1.
Everything you say is true, on some level. You only think you can lie, but you can’t really. If you tell a lie on the material plane, your astral will cop on you. MNC21
2.
If there’s anybody paying attention, you can’t lie. You can only lie to people who don’t feel vibes. But to anybody who feels vibes, when someone’s telling a lie, it makes a certain vibration. MNC21
3.
[A lie] has a strange negative energy about it, because it’s a noise you make that doesn’t really have any meaning connected to it. I once saw, when I was stoned and somebody was lying to me, that the inside of his mouth was all black, because there was just no energy there — it was a low-energy place. [At least that’s how my psychedelic imaging system translated it to me. 2005] MNC21
4.
Why do we care so much about truth? I think one of the reasons we respect it is because of the extraordinarily high signal-to-noise ratio that we have here on the planet. Much of our daily conversation is about things that don’t exist in the material plane, because they’re in the past or they’re in the future. A lot of our conversation doesn’t have to do with here and now. Truth is accurate information about here and now, here and now. MNC22
5.
I think that truth is the same as God. Somebody said to me that it’s like a pyramid with three sides, and it only has one point at the top, and that point is God — and the sides are love and truth and beauty. MNC22
6.
True beauty doesn’t have anything to do with what you physically look like. You just sit there and radiate it and be beautiful. It doesn’t matter what you’re shaped like — it’s not on that sort system. It’s on another one. That’s why beauty is as heavy as love and truth. MNC22
7.
Truth has a special quality: Truth can be aspired to. With truth, you say, “Oh. I can do something about that one.” It’s hard sometimes to find a handle for our heads, to get ourselves high. I find that truth works really good. I find that if I’m hanging around somewhere and the energy is not as high as it should be, sometimes somebody’s not telling the truth. [Maybe me. 2005] MNC22–23
8.
In the Catholic church, there are both sins of omission and sins of commission. It’s an interesting idea that there are things you can do that are wrong and there are things that you don’t do that are wrong, too. Truth’s like that…. You have to say it. [Someone has to say it. 2005]
MNC23
9.
[Trying to live the truth] is a gas. It’s a stoner. That is to say, if you want to live the truth, you can be your own movie camera. It’s safe to assume that you’re one of the cameras for the Akashic record. You’re recording the history of humankind here on this planet, as it’s seen through your eyes. [The Akashic record, a concept found in the Vedantic tradition, is the unwritten but meticulously complete archive, on the astral plane (or at least in your own memory) of everything that’s very happened — including everything you’ve ever done. Sometimes on Haight Street, we would say, “Are you going to do that right here in the Straight Theater?” Which meant: “Right in front of God and everybody?” And it was much the same concept. 2025]
MNC26
10.
You’re also the narrator for the film you’re filming. If you let things happen that aren’t true — if somebody says something around you that’s a lie, and you know it is, and you don’t say anything about it — then it’s your lie, too. You just bought it, and that lie belongs to you, too. Once you buy a lie, it’s in your subconscious, and you’re stuck with it until you work it out by doing something about it. MNC27
11.
You can put telling the truth and telling a lie on opposite ends of a continuum, with percentages in between, and you can see that some people don’t exactly lie — but they get down into a forty-ninth percentile sometimes, and they seldom get much above fifty-one. They just hang around where some of it’s true and some of it isn’t, and some of it doesn’t matter, because they’re just shooting the shit for a while. MNC28
12.
Usually, when you listen to people talk, you know the truth when it’s spoken, because it has a ring to it. It rings like a bell. Sometimes the truth might be back up in your head, or somebody’s head, hidden behind a few layers of lies, and you might have to excavate to find it. But you can tell without a doubt when you find it, because everything turns golden and bright, and gets pretty, and everybody gets beautiful, with maybe the smell of nice incense in the air. That’s what truth is like when you experience it. MNC29
13.
