November 1957

While tension, as a psychoso- Like all other diseases, tension matic illness, has no history, at tends to narrow the patient’s least some of the causes of tension awareness until, in extreme cases, lie within the public domain and he is conscious of nothing but himcan be made the subject of historical study. The same is true of the procedures sanctioned by various societies for the prevention and .. relief of tension. ; At the risk of indulging in those Original Sins of the intellect, oversimplification and over-abstraction, let me sum up this entire matter in one large, comprehensive generalization. Tension, I should say, arises in persons who, because of some congenital or acquired weak- self. Grave illnc~scs profoundly The History of Tension ness, are unable to cope with certain distressing situations. These change the personality of thcir vietims. To this changed personality by Aldous Huxley distressing situations are produced the narrowing awareness induced by conflict-conflict between the by the illness soon comes to seem fundamental drives to self-affirma- almost normal and is taken for tion and sex on the one hand, and granted. Tension is not a severe ill- TKNSION IS A FORM OF INSEASE; and ture, the march of civilization, all the equally fundamental drive to ness, and those who suffer from tendiseases, as such, are beyond the the marvels of nature, all the tri- gregariousness on the other. The sion are well enough to feel ant1 scope of history. There is no such umphs of art and science and drive to gregariousness is canalized suffer from the cramping self-centhing, for example, as a medieval technology-these things exist for by society, sanctioned by tradition, teredness imposed upon them by stomache-ache, no such thing as a the healthy, not for the sick. The and rationalized in terms of religion their psychosomatic disorder. They specifically neolithic focal infection, sick are aware only of their private and philosophy; hence the intrusion are like those lost souls whose puna characteristically Victorian neu- pains and miseries, only of what of historical factors into a situation ishment is, in the words of the ralgia, or a New Deal epilepsy. So goes on within the four walls of the that, on the animal level, would be great Catholic poet, Gerard Manley far as the patient is concerned, the sickroom. For them the infinite uni- exclusively biological. The disease Hopkins, “to be their sweating symptoms of his illness are a com- verse has contracted almost to a of tension seems to have arisen un- selves, but worse.” pldely personal experience, an ex- point; nothing remains of it but der all cultural conditions – in The victim of tension knows and perience to which the public life their own suffering bodies, their own shame cultures as in guilt cultures, is acutely distressed by this sense of of nations, the events recorded in numbed or tormented minds. Dis- in primitive cultures no less than in being his sweating self, but worse. the headlines or discussed in scien- ease as an actual experience is more highly developed cultures-and fun- And here we may remark that even tific journals and literary reviews or less completely independent of damentally similar devices for re- healthy people are often distressed are totally irrelevant. Politics, cul- time and place. . . . lief of tension have been developed by the realization that they are in all the societies of which we condemned to be the separate, inri~illr pc~rrttissiorr front the Armals o f the New York Academy I.*v~~c~r.ptcd Scir,rrcv,s.dlny. 1957 of have any knowledge. . . . sulated individuals they so irre-

