Meher Baba, and the Post-Psychedelic Spirituality of Pete Townshend Holland Hall University of Florida April 1, 2016

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The Pinball Wizard and the Miracle Cure: Reflections on Tommy (1969), Meher Baba, and the Post-Psychedelic Spirituality of Pete Townshend Holland Hall University of Florida April 1, 2016

Abstract

This project utilizes The Who’s rock opera Tommy (1969) to illustrate the ways in which spiritual seekers navigated the psychedelic era of the late 1960s. Tommy tells the narrative of a “deaf, dumb, and blind” boy’s spiritual journey, which is a semi- biographical account of the group’s primary songwriter, Pete Townshend. By portraying the history of post-psychedelic religious movements through Townshend’s own involvement with the spiritual master Meher Baba, I demonstrate that countercultural members did not use psychedelic drugs merely for recreational purposes. Rather, this project illuminates how some countercultural members who experimented with psychedelic drugs sought to expand their spiritual perception—oftentimes with promising results. Although psychedelic drugs opened a door to a richer spiritual experience for many, they typically failed to provide a permanent pathway to enlightenment. This essay focuses on the narrative of Tommy to show how Westerners began exploring Indian religious practices as an alternative for their psychedelic experiences.

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Table of Contents

A Dedication: Dear Prudence……………………………………………………………. i

Prelude: A Weekend at the Meher Spiritual Center, 2015………………………………. ii

Introduction: Historiography of Music and Indian Spirituality; Music Criticism and Musicological Evaluations of Tommy…………………………………..… 1

Chapter 1: Tommy as the “Normal Post-War Child”: Navigating the Aftermath of World War II and the Psychedelic Era…………………………………...……..... 7

Chapter 2: Rejecting the Psychedelic (and Christian) Gospel: Western Responses to South Asian Religious Movements…………………………….………... 20

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………… 29

List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………... 30

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………. 31

A Dedication

Dear Prudence, open up your eyes. Dear Prudence, see the sunny skies. The wind is low. The birds will sing That you are part of everything.

- The Beatles, lyrics from “Dear Prudence,” 1968

Many of us who came of age in the ‘60s continue our spiritual quests and know the joy of living peace. Before long, we will be gone—but others will carry our legacy. There is nothing more important any of us can do for ourselves and our world than for each to embark on our own unique spiritual journey within… This revolution in consciousness continues with our children’s generation and those to follow. They grew up knowing conceptually that happiness comes from within, and that by changing ourselves we change the world. We are changing the world and we must continue making it more enlightened so all humans across this earth live side by side in peace.

- Dr. Prudence Farrow Bruns, Dear Prudence: The Story Behind the Song, 2015

This project arose out of a smaller research paper I completed for my History

Practicum, Dr. Louise Newman’s “1968,” in the fall of 2014. The subject of that project was Prudence Farrow Bruns, the woman who inspired the Beatles song “Dear Prudence.” I first became aware of Ms. Bruns while attending her presentation on Transcendental

Meditation about four years ago. When embarking on my senior thesis in Spring 2015, I was rather directionless as far as my topic was concerned. But Bruns’s memoir, Dear

Prudence: The Story Behind the Song, had just been published in June, so I knew Bruns’s memoir was where I had to begin. Bruns’s life story illuminated the profound relationship between psychedelic drugs and new forms of spiritual seeking in the West during the

1960s, which led me to further explore how other popular music artists—in this instance

Pete Townsend—may have expressed their own experiences with newly popularized

“spiritual” drugs and subsequently Indian religion.

Prelude: A Weekend at the Meher Spiritual Center, 2015

Figure 1

The website for the Meher Spiritual Center proclaims that it serves as “Meher Baba’s home in the West,” and that it provides “a spiritual retreat for rest, meditation, and renewal of the spiritual life, for those who love and follow Meher Baba, and those who know of him and want to know more.”1 Although Meher Baba died in 1969, the Center still attracts guests who come for rest and remembrance of Baba.

1 “Meher Baba Spiritual Retreat,” Meher Spiritual Center, accessed January 12, 2016, .

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On November 6, 2015, the wheels of my Honda Civic rolled from the asphalt of

Kings Highway onto the gray dirt parking lot of the Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle

Beach, South Carolina. In my passenger’s seat I had a single backpack filled with a few changes of clothes, some toiletries, my laptop, and two vinyl records: the “rock opera”

Tommy (1969) by an English rock ‘n’ roll band, The Who, and Who Came First (1972) a solo album by Pete Townshend, The Who’s primary songwriter. The next few days were to serve as my “first-time retreat”2 at the Spiritual Center, named for and dedicated to Meher

Baba, the Indian spiritual leader whose influence on Townshend hasn’t yet been well understood, although Baba’s Western following reached its zenith as part of the post- psychedelic religious movements of the 1960s counterculture, in which Townshend played a pivotal role.

My preliminary research had already revealed that by the end of the 1960s, the center was attracting individuals who had once heavily experimented with psychedelic drugs, but had subsequently become disenchanted with the drugs that purportedly took users on spiritual journeys. I was voyaging to Myrtle Beach to explore how the center may have helped to satiate those spiritual yearnings in the post-psychedelic landscape of the late

1960s, and to search for further evidence that the renunciation of drug experimentation had played a significant role in expanding Meher Baba’s Western following.

Thus, the albums weren’t meant to keep me company on a personal retreat, but were my primary motivation for travelling to the Meher Center. Tommy, an allegorical rock opera, tells the story of a spiritual journey, as the title character searches for a cure for his being—literally and metaphorically—deaf, dumb, and blind: a metaphor for his lack of

2 “First-Time Retreat,” Meher Spiritual Center, accessed January 12, 2016, .

iv spiritual perception. Although there is no explicit lyrical allusion to Meher Baba in any of the songs, on the inside of the album sleeve, there is a dedication: The Who credits Meher

Baba as “Avatar”—the Hindu term for a deity’s manifestation in human form.

Townshend’s solo album also has a reference to Baba, this time a memorial to the “Avatar” who had “dropped his body”3 in 1969 (and who Townshend never met). On the album’s cover, there is a photograph of Townshend wearing a button of Baba on his white boiler suit, and on the inside of the album sleeve, there are pictures of the spiritual master discoursing via his own unique rendition of sign language (Baba took a vow of silence beginning in 1925, but communicated his discourses through his own unique rendition of sign language—a few of his close followers were responsible for interpreting his messages and relaying them through speech and writing). Although Townshend became an ardent follower of Meher Baba in 1967 and commissioned the friend responsible for his conversion to Baba discipleship to illustrate all of the album’s artwork, he did not intend

Tommy to be a “proselytizing vehicle for Meher Baba,” but rather to express “spiritual yearnings during… post-psychedelic times.”4

The 1960s counterculture is often remembered as epitomizing the hedonistic mantra of “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll,” but as Townshend’s statement suggests, Tommy reveals another significant narrative of the time. Many members of the counterculture confronted their existential anxieties, along with the perils of drug abuse, by swapping a hedonistic creed for a higher power, often with the assistance of South Asian religious influences. In other words, Tommy’s narrative is partly biographical—as both the title character and

Townshend himself experience alienation and abuse as a child, yet overcome their troubled

3 Followers of Meher Baba often refer to his death as the moment he “dropped his body.” 4 Pete Townshend, Who I Am: A Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 163.

v childhoods and achieve wildly successful careers. The fictional Tommy becomes famous for his pinball wizardry and vulnerable to all of the sensual pleasures that accompany fame, recalling Townshend’s own ascension from a childhood filled with sexual abuse, parental neglect, and bullying to the status of a famous rock musician.

