644 - The Rose of Paracelsus – Chapter 1

Program Notes §

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Guest speakers: Leonard Pickard, Ralf Jeutter, Nese Devenot, Julian Vayne, and Nikki Wyrd

https://www.amazon.com/Rose-Paracelsus-Secrets-Sacraments/dp/0692509003/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2B6AZMGUI82O&keywords=the+rose+of+paracelsus&qid=1559928257&s=gateway&sprefix=the+rose+of+%2Caps%2C211&sr=8-1%3C/h3%3EToday’s podcast features a reading of Chapter 1 of The Rose of Paracelsus by the author, Leonard Pickard. Additionally, there is commentary by Ralf Jeutter, Nese Devenot, Julian Vayne, and Nikki Wyrd. This podcast was produced by the Lakey sisters, Kat and Alexa. Psychedelic Salon podcast number 609, “The Rose Garden Introduction”, provides an overview of this project, which begins today with a reading of Chapter 1.

PROGRAM SECTION TIMES:
00:00 Kat and Alexa’s Intro
08:00 Title and Epigraphs
09:18 Author’s Note
10:53 An Invitation
12:12 Report to the Human Subjects Committee
15:20 Chapter 1 Part 1
01:04:07: Chapter Break and Commentary from Nese Devenot Part 1
01:17:32 Chapter 1 Part 2
01:51:42 Ralf Jeutter Commentary Part 1
02:01:20 Nese Devenot Commentary Part 2
02:11:11 Ralf Jeutter Commentary Part 2
02:23:17 Julian Vayne and Nikki Wyrd Commentary
02:29:50 Kat and Alexa’s Sign Off

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Transcript §

00:00:00 ► §

Greetings from cyberdelic space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic

00:00:23 ► §

salon.

00:00:23 ► §

This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

00:00:30 ► §

And today we begin the reading of Leonard Picard’s masterful novel, The Rose of Paracelsus.

00:00:34 ► §

It’s, well, it’s actually more than a novel, but we’ll call it that for now.

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So if you’ve already listened to Podcast 609, which is an introduction to this book,

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and to Podcast 629, which is praise from people all over the world for Leonard and for this book, well then you’ve probably been eagerly awaiting today’s podcast

00:00:52 ► §

of a reading of chapter one. As you will hear, this first chapter is actually read by Leonard

00:00:59 ► §

Picard himself. There have been many people responsible for getting us to this point,

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There have been many people responsible for getting us to this point, mainly Kat and Alexa Lakey.

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Then there are also the countless friends of Leonard’s all over the world who, in different ways, have contributed to keeping Leonard’s story alive.

00:01:25 ► §

And, as you’ll hear in just a moment, many prominent scholars have joined in to add expert commentary to these readings, some of whom you’re going to hear from today. And I don’t want to forget to thank the friends and supporters of these podcasts,

00:01:32 ► §

including the core of the salon who support me on Patreon. Most importantly, however,

00:01:37 ► §

we all have Leonard Picard to thank for not only a magnificent work of art, but for his great spirit, a spirit that is an inspiration for

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us all. Although I was already well along on my second reading of the Rose of Paracelsus when

00:01:53 ► §

this reading by Leonard reached me, well, I got his book out and read along as I listened to him.

00:01:59 ► §

Well, you know, for some time now I figured that I was getting too old for something like this to happen again.

00:02:05 ► §

But, well, my spine actually tingled as I heard Leonard reading to me while I read along.

00:02:12 ► §

If you don’t already have a copy of this book, well, you really should get one and read along with us.

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It’s a real trip.

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And by the way, whether you realize it or not,

00:02:23 ► §

as you enter this world here in the salon right now with Leonard, you too have become a part of his story.

00:02:31 ► §

Now, here are the Lakey sisters.

00:02:38 ► §

Hello, and welcome to the first full chapter episode of the Rosa Paracelsus podcast titled Highlander.

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My name is Kat.

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And my name is Alexa. If you’re unfamiliar with William Leonard Picard, his book, and this podcast

00:02:51 ► §

project, we suggest that before you proceed, go back and listen to episode 609 of The Psychedelic

00:02:57 ► §

Salon, where we introduce the story. We also recommend watching the short film that Kat made

00:03:02 ► §

on the topic, which Lorenzo links to in episode 629.

00:03:06 ► §

We’re going to start this episode off with a quote from Carlo Rovelli.

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Carlo is a theoretical physicist, founder of loop quantum gravity theory,

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and the author of several internationally acclaimed bestsellers on physics, translated into more than 40 languages.

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Carlo recently published an article about the Rosa Paracelsus in the leading Italian

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newspaper, the Corriere della Sera. Here is a portion of what he said. It’s a massive 650-page

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work, halfway between autobiography and fantastic history, written in an extremely refined,

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cultured, intense, very rich language. What immediately amazes is the language,

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an English rich in endless vocabulary,

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with an archaic Elizabethan cadence,

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where reality and exaggeration, intensity and depth,

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intertwine continuously and merge with each other.

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But what slowly emerges from the book is something deeper,

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a gaze full of love and compassion

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that embraces the layered complexity

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of reality and opens up perspectives never seen before. There is a wisdom and sweetness that

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indicates the boundless and luminous spaces for the whole of humanity, its sacredness,

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its moving beauty. The rose is like a slow brooding song to this vision, written by a great soul, sweet and kind, with compassion and love, from the black background of a concrete, steel cell, two meters by three, where it languishes without the comfort of friends or love for almost twenty years.

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Highlander, chapter one of the book, was recorded by Leonard himself.

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It was pieced together from a series of around ten phone calls from within the maximum security prison he currently resides in.

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If you listen closely, you can occasionally hear the ambient sounds of the prison in the background

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as Leonard read the chapter aloud in the early morning hours, using his precious limited phone

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calls to bring it to you. Each chapter in this podcast series will be read by a different voice,

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and some of the upcoming readers include Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rost,

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Ben Sessa, M.D., and many others. We’re going to break partway through the episode to help

00:05:16 ► §

listeners digest the first sequence. We’ll hear some thoughts on the first passage by a psychedelic

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researcher and postdoctoral scholar, Neche Deveno. Here’s a short excerpt from

00:05:26 ► §

her commentary to give you a taste. Hi, my name is Neche Deveno, and I’m here to share some thoughts

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about Leonard Picard’s The Rose of Paracelsus. Now, I have a PhD in comparative literature,

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and I’m used to reading, I guess what you would call literary English,

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which is not how most people speak nowadays.

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And The Rose of Paracelsus is definitely written in literary high English,

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which means that for people who haven’t studied literature,

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it can be difficult to follow along at first,

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and maybe helpful to have a dictionary.

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There are a lot of words that are used that are not familiar from everyday conversation, but one thing that I’ve noticed for myself and

00:06:14 ► §

also teaching literature to undergraduate students is that if you have patience with it and you can

00:06:20 ► §

kind of bear that initial discomfort of not quite being used to words being used in this way,

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it really allows you to get into a specific frame of mind and mode of consciousness even

00:06:34 ► §

that becomes natural as you go along.

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And so I’d just like to encourage anyone who steps into it and feels a little out of their depth

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to have patience and

00:06:45 ► §

allow yourself to kind of get carried along. After the chapter concludes, you’ll hear more

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from Ne’Shea, and you’ll also be treated to Julian Vane and Nikki Weird, who provide the commentary

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for the introductory episode, and will be chiming in from time to time on future chapters.

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Our narrator is going to meet the secret chiefs, the mountain-dwelling, mysterious, illuminati, masters, figures who guide or attempt to guide the destiny of humanity.

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And that’s what he encounters initially with Crimson, this liminal space by the sea.

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And then they sit around the fire and there’s references to all kinds of things

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there’s alchemy in there there’s magic in there there’s the peyote ceremony of the native american

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church is referenced in there the idea of being a rosicrucian of behaving as though you are just a

00:07:40 ► §

normal member of society but then this deep covert operation to create planetary scale batches of LSD

00:07:49 ► §

as part of a compassionate project to help evolve our species it’s a it’s a remarkable opening for

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a remarkable book it combines the the very grand with the very ordinary, so the practicalities of lighting a fire,

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and the small details of the conversation and the way that someone’s hands are moving,

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and then coupling that with the cosmic scale, the grand scale.

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We also have commentary from Ralph Jeter, a Homeric scholar who will give us some insight into the unique literary style of the Rose Paracelsus.

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The first chapter of the Rose is a very strong starting point for the book.

00:08:35 ► §

It sets the atmosphere, the scene, and the tone of the book.

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It launches it, you could say, straight into the stratosphere.

00:08:43 ► §

It launches it, you could say, straight into the stratosphere.

00:08:48 ► §

Reading it feels at times like a tightrope act,

00:08:53 ► §

because the language used is so finely calibrated and highly strung that any slip would feel like falling off that rope.

00:08:58 ► §

This is the first important aesthetic device we have to take note of,

00:09:03 ► §

the artificiality of the

00:09:06 ► §

language used in this book it is a literary language informed by vast

00:09:13 ► §

amounts of reading the author’s undertaking and is undertaking he uses

00:09:20 ► §

deliberately and at times old-fashioned literary language which originated from a very different

00:09:27 ► §

societal and ethical conditions than the modern undercover drug world he is partly depicting.

00:09:35 ► §

By doing this, the author is willing to be judged by these standards. Does the choice of this style

00:09:41 ► §

work or not? The first chapter is a good example that it does work,

00:09:47 ► §

that the author has made a wise decision to use a language,

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which is a beautiful artifact, basically.

00:09:54 ► §

Once again, we suggest picking up a copy of this book to follow along.

00:09:58 ► §

Highlander begins with Leonard’s first encounter with a man named Crimson,

00:10:02 ► §

a member of the Six.

00:10:04 ► §

The Six are an elusive group of chemists

00:10:06 ► §

who create planetary-sized batches of LSD in extreme secrecy and reverence. We won’t give

00:10:12 ► §

away any more than that, but instead invite you to settle in and enter the world of the

00:10:16 ► §

Rosaparacelsus on Secrets and Sacraments, as read by William Leonard Picard himself.

00:10:36 ► §

The Rose of Paracelsus

00:10:38 ► §

Owns Secrets and Sacraments

00:10:40 ► §

With three epigraphs

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One by Lewis Carroll May this forever be the secret between yourself

00:10:53 ► §

and me, one by Thomas De Quincey from writings, and his Suspiria de Profundis, insolent vaunt of Paracelsus,

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that he could restore the original rose or violet

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out of the ashes settling from its combustion.

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The last by Aristophanes,

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so that we are far away.

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The most ancient of all things blessed.

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And that we are of love’s generation.

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There are manifest.

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Manifold signs.

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We have wings.

00:11:40 ► §

The dedication page.

00:11:47 ► §

For the one Who Wept.

00:11:52 ► §

These writings are a literary experiment.

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It is an extrapolation of the government’s fictions at a federal trial,

00:12:04 ► §

hypothesizing the existence of an international psychedelic conspiracy.

00:12:11 ► §

It evolved as well from the poetry and stories of Jorge Luis Borges.

00:12:16 ► §

The experiment is to discover whether a classical form in the mannered language of Borges

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can be applied to a theoretical drug trafficking organization

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and to psychological phenomena often not accessible through prose.

00:12:34 ► §

The cities and characters at times may seem unreal,

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as is the narrator and these very words, the atoms of thought. In the form of a memoir describing

00:12:50 ► §

a researcher’s observations on a seductive group with special gifts, the tale is an effort

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to emulate certain works of Borges and thereby to embrace the medieval, the erotic, the infinite.

00:13:09 ► §

It is the author’s hope that the reader will find something memorable in these pages, even

00:13:17 ► §

though the commonplace yields to the transcendent at a moment’s reflection.

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transcendent at a moment’s reflection.

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The careful and accurate reader now enters this labyrinth of science, myth, and sensuality,

00:13:41 ► §

cognition and compassion, surveillance and deception, and the trying of the human spirit.

00:13:51 ► §

One might approach the material as it was written, slowly. Such a reader is invited to contact the author with comments, suggestions, and corrections. This is a living work, subject

00:13:59 ► §

to revision and expansion. Those whose efforts are incorporated into subsequent editions

00:14:06 ► §

will be cited or acknowledged at their thoughtful discretion and with enduring gratitude.

00:14:18 ► §

Part One, titled, A Simple Monk, with an epigraph by T.E. Lawrence from Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

00:14:30 ► §

The dreamers of the day are dangerous men,

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for they act their dream with open eyes to make it possible.

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Covering the manuscript is a page titled

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Report to the Human Subjects Committee,

00:14:53 ► §

Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

00:14:58 ► §

And it reads,

00:15:00 ► §

With the assistance of a grant through Harvard Medical School,

00:15:04 ► §

a series of interviews has been conducted among the principals of various drug trafficking organizations.

00:15:11 ► §

In an effort to quantify the economics, public health burdens, and prevalence of certain drugs and, A, in the instance of non-lethal drugs, both novel and synthetic, such as LSD, ayahuasca,

00:15:29 ► §

to explore the lifestyles, personalities, characters, and motives of manufacturers.

00:15:37 ► §

And B. In the instance of lethal addictive drugs, such as heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, to observe

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the drug’s progress from the farm gate or a clandestine laboratory to the street user

00:15:54 ► §

and the toxic outcomes from uncontrolled use. The enclosed report consists of a personal

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The enclosed report consists of a personal field journal over four years, including relevant scenes in Cambridge and in foreign rigorous ethnographies on the psychedelic

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group. The challenges are similar to those experienced by ethno-pharmacologists living

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for extended periods among remote Amazonian tribes during their practice of syncretic religions.

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Richard Evans Schultes at the Harvard Botanical Museum

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and his graduate students have applied these methods to indigenous groups in the Orinoco Basin and the Pantanal.

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Due to the unusual phenomena encountered, numerous historical recollections are embedded in the report.

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They may be helpful in distinguishing the observer from the observed.

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As a caveat, the committee will note that while illegal activity is not condoned herein,

00:17:26 ► §

the descriptions of altered and visionary states often parallel existing records

00:17:33 ► §

in the medical, forensic, and psychiatric literature

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to which these special histories may be supplemented.

00:17:46 ► §

Respectfully submitted, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Chapter One, titled Highlander,

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with an epigraph by Borges from The Man on the Threshold.

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But where was one to find them if they wander the earth lost and anonymous

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and are not recognized when they are met with,

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and not even they themselves know the high mission they perform?

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A quote from Orwell, 1984. themselves know the high mission they perform.

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A quote from Orwell 1984

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You had to live

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did live

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from habit that became instinct

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the assumption that every

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sound you made was overheard

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and except in darkness every moment scrutinized.

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The last epigraph by Joyce, from a portrait of the artist as a young man.

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The stars began to crumble, and a cloud of fine stardust fell through space.

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And now we begin the narrative of Chapter One.

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Her eyes were emerald and hermetic, her weathered face lit as if by benign witchcraft.

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An agile elderly woman of dignity and bearing, with waist-length white hair and loose braids.

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She was an ominous rose, bundled artfully in woolens of purple and red.

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An unexpected apparition.

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She descended to sit beside me.

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The dying sun and silver streams

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yielded to the moonrise.

00:19:59 ► §

They are coming for you, she said.

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We watched as before as the solitary piper began playing to the full moon,

00:20:10 ► §

standing with his fur sporan among the heathen hairbells on our isolated hilltop.

00:20:18 ► §

His double jacket, bonnet, ribbons fluttered in the sea wind.

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The plain mantle over his left shoulder was held by a brooch.

