The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (17 page)
Read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Online
Authors: Tom Wolfe
Tags: #United States, #Social Science, #General, #Popular Culture, #History, #20th Century
A pot of money at the front door
âThere was a curious little library building up on the shelves in the living room, books of science fiction and other mysterious things, and you could pick up almost any of these books and find truly strange vibrations. The whole thing here is so much like â¦
this
book on Kesey's shelf, Robert Heinlein's novel,
Stranger in a Strange Land
. It is bewildering. It is as if Heinlein and the Pranksters were bound together by some inexplicable acausal connecting bond. This is a novel about a Martian who comes to earth, a true Superhero, in fact, born of an Earth mother and father after a space flight from Earth to Mars, but raised by infinitely superior beings, the Martians. Beings on other planets are always infinitely superior in science-fiction novels. Anyway, around him gathers a mystic brotherhood, based on a mysterious ceremony known as water-sharing. They live inâ
La Honda!
At
Kesey's!
Their place is called the Nest. Their life transcends all the usual earthly games of status, sex, and money. No one who once shares water and partakes
of life in the Nest ever cares about such banal competitions again. There is a pot of money inside the front door, provided by the Superhero ⦠Everything is totally out front in the Nestâno secrets, no guilt, no jealousies, no putting anyone down for anything: “ ⦠a plural marriageâa group theogamy ⦠Therefore whatever took placeâor was about to take place ⦠was not public but private. âAin't nobody here but us gods'âso how could anyone be offended? Bacchanalia, unashamed swapping, communal living ⦠everything.”
âThere was a curious little library building up on the shelves in the living room, books of science fiction and other mysterious things, and you could pick up almost any of these books and find truly strange vibrations. The whole thing here is so much like â¦
this
book on Kesey's shelf, Robert Heinlein's novel,
Stranger in a Strange Land
. It is bewildering. It is as if Heinlein and the Pranksters were bound together by some inexplicable acausal connecting bond. This is a novel about a Martian who comes to earth, a true Superhero, in fact, born of an Earth mother and father after a space flight from Earth to Mars, but raised by infinitely superior beings, the Martians. Beings on other planets are always infinitely superior in science-fiction novels. Anyway, around him gathers a mystic brotherhood, based on a mysterious ceremony known as water-sharing. They live inâ
La Honda!
At
Kesey's!
Their place is called the Nest. Their life transcends all the usual earthly games of status, sex, and money. No one who once shares water and partakes
of life in the Nest ever cares about such banal competitions again. There is a pot of money inside the front door, provided by the Superhero ⦠Everything is totally out front in the Nestâno secrets, no guilt, no jealousies, no putting anyone down for anything: “ ⦠a plural marriageâa group theogamy ⦠Therefore whatever took placeâor was about to take place ⦠was not public but private. âAin't nobody here but us gods'âso how could anyone be offended? Bacchanalia, unashamed swapping, communal living ⦠everything.”
Kesey by now had not only the bus but the very woods wired for sound. There were wires running up the hillside into the redwoods and microphones up there that could pick up random sounds. Up in the redwoods atop the cliff on the other side of the highway from the house were huge speakers, theater horns, that could flood the entire gorge with sound. Roland Kirk and his half a dozen horns funking away in the old sphenoid saxophone sinus cavities of the redwoods.
Dusk!
Huge stripes of Day-Glo green and orange ran up the soaring redwoods and gleamed out at dusk as if Nature had said at last, Aw freak it, and had freaked out. Up the gully back of the house, up past the Hermit's Cave, were Day-Glo face masks and boxes and machines and things that glowed, winked, hummed, whistled, bellowed, and microphones that could pick up animals, hermits, anything, and broadcast them from the treetops, like the crazy gibbering rhesus background noises from the old Jungle Jim radio shows.
Dusk!