In the rock opera’s story, the title character Tommy yearns for more—a cure for his physical ailments. Tommy’s parents, who are baffled and frustrated by their son’s illness, suggest possible cures for the boy—cures that mock the avenues for healing that were most possible in the West: Christianity and the consumerist excitement of “Christmas,” a psychotherapist (“There’s a Doctor!”), LSD (“The Acid Queen”) and even illicit sex, as a pimp, “The Hawker” tries to sell a woman to Tommy, promising, “She’s got the power to heal you… Every time she starts to lovin,’ she brings eyesight to the blind.”5 All of these efforts prove futile, although the psychotherapist points the boy to a mirror, suggesting that his cure is within himself. However, Tommy misunderstanding the advice, gazes at his own reflection, egotistically surmising that he is his own cure: “I’m Free!” sings Tommy, believing he has extraordinary healing powers and that he has miraculously cured himself.

Thus, Tommy, the pinball wizard, tries to convert his fans to become his spiritual followers, but they reject him as their Messiah, and in the album’s final song, “We’re Not

Gonna Take It,” the pinball wizard is again presented as deaf, dumb and blind.

Yet, in the final verse, a miraculous cure occurs, as Tommy’s ‘inner’ voice once more weeps the leitmotif, “see me, feel me, touch me, heal me”6 to a soft keyboard melody—until an electric guitar pumps life back into him as if it were a defibrillator restoring his spiritual pulse, allowing him to once again hear, speak, and see. The

5 “Eyesight to the Blind (The Hawker),” The Who, Tommy (Decca, 1969). 6 Pete Townshend, Who I Am: A Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 158.

vi thumping of the guitar signals that some divine force has healed Tommy, inspiring him to exclaim: “Listening to you, I get the music! Gazing at you, I get the heat! Following you, I climb the mountain! I get excitement at your feet!”7 Tommy’s physical journey to restored health, a metaphor for Townshend’s own spiritual journey, has involved the rejection of false elixirs, as this allegory insists that Tommy’s eventual spiritual enlightenment relied on some ambiguous external force.

As I discovered, Townshend made multiple pilgrimages to the Meher Spiritual

Center beginning in the early 1970s (after Baba had already died), and the Center even inspired a small fraction of Townshend’s post-Tommy works. The title track of 1978’s Who

Are You by The Who references Townshend’s first walkthrough of the estate (“I know there’s a place you walked, where love falls from the trees”),8 and a 2006 rerelease of Who

Came First includes a piano instrumental that Townshend composed about “Lantern

Cabin,” one of the many cabins that house the center’s guests.

In 2015, the center still sits in “virgin forests,” comprising 500 acres of undeveloped woodlands along the Atlantic coast and featuring a serene lake at the heart of the retreat.9 There is a mystical quality to the estate, perhaps because it provides a bounty of nature in strark contrast to the rest of the overdeveloped tourist hub of Myrtle Beach.

Although a staff member informed me that Townshend had not stayed at the center for a long while, there still exist traces of his affection for the Avatar, but they are visible only to those familiar with his compositions.

7 “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” The Who, Tommy (Decca, 1969). 8 Pete Townshend, Who I Am: A Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 226. 9 “Brief History,” Meher Spiritual Center, accessed March 22 2016, .

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Figure 2

Tommy’s album credits (1969)

The inside covers of Who Came First (1972)

The first thirty minutes of my arrival at the Center involved reading over its

Directives, a code of conduct set forth by Baba that all guests must read before their first- time retreat. Rule A informs visitors: “There is to be no drug activity or involvement with drugs (including marijuana) at Meher Center. Meher Baba has said: ‘Drugs are harmful

viii physically, mentally, and spiritually”—a direct reference to the pamphlet God in a Pill?

Meher Baba on L.S.D. and the High Roads, published in 1966.10 Rule G states, “Please remember that Meher Baba does not wish us to indulge in conversations regarding backbiting, politics or drugs.”11 Although the Center prohibits the possession of alcohol and all other illicit drugs, Rule A is especially significant as it is directly relays Baba’s argument about drug use for those who are spiritually seeking—an argument that was originally a response to LSD’s popularization as a spiritual vehicle. Nearly 50 years after

Meher Baba first articulated this Directive, his anti-drug stance is still central to those who follow his teachings.

During my second day at the retreat, I inquired about Lantern, and my suspicions regarding its connection to The Who guitarist were confirmed. Townshend stayed in the modest beige cabin whenever he visited, and a call to the groundskeeper—coupled by a serendipitous stroke of luck—permitted me to tour the cabin on the afternoon of my final day in Myrtle Beach. As new visitors were to inhabit the cabin within a few hours, I hastily stopped by my own cabin to retrieve my iPhone and earphones before trekking to Lantern

Cabin.

With the soft piano notes of “Lantern Cabin” seeping into my ears, I walked throughout the small lodge. A tea kettle rested on the stove, a framed photograph of Baba holding a goat hung on the walls of the foyer, and two wicker chairs faced sliding glass doors overlooking the lake. The music ushered in a state of reflection, encouraging me to

10 Meher Spiritual Center, Directives and Procedures for Meher Center Guests (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, n.d.). 11 Ibid.

ix ponder my own spiritual journey. Existential meanderings now at a halt, I took a mirror-pic of myself inside the cabin, in the spirit of a true Millennial.

Introduction: Historiography of Music and Indian Spirituality; Music Criticism and

Musicological Evaluations of Tommy

This project utilizes The Who’s rock opera Tommy (1969) to illustrate the ways in which spiritual seekers navigated the post-psychedelic era of the late 1960s. Tommy tells the narrative of a “deaf, dumb, and blind” boy’s spiritual journey, which is a semi- biographical account of the group’s primary songwriter, Pete Townshend. This project relies on lyrical analysis to narrate a religious history of post-World War II America and

Britain, primarily aided by Townshend’s memoirs. By portraying the history of post- psychedelic religious movements through Townshend’s own involvement with the Indian spiritual master Meher Baba, I demonstrate that countercultural members did not use psychedelic drugs merely for recreational purposes. Rather, psychedelic drugs opened a door for novel approaches to spirituality in the West. Although the drugs heavily influenced the spiritual outlook of 1960s counterculture members, they did not always provide a sustainable means for helping individuals achieve enlightenment.

As psychedelic drugs lost their religious aura, spiritually seeking counterculture members embraced Indian religious influences to continue their spiritual quests. While

Townshend’s own experiences with LSD influenced a portion of Tommy’s anti-drug message, this paper will explore how Townshend’s relationship with Meher Baba had an even larger influence on Townshend’s refuting of psychedelic drugs as spiritual vehicles.

This project will also seek to understand Meher Baba’s countercultural following in relation to other South Asian-influenced religious movements of the 1960s, specifically those that have maintained a wide visibility as a result of their affiliation with another group of British rockers—The Beatles.

Philip Goldberg’s American Veda: How Indian Spirituality Changed the West relays many of the historical and cultural influences of the psychedelic period and the subsequent fascination with Indian religions in the late 1960s. However, Goldberg places a heavy emphasis on the influence of The Beatles, suggesting that in regards to Western religion, their 1968 voyage to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram in India “may have been the most momentous spiritual retreat since Jesus spent those 40 days in the wilderness.”12

Goldberg explores the 1960s countercultural fascination with Indian religious influences as a result of the spiritual shortcomings of psychedelic drugs, which is exhibited by The

Beatles’ 1968 trip to Rishikesh, India.13 However, in focusing primarily on the spiritual pursuits of The Beatles, Goldberg leaves out Meher Baba’s influence during the counterculture, and thus his influence on Townshend, Tommy, and other 1960s spiritual seekers. Although Baba did not have as much exposure during the late 1960s as

Maharishi, he is still a prominent component to this religious history. After all, almost 7

