Albion Dreaming (28 page)

Arrangements were quickly made for Leary to return to Tangier or Madrid. However, Leary stated he did not wish to return to either
Morocco or Spain, but “... wished to go on to a more civilised country – America”. While Leary was waiting, customs officials tried to get a decision as to whether he ought to be searched. Consideration was given to the fact that if he were found to be in possession of LSD it would cause a stir in the press, and the Home Office wanted to avoid that at all costs. Luckily, seats were found on a flight leaving for America in a few hours and customs decided against a search. After a few hours wait Leary was taken to a Securicor bus and, escorted by an immigration official, boarded a flight for New York that took off at 11.45 pm.
¹⁶

The Home Office file refers often to the press and it is clear they did not want the media to know Leary had attempted to gain access to the UK and had been refused. Leary’s attempt to come to the UK, claims of holidays and parties notwithstanding, may have been manipulated by him to glean some media attention. One of the officials, Mr Geenyer, who dealt with him during his wait at Heathrow, commented, “From his manner it appeared that Mr. Leary fully expected to be refused leave to land. It also seemed that he was a little disappointed that his presence failed to attract any public notice.”
¹⁷

Though the LSD party to which Leary had been invited was not identified, it was almost certainly the event held in September by the staff of
Rolling Stone
magazine’s London edition at a venue in Hanover Square. In his analysis of late Sixties counter culture,
High Sixties
, Roger Hutchinson notes: “Possibly the most extravagant mass ‘bad trip’ of the decade took place late in 1969, in Hanover Square, at a party held by the newly-launched London edition of the American rock magazine
Rolling Stone
to entice advertising from the music industry. The drinks served at the party had been laced with LSD, and the LSD had in its turn been laced (unbeknown to the
Rolling Stone
staffers) with strychnine.”
¹⁸

According to DJ Jeff Dexter, “For some reason someone had laced a lot of the food and the alcohol had been laced with some substances.”
¹⁹
Dexter was used to the effects of LSD but his friend, pop star Marc Bolan was not. Indeed, Dexter, who knew Bolan well, believes this was the first time he had taken LSD. This might
surprise many Bolan fans as Tyrannosaurus Rex, Bolan’s group, was a favourite of acidheads and he commanded a large following with his fey, Tolkien-esque lyrics, colourful clothes and alternative lifestyle. Other guests at the party, many of them journalists from the mainstream press such as
The Times
and the
Evening Standard
, were also getting ill on the spiked food and the party was rapidly descending into chaos.

Bolan completely freaked out on the drug and had to be driven home by his girlfriend June, overwhelmed and terrified by the LSD: “By that time Marc was going crazy ... and then he bit June and started flailing and I had to hold him down in the back of the Mini. He started to cry and he really just didn’t know what was going on. June called a friendly doctor who came round and tranquillised Bolan.”
²⁰

Dexter discussed the experience with Bolan a few days later. The singer was afraid he was a faker because he had not been able to cope with the experience and could not understand how his friend was able to. “It certainly made him think a lot about who he was,” concludes Dexter.
²¹

The Home Office may have thought it politically expedient to prevent Leary from entering Britain, but they couldn’t prevent the counter culture reading his books. Leary’s impact on LSD use and philosophy in Britain cannot be underestimated. Once LSD was legislated against, mainstream and underground books, magazines and newspapers followed his every move and pronouncement. His books were required reading for the committed acidhead, even if they weren’t always understood; many more people talked about Leary than read or comprehended him. Some LSD users found them helpful, both in navigating their course through an LSD trip and in providing a philosophy for the use of acid.

Reviewing
The Politics of Ecstasy for The Times
, Richard Holmes noted the American’s self-obsession and found his naïvety about the dangers of drugs disturbing. Nevertheless, he also found it an “enthralling piece of American documentation”. Holmes saw Leary’s advocacy of LSD as “just the counter used again and again in the attempt to answer one enormous overall question, which is never posed: what the hell has gone wrong on this Americanised
planet? What blessed vision of the spirit will lead us all home again?”

