KP van der Tempel on synchronicities

Klaas Pieter van der Tempel

[Today's post is an excerpt on Synchronicities from Klaas Pieter van der Tempel's new book, Pause, Play: A Higher Consciousness Handbook, a collection of dozens of short items on how to "wake up" into your everyday life, which I published under the brand Anecdota Press. 

I have posted quite a few times at this blog about synchronicities and I also get emails about them. On Wednesday, V. Morgan wrote, "So I'm driving yesterday thinking about galactic coincidence control when a car "wrapped" in giant ad for "23rd Brewery" passes in front of me.  G-d's hones truth.  Fnord." -- The Management]

Big one. This is probably the biggest one. Synchronicities are the most down-to-earth reminder and engineer of who you are. Why? Because they happen to you. Synchronicities, or coincidences, are the unconscious at work, revealing itself through minor or major absurdities. These include coincidences in things you see or hear, telepathy, Freudian slips, and so on. And you have to have synchronicities to know that you are in tune. When you notice a coincidence, you realize that the movie which is our reality is right on cue. The director is at work, revealing his or her tricks right in front of your eyes.

Synchronicity is the name Jung gave to meaningful coincidences. The concept has grown since then, and it covers basically all experiences of coincidence, déjà vu, and other such meaningful yet highly personal events. Whenever you feel like something ‘out there’ is happening directly to you, and only you can see the signs (or maybe you share it with a specific person or group), then you are experiencing a synchronicity. In a way, it’s the ‘higher’ you talking to you, the lower you.

Follow the signs! Be inspired by the Invisible Hand that’s directing you. Here, instead of always talking and trying to be in control of reality, you listen. Everything is you talking to yourself; so all you have to do is open your eyes, open your ears, open your heart and mind, and see what you are trying to tell yourself.

Whether the synchronicities are boring or amazing, interpret them as if they are meant to be meaningful. Objectively speaking, you cannot know what they mean, nor should you need to. You can only decide it for yourself. Know that, as with @dreams, the main message of any synchronicity is this: Wake up!

Synchronicities start as a wakeup call. And when you’re awakened by them, you are free to do anything because you’re in an altered state already. It’s the pause that allows you to play.

What you might also try to recognize in your daily life is that everything is synchronicity. We tend to only notice synchronicities when something appears odd or unusual. But everything that happens, happens for a reason; it’s you talking to yourself, creating yourself, playing with yourself.

Write down all of your synchronicities within a period of one or two weeks. And if you’re not having enough of them, summon a synchronicity to yourself. It could be one of your prayers. “Send me a synchronicity,” or something along those lines.

Synchronicity and finding an old friend.

An ebook I published which talks about the importance of synchronicity to tapping into higher consciousness. See this excerpt. 

I've been interested in synchronicity for much of the life of this blog. I ran into a synchronicity this week, when I tracked down an old friend I hadn't had any contact with in a long time. I don't want to invade his privacy, so I'll call him "Sam" and avoid details.

Another old friend of mine, who I'll call "Percy," and I had tried some some years to figure out what happened to Sam. We had no success. Earlier this week, my wife asked, "Did you ever figure out what happened to Sam?" It wasn't a topic we have had a conversation about in a long time. 

Then two days ago, I got a message on Facebook from Percy, asking if I ever made any progress finding Sam. It was the first time I had heard from Percy about it in nearly a year. 

So I decided to go to work, running searches on the Internet and contacting people. One of them was one of Sam's few surviving blood relatives, a niece, who told me that for the first time in a long time, she and her mother (Sam's sister) had just talked about whatever happened to Sam, and wondered if he was still alive. 

Eventually I found Sam and I actually got him on the phone Wednesday and talked to him. 

My wife assumed that I had found Sam because of her remark, and I explained that no, I'd been prompted by Percy and I mentioned what Sam's niece said. "I guess it was in the air," my wife said. 

Click on the "synchronicities" label on this post for more synchronicities.

Coincidance, Week Eight

"The Physics of Synchronicity"

"Semper as  Oxhousehumper"

Although I had to work had to follow all of Wilson's arguments in the synchronicity essay and the Joyce piece, I was very interested because I keep noticing synchronicities in my own life.

None of them are earth-shattering, but they seem interesting to me. For example, on Twitter, I follow a guy named Ted Hand, who also follows me. What we mainly seem to have in common is an interest in Robert Anton Wilson, although Hand is particularly a Philip K. Dick expert.

Late on the night of Oct. 17, I  Tweeted (in a Tweet addressed to Roman Tsivkin, "Iain Banks is the best Anglo-American SF writer I can think of who never won a major award." Hand retweeted my Tweet. I had no idea he was interested in Banks, and he could not even have seen my Tweet unless he followed both Roman and myself.

Meanwhile, Hand sent out a Tweet linking to a posting on the Io9 website about astronomers discovering a big asteroid that might hit the Earth -- and at almost the same time he was retweeting my Banks Tweet, I retweeted his asteroid Tweet.

Speaking of Mr. Tsivkin, he recently put a literary coincidence into my reading life. A few weeks ago, I mentioned in a blog posting here that maybe I ought to recommend that he read George Alec Effinger, a cult science fiction writer I'm fond of, and he went out and read some Effinger books. So I thought maybe I ought to let Roman recommend a book to me, and he suggested I read Too Loud a Solitude by the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal. I'm reading it now.

I've been an avid reader for decades, but I never heard of this apparently world-famous Czech writer. Which seems strange. For years, I corresponded with a very literary Czech man named Vaclav Kriz, who lived in Brno. When I looked up Hrabal's biography, I saw he was born in Brno.

But just a few days after Roman told me about Hrabal, I opened up the Wall Street Journal's Saturday books page, and read a recommendation of Hrabal's novel Closely Watched Trains.

I looked up Hrabal on Wikipedia, and his life is the tiresomely familiar sad story of an Eastern European artist abused by the regime; several of his books were allowed to be published after he gave a self-critical interview in which he supposedly said things like "as a Czech writer I feel connected to the Czech people, with its Socialist past and future." Laughably insincere, but fortunately, Communist bureaucrats don't have any more of a sense of humor than capitalist ones. But see how Hrabal died:

"He died when he fell from a window on the fifth floor of the Bulovka hospital in Prague where he was apparently trying to feed pigeons. It was noted that Hrabal lived on the fifth floor of his apartment building and that suicides by leaping from a fifth-floor window were mentioned in several of his books."

