From Rock Star to Occult Historian - A Talk with Gary Lachman

[Music] Greetings listeners and welcome to the first pop apocalypse of 2026. It's a podcast brought to you by the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. And this new year comes with a lot of exciting new programming at CSWR. And anyone who's interested should subscribe to our newsletter. But if you have not already, what are you doing? But anyway, here's a couple events you can attend on Zoom. And they're coming up pretty quickly, so have your fingers ready for some keyboarding. At 11.30 a.m. Eastern on January 26th, our director, Charles Stang, and the artist Sarah Shore will discuss Thoreau and her David Thoreau and his extraordinary encounters with and meditations on the Sun and the Moon. And then the significance of those encounters for their ongoing book collaboration, Skywater. Then at 4 p.m. on January 29th, the esteemed poet Jane Hirschfield is giving a reading over in short's hall for those of you who are in Cambridge. Now, to list Hirschfield's publications, fellowships, and awards would take like 15 minutes. So I'll put those in the show notes, but just trust me that you should sign up and catch it on Zoom. If you're not already in Cambridge and signed up to see it in person. All right. And now to the show. Today's guest is someone I've wanted to interview for quite some time. Gary Lockman. Gary Lockman first came to National Consciousness as bassist, and then sometimes songwriter, in the new wave band Blondie. You've probably heard of them. After some twists and turns, he became an impossibly prodigious author, primarily of intellectual history. To date, he's written and published 26 books on subjects ranging from the occult in the 1960s to magic undercurrents in the Trump administration. But where he's really thrived is writing books on specific figures like Carl Jung, PDO Spensky, Maurice Nickel, Rudolf Steiner, Mr. Crowley, and Madame Blvodsky, and many more. His latest book is a memoir touched by the presence from Blondie's Bowery and Rock 'n Roll to Magic in the Occult. So Lockman's memoir proved to be the perfect opportunity to invite him on and discuss ways in which magic, the work of Gurjief, and the intellectual history of the occult have impacted his own life of the mind. And there's some fun stories to boot. So without further ado, let's welcome to the show Gary Lockman. [Music] So it is my great honor to welcome to the show author and musician Gary Lockman. So Gary, welcome to the Papa Pocalypse. How are you doing today? I'm doing very well and thank you Matthew for inviting me to be on the show. We're very excited as we were talking about before, recording a long time reader and fan of your work. And one of the things that we like to do on this particular show is sort of take a biographical look at our guest. And so there was never going to be a better time to invite you on than when you would just publish touched by the presence. So this is going to go pretty seamlessly. But I always start out the show with the same question, although I'm going to tweak it a little bit because of the memoir. So I always ask about somebody's religious upbringing and how it influenced them later on. And I would ask you about that, but having just read touched by the presence, it's clear that you've come to see that comics, reading, television, sci-fi and fantasy. These are the things that really sort of formed you and put you on the specific path. So how is it that you're early exposure to comics fantasy sci-fi and that led to your eventual interests in esoteric intellectual history? Well, just to answer that, I was I was I was born of Catholic. So if that's until I mean, I meet confirmation and I think it's always about 13, then I kind of stop going. So I was about it, but I don't have any I don't feel like I had walked away with any sort of Catholic guilt or any that sort of thing. But comic books. Yeah, I mean, that was that that was the awakening for me in the beginning, I would say the introduction to pretty much what I've been pursuing my whole life and what I wound up doing in now since I've been living in London for 30 years writing these books. Not necessarily about comic books, but about many of the ideas, the simple themes and the story I tell is. Well, one thing I'll tell is I I know I was reading at least at the age of five. And this is because I knew I remember the change from comic books being 10 cents of 12 cents. And that that ended it or that started I think at the towards the end of 61 or something and I was born at the end of 55, but I still would have been technically five at the time and comics are was predated a couple months ahead. Or of the actual time, you know, they had a weird kind of of the wrong calendar sort of thing. So any case I figured it out that I was at least because it was picked to go the issue of the flash. And he was one of my favorites. And I got 10 cents from my grandmother and went to get it and the guy said it's 12 cents and I had to go back and she didn't want to give me the other two cents and I really had a fight for it and all that. So it was like these moments you remember. And but that was that gives puts me at the age, but I remember there's a character in the Legion of superheroes and they weren't necessarily one of my favorites, but I remember them. They were like the back pages of adventure comics and super boys in them and they were teenagers from the future and predating the X-Men, the X-Men teenagers with superpowers know that. But one of the characters was cosmic boy and his powers were magnetism and didn't understand why he wasn't called magnet boy or magnetic boy, just it was very logical. There was lightning light. He shot lightning bolts. You know, there was sun boy. He was, you know, fire or something like that. So it all made sense and I didn't like what is what's the cosmic bit. I asked my sister who's a few years old and she didn't know, asked my mother, she didn't know, I didn't bother asking my father and I just figure you could say, well, I've been trying to figure that one out for the last 65 years. What has caused me, but I mean, it's the sort of thing where it was an opening to other worlds or the realities. I mean, if you look at the stories and all that, I mean, you know, they seem childish from one point of view, but it's all about the future or the planets. Beings with strange powers or and I later came to see them as sort of models of self actualization in the sort of sense kind of like, sort of like, be all you can be kind of thing, which sounds cliched. But I even wrote an article about this many years later for the times literary supplement here when I was introducing my sons, he never became a comic reader. There were victims of the digital age. So it's all anything on the phone and all that. But when they were very young, I introduced them to the DC world through who also moral, but, but mostly the DC through the Justice League. And cartoon network series, which is one of the best things ever done as far as I'm concerned if you ever see them. I mean, the animation may seem by now dated, but the actual integrity and authenticity and kind of, they really would loyal to the sort of story lines in many ways. Was this any Justice League of the 90s or like the cartoon network. So it would have been like the early 2000s. Because I'm very familiar with the Batman from the 90s, which is the Batman. And then after that, I think there was a Superman series. And I think they did Justice League and Justice League unlimited, which was like, they had practically every character in the DC. Very cool. And I'm sure they're available. But I mean, I have them on CD. There's the 20th century room down the hall. And I guess that's what the CD is in every, but in any case, it was like they were just this incredible gate way to this larger sort of universe and larger kinds of ideas about reality. But a favorite character in mind, who wasn't necessarily superhero, because he didn't have super powers. But I think he exemplified the romantic kind of idea about about life where there's, you know, there's every day, you know, the triviality of every day, this is a high you could cause it. And every now and then there's some opening to a much more interesting, fascinating magical, you know, strange world out there. And this character is Adam Strange. And. He's an archaeologist and one day he's digging away. I forget exactly where it was in the Andes or someplace like that, some remote site. And he's hit by this beam from outer space, the Zeta beam. And it sends him to another planet, Ran, which is like, I think, an Alpha Centauri or something like that. And there he, it's like Flash Gordon or it's like, you know, the Edgar Rice Burrows, John Carter with Mars stories. There he gets involved with the beautiful woman, gets involved as a kind of hero, has a nifty rocket pack and rain gun and all that. But then after certain time, the effects of the Zeta beam wear off and he's sent back to Earth. So even though he has a fascinating life as an archaeologist, which you might say might, might, you know, satisfy his romantic urges, he spends the rest of his life frigging out when the Zeta beam, next, where's next going to hit. And it's always in these remote places. So it ain't Antarctica or wherever he can get to it because of his, you know, day job as it were. But it's just a somatic sort of, you know, to me, it struck me later on. But this was the metaphor for this romantic view of life where there's this mystery and strangeness, you know, there's this every dayness, which is dominant in 99% of life is that. But every now and then you get, you know, these, these kind of flashes of this other sort of way of living. And so that, you know, I was indoctrinated bit that are infected with that at the early age. And that later went into just fascination of comics in general. And I think my interest in history and so forth