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279 - Peter Gorman Interviews the Elders

Aug 24, 2011, 48 min read

Program Notes

Guest speakers: Allen Ginsberg, Ram Das, Laura Huxley, Peter Gorman

As us Monty Python fans love to hear, “Now for something completely different.” Well, not really. But today’s program is a little different in that instead of featuring just one speaker we have an audio collage that includes Allen Ginsberg, Ram Das, and Laura Huxley. A finer collection of psychedelic elders you would be hard-pressed to find.

First of all is a rare recording of a telephone interview of Allen Ginsberg by then “High Times” editor, Peter Gorman. When Gorman asked for a story about Timothy Leary, Ginsberg tells of the time that Leary came to his New York apartment to meet Jack Kerouac and they took psilocybin together Next is a brief conversation that Peter has with Ram Das during which we learn some more of the background of the early days at Millbrook and the interesting series of events that led up to going there. The last segment is another Peter Gorman interview, this time with Laura Huxley in which she tells of some of her own experiences with LSD. It’s a short program but packed with interesting historical ancetdotes.

Personal Message
from
Eldridge Cleaver
to
Timothy Leary

Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary
A Kickstarter campaign for Joanna Harcourt-Smith

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Transcript

00:00:00 ►

Greetings from cyberdelic space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic

00:00:24 ►

salon.

00:00:24 ►

From Cyberdelic Space, this is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

00:00:34 ►

And to begin today’s program, I would like to thank some of our fellow salonners who either bought a copy of the audiobook version of my novel, The Genesis Generation, or who made direct donations to help offset some of the expenses here in the salon.

00:00:42 ►

And those generous souls are…

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And I thank you all ever so much for your continuing support of the salon.

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Now, as you may recall, a couple of podcasts ago, two of our fellow salonners had some things to say about synchronicities. And so now here is one more.

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I just had decided that today’s podcast would include an interview that Peter Gorman did with

00:01:18 ►

the poet Allen Ginsberg. And so I was setting up the directory that I put things into for each

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week’s program. And I opened my email client in order to get a message that I’m going to be reading at the end of today’s podcast.

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Well, my email program came up and automatically checked for new mail, and a message came in from someone whose name I knew quite well, but who I’d never heard from before.

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but who I’d never heard from before.

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As it turns out, Dennis McKenna gave her my email address and suggested that she ask if I would help promote her Kickstarter project,

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which I’ll do at the end of this podcast.

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But first, the coincidence.

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The person who sent me the email, I discovered just a few minutes later,

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was actually mentioned by Alan Ginsberg in the interview that we’re about to hear.

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And her name is Joanna Harcourt Smith, and as you know, Joanna was with Timothy Leary at the time he was arrested,

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or I guess I should say abducted, right after they landed in Afghanistan when Leary was on the lam.

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But I’m way off track to my introduction to today’s program, so let me get back to that.

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But you have to admit that it was an interesting little synchronicity to receive an email from someone whose name then came up in an interview that was recorded about 15 years ago.

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Now, before I tell you a little bit about the interview we’re about to hear,

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it just occurred to me that some of our younger fellow salonners may not be so familiar

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with the work of the great American poet Allen Ginsberg, who for me has been a permanent feature

00:02:53 ►

of most of my adult life. It was in October of 1955 that Ginsberg read his famous poem Howl,

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which even if you hadn’t heard of it, you most likely heard its opening lines, which are,

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I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,

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starving, hysterical, naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn

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looking for an angry fix.

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You gotta love it, don’t you?

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Well, Ginsberg then goes on to talk of the angel-headed hipsters

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who we now think of as the Beat Generation.

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Well, that poem didn’t directly make it to the small Midwestern town

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where I was living at the time,

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but on our senior class trip to New York and Washington,

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I joined a few brave friends and we went down to Washington Square

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and spent the evening in a dingy little coffee shop,

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listening to mostly pretty bad poetry and drinking some really horrible coffee.

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But on that night, one of the poets got up on the stage and read that first part of Ginsberg’s poem.

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And I was hooked.

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The following autumn found me at college where one of my first purchases at the local bookstore

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was a copy of Ginsburg’s Howl and Kerouac’s On the Road.

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So, while hearing Allen Ginsburg telling these stories

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may not seem all that exciting to some of our fellow slaunters,

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I do hope that it resonates with you as much as it does with me.

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And while there’s no date on this tape,

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I think it’s safe to assume that it must have been recorded sometime in the summer of 1996.

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My reasoning is that they’re talking about an August issue of High Times Magazine

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that was to memorialize Timothy Leary.

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And, of course, Timothy Leary died on May 31st of 1996.

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And, of course, Timothy Leary died on May 31st of 1996.

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And as you’ll hear, Allen Ginsberg didn’t sound all that energetic at the time himself,

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which isn’t really surprising, for, as we know, Allen Ginsberg died in April of 1997.

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And considering the fact that he’d already suffered two strokes by the time this recording was made, I think it quite remarkable

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and highly commendable of him to agree to this telephone interview with Peter Gorman.

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And as you are about to hear, we’re going to be treated to the telling of a story by

00:05:14 ►

Allen Ginsberg about a psilocybin trip that he took with Timothy Leary and Jack Kerouac.

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And if you’re a historical psychedelic story junkie like I am, well, you’re in for a treat.

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Now, here is Peter Gorman in a phone call to Allen Ginsberg.

00:05:33 ►

Hello.

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Hello, Allen Ginsberg.

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Yes.

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Hi, this is Peter Gorman from High Times.

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Yeah.

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Hi.

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Thanks for agreeing to do this.

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I don’t know if Peter explained, we’re just putting together a 32-page kind of a tribute to Tim Leary.

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And it’s just an insert in September’s issue, in August’s issue.

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And among other things, Marty Lee wrote a history of it.

