Free The Stoned Apocalypse by Marco Vassi

quietly. I hitched to the campus, finding that a freer way of travel than driving, and loosened up with a light rap with the cats who were driving. On campus, I went to the Lounge, and spent an hour moving chairs and picking trash up off the floor. This was the necessary self-humbling that the religious cookbooks recommend for any holy venture.
    I went out onto the grounds and sat under a tree, smoking three joints, and watching the evening star emerge from the growing dusk. I made peace with the universe, switched my consciousness onto No-Mind, and prepared to begin an adventure the parameters of which were totally unknown to me. At least, consciously. As always, the twin threads of sexuality and mysticism wove their fantastic pattern through all my actions, but the final result of that mix wasn’t to be seen until four weeks later.
    A hundred and ten people showed up. All young, all beautiful, all stoned. When the class began, I sat crosslegged on the floor, and watched all those eyes looking at me, waiting, expecting. All of my preparation steadied me, and I gazed slowly over the crowd which I had to transform into a single organism before three hours. Countless thoughts tumbled through my mind, so quickly and profusely that I couldn’t even check them as they passed. I merely watched and let them register.
    “What do they want?” I wondered. “Here are a bunch of kids who are healthy, pretty, and living in the most beautiful city of the richest nation on earth. They have access to some of the earth’s most wondrous offerings. Their government is becoming militarily fascistic and their heads are being wooed by psychedelics. Their parents and teachers are wooden automatons for the most part. Why aren’t they somewhere else, fucking or turning on or blowing up banks? What do they hope to get here, in this public place, from this stranger from New York?”
    I checked my catalogue of basics: food, shelter, clothing, recognition, meditation, orgasms, truth, and love. The first three were out of my domain. So I went to the other five. Each of these people was starved for recognition; not the surface hello we give to one another. But every one of them wanted that deep inner part, that part that is most central, to be seen and known as valuable and beautiful. As far as meditation, it was clear that not a one of them had any notion what that meant. Those who were even at all familiar with the word had probably been introduced through one of the Maharishi-type charlatans who infest the nation with their lotus poses and self-induced visions. Orgasm was always a problem; men could ejaculate and women could clitorally twitch, but few could sail into that totally convulsive realm of pure vegetative release. Truth, of course, being practically nonexistent among the human race, was to be another necessary element, but the transmission of truth can never be articulated in any symbology whatsoever. And as for love, I put that on the shelf of hopefulness. The best thing to do was prime the subconscious with an awareness of the elements and then not consider them again.
    The workshop was successful but unspectacular. I ran through several of the standard routines, including facial relaxation and eye contact, mutual massage and suggestion of imagery. That night I ended with an exercise I had originated, called “the Puppet.” After having everyone go into very deep physical relaxation lying in the corpse pose, I had them imagine a guillotine above them, with the blade dropping down at intervals to chop off, one by one, each of the limbs and head. The sense of imagining one’s body being cut to pieces allows a muscular relaxation not otherwise attained. At least, in most cases. Several of the people that night, when I said, “Now let the blade drop down and slice off your head,” sat bolt upright, blinking in sheer terror. But, to paraphrase Lenin, “You can’t make a revolution without blowing a few minds.”
    Afterward, I put on