Part III – Chapter 2

Chapter 2 are all of the statements in Part II that, in general, are about the LSD
experience itself, especially what can happen during an LSD trip, what it means to
people, what they get out of it, etc.

A brusque psychedelic experience in a tilted, coldly clinical setting could do more harm
than good.

A completely different set of LSD sessions emerged when it became obvious that the
drug experiences could enhance creative potential in certain individuals.

A delicious warmth suffuses my whole body. Hot and blissful, I float through the
universe.

A genuine artistic talent of extraordinary power and scope may emerge during the LSD
procedure.

A good experience with drugs heightens and intensifies all experience—a new and deeper
appreciation.

A journey into this new mode of consciousness gives me a marvelously enhanced
appreciation of patterning in nature.

A painter discovered the identity of the image which had been eluding him for his
paintings. (This was under LSD, of course.)

A particular tune (music) may have a specific biographical meaning that can elicit quite
unexpected responses from the subject.

A person describing it can talk about a complete loss of the ego and simultaneously claim
that his or her sense of identity expanded so that it encompassed the entire universe.

A person discovers that we are spirit and exist separate from the body in another, an
eternal dimension.

A person in the psychedelic state can perceive much more in other human beings than he
can when he is in his everyday mind.

A person may have a euphoria-inducing experience of empathy with a chair, a painting, a
person or a shoe (or anything).

A reality is experienced that exposes a gleam of the transcendental reality in which
universe and self are one.

A sacrament flips you out of the TV-studio game and harnesses you to the 2 billion year
old flow inside.

A short time interval is experienced as being much longer. In the extreme case, minutes
can be experienced as centuries or millennia.

A sound so faint that I would not ordinarily have heard it at all, is perceptible through
three closed doors.

A subject may “feel” the interior of his body, experiencing his internal structure and
processes as he understands them or as altered in some way.

A succession of object-stimuli might be used to lead the subject beyond the aesthetic
appreciation of the thing to meaningful examination of his own life.

A thousand sensual feelings are emitted and at once sending out waves of climaxes which
thrill the mind to even greater heights.

A too-hasty return to game involvements will blur the clarity of the vision and reduce the
potential for learning.

A very characteristic perceptual change is ornamentalization and geometrization of
human faces, animals and objects.

A walk in nature with its variety of sensory experiences, seems to be conducive to
positive or even ecstatic emotional states.

Acid allowed me to experience my soul. Ego, ambition, defenses, critical faculties are
sloughed off or suspended.

Acid opens your door, opens the window, opens your senses, opens your beam to the vast
possibilities of life, to the glorious indescribable beauty of life.

After completing the process of the ego-death, individuals consider human experience in
a much broader, spiritual network.(framework?)

After having had the LSD experience, I know that there can never be love where there is
secretiveness and darkness. Love only endures in the bright light of the day.

Aggressive feelings and impulses are usually strikingly reduced and interpersonal and
philosophical tolerance increases considerably.

All forms are radically transcended and merge into the boundless radiance of Formless
Consciousness.

All happenings are mutually interdependent in a way that seems unbelievably
harmonious.

All of creation—people, animals, plants, and inanimate objects—seems to be permeated
by the same cosmic essence and divine light.

All of this is felt in the deepest roots of one’s body. One descends into these roots and
relives the prehistoric process. (eyes closed)

All of us look at each other knowingly, the feeling that we knew each other in that most
distant past, the realization that we are and always have been one.

All sensory pathways seem to be wide open and the sensitivity to and appreciation of
external stimuli is greatly enhanced.

All that you see has a pristine quality: the landscape, the edifices, the carvings, the
animals—they look as though they had come straight from the Maker’s workshop.

All visions are created by your mind. Your consciousness is creator, performer and
spectator of the “retinal circus.” (eyes closed)

Almost always, the subject is introduced to such increased awareness that this experience
remains one of the outstanding events of his life.

Although out of the safe harbor of his own identity anchored in this time and this place,
the traveler may still be clearly aware of this time and place as well.

Although the changes of perception are most striking in the optical field, they can also
involve hearing, touch, smell or taste.

Although the experiences have been fulfilling in hundreds of ways, by far the most
meaningful have been the religious insights and feelings of spirituality.

Although this is in no way the norm, psychedelic experience can result in a major
personal transformation or can resolve a chronic emotional problem.

An appearance of newness beautifies every object, clean and beautiful newness within
and without.

An architect on LSD figured out the design for an arts and crafts shopping center. He
caught the essence of the image.

An externalized psychedelic experience in the mountains, on the seashore, in the woods
or even in one’s own garden can become a unique and unforgettable event.

An extreme in the experience of changed time and space is the awareness of infinity and
eternity.

An important aspect of the discussions in the preparatory period is exploration of the
subject’s philosophical orientation and religious beliefs.

An inconceivable beyond, “without conception,” there flashes forth from its unknown
depths the state of consciousness which is called divine.

An incredible amount of light and energy was enveloping me and streaming in subtle
vibrations through my whole being.

An individual begins to see things as they are, in a way he has not done before—to see
clearly.

An individual tuned into cosmic consciousness usually has no doubt that he or she is
confronted with the ultimate reality.

An individual who has experienced transcendental states has a strong feeling of cosmic
identity.

An individual who has a transpersonal experience develops an entirely new image of his
or her identity and cosmic status.

An inner wisdom usually can be depended on to guide the psyche into the paths that it
needs to follow.

An interesting dialog occurs between pure transcendence and the awareness that this
ecstatic vision is happening to oneself.

An object is not perceived in terms of use, purpose or relation to anything else. It is
perceived as a whole.

An over-awing type of beauty is seen that makes people experience certain mystical
revelations.

Anger and anxiety are irrelevant because you see your small game in the context of the
great evolutionary game which no one can win and no one can lose.

Another striking aspect of the psychedelic transformation is the development of an
intense interest in consciousness, self-exploration and the spiritual quest.

Anxiety in the therapist about “inducing psychosis” seems likely to render the experience
anxiety-ridden for the subject.

Any number of interpenetrating universes of different orders can be seen in holographic
coexistence.

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.

As for identity, it is not really lost. On the contrary, it is found; it is expanded to include
all that is seen and all that is not seen.

As objects become charged with symbolic meanings, they incorporate emotions, often of
a religious nature.

As the gates of the unconscious mind open, a wide variety of repressed emotions and
recollections can be released into conscious awareness.

As the phenomena gains in richness, colors stream and mingle at the edges of things and
colored objects stand revealed in all their characteristic drug-state vividness.

As the universe reveals its true essence as a cosmic play of consciousness, the world of
matter is destroyed in the psyche of the individual.

As well as being filled with resplendent divine light, the transcendental domains are often
described as existing beyond the ordinary senses.

At a certain point this form of therapy automatically changes into a serious philosophical
and spiritual quest addressing itself to the most fundamental questions of existence.

At the antipodes of the mind, we are more or less completely free of language, outside the
system of conceptual thought.

At the extreme, the individual consciousness seems to encompass the totality of existence
and identify with the Universal Mind.

At the height of a visionary experience it is crystal-clear that you can change completely.
Be an entirely different person.

At times, the scenery of the Beyond bears very little similarity to anything known on
earth. (eyes closed)

Beautiful natural scenery or certain objects that reflect nature’s creativity usually have a
very positive influence on the LSD experience.

Before taking the drug, I feel apprehensive about the possibility of flipping out, but
during the high, I am afraid I won’t flip out enough.

Bodily contact is probably the most effective method of softening hardened surfaces.
Your blood begins to flow into the other’s body. You both drift down the capillary river.

Body movements can be in tune with your ancient cellular-mythic patterns and the dance
itself can be a wild ecstatic turn-on spiritual event.

Brain-activating drugs expose people to powerful, mind-blowing experiences that shatter
conventional ideas about reality.

Brilliant minds, some of the world’s leading scientists and artists, engaged in discovering
these drugs and applying them to a whole range of things.

By inducing ego-death and evolutionary perspectives, psychedelic drugs can counteract
the fear of death.

Careful planning of both the emotional atmosphere and the physical environment is
important.

Cellular flow. You are swept down the tunnels and canals of your own waterworks,
visions of microscopic processes, the fantastic artistry of internal factories. (eyes closed)

Change in behavior can occur with dramatic spontaneity once the game structure of
behavior is seen. The visionary experience is the key to behavior change.

Changes in human consciousness would make it possible for us to use the fruits of
modern science constructively and with wisdom.

Changes in the perception of forms and colors are so rich and dramatic that they have
been referred to as “orgies of vision” or a “retinal circus.”

Chemicals will be the central method of education in the future. The reason for this, of
course, is that the nervous system and learning and memory itself is a chemical process.

Clean water in any form seems to have a particularly powerful impact. A swim, shower
or bath can frequently dispel negative experiences and facilitate ecstatic reentry.

closed eyes—I see centuries and all the glory and tragedy of man. Everything is in this
music.

closed eyes—Images are in constant dynamic movement and usually convey action and
drama.

Colors are typically very bright, penetrating and explosive; the light and color contrasts
are enhanced and deepened.

Colors blaze and often have sound. Sounds throb with unbelievable beauty and intensity
and often have color.

Colors seem to hold great and uncanny significance. All of them are providential and
mean something.

Commenting on the spot is putting oneself in the way of what one feels. It is losing touch
with it.

Compared with sex under LSD, the way you’ve been making love, no matter how ecstatic
the pleasure you think you get from it, is like making love to a department-store-dummy.

“Completely forgotten” materials may emerge as ideas and images which seem
mysterious in origin.

Confront the awesome illumination of the metaphysical void and new energy
transformations.

Consciousness awakens to its original condition and suchness, which is also the suchness
of all of existence.

Consciousness can be expanded or deepened so as to include vast areas of experience
entirely ignored or “screened-out” by conscious attention.

Consciousness-changing devices initiated many of the religious perspectives which,
taking root in history, continued after their psychedelic origins were forgotten.

Consciousness-expanding drugs unplug these narrow programs, the social ego, the game-
machinery.

Consciousness is suddenly released from its conditioned patterning and flung into a
flashing loom of unlearned imagery.

consciousness of the Universal Mind—This is one of the most profound and total
experiences observed in LSD sessions.

Depth perception is often heightened and perspective distorted; inanimate objects take on
expressions, and synesthesia (hearing colors, seeing sounds, etc.) is common.

Descriptions of paradise in many mythologies describe environments that abound with
precious metals and stones.

Descriptions of visionary landscapes occur in the ancient literature of folklore and
religion.

Direct perception of unity is the very heart of mystic experience, accompanied by
powerful feelings of joy.

Don’t read a book. Tune in on your own internal vocabularies and cellular Libraries of
Congress. (That was Timothy Leary.)

Draperies are living hieroglyphs that stand in some peculiarly expressive way for the
unfathomable mystery of pure being.

Drug users often refer to emotions or combinations of emotions they have never felt
before.

Drugs like LSD reveal something of the otherwise dimly visible expanse of the mind and
suggest that its vast potential is scarcely to be comprehended.

Drugs open awareness to messages from the autonomous nervous system, signals from
the great organ and tissue centers within the body.

Drugs suspend certain inhibitory or selective processes in the nervous system so as to
render our sensory apparatus more open to impressions than usual.

During a deep ecstatic experience, the subject will accept enthusiastically just about any
piece of music.

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

During several minutes of objective time, persons under the influence of LSD can
subjectively experience entire lifetimes, centuries, millennia, or even eons.

During the acid trip, the nervous system is most open, most unconditioned and ready to
take a completely new imprint.

During the LSD experiences, the subject loses his accustomed habits of thinking and
feeling.

During the psychedelic experience, the heavy shackles of the mind are loosened,
consciousness free to move in any direction.

During the psychedelic session the nervous system returns to that state of flux and unity-
chaos of infancy.

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

Dying persons who had transcendental experiences developed a deep belief in the
ultimate unity of all creation. They often experienced themselves as integral parts of it.

Each object seems complete. The world we see in each has objects of its own which are
seen as worlds and objects endlessly.

Elements of animal and plant consciousness can increase an individual’s love of nature
and make him more responsive to ecological problems.

Elements of mystical consciousness can occur in psychedelic sessions of well-educated,
skeptical and scientifically oriented individuals.

Elements of the world that we would normally consider to be outside the range of our
consciousness, appear.

Emotions are closely tied to ego games. Check your emotions at the door to paradise.
(This refers to negative emotions.)

Eternity is now and in the light of unrepressed vision, the physical organism and the
physical world turn out to be the divine world.

Even some of the moving expressions of the Bible and religion pale in my attempts to
describe the experience.

Events from different historical contexts appear in clusters when they share the same
strong emotion or an intense physical sensation of a similar kind. (eyes closed)

Events from the recent and remote past can be experienced with vividness and
complexity.

Every detail is seen and rendered as a living jewel and all these jewels are harmoniously
combined into a whole which is a jewel of yet a higher order of visionary intensity.

Every kind of typically religious emotion, symbol, and insight appears during
psychedelic drug trips.

Every man and woman who reaches the higher levels of spiritual and intellectual
development feels the presence of a Higher Intelligence.

Every moment is a window into eternity. The absolute is manifest in every appearance
and relationship.

Everything is brilliantly illuminated, shining from within and a riot of colors is intensified
to a pitch unknown in the normal state.

Everything is composed of tiny dots of color and these dots all blend together to form a
single scene and a single reality.

Everything is in flux, flowing together toward becoming One, toward the eternal
Synthesis.

Everything seems alive. Everything is alive, beaming diamond-bright light waves into
your retina.

Everything seems to be in undulating movement and inanimate objects are frequently
described as coming to life.

Examining a common object, the subject will be overwhelmed by a sense of wonder and
over the complexity of the most simple items.

Experiences from the past connected with a strong emotional charge are activated,
brought forth from the unconscious and relived in a complex way.

Experiences of oceanic ecstasy and cosmic union seem to be deeply related to the
undifferentiated state of consciousness that an infant experiences.

Experiences of the consciousness of particular, stable, immutable and durable substances
are perceived as being high spiritual states involving an element of sacredness.

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

Experiences with the sun and wind lend themselves to creation of rich mythological
fantasies.

Experiential identification with inorganic matter is often accompanied by fascinating
insights of a philosophical, mythological, religious, and mystical nature.

Experiential identification with the inorganic world is not limited to the secular aspects,
but has often distinct numinous or spiritual qualities.

Extremely valuable insights may enable the subject to revise his thinking and self-image
and to alter his behavior in desirable ways.

Facing the drug state once it sets in is usually easier than dealing with all the fantasies as
to what the experience will be.

Faith is the first step. Then comes illumination and with it certainty and then
emancipation.

Feelings and visions alike became cold and dead in the writing, a faint account giving a
prosaic one-hundred-thousandth of the experience itself.

Feelings of awe, reverence or sacredness are the natural emotional response to the
realization of the overwhelming power and radiance of the universal energy process.

feelings of joy, peace, love, blessedness—Such high-intensity emotion is far removed
from everyday experience.

Feelings of separation and alienation are replaced by a sense of belonging or being a part
of the life process.

Flowers are almost as transporting as precious stones, reminding us of what’s always
been there, preternaturally bright, colorful and significant, at the back of our minds.

Following the ego death, individuals saw human existence in a much broader spiritual
framework.

For psychedelic drugs to be administered by doctors on a “Now take this” basis defeats
the whole purpose of the experience.

For the mystical consciousness, “god is love” is a self-evident truth, not a piece of
wishful positive thinking.

Forgotten incidents from the remote past may be released from the unconscious and
relived.

Forms and colors of abstract visions can be perceived as lascivious and obscene or very
sensuous, sexually stimulating and seducing.

Forms of architecture may be seen to have largely originated in various forms of altered
consciousness.

Frequently, individuals who did not show any artistic inclinations at all prior to the LSD
experience can create extraordinary pictures. (That’s once they had the LSD experience.)

Frequently, music seems to resonate in different parts of the body and to trigger powerful
emotions.

From my “heavenly” trips, I know that I am but one of the myriad manifestations of the
Self that is undying and unborn.

Get in touch with your cellular wisdom. Get in touch with the universe within. The only
way out is in and the way to find the wisdom is to turn on.

Get in touch with your sense organs as cameras to put you in touch with the vibrant
energies around you.

Go inside. Go into your own brain. Start using the untapped region of your head. Here is
the real frontier, the real challenge, the real opportunity.

Grass was good but only LSD could get you past the receptionist, through to God on the
phone.

Greater access to unconscious resources is a cardinal feature of psychedelic, creative, and
other novel perceptual experiences.

He and the room take on the quality of the music, erotic, the deep mystery of images
complete in themselves.

He comes to realization of the Self which is the enlightenment of the darkness that is
ignorance and the deliverance from the mortal consequences of that ignorance.

He emphasizes that his understanding is all experienced as simultaneous visual and felt
thinking.

He experiences a rightness, a rightness of extraordinary scope, a rightness of which he
had no idea.

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.

He “feels” in his brain the patterns that man once employed in creating the zodiacal
patterns.

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 has been thrust into a new world and his now useless “real world” categories fall
away.

He has ceased to identify himself with his ego, with the image of himself which society
has forced upon him.

He has found God and his connectedness to the rest of reality in his psychedelic
experiences.

He (Leary) knew how important it was to have a warm supporting setting to experience
the ego-shattering revelations of the mushroom.

He may have a deep and moving religious experience in which he understands the pattern
of all life, with awe, gratitude and total understanding.

He may reach philosophic conclusions of rare profundity and of “absolute truth,” perhaps
in areas completely foreign or little known to him previously.

He may see and understand with unimagined clarity and brilliance various social and
self-games that he and others play.

He may witness many of what he believes to be the details of evolutionary and historical
unfolding. (eyes closed)

He or she has a deep sense of emotional, intellectual and spiritual liberation and gains
access to breathtaking realms of cosmic inspiration and insight.

He said that a few LSD sessions had given him more insight into his personality than the
whole of four years in analysis.

He said that he did not “really think it possible to study and understand modern
philosophy without at least having tried a psychedelic.”

He sees that his ego is his persona or social role, a somewhat arbitrary selection of
experiences with which he has been taught to identify himself.

