Rebirth: A Personal Journey

It seems that when we get the fullest possible picture of how our brains and nervous systems work at their peak, what we call logic will be a useful subset of a larger gestalt. - R.U. Sirius (Ken Goffman) from an excellent interview in Better Humans.

An excerpt:

"It started when I started a small zine called High Frontiers in the mid-80s, which was dedicated to the notion of a "neo-psychedelic renaissance." I could have called it a techno-psychedelic renaissance since that was largely what it was about. High Frontiers published about once a year from 1984 to 1988. It was well-liked within the zine world, reaching a circulation of about 20,000, which was good by those kinds of standards. Plus we had several lifetimes worth of fun as I'm sure some of your readers can imagine.

I can imagine...

My personal discovery of High Frontiers initiated the most magical day of my life. It started on the evening of May 31st, 1987, when I picked up issue #3 (1987) at Tower Records in Palo Alto, CA. where I happened to be working that summer. When I found and then browsed this astounding magazine, I quickly realized I had found a most remarkable treasure. I bought it immediately and took it home. I still think this is the single most amazing publication I have ever read to this day. That night I stayed up late in bed reading the whole thing from cover to cover.

Very late that night I finally reached the end. In the back of the zine were many ads, including one for the Psychedelic Shop on Market Street in downtown San Francisco. I had never been to anything 'psychedelic' before, and saw this as my chance to go up there and experience some of the culture, which obviously still seemed to be alive as evidenced by this magazine by RU Sirius. So naively, I wandered up to SF the next morning on June 1st, 1987. I got to the shop, and was overwhelmed at all the poster psychedelic art, books and novelty items. It was amazing. Here I am a young man still in college, just a couple of years after getting away from my parents, and I'm being reborn in the heart of psychedelia. It was a sublime feeling I can't describe. I just spent the better part of the night reading all of this psychedelic stuff that was blowing my mind, it was overwhelming, and now here I am in the SF psychedelic shop. The owner could obviously see I was enthralled, and he told me I should go to Haight Ashbury. And this is where you might think I'm naive. Having read many psychedelic books, including most of Tim Leary's and Robert Anton Wilson’s stuff, Haight-Ashbury was only a vague recollection of something "sixties". And then I remembered, "Oh yeah! Summer of Love!” So I took the map from the guy and drove to Haight Ashbury. I got there, and easily found parking, as it was a weekday. I walked just a couple of blocks and there I was standing on the corner of Haight Ashbury on June 1st, 1987 at at noon.

Then blaring on a radio from the bookstore on the corner, the DJ said that today marks the 20th anniversary to the day of the Summer of Love and the Haight-Ashbury Phenomena, as well as the release of Sergeant Peppers Lonely Heart Club! Whaaaat???! I couldn't believe it. I was blown away. Only 2 months earlier I had first learned in depth the idea of Synchronicities from Wilson's book Cosmic Trigger, and now I'm living in one. It was beyond words...

I must have stood there for another 20 minutes, just soaking in the whole thing. Believe it or not, the Haight on the day was really nice. I walked the whole thing, meandering my way into Golden Gate Park, and spent the rest of the afternoon smoking some very good sativa and enjoying my walk through the heart of the 1967 Be-In. It was utterly magickal, almost as if I was there re-living it. As I slowly walked and explored my way through the park I eventually came upon the Pacific Ocean on this warm and blissful day. As I reached the shores of this large ocean, tears of joy rolling down my cheeks, I become initiated into the Great Work.

Thank you Ken.

Posted by paul at May 2, 2004 02:20 AM | TrackBack