Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Don Lattin is a freelance journalist and religion writer who appears
to be hopelessly stuck in the sixties. 

Lattin’s new book is titled THE HARVARD PSYCHEDELIC CLUB – How Timothy
Leary, Andrew Weil, Ram Dass and Huston Smith Killed the Fifties and
Ushered in a New Age for America. It’s the never-before-told story of
how a young and jealous Andrew Weil got Tim Leary and Richard “Ram
Dass” Alpert kicked out of Harvard in the early 1960s. They, along with
religion scholar Huston Smith, go on to lay the foundations for the
social and spiritual revolution of the sixties and seventies.


It came out in January and is now in its fourth printing. According to
HarperCollins, it is a "national bestseller." It is been favorably
reviewed in dozens of venues, including two reviews in the NY Times. 

Lattin is also  the author of Jesus Freaks -A True Story of Murder and
Madness on the Evangelical Edge(HarperOne 2007); Following Our Bliss -
How the Spiritual Ideals of the Sixties Shape Our Lives Today
(HarperSanFrancisco 2003); and is the co-author (with Richard Cimino)
of Shopping for Faith – American Religion in the New Millennium (Jossey
Bass 1998) 
  

    
Leading the interview is our own <digaman>, Steve Silberman.

Steve Silberman's articles on science, literature, and music have  
appeared in Wired, the New Yorker, GQ, Nature, Salon, the Shambhala  
Sun, and many other national publications. He was the co-producer of  
the Grateful Dead's box set "So Many Roads (1965-1995)," and co-wrote 

"Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads" with David Shenk. In the  
1980s, he was poet Allen Ginsberg's teaching assistant at Naropa  
University (naropa.edu). A long-time conference host on the WELL,  
Steve lives with his husband, Keith, in San Francisco.

Welcome to Inkwell.vue Don and Steve!
  

    
Steve Silberman (digaman) Tue 13 Apr 2010 (01:20 PM)

It's really a pleasure to have this conversation with Don about his 
wonderful new book.  I first came across Don's writings in the San 
Francisco Chronicle, I believe.  I was impressed by how well and
fairly he was able to write about spiritual matters in the unlikely
setting of a daily newspaper. As a young aspiring journalist myself I
remember thinking, "That guy has a cool beat." Welcome to the WELL,
Don, we're honored by your presence.

I'm a big fan of your new book, "The Harvard Psychedelic Club." As you
can see in my biographical blurb above, I knew Allen Ginsberg quite
well for about 20 years, so I was familiar with the cast of characters
in the book and some of the more infamous stories.  But what impresses
me is how much of the book is fresh and new to me.  Though I'm very
familiar with Andrew Weil's work in alternative medicine -- in fact, he
was writing a column for Wired magazine's website, HotWired, when I
was the senior editor there, back in the mid-'90s -- I was completely
unaware of his role in accelerating the forced departure of Tim Leary
and Richard Alpert (now Ram Dass) from Harvard.  You found a lot of
things in your research that freshens up this history, and wove them
together in a cogent and engaging way, so that even someone who feels
like they "know" the Leary lore could 
get a lot out of reading your book.  And for readers who know nothing
of these stories and have never sampled psychedelics themselves, well,
step through the multi-colored door of this book -- a new world awaits.

Don, this week, as I'm sure you know, there's a serious scholarly
conference on psychedelic use happening in San Jose, put on by the
MAPS folks (http://www.maps.org/conference/). There was also an article
in the NY Times the other day, which was the most-read link on the
site last night (http://nyti.ms/9DhVi9), about mainstream medicine
starting to take seriously again the notion that psychedelics could be
useful in therapy for addiction and disorders like depression and PTSD.

Obviously, this notion would not have surprised Leary and Alpert circa
1964.  The surprise would have been that psychedelic research in labs
stalled for more than 40 years, shut down by the authorities, at least
in part in response to the events you describe in your book.  I have
two questions for you to start off:

1)  What effect do you think the activities of Leary, Alpert, and
their friends had on the course of psychedelic research in medicine?

2)  What do we know now about psychedelics that we didn't know in the 
'60s?

