Experience (Preceded by Drug, LSD, Mystical, Psychedelic, Religious, Spiritual, Transcendental, Transpersonal, or Visionary)
A brusque psychedelic experience in a tilted, coldly clinical setting could do more harm
than good.
A chemical description of a spiritual experience is like the chemical description of a great
painting.
A transcendent experience can be soul-shaking, can be painful to return at once to game
reality.
After having had the LSD experience, I know that there can never be love where there is
secretiveness and darkness. Love only endures in the bright light of the day.
All behavior involves learned games but only that rare Westerner, we call “mystic” or
who has had a visionary experience sees clearly the game structure of behavior.
All the religious movements that have shaped human history were inspired and
repeatedly revitalized by visionary experiences of transpersonal realities.
Although this is in no way the norm, psychedelic experience can result in a major
personal transformation or can resolve a chronic emotional problem.
An externalized psychedelic experience in the mountains, on the seashore, in the woods
or even in one’s own garden can become a unique and unforgettable event.
An individual who has a transcendental experience develops an entirely new image of his
or her identity and cosmic status.
As the retina enables us to see countless pulses of energy as a single light, so the mystical
experience shows us innumerable individuals as a single Self.
At the height of a visionary experience it is crystal-clear that you can change completely.
Be an entirely different person.
At the present time, man is so sick that today it is safe to say that drugs are the specific
and almost the only way that the American is ever going to have a religious experience.
Beautiful natural scenery or certain objects that reflect nature’s creativity usually have a
very positive influence on the LSD experience.
Change in behavior can occur with dramatic spontaneity once the game structure of
behavior is seen. The visionary experience is the key to behavior change.
Deep religious experiences can be found only within ourselves. (LSD is the key that
opens the door.)
Direct perception of unity is the very heart of mystic experience, accompanied by
powerful feelings of joy.
Direct spiritual experiences are perfectly compatible with the mystical branches of the
great religions of the world.
Doctrine is the interpretation of religious experience. (Western religions mistake doctrine
for the experience.)
During mystical experiences, one can feel that one has access to ultimate knowledge and
wisdom in matters of cosmic relevance.
During the LSD experiences, the subject loses his accustomed habits of thinking and
feeling.
During the psychedelic experience, the heavy shackles of the mind are loosened,
consciousness free to move in any direction.
Dying persons who had transcendental experiences developed a deep belief in the
ultimate unity of all creation. They often experienced themselves as integral parts of it.
Experiencing one’s self as one with the universe or with God is the hallmark of the
mystic experience, regardless of its cultural context.
Expressions of mystical experience will not stand the test of logic, but the mystic doesn’t
claim to be logical. His sphere of experience is the unspeakable.
Few people have much conception of what a religious experience really is. Few people
have any idea how the divine process presents itself.
Few therapists are capable of assessing, evaluating and integrating psychedelic
experiences in a useful way.
For thousands of years, pre-industrial societies taught that personal growth involved
visionary experiences.
Frequently, individuals who did not show any artistic inclinations at all prior to the LSD
experience can create extraordinary pictures.
Grof describes transpersonal experiences as those in which ego boundaries are dissolved
and awareness is extended beyond the ordinary confines of time and space.
He may have a deep and moving religious experience in which he understands the pattern
of all life, with awe, gratitude and total understanding.
Historically, mystical experience has filled man with wondrous awe and has been able to
change his style of life and values.
If a member of a typical congregation were to have a profound religious experience, its
minister would very likely send him to a psychiatrist for medical treatment.
In the right psychological environment, these chemical mind changers make possible a
genuine religious experience.
In traditional psychiatry, mystical experiences of any kind are usually treated in the
context of serious psychopathology.
It does not happen to everyone, although the capacity for mystical experience belongs to
the essence of human spirituality.
It is faith or loving confidence which guarantees that visionary experience shall be
blissful. (Without that, the trip can be a bummer.)
Leary links the psychedelic experience to Oriental mysticism as well as to the most up-to-
date concepts of modern biology and brain physiology.
LSD could trigger a peak experience with therapeutic benefits on psychological growth
and self-actualization.
Life flows back to us when we turn the stale oldness of theological notions to the
newness of spiritual experience.
LSD experiments gave new impetus to exploration into the essence of religious and
mystical experience.
LSD is extraordinary because of the rich view of the unconscious which it permits.
Somewhere in this rich view of the unconscious lies the mystic experience.
LSD religious experience—A Christian will report it in terms of the Christian vocabulary
and the Buddhists will do likewise.
Music has several important functions and adds new dimensions to the psychedelic
experience.
Mystical experiences should not be considered pathological; it seems more appropriate to
view them as supernormal.
Mythological materials often emerge in consciousness during a psychedelic experience.
(eyes closed)
Not only can psychedelic drugs deepen and broaden our understanding of religious
experience, but they may also contribute to genuine spiritual development.
Of utmost importance is the psychedelic peak experience, which usually takes the form of
a death-rebirth sequence with ensuing feelings of cosmic unity.
One of the main goals of all religions is the realization of God and the transcendental
experience.
One unusual characteristic of the psychedelic experience is the number of levels on
which one can operate. It is just as if one is actor and audience at the same time.
Only a warm, supportive atmosphere can lead to a therapeutic LSD experience, not the
cold, clinical environment.
Persons who take drugs on their own are most interested in aesthetic and mystical
experiences.
Psychedelic experience emphasizes the unity of things, the infinite dance…You are the
wave, but you are also the ocean.
Psychedelic experiences mediate access to deep realms of the psyche that have not yet
been discovered and acknowledged by mainstream psychology and psychiatry.
Psychedelic experiences seem to have a powerful effect and can change a person’s
attitude toward life.
Rationalist intellectuals tend to scorn the psychedelic experience as antagonistic to clear
thinking if not a flight into delirium. (Have any such “intellectuals” had the experience?)
Religious experience can be defined as that experience which occurs when the “depths of
our being” are touched or confronted by the “Depth of Being”.
Religious experiences are not the same as a religious life and not the same as a religious
belief.
Spiritual experience does not obliterate the here-and-now but makes it more radiant and
miraculous (or allows us to see how radiant and miraculous it always is).
Spiritual experiences in psychedelic sessions usually do not take an orthodox religious
form. More frequently, they resemble what Einstein referred to as cosmic religion.
Spiritual insights accompanying the psychedelic experience might be subjective accounts
of the objective findings of astronomy, physics, biochemistry and neurology.
The association of drugs with religious experience is so offensive to some that they will
deny that such things can be.
The confrontation with God, the authentic religious experience, does have the power to
transform.
