“Previously Unimaginable, Inconceivable, Unknown, Inaccessible, or Hidden”, “Never Thought, Suspected, Expected, or Even Dreamed Was Possible Before”, “Experiencing Something For The First Time or Better Than Ever Before”, etc.
An inconceivable beyond, “without conception,” there flashes forth from its unknown
depths the state of consciousness which is called divine.
Drug users often refer to emotions or combinations of emotions they have never felt
before.
Everything is brilliantly illuminated, shining from within and a riot of colors is intensified
to a pitch unknown in the normal state.
God has no skin and no shape because there isn’t any outside to him. Your self is that
cleverly hidden because it is God hiding.
In psychology, the psychedelics have provided the key to the unimagined vastness of the
unconscious mind.
Individuals find that they can think more clearly and that they suddenly have access to
untapped sources of creativity within themselves.
It has deep and revolutionary implications for the understanding of psychopathology and
offers new therapeutic possibilities undreamt (undreamed) of by traditional psychiatry.
It is a condition of extreme suggestibility where minor cues come to assume enormous
significance and great mood swings can be precipitated by hitherto insignificant stimuli.
It was these experiences that convinced me of the existence of a miraculous,
unfathomable reality that is hidden from everyday sight.
It’s a universe of inconceivable beauty in which all things are full of life and charged
with an obscure but immensely important meaning.
LSD can produce dramatic changes in personality leading to unprecedented peace, sanity
and happiness.
LSD could enable one to study psychic material that is buried in the deepest layers of the
unconscious and is usually inaccessible to less dynamic techniques.
LSD enables us to penetrate deeply and bring about changes in personality formerly
thought impossible.
LSD propels them into hitherto unmapped regions of the mind while the mystical lore of
the East serves as a guide through this virgin territory.
Man falls when he becomes entangled in his own web of words, ideas, discriminations,
thus losing sight of the one and inconceivable reality.
Many individuals become intensely interested in nature and find a capacity for ecstatic
experiencing of natural beauty, frequently for the first time in their lives.
Materials not normally accessible to consciousness surge up and determine the thought
content and patterns.
Most of us do not suspect the existence of another way of interpreting our perceptions of
the world around us.
Nothing before LSD ever brought home to me the idea that things of the spirit might be
real and palpable.
Observations of the transpersonal realm are beginning to suggest that consciousness is
involved in the so-called material world in ways previously unimagined.
One finds, again and again, in the reports written by subjects after the event, the
statement that “this is the most wonderful experience I have ever had”.
One is completely suspended and truly living in one’s experiences much more so than
ever before. (That’s with LSD.)
Pieces of music with which I thought I was thoroughly familiar, having heard them
hundreds of times before, I hear as if for the first time during an LSD trip.
Psychedelic drugs give me a sense of harmony and beauty. For the first time in my life, I
can take pleasure in the beauty of a leaf; I can find meaning in the processes of nature.
Psychedelic drugs have enabled them to attain significant experiences otherwise
unavailable to them.
Sexual energies will be unimaginably intensified and it will lead to a deeper experience
than ever thought possible.
Sights, sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations all appear to be unimaginably more
intense, vivid, and pleasurable.
Sometimes they acquire new insights and intricate knowledge about the life process from
sources within them that are not ordinarily available.
Subjects often discovered sensitivities and capacities within themselves that they were
never would have suspected.
Such well-known concepts as the “primordial essence” and the “ultimate Ground of
Being” take on an immediacy and clarity hitherto unknown.
Sudden and unexpected displays of more primitive and intense emotion than shown
during normal waking consciousness may appear.
The discoveries that lie on the horizon are unimaginably transformative for human
society.
The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the
first time.
the hitherto unbelievable surprise: You don’t die because you were never born. You had
just forgotten who you are.
The psychedelic experience provides nothing less than a mean of truly going “beyond
Freud” and to venture into these previously inaccessible regions of mind.
The subject can witness or identify with the birth and development of the cosmos
involving dimensions and energies of unimaginable scope.
The world becomes more mysterious, being immeasurably grander, vaster, more complex
and indeed, more imaginative than we had supposed.
There were many dimensions that were far beyond anything that one could produce in
fantasy in a usual state of mind.
These drugs have the unique effect on the human psyche of bringing into awareness
forms of consciousness that are usually hidden or unconscious.
They had transcendent experiences that have made them aware of previously hidden
areas of existence.
We can find ourselves filled with a love which we have never even dreamed was
possible.
With rare exceptions, that which is truly subjective and interior has thus far remained
entirely hidden from Western man.
You see with an immediacy of vision that leads you to say to yourself, “Now I am seeing
for the first time, seeing direct, without the intervention of mortal eyes.”
All of this stuff that is normally hidden in the active language is suddenly not only
available but visibly deployed in three-dimensional space and emotion. You recognize it
as intimately of yourself. In a sense you recognize it as your soul.
