Jerry Garcia on Christianity, God, and Consciousness

This is one of the best interviews with Garcia that I have read to date. Talks about much more than faith if your interested:http://www.levity.com/mavericks/garcia.htm


David: What's your concept of God if you have one?

Jerry: I was raised a Catholic so it's very hard for me to get out of that way of thinking. Fundamentally I'm a Christian in that I believe that to love your enemy is a good idea somehow. Also, I feel that I'm enclosed within a Christian framework so huge that I don't believe it's possible to escape it, it's so much a part of the western point of view. So I admit it, and I also believe that real christianity is okay. I just don't like the exclusivity clause.

But as far as God goes, I think that there is a higher order of intelligence something along the lines of whatever it is that makes the DNA work. Whatever it is that keeps our bodies functioning and our cells changing, the organizing principle - whatever it is that created all these wonderful life-forms that we're surrounded by in its incredible detail.

There's definitely a huge vast wisdom of some kind at work here. Whether it's personal - whether there's a point of view in there, or whether we're the point of view, I think is up for discussion. I don't believe in a supernatural being.

Rebecca: What about your personal experience of what you may have described as God?

Jerry: I've been spoken to by a higher order of intelligence - I thought it was God. It was a very personal God in that it had exactly the same sense of humor that I have.(laughter) I interpret that as being the next level of consciousness, but maybe there's a hierarchical set of consciousnesses. My experience is that there is one smarter than me, that can talk to me, and there's also the biological one that I spoke about.

David: Do you feel that there's a divine plan at work in nature?

Jerry: I don't know about a plan. I don't know whether it cares to express itself that way or even if matters such as developmental constructs along time have any relevance to this particular God point of view. It may be a steady-state God that exists out beyond space-time beyond our experience, or around it, or contemporary with it, or it may function in the moment - I have no idea.

 

This is sadly shallow, and I say that as a long time Grateful Dead fan. If Jerry had known Christ, he might not have destroyed himself with heroin. I always loved him, but the last thing he ever wanted to be thought of was a guru. It's too bad that so many of his devotees have somehow made him into a spiritual sage.

 

I guess when taken out of the contex of the interview, it does seem a little shallow. Take a look at the interview in full and then tell me what you think. I thought that it was very candid and he spoke to many of the spiritual things I had guessed were going on in the concert halls.
In terms of his Christianity and his herion addiction, it was something that he probably struggled with every day. I don't think that he was a spiritual sage in terms that he knows about a certain path or realm that we don't have access to (although I do believe he has been to places that I haven't reached yet); however, at certain moments, he was able to lossen himself up to the actions of that other realm and allowed it to come through to us. It wasn't him, it was the other, it was us.

 

I can definitely relate to this quote from the interview:

"Psychedelics were probably the single most significant experience in my life. Otherwise I think I would be going along believing that this visible reality here is all that there is. Psychedelics didn't give me any answers. What I have are a lot of questions. One thing I'm certain of; the mind is an incredible thing and there are levels of organizations of consciousness that are way beyond what people are fooling with in day to day reality."

Thankfully, I found the answer(s) to my questions in Christ, the Word of God made known to man:

"He is not silent. The reason we have the answer is because the infinite-personal God, the full Trinitarian God, has not been silent. He has told us who He is. Couch your concept of inspiration and revelation in these terms, and you will see how it cuts down into the warp and woof of modern thinking. He is not silent. That is the reason we know. It is because He has spoken. What has He told us? Has He told us only about other things? No, He has told us truth about Himself -- and because He has told us truth about Himself -- that He is the infinite-personal, triune God -- we have the answer to existence." (Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)

- http://www.rationalpi.com/theshelter/silent.html

 

Huck, do you feel like God was somehow expressed or otherwise clearly present in those halls? Or do you feel like the Dead were a diversion?

 

I believe there was a yearning for God expressed in the music/energy of their shows, but no knowledge of him.

 

when a friend brough mythologist joseph campbell to a grateful dead concert, he immediately identified the "vibe" (pre-, during, & post-concert) as an american manifestion of the dionysian aspect of the spritual experience... (the majority religions in america tend to be rather apollonian in nature)

~

(anybody heard of "the fosterites" & their special services for "the saved" ? oh, right, fictional religions have no place in our evaluation of the american psyche, izzat so?)

 

I don't hear an emotional plea for the spirit of God coming through his guitar Finn. I hear someone, imperfect, yes, balancing the energies of the otherworld with the frailties of this one.

 

"Some talk of deviation
but from what was never mentioned
so I set out to find the wrong way home"

Robert Hunter.

The Dead were a diversion from a lot of the narrowness and general uptightness that surrounds the whole business of 'spirituality'. The thing was like an initiation. At their best, the band were like a single intrument being strummed by a definite higher benign force - there were truly magic moments with the dead.
Thats a few of my thoughts anyway.

 

Jerry is Christ, silly heads, like all of you!

 

I think the way the dead played together with so many sounds overlapping in such a great harmony including the light shows and the love of the crowd was kinda like a sensory overload for the brain so it forced the brain into the now, where it all is at

 

I'd like to point out that Jerry died of a heart attack in rehab while he was seeking to break free from the bonds of heroin. It just wasn't just heroin that killed Jerry. He was overweight, diabetic and he was a heavy cigarette smoker.

 

...the music played the band ...

 

Methinks there is some knowledge of God expressed in Ripple.

 

I was thinking about that too, after I posted the original thread. Box of Rain has a similar theme. any others? its still early here.

 

Blues for Allah