Strange, Unusual, Unfamiliar, Peculiar, Eerie

As everything in the field of consciousness assumes unusual importance, feelings become
magnified to a degree of intensity and purity almost never experienced in daily life.

During unusual states of consciousness, one can make beneficial visionary journeys to
other realms and dimensions of reality.

Extrasensory perceptions are not unusual talents possessed by specially gifted
individuals. They are normal unconscious events.

How odd that a chemical can do what a lifetime of spiritual exercises rarely brings to
anyone.

Is it not strange that an experience which is regarded with such fear and distrust by those
who have not had it, is so highly regarded by those who have?

Is it not strange that an infant should be heir of the whole World and see those mysteries
which the books of the learned never unfold?

It is a special kind of enlightenment to have this feeling that the usual, the way things
normally are, is odd, this feeling of universal oddity.

Making full allowance for cultural variations, it appears that men’s experience of “the
ultimate” are peculiarly alike. (Experiences of “the ultimate” are universal.)

Many LSD subjects reported unusual aesthetic experiences and insights into the nature of
the creative process; they frequently developed a new understanding of art.

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.

Sexual arousal can reach an unusually high degree and can be expressed in scenes of
orgies, sexual perversions or rhythmic sensual dances. (eyes closed)

Strange mental results occur when the sex act is deliberately slowed down, prolonged
sexual unions.

Subjects underwent highly intense and unusual experiences which may change perception
of life experiences.

That which delights us is the peculiar essences of things, and the intangible relation of
harmony which the essences, manifold in unity, bear to each other and ourselves.

The combination of our unfamiliarity with Eastern cultures and their sophistication gives
them an aura of mystery into which we project fantasies of our own making.

The deep contents of the psyche that we are ordinarily unaware of erupt into
consciousness in the form of images, powerful emotions, and strange physical sensations.

The dimension of depth is where we address ourselves to what really matters and
confront the mysterium trememdum—the interior strangeness of Being.

The experience of cosmic unity has an unusual therapeutic potential and can have lasting
beneficial consequences for the individual.

The intelligent use of psychedelic drugs required a new professional, unfamiliar to the
Western world, the brain guide. The multiple-reality coach.

The powerful sensations from every part of your body and the unusual connections of
thoughts and feelings that are normally ignored come dramatically into consciousness.

The reason why precious stones are precious is precisely this, that they remind us of this
strange other world at the back of our heads.

The simple words, the most trivial ideas take on new and strange shapes, incongruous
resemblances and associations impossible to foresee, puns, comical absurdities.

The symbolic adventures are unusually vivid and explicit in their application to the
individual’s life. (eyes closed)

These artists seemed like explorers or big game hunters venturing into very strange
territory and bringing back alive what they had seen.

These strange forms of research and experimentation are not implacable rivals but
potential partners of science.

This Other World is vibrant, with strange energy transformations and exists in another
dimension of mind or self.

Through these landscapes and among these living architectures wander strange figures,
people, super-human beings, animals, fabulous monsters. (eyes closed)

Transpersonal experiences have many strange characteristics that shatter the most
fundamental assumptions of materialistic science and of the mechanistic worldview.

Unusual types of religious worship should be protected until they not only have been
proved harmful, but also more harmful than they are good.

With unusual intensity, the field of awareness is flooded with material from the
individual’s unconscious and from the sensory organs, particularly the optical system.

You have this very strange impression that the world is always like this; we just don’t
notice.

A strange, qualitative leap seems to occur in which deep exploration of the individual
unconscious turns into a process of experiential adventures in the universe-at-large,
involving what can be best described as the superconscious mind.

Albert Einstein discovered the basic principles of his special theory of relativity in an
unusual state of mind; according to his description, most of the insights came to him in
the form of kinaesthetic sensations.

As the sexual activity continues and the drug takes greater hold on you, the sensations
intensify. The penis feels bigger, stiffer and strangely “rubbery”. Sensations of pleasure
expand to more areas of the body than usual.

Colors are unusually bright and explosive, color contrasts much stronger than usual and
the world can be perceived in a way characterized by various movements in modern art,
such as impressionism, cubism, surrealism or superrealism.

For most people, it’s a life-changing shock to learn that their everyday reality circuit is
one among dozens of circuits which, when turned on, are equally real, pulsing with
strange forms and mysterious biological signals.

I unlock the secret not by hypothesis, not by processes of reasoning, but by journeying
through self-same fields of weird experience which are dinted by the sandals of the
glorious old dreamers of the East.