Wilson refers to Arthur Koestler's book The Roots of Coincidence more than once, so I looked it up. Wikipedia says this about it: "The Roots of Coincidence, written by Arthur Koestler, is an accessible introduction to theories of parapsychology, including extra-sensory perception and psychokinesis. It postulates links between elements of quantum mechanics, such as the behaviour of neutrinos and their interaction with time, and these paranormal phenomena. It is influenced by Carl Jung's concept of synchronicity." It would appear the book influenced Wilson's thoughts.

I liked the way Wilson tied the I Ching with the 1's and 0's of computers. This is something he does with Illuminatus!, of course, with the computer programmed to use the I Ching. The dots and dashes of Morse code transmitted on telegraph wires arguably kicked off the telecommunications revolution.

As an American blogger, I feel connected to the American people, with its Socialist past and future.  No, wait, that's not current. I think James Clapper is a great American, and I wish the liberal media would leave him alone.

Synchronicity in Richard Powers' 'Orfeo'

 American composer William Duckworth (1943-2012), who never inserted musical notation into bacteria and probably is not alluded to in the new Richard Powers novel. 


New news news news news news news has a ... has a ... has a kind of mystery

I recently had a unique reading experience. I read a new novel, Orfeo by Richard Powers, and as I went though it, I had the odd feeling that it was written for me. It’s an interesting experience  of synchronicity,  and as RAW fans are interested in synchronicity, I write about it here.

I'm not crazy enough to think that when famed novelist Richard Powers sat down to write his new novel  that he was aiming for a book that would please his longtime fan, Tom Jackson, out in Ohio. But there are interesting coincidences that gave me an eerie feeling.

Start with the fact that only a fairly narrow audience of readers will get many of the references. Orfeo is a literary novel about a modern composer, Peter Els,  that contains a great many allusions to music. People who listen to modern classical music are a small subset of a relatively small group of listeners.

The words quoted at the top of my blog post, for example, are from an aria that Richard Nixon sings from the John Adams opera, "Nixon in China," about Nixon's historic trip. I recognized the words when one of Adams' characters, a character somewhat reminiscent of director Robert Wilson, sang them words to Els.

A cassette tape of "Nixon in China" was one of the first recordings of modern classical music I ever bought. Although it is famous as modern operas go, I would be surprised if as many as 1 in 100 Americans would get the reference without help. Powers inserts the words I’ve quoted into his novel without explanation. There’s also a joke about spectral music, which you’ll get if you recognize the name “Tristan Murail.”

Powers is that kind of novelist. He never explains in the text, either, why he calls the book Orfeo. And that gets us into why I had the odd feeling the book was written for me.

One of my hobbies, aside from letting a blog about Robert Anton Wilson eat up much of my time and attention, is listening to classical music. Aside from the usual suspects every other classical listener pays attention to, I have a particular interest in modern classical music, including some composers who are considered too “way out” for most people.

One of my favorite composers is William Duckworth, who died of cancer a couple of years ago. I own all three available commercial recordings of “The Time Curve Preludes,” his best-known work. It's a great piece. I own most of his other work that is available on the market. I even knew Duckworth,  in the sense of “knowing” someone you’ve only met on the Internet. I blogged about him, and he sent me an autographed copy of one of his books. Another time, he sent me an unreleased CD of music by his world music/avante garde band. Once he wrote to suggest a blog post, and so on. I was quite upset when he died. His New York Times obit is here.

Anyway, Duckworth, like Peter Els, taught at a Pennsylvania college and lived in a small Pennsylvania city. Like Duckworth, Peter Els was influenced by John Cage, and some of his pieces are very conceptual.

But the clincher in the possible connection of the two is the word Orfeo.

Orteo is Italian for Orpheus, the character in Greek mythology whose music was so powerful he could charm all living things and even rocks with his music. When Els gets into trouble with the federal government for breeding bacteria in his apartment (in a concept that even Duckworth never thought of, Els wants to insert musical notation into the DNA of bacteria, so his music will last for millennia) he goes on a journey, analogous to Orpheus' famous descent into the underground, to recover his own lost loves.

But Orfeo also has a specific meaning for classical music buffs. The opera L’Orfeo  by Monteverdi is one of the earlier operas, and is certainly the first opera still remembered and performed today.

Duckworth also composed a version of the Orpheus story. As Wikipedia explains, “The iPod Opera 2.0: The Myth of Orpheus, the Chronicler and Eurydice, [was] podcast in 26 episodes as MP3 and QuickTime video files. The video episodes may be downloaded and played on many different kinds of computer systems, including Apple OS, Windows and Linux computers, while the MP3 files may be downloaded and burned as an audio disk. The completion of the podcast in February 2007 was timed to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the first performance of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo.” I’ll add that the first number of the Duckworth piece is a rewrite of the overture to Monteverdi’s opera.

The Powers novel has Tweets from Els interspersed throughout the text. Duckworth was active on Twitter, as @Timecurve.

My wife says that a smart guy like Richard Powers probably knows who Duckworth is. My own guess is that I’m outlining coincidences here, and the novel is not, in fact, a long dog whistle to William Duckworth fans.

But I’ll try to write to Powers and ask. If I get past the “email from nuts” filter and obtain a reply, I’ll let you know.

Scott Apel discusses his Philip K. Dick book

D. Scott Apel's book Philip K. Dick: The Dream Connection is a key document for Dick fans. The anthology includes a very long interview with Dick and pieces by Robert Anton Wilson, R. Faraday Nelson and Dick himself. Lawrence Sutin, author of Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick, says Apel's book is "Hands down the most joyous and entertaining book on Philip K. Dick."

For some useful background on the book, see below for an interview with Scott conducted by his friend, ej "Jami" Morgan. 

This interview first ran in PKD OTAKU #22, 14 May 2011. 

ej Morgan is a writer based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Among other books she is the author of the novel A Kindred Spirit. Scott describes it as "A brilliant novel about a woman who believes she's getting post-mortem messages from PKD." You can visit her official website. 

Here is Ms. Morgan's original introduction to the interview:

Never underestimate the “Phil factor.” And if you wonder what that means, D. Scott Apel’s Philip K. Dick: The Dream Connection is as good a place as any to dive in for a big dose. For instance, just as Editor Gregg Lee and I were discussing pulling the 1987 book out of mothballs and taking another look at it, Scott announced he is re-releasing the book as a trade paperback this spring. That’s synchronicity.

