“The Grateful Dead”

“At Yak’s guidance, Hebie had put the Dead’s “American Beauty” album on the turntable. “Ripple,” the song Artus had earlier talked about as relating to Pure Consciousness, began to play. First, there was the downhomeyness of the acoustic guitar. Then Jerry Garcia began to sing to us, as though he were just casually sitting on a cushion on the other side of the room. The lyrics were pure inspiration: words glowing with the golden light of sunshine; melodies played on unstrung harps. Based on my recently acquired knowledge of Brahman, I understood that Jerry was singing about the translation of afflatus, divine creative whispers, into expressed form. And the chorus was the Zen koan that Artus had discussed: the ripple that appeared in still water, which had not been disturbed by either thrown stone or blown wind. How can I possibly describe the impression that marvelous song made on me, whose soul was, at that moment, fully opened, like the calyx of an exotic flower first exposing its perfumed petals to the world? It was as if the music and words were operating directly on the fibers of my soul. I seemed to exist in the same locationless space from which those lyrics had arisen. When Garcia sang about a fountain not made by the hands of men, I felt myself to be delicately sipping its crystalline waters.”