Luminous Numinous

Yogi Bhajan, Yogi Bhajan, everywhere I turn it’s Yogi Bhajan. I’m kicking it with my best friend Alyne Rose–who studied to be a teacher of Kundalini Yoga– and who’s she yammering on and on about? Yogi Bhajan. I’m following up on one of my favorite books of the last few years—Rational Mysticism by John Horgan. I’m on the author’s webpage reading chapters that were left out of the book. And who does he say is the most enlightened person he’s ever met? It’s not Huston Smith or Stan Grof. It sure as hell isn’t Ken Wilber. It’s not even the late, great Terrence McKenna. Nope. Who is the one person that this Columbia educated journalist and former science writer for Time, Newsweek, Scientific American and the New York Times says might have been a fully realized human? You guessed it: Yogi Freakin’ Bhajan!

That’s not all. Oh no, there’s more. So, I’m researching Eugene, Oregon. I’m thinking about moving up there. I’ve applied to a doctoral program at the U of O. I’m reading up on Eugene, learning about the local flavor and culture. It seems that Eugene’s a hotbed for gurus and cult leaders. There was Ken Kesey with his acid tests and band of Merry Pranksters. Then you’ve got “anarcho-primitivist,” John Zirzan editor of Green Anarchy magazine. He lives in Eugene. But you want to guess what guru made the biggest splash in Eugene and still has a huge following there? Well I’ll be damned if it’s not that son of a gun, Yogi Bhajan.

Look, let me be clear. I have no problem with what Yogi Bhajan preaches or teaches. I have no problem with Sikhs (except for the guy  in the Fast Stop Market in Val Verde….and the guy who owns the Subway in Madera Ranchos; they’re assholes). I’m sure Kundalini Yoga is all that it’s cracked up to be and more. And I take no issue with Yogi Bhajan’s personal character in general or with his deeds and actions. I’m sure, on the whole, he was a a solid guy who did a lot of people a lot of good. No, my beef is with his name, “Yogi Bhajan.”  I think it’s manipulative. I think it’s a lingual gimmick to get Americans to trust in him and to buy into what he’s saying. By calling himself Yogi Bhajan, this character was tapping into the heart of what is sacred in America: baseball and cartoons. With this carefully chosen moniker, this Yogi Bhajan cat was neurolinguistically programming us to think that he was talented, witty, and loveable like the great Yogi Berra, arguably the best—and certainly the most quotable–catcher in this history of major league baseball. At the same time, the Yogi Bhajan pseudonym also triggers semantic centers in the brain that force us to consider him as being “smarter than the average” member of his species just like the great Yogi Bear, arguably the smartest Ursidae ever to steal a pick-a-nic basket in Jellystone National Park.

Look, you and I may know that the Yankees are a bunch of cheaters. We know all about the Kansas City pipeline that sent all of the best Athletics players to the Big Apple in ludicrously lopsided trades. We know how this put the Yankees on top financially. We know that, since there is no salary cap in baseball, that the rich, cheating Yankees have, in turn, been able to use their unfairly earned economic advantage to lure all the best players to New York (and force them to stay in New York. See: CC Sebathia) and thus, the Yankees stay on top forever. Sure, we might know this, but the average American loves the damn Yankees. They’re America’s team. Hell Americans are even referred to as Yankees. The Yankees stand for everything America stands for. They stand for capitalism and Wall Street. With those sharp pinstripes stretching vertically upward like Manhattan skyscrapers, the Yankees stand for industry and growth. Like America, they stand not for the dark horse, but for the frontrunner; not for the long shot, but for the sure thing. America stands for conquest and winning at all costs. America will napalm a village full of children if that’s what it takes to win, and the Yankees, too, would drop an atom bomb on Fenway Park, Citi Field, or Dodger Stadium if they thought they could get away with it. The Yankees, with their swastika-like logo stand not for the underdog, but for exterminating the under-dog.

But the common man is uniformed; he loves the Yankees because their winning is predictable. It’s something he can count on in a chaotic world. And because he loves the Yankees, the average Joe loves Yogi Berra. The average man understands the paradoxical poignancy, the non-dual knowing of Yogi Berra’s bromides. Berra uttered such wise witticisms as “It aint over til it’s over” and “baseball is 90 % mental and the other half is physical.” But Berra’s most quick-witted quote was surely “I really didn’t say everything I said.” Yogi was a Yoda amongst Jabas.