Dependence on a narrow conceptual framework can prevent scientists from discoveries,
recognizing or even imagining undreamed-of possibilities in the realm of natural
phenomena.
eyes open—The colors had become not only more luminous and brilliant, but different in
quality from any color previously seen; they were located outside the normally visible
spectrum.
He may see and understand with unimagined clarity and brilliance various social and
self-games that he and others play. His own struggles in karma (game) existence will
appear pitiful and laughable.
I have used the symbolic expression “awakening” because it clearly suggests the
becoming aware of a new area of experience, the opening of hitherto closed eyes to an
inner reality previously unknown.
I’m eternally grateful for this experience. LSD changed my life. I’ve lived more, felt
more, enjoyed life more in the last few years than I had dreamed possible. LSD gave me
that treasure. (That was actor Cary Grant.)
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.
If the answer existed within the conscious ego, the quest would never have begun. The
answer is found in those areas that were previously unconscious, those areas where the
body links and joins other bodies and the total energy continuum of life and ecology.
Individuals can feel that prior to the experience they had never really seen colors, smelled
the variety of fragrances and odors, tested the infinite nuances of food, or experienced the
sensual potential of their bodies.
It is important to prepare the client for the fact that the dimensions of the experience will
probably be beyond anything he or she has ever faced before or could even imagine in the
usual state of consciousness.
LSD subjects sophisticated in mathematics and physics have repeatedly reported that in
their psychedelic sessions they gained illuminating insights into a variety of concepts and
constructs that are not imaginable and visualizable in the ordinary state of consciousness.
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.
People who have had such experiences usually agree that deep within each of us lie
goodness unimagined, wisdom, music, talents of every variety, joy, peace, humility, love
and spirituality, to mention only a few.
Psychedelic, mind-manifesting drugs give promise of providing access to the great and
hitherto largely impenetrable realms—the vast, intricate and awesome regions we call
mind.
That transpersonal experiences can mediate access to accurate information about various
aspects of the universe previously unknown to the subject requires in itself a fundamental
revision of our concepts about the nature of reality.
The colors are typically described as rich, brilliant, glowing, luminous or
“preternatural”—colors exceeding in their beauty anything the subject has ever seen
before.
The discovery of the hidden aspects of reality and of the challenges associated with them
adds fascinating new dimensions to existence. It makes one’s life much richer and more
interesting.
The self reveals itself to consciousness more completely than has been possible hitherto,
with consciousness “living” the ensuing symbolic drama in terms of patterns that have
become simultaneously personal and universal. (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.
This euphoric feeling includes elements of profound peace and steadfastness, surging like
a spring from a depth of my being which has rarely, if ever, been tapped prior to the drug
experience.
Vivid experiential encounters with elements of the deep unconscious made it possible to
relate to spiritual and psychic dimensions that were beyond their previous conceptual
frameworks.
We are liberated and enlightened by perceiving the hitherto unexperienced good that is
already within us, by returning to our eternal Ground and remaining where, without
knowing it, we have always been.
With the ego and mind unplugged, what is left? It’s something Western culture knows
little about, the open brain, the uncensored cortex, alert and open to a broad sweep of
internal and external stimuli hitherto screened out.
Bad trips may ultimately be good ones. The “bad trip” is one in which the person recoils
in terror when unexpectedly confronted with ranges of energy which he cannot control.
(This is the ego dying and one has to be prepared for it so that it’s not so “unexpected”.
As for the terror, it’s all in the person’s mind or ego.)
Blake says the landscapes and the architectures in which they live are highly organized,
they are articulated beyond anything which the mortal and perishing sight could possibly
imagine, that they were in some sense super-real, they were more real than ordinary
reality (eyes closed).
Colors are bright and glowing, the outlines of objects are defined as they never have been
before, spacial relationships are drastically altered, several or all of the senses are
enormously heightened—“all at once” the world has shed its old everyday facade and
stands revealed as a wonderland.
He takes a fantastic inner journey into the unconscious and superconscious mind. These
drugs thus reveal and make available for direct observation, a wide range of otherwise
hidden phenomena that represent intrinsic capacities of the human mind and play an
important role in normal mental dynamics.
I never suspected that the ancient spiritual systems had actually charted, with amazing
accuracy, different levels and types of consciousness that occur in nonordinary states of
consciousness. I was astonished by their emotional power, authenticity, and potential for
transforming people’s views of their lives.
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.
Just as photographic chemicals bring to light the picture already imprinted on the film,
the psychedelic chemicals have, in actual practice, introduced many people to an
appreciation of music, a capacity for art or a sensitivity to poetry that was there but which
they never dreamed they had.
Most of the awe and reverent wonder stems from this confrontation with an unsuspected
range of consciousness, the tremendous acceleration of images, the shattering insight into
the narrowness of the learned as opposed to the potentiality of awareness, the humbling
sense of where one’s ego is in relationship to the total energy field.
