Just Be Cause…Escape Plans Secret Meeting With Claude Needham!

Good Evening Readers!

If you have been following this blog, you have noticed a lot of discussion around the Just Because Club experiments. Well, tonight I have a special treat for you, and it was a special treat for me too. Secret Agent 333 went to great pains to track down the creator of the Just Because Club, Claude Needham.

A few of Claude’s Books:

Creative Deconstruction Secret Agent 333 just returned from an Escape Planning session with Just Because Club author Claude Needham. To read the original post, click on these words.

Before we get to the Secret Report, feel free to check out the following links to some Just Because Club and Claude Needham related Bardo webs:

Just Because Club

Slime World

Bardo Training Center

Institute for the Development of the Harmonious Human Being

Dead Elvis

Gorebagg TV

Claude Needham Sculptures and fascinating artist statement.

Readers: I would love to read about your experiences in these webspaces, and if you do any of the Just Because Club experiments, drop me a line, or leave a comment, and let me know about how it goes for you.

Next, here is a video with Claude and E.J. Gold:

If you find spiritualgaming on youtube, you can follow the links to find all kinds of bardo exploration and Just Because Club material.

In the text below, you will find my questions and comments in blockquotes, and Claude’s answers as normal text. Enjoy!

Without any further wiseacreing on my part (well maybe a little more…), allow me to introduce–the magnificent Claude Needham:

Q: To begin, tell my readers a bit about yourself, anything you would like to discuss or mention.

A: This is a difficult question. I’m confronted by the need to enter a short bio from time to time and have yet to feel satisfied by any answers. I have a wide variety of interests and involvements. Writing (science fiction and transformational psychology), sculpture, painting, drawing, jewelry, wood working, programming, web design, game design, game playing, simulation writing, physics, chemistry, and so on and so forth. In college I had several different majors, first pre-med, then geography, then early childhood education, then psychology, then biology, then chemistry, finally graduated in chemistry then went on to a PhD in Molecular Biophysics specializing in theoretical quantum mechanics of protein systems.

Will do most anything that gives me an opportunity to work with groups of interesting folks – house building, farming, rebuilding cars and motorcycles, mining, mushroom farming and pretty much anything.

Q: Elaborate on the creation or genesis of the Just Because Club, both the website at: http://www.slimeworld.org/xxaxx/jbc_ndx.html and the book.

A: I have been working with E.J. Gold for many decades. I consider him to be a shaman’s shaman, and a teacher’s teacher. To me he is the Einstein or Paul Dirac of the enlightenment trade. I just mention that for reference. Not being much for the my guru can beat up your guru conversation, please don’t feel the need to explain how your favorite guru is ultra cool and totally pwns mine. It’s all cosmic – dust at least until you start to look real close then you discover that there is nothing here at all and its just wiggling bits of vibrating strings – quantum fluctuations of probabilistic cross-dimensional monkey business.

Any way, back to the Just Because Club. This started with a group of 100+ serious dimensional seekers looking to explore the spiritual horizon from the inside out. The JBC exercises were stuff to do “just because”. We did not prejudice their results by telling them what to expect or why the exercise was a good idea. We had them do the exercise “just because.” This way each of the 100 were totally open to whatever. Hence, the results they had or didn’t have were un-tampered with.

Q: How do you, or did you, come up with the exercises?

A: EJ and I worked on the exercises together. We happen to be very old game players and scientists from way way back. I’ve been doing this a long time and happen to have a talent for it. My physics training didn’t hurt. But honestly I was pretty much born with this bent. And if you read the Just Because Club book, Handbook for The Recently Deceased, or the Any Game Cookbook, I think you will agree that bent is the correct choice of words.

Q: Any remarkable results you would care to share?

I did not know what to expect with the exercises. I knew what my results were. But I didn’t know how the group of 100 would react or what they would discover. I had an interesting vantage point. Each week the group of 100 would call with a short description of their results. Thus, I was treated to 100+ people giving me an overview of how it went for them. This was fun.

The first experiment (The Shopping Market experiment) was the most remarkable. Partly because it was the first, and partly because it was so revealing. Each of the 100+ called in and started the report by saying that not much happened. Then they would continue their debriefing by describing totally amazing phenomena of altered states. Each participant declared that nothing much happened but their descriptions were not unlike someone relating an acid trip. All of this even more remarkable given that the exercise was to simply visit a local grocery store. Something they would do several times a week during the normal course of their lives. What made this trip different? Well, for that you’ll need to do the exercise.

Q: How would you respond to a person who asks, “What’s up with all this stuff about Bardos? I’m just trying to live my life.”

