LSD use was a fundamental building block in a new way of thinking, in a new community.
Why do we have war?
What is the power of love?
Who is God, and why is he here, and what has he done for me lately, anyway?
I mean these were questions that were being debated by young people who were just
growing into their bodies and their minds and their selves
We really thought that drugs were going to change the world.
We really did. We thought if you turned on, if you took acid, you would really change,
because we had changed from those experiences.
Experiences of cosmic oneness where I truly felt I was no different than you,
I was no different than my black friends,
I was no different than anyone who lived in any other part of the world,
nor was I that different than my dog.
God lived inside all of us, is a cliched
way of putting it.
We're going through a door, and you wanted to be in the rooms on the other side of that door.
You wanted to know what was there, and you wanted to take that knowledge back with you.
There's a sense of being in communion with powers greater than yourself,
and intelligence far strips the human mind and energies which are very ancient.
Your sense of being brought into God's workshop and...
or that the veil is pulled away for the first time. You see how things really are.
Yeah, you know, we're trying to learn to live better, and to think better, and to be better human beings,
and to be a better race. To be a better civilization. And to make this whole thing work.
What we're thinking about is a peaceful planet. We're not thinking about anything else.
We're not thinking about any kind of power, we're not thinking about any of those kind of struggles.
We're not thinking about revolution
or war or any of that.
We would all like to be able to live an uncluttered life, a simple life, a good life, you know.
And, like, think about moving the whole human race ahead a step.
And one of the ways of achieving that being is through, through, drugs.
I think for, personally, that the more people turn on, a better world it's going to be.
The music changed just immediately.
I cannot explain to you what it's like to be in a crowd of 5,000 people on LSD,
with a Grateful Dead also on LSD,
leading the crowd through a series of improvisations.
And before that, rock and roll songs were three minutes. Period, paragraph, we're out of here.
