Knowledge

Almost all intellectual breakthroughs have been produced by mavericks pushed out of
and operating independently of establishment knowledge systems.

Direct knowledge of the Ground cannot be had except by union and union can be
achieved only by the annihilation of the self-regarding ego.

During mystical experiences, one can feel that one has access to ultimate knowledge and
wisdom in matters of cosmic relevance.

Each of us potentially has access to vast realms of knowledge through his own mind,
including secrets of the universe known so far only to a very few.

Eternal life “stands in the knowledge” of the Godhead, not in faith in anything less than
the Godhead.

Experiences of this kind can bring instant intuitive knowledge that by far exceeds the
intellectual capacity and educational background of the individual.

If God is universal, the knowledge of God should include all other knowledge as the
sense of sight includes all the differing objects of vision.

In this state of cosmic unity, we feel that we have direct, immediate and unlimited access
to knowledge and wisdom of universal significance.

In this state of knowledge of God, the mind is enlightened from out of the depths of
divine wisdom which defy our scrutiny.

Insightful knowledge or illumination about being or existence in general that is felt at an
intuitive, nonrational level and gained by direct experience.

Intuition is the part of you that has hunches and is able to discover direct knowledge or
understanding without rational thought.

Knowledge belonging to Mind at Large oozes past the reducing valve of brain and ego,
into his consciousness. It is the knowledge of the intrinsic significance of every existent.

Knowledge of the true nature of existence is perceived as being ultimately more real and
relevant than all scientific theories or perceptions and concepts of our everyday life.

Man’s obsessive consciousness of and insistence on being a separate self is the final and
most formidable obstacle to the unitive knowledge of God.

metaphysical knowledge—It is impossible for one who experiences it to entertain the
slightest doubt of its truth.

Sometimes they acquire new insights and intricate knowledge about the life process from
sources within them that are not ordinarily available.

The average person may pass through new dimensions of awareness and self knowledge
to a “transforming experience.”

The ecstatic consciousness is an expansive consciousness, open to a profusion of new
sensations, new perceptions, new knowledge and new values.

The knowledge through participation in ultimate reality, in the sense of being able to
KNOW and SEE what is REAL, carries its own sense of certainty.

The subject in this state feels that he has access to direct insightful knowledge and
wisdom about matters of fundamental and universal significance.

The wisdom for change and healing comes from the collective unconscious and surpasses
by far the knowledge that is intellectually available to the therapist.

To know truth, one must get rid of knowledge. (That means getting rid of what the ego
thinks is knowledge based on words.)

To one who has self-knowledge, there is no duality between himself and the external
world.

To reach a translogical form of knowledge or realm of wisdom, celestial beauty, and
spiritual essence is one of the most ancient experiential goals of mankind.

Useful analytical knowledge about the world is replaced by some kind of biologically
inessential but spiritually enlightening acquaintance with the world as beauty.

We may be on the brink of rediscovering what was common knowledge among the
ancient Greeks.

We will attain to knowledge of the universe through the spirit of truth and thereby to
understanding of our being one with the deepest, most comprehensive reality, God.

When the mind is completely purified, knowledge of the true identity of one’s own Self
arises.

A truth tested and established may lie for centuries, mildewed and rusted, in the armory
of knowledge, until some great soul comes along, draws it out of the rubbish, and with it
pries open the portals of one more promised land of blessing for the human race.

Archetypal images and entire scenes from the mythology of various cultures often occur
in the experience of individuals who have no intellectual knowledge of the mythic figures
and themes they are encountering. (eyes closed)

If psychedelics offer valid ways of exploring man’s “inner world,” the hidden ways of the
mind and brain, we should surely admit that new knowledge of this inmost frontier may
be worth quite serious risks.

In many instances, the degree of historical or ethnographic knowledge that emerges is
clearly incongruent with the subject’s previous education and level of information in
these areas.

It is possible to cut beyond ego-consciousness, to tune in on neurological processes which
flash by at the speed of light, and to become aware of the enormous treasury of ancient
racial knowledge welded into the nucleus of every cell in your body.

