SPEAKER_00 0:01

And look at the model. And to develop the NFU command model and a development finder and a threat of control model. The ML creative control model. The monthly content controlled feature. Thank you for tuning in for the content with a lot of templating features and loose in the middle of the case.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

And then uh an opening quote to kick us off in the right direction. And this is from Gary's book, our special guest, um who specializes in consciousness studies. And just finished this great book last night, The Secret History of Consciousness. And in your own words, Gary, on page 175, to be sure, as I can say from my own experience, the shock of feeling one's inner world to be directly and intimately linked to the outer one is vitalizing to say the least. And to a certain extent, we all experience something of this sort already. Anyone who has been baffled by a curiously ap synchronicity knows there is more to our relation with the world than what the science that denies these experiences suggests. And then continuing a bit, uh, yet it's not all in the mind. We do not quote unquote create create reality. There clearly is a reality, reality outside us. What we do create is our representation of it, and it is to this we are responsible. Does that sound familiar?

SPEAKER_03 2:46

Uh yeah, I'll have to check. I'll have to get my copy in. No, I'm I'm I'm I'm sure I'm sure that's uh that's no, that's that's clearer and and uh uh better than I thought I could express it. But no, yes, that sounds that sounds pretty good. Yes, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Yeah, because in our audience, especially the live audience, uh it's there's a lot of uh counselors and therapists. And yeah, I was thinking, you know, as I got to know your material better, that uh we take the inner life for granted. And you show in that book how it wasn't always the case that we humanity was aware that we had an inner inner life. Yes. Actually, to set the stage for the conversation, you could say a bit about that, like the the thesis statement of your book about consciousness and the phases it went through.

SPEAKER_03 3:44

Uh well, I mean, and the book itself is it's kind of a collection of different notions about consciousness and sort of evolution of consciousness that get left out of the the um the discussion uh much of the time. Um usually when there's a you know discussion about consciousness, there's there's what I call the three S's, although it's phonetically, although you know spelling it's not quite it, but it's scientific, or the spiritual, which I think probably can encompass something what I was talking about in there, or which I think usually it's more like meditation or Buddhist sort of approach to it in some way, and then the psychedelic, which is P PSY, but it's um, and that's um, you know, uh usually mind-altering drugs in the uh discussion or investigation of consciousness. And what I did in that book is just put together lots of other sorts of stuff that I've been reading over the years, and saying there's a whole other story or narrative. And the basic idea is that at a certain time, um, and I would think we can even chart this historically, um, the sort of self-consciousness that we have, that we're we're used to having, or our awareness of our awareness, um, which leads to lots of problems um and sets us apart from the rest of the world, or I would say in some way, enables us to actually have a world that we can reflect upon and be an observer in. This might not have been the case at earlier times. And I uh that idea comes up in different writers. There's a Swiss-German philosopher, Jean Gebser, who talks about different structures of consciousness, but he doesn't he doesn't like the word evolution because he thinks that's associated with a particular structure of consciousness we're in at the moment, um, with the tail end of what he called the mental rational. And so evolution for him is linked up with notions of 19th century progress and things of that sort. So he thinks in terms of mutations. Uh, there's another um thinker, a fellow named Owen Barfield, um, who was a uh uh well, he was one of the inklings. He was he was close friends with C.S. Lewis and and Tolkien. And um he wrote a lot about language and poetry. He was also uh a follower of Udof Steiner. But he had this uh notion, and he spells it out in a wonderful book called History in English Language, where the further you go back in the history of language, the more poetic and metaphoric and imaginative the language is, which seem contrary to precisely those kind of 19th-century notions of progress. You start out with something very simple, ug-ug, or whatever, you know, some noise, and that's over time somehow became a word or something. Um, and he said, no, no, it's there is no phase in the history of language where it's ug. The furthest we go back, it's always very metaphoric and it's living. And he's saying uh, you know, the Darwinian type uh people looking at the history of language would say, well, at one point there was some strange mutation of a whole generation of poets, you know, you know, prehistoric poets who suddenly were flourishing with all these metaphors, and then that that's why that happened. He said, No, it's not like that at all. It's the way it is, is because people back then saw the world in that way, and they didn't see it in the distinct subject-object, excuse me, way that we see it as something completely other than ourselves and very definite and hard, and you know, we can bang up against. It was more like a kind of flowing, fluid kind of relationship between the two. So, those those are various different ways in which, and there's others in there that I that are look at this notion. So, what we understand as consciousness is something that's been arrived at, you can say historically, it's not something consciousness per se.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Yeah, and does the individual journey parallel the one of humankind in phases?

SPEAKER_03 7:44

Oh, I would think so. I think you know, there's evidence to uh quite a bit of it that suggests that you know this uh the early phases of of childhood, from I guess up to about two, that's the child is in a sort of auroboric relationship with the mother that doesn't really recognize itself at first as something other, you know, something separate. Um, and then you hit the terrible twos when you know, no, and they learn how to say no, which is the work, which is like Sartre. They all start to be Sartrean existentialists at two, because they say no and they negate. And then that's that separates them from the great surround, you know, uh, which we later on want to find our way back to in some sense, because that's what we lose contact with as we develop our individual ego. So I would say, yes, that's the case. Um, and I would also suggest, and many of the writers they look at in that book, in some way, they they suggest this um, that um the self-consciousness we have, it can itself is at times transcended. Um and we, as I say in that quote, we have an experience in which that sort of participatory relationship with the outside world happens again, but at a level when we're we're aware of it. We're not we're not completely plunged and embedded in it as we were when children when we didn't know about it. It was just like that. So those poetic moments, those aesthetic moments, those those moments of sort of meditation when suddenly you know the the subject-object, the barrier is is is permeated and we have that that wonderful sense again.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Yeah. Sorry, Deanna?