If we can think of the brain as a computer, then by temporarily altering the chemistry of
the brain, stimulates new connections, linking up memories and information in unusual
ways. By this kind of synthesis, fresh concepts are formed…

In these days of peril, no religious leader can afford to overlook any source of religious
motivation, no matter how strange and particularly one that in so many cases has proved
effective.

In this strange experience, one has the sense that there is this fundamental sanity in spite
of the preposterous nonsense. (The “nonsense” is the nonsense of the world or society as
it is, not as it could and should be.)

It is not unusual for people in non-ordinary states of mind to accurately portray material
that precedes their conception or to explore the world of their parents, their ancestors, and
of the human race. (eyes closed)

My experiences with these substances have been the most strange, most awesome and
among the most beautiful things in a varied and fortunate life. (I’m surprised he indicates
that he has experienced beauty of this magnitude before trying psychedelics.)

One perceives objects and people’s faces and movements of limbs in a peculiarly stylized
manner as if the essence or under-lying idea was struggling or better pressing to reveal
itself.

Shapes devoid of content could produce feelings of meaning, in the same way that
unusual notes in a pattern seemingly devoid of content, can convey very specific images
and emotions.

Suddenly, the familiar view of our surroundings is transformed in a strange, delightful
way: it appears to us in a new light, takes on a special meaning. Such an experience can
be as light and fleeting as a breath of air, or it can imprint itself deeply upon our minds.

The best model for understanding the changes in behavior that occur after psychedelic
drug use is the changes in one’s views of self and world after a voyage to a strange
country.

The experiential insights from unusual states of consciousness suggest the existence of
intangible and unfathomable creative intelligence aware of itself that permeates all realms
of reality.

The linearity of temporal experiences is transcended in unusual states of consciousness.
Scenes from different historical contexts can occur simultaneously and appear to be
meaningfully connected by their experiential characteristics. (eyes closed)

The unusual states of consciousness induced by LSD can generate important insights,
facilitate problem-solving and lead to valid intuitions or unexpected resyntheses of
accumulated data.

The word for every strange phenomenon with all the world is “only imagination.” (If
Mark McGuire hit 70 home runs in one season, that is a strange phenomenon. Was it
therefore “only imagination?” Did we all just imagine that he did it?)

These are unusual manifestations of human mental function, ordinarily inaccessible. The
ability to produce them chemically clarifies similar obscure and puzzling experiences
found in religious, historical and mystical literature.

Time is so slow as to be a kind of eternity and the flavor of eternity transfers itself to the
hills, burnished mountains which I seem to remember from an immeasurably distant past,
at once so unfamiliar as to be exotic and yet as familiar as my own hand.

Unusual states of consciousness, similar to those produced by LSD, occur spontaneously
in many dying individuals for reasons of a physiological, biochemical and psychological
nature.

Various objects in their surroundings can lose their usual forms; they seem to pulsate and
be in a state of strange instability and flux. During this process, they frequently appear
grossly disproportional, distorted and transformed.

We sometimes have a strangely pleasant sensation of having forgotten something
extremely important from long, long ago. Occasionally, this shadow of a memory comes
with hints of a forgotten paradise.

Your thoughts, feelings and sensations are new and strange. All events, physical,
personal or social are looked at with a new eye. You suddenly realize who you really are
and what your personal reality means.

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.

Characteristically there are at first flashes of light or amorphous forms of vivid color
which evolve and develop into geometric figures, shapes, human faces, and pictures of
great complexity. The depth of the color and its unusually arresting tone strike the
subject. (eyes closed)

experiences of other universes—The strange and alien worlds that LSD subjects discover
and explore in this type of experience seem to have a reality of their own, although not
within the range of our cosmos; they appear to exist in other dimensions, in universes
coexistent with ours. (eyes closed)

How strange that we should all carry about with us this enormous universe of vision and
that which lies beyond vision and yet be mainly unconscious of the fact! How can we
learn to pass at will from one world of consciousness to the others? Mescaline and LSD
will open the door.

In this type of experience, subjects get involved in wild adventures in strange, alien
worlds that have reality of their own, although not within the range of our cosmos. These
universes seem to exist on other levels of reality or in other dimensions, parallel with and
coexistent with ours. (eyes closed)

It is not unusual in psychedelic sessions to experience concrete and realistic episodes
identified as fetal and embryonic memories. Many subjects report vivid sequences on the
level of cellular consciousness which seem to reflect their existence in the form of a
sperm or ovum at the moment of conception. (eyes closed)

Large numbers of professionals have had the chance to experience transpersonal
phenomena in their own training sessions and have recognized their unusual and specific
nature. This set of data was one of the major heuristic streams that converged into
transpersonal psychology as a new and separate discipline.

