Mavericks of the Mind: Conversations with Terence McKenna, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, John Lilly, Carolyn Mary Kleefeld, Laura Huxley, Robert Anton Wilson, and others… (41 page)

Coming from Aldous, that was quite a compliment. Then there were people I didn’t know, but read. Great influences were Joyce, Camus and Bertrand Russell. These were people who meant a lot to me. An incomparable writer named B.Travin added a lot to my understanding of human nature. I get more from what great minds have written about human behavior, than any psychiatric text. Sometimes I feel that I have learned more psychology from Dostoyevsky and Conrad than I have from Freud. I approach my practice that way; by interacting with people as if they were protaganists in their own dramas. That way you can’t be biased.

It was the way Proust described the Tower of Combrey. He said, if you really want to know the tower you must see it in the morning light, and in the evening light. You must see it in the winter time covered with snow. You must see it in the summer time. You must see it in the mist, and you must see it sometimes with eyes half closed. You must see it from above and from below. You must see it from the east, north, south and west. Then you’ll begin to know the Tower of Combrey.

DJB: Have you ever given any thought to what happens to human consciousness after physical death?

OSCAR: I’ve given a lot of thought to it, (laughter) but I’m afraid not much productive thought. My bias is that when the current is shut off, we somehow lose our sense of individuality. That is the only way I can put it. Shakespeare said of death, ‘that strange bourne from which no traveller doth return.’ No traveller has ever returned from this journey, so there’s no direct evidence, (laughter) except people who say they have. Well, you can decide for yourself whether they have or not. In any case, my thought is that, for myself only, that I’m simply shut down in my present state, and that somehow I -- which is now a kind of fruitless phrase -- am somehow restored to the earth, or to the matrix, or to what the Germans called the urschlime, or the fundamental substrate of all things, the fundamental primitive primordial stuff of which we are constituted. We go back to before the Big Bang I always remember the Big Bang as the biggest orgasm in history. (laughter)

JEANNE: How has your experience with psychedelic drugs influenced your life, your work and your practice?

OSCAR: In a word - profoundly. It really took me out of a state in which I saw the boundries of myself and the world around me very rigorously prescribed, to a state in which I saw that many, many things were possible. This created for me, a sense of being in a kind of flux, a constant dynamic equilibrium. I used a phrase at that time to designate how I thought of myself at any given moment. It’s a nautical term called a ‘running fix’. It means that when you report your position in a moving vessel, you are only talking about a specific time and circumstance - the here and now. The illusion of living in one room has now given rise to the ill- usion that there are a great many rooms. All you have to do is get out into the corridors, go into another room, and see what’s there. Otherwise you’ll think that the room you’re living in is all there is.

DJB: Could you tell us about your discovery of DMT?

OSCAR: Yeah! (laughter) It is a psychoactive ingredient of the halllucinogenic brew they use in the Amazon called Ayahuasca. An analysis by chemists revealed that it contained a substance called dimethyltriptamine, DMT. This was unusual because it was almost identical to a chemical found naurally in the body, and it didn’t make sense that we’d carry around with us such a powerful hallucinogen. Nevertheless, a friend of mine, Parry Bivens and I, purified some dimethyltriptamine. We had it all set up one evening. It was thought to be inactive orally by itself. To be on the safe side, we thought we’d inject it into one another the following day. So Parry said he’d see me in the morning and we’d go ahead and try it out. We had nothing to go by as it had never been used before. So when Parry left me I was in the office looking at these bottles, and I got this devilish thought that I should take a shot of this stuff. But I had no idea of how much to take.

So I said, like Hofmann, I’ll be conservative and take a cc. I backed myself up to the wall until I could go no further so (laughter) I had to inject myself in the rear. And from then on -- Man, I was in a strange place, the strangest. I was in a world that was like being inside of a pinball machine. The only thing like it, oddly enough, was in a movie called Zardoz, where a man is trapped inside of a crystal. It was angular, electronic, filled with all kinds of strange over-beats and electronic circuits, flashes and movements. It looked like an ultra souped-up disco, where lights are coming from every direction. Just extra- ordinary. Then I’d go unconscious, the observer was knocked out.

Then the observer would come back intermittently, then go back out. I had a sense of terror because each time I blacked out it was like dying. I went through this dance of the molecules and electrons inside of my head and I, for all the world, felt like a television set looks when on between pictures. Finally I lay on the floor, time seemed endless. Then it lightened up and I looked at my watch. It had been 45 minutes. I’d thought I had been in that place for 200 years. I think what I was looking at was the archetonics of the brain itself. We learned later that that was an enormous a dose. Just smoking a fraction of this would give you a profound effect. So in that dose range I think I just busted every- thing up. (laughter) Parry came back the next day, and he said, "Well, let’s try some." I said, "I got to the North Pole ahead of you."

DJB: That took a lot of courage.

OSCAR: Well, it was fool-hardiness.

DJB: I hear you’ve been doing some interesting work with dolphins and Olympic swimmers. Perhaps you could tell us a little about this project.