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His kilt, the hunting steward tartan.

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His black brogues shined beneath white spats.

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He was etched against fog banks, cascading to the darkening ocean.

00:20:47 ► §

against fog banks cascading to the darkening ocean, as tall dry stalks of prune leaned

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in the cool dust. Amid the salt air and spiky gorse he fingered a haunting melody on his

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chanter. The five pipes and low octave drones seemed but a dirge until the skirling grew high and free, resounding Scotland the brave.

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It was the Hunter’s Moon celebration on this crisp October eve, when once each year only

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local villagers of Point Reyes, California, knew where to gather on Inverness Ridge

00:21:25 ► §

to attend the piper.

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Crocheted pullovers

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or clustered within blankets,

00:21:32 ► §

we listened,

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while below the lonely moors

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stretched like gray counterpanes

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to the edge of nothingness.

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They’re coming for you,

00:21:47 ► §

she said again, more intently.

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Now, how shall I recognize them, I ask?

00:21:56 ► §

She could not hear the quickness of my heart.

00:22:03 ► §

They are like stumbling through a mirror, traveling across the sky. She whispered a few directions in the cultivated voice of a ballet grand dame, rich with central

00:22:12 ► §

European dialects, perhaps Hungarian or Czech.

00:22:16 ► §

Her words were like a room full of moonlight to one’s imprisoned blood.

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She had a spectral air,

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the holiness conferred by secrecy.

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Though formidable,

00:22:31 ► §

she spoke almost inaudibly,

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as if presenting to the Inquisition.

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She referred to six people in the world

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who had the capacity to synthesize kilograms of LSD.

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She said they moved about the shadowy earth with solitary motives,

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as the most devoted of societies.

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Others described them as an invisible cartel of theologians and mystagogues,

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without weapons or violence, reputed by

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some within the underground to possess the preternatural equanimity of the

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battleground. I was visiting from Cambridge in graduate studies at

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Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

00:23:32 ► §

A simultaneous appointment at Harvard Medical School as a drug policy fellow and research associate in neurobiology, supported an interest in novel drugs and organizations.

00:23:41 ► §

Through a baffling labyrinthine series of seemingly accidental

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encounters

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I became aware of them

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and they of me

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yet they remained

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eternally elusive

00:23:55 ► §

unlocatable

00:23:57 ► §

unknowable

00:23:59 ► §

at an uncertain time

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an unknown person

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had disclosed vaguely one of the six might approach after each encounter and vetting perhaps another might appear but ultimately only five of the six of no identities. Their names were to be replaced by shades ascending from scarlet, as were

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painted Homer’s ships. Crimson, indigo, vermilion, magenta, cobalt. At the appointed hour, I

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walked northward in the violet evening far along Lemontour Beach.

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There were no signs of human existence, only a monotony of ocean and wind-carved dunes.

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The surrounding fog was phantasmal with loneliness, as if one had left Earth’s embrace.

00:25:06 ► §

High seas were running with immense clouds of spray.

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Shivering, I kindled a small fire from driftwood and, by its warmth, began listening to a recording

00:25:20 ► §

of Wagner’s Der Ring der Nibelungen.

00:25:29 ► §

recording of Wagner’s Der Ring der Nibelungen. The white noise, as the booming waves folded in upon themselves,osserine gold in the ring cycle, announcing the creation

00:25:51 ► §

of the world.

00:25:54 ► §

At the 108th measure, crimson materialized silently beside me.

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There was no fright at the presence of this international quarry, but an odd sense

00:26:07 ► §

of greater safety. Upon leaving a small sailboat moored in a distant inlet on Tamales Bay,

00:26:16 ► §

he had walked ten miles through the national seashore, hiking trails. He was casual, admiring the Pacific, mentioning sailing off Cape Cod and

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the South China Sea and the coastlines of Goa and Ibiza. His eyes were deeply set like

00:26:38 ► §

a Navajo roadman, the visage of having seen the dancing flames and prayer fans and movement of spirit until the dawn woman brought water.

00:26:52 ► §

His face of many years was smooth as if reborn, tall with gray hair close to a crew cut,

00:27:02 ► §

with gray hair close to a crew cut.

00:27:06 ► §

A beatific countenance at moments.

00:27:11 ► §

He had the quick acuity of a heavily scheduled surgeon.

00:27:16 ► §

His language mingled with scholarly asides.

00:27:20 ► §

He wore a heavy dark red cable knit over jeans and running shoes.

00:27:23 ► §

Rangy and well-exercised,

00:27:25 ► §

he could have been a Princeton crew alumnus,

00:27:27 ► §

a roar carrying skulls from the boathouse to the lake.

00:27:32 ► §

In his late fifties,

00:27:34 ► §

his voice was at times retreating and academic,

00:27:39 ► §

reflecting years of isolation in deserts and mountains,

00:27:49 ► §

surrounded by literature and ranges of light. His eyes were hazel, like leaves in late autumn. He offered a sip of mango juice from an antique silver flagon, as if it were holy water. Within minutes,

00:28:09 ► §

the sea floor itself, perhaps the entire continent, seemed to move ever so slightly,

00:28:17 ► §

like some microscopic, profound, and irrevocable tectonic shift.

00:28:24 ► §

profound and irrevocable tectonic shift.

00:28:28 ► §

The fire’s heat against the cold sea air became the allegory for the world

00:28:31 ► §

balanced by practitioners of these clandestine arts.

00:28:37 ► §

I could only listen

00:28:38 ► §

to his fantastic web of recollections and foretelling

00:28:42 ► §

as he spoke softly, confiding mythic tales of remote

00:28:49 ► §

laboratory sites.

00:28:52 ► §

Sacred glass furnishes, he said, disgorge illumined fragments of mind and blinding rivers.

00:29:02 ► §

Alone and on their knees at these fountains of consciousness, singular

00:29:07 ► §

beings pray for an end to suffering. Eternal evenings become crystal daybreak pierced by

00:29:15 ► §

the morning star. At first, thinking him messianic, pontificating, perhaps a proponent of some arcane religious heresy or ghastly

00:29:27 ► §

folly, I felt mixed elation and alarm.

00:29:34 ► §

There was a moral unease at his description of what could only be mere simulacra, but

00:29:41 ► §

the changes were beginning.

00:29:43 ► §

but the changes were beginning.

00:29:49 ► §

With his words, the beach became luminous as noon,

00:29:53 ► §

as though the sky had knocked open.

00:29:56 ► §

There was the crackle of stars,

00:29:59 ► §

then blood-red shells of Magellanic clouds.

00:30:03 ► §

The ocean was billowing cold and black,

00:30:07 ► §

percussive between the screaming silences the dunes were a moonscape of rubble

00:30:12 ► §

there is vision and fusion of thought and feeling

00:30:17 ► §

he said

00:30:17 ► §

as forgiveness for all blasts heavenward

00:30:21 ► §

absolute chaos renders to absolute certainty.

00:30:28 ► §

Wrenching ignominy and confusion

00:30:31 ► §

transmute to clarity and peace.

00:30:36 ► §

The tranquil veils of Elysium

00:30:39 ► §

are welcoming us.

00:30:43 ► §

He fell silent.

00:30:48 ► §

The sound of the sea began to evolve out of night.

00:30:51 ► §

The hum of existence whispering secrets like some fantastic drug,

00:30:55 ► §

but not so cruelly,

00:30:57 ► §

for mine that evening was so vast

00:31:00 ► §

that no mere substance dare mimic its majesty.

00:31:06 ► §

It was the power of grace that compelled us.

00:31:12 ► §

The seas cradled and released as if in play.

00:31:15 ► §

They flowed in bright streams reflecting the plumed branches of heaven above.

00:31:22 ► §

Unrolling firmaments were full of incoherent raptures.

00:31:27 ► §

I sat speechless in a hypnagogic state while he seemed to transform in the shifting firelight

00:31:36 ► §

and white noise and the reflections of ten thousand fingers of fractal silver waves into

00:31:44 ► §

a spectrum of beings.

00:31:48 ► §

He re-aggregated as the alchemist Paracelsus, as the Gnostic wizard Hermes Trismegistus,

00:31:58 ► §

as an ecclesiastical conspirator in 16th century Basel, as an itinerant tinker on a Scottish beach. He displayed the Dionysiac

00:32:10 ► §

intoxication recalled by Euripides in the Bacchae, yet the solemnity of Delphic priest

00:32:18 ► §

as clouds of myrrh trail from his oracular pronouncements. He became robot flesh

00:32:27 ► §

from synthetic DNA and future avatars

00:32:31 ► §

penetrating the present for just this one encounter

00:32:35 ► §

than a Miocene hominid

00:32:39 ► §

speaking unknown tongues before the advent of fire.

00:32:45 ► §

He became the angel that St. John saw in the sun.

00:32:50 ► §

Then all the healers and medicines of the world,

00:32:55 ► §

the heretical anatomy of Galen and Vesalius,

00:32:59 ► §

the antisepsis of Lister,

00:33:02 ► §

the anesthesia of Crawford Long.

00:33:07 ► §

Finally, the dreamlike light show slowed,

00:33:14 ► §

the changes merging into a single, still, perfectly clear prospect.

00:33:20 ► §

They appeared at last, only Crimson himself,

00:33:28 ► §

simply poking the embers around and placing driftwood as if nothing at all had occurred except two friends

00:33:33 ► §

warming themselves beneath the universal canopy.

00:33:38 ► §

After the psychic conflagrations

00:33:41 ► §

I took quite some moments to recover.

00:33:45 ► §

Something more you wish to know, he said.

00:33:50 ► §

With gravitas.

00:33:53 ► §

The night was a Damascene conversion

00:33:57 ► §

into a privileged heterodoxy,

00:34:01 ► §

like a enrichment conferred by priests of concealed knowledge.

00:34:07 ► §

In the end, one was grateful to discover, all was lucid.

00:34:14 ► §

At first it seemed a trial by self-immolation, where the duplicitous would go mad.

00:34:23 ► §

But in the purity of my inquiry I survived this first encounter,

00:34:29 ► §

perhaps the last stage of their background check.

00:34:34 ► §

I’ve been permitted a carefully limited glance at the edges of a worldwide system, the existence

00:34:42 ► §

of which had never been proven by writings henceforth but

00:34:49 ► §

a fitful remembrance not only of these most uncommon of interviews, but of complex ephemera

00:34:58 ► §

barely recordable yet absolute. They were so utterly unforgettable

00:35:05 ► §

that in order for the observer

00:35:08 ► §

to function

00:35:09 ► §

they must be

00:35:12 ► §

forgotten.

00:35:15 ► §

Rendered mute

00:35:16 ► §

by all that had been said and seen

00:35:19 ► §

none of which

00:35:20 ► §

was suitable for Harvard peer review

00:35:23 ► §

I managed to remember a question,

00:35:27 ► §

finding a barely articulate voice.

00:35:30 ► §

The mind.

00:35:34 ► §

The mindset.

00:35:36 ► §

What is required for your work?

00:35:41 ► §

Other than the syntheses conducted by each of the six he said i specialize in basic security

00:35:48 ► §

the foci of the other five are different my perspective cycles among only a few realities

00:35:57 ► §

then repeats moving from window to window i may in one view predatory opposing forces with weapons,

00:36:08 ► §

and in another, daisies strewn in a field like laughter,

00:36:15 ► §

and in another, the nightingale’s cry on a southern night,

00:36:21 ► §

or an unmarked car at the wrong time of day,

00:36:24 ► §

or an unmarked car at the wrong time of day or sublime ranges of forest and mountains

00:36:29 ► §

and no walls.

00:36:32 ► §

It’s the schizophrenic life of a sentient herbivore

00:36:36 ► §

at any moment devoured pitilessly.

00:36:41 ► §

But living the long peace,

00:36:44 ► §

grazing in serenity

00:36:46 ► §

beneath untroubled skies

00:36:49 ► §

but how do you live

00:36:52 ► §

each day

00:36:54 ► §

upon waking he said

00:36:57 ► §

I meditate on

00:37:00 ► §

boundless tranquility and freedom

00:37:03 ► §

then through every hour

00:37:05 ► §

keep submerged

00:37:06 ► §

the cold sweat

00:37:08 ► §

the awareness

00:37:09 ► §

of pervasive surveillance technologies

00:37:12 ► §

ubiquitous cameras

00:37:14 ► §

facial recognition

00:37:15 ► §

dossiers and data banks

00:37:17 ► §

I constantly recognize

00:37:20 ► §

fearfully armed governments

00:37:22 ► §

the control of radical thinking and non-obescence,

00:37:28 ► §

the data mining for single actors and organizations beyond the state’s understanding.

00:37:34 ► §

As I walk through cities, I’m cognizant of aerial, automotive, pedestrian surveillance,

00:37:43 ► §

of aerial, automotive, pedestrian surveillance,

00:37:48 ► §

the small armies of police disguised as laborers,

00:37:53 ► §

bankers, cabbies, barflies, cocaine traffickers,

00:37:56 ► §

and earnest fellow travelers.

00:38:01 ► §

At this overwhelming disclosure,

00:38:06 ► §

which at first seemed a highly functional paranoia, I noticed that Crimson was an island of contrast.

00:38:11 ► §

His hands were toughened from splitting cords and fire-making,

00:38:17 ► §

at the same time without tremor,

00:38:21 ► §

possessing a connectedness between earth and sky.

00:38:26 ► §

Yet his perfectly manicured fingers

00:38:28 ► §

seemed capable of telegraphic flourishes,

00:38:34 ► §

the precise rotation of stopcocks,

00:38:37 ► §

the fine analytical measurement of exotic reagents.

00:38:43 ► §

He emanated an electrical excitement

00:38:46 ► §

suggestive of some great

00:38:48 ► §

and wonderful secret.

00:38:51 ► §

He unnervingly anticipated

00:38:52 ► §

my every thought

00:38:54 ► §

with a drawing gently

00:38:57 ► §

when I grew fearful

00:38:59 ► §

at his presence.

00:39:01 ► §

Near this remarkable being,

00:39:04 ► §

one of the six, it seemed no time for careless trivia.

00:39:11 ► §

How do you avoid detection?

00:39:15 ► §

I dress, act, and speak quite conservatively, striving to be forgettable, to leave no memory.

00:39:23 ► §

striving to be forgettable, to leave no memory.

00:39:30 ► §

One must be a gray man, perhaps a mild accountant of little means,

00:39:38 ► §

to hide without a trace personal responsibility for the ecstasies,

00:39:44 ► §

the orgasmic religiosities in millions of minds.

00:39:48 ► §

At this frank admission, he looked to the sea.

00:39:55 ► §

I was saddened by this painful description of his dichotomy,

00:39:59 ► §

the chilling and necessary mechanisms for covert actions coexisting with his heightened aesthetic.

00:40:04 ► §

His poetic stream of observations and acts coexisting with his heightened aesthetic.

00:40:08 ► §

His poetic stream of observations and acts rendered every moment deeply felt.

00:40:14 ► §

It seemed the greatest irony

00:40:16 ► §

that one who espoused divine unity and harmony

00:40:19 ► §

would suffer in such cause,

00:40:23 ► §

a lifetime of being a virtual outcast.

00:40:28 ► §

I seized upon his assertion of mimicking

00:40:31 ► §

common habits, mores, and clothing to appear normal

00:40:35 ► §

even as he controlled some vast

00:40:39 ► §

chimerical and stealthy machine.

00:40:45 ► §

You practice a form of social invisibility.

00:40:50 ► §

We dress for the environment, he said,

00:40:53 ► §

like chameleons.