 
  

    
Steve Silberman (digaman) Tue 13 Apr 2010 (03:51 PM)

3) Don, after the '60s crashed into the '70s -- call it The Great
Bringdown -- it became hip to say that the experiences of spiritual
insight chronicled in the first part of your book had been mere
illusion because they were catalyzed by drugs.  Of course they weren't
*real* spiritual experiences, even many former hippies seemed to agree,
because instead of being brought about by meditation, or prayer, or
fasting, or grace, or whirling, or a period in the wilderness -- or any
of the thousand other traditional means of attaining life-transforming
insight --they had been gotten "cheap," by popping a pill.  Only a
naive drugged-out person would compare the two, right?  And yet, the
more we know about the neurological basis of religious experiences, the
more they seem like any other kind of experience: a product of changes
in brain chemistry or
neural activity.  Note: That's not to say that there is no God, or no
Buddha, or that profound experiences of grace or kensho are *only*
blips on an EEG.  But all experiences are filtered through our internal
hardware and software; so why can't altering the activities of our
brains also provide authentic spiritual experience?  In fact,
scientists have suggested that even some of the classic spiritual
experiences in history-- such as the complex visual and auditory
visions of the nun known as Hildegard von Bingen -- were triggered by
physical conditions (Hildegard had migraines).

So, nearly half a century after the Good Friday Experiment (and you
might want to gloss that tale for people here who haven't yet read your
book), what do you think about the authenticity of psychedelic
spiritual experience?

 
  

    
Don Lattin (donlattin) Wed 14 Apr 2010 (07:15 AM)

Steve, thanks so much for your kind comments about my book. One of the
things that has been most heartening to me as a journalist are the
positive reactions from people who personally knew the four men I
wrote about and tell me 1) that they thought they knew the whole story
but discovered new aspects of the saga, or  2) tell me that I captured
the moment. 

You mentioned the NY Times story earlier this week. There was also a
much longer and even better story in the April edition of Playboy.
There seems to be lots of interest. I've been overwhelmed by the
critical response to and the media interest in "The Harvard
Psychedelic Club." This is my fourth book, and I was never able to
crack the NY Times. This book got TWO (mostly positive) reviews in the
Times. According to HarperCollins, it has become a "national
bestseller." Two other books have been published about the era this
year - "Birth of Psychedelic Culture," a conversation between Ram Dass
and Ralph Metzner about the days at Harvard and Millbrook, and "Orange
Sunshine," a book about the Leary-inspired Brotherhood of Eternal Love,
a "church" that was really a big drug smuggling ring. 

You mentioned the upcoming MAPS psychedelic conference in San Jose.
I'll be on a panel with Ralph and Ram Dass (via video from Maui) on
Saturday evening talking about our two books. The conference is sold
out with more than 700 tickets sold. So, happening is happening, but
we don't know what it is. Do we, Mr. Steve?

 
  

    
 Don Lattin (donlattin) Wed 14 Apr 2010 (07:41 AM)

Huston Smith was brought into the Harvard project is assess whether
the spiritual/mystical experiences that the "subjects" were having
were "authentic religious experiences." Huston eventually concluded
(like many of us) that the EXPERIENCES were real -- as real as the ones
the mystics report -- but what was and is important is what we DO with
the experience. Do they make us better people -- more humane and
compassionate and less ego-centric? In the end, that's what makes them
"real." That's why many people argue that there's no reason to keep
taking these drugs after you are (as Jimi would say) "experienced." Or,
as Alan Watts said, "Once you get the message, hang up the phone!" 

 
  

    
A quick note to our offsite readers...You may ask your questions of
Don by emailing them to <inkwell@well.com>
  

    
Yes, if you're not on the Well, please do send your questions.  We'dlove 
to have you join the conversation.

Thanks so much, Don.  I agree with you that the proof of authentic 
spiritual experience is in the pudding -- in how much it changes your life 
and leads to more compassionate and less egocentric behavior.  And isn't 
the same question germane to non-drug experiences of illumination?  Who 
cares if Glenn Beck had a come-to-Jesus conversion experience if he's 
still a cynical liar whose words provoke needless fear, confusion, and 
potential violence?  But that's another conversation.