Of great relevance for the creative process is the facilitation of new and unexpected
synthesis of data, resulting in unconventional problem-solving. It is a well known fact
that many important ideas and solutions to problems did not originate in the context of
logical reasoning, but in various unusual states of mind.

Professional as well as public tradition has omitted serious consideration of creativity,
religious development and problem solving during reveries, daydreaming or other
unusual conscious states. In fact, there is a basic disinterest in the fields of psychiatry and
psychology as regards the entire topic of consciousness.

Psychedelic drugs dramatically suspend the conditioned, learned aspects of the nervous
system. Suddenly released from its conditioned patterning, consciousness is flung into a
flashing loom of unlearned imagery, an eerie, novel landscape where every-thing seems
possible and nothing remains fixed.

Sometimes, there is very little actual perceptual distortion of the environment, but the
latter is emotionally interpreted in an unusual way. It can appear incredibly beautiful,
sensual and inviting; or comical; very frequently, it is described as having a magical or
fairy-tale quality.

The best researchers, when confronting problems and riddles that had defied all solution
by ordinary methods, did employ their minds in an unusual way, did put themselves into
a state of egoless “creativity” which permitted them to have insights so remarkable that
by means of these they were able to make their greatest and most original discoveries.

The descriptions of heaven, hell and the posthumous adventures of the soul were
misunderstood—frequently not only by critics of religion, but by clergy and theologians
themselves—as historical and geographical references rather than cartographies of
unusual states of consciousness.

The emotional effects are even more profound than the perceptual ones. The drug taker
becomes unusually sensitive to faces, gestures, and small changes in the environment. As
everything in the field of consciousness assumes unusual importance, feelings become
magnified.

The perception of the environment has a certain primary quality; every sensory stimulus,
be it visual, acoustic, olfactory, gustatory or tactile, appears to be completely fresh and
new and at the same time, unusually exciting and stimulating. Subjects talk about really
seeing the world for the first time in their lives.

The subject is caught in an endless flow of colored forms, microbiological shapes,
cellular acrobatics, capillary whirling. The cortex is tuned in on molecular processes
which are completely new and strange: a Niagara of abstract designs; the life-stream
flowing, flowing. (eyes closed)

This richness of gem-like qualities, which is found in the Visionary World, does explain
many very strange facts about certain types of art and many facts about the curious,
uniform quality of religious traditions, folklore traditions, traditions of the nature of the
Golden Age and After Life, which are found all over the world.

We have now learned that many species of these strange growths possess a power such as
early man could only have regarded as miraculous. Indeed they may have given to him
the very idea of the miraculous and inspired many of the themes that come down to us in
our heritage of folklore.

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.

Words like hallucination and psychosis were loaded; they implied negative states of
mind. The psychiatric jargon reflected a pathological orientation, whereas a truly
objective science would not impose value judgments on chemicals that produced unusual
or altered states of consciousness.

Christianity and even Protestant Christianity has remained, willy-nilly, the most
authoritarian and bigoted of all world religions. He who attempts to question or modify
any of its dogmas quickly gets into very hot water in any Christian country. There has
been one “revelation” and it is enough. He who has new ideas is probably inspired by the
Devil or has been out in the woods taking strange drugs with the witch women.

Individuals feel that they have left their past behind and that they are capable of starting
an entirely new chapter of their lives. Exhilarating feelings of freedom from anxiety,
depression and guilt are associated with deep physical relaxation and a sense of perfect
functioning of all physiological processes. Life appears simple and exciting and the
individual has the feeling of unusual sensory richness and intense joy.

One of the major problems of LSD psychotherapy was the unusual nature and context of
the psychedelic experience. The intensity of the emotional and physical expression
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
couch.

Our ordinary Newtonian-Cartesian consciousness can be invaded with unusual power by
various archetypal entities or mythological sequences that, according to mechanistic
science, should have no independent existence. The myth-producing aspects of the
human psyche will portray deities, rituals from different cultures that the subject has
never studied. (eyes closed)

The images are most often of persons, animals, architecture and landscapes. Strange
creatures from legend, folklore, myth and fairy tale appear in wonderful surroundings.
Ancient temples and castles are imaged and figures and incidents from the historical past.
Persons, places and objects observed in the course of the subject’s life may make their
appearance. (eyes closed)

The intensification and “deepening” of color, sound and texture lends them a peculiar
transparency. One seems to be aware of them more than ever as vibration, electronic and
luminous. As this feeling develops it appears that these vibrations are continuous with
one’s own consciousness and that the external world is in some odd way inside the mind-
brain.

