People have known or educated supposedly, I've met very few educated people, gosh, on big campuses, and wow, you really have to look for an educated person at those places. You know, you find many a specialist, but almost nobody is educated. But, you know, why isn't? This is old hat. But hell, black people legitimately say, well, hell, it's old hat about racial inferiority, racial superiority, and the word race itself being a hard-washed word. The point is, it's not a simple matter that you educate people that, oh, this and that's a mistake, because people have savage and vicious investments in oppression, in being oppressed, and in being oppressive.

[01:15]

And it takes sometimes force, violence, coercion, and the sternest of prohibitions involving the denial of another person of rights. For significant changes to take place, since these irrational, deep-rooted, vicious investments are so great. But, you know, as for me, I would rather have my freedom and not be liked by ten people I pass on the street than not have my freedom and say, oh, good boy, you're keeping in your place.

[02:22]

Because the nitty-gritty of life revolves spiritually around fulfillment. It doesn't revolve around a popularity contest. This, to me, is where consciousness-raising, through meditation, through literature, and thereby through effective social and political action. It's where and how a lot of change takes place. So, we live in a city of such incredible oppression. The gay community, powerless, disorganized, people are busy trying to dance their ass off at a disco, things of that sort.

[03:40]

Consciousness is lacking. Even with women's rights, too, for example, many of the spokesmen for women's rights are themselves so oppressive, so power-hungry, the last thing that they would do would be work together. Oppressed people have an investment in oppression by being splintered so that there can be ten different Martinets, ten different power brokers. The city of San Francisco has five gay political clubs, 38 different Marxist groups, on and on and on.

[04:44]

I don't know how many women liberationists or un-liberationists grow, but there is an investment in being a power broker, and that requires oppression and its maintenance. And so, at the core of the political and social process, to me, is a type of active participation that requires a renewal and a utilization of one's whole and total being. Now, I'm going to do something that I haven't done at any point, and that is recommend a book I haven't read. Just yesterday, I was looking at a book in the bookstore, and just a little bit of it that I looked at looked so exciting that I'm just dying to read it.

[05:55]

It may be absolutely lousy and no good and all the rest, but I thought I'd share it with you if any of you would be interested. In a sense, I'm not recommending it. I'm recommending that you look at it. Making Changes, The Politics of Self-Liberation by Melvin Gertoff, G-U-M-T-O-F. Melvin Gertoff came from a Jewish background and went into teaching and all the rest, and at this point lives in a commune situation in the East Bay. So, primitive communism and interested in politics, literature, sex. It's not homosexual, heterosexual, it's sexual.

[07:02]

It's a nice way of looking at things as far as I'm concerned. But what I liked about it was the caption, The Politics of Self-Liberation and His Struggle. And I share one thing in common. We both went to Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, New York, and wound up in Berkeley. So, at any rate, I found it fascinating on exactly the sorts of subjects that we're talking about. Does anyone have a thought to share or comment, question or observation? I was wondering about the transformation from agrarian to commerce. And you're talking about women being involved in the mystical. In an agrarian society, the mystical would be much more important.

[08:04]

And, you know, as we transform into commercial, then so-called man, masculine, rational mind would be more important. So, do you think that's an important factor or is that too simplistic? No. You see, in the early agrarian society, without commerce, the woman had both a maternal and priestess function, deeply rooted to the soil and the sky. Now, we've all been taught history from an exceedingly oversimplified point of view. I wonder if anyone has studied economic development of, for example, the Roman Empire. The stages of development of the different portions of the Roman Empire went through.

[09:06]

Agrarian is a very broad term. It can mean self-sufficient, native living. Or it can mean commercial enterprise with the equivalent of a middle class. A middle class which is commercial in its enterprises, like the famous money changers in the temple, if you will. The traders of the silk road from antiquity that went from Samarkand to Trebizond. And so, there were many layers of economic development that took place. And among them was the removal of agricultural business from the location of the house and farm to the marketplace, to other marketplaces, to money.

[10:18]

The development of money and notes, commercial transaction systems, and things of that sort. Agriculture became incredibly complex as a business, which involved a lot of political development, civil service. There were superb studies of it from both ends of Asia. In Israel, Palestine, then by Max Weber many years ago. And in China, then by Needham and a number of other science and social historians and economic historians. And the rise of, for example, the literati class, superb essay by Max Weber, which he wrote in the early 30s, called The Chinese Literati, that has never been surpassed.

