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New Thinking Allowed Audio Podcast
Elvis Presley and the Paranormal with Miguel Conner
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Elvis Presley and the Paranormal with Miguel Conner Miguel Conner is host of the Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio podcast. He has authored two books of interviews about gnosticism, and also four novels. His newest book is The Occult Elvis: The Mystical and Magi...
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Book three in the new Thinking Allowed dialogue series is UFOs and UAP. Are we really Alone? Now available on Amazon, New Thinking Allowed.
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Is presented by the California Institute for Human Science, a fully accredited university offering distant learning graduate degrees that focus on mind, body and spirit. The topics that we cover here. We are particularly excited to announce new degrees emphasizing parapsychology and the paranormal. Visit their website@cihs.edu.
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You can now download a free PDF copy of issue number eight of the new Thinking Allowed magazine or order a beautiful printed copy. Go to newthinkingallowed.org.
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Thinking allowed.
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Conversations on.
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The Leading Edge of Knowledge and Discovery with psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove.
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C
Hello and welcome. I'm Jeffrey Mishlove. Today we will be exploring Elvis Presley and the paranormal. My guest is Miguel Connor, who is the host of the Aon Bite Gnostic Radio podcast. He is also author of several works of fiction and two books of interviews with Gnostic thinkers. His most recent book is the Occult the Mystical and Magical Life of the King. Miguel lives in Northern Illinois. And now I'll switch over to the Internet video. Welcome Miguel. It is a pleasure to be with you.
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D
Pleasure is all mine and thanks for having me on.
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C
I'm in effect returning the honor since you interviewed me some years ago.
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D
Yes, yes, I do remember. At the heights of the pandemic and it was a wonderful interview.
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C
Well, you've got a new book out. It's your first non fiction book and you describe an interesting process that you went through to write a book about Elvis. Because like many people of our generation, we tended to favor the Beatles. I remember Elvis. I was alive in the 1950s when Elvis became a huge star. Unbelievably huge star. I was nine years old at the time and I remember adults coming and they had this puzzled look on their face. They needed to talk to me, a kid, like, what's going on with this Elvis pelvis fellow?
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D
Yeah, he made a stir. He made a stir. And I was like you. I was always a Beatles guy, as they say. And there's instances in the book. The book starts with Pulp Fiction. There's a famous scene with Mia Wallace, played by Uma Thurman, telling John Travolta, the John Travolta character, Vincent Vega, that there are only two people in this world, Elvis people and Beatles people. They can like each other, but they are different. Who you choose decides who you are. And all my life I was a Beatles person. Never had time for Elvis. His music never did anything for me. I always thought he was the music version of Mountain Dew or McDonald's. And lo and behold, the universe has a sense of irony and had other plans for me. And as I write in the book, I defined an Elvis person, and I am now an Elvis person. This happened through a series of visions, synchronicities, altered states of consciousness in the summer of 22, involving a couple of ayahuasca trips. Again, dreams, synchronicities. And before I knew it, this voice, this force, was urging me to write about him, about Elvis. And I had never written a biological. But it was so overwhelming, it was calling to me. And I'm old enough, Jeffrey, to know that when the gods call you, you either obey or the pain that's going to be involved is going to be unbearable. They have the agenda. We as humans are just channels for something bigger. If we're wise. If we're wise. And lo and behold, by the February of 2023, I sat down in a cold winter knight. You're, you know Wisconsin, you know the Midwest. Only reading one bayou in my life. And watch Bass Luhrmann's movie Elvis. I sat down and three months later, I had a first draft. And this the. The universe kept answering me. I was lucky enough to have some wonderful people like Ronnie Pontiac and Mitch Horowitz give it a look and editing thumbs of approval, and a few months later, I had a deal. So I don't like to say it was channeled. I like to say it became quantum entangled with Elvis.
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C
Well, that's a good way to put it. But I think for benefit of our viewers, let's talk a little bit about your background with the Aon Byte Gnostic radio podcast. Would you call yourself a Gnostic? Is that a fair label for you?
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D
I would not. And the reason I don't is because the surviving Gnostics of ancient times are the Mandaeans. Mandean is a Semitic term meaning Gnostic. And I feel they are the last vestige of the ancient Gnostics, maybe along with the Yazidi. So I don't want to. I'm not a Mandean. I'm not a Gnostic per se. I guess you could say Neo Gnostic. So I just like to call myself heretic, like the church fathers called the ancient Gnostics. But Gnosticism has been a big interest and passion in my life, and that also happened because of an Ayahuasca vision. The plant always has very interesting information to tell you. That's all I have to say.
