(Photo by Dion Ogust)
What else gets you in touch with your subliminal self?
Well, I have been a student of yoga for quite a few years. I sort of got into these protocols back in the ’50s, getting into a lot of different organizations. I was with the Rosicrucians, I studied a little Buddhism – a lot of these practices. So I’m still doing that.
As a matter of fact, I’ve been here [in Woodstock] about six months, and a lot of the stuff that was moved over here from Germantown…I’m coming across a lot of the books I used to use back in the ’50s, and Eureka! I’m finding that I understand more of the things I read back then. I understand them and know how to apply them better. I understand what these scriptures – if I can use that word – mean, and how I can really apply them. In any religion or philosophy, it’s good to intellectually know that, “Oh, there’s a God and there’s an afterlife.” It’s okay to read it and accept it, but it’s another thing to really understand it, and to live it and make it part of your real life. So I intellectually understood all these things, but I didn’t have the knowledge to really use it and make it a part of everyday life.
In many cases, I’m not there yet, but I’ve learned so much more and can understand so much more…It’s really phenomenal. I can practice it; it’s a part of me, rather than knowing intellectually that it’s a great thing if you can do it.
And that’s akin to the letting-go of improvisational music. It sort of gets you in touch with your subliminal self?
Yes, that’s where you want to be: a spirit, what people call a Christ consciousness, a God consciousness, whatever term you use – Buddha, Christ, Krishna – whatever it is you can visualize as the truth. But there is inside of you the real thing that’s going on. We’re just human beings and we have this artist stuff we deal with in life, but inside is where the truth lies; it’s just a matter of being able to access it…
Since I’ve been not playing, it has been a revelation reading these books I had a long time ago. Now when I read them again, I get it: Now I can actually live it, I’ve absorbed it. So within myself I feel like I’ve taken a giant step over the years from then to now, in terms of getting closer to your real self.
The music is an expression of that.
Music is one of the beautiful gifts that we have from that celestial plane…I’m loath to draw a straight line between my music and spirituality, because I would be getting a little too big for my britches. I don’t know that. But what I’m trying to get to when I play and discover something that I’m not consciously thinking about…yes, it’s true, I want to get deeper inside of myself.
There’s a spiritual thing that’s inside of every person, and that’s where I’m trying to get whenever I play music. That’s where the painters, the writers…that’s why guys use drugs or drink a lot: because they want to get to that place. And musicians, of course, are notorious for that; but also painters use drugs and drink a lot, whatever it is, to get deeper inside of themselves.
So music is like a vehicle…and painting…I could go to a museum and come out and I’m out there, my head is in the clouds…Some paintings have that real feeling of unity with the absolute, gives me a unity with my inner consciousness…