At dusk a man could put on something like a World War I aviator's helmet, only painted in screaming Day-Glo, and with his face painted in Day-Glo constellations, the bear, the goat, a great walking Day-Glo hero in the dusky rusky forests, and he could orate in the deep of the forest, up the hill, only in spectral tones, like the Shadow, any old message, something like:
“This is control tower, this is control tower, clear Runway One, the cougar microbes approach, bleeding antique lint from every pore and begging for high octane, beware, be aware, all ye who sleep in barracks on the main strip, the lumps in your mattress are carnivore
spores, venereal butterflies sent by the Combine to mothproof your brain, a pro-kit in every light socketâPlug up the light sockets! The cougar microbes are marching in like army ants ⦔
âhappy to know that someone, somebody, might answer from the house, or some place, over another microphone, booming over the La Honda hills:
“May day, May day, collapse the poles at every joint, hide inside your folding rules, calibrate your brains for the head count ⦔
And Bob Dylan raunched and rheumed away in the sphenoids or some damned placeâ
Huge stripes of Day-Glo green and orange ran up the soaring redwoods and gleamed out at dusk as if Nature had said at last, Aw freak it, and had freaked out. Up the gully back of the house, up past the Hermit's Cave, were Day-Glo face masks and boxes and machines and things that glowed, winked, hummed, whistled, bellowed, and microphones that could pick up animals, hermits, anything, and broadcast them from the treetops, like the crazy gibbering rhesus background noises from the old Jungle Jim radio shows.
Dusk!
At dusk a man could put on something like a World War I aviator's helmet, only painted in screaming Day-Glo, and with his face painted in Day-Glo constellations, the bear, the goat, a great walking Day-Glo hero in the dusky rusky forests, and he could orate in the deep of the forest, up the hill, only in spectral tones, like the Shadow, any old message, something like:
“This is control tower, this is control tower, clear Runway One, the cougar microbes approach, bleeding antique lint from every pore and begging for high octane, beware, be aware, all ye who sleep in barracks on the main strip, the lumps in your mattress are carnivore
spores, venereal butterflies sent by the Combine to mothproof your brain, a pro-kit in every light socketâPlug up the light sockets! The cougar microbes are marching in like army ants ⦔
âhappy to know that someone, somebody, might answer from the house, or some place, over another microphone, booming over the La Honda hills:
“May day, May day, collapse the poles at every joint, hide inside your folding rules, calibrate your brains for the head count ⦔
And Bob Dylan raunched and rheumed away in the sphenoids or some damned placeâ
By nightfall the Pranksters are in the house and a few joints are circulating, saliva-liva-liva-liva-liva, and the whole thing is getting deeper into the
moment
, as it were, and people are working on tapes, tapes being played back, stopped, rewound, played again, a click on the plastic lever, stopped again ⦠and a little speed making the roundsâsuch a lordly surge under the redwoods! âtablets of Benzedrine and Dexedrine, mainly, and you take off for a burst of work and rapping into the night ⦠experiments of all sorts favored here, like putting contact microphones up against the bare belly and listening to the enzymes gurgling. Most Prankster bellies go
gurgle-galumph-blub
and so on, but Cassady's goes
ping!
â
dingaping!
â
ting!
as if he were wired at 78 rpm and everyone else is at 33 rpm, which seems about right. And then they play a tape against a television show. That is, they turn on the picture on the TV, the
Ed Sullivan Show
, say, but they turn off the sound and play a tape of, say, Babbs and somebody rapping off each other's words. The picture of the
Ed Sullivan Show
and the words on the tape suddenly force your mind to reach for connections between two vastly different orders of experience. On the TV screen, Ed Sullivan is holding Ella Fitzgerald's hands with his hands sopped over her hands as if her hands were the first robins of spring, and his lips are moving, probably saying, “Ella, that was wonderful! Really wonderful! Ladies and gentlemen, another hand for a great, great lady!” But the voice that comes out is saying to Ella Fitzgeraldâ
in perfect synch
â“
The lumps in your mattress are carnivore spores, venereal
butterflies sent by the Combine to mothproof your brain, a pro-kit in every light socketâLadies and gentlemen, Plug up the light sockets! Plug up the light sockets! The cougar microbes are marching in ⦔
moment
, as it were, and people are working on tapes, tapes being played back, stopped, rewound, played again, a click on the plastic lever, stopped again ⦠and a little speed making the roundsâsuch a lordly surge under the redwoods! âtablets of Benzedrine and Dexedrine, mainly, and you take off for a burst of work and rapping into the night ⦠experiments of all sorts favored here, like putting contact microphones up against the bare belly and listening to the enzymes gurgling. Most Prankster bellies go
gurgle-galumph-blub
and so on, but Cassady's goes
ping!
â
dingaping!
