A book Review of Breaking Open the Head by Daniel Pinchbeck.
"From the anguish of life's impermanence to the ecstasy of spiritual transcendence."
-Henrix Michaux-Going from atheism to an acceptance of life being a magical journey isn't an easy task. Daniel Pinchbeck does exactly this in his book, Breaking Open the Head. The book takes us through his personal awakening from a jaded New York writer to banishing evil spirits in his apartment with the aid of a modern tarot reading pagan, and finishes with the ultimate responsibility that each and everyone of us has to become our own shamans, our own healers, and share our knowledge. It sounds like a new type of Super Hero already, and in a way it is... a modern type hero, looking for itself through the old and the new, diving under water and coming back up to share his trip with others. Daniel's words are inspiring, and he gives a wonderful homage to ageless psychedelic researchers, writers, poets and traditional shamans. The book is a great trip through remote areas of the world, mirored in the not so commonly explored spaces which the human brain discovers and creates all at once.
"The Universe is a machine to create Gods"
-Henry Bergson-The books opens with an Iboga trip in Gabon, amongst the Bwitis. From the Bwitis chief, we go to Burning Man, to South America passing back by New York. Pinchbeck manages to keep a refreshingly personal look at what he sees. His critics as his praises remain harsh and real all at once.
Here is an exemple of his type of realism. On a trip to Mexico, he describes a town as "ugly". A more "new agy" minded writer might have idealized the town, and seen something more exotic than a plain and "ugly" building. Pinchbeck does not do this common mistake. He sees the building as ugly and he writes it. This view on things reminded me of my own travels when seeing shacks, thinking how "quaint" they might look on first approach, then realizing that if I'd see the same shacks in my own society, I might think it's just "trash". As if the travelling itself, the putting oneself in a new environment, had a way to sometimes romanticize what is being seen. The very same element of life becoming something else, as if by magic, or by a romantic form of delusion. "After rooting out it's witches and shamans and destroying it's visionary traditions, the modern world relied on artists and poets to create pallied simulations of what had been lost. In the modern world, the artist took over the role of the shaman".
Pinchbeck is introduced to Gurdieff (GD)during a Burning Man gathering. According to GD, the soul is something to work for, to suffer for. What others might call "machine like people", would be equivalent to soulless in GD's terminology. Humans' purpose is to serve Earth. Humans are the "sense" perception for Earth. Everything on Earth, humans, plants ect, die and are food for the Moon. Earth and the Moon are living developing beings. Earth becomes a Sun, and Moon becomes an Earth.
According to GD's school of thought, if an individual develops mental powers, if he develops the Will, it attains liberation from being food for the Moon.
Anthropologist Micheal Harner, describes a Ayahuasca trip. When Dragons said they were "the true gods of this world", he asked a blind shaman, who answers "Oh, they're always saying that. But they are only the Masters of Outer Darkness".
Talking about Jean Paul Sartre, Pinchbeck mentions that people not having proper shamanistic background can have hard times dealing with dissolving of ego created by psychedelics. The book mentions Sartre and his lobster trip during his bad mescaline experience. Sartre "started having the persistent impression that he was being pursued by a giant lobster. The hallucinations lasted for some time - some sources say almost a year - and were a cause of concern to the budding existentialist."
I disagree with the point of view that people must have a shamanistic background in order to deal with a trip properly. Sartre happened to be a drinker and barbituate user, which perhaps reflect in his existantial crisis. He was used to dealing with "non ordinary states of mind", even if not the psychedelic ones. I do not believe that a knowledge of any shamanistic types traditions are needed in order to go into a psychedelic journey. The psychedelic journey will be filtered through ones own experiences and areas of knowledge. Someone with no shamanistic background will not miss this aspect, since the aspect haden't yet been created in the psyche. If Sartre had a hard time with his mescaline trip, I would think that it is more related to his general anxieties than to his non shamanistic background. Perhaps he could have dealt with his anxieties better if he had been familiar with shamanistic type trainings. Sartre was an intellectual, not a poet. Intellectuals in general seem to have more of a difficulty when they are faced with having to let go of any meanings created by words. Their world being made of words is attacked that much more by the psychedelic experience. Of course, some intellectuals have a better time dealing with "ego dissolving" than others, yet, this was not Sartre's case."..annihilating the machinery of the mind"
-Henri Michaux on mescaline-Daniel mentions that "the European mind was not ready to deal with psychedelics". I have a problem with this type of cultural based judgements, which I read as oversimplified notions. The few reports written by artists is what is known to the world. Let's not confuse the written world with the real world. Each continent, each culture, at any given time, contains its poets as well as it's dogma creators. It seems it is more a people's personalities issue, than a continents issue. Perhaps, here would be a good time to ask the question " where did cannabis and alcohol get illegalized first?".