SPEAKER_04 9:30

Yeah, I'm just thinking as you're talking, just wondering, given that I know a little bit of your bio and that you were a musician and then you trans, you decided to begin your writing, I think, at 40. Um, what what is the passion behind your obvious understanding of this of the mystics of the world?

SPEAKER_03 9:51

Um, it's a good question. I started I started reading about all this sort of thing um back when I was a musician. So this takes us back nearly 50 years ago, uh, 1975. I was living in New York on the Bowery. And if you know New York, that was when the Bowery was the Bowery, you know, Skid Row, just homeless and so on. And um I was playing in the then unknown Van Blondie, later went on to become very successful. Um, but we were living in a um, we had a floor in in a in a building, sort of like a loft space. And um, the fellow who rented the floor to us, he lived in the building as well. And he was a devotee of Alistair Crowley. I mean, I have a map here that I've I've I'm not a devotee myself, but I'm I I I guess I'm some some some degree an expert on it. I've written a book about it and all that. So um, but that's this is how I got interested in it. And he would give these impromptu tarot readings with this Crowley Thoth deck, and he did these canvases. He was a painter, flamboyant, gay, wild biker. Uh, and um one of the books I uh I had no interest in the occult magic, anything like that. I read a lot, I read Herman Hesse and existentialism and stuff like that in the beats, but my only interest in the occult was horror fiction like H.P. Lovecraft or or old horror films, you know, Boris Karloff and all that. And um, but one of the books I came across at this time was a book just called The Occult, and it was by a British writer named Colin Wilson. And literally that book changed my life. I I uh it was such a good read, and his approach to it was a philosophical approach. I didn't know at that time that he had had a whole career writing about existentialism and phenomenology and all this stuff that I you know didn't know much about. And um, I just was taken with the book, and so it just introduced me to all of these characters I subsequently, many years later, wound up writing about. And so it started out as just like a you know fan enthusiasm, you know, for this is wow. And um gradually I just became more and more interested in it in a couple ways, one in which the sorts of experiences or states or uh that in various ways were discussed by these people of consciousness. What was that about? I wanted to explore those, and then I became interested in also the history of it and how these ideas have informed a lot of our mainstream culture. So the first book I did was a book about the 1960s called Turn Off Your Mind. And it was about how the occult and the mystical and the magical influenced pretty much all of the popular culture, um, say from about the mid-60s until the very end.

SPEAKER_04 12:36

That's awesome. I mean, that's you know, you're describing a lived experience that you actually had this while in my language, somewhat of an awakening with the with what was around you and what you were reading, and and then it became what you do.

SPEAKER_03 12:56

Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, I I just became fascinated with it. And um I mean, I uh well I started having odd experiences, and then one what one uh well group of them happened while I was on tour. And uh my girlfriend and I at the time, we we started we seemed to be having shared dreams, or we would know when the other one was going to call. This was much before you know cell phones and mobile phones. You had you know, in a hotel room in Detroit and the other ones in New York and also stuff like that. And um so I wound up, this happened quite a bit, and I wound up writing a song called The Mobies Touched by Your Presence, dear, and that was a hit in the UK and and Europe, not in the States, but in UK and Europe, longer ago than I care to um remark on. Um, but it was it was a song about our telepathic relationship. And at the same time, or not long after, I read a book um called An Experiment with Time. And this by a fellow named J.W. Dunn, who wasn't an well, he wasn't really an occultist, but he was he was an aeronautics engineer, but he discovered that he dreamt the future, bits and pieces of the future turned up in his dream, and said, you know, check it out for yourself, just start writing your dreams down. And I did, and lo and behold, I started recording all these precognitive dreams. That started in 1980, and I I've I have uh I even did a book about this during the first lockdown here with COVID called Dreaming Ahead of Time, and it's based on a stack of um dream journals I have going back to the mid-1980s, and which I plucked out all of to me the more convincing kind of precognitive dreams. So I've had the and and synchronicities and coincidences, so I've had those sorts of experiences, and then over time, I I hope my reading has got more acute and serious and critical, and I've you know arrived at you know somewhat sober assessment of these sorts of things.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Um was the name of that song again?

SPEAKER_03 15:07

Oh, the song is I'm always touched by your presence, dear. Okay, and it came out in 1978, and it was a big hit on Blonde for Blonde. Um, and uh it's paid the rent for me quite a few times, so I'm very thankful for it.

SPEAKER_04 15:22

And based on your concept of time, this podcast may have already occurred.

SPEAKER_03 15:29

Well, if you follow uh poor old Nietzsche, Nietzsche's ideas of eternal recurrence, yeah, it's it's it's happened already and has happened already many, many times. So uh so you know, um but I I I always figured out if if it because he's very strict about it, it's it's eternal recurrence, it's the recurrence of the same, the exact same. And this is the way he posits this in the gay science. It's a what if, you know, what if one night some demon said, you know, this moonlight, the spider web, and I forget exactly, but that's kind of the context. All of this that you're seeing now, you have seen innumerable times before, and you will see innumerable times again without change, no change whatsoever. What would you think of that? That's basically, and so if you think that it's it's it's okay, it's eternal occurrence exactly the same. So it's exactly the same. There's only this now. There's only this now, no matter how many times it's recurred. It doesn't matter how many times it's recurred because the content is exactly the same. It's this now. So, how do you feel about this now? That's but I think that's what it comes down to. Usbensky. I'm sorry, go ahead. Go ahead, Sergio.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

That's the classic question in therapy. How do you feel now? Yeah, and then brings up the issue of change. If there's internal reoccurrence, what does it take to change and shift and break patterns?