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Joe Moraskin was with the Weather Underground, did an interview with him a couple of weeks ago.

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Rosemary weighed in with a piece about the Ground, did an interview with him a couple of weeks ago.

00:06:08 ►

Rosemary weighed in with a piece about the Millbrook bust.

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And now I’ve called people like Ken Kesey and Albert Hoffman just to have people tell me a story or two about Tim Leary

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that would draw a better picture for our readers

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of who the guy really was as opposed to who we’ve read he was.

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Yeah.

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So I was hoping that you would do the same.

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Yeah, and I was just wondering.

00:06:33 ►

I saw him in January.

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One of the things that was amazing, he was full of spirit and quite tender.

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and quite tender. The illness had brought out a very tender and affectionate side to

00:07:07 ►

him. He hugged me and I kissed him. He was somewhat twitting me as I could see, I was somewhat tweeting me. I said, I knew I’d turn you gay some time later.

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He said, for you anytime.

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He was kind of cute.

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He was quite straight and macho, not macho but very straight, you know, Irish coach.

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The only thing I do remember is he came up to my apartment in New York in 1960 to meet Kerouac.

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And Cadillac

00:08:07 ►

caught

00:08:13 ►

out to

00:08:13 ►

him as

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a

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coach

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Leary

00:08:14 ►

you know

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like an

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Irish

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football

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coach

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advancing

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the

00:08:20 ►

football

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game

00:08:21 ►

and

00:08:22 ►

managing

00:08:23 ►

the

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team

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and when he got high football game and managing the team.

00:08:29 ►

And when he got high,

00:08:34 ►

after a while, after Caroline took the saddle assignment, he said,

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looking out the window on 2nd Street,

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in between Avenue A and B. Walking on water wasn’t built in a day.

00:08:56 ►

We went on a pilgrimage to various people.

00:09:01 ►

Robert Lowell and Barney Rossett and others,

00:09:07 ►

distributed a little bit of psilocybin and sat with them.

00:09:14 ►

Lowell was somewhat gloomy mood, but liked me.

00:09:22 ►

I said, as we left, after we had come down a bit, we gave him a very little amount.

00:09:31 ►

Leary gave him a very little amount.

00:09:33 ►

Well, he took a very little amount.

00:09:35 ►

I gave it to him in his hand to juice the amount.

00:09:39 ►

And the gnomes allude me to the theft. and those who knew me.

00:09:45 ►

I said, well, I’m a working kid, all of these.

00:09:49 ►

Well, I’m not sure of that.

00:09:53 ►

Barney Rossett,

00:09:57 ►

I had a sort of a bum trip.

00:10:00 ►

He said, I pay my dollar, my psychiatrist, $50 an hour

00:10:04 ►

to keep me from having this kind of an experience.

00:10:12 ►

And then he sent me to get some just a lonely monk.

00:10:17 ►

So I delivered it to his house near where Lincoln Center is now.

00:10:23 ►

And about a week later, I saw him in the five spot.

00:10:28 ►

And I asked him what he thought of Leary’s pill,

00:10:31 ►

the psilocybin.

00:10:33 ►

He said, got anything stronger?

00:10:37 ►

And then we gave some to Dizzy Gillespie.

00:10:41 ►

And I asked him what his reaction was

00:10:43 ►

about two weeks later, again in the five spot.

00:10:46 ►

He said, anything to get you high, Ned.

00:10:50 ►

There was a time the government had set him up.

00:10:55 ►

But the key thing was the reason they wanted Leary was that he had escaped through the offices of the Weathermen, I believe.

00:11:12 ►

And the heads of the FBI were trapped because they had been wiretapping the Weathermen.

00:11:19 ►

And it was illegal for them to do that.

00:11:24 ►

Unless it was an international conspiracy.

00:11:28 ►

Moscow Gold.

00:11:32 ►

And they kept Leary incommunicado, I think, around 1975, was that?

00:11:42 ►

I thought he was out by then.

00:11:46 ►

He was 70, I thought, or 71

00:11:47 ►

when he fled to Algiers.

00:11:51 ►

No,

00:11:51 ►

he fled to Algiers,

00:11:54 ►

but then they caught him in

00:11:55 ►

Afghanistan.

00:11:57 ►

Yeah.

00:11:58 ►

So they grabbed his passport

00:12:01 ►

as he left the plane.

00:12:03 ►

The American consul rushed up and grabbed his passport.

00:12:07 ►

So he was then without passport

00:12:10 ►

and then expelled from Afghanistan to the United States

00:12:14 ►

where he was in jail for quite some time.

00:12:19 ►

You have that on record, don’t you?

00:12:21 ►

Yes.

00:12:22 ►

So it would be around 74 or 75.

00:12:26 ►

I think it was 75.

00:12:31 ►

Because I got a call from him, actually.

00:12:42 ►

It was very rare because hardly anybody had heard from him.

00:12:46 ►

It was all for Joanna, who had a kind of monopoly on communication.

00:12:53 ►

And he said he was sleeping on steel sheets and in solitary.

00:13:00 ►

And what they were trying to do…

00:13:12 ►

And what they were trying to do, well, she had called and said she wanted to arrange for Larry to get in touch with Bill Kunstler.

00:13:24 ►

So I consulted Kunstler and called her back and said that if they wanted to get in to retract her, let me use this number.

00:13:30 ►

The counselor had suspected some kind of entrapment, actually, from her.

00:13:33 ►

And they never did call, I guess.

00:13:42 ►

Later on, when they got out, I was explained what the problem was there. That the FBI had been wiretapping the weathermen illegally,

00:13:50 ►

and they wanted Leary to testify that the weathermen were getting Moscow gold.

00:13:55 ►

That money was coming from abroad as part of a big communist conspiracy.

00:14:01 ►

Well, as far as he knew, it wasn’t.