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.
Psychedelics expand attention. They make the spotlight of consciousness a floodlight
which not only exposes ignored relationships and unities but also brings to light
unsuspected details, details normally ignored because of their lack of significance or their
irrelevance to some prejudice of what ought to be.
Take the sense of sight. LSD vision is to normal vision as normal vision is to the picture
on a badly tuned television set. Under LSD, it’s as though you have microscopes up to
your eyes, in which you see jewellike, radiant details of anything your eyes fall upon.
You are really seeing for the first time.
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.
These accounts do suggest that a “new vision” takes place, colored by an inner exaltation.
Their authors report perceiving a new brilliance to the world, of seeing everything as if
for the first time, of noticing beauty which for the most part they may have previously
passed by without seeing.
We can mention the Jungian archetypes—the world of deities, demigods, superheroes
and complex mythological, legendary and fairy-tale sequences. These experiences can
impart accurate new information about religious symbolism previously unknown to the
subject. (eyes closed)
We could mention many instances where a creative individual struggled unsuccessfully
for a long time with a difficult problem using logic and reason, with the actual solution
emerging unexpectedly from the unconscious in moments when his or her rationality was
suspended.
Your soul is free, loses all sense of time, alert as it never was before, living eternity in a
night, seeing infinity in a grain of sand. What you have seen and heard is cut with a burin
in your memory, never to be effaced. At last you know what the ineffable is and what
ecstasy means. Ecstasy!
Certain physical stimuli from the environment can change the session in a very dramatic
way. This may be observed in connection with certain accidental sounds; thus barking of
a dog, sound of a jet, explosion of fireworks, factory or ambulance sirens or a particular
tune may have a specific biographical meaning that can elicit quite unexpected responses
from the subject.
Normal waking consciousness may be replaced by aesthetic consciousness and the world
will be perceived in all its unimaginable beauty, all the blazing intensity of its
“thereness.” And aesthetic consciousness may modulate into visionary consciousness.
Thanks to yet another kind of seeing, the world will now reveal itself as not only
unimaginably beautiful, but also fathomlessly mysterious.
Sensory perceptions become especially brilliant and intense. Normally unnoticed aspects
of the environment capture the attention; ordinary objects are seen as if for the first time
and acquire new depth of significance. Aesthetic responses are greatly heightened; colors
seem more intense, textures richer, contours sharpened, music more emotionally
profound, the spatial arrangements of objects more meaningful.
Squeeze the stone until it becomes soft as cotton. The guide then may induce an empathic
relationship, telling the subject to “Let yourself go into the stone, let yourself dissolve
into the stone. Be one with the stone, so that you understand it and so that it understands
you”. By such means, experiences of empathy are made possible for persons who never
have had even remotely similar experiences before.
Up this gradual stairway of Sense, Understanding, Intuition, we mount to that height from
which we are able to behold, with some degree of calmness, the infinite fields of intuitive
Beauty and Truth, when the screen of the bodily is removed, and the scope of vision
belonging to our highest faculty is realized to be immeasurably beyond all that our most
rapturous visions ever conceived it.
We may feel that we are 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.
A trip is really a journey into the unknown territories of the mind.
He may “see what has to be done” as he has “never seen it before.”
Heretofore unimagined answers are forthcoming.
It seems as though, for the first time you are breathing life.
It’s like seeing things for the first time. It’s like a renaissance, a rebirth of the mind.
LSD might have undreamed of therapeutic potential.
LSD releases stored hidden programs.
LSD swirls the voyager into unknown regions.
LSD users have entered the unknown land of psyche.
Music can assume a previously inconceivable emotional and aesthetic intensity.
One sees the old and familiar in a new and strange way, often as though for the first time.
People and objects become as fascinating as if they were the first of their kind ever seen.
The inner sphere is the real self, unknown to the conscious ego.
There is a deep positive potential in every human being that is hidden.
This emergence is always so miraculously unexpected.
We can explore mythological and other realities that we previously did not know existed.
You become aware of processes you were never tuned into before.
You will rejoice in perception of a meaning in life which you never felt.
Your mind is seething to heights undreamed of.
He experiences himself as a far greater being than he had ever imagined, with his
conscious self a far smaller fraction of the whole than he had realized.
This is perfection. Everything, everything is so beautiful. I’ve never heard music like this
before.
Why the colors are so bright! The world seems alive! I’m seeing for the first time! It’s
alive! Well, of course, it’s alive. Your eye knew that all along.
All colors I have ever beheld are dull in comparison to these.
I feel for the first time that I really know you.
I have just come back from seeing the world for the first time.
I have never seen such color before.
I’ve been blinded all my life to this radiance.
I’ve been turned on to life and have never been so happy.
I’ve never listened to music like this before.
It is as if I see everything for the first time.
Magnificent, I never really saw color before.
Emotionally, aesthetically and religiously, the experience was the most intense,
impressive and valuable day I have ever experienced.
