Duncan Trussell Family Hour - RON REGE JR.

Episode Date: March 26, 2014

Cartoonist and Musician Ron Rege Jr. joins the DTFH to talk about his amazing book "The Cartoon Utopia" as well as to discuss western esotericism, the occult,  and many other great and secret things.

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Today's guest is Ron Regi Jr. Ron is an artist. He's a musician. I've known about him for a long time. He's always been out in the periphery. He's friends of mine, and I love his art. I've admired his art for a very long time. I actually saw him perform once in the band Lavender Diamond.

Saw him play live, and that's a great band, Lavender Diamond. Check him out if you've never listened to them before. But recently, I came into contact with this amazing book called The Cartoon Utopia. And I'm so happy that this was sent to me. I'm afraid that I don't remember who sent it to me, and in fact, I'm not really sure how I got it. I don't know if someone gave it to me at a show or if someone sent it to my PO box. If you're out there and you're listening to this, thank you. The book sat around my house for a really long time.

I didn't open it. I thought the cover was super cool, but I didn't even know Ron Regi had written it. Then over the past few weeks, I've been opening it up and looking at it, and then it's been dawning on me that this is a work of supreme mystical genius. I put it on the level of be here now. I invite you to buy a copy of this book. After you listen to this podcast or before you listen to this podcast, I cannot emphasize enough just how incredible this text is.

It's really great. It's everything that I love. It's a lot of things that I think about, and it's articulated in a form that is graceful and psychedelic and fun to read. After spending some time with this book, I managed to get in touch with Ron Regi, and he agreed to come on the podcast, and I'm very grateful for that. So now, everybody, please open your hearts and send all the metaphysical love energy that you can summon in the direction of the very sweet genius, Ron Regi Jr.

Ron Regi, welcome to the Duncan Trestle Family Art Podcast. Thank you so much for coming to be on the show. Thanks for having me. Man, so I want to share how this ended up happening first, because it fits in perfectly with this beautiful genius thing that you've created here, which is this book which I'm going to be obsessed with for the rest of my life called The Cartoon Utopia. Now, what's weird is I don't know how I got this book. This book ended up, I think someone sent it to my PO box when I used to have a PO box.

I don't remember. It just was one of these things that was around the house, and I really like the cover of it, and I remember like just every once in a while opening it up and looking at it and thinking, man, that was psychedelic, but I didn't really spend much time with it, you know? And I didn't know you had written this book, which is fascinating for a lot of different reasons. And then one day you open up the front page, and what does it say? I open up the front page and written on the front page.

It says that you've signed it, and it says for Duncan by Ron Regi Jr. Now, the fact that it's by you, Ron Regi is really mind-blowing in a lot of ways that we can't even talk about on the podcast just because you're connected distantly to friends of mine, and I didn't know you'd written the book. There's secrets, people. Yeah, there's secrets, but it's so, so suddenly I was like, what the fuck? Then I start reading the book, and then I realize what I have in front of me here is for Western, I guess what you'd call for alchemy, for occultism, for Western esotericism.

Is that how you say it? Esotericism? I think so. This is be here now. This is be here now for Western philosophies, and it is just a work of genius, not to freak you out or anything, man, but wow. How long have you been studying these kinds of philosophies? Not long. Like maybe like five or six years or something like that?

Over, but pretty much over the last decade. It was very slow for the first five years, and then like, yeah, about five years or so. What started it? What got you into this in the beginning? I went to, I have a friend named Maja Dao. She calls herself the White Witch of LA, and she was giving lectures at the Philosophical Research Society, which is not far from here, where we are right now. And I had known her through zines and comics, and I went to see one of her lectures, and it was on alchemy and relationships, and I don't know, I had been slowly, ever since getting to LA,

I had been slowly kind of like, in parsing LA history, I was finding all the weird funny little like religious things and stuff like that, and kind of, you know, came across Manly Pee Hall. It was like I was kind of discovering theosophy and Manly Pee Hall, and all those people, I was reading books about them, and then realizing that there was stuff right here in my own city. But once I started going to Maja's lectures, and she was a friend of mine, and a lot of my friends from the music community, when I walked into the first lecture, were all there. I didn't know what I was going to. I had been to the Gnostic Society.

I thought it was going to, you know, I didn't expect to see other people I knew there. Well, a lot of people listening to this don't know about Los Angeles' rich occult history. Can you talk about that a little bit? Because I'm actually pretty foggy on it myself. I know about Manly Pee Hall, but my dates are all confused. Yeah, well, there's just like kind of in the, I think it's everything about this city, the way that everyone was so optimistic that came here and built this city. A lot, you know, like the way, everyone knows about how Hollywood got made, and then the oil companies,

and it was all, you know, very like idealistic people who even made this place. There were spiritual people to go along with them. Yes. That were centered here and kind of ended up here. And a lot of people have a lot of theories about it, even in kind of the occult and esoteric circles. The idea of California as this weird, like golden manifest destiny place is like even in with a lot of the stories. So all the stuff that you didn't, we didn't know how it was going to work out. Things like televangelism with Amy Semple McPherson or just like the films and TV, nobody knew.

There was a lot of spiritual stuff that nobody knew what was going to happen with it that was here. And that's why we have Scientology. Yes. Here and like all these different things and a lot of Eastern centers here. But like, there's also a lot that we don't remember, like the whole spiritualist movement and how large it was in the United States. That it was like really, really, really big I am movement, which the cover of my book is based on some of these. I am. I am and quotes was an enormous, enormous thing in the United States all over the United States in the 30s.

What is it? What is the cover of your book? Can you describe what's on the cover of your book? It's this cartoon image of this kind of like figure in the center that's rising up out of these two lower figures that's got all this light shining out of it. I don't know what people think it is when they initially see it. It looks like astral projection or some kind of Godhead kind of thing. Yeah. But the I am presence movement was very was a kind of I guess it would be a religious movement that delved into the aura and astral projection and all that kind of stuff.

A lot of which I think Americans first understood through spiritualism, like before that, but they also were super patriotic way into America. Yeah. It was most likely conservative minded people and it was this is before the health movement. It's before any kind of like positive thinking. So it was like all mixed up together in early times in ways that things have been so polarized now. A lot of it kind of just all got mashed together. Wow. So you're saying sort of like conservative, like Bill O'Reilly types were actually Ronald Reagan got his astrology done every day is chart.

It's not a secret. Is that true? Yes. Wow. I remember it's funny when you said like things that are like I remember I kind of remember that. I feel like it was in the pair. I was just a kid in the 80s, but I think he was a Californian. Wow.