12 Philip Goldberg, American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation: How Indian Spirituality Changed the West (Bantam Doubleday Dell, 2010), 7. 13 Paul Saltzman, The Beatles in Rishikesh (New York: Viking Studio, 2000), 98. Saltzman, whose 1968 pilgrimage to Maharishi’s ashram coincided with that of The Beatles, recalls conversations he had with The Beatles (specifically George Harrison) regarding Indian spirituality and drugs. Saltzman relays that “as [The Beatles] delved deeper into ‘spiritual’ questions they found drugs less capable of helping them find the inner answers they were looking for.” He explains that the band’s earlier involvement with marijuana, hashish, and LSD for recreation and “exploring consciousness” had brought about positive results, but that “In time, though, drugs became somewhat of a dead end”—Saltzman agreed with this sentiment, as he personally experienced the same “spiritual journey” in which psychedelic drugs ignited a deeper desire for seeking answers within Indian religious traditions.

months after his death, a group of Baba’s followers represented the Avatar and his

teachings at a tent dedicated to Meher Baba at 1969’s famous Woodstock Festival.14

In The Who on Record: A Critical History, 1963-1998, John Atkins reminds

music fans that the meaning of Tommy is dependent on one’s unique interpretation. As a

music critic, Atkins adheres to “the premise of [the] intentional fallacy school of literary

criticism, which disassociates the work entirely from its creator and his or her conscious

pronouncements upon it.”15 Yet when dissecting the plot of Tommy, Atkins assesses the

album’s allegorical meaning in relation to Townshend’s profound relationship toward his

spiritual master, Meher Baba. As Atkins explains, following Baba “jolted Pete uneasily

out of a habit (smoking dope and taking hallucinogenics),” although “Baba didn’t,

however, cause Pete to abstain from alcohol or nicotine.”16 Nonetheless Atkins connects

Baba’s anti-drug sentiments to Townshend’s renunciation of marijuana and

hallucinogens, but does not mention how Baba’s specific opposition to using psychedelic

drugs as spiritual tools manifested itself within Tommy. Apart from this omission, he

accurately assesses that “the themes of Tommy do not directly reflect Baba’s

philosophy.”17 However, he does explain that while Baba’s teachings are not explicitly

translated into the work, “the inner breakthrough experienced by Tommy is comparable

to feelings gained by one coming to Baba for the first time.”18

14 “Other Items 1,” Meher Baba Travels, accessed April 4, 2016, http://www.meherbabatravels.com/other-items-1/. 15 John Atkins, The Who on Record: A Critical History, 1963-1998 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2000), 125. 16 Ibid., 102. 17 Ibid., 122. 18 Ibid., 122-123.

Like Atkins, musicologist David Nicholls also suggests that Tommy’s narrative is ambiguous and subject to the interpretation of individual listeners. In “Virtual Opera, or

Opera Between the Ears,” Nicholls draws comparisons between the “rock opera” and operas of the 18th and 19th centuries, yet explains that “virtual operas” do not require the same physicality of a classic opera. Instead of the opera being performed onstage,

Nicholls explores the idea of the mind as the stage for virtual operas to be acted out— complete with multiple characters and exchanges in dialogue. In his analysis of Tommy’s plot, Nicholls emphasizes the boy’s need for “physical and emotional affection”19 from his parents, which he was lacking in his childhood and which purportedly contributed to his becoming deaf, dumb, and blind. Nicholls’s analysis of the boy’s predicament correctly focuses on Tommy’s early childhood relationship with his parents who were experiencing the end of a war. (In his 2012 memoir, Townshend explains that his childhood observations of his own parents’ marital turmoil contributed greatly to his adolescent confusion). Although Nicholls connects the protagonist’s spiritual journey with that of Townshend’s discovery of Meher Baba (noting, “Arguably, Tommy is in part a semi-autobiogrpahical statement by Townshend”),20 he too does not explore Meher

Baba’s philosophy and teachings.21

19 David Nichols, “Virtual Opera, or Opera between the Ears,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 129, no. 1 (January 1, 2004): 113. 20 Ibid., 106. 21 While music criticism allows for ambiguity and open-ended analysis of the allegorical qualities of the artwork under interpretation, some scholars have provided psychoanalytic assessments of the album’s themes. One such example is psychologist Jerome J. Tobacyk’s “The Rock Opera Tommy by The Who Illustrates the Psychodynamics of Conversion Hysteria,” which makes no references to the album’s Avatar, Meher Baba. However, Tobacyk focuses on the “psychoanalytic concepts” inherent in conversion hysteria, which he argues are demonstrated throughout the album. Many of the concepts

This project will seek to interpret Tommy’s spiritual narrative in relation to Meher

Baba’s discourses, as well as other South Asian-influenced religious expressions that became popular in the counterculture of the late 1960s, specifically Transcendental

Meditation (TM), and International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON).

Although these two movements vary in beliefs and practices, they both attracted spiritual seekers during the post-psychedelic era. Therefore, this project will argue that the character Tommy does not solely represent Townshend, but also encompasses the experiences of other spiritual seekers who sought to expand their consciousness through psychedelic drugs, yet ultimately became disenchanted with these drugs and turned to

Indian religious practices to continue their spiritual journeys. Analyzing Tommy in its historical and cultural context thus offers listeners a completely new perspective on the character Tommy, Pete Townshend, and the dissenting religious views of the 1960s counterculture. Townshend’s 2012 memoir, Who I Am, and The Who’s 2014 documentary Sensation: The Story of The Who’s Tommy will both be utilized to analyze the allegorical themes of Tommy.

Exploring the psychological landscapes of post-World War II Britain and

America will provide a setting for the popularization of psychedelic drugs and how they became viewed as spiritual catalysts, and Townshend’s own spiritual narrative will be utilized to demonstrate how individuals navigated this new psychedelically-induced spiritual period. Although hallucinogens introduced a new era of existential perspectives and provided a relatively simple method for seeking enlightenment, they did not necessarily offer a sustainable means for individuals to continue their spiritual

Tobacyk mentions are also exhibited throughout Townshend’s own relationship with Meher Baba, as recorded in his memoir.

6 explorations—many users renounced these drugs after subjecting themselves to traumatic trips or experiencing other limitations of the drugs. Yet spiritual seeking was not halted, but oftentimes redirected through other avenues. A popular alternative to the psychedelic experience involved South Asian-influenced religions, especially as religious leaders— such as Meher Baba—argued against the use of hallucinogens for spiritual objectives and suggested that their religion could serve as a more authentic means to attain enlightenment. Meher Baba’s 1966 anti-drug pamphlet, God in a Pill?, will be utilized to relay his anti-psychedelic drug sentiments. This pamphlet is reproduced in the 2003 compilation book A Mirage Will Never Quench Your Thirst: A Source of Wisdom about

Drugs, which also relays the testimonies of Western individuals who spread the God in a

Pill? message to other spiritual seekers during the 1960s.

Chapter 1: Tommy as the “Normal Post-War Child”: Navigating the Aftermath of World War II and the Psychedelic Era

In a documentary about Tommy’s conception published in 2014, Pete Townshend explains that the character Tommy is born toward the end of a war, to a mother who is uncertain if her son’s father will return from combat.22 Townshend also notes that he himself was born toward the end of a war: “I am a war baby though I have never known war, born into a family of musicians on 19 May 1945, just two weeks after VE Day and four months before VJ Day bring the Second World War to an end.”23 Even though he did not experience the catastrophes of the Second World War, the shadows of that war eerily shaded his childhood in West London. Just as England had to rebuild physical structures destroyed by Germany’s bombings and blitzes, the psyche of a deflated populace had to be reconstructed as well. Townshend explains, “In 1945 popular music had a serious purpose: to defy post-war depression and revitalize the romantic and hopeful aspirations of an exhausted people.”24 The rocker’s father, who was a Swing musician, introduced the young Townshend to music’s capacity to uplift people in times of despair and rebuilding. As his own music career took off in the mid-1960s, Townshend grappled with the purpose of his generation’s music and the power of cultural influence exercised by individual musicians, such as Jimi Hendrix and members of The Beatles.

