center Camp at Burning Man.
00:40:24 ►
At the roaring burn barrel outside Center Camp,
00:40:27 ►
we ran into two friends of Jade’s, Don and Sarah.
00:40:30 ►
Sarah crouched on her knees wearing an Uncle Sam hat,
00:40:33 ►
attaching pads to the end of her fire poi chains,
00:40:35 ►
in preparation for a fire dance.
00:40:37 ►
She looked up at us and cheered.
00:40:41 ►
Back then, when I was a political activist,
00:40:43 ►
I was going around as Johnny America. So she looked up and cheered at me.
00:40:46 ►
Johnny America! Every time I see you, it brings out my shaman side.
00:40:52 ►
In that second, her smile flickered into a sideways slit,
00:40:55 ►
her head transformed into a giant gray scalp,
00:40:58 ►
her eyes stretched diagonally into wide black alien eyes,
00:41:02 ►
and her nose shrank to two narrow pinpoints.
00:41:05 ►
Sarah had just revealed herself
00:41:06 ►
to be one of the gray aliens
00:41:08 ►
I had read so many negative things about
00:41:10 ►
while researching the Draco reptilians.
00:41:13 ►
I mean, that’s a whole rabbit hole
00:41:15 ►
you could go down if people followed that.
00:41:16 ►
In the book, I go down that rabbit hole a little bit.
00:41:20 ►
Instead of being freaked out, however,
00:41:21 ►
I took it all without a pause.
00:41:23 ►
One more piece of initiatory information on the wild side I was now walking.
00:41:28 ►
It didn’t hurt that she looked friendly and, frankly, kind of sexy.
00:41:33 ►
Look who’s talking, I said back to her.
00:41:35 ►
Don gave Jade a warm hug and she nuzzled close to him.
00:41:38 ►
I always felt a tinge of jealousy about their friendship, even though Don and Sarah were married.
00:41:43 ►
Don had a lot of qualities
00:41:45 ►
that Jade admired, including frat boy humor and a slightly macho attitude. He had co-founded an
00:41:51 ►
online advertising company worth $850 million, owned his own brownstone and park slope, and
00:41:57 ►
although slightly balding, he was tall, muscular, and Jewish, which would make her family happy.
00:42:03 ►
Don didn’t appear to be wearing a pliant costume.
00:42:05 ►
He didn’t need to.
00:42:07 ►
He made enough of a present in a simple tan coat and blue jeans.
00:42:11 ►
I returned my gaze to Sarah and heard the familiar voices giggle.
00:42:14 ►
See? Not all aliens are ugly.
00:42:17 ►
I giggled, too.
00:42:18 ►
Don caught this and he turned his gaze up to the stars and then back to me.
00:42:22 ►
He leaned in so close I could feel his breath.
00:42:25 ►
You’re up there, aren’t you? He grinned. I can tell, but don’t worry. When the sun comes
00:42:29 ►
up, you’ll ground. How do you know, I asked. Oh, Sarah and I have our own ET connections.
00:42:37 ►
When we first met at Burning Man a couple years ago, we ate some fungi on a golden vibrating
00:42:42 ►
art pyramid, and she literally took off her face
00:42:45 ►
and showed me the sexy gray alien she has underneath.
00:42:50 ►
Should I reveal to Don what I’ve just seen?
00:42:52 ►
I decided not to.
00:42:55 ►
But later, if I could just get a side note, we had dinner with them about eight months
00:42:59 ►
later and we were having dinner and he was talking about this alien and I was like, you
00:43:03 ►
know what, Don, I changed his name in the book, I saw her shapeshift once.
00:43:08 ►
And he just goes, honey, draw him a picture. And she drew a picture of exactly
00:43:12 ►
what I saw with an alien’s heart NYC
00:43:16 ►
strolled next to her.
00:43:20 ►
So anyways, he showed her sexy gray
00:43:24 ►
alien underneath.
00:43:26 ►
That’s incredible, I said, but aren’t the grays bad?
