LSD and the 1960s by Michael Erlewine (Michael@Erlewine.

net) Things are almost back to normal here at our center after four days and 3.25 GB of in-depth interviews with Sixties icons, poet/activist John Sinclair and concert producer Peter Andrews. Mostly we talked about the 1960s, what those times were like, and how they came about. In particular, since both John and I are a few years older than the average hippie, we had started out trying to hitch a ride on the Beat Movement, after reading the works of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and others. We did everything we could to embed ourselves in the beat ethic, but it was just a little too late, and we didnt make that train, but were left standing at the station wondering what to do with our lives. We had to wait for the next wave, which turned out to be the Sixties and (I hate this term) the hippies. I

was never a hippie. I am a couple years older than the hippies, so call me a pre-hippie or a post-beat. As it turned out, folks like Sinclair and I ended (who are the same age) up teaching the hippies about poetry, literature, jazz, and the arts, which we had learned from the beats. But what was it that turned the culture away from the Beats and into what we call the Sixties generation? Of course there are lots of reasons why the alternative culture of the 1960s arose, the most clichd of which is that the Sixties was a reaction to the button-down, crew-cut, cookie-cutter culture of the 1950s. Both John Sinclair and I agree that the single definitive event that made the Sixties possible was the advent of LSD to the scene. It changed both of our lives forever. I know, in this new world of organic food and health, drugs are not cool. I dont use them and dont even recommend them, but if you want to know the truth of what caused the Sixties, you just heard it. The Beat movement had a dark and lonely quality to it that probably came from the European tradition and it was about surviving and existing in a bad situation, like the monotonous gray of the 1950s. The Sixties, as we know, was all about light and life not as survival, but life as an alternative to the 1950s. There had to be some cause that allowed this segue to happen. The only cause I can find in my own life is the advent of LSD. And I am not alone in this. For whatever reasons that particular drug made all the difference. If you would like a short discussion on the how and why of this, let me know via some comments and I will do a blog on it. LSD: Dharma Training in a Sugar Cube?

This blog is bound to be somewhat controversial because I am going to point out that LSD contributed to making the 1960s what it was. Not only did it contribute, but it was a key (perhaps the key) ingredient that made it possible for the Sixties to distinguish itself from what came before. Please hear me out. Over the years I have written and spoken about the 1960s and LSD, including my own experiences with the drug. I have tried to point out how this particular drug played an important role in shaping the Sixties experience, at least in the minds of many people I have met who took the drug back then. LSD is not a casual drug. Once you have had it, you think more than twice before you just go and do it again. If pot is a fun merry-go-round ride, then LSD is the rollercoaster and a steep one at that. Pot is a casual drug, more like just getting high and certainly more entertaining, but not as gushy, as alcohol. LSD and some of the other hallucinogens are a whole OTHER experience and not at all like just getting high. I cant tell you that LSD was easy sailing for many of us, but I can say that the overall consensus from almost everyone I know who took the drug was that the business-end of LSD was all about learning how our mind works. And here is the interesting part. Looking back it is easy now to see that, aside from being a drug, LSD was my introduction to mind practice or mind training (call it meditation or whatever you wish) dharma practice in a pill. Of course, it was not quite as simple as that. But what LSD did do for millions of users (ready or not) is to expose us to the

age-old deer-in-the-headlights division between subject and object dualisms. Once that division is grasped, the mind is free to reflect or respond because we then own the experience as ours. We know only we are responsible, not someone or an authority out there. And, of course, resolving dualisms is a hallmark trait of many spiritual disciplines, including the Buddhist tradition. What does this entail? The main lesson of LSD (and I have discussed this with many folks over the years) is that this particular drug is capable of resolving the habitual subject/object dichotomy, which simply means the assumption that thinks: I am here in my head looking out at you (and the world) AND the world I am looking at is independent of me and what I think. This assumption is false. On LSD that rigid ingrained division between me and what I see starts to break down and I begin to realize that what I see on the outside world depends very much on what I project from my head - my inside world. Perhaps we each get glimpses of this once in a great while in day-to-day living, but acid made it very clear to me that the world is our movie screen upon which we project whatever prejudices and labels we are carrying around. And then, to make it worse, most of us take what we project (our own projections) seriously, as validation that what we see out there is in fact real the reality. It is a perfect case of Catch22. I hope this is clear. LSD was capable of breaking down this age-old dichotomy, revealing to me that in actuality I play both parts, the projector and what is projected. Once we realize that we are the victims of our own projections I mean FULLY realize, then we cannot