00:14:04 ►

They were just a domestic dissidence.

00:14:11 ►

And so they were keeping him, the government and the FBI was keeping him, the feds were

00:14:28 ►

The government and the FBI were keeping him in solitary,

00:14:35 ►

trying to get him to change his story to testify for the, I think, Sullivan or somebody. I forgot who.

00:14:38 ►

And the FBI was otherwise going to go to jail.

00:14:41 ►

And finally, those guys in the FBI did go to jail.

00:14:45 ►

Maybe he failed, I’m not sure. Do you know the story?

00:14:50 ►

Not all sure.

00:14:53 ►

You might have to check, fact checkers check it out.

00:14:56 ►

But some civil higher ups, including Mark Felt, but I’m not sure,

00:15:02 ►

did have to go to jail for violating the law and wiretapping

00:15:08 ►

when they shouldn’t be.

00:15:11 ►

And the people on the left, some of the lawyers, I think Michael Kennedy, were claiming that

00:15:21 ►

Leary had sang, naming names.

00:15:24 ►

claiming that Leary had sang, naming names.

00:15:42 ►

But Leary’s account was that he’d actually refused to cooperate with the government,

00:15:47 ►

and thus the trial of the FBI people went on,

00:15:48 ►

and they went to jail.

00:15:57 ►

This was at a time when the left was disillusioned with Leary.

00:16:13 ►

He had fled with the weather him from jail and they had made him sign a, some kind of a manifesto addressed to me, partly,

00:16:19 ►

renouncing pacifism, renouncing nonviolence.

00:16:28 ►

They delivered him, of all places, to Eldridge Cleaver now in Algiers, or Algeria, yeah.

00:16:36 ►

And after a while, Cleaver put him in jail, or arrested him and held him in Communicado.

00:16:37 ►

Do you remember that?

00:16:37 ►

Sure.

00:16:45 ►

And years later, they met again in jail and went over what happened. It turned out that the FBI or the CIA, one of the government agencies, had been feeding

00:16:52 ►

disinformation to Aldous Kreeber saying that Leary was a member of the CIA and was there

00:17:00 ►

to infiltrate and spy on them. And I think some acquaintances,

00:17:10 ►

some black acquaintances of Eldridge Cleaver

00:17:14 ►

were in his group in Algiers,

00:17:18 ►

were actually double agents

00:17:19 ►

and were feeding him that disinformation.

00:17:24 ►

So Leary was the recipient of a tremendous amount of disinformation

00:17:29 ►

and attack from the Narcotics Bureau, Treasury Department,

00:17:34 ►

Gordon Liddy of all people, the criminal himself,

00:17:40 ►

and CIA and FBI,

00:17:43 ►

almost an international conspiracy to entrap him

00:17:48 ►

and to put him through the wringer.

00:17:51 ►

And he emerged from it cheerful and not embittered,

00:17:56 ►

as many people might have been.

00:17:58 ►

Went through that ordeal for years,

00:18:03 ►

beginning with his bust going down to Mexico where he took responsibility for

00:18:10 ►

his daughter. His daughter had put a little bit of grass in her bosom. And after being

00:18:21 ►

warned not to take anything at all, crossing the border, he was turned back to the Mexican border and sent back to American Custom 30 years for a couple of joints

00:18:45 ►

by a judge in Texas

00:18:51 ►

who denounced Leary as an unholy influence

00:18:56 ►

because of his books and writings

00:18:59 ►

and so gave him this big, huge sentence

00:19:04 ►

which was constitutionally questionable, because you can’t sentence a person for his books and writings. one of these exorbitant miscarriages of justice,

00:19:31 ►

which was righted in an odd way by a lawyer from Texas,

00:19:32 ►

whose name I’ve forgotten,

00:19:38 ►

who won Leary’s appeal for the bust on the technicality that for him to register with the marijuana,

00:19:44 ►

for the Marijuana Tax Act,

00:19:46 ►

would have put him in double jeopardy

00:19:49 ►

or something like that, you know,

00:19:51 ►

forced him to testify against himself.

00:19:57 ►

So he was released from that,

00:20:00 ►

and he won that case.

00:20:02 ►

And in that release, many people were also released because he had overturned the Marijuana Tax Act law.

00:20:12 ►

That was the beginning of his troubles.

00:20:15 ►

Well, not the beginning, but that was the beginning of his incarcerations.

00:20:19 ►

But before that, his troubles were initiated by none other than Milbrook,

00:20:28 ►

by none other than Gordon Vitti, who himself later was convicted of all sorts of crimes.

00:20:37 ►

Wretched.

00:20:37 ►

Yeah.

00:20:38 ►

But what’s interesting is that in those days,

00:20:52 ►

In those days, Vizzy was constantly raiding Millbrook illegally without warrants and without proper court permissions.

00:21:02 ►

And I remember there was an ACLU man called Noel Tepper, a lawyer, I think, in Poughkeepsie.

00:21:06 ►

My interview around that time, I went to in Poughkeepsie. When I interviewed around that time,

00:21:09 ►

I went to see what I could do to help.

00:21:14 ►

There were so many violations of the law in Liddy’s raids on Millbrook

00:21:16 ►

that it would take a team of lawyers years

00:21:19 ►

to sort them all out and sue.

00:21:23 ►

So Liddy got away with it,

00:21:26 ►

but he himself was such a wild man in the nuisance

00:21:29 ►

that they didn’t want him around.

00:21:31 ►

They kept him running for district attorney,

00:21:35 ►

excuse me, assistant district attorney.

00:21:38 ►

So they bounced him off to Washington,

00:21:40 ►

to the White House,

00:21:40 ►

where he became part of the, I believe,

00:21:52 ►

into the White House where he became part of the, I believe, the Nixon Plumbers Group or something. Sure.

00:21:52 ►

Not only that, but also part of the White House Advisory Group on Drugs, no less.

