Fishmonk & FUN3 seem like the types that could have made it in the Vosse Posse.

My guess is that when VDP said this:

"You know, any sane magician would never reveal his method of deception. And I don't think that a sensible musician would either."

He was referring to (at least as far as SMiLE goes) The Act Of Creation.

Don't you guys think that an album with the ability to 'turn you on' is EXACTLY what "The Moment" & the Summer Of Love were all about?

Brian nailed it!!!!!!!!

Someone agreed with me about this:

I must be a jerk to not be able to get this idea across (13 years I've been at it).

It's a start.

A likely scenario is that Brian revisited his bookstore riddle to find "the answer." But you'd have to give the discredited biography's account of the flashback a chance of credibility to benefit from that idea.

I understand why folks aren't likely do do that but make no mistake: the idea of people doing such things in the 60's is a credible one.

'"Not many people take more than three or four trips a year. Some fast a little beforehand, or read Huxley or dwell on Zen koan to limber up the brain; others say they concentrate mainly on their own psychological "hang-ups."'

~Barry Farrell, "Scientists, Theologians, Mystics Swept Up in a Psychic Revolution." LIFE, March 25, 1966: 31.

One interesting thing about Koestler's way of thinking is that in humor you need some energy to make it work. "A drop of adrenaline" is part of the equation.

This may well explain Brian's health & vegetables & fitness "obsessions."

Also note when Brian doesn't work out or eat right (while at the same time promoting such lifestyle choices) it makes sense. Brian has already been spiritually enlightened, he doesn't need to do those things.

Brian said he wanted to promote vegetables & health because "health is an important ingredient in spiritual enlightenment."

Michael Vosse has stated that Brian believed that through humor & laughter one could bring about a spiritual experience.

The demo recording for "Vega-Tables" includes a laugh track which puts both health & laughter together (two ingredients for spiritual enlightenment).

Brian's favorite book, Arthur Koestler's The Act Of Creation, outlines the logic behind laughter and lays out how achieve art which gets the desired result. Epiphanies are possible.

The SMiLE project employs the tools set forth by Koestler: from the pun, the visual pun, through animal impersonations, and a child's word for father "dada".....it's all there.

If Brian was working on an album to inspire the spiritual experience then all of the glorious claims for the project were well founded....and Brian's claims that he was making witchcraft music are also vindicated. The album's abandonment is understood in greater depth & Brian's insistance that it was innapppropiate music also has a sound foundation. Lastly all of the above would reveal SMiLE as something similar to a Zen riddle, with the ability to prompt spiritual enlightenment.

I must be a jerk to not be able to get this idea across (13 years I've been at it).

The best is yet to come. I promise.

This is an approach thing (at least regarding SMiLE).

Believe it or not, I agree with AGD 99% of the time.

Have a peaceful evening all.....

You guys were right about 'Surfing Saints' and my hunches about the article are incorrect. The article now seems a collection of various surfer's comment regarding the spiritual surfing experience.

Later today I will remove all 'Surfing Saints' references from my webpage (the Out-Of-Sight one) but will leave my original Zen page as is as it's meant to show my warts.

Andrew G. Doe said:

But, as my father said, "you can't tell someone something they don't want to hear".  You've insinuated we're all too dumb to grasp this elemental truth you've uncovered, but fact is you're the one with the closed eyes and mind. We've repeatedly researched your 'findings' and uncovered some facts - not suppositions, facts - behind them that cast grave doubt, if not invalidate entirely, their credibility, yet you still argue the toss. You won't admit that some of your tenets are now discredited in the eyes of everyone here, except yourself. I can understand that, you've put a lot of time and effort into this and you don't want to look at that as wasted. Been there, in both my BB researches and my family history. Spent two, three years tracing one branch, online and physically, before it dawned on me that something was screwy - dates didn't line up. Checked it... wrong person. Did I ignore it and leave the tree as it was ? Nope, made a copy of the records (in case someone else could use it) then deleted that branch, with over 80 names in it, from my tree. That's what good researchers do - admit their errors, adjust their view in the face of new evidence, which evidence they don't take on face value but sift for themselves.

You carry on ignoring what everyone who disagrees with you is saying and press on with what you know to be true. I'm done with trying to argue in a reasonable manner with someone who is not open to anything that disagrees with his fixed stance and has grown increasingly irritating in their inflexibility. As for my researches, I'm not interested in creativity, I'm after the closest approach to what really happened, to the truth, that I can achieve and I find it sad that someone of your obvious intelligence has to stoop to denigrating my work when you have no plausible comeback. I don't like me when I get really angry and neither would you: unfortunate things would be said. I'll leave you with these observations, repeated once more, for you to ponder on, or not as you wish.