By playing on the first two syllables (and the third consonant sound) of Yo-gi B-erra, Yo-gi B-hajan is re-routing our neurocircuits and re-wiring our synapses to think that he, too, is so powerfully and poetically insightful. But that’s only half of his conniving scheme.

You and I may know that Yogi Bear isn’t “real.” But that doesn’t matter to the Kelly Bundys of the world (and there are more of them than you might think.) Yogi Bear exists as part of the noösphere, part of the collective unconscious; Yogi Bear has left an indelible morphogenetic imprint on our minds that, if Nick at Night has anything to say about it, may never be eroded. By utilizing the first two syllables (and the third consonant sound) of Yogi Bear in his alias, Yogi Bhajan is telling us that he is a bear that can outsmart humans! Since Yogi Bhajan is a human, we are only left with the natural conclusion that this is some sort of metaphor. In this analogy , are we not supposed to surmise that bears represent humans and humans therefore represent gods? Pick-a-nic baskets must stand for sacred secrets, don’t you see? Isn’t it clear to you that Yogi Bhajan is trying to tell us that he can steal secrets from the gods just as easily as Yogi Bear stole pick-a-nic baskets from Jellystone’s tourists? Well, even if it’s not clear to you, it’s clear to me.

Well, I’ve had enough, damn it. Why does it always have to be Yogi Bhajan all the freakin’ time? What about me? I want people to think that I am special. I want them to think that I am a mystic master. What does this Yogi Bhajan dude have on me? What’s he got that I don’t? What’s that you say? A clever, manipulative name that triggers people’s mental and emotional fondness for both the Yankees and the Cartoon Network? Well, hold your horses. Two can play at that game!

Henceforth and forever, I shall be known as…Mickey Mhajan! (I had considered going with “The Maha-Mickey-Mantle-Mahesh-Mouse,”  but decided that was a bit much.) That’s right, I, too, can play on the average man’s love for the Yankees and, at the same time,  his love for cartoons!

By borrowing the first two syllables (and the third consonant sound) from Mickey Mantle’s name, I am sending the message that I am a psycho-spiritual winner. I’m saying that I am not only a VIP, but the MVP. My new name says that I am a mystical hard-hitter; the hardest in fact. Not only can I “knock it out of the park,” yogically speaking, I can knock it 734 feet, baby. That’s enough to, tantrically, knock it out of two parks! My new name says that when the guru game is on the line and you need somebody to hit a walk-away homer, that I am the best in the business, bitches.

But I’m also stealing the first two syllables (and the third consonant sound) from that most recognizable of all anthropomorphic rodents—Mickey Mouse, who is more than a cartoon; he’s an icon. By choosing a name that sonically seduces your psyche with the first five sounds and seven letters of Mickey Mouse, I am programming you to think that I, Mickey Mhajan, am humble, happy, high-spirited, and even heroic.

And let’s not forget that Mickey Mouse is mighty mighty; he’s a much mightier mouse than, say, Mighty mouse. Mickey’s dominance resonates with the message I want to send as Mickey Mhajan: power!  As the mascot and trademark of the almost omnipotent Disney Corporation, Mickey Mouse, like Mickey Mhajan, is a force to be reckoned with. For, Disney, like the Yankees, like all great American corporations, and like America herself, isn’t afraid to play dirty in order to dominate. 

This article is playfully and apologetically dedicated to Yogi Bhajan, a truly great man with a great sense of humor; and to John Horgan;  Alyne Rose Keller;  Lyle Williams;  and Sgt. Jay Soccoccio, all of whom have, in different ways, served as my teachers.

To actually learn something useful about the venerable Yogi Bhajan or about Kundalini Yoga, click here.

 

 

 

 

Have I told you about the time I shared the warmth of a fire and the smoke of a good cigar with history’s most esteemed storyteller this side of Shakespeare? Really? You don’t know about my exclusive interview with Spielberg? You haven’t heard about the time Tom (Cruise) and I were acting together in that big budget Extra-Terrestrial Sci-Fi flick Steven was directing? Well, I suppose I ought to tell you. I’d better give it to you straight. I’ll just lash together a few raw facts….throw in a bit of old Negro wisdom.