The day of the LSD experience often became a dramatic and easily discernable landmark
in the development of individual artists.
The deep psychedelic experience is a death-rebirth flip. You turn on to the ancient
rhythm. You become its beat.
The entire study of consciousness, the religious experience itself, remains in a state of
medieval ignorance and superstition.
The essential effect of the psychedelic experience is the death of the time-bound ego and
the consequent realization of the Supreme Identity.
The founders of the great religions of the world as well as their prophets, saints and
eminent teachers all had visionary experiences.
The goal is to shed all ego sensations completely and in mystical experience, merge with
the totality of the cosmos.
The LSD experience appears to involve a variety of factors on many different levels; each
has a distinct therapeutic potential.
The LSD experience is all about merging, yielding, flowing, union, communion. It’s all
lovemaking.
The LSD experience is felt by almost everyone who undergoes it to be profoundly
significant and enlightening.
The LSD experience is not concerned with morality. Rather it is concerned with
immortality.
The LSD experience spurs a driving hunger to communicate in new forms, in better
ways, to express a more harmonious message, to live a better life.
The mere suggestion of a connection between psychedelic drugs and authentic religious
experience will outrage many and perhaps, puzzle most.
The mystical experience enables the individual to be so open and sensitive to organic
reality that the ego begins to be seen for the transparent abstraction that it is.
The mystical experience is neither a particular state of mind not mere blankness of mind.
(It’s not a “particular” state of mind which can be described.)
The mystical experience is the consciousness of the “living primordial cosmic fact of
Love,” “the Gratuitous Grace.”
The parallels between the phenomenology of rites of passage and LSD experiences
involving death and rebirth are far-reaching.
The psychedelic experience basically has been one of turning on to the life process, to the
dance of life.
The psychedelic experience can become a source of revelatory, aesthetic, scientific,
philosophical or spiritual insight.
The psychedelic experience frequently involves elements totally alien to an individual’s
own religious tradition.
The psychedelic experience has been around for a few thousand years before Haight-
Ashbury.
The psychedelic experience has the potential of initiating the unfolding of a self-healing
and self-realizing process.
The psychedelic experience is a way to stand apart from yourself in a way you ordinarily
cannot.
The psychedelic experience is fundamentally or ideally the bursting of ego-
consciousness, with the concomitant realization of cosmic-consciousness.
The psychedelic experience is incomprehensible to a rational, achievement-oriented,
conformist philosophy.
The psychedelic experience is incomprehensible to one committed to a conformist
philosophy.
The psychedelic experience provides ecstatic moments which dwarf any personal or
cultural game.
The psychedelic experience provides nothing less than a means of truly going “beyond
Freud” and to venture into these previously inaccessible regions of mind.
The psychedelic peak experience is certainly an important factor mediating deep
personality transformation.
The public at large fails to take seriously any positive feelings of inner change through
drug experience. (That’s because they have never experienced those positive feelings.)
The recognition of the love aspects of the mystical experience and the implications for
new forms of social communication are especially important.
The refusal to admit that drugs can induce religious experiences is like the 17th century
theologians’ refusal to look through Galileo’s telescope.
The religious experience is the ecstatic certain discovery of answers to spiritual
questions.
The so-called “instant psychotherapy” is in fact a possibility in the psychedelic
experience.
The spiritual experiences they had in their LSD sessions were important evidence that
spirituality is a genuine and deeply relevant force in human life.
The spiritual insights accompanying the psychedelic experience might be subjective
accounts of the objective findings of astronomy, physics, biochemistry and neurology.
The subject describing a psychedelic experience is able to mention only a very few items
selected from the wealth of events that make up the total experience.
The substitution of interminable chatter for mystical experience or immediate realization
of our union with God is the basic reason why the Church has no spiritual power.
The time will come within a century when an educated man will be he who knows who
he is and where he came from, knows on the basis of direct psychedelic experience.
The total impact of an LSD experience can never be forgotten regardless of how much
the visions may dim.
The transpersonal experiences revealing the Earth as an intelligent conscious entity are
corroborated by scientific evidence.
The very fact of mystical experience belies the oft repeated assertion that human
consciousness can never rise above the level of formal religious symbolism.
The visionary experience bears a striking resemblance to “the Other World” as we find it
described in the various traditions of religion and folklore.
The visionary experience is described in the 7th book of Plato’s Republic and mapped in
the Bhagavad Gita and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. (Marco Polo also wrote about it.)
The visionary experience is so highly prized that throughout the ages of recorded history,
people have done their best to induce visions.
The words which one uses to describe the psychedelic experience depend upon the
investigator’s cultural background, his language repertoire, his literary breadth.
There exist hardly any perceptual, emotional or psychosomatic manifestations that have
not been observed and described as part of the LSD experience.
There is nothing that the more traditional churches fear so much as ecstatic religious
experience.
These drugs, handled correctly, appear to offer incomparable opportunities for studying
religious experience.
These heroic figures of man’s visionary experiences (eyes closed) have appeared in the
religious art of every culture.
These visionary experiences have a primary numinous quality, as C. G. Jung called it;
they were the original sources of all great religions.
They had transcendent experiences that have made them aware of previously hidden
areas of existence.
This “very high sort of seeing” is the heart and veritable core of the psychedelic
experience.
This was a pre-religious experience. Religion now seemed superfluous next to being in
the presence of this source of life.
Thoughts, even of the saints and Jesus, are hindrances to the sight of the pure God, the
mystical experience.
To the ordinary institutional-type psychiatrist, any patient who gives the least hint of
mystical or religious experience is automatically diagnosed as deranged.
Transpersonal experiences have many strange characteristics that shatter the most
fundamental assumptions of materialistic science and of the mechanistic world-view.
Transpersonal experiences involve a strong, personal and conscious relation to reality that
goes far beyond the present scientific framework.
Transpersonal experiences that involve transcendence of spacial barriers suggest that
boundaries between the individual and the rest of the universe are not fixed and absolute.
Upon the certainty of this union with God depends the entire joy, power and world-
transforming character of the mystical experience.
Virtually in every religious tradition, both civilized and primitive, use has been made of
mind-changing drugs used for the purposes of inducing visionary experiences.
Visionary experience plays a dominant role in the creative process in art, literature and
science.
Visionary experiences enter our consciousness from somewhere “out there” in the
infinity of Mind-at-Large.
When we enter the realm of transpersonal experiences, we burst through barriers that we
take completely for granted in our everyday lives.
With the decrease in the power of words in the psychedelic experience, the immediate
sensory life gains in range of significance as well as strength.
You get from an LSD experience only what you bring to it and what you’re ready to take
away from it.
