PARTISAN REVIEW
303
INT: What I said before, you didn't directly answer whether you felt
that drugs were directly contrary to this in some ways.
GINSBERG: No, directly contrary is words. And it immediately sets up
whole poles of polarized thinking, which is unnecessary. What I would
propose is using actual mediation
to
get high, to regain conscious–
ness, to either supplement the drugs with meditation, to replace the
drugs with meditation, or to augment the meditation with drugs, but
to make the meditation the backbone of both political and conscious–
ness exploration activity as a necessary ritual stabilizing influence in
any kind of action - whether in drug-taking or politics, or even
religion, the actual sitting is the stabilizing factor, the practical side,
the real praxis, because that's the thing that teaches patience, that's
the thing that teaches observation and mind-consciousness, that's the
thing that makes you more and more sensitized to internal rumblings
and auras and neural patterns, that's the thing that profiles your
consciousness for you.
INT: I remember when I was sort of poking around in preparation for
this - there was an interview in the New Orleans underground
paper....
GINSBERG: The
N ala Express.
1m:
In which you said something like that especially radicals should
try to get into this.
GINSBERG: Well, particularly for those radicals who want to renounce
use of psychedelics as being either too strong or too disorienting or
too much of an interference with their political activity - if an eight–
hour trip leaves them too vulnerable to police violence and entrap–
ment also, they would be invulnerable with a good solid hour of
morning sitting - and that could replace psychedelics if it were
pursued regularly, daily, and seriously. But there's no excuse not to
include a larger consciousness in any revolution. Because the whole
revolution attracted people and got people on because it began out
of the body, it began out of the recognition of a larger consciousness
- and because of the ecological crisis, any effective revolution that
will save the planet will have to include all sentient beings, will have
to include the Bodhisattva's vow, will have to include the deeper
realization of our ultimate nature - otherwise we'll just have another
mad revolution with Blacks shooting whites, and whites shooting
Blacks, the Left disordered and having
putsches
and having argu–
ments with each other, and arresting each other and putting each
other in chains after victory power is gained, like other revolutions
have been. So in order to insure that the revolution be won as
divine, because we're now God, we can end the planet, you know,