22 The Who, Sensation: The Story of the Who’s Tommy (Eagle Rock Entertainment, 2014). A friend of Townshend notes that the timeline for Tommy’s birth is toward the end of World War I by dating his birth as 1918, however, Townshend was born during the final weeks of World War II. As the album is biographical of Townshend, and because Tommy comes of age during the psychedelic period (one of his possible cures comes in the form of LSD), Tommy is arguably a post-World War II child, i.e. representative of Townshend’s generation. 23 Pete Townshend, Who I Am: A Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 6. 24 Ibid., 4.

Townshend relays that he felt intimidated by the shamanistic qualities of

Hendrix’s psychedelic guitar mastery and mildly confused about how other musicians, such as Paul McCartney, became leading spokespersons for the new drug craze (e.g. the popularization of recreational marijuana). He explains, “psychedelia, drugs, politics and spiritual stuff were getting knitted together all of a sudden, and I did my best to keep up.”25 Townshend found his place in this new countercultural fabric by addressing the distress of his English peers through his music, and much like his “British Invasion” counterparts (most notably The Beatles and The Rolling Stones), Townshend found his own unique way to express the shifting tides of the psychedelic period that began in the

United States.

On a global scale, western societies had a lot of confusion to confront. The introduction of nuclear warfare during World War II demonstrated that the world—and therefore life itself—was more fragile than it had ever been. In 1964, as a late teenager,

Townshend understood that this perception of reality pervaded the psyche of the postwar population, and he sought to address this theme through his music:

I wasn’t trying to play beautiful music, I was confronting my audience with the

awful, visceral sound of what we all knew was the single absolute of our frail

existence—one day an aeroplane would carry the bomb that would destroy us all

in a flash. The Cuban Crisis less than two years before had proved that.26

While much of Europe was recovering from the trauma of Germany’s invasions, the

United States was also confronting the exacerbated threat of Communism and Red Scare anxieties. Postwar children were thus navigating a confusing era, despite not yet having

25 Ibid., 109. 26 Ibid., 62.

9 lived through wartimes. As Townshend conceived the idea for a child coming of age in these circumstances, he notes his inclination toward creating “this viable boy that [his] audience, Who fans, could occupy, get inside him, and then they become the hero.”27

Speaking further of Tommy’s protagonist, Townshend explains, “I simply wanted to demonstrate that my hero was, by own measure, a normal post-war child.”28 During the album’s production, Who manager Kit Lambert recognized Tommy as “tightly biographical”29 of Townshend’s own life. Within the narrative of Tommy, it is safe to assume that Townshend is in essence the pinball wizard. Toward the end of the album’s production, Townshend met with Nik Cohn, a friend and record critic. Cohn originally gave the album 4 stars, allegedly complaining about the album’s protagonist being a guru. Townshend explained to Cohn: “Well it’s not really about a guru. No, it’s not a guru... He’s somebody who can feel vibrations, and music, and it turns into a spiritual language that he understands and that other people around him can see.”30 This was apparently even more detestable to Cohn, whom Townshend was especially eager to please. Pleading with the critic, Townshend suggested Tommy could be a pinball wizard, as the pair frequently played pinball together in London arcades. This suggestion earned

Tommy 5 stars… “and an extra ball.”31

27 The Who, Sensation: The Story of the Who’s Tommy (Eagle Rock Entertainment, 2014). 28 Pete Townshend, Who I Am: A Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 159. 29 Ibid., 157. Townshend relates the biographical nature of Tommy to the 1966 Who song ‘A Quick One, While He’s Away,’ which is “[Townshend’s] own story retold as a fairy tale.” He also notes that “Being aware of [Tommy’s] biographical aspect, Kit shrewdly brought it to [Townshend’s] attention whenever [his] creative process began to meander.” 30 The Who, Sensation: The Story of the Who’s Tommy (Eagle Rock Entertainment, 2014). 31 Pete Townshend, Who I Am: A Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 163.

To further explore the sociocultural climate of postwar Britain, I conducted an oral history interview with my English cabin mate at the Meher Spiritual Center, Fiona

Jones, who was visiting the Center out of her own existential curiosities (and because many of her friends back in England are devout Baba followers). Two years younger than Townshend, she also spent her childhood in post-World War II London. Jones notes that during the postwar period there was full employment in England, “so you knew if you kept your head down you’d have a job for life, that [the] next year you could afford a car, and a year after that you could afford a better house… you had a future.”32 According to Jones, this sense of economic security provided her generation with something to rebel against. Jones, now a psychiatrist in England, explains that postwar children “were born into a situation where people didn’t have ‘anxiety’… they ‘suffered from their nerves.’”33

The general lack of psychological understanding in these postwar landscapes—coupled with a desire to forsake the status quo—set a dangerous stage for the psychedelic period, which Jones notes gained popularity among her generation because it offered vibrancy and a sense of personal freedom in contrast to the “very boring, very stale”34 environment of the previous generation that was merely eager to get over the war years.

Although the psychedelic period is popularly remembered as the counterculture’s colorful contrast to such stale and socially conforming times, there was also a profound spiritual aspect to this era. For many, psychedelic drugs were not merely recreational drugs, but rather they became a temporary means to fulfill spiritual yearnings. Former

Harvard psychologist, Timothy Leary, served as the primary cultural figure of this

32 Fiona Jones, conversation with the author, 7 Nov. 2015. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid.

11 psychedelic period by touting that LSD contained spiritual qualities and could therefore be used to expand consciousness. This assertion caused the drug culture to evolve into a religion of its own, which gradually shifted the way postwar children came to view the universe and their place in it.

Tommy’s ninth song features a gypsy, “The Acid Queen,” tempting Tommy’s parents with a possible miracle cure in the form of acid, a colloquialism from the time that refers to LSD: “If your child aint all he should be now, this girl will put him right.

I’ll show him what he could be now. Just give me one night.”35 Although there are obvious sexual undertones, the gypsy is dually serving as a sinister missionary of the

“psychedelic gospel”— Timothy Leary’s notion that psychedelic drugs offered a key to spiritual enlightenment.36 Leary was adamant about the spiritual possibilities of LSD; he established the League for Spiritual Discovery in September 1966 to argue for the legalization of LSD for spiritual purposes, and he wrote The Psychedelic Experience with his Harvard colleagues Richard Alpert and Ram Das to validate the spiritual nature of the drug. Among other psychedelic literatures, Leary also released a pamphlet titled “Start

Your Own Religion” in 1967, intended to explain how individuals may explore spirituality through creating their own brand of religion. According to Leary’s discourses,

LSD was to serve as the sacrament of these new faiths. His works influenced a multitude of drug cults that arose in the mid-1960s, but the impact of LSD and the use of other hallucinogens—such as peyote (mescaline), and “magic mushrooms” (psilocybin)—

35 “The Acid Queen” The Who, Tommy (Decca, 1969). 36 Robert C. Fuller, “Drugs and the Baby Boomers’ Quest for Metaphysical Illumination,” Nova Religio 3, no. 1 (October 1999): 105.

12 encouraged a spiritual awakening that went beyond the creation of psychedelically centered religious movements.37

To demonstrate the influence of “spiritual” psychedelic drugs on the shifting metaphysical views of the 1960s counterculture, Robert C. Fuller, professor of

Philosophy and Religious Studies, expands the meaning of the psychedelic gospel. Fuller explains that Leary’s slogan to “turn on, tune in, [and] drop out” spawned a new countercultural perception of spiritual matters, which he refers to as the “‘seeker’ style of baby boomer religiosity.” 38 In his article “Drugs and the Baby Boomers’ Quest for

Metaphysical Illumination,” Fuller argues that postwar baby boomers in America sought forms of religious expressions that deviated from the established Western dogmatic traditions, namely Christianity, because psychedelic drugs introduced a novel approach to spiritual matters. He explains that psychedelic drugs served to reinvigorate individuals’ quests for spirituality, while simultaneously demonstrating that the paths to blissful spiritual experiences were pluralistic. Such an introduction led many individuals to seek other avenues to enlightenment. Prudence Farrow Bruns, for whom The Beatles composed the song “Dear Prudence” in 1968, serves as a prime example of a post-World

War II seeker whose spiritual journey was guided by psychedelic drugs.