00:40:56 ► §

So there are no sartorial affectations or signals

00:41:00 ► §

as we move unnoticed among the mainstream.

00:41:05 ► §

No capes or long hair or shaved skulls or tattoos or any distinguishing features.

00:41:13 ► §

When it becomes boring visually, it appears the ultimate conformist, hopeless to underground

00:41:20 ► §

art and fashion.

00:41:22 ► §

Yet the women have been known to affect fascinators among the pomp of English

00:41:27 ► §

receptions, or torn Levi’s for a dismal bus ride to Corpus Christi. The sands were white

00:41:39 ► §

meadows beneath the moon, drawing the brilliance of open sea. Crimson seemed a persecuted

00:41:49 ► §

ecclesiastic, fleeing gothic halls and cloisters, his intrigues majestic as the

00:41:58 ► §

night horned with stars. Rather than sensing criminality, one felt the presence of great virtue.

00:42:12 ► §

And your behavior is normal. We are considered wild men among a few, he said, but our manner is entirely conventional, even drab or self-effacing.

00:42:26 ► §

Forsaking all recognition for the improbability of detection,

00:42:33 ► §

we practice blending in seamlessly.

00:42:38 ► §

Upon contact with the public, we have easy courtesies and friendly eyes,

00:42:44 ► §

exchanging simple words as though one has

00:42:48 ► §

nothing to hide, but also to not frighten anyone or provoke suspicion or even remembrance.

00:43:00 ► §

White caps were racing, colliding into light showers of spray.

00:43:07 ► §

The winds were a chanting sort of litany, conjured up by fairies.

00:43:16 ► §

But how do you remain balanced?

00:43:20 ► §

As with Daniel among the lines, he said,

00:43:23 ► §

one’s heart cannot be conflicted even momentarily.

00:43:28 ► §

Such enduring duplicity must be conducted with fearless grace.

00:43:35 ► §

The life is difficult.

00:43:39 ► §

Only by devotion to cognitive evolution can harboring constant deceits be made honorable. I speak

00:43:49 ► §

here not of small syntheses, a hundred grams or a million doses on occasion, but the requisite decades, for planetary scale of batches.

00:44:09 ► §

Crimson was not being sentitious, but perceived correctly he was the prey, constantly hunted

00:44:15 ► §

by unseen international law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

00:44:21 ► §

I listened to this lonely warrior behind enemy lines

00:44:25 ► §

who spoke of a small but widespread underground

00:44:29 ► §

that provided him with a modicum of respect, tolerance, and safety.

00:44:37 ► §

He had committed a felony that would be penalized by life in prison

00:44:41 ► §

not once, but for a lifetime.

00:44:50 ► §

by life in prison, not once, but for a lifetime. It was disconcerting that in beholding his face one saw not some cabalistic darkness, but a luminous compassion.

00:45:00 ► §

Crimson, as one of the six, was a dedicated psychedelic manufacturer since his first exposure to classical hallucinogen.

00:45:11 ► §

In rare instances, my inquiry was permitted into other techniques by which he had somehow evaded arrest for decades.

00:45:20 ► §

for decades.

00:45:23 ► §

I learned of the rogue chemist’s methods

00:45:25 ► §

of a trade-off of an unthreatened life

00:45:28 ► §

for an inspired

00:45:30 ► §

alienation

00:45:30 ► §

which must not be shared

00:45:33 ► §

even with those

00:45:36 ► §

he loved.

00:45:37 ► §

He ceased his introspections

00:45:39 ► §

for a while, then remarked,

00:45:42 ► §

As you say in Zen,

00:45:48 ► §

a hair’s breadth of deviation, and you’re out of tune.

00:45:49 ► §

I’d never once referred to my years before Harvard as a monk at Hoshin-ji Monastery.

00:45:58 ► §

The Six had investigated me.

00:46:01 ► §

Somewhat undone, I suggested taking some air. We walked in an unhurried way, arms crossed,

00:46:11 ► §

even as the chill of the rolling gray ocean began to reach through us. We passed masses

00:46:17 ► §

of kelp and sequoia driftwood, watching the sandpipers at the edge of ripplets and gulls sailing over the crest,

00:46:28 ► §

while the sighting of Kestrel’s eagles and egrets redeemed our intrusion into this sacred

00:46:34 ► §

shore.

00:46:37 ► §

Stopping at last, we saw in the mist, flowing over our distant embers, the sleeping eye

00:46:43 ► §

of some great beast.

00:46:42 ► §

flowing over our distant embers,

00:46:44 ► §

the sleeping eye of some great beast.

00:46:49 ► §

Returning, we hastened our fire with eucalyptus.

00:46:53 ► §

Warming ourselves, we faced the sea and talked of magical things,

00:46:57 ► §

then of desperate moments.

00:47:00 ► §

The covert lifestyle, Crimson mused,

00:47:03 ► §

the practice necessary to support clandestine psychedelic manufacture, may be applied to any severely outlawed activity.

00:47:15 ► §

The hidden other life, terrible in its stress, requires the most delicate decisions.

00:47:22 ► §

requires the most delicate decisions.

00:47:27 ► §

Metaphorically, perhaps the only way it can be described,

00:47:31 ► §

the path is fine as a silver web,

00:47:36 ► §

treacherous as an icy couloir.

00:47:40 ► §

Yet success, the completion of a synthesis, is like the dawn, the end of dreams.

00:47:47 ► §

Trails of smoke from our fire dwindled away among the stars.

00:47:54 ► §

Ribbons of darkness turned throughout the enigmatic diamond sky.

00:48:00 ► §

Light sea winds invigorated the blue-black littoral of the coast.

00:48:04 ► §

Light sea winds invigorated the blue-black littoral of the coast.

00:48:12 ► §

Eager to learn more, and not wanting to divert him from his poetic illusions, I offered some jasmine tea from a flask.

00:48:17 ► §

My questioning became very gentle, like a novitiate who knew nothing.

00:48:24 ► §

And what decisions might those be, I asked. like a novitiate who knew nothing.

00:48:29 ► §

And what decisions might those be, I ask?

00:48:34 ► §

It is as if we were early Christians, he ventured,

00:48:37 ► §

clinging together among hostile Romans or pagan Visigoths before legions worshipping Saturn.

00:48:44 ► §

One decides early on

00:48:45 ► §

whether one’s elixir is sacramental

00:48:48 ► §

or poisonous,

00:48:51 ► §

whether the outcome is benevolent

00:48:53 ► §

or criminal,

00:48:56 ► §

a hallowed duty

00:48:57 ► §

or a tragic caprice.

00:49:01 ► §

The moral issues are resolved

00:49:03 ► §

through repeated personal sufferings and illuminations,

00:49:09 ► §

agonies and ecstasies no less than any acolytes.

00:49:13 ► §

We were among the first exposed to the substance.

00:49:20 ► §

And you concluded that distribution of psychedelics was, in the aggregate, benign?

00:49:27 ► §

Among a narrow subset of the population, he said, who wish it.

00:49:32 ► §

Not for everyone.

00:49:35 ► §

LSD is only the first synthetic non-lethal compound in an accelerating psychopharmacological revolution of evolutionary magnitude, the dimensions

00:49:48 ► §

and social impact of which we hardly can anticipate.

00:49:55 ► §

Evolutionary magnitude?

00:49:58 ► §

Consider the primordial firemakers of Homo erectus, the cave artist at Lascaux or Grotte Chauvet-Pont-D’Arc.

00:50:10 ► §

Think of the coming of the prophets,

00:50:14 ► §

the transition from papyrus to electrons for communication.

00:50:19 ► §

For those who first knew of the light,

00:50:23 ► §

special knowledge and practices were closely held.

00:50:27 ► §

For the future unraveled in manifold directions, both that of plague and salvation.

00:50:37 ► §

Societies divided on the issues, moral introspection was paramount.

00:50:43 ► §

What does one do with the sacred, with utterly transforming technology? Withhold

00:50:50 ► §

it or release it? None were decisions for governments, but for the makers. I waited

00:51:02 ► §

for his elevated, almost scholarly discourse to resolve into actual precepts that could be recorded.

00:51:12 ► §

Although he possessed several distinct voices, his language at this time was antiquated, Dickensian.

00:51:21 ► §

It seemed stilted to the modern ears, though he had spent years alone,

00:51:27 ► §

removed in hidden settings,

00:51:30 ► §

comforted only by Victorian literature

00:51:32 ► §

or the writings of Virgil or St. Augustine or Plotinus.

00:51:39 ► §

How do you protect yourself

00:51:41 ► §

and those who protect you, I ask,

00:51:45 ► §

conceding both his moral imperative and his fiercely armed opposition?

00:51:51 ► §

He looked somberly at me.

00:51:55 ► §

Would a brief tutorial be helpful?

00:51:59 ► §

A day in the life of a hypothetical chemist or distributor of some future drug?

00:52:06 ► §

I assured him it would, stirring the fire gently to not distract him.

00:52:14 ► §

Let’s assume a compound that induces profound religiosity.

00:52:21 ► §

Its adherents are persecuted persecuted no longer by Caesar but by governments preferring

00:52:28 ► §

sole control over advances in neurochemistry

00:52:31 ► §

the same security rules would apply to clandestine chemists

00:52:37 ► §

confronting another inevitability

00:52:39 ► §

the first substance is significantly enhancing cognition

00:52:44 ► §

memory and learning.

00:52:49 ► §

Imagine the social outcomes, not only of these, but of erotogenics that hide libido.

00:52:59 ► §

Crimson, clearly safe at our obscure campfire up this secluded coastline, begin expounding

00:53:08 ► §

with vignettes on furtive arts seldom practiced in our civilized interdependency.

00:53:16 ► §

I remained quiet throughout the night as he described in staccato bursts or long reveries how not to attract attention

00:53:26 ► §

while constructing a type of psychological nuclear bomb

00:53:30 ► §

affecting millions

00:53:33 ► §

who is carried easily in one’s pocket

00:53:36 ► §

in the form of a drug potent in micrograms.

00:53:41 ► §

Although too specialized to be included

00:53:43 ► §

in a rigorous research monograph at Harvard

00:53:46 ► §

his portrayals were tantalizing

00:53:50 ► §

and interruptions unthinkable

00:53:53 ► §

the iron of night became fleetingly veined

00:53:58 ► §

with trails of light

00:54:00 ► §

manifold spectra recalling

00:54:03 ► §

the dialectical dreams of the first imagery.

00:54:09 ► §

The fire behind Crimson was radiant

00:54:11 ► §

into a halo around him.

00:54:15 ► §

Together here we are considering

00:54:17 ► §

the mystical intersection of mind and brain, he said,

00:54:21 ► §

in service of humanity.

00:54:24 ► §

Even while some regard distribution

00:54:26 ► §

as foolhardy and criminals,

00:54:30 ► §

others honor it.

00:54:33 ► §

He alluded to the Kabbalah’s description

00:54:37 ► §

of the 13 keepers of the mysteries,

00:54:40 ► §

men and women spread across the earth

00:54:42 ► §

in trivial occupations,

00:54:54 ► §

cobblers, camel herders, beggars, but pounding of the winter storm surf on the

00:55:06 ► §

beachhead. Upon the fire, we placed redwood washed down from the cloud-bound Humboldt

00:55:14 ► §

coast. As it steamed and snapped in the blazes, he looked intently at me. He stopped theorizing.

00:55:23 ► §

He stopped theorizing.

00:55:28 ► §

It’s better that we all teach you in small ways.

00:55:31 ► §

There are six chemists.

00:55:35 ► §

Of four others I shall speak, Crimson confided.

00:55:42 ► §

We may be thought of as occupying the surface of a modern Eucharist, the crystal, while within the jewel we all prepare the sacrament individually

00:55:48 ► §

in remote sites.

00:55:51 ► §

But each thereafter in returning to the world is responsible for different facets.

00:55:58 ► §

We then focus separately on practical aspects that ensure continued viability of the system.

00:56:07 ► §

What are these practical aspects beyond the synthesis?

00:56:12 ► §

I develop fundamental security, the habits to make arrest or seizure improbable.

00:56:33 ► §

The others, whom we’ll designate by the cryptonyms indigo, vermilion, magenta, and cobalt, have different roles.

00:56:35 ► §

We constantly share what we learn.

00:56:39 ► §

Tell me of the Eucharist, the sanctity and precision of labs, and their surreptitious transfer from site to site.

00:56:54 ► §

Vermillion monitors distribution. He conducts downstream counterintelligence with gifted woman operatives who employ forms of tantric unions,

00:57:10 ► §

esoteric, erotic practices.

00:57:13 ► §

At this he hesitated,

00:57:16 ► §

processing some emotional memory.

00:57:19 ► §

He went on.

00:57:21 ► §

Magenta is concerned with research,

00:57:24 ► §

the future, anticipating neuroscience, the next touchstone of evolution.

00:57:32 ► §

Cobalt considers high-level threats, infiltrates governments, and watches intelligence and enforcement agencies.

00:57:42 ► §

Spy versus spy.

00:57:46 ► §

Together, we survive.

00:57:50 ► §

And the sixth matter, woman,

00:57:53 ► §

that discovery we must leave to you

00:57:56 ► §

and your readers.

00:58:00 ► §

I stacked rough pine driftwood

00:58:03 ► §

until our ceremonial flames grew hotter and more luxuriant against the translucent purple night.

00:58:11 ► §

With a gunshot crackling of resins, live sparks swirled upwards like fireflies in the air, sea air cool and delicious.

00:58:21 ► §

The sky freshened, the smashing breakers and hissing foam, finally

00:58:27 ► §

all that could be heard. Barely visible waves, now exposed by the dissolution of mist, reflected

00:58:38 ► §

in broad paths of light to the far edge of the waters, the fullness of the October moon.

00:58:46 ► §

Suspended in high, horizontal dark clouds

00:58:49 ► §

that curled and pointed as if in a Tibetan painting,

00:58:54 ► §

its lunar whiteness was of sublime and eternal beauty.

00:59:00 ► §

Before me, a second shift in perception occurred,

00:59:08 ► §

for the veil was removed this night.

00:59:25 ► §

The orb seemed to possess a powerful, mute aesthetic, one increasingly disturbing in its perfection. It became an apocalyptic profundity rendering a sudden comprehension of the divine in the irrefutable art of God.

00:59:31 ► §

I had to turn away so that I could function and not, before its unutterable presence,

00:59:37 ► §

wildly dance and shout or kneel.

00:59:43 ► §

As he observed my staggering glimpses,

00:59:46 ► §

voice arose in a grounding way

00:59:48 ► §

in sepulchral tones

00:59:50 ► §

as in a vast auditorium.

00:59:54 ► §

You wish to learn the mechanics of it all, you say.

00:59:59 ► §

Whatever is comfortable for you, I returned

01:00:03 ► §

with the greatest effort.

01:00:06 ► §

He said nothing, avoiding only with difficulty the ineffable transcendence so starkly plain before us.

01:00:17 ► §

I managed only a few words.

01:00:20 ► §

Your special arts might live forever.

01:00:24 ► §

your special arts might live forever.

01:00:28 ► §

He hesitated at my awkward overture then viewed internally some realm of future and past.

01:00:33 ► §

Regaining my footing somewhat,

01:00:35 ► §

I cautiously tried again,

01:00:37 ► §

appealing to his historical perspective.