A: I’d say more power to ya. If you can avoid the Bardos, then most definitely avoid them. Some folks seem to be able to. It’s like poison oak. Who the heck cares about poison oak remedies or tall tales of poison oak outbreaks. If you can avoid poison oak then by all means do. It is highly recommended But if you find yourself suffering a severe case of poison oak then suddenly you know for yourself what’s up with it and why you should do something about it. However, please be aware that there is one huge difference between poison oak and the Bardos.

The analogy definitely breaks down in so far as if you do nothing, poison oak will eventually go away. But with the Bardos, we are not so lucky. You can not just ignore them out of existence. However, I don’t believe the Bardos are a direct concern for everyone. For whatever reason, it just happens to be that at any one time there is only a small number of folks for which the Bardos are a real concern. So, if you don’t find yourself suffering from a bad case of the Bardos consider yourself lucky and just avoid the topic for the moment.

Q: Describe what you mean by the term ‘Bardo.’

A: Let’s consider the Bardo to be the unveiled vision of “what is”. Normally, our vision is veiled by layer upon layer of interpretation and just plain stuff. However, there comes those times – whether it be from illness, drugs, shock, or death – when the veils drop away revealing “what is”. Granted this is not necessarily a 100% deal. But it happens just the same.

Preparing one’s self for dealing with “what is” could well be worth the investment. Would it not be sweet to have the capacity to live one’s life staring creation in the face without collapsing into one convenient delusion or another. This is a practice. Some of us are sorta good at it, some of us are just starting out trying go find our way, and a few folks are damn good at it.

Q: How is this term useful to living humans? (of course the nuances of what it means to be alive are also open to interpretation…For the sake of this discussion, I mean humans who believe themselves to be alive. As I explore the ABD, the JBC, and the Handbook for the Deceased, I wonder sometimes whether I am alive or not, or whether the distinction even matters.)

A: “What is” is what is. It is here whether you are dead or alive. It just happens that when the body falls away you are left naked in the face of God. The body is a wonderful filter. It changes “what is” in many ways that makes it more tolerable. So when the body drops off, it can be a bit shocking. ;P

Q: You list many scientific articles you have written with E.J. Gold at the website: http://www.slimeworld.org/xxaxx/xxscipap.html I would like to read all of the articles. Where can I find the full text?

A: I had a bad experience in post-graduate work in which my research was used by semi-hairless monkeys in an attempt to make bigger and better ways of screwing with other semi-hairless monkeys. Hence, some of the research is better left rotting in the bottom of a neglected filing cabinet behind a jammed door at the bottom of a broken set of stairs in the basement of some forgotten office building. For the other articles we’re holding out for large cash offers. LoL.

The concept of fictile art seemed intriguing and familiar to me. It re-awakened a ten-year-old interest in the works of the Situationists, Raoul Vaniegem and Guy Debord. The film, Waking Life came to mind. A stylized Guy Debord, 8 years after his suicide, appears in the film, giving yet another hint that the main character in the film is traveling through the bardos.

Debord defined Psychogeography as, “The study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” Another definition is “a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities…just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape.”

I have included your definition of fictile art below in bold.

Fictiles A New Art Form
The challenge of found art or ready-mades is to use the artist’s eye” to locate objets d’art that appear before the artist within the context of the environment as-it-is. Within the framework of this art form it is permissible to juxtapose objects in new and stimulating fashions and to set objects within modified environments that may evoke the art from the ready-made. Altering the object itself is disallowed by the rules of the form. In fictile art no force is exerted on the environment, the environment is left unmodified. The creative force of the artist is exerted directly on the world view of the viewer. Through the modification of the world view the environment as a whole becomes the art form. This use of the plasticity of the world view gives rise to the term fictile art. Through the molding of the world view into a new and unusual form the environment itself is set into a strange juxtaposition with itself thereby evoking the art form.

Q: Have you found inspiration in the works of Guy Debord and Raoul Vanigem?

A: Not to my knowledge. Didn’t even know about them until long after we wrote that paper. I never was much on proper footnote research – finding it much easier to just do the work. However, it is definitely fun to compare notes and play with getting into the headspaces of other just-because-nauts.

I find that my results from doing the exercises in the Just Because Club, specifically the Dice Walk in a downtown area, to induce a state of awareness akin to practicing derive’.

Debord’s instructions read, “In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there… But the dérive includes both this letting go and its necessary contradiction: the domination of psychogeographical variations by the knowledge and calculation of their possibilities.”

Where fictile art involves using found objects and juxtaposing them in the environment, derive’ involves allowing the environment to move you, while staying aware of how the movements occur.

The juxtaposition of derive’ and fictile art go well together. While on derive’, a person will find objects, and juxtapose them in ways that relate to the flow of the psychogeography, allowing him or herself to mix deliberately with the environment, as well as deliberately acting within it to create novel combinations and experiences.

Q: Will you go into more detail about fictile art, giving a couple examples of it?

A: Words are an invitation to climb into the headspace of the writer. A kind of roadmap and postcard home at the same time. I think it may spoil the voyage to give more clues at this time.

