The Man Who Turned on the World Michael Hollingshead FOREWORD by Alan Bold 'THE MIRACULOUS MAN' (For Michael Hollingshead) Date of birth unknown, and inconsistent In the presentation of his point of view, He may have got near Kapilavastu After some service in the orient. Certainly he settled for a while For something eerie happened at Bodh Gaya Where ho overcame an enemy named Mara And retained a smug, but somehow moving, smile. Later this became more pure and poignant Until some vile and murderous abuse Mocked his claim to be king of the jews And made him shrewd and militant. From Medina he took Mecca by force Saying man was made from wicked gouts of blood. It's different to assess just how much good He ever did. Or ever will, of course Edinburgh 1972 1. A Lovin' Spoonful In the beginning, more exactly... in 1943, Albert Hofmann, a Swiss bio-chemist working at the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Laboratories in Basel, discovered—by accident, of course; one does not deliberately create such a situation—a new drug which had some very remarkable effects on the human consciousness. The name of this drug was d-Lysergic Acid Diethylamide Tartrate-25, a semi-synthetic compound, the Iysergic acid portion of which is a natural product of the ergot fungus Claviceps purpurea, which grows on rye and other grains. Its most striking pharmacological characteristic is its extreme potency—it is effective at doses of as little as ten-millionths of a gram, which makes it 5000 times more potent than mescaline. It was during the synthesis of d-LSD-25 that chance intervened when Dr. Hofmann inhaled some of the whitish-brown powder and discovered that it produced some strange effects on his mind. ... 'Objects, as well as the shape of my associates in the laboratory, appeared to undergo optical change... fantastic pictures of extraordinary plasticity and intensive colour seemed to surge towards me.' 1960 New York City, seventeen years later... a small package from Switzerland arrived in my mail one morning containing one gram of Dr. Hofmann's acid, which I had arranged to be sent to me. There was also a bill for $285. I had first heard of LSD from Aldous Huxley, when I had telephoned him at his home in Los Angeles to inquire about obtaining some mescaline, which he had recently been using. His information also included the name of Dr. Albert Hofmann and a caution, subsequently unheeded, to take great care if ever I should take any of the stuff: 'It is much more potent than mescaline, though Gerald (Heard) and I have used it with some quite astonishing results really.' There had been no difficulty obtaining even one gram of LSD—I simply asked an English doctor friend of mine to write the order on a sheet of New York hospital letterhead saying that 1 I needed this ergot-derivative as a 'control' drug for a series of bone-marrow experiments. Eagerly I unwrapped the package. The acid was in a small dark jar marked 'Lot Number H- 00047', and in appearance looked a bit like malted milk powder. My problem was how to convert the loose powder into a more manageable form. One gram would make 5000 individual doses and I was obviously going to need to measure it out in some way. I decided to randomise it by mixing it into a stiff paste made from icing sugar. I cleared the kitchen table and set to work. First I poured some distilled water into a bowl, and then mixed in the LSD. When all the acid had dissolved I added confectioner's sugar until the mixture was a thick paste. I then transferred my 'divine confection', spoon by laborious spoon, into a sixteen-ounce mayonnaise jar, and, by what magical alchemic process, the stuff measured exactly 5000 spoonfuls ! In other words, one teaspoon of the stuff ought to contain 200 gamma (millionths of a gram), which would be sufficient for an eight-to ten-hour session, and a pretty intense one at that. I should add at this point that I had, like all good chefs, been tasting the preparation during its making with my finger, and must have absorbed about the equivalent of five heavy doses before I finally screwed the lid on the mayonnaise jar, which left me somewhat unprepared for what was to follow. I rented at that time the floor-through apartment above Jim Paul Eiler's 'Showplace' on West Fourth Street near the corner of Macdougal and Washington Square. It was a large rambling place-with a roof garden over the back from which to observe the life of the Village and the concrete towers of Manhattan. I moved on to the roof and sat up there and began to observe. .. I beheld a city of 10,000 angry streets, and giant buildings fingered the sky; from a thousand throats the giant screams. A hundred trash-cans tumble lids and litters across the sidewalks, a siren goes hooting past, and all is CHAOS. My mind was in a state of confusion, of whirling distractions and distortions and intensely vivid non sequiturs. 