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

  NINA: I know nothing about that except that my consciousness, when it is liberated from the body, goes into strange and unfathomable yet somehow familiar dimensions. The only certainty I came away with from my LSD studies is that I am not my body. Strangely enough, today many New Agers see this as heresy. They call it dualism. "I am what I eat. I and my body are one", they say. True, I'm no more separate from my body than from the air I breathe, or from a rock, or from a worm, or from anything at all. So I wind up in a cosmic goo. But we have learned to name things so we can distinguish between what's me and what's not me. I am not my body any more than I am the air, the rock, or the worm. I think of my body as my spacesuit which I will discard once it has grown threadbare--but I wil1 go on. People in our culture think of death as the enemy, yet death is as natural as eating. There are two possibilities: either we die and everything is over, we're just simply, you know, gone—so what's there to be afraid of! Or else life is a spiral that is eternally ascending. We may or may not come back to this planet in physical form, but I think that we are travelers, and that our journey is endless. I don't like the idea of being in pain and all that stuff that leads up to the actual death, but death itself doesn't frighten me.

  DJB: What are your thoughts on euthanasia? There is so much fear of legalizing it.

  NINA: I can understand it. We're all too human, and no doubt there will be abuses. On the other hand, to be spared the agony that precedes death is a blessing that many people would welcome. As for myself, I hope to be able to end it once my spacesuit is beyond repair!

  RMN: I'd be interested to know your ideas on abortion, Nina. Is it a crime from the spiritual point of view?

  NINA: The crime is to bring an unwanted child into the world. I believe that the soul enters the body at birth, and that the embryo is a spacesuit in the making. I see no reason to be any more sentimental about our biological container before birth than after death. To me, it is simply matter not yet or no longer animated by life. It's interesting to note that the Catholic church is as ready to bring masses of uncared-for children into this overpopulated world as to bless troops that are going into battle. Could there be a connection, I wonder? Are these unhappy masses needed for cannon fodder? The pro-life stand of the church is a desperate attempt to continue to rule by appealing to the flock's self-righteous emotions, and in many cases, this appeal succeeds.

  Former generations took it for granted that it is woman's destiny to bear children. Women were bred to be breeders, but when girls began to receive the same education as boys it became clear that not all women are cut out to be mothers. I thought that the pill and other contraceptives would generate a new approach to bringing children into the world, making the act of conception a free, conscious choice rather than a haphazard accident. Today, as in past generations, more than ninety percent of all children are the result of an accident, but even some who desire children do so for the wrong reasons. They submit to peer pressure, or they wish to have something that belongs to them, something that will give them the love they can't find anywhere else.

  A child is not property. It is an incoming soul--a visitor from another dimension who is entrusted to our care. The visitor needs to learn the native language and the use of the spacesuit and has to be taught, nurtured and loved. One of the best-kept secrets is that bringing up a child requires a great deal of self-sacrifice and the willingness to subordinate one's own needs and desires to those of the growing child. Parenting can't be done with one hand tied behind one's back. In the utopia I envision, people will make informed choices about welcoming a soul into this world, and they will do so in the full knowledge that their children are not their children but the sons and daughters of life.

  RMN: What is your personal understanding of God?

  NINA: God! You know, devout Jews will neither write nor pronounce the word G-d, holy be His name! I think they're right, because as soon as you try to define God, you're no longer talking about the omnipresent power that set all this in motion and pervades all there is. I think the Jews and the Christians are wrong about giving God a masculine pronoun. God, as I conceive it, is neither a he, a she, nor an it. God is everything, or God is nothing. Trying to put a gender on the ineffable is like trying to drain the ocean with a sieve. When you question the Hindus about God, they say, "Tat twam asi," which means, "Thou art that." Or they answer, "Not this, not that." Can we limit the illimitable by calling it this or that? My understanding of the divine is of a force that is the sum total of All There Is, which includes, but is not limited to, nature.

  DJB: Why did you write One Foot in the Future and why did you choose that title?

  NINA: The events of my life, which spans most of the twentieth century, are dramatic enough to make the book "a good read," as an English friend put it. I wanted to entice the reader to view the psychedelics in the context of the life of a mature, rational woman who used them as a means to touch the noumenon. I also wanted to try to set the record straight about the pioneers of the psychedelic consciousness. The Harvard trio of Leary, Alpert and Metzner had been researching consciousness long before their involvement with psychedelics, and this has remained their primary interest throughout the years. The title of the book calls to my mind the Fool in the Tarot deck. All he has kept of the past is the little bundle on the end of his stick. One foot is firmly planted in the present, on the earth, the other extends over the abyss--the unknown, the not-yet. Most of my life, I've been just half a step ahead of the crowd and have looked to the future instead of the past.

  DJB: One of the things that delighted me when I read your autobiography was your undying sense of optimism, and your continual willingness to let go of your past, as you Journeyed through life. Are you still optimistic about the future, and what gives you faith in the life process.

