While sort of drifting in NorthCal I got glued to Mill Valley and after being living the entire autumn and winter up in the house where Milton and I shared with Bhagavan Das, I decided it was time to go back to Helga.
I mean physically because she was in my mind all the time. Bhagavan Das kept saying Shiva and chanting as Ahhhhh Ahhhhh, OMMM OOOMMMM and I was saying to myself Helga, my mantra so I had to find a job to buy the ticket back to Brazil and with hardworking, I would make extra cash to re-start normal life down under the Equator. Would I be able to engage in an ordinary world again? Yes, I would but not working as System Analyst anymore, it got to be Advertising. Can you imagine that, is it normal to what degree?
The job I found was as to be a driver at the Room Service. I had basically to check-in as to be available, then go out to stand at a strategic point in a street to hear the order over the phone, to pick it up at a restaurant and deliver it to the customer´s door, sometimes the bedroom. For the strategic point, I considered a place nearby a public pay phone, no cell phone era, no social media either, of course, no Internet, period. And I was so eager to reach the budget goal that I asked the manager to give me three orders at once and I promised to him to deliver them within one hour. I challenged myself succeeding well and he nicknamed me "the bullet man". It was a night shift for during the day I was working at The Limited Store right at Union Square in San Francisco as a stock person and soon I was promoted to cleaning man and display organizer, three positions embodied in one man show. Yes, the girls at the store used to dress me up as a girl with makeup and everything and asked me to arrange the display while the manager who used to pick on me asked me to sweep the storefront walk side. Sure we all had a ball, in my case to earn US$10,00 an hour.
I tell this here to contextualize how inadequade was to live in Mill Valley with Bhagavan Das. Inadequate in the sense that life in the house was the opposite of the business life I decided to engage on to make cash to go back home. Milton had been gone already to join Rajneesh at his Center known as Rajneeshpuram, in Oregon, Colorado. At the house life was like this: no compliance to the ordinary business time, we could go through the entire night and day reading, meditating, making love, writing, drinking, pretending to eat because there was no food in the house except in special occasions, I tell later. The meditation and making love jobs were entirely handled by Bhagavan Das who used to host young girls and ladies in his bedroom and the symphony I could hear from the living room in front of the fireplace, my favorite spot, was the females screaming and Bhagavan Das laughs. I kept the other demands of reading and writing and drinking. Again, drinking I mean tea, made out of the leaves from the orchard around the house. Actually, I never knew exactly what kind of raw material I had for tea that Bhagavan Das used to bring in, they all tasted cypress, the trees of Muir Woods. For substance in our stomach, we used to make bread out of whole wheat flour and water, a dough similar to a flat Arabic bread burned on a grill. I must note that Milton used to disappear for days, he built himself a pyramid out of scraps of plastic further up on the mountain and stayed there for long periods.
Now, as I promised I was going to tell, occasionally Bhagavan Das or Milton used to announce that we would have a party in the house certain few days ahead. - How? I asked myself the first time I heard, how a party without silverware and a minimum of amenities and supplies to entertain guests? Well, the system was the guests would bring food, drink, lots of drinks and dope, plus the party would be rarely inside the house for everyone used to camp outdoors, under tents, in sleeping bags or out in the open simply. So animals-party of all sorts provided falling in the category of hippie or beatnik, both or anything in between would drink a lot, make love mixing the so-called genders (if nowadays we still use the word), as couples or groups of three or four or five. I heard once and accepted without arguing that it was a Tantra ritual and funny enough to me, I used to watch all that from inside the house and no one never bothered to either invite me in (out) or questioning my detachment. The thing is I believe I did not bother with them all either because I was corrupted by the fact that the leftover of the party, food, and drink, especially, used to last a week and so I could eat something close to normal meals and beverage
Search of another horizon
Eventually, I left the house and rented a room in a house with two vegetarian girls although often I preferred to sleep in my yellow Rabbit VW bought in a junkyard for US$50,00 and finally I was able to buy a ticket back to Brazil to reunite with Helga. Search is always a spiritual experience, one might think is searching something else instead but it will be always a spiritual substance, in the end. I had the chance to meet up and even mingle with figures like Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Ram Das (Richard Alpert) to name few most famous but I was blind to anything that would not point to Helga. Before this deep journey in America and within myself yet in Rio de Janeiro I used to read with fascination, among fiction, authors of real meanings such as Trostky, Bakunin, Alekos Panagoulis, Kafka and not so heavier ones but prominents likewise Latin Americans and they all seemed unreachable or I actually never thouhgt to meet them, it was their ideas provoking quotes inside out to me, I used to disagree with them, agree with certain restriction, admire their boldness but never passed through my mind I could discuss face to face with one of them. Then in California, I had the chance to do this and simply did not ring the bell for me.
