Thaddeus Golas, in The Lazy Men's Guide to Enlightenment
says: "LSD is genuinely enlightening, and there are many people who can
say, as I have, ‘I would meditate for a thousand years just for another
moment like that one.' There are many doors to a broader consciousness.
Why are we afraid of the doors that are open?" He believes that LSD
allows people to look deep inside themselves -- and that is an act of
courage. "LSD will show you all of the divine intelligence you can
handle." He believes that people are not fragile; humans are timeless
beings who cannot be destroyed and that LSD can show us who we are. LSD
demonstrates, without any doubt, that there is a higher consciousness
than that which mankind now finds credible.
LSD is 100 times
more potent than psilocybin and psilocin and 4,000 times more potent
than mescaline. It is classified as a Schedule I drug by the CSA (DEA).
Today someone searched for the phrase "Thaddeus Golas has a headache." Thaddeus Golas is the author of A Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment, a book I would list as one of the most important books I ever read. As with most ideas, it's often about timing. He brought it all together for me, and after reading his writings, I was a different person, and to my mind's eye, a more centered, spiritual person. He helped me to make peace with my many divergent selves.
I hesitate to say this because so many people didn't experience the 60s and 70s as I did. Most of the information most people have comes from the government. The same government, I would remind you, that said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Saddam planned and executed the 9/11 attack. So, having put everything in perspective, here's my confession to you. I did a lot of LSD in the late 60s and early 70s. The last year I was in the U.S. Army in Alaska (1973), I did acid almost every week-end. I used to joke to friends about America's Achilles Heel: on week-ends, everybody in the army below Sergeant would be stoned on LSD, pot and beer. Everyone above that rank would be stoned on alcohol. If the Russians had attacked late Friday night or -- god forbid, Saturday morning, American would be lost. Actually we weren't safe until about Tuesdays. Mondays were always about hangovers.
But I digress. I did a lot of LSD. I have no apologies, and I have no regrets. It's true, I never became President of the United States nor chairman of the board of a major corporation, and I'm told that at one time I could have been a contender for either. Fuck, I was a Republican until about 1971 when I converted to the dark and evil side, the ANTI-Republican.
It is because of LSD that I'm as tolerant of human beings who worship idols and belong to cults. Into that category, I place most Christians and almost all Muslims. With both of those groups, most value the book containing their spiritual practices more than the practices themselves. Too many worship the book rather than practice the techniques for becoming enlightened. I think most of those two groups are a bunch of fools. As a secular humanist, I wish to note that my philosophy has shown more tolerance towards cults than cults have shown towards us.
Back to Thaddeus Golas. He has been my unofficial guru from the day I read his Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment. He never sought to be any one's anything. He warned everyone away from thinking that he was important just because he figured a few things out and wrote a book. Anyone can write a book. He deduced that first, of all, if enlightenment was worth anything, then it had to be available to everyone without condition. You shouldn't have to go somewhere and do something to attain it. Things just are. You either understand it or you don't. Thaddeus understood it and pointed it out to a lot of others.
I quit doing LSD about 20 or 25 years ago, and probably not for the reasons you're already surmising. Just as there was a time in America when you sent your kids out trick or treating for candied apples, cookies and popcorn balls and then allowed them to come home and eat all that shit dropped into their bags by strangers, there used to be a time in America when someone offered you LSD, you were pretty sure of what you were getting. Times have changed. I don't even like to smoke pot that I didn't grow myself. Oh, sure, I trust brand labels on booze because, well the government controls them rather than fights them. Oh why, oh why, does this scenario sound so familiar? There must have been a TV show about it once upon a time.
I'm free associating tonight. I like when I do that. I mean, there is no button that I can push and say, let's go day tripping. Tonight I smoked a joint, had a martini, a very good dinner, and then got completely giggly when I called a friend to tease her about being home alone on a Friday night, blogging. She put her paramour on the line to assure me that, indeed, she was not alone, at home, blogging on Friday night. When I stopped laughing, I felt high enough to write.
Tonight,my writing got started with Thaddeus Golas because someone did a Google search and visited my blog as a result of that search. In the Zen of blogging, accidental encounters are the most significant spiritually. No, it's true, they are.
One of the things I know from having read A Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment is that there is no one great blast of light after which you're another Buddha. Instead, life is much more about stumbling along in the dark and every once in awhile, managing to strike one of your wet matches, and just for a brief moment, you can see about a foot in front of you. LSD helped me to see in the dark and what I saw was the Buddha's well trodden path.
How easy is that? Wait, my match just went out. Shit, there's bound to be a light switch along here somewheres.
Recent Comments