You spoke of, what I surmise, is an experience in “Remote Viewing” or could even be “Astral-Projection.” Fascinating stuff. You mentioned, if I remember correctly, that this was the biggest psychical experience you had ever had. Is this true? Any paranormal experiences or otherworldly encounters?

I imagine this refers to accounts I have given concerning a couple of experiences I had with Geff from Coil, around the time of the sensory deprivation, scrying, and Dreamachine-style experiments I have mentioned. We were always looking for ways to access altered states, and enhance our perceptions – one such experiment involved attempts at hypnosis: Geff said that he had been taught some basic methods for inducing light hypnotic states (I think by a school-teacher, of all people?) – which we thought would be useful for our ongoing ‘occult researches’ – so one time he offered to teach the basics to my friend Raoul and myself. The premise was that you concentrated your gaze on something that would hold your attention while the hypnotist (in this case Geff) spoke in a rhythmic, repetitive fashion, gradually getting slower, heavier, and more insistent – sort of bypassing your conscious attention and going in more-or-less subliminally, I suppose.

With Raoul, we used a shiny coin blue-tacked to the plain white, inward-sloping attic room wall, with an angle-poise lamp pointed at it – and just ‘put him under’ and then after a few minutes of relaxation brought him out again. What was strange was at first he just could not speak, started laughing – then crying – all mixed up together, and then started to get a bit panicky, like someone who can’t catch their breath . . . but then after a few soothing words and some fresh air, leaning out of the window onto the garden at the back of the house, he came back to himself and was OK again. Apart from that, he just said he’d felt a nice state of warm relaxation, floating . . .

When it came to my turn, because Geff had said you could use anything as the focus, really, as long as it was something you could stare at, not take your gaze from, I asked to use an Austin Osman Spare painting that they had just purchased [the one of trees which I think not long after they sold to David Tibet – it certainly ended up on the cover of Current 93’s ‘Tamlin’ 12” anyway] It was quite literally just sitting there, leaning against the wall of the spare bedroom. So we put it on a chair, propped up against the wall, again with the rest of the lights out and just the angle-poise. Geff did his stuff and the last I remember was like going under at the dentist, when they count you down . . . and then just coming back out of it. Other than a warm, pleasant, relaxed feeling, there was nothing more to it. At least not at the time . . . But later that night, staying the night in that same spare room, trying to get to sleep I just couldn’t seem to settle. I was half-sitting, propped up against pillows, andfacing the same window out onto the garden I mentioned earlier. It was a fairly stormy, blustery old night, and my attention was drawn to a tree at the bottom of their garden almost magnetically. After a while it was like my attention was being drawn in to the tree, with an almost ‘G-force’ acceleration – quite disconcerting at first – and then, all-of-a-sudden, I was IN THE TREE. I don’t know how else to describe it – I had literally swapped places with the tree, and could feel my roots reaching down into the soil and my branches swaying in the wind – but almost as soon as I registered the sensations, the shock or surprise was such that I snapped back into my body, propped upright in the bed. One of the strangest sensations I have ever experienced in my life.

One of the other bizarre ‘out-of-body’ type experiences – also the strangest and strongest of this type I have ever experienced, under any conditions – was also staying with Coil. At one point the had got to know a chap called Tony Bassett, a sort of ‘mad professor’ type, who made all sorts of weird and wonderful gadgets – a lot of them ‘mind toys’ involving strobe-lights, flicker, and binaural beats, that sort of thing – but also some more serious alternative therapy gadgets, like the infamous ‘black box’ [the subcutaneous neuro-electric stimulation device which was meant to encourage the body’s production of endorphins, supposedly making it useful for relaxation, meditation, and also as a home detox device – the prototype had apparently been used to help treat the likes of Keith Richards and Pete Townshend for drug addiction, and was meant to be based on similar principles to acupuncture.] This Tony also made things like the ‘wishing machine’ that Burroughs wrote about (and that Geff cites in the Introduction he wrote to the Dutch edition of WSB’s Electronic Revolution) and various devices relating to an alternative energies therapy called radionics (don’t ask me!) The main one was something called the Lhakovsky Multi-Wave Oscillator, which apparently as well as being good for whatever ailed you was also alleged to induce out-of-body-experiences! The idea was you started off by giving yourself brief exposure to certain milder frequencies to begin with, then built up both your length of exposure and intensity gradually over a period of time . . . but typically, Geff wanted to take the thing for a joyride, and – also typically at that time! – I was happy enough to be along for the ride.