  NINA: I'm no Pollyanna. I see that we've messed things up, but I believe that at this time in history we're making an evolutionary quantum leap. My view of evolution begins where Darwin's leaves off. An ancient Hindu text declares that the aim of evolution is not just survival of the fittest but the manifestation of the perfection that is already present in all of us. Teilhard de Chardin's idea that we are advancing toward Christogenesis, the Christ consciousness lived and personified by us all, appeals deeply to my intuition. My faith in the life process comes from the same source as the willingness to let go of the past. Go with the flow, we used to say in the sixties. I believe that surrender is the key to the psychedelic experience as well as to life; when we impose our will on it, we're sure to have a bummer.

  DJB: How do you feel about, and what type of potential do you see for some of the new scientific advances in technology that will influence the future evolution of consciousness, such as designer drugs, brain stimulation machines, and Virtual Reality?

  NINA: Wow! The words "designer drugs" and brain stimulation machines bring all sorts of possibilities for behavior control to my mind. In the wrong hands, a sci-fi horror movie could result. I'm impressed by the practical applications of Virtual Reality, but my God, do we need more high-tech toys? We're living in a Disney world, even without TV. Does the fact that I can't wholeheartedly cherish the thought of a future laden with all kinds of toys for changing our brains mean that I now have both feet in the past?

  DJB: How do you see human consciousness evolving in the future?

  NINA: OK., here goes: I believe that the knowledge that we are all eternal spirits who will continue our adventure after the body's death will bring about a profound change of values. Science has already demonstrated that what we perceive as solid matter is only a hunch of atoms that have come together for a while to form an object. In the last few decades, science and mysticism have begun to resemble each other more and more, and I don't doubt that it will eventually find the means to prove the reality of life after death. A technology that fulfills its promise of freeing us from hard labor will make an unprecedented amount of leisure time available to all. It was the financial ease of the fifties that allowed th
e spiritual awakening of the sixties to occur. Perhaps the poverty of the nineties will bring us back to the ideals of respect for all life, for the gifts of the earth, and for each other.

  RMN: Can you explain the theory that you have about androgyny and the evolutionary end of biological sex as you see it?

  NINA: I once read somewhere that long ago, when we still lived in caves, we had the ability to close our earlaps so that no insects could enter while we slept. I don't know if this is fact or fantasy, but it struck me as a good example of Nature's adaptability. When she's through with a feature, she impartially discards it. I believe that the future of mankind is we-mankind. I think we're evolving toward androgyny, neither male nor female nor bisexual, but beyond sex. The old system of procreation is becoming obsolete. Pleasure is the carrot Nature holds up to keep us alive and reproducing, so she gave us pleasure in eating and in sex. But we have over-reproduced. Overpopulation is the biggest threat facing the human species. We cannot continue to cover the earth with our progeny.

  I think that we will transcend gender. An astonishing number of today's younger generation already looks neither male nor female. Nobody can watch the present volcanic upheaval in the relationship of the sexes without being aware that a gigantic reshuffling of the sexual card deck is in progress. Something new is happening. The boundaries between the genders are getting more and more blurred while the war between the sexes rages. To me, it looks like the last anguished gasp of an evolutionary dead end, the chaos before a new order appears. Perhaps in the future there will be neither males nor females, but androgens who are complete within themselves and not subject to the eternal dance of attraction-repulsion that dominates the sexual scene. Human love, as we now know it, is possessive and exclusive. I believe that true love is possible only where no motive of self-interest is involved.

  RMN: What are you doing these days? Can you tell us about any projects on which you're currently working?

  NINA: Well, actually, I'm just sitting back letting it happen--whatever it is. I wrote a scenario for a Cosmic Soap Opera. It begins with the cosmic egg splitting in two and the Divine Couple trying to come together on earth through many incarnations. I give talks about the relationship of the psychedelics to the spiritual path, but beyond that--hey listen, kids! I'm 73 years old. Don't I have a right to sit back and enjoy the breeze?

  RMN: Yes, you do. You've certainly led an active and adventurous life. Looking back over it, how do you see the various stages that you've gone through contributing to the person you are today?

  NINA: The person I am today...But who is that person? I'm not very self analytical. I like what G. B. Shaw says in Joan of Arc: "Thinking about yourself is like thinking about your stomach--it's the quickest way to make yourself sick." I could say I'm a writer, a mother, a senior citizen, an iconoclast, a researcher of human consciousness, but you know, none of these labels really describe me. I could say I'm an energy blip in the cosmic void, or that I'm a crazy quilt of attributes, good and bad--but I'm more than that. I'm more than the sum of my parts. Trying to define oneself, I think, is an exercise in futility that can put us in the self-concentration camp.