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C
As a result of your reading and doing your radio podcast, it's really more than radio. It's also on YouTube. You have exposed yourself in a very deep way to esoteric culture. And that's long before you decided to write a book about Elvis.
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D
That is correct. I've been doing my podcast for a long time, full time since 2018. I do have a couple of nonfiction books on Gnosticism. They're more like transcripts of people that I interview in the show with my commentary, including Elaine Pagels, Jeff Kripal and a whole others. And I've written dozens of articles, again hundreds of podcasts and yeah, been very into Gnosticism, hermeticism and the Western esoteric tradition as it's called.
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C
It's very tempting to consider Elvis as some writers who write about rock stars and their mystical interests think of them as truly enlightened beings, spiritual teachers. On the other hand, I think it's fair to say that if one looks at Elvis's life as an example, he showed us how you can grow old and fat and overdose on drugs.
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D
Yeah, that was certainly his life. I don't think the book I attempt. I think one of the main themes of the book, Jeffrey, is the idea of fate and destiny. Maybe we can't overcome our fate, but we can create some sort of destiny. And I show how Elvis was fated to be Elvis from the very beginning and his rise and fall. And then I offer many possibilities or lenses. You can see Elvis through Jung, Steiner, alchemy, psychology, even ufology to try to understand Elvis. Ultimately it's a mystery, right? I'm a recovering addict and to me it's still a mystery why I survived. And for example, my brother could not overcome his demons. So I tried to give this large prism to show Elvis and also couch him in terms not so much as a teacher, but as a America shaman. You know, a shaman is one who guides the tribe and gives them healing medicine. A shaman is somebody who dances and creates music, music for the tribe. So that's who I see Elvis as America shaman. As we transition from this kind of benign republic into this post world empire with high technology and ufology and nuclear bombs and all that. And I give examples of what shamans do and it does fit Elvis. In fact, as I show in some circumpolar traditions, the shaman does end up being a drug addict, overweight and broken down figure because of the weight of the, that he carries on his shoulders with the tribe and the, the, the, the stress of going into the spirit world and bringing these gifts back, this art and spiritual. And I also talk about the concept of the wounded healer, which Paul Levy really goes into in both of his Wutiko books. And that's the idea that the, the magician or the shaman is chosen because they are broken. They've had some sort of childhood trauma. They, whether it's a near death experience or something or a disease, and that opens their channels of communication and they are able to heal because of their wounds, not despite their wounds. Their wounds, their trauma is a teaching tool for them to reach down into, into their magic. And often the wounded healer does not want to heal themselves because they feel they might lose their power or their way to connect with the audiences. And we see that a lot. We certainly see it in rock music, right? Whether it's Jim Morrison or others, they are tragic, but it seems their tragedy and their darkness is what, you know, helps us heal and makes us connect. So when you see Elvis through a shaman and the wounded healer, I think it makes more sense.
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C
Jeffrey, let's talk about Elvis birth for a moment. You begin your book very much focused on the circumstances of his birth. And there is a sense, almost like Jesus, that there were signs.
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D
Yes, indeed. Yes, there was a blue light over his birth. And yes, Jesus had a star. Julius Caesar, Buddha. These characters, character, the heavens are very busy when these great historical figures decide to come out of the, the canal. But yes, from the moment he was born, according to his father Vernon, he, they were having a really. His mother Gladys was having a rough, a rough labor. They were so dirt poor. Remember, this is 1935, in the South Great Depression. They couldn't afford a doctor or hospital, so it had to be in their little shack in Tupelo, Mississippi. And Vernon goes outside to have a cigarette and suddenly a blue light appears over the house. And suddenly he can't hear the wind, he can't hear the coyotes. He's freaking out and he throws a cigarette out and runs back into the house. And somehow there's some sort of memory wipe. Well, there was a reason because again, tragically, Gladys gave birth to twins. One was Jesse Presley and he was born still. He was born. He was stillborn. He didn't make it. And 35 minutes later, Elvis came out. And these two events really shaped Elvis from the beginning because as I discuss in the book, there's a concept called the twinless survivor, which we know twins are very connected, but they are connected even in the womb. They play with each other, they communicate, but when one of them dies at birth, it forever affects the surviving one. They, they grow up with this kind of a Guilt, survivor phenomena or syndrome? I compare him. Philip K. Dick had the same problem. His twin Jane died. And he always said, well, what did people ask him? What do you think? He said, I guess I got all the milk. It was this guilt. At the same time, you have the blue light, but you have twinless survivors. They are always very driven to understand the deeper questions of life, like Philip K. Dick or Elvis. Why did this happen to me? Why was I born poor and then became rich? Why did God allow this? And so forth. So they are seekers, they tend to be mystics, but on the dark side, they tend to be workaholics, prone to drug addiction and cannot make connections with other human beings. So again with Elvis, it's almost like the moment he was born, fate just came crashing down on him.