00:43:30 ►
Most, but not all.
00:43:31 ►
You know, aliens are like people.
00:43:33 ►
Everyone is different, and you can’t judge solely by race.
00:43:36 ►
Hell, even some of the Lizzies are helping out these days.
00:43:40 ►
Sarah lit up her poi and began spinning the chains.
00:43:43 ►
She was new at fire spinning and struggled at it.
00:43:46 ►
Uninterested in our conversation,
00:43:47 ►
Jade walked over to hold a fireproof safety blanket for her.
00:43:51 ►
How do you know about the Lizzies, I asked Don.
00:43:54 ►
I was surprised he knew the Pleiadian nickname for the reptilian aliens.
00:43:58 ►
I was also amazed that Jade and I just happened to bump into her two friends
00:44:01 ►
who claimed to have ET connections.
00:44:06 ►
Was a chance or one of those pliosynchronicities?
00:44:10 ►
While in bed after the first date with Sarah,
00:44:12 ►
oh, this is Don speaking,
00:44:13 ►
my spirit was taken up to a mother ship
00:44:15 ►
with huge windows overlooking the earth,
00:44:18 ►
Don told me.
00:44:19 ►
I saw thousands of saucers
00:44:20 ►
beaming down indigo lights of intention
00:44:22 ►
to help the planet ascend.
00:44:24 ►
But there were a few ships, some reptilian I was told, that beamed down
00:44:28 ►
negative energies. My ship was full of bizarre and entertaining creatures.
00:44:32 ►
A carnival-esque federation of sorts. They told me
00:44:36 ►
they had brought me here because I could handle it.
00:44:39 ►
You know what’s funny, he said. People have this tinfoil
00:44:44 ►
spade suit 1950 idea of aliens.
00:44:47 ►
But the beings I saw were galactic bohemians.
00:44:50 ►
David Bowie-like art stars, flamboyantly androgynous healers, and outrageous alchemists.
00:44:55 ►
A lot of them had really cool tattoos.
00:44:59 ►
They come from advanced societies that have synthesized art and science so they know how to have a good time.
00:45:04 ►
I think of Burning Man as the first extraterrestrial city on Earth.
00:45:08 ►
It completely integrates technology and visionary art with neo-tribal ritual.
00:45:12 ►
I figure most people attending came from other planets originally,
00:45:15 ►
they just don’t realize it yet. The Playa is a portal preparing us for the cosmic
00:45:20 ►
dance party everyone’s waiting for, so to speak. At that moment,
00:45:23 ►
a man wearing a black duster and a
00:45:25 ►
fedora stepped up next to us at the burn barrel. He seemed upset, head drooped. He took off his
00:45:30 ►
leather gloves to warm his hands. He lifted the brim of the fedora, revealing cracked red skin
00:45:35 ►
around his eyes. He was in his mid-twenties, with a thick green, Greek-looking unibrow,
00:45:40 ►
brown chipmunk cheeks, and dark stubble on his chin. New Orleans is gone, man, he said with
00:45:46 ►
a southern drawl, his eyes on the flames. My house was wiped out. Katrina took down the whole city.
00:45:52 ►
People are dying in the streets, mostly blacks. Bush won’t do a damn thing. Thousands are holed
00:45:57 ►
up in the Superdome and abandoned in flooded prisons right now, left to rot. It’s totally
00:46:02 ►
third world. I can’t believe this is America. I’m so sorry,
00:46:07 ►
I said. He tried to hold back tears. I put my arm around him for several minutes. Then he tipped his
00:46:12 ►
hat, said thanks, and walked away. I couldn’t tell what was more surreal. My alien introductions are
00:46:18 ►
the fact that the birthplace of jazz was underwater. It all felt like pieces of the new normal.
00:46:24 ►
I reported the news to
00:46:25 ►
Sarah and Don and Jade. Isolated in the never-never land of Burning Man, where cell phones don’t
00:46:30 ►
work and there’s no email, we hadn’t heard what was happening off-client in the default
00:46:35 ►
world.