So, you lay down in front of the LMWO, head near the big grey box, between a couple of aerials (like something from an old portable TV) – and mad-professor Geff started twiddling the big dial and flicking switches like nobody’s business . . . I started to feel some very strange hairs-prickling-at-the-back-of-the-neck stuff, also something that I can only describe as being like a magnetic current sweeping across the inside of my head – then accompanied by a see-sawing sensation, which was actually slightly disconcerting – and then before you know it I literally felt myself tip UP and slip OUT of my body . . . Next thing, I appear to be floating – rather awkwardly – just below the ceiling of a room I don’t recognise – I just about manage to turn on my side a little, and see that the wall opposite is lined floor-to-ceiling with book-cases, and that there are piles of books and boxes still to be unpacked, a big table in the middle of the room with like a heavy red tablecloth or some-such slung loosely over it, and a large bay window in the adjacent wall – and then the sound of a large heavy door slamming shut jolts me back into my body, and I am once again lying on the first-floor living-room floor with Geff leaning over me, a look of some concern on his face, saying:

“Fucking hell, are you alright? You went right out for a minute there!”

As I look up, I see that Sleazy has just come in an is standing framed in the living-room door (the ‘slam’ I heard and felt must have been him getting home and coming in the heavy front door downstairs) with a what’s-going-on look on his face, and as soon as I am able I tell Geff he’s not far wrong, and explain what I think I have just seen. I have barely finished (sitting upright now) and see that they exchange meaningful glances – Geff bursts out laughing, and Sleaz beckons me to come with him, without a word. Getting up I follow him, we go downstairs and out the front door. He then takes me down the side alley to the door for the downstairs flat, which he has just bought. I know that they have begun to have it done up, so that they can now live in the whole house, but have not seen it yet – and as the internal door in the hall is still closed off from when they were separate flats and the only entrance for now is still the outside door, this will be my first time entering the ground floor. He ushers me in, along the hall to the room that is directly below their living-room upstairs. It is in the process of being converted into what will be quite a handsome library, with floor-to-ceiling bookcases along opposite walls, either side of the bay window. In the middle of the room sits a large antique wooden table, partly covered by what looks like a curtain or drape of a crushed-velvet texture in a deep red colour.

CLICK HERE FOR THE CONCLUSION / PART 2

-Revelator Keats Rosz is a writer, musician, and paranormal detective residing in Portland, Oregon. For more, follow him on twitter @dakota_slim and check out his latest project: WE, THE HALLOWED and his music: DAKOTA SLIM and SPARE ∴ SPELLS

MATTHEW LEVI STEVENS LINKS:

WEBSITE:

https://whollybooks.wordpress.com/

PURCHASE "THE MAGICAL UNIVERSE OF WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS"

http://mandrake.uk.net/the-magical-universe-of-william-s-burroughs/

REALITY SANDWICH ARTICLE:

http://realitysandwich.com/172802/magical_universe_william_s_burroughs/

TERRY WILSON “APPRENTICE TO AN APPRENTICE” :

http://www.beatdom.com/apprentice-to-an-apprentice-the-perilous-passage-of-terry-wilson/

UNCLE BILL & THE WRECKERS OF CIVILIZATION :

http://realitystudio.org/biography/nothing-here-now-but-the-recordings/

THE FINAL ACADEMY REVIEW :

http://genesisporridgearchive.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/a-report-on-final-academy-by-matthew.html?zx=87455eecc3622abf