Have to admit, I like what Andrew said.

The pairs of quotes that connected Surfing Saints to credible Brian Wilson quotes indicate that Brian did go through something comparable to the "ultimate religious experience" described in Surfing Saints. The clear light experience is also quote common to this experience...the red sky...probably not so much. The point is that if one takes Surfing Saints out of the equation--the equation doesn't change much.

One pair of quotes I omitted was connecting "finding out you really are...God" (from Surfing Saints) with a latter day Brian quote about developing "a Jesus Christ complex" in the sixties.

One thing about the religious experience is that there is some precedent for the idea that those who have such an experience feel a strong desire to bring about that experience in others. The term Bodhisattva applies to this way of thinking. So the idea that SMiLE was about conjuring the spiritual experience is in line with this way of thinking.

If one looks up "spiritual experience" say...even in wikipedia one will find the experience throughout the religious world. So when Brian Wilson dabbled in (an was instantly hip to) various religions it was because he had the experience common to all religions. In the Tom Nolan article Brian is quite pleased with the term "the essence of all religion" and this is why that is.

This is why trying to explain SMiLE by comparison to Zen alone is wrong. I made this mistake many years ago but have been trying to correct it more recently. But if there is to be a simple explanation....saying "it's something COMPARABLE to a Zen riddle" is about as concise as it gets. Unfortunately this gets taken for "is a Zen riddle" which is not exactly correct. I still think the idea of Zen riddles is an important concept for SMiLE because SMiLE is done in this spirit.

Anyway, it's pretty obvious I'm getting a little too creative here. There is no proof that SMiLE is what I'm asserting it is. That's correct.

Just as with spiritual enlightenment itself...it take a little creative leap to get there.

Art seems like a different animal than genealogy. What an artist is trying to say & what is perceived can be two entirely different things, multi-level, accidental, the shallowest of shallow & the deepest deep. Genealogy may require a judgment calls along the way but it is still based upon a set reality of genetic path. Art invites interpretation & re-creation which are creative processes.

I think that the reason the person being quoted in the Surfing Saints article is not mentioned by name is because of a request in the piece itself. The request is, "Please don't tell anyone I said that" (referring to the "finding out you really are...God" line that precedes the request for anonymity).

Compare these two quotes from CHEETAH!:

"It's physical; really Zen, right?"

"You get to understand that the surf is now. The eternal now, right?"

The first one is from Goodbye Surfing, Hello God and the second is from Surfing Saints. And at the end of both lines you have a Zen reference followed by "right?". Obviously, this will likely not be very convincing to most of you.

I would however ask the same people to consider how many people they know speak of God in such a manner. In my 50 plus years the majority of my intersection with people speaking in such terms is pretty much limited to one person, Brian Wilson.

Consider some of the following pairs of quotes. The first one will be from Surfing Saints & the follow-ups will be noted.

"A lot of people say Kahuna all the time, but that doesn't mean they really believe Kahuna is God. It's just a word, anyway. You don't need words when you know."

"If they don't get the words, they'll get the music, because that's where it's really at, in the music. You can get hung-up in the words, you know." (Goodbye Surfing Hello God)

"You don't need words when you know. And if you don't know, man, don't expect anyone to tell you."

"I can't teach you, or tell you, what I learned from taking it (LSD). But I consider it a very religious experience." (The Frenzied Frontier of Pop Music)

"That's what you really learn from surfing, that everything is always changing and time never repeats itself."

"Empires, ideas, lives, institutions--everything has to fall, tumbling like dominoes." (Goodbye Surfing Hello God)

"To come out of that wave alive, is like being reborn."

"Then the whole thing was there. I mean my whole life. Birth and death and rebirth. The whole thing. Even the beach was in it, a whole thing about the beach." (Goodbye Surfing Hello God)

"It's only happened to me once---early in the morning alone on the beach...."

"I had what I consider a very religious experience." (The Frenzied Frontier of Pop Music)

What subtlety I like most (this is a very subjective point) about the Surfing Saints article, besides the clear light claim, is that the sun was coming up very red. As you glance through the booklet meant for inclusion in the album you get the feeling of the red sky red.

But as far as the spiritual topics covered in the Surfing Saints piece go....they seem to be what was on Brian's mind following his religious experience. The intro to the piece about "the sun tanned world of bikini beach" seems straight out of the California myth.

You could knock Surfing Saints out of the discussion if you honestly think & feel it's not Brian. You can totally ignore the bio's LSD accounts if that makes you feel better. You don't have to think SMiLE is comparable to a Zen riddle: that it was meant to bring about spiritual enlightenment. It doesn't have to be the greatest album ever. Brian doesn't have to be on the genius level certain "theories" would have you believe. All the grandest claims about SMiLE don't have to be satisfied.