After experiencing a peyote-induced high in 1964, the teenaged Bruns—who was raised a devout Catholic—rediscovered her desire to devote herself to God. She explains,

“I was awed and felt safe with peyote,”39 the cactus that yields mescaline.40 Bruns notes

37 Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1985), 237. 38 Ibid., 102. 39 Bruns, Prudence Farrow, Dear Prudence: The Story Behind the Song (North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015), 139.

13 that this experience “reinforced what was most important to [her]—the quest for spirituality and truth.” She recognized the sacredness of the drug, and that it was not something she could abuse anytime she sought a “quick buzz.”41 Although her peyote experience encouraged her to further her spiritual pursuits, she did not seek God through her Catholic roots. Rather, much like the American Beatnik generation looked toward

Buddhism, Bruns turned to Indian religious influences to satiate her yearnings, although at this point in her journey, she had yet to renounce psychedelic drugs altogether.

This new era of spiritual seeking also took place in England at this time, as cultural influences flowed across the Atlantic (such as the “British Invasion” in the

United States, and subsequently the rise of psychedelic drug experimentation within the

English counterculture). Popular music served as a medium to popularize psychedelic drugs, e.g. The Beatles’ 1967 LSD anthem “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” which features the character Lucy on a vibrant acid trip—according to classic rock mythology.

However, popular culture did not always portray hallucinogens in a positive, blissfully mystic manner: “The Acid Queen” refuted the use of psychedelic drugs, specifically in regards to spiritual seeking.

“The Acid Queen” is Tommy’s sole anti-psychedelic song, and it relays a monologue by a gypsy who urges Tommy to “Gather your wits and hold on fast, your

40 Mescaline was the compound that inspired Aldous Huxley’s book Doors of Perception (1954), which relayed his first experimentation with mescaline. Huxley’s work influenced the Beatnik generation, the counterculture that preceded that of 1960s “hippies.” The cultural significance of Huxley in regards to the 1960s counterculture is that American psychedelic rock band The Doors borrowed their name from his work, and he was also featured as one of the figures on the cover of The Beatles’ “trippy” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). 41 Bruns, Prudence Farrow, Dear Prudence: The Story Behind the Song (North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015), 139.

14 mind must learn to roam.”42 The gypsy’s temptation falls in line with Leary’s sermon to

“turn on” and “tune in” to spiritual enlightenment through psychedelic drug use, and

Townshend’s inclusion of the song within the context of Tommy’s spiritual journey demonstrates the significance of Leary’s rhetoric within the counterculture’s quest for enlightenment.43

While none of Townshend’s music encourages the use of LSD, he does credit his psychedelic drug use for shifting his metaphysical perspectives. Townshend took his first acid trip in 1966 after hearing rumors swirling about a new drug that promised to take its users on awe-inspiring journeys. He notes that during his first acid trip, he spent almost five hours in a childlike state, “rediscovering everything [he] took for granted: stars, moon, trees, colours…”44 The Who guitarist only took a total of four acid trips prior to Tommy—yet much like peyote revitalized Bruns’ spiritual sense, Townshend notes that his perception of the world was arguably positively affected by his initial experiences:

Trees bare of their lives in winter, for example, began to look like those

medical student mock-ups of the vein and artery network inside the human

lung; in effect I suddenly saw trees for what they really are: planetary

42 “The Acid Queen” The Who, Tommy (Decca, 1969). 43 Townshend composed other works related to Leary’s notion of enlightenment through hallucinogens in the years following the album’s release. One of Townshend’s first post- Tommy compositions includes the song “The Seeker,” which is featured on the The Who’s compilation album, Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy (1971), and exhibits this newfound style of spiritual searching. “The Seeker” can also be found on the 2006 rerelease of the Baba-devotional album Who Came First, and its alternate lyrics speak directly to the influence of 1960s countercultural (and spiritual) icons such as fellow psychedelic gospel missionaries Timothy Leary and The Beatles: “Looked under chairs, looked under tables. Tried to find the key, to fifty million fables. They call me the seeker; I’ve been searching low and high…. Asked Bobby Dylan, I asked the Beatles. Asked Timothy Leary, but he didn’t help me either. They call me ‘the seeker.’” 44 Peter Townshend, Who I Am: A Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 105.

breathing machines. I wasn’t a tripped-out freak, but the way I looked at things

was evolving.45

Although Townshend’s first few trips altered his perspectives in an enriching way, his fourth trip was absolutely Hellish. As a result, Townshend quickly observed that psychedelic drugs could not provide a magical anecdote to expanding consciousness and satiating spiritual yearnings.

Despite Leary’s assertion that LSD and other hallucinogens could be successfully incorporated into society as spiritual vehicles, the psychedelic drug culture spawned a vast array of social problems that starkly contrasted the peace and love ethos that the counterculture sought to embody. As I explain in the next chapter, psychedelic drugs also lost their perceived spiritual nature as many consumed these drugs recreationally and without any grandiose spiritual purpose. Such use subjected many users to traumatic trips, oftentimes causing individuals to become irrationally paranoid as their perceptions of reality became distorted. Similarly, as many postwar children reached the end of their adolescence, many felt that continuing their psychedelic drug use hindered their transition into a productive and stable adulthood.

Although psychedelic drugs introduced a new pathway to mystical experiences for Western society, Leary’s quixotic psychedelic gospel failed to predict the peril that hallucinogenic drugs could wreak on the counterculture’s populace. During 1967, the so- called Summer of Love in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury community, “drop out” youth demonstrated the many pitfalls of rampant psychedelic drug use. Young countercultural idealists believed that the Haight would serve as a peaceful community inhabited by

45 Ibid., 109.

16 those who were disenchanted with mainstream American society and seeking to create a

“drop out” utopia. Instead, the community became a dystopia of crime, with many individuals subjecting themselves to bad hallucinogenic trips. Stating that the community had become an “acid ghetto”46 by 1967, Acid Dreams authors Martin A. Lee and Bruce

Shlain highlight many of the disastrous results of the widespread abuse of hallucinogens, articulating that “the hippie community had degenerated to the point where it merely offered a different setting for the same destructive drives omnipresent in straight society.”47

The authors explain that such “destructive drives” involved a wide range of crime including sexual assault against individuals incapacitated by drugs, and similarly, the malicious manipulation of “easy-prey LSD takers” executed by individuals such as

Charles Manson. Perhaps the most pervasive predicament that plagued the hippie colony was bad acid trips, which necessitated the instillation of health clinics where individuals could seek solace during moments of tripped-out desperation.48 Although Lee and Shlain argue that the increase in bad trips was a direct result of the Haight’s hectic environment, individuals elsewhere also experienced traumatic trips, causing many counterculture members to become disenchanted with psychedelic drugs.

While the “The Acid Queen” demonstrates the temptations of Leary’s psychedelic gospel, it is also reminiscent of Townshend’s sole “bad trip,” which he notes was “the most disturbing experience [he] had ever had.”49 The song relays Tommy succumbing to the temptation of LSD as a spiritual vehicle at the behest of a gypsy, who

46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., 186. 48 Ibid., 186-187. 49 Peter Townshend, Who I Am: A Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 148.

