The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss (32 page)

As the time neared for me to start classes, my father determined that my mother would take me to Boulder and help me get settled. To provide moral support, Mom’s good friend Marge, the English teacher from whose class I’d been summoned by the sheriff two years before, accompanied us. Marge was wise in ways I hadn’t realized. She was there for Mom, but she also realized I wasn’t a bad kid, just a little misguided, or perhaps a lot misguided; but nonetheless her presence helped me as well.

I had to find a place to live. Mom wanted me to live in the dorm at least for the first semester, but I was adamantly opposed. I didn’t want to face the restrictions that would entail, especially the restrictions on being able to smoke dope whenever I wanted. Plus, I was an introvert and repelled by the kind of social interaction that dorm life entailed. So I pushed back. I found another place, a tiny apartment in a three-story hippie house filled with a motley assortment of freaks, and with a landlord who didn’t much care what you did as long as you paid the rent on time. It was just what I was looking for! It was Mom’s worst nightmare, for the same reasons. But I insisted, and tried to convince her it would be OK, and actually Marge came to my defense. So it was that I found myself in Number 7, 1507 Pine.

Shortly after my mother returned to Paonia she fell and broke her ankle. Here was yet another challenge, as if the worry we’d caused her wasn’t enough. She had always been fragile, and probably at her age, fifty-six, she may have been developing some osteoporosis. This injury further exacerbated the arthritis that she was suffering. Although we didn’t realize it at the time, the arthritis and the ankle injury were harbingers of a much more serious illness she’d face some months later.

I settled into my studies in the warm autumn of 1969, happy to have the bust behind me, happy to be in Boulder living on my own. I wasn’t sure what courses to take; like many freshmen I had no idea what I wanted to specialize in. I knew I wanted to pursue something related to psychedelics, but I was uncertain whether it would be neuroscience, chemistry, anthropology, or botany. I had a vague idea that I wanted to be an ethnobotanist, but there was nothing in the curriculum that matched that; so I started taking classes in basic botany—plant taxonomy, mostly—and anthropology.

One of my classes was an introductory ethnography course taught by Omer Stewart, an authority on the Native American Church, and later the author of
Peyote Religion: A History
(1987). As I’ve noted, Carlos Castaneda’s
The Teachings of Don Juan,
had come out the previous year and had an enormous impact on me. Since then, much if not all of Castaneda’s work has been discredited as confabulation, but that first book may have had some basis in truth. At the time I had no reason to doubt it, nor did I want to doubt it. In fact, I credit it, along with Eliade’s work, in fostering my interest in psychedelic shamanism. It provided a context for the use of psychedelics that I couldn’t find anywhere else at the time, certainly not from Timothy Leary or the other mass-market gurus. The revelation for me was that psychedelics were nothing new; rather, they were part of a shamanic tradition stretching way back, possibly to the Paleolithic or even earlier. If one wanted to understand psychedelics and how to use them, consult the peoples who had been using them for thousands of years. This made sense to me, and still does.

Part of the reason that psychedelics were so disruptive to society (or were perceived to be) when they burst on the scene in the sixties was that we had no context for them. They were not part of the Western religious tradition (although they may once have been, that connection has long since been suppressed) and their role in witchcraft and alchemy was esoteric knowledge—that is, largely forbidden knowledge. So psychedelics were fascinating to many of my generation, but there was no map, no guidance on their usage that could be adapted to the contemporary societal context; this partly explains why many people got into unfortunate situations with them. It was not widely understood at the time that proper “set” and “setting” were essential to using psychedelics safely, and for purposes of spiritual discovery and the exploration of consciousness. In fact, this is largely what shamanism is: a set of procedures, practices, and beliefs that provide a structure or a context for understanding and controlling the experiences, within limits. Without that context, one is left to random experimentation without any framework for interpreting the results. In that respect, I think Castaneda’s first book did a service for a generation of psychedelic novices. It made us aware that at least there was a context and a tradition, even if the one he described, through the character of don Juan Matus, a supposed Yaqui sorcerer, was largely the product of the author’s fertile imagination.