You can gloriously settle for the confusion kettle that all your brilliant uncreative research has wrought. Let obviousness rule.

Andrew G. Doe said:

Again, you're supporting your argument/theory with a quote from Brian's non-bio, but even allowing it might be valid (for the sake of argument), has it not struck you that his previous two bad trips and the flashback were described in considerable detail, yet the good trip was mentioned in a single, almost  throwaway sentence ?

Yeah, that means he was still keeping the details of his ultimate experience secret. One reason to do so would be to preserve the mystery that is known as SMILE.

Also, concerning the "Surfing Saints" article... although it's been attributed to Brian, does it really look like anything he'd say in 1966/67 ?

Some of the speaking style is just Brian's from that period.

As far as the subject matter goes: this is the one insight we get into the details of the 3rd, or ultimate, trip.

I'd accept that Dennis might say it, but whoever is being quoted has a good handle on the surfing culture and is obviously a surfer. Not Brian, then... and the "clear light" reference is about a sunrise. That's all. The article makes it clear what the "Ultimate Religious Experience" actually is: "surfing is really kind of religious... The surf is now. The eternal now" Just about every version of that BW quote I've seen is limited to those three words "the eternal now", which sounds most profound... but add "the surf is now" and the entire meaning is turned 180. Finally, "You want to know where it's really at, man ? It's a sport. It's chicks. It's groovy. Anyone who tells you anything else is living in another world."

The article uses surfing as a starting point to talk about the "Ultimate Religious Experience." For instance "coming out of a wave" is related to "finding out you really are...God."

It's interesting to note that the elongated titles & intros of both CHEETAH pieces (the Jules Siegel article & Surfing Saints) seem to compliment each other.

"The Religious Conversion of Brian Wilson: GOODBYE SURFING HELLO GOD!" and "In the sun-tanned world of Bikini Beach improbable mystics are finding a new Ultimate Religious Experience."

BTW, Alan Watts used the phrase "the eternal now" as interchangeable with the term "Zen."

Andrew G. Doe said:

'Course... if you're implying that Brian's trips are fiction, or even inaccurately reported, then 50% of your 'clear-light' theory just keeled over and died. Can't have it both ways, Bill. Can't manipulate the evidence to your own ends.

The "clear light" reference isn't taken from the bio but rather the Surfing Saints article from CHEETAH! (page 98 of LLVS). Brian confesses "It's only happened to me once...." while talking about the "Ultimate Religious Experience."

This would then correspond to trip #3 from the bio which was described as "the ultimate...four hours of enlightenment and spirituality."

Quote from Andrew G. Doe:

If you're referring to the Fusion article... I can't find anything even close to him saying that. if it's not, care to point me at the article in question ?

That quote is on page 57 of the revised LLVS. the article is SMILE BRIAN-AND PULL THEM STRINGS and it was considered a Vosse piece by Cam Mott or some folks on some bygone messageboard or yahoogroup (so sorry if I got the Vosse part wrong). The take away is that vegetables (the actual food) promotes health which is "an important ingredient in spiritual enlightenment."

Firstly, where's the reference to vegetables in this... secondly, Bill, that whole piece is a put-on, a joke, hence the repetitions of "out-of-sight" in an intentionally square spelling.

Hope we're looking at the same thing--it's on page 68 of LLVS. This piece is chock full of vegetable references: "Grasping firmly onto the carrot, Brian ate it quickly, and, lo and behold!--it gave him some very out-of-sight vision, of a very out-of-sight world." The idea that you need a lot of energy to deal with the out-of-sight world is an "enlightening perception."
The take away from this is that the same connection is made between vegetables and accessing a new frame of reference. "I've just come down from Carrot Heaven to help you see just Where It's At, and to tell you that the world is really Out-Of-Sight!"

Is this flashback reported anywhere else except in this book ? If not, then it's immediately suspect.

Nowhere else to my knowledge. The flashback is referenced a second time in the bio when Brian is discussing the direction for his next album (it was Pet Sounds) with his astrologer (page 131).

Frank Holmes is key to understanding SMiLE. By being somewhat out of the loop his honesty regarding his contribution is illuminating.

How did YOU propose to make an album capable of prompting spiritual enlightenment? You didn't say.

The point of the bio reference was to indicate that the unreliable bio DID have an idea how to achieve the goal of SMiLE. Wow. It's as if a total piece of crap had the clue that could produce the greatest album never made.

My guess is that none of the online geniuses reading my prior post could come up with a single way to make an album with the ability to promote spiritual enlightenment.