What we’re talking about is accurate information given from one monkey to another monkey in order that “God” may talk to “God” accurately. MNC31
14.
There’s a kind of truth that doesn’t insult your intelligence, because you can figure it out for yourself and see if that’s the way it works. MNC113
15.
Sometimes I can smoke some grass and not get high. But I find that if I tell the truth, it gets me high every time. So, if you find yourself to a place where you think you’re as high as grass is going to get you, then try a little truth, and start climbing up the ladder by hand. You can get as high as you want to on truth. Just be telling it as it comes. It doesn’t even have to be about something heavy. Because it’s true, it’s heavy. Somebody asks you the right time, you tell ’em the right time, it’s heavy, because it’s true. MNC133–134
16.
I really feel good when I find out that I can say something true once in a while, because when you say something true what comes out of your mouth is the word of God, because that’s what the word of God is. It doesn’t matter who talks it, just so it gets talked. MNC134
17.
Truth is a hard master, too. If you’re going to have truth for a master, you have to stand up for it all the time. I think somebody said that you have to be running or you’re going to be losing ground actually. MNC134
18.
Jesus said, “The truth shall make you free.” The only way that anybody can put any controls on you is if they can make you swallow a lie. If they can make you swallow a lie, then they have a handle that they can pull you around by and make you do one thing or another. If you don’t swallow lies, you don’t have any handles on you. MNC134
19.
Now truth’s a funny trip, because if you really up and try to do it there’s going to be some resistance. If you’re going to try to speak some truth there’s going to be somebody around who’s got a hand in the till or a skeleton in their closet or an ace up their sleeve, or some extra ego in their back pocket, who is not going to want you to talk. There’s various ways that they will try to keep you from talking, and you have to pay attention to them. MNC134
20.
If you start to say something that’s true, insist on saying it until you’re finished saying it. Don’t let yourself be interrupted when you’re speaking truth, because it cheapens the truth to let it be interrupted. MNC134–135 MNC134–135
21.
The truth’s going to come out anyway, you know. You just might as well up and do it yourself. It gets you stoned to do it. If you say something that’s really true, there has to be like a second there so everybody knows that they thought that thing was true. You don’t let somebody drop in something lightweight too close behind it. Don’t devalue the truth by shoving it up in too close proximity with a low level of truth. MNC135
22.
Truth is what’s going on, never mind does it scan. Don’t worry is it going to make everybody sitting around jump for joy – speak the truth, and then we’ll work it out from there. At least we’ll have some thing that we know about for openers, like a stable datum to start on, an agreed-upon North. Like, truth is the first cause. MNC137
23.
There are lots of ways to go to the top of the pyramid where God is; it’s got a lot of sides. And one of those sides is love. One of those sides is justice, complete fairness. One of those sides is beauty, true inner beauty, but dig, truth is one of those sides too, and the nice thing about truth is that it can be aspired to. If you don’t happen to feel that you’re beautiful, you may have trouble just changing your mind and deciding I’m beautiful, right now. But you can change your mind and decide to tell the truth. All you have to do is just say that you want to do it, and start working at it, and you’ll get loving, and you will become just, and you will become beautiful. If you follow truth, it will take you to the same place. MNC137
24.
I’d read a lot of religion when I was a kid, but I hadn’t been able to make it work, because it didn’t have any juice. I’d never seen anybody with any juice. I’d heard there was supposed to be heavy people, but I’d never seen one. I thought maybe they died out a couple thousand years ago or something, and we just weren’t in that strain anymore. MNC149
25.
Then when I got high that time, I found out that there were a lot of heavy folks, because I found myself face-to-face with a whole mess of ’em all at once. MNC149
26.
I’d go out and I try to tell somebody about what I knew, and I’d get my head copped. Then I’d go home and say, “How’d that happen? I was feeling really heavy a minute ago, and then wham!” Because I couldn’t keep my energy. I’d drop my chi every time anybody would thump me.MNC149–150
27.