[11:21]

In which the cultivated person as civil servant was the assessor, the surveyor, the tax collector, and all the rest. Well, that shows a different stage of agrarian development from partial native farming. And that was the point at which women's role became more and more the home, maintaining the homestead and things of that sort. Do you think the concept of land ownership might have been a turning point? Yeah, yeah. Well, land ownership, per se, as private individual property, not as tribal holding or family plot even, but as individual property. This was directly parallel to the development of the exceedingly patriarchal family.

[12:34]

If it doesn't sound too elastic, I would recommend a very short work, much outdated, much outmoded, but excellent, by Friedrich Engel. The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State. And incredible that that was written 120 years ago. It's incredible. But, yeah, you can report me to the FBI and add another page to my thoughts. At any rate, the thing that I'm driving at, though, is that I essentially feel that the core, unlike the Marxists, conservatives, liberals, any political group say,

[13:41]

and also unlike what most religious groups say, there's a double-barreled process at work. The religious groups say, liberate yourself, the world is always going to be shit-filled, but if you can somehow hold your nose and walk above it, then everything is fine. The politicians say, religion is the opiate of the masses, get out there and be my slave, I mean, be a loyal comrade, and everything will be fine when I'm boss and we all share what I say we can't. Rather, to me, it's a double-barreled shotgun. You have to be centered about the wholeness of your own being to engage in any significant behavior that isn't chaotic.

[14:42]

But if you are centered in that moving, flexible reality that still has the constant state of repose and tranquility, because you're with it, girls from Sahara and Nirvana are in a dynamic, instant involvement, spinning around a lot, but the middle doesn't spin so much. Why, you'll then have something to utilize in significant, societal, and economic ways. And society doesn't mean organizing the U.S. of A. and Canada and Mexico and the islands offshore, you know, it can mean involvement with two or three or ten or a hundred or a thousand people.

[15:50]

But utilizing it in ways that are spiritual, if the spiritual life is a self-giving and outpouring that there's an accompanying inflow, Ditto. A gory mess out there. So to me, it isn't an either-or. But I do see a fairly clear-cut priority for the launching pad, because when I look out there at the reformers, there are so many messes, so many screwballs, so many power-hungry people lusting for slaves, and so many slaves lusting for masses to tell them what to do.

[17:02]

I'm giving a little pat on the head, but the only way to throw anything out is to be together yourself in the first place. Or, as he mentioned me, or transformed into a master or a slave, something of that sort. So to me, it isn't an either-or. It's a total process where the launching pad is coming to terms with and utilizing the manifold components that make up your being as you. And that is someone else. Because again, though the realm of nature may be going through these processes, so is every individual, and so the model is yourself, as I see it.

[18:09]

I'm afraid that... You know, I don't exactly like the model that I look at in the mirror, you know. I'm supposed to follow that guy, you know? That guy? I think that's about what we're stuck with, though. The utilization of that guy that we... That's not so bad, is it? Yeah. Jung underwent, as I suggested, a lot of development in his presentation of this. His most clear-cut statement of it is in a short work, two essays, in analytical psychology.

[19:19]

I think it was written in 1932. I'm not sure. His biggest development is in the book that is now translated as Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. It used to be translated as Symbols of Transformation. Or was it vice-versa? I can give you a different title. Uh-huh. But, at any rate, Jung defined as animus characteristics in the female, the heroic, the imaginative processes that are productively put to work, in other words, libidinal drive, not sexual libido.

[20:24]

See, the word libido in Jung means life energy. In Freud, libido means sexual energy. So, life energy, libidinal drive, the drive to go beyond oneself, is personified in this heroic form as the animus. So, obviously, if it's lopsided in a woman, to use Jung's words, because these are not pleasant words, the woman will be bitchy, quarrelsome, argumentative, nitpicking, hyper-rational. That's one form of animus-ridden woman, negative.

[21:25]

The other form of animus-ridden woman, negative, is the woman who identifies with it in a romantic way, and she becomes a silly, stereotyped, conventionalistic person. The creative use of the animus is that it lends imaginative, yet constructive and goal-oriented development to the personality. So, the animus is not the same as other forms of the feminine.

