The Private Sea
William Braden
12. The Jordan and the Ganges
Nature does not count, said Bergson. Neither does it measure.
The French philosopher, who died in 1941, has been harshly judged
for his anti-intellectualism and for the essential role he assigned
to intuition in man's perception of ultimate reality. But his
views on the limitations of the intellect have acquired a new
significance today in light of the contemporary developments we
have discussed in this book, and they may help illuminate an important
aspect of drug cultism and related movements. In Bergson, indeed,
those movements may yet discover their metaphysician.
In criticizing intellect, and therefore science as well, Bergson
asserted that intellect has its eyes turned always to the rear.
By this he meant that the rational mind is concerned primarily
with prediction based on past experience, or in other words with
the anticipation that cause-and-effect events will repeat themselves
in the future. And intellect favors this kind of perception because
intellect is interested only in action, or in using things by
acting upon them (I-It). Lecomte du Nouy made the same point,
no doubt taking it from Bergson, when he commented, "The
aim of science is to foresee, and not, as has often been said,
to understand." Of course it does foresee. It is highly
successful as far as its own limited goals are concerned, and
the world's work could not be done without it. But it does not
understand, and philosophers delude themselves, said Bergson,
"when they import into the domain of speculation a method
of thinking made for action." Cause-and-effect prediction
is valid enough in one sense, but the intellect in another sense
has actually created cause and effect. It has done so by artificially
dividing and, as it were, freezing in time a reality which in
fact consists of a dynamic and indivisible Whole. The intellect
cannot comprehend movement, and it cannot comprehend the Whole.
In short, it cannot comprehend life.
Dividing? Freezing? What did Bergson mean?
In the first instance, to borrow an example which Bergson used
himself, suppose for a moment that reality consisted of a curved
line. Science imagines it can grasp the ultimate truth about life
by chopping the Whole into pieces—by reducing reality to ever
smaller units of matter and energy. Science therefore would divide
the curved line into individual points or segments, and it would
then try to explain the Whole in terms of its parts. But each
of the individual segments would, in itself, be almost a straight
line—and the smaller the segment, the greater the illusion of
straightness. Thus, by restricting its vision, science quite likely
would propose that reality consists of a straight line, or rather
a series of straight lines. Following the same sort of logic,
we can imagine science announcing the discovery that Wordsworth's
ode is composed of twenty-six basic particles (the letters of
the alphabet), and while this observation is perfectly correct,
it hardly captures the meaning and significance of the poem as
a Whole.
As for movement, Bergson likened the intellect to a motion picture
camera. The intellect simulates movement by taking a series of
snapshots, each one of which is frozen in time for purpose of
analysis. Intellect studies these snapshots and thinks that in
doing so it is studying true motion. But clearly it is not. This
Bergson referred to as the cinematographical fallacy, which
has its basis in "the absurd proposition that movement is
made of immobilities." And thus Bergson explained the paradoxes
of the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno, including the paradox of
the arrow fired from a point A to a point B. According to Zeno,
the flying arrow must successively occupy a series of lesser points
between A and B. and it must obviously be at rest at each such
point, at least for a moment; therefore it is motionless during
the entire course of its passage. Or again, the arrow in its flight
must first cover half the distance from A to B. But before it
can do that, it must first cover half the distance from A to the
midpoint. And half of that distance. And half of that distance.
And so on, until at last we see that it is impossible for the
arrow to get started at all. But we know that the arrow does travel
from A to B. so there must be something wrong with Zeno's argument,
and Bergson resolved the problem by suggesting that the flight
is in fact "an indivisible movement." Once the flight
is over, you can count as many imaginary points as you like along
its trajectory. The fact remains that the flight itself was accomplished
"in one stroke," from A to B. although a certain amount
of time was required for this flight. Thus Bergson accused the
intellect of neglecting time, or duration, as an actual factor
in the mosaic of reality. Science deals with points of time, he
said, but it does not deal with time itself or with motion as
such.
