William Burroughs 1983 Naropa reading continues from here
WSB: Kim has never doubted the existence of God or the possibility of an afterlife He feels that immortality is the only goal worth striving for (I mean, what you are here for?) He knows that it’s not something you just automatically get to, believing in some garbage or other, like Christianity or Islam. It is something you have to work and fight for, like everything else in this life or another. You see, Kim believes in the magical universe which is the universe of will, where nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen – a living universe. The magical universe is a universe of many gods, often in conflict and this is, after all, more in accordance with what we can see from here looking around us, forces in conflict. This is a war universe. So the paradox of an all-powerful and all-knowing God who nonetheless allows evil and death and suffering does not arise arise. “We got a famine here, what happened, Osiris?” – “Well you can’t win ’em all. Hustling myself”.
“Can you give us immortality?” – “Well, I can give you an extension, maybe. Take you as far as the Duad” (and that’s a river of excrement they all got to swim through). “You’ll have to make it from there on your own. Most of them don’t Very few people are good at anything. Figure about one in a million.” Well, biologically speaking, that is good odds, better than a stacked deck of lies. One-god religions are death traps. “Yeah they’re gonna get immortality, everybody can whine and mewl out a sniveling prayer.” I remember dealing with the a slip of the printer’s ink – “The Women’s Temperance Union opposes child abuse, intemperance and immortality!” One-god religions are a step towards the elimination of all spiritual values. The unpredictable, the spontaneous, the living have no place in the one-god universe. From Christianity to Communism is a very short step. Believe what we tell you to believe.
Well, the most arbitrary and bureaucratic immortality blueprint was drafted by the ancient Egyptians. First you had to get yourself mummified, and that was very expensive, making immortality a monopoly of the truly rich. Then your continued existence in the Western Lands (that’s the title of my next book, Egyptian Paradise) was entirely contingent on the continued existence and welfare of your mummy. That is why they had their mummies hid good . Now mummy’s your basic passport but you must also know the names. You shall not pass unless you know my name for page after page in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Well here is plain citizen Horus. He’s got enough vigor and vitality to survive his physical death. He won’t get far. He’s got no mummy, he’s got no names, he’s got nothing. What happens to a bum like that, a nameless, mummyless asshole? Why, demons will swarm all over him at the next checkpoint. He will be dismembered and thrown into a flaming pit, where his soul will be utterly consumed and destroyed forever. While others, with sound mummies and the right names to drop in the right places, sail through to the Western Lands
But there are some second-class souls who just barely squeeze through. These mummies are not in a good sound condition. These creeps are relegated to third-rate transient hotels just beyond the last checkpoint, where they can smell the charnel-house disposal ovens from their skimpy balconies. “You see that sign?” the bartender snarls – MAGGOTY MUMMIES WILL NOT BE SERVED HERE – “Might as well face facts…my mummy is going downhill. Cheap job to begin with..gawd, maggots is crawling all over it ..the way that demon guard sniffed at me this morning…” Transient hotels…
And here you are in your luxury condo, deep in the Western Lands… you got no security. Some disgruntled former employee sneaks into your tomb and throws acid in your mummy’s face. Or sloshes gasoline all over it and burns the shit out of it. “OH… Someone is fucking with my mummy…”. And brother, you are fucked!
Mummies are sitting ducks. No matter who you are, what can happen to your mummy is a pharaoh’s nightmare – the dreaded mummy-bashers, grave-robbers, scavengers, floods, volcanos, earthquakes, explosions. My god, the worst thing that could happen to a mummy. Mummies are dedicated pacifists. No nukes is good nukes to a mummy.
At one point in Egyptian history, there was a hundred years of revolution when the poor became rich and the rich became poor. A chronicler relates “one (person) leader uttered a terrible threat “I’m going to destroy all your fucking mummies, which is sucking their immortality from the workers!” – Scary, yeah.