[22:30]

It's one among several feminine archetypes in the psyches of people. Now we're talking men and women. Animus, we're talking only about women. For example, the goddess, the child of hope, the mother, the heroine. All of these are personifications in dreams, in art, in literature, in imagination, in free association and fantasy. And so, for example, if a woman were to let herself go and enjoy, in ways that aren't crazy and would cause you to wind up in a booby hatch, enjoy fantasizing that

[23:33]

you are Florence Nightingale, Joan of Arc, Susan B. Anthony, Muhammad Ali, Charles de Gaulle, you see, the whole gamut, and enjoy it all, you will gradually also see yourself beyond any and all of these specifics. Just like, and again to anticipate next month, when you meditate with an icon of any sort, like with Tara, you go into, through, and beyond. And the beyond that you find is yourself. And likewise for a male

[24:35]

to identify with Elizabeth Barrett, Florence Nightingale, Muhammad Ali, Thomas Edison, you know, just... You really enjoy it, you really dig it. And dig the sky, dig the earth, the plants, the waves, the moss, look at the trees. Love the moss and the lichen on the rocks, and whatever, and just... Don't use it as an if, but enjoy. Enter into. Walk through. We're talking about visualization next month. That's visualization, some forms of visualization done by the Desert Fathers in the 4th century and 6th century,

[25:39]

that very few people know about as well. Walk through it. And then, there you are. Right where you are. But elevated. Transmuted. Make sense? Hmm? Hmm? Hmm? Well, the doing is the attaining. And, uh, that's the if. But don't expect to find yourself on the way up, never land, always returning to ground zero. Now there's a lovely story about,

[26:41]

uh, there's a story about a artist who painted the landscape and painted a path and stopped walking on the path and disappeared into the painting and was never again seen. Now, you know, it's charming, and it has its point, it's a legitimate point, and that's its beauty, its point. But, samsara is nirvana, nirvana is samsara. The divine human experience is the uplifted human experience. Right now, here. So the goal of any and all of this enlargement of consciousness that produces an enlargement of self is that you, right here, are fuller, and pleaser, and richer, have received more,

[27:42]

be so more. And if you do it with joy, you do it without measure and weighing. Should I, shouldn't I do this, that? You do it. It happens. And that's the result of spiritual discipline. And then discover what happens. Anyone else have a thought to share? Yeah, something I'm working on. Something I'm working on. Yeah. Well, I personally identify very heavily with my ancestral roots in Central Asia and Asia Minor.

[28:45]

And I really don't feel much at home elsewhere. And the closer I get geographically and that's right here in England, I feel happier in a poetic way than here. And that is a big problem and a big hang-up because I should be free enough and spontaneous enough to engage in any dimension of experience to where I'm at, wherever it may be, because reality is, you know. You referred to this country.

[30:01]

Yeah, well. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, what I, I've been working on it. One thing I've been trying to to put together some poetry recently without commendable success. What I intend to do with more discipline is distract that chain of thought with instant meditation that involves the loss of self into subtext or whatever is one of my ongoing disciplines. And for the blank mind, I do it so that as in a crowd you feel suffocated or something of that sort. Likewise, let's try to think positive thoughts or back yourself up. That's all work and effort that magnifies

[31:04]

the alienation but rather to do instant meditation and be on another level of consciousness so that you are indifferent to the static. But static can be very noisy and I find myself in lots of ways just one hell of a lot of static still keeps coming on and I turn the dial from one station to another more static more static It's this life and if there are many more many more lives deal with it. I think it's a creative thing to deal with very realistically It's often

[32:09]

very, very hard and I find it very, very hard to accept certain basic facts of life that are what they are and I know what they are this, that and the other things dealing with them constructively is part of the ball of wax that's the meat to live and enjoy damn tough you know but my premise is that there's a chaotic mess out there there's a chaotic mess in here and our job is to do as the gods of old did and put order into the chaos give things name and form and placement and ranking of importance

[33:12]

and unimportance and life span and health and no longer useful and all the rest so part of the spiritual life is a very practical dealing with these things but as a starting point the maximum of self-transcendence self-involvement in it is almost always a disaster because the more you worry the more you fret the more involved you are with it the badder the worse it feels or the angrier or the whatever and so kaboom another level it doesn't always work it won't always work and if anyone tells you