So that was so it's a part of being in California part of what was happening is we're just inundated in in this this these these new. And if you know anything about Isotera or the occult a lot when you're reading a lot of the things you're like this guy's not a hippie. He's just like don't do this. Don't do that. You got to do this to make the magic work. You know. Yeah. So exactly kind of the opposite of being a hippie.

A lot of these people are really a lot of it's not permissive. Yes. Yeah. Well, okay. So this book I read this interview that you did on a and I don't know what it is a blog or a zine called the comics journey or something. The comics journal. Yes. The comics journal.

Yes. And man, I got to tell you that interview really pissed me off because in the very beginning of it because I've been reading this book every day. This is the kind of book where you can, you know, open it up to just any page and you'll get an idea out of it that will give you something to think about for a week and or longer because you're incorporating not just your own philosophy into this but you're also mixing in. A lot of other sources. Yeah. So, he was in a room dusted with be here now, but he did it with Buddhism and Eastern wisdom. This is, this is, you've got, you've got stories of Mesmer and Carl Jung and so many luminaries in here that are from the West. It's so good.

But this book, this interview that I read, it starts off with this guy, this asshole saying like, Oh, maybe he's gone crazy. And then, and then in the interview with you, he has this like shitty audacity to kind of ask you like, Have you lost your mind that you've created something so beautiful and wonderful. And he's like the only way this dullard can assimilate what you've done is to think like, Well, he's must have gone nuts. That really was infuriating. I couldn't believe it. Like I just, I couldn't fucking believe it. That's really funny. But you said in this interview, it's something that I thought was really interesting, which is that you said, you said that you channeled this.

You felt like some of this had been channeled in a certain way. I was talking about my previous book, actually. Oh, you were? You weren't talking about. I think, yeah, that interview probably could have used some editing. It was very long. It was a little bit too long. And there were things that were like kind of like went off in tangents.

I felt like in it. I'm pretty sure I was talking about my previous book called Skibrabi by, which is more of like a, it's 300 pages, but it's like a fictional story has fictional characters that go through a story. Right. And that I didn't really quite realize it because I had no, I know, like language or tools to know what channeling would have been when I made that book. Right. Because I wasn't exposed to anything really spiritual in this kind of way at that time, but that book was kind of channeled. Like, I don't feel like I wrote it or anything. It just came through you.

Yeah. Yeah, which I think I carry into a lot of my work. So there's probably a lot of stuff like that, but I definitely didn't channel this the way that like Blavatsky or Manly Hall did with their big books. And they said that they channeled their stuff. Their stuff was both both the secret doctrine and Manly Hall's secret teachings of all ages are were written by people in their twenties that it seems like it's almost impossible. They could have amassed all that information and they both say that they pretty much channeled it. Wow. Yeah, that see that that I that word channeling is like such a loaded word.

Now it's scary to even talk about it because it brings to mind people with their eyes rolled back in their heads and living rooms and Pasadena. You know, kind of telling people what they want to hear. But the best moments that I've ever had creatively are the ones where I'm not responsible for whatever is coming through me. Probably most artists can relate to that. What do you think that's coming from? Oh, where do I think? I don't know. That's one of the great mysteries of like being a human.

I think it's definitely like a very like there's nothing else to say about it besides being spiritual. The idea of like inspiration, you know, or I don't know where it comes from. And it's like an idea that it's kind of like, you know, it seems like it comes from the most back part of your brain that you don't understand. You can't look at it. You can't look at it. So it just pops out of you. And there it is. Yeah.

The other thing I like that you said in this interview was the he, of course, did the thing where you're like, how many drugs you take to make this book? You must take a lot of drugs to do that. Yeah. And I love your response, which is like, I've never taken a psychedelic. That is such an inspirational mind blowing thing because I'll be honest, when I was looking at this book, when I look before I read that interview, my brain also went, how many drugs was he on when he did this book? Because it is so psychedelic, man. And for me, that's a, I like when people to sometimes people say, your stuff looks like I had this friend that was on speed. That looks like, and it's funny, like all the little scribblings, it looks like I've had people like say that kind of just like a compliment or like a curious thing.

I'm like, that's very strange. But that's just, but that that's just hardcore. I grew up on hardcore. What do you mean by that? You grew up on hardcore. Hardcore, like music, I think, because it was really fast and energetic. I think that went into my drawing as a very young person. So it's punk.

So it's punk rock. That's where all the kind of like a lot of the energy comes from. Oh, wow. So are you listening? I'm not like a straight edge guy or anything. But do you listen to when you're when you're drawing this stuff? Are you listening to music at the same time usually? Probably, but it's not like a vital part of doing it.

This. So this. Okay. So this book is the reason that I'm asking these things. Where does it come from? Where was it channeled? Are you on drugs? And I think the reason people ask you these things is because it feels otherworldly.

When you read this book, when you go through it, you realize you feel like it reminds me of the feeling that I that I get when I read the Frank comics, you know, Woodring. Yeah, that's a great compliment. Where you feel, you know, Tolkien, when you read Tolkien, your mind is trying to like come up with a way to explain how something that doesn't feel quite like it belongs in this dimension, got into this dimension. So that's why we say to you, were you on drugs?

Have you gone crazy? Because the real question that we all want to know is what is this? It's kind of a textbook. Yeah. Is it a grimoire? Does it classify as a grimoire? Is that the right word for it? Am I pronouncing grimoire right?

You're pronouncing it right, but I don't even know exactly what that is. Like a book of magic. Yeah. I don't think so because I don't have any like instructions for spells or like in like intentional kind of like stuff like that. I think of it as being my intention with making, I was fascinated with a lot of it. It's kind of like a textbook for my friend's Maja's magic classes. She does them once a month and it's called magic class and it's kind of like the cartoon

textbook. A good 50% of it is notes from her lectures. Cool. And then basically it was like I was going and like taking notes from her lectures and then just kept reading more and more and more and more things and I was very like probably at a stage in my life where like maybe I could have gone to grad school. I have a BFA. I could have gotten an MA.

You know like instead I made this book. I just studied on my own and I did just like go through a lot of years where I was just like super fascinated with like what about this dude and then I'd hear about this thing and like her lectures are very like that. She kind of like pulls very like obvious stuff out of like science in the like history of the occult and stuff like that. And it was like oh what is up with William Blake really? Like I was like I hadn't read those books completely.

So now that I've read about this, who is Swedenborg? Right. You know like Blake was a Swedenborg? Who is Swedenborg? Oh wait a minute so Rudolf Steiner did what? You know it was just like one thing after another. And so much of it is like the background of things that are all around us you know. Yes.

