Creative Reading Seminar: Burroughs on Conrad & the Picaro | Naropa Lecture 2/3

[00:00:01]well say a few more few things about some of the other Conrad books on the list under Western eyes was a financial failure when it was first published in 1911 and I think it's still one of his least read novels how many of you have read it well that's that's pretty good the background is Revolution bomb throwing terrorists and double agents to what extent uh these people people were news at that time I just don't know see the media was really in its infancy at that point but at any rate apparently wasn't a popular current subject at the present time when terrorism is again in Vogue very much so uh the book might have uh quite a lot to say to present day audiences and also this you notice these are the Zar Zar secret police are just exactly reminiscent of the KGB it's like you know the just same guy stayed in there with different management not all that different and the basic theme is again Corruption of an ordinary person under stress that's a recurrent theme with Conrad you see you have razim off uh who's the uh protagonist of under Western eyes no sto uh Jim uh Willams and an outcast of the islands and of course elar didn't need to be corrupted he was already completely complete [Music] jit uh in Conrad's own words rasimov is an ordinary young man with a healthy capacity for work and sane Ambitions he is working towards an academic career in 30 years he could be a respected Professor then Conrad drafts this rather dull rather study young man into his is novel all Conrad's characters seem to be unwillingly enlisted in the cause of fiction and no wonder because that means trouble no trouble no story and they would dodge the draft if they could but the notice always Ares in some unexpected guys report to Casting now this Hon a bomb throwing terrorist who has just executed as he says Mr P uh takes refuge in Raimo's apartment under the totally mistaken impression that rimo sympathizes with the revolution uh and he is utterly appalled by Hon's presence in his room it's like having Patty Hurst dumped into your lap but one hell of a lot worse because this is zarus Russia with police quite as brutal and arbitrary as the present day Russian police and this isn't a few years in a comfortable jail with a Publishers contract coming up uh this is 10 years in Siberia considering the uh seriousness of this uh case might even be a death penalty so all he wants is to get Halden out of his room but hden sends him to a connection who is supposed to arrange his Escape but the connection is dead drunk there's a great scene when rasimov loses his temper and breaks this club over this guy's head doesn't help any uh so then rosof is wandering around in the snow and he has already decided to turn holding in he was thinking about the um there's some very good uh What I would call hallucinations going hallucinations of stress here and this uh Conrad does very very well indeed she's already decided to turn Halen in and then he thinks about um uh the you know he's just been to try to arrange H and escape and he thinks well I better not say anything about that it was just like a uh it saids a a very hard faucet turned over in his mind and he better not say a word about that uh he's wandering around in this snow and then uh he has this hallucination of seeing Halen Halen's Phantom stretched out in front of him in the snow anyway he goes to his Patron this is a prince who's been sort of uh his Patron and there's a hint that um rasimov may be the I'm thinking that this is carrying to unit isn't at all um there is a a suggestion that the prince is um that rasimov is the illegitimate son of the prince well anyway he goes to this uh Prince and the prince of course goes to the police that is to the military and like Lord Jim you see uh rasimov is taking an irretrievable step he has become an Informer there's a very good scene when uh hen walks out of his apartment this is another of these hallucinations of stress and he sees uh he knows the police are waiting out there and he sees the police's sort of someone with a cape with a black cape around and and a slouch hat and then another picture as he says a perhaps just a shifty-eyed scaler with a with a loaded stick uh smelling of raw onions and spirits well uh well of course they the authorities are not convinced they think that there's some connection and they're quite right in thinking that remember he has something to hide namely the fact that he did try to facilitate halton's escape to get rid of him and he's expecting to go up against the tough cup that's the general that he saw at first and instead he goes before conop counselor Mulan and that uh the interview with counselor Mulan is uh a very fine indeed it's one of my uh favorite passages um I wish I had the book here I tried the Bible I can't find it in town but at one point rasimov is about to walk out he says I protest against this comedy of persecution a comedy of errors Phantoms and suspicions I shall take the Liberty to retire simply to retire he walked to the door an unhurried Bo said KIRO sidorovich rasimov at the door turned his head to retire he repeated where to asked councelor Mulan softly he's not about to let this guy go of course um well anyway I'm I'm frequently asked what other writers have influenced my own work and I would say without hesitation I've been most influenced by Joseph Conrad and Denton Welch the interview between Carl and Dr Benway in Naked Lunch was quite consciously modeled on the interview between councelor Mulan and rimo and they both have the same trick of half finished sentences um and the end is almost identical that was quite quite consciously did that years later when Brian gon was writing the process he showed me a passage of dialogue taken verbatim from a science fiction novel and used in a similar scene in his own work in progress uh the science fiction novel appropriately concerned a mad scientist to devise the black hole into which he disappeared and this passage was not however was not used in the uh published text to the process oh uh incidentally I think under Western eyes is definitely good film material you see U rasimov the Informer Falls in love with the sister of hden who was executed um was um arrested and executed after being turned in by rasimov and then