01:00:41 ► §

Read one day by someone in need,

01:00:48 ► §

a revolutionary in time of oppression a soul in your path

01:00:50 ► §

why not pass the knowledge on

01:00:53 ► §

would that not be the apex he said

01:00:57 ► §

of narcissistic illusion

01:00:59 ► §

but so it is with all true callings

01:01:03 ► §

from neurology to theology

01:01:05 ► §

to dare I say it

01:01:07 ► §

the prosecutor’s imperative

01:01:10 ► §

he became pensive and solemn

01:01:14 ► §

the firelight began flickering like sheet lightning

01:01:18 ► §

plunging us into anonymity

01:01:21 ► §

a small premonitory unease

01:01:26 ► §

manifested a tingle of disaster

01:01:29 ► §

that labored and fled like slow wingbeats

01:01:33 ► §

through the spokes of darkness.

01:01:36 ► §

A stream of ants escaping the smoking

01:01:39 ► §

castaway pine branches

01:01:40 ► §

fell one by one into the fire.

01:01:46 ► §

Crimson, down from his reveries, considered the subject.

01:01:53 ► §

The occult life in modern times, he said, in American Europe, Russia, and Southeast Asia,

01:02:01 ► §

the domains of my experience excluding South America and its obscene cocaine trade

01:02:06 ► §

is an exercise

01:02:09 ► §

in cultivating

01:02:10 ► §

two or more parallel worlds

01:02:12 ► §

and moving easily

01:02:14 ► §

among them

01:02:15 ► §

a pale

01:02:17 ► §

rinse dawn was breaking

01:02:20 ► §

we were sticky with dampness

01:02:22 ► §

and salt

01:02:23 ► §

my wavering skeptical mind had foundered

01:02:28 ► §

against his most exalted dedication.

01:02:32 ► §

One felt a foreboding of terrible perils,

01:02:38 ► §

for the sage spirit was encircled by genuine enemies.

01:02:44 ► §

I pressed him with care.

01:02:48 ► §

What are the rules of conduct?

01:02:52 ► §

One could write a treatise on them.

01:02:55 ► §

They must be observed as religiously as the 300 vows

01:02:59 ► §

of a Pasana monk in the Thai forest.

01:03:04 ► §

At the slightest misjudgment,

01:03:07 ► §

one is swept away from the purity of graceful practice

01:03:10 ► §

into the cesspool of captivity.

01:03:15 ► §

Let’s call them Washington rules,

01:03:19 ► §

as in D.C.,

01:03:21 ► §

followed so one’s demise is met with dignity, rather than walking abused in

01:03:28 ► §

forlorn circles around a prison track.

01:03:33 ► §

The undertow drew its hissing breath at the terrible cruelty of his fate.

01:03:40 ► §

Above a froth-chained sea, the gulls screamed and herons rasped.

01:03:46 ► §

The useless horror of penal servitude forever shadowed the six,

01:03:53 ► §

immerred behind some wall.

01:03:56 ► §

One could be driven half-mad by the squalor of confinement.

01:04:02 ► §

Beyond our fire, piles of rotted, lichen-encrusted redwood logs were trapped in moon-bright sand.

01:04:12 ► §

I thought of the last caribou crawling in heavy snows, their shaky, frightened cows,

01:04:23 ► §

the frolicking wolves.

01:04:28 ► §

Washington rules, then, I agreed, quite eager to learn.

01:04:33 ► §

It was nearing first light.

01:04:35 ► §

He abruptly turned to go.

01:04:38 ► §

Confused and apprehensive at perhaps overstepping my charter with invasive questions,

01:04:45 ► §

I mumbled some apologies and absurdly asked for his phone number.

01:04:50 ► §

As the night had taught, he had thought far ahead of me.

01:04:57 ► §

Experience is more indelible than rhetoric, friend.

01:05:02 ► §

Visit San Francisco Saturday, anywhere

01:05:06 ► §

downtown.

01:05:08 ► §

At sunrise,

01:05:10 ► §

I’ll find you.

01:05:14 ► §

Quickened, I rushed to

01:05:15 ► §

reply lightheartedly,

01:05:18 ► §

recalling his penchant for many costumes.

01:05:22 ► §

How should I dress?

01:05:24 ► §

Bring your

01:05:25 ► §

gym clothes, he said simply.

01:05:29 ► §

A little

01:05:30 ► §

smile.

01:05:32 ► §

He then slowly raised

01:05:34 ► §

his hand and walked away,

01:05:36 ► §

his fire-lit body

01:05:38 ► §

receding like

01:05:40 ► §

a phantom in the pale obscurity

01:05:42 ► §

by the

01:05:43 ► §

singing sea.

01:05:47 ► §

With the weariness of this immensely long vigil, I trembled quietly at his sudden disappearance.

01:05:55 ► §

I remained crouched on the beach for hours as the fire withdrew to embers, then to ash.

01:06:03 ► §

fire withdrew to embers, then to ash.

01:06:07 ► §

The moon, not unusual,

01:06:10 ► §

fading now into the ocean.

01:06:16 ► §

The incoming tide, like the slow pulse of the earth, erased in great rhythmic

01:06:19 ► §

sweeps his footprints, until at

01:06:23 ► §

last there was no trace whatsoever to be found.

01:06:40 ► §

We’re going to break now and hear some commentary from Nishay Deveneau. After she’s done, we’ll play

01:06:44 ► §

the rest of Leonard’s recording,

01:06:46 ► §

and there will be more discussion after the chapter concludes.

01:06:52 ► §

In the introduction, or before the introduction,

01:06:55 ► §

there’s a report to the Human Subjects Committee at Harvard University.

01:06:59 ► §

Of course, Leonard went to Harvard and studied the topics described in this book. And so there’s this sort

01:07:07 ► §

of realistic frame narrative accompanying the story where this is a document in ethnography

01:07:14 ► §

describing Leonard’s introduction to a group of chemists described as being involved with a drug trafficking organization of some kind.

01:07:26 ► §

And right off the bat, we have this distinction

01:07:30 ► §

between two very different, even opposing, tendencies.

01:07:36 ► §

On the one hand, you have A, in the instance of non-lethal drugs,

01:07:42 ► §

both novel and synthetic, LSD, ayahuasca, etc., to explore the lifestyle, its personalities, characters, and motives of manufacturers, so specifically studying those who pursue non-addictive and even anti-addictive drugs,

01:08:04 ► §

addictive drugs, heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, to observe the drug’s progress from the farm gate or clandestine laboratory to the street user and the toxic outcomes

01:08:10 ► §

from uncontrolled use.

01:08:12 ► §

Because this is very much a story about a war, almost, between conflicting motivations.

01:08:21 ► §

There’s a group of chemists, of which the character becomes involved,

01:08:26 ► §

who are actively seeking to liberate humankind from these opposing forces of

01:08:34 ► §

control and constriction and habit and imprisonment, ultimately. So it’s an allegory of this fight for freedom in the face of this fight to imprison

01:08:50 ► §

the population and through the population’s consciousness. So that comes up very early on

01:08:57 ► §

in this letter to Harvard about the ethnography, and I just wanted to point that out.

01:09:02 ► §

But into the first chapter, immediately we’re faced with this sort of high,

01:09:06 ► §

high literary use of English.

01:09:10 ► §

And we’re kind of thrust into this mysterious event

01:09:17 ► §

where we have this woman speaking to Leonard,

01:09:19 ► §

and she says,

01:09:20 ► §

they are coming for you,

01:09:22 ► §

without initially explaining who that they are.

01:09:26 ► §

And then it continues a little bit farther down that page, they are coming for you without initially explaining who that they are and then it continues a little bit farther down that page they’re coming for you she said again more intently

01:09:30 ► §

now so there’s a sense of kind of urgency and mystery and slowly it becomes apparent that

01:09:38 ► §

leonard is becoming acquainted with this mysterious group of six chemists, only five of whom are introduced explicitly in the story.

01:09:50 ► §

And even though the language is off the bat metaphorical,

01:09:56 ► §

when this woman elaborates and Leonard asks how he’s going to recognize the chemist,

01:10:02 ► §

she responds, they are like stumbling through a mirror,

01:10:06 ► §

traveling across the sky. Following along, we find out that although it has this sort of fictional,

01:10:14 ► §

fantastic mode of representation with that kind of description and the language used there,

01:10:19 ► §

it’s also grounded in the ordinary world. So on page 17, it continues,

01:10:24 ► §

I was visiting from Cambridge in graduate studies at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. It’s also grounded in the ordinary world. So on page 17 it continues,

01:10:29 ► §

I was visiting from Cambridge in graduate studies at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

01:10:34 ► §

A simultaneous appointment at Harvard Medical School as a drug policy fellow and research associate in neurobiology supported an interest in novel drugs and organizations.

01:10:40 ► §

So there’s a very concrete reason for Leonard to be interested in this organization

01:10:46 ► §

and studying them from a kind of instrumental project, dissertation, mode of investigation.

01:10:54 ► §

And yet there’s something more to that story beyond just an intellectual interest.

01:11:01 ► §

He mentions there’s seeming coincidences kind of leading him to this group of

01:11:07 ► §

people and things lining up in strange ways, so the conscious mind’s ideas for what’s going on

01:11:13 ► §

isn’t necessarily the whole story here. I’d like to also reference Lana Cook as a literary scholar

01:11:21 ► §

who’s written about a psychedelic aesthetic in literature.

01:11:30 ► §

And I find her distinction between realism and fantasy really helpful. And she describes writers in the tradition of the psychedelic aesthetic

01:11:35 ► §

who establish realistic or real-world details to construct a familiar ground for readers,

01:11:41 ► §

while simultaneously disrupting readers’ normative sense of reality

01:11:45 ► §

through more fantasy or fantastical elements.

01:11:50 ► §

So the realism, in her words, acts as the narrative bait and hook, while the fantasy

01:11:55 ► §

scoops the readers out of the water.

01:11:58 ► §

And in this context, the figurative language, and particularly novel metaphors, serve an

01:12:03 ► §

important function in that they render

01:12:05 ► §

unfamiliar concepts accessible to readers and also unbind readers from their habitual

01:12:11 ► §

ordinary perspectives on reality.

01:12:13 ► §

So there are moments in this book where the reality is very accessible and normal and

01:12:18 ► §

limited at Harvard, going about from classes to classes and thinking about the upcoming exam.

01:12:26 ► §

And that’s very important and strategic because there’s that baseline of familiarity.

01:12:31 ► §

And then when things get strange and they get really strange at certain parts,

01:12:35 ► §

it’s very normal that it describes in terms of strange phenomena that begin to occur.

01:12:43 ► §

strange phenomena that begin to occur. The implication is that this is not some fantasy about Mars or some other planet or dimension,

01:12:50 ► §

this is our world, but just a non-ordinary experience of the world that Leonard is drawn

01:12:57 ► §

into by proximity to the substances and these chemists in particular because later on especially just being around

01:13:05 ► §

some of these chemists has alterating altering effects on leonard’s consciousness and so

01:13:12 ► §

the language changes to reinforce that diversion or difference from ordinary reality

01:13:19 ► §

so in terms of the chemists because in this this first chapter, Leonard meets Crimson, who is the first of the chemists who he’s exposed to.

01:13:32 ► §

And Crimson materializes, and it’s just the two of them,

01:13:37 ► §

and they start having this conversation.

01:13:39 ► §

But even though he kind of appears out of nowhere,

01:13:42 ► §

Leonard mentions feeling an odd sense of greater safety or familiarity, even though he’s never met this person before.

01:13:50 ► §

And the line between Leonard and these other chemists is not completely clear in the sense

01:13:59 ► §

that a lot of descriptions of the chemists here and later in the book have very explicit parallels

01:14:06 ► §

to aspects of Leonard’s own personality. So you can read this in multiple ways. You can read it

01:14:12 ► §

as these are separate people or these are reflections of different facets of personality.

01:14:18 ► §

For example, on page 18, describing Crimson’s language, this also describes Leonard’s language, especially in correspondence

01:14:28 ► §

even outside of the context of this book. So the line is on page 18

01:14:32 ► §

his language mingled with scholarly asides

01:14:36 ► §

a little bit later down. In his late 50s his voice was at times

01:14:40 ► §

retreating and academic, reflecting years of isolation and deserts

01:14:44 ► §

and mountains, surrounded by isolation and deserts and mountains

01:14:45 ► §

surrounded by literature and ranges of light and so of course we know that leonard’s been

01:14:50 ► §

in prison for decades now and his communication style is definitely inflected by the many works

01:14:58 ► §

of literature that he’s been accompanied by in his prison cell so it’s a description it’s a

01:15:04 ► §

description of crimson but it’s’s a description of Crimson,

01:15:05 ► §

but it’s also a description of Leonard

01:15:06 ► §

and of this book as you read along.

01:15:10 ► §

There’s another example on page 24.

01:15:14 ► §

So this is describing Crimson again.

01:15:16 ► §

Quote,

01:15:17 ► §

Although he possessed several distinct voices,

01:15:19 ► §

his language at this time was antiquated,

01:15:22 ► §

Dickensian.

01:15:23 ► §

It seemed stilted to the modern, as though he had spent years alone,

01:15:27 ► §

removed in hidden settings, comforted only by Victorian literature,

01:15:31 ► §

or the writings of Virgil, St. Augustine, or Plotinus.

01:15:35 ► §

So reading this, it’s equally a description of the book.

01:15:39 ► §

It’s that kind of Victorian, almost, language that seems stilted or anachronistic to the ear.

01:15:48 ► §

But again, there’s this distancing effect caused by that,

01:15:52 ► §

in the sense that it’s the real world, but represented as if from another age,

01:15:59 ► §

and then using that as a baseline for the normal representation of the world

01:16:05 ► §

that then becomes increasingly estranged during these non-ordinary interludes,

01:16:10 ► §

that you could say.

01:16:11 ► §

And his first non-ordinary interlude actually occurs in this chapter

01:16:16 ► §

during the conversation with Crimson,

01:16:19 ► §

where he’s given some mango juice to drink out of a flask.

01:16:27 ► §

This is on page 18 of my copy.

01:16:31 ► §

It says,

01:16:32 ► §

He offered a sip of mango juice from an antique silver flagging,

01:16:35 ► §

as if it were holy water.

01:16:37 ► §

Within minutes, the sea floor itself, perhaps the entire continent,

01:16:41 ► §

seemed to move ever so slightly,

01:16:43 ► §

like some microscopic, profound, and irrevocable tectonic

01:16:46 ► §

shift and then crimson begins to speak in really compelling almost prophetic or mystical terms

01:16:57 ► §

in words that are pretty abstract but also. And so listening to these words, Leonard is also here

01:17:09 ► §

serving as almost a stand-in for the reader in the sense that he’s like, wow, this guy’s

01:17:14 ► §

seems like he’s kind of onto something, but also uncertain, not used to hearing people speak in

01:17:20 ► §

this way. For example, so later on page 18 leonard says to the reader at first

01:17:27 ► §

thinking him messianic pontificating perhaps a proponent of some arcane religious heresy or

01:17:33 ► §

ghastly folly i fixed i felt mixed elation and alarm there was a moral unease at his description

01:17:40 ► §

of what only could be mirror simulacra, but the changes were beginning.

01:17:46 ► §

So Leonard here is suggesting that part of him is compelled,

01:17:50 ► §

or impressed with what he’s hearing,

01:17:53 ► §

part of him is unsure of where this person’s coming from,

01:17:57 ► §

and yet despite the uncertainty, there’s actual changes that start happening.

01:18:02 ► §

So regardless of the intellectual assessment,

01:18:07 ► §

the ideas are doing something to Leonard

01:18:09 ► §

and altering his consciousness as he’s listening.