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C
Well, one of the important points of your book is that Elvis had a deep personal interest in the occult and mysticism and metaphysics, in esoteric Christianity and in yoga. He actually became, for a period of time, a brief period, a practitioner of Kriya yoga in the tradition of Yogananda.
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D
Yes, he did. In fact, he almost quit the music industry to be a monk full time, but he had to be talked out of it. But he was always, again, a seeker. He was always very open minded. He was raised in the Pentecostal tradition, but his mother had some sort of second sight, Gladys, or witch blood, whatever you want to call it, because she could see beyond the veil and she could see figures at night. She had premonitions. Elvis talks about. Her and her mother, at a young age were able to astral travel. And it was a gift they both had or a talent, but they kept it secret for obvious reasons, and they believed in faith healing. So Elvis was always very open minded. And even when he joined the army in 58, he was talking to people about how reincarnation made more sense than the doctrine of eternal damnation. He was reading books like Kahlil Gibrain's A Profit and doing aromatherapy for his own health. So he was always open to it. But it was really in 1964, when he met Larry Geller, who was a master of all these traditions as hairdresser, that the floodgates had opened and he could really find the answers about his twin, Jesse, who became sort of his Damon, his higher self, and find his purpose in the world and find ways he could connect more with the divine, expand his consciousness. And it was very broad and very eclectic. But yes, Yogananda was a huge part of his life, and so was many, many Eastern Traditions.
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C
The irony is that when the Beatles came along, they were very open about their interest in meditation and yoga and Eastern philosophy, particularly George Harrison was extremely open about that. It was a hallmark of who he was. But in the case of Elvis, he didn't allow that interest to become very evident in his stage Persona or in his music.
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D
I would say yes and no. He didn't broadcast it, but he didn't hide it. And keep in mind, Elvis was going to the Yogananda Ashram years before George Harrison started going to the same place. So they almost. I mean, they met once, but they could have really, like, worked together. He didn't hide it, but he didn't. But he didn't broadcast it. I don't know. There's a movie that came out last year, Sofia Coppola's Priscilla, based on Priscilla's biography. And it's. There's 10 minutes of what happened when Elvis discovered these things. He would hand out these books on the occult, whether it was theosophy or Gurdjieff. He would get these circles with his groupies or bodyguards and they would meditate, do yoga, or he would ask them the bigger questions of life in between sets, movie shots in Hollywood there, and read and meditate and talk to people about it. So he was. You know, he would send Priscilla to go see Manly P. Hall lectures because he would have. He would have disrupted his lectures. So he had to send Priscilla to write notes and bring them back so he could read them. So it's almost like he was planting the seeds while still being Elvis about what he did. And yes, then came a time when Colonel Parker and Priscilla put so much pressure on him because they thought he was. He was going to become a monk or do. He was just getting so detached into the spiritual world that they did a concerted campaign to break him away from Larry Geller and his occult interests. And he did for a while. But what he did is he went underground. He would do it in Vegas or read books in Vegas and all that. And he would do. When he came out with his Vegas manifestation. I would say that's a very occult Persona, if you would. I mean, he had the, you know, the Egyptian motifs. He wore an ankh or the Aztec motifs. There are reports of him stopping shows and doing Tibetan prayers to get the crowd worked up. I mean, is it kind of became very open. But again, he never really broadcast it. But you find this in all these biographies. Whether it's Priscilla's biography or Sonny west or Jerry Schilling, they all talk about Elvis's interest in the occult. Many fans do, but again, he didn't wear it on his vest or make it part of his albums of music like the Beatles did.
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C
Well, I think one of the most amazing episodes that you write about is the times in which he would come upon people who were sick or injured. And he seemed to show, on occasion, I guess I would have to call it a miraculous healing ability.
