visions

Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Fri, 05 Feb 1999 09:05:49 +0000 

    Mattis questions 'silly' as the right word to describe 
    LSD as a tool of understanding.  

    In the original post I was mocking more my old boss's 
    Jungian enthusiasm than the use of the drug itself.  

    In my own rather limited experiences with it, the one 
    insight which I still feel I should never otherwise have 
    gained was into the subjective nature of time.  There's 
    nothing very taxing intellectually about imagining oneself 
    standing 'outside of time' & I had never thought all that 
    much about it.  But, undeniably, under the drug I did 
    have that sudden click of understanding for which 
    we use the word 'insight'.  (Not so much a click, actually, 
    more an intergalactic boom.  Terrifying at the time, 
    strangely reassuring in retrospect.) 

    At the more personal level I remain doubtful that 
    the supervivid kaleidoscope of colours, snakes, Grecian friezes 
    & so on, shed any more light on my own individual story 
    than the figures that emerged from other - less exotically 
    triggered - deliriums.  I'm afraid it took the hard old slog 
    of lying on the couch in Maresfield Gardens arguing the toss 
    over several years with myself & Mrs Burlingham before 
    the real pennies began to drop.

    This obviously reflects a personal predisposition.  I'm very glad 
    to have had that particular glimpse behind the curtain.  
    And I suspect I might have gained similar experiences 
    from following the various Christian or Buddhist mystical 
    disciplines.  My trouble is: I find them really quite boring 
    & - secretly - kind of irrelevant.  

    Even at this advanced age when I should be thinking of 
    higher things, I'm much more intrigued to understand 
    what the hell is going on behind the eyes of my wife.  
    How did the undercarriage retraction system work on 
    the Hawker Hurricane?  To what extent is this drunk 
    exaggerating his alcohol intake?  How *did* old Hem 
    convey that feeling at the start of a hot summer morning?  
    And so on.  

    Which no doubt explains my ambivalence about the later 
    Salinger, the Buddhist version.

    Scottie B.
    the Buddhist.