Mavericks of the Mind: Conversations with Terence McKenna, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, John Lilly, Carolyn Mary Kleefeld, Laura Huxley, Robert Anton Wilson, and others…

by Brown, David Jay

  JEANNE: What about in the field of psychobiology and psychopharmacology?

  OSCAR: In psychobiology the situation is a little different. I think a lot of the research in psychobiology is relatively free of the psychological bias than the clinical work, and in that respect, more progressive. Psychopharmacology is where the action is. The medicines have been remarkable. Even so, there’s been no remarkable new anti-depressants. There’s been a span of about twenty years between the last ones, which were the tricyclics, to the new ones of Prozac and Zoloft, which came out recently. All in all, the psychologists have stolen a great march on the psychiatrists. They’re more accessible and they speak a language which the public finds easier to understand, and they pander to the public’s fear of medicines and pills.

  DJB: Why do you think that there’s such a fear and resistance against using chemicals to heal the mind?

  OSCAR: We’re a drug-phobic culture. It’s a contradiction in terms because we consume more drugs than in any other country. We make a strange distinction between various kinds of pills. Somebody ought to do a research paper on that, on why certain pills are acceptable and others are not. You see people who take handfuls of vitamins in the morning, and they go to a herbalist and take herbs which they know nothing about. But many have great reservations about "drugs".

  DJB: I was talking to a friend about anti-depressants. He said, "I think people should be able to do it by themselves and not rely on drugs." But then at the end of the phone call, he starts telling me about this herbalist that recommended something for his allergies that he felt had an amazing effect. (laughter)

  OSCAR: Yes. We have this funny schizophrenia about pills.

  JEANNE: What is your view on bridging alternative medical modalities, such as acupuncture and herbalism, with modern methods?

  OSCAR: For ten years I was Research Director on the board of an organization call the Homes Center. We gave sums of money to scientifically validate unconventional and unorthodox treatment methods. So you can see where I’m at. The Homes Center was the first and for a long time, the only organization to be doin that. One of the grants was for Stephen LaBerge’s work in lucid dreaming. Some of the other work we funded was in support of energy healing, biofeedback and acupuncture. So I’m very much in favor of the scientific exploration of alternative methods, but not just accepting them unreservedly without discrimination.

  DJB: You told me about the theory of an emoting machine that embodied the complex array of emotions. Could you explain this concept to us?

  OSCAR: It was an extension of things I had seen and read, but I put it in a new form, which hypothesized that emotions have a kind of quantitative nexus. That means that they are composed of particles, just like photons in a beam of light. In the final analysis emotions are a form of energy that have a pulse or quanta like the electrons in an electrical field. Once you assume that emotions can be quantified and measured then they no longer need to be seen as this vague, amorphous thing that just pours over you, that seems to arise in some strange, spontaneous way, and has no form or substance. We know something of that part of the brain that specifically regulates emotions -- it’s called the limbic system. Here, emotions are engendered, and in some way made appropriate for the occasion. I see emotions as relating to cognitive experience in the same way a music score relates to a movie. The musical score is not discersive, it doesn’t tell you anything about the specific action, but it lends a kind of overtone, a richness to the experience that fleshes it all out.

  For example, it’s hard to imagine seeing Chariots of Fire without the musical score. I think emotions act in very much the same way. I believe that emotions can be traced and channeled. Some day we may have a way of regulating emotions, and devise a system of emotions just like we have a grammer of logic or cognitive effects. In theory, it is possible that a machine could be made that could emote, but we’re a long way off from that. In order to do this, emotions would have to be reduced to some formula, using the analogy of color. They are like the three primary colors. Out of red, blue and yellow, every other nuance of color is created. I think somebody once said that it runs into the thousands, the discernible hues we can see. Thousands, can you imagine that?

  So I figured you can get a vast array of emotions from three primary emotions. Fear, anger and love would seem to be the most basic and reasonable choices. Out of fear, love and anger, mixed in the proper tinctures and proportions, you might get such complicated emotions as indignation, apprehension and so on. All these fancy sounding ones. But there are two which don’t seem to fit in. One is curiosity and the other is disgust. I had a lot of fun with this, it’s really off-the-wall stuff.

  Let’s assume that this is possible, that the body is equipped to create fear, love and anger in some way. The limbic region may be the generator. We found that emotions are mediated through the nervous system and they are transmitted through specialized neurons in the form of chemical messengers called neuro-transmitters which seem to carry an emotional charge. It is a very elegant way of thinking, that emotions are transmitted through this chemical interchange. That was proven by the fact that if you alter the chemistry, then you alter the emotional content of the mind or the brain. So you now have a beginning theory for emotions as having some substrate in material things that could be quantified. This leads to some way of building an emotional model that may work.