â
ting!
as if he were wired at 78 rpm and everyone else is at 33 rpm, which seems about right. And then they play a tape against a television show. That is, they turn on the picture on the TV, the
Ed Sullivan Show
, say, but they turn off the sound and play a tape of, say, Babbs and somebody rapping off each other's words. The picture of the
Ed Sullivan Show
and the words on the tape suddenly force your mind to reach for connections between two vastly different orders of experience. On the TV screen, Ed Sullivan is holding Ella Fitzgerald's hands with his hands sopped over her hands as if her hands were the first robins of spring, and his lips are moving, probably saying, “Ella, that was wonderful! Really wonderful! Ladies and gentlemen, another hand for a great, great lady!” But the voice that comes out is saying to Ella Fitzgeraldâ
in perfect synch
â“
The lumps in your mattress are carnivore spores, venereal
butterflies sent by the Combine to mothproof your brain, a pro-kit in every light socketâLadies and gentlemen, Plug up the light sockets! Plug up the light sockets! The cougar microbes are marching in ⦔
Perfect! The true message!â
âalthough this kind of weird synchronization usually struck outsiders as mere coincidence or just whimsical, meaningless in any case. They couldn't understand why the Pranksters grooved on it so. The inevitable confusion of the unattunedâlike most of the Pranksters' unique practices, it derived from the LSD experience and was incomprehensible without it. Under LSD, if it really went right,
Ego
and
Non-Ego
started to merge. Countless things that seemed separate started to merge, too: a sound became â¦
a
color!
blue ⦠colors became smells, walls began to
breathe
like the underside of a leaf, with one's own breath. A curtain became a column of concrete and yet it began rippling, this incredible concrete mass rippling in harmonic waves like the Puget Sound bridge before the crash and you can
feel
it, the entire harmonics of the universe from the most massive to the smallest and most personalâ
presque vu!
âall flowing together in this very moment â¦
Ego
and
Non-Ego
started to merge. Countless things that seemed separate started to merge, too: a sound became â¦
a
color!
blue ⦠colors became smells, walls began to
breathe
like the underside of a leaf, with one's own breath. A curtain became a column of concrete and yet it began rippling, this incredible concrete mass rippling in harmonic waves like the Puget Sound bridge before the crash and you can
feel
it, the entire harmonics of the universe from the most massive to the smallest and most personalâ
presque vu!
âall flowing together in this very moment â¦
This side of the LSD experienceâthe
feeling!
âtied in with Jung's theory of synchronicity. Jung tried to explain the meaningful coincidences that occur in life and cannot be explained by cause-and-effect reasoning, such as ESP phenomena. He put forth the hypothesis that the unconscious perceives certain archetypical patterns that elude the conscious mind. These patterns, he suggested, are what unite subjective or psychic events with objective phenomena, the
Ego
with the
Non-Ego,
as in psychosomatic medicine or in the microphysical events of modern physics in which the eye of the beholder becomes an integral part of the experiment. Countless philosophers, prophets, early scientists, not to mention alchemists and occultists, had tried to present the same idea in the past, Plotinus, Lao-tse, Pico della Mirandola, Agrippa, Kepler, Leibniz. Every phenomenon, and every person, is a microcosm of the whole pattern of the universe, according to
this idea. It is as if each man were an atom in a molecule in a fingernail of a giant being. Most men spend their lives trying to understand the workings of the molecule they're born into and all they know for sure are the cause-and-effect workings of the atoms in it. A few brilliant men grasp the structure of the entire fingernail. A few geniuses, like Einstein, may even see that they're all part of a finger of some sortâSo
space
equals
time, hmmmmmm
⦠All the while, however, many men get an occasional glimpse of another fingernail from another finger flashing by or even a whole finger or even the surface of the giant being's face and they realize instinctively that this is a part of a pattern they're all involved in, although they are totally powerless to explain it by cause and effect. And
then
âsome visionary, through some accidentâ
feeling!