While taking Stewart’s class I visited his office to discuss
The Teachings
, which he had read carefully. He assured me the book almost had to be a fabrication; there was nothing in Yaqui traditions that even hinted at the practices it described. Either Don Juan was an idiosyncratic figure whose belief system bore no relationship to Yaqui culture, or he and his practices had been constructed out of whole cloth. Stewart’s critique was a wakeup call. I had learned early on a valuable lesson about accepting, without corroborating evidence, the assertions of self-styled gurus, shamans, and other supposedly wise teachers. It’s good to keep an open mind; there is much we don’t know, as one should never forget. But it’s just as crucial never to sacrifice the capacity for critical thinking and skepticism. Stewart’s lesson is one that many who fall prey to cults of one sort or another (and I include most of the major world religions here) would do well to heed.

The value of skepticism was reinforced in a second course I took that fall, on the comparative anthropology of religion. To discover the variety of what passed for religious or spiritual practice was eye-opening. One person’s abomination or blasphemy could easily be another’s sincere belief. I remember reading
When Prophecy Fails
by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, first published in 1956. It’s the study of a Midwestern UFO cult that claimed to be channeling messages from aliens. Newly recruited members were told they’d be picked up on a specific date and saved from the imminent end of the world. The members quit their jobs, gave up their possessions, and gathered together, waiting to be saved. When the appointed date came and went, they grew even more convinced that the revelations were valid. It wasn’t until two later predictions also failed that members became disillusioned and the cult fell apart. The case is an interesting commentary on the folly of human belief systems, including most millenarian cults. The dynamic of the true believer is much too prevalent in today’s mass consciousness, and in political and religious discourse: My mind is made up, don’t confuse me with facts!

All this amounts to a cautionary tale for those anticipating the end of history as predicted by Terence and others for the winter solstice in 2012—or on any other such date. No prophecy of major global catastrophe or the end of history has ever come true. Terrible events can and do happen in both human and natural history, but prophets cannot predict them. And yet it is virtually certain that some believers will find a way to rationalize the fact of a prophecy proven wrong. From a sociological perspective, it will be interesting to observe what happens in the days before and after the latest in a long line of such predictions. I don’t expect the world to end, of course, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were major social disruptions resulting from mass hysteria.

Much of my education during that first semester in Boulder did not occur in the classroom. It happened when my friend and mentor John Parker came out from California and spent several weeks with me in my apartment. John and I had been carrying on regular correspondence for a couple of years. His eclectic interests—in drugs, magic, shamanism, biology, chemistry, alchemy—likewise fascinated me. Our hashish-fueled conversations lasting well into the wee hours were a supreme pleasure. During those weeks together, we explored many of the ideas that Terence and I would later call upon to force open the portal to hyperspace at La Chorrera.

Chapter 26 - Girl with a Gun: 1970

John eventually returned to Berkeley, and I finished my first semester in Boulder. The end of that semester corresponded to the end of the sixties, though that troubled decade’s social ferment continued undiminished. The Vietnam War dragged on; Nixon’s illegal invasion of Cambodia in late April 1970 sparked campus protests across the country, leading to the Kent State shootings on May 4. At CU, a large portion of the student body took to the streets, and I was among them. I had turned nineteen the previous December just weeks after the draft lottery went into effect. Though I had a student deferment, the lottery saved me from any risk of being drafted because I had a very high number. Nevertheless, I was as outraged as many of my contemporaries, and our protests shut down the university for the rest of the semester. All final exams were canceled; most of the faculty supported the protests, and students were awarded whatever grades they had before the protests started, so I got off easy. There was no real assessment of my performance after my first year, and many of my peers were in the same position.

I may have come quite close to dying during one of those protests. I was standing in a large group one day that had blocked off University Avenue, between downtown Boulder and the campus on “the Hill.” The cops had cordoned off the street below and were directing traffic away from the crowd, which numbered maybe a thousand kids. Suddenly a car broke through the barricades and raced toward us, as if its driver was bent on mowing us down. But suddenly it stopped, screeching to a halt very near to where I stood. The woman in the car had the windows rolled up and the doors locked. She was obviously in some sort of distress, though it was hard to tell if she was angry or scared, let alone why she’d driven into the crowd in the first place. I started to reach for the handle of her car door, I don’t know why. I didn’t want to haul her out of the car; I had some idea of inviting her to get out and join the protest. Then I saw the gun she was cradling in her arm, her white-knuckled grip on the handle, and I froze. If I’d made any further threatening move, I think I would have been shot dead. Instead I had that “whoa” moment, put my hands up and backed slowly away. By this time everyone nearby had noticed the gun, and the crowd got quiet and moved away, opening a space around the car. The driver put the car in gear and slowly drove back down the hill in the direction she had come from. It was a sobering moment for everyone—one of those bifurcations in the time stream that could have gone very differently.

