Now
that the Austin
economy is softening, we can all take a little time out to reflect on the
spiritual side of things. At least that’s what the organizers of the First
Annual Austin Whole Life Expo are hoping. The Expo is to new-age spirituality
what South By Southwest is to music — a multi-day, multi-pay, visionary
carnival. Over the course of three days, Palmer Auditorium will be filled with
body workers, intuitive artists, natural foods vendors, and a holistic lot
more. The Expo promises to be a spiritual sideshow, complete with over 170
homeopaths, naturopaths, and other-o-paths offering everything from tips on ark
survival to video dating to Tibetan monk chanting.
The Austin event marks the first time the Whole Life Expo has ventured forth
from its home in San Francisco. Over the last fourteen years it has grown from
a kooky cottage industry to a full-blown marketing extravaganza. To give
Austinites an idea of what to expect, I interviewed four of the 104
personalities who will be leading lectures (free with admission), workshops
(extra charge for each), or featured workshops (slightly bigger extra charge
for each) as part of the event.
James Redfield is a former therapist from northern Alabama who decided to
write and self-publish a novel three years ago. The Celestine Prophecy has since sold more than 5.3 million copies, and has been on the best-seller
list for over 100 weeks. Redfield’s latest book, The Tenth Insight, is
also a best-seller.
Fifty-year-old San Antonio native Whitley Strieber looks as if he should be in
the insurance business. Instead, he made a name for himself as an author
writing thriller fiction like The Wolfen and The Hunger, both of
which were made into movies. In the mid 1980s, he got real, producing works of
speculative fiction with author James Kunetka. In 1985, he got really real and
produced Communion, a book about his own experiences with alien
abductions that sold over 10 million copies. Strieber’s recent books, Transformation, Breakthrough and the soon-to-be-released Secret
School all deal with the alien abduction phenomenon.
Judith Orloff is a soft-spoken, ocean-loving Southern California shrink, a
board-certified psychiatrist who is an Assistant Clinical Professor of
Psychiatry at UCLA. She is also a psychic who uses her spiritual powers to help
heal patients, locate shipwrecks, and assist with police investigations. Orloff
chronicles her struggle to balance hard science with spirituality in her
recently published Second Sight.
Terrence McKenna is a bearded, psilocybin mushroom-eating philosophical
prospector. McKenna has spent the last 25 years collecting nuggets of wisdom in
his study of “the ethnopharmacology of spiritual transformation.” In his books
The Archaic Revival and True Hallucinations, McKenna weaves
trippy stories from the Amazon and Asia with linguistic theory, alchemy, and
mathematics. McKenna declares, “I am in the absurd position of being either an
unsung Newton or completely nuts.”
Whether or not these people are Sir Isaac Newtons or Alfred E. Neumans, they
are intriguing writers. Wrapping my mind around clinical psychosis, alien
abduction, tryptamine hallucinations, and lost Peruvian manuscripts, I realized
that these folks are all working in a new literary genre — something I call
“spirit fiction.” It’s as reality-based as science fiction and as prescriptive
as self-help books. It combines psychology and medicine with mythology and
physics. And it all points to a great spiritual truth somewhere out
there. Or is it in here? No, it’s both.
The key to enjoying spirit fiction is the same as the key to enjoying any kind
of fiction or the key to accepting the teachings of any religious system. The
reader or student must make a leap of faith and place his or her confidence in
the author or teacher. It’s a literary con game, but an enjoyable one. Each of
the spirit fiction books I read had a different emphasis, though they all
touched on the themes of disquiet, synchronicity, meditation, energy flow, and
ultimate happiness. The lectures and workshops will probably follow the same
pattern. If you leave your cynicism at the door and go with the flow, you’ll
probably enjoy the ride.
Austin Chronicle: Have you ever been to Austin or have you heard anything
about Austin?
James Redfield: It’s probably been ten years since I’ve been down to Austin,
and I’ve only passed through. So I don’t know a lot about it.
Whitley Strieber: Yes. Many times. I went to the University of Texas.
Judith Orloff: I have a patient who just moved to Austin and loves it. I have
heard that it’s kind of a burgeoning haven of new thought.
Terrence McKenna: No. I hear there is a great music and rave scene there. Sort
of like the Berkeley of Texas.
A.C.: Have you ever had any unusual psycho-spiritual experiences in Austin
or have you had any visions/premonitions about Austin?
J.R.: I can’t say that I have, really. I’m looking forward to going over. A
lot of people there are interested in quality of life. And when one explores
quality of life it goes right into spiritual awareness. I think we get a lot of
letters from Austin. So I’m sure there will be a lot of people there interested
in continuing this dialogue we’re in about the nature of spirituality.