Knowledge is a collection of facts and information. Knowledge is something which
comes from without. Wisdom is the ability to use those facts and the information for the
meaningful purposes of life. Wisdom comes from within.

Language must never be taken seriously when it is used as being in any way the
equivalent of unmediated experience or as being a source of true knowledge about the
nature of things.

Science and technology have given us wonders but wisdom is languishing. Knowledge
grows and wisdom languishes. (Knowledge here means what the ego knows, not real
knowledge or wisdom.)

Somewhere deep in our DNA memory banks there is this intuitive knowledge that
chemicals are the key. I think it’s no accident that in so many myths passed down from
generation to generation there is this theme of the magic potion.

The form of spirituality I am referring to is fully compatible with any level of
intelligence, education, and specific knowledge of the information amassed by such
disciplines as physics, biology, medicine, and psychology.

The longer religion attempts to hold an absolute position and to be a substitute for
metaphysical knowledge, the more untenable, embarrassing and discredited that position
will become.

The spiritual leadership of a stable and unified society must have access to metaphysical
knowledge, i.e., to an effective realization and immediate experience of the ultimate
reality.

The ultimate Ground simply “is”. Only when the individual also “simply is”, by reason of
his union through love-knowledge with the Ground, can there be complete and eternal
liberation.

The vision-producing drugs have a long history. As far back as knowledge of man exists,
there have been stories of herbs, roots, brews and potions to be eaten, drunk or smoked to
change in some way the state of consciousness.

The young men of this land, as they are often called, a “lost” race—they are a race that
never yet has been discovered. And the whole secret, power and knowledge of their own
discovery is locked within them.

There is no doubt that a genuine comprehension of religion, mysticism, shamanism, rites
of passage or mythology is impossible without intimate knowledge of the death
experience and the death-rebirth process.

We cannot make intuitions happen; we can only let them enter our awareness. In fact, if
we disengage our awareness from ego consciousness and intellect, we cannot stop
intuitive knowledge from bubbling up out of the unconscious depths.

Without self-knowledge, what you say is not true. Truth repeated is no longer truth; it
becomes truth again only when it has been realized by the speaker as an immediate
experience.

ancient and Oriental religions and philosophies—It has become increasingly clear that
these systems of belief reflect profound understanding of the human mind and of unusual
states of consciousness, embodying knowledge that deals with the most universal aspect
of human existence, and thus is highly relevant for all of us.

In our minds we possess a far greater wealth than we have ever conceived. Such a
discovery may do much for us in every way, making material ends seem less valuable to
us as ultimate aims, and encouraging us to live well for the sake of a spirit which
possesses fathomless capacities for happiness no less than knowledge.

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.

It is a complex revelatory insight into the essence of being and existence. This insight is
typically accompanied by feelings of certainty that such knowledge is ultimately more
real and relevant than our concepts and perceptions regarding the world that we share in a
usual state of consciousness.

It is highly desirable that each guide possess a broad background especially including
knowledge of history, literature, philosophy, mythology, art and religion. Materials from
all of these fields and from others, emerge in many of the sessions and the guide must
recognize the materials if he is to be of maximum effectiveness.

It is not uncommon for subjects reporting evolutionary experiences to manifest a detailed
knowledge of the animals with whom they have identified—of their physical
characteristics, habits and behavior patterns—that far exceeds their education in the
natural sciences.

Let us try to bring about a new and glowing synthesis, a new higher consciousness that
brings together the East and West, the head and the heart, science and spirituality and
knowledge and wisdom. (Knowledge here means what the ego “knows” which isn’t
wisdom.)

The drug can mediate access to vast repositories of concrete and valid information in the
collective unconscious and make them available to the experient. The revealed
knowledge can be very specific, accurate and detailed; the data obtained in this way can
be related to many different fields.

The formless, dimensionless and intangible cosmic consciousness can best be described
as Infinite Existence, Infinite Awareness and Knowledge, and Infinite Bliss. However,
any words refer primarily to phenomena and processes of the natural reality and are,
therefore, only pitiful attempts to convey the essence of this transcendental principle.

The history of science makes clear that the greatest advancements in man’s understanding
of the universe are made by intuitive leaps at the frontiers of knowledge, not by
intellectual walks along well-traveled paths. Similarly, the greatest scientific thinkers are
those who rely on sudden intuitive flashes to solve problems.

