Not long ago I spoke with my old friend, Dennis. Hes dying of cancer the same kind that killed my mom. We grew up in the same Chicagoland neighborhood. We were close. Apparently hed made his peace with God already, so our conversation turned away from his troubles, back to the old days when we were testosterone driven rebels that explored alternate states of mind with LSD and other chemical expedients. We did that frequently and were not bashful talking about it.

At the end of our conversation he said with some confidence, Im not afraid to die, man. Ive seen the other side. I understood exactly where he was coming from. Literally, we had seen the other side, and it was something to behold. Its been thirty years since Dennis, his older brother, Mike, and I, stormed the gates of Eden, looking for apples. Too much forbidden fruit can be dangerous. After a few years of over indulgence we outgrew the need to take LSD. He turned to the Lord and casino gambling. I became a Buddhist, author, and royal pain in the ass.

Looking back, I dont have a single regret about using psychedelics. They prepared me for my Buddhist life and especially my writing career in ways that cant be taught in a classroom or in some study material. Apparently, psychedelics prepared Dennis for understanding death. The whole situation caused me to reflect before the Gohonzon. I realized that when I was facing cancer and my own death just 16 years earlier, I, too, remembered the grand visions and enhanced sensory awareness experienced by my own use of psychedelics. It was like the cascade of memories and feelings you get when returning to your hometown after a long absence. It might be politically correct to say our conduct was stupid, dangerous, and wrong. Perhaps stupid and dangerous, but not wrong. Its been 30 years since those adventurous days. The details are gone. What remains is the ghee - a sense of the sacred.

Of course, there doesnt seem to be any place in the current configurations of organized Nichiren Buddhism for the use of psychedelics or any other mind altering substance except alcohol as a socially acceptable drug of celebration. Even the priests get drunk to say nothing of us laity. Our practice is strict obedience to the mentor, system and dharma. Were all about pure samadhi meditation via chanting daimoku and gongyo hold the shrooms. You chant the right mantra to the correct mandala and thats all you need to become a true Buddha. No question about it in our sectarian canon just chant and youll eventually become a Buddha, warts and all. The effects of psychedelics internally compromise all highly structured organizations and hierarchies. Terence McKenna writes in Food of the Gods:

.LSD is more than a commodityit is a commodity that dissolves the social machinery through which it moves. This effect has bedeviled all the factions that have sought to use LSD to advance a political agenda.

A psychological deconditioning agent is inherently counter agenda. Once the various parties attempting to gain control of the situation recognized this, they were able to agree on one thing that LSD be stoppedthat when the methods that worked for colonial empires peddling opium in the nineteenth century were applied by the CIA to internal management of the American state of mind during the Vietnam War they damn near blew up the whole psychosocial shithouse.

Like many others who came of age in the 60s, Dennis and I ventured down that ancient path of initiation - a vision quest strewn with untold psychic dangers and rewards. There were no ritual controls in place to anchor us. There were no elders, Shamans or wise ones to guide the way. The psychedelic revolution of the 60s was a wilderness without qualified guides. Timothy Leary was more like Johnny Appleseed than the wizened old brujo, Don Juan, written about so eloquently by Carlos Castaneda. Our guru was the music, but the melodious spell of the gandharva could not open the palace gates of nirvana. We all realized that there was more psychedelics were but a glimpse - a pill couldnt get you all the way there. For this reason, many of us sought God or Eastern religion. I had a few friends that became so terrified that they became rabid Jesus freaks. A few trippers experienced the alpha and omega. Most caught a good look at the invisible universe and experienced the minds many hidden levels. More than a few were psychologically scarred, and there was that rare event where someone was drown by the undertow of insanity.

The 60s and early 70s were turbulent years to be sure. We were involved in what many believed was an unjust war. Revolution billowed from the Universities, and music cast its spell over youth like the sirens song. Millions of baby boomers, the sons and daughters of hard working Americans wondered what life was really all about? LSD was a passkey to the unconscious and a way to break from the traditional order.

There are many mysteries in samsara. One of the oldest and most esoteric is the powerful influence of psychotropic drugs on human consciousness and development. At the heart of ancient religions, art, literature, music, and technology are the visionary expedient of Soma and her host of holy siblings. Until the 1960s, knowledge of trance inducing plants was confined to the shamans, tribesmen, select seekers, and the academics that later studied them. Dr. Albert Hoffmans accidental discovery of LSD in 1938 changed all of that. Soon, the genie was out of the bottle and any third year chemistry student yahoo could synthesize satori.

It was May 1969 when I first tried psychedelics. For the next five years, until I began chanting, I explored the mind with LSD, mescaline, Psilocybin, cannibanoids, and select phenethylamines like 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA) and 2,5-dimethoxy-4-methylamphetamine (DOM or STP). I had many experiences of varying degrees of import. I used psychedelics in conjunction with dhyana meditation practices, ceremonial magick, eight-limbed yoga with an emphasis on Kundalini, and pranayamic deep-breathing exercises. I learned early on that I was only one being in a long line of aspirants that had walked down that ethereal path. On more than a few occasions I secretly wondered how some of my more advanced Buddhist leaders would deal with a whopping dose of altered consciousness. It would have given them a new perspective to the concept of ku. One of my favorite 19th century authors writes:

My travels to India had familiarized me with their systems of meditation and the fact that many of the lesser Yogis employed hashish to obtain samadhi, that oneness with the universe, or with Nothingness, which is the feeble expression by which alone we can shadow that supreme tranceIn the first place, the Ego and the non-Ego unite explosively, their product having none of the qualities of eitherthe first thing observed is the flashthe ecstasy or Ananda (bliss) attending dhyanaIn higher mystic states, then, the Yogi or Magician has learned to suppress itthe new consciousness resulting from the combination is, too, always a simple one (The Psychology of Hashish, Alesiter Crowley)

In my heart, I sought the truth of existence and the meaning of life. I didnt find it until Buddhism blossomed in my life. Thanks to Dennis, I was able to remember with some sense of nostalgia the rites of initiation of my era and what shaped my life - beyond getting drunk at the frat house rush or finishing basic training in the Army. So, Dennis, I wish you peace. It was amazing. Happy trails to you, until we meet again.