W.S.: No. Not in Austin. I’ve had abduction experiences in the north part of
San Antonio, where I grew up, but not in Austin.
J.O.: What I pick up about Austin is that it is a combination of two worlds,
it’s kind of a place of innocence and a city of jewels. That’s what it seems
like. And it’s a place where something new can grow out of the bedrock beneath
it…. Although parodoxically it might seem rigid and hard, it really isn’t and
in that rigidity there is also the potential for blossoming.
T.M.: No. I’ve meditated on what it would be like to live under the X in Texas,
but that’s about it. Is Bob Wills still the king?
A.C.: What is it about Austin that makes it a good place for one of your
spiritual workshops?
J.R.: I have several friends who moved to Austin because of the sense of
community. There seems to be a lot of artists and writers and musicians who
gravitate to Austin. A lot of musicians. So I’m looking forward to getting a
feel for the spirit of Austin.
W.S.: A lot of close-encounter experiences have taken place in Texas. Out in
the Hill Country. It’s one of those places like the Hudson River Valley. A lot
of parents have had these experiences. A lot of kids have had these
experiences. And a lot of people are trying to figure out what has happened.
These are classic UFO encounters. It’s a very alive area, the Hill Country.
It’s full of magic. It would be even more full of magic if it had water.
J.O.: I know psychically that there are a group of people in Austin who are so
ready for this and so open and yearning and hungry for freedom… It’s like a
place waiting to burst. It hasn’t quite burst yet, but it’s in the process
of… it’s a city that I don’t think has come into its own in a spiritual
sense. And the city itself is crying out for that. That’s why I wanted to come
to Austin.
T.M.: Well, it’s supposed to be a countercultural sort of place. Different
people have been trying to get me to Austin for many years. The folks that run
the Expo have been encouraging me that I will be well received. I have some
friends from RoseX Media that worked with me for a while. They returned to
Austin when they decided to have a child, so I am hoping to see them. Then I
also did some writing for a magazine called Boing-Boing. I think that’s
in Austin.
A.C.: Do you think the Whole Life Expo is a good place to present
revolutionary ideas, or do you think that your message will get lost in the
spiritual carnival?
J.R.: I don’t worry about that. There’ll be a certain percentage of people
there to see me and hear about me. And it’s just a way to gather a lot of
different people who have something to offer and a lot of people who are
interested in the dialogue. I think it’s very, very healthy that we’re having a
wide conversation about spiritual concepts. People are interested in real
experience. They don’t want to hear about theory. They want to hear about what
is directly applicable to me. At these expos you have a great conversation
where people can debate and continue to build a consensus about how to live
life in a more spiritual manner.
W.S.: It’s an excellent atmosphere. People have good reasons for not committing
to being alien abductees. They lose their jobs, their credibility. I’ve seen a
lot of lives ruined because of it. It’s been hell for me. If I had to do it
again, I would have never written Communion in 1986. It’s horrible to
become part of an issue. But now in a way it’s fufilling. I’m on the leading
edge of something, I don’t know what, but it’s something. I do a few UFO
conferences every year, but not many. I feel more comfortable here because
people can be more anonymous. They can learn more about these experiences. And
be discreet.
J.O.: I am a firm believer that if there is a message with power and with
meaning then the right people will find it, no matter what the atmosphere is.
The atmosphere of many, many people can be really magical. It can be
synergistic in terms of getting people’s excitement. It can foster an openness
that might not be there in a smaller group.
T.M.: I require that people have an open mind to listen to what I have to say.
Occasionally these expos turn out people whose minds are so open, they don’t
know shit from Shinola. The material I present concerning the use of
hallucinogenic drugs for spiritual transformation requires some pretty heavy
going. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea.
A.C.: What do you hope that Austinites will come away with from your
workshop?
J.R.: What I’m gonna talk about is the 10 insights, the first nine included in
The Celestine Prophecy and the latest book which is The Tenth
Insight… I think that the insights are sort of wired into our brains,
they’re archetypal. Once we have a certain awareness, we naturally proceed to
another awareness and it happens through steps. And when I talk about 10
insights, I talk about insights that are already happening in the culture. In
other words, I consider myself as kind of a reporter…. What I think people
will get from it is an understanding of the path that we’re all on and will be
able to identify where they are in these stages to awareness… we are all
dealing with these breakthroughs.
W.S.: They can expect to come away with a clear idea of their questions in a
manner that will make their experiences useful to them without closing in on
any answers. I don’t ever close the questions. It’s impossible at the present
time, unless you lie. People will tell you that they are from the stars or a
lot of different things. But at the present time, we just don’t know the
ultimate answers. You have to become comfortable with the questions. You have
to confront these experiences in such a way that they are not terrifying. I try
to tell people how to cope with these experiences, which are sometimes quite
traumatic. How to lead productive lives.
