Chapter 23 – Gaskin’s Farm

People of the Gate

They leave Stoneybrook Farm several days later, continuing on their way east, heading first to Nashville and then down to Gaskin’s Farm. In Nashville, they stop at a natural foods store, and there’s a note on the message board for them from Daniel and Jerry. They’re already at the Farm.
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He’s really angry with Karen. He feels she sabotaged his work again at Stoneybrook. He did their trip for a week, working in the restaurant and helping out on the farm too. He has his own trip though, and he wants it valued by anyone he would be family with. He doesn’t feel he was being too pushy. He was just checking to see if he would be honored as a medicine person if he stayed.

He’s finally seeing something about Karen. Somewhere along the way, she has become frightened – on the surface by acid and where he’s going with it, but more deeply by herself – frightened by whatever acid would ask of her to deal with next. Since Berkeley or before she has stopped working to be conscious and high and has instead worked to bring him down every time he’s high himself.
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Later, as they’re driving up to the Farm, they’re still fighting with each other. And then suddenly there’s the gate. They pull themselves together and head in. The gate looks just like those gates on the Air Force bases he was stationed on. It even has a little guardhouse off to the side.

They seem to have a really good group head here and are very sensitive to vibes. They immediately pick up on his and Karen’s negative energy, although they don’t know where it’s coming from or what it means. Because of this, the folks here keep them at the gate, not wanting to let them into the rest of the Farm until they have figured them out.

The gate people tell him and Karen that they are what Gaskin calls “acid Indians.” They tell them that acid has led them to believe they have a spiritual connection with the land. It’s meant in a putdown way, but he turns it around. He can already see they could use a bit more of the Indian here.

The folks here don’t like acid, although they all started out together in San Francisco as acidheads with Stephen as their Guru. They’re all constantly quoting Gaskin, saying, “Acid’s a rocket ship, but town is only a few miles away.” They all smoke pot and use “natural” psychedelics though, like mushrooms and peyote.

Here on the farm, they’re overly righteous about not doing acid and tell him that if he wants of stay, he has to take his acid off the farm. He agrees to do so. He does want to stay. Whatever he feels about the farm now, he knows that it’s a worthy social experiment and he wants to see more.
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Daniel and Jerry

Their second day, still stuck at the gate, they hear that Daniel and Jerry are still here. He and Karen figure that they’ll hear about them being stuck here at the gate and come to see them.

Sure enough, Daniel and Jerry show up just after he has been told to take his acid off the Farm. Daniel says that he and Jerry will help him with that, that they’ll take some now before they leave. They all have the feeling that this is their last time together. They don’t know why. They all feel that they were assigned to each other for some reason and that it’s ending now here on the Farm.

Daniel and Jerry feel as he does that the Farm is like an ant colony or beehive, a highly complex social structure of hierarchical and regimented ways. They’ve been here several days and have enjoyed their stay, but both of them say strongly that they wouldn’t want to stay here any longer. He and Karen agree. It’s too oppressive here.
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Stephen says that town is only several miles away; because that’s where he has stopped in his spiritual development and the furthest he can see. All the folks here are blindly following someone no higher than they are just because they are spiritually lazy and don’t want to do the work themselves to become truly high.

He feels especially sad for Stephen, caught by the teacher trip. Stephen ought to sneak out in the middle of the night and go off somewhere alone. He really needs to find his connection with Spirit again and see that town’s not where he’s really going after all. He just thinks that that’s his goal because that’s all the further he can get with all these folks dragging along on his coat tails.
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He has a real good feeling trading acid to Daniel and Jerry right under these folks’ noses. Now he doesn’t mind taking the rest of his stash off the farm. He doesn’t want to do acid here anyway. He would either become uptight, afraid that they’d find out he was tripping and hassle him, or else become angry at them for being so unconscious as individuals and so one-sided as a family, so much so that they have to lay their trip on him and others who just come by to visit and say hi.

