Thanks to those
capital letters I thought it was a book mainly about shamanism, which
fascinates me. It turned out to be primarily about hallucinogenic drugs,
which don’t.
It recounts the
psychedelic drug-taking adventures of writer
Daniel Pinchbeck as
he strives to reach new levels of awareness.
At the beginning of
his quest he “did not believe in the existence of a ‘spirit world’”.
However, after a series of mind-altering experiences – which he describes as
“the classic spiritual awakening” – he awoke to - gulp – a gloriously
fashionable view of our world:
Humanity is staring
through the keyhole, the ozone hole, onto an increasingly degraded planet
and its own short-sightedness. Addicted to oil as if it were crack, we are
chopping down the world’s tropical forests at an astounding rate….Against
the floods, genetic pollution, bacterial onslaughts, radioactive infernos
unleashed by human stupidity or aggrieved nature, our technologies will pop
like toy guns. Watch the fun as the stock markets continue to seek profit,
down to the last seconds of recorded history, betting on the margin-calls of
disaster relief and reinsurance agencies. What is “profit” anyway?
And so on.
It’s enough to keep
anyone off drugs for life.
I went to university
in the late-1960s, but mostly avoided the drug scene. I can even sympathise
with ex–President Bill Clinton. On the half-dozen occasions when, at a
student party, I nervously found myself with a joint in my mouth, I too
almost didn’t inhale, terrified that the moment I did a thousand drug squad
officers would invade the room. Or a thousand pink elephants would invade my
brain. Neither happened, of course, but nor did I get many thrills.
And then, in 1977,
while resident in Japan, I spent the Christmas holidays in Bali, Indonesia,
with a group of friends. One of them, Dave, the son of a policeman, combined
bitterness, an anti-authoritarian streak and self-destructive tendencies in
about equal proportion. Unfortunately, I didn’t recognise this at the time.
“Let’s take some magic
mushrooms and then go to Kuta Beach and watch the sunset,” Dave said to me
on New Year’s Eve.
I imagined that the
mushrooms made the colours a little brighter, or something. It sounded cool.
Bali was a place for exotic experiences. Obediently I followed, to a dirty,
back-alley restaurant, where we ordered two large bowls of the mushroom
soup. I don’t remember the taste. I do distinctly recall that when we went
to pay, after the meal, the woman in charge showed us menus with prices much
higher than when we had ordered.
And then, on the
stroll back to our dingy, dollar-a-night sleeping quarters, came one of the
only pleasurable moments of the experience. We were passing through a
coconut plantation, and suddenly I realised that all the trees were a
flaming orange. And the sky was a brilliant purple. And I wasn’t walking. I
was floating, filled with a beautiful sensation of peace.
It was back at our
quarters that things went bad. I began feeling nauseous. I sat on the
outdoor veranda of my room and tried breathing deeply. Meanwhile, Dave had
retreated inside, and I could hear him screaming profanities.
My vision became
skewed. Everything was rippled, like looking at a reflection in a lake and
then throwing in a stone.
The middle-aged
Indonesian owner of our lodge walked past. “Do you think you could call a
doctor?” I asked him. “I’ve taken some mushrooms and I’m feeling a little
bad.”
He roared with
laughter and walked on.
Some young Australians
– in Bali
for drugs, and resident at our lodge – overheard. They too started laughing,
and began to tease me.
“Puke,” they shouted.
“Come on, let’s see you puke.”
I was scared. I was
now seeing snakes, writhing out of flowers and bushes and even out of
someone’s head. There were bright flashes. Colours kept changing.
An attractive young
Dutch woman wearing a batik sarong accompanied the Australians. She
approached.
“Did you take the
omelette or the soup?” she asked.
“The soup.”
“That’s the worst. The
large portion or half?”
“Large.”
“Too bad. It’s going
to last four or five hours. You just have to go with it. Do you understand?
Don’t think bad thoughts. Don’t let bad things upset you. Just relax and go
with it. Do you understand?”
I thought I did. She
left, and fortuitously at that moment a couple of my friends arrived,
returning to the lodge from the beach. Hearing what had happened, one went
to look after Dave – still screaming – and the other took me to his room.
I don’t remember much
more. I welcomed in 1978 lying on my friend’s bed, in the midst of a flow of
shapes, images and colours, trying not to let the paranoia take root,
waiting for it all to pass. Only right near the end did I once more
experience that beautiful initial sensation, as I floated through a
kaleidoscope of swirling colour, enveloped in an overwhelming glow of peace.
“I don’t want it to end,” I actually recall saying.
Hallucinogenic drugs –
like, say, Zen Buddhist meditation – can clearly open doors in the mind to
amazing new levels of consciousness. And I have no doubt that, by using the
drugs, certain people can open themselves to outside spiritual forces.
Not for me, though. At
the time I took the mushrooms I was living in Japan, and was an intense
spiritual seeker, deeply involved in Zen Buddhism (which I have written
about here). The
mushrooms didn’t help me one bit.
It was another 15
years before I experienced my spiritual awakening. Like Daniel Pinchbeck,
author of “Breaking Open the Head”, I was raised in an anti-religious
household, with one Jewish parent. But in 1993, at the age of 44, now living
in Australia,
I became a Christian.
At the time it felt a
fairly natural progression in my life. But gradually, as I started to absorb
the mind-altering message of Jesus, the process enhanced by the active
working in me of God’s holy spirit, I realised I had embarked on a radical
new journey.
It’s not always easy.
No quick hallucinogenic fixes are available. It’s a minute-by-minute
commitment, continuing for a lifetime. But it is a journey that promises
powerful new insights into our world and a spiritual enlightenment that, I
suggest, no drug could ever deliver.
February 25th, 2003