Yeah right. Like Waldorf schools. I'm like I know what a Waldorf school is. You know it was just. And I think it came in a time and maybe it's my internet thing. It's like a lot of it I was able to like go through sacredtext.com. Like every weird book in the world is on this one website. You know like you can read all this weird stuff.

So basically it was just like I had a few years of going through all that stuff. I was very frustrated with the medium of comics. I don't write jokes. I didn't want to make characters or stories. I wasn't feeling like doing any fiction. And I had been doing a lot. Yeah I'm like oh maybe I'm just going to do art shows. And that's what a lot of these started off as is pieces for art shows.

Right. And then eventually I was like oh I'm doing comics and then if I'm a cartoonist I couldn't help it. I'm like now I'm writing a story about Mesmer. Right. And I was able to go around for a few years and like pick up on stuff but it is like I've always been interested in like outsider guys. Right.

I don't know what it is. Maybe it's just like being like a kid and looking for weird stuff that people didn't know about but like I've always held like you know like Sun Ra's at the top you know it's like and actually you know what happened through the course of doing this book is that you know Sun Ra kind of sounds crazy and you don't know what the fuck he's talking about. I have there's nothing vague about anything that he's saying anymore. I listen to it and I'm like yes because he's read all the books. Right.

He's totally and it's actually I have kind of an inspiration for this is friend of mine has there's a book of all of Sun Ra's poetry. Yes. There's books that are split up that are little books of his poetry. There's one edition that's all of it and in the back is a bibliography of it says in and it's like this isn't Sun Ra's book collection. These are the books that were in his house when he died kind of. Wow.

And it lists all the books and I'm like if you look in the like that's kind of inspired for like what's in the back of my thing. It's just like I've looked at it all and I was like I've read I know what he's talking about. All this shit. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Well that's it. That's the thing. The way you're describing your book is that if someone's listening maybe they would think that this is just a compilation of different philosophies put together. But there's an over. Yeah. It's like all smushed together and I did find that like in seeing all this stuff like all these guys had this they're all kind of looking for this thing.

Well one of the they all seem to be kind and it's all kind of like you know like there is some and then I just found out about Alchemy and like the Philosopher's Stone and I was like oh there it is. That's what. Well this is see this is you have there's a theme that comes through it. It's not just it is a bunch of it is a lot of stories and philosophies and illustrated quotes. But there's an overarching theme that's kind of pouring out of the book which is this idea

of shaking. Well this is my this is what my interpretation of it. Shaking off the old paradigm that is making that has the tendency to make us feel very limited and depressed. And plugging into a much much much bigger picture. And in that and you've used you've sort of used all these different examples and you've hung hung them on this frame to hang this bigger thing on. But you clearly have come in contact with some kind of bigger thing.

And I in I don't know if it turned out this way but I kind of made a conscious like intention and I felt like there's a lot of like people have resistance to so many aspects of it. I was like I'm not going to make it some black magic thing with the pentagram on the cover because people who don't like it aren't going to look at it. Right. And I think it's because I'm in the world of comics that I've found to be astoundingly just really just kind of like very middle of the road kind of world. That's strange.

Yeah. It's very strange. Different time than the 60s. It's not you know you wouldn't think everyone's square now. Huh. People are just square these days. There's a lot of squares and funny hats. Yeah.

What's going on? Yeah. But I that and then people are also very hesitant to the other side to the new age side of it. And I could see that there was a stuff that just everybody would like. Right. Or would be into. So I kind of without thinking too much about it and it's only my I didn't want to make a book about chakras or about astrology or about actual stuff.

I wanted to make it a little bit more vague to kind of like throw it in there to the science fiction people because when I go to San Diego Comic Con and I see this like display of corporate commercial like fantasy all over people's bodies and I can tell what kind of people they are. They are. I think there's a lot of this information that they would think was really cool. Right. That in that part like kind of baffles me.

Well that's kind and you're you feel compelled you you felt compelled you feel compelled to get this information into the world. There is a. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a missionary feeling in a sense or a kind of like a altruistic feeling that you're you're wanting to be part of. You must be crazy then.

Right. That's why I thought you're crazy because if you're if you're trying to use your art to help the world you've lost your mind and I want to read this smarmy intro. I've got it right here. It really flipped me up man. It just I didn't expect it. It was it was this is from I'll have the link on my site and you guys can go check this out because this is the kind of shit that is like slowing down the whole fucking process

is these goddamn critics the moment somebody has a mystical experience they want to put them in a mental asylum. Can I tell you something about this? You won't be able to put on this podcast. Yeah. Hold on one second. Okay. Here we go.

All right. Regie's just published 148 page hardcover survey of dozens of major occult thought streams in words and picture form shows not just a radical transformation dash heightening question mark in Regie style but also a degree of dot dot dot yikes has Ron gone crazy. The trademark Regie cuteness is still there in the human figures but there's no narrative no word balloons instead instead cascading masses of blocked text drawn in 3D profile cross sections of micro and macro cause most action squiggles and diamond zaps chromosomes and galaxies and plant leaves and on and on a spookily obsessive vibrating controller

that recalls Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphics. 70s Jack Kirby it is trippiest Howard Finster's folk Christian exhortations and of course every genius featured in the landmark 1986 lack my show catalog. I just don't like that term crazy when it comes to it's like you know what crazy is crazy is when you find yourself eating your own diarrhea on the street not making beautiful art. You know crazy is like the crazies when you come to and you're looking at your babies floating in the bathtub that you just drowned not when you've that's crazy we've got to stop using the word crazy to describe people who have woken up or are in the process of waking up

because what ends up happening and by the way this is as I reread that the guys have obviously quite a good writer and that's an excellent description minus the crazy stuff but the reason that I don't like the use of that term because what happens is people start waking up for whatever reason who knows why maybe they come in contact with some information that you have here maybe they take mushrooms or maybe they have a powerful meditative experience or maybe they fall in love or maybe they have heartbreak and they start waking up and then as they're waking up because nothing in our culture prepares us for how big this universe is when they start getting glimpses of the truth.