On the other hand, said Bergson, instinct directly installs itself
within movement and reality. It refuses to recognize those points
of time and those snapshots of life which are nothing more than
"arrests of our attention." Instinct thereby provides
us with a form of knowledge which is "practically useless,
except to increase pure understanding of reality."
Bergson did not advocate that we rely solely on instinct. Nor
did he deny the necessary function of the intellect. But he did
reject an utter reliance on intellect alone or instinct alone.
The one is necessary for survival, the other for understanding.
"There are things that intelligence alone is able to seek,
but which, by itself, it will never find. These things instinct
alone could find; but it will never seek them." But intuition
can both seek and find them. Intuition for Bergson was a combination
of instinct and intelligence—it was instinct guided by intelligence—and
the same happy marriage has been proposed by many others, including
Gibran. Thus instinct is the wind which fills the sails of our
little ship, as it skims over the waves of this earthly existence.
And intellect is the rudder with which we steer the ship. Similarly,
life is complicated only when we consider its parts rather than
the Whole, and its apparent complexity increases in proportion
with the number of parts which we synthetically ascribe to that
Whole. And this perhaps is the basis of the Hindu teaching: "He
who knows OM knows all." (He who knows the monistic One knows
all.) If the consciousness that slumbers in instinct should awake,
said Bergson, "it would give up to us the most intimate secrets
of life." It would do so by revealing to us the Whole, philosophy
being nothing less than man's attempt to dissolve once more into
that Whole from which he has estranged himself—that Whole where
there are no measurements and no laws (only science has laws,
not nature), where "there is nothing left but the reality
that flows, together with the knowledge ever renewed that it impresses
on us of its present state."
That, in brief, was Bergson's case against a slavish reliance
on the rational intellect, and it would seem that his point of
view today is reflected to a considerable extent in the assertions
of radical theology, psychology, and pharmacology. Maslow, for
example, has expressed his criticism of "the need-motivated
kind of perception, which shapes things . . . in the manner
of a butcher chopping apart a carcass." We must give up,
he said, "our 3,000-year-old habit of dichotomizing, splitting
and separating in the style of Aristotelian logic.... Difficult
though it may be, we must learn to think holistically rather than
atomistically." In the same sense, in the context of Zen,
Suzuki stated that the central fact of life "cannot be brought
to the dissecting table of the intellect," and he said further:
"To stop the flow of life and to look into it is not the
business of Zen." Taking a metaphor from chess, Dr. Sidney
Cohen described LSD perception as a kind of knight's-move thinking
which leaps over logical premises and formal syllogisms. Huxley
called for a recognition of the non-verbal humanities, or "the
arts of being directly aware of the given facts of our existence."
There is New Theology's emphasis upon "presentness"
and here-now, derived especially from Bonhoeffer, Bultmann, and
Buber. We could give many more examples, but perhaps we have made
our point—that the psychic pendulum may be swinging again from
the rational and the conscious to the intuitive and the unconscious,
for better or for worse, resulting in a phenomenon which Maslow
has termed "the current call back to raw experience as prior
to any concepts or abstractions."
Our acceptance of the intellect's perceptions has always been
tempered, to some degree at least, with doubt and uncertainty.
Consider a nightmare. What does it represent, if not a temporary
suspension of the natural order we normally perceive? And what
does it express, if not a concealed fear that cause and effect
are not wholly to be trusted or depended upon—that they may
break down at any moment in waking life, leaving us naked and
defenseless? We sense perhaps that the ordered universe with its
immutable laws is not real at all but our own invention, and there
is no guarantee that those laws tomorrow may not be rescinded.
In the nightmare they are rescinded, revealing to us our subliminal
anxiety.