00:46:36 ►
This is only the beginning, Don said. America is broke, 12 trillion dollars in debt. Saving
00:46:42 ►
New Orleans would cost too much unless we radically switch priorities from armaments to people.
00:46:47 ►
With each coming catastrophe from global warming,
00:46:50 ►
corporate entities are going to use the shock doctrine to take control of traumatized populations.
00:46:56 ►
Get ready, he said.
00:46:57 ►
The fight for the planet is on.
00:47:00 ►
Walking back to the Hebe camp that morning with Jade,
00:47:03 ►
the sun rays grounding me for the coming day,
00:47:06 ►
we passed by an eight-foot-high cafe counter serving coffee to a still-walking ringmaster and a still-walking giraffe.
00:47:13 ►
Two muffin art cars, one chocolate, one blueberry, racing each other down the nearly empty esplanade,
00:47:18 ►
and a dirty-talking remote-control robot that hit on Jade.
00:47:22 ►
Our stroll brought back memories of lunch hour and walk
00:47:25 ►
near the September 11th Fund’s
00:47:27 ►
Midtown headquarters. I remember
00:47:29 ►
noticing each office, bar, bank,
00:47:32 ►
restaurant, shop, and apartment building
00:47:33 ►
and seeing the first time that our entire
00:47:35 ►
culture is constructed at places
00:47:37 ►
where we work to make money to buy things
00:47:39 ►
and places where we recover
00:47:41 ►
before going back to work so we earn
00:47:43 ►
money to buy more things.
00:47:45 ►
At the time, I couldn’t imagine a society other than this depressing, monochromatic hamster wheel.
00:47:51 ►
But Burning Man offers something different.
00:47:53 ►
The festival does without the arbitrary laws and regulations that draw lines between people,
00:47:59 ►
isolating them from one another, boxing them in to consume more and more stuff.
00:48:04 ►
The Society of the Burn follows guidelines that encourage participatory culture and community
00:48:08 ►
engagement.
00:48:09 ►
If a windstorm strikes down a party tent or life sculpture, volunteers quickly rush to
00:48:13 ►
put it back up.
00:48:15 ►
If you need a coat or a hug, people will offer it to you, living in the spirit of the gift.
00:48:20 ►
Helpful rangers in khaki cargo pants patrol the grounds, acting more like Boy Scouts than like bodyguards,
00:48:26 ►
body-armored cops with guns.
00:48:29 ►
There’s a general trust for each other that enables people to feel safe,
00:48:32 ►
to embody the festival’s mantra of radical self-expression,
00:48:36 ►
which explodes in a circus-like spectrum of creativity and playfulness.
00:48:40 ►
In Black Rock City, the clashing viewpoints of rugged individualism
00:48:44 ►
and collectivism
00:48:45 ►
meld into dynamic social sculpture, where the flame-flowing barbarians and leather-clad
00:48:51 ►
Thunderdome gladiators pitch in together to set up camp. Or collect ice from Artica, the
00:48:56 ►
ice store, or fill in on a kitchen shift. These simple agreements lead to rampant synchronicities
00:49:02 ►
as all of us have our hearts open by resonating with the higher frequencies around us.
00:49:07 ►
Perhaps Don was right.
00:49:09 ►
Maybe Burning Man is the first outcropping of a new galactic culture on Earth.
00:49:13 ►
But as I saw it, there was still one big problem with Black Rock City.
00:49:18 ►
It only lasts one week a year. That was Burning Man.
00:49:33 ►
It’s always tough to read in front of people, right?
00:49:40 ►
One of the major arguments I make in the book is I think we may be going through a vibrational shift
00:49:42 ►
in humanity, up the world
00:49:45 ►
tree of life. And this happens in people’s own evolution. You go up to chakras. You may
00:49:50 ►
start red and as you evolve you go to more of a yellow or orange, yellow. You know, everyone’s
00:49:56 ►
got different auras. And of course they’re always changing too. It fluctuates. But what
00:50:00 ►
I think may be happening is we’ve moved from this kind of tribal chakra of the
00:50:06 ►
second chakra into a third chakra.