He’s seeing this fresh new world with the eyes of a child. Everything looks new and
fresh, unblinkered by convention, his vision not yet limited and distorted by conditioning.

Here we could travel into our own minds to remote and hitherto inaccessible realms
within.

His brain is like a computer that has received a large amount of new information to be
assimilated.

His experience of nonordinary reality is no less real for being unverifiable in the realm of
ordinary experience.

How can we preserve the freshness, illuminate each second of subsequent life? How can
we maintain the ecstatic oneness with others? (This refers to when the trip is over.)

Huxley described the experience at its best as a “gratuitous grace,” providing access to
what he called “Mind-at-Large,” beyond the “reducing valve” of the ordinary egoic mind.

Huxley was fascinated by the potential in drugs such as mescaline, LSD and psilocybin to
provide a learning experience normally denied us within our educational system.

I am looking into his face. It has a new clarity. His eyes look at me and we meet in
unlimited space.

I am still amazed at the exquisite feeling of release, peace of mind, and complete
relaxation.

“I can feel better and more deeply; I can see so much better; I can listen so much better,”
etc.

I can feel myself fusing with the other person. It is difficult to know even anatomically
what part of myself is me and what part is the woman.

I don’t think I shall ever again experience anything more radiant than my visions that
afternoon.

I enjoy the visions of beautiful patterns in motion everywhere, on plain cloth, on walls, in
clouds and dirt yards.

I feel that the mountains and the sea and the stars are all part of me, and my soul is in
touch with the soul of all creatures.

I feel this whole world to be moved from the inside and from an inside so deep that it is
my inside as well, more truly I than my surface consciousness.

I feel, with a peace so deep that it sings to be shared with all the world, that at last I
belong, that I have returned to the home behind home.

I find this world to be beautiful and if I can retain the insights I am getting, there will be
some fundamental change in my whole being.

I have finally come to myself and I have another body, a body of bliss, a pure body of
light and energy.

I have seen the Bird of Paradise, she has spread herself before me and I shall never be the
same again.

I know now that I never knew what people were talking about when they talked about
feelings till I took LSD.

I have seen the greater consciousness, shining like the sun on the other shore beyond the
darkness.

I know from first-hand experience that the LSD-type drugs in the right hands are superb
psychiatric tools.

I know myself to be part of a larger, unrestricted creative network that could be described
as divine.

I know that this is a new me. The drug does things nothing else could do. Everyone
should be confronted with its virtues.

I participate in a kind of harmonious and convincing equilibrium, in the way everything
truly is and how everything should be.

I see centuries and all of the glory and tragedy of man. Everything is in this music (eyes
closed).

I try to go deeper, sinking thought and feeling down and down to their ultimate
beginnings.

I unlearn and become, as it were, a little child again that I may enter into the Kingdom of
God.

I usually trip once a week because I can stand it if I trip only once a week. If I went two
weeks, I’d grow enough ego in two weeks that it would just devastate me.

I will have enjoyed more living in the latter part of my life than most people ever know.
(That was actor Cary Grant.)

I wonder if I’ll ever feel such harmony again with any group of people as I felt with them
throughout that day.

I’m high! I’m alive and it’s great to be alive and I’m happy and it’s great to be happy and
I’m high and it’s great to be high, and it’s great to be alive and happy and high!

I’m strong and new again and there’s no such thing as dark soul-fear and confusion. It’s
all love and beauty.

I’ve been given tremendous mileage on my quest for meaning by the few transmitting
glimpses LSD has given me of the cosmic mesh that stitches the universe together.

Ideal conditions for an LSD session involve a simple, safe and beautiful environment and
an interpersonal situation that is supportive, reassuring and nourishing.

Ideas acquire a strong emotional component, thinking and feeling being hardly separable
in the LSD state.

If, as we believe, the drug-state distortions are manifestations of tendencies found also in
“normal” perceptions, then they afford opportunities for studying the perceptual process.

If there is no distinct ego, the stream of experience can simply flow on, unobstructed, by
itself, a spontaneous, unforced and unblocked flowing of life.

If this potentiality were recognized and used, it would release for us unlimited strength,
unlimited talents, unlimited harmony and peace, unlimited love, unlimited beauty.

If this state of consciousness could become more universal, the pretentious nonsense
which passes for the serious business of the world would dissolve in laughter.

In addition to being instruments of philosophic revelation, mystical unity and
evolutionary insight, psychedelic drugs are very powerful aphrodisiacs.

In addition to widening my spiritual and aesthetic horizons, psychedelic drugs affected
my feelings about my self.

In all religious traditions, the paradises and other worlds have precisely the qualities
which are given in the descriptions of the visionaries.

In altered states of consciousness, one gains the ability to interpret his perceptions in new
ways.

In field, forest and every garden, a reality is perceptible that is infinitely more real, older,
deeper and more wondrous than everything made by people.

In general, the level of intelligence goes up for LSD takers; they become more than they
were.

In high states, users have reported that they can perceive connections and associations of
ideas that were not accessible to them in the non-high state.

In many instances, ego dissolution occurs when one is overwhelmed by the perception of
something that is exquisitely beautiful.

In mental silence, we “look into our own Self-Nature,” we “hold fast to the Not-Thought
which lies in thought,” we “become that which essentially we have always been.”

In most instances, a dramatic negative experience, if properly handled, will result in a
beneficial resolution.

In natural forms like seashells, there is a whole interior universe of order. (That’s true of
all forms because all forms are natural forms.)

In non-ordinary states, the boundary we ordinarily see between myths and the material
world tends to dissolve.

In one sense, psychedelics are enzymes that make the creative process and the process of
discovery go faster.

In psychedelic drugs, we might find out how to promote creativity by enhancing the
creative imagination.

In psychedelic sessions, all of the elements in the universe in its present form and
throughout history can be consciously experienced by the individual.

In psychedelic therapy, there is a great emphasis on aesthetically rich settings and a
beautiful environment.

In psychology, the psychedelics have provided the key to the unimagined vastness of the
unconscious mind.

In sessions where the emphasis is on aesthetic experiences and artistic expression, LSD
subjects are primarily interested in changed perceptions of forms, colors and sounds.

In taking LSD with someone, you are relinquishing all of your personality defenses and
opening yourself up in a very vulnerable way.

In the case of the psychedelics, the conditions under which they are tried deeply influence
the direction of the experience.

In the extreme forms of transpersonal perception, we can experience ourselves as the
whole hemisphere of our planet or the entire material universe.

In the intensity of this vision, intellectual comparisons are transcended. (Intellectual
comparisons are based on words and LSD is way beyond words.)

In the LSD era, religion without drugs would be unnatural and pointless, like astronomy
without telescopes.

In the LSD state, the sensitivity to external factors and circumstances is intensified to a
great degree.

In the oceanic state of mind, the world appears to manifest indescribable radiance and
beauty. (oceanic ecstasy)

In the psychedelic state, our mind seems to exist outside the scope of ordinary rational
consciousness.

In the right psychological environment, these chemical mind changers make possible a
genuine religious experience.

In this special state of consciousness, the subject becomes aware of certain intra-psychi
processes ordinarily excluded or beyond the scope of awareness.

In this state, all the sensory pathways are wide open and there is an increased sensitivity
and enjoyment of the perceptual nuances discovered in the external world.

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.

In this state, the categories of space and time are transcended and subjects can perceive
themselves as existing outside of the usual space-time continuum.

In this world, nothing is wrong or even stupid. The sense of wrong is simply failure to see
where something fits into a pattern.

Individuals experience feelings of getting to the essence of things—of the external world,
of others, and of themselves.

Individuals find that they can think more clearly and that they suddenly have access to
untapped sources of creativity within themselves.

Individuals may have profound experiences, yet they give the impression to an external
observer that nothing is happening or that they are sleeping.

Individuals occasionally report quite realistic recollections of their fetal existence. They
can feel like an embryo in the womb and have specific embryonal sensations.

Individuals talk about experiencing themselves as reborn and purified; a deep sense of
being in tune with nature and the universe replaces their previous feelings of alienation.

Information that comes to the LSD user seems more real than ordinary reality. (It sure is
more real and meaningful than ordinary reality.)

Inhibitions and suppressions relax, allowing emotions, thoughts, fantasies, and memories
to flow more freely.

Insights are accepted without reservations and seem much more valid than under nondrug
conditions. (The insane ego is gone.)

Insights are accompanied by an emotion which reinforces the conviction that a fragment
of Truth has been discovered. We call this kind of learning “revelation.”

Intelligence increase drugs like LSD enormously accelerate, extensify, intensify the
human brain function.

Intense and impressive psychic experiences make possible the sudden unlearning of
ineffective ways of performing.

Intensified light, intensified color and intensified significance do not exist in isolation.
They adhere in objects.

Isn’t the whole point of psychedelics to break down the walls of absurdity and reestablish
a divine intuition amongst the human species on this good earth? Well, of course it is.

It activates the patient’s unconscious so as to bring forth fantastic and emotional
phenomena.

It appears as if someone has white-washed the world. Everything gleams as if it were
new; even the old pickup trucks seem to shine.

It appears to be possible to listen to music with one’s whole being and with a completely
new approach.

It became clear that these extraordinary phenomena were normal and natural
manifestations of the deeper domains of the human psyche. (eyes closed)

It became obvious that the drug experiences could enhance creative potential in certain
individuals. Highly creative individuals became favorite subjects for LSD sessions.

It becomes suddenly clear that things are joined together by the boundaries we ordinarily
take to separate them.

It connects you with feelings that you’ve never been connected with before. They are now
open to you.

It does exist and there is an intelligence and there is a planfulness and a wisdom and
power that you can tune in to.

It has a deep logic of its own and can be meaningfully related to a new model of the
universe and of human nature.

It has a way of being able to turn one’s mind inside out and dissolving what seemed to be
the most oppressive human problems into questions like “Why is a mouse when it spins?”

It has been puzzling how a single drug can produce such an enormous range of different
experiences, appearing in various combinations and seemingly on the same continuum.

It has deep and revolutionary implications for the understanding of psychotherapy 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 is a cosmic consciousness into which we enter as our normal consciousness expands,
and we become aware of the transcendent dimension of humanity beyond space and time.

It is a non-egotistic consciousness, a kind of formless and timeless consciousness, which
seems to underlie the consciousness of the separate ego in time.

It is a total clarity and presence of mind, actively passive, wherein events come and go
like reflections in a mirror; nothing is reflected except what IS.

It is an experience which people have when they are, as it were, reborn into the world and
suddenly, with this kind of visionary sight, they perceive its miraculous beauty.

It is as if we have been stripped of the filters and distorting lenses that ordinarily limit our
perceptions of ourselves and the world.

It is as though all previous hearing of music had been deafness. The music seems to play
in you.

It is difficult to realize the intensity unless one has been through the experience. (It’s not
only difficult, but impossible.)

It is easier to change behavior if you understand the learned-game nature of behavior.
This sort of insight can be brought about by consciousness-expanding drugs.

It is faith or loving confidence which guarantees that visionary experience shall be
blissful. (Without that, the trip can be a bummer.)

It is often possible to facilitate the emergence of a certain emotional quality by a specific
choice of music.

It is possible that a person is aware of more perceptions in a given amount of time as a
result of the enhancement of sensory data.

It is possible to experience the consciousness of all creation, of the entire planet or the
entire material universe.

It is possible to experience the history of the Universe before the origin of life on earth.
(eyes closed)

It is possible to zoom in and selectively focus on different levels and planes of the
experiential continuum and to perceive or reconstruct fine textures.

It is total clarity and presence of mind, actively passive, wherein events come and go like
reflections in a mirror: nothing is reflected except what IS.

It may lead to rediscovery of self and finding new potential for growth and development
with a new beginning.

It offers one the chance to experience a true expansion of consciousness, an increase in
awareness, a general improvement and heightening of perception of all kinds.

It offers unparalleled opportunity to catalyze awareness of otherwise unconscious psychic
processes, to widen the area of human consciousness.

It permits you to see more clearly than our perishing mortal eye can see, vistas beyond
the horizons of this life.

It provides new levels of understanding of one’s own identity, the dimensions of being,
human life and existence in general.

It remains the single most important event of my life. Nothing at all can be compared to
it.

It reveals the soul. My own experience under LSD was the revelation of my soul to me.
There can be no deeper experience, or more profound revelation.

It seems to give all sensory input almost equal importance, instead of just what’s
important for survival.

It swings open the gates to vast new possibilities, providing us with information about the
nature of our lives that is quite revolutionary.

It transports me, it makes me see with eyes that transfigure a work of art into something
else, something beyond art.

It was puzzling how a single drug can produce such an enormous range of different
experiences, appearing in various combinations and seemingly on the same continuum.

It was the classic visionary voyage and I came back a changed man. You are never the
same after you’ve had the veil drawn.

It was these experiences that convinced me of the existence of a miraculous,
unfathomable reality that is hidden from everyday

It would appear that everybody who experiences these levels develop convincing insights
into the utmost relevance of the spiritual dimension in the universal scheme of things.

It would appear that LSD is a ticket to a wondrous time machine that transports the
tripper on a whirlwind tour of mankind’s ancestral past.

It’s a state of wholeness in which the mind functions freely and easily without the
sensation of a second mind or ego standing over it with a club.

It’s a universe of inconceivable beauty in which all things are full of life and charged
with an obscure but immensely important meaning.

It’s called a “transporting” experience. It transports you, takes you out of this world, puts
you into the Other World.

Its clarity sometimes gives the sensation that the world has become transparent or
luminous. (Transparent here doesn’t mean nothing or blank, but clear of ego perceptions.)

It’s like a key is opening a door and the light is flowing in. And this means a great deal to
me.

It’s philosophical. I could write a book about the cosmic thoughts I had. This is the Rolls
Royce of dope.

It’s possible in one session to eliminate a neurosis that had resisted years of non-drug
psychotherapy.

Just as a microscope can help a biologist, LSD can remove the inhibitions to perception
which prevent us from seeing the central relationships of the world.

Just as any object can become the essence of all energy, any note of music can be sensed
as naked energy trembling in space, timeless.

Leary had that abstracted look of a person who can see with absolute clarity what no one
else will believe is there.

Leary insisted that the insane rat race was the real “narcotic escape” and that people
could find a new kind of harmony by “sanitizing” themselves with LSD.

Life appears simple and exciting and the individual has the feeling of unusual sensory
richness and intense joy.

Life at Millbrook had a mythic dimension that was nourished by a sense of having
embarked upon a journey into unknown waters.

Light contained in objects, shining out of things and people is a kind of luminous living
geometry.

Light, sound, touch, taste and smell become a continuous warp, with the feeling that the
whole dimension of sensation is a single continuum or field.

Like a microscope, LSD magnifies. Instead of magnifying things outside the body, it
magnifies inner experience.

Like in “Alice in Wonderland” you enter a Never Never Land where everything sparkles
and tingles, everything seems alive and new.

Looking at flowers or trees, sitting in the grass, smelling hay or watching the sunset can
be powerful experiences long to be remembered.

Looking back on my own experiences, they all converge toward a kind of insight to
which I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance.

Love is transformed from a cliche to a living and vital reality. Lifelong convicts have
become compassionate and near-delinquents have been gentled.

LSD activates deep repositories of unconscious material and brings their content to the
surface, making it available for direct experience.

LSD activates emotionally important material in different areas and on various levels of
the personality.

LSD allowed you an objective look at your own conditioning, at all the categories you
had been taught to filter experience into.

LSD-assisted analysis could deepen, intensify and accelerate the therapeutic process and
produce practical results.

LSD breaks down those barriers that have made it possible for words to hide truths from
us. Taking of the drug is in fact essential to a true understanding of the experience.

LSD, by permitting consciousness on several levels at once, becomes specifically a
tuning device for the senses.

LSD can be not just a “mind-or consciousness-expanding” drug, but a “conscience-
expanding” one as well.

LSD can produce dramatic changes in personality leading to unprecedented peace, sanity
and happiness.

LSD can temporarily bring back the vividness of newness, the novelty of the first sensory
experience after repeated exposures.

LSD can truly accomplish the transcendence repeatedly and unsuccessfully sought in
drunkenness.

LSD carried with it a certain messianic vision, a certain understanding of the meaning of
freedom.

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 could expedite the psychotherapeutic process and shorten the time necessary for the
treatment of various emotional disorders, which makes it a potentially valuable tool.

LSD could shake people out of the rut of ordinary perception and catalyze some sort of
revelation.

LSD could trigger a peak experience with therapeutic benefits on psychological growth
and self-actualization.

LSD enables us to penetrate deeply and bring about changes in personality formerly
thought impossible.

LSD encapsulates an enormous amount of experience into a relatively short period.
Insights that might normally take years to acquire can burst forth in an awesome flurry.

LSD experiments gave new impetus to exploration into the essence of religious and
mystical experience.

LSD has been said to be capable of inspiring artists to new heights of originality and
productivity.

LSD has confirmed and strengthened what was already genuine in my religious
intuitions.

LSD has had phenomenal success in helping individuals attain long-sought solutions to
specific creative and technical problems.

LSD helps patients in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy to perceive their problems in
their true significance.

LSD in psychiatric use is much more often said to have prevented suicide than to have
caused it.

LSD is a catalyst or amplifier of mental processes. If properly used it could become
something like the microscope or the telescope of psychiatry.

LSD is a key to opening up sensory, cellular and precellular consciousness so that you
flow and harmonize with these different levels.

LSD is a kind of cure for intellectualism, a remedy for minds hung up in categories. We
feel like a medical team in a plague area. (That was Timothy Leary.)

LSD is a way of extending yourself so that something spectacular and beautiful can be
available to you.

LSD is extraordinary because of the rich view of the unconscious which it permits.
Somewhere in this rich view of the unconscious lies the mystic experience.

LSD is magnificent and for a fetus, it must be ultra-magnificent (referring to a mother
tripping while pregnant or while giving birth).

LSD just blew the frame right out of the picture. It gave you a sense of infinite
possibility. LSD gave us the idea it could be different. It was tremendously inspiring.

LSD may lead to the finding of new potential for growth and development and to a new
beginning.

LSD might be the brain’s experience of itself when all the electrical circuits are turned on
at once.

LSD phenomena are extremely interesting material for a deeper understanding of the
mind, the nature of man and human society.