00:22:04 ►

advisory group on drugs,

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no less.

00:22:07 ►

Lillian Pollitt is in illegal activities

00:22:10 ►

and

00:22:11 ►

reading Millbrook into

00:22:13 ►

a White House

00:22:16 ►

advisory job.

00:22:18 ►

Okay.

00:22:20 ►

Thanks.

00:22:20 ►

Do you have enough?

00:22:21 ►

Yeah, is it possible for you to send me a little…

00:22:25 ►

I’ll send you a copy and I’ll send you a transcript of everything.

00:22:28 ►

A transcript?

00:22:28 ►

Oh, your edited version, yeah.

00:22:31 ►

Okay.

00:22:31 ►

Both.

00:22:32 ►

Yes, of course.

00:22:33 ►

Yeah, you can send it by fax.

00:22:35 ►

Do you have a fax number?

00:22:37 ►

675-1686.

00:22:39 ►

Yeah.

00:22:39 ►

Then I respond there.

00:22:42 ►

Thank you very much.

00:22:43 ►

Thanks for the time.

00:22:44 ►

See, if stuff is printed in my name,

00:22:47 ►

I get responsible for the syntax.

00:22:49 ►

Exactly.

00:22:50 ►

And I have a bibliographer who puts all that down,

00:22:53 ►

and it’s already a two-volume bibliography,

00:22:57 ►

which is enormous.

00:22:58 ►

So I have to be careful that what I print under my name

00:23:02 ►

is what I have edited.

00:23:05 ►

Right.

00:23:06 ►

Okay?

00:23:07 ►

Yes.

00:23:07 ►

Yeah, thank you.

00:23:08 ►

Thanks very much.

00:23:09 ►

Bye.

00:23:12 ►

Before I forget, seeing as how Eldridge Cleaver was mentioned,

00:23:16 ►

I probably should remind you that some years ago I discovered an old cassette tape

00:23:21 ►

on which Eldridge Cleaver had recorded a personal message to Timothy Leary.

00:23:26 ►

And it was several years after they were both out of prison.

00:23:30 ►

And actually not too long before both of them died.

00:23:33 ►

But if you haven’t heard it, you may want to take a listen.

00:23:36 ►

It’s quite interesting, I think.

00:23:38 ►

Particularly if you’re familiar with some of the history that those two shared.

00:23:42 ►

And I’ll post a link to it along with the program notes for today’s podcast

00:23:46 ►

for you to download or listen to if you want.

00:23:49 ►

Now, what we’re going to hear next is an interview that Peter must have done

00:23:54 ►

around the same time with Ram Dass, who, as you know, was known as Dr. Richard Alpert

00:23:59 ►

at the time he and Timothy Leary were doing research at Harvard,

00:24:04 ►

again in Mexico, and eventually at Millbrook in upstate New York.

00:24:08 ►

And while the portion of this interview that has survived for us to hear is quite short,

00:24:13 ►

it does contain at least one funny psychedelic tale that I think you’ll enjoy.

00:24:18 ►

So here is Ram Dass speaking with Peter Gorman sometime in 1996.

00:24:23 ►

speaking with Peter Gorman sometime in 1996.

00:24:31 ►

What had happened was the thing that turned out to be such key issues.

00:24:38 ►

He went to Mexico with Frank Barrett.

00:24:41 ►

He had no intention, I mean, he didn’t think about taking mushrooms.

00:24:46 ►

And when he got busted with Susan at the border,

00:24:52 ►

he certainly had no plan to become a Supreme Court case around marijuana tax laws.

00:24:56 ►

And when he got prostate cancer,

00:24:59 ►

I don’t think he anticipated that he could turn dying

00:25:04 ►

into such a wonderful theater piece.

00:25:08 ►

And bringing the possibility of celebratory joy to dying in this culture.

00:25:17 ►

And I think he’s playing this and it’s all quite beautiful.

00:25:25 ►

Timothy, all you have to do for Timothy is have the combination of something that will have some impact on society,

00:25:37 ►

something that is, has a slightly rebellious and revolutionary air to it, the anti-establishment.

00:25:45 ►

And something that intellectually reflects a greater freedom for individuals.

00:25:57 ►

Because our play a lot has been around the freedom for individuals to use their own consciousness in the way they choose.

00:26:07 ►

Well, Timothy, he’s always pushed the system. I remember when we got thrown out of Mexico, He came back to Boston and Timothy really couldn’t stay there.

00:26:29 ►

I mean, we’d been thrown into Harvard and we had no business in Boston, really.

00:26:33 ►

And so Timothy made a deal with a guy who was a political heavyweight down in Dominica.

00:26:42 ►

And he decided we’d all move to Dominica. I lived in the Caribbean and

00:26:51 ►

Sir Timothy went down with the advance guard and the children and family and so on to set

00:26:59 ►

up shop. I was to come afterwards with the Land Rover and all that stuff.

00:27:07 ►

You had to go to Antigua first to get to Dominica.

00:27:13 ►

So I came down maybe two weeks later on Antigua, swimming in the evening, waiting the next

00:27:22 ►

day to go to Dominique. And across the beach came Timothy with all of his merry band.

00:27:29 ►

They’d already been thrown out of Dominique because of the little Timothy’s involvement in the politics.

00:27:39 ►

So we’re now about $50,000 in debt.

00:27:50 ►

All of our stuff is on a ship coming to Antigua and Dominica. We had already been thrown out, so we set up on the island of Antigua.

00:27:58 ►

We rented an old bar called the Bucket of Blood and we moved in.

00:28:08 ►

We found that we decided we were going to set up our psychedelic training center in Peeble.

00:28:17 ►

We would have to win over the 12 psychiatrists.

00:28:23 ►

So we started a cocktail parties for each other.

00:28:27 ►

Try to charm them.

