A Visual Account of the Spiritual Dimension of the Haight-Ashbury during the 1960s in San Francisco

1. by
Arthur Chandler
The Quest for New Meaning

2. Why are we in Vietnam?
Black Power!
The Assassinations
Psychedelic Drugs
The Pill
The capitalist, racist, imperialist, etc. SYSTEM

3. The 60s Scene in the Haight: Oracles, Art, & Head Shops

4. Instruments
of
Transcendence

5. The BIG event:
Dropping acid,
Changing your mind

6. A Brief Historical Detour into Alternate Realities
Ancient Ways: Alcohol and Fasting
Ancient Opiates: Opium, Morphine, Heroin, Marijuana, “Hasheesh”
New World Drugs: Cocaine, Mescaline, Peyote
Progressive Drugs: LSD, Amphetamines, Ecstasy, Direct Implants
Why pursue these altered mental states?
Boredom, kicks, curiosity, addiction, coping with problems, spirituality, ….

7. New Perceptions, New Art
A new art means only new forms, and new forms arise
from one or both of two causes: new needs and new
possibilities. The two often overlap, and they are
brought to the conscious mind by the sudden
discovery of new attractive sensations, of unfamiliar
realities, of striking paradoxical connections in daily
experience. – Jacques Barzun, “Visual Evidence of a
New Age”

8. The Haight Dilemma:
The System is corrupt:
So where can we find
authentic and relevant truth,
meaning, and purpose?

9. Native America:
Gathering
of the
Tribes with
New Communities of
Meaning

10. Anthem of the Sun:
The East Asian Traditions

11. Egyptian Tradition
Acccording to one story, the
Warlocks changed their name to
The Grateful Dead after Jerry
Garcia opened the Egyptian
Book of the Dead ast random,
shut his eyes, and pointed to the
quote shown in this poster.
Most amazing fact of all: that a
rock group should happen to
have lying around a copy of the
Egyptian Book of the Dead

12. A Mythic Community of Media Ads
Poster by Rick Griffin

14. Elsie, Zig-Zag, Sun Maid, Psylocibyn and Peyote

15. The Mystic Dollar

16. Everybody is Good at Heart

17. Black Light Posters: Simulating Psychedelic Intesnsity

18. Integrated Vision

19. Spiritual
Yearning

20. “There was something so
... religious in the air, in
the very atmosphere of
the Prankster life, and yet
one couldn’t put one’s
finger on it. On the face
of it there was just a
group of people who had
shared an unusual
psychological state, the
LSD experience —” --
The Electric Kool-Aid
Acid Test

21. The spiritual tradition: motherhood

22. The spirit of Saint Francis

23. Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so
much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to
eternal life. -- St. Francis

24. The human condition: between instant and eternity

25. The Highest Reach of Art:
Where did it all come from? Where is it all going? What does it all mean?

27. Sistine of the Haight:
Evolution Mandala
by
Dion Wright
11’X8’

28. Evolutionary Spritualism:
Where it all came from, where it is all going, what it all means

29. Perfect Circle, Yin-Yang Jewish Star, Rthe Six
Elemenets of Life, Carbon Molecules, We Are All One

30. Diversity from Unity: Mitosis

31. The Upward Flowing Stream

32. Emergence from the Water into Air

33. The Unopened Flower

34. About to open up and out…

37. Steve Jobs on the Psychedelic Experience
“Taking acid was one of the two or three most
important things I have done in my life.”
-- John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry