LOTUS: How did you first become involved with Electronic Dance music?

SUN: Back in Santa Cruz in 1991 with Mr. Floppy's. Mr. Floppy's were the first rave events in the Bay Area. There were probably about 100 people in the collective. From there I did an event called The Interzone Project with Robert Anton Wilson, Nick Herbert, World Entertainment War, Cyberlab Sevev, and about 20 drummers. This was before the scene had developed. Toon Town was the first San Francisco event later that year. In '92 I did an event with Mondo 2000 which was a two-nighter that had the first ambient room in San Francisco.

LOTUS: Where did you get the idea for doing an ambient room? Was this something you had seen somewhere else?

SUN: No. I grew up in Chicago in the '70s. We were listening to Brian Eno and Pink Floyd -- all this experimental music -- Genesis and King Crimson. Back then it was a whole different reality. At the high school I went to there was always gang warfare and the gangs would do these house parties as a truce. Each would have one DJ and they would battle each other instead of killing each other. That's how it all started, back in Chicago at least ... I know there was a scene in Detroit ...

LOTUS: Would you just DJ at these SF events?

SUN: No, we were playing live. It was spontaneous, experimental live performance. We did DJ, but we processed. We'd experiment with processing and tweaking things out to the point of absurdity. From the beginning it was fun, interesting, and creative. Before the scene became commercialized in the Bay Area it was more about art and it was the coolest scene that I had ever experienced. Rock & roll for me was a dead scene and I had been out of it since I was 18 when I went into an ashram, the Self-Realization Fellowship in Encinitas. I lived in the ashram for about six months and then went and got my holistic health therapist's license. ATOI developed basically as a seed for a future non-religion consciousness experiment. It is a mystery school.

LOTUS: Could you clarify that?

SUN: The CDs are just the outer circle. That's what we're doing to communicate within ourselves and to humanity the intention of the Temple, which is to study the mysteries of life and bring these mysteries to people's conscious mind -- out of the subconscious dreamtime into the conscious waking state. [Richard begins talking about all the world's religions starting as psychedelic experiments. I play devil's advocate. The two of us begin a long discussion aboutt whether or not the Sufis formed as a result of smoking hash, Shaivatite Hinduism, Terence McKenna, Gnosticism, ancient mystery schools, and whether or not Christianity comes from the Greek Stoic philosophy of the Christos or Hindu Krishnaism -- and, after an interruption, the difficulty of uniting promoters in San Francisco. Upon this, Richard begins talking about SF again.] When the scene started, it was like an explosion of humanity in San Francisco. There were all ages, all religions, all colors, gay, straight, the whole city was raving. From Wednesday through Sunday there were at least five major parties going on every night for two years. After about two years, the authorities finally shut down most large events that were the warehouse type. It's all now a club/disco/over 21/non-psychedelic scene. It's nothing like it was. I don't think ever in human history that many diverse gatherings of people melted into each other psychedelically. [Richard discusses how the early SF scene was influenced by the movement in England and how this is a worldwide movement that will be particularly felt in Asia. He suggests using churches and mosques for meditative ambient gatherings. He compares the state of ambient music before ATOI began to the state of ambient music now while emphasizing that we has never made music for the purpose of making money. He makes a living as a gem dealer. The discussion moves towards the spiritual value of crystals and how he was initiated by a shaman.] Hopefully the people who read this article will get inspired to start communities, be creative, explore their minds. They need to start their own religions. Work through the systems, learn from the masters, but you are your own master. Ultimately you're responsible for your own enlightenment. [Richard's father was a Zen Buddhist and taught him to question at an early age. This begins a discussion on learning from Nature and Taoism. He feels that yogic practices are as relevant as music and that music is transforming the consciousness of the planet. He discusses how everything is music and makes a series of analogies to Hindu spiritual theory about the sacred vibrations of nature. From here he moves into discussing musical nodes and their relevance. He then begins talking about the early SF scene again.]

LOTUS: I hope you don't mind if I interrupt you for a moment.

SUN: Okay.

LOTUS: I hear what you're saying and I agree with most of it, but most of our readers have only been going out for roughly two or three years.

SUN: In LA?

LOTUS: Yeah, but I'd say in other cities as well. One thing I've found is that, when people start talking about old-school experiences, many people start closing off because they have trouble relating to them. Some people even begin to think it sounds arrogant and assume it really wasn't that different. Also, I think a lot of people when they start to hear about mystical things that they haven't had a personal experience of, in a similar way, start to close off because they can't relate to it. It becomes bullshit to them.

