Out Of The Psychedelic Closet
Last spring, I celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the greatest turning point in my life. In April 1970, at the age of twenty-three, I found myself climbing the western slope of the Mount of Olives, facing Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock. By midafternoon I had returned to the foot of the mountain and entered the Garden of Gethsemane, a lush patch of green adjoining a Russian Orthodox church and filled with roses and olive trees. The ancient trees inspired within me a deep sense of awe surpassing any I’d ever felt, though comparable to my childhood response to the blowing of the shofar that signaled the close of Yom Kippur each year.