01:18:12 ► §

And it reaches a crescendo

01:18:13 ► §

in this sort of fractal explosion

01:18:17 ► §

outside of normal space-time.

01:18:19 ► §

On the next page, he says,

01:18:21 ► §

I sat speechless in a hypnagogic state

01:18:24 ► §

while he seemed to transform

01:18:25 ► §

in the shifting firelight and white noise and the reflections of 10,000 fingers

01:18:30 ► §

of fractal silver waves into a spectrum of beings.

01:18:34 ► §

And this is a combination of beings from ancient history,

01:18:39 ► §

healing figures in the history, and reaching into the future.

01:18:43 ► §

It says he became robot flesh from

01:18:45 ► §

synthetic dna and future avatars penetrating the present for just this one encounter etc

01:18:51 ► §

and then all of that fractal connection through time folds back down and it’s just

01:18:59 ► §

two people sitting and talking by a fire as if nothing at all had occurred. And this is a microcosm of what the entire book does,

01:19:07 ► §

because there are these moments of, like I was saying, normal going about school,

01:19:12 ► §

and then suddenly there are these asides where Leonard follows these figures

01:19:19 ► §

into other realms of consciousness, other modes of perception beyond normal space and time perception,

01:19:27 ► §

and encounters these chemists as figures who have not only developed a facility

01:19:34 ► §

with these many modes of being and modes of consciousness,

01:19:37 ► §

but also are engaged in this both mundane and cosmic war of being on the run and fighting for what

01:19:48 ► §

they believe is right, which is freedom and the protection of the weak and the young.

01:20:12 ► §

The dank, moist, green San Francisco wharves were like a shattered fragment of an abandoned temple.

01:20:20 ► §

The cold dawn exhaled rising damps and flotsam under the optic to the sky.

01:20:28 ► §

As the edge of day filtered from the Berkeley horizon, the bay bloomed with iridescence.

01:20:31 ► §

Mirages flickered across the water.

01:20:35 ► §

My position had been chosen randomly.

01:20:38 ► §

I’d looked for any movement.

01:20:46 ► §

It seemed an unlikely place to be pinpointed, even by a crack surveillance team.

01:20:55 ► §

The massive 19th century clock on the Ferry Building ticked to 4.30 a.m.

01:21:02 ► §

Glowing in the twilight, its circumference breathed the last effects of Crimson’s fireside revelations. Even in the devout stillness of the morning,

01:21:09 ► §

the leaves of tall imported palm

01:21:11 ► §

still fluttered almost imperceptibly

01:21:14 ► §

in the breeze of mind.

01:21:18 ► §

It seemed I stood at the crossroads

01:21:22 ► §

of past and future,

01:21:24 ► §

seeing in all directions.

01:21:28 ► §

For nearby, the monks and nuns at Hoshin-ji Monastery moved with hands folded in prayer to the zendo for morning meditation.

01:21:37 ► §

As the great temple bell sounded sonorously.

01:21:48 ► §

sounded sonorously, while in Cambridge students hurried to the memorial church bells, tracking a new frost in Harvard Yard, and giddily discussing Heidegger.

01:21:54 ► §

In Moscow, a mathematician’s daughter kissed her father farewell as he grappled with a

01:22:00 ► §

Poincaré conjecture.

01:22:02 ► §

grappled with a Poincaré conjecture.

01:22:05 ► §

And in Mazar-e-Sharif,

01:22:08 ► §

heroin cooks and dirty loincloths squatted before kerosene-soaked pits

01:22:11 ► §

filled with morphine paste

01:22:14 ► §

and conjured devils

01:22:16 ► §

that fled to the West.

01:22:19 ► §

It was a cloudless morning,

01:22:22 ► §

the bay with small skirmishing wavelets, the seafront windless.

01:22:28 ► §

I leaned against heavy pylons in the cold salt air, infused with these memories and premonitions of worlds to come.

01:22:39 ► §

All finally resolved to a single scholar at no place in particular,

01:22:47 ► §

awaiting those with no name,

01:22:50 ► §

and who would dare release to entire populations their antidote for addiction,

01:22:57 ► §

even at the cost of their own lives.

01:23:03 ► §

As I nursed hot tea from a thermos,

01:23:07 ► §

Crimson and his unnerving manner came from nowhere.

01:23:11 ► §

Good morning in soft Russian and German

01:23:14 ► §

and smoothly collected me.

01:23:17 ► §

We walked together as the city ceased its spitful dreaming

01:23:21 ► §

until we breakfasted in a run-down coffee shop

01:23:25 ► §

that catered to drunks and the homeless.

01:23:29 ► §

Old men wearing dirty knitted gloves

01:23:31 ► §

with no fingers

01:23:33 ► §

rattled on nonsensically

01:23:35 ► §

while a slatternly tired waitress

01:23:38 ► §

poured coffee beneath a handwritten sign.

01:23:42 ► §

No refills.

01:23:44 ► §

She kindly allowed the destitute the center

01:23:47 ► §

curve of a warm corner. Greasy menus were tucked taped to wooden tables. Resigned

01:23:53 ► §

eyes looked vacantly through smeared windows at forbidden skyscrapers.

01:23:59 ► §

Crimson sat across from me, wearing sweat-stained coveralls from the Salvation Army free box,

01:24:07 ► §

and had a two-day-old stubble. Eager to hear of covert methodology, even over chipped bowls

01:24:15 ► §

of instant gruel, I asked about Washington rules. Crimson deftly held the conversation to his prospects of finding food stamps, menial

01:24:29 ► §

labor, or public assistance. He left a $20tipundertheplatefora$2 meal because

01:24:39 ► §

of the waitress’s soft eyes for the lost.

01:24:52 ► §

We speak in public, he said, only that appropriate to the listeners, even complete fictions.

01:24:59 ► §

Loitering near a bus stop, he was indistinguishable from an indigent person.

01:25:04 ► §

After some minutes, I realized he had no car and awaited no one.

01:25:09 ► §

We boarded the Folsom bus, standing at rush hour,

01:25:14 ► §

riding wordlessly into humanity’s ocean of personal agendas.

01:25:18 ► §

Tourists both determined and directionless.

01:25:21 ► §

Workers asleep or awakened.

01:25:24 ► §

Those worried or frivolous. the pursuers and the pursued. A tall, slender

01:25:30 ► §

girl in ripped danskins and denim jacket, carrying a book bag with a pale logo of the

01:25:37 ► §

university at Maastricht, stood gripping the top of a seat. She appeared a severely dressed-down model with no makeup,

01:25:48 ► §

an ivory face,

01:25:50 ► §

spectacles with fine gold rims,

01:25:52 ► §

and her bright blonde hair and Eastern European braids

01:25:57 ► §

above her endless black leggings

01:25:59 ► §

flashed a slice of black watch tartan micro-skirt.

01:26:06 ► §

She edged slowly through the compressed crowd like a gymnast,

01:26:12 ► §

leaving in her wake a little frisson of heat and disquiet,

01:26:17 ► §

eyes down and excusing herself in almost unheard Dutch,

01:26:22 ► §

but with an evident Glaswegian overtone. She stepped out with

01:26:28 ► §

head held high in a practiced pirouette of her narrow hips over the gutter, as if in

01:26:34 ► §

another age she were delicately disembarking a Phaeton assisted by a liberated footman.

01:26:42 ► §

Looking neither to the left nor right, she disappeared as

01:26:47 ► §

an anomaly in America. Past sullen Negro boys and confused street hustlers rendered mute

01:26:56 ► §

at her passage. Crimson with a rural Alabama accent engaged a toothless, grizzled veteran

01:27:05 ► §

about the highlands of Vietnam,

01:27:09 ► §

his long, red-dirt vowels gravely recalling

01:27:13 ► §

the killing at Quan Tri,

01:27:16 ► §

the Aishaw Valley,

01:27:18 ► §

Khe Sanh,

01:27:19 ► §

and Dinh Binh Phu.

01:27:22 ► §

We finally descended into the dissolute drug and sex

01:27:26 ► §

bazaars of the Tenderloin.

01:27:29 ► §

The street

01:27:29 ► §

lay ravaged in the abhorrent

01:27:32 ► §

morning from the tawdry night

01:27:34 ► §

of the craven and the crazed,

01:27:37 ► §

the small-time rip-off

01:27:38 ► §

artist and purveyors of abused

01:27:40 ► §

flesh.

01:27:42 ► §

We arrived at some

01:27:43 ► §

flophouse and part of of shooting gallery for addicts,

01:27:47 ► §

but also catering to the dispossessed who had begged enough handouts to afford a room

01:27:54 ► §

with thick brass locks and chains and no questions. The halls had the penetrating smell of urine.

01:28:03 ► §

The halls had the penetrating smell of urine.

01:28:12 ► §

Crimson’s small space had a sprung bed, torn lace curtains revealing desiccated shades,

01:28:16 ► §

a banging iron radiator thickly painted and peeling,

01:28:24 ► §

and a small writing desk embossed by cigarette burns and crescents of stains from cheap wine.

01:28:27 ► §

From the window down two floors,

01:28:31 ► §

one saw a small enclosure from adjacent buildings that was filled with prophylactic rafters and shattered bottles,

01:28:37 ► §

broken glass pipes and scorched tinfoil.

01:28:41 ► §

The hollow echoes of lust and addiction,

01:28:50 ► §

death and poverty, all faded now, washed clean for a moment in the purifying daylight. The curtains moved lightly in the morning air.

01:28:59 ► §

Welcome, he said, to an example of one type of temporary safe house, easily acquired and discarded.

01:29:09 ► §

Another may be an architectural study on a promontory above the sea, or shepherd’s cottage in an alpine valley.

01:29:19 ► §

This kind doubles as a reminder of human frailty, and of the demons we oppose through our practice

01:29:28 ► §

so that we don’t ever forget.

01:29:34 ► §

I said nothing, stunned not only by the fluidity of his movement among divergent worlds,

01:29:43 ► §

by his changing appearances, dialects,

01:29:47 ► §

mannerisms and identities,

01:29:50 ► §

but also by his comprehension

01:29:52 ► §

of the darkness.

01:29:57 ► §

He dismantled a portion of a closet ceiling

01:30:00 ► §

and removed a folded set of clothes

01:30:02 ► §

and a briefcase then rifled through the contents

01:30:05 ► §

to produce a Belgian passport and an electric razor from a duty-free shop in Hamburg.

01:30:13 ► §

Shaving and donning a cutting-edge black suit and seizing a gym bag, he showed me along

01:30:19 ► §

the street for blocks, arriving at the desk of an executive gym on the tenth floor of a Luke’s high-rise

01:30:28 ► §

hotel.

01:30:31 ► §

We were passed into the lockers by the thin receptionist.

01:30:37 ► §

She was Celtic and post-punk, swept-back black hair and mauve singlet over her small, high

01:30:44 ► §

breast.

01:30:44 ► §

swept-back black hair and mauve singlet over her small, high breast.

01:30:50 ► §

Her lipstick was a fashionable Laurent Rouge pour couture.

01:30:54 ► §

She had eyes of lustrous heights,

01:31:00 ► §

as if they had seen everything, as if they had been taken by the sky.

01:31:04 ► §

We proceeded into a lengthy, serious workout, I, with a prison calisthenic routine

01:31:06 ► §

made for cramped cages

01:31:09 ► §

crimsoned into heavy aerobic strides

01:31:13 ► §

on a precipitously inclined treadmill

01:31:16 ► §

both ending with floor sets

01:31:19 ► §

slow yoga and esteem

01:31:21 ► §

barely visible in the clouds

01:31:24 ► §

crimson outlined the Washington rules. You

01:31:31 ► §

are in the setting of my choice, not yours, so there’s minimal fear of surveillance. No

01:31:37 ► §

devices. No recorder taped to scanner agents behind these walls.

01:31:50 ► §

Your young revolutionary today must adapt to each decade’s technology.

01:31:56 ► §

The basic rules are old spycraft applied to modern threats, evolved from the code of the Peloponnesians,

01:32:01 ► §

the writings of Machiavelli,

01:32:03 ► §

from the Staatspolizei, the Cheka, from the NKVD, MI6.

01:32:13 ► §

Tell me.

01:32:15 ► §

An mnemonic is ABC, or Automation, Behavior, Containment.

01:32:24 ► §

To briefly summarize, first we consider automation.

01:32:30 ► §

Cameras are everywhere.

01:32:33 ► §

Cars and digital devices are locatable.

01:32:36 ► §

All electronic footprints are retrievable.

01:32:41 ► §

Second is behavior.

01:32:44 ► §

Be forgettable. Act normally. Move between identities easily. Change lifestyles only operationally. Almost everyone talks. Pillows are not for secrets.

01:33:07 ► §

Only ignorance is invincible to inquisitors.

01:33:14 ► §

And if personal habits work closely only with those known for more than ten years,

01:33:23 ► §

exercise daily. No drug use other than the

01:33:29 ► §

rare sacrament. For all is too serious for indulgence. We avoid even caffeine rather

01:33:37 ► §

than whipping our senses daily. Embrace deep yoga. Med meditate with every movement

01:33:46 ► §

every step

01:33:46 ► §

like breathing

01:33:49 ► §

and of your security routines

01:33:53 ► §

each morning religiously ask

01:33:57 ► §

what if they came now

01:33:59 ► §

and carefully examine all notes

01:34:03 ► §

computer files

01:34:04 ► §

discard numbers, receipts anything that leads and carefully examine all notes, computer files,

01:34:07 ► §

discard numbers, receipts,

01:34:12 ► §

anything that leads to sensitive individuals or locations or those that know them.

01:34:15 ► §

Once each week, do security day.

01:34:20 ► §

Sever or create a relationship.

01:34:23 ► §

Drop negative habits.

01:34:24 ► §

Switch locations. Review the rules. sever or create a relationship, drop negative habits, switch locations,

01:34:25 ► §

review the rules,

01:34:28 ► §

constantly assume the opposition on the periphery,

01:34:33 ► §

study investigative probes at the edges of things,

01:34:37 ► §

people arrested,

01:34:39 ► §

surveillance,

01:34:41 ► §

odd statements by desk clerks,

01:34:44 ► §

anything suggestive of hostile forces so our loving matrix doesn’t

01:34:50 ► §

unravel into the unforgiving world where people die in small steel enclosures.

01:35:00 ► §

We sat in silence, then showered, toweled, and dressed.

01:35:08 ► §

We passed the girl at the desk, who only nodded.

01:35:13 ► §

She was strikingly lean in her tight leather pants and heels,

01:35:20 ► §

dreaming of her nights dancing among blasted goth tribes in the artist Soma district.

01:35:31 ► §

In the noon crowds, Crimson revealed her background. We watch her as we do selected persons, for we might approach her one day asking for some small and harmless but critical

01:35:38 ► §

service. Crimson described the girl as first appearing one sunrise on the empty streets, careening

01:35:47 ► §

about joyously with her boyfriend, obviously survivors of a psychedelic night.

01:35:55 ► §

Confronting me suddenly before walking away, she said,

01:35:59 ► §

We’re not high on drugs or anything. The girl dismissed Crimson as some conservative businessman,

01:36:08 ► §

ignorant of her revelations, disapproving of her gleaming morning.

01:36:15 ► §

A pavement artist, one skilled in tracking by foot,

01:36:20 ► §

located her crash pad and found her a safer job, anonymously.

01:36:28 ► §

She doesn’t remember our encounter and will never be reminded.

01:36:34 ► §

How many people do you provide for or develop?

01:36:39 ► §

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, monitored indirectly by the six.