Being here on the Farm, he has been able to stay in the here and now and out of his head and his thoughts more than usual. He likes how the Farm as a whole is affecting him. He just doesn’t like any of them as people yet. They’re all way too righteous for him.
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Observations

They’re still waiting at the gate, wondering if they’ll ever be allowed onto the rest of the farm. But finally, the folks here tell them what has been bugging them, that they have felt all this negative energy coming from him and Karen. Now that he and Karen know what has been bothering them, they share what they’ve been through. They certainly weren’t trying to hide it. And now that the people of the Gate understand where he and Karen are coming from, they finally decide to let them onto the rest of the farm.
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The folks here are a large family, with over six hundred folks on the Farm. They’re a total contrast to the Rainbow Family. At the Rainbow Gathering, everyone did what he or she wanted to do, no one told anyone what to do, and everything got done – easily and with a lot of fun. Here on the Farm, only a select few can do what they want to do. There’s a hierarchy here too, with Stephen and his “bishops” telling the rest of the folks what to do. Here everything gets done too – but efficiently and without much fun.

The farm folks have bent over backwards to fit in down here in redneck land, and, in doing so, they’ve become somewhat straight. They have reached out to their neighbors too, helping with the harvests and sharing what they know, especially about midwifery. They’ve also agreed, as a goodwill gesture, not to vote in local elections. There are enough folks on the Farm to significantly affect local politics, but they don’t want the folks living around here to feel threatened by their numbers.

They’re very sexist for hippies, hassling Karen for wearing pants, telling her that ladies don’t wear them. Also, when they were still at the gate, the folks there were looking for someone, and one of the gate persons suggested calling the laundry room and asking “one of the ladies there.” He and Karen both asked how they knew there would be no men there. “Only ladies do the laundry,” was their answer.

They have an awesome group head. Everyone knows who he and Karen are now that they’re on the farm. Wherever they go, they have the same discussions, about acid and town being only a ways down the road, and, more relevantly, about how to get alone as a couple.

The folks here are high, but it’s a group head high. Everyone works eight to ten hours a day, every day but Sunday. Because of this, everyone is always busy and tired and never able to be alone to talk to God. They’ve given Stephen the freedom that they themselves have given up, have let him carry their high and be their wisdom. That’s why everyone calls it Gaskin’s Farm – as in Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm.”
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Stephen and Ina May

Stephen and his wife, Ina May, began their Guru/Farm trip with another couple. All of them were in a four people marriage. They all generated a great amount of energy together and attracted all the other folks to them.

However, the other man in the marriage has just been asked to leave the farm, to travel for a while until he mellows out. It doesn’t look good long range for the farm when folks are excluded because they disagree with Stephen.

Stephen just returned last night. He’s been on the road with the farm band. Everyone’s very excited that he’s back. He’s the meaning of their life. Tomorrow is Sunday, and he’s giving a sunrise sermon. Everyone will be there, all six hundred and some of them.
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The next morning they’re all up very early. It’s still pitch dark when someone knocks on Sam’s door. They dress and hurry out, not wanting to miss anything and not sure where to go.

Once outside the van though, it’s obvious. Everyone’s heading along the road that heads east from their van. They follow everyone and soon come to a large clearing where many folks are already sitting on blankets or standing around. The men are already smoking pot, wanting to be as high as they can when Stephen comes to speak.

He doesn’t often see the sun rise. It’s beautiful watching the colors come back into the world, watching the light change as the sun comes up. Finally and dramatically, as the sun rises, Stephen appears. They all Om to greet the sun, and afterwards Stephen speaks. Stephen is wise and very high. He can understand why these folks living on the farm could follow him.

He can’t though. He has his own way, and he’s not surrendering it to anyone else, no matter how high the person might be. He would like to talk with Stephen though, share some of what he has learned, but Stephan’s too well protected. Every time he or Karen ask if they can meet with him or Ina May, they’re looked at funny, as if they’ve asked to meet with the King or Queen.
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They never see Ina May, but she has a major influence upon them. She’s into what she calls spiritual midwifery, making birth a holy ritual, full of love and very high. He and Karen are still making love without protection. They’re still open to having a child together in spite of all the shit they’ve been through. They think they would like to have their baby here, or if that’s not possible, to have it in a similar way.
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The Sin of Social Position

The folks at the Farm pick up that Karen is pissed at him for not wanting to accept whatever work comes his way, for not wanting to work with his hands. That’s part of why she keeps sabotaging him when he does acid with others. She feels that he’s inflated to think he’s a healer and a spiritual teacher. She thinks that he ought to do whatever work comes his way.

