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Consciousness Expansion and Counterculture in the 1960S and Beyond

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Consciousness Expansion and Counterculture in the 1960S and Beyond 16 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 Consciousness Expansion and Counterculture in the 1960s and Beyond A of our collective worldview occurred in A dramatic expansion the early sixties, when astronauts and cosmonauts were launched into space on Earth-orbiting satellites, and brought back the first dramatic photographs of the whole Earth from space. Emblematic of the aspirations for space exploration, the television series Star By Ralph Metzner, Ph.D. Trek, with an alien as one of the main characters, began airing www.greenearthfound.org on NBC, and became a cult classic in American science fiction. In [email protected] 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon. As explained by astrologer-scholar Rick Tarnas in his book Cos- mos and Psyche, close conjunctions and alignments of the planetary archetypes Uranus, Pluto and Saturn characterized the revolution- ary, liberating and creative energies of this decade. The boost in The boost in the exploration of outer space was accompanied by a parallel surge the exploration of in the exploration of psychic or inner space. As far as I know, the concept of consciousness expansion was outer space first used by Tim Leary and his associates at Harvard, to describe the effects of drugs like psilocybin and LSD, which were also later was accompanied by termed psychedelic (“mind-manifesting”). In a 1961 letter to Leary a parallel surge in from Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD expressed his appre- ciation to Leary for the concept of consciousness expansion, stat- the exploration of ing that he had been urging Aldous Huxley and others, that while psychic or the applications of LSD in psychiatry and pharmacotherapy were important, there were wider implications of these experiences for inner space. the enhancement of creativity and deeper understanding of the further reaches of the human mind. In this regard, Hofmann was far more open-minded than Huxley, R. Gordon Wasson and most psychiatrists, who tended to believe strongly that these drugs could only be used safely by psychiatric patients under medical supervision, or at best by elite intellectuals. Tim Leary’s approach was radically different, though it was not, as some believed, opposed to psychiatric research being done with psychedelics. maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 17 Leary and his associates began their something or doing something. The treat- research with psilocybin at Harvard Uni- ment of addictions and compulsions with versity in the early 1960s, carrying out psychedelic, consciousness-expanding studies with “normal” people in support- drugs was (and is again now) one of the ive, naturalistic settings that were neither most promising applications of these sub- clinics nor laboratories. Participants in stances in health care. these studies could clearly confirm that One of the studies carried out as part these substances, although called halluci- of the Harvard research, involved the nogenic by some, did not induce halluci- “experimental mysticism” study of Walter nations in the sense of seeing illusions of Pahnke, in which theology students …we emerge from things objects that weren’t “really there.” took psilocybin in a religious setting, Rather, they seemed to affect the actual and reported a high proportion of clas- the closed cocoon-like psychophysiology of perception in such a sic mystical experiences. This study of way that one would see everything that religious-mystical experience induced by was there, as ordinarily, and in addition psilocybin has recently been replicated state of dream and sleep much more: vibrating fields of subtle in research by Roland Griffiths at Johns energies, or associated thought-forms and Hopkins University. Mystical experiences to become aware of patterns that related to one’s personal involve a complete transcendence of the history, or our relationships with other usual boundaries of time, space and the our body, the bed we’re in, beings, human and non-human in the physical body and a sense of oneness with world around us. the divine and the cosmos – representing The process of consciousness expan- the ultimate expansion of consciousness. our sleep companion, sion induced (with the appropriately In my view, a second major application of favorable set and setting) by these drugs, psychedelics in the future is likely to be the room, perhaps was in some ways analogous to the in the psychological preparation of people process of awakening: when we awaken for dying, enlarging their awareness and the garden outside the from sleep, our perceptual world opens sense of identity beyond the confines of up and we emerge from the closed the body and personal ego-mind. [Pub- window, the greater world cocoon-like state of dream and sleep lisher’s Note: To learn more about current to become aware of our body, the bed research of this type visit: www.maps.org] we’re in, our sleep companion, the room, Through the discoveries of R. Gor- beyond – potentially perhaps the garden outside the window, don Wasson and others in Mexico, and the greater world beyond – potentially Michael Harner and others in South all the way to all the way to the infinite cosmos. As we America, by the late 1950s and early do, our sense of identity changes, we may 1960s, the psychological and medical remember the more limited dream world researchers who first applied LSD and the infinite cosmos. we had been in, and find that we have other consciousness expanding drugs a greatly enhanced freedom of choice – in Western laboratories and psychiatric freedom to think and see differently, to clinics, found themselves unexpectedly move and do things hitherto impossible. connected to ancient lineages of mysti- Later studies with LSD or peyote in cal, spiritual and shamanic teachings and the treatment of alcoholism, or ibogaine practices. Both the shamanistic and the or ayahuasca in the treatment of cocaine Asian yogic traditions are based on world- addiction, were based on the finding that views vastly expanded in comparison experiences of expanded consciousness to the standard materialistic paradigm could be, depending on set and setting, accepted in the West. In these worldviews associated with insight into one’s own there is a recognition of many levels of character and deeper needs, and there- reality, many dimensions of being, equal fore lead to more healthy and positive in reality to the time-space-matter dimen- choices. Addictions and compulsions, sion, which is the only one recognized whether consumptive (drugs, alcohol, as real in Western science. Furthermore, food) or behavioral (sex, gambling, shop- these Asian and indigenous traditions ping) can be understood as involving also recognize the reality of beings, called contracted states of consciousness, where “spirits” or “deities,” existing in these attention and awareness is fixated on multiple dimensions, that have their own repetitively and ritualistically taking in independent, autonomous existence, and 18 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 are not merely symbols or archetypes in important to recognize that being against human consciousness. something was not the primary intention Thus, the discovery of consciousness- behind these movements. expanding drugs in the West and the In an infant’s struggle to be born, ulti- re-discovery of the role of consciousness- mately into a larger world and way of be- expanding plants and fungi in shamanis- ing, there may be a phase of intense and tic societies, along with other modalities sometimes violent opposition to the limi- of exploring consciousness such as the tations of the existing order (represented shamanic drumming journey and yogic by the mother’s body). This kind of The process meditation practices, led to significant opposition, which may even threaten the expansions of the Western material- mother’s life, is not however the ultimate of consciousness ist scientific worldview – at least in the aim of the neonate’s struggle – which is thinking and writing of many individu- rather to emerge from a condition that als, if not the academic establishment and has become intolerable, too limiting, into expansion induced… mainstream media. an expanded world of greater freedom It is possible to apply the conscious- and possibilities for growth. Let us look by these drugs, ness expansion of concept to the forms at these movements, which continue in and patterns of collective consciousness: various ways to this day, through the was in some ways to mass-mind images and memes, to dual lens of counterculture and expand- scientific paradigms and worldviews, to ing consciousness. analogous to the ideologies of spiritual practice and religious devotion. In my book The Expan- Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, sion of Consciousness (2008), I pointed out published in 1962, raised awareness of the process that the decade of the 1960s was a time environmental despoliation and is gener- of several interconnected movements ally considered the beginning impetus of awakening… of socio-cultural transformation that for the American environmental move- profoundly changed Western society, and ment, and for major conservation and more indirectly other countries in the preservation organizations and policies world as well: the environmental move- that persist to this day. The very title ment, the women’s liberation movement, Silent Spring refers to an experience of the anti-war movement, the civil rights expanded consciousness:
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