It all came back to me the other night. I was watching Where the Buffalo Roam. At the very top of Chapter 10, there is a shot of Piru, CA—a pan on a car. Piru’s where it all happened, you see.

Call it heroism, call it destiny, call it trespassing. Steven Spielberg, the grand-daddy shot-caller of them all was in my town, on my territory–my turf. And I was going to get to him, boy. And nothing—no militant lesbian production manager and certainly no grabassing P.A.–was going to keep me out. No, sir.

A lot of filming happens in Piru. Murder She Wrote. The Dukes of Hazzard. Reno 911. And that truck commercial where the guy hitches that restaurant to his pick-up and then tows the whole diner, pretty waitress and all, behind him.

Piru is no stranger to the stars, either. A lot of Hollywood blue-blood has rolled through town—the iconic elite. Burt Lancaster. Judy Garland. Dolly Parton, Sly Stallone, Jennifer Lopez, The Rock, and “The Dude” himself, Jeff Bridges. They’ve all shot pictures in Piru. But this was something else. This was big, boy. Tom Cruise? Steven Spielberg? A remake of War of the Worlds? You don’t get any bigger than that. The Circus had just rolled into town.

“Great Scott! What the fuck are those lights? Are they having the Super Bowl in our backyard?”

“They’re shooting something, Nash Bridges or Carnival maybe,” my girlfriend says.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s a great big fucker from the looks of it. Let’s go sneak a peak.”

I know Piru like the back of my hand. Piru’s about the size of the back of my hand. Piru is located in what is called the Santa Clara River Valley and sometimes the Heritage Valley by those less Catholically or less Mexicanly inclined. The Santa Clara is the last undeveloped river valley in Southern California. Located just south of the Los Padres mountains and just north of the Santa Susannas, the Santa Clara River Valley is a hidden Eden only now becoming sullied by the White Man with his khaki condominiums and his taupe tract homes. In the spring, parts of the valley near Piru, up Sespe Canyon in Fillmore, and down along Grande Canyon back behind Val Verde all light up in a floral display of purple lupine and golden mustard that would make you swear that Jehovah himself, like the white-bearded Jew Spielberg, was a Lakers fan.

But the point in any case is that Piru is a small town. Rural. When you live there, you know your way around. You know how to cut through the abandoned lot with the rotting pomegranate tree down the train tracks and past the machine shop, bypassing several levels of security, right to the center of a major motion picture, should its nucleus happen to be located in downtown, Piru. That’s what we did, my girlfriend and I. We took the short-cut.

Deception was the only way. We wanted at Spielberg bad. It’s not as though we could be forthright with these Hollywood goons. Saying “take me to your leader” wasn’t going to fly. Ingenuity was called for. We played like we were A.D.s when that suited us and played like extras when that seemed more fun.  We kept defecting from our assigned extra groups to new groups, closer to the stars, closer to Cruise and to Spielberg. Finally, we ended up acting in a scene with Cruise, actually being directed by Stevie Spee himself. As we stood around, Cruise smiled and waved at us. It was difficult to tell who was more excited about their close proximity to Tom Cruise:  my girlfriend… or Tom Cruise?

When we started rolling, Cruise was driving this car. Dakota Fanning was in back with the camera operator. Our job was to try and get to the car and to bang on the windows. Well, now, I’m an actor. A trained actor. UCLA. A doctor of thespianism. I played Romeo for the Sacramento Shakespeare Festival, damn you. So get out of my way, boy, I’m comin’ through!