SPEAKER_03 16:52

Well, I was gonna say that's that's that's Uspensky, um, P. D. Uspensky, who was most known as a sort of exponent of the ideas of G.I. Gorgev, this enigmatic Armenian esoteric teacher, but he was a Russian writer and philosopher in his own in his own right. And his pet, his, his, his pet, you know, idea, his pet idea was the eternal recurrence. But he believed it was possible to change if you awake during one of them, if you somehow make efforts, it's possible. It's yes, it's most of it is exactly the same. And there's some people who are so embedded in life that they will never ever change. But he thought of it, think of it as like a big wall, right? And there's a couple little pebbles in there that if they move, the nothing's gonna happen to the wall, the wall isn't going to fall down, nothing like that will happen. And it isn't like in all the sci-fi movies. If you you know go back in time and if you step off the path, suddenly you go back, and you know, Hitler won, you know, World War II and whatever it is, you know. It's no, you can little people who don't get caught up in huge big events can make little changes in their life, and so you know, whether that's true or not, but for him, it was more like a reincarnation back into the life, but you could somehow work to remember.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

I was gonna say it has a lot in common with classical Hinduism.

SPEAKER_03 18:13

Oh, yes, yeah, sure, sure, sure. No, no, no, absolutely. Although for him, it isn't reincarnating into another life, it's going back into the he he he wrote he wrote an interesting novel about it called Strange Life of Ivan Osokin. And it's about this kind of poetic bohemian young, you know, Russian guy who's screwed up his life and he's you know about to blow his brains out, and he meets a magician, and the magician sends him back, and he thinks he can change things, but he does exactly the same thing. So it's it's a bit gloomy. Um, but uh, I mean, I I I I always associate Nietzsche's with um in Rilke, Rilke in in the Duino elegies, he says once and once only, you know, now, but now ever so intensely. Like the angels are you know very intense, their being is so intense that it overwhelm us. So if you can somehow achieve that affirmation, that vision of affirmation in the now, you know, then you you're you're you I don't know, you're you're somehow breaking out of the recurrence itself. It isn't gloomy, it's it's not a gloomy, gloomy recurrence.

SPEAKER_04 19:22

So yeah. And I want to just make a point for the therapists in the room that in in the context of therapy, these are the numinous moments, these are the moments that are are seemingly just par for the course. But if there's one shift in consciousness or awareness or intention, then the client can go a different path. So that's what came to mind as you were as you were describing that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

About the Gibster, uh so Ken Wilbur lifted his paradigm from Gibser, right?

SPEAKER_03 20:04

Uh yeah, I have to say I I I never have been a big reader of Ken Wilbur. Um, I read a couple of his books. I reviewed one ages ago. I always found it a bit too sort of scientific, if you know what I mean. I mean, just the the way he writes about things, and um I'm sure he's doing good work. And the other thing I have to say, I I led me to not be interested in is that he he thought very highly of Daffree John, who I remember being a kind of, I don't know, maybe I don't know about him, but one of these gurus that seemed quite dubious. Um, when I worked for many years at a metaphysical new age bookshop in Los Angeles in in the late 80s into the early 90s, a place called the Bodhi Tree. That was very well known in its day. It doesn't exist anymore, but in its day it was you know quite well known. So I I came to know a lot of at the same time, I was working on a degree in philosophy. So I was having this dual life. I was getting a BA in philosophy and studying Wittgenstein and Hegel, and then um talking to people about the auras and showing them how to use the I Ching and getting that crystal that's going to dispel all negativity.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

And now you have Watkins bookstore, right, in the UK.

SPEAKER_03 21:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's in London. Yeah, that's it's sort of sort of the equivalent. It's sort of the equivalent. Um, but the Bodhi tree I worked there, it's heyday during like the Heyday of the New Age, and uh it was like quite quite the place. Um, but I'm just saying that that's how I sort of know I got familiar with a wide range of sorts of things while I was there. Uh but um yeah, I don't know. I never quite got into Wilbur. Um, and then I I did have some contact with someone who was sort of a fellow named Andrew Cohen, who's a guru for a while here in London. He had something called Enlightened Next in the 2000s. And uh he had a magazine called Enlightened Next, and I I I wrote some articles. I wrote an article about Gepser and some other things. For them. It was, I remember around 2012, I wrote something about called, you know, the 2012 meme, when it was one of the many end of the world memes Ketzikwatl was coming back, and that was like the tail end of when I started working at the Bodhideri in 1987. There was something called the harmonic convergence. And people were going out to the desert at Mount Shasta and meditating to bring on the vibes. And then the denouement was supposed to be 25 years later in 2012.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

How come you didn't become more new agey yourself?

SPEAKER_03 22:33

No, I'm saying I'm reading Wittgenstein. I'm I'm I'm reading the philosophical investigations and I'm working my way through the phenomenology of mind while I'm at the university, and then I'm there. And so I felt I was left and right brain. You know, I I've yes, you know, I I think I'm a walking example of that because then I used to be, you know, while musician jumping around on stage, very Dionysian, and I moved into this Apollonian other realm now where I'm writing all the time. So I did I didn't I didn't think to do that, but it seems oh that's actually what I think about. That seems to have that seems to what is happening.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

According to the dialectical model, then that's the third principle emerges, right?

SPEAKER_03 23:15

Yes, I'm waiting for the transcendent function uh to kick in. And with any luck, it does when I'm writing well, and that's when it counts.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

And have you had any like epiphanies, revelations personally, breakthroughs? Do you like to do that?

