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From: nm34@sdcc12.UUCP (nm34)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Re: Deadheads are the gratest (sic)
Message-ID: <235@sdcc12.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 8-Apr-85 11:07:28 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcc12.235
Posted: Mon Apr  8 11:07:28 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 10-Apr-85 03:41:28 EST
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> 
> I am curious.  What exactly do the Greatful Dead stand for and 
> how are their concerts a religious experience?
> 
> karen

     It is very difficult to explain, as is any "transendental"
experience.  The best way to "understand" what it is all about, is to
experience a Dead concert.  

     Short of that you cannot really know what its all about.  But I
will, to the best of my limited ability, try to explain.  To start, I
should explain that I am devout atheist.  I do not believe in any god,
or in any thing, force, spirit or experience that is not born out of the
human mind or the "real" world.  

     A Dead concert can be called, "religious experience" in the same
way that love, art, music, and caring can be called religious.  At a
Dead concert, these elements are concentrated and mixed until they
acquire an intensity that is greater than the sum of the parts.  This
intensity is derived, I think, from the ability of the actors, ie.
concert goers, to forget themselves, and become in touch, at least get
closer to their "true" selves.  The "true" self is the one that exists
when you are not aware of it.  It is the self that is capable of the
most extreme forms of sensual and mental awareness.  It is like love.
Or when you get lost in a book.  The key word is lost.  When you lose
your self-perception, you are able to truely feel.  And it is only when
this selfness is lost do we approach this oft sought after state.  

     In the Dead experience, we come close, some closer than others to
this state.  IT differs from a trancendental experience, in that there
are thousands with you.  That is what makes it religious.  The numbers
of people on the same wavelength.  It is very similar to a revival
meeting in a church down south.  There the people (without the aid of
drugs) are able to lose ones-self and experience what they could only
describe as bliss.  It is religious, because they are with many others.
This communal bliss seems to them to be only explanable by some kind of
devine intervension.  But we dont need a god to get to this experience,
it can be found through drugs, or music, or love or just through the
proper concentration of the mind (ie. meditaion).  The Dead experience
is just one way to get there, and it sure is a fun way.


                           Andy Bindman