But anxiety can turn to joy—and does so in the mystical, peak,
and psychedelic experiences. We are suggesting, then, that there
is a common factor in all of these meta-experiences. The common
factor is an apparent suspension of cause and effect—and this
in turn is the result of a temporary paralysis of the intellect,
as Bergson defined the intellect. Simply that and nothing more—or
that and nothing less. We are suggesting also, as indicated earlier,
that the intellect is the basis for the myth of the Demiurge,
that imperfect deity who is the cause of the fall from pure Being,
the creation of matter, our phenomenal existence, and the Net
of Illusion. And such an interpretation might well enable us to
accommodate within the radical Western framework many fundamental
doctrines of Eastern metaphysics. After all, it is possible to
demythologize the East as well as the West, and such an effort
now could lead at last to that reconciliation which has long been
predicted.
In the East, as also in Plato's philosophy, the Net of Illusion
has commonly been blamed on the body, or more specifically the
senses, with the assertion that the world perceived by the senses
is not real. The Eastern viewpoint has therefore appeared to be
world-denying, and as such it has found small favor in the West,
where men for the most part have obeyed an impulse to affirm the
world, sorry as it may seem. But there is an alternative theory,
and the contemporary meta-experience might seem to confirm it.
It is not the body which is at fault, but only a part of
the body: namely, the noetic brain, or that prefrontal bulge,
pronounced in man, which accounts for the rational process and
the rational way of viewing the world.
Thus the world itself is real enough; it is only our way of looking
at the world which is not real. It is our mode of perception that
leads us astray, and it is not the senses which deceive us but
rather the mind or intellect which receives and interprets the
sensory input. That evolutionary gift, the cerebral cortex, has
enabled us so far to survive and to prosper, but it also has distorted
our vision of ultimate reality. It directs our vision in such
a way that we can see the world now only in a symbolic fashion,
in terms of use and action. We know what happens, for example,
when a man puts on a pair of those inverting spectacles which
cause all images to appear upside down; after a time the man will
adjust to the situation, and the images will appear to him right
side up again. In the same way, perhaps, there is something which
determines that we shall always see things in a certain manner:
a kind of internal processing center for the raw data from the
senses. No doubt this is for our own good, just as the rigid rules
and the white lies of the parent are no doubt intended for the
welfare of the child. But it is nevertheless restrictive, and
it is based in a sense on a form of deceit.
It might be argued, then, that Eastern wisdom conceals an esoteric
teaching along the lines of this same proposition. The East, it
may be, has also meant "as if." The Net of Illusion
does not refer to the world at all; it refers to our perception
of the world. By the same token, OM is not an immaterial abstraction
which transcends the world of matter and earthly existence; it
is the world we live in but do not see: it is here-now, I-Thou,
and "the reality that flows." Nirvana therefore does
not imply a release from the body which leaves the world behind;
it implies a mental or spiritual awakening which allows us to
look at the world as it actually is. It does not deny the world.
It affirms the world but rejects all partial views of it. It rejects
the intellect, and it rejects the supposed order which intellect
imagines it perceives in cause-and-effect relationships. As Spinoza
suggested, this order perhaps is self-realizing. It is what we
look for, what we are used to, and what we expect. If the world
tomorrow should fall into disorder, we should soon perceive this
too as perfect order.
In Mahayana Buddhism, the East itself has appeared to move toward
a similar interpretation—from a denial of the world to a more
perfect affirmation of the world—and this movement, as we have
seen, comes to full expression in the teachings of Japanese Zen
Buddhism. The goal of Zen is satori. And satori
is not a denial of the world, nor is it a form of release from
the world. It is, said Suzuki, the acquiring of a new viewpoint.
It is a new way of looking at things, and it is designed specifically
to overcome the intellect's way of looking at things. It is designed
to destroy the intellect. As Suzuki put it: "Satori
may be defined as intuitive looking-into, in contradiction to
intellectual and logical understanding." It is not interested
in concepts, abstractions, and a limited perception; "it
does not care so much for the elaboration of particulars as for
a comprehensive grasp of the whole, and this intuitively."
It is interested in the here and now, and it accepts the world.
"What was up in the heavens, Zen has brought down to earth."
