296 The Journal of American Culture Volume 36, Number 4 December 2013 Winner of the William M. Jones Best Graduate Student Paper Award at the 2013 American Culture Association Conference From Acid Revolution to Entheogenic Evolution: Psychedelic Philosophy in the Sixties and Beyond Chris Elcock1 Introduction research with psychedelics, underscoring its promising early results—notably by interviewing Steven Ross of the New York University psilocy- In 2010, the magazine Playboy published an bin/cancer research team. article on “The New Psychedelic Renaissance,” In 2005, Harvard gave its go ahead for research which examined the state of psychedelic research on LSD and psilocybin. From a historical stand- throughout the world: Israel, Jordan, Canada, point, this was a highly symbolic move because it Brazil, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Mexico, was the first time in over forty years that the pres- were some of the countries researching into the tigious university was authorizing psychedelic potential of MDMA, ayahuasca, LSD or ibogaine, studies. That ban had its chief origin in the notori- in various applications such as end-of-life anxiety ous deeds of Timothy Leary,3 who began his or opiate addiction. In the United States, psyche- career as the “High Priest” of LSD by introducing delic drugs like psilocybin (one of the main psy- psilocybin and LSD to the psychology department choactive agents of “magic mushrooms”), LSD, —and to some of its students. The university took mescaline (an alkaloid contained in peyote cacti), issue with their “unscientific methods” for study- and MDMA (aka “ecstasy”) were used in research ing psychedelics and with the liberties he and fel- for end-of-life anxiety, obsessive-compulsive dis- low psychologist Richard Alpert (now known as orders, cluster headaches and post-traumatic Baba Ram Dass) were taking. Leary decided that it stress disorder of Iraq war veterans (Kotler)2. was a good time to start promoting LSD as some- CNN also documented contemporary therapeutic thing even better than therapeutic well-being: Chris Elcock is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Saskatchewan under the supervision of Canada Research Chair, Dr. Erika Dyck. The Journal of American Culture, 36:4 © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. From Acid Revolution to Entheogenic Evolution Chris Elcock 297 LSD and the psychedelic experience, he reasoned, dogma and dualism, and a belief that psychedelics could change the world for the better. are the key to the next stage of human evolution. Half a century later, such claims might still Yet, given the present cultural feeling of environ- sound surprising. Yet, back then, several influential mental uncertainty, authors are now taking the figures saw psychedelics and their power to radi- philosophico-spiritual value of psychedelics one cally question ontological certainties as having an step further. Psychedelics, they argue, can play a inherently revolutionary potential. During his positive role in altering mankind’s consciousness time at Harvard, Leary ran psilocybin sessions and fostering a much-needed reunion with nature with the novelist Aldous Huxley, as well as some to ultimately prevent a global environmental the foremost Beat figures. Jack Kerouac, William catastrophe. S. Burroughs, Neil Cassady and Peter Orlovsky While Wouter Hanegraaff has pointed to the underwent the psychedelic experience, but it was “importance […] of psychoactive substances as Allen Ginsberg, who immediately realized that it catalysts of new spiritual revelations” (293) in the was time to start a “peace and love” movement. development of the 2012 millenarian popular Prior to this joining of forces, Aldous Huxley literature sparked by Terence and Dennis McKen- had experimented with mescaline and published his na and that have shaped the New Age culture, it psychedelic meditations in his classic essays “The also appears that the apocalyptic fears that are so Doors of Perception” and “Heaven and Hell.” Like present in post-’60s psychedelic literature and that Leary and Ginsberg would find out in the early are behind a tangible 2012 culture are the logical 1960s, Huxley also felt that psychedelics had the consequences of a specific form of monistic envi- power of revamping Western society and, upon ronmental awareness fostered by the insights of meeting Leary, suggested that he start a psychedelic the psychedelic experience. In a larger cultural crusade in which he would enlighten the “best and context of growing environmentalism and with the brightest” to ultimately transform the domi- the current ban on most psychedelic substances in nant structures of American society—a decision he the Western world, then, tying an apocalyptic would regret when it became apparent