rasimov has been enlisted by councelor Mulan as an Informer in Geneva which was then a center of terrorist activity there's a lot of comic scenes in Geneva actually in the salon of this uh lady who receives all these terrorists and and uh there also could have a very good ending you see rasimov has been deafened by a terrorist they find out that he is an Informer and his eard drums ruptured so he's stoned de now I see the film when this happens she could turn off the soundtrack there's snow and he's walking around in the snow uh and you repeat here the scene of his wandering around in the snow when he sees the Phantom of halron across his track the tram is coming and of course he the guy's going like this you know banging on the belt and of course uh R um rasimov can't hear him and the tram runs into him in the novel he survives that and lives on but I think in as as a film it would be much better if that was uh if he was killed right then well now we're turning from Heroes although rasimov is hardly a hero uh uh to anti Heroes and consider the Pices novel now the Pices novel is is inseparable from the concept of the anti-hero um and actually the first one of the first novels uh ever written or one of the first novels that we have is a picures novel and that is the satiric and a Patronus Arbiter who was a courtier at U Nero's Court you remember how many of you have read that I can't really see very well many of you read thecan it's uhhuh it's very funny actually and it's sort of very modern and uh there's a great great scene in there is the Feast of tralo where this um Rich Freedman tralo is getting drunk and asking everyone to mourn for him as if he was already dead and reading his will and it's the uh the not the hero but the protagonist is a thief cheap thief and an adventurer living very precariously by his wits and uh then there's another novel early example is the unfortunate traveler by Thomas Nash was written in the 16th century and the hero Jack Wilton is a typical picaresque antihero uh he the he uh encounters a series of Adventures and Misadventures often of a comic nature and most pictures novels are funny um and most of them they all have anti-heroes and the uh the typical hero protagonist of a PES novel is also um well he's not a member of the establishments he's an outsider by his nature so uh now I was thinking of three writers who really to my way of thinking come under the are in the picaras tradition but are not generally considered so and those are Jane BS Seline and Denton welge and I think I'm also myself very much in the pickar ass tradition uh and actually seline's Journey at the end of the night is a classical picker ass novels but was not recognized as such by the critics they all said oh this Cry of Despair and all that is it isn't it all it's terribly funny book uh Jane BS and Denton Welch also to my mind fall into this category are not uh as directly or not they're not in such a classical picker ass tradition but both writers pleasantly surprise the reader with Frank admissions of ineffectuality and cowardice and the antihero is also very much a punk phenomenon a not for nothing was Welch called Denton Welch called Punky by his father uh when the gap between what one has been taught he should feel think say and do and what one actually does feel and think becomes too great The antihero emerges he emerges from a black hole a vacuum in the fabric of correct behavior and his conduct is often so outrageous as to provoke laughter rather than censure uh I've also made a collection of of anti-heroes in reality from newspaper accounts there was actually a pilot in the early days of Aviation who' smuggled a parachute on board and he bailed out and left the passengers to crash and uh in the sinking of the Titanic there was a steuart who uh got himself up in women's clothes and switched into the first life boat and he was discovered how he ever escaped with his life I don't know but he did and then I used that in U twilight's last demings and I had the captain escaping in women's clothes and then there was a Mexican bus driver this is really the prize of the collection and the bus was completely full about 47 people in the bus and a lot of people on top of the bus the way it happens in Mexican buses and uh the bus driver is smoking a cigarette with a leaky can of gasoline beside him and you know sing an idiot Mambo krio Mambo you looked down and saw that the uh the gasoline ignited from me a cigarette without interrupting his song he opens the door and jumps out so the plane went ahead and crashed into a ravine everybody inside was burned to death and about 30 peons riding on the roof roof uh jumped off you know 30 guys with machetes and they start and looked at the driver man and he took off and has never been seen since he out distan 30 machetes and those those Mountain Boys you know they can run so he must have been a real marathon runner wow actually actually true yes they never found never heard of him again now uh sine I just speak of one scene which I think is terribly funny the scene on the boat he gets on his boat going to Africa and all the other passengers are civil servants and army Personnel so they they're on they don't pay see but when they find out he's paying paying his own pair they decide there must be something all wrong about him he is suspected of pimping a bit and selling cocaine also a pederasty but that only is a sideline so finally they Corner him on on the deck and they prepared to beat him to a pope so he rushes up seizes both the captain's hands in his with a fine show of emotion and says among soldiers and gentlemen should any misunderstanding be allowed to exist in God's name Beil of France so he says however ill dispo it's very difficult for an officer to strike a civilian in public however ill disposed towards him he may feel just when the other is shouting beevil of France so he says their hesitation saved me bit by bit while this humiliating trial lasted I felt my self-respect slipping away from me further and further and at last completely gone as it were officially removed say what you like it's a very pleasant sensation after this in in ENT I've always felt infinitely free in light morally I mean of course perhaps fear is what you need most often in life to get you out of a hold personally since that day I've never