At the Farm, they support her. They tell him that he’s guilty of the “sin of social position,” the error of thinking one sort of work is better than another. In particular, according to them, he’s wrong to think that, because he’s a healer and teacher, he’s better than a carpenter, a waiter, or whatever. He tells them that he doesn’t think he’s better than anyone else, never did – it’s just that he has already worked for almost twenty years as a carpenter. He’s tired of it. But he does hear them and decides to accept the flow, to take whatever comes.
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When they leave the Farm, they drive back through Nashville, planning to head east from there. Sam needs new shocks, so they head into the nearest Sears. While the folks there are working on Sam, these two hippie types come up to him and ask if he’s a carpenter, and does he want a job? Having listened to Karen and the folks on the Farm and deciding to be open to the flow, he answers yes.

They hire him on the spot – for three fifty an hour. They want him to start right away. He says okay and, after Sam’s fixed, he and Karen follow them to the job. On the way, he’s thinking that maybe he’s going to be the Zen teacher now, one who earns an honest living as a carpenter. He decides to leave it loose, to see what comes.

The next day he’s so into working with his tools after all these years that he doesn’t notice what’s going on. He’s surprised though, when they say, early in the afternoon, “lets quit for the day and go home.” He and Karen are camping in their van in these guys back yard now, and they’ve driven him to work, so he says okay.
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They have a dog chained up in their back yard, and, when he first gets here after work, Karen’s just outside the chain’s length, singing softly to the dog. He’s a big German Shepard and very scared. Karen tells him, when he comes up softly and sits beside her, that she’s been here for hours. This dog has been really hurt. He sits there with her for a while, slowing down and finding his own peace. After awhile, Karen is touching the dog, and soon its head is on her lap. He’s so moved watching this that he cries.
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The next day at work, he figures it out. First of all, these two guys are really flaky. They aren’t even trying to do good work. Then he realizes that these guys are junkies, and broke ones at that. They can’t even put in a whole day. By midday, they’re too sick from not having had their fix for the day and too broke to buy any more until payday. Soon, they’re yelling, accusing each other of stealing from their fast dwindling stash, so strung out they no longer care that he knows.

He begins to worry that they won’t last till payday. He wonders if they’ll pay him or if they’ll rip him off to buy more junk. He decides to stay on though, to help keep them together and working so they can all be paid. He talks with them about their medicine, so different than his. He has never been close to heroin, and he’s curious about what it does for them. He’s not at all interested in doing any – not that they would share if he were.

Later. . . . He has worked three days now, and he has earned over fifty dollars already. He can see why Daniel and Jerry felt free to go on. They had kept showing up in his life just to get him to here. He realizes now that he’ll probably never see them again.

While he’s working, Karen has found a good mechanic and is getting Sam worked on for a reasonable price. They’ve decided to leave here this weekend. They both feel more confident about money, feel they can always get by. They have enough money for now.

Working as a carpenter helps to get him out of his mind. He’s just a tired and lazy body now, after working all day.

The next day, being payday, he quits at noon. He just can’t deal with them being so down all the time. They’re really bringing him down too. He doesn’t make it personal, and he does get paid for all his work.
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During all this time here, he has noticed the result of his being completely open to the flow. Before going to Gaskin’s Farm, he would have refused these guys when they approached him in Sears, would have said he had other plans. He would have pissed Karen off then.

He tried being completely open to the flow, and he has seen what has occurred. These guys are junkies and not at all high. From all this, he has learned that if being aware with positive energy is his goal, he has to be less open to the flow and more selective as to whom he lets himself be close to and why.
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Later…. Eating at a local restaurant – eating catfish, the local favorite –he shares with Karen what he has experienced this week and what it has meant to him. He tells her how being high is most important to him. He tells her that he has heard her and the Farm telling him not to think that any work is more important than any other, but he knows that he can’t do just any work. Being high and healing is what he does best. He thinks she understands.

The folks at the next table sure do. They come over and introduce themselves. They invite them over to their table, and afterwards to their house here in town to stay for a while.
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Chapter 24 – Reflections

A Deeper Look at It

The folks from the other table turn out to be much higher people than the junkies were – higher than the farm folks were too. He’s enjoying hanging out with them at their house today. He feels much better here, may even stay a day or two
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He dreams that he’s with some people. They’re all getting ready to do some sort of physical work together. At first he doesn’t want to do it, but then he realize that he spends way too much time sitting around and thinking. He also realizes that he would enjoy the work – weeding a big garden. As usual, Karen’s hanging out with some young guy, and he feels left out. He tries to connect with her, but it’s difficult to break in between the two of them.