âtied in with Jung's theory of synchronicity. Jung tried to explain the meaningful coincidences that occur in life and cannot be explained by cause-and-effect reasoning, such as ESP phenomena. He put forth the hypothesis that the unconscious perceives certain archetypical patterns that elude the conscious mind. These patterns, he suggested, are what unite subjective or psychic events with objective phenomena, the
Ego
with the
Non-Ego,
as in psychosomatic medicine or in the microphysical events of modern physics in which the eye of the beholder becomes an integral part of the experiment. Countless philosophers, prophets, early scientists, not to mention alchemists and occultists, had tried to present the same idea in the past, Plotinus, Lao-tse, Pico della Mirandola, Agrippa, Kepler, Leibniz. Every phenomenon, and every person, is a microcosm of the whole pattern of the universe, according to
this idea. It is as if each man were an atom in a molecule in a fingernail of a giant being. Most men spend their lives trying to understand the workings of the molecule they're born into and all they know for sure are the cause-and-effect workings of the atoms in it. A few brilliant men grasp the structure of the entire fingernail. A few geniuses, like Einstein, may even see that they're all part of a finger of some sortâSo
space
equals
time, hmmmmmm
⦠All the while, however, many men get an occasional glimpse of another fingernail from another finger flashing by or even a whole finger or even the surface of the giant being's face and they realize instinctively that this is a part of a pattern they're all involved in, although they are totally powerless to explain it by cause and effect. And
then
âsome visionary, through some accidentâ
â
ac
cident, Mahavira?â
ac
cident, Mahavira?â
âthrough some quirk of metabolism, through some
drug
perhaps, has his doors of perception opened for an instant and he almost seesâ
presque vu!
âthe entire being and he knows for the first time that there is a whole â¦
other pattern
here ⦠Each moment in his life is only minutely related to the cause-and-effect chain within his little molecular world. Each moment, if he could only analyze it, reveals the entire pattern of the motion of the giant being, and his life is minutely synched in with itâ
drug
perhaps, has his doors of perception opened for an instant and he almost seesâ
presque vu!
âthe entire being and he knows for the first time that there is a whole â¦
other pattern
here ⦠Each moment in his life is only minutely related to the cause-and-effect chain within his little molecular world. Each moment, if he could only analyze it, reveals the entire pattern of the motion of the giant being, and his life is minutely synched in with itâ
âAND WHEN THE CHEVRON TANKER FOLLOWS THE BUS INTO ⦠NOWHERE ⦠ONE GETS A GLIMPSE OF THE PATTERN, A NEW LEVEL ⦠MANY LEVELS HERE â¦
The Pranksters never talked about synchronicity by name, but they were more and more attuned to the principle. Obviously, according to this principle, man does not have free will. There is no use in his indulging in a lifelong competition to change the structure of the little environment he seems to be trapped in. But one could
see
the larger pattern and move
with
itâ
Go with the flow!
âand accept it and rise above one's immediate environment and even alter it by accepting the larger pattern and grooving with itâ
Put your good where it will do the most!
see
the larger pattern and move
with
itâ
Go with the flow!
âand accept it and rise above one's immediate environment and even alter it by accepting the larger pattern and grooving with itâ
Put your good where it will do the most!
Gradually the Prankster attitude began to involve the main things religious mystics have always felt, things common to Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and for that matter Theosophists and even flying-saucer cultists. Namely, the
experiencing
of an Other World, a higher level of reality. And a perception of the cosmic unity of this higher level. And a feeling of timelessness, the feeling that what we know as time is only the result of a naïve faith in causalityâthe notion that A in the past
caused
B in the present, which will
cause
C in the future, when actually A, B, and C are all part of a pattern that can be truly understood only by opening the doors of perception and experiencing it ⦠in this moment ⦠this supreme moment ⦠this
kairos
â
experiencing
of an Other World, a higher level of reality. And a perception of the cosmic unity of this higher level. And a feeling of timelessness, the feeling that what we know as time is only the result of a naïve faith in causalityâthe notion that A in the past
caused
B in the present, which will
cause
C in the future, when actually A, B, and C are all part of a pattern that can be truly understood only by opening the doors of perception and experiencing it ⦠in this moment ⦠this supreme moment ⦠this
kairos
â
For a long time I couldn't understand the one Oriental practice the Pranksters liked, the throwing of the
I Ching
coins. The
I Ching
is an ancient Chinese text. The Book of Changes, it is called. It contains 64 oracular readings, all highly metaphorical. You ask the
I Ching
a question and throw three coins three times and come up with a hexagram and a number that points to one of the passages. It “answers” your question ⦠yes; but the