Who among us has not thought of a favorite PKD book, and had it turn up at a used book store? But, the more you dig in and learn about Phil’s real-life experiences, the freakier the Phil factor gets. Synchronicity becomes deeper and more Dickian. Scott found out first hand – with both real Phil and post-Phil encounters – and those accounts are the essence of The Dream Connection.

Morgan further reports (in 2026) " I did a lengthy telephone interview with Scott in the late 1990s that was supposed to  appear in Issue #8 of Radio Free PKD. Sadly, there was no Issue #8.  Greg Lee stopped printing the ‘zine after Issue #7." But OTAKU editor Patrick Clark agreed to run it, she says. 

This interview is reprinted here by kind permission of ej Morgan. 

JAMI MORGAN: Some RFPKD [Radio Free PKD] subscribers read your book when it first came out, and serious Dickheads may recall that you were a contributor to the original PKDS newsletter. Others will discover you and TDC in this second release. So, let’s start by going back to those early days in 1977 when you first met Phil. You were just a kid then, right? 

SCOTT APEL: Well, I was 25, just out of college and my friend Kevin Briggs and I had been working on a book project called Approaching Sci Fi Authors for a couple of years. To put the time frame in perspective, this was pre-Star Wars; a time when sci-fi was still pretty much a cult interest. We were sending out letters and lining up interviews with several authors who lived in or near the California Bay area. So, one day I come home and my Mom (I was living at my parents’ house at this time) said your friend Phil called. I said, “Who? I don’t have a friend Phil.” Mom said, “He just said, ‘Tell Scott his friend Phil Dick called.’” Of course, I was blown away. We still had some trouble getting the interview set up, because he tried to back out a couple of times. But his girlfriend at the time, Joan Simpson, helped convince him. I remember she told us it would be the best thing for him right now, since he had been brooding and melancholy and was having trouble writing at the time. Anyway, he finally agreed to let us come to his home in Sonoma and do the interview. It turned into a 2-day session with us staying overnight at his house. I described the whole experience in detail in the book. 

JM:  You intended to just ask basic questions about how he wrote his science fiction, but this led into an entirely different area when Phil began talking about his experiences with psychic phenomenon, something you didn’t anticipate when you set up the meeting, right? 

APEL: First of all, we didn’t anticipate the enormous length at which he wanted to talk about these things. Secondly, we never anticipated the enormous depth at which he wanted to approach some of these subjects. Science fiction and literature became just a jumping off point to talk about religion and philosophy. With most of the other writers [interviewed for the project] we were lucky to get an hour interview. With the really good ones, like Ted Sturgeon and Norman Spinrad, we were doing 2 hour interviews just because they had so much to say. But Phil, by comparison, had four times as much to say. Sturgeon was pretty well tapped out after the two hours, but with Phil we had over eight hours on tape. And we just decided that was the place to stop because it became obvious we could do a whole damn book just on Phil. So, yes, we certainly were taken by surprise by the depth at which he wanted to discuss the material. 

JM: You were interviewing him in 1977 and Phil’s life-altering event occurred in February/March 1974. The incident he called the “2-3-74” event. So, all of this was pretty fresh at the time, right?

APEL:  Exactly. In fact, the interview in The Dream Connection is THE most complete and most in depth description of those experiences that has ever been published anywhere. He may have had longer conversations with closer friends of his, like Paul Williams, but as far as what’s lasted on paper and anyone who wants to understand those experiences and doesn’t read TDC isn’t getting the full story. I’m very proud of that fact. That this most controversial part of the man’s life is the part we took most seriously, seriously enough to print it in its entirety. 

JM: And it certainly is controversial, because many of his original hard-core fans are really uncomfortable with his later works and believe he had some kind of physical or biological episode or that he was even insane. There’s the whole gamut of how people react to that part of his life. But, in TDC you came away feeling he was quite sane.

APEL: Oh yeah. There is no question about it in my mind. And, I can make a claim like that if only because I have a degree in psychology and I’ve worked in mental asylums. They train you to tell the difference between people who are sane, people who are insane and people who are acting insane. Phil was not in any way crazy. There may be some biological explanation for some of his experiences; you know a brain embolism or over-medication. I’m not a medical doctor. But, I do know the man was absolutely sincere in his belief that he had an experience that was in some way outside the realm of normality. He did his best to describe it and devoted most of the rest of his life of his life trying to put it in some kind of perspective and context. 

Now, if you turn to a book like Cosmic Consciousness by [Richard] Bucke, I believe his name is, a classic in the field, he writes descriptions of any number of people who claim to have had some kind of unusual experiences. They’re pretty much all the same and they’re very much like Phil’s. They all feel they’ve had some type of revelations. Now whether they’re medical or chemical, physical or spiritual, or all of the above – nobody knows exactly what that stuff is, yet the experiences all have similar characteristics. I’d say Phil is just another one. He had the gates of perception open, given whatever cause and for whatever reason. But, it certainly was not something that should be considered insane. It may be the next step in human evolution to get people of their minds and into the cosmic consciousness.

JM: Phil ranged all over the place, not only in his conversations with you but also in the Exegesis and in VALIS, trying to decide if his experiences were extra-terrestrial or contact with some disembodied entity. 

APEL: Yes, was it a disembodied spirit, was it his own reincarnation memories, was it totally drug-induced, was it aliens contacting him – this was a man with an enormous imagination. So, when he came up with a theory he tried to match it to the facts, because he did have some kind of scientific training. He would think of a theory and then he’d compare it to the facts and eventually discard most of it, which I think maybe a lot of people who read about Phil’s later life fail to understand. He was approaching all this stuff in a very scientific manner by applying his theories to the data and then discarding most of it as irrational. I like to think of it as entertaining an idea. He wasn’t convinced that aliens were affecting his mind or that Russians were transmitting works of art into his head. That was a theory. The way he tested a theory was to try it out – wear it like a suit of clothes for awhile and see how comfortable it was. Eventually the flaws would appear. In fact, he used the clothing metaphor. He would find a loose thread and pull on it until the entire suit came apart. Then he’d discard that and get a new set of clothes.

JM: You devote about 75 pages to the interview that took place and then conclude with an Afterward on the conspiracy-cloaked Russian Xerox Missive. In it Phil, or actually Joan (his then-girlfriend) referred to that particular theory as the “really important part.” Can you explain what that was all about? 

