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LSIQ: The Contact Hi
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neo-Freudianism,can
be
Gone in
other ways, given sufficient knowl-
edge of the mec hani sms involved.
Howard
Junker
was first synthesized
hall wenty years ago, national
as to the effects of psy-
did not occur until the Har-
of 1962-63. University
use
of
begun
1960 by Professors TimothyLeary
Rlchard Alpert. Forced to leave
ellow Ralph Metzner, began
irst ttempting to found
in Newton,
in
Mexico, the n n
a
sland,inally at ehe
oundation in Mdlbrook,
. Y whereLeary ives and works
a small
group
devoted to the ex-
g drugs. ,On he way, a great deal of
evangehsm has been gen-
for the experience in scores of
and discussions, as well aS 1n
The PsychedeZzc
..and a
book,
The Psychedehc,
Books
1964 ,
on The
Book
of
the Dead (Further
als-on scienstific, therapeutlc
aesthetic inodels-are promised 1
?Ihe dpuble-edged promise of psy-
exstasis- sychosis/enlight-
earsome to
ny potential voyagers fro m
a
trip.
Thedanger of flipping
osing touch with
ity-1s qui te eal,althoughcasu-
ty, rates on psychedelic experiences
hard to come by, and erhaps
1n 10,000 experiences
m astingmentaldamage.
LSD has been used
w+th
varying
of success, in psychotherapy,
well as in the training of psychia-
. is
what psydhotics feel
. . .Ihe reatment of alcohol-
and
sthe reduction
of
anxiety in
cancerpatients.Further, as
Huxley p ut t, #todays aspi-
g mystic would be foolish to try
He should, Huxley advised,
thechemicalconditions o
. . . turn for
echnicd help
to
the specialists,
- ~
.
So far
LSD;
psilocybin, mescaline,
heiresearchrogramswith
DrugAdministration
(psychedelics,which are ot addic-
ive,o not come underarcotic
uly
5,
3985
I
codes), ,bu t he drugsare 1lQt hard
to obtam from local connections And
now that mariJuana, which s a mild
psychedelic, is acknowledged kid stuff,
the use of wonderdrugs can be ex-
pected Ito increasedramatically
For
all the talk.estimonials and
debate, however, there ave s et
been
n o
public sessions-after all the
drugsre Illegal, and who wanmts
gaswkers anyway But how to trans-
lat e bhe experience int o terms he un-
inltieted an nderstand by subjec-
tive, reports? scientific analyses? how-
to
lessons? humble question-and-an-
swer sessions?None of these strata-
,
gems do the lob, since,ltimately,
either you have
or
havent taken a
tri,p yourself.
Lucluly, ar t i,mitates ife, an d lec-
t~es-cum-demons~~,a t ions
ere intro-
,
duced his spring ,et the Village Van-
guard
in
New
York
A series of Mon-
day n ight sessions, opened June 14
at:
the New Theatre,154
East
54thSt,
The lean,anned, Giobto-sainthke
Learycalmlyannounced
on
thefirst
night that in the past
s1x
montrhq the
psychedelic revolution had been, won.
Thereare nowavailable ( 1 ) the
ac-
counts
of
explorers, spokesmen and
publici,sts, (2)manualsnd maps
for hehip;and
( 3 )
materials to go
ulp on.
Aqd tonight, Leary continued,
lcwe are gomg to run a session for
you. We are going to try to turn you
on
But short of
a
real drug-dole, how,
i f the experience really
is
Something
Else, canherdinaryudio-visual
techniques pmoduce a rip?The
,key
to the posslbdity of
a
psychedelic the-
atresheotion of thecontact
high-an experiehce ttained solely
by being mth -tuning into-someone
who , 8 i sup on hedrug. F,urther, it
seems toe possible, even though
chemical races
of
LSD
do not inger
in thebrain , to lapse nto or recap-
ture psychedelic
intoxicationong
after he actual experience.
William S Burroughs, todays De
Quincey, who attributesmanyscenes.
in Nak e d L um l z to psychedelics, tells
of a Proustian reactivation of the ex-
periencewhen the precise array of
stimuli music,ictures, odors,
tastesencountered during Ithe ex-
perience are duplicatedAnything
that can be done chemically, says
Burroughs,perhapspresaging
a
neo-
\
Th e psychedelic theat re +ttem ?ts
to stimulatemultiple levels
of
c p
sciousness by audio-visual bornbard-
Nment. Its creators, a Woodstock, N.Y.,
lmio publicly known as PSCO, cpm-
prised
of
.former Playboy correspon-
dentnd poet Gerd Stern, ex-Pop
artist Steve Durkee, andlectronic
technxlan Michael Callahan, call
thehbarrag e of films,slides,kinetic
sculpture, strobe lights, tapes and live
actorsamulti-channelmedia mix.
These fancyerms aTe part ly a
Ntrxbu,te
to
the University of Torontos
,cornmumcationsommentator
Mar-
sha ll MscLuhan, who akes a promi-
nent phce in h e philosophical back-
gl-oundf the psychedelic Itheatre.
supplyingcontemporary echnic@ in-
sights to
balance
the Oriental
mysti-
cmn of such figuresas Meher Baba.
who
in
ancient
times
was
called
Jesus th e Christ, Gotama the Bvddha,
Khnshna the Lover andRamahe
King.
McLuhanargues thatmedia study
shouldconcentrate
o n
ahe effects of
the technolo,q on the nvironm ent,
on
so,cial
organization ndhought,
not
on the programmatic content he
media ransmit Themedium
is the
message, says McLuhan, ,who recalls
how
themvention of
movable
type
provided udversal access to the word
and led to secular earning, ndividu-
alism, nationdlsmand he
assembly
line. These form s, or MoLuhan, are
based on the model of the linedof-type.
which is linear, equential a n d bi-
r
One Year, $10
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dimensional. Sn thelectronicge,
however, th e model is circuitry, which
offersmultiple,simultaneousconnec-
tlons, as m the analog computer, Tel-
s tarand worldgovernment.
In
other words, explains ;the U8CO
$roup, while th e .old-fashioned, single-
*
screen movie with%tsequenhal,
frame-after-frame progression,
worked
once,e now needimultaneous,
lnulltlple imag es. More th an ha t, we
need
a
new theatre that will provide
a
totalart, a grandcombmation of
media
At the Ne,w Theatre the medi a are.
a half dozen %l'm a nd ,slide projectors
whichanderndlendmages
over a huge creenwhich dls the
prosceniumarch , wo "analmog projec-
tors" whic h re forms of h m ia or
color-ocgans developedy%Richard
Aldcroit, f our diffrac$ion hexes
which
are boxes in 8w.hich 8re vok e hex ago nal
flguressluddedwith dlf4ractiongrat-
ings (they break up the li ght ike a
prlsm)
two NO-NOW+OW iboxos
which flaslh those comlbmations of
letterswithmuchclicking, as
m
a n
electronicrain,ne presenttation
oscilloscope hhe size
of,
a TV set,
a
strobe lighmt w h c h danced ibehind Ithe
screen;several
sound
channelsrang-
ing
from
the Eeatles 'to erotic breath-
ing;as wellas a 11v.e drummerand,
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