is, I mean, I'm not an academic historian. So I didn't know I write about historical, I write about dead people. One of the things I talk about this book, I can't even talk about is as, in most of my books, are about, you know, other people in their dead. And this one's about me and on the live. So it's a very strange, a different kind of thing from you. But it's in a historical in that sense. He's a figure from the past. And I became interested in comic books in the 30s and the 40s, you know, because in the back pages of the comics, when I was a kid in the 60s, this is the beginning of comics being collectors, you know, collectible kinds of things. And there were these catalogs for, you know, old issues of comic books from the 1940s or something. And I somehow became, I guess today, I don't know if it's there in the States. And here in the UK, there's something called hauntology. I mean, on the fringe. And so it's kind of like being fascinated with the media past, if that's of, I'm not interested. More of something like that. So I mean, so I was doing that long before it had a name because I was interested in the past of say, you know, 10, 15 years, 20 years before me, the effects of which were still still around, obviously. But one of the thing about the 60s, which I said in this book, and I also say my first book turned off your mind, which is about the occult influence on pop culture in the 60s, is that so much of the popular culture that I grew up in the 60s was from earlier time. You know, like the Marx brothers, you know, things I would see on television. So the miracle of television that had all these old kinds of movies. But they were picked up by the hippies too. I mean, I remember, you know, my late teens going to, you know, sort of film nights at the local college. And it's like two Marx brothers films and everyone's smoking pot and it's downed out and all that kind of thing. And so it's like all this kind of old stuff got somehow revitalized in the new current account of culture sort of thing. And you can see even in the comic books himself figures like Captain America and others who were from that time being brought back in. So it was, you know, this otherness or strangeness, I don't want to call it magic mystical. But it's also wonder, which is, you know, the source of philosophy, the beginning of philosophy, plus this notion of the past, the history. So those things somehow inculcated in me or stayed in me for later on. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that was in a long answer to your question about comic books. Yeah, so there you go. Sorry. No, we only do long answers here. So I appreciate that. No, and it's just really rich and there's a lot of ways to go. So yeah, and, you know, just to sort of riff briefly, we've, you've talked about it. Others like Jeff Kriple have talked about it. We also end up finding out that the people who were behind a lot of these comic books were having these esoteric interests or these sort of mystical type of experiences and then embedding them in the work. So there's this interesting sort of recursive process that's happening there. That's really interesting. And you bring up, also, I didn't, this is a little segue, you bring up turn off your mind. So, you know, after childhood, after high school, you eventually find your way to Manhattan. And you become basis in a little band called Blondie, which, which has a nice little, little career, you could say. And so actually, I'm going to try and answer or ask this question, even though it's kind of big. So you write about turn off your mind, this sort of like a cult intersection with rock, right? And there's a lot of that same exploration when it comes to metal and the occult. I haven't heard as many people talk about what the role of the occult was and the esoteric in punk and new wave. Like within that culture, you would obviously be in a position to do that if somebody was going to talk about it. So was it there or was it just kind of people might be handing around Crowley books or something like that, but doesn't have the same sort of, it's not saturated in the same way as the six metal metal. The honest, man, it was something that I was doing. I mean, I was a kid. I was 19, you know, reading about this stuff. So it wasn't until a bit later when I moved to Los Angeles where things happened. The West Coast that I got involved in actually sort of practicing some things. But so you have to see me as kind of 19, like, wow, what is this kind of learning about it? So I mean, I mean, it was kind of like my encounter with it was kind of like what I later called like the debris of the, not necessarily previous generation, but just whatever, like the last five or six, ten sort of years. So on bookshelves, people would have like Timothy Learier and stuff. Some stuff I had already read in high school, like Castanade, it was stuff like that. But there was kind of the copy of the E-ching or something like that. And I mean, in punk per se, I wouldn't say that because it didn't strike me as, you know, that would have been like, you know, they just would have considered that rubbish or something. I mean, there was not mystical, but the poetic, you know, sort of French symbolist side to people like Patty Smith and Tom Brillain and Richard Hill in the very early days. So, but it's more poetic, you know, on that kind of thing, not necessarily a culprit say. And I just got interested. So I mean, I know I've heard stories about other people around at the time stuff was going on, but I didn't know about it and I wasn't into it. I mean, I know there was one of the bookshops there. Again, this wouldn't have been in a punk world, but it would just in the cult world. Excuse me, the cult world is a place called Magical Child. That was near the original Barnes and Noble's on Fifth Avenue, like 18th or 19th Street or something like that. And there's all the supposed to be goings on in the back room, which subsequently turned out to be something like that. I've heard of just something called Grapefond. There's a couple books out about that. But for myself, no, it was more like I'm just, I just became introduced to this sort of thing when I moved in with Christen Debbie into what became known as the Blondie loft. On the Bowery, just the block south of Houston, you know, so like a blocker, two away from CBGD. And the fellow had the lease on the building and so forth, anything like that. It was this wild, famed boy and gay, biker artist who's into the Hells Angels, but he was also into Crowley and he used to do tower readings with the Crowley Thoth deck. And they would read from, are you a drug-fiend and things like that. And I just became fascinated, you know, I hadn't had any introductions. I mean, I wasn't into magic before then. I'd read a lot. I was always reading. It was a peracious, addicted reader, but I liked Lovecraft and like the weird tales kind of crew, but I didn't take magic and that kind of stuff seriously. But then it just was like, ooh, and then I saw Crowley's book Magic and Theorem Practice and it was one of these things that's same time. It's equally baffling and fascinating. You sort of have no idea what he's talking about, but it's like, well, you got kind of like to know what it is, he's seen. And even that book, I say in touch by the presence, even the influence of comic books kind of affected me there because if you know this book Magic and Theorem Practice, there's one of the opening pages. There's different symbols of the magician in the robe and different kind of, you know, postures, but it's a line drawing. I think from taking from photograph, but it's a line drawing. And to me, it looked like some character from the comic book. It says, the hood on is a star in the hood and so all these weird kind of positions. And I thought, oh god, he looks like some character in a superhero or something like that. But then, the thing that sold it for me was coming across Column Wilson's book The Occult. It was published in '71 and I came across it's summer of '75, let's say. So not too far off from when it was first out. And it was such a good read about all this sort of stuff and all these figures like Gerjev and Mount of Lovatsky and Rasputin and Crowley and Yates and the Golden Dawn and Ostrudamus and whoever, you know. And it, you know, more or less philosophical scientific approach to it, but not in any dry academic way. It's a compulsively readable book reviewer's or what I'm just saying, compelling. And I couldn't, literally couldn't put it down and I just became fascinated with it. And it was a great time to become interested in all this stuff because it was available in all the bookshops, wisers, was the big bookshop and Cooke or Union and whatever in between Greenwich or East Village. Near and near the Cube, I don't think Cube is still there, but not too far from it. It was like Broadway. It was Broadway and I was around that. So that way, yeah. Not right by the Cube, so I'm sort of my psychogiography is a bit off. But that was the, I mean, they were a book, they were published or two. But also all the bigger book bookborns, Noble or other, and there were many, many different and sort of independent bookshops, but they all had a cult sections and cut out tables. There was a lot of reprints of public domain titles, so they were very cheap. And it was all the classic stuff. So I just started reading it. And you know, once I get interested in something, I'll just start reading about as much as I could. Yeah. So there's so much to get into regarding books here, but while Crowley came up, I did want to ask first. So the introduction to Crowley is that what ended up bringing you into sort of like practical magic at the time, like starting to do stuff or did that take a while? Well, let's see. Well, the story behind that is when I left Blondie, I moved to Los Angeles to be with my then girlfriend, Lisa Jane Persky, with whose presence I was