00:28:29 ►

That’s hilarious.

00:28:31 ►

And one of them was the leading lobotomy for the Caribbean island chain.

00:28:41 ►

And we were not pro-hobotomy. And Timothy had a secretary, a fellow who

00:28:55 ►

was a very serious and dedicated person. And we all took LSD one night to clear our heads, plan our strategy, to change the world.

00:29:14 ►

This fellow under LSD developed a vision that by dealing with this lobotomy doctor we would make it

00:29:27 ►

back to the devil. And that it was his job to protect us from doing this. So in his bathing

00:29:35 ►

suit he went into the city and found the doctor and offered himself for lobotomy, feeling that if he had a lobotomy, that would wake us up to what

00:29:47 ►

terrible things he was doing. So that led to us being thrown off at Tegla. I escorted

00:29:59 ►

our friend back to the States and treated him for some time something. That impressive stuff, I guess.

00:30:07 ►

I think he’s quite a successful computer or something now.

00:30:11 ►

Don’t change it.

00:30:13 ►

Yeah, it’s okay.

00:30:16 ►

Oh, I wasn’t going to mention the name.

00:30:21 ►

And so then we came back to Boston, to the house which we still had.

00:30:31 ►

And that’s when Peggy Hitchcock, who was hanging out with us, said that she’d bought her two young brothers that just bought a cattle ranch up in New York State.

00:30:47 ►

Maybe that would be a good place for it. She thought there was an old house on it that

00:30:53 ►

nobody was using. And so I was so desperate I got her to get in the car and we drove a few hundred miles to the place, riding in nightfall, finding this big old

00:31:09 ►

mansion that we broke into and walked through in the dark with a candle.

00:31:17 ►

63 rooms out and 63 rooms.

00:31:22 ►

Nine bathrooms. And this place was all boarded up. So we moved there and Timothy started in Millbrook.

00:31:27 ►

Millbrook was one of his finest hours I think that first year.

00:31:35 ►

Because we created a cello it’s so colorfully dramatic.

00:31:48 ►

If you have the backdrop of this house which was owned by the Mellon family,

00:31:54 ►

which got a 3,000 acre estate,

00:31:59 ►

with the other house being an Italian marble bungalow, as it’s called,

00:32:07 ►

We had the boys reported with all the models from New York, using a helicopter to drop down to our house.

00:32:10 ►

And we had Charlie Binkin out in the field.

00:32:23 ►

Unfortunately that’s all there was of this recording,

00:32:26 ►

but I still thought it would be fun for you to hear Ram Dass

00:32:29 ►

telling about a few of his own psychedelic adventures.

00:32:32 ►

And in case you haven’t been with us here in the salon since the beginning,

00:32:36 ►

you may want to go back and listen to one of the podcasts that I did with Gary Fisher.

00:32:40 ►

I think it might have been my podcast number 98.

00:32:46 ►

Fisher. I think it might have been my podcast number 98. As you know, Gary was part of what Ram Dass just referred to as the Advance Party when they relocated to Dominica, and Gary has

00:32:54 ►

some really funny stories to tell about that little misadventure, including the night that

00:32:58 ►

they panicked and buried all of their acid on the beach, only to discover the next day that the tide had washed it all out to sea.

00:33:07 ►

Of course, they didn’t think of it as all that funny at the time.

00:33:11 ►

Now, the concluding interview that I’m going to play for you today is the interview that Peter Gorman conducted with Aldous Huxley’s widow, Laura.

00:33:19 ►

And if I’m correct, for this interview, we’re going to go back a bit further in time to 1993 when Peter was

00:33:26 ►

working on the LSD anniversary issue for High Times, the one that you heard about in my previous

00:33:32 ►

podcast where he interviewed Dr. Oscar Janiger. And like many of us who were living in Southern

00:33:38 ►

California during Laura Huxley’s last years, I had several opportunities to visit with her, both in her home and at

00:33:45 ►

several public events.

00:33:47 ►

In fact, I’ll never forget seeing her holding Ram Dass’ hand as he sat in his wheelchair

00:33:51 ►

while she danced around him, giving him a twirl or two in his chair while a musician

00:33:57 ►

played the flute.

00:33:58 ►

And if you knew Laura, you can just imagine the twinkle in her eyes, laughing at her own mischief,

00:34:10 ►

while good old Ram Dass sat there very stoically with a benign smile frozen on his face.

00:34:15 ►

It was one of those snapshots in time that one never forgets.

00:34:18 ►

But I digress once again.

00:34:24 ►

So, now we’re going to hear some of the stories that Laura always loved to tell whenever she had a chance,

00:34:28 ►

and as you will discover, she had a great flair for their telling.

00:34:37 ►

Well, I explained yesterday sort of the project, and I know you’ve had a lifetime of experience,

00:34:44 ►

and unfortunately, we have a very short space for each of you.

00:34:54 ►

So I was hoping you might talk to me a little about your early work before LSD with Aldous and yourself,

00:35:06 ►

your own experimentations, and your feeling about the work you did with psychedelics and then particularly how that related to LSD to be part of this mosaic that I’m kind of painting.

00:35:10 ►

No, that’s in five minutes.

00:35:14 ►

To begin with, I wrote all of this in a book, if I don’t give you enough, there is a book called This Timeless Moment,

00:35:26 ►

where I spoke about all our experimentation and my work before.

00:35:31 ►

Who published it, just so I can put it in the introduction?

00:35:34 ►

Yes, it was originally published by Farrar and Strauss,

00:35:39 ►

and then there have been many paperback editions,

00:35:42 ►

and actually, yes, there is a new edition by,

00:35:44 ►

let’s take a look, this is aback editions. And actually, yes, there is a new edition by…

00:35:45 ►

Let’s take a look.