myself wanted any other weapon or any other virtu this is about as far as you can get from Lord Jim and then he goes into the bar with them and they start telling all their stories and War reminiscences and he says that's something deserves to go down in history and then they begin to Fe he's a very nice guy there's some great uh passages in Africa itself uh just read one here uh endless Petty quarrels both personal between groups were always in progress between the military and the civil servants between these and the traitors and between both of them against the former and then between all three against the black men and finally between the black men themselves such vital energy as was not Sat by malaria thirst and the Heat of the sun was consumed by hatred so bitter and insistent that many of the residents used to die in their tracks poisoned by themselves like scorpions very very funny book and uh death on the installment plan is also I think very funny indeed I sort of lost him in his later books now uh dent and Welch very different uh type of writer I often recommend uh Denton wels to Young Writers who say they don't have anything to write about cuz he can go to a tea party or go out and buy a snuffbox or something and get a whole chapter so I'm just going to read a few selections from a maiden voyage and a voice uh from a cloud to give you some idea in school that afternoon we we each had to write a chapter of a ghost story this is the only lesson I've ever enjoyed or remembered borrowing from the Bible I wrote the hair on my flesh stood up how everyone laughed when it was read out I described the red damst walls the silver sconces and the great bed crown with moldy ostrich feathers all very romantic and now he's in China I slept alone that night in a bungalow some way from the others its owner became very ill been taken to Shanghai and no one expected him to live two soldiers were put to guard me um I began to explore the rooms a ghostly smell of liquor hung about the sideboard in the dining room and the dried siment in the empty decanters reminded me of scabs on sores I sat down in the armchair which let out a dirty sigh of dust and tobacco smoke I was fascinated by the sharp soiled feel in in the house I went to look at the bed from the ceiling a gray carac of mosquito net fell around it giving it an important grim look then uh you find one of the soldiers looking in the window at him at breakfast the next morning we had Buffalo milk on our porridge I tried not to imagine it squirting from tingling leathery uters it reminded me of the soft Rich mud around a pool where cattle go to drink this is a passage I like very much there sort they uh they put off their Train by soldiers and they just stop in this hotel in some small Chinese City a wasy looking servant came out of the rooms and led us up the brass-bound stairs to another wide passage here the reek of opium was unmistakable it hung heavy and sickly in air which was already loaded with smells of garlic and sweat the most disgusting smell of all was the breath of scent which floated corruptly on the back of the others like a top dressing um sleeping people lay on the benches one had just woken up and been sick his vomit lay in a pile beside him a door opened and two Chinese you ran out they were dressed only in European shirts as they darted past I saw with a shock that one of them wore a little Ebony and Ivory crucifix which bobbed stupidly up and down on his chest the weary servant took no notice I lay down on the bed again and waited for the dawn it came in a little thread like an inflamed eyelid against a gray face the morning seemed dead and old and tired before it had begun the life in the passage revived there was vomiting and wretching and the noise of servants quarreling this is a passage I like very much she um you know children are supposed to love their ponies uh and then he's in um he's in um China and some girl ask him would you like to come riding this afternoon someone has lent me a pony and I thought you could hire one and come with me I had not ridden since I was 10 years old when my horrible little black pony had last been given away how I had hated it once it had broken out of the stable and galloped through the roses and Over The Lawns showing its awful yellow teeth now this uh passage here is the beginning of a voice um through a cloud uh reading from forward here the manuscript of this nearly completed novel by Danton Welch was at his bedside when he died at the age of 31 he had suffered 13 years of chronic and painful illness caused by a road accident in which he sustained a serious fracture of the spine he was just riding along the road and some female motorist came along and ran into the back of his bike and he was a an invalid from then on out and this book a voice to a cloud describes his uh Hospital experiences but what is very interesting I mentioned the walk EX exercise in the last exerc in the last um class where you just notice um things as as you walk or ride on a bicycle it wouldn't make any difference or whatever and also paying attention to what you were thinking and feeling at a given time when you saw something or whatever now he is doing this in the uh time just before the accident so everything is very important you see just if you'd been uh stayed a little longer in the church or not so long in the um snack Place uh it wouldn't have happened so it gets really is quite the charge I REM reminded how many of you saw the Battle of of alers uh it was a bad title it sounded like the Riff or something like that but actually it was about the um of course the the French in alers and uh particularly U effective where the uh bombs you got a bomb in a milk bar for example and the audience knows bomb's going to go off and the other people don't and it really is very very tense you know just minute after minute after minute getting closer to that bomb and that's you get some of that feeling from this um passage he goes into a church and he doesn't stay long he feels rather embarrassed and then uh so I was not used to traffic so near beckingham I saw teas and light Refreshments advertised and he decides to go in and have a coffee the drive led me at last to the front of a small 18th century house with a portico of ionic columns rising to the height of two stories and uh he goes in