I charged at the van and it didn’t matter how they re-arranged us extras. Even if put in back, I steamrolled my way through like O.J. Simpson in the Rose Bowl or a murder trial. I banged on the window, scaring the crap out of weird little Dakota and even startling the camera guy as well. I growled and snarled and gnashed my teeth and I pounded furiously against the glass. I had a close-up. There could be no doubt. A big sucker, too. A BCU as the boys say. But when the movie aired, I was disappointed. Sure, I was terribly disappointed at the picture’s low level of artistry, but I was even more disappointed that I had been CUT from this bloated piece of cinema trash. The nerve of those evil rat bastards! I was thrown into the terrible dark oubliette of the proverbial cutting room floor. No one would ever see my BCU. Piru as a whole suffered much the same fate. There was hardly a frame of Piru in the whole picture. And those wasteful fuckers spent days blowing shit up and raining on people. All for a few frames that could have been shot on the lot. We, my girlfriend and I, opted not to get rained on. That was to be the final destiny that night for the car-charging, window-pounding extras. They had a great big rain machine and they wanted to give us pneumonia for fifty filthy bucks. We decided to walk home, take showers, smoke some pot. Our labors went unpaid and uncredited.

The next night, the girlfriend had to work. She was a waitress. (I’m certain she was hoping some handsome buck would haul her away in his full-ton pickup).  She couldn’t stalk Steven Spielberg with me this particular night. But she sent over a little buddy who served as her understudy, a fellow from her film classes at the nearby California Institute of the Arts. CalArts is the best animation school in the world, maybe. But the theater and film schools are otherwise overpriced consolation prizes for students who are rejected, like Spielberg in his day, from the acronymic pantheon of SC, UCLA, AFI. The little buddy’s name was Andy. A bright-eyed and star-struck fellow, Andy owned a fancy HD camcorder and had done some film work, including serving as the personal assistant on an NBA commercial for one Kobe Bryant, whose greatness and historical weight Andy seemed to not adequately grasp. But Spielberg’s greatness Andy grasped perfectly. You might say little Andy was obsessed with Stevie Spee. (It was, in fact, Andy who coined this familiar vernacular for his idol.)  It was something like Andy’s Great American Dream to meet Stevie Spee. And for a few bowls of chronic sativa, I was to be Andy’s guide on this historic quest. I’d hand him his hero on the half-shell.

Sufficiently stoned, Andy and I made our way through the abandoned lot with the rotting pomegranate tree, down the train tracks and past the machine shop into the center of the Universal universe. We wore serious expressions. We kept our arms folded. “Yeah, buddy. We’re legit. What the fuck are YOU looking at?” We could have been anybody. We were young—I, 26 maybe, and Andy probably 18 or 19—and that made it worse. You see, all the powerful people in Hollywood are young these days. There are seven-year-olds running studios. Hell, we could have been the representatives of rich Saudi investors for all anyone knew. Or maybe we were government henchman supervising the film to make sure it was action-packed and bloody enough and emotional enough on subjects like sacrifice and heroism to convince at least a few thousand more poor black kids to enlist as Marines. The pentagon controls Hollywood and always has. Like I say, we could have been anybody. Best not to fuck with us. And no one did.

We had heard overheard Spielberg giving a note. There was a hole in Cruise’s windshield after he crashed. The people in charge of smashing the windshield asked Spielberg what he thought of their hole. He said, “A little bigger.” They made it bigger with a hammer and a chisel and looked at him the way a blacksmith looks at the king who’s fond of beheading people when handing him his best attempt at horseshoes. “Yeah, that’s good.” Spielberg said. I turned to Andy and said, “That’s why he makes the big bucks. He knows how big the hole needs to be.”

Andy and I sneaked closer and closer to Spielberg. Finally, we found him alone, standing near the Piru Bridge, near the impromptu movie diner, near where Tom Cruise crashes his car into a phone pole or power pole. Spielberg had drawn first blood. As one of the more evolved species indigenous to Piru, I had ruled the roost. But now Speilberg was king of the hill,  top of the food chain. By coming to town and blaring his damn floodlights into my living room, Spielberg had invaded my world. But now I was about to invade his!

We had Spielberg cornered. It was just us and him. The Young, the Crazy, and the Famous. We approached. Spielberg was smoking a stogie and warming himself near an electric heater. Andy was maybe two and a half feet from Spielberg and I was between them, right next to Spielberg. I could  breathe the insidious secondhand smoke of his cigar. I couldn’t help but breathe his smoke, actually. And the whole metaphorical, archetypal, allegorical nature of the whole thing hit me. How shamanic was this?!?! Here we were breathing in the wafting fumes of a mind altering plant (tobacco) this man was smoking; we were sharing his smoke and his fire, this electrical, artificial fire, as he, the world’s most celebrated storyteller, was taking a breather in the midst of telling another of his epic extra-terrestrial extravaganzas, a film whose budget could have bought you any number of small island nations and banana republics. We were so close we could touch him. I could smell his cologne. Obsession, I thought, by Calvin Klein. This was a close encounter of the third kind. Not just a sighting, but a full-blown interaction.