The most human thing about man is his eternal, childlike hope that somehow, someday,
the deepest yearnings of his heart will come true. Who is so proud and unfeeling that he
will not admit that he would be deliriously happy if, by some strange magic, these deep
and ingrained longings could be fulfilled? If there was eternal everlasting life beyond
death after all?

We may feel that we are really seeing the world for the first time in our lives. Everything
around us, even the most ordinary and familiar scenes, seems unusually exciting and
stimulating. People report entirely new ways of appreciating and enjoying their loved
ones, the sound of music, the beauties of nature, and the endless pleasures that the world
provides for our senses.

Adventurous and creative people have always been willing and have usually been
encouraged to take the most serious risks in the exploration of the outer world and in the
development of scientific and technological skill. Many young people now feel that the
time has come to explore the inner world and are willing to take the unfamiliar risks
which it involves. They, too, should be encouraged and assisted with all the wisdom at
our disposal.

When subjects were given a psychedelic drug without knowing what to expect or how to
respond, being left alone in a dark room or threatened by unfamiliar researchers
demanding cooperation in psychological testing, it is easy to understand why so many
experiences became psychotic. If nonpsychotic experiences are desired, subjects must be
prepared, feel secure in a friendly environment, and above be willing and able to trust in a
reality greater than themselves.

Around us, worlds are born and fall, images dance with us, strange shapes glow brighter.
Drug-induced religious and mystical experience is unusually intense.
Feelings toward other people become unusually intense.
It is possible to feel unusual openness and closeness to others.
One sees the old and familiar in a new and strange way, often as though for the first time.
Peculiar boundary shifts enter into men’s awareness.
The content of the mystic experience reflects its unusual mode of consciousness.
The path that leads there is not a path to a strange place, but the path home.
The unfamiliarities of foreign cultures are nothing to those of one’s own inner workings.
There can be direct acquaintance with the intrinsic strangeness of existence.
You sense a strange powerful force beginning to unloose and radiate through your body.

Every scene was realistic, but the colors were unusually vivid and all sparkled in brilliant
morning sunshine. (eyes closed)

He looked around him as if seeing the world for the first time. The world was beautiful,
strange and mysterious.

His features showed an unusual mixture of infantile bliss and mystical rapture. (This
“infantile bliss” is positive and mature.)

I started experiencing a strange excitement that was dissimilar to anything I have ever felt
in my life.

I stepped forth into some strange land which can only be grasped in terms of
astonishment and mystery, an ecstatic nirvana.

It occurred to me how strange it would be if some inkling of this state drives one mad as
if the mad person knows this state exists and not being in it drives him mad.

Strangely enough I preferred the subtle colors to the bright flowers. They seemed more
mysteriously beautiful.

The green trees transported and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made
my heart leap, almost mad with ecstasy.

How easy, I kept saying, to turn whatever one looked at, even a human face, into a pure
object, an object of the most magical beauty, strangeness, intensity of thereness, of pure
existence!

It seems as if the “new information”, the bombardment of the senses by unfamiliar
signals, had really taught the body something, on a preverbal level; something which
persuaded it that old fears and tensions were no longer necessary.

My comrades appeared to me disfigured, part men, part plants. So strange did they seem
that I writhed with laughter and overcome by the absurdity of the spectacle, flung my
cushions up in the air.

Feeling not that I was drugged but that I was in an unusual degree open to reality, I tried
to discern the meaning, the inner character of the dancing patterns which constituted
myself and the gardens and the whole dome of the night with its colored stars. All at
once, it became obvious that the whole ting was love-play. This was not just love as we
ordinarily understand it. It was also intelligence.

Most of the scenes were oriental—brilliantly illuminated landscapes, strange towers,
pagodas and temples, furnishing the background to exquisite lovely dancers. (That’s with
closed eyes. To be clear, the scenes will not at all necessarily be oriental. They probably
will not be, but can be as in this person’s case and this person might never see oriental
scenes again.)