Every person who has a genuine mystical experience reports that he sees the unity, reality
and infinity in space and time of all creation. He feels joy, peace and a sense of the
sacred. He knows that his experience is true.
For many people, one or two psychedelic experiences can accomplish the goals of a long
and successful psychotherapy, a deep understanding and game-free collaboration between
participants, plus insight.
For the perception of art, particularly music, it is not infrequent that as a result of
psychedelic experiences, nonmusical persons develop vivid interest in music and others
discover entirely new ways of experiencing it.
Human beings have a profound need for transpersonal experiences and for states in which
they transcend their individual identities to feel their place in a larger whole that is
timeless.
If the perceptions touched off by the drugs are in any reliable sense religious, then an
invaluable means of studying the dynamics and effects of profound religious experience
at firsthand is available to us.
In light of the overwhelming evidence we have regarding visionary experiences in
virtually every area of life, it is remarkable to think that traditional Western science
continues to ignore this crucial force in human history.
If mysticism and mystical experience can be freed of their supernatural connotations,
there is no reason why modern science cannot acknowledge and even absorb them into its
domain.
It’s a great feeling, one of the greatest of the entire psychedelic experience, to look into
another being’s eyes and see that they’ve seen the same incredible thing that you have. It
validates the vision. (The vision is valid regardless.)
LSD can catalyze and precipitate a sudden dramatic transformation. On occasion, one
LSD experience has drastically changed an individual’s world-view, life philosophy and
entire way of being.
Male-female union is a natural biological and psychological vehicle for transcendent
experiences, a merging which can be more complete and intertwined than they had ever
dreamed possible.
Many transpersonal experiences involve events from the microcosm and macrocosm—
realms that cannot be directly reached by human senses—or from periods that historically
precede the origin of the solar system.
Marco Polo’s book contains one of the earliest accounts of the psychedelic experience.
(Actually, that’s not true because psychedelic experiences go back to the beginning of
man.)
Metanoia is that profound state which mystical experience aims at—the state in which we
transcend or dissolve all the barriers of ego and selfishness that separate us from God. It
is the state of direct knowing, immediate perception of our total unity with God.
Most of the LSD experience takes place in a nonverbal region of the mind and deliberate
overintellectualization stands in the way of the free flow of the subject’s stream of
consciousness.
Mysticism may be the ultimate source of ethics, morality and the life of righteousness,
mystical and ecstatic religious experience the sources of astonishing vitality and
efficiency in the pursuit of good works.
No one who has studied the matter closely doubts the reality of psychedelic peak
experiences, the capacity of psychedelic drugs to open up the unconscious, or the
conviction of some who take them that they are gaining insight.
Peyote produces self-transcendence in two ways—it introduces the taker into the Other
World of visionary experience and it gives them a sense of solidarity with his fellow
worshippers, with human beings at large and with the divine nature of things.
Profound transpersonal experiences move the individual out of the narrow framework of
identification with the body-ego and lend to feeling and thinking in terms of a cosmic
identity and unity with all creation.
Psychedelic experiences are very complex phenomena which have not yet been
adequately explained and which represent a serious challenge to present theoretical
thinking.
Psychedelics can be healing tools. I’ve seen a lot of healing, not just of mental problems
but of physical problems, from psychedelic experiences; they’ve got great potential in
that regard.
Raptures about “transcendental experiences” often focus on the visual splendors and lofty
insights into the meaning of existence and the universe and the increase in aesthetic
sensitivity.
Religious experience is the most profound and powerful aspect of the human personality
and is the aspect most capable of bringing out the compassionate and creative qualities of
the human spirit.
Saying that a drug experience can precipitate a psychosis is not the same as saying that
drugs cause psychosis. We do not say that sex and college cause psychosis even though
we commonly see that both can trigger it.
Sexual union that occurs in the context of a powerful emotional bond can take the form of
a profound mystical experience. All individual boundaries seem to dissolve and the
partners feel reconnected to their divine source.
Spiritual experiences in psychedelic sessions frequently draw on the symbolism of the
collective unconscious and can thus occur in the framework of cultural and religious
traditions other than the experient’s own.
The educational topics, philosophical issues, intellectual questions, and personal insights
which evolved from my LSD experiences and subsequent investigations are a continuing
source of growth.
The enlightened individual goes beyond grammar. He has what may be called a
“grammar-transcending experience” which permits him to live in the consciousness of
the divine continuum of the world and to see the one continually manifest in the many.
The fact that visionary experiences has always, at all times and everywhere been very
highly valued, means that at all times and in all cultures systematic attempts have been
made to induce this experience.
The importance and value of transpersonal experiences is extraordinary. It is a great irony
and one of the paradoxes of modern science that phenomena with a therapeutic potential
transcending what Western psychiatry has to offer are, by and large, seen as pathological.
The LSD experience is a confrontation with new forms of wisdom and energy that dwarf
and humiliate man’s mind. This experience of awe and revelation is often described as
religious.
The main objective of psychedelic therapy is to create optical conditions for the subject to
experience the ego death and the subsequent transcendence into the so-called psychedelic
peak experience.
The meaningful things seen in the mescaline experience are not symbols. They do not
stand for something else, do not mean anything except themselves. The significance of
each thing is identical with its being. Its point is that it IS.
The mystical experience is essentially the being aware of and being identified with a form
of pure consciousness, of unstructured transpersonal consciousness which lies, so to
speak, upstream from the ordinary discursive consciousness of everyday.
The mind must be prepared and the conditions right for a profound mystical or religious
experience to occur. And even then, the drug user may go through a descent into torment
and even a seeming death agony before attaining joyous unity and rebirth.
The psychedelic drug doesn’t mean doctor-disease, dope fiend-crime or instant insanity
but ecstasy, sensual unfolding, religious experience, revelation, illumination, contact with
nature.
The psychedelic experience at its best embodies a mythic substantiation of the universe
that is frequently overpowering in its revelations. It is a world of myth and ritual, a never-
never land of infinite grace and goodness. (eyes closed)
The psychedelic experience can be not only a challenge, but also a support of my faith. I
can see Judaism in a new and amazing light. (A Hassidic rabbi who tripped with Timothy
Leary said that.)
The psychedelic experience tends to bring the subject into intimate contact with nature
and dramatically enhances his or her sensory perception of the world and an encounter
with nature at its best can become an aesthetic and spiritual experience of lasting value.
The psychedelic mystical experience can lead to a profound sense of inspiration,
reverential awe and humility, perhaps correlated with the feeling that the experience is
essentially a gift from a transcendent source.