For the first time, I was experiencing the universe for what it really is—an unfathomable
mystery, a divine play of energy.
For the first time, I was seeing colors and forms and things in themselves (seeing objects
as alive and meaningful).
For the first time in my life, I knew what the word “beauty” meant. Now I understood
that I had never even begun to penetrate what beauty was all about.
For the first time, the word ecstasy took on real meaning. For the first time, it did not
mean someone else’s state of mind.
He experienced a comprehensive familiarity with the complex network of his being such
as he had never known before.
He felt that for the first time in his life he was experiencing the universe for what it really
is—an unfathomable mystery, a divine play of energy.
He felt the experience was unbelievably beautiful; he had never experienced anything
like that in his whole life.
He found the whole experience exhilarating for having given him insights into his psyche
and the nature of existence that he hadn’t thought himself capable of achieving.
He had broken through the boundaries of his everyday consciousness to enter a world that
he had previously not even imagined could exist.
He looked around him as if seeing the world for the first time. The world was beautiful,
strange and mysterious.
He saw objects in a new light; they disclosed their inherent deep, timeless existence,
which remains hidden from everyday sight.
Here we could travel into our own minds to remote and hitherto inaccessible realms
within.
His consciousness was providing him with amazingly detailed, complex and concrete
information that he had never dreamed possible.
I awakened into a brilliant, overwhelmingly glorious light. It was very brief but I’d never
experienced anything like it in my life. It had quite an impact.
I could see beauty in hundreds of commonplace things I had not thought of as being even
attractive before.
I didn’t know there could be such joy and freedom in rhythm and movement (or such joy
and freedom in general).
I felt a certain reunion with thoughts and sensations that were pure, as if they were being
experienced for the first time.
I found myself in the middle of a cosmic drama of unimaginable proportions. (eyes
closed)
I had broken through the walls of ordinary consciousness, and what I glimpsed dwarfed
the world I had previously known.
I had never before seen, touched, tasted, heard, smelled and felt so profound a personal
unity and involvement with the concrete material world.
I had never dreamed that such heavenly bliss was available to mankind (paradise,
beauty).
I had never talked so openly about myself before in my life. And it was easy. I didn’t feel
like hiding anything about myself.
I had no idea how liberating—both metaphysically and symbolically their venture would
be.
I knew what was important in my life and what was less important more clearly than ever
before.
I know now that I never knew what people were talking about when they talked about
feelings till I took LSD.
I lost the boundaries of my physical body. I felt that I was standing in the center of the
cosmos. I had never known this world. I was never created. I was the cosmos.
I never felt so clean inside in all my life. All the trash seemed to be washed out of my
mind. It seemed as if I were born all over again.
I never heard music played like that before. I suddenly understood the very essence of
music, the secret of its magic.
I ran out to the lawn, snow, trees, starlight. It had never been more beautiful. Etched,
sharp, magnified.
I saw that there were dimensions to life and harmonies and deeps which had been for me
unseen, unheard and untapped.
I started experiencing a strange excitement that was dissimilar to anything I have ever felt
in my life.
I was aware that my thinking processes were working more rapidly and clearly than ever
before.
I was dead and yet I was never more joyously alive; thus I knew that after death, the soul
is more alive than we can ever be while living (without LSD).
I was having the best time of my life. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a feeling of joy
that great.
I was now discovering dimensions of the cosmos that are usually hidden to our senses
and intellects.
I was overcome by a warmth and sense of comfort that I’ve never experienced before or
since.
I was struck by the magnificence and intensity of the colors. Everything was
resplendently rich. I never imagined such beauty.
I went back into my childhood, back to my conception and back before the creation of the
earth. (eyes closed)
In a psychological sense, it was almost as if I were married for the first time in my life
during the session.
It became a tactile experience of a kind that overshadowed any love-making I had known
before.
It was a fantastically joyous occasion. The magic of love filled the room, and we have
never known such joy.
It was a feeling that was deeper, more profound, more moving, more meaningful, than
any feeling I have ever had.
It was like looking at the world for the very, very first time and thinking how beautiful,
how sensuous!
Like a blind man newly healed and confronted for the first time by the mystery of light
and color, he stared in uncomprehending astonishment.
Music seemed to awaken a depth in me that I never knew existed. With each note I
seemed to soar to higher heights.
My heart was filled with joy that was overwhelming, just a beauty and peace that I have
never known.
My little ego seemed removed and I felt that I saw clearly and purely for the first time in
my life.
Never have colors had the glorious, fascinating, delighting intensity that they had for me
at the time.
red lawn chair—This red color was just about the most beautiful thing I had ever seen,
the way it combined with the shadow and the light.
She was now able to experience herself and the world in a way completely different than
ever before. She had zest for life.
The colors were not only more luminous and phosphorescent, they were different in
quality from any color previously seen.