Milton used to tell me about Bhagavan Das that he inspired Ram Das to write Be Here Now, that he traveled with Allen Ginsberg from Greece to India, that Bhagavan Das was a Guru and that Timothy Leary was his friend and was around and doing this and that and many other goings about, but nothing that appealed to me in the sense that would instigate some sort of impulse to peer about. Why? I tell why in Alvidia, Yet Another Horizon and many episodes of that long passage in American I did not write in the book because it would deviate from the core of my search that was to make my dream to come true. Fact: Bhagavan Das, AKA Kermit Michael Riggs from Laguna Beach, California, who was born May 17, 1945, is considered by many historians and others as being single handedly responsible for one of the era's most crucial happenstances, the introduction of HIS guru, Neem Karoli Baba, to Ram Dass, AKA Dr. Richard Alpert in India, circa 1967. In turn, upon Alpert's return to the U.S., he wrote the ultimate in life style changing books, Be Here Now (1971).
Episodes like the above kept piling up such as I almost, almost met Jerry Garcia, leader of the Grateful Dead in his own house. I had this order to deliver, a couple of pizzas, so I grabbed the address and heard without paying much attention to the joke someone threw on me, that I should be careful with the lady. In front of a huge iron gate, I pushed the bell button and heard a child´s voice saying come on in we are waiting for you Mr. Delivery. By the door, a girl of around maximum 7 years old smiled to me while I saw an adult coming from the backyard into the house and it was a lady and she was naked, completely naked. - Come on in! The lady shouted simultaneously with the smiley girl again and I went straight to the kitchen and both of them followed me. I was paid, got a good tip and went back to mind my own (all dressed) business. Days later the Room Service dispatcher said the lady in San Rafael want me precisely to deliver the order so I did and again she was naked and it was the same smiley princess who welcomed me in, and I did that several times including one when the lady invited me to join them for pizza and since I had made some sort of connection with the smiley girl I accepted, had a slice and it was all, soon I would be flying back to Brazil. And only a bit later someone told me the lady was the ex-wife of Jerry Garcia.
I could go on with similar encounters like with George Lucas, not exactly with him but while dropping a huge order in his Skywalker Ranch I had to spread the food on a table while could hear him discussing with his team nearly touch him while going around the table.
So much for fantasy, my true and real-world searching was yet another horizon...
Mystic Arts World, a 1960s Laguna Beach emporium, bookstore, and gallery, burnt to the ground in 1970, was not much more than a front for the operations of an outfit that called themselves The Brotherhood of Eternal Love. an invention business by Timothy Leary who started to develop LSD with the help of few peers from Harvard including Richard Alpert before he became Ram Das, and even with the help of CIA, before Tim was arrested (eventually he scaped prision). The Brotherhood dealt heavily in the movement and sale of 1960s counter culture indulgents such as marijuana, psychedelic mushrooms, and LSD --- reportedly with upwards of $200 million in sales in the late 60s.
Funny enough I found out that in April 1st of a certain year back in the lat 60 early 70´s no more no less than John Lennon bought a book authored by Timothy Leary and Ram Das wile this later one still playing as Dr. Richard Alpert as high rank Harvard peer. So by an umbearable rule of thumb (weird silogism per say) if Timothy Leary inspired John Lennon to write the song "Come Together" later first track of and my friend room mate Bhagavan Das inpired Tim Leary, and Ram Das, to change the world, I then was pretty close to heaven, I mean with so much stars flying by humble sphere...
And I quote John to David Sheff, who also interviwed Bhagavan Das and Tim: "The thing was created in the studio. It's gobbledygook; "Come Together" was an expression that Leary had come up with for his attempt at being president or whatever he wanted to be, and he asked me to write a campaign song. I tried and tried, but I couldn't come up with one. But I came up with this, "Come Together," which would've been no good to him—you couldn't have a campaign song like that, right?"
Timothy Leary and his family at the State University of New York circa 1969 during one of his lecture tours
In 1980, "Abbey Road" became the first Beatles record to sell more than 10 million copies. "Come Together" is the first—and, some might say, best—song on it.