SPEAKER_03 23:32

Oh yes, well, I actually well, there's one thing that's um it's the next uh thing I'm gonna be writing about. Um well, I'll tell you something. Uh I mentioned the the first lockdown here in London. And I have to say, I know it's a horrible thing to say, but I have I have lockdown nostalgia because it was quiet, you could hear the birds, the air was clean and all of that. And um, I'm I'm very privileged. Um uh it was more of an inconvenience to me than anything else. But one morning, um I remember walking out, just opened my garden uh door out into my garden here, and looking up and thought, what's that? And it was the sun. And I I for a moment I was totally surprised by the sun. And it was, I I if my neighbors had heard me, I started cackling, I started laughing, like, what the suddenly I'm just you know what is that thing up there? And then you know, everything else kicked. Oh, yes, it's the sun, it's 93 million miles away, blah blah blah. Everything I know about it, but for what however many nanoseconds, it was some you know, primal perception of this thing, three actually three-dimensional sort of thing. That's there's it's not a flat surface, a picture, cinema. There's I was somehow aware of you know, all very quickly. Um and um and I I wrote an article about that, and uh uh I I I I relate, I mentioned this writer Colin Wilson, um, and I became quite a fan and devotee of his work and a friend over time. And we had a 30-year friendship, and I wound up writing a book about him as well.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

And let it let it be said that you're the natural successor to Colin Wilson.

SPEAKER_03 25:18

Okay, well, I mean, I I you know, I I I guess I you know what I'm I'm reminded of Goethe who said, you know, beware what you wish for in youth, because you will get it at middle age. So I must have wanted that when I quit, you know. Well, that's the thing. I I I got too smart for rock and roll. I kept reading his books. Yeah. And what I wanted to say, I couldn't say in a in a pop song anymore. Uh became, you know, and it it it when you try to do that in a pop song, it just sounds too earnest, or it's just just it's not the media for that kind of thing. And I so I decided I spent 10 years learning how to write anything that you know, not only would anyone read that they would pay me to do. So it took quite a year to do that. Excuse me, I keep hitting the table. Um, but in any case, so Wilson has this idea what he calls very simple, something he calls the robot. And the robot is this um uh uh uh evolutionarily labor-saving sort of device that we've developed. And basically, when you learn how to type, when you first learn how to type, you have to look at where every letter is on the keyboard and it's like this and like this and like that, and you make lots of mistakes, but then one day, bang, you can just do it. Or you're not doing it, your your hands or whatever, some other part of you is doing it, then you can think about what you want to type, right? Or riding a bike, you know, you try to ride a bike, when you first try to do it, you fall over and all that, and finally you manage to do it, and then you can think about where you want to go. So that bit that's doing it is what Wilson calls the robot. I mean, it's absolutely necessary, but like a too eager uh valet, it does things you'd rather do yourself. Uh, and it starts to take over. And oh, don't let me, let me do it, let me do it. So it starts seeing the sunsets and it starts listening to music and it starts whatever, all the stuff that you'd like to do yourself that you get pleasure from. Suddenly you're not getting the pleasure anymore because you're not doing it, you aren't there, the robot's doing it. The robot's not a bad, it's not a villain, but we allow it to take over. But in moments of crisis, suddenly we it instinctively we push it aside and we're there. And this is one of the reasons why Gurdjeff was brilliant, because he was a master at creating artificial crisis and artificial inconvenience. That would he called it you being mechanical or being asleep, but that would shock people out of that. Um but what I what I think happened when I was surprised by the sun is I think because it was lockdown, I was in kind of you know, little crisis mode, you know, crisis light kind of mode. Uh so it meant that I I had to go shopping different places, and you know, you couldn't be out too often, and my my root, my routine was changed a bit. So it was slight, slight differences like that. Just I think the little bit of effort that I was putting into everyday things because of crisis mode somehow pushed the robot aside. And when I walked out that morning and I looked up, I saw the sun for probably the first time since I was about five years old. And it was like, ah, what is that? You know, and um, so it's that what is that moment. So I'm so I'm I'm been discussing uh uh the book idea with one of my publishers for something along, you know, that that kind of that that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

Wilson had the idea that it could be sustained with intentionality, with effort that you could meet reality in a way where you're not asleep, like an on automatic pilot, which is what the robot is.

SPEAKER_03 28:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, he believed if you if if you uh well he's he said he always tells the story of uh the writer Graham Greene. Um when he was a teenager, he was bored to tears, and he had gone through Freudian you know psychoanalysis and he was well adjusted, but he just was completely he wasn't getting any joy out of life in any way whatsoever. And he was so bored that one day when he found his brother's revolver, his brother had a revolver for some reason, in in the corner cupboard, he took he took it, put a bullet, you know, in spun the chambers, and he went out to the common, you know, um, and he was going to play Russian roulette. He'd been reading about it. And so he's so bored, like, oh, let's I'll just try to blow my brains out. Let's see what happens. And and you know, he put it to, and I'm doing a column Wilson now, doing he put it to his head, and when he clicked the trigger and he just heard an empty click, Grain said that suddenly it was as if you know, lights went on all over the world, and I saw infinite possibilities. And suddenly that he wasn't bored, nothing had changed except something changed in him and Wilson. So what happened? It was like he went like that, involuntarily made this kind of you know, made a fist of his mind. Um lucky, otherwise, we would have lost a lot of novels. Well, from Wilson's point of view, just as well, because they're very gloomy and pessimistic that he would he would say. Uh, but we can we can put that aside. Uh you know, writers are always, you know, they're they're they not that they have never have a good word to say about other writers. Um but if it but so it's that, and again, that's what Gerncheff did. You know, he created situations and people would be put in situations where they they would have to somehow focus and concentrate. And and uh I talk about it, I recently did a book about this fellow, Morris Nickel, who started out as a Jungian. Jungian, um, he was Jung's British lieutenant a hundred years ago in in in London now. Oh, he was with Gurdjieff and Dispensky by now, but say 1920. Uh, he was follower for Jung, and then he became a follower of uh Gurdjieff and Uzbinsky. Uh but he talks about Gurdjieff's method of frustration, creating these situations where you would you would you would be like like you get like that, and somehow he he would generate second wind. You know, but athletes, you know, they athletes when they feel oh they can't, they're doing the marathon and they just don't have an ounce left of any energy, and but they try one more time and bang, there's a new petrol tank opens up and they're you know they're zooming. And so that's again, we Wilson is fond of uh quoting this line from William James in uh an essay of his called The Energies of Men, where he says, We live subject to degrees of fatigue which we have come only from habit to obey. So we accept a certain level of okay, this is this is uh this is my usual consciousness, is yes, everyday consciousness, and something like that. And it's like a very low level where we could be on a higher uh uh kind of level, and these crisis situations force us, force us to do that.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