The recent increase of interest in various forms of self-exploration, which can mediate
direct spiritual experiences, is a very encouraging trend and a development of great
potential significance.
The spectrum of transpersonal experiences is not only extremely rich, but includes levels
of reality governed by laws and principles that are different from those that rule ordinary
reality.
The things that are most important to many young Americans are not being discussed in
academic life. The sterile formalism of much American higher education can hardly hold
a candle to the psychedelic experience.
There are many reports of patients receiving meaningful insight about themselves in an
LSD experience without the intervention, participation or even the presence of a
therapist.
There are mental spaces inside our skulls as enormous as the spaces out there. The
experience of distance, of inner distance and outer distance, of distance in time and
distance in space—it’s the first fundamental religious experience.
There can be direct acquaintance with the world’s unity. This immediate mystical
experience of being at one with the fundamental Oneness that manifests itself in the
infinite diversity of things and minds can never be adequately expressed in words.
There have been few serious attempts to make theoretical use of the full range of
psychedelic experiences in terms that do justice to the understanding of those who
undergo them.
There is evidence that the spiritual insights accompanying the psychedelic experience
might be subjective accounts of the objective findings of astronomy, physics,
biochemistry and neurology.
There is no doubt that the drugs have introduced many of the youthful generation to a
firsthand religious experience that they would have encountered in no other way. (That
was written in 1969.)
There is no non-ecstatic religious experience. (Yes, all religious experiences are ecstatic
or it’s not a religious experience. There is no such thing as a religious experience without
ecstasy. One can’t play baseball without the ball.)
Those aspects of the psychedelic experience which subjects report to be ineffable and
ecstatically religious involve a direct awareness of the energy processes which scientists
measure.
To some people, looking only at the surface, the sequence of events of my first
psychedelic experience might seem to border on madness; others will see it in a profound
logic and wisdom.
Transpersonal experiences can be defined as “experiences involving an expansion or
extension of consciousness beyond the usual ego boundaries and beyond the limitations
of time and/or space.”
We are in need of a kind of philosophy or vision, an intellectual grasp of its nature and
recognition of its value, so that the psychedelic experience may be incorporated into our
lives as wisdom.
We can perhaps see the whole course of a psychedelic experience as an effort of
consciousness to rid itself of false identifications and experience its own everchanging
identity.
William James was well aware that a deep religious conversion is the best therapy for
alcoholism. The importance of deep spiritual experiences for overcoming alcoholism was
also well known to Carl Gustav Jung.
A system of thinking that deliberately discards everything that cannot be weighed and
measured does not have any opening for the recognition of creative cosmic intelligence,
spiritual realities or such entities as transpersonal experiences or the collective
unconscious.
An individual who has a transcendental experience develops an entirely new image of his
or her identity and cosmic status. The materialistic image of the universe in which the
individual is a meaningless speck of dust in the vastness of the cosmos is instantly
replaced by the mystical alternative.
Drug experiences, like all novel experiences, can provide themes and material for the
artists’ imagination to work on. And it has also been suggested that psychedelic drug
experiences can subtly affect the faculty of insight, providing original solutions to artistic
and intellectual problems through new combinations of ideas and feelings.
Drug use may be criticized as an escape from reality. However, this criticism assumes
unjustly that the mystical experiences themselves are escapist or unreal. LSD is by no
means a soft and cushy escape from reality. It can easily be an experience in which you
have to test your soul against all the devils in hell (the ego’s fight for its life).
For us, a proposition is either true or false, a or not-a, God exists or does not exist and
countless gallons of ink and blood have been shed in disputes stemming from this kind of
rigid either-or logic. Indian and Chinese thought, as well as mystical and psychedelic
experiences, lead one to a logic of levels, rather than of propositions.
He stands outside of and apart from his familiar ego, all its protective barriers having
been shed; and this can lead in some to transcendent experience, while in others to a deep
panic. To those for whom the ego is their only possible self, the only possible mode of
consciousness, its disappearance is a kind of death.
His drug-induced religious experience vitalizes his religious life and demonstrates the
error of those who think that only the logical and rational aspects of religion are valid.
(How logical and rational is it to think that you were born in sin because of something
from 2000 years ago which you had nothing to do with?)
I suppose in a certain sense one can say that the value is absolute. In a sense one can say
that visionary experience is, so to say, a manifestation simultaneously of the beautiful and
the true, of intense beauty and intense reality and as such it doesn’t have to be justified in
any other way.
Individuals who encounter transpersonal experiences of this kind in their psychedelic
sessions frequently gain access to detailed and rather esoteric information about the
corresponding aspects of the material universe that far exceeds their general educational
background and their specific knowledge of the area in question.
Introducing transpersonal experiences into psychology creates a conceptual bridge
between Western science and perennial philosophy. It also throws new light on many
problems in history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, and
comparative religion.
It is most curious to find, from Japan to Western Europe these same images coming
through again and again, showing how universal and how uniform this kind of visionary
experience has been and how it has consistently been regarded as of immense importance
and has been projected out into the cosmos in the various religious traditions.
It is significant that those who have been surprised by a mystical experience seldom fail
to feel that their experience is religious. Intuitively, they become aware—at least
subjectively—that their state of mind somehow links them with the saints and prophets of
the ages. This is the case even with atheists.
It should be one of the chief tasks of the guide to help the subject select out of the wealth
of phenomena among which he finds himself, some of the more promising opportunities
for heightened insight, awareness and integral understanding that the guide knows to be
available in the psychedelic experience
Many leading humanistic psychologists exhibited a growing interest in a variety of
previously neglected areas and topics of psychology, such as mystical experiences,
transcendence, ecstasy, cosmic consciousness, theory and practice of meditation, or
interindividual and interspecies synergy.
Many transpersonal experiences have a strong influence on the individual’s values,
attitudes and interests. Thus, experiences of the collective and racial unconscious can
generate a sensitivity to the needs and problems of another culture and create a deep
appreciation for its religion, art and life philosophy.
Only a few rather exceptional professionals have shown a genuine interest in and
appreciation of transpersonal experiences as phenomena of their own right. These
individuals have recognized their heuristic value and their relevance for a new
understanding of the unconscious, of the human potential and of the nature of man.
Profound religious experience is always moving and probably the most captivating and
shattering experience known to man. When I say “shattering” I mean that the experience
shatters certain fundamental assumptions about life which stand in the way of a broader
and more humane view.
The current public taboo on any evaluation of drug-use experience that fails to be shame-
fared and remorse-laden…individually and generationally reinforces hypocrisy, denial,
guilt, inhibition, and repression. Like any ban on the utterance of truth, it warps public
morality and cripples the soul.