Their mind starts thinking oh no I must be losing my mind am I going crazy and then things like this only amplify that and then you start feeling guilty for waking up and you're right you begin to resist because you don't want to go crazy so you shut the conduits off and just try to get back to your normal life and so that's why I don't like the term which could be dangerous dangerous why well to yeah to open up and then to kind of like close it all off again yeah you can't can you close it off again that could really make people snap you know do you think you can close it off again once you've once you've opened it up I don't think so now this is in this great book if you ever heard of Chogyam

Trumpa mm-hmm he's great he was like he's a this Buddhist teacher kind of an apostate I may have read the name and not known how it's pronounced Trumpa TRUN GPA but and I've talked about this on the podcast before but there's a in the in the introductions to one of his books on meditation he says don't if you can avoid becoming spiritual avoid it like don't go down this path because once you start down the path you can't go back once you start waking up a little bit you're gonna have to keep waking up because you can't you can't go back into the normal world again so I know what you mean then you're crazy then you must be nuts I get it all the time you know people say oh Doug you know Duncan he's loopy he's

he's loopy it's like it's such a funny thing that term crazy meanwhile you go out in the world and you see this like you see it from the the the dusty old lens that everyone's looking through the world at what's crazier than that they're putting this like toxic like refined alcohol thing that came out of the ground into their giant metal box that like hundreds of people died to like make cuz they're mad cuz they're late to pick up their t-shirts for their new promotion yeah that's crazy not be not sitting and drawing beautiful beautiful works of art that are there a medium to get across this much bigger message how about put yeah putting the doom hoes in your fucking metal chariot so that

you can get to your goddamn job that you decided class on time yes that's that is absolute insanity now I want your butt will look good just your fucking butt looks good so that you'll get a better job totally sane totally normal of course yeah exactly what we're supposed to be on this planet to do that's it yeah getting a hurry so your ass looks good that's why we're here that's why billions of years of evolution happened to solidify as us so you can get to your fucking Pilates class on time you robot I want to read this this is in the very beginning of the book and man what I've been doing is so I'll get like uncomfortably high from eating this new marijuana that I found at this dispensary called chiba chews

that are very strong and then I'll get really uncomfortably high and then I'll sit and read your book and it's so fun it's the best man and so I just want to read this beautiful opening to the book it starts with a William Blake quote contracting our infinite sense we behold multitude are expanding we behold as one oh my god it's great and then this is the I'm just gonna read I mean I wish you can't describe the art it's too complex and too intense to describe you guys just have to buy this book this is western be here now and you guys know how much I talk about be here now it's just as powerful as that but but this says kept in balance by equal weights everything in the universe came from one point

everything inside and outside of you is made of materials split apart at this initial moment every aspect of every process from the largest of the smallest is attempting to be united again everything strives towards strives toward perfect balance the macrocosm is the microcosm all is one and that sound effect is exactly right but then I did now I just want to play this I'm I'm gonna stop for a second I'm gonna play this I don't know did you hear if you know about the how they've just proven inflation theory that everything big bang yeah mm-hmm did you see that awesome thing where the scientist is they tell him for the first time yeah it's so cool do you mind if I play it really fast so people can hear okay hold on okay so for those of you

who haven't heard this this is the from YouTube Stan Stanford professor Andre Linday celebrates physics breakthrough this is like we hilarious this is like what would happen if we were in a dimension where everyone was a super genius this is what candid camera would be like but this is pretty cool can you hear it mm-hmm Stanford University today I'm gonna deliver a news to professor Andre Linday who is the founding father of inflation so inflation is the theory about the bang of big bang it explains why we have all this stuff in the universe so today I'm gonna tell him our experiment bicep to base itself Paul has found the smoking gun evidence of inflation he has no idea that I'm coming

so I have a surprise for you wow it's five sigma a point two discovery yes what just a second can you repeat it five sigma as clear as day are a point two what if you can you like the game are point two plus minus point all right we don't expect anybody you're not tells it's probably some kind of delivery did you order anything yeah I ordered finally it arrived we are talking right now about the billions of the billions of the billions of the millions of a second after the big bang so we see the face of the big bang it is an image of these gravitational waves which are purely quantum gravity feature of what was produced in the big bang so this is a remaining part of the story I would love to be that smart even this is true

of such a what a beautiful thing because here we have you know science catching on to this stuff which is been described in secret in mystery schools for such a long time but it's really cool to see that's the stuff that's so interesting that it's funny for people like put up their guard against it in like a materialist sense right that like you know I'm pretty before I kind of like a pretty skeptical person in general or like whatever and I take stuff from everywhere and sometimes science is stupid and sometimes religion is stupid you know it's yeah nobody's got like a like a hold on it all but then yeah there's really basic stuff that it's like all of this these ancient ideas it's like why do people know that inherently right like why is

nobody like surprised that they found out the big bang because like it seems like people kind of know it right and like we're proving it now but why did everyone think that always is heavy stuff it is heavy stuff and it's and when you have the gift of picking it it can be so complicated I mean just listening to that five Sigma Pi in the fifth degree radiant really wow let's open champagne but so you know that that works for a certain type of person but when you have the talent to pick out the most simple parts of these giant ideas and throw it out there that's what I'm saying man that's what you've done here it's like you have the yoga sutras of Patanjali for example if you ever looked at those they're so simple simple simple little verses that you can

then break apart is and make it as complex as you want it's a fractal you can go deep and deep and deep and this just this idea you know I've had this idea before on LSD I had this I this very similar idea that that you know what would happen if nothingness woke up and has somehow was aware of itself what a terrifying moment that would be that that would just be the most terrifying thing that could ever happen as you don't have any you're nothingness that says that point of consciousness and then that would be a really horrifying moment is the way I thought of it and then that would cause you to shatter into a zillion pieces and then we're all little fragments of that universal terror dealing with the little bits of the terror on our own level and if each

of us can handle fix that that little piece of the universe inside of us then maybe we could suck back together again minus the terror and be in some kind of orgasmic eternal paradise state but this that's what all that's what you're talking about that you experienced on a psychedelic is like that's what all esoteric literature is about because that I was just reading in a book last night like what you're talking about you know it's like it's like there's all these like you feel that and then there is it's been written about right and that's why I throughout history but this is why I love this book because you've grabbed all these different thoughts that I've had and you've not you've put them down and then you've illustrated them in this brilliant way particularly this this

this is just on page 13 but this this idea that everything every aspect of every process from the largest to the smallest is attempting to be united again that is you know I'll sit on the on the couch with my girlfriend and my dog will jump up onto the couch while we're sitting together and then lay on both of our laps and that's there's clearly a gravity of like of congealing of like things coming together again you know and then and then that's God or that's love or that's to me that's high I can't think of anything more high-tech than that there's you know what I mean it's just that when you're when that's happening and everything's amazing and there's just this little bubble of utopia for a moment you've got this bubble to me that's that's better than a time machine

that's better than a spaceship that's just this amazing moment and then the other side of that is the times when I'm separated from everything or pushing things away or trying to like extract myself from situations right yeah then you've become part of the explosion that's going out so I just love the idea that you get to decide am I going to be part of the congealing blob love force or I'm going to be the part of the thing that's shattering off into time right so which part are you right now Ron Regi I don't know anymore you don't huh both I don't know all of those things right well you know sometimes one times the other I mean because we're things definitely going waves back and forth you know because both are important you know this that's the whole duality the whole