He turned to us and smiled. I assume that he assumed we must be there for a reason. If I’d wanted to make the headlines, I could have jumped him right there and snapped his neck. He’s a small guy, too. Somewhat wimpy seeming. So much for the security. Universal was paying the fucker a cool hundred million to direct the picture. They could have spent a bit more keeping him safe. Finally, Spielberg turned to me and spoke. He said, “Mr. Heater” and then he pointed at the electric heater that was keeping the three of us warm. It had a brand logo that read, “Mr. Heater.” I smiled back, thinking perhaps that this man was actually some sort of utter imbecile, a complete cretin. Able to read, apparently, but perhaps just barely. “Mr. Heater.” Was that all he had to say for himself? Was this the man who had, at 27 or 30 depending on who you ask, made the world afraid to go in the water? Who knows,  maybe he read my mind or felt my vibes as I was thinking of how easy it would be to do him in on the spot. Maybe he was trying to make small talk so I wouldn’t assassinate him,  and “Mr. Heater” was the best he could muster.

About that time, one of the militant lesbians found us and asked us if we were extras. While I was contemplating an appropriate response, Andy answered in the affirmative. As she began booting us back to where she supposed we were supposed to be, out on the bridge, in the cold air, far from Mr. Heater,  Andy, ever the D.P., was thinking photojournalism. He asked for a picture. Spielberg said no. Then, I, a man of the written word, asked for his autograph. He looked at me squarely. It was a look of disdain, like he was taking in one rotten doozie of a fart and said, “I don’t think so.” He lisped somewhat–a sibilant “s” like you’d hear from a Spaniard or an East Village queen. You don’t catch it when he’s on T.V., but it was there, clear as a hissing snake. Had it been “Mithter Heater?”  Or was it more like  “Mishter Heater?” And was it “I don’t think tho”  or “I don’t think sho?” It was neither. I’m sure of it. The man’s “s” sounds were a rare hybrid between “th” and “sh”  that only he could utter. He has Asperger’s Syndrome, you know. A subtle form of autism. I’m sure it’s irrelevant to his speech impediment, but I thought I’d better mention it.

Spielberg had rejected me, sure. I won’t debate that. But he had spoken to me. I’d asked him a question and he had answered. There was no disputing that much. I asked; he answered. You can call it what you want, but it was an interview in my eyes. Now I could say that I had acted in a Spielberg pic (in a scene with Cruise and Dakota Fanning, no less) and that I had interviewed the autistic auteur. I would say it, too, and often.

As we were ushered away rather briskly, I made a final desperate plea. This bastard had to have a soft-spot. I figured I’d appeal to his sense of artistry. “Sir, is this really how you’re going to to treat the extras…we’re the ones who create the atmosphere!” Spielberg, with his index finger,  motioned me towards him.. and as I leaned in,  he said, “Fuck the atmosphere.”

Fine. You have it your way. Spoil the fun. I fabricated that last small paragraph, I admit it. But the rest is true to the letter. A weird tale to be sure. Aliens. Billionaire Jews with smuggled Cuban stogies. Short, narcissistic Scientologists with smug,  sinister smiles. Little girls with too many adult brains (and too many adult admirers) for their own good. Armies and legions of people committed to making make-believe. And machines pissing man-made rain down on cinema’s untouchables–the extras, a lot whose very name points at their superfluousness. For regular folks, for you and me, the atmosphere rains on us, but Hollywood…Hollywood can rain ON the “atmosphere.”

There are some parts of this account some people can’t believe. I can accept that. They want to believe, sure, but they just can’t. It’s all just too absurd for workaday folk. But that’s not my problem. No, my problem is that it never got weird enough for me.

Do you identify as a mystic (Zen Buddhist, Vedantist Hindu, Gnostic Christian, Kabbalistic Jew, Islamic Sufi)? Does the Perennial Philosophy speak to you?