APEL: (pause) No, I really couldn’t. (long laughter from both of us.) That was just another piece of data in the hopper. Who knows what that was all about? I couldn’t even begin to explain it. [NOTE: Paul Williams does delve into the Xerox Missive extensively in his book Only Apparently Real for anyone who wants to further explore that point.] 

JM: And, what state was VALIS in at the time of your interview with Phil?

APEL: Well, that’s a complicated subject, but it is all spelled out in great detail in TDC. He had written a book called Valisystem A which I believe became, in part, Radio Free Albemuth. By the time he released VALIS, his thinking had changed so radically that the two books appeared to be completely different. At the time we interviewed him, he had finished Valisystem A, but wasn’t happy with it. He knew there was more to it, but didn’t know what and he wanted to take it in a different direction, but wasn’t sure where.

According to Russ Galen, Phil’s agent for many years, Phil told Russ that it was our interview that helped unlock his creativity and made him think in different directions, and actually enabled him to throw it aside and start from scratch and rewrite VALIS. 

JM:  Wow, now that’s heavy. (pause) That really brings up the issue about David and Kevin and your feelings that at least in part, you and Kevin Briggs were incorporated into David and Kevin of VALIS. 

APEL: There’s a couple of lines right out of our interview with him that comes right out of the mouths of David and Kevin in VALIS. Plus, most of the exploits in VALIS took place in Sonoma. Kevin [Briggs] called me and said, “Guess what! We’re characters in the book.” Then I read it and it was very clear to me that he did use us as characters. And, then I talked to Phil – I called him on the phone – and I said, hey, I know how you work, that you use real life people. And I know how you combine people occasionally into characters in your fiction, but I want to know is this David in VALIS actually David Scott Apel? And, is this Kevin really Kevin C. Briggs. And he said, “Sure are.” So, I got it directly from him that these characters were at least partially based on us. Now, Tim Powers and Kevin Jeter have also claimed that the characters are based on them. And I know they’re the more famous ones – the better and longer term friends of Phil’s than Kevin and I were. Yet, when I asked Phil about it, he was confirming that he at least used us in part, combining me and Tim Powers into David and Jeter and Briggs into Kevin.

You know, I hate to make a big deal out of this. I don’t want to sound like one of those people who is waving their hands for attention, yelling “Me, Me.” I just want people to know the real story. Because I’m sure at the time, even Jeter and Powers didn’t know the whole story. That’s all. And, I’m very proud to be associated in Phil’s mind with Tim Powers. He’s an enormous talent. We’ve since exchanged letters and it’s a point of honor for me that Phil would connect us in that manner. 

JM: EJM: Ok, let’s discuss what you call Phase Two – the second section of the book – dealing with dream telepathy. Do you recall who first mentioned the topic? Did Phil mention dream telepathy or did you?

APEL: No, I think I did, because a good friend of mine wrote a book called Dream Telepathy and we wanted to know if Phil had read that. Actually, Phil mentioned the concept and I said what you’re talking about sounds like the same thing in the book by Alan Vaughan where he covered experiments by several scientists who actually transmit and receive material in the dream state. So, it was something Phil was definitely aware of. 

JM: I bring it up because it’s crucial to the next phase of what happens in your book, AFTER Phil dies. 

APEL: Well, any condensation of those experiences runs the risk of sounding crazy. Which is why I took the time and the effort to detail the entire range of experiences in the book. Any kind of summary here will make it sound like something from the psychic friends network or a bad movie, some psycho-thriller made for cable TV. But, yes, a year or so after Phil died I began having dreams about him and about subjects he had talked about. And, as someone who had been keeping a journal of dreams for over 20 years, I paid a great deal of attention to them. I was able to identify them as very different from any other type of dream I had ever had and therefore paid even more attention to them. They all seem to revolve around these ideas of Phil communicating with me. So, you know, I’m fairly open-minded, and decided, OK, I’ll entertain the idea. But, what really made my mind up to even pursue this was the tremendous number of “synchronicities” that started to cluster around Phil Dick related activity. I couldn’t ignore the links between what was happening inside my mind and outside in my own environment. So, at the risk of looking like a fool – something I excel at – I decided Phil had some kind of message that he wanted to get through. So let’s just go ahead and take the next step and try to find a medium – which for some people is perhaps a contradiction in terms. But, since I knew Alan Vaughn who wrote the book Dream Telepathy, I contacted him and set up meetings with a number of different mediums and eventually I got some decent evidential data. 

[Note: Now, I won’t attempt to cover this vast amount of “evidential date” here. That is Phase 3 and takes up nearly half of the book. That’s for you to fully explore, if interested, in Philip K. Dick: The Dream Connection. What I can say is that just as Scott believes Phil was completely sane and rational, I found Scott to be quite convincing, incredibly honest and sincere— both in the book and during this interview — discussing his experiences with mediums and attemps to contact Phil on the other side. And Scott wondered aloud about why so many people had similar experiences.] 

APEL: You know, I thought it was very interesting that after Phil died, others wrote about Phil making contacts... [Michael] Bishop, [Richard] Lupoff...was this same psychosis affecting them? Maybe because he WAS making a big splash in a psychic pond and ripples were going out to his friends. I just happened to be close enough to get doused. Others were far enough away to just see the ripples.

JM: And now looking back on it, what do you think the message was?

APEL: He wanted his friends to know he was OK, that he loved them and here’s some evidence that there is life after death. In some sense the whole story, in true Phil Dick fashion, transcended even the idea of interesting experiences, he wanted to come back and prove his philosophy, the stuff he spent his adult life writing about. In some sense, it’s like a footnote to say: “By the way, I’m back and I was right.”

[Note: I first read TDC in 1997 while engaged in my own series of Dickian synchronicities—“meaningful coincidences” as Scott described them. It was truly weird since I was working on a concept for my own novel which deals with Phil making contact from the hereafter [A Kindred Spirit]. When I started writing it, I had no idea so many others had tackled the topic of Phil “coming back.” Of course, I was just learning how pervasive the Phil factor is. TDC includes an essay by Ray Nelson, co-author with PKD on The Ganymede Takeover, in which Phil visits him in the dream state urging him to write a sequel to The Man in the High Castle, based on notes they once developed in a writer’s group. Just good essay material? Nelson later confirmed to Scott that he started working on the sequel because the experience with Phil was “so real.” I’ve since learned that Paul Williams, former literary executor for Phil’s estate and founder of the PKD Society (and rock historian extraordinaire), experienced untold synchronicities, at the least, and at times actual feelings of contact with Phil, during the years he spent on the PKD project. I mentioned some of this to Scott during our conversation.]

