dimension of drugs. As Goan parties prove, some of the most exalted states of the
human spirit—cosmic communion, the integration of self and other, the sense of
timelessness—can be triggered with molecules, programmed beats, and electronic
effects. Even if you sacralize these elements, couching their technical power in
supernatural over-beliefs or the performative power of the rave’s Gestalt, there is still
the problem of the morning after—which, given the psy-trance emphasis on dancing
well into the next day, is more of a metaphor than usual. Think of it as a
metaphysical morning after, a period of deflation, drift, and potential despair. It is
during this period, which is rarely given much focused attention, that the merely
hedonistic or “druggy” character of the psychedelic experience becomes most
evident. Leaving the question of somatic costs aside, bohemian scenes still fall short
because they rarely provide the cultural mechanisms that, in traditional psychoactive
societies, allow people to integrate their experiences into everyday life.
In many ways, this resistance to over-beliefs or strict communal rituals is a good
thing. Such “psychedelic agnosticism” goes a long way toward squelching
authoritarian tendencies or religious delusions. Moreover, many looser and more ad-
hoc quasi-spiritual contexts have emerged in the psychedelic and psy-trance
community, as individuals and groups seek to deepen their experiences through art,
environmental activism, meditation, yoga, group processing, or any number of
occult techniques and interpersonal therapies. Also, the increasing popularity of
ayahuasca sessions has focused attention on the spiritual intentionality surrounding
serious psychedelic use. Because without the long-term transformation of the psyche
and its network of embodied relationships the ecstatic trance may do little more
than stage its own repetition—no longer as a meta-erotic ritual of rhythmic return,
but as habit and jaded escape.
Holy HampiTowards the end of the 1980s, when Goa’s electronic dance music had already
become a distinct style, the tracks played at parties were produced in the West with
the colony in mind. But some trance cuts were homemade. I met one German
producer named Johan, a handsome fellow who had released tracks under the name
Mandra Gora and lived in a huge house in a small inland village. His room
contained little more than a bed, a batik print, and his gear: Macintosh PowerBook,
Akai sampler, keyboard, DAT deck.
Johan arrived in Goa in 1988, when the trance scene was totally underground.
“It was like a poker game no one could follow,” he told me. Johan was not into
DJing—he was one of those power dancers who treated the night as one long track.
“With a combination of good music, a good spot, and good dancing, it’s like a cosmic
trigger goes off,” he said of Goa’s greatest rites. After a night’s ride, Johan would
return to his home studio, mix his vibes into new tracks, dump the bytes onto
DAT, and pass the tape on to his DJ friends. “It was like a perfect feedback loop.”
Unlike most music-makers or DJs in Goa, Johan didn’t care about talking to a
writer like me, because he knew that, in some sense, it was already too late. Goa
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