It too proclaims the reality that flows. Thus the Zen master denies
that reality is this, that, or the other thing; and when he is
asked what is left, he slaps his pupil and declares, "You
fool, what is this?" Satori, then, is a new kind of
perception; but it is nevertheless a perception of this world.
"It is not that something different is seen, but that one
sees differently."
All this would seem to indicate that the radical West and the
demythologized East are not so far apart concerning the Net of
Illusion, and the worldly Westerner need not hesitate for this
reason to join that so-called leap to the East. From Dietrich
Bonhoeffer to James Bond, the contemporary emphasis upon this
world and this time is wholly compatible with the esoteric interpretation
of Eastern thought. In so far as they confirm the reality of this
world, the new insights into the nature of meta-experiences challenge
the orthodox Hindu as much as they do the orthodox Baptist, and
we may be experiencing today not so much a leap to the East as
the emergence at last of a possible East-West synthesis: a historic
blending, as it were, of the waters of the Jordan and the Ganges.
If the East and West should agree that the world is real, however,
where would this leave the question of immortality? And what of
reincarnation?
Reincarnation has been represented as a cycle of death and rebirth,
while nirvana has been represented as a release from this cycle—and
a release thereby from the world. After a final death, according
to the popular Western view, one merges with the Absolute and
thus achieves immortality in a state of pure Being somewhere beyond
the pitiful world of appearances and phenomena. We have said,
however, that the world beyond the world of appearances is this
world seen in a different way. We have said that nirvana is realized
in this world by living men, not in some other world by dead men.
Nirvana is the pure experience of the present moment in this
world here and now. That at least was the esoteric interpretation,
and we might very well ask, then, what this interpretation has
to say on the question of death and immortality. Does it not in
fact neglect the question altogether, leaving unanswered the fate
of man when life is ended and death occurs?
The esoteric reply might be that life never ends and that death
is just one more delusion of the intellect. Immortal life is not
experienced in some ethereal realm beyond this world; it is experienced
in this world, here, and that was the deeper meaning of the statement
that nirvana is realized in this world by living men. To see the
world as it really is means to understand that life is immortal.
And thus the myth of the terrible wheel of death and rebirth.
The wheel is caused by the intellect, and it is nothing more than
the rational way of looking at things. The wheel is the I-It mind.
It does not mean that we are cursed to return again and again
to this world, for there is no other place we could possibly go.
There is only this world. There is nothing else. The myth
means that we are compelled by the intellect to go on and on imagining
there is something else, and also to go on and on imagining the
world exists as the intellect portrays it. To escape from the
wheel means simply to become aware that the world it portrays
is not the real world at all, or not the whole world. To escape
from the wheel means to understand that death is false and that
life is immortal. You shall know the truth and the truth shall
set you free, from death as well as mechanism. If the intellect
by nature cannot understand life, it follows that the intellect
by nature cannot understand death. Its view of death results from
the fact that it looks only at the parts, not at the Whole. If
it would once look at the Whole, it would see immediately that
life is immortal.
This interpretation would seem to justify immortality on a strictly
monistic basis, by sacrificing pluralism; it preserves the One
only by denying the reality of the individual selves. And what
of the Western emphasis on personal survival of the individual
self or soul? The esoteric doctrine would be that it is precisely
our insistence on personal immortality which makes us blind to
our actual immortality. The individual ego or personality has
no real significance, and therefore the death of this personality
has no real significance and should not be regretted. It is only
because we insist on the significance of the one that the fact
of the other seems so terribly important to us. And anyway, what
do we really mean by personal? The truth is, the Western emphasis
on this element has lately become at least somewhat less emphatic.
In rejecting what he called the religious interpretation of Christianity,
Bonhoeffer wrote from his prison in Berlin:
In my view, that means to speak on the one hand metaphysically
and on the other hand individualistically. Neither of these is
relevant to the Bible message or to the man of today. Is it not
true to say that individualistic concern for personal salvation
has almost completely left us all? Are we not really under the
impression that there are more important things than bothering
about such a matter? (Perhaps not more important than the matter
itself, but more than bothering about it.) I know it sounds pretty
monstrous to say that. But is it not, at bottom, even biblical?