  JEANNE: What is your view with regard to the evolutionary process of male-female relationships?

  OSCAR: The word relationship in this context is a bothersome one. I think men and women have certain attributes that are native to their individual biology. How they manage to coordinate them is something that requires a tremendous amount of tolerance and understanding for what is unfamiliar to the other person. I think that men and women have to somehow appreciate the differences between them, and not assume that either of those differences have a more superior quality than the other. And there are differences, I think the danger is assuming there are none. I think it’s an issue of how mature the human race gets. It’s the difficulty in discriminating between the biological and cultural differences and their resolution. The problem here is that they are hopelessly mixed up, and that has to be sorted out before you can say anything definitive about it. For example, all kinds of cultural values are placed on behavior which has nothing to do with biology.

  DJB: Well culture and biology are quite intertwined.

  OSCAR: Yes, they’re intertwined, but there is a way of studying this in relative respect to the circumstances involved. Now we see you have a group of people who feel that men and women live differently in different conditions. That is to say, there was a time in the world when things were primitive and presumably better, and our modern problems are really the result of industrialization and male supremacy and egotism. Women, in an effort to become compensatory have become goddesses. These changes in historical conditions made these differences exaggerated, but I wouldn’t go any further with that, because it’s too easy to fall into established predjudices on this issue. I think basically women make an extraordinary contribution in their own biology, so to speak, and it’s mental equivalence, and men make their contribution.

  JEANNE: What kind of philosophy do you think people should adopt in regard to social responsibility in general?

  OSCAR: I think what we need more than anything else is enlight -ened self-interest. This is not the same as selfishness. Selfishness is gaining something at the expense of others. Enlightened self-interest is somehow nourishing and gaining something in terms of ourselves and what we need, not at the expense of others. Unfortunately, instead of that we have charity and sacrifice which only compounds the problem. You can see clearly that I’m not one of the holy types. Let your mothers and fathers take care of themselves. Freud said the most important story he every heard was of a mother bird carrying a little bird on it’s back. There were three little birds and she carried them across the channel.

  In the middle of the cha
nnel the mother bird said, "When I am old and sick, would you carry me on your back?" The first bird said, "Yes mother, I’d be happy to." And the mother turned over and dumped the bird. The second bird, the same problem. The third bird however, said, "No, I won’t carry you on my back, I’ll carry my children on my back." Think about it. If everyone here did that, we’d have no more problems. Your obligation is to carry your children, not your mother on your back. If she did the right thing, you wouldn’t have to carry her. She would have already prepared, like you’re going to prepare for your children. That’s what I’m talking about -- enlightened self-interest.

  DJB: Oz, you’ve worked with and interacted with many of the outstanding minds of our time. Who have been some of the most important influences in your development and where have you found inspiration when you needed it?

  OSCAR: Well, Aldous Huxley has been a real source of inspiration to me. Let me give you an example. I was on the stage of the Ebel Theater as part of a three doctor team, to examine a man who professed to be able to lower his blood pressure, stick pins through his cheeks, and remain buried alive in some way where he could get no air. I was to examine him, along with the other two doctors, to see that he wasn’t faking. He stuck a hatpin right through his hand. It didn’t bleed, and we reported that dutifully to the audience. He said he would then lower his blood pressure to 50 over 30, a level at which I felt a person couldn’t live. I took his blood pressure and it was high - about 180 over 110, and I reported that. Then he huffed and puffed and went into a trance. He got rigid, and then we took his blood pressure again. It was 110 over 70 and I reported that to the audience.

  That evening we met with Aldous, his wife Laura, Anais Nin and her husband Rupert, and this issue came up and I recounted my experience at the theater that morning. And then I said, "So you can clearly see that this man was faking. He said he would lower his blood pressure to 50 over 30, and he didn’t." I went on to lament that so many of these so-called miracle workers are charlatans. I was very self-righteous. Then Aldous looked at me. He said, (with a British accent) "Dr Janiger." I said, "Yes?" He said, "Don’t you think it was remarkable that he was able to lower it at all!" (laughter) A light went on in my head. From that moment on, I got a lesson that I always remembered. Then there was Alan Watts, who I had the good fortune to know and to be his physician for part of his life. He was a remarkably intelligent man, probably the best conversationalist I ever met.

