The Human Be-In issue was the first color Oracle. The cover was used as one of the posters for the Human Be-In, and the paper was given away free there. We printed about 60,000 copies. From then on we would print over 100,000 copies of each Oracle, and they made their way around the world from Vietnam to Moscow. The cover was a collaboration by Michael Bowen, Stanley Mouse, and Casey Sonnabend.
Michael Bowen centered much of the organizing energy for the Be-In from his pad at Haight and Masonic. We were concerned about the philosophical split that was developing in the youth movement. The anti-war and free-speech movement in Berkeley thought the Hippies too disengaged and spaced out. Their influence might draw the young away from resistance to the war. While the Hippies thought that the movement was doomed to endless confrontations with the establishment leading to violence and fascism.
Michael and I decided that to strengthen the youth culture, we had to bring the two poles together. We felt that the two factions could stand together on the pillars of peace, love and transcendental vision. But to have a Human Be-In we would have to have a Pow-Wow. We met with Jerry Rubin, Max Scheer and other Berkeley activists and shared our ideas about directing magical and conscious energy to destroy the Pentagon as the symbol and seat of evil. The idea to exorcise the Pentagon would be realized in the March on Washington in October. The Gathering of the Tribes at the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park in a "union of love and activism" was an overwhelming success.
The San Francisco bands played: Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, and Quicksilver Messenger Service. Poets Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Lenore Kandel read, chanted and sang. Tim Leary told everyone to Turn on, Tune in and Drop out. The Diggers gave out free food. The Hell's Angels guarded the generator cables which someone had cut. Owsley Stanley gave out free acid. A parachutist dropped like an angel from the sky and the whole world watched on the evening news. Soon there would be Be-Ins and Love-Ins from Texas to Paris and the psychedelic and political aspects of the youth culture would continue to grow hand in hand everywhere.
RICHARD ALPERT - INTERVIEW
Richard Alpert, later to be known as Ram Dass, was a psychologist at Harvard who participated with Tim Leary in the early research and experimentation using LSD at Harvard and at Millbrook. The mandallic art was by Daingerfield Ashton, a young pen and ink artist from South Carolina, who was AWOL from the army. In our interview Alpert says: "The Haight-Ashbury is... the purest reflection of what is happening in consciousness at the leading edge in our society... This is an interesting question: Whether we westerners can ever take on a master... master roles really don't fit into Western culture... Meher Baba says "love me, turn your whole consciousness over to me and you'll get enlightened". But that's not going to work here and Tim doesn't take on masters. I mean I can't do it, just constitutionally at this point in my development, I can't do it... A guide is a guy who's been there before and will help you, but he's not somebody you turn over your spiritual development to. Of course, Dr. Alpert would go to India, find a guru, change his name to Ram Dass, return and educate a whole generation on the virtues of guru worship.
ALLEN GINSBERG - RENAISSANCE OR DIE
The centerfold for the Be-In issue was Renaissance or Die, a speech Allen Ginsberg gave in Boston, November, 1966 to a convocation of Unitarian ministers. The drawing was by Rick Griffin. Ginsberg declared, "How can we Americans change theme? I will make a first proposal: that everybody who hears my voice... try the chemical LSD at least once, every man, woman and child over 14 in good health... then I prophecy we will all have seen some ray of glory or vastness beyond our conditioned social selves, beyond our government, beyond America even, that will unite us into a peaceful community... America's political need is orgies in the parks, on Boston Commons, with naked Bacchantes in the national forests... I am acknowledging what is already happening among the young in fact and fantasy... I am in effect setting up moral codes and standards which include drugs, orgy, music, and primitive magic as worship rituals... and I am proposing these standards to you respectable ministers... that you endorse publicly the private desire and knowledge of mankind in America, so to inspire the young."
THE GOD I WORSHIP IS A LION
The God I Worship Is a Lion is a poem by Michael McClure expressing the identity of body, spirit and nature. The collage is by Michael Bowen.
