Out of Body, Out of Mind

Excerpt from Alli's psychedelic autobiography, plus link for today's call

Oops!

I realized I forgot to include the link for today’s call… so here it is:

Enclosed is an autobiographical excerpt from Alli’s The Eight-Circuit Brain.

Enjoy…

OUT OF BODY, OUT OF MIND

Berkeley, CA, 1975. Once an acidhead, always an acidhead. There was no way to forecast the long-term effects of all that acid until it caught up with me shortly after my 23rd birthday when I succumbed to a spontaneous, full-blown out-of-body experience. I was not on drugs; this was not a lucid dream, or some acid flashback. If only it were, I might have recovered. While fully conscious, an unbroken chain of internal psychic events rapidly unfolded resulting in my cognition of existing independently of my physical body. I still have no words for this astonishing event except to say it radically altered my outlook, destroyed my sense of body-based identity and shook the very foundations of my being. “I have a body but I am not my body” was no longer a metaphysical concept; it became my metaphysical reality.

After the initial fears subsided, I did everything I could to replicate the experience a few days later but to no avail. I wanted to fly out of my body again and fly out further than before. I wanted to know what happened to me. However, this was not a shock I could conjure up with my will or perform by my efforts alone. Whatever happened to me was clearly dictated by a source far greater than my ego.

A peculiar consequence developed from this out of body event—I began to see auras. I was now subject to an intermittent ability to see energy fields emanating from almost everyone I encountered. On the streets or inside my home, I saw friends and strangers alike as indistinct flashes of light, random bits and streams of weird personal information. Too much information, way too much information. My “third eye” was blasted open, out of control and overwhelming my daily existence. I did not feel this was a problem, as I was also feeling very high during this time. In fact, I was not feeling much of anything and had no idea I was courting schizophrenia.

Around this time I developed this obnoxious behavior for mirroring the emotions of others. I also tried anchoring or grounding myself in the young women I was attracted to by feeling or feeding off their emotions. I didn’t know it was happening at the time. What was happening was I had lost touch with my true feelings and had become another amiable, twenty-something, emotionally parasitic acidhead on his merry way to his first psychotic break. Who knew? After reading Castaneda’s first four books, I thought I was an urban shaman surfing the Nagual on my way to becoming an urban shaman. To me, this state of overall weirdness was simply part of the shamanic path, which in retrospect it may have been. Or maybe not.

I was very lucky that someone cared enough to tell me point blank how unstable I was and how I really should learn to “manage my energy.” That caught my attention. Nobody ever called me unstable before. My friend suggested that I go see a professional clairvoyant by the name of Michael Symonds who was interviewing candidates for his next psychic training program. So, I went to see Michael and he told me that my sixth chakra was spinning out of control and that it was something he could help me with. I asked him if the others in his program were also out of control like me and he said, “No, you’re the only psycho in the group.” Then he laughed and said most of the others were psychos, too. We both laughed though I was left wondering what he really meant by that. Michael had a glint of the leprechaun in his eye.

THE NEUROPHARMACY OF MY BRAIN

Berkeley, CA, 1976–77. Around the same time I began Michael’s training program, I was invited by musician/painter David Rosenbloom to join a small group of individuals he was directing in paratheatrical processes inspired, in part, by the early work of Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski. Certain non-Grotowski principles, such as the “No-Form” of Zazen, and the exploration of energy polarities, were also introduced to help us access subtle energy currents in the body as movement resources. We learned how to detect and access sources of energy in the body towards giving them expression in physically active trance states. This new ritualistic work revived my relationship with my body. I began to experience and see my body in a whole new way as a kind of vessel that mixed and transformed its own alchemy of elements, conditions, and forces.

This awareness inspired a new respect for body wisdom. Doing this physical ritual work also left me in an extended rapturous state but, unlike smoking pot, I didn’t feel spaced out, ungrounded or disconnected from my body afterwards. This work was clearly, deeply grounded in the body itself. These early experiments with David also marked the genesis of the paratheatre medium that would become my life’s work. (paratheatrical.com)

Mr. Symonds taught our group a meditation technique resulting in a physically passive but psychically active trance state. This trance work stimulated the pineal gland, releasing just enough serotonin to increase the sensitivity to light which, in turn, enabled more perception of the subtle currents of energy emanating from the energetic body of the chakras and the aura. With practice, we were trained to see our own auras and then, to see and read each other’s auras. More importantly for me, we also learned how to close the third eye; what a relief not to see auras, 24/7. Besides helping manage my psychic energy, this technique also got me very high in a very different way than the ritual work. I happily practiced this psychic trance meditation every day and as my psychic abilities improved, I turned my new talents into a career as a professional clairvoyant (from 1978 until 1986; more on this later).