SUN: It doesn't really mean that much unless they've experienced it. Probably 80% of the people don't really care about it.

LOTUS: So here's the end-all questions: How do you think, in the present, people could begin an inquiry into recapturing those intense energetic experiences as dance events?, and How do you think people can try to look first-hand into mystical experiences to see if they are as profound as they are described to be?

SUN: It's very difficult to reduce the answer. The answer I could best say is to keep the scene evolving by evolving yourself through meditation.

LOTUS: How would you suggest people become aware of that state more often?

SUN: In kriya yoga, what we do is breathing exercises which oxygenate the brain and calm the mind. [Begins a discussion of Hindu and Taoist masters controlling their life force through breath control. He believes that there is a fundamental human desire for us to evolve as a species and that breath control is the basis for developing superhuman abilities.] People have potential that they are not using. They say we use 10% of our brain. What if we were using 50% of our potential, if right now we are only using 10%? This is the quest. This scene and the people who are reading this, they are the builders of the future civilization. They have to increase their potential. This is where psychedelics come in. Psychedelics give you an insight into the human mind that we create our realities. The people who created the first personal computers were meditating in the '60s and doing acid in the Himalayas and then realized they could take these huge indutstrial computers and shrink them down into portable briefcase-sized things. It's not to say that psychedelics are the answer, but psychedelics are an integral part of the house community.

LOTUS: That's a fundamental question within the dance community. Is it necessary? Part of the reason we have so many damn problems is because of drugs, but drugs do seem to be very viable means in which a person can achieve certain points of realization.

SUN: Do you think you would have gotten where you are at without psychedelics? I mean, despite the music, the lights, and the sounds, on psychedelics everything is amplified.

LOTUS: Yeah ... It's hard for me to say, because I do a lot of yogic work, but I've done a lot of psychedelics over the years. Now I can realize that state fairly easily -- I don't really need the drugs to get there. I just use the breath, visualizations, paths of association, and sometimes movements.

SUN: So you've graduated.

LOTUS: Well ... I wonder if I could have gotten to where I'm at if I didn't experiment like I did a few years ago.

SUN: Would you be the person you are now without those experiences?

LOTUS: Definitely not, but would I still have access to my present day experiences? If I had just followed a pure yogic path and gone deeper into that without using psychedelics, would I still be able to access the same level of perception? I've used a lot less drugs as I've grown older ...

SUN: Be careful when you say drugs, because drugs and psychedelics are not the same thing. There are narcotics -- addictive drugs -- and psychedelics, which are a self-initiation into super-consciousness. Psychedelics are just amplifying what is within you, whereas a narcotic becomes a preset program. The things about psychedelics is that they are not addictive.

LOTUS: Not physically addictive.

SUN: No, not physically addictive. A lot of people get stuck. If you do psychedelics and you don't meditate, you create a grabage pile in your mind because without processing the psychedelic state [is not beneficial]. [Richard talks about the degree to which using psychedelics changes a person by helping one realize that their mind is infinite. He believes that we are moving to a point where the music alone will be able to produce a pure psychedelic state. My trip is to get people to lay down, relax, close their eyes, breathe and listen. There are negative aspects to the rave environment. The music is so loud that people can't really communicate, so they tend to communicate through movement and dancing. It's so chaotic. I feel that this scene is moving toward communities. People have to get something more out of life. Not everybody is going to build a community, but some people need to grow gardens and live off home industries on the land. [He feels that nature is the ultimate teacher and discusses several profound experiences he had with nature. He believes that the planet has intelligence and that our consciousness is tied to the consciousness of all reality, and that when prople's intellect separates from that infinite consciousness it is only to gain perspective. He then starts finding parallels between the development of rock & roll and rave culture.] The rave scene is duplicating the exact same program. People are becoming sheep. They go to there events and are programmed to become spectators or performers. My intention is to create an alternative where people are not required to do anything. They don't have to be a spectator, they don't have to be a performer. They just have to lay there and relax. When we do events, sometimes there are just periods of silence. I would love to do an event where we don't even have music, we've just transcended the need for distraction. If people want music that's fine, but we're talking about three day events out in nature where people can listen to the birds. They don't listen to a digital tape of the birds. That to me is an event I want to be part of. I want people to get really high off life itself. They don't need to do psychedelics. That's their choice. I'm not here to tell them what to do. I just want to see this scene continue to evolve and express higher levels. Promoters will hopefully use their imagination to create events that are going to blow people's minds instead of just duplicating the same old pattern, like going to an aerobics class of something. I'm looking for people who are really using their imagination in creating events that are completely transformative. That interests me. That's why I got into this scene in the first place, because there were some really creative people and there still are and there will be. People who would say, "Hey, I'm going to really do something that is just going to blow people's minds."

LOTUS: I still throw events occasionally and the difficulty isn't coming up with creative ideas, it's manifesting them. Going back to psychedelics, the problem isn't so much the down sides of psychedelics, I think that is just one of the challenges people have to overcome if they want to get the most out of any kind of experience. The real down side is that there is a clear association by authorities of drug use with the rave scene and it is so damned hard to throw an event because of that. Also when people do a lot of drugs, they have very intense experiences and they can act in a very intense manner. That can often freak people out because, if they're a 45-year-old shopkeeper who's sober, they're not used to seeing someone on psychedelics and it's frightening. I think the challenges are more structural.

SUN: You've hit the nail right on the head. The answer to the problem is shamanism. When we do peyote meetings at the Native American Church, there are road chiefs who are trained. They have apprecnticed for years. They know how to deal with people when they begin going through total catharsis. When the scene started, we all thought, "Wow! This is a great thing." Then the elements of the narcotics and the authorities and the gangsters ... all these ugly things started coming into this beautiful garden. That's reality. Shamanism, vision-questing, are not for everyone. When people are ready, they're ready, but when you're dealing with someone who doesn't know anything and they go into an intense psychedelic experience but they haven't done any meditation, they don't know anything about shamanism, they don't even know what is happening, chances are if they are fortunate they have really good experiences, but there are always people who have really bad experiences. I think this is the problem. There's the mass of people who have had the experience, but not everyone is a shaman, goes deeper into the medicine. The medicine is the teacher. Once you've had the medicine enough time, it's permanently a part of your consciousness. I don't need to take these things anymore. I can meditate and access that frequency in my mind at any time. The more I meditate on it, the stronger it gets. Occasionally, when I do medicine, it's not for kicks, it's for healing purposes or when I'm really stuck, I mainly just meditate a lot. It's the best addiction a person could ever have. [Laughs] Bliss is free. [Begins discussing the nature of shamanism, the role of a priest in society, artist as shamans, ancient Taoist hermits, learning from animals, and the importance of a natural diet.] If you're toxic from eating McDonald's filled with poisonous, rancid oils your energy is stagnant and stuck, if you then do medicine, you don't really get anything out of it. You don't get any processing. [Talks about detoxifying people herbally and the value of the Hawaiian herb noni. Talks more about doing music for the love of it instead of working for a corporation. Both of us talk about the compromises artists have to make when they try to do it for a living. Suggests the importance of keeping Lotus Magazine free. This scene has more value than just feeding from corporate suit's pockets. There's more to life than just producing mediocre product and deriving your income from that. At the same time, we have to do something to keep the rent paid. Ultimately, we're going to have to produce an alternative system or inevitable anarchy. All these DJs, musicians, and promoters are basically trying to survive and yet ... survive for what? Survive so we can pay our rent, eat, and exist; or survive to create a future civilization? For me, that's the real question. What is it going to take? We've got to get down to some serious lifestyle changes here. It's obvious that the planet is not going to continue to absorb radioactive waste forever. Our problem is that civilization is based on capitalism and the religion is money. Money is the god that the bankers worship. That's what they live off and they're profiting off the destruction of the rest of the planet. This is my fantasy: We do these parties, we raise funds, we build art colonies on the land -- universities of dance and sound and music. We have studios there and generate products. We create a future civilization. We heal the planet, heal ourselves. [I express some distrust of a hippy mentality, especially as it relates to communal living. I feel we need to transform society from within rather than step outside of it. Richard defends the '60s, saying "They did the best that they could at the time," and notes all of the natural industries that came out of the '60s movement. He recounts being in riots in the '60s as a child and all the resistance from authorities. He agrees that society needs to be transformed from within, but points out that people have different paths in life. I mention that we're running out of tape and ask him to voice his final thoughts.] One final word to promoters, DJs, and dancers: Keep the scene fresh and creative. Don't allow it to stagnate. Use your imagination.

outward  inward