and this 18th century room but it says was spoiled by um glossy plaques advertising swept soda water and player cigarettes and he was the only one there I sat down at one of the little tables and ordered coffee and biscuits as I waited I looked out the windows at the little figures moving against the bright green and pale pink of the bunkers it was it's by a golf course now here's uh interesting passage looking at the sides of the windows I saw that some of the beautiful little brass handles on the shutters were broken or missing I was given a vague uneasy feeling of universal damage and loss the waitress brought my coffee then retired behind the counter again and began to laugh and talk quietly with her companion I wondered if she was laughing at me but her voice was so low I could hear nothing well anyway he lingered here quite a long time and this is very crucial of course at last I got up to go I gave the room a final look I then recrossed the galleried hall and passed out beneath the Portico my head was full of plans for restoring the house I was ruthlessly sweeping away the waitresses the lace parchment lampshades the wicker furniture and the food counter he gets out on the the um Road I I thought that the ride had been very easy and pleasant so far I felt i' had wasted many opportunities by leaving my bicycle in the country and not bringing it to London before I was going along a straight wide Road keeping close to the curb not looking behind or bothering about the traffic at all I Heard a Voice through a great cloud of Agony and sickness this is when after he's been hit and he's [Music] um um practically UNC conscious and then a cop comes up and so take him to the hospital and uh as I say he never recovered and also but uh he had been a painter going to uh art school and um he didn't really start you right until after the after the accident and this which was about the accident was the last novel he wrote the first was um uh the first was made in Voyage well now I uh I don't have Jane B's book with me so I'll talk something say something about her on Monday uh just mention here that she was a a legend in her own um life she spoke perfect Arabic with a heavy Bronx accent and um Brian told me about how she she was up on the roof you know only the women are allowed on the roofs during the daytime in a in an Arab town you go up on the roof and the women will all start screaming at you pardon Ro uh she was up on a roof the all these Arab houses have flat roofs the men are not supposed to be up there until sundown and if they get up there in the daytime that's when the women are you know hanging out the wash and gabbing and gossiping uh and uh they'll start screaming at you um so she just leaned across to the next roof and she said you had anything good to eat lately and she was in solid and she had all sorts of mischances in her personal life she had a manuscript completed and a great wind came in just blew the manuscript out of the room and away and was never seen again she didn't have a copy uh she had a stroke and eventually became insane and she died in a hospital in Malaga about um two or three years ago I'll have her book it's uh it's been reissued the complete works of Jane B didn't write all that much it can all be gotten into one volume and it's um been reissued by Echo Press called my sister's hand in mine great the uh I think that two serious ladies is also really a comic Classic this marvelously funny scenes in there uh in 1959 Brian gon said that writing is 50 years behind painting and applied the Montage technique to writing now how did uh painting get 50 years ahead of writing but most forward steps in any field occur through necessity it seems that the natives of this planet will not get up off their ass until they have to now the most important advances in medicine in the past Century has resulted from Wars that's uh know they they didn't lick malaria until World War II and evolution of course is also a matter of necessity who knows the future on this planet May belong to creatures who thrive on radioactivity they certainly have a powerful Lobby I must say well 100 years ago here are all these painters peacefully painting cows in the grass and everyone says my how clever it looks just like cows in the grass you can almost smell it and they bought these canvases for huge prices the vaner bills had a load of this crap for which they had shelled out millions and the collection sold at auction for about $100,000 you see the paintings return retain a certain value as Antiquities rather like wooden Indians but the prices that uh you can't get anywhere near the price that these things sold for uh so what happened to this painter's Paradise photography click a camera can do it better and photographers shot the cows in the grass out from under painters and they had to move on and then there was Montage impressionism minimal impressionism body art happenings and every artist practically now is his own school one guy is doing broken plywood and something else and so uh now let us ask what invention could to blast the writer out of sequential narrative uh well perhaps a tape recorder sensitive enough to record subvocal speech you see here's the intuitive writer cleverly approximating the verbal stream of Consciousness why it's so real just what such a person would be saying to him or herself click turn on the recorder click play back the tape recorder can do it better so now writing has to move and uh the process I would say anticipates uh such an invention and the writer is disappearing into his tape recorder uh the process is certainly a neglected book few books have sold fewer copies have been more enthusiastically read by those who did read it the process was originally published by double day but one of the directors I recall hated the book so there was no promotion in the cop in the cop iies were finally uh ped and Cape was the publisher in England and it's still in print I think in the panther paper back if you can find it well anyway in the process Brian G eliminates the omniscient author who knows the past present and future and the innermost thoughts and feelings of his characters nothing is presented in the process that the person speaking could not know from his own experience the process is a series of first person recordings and the tapes are I thou