01:36:49 ► §

Within a hierarchical cartel of devotional equality,

01:36:53 ► §

each may be called upon for some small event,

01:36:56 ► §

but unknowing of the reasons.

01:37:01 ► §

Although a shared consciousness is an ancient tribe and spirit, the small operational side beyond the six

01:37:06 ► §

is structured in cells,

01:37:09 ► §

no one aware of the others.

01:37:12 ► §

They are all ages,

01:37:15 ► §

all walks of life,

01:37:18 ► §

except for the millions

01:37:20 ► §

bonbonniere of erotic models,

01:37:24 ► §

which are forever young.

01:37:29 ► §

You mentioned the tantric practices

01:37:32 ► §

of Remilian and his counter-surveillance.

01:37:35 ► §

Would he include this girl?

01:37:38 ► §

Perhaps.

01:37:40 ► §

If she possessed a certain irresistible

01:37:43 ► §

animal magnetism and the refined intelligence of a chess master.

01:37:48 ► §

But our sexuality is varied.

01:37:53 ► §

Two are practitioners of high monogamy throughout their lives,

01:37:57 ► §

faithful to only one person, as am I.

01:38:02 ► §

Another is non-sexual,

01:38:06 ► §

anhedonic,

01:38:07 ► §

Apollonian.

01:38:12 ► §

One conducts serial monogamy.

01:38:17 ► §

Vermilion is both tantric and Dionysian.

01:38:19 ► §

But how would each employ her?

01:38:22 ► §

If she were a skilled hacker,

01:38:27 ► §

Cobalt might request that she breach security for a database.

01:38:31 ► §

If she could trail a code and spycraft terms,

01:38:39 ► §

she may be asked to walk naked by the fire as a burning man and engage someone we wish to study.

01:38:44 ► §

If she were a graduate student in pharmacology or policy, indigo or magenta could involve her through multiple cutouts.

01:38:51 ► §

For now, she sees all staff and guests at this hotel quite close to City Hall and the Federal Building.

01:39:04 ► §

I didn’t pursue the subject.

01:39:07 ► §

Crimson led the way as we walked along the boutique district,

01:39:12 ► §

his restaurants and bars filled with young professionals,

01:39:16 ► §

confident they had it made.

01:39:20 ► §

He pointed out the clusters of cocaine users,

01:39:25 ► §

those monologuing hyperkinetically between bouts of craving and begging more lines.

01:39:33 ► §

I think of the Berlin epidemic of 1930, he said,

01:39:38 ► §

where men and women sold garments from their backs for just moments of unbridled lust.

01:39:44 ► §

and sew garments from their backs for just moments of unbridled lust.

01:39:47 ► §

Now is then,

01:39:51 ► §

they make a Faustian bargain of exorbitant payment for what is, as the final joke,

01:39:56 ► §

free for everyone,

01:39:58 ► §

and heavily available among those conducting the erotic rites.

01:40:04 ► §

Vermillion will speak of such worship.

01:40:09 ► §

Do psychedelics displace addictive drug use?

01:40:15 ► §

From the earliest days,

01:40:17 ► §

our hopes included prevention of the great infections.

01:40:22 ► §

By these means, we try to inoculate against

01:40:25 ► §

the poisons of cocaine,

01:40:28 ► §

heroin,

01:40:29 ► §

methamphetamine, alcohol,

01:40:32 ► §

providing users

01:40:34 ► §

and addicts with insight

01:40:35 ► §

into their psychic vampires,

01:40:37 ► §

if you will,

01:40:39 ► §

that drain

01:40:41 ► §

their life force.

01:40:44 ► §

Sadly, they substitute a ridiculous powder for all rewards.

01:40:51 ► §

They forget the power of normal orgasms.

01:40:54 ► §

Indeed, all human pleasures,

01:40:58 ► §

the laughter of children,

01:41:01 ► §

racing clouds at the edges of storms,

01:41:08 ► §

ennobling dignity of kind acts the triumphant bliss of a natural mind.

01:41:15 ► §

We took a cab to Golden Gate Park for the afternoon

01:41:19 ► §

watching young families and cyclists about the meadows

01:41:22 ► §

beyond the half-moon bridge,

01:41:25 ► §

by a formal zen garden and a pond of white carp,

01:41:30 ► §

we sipped herbal teas at the Japanese tea house.

01:41:35 ► §

How is money regarded, I inquired,

01:41:38 ► §

a salient economic detail in any study involving Harvard,

01:41:42 ► §

one that would exclude the divinities of our fireside,

01:41:48 ► §

the unwriteable subtleties of mind.

01:41:51 ► §

Money is a byproduct of the synthesis.

01:41:55 ► §

It cannot be avoided, and to it we are neither attracted nor repelled.

01:42:01 ► §

It is merely paper, a convenience for food, shelter, movement, the intricacies of identities and security operati.

01:42:12 ► §

Drug traffickers singularly focus on profit, growing mad with greed.

01:42:19 ► §

But psychedelic synthesis, with its chronic exposure to the substance,

01:42:24 ► §

but psychedelic synthesis, with its chronic exposure to the substance,

01:42:29 ► §

quickly eliminates those who hope to sate such hunger.

01:42:34 ► §

One stands beside a furnace of consciousness,

01:42:37 ► §

as it were an ark of a covenant,

01:42:42 ► §

where silver and gold are vaporized instantly, and there is neither surplus nor lack.

01:42:48 ► §

I thought of the Rhine maidens, where stolen river gold was made into the ring.

01:42:54 ► §

Desire to possess it led to Gadadammerung, the end of the world.

01:43:02 ► §

A gold Louis betrayed Louis XVI, fleeing near Varennes, Crimson remarked,

01:43:10 ► §

ever the sensitive, always reading me. To these pronouncements I hardly could reply.

01:43:19 ► §

Crimson continued in his ruminations, finally speaking in an aside.

01:43:27 ► §

Others of the

01:43:28 ► §

six may comment on the paper.

01:43:31 ► §

A prophet

01:43:31 ► §

is a misconception of the

01:43:33 ► §

inexperienced,

01:43:35 ► §

but to us a distraction from

01:43:38 ► §

duty. We prefer

01:43:40 ► §

not to trade our soul

01:43:42 ► §

for the whole world,

01:43:43 ► §

but rather admire the words of Epictetus

01:43:47 ► §

and his contempt for gold.

01:43:51 ► §

We live briefly in mansions and hovels

01:43:55 ► §

which have the same flies.

01:43:59 ► §

It is only love itself that is sought,

01:44:03 ► §

which cannot be bought or sold. In its presence, a tin-roofed

01:44:09 ► §

shack becomes a palace. In its absence, the glory of kings is but a beggar’s tatters.

01:44:21 ► §

We walked along the trails in the park to the ocean.

01:44:28 ► §

Dusk loomed and swallowed the sunset,

01:44:34 ► §

the city curving away from the frail golden light on the Pacific.

01:44:39 ► §

The sea was brilliant, curly and flexing,

01:44:46 ► §

then moody, awaiting in wonder the first constellations.

01:44:52 ► §

In the early evening, we hailed a taxi and arrived in the mission near 16th Street,

01:44:57 ► §

where we chanced upon a cluster of illegal immigrants on a street corner.

01:45:03 ► §

Crimson approached with fluent and familiar salutations in Spanish,

01:45:07 ► §

quickly retrieving several vials of crack,

01:45:10 ► §

giving them a thick packet of phone cards,

01:45:14 ► §

were removed together down an alley where he smashed the vials underfoot.

01:45:18 ► §

The cards will be used to call narcotics vendors

01:45:22 ► §

from Mexico to Colombia,

01:45:25 ► §

confusing any software aggregating names and numbers

01:45:28 ► §

and generating schools of red herrings for hostile analysts.

01:45:35 ► §

His was a basic sanity, full of practical wisdom.

01:45:41 ► §

He had a perfect aplomb, his every confidence delivered with the prudence of

01:45:47 ► §

a seminarian. But when he crushed the vials, I thought he muttered violent impotence. They

01:45:57 ► §

seemed to be Latin phrases, as in some rite. I recognized only the name of Lucifer.

01:46:06 ► §

We straggled during our long walk to the warehouse district,

01:46:10 ► §

finally arriving at the cheapest of Laotian restaurants,

01:46:15 ► §

haphazard with Montagnard weavings.

01:46:18 ► §

We were restored with a simple meal of vegetables and rice.

01:46:24 ► §

Crimson exchanged a why,, a bow, to the owner

01:46:28 ► §

and made his small daughter giggle incessantly

01:46:32 ► §

with comments and humong.

01:46:35 ► §

I noticed she had a blue ribbon in her hair

01:46:38 ► §

and that Crimson placed his chopsticks reverently

01:46:42 ► §

as if it were some subtle practice.

01:46:47 ► §

The evening fell upon us like the neon cool of subterranean blues.

01:46:54 ► §

We entered the pounding Folsom venues, their entries plastered with club posters under black light,

01:47:02 ► §

plastered with club posters under black light,

01:47:08 ► §

where mobs of mohawk-pierced youth and funerally black goths danced in broken-loined rhythms.

01:47:12 ► §

Some walls, electronic dance music,

01:47:18 ► §

were visceral with techno, drum and bass,

01:47:23 ► §

trance, jungle, emo, and math rock. Couples lay devastated across

01:47:29 ► §

lush pink cushions, chilling in tranquil ambient lounges, while below, mass dancers linked

01:47:38 ► §

arms like the telepathic future celebrants in Clark’s childhood’s end, who moved in serpentine swarms of religious ecstasies

01:47:48 ► §

across the planet.

01:47:51 ► §

We mingled with separate groups

01:47:54 ► §

and danced until exhaustion closed,

01:47:57 ► §

clinging on the last threads of inhibition blown away.

01:48:02 ► §

Powerful electromagnetic pulses from massive dynamos electrifying the

01:48:08 ► §

city were transmuted by musicians’ fingertips and holy concentration into the primal rhythms

01:48:17 ► §

of epochs before speech and fire. In the ambient rooms, crimson slowly moved among these subdued

01:48:28 ► §

and transformed, a ministering spirit conferring blessings, speaking softly in

01:48:36 ► §

his gentle way, like a physician among the newly born. Those who could speak returned earnest words of innate trust, their faces

01:48:50 ► §

open to him, their eyes like pools of night reflecting fields of stars.

01:49:01 ► §

At 4.30 a.m., as if synchronous with the previous dawn, we departed the clubs and walked for blocks, finally sitting on an isolated sidewalk, the crimson resting peacefully against the cement wall of an undistinguished building.

01:49:26 ► §

and mute after the comedy humane of intersecting tribes and electric youth, their revelry like the frantic joy of immortals. On the edge of vision, the

01:49:34 ► §

Folsom bus groaned and slid diagonally down an anonymous alley, the fluorescent

01:49:42 ► §

glare exposing elderly Mexican and Filipino women in shawls, punks swinging crazily from chrome poles, and unconscious drunks crashed across plastic seats.

01:50:04 ► §

Of loneliness, a fog horn sounded its wet lips.

01:50:10 ► §

A faint Pacific breeze began to move eastward across our hot faces.

01:50:18 ► §

Crimson awakened me from a reverie, tapping the wall behind him thrice,

01:50:22 ► §

slowly and sharply, and then spoke.

01:50:30 ► §

One last warning, a counterpoint to our night’s vulnerable ecstasies. This six-story building with no marking is 611 Folsom. On the fifth floor is the northern

01:50:40 ► §

telecom switch for much of the internet and phone traffic from the western hemisphere.

01:50:47 ► §

Zetabytes of information from undersea cables converge here,

01:50:50 ► §

all monitored by an optical splitter reflecting content to NSA.

01:50:57 ► §

There are many such sensitive, compartmentalized facilities.

01:51:03 ► §

He had seen an adversary, that of liberty constrained.

01:51:09 ► §

Crimson was a study in religious devotion.

01:51:11 ► §

His words were hushed as before great battle,

01:51:15 ► §

imagining a world in fetters.

01:51:19 ► §

Chromatic scale, like membranes of light,

01:51:23 ► §

lit up the edge of sky.

01:51:26 ► §

All information,

01:51:28 ► §

every keystroke movement conversation

01:51:30 ► §

is analyzed for terroristic intent.

01:51:34 ► §

This scrutiny will evolve

01:51:36 ► §

to ever lessening crimes,

01:51:38 ► §

minor infractions,

01:51:39 ► §

pre-crime analysis.

01:51:42 ► §

Ultimately, behavioral and thought control technologies will influence

01:51:46 ► §

every individual. Magenta and cobalt will address these issues and the end of revolution.

01:51:55 ► §

We feel one must act quickly. At this cold prescience, he stood, taking my hand warmly in both of his.

01:52:08 ► §

He wished me at great length safety and peace.

01:52:13 ► §

Until another space and time, he concluded happily.

01:52:19 ► §

And where do you go now? I ventured with bravado holding for precious seconds.

01:52:26 ► §

I must make breakfast for my children, he said, and see them off to school.

01:52:34 ► §

I thought then it was some cryptic parting.

01:52:37 ► §

As a magician behind the silk robe of the lessening night, he was gone.

01:52:49 ► §

Folsom Street was empty, but for grinding sanitation trucks.

01:52:56 ► §

Weary, I slid down the wall, legs askew,

01:53:01 ► §

as light crept down the tips of old warehouses under a dusty

01:53:07 ► §

flash of blue sky. My flight

01:53:11 ► §

to Cambridge and the rigors of Harvard was

01:53:15 ► §

due in only two hours. Half awake,

01:53:21 ► §

I recalled how I had

01:53:23 ► §

begun this study of six chemists and their international trafficking organization

01:53:29 ► §

and how I had arrived at Harvard

01:53:34 ► §

I nodded for a while

01:53:39 ► §

dreaming of other walls

01:53:42 ► §

some of metal smeared with blood.

01:53:47 ► §

Some fragrant with jasmine and roses.

01:53:53 ► §

Caressed by soft bells.

01:53:58 ► §

Thank you for listening.

01:54:01 ► §

This is Leonard.

01:54:18 ► §

If we think of different literary modes, we could say we have the following. And this is, of course, in no way a complete list, but it just wants to set the scene a little bit for this particular novel.

01:54:27 ► §

The realistic, in the mode of Tolstoy,

01:54:30 ► §

where the reality depicted appears to have substance

01:54:34 ► §

and has an ethical underpinning

01:54:37 ► §

which guides the fades of the characters,

01:54:40 ► §

like an imminent textual intelligence, you could say.

01:54:45 ► §

We have, on the other hand, pure fantasy in the mode of Tolkien,

01:54:49 ► §

where the reality depicted is a parallel universe,

01:54:53 ► §

which is recognizable in some aspects as familiar,

01:54:58 ► §

but which operates according to its own, often non-realistic laws.

01:55:04 ► §

And then we have the disturbing modes of Kafka and Borges,

01:55:08 ► §

where the familiar appears to be infused with the uncanny, which gives the familiar a sense

01:55:15 ► §

of the dreamlike and often, of course, of the nightmarish dreamlike. And then you have the

01:55:22 ► §

mythological epic, Allahummeh, which draws a detailed portrait of a collective

01:55:27 ► §

in this case the Hellenic collective

01:55:30 ► §

and then also you have the hybrid modes

01:55:34 ► §

of somebody like Philip K. Dick

01:55:37 ► §

who through so-called science fiction

01:55:40 ► §

can amplify the scope of possible narratives

01:55:44 ► §

infinitely without losing touch

01:55:47 ► §

with the human condition. On the contrary, through this mode he can deal with fundamental

01:55:55 ► §

metaphysical questions concerning man’s position in the universe, the role of individual and

01:56:00 ► §

collective consciousness, and so on. Leonard Pickett sets out his stall

01:56:07 ► §

by calling his book a literary experiment. The title of the book gives a clear indication

01:56:15 ► §

what kind of experiment we are looking at. It is an experiment in the Borges tradition,

01:56:22 ► §

meaning the boundaries of what is real and what is not,

01:56:26 ► §

what is, in the words of Philip K. Dick, idios cosmos, one’s own individual world,

01:56:34 ► §

and coine cosmos, that which belongs to the collective, the community, will be tested out.