One of the things I enjoyed in your book was the section in which you 
talked about the Transcendentalist tradition in New England and how, in a 
way, Harvard was the perfect setting for the early days of the 
Leary/Alpert trip.  I'd love it if you could expand on that a bit, and 
also talk about how San Francisco, and the Haight-Ashbury in particular 
(where I've lived for 30 years, as a fairly direct result of what happened 
here for really a very brief time circa '64-'68), were the perfect stage 
for the Birth of Hippie.
  

    
I find it absolutely fascinating that the article in the New York
Times was the subject of so much interest.  I think it's still the #3
most emailed article today.

Don, do you think that we are poised to take another look at
psychedelics, or is this another "false dawn" episode in the eternal
War On Some Drugs?

And this to both Don and Steve, who has just brought up the issue of
egocentric behavior.

How do we square the idea that a psychedelic experience can be truly
spiritual with the life and career of Timothy Leary who (love him or
hate him) must have been one of the most egocentric people ever to walk
on the face of the Earth?
  

    
Well, the history of religion suggests that religious experience and
religious convictions do not automatically make you a good person.  
(There have been a few news items on the Catholic Church lately that could
be considered relevant.)  I would suggest that because most psychedelic
use takes place outside of any cultural institutions at all other than the
tradition of stoners turning each other on, very little cultural
information is imparted with the experience, leaving the would-be
psychonaut to spin around in deep space without guidance.  On the other
hand, if you're a Zen Buddhist and you go to your teacher and say, "I just
had a flash while meditating that the whole Universe is empty, and that we
are all Buddhas!  I feel so blissful!" the teacher will give you advice
and practices to deepen and ground that experience so it's not just a
flash (or they might just whack you with the kyosaku, the Zen stick,
imparting its own lesson).  So I think one of the main problems with the 
legal war on psychedelics is that it has impaired the development of 
traditions that would lend the experience meaning.  That's one of the 
reasons that I wrote a book called "Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for 
Deadheads" years ago with David Shenk -- I thought the culture of 
Grateful Dead fans was a fascinating example of an attempt to *improvise* 
a meaningful framework for psychedelic experience on a mass scale.
  

    
I am really excited about this conversation.  Two writers who I have a
lot of respect for.
  

    
Leary saw himself as acting out in the tradition of the
Transcendentalists and Harvard's William James, the "father of American
psychology." Few people seem to have picked up on the fact that the
book's title "The Harvard Psychedelic Club," is a play on "The
Metaphysical Club," the 2001 Louis Menand book about four other dudes
from New England -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles S. Peirce, John
Dewey and William James. Leary loved to point to a famous line in
James' 1902 philosophical masterpiece, "The Varieties of Religious
Experience," in which James waxes poetic about the mystical wonders of
inhaling nitrous oxide. 

San Francisco, of course, has its own tradition as a mecca for madmen
and risk-takers, going back to the Gold Rush. It was re-discovered by
many young Americans in the 1940s because it was a shipping off point
in World War II. People stuck around for the post-war economic boom,
which provided the space for lots of experiments, most notably in our
case being the rise of the Beat scene in North Beach in the 1950s and
the hippies in the Haight in the 1960s. Another reason that the
psychedelic movement took root in Boston and the Bay Area are the
presence of many colleges and universities and so many baby boomers
(myself included) moving to those two regions in the 1960s and 1970s to
go to school. Combine lots of young people, lots of money, lots of
spare time, and the right drugs (especially LSD and the birth control
pill) and -- presto -- you have "the Sixties." 





    
  

    
Thanks, Don.  What were some of the things you discovered in the course of 
writing this book that surprised you the most, and changed the way you'd 
been thinking about your subject?
  

    
Mark: You are right about Tim. LSD is a powerful drug, but not
powerful enough to melt the ego of Timothy Leary. This is a guy who had
the chutzpah to stand in front of a theater marquee in NY that read
"Timothy Leary -- The Reincarnation of Jesus Christ." Talk about a
messiah complex! Psychedelics can melt the ego, but also fuel those
prone to grandiosity. That was def. one of Tim's problems. 

Time will tell if we are poised again for the Dawning of the New Age
of Aquarius or another War on Drugs -- or both. I think the retirement
of millions of baby boomers and the development of new designer
psychedelics will lead to some pretty interesting shit.  
  