he it she we you feminine you masculine and lastly they and all the narrations are recordings on the Ure of ulyses oh Hansen a pot smoking black professor recording and recorded as he travels through great deserts where the fabulous himr juggle precarious Phantom Empires over heat waves and atomic testing sites and the tape recorder is the point of observation that brings each uh narration into present time uh Rising the curtain can begin with a tape recorder against a white wall there's a round opening in the wall through which like a port hole we see the Blue Sky of Africa the black hand presses the button playback one [Music] um I'm out in the Sahara heading due south with each day of travel less sure of just who I am where I am going or why this desert is so long it can take a lifetime to go from one end to the other and a childhood to cross at its narrowest point sandunes a jolting truck smell of hot iron and asid exhaust fumes Hansen fills his ke pipe black Weezer the driver's assistant on a flute made out of an old bicycle pump is playing a windy tune scenes rise from the quarter here's a report from Bo um that's the I and th is um Hamry uh who comes from the Mountain Village of Juka where the rights of pan are still celebrated and he had been um he had been um the goat God at one time the a boy is seed into a goat skin and he is uh beud the goat guard for the festival which lasts about 4 days um and he is not at all content to be just to recording and uh now the Master of Ceremonies uh Hassen marican the black professor introduces that interplanetary voeville team the hmmer this pair who travel through Africa with a million dollar tossed casually into a suitcase leaving a wake of riots and Devastation behind them as all travelers in present time must do riding a surfboard on the wave of present time which is of course what the city desk calls news and remember that all news is bad news now the one and only the himmer doctor of grammatology advanced student of iMac hereditary Bishop of the far Isles now of course um grammatology is actually Scientology and the hemmers are actual characters who consider themselves to be the power behind hubard and they were called the skeltons and a witty uh local CIA man said oh mother hubard went to the cupboard and found a Skelton there so uh this is the hmer said I've been through the whole gamut from budo Voodoo to MRA from Scientology just bu and and every branch of Eastern mysticism and I say to you Proclaim to you one in all that Morocco is the wild west of the spirit hio silver and he throws himself into self- flagellation Cults with considerable personal danger and he is a dauntless initiate a big-time player in the game and interplanetary agent shimmering with Eerie Authority from some tenuous lost Place far away and long ago or if you like the high priest of some future cult clothed in Robes of perhaps you begin to see I am just a recording he said well this is Operation seal and this Emerald seal uh which he describes the beginning end of word he goes to the black professor uh and actually there was such a seal and he did give it to Brian and we finally hawked it in London didn't get very much for it uh but the seal is supposed to be the beginning and end word in the beginning was the word in the beginning of what exactly what we call recorded history which goes back maybe 10,000 years and only exists in the recordings same roles over and over 10,000 years and there can't be any new roles because it is all pre-recorded the world is contained in that word the Saharan Scabbard you hold in your hand [Music] um that's it if you have all recorded history stored in one artifact well that's it the world is Shadows on the wall Which F flicker briefly over the recorder and return to silence and here's uh she who's got all these plots going oh don't be silly and say you won't be emperor of Africa after all it's a game and we'll cheat you if we can now isn't that fun well hasn't didn't think so you have only to say it you know the word and uh so actually in the end uh of course the Sands of present time are running out from under our feet where do we go from here we're here to go it still takes a pair to beat out old terrestrial death and roll out replicas all over the universe all we need is the emerald the last tape is they the hemmers make a brief dimmed out appearance transformed into a dull couple from Champagne Illinois and Hass is on the train again with his keep pipe on his way to a teaching job in the Alo School uh the recorder turns to an emerald seal solely covered by dust and drifting sand they have all spoken the emerald was a tape and the process was the word the whole illusion of language now to consider in physiological terms the beginning of word and the function of language there's a book on the list entitled the origin of Consciousness and the breakdown of the bamal Mind by Julian James how many of you have read that ah well good yes very interesting book uh I'm not altogether convinced of his thesis and the book the end of the book sort of falls down completely but anyway he surmises that the first voices were what we would Now call hallucinated voices the chief of the chief or God King was able to aboke these voices and this ability to make his subjects hear his voice was the reason for the A and when he was held if you could imagine uh he's here and they're there and they're hearing his voice right in their heads he further summarizes that the right or non-dominant brain hemisphere was the source of these voices now someone carrying out a test say at some distance from the chief needed this hallucinated voice to keep him on the job the right brain hemisphere was the voice of God so ruled by his right brain Hemisphere by camera only man was not conscious as we know Consciousness which is a byproduct of indecision and conflict bamal man had neither conflicts nor responsibility he was obeying the voice of God to put it in Freudian terms he had no ego he was ruled by his super ego and his IDs speaking through the right brain hemisphere he had no need for what be called Consciousness which is ego H homeric Greeks saw and heard the gods now the poet is you see we think of the poet like Homer speaking in fanciful terms when uh his Heroes U talk with the gods not at all he was speaking according to um James pieces