Readings from “Light My Fire: My Life With the Doors”by Ray Manzarek
THE WORD:
from chapter 4 “The Beach and Lsd”, page 117
The negatives of marijuana were few. The positives were delicious. Relaxation, increased perception, color enhancement, delight in food, delight in sex, increased logical brain connections – “Oh, I get it now !” and “I understand” and “I never saw the connection between those two things before” and a general overall groovy feeling, as we said in the sixties. Of course those logical brain connections are exactly what your religious leaders and your federal, state and local government officials do not want you to make. They’d be out of a job if you actually looked behind the curtain. They definitely don’t want you opening the doors of perception.
MEDITATION: The hallmark of true wisdom is that when you hear it, it resonates. It’s like you already knew it, but someone finally put it into words for you. When I read this, it reminded me of this guy Guido who I knew in college. He used to like to smoke a little weed (or “arsenio” as we used to call it back in the day). Anyway, Guido was backpacking in the dark continent and there were these two rogue types who’d just arrived from South Africa and they were whispering to themselves about managing to smuggle gold out of the country at a potentially fabulous profit. “What about you Guido, old chap, have you come across any gold here in Africa?”. “Totally” Guido said, “The other day in the market I bought eight ounces of awesome bud for like seventy-five cents”.
Like those two somewhat befuddled smugglers, I have to admit, I’d never seen the logical connection between precious metal and smokable intoxicants before. But that’s because the door of perception had never been opened to me. In today’s passage, Ray is giving all of us the key to that door.
Let’s get one thing completely clear. In no way is Ray saying that drugs are the key to enlightenment. Except maybe in the “literal” way. But that’s exactly the way the government wants you to read it. Only an unenlightened rube would actually read it that way. What he’s really saying is work hard, live a healthy lifestyle and educate yourself. Its just that smoking tons of weed seems to make those things easier to accomplish. Or at least think about….