All strange things were explained, all vexed questions solved.
Everything seemed new and in a way strange.
He began to stomp on the floor as if obeying some strange internal rhythm.
He enjoyed several days of “unusual calm” just after the session.
His features showed an unusual mixture of infantile bliss and mystical rapture.
My husband’s red plaid shirt was glowing with a peculiar intensity.
The grass, bushes and trees outside my window glistened with a strange beauty.

a peculiarly immediate conscious access to the inner workings of the central nervous
system (eyes closed)

all the world so strange and multi-level intricate, but so perfect, so beautiful, so fine, so
good, so perfect

an object of the most magical beauty, strangeness, intensity of thereness, of pure
existence

Christianity, with its politically ordered cosmology and technology, with its imperialistic
mechanization of a natural world from which man himself feels strangely alien

into some other strange land of unlikeliness, which can only be grasped in terms of
astonishment and mystery, as an ecstatic Nirvana

Jungian archetypes having that peculiar quality of external reality and alien intelligence
(eyes closed)

LSD, its eerie power to release ancient, wise, at times even holy sources of energy, inside
the human brain

propel consciousness into an eerie, novel landscape in which everything seems possible
and nothing remains fixed

seems to allow detours from the customary channels of experience and permit
transcendence of some of our peculiar social inhibitions

spiritual consciousness—a strange and almost always hitherto unexperienced awareness
carrying with it a “flavor of eternity”

that peculiar naturalness and un-self-consciousness for which little children are loved and
which is sometimes regained by saints and sages

the new relationship between religion and science that seems to be emerging from the
study of unusual states of consciousness

the peculiar sensation of freedom of action which arises when the world is no longer felt
to be some sort of obstacle standing over against me

the relation of the stranger and more remote areas of the mind with all kinds of cultural,
religious and philosophical aspects of our life

the strange sense of timeless moments which arises when one is no longer trying to resist
the flow of events

the unusual nature and power of the material that emerges from the depths of the
unconscious

to go beyond into regions where the terrain is unfamiliar, but where a much more
profound transformation and self-realization is possible

unusual insights into the nature of various emotional disorders and ways of detecting and
healing them

vivid reenactments of traumatic or unusually pleasant memories from infancy, childhood
or later periods of life

participation in cellular flow, visions of microscopic processes, strange undulating multi-
colored tissue patterns, being a one-celled organism floating down arterial waterways,
being part of the fantastic artistry of internal factories (eyes closed)

the five senses disembodied, all of them keyed to the height of sensitivity and awareness,
all of them blending into one another most strangely, until the person, utterly passive,
becomes a pure receptor, infinitely delicate, of sensations

a mysterious change into something rich and strange
a strange happening
a strange journey of adventure
a strange, mysterious feeling
a variety of strange and unusual sensations of all kinds
a world where they are seeing very clearly very strange and interesting things
an unusual potential for mediating transformative and mystical experiences
can experience a wide spectrum of extreme emotions and behave in most unusual ways
change into something rich and strange
confusing the unfamiliar with the unnatural
discovering a strange new world of extraordinary radiance and significance
extremely intense and unusual experiences
her strange sudden laughter
magical strangeness
my soul thrilled with a strange and unimagined ecstasy
novel energy levels and unusual forms of perception
on a strange primordial level
produces a variety of intense and unusual psychic effects
see it with unusual vividness and clarity
strange experiential territory
strange new feelings
strange penetration of depth
strange physical energies
strangely familiar
such a powerful stream of new and strange perceptions and feelings
that peculiar state of joy and serenity
that strange intuition of an eternal identity
the experience of unusual realities
the feeling of unusual sensory richness and intense joy
the intense realness, the unusual sensations
the labyrinth of strange byways and unknown paths (eyes closed)
the peculiar sensation of “walking on air” which arises when the mind is first liberated
the revelation of the strangeness and otherness that hides in familiar things
the strange territory of the mind into which they had stumbled
the unbelievably beautiful strange imagery
the unfamiliar altered consciousness induced by LSD
the unfamiliar terrain of his expanded consciousness
the unusual ability of this drug to facilitate intensive emotional abreactions
the vividness, intensity and perceptual peculiarities of drug trips
these strange deep realms
thirst for insight, adventure, strange surprises and mystical discoveries
unusual adventures in consciousness
unusual clarity and vividness
unusual depth and clarity of vision
unusual, exotic and stimulating experiences
unusual experiences of a spiritual nature
unusual kinds of body feeling
unusual openness and emotional closeness to others
unusual psychic energy
unusual richness of colors
unusual sensitivity to various psychological factors
unusual states of consciousness of extraordinary intensity and clarity
unusually rich