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.

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 have no personal knowledge. (eyes closed)

We are living simultaneously in the world of experience and the world of notions, in the
world of direct apprehension of Nature, God and ourselves and the world of abstract,
verbalized knowledge about these primary facts. Our business as human beings is to
make the best of both worlds.

We should re-evaluate our attitude toward mythology. Instead of representing bizarre and
ultimately useless pieces of knowledge, the data can prove to be invaluable cartographies
of strange experiential worlds which each of us will have to enter at some point in the
future.

Wisdom, in contrast to knowledge gathered by empirical or rational investigation, is an
attribute of one who, by virtue of inner vision, understands the nature of illusion and
duality. Wisdom becomes available when we see things as they are. Our task is to
remove the obstacles to awareness that limit and distort perception.

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 knowledge of the existence of mind-expanding plants and chemicals dawned upon the
consciousness of Western man, swift reevaluations of our attitudes toward certain so-
called “primitive” tribes became necessary. It became apparent that some of these
cultures had preserved the key to higher knowledge which the civilized world had
relegated to the status of myth.

I felt like the neurological Knute Rockne. I was a scholar from the greatest university in
the greatest country, moving the adventurous search for human knowledge forward. I
counted myself fortunate to be a member of that long line of visionaries who throughout
history have sought peaceful nature-shrines to carry on the search for self-knowledge.
(That was Timothy Leary.)

Jung observed repeatedly that the universal mythological motifs or mythologems
occurred among individuals for whom all knowledge of the kind was absolutely out of
the question. This suggested to him that there were myth-forming structural elements in
the unconscious psyche that gave rise both to the fantasy lives and dreams of individuals
and to the mythology of peoples.

Mystical insight is no more in the chemical itself than biological knowledge is in the
microscope. There is no difference in principle between sharpening perception with an
external instrument, such as a microscope and sharpening it with an internal instrument,
such as one of these drugs. If they are an affront to the dignity of the mind, the
microscope is an affront to the dignity of the eye.

Perceptions of encompassing light, infinite energy, ineffable visions, and
incommunicable knowledge are remarkable in their seeming distinction from perceptions
of the phenomena of the “natural world.” According to mystics, these experiences are
different because they pertain to a higher transcendent reality. What is perceived is said
to come from another world, or at least another dimension.

Since the psychedelic experience includes so many elements that are not part of nondrug
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. The point has become controversial but we see no sound reason why it
should be.

The argument that the person who has taken psychedelic drugs thereby disqualifies
himself as a person able to objectively view and evaluate the experience must strike most
seasoned researchers as simply ludicrous. It is also unanswerable since all who might
reply to it on the basis of real knowledge are declared in advance unfit to deal with the
question.

The formless, dimensionless and intangible principle that an individual can perceive as
the Universal Mind is characterized by infinite existence, infinite awareness and
knowledge and infinite bliss. Any descriptions and definitions, however, necessarily use
words that we associate with the phenomena of the three-dimensional world; they are
therefore incapable of conveying the essence of this ultimate transcendental principle.

Traditional scientists often attribute the appreciation that non-Western societies show for
shamans to the fact that these societies are unable to discriminate the abnormal from the
super-normal because of their lack of education and scientific knowledge. (This is an
example of how ignorant and arrogant Western societies really are. The West has
advanced in technology, but where is the wisdom?)

Underlying all these highlights, what held us together was our feeling that we were on the
cutting edge of knowledge. We were spearheading the acquisition of new and important
truths and their potentials. We likened ourselves to explorers in Africa when that
continent was still unknown to Europeans. (That was Timothy Leary referring to his days
at Harvard.)

We’re not just our bodies. That’s an illusion. Our physical forms are just a temporary
condensation of consciousness in material form. This one consciousness is our true
identity, and we all know this deep within us. I know that you know that we all know that
we are one. We’re all just playing this game. In ordinary reality, we’ve deliberately gone
to sleep on this knowledge.