The discoveries of the last few decades strongly suggest that the psyche is not limited to
the Freudian individual unconscious and confirm the perennial truth, found in many
mystical traditions, that human beings might be commensurate with all there is.
Transpersonal experiences and their extraordinary potential certainly attest to this fact.
The Good, the True and the Beautiful are absolute values and in a certain sense one can
say that visionary experience has always been regarded as an absolute value, that it has
been always felt to be intrinsically of immense importance and worth having at a very
great price.
The most direct challenge to the principles of mechanistic science are phenomena from
transpersonal experiences, such as “the relativity and arbitrary nature of physical
boundaries, nonlocal connections in the universe, memory without a material substance,
nonlinearity of time, and consciousness associated with inorganic matter.”
The most lasting value of the drug experience for me appears to be a number of
convictions, most of them religious in nature, which are so strong that it makes not one
iota of difference whether anyone agrees with them or not. (When you know the truth, no
one can talk you out of it. The truth is the truth.)
The psychedelic experience depends upon many factors—the dosage, the circumstances
under which it is given, the knowledge of the people giving it, and, most of all, upon the
attitude of the person taking it, what he wishes to learn about himself, how much he trusts
the people working with him, and how much he trusts his own underconsciousness.
The psychic depths and the time depths can be tested and explored in the psychedelic
experiences. The theoretical foundation of such a statement is that the ingestion of
psychedelic substances evokes an activation of deeply buried psychic contents and a
bringing of them to the surface of consciousness.
The reason psychedelic experiences are important and valuable is that people live their
lives by their own “chess-boards,” playing the lawyer-game, the merchant-game or some
rule-ridden ego-game, rarely if ever expanding their consciousness to the point of true
awareness and understanding of man and nature, including themselves.
The remarkable thing about the LSD experience is that you see the broad range of the
underconsciousness without losing consciousness, a state wherein you are aware of all
things in the conscious mind and at the same time aware of all things in the
underconscious mind.
The value, apart from their intrinsic value, so to say the ethical, sociological and spiritual
value of the visionary experience, is that if it is well used, it can result in a significant and
important change in the mode of consciousness and perhaps also in a change in behavior
for the good.
Transpersonal experiences can involve conscious experience of other humans and
members of other species, plant life, elements of inorganic nature, microscopic and
astronomic realms not accessible to the unaided senses, history, prehistory, remote
locations or other dimensions of existence.
Transpersonal experiences involving entities and realms that are not objectively real
according to the Western worldview can convey absolutely new information. For
example, in nonordinary states, many people have encountered deities and mythological
realms specific to cultures about which they had no personal knowledge. (eyes closed)
Transpersonal experiences which involve transcendence of spacial barriers suggest that
the boundaries between the individual and the rest of the universe are not fixed and
absolute. Under special circumstances, it is possible to identify experientially with
anything in the universe, including the entire cosmos itself.
Until Western science is able to offer plausible explanations of all the observations
surrounding such phenomena as spiritual experiences, the concepts found in mystical and
occult literature have to be seen as superior to the present approach of most Western
scientists, who either do not know the facts or ignore them.
Veneration for the induced visionary experience has roots in virtually every culture on
earth, however subliminated or repressed it is today. In fact, one could argue that the use
of visionary plants and hallowed drafts has been seminal to the development of
civilization.
We are dealing with an issue that is not new, an issue that has been considered for
centuries by mystics, by philosophers of the religious experience, by those rare and truly
great scientists who have been able to move in and then out beyond the limits of the
science game.
We overvalue the mind, that flimsy collection of learned words and verbal connections;
the mind, that system of paranoid delusions with the learned self as center. And we
eschew the nonmind, nongame intuitive insight outlook which is the key to the religious
experience, to the love experience.
Work done by those who refused to take drugs does not demonstrate greater objectivity
than that of persons who have had the drug experience; and doubtless, refusal to
experience the psychedelic state is a product, in some cases, of anxiety about the person’s
ability to cope with that state.
As an educational psychologist, I’m interested in the implications of LSD research for the
study of human learning and further human development. Through the LSD experiences I
have learned to look at myself and society in a new way. These experiences have been, in
effect, an additional higher education for me, equal in impact, effort, knowledge, beauty,
and scope to obtaining a doctorate at Stanford..
As in the case of other transpersonal experiences, episodes of organ, tissue and cellular
consciousness can be associated with many concrete insights; various details concerning
anatomy, histology, physiology and chemistry of the body found in the accounts of such
experiences often reveal a level of information that the subjects did not have before the
sessions.
Harvard—Over 400 “subjects” shared high-dosage psychedelic experiences with the
researchers in an atmosphere of aesthetic precision, philosophic inquiry, inner search,
self-confident dignity, intellectual openness, philosophic courage and high humor. The
historical impact of this “swarm” of influential scholars has not yet been recognized by
the still-timid press, popular or scientific. (That was Timothy Leary.)
If mystical experiences are integrated into the personality, they are highly therapeutic.
Single-state scholars and theoreticians are hard-pressed to explain this therapeutic value.
Denial is easier. But if an enlarged map of reality includes altered states of consciousness,
then experiencing such states logically leads to a fuller view of reality, and therapists tell
us that a fuller view of reality is therapeutic.
In the Western world, visionaries and mystics are a good deal less common than they
used to be. In the currently fashionable picture of the universe, there is no place for valid
transcendental experience. Consequently, those who have had what they regard as valid
transcendental experiences are looked upon with suspicion, as being either lunatics or
swindlers.
In traditional psychiatry, mystical experiences of any kind are usually treated in the
context of serious psychopathology; they are seen as indications of a psychotic process.
In his comprehensive and careful study, Maslow was able to demonstrate that persons
who had spontaneous “peak” experiences frequently benefited from them and showed a
distinct trend toward “self- realization” or “self-actualization.”
It has been shown that LSD experiences of death and rebirth and mystical states of
consciousness can change patients’ concepts of death and life and alleviate their fears of
dying. Psychedelic therapy has proved to be more than an important tool in the control of
mental and physical pain, it has contributed greatly to our understanding of the
experience of death.
LSD is a unique and powerful tool for the exploration of the human mind and human
nature. Psychedelic experiences mediate access to deep realms of the psyche that have
not yet been discovered and acknowledged by mainstream psychology and psychiatry.
They also reveal new possibilities and mechanisms of therapeutic change and personality
transformation.
One of the major problems in LSD psychotherapy was the unusual nature and context of
the psychedelic experience. The intensity of the emotional and physical expressions
characteristic of LSD sessions was in sharp contrast to the conventional image of
psychotherapy, with its face-to-face discussions or disciplined free-associating on the
coach.