[34:13]

that they've reached a stage where it always works I want their autograph too okay anyone else have any thoughts or feelings to express I think I'll ask a question well I talked earlier about pre-commissioning pre-commissioning is very important it seems like the physical expression component of people's psyches is more stable you know it's all right there same people same thing you sort of gel with all that stuff through your hand and in commercial society where a process of alienation begins things are a lot more jumbled up and messed up so

[35:13]

I guess my question is is spiritual life and spiritual practice essentially different in those two situations I mean in a situation where everything is all mixed up do you really have to do anything I mean what is it you're working with or is it just a completely different process yeah you're working with yourself what's that that's well you're working yeah well in the sense of not having a commitment to a metaphysics of something inside me which is which has four letters S-E-L-F on it it's working with the reality of one's existence and a multitude of feelings thoughts passions that you have integrating them utilizing without denial there are many components so that neither a beast

[36:17]

with your milk neither a beast nor a a milk toast would be the result this is something that was impossible in pre-commercial society those people were condemned to lives of ignorance and unfulfillment along aesthetic lines they had contentment when they weren't being raided by their neighbors and things of that sort but they did not have fulfillment there is a difficult R in Jewish path the net result of which

[37:19]

is simplicity in the long run but the path is difficult in R Jewish because it recognizes the chaos without and within that gives us an opportunity that they didn't have so because their situation was fairly stable they were able to they were able to exist so they weren't in a world of chaos maybe not so apparent they maintained a simple integrity that I for one wouldn't want it's a fashion to glorify that you know like Shoemaker's book Small is Beautiful tried to run an industrial society on small is beautiful tried to feed four and a half billion people on small is beautiful I could ask you another question about that it could be done in little groups and you can opt it

[38:19]

for yourself your friends and like-spirited people but you cannot produce energy food supplies medical supplies the sophisticated technology that allows me today to outperform an average or normally healthy person of my age in stress tests even though I had two open heart operations now in a world of small is beautiful I would long long long ago have been dead so I don't buy into that except to a limited degree there is what one of my favorite philosophers unfortunately was associated in the early

[39:21]

days with the Nazis and some of you looked on with great disfavor Martin Heidegger Heidegger speaks of the lived-in world in a world of oppression and I'm speaking you know as a person to the left not to the right people are not heroes the opportunity that we have in our self-expression and our uniqueness to pool together contributions and uniquenesses with like-minded people in intimate ways that restore community and wholeness in a corporate way that's more than individual this, oh yes indeed but that isn't what simply saying

[40:22]

you would like to see energy and mental quantities tiny factories tiny towns tiny this and tiny that that's inconceivable for the world that's it it isn't in need of war to me the intimacy of sharing one's fulfillment sharing one's void with other people who match up on those counts is is something to actualize in one's life in community but that doesn't mean that we abandon technology among the rest take for example nuclear fusion energy which can take

[41:25]

a cup of water it's theoretically complete the only thing that's lacking is sufficient technology and budgeting even a cup of seawater can fuel the world with no dangerous byproducts the US government is investing eighty million dollars a year in that something almost one percent the cost of an aircraft carrier there is the safe

[42:26]

massive spectacular energy of the future now guess me why we can talk about corporate structures international economics some of my other favorite subjects I have a lot of favorite subjects but but to me it's not a need at all I'm for not only technology but super technology to liberate people yet more and allow them more opportunities for more community there's a car produced in in Italy gin sold here it's produced in a factory by robots there was no human being on the assembly line floor of the factory everything

[43:26]

the frame the wheels the tires the nuts the bolts the welding everything is done by robots the loaded parts thousands and thousands of pieces are put together by robots the first time that the car is touched by a person is after it's given its electronic and mechanical check through by robots and then test driven by a human being and the commercial for the car is handmade by robots and it's superb superb well they don't have to worry about a US market and meeting California emission standards

[44:27]

or anything of that sort any car they produce in the next five years is going to be mapped out by the European market but the commercials for it in Europe are so much fun you know the show of the process and all and then at the end the slogan handmade by robots just great why just assume to see robots doing road trips I don't know I just pulled off the main subject that made me actually question a lot of things what I get from Schumacher is a question he didn't mainly address the question of scale what's appropriate scale in different situations or come up with what they come up with and it all seems so arbitrary the quality