Now Allen Ginsberg says you got no soul.. Well the Ancient Egyptians postulated seven souls and Pharaohs have fourteen. Top soul and the first to leave at the moment of death is the Ren – and that’s the Secret Name. And this correspondence to my Director. He directs the film of your life from conception to death. And the Secret Name is the title of your film. When you die that’s where he came in. Second soul, and second off the sinking ship, is Sekhem (Sekhmet) – Energy, Power, Light. The director gives orders. Sekhem presses the right buttons. He is the technician – Action, Lights, Camera! “No power left in this fucking set!”. He drinks the bicarbonate of soda and disappears in a belch. Third one out is the Khu, the Guardian Angel, the prompter, (you know, the one who insists on it, “don’t go in that place”, you know). These three souls check back into the space station for the next film. It’s the four left behind who pay the cheque in the Land of the Dead. The Ba – the heart, love-and-hate, tears-and-laughter, there’s no show without it. Going to lay the Ba behind, because you’re double and he takes his chances with you in the Land of the Dead Akh , his memory, the shadow, past conditioning, and last is Sekhu, the Remains, the physical body. With seven souls on set, there are palace jewels and revolutions. The Ka holds a straight razor to Ren’s throat – “Thinking about going some place, Rennie? Not without us you don’t. Your legs may skip up to the station but your head is gonna be staying right here” You can envisage a revolution lead by the Ka, backed by Khaibit, Ba and Sekhu. Intellectuals, peasants and workers against the Red and the utility combine. And the fake coups perpetrated by the priests of the church. Every Catholic boy’s got a saint medal around his neck for all the good it does him. Well the plan is to get all the souls working together in a space program. How many angles can dance on a space point? The answer is any number.
Hassan-i-Sabbah is supposed to have found out some basic secrets in Egypt. He got there, he’s moving West, just a jump ahead of Avisa. What did Hassan-i-Sabbah find out in Egypt? He found out that the Western Lands exists and how to reach it and this was the garden he showed his followers, and he found out how he could act as the Ka, the devil, for his followers (You see at death, I’ve told you, the others take off, but Ka is stuck with his boys, a front-line officer taking the same chances as his men, not once but every day).
Well, I believe that these souls or their equivalents exist, and that you can survive your physical death. I believe that the worst is man exists or can be made to exist. The Egyptians had a valid concept but they bogged down their fucking mummies. Instead of separating themselves, emancipating themselves, if you will, from the physical body, which may be the next evolutionary step, they tied themselves to the body for all eternity. We don’t want a skimpy hunk of sharecropper immortality with a string hanging off it like Mafioso spaghetti. We want the whole tamale and we want it now. The Johnsons have taken over the Western Lands and we are not applying in triplicate to the Immortality Control Board – “Immortality for the People” – How’s that for a Presidential program?
People are always asking what would you do if you were President and the answer is you would do what you were expected to do by the people that put you in office, if there was any doubt on that score you wouldn’t get the nomination let alone the Presidency. Occasionally they make mistakes. You think you can do what you want once you’re in the White House. Just try it. Wait till you’re out of line and they will kill you the way they killed John Kennedy. It’s my guess that Kenndy had uncovered something so rotten he couldn’t stomach it and he was about to spill. They got to him first, it looks like, and we’ll never know what he was about to spill but it must have been pretty rank. Here is a man not totally corrupt and here is something that is just too much.. So someone called a special number.
At a press conference, Reagan told a joke. We have a little pessimist and a little optimist. So they put the little pessimist into a room full of beautiful toys to cheer him up. And they put the little optimist into a room full of horseshit so he will learn his future trade as a politician. They come back and find that the little pessi- in tears – “What’s the matter with you, you little fart?” there “I’m afraid that someone’s going to come and take it all away from me”. And they find opi- up to his knees in horseshit, digging and throwing it over his shoulders. ”What the fuck are you doing?”. He says, “there’s got to be a pony in there some place!” – Now we have here a profound parable. The little pessi- is a realist. Indeed, somebody is going to take it all away from him and that somebody is known as Father Time. Meanwhile the little oppi- has received the horseshit satori – how to make a useful horse you can ride or eat out of horseshit – known as Reagonomics
Setting the record straight. Fifty years ago, deep in the Ural mountains of lower Slovonia, a thirteen-year-old prick named Pavlik Morozov denounced his father to local authorities as a counter-revolutionary kulak, got a pig hidden in his basement. That was when Stalin was starving out the kulaks. Up to three million small subsistence farmers starved to death in the winters of 1932 and 1933. Little Pavlikki was hacked to ghoulash by the outraged neighbors. Good job and all. Thus perished old squealing asshole. “His name must not die’, sobbed Maxim Gorki,” quote, “his heart contracted by painful emotion” unquote. So Pavlikki becomes a folk hero with a statue (that) shows him with his mouth open enunciating the good works, got a street in Moscow named after him. The village of Gerasimovka is a fuckin’ shrine, drawing legions of youthful pilgrims to the home of Pavlik Morozov, dirty little stukach (that’s Russki for rat). He may be a folk hero to the the Ivans but he’s just a fink to me.