  A witty, very open, candid person - great guy. He lived his life to the hilt. We went to see one of his television shows in which he was a featured guest. The audience was filled with hippy-type kids and everyone was fascinated. During the performance he was smoking these little cigarellos, they’re like little round cigars. So at the end of the performance a hand shot up. "Mr Watts. You tell us about life, and how to be free and liberated. Then why are you smoking these terrible cigars?" Old Alan, when he would get excited, one of his eyes would drift over to the corner of his head. He had this funny look and I knew something was coming. He looked at the young man and he said, "Do you know why I smoke these little cigars? Because I like it!" (laughter) So that’s Alan for you, and it tells the story of his whole life. If that’s Zen, more power to him.

  Another incomparable man was Gerald Heard. He could get up, give a lecture, and you could transcribe it, with footnotes and all, and it was ready for publication. It came out flawlessly. It was a seamless performance. Somebody in an audience once asked him, "Could you say a few words on architecture?" So Gerald replied, "What kind of architecture?" He said, "Oh, British architecture." "What year of British architecture?" He said, "Well, let’s say about the end of the nineteenth century." "Precisely what period are you referring to young man?" He said, "Well, the 1890’s." Gerald said, "Would you say the first half of the 1890’s?" He said, "Yes." (laughter) Then Gerald went off for an hour and a half on architecture in England during the first half of the 1890’s. It was a virtuoso performance. Aldous said to me that he thought Gerald was the best informed man alive.

  Coming from Aldous, that was quite a compliment. Then there were people I didn’t know, but read. Great influences were Joyce, Camus and Bertrand Russell. These were people who meant a lot to me. An incomparable writer named B.Travin added a lot to my understanding of human nature. I get more from what great minds have written about human behavior, than any psychiatric text. Sometimes I feel that I have learned more psychology from Dostoyevsky and Conrad than I have from Freud. I approach my practice that way; by interacting with people as if they were protaganists in their own dramas. That way you can’t be biased.

  It was the way Proust described the Tower of Combrey. He said, if you really want to know the tower you must see it in the morning light, and in the evening light. You must see it in the winter time covered with snow. You must see it in the summer time. You must see it in the mist, and you must see it sometimes with eyes half closed. You must see it from above and from below. You must see it from the east, north, south and west. Then you’ll begin to know the Tower of Combrey.

  DJB: Have you ever given any thought to what happens to human consciousness after physical death?

  OSCAR: I’ve given a lot of thought to it, (laughter) but I’m afraid not much productive thought. My bias is that when the current is shut off, we somehow lose our sense of individuality. That is the only way I can put it. Shakespeare said of death, ‘that strange bourne from which no traveller doth return.’ No traveller has ever returned from this journey, so there’s no direct evidence, (laughter) except people who say they have. Well, you can decide for yourself whether they have or not. In any case, my thought is that, for myself only, that I’m simply shut down in my present state, and that somehow I -- which is now a kind of fruitless phrase -- am somehow restored to the earth, or to the matrix, or to what the Germans called the urschlime, or the fundamental substrate of all things, the fundamental primitive primordial stuff of which we are constituted. We go back to before the Big Bang I always remember the Big Bang as the biggest orgasm in history. (laughter)

  JEANNE: How has your experience with psychedelic drugs influenced your life, your work and your practice?

  OSCAR: In a word - profoundly. It really took me out of a state in which I saw the boundries of myself and the world around me very rigorously prescribed, to a state in which I saw that many, many things were possible. This created for me, a sense of being in a kind of flux, a constant dynamic equilibrium. I used a phrase at that time to designate how I thought of myself at any given moment. It’s a nautical term called a ‘running fix’. It means that when you report your position in a moving vessel, you are only talking about a specific time and circumstance - the here and now. The illusion of living in one room has now given rise to the ill- usion that there are a great many rooms. All you have to do is get out into the corridors, go into another room, and see what’s there. Otherwise you’ll think that the room you’re living in is all there is.

  DJB: Could you tell us about your discovery of DMT?

  OSCAR: Yeah! (laughter) It is a psychoactive ingredient of the halllucinogenic brew they use in the Amazon called Ayahuasca. An analysis by chemists revealed that it contained a substance called dimethyltriptamine, DMT. This was unusual because it was almost identical to a chemical found naurally in the body, and it didn’t make sense that we’d carry around with us such a powerful hallucinogen. Nevertheless, a friend of mine, Parry Bivens and I, purified some dimethyltriptamine. We had it all set up one evening. It was thought to be inactive orally by itself. To be on the safe side, we thought we’d inject it into one another the following day. So Parry said he’d see me in the morning and we’d go ahead and try it out. We had nothing to go by as it had never been used before. So when Parry left me I was in the office looking at these bottles, and I got this devilish thought that I should take a shot of this stuff. But I had no idea of how much to take.