GoingFurther

GEORGE: Got a couple weeks? Neal was one of the most advanced thinkers. He was aware of a lot of this stuff that we all take for granted, LONG before everybody else. And talked about it, incessantly. REALLY incessantly. For instance, the term "Karma" which is very much just a part of our everyday language, was part of his consciousness, and the way he spoke about it, we didn't know what he was talking about. It was just something that he understood and knew to be the way things worked.

He was so advanced, in so many ways. Intellectually, and philosophically, and spiritually.

Everybody around him knew he was really special, but nobody really understood him.

LINDA: He's the first one that ever turned me on. EVER. I just remember him as a sweetie. I remember him sitting upfront, on the bus, on an upturned apple crate, and sitting beside him, watching the road go by, and he got a joint, and passed it to me, and it's like Ooof... BOOM, BOOM.

Oh, I enjoyed the trip after that. I enjoyed it BEFORE that. But I loved Neal.

He was a trip.

GEORGE: He told me one time, he was bemused by the fact that everybody idolized him. And trying to explain that bemusement, he said "I'm just a simple telepath!"

LINDA: Oh, he was SO cool. Just so cool. Unique.

GEORGE: He was beyond cool.

LINDA: There will never be another Cassady. EVER.

GEORGE: He'll probably reincarnate again. He's probably not finished yet.

LINDA: I hope so. He was good. He was witty, wasn't he? And he never stopped talking, evereverever! Even when he was asleep, his hands were busy! He was just moving, even in his sleep. I remember that. I liked that.

GEORGE: He was the most high-energy person that any of us ever saw.

Karma was a term that wasn't even part of our language in 1960. When somebody mentioned the word "Karma," I would not have known what they meant, and most of my friends would have felt the same way. It's a Sanskrit word, probably, and it has to do - a law of cause and effect. Edgar Cayce explained it very well, in his visionary explanations of it.

He said "It's a law. It's a law of cause and effect, having to do with spirituality. What you do, determines what happens to you."

It can be - there was a book written about Cassady called GRACE BEATS KARMA- and Cayce spoke of that saying "You could overcome your Karma through acts of grace."

We didn't even know what Karma was! But Cassady was talking about it. And it was a while before I knew what he meant.

We were all stuck in old world philosophical belief systems that had no room for those kind of ideas, which are actually hard reality. Most of us still believed what we were told, by people who didn't know.

Much like now, hahaa!

GEORGE: Well, first of all, it probably doesn't make sense.

But things don't have to make sense.

That's something people need to understand.

At the time, when we started associating with the Angels, we had just been busted for some pot. Another one of those stupid things they still seem to do. And so there was a kind of fellowship - we were fellow criminals, in a way. They were seen as being a criminal gang, which in some senses, I suppose they were, but they were just people, they were outlaws, we were outlaws in a different way, but there was a kind of bond in that we were outlaws.

One of the things I remember was when the Hell's Angels came out to La Jonda, to Kesey's house, where he lived. And they came and we had a big weekend-long party, with a whole bunch of 'em from the Frisco group, and they told Kesey "We've never been invited ANYWHERE before."

Nobody wanted the Angels to come. But then Kesey invited them. And we became friends with some of them. They were just people like anybody else. They didn't have respect for dumb laws. Sometimes they were violent. But they were just people.

And there was a way in which we could relate to them, and they could relate to us.

I could write a book-length thing about it. There's that much there.

Because there's so much there.

GEORGE: Oh god, we don't have that much time.

LINDA: I got one quick one. Ken said that one time, at the farm, he had some guests, and they were staying at the farm, and that was alright with him and his wife, Faith. So one night they invited this couple to dinner, and Ken said that was good, except for they kept coming back, and back, and back, having dinner every day, and every day. So one day, after dinner, Ken put the plates down on the floor, and he had Happy - I think it was either Happy or Maggie, one of the dogs, lick the plates clean, and Ken put the plates back in the cupboard, and he said 'Those people never came back for dinner ever again."

GEORGE: I had forgotten that story! I remember it now!

LINDA: He said it was open cupboards!

GEORGE: I remember the cupboards, yeah! They were just a shelf.

LINDA: And those people never came back after that. i thought it was great. I tell that story to every-body.

GEORGE: That tops just about anything else I can think of.

LINDA: It's so witty, and so non-personal.

GEORGE: And I'm sure that after the people left, he took the plates and ran 'em through the dishwasher.

LINDA: Absolutely.

GEORGE: Actually, just having the dogs lick the plates clean was probably as good as the dishwasher.

COLBY: They were friends, we have some footage of them playing poker together on the bus in vegas. Thompson wasn't huge on acid tho.

COLBY: Personally I feel like its like a portal back to childhood, less filters, everything is more colorful, beautiful and just generally more pleasant. You don't actually hullicinate much, I explain the visuals as more like the finger prints of the Universe, where you can percieve the energy of objects. Also expect some auditory hullicinations, music will feel more impactful etc.