APEL: Now, what you’re saying about you and Paul Williams and other people, that’s what I’m talking about. Synchronicity is not unusual among writers or among creative people. It’s actually quite common in the creative fields. What IS unusual is that so many people who knew Phil, or were fans of Phil, have these experiences clustered around Phil Dick material. Most writers, when they experience synchronicity, think it’s a sign that they’re on the right track, discovering meaning somehow and doing what they should be doing. But, what interests me is how many people, who are fans of Phil, have experiences like this related directly to Phil Dick material. It’s another step beyond just synchronicity. It’s the added Phildickian element and the real sense that life is becoming like a Phil Dick novel. You know, am I dealing with Palmer Eldritch? In Phil’s afterlife is he a benign interfering god or like Palmer Eldritch who is going to haunt me for the rest of my friggin’ life?

[Note: Scott says the experiences stopped once he published the book in 1987 and he felt closure to that ten-year period of his life. He went on to other projects, writing nearly 600 video and movie reviews for the San Jose Mercury News, writing plays and even appearing in some Killer B movies he became notorious for reviewing. So, why re-visit the book and the strange PKD experiences now?]

APEL: A whole new generation of readers are discovering Phil on their own or thorough the Internet. The first time I published the book it was truly a labor of love, my tribute to the man—Philip K. Dick and I didn’t care if I made a dime of profit. This time my motives are a bit more mercenary—I would like to make some money.

I’ve started up this new web-based independent small press publishing business. In addition to the Phil Dick book, I’m offering Chaos and Beyond, an anthology of Robert Anton Wilson material, my own Killer B’s video guide, and a real Phildickian science fiction comic novel called MFU, which I think is one of the funniest damn things I have ever read. And, finally, I do intend to publish that collection of interviews with the science fiction authors. There is so much brilliant material from the writers, material that should not be lost or forgotten. So, for now, I just hope to get my small press off the ground and make a success of it.

[This interview was originally written in 1999 for Greg Lee’s ‘zine Radio Free PKD. Scott Apel did republish TDC as a trade paperback in July of 1999.]

Daisy Eris Campbell on Cosmic Trigger, the Play

Daisy Eris Campbell with the cast of the Cosmic Trigger play  (Jonathan Greet photo, taken from http://cosmictriggerplay.com/)

By Daisy Eris Campbell, special to RAWIllumination.net.

[Welcome to week 27 of the RAWIllumination Cosmic Trigger Reading Group. This week we have a special post by Daisy Eric Campbell, creator of Cosmic Trigger: The Play. Read on for much humor and illumination about her very special relationship with Cosmic Trigger (the book), her father Ken Campbell (who staged the massive 18 hour Illuminatus play in London on November 23, 1976), and Carl Gustav Jung. Much more than that, however. Enjoy. -- Charles Faris]

I want to take you back to a moment I experienced about eight years ago.

Snapshot of Ken Campbell by Richard Adams (Creative Commons photo)

It's a few weeks after my father, Ken Campbell's, sudden and untimely death.

I'm standing on the corner of two cobbled streets in Liverpool in the rain.

Carl Jung

And I'm looking at a bust of CG Jung.

And that's kind of weird because right at that moment I'm half way through an essay about Carl Jung for a master's degree I'm doing.

But that's not why I'm there.

Stood next to me is Prunella Gee, Chris Langham and a guy called Peter O'Halligan. We're all looking up at this bust of Carl Jung.

It's there because Carl Jung had a dream about Liverpool and he wrote about it in his book, Memories, Dreams and Reflections. He said he thought it may be the most important dream he'd ever had. And he realised that in his dream, Liverpool was the Pool of Life.

I'm writing this essay about Jung's ideas of the collective unconscious and synchronicity, a phrase he coined, and now I find myself looking at this bust of his head. And that bust has only been erected because of the tireless campaigning of Peter O'Halligan, who's standing next to me. Because Peter O'Halligan is sure that this very spot is the exact spot that Jung dreamt about.

But just to the side of this bust is another unusual thing, it's a plaque, set into the wall, which commemorates The Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun.

This has also only been erected due to the tireless campaigning of Peter O'Halligan.

Because just over 30 years previously, which is when O'Halligan first found this illustrious Jung-Dream site, he also noticed that the building on the corner of these two streets — just along from where the Beatles first performed — was derelict. And so he adopted it, set up a caff, and called it The Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun.

And the first production to be staged in a room above the caff, was an eighteen hour epic called Illuminatus, directed by my father Ken Campbell, starring (amongst many many others) my mother, Prunella Gee as Eris, Goddess of Chaos and Confusion, and co-adapted with Chris Langham from a novel by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.

And there we all are now, and I say "It's weird because right now I'm in the middle of an essay about Jung", then I realise that, although I'm doing a distance-learning masters degree, I am actually studying at John Moores University, based in Liverpool.

And Peter O' Halligan tells me that John Moores knew my dad's dad, my grandfather, who I never met, they were both from just outside Liverpool, and John Moores offered my grandfather the opportunity to get involved with his new business venture, but my grandfather declined. It was the football pools. Which made John Moores a multi-millionaire, which was how come he'd had enough money to build a whole university, where I was right now studying Carl Gustav Jung.

Prunella Gee in The Wilby Conspiracy

And my head was starting to spin, then my mother, said "and you know you were conceived in that building?".

I said, "What? Surely you were both too were busy staging The Greatest Show on Planet World". And she said, "well it was an eighteen hour production. There were a few dull bits."

So I'm standing on the spot where I was conceived, which was also the site of Jung's most important dream, looking at a bust of Jung, whilst writing an essay about Jung at a university built with money that would have been mine, were it not for my paternal grandfather's lack of business acumen, where my mother played the Goddess of Chaos and Confusion and my father staged an epic which was to change the lives of everyone involved. And Eris is my middle name.

And they say there's nothing to this synchronicity lark?

***

The funny thing was that growing up I knew all about the legends surrounding the production of Illuminatus, but my dad was more than a little cagey about going into too much detail with me.

Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, as depicted in Daisy's play (Oliver Senton, left, and Tom Baker)

So it wasn't until I was in my early twenties, twenty-three to be exact, that I got around to actually reading Illuminatus. And – how can I describe it? It was like being initiated into a magical order that almost everyone I knew was already an initiate of. I suddenly found that I could speak the language of my tribe. I could spot 23s with the best of them, I understood the ancient battle between Discordians (Hail Eris!) and the Illuminati. I understood why you can never trust any government, the true meaning of the eye in the pyramid symbol on every dollar bill, why communication is only possibly between equals, and why you should never whistle while you're pissing. I began to see connections, and synchronicities everywhere. Life became too meaningful. And I began to understand the foolishness of giving your only daughter the middle name, Eris. I flipped out, and found myself in a very plush loony bin somewhere in Kent.

The morning after I arrived with rainbow knickers on my head (for important cosmic reasons) the inmates gathered to see what new nutters the night had blown in. They asked why I was there, and I told them “Synchronicity has led me here”. So completely trusting was I in the various signs that I felt I was being given, that I told them the answer to why I was there would be in that magazine — and I pointed to a magazine one girl was clutching, Soap Opera Magazine. I said I would open it at a random page, and there would be my answer.

So I did. And the huge pink headline read, "Daisy must lose some of her passion."

So that's what Daisy did, and ten years later, I honestly thought I had put a lid on that old crazy-maker, Eris.

Now the wonderful and possibly worrying thing about Illuminatus, is that almost everyone I know who has read and loved that book, has got a pretty similar story to tell. Some are less extreme. Some more. But tales of bizarre synchronicity are pretty much par for the course, and very often there are tales of some kind of spiritual emergency, as Stanislav Grof would call them, or temporary psychosis, as the rest of the medical establishment would have it.

These experiences are what Robert Anton Wilson, in his book, Cosmic Trigger, refers to as a journey through Chapel Perilous, a dangerous crossing point from which one can only emerge agnostic — or paranoid.

Incidentally it was only after reading Cosmic Trigger, that I understood what my dad was really on about when he used to say, “Now Listen Daisy, Don’t believe in anything — nothing which is the product of the human mind is a fitting subject for your belief — but you can suppose everything - and in fact you should. Supposing as much as poss is mind opening mind widening. Suppose God. Suppose flying saucers. Suppose fairies.

I suppose you could suppose that one of the big religions had got it right – down to the last nut and bolt! But, Daisy. Don't believe it.” Or as Wilson more succinctly puts it, "Convictions cause convicts."

That's the great thing about coming across fellow Wilson fans, is that you can relax, because you know that they're very likely to be agnostic — they'll be open to a bit of supposing. Although you have to be a bit careful, because occasionally they are not agnostic, they’re really really paranoid…

But usually they are what my dad called Yes-and people. When he was hanging out at the Royal Court Theatre with a bunch of new-wave playwrights, he couldn't help noticing what a depressed lot they all were — how any bright ideas were greeted with the phrase, ‘no-but.’ Then for one reason or another he got invited to a science-fiction convention and discovered a whole world of Yes-and people.

And that's what Illuminatus feels like as a novel. It's the ultimate Yes-and! novel. Especially since it was co-written by Wilson and his best mate Bob Shea, while they were both working at Playboy magazine. You can just hear them: "So should the rebels all live on a yellow submarine?" "Yes, and they should be able to talk to Dolphins" "Yes, and that can be achieved by the world's most advanced computer!" "Yes, and they'll go to Atlantis!"

Here’s the original policy statement Ken wrote to the British Arts Council when he was creating The Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool:

So I was in this loony bin somewhere in Kent with the rainbow knickers on my head – what I was actually attempting to do was to regulate the flow of cosmic pronoid synchronicities that I was experiencing (you know about pronoia, right? The creeping sensation that everyone everywhere is out to help you). I believe Paranoids favour tinfoil — but I was pronoid, so rainbow knickers seemed more apt. I knew from moment to moment if I was Eris or Daisy as there was always either a flower motif somewhere or an apple — or sometimes just any fruit —but anyway in the words of Hakim Bey, I had become a pirate for all signs and meanings.

I was holding forth one day, and I was telling everyone about my dad's notions about Artist's Choice. It goes thus:

Choice one: you can distract, entertain and deceive about the true state of things and thus help to sustain the status quo

Choice two: you can pose as exposing wrongs, but in fact deceive and therefore help to sustain the status quo.

Choice three: you can expose wrongs and bring about change. Unfortunately this choice is not possible, because if you really knew what was going on – you can be sure they’ve got something on you —

But perhaps there is a fourth choice which might just be possible:

"To pose as exposing wrongs, but in fact deceive, but with a wilful mix of truth and lie, research and fantasy, so inscrutably compounded as to send the status quo hunting for needles that nobody's lost, in haystacks that don't exist, diverting attention from the ensuing release of hitherto imprisoned forces, which will bring about change, but of an unpredictable nature."

And there's a surly young guy stood back from everyone else scowling at me, and he says, "How long have you been stuck up your father's arsehole?"

I look him in the eye, then after a pause I say, "I don't know."

***

So it's fifteen years since I'm in the plush loony bin reading "Daisy must lose some of her passion," and eight years since I'm standing looking at a statue of Jung, and Eris is well stuffed back in her box. Then I get a phone-call from someone to ask for a meeting to discuss the possibility of staging Illuminatus. And I remember my dad's worried face any time anyone mooted that possibility, and I remember the rainbow knickers, and I also remember that I'm meant to be trying to get out of my father’s arsehole. So I decline.

Then that same week I get another phone-call to discuss the possibility of staging Illuminatus. From someone else entirely, who has no idea about the first phone-call. And I think: oh, here we go. Illuminatus-related synchronicities are back - and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to out-run them this time.

But I knew I didn't want to stage Illuminatus again, and I wondered what was the logical next piece in this jigsaw puzzle?

Well, what was the book that Robert Anton Wilson wrote immediately after Illuminatus? It was Cosmic Trigger; a non-fiction book he felt compelled to write about what actually happened to him as a result of writing Illuminatus. And given what had happened to me simply as a result of reading it, you may begin to imagine the kind of strange-ness this book contains.

Then I realized: this book was born as a direct result of Illuminatus — and so was I! This book and I are siblings. It all became clear: I had to do a stage-adaptation of Cosmic Trigger.

Scene from Cosmic Trigger, the Play 

And picking up my father’s thoroughly battered copy of Cosmic Trigger, I was reminded that it is actually dedicated to Ken Campbell and The Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool, and that on page 223 (the same page, you may recall as Jung’s dream of Liverpool), Wilson writes about meeting my dad when he comes to the opening of Illuminatus at the National Theatre and is dared to do a naked cameo in the black mass scene.