The feeling was: I was home. That’s really the feeling of it…It was a bliss state. Of a
kind I never experienced before.
The music had an intensity of beauty, a depth of intrinsic meaning incomparably greater
than anything he had ever found in the same music.
The outside appeared clear, serene and beautiful. I saw things I have never seen on the
road. The trees, grass, colors, sky—all were a real delight to behold.
This feeling made me realize as never before that the need for spirituality was a universal
need of every individual who loves.
This unified divine vision seemed to be what she had been craving and waiting for her
whole life.
This was a vision of the hidden life forces, a manifestation of the life within that was
commonly only talked or read about.
This was the most interesting and thought-provoking thing I have ever experienced in my
life.
Through the richness of her experience, she discovered that the dimensions of her being
were greater than she thought.
To touch a fabric with one’s fingertip was to simultaneously know more about both one’s
fingertip and the fabric than one had ever known about either.
Words came out of their wrappers and said “look at me” and I would look at each word
and I would see things in that word that I never saw before.
At the gas station, the men smiled at me with twinkles in their eyes, and I felt very good,
I saw smiling men’s faces in the sky and the stars twinkling in their eyes. I felt better than
I ever had in my life.
I had not realized before to what extent such feelings as rapture, ecstasy and euphoria or
awe, devotion, reverence and holiness or any other positive emotion could reach, its
intensity.
I was deeply enmeshed in an abstract world of whirling geometrical forms and exuberant
colors that were brighter and more radiant than anything I have ever seen in my life. I
was fascinated and mesmerized by this incredible kaleidoscopic show. (eyes closed)
I was lifted entirely out of the world of hitherto conceivable being and invested with the
power of beholding forms and modes of existence which on earth are impossible to be
expressed.
It seemed as if I could distinguish every leaf, every blade of grass. It was like walking
through a fairyland, a tranquil, dreamlike landscape unassociated with anything I had
previously known.
Never has greater beauty immersed me in its flood. I was so lost in its waves, so
separated from myself, so disembarrassed of my ego, that odious appendage that
accompanies us everywhere, that for the first time I understood the nature of existence.
One of the most common statements one reads in subjects” reports about LSD sessions
refers to the feeling that on the session day, they really heard music for the first time in
their life.
The following day, he was in the calmest, most joyful and most balanced emotional
condition he had experienced in his entire life. After this session, his psychotic symptoms
never reappeared.
The thought occurred to me that since every minute of our lives was ruled by our
feelings, it was tragic we had so little contact with this part of ourselves where forgotten
feelings lay hidden.
We had entered the cosmic state. It was divine. It was expansive and harmonious and
beatific and one. I was alive! For the first time in my life, I understood what it meant to
be truly alive.
Everything was beautiful. Everything was right. Each smallest thing was uniquely
important, yet fitted perfectly into the whole. My little ego seemed removed and I felt I
saw clearly and purely for the first time in my life. I wept with relief and joy. I felt
unworthy of such blessedness.
I cannot recall whether the revelation came suddenly or gradually; I only remember
finding myself in the very midst of those wonderful moments, beholding life for the first
time in all its young intoxication of loveliness, in its unspeakable joy, beauty and
importance.
I cannot say exactly what the mysterious change was. I saw no new thing, but I saw all
the usual things in a miraculous new light, in what I believe is their true light. I saw for
the first time how wildly beautiful and joyous, beyond any words of mine to describe, is
the whole of life.
I looked on fields, and waters, and sky, and read in them a most startling meaning. I
wondered how I had ever regarded them in the light of dead matter. They were now
grand symbols of the sublimest spiritual truths—truths never before even feebly grasped,
and utterly unsuspected.
I was not I any more but a consciousness that encompassed a vastly broader spectrum of
reality than “I” had ever dreamed. I was changed, and the new vision so attracted me that
I stopped paying attention to the segment of reality that had formerly held my complete
attention, mainly, the physical plane.
I was not I any more but a consciousness that encompassed a vastly broader spectrum
than I ever dreamed of. It doesn’t last, but once you have known it, you can never forget
that it exists. When the experience becomes integrated into your life, the fear of death
disappears— and we can only truly begin to live when we no longer fear death.
It was as if all the warm, sunny wonderful days of my childhood had been rolled into one
and this was the day. I felt like a child looking out of the window at the beautiful,
beautiful world. Never in all my life have I seen anything that looked as beautiful as this
particular day.
My understanding of mystical teachings, both Eastern and Western, Hindu, Buddhist,
Christian, and Sufi alike, took on a quantum leap. I became aware of the transcendental
unity at the core of all great religions, and understood for the first time the meaning of
esoteric states.
Somebody brought back sherbet. It was Haagen Dasz and I took one mouthful. It was
absolutely delicious. I thought it was the best thing I had ever tasted in my life. I could
taste every nuance of the flavor and also felt, really felt, the texture as I never had before
in my life.
