FOOLS ON THE HILL WITH THE KARMA MEN

Tea for two with the Maharishi. The drift along hippie life purported to be inherently religious, but even among the hippies there were always a few who tried harder. These are the various sages of the movement, who appointed themselves or styled themselves or merely promoted themselves a religious prophets and spiritual guides. This temple of fame included Arthur Kleps ( 1928-1999 ) of the neo-American church, Allen Cohen ( 1940-2004 )editor of ”The Oracle”; and the most famous sage, Dr. Timothy Leary, creator of the League for Spiritual Discovery, or LSD.

Timothy leary was the prime apostle of psychedelic religion. At Millbrook, New York, his followers gathered to take LSD, explore their real selves and float about on a ten square mile estate.

Leary looked upon the chemical LSD as a sacrament, and its presumed power to arouse latent religious sensitivities formed the wellspring of hippie religiosity. What Leary would term a regeneration through chemical-mystical union of the self and the universe, or, more commonly, ”tuning in”. On a vast, rented estate at Millbrook, in the Hudson Valley, Leary’s transient disciples took the sacrament and potentially experienced their own body cells dividing.

the poet as swami. Allen Cohen edited a journal called The Oracle from a haight Street office draped with Indian prints. Oriental occultism, social rants, and fin-de-siecle artwork comprises the bulk of Cohen's message to the psychedelic world. The first issue appeared in Sept'66 and reached a peak of 100,000 copies per month.

In May 1957 Leary stumbled across an article in Life  magazine, written by R. Gordon Wasson, on the subject of entheogens, the use of psychoactive herbs in the religious ceremonies of the Mazatec people of Mexico.Intrigued, Leary traveled to Mexico to learn first hand what kind of mood change a helping of psilocybin mushrooms would produce. What happened was a radical change in his life.Leary returned to Harvard in 1960 and persuaded academic authorities that a psilocybin project could eventually be beneficial in altering the mind states of convicted criminals and alcoholics. He teamed with a number of associates, including Richard Alpert, who would later become known as Ram Dass, to research the effects of psilocybin, progressing on to LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide.

''And of course The Beach Boys, Donovan and The Beatles had found the Spiritual Regeneration teachings of the Maharishi, a sort of pop fusion of Buddhism, Hinduism and even stray bits of American “power of positive thinking” boosterism.''

”After about three years on the project, Harvard officials heard a vigorous protests from parents, who did not want their children exposed to those experiments. That effectively shut down the experiments, which forced Leary and Alpert out the door”.In 1964, a reading of the Tibetan Book of the Dead inspired Leary to co-author The Psychedelic Experience , in which he wrote that the “psychedelic experience is a journey to new realms of consciousness. . . . transcend[ing] verbal concepts of space-time dimensions, and of the ego or identity.”

There are about 2000 Deadheads in federal prison for LSD or marijuana cases, serving anywhere from Five Years to Life.

Discovering the true self and rejecting externals formed the message of the Buddha, who thus represented to most psychedelic believers the greatest religious teacher of all. Hippie gurus, at any rate, enjoyed striking Buddha like poses. Hippie religion however, was absorbant and Cohen’s ”Oracle” also recommended Tarot cards, Hopi Indian spirits, and Henry David Thoreau. Buddhism, Confucianism and Hinduism, particularly the watery blends offered by various celebrity mystics and sages, found little competition. Buddhism in particular was hip with the young because it had no ruling omniscient god who mandated antiquated moral codes, and its priest caste was best known for a) protesting war and b) wearing colorful psychedelic outfits. It was seemingly devoted solely to the “now,” and was misinterpreted as something of a Pop religion.

Rishikesh Ashram India, 1968.The Beatles, Mia Farrow, Donovan, Mike Love and others visit Maharishi Mahesh's Ashram to study Transcendental Meditation, a.k.a. T.M.

”Leary’s ideas received considerable publicity and in 1962 he was contacted by Mary Pinchot Meyer. Leary supplied her with LSD who used it with her lover, President John F. Kennedy. Leary later claimed that Meyer helped influence Kennedy’s views on nuclear disarmament and rapprochement with Cuba. Kennedy aide, Meyer Feldman, claimed in an interview with Nina Burleigh that the president might have discussed substantial issues with Meyer: “I think he might have thought more of her than some of the other women and discussed things that were on his mind, not just social gossip….In 1963 Leary and Alpert were dismissed from Harvard University after complaints from the parents of students involved in experimenting with LSD. The two men moved to New York and continued their research at a large mansion called Millbrook. …The following year Leary was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana. Found guilty, he was sentenced to prison. However, with the help of the Weathermen, he escaped from prison. Leary and his wife to move to Algeria where he spent time with Black Panther leader, Eldridge Cleaver. Later the couple went to live in Switzerland…. Richard Nixon described Leary as the “most dangerous man in America” and ordered G. Gordon Liddy to destroy him. In 1974 he was illegally kidnapped by Interpol agents in Kabul and transported to the United States. (At the time Afghanistan had no extradition treaty with the United States.) Leary was eventually released from prison in April, 1976.

The Beatles faith in Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was shattered into disbelief and suspicion based on the Yogi’s almost universal sized ego and his roaming eyes and body language in the Ashram. There was some doubt as to whether TM was short for transcendental meditation  or Trade Mark protected. The public comment was the Maharishi was addicted to cash. He tried to convince the Beatles to tithe a portion of their income into his Swiss bank account and his fee for initiating the Beatles was one week’s salary from each of them. In addition:

”Accurately or not, they became convinced that the Maharishi had distinctly worldly designs on one of their illustrious fellow students, actress Mia Farrow. They confronted him, in an oblique way, with this accusation, and when he was unable to answer it, or even figure out precisely what it was, they headed back to London … Less explicable, though, are reports of the same sage’s offering of chicken to at least one female student within his otherwise-vegetarian ashram, in alleged attempts to curry her favor….The Beatles’ disillusionment with the Maharishi during their stay with him in India in 1968 involved allegations that Maharishi had sex with a visiting American student….“Sexy Sadie” was later composed in honor of those believed foibles on the part of His Holiness….In any case, within a week Mia Farrow, too, had left the ashram on a tiger hunt, never to return (to Rishikesh). ( from Stripping the Gurus, Geoffrey D. Falk )

”In 1964 Kleps was fired from his position after writing a paper about marijuana. He then bought a piece of property in the Adirondacks and founded the Neo-American Church. He played the role of “Chief BooHoo, the Patriarch of the East” for the psychedelic church, a title intended to remind him not to take himself too seriously. The church used LSD and peyote as its sacrament and modelled itself vaguely after the Native American Church. After a long court case, the authorities eventually ruled that while native americans were allowed to take peyote within the context of religious ceremonies because it was traditional, the Neo-American church was not allowed that right because, in their eyes, the religious connection was being used as an excuse….Timothy Leary described Kleps as a “mad monk”. While living at Milbrook, Arthur Kleps was dosed one morning on a large dose of LSD and underwent a mystical experience. He eventually documented his adventures there in his book Millbrook. Unfortunately, Kleps also has a reputation for anti-semitic tendancies and at one point was kicked out of the Netherlands on this charge. Art Kleps died in 1999.”