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.

LSD provided me with a map of the territory, a deeper self-understanding within, a wider
context than my own personal history.

LSD provides unrivaled insights into the dynamics of emotional disorders and the
functioning of the human mind in general.

LSD Psychotherapy can be beneficial over a very broad spectrum of emotional and
psychosomatic disorders.

LSD religious experience—A Christian will report it in terms of the Christian vocabulary
and the Buddhists will do likewise.

LSD remains one of the most valuable tools in understanding the functioning of the
human mind.

LSD rips away the facade that keeps us from understanding how preoccupied we may
have become with the trivial.

LSD serves as a catalyst for inducing rapid and profound changes in the subject’s value-
belief system and in his self-image.

LSD sessions can be seen as opportunities to confront the mysteries of the universe and
the riddle of human existence.

LSD shows me the real Reality. It is the final enlightenment. The insights I gain are true.
(That’s right and don’t ever listen to anyone who doesn’t understand that.)

LSD stimulates an easy recall of events long buried in a patient’s subconscious and
striking insights into his own nature and the real world around him.

LSD strips off the protective barriers of the ego and all sensitivity and perception is
heightened.

LSD subjects can have several sequences of death and rebirth in a single psychedelic
session.

LSD subjects frequently experience contact with water as being not only physically
cleansing, but also emotionally and spiritually purifying.

LSD subjects frequently report being able to perceive worlds that have 4, 5 or more
dimensions.

LSD subjects frequently report that the flow of music helps them to let go of their
psychological defenses and surrender fully to the experience.

LSD subjects in this state experience powerful currents of energy streaming through their
bodies.

LSD subjects report experiences in which they identify with various animal ancestors in
the evolutionary pedigree.

LSD subjects report numerous visions of archetypal forms, individual deities and
complex mythological sequences. (eyes closed)

LSD translates into the language not just of religion, psychology and psychotherapy, but
also of the physical and biological sciences.

LSD, used improperly as in the infamous CIA experiments, can sabotage the brain so
totally that “mind murder” seems the best word for such unethical experimentation.

LSD will change biochemical balances inside our nervous system and you can experience
directly some of the things which we externally view through the lens of the microscope.

Magnificent revelations, both spiritual and philosophical, can occur marking the highest
union of experience and intellect.

Mandalas are a way of visualizing the concept that everything is connected, everything
springs from the same center.

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.

Many LSD subjects discover in their sessions new dimensions in music and new ways of
listening to it.

Many LSD subjects report endless odyssey through the network of circulatory tunnels.
(eyes closed)

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

Many people discover a deep connection with an inner source, higher self, or God, and
they might experience the world as an expression of the Divine.

Many people get tremendous recalls of buried material. A process which may take six
years of psychoanalysis happens in an hour—and considerably cheaper!

Many people have had the experience of a unifying vision in which the whole creation
seems to come together in unity.

Many people report visions of brilliant light with a supernatural quality radiating divine
intelligence or experience God as pure spiritual energy permeating all.

Many people retain a powerful sense of incompletely explored emotional and intellectual
possibilities of something felt as intensely real and not yet explained or explained away.

Many people who embark on a journey of self-exploration develop the insight that our
inner dimensions are bountiful and endless.

Many persons claim to experience a new sense of hope, rejuvenation, renaissance, or
rebirth.

Many persons have taken LSD and have experienced remarkable enhancement of their
sense of well-being.

Materials not normally accessible to consciousness surge up and determine the thought
content and patterns.

Memories from the first days or weeks of life can be relived with photographic accuracy
of detail.

Memory has a deep dimension, a sensation of being immeasurably ancient and knowing,
as somehow prior to time and space.

Mentally, he has experienced the meaning of larger contexts, which has been freeing and
ecstatic.

Mescaline and LSD take you beyond the senses into a world of cellular awareness. (eyes
closed)

Mescaline raises all colors to a higher power and makes the percipient aware of
innumerable fine shades of difference, to which, at ordinary times, he is completely blind.

Most of the art in the collections of psychedelic therapists comes from subjects who were
not professional artists, but had LSD sessions for therapeutic, didactic or other purposes.

More of what the eye sees and more of what the nose smells is getting into
consciousness.

Most paradises are adorned with buildings and like the trees, waters, hills and fields,
these buildings are bright with gems.

Most people discover a deep connection with an inner source, higher self, or God, and
they might experience the world as an expression of the Divine.

Most people feel exalted as they discover their real cosmic status and gain an entirely
new perspective on their daily problems.

Most people who experience these inner domains recognize them as part of the
boundless, expansive essence of each human being.

Music has several important functions and adds new dimensions to the psychedelic
experience.

Music is often helpful in establishing certain emotional moods and thereby aids the
subject in letting his feelings come out.

Music may produce visions of color, pictures may produce sounds, odors may produce
visual and auditory images.

music played on an organ—As leaves seem to gesture, the organ seems quite literally to
speak.

My most interesting intellectually stimulating experiences have been psychedelic
sessions. Psychedelics open wide the doors of learning.

My own belief is that these experiences really tell us something about the nature of the
universe, that they are valuable in themselves.

Mystical transcendence of time and space involves an experience described as eternity or
infinity.

Mythological figures literally come alive and assume independent existences. The same
is true about the landscapes and structures that make up the mythic world. (eyes closed)

Mythological images are endowed with special power and numinosity that gives them
divine status. (eyes closed)

Mythological materials often emerge in consciousness during a psychedelic experience.
(eyes closed)

Mythology, the repository of a culture’s sacred history, reveals the relevance and
universal nature of the experience of death and rebirth.

Never have colors had the glorious, fascinating, delighting intensity that they had for me
at the time.

Never underestimate the sacred meaning of the turn-on. To turn on, you need a sacrament
which turns the key to the inner doors.

No longer need man wonder with Job about God’s mysterious ways. LSD has all the
answers and more. It is The Truth, The Experience, The Godhead.

No matter how much mental training and psychological exploration had been done,
further realms of experience could be revealed by the psychedelics.

No matter where one is or what one is observing, the situation feels fraught with
meaning, portentous.

No one should take LSD unless he knows that he’s going into the unknown. He’s laying
his blue chips on the line.

No one should take LSD unless he’s well prepared, knows what he’s getting into and is
ready to go out of his mind. Be with someone you trust emotionally and spiritually.

Not infrequently, LSD subjects discover dimensions in music that they were unable to
perceive before.

Not LSD, but mishandling of the session, is with few exceptions the key factor when a
normal subject experiences an LSD “psychosis.”

Not only can psychedelic drugs deepen and broaden our understanding of religious
experience, but they may also contribute to genuine spiritual development.

Nothing before LSD ever brought home to me the idea that things of the spirit might be
real and palpable.

Nothing exists except undulating energy and flowing consciousness upon which the
grasping mind imposes categories which have nothing to do with the energy-flow.

Now I know that life is a constant flowing and we are part of each other. I have read it,
thought it, but now I know and am overwhelmed with gratitude.

Now I know what Blake and St. John of the Cross were talking about. This experience is
what I was seeking when I became a Catholic.

Now I step forth easily from my body’s prison-cell and live in the realm of the
primordial.

Now that he was aware of “countless realities”, routine existence had been revealed to
him as “illusory.”

Objects and stimuli are greatly transformed, so that at times they are even
unrecognizable.

Objects in the environment—lights, trees, plants, flowers— seem to open and welcome
you. They are part of you. You are different pulses of the same vibrations.

Objects take on a pristine immediacy, looking as they may have looked to Adam on the
first day or to the drug user as a child.

Objects which appear to ordinary, utilitarian, pragmatic, goal-oriented thought and
perception as irrelevant take on sudden and surprisingly fresh meanings.

Occasionally, the geometrical and ornamental visions appear to have some specific
emotional connotation.

Oceanic feelings and ego loss are often called regression to infancy. Why not consider
the possibility of adult oceanic feelings?

Of great relevance for the creative process is the facilitation of new and unexpected
synthesis of data.

Of utmost importance is the psychedelic peak experience which usually takes the form of
a death-rebirth sequence with ensuing feelings of cosmic unity.

Often one is struck with the familiarity of the revelation, as though he is now revisiting
an inherent buried truth, having “been there before” at some indefinite time in the past.

Old destructive patterns of behavior may suddenly be abandoned after an overpowering
emotional experience. The learning of new attitudes and techniques may become easier.

On a fundamental level, the human mind is connected with the Infinite; psychedelics
simply made manifest this basic truth.

On an LSD trip, nearly anything one looks at can seem pregnant with meaning,
embodying great truths.

On occasion, LSD subjects have stated that they experienced themselves as neurons in
their own brains.

On the threshold of the most profound and ultimate depths, we are faced with the
revelation that our experience is contained within the depths of the Divine Life itself.

Once a person has been emotionally stirred to such depths, he can never completely lose
his new sense of awareness.

Once the reality of the world as grounded in the Absolute is established, the body seems
to be less an obstacle to freedom, for it is a form of that self-same Absolute.

Once the threshold of altered consciousness has been crossed, we are flooded with a
kaleidoscopic vision of extended perceptual fields and psychological insights.

One becomes intoxicated with divine feelings and becomes free from anger and other
negativities.

One can conceive of this great total pattern as having a transcendent uniqueness over and
above the nature of its parts, that some might call its divinity.

One can connect with a state that feels eternal, understanding that one is at once the body
and also all that exists.

One can discover an all-encompassing sense of unity and interconnectedness with all of
creation.

One can transcend the limits of the specifically human experience and tune into what
appears to be the consciousness of animals, plants or even inanimate objects.

One can undergo an experience of total annihilation and emerge from this process
renewed and reborn. The learning here is profound.

One conception of psychedelic therapy for alcoholics is that LSD can truly accomplish
the transcendence that is repeatedly and unsuccessfully sought in drunkenness.

One could look at a pebble for days, and in a sufficiently enlightened state of mind, there
would always be more to be learned.

One feels open to a total flow, over and around and within the body and one becomes
more and more conscious of these threads of energy, of their vibrations.

One feels or responds emotionally with more intensity, more depth, more
comprehensiveness.

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 being inundated with an ocean of new information and one has to learn to
navigate.

One is completely suspended and truly living in one’s experiences much more so than
ever before. (That’s with LSD.)

One is joyfully aware of the 2 billion year old electric sexual dance. One is at last
divested of robot clothes and limbs and undulates in the endless chain of living forms.

One looks beyond the horizon of the normal world and this “beyond” is so impressive or
even shocking.

One may be infused with ecstasy, peace and a deep feeling of support by the cosmic
process.

One must be tuned into the flow of the life energy and enjoy one’s existence; then the
value of life is self-evident.

One must have a genuine curiosity about new direction of personal growth and the fabric
of psychedelic insight and discovery. There should be dedication of purpose.

One of the most interesting aspects of LSD research is the relationship between the
psychedelic state and the creative process.

One of the most striking effects of LSD is its ability to activate the leisurely pace of
conventional consciousness.

One of the things that is shaking to an individual of LSD is that he has to come to a
realization that he is Christ and then recognize that everybody else is.

One of the top overriding values of these altered states is that they bestow direct
experience of phenomena usually apprehended only in abstraction.

One of the unique properties of the drug is that it excludes random distractions from the
immediate perception and permits total concentration.

One realizes that the form of man extends far, far beyond the limits of the skin and very
much deeper than the conscious ego.

One sees quite clearly that all existence is a single energy and that this energy is one’s
own being.

One sees that all form is an illusory package of vibrations, just like your television
screen.

One theme that is particularly powerful and recurs with remarkable frequency in the
mythology of the heroic journey is the encounter with death and subsequent rebirth.

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.

One vast, immense, everlasting, cosmic wind blows through all and everything and keeps
it in motion—alive, changing, growing.

One who has the courage to undergo the shattering of the illusion will die, but will die in
the mystical sense, “…so that he may live again.” (The ego is the illusion which dies.)

One’s true identity is felt as something extremely ancient, familiarly distant, with
overtones of the magical, mythological and archaic.

Only a warm, supportive atmosphere can lead to a therapeutic LSD experience, not the
cold, clinical environment.

Our internal functions are not beyond the reach of consciousness. (They are beyond the
reach of ego or “normal” waking consciousness.)

Our mythologies preserve the hint of a way back, to the lost unity, though the price is a
form of death.

Our perceptions of visionary objects possesses all the freshness, all the naked intensity of
experience which have never been verbalized, never assimilated to lifeless abstractions.

Painful experiences can be as personally revealing and permanently beneficial as
experiences of great joy and beauty.

Paradise refers to a state of metaphysical ecstasy, a sanctuary of eternal youth, gardens of
incredible beauty, roads paved with gold. (eyes closed)

Particularly noteworthy are the positive results obtained with cases highly resistant to
conventional forms of therapy.

Patients are encouraged to use the sessions for self-exploration and dynamic
understanding of their emotional problems.

Patients who are bogged down in an egocentric problem cycle can be helped to release
themselves from their fixation and isolation.

Patterns, mosaics, kaleidoscopic designs and sparkling clusters of jewel-forms appear
before the eyes.

Peaking on LSD is above all one of an open horizon, a field of presence in the wildest
sense.

People may come to understand better through psychedelic drugs the visionary and
mystical language of poets like Blake, Wordsworth and Whitman.

People may feel keener awareness of their bodies or sense changes in the appearance and
feeling of body parts.

People may see lights or visions or they may hear different kinds of inner sounds. They
may experience inner fragrances or tastes.

People repeatedly report that these states of consciousness have a brilliant, numinous,
mythical quality.

People who have used LSD are much more attuned to getting turned on. Marijuana
usually sends them much higher than it does others.

Perception is not limited to what is biologically or socially useful. (That is the limit of the
ego’s perception.)

Perception will be known for what it is, a field relationship as distinct from an encounter.
(You are not encountering the universe and fighting it from outside. You are a part of it.)

Persons who take drugs on their own are most interested in aesthetic and mystical
experiences.

Pervasive feelings of the “All rightness of the Universe” and a humble gratitude are the
overwhelming emotional responses to union or communion with the divine.

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.

Place and distance cease to be of much interest. The mind does its perceiving in terms of
intensity of existence, profundity of significance, relationship within a pattern.

Plunge into the whitewater of this new experience and reach the calm mystic pools
downstream.

Powerful experiential sequences of dying and being born can result in dramatic
alleviation of a variety of emotional problems.

Precious stones are precious because they bear a faint resemblance to the glowing
marvels seen with the inner eye of the visionary.

Pressure on the eyeball produced alterations of visual perception. (If your eyes are closed
and a light is put just in front of the closed eyes, that will influence visions.)

Preternatural light evokes, in everything it touches, preternatural color and preternatural
significance.

Previously pragmatic and materialistic individuals can develop deep interest in and
genuine appreciation of the spiritual aspect of existence.

Profound emotional bonds can develop as a result of an LSD session—bonds that can last
a lifetime.

Profound self-understanding and a high degree of self-transformation may reward the
subject.

Proponents argue that LSD may widen their window on the world and on themselves as
well.

Psychedelic agents may facilitate lasting change in the direction of increased creative
expression and self-actualization.

Psychedelic drug therapy did not die a natural death from loss of interest; it was killed by
law. (That is fascism.

Psychedelic drugs afford the best access yet to the contents and processes of the human
mind.

Psychedelic drugs allow us to study—directly, experientially, empirically—the problems
which have perplexed philosophers for millennia.

Psychedelic drugs allow you to see and hear new patterns of energy that suggest new
patterns for composition. In this way, they enhance the creative perspective.

Psychedelic drugs bring you into levels of reality which aren’t structural because the
mind can’t structure them.

Psychedelic drugs can stimulate a breakthrough to an enlarged consciousness of a
transfigured world of the Eternal Now.

Psychedelic drugs enable the individual to cultivate those creative and spiritual facets of
his personality that so often remain unexplored.

Psychedelic drugs enhance creativity, providing solutions to artistic and intellectual
problems through new combinations of ideas and feelings (and perceptions).

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 give promise of providing access to the great and hitherto largely
impenetrable realms—the vast, intricate and awesome regions we call mind.

Psychedelic drugs have allowed me to believe impossible things, and I am grateful to
them for that.

Psychedelic drugs have enabled them to attain significant experiences otherwise
unavailable to them.

Psychedelic drugs held the promise of changing mankind and ushering in a new
millennia. (The promise is still there and everywhere, at all times.)

Psychedelic drugs manifest universal native capacities of the mind and permanent
possibilities of human experience.

Psychedelic drugs open up the possibility of working in areas little or not at all touched
by psychoanalysis and other therapies.

Psychedelic drugs opened to mass tourism mental territories previously explored only by
small parties of particularly intrepid adventurers, mainly religious mystics.

Psychedelic experience emphasizes the unity of things, the infinite dance…You are the
wave, but you are also the ocean.

Psychedelic experiences mediate access to deep realms of the psyche that have not yet
been discovered and acknowledged by mainstream psychology and psychiatry.

Psychedelic experiences seem to have a powerful effect and can change a person’s
attitude toward life.

Psychedelic substances are extremely powerful tools for opening the depths of the
unconscious. They have great positive potential.

Psychedelic substances can induce without any specific programming, profound death-
rebirth experiences and facilitate spiritual opening.

Psychedelic substances can occasionally facilitate extrasensory perception (like
accurately describing something that is historically or geographically far away).

Psychedelic substances have been used very wisely in primitive cultures. Our culture
doesn’t have this framework, the closeness to God and nature.

Psychedelic therapy can have a positive effect on a variety of emotional symptoms and
problems.

Psychedelics bring normally unconscious, subliminal under-the-threshold experiences
into awareness.

Psychedelics have shown me that certain things are possible, things I would otherwise
never have believed.

Psychedelics make it easier to see and accept aspects of reality that one can’t rationally
explain.

Psychedelics offer unique opportunities for healing of emotional and psychosomatic
disorders, for positive personality transformation, and consciousness evolution.

Psychedelics provide opportunities for mystical insight in much the same way that well-
prepared paints and brushes provide opportunities for fine painting.

Purged and purified, the soul approaches union with the Divine. Light, love and joy have
become the only realities.

Reading and preparing are useful, but no words can communicate experience. You are
going to be surprised, startled and delighted.