The most extraordinary event happened. Quite suddenly the room, a dingy office in an
old college building, resembled a cathedral of enormous size and beauty. The colors of
the furnishings were incredibly beautiful, full of deep texture and hues I had never seem
before. Small objects around the office were magnificent works of art.
They had understood for the first time what the sages of pre-scientific and anti-scientific
traditions were talking about. Psychedelic drugs opened to mass tourism mental
territories previously explored only by small parties of particularly intrepid adventurers,
mainly religious mystics.
Was I going mad? Did the psychedelics rob me of my senses? No. They brought me to
my senses. The world around me—people, scents, colors, sounds—all was intensified. I
never knew how keen my senses were! And that other sense—the sense of oneness with
all creation!
We walked around the garden together. It was like walking in Paradise. Everything was
composed and harmonized. I felt I had never really seen this garden before. I was
enchanted with each plant, leaf, flower, tree trunk and the earth itself. Each blade of grass
stood up separate and distinct, edged with light. Each was supremely important.
A most beautiful sunset was dying in the west, the river was tinged by it, the very zenith
clouds were bathed in it, and the world beneath seemed floating in a dream of rosy
tranquility. My awakened perceptions drank in this beauty until all sense of fear was
banished, and every vein ran flooded with the very wine of delight. Mystery enwrapped
me still, but it was the mystery of one who walks in Paradise for the first time.
For the first time, I understood the meaning of “ineffable.” There seemed to be no
possibility of conveying in words the subjective truth of my experience. A veil had been
lifted from my inner vision, and I felt able to see, not just images or forms, but the nature
of truth itself. The doors of perception were so cleansed, they seemed to vanish
altogether, and there was only infinite being.
I remember being particularly struck by the joy of hearing music as I never had heard it
before. I could laugh at my old self-image, which included “not being musical”. I was
deeply moved by each piece of music that was played. As I listened without distraction,
each one evoked a different aspect of my psyche, and at the center of each was the perfect
still point of pure being where one could experience union with God.
Now I could hear, as if for the first time, the depth of the wisdom in their teachings and in
the mystical doctrines of all ages and all cultures. As I sought for words to express my
own ineffable experience I gained a new appreciation for those individuals who had
attempted to communicate their own insights in writing or art. I also became interested in
understanding intuitive ways of knowing.
The acid took me directly to my lucid, “higher self.” It was as though I’d arrived at my
true nature: sincere, clean of purpose, and more useful and wonderful than I’d ever felt in
my life. I can’t fathom what it was that made me feel so “perfect” and “enlightened” or
what specific obstacle the chemical had overcome to enable me to feel so wholesomely
fabulous. I felt a sweeping reassurance that everything was all right after all.
The city was bathed in the first pink rays of the morning sun and was truly breath-taking
to behold. The soft greens of the trees and grass of Central Park were beyond belief. The
buildings and streets had a certain warmth and charm hitherto reserved for memories of
bygone days…That evening I was back in my old familiar world but with an awareness
of and appreciation for colors, hues and textures that I never had before.
The night was all joyous discoveries, many of which brought me almost to the point of
tears, to laughter and astonished wows regularly. Whole new horizons. I felt humbled and
honored to be in a room with and listening to such enlighted powers. I felt in flash after
flash that I’d never been so high before, never so aware and never—at least not since a
long, long half-remembered time ago—so hopeful and happy.
When I realized that I was being born again, that life goes on and on and on, the feeling
was overwhelming. I was filled with confidence that it was okay to die, because the
consciousness that inhabits the flesh has a higher destiny. It never began and it won’t end.
It just keeps going. Then I was struck with wave after wave of value wisdom, as though
the forms behind human spirituality were hitting me for the first time.
I sensed a complete connectedness of everything. It was obvious to me that all of the
separateness I ordinarily perceived was, in fact, an artifact of cultural conditioning, and
was indeed less “real” that what I was supposedly hallucinating. At that moment, I knew
that I was, for the first time, experiencing things as they are, utterly continuous. There is
no discontinuity. There is not one thing and another thing. It is all the same thing, the
Holy Thing.
That first experience with psilocybin had an immeasurable effect on my life. It was
radically and totally different, yet during the course of the experience I felt closer to my
true self than I had ever been and more aware of my innermost feelings and thoughts. I
had also been fully and intensely aware of people and things around me and did not lose
the reality perceptions that govern our ordinary world. Rather, ordinary perception was
enriched and enlivened beyond comparison.
Ecstatic vision: for the first time in my life I literally saw “the world in a grain of sand.”
For the first time, his awareness of a piece of music was completely unobstructed.
For the first time, I understood, not on a verbal level.
He felt during the experience that he “knew” the other as he had never known her before.
He said he never felt better or enjoyed food more.
I became alert to all sorts of signals previously invisible.
I felt an amazing array of emotions with an intensity I did not know was possible.
I felt both serene and exhilarated as never before in my life.