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D
He did indeed. And again, he got this from his family. Being raised a Pentecostal faith healing. It's a natural part of your culture. He had to be healed when he was very sick by his parents. Again, comes from his mother. And it was a natural ability that, especially when he started learning about healing techniques and different traditions. You know, he loved Alice Bailey's book on how to cure the body and diseases, and he tried to use it himself to cure his diabetes. But the instances are really fascinating. I mean, Priscilla talks about how he could cure her headaches just with the touch of his head. His girlfriend later, Ginger Alden, talks about if a groupie or his or her sister was sick, he could cure headaches or her nausea or her hangovers. It was just over and over, and then came sort of the high level cures. Jeffrey. For example, there's the instance where Elvis was driving in Memphis and he saw there was a bus on the sidewalk and the driver had gotten out and he was holding his chest, obviously having a heart attack. He crashed his bus. Elvis got out, put his hands on his chest and started doing, like, his healing power. And suddenly the man no longer had chest paints. There's an instance of him going snowboarding in Colorado with his posse, and somebody in his group sadly hit a pole and broke his leg. And everybody's there. There was a doctor there and said, you know, we need to take this person. It was the doctor's son, actually. We need to take him to the hospital. And Elvis is like, it's my vacation. You know, it sounds kind of arrogant, but Elvis put his hands on his. On his leg and did his prayer meditation and cured his broken leg. There's an instance of one of his backup singers from the Sweet Sensations. I think that's the name of the backup group. She was crying in the dressing room with the other singers around him. And Elvis walks by and is like, what's wrong? And she's like, I just went to the doctor. I have incurable stunts, stomach cancer, and it's not looking good. Elvis said, all right, ladies, let's gather around her. Let's pray, and let's Pray hard they did that. She went back to the doctor the next week. No cancer. So the book shows over and over many other instances of amazing abilities. Again, what does a shaman do, Geoffrey? He heals. That's one of his first priorities.
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C
Well, I know there's an ancient tradition in which royalty said to have healing abilities, people would come to the king. I think it has something to do with the aura or the charisma associated with the role that the King plays in culture. And of course, Elvis was called the King of Rock and Roll. So in a way that's even a more powerful. I'm trying to find the right word. Archetype, perhaps. Is the word a more powerful archetype than even a king?
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D
Yes, yes, that's for sure. Yeah. I mean, the archetypes are there. And I go in the book about what archetypes were working within him. And of course I explained, you know, archetypes, according to Jung, weren't these static things somewhere in an ideal world. They're not like Plato's allegory of the cave or Plato's concept of ideas or instincts. There were dynamic forces that could have an agenda that were quasi sentient and could invade you if you allowed them. But the problem, because they have an agenda. The king must find a king and manifest as a king in this world. But too much could destroy you. And we see that the example could be Elvis. He tapped too much into the King archetype and it was too much Marilyn Monroe, she might have tapped into the princess archetype too much and it just destroyed her psyche. That's one of the theory of the many theories. That's one of them that I propose in the book.
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C
Well, Elvis seemed to know that he was going to die early.
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D
He did indeed. Indeed. And he talked about it through most of his life, even as a teenager. Although you can dismiss that as you know. You know, when we were young, we were all like the. Who hope I die before. Before I get old. I'm gonna die young. But we all do that. Histrionics and rock stars are even worse about that. However, towards the end of his life, he started mentioning hints that really disturbed people. Like telling his friend Larry Geller when they were signing copies, these legal copies, which Elvis had put off but needed to be done. And he said that things aren't going to turn out like you want. And Geller. There was something in his voice that freaked out Geller. And then Elvis says, angels can only fly because they take themselves so lightly. Or going back to. From Memphis to Tupelo driving alone with a friend and looking for his marbles underneath his old house and saying and talking about his mama raised him. And, you know, he was just looking for some objects of his childhood. But the most chilling one, or seems to be when his stepbrother, David Stanley, came to him two days before he passed. And he walked in, and Elvis is sitting in his bed, laying in his bed, and he's. You know, you can tell his health is dying. He's drugged out, he's sweating, but he's still reading all these books on metaphysics. His bed is strewn with all these books. He was always studying and working hard, even at the end. And his brother David says. Elvis says, come here. And he says, you know, David, I love you, but in two days, I'm gonna be on a higher plane. And his brother's like, oh, yeah, in two days we're taking a plane to Portland. Yeah, yeah, we gotta be ready for this concert. And Elvis sort of like rolls his eyes like, you know, he's not gonna get it. And he gives him a big hug and leaves. And lo and behold, two days later, Elvis left the building, as they say.
