"In earlier, wiser times this struggle was clearly recognized as the essential battle between God and the devil, in which the devil (who is always he who controls the external power) systematically switches the labels (for obvious tactical reasons) and calls the static, regulated, dry, grim, humorless, destructive antilife good and the free, ecstatic, sensual, moist, funny, joyous BAD. This doesn't fool the turned-on undergrounders, who are hip to the fact that God is a singing, swinging energy process who likes to laugh and make love and burrow, murmuring, underground.
The underground is always aware of the existence and reflex responses of the overground. Survival in the underground de- pends on your ability to anticipate the movements of external power. It's always been a capital crime to laugh, make love, and turn on barefoot in front of whitey's house, and these are the endemic, chronic crimes of the giggling young, the colored, the artists and the visionaries.
The structure of the overground is always obsessively and specifically organized. Read the rule books and directories. Today the whole freaky social structure is listed alphabetically in the yellow pages of the phone book. Read the section solemnly listing the local offices of the U.S. government, for example. Isn't that weird?
The structure of the underground is equally explicit and obvious to those in the know, but this knowledge is experiential, whispered, word-of-mouth, friend to friend and rarely written down. Can you write down a good joke? The telephone directory has no listing for the soft essences, the chemical secretions of life, love goddesses, alchemists, ecstasy drugs, astrologers, religious experiences, prophetic visions, fun, laughter, wry humor, the warm hand that slips under your pretenses and touches you in exactly the right place. Where are these classified?" - Dr. Timothy Leary, The Politics of Ecstasy
