According to
Paul Krassner in
Los Angeles Times, "
Turn Off Your Mind offers an alternative chronicle of what went on in the '60s when, somewhere along the spectrum of expanding consciousness, many
hippies collided with a fascination with
black magic. But Lachman's book reads more like a list of references that could conceivably serve as an aid in preparing for a stint on 'Occult
Jeopardy!'" Krassner found the book to focus too much on the negative sides of the 1960s counterculture. He further wrote that Lachman "resorts to ... mendacious generalizations", "fails to report interesting details", that his "selection of anecdotes isn't without errors" and that there is "a fixation on
fascism in the book that taints Lachman's perceptions". Krassner wrote: "I suspect that, unless you are a hard-core enthusiast of occult esoterica, you will find reading this book a chore rather than a pleasure."
The Independent's Christopher Hirst wrote that there is "much in Lachman's book to entertain and inform those who wished they had lived through the Sixties and those who did but can't remember it. If you want to know about, say,
beatnik king
Brion Gysin,
ley-line apostle
John Michell and
Zen master
Alan Watts, this is the place to start." ==References==