OSCAR: Albert Stevens, Matt Biondi and I, got the idea several years ago that we might find an innovative way of approaching wild dolphins, by using Olympic swimmers - the best in the world. It is difficult to study wild dolphins because they are free-ranging and peripetetic. We went to where the dolphins were reported to be, fifty miles off the coast of Grand Bahamma Island. We waited. When they came we jumped in with them, and did sa great deal of underwater filming. We studied the film to try to find out how the dolphins behave, and we’re still in the process of doing that now. We did it for three years and developed a good working relationship with these dolphins whom we were now able to identify. Dolphins are strange and beguiling creatures. Their language seems totally incomprehensible, as we know our own language to be nothing like it whatsoever. It appears to be a different order of communication. What stories the dolphins could bring back from their alien world of water if we could only communicate with them.

DJB: The final question. Could you tell us about the Albert Hofmann Foundation and any other current projects that you’re working on?

OSCAR: Well, I co-founded the Albert Hofmann Foundation about three years ago. I was involved in LSD research from 1954 to 1962. During that time I accumulated a large store of books, art-work, papers, correspondence, tape-recordings, news-clippings, research reports and memorabilia which probably represented a fair sample of what went on in the psychedelic history of Los Angeles and elsewhere. I was aware that there is a great deal of this kind of information that is scattered and isolated and in dager of being lost or destroyed. Collected and organized this would provide an extremely valuable resource for future research and historians.

I was approached by several people who were committed to preserving these unique records. We formed a non-profit organization that we felt was fitting to be named in honour of the man who discovered LSD and psilocybin - Albert Hofmann. He was most gracious in his acceptance and pledged his whole-hearted support. It is based in Los Angeles and functions soley as a library, archive and information center at this time. We have collected a great deal of relevant material from the poineers of psychedelic research; eg. Laura Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, Stan Grof, Humphrey Osmond and many others. I got back an enthusiastic response from most of the leaders of this movement.

The foundation provides the only open forum for the legitimate discussion of these issues. It offers a place where people can discuss ideas about their own experiences under these various agents. I was surprised to learn how many people out there are closet psychedelic graduates. I’ve talked to people who I thought that never in a million years would understand what I was talking about. "Oh my, It was a wonderful experience!" said a sixty-five year old professor of Medieval French, and I couldn’t believe that she had said that. There’s plenty of them out there, so we’re bringing them together and many of them have become members in our organization. Other projects? I’ve been working in several non-profit organizations that have some concern for the ecological welfare of the Earth.

One is called, "Eyes on Earth", and another is called, "Earth Anthem". Eyes on Earth involves a scientific visualization of the Earth and it’s resources. It is the only true cloud-free picture of the Earth, projected electronically onto a huge globe. It was painstakingly assembled by the photographs of the Earth without clouds taken by satellite and it depicts how different resources are dwindling and being depleted. Earth Anthem is a contest for people throughout the world, to find an anthem that represents the earth. This project will culminate in a program designed to celebrate the finalists of this contest. We want to find a song that is representative of the earth, one that we could sing if the Martians come. (laughter) In addition, my new book  -
A Different Kind of Healing
- is in publication by Putnam and is to be released shortly. So that’s what I’m up to, and I keep moving. I think Einstein said it, "Keep moving!"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From here to Alternity and Beyond

with John C. Lilly

How does one briefly describe a man as complex as John Lilly? Whole books barely provide an overview of this man's extraordinary existence, amazing accomplishments, and contributions to the world. His list of scientific achievements covers a full page in
Who's Who
in America. John C. Lilly, M.D. is perhaps best known as the man behind the fictional scientists dramatized in the films
Altered states
and
The Day of the Dolphin
. He pioneered the original neuroscientific work In electrical brain stimulation, mapping out the pleasure and pain pathways in the brain. He frontiered work in inter-species communication research with dolphins and whales. He invented the isolation tank and did significant research in the area of sensory deprivation.

Educated at CalTech, Dartmouth Medical School, and the University of Pennsylvania, he did a large part of his scientific research at the National Institute of Mental Health and built his own dolphin-communication research lab in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. After experimenting with LSD in the sensory deprivation flotation tank, he left the academic world in pursuit of ever higher states of consciousness. From the Esalen Institute to Chile to ketamine-induced extraterrestrial contacts in other realities, this man's life is more far-out than any science fiction. Always following the scientific tradition that carved his name into history, John Lilly systematically and courageously explored the states of consciousness produced by LSD and ketamine while in the isolation tank. His autobiographies
The Center of the Cyclone
,
The Dyadic Cyclone
(with Toni Lilly), and
The Scientist
, provide mind-boggling overviews of his amazing adventure of a life. His philosophy on how to reprogram one's own brain is best summarized in
Programming and Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer
, and
Simulations of God
.

Rebecca McClen and I interviewed John at his house in Malibu on the night of February 16, 1991. It was a magically enchanting evening. John was like a Zen master, with sparkling extraterrestrial eyes, in top form, more brilliant than ever at 76, laughing, creating and bursting realities like soap bubbles. John is very direct and ruthlessly compassionate, more knowledgeable than a library of encyclopedias yet as innocent and curious as a small child. The interview lasted over four hours. John spoke enthusiastically to us about how his early scientific research influenced his latter explorations in consciousness, from dolphins to extraterrestrials. He spoke to us about the distinction between insanity and outsanity, and about ECCO-- the Earth Coincidence Control Office. We discussed and shared our ketamine experiences together. He discussed his ideas about how ketamine makes the brain sensitive to micro-waves, so that it can directly pick up television and radio signals. From electrical brain stimulation to interspecies communication to sensory deprivation to psychedelic exploration, John Lilly is a pure delight to be around

DJB