like togetherness and separateness is pretty confusing you know yeah both are important and you have to like keep them in balance you know you can't just be one blob of love all day I guess you can but I don't know it's just you're worth thwarted again and again and again it's like the whole thing is it's like this balance that you're talking about it does this both are valid the separation the breaking apart the shattering and the coming together are both equally valid and that's the big confusion that's I think where you get into this like what's his name Zizak or what's that guy's name you know I'm talking about he's got he's that like yeah is there yeah I haven't like looked into it he's he got in a battle who's he against is he the guy that isn't a battle

there's somebody else that it's like them verse each other with their ideas he's he's got this terrible like speech impediment but he's a genius and so he's just like this and I this thing that we are is like I can't do his voice but his whole point is like this is a fucking mistake this thing that we are is a malfunction because what's fused together here are these two impossibilities like we're having these two problems that have come together which is something this and nothing this if somehow accidentally met the fucking ghostbusters they crossed the wires and the end result is that we're stuck in this constant state of being either ripped apart and then trying to draw ourselves back together so what's the solution Ron I don't think I have any answers

it's funny for me to make this because I'm definitely the guy I'm like I'm not the most studious person I'd like to read a lot of stuff but I can't like parrot you back things and give you the dates and everything I'm like a little like shaky on that side and I'm like not sure of anything myself you know so like I'm like very like almost like very like amateur approach to like everything but I was just able to like put it all in this anyways see this is what all of you guys always do oh really because the people like me when somebody asked me what the answer is yeah oh I'll tell you and the people and I don't know I have no right to do that but the people like you and the people from the Ramdas camp whenever you ask them questions they're

always like sorry they're like sorry I don't really know I don't know don't know the answer yet here we have this incredible this incredible book that's so filled I mean you have really just poured yourself into studying this stuff it's incredible and yet you're still just like all of us kind of still kind of just like at an introductory level because I'm being a very modern day gentlest you know I wasn't like anthroposophy is for me I'm like I didn't have that happen which I didn't want to happen really and I've never really been that into like subscribing to one thing because that's probably where you're gonna find answers is by going into one why don't you want to subscribe to one thing this is too many different ideas if there's

anything that like I do I mean it seems like all the alchemical ideas like actual alchemy seems to be a really good basis of stuff that I can go along with and I'm like can you describe how to like alchemy is something that I certainly didn't understand it was one of the fun it was probably the funnest part about doing this and kind of almost like was the funny thing to even like get me going into a lot of this stuff was just realizing what it was because Maja was giving lectures on alchemy and I was like alchemy because anyone's like what is that it's some ancient thing that's turning lead into gold it's before science they didn't know quite what they were doing and they thought you could do that but they were wrong so forget it when it's that's

very like an oversimplification it it there are parts of physical alchemy that did form the basic basic like the basis for the physical sciences and of course the physical sciences grew out of alchemical ideas even if a lot of it wasn't right they like thought that things combined in certain reasons and that built it but that was a very tiny aspect of what it what it is which is mostly a system of dealing with the psychological like problem of being a human is it's psychology really Carl Jung spent the later half of his life something like 30 years studying it and writing about it but that's when he was old and crazy he lost his mind so no one cares true yeah you know like the Mysterium conjuncto is like what the like when you look at

the like the collected young it's like the first one's like this and it's all the stuff you know about yeah the second one is like this big and it's the Mysterium conjuncto and it's all about he sees that these archetypal the whole idea of the they're being archetypal ideas that all humanity holds that are in our dreams and form the basis of these like characters and everything that go through all the legends like that's the part of Jungian idea he's saying that it's in that's in alchemy and the symbology of it is what alchemy is and it's was done by and it's it was done by people in secret because it always had to be something when it's always been dangerous to delve into that stuff and they had to keep it secret because it was separate from the church and it was separate from the state

all throughout the history of Western culture so they had to speak in rhymes and verses and they had the right books and trade them with each other secretly so that nobody even know what it was and but they also had to like sometimes they had to wave their magic wand and like do some tricks for the king give them money the history of it is very if you read about what they actually had to go through like this is and this holds in the whole tradition of witchcraft and magicians and any story that you've seen in the pointed hat and like whatever yeah like leads into a lot of this stuff is that it sounds like being an artist in the modern age because like the role of what an artist was throughout history is like a lot of times you were a craftsman or you were a religious person and like the idea that we have now this independent idea

is very much seems like the idea of like an alchemist and it's so funny that it's like the word is thrown around so casually and a lot of it comes from Maja's lectures she would always she one thing that she points out is she'll take a word be like you know this word that you know that you throw around casually like hermetically sealed yes every last little thing like that is just open up the book just Wikipedia it and read it and be like really right what it means and it does change everything that you think about certain like because hermetically sealed the word hermetic is these they're talking about what me or me is trying to mess to I can never say the name yeah it took me a long time it's trying to mess to Jerry is or something I missed it justice Hermes try missed it can you talk about who that is because I think this is a great place to go with this

conversation because hermetically sealed we nobody knows exactly who he is he's a very mysterious yes person that probably didn't exist but it's kind of an amalgamation of three or four maybe people who did exist because it's Hermes being because it's also a you know like a Greek God yes it all kind of ties together but I guess if I turn to the page it has it here we go here we go while you're flipping through that man I've got to tell you I woke up last night because I've been you know very excited about talking to you talking with you I woke up last night and I thought oh you should tell Ron that you should make a deck of tarot cards using using this you could just already use the art that's in here

you could just pick panels out and it's on the list like it's like eventually there should be around you tarot yes I can do that 20 years or like whatever I'm not sure exactly I haven't delved to the tarot is a pretty serious thing and I haven't I wouldn't want to do it lightly it's but it's kind of funny I've been doing a lot of the jaw it's been like commercial illustration jobs and a bunch of different things that I've been in commissions that I've been doing yeah they all kind of I've been joking that I'm making my own tarot because they look I've been doing these things that look kind of archetypal I'm like well if there was this and that I don't know what this that's the goddess of that's the king of such and such yeah yeah well like I did in New York Times illustration it's about their want to put a ladder at the lat the very end of Mount