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C
One of the features that sort of characterized Elvis's entire life from a psychological point of view is the fact that his mother was overprotective. And I think it's probably fair to say he had a dysfunctional relationship with.
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D
Her, to say the least. I would say it's definitely abusive. We know it today as helicopter parenting. But I think in the psychological way of saying it's called lethal enmeshment. And what happened is when Jesse died, Gladys was later taken to the hospital and she was told she could no longer conceive children. So almost to be expected, she became very possessive of Elvis to the point she wouldn't let him out of her sight. And in lethal enmeshment, when you are so possessive of the child, you don't allow it to grow, to experience. You don't allow its ego to develop. And this child is always in this world of extremes where it is either the proxy husband or the wise king, because that's what happens. It becomes a replacement spouse in the relationship, or the little kind of chaotic child that has to sneak around and get in trouble so he can explore the world. And this certainly really harmed Elvis's psyche very much. I mean, there are stories of Elvis sleeping with his parents when he was 16. However, the reason might be because he was a horrible sleepwalker. And, you know, there were times he almost walked outside off buildings. And so Forth. But they had a very unhealthy relationship. And again, children who suffer from lethal enmeshment, guess what, they have problem connecting with women. They are prone to drug addiction. And like the twinless survivors, they can be very self destructive. So this was very unhealthy. And when Gladys died in 58, she was in her only early 40s. And Elvis was only 23. 23, yeah, he was only 23. So he was just a kid. Even though he was already the king of rock and roll, it destroyed his psyche. He could never recover from that. So again, it's idea of fate being sealed at a young age. The blue light, twinless survivor and this oppressive mother archetype. In fact, Jeffrey, I was thinking the other day, you know, maybe Elvis. There's nobody like Elvis. But maybe it is Oedipus. Remember the story of Oedipus Rex? He was the king, he was a rock star because he defeated the Phoenix and he had a very freaky relationship with his mother. So Elvis was kind of like Oedipus in many ways.
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C
Probably people today remember Elvis's death more than his life. When he died in 1977, it was broadcast all over the world.
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D
It was, it was a huge shock to the psyche of the country. I mean, President Carter talked about it. More than 50,000 people showed up the next day at Graceland. I mean, Graceland is really the temple of our country, I would say. I mean the White House is the number one visited house in this country. Graceland is number two, even today. And it was. People just couldn't believe it because he was only 42. And of course this set out a series of a lot of conspiracy theories. Wondering had Elvis escaped to Argentina? Was he go. Was he undercover because of mob ties, the witness protection program? Had he just quit to be a pastor somewhere? It was a. And of course there was. The Elvis visitations still happened today, became ubiquitous all over the place from Kalamazoo, from people's. Him appearing in people's dreams, him appearing when people died, him appearing near death, experiences appearing all over. I mean, the Elvis visitation is almost, in American culture, is almost as common as Bigfoot or the UFO or Jesus or the Virgin Mary. You know, he's. If there was a, somebody said a Fortean pantheon or Mount Rushmore, Elvis would be there with Bigfoot, Jesus, the Virgin Mary and the alien. So he was very busy. Still is.
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C
It's easy to sort of dismiss all of that as something having to do with popular culture. But it's important to note that Raymond Moody who is the person who put the whole concept of the near death experience on the map with his book Life After Life, wrote about Elvis afterlife and took a very serious academic interest in all of these accounts of apparitions of Elvis Presley that were reported after his death. You list many of them in your book.
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D
Yes, I do, I cite others. But I do lean heavily on his book. It's a, it's a wonderful book. And like you said, his work has been so seminal in this, in this arena of trying to find out. And yes, Elvis was, he was all over the place, as I keep saying. It was something that the psyche of the country couldn't handle as it lost its shaman, its magician, its king, whatever you want to call it. A big part of the American psyche was really wounded. And this happens when great figures dies, whether it's Jesus or King Arthur or so many others, we can't accept it. And somehow they are still around with us on many dimensions.
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C
Well, it does appear as if Elvis has taken on a life in the Bardo Plains, an even stronger presence than when he was alive on earth.