quite in factual terms because people then were existing in a medium of hallucination both verbal oral and visual now uh why were the voices uh believed and believed and obeyed authority of these voices derives from their very presence the inner voice is inescapable to hear is to obey and he cites case of a modern man on a beach and or and a voice orders him to drown himself and he would have done so except the Lifeguard jumped in pulled him out so he could tell the story um and of course the voices of schizophrenics are definitely uh in this category Now isn't this this is very much the same thing what she says in the process the first word was hello the enforced recognition of another being or at least another voice and another purpose inside the human nervous system uh James cites a mass of evidence from patients with brain injuries and experiments with electrical brain stimulation the right brain hemisphere is the source of creation synthesis and uh the relation of objects in Space the simplest problem in Geometry becomes extremely difficult if the right uh brain hemisphere is damaged or destroyed for example that is say 0x 0x x uh Z well obviously the next uh thing is X but it would be very hard for anyone to see that if they're right brain hemisphere was uh destroyed the left tan can and stimulation of certain centers in the right hemisphere can produce oral hallucinations in normal subjects now he doesn't go far enough wouldn't this lead us to infer that perhaps the voices were originally produced by some external stimulation that an electromagnetic field or or perhaps even a virus was the original means by which the voices were internalized and that these must have come from somewhere well he doesn't go that far actually now the the bamal Mind according to uh his thesis uh broke down in a period of great chaos and migrations and this breakdown was the beginning of consciousness of the hallucinated internal space known as I now his point is that uh well the home Eric hero had nothing there no such internal space they didn't have this eye uh into morality law and divination uh naration and responsibility and deceit as well you see if you need uh he says that the the rise of oracles is a very important step in the breakdown of the bamal mind if you need oracles you don't got it you don't have the the voice of God in your own head well then people then finally uh as this broke down then the the people who were hearing voices uh became uh sort of a nuisance and in fact they were uh in many cases driven out or even shut up into uh concentration camps now from this point on uh the dominant hemisphere is from this point on une easily and insecurely dominant remember the whole Space we call I our whole reality concept which is a moving film of Association memories is as much an illusion as the voice of God that ruled by Camal man both constructs are simply recordings uh the whole screen you think of as reality May quite suddenly go blank this is the way the world ends not with a bang but a click uh now in evolutionary terms we have seen the complete dominance of the non-dominant hemisphere and now the precarious dominance of the dominant hemisphere at the expans of mental of great mental illness and crippling conflicts and James has no solution and I think his the end of his book is quite disappointing as obviously some synthesis is necessary perhaps the two brain hemispheres will ultimately just fuse into one which eliminate uh conflicts which are I think becoming more and more crippling there's a number of very interesting ideas in this book and I recommend it um he said reading in the third millennium BC may have been a matter of hearing the coni form that is hallucinating the speech from looking at its picture symbols and pictorial writing in general is a device to release information which the reader already has uh he says of course bamal Mount had no internal space in which to be private and no uh I to be private with um and he speaks of the minds it is possible that reading or hallucinating from the giss function for the minds is dead hallucinate hucog genic drugs for others leis is is very interesting and book worth reading I stop here for some questions and discussion um how many of you have read how many had read the book uh the by Camal mind book only one yes what do you think rather interesting uh that was my feeling yes yeah kind of compar it to yeah but he he he begs the question as to where the voices came from the first place I mean how they got into the um the non-dominant brain hemisphere but this is rather the whole thing is rather uh very much a a um a pointed issue now because uh these cult leaders like um oh HT and Jones and so on they become the voice of God to their followers yeah yes indeed but I I remember reading about sit on said that his boys what was his name in detr or whatever his name was that seem to drift out of the loudspeaker it was just all around you maybe you had tape recorders um playing back his voice but but that apparently is what happens that uh they become the voice of God to their followers which means that they have uh as it were invaded the non-dominant brain hemisphere anybody that has happened after that that [Music] organization anybody organization as that that's right yeah yeah yes exactly exactly if they don't um if they don't conform but it's amazing because uh some of the uh digri followers is sitting on people they believe to this day that the media put the snake in the mailbox to discredit cnon on I mean how how far can it go well somewhat further when Joan order of them all commit suicide um was rather interesting to compare that to some of Mer Ali books onism linear Time and hisorical Time Cal times yeah comparing the anything except not the differences between but they kind of overlap a little bit they do they do right def um well let's see uh further any some further questions yes would be example of a man with a masterful and uh clever ego of the sort that we recognized in uh forly mod among people [Music] ask you're talking about cult leaders well I'm referring to James's idea that all the people there were asleep and caught up in Mor of the Gods it seemed to me that part [Music] ofus strength was that he he clever yeah well yes that was uh the point I was making that that anyone um who's going to Has the