Everest it's like the last 10 feet oh they want to put a metal ladder so it's like I had to draw a guy in a ladder looking up and the other guys are going like the long way around that's a tarot card I don't know what that is yeah right that's look it's a car for these climbing that's great which is funny because I don't know I'm like and I've asked as I've drawn them I've asked people who know I'm like is that someone and they're like no I'm like but doesn't it doesn't look like the maybe you're not supposed to know maybe that's not your job you're supposed to make the thing and not know the thing probably I mean sometimes do you think maybe that's just it like sometimes you just don't get to be the person who knows what you're talking about but you that's other people's job yeah kind of yeah that's how I do feel about

that's why I chose cartooning as a medium because you don't it's the most I kind of already had these like kind of intricate ideas about cartooning before I got into any kind of esoteric ideas cartooning is the most direct form of speaking directly to one from one human being to another because when you read you're going through these weird system of characters yes so and you're not seeing with cartoony you're seeing the person's hand so the person is directly what I drew on a piece of paper yeah goes into their eyes with you it's very private right you don't need to know if I'm alive or dead who I am what sex I am right anything about me and I don't have to tell you because you're just looking at the thing right which I kind of like and it's got so much words

and you know if you look at a painting it's a little bit more mysterious but with this there's a lot that I get to say to you yeah and you don't get to say back which is I wished what I wished the internet was like this two-way conversation thing with comments I'm finally getting over up until recently if there was like I'm like if you couldn't turn the comments off I wasn't using it so don't I want to say some stuff and not talk about it I just don't get I love thinking about it like I like to think about the mind state you've got to be in to like send somebody a shitty tweet that you don't know like you're so infuriated by something that you've consumed that you like you feel like you got to send a dart down the digital tube into that person quite often like they they try to quite often these

comments they're they're not like a you know and I know this isn't news to anybody but they're not like a really logical critique they're trying to pick out the they try to find the worst thing they can say to you the very worst thing it's almost like they hope that you'll read their comment and slice your they want to murder you almost with their comments like they want to it's very it's very bad and it's very interesting I feel like I've from living here and people that I know it's very it's really funny that people understand that they're talking about real people and like we all might as well all create cartoon characters of each other because even these celebrities that you hate are like real people that like live around here that like go to the they have to go to the gap or whatever like even if they have somebody go to the

gap for them like they're probably reading what you're writing you got to be careful man and it doesn't matter like who they are they're all like real people it's very weird so we might as well just make up fictional versions of ourselves we kind of have to well haven't we done that run haven't we done that anyway like isn't that the idea like we are all just fictional versions of nothing oh you found it about yeah it's so I reproduced this thing called the emerald tablet of Hermes Trismegistus the emerald tablet is like the holy grail the 10 commandments of hermetic ideas and it's a very short it's interesting there's a lot of different translations of it yeah that like some of them say god bigger and like you know like kind of accentuate different things

through the ages but uh yeah I will you read it okay I'll do it thank you true true without a doubt the below is as the above and the above is as the below to perfect the under to perfect the the wonders of the one as all things come from the one from the meditation of the one so all things are born from this one by adaptation its father is the sun and its mother the moon the wind carries it in its belly and it and its nurse is the earth it is the father of all of the wonders of the whole world its power is perfect when it is transformed into earth separate the earth from the fire and the subtle from the gross cautiously and judiciously it ascends from the earth to the heaven and back to the earth so that it receives the power of the upper and the lower

this you will possess the brightness of the whole world oh no excuse me thus you will possess the brightness of the whole world in darkness will flee you this is the force of all forces for it overcomes all that is subtle and penetrate solid things thus the world was created from this wonderful adaptations are affected and the means are given here hermes trismegistus is my name because I possess three parts of the wisdom of the whole world it's like a wow it's like a rap boast 2000 bc look you got to throw that in after that beautiful incredible thing you got to be like by the way this is hermes trimester yeah check check check check out my cd bitch yeah right it's beautiful it's it's almost like uh it makes me think of um uh the doubt

hing almost it's it's it's so it's exactly it is so deep you know you could take you could pluck any line from that and spend a lifetime thinking about it it is a little bit funny that a lot so much more there's so much eastern stuff that in our american culture is well known where it's like there's so much stuff on like the western side which honestly has a lot of like comedy in it and like fun i love reading the flowery like writing yeah a lot of people in like the 17 1800s writing stuff and they're like yeah right i love reading it it's i what i i'll tell you what i really love about it i love that it's right there in front of you just like you said you can go to the internet you can go there's all these texts are there right there in front of you but nobody knows about it

it's it's like it granted it's hard if you have no idea to unravel that can you unravel from crazy new age things or weirdness can you unravel what you still have to like dig through the don't heap to find it yes you do there is work involved but this is the thing it's like i mean i think that you know it when you see it like anything else you know well i don't remember what page it was on but you were talking about reading these old texts you were saying is there use in reading these old texts and you said and you said that you have to try to connect to the energy behind it right mm-hmm yeah so so you're you're sort of like when you go at these things don't approach it as though you're gonna from a text from the 17th century you're going to

it's gonna like be like you're reading something that nasa put out yeah but if you can connect to the thing that inspired the person to write that stuff and usually if you're interested in doing that you're gonna recognize things anyways you know yes right and that that is an interesting aspect of this stuff isn't it seems like it buddhism hinduism most of this stuff it's out there and it's not secret it doesn't have the tendency to be kept secret it's not hidden right but what's cool about this stuff is for some reason it likes to hide it's almost like eastern forgive me for saying this because i love eastern traditions and everyone who listens knows but it's like this is so bad you know that awful book men are from mars women are from venus it's almost like

eastern traditions are it are a dog and western traditions are a cat i never thought of it that way you know like it's one one is just like right there for you uh-huh but the other one it's going through that's a very interesting analogy never it hides it's tricky it likes it makes you work for it in a certain way and that's the other thing i like about your book is because i've always been attracted to the trickster idea like concept two and that's you know oh that's a cool like angle yeah why why is it like that why is it so slippery uh i think probably because of that it's like an artist artistic tendency right to be tricky to be to be tricky uh to be like to make people wonder to kind of like get people's imagination going

is kind of like what the like whole idea of magic is you know it's like to trick someone into seeing something you know um i don't know a lot of what in in a literal sense it's had to be slippery because of the way that the patriarchal christian society has uh dealt with all of us for the last couple thousand years you know pretty you know like they it's it's had to hide a lot of thing a lot of ideas had to be hidden for a very long time you know as it's like still hidden still and are still hidden yeah it's very it's been very it's a that's really why in a literal sense there's more uh kind of fun esoteric reasons why stuff would be mysterious or hidden uh and kind of hard to understand because it's not for everyone uh you need to do work to pull it out you know