01:56:42 ► §

And one can expect the boundaries to be fluid rather than rigid and clearly delineated.

01:56:49 ► §

In the words of the author, Leonard Pickett, he intends to use a classical form,

01:56:57 ► §

a mannered language applied to a theoretical drug trafficking operation.

01:57:07 ► §

drug trafficking operation. And he makes it equally clear that it’s the government’s fiction hypothesizing a psychedelic conspiracy. The author therefore puts in aesthetic distancing devices

01:57:15 ► §

which we have to take seriously. The novel, despite the author’s claim, is only partly a roman acclave, and it is up to the reader to give this

01:57:27 ► §

weight or not. Like any great novel, this can be read, the Rose can be read on many levels.

01:57:36 ► §

Some may like to read it as a kind of purely psychedelics-inspired fiction. Some like to read

01:57:43 ► §

it for a biographical angle, meaning to see it as a

01:57:46 ► §

self-justification of the author regarding his own alleged involvement in LSD production

01:57:51 ► §

and the penal consequences following from that. The latter reading certainly would do this book

01:57:58 ► §

no justice, in the same way that the reading of the Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky as purely a portrait of a dysfunctional family-cum-crime story

01:58:08 ► §

would fall short of any meaningful interpretation.

01:58:14 ► §

The first chapter of The Rose is a very strong starting point for the book.

01:58:19 ► §

It sets the atmosphere, the scene, and the tone of the book.

01:58:25 ► §

It launches it, you could say, straight into the stratosphere.

01:58:29 ► §

Reading it feels at times like a tightrope act,

01:58:33 ► §

because the language used is so finely calibrated and highly strung

01:58:38 ► §

that any slip would feel like falling off that rope.

01:58:43 ► §

This is the first important aesthetic

01:58:46 ► §

device we have to take note of. The artificiality of the language used in

01:58:52 ► §

this book. It is a literary language informed by vast amounts of reading the

01:58:59 ► §

author has undertaken and is undertaking. He uses deliberately an at times old-fashioned

01:59:09 ► §

literary language which originated from a very different societal and ethical conditions than

01:59:16 ► §

the modern undercover drug world he is partly depicting. By doing this, the author is willing to be judged by these standards.

01:59:25 ► §

Does the choice of this style work or not?

01:59:29 ► §

The first chapter is a good example that it does work,

01:59:32 ► §

that the author has made a wise decision to use a language,

01:59:36 ► §

which is a beautiful artifact, basically.

01:59:43 ► §

The author creates an atmosphere of secrecy and conspiracy,

01:59:48 ► §

a conspiracy which can either be judged as good for mankind

01:59:53 ► §

or as a criminal conspiracy which undermines the structure of our society.

01:59:58 ► §

Of course, both views are held simultaneously regarding the substance under discussion in this book,

02:00:04 ► §

named as the sacrament and clearly identifiable as LSD.

02:00:09 ► §

Like any great author, also this one has an uncanny neck to anticipate future developments,

02:00:16 ► §

and one can say with some confidence that the scales are slowly tipping in favor of a benign view of the substance under discussion,

02:00:25 ► §

slowly tipping in favor of a benign view of the substance under discussion, that its potential for mental health and overall human evolutionary development is more and more recognized in

02:00:31 ► §

research circles to do with neurology, consciousness studies, and philosophy, where this substance

02:00:37 ► §

has given metaphysics in the platonic sense a new, fresh, brisk wind.

02:00:41 ► §

A new, fresh, brisk wind.

02:00:49 ► §

The author starts the chapter with great confidence when it comes to his conviction of the benign nature of the work of the six chemists.

02:00:57 ► §

Since, he says, and this is a quote,

02:00:59 ► §

they moved about the shadowy earth with salutary motives,

02:01:08 ► §

with salutary motives as the most devoted of societies, an invisible cartel of theologians and mystagogues. This is the end of

02:01:16 ► §

the quote. How can one not be taken in, charmed by sentences of this nature? How can one not feel hope and optimism in the face of

02:01:28 ► §

these sentences regarding the future of mankind? And who does not want to belong to a circle of

02:01:34 ► §

people who are in the know, who can lift the veil of illusory reality, who can pierce the fabric of

02:01:41 ► §

mundane reality and get glimpses and experiences of the transcendental.

02:01:47 ► §

And this is what the author brings to the table. And it is better done well, otherwise the so-called

02:01:52 ► §

transcendental ends up to be kitsch, second-hand wear, borrowed from the annals of obscure,

02:01:59 ► §

hackneyed mysticism and profound-sounding philosophy. The author, in my opinion, does very well,

02:02:06 ► §

and he manages to vivify the transcendental through the prism of authentic experiences.

02:02:12 ► §

Huxley’s perennial philosophy is very much alive and kicking in this book.

02:02:17 ► §

Right from the beginning, there’s an intimation and even declaration of a parallel world better, more meaningful, more significant

02:02:27 ► §

in evolutionary terms than the world framed by our everyday consciousness. Quote, a room full of

02:02:35 ► §

moonlight to one’s own imprisoned blood, end of quote, as the author so beautifully writes. Again,

02:02:42 ► §

the author manages to lay a passageway from the sublime,

02:02:46 ► §

the transcendental, the spiritual into the everyday world. Or, to put it another way,

02:02:53 ► §

extraordinary states of consciousness inform and impact on the everyday consciousness.

02:03:00 ► §

And by doing this fulfills the promise of the counterculture of the 60s, namely to expand our consciousness.

02:03:08 ► §

And here, another advantage of the chosen modern style of writing comes to bear.

02:03:13 ► §

This book, despite its indebtedness to the named counterculture, is not stuck in the past.

02:03:25 ► §

stuck in the past. This is not a hippie treatise and nothing wrong with that, but a kind of reinvention and reinvigoration of some of these dearly held beliefs. The book,

02:03:33 ► §

by using a highly strong literary style, has a thorough modern and visionary feel to it.

02:03:54 ► §

and so we hear some introductory notes about the different chemists and how they go about their operations because they’re being hunted knowing that their their work would be penalized by life

02:03:59 ► §

in prison and that the threat of prison and being written from prison really permeates the book as well.

02:04:07 ► §

There are these little asides about the horrors of being locked away, the inhumanity of it,

02:04:13 ► §

and there are also these moments of, I guess you could say foreshadowing,

02:04:18 ► §

or the sense of this darkness to come, which unfolds as the story unfolds but

02:04:26 ► §

since there is this foreshadowing there’s this element of

02:04:28 ► §

time, linear time

02:04:30 ► §

unfolding

02:04:32 ► §

or deconstructing at certain points

02:04:34 ► §

Glenard says

02:04:35 ► §

for a moment

02:04:37 ► §

that he feels as he

02:04:39 ► §

he’s separated from Crimson briefly

02:04:42 ► §

and in their discussion

02:04:44 ► §

his introduction is

02:04:45 ► §

continued but there’s this moment on page 28 where he says it seemed i started the crossroads of past

02:04:53 ► §

and future seeing in all directions and then there’s a list of scenery and as you read the

02:04:59 ► §

book all of these scenes come up in the story. And so he actually is looking through time, not just figuratively, but in the specifics,

02:05:12 ► §

it’s in fact true that he’s looking at different parts of the story.

02:05:16 ► §

So it’s a moment, there are several moments in the story where synchronicities and time

02:05:21 ► §

seems to move in nonlinear ways, you could say.

02:05:27 ► §

synchronicities and time seems to move in non-linear ways, you could say, and the perceiving intellectual part of the self isn’t the only agent. It appears who’s making decisions

02:05:36 ► §

and leading to certain outcomes. So all of those themes are introduced early on here.

02:05:43 ► §

So all of those themes are introduced early on here.

02:05:49 ► §

And Crimson also mentions the different roles that the different chemists play, different parts of a team effort to keep their illegal activities going

02:05:58 ► §

in spite of this governmental force against them.

02:06:04 ► §

of this governmental force against them.

02:06:09 ► §

And they talk about how they deal with this sort of double life of being committed to

02:06:15 ► §

an effort that is seen as criminal,

02:06:20 ► §

but that they see as pure

02:06:22 ► §

and needing to be fully recommitted to over and over again.

02:06:27 ► §

So just that it introduces you, this first chapter, to the mindset of these figures

02:06:32 ► §

and also Leonard’s naivete in terms of he’s just being let in on this information.

02:06:41 ► §

And so the reader is sort of a parallel in the sense that we’re just being let in on this information and so the reader is sort of a parallel in the sense that we’re just being let in on this information and he’s also led through very downtrodden communities in san

02:06:52 ► §

francisco people who are cocaine users etc and we see we follow crimson and see how there isn’t just this intellectual idea about their mission, but how he’s actually

02:07:07 ► §

living it out in his ordinary day-to-day interactions with people. So he, on page 33,

02:07:15 ► §

for example, he intervenes into these cocaine users, and he describes specifically,

02:07:21 ► §

from the earliest, this is a quote, from the earliest days, our hopes included prevention of the great infections.

02:07:27 ► §

By these means, we try to inoculate against the poisons of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and alcohol,

02:07:33 ► §

providing users and addicts with insight into their psychic vampires.

02:07:39 ► §

And throughout the story, this group of chemists, it’s very clear that they’re not creating drugs for the sake of

02:07:49 ► §

drugs. And they specifically mentioned that they don’t do any drugs beyond the rare sacrament,

02:07:56 ► §

as he says on page 31. The exercise daily and crimson continues, no drug use other than the rare sacrament for all is too serious for

02:08:05 ► §

indulgence we avoid even caffeine rather than whipping our senses daily embrace deep yoga

02:08:12 ► §

meditate with every moment every step like breathing so it’s this real clear commitment to living out this faith in trying to put a finger on the scale

02:08:27 ► §

against these forces that are trying to accumulate data to map and control behavior.

02:08:35 ► §

And we’re seeing that now. A lot of the story also is very prescient in terms of

02:08:40 ► §

things like the fentanyl crisis. Leonard foresaw the problems that we would, as a society, be having

02:08:47 ► §

with that now, far before that was actually a problem. And just thinking through the implications

02:08:57 ► §

of some of the chemical technologies and ordinary technologies, like there’s this emphasis on the government’s mapping, data collection, controlling people through, you know, things that have happened recently, like the Cambridge Analytica scandal in England, where they got data on people and then exposed them basically to tailored propaganda in order to kind of get

02:09:26 ► §

people to behave in certain ways based on that data collection that’s the sort of thing that

02:09:32 ► §

these chemists are up against so the idea of creating the sacrament the creation of the

02:09:40 ► §

sacrament is one part of this larger resistance to these forces of tyranny and control and oppression

02:09:48 ► §

that are seeking power over freedom for all so those are the kind of big themes that are

02:09:58 ► §

introduced here um including the connection is this sort of there are these luciferian analogies um like

02:10:07 ► §

towards the end on page 35 crimson crushes these files of drugs and it says but when he crushed

02:10:13 ► §

the vials i thought he muttered violent violent epithets they seem to be latin phrases as in some

02:10:20 ► §

right i recognize only the name of lucifer so So there is this sort of, as I was saying, cosmic or almost like Paradise Lost style

02:10:32 ► §

good versus evil battle that is going on in the background.

02:10:38 ► §

And so the implication, though, is that these forces, this fight between power and control

02:10:43 ► §

and freedom are happening in the background of our ordinary life.

02:10:49 ► §

And Leonard is just getting a glimpse into the larger implications,

02:10:54 ► §

and as I was mentioning, many of which have actually played out,

02:10:58 ► §

the stakes of which are much greater now in our everyday world today

02:11:02 ► §

than they were when Leonard first wrote this book. So

02:11:06 ► §

his fingers were really on the pulse of a lot of the concerns with the kind of the crossroads we’re

02:11:13 ► §

at civilizationally at the moment. So even though there is this abstract, figurative,

02:11:20 ► §

often difficult language, it’s communicating something that’s very real about our times

02:11:27 ► §

and the stakes involved and the ability for people to use non-ordinary states of consciousness to get

02:11:34 ► §

glimpses into better alternatives for how to live and how to relate and how to notice and help free ourselves from parasitic controlling forces that

02:11:47 ► §

aren’t necessarily working in our best best interest so those are the larger themes and i

02:11:53 ► §

also just wanted to point out that this also this chapter this first chapter really is trying to

02:11:58 ► §

i guess teach how to read the book introduce some of the themes and also the logic in a way behind the book and the the line that really stands out to me is on page 27 towards the bottom where

02:12:11 ► §

Leonard’s speaking to Crimson and Crimson is saying he’ll find him again in San Francisco

02:12:19 ► §

so he’s he’s Leonard saying he wants to learn more. And then Crimson responds,

02:12:27 ► §

Experience is more indelible than rhetoric, friend.

02:12:31 ► §

Visit San Francisco Saturday, anywhere downtown at sunrise.

02:12:35 ► §

I’ll find you.

02:12:37 ► §

So that went, experience is more indelible than rhetoric.

02:12:41 ► §

There’s this idea that the ideas expressed in the story, by having it in this

02:12:47 ► §

literary style, you are going through these experiences as experienced by Leonard. And you

02:12:56 ► §

learn ideas and perspectives by going through the experiences that you wouldn’t internalize in the same way if you saw those

02:13:05 ► §

same ideas listed in bullet point form.

02:13:08 ► §

So by having the experience, the communication happens in a more indelible, more effective,

02:13:14 ► §

embodied way than a purely intellectual transmission of concepts, if that makes sense.

02:13:21 ► §

So that’s it for now, just some brief thoughts, and I look forward to continuing along

02:13:29 ► §

more with all of you. Thanks.

02:13:40 ► §

The style at this stage evocates a world composed of light, colors and music, very fitting obviously to the topic in hand.

02:13:49 ► §

The world depicted is a fluid space-time continuum where the boundaries between the worlds of different consciousnesses, if that is a permitted plural, at work are porous to say the least. The contact high referred to in this chapter is just a good

02:14:06 ► §

way of describing the natural merging tendency of our consciousness with the surrounding greater

02:14:14 ► §

mind if we allow it free reign, rather than limiting it to our default mode network operations,

02:14:22 ► §

to speak in urological terms. Just like Richard Wagner in

02:14:28 ► §

the beginning of his Rheingold creates a world out of a repetitive three-node drone,

02:14:36 ► §

I think 172 bars long or something like that, these characters appear to originate from light

02:14:42 ► §

and sound, which is underscored by their names as

02:14:45 ► §

colors, crimson, indigo, vermilion, magenta, and cobalt. The characters are elusive and ethereal

02:14:55 ► §

because they are partakers of the mystery. Characters who have seen, I quote, the dancing flames and prayer fans and movement of spirit, end of quote, as the author

02:15:08 ► §

writes, and operate at the same time as hard-nosed undercover agents for the expansion of consciousness

02:15:16 ► §

and the liberation of human beings. The description of this double existence is masterful in this book, in my opinion, and it makes me reflect

02:15:25 ► §

on how much of this double life is a result of irrational so-called drug laws, where people

02:15:33 ► §

have to go into illegal activities in order to partake, produce, distribute, or whatever,

02:15:40 ► §

of substances which, on balance, seem to have the potential to give mankind a direction

02:15:46 ► §

which serves not the greedy clique of some individuals, but man in general in the context of nature,

02:15:55 ► §

or, to put it shamanically, in the context of Mother Earth.

