PART THREE: REVELATIONS 2

(Note in 'My Life by Date' Journal) September 19, 1970: Renaissance Pleasure Faire with Bud.  LSD.  Religious idea: "The All Mind."

(Entry in journal:)   

In August, 1970, Luv (our white German Shepherd) had a terrible accident. We were walking in an unfamiliar area, when he jumped over what looked like a low wall and fell twenty feet on the other side, injuring his right-front paw badly. He had to wear a cast on his right front foot, plus a large crutch-like contraption that fastened to his body with a harness and kept his foot from touching the ground. This required that someone had to be with him practically all of the time for several months.

Herb and I had been planning to go to the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, in the Black Point Forest near Marin, in September. We had even made monks cloth robes to wear as Monks, but Luv's situation forced us to change our plans. Bud, a friend from Los Angeles, unexpectedly arrived for a visit, and offered to go to the Faire with me on Saturday, and Herb on Sunday.

He also offered "a little something extra," a special gift he had brought along, intending to party: LSD. Bud gave each of us a small white pill that looked like a saccharin tablet. "It's Owsley Acid," he said proudly. "'White Lightening!' The best there is!"

I wasn't sure I wanted to try LSD. I'd heard many stories about people freaking out, jumping off roofs, thinking they could fly. People supposedly had done terrible things while stoned on LSD. On the other hand, The Beatles had recommended it highly! (But, then, the Beatles were breaking up, so what did they know?) Herb had already tried acid, and helped talk me into it. "You'll love it," he promised.

Bud said he wouldn't take any himself, but would smoke some pot, and promised to stay close by me all day, just in case I freaked out and tried to fly. We would also take along a tranquilizer, just in case. On Saturday morning, I took the pill just before leaving home, and by the time we reached the parking area, I felt as though my body was shifting gears, like going from low to second to high, and finally into overdrive! My awareness seemed to open like an incredible flower with each shift of my gears! I had never been so aware of physical sensations — my heart beating, the blood rushing through my veins, my lungs expanding and contracting — and it seemed like a million delicious little butterflies kept fluttering up and down my spine, and dancing all over my body!

As we walked through the Faire's gates, it was like stepping into a new world, completely disconnected from the one we had just left.

There were hundreds of people, dressed in Elizabethan costumes of every variety, as well as brilliant and colorful "Hippie" outfits, and they were frolicking like children, pretending and posturing, and having a wonderful time! And there were real children putting on a show of their own — laughing and squealing and chasing each other and climbing trees! The delight was contagious. The combined good-feeling seemed to lift everything up onto a whole new level. It was all still the same, but cleaner, clearer, more in-focus, more "real!"

I became very aware of the love that seemed to be everywhere. It felt delicious! I had never felt anything like it before! We all seemed to be immersed in it — like a slightly-heavier-than-air ocean of warm ambrosial sweetness that drifted and eddied around us, buoyant and uplifting!

I felt welcome! At home!

I felt a profound sense of well-being and belonging! It was as though my eyes had been clouded all my life, but now were clear, and I could see things as they really were — as they always had been! Everything was so fantastically beautiful, I wanted to weep for sheer joy.

Then it seemed that my mind somehow made contact with a much larger intelligence, which seemed to be everywhere, permeating everything. All I had to do was think of a subject, and suddenly I seemed to have knowledge that I'd never suspected I had. I realized, as though I had known it all along, but had pretended not to understand, that I, alone, was in control of myself, of my life — not fate, not God, not Nature, but me! I was the one who ultimately made the decisions — to be sick, to be well, to be happy, to be miserable, to die or to go on living! I could be as angry and disappointed with my parents as I wanted to be, and for good reason, but they were not to blame for the life I was living! Neither of them could have done anything to change that. I had chosen to take every single step I had taken! Unconsciously, perhaps, but my own choice. Period.

I knew I could stop having headaches and catching colds, because neither one was "real," both were products of the mind! All I had to do was decide to stop hurting myself! I could stop being sick and allow myself to "grow old" naturally. Without illness, the human body might be able to last a very long time! The unexplainable ages of Methuselah, et.al. might have happened at a time before all the "Sins" of the Jewish priests diminished the average lifespans from 900 to 33 years. If I could get rid of all those imaginary sins, I might live to be a hundred, or more.

It was very much like waking up and finding that the terrible dreams which had seemed so real during the night, had suddenly vanished, and morning was shining through all the windows!

The Faire offered a million delights, affecting all aspects of my awareness — sights and scents and sounds and sensations, and I welcomed them all and indulged them like a starving man gorging himself on an amazing banquet of flavors and textures and sensations, each more exquisite and delicious than the others!

But then the darkness and the dream returned! "Reality" descended like night. Long before I wanted to leave, we were headed back toward San Francisco in a gathering fog. It seemed as though I had been huge, and was shrinking! I felt like I had as a small child, leaving Grandma's warm and wonderful kitchen, going home to where nobody talked to each other. As I watched the foggy headlights and taillights, stoplights and streetlights, weaving themselves into kaleidoscopic patterns, tears streamed from my eyes as though I had lost my dearest friend!

I tried to describe the experience to Herb and Bud, and they both smiled knowingly, like parents indulging a child's exuberant exaggerations, but I simply could not find the words to truly express the incredible adventure I had been through. Bud carefully explained: "You only saw what was already in your head. That's what Acid does: It lets you see inside your head!"

The next day, while Herb and Bud were at the Faire, I got stoned on marijuana, and tried to recapture the enchantment, but it remained inaccessible, just beyond an impenetrable threshold. Finally, I settled on trying to write down some impressions of what I had discovered:

"It was like returning home! It was like coming back to a beautiful and beloved place where I felt safe and loved and appreciated. It was like the way 'coming-home' was supposed to be, the way I'd always imagined it was for others, but never was for me! Everything was so bright, so clear and clean. Things used to be like that for me; things had a beauty and simplicity which got hidden more and more with each successive year of school — where they taught me "the truth" about their counterfeit civilization! Liars and Hypocrites! They ought to be shot! Too late, they're all already dead!

Civilization is garbage! Layer upon layer of garbage all over us! Civilization stinks!

The struggle between good and evil is nothing more than an anthropomorphic battle between the inner and the outer man. The Inner is innocent, open and loving, welcoming and loyal, whose ultimate is sharing. The Outer is civilization, base and mean, full of rules and laws, hateful and distrusting! Civilization is drubbed on us like plaster, layer by layer until everything good and sweet and pure is covered up and smothered!

"Civilization" is the shame of sharing!

That clarity, that "super-reality" really exists! I did not imagine it, I experienced it! At other times, I see it only dimly, vaguely, out from under my great overcoat of social do's and don'ts and whatwillpeoplethinks! But yesterday, I saw it clearly! And I believe it saw me! And I think it said ‘"WELCOME!’