17 personifies the psychedelic gospel. Listeners can detect that Tommy is not blissfully expanding his consciousness, but has rather fallen victim to a bad trip. The villainous gypsy observes, “His head it shakes, his fingers clutch. Watch his body writhe!”50 In the last line of the song, Townshend uses the gypsy to summarize his opinion of the psychedelic gospel: “I’m the gypsy—I’m guaranteed to break your little heart.”51

Townshend was not the only counterculture member to become disillusioned with psychedelic drugs through bad trips and embrace spirituality through Indian religious influences. Adi Karta, a Hare Krishna who currently distributes ISKCON literature on the

University of Florida campus, explained that he had some positive LSD experiences, such as trips he took in the countryside of his native England during his late adolescence. But by the time Karta joined the Hare Krishna’s London following in 1974,52 he was experiencing a lot of anxiety in his life, yet he no longer looked to drugs: “I was sick of drugs at that point. I just had too many bad trips.” Speaking of the purported spiritual components of LSD, Karta relays, “It had a spiritual horror, and it wasn’t really spiritual.”53

Another spiritual seeker, Prudence Farrow Bruns, also experienced a disastrous

LSD trip—one that caused her to swear off drugs altogether. Bruns was apprehensive about trying LSD, as many friends relayed their bad trips to her, and because she already occasionally suffered negative psychological effects from marijuana. Nevertheless, she felt pressured by her friends and Leary’s consciousness-expansion rhetoric to try the

50 The Who, “The Acid Queen,” Tommy (Decca, 1969). 51 Ibid. 52 When Karta first sought solace in the Hare Krishna movement, he moved into the London ISKCON temple donated by Beatle George Harrison. 53 Adi Karta, conversation with the author, 19 Jan. 2016.

18 drug, noting that it seemed “as if it were [her] duty to expand [her] mind and evolve.”54

Bruns took her first trip in 1965, which she explains thrust her to the very gates of Hell, transforming her into evil: “I was becoming one with the evil, the devil… by choosing to take LSD, I had chosen to become one with the acid and give myself to it.”55 Bruns explains that she encountered other mythological monsters during this trip, such as

Medusa, and she was terrified that she would be stuck in this warped world forever.

While not everyone who experimented with psychedelic drugs experienced such disturbing trips, the luster of the psychedelic gospel was wearing off as individuals underwent deeply disturbing psychological states. Similarly, as postwar children reached the threshold of young adulthood, many saw continuing their psychedelic drug experimentations as a hindrance to maturity.

Townshend recalls feeling a need to “stop fucking around,” as he and The Who embarked on the Tommy project. He speaks for the entire band by explaining, “we had to stop taking acid, stop pretending that we could have sex with whoever we wanted to have sex with, and just get serious about life.”56 While other band members did not necessarily halt their behaviors as Townshend did, he notes that other followers of Meher Baba—a circle of friends he met in California through his friend Rick Chapman—had a similar epiphany: “they’d lived hard, done drugs, had lots of sex and decided to hunker down and follow Meher Baba.”57 Similarly, an interview with an inhabitant of the Meher Spiritual

Center in 1970 demonstrates that other psychedelic users came to view their drug use as a

54 Bruns, Prudence Farrow, Dear Prudence: The Story Behind the Song (North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015), 151. 55 Ibid., 153. 56 The Who, Sensation: The Story of the Who’s Tommy (Eagle Rock Entertainment, 2014). 57 Peter Townshend, Who I Am: A Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 148.

19 hindrance to living a purposeful life. The interviewee notes that he and his circle of friends collectively “had an idea of finding some paradise in the woods or some tropical island and just staying in this paradise forever eating acid and smoking grass… We thought that just doing what we were doing, taking acid, making love… was really the free life.”58 He explains that eventually this sort of existence made him feel like a parasite, and he concluded that he initially began this lifestyle because he feared transitioning into the seemingly routinized working life of adulthood.59

As many counterculture members became wary of the psychedelic gospel, South

Asian religious practices presented new alternatives to achieving enlightenment.

Religious movements such as Meher Baba’s following, International Society for Krishna

Consciousness, and Transcendental Meditation, became widely popular among seekers as spiritual leaders specifically targeted the psychedelic drug culture, refuting Timothy

Leary’s assertions that LSD could serve as a religious sacrament. Meher Baba was the primary spiritual leader to offer this assessment, and some of his newly converted

Western followers encouraged other seekers to view the psychedelic gospel in a similar manner. The following chapter will demonstrate the impact of Baba’s message on the

West, while also exploring other South Asian responses to the psychedelic gospel.

58 Thomas Robbins and Dick Anthony, “Getting Straight with Meher Baba: A Study of Mysticism, Drug Rehabilitation and Postadolescent Role Conflict,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (1972): 129. 59 Robbins and Anthony’s article “Getting Straight with Meher Baba: A Study of Mysticism, Drug Rehabilitation and Postadolescent Role Conflict” details how individuals who were preoccupied with psychedelic drugs transitioned from the drug culture to more socially conforming work roles through the assistance of Meher Baba’s teachings.

Chapter 2: Rejecting the Psychedelic (and Christian) Gospel: Western Responses to South Asian Religious Movements

In his 1969 article “Eastern Mysticism and the Resocialization of Drug Users,” sociologist Thomas Robbins notes, “Until about 1966, [Baba’s] American following remained small and predominantly elderly.”60 Robbins, who extensively studied new religious movements of this period and researched Baba’s American following as a participant observer, explains how a shift in discipleship occurred in the late 1960s: “In the last three years, an interest in Meher Baba has developed on the part of American

‘hippies,’” and that “much of it is in connection with his opposition to the use of psychedelic drugs.”61 Robbins relays his research findings in this article after spending over a year as a participant observer of Meher Baba’s following in the Carolinas—he attended weekly meetings at the Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Baba group as well as two months at the Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Robbins notes that a group of spiritual seekers who became disillusioned with psychedelic drugs created the Chapel Hill group in the spring of 1967, not long after Townshend’s own introduction to the Avatar. Robbins believed that the “Baba cult” was specifically recruited from the drug culture—a claim that seems credible as the Avatar released specific anti-psychedelic drug literature, such as the previously mentioned God in a Pill? Meher Baba on L.S.D. and The High Roads, published in 1966.

In his pamphlet, Meher Baba was blatant about rejecting the spiritual properties of psychedelic drugs: “No drug, whatever its great promise, can help one to attain the spiritual goal. There is no short-cut to the goal except through the grace of the Perfect

60 Thomas Robbins, “Eastern Mysticism and the Resocialization of Drug Users: The Meher Baba Cult,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 8, no. 2 (1969): 311. 61 Ibid.

Master, and drugs, LSD more than others, give only a semblance of ‘spiritual experience,’ a glimpse of a false Reality.”62 Baba’s discourse resonated with many seekers who used hallucinogens in their spiritual pursuits, and some Westerners took to spreading his message as a response to the popularization of psychedelic drugs.

The 2003 compilation booklet A Mirage Will Never Quench Your Thirst: A

Source of Wisdom About Drugs features a foreword by three such individuals, all who became disciples of Meher Baba in the mid-1960s. These three young men, each attending college in the Boston area, categorized themselves as spiritual seekers. The men—Allan Cohen, Robert Dreyfuss, and Rick Chapman—were also experimenting with drugs ranging from marijuana to LSD. Once coming across Baba’s message regarding psychedelic drugs, the men took to spreading his discourse.

Rick Chapman was a consultant of drug research at the University of California at

Berkeley in the late 1960s. A 1968 Kingston, New York, newspaper article titled “Two

Will Speak On Meher Baba” advertises an event in which Chapman and another Baba follower were to discuss the Avatar and his discourses at a program held in Woodstock,

New York. The article notes that Chapman was to specifically speak on Meher Baba’s statements regarding “existence, the drug question, real mysticism, war, [and] the evolution of consciousness.”63 In his 2003 forward featured in A Mirage Will Never

Quench Your Thirst, he explains that Baba’s message regarding drugs were likely “meant for seekers who know that they do not know everything and might value illumination on the subject from one who knows and whose sole interest is our true well-being,

62 Lauren Weichberger and Laura Smith, A Mirage Will Never Quench Your Thirst: A Source of Wisdom About Drugs (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: Sheriar Foundation, 2003), 31. 63 “Two Will Speak On Meher Baba,” The Kingston Daily Freeman, March 27, 1968.