But I spent most of my days that school year over books, not in the streets. After John left, I continued my academic studies while the two of us pursued our esoteric explorations via letters. Most of my spare time was somewhat hermit-like; I spent long hours at home smoking hashish while reading and studying various obscure tomes in the company of the coal-black cat, Ahriman, that Lisa and I had adopted over the summer and brought with us to Boulder. I also got to know my neighbors across the hall, Hans and Nancy, the hippie couple living in Number 6. Hans, whose parents were Dutch, had grown up in Boulder; Nancy, his new wife, was the daughter of a wealthy Denver family. Hans was a good carpenter and made his living that way. We became close friends over those two semesters at 1507 Pine and have remained so ever since.

Into the spring of 1970, Terence remained off the radar, still hiding out in the obscure backwaters of Southeast Asia. My parents would occasionally get postcards from HCE as he slowly worked his way to the outer islands of the Indonesian archipelago in search of butterflies and anonymity. Our correspondence lapsed for a while; there was no place to send a letter because it was impossible to know where HCE would turn up next. After a few months of such rambling, faced with evaporating finances, he ended up teaching in Tokyo in one of the English mills that were ready sources of temporary employment for itinerant travelers. I welcomed this development because it was an opportunity to renew our regular correspondence.

My longed-for love, Peggy, had started school in Boulder in the fall but left for New Mexico in the spring. This disappointed me because it meant there was no chance to get better acquainted, despite a few pleasant moments spent together early in that school year. She was invariably nice to me, but my passions were not reciprocated. I clung to the hope that I’d have another chance to get together with her when she returned after the semester, but reality intruded when she did. I discovered she’d met someone else, only to have that relationship fall apart, leaving her sobered and saddened. I was furious and heartbroken, though I knew I had no real justification for such feelings. A mere casual friend, I had no claim on her; and yet, if only she had stayed, we might have developed something together. Or so I told myself. It was a complete delusion, of course. But the heart does not listen to logic or reason; it is a creature of pure emotion; it knows only what it wants, and it knows only pain when it doesn’t get what it wants.

I did my best to present a facade of sympathy to her. She was not in a happy place either. She knew she had screwed up badly, had made some bad decisions and wanted to move beyond feelings that were surely quite similar to mine in the wake of her ill-considered relationship. I did my best to be kind, though in reality I was seething with jealousy. I wanted nothing more than to track down the monster who had despoiled my perfect, pure, virginal angel and tear him limb from limb. I also knew that had the tables been turned I would have done the same thing.

The denouement of that very depressing spring came when my father arrived to take me back to Paonia for the summer. My mother had been feeling increasingly poorly all winter, ever since she’d broken her ankle the previous September. She’d suffered from arthritis for years, and that accident had made it worse. She had gone to the Penrose Cancer Center in Colorado Springs, one of the premiere oncology centers in the country at that time, not because she thought she had cancer, but because severe arthritis often accompanies cancer, and she thought they might have new treatments that would help her. It didn’t take long for these trained oncologists to uncover the much grimmer truth: She had metastatic bone cancer and probably had only months to live. Cancer, not arthritis, was the cause of her severe joint pain and fragile bones. Now it was clear. She had undoubtedly broken her ankle because even then her bones were losing their strength. Our family physician had misdiagnosed her problem because he lacked the training or had misinterpreted the signs. Years later, in my own reading on the topic, I found that bone cancer was the most common sequela of breast cancer, which my mother had survived five years previously. In fact, just prior to her ankle fracture she had passed the five-year threshold that was thought to signify that she was cancer-free. Though I don’t blame her doctor for missing the diagnosis, catching the cancer nine months earlier might have bettered her chances. As it was, it was too late; Mom did not live to see the end of the year.