Comic Bill Hicks’ Excellent Inter-Dimensional Adventure
Comic Bill Hicks was described as “irreverent, outrageous, shocking, angry,” and “genius.” He loathed media-entrained helplessness and consumerism, referring to America as the “United States of Advertising.” Called the “comedian’s comedian” by critics, Hicks performed in the U.S., U.K., and Australia until his death in 1994 at age 32.
But the adjectives above cannot fully describe Hicks, who waged war on the cultural trance, calling for a new, awakened consciousness. He was a rock n’ roll Gabriel on the razor’s edge, trumpeting a vision of a vast, human evolutionary shift. Look and listen between the lines and other descriptors will come to mind; “visionary,” “prophetic,” and yes, “dimensional traveler.”
One of Hicks’ alter egos, “Goat Boy,” was a startling stew of Pan, Dionysus, Bacchus, and any hedonistic diety you can think of. Goat Boy was the comic gestalt of Hicks’ libido — seriously explicit, but paradoxically wise and child-like. Gerald Nachman, the San Francisco Chronicle theater critic wrote, “However rough he gets, I felt my head opened up by Hicks. He’s not everyone’s cup of chicory, but If you like your comics witch’s brew-strong, Bill Hicks is the wit of choice.”
Harmonic Convergence 1987
As a teenager, Hicks and his friends discovered psilocybin mushrooms as a tool for spiritual insight. From an even earlier age, Hicks had explored eastern meditation traditions and subjects in the “Course in Miracles” genre. He earnestly and sincerely sought enlightenment, say his surviving friends. And he believed unshakably in UFOs and multi-dimensionality.
Laser-focused on a career as a comedian, Hicks began sneaking out of his parent’s house to perform in a Houston comedy club at age 14. By 1985, he was established as the leader of the pack of the Houston comedy scene. Hicks was living like a rockstar; drugs, alcohol, wild parties, etc., and over the next few years, he fell into addiction and behaviors that impacted his career and was losing credibility as an artist and performer.
“Bill knew he needed to get sober. From a career standpoint, it became apparent he needed to turn things around,” wrote friend Kevin Booth in his book. But according to Booth, now a filmmaker and producer, the 1987 Harmonic Conversion event was the turning point. The event was organized by author Jose Arguelles, the Aug. 16, 1987 date was chosen because of planetary alignments and the Mayan calendar. Hicks, Booth, and another friend prepared days in advance with meditation and clean diets.
The day of the convergence, the group ended up at another friend’s ranch sitting near a pond. Booth and Hicks had both taken large doses of psilocybin mushrooms — called a “heroic” dose by Terence McKenna — intending to “punch a hole” through the fabric of reality.”
After talking about relativity for a while, Hicks and Booth found themselves inside a ship that was like a conch shell with neither fully realizing the other was having the same experience “In his book, “Bill Hicks: Agent of Evolution,” Booth writes:
“We headed towards a circle of light. The beings, they were glowing. Bill was asking questions like; ‘Why are you here? Why is this happening?’
“I came out with explanations of time travel and a firm belief that the barriers to time travel and communication were all inside your mind. Basically, anything was possible. Immediately after leaving the ship, we said a few words.
KEVIN: Oh my god. Did you…?
BILL: Yes.
“Then we realized we were able to communicate telepathically. We had a perfectly normal conversation without either one of us opening our mouth. We were perfectly in sync. It was like a miracle. We communicated like this for a while, neither of us speaking anything.”
Booth adds that after, Hicks started talking about the experience from the stage. “He saw the source of light that exists in all of us,” says Booth. Still a combination of barbed wire and silly putty, Hicks began to conclude his shows with a new message (excerpted) and spoke of one god with the name of ‘love.’
“The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, ‘Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?’”
“We can change it anytime we want. It’s only a choice. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defense each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.”
Booth has long been at the center of a theory that Hicks faked his death and became the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, in part because Booth went to work for Jones shortly after Hicks’ death. When asked via email, he did not respond.
Hicks’ words are as fresh today as they were in the early ‘90s. When watching Hicks’ Youtube performances, it’s easy to forget the material is 25-plus years old.
Hicks died of pancreatic cancer at the unusually young age of 32 — this is not a young person’s disease. But ensuing generations have embraced his vision and message. “Zeitgeist,” a powerful 2007 documentary that examines the mass illusions created by prevailing institutions, features Hicks at the conclusion.
Hicks never wavered from his vision of the next turning of human evolution and his aspirations for unity and peace. But his performances also revealed his anguish, derived in part from humanity’s cruelty to itself. His angst may be described by Robert Anton Wilson’s insight in his book “Prometheus Rising.”
“We are all giants, raised by pygmies, who have learned to walk with a perpetual mental crouch,” and echoed in G.I. Gurdjieff’s words, “Fairness? Decency? How can you expect fairness or decency on a planet of sleeping people?”
About the Author
Is Psychedelic Tourism Destroying the Sanctity of Plant Medicine?
As psychedelic healing and plant medicine go more mainstream, luxury psychedelic tourism is on the rise—good news for the spread of this medicine, but how might over-commercialism affect this sacred practice?
A recent Bloomberg article highlights the rise in all-inclusive psychedelic retreats. Indigenous plant medicine has been around for centuries, and its health benefits have been scientifically demonstrated, but as it gains mainstream acceptance and finds a bigger audience, some only see dollar signs.
Bloomberg reports, “according to Data Bridge Market Research the psychedelic market is expected to grow from $3.8 billion in 2020 to $10.7 billion by 2027.”
With the potential to make a lot of money, could some unscrupulous companies capitalize on this trend and remove the sanctity of this practice?
Carlos Tanner is the director of The Ayahuasca Foundation in Peru, he founded the center in 2009 as the result of his own healing journey. “When I started our retreat center, The Ayahuasca Foundation, I was coming off of a seven-year study myself; a four-year apprenticeship where I lived with a curandero and several years after that of studying with other teachers,” Tanner said.
“For most people that were starting centers at that time—which wasn’t many—you were a student first, and eventually after years of study, you came to the point where you wanted to offer this to people from outside of the culture. Now we see people who don’t have very much experience at all, but yet they’re opening a healing center.”
As this budding industry is dealing with rapid growth, there are some complicated issues regarding its increased popularity.
“When it comes to the commercialization of substances that have an ancestral background I would say that it is a delicate situation, and I hope that there would be a benefit to those indigenous populations from which those traditions were orignated. But at the same time, I know many indigenous people and they are for the spreading of what they believe to be their culture, which oftentimes was something that was looked upon negatively or was degraded as if they were second-class citizens, quite literally,” Tanner said.
“But now having people from the Western world, from the modern world, want to learn or experience elements of their culture, I think gives them a sense of pride. So it’s a complex question, to say the least.”
