The Dedalus Book of the 1960s: Turn Off Your Mind

Don't let the cheezy cover discourage you. This book is well written and well-researched. He covers all the dark and "groovy" aspects of the 60s with a fair-handed and well-researched approach. It's a fun read and no matter how much you know about the 60's and its love of the occult, I can guarantee you will find gems of knowledge stashed away in this little tome. He covers everything from Aleister Crowley to J.R.R. Tolkien, not to mention such icons of the 60s as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Amazing read of music history. An insight of music and lyrics and the possible influences to the music we have all been affected. With so many people named and their connections to the mystic. Each person could have a chapter devoted to each of them. As I read the book, I certainly have come up with great questions that I would ask music icons, like Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney of their musics true meaning.

I rarely review more than one book by a single author, but in Gary Lachman's case it is really justified. He is the former bass player and songwriter with the band Blondie, and so he came in on the tail end of some of the extraordinary goings-on that permeated part of the art and music culture of the late 1960s. Gary has done an extraordinary amount of research and digs deeply into the dark side of the 1960s. He turns up some fascinating material about the people who provide the soundtrack for many of us as we were growing up. There is a wealth of anecdotes about the Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, the Rolling Stones and a host of other celebrities who soaked themselves in New Age spirituality, and in some cases the dark side of the occult, producing songs like Sympathy for the Devil and eventually spawning bands like Black Sabbath. The book is populated by some extraordinary individuals including Kenneth Anger, Anton LaVey and, of course, the Maharishi, who all hoped to extend their reach by appealing to the rich and famous in the music and the arts. The motives of some of the people whom we meet were clearly of the highest order, while others, including Charles Manson had their own agendas. Gary's book is quite well researched, opinionated and extremely readable. Though I would be willing to bet that most readers will also find a few things that he says to be infuriating. I thought that I knew a lot about those days, but it turned out that there was much that I had not known before: The book is a revelation about people, beliefs and practices that are still affecting us today. If you have any interest in the New Age, mysticism and in the explosions in music and personal freedom that happened at the end of the 1960s, I cannot think of a better book that ties them all together.

Amid all the other revolutions that happened in the 1960s - sexual, social and political - another revolution took place that has been overlooked by historians. A revival of the occult affected all parts of daily life, from the Beatles' journey into psychedelia to the movie Rosemary's Baby to the novel Steppenwolf. There have always been those interested in the idea of secret knowledge only available to a select few, including ancient civilizations and lost races. Such interests became popular through groups like the Theosophical Society of the 1920s founded by Madame Blavatsky. A later manifestation of this interest in secret things was the near obsession with flying saucers. All the people and movements one would expect to find in such a book are here: Charles Manson, astrology, the Tarot, Jim Morrison, Timothy Leary, yogis, witchcraft, Transcendental Meditation, Brian Wilson, Anton LaVey and Aleister Crowley. Another huge influence on the mystical revolution of the 1960s was the written word. Hermann Hesse was a Nobel laureate whose novels were rediscovered in the 1960s and spread across American college campuses like wildfire. The publication of a fantasy novel by an obscure British author named Tolkien (The Hobbit) by two American publishers at the same time, because of copyright problems, caused another literary firestorm. This helped lead to the rediscovery of 1930s pulp authors like Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. Who can forget other literary heavyweights like Jack Kerouac, L. Ron (Scientology) Hubbard, Allan Ginsberg and Aldous Huxley? I very much enjoyed reading this book. It is very well researched, and does a fine job exploring an aspect of "the 60's" that is generally forgotten. This gets two strong thumbs up.

I've always had a very secretive interest in mysticism and visionary states of consciousness. I've also been a big fan of Blondie. So when I discovered that a former member of Blondie has written books on mysticism and altered states of consciousness I almost freaked. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed by this book. Gary Lachman does not appear to really know anything about mysticism. This entire book is written from the perspective of a serious occultist. Everything he writes about is related back to either G.I. Gurdjieff or Aleister Crowley or Charles Manson. It is a sustained misinterpretation of the spiritual reality, a sort of spiritual psychosis, completely lacking in real insight. It is ironic that the author is familiar with the Theosophical Society but focuses on Helena Blavatsky instead of George Russell (aka A.E.) whose book "The Candle Of Vision: Inner Worlds Of The Imagination" shows an extraordinary understanding of miraculous states of consciousness which can make real magic happen in the subjective realm of the mind. On the other hand, this book is a great reference tool for researching all the mystic and psychedelic influences of the sixties which probably have had a greater influence on you than you might care to acknowledge. It should also be noted that a mystical experience is always interpreted through the religious framework of the mystic's culture. Therefore Gary Lachman's perception of a mystical experience could be due to a bad 60's vibe!