like that kind of stuff that is yeah in the in the western sense there's a lot of that there's you know in there um so like you're not going to know exactly into you know but a lot of it yeah is literally just because it had to stay like it was dangerous because it is it's a lot of this stuff that we're talking about kind of abstractly is dangerous to the status quo of consciousness right and that's what is that's what i think like i don't know if it's the more time goes by it feels like we're kind of slowly continuously like heading towards something like that to me personally it seems like it's just like every six months it's things are getting more crazy in the culture yes they're heading towards that uh heading towards what towards uh uh people realizing

that are a shift in consciousness uh really this conscious yeah like yeah and it seems like it's going to be hard to keep people from it i've only been thinking about recently but i wonder if it's going to be with younger people that the more of this technology stuff that they've already had uh from when they were born being around and dealing with and then looking at us or the society of their grandparents or great grandparents and like how they're going to decide to live i think might really shift exponentially yeah i i mean i i definitely get that feeling and i definitely maybe i'm wrong and maybe it'll be for the worse or the for the better or like strut but i think a lot of it might be like consciousness based you know as aspects of

society or shifting well you know to pull it out of like all of society's shifting and bring it back to the self sometimes i wonder it's like and you read you know some of this stuff it reminds me of things i've forgotten and then for a second as i'm remembering how beautiful the world is and how incredible the world is suddenly everything brightens up and you look around and you know i even said in this interview the colors seem brighter to you you you get this feeling like all of a sudden everything is you're like whoa wait wait oh i forgot this is paradise oh wait is this heaven are we in heaven is this some kind of like paradise that i'm too dumb to see it's heaven hidden from people by their lack of awareness is that what keeps you from realizing you're in heaven is the

more your consciousness shuts down the more you seem to feel like you're in hell and the more you wake up the more suddenly you're like oh wow and not just like colors are brighter but all of a sudden that's when the synchronicities begin to come is this paradise here or is this the the bad point that we've got to like work to get towards paradise you know right and is it if it's paradise here does that mean that and a lot of use of terror tradition really says that it's it is some other place that this is like a medium that this like physical thing is something to like move beyond that's something that i'm not always like i'm not really too sure to move beyond how by death by yeah by death beyond death evolution reincarnation like moving to a bit becoming a having a better

like improving your soul in this lifetime that's like gergiev growing your own soul or whatever yeah and and there's a lot a lot of that is like that like oh yeah this physical thing is like oh the astral thing we're we don't have bodies is better that i'm see i don't like that i don't that bugs me i think that that's that's doing that thing where you're you're getting your that's in there so like anything else it's like you gotta like kind of like make your way through that depending on how you feel about like i want this to be heaven i don't want to why can't this be it why does there always have to be some fucking destination exactly but i see that as kind of like the western the whole patriarchal like mindset that we this society that we live in

is very like based on that the only way that we've we've arranged this way for like these us weird monkeys to get along and it's so hard for like us to do that that we've had to like construct this thing carrots but hanging carrots in front of everybody and it's very yeah at all no one even likes carrots and i'm not sure if you can like let even if you can like have like if you let a little bit of it go if it's all gonna go let it all go well that's the thing you know you read about these stories that come out a collapse of civilization the end of this the end of that and it's like well no it's not it's just a collapse of civilization would maybe that could actually you know if someone gets an enlightened if someone got enlightened for example someone wakes up for

somehow you suddenly do come out of the dream and you realize like okay great my career isn't me and my personality wasn't me and i just assembled this whole thing i'm the universe having this incredibly pleasurable experience being a human being and then you just you're suddenly free well if you looked at your ego as society yeah it's a collapse of society you know in the same way isn't society just the ego of the population and the collapse of society could also be the enlightenment of society simultaneously it's true it could be i think so meanwhile some fucking kids cradling his mother's smoldering head in syria and like yeah this is enlightenment asshole this is just bloody brutal collapse so what do we tune into i mean you'd have to

decide this is where i always get caught is like do is it just ego maniacal narcissism to pretend that if you can wake up if you can open yourself up if you can raise your consciousness then the world around you will transform in the most beautiful way and you might come out of a terrible dream to realize that you are an awakened being and living in heaven or is it the other it's better than like why not do that it's kind of the point of my book is like why why not try why not try that a little why not consider it like kind of like not you didn't even have to be like a big giant thing just like a little bit of it is good and is obviously seems to be positive yeah just a little thing just a just a little bit of that you know because it's such because like what's the the way

that things are is so oppressive that you know like how could it not a little bit of that not help you know or like and just so i mean people are not coping humans are not coping with this system right all right never mind yeah what you're talking about like the real poverty and violence in war in the world and the environment and everything else it's just like we're not it's not working right like we're not and we're not dealing with it well at all and yeah any little bit of kind of like positive awakening or being able to even just function and deal with it one way that i'm able to that i've been functioning lately is that understanding that like how many things aren't real that like we think of as real and in kind of in the in the

idea of just being like oh you think i this kind of like separation idea of like being like oh that person believes in astrology and like because of where the moon was yesterday that conversation went well that they had with their sister you know like i don't believe in that stupid i'm just going along like you know it's like thinking that that's a ridiculous idea and applying it to a lot of things from like something like money oh yeah which is the whole reason that like you know like i can have this microphone in front of me like it's all like it's the most same it's like it's a astoundingly abstract idea yeah as it are laws or because like rules of any sort yeah yeah well especially based if you're living in the now especially based on in the now rules are like

laws about anything it's just like that guy is going to stab you there is a law and it was right it's a good thing we argue about it how he's going to go to privy it's like he's still going to stab you right now and like and there's like this guy maybe he's going to stop him from doing it maybe if when he was a kid if there had been right yeah you could have you could have the goddamn supreme court say that that guy should not stab you and he was still gonna get a lot it's just a lot of human mind like stuff going into all these fictions so like so i've kind of like been able to cope by equal as in them all as like all equally like i could like take part of or take seriously or like kind of you know take reliever that people have different combinations to like get

through right you need to i mean this is this is the thing here we go again with the crazy thing because the moment you start that's crazy that he's crazy doesn't believe in laws you know or yeah the whole thing with the president comes from hardcore you you you're you're talking about this sort of i heard about anarchy before anything yeah right well it is an it is anarchist that was like the first thing i heard about as like a kid who was just looking for rebellious things right i don't know other people heard about kiss or something first like i heard about anarchy can you can you do me a favor for somebody like who has spent a a little bit of penning drawing anarchy symbols on notebooks i don't know what it means can you describe what it means

with anarchy yeah uh well i think it means a lot of different things to different people um to you as not to me it's just like the like the it's a very basic just like rock and roll like the rebel idea rightarian like right fuck you it has a basis in the it's political basis in there not being any authority whatsoever you know and not living with any rules or whatever which you know i don't know does that go into like black magic realm or like whatever but i think but there's like actually i was in um sweden capital sweden where was i uh anyways i was in sweden on mayday and they have all the different groups that march by the palace yeah in my the people i was with they were like which