Recall is not just merely accurate in every perceptual detail. It is also accompanied by all
the emotions which were aroused by the events when they originally happened.

Recall of repressed memories is greatly enhanced, reliving of repressed biographical
events.

Release of unconscious materials frequently occurs. Insight is added to insight. At last, I
am seeing the world without self-deceit or illusion.

Rhythmic sounds seem to control and conduct a color symphony that can be viewed from
behind closed eyes.

Sensitivity to others and their problems was stimulated by the drug. It grows naturally out
of the experience of unity.

sex—I can feel myself fusing with the other person. It is difficult to know even
anatomically what part of myself is me and what part is the woman.

Sexual activities can become freer and potency in men, as well as orgasmic ability in both
sexes is often greatly augmented.

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

Sexual energies will be unimaginably intensified and it will lead to a deeper experience
than ever thought possible.

Sexual intercourse on the session day can become the most powerful experience of this
sort in the subject’s life.

Sexual love may be transformed into a type of worship in which the partners are for each
other, incarnations of the divine.

She follows, dancing beside me and through me, just like clouds drifting through each
other.

Sights, sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations all appear to be unimaginably more
intense, vivid, and pleasurable.

Significant aspects of mystical consciousness are felt by the experiencer to be true, in
spite of the fact that they violate the laws of Aristotelian logic.

Since it can be the most profound and moving experience of your life, no one should ever
enter it, in my opinion, without the most careful preparation.

So astonishing will be this new insight that he may be absolutely overwhelmed and in his
excitement, laugh and cry at the same time.

Some are able to project an image of their own body on a wall or into a crystal or may
close their eyes and envision their own body image.

Some female subjects have experienced the penetration by the sun as sexual, speaking of
the sun as a “cosmic lover” or using other words to that effect.

Some psychiatrists very early saw the remarkable potential of LSD for telescoping many
weary hours of psychotherapy into a brief, intense experience.

Some referred to their first psychedelic experience as a “peak experience,” as a turning
point in their lives.

Some subjects have reported that as a result of such experiences, they have developed a
new understanding of some of their personal problems and conflicts.

Sometimes inanimate objects are described as coming to life; at other times the entire
world can appear geometicized and ornamentalized. (It can be both at the same time.)

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

Sounds throb with unbelievable beauty and intensity and often have color. (That’s right.
Sounds can have color.)

Specialized training of the therapist, which includes first-hand experiences of psychedelic
states of consciousness, is an important element in LSD psychotherapy.

Spiritual experience does not obliterate the here-and-now but makes it more radiant and
miraculous (or allows us to see how radiant and miraculous it always is).

Spiritual insights accompanying the psychedelic experience might be subjective accounts
of the objective findings of astronomy, physics, biochemistry and neurology.

Stay calm, let the experience take you where it will, don’t hold on, let the stream carry
you along.

Streams and waves never stop moving and yet they are in no hurry to reach any
destination. Indeed they are not going anywhere at all.

Subjects are apt to engage in philosophical and metaphysical conversations that would
normally be foreign to them.

Subjects consistently reported that the drug induced in them a variety of changes which
facilitated the creative process.

Subjects frequently talk about timelessness of the present moment and say that they are in
touch with infinity. They refer to this experience as ineffable.

Subjects often discovered sensitivities and capacities within themselves that they never
would have suspected.

Subjects often experience themselves as fetuses and can relive various aspects of their
biological birth with very specific and verifiable details.

Subjects perceive noises from the environment that are subliminal and that they would not
notice under normal circumstances.

Subjects see new dimensions in the world and in the universe and tend to regard ordinary
things and activities in everyday life as manifestations of the divine.

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

Such high intensity emotions, feelings of joy, peace, love and blessedness is far removed
from everyday experience.

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.

Techniques that directly activate the unconscious seem to reinforce selectively the most
relevant emotional material and facilitate its emergence into consciousness.

Texture and shape yield their qualities in the most profound manner to the sense of touch;
the absolute essence of any scent is penetrated by the olfactory senses.

That kind of thing happened to people. Get stoned with somebody, look at them, fall in
love with them.

The ability to relax physically and emotionally and enjoy ordinary things in life is greatly
enhanced.

The action of consciousness-expanding drugs on the cortex can be holy and intensely
educational.

The actual experience of a hallucinogenic adds dimensionality to one’s understanding of
a patient who is attempting to describe his.

The actual experience of gratitude has an uplifting and joyous quality which is beyond all
words.

The aim is to bring about the experience of liberation, not to construct a philosophical
system.

The aim of all Eastern religion, like the aim of LSD, is basically to get high, that is, to
expand your consciousness and find ecstasy and revelation within.

The aim of education is to learn how to use all of these levels of consciousness (not to
memorize nonsense).

The archetypal figures are endowed with great energy and numinous power. When we
encounter them, the experience is usually associated with strong emotion. (eyes closed)

The archetypal visions accompanying the experience of cosmic unity are of heavens,
celestial cities, paradisiacal gardens, and radiant divine beings. (eyes closed)

The atomic structure of matter is known intellectually but never experienced by the adult
except in states of intense altered consciousness.

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

The basic mystery of the eidetic images will deepen along with the drug-state levels. (The
eidetic images are seen with the eyes closed.)

The basic structure of experience is given by our sense of space and passage of time.
Both are profoundly altered in psychedelic mystical states.

The beautiful forms of life upon the earth combine and swirl and couple and embrace in
the most incredibly intricate, divinely magnificent spectacle conceivable.

The blinders are removed and the individual glimpses the nature of the process. This
revelation comes through a biochemical change in the body.

The bud has opened and the fresh leaves fan out and curve back with a gesture which is
unmistakably communicative.

The bum trip could be a more meaningful and educational event than the good one. (A
bad trip isn’t as good as a good trip, but it can still be very beneficial.)

The cellular level of consciousness puts man in touch with the DNA chain, which goes
back to the origins of life.

The choice of music has a strong structuring influence on the experience, even if we try
to adjust the music to the nature of the experience.

The Christian must accept by faith. The mushroom of the Aztecs carries its own
conviction; every communicant will testify to the miracle that he has experienced.

The claim that drugs “expand consciousness” refers to changes in several dimensions of
experience.

The consciousness-changing (expanding?) drugs give a glimpse into the mind. One could
almost say that LSD gives a glimpse into the very soul of man, taps a universal knowing.

The consciousness is finally of universals, of essences constituting the ground of the
subject’s and of the world’s existence.

The content and nature of the experiences are authentic expressions of the psyche,
revealing its functioning on levels ordinarily not available for observation and study.

The content of LSD sessions entails simultaneous perception of many dimensions and
levels of the mind.

The content of the experience is self-validating and known with absolute certainty to be
true.

The cosmos is seen as a multi-dimensional network of crystals, each one containing the
reflections of all the others.

The dancing, kaleidoscopic arabesques which appear before closed eyes are surely an
observation of some reality.

The dancing playful flow of life is, in the most reverent sense, sexual forms merging,
spinning together, reproducing.

The day of the LSD experience often became a dramatic and easily discernable landmark
in the development of individual artists.

The death-rebirth experience can seem to have transcended all boundaries and become a
drama involving all of mankind.

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 feelings.

The deep psychedelic experience is a death-rebirth flip. You turn on to the ancient
rhythm. You become its beat.

The degree to which he can allow himself to be carried unresistingly by the tidal waves of
visions seems to determine the richness of the experience.

The depth and intensity of the death-rebirth experience provides a dramatic framework
for the termination of the old social role and the assumption of the new one.

The development and expansion of a direct emotional experience of reality, unobstructed
by words and concepts would be of evolutionary significance.

The discovery of LSD and subsequent psychedelic research opened up new revolutionary
avenues in the study of human consciousness.

The discovery of LSD is as important to philosophy and religion as the discovery of the
microscope was to biology.

The distinction between the ordinary and the sacred disappears, and the individual—who
essentially is the universe— becomes sacralized.

The door is opened. The door is the rigid barrier which man erects between himself and
spiritual freedom.

The dramatic experience of new dimensions of reality can be meaningfully integrated
into the world view (a new, better and more meaningful and realistic view of the world).

The drug can be seen as a means of passage to the inmost self, the collective unconscious,
or the transpersonal realm.

The drug can open and sensitize all the sensory channels to an extraordinary degree and
make it possible for the subject to perceive the world in a totally new way.

The drug experience seemed to reduce depression, tension, pain and fear of death
dramatically.

The drug invites self-disclosure and emotional closeness without disturbing intellectual
capacity.

The drug is a superior instrument for treating the whole range of neuroses or any similar
disorders.

The drug itself is seen as a catalyst that activates the unconscious processes in a rather
unspecific way.

The drug user feels himself to have transcended the trivial and absurd preoccupations of
his fellows—the “game world” of ordinary consciousness.

The drug user lives through the archetypal adventures described in myths and fairy tales.
(eyes closed)

The drugs diminish defensive attitudes without blurring perception, as in the case of
alcohol.

The drugs produced sudden insight that one has been living in a narrow space-time-self
context.

The early experimentation with LSD brought important new insights into the nature of
the creative process.

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

The ecstatic trip can be diverted, the person’s mind ready to explain away paradise and
pull him back to the old egocentric game.

The effect is to free the consciousness from the obstacles to true realization of universal
unity.

The effect of consciousness-expanding drugs will be to transform our concepts of human
nature, of human potentialities, of existence.

The effects of these drugs result in an intensity of personal experience and emotion more
meaningful than the term “hallucinogenic” implies.

The effects seem to operate upon the nervous system by reducing some of the inhibitory
mechanisms which ordinarily have a screening effect upon our consciousness.

The ego death that precedes rebirth is the death of our old concepts of who we are and
what the world is like.

The ego’s pride in itself is entirely debunked, not masochistically, but in the spirit of
cosmic humor.

The emotional impact of sound can be modified. Not infrequently, LSD subjects discover
dimensions in music that they were unable to perceive before.

The emphasis shifts from pursuit of complicated external schemes to appreciation of
simple aspects of existence.

The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the
first time.

The energy fields and the streaming of energy can be experienced in a tangible way and
can even be visually perceived with the eyes closed.

The enriching growth potential that they contain demands continuing study and attempts
to understand them (the psychedelics).

The essential effect of the psychedelic experience is the death of the time-bound ego and
the consequent realization of the Supreme Identity.

The expansion of the subjective time sense is another factor contributing to the intensity
of the experience.

The experience can open one’s eyes and make one blessed and transform one’s whole
life.

The experience has shaped, at a deep level, my responses to dramatic changes that have
taken place in my life.

The experience is capable of giving intense visions and intense new awareness and
conviction of awareness of one’s own place in the universe.

The experience is often so deeply revealing and moving that one hesitates to approach it
again until it has been thoroughly “digested” and this may be a matter of months.

The experience may be chaotic, beautiful, thrilling, incomprehensible, magical, ever-
changing.

The experience of beauty is pure, self-manifested and compounded equally of joy and
consciousness.

The experience of cosmic consciousness is boundless, unfathomable, and beyond
expression.

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

The experience of cosmic unity is characterized by transcendence of the usual subject-
object dichotomy.

The experience of death-rebirth is usually so realistic that it is perceived as experientially
identical with actual biological demise.

The experience of dying occurs in the context of the death-rebirth experience and total
surrender to it is always followed by feelings of liberation.

The experience of ego-death in psychedelic sessions is the most powerful remedy against
suicidal tendencies.

The experience of liberation from the tyranny of the ego is an experience so
extraordinary, so unique that it is never forgotten.

The experience of paradise combines feelings of transcendental happiness and joy with
delight in exquisite beauty of an unearthly quality. (earthly?)

The experience of peaking on LSD is above all one of an open horizon, a field of
presence in the widest sense.

The experience of psychological and spiritual rebirth is typically associated with a sense
of love, compassion and reverence for life.

The experience of rebirth is typically associated with a sense of love, compassion and
reverence for life.

The experience of the Absolute, the Ultimate Reality, transcends all categories and eludes
description.

The experience will teach you what you need to know in order to grow and mature,
which is to gradually dissolve your over-protective defense structures.

The experiences of universal symbols are followed or accompanied by an intuitive
understanding of various levels of their esoteric meaning.

The experiences they produce are of an infinite variety. They might be aesthetic,
psychological, philosophical insights or emotional releases.

The extension of consciousness seems to go beyond the phenomenal world and the time-
space continuum as we perceive it in our everyday life.

The extraordinary part is that Aldous is experiencing that which he has known for a long
time.

The eyes and ears, the nose and skin, all become avenues of erotic communion, not just
with the other people, but with the whole realm of nature.

The eyes become intelligent jewels. (That’s what someone else’s eyes can look like,
especially if they are also tripping.)

The eyes, ears, nose and skin all become avenues of erotic communion, not just with
other people, but with the whole realm of nature.

The eyes have become microscopes and the texture of the visual field is infinitely rich
and complex.

The fact that the experience was induced by drugs has no bearing on its validity (as a
religious experience).

The familiar view of our surroundings is transformed; it appears to us in a new light,
takes on a special meaning.

The figures are often extremely colorful and accompanied by a variety of awe-inspiring
sounds. (eyes closed)

The flash of recognizing the bullshit was a good one. Like waking up and finding out that
the quicksand you’re caught in is only a dream.

The full harmony of all qualities capable of teaching or delighting us may flow in at once
to ravish the soul.

The full splendor of sexual experience does not reveal itself without a new mode of
attention to the world in general.

The fullness of awareness increases to an intensity that may seem almost too great to be
borne.

The goal is to shed all ego sensations completely and in mystical experience, merge with
the totality of the cosmos.

The guide must steer a course of gradual intensification and enhancement of
consciousness.

The healing potential of ecstatic states is of such paramount significance that it suggests
an entirely new orientation in psychiatric therapy.

The heightened sensitivity in all areas gives me a feeling of communion with my
surroundings, both animate and inanimate.

The high value, the meaningfulness, and the intensity reported of such experiences
suggest that the perception has a different scope from that of normal consciousness.

The historical and evolutionary sequences may be seen as having the function of moving
the subject toward increasing dramatic involvement. (eyes closed)

The household furniture is alive. Everything gestures. Tables are tabling, walls are
walling, a world of events instead of things.

The idea of something happening without a tangible precedent, sufficient cause, or
initiating impulse simply is not questioned on this level of experience.

The illusions of matter, space and time have been completely transcended and reduced to
this one mode of consciousness which is their common source and denominator.

The images from the mythological domains of the collective unconscious that appear,
often portray celestial realms and paradises. (eyes closed)

The images may enter into consciousness as supremely meaningful, illuminating the most
important areas of the subject’s life. (eyes closed)

The images of the archetypal world are symbolic and are “out there” in the collective
unconscious. (eyes closed)

The imprint is made. You emerge with a new reality: what was invisible or impossible
before is now part of your self and your perceptual field.

The increased sensitivity and awareness enhances the pleasurable aspects of sexual
experience.

The individual can be flooded with feelings of love and mystical connection to other
people, nature, the entire cosmos and are commensurate with all of existence.

The individual connects with important aspects of reality that are inaccessible to
perception under ordinary circumstances.

The individual consciousness seems to encompass the totality of existence and identify
with the Universal Mind.

The individual discovers new ways of enjoying his or her own physiological processes
and develops more respect for life in all its infinite manifestations.

The individual experiences a deep sense of emotional and spiritual liberation, redemption
and salvation.

The individual feels full of excitement and energy, yet centered and peaceful and
perceives the world as if through cleansed senses.

The individual feels that his memory has transcended its usual limits and that he is in
touch with information related to the life of his biological ancestors.

The individual gains experiential access to the unitive states. This tends to change the
way of being in the world and the basic approach to life.

The individual has a sense of merging with the environment and feelings of unity with
perceived objects.

The individual in this state becomes deeply aware of his or her unity with other people,
nature and the entire universe and with the ultimate creative principle or God.

The individual is freed or forced to experience a great outpouring of feeling often far
beyond his conception of his own emotional capabilities.

The individual leaves behind one mode of being and moves into another and totally new
experiential condition.

The individual regains his sense of being one with that Nature of which he is a part and
which is also the very ground upon which he stands.

The ingestion of psychedelic substances evokes an activation of deeply buried psychic
contents and a bringing of them to the surface of consciousness.

The insights psychedelics potentiate frequently enable one to see through the myriad
pretentions and deceits which make up the mythology of the Social Lie.

The insights that have been achieved by LSD experimentation are of lasting value and
relevance.

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

The intense drug experience permits an impact on the subject not obtainable by any other
means.

The intensity of these experiences transcends anything usually considered to be the
experiential limit of the individual.

The joy of the spirit is available the moment pride is swallowed and the free gift of union
with God is accepted.

The kaleidoscopic and complex world that has always been there comes dramatically into
consciousness.

The keynote of the experience is the tremendous exciting sense of an intense
metaphysical illumination.

The learned perceptions disappear and the structure of the world disintegrates into direct
wave phenomena.

The light is glittering as if reflected by diamonds or other precious stones in a tremendous
variety of very rich colors.

The logical conceptual mind turns on itself, recognizing the foolish inadequacy of the
flimsy systems it imposes on the world.

The longing of my soul to experience the Reality of Oneness with the Absolute was my
paramount hope and motivation in taking LSD—that some breakthrough might be given.

The LSD experience appears to involve a variety of factors on many different levels; each
has a distinct therapeutic potential.

The LSD experience cut right through the Zen games and intellectual disillusionment of
the once worshipped Beat generation. Acid’s first and most powerful message was love.

The LSD experience is all about merging, yielding, flowing, union, communion. It’s all
lovemaking.

The LSD experience is felt by almost everyone who undergoes it to be profoundly
significant and enlightening.

The LSD experience is not concerned with morality. Rather it is concerned with
immortality.

The LSD experience made available again the “lost” and forgotten visual modalities one
has a child.

The LSD experience spurs a driving hunger to communicate in new forms, in better
ways, to express a more harmonious message, to live a better life.

The LSD gamble is that risk men have faced for thousands of years if they wished to
pursue what lay beyond their minds.

The LSD revelation is the clear perspective. The LSD panic is the terror that ego is lost
forever.

The LSD session helped them gain deep insights into the world of painters, empathize
with them and understand their art.

