I Have America Surrounded. John Higgs

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СКАЧАТЬ on the religious dimension of the psychedelic experience, and explored ways to communicate this to people without the use of any psychedelic drug. ‘Chemicals are only one psychedelic method,’ he told Newsweek. ‘There are hundreds of others we can employ here—diet, fasting, dance, breathing exercises, sensory withdrawal, Zen, photography, archery’¹⁴ He announced that Millbrook would host a series of drugless consciousness-raising seminars each weekend. ‘The Beats come, they see a straight scene, and they go away,’ he claimed.

      These drugless seminars were unusual events. Guests paid $60 a head for the weekend, and would find themselves meditating alone in empty rooms while cards containing written instructions were occasionally posted under the door. The guests had to dress in togas and eat meals together in total silence. A voice would intermittently read ‘bright sayings’ over a Tannoy system, or a gong would be hit. For the full-time residents of Millbrook, who gobbled endless LSD tablets and giggled away in the background, the whole thing was completely ludicrous.

      Tim kept up the ‘drugless’ angle for at least the next three years, when he went out on the road and performed ‘Psychedelic Religious Celebrations’ in theatres across the country. These were multimedia events, an hour and a half in length, which attempted to create a sense of spiritual awareness in the audience through light shows, prayers and the stories of Christ and the Buddha.¹⁵

      The irony of this drugless stance is that by the time Tim arrived at Millbrook it was already too late to stop the swelling interest in LSD that would erupt into the mainstream during 1967’s ‘Summer of Love’. His advocacy at Harvard and Zihuatanejo had gained enough publicity that the existence of LSD was now public knowledge. Curious people wanted to know more, so they started to investigate the subject themselves. The establishment of an underground drug infrastructure that would eventually produce enough LSD to supply an estimated seven million Americans was now under way. Tim could talk about meditation and yoga all he liked, but nothing would put this genie back into its bottle.

      Life at Millbrook, of course, was about as far away from the pious earnestness of the ‘drugless’ consciousness work as it is possible to get. Tim, like the CIA before him, was interested in the effect LSD had on what was known as ‘imprinting’. This is the idea that not all behaviour is learnt through a long process of repetition. Instead, there are certain times when a behavioural trait is ‘imprinted’ in the psyche during one specific event. The classic demonstration of this is a famous experiment by the zoologist Konrad Lorenz in which ducklings were hatched, not in the presence of their mother, but in the presence of a tennis ball. The newborn birds then imprinted this ball as their mother image. From that point on the poor ducklings would blindly follow the ball around, even after their real mother had been introduced to them.

      It was possible to use LSD to imprint new behaviours, as the CIA discovered in their experiments in brainwashing. Indeed, one of the dangers of LSD is that it is possible for a careless tripper to ‘imprint’ a ludicrous belief by accident. But what the CIA hadn’t understood, Leary believed, was that at the height of an acid trip it is possible to ‘rise above’ all the imprinted patterns. In that state you could see that your behaviour was not the result of free will but of conditioned, robot-like reflexes. This awareness was like a laboratory rat, which had spent its life running along the corridors in a maze, being suddenly lifted up by a scientist to a height where it can look down and for the first time comprehend the maze it had lived in. LSD would allow the duckling in the experiment, for example, to become aware of his automatic response to the tennis ball and understand why it was acting in that way. It was this awareness that interested Tim, for it allowed an individual to work through previously destructive habits and become, he felt, truly free.

      Tim’s research was now focusing on eradicating previous mental conditioning. The idea was that an individual could use LSD to replace a specific, unwanted personality trait with an imprint of new, less destructive behaviour. The ability to ‘reprogram’ yourself like this, Tim claimed, was perfectly natural. It was simply the next, unavoidable evolutionary step. Not everyone was convinced by this argument, however, as attempting to improve upon millions of years of evolution by taking conscious responsibility for the way your brain operated seemed arrogant and dangerous. Fortunately, this debate was mostly academic, for it was soon realised that permanently eradicating behaviour was extremely difficult. The problem was that the awareness granted by LSD was fleeting and easily lost after the drug had worn off. How could they make that level of understanding permanent?

      And so began a strange regime of ‘deconditioning’ behaviour patterns. It owed a lot to the Armenian mystic and writer Georges I. Gurdjieff, who attempted to bring his followers to enlightenment through tactics such as shock, or mind-numbing physical exertion, such as cutting a lawn with a pair of scissors. At Millbrook, a bell would ring four times a day and everyone in the house would have to stop and write in a diary the behavioural ‘game’ they were currently involved in. Food would be dyed strange colours to confuse the senses, and visitors could find themselves presented with, for example, a plate of green eggs and a glass of black milk. Communal parenting was introduced, much to the dismay of the non-parents, who suddenly found themselves with the responsibilities of unpaid nannies.¹⁶ The aim of all this was to conquer the routine, unconscious patterns that leave us sleepwalking through life. Even 10 years later it was noticed that Tim studiously avoided routine,¹⁷sleeping in different rooms, brushing his teeth with different hands, and ordering different drinks in bars.

      Sexual hang-ups and jealousy are a big part of our conditioning, so they clearly had to go. The third floor was designated as an ‘anything goes’ area, and all beds were open to all-comers. Initial enthusiasm for the idea gradually declined, however, and it was grudgingly accepted that the plan was causing more tension than it relieved. Nevertheless, there was still plenty of sexual exploration in the house, especially for Tim. As the group’s alpha male, he was the focus of attention for the many female visitors who passed through the house. Art Kleps remembered being in the kitchen one morning discussing the similarities between Leary and Jesus with a Christian IF-IF member, when Tim arrived ‘tousled and haggard, drew a coffee and turned to the assembled breakfasters to inquire rhetorically: ‘Jesus Christ, do I have to fuck every girl who comes to this place?’¹⁸

      All this was extremely difficult for his children, who were now in their early-to-mid teens. After attempts at communal parenting had broken down, Susan and Jack were more or less left to their own devices. Tim claimed that his unorthodox, hands-off parenting was in the children’s best interests, but it seems more likely that he was just too preoccupied with his work to give enough of his time to them. His parenting method, certainly, was the polar opposite of what is currently considered good parenting, since nowadays establishing a routine and clearly defined limits is recommended as the best way to allow children to flourish. His children were soon taking acid and other drugs. Leary stated on stage in 1967: ‘I know no child over the age of seven who hasn’t been given drugs, and I know many of them.’¹⁹ There was certainly no effort to provide set and setting and an experienced guide for the first trips of Jack and Susan.

      The children reacted in opposite ways. Jack became increasingly aware of his father’s faults, and the disillusionment that began to set in slowly evolved into anger, and eventually outright hatred. Susan, on the other hand, became devoted to her father, and jealous and vindictive towards anyone else who wanted to take up too much of his time.

      An attempt to gain a little normality was made at the end of 1964, when Tim entered into a short-lived marriage with Nena von Schlebrugge. Nena, the daughter of a Swedish baron, was one of the many exotic people who passed through Millbrook that year. She was, as Tim wrote to his mother informing her of the wedding, ‘a most remarkable person of unusual intelligence, СКАЧАТЬ