Are you an advocate for the responsible use of psychedelics to achieve creative solutions to problems and to reach “peak” zones or states?

Are you an advocate of consciousness evolution, cognitive development, and transcendence?

If so, now that the NBA playoffs are upon us, I hope you are rooting for The Los Angeles Lakers. Because, and you may not realize this, the Lakers stand for LSD, mysticism, and self-realization.

Let’s look at the LSD connection first. Even if you’re not into basketball, you probably know the name of the Laker’s head coach, since Phil Jackson, a.k.a. the “Zen Master” is the most famous coach in all of sports. Phil has the highest winning percentage of any coach in the history of the NBA (both in the regular season and in the playoffs). He has more playoff wins than any other coach in history and is tied (for the time being) with Red Auerbach for the most championships of any NBA coach, having won it all an incredible 9 times (out of 11 trips to the Finals)–6 with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls and 3 with Kobe Bryant and the L.A. Lakers. To further put Phil’s greatness in perspective, out of the last 18 years, Phil has won 50 % of the championships. And if not for injuries to Karl Malone and Andrew Bynum, Phil might have as many as eleven championships during those 18 years. All speculation aside, if the Lakers win this year (and they just might), Phil will have won MOST of the last 19 championships. That is truly astounding.

Phil admitted, in print, that an LSD-induced vision helped him to see basketball in a new way. While tripping, Phil envisioned a new brand of basketball where the players were more versatile and the positions more inter-changeable. Phil realized that, since players often have to switch on defense, you would want tall, strong guards, and active, skilled centers. On offense, too, it helps if your centers can pass and shoot and if your guards can post up and play with their backs to the basket.

Phil would later become the most famous advocate of Tex Winter’s Texas Triangle Offense for just these reasons. (Tex is a consulting coach for the Lakers.)

There is an LSD connection on the roster, too. Lakers Forward Luke Walton has a Grateful Dead tatoo, and he’s the son of UCLA legend and NBA standout Bill Walton, a long-time, vocal advocate of LSD use. You do the math.

And let us not forget the acid head watching the game from center court near the visitor’s bench, heckling the opposing players and working the refs during all important games (and most of the trivial ones, too). For if the Lakers have the most famous coach in all of sports, they certainly also have the most famous enthusiast. No team in all of sports has a marquis fan even remotely like Jack. Jack Nicholson has been sitting courtside at Lakers games for decades.

Jack is quite possibly the most beloved actor in the history of cinema. Even bad impersonations of Nicholson are instantly identifiable by their nasal tone, slowed rate of utterance, and flattened vowel sounds. Jack is so famous that people commonly refer to him by his first name alone.

How did Jack become so famous? Well, to begin with, he wrote a screenplay for a B movie that was directed by Roger Corman. Jacko’s script was called The Trip and it’s about…you guessed it…an LSD trip. The Trip put Jack on the map in Hollywood, but as a writer, not as an actor.

However, when Rip Torn was fired from Easy Rider, after getting in a heated argument with Dennis Hopper, Jack took his place and rose to stardom soon after. Easy Rider, which is flat out one of the best films ever made (it won the palm d’Or–the most prestigious award in all of film–at the 1969 Festival de Canne), is largely about drugs of course. The two protagonists pick up a hitch-hiking hippie who gives them 4 strong doses of LSD for their kindness. The protagonists end up eating the LSD in a cemetery in New Orleans with a couple of hookers. Their acid trip is one of the most avante-garde scenes in the history of American cinema.

But the movie that really made Jack famous was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Jack won his first of 3 oscars (Jack’s 3 acting oscars, including 2 for “Best Actor,” are most among male performers–only Katherine Hepburn has more). Cuckoo’s Nest was written by Jack’s friend, Ken Kesey.