in touch. We were in touch with G. So this is just to say that's obviously that's the illusion to the Blondie song most touched by your presence here. So it's song about Lisa. It's G and I were having these telepathic experiences in 1977, or when I was on the first North American Blondie tour we were opening for Iggy. Basically we're having shared dream experiences and we would know when the other one was going to telephone and this was back in the day well before mobile phones or cell phones. And so you had to be at a certain place at a certain time to send or receive telephone calls. You had to be in the hotel room or home or in a phone booth but it wasn't nothing like that. And funnily enough whenever I went to call her she was about to call me. So I had these kinds of experiences but an actual kind of magical practice. Well, I moved to Los Angeles and again, there used to be a great bookshop on Hollywood Boulevard called Gilbert's and it wasn't solely a cult but they had a very very big a cult section. It was an antiquarian collectors bookshop as well. And people like Jimmy Page and Bowie and the filmmaker Ken Thanger who were all early fans, were clients and both stuff there. And so I would you know frequent this place. And again, this is well before the internet and they had an old fashioned bulletin board. People you know push pins and putting up notices on index cards. And I saw something for a Crowley group or something like that. So when Petri Whiscaff McCorn that I am and never the armchair magician, I thought, okay, what the heck? So I just sent them some, hey, sorry, whatever. What are you about? And you know, you never, I don't remember what I said in the postcard. And not too long after, there's a knock on the door of the house. I'm sharing at least on a few other people. And this unprepossessing fellow asks me if I was ready to you know, commit to the pursuit of the knowledge and conversation of my Holy Guardian Angel, which is an odd thing to be asked after opening the door. Someone knocks it. It was sort of like a Jehovah's Witness asking if you wanted to join or not. And so I had to think about it. But I thought, all right, well, why not? So I signed on the dotted line. And I don't mean to, you know, be sort of facetious about it, but it is in retrospect. It is kind of odd. But I took it seriously and saying the book that I was initiated, I believe by a great emigmur tree who was a fellow who knew Crowley in Crowley's last days. And he was living in Netherwood, which is not there anymore, but it was like a boarding house on the coast here of a place called Hastings. Actually, there was a book about that. Netherwood, the last resort of Alice to Crowley, not contributed something to it. And he, he was in LA. He was, well, he met Crowley when he was in the army during the war years. He was stationed over here. And he was interested in magic and all that. And then he later in Los Angeles, he helped sort of keep the OTO going. And then later in the late 60s, early 70s, I don't know the exact history, got it going again, you know, sort of revamped it. And I, I can't say for certain, but I believe he was the one who performed it. So actually had some contact with someone who knew Crowley, which doesn't mean anything, but sort of it's not kind of thing. I mean, in fact, the guy who in the Bondy loft, the biker artist told me he introduced me to somebody. He said, but just want to Crowley's offspring. But, you know, who knows, you know, I think he sprinted seed far and wide. So if, you know, whatever, if it's true, we've all met some sort of crime. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At some point. So, in any case, I was initiated into this. And I took it seriously. You know, I had the robe and I was doing well in the back of magic and theory and practices, you know, various different rituals and exercises and things of that sort. And so, and but after a while, I mean, I, I, I, I tell a story more detailed in an earlier memoir, "Coonil Grocker," Lisa said, you must be out of your mind. The guy who, you know, got involved with he turned out to be, you know, a poor example, let us say, of the thalamic attitude towards life. Or a good example, depending on how you take it. But he was a sort of little Crowley himself. And it'll, it all went south or it all went pear-shaped as they say here. And so after a while, and then I found Crowley Cuaservo big after well, you know, it's just it's all over. I mean, he's, that's why he's a good rock and tour. I mean, if he's a good storyteller. But after a while, everything is just funneled, you know, towards him. And I just got a bit tired of his personality and I, but I, you know, I was a beautiful student. I read all the poetry. That takes him to work. That's tough. That's tough. That's tough. That's tough. Letting us say, "Oh, yeah, let me tell you." So, well, you know, any case, but then I just kind of dropped out, dropped out of it. I moved back to New York, relationship at least ended. I moved back to New York and it was kind of between for a while. And my band, we were, you know, the know, KanoW, the name, coming from my interest in narcissism, you know, at the time. The little light could understand and know about it from what was, you know, well, this is before Elaine Pagel's book, but it was in the air and things of that sort. Yeah. Do you mind if I ask you like a little inside baseball question? Technically, what I do is reception of Nostek stuff in America. So, this is kind of very interesting to me. So, were you reading like John Darts books? Or Jonas, early nogamonies? Well, Hans Hanz, Jonas, Hans Jonas, I read Elaine Pagel's, I mean, later, Stefan Heller. I mean, this is, especially if you're in LA. Yeah, I know. I mean, I just to attend his, his talks on Friday, Eve, when I worked at the Birdie Tree Bookshop, which was, you know, the most famous metaphysical bookshop, West of the Rockies. And I was working there and he had these Friday evening things that the Nostek Church on Hollywood Boulevard. I mean, only in Hollywood do you have a Nostek Church on Hollywood. And he would lecture on everything. He was brilliant. He was lecture on existentialism, processes, and magic, and Blvatsky. He just, he just listened to him talk. He was great with this Hungarian accent. He's still going. He's still changed. He's still going. He's in his 90s and he's still, he's still, as far as I know, he's still, I think, I think he's doing his services on Sundays for the Nostek Church. He said he was, he was going to start a memoir himself. But I haven't seen it come out yet. So, but that's, yeah, I've heard that as well. And I, I've, I've inquired about that. And I said, you know, if he should get a skate song. as they say, you know, get it, you know, get it, get it going. But, you know, he's, but, um, I'm trying to think at the time, I mean, um, this was just sort of on the cusp of the Naga-Madi stuff coming out, you know, that being discovered and being translated and so, yeah, it was sort of, I mean, just, again, it's the kind of thing. I was like 21, 22, you know, sort of like, oh, yeah, so that was the sense of the name of the band. But, you know, we were pop band, but there wasn't any, you know, I mean, in the lyrics, I mean, you know, there's some slight, not necessarily, oh, this is what we had a song in the know as well, you know, I would give up everything to be in the know or something like that, but it's not, you know, not necessarily, I would give everything to be ennostic, but it was the sole notion of having, you know, direct knowledge, direct experience, and that, and in a very general kind of sense. And I had, you know, one or two experiences, but I would flock up to being something like that, but, um, nothing that I would call mystical, much more kind of, and it's something I've been written about recently, more recently. I'm just a more vivid, you know, grasp of actually where we are right now. And that sounds horribly cliched and all of that. And this is why we don't have a language to talk about these kinds of things, which is a whole other issue you can get into. But, but again, it's knowing and knowing. There's knowing, there's knowing, or there's knowing, you know, italics, or there's noces or epistemic and all that, that, that sort of thing. But in any case, that was, yeah, I was, I was kind of on my own when I, when I was doing this and, and then when I got to LA, I did that, dropped out of that, went back and forth. And the next sort of, as we say, system that I kind of joined and practiced for was the Gergé for. And that was, that, that was more, that was longer. That was a few years. And that was much more interesting and got more out of. So what, when it, uh, talking about this sort of fuller sense of things, like really knowing something, like in terms of noces, just an experience of things, naturally led into this discussion of Gergé Fennus-Bensky and this sort of like being. So, uh, you mentioned that you got much more out of it. What did you get out of having practiced the work for a few years? What was it that you felt changing inside you? How did it sort of transform? By certainly how, um, I would say, you know, a few, uh, very clear and convincing and indubitable, I love that word. There's, there's a, there's a, a Daffy Duck cartoon. I'm sorry, I'm, I'm jumping off to tangent here, but there was a Daffy Duck cartoon, Warner Brothers cartoon, where he says indubitably. And I'm trying to find it on YouTube, but I can't get it. But in any case, now, an indubitable moment of like whatever you want to call it, wakefulness, noces, uh, um, you know, uh, you know, and, you know, to me, it's more important if you have a few of those that you know and you, you, you can say, incontrovertibly, you know, whatever, I know this happened, then, you know, you're reeling off your latest mystical experience or, you know, whatever that might be. And, um, I can say one of