that Leary message to the prohibition of those substances is was fond of causing controversy. Huxley, then, also an attempt to argue against the existing legis- believed that the psychedelic experience could be lation and promote psychedelics as valid antidotes used in a pragmatic way to reform the elites. to environmental destruction. Thus, where Nicho- The fact that a brilliant mind like Huxley or that las Langlitz has recently argued that “attempts to a charismatic Harvard professor turned LSD guru relegitimize [the use of psychedelics] in the West saw the psychedelic experience as a valid tool for […] have taken the route of science, not religion” self-improvement and, so went the dialectics, for (17), evidence in the contemporary psychedelic lit- the greater benefit of mankind, is not the only rea- erature also suggests that the revival is not con- son why these ideas deserve attention. Indeed, the fined to science, insofar as it is also undertaken Psychedelic Renaissance should not be limited to from a philosophico-spiritual perspective.4 the therapeutic realm of psychedelics: LSD and The psychedelic movement which surfaced psychedelics did not disappear in the ‘60s; they sometime in the early ‘60s, with Huxley’s injunc- have, of course, been used recreationally through- tion to enlighten the “best and the brightest” out the decades, but more importantly these drugs, using LSD,5 and arguably ended with the sordid along with others like MDMA, ayahuasca or ibog- publicity brought by Charles Manson and his fol- aine, continue to inspire writers with insights that lowers, had an agenda for social and cultural display a remarkable historical continuity. change that is echoed today. Although it would The past and contemporary intellectual insights be wrong to claim that all LSD users in the ‘60s related to the psychedelic experience, then, have saw themselves as cultural revolutionaries, some many similarities: a monistic and post-modern did follow Leary’s precepts and believed that if a conception of reality and the Divine, a suspicion of sufficient number of people changed their ways of 298 The Journal of American Culture Volume 36, Number 4 December 2013 life, they would reform American society. Half a satirists of his society. In some respects, he con- century later, the legacy of the American LSD centrated all his deepest fears in what has been movement is still unclear.6 But, as noted above, widely acknowledged as his essential work, psychedelic practices did not die in the ‘60s. As namely his dystopian novel Brave New World, Hanegraaff argues, “neoshamanism in its original which he partly intended as a warning of what psychedelic form did not vanish after 1970, but Western society could potentially become. Cen- continued as a vital underground culture, which tral to his concerns was what he saw as the dan- has become much more easily accessible again gerous alliance of politics, technology and since the spread of the Internet” (293). Beyond consumerism. In Brave New World, the ruling this subculture, however, there are obvious philo- body uses mind-manipulating techniques to con- sophical similarities and differences that exist dition the masses to love their ruler, but also to between the ‘60s psychedelic movement and what find comfort in consumerism. Individuals are might be referred today as the “entheogenic born in test-tubes and their technical and intellec- movement.” More broadly the past and present tual capacities are pre-established by eugenic pat- psychedelic movements can be understood as terns. Huxley believed that people would not preaching a form of spiritual utilitarianism and accept biological and mental conditioning if they traced right back to the longer-lasting tradition of did not get something in return: a highly promis- American pragmatists like William James. cuous social life, where everyone is allowed and socially encouraged to have sex with everyone, but more importantly, the escapist hedonism of Psychedelic Philosophy in the the imaginary drug soma, which was, depending ‘50s and ‘60s on the dosage, alternatively a stimulant, a sedative or a psychedelic (an impossible combination). These key aspects of the society depicted by Hux- There are many intellectuals who, from their ley allowed any potentially subversive energies to early encounters with psychedelics, had life- be channeled and diffused. The old order would changing experiences that deeply called into ques- thus always stay in place. tion their ontological certainties. Aldous Huxley The suspicion of technology became one of the was arguably the most influential in this respect, central elements of Huxley’s critique of Western but there are of course other important characters society. Whilst Brave New World was a work of such as Timothy Leary