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| The Greateful Dead's 1980 album "Go To Heaven" |
My spiritual journey began in those tender years as an adolescent listening to The Grateful Dead.
Well, it probably wasn’t where it actually began but when I first started listening to this rock & roll band their music
and their lyrics gave me a structure with which to understand my own spirituality.
Okay, just who is The Grateful Dead? And for this particular article
I am going to, for the convenience of my readers, provide some images. The Grateful Dead is a musical group that was started
in 1965 by Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Ron McKernon and Bill Kreutzman. They were one of the original if not the first
psychedelic rock & roll band. Now the term psychedelic has some negative connotations, I understand. And so that’s why
I’m writing this, to clear away any misunderstandings. Why? And what does this have to do with spirituality. A lot.
Back in the late 1950’s the U.S. military were testing a new drug that had recently been developed. It was called Lysergic acid diethylamide or LSD. You can read an entire article about it on
Wikipedia by clicking on the highlighted chemical name at your leisure. Then it would be a good idea to read one about Ken Kesey because he started that whole acid test thing that went on in
San Francisco’s Bay Area in the early sixties and that is what fueled the hippie and the counterculture movement and
of course the soil that gave root to The Grateful Dead. Back then a very bright and clever chemist named Owsley started manufacturing
this stuff and a lot of people started getting really high. He supplied the acid test parties sponsored by Ken Kesey and The
Merry Pranksters and The Grateful Dead were the house band who provided the beat and the melody when they weren’t stoned
out of their minds. Hey, even when they were they contributed some interesting selections and verses.
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| Jerry Garcia |
So, the Grateful Dead or the Dead as they came to be known in later years did the acid test scene but soon took their musical
show on the road, made their first album in 1967 and very soon their concerts were the stuff of legends, happenings, an experience
that was never ever the same. The reason for this was that they always had plenty of tunes to play, some of their own and
other ones taken from not so well known blues artists that people had pretty much forgotten. But the most important reason
why they were so special was because of this organic interaction that there existed between the performers and audience. The
members of this band were very good friends, very united and always extremely conscious of their audience. They would sense
the audience’s vibrations, or feel them out and make effort to play to that. Then something magical happened when their
minds and hearts became entwined creating a crescendo in which the music started to play the band. It’s hard to explain
but it happened when the sum of their talents and hearts and minds became greater than all of them together. And since they
had always been very good at jamming or playing for long durations—longer than a song that played for three or four
minutes long—the magic combined with their finely honed musical skills would reach heights that would take them and
their audience into higher states of awareness most of the times without the need of psychedelic drugs.
That was when it got really good.
Okay, well, as I said before there were lots of other psychedelic bands from that era out there. There was Jimi Hendricks,
Big Brother and the Holding Company and Jefferson Airplane to name a few. So what so different about The Grateful Dead?
When Jerry Garica, the lead guitarist and singer and the one who is identified probably most when you talk about the Grateful
Dead, was with his friend and bass guitarist Phil Lesh at his house one day, they were going through an old Funk & Wagnalls
Folklore Dictionary, trying to find a name for their band which was, at that time, The Warlocks when they came upon the entry
that said Grateful Dead
“Grateful dead (or grateful ghost) is a folktale present in many cultures throughout the world. The most common story
involves a traveler who encounters a corpse of someone who never received a proper burial, typically stemming from an unpaid
debt. The traveler then either pays off the dead person's debt or pays for burial. The traveler is later rewarded or has their
life saved by a person or animal who is actually the soul of the dead person; the grateful dead is a form of the donor.”(Widipedia:Grateful Dead (folklore))
So, this Grateful Dead is the soul who is thankful that he receives a proper burial and that he no longer needs to hang around
his body feeling concerned that he’s been left without the proper care being taken of his body that housed his soul.
It’s the story of an unfortunate soul who has been released from this sadness and entrapment in the astral realm. It’s
the story of an enlightened soul who through the kindness of his heart expresses sympathy to this poor individual and from
the charity of his heart he liberates this soul so that he can go home into the higher realms.