Is there any concern in the Old Testament about saving one's soul
at all? Is not righteousness and the Kingdom of God on earth the
focus of everything, and is not Romans 3.14 ff., too, the culmination
of the view that in God alone is righteousness, and not in an
individualistic doctrine of salvation? It is not with the next
world that we are concerned, but with this world . . .
Tillich wrote:
Even if the so-called arguments for the "immortality of the
soul" had argumentative power (which they do not have) they
would not convince existentially. For existentially everybody
is aware of the complete loss of self which biological extinction
implies. The unsophisticated mind knows instinctively what sophisticated
ontology formulates: that reality has the basic structure of self-world
correlation and that with the disappearance of the one side, the
world, the other side, the self, also disappears, and what remains
is their common ground but not their structural correlation.
Again, what do we mean by personal—and by personal survival?
The meta-experience suggests that we are all expressions or aspects
of a primary state of Being. And this is immortal. Therefore,
we too are immortal—for we are it. In each of us the primary
state comes briefly to a sharp focus: we suddenly appear, like
the dew that condenses from the still morning air, or a wave that
lifts from the surface of the sea. The dew burns away, the wave
drops, and we die. But there is no real death. There is something
elemental which survives and re-expresses itself. Thus a great
actor might look back on the roles he has created and might also
forget some of his lesser performances; but he does not imagine
that he himself died with the closing of a play: he goes on, growing
in talent, and even his failures may serve to instruct him. Similarly,
what dies when a man dies is simply a role. What dies is merely
a point of focus where Being had concentrated itself. What dies,
in the last analysis, are only the particular memories which Being
had accumulated at this point or that point, in this role or the
other. And even the better of these are preserved by speech and
by pen. What dies are only particular points of view. And the
better of these are also preserved, for so long as they seem valid:
until still better replace them.
All this is what the meta-experience seems to tell us, and no
doubt it does not look very convincing or comforting on the printed
page. Perhaps it appears to say only that life goes on—meaning
that life goes on but you do not. But descriptions of the meta-experience
are not the same as the experience, and the experience would seem
to mean something more than life goes on: it would seem to mean
that you go on too—although not in the traditional sense of
reappearing somewhere after death with all of your thoughts, memories,
and personal cachets intact. However desirable this latter kind
of survival might normally appear to us, the fact remains that
the meta-experiencer finds it neither desirable nor in any sense
important. In a state of unsanity, it just doesn't matter.
Possibly the West could assimilate this interpretation of immortality,
if it had to, since nobody really believes in personal survival
anyway. We might be able to accept a monistic structure after
death. What is far more difficult to accept is the thought that
life has this character here upon the earth. The idea that other
people do not really exist as separate entities can be a terrifying
idea—pure hell, in fact—for it leaves you more alone even
than Sartre would leave you. Not we are alone, with no excuses,
but I am alone. There is an appalling difference between those
two statements, and it is really the fundamental difference between
the Western view and the Eastern. If life after death can be purchased
only by paying the price of earthly pluralism, there are many
perhaps who would not care to pay that price—who would give
up the former, if they could, to retain the latter. And obviously
you cannot have both a monistic immortality and a pluralistic
mortality, since monistic survival is predicated on the assumption
that life itself is monistic. There may therefore be a deep and
basic wisdom reflected in the West's instinctive rejection of
this horror. On the other hand, however, it could be a matter
not of wisdom but of courage, or the lack of it: to say that the
idea is terrifying is not to say that it is not true. In any case,
it is a question to be faced—posed again now by the meta-experience.
And it is hard. Very hard. This is why we said earlier that the
Eastern challenge to pluralism is more critical even than the
challenge to transcendence.