00:50:08 ►
A lot of yogis say this, that our societies right now are in a third chakra consciousness.
00:50:14 ►
It’s one of ambition, willpower, achievement.
00:50:16 ►
I mean, if you look at it, we’ve gone from planting seeds in the ground to seeing 14
00:50:21 ►
billion years to the beginning, 14 to 15 billion years to the beginning of the universe
00:50:25 ►
in just 10,000 years.
00:50:27 ►
We’ve accomplished a lot, both positive and negative.
00:50:31 ►
And those fires of the third chakra,
00:50:34 ►
and destructive fires too,
00:50:36 ►
are pushing us up into this third chakra.
00:50:39 ►
I mean, into the fourth chakra, the heart chakra.
00:50:42 ►
And this is like the center of the tree of life.
00:50:44 ►
It’s the center of the cross. There are seven this is like the center of the tree of life. It’s the center of the cross.
00:50:45 ►
There are seven chakras.
00:50:47 ►
That’s the middle of them.
00:50:48 ►
It’s the integrator of opposites.
00:50:51 ►
I believe this is what the Gnostics were calling the bridal chamber.
00:50:54 ►
It’s a secret space.
00:50:56 ►
If you look at that sacred heart of Jesus, you know that big glowing heart,
00:51:00 ►
I think he’s really messaging something there.
00:51:03 ►
Heart energy.
00:51:04 ►
Heart energy is a healing energy.
00:51:06 ►
If you want to heal Reiki people,
00:51:08 ►
people in ayahuasca,
00:51:10 ►
you’ve got to open your heart
00:51:11 ►
and then it’ll go through. If the heart’s
00:51:14 ►
closed, it’s really
00:51:15 ►
hard to heal. You’re in that third chakra
00:51:18 ►
fix, fix, fix, fix.
00:51:20 ►
And I think what’s happening is
00:51:21 ►
we’re healing our lines, the vibrational
00:51:23 ►
frequency is lifting. It’s scientific. Often’re healing our lines, the vibrational frequency is lifting.
00:51:26 ►
It’s scientific.
00:51:27 ►
Often I hear people, oh, the vibrations, it’s a scientific thing.
00:51:31 ►
The universe is energy.
00:51:32 ►
String theory says this.
00:51:34 ►
As we heal our wounds, as we illuminate the shadows in our family lines, in our historical lines,
00:51:40 ►
we bring more light, we raise the vibration, the amplitude of that heart vibration increases.
00:51:47 ►
More people are attracted to that vibration.
00:51:50 ►
It gets bigger and bigger until you have critical mass.
00:51:53 ►
And, I mean, let’s just see.
00:51:55 ►
Like, how many people here in this room
00:51:57 ►
feel like they are going through some healing
00:51:59 ►
or initiatory process?
00:52:01 ►
Like, raise your hands.
00:52:02 ►
Like, really raise them up.
00:52:04 ►
This time.
00:52:04 ►
Like, this is the big question of the night.
00:52:06 ►
Raise them full straight hand.
00:52:07 ►
I’m doing this. And if you can, just
00:52:09 ►
look around at
00:52:11 ►
your brothers and sisters in the room and
00:52:14 ►
acknowledge
00:52:15 ►
we’re going through this.
00:52:19 ►
But
00:52:19 ►
I think we’re the pioneers.
00:52:22 ►
And that’s often a really
00:52:24 ►
fun place to be, but it’s also really frustrating too.
00:52:29 ►
I have a feeling if you went into the Walmart and you said,
00:52:32 ►
Attention Walmart shoppers, how many people are here are going through an initiatory process?
00:52:41 ►
The person picking up the big thing at Crisco may not raise their hand. So I believe
00:52:50 ►
we’re pioneers and we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of love and play to do too.
00:52:54 ►
I am personally really interested in the Santa Dime Church in Oregon where it’s legal there.
