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Stephen Gaskin and his bus caravan appeared at Grinnell College out of the night en route from California to what became The Farm in Tennessee. There being little to do in the middle of the Iowa cornfields, I went to Darby Gymnasium to hear his presentation and receive a copy of this book. They were giving them out for free. The book, while a little too much out there for my tastes, was pretty good, combining, as it did, Eastern religio-philosophical concepts with psychedelic experience within a socially conscious and activist context. At this point in my life religion, but not Christianity, was starting to make experiential sense. I was reading a lot of stuff inspired by Chinese, Japanese and Chinese traditions, beginning to study depth psychology and taking a lot of LSD, cactus and mushrooms. What was missing generally was attention to how to put these insights into practice on more than just a person-to-person level, to actually begin a peaceful revolution to end the causes of unnecessary human suffering. Gaskin addressed these concerns in his book and I appreciated it. There was a poignant footnote to this encounter--poignant for me. I'd recently met two female roommates, one of whom, name now forgotten, was, as they say, hot, the other of whom, while a little plump and not notably sexy, had impressed me with her kind and considerate character. Her name, Aletheia, Greek meaning "truth", I do remember. I'd been drawn to their room by the former, but it was Aletheia who kept me there, my interest in her growing through our conversations while my interest in the other declined. This wasn't unusual, this free-floating erotic obsessiveness ranging from lust to ethical aspiration. Aletheia inspired the latter with which I was more comfortable in any case, just having lost my virginity in less than ideal circumstances, and was becoming daily more beautiful in my eyes. Ironically, however, the very characteristics that made her so attractive to me made the caravan attractive to her. She left with them.

2022-11-14 16:10