“I must have had a thousand trips…”
~ John Lennon

Below is a YouTube video of an interview with John Lennon on his and the other Beatles’ use of LSD. Watch it for a deeper understanding of the man. Also, please read the excerpts from some interviews with Lennon, and selected quotes.

I’ve been talking about entheogens, God-inspiring substances (“consciousness-expanders,” or how about “Spirit Revealers”), of which LSD is surely to be counted as one. A question for those of you out there who are anti-LSD: Would you want to live in a world without the Beatles music? Isn’t it so much better with such brilliant, brilliant art? But would this music have ever come to be were it not for LSD? Sir Paul (who ingested far less than John, certainly) has admitted as much — LSD was the source of quite a bit of the Fab Four’s inspiration. As Lennon notes, acid never wrote the songs, but it surely played a part in the consciousness of the four men who composed that glorious body of music.

That said, do keep in mind that Lennon stopped taking LSD because of too many bad trips. Well, I want to say that I’m not advocating LSD as the Entheogen of Choice. Perhaps natural plant medicines such as Iboga or Ayahuasca would be a wiser decision.

That brings me to comment on Eckhart Tolle’s recent admission to Oprah that he has tried LSD himself, partly to see how it would compare to his own awakening experience. Here’s a little piece I wrote at right around the time the Tolle-Oprah dialogue was beginning:

Some of you have already heard me talk about this, namely Eckhart’s “confiding” (in front of at least 700,000 viewers) to Oprah that he has taken acid — just to see how it compared to the awakening experience he had about a decade ago. In short, he remarked that LSD felt “violent” to him, and that his own experience was “much better.” I guess you might say LSD induced a “rude awakening” in him, as opposed to his own more “natural awakening.”

I also had an awakening experience which was not drug induced, and it led me to the path I’m on (that of yoga). And along the way I’ve had a number of little “satori” experiences — openings, epiphanies, that came about naturally and organically. In short, I would have to say that I, too, was able to grow spiritually without the use of drugs. That said, I also want to say that it’s not for me to judge anyone else’s path, what the universe brings an individual’s way to help them to grow. For some people, entheogens (what used to be called psychedelics — “entheogens” means “God-inducing/inspiring”) provide an opening to the spiritual dimension that they otherwise might not have had. It certainly did it for many people in the sixties, and although some were permanently damaged by their experiences, many others were greatly helped.

Some of you may know of Ram Dass (aka Richard Alpert) who worked with Timothy Leary at Harvard in the 50s and 60s before both of them were kicked out for experimenting with what were then called “psychedelics.” Well, Richard Alpert went on to take some 300+ LSD trips (probably more like close to 4-500, actually) over the course of the 60s, before he went to India and learned from his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, that one does not necessarily need to ingest drugs to reach higher levels of consciousness. At that point, when he had returned from India, Ram Dass wrote “Be Here Now,” which influenced a lot of people, especially in regard to getting off of drugs. So I recommend reading “Be Here Now,” if you have the chance, but until then, I’ve selected a few videos that you will definitely find interesting. They’re not too long. One is from Ram Dass in the 60s (when he was still Richard Alpert); one from the 70s, after returning from India; and one from the 80s — a more mature Ram Dass looking back on his journey. And I leave it to you to look for videos of Ram Dass from the 90s and today. You’ll see that even with taking all of those acid trips, Ram Dass remained remarkably lucid, always the speaker par excellence. Anyway, here they are…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hW6Dm_m5t4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfl-ySSARx8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao7o7evbE24

Tomorrow I will talk more about Tolle’s comments, but for now I would like to say that, unfortunately, not everyone will have a “natural awakening” like Tolle had, and even if they do, some, like me, would like to go “Furthur” with our exploration of consciousness. And why would Tolle take LSD and not, perhaps, a lower dose of a plant medicine such as, say, San Pedro(containing mescaline, a phenethylamine)? Wouldn’t that have gotten him closer to comparing like with like? In this sense, I find what Tolle said to be somewhat disturbing. But perhaps he was taking that kind of stance because he was being listening to by so many thousands?

Notes about Lennon’s drug use from his interview with Rolling Stone.

How did you first get involved in LSD?

A dentist in London laid it on George, me and the wives, without telling us, at a dinner party at his house. He was a friend of George’s and our dentist at the time, and he just put it in our coffee or something.

When you came down, what did you think?

I was pretty stoned for a month or two. The second time we had it was in L.A. We were on tour in one of those houses, Doris Day’s house or wherever it was we used to stay, and the three of us took it, Ringo, George and I. Maybe Neil [Aspinall] and a couple of the Byrds – what’s his name, the one in the Stills and Nash thing? – Crosby and the other guy who used to do the lead. McGuinn. I think they came, I’m not sure, on a few trips. Peter Fonda came, and that was another thing. He kept saying [in a whisper], “I know what it’s like to be dead.” It was a sad song, an acidy song, I suppose. “When I was a little boy” . . . you see, a lot of early childhood was coming out, anyway. So LSD started for you in 1964. How long did it go on?

It went on for years, I must have had a thousand trips. Literally a thousand, or a couple of hundred? A thousand – I used to just eat it all the time.

The other Beatles didn’t get into LSD as much as you did?

