READERS OFFER VISIONS ON PSYCHEDELICS

Congratulations to the Straight and Charles Montgomery for spreading
the dharma of the psychedelic renaissance ["Psychedelic Renaissance",
May 17-24]. It is fitting that your paper, which had its own genesis
in the '60s, should continue to carry the torch of enlightenment
against the establishment's buffeting winds. As one who "hung out"
with Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Ralph Metzner, and others while they were at Harvard, I can vouch for the historic significance of the meeting just held at Whistler.

The author properly points out the pioneering role that Canadians
played in the legitimate study of the subjects. One fact was not
mentioned. The hallucinogenic mushroom was unknown in North America outside the care and control of curanderas in the central mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico, until October 1964. That was when it was discovered in a cow pasture behind the aggie barns on the UBC campus. It was found by an arts student on his own erratic pilgrimage to mystical
self-awareness who would ingest anything physical or metaphysical. He
naively thought that was what a "liberal-arts education" was all
about. As for the mushroom, the rest, as they say, is history.

Synchronicity being what it is, I am not surprised that Montgomery's
article came out while I was reading a just-published book of
selected interviews with Allen Ginsberg. The Straight, good
journalistic interviewing, Ginsberg, and head food are a rare mix of
hope in a world where Ginsberg's Moloch in "Howl" spawned Brian
Mulroney, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and now George W. Bush.

Carey Linde
Vancouver

"Human knowledge needs to be understood to be loved; divine
knowledge needs to be loved to be understood" (quote from a radio
pastor). Seeking embodied in altered states of consciousness via
ingested substances should be given a red light while the true dangers
are studied. I am a child of the '60s and believe we needed the fresh
consciousness expressed in the long-lasting and practical alternatives
of that era. Diversity and freedom are also necessary today, counter
to job slavery and mindless cloning development. Yet, we can do this
and find God in tried-and-true methods safely. Study the Bible, try
praise, meditate on God's word. Prayer works and worship will lift
your soul. We need to overcome our offendedness to achieve higher
states of clarity and that which is of God.

Mike Bohnert
Port Coquitlam

Thank you, Leonard George, for your refreshing article on the
observations of imagination both outside of and within science
["True Imagination Is Knocking Hard at Science's Door", May 17-24] It
was not only interesting and articulate but showed a laugh-out-loud
sense of humour.

This is the writing I look for when I pick up the
Straight.

Chris Lindholm
Vancouver