So the peak experience and right, be yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's let me put in the devil's advocate challenge on Wilson. Maybe maybe you too, because the idea that we can break through and live continuously in that state of heightened awareness, it seems to take out the whole feminine side of life and the cycles and the you know, mountains and valleys, and mountains and valleys, and with the organic, cyclical, feminine nature of the world, as opposed to the masculine quest, you know, to reach that state and stay there, right?

SPEAKER_03 32:36

Yeah, so what do you this is this is actually an argument or criticism that Maslow, the you know, the originator peak experiences had with Wilson and uh because they they were friends, but in his journals he wrote that um about this Wilson. He said he's too he's too intellectual, it's too it's too cerebral, it's too too much will, and he doesn't have the the more meditative or plateau. And I can understand, I know I I can appreciate that. But I think at the same time, Wilson does talk about going into deep states of relaxation. The poet it's not only that, it's also that that's one way, should we say it's one way you can get the get the robot, get get the reins, get the wheel back, you know, from the steering wheel back from the robot. But another way is you can relax into into deep, deep poetic states. And he talks about that's the essence that uh I mean, I think well before um people were talking about right and left brain, Wilson was talking about right and left brain in in the late 70s, early 80s, but even before that, it doesn't matter the physiology or where these two different ways of being uh are located. But the obviously they're we know them, but he also talks about getting into deep sort of poetic sorts of states when we can relax. And uh that's one sense, that's why he was very fond of of drinking wine, because you know it's poetry in a bottle, you have a glass of wine, suddenly, ah, you know, you're not at war with yourself anymore, and things become, you know, um, what looked really boring is very interesting, hence why many writers and poets become alcoholics. Um, but um no, I I I think you're right about that. But I I don't think he means being on it constantly. I think he even says that we don't really need to be at this what we need is to have it that that's the underpinning. We we know we know okay. It's like, okay, is it ultimate yes or ultimate no? That's how we started out as outsiders, these 19th century, early 20th century, you know, romantic figures who had these moments of ecstasy, but then they had to go, you know, to work the next day.

unknown 34:36

Right.

SPEAKER_03 34:36

And they go these ups and these downs, and like which one's right? And they they in many of them they become a bit enfeebled from the higher states because it it makes them um less able to deal with the everyday world.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:53

So he said, okay, is there a way for one to have those kinds of visions without succumbing to you know the everyday world? And then, or he, or he's say historically, well, these existentialists came around and um they were tougher, but they were they're stoic, they don't have the kind of vision, you know, they they have the insight into meaning and the need for meaning and and things of that sort, and the scientific reductionist picture is inadequate and all that, and they're have insight into our own modes of self-deception.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

So it comes back. Sorry, no, no, you go on, go on. It comes back to double awareness, so that you have the ego, robot, ego engaged in wheels of life, plus you have this background bird's eye awareness going on at the same time.

SPEAKER_03 35:38

Well, that's that's the thing. I mean, and I think for Wilson is saying is like we we've been sort of enculturated to have this negative view. Uh, it's what it's what Gebser calls the difference between Urangst and Ur Vetrauen, like you know, primal primal fear and primal trust. But we we tend to start with primal fear, you know, it's like who you know, something's gonna whack me in the head, and so I have to I have to sort of be alert all the time, and we're hyper tense like that. And those moments of deep I I know I'm like, I mean, I know this stuff intellectually, but I'm I'm a victim of it as as well. I mean, I can tell you I was gonna say just like I'm sorry, do you have practice?

SPEAKER_01 36:17

Do you have any kind of psycho-spiritual or spiritual practice yourself?

