Slip Inside This House
by Tommy Hall and Rocky Erickson
The Thirteenth Floor Elevators

Aldous Huxley a long time ago in The Perennial Philosophy alerted us to the fact that in all times and places, in all kinds of societies, human beings persist in making what, for want of a better term, we can call the mystical breakthrough. Whenever and wherever it happens, the experience is always the same: unio mystica, the mystical union. When people try to communicate the experience, it comes out in different ways: the concise paradoxes of the Tao Te Ching, the enigmatic guideposts of the I Ching, Buddha's gentle nudges (so often since distorted by misguided followers), the pregnant symbolism of the kaballah, the vast and engulfing cosmology of Hinduism, the ecstatic outpouring of the various Christian mystics, the side- and mind-splitting anecdotes of Sufism, and so on.

The most recent visible outburst of this kind happened in the 1960s. Beneath the gaudy psychedelic surface, something had happened, was happening. One place it happened was in Austin, Texas. The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, a garage band of little distinction other than the presence of an electric jug, suddenly began singing a song called "Slip Inside This House," by Roky Erickson (the lead singer) and Tommy Hall (the jug player).

In eight minutes, "Slip Inside This House" says it all again. The 5,000-year-old message comes alive once more, this time couched in 20th century words and played on electric instruments. The Elevators recorded the song on an album called Easter Everywhere. They knew what they were up to. It is as if Lao-Tze, the Dhammapada, and Patanjali had been reduced a 15-stanza, 8-minute song, with 20th century words:

1. Bedoin tribes* ascending
from the egg into the flower,
alpha information sending
state within the heaven shower
from disciples the unending
subtleties of river power.
They slip inside this house as they pass by.

2. If your limbs begin dissolving
in the water that you tread,
all surroundings are evolving
in the stream that clears your head,
find yourself a caravan
like Noah must have led,
and slip inside this house as you pass by.

3. Slip inside this house as you pass by.
True conception, knowing why,
brings even more than meets the eye.
Slip inside this house as you pass by.

4. In this dark we call creation
we can be and feel and know
from an effort, comfort station,
that's surviving on the go.
There's infinite survival in
the high baptismal glow.
Slip inside this house as you pass by.

5. There is no season when you are grown.
You are always risen from the seeds you've sown.
There is no reason to rise alone.
Other stories given have sages of their own.

6. Live where your heart can be given,
and your life starts to unfold
in the forms you envision
in this dream that's ages old.
On the river layer is the only sayer.
You receive all you can hold,
like you've been told.

7. Every day's another dawning.
Give the morning winds a chance.
Always catch your thunder yawning.
Lift your mind into the dance.
Sweep the shadows from your awning.
Shrink the fourfold circumstance
that lies outside this house.
Don't pass it by.

8. Higher worlds that you uncover
light the path you want to roam.
You compare there and discover
You won't need a shell of foam.
Twice born gypsies care and keep
the nowhere of their former home.
They slip inside this house as they pass by.

9. Slip inside this house as you pass by.
You think you can't, you wish you could.
I know you can, I wish you would
slip inside this house as you pass by.

10. Four and twenty birds of Maya
baked into an atom you
polarized into existence,
magnet heart from red to blue:
to such extent, the realm of dark
within the picture it seems true,
but slip inside this house and then decide.

11. All your lightning waits inside you.
Travel it along your spine.
Seven stars receive your visit.
Seven seals remain divine:
seven churches filled with spirit,
treasure from the angels' mine.
Slip inside this house as you pass by.

12. Slip inside this house as you pass by
The space you make has your own laws.
No longer human gods are cause.
The center of this house will never die.

13. There is no season when you are grown.
You are always risen from the seeds you've sown.
There is no reason to rise alone.
Other stories given have sages of their own.

14. Draw from the well of unchanging.
Its union nourishes on
in the right re-arranging
till the last confusion is gone.
Water-brothers trust in the ultimust
of the always singing song they pass along.

15. One-eyed men aren't really reigning.
They just march in place until
two-eyed men with mystery training
finally feel the power fill.
Three-eyed men are not complaining.
They can yo-yo where they will.
They slip inside this house as they pass by.
Don't pass it by.
                                        --Roky Erickson & Tommy Hall.

*Several readers have pointed out a problem with the first line. The printed lyrics with the original International Artists LP have the line as "Bedoin tribes ascending," but some ears hear Roky sing the line as "When your tribe's ascending..."

END

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