Daniel goes on with a hard critic of Levi Strauss for not finding value in Indian ways of spirituality. "His patronizing attitude towards the Indian spiritual culture reflected 500 years of colonial repression and europeen snobbery" (p130)."Yage is space travel "
-WSB, Peru 1953-
Talking about William S Burroughs (WSB). (p138), "although he only took Yage a few times, it is possible to argue that the yage visions had a much deeper effects on his fiction than his heroine habit".
I would argue against this statement. WSB did Yage after a couple decades of opiate addiction. His Yage journey, was most likely filtered through those opiated years. As the great Anne Shulgin says "psychedelics will not change you, unless you want them to", WSB using Yage does not change who he was, ie, a person infatuated with the nodding procurated by opiates and it's derivates and highly inspired and formed by the opiate space.
This to me reflects on a tendency that some psychedelic users have to put the psychedelic experience above all else. It seems like it shows the expectations and desires of some psychedelic users, to want to see the psychedelic experience as so separate and so much more powerful than anything else."Once you have opened that door and experienced that grace,
once you have had that experience, the door never quite closes again!"
-Anne Shulgin-
(p150), about "spiritual tourism". Pinchbeck describes what he sees as being beneficial for the Indian populations, for exemple the benefits of making some money that can enable them to keep their cultural heritage, and in return for the West to gain new visions and new insights. We trip through the rain forest and the devestation caused by the Oil companies, killing what's left over from the previous destruction of a way of life by Occidental Missionanries. He takes us to a visit to the Huarani Indians who do not use hallucinogens, contrary to most surrounding tribes. Indians get connected to the land from generation to generations."Capitalism is a religion of destruction"
-Walter Benjamin-Pinchbeck warns us about what Shamanism also entitles, such as some darker encounters which are also part of the Shamanistic traditions. One needs rooting, because it is not the happy go lucky type of trails that some would like to imagine the journey to be. "Ayahuasca seems to dissolve the rigid categories that modern culture has created between poetry/science medicine /magic, knowledge of the self and knowledge of the universe". Higher spiritual forces feed on our realities and vice versa.
"It is nescessary to cultivate your garden"
-Voltaire-
Part 6 of the book, starts with a hard cristim on the 60's counter culture with a brief history of CIA involvement in acid. Pinchbeck comes with a very hard critic of Timothy Leary. I can not agree with those new waves of Leary's over critisism. To me, it seems like fashion.
In the long run, we do not know what Leary's effect will be, and we do not know what would have been without him. Leary was being his own wacky and eccentric Leary self. The 60's were perhaps a time of opening some doors which had been closed of for a while. Now might be a time of new inquiry, after the hang over of the 70's and 80's, the anger of the 90's, now with the after shock period. Pinchbeck is part of the new generation of psychedelic explorers, and he makes me glad to see this new generation asking harsh questions into the inquiries of the mind. Like a kid after it ate lots of candy, we have done licking our fingers, and can now wander what we would like to do after all that initial sugar high. Never the less, falling into fashion trends can only be damaging, as well as short lasting in my opinion.
Conclusion:
Pinchbeck's Breaking Open the Head is a wonderful OM'ing to the spirits and to the various people that have set them in poems, prose and theorized them. The book introduced me to writers and thinkers I was not aware of, reminded me of old inspirations of mine, as well as being a very personal account from Pinchbeck's own points of views. I found the book to be an inspiring homage to new and old discoveries alike. It seems to be bringing a fresh look to what seems as a new assimilation of psychedelic experiences into real life applications.
To each to become it's own shaman, have the guts to look into oneself, deal with what is found inside, find ways to apply the insights gained and to share the knowledge gained with the outside seems to be Pinchbecks closing words after he Broke Open his own Head, came back, and shared it with others.Pinchbeck created a beautiful account of a persons journey, his own, and a true homage to the mind of many.
References:
Henri Michaux. Poet, Painter.
Jim de Korne. Ethnobotanist.
William_S._Burroughs. Writer, cut up artist.
Micheal Harner. Anthropologist.
Claude Levi-Strauss. Anthropologist.
Jean Paul Sartre. Existential Philosopher.
Voltaire. Philosopher.
Timothy Leary. Psychologist.
Gurdjieff. Dancer, traveller, philosopher.
Antonin Artaud. Dadaist, surreal absurd artist.
Paul Devereux. The long trip.
Jeremy Narby. Anthropologist.
Carlo_Ginzburg. Microhistorian, "Plants, the matrix of all possible stories".
Henri Bergson. Intuition Philosopher.
Walter Benjamin. Philosopher.
Environmental Justice Case Study: Ecuador’s Huaorani Indians Fight Against Maxus Energy Corporation’s Plans to Extract Oil on Their Traditional Territory
Huaorani Indians. The Spirit of the Jaguar.
State of Denial. Oil problems.-A fuzzy review, images created with Vue d'Esprit-2005-