Profound transcendental experiences, such as consciousness of the Universal Mind, in
addition to having a very beneficial effect on the subject’s physical and emotional well-
being, are usually central in creating in him a keen interest in religion, mystical and
philosophical issues, and a strong need to incorporate the spiritual dimensions into his
way of life.
Since the psychedelic experience includes so many elements not a part of the nondrug-
state experience the guide never will be able to understand the subject or communicate
with him adequately unless the guide himself has first-hand knowledge of the drug-state
and its phenomena. This point has become controversial, but we see no sound reason why
it should be.
Spiritual experiences of this kind can occur in individuals of high intellectual caliber and
rigorous scientific training, in fact, they are fully compatible with observations
accumulated by various branches of modern research. An important illustration of this
point, for those who emphasize the scientific world-view, is the recent convergence of
quantum-relativistic physics and various mystical traditions.
There had been previous explorations. There was a history, a tradition. There were maps
and guidebooks. Though trained in the Western methods of scientific research, Leary
(and the rest of us) felt affirmed in our spiritual approach to psychedelic experiences by
the discovery of these ancient writings. Our initial work on this text was later developed
and published as The Psychedelic Experience. (That was Ralph Metzner.).
They’re not interested in mystical experience at divinity schools. They’re interested only
in words and in history. If someone had a mystical vision a safe 2000 years ago and left
some record of it, that might interest them. But mystical experience, the raw and vital
force that gives rise to a religion, is too much for them to cram into their semantic,
pseudoscientific endeavor to understand God.
This transcendence of space and time is a key concept in all mystical experience. In our
present mode of mental consciousness, we experience the world in terms of space and
time; we experience everything separated in space and going from point to point in time.
It is well known that modern physics calls this whole space-time system in question, and
the transcendence of the space-time dimension is central in mystical experience.
Those who argue that LSD-induced spiritual experiences cannot be valid because they are
too easily available and their occurrence and timing depend on the individual’s decision,
misunderstand the nature of the psychedelic state. The psychedelic experience is neither
easy nor a predictable way to God. Many subjects do not have spiritual elements in their
sessions despite many exposures to the drug.
To interpret the visionary experience laymen use the language of ecstasy and
psychiatrists use the language which is familiar and natural to them, the dialog of
diagnosis. Now the curious thing about psychiatric language is that it’s almost completely
negative, a pompous, gloomy lexicon of troubles, symptoms, abnormalities,
eccentricities.
Transpersonal experiences, especially in psychedelic experiences, do not always occur in
a pure form. Embryonal experiences can occur simultaneously with phylogenetic
memories and with the experience of cosmic unity. These associations are rather constant
and they reflect deep intrinsic interrelations between various types of psychedelic
phenomena as well as the multileveled nature of the LSD experience.
We felt that we were involved in a fascinating historical event—the first research project
in which experimentally induced mystical experiences were being woven into the fabric
of daily work and play. We saw ourselves as pioneers developing modern versions of the
traditional techniques for philosophic inquiry and personal growth. (That was Timothy
Leary.)
We were not to be limited by the pathological point of view. We were not to interpret
ecstasy as mania, or calm serenity as catatonia; we were not to diagnose Buddha as a
detached schizoid; nor Christ as a exhibitionist masochist; nor the mystic experience as a
symptom; not the visionary state as a model psychosis. (That was Timothy Leary and
Aldous Huxley agreeing.)
What is needed is the clear voice of people who have no stake in disguising the truth. The
young must be taught to distinguish between psychedelics, which hold out the promise of
religious experience and of self-transcendence, and destructive drugs like cocaine,
amphetamines, heroin, crack. They must be taught to respect the psychedelics and to be
ready spiritually and psychologically before they attempt to take them.
Within our own consciousness, there is a memory, waiting to be recalled, of every
movement, feeling and desire in our lives. This implies that everything survives in a way
more complete than just intellectually. The psychedelic experience heightens this recall,
and if handled properly, could pass through beneficial channels leading to psychotherapy
and rehabilitation.
Leary the scientist, Alpert the intellectual and later the mystic, Metzner the scholar: what
held these three together was their shared faith in the power of the transcendent
experience to remove the blinders that keep us at odds with each other. A world where all
humans have access to the mystical experience would be a world transformed, they
believed. Everyone would then directly see what Jesus, Buddha, Moses and Mohammed
preached.
A heavy psychedelic experience is upheaval time for anyone.
A profound transcendental experience should leave a changed man and a changed life.
A psychedelic experience flips you out of your mind.
All religious traditions start from mystical experience.
An inhibitor of visionary experience is ordinary, everyday, perceptual experience.
Because of that mushroom experience, I never forgot what’s really important.
Drug-induced religious and mystical experience is unusually intense.
Each drug experience is a unique journey of exploration into the mind.
Even a single psychedelic experience can have profound and lasting consequences.
Every LSD experience is unique.
In a psychedelic experience, a few seconds can yield a whole new orientation.
LSD experiences were often deeply spiritual.
No words can adequately communicate the intensity of a LSD experience.
Nothing is more deeply felt than an intense LSD experience.
People did immensely value this kind of visionary experience.
Personal religious experience has its root and centre in mystical states of consciousness.
Psychedelic drugs are capable of producing the whole range of religious experiences.
Psychedelic experience had given them greater depth as people and as creators.
Psychedelic experience is by nature private, sensual, spiritual, internal, introspective.
Psychedelic experiences can play an important role in the creative development of artists.
Psychedelic experiences create an opportunity to grow and to learn.
Religious doctrines and ideas are quite distinct from mystical experience.
Religious experience has its roots and center in mystical states of consciousness.
Religious experience is closely associated with the best therapeutic results.
Return to nature is an important aspect of the psychedelic experience.
Sexual experiences and behavior can be deeply influenced by the LSD experience.
The content of the mystic experience reflects its unusual mode of consciousness.
The drug induced experience has been regarded as intrinsically divine.
The entire spectrum of transpersonal experiences is commensurate with existence itself.
The essence of the authentic mystical experience is insight.
The general American culture lacks a tradition in visionary experience.
The great kick of the mystic experience is the sudden relief from emotional pressure.
The intensity and magnitude of the LSD experiences are so great.
The LSD experience is a deeply spiritual event, a religious pilgrimage.
The LSD experience is a manifestation of the psychic unconscious.
The LSD experience is a revelation of something outside of time and the social order.
The LSD experience is not conceptual manipulation.
The LSD experience puts you in touch with the wisdom of your body.
The LSD experiences do not fit any existing theoretical system.
