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opening tourist visit to the City of Dreams, it expresses the threads out
of which we wove Coffeehouse Culture
Where Are We?
And How Did We
Get Here?
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ELECTRIFYING
SECTION
•••••••••••••
Introducing Mr Bliss
(The Inner Light's Consulting
Editor, aka the Indiana Jones of
Consciousness, takes a bow)
••••
THE BIG FEATURE
In the Presence
of the Gods
(In part one of our three part
The sincere but hopelessly deluded founder of
Coffeehouse Culture tries to work it all out. But
as the gruesome story unfolds, what a surprise.
In this, the very first article to describe the
Coffeehouse Culture concept, all is revealed. But,
oh dear!, what a disaster. Coming up with the
confession to end all confessions, we pull up the
trouser leg of eternity and pluck the hairs of time
as we explore the appalling series of cock-ups,
miscalculations, misjudgements, misadventures
and missed appointments (with destiny) that
brought us to this point
Vedic culture of ancient India,
Mr Bliss leads us in a ritual dance)
••••
Parade of Fools
(Crazy sadhus and barmy babas.
But they are the keepers
of the secret knowledge, of the
hidden wisdom, of the tricks and
techniques that transmutes.)
Prophecy & Profit
('The Celestine Prophecy'
might have seemed
more profit than prophecy
but it has changed lives)
he clock by my bed says noon. I think. Either that or oneof the hands has fallen off. It is hard to tell when you have
only 50% vision. Whatever the clock says, it is clearly time
to get up. The day is passing and there are always things to see
and people to do. I rise. Too fast. And have to sit on the edge of
the bed while the room finds its point of balance. I feel strange.
Am I ill? Am I coming down with some strange affliction that makes
your forehead feel stretched, your eyes feel like rocks and your
mouth feel like the quarry from which they were carved? God, I
could almost be stoned.
XOf course! I'm in Amsterdam. And I am stoned. Still stoned from
last night.
XSo, at least, I know where I am. That is one question answered.
But how did I get here? That is another question. And, the
Lord of the Dance
(Our House Shivite looks at
the Bom Shankar mantra)
Trust Me, I'm a Docker
(Our dubious Health Expert
greases up to introduce himself
in the most intimate fashion)
The Astral Traveller
(Our physically challenged
diarist takes off)
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machine. Where can I take
you? .... Was that 'Magical
History Tour'? No problem.
Fasten your seat belt and
prepare. I am going to show
you the past and in it you will see your future and the future
of everyone. Hold on. Heerrre
weeee goooo!"
• • • • • • • • • • • • • •
XIt is 1966 and the Western
World is about to go through
a social revolution. Bringing
theatre onto the streets, a
whole generation is about to
cut the cords that bind it to
Back to the future? Or is it
just a load of balls?
Hollywood musicals and the
hippy movement that had
a much more significant
message. And it was not
one that you were going to
have a lot of trouble getting
your tongue around. (Sorry
about the cheap oral sex
joke.) When the cast of
'Hair' stood on the stage
with the ersatz light show
doing its insipid thing and
sang: 'This is the dawning
of the Age of Aquarius ...'
they were telling us some-
thing serious. Even if we
freedom is in the air. And
something else. And the kids
are in the park having a party.
This is a crucial point in
modern world history. More significant than mere events.
This is a movement. A gentle
breeze that grew and grew
until it turned into a storm and
then a typhoon that looked
like it might blow down the
established order. In a
magnificent piece of quick-
change artistry, society will
be seen to peel off its thick
grey polythene skin and
replace it with something
much more jolly.
XBig stuff. But few of us there
realised what exactly was
going on. OK, so some of us
had an inkling. But that wasn't
enough. Glossy magazines,
glossy television producers,
glossy movie directors and
other similar glossy people
tried to explain it but they all
missed the point. In fact,
almost everyone missed the
point.
XIt was easy to pin it all on
acid. But . . . .
XDrugs can have devastating
effects on individuals both
good and bad. But on whole
societies? And over the long-
term? Nooooo.
XWhat acid actually did was
produce dramatically increas-
ed levels of consciousness.
That was the 'something else'
that was in the air. The buzz
of consciousness in expansion
mode.
XIt was beautiful to be there.
For a while. In that while, the
kids discovered what freedom
was all about, found new
meanings that realigned their
attitudes and their lives,
learnt how to live and what
made life worthwhile.
Although the term 'love gener-
ation' has become a big joke,
I was part of it and I believed
in it. And what's wrong with a
good quality like love, anyway?
XAnd it did get big. So big, in
fact, that for a while it looked
like it might bring about the
radical changes that were
clearly necessary in a world
that had been badly under-
mined by financial and political
power-freaks. Life took on a
new meaning and shape. Old
rules no longer seemed to
apply. Freedom was in the air
and on the streets.
XIt was a liberated and liber-
ating time. The airwaves were
buzzing with psychic energy
and the vibe was onwards
and upwards. It was exciting
being there, at the cutting
edge of social change. So
exciting, in fact, that it
blinded us to harsh reality.