'I have broken the shell!' I laughed. 'Now I step forth easily from my body's prison-cell and live in the realm of the primordial. I shall sing of heroes, wild men of the mountains, guardians of the door, and ancient legends.... I shall transform myself into a god who could walk across the tops of mountains... thousand-headed was Purusa, thousand-eyed, thousand-footed he reached beyond the earth!... Cuhulain rides his five fiery chariots across the firmament! Arthur and Lancelot in battle! The ground shakes! In the beginning was blood and fire.... I shall sing that you might listen and would know the glory that mall is, now, in his first dawning.... In the beginning, then ... proudly the purple cock-man proclaims the arrival of the Dawn. The Warden of Robes enters to attend our abracadabra about Acid and All accompanied by large assembly of Acid Age Adams, Artists, Anarchists, Actors, Angels, Alchemists, Athletes, Aristocrats and assorted Acrobats. The 'gates of heaven' swing open on the court within; worshipping priests from 10,000 countries kneel before the royal insignia. The first rays of the sun gild the 'fairy palms'; smoke of incense swirls round dragons writhing on each royal robe—they seem to float among the clouds. It was a very strange first trip indeed, and it was of many hours' duration, perhaps fifteen. What I had experienced was the equivalent of death's abolition of the body. I had literally 'stepped forth' out of the shell of my body, into some other strange land of unlikeliness, which can only be grasped in terms of astonishment and mystery, as an état de l'absurde, ecstatic nirvana. I could now 'understand' why death could produce the sort of confusionIwas experiencing. In life we are anchored through the body to such inescapable cosmic facts as space, gravity, electromagnetic vibrations and so forth. But when the body is lost, the psychic factor which survives is free to behave with uninhibited extravagance. It was only after many, many acid sessions that I learned how to cope satisfactorily with the incessant barrage of sense-eclipsing distractions, pleasant and unpleasant, delightful and horrible, which acid induces. I discovered, for instance, that I could, by concentrating my attention on some object, put a stop to the whirling distractions. The object on which I concentrated became a radiance of pure light, very wonderful—so wonderful that one could be wholly absorbed in it. It would be possible to stop at this point, to convince oneself that this was the Real Thing, the ultimate illumination, Nirvana! Or the 'Divine White Light'! But—let's 2 face it—LSD is not the key to a new metaphysics of being or a politics of ecstasy. The 'pure light' of an acid session is not this—it may even be the apotheosis of distractions, the ultimate and most dangerous temptation. But it does allow one to live at least for a time in the light of the knowledge that every moment of time is a window into eternity, that the absolute is manifest in every appearance and relationship, and that Love is Wisdom in daily practice. And though hard, it is possible to live this way. It is the development of another state of consciousness within 'one's' own self, one that leads to a vision of existence in which only the sense of wonder remains and all fear is gone. It is also the impetus that makes a few travellers in each generation set off in search of the grail, the genii in the bottle, the magic ring.... Once back in the present, when the 'mountains were again the mountains, and the lakes again the lakes' I felt a degree of apprehension about the acid I had by now stashed away in my study. It was pretty volatile stuff. How on earth could the energy of this strange atom be utilised; how could man adapt it to his needs? LSD was a bundle of solutions looking for a problem, the problem being how to undertake a work of integration on a massive scale. Modern man had fallen victim to the merciless vision of his own sceptical intelligence. Caught up in a wilderness of externals, he was a stranger to himself. Accordingly, I telephoned Aldous Huxley at his home; he might at least advise me about what was happening with regard to LSD. Huxley had used both mescaline and LSD and had found in them, perhaps, the visions he had so long sought.