Hi MOQers:
I recently found some interesting stuff on Gerald Heard, who I
mistakenly mentioned as Beard in yesterday's post. The "b" key is right
next to the "h" key, ooops! Anyway Heard was a pioneer in the mystical
use of LSD and was a friend of Huxley's. The two of them, as well as
Alan Watts, were all Brittish. And their pioneering work actually
occcured in the 50's. I mention this to point out that the ritual use of
hallucinogens isn't really an invention of America's hippies in 60's, as
many people assume.
Heard was wrote thirty-something books of science, history, religion,
philsophy and even fiction. He was a BBC science journalist, wrote
novels and was a mystic. He saw the new physics, Gestalt psychology,
semantics, the socialogy of knowledge, holistic theorys and the use of
hallucinogens as part of a larger cultural shift and a profound
epistemological revolution. He was especially interested in exploring
"nonconsensus reality" and the ways in which our consciousness creates
"reality maps". Gerald Heard was not much like our friend Chaz.
Huxley first ate mescaline at home, under the supervison of a
psychiatrist, in the spring of 1953. Heard ate his first dose soon
thereafter and pretty soon a lot of people getting in on it, Cary Grant,
James Colburn and Jack Nicholson were among the "artists" to take LSD.
Heard caught the interest of a Los Angels based psychiatrist named Oscar
Janiger who then founded the Albert Hoffman foundation to conduct
research on the drug. I think Hoffman, the inventor, was also a Brit.
All of this was before Tim Leary and the 60's counterculture made LSD so
infamous. In fact Heard stoppped experimenting with it in 1966.
In order to explore the religious and psychological potential of LSD,
Heard traced the use of various visionary drugs "in rites of religion,
in social procedures, in drama and in oracle systems". He saw the task
of religion as one of "rebinding" the soul to integral consciousness, or
to overcome the psychic fragmentation that results from the mind/body
split. Heard said that LSD is "a perfect psycho-physical aid to sustain
the mind at its utmost reach, and as an aid to that total unwavering
attention which permits the emergence of the highest quality of
comprehensive consciousness". I blush at the word "perfect", but
otherwise I think it expresses the idea behind LSD's purpose.
In a letter to a partner and friend, written in '66, he concludes that
the LSD experience is "only the first hint of the oncoming Psychological
Revolution, the Copernican Revolution of the Mind".
Heard writes, "The third act is due. And the writer today mst face
it...Beyond tragedy lies meta-comedy. The central figure of that play is
known in Asiatic drama, the very word play they call Lila, the weaving
dance that displays and resumes the universe."
How Pirsigian is that!?
DMB
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