by Stanley
The Swinging Sixties seems a long time ago, but it is worth remembering that it was a time of great cultural upheaval. It came with the craze of Rock and Roll and the Summer of Love; of the Beatles frenzy, the Pill, the hippy communes, of ‘make love not war’ and the revolt against the Viet Nam conflict. ‘Tune in, turn on and drop out’ they said – meaning, ‘tune in to your instincts, turn on with psychedelics and drop out of the rat race. Naturally, like all revolutions there was a counter-revolution; and the counter-attack was aimed directly at the engine that drove the insurrection: the discovery of LSD; for it was hallucinogenic drugs that had opened the psychic sluice-gates threatening the very fabric of civilised world. There was too much energy in it for the pillars of society. The government panicked and, in sweeping counter-revolutionary legislation, psychedelic substances were made illegal and the long arduous war on drugs in the western world began.
Our ordinary state of consciousness varies a great deal. Each night when we go to sleep or when we get into noticeably better or worse moods our state of consciousness alters; but the range of these changes is fairly consistent. Most good moods are similar – the circumstances might change but the tone is much the same; and each of our bad moods has a similar quality.
There is a range or spectrum of emotional tone that is ‘normal’ for me as a person. I fluctuate within my range and I am very familiar with every shade of it. Outside of that I have awareness that there are states of consciousness that are quite different. I think everyone has a deep inbuilt knowing that there are quite different and better ways of being. They glimpse them occasionally; just often enough to keep a vague longing alive. It gets projected into the future in the form of goals and projects that promise happiness; they chase it with destructive drugs like alcohol and amphetamines – all very understandable because these pursuits are like a thin thread connecting them to something good and profoundly desired. Even the drag on the first cigarette can do it. It’s an instant of pure pleasure. It’s understandable that people will cling tenaciously to a habit that is killing them rather than let go of Ariadne’s thread that could lead them out of the labyrinth. Paradoxical as it may seem, such people are on the side of life.
The term ‘pleasure’ has equivocal connotations. Epicurus taught us that pleasure is the highest good. It is the purest signal that we are getting something we need. The collateral effects may be damaging, but the signal itself is pure. It may only be a sense of promise – but it’s the intuition that there is something better; and it’s more precious than mere survival. That’s why the 60s upheaval was so dramatic. The windows were thrown wide open, the Music of the Celestial Spheres came through loud and clear and the acid trippers went crazy. It was like a religious hysteria or like falling in love where everything you’d ever dreamed of was possible – not only possible, but you could experience it – LSD would take you there.
A promise is a great thing. One can live on promises. When someone is down in the dumps they will say, ‘there’s nothing to look forward to’. But a promise is not simply a delusion. It hooks into something one has known somewhere, at some time, maybe long forgotten. Pleasure in the present moment maybe dulled by the sobering thought that it will not last. Tomorrow it’s back to the office. But the first time there was no such dampener. Maybe when you first opened your eyes after the life and death struggle of birth and saw that the world was good, maybe then … ah then!
Maybe then you knew.
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