He also dreams that he’s working for this man. The man likes him and takes him down into this little room. The man tells him that he’s to be his assistant, meaning he can stay in this room without working if he wants.

But he grabs up a broom and starts sweeping. He starts with the little room, then out into the hallway and then, before he’s done, all the other rooms. He’s doing a good and careful job of it. Someone comes by and says that they had wanted this done, had been going to ask. They appreciate that he has done it without even being asked.

Sweeping, he sees a black dog. A man has hurt the dog badly. He finds the man and kills him with his bare hands. Afterwards he feels really good. The man was evil. Everyone agrees.
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He enjoys physical work. He has always liked to weed, helping his mother in their family garden when he was a young boy. He has always liked to sweep too. He used to sweep for his dad on his building jobs. He used to help his mother clean at home too. At times, he has also enjoyed carpentry work. He just didn’t enjoy it here in Nashville with those two very depressing junkies.

His first dream is reminding him that Karen is always going to be attracted to young guys for their physical energy. That’s just the way she is. He is forty. He’s not twenty anymore. His first dream is also suggesting though, that if he were more physical, he would have more physical energy. Maybe then he would be more attractive to her, certainly more so than when he sits around and thinks all the time.

His second dream is more profound, showing him as a responsible worker who doesn’t need to be told what to do, who, more importantly, has to kill the man who hurt the dog. He has to fight off and overcome that part of himself, his fearful mind, that is always out to keep him from being body.
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The Zen Teacher

Each morning they have stayed here, he has come in from the van and swept out these folks’ house. Karen has been doing the dishes and cooking with the others. She has been baking bread too – sourdough from her starter.
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He’s reading Doris Lessing’s, Briefings for a Descent into Hell. Here in Nashville at this high house, he’s coming back to himself and to his task of waking up fully and helping others to wake up too. He feels as if he has been asleep on the road, too much into fear and hurry.

He realizes that the best way to wake up others is to be awake himself. If he focuses on himself, on being awake, the rest will follow.
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After being with these folks for several days, he begins to understand the dynamics and the emotional undercurrents of their house. They’re all committed to being as high and as open as they can be. They’ve all been very experimental, especially in relationships and in always being as honest and loving as they can be. All of them have been lovers with each of the others at one time or another. It has made it very complicated, although very high.

He wonders how he can help them, if he even can. They’re all attracted to him, talking with him and sharing what has been going on and what they feel. Ed and Beverly are wanting to be a couple now. Elaine is burnt out and is thinking of moving on.
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He decides to drop acid here in Nashville and trust to the high here in the house to carry him through. The only way he sees that he can truly give to these folks is by getting as high as he can around them. Also, he has been through a great deal lately, with a lot of different folks – the Rainbow Gathering, Boulder, Stoneybrook, the Farm, the junkies and now here – and with no time at all till now to slow down and digest what’s gone down.

So he drops and….
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Later that night, by the end of his acid trip, all the folks here are very high behind his tripping, and he sees that it’s the same here as it has been everywhere else on the road from Berkeley to here, everywhere except on Gaskin’s Farm where he wouldn’t trip. He likes it that he can do acid and everyone around him will get a good acid contact high.
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His Work Now

Tripping yesterday, he realized that all the folks here in the house are in love with one another. These in-love feelings occurring here are the same high energy and magical love feelings as those transference feelings that often occur in analysis. As with analysis, these in-love feelings here have come from working to become more conscious together.

They are all opening up to him here. It’s amazing. Yesterday, Elaine told him why she’s leaving here, what her life here has been like. She’s a very high sister.
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He has always seen healing as being similar to being a detective, quietly sorting out the feelings and relationships and sifting through to the central issues. Before now, he has always been a healer on the ego level. He would see what was going on and attempt to be healing by using words to share what he understood and saw happening.

Now though, he’s learning to use ego only as a focus for his seeing. He knows now that if he relates to the truth from his center, from his Hara, he won’t have to put what he sees into words or try to change anything. Just by being aware of the truth and by being centered himself, change, healing change, will occur. This is being the Zen teacher.