SPEAKER_03 36:22

Well, I try to or I try to pay attention when it does happen. And I was gonna tell you a story. I was in, I was back in early in the year, back in the spring, I was in Granada and in Spain for a while to see the Alhambra. Uh, and it was lovely at all that. Uh, but by the time I had to leave, I I my my plans were I didn't plan it very well, and I had a lot of time before you know getting to my flight and all that kind of thing. And I had to leave the Airbnb I was in early. So I was kind of tramping around for hours, killing time, and I already walked and walked a lot, and I was like tired and depressed. And there was this one local tapas bar that I wanted to go into, but it looked too local. I was a little intimidated to go in as a tourist and all that. And I was trying to remember my Spanish and all that kind of thing. And I said, Screw this, you come all this way, go and go, just go in there. So I went in and I sat down, and they were very friendly. And um, I suddenly my high school Spanish started to come back to me. And I said, Oh, yeah, you know, I know what that is, I know what that is. And so I ordered something. And you order something, and I ordered a glass of wine, and you order something, but they give you something extra on top. It's like, here's what you your glass of wine, here's what you order, and here's a little treat. And um I sipped my wine, and suddenly I felt everything just relaxed. And I wanted to move to Granada. I said, Yeah, I'm gonna come. This is wonderful. I I just I just felt I'll just come back here, I'll learn Spanish. And I just and I sat there for the rest, however time I needed until I got, you know, to my flight. So it's a mini, it was like a mini peak. Uh, but I and I said to myself, Mike, you're what what what happened? Why how did you go from and it wasn't just because you can have a glass of wine and still be grumpy, you know, it it's not like that that that's that's not a miracle cure, you know. Sometimes it helps, some a lot of times it doesn't. But I just was like, oh, and I just so so okay, what happened? So I'm trying to, I guess I'm trying to do the phenomenology of my Granada experience. So like what what happened? And is it like what happened when I was surprised by the sun or things like that? But um, no, I mean I I I I I try to linger in the morning and remember my dreams, and I I write my dreams down. I I do that regularly. And um I do try to take out time, a bit of time every day I can't, just to sort of just relax. That sounds not particularly spiritual, and I don't necessarily mean you know, chill out, but I mean just sort of like, okay, because I am, I'm it's partially what I do for a living. I mean, it's it's hard to make a living as a freelance, you know, writer, especially, you know, the sort of thing I do, and I'm very lucky um that I that I am doing it uh and and and able to do it, but I sort of have to you know keep keep working all the time. And I I'm a Capricorn and I the Capricorns are like that call it just ambitious. It's work, work, work, work, work.

SPEAKER_04 39:20

So I what I hear as you talk is that your Bodhi tree experience and your son experience and your Granada experience is the balance to the intellectual writing that you do. It's it's the yin and the yang. It's the divine masculine, the divine feminine. So it sounds like you know, whatever's forward fronting in your life that people see may be different than the balance you you find in your own for all of us, the balance that we find in our own lives. Um that's just what Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:54

Well, I I I I again I I the one thing people do say, and I and I don't mean to blow my horn, but they say about my books is that there is a there's a a good balance. And I I achieve it in the books probably more than I do in my life, but that's the virtue of creativity. Creativity makes up for all the all the you know, contingent, you know, uh what is it, uh inelectable life, I think uh Baudelaire called it. Somehow the stuff that you just it's just in the way, no matter what you do. And it it makes up, it makes up for that. So um I I know myself, that's when I feel most alive and most aside from the surprise by the sun and granada experiences, when I'm if I'm writing well, my my sense of I or me, whatever it is, you know, it's it's like it's like smack in the right right place. And um I I hope it's reflected in the writing, you know. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 40:49

So so yeah, that yeah, that is your practice. Like some people meditate, some people climb mountains and do these very well researched books.

SPEAKER_03 41:03

Well, and I I've I've I've also worked, you know, I I worked at actually the writing itself. Um, I mean it's it's not deathless prose, but I I know I look back, you know, stuff I wrote, you know, whatever, 20 years ago, and and and more recently, the you know, it's it's different as a you know a surer hand, if and this is me blowing my own horn. But um actually the last thing I did was a memoir. It was about um how I went from playing in you know rock bands and writing songs to um writing books. And I I I just did it for myself. I I I spent 2023 writing it. Um I I say to keep saying, but it would that it was. I don't know how much it how that much that worked, but uh that was the idea because I I just need to keep working on something and I didn't had any work. Um so I just sat down and started sort of well because people people often ask me, how did you go from playing in a rock band to like writing the song, writing the books you do? And I said, Okay, well, how did I? And so I just did that, and then I at the end I sent it to a reader from one of my publishers, and I I wasn't necessarily submitting it, but I was saying, Well, I I appreciate your your taste and your comments on my other book, so I just wonder what you could think of this. And then he passed it on, and so they're publishing it.

SPEAKER_01 42:19

So yeah, but what's the title of that one?

SPEAKER_03 42:21

Touched by the presence. It refers to the song, it refers to the song. So they'll probably they'll probably they'll they will probably have to come up with some subtitle because that's what publishers do all the time now. You have to have a subtitle that says, you know, it what they how they say here, it does it what what does it say on the tin? Does it you know, like what is this about? You and you sort of have to say what this is about. So people, but so it I mean, I don't know. I don't know if enough people remember the song, you know, uh, or uh I'm I'm certainly not a celebrity or anything like that. So um, and it's not only that, there's there's start starts my childhood and it goes up to it goes up to when I left Los Angeles at the end of 1995 and and um to start my journey here. So there's a C there's a sequel if anyone's interested. But that one's coming out soon, or it's um it's with it's with my publisher now. So um I'm waiting to get the copy editing back.

SPEAKER_04 43:18

So was that experience writing the memoir? How I I guess the question is, how was it different than writing the other kinds of books that you write?

SPEAKER_03 43:28

Um a lot less research. It's true. That's for sure. Um, but uh no, it was interesting. It was interesting because I hadn't I I had written a memoir before, which was specifically about my years in music, and that's still in print in the States, and that's called New York Rocker, My Life in the Blank Generation. So that would have that covers 1974 to 1981. So um this what I this memoir uh just finished is like What happened before that and what happened after that. And so there's a few chapters devoted to the music. So it's not not only that. No, it was interesting because I don't know how to say it. I mean, that's that's a bland uh it was it, it was it was it was a no, it was a different experience. And invariably you go through, you know, things in your life that you know and you probably mold over in your head, but once you start to write about them, it's very different. It's very different thing. And there were some things I thought I would have wanted to write about, and I tried when I read back, it's no, I just don't, it didn't come across well. And what I did was keep to the story. So I mention as few names as possible. Some some people rate it, some people rate an initial, and some people it's a friend or some friends, but it will it wasn't a matter of like you know uh rating them, you know, but it was more like just tell the story. Because, you know, the other kind is like it's all the detail oh who who was that and where did da-da-da-da-da. And that I'm I'm not I'm in no way celebrity, so nobody wants to know all that kind of stuff. And in fact, if anybody does, that gives somebody reason to write a biography of me, you know, sometime with some some poor graduate student who has absolutely no thesis material might dig me out somewhere. So uh uh, but in any case, give them something to do. So I just like told the story. So it's the closest thing I've come to writing a novel, put it that way. Okay, yeah, which is something I'd like to do, but I that I've I'll say that from my sunset years, which I I think are rather quickly approaching, probably.