them certainly came from when I was practicing the, the Gergé Fennus for the brief time that I was doing them. If you know them, you know, the kind of, it's that, you know, times 10, you know, um, when you're a hand and all this is it. And again, I'm, I'm, I'm doing, I'm doing it quickly and I have nothing but respect for this. Uh, and, uh, but I tell the story in the book. And this is when I was in Los Angeles. I saw, I, I first did it with involvement in, in New York, and I was still living in New York and that would have been there, like 80, 81. And then in 82, I, I, I was moving back between LA and New York quite a bit in the early 80s. And then in 82, I moved back to LA for the longest stretch until I moved here. And, um, in LA was when, was when after a while, after being there for a while, we was introduced to, to doing these movements. And, you know, they're quite, they're quite difficult. Have you ever seen any of the, just probably some videos of them on YouTube, there's the Peter Brook film meetings with remarkable men. And there's a section, um, in, in that where there's a, performance of the movements. And, uh, they're, you know, they're very angular. They're not, they're not necessarily aesthetic, you know, they're not necessarily like ballet or, or, or, or, I mean, there's uRid me, which is something that Rudolph Steiner does, but they're not even, they're not even graceful, uh, like that. They're kind of the very sharp, um, percut, moments percussive, or piston, I've, I've been with piston like kind of movements, but they're very, very difficult. In any case, um, you learn, some you learn something, they keep increasing the difficulty, um, the number of body parts you have to move in unusual, you know, ways to a very strong pulsing piano rhythm sort of thing. And, um, we're one evening trying to do this new set, and I just felt I couldn't, couldn't do it at all. And, um, no, I can't do this. Uh, I just, you know, okay, I've just, a trying and failing, trying and failing, and then say, okay, no, that's it. And then, tried one more time, and then sort of bang, I hit it, it hit, and I was doing them. And I had this incredible rush of energy. And, um, Gura Jeff himself used to talk about what he called the great acumulator. Uh, and he had his own sort of weird, you know, psychophysiology of the human body. And he said, you know, so we, in us, we have something he called acumulators, which have, which have acumulate energy, um, you know, gas tank, you know, petrol tank. Um, and, you know, you use, you use one up, you use one up, you use one up, and it gets emptied. And it's another one. And that, that, that, you know, that taps up the other and then, but then after a while, you, you run out. But if you make a certain kind of super, what do you call the super effort, an extra effort, you go that extra mile, you can connect to the great acumulator, which is this, you know, inexhaustible source. Um, and, in their terms, uh, that, at least for me, at that moment, that it happened, I suddenly just felt so I just, the way I said it, I was so, as they say, here, were so full of beans. I wanted to get my car and drive the San Francisco back just for fun, you know, things. I've never heard this full of beans. That's wonderful. Full of beans, though, that, I mean, I don't know if they may say it here. This is like an old, old, you know, grid kind of thing. He was full of beans, he was ready to go. Like, he had his, he had his weedies, you know, or something like that, you know, um, but, um, but I'd later, and this is through Colin Wilson's work, because he, he made this connection. Uh, if you know, William James, the American, um, philosopher and psychologist, this is wonderful, uh, essay, the early 1900s, called the energies of men with energies of man, or something like that. But it's about, um, it's basically a study of, of second wind, um, you know, athletes or, uh, runners, you know, going, they're going, they're going, they're going, they just can't, they're out of it. Can't do another, you know, then suddenly bang, they hit a fresh gas tank and then, ooh, you know, they can go and they can do the marathon again and back. And similarly with, with this Gerjief method of pushing you, pushing you, pushing you, pushing you to keep making these efforts that, that you, you don't want to make. You have to, you have to break through the frustration, if they break through the, the resistance, the reluctance to, to do it. But once you break through that, then that's, you know, this other energy comes in and that's much like what James understood by second wind. Um, so when I put those two together, I said, okay, it doesn't matter where, this energy is coming from, whether it's the great accumulator or wherever it comes from, where James is saying it's coming from, but this, the process of getting to it, both of them are talking about the same thing. Very different ways. Gerjief developed a system, a method of applying it. So it's, it's kind of like artificial crisis or, uh, you know, induced inconvenience. And, and, and, and, you know, I mean, I did this book about Morris Nichol, who was started out as a Jungian century ago, more or less, and later jump ship and became the father of Gerjief and his spansky, um, but he spent time at the Gerjief's, priori, the famous institute for the Monies development of man in front of the outside of Paris, which I visited in 1983. And, um, he himself says, oh, this Gerjief, it's the method of frustration in the sense that you, it's, it builds up a kind of, um, frustration and it somehow, that crisis or, or that, or that inconvenience gets you out of your artificial self or your mechanical self. And that rush of energy, in a way you can say is, well, it's you. You, you, you were there, not, not Wilson would say the robot, Gerjief would say, not the machine, you know, whatever, it's, uh, the self, not the persona, whatever it might be, there's a variety of different ways of talking about the switch from one to the other, but it's a sudden, sudden freshness, a sudden alertness, but it's also a sudden just actually, know what influx of energy. So I mean, that was one thing that I, I mean, it's a similar, so it's a thing. So that was one thing that I could say, okay, I know that happened to me. So one, a question that I wanted to ask you specifically, we, we did a whole like Gergief, 100 year anniversary of his trip to Harvard event last year. And I've interviewed a number of other. You mean you mean you mean you mean no, no, no, no, or Gergief. There was a came to Harvard, I think, or, well, I may have to edit. I mean, maybe did, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No. No, no. No, no, no, no, no. So there was a big, there was a hundred year anniversary of something, which is why we get put on a Gergief conference last year with, you know, major, they did, you know, Gergief song cycle, they had movement, the whole thing. Yeah, there was scholars giving talks on Gergief. And for this particular show, I've interviewed a bunch of writers, artists and Gergief is everywhere. He always comes up. So my curiosity is, well, in, let me phrase this, even with musicians where they're not using any of the Gergiefian scales or trying to, you know, embody Gergief's music, they're just influenced by the practices and then bring it into their work. Do you see anything in particular about the Gergief work that seems to blend so well into making art, writing books, you know, or, because certainly music, I mean, because he, he, he, he himself composed and Thomas De Hartman, and it's usually, Thomas De Hartman's transcriptions of Gergief's, he had this harmonium, this kind of accordion thing that he would play something on and the Hartman would turn it into piano music and then that would be, that's usually what you're doing the movements to, something along those lines. So, I mean, there's that. And, I mean, well, I don't know in one sense, writing books, I mean, there's many, many people wrote books, but a lot of people stopped writing. At least two of his closest, like, Uspensky. Uspensky, basically, I mean, gave up writing. I mean, he worked on what became known as In Search in Miraculous from the 20s until he died. And he rewrote earlier things. He put together a new model of the universe. You've got there. It was, if you see, the dates on the end of the chapters, it's often like 1910 and 1922, or something, you know, to mean something like that. So, he, that was the book he was working on when he bumped into Gergief. And he had to put that on ice until, excuse me, that's the wrong word, had to put that on the back burner until after his work with Gergief. And then he went back when he was here in London. See, around this hundred years ago, this time, he was living an area called Baron's Court and what they call the bedset, which is a small little place that I've got. Working on In Search in Miraculous, then wondering what to do with the material from a new model of the universe. So, so, but and more snickle too, as I mentioned, not as well known, but he was actually, he wrote fiction. He wrote novels. He wrote strange stories. There was a strand magazine and things of that sort. But one of the things I talk about in my book about him is somehow he became very, what's the word? And he had horrible writers, writers cramp, where he couldn't bring himself to work on things. So, those were a couple different things. But I mean, certainly with dance, I would say certainly I would say things with dance with music, perhaps with art and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I'm not saying that it doesn't work in that, but it's kind of like I think in a certain sense, Gergief said, well, you know, if you know how to sew a basket, that's a bit much better than if you can go and write a book. It's like that sort of not anti-intellectualism, but the kind of, you know, at least saying, well, yes, you know, we know