Without special training and sophistication in archeology or mythology, knowledge of the
cultural heritage involved or even adequate general intellectual background, an individual
may experience mythological and symbolic experiences from ancient Greece, Africa,
India, Tibet, China, Japan, Australia or Pre-Columbian countries (or other cultures, seen
with eyes closed).

Each person will become his own Buddha, his own Einstein, his own Galileo. Instead of
relying on canned, static, dead knowledge passed on from other symbol producers, he
will be using his span of 80 or so years on this planet to live out every possibility of the
human, prehuman and even subhuman adventure. As more respect and time are diverted
to these explorations, he will be less hung-up on trivial, external pastimes. (That was
Timothy Leary.)

All knowledge is potentially available.
An extensive new area of knowledge of mind is waiting to be opened.
Can we summon the courage to receive true knowledge?
Greater knowledge brings with it an awareness of ignorance.
Into the energy which exists before Matter and there in pure Energy, was All-Knowledge.
Knowledge of the universal and infinite is man’s true end.
Liberating knowledge of God comes to the pure in heart.
Man’s brain is capable of limitless new dimensions of awareness and knowledge.
Mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge.
Mystics call the highest knowledge unknowing.
Prior to any metaphysical knowledge, we have no direct consciousness of interior truth.
Real knowledge is nonverbal and beyond the reach of concepts.
The knowledge acquired in altered states demands new kinds of scientific theory.
The lips of knowledge are closed except to the ears of understanding.
The ultimate reason for human experience is unitive knowledge of the divine Ground
These drugs increase society’s range of human experience and human knowledge.
Total deliverance comes only through unitive knowledge.
Wisdom is the spontaneous immediate knowledge of the Suchness of things.

He experienced a déjà vu of divine joy and understanding, as though stumbling upon a
golden trove of submerged knowledge.

It seemed that everything there is between heaven and earth had been revealed to him,
what Jung called the “absolute knowledge of the unconscious.”

The knowledge that was suddenly revealed to me under LSD seemed to be remembered
rather than learned.

This new knowledge did not frighten me. It excited me. There was “something very great
about it.”

His emotional state was one of “tranquility, a quiet kind of happiness and a security
coming from the knowledge of having accomplished something enormously worthwhile,
of having made some very great advances.”

Psychedelic subjects reported experiential identification with other people, animals and
various aspects of nature during which they gained access to new information about areas
which they previously had no intellectual knowledge.

When I read about such visionary states later, I felt especially grateful for my experience
because it seemed that much more authentic and because it gave me a window on the
knowledge of the sages.

To concoct anything by way of description that would even hint at the magnitude, the
sense of ultimate reality…this seems such an impossible task. The knowledge which has
infused and affected every aspect of my life came instantaneously and with such
complete force of certainty that it was impossible, then or since, to doubt its validity.

I felt a vast peace all through me and a sense of secret knowledge.

I felt very good in the deep and profound knowledge of my eternalness.

a religion which goes beyond symbols, a knowledge of God entirely transcending
symbolism

a sense of certainty that this knowledge is ultimately more relevant and “real” than the
perceptions and beliefs we share in everyday life

an ecstatic experience of an ascent into the celestial regions and the acquisition of
supernormal knowledge

an undifferentiated unity wherein the knower, the knowledge and the known are
experienced as a single reality

can relive a forgotten or repressed experience with all its original emotional intensity,
emotion which has remained bottled up inside him without his knowledge

gained access to new information about areas about which they previously had no
intellectual knowledge

insightful knowledge or illumination about being or existence in general that is felt at an
intuitive, nonrational level and gained by direct experience

knowledge of ourselves brought back from the subterranean regions of our psyche—our
phylogenetic awareness

knowledge other than the contents of our surface consciousness, which can apprehend
reality only in the form of one abstraction or thought at a time

makes possible an ever deepening knowledge of the mystery of human—that mystery
which merges ultimately and becomes one with the Mystery of Life itself

mapping uncharted zones of the human psyche, to resurrect a lost art or a lost knowledge
or a lost consciousness, said Ginsberg

my awareness of my connection to the whole, a knowledge more valuable than status or
being some so-called important individual