I Ching
didn't seem very Pranksterlike. I couldn't fit it in with the Pranksters' wired-up, American-flag-flying, Day-Glo electro-pastel surge down the great American superhighway. Yetâof course! The
I Ching
was supremely the book of
Now
, of the moment. For, as Jung said, the way the coins fall is inevitably tied up with the quality of the entire moment in which they fall, the entire pattern, and “form a part of itâa part that is insignificant to us, yet most meaningful to Chinese minds” ⦠these things
I Ching
coins. The
I Ching
is an ancient Chinese text. The Book of Changes, it is called. It contains 64 oracular readings, all highly metaphorical. You ask the
I Ching
a question and throw three coins three times and come up with a hexagram and a number that points to one of the passages. It “answers” your question ⦠yes; but the
I Ching
didn't seem very Pranksterlike. I couldn't fit it in with the Pranksters' wired-up, American-flag-flying, Day-Glo electro-pastel surge down the great American superhighway. Yetâof course! The
I Ching
was supremely the book of
Now
, of the moment. For, as Jung said, the way the coins fall is inevitably tied up with the quality of the entire moment in which they fall, the entire pattern, and “form a part of itâa part that is insignificant to us, yet most meaningful to Chinese minds” ⦠these things
THAT ONLY LUCKY DOGS AND MERRY PRANKSTERS HEARâand SO many mysteries of
the synch
from that time on ⦠There is another book in the shelf in Kesey's living room that everybody seems to look at, a little book called
The Journey to the East, by
Hermann Hesse. Hesse wrote it in 1932 and yet â¦
the synch! â¦
it is a book about ⦠exactly ⦠the Pranksters! and the great bus trip of 1964! “It was my destiny to join in a great experience,” the book began. “Having had the good fortune to belong to the
League, I was permitted to be a participant in a unique journey.” It goes on to tell about a weird, circuitous journey across Europe, toward the East, that the members of this League took. It began, supposedly, as just a journey, to get from here to there, but gradually it took on a profound though unclassifiable meaning: “My happiness did indeed arise from the same secret as the happiness in dreams; it arose from the freedom to experience everything imaginable simultaneously, to exchange outward and inward easily, to move Time and Space about like scenes in a theater. And as we League brothers traveled throughout the world without motor-cars or ships, as we conquered the war-shattered world by our faith and transformed it into Paradise, we creatively brought the past, the future and the fictitious into the present moment.” The present moment! Now! I The
kairos!
It was like the man had been on acid himself and was
on the bus.
the synch
from that time on ⦠There is another book in the shelf in Kesey's living room that everybody seems to look at, a little book called
The Journey to the East, by
Hermann Hesse. Hesse wrote it in 1932 and yet â¦
the synch! â¦
it is a book about ⦠exactly ⦠the Pranksters! and the great bus trip of 1964! “It was my destiny to join in a great experience,” the book began. “Having had the good fortune to belong to the
League, I was permitted to be a participant in a unique journey.” It goes on to tell about a weird, circuitous journey across Europe, toward the East, that the members of this League took. It began, supposedly, as just a journey, to get from here to there, but gradually it took on a profound though unclassifiable meaning: “My happiness did indeed arise from the same secret as the happiness in dreams; it arose from the freedom to experience everything imaginable simultaneously, to exchange outward and inward easily, to move Time and Space about like scenes in a theater. And as we League brothers traveled throughout the world without motor-cars or ships, as we conquered the war-shattered world by our faith and transformed it into Paradise, we creatively brought the past, the future and the fictitious into the present moment.” The present moment! Now! I The
kairos!
It was like the man had been on acid himself and was
on the bus.
EVERY FRIDAY NIGHT THEY HELD A BRIEFING. BRIEFING WAS Babbs's term, from his military days in Vietnam. Faye fixes some supper of rice and beans and meat, kind of a stew, and they all go into the kitchen and dig into the pots and put some on a plate and eat. A few joints are circulating around, saliva-liva-liva-liva-liva. Then they all go up to one of the tents on the plateau, Page's, and they all crowd in there, sitting this way and that with their legs pulled up under their chins and they start throwing out this and that subject for discussions. Curiously, this is like summer camp, on one level, the Honor Council meeting out in the woods after supper, everything smelling of charred firewood and canvas damp with dew, and crickets and cicadas sounding off and people slapping their ankles from mosquitoes and bugs and shit. On the other hand, the smell of new-mown grass burning and ⦠the many levels ⦠aren't particularly summer camp. They usually wait for Kesey to start off. He usually starts off with something specific, something he's seen, something he's been doing ⦠and builds up to what he's been thinking.
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