The mystic experience can be ecstatic, profound, therapeutic.
The mystic experience is the measure, the standard for what is real.
The mystical experience may help to lead a less self-centered and more creative life.
The potential for a mystical experience is the natural birthright of all human beings.
The psychedelic experience can release learning blocks.
The psychedelic experience is an intimate, personal and sacred one.
The psychedelic experience is man’s oldest and most classic adventure into meaning.
The psychedelic experience is one of looking deep within yourself.
The spectrum of visionary experiences is very rich.
The subject often conceives of his psychedelic experience as a kind of journey.
The transcendental experience may open up avenues of creativity.
These mystical experiences had an enormous relevance.
Transcendental experience can open up avenues of growth.
Transcendental experience is the only escape from the prison imposed by the ego.
Transpersonal experiences can be of great therapeutic value.
Transpersonal experiences have a definite religious and mystical emphasis.
Visionary experience is preternaturally brilliant.
I realized that under the proper circumstances, psychedelic experiences are truly a “royal
road into the unconscious.”
Some referred to their first psychedelic experience as a “peak experience”, as a turning
point in their lives.
The drug experience seemed to reduce depression, tension, pain and fear of death
dramatically.
The LSD experience cut right through the Zen games and intellectual disillusionment of
the once worshipped Beat generation. Acid’s first and most powerful message was love.
The LSD experience made available again the “lost” and forgotten visual modalities one
has a child.
There was a huge opening in the sky, I saw God. I had a tremendously mystical
experience. I was deeply moved, deeply in love. And when I say love, it’s not like the
level we know from analysis. It was the absence of all anger, the absence of all conflict.
In a letter to Humphrey Osmond, Aldous Huxley described a mescaline experience,
during which he came to the conclusion that “I didn’t think I should mind dying, for
dying must be like this, a passage from the known, constituted by lifelong habits of
subject-object-existence, to the unknown cosmic fact.”
Most of the subjects felt that the psychedelic experience could sometimes supply a
guiding vision which provided direction and meaning for one’s life thereafter. They
mentioned intense emotions such as love, compassion, or empathy, and the recognition
that the mind can be and should be highly trained.
I realized, “My God, every single second is really eternity.” I felt I’d dipped into eternity
and was experiencing a glimpse of it along with a hint of its vastness. I was blown away
by the enormity of these revelations. By now, I was flying so high, I felt I was in an
exalted state, that I was having a mystical experience of the highest order, something I
always dreamed of.
The mystical experience was not a band-aid for my unfulfilled dreams. What I longed to
catch a glimpse of was a dimension that includes, yet far exceeds, the human world. I
hungered for the experience of the MORE without which life, to me, was not worth
living. I believed the words of the mystics and poets, but I wanted to experience them
myself.
The psychedelic experience seemed to have opened new realms of mystical and cosmic
feelings within her. The religious elements that she experienced in her session
transcended the narrow boundaries of the traditional Catholic religion she had been
brought up with. She was now precipitating toward the more universal approaches found
within Hinduism and Buddhism.
The work of many artists—painters, musicians, writers and poets—who participated in
LSD experimentation in various countries of the world has been deeply influenced by
their psychedelic experiences. Most of them found access to deep sources of inspiration
in their unconscious mind, experienced a striking enhancement and unleashing of fantasy
and reached extraordinary vitality, originality and freedom of artistic expression.
Following this insightful LSD experience, the patient felt “enormously released.”
The LSD experience heightened intellectual appreciation and curiosity.
The psychedelic experience signified the reality and the beauty of the flower of the spirit.
a feeling of awe, beauty, reverence, and humility, emotions characteristic of the mystic
experience
a mystical experience of great depth during which he felt “dissolved” in “the universal
pool” and experienced “the peace that passeth understanding”
a profound mystical or religious experience involving elements of death and rebirth,
cosmic unity or communication with God
a religious experience, a feeling of oneness with God and the universe—the point at
which the individual is overcome with joy and good will
a religious experience, a oneness with the universe, insight into oneself and all other
mysteries
a religious experience culminating in a sense of total self-understanding, self-
transformation, religious enlightenment and possibly mystical union
a religious experience, though in a highly transcendental, ineffable sense not closely
related to institutional religion or a dogmatic, creedal theology
a rich spectrum of transpersonal experiences that provide profound insights into realms
and dimensions of reality that are ordinarily hidden to human perception and intellect
a yogic practice called Tantra, where ritual sexual union is used as a vehicle for inducing
spiritual experiences
an inner dedication, an unruffled optimism, a deep belief in the religious experience and
the power of psychedelic drugs to produce it
full appreciation of the therapeutic potential of the mystical and religious dimension of
the LSD experience
mystical experience, visionary breakthroughs to a deeper, more comprehensive reality
than that perceived by our rational everyday consciousness
psychedelic drugs especially valuable in the area of comparative religion where the
researcher might find a key to the understanding of the genesis of religious experiences
psychedelic experience not a matter of intellectual conviction or belief but of direct
vision
psychotherapeutic value in the LSD experience as a new beginning—an existential
encounter of decisive proportions to be followed by a realignment of the perceptual set
self-understanding, religious enlightenment, mystical experience, harmony with the
universe and with other persons
spiritual awakening, a direct visionary experience of transpersonal realities, the original
source of mainstream religions
that drugs had been used in esoteric religious rituals from the days of antiquity right up to
the present, as a stimulus to religious experience
that view of life or mode of living and knowing, which lies at the heart of the psychedelic
experience
the beneficial potential of mystical experience in stimulating the ability to feel and
experience deeply and genuinely with the full harmony of both emotion and intellect
the growth of an unfolding process of renewal that may be awakened by the mystical
experience
the “invasion” of the conscious by unconscious contents which occurs in mystical
experience
the landscapes of the mescaline experience rich with precious stones—All paradises
bounds in gems. (eyes closed)
the mystery of the nature of the relations between visionary experience and events on the
cellular, chemical and electrical levels
the mystic non-self and the mystic self experience, flashing in and out between the two,
the flashing in and out between pure egoless-unity and lucid non-game selfhood
the parallels between LSD sessions and esoteric procedures focusing on the death
experience
the possibilities that psychedelic experiences can offer in terms of self-exploration,
finding the roots of one’s emotional symptoms and solving life’s problems
the rarely satisfactory imposition of standard therapeutic procedures upon the psychedelic
experience
the rejection of classic spiritual and mystical experiences as symptoms of mental illness
by modern science and psychiatry
the root of religion, namely religious experience, the most captivating and transforming
experience known to man
the sense of physical separateness may be lost—moving towards a mystical-type
experience
the universality of perception in the psychedelic experience, the universal central
perception