trievably are. Neurotics hate being ness. The individual longs to be two of them, the most popular and poisoned arrows. By the late Stone their sweating selves, but worse. merged with the herd, but he is too the most difficult to control, namely, Age he was systematically poisoning Normal people hate being their self-centered to be able to do so the chemical method and what may himself. The presence of poppy sweating selves, period. One of the completely and too self-conscious to be called the crowd method. heads in the kitchen middens of most disagreeable symptoms of ten- be able to sustain the attempt for [The] list of chemicals that have the Swiss Lake Dwellers shows how sion is simply the normal distress long. He is therefore condemned been used from time immemorial early in his history man discovered a t being an island universe raised, to live in a state of chronic dis- for changing the quality of con- the techniques of self-transcendence so to speak, to a higher power. Man satisfaction, constantly pining for sciousness, thus making possible through drugs. There were dope is a self-adoring egotist, but an ego-something that, in the very nature some degree of self-transcendence addicts long before there were tist who often feels an intense dis- of things, he can never have. and a temporary release from ten- farmers. taste for the object of his idolatrous These two explanations are not sion [is long.] Let us always re- Here let me mention a fact of worship. Correlated with this dis- mutually exclusive, and I should be member that, while modern pharma- some importance. To relieve tentaste for the beloved self, there ex-inclined to think that both are par- cology has given us a host of new sion, a chemical compound need not ists in all human beings an urge to tially correct. Be that as it may, the synthetics, it has made no basic have the characteristics of a trmself-transcendence, a wish to escape facts for which they profess to ac- discoveries in the field of the nat- quilizer. Alcohol, for example, is from the prison of personality, a count are genuine facts. There is ural drugs; it has merely improved far from tranquilizing, at least in an urge to self-transcendence and, the methods of extraction, purifica- the middle stagm of intoxication, . with it, a profound distaste for the tion, and combination. All the nat- and it has been relieving tension insulated ego, a distaste which, in urally occurring sedatives, narcotics, ever since Noah made his epochthe victims of tension, becomes euphoria, hallucinogens, and excit- making discovery. . . . a c u t e a n d agonizing. In every ants were discovered thousands of In his Varieties of Religious Exhuman culture certain procedures years ago, before the dawn of perience William James says: “The for achieving temporary self-tran- civilization. This surely is one of sway of alcohol over mankind is unscendence, and thereby relieving the strangest facts in that long cata- questionably due to its power to tension, have been developed and logue of improbabilities known as stimulate the mystical faculties of systematically employed. These human history. human nature, usually crushed to procedures may be classified under I t is evident that primitive man earth by the cold facts and dry longing to become something other a few comprehensive headings. experimented with every root, twig, criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriand greater than the all-too familiar There are the chemical methods, leaf, and flower, every seed, nut, ety diminishes, discriminates and Me, a susceptibility to nostalgia the musical and gymnastic methods, berry and fungus in his environ- says no; drunkenness expands, for a world superior to, or a t least the methods that depend on the sub- ment. Pharmacology is older than unites and says yes. I t is in fact the different from, the boring or pain- jection of insulated individuals to agriculture. There is good reason to great exciter of the Yes function ful universe of everyday reality. the influence of crowds, the various believe that even in paleolithic in man. It brings its votary from The religious man has attributed religious methods and, finally, the times, while he was still a hunter the chill periphery of things to the this universal urge to self-transcen- methods whose purpose is mystical and a food-gatherer, man killed his radiant core. It makes him for the dence to an innate and deep-seated self-transcendence – the various animal and human enemies with moment one with t r u t h . N o t yearning for the divine. The biolo- yogas and spiritual exercises of gist sees the matter somewhat dif- Oriental and Western tradition. ferently, and he attributes man’s de- Hours would be needed to do justice sire for self-transcendence to the to all these stratagems, and I must workings of his innate gregarious- limit myself to a discussion of only

through mere perversity do men run of doors, a bypassing of what I have she “regards the center of our soul prophesying, the ecstatic sense of after it. To the poor and the un- called the cerebral reducing valve, as a cellar, into which God admits being one with divine truth. Similettered it stands in the place of the normal brain function that us when and as it pleases Him, so larly, in ancient India, the juice of symphony concerts and of litera- limits our mental processes to an as to intoxicate us with the delicious the soma plant (whatever that ture. It is part of the deeper mys- awareness, most of the time, of wine of His grace.” plant may have been) was not ‘