So my dad could be a character in it!

KEN (coming out of audience onto stage)

Yeah, alright. That’ll do for now. Go and learn your lines.  I’ve got to talk to this filmmaker chap.

The actors come off stage, talking in English accents and wander off to various perches to look over their scripts or chat quietly.

KEN

Right, I haven’t got long. I’m just slinging on an 18 hour epic with no money. What do you want to know?

FILMMAKER

Well, I suppose – er - how you came to be putting on this production?

KEN

I get this phone call from a Liverpudlian poet chap, Peter Halligan, to say he’s been reading Jung’s book Memories, Dreams and Reflections and on page 223 he – Jung – talks about this dream he’s had about Liverpool being the pool of life. There’s a little fountain and whatnot.

Anyway Jung reckons this is one of his most important dreams. So this poet chap, Halligan, makes it his commission to find the exact spot. So he’s phoning me to say that he’s found it. It’s on the corner of Mathew St, right near the Cavern Club where the Beatles first performed. Anyway the building on the corner of this most holy spot turns out to be derelict, so Halligan claims it. He’s telling me that he's set up a caff in the basement and he wants to know if I’ll come and stick something on for him. He’s called it The Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun.

So I pop along to Compendium bookshop to scout out some possible ideas for this show, and I pick up a few fairly interesting looking bits and pieces, and then I come across this book and on the cover is a Yellow Submarine.

So I decide to test it. I thought: Jung’s dream was on page 223 of Memories, Dreams and Reflections so I’ll turn to page 223 of this Submarine book and if interesting, I’ll stick on an adaptation of that. So I turn to page 223 and – I’ll read it to you.

John! John get the cloth out of your ears – grab that copy there will you?

Right, read out the bit from page 223.

JOHN

Where is it, oh yeah. It's a quote from Robert Putney Drake: "Do you know what Jung-

The FILMMAKER looks up surprised.

that old Chinese sage disguised as a psychiatrist, answered? “You are diving, but she is sinking”.

KEN

Yeah. That stopped me in my tracks. So I phone back Peter Halligan and say “Yeah Peter I’ve got the show for you – It’s called Illuminatus."

So here we all are in a derelict cinema in Liverpool. First thing the company had to do was fit the toilets.

The FILMMAKER cuts.

FILMMAKER

That’s great, Ken.
KEN

So how did you come to be making a film about us in your cardigan?

FILMMAKER (flustered)

Well urm. I heard about it from a friend back in London.

KEN

Who?

FILMMAKER

Urm Brian Gilbert

KEN

Oh that burk. Yes?

FILMMAKER

Yes, and well I put in an application to the arts council and got the go ahead.

The cast winces as the filmmaker says this

KEN

You got funding from the arts council?
FILMMAKER

Yes.

KEN

They won’t fund the greatest show on Planet World, but they’ll fund some prick who’s heard about it from his burky mate in a pub?

The filmmaker is laughing along nervously

NEIL CUNNINGHAM (to himself, covering his eyes)

Oh God, don't laugh you stupid fucker.
KEN

You think I’m joking? You know what funded is don’t you? Fun Dead. You and your arts council funded camera are sucking the fun out of the true geniuses. Fun Dead. A conspiracy of mediocrity.  Go on you can fuck off and tell that Brian burk not to send any more pillocks up to Liverpool . Go on, fuck off out of here.

The filmmaker realises he’s deadly serious and bundles his stuff and himself out of there.

FILMMAKER (safe distance)

Fine, Ken. You carry on up your own arsehole.

KEN

Yes, I fucking well will. And I’ll find the whole secret of the Great Cosmic Joke up there, right up inside my arsehole - and you can beg for Arts Council funding to come in and have a look…

FILMMAKER exits

So I got to work.

But then I was floundering about with the first draft and wondering if the whole thing was a bit daft and a bit cosmic for modern sophisticates, and if there was really an audience for Robert Anton Wilson-related theatre out there anymore, when as synchronicity would have it I was introduced by my own mother, to the wonderful John Higgs, whom she had met incidentally because John was procuring a picture of her as Eris, and he said “yes! There is an audience and I know where to find them!”

Prunella Gee as Eris 

It's a very particular challenge, trying to write a drama about Yes-and people, because mostly they all agree! So I'm pioneering the new Yes-and narrative structure, where the drama is to be found in what happens when you keep saying yes-and long after all the neophobes have dropped away with their no-buts.

So anyway we’re going back nearly three years now, and the first draft is written, the second draft is underway. And my attention turned to how I might fund the bugger, especially given my father's strong views on Arts Council Funding.

I was pondering this, when my partner said, "Isn't the clue of how to fund it contained within the last scene?

WILSON'S HOME - 2007. He is an old man now.

A letter plops through a letter box. He slowly maneuvers himself to pick it up.

WILSON

In 1975 I lost the ability to know when something was about to come through the door. It wasn’t all that useful a skill anyway. It’s a cheque for $23. How funny.

Another letter plops through the letterbox. He opens it.

It’s another cheque for $23.

And another.

And another.  OK there’s something fishy going on. Time to consult the oracle.

He reaches for his laptop.

Type in Robert Anton Wilson 23 dollars.
And…magick.

(reading)

Ok guys, time to support cosmic thinking patriarch Robert Anton Wilson, whose infirmity and depleted finances have put him in the precarious position of not being able to meet next month's rent or his medical costs. His last wish is to die in his home, but he cannot afford this option. 

Robert Anton Wilson will one day be remembered alongside such literary philosophers as Aldous Huxley and James Joyce. (I don't know about that.)

 But right now, Bob is a human being in a rather painful flesh-suit, who needs our help. I refuse for the history books to say he died alone and destitute, for I want future generations to know we appreciated Robert Anton Wilson while he was alive.

If Bob Wilson changed your life, send him $23 dollars now.

Another envelope plops in, followed immediately by another, and another, they are clogging in the letter box; then the whole door starts to strain - eventually bursting open - and an avalanche of envelopes pours into the room.

Bob, all white long beard and twinkly eyes, stares in delighted disbelief.

After the night of October 23rd 2013, when I first told this tale, £23s began to roll in, and we went on to raise over £23,000. Enough to stage the whole four-hour epic seven times in Liverpool and London in 2014, and to create The Find the Others Festival of Robert Anton Wilson and his ideas. (The name was inspired by Timothy Leary’s answer to an earnest seeker: “What do you do after you’ve turned on, tuned in and dropped out?” Dr Leary: “Find the Others”.