Kesey of course was one of the original LSD advocates. His psychedelic beginnings are most interesting. While in graduate school as a creative writing student at Stanford University, Kesey had volunteered to take part in a CIA experiment called MK-ULTRA at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital. The CIA was trying to find an ideal mind control mechanism (the CIA would later conclude that the best mind control mechanism was television). As a participant in the study, Kesey was given an array of psychedelics: LSD, psyllocybin, mescaline, and even DMT. While the experiment proved a failure for the CIA (because psychedelics make the idea of authority ridiculous and even hilarious, they are not great mind control drugs), the experiments were very fruitful for Kesey, who quite liked expanding his mind with chemicals and continued using LSD and other entheogens illicitly long after MK-ULTRA had concluded. Kesey and his acid-eating cronies became famous as the “Merry Pranksters” and their antics were documented in Tom Wolfe’s classic The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test. The “acid tests” were simple. If you had a good time and “turned on” after drinking the dosed cool-aid, you were alright; you were hip. But if you freaked out and panicked, then you were wound too tight; you were a square.

My point in mentioning The Trip, Easy Rider and Cuckoos Nest, which were Jack’s three most important early projects, and all of which relate to acid in one way or another, is that connecting Jack Nicholson to LSD is about as difficult as connecting Kevin Bacon to other movie stars (like Jack for instance….let’s see…A few Good Men…. I got it in one!)

I can’t prove that Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss has taken acid, but he earned his PhD in CHEMISTRY when he was only 24, just as the psychedelic sixties were about to explode. Again, you do the math.

But the Lakers don’t just stand for acid. They stand for Eastern religion and mysticism.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar, long-time Lakers center and current centers coach, is a Muslim.

Phil Jackson self-identifies as a Zen Buddhist.

Phil was the first coach in major sports to have his players meditate and do hatha yoga. He also has them do positive visualizations. The results are hard to argue with, given that Phil’s record is unparalleled in history.

But beyond acid and Eastern spirituality, the Lakers stand for self-realization, cognitive development, and transcendence.

Owner Dr. Jerry Buss is a master strategist. A self-made man, Buss started off with a $1000 real estate investment and steadily parlayed his dividends into millions.

Buss’ strategic mind manifests not only in basketball and real estate, but in tournament poker. Buss has previously come in 2nd and 3rd in the World Series of Poker, no small feat by any means.

Kareem, too, is a genius.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar was arguably the most dominant basketball player ever. Kareem was always in motion. He always kept you one step behind. If you favored toward his right, he’d beat you with his left, He kept you fighting for position so that when he went up for a shot, you had no chance of measuring it or accurately timing a block because you were still trying to stand your ground when he took to the air. And even if you did measure or time his shot–and you couldn’t but if you did–it didn’t matter because his infamous sky-hook was indefensible. Even Wilt Chamberlain couldn’t block the skyhook and Kareem could hit his silky smooth signature shot out to twelve feet. Kareem scored an incredible 38,387 points during his tenure in the NBA; that’s more points scored than by any other player in history. Kareem also won three rings in college with legendary coach John Wooden at UCLA, winning an astounding 88 games and losing only twice. Even Kareem’s high school team once won 71 straight games.

A standout scholar at UCLA, Kareem was highly regarded as an essayist by his English and History professors. Kareem is, like Phil Jackson, a published author, having written an impressive scholarly history of the 761st Tank Batallion in WWII, called Brothers in Arms.

Kareem’s stardom extended beyond the Hollywood hardwood to the silver screen. He appeared in Fletch with Chevy Chase and also in Stephen King’s apocalyptic mini-series, The Stand. However, Kareem is most famous for his classic roles in the comedy Airplane! and as the antagonist in the epic Bruce Lee film, Game of Death.

To return to the Eastern Philosophy/Spirituality thread, Kareem is a devout muslim as his name quite obviously implies. But what you may not know is that he’s also an expert in Shaolin Kung Fu. He learned Kung Fu at UCLA in order to keep his arms and legs strong. Not only do the Lakers have the only Buddhist head coach in major sports, they have the only muslim coach in the NBA in Kareem, their center’s coach and mentor to Pau Gasol and young Andrew Bynum.

Lastly, a word or two needs to be said about Kobe Bryant. Kobe is not a Sufi or a Mahayana Buddhist as far as I know (although he practices concentration and insight meditation). But With Jackson as his coach and with a chemist who came of age in the sixties as his owner, anything’s possible. And I can’t connect Kobe to acid, although one wonders when he sinks 62 consecutive free throws (he had a separate streak of 50) or goes apeshit and hits an NBA record 12 three pointers in a single  game!

(There is, after all, a basis for such theorizing in sport’s history. You will recall that Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter while tripping on Acid in 1970.)

