The Novels of Ken Kesey

A manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, by Richard Alpert, Ralph Metzner and Timothy Leary, interprets signs of the ‘Third Bardo’ in a psychedelic experience using Ken Kesey's fiction: where Tibetans saw demons, a Westerner may see impersonal machinery, futuristic control devices, and visions of world destruction. Kesey's novels One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion describe the ego's disintegration, death, and rebirth central to an LSD trip; both books serve as literary metaphors for psychedelic experiences.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In their manual based upon The Tibetan Book of the Dead , Richard Alpert, Ralph Metzner and Timothy Leary discuss the signs of the ‘Third Bardo’ existence in a psychedelic experience in the vocabulary of Ken Kesey's fiction: Where Tibetans saw demons and beasts of prey, a Westerner may see impersonal machinery grinding, or depersonalizing and controlling devices of different futuristic varieties. Visions of world destruction and hallucinations of being engulfed by destructive powers, and sounds of the mind-controlling apparatus of the ‘ combine's fog machinery ’, of the gears which move. In his two novels, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion , Kesey has described that sense of the disintegration and death and ultimate rebirth of the ego which lies at the heart of the LSD ‘trip’. Both books are literary metaphors for psychedelic experiences.