I felt freer that I had ever felt before.
I had a vivid spiritual self that had been there all the time, waiting for me to discover it.
I had never felt as close to nature before.
I had never felt this wonderful before.
I had never known what awe was.
I had never seen it so clearly before.
I had experienced unexpected, impressive things.
I had never before felt myself to be so liberated.
I had never heard music in this manner before.
I had not known that one could love with such intensity.
I heard, saw, felt, smelled and tasted more than ever before.
I knew the meaning of things I never comprehended before.
I looked at the trees for the first time, really looked at them.
I never experienced anything quite so overwhelming in my whole life.
I never saw before how arbitrary, pompous and absurd conventions are. I laugh out loud.
I noticed color and beauty where I had never seen it before.
I perceived much more clearly than ever before.
I saw colors I never experienced before.
I was more alive than I’ve ever been in my life.
I watched in rapture, thinking there had never been such beauty.
It was as though he had just put on his first pair of glasses.
LSD opened up paths of thinking that I never knew existed.
Never was the sky so blue.
No spectacle had ever affected him with such a magic spell.
Rev-violet roses were of unknown luminosity and radiated in portentous brightness.
Sensations were acute. I heard, saw, felt, smelled and tasted more fully than ever before.
Shapes glistened and sparkled with such diamonds as to be unimaginable in splendor.
Sights and sounds possessed a keenness that he had never experienced before.
Sweeping across the heavens came the gold of love and God, rich beyond imagining.
The dimensions of being I entered surpassed the wildest fantasies of my imagination.
The experience unfolded range upon range of reality I hadn’t known existed.
The grass was the greenest I had ever seen.
The light sparkling from the cars was as beautiful as anything I had ever seen.
The music seemed more beautiful than any kind I had ever heard before.
There was a heavier dimension to all this than I had realized before.
Unimaginable depth and range of sensations filled my entire being.
a fresh look that would teach us to tap the enormous reservoir of potentialities buried
beneath the threshold of awareness
a magic key to paradise, a paradise of beauty and depth of knowing and understanding
which had been dormant within me
a process of purification, the onset of enhanced psychic sensitivity giving access to the
hidden and highest potentials of human existence
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
an awakening of a consciousness always present in the nervous system but ordinarily
dormant
an ecstasy infinitely exceeding anything describable or anything I had imagined from
what the world’s accomplished mystics have struggled to describe
an intensity of beauty, a depth of intrinsic meaning, incomparably greater than anything
he had found in the same music
courage not to be afraid in facing those unknown realms of experience opened up by
psychedelic drugs
curanderos or shamans—explore all the corners and caves and hidden inlets of the
visionary world and then guides other visionary travelers through the jungles of their own
brains
discover that eating can be an adventure involving qualities and dimensions that they
never imagined
enlightenment, full awareness of that blissful Reality whose attributes include
inconceivable wisdom, compassion, light, beauty, energy and gaiety
experiencing emotions and physical sensations of great intensity, often surpassing
anything we might consider humanly possible
had an intensity of beauty, a depth of intrinsic meaning, incomparably greater than
anything he head ever found in the same music
had opened my eyes to beauty such as this world has never seen and to God (“This world
means the so-called “real world” of ego, without LSD.)
in the very midst of those wonderful moments, beholding life for the first time in all it
young intoxication of loveliness, in its unspeakable joy, beauty and importance
knock out inhibitory processes in the nervous system which select, discriminate, censor,
evaluate, and they thus release an enormous flow of previously screened-out awareness
of exquisite colors such as surely no one has dreamed of (That’s until they have taken
LSD)
provided the subject with a living reality and a directional frame of reference previously
unknown
pushing human consciousness beyond the present limitations and on towards capacities
not yet realized and perhaps undreamed of
realized for the first time that during all the years of his life he had been behaving “like a
person who had no mind.”
realness of experience and forms of thinking now unknown (That’s unknown to most
people, not everyone.)
