Pariyatti

Introduction from Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner AS THE WORLD ADVANCED into the early seventies I felt strangely dislocated. I really couldn’t accept that the sixties had so quickly become an “era” in the past tense. I tried to remind myself that, if only for a brief time, the mind of my generation had been wide open to experiences, perceptions of the universe and modes of life whose power and truth contradicted a lifetime of convention. For a while, through chemicals, a wholly other state of being seemed possible. In the initial hour’s rush of my first dose of mescaline, that surge in which my perceptions set out on their own, I was freed for the first time from my conceptions, and the world of accomplishment and prestige became someone else’s bad dream. But somehow, I was still the same. Despite the incredible visions of Truth I had experienced, I was no more peaceful or loving than ever, and as the visions became memories, I began to experience the most profound disorientation. N