groups you want to be with the social democrats or the anarchists or the black blood or the difference so i went with like the anarcho syndicalists who had the they were they had the black flag and they were the anarchists and hung out with them and like was drinking with them all day and i was like yeah i'm an anarchist too and stuff into the middle of the day when i was i realized i was like there's only one difference between me and you and they were like what is it i was like you guys believe in work i'm an anarchist you're an anarchist because it was a very you know like that i was in their public drinking hall of their like place where they had you know like they all grew their own vegetables and they were very like you know but they had their system and

i was like no i think um i if i was getting along those lines my anarchistic things would be the destruction of all the systems and no systems yeah and it's i mean it was in there was yeah it was not they didn't they didn't like that the problem with using the term the destruction of all the systems that's where it scares people when the truth is the systems have been destroyed because the systems never really existed we're talking about the idea of there being no time just this one moment and there's these little like what humans have decided to play these various games of make believe that they call governments or whatever and and we really take it seriously i mean when you want to i love the way that that thing that you show the way that science is like

breaking that down too yeah to science to just be like oh shit there's no time or like whatever it is that they're that little pinpoint that they're talking about that little point you think there was a fucking senate in there or there was there was the potential for the senate and congress and everything was in there and then the question is is is it wouldn't it's you know whatever this inflation that they're talking about is if you zoom far enough back from the inflation guess what it's still a little fucking point that's the thing and that's where you get back to the beginning of your incredible book which is that here we are dealing with this balance between maximum inflation and maximum unification and here we are caught in between have you ever heard that idea that the

crucifix represents the past present and future crossing with infinity yes where does that come from uh oh i don't know where it comes from but it's in yeah like all basic belief systems is that yeah like the four wins and the four elements and the the crossing of it it's yeah it is very basic um it's the yeah and the universe coming out of the point in the middle yeah i know in uh it's in hinduism i've said i've been looking in the kind of like different uses of the swastika in hinduism that cross point and that what the what the other lines on the swastika represent are the motion in the spinning of the universe well and the universe coming out of that point i think it's isn't it and that's i believe like in where it's used in hindu uh

representation is that's what that's supposed it's the motion it's the motion and that's kind of like what yeah and that's what like the symbol it's the spinning of mixing yin and yang like everything together why is it that the shittiest people snatch the best symbols but that one's you know it's very the spinning of the swastika is like that's what we're all here to like do wow yeah wow this um you know what man this is frustrating we we've oh it didn't even we barely scratch the surface ron it's i'll have to come back you gotta come back because this stuff is like i'm really really interested in it and um did you want to ask me more specific questions about the book or something yeah absolutely well yeah you know i if you have like little specific

ones i could always like answer them quickly if you want to like i just want to i you know rather than um uh ask a question i was wondering if you could just read these two pages because i just thought it was so beautiful from the from the red book yeah okay cool awesome all right and then if you'll come but if you'll just please come back because we could talk about it more okay cool here this is uh what it is is it's from the red book of Carl Jung which came out a couple years ago do you know have you seen the i don't know what it is it's um it's a book that he did in secrets that's very very large it's a it's it's a lot like this

book it's a giant uh illustrated book of his paintings which when you see them you're like oh he didn't have to do all that others if he had just made these paintings he would be remembered forever as a great artist besides the fact that he's Carl Jung also right but it's all these paintings and uh there's all this writing in its um i believe it was his analysis of his own dreams when he was younger when he was putting together his dream like the things his ideas for psychology kind of did it on himself first and the red book was like his diary and wow it's been like a hundred years or whatever like his family just recently had it released and didn't even know about it um close to here just a few blocks from here in At

Water Village there's a the Ecclesia Gnostica which is a Gnostic church I've been there yeah the light there's not very many Gnostic churches in the United States at all and there's a gentleman there named Stephen Heller who's a Gnostic priest and an expert on Jung and Alchemy from the Gnostic perspective cool and he was doing lectures they do like he does a lecture there every Friday night um for years many years uh he did a series of lectures about the red book so what I did is I haven't read the red book and like dissected it but he just told this really brief story from the red book with which I just took notes of and so this is a comic made from my notes of Stephen Heller's interpretation of what's in the red book which is what most of

the stuff in this book I didn't it's my translations of all of these ideas I didn't make up really if you guys could hear my brain you would have just heard Ron Regi pop into the category where I called coolest guy ever so uh how do I read this without the I guess it's good with just the word it's good with just the words only that which you call banal contains the wisdom that you wish to discover alone in the castle wearing green you are drawn upwards from the top of the tower you look into the distance and you think to yourself do I see something there in the woods the red one appears and comes closer you see a figure in the woods wearing red and it comes up to you he comes up to you and says hello you have called me

here and you say who are you the devil and he says no although many people think that I am you say who are you then and as you say that his coloring mellows and your green outfit blooms into flowers and then he says I am joy and your answer is but I can't experience joy for then I cannot be serious and I must concentrate to do my work so when I heard that my little cartoonist brain said I'm going to make a comic of that which is how we we cartoonists are uh or at least the kind of cartoonists that I am we're very much just like uh journalists or blog writers or something like that we're out there like we're making our little things and we make comics out of them I don't think you'll ever be able to

define yourself Ron but but that this book cartoon utopia that little piece right there that uh suddenly it's back now I'm back oh yeah stop fighting off joy what do you what do you think you have to be serious stop stop this endless battle against joy and your book is page after page after page of different ways of saying just stop fighting joy and and and that's what's why it's such a wonderful thing to have around because if you're feeling bummed out you can just open it up to just about any page and whoosh your it reminds you so thank you so much for this book thank you and thank you so much for uh coming on my show and how can people find you Ron uh on Facebook or I have a tumbler uh Ron Regi Jr and you tweet too and I I suppose I do I don't

tweet directly other things that I'm using like tweet for me I think well you're an automated tweeter I'm an automated tweeter so you're what's your time I'm on Instagram I'm on all of them I'm on almost all of them just under my name so I will have links to all all of them at my website and um uh definitely a link to pick up a copy of the cartoon utopia which you guys have to do this should be around your kids um and around your house it's one of those great books Ron thank you very much Hare Krishna uh talk to you soon thanks for listening everybody I'm gonna have all the links you need to find everything you need to find out about Ron Regi at dunkatrustle.com please give us a nice rating on iTunes and don't forget to check out squarespace.com

Hare Krishna