SPEAKER_01 45:33

So you're a celebrity in the consciousness studies world. Well, I always say I and anybody can be a rock star, I'm a cult figure. There you go. Here's a here's a personal canniper question for you. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained one quality or ability that you don't have now, what would it be? Patience.

SPEAKER_04 46:00

Yeah, I could use it to that.

SPEAKER_03 46:02

Yeah, I I I I I I can be very impatient, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:07

Oh that says it all because there's some theologian that says all of sin uh comes from arises from the lack of patience. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 46:21

Pascal said that everything wrong everything wrong with human beings is that they can't sit quietly in a room. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it depends on the room, but you know, um, but you know, I uh no, I I know. I mean I'm I just and it's it's because I have this I gotta get things done, I gotta get things done kind of thing, which is very left brain. A right brain's like, oh, you know, look at that pumple. Right, you know, and which I which I I I like, you know, but I'm also like and I had that that I mean to figure a practice. I say to myself, okay, slow down, try to slow down, try just try to slow down. And there's a quote from Hermann Hesse um that Wilson refers to, and I I say it as well, and it's in his novel, Journey to the East, and he says, uh, a long time devoted to small details exalts us and increases our strength. So that's a practice I do. Say think of something you have to do, some boring, stupid, repet repetitive kind of task or job or something. Like tomorrow, I Thursday's house cleaning day for me. So I I clean my flat on Thursday. Right. And I try to look forward to it in that way, or or again, put instead of having that oh fucking I clean my, you know, just put a little more into it. And um, I think that is true that if you put something, it's it's in a way, it's kind of reverse. Uh there's the scene in Tom Sawyer, you know, um uh Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, where Tom Tom Tom has to paint the fence. He doesn't really want to paint the fence, and he starts pretending that it's a lot of fun thing to do. And his friends are all first they were all hanging out, kind of making fun of him because he had to paint the fence, but he's sort of saying, Man, I sure am enjoying myself painting this fence, whatever. And they start, oh yeah, well, can I try? Can I try? And he gets them really excited, and so he gets them to paint the fence, but the joke is on him because they actually enjoy painting the fence, so the fence gets painted. He's the one who loses out because oh he thinks, okay, I'm cool, I got them to paint the fence, but he didn't get the joy out of painting the fence. And again, that that in a way that's a Gharjeef kind of technique. You, you, you, you, you, there's some boring thing that it's the most boring thing that you you have to do the next time you have to do it, love doing it. Put everything you got into doing it, and you may very well find that this is an enjoyable, enjoyable thing. I I know a couple couple years ago, um, I I painted my flat. I tried to get professional painters in, but they cost my god, what they cost is just ridiculous. And it's so okay, I'll just do it myself. I'm horrible at it. I'm not a DIY person at all, but I thought I'll just do it. And um in the background, I put on Shakuhachi flute music, Japanese flute music. I thought it was very zen. And I loved, I wanted to go paint my neighbor's flat. I I I I I loved it. I just I just I just I just loved it, you know, more than anything else. And I I that's something I try to remember whenever whenever I get, I don't know what it is, board frustrated, bored, depressed, or something like that. Go do something physical. Go do something physical, and whatever happens, you forget whatever you you're you know, uh uh obsessing about, and then it surprised by the dust, I guess. It's like, what is this thing in my hand?

SPEAKER_01 49:54

You know, but you know, I it sounds ridiculously banal, but it's true. The the classic saying, uh, before enlightenment, chop wood carry water, after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. Absolutely. There is something talk won't cook the rice, you know.

SPEAKER_04 50:09

Yeah, there is something actually meditative about that process when we put that intention into the work.

SPEAKER_03 50:16

Yeah. Well, I mean, that that's what I think. I mean, Radh, because I I I tend to get bored sitting and trying to meditate. I when I was young, I tried to do the Zen thing, and I just I never quite got a hang of it. Um, but doing something, I can okay, I can whatever, try to be whatever it is, whatever you want to call it, you know, mindfulness or being in the presence or whatever it is. Uh I in the Grand Jeff Work, they call it self-remembering, just basically trying to have a remembering that you exist, basically. Because most of the time we we forget that we exist. And so we're watching something. We're sitting in some we're sitting in a portable cinema, you know, seat watching what's going on around us, and we forget we're actually in, and there's a behind. We're in a 3D thing, but we just tend to think of it like that. It's Plato's cave, you know. But AI on your computer screen is the souped up, you know, upgraded Plato's cave, you know, today. It's the same thing. We're looking at pictures on the wall, and it's only in those rare moments when I'm surprised by the sun, and I realize it's not something that's on, it's not on a mural, it's a thing that's I can't get my arms around it, but it's a three-dimensional thing that's in depth out there in space and all that. And I that's ancient hermetists that I wrote about in the book called Quest the Hermit Trismagistos, who was this legendary uh um savant and sage and you know uh father of magic and and all of that. Um they did this kind of we don't know quite exactly what they did, but there was a kind of weird meditative kind of practice where they wanted to achieve cosmic consciousness, which is precisely that that notion of you you perceive you perceive that world about you is is real. I don't know how to say it because we don't have that's the problem, we don't have a language for this thing.

