 | |
| Author | Gary Lachman |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Sidgwick & Jackson |
Publication date | 2001 |
| Pages | 430 546 (revised) |
| ISBN | 0-283-06366-1 |
Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius is a 2001 book by the American writer Gary Lachman. It charts the presence of mystic and occult ideas in the pop culture and counterculture of the 1960s. A revised and expanded version was published in 2009 as The Dedalus Book of the 1960s: Turn Off Your Mind. [1]
According to Paul Krassner in Los Angeles Times , "Turn Off Your Mind offers an alternative chronicle of what went on in the '60s when, somewhere along the spectrum of expanding consciousness, many hippies collided with a fascination with black magic. But Lachman's book reads more like a list of references that could conceivably serve as an aid in preparing for a stint on 'Occult Jeopardy!'" Krassner found the book to focus too much on the negative sides of the 1960s counterculture. He further wrote that Lachman "resorts to ... mendacious generalizations", "fails to report interesting details", that his "selection of anecdotes isn't without errors" and that there is "a fixation on fascism in the book that taints Lachman's perceptions". Krassner wrote: "I suspect that, unless you are a hard-core enthusiast of occult esoterica, you will find reading this book a chore rather than a pleasure." [2]
The Independent's Christopher Hirst wrote that there is "much in Lachman's book to entertain and inform those who wished they had lived through the Sixties and those who did but can't remember it. If you want to know about, say, beatnik king Brion Gysin, ley-line apostle John Michell and Zen master Alan Watts, this is the place to start." [3]
Robert Anton Wilson was an American author, futurist and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized by Discordianism as a Pope and saint, Wilson helped publicize the group through his writings and interviews.
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Flower power was a slogan used during the late 1960s and early 1970s as a symbol of passive resistance and nonviolence. It is rooted in the opposition movement to the Vietnam War. The expression was coined by the American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in 1965 as a means to transform war protests into peaceful affirmative spectacles. Hippies embraced the symbolism by dressing in clothing with embroidered flowers and vibrant colors, wearing flowers in their hair, and distributing flowers to the public, becoming known as flower children. The term later became generalized as a modern reference to the hippie movement and the so-called counterculture of drugs, psychedelic music, psychedelic art and social permissiveness.
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