The LSD state is, in essence, one of greatly heightened suggestibility, with environmental
cues sensed most exquisitely.

The man who catches a glimpse of this vision seldom doubts that he has reached a realm
of truth that takes precedence over every other thing.

The mind comes to rest and notices the rhythm, becoming aware that the timeless intent
of the process is fulfilled at each instant.

The mind grows clearer, more luminous, more peaceful. Insight becomes more
penetrating.

The “mind seeking to know the mind” or the “self seeking to control the self” has been
defeated out of existence and exposed for the abstraction which it always was.

The mirror image has provided insights resulting in amelioration or resolution of long-
standing problems.

The moment of revelation when you’re turned on to the whole process, which men of old
called the mystic, is the purpose of life.

The more expanded your consciousness, the farther out you can move beyond your mind,
the deeper, the richer, the longer and more meaningful your sexual communion.

The most impressive characteristic of the experience was an enormous and for me,
unique sense of freedom.

The mushrooms might have been a “mighty springboard” which first put the idea of God
into men’s heads.

The “myself” which I am beginning to recognize, which I had forgotten but actually
know better than anything else, goes far back beyond my childhood.

The mysteries of outer space were child’s play compared to the complexities of inner
space.

The mysterious and unsought uprising of love is the experience of complete relationship
with another, transforming our vision not only of the beloved but of the whole world.

The mysterious uprising of love is the experience of complete relationship with another,
transforming our vision not only of the beloved but of the whole world.

The mystery of creation, the wonder and fascination of creation shimmers in every leaf
and stone, every thorn and bud.

The mystic vision is one of unity and modern physics lends support to this perception
when it asserts that the world and its living forms are variations of the same elements.

The mystical consciousness is so much more deeply rooted than any other human
impulse and is characterized by an experience that goes beyond death.

The mystical experience enables the individual to be so open and sensitive to organic
reality that the ego begins to be seen for the transparent abstraction that it is.

The mystical experience is neither a particular state of mind nor blankness of mind. (It’s
not a “particular” state of mind which can be described.)

The mystical experience is the consciousness of the “living primordial cosmic fact of
Love,” “the Gratuitous Grace.”

The nature of psychedelic therapy is such that the process itself automatically selects in
each session the material that is most emotionally relevant at the time.

The nonordinary state of consciousness suspends the traditional ways of thinking that
prevent a solution and allow a new creative synthesis.

The “normal” modes of awareness are suspended. (During an LSD trip, awareness
expands far beyond the “normal,” to the real.)

The observations of nonordinary states of consciousness have important implications for
many fields of research.

The only way I could describe this state of ultimate cosmic ecstasy was to refer to it as
“diamond consciousness”.

The only way to study these drugs properly is to take them. You don’t learn anything of
significance by watching a subject under LSD.

The organism, rather than acquiring behavior from the environment, hooks up an innate
behavior pattern to the environment.

The orgastic feeling, if felt deeply and strongly enough in sex, always includes an
element of self-transcendence, of release.

The original sense of the seamless unity of nature is restored without the loss of
individual consciousness.

The parallels between the phenomenology of rites of passage and LSD experiences
involving death and rebirth are far-reaching.

The past, from which our ego is abstracted, has entirely disappeared. Any attempt to cling
to the ego or to make it an effective source of action is doomed to frustration.

The patient often states that he feels reborn, whole, clean, grateful and joyous, loving all
things, animate and inanimate.

The people change from a very disturbed, mixed-up state to a clear place where they
function much more creatively, in terms of relations to themselves and outside.

The person has had what he regards as an enormously impressive and important
experience.

The person is allowed to glance back down the flow of time and perceive how the life
energy continually manifests itself in forms, transient, always changing, reforming.

The person who takes the drug undertakes a journey into his or her psyche. For this
reason, LSD is of deep relevance for understanding the human mind and psychotherapy.

The personality is touched to its core and is led into provinces of psychic life otherwise
unexplored. Light is shed on boundaries otherwise dark and unrevealed.

The perspective of the continuation of life in another form has a very liberating effect on
the individual and can considerably alleviate despair and the fear of death.

The peyote road has shown me many wonders. I shall continue to follow that adventurous
path, that sublime way of life.

The possibility of something originating out of nothing or of something vanishing
without a trace does not appear absurd, as it would in everyday consciousness.

The power of psychedelics to evoke evolutionary archetypes awakened many women to
the goddess within.

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 present has spread out from its constriction in an elusive pin-point of strained
consciousness to an all-embracing eternity.

The Primary Clear Light has such overwhelming radiance and beauty that the unprepared
may turn away from it in terror.

The process involves a profound personal transformation during which most aspects of
the individual’s life are dramatically redefined.

The process of getting beyond the game structure, beyond the subject-object
commitments, the dualities, this process is called the mystic experience.

The psychedelic drugs genuinely give some inkling of the complexity of Eastern
consciousness.

The psychedelic drugs produce insights into some of the absurdities within the individual
and also within the social structure in which he is embedded.

The psychedelic experience basically has been one of turning on to the life process, to the
dance of life.

The psychedelic experience can become a source of revelatory, aesthetic, scientific,
philosophical or spiritual insight.

The psychedelic experience frequently involves elements totally alien to an individual’s
own religious tradition.

The psychedelic experience has the potential of initiating the unfolding of a self-healing
and self-realizing process.

The psychedelic experience is a way to stand apart from yourself in a way you ordinarily
cannot.

The psychedelic experience is fundamentally or ideally the bursting of ego-
consciousness, with the concomitant realization of cosmic-consciousness.

The psychedelic experience is incomprehensible to a rational, achievement-oriented,
conformist philosophy.

The psychedelic experience is incomprehensible to one committed to a conformist
philosophy.

The psychedelic experience is man’s oldest and most classic adventure into meaning.
Every religion was founded on the basis of some flipped out visionary trip.

The psychedelic experience provides ecstatic moments which dwarf any personal or
cultural game.

The psychedelic experience provides nothing less than a means of truly going “beyond
Freud” and to venture into these previously inaccessible regions of mind.

The psychedelic experience seemed to have opened new realms of mystical and cosmic
feelings within her.

The psychedelic peak experience is certainly an important factor mediating deep
personality transformation.

The psychedelic religious movement uses the same chemical aids or sacraments as the
first American religion—the peyote religion of the native American Indians.

The psychedelic session should take place in a protected environment where the client is
not disturbed by external influences and in turn, has unlimited freedom of full expression.

The psychedelic spectrum covers the entire range of experiences that are humanly
possible.

The psychedelic state, and other forms of altered consciousness are worthy of serious
study if the act of human creation is to be better understood, guided, and encouraged.

The psychedelic state is an immensely powerful one for obtaining insight and
understanding through visual symbolism.

The psychedelic state is not a “toxic psychosis” but a “journey into the unconscious or
superconscious mind.”

The psychedelic style involves a revolution in our concepts of art and creativity, the new
music, the new poetry, the new visual art, the new film.

The psychedelics give warrant of being man’s most valuable resource to date in solving
problems and in treating emotional disorders.

The psychedelics offer the hope that we are on the threshold of a new renaissance in
which man’s view of himself will undergo dramatic change.

The psychedelics permit access to preverbal impressions, to unconscious material, and to
intuitive processes.

The psychedelic technique fulfills the hopes of many troubled individuals for magical
intervention, a quick solution to their problems.

The psychedelics ain’t junk. The psychedelics are holy sacraments! Everybody should
take acid at least once to straighten-out their heads.

The psychedelics’ special effectiveness for mental illness is closely associated with their
capacity to release ecstatic religious states.

The psychological power of his new spiritual vision was so great that it helped him
overcome his excessive fear of death.

The rate of recovery or significant improvement was often higher with LSD therapy than
with traditional methods.

The realm of insights or problem solutions is in any area which is meaningful to that
individual be it social or personal, intellectual, religious, philosophical, things like that.

The recognition of the love aspects of the mystical experience and the implications for
new forms of social communication are especially important.

The rediscovery of these experiences and the recognition of their heuristic relevance has
been one of the major incentives for the development of a new movement in psychology.

The region of death becomes knowable and death itself is seen primarily as a rite of
passage to a spiritual mode of being.

The religious and mythological symbolism is rich and multiform and can draw on
different cultural traditions. (eyes closed)

The retracing of genetic memories back through the myriad, multi-webbed fabric of
RNA-DNA memories will be the major intellectual-ecstatic task of the future.

The revelation of the love aspects of the mystical experience and the implications for new
forms of social communication are especially important.

The rigidity of the normal mind was so different from the complete openness of the
psychedelic situation.

The role of the psychedelic guide is new in our society, but the newness of the role
should not blind us to the antiquity of its precedents.

The sacramental process of our religion is the use of marijuana and LSD and nothing can
substitute for that.

The sage judges by the concrete content of the experience and not by its conformity with
purely theoretical standards.

The scenery of the heavens and paradises is typically flooded with brilliant white or
golden light, and is full of luminescent clouds or rainbows. (eyes closed)

The screens that obscure who one really is are removed and one can sense a personal
positive essence.

The selective, systematic use of psychedelics in creative problem-solving situations may
turn out to be one of the most significant applications of these chemicals.

The self-luminous objects possess a meaning and this meaning is, in some sort, as intense
as their color.

The self realized in your inmost consciousness appears in its purity, which is not the
realms of those given over to mere reasoning.

The sensations fill the person’s attention, which is passive but absorbed in what is
occurring, which is usually experienced as intense and immediate.

The sense of physical separateness may be lost—moving towards a mystical-type
experience.

The significance of the LSD observations transcends the framework of psychiatry and
psychology and extends to many other scientific disciplines.

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

The singing is good, but under the influence of the mushroom, you think it is infinitely
tender and sweet. It is as though you were hearing it with your mind’s ear.

The slightest movement, the change in voices, a curtain waving in a breeze assumes
many values.

The so-called “instant psychotherapy” is in fact a possibility in the psychedelic
experience.

The soul beholds realities of greater significance, such as may never be apprehended
again out of the light of eternity.

The soul emerges into the radiance of the Divine Light and experiences spiritual rebirth,
salvation, redemption, resurrection, reunion.

The spectrum of thinking varies from dreamy bemusement to clear, integrated mental
activity.

The spirit, interiorly in a state harmonious to the celestial concourse, will be invested
with a spiritual body.

The spirit will return to its mythological roots and the magic landscape from which it
sprang.

The spiritual experiences they had in their LSD sessions were important evidence that
spirituality is a genuine and deeply relevant force in human life.

The spiritual insights accompanying the psychedelic experience might be subjective
accounts of the objective findings of astronomy, physics, biochemistry and neurology.

The state of consciousness of the Self-realized individual is characterized by joy,
serenity, inner security, a sense of calm power, clear understanding and radiant love.

The strong conviction of belonging and of having a personal worth gives meaning to the
outer world and changes in the perception of it.

The structures and the masks he has built up over the years suddenly disappear and he is
cast free to ponder on the ultimate reality of things without restraint.

The subject becoming aware of himself as continuous with the energy of the universe,
feels himself to be filled by divinity.

The subject can witness or identify with the birth and development of the cosmos
involving dimensions and energies of unimaginable scope.

The subject comes to experience himself in a totally new way and finds that the age-old
question “Who am I?” does have a significant answer.

The subject describing a psychedelic experience is able to mention only a very few items
selected from the wealth of events that make up the total experience.

The subject experiences a sequence set in another country and/or a different historical
period, usually with deep emotional involvement and dramatic abreaction. (eyes closed)

The subject experiences in this state powerful currents of energy streaming through his or
her entire body.

The subject feels unburdened, cleansed and purged and talks about having disposed of an
incredible amount of personal “garbage,” guilt, aggression and anxiety.

The subject had what he regarded as an intensely interesting and remarkable session,
“probably the most interesting 10 hours” of his life.

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

The subject may experience a profound and rewarding sense of continuity with
evolutionary and historic process.

The subject may feel that he is seeing the other (person) in all her richness and
complexity for the first time.

The subtle film that separates our everyday lives from the amazing world of our
unconscious mind becomes transparent and finally breaks down.

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

The taboo of the ego and superego became sufficiently weakened to allow unconscious
material to flow into consciousness.

The tendency of LSD seems to be to switch the operations of the mind from the verbal
association stream of thought to intuitive perception of images and forms.

The terms in which a man interprets this experience are naturally drawn from the
religious and philosophical ideas of his culture.

The therapeutic claims made for these drugs are of sufficient potential importance to
warrant serious unprejudiced study.

The therapeutic effects associated with the experience of death and rebirth are so
important.

The therapist has to be open to the spiritual dimension and recognize it as an important
part of life.

The time of dreams is different than the time of waking. The time of mystical or
psychedelic states is different again.

The time will come within a century when an educated man will be one who knows who
he is and where he came from, knows on the basis of direct psychedelic experience.

The total impact of an LSD experience can never be forgotten regardless of how much
the visions may dim.

The trained guide can usually sense when ego-attachment threatens to pull the person out
of the unitive flow.

The transformation of consciousness is like the correction of faulty perception or the
curing of a disease.

The transformative power of such experiences has been appreciated throughout history in
the legacies of the ancient mysteries.

The transpersonal experiences revealing the Earth as an intelligent conscious entity are
corroborated by scientific evidence.

The true and deepest value of the experience is that it offers a “tangible vision” of a better
state. (It’s the highest or best state of being.)

The true essence of the experience can never be communicated. (That means with words.
People must experience it for themselves.)

The “turned-on” person realizes that he is not an isolated, separate social ego, but rather
one transient energy process hooked up with the energy dance around him.

The ultimate challenge to Newtonian science has been the discovery that clinically blind
people experiencing out of body experiences describe scenes that are visually accurate.

The unique perception of color and forms, as well as the overwhelming influence of
music, frequently mediate a new understanding of art and artistic movements.

The universe is perceived as indescribably beautiful and radiant; individuals feel cleansed
and purged and talk about redemption, salvation or union with God.

The use of LSD is a ready way of stirring deeply buried sources of the religious life and
perceptions, which create feelings of awe, joy, wonder, peace and love.

The use of LSD led to a resurrection of the body. The person discovered that his body
belonged not to the state, the moralist or the doctor but to himself.

The user observes what he is experiencing in the situation and realizes it is not how he
usually experiences the stimuli.

The user of LSD and marijuana is not running away from life, but looks for a fuller
experience.

The usual boundaries between consciousness and the unconscious have been breached
and finally in large measure dissolved.

The usual distinction between the inner world of one’s own mind and external reality
became much more arbitrary.

The value of his experience will depend in large measure on his willingness to suspend or
abandon his ordinary everyday way of looking at things.

“The view of that world” says Plato, “is a vision of blessed beholders” for to see things
“as they are in themselves” is bliss unalloyed and inexpressible.

The visionary and the mystic wait upon inspiration in a state of wise, nonverbal
passiveness, of dynamic vacuity.

The visionary experience bears a striking resemblance to “the Other World” as we find it
described in the various traditions of religion and folklore.

The visionary revelation answers the escape question. There is no death. Ecstatic,
mirthful relief.

The visual field behind closed eyelids becomes rich in color and animated and the
individual can see a variety of geometrical or architectural forms.

The voyager returns gradually to shore, sometimes dipping back into the tides of the far
sea.

The walls of the room are starting to writhe, objects are swimming in pools of light,
colors are becoming vibrant, everything intense.

The whirling colors and shapes produce certain effects that recall flashes of rare beauty
seen in pictures, dreams.

The whole field of vision with its vast multiplicity of colors and shapes is a state of
affairs inside our heads.

The whole rigid structure which is man’s usual interpretation of life suddenly drops to
pieces.

The whole world of men and nature acquires an atmosphere that we may call variously
divine, luminous, enchanted, timeless, archetypal.

The wind is experienced as a tangible manifestation of the awesome power of the
universe, as “God’s breath” or nature’s exhalations.

The words which one uses to describe the psychedelic experience depend upon the
investigator’s cultural background, his language repertoire, his literary breadth.

The world appears to be a beautiful and safe place and the zest for life is distinctly
increased.

The world becomes more mysterious, being immeasurably grander, vaster, more complex
and indeed, more imaginative than we had supposed.

The world is experienced as a physical extension of oneself, or one’s own nervous
system.

The world is not static and dead. It’s now a shimmering dance of living energy. All
solidarity is gone.

The world will now be perceived in all its unimaginable beauty, all the blazing intensity
of its “thereness.”

There are no specific psychological reactions to these drugs; there are, rather, various
reactions.

There can be direct, aesthetic acquaintance with the world as beauty or with the world’s
unity.

There can be the experience of merging with another person in a state of dual unity
(without losing sense of identity).

There exist hardly any perceptual, emotional or psychosomatic manifestations that have
not been observed and described as part of the LSD experience.

There is a general enhancement and intensification of consciousness and at the same
time, an extension and transfiguration.

There is an intensification of what I may call intrinsic significance. That which is seen,
either with the eyes closed or open is felt to have a profound meaning.

There is an unfixing of perceptual constants and the subject’s habitual reality ties are
suspended.

There is generally a dramatic redefinition of his or her concepts regarding the dimensions
of the human mind, the basic characteristics of consciousness and the nature of man.

There is no doubt that psychedelic drugs produce experiences regarded by those who
undergo them as religious in the fullest sense.

There is so much mystery in a psychedelic day, so much happens in the person who is
having the experience that he cannot express.

There is time to perceive every detail of the movement with infinitely greater richness.
Normally we do not so much look at things as overlook them.

There’s a real difference in the way you look at the world if you’ve had the experience of
tripping.

There’s a whole body of literature on the phenomenon of people temporarily possessing
supernatural powers, particularly tribal peoples who use psychedelic substances.

There’s only personal experience, firsthand experience which counts. I always tell people
to disbelieve any hearsay.

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

These chemicals will inevitably revolutionize our procedures of education, child rearing
and social behavior.

These drugs are useful in producing valuable personality changes in individuals with
serious personality disorders.

These drugs can elicit material normally in the subconscious that can be of considerable
value to virtually all schools of psychotherapeutic thought.

These drugs characteristically generate heightened responsiveness to feelings and a sense
of closeness to other people.

These drugs, handled correctly, appear to offer incomparable opportunities for studying
religious experience.