J.O.: I form workshops around my book Second Sight where I use that as
a teaching text. Basically I talk about my story and I try to use my life as a
template for people so that their lives can be easier than mine has been in
terms of psychic and spiritual development. I get hundreds of letters from
people around the country saying I’m so glad you came out with these
experiences, I’ve been frightened to express them. It creates a circle of
people who finally have permission to talk about their experiences and share
some of what they’ve been going through and get in touch with their visionary
side. So, the first part is about my book and about my experiences and then
encouraging people to develop their own abilities. I hope people come away with
the same sense of freedom that I have gotten from being on this journey, in
terms of tapping into the visionary side of the inner self and knowing the
power and authority of that as a guiding, psychic source.
T.M.: Some people I hope will come away with a whole lot of questions they
didn’t have before about how the universe works. I am a keen proponent of the
use of hallucinogenic drugs. That concept alone will be difficult to accept for
those people caught up in the war on drugs. Other people will swap stories of
their hallucinogenic experiences and ask specific questions. They will come
away with technical information — recipes, tips on raising psilocybin
mushrooms, that sort of thing.
A.C.: How will your workshop help with the problems all of us face in
Austin, like the traffic?
J.R.: The traffic is not going to improve, but the frustration level might.
W.S.: It won’t help with the traffic. I wish something would. I can’t believe
what a mess it’s gotten to be. Austin is a beautiful city. The city has to fix
the problem without turning itself into a sea of highways.
J.O.: Absolutely [it will help]. The kind of workshop that I do and the kind
of workshop that will be given at the Whole Life Expo create a vortex of energy
that creates changes around it. When people begin to change their internal
focus, their external world begins to change. It starts inside and goes
outside, including traffic. Just imagine if everyone was practicing patience
and understanding on the road. It would be very different.
T.M.: I don’t see how my workshop will help with the traffic problem in Austin.
You have one of the world’s great experts on traffic flow right there in town.
His name is Prigogine. He spends half the year at the University in Austin, I
believe. So call Professor Prigogine for traffic rerouting [laughs]. And tell
him that I said to call.
A.C.: What changes and challenges do you think Austinites can expect heading
into the next millennium?
J.R.: They’re gonna face the same challenges that we all face, no matter where
we are. One is being able to find a consciousness or an approach to life that
allows them to adjust and adapt. In the next 20 years, things are going to move
faster than ever before… We all have to find a way to ride this wave of
change. And the way we are learning to do that is to stay ahead of the curve,
where we’re not just reacting to change, we are participating in the change….
When we get into the middle of this adventure that is unfolding that is our
destiny, we handle the change naturally, because we are the change.
W.S.: I have no idea whether or not the explosion in alien abductions is tied
into the coming of the next millennium. As for Austin, I don’t know. Will there
be a cure for Esther’s Follies? Will Austin get another small, personal
bookstore like Watson’s? Austin is one of the biggest intimate cities in the
U.S. Do keep Barton Springs alive. Don’t widen I-35.
J.O.: I think it’s going to be a huge time of change and trial and challenge
and that what Austinites and everyone is faced with is summoning our inner
light to create goodness in the world. And that’s what we need to do and need
to do it quickly. Because the world is filled with such darkness and political
and social and environmental strife. The only way we are going to change that
is to create more light and goodness within and then affect the external world.
And Austin being the burgeoning place that it is has particular power because
as people come together in Austin, they can make a very positive influence on
the city and then in the world simply by a change of attitude and focus to more
spiritual things.
T.M.: Between now and then there will be constant and accelerating change.
We’ll have rapid spiritual evolution, rapid metallurgical advances, rapid
epidemiological whoop-dee-doo…. It’s going to get weirder and weirder, faster
and faster. Wait until you’re leading a gang of teenagers hunting rats under a
bridge and communicating with extraterrestrials… that should be happening
about the year 2003. And that’s just the beginning.
I’m going to go to the Expo because I like all this stuff. These people define the term “far out.” They are
learned, eloquent and funny. They write about the fantastic possibilities of
the human spirit, and, let’s face it, the human spirit is a pretty fantastic
thing. This is Austin, Texas, after all. The organizers are projecting
definitely positive thought-forms: The Second Annual Austin Whole Life Expo is
scheduled for October 1997. n The Austin Whole Life Expo is scheduled for September 13, 14, and 15 at Palmer
Auditorium. Tickets are available at Book People. Call 800/551-EXPO for
information
This article appears in September 13 • 1996 and September 13 • 1996 (Cover).