00:35:46 ►

It’s a very lovely edition, actually,

00:35:49 ►

which is…

00:35:51 ►

And it’s published by…

00:35:54 ►

It’s published by…

00:35:59 ►

Yeah, the one that is published now is by…

00:36:03 ►

Oh, yes, Mercury House. Mercury House. Yeah, Mercury House has a book

00:36:08 ►

around. Now, what can I tell you? You see, when I took LSD and I believe that it was

00:36:17 ►

also part of all this experience, is that everything that you know and you don’t know, you know a little bit, you have glimpses

00:36:30 ►

and things like that, then becomes very real and much more intense.

00:36:37 ►

Well, when LSD was not the first, you had done mescaline earlier or no?

00:36:41 ►

No, no, I just did my first experience with old, with the thing.

00:36:47 ►

Okay.

00:36:48 ►

No, I had done none of these things before, not at all, before I met old.

00:37:01 ►

Uh-huh.

00:37:02 ►

And did you, I don’t know,

00:37:06 ►

I mean, you know, you wrote a whole

00:37:08 ►

book, you’re giving me one second. Well, yes, I wrote

00:37:10 ►

maybe half of the book.

00:37:12 ►

It was extraordinarily

00:37:13 ►

revealing and

00:37:15 ►

shaking and beautiful and aesthetic

00:37:18 ►

and passionate

00:37:20 ►

and everything.

00:37:22 ►

When I look to

00:37:23 ►

these experiences

00:37:25 ►

I see that they were there

00:37:27 ►

in essence before but they were not

00:37:30 ►

manifested

00:37:30 ►

all these qualities

00:37:32 ►

they were not quite as deep

00:37:36 ►

as intense as overwhelming

00:37:37 ►

I mean even now

00:37:40 ►

if I just listen to some music

00:37:42 ►

the whole thing comes back

00:37:43 ►

in the same character

00:37:46 ►

and yet not

00:37:47 ►

as the

00:37:48 ►

compassionate

00:37:51 ►

part. I mean everybody arrives

00:37:54 ►

to this, everybody

00:37:55 ►

reacts to this

00:37:57 ►

in a certain different way.

00:38:00 ►

My reaction usually

00:38:01 ►

is on the aesthetic level

00:38:04 ►

and on the compassionate level.

00:38:08 ►

And when was that first experience?

00:38:11 ►

And were you using Sandoz material?

00:38:14 ►

Yes, Aldous gave it to me.

00:38:15 ►

It was before we got married.

00:38:17 ►

It was in his house.

00:38:20 ►

And it was quite extraordinary because he gave me, after a while, he gave me a little soup, a little vegetable soup to eat.

00:38:30 ►

And then he wanted to take away the dish that was dirty with the soup.

00:38:35 ►

He wanted to wash it.

00:38:37 ►

And I wouldn’t let him do that because to me that was the entire cosmos. This 30 dishes became a picture of the cosmos

00:38:46 ►

because there were little pieces of vegetables here and there in the round, white place.

00:38:52 ►

And it was so beautiful that I would never have washed a dish like that.

00:38:57 ►

Just to tell you a little example, but that’s what I remember now.

00:39:02 ►

And so what year was it that you did?

00:39:06 ►

Oh, that was 55.

00:39:09 ►

We made it in 56.

00:39:11 ►

That was in 55 in the spring, I think.

00:39:14 ►

And so I was told, I think, Oscar Janager.

00:39:20 ►

Do you know Oscar?

00:39:21 ►

Oh, yes.

00:39:21 ►

So Oscar said that he had administered LSD to Aldous at one point.

00:39:30 ►

No, I think Osman did that.

00:39:32 ►

I don’t think Oscar.

00:39:33 ►

You’re speaking about Osman, Humphrey Osman.

00:39:37 ►

I could be mistaken.

00:39:38 ►

I’ve been talking to a lot of people.

00:39:40 ►

Humphrey Osman is the one that came before,

00:39:42 ►

when Aldous was still married to Maria, before Maria died,

00:39:47 ►

Osmond was invited, if you look in the volume of letters, which is a wonderful volume, the letters of Aldous,

00:39:54 ►

they invited, Aldous and Maria invited to be their guests, and in fact they did not even know him,

00:40:01 ►

but they invited to be their guests, They became close friends, wonderful friends, and he was the one that administered to all the LSD, not Oscar.

00:40:12 ►

Okay.

00:40:12 ►

That I’m aware of. And then it was not, I think that first time, I think it took Mescaline,

00:40:19 ►

I’m not sure about that, but it’s all written up very precisely in the book, of course, in the official biography.

00:40:29 ►

Did you, after your first experience, how many more experiences did you have?

00:40:37 ►

Altogether, I have had about six or seven. And. And all those all together had probably ten. You know, we

00:40:48 ►

never took that, but once every maybe six months or once every year, something like

00:40:54 ►

that. Again, if you want me to be precise, you better read that volume, because in there,

00:41:01 ►

when I report something by writing, I check it again and again, and I’m very, very precise,

00:41:05 ►

particularly about his death and about the schedule of that.

00:41:10 ►

Now I can tell you, and it is also correct, but not as precise.

00:41:15 ►

I won’t do anything that calls on precision without double-checking the volume.

00:41:22 ►

I’m just trying to get a little bit of a feel,

00:41:24 ►

and I think the soup story is wonderful.

00:41:27 ►

The feel is, it’s one of, it’s like everything else, you know, it’s like water. You don’t

00:41:34 ►

survive if you don’t have water, but you know very well that they had a way to kill people

00:41:40 ►

by making them drink too much water. And so it is with this drug. It’s heaven and hell,

00:41:47 ►

and it’s according to what you do with it. And particularly, if you remember, this was one of

00:41:53 ►

the favorite things of all the saints, that it was a gratuitous grace. A gratuitous grace is

00:42:00 ►

neither necessary nor sufficient for salvation.