you're very smart, but can you use your hands? So, developing these other parts of ourselves and that kind of thing. But no, but certainly, I would say certainly, I mean, the the the the when I first got involved in it, I fellow who was sort of the leader of the group, I was attending. He was one of the teachers of the dancers and he was also a painter. And I remember the one I couldn't say now what the paintings were, but I remember seeing when I went the first time meeting him and his flat, I mentioned it in the book as well, the walls and the the flatter full of these, you know, these these fantastic paintings in it and this kind of oriental sort of sense and all that. So I think in that in that sense, certainly. Yeah, I mean, but there's other, I mean, like Rudolph Steiner. I mean, it's a lot of art involved in that as well. But you must know that Robert Fripp from King firms and he was the student of Bennett's, but Richard Lloyd, the one of the guitarist from television is very, very deeply interested in the Gerget work. I mean, I really subsequently came to understand that through the miracle of Facebook. When we just yeah, because I was posting something because I was, you know, get to talk about it or did this book on the spanish. Here's something along those lines and he came up and you know, exchange sort of things and it was kind of like, oh, yeah, okay. I mean, but I knew him at the time that I didn't know him well, but so I didn't know this about him back in the day, but subsequently. You know, it's, what do you want to say, this is kind of discipline, maybe, maybe I think that might be the attractant in some way. There's a certain, there's a kind of discipline to it that's. Yeah, for certain kind, for certain people, I think that's a strong, this is strong attractant and it's something that you can apply, you know, I think to music as well, because this is obviously a certain discipline to be able to play, play musical instruments. I mean, I feel like there's me who just banged away. Well, maybe you returned to guitar after years in the work and see what happens to come of it. No, I mean, I feel like there's a really rich reception of Gurgif in the art sort of book that just sitting there waiting for someone. Yeah, I mean, at the Peter Brook, the Philbox, he's a filmmaker. I mean, there was, I do remember at a time though, it must have been. Sean Cassavetti's, I don't know if he direct the videos in the version of the Tempest. There's an updated contemporary and it might have been 1980 or something like that, but there was just a off side, side remark about Gurgif, with this actually kind of ditsy. I haven't seen the film in ages, ditsy kind of blonde woman kind of mentions. Oh, I need to go to Gurgif first. But I'm just saying this at the time because it's the keeper of low pro. I mean, it was. Just in the papers in the 20s and the 30s and all that, but I think in the contemporary time he tended to keep a low sort of profile and it still does the Gurgif foundation is, you know, they've rightly so the very serious. So they tend to keep a low profile not get publicized and all that, but certain. No, I think you're absolutely right. You know, an architecture in all these sort of fields. It's something that. I'm I remember Yacob Needleman. He was passed away some years ago. He was a little while ago. Yeah, but he he was very much involved in that and in the work and all that. And I know he. There was some. I can't remember what it was called now, but there was some anthology that he edited. Yeah, I know what you're right. I know. Right. You different, you know, sciences or arts or whatever something like that. It's kind of, you know, wide wide range areas of the way in which Gurgif's ideas have been influential. I know exactly what book you're talking about, but not the title. I'm going to put that in the show notes. That's fun. So Jacob Needleman just came up. I interviewed Cynthia Bergio last. And anyway, I studied under Jacob Needleman when I was at SFSU. He was a really interesting character. So we're talking in a certain way, all of these different figures that we've talked about are leading to figures had a very big impact on your life in a lot of ways. Colin Wilson. And he's come up a number of times. So first, let me say thank you for bringing so much attention back to him. I ended up tossing my copy of the outside rough there. When I remember reading when I'm like 18 years old and, you know, just like making sense of the world. That sort of thing. You know, and the, how to say it. The territory that he ended up tracking has become has really flourished in sort of like esoteric studies and intellectual history, but he's still not as well. Like he just doesn't have the same sort of stature that you might expect. So I love the fact you keep bringing attention to it. So I have so many different questions on Colin Wilson, but I just kind of want to open the door here. How did you come to Wilson's work as we talked about that? But What was it that just sort of really grabbed you and helped you find yourself within Wilson's work? Even before you met him. Right. Well, I mean, when I read the occult, I said there was just the general fascination with this whole history of these incredible characters and all the possibilities to be in consciousness. But it was one in particular that stuck with me then something that equals faculty X. And it just means it's a faculty of the human consciousness that we don't have a name for. And he calls it our ability to grasp the reality of other times and places. Meaning that reality, we tend to think reality is what's immediately right in front of us. When you think about it, you know, reality extends. We don't know how far this galaxy is for most. We know that bit right in front of us now. We sense that we see that. But when you think about it, you know, that's not the end of reality. So in a certain sense, we're hypnotized by what's right in front of us. And this faculty ends X is this strange ability that hits us every now and then and becomes aware of larger areas, the larger areas of reality. Not just some supernatural realities, I don't think that. So that was something that stuck in because I had, it's the proust experience. If you know in the beginning of remembrance of things past when the proust's narrator, he's he tastes a bit of this cake is called a matalain in a bit of like herbal tea. He brings back the memory and he's what was what is that? What is that? And suddenly he remembers what it is. And when he was a young boy, when he was on holiday, his aunt used to give him a taste of her matalain dipped into tea. So the thing is he knew factually that that had happened, you know, if you asked him, "Oh, Marcelo, when you were however old and you were there, do you remember?" Oh yes, I remember that. May we? But that wasn't, it didn't bring the fact back to him, the reality of it came back to him. So he could say, HD3D, VR, whatever, whatever feeble attempt we tried technologically to grasp, you know, a more vivid reality. It was more than that. It came back to him. The past came back to him in that way. And it's not necessarily a nostalgia for the past, but it's this ability to grasp a wider range of reality. So that idea, fundamental idea, for some reason, that stuck with me and all the different examples he gave of it. It's in Heza, it's in Arnold Toin B. It's all these different examples he gave, just stuck with me when I was reading this book. But that was initially reading the occult, was in the context of my indiscriminate reading about everything to do with the paranormal in the occult, anything I could get my hands on at the time. So it was books about that, Crowley, Golden Dawn, Parapsychology, Flying Solicitor's, whatever. Morning in the Gisheens, which is, you know, a friend of mine said, it's a crap book that changes your life, you know. It's a very bad book, but it's one of those books, wow, if you read it at the right time, you know. So, um, so any case, so that was in that context, but then later when I moved to Los Angeles, you know, I had left Bondy and um, hadn't yet put my own band together. I came across a copy, the outsider, and I think it was precisely that copy that you've got there. That addition, I think it's a Delta, I'm not mistaken. I can see, I mean, you don't have to stop it. Yeah, it's a Delta book. There we go. Okay, so, uh, I even said, yeah, I came across that addition and I um, I just, okay, so um, I remember buying it and I just read it and I just identified with this character type, they call the outsider. Um, and, uh, and again, all these people that I had read about are in this book. So a lot, I hadn't read about, but niches in there and Hessas and I mean, I was, I was a, Hessas, you know, a casualty in the early 70s, like millions of other American adolescents and um, I just read, I mean, I still go back and reread them today, but I, but I was, so oh my god, it's very much. Hessas, um, even writes about GERGIF, and this is before the occult. This came out in 56, the occult came out in 71. So Wilson was one of the first ones to write about GERGIF from someone outside of kind of the work people had written their accounts, you know, the own personal accounts or something, but not someone looking at it. And also, incidentally, he's one of the first ones to write about Hessas, an extended English kind of, you know, critical matter because Hessas wasn't even in print at that time as much. So Wilson's outsider was one of the things that helped start the Hessas kind of revival is his, um, yeah, well, he was the best seller just before, just, it's just after he died again, it was like posthumous bestseller dumb, and it was like the third time, and any case going on about it. But I just identified with this character that he called the outsider and that someone who's basically had an appetite for kind of meaning and purpose that couldn't find, you know, in, in