“Tune in, turn on and drop out.”
This was Timothy Leary's advice to the Flower Children back then. He
and many others figured that LSD, or any other psychotropic drug
would enlighten you, expand your mind and rush us headlong into the
Age of Aquarius where we'd all hug trees and each other. Well...
The problem with that was that most
people didn't use it for personal growth at all. It was recreation.
Huston Smith, who I know you've never
heard of, was the son of Christian Missionaries who tried to
proselytize deep inside Communist China. Not an easy thing to do when
Mao was purifying the nation of capitalists. Huston grew up in this
and became evangelized (Methodist). He eventually became a professor
of religious studies and worked along side Leary. They and Richard
Alpert experimented with LSD as college professors at Berkely.
Huston was there when they give hits of acid to sophomore college
kids and studied what happened.
Huston convincingly argued that the LSD
experiences and any religious epiphany were exactly the same. Become
a Christian monk hidden deep in the mountains and you'll have
personal insights into Jesus like St John of the Cross. Or you
could drop acid and get them. The two experiences are
indistinguishable. The new knowledge comes from literally nowhere and
is stunning to know.
Huston went on to say though, most
people don't do a damn thing with the epiphanies they receive when
ripped on acid. The religious ascetics however, do. This was
Huston's main criticism of it and a lot of the 60's trippy-dippy
mindset.
I had my epiphany once.
It wasn't on acid. I know my
subconscious too well to let that raging gorilla out and I have never
dared to try it. No.Thank.You. My experience with lightning bolt
realizations came from boring ol' marijuana. That and a Beatles's
song.
Prior to 17, I smoked bales due to my
older brother buying bales. I won't say when I started to smoke but
if you read this blog enough, you'll guess the age. Too damn young.
But hey, “Anything Goes” when it's the 70's.
It was recreational for me. It also
became one hell of an escape. When high, and having a pair of
headphones on my head, I could completely leave my “real” life
and go wherever my imagination took me. Now why would I want to leave
my real life behind at such a young age? Well...try being an adult at
14 to 40 something mother who decided she didn't want to be one
anymore. In short, she was wrecked with depression and made useless
by it. I had to step up and be Dad. So, sucking on a joint was a
vacation.
One Saturday morning in the spring of
1981, I was crushing out a joint and waiting for that high to climax,
then I would listen to music via headphone. That was good for about
two hours of space trucking around the Milky Way. I could forget
about going to CVS to pick up her script, cut checks for the bills,
clean the house and the other usual Dad shit. The next two hours were
mine and I'd deal with real life later in the afternoon.
I played the Beatles album Abbey Road
and “I Want You (She's So Heavy) came on. I had never heard that
song before. To describe it, it's a bit heavy metal/bluesy but
there's a turn in the song where they play the same riff over and
over again for about three minutes, with no change. If you're
straight and listen to it, it's pretty hypnotic due to it's
repetition. Now listen to it high as a kite, in a rocking chair
rolling to the beat and you end up past Pluto.
But what happens at the end of the song
is startling if you've never heard it before. It cuts off, dead. You
are put in a trance and suddenly the musical mantra hits a brick
wall. You hit that brick wall too.
So there I was, rocking away, drifting
back and forth to that repetition when this song cuts off to dead
silence. I opened my eyes in a bit of shock and sat there for a
minute. Then this thought, which came from nowhere, appeared in my
head.
“You can't keep this up. You can't
keep escaping. College is coming one day, so is work...you can't hide
in a cocoon so deeply several times a week. You have to grow up.”
I'm not kidding, I was startled by that
thought. I didn't like it at all. I didn't like the idea that I had
to wake up and keep my shit wired tight, like an adult. I had to be
competent. I had to leave childhood behind for
good. Ugh. Well, the message was so startling to me that I obeyed
it. I grew up.
A few years later, in a Cognitive
Processes class taught by Don Cousins at RIC, he was talking about
epiphanies and how our minds can hatch them. “Where does this
strange creativity come from?” He then turns to me and asks, “Did
I have any epiphanies?” I said “Yes” and then refused to
elaborate. It was too personal. My friend Ken who was in the class as
well remarked to me after that he could tell I “shut right down”
when asked to share my experience. I never told him either. There
are times when you are hit with ideas and they're yours, and yours
only.
It's been 34 years since I regularly
smoked. I can't do it now. I have tried several times over those past
years and all it does is invoke that experience I had then. It's
powerful enough to have lasted with me all these years.
So, how's that? A drug induced epiphany
told me I had to “cut the shit.” Without having known Huston
Smith back then, I used this wake up call to good use all on my own.
Lucky me.
What I want you to do now, is play the
song (click the pic), close your eyes and let it take you along. I want you to feel
that sudden stop that'll come unexpectedly. If you want to drop acid
and chug some Bushmills, fine. Otherwise just let the song envelope
you. If you hate psychedelic rock, move on.
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