00:53:01 ►
They use ayahuasca in Christianity, kind of fusing those two.
00:53:05 ►
And they’re very big about love and firmness.
00:53:08 ►
You know, you have to have love, but you also have to be firm and strong
00:53:11 ►
and keep battling.
00:53:13 ►
I look like, I think we are spiritual warriors of love.
00:53:16 ►
And, you know, we’re getting a lot of forces that want, you know,
00:53:19 ►
they want to drag you down.
00:53:20 ►
And it’s just always going back to that love component, the healing component.
00:53:23 ►
Seeing beyond the separation, the integration that’s happening here.
00:53:31 ►
Yeah.
00:53:32 ►
And I think societally we’re seeing this too.
00:53:34 ►
Like we are energetically a house critically divided.
00:53:39 ►
We fight for, I mean, of course I think it’s even worse in the U.S.
00:53:43 ►
You know, we’re such rugged individualists there. You know, we fight for resources. We fight for jobs. We fight for, I mean, of course, I think it’s even worse in the U.S. You know, we’re such rugged individualists there.
00:53:45 ►
You know, we fight for resources.
00:53:47 ►
We fight for jobs.
00:53:48 ►
We fight for energy.
00:53:49 ►
We fight for money.
00:53:50 ►
We fight for land.
00:53:50 ►
We fight for everything.
00:53:51 ►
Compete, compete, compete.
00:53:53 ►
And these systems, these hierarchical parasitic models are meant to cut your energy down.
00:53:59 ►
I see it as part of that Eden riff, the shame, blame, taking your energy.
00:54:03 ►
It’s like advertising,
00:54:05 ►
I feel, is like a really unconscious form of shamanism. Casting spells in a way. You
00:54:11 ►
know, in the beginning was the word. The word is a spell. It’s magic. And you can use the
00:54:16 ►
word for really beautiful things. But you can also say, you’re not good enough, eat
00:54:20 ►
a Snickers. So you’ve wounded, and then you’ve put in this replacement thing that doesn’t heal. And I think our role is to use those functions, create new design systems that
00:54:32 ►
understand energy. That we create sacred geometries of healing. That we create health systems
00:54:39 ►
that actually are healing models. That we create educational systems that actually understand
00:54:44 ►
wisdom versus information. That we have political systems that actually understand wisdom versus information.
00:54:46 ►
That we have political systems.
00:54:48 ►
I mean, I’m so excited about the Occupy.
00:54:50 ►
You know, we are the 99%.
00:54:51 ►
And I know people are now saying we are the 100%.
00:54:53 ►
But just going to that 99%
00:54:55 ►
has been a huge leap in our consciousness
00:54:56 ►
of, wow, that’s including people
00:54:58 ►
we would have never included before.
00:55:03 ►
Yeah.
00:55:03 ►
And I think these systems have lied to us
00:55:05 ►
and they’ve left us empty and now people are really looking
00:55:07 ►
for things and that’s why
00:55:09 ►
you guys, you know, Jesus says
00:55:10 ►
you don’t take a lamp and you put it under
00:55:13 ►
you put it on a lamp post
00:55:15 ►
and we’re meant to shine
00:55:17 ►
I love this idea of the
00:55:19 ►
disciples going out and spreading the gospel
00:55:21 ►
the good news, but it’s not through this
00:55:23 ►
like evangelical, you must think this way.
00:55:26 ►
It’s through love and
00:55:27 ►
showing light in the darkness, showing
00:55:30 ►
there are these opportunities, there are these spaces
00:55:32 ►
that we’re creating for healing,
00:55:34 ►
for connection, to make change
00:55:36 ►
in the world. And that’s
00:55:37 ►
kind of like the Evolver social movement.
00:55:40 ►
We are really working on that too.
00:55:42 ►
I’m so thankful Occupy has
00:55:44 ►
happened because all this stuff we wanted to do,
00:55:47 ►
they’re now doing it.
00:55:48 ►
All the political stuff,
00:55:49 ►
they’re covering a lot of that.