reveal extraordinary capacities of the human psyche and important aspects of reality
normally hidden from our awareness
reveals a rich spectrum of dimensions of reality that are ordinarily hidden from human
awareness and are not available in the everyday state of consciousness
spiritual consciousness—a strange and almost always hitherto unexperienced awareness
carrying with it a “flavor of eternity”
the conviction that the subject is seeing himself for the first time as he really is—with all
mental blocks and defenses down
the discovery that the human brain possesses an infinity of potentialities and can operate
at unexpected space-time dimensions
the euphoria induced by the satisfaction of the senses raised to a degree he had never
before experienced
the heightening of perception, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling or touching better than
before
the hitherto unconscious unity of life—a unity grounded in the fact that God is man’s
interior and not exterior center
the mind and senses in the state of open attention, where nature is received in its
unknown reality
the monumental emotions which reached their peak, becoming unimaginably deep and
soul shaking
this unique and most wonderful of experiences which transcends everything, even the
imaginable
to become aware of feelings of love and unity with nature of which he could never have
dreamed
to take them higher, to a new realm, to a psychic state they’d never experienced before, a
new land of intensity and passion
would intensify your visual awareness and would make you aware of colors—some of
which you may never have seen before
experiences of a world transfigured into unimaginable loveliness, charged with intrinsic
significance and manifesting, in spite of pain and death, an essential and divine All-
Rightness
the sense of perceiving truths not known before…insights into depths of truth unplumbed
by the discursive intellect…the mysteries of life become lucid…illuminations, revelations,
full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain
a hidden Self that is actually much more the central me than my ego
a level of reality which he had never experienced before
a miraculous, powerful, unfathomable reality that was hidden from everyday sight
a purity I have never felt totally
a revelation of hidden things
a sense of rebirth beyond anything ever experienced or imagined previously
a vast dimension of one’s being which has been kept hidden
acquiring a wholly new and unexpected dimension
an expanded, awesome sensory world hitherto unknown to him
an exploration of the unseen, almost unknown realm called the unconscious
an unexpected radiance
an unprecedented experience of unimaginable intensity
an unprecedented revelation of beauty
beyond anything ever experienced or even imagined
bold flights into unknown regions of imagery (eyes closed)
bringing a sense of well-being that the person never dreamed was possible
brings into consciousness truths long hidden in the unconscious
broadened and deepened beyond all imaginable limits
death a continuation of what had been the hidden aspect of the experience of life
dimensions beyond anything encountered in everyday life
discovered a new unexpected source of strength and their true identity
discovering unsuspected dimensions of life
ecstasies undreamed of
enriches life with a dimension of earnestness and momentousness hitherto unknown
experiences sensations more intense than any he has known
exploration of unimagined realms
explorations of the unknown zone
found they had creative capabilities they’d never suspected
fresh meanings and unsuspected beauties
had never dreamed that such heavenly bliss was available to mankind
has entered a condition of what until then may have been inconceivable
have never known what fascination there is in the ecstasy of beauty
hidden human potential
illumination achieved through the sudden and unexpected
inconceivably brilliant and clear
information that was usually screened out to flow freely into consciousness
inner journeys and discoveries in the unknown territories of the human psyche
journey into the hidden recesses of the mind
leaping into a new and hitherto unknown dimension
look at anything as though you were seeing it for the first time
makes it possible to for a person to explore otherwise inaccessible areas
may reveal possibilities of experience which the subject did not know existed at all
more beautiful, more divine than anything I could consciously imagine
multiplying human intelligence to undreamed capacities
my soul thrilled with a strange and unimagined ecstasy
new experiences which were not like anything that they ever imagined before
new, unknown and uncharted territories of the human mind
of such unimaginable experiential dimensions
offers new therapeutic possibilities undreamed of by traditional psychiatry
open the door to visions of unimaginable richness and significance
“out there” in the psychological equivalent of a hitherto unexplored geographical region
presenting a wealth of hitherto unknown perceptual possibilities
realities that had never been dreamed
realizing his or her hidden potential
recover the lost or hidden dimensions of our nature
regions of the mind and states of consciousness hitherto inaccessible
revelations of hitherto unconceived modes and uncharted fields of spiritual being
see things for the first time “as they really are”
seeing the truths that were hidden beneath everyday reality
so inconceivably intense that no one can describe it
so intensely alive as never before
standing before objects as if recognizing them for the first time
surging like a spring from a depth of my being which has rarely, if ever been tapped
the apocalypse of utterly unimagined truths
the awakening of potentialities hitherto dormant
the awakening of some unknown intuitional faculty
the best lunch I have ever eaten in my entire life
the bliss of this unexpected spiritual opening abounding in astonishing insights
the first time you flew on the wings of your perception
the hidden, intuitive aspects of the psyche
the hidden wisdom
the hidden wisdom in the unconscious
the labyrinth of strange byways and unknown paths
the most heavenly music I have ever heard in my entire life, incredibly beautiful
the most vivid brightness I had ever seen
the rare unexpected ecstasy and adventure of the psychedelic drug trip
the truth which had previously been hidden behind a veil
the unexpected beauty
the unknown, the real present in which we live
the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes
the wild unknown and uncharted, where anything is possible
this mysterious unknown
this supreme, shining, primal and infinite universal Form which was not seen before
to a clearer, more integrated way of existing than I have ever known
to awaken deeply hidden secrets in your underconsciousness
to discover the hidden truth and mystery of being to explore the unknown, to feel no limit as to what might be discovered
to look at your heretofore hidden self, the real you
to see a beauty that transcends anything one had imagined possible before
unconceived beauties and truths
undreamed of structural and phenomenological galaxies within
unimaginable love
unimagined bliss
unimagined truths
unlocking previously dormant spiritual potentials
vastness, incredible luminous light, a different radiant quality here never seen before
watching colors more exquisite than anything I’d ever seen