00:42:06 ►

In other words, you can get the gratuitous grace

00:42:08 ►

when you are in a state of mortal sin, so to say.

00:42:12 ►

And it is what you do with it.

00:42:15 ►

I mean, the dog does not put things in you that are not there.

00:42:20 ►

But the trick and the danger

00:42:23 ►

is that you never know which one of you, which part of you emerges during a drug experience.

00:42:34 ►

There is many, many people within ourselves, we are a crowd actually.

00:42:38 ►

And who is going to come up during this drug experience depends on many unknown factors and on some known

00:42:45 ►

factors, set and set in your, what’s the word again, a deal about that?

00:42:49 ►

Set and set in about the situation of your chemical situation that day or that week,

00:42:56 ►

the situation of your liver and of your chemistry.

00:43:00 ►

So there is naturally an element of unknown.

00:43:04 ►

If everything was known, then there would be no research.

00:43:07 ►

We knew exactly what was going to happen, so why do it?

00:43:11 ►

Did you ever take, use LSD after Aldo’s death?

00:43:19 ►

Yes.

00:43:22 ►

Can you tell me, was it a different thing? Or was it similar? I mean similar in the sense

00:43:29 ►

that they’re all different.

00:43:30 ►

They are all similar and they are all different.

00:43:34 ►

Yes.

00:43:35 ►

I took it just three or four weeks after he died because I wanted to take him at the same

00:43:41 ►

time when he took it as he was dying, but it’s not one person has to be there grounded, you know. So I didn’t take it as he was dying, but I took it soon after three or four weeks. predictable became very trying I mean somebody died next door where I was

00:44:06 ►

something expected like that so the beginning of the experience was not good

00:44:12 ►

at all and then it turned then it became again I don’t know if that was connected

00:44:21 ►

by the fact that he was dead and that he was not there again this I don’t know if that was connected by the fact that he was dead and that he was not there again.

00:44:26 ►

This I don’t know.

00:44:27 ►

Then I had it only once again after that.

00:44:30 ►

Then I stopped because I then became the whole family actually of a child who is now 18 years old.

00:44:39 ►

And I didn’t take any drugs during these last 18 years, 17 years, because the child, I would not ever

00:44:48 ►

lie to a child, and if I would tell her I take an SP or something, she would tell her

00:44:53 ►

friends, and it would make it very difficult. So I never took it, as I said, for 17 years now she’s a teen and she’s now out of teenage

00:45:05 ►

and she told me now

00:45:07 ►

now I’m a teen

00:45:10 ►

I can do what I want

00:45:11 ►

so I said now

00:45:13 ►

you are a teen I can do what I want

00:45:16 ►

so will you experiment again

00:45:20 ►

if the right time and place

00:45:21 ►

if it is the proper thing

00:45:22 ►

ambience and everything.

00:45:25 ►

There is other things that I have not taken, you know, there is so much since then.

00:45:31 ►

So I am a little bit stuck in the 1970s period or so.

00:45:41 ►

You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,

00:45:43 ►

where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.

00:45:50 ►

Well, Laura may have felt that she was stuck in the 1970s, but the times I spent with her, she didn’t seem stuck at all.

00:45:58 ►

In fact, one day we even marched together through the streets of Hollywood in a demonstration where we chanted,

00:46:04 ►

The violence must cease. Our children want peace.

00:46:07 ►

And as you know, Laura spent much of her time in the last decade or so of her life

00:46:12 ►

working to help underprivileged children get a better start in life.

00:46:16 ►

She was a wonderful woman, and largely because

00:46:20 ►

of her efforts, Aldous Huxley’s name has not yet been buried by the

00:46:23 ►

sands of time.

00:46:31 ►

So, I hope you enjoyed this little audio collage, and there is more yet to come from the collection of the Peter Gorman interviews that our fellow salonner Hector Glass digitized for us, including

00:46:37 ►

one with Dr. Albert Hoffman and another with Richard Evans Schultes, both of which will

00:46:42 ►

be coming your way in the weeks ahead.

00:46:45 ►

But first, let’s get back to the present, where I’ve got a few more things to pass on to you.

00:46:50 ►

First of all, there’s a comment I received that is somewhat typical of several others

00:46:55 ►

regarding a cleanup of bad sound quality on some of these old recordings that are floating around these days.

00:47:01 ►

And this one came from Paul H., who said,

00:47:04 ►

Hi Lorenzo, a couple of years ago in the salon you spoke of some software or service that you

00:47:10 ►

had begun using to improve the sound of some of the old tapes that you were using to make your

00:47:15 ►

podcast. I believe it did something like equalize the sound levels coming from the different source

00:47:20 ►

mics used in the recording the tapes. Would you be kind enough to post that info

00:47:25 ►

here as I’m embarking on a project using old cassette tapes and would very much like to clean

00:47:30 ►

up the sound of them before finalizing my project? Well, I think what Peter is referring to is the

00:47:36 ►

Levelizer, which is free software that is available from Audioplex at www.audioplex.com

00:47:47 ►

slash l-e-v-e-l-i-z-e-r dot h-t-m.

00:47:53 ►

And Levelizer is used to eliminate changes in volume,

00:47:56 ►

but it doesn’t remove the buzz and hum that’s often found in these old tapes.

00:48:01 ►

And for that, I’ve been using the open-source audio tool that most podcasters use, and that is Audacity. Thank you. However, if you remember back several podcasts, I mentioned a couple of files that were beyond the scope of that tool.

00:48:28 ►

However, I’m now happy to report that one of our friends of the salon, Amara Angelica, did a lot of work on the Hoffman and Schultes recordings, and as a result, you’re going to be hearing them in future podcasts.