00:55:52 ►
And I think if I get into Evolver,
00:55:54 ►
I think a lot of what we cover
00:55:55 ►
is the cultural and consciousness stuff.
00:55:59 ►
So what was the last film screening you showed here?
00:56:02 ►
It’s the film.
00:56:04 ►
I haven’t done a film in a while.
00:56:07 ►
Which one?
00:56:08 ►
Electronic Awakening would be…
00:56:10 ►
Electronic Awakening. Yeah.
00:56:12 ►
So it’s this movie about like dance strides and how they’re changing, opening people up to community and reinventing their lives and transforming.
00:56:22 ►
And I mean, I think that’s a real service.
00:56:24 ►
A lot of places, one, they don’t even
00:56:25 ►
have independent theaters, but also
00:56:27 ►
these independent theaters, they may not
00:56:29 ►
be up to showing consciousness
00:56:31 ►
movies like Thrive, I Am,
00:56:35 ►
2012, Time for
00:56:36 ►
Change. There’s been so many great ones coming out.
00:56:38 ►
Wake Up, DMT, The Spirit
00:56:39 ►
Molecule. I’m really excited about this.
00:56:42 ►
There’s also a lot of great new literature
00:56:43 ►
coming out, like Fishers of Men, Adam Ellenbosch. Charles Eisenstein was just in town. Hopefully
00:56:50 ►
some folks saw him. He’s got this book, Sacred Economics. That’s an Evolver Edition book
00:56:57 ►
like my book. So he’s been traveling the Spore Network. So we’ve got the Speaker’s Bureau.
00:57:03 ►
We’ve got the film screenings. we’ve got the film screenings,
00:57:06 ►
we’ve got consciousness parties like tomorrow night, which I guess we’ll talk about that
00:57:10 ►
a little later, the consciousness party, eco festivals, all these kind of things. And we’re
00:57:16 ►
creating these spaces, these safe zones that show people there’s a whole different way
00:57:20 ►
we can be and interact. That’s part of it. And to be honest, I think if you look at the situation,
00:57:26 ►
like, where we’re at,
00:57:27 ►
we’re totally screwed. Politically,
00:57:29 ►
economically, environmentally, we are screwed.
00:57:32 ►
The environmental indicators, all of them.
00:57:35 ►
But,
00:57:36 ►
we’re screwed in the old context,
00:57:38 ►
in the old form. When you open up
00:57:40 ►
your heart, and you ground yourself,
00:57:41 ►
you open up to these energies, there is
00:57:43 ►
so much help. There’s so much
00:57:45 ►
healing. The potentiality we have
00:57:47 ►
as sons and daughters of the Divine
00:57:50 ►
is extraordinary.
00:57:52 ►
And, you know, I actually think we need a miracle,
00:57:54 ►
and that’s exactly why we’re here, is
00:57:55 ►
we are here to, we’re here to manifest
00:57:58 ►
miracles. And that’s
00:58:00 ►
what happens, and this is why,
00:58:02 ►
I mean, probably so many of you can say, like,
00:58:04 ►
there was a synchronicity that brought you here or at least on your path.
00:58:07 ►
We heard the word synchronicity magic all the time across this Evolver network.
00:58:11 ►
You know, that’s 40 cities.
00:58:13 ►
So it is just growing, and everyone’s doing their thing.
00:58:15 ►
There’s so many groups out there right now, so many tribes.
00:58:19 ►
And I feel like we’re doing it, but like I said, we’re the pioneers.
00:58:22 ►
So we’ve got to be firm and have love.
00:58:24 ►
We’re doing it, but like I said, we’re the pioneers, so we’ve got to be firm and have love.
00:58:34 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
00:58:38 ►
So, are you still with me?
00:58:45 ►
Now, if you’ve been joining me here in the salon for a while, you may have noticed that I do my best to avoid any and all discussions about organized religion. Like you, perhaps, I see a clear
00:58:51 ►
dividing line between organized religions with their dogmas and hierarchies of priests and
00:58:57 ►
ministers and the world of spirituality, which I think of as arising primarily from personal
00:59:03 ►
experience.