strength to sort of produce his voice in other people uh and make them obey well there they're always sort of dominant strong personalities whether they're you be leaders in um in any sort of a positive sense or just conmen but they had the power to convince in other words any any cult leader must have the power to convince now as you point out he's he's convincing people often who are quite ignorant that and um he wants to keep them that way that's the way he likes to see them it's IGN did you say earlier that they cultivates nere control theere they've done lots of experiments with electric brain stimulation say in stimulating certain areas in the right brain hemisphere and that will produce hallucinated voices in perfectly normal subjects earings did you say that Cults leaders tend to take on The Voice yes so is that to imply that that we're still not very far away from whated very close to still hearing voices well yes and lots of people do hear voices and actually we all hear voices uh we we have the me voices of memory and of course uh oral hallucinations are among the most common and I think there are very few people that haven't had it at one time or another uh the most common is to hear someone call your name but uh so it's uh it's not an uncommon occurrence don't have doesn't isn't confined to uh schizophrenics by any means evolutionary process that we moving away from well I don't know you see what has happened is we had first a complete dominance uh according to his thesis is it's probably a simplification say the complete dominance of the non-dominant hemisphere that's the guy's getting his orders from the voice of God and that's it it it doesn't have any conflict then uh we have as I say the precarious dominance of the uh dominant hemisphere which is logic linear think Etc and all like that which uh frequently breaks down into mental illness and great manifestations of of illogic uh such as we had in the uh Nazi movement and so on and so forth and um so the what we've had in the since the breakdown of what he calls it by Camal mind is a state of conflict which we have now and this conflict I say of often resulting in mental illness and all sorts of abolitions and now we have a realization that um that lateral that lat that linear thinking is not the answer and that you know all the umic what mic well this is this microphone doing anything here yes oh I thought it was just um yes was that I say first we had the uh the rule of the uh bamal mind that is the the non-dominant brain Hemisphere and when that broke down we had a very uneasy dominance of the dominant hemisphere which is existed to this day with um many breakdowns and a great deal of conflict and illness so um and now now the feeling that uh linear thinking and logic is just a very small part of the picture and that has of course has resulted in uh uh well Eastern religions interest in Eastern religions medit meditation Buddhism and uh on the another level on in um uh Cults and all sorts of uh programs for self-improvement and uh uh who's the man that uh that's always talking about lateral thinking Bono model yes yeah mhm so we have now A reversal and presumably if we're make a forward step there must be some kind of a synthesis although James doesn't say anything about this and apparently doesn't believe in such a synthesis and is very negative towards um um those who are attempting to do lateral thinking and to get away from linear thinking I mean he seems to feel that there's no uh no possibility of a synthesis excuse me kind of a rising of individual's own personality or ego away back to the get back toal image I think is very much the same as born again Christian fundamentalist baptism yeah yes very much so very much so yes so there is a very definite swaying away from rationality at the present time but he doesn't he doesn't suggest any sort of synthesis of the well the two brain hemispheres to put it in uh simplest terms yes physical reolution sh yes yes certainly well no he is not he is uh pointing out for example that the um the bamal Mind broke down in a period of great sociological change and Chaos not necessarily uh physiological but I don't think there any uh that I think that the such changes would involve uh physiological changes it's a question of what one is used to how one is used to thinking if one has been used to uh by Camal thinking that is to hearing the voice of God uh if you're used to that you are physiologically different from someone who is not what does he do with a like soes probably pointed out great of rationality [Music] West no no Socrates is way after uh what he considers a breakdown in the bamal mind uh any any philosophy see they didn't need any philosophy if they've got the they got the voice of God inside so Socrates way after that Socrates the philosophers and in fact very much earlier devation indicates that the bicameral mind had broken down that's what he's talking about the the arising of what we call Consciousness which he says is something that these people didn't have at all let say the homos the early homos did not have anything corresponding to I except H except except what he had well uh yeah he he points out the adicus is a later um hero as he's not one of the earliest and that he be yes he pointed out exactly that odesus in the beginning of Deceit is to break down the Bal mind you got a bical mind going there isn't any deceit yeah points that out have you read the book well yeah well he points that out very definently that udus was uh one of the signs the the the deceitful hero who has a very desent ego and a very tricky ego is uh one of the signs of the breakdown of the bical Mind one of many the whole concept of course responsibility of morality well the whole of philosophy really indicates uh breakdown of the bamal m and all all all um rules of conduct uh more questions to's well it a very very very important point you see remember this is very new and that uh now you can um by electronic means uh tune right into the right brain uh Hemisphere and there's all sorts of things that can be done with uh with the tape recordings as we saw at Watergate so this is a this is a new development is um the tape recorder and one of the more important probably one of the more important developments one of the more important inventions God's little toy as Paul BS