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D
Yes, there is the famous saying, I don't know who was the music agent who said when he heard about Elvis chapter dying, he said, good career move. So you know, he'd already broken so many records before. Sometimes it's outstanding when you, when you do the research. For example, he did almost what, 4,000 concerts from the Houston Astrodome to small halls to Vegas showroom. He sold every concert he ever was in. In between 1955 and 1977, I think he made about $4 billion. Now adjust that for inflation. This is Silicon Valley levels money. He blew most of it because he was so giving. He was reckless. He never invested in stocks or bonds. So he was already just so. He was already, as they say, the greatest, the goat, as we say today. But once he died, of course he became just as famous. And he continues. I say, I think he's getting to be more famous even today.
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C
Well, I moved to Las Vegas in 2001. I'd been living in the San Francisco Bay area. And of course at that point Elvis had been gone for almost a quarter century. But the whole city was full of Elvis Presley imitators.
- [33:42]
D
It is, it is. And of course Elvis is huge in Japan, Australia, the uk. He still has such an impact. And of course he appears in many movies that are classical. I know, you know, David lynch, who left us this year, sadly, he always said Elvis is the greatest icon of the 20th century. There's nobody like him. And when you watch David lynch movies, you almost see like he's trying to chase the Elvis 50s vibe, especially in Wild at Heart. You know, Nicholas Cage has always tried to be his hero, Elvis. Leonard Bernstein, who you would think would not care about rock and roll, always said, yeah, Elvis is the greatest figure of our century. He defines what America is. So it's. There's nothing like Elvis that has ever appeared. And I don't think there'll be anything similar, although there might be, as I'm writing the sequel to it, but we can get to that. But no, he was unique, very unique.
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C
Well, what do you think Elvis has to offer people such as yourself today? People who are deeply enmeshed in spiritual searching, in esoteric culture. Why would such people, people who are, for example, members of the new thinking allowed audience, why would they be interested in Elvis?
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D
Well, not one, because there's this dimension of Elvis that has been missed. It's not, again, like him, his interest in the occult and the esoteric. He didn't hide it. This is not hidden. I didn't get anything from the tabloids, Jeffrey. I got these from all these biographies that have sold millions that are from reliable witnesses. All of his magical powers, like, you know, controlling the weather or, you know, manipulating matter, healing. There are always many eyewitnesses there. And you can find them in all these biographies. You can find them in different, different channels. They're all reliable. So it's almost like we've missed this part. And I think it's important to know how this esoteric spirituality is so important. I mean, Hinduism is essential for the Beatles, doing Revolver Sergeant Peppers. Kabbalah was essential for David Bowie to really thrive in the 70s. Thelema was essential for Jimmy Page. So we're missing this and it's important to see this at the same time. I like to talk about the concepts of fate and destiny, to see how we can do it. Self knowledge is a very important concept because Elvis was always trying to know himself and his role in the universe and understand why this happened to him. So I think those things are, you might say, the themes that people can find interest. And I think the world is ready for it. Jeffrey. Recently there was a book on the occult side of Jim Morrison, sold very well, a book on the occult, Sylvia Plath. So I think this is coming out because we are ready to understand and tap into these wonderful traditions. Lastly, I think Elvis really represents what America is, both the good, bad, the shadow side and so forth. And I think if we can get back to Elvis, perhaps We as Americans can go back to understanding our identity because I think we've become very fragmented as a country. We don't know who we are. And Elvis represents all that. The multiculturalism, the acceptance of other traditions, the sensitivity but ambition that is both kind and individualistic and all that.
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C
You mentioned in passing a moment ago that Elvis showed some ability to control the weather.
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D
Yeah, one of the abilities or one of his many abilities was the magical ability. And he did it over and over again. As I mentioned, he could astral travel. And that is something that he showed. He shows ideas of premonition. He was one of those individuals that could read the room and read people really well, to the point people in the industry thought it was eerie. He also learned how to manipulate the weather. Moving clouds was a gift that he learned with Larry Geller, creating force fields, moving objects and so forth. Now why did he do these things? Why did he make. Didn't make them public? Or why did he just hide it for Elvis? He learned from Yogananda that the closer you are to the divine, the more magical abilities or miracles you will do. So to him it wasn't I'm powerful or I'm great. It was like, I'm getting closer to God or I'm getting closer to revelation. And that's what really drove him. But he was certainly a natural magician and a mystic all the way.
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C
There's certainly no question that his career rose like in a meteoric fashion as soon as, as he became public. Within just a few months, he was an international sensation.
