Allen Ginsberg at Georgian Court, 1995, (Lakewood, New Jersey) – Q & A
– continues from here
Student (10): Do you know consciousness?
AG: Do I know consciousness? Uh yeah, I know consciousness—here we are. I don’t think I’m a Buddha. I don’t know the extent of it.
Student (10): Do you know the subconscious?
AG: I don’t think there is one. My mind is open to itself.
Student (10): You don’t believe in the subconscious whatsoever?
AG: Well, believe, what is the word “believe in”? I don’t know what the word.. what is “believe in”? Consider the word “believe in.” That means that I believe in something that I haven’t seen, it’s a subconscious. That there’s a subconscious that I’m not in contact with, except intermittently, and I believe it’s there, or I believe in it. Well, I have dreams, I don’t know where they come from, but is that subconscious? It’s a word, but the Buddhist have another word, “unborn”. You can’t trace it to its womb, can’t trace it to its origin. That’s just as good as the word, “subconscious”, but I think that we are much more aware of everything that goes on in our mind than people make out. You know, everybody is aware of wanting to screw their mother or brother or sister. Everybody’s had that dream. Very few people have suppressed it one hundred percent, that it’s totally unfamiliar and reprehensible. It’s just ordinary, everyday mind, it’s no big deal, you know. Maybe saying, calling, the subconscious is like making it a big deal, as if it’s something secret that nobody has noticed before. I mean what is a subconscious? Repressed, something about repressed emotion? – like screw your mother, be screwed by your father, something like that, the worst that you.. incest..Pardon me.
Student (10): I would just think of it as things that.. (it) isn’t really picked up in your conscious perception..
AG: Well, it’s the, you know, the whole point of those “Spots of Time” of Wordsworth are things that are there, that you didn’t quite notice but they’re there, and you think of them once every couple months. Is that subconscious or is that conscious?
Student (10): Well, it’s conscious if you can recollect it.
AG: Yeah, but then, what if you’re stoned? Well yeah, but that’s just another thought, so I won’t cultivate that. So, I think there is a question of meditation, of cultivating mindfulness, cultivating awareness. Cultivating awareness of what’s going through your mind. I mean that could be sharpened but I don’t think anything’s ever totally submerged in the darkness of some mythical subconscious that never comes to surface and you never notice it. I mean people notice everything, but they don’t notice what they notice.
Student (10): would you recommend a holding of that perception either in meditation or psychedelic or…?
AG: Well meditation or art. I don’t think that the drugs do that much good. Maybe once or twice but that’s about it, but the problem is people get hung up on the sensation of the drug and it negates somewhere and it becomes like chasing their own tails, running after their own shadow. Yeah
to be continued