So then, if the bio has a better idea then any of the online geniuses could come up with.....who do you think is the genius who came up the idea for the bio?

No.

Brian blocked the release of the SMiLE material for years (due to its 'inappropriate" nature). He has never explained how the music was "inappropriate." Apparently, he doesn't want folks to know what he really was up to. Peter Reum even recently admitted that Brian isn't spilling any beans.

You'll also notice that Van Dyke has taken on more of the "ask me, I wrote all the words" role to take the pressure off of Brian as he doesn't want to handle the hard SMiLE questions. VDP is adept at fielding the toughies.

If those guys admit to what they were up to (Bob Hanes said "Brian & Van Dyke knew exactly what they were doing") a lot of folks likely would be pretty pissed off. SMiLE has become a big deal over the years. Better to play it out as is.

Plus, mysteries and myths sell records.

The original goal of SMiLE was to bring about spiritual enlightenment.

Evidence of this is from Brian himself. In the Vosse piece Brian wants people to eat vegetables for health because "health is an important ingredient in spiritual enlightenment." He's promoting health (on the SMiLE album) to promote spiritual enlightenment.

This same theme can be detected in Brian's piece for The Beat.

"...Brian Gemini was a very quick-witted sort of soul, and he perceived instantly that he would need a great deal of out-of-sight energy to be able to cope with this brand new out-of-sight world which he had just seen with his new found out-of-sight vision....Shortly after this enlightening perception...." Once again the vegetables &, in this case, the out-of-sight world, are a health & spiritual enlightenment tie-in. Doubters should check out the piece in LLVS.

And Brian's explanation of the "Surf's Up" lyrics ends with "the joy of enlightenment, of seeing God." Once again a piece of SMiLE music is tied to spiritual enlightenment. But this isn't just done by Brian.

Frank Holmes in his piece at the end of Priore's latest SMiLE book explains some "Surf's Up" lyrics: "...and 'two-step to lamp's light' is an idea of stepping to enlightenment, finding your way there."

So how would one make an album that could inspire spiritual enlightenment? Please, will all the brilliant reading people reading this post write down how they'd make an album that could inspire spiritual enlightenment. DO IT!!!! Don't be gutless cowards. If you're so freakin' smart it should be easy. Take your time & don't read any further until you've done so. If you come up empty then realize that maybe you aren't so freakin' smart. If you can get over yourselves then read on.

In Brian's bio (despite all its flaws) the bookstore acid flashback scene presents a possible way to do this. Brian seems taken to solving the riddle and recalls Loren saying that flashbacks are "comparable to Zen riddles, mysteries full of meaning." So perhaps presenting "mysteries full  of meaning" would produce a result (spiritual enlightenment) that was comparable to Zen riddles & their result (spiritual enlightenment).

If we step back & consider hypothetically an album capable of prompting the spiritual "oceanic" experience then a strange thing happens: all of the farthest out claims about the SMiLE project (based upon the perceptions of folks surrounding the project & involved in the project) come true. Brian knew no boundaries---TRUE. He was the potential leader of the movement ----TRUE. He & Van Dyke were  making a mind-blowing fully integrated concept album----TRUE. Nothing was impossible----TRUE.

And this spiritual goal also completely meshes with Brian's consistent claims from the era: that he was making spiritual music.

If we consider Brian's claims the SMiLE was ahead of it's time----YEAH. What about Brian's claims that it still is too advanced---YEAH. What about Brian's claims that it's "inappropriate music"----YEAH, quite possibly (tho I have to add that such endeavors are also held in the highest regard my many religions).

This is totally consistent stuff. The spiritual enlightenment goal solves it all, and elevates SMiLE in a league of its own (perhaps the greatest album ever???).

Andrew G. Doe said:

Brian's trips are well-documented.

Where?

If you're making an album about America you don't cash in the chips because you have a song about the Great Chicago Fire.

But if you're making an album that's gonna transmit your spiritual experience to unsuspecting listeners you might second guess your original concept along the way. You may even abandon it. You might even call it "inappropriate music to be making."

Fresh Subud air around my head...

And Brian's comments about the lyrics "maybe they work, I don't know" in the Jules Siegel article illustrate that they (Brian & Van Dyke) are on the same experimental page. Brian then goes on to affirm his commitment to his "spiritual music."

I was lying.

That's just following through on a certain logic.

It's not a koan & I have to tell you that I know nothing about Zen so please don't bring the subject up again.

But the koan idea & the riddle or mystery idea is interesting in conjunction with the idea of prompting spiritual enlightenment and that's where they meet in SMiLE.

So the stuff cobbled together form other sources proves the other sources were incorrect. Is that correct?