Into the within

I had this existential crisis in my late 20s,” says Daniel Pinchbeck, controversial author of Breaking Open The Head: A Psychedelic Journey Into The Heart Of Shamanism and 2012: The Year of the Mayan Prophecy.

Only child of Beat-author Joyce Johnson (who dated Jack Kerouac) and abstract painter Peter Pinchbeck, Daniel grew up knowing people like the poet Allen Ginsberg, and almost inevitably became a New York arty journalist/literary editor/fashionable party-goer. It was a bohemian path that led ultimately to emptiness and a nascent drink problem.
“Turning 30 I was in the throes of depression, despair, nihilism and cynicism,” recalls Pinchbeck. “When I looked back at my life up to that point, I remembered the psychedelic experiences that I’d had in college. And I decided to make that the centre of my investigation as a journalist.”
The resulting book, Breaking Open The Head, is an extraordinary literary adventure. Against a background of erudite research into the relevant scientific, philosophical, visionary and psychedelic literature, the book tells the story of Pinchbeck’s headlong exploration of a huge array of psychedelics – from synthetically-produced chemicals to visionary plants, including the mushroom-like iboga and ayahuasca, which he took under the guidance of indigenous shamans from West Africa and South, Central and Native North America.
“Part of the thesis of the book is that the exploration of non-ordinary states of consciousness has validity,” Pinchbeck says, “and that these psychedelic substances could have a real place in modern culture, but they have to be thoroughly understood in terms of their benefits and their dangers.
“On the other hand, the book explores my own shift from a secular, materialist, nihilistic perspective to accepting that there is a realm of the psyche – that consciousness and material reality are interconnected, and that there are these other levels or dimensions of being that psychedelics seem to provide access to.”
Discovering a psychic dimension through psychedelics came as a huge surprise to the secularly-raised Pinchbeck.
“I’d grown up in a culture that was very scientific-based and materialist. I think a lot of people almost have two tracks running at the same time… Underneath they are sort of aware that there’s a psychic level, they’re aware of synchronicity and serendipity and spirit – but then the mainstream ideology of western culture has been this secular materialist scientism, and you almost need to speak that language to get ahead.
“So in a way I’m trying to integrate the levels. If we could speak really coherently about how those other dimensions could connect to this one, then we could maybe take a step forward in both our own personal evolution and that of consciousness generally.”
In shamanism, Pinchbeck found a guiding and protective structure for his psychedelic explorations.
“Shamanism is a word that comes from the Siberian language, but it’s now used to denote a wide range of practices that have pretty much been found all over the planet. The shaman is the one who goes into non-ordinary states and brings down information, healing, energies, visions and prophecies from other realms. They’re like the storyteller and the mythmaker and often the healer. To a certain extent western culture has domesticated and whitewashed shamans. If you go to Amazon cultures, shamans can be very ambiguous figures. They can have a lot of power and they can heal, but they can also destroy.
“When people come out of the secular materialist culture and re-discover these psychic levels, they tend to be excited and then get sort of naïve about the workings of the psychic and the spiritual realm. So shamanism is a sophisticated set of techniques for dealing with non-ordinary consciousness and non-ordinary state experiences.
“It doesn’t always involve drugs or psychedelics – there’s a lot of shamanic cultures where they don’t use substances. But in a place where there are psychedelics, the visionary plants become an essential part of the shaman’s tool kit.”
What advise does Pinchbeck have for people drawn to psychedelics?
“One thing is that you can only get out of any kind of experience what you’re willing to bring to it. So people for the most part, if they only have the kind of hedonistic approach to psychedelics, that’s kind of the experience that they’re going to get back.
“But if they could actually consider the possibility that these plants and substances are a lot more than that, then they might get a lot more back. You can use a computer to play video games and watch pornography, or you can use it to learn about the universe. Psychedelics are in a similar category. Your intention is hugely important.
“With psychedelic exploration, you can get a number of free rides where nothing significant happens, but at a certain point you may find that you have a bad trip, or you get opened up to stuff that seems really frightening. And for me that’s the point where you really have to move from just doing it casually to thinking about exploring more of a shamanic practice, with knowledgeable shamanic guides; some kind of tradition that had a protective shield around it, going back a long time.
“There’s a great website called erowid.org that has huge numbers of trip reports and facts and frequently asked questions on all the different substances. People would be well-advised to study up before they tinker with chemicals and psychedelics. The more people educate themselves, the more they’ll have better, more conscious experiences, and do less damage to themselves and the people around them.
“Unlike, say, Timothy Leary, I don’t advocate that everybody go out and take psychedelics. I think that it’s up to the individual, and I don’t think it’s right for everybody. People can get a lot out of my writings who haven’t explored psychedelics.
“But I think we’re going to have change the paradigm and the trajectory of what we’re doing as an increasingly globalised civilization. At the moment we’re recognising that economic progress, in the old kind of linear modern industrial sense, is just gonna lead us further and further into disaster and destruction.
“We need a different goal-orientation for what we’re doing as humans on the planet. And it seems to me that the exploration of consciousness, and the intensification of being, through different spiritual disciplines and technologies, could actually be that alternative paradigm.”
You mean we could shift our focus from chewing up the world’s remaining resources to exploring inner realms instead?
“Yes, from outer growth to inner growth,” says Pinchbeck. “Once again, it’s not just psychedelics… there’s also yoga, meditation, tantra… One of the great things about globalisation is that all these esoteric traditions of the world are now becoming transparently available to anybody who wants to search the internet and learn about these practices. It’s a pretty amazing time.”

For more information, read Breaking Open The Head and 2012 by Daniel Pinchbeck, and visit www.realitysandwich.com and www.postmoderntimes.com