  As you know, Freud was my compatriot; we both came from Vienna, but while I greatly appreciate the quality of his writings and his scholarly grasp on mythology, I can't help feeling that he was to a large extent responsible for putting great numbers of people in the self-concentration camp. His imaginative way of looking at mental dis-ease and neurosis made them seem most attractive, and people began to watch their emotions with the fascination of Narcissus beholding his own image in the lake. America fell in love with Freud's ideas years before they were accepted in Europe. When I came to this country in 1941, everybody was talking about Freudian slips and Oedipus complexes. Phallic symbols were everywhere. In the fifties, it was very "in" to have a shrink. People went back to their childhood to search for the subconscious roots of their present mental quirks, and what they found was that Mom was to blame--it was all her fault. It seems to me that when people are so busy observing their subjective feelings, they lose touch with the great big world around them.

  Who I am today is who I became in the years of peeling the onion of my conditioning and attempting to relocate the center of my small self in the Higher Self. The Nina Graboi self is transitory, an instant in an ocean of being, but the Self is undying and unborn-or so the Hindus say. Let me quickly tell you, before we go on, that there is nothing any more today that I absolutely and positively believe. Everything is possible, but our ignorance is abysmal and so is our tendency to embrace belief systems that we find attractive. In an LSD session, our self-transcendent experiences seem a thousand times more real than our everyday world, but that does not mean that they necessarily embody ultimate truths, no matter how attractive they are.

  DJB: To the people who know you, you appear to be a happy person. Can you tell us what your secret is?

  NINA: Happy? I don't know. Content may be a better word. I think it's because I buy the Buddha's idea that all suffering is caused by attachment to the objects of desire. It makes good, practical sense to me. If this is as clear to you as it was to me when I read it for the first time many years ago, then desire and attachment will start slowly to fall away. Besides, all I am is a blip in the cosmic soup. Life is ephemeral, an instant in eternity. So why get hung up? I go with the flow, as we used to say in the sixties.

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  Bridging Heaven and Earth

  with Laura Huxley

  Laura Archera Huxley has received wide recognition for her humanistic achievements including that of Honorary Doctor of Human Sewices from Sierra University, Honoree of the United Nations, Fellow of the International Academy of Medical Preventics, and Honoree of the World Health Foundation for Development and Peace from which she received the Peace Prize in 1990.

  Born November 2, 1911, in Turin, Italy, she expressed a great talent for music and went on to become a concert violinist. She played all over Europe but her American debut was at Carnegie Hall, just before World War II. She played in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra from 1 944 until 1947 and then went on to produce documentary Films and become an editor at RKO. During the fifties Laura worked as a psychological counselor, a lecturer, and a seminarist of the Human Potential Movement, in which she is still involved today. She is the founder of Our Ultimate Investment, a non-profit organitation for the nurturing of the possible human.

  In 1956 she married the renowned writer and philosopher, Aldous Huxley, and lived with him until his death in 1963. She has written a number of books which focus on the development of psychological freedom: You Are Not the Target, Between Heaven and Earth, OneADayReason to Be Happy and The Child of Your Dreams, which she wrote with Dr. Piero Ferrucci. She is also the author of This Timeless Moment, a book describing the life she led with her husband and a beautifully touching tribute to his genius.

  We met with Laura on April 8th 1 992 in her lovely, chapel-like home in the Hollywood Hills. Her easy smile and bright-as-button eyes spoke of a serenely playful spirit. Together with her gracefuI posture, they revealed that after eighty years of life she has succumbed neither to emotional nor Newtonian gravity.

  RMN

  DJB: What originally inspired your interest in mysticism, personal growth, and spiritual development?

  LAURA I don't know that there was one moment that it happened. It was just a natural development. You can call it whatever you want to--the creative forces, an inspiration. But all my life, and now at this very moment, I have wanted to go farther. It is so clear that there is so much more. This immensity, this beauty, this mystery all around us--and we perceive such an infinitesimal part of it. I guess it is greed to want to be more than a limited being with a limited body-mind. But you feel that the potential is so much greater than what you have actualized, and then something happens showing that you can go farther. That is a wonderfu
l aspect of life.

  DJB: So you see it as a natural extension of your own development?

  LAURA Yes. When you feel the immensity of the possible, naturally you are interested in plunging into it. When you feel good, you plunge deeper. However, at my age--I am eighty--I often am exhausted. Then I have to stay quietly--I have no choice. And then again something new happens. It may be something distressing and I just have to deal with it however I can. Or something wonderful happens, giving me again the overwhelming apprehension of life's renaissance forever, even when death may be around the corner.

  RMN: How did your interest in psychotherapy develop?

  LAURA In 1949 Ginny Pfeiffer, my best friend, was diagnosed as a terminal cancer case. The Mayo Clinic declared with total certainty that there was no possibility for her to get well. Death would come in six months, or if a miracle would happen, in two years. It was a shock. It plunged me into all kinds of exploration. Until then, my life had first been devoted to the violin, totally. After that, I had started to work in films. I had never studied medicine, psychology, nutrition or healing. Actually, I had left school at fourteen so I could concentrate my energy on practicing and concertizing.