Lie, Cheat and Steal
And Make Friends with Darkness
And Turn the Other Cheek
Wine or Whiskey, that Is All There Is
But I'll Stay Forever Young"
The above is one of my favorite songs by Tom Waits. Its lyrics reflect a good deal of the themes that I address here, which speak to a kind of spiritual malaise or existential ennui that is more pervasive than most people realize, and one that has given birth to a vast subculture of neo-paganism among those whose souls have been crushed by the world.
The lyrics to the song above speak to this malaise in a sort of sly way; while it is clear that there are some things that people are just plain better off doing without, there is no clear indication that this particular kind of life-avoidance is the best answer. On the other hand, in view of the vastness of the world, and the fact that the world is so poorly prepared to deal with people in it who are trying to lead exemplary lives, the song's conclusion is quite understandable.
And there is no indication in the song that "the soul" is the sort of thing you can buy back in the usual way:
"There are no soul cards to play
And no lost love to win
and no time to be anything other than you
There are no easy ways back home
There are no rules for when to start"
Perhaps the best known and most influential pagan philosopher was the author of a series of books whose titles include Widdershins, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, and The Book of Lies. His name was Terence McKenna. He was born into a respectable Catholic family on February 16, 1946. After receiving a medical degree in the early 1970s, he became fascinated by psychedelic drugs, particularly the mescaline-based substance that was known as the peyote cactus. A decade later he began work on the series of books that would eventually earn him widespread notoriety.
McKenna was born into a prosperous Catholic family. His father, a lawyer, died when he was fourteen years old and he was raised by his mother, sister, and brother-in-law, a professor of psychology. After his mother's death when he was twenty-six, he and his sister moved in with his aunt and uncle who lived in the suburbs of Chicago. The two later moved to an area of the city then known as one of the rougher parts of town: the neighborhood was known as the Near North Side (now named the North Loop), but was usually referred to simply as "the Loop."
He went on to receive a medical degree from the University of Illinois in 1977, after which he joined the Air Force, from which he received a disability discharge in 1978. He first became interested in psychedelics in 1969. By the early 1970s he had become involved with the then-fledgling Grateful Dead. McKenna, with the permission of the band, would hold psychedelic seminars in which dozens of people would gather to ingest the powerful, mind-altering substance. McKenna once said that, after coming down from one of these sessions, "it felt like somebody had opened a door in the top of your head and taken your brain out and shaken it around a bit." From 1973 to 1978 he participated in the Bay Area Counter-Culture movement. (McKenna was the first person to use the term "neo-paganism".) He became a follower of Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert and associated with Terence and Dennis McKenna, both of whom would publish works by him.
During his time as a military physician he became fascinated with entheogens, substances that would induce religious experiences in people. He wrote his first book, The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching, in 1979. The following year McKenna became involved with the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, an organization of drug users associated with the Human Be-In in San Francisco. He and the brotherhood's leader Robert Thomas, or "Bear" Richards, became known for their wild, free-form concerts and for their use of mind-altering drugs. McKenna eventually became disillusioned by their use of drugs. He wrote, "I've always seen drugs as aids to the mind, not its source. One needs no assistance going to one's higher mind; one needs it when one's higher mind becomes inaccessible." (McKenna would write a series of articles criticizing the Brotherhood's use of LSD, among other substances, in publications by The San Francisco Examiner and Rolling Stone.)
By 1980 McKenna had become a member of a group associated with the Esalen Institute called the California Institute for Integral Studies. He then began to write a series of books, which are now considered classics in the fields of the psychedelic and mystical experiences. He died in 2000 at the age of fifty-four after returning home to San Francisco from a trip in a remote part of the Colombian Amazon jungle.
McKenna had previously been a drug user, but the psychedelic compounds of the Amazon (among other substances) had a profound influence on him. He described an encounter with "a new vision of reality that radically reinterprets the sense of the sacred." He wrote, "You see yourself as a creature temporarily separated from the universe, from the larger web of life. If you become reattached, in this vision you rejoin the larger circuit, become a conduit between yourself and the vast web of energy that feeds you. You become a transmitter or a portal." This experience was "so profound that it rewrites your view of reality, of the universe, and in fact of yourself."
He wrote that the experience "is not a trip of becoming separated from the world, but a revelation that you are never really separated from it." He explained that the nature of the experience was similar to the way a television is experienced: "By becoming conscious of a field of conscious energy, you experience yourself not as a disembodied spirit but as a body that can make contact with all other bodies in the universe." The experience is also akin to a dream, he added, in which one is not restricted to the local, physical environment. He wrote that "this experience will radically reinterpret how you understand the human self and reality." (McKenna would also write several books on the Amazon.)
McKenna found it difficult to describe in language the sort of spiritual vision he was encountering. He said, "I'm sure I could describe it in words, but it's not like trying to describe a color or a sensation. Words are inadequate to the task." He also admitted that he often didn't recognize the changes that occurred in his consciousness: "I really don't know what happened to me," he wrote. "I can only say that I woke up as a different person."
His experiences with entheogens served as a turning point in his life: "My entire intellectual paradigm shifted," he recalled. He wrote that he was "literally transmogrified" by the experience. He said, "I have never been the same since." He concluded that his experience was of a deeper sort of reality than he had previously understood or been able to comprehend:
As [the Buddha] said, there is a realm of formless consciousness -- you never quite reach it, but you come very close, and you never forget it. I call it the shamanic realm. It's like shamanism -- the only people who see spirits and contact the other world -- because you've been there, it's very hard to understand because it has no form.
He compared the experience to entering a cathedral, in which the spirit of the place takes over your body and you feel like a shaman who has journeyed to a place from another world. He stated, "Every new shamanic or entheogenic trip is an affirmation that our connection to the great mind is real. You don't go looking for that space, but it's there, you come in contact with it, and then you're hooked."
McKenna believed that the psychedelic experience had a role to play in the spiritual lives of many, but it was simply impossible for most people to do it all the time: "The psychedelics open up a new realm. They open up the real possibility that our lives, our minds, are part of an immense whole, and not isolated entities." He went on to say that he believes there is a "soul," a collective soul in which all individual minds are a part. He added that he thinks there is more to the universe than the material one that we experience. He stated, "I do believe in an underlying intelligence, something much deeper and more encompassing than the material world and the individual self. What I call soul, consciousness, may just be a part of this underlying intelligence."
McKenna developed the theory that in the early 21st century a "wave" of people will become involved in entheogens. He added, "The whole world is full of people ready to break out, but they don't know it's time yet. It will happen at a time when the technology and social structure are ready." He noted that, on a world scale, "we have the technology and the desire to take our consciousness to higher levels."
Many years ago -- several decades, in fact -- I read through McKenna's books, and I can remember feeling almost hypnotized