George did. In L.A. the second time we took it, Paul felt very out of it because we are all a bit slightly cruel, sort of “we’re taking it, and you’re not.” But we kept seeing him, you know. We couldn’t eat our food; I just couldn’t manage it, just picking it up with our hands. There were all these people serving us in the house, and we were knocking food on the floor and all of that. It was a long time before Paul took it. I think George was pretty heavy on it; we are probably the most cracked. Paul is a bit more stable than George and I.

And straight?

I don’t know about straight. Stable. I think LSD profoundly shocked him and Ringo. I think maybe they regret it.

Did you have many bad trips?

I had many. Jesus Christ, I stopped taking it because of that. I just couldn’t stand it.

You got too afraid to take it?

It got like that, but then I stopped it for I don’t know how long, and then I started taking it again just before I met Yoko. I got the message that I should destroy my ego, and I did, you know. I was slowly putting myself together round about Maharishi time. Bit by bit over a two-year period, I had destroyed me ego. I didn’t believe I could do anything. I just was nothing. I was shit. Then Derek [Taylor, Apple press officer] tripped me out at his house after he got back from L.A. He sort of said, “You’re all right,” and pointed out which songs I had written: “You wrote this,” and “You said this,” and “You are intelligent, don’t be frightened.” The next week I went to Derek’s with Yoko, and we tripped again, and she made me realize that I was me and that it’s all right. That was it; I started fighting again, being a loudmouth again and saying, “I can do this. Fuck it. This is what I want,” you know. “I want it, and don’t put me down.” I did this, so that’s where I am now. At some point, right between `Help!’ and `Hard Day’s Night,’ you got into drugs and got into doing drug songs. A Hard Day’s Night, I was on pills. That’s drugs, that’s bigger drugs than pot. I started on pills when I was fifteen, no, since I was seventeen, since I became a musician. The only way to survive in Hamburg to play eight hours a night, was to take pills. The waiters gave you them – the pills and drink. I was a fucking dropped-down drunk in art school. Help! was where we turned on to pot, and we dropped drink, simple as that. I’ve always needed a drug to survive. The others, too, but I always had more, more pills, more of everything because I’m more crazy probably.

How do you think LSD affected your conception of the music? In general?

It was only another mirror. It wasn’t a miracle. It was more of a visual thing and a therapy, looking at yourself a bit. It did all that. You know, I don’t quite remember. But it didn’t write the music. I write the music in the circumstances in which I’m in, whether it’s on acid or in the water.

What was your experience with heroin?

It just was not too much fun. I never injected it or anything. We sniffed a little when we were in real pain. We got such a hard time from everyone, and I’ve had so much thrown at me and at Yoko, especially at Yoko. We took H because of what the Beatles and others were doing to us. But we got out of it.

Quotes by John Lennon

The reason why kids are crazy is because nobody can face the responsibility of bringing them up. Everybody’s too scared to deal with children all the time, so we reject them and send them away and torture them. The ones who survive are the conformists — their bodies are cut to the size of the suits — the ones we label good. The ones who don’t fit the suits either are put in mental homes or become artists.

All we are saying is give peace a chance.

I don’t believe in killing whatever the reason!

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.

Everything is clearer when you’re in love.

I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong.

I don’t intend to be a performing flea any more. I was the dreamweaver, but although I’ll be around I don’t intend to be running at 20,000 miles an hour trying to prove myself. I don’t want to die at 40.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.

If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that’s his problem. Love and peace are eternal.

It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.

Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.

Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.

Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock and roll or Christianity.

Possession isn’t nine-tenths of the law. It’s nine-tenths of the problem.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn’t insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.

The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?

The more I see the less I know for sure.

The older generation are leading this country to galloping ruin!

The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.

The worst drugs are as bad as anybody’s told you. It’s just a dumb trip, which I can’t condemn people if they get into it, because one gets into it for one’s own personal, social, emotional reasons. It’s something to be avoided if one can help it.

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.

We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow’s nest of that ship.

We’ve got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it’s going to get on by itself. You’ve got to keep watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it.

You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate.

Many of these are from from his interview with Rolling Stone

Do you think you’re a genius?

Yes, if there is such a thing as one, I am one. When did you realize that what you were doing transcended — People like me are aware of their so-called genius at ten, eight, nine. . . . I always wondered, “Why has nobody discovered me?” In school, didn’t they see that I’m cleverer than anybody in this school? That the teachers are stupid, too? That all they had was information that I didn’t need? I got fuckin’ lost in being at high school. I used to say to me auntie, “You throw my fuckin’ poetry out, and you’ll regret it when I’m famous, ” and she threw the bastard stuff out. I never forgave her for not treating me like a fuckin’ genius or whatever I was, when I was a child. It was obvious to me. Why didn’t they put me in art school? Why didn’t they train me? Why would they keep forcing me to be a fuckin’ cowboy like the rest of them? I was different, I was always different. Why didn’t anybody notice me? A couple of teachers would notice me, encourage me to be something or other, to draw or to paint – express myself. But most of the time they were trying to beat me into being a fuckin’ dentist or a teacher.

Please Note: I excerpted this material from the following website, so kudos should got to the individual who did the grunt work, not me: http://eqi.org/jl.htm