He can see that there are negative and undealt with feelings here, old stuff still living on. He can see why Elaine would want to leave. He can only help by being himself. He sees that there’s anger and hurt and fear here in addition to all the love. If he can arrive at a here and now perspective, if he can come from his center, then he can rise above these negative feelings and perhaps lift the others above them too, long enough at least, for them to become aware of these feelings themselves.

To do this sort of work, he needs to ground himself out with physical work – carpentry or whatever, some sort of satisfying and physical activity. He has to be careful though, not to regress back to who he was when he worked physically before, unmindful then of being high.
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The Comet

They’re back on the road again. They left Nashville early this morning, with everyone from the house out to say goodbye. He’s going to miss those folks, but he’s glad to be back on the road.

The mountains here in the east are little more than hills. They’re very old and worn down, smoothed over by the years. He had thought to stop somewhere along the way and backpack awhile to get away from all the people, but it wouldn’t be worth it. He would rather go on.
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One night, camping along the Blue Ridge Parkway, Karen dreams that they are at a scientific meeting at which an astronomer is telling everyone that a very large comet is coming soon. An old Native American who is standing beside her says that the scientists are wrong to think it’s just a block of dirt and ice. A Great Spirit is coming. The Native American asks him and Karen to go with him on a journey of exploration.

The next day, they hear on the radio that a comet has been sighted by an astronomer in Europe, had been sighted about the time she had her dream. The astronomer has called the comet Kohoutek.

He’s very impressed by this synchronicity and decides that he’ll travel out into the southern desert again this coming winter, when the comet will be visible. He wants to meet this Great Spirit. He’ll leave just after the Winter Solstice, as they did last winter.

He decides that he’ll go into retreat then, probably somewhere in southern New Mexico. He’ll go into retreat from the prevailing “old consciousness” and the people who identify with it, so that he may open himself to the Spirit coming with the comet.

Traditionally, comets are omens of death and destruction, portents of radical and unwanted change. They release strong energies that are likely to take a negative form. His work this coming winter will be to tame this energy, to understand and channel it into a more positive and spiritual direction.
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Yesterday, he was feeling that he needed something outside of himself, some new enthusiasm in order to move on. The coming of this comet, together with the spiritual meaning given to it by Karen’s dream, turns him on and wakes him up. It releases a whole lot of energy that he hasn’t been able to connect to since heading down from the high mountains of Colorado almost a month ago.

He’s hoping that the comet will give him enough energy and meaning so he can leave behind all those old consciousness trips he has been carrying around for so long. He wants to continue moving on.
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The Magician

He dreams that he goes into this fantastic old house. Inside, he meets some very high magicians. He’s particularly struck by one of them who could be of either sex, or somehow of both. He asks if he or she knows Ed Steinbrecher. The person seems to be a woman when she answers, but he’s still not sure. She says that she does know Ed and is pleased that he does too. She tells him that he can come back here whenever he wishes to study with her.

He also dreams that he’s going by this other woman’s house. She’s a witch. He had visited her earlier and knows that she wants to see him again. Part of him doesn’t want to stop and visit now. He would rather go on a long walk. As he passes by, he sees her inside her house, playing her piano. She isn’t wearing any clothes and is a real turn on, but he still wants to go on. Her dog, a golden retriever, comes out from some nearby bushes, and he thinks he’ll take the dog with him on his walk.

She hears them though, and comes out, wearing a dress now. He says he was going to walk first, then visit with her. She says he still can, aware of his attraction for her. He realizes that he would rather stay with her, now that she’s here.

Then he dreams that he goes next door to tell these two dreams to the folks living there. When he had visited them the day before, he had somehow caused a hassle. He’s not sure he will be welcome now, but he needs to share his dreams. feels it would just lead to another hassle. The other folks feel a difference in him now and are willing to listen.
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His two dreams of the magician and of the witch are about those sides of himself. An old and wise magician within him is pleased that he has seen the similarity between himself and Ed Steinbrecher and is open to being a magician himself.

He also has an inner, bewitching, earth magic lady – with whom he has a very ambivalent relationship. On the one hand, he is very attracted to her and likes her a great deal. On the other hand, he is very attracted to her and likes her a great deal. If he wants to stay centered in his total being, he has to find his balance with her.