Holmes admired Leary’s message of spiritual self-reliance and reverence for the planet, equating it with the vision sought by the American transcendentalist philosopher Thoreau. However, Holmes “... could not overlook the LSD vendor either. As a marketer of dream solutions for my generation I have for him nothing but scorn.”
²²

“Dream solutions” was one way of describing the visions of change offered by LSD, but Holmes was wrong to think that acidheads weren’t actively considering the “blessed vision of the spirit”. Religion and spirituality had been at the heart of LSD use since the Fifties and the drug set many people on a path of spiritual development that they saw as a natural conclusion to their LSD use.

The early acidheads who had travelled the hippie trail to the East in search of enlightenment were now beginning to return. With them, they brought religious trinkets, tales of ashrams where gurus offered enlightenment and a clutch of spiritual practices and techniques. This mix ‘n’ match spirituality was highly attractive, particularly to hippies who could not bring themselves to subscribe rigidly to any specific belief system. The aura of spirituality permeated the flats and squats of London and spread out through the major cities and provinces. Alternative bookshops began to stock texts from Taoism, Buddhism and Hinduism. What had once been the interest of a small group of people spread to the growing numbers of LSD users. Acidheads began, in great numbers, to read books such as the
Tao Te Ching
, the
Bhagavad-Gita
and the Buddhist sutras. The Taoist divination system, the
I Ching
was particularly popular among LSD users and it was a common book to find in flats and squats, consulted and acted on with the utmost sincerity.

Quintessence guitarist Allan Mostert noticed this change in attitude: “There seem to be more and more people in London with altars in their pads. It’s nice that people are starting to realise that their pads are shrines and temples. We’re all walking palaces. Our senses are really the gates of the palace. Some people don’t know there are gates there.”
²³

LSD use and ideas from eastern spirituality became enmeshed, and for those who couldn’t bring themselves to stick solely to either acid or meditation, a mix of the two seemed to be equally effective. For those who had been shaken to their soul by LSD, religious practice offered both spiritual salvation and an escape from the disorientating effects of the drug and the impact it had on their lifestyles.

One religious group that specifically targeted LSD users was the Divine Light Movement (DLM), founded in India in the early Sixties. The DLM was led by Prem Rawat, known originally to his followers as Guru Maharaji Ji. Rawat’s teachings were an eclectic mix of various elements of Hinduism with the focus being on four meditation techniques that caused physical effects in the practitioner. Rawat believed himself to be “Lord of the Universe”, the physical manifestation of the divine. His followers were known as Premies and Knowledge was the spiritual transmission conferred on those deemed ready to receive it, Knowledge being analogous with enlightenment.

Drug users of all persuasions were attracted to DLM in its early years because of its relative lack of structure compared to other religious disciplines. One study discovered that, when compared to a control group, those who joined the DLM in the early Seventies reported twice the incidence of drug use prior to joining the cult. Rawat noticed the appeal of DLM to the acid subculture and manipulated it to the cult’s advantage.

One early DLM promotional leaflet focusing on LSD in relation to Rawat’s teachings philosophised: “If a man takes LSD, as long as he feels the effects of LSD, he feels okay, but when the LSD finishes, he is not ok, because he is no longer in bliss.” The leaflet continued with the claim, “What I have is a constant LSD. It’s not LSD; it’s like a built-in LSD, which God provided you with when you were born. When you get into it, you’re always blissed out. There is no need to come down from it ... So come, leave these things and come to me. I’ve got a much better thing. Try it, you’ll like it. It’s much better and much more far out.”
²⁴
For anyone brought to the end of their mental and spiritual tether by LSD these words would have seemed like a lifeline thrown to a drowning
person: someone who understood LSD and promised to take you further without it.