22 happiness, and spiritual growth.”64 Through Chapman’s role as a messenger of Baba’s anti-drug rhetoric, it is evident that Baba specifically spoke to spiritual seekers who may have become disenchanted with the psychedelic gospel. It is also apparent that Chapman played a central part in spreading this message in the late 1960s and early 1970s—

Townshend mentions him in his 1970 Rolling Stone article, “In Love With Meher

Baba,”65 as well as on the back sleeve of Who Came First, where he provides his listeners with an address to Chapman’s information center and encourages, “Get your information from him.”66

Baba’s other Western disciple, Allan Cohen, fondly recalls: “I was one of the many who were lucky enough to hear Meher Baba’s wake-up call about drugs and spirituality,” and that he and others responsible for spreading Baba’s anti-psychedelic message “were privileged to see how these clear and cogent statements of simple truth opened minds and hearts not only to Divine Wisdom but also to Divine Love.”67

Townshend himself spread this message in the November 26, 1970 Rolling Stone cover story, “In Love with Meher Baba.”

In the article, Townshend relays how he came to hear of Meher Baba, and more importantly, how he came to view drugs once he became familiar with Baba’s stance on psychedelic drugs. He begins his first subsection, “My Last Dope Smoking Days,” by reiterating Baba’s key phrase from 1966’s God in a Pill?: “Drugs are harmful mentally,

64 Weichberger, Laurent and Laura Smith, A Mirage Will Never Quench Your Thirst: A Source of Wisdom About Drugs (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: Sheriar Foundation, 2003), x. 65 Pete Townshend, “In Love with Meher Baba,” Rolling Stone, November 26, 1970: 25-29. 66 Pete Townshend, Who Came First (MCA Records, 1972). 67 Ibid., xvi.

23 spiritually and physically.”68 Townshend demonstrates how much the message resonated with him by explaining, “I repeat these words parrot fashion, not knowing honestly whether I would have said it myself had Baba not said it first.”69 Although Townshend notes he smoked an exorbitant amount of marijuana in his late teens, he never viewed his use as a problem. He indulges in the nostalgia of all the time he spent high from smoking marijuana, yet explains his spiritual awakening allows him to experience this sort of feeling all the time. And while Townshend doesn’t delve too deeply into Baba’s anti-LSD rhetoric, he relays, “Baba did not even concede that an acid high was even a miniscule part of the high that he himself enjoys as a Perfect being.”70 Townshend’s article demonstrates how effective Meher Baba’s anti-psychedelic rhetoric was during the post- psychedelic era, and how many counterculture members came to reject the psychedelic gospel by adopting the Avatar’s stance. While Baba targeted the psychedelic scene by arguing against the spiritual qualities of hallucinogens, ISKCON advertised that individuals could experience the psychedelic gospel through their religious activities.

“STAY HIGH FOREVER: No More Coming Down… Practice Krishna

Consciousness,” an excerpt from a 1969 Back to Godhead Magazine exclaims.71 The advertisement illustrates ISKCON’s specific agenda for young spiritual seekers who had likely faced adversity as a result of the psychedelic craze: “Bhaktivedanta is in the bonafide line of Krishna’s disciplic succession. He has especially come to [America] to

68 Readers may recall Baba’s stance against drugs—specifically psychedelic drugs—from the first rule he dictated to guests at the Meher Spiritual Center, which prohibits center guests from using drugs on site. Even in 2015, this anti-drug ethos was central to the spiritual center dedicated as Meher Baba’s home in the West. 69 Pete Townshend, “In Love with Meher Baba,” Rolling Stone, November 26, 1970: 25. 70 Ibid. 71 “Stay High Forever,” Back to Godhead Magazine, 1969, http://theharekrishnamovement.org/tag/stay-high-forever/.

24 spiritually guide young Americans.”72 According to this advertisement, individuals can expand their consciousness “by practicing the transcendental sound vibration” of chanting “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Krisha, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Hare

Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare,” which induces “transcendental ecstasy.”73 The excerpt uses the psychedelic gospel of “turn on, tune in, drop out,” to specifically explain how one may forsake drugs and experience a Krishna high. For counterculture members who became disenchanted with psychedelic drugs, but had experienced the transcendental nature of these drugs, ISKCON provided seemingly more reliable route to spirituality.

Transcendental Meditation also provided an alternative path for consciousness expansion for those familiar with the effects of psychedelic drugs, although it was The Beatles’ renunciation of drugs following their initial encounters with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi that likely spread the idea that TM could replace drug experiences.

On August 26, 1967, The Beatles gave a press conference renouncing drugs after watching Maharishi’s introductory TM seminar. George Harrison claimed, “LSD isn’t a real answer. It enables you to see a lot of possibilities that you may [have] never noticed before, but it isn’t the answer. To get really high, you have to do it straight.”74 Paul

McCartney harped a similar tune: “This is it. [Drug use] was an experience we went through. Now it’s over and we don’t need it any more. We think we’re finding other ways of getting there.”75 The Beatles introduction to Maharishi likely sparked a larger Western interest in TM, but their renunciation of drugs represented a movement away from the

72 Ibid. 73 Ibid. 74 “The Beatles Renounce the Use of Drugs,” The Beatles Bible, n.d., http://www.beatlesbible.com/1967/08/26/the-beatles-renounce-the-use-of-drugs/. 75 Ibid.

25 psychedelic scene that was already happening within the counterculture, and their affiliation with Maharishi comprised just a fraction of the revision of Western religion.

As the psychedelic subculture shifted away from spiritual quests through drugs, religious practices served to satiate the spiritual yearnings that psychedelic drugs had ignited. Townshend notes, “There was that sense that we needed an alternative to this extraordinary, colorful world that we discovered in hallucinogenics.”76 Yet for many members of the counterculture, Christianity did not provide this alternative. Tommy demonstrates the counterculture’s rejection of Christianity through the song “Christmas.”

As Tommy congregates with other children during Christmas morning, the opening of presents fails to excite him. Although the song mocks the consumerist component to the holiday, it primarily demonstrates Tommy’s parents’ confusion regarding their son’s inability to be saved through Christianity. Tommy remains deaf, dumb, and blind during the purported birthday of Jesus, symbolizing that Christianity is not able to cure his lack of spiritual perception. His parents question, “How can he be saved from the eternal grave?” because it is apparent that “Tommy doesn’t know what day it is… he doesn’t know who Jesus was or what praying is.”77 Although many counterculture spiritual seekers were raised in the Christian faith, Christianity did not appeal to them during post- psychedelic times for a multitude of reasons.

The popularity of Indian religions during the post-psychedelic landscapes of

America and England demonstrates a definite correlation between the psychedelic period and the quest for spiritual avenues that deviated from Western society’s dominant

76 The Who, Sensation: The Story of the Who’s Tommy (Eagle Rock Entertainment, 2014). 77 “Christmas,” The Who, Tommy (Decca, 1969).

26 religion.78 As previously explored, South Asian religions and their new Western followers specifically addressed the shortcomings of the psychedelic drug scene. Another argument for this countercultural interest in looking to India for new spiritual avenues includes the similar “mystical” perceptions of both psychedelic drugs and South Asian religions.79 Yet perhaps the biggest influence in the popularizing of these religions was that they seemed to offer a legitimate substitute to cultivate highs.

In his 1978 article “Conversion and Alternation Processes in the Youth Culture: A

Comparative Analysis of Religious Transformations,” Thomas Pilarzyk, scholar of

Asian-American religious movements, relays data and interview excerpts from 63 members of ISKCON collected from 1972 to 1974. According to Pilarzyk, 85 percent of the ISKCON members he interviewed had tried hallucinogens. To demonstrate how former psychedelic spiritual seekers equated their new religious experiences to the drug experience, Pilarzyk relays an anecdote by a Western ISKCON Brahmin: “I was so into acid that I could hardly talk without stammering or stuttering.” After stumbling upon the

Hare Krishnas and listening to their message, he discovered “that [he] could ‘get high’ by chanting… that [he] didn’t need drugs.”80 Similarly, some Westerners came to view TM as an alternative to LSD.

