Listen to the Ray Manzarek interview.

Assume for a minute that Jim Morrison died in Paris 27 years ago last Friday and isn’t – as conspiracy theorists believe – writing poetry and drinking himself stupid somewhere under an assumed name.

That means the legendary singer of the Doors has now been in the earth as long as he was on it.

Unintentionally, but just in time for that dubious anniversary, Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek has published his memoir, Light My Fire: My Life with the Doors (Putnam, $26.95).

“It’s my transition-into-the-21st-century book,” Manzarek says in a phone interview from his Southern California home. “It’s to help the audience, to help the young people, who may not have an idea as to what the ’60s were all about, get over this apocalyptic transition that we’re in right now, this millennial apocalyptic transition period, and to know there are some older people who carry the torch of love.”

As if you couldn’t tell, Manzarek speaks (and frequently writes) in hippie-fied ’60s-speak. About recording the hit Light My Fire, he writes that the Doors “had locked into the primordial energy of the globe.”

Upon hearing Morrison sing the final lyrics of Moonlight Drive for the first time: “The chief ghost, the angel of death, brushed my shoulder at that instant, but I fear it not. I was in a rapture of creative imagining and nothing could dissuade me from my goal.”

Manzarek also tells a fair number of spellbinding stories about his and Morrison’s transition from UCLA film students to creators of landmark psychedelic music. His first-hand account should fascinate the band’s many fans.

Yet the more metaphysical the subject, the more mystical Manzarek becomes.

For example, during the interview, Manzarek was asked: Is Jim Morrison in heaven or hell?

His answer, in its entirety:

“Is there a heaven or hell? You don’t ask that question of an old acid head. I’m a oneness man.

“But let me put it to you this way: Jim Morrison is in heaven, because everybody – here’s the New Age religion, here’s the religion of Ray Manzarek – everybody goes to heaven. There is no hell. If you’ve done bad things, you’re in hell.

“If you would do something bad on Earth, you’re in hell, because the divine revelation of being one with the energy – to finding the Christ within you, the Christ within you – is so divinely, deliciously good that to do wrong puts you in a crazy state of mind that is hell. Hell on Earth, man.

“Retribution, you’re giving yourself. For all your sins, you’re paying the ultimate price for your own sins. You’re receiving the retribution right here on Earth with the anguish inside of you. You don’t need to be punished by some all-seeing deity. 

“In fact, what happens to you after you die is, you merge with the energy of the universe. It’s not so much a heaven state or a hell state. You merge with the energy of the universe. The energy of the universe is God. You become God. God is you, me, all of us.”

Manzarek, 63, who grew up in Chicago, practices Atenism, which he describes as an ancient Egyptian religion last observed in the 18th Dynasty (around 1554 B.C.). He discovered it in Sigmund Freud’s book Moses and Monotheism, which talks about a pharaoh, Ahken Aten, discovering the energy of the sun.

Manzarek says Aten’s experience was much like one he had walking along a beach in Venice in 1965. Morrison had left California, ostensibly to move to New York, and Manzarek found himself jobless, broke and wondering what he was going to do with the rest of his life.

He writes: “I thought to myself, `I’m in no position to make any decisions. I’ll let the energy of the sun guide me. The divine energy. The all-healing, all-encompassing, all-nurturing, all-supportive energy.’ I went back to my beach towel and just plopped down. And there I was, just sitting in the sun, being a bum, smoking a joint and trusting in the energy. And who comes walking down the beach but James Douglas Morrison.”

In short order, they would team up with guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore to form the Doors. They made eight albums in four years – an unheard-of pace today – as Morrison ping-ponged between Jim, their poet-friend, and “Jimbo,” the overindulgent drunk.

When Morrison died, he moved beyond superstardom and into the legends category.

The Doors were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

Manzarek says Morrison’s death is a cautionary tale. As for the story of the Doors, “If you’re into the Bible, Jesus says, `See how good it is for brethren to dwell together in harmony.’ That’s in fact what we did on stage…. It was incredible. The ’60s were incredible.”

The Doors didn’t really make it out of that decade. Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore tried to continue on, but without Morrison that was pointless.

To the outsider, then, it would seem that for 27 years, Manzarek and company have been living in the shadow of a dead man. 

He doesn’t see it that way.

“If you’ve got any brains at all, you’ve got to realize that the lead singer gets all the attention, both good and bad,” Manzarek says. “He gets all the attention, but he also gets busted. He gets all the crazies who come around, people with the drugs and the booze – `C’mon, Jim, get drunk with me.’

“Jim, of course, was supposed to get all the attention. So the fact that he has gotten all the attention, that’s right. That’s how it’s supposed to be. But I’ll be damned if all that attention didn’t kill him in the end.”