calls it exactly that um yeah's lot of a lot of evidence mounting you know for example what's that what's that new science om Omni exine know everything's affecting your so to speak mechanical chemistry memorization right there too right in yes certainly mhm [Music] questions well go on briefly the uh on the reading in the reading list uh I'm going to go through talking about books that I haven't talked about uh briefly now these books the lur montin and the kif Hakim by BTY buhul but the only books on a very uh to my mind a very important and unique figure uh The Old Man of the Mountain Hass Saba who uh uh lived about a, ad The Old Man of the Mountain Master of the Assassins operating from a mountain Fortress in alamut where he trained his assassins he terrorized the whole Muslim World his long bony finger could reach as far as Paris now his technique was that he would know he's going to have trouble from so and so some kif some general and then he would plant uh one of his men either in the U sometimes in the Entourage or as a servant there's one case of a general uh who was about to uh start a campaign against uh Hass is saa's Fort alamut he see wasn't paying taxes up there he was living outside the law and there were many Expeditions made against alamon well uh at this point and the general was getting all to uh launched this campaign an old man who had worked in the garden for 10 years killed him with a scythe he was one of Hass saa's um assassins there are many misconceptions of H Saba the hashy story you know that um he gave them hash and they felt themselves transported to Paradise which was full of uh hores and anyone who's taking has shei knows this is pretty absurd and there said there were no women allowed in alamut at all that everything points to a very Spartan discipline he had his own son beheaded for bringing wine into alamu but you see this system you have a fortress which surrounded by partisans it wasn't wasn't by only means the by any means the only Fortress uh he was in uh no effect position with regards to his opponents that is he could affect them they couldn't affect him and this is still a very viable tactic but of course the no effect position would have to be insured by concealment uh they made a number of attempts as I say to take alot but it didn't wasn't taken until um oh God about 200 years after the death of um H saba and his last words were supposed to have been uh nothing is true everything is permitted now this is usually taken as a license to commit any sort of atrocities everything is permitted but remember that everything is permitted because nothing is true that is permitted to someone who realizes that everything is illusion um so uh the the Calif Hakim is was also a member of the same sect of the ishan sect uh but uh he was a kif of uh Cairo and was very tyrannical indeed but he's the only Tyrant ever to take absolutely no regard for his personal safety he rode around on a donkey all through the streets of uh Cairo where he was very much uh hated but he was never uh assassinated he disappeared finally um the whole matter of Hass is saa's Method and uh there was supposed to have been a large library at alamoo uh but there's no record of this Brian gon's been there and he said there couldn't have been more than a 100 people at most Resident in Alamo it's because it's it's just the top of a mountain and they must have gotten their uh supplies from surrounding Villages which would must have been and friendly um some of these books I think have recent or alleged books of to come from malamu have recently turned up in Bombay somewhere there's very little known about the uh the ACT what actually went on there what form of training the um the um assassins received or how he could activate them at a distance which apparently he could uh it is true that he uh was in in um Egypt at one point and that he uh had come in contact in contact with hashish and that he this formed some part of the training but um it certainly wasn't didn't U cause people to be tricked into a fake Paradise that is just a misconception of uh what was going on there well uh any questions have have any of you read any of um there is another book I think the Valley of the Assassins there are a couple of other books about uh Hass SAA and the other members of the he was a member of the ishan culture remember or sect uh which survived lives in the alican who is supposedly traces his uh descent to Hass SAA now this uh there's this um genealogy is very very questionable it was supported by the English who wanted to uh use him as a uh sort of a puppet uh ruler and it it has been questioned and um it was a dissident a dissident U mlim cult that had uh the tenants of it are really quite hard to pin down because H SAA left no written record I mean had didn't write any uh uh sort of a test um um you know Bible or anything like that there's uh very little um written have any of you read anything about uh H is at all there's not much uh not much known about him and what there's a couple of books the Valley of the Assassins there was another book on secret societies which I forget the name which uh listed the Assassin is one of the um one of these secret societies yes H oh yes yes that is uh L L montin by Betty B both of these books are unfortunately in French and have not been translated the second the second uh book on the list it's what I was just talking about uh published by Gard in 1924 um and as I say have not been translated and the only others others I now there about two um that I I forget the author and the name but she certainly had the it's certainly the best and most complete account although what her sources were the Russians are the great uh the most um uh considerable Scholars on this particular subject of H SAA and the um genealogy Etc the mlims took it not the Muslims excuse me the Mongols took alamot in about 12200 and something and then there's the rumor of this Library which uh has never turned up so it's pretty wide open for uh research and also for inference since we don't know what the actual training was of the the Assassins received so um it's uh a good subject for fiction find way the wild oh yes yes yeah H yes H isaba is one of my uh I've been very interested in uh uh to find out as much as I can about him and um he was uh apparently a pretty unique figure