People argue, but there has never been a perimeter player as talented as Kobe in the history of the game. No one has ever been as transcendent at putting the ball in the basket from anywhere (and everywhere) on the court. Say what you want about Michael Jordan, MJ never had to play against (”illegal”) zone defenses and quadruple teams! And he still never scored anywhere near 81 freaking points in a game.

My friends Jay and Alexis and I once saw, in person, Kobe score 62 points in only 3 quarters of an NBA game! That’s simply unheard of. No one else has ever scored 62 points in a whole game at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. (This year Kobe also set a new record at Madison Suare Garden in NYC with 61 points) and Kobe scored his 62 in 3 against a Dallas Mavericks team that was the best in the NBA that year. The Mavs had the best record in the league that year, went to the Finals, and got jobbed by the refs who were told by commissioner David Stern to hand the series to the Miami Heat on a silver platter as reported by whistle blower (double entendre fully intended) Tim Donaghy. Can you wrap your head around that? 62 in 3 against the Western Conference Champs (and the League MVP, Nowitski)?

I tell you that everyone in the building was in awe. Defenders would be frozen in astonishment, watching as though they, too, were merely fans in attendance. Even Mavs fans, at a certain point, began chanting “Kobe” (like the Russians chanting “Rocky” in Part IV), hoping and knowing that each shot was going in, because they too were witnessing a miracle and becoming a part of history.

The player assigned to guard Kobe that night, more than embarrassed or shamed, was also awed. Following the game, he asked Kobe for his shoes. Kobe happily took off his sneakers and signed them. Can you imagine: a professional athlete who makes millions of dollars a year asking another player, who had just bested him, for his autographed sweaty sneakers? Rather than being humiliated, Kobe’s rival just wanted to be able to give his own son a piece of memorabilia signed by Kobe. That’s amazing.

Talk to anyone who has seen a game like Kobe’s 81 against the Raptors or 62 in 3 against Dallas and they will all tell you that witnessing such greatness is almost spiritual; it’s trans-personal, transcendent, numinous.

Take it to the bank, no perimeter player will ever score 81 again. And if someone does, it will be Kobe himself.

NBA stats analyst John Hollinger says that the three most impressive basketball games ever played by a single player are, in descending order, 1.) Kobe’s 62 through 3; 2.) Kobe’s 81 against (triple and quadruple teams in) Toronto; and 3.) Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 point game in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Hollinger has taken into account each game’s pace, the number of possessions, and so forth. In Chamberlain’s day, there was no zone D, there was a much faster pace, and there were many more baskets scored at both ends of the court. And don’t forget that Chamberlain was HUGE and was playing two feet from the basket, not launching 32-footers like Kobe and leaping over people 7 inches taller than himself to dunk on them. Keep in mind Hollinger is an admitted San Antonio Spurs fan and no Kobe-lover. He’s just a mathematician who calls it like he calculates it.

Love or hate Kobe, he is the most transcendent scorer in the game’s history, Kareem is #2, Wilt Chamberlain is #3 and Michael Jordan, sorry, is #4. But either way, is it merely coincidence that both Bryant and Jordan are meditators, yoga practitioners, and students of acid-head Jackson–The Zen Master?

Again, maybe you don’t really care about basketball. Or maybe you root for some ordinary team that, like almost all sports teams everywhere, stands for……I don’t know…sitting on couches, gorging yourself on beer and potato chips…or the military industrial complex….or just sad, boring, overweight white people in bland mid-western towns passionate and angry because they have nothing else in their lives to cheer for. Go ahead and root for mediocrity. I can respect that.

But me, I’m rooting for LSD. I’m rooting for meditation and mysticism. I’m rooting for transcendence. I’m rooting for self-realization. I’m rooting for greatness. I’m rooting for the L.A. Lakers.

This post is respectfully dedicated to Sgt. Jay Soccoccio, to the vivacious Vivian Garcia, to Joey “The Toad” Genitti, to Ed Lee, to Lil Abner and Joel Navar, to Michael Sopko, to Geoff Robertson, to Dr. Syd Gris of Opulent Temple, and to Alexis Forni who has purple and gold in her veins even in India. Go Lakers!!!