The main thing is, I found out that it’s easy to get high; it’s harder to stay high. The way you stay high is with truth. MNC150
28.
Then it’s only been like for this year that I’ve felt like I’ve had an actual commitment to truth. Like I used to say, “Well, I’ll just ignore some of this, because it’s none of my business.” But I don’t do that anymore. Everything is my business, and I don’t ignore anything unless that’s what I’m supposed to be doing to it. And if I’m supposed to ignore it, then I will, and it’s hard to get my attention to it. MNC150
29.
[Is the idea of free will inconsistent with God’s will?] That’s opposing free will and determinism in a sense. The way that works is that it’s not either/or – it’s a continuum, and you have degrees of free will according to the condition you are in, all the way up to when you willingly merge your will with God. MNC150
30.
The question of free will is, are you going to straighten up or not. And you always have that option. But then to the extent that you know what’s going on, you become more free. MNC150
31.
If you really don’t know what’s going on, which is like blind to the truth, or like being completely worldly or something, you say you don’t really know there’s anything going on besides the meat part. [This is the position of a 19-century materialist.] Wow, there’s a lot going on besides the meat part. And if you don’t know it, then you’re pretty much determined. You’re determined because you’re an effect rather than a cause, right? The universe moves you and you bounce around it. MNC150–151
32.
But then you can go from that place all the way to the other end, to where your will merges with the will of God. And then your will and God’s will are one, and you have absolute free will under God too, because you are God, and God has absolute free will. MNC151
33.
The more truth, the less determinism. The truth shall make you free. MNC151
34.
The important thing is how we as individuals relate to our universe. The important thing then to learn is the structure of the mind, and how your own mind works. Learn what way is your head reacts in every situation and encounters. Being raised in this culture, with the presuppositions of this culture about the nature of the mind, means that you were programmed in your youth with much erroneous information. MNC160–161
35.
Clearing the subconscious is nothing other than the complete reprogramming of your own head, and you have to take the job in your own hands and do it yourself. The best thing you can depend on for help is somebody who will tell you the truth. If you find someone who will tell you the truth about where you’re at, hang onto them, and don’t let them get away. MNC161
36.
And practice telling the truth yourself, because we haven’t been taught to place a very high value on truth in this culture. We have to value truth highly, and we have to be scrupulous in telling her down to the final detail. Letting something not quite true slip past without pointing it out, hangs you up for a while – until you get straight with it, in fact. MNC161
37.
I believe that you can become selfless and accept the truth, whatever it may be. It means that you have to want to know the truth more than anything else. You have to want to know the truth if the truth means you’re full of shit, and if you can accept that then you can know truth. C5NOV70
38.
I don’t say it’s [my truth]. I’m just borrowing it. It’s been hanging around for thousands and thousands of years, and I just picked it up and nobody seemed to respect it. I thought it was a nice thing, so I’ve been trying to make respect for it around where I am, and it’s the same one. In Minneapolis the arrangement to speak was made by a Methodist minister, and we spoke in a Catholic church. I teach Christianity and Zen Buddhism and Judaism and Sufism, just for a start. The people that have come with me are not sorted on national background, they’re all kinds of colors, and they came from all kinds of different religious structures, and they can all say that there is that one pure note that goes through them all and that’s what we’re seeking. C17NOV70
39.
We’re uniting folks together and we’re doing things, and if you want to know how to do it and what to do, watch us because we’re doing it. C17NOV70
40.
[How can you be sure that telling the truth is the right thing to do at the time?] You have to make a decision on the basis of your own judgment, with the possibility that you may make a mistake. That’s the only kind of decision that’s worthwhile. That’s the only time when you exert your free will. You have to make decisions and decide to do something every now and then… even if it seems to be heavy. That’s all I’m doing: I’m just making decisions on my own free will to decide to do a bunch of stuff because I think it needs to be done.C17NOV70