It all seemed real but we
should have seen it for
what it was, too good to be
true.
XBut on the other side of
every up there is a down. So
it didn't stay exciting for long.
By the end of 1967 it was all
over. Dylan said 'don't follow
leaders' but we did anyway.
Ya gotta fight politicians with
politics, they told us and we
believed them. And in the
process, we all to some
extent walked into the trap
they'd set for us.
XA good war is always a
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are getting restless. And if it
can be fought in someone
else's country, so much the
better. By the time we realised
that we had been had, the love
generation was a strung-out
prostitute with a social disease
and a collection of sparkly
clothes, living in Denver,
Colorado. Too late. Missed our
chance. No blame.
XFor all the missed chances,
the mood of change that kept
us up and running through
those twelve golden months
did have some long-term
effects. I, for one, have only
just stopped burning my bras
and, then, only because I care
for the ozone layer.
XEssentially, however, nothing
changed. There was no
overthrow of the tyrannical
political, social and financial
systems that dominated us
then and continue to dominate
us. (Which, at the time, was
probably for the best since we
didn't have much to replace
them with other than a lot of
hanging-out, getting-stoned
and screwing-around.)
XIt is easy to enter the time
machine and see where we
went wrong, what we didn't
understand, what we should
and shouldn't have done. But,
at the time, very few of us
understood what was happ-
ening. Sure, we could see that
it was big and see that it was good but what it was .... We
had, as I have said, only the
merest inkling. Anyway, we
were all too busy cracking our
skulls open with Sandoz and
then Owsley acid to think
about things that actually
mattered.
XIt wasn't until the party was
over that we could actually
step back and see what had
happened. Not just socially but
to ourselves. For some of us,
those months from the fall of
1966 to the end of the summer
of 1967, provided a bedrock of
inspiration that propelled us
through life. Having experi-
enced increased consciousness
in Technicolor, Surround-sound
and Cinemascope, some of us
sought to find out more. For
myself, I turned to India (a
culture based on conscious-
ness), TM and hope. But there
wasn't much of that around.
XSlowly, it all came into
perspective. For those of us
who still needed telling (me
included), there was 'Hair.' Yes
folks, the show of the social
phenomenon .... see those
happy zappy freaks and space
cadets sing and dance their
way from love-ins to detox
centres .... watch the love
generation humping on the
stage .... ten great songs. In
some ways, 'Hair' was a
celebration of some of the
freedoms that had been
gained. One of many big songs
in this musical of the love
generation was a celebration
of oral sex called 'Cunnilingus,'
with lyrics that ran something
like: 'Cunnilingus, cunnilingus,
use your tongue and not
your fingers .....' Remember,
this was in a show that
was staged first of all in the
States. Fairly outrageous,
wouldn't you say?
XThere was, however,
another song buried in this
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XEventually, the full import
of what was being said
and what had happened
seeped through. In the
ebbing backwash produced
by the burst of undirected
energy that had been
generated by the increased
consciousness of those
twelve months, books deal-
ing with mystical and
spiritual subjects flooded
onto the market. Read
enough and you are
eventually going to find out
whatever it is you want to know.
XThe song, so the astrolog-
ers said, was right. It was,
indeed, the dawning of the
Age of Aquarius. But, like
dawn in the world, it was
the first light that appears
in the sky in the early hours
of the dark morning and
then disappears until the
real dawn happens. No
more than a herald prep-
aring us for the arrival of
the day, it is the first dawn
that gives us hope that the
long dark night is soon to
end.
XOn the other hand, optim-
ism is an affliction. Like a
junk habit, it has to be fed.
Otherwise, it will inevitably
turn into cynicism and des-
pair. Hope, however, comes
from a deeper level but
even that is not limitless.
For over twenty-five years
I explored the subject of
consciousness through both
experience and study ....
and I watched for signs.
And there were signs.
Small signs. 'Live Aid' was
one. The wall coming down
was another. But nothing
big.
XWhen you watch life and
the world in action you
learn a lot about the way
in which things happen ....
and all the time you get
older, more balanced, more
experienced and gain know-
ledge. But it still took me
many years to work out the
way in which the New Age
would arrive. And, for a few
years there, I thought it
wasn't going to happen at
all. Over the years between
1967 and 1990, I slowly
became more and more
desolate. Eventually, how-
ever, I realised that I had
been watching the wrong
things. When the New Age
arrives it will not be merely
an event. It will be like it
was in '67 a movement
based on increased consci-
ousness. No organisation.
No conscious posturing
(although, in any situation,
there is always going to be
some conscious posturing).
No structure. Just people.
People with increased
consciousness.
XSome hope, huh!
XFor a while I thought that
the TM movement might
have the key. TM is a tech-
nique that not only gives
you regular and systematic
experience of increased
consciousness but also
strengthens the nervous
system so that higher
levels of consciousness can
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