So, this is the name of the band. This is so interesting. I’m not so sure how the band members interpreted this but
the way I feel about it is that rather than they being the point from which joy proceeds, giving the gift of music to their
audience, they are at the receiving end. Perhaps it is not so much about them than it is about the origin from whence their
salvation comes from, their audience.
Well, I know that a lot of you out there couldn’t care less about my infatuation with a rock & roll band. But, as you
know, music is a very spiritual medium of communication. Now, I started listening to this group when I was fifteen and the
love I feel for them and their music is still there as I approach my 49th birthday.
Humor me for just a couple of paragraphs further as I attempt to make my point. You’re no doubt familiar with the remarks
I made previously about how an initiate begins his or her spiritual path. Traditionally, this is not something attempted alone
but with the help of a shaman, or a spiritual teacher. The initiate must sever his or her connection and familiarity with
the physical world in order to appreciate the world of the unconscious. This has been done by putting the person in a room
devoid of any light as was done in the mystery schools in Egypt thousands of years ago. The same end can be achieved with
the use of a floatation tank. All of your physical senses must be cut off somehow so that all that you have is your mind.
That is the jumping off point.
There is another way too. Through the medium of music. This is where The Grateful Dead became explorers. They discovered very
early on in their experience as a band because of the problems they often had with their sound equipment because of how they
taxed it quite frequently with their hard playing, that they incurred a lot of feedback with their guitars. At first, it seemed
like an obstacle but then they began to view it as an opportunity for experiment.
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| The band in a barber shop circa 1967 |
The Grateful Dead, as far as I know, are the only band who made feedback an art form. But to know what I’m talking about
you need to hear it and really listen to it to appreciate it. Most people will not get very far or have enough patience to
listen to what seems to be archaic noise. That’s okay because it’s not for everyone. Neither is the true path
of spirituality.
You see, when you begin listening to the intentionally devised sound of feedback it is very very strange. But then again,
there is inherent in feedback or electronic noise the element of unfamiliarity. When you begin to pursue a spiritual path,
a true spiritual path you must first unfamiliarize yourself with what you now take for granted, the physical world brought
to you by your five physical senses. When you achieve that then you begin to sense your spiritual senses: intuition, clairvoyance,
clairaudience, etc. But these can only be perceived when you, temporarily, deny the physical world. You don’t want to
do this all of the time, just enough so that you can allow yourself to get to the point at which your spiritual senses have
an opportunity to be recognized and utilized by you.
This is what drew me to listen to The Grateful Dead. In a sense, and in keeping true to the meaning of this band’s name,
I must become a Grateful Dead, a soul in search of release and liberation. I may not be physically dead but I am alive yet
not aware of who I am, my true self, that divinity within me. I’d say that is worse than being physically dead.
You can pursue any number of ways really to deny your physical body so that your spiritual senses can open up more. All you
Unification Church members experienced some of them at one time or another in your early life of faith in the church. Becoming
a vegetarian is a good way. A commitment to harmlessness to all life and a respect for Mother Earth is probably the fastest
way to get real spiritual. Once you connect with nature you connect with a very primal force within yourself.
Okay, I’m through with talking about The Grateful Dead. If you’re interested, check out the links I’ve provided
as hyperlinks in this text and you may find them at the end of this article.
In the next article I’m going to talk in a more personal way about what I went through. One thing that I wasn’t
was an ascetic and I didn’t convert to Buddhism. My spiritual path was a rather organic path that I carved out for myself
based upon my needs at the time. I think you’ll enjoy it.
References
1. Grateful Dead Official Home Page:
2. Article about the Grateful Dead on Wikipedia:
3. Article about LSD:
4. Article about Ken Kesey:
5. Article about the origins of the name of the Grateful
Dead band:
My Spiritual Path Part 3
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