Rawat already had many followers in Britain when he visited for the first time in June 1971 to appear at the Glastonbury Fair. This event is covered in detail in the next chapter but suffice to say it was an event at which there was “bucket loads of acid”, according to one attendee who later became a DLM Premie. Organiser of the festival, Andrew Kerr, was unimpressed by how Rawat’s brand of spirituality was introduced to the festival: “I was on stage at the time listening to a band called Brinsley Schwarz ... when all his followers came along and pushed the band off stage. I walked off, disgusted.”
²⁵

Though some festival-goers were highly impressed with Rawat and took Knowledge from him, others were less keen. Many of the grass roots hippies including Sid Rawle, who was running one of the free food kitchens there, were indifferent to the fourteen-year-old guru and his pushy followers. They believed he was out of tune with the spirit of the event and had virtually gate crashed the event. Rawle even believed that the pyramid stage had been specially designed for Rawat, which Andrew Kerr flatly refutes.

DLM ashrams quickly sprang up all over Britain, attracting those for whom LSD was either too overwhelming or who wanted a more organised spirituality in their lives. Many who joined the DLM and received Knowledge later became dissatisfied with the organization, regarding it as a dangerous cult. Having broken free, these ex-Premies now run their own email message boards on which they discuss their experiences. LSD is often mentioned as being one of the reasons they turned to DLM. They equated the effects of DLM practice and the Knowledge offered by Rawat as being synonymous with the LSD experience. One ex-Premie wrote, “... acid was absolutely key to me looking for ‘knowledge’, which was what our group of mates called it before I knew about Rawat.”
²⁶
Another recalled, “the line I remember from the guy who told me about the big K was – it’s like the most gentle, most beautiful, peaceful acid trip you can imagine.”
²⁷

In its early years in Britain DLM was not as tightly organised as, say, the Hare Krishna movement and didn’t demand that its
adherents dress differently or cut their hair. This was also one of the attractions of being a Premie, on the outside, you could remain a hippie. In fact, many Premies joined DLM and continued to use LSD and other drugs. One ex-Premie noted, “the number of ISB fans and Deadheads that were around was scary.”
²⁸
Both the ISB (Incredible String Band) and the Grateful Dead were regarded as hard-core acidhead bands, their lyrics often of the “cosmic” variety, their fans frequently serious LSD users and seekers after transcendence.

Other religious organizations, such as the Hare Krishna movement, Meher Baba and Transcendental Meditation, attracted LSD users in large numbers. For some LSD users these religious organizations almost certainly saved their mental and spiritual health. They gave the spiritually inclined but existentially shattered LSD taker a structured existence, a purpose and an extended and loving family. Despite this, large numbers who joined these cults and sects only briefly or who couldn’t break free of their LSD habits came back into the LSD subculture and took up where they left off.

As a result, barely understood ideas taken from a variety of religions and beliefs were fed back into the LSD subculture. Books such as Tim Leary’s
Psychedelic Prayers
and
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
, touted as being guidebooks for those on an LSD trip, bolstered these ideas further. These books helped consolidate the already widely held belief that an acid trip was about self-discovery, the experience of God or of supernatural powers. LSD users often found that a heavy trip could encompass all of those and much more besides, leaving them spiritually fragile for days afterwards.

Jeff Dexter, like many other acidheads, was a follower of the Tibetan Buddhist Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and visited his monastery in southern Scotland. “One night there I had some acid and Trungpa said, ‘Well, give me some then.’ So I gave him some acid. Three of us in the room took acid, including him. After about forty minutes this bead of sweat appeared on his forehead, I looked at it, and I thought it was a crystal coming out of his skull! And he went, ‘I see, little mouse’. That’s what he called me, little
mouse. ‘This is something quite special. You have to realise that all your answers you are looking for ...’ and he put his hand on my shoulder and of course if he touched anyone up there they thought they had been immediately blessed, ‘all your answers are already inside you. You’re already there.’”
²⁹
Shades here of Huxley’s
Island
philosophy: “Here and now boys, here and now.”