It happened in a deprivation tank at a truck stop just outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. I’d driven up from Tijuana where I had helped start an Ibogaine clinic, treating drug addicts and spiritual seekers alike. I was taking the scenic route to NYC to meet with some investors in my ‘78 Ford Ranger.
I was tired and hadn’t been sleeping. I’d been fighting forest spirits for the last 8 days. We’d gotten into some kinda fight in Washington in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. It was raining at the bottom of Independence Pass and snowing by the time I was at the top. So it was a bit slick coming down off the mountain and I had to white knuckle it the whole way. As a result I decided to stop at the bottom and calm my jangling nerves with a roaring campfire and some whiskey. I gathered up some wood and wouldn’t ya know it, pissed off some pine tree spirits in the process. Their spirit had been antagonizing me ever since. I’d almost gotten my ass kicked at a Denny’s in Missoula when some hunters mistook my arguing with the spirits, as me cussing at them. I explained and luckily one of them was part Cheyenne and his grandfather was a medicine man. The others agreed that certain pine tree’s are just plain evil. We actually got along pretty well. They asked if I wanted to join them on their hunt. They had a license to take down a rouge male Grizzly in the area. They where gonna do it with bow and arrow to honor its spirit. It sounded honorable but I didn’t feel like getting mauled by a 1,000 pound animal so I finished my Moons Over My Hammy and split.
It took several minutes to relax in the deprivation tank, but once I did, everything let go. I wept and felt myself shudder and the jagged weight of ego dissolve. The tree spirits became a chorus of noise joining into the great cosmic song that I found myself floating through. The music was a torrent of different colors and if you focused in on one it became a singular song. Some of it sounded like The Beatles and Beach Boys. Only I’d never heard any of it before. The only one I really remember is this great Leonard Cohen song, I didn’t think existed. Once the internet came along I searched for the song but the best I can tell it doesn’t exist in recorded form, maybe Leonard isn’t even aware of it yet.
So anywho, though the music and visions tempted to enrapture me I knew from my training to let go. I floated higher into the sun that became the faces of gurus; Ramana Maharshi, Col Saunders, Nissagardatta and others I didn’t recognize, but I let them go too and everything fell away except the rolling black awareness of boundless space. Consciousness in it’s singularity. There was and is no death and no birth. Nothing but this. It was a profound experience and when I stepped from the float tank 45 minutes later, my fear of death had disappeared. It no longer existed.
I’m getting ahead of myself because I’m sure you just want to hear the Leonard Cohen song… maybe someday he’ll record it. If you see him you can give him the words.
And Judy Garlands ready
In the back seat with a machete
she’s got those earrings on
said she was here before us
deep within the forest
says she’s 10 feet tall
and Frankensteins monster never had a name
but the little girl danced with him still
and he threw her in the river all the same
right in there with those pretty daffodils
and its funny how we sleep
through 6 hundred feet
of history, before and after us
and its funny how you keep
singing the monster to sleep
there’s a name in here somewhere
and I don’t know how.