avoid beginning to dismantle the apparatus that has been doing this to us all of our lives. This realization is the positive power of LSD and some of the other hallucinogens. I know too well there are also negative effects, like trying to stabilize that realization, but that would be another blog. And while perhaps we can agree that it is regrettable that it takes a drug like LSD to make this dichotomy clear to us, IMO this was a small price to pay for the lesson learned: responsibility. And this next point is key: The take-away from LSD back then was that once we see our own dualisms for what they are, we also own them and become personally responsible for their removal. We finally get it and know we can, albeit with real effort, remove these dualisms ourselves, one by one. In fact, we have no choice, and the removal process drove more than a few of us a little crazy. It frequently takes years to stabilize what is seen on a single LSD trip. Once you open that door to the mind, there is no going back, not because LSD is a drug, but because the obscurations of the mind are so pervasive, and have held us captive like: forever. When we see the subject/object duality as nothing but creations of our own mind, we can no longer just stand by and be a victim of circumstances. Up until we recognize our inherent dualistic approach, we are like fat in a frying pan, driven hither and thither by every passing wind and phantom our mind projects on our screen of the outside world. With no insight into our own mind, we dont even know we are watching a movie that we ourselves are creating as we go along. And this watching our own movie is what was happening to everyone in the late 1950s and early

1960s. Until LSD came along, we younger people had not a clue. And the keyword here is responsibility, Before my first LSD experience on May 6th of 1964, there was not even the tiniest gap in my dualistic thinking, or very little. After that LSD experience I immediately responded to my condition and began the long process of deconstructing the mental processes that enforced my dualisms, untying knot after knot that obscured my mind. It was not an easy process and it took years. The bottom line for me is that LSD and other hallucinogens made the whole Sixties generation more responsible for our own actions and it is this sense of responsibility that responded (pun intended) to the actual needs of the real world and gave us things like whole and organic foods, a renewal of home birth, home education, local responsibility, a greater sense of community, the Internet, etc., not to mention a unique generation of rock n roll music, film, and the arts. We dont usually associate responsibility with the Sixties movement, but there you have it. Once we know that only WE are responsible for what we see in the world, we automatically begin to respond rather than continue to blindly watch our own projections on the screen of life. We act. And Sixties folk acted. And it is this responsibility (feeling responsible) that is the reason that drugs like LSD cannot just be dismissed as simply an excess of the hippie life, a side road or tangent. LSD back then was a primary path or avenue over which the Sixties generation travelled and the 1960s would not have been what it was without it.

After some fifty years of consideration, this is one of a few (perhaps the main) key considerations for understanding how the Sixties worked. My friend and 1960s icon poet/activist John Sinclair has come to the same conclusion independently, that LSD is THE key to how the Beat movement ended and what we call the Sixties began. LSD was the catalyst that opened not only my mind, but millions of minds, and that collective opening became the Sixties. LSD woke us up and helped to make us responsible for our own actions and for this world we live in. We each struggled to deconstruct the more closed mentality of the 1950s. And the Sixties children have proved this by their actions. They have walked their talk. How else could we have done so much, if we did not feel personally responsible for the world around us. Of course today we have many forms of mind training available to us and I have been practicing Tibetan Buddhist techniques for some 38 years. But in the early 1960s there was very little mind training out there, anywhere. When there is a need, nature finds a way. And there was a great need for my generation to wake up and wake up quickly. When LSD came along, it made that possible by connecting the traditional gap between subject and object giving us no one to blame but ourselves. When we saw that the world was also our own projection, we were free to stop projecting dualisms and clean up our mind. No, not everyone back then took acid, but more Sixties folks did than did not, people like Steve Jobs, and so on right on down the line. My point is that the keyword for the Sixties generation is responsibility, responsibility to ourselves and to

the world. Sixties people care and their cultural achievement proves their sense of responsibility. Note: This blog is not to be construed as my suggesting that you run out and take LSD. The particular obscurations of the 1950s have cleared and today we have dozens of mind-training practices available to us. My only reason in writing this is to point out that for a whole generation, acid (LSD) was our first introduction to working with the mind mind practice. LSD was key in plunging us into working with our minds and making the Sixties what is was. Feel free to disagree with me and ask questions. I will continue tomorrow with The Deconstruction of LSD. The Deconstruction of LSD Before we get into deconstructing the LSD experience, there are a few housekeeping chores to attend to. Lets begin by separating the drug LSD and its effects on the brain from its effects on the mind, two very different things. In May of 1964 at 10:30 PM in Berkeley California I took LSD for the first time; coming events were already casting their shadow. And the shadow of this new drug LSD was long. Very few of us had taken the drug and the reputation that preceded it was that this was no casual drug, but a drug capable of altering your mind not just for a few hours, but forever. That was a barrier not everyone was willing to cross, and the few of us that did at the time did it with considerable fear and trembling. Well, some folks just took anything that came along, but I was not one of those. Up to that point we had never encountered a drug that threatened to change your mind for you permanently.