[45:31]

of life the quality of life of people who work in a factory of twenty thousand people if they live in a decentralized domain fashion and all the rest and their life is not drudgery their heads are screwed up and all the rest can have immense intimacy and relatedness in their smaller community and tie in with the larger ones which I'm all for as far as I'm concerned ultimately we tie in with one another everywhere who knows in the case of any one of us how many different tribes

[46:31]

and races and traditions passed through where our ancestors lived and left deposits and I don't mean banks while they were en route so even though we don't all look alike we're all mongrel bastards to begin with and that's history and so we all in a sense still contain one another even biologically so to make community in the largest sense is large very large and small and the one person

[47:32]

I've suggested no which may not make much sense to you or it may make great sense to you but the one person to me to you to any one of us is such a multitude of diverse warring factions and a couple of them friendly to one another inside of each of us that the first community to make beautiful as small as beautiful is the multiplicity of communities that each one of us are and that's the of but taking the mechanized factory to its logical conclusion if if people don't work what's the basis for community you know if they didn't have the work what would be the basis for the community well

[48:33]

any sort of production and exchange of goods requires work and the amount of work that accompanies advanced technology is often surprisingly great but it goes along distribution sales service and so on in a humane society we can let's say be in school two days work one uh work two you know

[50:12]

let's say okay let's take this um plant in in Milan which is um a venture of Fiat and Alfa Romeo um gigantic place if it were a Detroit auto factory it would have 35,000 people working there it has 400 let's say I had 900 a thousand let's work together on a decent schedule some day pursuing this and that interest and some working and some doing their part cleaning the toilets and some

[51:13]

in the kitchen and some traveling to um uh the Seychelles Islands or wherever they'd like to go with a great deal of both cooperative and individual effort I don't see the two in conflict again here is an either or you know it's like the bit of shall I be a spiritual person or a political person it's shall I be um cooperative community related person or an individualist and I wouldn't buy into an either or or either of those I um my feeling was it was in relation to uh the people that purchased this machine made out there which would give them lots of pleasure um but somehow

[52:14]

there's a sense of if it deteriorates very quickly you can sell it out and you know break off from it for example of having it sort of separate because you don't know the person there was nobody who made it actually so it's really a responsibility for you know and maybe maybe I'm talking about it incorrectly but that was why I brought it up in the first place one of shoemakers uh salient point and one that writers about alienation who don't know where it all comes from and relate it to its origin go into is that somehow there was a golden age when a shoemaker made shoes and sold them to his neighbor the butcher who slaughtered the cow and sold him the meat that he put on

[53:14]

his table and he in turn got his vegetables from the farmer who lived just outside of town and um you know and everything was a handmade commodity from beginning to end with great pride in workmanship only for highly sophisticated rare artists was there ever such a day the days of hand tool craftsmanship were days of slavery oppression and drudgery for the people who made those handcrafted articles and invested in those articles is slavery exploitation and all the rest you can go back even further when the women by their gathering

[54:14]

and their fishing provided 80% of what the community ate and the men would do their hunting and their rituals and yet there was a fabric and that is that is a slavery but it's mutual exploitation yeah so here's where I disagree with Marxism I look for the fabric of a future society given the ranges and possibilities of technology to be more determined by elective choices of taste lifestyle interest and social concern than economic necessity I think it's possible to have social relationships no longer have economic necessities at their core and so from that point of view to use a model

[55:15]

of economic necessity I think wouldn't be to think in terms of the liberating power that is possible of technology for example in Japan now it's interesting that the most the most beautiful fabrics in Japan usually are wedding sashes the most elaborate multicolored beautiful multidimensionally stitched wedding sashes in Japan are machine made the fabrics of the 18th century no matter how elaborate and beautifully done don't

[56:19]

begin to compare with the beauty of these textiles that are produced by machines that are so automated that they utilize both the most advanced automated electronics and laser physics together to produce such incredible textiles who devised the pattern the design and all the rest the artist working with the tools of artistic enterprise now I am a musician painter a watercolorist