00:59:11 ►
And as I’ve said before, my bias against organized religion comes from a childhood and early adulthood that was closely confined within the walls of the Catholic Church.
00:59:15 ►
It took me until I was over 40 years old to break the mental chains that had been forged in my mind
00:59:22 ►
during all of those years of being preached to about
00:59:25 ►
what a worthless and sinful creature I was. And for what it’s worth, that included four years
00:59:31 ►
of a Catholic education at the University of Notre Dame. In fact, now that I think of it,
00:59:36 ►
and this is a joke coming your way, but now that I think of it, maybe the fact that our class was
00:59:42 ►
the first in the history of the school to never have a winning football team,
00:59:47 ►
well, maybe that’s what caused me to begin losing my belief in the power of prayer to the Catholic God, the God of football, right?
00:59:56 ►
In any event, I am now firmly against any and all organized religions.
01:00:00 ►
It doesn’t seem necessary, of course, to point out that people are dying all over the
01:00:05 ►
world today because some crackpot Christian posted a YouTube video that profaned Islam.
01:00:12 ►
But before we jump on the bandwagon against the irrationality of that kind of a response to a
01:00:18 ►
video that most of the demonstrators haven’t actually even seen, we should keep in mind,
01:00:23 ►
perhaps, as Jon Stewart on The Daily Show pointed out,
01:00:26 ►
that in terms of the age of Islam, it’s about where the Catholics were when their religion was only 1,400 years old as well.
01:00:35 ►
And at that point in their evolution, well, we had the Inquisition and the burning of tens of thousands of women healers
01:00:42 ►
who were branded as witches.
01:00:44 ►
My point is that all organized religions have their periods of insanity.
01:00:49 ►
In my own case, once I shed the shackles of my childhood brainwashing in my parents’ religion,
01:00:56 ►
which is the same thing that happened to them,
01:00:58 ►
well, after I broke loose and became a free thinker, I did my best to become an atheist.
01:01:03 ►
But at the time, I was living in a place
01:01:05 ►
where you could walk through the fields and gather magic mushrooms for free. So I was an atheist
01:01:11 ►
during the week, but on weekends, after swallowing a bunch of magic mushrooms, I began to develop my
01:01:16 ►
own spiritual practice. I can still remember my dad’s friends when they were talking about World
01:01:21 ►
War II saying that there are no atheists in foxholes.
01:01:25 ►
Well, the same is true for people who are in the process of digesting a few grams of dried mushrooms.
01:01:34 ►
Now, this has, I guess, been a really long way for me to get to the main point that I wanted to make about religion.
01:01:40 ►
And it ties in to what we heard Krishnamurti say in my previous podcast about the pitfall of words.
01:01:46 ►
For example, I do my best to avoid the word God,
01:01:50 ►
because my assumption is that no two of us has exactly the same concept of what the word means.
01:01:57 ►
You know, to some it brings up an image of an old man, it’s usually a man, isn’t it?
01:02:01 ►
With a long white beard, sitting on a throne, and in a really bad mood while condemning unbaptized little children to hell.
01:02:09 ►
Now, others may think of a universal spirit, or a pervasive consciousness,
01:02:13 ►
or any of a thousand other concepts.
01:02:16 ►
So, to me, that word is so poorly defined now that it’s essentially useless.
01:02:22 ►
Likewise, when I heard Jonathan just now state that he was a Christian,
01:02:27 ►
and in fact he even seemed to surprise himself in saying that,
01:02:31 ►
well, when he said that, my mind, for a brief moment,
01:02:35 ►
forgot everything that he’d said leading up to that statement,
01:02:37 ►
and my thought was, I can’t podcast this.
01:02:41 ►
There’s no way that I want to appear to support Christianity.
