Astral travel: fun or selfish?

Beats at Naropa, an anthology edited by Anne Waldman and Laura Wright (Coffee House Press, '09), was assembled from Naropa University’s audio archives, and includes selections from lectures by “Beat” writers like William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, representatives of the Black Mountain School like Charles Olson, plus unclassifiable Beat allies like Ed Sanders, Anne Waldman, W.S. Merwin, and many others, all of whom served as instructors and advisors at Boulder’s Naropa University.

I only recently learned that my favorite book by William S. Burroughs, a collection of essays entitled The Adding Machine (Burroughs is directly descended from a namesake who invented this device) was also culled from recordings of lectures he gave at Naropa, perhaps accounting for its welcoming, conversational tone. Likewise, Beats at Naropa is a very engaging book, offering the de-facto trust of a teacher-student relationship, along with the accompanying insider’s perspective. One aspect of Naropa University is the implied necessity of balancing the creative and spiritual disciplines. Perhaps most amusing in this connection are the snippets of light-hearted debate between Burroughs and Naropa’s founder, Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, over whether or not astral travel (which Burroughs sees as “fun”) should be prohibited from Buddhist practice as a “distraction that may not be shared with others.”

As a brash young poet, I crashed one of Ginsberg’s lectures at Naropa just before he died. When it was over, I introduced myself as “Henry Alarmclock” (my pen name at the time), telling him, “You stayed overnight at my parents’ house one time in the seventies, they were poets.” “Well, I may have,” said Ginsberg, and got out of there in a hurry. I preferred my meeting with Gregory Corso after his reading at the Boulder Library—“Aaaaah, Mr. Alarmclcock!” he screeched ingratiatingly. Later that summer I missed the bus back from Boulder, walking to Naropa and trying to sleep in the field of grass behind it. No such luck. With both of these men now dead, plus both Burroughses, Anne Waldman, having started the audio archives from whence this collection sprang, is to be credited with having added to the living strength of their literary legacy.