These drugs have the unique effect on the human psyche of bringing into awareness
forms of consciousness that are usually hidden or unconscious.

These drugs, if properly used, could be the source of energy that is to transform the
human mind.

These drugs intensify experience, transfiguring the way we normally regard objective
reality.

These drugs produce ecstatic states from which new learning, a shift in values, or
subsequent behavior change purportedly ensue.

These drugs provide their users with direct intimations of attractive alternative realities
which might normally never be encountered.

These experiences are often accompanied by intense sensations of a potent spiritual force
that floods the body.

These experiences are such expansive openers, and lead into so many dimensions of
understanding and experience.

These experiences changed my assumptions about how and why we become who we are,
and why we behave the way we do.

These experiences occur in a complex psychological, philosophical, mythological and
spiritual context.

These experiences seem more direct and immediate, more real than ordinary reality.

It remains as valuable to me now as it was then.

These heroic figures of man’s visionary experience have appeared in the religious art of
every culture. (The heroic figures are seen with the eyes closed.)

These living gems, glowing with internal radiance, encrust the buildings, mountains,
banks of rivers, trees. (eyes closed)

These New Worlds of a subconscious can never be colonized, are seldom thoroughly
explored and in many cases await discovery.

These people need real love and understanding, the love and understanding which seems
to come through LSD.

These plants and drugs as expanders of human consciousness could revolutionize
psychology and philosophy.

These remarkable medicines temporarily dissolve our defenses and permit us to see what
separative consciousness normally ignores, the world as an interrelated whole.

These sacraments are fantastic privileges. It is an undescribable grace, an undescribable
privilege.

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

These visionary experiences have a primary numinous quality, as C. G. Jung called it;
they were the original sources of all great religions.

They are at once unique and eternal, men and women but also gods and goddesses. For
now that we have time to look at each other we become timeless.

They describe the state as definitely not blank or empty but as filled with intense,
profound, vivid perception which they regard as the ultimate goal of the mystic path.

They felt that the experience had improved their capacity to deal with their problems and
had enormously stimulated their psychological growth.

They had transcendent experiences that have made them aware of previously hidden
areas of existence.

They may experience eternity and infinity within a period lasting seconds or minutes of
actual clocktime.

They might begin to see the whole life process as a miraculous cosmic drama that is
carefully orchestrated by a divine cosmic force.

They opened the gateway to that level of Divine love and grace that is the source of true
healing and the freeing of our ultimate capacities.

They said it was the most fantastic experience they ever had in their life. It changed their
whole life.

They would return through psychedelic drugs to a lost state of innocence, a time before
time, when creation was fresh and the earth a paradise.

This ability of the individual to examine memories, unburdened by feeling of guilt or
anxiety, often leads him to believe that at last he is seeing himself as he really is.

This can lead to profound and ecstatic realization of the true nature of ourself and the
cosmos.

This experience has considerably changed my view of reality. These are new experiences
of the world I want to explore.

This experience of death-rebirth is usually so realistic that it is perceived as experientially
identical with actual biological demise.

This intensified connection through LSD at the advent of our relationship resulted in a
permanent bond.

This is a matter of immediate experience, a psychological fact which has been recorded
in folklore and the religious literature of every age and country.

This is perfection. Everything, everything is so beautiful. I’ve never heard music like this
before.

This is the central experience Jesus sought for all people. This is the heart of Jesus’ life
and teaching, although it is now largely absent from the institutional Christian churches.

This is what Jesus taught and demonstrated—cosmic consciousness, the direct experience
of divinity dwelling in us and all things.

This most intimate of relationships of the self with another, sex, would naturally become
one of the chief spheres of spiritual insight and growth.

This newness of everything—it is as though the world had just dawned—overwhelms
you and melts you with its beauty.

This other earth, where everything is brighter and clearer and more real than in our world
is, he says, a vision of blessed beholders. (That was Socrates, Plato’s mentor.)

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

This preternaturally significant light shines on or shines out of a landscape of such
surpassing beauty (eyes closed).

This profound experience may constitute a new and powerful means for facilitating
profound therapeutic changes and for facilitating reconstructuring of the personality.

This “very high sort of seeing” is the heart and veritable core of the psychedelic
experience.

Those “mythicizing” the wind experience feel “cleansed” and “inwardly purified” by the
wind’s “clean sweeps” through them.

Those who have approached the experience with a receptive mind have often found
meaning and liberation.

Those who have experienced most keenly their union with God are intensely real and
unique personalities.

Through music, I am aware of an occasional surge of inspiration and insight that has
become a dynamic element in whatever creativity I may possess.

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

Time is drastically altered. Centuries seem to go by and the second hand on the watch
appears to stand still.

Time may seem to slow down enormously as more and more passing events claim the
attention, or it may stop entirely, giving place to an eternal present.

To develop graceful, fulfilling ways of living a more serene, beautiful and creative life,
psychedelics will help to point the way.

To seek to condense any of my experiences into words is to distort them, rendering them
finite and impure.

To study drugs, one has to do it. It’s possible to be scientific about data of the internal
world.

To those who rode on the crest of the wave of the psychedelic years, the transformation
of society seemed only an arm’s length away.

To use music as a catalyst for deep self-exploration and experiential work, it is necessary
to learn a new way of listening to music and relating to it that is alien to our culture.

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

Transpersonal experiences involve a strong, personal and conscious relation to reality that
goes far beyond the present scientific framework.

Transpersonal experiences that involve transcendence of spacial barriers suggest that
boundaries between the individual and the rest of the universe are not fixed and absolute.

Under LSD, the most devastating of buried memories have been recovered and within a
single session relived and resolved.

Under LSD you come to know that God is not apart and aside from Man but that God is
within Man and that Man is within God.

Under special circumstances, it is possible to identify experientially with anything in the
universe, including the entire cosmos itself.

Under the drug, they claim to feel the glory of God and the spiritual glory of each other—
and all of mankind.

Unquestionably this drug is very useful to the artist, activating trains of association that
would otherwise be inaccessible.

Until you have experienced the effects of the drug, you cannot know how narrow your
previous ideas about the world were.

Used therapeutically, a psychedelic drug might help to resolve a neurosis or other
psychological problem and therefore release creativity.

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

Various archetypal images of deities can accompany the birth experience, as individual
visions or in the context of entire mythological sequences. (eyes closed)

Visiting new realms within yourself, you are suddenly imbued with creative ideas and
new insights and find that your potential seems limitless.

Visual impressions are greatly intensified and the eye recovers some of the perceptual
innocence of childhood.

Visual perceptions are greatly intensified and the eye recovers some of the perceptual
innocence of childhood.

We believe the experience to be of enormous potential value, both to the subject and
researcher.

We encounter celestial realms and Gardens of Paradise from the mythologies of a variety
of the world’s cultures. (eyes closed)

What is happening to Martin’s shirt? It begins to glow. The leaves and peacocks are
moving. Yes the design is changing. (the “flowing shirt”)

What is happening to you seems to be freighted with significance, beside which the
humdum events of everyday are trivial.

What you learn from LSD can make you a better person—more alive, awake, intelligent,
loving, creative.

When a voyager is clearly in a profound ego-transcendent ecstasy, the wise guide will
remain silent.

When experiences are associated with a sense of personal memory from one’s spiritual
past rather than biological history, we can refer to them as past incarnation experiences.

When one turns his attention inward, he discovers a world of ‘inner space’ which is as
vast and as real as the external, physical world.

When subjects share ego-shattering experiences together, they develop strong, positive,
emotional bonds.

When the eyes are closed, fantastically vivid images appear: first geometric forms and
then landscapes, buildings, animate beings, and symbolic objects.

When the eyes are open, the environment appears to be in flux or in rhythmic undulating
movement.

When the psychic energy first begins to be felt, there is a growing sensation within of
thousands of delicate threads moving about the body.

When the terror comes, remember that you’re the director and author of this heroic
drama. (It’s the ego that can feel terror.)

When the voyager is clearly in a profound ego-transcendent ecstasy, the wise guide will
remain silent.

When we have experiences of this kind, we feel that we have encountered dimensions of
reality that belong to a superior order.

When we step into nonordinary reality even for a moment, we experience things directly,
see inner contents rather than external forms.

Where the patient suffered paralysis in one arm, LSD was finally tried as a last resort.
The arm became normal again.

Whether or not objective tests show a “real” increase in sensory acuity seems laughingly
irrelevant to the drug user.

While it can give an ecstatic experience, at the same time, it lends an extraordinary
intensity of attention.

While one is under the drug, one has penetrating insights into the people around one and
also into one’s own life.

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.

With adequate support and guidance, such episodes can prove to be very beneficial for
the dying individual.

With his consciousness enlarged out of bounds, he may, if all goes well, find out that he
no longer feels anxiety about past or future.

With its internal, invisible, indescribable phenomena, the psychedelic experience is
incomprehensible to a rational, achievement-oriented, conformist philosophy.

With LSD, technology has produced a chemical which catalyzes a consciousness which
finds the entire civilization leading up to that pill absurd.

With LSD, we had found the means with which our Western kind of civilization could be
renewed by the discovery of new mysteries.

With psychedelics, a new energy—a potent psychic energy—has entered the world stage
and must be reckoned with.

With the decrease in the power of words in the psychedelic experience, the immediate
sensory life gains in range of significance as well as strength.

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.

Within consciousness, more simultaneous mental processes operate without any one of
them interfering with the awareness of the others.

Words can’t describe this. I feel an awe and wonder that such a feeling could have
occurred to me.

You are going to face blazing illumination of the divinity. It’s going to change you
completely. You’re never going to be the same. Do you want to do it?

You are tuned into areas of the nervous system which are inaccessible to routine
perception.

You become aware deep within you of ultimate communion, experiential awareness of
communion.

You can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the
certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you.

You feel as if you are looking down at what was once your former life and you laugh
inwardly at the little things that once seemed so important.

You gaze into the big picture, thinking about the cosmos and know everything’s
connected.

You get a sense of the larger picture of things. People who don’t trip are too tied up in
themselves to see anything beyond their own petty, little troubles and problems.

You get from an LSD experience only what you bring to it and what you’re ready to take
away from it.

You go mad about sunsets because sunsets remind you of what’s always been going on,
whether you knew it or not, inside your skull and outside space and time.

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

You hear music way off in a cavern and suddenly it is you who is way down in the
cavern.

You may feel awed, filled with wonder by the scope, immensity and quality of your
experiences.

You must go out of your mind to reach that creative quietude which is open to enriched
experience.

You must let go of the clutching personal self, in order to let this deeper self within you,
which you interfere with, come through and perform its miracles.

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.”

You will discover the key to enhanced intelligence within the chemistry of the nervous
system.

Your emotions are profoundly affected and you feel that an indissoluble bond unites you
with the others.

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.

You’re suddenly flooded by lights and colors and sensations and images, and also getting
simultaneous messages from different parts of your body.

You’ve climbed inside Einstein’s formula, penetrating to the ultimate nature of matter
and you’re pulsing in harmony with its primal cosmic beat.

You’ve never heard music in your life, really, you’ll see that you’ve never really heard
music in your life until you’ve heard it on the trip.

A child sees his first bright red ball, tastes his first piece of chocolate, smells his first
flower, touches his first piece of velvet and hears his first few notes of music in a manner
not unlike that of the individual under LSD.

A good experience with the drugs heightens and intensifies all experience and just as one
can enjoy music and art during the experience with a new and deeper appreciation, so one
can do the same with sex—it can be a beautiful experience under the drug.

A know-it-all attitude, that of a “big shot” will usually cause suffering. That’s what
peyote can do to a man who thinks he knows everything. Peyote will bend him down and
turn him inside out.

A number of architects have added to the extensive evidence for the drug’s use as an
instrument for enhancing perception, for training in visualization. They report that visual
and auditory acuity are revolutionized.

A person in this state suddenly sees that everything in the universe is a manifestation and
expression of the same creative cosmic energy and that separation and boundaries are
illusory.

A professional engineer-physicist who was skeptical about the enhancement of creativity
through LSD was surprised by the “intensity of concentration, the forcefulness and
exuberance” with which he could work.

A sexual partner may change in age or appearance, take on the features of mythical and
historical figures, and sometimes come to represent all men, all women, or natural
features like landscapes, rivers and oceans.

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.

A typical myth of the heroic journey begins when the ordinary life of the protagonist is
suddenly interrupted by the intrusion of elements that are magical in nature and belong to
another order of reality. (A typical path?)

Aesthetic responses are greatly heightened, colors seem more intense, textures richer,
contours sharpened, music more emotionally profound, the spatial arrangements of
objects more meaningful.

After one sits gazing at a candle and feels that the flame and the hand and the music and
water running in the bathroom are the same “stuff” and after one experiences oneness
with all men, then one begins to understand the word “ineffable.”

All colors are intensified to a pitch far beyond anything seen in the normal state and at
the same time, the mind’s capacity for recognizing fine distinctions of tone and hue is
notably heightened.

All living organisms are throbbing together. One is joyfully aware of the 2 billion year
old electric sexual dance. One is at last divested of robot clothes and limbs and undulates
in the endless chain of living forms.

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.

All questions about the mysteries of life seem to be answered and there is no need to go
any further. Communicating this to those who have not has this experience is neither
possible nor necessary. It becomes self-validating and deeply personal experience.

Amorphous surfaces, textures of objects and spots on the floor or walls can be seen as
fantastic animals, grotesque faces or exotic scenery. The optical side of aesthetic LSD
sessions can be so overwhelming and rich that it has been described as “orgies of vision.”

An enormous amount of energy from every fiber of your body is released under LSD,
most especially including sexual energy. There is no question that LSD is the most
powerful aphrodisiac ever discovered by man.

An individual having a peak experience feels a sense of overcoming the usual divisions
and fragmentations of the body and mind and reaching a state of complete inner unity and
wholeness; this usually feels very healing and beneficial.

Ancestral experiences are multiform and complex. Sometimes, they involve actual
reliving of short episodes from the life of one’s ancestors or whole sequences that are
specific and rich in concrete detail. (eyes closed)

Any and every shape—human, divine, diabolical, heroic, evil, animal, thing—which the
human brain conjures up or the past life recalls, can present itself to consciousness:
shapes and forms and sounds whirling by endlessly.

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)

Artistic and literary folks respond ecstatically and wisely to drug experience. They tell us
this is what they have been looking for: new, intense, direct confrontation with the world
about them.

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.

As you returned from these experiences of pure contentless energy, the world of images
and categories in which we live our normal lives did indeed seem like a “plastic doll
world.”

At times, a subject may feel like laughing or crying without being able to explain why his
is experiencing these feelings. (There is no need to explain and the person is way beyond
explaining in words anyway.)

Awareness of all normal sense impressions and the empirical ego seems to die or fade
away while pure consciousness of what is being experienced paradoxically remains and
seems to expand as a vast inner world is encountered.

Because of their clarity and vividness, transcendent states frequently feel more real than
“ordinary” reality; people often compare the discovery of these realms to awakening from
a dream, removing opaque veils, or opening the doors of perception.

Before beginning the program there were issues in the marriage that she could not
acknowledge or break through. But the psychedelic experiences permitted breaking
through them, even exploding through.

Before taking LSD, I never stayed in a state of sexual ecstasy for hours on end, but I have
done this under LSD. It heightens all of your senses and it means that you’re living the
sexual experience totally. Each caress or kiss is timeless.

Blake said that “gratitude is heaven itself”-a phrase I was unable to understand before
taking LSD, but which now seems luminously comprehensible. (That was Aldous
Huxley. One can say that LSD is heavenly gratifying.)

Blake saw visionary landscapes “articulated beyond all that the mortal and perishing
nature can produce” and “infinitely more perfect and minutely organized than anything
seen by the mortal eye.”

Blissfully accept the wonders of your own creativity. (The visions you get are your
creation even if you don’t know how you did it or what it means. Potentially, we all have
limitless creativity. Ego blocks us off from our creativity just as it robs us of our lives.)

Bodily contact is probably the most effective method of softening hardened surfaces.
Your blood begins to flow into the other person’s body. You both drift down the capillary
river.

Body movements (dances which are spiritual) can get you grooving with your internal
energies. The movements can be in tune with your ancient cellular-mythic patterns and
the dance itself can be a wild ecstatic turn-on spiritual event.

Certain drugs can produce in otherwise normal individuals deep mystical and religious
states. Matrices for such experiences exist in the unconscious as a normal constituent of
the human personality.

Certainly my sense of touch is heightened…My hearing appears to be more sensitive, and
I am able to take in without disturbance or distraction many different sound impressions
at the same time

clear consciousness, seeing the world as it is—Such awareness is a lively attention to
one’s direct experience, to the world as immediately sensed, so as not to be misled by
names and labels.

Closed-eye fantasies in this world seem sometimes to be revelations of the secret
workings of the brain, of the associative and patterning process, the ordering systems
which carry out all our sensing and thinking.

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 of modern art,
such as impressionism, cubism, surrealism or superrealism.

Consciousness changes. Your nerve endings, neural cameras, cellular memory banks,
protein structures become broadcasting instruments for the timeless humming message of
God located inside your body.

cosmological mysticism—It’s an ecstatic experience of Nature and Process which leaves
the subject with a sense of having acquired important insight into, as well as identity
with, the fundamental nature and structure of the universe.

Could the drugs help us who are now located between the animals and the angels, to one
day leave our larvel state and become butterflies? With all my heart I wanted to believe in
our potential to evolve, to emerge from our brutish past.

Creative or revelatory experiences involve a temporary and voluntary breaking up of
perceptual constancies, permitting one “to shake free from dead literalism, to re-combine
the old familiar elements into, new, imaginative, amusing, or beautiful patterns”.

Dances which are spiritual, body movements can get you grooving with your internal
energies. The movements can be in tune with your ancient cellular-mythic patterns and
the dance itself can be a wild ecstatic turn-on spiritual event.

Dr. David Smith, of the Haight Street Free Clinic said, “Acid lowers your powers of
discrimination until everything seems important.” When I heard that, I said,

“No. Acid RAISES your powers of INTEGRATION until everything IS important.”

Dominating this ecstatic state is the feeling of intense love. You are a joyful part of all
life. The memory of former delusions of self-hood and differentiation invokes exultant
laughter.

