Mavericks of the Mind: Conversations with Terence McKenna, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, John Lilly, Carolyn Mary Kleefeld, Laura Huxley, Robert Anton Wilson, and others…

by Brown, David Jay

  Nina: As a non-technocratically inclined person, I have to admit that I love some of the things that I see on television. There’s a series on right now called How the West Was Lost, and it shows what the white man civilization did to the Native Americans who lived their lives in harmony with nature, without despoiling nature. We really could have learned a lot from them

  if we hadn’t almost demolished them with our civilization, our technology, our weapons, and our germs.

  Timothy: Nina, why do you use the word ‘our’? You’ve never done this before. You and your people came from Austria. All this was happening while you were over there, and you’re using that predatory pronoun again.

  David: I think that Nina is speaking for the species.

  Nina: It’s true, because I’ve never thought of myself as German, American, Jewish, Christian, or anything.

  David: Or even as Nina Graboi!

  John: There’s a native society which I want to call to attention to, and that’s the cetacean nation. It takes up seventy one percent of the planet, and that’s the oceans. We know very little about the cetacean nation, and they have very little technology that we know of—but they sure probably have a lot of philosophy and a lot of history that we should learn. They are very careful in their treatment of us, and they probably have high ethics and high morals in regard to the human race, even though the human race does not in regard to them. Their example is not being followed particularly. Well, more and more people are starting to follow it, but the whaling industry in particular is not following it. So I’d say that we should explore this native population on the planet, and find out what it is to be without technology and to have 25 million years of history and philosophy to work with.

  Timothy: John, you’ve tried to use computers to communicate with dolphins haven’t you? How’d that work out?

  John: It wasn’t worthwhile. I prefer the direct communication, such as Margaret Howe had with Peter Dolphin in St. Thomas—in which Peter Dolphin would mimic the human language that Margaret would give to him. Within three months he learned a lot of words, and he began to learn the meaning of those words. I think if we could produce something of this sort with natural communication, without sophisticated technology, then we could break through the barrier.

  Rebecca: There’s a concept going around known as “sustainable development,” and I’m sure a lot of you have heard of it. Isn’t one of the things that native societies were good at is just taking what they needed and no more, and replacing the resources that they used? Most of the poorer nations on the Earth today are actually on the verge of finishing off their natural resources. We’ve just been in a huge war over oil, and that’s going to be gone in about fifty years, according to some of the projections. Even electronic technologies need a power source, so don’t we perhaps have something to learn from native societies who put back what they take? Does anybody have something to say?

  Nina: I would like to put in a word for a truly reusable resource, which is the growing of hemp. Hemp does not abuse the soil that it’s grown in and hemp can give us a very large percentage of the things we need for survival. Clothes, paper, and gasoline can be made out of it. There’s a book called The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer, where he describes all of the ways that hemp could save the economy of the world—for Christ’s sake! It really could. So, I just wanted to put in the word that we still, at this late date, could really save the Earth if we put some of our silly prejudices aside and looked at reality as it is.

  David: John, do you think that technology is making us dependent on it, or, in fact, addicted to it, so that we can’t function without it? Or, do you think that technology, in general, is making us more independent and creative?

  John: Let’s take the telephone, the radio, the television, and other communication devices. They’ve speeded up communication but they have not given more depth of communication. That’s in each mind and each brain. So, I suggest what we do is isolate people in the isolation tank, keep them away from technology (other than the isolation tank) and then let them become creative that way. Now somebody once asked, “Well, don’t you get addicted to the isolation tank?” I said, “Try it and see!” Then somebody asked, “If you take one dose of Ketamine isn’t that enough?” I said, “Well, is your first sex act enough?” Technology is married to us whether we like it or not. If we want to find out what it’s like to be without it, go out camping someplace.

  David: So you’re saying, basically, that what it does is speed up communication, but it doesn’t actually improve the quality of communication. How do you feel about that Carolyn?

  Carolyn: Well, again, you’re back to the dinosaur with me, because I am totally not involved with learning about myself through electronic technologies. I don’t think that I have the particular genetics for that kind of procedure. It’s just not me. As far as I’m concerned, I gain knowledge about myself through other mediums, which become a mirror of where my consciousness is, and of what’s going on around me. I think that we’re on an intergalactic planet, evolving with energies from everywhere, and everything is interacting.