00:48:46 ►

podcast. Another message I received touches on a topic that also seems to be of great interest to many of our fellow salonners, and that is finding the others. This one comes from Dave A., who

00:48:52 ►

writes, Hello Lorenzo, I have recently been feeling a call from the spiritual world. My

00:48:59 ►

explorations of various spiritualities has led me to Native American spirituality and shamanism, which

00:49:05 ►

feels a lot like coming home.

00:49:07 ►

I’ve been exploring psychedelics for a while now and feel it’s time that I sought guidance

00:49:12 ►

from more experienced journeyers.

00:49:15 ►

Do you know of anyone in the Portland, Oregon or surrounding area that might be willing

00:49:19 ►

to be a guide of some sort?

00:49:21 ►

Do you have any advice on how I might take further steps to pursue some form of modern shamanism aside from reading books?

00:49:29 ►

Well, Dave, as I’ve said in the past,

00:49:32 ►

I’m not really in a position to introduce people to one another,

00:49:36 ►

simply because, as I’m sure you are well aware,

00:49:39 ►

there’s always the problem of not knowing people well enough

00:49:42 ►

to be able to recommend them to others.

00:49:45 ►

I do know that there is an active group of like-minded people in Portland

00:49:49 ►

who stopped by one of the medical marijuana dispensaries in town,

00:49:52 ►

and I’ve heard them talking about it in various podcasts on the Cannabis Podcast Network,

00:49:57 ►

which you can find at dopetheme.co.uk.

00:50:01 ►

But there now happens to be another opportunity for you if you can make it up to Orcas Island, Washington

00:50:08 ►

which you can get to by taking the ferry out of the terminal

00:50:12 ►

that’s closest to Seattle. As I’ve mentioned before,

00:50:16 ►

Bruce Dahmer and I will be conducting a workshop there on September 30th,

00:50:19 ►

October 1st, and October 2nd, titled Beyond 2012.

00:50:25 ►

And the cost of the workshop is only $45,

00:50:27 ►

and the profits are going to be sent on to Sasser Shulgin

00:50:30 ►

to help offset some of his medical expenses.

00:50:33 ►

Now, I’m told that if you want to stay at the Outlook Inn on Orcus,

00:50:37 ►

which is where the workshop is going to be held,

00:50:39 ►

that you need to get your reservation in pretty soon.

00:50:42 ►

However, there are also other places to stay

00:50:45 ►

on the island, as well as a lot of great camping sites. It’s really a spectacular place for

00:50:51 ►

a workshop, and it also is a place where you’ll be able to meet some of the other members

00:50:55 ►

of the tribe who happen to live in the Pacific Northwest, as well as salonners from California,

00:51:01 ►

Utah, and North Carolina, who I’m told have already bought their tickets for that event. And to purchase your ticket, or

00:51:08 ►

for more information about this event, you can go to somaticrevolution.com

00:51:12 ►

That’s www.s-o-m-a-t-i-c

00:51:17 ►

somatic, r-e-v-o-l-u-t-i-o-n

00:51:20 ►

somaticrevolution.com for the details.

00:51:25 ►

Now one last announcement before I go,

00:51:27 ►

and that is a Kickstarter project that I want to let you know about.

00:51:32 ►

And, yes, I realize that some of our fellow salonners are again going to be disappointed

00:51:37 ►

in that I’m mentioning this project and not their own.

00:51:40 ►

But, as I’ve said before, if I announced every Kickstarter campaign that I get requests to support, well, we’d be spending about half of each of these podcasts talking about them.

00:51:50 ►

So, I’ve restricted myself to only mentioning those rare projects that will lead to the preservation of some of our community’s history that may slip away otherwise.

00:51:59 ►

And this project is one of them, which I first learned of in an email that read in part,

00:52:06 ►

project is one of them, which I first learned of in an email that read in part, Dennis McKenna gave me your email as I have a Kickstarter project going so that I can publish my book,

00:52:11 ►

Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary.

00:52:14 ►

Well, anything Dennis recommends gets my attention, of course, and the person sending that request

00:52:20 ►

was Joanna Harcourt Smith, who, if you are familiar with the life of Timothy Leary,

00:52:25 ►

you already know about, but not directly from her.

00:52:29 ►

In fact, I’ve always wondered why we’ve heard all of the stories and gossip about Joanna

00:52:34 ►

as told by a bunch of men who had their own agendas,

00:52:38 ►

and yet the mainstream media never seemed to give her a chance to tell her own side

00:52:42 ►

of those historical times when she and Leary were arrested in Afghanistan and he was imprisoned in the U.S.

00:52:49 ►

I know that I, for one, am most anxious to hear Joanna’s side of the story,

00:52:53 ►

and so I’ve made a pledge myself to help get her book published.

00:52:57 ►

And if you are also inclined to hear her side of that fascinating story,

00:53:01 ►

you can help by going to kickstarter.com and just type Harcourt, H-A-R-C-O-U-R-T

00:53:07 ►

in the search box, and that’ll bring up the Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary link.

00:53:14 ►

And I’ll also put a link to that Kickstarter campaign along with the program notes for this

00:53:18 ►

podcast. Well, that’s going to do it for today, and so I’ll close this podcast once again by reminding you that this and most of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon are freely available for you to use in your own audio projects under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial ShareLight 3.0 license.

00:53:37 ►

And if you have any questions about that, just click the Creative Commons link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage, which you can get to via psychedelicsalon.us. And if you’re interested in some of the stories that may or may not have led

00:53:51 ►

you and me to where we’re sharing this moment together, you can read a few of them in my novel,

00:53:56 ►

The Genesis Generation, which is available in Kindle and other e-book formats, as well as a

00:54:02 ►

pay-what-you-can audiobook read by me.

00:54:05 ►

And you can find more about that at genesisgeneration.us.

00:54:10 ►

And for now, this is Lorenzo, signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

00:54:14 ►

Be well, my friends.

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