the world and had to, had to create it, had to have some kind of creative life. And so, and again, I'm 22 or on my way to be 22. So, you know, I'm reading it at, at, at the time. And, um, I had, you know, I had become an outsider. I had left the band that was on its way to become, you know, successful. I was back where I started from, again, you know, I, I was, you know, Lisa, she was on her way to interacting careers and we were like kind of back to state, you know, stage one, both of us together there. But I was determined to do it, and that, that reading that book, reading about these different characters, um, fictional, but in real life as well, Nijinsky and Van Gogh and Lawrence of Arabia. When I was, that was one of the first films I saw when I was a kid. I was, oh, I didn't know all the stuff about him and Peter Routou, Peter Routou, in my mind, when I was agreeing to the book, if you know the film, the David Lee in movie, he plays Lawrence. So, again, oh, it just, it was just powerful and, and, and he's just, it's had this intensity. Um, that I thought, yes, I'm, I'm, I'm, I either am or want to be, or I will make myself one of these characters, you know, or do you, do you make yourself it? Or are you ready? Do you discover yourself? Have you lost yourself like the house keys? Or do you make yourself for something, you know, like, like, like, so, that sort of thing? And I had already been reading Nietzsche. I had a high school teacher, my last year of high school, who, um, took me aside and started giving me books to read and he taught the rest of the class, whatever the regular curriculum was. He was a young guy, a progressive, progressive, but he's given me Sart and Nietzsche and, and Kamu and all this kind of stuff and he's testing me on that. So I had, I had already had a background reading that kind of stuff, um, you know, I was 16 and 17. Um, so, a few years later coming across it, again, in Wilson's book, the outsider, when I'd read his book, The Occult, and one of the things that got me in The Occult was that he mentions Sart. He mentions like Heidegger. And I, Heidegger was like somebody I was mispronouncing. You know, it was like some name I was mispronouncing, but I come across it and, you know, some, something about, you know, Nietzsche or somewhere or something like that. And so, what's he, what's that doing in a book about The Occult, you know, so that was like that strange kind of thing. I didn't know that Wilson had already had 15 years as it worked with your rear writing about existentialism and things of that sort. So, I discovered that when I came across the outsider, his first book. So I went back to that and then I, after that, I just, I hunted down all of his books, you know, and, and, and LA was a good place to do that in because there was at the time, many, many, many secondhand bookshops. Um, and then whenever, when I got my band together, whenever we went on tour and he that kind of thing, you know, I would just hunt down. I would get up early if there was a bookshop in town. Not every place did have one. If they did, I would go. So that was, you know, that, that was it. I just became fascinated all that. And how did you, as I understand it, you guys became friends? I mean, with that, I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for reading his books. I mean, I, I wanted to be a writer when I was a kid and that initially manifested in writing poetry. Most of the words I managed to destroy, I did allow one to appear in a footnote to give you some idea that I wasn't joking. I was actually writing poetry. But then that turned into writing songs and I wanted to write, but I couldn't write anything anyone would read. But it was through reading him and then just, I mean, he knew he had lots of fans and there were people that visited him quite a bit. And I made a, I made a pilgrimage to where he lived. He died in 2013. I made a pilgrimage to where he lived in a small place called Goran Haven, which is in Cornwall, which is the four west country. He were in England, the furthest west tip. And when I was here in 1983, before I was living here, I was living in Los Angeles and I came here on a kind of, what I call the mini search of the miraculous that it went to places like, well, we went, I visited the site with Gergius Prairie, was in Fontainebleau, a short cathedral, Notre Dame. I was into, I was into sort of sacred geometry and the symbolism that were in the Gothic cathedrals and all that. I was reading a lot about lay lines and earth magic and megaliths and then I went down to, went to Avery and Stonehenge and I went to Glastonbury and down, further down, like Cornwall, there's Mary Maiden. I had an ordinance survey map, so I was, you know, I was, I was a proper way line hunter and all that, you know, I'm compositional, I kind of think. So didn't discover anything, but it was fun to do that. But while I was down there, someone had a bookshop here in London had given me Wilson's phone number because I was talking to him about him and I bought like a bunch of his paperbacks or something like that. And he said, oh, he loves visitors. And now I realize that guy was saying, yeah, college, I'll send another one down to you. But he enjoyed, he enjoyed people visiting him and he had this big, big place that he and his wife, Joy, they originally got in 1957. He was hounded out of London. I mean, his, the outsider came out. He was very popular. He was kind of like the Elvis Presley of existentialism here in England. And he was in all the newspapers for a while. And there was a whole scandal where he had to leave London. I can't go into details, but he wound up moving down to the far west country. It was very remote then. And it was still relatively, but the time I went down there, but it had a big kind of sprawling you know, house with like bungalow and different stuff like that. Books, more books. And you'd see outside of a book, ever see outside of a bookshop, you know, it's just like Sony books everywhere. And no, I mean, the first time I went there, I never really stayed up late, drank a lot. And he explained his ideas about phenomenology to me, which at the time I believe I had nailed. But the next day, I had no idea what he was talking about. Yeah, I got it, but all that. But he has his own, he developed his own particular application of history of phenomenology to create what he called a positive or a new or evolutionary kind of existentialism that would pick up where existentialism was sort and hard to go and others had left off in various cold Disucks. And actually, I just was talking to someone earlier today about possibly doing a course on this because I did born for CIS a while back on Wilson. And I'd like to do one about in the context of existentialism a certain way and bring just that existentialism sort of, pursuit of meaning, search for meaning basically. And his particular thing, which brings in what he wants to say ideas about consciousness that extend beyond, you know, into the paranormal or into the mystical and things of that sort. And I think in some ways that, well, on me, Corbin, you know, the scholar of Iranian person is a scientist and he started out as phenomenology. He translated, he was the first one to translate hydrogen to French, I believe. He was. And you can see a lot of that kind of, you know, the, who's early in sort of bracketing or, you know, whatever that attempt at seeing things without the preconceptions can bleed into or, you know, gradient into the sorts of visionary experiences, things of that sort. So, so something along those lines, so I, if I can do a course like that, I'll be interested in doing that. Oh, that would be great. You know, just one of the things, as I was reading your book is we are sort of ripe for some sort of colon Wilson Renaissance. I think it would be really interesting. How long has he been dead? Let's see. It's 13 years he's been dead. So, yeah, it could be, it could be. Well, I just, I'm speaking as someone who, you know, was trained in like, yeah, esotericism, PhD, knows all the folks at Amsterdam, et cetera. Oh, yeah. Like we've, I've never heard a paper on colon Wilson. I think it's pretty much in a class, never in a seminar. It just never, it wasn't even on, you know, the, I wonder if there's in. Yeah. Yeah. So Jeffrey, Jeffrey, you might, I just, I just wonder for like, I don't know. I mean, I like Voodoo Hanagriff, who, I know I haven't, I haven't talked to him in years, but I just wonder if that's a little too pop or something. I remember somewhere Anton Fave, who, you know, the, the, the, the, the Dwayne of, you know, academic, I started making some sort of, um, derogatory mark about Wilson or something like that. So it's like too, too popular. So, I mean, I, I mean, to me, the interesting stuff is in the popular culture. So like, Jeffrey said, this is, this is the, the real avenue or venue or, you know, conduit through which these things come out, you know, into the, into the real world. That was that way, you know, everything's life. And, yeah. I mean, I was going to say a good friend of mine, um, Colin Stanley, um, Wilson's bibliographer, he, he established a common Wilson archive and nodding him university. So at some point, you know, people will discover that I bet there's going to be some eager, you know, um, thesis student who needs something. And, oh, nobody's touched him yet. Yeah. That, that, that great idea. And is that also what became of his library? Because you talk about his library is having 80 to 100,000 books. Oh, yes. Really hard to find. Oh, no, no. Well, well, it became, what became of Colin, Stanley's pristine collection of all of Wilson's books, Wilson's own books. Yeah. I don't know what the status of them now. I know I helped a few years back, uh, put in, do you minifiers and help? No, it was like they're facing a crisis, I think, because it's down, you know, it's very wet down there. And it's really hard to know what