During some spiritual states, one sees the ordinary environment as a glorious creation of
divine energy, filled with mystery; everything within it appears to be part of an exquisite
inter-connected web.

During the psychedelic session the subject’s nervous system is in a state of disorganized
flux closely analogous to that of infancy. (This isn’t infantile. It’s very high level of
maturity.)

Ecstatic and unitive feelings of belonging, infuse the individual with strength, zest, and
optimism, and enhance self-esteem. They cleanse the senses and open them for the
perception of the experience of fundamental oneness with the rest of creation.

Ecstatic and unitive feelings of belonging, infuse the individual with strength, zest, and
optimism, and enhance self-esteem. They cleanse the senses and open them for the
perception of the extraordinary richness, beauty, and mystery of existence.

Encounters with the divine regions are extremely healing. Reaching them, one often
feels positive emotions such as ecstasy, rapture, joy, gratitude, love and bliss, which can
quickly relieve or dissolve negative states such as depression and anger.

Every cell in your body is singing its song of freedom—the entire biological universe is
in harmony, liberated from the censorship and control of you and your restricted
ambitions.

Every person who has a genuine mystical experience reports that he sees the unity, reality
and infinity in space and time of all creation. He feels joy, peace and a sense of the
sacred. He knows that his experience is true.

Every woman has built into her cells and tissues the longing for a hero, sage-mythic
male, to open up and share her own divinity. But casual sexual encounters do not satisfy
this deep longing.

For many people, one or two psychedelic experiences can accomplish the goals of a long
and successful psychotherapy, a deep understanding and game-free collaboration between
participants, plus insight.

For many professional artists as well as laymen, the LSD session represented a profound
aesthetic experience that gave them a new understanding of modern art movements and
art in general.

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.

For most people, this discovery is a glorious surprise. Mystics come back raving about
higher levels of perception where one sees realities a hundred times more beautiful and
meaningful than the familiar scripts of normal life.

For the perception of art, particularly music, it is not infrequent that as a result of
psychedelic experiences, nonmusical persons develop vivid interest in music and others
discover entirely new ways of experiencing it.

Gem-like objects, bright, self-luminous, glowing with preternatural color and
significance, exist in the mind’s Antipodes, are seen by visionaries and are felt by all who
see them to be of enormous significance.

Hallucinogenic drugs give people who lack the gift of spontaneous perception the
potential to experience this extraordinary state of consciousness and thereby to attain
insight into the spiritual world.

Hallucinogens could lead to deepened understanding of religious and mystical content
and to a new and fresh experience of the great works of art. (Actually, with LSD,
whatever you look at becomes a great work of art, even if it’s dust or garbage.)

He is, as it were, embarked upon a voyage of discovery which is only completed by his
return to the normal world, to which he comes back with insights different from those of
the inhabitants who never embarked on such a voyage.

He knows himself to be one with all, for he is no longer separating himself from the
universe be seeking something from it. (He realizes that he can’t separate himself from
the universe because he IS the universe.)

He may find that all life and its secrets, all mankind and himself, are concentrated in the
ear of corn he is holding in his hand, and he may contemplate it and stare at it for long
moments, even hours.

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.

He or she typically feels freed from anxiety, depression and guilt, purged and
unburdened. This is associated with a flood of positive emotions toward oneself, other
people and existence in general.

He senses the incredible emptiness that lies within the atoms, where the electronic planets
circle their proton suns at distances which are comparably as vast as those in the solar
system itself.

High dosages and internalization of the process lead to greater depth, intensity and
spontaneous flow of the experience; this results in a better chance for a positive
breakthrough.

Houston Smith ran psilocybin sessions for MIT undergraduates and graduate students as
laboratory exercises for his seminars on mysticism. How elegant and civilized! This was
exactly how we thought education should operate. (That was Timothy Leary.)

I am looking at what I ordinarily call a confusion of bushes, a tangle of plants and weeds
with branches and leaves going every which way. But now I see that what is confusing is
not the bushes by my clumsy method of thinking. Every twig is in its proper place.

I believed the time would come when each person would be in continuous contact with
the beauty, the great capacity for love, the musical and artistic talents, the spiritual
richness and all the other wealth which now lay untapped deep within himself.

I can gain insight into the nature of consciousness or experience, the meaning and
essence of being and the experience of harmony, the mystery of life, communion and
sharing, the delight of ecstasy. (Anyone can gain that insight. LSD is the best way.)

I don’t know if I can say anything more about this experience. I realized at the time that I
had made it perfectly clear in my books and was only amazed that I didn’t always
understand what I was saying. (That was Alan Watts.)

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 have a warm inner feeling of great creativity. I feel that I am outstripping Michelangelo
and da Vinci combined. (No artist can come close to what you see with your eyes closed
during an LSD trip. LSD-inspired artists try to recapture it but can’t do it.)

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 learned that the brain is an underutilized computer, that normal consciousness is one
drop in an ocean of intelligence, that consciousness and intelligence can be systematically
expanded, that the brain can be reprogrammed.

I’m eternally grateful for this experience. LSD changed my life. I’ve lived more, felt
more, enjoyed life more in the last dew years than I had dreamed possible. LSD gave me
that treasure. (That was actor Cary Grant.)

Ideation, images, body sensation and emotion are fused in what is felt as an absolutely
purposeful process culminating in a sense of total understanding, self-transformation,
religious enlightenment and possibly mystical union.

If the therapist views the experience as a psychosis, he unwittingly helps the patient
develop a psychosis, not through suggestion alone, but also because he cannot offer the
patient a framework to handle the new experience.

Important emotional experiences from the past are relived with all the physiological,
sensory, emotional and ideational characteristics of the original reaction and frequently
with a detailed, realistic representation of the setting. (eyes closed)

Important emotional, psychosomatic or interpersonal difficulties that have plagued the
client for many years and have resisted conventional therapeutic approaches can
sometimes disappear after a full experience of a transpersonal nature.

In altered states of consciousness this new perception of the world becomes dominant and
compelling. It completely overrides the everyday illusion of Newtonian reality, where we
seem to be “skin-encapsulated egos” existing in a world of separate beings and objects.

In deep experiential psychotherapy, biographical material is not remembered or
reconstructed; it can actually be fully relived. This involves not only emotions, but also
physical sensations, visual perceptions, as well as vivid data from all the other senses.

In experiences that have transpersonal dimensions, the individual has the sense of having
transcended his or her own identity and ego boundaries as they are defined in the
ordinary state of consciousness.

In many cases the subject discards the spectator role which he had assumed for the
historical tour and finds himself taken up into a seeming identification with the stages of
evolutionary process. (eyes closed)

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.

In non-ordinary states, archetypes may appear in forms that we perceive through inner
sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, or the virtually palpable sense of a presence. (eyes
closed)

In such states, the subject has a revelation of the significance and interrelationships of
many dimensions of life; he becomes aware of many levels of meaning simultaneously
and “understands” the totality of existence.

In the paradisal vision, the individual has a different sense of identity. It is not merely
itself, bounded rigidly by its own skin. Its identity is also the whole field, which, in
mystical terms, is to say that it is one with the universe.

In the spiritual and mystical literature of all ages, one can find numerous descriptions of
spectacular physiological changes in the body or seemingly impossible achievements of
people in various extraordinary states of mind.

In this state of mind, it becomes clear that the ultimate measure of one’s living standard is
the quality of one’s life experience and not the quantity of achievements of material
possessions.

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.)

In this type of experience, the subject has the feeling of encountering the Creator of the
universe or even of full identification with him. This can be accompanied by
extraordinary insights into the process of creation.

Individuals can feel that prior to the experience, they had never really seem colors,
smelled the variety of fragrances and odors, tested the infinite nuances of food, or
experienced the sensual potential of their bodies.

Individuals experience a new sense of empathy and warmth toward other people and
perceive the world as a fascinating and basically friendly place. Everything in the
universe appears perfect, exactly as it should be.

Individuals found a new ability to understand universal religious symbols, the metaphors
of holy scriptures and other sacred texts and the language of certain complicated
philosophical essays.

Individuals who experienced the phenomenon of ego death followed by the experience of
rebirth and cosmic unity seemed to show radical and lasting changes in their fundamental
understanding of human nature and its relation to the universe.

Individuals who transcend the boundaries of ordinary reality and embark on the spiritual
journey, typically experience a dramatic change in their concepts of the dimensions of
existence.

Insofar as performance has lagged because of inability to perceive the solutions to
specific problems, LSD can actually increase creative activity. (With LSD, the person can
“perceive the solutions” that they couldn’t otherwise.)

Instead of straining toward a future which one hopes to be different, the mind opens and
admits a whole experience in which and by which the problem of what is the “good” of
life is answered.

Internal unity occurs when consciousness merges with this “ground of being,” beyond all
empirical distinctions. Although awareness of one’s empirical ego has ceased, one does
not become unconscious.

It is a direct and immediate awareness that we are dealing with something that has a
divine nature and is radically different from our ordinary perception of the everyday
world.

It is an ecstatic state, characterized by the loss of boundaries between the subject and the
objective world, with ensuing feelings of unity with other people, nature, the entire
Universe, and God.

It is an illuminating insight into the very essence of existence. The experient does not
gain rational understanding of the cosmic process, but reaches instant comprehension by
losing his or her separate identity and literally becoming the process.

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)

It has mediated a profound spiritual opening in atheists, skeptics and materialistically
oriented scientists, facilitated far-reaching emotional liberation and caused radical
changes in value systems and the basic life style. (“It” is LSD.)

It is a cosmic consciousness into which we enter as our normal consciousness expands,
and we become aware of the transcendent dimensions of humanity beyond space and
time.

It is a direct and immediate awareness that we are dealing with something that has a
divine nature and is radically different from out ordinary perception of the everyday
world.

It is an ecstatic experience of Nature and Process which leaves the subject with a sense of
having acquired important insight into, as well as identity with, the fundamental nature
and structure of the universe.

It is an ecstatic state, characterized by the loss of boundaries between the subject and the
objective world, with ensuing feelings of unity with other people, nature, the entire
Universe and God.

It is an illuminating insight into the very essence of existence. The experient does not
gain rational understanding of the cosmic process, but reaches instant comprehension by
losing his or her separate identity and literally becoming the process.

It is important to prepare the client for the fact that the dimensions of the experience will
probably be beyond anything that he or she has ever faced before or could even imagine
in the usual state of consciousness.

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)

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.

It may be that LSD not only changes the pre-conditions of death, but alters the transition
as well. The question is, does it do anything else? No one can answer, for in this realm,
there is not a single expert.

It opens access to most extraordinary realms of experience, offers remarkable
philosophical and spiritual revelations and mediates fascinating insights into the cosmic
processes by which reality itself is created.

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.

It seems that everyone who experientially reaches these levels develop convincing
insights into the total relevance of the spiritual dimension to the universal scheme of
things.

It was a magical time. Visions of utopia flooded my brain. The pictures the psychedelics
beamed into my mind opened me up to the world in new ways and showed me what is
possible when love, trust and faith replace envy, possessiveness and violence.

It was as though for all of your normal waking life you have been caught in a still
photograph, in an awkward, stereotyped posture. Suddenly, the show comes alive,
balloons out to several dimensions and becomes irradiated with color and energy.

It’s an ecstatic experience of Nature and Process which leaves the subject with a sense of
having acquired important insight into, as well as identity with, the fundamental nature
and structure of the universe.

It’s an utterly amazing, fascinating state of finding yourself a pleasant part of an endless
vista of color that is soft and gentle and yielding and all-absorbing. Utterly extraordinary,
most extraordinary.

It’s as though for all of your normal waking life you have been caught in a still
photograph, in an awkward, stereotyped posture. Suddenly, the show comes alive,
balloons out to several dimensions and becomes irradiated with color and energy.

Leary felt that LSD’s significance lay beyond all social analysis and all psychological
categories and since the drug experience was completely unique, a new model was
needed, a new structure.

Limiting structures fall away, the infinite process becomes conscious of itself, the illusion
of separateness dissolves, and the original wholeness is restored, the forgotten source
remembered.

Long “forgotten” memories may become accessible and meaningful, with the subject
“going back in time” to very vividly experience the emotional as well as the other
contents of important forgotten or repressed events.

Looking at drapes, a face appears in their design. As you go on looking, the area
surrounding the face begins, if you don’t force the process, to form a logical pattern; and
the longer you look, the more the whole scene becomes as clear as a photograph.

LSD can catalyze and precipitate a sudden dramatic transformation. On occasion, one
LSD experience has drastically changed an individual’s world-view, life philosophy and
entire way of being.

LSD patients who had experienced profound feelings of cosmic unity frequently
developed a negative attitude toward the states of mind produced by intoxication with
alcohol and narcotics.

LSD produces an upsurge of unconscious material into consciousness and repressed
memories are relived with remarkable clarity—with therapeutically beneficial
consequences.

LSD subjects may scream and produce inarticulate sounds, toss and turn, act up, kneel,
put their head in one’s lap, pace around the room or even roll on the floor (and it’s all
right).

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.

LSD was a means of exciting consciousness and provoking visions, a kind of hurried
magic enabling youthful seekers to recapture the resonance of life that society had
denied.

LSD will change biochemical balances inside our nervous system and you can experience
directly some of the things which we externally view through the lenses of the
microscope.

Male-female union is a natural biological and psychological vehicle for transcendent
experiences, a merging which can be more complete and intertwined than they had ever
dreamed possible.

Many leave behind all feelings of being victimized by their everyday trials and
tribulations, or even by such global problems as economic strife and war, knowing that
on another level they are active participants in the creation of a universal drama.

Many observations from psychedelic research indicate that LSD can be of extraordinary
value to various scientific disciplines that are traditionally considered domains of reason
and logic.

Many people describe passing through a dark tunnel or funnel that brings them to a light
of supernatural brilliance and beauty, a divine being that radiates infinite, all-embracing
love, forgiveness and acceptance.

Many transpersonal experiences involve events from the microcosm and macrocosm—
realms that cannot be directly reached by human senses—or from periods that historically
precede the origin of the solar system.

Marvels of creativity occur as this material emerges. It is an entirely uncontrolled self-
creativity: perfect art, without any artist. (The eyes are closed and you see these fantastic
images which you are somehow creating without knowing how it’s possible.)

Mathematicians and physicists reported remarkable experiential insights into various
problems related to astronomy and astrophysics that can be expressed in mathematical
equations, but cannot be fully intuited in the ordinary state of consciousness.

Millions already know that beyond the fears of the state-sanctioned psychiatry and
governmental policy, under the right set and setting psychedelics can lead to joy,
mystery, rebirth and realization beyond belief.

Most of the LSD experience takes place in a nonverbal region of the mind and deliberate
overintellectualization stands in the way of the free flow of the subject’s stream of
consciousness.

Most people, it seems, who relax and “let go” have the universal experience of
discovering a single Reality, a oneness with all things, an identity with God, with the
Supreme Being, with the Higher Self, or whatever you wish to call it.

Most people who experience these inner domains recognize them as part of the
boundless, expansive essence of each human being, which is usually obscured by the
problems and concerns of daily life.

Music seems to serve several important functions in the context of psychedelic therapy. It
tends to evoke a variety of powerful emotions and facilitates deeper involvement in the
psychedelic process.

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.)

New insights into a new, transfigured world of givenness, new combinations of thought
and fantasy—the stream of novelty pours through the world in a torrent, whose every
drop is charged with meaning.

No one who has studied the matter closely doubts the reality of psychedelic peak
experiences, the capacity of psychedelic drugs to open up the unconscious, or the
conviction of some who take them that they are gaining insight.

Nonordinary states of consciousness make it possible for unconscious material with
strong emotional charge to emerge into consciousness. This process is an expression of a
powerful spontaneous healing potential and should be supported.

Not infrequently, unsophisticated subjects have reported stories that strongly resemble
ancient mythological themes from Mesopotamia, India, Egypt, Greece and other
countries.

Observations from LSD research clearly indicate that in various states of mind, the bliss
of paradise, and ecstatic raptures of salvation can be experienced with a degree of
vividness and a sense of reality that surpass our everyday perceptions.

Occasionally, the subjects can lose awareness of the actual physical setting altogether and
their consciousness moves into experiential realms and subjective realities that appear to
be entirely independent of the material world.

Odd as it may sound, the ego finds that its own center and nature is beyond itself. The
more deeply I go into myself, the more I am not myself and yet this is the very heart of
me.

Oftentimes, those who underwent psychedelic therapy reported dramatic personality
changes involving not only the relief of neurotic symptoms but a wholesale revamping of
value systems, religious and philosophical beliefs, and basic lifestyle.

On the verbal level, the “psychedelic” conversation may include a mutual awareness of
nuances rarely encountered in ordinary conversation, multiple meanings and shades of
meanings, all attached to a single word or brief phrase.

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.

One of the most difficult things that a psychedelic therapist had to learn was how to do
nothing, how to become transparent, yet remain attentive enough to respond at the critical
moment.

One of the most important changes most people experience through non-ordinary states
of consciousness involves a new appreciation for the role of spirituality in the universal
scheme of things.

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

One theme that is particularly powerful and recurs with remarkable frequency in the
mythology of the heroic journey is the encounter with death and subsequent rebirth. (eyes
closed)

One transcends the dichotomy set up in one’s mind between “inner” and “outer” worlds
of experience and sees reality only from the standpoint of the mystical vision and many
experience life beyond all dualities.

One transcends the ordinary distinction between subject and object and experiences a
state of ecstatic union with humanity, nature, the cosmos, and God. This is associated
with strong feelings of joy, bliss, serenity, and peace.

Past-incarnation experiences consist of fragments of scenes, individual events or entire,
rather clear and logical sequences occurring at another place and time in history. (eyes
closed)

Past-incarnation sequences. The subject experiences a sequence set in another country
and/or a different historical period, usually with deep emotional involvement and
dramatic abreaction (eyes closed).

People perceive the mystical realms to be pervaded by a sacred essence and an
unfathomable beauty, and they frequently see visions of precious gold, sparkling jewels,
unearthly radiance, luminescence and brilliant light. (eyes closed)

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.

Perhaps they reveal the “normal” state. To many people, the states of awareness that are
experienced are not “abnormal,” but rather, familiar territory that had been lost in some
primal amnesia. These states are the human heritage.