02:16:14 ► §

Or is this part of the long-standing dichotomy of the secret sciences of hermeticism, alchemy and other esoteric teachings, and the currently dominant strain of one-sided rationalism?

02:16:23 ► §

Maybe it is a combination of the two, or maybe it is both at the same time. So crimson, indigo, vermilion, magenta, and cobalt

02:16:28 ► §

are Homeric ship colors, as the author points out, which provides an important frame of reference in

02:16:36 ► §

this book. The classical tradition, more specifically the Hermetic and pre-Socratic tradition, which reveals the metaphysical substratum of the book.

02:16:49 ► §

Quote,

02:16:50 ► §

The fire’s heat against the cold sea air

02:16:54 ► §

became the allegory for the worlds balanced

02:16:59 ► §

by practitioners of these clandestine arts.

02:17:02 ► §

It’s such a beautiful quote, we’ll say it again.

02:17:05 ► §

The fire’s heat against the cold sea air

02:17:09 ► §

became the allegory for the worlds

02:17:12 ► §

balanced by practitioners of these clandestine arts.

02:17:16 ► §

End of quote.

02:17:18 ► §

This is the fire within creation,

02:17:21 ► §

the creative principle,

02:17:23 ► §

the prima materia of Heraclitus, revealed by these chemists,

02:17:27 ► §

alchemists, and would suggest that the author views the sacrament as part of a long cryptic

02:17:34 ► §

secret stream of consciousness underlying the stream of purely cerebral consciousness.

02:17:41 ► §

It is a continuation of the hermetic tradition going right back to the

02:17:45 ► §

pre-Socratics, a process of removing layers upon layers of dense materialistic philosophy,

02:17:53 ► §

which we have accumulated over the centuries, revealing in the end, after many purifications

02:18:00 ► §

or resettings of the mind, again the roomful of moonlight to one’s imprisoned blood.

02:18:09 ► §

And bringing to light what Heraclitus called the latent form,

02:18:15 ► §

which is the master of the obvious form.

02:18:18 ► §

And if I’m not completely mistaken,

02:18:20 ► §

this is what the author manages to achieve in this first chapter.

02:18:24 ► §

He makes not only

02:18:25 ► §

visible the latent form, but lets it create the obvious form. Aesthetically speaking, this could

02:18:34 ► §

go so easily wrong in the hands of a less accomplished writer than Leonard Pickett is,

02:18:39 ► §

but in this chapter it is clearly very, very successful.

02:18:48 ► §

Another theme is that of freedom and captivity.

02:18:52 ► §

In saying this, it is impossible not to think of the current plight of the author,

02:18:55 ► §

languishing in a high-security prison in Arizona,

02:18:58 ► §

surrounded by violent criminals of the most dangerous kind.

02:19:02 ► §

A penalty, in my opinion, and this is only my opinion and I

02:19:06 ► §

have no idea how the author thinks about this, but a penalty, in my opinion, which appears to be driven

02:19:12 ► §

by a sadistic pleasure of depriving a human being of even minimum contact with nature.

02:19:18 ► §

A punishment which has nothing to do with a rational penal code, in my opinion, but which reminds me of Philip K. Dick’s beautifully empathetic statement

02:19:28 ► §

in his book, Escanadagli, which describes the lives of people

02:19:32 ► §

who were entirely punished too much for what they did.

02:19:39 ► §

Coming back to this theme of freedom and captivity, it is as if the characters originate from a free, transcendental realm.

02:19:51 ► §

They manifest out of nothing, a creation ex nihilo.

02:19:56 ► §

I can only speculate whether this is some kind of conscious or subconscious wish fulfillment on the part of the author.

02:20:03 ► §

It certainly works as a literary device.

02:20:07 ► §

There, the character’s tasks appears to be to break the limits of materialistic limitations,

02:20:16 ► §

to break free from living in an exile on this earth, in the neoplatonic sense, or in the

02:20:22 ► §

gnostic sense really, which depicts the cosmos as a kind of malfunctioning, irrational mechanism

02:20:28 ► §

which needs salvation from the true creative force,

02:20:32 ► §

which lurks in the background, accessible to some, invisible to most.

02:20:39 ► §

They, the characters, are engaged in an alchemical process

02:20:43 ► §

of reversing the separation and destruction

02:20:47 ► §

from nature, from cosmos, from the greater mind. A transmutation, even transubstantiation,

02:20:55 ► §

the true change of gross matter into sublime energy, or the disclosure of the sublime energy

02:21:01 ► §

hiding in gross matter. A putting back together, one could say.

02:21:07 ► §

Or, as the author puts it, again so beautifully,

02:21:11 ► §

there is fission and fusion of thought and feeling,

02:21:15 ► §

as forgiveness for all blasts have in word.

02:21:19 ► §

Dissolute chaos renders to absolute certainty.

02:21:24 ► §

Wrenching ignominy and confusion transmute to clarity and peace. I would claim there’s no contemporary author who can capture this unbearable dichotomous tension better than Leonard Pickett.

02:21:45 ► §

And that makes me reflect one more time on his current situation in the prison.

02:21:49 ► §

I have no idea how he keeps his sanity, his equilibrium,

02:21:53 ► §

his undiminished interest in life under these conditions.

02:21:57 ► §

Respect and love is what the author deserves.

02:22:02 ► §

The juxtaposition of the inner blast of the sacrament, which leads to

02:22:08 ► §

liberation, and the outer blast of the atomic bomb, which leads to destruction, captured in one

02:22:15 ► §

perfect cadence. Let’s repeat it, because it’s so beautiful. There’s fission and fusion of thought and feeling as forgiveness for all blasts heavenward.

02:22:28 ► §

Dissolute chaos renders to absolute certainty.

02:22:32 ► §

Wrenching ignominy and confusion transmute to clarity and peace.

02:22:38 ► §

The tranquil veils of Elysium are welcoming us.

02:22:43 ► §

Beautiful stuff.

02:22:45 ► §

The book has a deliberately revelatory tone.

02:22:50 ► §

Chapter one reveals our own buried alternate history,

02:22:55 ► §

the holy grail of philosophers,

02:22:57 ► §

and with it, the suppressed source of healing, the cure.

02:23:01 ► §

The chemist Crimson embodies,

02:23:03 ► §

or as the author calls it, re-aggregates,

02:23:06 ► §

this tradition in its various manifestations. Paracelsus, Hermes Trismegistus, Dionysian

02:23:14 ► §

Intoxication, the Delphic Priest, Galen, Vesalius, the angel St. John saw in the sun, etc.

02:23:28 ► §

saw in the sun, etc. The revelation is that redemption, healing, the cure, the fusion with the divine is always a possibility for those who are willing to drop beneath the rigidities of pure

02:23:35 ► §

rationality. Just as much as the author in real life suggested a way out of the opioid crisis,

02:23:43 ► §

20 years before anybody in the press even picked up on it, and then it was too late, the author of The Rose of Paracelsus

02:23:51 ► §

provides a potential map for addressing what is the disease of our modern time.

02:23:57 ► §

Spiritual desiccation, the loss of the connection with the divine, and that also means nature.

02:24:08 ► §

connection with the divine, and that also means nature. The woods of Arcadia are dead, as Yeats put it, and he also knew that only words, sacred words, can save us now. What the author describes

02:24:18 ► §

as, quote, conversion into a privileged heterodoxy or, quote, a bewitchment of concealed knowledge,

02:24:28 ► §

end of quote, is a continuation of the German philosopher Adorno’s message in a bottle idea.

02:24:35 ► §

Sacred knowledge is passed down a network which subverts the official surveillance network,

02:24:41 ► §

which is limiting and inhibiting, controlling in its intention,

02:24:46 ► §

while this network of chemists is the opposite, disinhibiting and unlimiting, a network of messages

02:24:53 ► §

which ignite the fire within us, burn away the dross of social conditioning, and cleanse the soul of everything fake and inauthentic.

02:25:12 ► §

Leonard Pickett gives in this chapter a unique voice to those who have not given up on spiritual freedom,

02:25:22 ► §

self-autonomy, a belief in the Elysium to be found in our psyche, consciousness, soul, whatever we want to call it.

02:25:26 ► §

In Koine Greek, which neatly connects the Homeric heritage with the early anarchic Christian tradition, it is stated that

02:25:30 ► §

The kingdom of God is within us.

02:25:53 ► §

the first chapter of the rose of paracelsus is highlander and for me it’s really interesting that makes me think of scotland but actually where it’s taking place is inverness over on

02:25:58 ► §

the west coast of the united states and there’s that interesting sense of this remote landscape, wherever it

02:26:06 ► §

happens to be. And our narrator is going to meet the secret chiefs, you know, the mountain dwelling,

02:26:14 ► §

mysterious Illuminati masters, figures who guide or attempt to guide the destiny of humanity.

02:26:22 ► §

And that’s what he encounters initially with Crimson,

02:26:26 ► §

this liminal space by the sea.

02:26:30 ► §

And then they sit around the fire

02:26:32 ► §

and there’s references to all kinds of things.

02:26:35 ► §

There’s alchemy in there, there’s magic in there,

02:26:37 ► §

there’s the peyote ceremony of the Native American churches

02:26:40 ► §

referenced in there.

02:26:42 ► §

The idea of being a Rosicrucian,

02:26:44 ► §

of behaving as though you are just a

02:26:47 ► §

normal member of society but then this deep covert operation to create planetary scale batches of lsd

02:26:57 ► §

as part of a compassionate project to help evolve our species it’s a It’s a remarkable opening for a remarkable book.

02:27:07 ► §

It combines the very grand with the very ordinary.

02:27:10 ► §

So the practicalities of lighting a fire

02:27:14 ► §

and the small details of the conversation

02:27:18 ► §

and the way that someone’s hands are moving.

02:27:22 ► §

And then coupling that with the cosmic scale the grand scale

02:27:26 ► §

so in that interest intro section we’ve got set up for essentially the rest of the book so we know

02:27:34 ► §

that there are these six chemists with this remarkable power to kind of induce a psychedelic

02:27:40 ► §

state by simply being in their presence and we have that sense of the beautiful

02:27:46 ► §

and the terrible that holds true and is counterpointed throughout the book and the

02:27:52 ► §

sense of the great compassionate and this kind of christic idea of suffering and of redemption

02:27:59 ► §

and then things like addiction and the way that the darker side,

02:28:07 ► §

the more difficult or unpleasant side, perhaps is better to describe it as,

02:28:11 ► §

of the drugs and the drug experiences being dealt with.

02:28:15 ► §

So issues like money are addressed in that

02:28:18 ► §

and issues of having to live these duplicitous double lives.

02:28:23 ► §

The phrase that’s used at one point is a that our narrator talks

02:28:26 ► §

about having a moral unease and i think that’s very much where this is because even crimson in

02:28:32 ► §

the chapter says well we don’t know where this leads we feel that this is the right compassionate

02:28:37 ► §

thing to do but also references all of those other psychoactive and psychedelic uh substances

02:28:44 ► §

and changes that are coming into culture.

02:28:47 ► §

So I think that there’s very much this, it is a kind of messianic thing. It’s this idea that

02:28:51 ► §

these people are trying to change the world and they believe what they’re doing is right in the

02:28:56 ► §

same way that historically we know that people like the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, absolutely,

02:29:00 ► §

that was their mission. That’s what they thought was a good thing. And perhaps they were and perhaps they are still right.

02:29:07 ► §

Yeah, they even explicitly say, think of the first early Christians

02:29:13 ► §

and how they would have felt when they were doing what they were up to.

02:29:18 ► §

And they wouldn’t have known exactly what it was that things were going to lead to.

02:29:21 ► §

So it has that sense of a religious mission.

02:29:24 ► §

that things were going to lead to. So it has that sense of a religious mission.

02:29:30 ► §

So listening to a whole chapter rather than just the excerpts that we did for the initial episode of this podcast, listening to a whole chapter in one go as we just have done, which took an hour

02:29:35 ► §

and a half or however long it is, is a very different experience. You immerse yourself in

02:29:40 ► §

it in a different way. It has that filmic cinematic quality to it,

02:29:49 ► §

partly because of the length of the thing, but also because of the sweeping passages,

02:29:55 ► §

the camera of the text pans over the different landscapes and takes you into the intimacy of the scene where someone’s hands are conjuring things together, whether that be the fire or

02:30:00 ► §

a scene from a far off country into time and place. That you can immerse yourself into the readings is very different,

02:30:08 ► §

so it’s important, I think, to prepare yourself with a nice cup of tea

02:30:13 ► §

or whatever is your favourite beverage of choice,

02:30:15 ► §

make yourself comfortable and really settle into it.

02:30:18 ► §

Listening to a whole chapter in one go is a deeply moving,

02:30:22 ► §

deeply intense but deeply fulfilling experience in a way that a good meal is

02:30:28 ► §

rather than a quick snack. I found listening again to a recording that’s been made in prison

02:30:36 ► §

and has been taken from a phone line, which is only available for a few short minutes each month to Leonard.

02:30:46 ► §

And so that recording has been done over a long period of time

02:30:51 ► §

and cut together with only those brief little announcements

02:30:54 ► §

indicating the fact that this is from a prison, that the reading is coming.

02:31:01 ► §

And of course, it’s deeply moving because that’s where he is in that place and has been for a long time. And that’s where this

02:31:12 ► §

beautiful text and these gorgeous poetic phrases and these great sweeping vistas of narrative are coming to us from.

02:31:28 ► §

They’re coming to us, these great sweeping vistas of language

02:31:32 ► §

from a tiny enclosed box surrounded by many caged people

02:31:38 ► §

in an isolated desert in the United States.

02:31:42 ► §

And that’s a very powerful and very moving thing to listen to.

02:31:47 ► §

It can only add to the respect that I have for Leonard for him to devote time to not just to

02:31:54 ► §

read this passage, this chapter, which must have taken weeks if not months to do,

02:32:02 ► §

given his allotted phone calls but the the way that he’s

02:32:06 ► §

collected all of these ideas and thoughts and put them down with paper and pencil and created this

02:32:13 ► §

book so that concludes the first chapter of the rose of paracelsus we hope you enjoyed listening

02:32:24 ► §

please feel free to contact us with comments and questions on the material This concludes the first chapter of The Rose of Paracelsus. We hope you enjoyed listening.

02:32:29 ► §

Please feel free to contact us with comments and questions on the material.

02:32:32 ► §

Signing off, I’m Alexa.

02:32:36 ► §

And my name is Kat. Thank you for joining us.

02:32:43 ► §

A Basilea to Theo enters Umon Estine.

02:32:45 ► §

The kingdom of God

02:32:46 ► §

is within us.

02:32:58 ► §

And you can add

02:32:59 ► §

your comments

02:33:00 ► §

about this podcast

02:33:01 ► §

on the program notes

02:33:02 ► §

page for podcast

02:33:03 ► §

number 644 and you’ll find that

02:33:06 ► §

page at psychedelicsalon.com. Also, if you wish to comment by email, please send your comments to

02:33:14 ► §

therose at psychedelicsalon.com, and I’ll send them on to Kat, Alexa, and Leonard.

02:33:21 ► §

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space. Namaste, my friends. Thank you.