to do. And I tell you know, if there was a place to house them, I think they'd be happy to find some way to do it, to, to do it. I haven't talked to them in a while, but I know there was something like 60,000. And then they had, they had these sheds out. There were books in the house. Then they have, like an old caravan, basically, like, I, what they call a camper van that's like, they are, that's full of books. Then there was a shadow that I was in was full of books. And then he had these two sheds. Um, there was the crime shed, which I thought was a great title. That was a shed, all the books on crime, because he wrote about crime as well. That was a great title of the crime. That is so perfect. Um, yeah, it's a shame, because the digitization sort of energy has meant these private libraries, they used to be taken up by universities. They're just not. It's huge. So we've talked a bit about universities and SOGERICS system and SOGERICS studies. So one of the really interesting things about your place in that is that on the one hand, you've written a staggering number of books, 25, or did, did you write one this morning and it's up to 26 or, I think that touched, touched just 26. Okay. There we go. And you did it all without the benefit of an academic position. So you're in a really interesting position to comment on the, you know, a lot of people who do SOGERICS studies struggle with this. What do you think are some of the limits of being an academia, the things that you wanted to avoid? And when some of the benefits of remaining sort of on the outside, right, of the academy, properly speaking and working as an intellectual historian from your own place? Well, when I, well, initially, I, my career choice after rock and roll was to teach philosophy. That was what I was originally going to do. So in 1984, actually, I came back from this mini search in the miraculous in Europe and such and such and to do it myself, you know. So friends suggest, well, you read all these books, why don't you go back to university? So I went on to going back to university and I decided to study philosophy and I enjoyed it. And I really enjoyed my undergraduate, the BA. I really enjoyed doing that. It was a lot of fun. And lots of stuff that I, you know, I read randomly and this was like, okay, now, you know, people I probably would have avoided, like, like, livenits or something, okay, at least, you know, forced to read it and that kind of thing. So I wanted to get a good grounding in it. Different things happen, a marriage happen, that kept me from doing, I was originally wanted to go to Stony Brook to, because they had a good department in continental philosophy, that's what I wanted to do. But I wound up staying in LA because I got a relationship, you know, wound up starting, um, in the HD track in English, lit at USC. And by then, I guess this would have been 92, something like that. PC thing had started to kind of happen and I wasn't interested in deconstructing anybody and I was like an old humanist romantic who's like, no, what did Blake mean? What is he? So it's just, I just just fish out of water and I just sort of felt, oh god, I just, I don't think I'll ever get a job because I just don't want to do any of this kind of stuff that people are doing. I just don't, just doesn't appeal to me at all. Um, so that was like it just in my own kind of world. That, that, that sort of turned me off to continuing, and that had nothing to do with esoteric studies. I mean, I was reading that kind of stuff on the side, but for a while I wasn't, I was reading a lot of George Steiner, not Rudolph Steiner. And I was trying to understand Walter Benjamin and people like Adorno and all this kind of stuff and Derri Dahl and that, that kind of thing. Um, and I just thought, well, I don't, I don't really want to have to go and do this stuff. This is what it's going to take for me to get a job somewhere. I don't really want to do this. And this is a thing about touched by the presence. This was when miraculously this loyalty checked. substantial royalty check for that that song appeared and I could go I Don't have to do it for a while and I tell I quit and I started I tried to write a novel But as with yesterday, I mean the thing it's it's it's I don't know I guess because my my own introduction to it wasn't through academia. It was through some you know It was through a wild gay flamboyant Biker artists on the Bowery in the context of rock and roll and All of that so this context like pop culture and all that sort of thing so I mean, I wasn't I wasn't As to join a secret society by an emissary something like that. I was I was reading you know two paperbacks about all this kind of stuff So I guess I like to keep I Not consciously, but I saw that just seems to be the context, you know that that I and it's the freedom You know it's a freedom where I mean I just don't feel I mean I've been in some things with oh this wanted a vooter and Think some of the people and it's as well while ago I think it was Copenhagen and we're doing something on Hilma F. Clint, you know the you know the Swedish artist there was like She was making the rounds and and we were there giving talks and something and I think at the end like the person who was moderating Say well, we we have to ask we've come to the time where we have to ask that really basic question and like you know do you believe in any of this stuff, you know and? The academics are kind of well and I said yeah, of course I do and and I pointed to the audience to say so do they Why do you think they came out? It's kind of thing and I was kind of like and I sort of said like and these guys they do too But they don't want to say you could say they're afraid they'll lose tenure And so I was kind of that you know not combative, but you know one of the shake things up a bit and I said of course Of course, look what's the point? I mean I I'd rather the air on the side of that than air on the side of no You know did that way so I? I mean, you know, I guess I wait Jeffrey's different I mean because he's he's he's he's out in the open about all that and I know in here I know his books get reviewed in the Guardian places of places Who were you know they're god there very very left know that they're not usually interested in all that that kind of jazz So you know good for him and you know Yeah, I mean he's like him or you yourself You know and that sort of thing. Yeah, I mean he's he's had a number of students like me and Doing what you can't but I mean Jeff is his own thing all right. He's kind of like his own publishing industry and You know, it is still I Supposed you could say it's getting better, but it's still sort of expected The people who are coming through the esoteric mystical studies are going to be what about her metavan speaking to was the methodological agnosticism I think I don't know. I don't know And it's you know, it's completely fair and necessary for the project to be getting tenure No, I mean, but underneath Yeah, yeah, sorry, go ahead. No, but you know underneath the Things that are published things are different. That's that's what we all know I had to think when I aged turn turn of human actually interviewed Anton Fave in the cafe outside the sobong And I at the end of it I sort of said something like to him like Something like along the lines. Well, do you do even these kinds of things? And he's not a mental interest. He was very indignant about it. No that kind of thing. So um no, I Well, funnily enough though there's Academic publisher pal grave and pal grave make my one they recently asked me to do peer review of two manuscripts they Been submitted to them and they're interested in whether it's they should be published or not about One was about the link between sort of Victorian the writings about Victorian ghosts En psychic phenomena and the phenomena themselves and so it's and it was God it was it was his fish Stanley fish and some some weird The thing that made me run away from you know English studies in graduate school some weird theory new his sources It's something about how it doesn't matter whether the phenomena reveal or not the these kind of interpretive communities Oh, um established a reality of these things regardless of any So-called um empirical evidence of them which made me say well, you know They're actually just quite a bit empirical evidence but but but and there was another one That's the new thing but I thought is odd and I said to look you know. I'm not an academic You know, I have no idea where this fits in to Current studies in this. I wouldn't be able to tell you whether they say oh no no The author is insisting you You look at this they they said please bring because because you could bring outside peers in I said okay fine So I'm an authority but I without an academic um At least an authority for publisher to ask you know whether they should publish and I I get I get my thumbs up Very cool. So I even though I said I have no idea what Stanley fish is talking about but you know I'm sure it's okay nice So I can't let you go without asking you about dreams um so the Yeah So many of your books are about a particular figure and intellectual history etc But then dreaming ahead of time is doing you know you're you're really after it right with this nature of things so um Keep it keep it simple. What do you think these precognitive dreams tell us about the nature of consciousness Just keep it simple I think they tell us that our everyday consciousness With time streets seems to go in one direction um not necessarily false but um it's Not complete So there are other levels of consciousness and time and I I agree with JP priestly we can Although JW done who wrote this book experiment of a time which was the one that I read in 1980 Which got me to record my dreams and which I started to see I was dreaming bits and pieces of my own future not predicting anything But just bits things that would happen to me