Q: How can I use this blog, and this interview, for example, as a practice in fictile art?

A: Not sure I can answer that question. Let me answer a different question and let’s see if it helps shed any light on your question. Most human endeavors are either a vain attempt to control the environment or an exercise in dressing it up in a lingerie and lipstick to make it more palatable. There is an expression: “You can’t change what is, but you can learn to like it.”  This is not an invitation to nihilism or resignation. Rather a clue on how to climb out of this mess.

Q: Can we use this interview as a tool to induce an awareness of wandering in the bardos, both in each other, and in the reading audience, if they indeed exist?

A: God, do you actually have people reading this blog? I hadn’t considered the possibility until now. <grin> I’m not much for inducing others into much of anything. In fact, if you convinced me that somehow I had the power to induce others into something I would probably stop writing. Don’t want that karma. However, I don’t mind providing tools that folks can use to induce themselves. As long as the tools are of the type that folks get a taste of what’s ahead so that they have the option of backing off should they not care for the direction it’s going.

I get nothing from another’s beliefs. Whether someone agrees with me or not does not change my situation. No gold stars. I don’t need my reality validated. I don’t really have enough of a fixed view of my reality to know what you would be agreeing with in any case. Actually, now that I think of it, I might have an answer for the previous question about how you can use this blog as a practice in fictile art and also how you can perhaps induce an awareness of the bardos in your readers.

Follow these simple rules: Never hesitate to be direct. Always tell the truth.

Q: You commented that Diablo 2 can be a profound tool. How so?

A: First of all Diablo 2 is not the only option in this regard. It is one of a few. Second of all, the point is not so much that it can be a profound tool. The point is more that it is a profound tool. Or, at least the testament of those working with it have convinced me that it has had profound effects on them. Actual change.

Q: Explore some of the correspondences between Diablo 2 and The Work, as you understand it.

A: Let me answer this question by referring your readers to http://www.bardotrainingcenter.com
On this site look to the menu on the left and locate the link for “Training Benefits.” This will answer some of your question. The rest of the question will be not dealt with in more detail in your next question.

Q: Give a short description of what you mean by capital W “Work.”

A: I will not deal with this question and not deal with your previous question in this answer. I’m not the one to ask about The Work – at least when it comes to defining it and giving descriptions of it. You may recall the story about several blind guys describing an elephant. One says the elephant is like a rope – having examined the tail. Another says the elephant is like a tree – having examines a leg. Another says the elephant is like a great hose – having examined the trunk. Another says the elephant is like a great boulder – having examined the body. And, so on.

Me I’m the guy that cleans the stall after the elephant goes out for a walk. I see the evidence of where the elephant has been. I do my best to make the elephant’s life better by keeping the dung off the floor to reduce the number of flies and other pests that would bother the elephant. I change the water so that it may have fresh cool water. And, I do my best to keep fresh hay and other edibles available to the elephant. But, I don’t actually see the elephant that much. If not for the missing hay and missing banana’s, and if not for the piles of poo on the ground, and if not for the water trough being depleted I would have no evidence of an elephant. And as far as I know, this could all be a wild cosmic joke in which some guys sneak in taking away the hay and water leaving poo in its place.

I do seem to have a knack for being in the right place at the right time in order to stumble across small jobs that need to be done. I am willing to work. And, even have a fairly decent attitude about working (once I get started at least). Is this real work with a capital W? Can’t say. Leastwise I’m not interested in trying to say something that will convince someone else that it is. I’ve paid my money, and I’m taking my chances. I’m not asking anyone to do my work. I’m not trying to point in the direction of any specific work that another “should” be doing. Hence I have little desire and even less facility in the art of convincing anyone that I know what the hell I’m talking about when it comes to Work.

When pressed to it, I suppose my message would be: “If you believe you have work to do, don’t you think you should get about your business?”

-Claude

Wow, thanks again Claude. I enjoyed immensely getting in touch with you, writing these questions, and getting your responses. Let’s do this again sometime, after we get a chance to gather some comments and digest all of this great stuff. I love your books, and all of the efforts of the IDHHB and company that I have experienced thus far. I look forward to my first diablo 2 bardo safari this weekend. More on that as it develops… Yeah! I am so excited to have Claude Needham on my blog! Yeah!

Remember folks, sometimes your favorite artists and writers are just a phone call away….

I look forward to your comments below.

Enjoy!

Love, wildness, Chaos, Joy….

-Garrett

PS: the false self suicide inherent in this post was the self who insisted that it is impossible to get a hold of people whose works I enjoy…

Tags: attention, awareness, bardo safari, bardo training, Claude Needham, consciousness, diablo 2, E. J. Gold, esoteric studies, Fourth Way, gaming, IDHHB, interview, Just Because Club, spiritual gaming, work