By Tench Phillips, Naro Cinema
“The secret of life is to die before you die and find that there is no death.” – Echart Tolle
It’s been over 50 years since a few intrepid souls on the faculty of Harvard University in the early sixties re-discovered the psychedelic catalysts that were to inspire a whole generation of seekers to experience expanded states of consciousness. These early adopters consistently reported on their trips as having profound visions of heaven and hell, of witnessing the death of their ego selves, of seeing material reality as living energy, and of experiencing direct communion with the whole of totality.
Their groundbreaking work reverberated throughout a culture breaking out of a fifties pragmatic conformist worldview. The old mindset had been cultivated over the preceding two centuries by the reductive materialism of science, organized religion, consumer capitalism, and war. Everything was to soon change.
Boston was a center for intellectual enlightenment in the mid-twentieth century. Harvard professor and ethnobotanist Richard Schultes had spent years exploring the Amazon and studying the knowledge of plants from aging shamans. Returning to Boston, he would impart this ancient knowledge to such exceptional students as Andrew Weil, who was to become the acclaimed holistic physician and author, and Wade Davis, who was to go on to become the noted anthropologist and author.
During the same period, an explorer of a different kind was doing chemical research for the pharmaceutical company Sandoz in Switzerland. Albert Hofmann was synthesizing ergot, a fungus that grows on rye and is a source for certain medicinal alkaloids. In 1943 he tested the result on himself by ingesting a small dosage of .25 mg of lysergic acid diethylamide. His unexpected reaction was so pronounced and profound that only later was he able to articulate his experience of the world’s first LSD trip.
Over the next two decades there were subsequent experiments with LSD that were conducted on volunteer subjects by the C.I.A. The agency’s research was for the nefarious purpose of inducing psychosis and mind-control. The drug’s potential for therapeutic and medicinal use, and for mind expansion and spiritual practice were not fulfilled until some years later in Boston through the research of two recently hired Harvard faculty members, psychology professors Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary.
In 1960 Alpert and Leary initiated the Harvard Psilocybin Project. Leary had just tried magic mushrooms while in Mexico and was thoroughly transformed by his experience. He later recounted that he had learned more about the brain and its possibilities in five hours from taking mushrooms than in his preceding 15 years of studying psychology. His scholarship soon shifted from his interest in psychology to that of metaphysics and spirituality.
The two friends and colleagues were able to procure a legal source of the psychoactive component of mushrooms, psilocybin, and they administered doses to volunteers in studies that they conducted at the university and at Concord Prison. Their research was compiled and later published as ‘The Psychedelic Experience’. It was based on ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead’ and investigated the process of the death of the ego that can be experienced in the psychedelic journey.
But the daring and contentious exploits of the Harvard professors also revealed institutional limits that threatened the established order. When The Harvard Crimson newspaper published an article written by undergraduate Andrew Weil exposing the psilocybin research for all the public in 1963, the administration clamped down and looked to justify Richard Alpert’s expulsion. Alpert was soon fired based on trumped up charges of marijuana possession and Leary’s contract was not renewed. The story became national news and the country turned their attention toward the strange and wonderful happenings that subverted the staid culture of the Ivy League school.
Leary and Alpert soon relocated their psychedelic community to a huge mansion on a rural estate located in New York’s Hudson Valley called Millbrook. It was loaned to them by a wealthy heiress to the Mellon family. There they continued their research on consciousness using the much stronger psychoactive, LSD-25. In the early years, these drugs were still legal, but it became increasingly evident that certain forces within the government were getting nervous.
As more young people took heed of Leary’s adage to “turn on, tune in, drop out”, many questioned the old rules of the establishment. It was easier in that era to navigate society and still remain outside the system. Many alternative communities sprouted up. Mass youth movements organized to end the Vietnam War and to fight for legislation to regulate environmental pollution. The sixties birthed the civil rights campaign for people of color as well as the long-fought battle to win equal rights for women.
All these human potential movements reflected a huge cultural awakening – a change of consciousness that was fueled and articulated by popular culture through music and the arts. But the ruling elite felt the trembling of a social earthquake that might undermine their control of society. And many believed that the responsibility for the social unrest germinated within the drug culture.
Richard Alpert departed from the Millbrook community before they were raided in the fall of 1966 by the Dutchess County sheriff’s office along with the assistant district attorney G. Gordon Liddy (Liddy would later go on to engineer the Watergate break-in under Nixon). That same year LSD was made illegal in California.
Alpert eventually made his way to India in his search for spiritual enlightenment that lay beyond the drug experience. He met his guru Neem Karoli Baba, or Maharaja, and was given his new sanskrit name Ram Dass (Servant of God). On his return to America, he became a channel for Eastern Hindu teachings. His book ‘Be Here Now’ became a perennial bestseller and has influenced Westerners over the years to turn toward yoga and eastern philosophy.
In contrast, Leary challenged the authorities and in retaliation he was arrested multiple times, at least once for simple marijuana possession. Over the years, many have blamed Leary’s irresponsible actions as the reason for the passage of the Controlled Substance Act in 1970 that classified all psychedelics along with cannabis as Schedule 1 drugs – wrongfully defining them as having no inherent medical benefits, which is obviously now known to be a false claim considering there are many medical marijuana patients benefitting from the plant. As well as the industry even benefitting from coupons, look here for the CBDfx coupon as an example.
Despite grassroots opposition over the decades, psychedelics have remained illegal, and have justified the government’s ongoing War on Drugs. But it soon became apparent that it was really a ‘War on Urban People of Color’ – having incarcerated millions of otherwise law-abiding Americans for nonviolent crimes of drug possession.