  Those people that are involved with a particular kind of technology are part of this evolutionary force. They’re supposed to be doing what they’re doing. We need them there. They’re teaching us things, each in their own way. Everything is very individual. There will probably always be a need for a diversity in how people use technology, because we need diversity and that’s what is really going to bring our species forward. Therefore, the diversity is necessary, and with this diversity the knowledge that we need in every aspect of life will grow with technology. So we’ll end up with orthomolecular technology. We’ll have a live technology that won’t be leaving things out, so that some of us can’t relate to it. It will grow, like we grow—each in its own way, and all of it important.

  David: Oz, when you look back over the turbulent history of psychedelics, and our involvement with them, what do you think we should have done differently and why?

  Oscar: I hoped you weren’t going to ask me that. I don’t know. I think that there was no precedent for that, and we had no way to know what the right way to proceed was. We can only see in hindsight, of course, but that doesn’t really tell us anything does it? We had no precedent, so it just had to develop as it did. There was nothing in our past history to indicate how to use these things or what path we had to follow. Sure, we were told that there were native tribes who used these things, and we could follow their directions. Then we found The Tibetan Book of the Dead and we used that as a model. But, in looking back, I don’t think that we could have really foreseen any other way. It bled out of the laboratories, it hit the streets, and it was all over the place. Who could have foreseen that, for example? The experience was so strong that we had no idea that kids would simply take it up. It seemed highly unusual that they would. When it happened it was a force that could hardly be stopped at that time.

  Rebecca: Would you have done anything differently, if you could do it again?

  Oscar: Personally, under the circumstances, in hindsight, I might have—but then, no. I did what I thought I could do and had to follow the river, so to speak. That’s what I did, but I can’t see that there’s that much we could have done differently. But now we have an opportunity to do it differently. I’m told that the kids are using it again, and all right, let’s see if something else will evolve from that. Maybe there will be a different way of dealing with it. The ideal settings, of course, we all discuss. John and I, and the rest have talked about places where people can go to have a kind of revelatory experience, like they did at the Eleusinian Mysteries and all. But these were vague and idealistic propositions, and how to deal with it, unfortunately, is something that time will work through and we’ll get a better understanding of it. I’m sorry to have to be so abrupt with this but that’s all I can say.

  Laura: Don’t you also think that the people that used psychedelics in the past were in a class society, and th
erefore only the priests could use it. We are a democracy, so we have to go as we wish on our own discipline, not- discipline, or whatever. It’s so different. There are almost six and a half billion people now, and then there were a few hundred, or a few thousands.

  Oscar: Sure, if you looked at native societies, you were told that they take it once in a while, whether someone needs it or not that is. And we knew about the Huichol Indians.

  John: May I talk about that?

  Oscar: Sure, please do John.

  John: I have a son who is fifty-seven years old now, and he spent the last twenty-five years with the Huichol Indians—so I think that we have an authority here. They give children of age four their first peyote. Then at age fourteen they give them a full dose and they ask them what they’ve seen. If they’ve seen the proper things then they’re made into shamans. In this society this has gone on for 2,000 years, being uninfluenced by the Spaniards or anybody else. They’re in the very high sierras of Mexico, and my son is helping to keep highways out of the place, although he doesn’t know how much longer he’s going to be able to do that. It’s an uncontaminated society that’s been on psychedelics, peyote, for 2,000 years. They make yarn paintings and they portray their visions.

  My son has taken movies of them during their peyote trips, and has asked them to tell what it was about, and to make a yarn painting out of it. And he animates the yarn paintings, so that you can get some sort of a transfer from the inner vision to the outer representation in the motion pictures. He’s trying to protect this society, and it’s very difficult to do because there are many people who want to go in there and change it, including the Federalis of Mexico. He’s trying to record all of this the best that he can. He has notes that are about two feet thick, and he has many movies. He said that if I sat down with him and looked at all these movies it would take me eight hours a day for two weeks to see them all. Now this kind of research is very rich and can give some perspective on how a society organizes itself with peyote as its basic component.

  Nina: I’d like to say something about that question of whether we would have done anything differently now if we had to do it again with psychedelics. For about a quarter of a century I’ve been struggling with the question of whether the actions of certain people who popularized LSD, were beneficial or the opposite to the human race. I used to think that LSD had brought us a quantum leap forward in our evolution because now, suddenly, there were more people on Earth who had seen a reality other than the one that we normally see with our five senses. This mass of people has now had this experience, which used to only be available to saints, and mad people probably. I sometimes think that this mass of people is what’s going to change the world, and that this is the evolutionary leap forward that we’ve been hoping for. However, part of the time, I also do think that, oh, it fucked us up.

  Timothy: Who is this ‘us’ you’re talking about? We’re a billion human beings.