    
Don, you need to stay on the Well after this interview.  You will fit
right in.
  

    
Just casually wondering, haven't seen the book yet but plan to -- child of 
the 60s, have indelible memory of sitting on the floor in a small 
classroom with Timothy Leary and about 50 other people as he toured 
college campuses in must have been 69 -- anyway, back then I think the 
doses of LSD were very high and currently are fairly low. I'm in no 
position to judge the difference but am wondering if this is why there's 
renewed interest in using it medically, and if it is a more recreational 
type experience than a spiritual one these days. 
  

    
Steve: The most surprising thing I discovered writing this book was
not about Leary, Ram Dass, Huston or Weil. It was about myself. I kept
myself out the book, especially after I re-wrote the whole thing as
"narrative non-fiction." The first draft was much more "journalistic."
I creep into the story a bit in the conclusion, but then go all
confessional in an afterword where I write about my own ecstasies and
agonies with psychedelics and other less mystical drugs. The book
forced me to re-examine some of my own experiences back in the day, and
I hope it will do that for other readers. In fact, I know it will. I
get emails every day from people talking about just that.  
  

    
Noting that there were some posts slipping in as I posted #15, and still 
curious. Also curious about designer psychedelics. 
  

    
Kayo: There is lots of new interest in medical and
psycho-therapeutical uses of LSD and MDMD (Ectasy) -- some of it
above-ground, legal and government-sponsored. I heard that the FDA has
approved clinical trials to use Ecstasy on Iraqi war veterans with post
traumatic stress disorder. Check out MAPS.org for all the details.    
  

    
Meant to type "MDMA," not "MDMD," but that may have been a prophetic
typo. By the way, can we edit posts after posting them? 
  

    
(you can scribble posts, and do them over, but you cannot edit them
once they are up. To scribble, click on the blue post number and then
click on scribble. Close the window and then repost)
  

    
Don, that's an interesting point you bring up about the role of the
post-war economic boom in fostering the counterculture.  Also, the
population of the U.S. was much smaller then.  Because of the postwar
migration to the burbs, many central cities were relatively
under-populated (but not yet slums).  The Haight during the 50s and
early 60s was a good example.  Also, because suburbia had not yet
sprawled, if you wanted a rural retreat, you didn't have to go far or
spend much.

And of course, the economic boom was widely shared, so if you wanted
to hang out in some place pretty, you weren't competing with the
super-rich and hordes of trustafarians.

Truly the psychedelic pioneers inhabited a world that was quite a bit
different from our own.
  

    
Maybe. On the other hand, many of us were living on the economic edge
back then. People seem to have more expectations today that they need
and deserve more stuff. We need to revive on the anti-materialism ethos
of the 60s -- but not until I get my I-Pad.  
  

    
Mark, great to have you here as part of the conversation.

Don, there's a touching moment in your book where you describe the former 
Richard Alpert/Ram Dass as he is now -- ten years after a devastating 
stroke, living in Hawaii, still articulate but with a lengthy delay 
between words as his brain tries to generate the language. As anyone who 
knew him back in the day can attest, Ram Dass was one of the world's great 
talkers.  I once had the extreme pleasure of spending a few days with him 
at a camp called Creating Our Future that trained kids to become 
environmental activists.  To be brutally honest, I wasn't inclined to 
approach him as a great teacher, though I enjoyed his books;  but I ended 
up feeling like he was extremely smart and wise, a cosmic "mensch" in the 
same way as Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Garcia, or Robert Krulwich of RadioLab, 
who is happily still alive and thriving.  I'm curious if you could tell us 
more about what Ram Dass' life is like now, and how you ended up feeling 
about him after you traced the arc of his life.
  

    
As Ram Dass said when I first asked him for an interview to talk about
Andy Weil and Ronnie Winston (the undergraduate in their triangular
Harvard relationship) :

It's complicated. 

Gotta sign off now to go visit a dying friend. Stay tuned. 
  

    
Don, just so you know, I am roughly your age, so I remember those
days.  Yes, many of us were on the edge, but there was not quite as far
to fall - or so it seemed.