Dolphins, drugs, new age music. Isolation tanks as a portal into other dimensions. True love and fake aliens. Julian shares a personal love story from the nineties that intersects with the work of prolific scientist, inventor, and psychonaut, John C. Lilly.
The belief that we can contact extraterrestrial civilizations, which are waiting to usher humanity into a golden age of light and love, is now a hugely profitable and popular commodity. Apparently these extraterrestrials also want to help us vanquish the forces of Deep State darkness. This is evidenced by the QAnon-and-alien-disclosure-style of programming on Gaia’s spiritual subscription platform (which brings in roughly $80 million annually).
Yet: Gaia is currently embroiled in a legal battle with a former host who claims that his stories about secret space programs and eight-foot tall “blue avian” aliens are actually part of his trademarked creative IP. When it comes down to dollars, he admits it’s all make-believe. Has he really ever dropped acid in a flotation tank though?!
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She had beguiling green eyes set in sun-kissed brown skin and shoulder-length blonde hair with one of those hippie girl colorful beaded hair wraps trailing behind her ear.
You may not care, but all of this made quite an impression on me.
The day I met Christine, having casually sidled up beside her in line for the bathroom at the Novel Cafe in Venice, California, she also wore a bindi.
One of those little forehead adornments used in India to represent the third eye.
Our ensuing conversations that day centered on how peak moments tripping on LSD revealed the spiritual truths of the universe as described by ancient enlightened yogis.
I was in love.
She was 25, I was 23, and this began an unforgettable, if ill-fated, two-year romance.
Christine introduced me to MDMA, and our first ritual consumption of the love drug confirmed to us both that we were indeed soulmates who embodied the archetypes of Shiva and Shakti, Krishna and Radha, and had experienced past lives together throughout eternity.
Which was also happening always, only, right now.
You get the idea.
Now, predestined cosmic incarnations of divine love or not, we were both, perhaps predictably, quite traumatized and reactive little spiritual seekers, and I've never in this life or any other endured and participated in such bitterly acrimonious arguments and fights, dramatic breakups, and ecstatic reunions.
Karma, baby.
A lot of our initial conflict centered on my feeling that using psychedelics was a powerful adjunct to spiritual practice, but one that should be engaged in sparingly, maybe once or twice a year, as a way to check progress and receive inspiration.
But Christine wanted to take ecstasy every other weekend.
Why not?
And she felt judged by my concern that this might just be a self-indulgent addiction born of easy escapism more than dedicated spiritual commitment and disciplined practice.
Now, I was an arrogant and selfish, quite judgmental young man who lived alone in a pretty filthy tiny apartment far from any familial guidance.
And I was, I hasten to add, not only pre-therapy, this eventual breakup would finally begin my time on the couch, but also blissfully lacking in most social graces.
No emotionally intelligent communication or relational thoughtfulness had dawned in my young psyche at that point.
I was basically a feral bliss ninny.
But I also became genuinely concerned that Christine might be mentally ill.
She worked as one of those people who wandered between tables at outdoor restaurants offering roses for sale to couples who looked like they might be on a date.
And she once explained to me over the phone that on her way home after finishing her restaurant route late at night, she suddenly realized she had lost time.
What do you mean?
I said.
Well, one moment I was driving on a familiar stretch of freeway heading back to my parents' house, and the next, it was several hours later, and I was nowhere near my destination.
She said.
And this is what she'd apparently heard happens to people when they've been abducted.
