Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream [Paperback]

 

 

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Storming Heaven is a book that will forever stay dear to my heart as it literally changed my life. I can't expect anyone else to have the same experience I did, and it changed it in a way you probably wouldn't imagine, but I can definitely recommend you this book and say it is a fantastic read. Jay Stevens has written a completely non-sensationalistic, thoroughly researched and extremely compelling account of a chapter in modern history that has, unfortunately, become distorted in contemporary consciousness. This book doesn't create a rose-tinted view of the American 60's cultural revolution, but instead unearths its roots, explores its good side and bad, and never forgets to remain dogged in pursuit of the truth. That isn't to say that the book is dry, far from it, this is a page-turner that will ultimately break your heart.

The story contained within is fascinating, far broader than mere drug experiences and filled with unforgettable characters. It is an incredible history lesson about a recent time you probably thought you already understood, but after reading this, will realize you didn't. If you have any interest in modern history, American culture, or indeed the potent chemical mentioned in the book's title, this is *essential* reading.

It expanded my perceptions without the use of drugs, I hope it will do the same for you.

Storming Heaven is a history of the movers and shakers of the drugs revolution which started in California and whose ripples can still be felt.
As LSD spreads through the universities, music studios and film lots, Jay Stevens charts the adventures of many of the acid lumineries such as Ken Kesey and the merry pranksters, the grateful dead and how the movement suddenly took on a huge momentum, which forced the forsec of law and order into action.
A great insight into ther period, with a very west coast flavour.

These days we are all happy with our technology, and rightly so. Our Android smart phones allow the world to fit into the palm of our hands; internet highways let the uninteresting meet interesting people - the people I meet online are far more interesting than the people I meet in my home town-, and computer games allow us all to wonder through titanic realms; games are getting better, and are spawning virtual realities that let us all, including the poorest and weakest among us, be who the heck they want to be; without being judged by the authorities or nosey neighbours etc.

You get the picture; obviously, because this is our 21st century world. And it gets better; entrepreneurs, like the inventor Ray Kurzweil, promise that the rosy picture I just painted above is only the beginning, and sometime soon, when the technology reaches God-like complexity, we will all transcend into silicon heaven and live forever. This is the expected singularity that is coming our way and those stick in the mud luddites better move out of our way!

Now, people like Aldous Huxley would call this 'singularitarian' idea of an upwards techno elevator, via our brilliant technology, a 'self transcendence' downwards. In other words, he would not be impressed with the idea of transferring his consciousness into a silicon chip, to be immortal.

Why would he be so negative? We can't exactly call Aldous a Luddite, or as we Brits say, an old fart. These rightly placed badges are given to idiots, who criticise our modern world, but Aldous Huxley was not an idiot. Why then would he call our technological escape a ` self transcendence downward '? The reason was that Aldous Huxley had access to magical spells that make our augmented realities look like baby toys! That is, Huxley had access to the 'Other World', whatever that may mean, and a person who's been there will not be too impressed by Ray Kurzweil's singularitarian wrap.

We think our Avataric selves are the cutting edge of ontology, but this is only because we don't believe that there is anything outside of materialism and so we focus more and more on technology. Even `New Age', people who criticise science and materialism, fall into this downwards spiral of techno nihilism.

But our grandparents, back in the 1940 to the early 1960's, would laugh at our looking at ourselves in our techno mirrors because they had LEGALLY sanctioned psychedelic drugs that allowed them a glimpse through the matrix. (The comedian, Doug Stanhope, has a very funny joke about old farts arguing that kids these days are boring because they don't take drugs)! It is all in this book and we young 'n's are left humbled by our naïve view of what escape really means. We watch movies in CGI and are impressed; Huxley will find that very funny indeed!

Imagine this parallel history. Peasants break into Galileo's study, steal his telescope and party hard; with some making their own telescopic observations. After some hard telescopic mischief like looking up each other's bums, or whatever else peasants got up to back in 14th century Italy, the Pope orders his goons to attack smash all the telescopes and forbid the peasants from going anywhere near a telescope. Priests will from now-on scream from the pulpit that all telescopes are evil. This hysteria would have the effect of shutting down the promise of the revolution the telescope hailed and modern science.

Well according to this book (and Storming Heaven), this is what happened with LSD, mushrooms and the entire psychedelic discovery. It's an amazing fact that today, philosophers, psychologists and scientists ignore 'the other world', as Stevens calls it. Stevens shows that back in the 1940's, psychedelics were not controversial and were in fact seen as the cutting edge in consciousness science. The psychedelic revolution took place at around the same time as the discovery of nuclear power. There was as much excitement about the promise of LSD as there was about the splitting of the atom. It's all in here.

I didn't know about LSD treating alcoholism, or the thousands of prestigious scientific journals raving about psychedelics and thousands of scientific research papers published on the therapeutic promise of LSD.

Apparently there was a wide acceptance of magic mushrooms amongst the political establishment and the intellectual elites in America. For example, the media magnate who owned the New-Yorker hosted many magic mushroom parties in the 1950's for his political establishment buddies. Stevens writes about the later civil war between those following Timothy 'give it to the peasants' Leary, versus Aldous 'give it to the brightest and the best' Huxley. Leary's gang won the argument and so we had the 1960's revolution and the subsequent crackdown by the cardinals of our culture.

The information in here is eye popping, the book is thick but very readable and so there is plenty of back story on the interesting characters of the period, like Gerald Heard, who was an even greater polymath than the renowned polymath Aldous Huxley, or the young Terence McKenna, just back from the Amazon with weird stories to tell. There is a very interesting conclusion that Stevens makes that is different from the later Terence McKenna version of the psychedelic experience. McKenna argued that psychedelics shrink the ego and so would create nicer people (I explain it crudely but that are the gist). But Stevens shows that LSD mostly created ego monsters, because the more acid you took, the more narcissistic you became. This is why the counter culture figures of the 1960's went a bit bonkers towards the end. The CIA knew this and so they flooded the youth movement with pure LSD and, by doing this clever trick, they destroyed the New-Left. LSD apparently helped boost the narcissistic powers of the counterculture leaders and that's why Timothy Leary went a bit daft. I happen to agree with that bit and it is also the opposite of Terence McKenna's version of creating a ego-less utopia with mushrooms. Stevens also mentions that the I-Claudius creator Robert Graves was the reason that magic mushrooms came to the west which I found weird. My only criticism is that the book is centred on America. What about Germany or the UK for example? Albert Hoffman had a secret gang of poets and philosophers doing LSD. Ernst Junger was one of the members. But there is no mention of this in here. Anyway, this is the definite history of God's gift to us apes!

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4.0 out of 5 stars Subculture Unleashed
When I received this book I wasn't sure what I would be reading, but I was intrigued. The book covers LSD and mescalin and other hallucinogenic drugs in their context of 1950's... Read more

Published on 26 Jun 2006 by Ethereal Neil

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