tery and tragedy of life that whiffs what is biologically useful. For both The experience of self-transcen- merely sacred to Indra, the heroand gleams of something that we there is a glimpse of something dence and the release of tension god of battles; it was Indra. And at immediately recognize as excellent transcendent to the world of every- produced by alcohol and the other the same time it was Indra’s alter should be vouchsafed to so many of day experiencethat narrow, utili- consciousness-changingchemicals is ego, a god in its own right. tarian world that our self-centered us only in the fleeting earlier stages so wonderful, so blessed and bliss- Many similar examples of this of what in its totality is so degrad-consciousness selects from out of the ful, that men have found it quite identification of a consciousnessinfinite wealth of cosmic potentiali- natural to identify these drugs to changing drug with some god of the ties. What the drunkard sees in which they owe their momentary local pantheon could be cited. In the earlier phases of intoxication happiness with one or another of Siberia and Central America variis immediately recognized as excel- their gods. “Religion,” said Karl ous species of hallucinogenic mushlent. What is not excellent is the Man, “is the opium of the people.” rooms are regarded as gods. The particular method employed for It would be a t least as true to say Indians of the southwestern United achicving this transcendental ex- that opium is the religion of the States identified the peyote cactus perience. people. with native deities and, in recent Alcohol is one of the oldest and A few mystics have compared the years, with the Holy Ghost of certainly the most widely used of state of ecstasy to drunkenness; but Christian theology. In classical all consciousness-changing drugs. innumerable drinkers, smokers, times the northern barbarians who Unfortunately it is a rather ineffi- chewers, a n d snuff-takers have drank malt liquor worshipped their ing a poison. The drunken con- cient and, at the same time, a rather achieved a form of ecstatic release beer under the name Sabazius. Beer sciousness is one bit of the mystic dangerous drug. . . . through the use of drugs. The was also a God for the Celtic consciousness, and our total opinion William James’s characterization supernatural qualities of this mental peoples, as mead seemed divine to of it must find its place in our of alcohol as an exciter of the mys- state are projected outward upon the Scandinavians and the Teutons. opinion of that larger whole.” tical faculties is strikingly con- the drugs that produced it. Thus, In Anglo-Saxon, the idea of catas- Elsewhere in the Varieties James firmed by what the mystics them- in Greece wine was not merely trophe, of panic, of the ultimate in cites the dictum of one of his selves have said of their ecstatic sacred to Dionysus; wine was Di- horror and disaster is conveyed by medical friends: “There is no cure experiences. In the mystical litera- onysus. Bacchus was called Theo- a word whose literal meaning is for dipsomania except religion- ture of Islam, metaphors derived inos-Godwine-a single word “the deprivation of mead.” mania.” In their somewhat too epi- from wine and wine-bibbing are equating alcohol with deity, the ex- Almost everywhere the consumpgrammatic way, thcse words express constantly employed. Precisely perience of drunkenness with the tion of consciousnc?ss-changingdrugs a truth that the collective experi- similar metaphors are to be found holy spirit. “Born a god,” said has been associated, at one time or ence of Alcoholics Anonymous has in the writings of some of the great- Euripides, “Bacchus is poured out another, with religious ritual. Drinkamply confirmed. Mystical experi- est Christian saints. Thus St. John in libations to the gods, and through ing, chewing, inhaling, and snuffence stands to drunkenness in the of the Cross calls his soul la inte- him men receive good.” That good, taking have been regarded as sacrarelation of whole to part, of health rior bodega di mi Amado-the in- according to the Greeks, was of mental acts, sanctioned by tradito sickness. For the alcoholic as ward wine cellar of my Beloved. many kinds-physical health, tion and rationalized in terms of the for the mystic there is an opening And St. Teresa of Avila tells us that mental illumination, the gift of prevailing theology. In the Moslem

world alcohol was forbidden, but From self – transcendence by t h e urge t o self-transcedence chemical means we now pass to selfcould not be suppressed, and there transcendence by social means. The were and still are places within the individual makes direct contact Moslem world where the consump- with society in two ways-as a tion of Cannabis indica is not only member of some familial, professanctioned by society, but has even sional, or religious group, or as a been turned into a kind of religiousmember of a crowd. A group is rite. Certain Mohammedan authors purposive and structured; a crowd is chaotic, serves no particular purpose, and is capable of anything except intelligent action. Using an analogy that is not too misleading, we can say that the first is an organ of the body politic, the second is a kind of tumor, generally benign, but sometimes horribly malignant. The greater part of most people’s lives is passed in groups. Participation in crowd activities is a relatively rare event. This is fortunate, have seen hashish the equivalent of for individuals in a crowd are differthe sacramental bread and wine of ent from, and in every respect worse the Christians. Among Jews many than, individuals in isolation or efforts were made to give a reli- within purposive and organized gious sanction to winebibbing. groups. . . . ,Jeremiah refers to the “cup of con- From the beginning men have solation,” which was administered done their work and gone through to the bereaved. Amos speaks of the serious business of living in purmen who drink wine in the house of poseful groups. Crowds have prot h i r God. Micah has some harsh vided them with their psychological words for those who, in his day, vacations. Nourishment drawn from uscld to prophesy under the influ- the group has been their staple enc-e of alcohol. Isaiah denounces food; herd poison has been their tlw prirsts and prophets who have delicious dope. … The spirituality “cwcd through strong drink.” They of small groups is a very high form IMVP erred, he says, “in vision.” of religion, but it is not the only or Traditionally, Dionysus was the god the commonest form-it is merely of prophecy and inspiration; but the best. Significantly enough, alas, the revelations of alcohol are Christ promised to be in the midst not altogether reliable. of a group of two or three.. . .(End)