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D
Yeah, that certainly makes you pause or when you look back, you said, how did that happen? How did this kid who didn't know how to read music, he played at church here and there. His teacher said he was, you know, he was a good looking guy, but he was just average. How did he suddenly start hanging out at this place called Sun Records in Memphis? And he said he wanted to do some tapes or do a record and show it to his mama Gladys, even though she didn't own a record player. But he did that and he sort of hung out and then he, Sam Phillips, the owner of Sutton Records, gives him an opportunity, wants to create this band and he somehow just gets signed and within he becomes a hit in his area. And then suddenly this figure, Tom Parker, who had never really managed musicians, latches onto him. And all of a sudden he's the biggest sensation in the country. He dominates culture and music and your daily talk for like three years straight. It makes you wonder, doesn't it, Jeffrey?
- [40:26]
C
Well, it's just charisma that there was something about him. And of course, the whole country was going through the post war era. It was redefining itself. It needed at that point, a new identity. And to break away from the old molds of the 1940s, Elvis seemed to embody something very new for American culture, rock and roll.
- [40:57]
D
That very astutely said, you're 100% right. That's why I call him the Lord of the crossroads. Because this country was at a crossroads between old technology and suddenly this amazing technology that popped out of nowhere, right? Satellites, nuclear bombs, transistor raiders, transistor radios. He was at the crossroads of the old ways of sexual relationship in this new era where women could be more liberated, men could be more vulnerable. We didn't have to be Gary Cooper. We could be more like Marlon Brando or Elvis, kind of sensitive and dark and vulnerable. He was at the crossroads of music and art. Suddenly it wasn't just white music and art. Suddenly, oh, we can start looking at African American music and Hispanic music. He was at the crossroads of the old Protestant religions. And, hey, let's start looking at other forms of spirituality, whether it was Elvis or the beat writers. Let's start exploring. He was at the crossroads of all these massive tectonic shifts. And he was there, as I say, like the pied piper, to lead us into it. That's why the other archetype I connect him to is the trickster. Because whenever something is transitioning, whenever there's a big shift, whether it's Ragnarok or Native American lore or anything like that, the trickster is in the middle of it, sort of playing around and helping us shift and change and let go of the old ways for something new. And again, Elvis, he really represents them. And as I argue in the book, Jeffrey, rock music is really a form of spirituality, was never really a form of entertainment. It's this fusion of the trickster, devilish blues and gospel music. Most people don't forget how important gospel music was to people. But individuals like Jerry Lee Lewis or Little Richard or Elvis, they were pastors first. In fact, the first rock and roll concerts. Music critics would go there and said, this is like a holy tent revival. What is this? This is not something new. We've seen this before. And people used to accuse Pentecostalism of mixing Jesus and sexual because that rock and music did. And it was a form of spirituality to help us cope with this brave new world, this mightiest empire that history had ever seen. And Elvis and these cats were there to sort of grant us new vistas, help us cope with these, help us expand our consciousness and deal with this new history. So yeah, Elvis was definitely part of this spiritual movement I call rock and roll and it was essential for us being able to pivot to again this post war America.
- [43:54]
C
Well Miguel Connor, this has been a very informative and I would say inspiring and energizing conversation. Thank you so much for writing the book and for sharing it with the New Thinking Allowed audience.
- [44:09]
D
I really enjoyed it and thanks for having me on.
- [44:13]
C
And I should let our listeners know we're planning another interview. We'll be talking about Gnosticism. We'll go more deeply into your esoteric interests next time.
- [44:24]
D
Yes we will. And keep in mind, Elvis did read the Gospel of Thomas in some of the Nag Hammadi libraries, so he knew about the Gnostics.
- [44:33]
C
Well, it's been a great joy to be with you Miguel, and for those of you watching or listening, thank you for being with us because you are the reason that we are here.
- [45:09]
A
Book three in the new thinking allowed dialogue series is UFOs and UAP are we really Alone? Now available on Amazon, New Thinking Allowed.
- [45:20]
B
Is presented by the California Institute for Human Science, a fully accredited university offering distant learning graduate degrees that focus on mind, body and spirit. The topics that we cover here. We are particularly excited to announce new degrees emphasizing parapsychology and the paranormal. Visit their website@cihs.edu.
- [45:48]
C
You can now download a free PDF copy of issue number eight of the new Thinking Allowed magazine or order a beautiful printed copy copy. Go to newthinkingallowed.org.