Meta-experience does not really deny the possibility of some unseen
dimension which transcends the experience; it simply fails to
provide us with any evidence to support the possibility—and,
further, it does not suggest any need for this hypothesis. If
there is a transcendent power, well and good. If not, that is
all right too. The reality suggested by the experience is reality
enough, if that is all there is, and the experience therefore
has nothing to do with the existence or non-existence of a separate
God. The experience tells us only that our normal perception of
the world is limited and limiting: that we are deceived in our
perception by a mental process, the seat of which can be anatomically
localized in the human brain—which can even in fact be excised
by surgery. The experience tells us to stop living only in the
past and the future, or in a present moment which is perceived
always in terms of the past and the future. It tells us that we
need no longer be estranged from reality and from ourselves. The
Eden story can now come to its inevitable and happy conclusion;
the flaming sword has been extinguished, and we are free at last
to re-enter the garden. It tells us this, and it does not tell
us there is no transcendent God. After all, how could it? Negatives
are hard to prove in any instance, and I cannot, for example,
conclusively demonstrate that there is not at this moment a pink
owl perched in a lime tree on the fifth moon of Jupiter. Nor do
I especially care whether there is or isn't. But only a fool would
insist that his vision necessarily takes in the whole of reality,
and one wonders if God himself could ever be sure there was not
somewhere some other God who transcends him. Thus the meta-experience
tells us only what it sees; it speaks to us of this world—and
it may be that this esoteric interpretation at least partially
answers the objection of Tillich and Buber that mysticism is world-denying
and therefore an inadequate response to existential anxiety.
The meta-experience, then, is not directly concerned with the
question of God; but it is not for this reason any the less fundamental
in its assertions. As William James put it to us, quoting Leuba:
"Does God really exist? How does he exist? What is he? are
so many irrelevant questions. Not God, but life, more life, a
larger, richer, more satisfying life, is, in the last analysis,
the end of religion. The love of life, at any and every level
of development, is the religious impulse."
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the meta-experience
offers an accurate perception of ultimate reality. We still must
ask whether it is wise or prudent to seek that experience and
achieve that perception.
For one thing, the experience suggests that symbols serve only
to distort our view of the actual world. But I can never forget
Helen Keller's story of that day at the well house, at the age
of seven, when she first learned the meaning of language. Before
that, she said, she had been only a wild little animal lost in
the dark, unable to give love or receive it. "Before that
supreme event there was nothing in me except the instinct to eat
and drink and sleep. My days were a blank, without past, present,
or future, without hope or anticipation, without interest or joy."
Then Anne Sullivan held one of her hands under the running pump,
and into the other she spelled out "w-a-t-e-r." The
meta-experiencer would say of course that "w-a-t-e-r"
and water are two different things; but Miss Keller has given
us her own reaction. "I knew then that 'w-a-t-e-r' meant
the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That
living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it
free!" Or again: "All at once there was a strange stir
within me —a misty consciousness, a sense of something remembered....
Nothingness was blotted out.... That word 'water' dropped into
my mind like the sun in a frozen winter world." And we might
do well to remember this before we decide to blow out that sun.
An obvious objection to the meta-experience is that it denies
or ignores the existence of evil—which it considers simply a
dualistic deception. And this was the main objection James had
to the optimistic mysticism of Whitman. You cannot ignore evil,
said James, for "the skull will grin in at the banquet."
"Here on our very hearths and in our gardens," he said,
"the infernal cat plays with the panting mouse, or holds
the hot bird fluttering in her jaws. Crocodiles and rattlesnakes
and pythons are at this moment vessels of life as real as we are;
their loathsome existence fills every minute of every day that
drags its length along." For his part, James preferred an
optimism which first acknowledged evil and yet saw hope. Only
this could we really trust.
There are the clear and present dangers which threaten the individual
who is in the grips of a meta-experience: running in front of
cars, leaping from windows with the expectation of flying, a generalized
indifference to injury and death. But there is also a less clear
and even more present danger which threatens the vitality and
welfare of society itself, and this is the danger of a quietistic
indifference to social goals and social rewards. Until very recently
there was little cause for concern about this, and Maslow provides
us with an excellent example. While he conceded there was a possible
quietistic danger inherent in the peak experience, he added that
the experience came rarely even to self-actualizing people, and
as late as 1962 he wrote: "Therefore the problem posed here
is more an ultimate than an immediate one, more a theoretical
problem than a practical one." Now LSD has made the problem
both immediate and practical, and the issue must be dealt with.