the next day of the day after um He he he had this idea of this kind of you know infinite number of selves and times and because there's always a self-observine of the self at the British Author of J.B. Priestly he was fascinated with time. He called himself a time-hunted man He said we only need three so there's the everyday one with times only one direction Then there's the dreaming me the dreaming observer which you're lifted out of that stream And you can see the back the past and you can see the future too But it's your it's your past and it's your future. So it's not charisma or predicts. It's not that. It's just what's going to happen to you And then this the next level is one in which you connect Um and you could take advantage of what you've seen on its way to you Uh to avoid it if necessary or make make sure it happens or something on those lines and he tells the famous story The woman who had a dream when she was camping And she had an infant child with her. She needed to wash some things and so she she went down to the stream And oh she forgot the soap and she went put the baby down saying it'll be two seconds It's it's far enough away. It's not going to roll into the water She goes back to get the soap comes back and the baby head rolled into the water in the dream um so Not long after she is camping. She does every infant child. She does need to wash some things She's on her way to the stream to remember is the dream And she goes back and gets the soap while she has the kid with her and none of that happens But she had an opportunity to change The possibility of what's going on. So I'm I'm not a determinist in that way I think we don't always do this. I mean most of the time we are mechanical most of the time you know A future is pretty much the same as our past but we can have I mean, you can say I mentioned earlier that my place was you know going through all this kind of I mentioned right that my place was going to what was kind of even that the upset of that The fact that I'm camping out here you can't see it But I'm camping out in my my my living room on the couch here And everything is different in workmen are coming in and out of the place and everything is and I'm I'm Going out most of the day even that slight bit of inconvenience Or slight bit of disruption To everyday routine. I caught myself have this feeling of thing. What is that? I feel like I'm on holiday Which is exactly what I talk about in I wrote Nick This is the book that's coming out later. It's with the publisher. It's not I I finished it early this year. It's a shorter book, but it's it's with them now. I I delivered it ahead of time I dream I had a time and I deliver books at a time as well um, but I had this strange experience a few years back when they had the first um Lockdown here the first COVID lockdown and I have a At the great good fortune to have a garden flat. So I've Opened my door here and I have a little garden private garden. Excuse me. It opens up to a bigger communal garden So one morning I must have been March so must have been over that was it was five years ago already now six years ago Yeah, about five I think 2020 um I went out during the lockdowns going on and so I was doing all the things you have to do wearing the gloves and riding my bike out to find little shops that had anything left because the big shops are completely You know the the hoarders that got to it and all that and you know cleaning everything so a variety of different again in conveniences I had to make a slight effort, your G-fian style, a little extra effort. I remember walking out here, cup of coffee in hand, going out and looking up, I said, "What is that?" And it was the sun. And I was utterly surprised, just I didn't know what it was for a few nanoseconds. I thought, "What is that?" And then I started laughing. I realized what I had asked, and then I started laughing, it was cackling. But it was this. Being, I was surprised by it, and it's presence. Oh yeah, I know what the sun is. It's 93 million miles away. It takes nine minutes for it's light to get. I know all those facts, but suddenly it struck me as this actual thing. There. If it almost is like it hold it in a certain way, it was that kind of vivid and clear and concrete. And I chalked that up to. So I was saying this kind of alertness that came from the inconvenience, having to put a little bit extra effort. And at the time I even was thinking, "What is. "What do I feel like?" Well, I just. Everything seems a bit more vibrant. It's like, "Oh God, I feel like I'm on holiday." Even though it was. Crisis, it was the last thing for many people on holiday. But it felt like holiday because, you know, holidays generally, you know, you go somewhere else and it's a different routine, you know, it's a scenery's different, that's not the case. Although it is a bit different. I've got the other half of my libraries on the floor behind me right here. So that's. That times too, it's on the floor behind me. You know, so it is a bit different and all that. So, in any case, I'm going on and on, but this is the sort of thing that this is Wilson's. This is the result of his phenomenological analysis of what he calls the robot, which is this handy, labor-saving device that we develop in order to take care of things, but it does its job too well and it starts doing things we'd rather do ourselves. But that morning when I walked out, my robot was off duty because I was in crisis mode and I had to be more there, you know, and somehow my being more there resulted in my seeing, well, the sun was more there too. And so, in any case, this is the long-winded comment about all that, but it's that similarly, similarly here, I found myself feeling this kind of strange. I'm just happiness and so on and I think, and everything, my place is completely, you know, a tip, it's horrible, it's dust, I'm going to be cleaning for weeks here and all that. But somehow I realized, yeah, well, you wanted to change it. - Yeah. - You've got it, and suddenly it's the slightest little bit of upset to the routine has inculcated this, I mean, now that I've analyzed it will probably go away because I'm aware of it. - You know, save it while you can. - Exactly, and it really sort of captured, you have the column Wilson part, it's very grigey, Pian, the like inconvenience to just take you out of that, that sort of mechanical mode of being. - So I guess the next step is can you do that without the inconvenience? I guess that would be somehow bringing in imagination, I would say in some way, in the main case. That's the next talk. - Well, is that your next book? So I wanted to ask you the last question. So I was gonna ask what you were working on, but it sounds like you already have a book in. So our guest choice, do you wanna tell us about the book that is coming out next that's with the publisher or what you're working on now? - Well, I'm not working on a new book at the moment. It's the other thing is with the publisher, but I think they haven't got back to me bad yet. But it's sort of along the lines of what I'm talking here. It's based on this experience that I had being surprised by the sun, it's an unpacking. It's an unpacking of that in different kinds of context. So it's a bit of zen is in there, a bit of existentialism and being in all of that, the search for being is if it's lost in some way and things of that. So it's yeah, it's something along those lines, but it's a couple of things happening. I was asked by the Italian publisher of my book, Dark Star Rising, Magic and Power in the Age of Who. And they asked me to bring things up to date for a new edition they're putting out. So I waited to the very last minute to submit it. Usually I'm ahead of time, but I had to say, 'cause who knows what can happen? - I'm folding again. - I know, I know, I know, I know. So I did that and then I was asked by, there's a group in, well, they're in the Netherlands in Germany, it's a Versa Crucion group, but they have a website called Logone, Log go n. And they asked me to write things every now and then, I did want to about, what would I call the portable cave? It's not out yet, but it's a take on the whole simulation, kind of meme that's very rampant these days and all that. So little bits and pieces and I'm next month, February on Sundays, I'm doing a four part series for the Philosophical Research Society in LA. Do you know them? Mally P. Hall started back in the 50s, and they're going strong now. And they're actually very good. They've kept themselves going and they have a, how should we say, more inclusive kind of profile? They have lots of lots of different things happening. It's a fantastic old kind of art deco, Mayan building in Los Felies in LA, but they have an online presence. So I'm doing a series, it's ancient Alexandria. It'll be very cool. Hermitist, narcissists, new platenists, and I'm calling it secret Christianity, a Christianity before Rome. So, and it's all this melting potable, these kind of things happening in Alexandria and say 200 around there, that kind of period. Super, super cool. And is that you're going to be teaching that as part of the online? That's online, yeah. Okay, cool. So it's up, it's up. I think if you just me and ancient Alexandria it'll turn up, there's an event bright site. If you're interested, it'll give you a tool. Yeah, I'll kind of think. And we'll definitely put that in the show notes. We love ancient Alexandria on the show and as part of TNT, it's a very big part of what we do. So Gary Lockman, thank you so much for the rich reflections. And yeah, everybody who has not already needs to read Touch by the Presence or pick up one of your other 25 books. Can't touch by the Presence and then no doubt you want to read all the other ones. Yes, very well put. All right, well, thank you very much for coming on the show. Pleasure, thank you, thank you, Matthew. Take care. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)