SPEAKER_01 52:04

So one word is expansion, something that expands.

SPEAKER_03 52:09

Yeah, it's or I I mean I I think we we can know something and not know it at the same time, and then you can really know it, or I say no, no in italics. So before I was surprised by the sun, oh I knew the sun was up there. What's that? Oh, that's the sun, it's 93 million miles away. You can swallow a million earths and bloody bloody blah blah. Uh so I knew it, but I didn't really know that. And in the morning I walked out and I saw I really knew that what the sun was for a brief. The same thing applies to the self, then right? Exactly, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:39

Anything it's embodiment, yeah. When when you had the experience with the sun, the sun, you were embodying the sun. Well, I took on that three, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:51

The the portrait view of it, yes, yes, yes, 3D, whatever it is, and all the HD stuff that we go out of our way. It's so weird that we we we're so alienated from real reality, but we do everything we can to make the fake reality as real as the real reality. So that's that's a strange one for me. Um, but all the efforts to do that are nothing. That moment when I felt that, right? I have to say, I mean, I I wish I could devote myself to only trying to recapture that again. And I I look forward to a time that I would be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 53:23

Yeah, you can, of course. With with four minutes to go.

SPEAKER_02 53:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:29

Oh, I'm sorry, we didn't we didn't leave any questions. I'm sorry, I was just a rambling on here. Anyone can pop in, but uh to get to get back to the big picture in two minutes, the you know, the evolution of consciousness and archaic, magical, mythic, integral, rational, mental, rational, then integral. So, what's your headline with all the chaos and mayhem we're experiencing now with the breakdown of the mental rational? What's your statement to the press?

SPEAKER_03 54:00

Well, you well, you nailed it. I mean, I I I I think we're going through what Gebs are called the breakdown of the mental rational consciousness structure. And I I think if he was still around, he he'd be, I told you so. Um, I mean, uh, he died in 73. And uh I think a variety of the crises that you know um we we're experiencing were were happening then, and others have happened. And and once, I mean, even the intellectual tradition itself, you know, deconstructionism, postmodernism, it's like eat eating itself up and all that kind of thing. So um it's not a picnic, and I I don't, you know, you don't need me to tell you that. And um, I just you know, hold hold on, it's tighten your tight, fasten your seatbelts. Uh it's gonna be a bumpy ride. Um, but I think I always think of um, well, someone who's uh a contemporary of Gebser, the historian Arnold Toynbee. And he he had what I call the Goldilocks theory of history. And it's the idea that he if you ever go to a deserted island, take a copy of his study of history, which is like 20 volumes. So it's something like that that'll keep you occupied for a while. But his fundamental idea in that context is that civilized he studied civilizations and he said, what happens is civilizations they go through what he calls their time of trouble, and this is during which they face a crisis or a challenge. And if the challenge is too great, they can't overcome it and it just smash and it happens very quickly. So, you know, um uh czarist Russia, you know, uh the the Romanovs and and the rise of you know the Bolsheviks and all that, or if they overcome it too easily, they become complacent and and and and kind of decadent and they have a slow kind of you know withdrawal. So maybe like the Byzantine Empire or something like that. I'm just pulling out of my head, though those those examples might not be right. But this is Goldilocks bit. But if the challenge is just right, if if if if it's that they can muster enough energy and will to overcome it and and break on through, carry on, it you know, it gets through the time of trouble. He said, Unfortunately, out of the 19 civilizations I've studied, 18 have failed. Um 19th is Western civilization, and uh I I'm dying in 1975, so he said cling and wait. So I don't know. I mean, and a contemporary um writer, E. McGillchrist, who's you know written a lot about the left and right brain, um, he talks similarly about you know what we're going through because of the left brain dominant world we're in, and it's it's created a world of all kinds of scientific, reductionist, masculinists, sort of you know, controlling the world sort of thing, because that's what it does. And it's cut out all the right brain. But he says historically, when things have got out of balance like that, usually a crisis somehow something it's sort of like the transcendent function in a way, it sort of forces the other side to come in. So I don't know. In one sense, I think the whole since say the 1960s, the occult revival going into the 70s and the new age, and now in a way, I think that's a kind of seepage, maybe um, in in in into into wider popular consciousness of some of the virtues. And I don't want I I don't want to reduce it to left and right brain, but you know, the the other, the other things that are neglected, so is a seepage in there.

SPEAKER_04 57:37

But I agree.

SPEAKER_03 57:39

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I you know, I I I I personally think it's up to individuals, you know, and who work it out for yourself, and that way it it'll perhaps you know help by example, or somehow you'll be able to act in the world from that perspective rather than being, you know, uh overwhelmed by because we you know it's a every time is a dangerous time, but we live in this very strange epistemological kind of no man's land where like everything is plausible, nothing's definite. So it's like a series of trap doors kind of falling through with like what's true and all that sort of thing, and you know, um so I think the individual needs to somehow somehow gain that that Goldilocks moment in ourselves where we could we can feel the two necess absolutely necessary sides. And again, does who cares? It doesn't have to be brain or it could be whatever, doesn't have to be located anywhere physiologically. But we know the difference between these two modes of of engaging with the world.

SPEAKER_01 58:39

So on that note, that's our hour of power. Awesome, and we'll continue to we'll continue to bless the moment, trust ourselves, and expect the best. Yeah, well, thank you very much. I I appreciate your um asking me to come on. Thank you.