Just as Rosenbloom’s ritual experiments opened me up to new somatic pleasures, Symonds’ psychic trance meditations turned me onto even more novel brain pleasures. Both mentors discouraged any psychoactive drug use during their respective trainings and for very similar reasons. In their different ways, they explained how pot and psychedelics over stimulated and the natural sensitivity of the CNS, a sensitivity critical for detecting the more subtle energy centers and currents. It was a no-brainer; I stopped cold turkey. Why? The effects of these ritual and psychic technologies closely mimicked my psilocybin experiences but without all the pesky side effects like post-trip loss of concentration, apathy, and paranoia. The new dealer in town was my own brain and its complex neuropharmacy of natural and supernatural highs. It was time to change my life. I committed myself fully to restoring the natural sensitivity of my CNS and rebuilding my commitment to the body wisdom.

PUNK’D IN CHAPEL PERILOUS

Berkeley, Helsinki Finland, Carmel and Petaluma, California; 1977–1983.

I was busy making an art out of poverty by teaching piano lessons to children, clowning at birthday parties, teaching theatre, doing aura readings and going on welfare for food stamps and Medi-cal. My chief sources for getting high were ritual, psychic work, romance, sex, and performing.

The heady mix of these hedonic sources aroused new levels of imagination and inspiration. Over the next four years I would write, direct and produce four full-length experimental theatre works, all exploring mystical themes. The thrill of seeing my plays staged and touring up the northern California coast was a big thrill. I would have continued doing it had these intoxicants not been upstaged by the gorgeous chaos of Punk Rock. Berkeley, 1980 was a great year to start a band. I formed The Frozen Beauties with my dancer/singer girlfriend, Sima the firecracker, and three other frozen beauties—Dick Doty on drums, Dean Webb (from Dudesheep days) on vocals, and a foxy lady bass player whose name I sadly cannot remember. Sima played synth, helped create the music and belted out the songs with Dean. I wrote the lyrics and played my blonde Rickenbacker until my fingers bled. We rode the punk/new wave with other local acts The Dead Kennedys, The Mutants, Crime, The Nuns, The Dils, The New Critics, and my favorite band, J. Poet and the Young Adults. After six months of gigging, The Frozen Beauties crashed and burned in a rubble of ego clash.

In 1981 this prolific and creative era culminated in a return to Finland for a highly anticipated homecoming visit. On arriving at the Helsinki International Airport, I stood before the passport control clerks who asked me my name, age, and citizenship...three times. I found this odd but answered them three times: Antero Alli, 29 years, Finland. They then explained the law—all male Finnish citizens under the age of thirty must serve in the army. WTF? I was suddenly ushered down a corridor two floors below where I entered a holding cell, given a blanket, a pillow, and locked inside. WTF? Shock. Shock. Shock.

The morning after my sleepless night I was driven by first class military escort to Helsinki Militia Headquarters where I was interrogated by two army officers and a medic. After speaking Finnish amongst themselves (which I understood but pretended not to) and after several hearty chuckles, the medic asked me to stand up. I stood up. He looked me up and down, told me to sit down and announced that I had passed the physical exam. WTF?! The two officers proceeded to explain to me, in no uncertain terms, that my life in California was over and that it was time to serve my country. Shock. Shock. Shock. Saturn takes about 29 years to orbit once around the Sun and I was officially in the dead heat of what astrologers call Saturn Return. I pleaded with the officers. “I haven’t been to Finland since I was three years old. Surely there must be some mistake!” They laughed and said it was my mistake to return to Finland before the age of thirty if I did not wish to serve in the army. They told me that my option to marching the icy tundra of the Finnish-Russian borders was prison time. Shock. I reluctantly signed up for active duty. They told me I had one week to get my affairs in order before leaving civilian life. The next sound I heard was the howling ghost winds of Chapel Perilous. I looked around. Where was I? There, above the altar, crucified, hung out to dry. Punk’d in Chapel Perilous.

As I drifted amongst the gravestones of the medieval Finnish cemetery in Mynamakki, it felt as if my entire consciousness had been jolted up and out of my body into a vortex several feet above my head. Here, this entity called “I” furiously radiated white heat, white light as the rest of me continued drifting throughout the tombstones. The feeling down below, inside my physical body, was a confusion of indescribable elation and panic. After finally finding my grandmother’s house, I told her all about my military catastrophe.

She listened very carefully and then called her friend, an unnamed Finnish professor of political science, for advice. He soon arrived, and after some serious thought, introduced (under solemn vow of anonymity and secrecy), my escape plan. I made it back to Berkeley, but not in one piece. My personality felt like a thousand shards of broken glass. I remember thinking—this is probably what used to be called a “nervous breakdown.”