Over the years Leary passed in and out of prison, and for a time he became a fugitive from the law when he escaped from a low security jail and traveled to Europe and Afghanistan. He would reunite with his old friend Alpert only a few more times over their later years. Their last time together was when Leary was dying of prostate cancer in California and Ram Dass was invited back to reminisce about the past and support Leary in his final journey. Leary died very publicly and actively in 1995, having been surrounded by his friends and family.
Ram Dass has led an active life as a respected and loved spiritual teacher and author. He suffered a debilitating stroke in 1997 that has left him partially paralyzed and has confined his touring and speaking engagements to his home in Maui, Hawaii. He has continued to teach, especially about his own mortality and the life lessons learned surrounding death and dying. He has stated that there is nothing to fear about dying; that it is perfectly safe.
The sixties generation has now reached an age that we are pondering our own impending death. To help us prepare, we have been given an unexpected gift by filmmaker Gay Dillingham. She has painstakingly compiled the many incomplete and untold stories of the era from interviews that she has conducted over the last 18 years with Ram Dass, Leary, their friends, and family. Her documentary “Dying to Know” is a beautifully moving culmination of their wisdom teachings as well as their tomfoolery. We will show the film on Wednesday, August 31 in the ‘New Non-Fiction Film’ series with speakers and discussion.
Those of us who benefitted in some way from the dawning of the Age of Aquarius would do well to recall the teachings of “Be Here Now” and to “Love, Serve, and Remember.” There is much work to be done on earth to try to come together and alleviate the suffering of all beings. The challenge is formidable but ‘the doors of perception’ have been opened.
Upcoming Film Events at Naro Cinema
PATHS OF THE SOUL
This is an astonishing journey of redemption, faith, and devotion by internationally acclaimed filmmaker Zhang Yang (Shower, Getting Home). The film blurs the border between documentary and fiction to follow a group of Tibetan villagers who leave their families and homes in the small village of Nyima to make a Buddhist “bowing pilgrimage”–laying their bodies flat on the ground after every few steps–along the 1,200 mile road to Lhasa, the holy capital of Tibet. In Tibetan with titles. Shows Wednesday, August 17. Speaker is Nicole Willock, Ph.D. a Tibetan scholar in Religious Studies at ODU.
Flick It! Fridays
The Naro staff girls again take over for the night and will screen a terrific cult comedy from the ‘80s, the Coen Brothers’ Raising Arizona. The Muse will be serving Smartmouth Beer and there will be lots of fun and social networking. Shows Friday, August 19.
WERTHER
Based on the German novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther” by Goethe, this brilliant opera composed by Massenet is full of suppressed desire and family duty. A noted French filmmaker, Benoit Jacquot’s new production at the Royal Opera House is conducted by Antonio Pappano and stars two of opera’s most in-demand talents Vittorio Grigolo and Joyce DiDonato. Shows Wednesday matinee, August 24. Presented with Virginia Opera.
LO AND BEHOLD
Acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog chronicles the virtual world from its origins to its outermost reaches, exploring the digital landscape with the same curiosity and imagination he previously trained on earthly destinations as disparate as the Amazon, the Sahara, the South Pole and the Australian outback. Herzog’s profound journey investigates how the online world has transformed virtually everything in the real world including how we conduct our personal relationships. Shows Wednesday, August 24. With speakers and discussion.
LEONARDO DA VINCI: THE GENIUS IN MILAN
The film opens at the Louvre in Paris with priceless Leonardo paintings being removed from the wall, and packed for shipping to their destination at the EXPO 2015 in Milan. The exhibit ‘Leonardo: 1452-1519’ is the result of 6 years work by leading Leonardo experts and is divided into 12 sections, retracing with scientific rigor the multiple paths travelled by the master. Shows Tuesday, August 30. Presented with Chrysler Museum.
DYING TO KNOW: RAM DASS & TIMOTHY LEARY
In the early sixties Harvard psychology professors Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (who later became Ram Dass) began probing the edges of consciousness through their experiments with psychedelics. The Harvard establishment soon became fearful of their charismatic influence, and severed their contracts. Leary became a missionary for mind altering drugs, and ignited a global counterculture movement. He landed in prison multiple times after Nixon called him “the most dangerous man in America”. Meanwhile Alpert journeyed to India to become a spiritual teacher and the author of the ground-breaking ‘Be Here Now’. With narration by Robert Redford. Shows Wednesday, August 31. With speakers and discussion.
NUTS!
Dr. John Romulus Brinkley was an eccentric genius who built an empire in Kansas during the early part of the twentieth century. He began his career with a fantastical cure for impotence that involved transplanting goat testicles. Nuts! traces Brinkley’s rise from poverty and obscurity to the heights of celebrity, wealth and influence in Depression-era America. Along the way he founded a million watt radio station on nothing but hot air and was elected Governor of Kansas. His audacious actions finally forced the federal government to create regulations to stop him. Shows Wednesday, Sept 7.
TICKLED
After stumbling upon a bizarre “competitive endurance tickling” video online, wherein young men are paid to be tied up and tickled, reporter David Farrier reaches out to request a story from the company. Instead he is threatened by extreme legal action should he dig any deeper. So, like any good journalist confronted by a bully, he travels to the hidden tickling facilities in Los Angeles and uncovers a vast empire, known for harassing and harming the lives of those who protest their involvement in these films. The more he investigates, the stranger it gets, as he discovers secret identities and criminal activity. Shows Wednesday, September 14.