Prohibitive laws are one answer, and certainly there is little
to be said for the so-called Gumball Machine theory that psychedelics
should be freely dispensed to the general population, with no
restrictions. We do after all have gun laws (though not very good
ones); we have laws regarding the purchase and consumption of
liquor; and there are regulations and licensing procedures for
people who want to drive autos or fly airplanes. In view of the
potential dangers of an immediate nature, it might seem fair to
put psychedelics in the same category as alcohol, guns, planes,
and cars. But in fact the governmental response has been to outlaw
them almost altogether. This apparently has succeeded only in
frustrating some very important research by scientists, and it
is doubtful in any case whether legal measures can resolve the
more basic questions that are raised by the drug movement.
There is the other side of the Delphic coin. Know Thyself,
yes. But also Nothing in Excess. As Suzuki put it: "There
is also such a thing as too much attachment to the experience
of satori, which is to be detested." This appears
to be a very neat answer, but it is much too easy telling people
to behave themselves, and urging moderation in this thing of all
things is no solution. LSD may not be addictive, but truth is.
This brings us to the test James suggested for the revelations
of drunkenness. "If merely 'feeling good' could decide,"
said James, "drunkenness would be the supremely valid human
experience." The question is—does the experience work out
when it is inserted into the environment? This is another way
of asking whether the individual continues to function and survive,
and whether or not the world's work still gets done.
But the psychedelic quietist would reply that none of these things
matters. It is the environment that is out of joint, and the world's
work is ridiculous. As for survival, life is eternal— especially
so for a psychic mutant. And just by the way, there is nothing
evil about pythons and rattlesnakes.
This is not to say that all drug cultists are quietists. In fact,
there is a fundamental dichotomy within the drug movement, and
this is reflected in the programs and philosophies of the two
major psychedelic churches—the Church of the Awakening and the
Neo-American Church—that existed before Timothy Leary's League
for Spiritual Discovery was founded in 1966.
The Church of the Awakening, mentioned earlier, might be described
as the middle-class right wing of the movement. Many of its members
are businessmen or professional people, and the church insists
that even psychedelic religion has both an internal and an external
function—the latter to be expressed in terms of "love,"
"service," and "growth." In its statement
of purpose, the church adds:
It is important to recognize and to understand the existence of
these two functions, internal and external; to recognize that
we have a basic need and urge to learn, and an equally
basic one to serve, to share. Next, of course, there must
be an aspiration of the achievement of these objectives within
the heart of each of us. And then, this knowledge and aspiration
must be channeled into action. We must do something about
it!
The Neo-American Church, on the other hand, represents more or
less the bohemian left wing of the drug movement. It would seem
to be dedicated only to "the appreciation of Transcendental
Reality," and, although the church officially advocates a
kind of revolutionary nihilism, the membership in general appears
to be more interested in withdrawal than revolt. The inclination
is to "turn on and drop out." There are individual exceptions,
of course, but this is the overall impression one gets.
The Neo-American Church to date has received far more publicity
than the Church of the Awakening has, and it has been more aggressive
in recruiting new members—particularly among the young. While
a cleavage does exist, then, it would seem nevertheless that there
are now many more quietists than activists within the drug movement
as a whole, and the problem grows more pressing with every day
that passes.
The psychedelic quietist of course does not consider his attitude
a problem—he considers-it a solution—and in fact he might
argue that there is precedent for his decision to withdraw from
the mainstream, renouncing the goals and rewards of society. Would
not identical consequences follow if Christians started to take
the New Testament literally?
The quietist asserts that there is no destination ahead of us;
we are already there. He announces, in effect, that he is getting
off the bus.
It may be, then, that the question comes down to this: Is the
cosmic bus going anywhere?