And would you believe it? There are FDA stool catchers slinking about like curs in human shape trying to entrap doctors into writing illegal codeine prescriptions for colds. He lays down his rap, punctuated with fake coughs and sneezes, ” As you can see, doc” (of course he always calls him “doc” in order to get on a familiar basis), “I got a bad cold. I need an RX. for codeine”, with an insinuating corrupt smile. “I don’t mind paying for it” – “Not so fast, jonky, remove please the shits – I mean the shirt, my English is not already so good” – “Look, doc, this isn’t necessary” – “You ask me to prescribe without to make the examinations?” “Alright”. Reluctantly he peels off his shirt . The doctor applies his stethoscope. He stands back hands on hips and looks at his patient archly “If you (saw) a good thing, you come to me in time. We have here a walkabout pneumonia.” He goes to the medicine cabinet and selects a huge syringe. “And now, (vat the doctor’s commands-heim), first a little of strychinine, ha ha ha, not to be afraid from the name – And this? – this is made from a sick horse full mit anti-corpses. Und now…” He advances on the stukach, “Now look doctor I don’t need any injection” – “Ach, ja, sometimes the mind is affected, the patient will not see his conditions. Igor!” A hulking male nurse slinks in. ”Now look doctor, I’m an inspector from the FDA, federal narcotic control, you understand”. “Ha ha ha, of course you are, and I am Hitler! ha ha ha, sieg hiels” Hold him, Igor, he is full crazy.'”
(The) Ten Commandments updated – Thou shalt not drop an atom bomb or shit one out in the first place. Yes, I’m talking to you, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, known as “Opie” to his friends. If you’ve got an atom bomb as a friend your only enemy is a dud. When Opie heard the good news about Hiroshima he said, “Thank god it wasn’t a dud”. And Truman said, “God has given us the atom bomb and he will show us how to use it”. Oh god! So we go on signing petitions supporting nuclear freezes what else can we do? Probably nothing. We sound (it) as a word of warning.
Brion Gysin has the all-purpose bedtime story. Some trifling trillions of years ago a sloppy dirty giant slopped the grease from his fingers to the floor and one of these gobs of grease is our universe on its way to the floor – splat! – “clean it up, woman” – well the giant, (see), was a male chauvanist.
“Thy shall not blow pot smoke into the face of thy pet.” – “Does (kitten) want to get high? Oh look he’s bombed.” – ‘ I will train a pet raccoon to bite the nose off from such a cretin. Blow your stinkin’ smoke in my face will ya?”, he hisses. “I’ve been studying ventroliquism”, washing the nose in a toilet bowl. “Racoons are known to wash their food. It’s a wonder of nature.”
Thou shalt not be such a shit you don’t know you are one – Is there anyone in this room has never said “My God, I acted like an absolute shit. If so, let him stand forth so that we may acclaim a latter day saint. Don’t look at me. I recall an interview with some cretinist reporter he asked me, “Mr Burroughs, is there anything in your life you regret, anything you would do differently if you had it to do over?” I just looked at him and said, “What did you say, no don’t repeat it. Well I’m lucky if I get through a day without something I did wrong, something I regret, and you are talking about a lifetime! My god!”
Well this is a.. the old folkloric piece – (from Nova Express) – “Daddy Longlegs” looked like Uncle Sam on stilts and he ran this osteopath clinic outside East St Louis and took in a few junky patients. For two notes a week you could stay on the nod in green lawn chairs and look at the oaks and grass stretching down to a little lake in the sun, the nurse moves around with a silver tray feeding the junk in. We called her “Mother” – Wouldn’t you ? Doc Benway and me would hole up there after a rumble in Dallas involving this aphrodisiac ointment and Doc goofed on ether and mixed in too much Spanish Fly and burned the prick off the Police Commissioner. So we come to “Daddy Longlegs” to cool off and we find him cool and casual in a dark room with potted rubber plants and a silver tray where he likes to see a week in advance. A nurse shows us a room with rose wallpaper and we had this bell any hour of the day or night just ring and “Mother” charges in with a loaded hypo. One day we are sitting out in the lawn chairs with lap robes, it was a fall day, the leaves changing, the sun cold on the lake. Doc picks up a piece of grass, he says “Junk turns you on vegetable – It’s green see.” So we check out of the clinic and rent a house and Doc starts cooking up this green junk and the basement is full of tanks, smells like a compost heap of junkies. So finally he draws off this heavy green fluid and loads it into a hypo as big as a bicycle pump. “Now we must find a worthy vessel”, he says. So we flush out this old goofball artist and tell him it’s pure Chinese H from the Ling Dynasty. Doc shoots the whole pint of green right into the main line and the Yellow Jacket turns fibrous grey green and withers up like an old turnip. And I say “I’m getting out of here, me”. Doc says, “An unworthy vessel, obviously. I withdraw from the case.”
Thank you.