01:02:46 ►
And that’s where Krishnamurti’s concept of the tyranny of words comes in, because what Jonathan was talking about,
01:02:52 ►
of course, was his resonance with the spirit of the Gnostic Christianity that was so pervasive,
01:02:58 ►
we think at least, during the first 100 years or so of that religion. Yet, even though I knew exactly what he was saying,
01:03:07 ►
the word Christian completely turned me off for a moment.
01:03:10 ►
Again, this is just a long way of saying that we all need to be very careful
01:03:14 ►
about our communications with others.
01:03:17 ►
And I’m not criticizing Jonathan here at all.
01:03:19 ►
He perfectly explained what he meant.
01:03:21 ►
It was me and my mind’s jumping to conclusions that laid the
01:03:25 ►
trap for me. Now, in past podcasts, we’ve heard Terrence McKenna often say that the world is
01:03:31 ►
created by language, and that thought really isn’t all that clear to me, to be honest.
01:03:37 ►
However, just recently I was talking to an educator who told me that children from affluent
01:03:43 ►
homes where the parents still read to their children
01:03:45 ►
and can afford to send them to preschool,
01:03:48 ►
well, children from those homes start kindergarten with a vocabulary of around 3,500 words.
01:03:55 ►
But poor children who come from homes where books are virtually unknown and who can’t afford preschool,
01:04:02 ►
those children arrive at kindergarten with a vocabulary of only 400 words.
01:04:08 ►
Think of it.
01:04:09 ►
These little children only have 400 words with which to think of and describe their world.
01:04:15 ►
No wonder we’re facing so many social problems these days.
01:04:19 ►
Well, now I’m really off track,
01:04:22 ►
so I guess that I’d better end this little rant that has moved from a commentary about organized religion to the importance of having a good vocabulary,
01:04:31 ►
when instead I should have been just complimenting Jonathan on not just the things that he’s done for our community,
01:04:36 ►
but also for having the courage to write about and talk about his own transformative journey through this incredible game that we call Life on the Planet Earth.
01:04:47 ►
And if you think back to the beginning of Jonathan’s mystical and personal adventures,
01:04:53 ►
they all began when he was advised to take some MDMA and get on the dance floor,
01:05:00 ►
which is precisely how my own personal transformation from Larry to Lorenzo began.
01:05:06 ►
A little MDMA, a few hours dancing at the Stark Club,
01:05:09 ►
and, well, as I’ve said before,
01:05:12 ►
when I walked into the Stark Club for the first time,
01:05:15 ►
I was an Irish Catholic Republican lawyer.
01:05:18 ►
When I walked out, I was still Irish,
01:05:20 ►
but the rest had all been washed away by some of the best music that I’d ever danced
01:05:25 ►
to. And so to Sobe and all the rest of you wonderful people who are dancing for us all right now,
01:05:32 ►
not just on the Pacific coast, but all over the world, my heartfelt thanks goes out to you.
01:05:37 ►
And just in case someone hears this and yet isn’t already a big fan of these great gatherings,
01:05:44 ►
let me close with something
01:05:45 ►
that Henry Miller wrote in his novel Tropic of Cancer. And keep in mind, this was written in 1934,
01:05:53 ►
a time when the world also seemed ready to come unhinged. I believe that today, more than ever,
01:06:01 ►
a book should be sought after even if it only has one great page in it.
01:06:05 ►
We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that
01:06:12 ►
is capable of resuscitating the body and soul. It may be that we are doomed, that there is
01:06:17 ►
no hope for us, any of us. But if that is so, then let us set up a last, agonizing, blood-curling howl,
01:06:26 ►
a screech of defiance, a war-hoop,
01:06:29 ►
away with lamentation,
01:06:31 ►
away with eulogies and dirges,
01:06:34 ►
away with biographies and histories and libraries and museums.
01:06:38 ►
Let the dead eat the dead.
01:06:40 ►
Let us living ones dance about the rim of the crater,
01:06:43 ►
a last expiring dance, but a dance.
01:06:48 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo, signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
01:06:53 ►
Be well, my friends.