  David: There’s that ‘predatory pronoun’ again. Timothy, I’m really curious about your opinion on this. When you look back over the turbulent history of psychedelics and our involvement with it, is there anything that you think we as a culture, or you personally, would have done differently and why?

  Timothy: I would say that a third of the time that I opened my mouth I was just issuing platitudes, a third of the time I was absolutely, madly inaccurate, and a third of the time I was hitting home runs. In baseball that’s thirty-three percent batting average. I feel it is ridiculous to ask ourselves that question, personally, because of what has happened in America in the last five decades—radio, television, tranquilizer drugs, biochemistry, and jet propulsion. These waves were inevitable. Naturally, now, because of jet propulsion, the Beatles, and the electronic technologies, the world knows about these vegetables that have been used for thousands of years by shamans, elegant English men, Hashishins in Paris, and so forth.

  I want to say that it would have happened without any of us on this panel, but this is a moment where I want to get very sentimental. The three people on the other side of this panel were involved in the creation of chaos using psychedelics when I was a straight kid drinking martinis. John was doing LSD research with dolphins and for the Navy. Oscar, of course, was doing LSD research in Hollywood. And the incredible gifts that Alduos Huxley made to our culture with your (to Laura) cooperation and help. So, it’s interesting that this movement, which was going to happen anyway, had such elegant and such fine people as you.

  Laura: You think it would have happened anyway? You think anything would have happened without what you or what Alduos did? You had such different methods, you and Alduos, but you seem to think it was inevitable, that the development of LSD was inevitable. So you had no choice?

  Timothy: Listen, for over fifty billion years DNA has been working, making all these different vegetables and growing the human brain—which has 100 billion neurons, each of which can interact with ten thousand other neurons. And this brain has all these receptor sights for these specific little vegetables, and I think that’s excellent. The fact that the psychedelic molecules operate in the brain, that’s inevitable. It became known worldwide because of jet propulsion, television, and so forth. But yes, I have a sense of genetic destiny here.

  David: What kind of knowledge are you privy to, Timothy, that makes you know that these things were inevitable? You’re assuming a kind of teleological design to the universe, which is not exactly established.

  Timothy: Why would they give us a brain, with a hundred billion neurons, if they didn’t want us to fucking use it?!

  David: Timothy who is this ‘they’ that you’re referring to? It’s the predatory pronoun!

  Timothy: We’re children. We have this enormous brain, and we don’t even know how to use it, because we’re still children! Why do we have a hundred billion neurons?

  David: Well, who gave it to us? You just said “they” gave it to us. You said, “Why would they give us a brain, with a hundred billion neurons...”

  Timothy: I didn’t say “they.” You’re saying “they.”

  David: You just said it, Timothy.

  Nina: You said it.

  Timothy: Well, all right then—I’m fucked again! (laughs) Wrong again! What’s the score now?

  John: The DNA control officer did this.

  David: Did you want to say something Carolyn?

  Carolyn: I think that it’s time that we started thinking about so-called ‘drugs’, entheogens, not on a moral level, but on a biological level. I think, hopefully, that that’s the point in time that we are in. We will understand entheogens as part of the bounty that this Earth has given us. Through the information that we now can share better, through the electronics and so forth, that we will be able to put it in a classification of biology and understand what it’s all about, rather than living in prejudice and fear, and being exploited through intimidation.

  Laura: Carolyn, what is the difference? I don’t see any difference between biology and morality.

  Carolyn: What I meant was we have been the victims, or we don’t have to be, but we haven’t been given enough information about these entheogens, these ingredients of the Earth. We haven’t been given the right information. Therefore, we haven’t been able to use them properly, and therefore it becomes a moral issue, because we’ve been told there’s something wrong with using them. That’s why it’s moral.

  Laura: Oh, oh—it’s moral in that way. The way that you use it—is that it?

  Carolyn: I mean, it’s completely illegal.

  John: Biology changed morality.

  Laura: Okay, well then, there you are. It’s moral in the sense that we have the choice to use this thing in one way or the other.

  Carolyn: I mean we were judged in the past, or people were judged. I remember in high school people thought it was a big deal if some students smoked grass. At Beverly High it was a big deal. They were the bad guys or whatever. And it’s illegal, a lot of the things that we’re talking about.
>
  Laura: The legality is a different story.

  Carolyn: Then it’s a moral issue in that regard, and it shouldn’t be a moral issue. It should be a biological issue, so that we understand what it’s about. That’s really what the Hofmann Foundation is about, so that we have an archive, a library, where all this information can be available to people. We need a society that makes this information available, so that there isn’t this ignorance, bigotry, and fear.