Since then the Others have gathered from all over the country and beyond. Festival 23 this summer was a celebration of all things RAW and Discordian. Fanzines, books, magazines are flying off the press as a direct result of RAW’s inspiration. Giant puppets of Burroughs, Watts and Leary stalk the land; Discordian cabarets, rituals, parties and talks are popping up all over the place.

Daisy Eris Campbell 

And for the ten-year anniversary of Bob’s death next year in 2017, we plan to pilgrimage to Santa Cruz where the mayor declared 23rd July, Robert Anton Wilson Day.

What we are proposing is this:

In the next couple of weeks we launch a website — ForTheLoveOfBob.net — the premise of which is simple, yet heroic: It is a list of every single thing the production will need to go ahead, with a space for someone to pledge their name next to each thing.

By this approach, we believe we'll bring more than the show – we believe we’ll bring the magick. Asks will range from performers/musicians to set-builders, anecdote providers, flyer-deliverers, a sofa to put someone up, food bringers, folk with a spare wig, or a talent for make-up or lighting etc etc...

We’ll be the Grit if you’ll be the Pearl. Yes, And! We can do this: For the love of Bob.

***

Bust of Carl Jung with rainbow knickers, from The Daily Grail. 

After the first night of Cosmic Trigger in Liverpool, a group of us pilgrimaged to the bust of Jung, and some blokes who really should have known better hoisted me up to place a pair of ceremonial rainbow knickers upon his head. And I cried out, “May our minds be blown – but just right!”

And as I looked up at the be-knickered bust of Carl Gustav, I realized why the dream of Liverpool was so important: It was the moment he realized he was finally out of Freud’s arsehole.

[Next week we are back on track with the final chapter of Cosmic Trigger, Via Dolorosa (235). As always, comment frequently, and with good humor. —Charles Faris.]

'The Secret Life of Plants'

PQ writes about The Secret Life of Plants, a work that he first heard about while reading RAW's Cosmic Trigger. Surprisingly, the documentary based upon the book turned out to have another RAW connection: "The other important thing I want to point out is a funny synchronicity---as I mentioned, I'd originally heard about The Secret Life of Plants through a passing mention in Robert Anton Wilson's synchronicity-filled book Cosmic Trigger. Another memorable part of that book is RAW's discussion of the Dogon tribe in Africa that possesses an uncanny knowledge of the solar system, the universe, and especially the star Sirius. Long before scientific instruments could even prove it, this isolated primitive tribe knew that Sirius had another star orbiting around it. Not only that, they knew this second star takes exactly 50 years to make a full cycle."

I have been meaning to read more about the Dogon and Sirius and haven't gotten around to it. Real soon now, as the fans say.

Synchronicity artwork

 

The artwork, above, is “The Buzz” by creationtrip. It was posted on X by Lucid Dreams, with this quote from Illuminatus! by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson: “Synchronicity is as universal as gravity. When you start looking you find it everywhere.”

Coincidance: Reading schedule and introductory remarks

When I recently posted a proposed reading schedule for the online discussion of Coincidance, which officially begins next week, the main feedback I got was that 10 weeks was too fast. So here is a new schedule which spreads the discussion out over 12 weeks, with about 21 pages a week. (Some weeks will be a few more pages, some a few less; I want to discuss the essays as a whole, not bits of them. So rather than listing page numbers I'll just name the pieces in the book for that week.)

I also thought I'd give a little background  on the book.

Coincidance: A Head Test was published in 1988, when Robert Anton Wilson turned 56. The publication date falls at the end of his second period, which ends with the publication of Nature's God in 1988. (His work seems to fall within three broad periods; the middle period is when he published his novels and the third and last period was devoted solely to nonfiction.) However, like other later collections such as Email to the Universe, Coincidance is a collection which draws pieces from a long span of years from Wilson's career. Also in 1988, Wilson published Neuropolitique (with Timothy Leary and George Koopman, a revision of Neuropolitics, and  Sex, Drugs & Magick: A Journey Beyond Limits (revision of the earlier book). Quantum Psychology, the topics of an earlier online discussion, came out in 1990.

(Note: In the comments, Eric Wagner objects that Sex, Drugs and Magick came out in the 1990s; I was relying on the bibliography at the Wikipedia article and don't have anything handy I can double check. Eric also pointed out that RAW publishes two screenplays in his reputed third period, so I have changed the word "fiction" in the above paragraph to "novels.")

While Coincidance covers a wide range of topics, the book has four long pieces about James Joyce's writing and begins and ends with a Joyce article.

Wilson's publisher, New Falcon, says that Coincidance was one of Wilson's favorite books.

The book illustrates New Falcon's strength and weakness as a publisher. One the one hand, New Falcon put the book out no doubt exactly as Wilson wrote it and has faithfully kept it in print. On the other hand, there are few signs of editing or marketing, and New Falcon has failed to make it available as an ebook.

Incidentally, I was inspired to begin this blog after I read Coincidance for the first time.

The online discussion begins Sept. 16 with Week One.

Coincidance discussion schedule:

Week One: "Fore-Words," "Synchronicity and Isomorphism in Finnegans Wake." (Sept. 16).

Week Two: "Werewolf Bridge," "The Motherfucker Mystique." (Sept. 23).

Week Three: "Mammary Metaphysics," "Jazz Haiku." (Sept. 30).

Week Four: "How to Read/How to Think," "How to Read/How to Think Afterwords," "Shrapnel," "Why Do You Live in Ireland, Dr. Wilson?" "The Poet as Defense Early Warning Radar System." (Oct. 7)

Week Five: "Death and Absence in Joyce." (Oct. 14).

Week Six: "Introduction to Three Articles from THE REALIST," "The Doctor With the Frightened Eyes," "Thirteen Choruses for the Divine Marquis." (Oct. 21),

Week Seven: "The Married Catholic Priests Convention," "Self-Reflexive Surrealists Haiku," "The Godfathers and the Goddess." (Oct. 28)

Week Eight: "The Physics of Synchronicity," "Semper as Oxhousehumper," (Nov. 4).

Week Nine: "Interview with Sean MacBride." (Nov. 11).

Week Ten: "Religion for the Hell of It," "Comix and Cut-Ups." (Nov. 18).

Week Eleven: "No Waters in Cherry Valley by the Testicles," "Shrapnel." (Nov. 25).

Week Twelve: "The Hidden Variables." (Dec. 2).