What we did not understand fully at that time was that, although there were hints, LSD was a drug that tailored your trip based upon your own fears and expectations. In other words, whatever you most feared or expected was liable to arise or happen on acid, just because LSD is all about our internal projections. That was not yet common knowledge, but the stories of this drug were already circulating rapidly, and tall tales they were. One had to be really curious, a little desperate, or just plain ignorant to take LSD in 1964. I was looking for a change. LSD, the drug experience, passes in something like eight to ten hours. It varies. But the effects of LSD can last a lifetime. It is not that the chemical effects of LSD stay in the body for a lifetime, but rather that the alteration of the mind can last a lifetime. Again: the brain is not the mind. And it is not that LSD chemically alters the mind and leaves it in a broken or altered state. Not at all. Remember it is the mind we are talking about here, not the brain. Rather it is that LSD unlocks the doors to the mind, which once open, cannot easily be closed again. You cant put the toothpaste back in the tube once it is out. That is why the effects of LSD were so far reaching. LSD did not permanently affect the brain, but rather the mind, and the mind is very much more than a brain. Those of us taking LSD back in the very early 1960s did not understand what a mind-altering drug really was all about. LSD is not a brain-altering drug, but a mind-altering drug. That distinction was too subtle for us at the time. We were used to drugs physically altering our perception for a few hours and then having it return to normal. LSD had the potential to not return you to life as you knew it. And not everyone

had a mind-altering experience on LSD, either because it was bad acid or for some reason their trip did not take hold. My first acid was pure Sandoz LSD. My point here is that LSD did not alter your brain permanently, but rather it had the potential to alter your mind permanently, and those two options are very different. It was the mind that got altered rather than the brain. Got it? On acid we saw things about how the mind worked that had never been open to us before. I had studied philosophy and psychology for years, including, for example, reading all 52 works by Dostoyevsky, one of the worlds great psychologists, and so on. But reading or thinking about the mind and actually experiencing how your own mind worked are so different. I had little practical knowledge of how my mind worked until I met LSD. From the first moments LSD hit me, I got an instant education, one that I could never forget, not even to this day. For the first time I saw how my mind worked, and what I saw altered my mind forever. I realized a few things, and realizations are permanent. Just ask the Buddhists the difference between an experience that passes and a realization. LSD was capable of providing realization, but realization that required stabilization. But it was not the chemicals in my brain from LSD that altered my mind, but rather it was the nature of the mind itself and seeing just how it worked that was utterly amazing and mind-altering. And I could not successfully repress what I saw. Once Opened, I could not close the door to the mind or put the toothpaste back in the tube. I had to live with it, and living with it was not easy.

What can be seen when the mind is open is not soon forgotten, and it takes time (and lots of it) to sort it out, often years for many people. What is seen of the mind on an LSD trip gets embedded or imprinted in our memory and stays there until we can bear to bring it to mind in its entirety. We take peeks at it as we can, for we have not created the infrastructure to support it, like: we are still operating with all the old habits we have always had. A glimpse of the mind on acid can dictate a complete revision or rewrite of our rules of engaging life and that, my friends, takes time. LSD was not only my introduction to mind training, but about all the mind training that was available to me at that time. It was too early to easily locate one of the Tibetan lamas who have real knowledge of the mind. They were not over here yet. Without a guide or teacher to point out what I was experiencing, I was out there on my own. And I had no real tools to work with. I had been plunged into experiencing the mind and I did not yet know how to swim. Of course it took years for many of us to recover from what we saw on a single acid trip. The mind is boggling! Had I had a teacher back then, I could have stabilized much more quickly. That kind of interface did not yet exist then, but it does now. There are many guides available these days who know something or a lot about how the mind works. Even I know a little something about all this, and I am still learning. So whether your mind got opened in the Sixties by LSD or you are learning to open it now with various meditation and mind-practice techniques, all the roads converge on learning about the true nature of your own mind. And it is not easy to do without guides and lots of experiential personal practice, like learning meditation.

To return to my Sixties theme, I believe it was the opening of our minds through LSD that sent many of us into mind training, whether we knew it or not at the time. And it is the results of mind training, clarifying and learning to use the mind that are responsible for all of the excellent cultural contributions that came out of the 1960s. Any questions? LSD: The Post-Doctorate I looks to me like there are a great number of you out there who took LSD and already have logged some mind-training time. Your mind is already partially open and you have been working (or struggling) with this for a long time, maybe since the Sixties. You might want to complete your mind-training education by getting some formal training in meditation or one of the other forms of mind practice. Thats what I am doing. I was half-baked from acid, but unable to figure it all out by myself. It is hard to empower yourself in these matters when you dont know what you are doing. These days it is much easier to find a guide who can help to empower you by pointing out what you still might need to know. There are answers to your questions. Even with a guide, it is still all up to you. Buddha himself could not just touch you on the forehead and enlighten you. We each have to do this for ourselves, which is what the Buddha did. So any help we can get is welcome, because we still have to do the whole thing on our own sooner or later. LSD is good at showing us that the mind is workable and that we can in fact work it. We have no choice. My mind before and after that first acid trip was never

the same again. Sure, I fell back into my old habits out of sheer exhaustion and because I could not immediately change those habits to fit what I saw were better ones from taking LSD. It takes time, a long time. When I was younger and programming astrology, I thought that programming was the most timeintensive thing in the world. Later I found that video editing was even more time intensive. Today at 70 years of age I know that mind training, changing your own mind around (or however you want to phrase it), is without any doubt the most time-intensive of them all. So dont expect change overnight. Is it worth it? You bet, and you may already have a good start.