the value that psychedelic experiences could have for the personal development of
“normal” individuals
those living geometries which are so characteristic of the visionary experience (moving
color patterns with the eyes closed)
those Other Worlds of transcendental experience where the soul knows itself as
unconditioned and of like nature with the divine
to break down ego defenses and induce a “transcendental experience” which seems to be
almost always religious in nature
to talk about the mystical experience simultaneously in terms of theology, psychology
and biochemistry
“transcendental” experiences—a state beyond conflict—often with rapid and dramatic
therapeutic results
transcendental experience with a paradoxical quality of being “contentless yet all-
containing”
watched 2 grasshoppers go into a kind of cosmic dance—the perception triggered a
transcendental experience of great intensity and depth
direct spiritual experiences, such as feelings of cosmic unity, a sense of divine energy
streaming through the body, death-rebirth sequences, encounters with archetypal entities,
visions of light of supernatural beauty
mainstream psychiatric literature suggesting that direct spiritual and mystical experiences
in the lives of the great prophets, saints and founders of religions were actually
manifestations of mental diseases
the opening of areas of religious and spiritual experience that seem to be an intrinsic part
of the human personality and are independent of the individual’s cultural and religious
background
that visionary experience has always been regarded as an absolute value, that it has been
always felt to be intrinsically of immense significance and importance and worth having
at a very great price
the fundamental importance of a mystical experience for the recovery of people in
Western industrial societies who are sickened by a one-sided, rational, materialistic world
view
the opening of areas of religious and spiritual experience that seem to be an intrinsic part
of the human personality and are independent of the individual’s cultural and religious
background and programming
the potentials of the drug experience for revealing new levels of consciousness and
bringing about changes in personality and behavior faster and more effectively than any
other method known to us
the psychological implications of the psychedelic experience, the accelerated personality
change, the rapid learning, the sudden life changes so regularly reported by psychedelic
researchers
the scope of the sacred realms, the profound insight of the sensory and physical
manifestations of mystical experiences, this enormous physical, mental, emotional and
spiritual input
the significance of visionary experience, this manner of comprehending the world—in
cultural history, in the creation of myths, in the origin of religions and in the creative
process of which works of art arise
a deep spiritual experience
a higher degree of self-fulfillment in the psychedelic drug experience
a model of the healthy psyche and included in it, was the mystical experience
a mystical experience of unity with all of life
a mystical or conversion experience
a mystical, transcendental, death-rebirth experience
a profound mystical experience of unity
a profound transcendental experience of an ecstatic and integrative nature
a spiritual experience so definite that there can be no mistaking it
a transcendental experience accompanied by intense psychological reactions
a transcendental experience of great intensity and depth
a transcendental experience of heaven or paradise
aesthetic transcendental experience and imagery
an intense mystical or revelatory experience
an intense religious experience, a mystical transcendent experience
an unusual potential for mediating transformative and mystical experiences
awesome mystical-religious experiences
communes—to apply psychedelic experience to new forms of social living
cosmic religious experiences
cosmic-religious experiences, feelings of great enrichment and increased self-confidence
deep, shattering, spiritual conversion experiences
deeply spiritual experiences
ecstasy in the form of mystical experience
Eden of visionary experience
ego-transcended experiences, non-game experiences
exploring the frontiers of human consciousness and spiritual experiences
genuine mystical and divine experiences
growth, spiritual experience, insight, harmony
heaven of blissful visionary experiences
inner transcendental experiences
insights of transcendental experience
intense and life-changing religious experiences
LSD a non-verbal, visionary experience
new realms of mystical and spiritual experience
perceptually gratifying, emotionally exhilarating LSD experiences
philosophic-religious experiences
profound ecstatic religious experience
psychedelic experience as a unique phenomenon with special therapeutic value
psychedelic experience, its tremendous range
psychedelic mystical experience
religious, mystical, visionary or cosmic experience
secular—divorced from spiritual experience
self-transcendent experiences
that an LSD-induced mystical experience might harbor unexplored therapeutic potential
that view of life or mode of living, which lies at the heart of the psychedelic experience
the authenticity of psychedelic peak experiences
the brightness of visionary experience
the complexity of the LSD experience and all the major variables involved
the critical role of visionary experiences in the spiritual life of humanity
the deepest religious (spiritual) experience of my life
the educational value of the psychedelic experience
the emotional afterglow of the drug experience
the enhanced awareness and extended consciousness of the transcendent experience
the exhilaration and vastness of the mystical experience
the extraordinary nature and scope of the psychedelic experiences
the full-blown mystical experience
the great universal significance of visionary experience
the greater depth of psychedelic experience
the heightened charge of energy released by transcendent experiences
the ineffability of psychedelic experience
the knowledge of the self, as revealed by the LSD experience
the LSD experience significant, useful and enriching
the multidimensional and multifaceted content of LSD experiences
the multi-faceted realities that the LSD experience opened up
the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive reality
the mystical or conversion experience
the nature and flavor of the psychedelic experience
the new reality that unfolds in the psychedelic experience
the non-game visionary experience
the nonverbal spiritual experience of the divine
the philosophical and spiritual dimensions of the LSD experience
the potential depth and complexity of psychedelic experience
the psychedelic experience, a Niagara of light energy
the psychedelic experience of mystical consciousness
the psychedelic experience so intense and impressive
the psychedelic experience, the treasure it promises
the raw, electric, shuddering sensitivity of the psychedelic experience
the religious aspects of the psychedelic revelatory experience
the religious dimensions of the psychedelic experience
the religious significance of psychedelic drug experiences
the religious-ontological nature of the psychedelic experience
the spiritual content of the psychedelic experience
the sudden awakening of the mystical experience
the transcendent nature of visionary experiences
the ultimate spiritual experience
the understanding of love which people find in the LSD experience
the unitary mystical experience
the universality of transpersonal experience
the unusual nature and context of the psychedelic experience
the value of these drugs as superlative means for the study of religious experience
the visionary bliss of heaven, a heaven of blissful visionary experience
the visionary experience of a deeper reality
the visionary experiences of paradises, celestial realms and cities of light (eyes closed)
this new reality that unfolds in the psychedelic experience
to deepen the consciousness of reality by way of a total mystical experience
to explore the mystical and religious dimensions of psychedelic experiences
tremendous visionary experiences of light, of luminous figures
very remarkable and startling visionary experiences
visionary and mystical experiences
visionary experiences of descent into the underworld (eyes closed)
was a profound and overwhelming mystical experience
words—static, psychedelic experience—fluid and ever-changing