[57:21]

and a sketcher because all the traditional media of art has gone away for some while so I respect the traditional art one of the tools of art is the use of industrial design for sensational beauty for several years I worked very hard at electronic composition in which I used a Moog keyboard bank of synthesizer patches and buttons and plugs and do-dads and all a lot of fun and electronic adapters that would tune my grand piano my acoustical piano

[58:22]

to an electronic piano and there are potentials of altering sound changing the very shape duration and all the rest of a sound wave that were inconceivable thirty years ago every sound had its fixed wave but you can do this that that you can have a sound before you press the note or a sound a minute after or whatever and the potentials are incredible it's also a lot of fun too if you want to play war play the Star Spangled Banner or Rocket's Red Glare and bombs boosting in air kaboom and oh boy it's just great fun but at any rate

[59:22]

can't you keep one? and when there aren't keys and you go like this with plugs and with knobs that's an instrument I'm the artist is there anything more sacred about a quill than a piece of chalk or a piece of chalk than a synthesizer but there's some point in in thinking about the quality of a quill like that's an expression of

[60:25]

of who we are and what we're trying to do and so maybe technology or not technology or whatever maybe that's not the point but still there's a there's several questions related to are you creating something that you can really express yourself with or are you creating something that you make the best of or are you well I never did it commercially and I had a hell of a good time and I've been looking at equipment recently and Nancy has been one time saying oh go ahead she knows what it's gonna add up to if I get started again and you're fine

[61:28]

but a lot of self-expression here's the point if I want new ranges of consciousness for myself for other people why not new ranges of tonality new ranges of sound of music of color of shading of experience undreamt of that wonderful new tool just like the chisel and the hammer revolutionized the world the laser and the fusion generator and our tools as well tools are things that we use people use hammers on their neighbors' heads a tool is

[62:30]

neutral but I don't see anything that's intrinsically good about a hammer or intrinsically bad about a synthesizer I can see both as means of very constructive expansion of the human psyche well, let's take the synthesizer right now it's probably created a couple of million deaf people in the world by its infantile use in in 80 decibel rock studios but is that the synthesizer? well I didn't do things like that and I mentioned in the first

[63:31]

session I saw someone killed recently went over by a car what? they wipe out cars? you know everything ourselves everything is a tool for use and the type of use is for moral decision-making and spiritual activity or the absence of it all together well, I think what most what I'm trying to make was that the tool itself is an expression of a person's some mystical vision I don't know I mean, there are some tools that intrinsically are bad and some are intrinsically good I'm not saying they're good or bad I'm saying that

[64:32]

that there are qualities that are expressed by the people who made them oh in other words you might say there's a distinction between an H-bomb and a and a and a synthesizer you could say there's a difference of expression there well yeah, now if what you make are moral judgments about things this gives things moral attributes to me there's only one thing that has a moral attribute and that's behavior sometimes thought mainly behavior now we talked about how different we all are I happen to be very handy

[65:34]

at something and very unhandy at others I'm sure you happen to be very handy at something and very unhandy at others and trying to do certain things for leisure self-expression community service self-fulfillment whatever very I I go bonkers over the excitement of reading medieval and ancient economic history that's how far out I am you know nothing can get me off more I get off on that you know the way a coke freak gets off on coke so okay that's my insanity or my number or my interest level or my whatever I don't think it's good

[66:35]

bad indifferent other than when I use it in educational ways that I think have a social benefit as I said about pornography or redeeming social value so I think it's one thing to say I would sooner express myself in this way than in that or do this sort of work from that or I like this food and not that or this color and not that or whatever you know in different strokes from different folks because as Jim points out there are innumerable psychological types even putting people in the grossest of categories he starts with four in his psychological type and lo and behold before you're through there's scatty eight

[67:35]

for just the grossest differentiations of basic personalities that different people have normally sanely so you know we're quite a diverse bunch of monkeys I say that's fine because I'm sure as hell glad that there are people who like to do what I don't and really enjoy it like going out in the garden and digging among the flowers and the plants and they call that fun? I'd rather sunbathe and the noise of them digging with their tools is too distracting I wouldn't even want to sunbathe near it all but if they like it fine and dandy well folks I hope we'll see

[68:37]

some of you in a month

[68:38]

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