Musicologist Jonathan Bellman has explored this concept, especially as it relates to The Beatles and TM. In his article “Indian Resonances in the British Invasion, 1965-

78 The Children of God and the Jesus People served as two separate emerging Christian sects that notably attracted former psychedelic users, but their followings were distinct from the traditional established Christian church denominations. 79 Thomas Robbins, “Eastern Mysticism and the Resocialization of Drug Users: The Meher Baba Cult,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 8, no. 2 (1969): 312. 80 Thomas Pilarzyk, “Conversion and Alternation Processes in the Youth Culture: A Comparative Analysis of Religious Transformations,” The Pacific Sociological Review 21, no. 4 (October 1, 1978): 386.

1968,” Bellman illustrates the West’s perception of meditation’s equivalence to drug highs by referring to an article in which a native Indian, Krishna Singh, admits to being

“rather annoyed” with Westerner visitors who “compare transcendental meditation with an LSD experience.”81 According to Bellman, Maharishi had repeatedly noted that TM had no relation to drugs. Despite Maharishi’s stance, Westerners still seemingly clumped

TM experiences with drug experiences. Bellman further demonstrates this by pointing to an advertisement for the 1968 book Maharishi, The Guru: “’Beyond Pot and LSD’ is the title of a chapter in this fascinating book… In it, the California hippies tell how they gave up drugs in favor of Maharishi’s non-drug turn-on.”82 Followers of Meher Baba also exhibited a similar “religion as a substitute for psychedelic drugs” ethos—a theme that is ambiguously relayed in Tommy’s final song, and explored through Thomas Robbins’s participant-observation research.

Townshend explained that following Baba allowed him to feel “stoned all the time” in his 1970 Rolling Stone interview, demonstrating that his positive marijuana and

LSD experiences were now substituted by his discipleship of Meher Baba.83 In the final lines of Tommy, Townshend relays the “spiritual high” he felt when coming to Meher

Baba: “Listening to you, I get the music! Gazing at you, I get the heat! Following you, I climb the mountain! I get excitement at your feet!”84 Robbins explains he observed this sort of elation during his research as a participant-observer of Baba’s following. He notes, “Persons attuned to passive psychedelic experiences are actually able to experience

81 Jonathan Bellman, “Indian Resonances in the British Invasion, 1965-1968,” The Journal of Musicology 15, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 126. 82 Ibid., 129. 83 Pete Townshend, “In Love with Meher Baba,” Rolling Stone, November 26, 1970: 25. 84 The Who, “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” Tommy (Decca, 1969).

Baba somewhat as a drug, to go on a ‘Baba trip,’” oftentimes through meditating on images of Baba. Furthermore, Robbins explains, “Many Baba experiences are similar to drug sensations not only in their passive-contemplative nature, but also in their hallucinatory aspect, e.g. having visions of Baba [and] ‘feeling Baba’s presence.’”85

85 Thomas Robbins, “Eastern Mysticism and the Resocialization of Drug Users: The Meher Baba Cult,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 8, no. 2 (1969): 312.

Conclusion

On the surface, Tommy appears to be an obscure “rock opera” that relays the story of a deaf, dumb, and blind boy who overcomes these physical debilitations and becomes a famous pinball wizard. Although music critics and musicologists alike have dissected

Tommy’s plot, noting that Meher Baba sparked Townshend’s interest in creating a spiritual narrative, Tommy encapsulates a specific religious history that is broader than

Townshend’s personal fascination with spirituality. Counterculture spiritual seekers sought to ascribe a profound meaning to their lives, but many became disillusioned with larger Western society and its traditional religious dogma, Christianity. Psychedelic drugs became part of the fabric of this counterculture, and leading cultural figures, such as

Timothy Leary, advertised hallucinogens to spiritual seekers by arguing that they provided a legitimate pathway to enlightenment. When spiritual seekers approached the limits of psychedelic drug use, and oftentimes experienced traumatic trips, they became disillusioned with the spiritual aura of the drugs and sought another route to blissful mental states through pursuing Indian religions that had a mystical quality of their own.

In addition to an innate interest in spiritual matters, Western seekers were also confronted with specific literatures that spoke to their desire to experience spirituality beyond the psychedelic drug experience. These religious movements dissuaded seekers from continuing spiritual pursuits through drugs, and some former psychedelic drug users perceived that they had found a substitute for drug highs once stumbling upon these novel spiritual pathways. Thus, Tommy relays a narrative that speaks to the spiritual nature of psychedelic drugs, while also exploring the idea of religion as a drug.

List of Figures

Fig. 1. Holland Hall, Meher Baba’s Home in the West, 2015, digital photograph. p. ii

Fig. 2. Holland Hall, Tommy & Who Came First, 2016, digital photograph. p. vii

Bibliography Primary:

“Brief History.” Meher Spiritual Center. Accessed March 22, 2016. http://www.mehercenter.org/pastandpresent/history.html.

Bruns, Prudence Farrow. Dear Prudence: The Story Behind the Song. North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015.

“First-Time Retreat.” Meher Spiritual Center. Accessed January 12, 2016. http://www.mehercenter.org/visitor/first-time.html.

Jones, Fiona. Interview by Holland Hall. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. November 7, 2015.

Karta, Adi. Interview by Holland Hall. Gainesville, Florida. January 19, 2016.

“Meher Baba Spiritual Retreat.” Meher Spiritual Center. Accessed January 12, 2016. http://www.mehercenter.org/.

Meher Spiritual Center. Directives and Procedures for Meher Center Guests. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, n.d.

“Other Items 1.” Meher Baba Travels. Accessed April 4, 2016. http://www.meherbabatravels.com/other-items-1/.

Pilarzyk, Thomas. “Conversion and Alternation Processes in the Youth Culture: A Comparative Analysis of Religious Transformations.” The Pacific Sociological Review 21, no. 4 (October 1, 1978): 379–405.

Robbins, Thomas. “Eastern Mysticism and the Resocialization of Drug Users: The Meher Baba Cult.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 8, no. 2 (1969): 308–17.

Robbins, Thomas, and Dick Anthony. “Getting Straight with Meher Baba: A Study of Mysticism,Drug Rehabilitation and Postadolescent Role Conflict.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1972, 122–40.

Saltzman, Paul. The Beatles in Rishikesh. New York: Viking Studio, 2000.

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The Who. “Christmas.” Tommy. Decca, 1969.

The Who. “Eyesight to the Blind (The Hawker).” Tommy. Decca, 1969.

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The Who. “The Acid Queen.” Tommy. Decca, 1969.

The Who. Tommy. Decca, 1969.

The Who. “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” Tommy. Decca, 1969.

Townshend, Pete. “In Love With Meher Baba.” Rolling Stone, November 26, 1970.

Townshend, Pete. “Meher Baba—The Silent Master: My Own Silence.,” July 2001. petetownshend.com.

Townshend, Pete. “The Seeker.” Who Came First. Hip-O Records, 2006.

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Townshend, Pete. Who Came First. MCA Records, 1972.

“Two Will Speak On Meher Baba.” The Kingston Daily Freeman. March 27, 1968.

Weichberger, Laurent, and Laura Smith. A Mirage Will Never Quench Your Thirst: A Source of Wisdom About Drugs. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: Sheriar Foundation, 2003.

Secondary:

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Fuller, Robert C. “Drugs and the Baby Boomers’ Quest for Metaphysical Illumination.” Nova Religio 3, no. 1 (October 1999): 100–118.

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Harper, Marvin Henry. Gurus, Swamis, and Avatars: Spiritual Masters and Their American Disciples. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972.

Lee, Martin A., and Bruce Shlain. Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1985.

Nicholls, David. “Virtual Opera, or Opera between the Ears.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 129, no. 1 (January 1, 2004): 100–142.