other kinds of knowledge, “higher” and more satisfying than the knowledge attained
through the abstract, hyper-intellectual process of ordinary science

pure mind, mind in its natural state, limitless, undifferentiated, luminously blissful,
knowledgelessly understanding

the Clear Light of reality itself or undifferentiated consciousness which underlies all
being, knowledge and perception

the genius of knowing the Holy, the awesome knowledge that the stuff of which we are
made is also Divine

the knowledge—and not just the belief—that there was a connection between me and the
rest of the universe, that I was more than what’s within the envelope of my skin

the knowledge that nothing that is utterable is real because this indescribable state is so
much greater

to be delivered out of separate selfhood in time and into eternity as realized in the unitive
knowledge of the Ground

to impart a superhuman knowledge which could not possibly be gained during waking
consciousness

to seriously review ancient and non-Western knowledge about consciousness and to aim
for a genuine synthesis of age-old wisdom and modern science

unconventional knowledge and understanding life directly and not in abstract, linear
terms

whether our physical models describe the universe objectively or just define the limits of
our own knowledge

freedom from the learned cultural mind, the freedom to expand one’s consciousness
beyond artificial cultural knowledge, to move from constant preoccupation with the
verbal game, the social games, the game of self, to the joyous unity of what exists beyond

metaphysics—refers to the knowledge of that which is beyond the natural order, to the
universal, infinite and eternal, as distinct from and beyond the individual, the finite and
the temporal

the world of the “collective unconscious”, an infinite ocean of knowledge from which we
can each draw. (It’s everything anyone and everyone who ever lived knew, did, said, or
experienced.)

a deeper insight of ourselves given by a new knowledge of the past
a feeling and knowledge of being physically boundless—an oceanic quality
a gain in self-knowledge
a joyful knowledge, the joy of knowing
a purely spiritual religion that seeks the unitive knowledge of the Absolute Godhead
a reality that is beyond human knowledge but nevertheless can be experienced directly
a sense of ultimate knowledge
a transcendental world of Being, Knowledge and Bliss
acquiring real knowledge of the process of life while in the drug-state
an eternity of radiant knowledge, of bliss unchanging in its ultimate intensity
an experience of intense self-knowledge
an experiential knowledge of a tradition
an immediate knowledge of those universal principles
awakens to full self-knowledge
direct experiential knowledge of the evolutionary process
direct, mystical knowledge of a Universal Self
direct spiritual knowledge, immediate knowledge
emotional knowledge of a direct and actual and acute sort
experience as “knowledgeless understanding, luminous bliss”
far higher grounds of knowledge
from delusion and ignorance to knowledge and enlightenment
getting rid of conceptualized pseudo-knowledge and opening ourselves to reality
intuitive knowledge
knowledge gained through vision and mystical intuition
knowledge of creation’s true nature
knowledge other than the contents of our surface consciousness
knowledge rather than a belief
knowledge that the world is play
knowledge with reflection
metaphysical knowledge the most immediate kind of experience
reaching for the generator of all life and knowledge
tapping that rich field of knowledge, insight, and revelation
the acceptance of a positive knowledge
the ancient knowledge of nonordinary states of consciousness
the ancient paths of knowledge
the certainty that such knowledge is truly or ultimately real
the depth and scope of such ancient knowledge
the enlightening and liberating knowledge of Reality
the experience, the immediate knowledge of it being so
the intellectual vision of Truth, the immediate, unitive knowledge of the divine Ground
the knowledge of eternal reality
the knowledge of the self, as revealed by the LSD experience
the knowledge of truth, not of any truth, but of that truth which is the source of all truth
the knowledge which gives the knowledge of everything
the liberating knowledge of the divine Ground
the radiance of unitive knowledge
the sexual act as a religious sacrament, a mode of mystical knowledge
the unitive knowledge of God, the Godhead
the wordless but all-embracing knowledge attained in the mystical state
this newly revealed knowledge
this preconceptual mystical knowledge
to attain an intuitive knowledge of God
to tune out our intellects and into our intuitive sources of knowledge
true knowledge
unitive knowledge of Suchness
visionary knowledge
Western mind—a restricted view of human knowledge
would not have had such insight without mystic super-knowledge