St John/Global Tribe, 2. Experience, the Orient and Goatrance

This chapter explores the career of the spiritual experience animating psyculture, from its earliest period in Goa. From the late 1960s, Goa attracted the disenchanted and the decadent, those whose disparate expatriations gave life to a “state of mind”, a mental mosaic which became integral to the evolution of the “trance dance” experience in seasonal Goa, infusing the subsequent psychedelic trance movement. Figures instrumental to psyculture are introduced and benchmark incidents are explained, with the chapter also examining the themes of “authenticity”, “freedom” and “liveness”, as well as the psychedelic Orientalism inhering in the “Goa” sound.