Peyote is not a plaything; Peyotists say that “if you play around with Peyote, it will turn
around and start playing with you.” The Native American Church is not for the curiosity
seeker: it is a serious religion.

Peyote produces self-transcendence in two ways—it introduces the taker into the Other
World of visionary experience and it gives them a sense of solidarity with his fellow
worshippers, with human beings at large and with the divine nature of things.

Phenomena perceivable directly by our senses appear on the same experiential continuum
with those that ordinarily require such complicated technology as microscopes and
telescopes to be accessible to human senses.

Profound transpersonal experiences move the individual out of the narrow framework of
identification with the body-ego and lend to feeling and thinking in terms of a cosmic
identity and unity with all creation.

Psychedelic drugs offer new perspectives on every aspect of human thinking, human
behavior, human searching. There is no issue in psychology, physics, biology and
theology which cannot make use of these microscopes of consciousness.

Psychedelic drugs produces reactions which are not conventional. Ecstatic behaviors are
not conventional and “normal” and it follows that they must be abnormal, psychotic,
crazy.

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.

Psychedelics can be healing tools. I’ve seen a lot of healing, not just of mental problems
but of physical problems, from psychedelic experiences; they’ve got great potential in
that regard.

Raptures about “transcendental experiences” often focus on the visual splendors and lofty
insights into the meaning of existence and the universe and the increase in aesthetic
sensitivity.

Realization of the fundamental identity of the individual consciousness with the creative
principle of the universe is one of the most profound experiences a human being can
have.

Realms that are ordinarily inaccessible to the unaided human senses, such as the physical
and biological microworld and astrophysical objects and processes, become available for
direct experience.

Religious, mystical, visionary possession states are powerful and wonderful—they open
the doors of perception, polish our sensory lenses, shake up our autonomic nervous
system, and get out hormones swinging—but they’re intimate and precious.

Sexual union that occurs in the context of a powerful emotional bond can take the form of
a profound mystical experience. All individual boundaries seem to dissolve and the
partners feel reconnected to their divine source.

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.

Since LSD is a non-specific amplifier of mental processes, the LSD phenomena cover an
extremely broad range, extending potentially to all aspects of human experience and
behavior.

Since psychedelic drugs expose us to different levels of perception and experience, use of
them is ultimately a philosophic enterprise, compelling us to confront the nature of
reality.

So astonishing will be this new insight that he may be absolutely overwhelmed and in his
excitement, laugh and cry at the same time. For many, the discoveries mean new truth
and wisdom.

Some of their disturbed subjects handled the experience well; some of those with the
best-put-together structure had trouble. (Maybe LSD should determine who really is
disturbed and who’s best-put-together.)

Some of these persons report that the death-rebirth process seems to have removed a
subtle film from their senses which previously prevented them from experiencing reality
fully.

Some people find it so useful in gaining new perspectives or seeing problems from a
different vantage point that they smoke it in preparation for intellectual work (refers to
marijuana).

Some theologians tended to view LSD and other psychedelic substances as sacred and the
sessions as sacraments because they could bring the individual in touch with
transcendental realities.

Sometimes the “doors of perception” are cleansed suddenly with a jolt; sometimes the
cleansing comes gradually with ever increasing discoveries. These discoveries may be
psychological insights or may be made through any of the senses.

Sometimes the general character of the room, specific pieces of furniture and trivial
objects or certain aspects of the view from the window can function as powerful selective
triggers of experiences.

Sometimes the image of the physical world is not so much a dance of gestures as a woven
texture. Light, sound, touch, taste and smell become a continuous warp, with the feeling
that the whole dimension of sensation is a single continuum or field.

Sound and music seem to represent direct manifestations of the cosmic order. (This refers
to sound and music within yourself, internally, that only you hear and not sound or music
in the external world that everyone who is there can hear.)

Spiritual experiences in psychedelic sessions frequently draw on the symbolism of the
collective unconscious and can thus occur in the framework of cultural and religious
traditions other than the experient’s own.

Spiritual feelings are associated with the dilemma of time and space, origin of matter, life
and consciousness, dimensions and complexity of the universe and human existence, and
the ultimate purpose underlying the process of creation.

Studies have indicated that when the experience is interpreted transcendentally or
religiously, chances are improved for the rehabilitation of hopeless alcoholics and
hardened criminals.

Subjects had not only past-incarnation experiences but also complex and detailed insights
into this area that were strikingly similar to those described in various religious and
occult scriptures.

Subjects responded by becoming deeply absorbed in this “new world” of altered
perceptions—often to the point of forgetting altogether their early concern with
psychological categories and labeling phenomena in terms of pathologies.

Subjects see new dimensions in the universe, have strong feelings of being an integral
part of creation and tend to regard ordinary things in everyday life—such as meals, walks
in nature, playing with children or sexual intercourse—as sacred.

Subjects who had previously ridiculed alchemy and the ancient forms of divinization
suddenly discovered their deeper meaning and found genuine appreciation of their
metaphysical relevance.

Take LSD in a nuthouse and you’ll get a nuthouse experience. These poor patients are
usually not even told what drugs they’re given; they’re not prepared. I consider this
psychological rape. (That was Timothy Leary.)

Terror at the confrontation with the Divine is natural and instinctive and has been felt by
every voyager on the great journey beyond the self. It’s the fear of death, the loss of
control. (There is no real death and it’s the ego that fears, loses control and “dies.”)

The ability of the drug to connect diverse people in empathic bonds suggested exciting
social applications. Once people learned to share others’ perceptions, a higher level of
human consciousness might be possible.

The argument that the person who has taken the psychedelic drugs thereby disqualifies
himself as a person able to objectively view and evaluate the experience, must strike most
seasoned researchers as simply ludicrous.

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 brain replaced the genitals as the forbidden organ that must not be touched or turned
on by the owner. The only way in which consciousness-change experiences could be
discussed was in terms of philosophic-religious.

The challenge of the complete human life will be for each person to recapitulate and
experientially explore every aspect and vicissitude of this ancient and majestic
wilderness.

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 common denominator of this rich and ramified group of transpersonal phenomena is
a feeling that consciousness has expanded beyond the usual ego boundaries and has
transcended the limitations of time and space.

The content of LSD visions could be influenced by thoughts and feelings immediately
preceding the experience. (Where your head is at, coming into the experience, is a key
factor.)

The conventional duality of subject and object, knower and known, feeler and feeling, is
changed into a polarity. The knower and the known become poles, terms or phases of a
single event which happens, not to me or from me, but of itself.

The “death” which must be undergone to behold the vision of God is the death of a false
identity and the withdrawal from the world which is required for liberation is withdrawal
from the game that this particular person, so-and-so, is my one and only self.

The dramatic experience of new dimensions of reality can be meaningfully integrated
into the world view (a new, better and more meaningful and more realistic view of the
world.)

The drugs appeared to suspend imprints of reality inducing a critical period during which
new imprints could be made. In a positive, supportive atmosphere, new realities were
being imprinted.

The drugs are opening possibilities and additional doors in a wide variety of fields
because they seem to provide a means to the contriving of periods of intense
concentration and examination.

The dust on the shelves has become as much of a mystery as the remotest stars; we know
enough of both to know that we know nothing. “Something unknown is doing we don’t
know what.”

The empathy with nature seems to be especially abetted by the warming rays of the sun,
the playing of the breezes over the subject’s body, his contact with the earth below him
and various other types of tactile experiencing of the environment.

The entirety of one’s personal history from pre-birth to the present moment can be
brought into the conscious mind and fully re-experienced. (That is also true for the
entirety of all of history and existence.)

The esoteric core of the great religious and spiritual traditions could be seen as roadmaps
to higher states of consciousness, and some of the most profound material in these
traditions became especially clear and meaningful during psychedelic sessions.

The expansion of consciousness is no other than extending our visions to comprehend
many levels at once and above all, to grasp those higher levels in which the discords of
the lower levels are resolved.

The experience can be very liberating and widening. It shows that the world one
habitually lives in is merely a creation of this conventional, closely conditioned being
which one is and that there are quite other kinds of worlds outside.

The experience evokes such a tremendous feeling of love and closeness that people love
to be close and hug each other and love each other. They have love puddles where they
all get together and just hug each other and love each other.

The experience of confronting the various areas of one’s own unconscious is absolutely
necessary for developing the ability to assist other people with competence and
equanimity in their process of self-exploration.

The experience of fundamental oneness with the rest of creation increases the tolerance
and patience toward others, lowers the level of aggression, and improves the capacity for
synergy and cooperation.

The experience of the collective and racial unconscious frequently mediate a great
amount of accurate information that far transcends the educational background and
training of the individual involved.

The experience of the phenomenal world and what we call usual states of consciousness
appear to be only very limited, idiosyncratic and partial aspects of the over-all
consciousness of the Universal Mind.

The experience quite regularly has a definite spiritual and mystical emphasis and this
typically takes the form of enchantment with the mysteries of nature and the creative
forces of the universe.

The experience transcends our ordinary concepts of causality. The idea of something
happening without a tangible precedent, sufficient cause, or initiating impulse simply is
not questioned on this level of experience.

The experiencer and the experience become a single, ever-changing, self-forming
process, complete and fulfilled at every moment of its unfolding and of infinite
complexity and subtlety.

The experiencer, when he opens his eyes, sees the outer world transfigured, sees it as
glowing with an intensity of light and significance and life, which is something he simply
does not see at all in his ordinary state.

The experiences have been described as waking dreams. But to me, the visions are far
more colored and vivid than any dream can possibly be. With LSD, you see with striking
and unforgettable clarity.

The experiences of the collective and racial unconscious frequently mediate a great
amount of accurate information that far transcends the educational background and
training of the individual involved.

The experient does not gain rational understanding of the cosmic process, but reaches
instant comprehension by losing his or her separate identity and literally becoming the
process.

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 fact that many people take LSD in an attempt to find a solution to their emotional
dilemmas or from a deep need for philosophical and spiritual answers should not be
underestimated.

The feeling of self is no longer confined to the inside of the skin. Instead, my individual
being seems to grow out from the rest of the universe like a hair from a head or a limb
from a body, so that my center is also the center of the whole.

The first noticeable effects of LSD are primarily on the five senses: sight, hearing, touch,
smell and taste. Colors seem more vivid and luminous; hearing becomes more acute; the
sense of touch is intensified.

The guide should have considerable experience in psychedelic sessions. To administer
psychedelics without personal experience is unethical and dangerous. (That was Timothy
Leary.)

The highest point of the experience is a moment of transcendence in which the user
passes out of the everyday world into a paradisiacal egoless state in which he believes he
has attained some ultimate revelation about the nature of mind and the universe.

The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which
helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in
this increasingly mad and dangerous world.

The illusion of matter, space and time have been completely transcended and finally
reduced to this one mode of consciousness which is their common source and
determinator.

The impression is that external time must have slowed down, while the internal
experience continues at the same rate. There is not the impression of speed or rapidity,
but that the time available to the user is magnified.

The individual can be flooded with feelings of love and mystical connection to other
people, nature, the entire cosmos and God. Experiences of this kind are extremely
healing.

The individual is feeling his relationship to the world exactly as it would be described by
a biologist, ecologist or physicist, for he is feeling himself as the unified field of
organism and environment.

The individual sees the world as incredibly beautiful, radiant, safe, and nourishing. This
is associated with a deep awareness of the spiritual and mystical dimensions in the
universal scheme of things and with a sense of oneness and belonging.

The individual who connects with these levels of his or her psyche automatically
develops a new world view within which spirituality represents a natural, essential and
absolutely vital element of existence.

The liberating aspects of rebirth and the affirmation of positive forces in the universe are
frequently expressed in visions of radiant, blinding lights that has a supernatural quality
and seems to come from a divine source.

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 look of everyday things takes on a tinge of the marvelous, in the words of Blake
borrowed by Aldous Huxley for the title of a book, “The doors of perception are
cleansed.”

The LSD experience is a confrontation with new forms of wisdom and energy that dwarf
and humiliate man’s mind. This experience of awe and revelation is often described as
religious.

The LSD voyage goes out far beyond one’s small private history. My trip was back
through the cycle of being, which, if Jung’s collective unconscious really exists, as I
could now swear that it does, is the recurring history of you and me, all of us.

The magnification of inherent colors and essences can become so intense that common
boundaries are dissolved, as adjacent forms bleed into one another, revealing the delicate
underlying web that links all forms.

The main objective of psychedelic therapy is to create optical conditions for the subject to
experience the ego death and the subsequent transcendence into the so-called psychedelic
peak experience.

The meaning of the universe is wholly felt, not thought out. (“Thought out” is based on
words, which by itself, cannot get one to the meaning of the universe. One must get past
words and ego.)

The meaningful things seen in the mescaline experience are not symbols. They do not
stand for something else, do not mean anything except themselves. The significance of
each thing is identical with its being. Its point is that it IS.

The mind must be prepared and the conditions right for a profound mystical or religious
experience to occur. And even then, the drug user may go through a descent into torment
and even a seeming death agony before attaining joyous unity and rebirth.

The most important reason for making the observations from psychedelic research
available to professionals, as well as the general public, is the revolutionary nature of the
observations associated with it.

The motivations for psychedelic experimentation can be extremely serious and reflect the
most fundamental needs of human beings—cravings for emotional well-being, spiritual
fulfillment and a sense of meaning in life.

The mystical experience is essentially the being aware of and being identified with a form
of pure consciousness, of unstructured transpersonal consciousness which lies, so to
speak, upstream from the ordinary discursive consciousness of everyday.

The new world in which I find myself has an extraordinary transparency or freedom from
barriers making it seem that I have somehow become the energy space in which
everything is happening.

The nonordinary state of consciousness had the remarkable capacity to select and bring
into conscious awareness contents that have a strong emotional charge and are thus
psychologically important.

The opening of the channel between the conscious and the superconscious levels,
between the “I” and the Self, and the flood of light, energy and joy which follows, often
produces a wonderful release.

The part of the mind given to trivial things surely had no immortality and the ego, which
continuously pushed us about trying to satisfy its selfish wants, would be dissolved and
good riddance.

The participation of archetypal elements in the death-rebirth process reflects the fact that
deep experiential confrontation with the phenomena of death and birth typically results in
a spiritual and mystical opening and mediates access to the transpersonal realm.

The phenomena that can occur in the course of LSD sessions cover a very wide range;
there are hardly any perceptual, emotional or psychosomatic manifestations that have not
been observed and described as part of the LSD spectrum.

The process of serial LSD sessions transcends the framework of traditional depth-
psychological analysis and offers unique possibilities for a serious philosophical and
spiritual quest.

The psychedelic can alter the perception of energy, matter, and time in such a way as to
enable select random access of the spatial and temporal dimensions and make it possible
to inhabit the skins of a variety of forms and entities.

The psychedelic drug doesn’t mean doctor-disease, dope fiend-crime or instant insanity
but ecstasy, sensual unfolding, religious experience, revelation, illumination, contact with
nature.

The psychedelic experience at its best embodies a mythic substantiation of the universe
that is frequently overpowering in its revelations. It is a world of myth and ritual, a never-
never land of infinite grace and goodness.

The psychedelic experience can be not only a challenge, but also a support of my faith. I
can see Judaism in a new and amazing light. (A Hassidic rabbi who tripped with Timothy
Leary said that.)

The psychedelic experience tends to bring the subject into intimate contact with nature
and dramatically enhances his or her sensory perception of the world and an encounter
with nature at its best can become an aesthetic and spiritual experience of lasting value.

The psychedelic mystical experience can lead to a profound sense of inspiration,
reverential awe and humility, perhaps correlated with the feeling that the experience is
essentially a gift from a transcendent source.

The psychiatrist asserts it is “fact” that the subject sat in a catatonic state for two hours,
refusing to talk; the subject knows the “truth” to be that he was spinning far out of space-
time into an ecstatic dance of neurons which made words inadequate and irrelevant.

The purpose of the whole experience is for the person to learn to experience himself and
the things about him with fulfillment and joy. Having a good time and experiencing
beauty is therapeutic.

The recent convergence between mysticism, modern consciousness research and
quantum-relativistic physics suggest that psychedelic research could contribute in the
future to our understanding of the human mind and consciousness.

The recent rapid convergence between mysticism, modern consciousness research and
quantum-relativistic physics suggests that psychedelic research could contribute in the
future to our understanding of the nature of reality.

The richness of opportunities for deep dramatic shifts and transformations that is
characteristic of psychedelic states seems to make LSD a very special adjunct to
psychotherapy.

The scientist of consciousness must have courage, take the drug himself, the courage that
comes from faith in your body, cells, the life process, conscious faith in the harmony and
wisdom of nature.

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 sense of the vast gulf between the ego and the world disappears and one’s subjective,
inner life seems no longer to be separate from everything else, from one’s total
experience of the stream of nature.

The spectrum of transpersonal experiences is not only extremely rich, but includes levels
of reality governed by laws and principles that are different from those that rule ordinary
reality.

The spirituality revealed in the process of focused self-exploration sees God as the Divine
Within. Here the individual uses various techniques that mediate direct experiential
access to transpersonal realities and discovers his or her own divinity.

The subject confronts figures from mythology with a shock of recognition, seeing in the
figures now revealed as inhabitants of his own deep psyche, enigmatic bearers of ancient
answers to the riddle of existence. (eyes closed)

The subject is made to understand that the value of his experience will depend, in large
measure, on his willingness to suspend or abandon his ordinary, everyday ways of
thinking and “looking at things.”

The subject knows with perfect conviction that he will in the future respond in terms of
the new insights and new orientation instead of making the old, painful and non-
productive responses he has made in the past.

The subject may observe or feel himself to be a part of evolutionary process, seemingly
aware of the whole or a part of the pattern of emerging life on this earth and its
progression towards the present point in time.

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 variability of response to the drugs is enormous, largely because what is most
important for a particular person to learn at a particular time will vary tremendously and
thus the experience will differ accordingly.

The veil which made you see duality drops away and you experience the world as a
blissful sport of God’s energy. You see the universe as supremely blissful light,
undifferentiated from yourself and you remain unshakable in this awareness.

The voyager may see his companion at different ages of life, at different periods of
history, and as different persons. At one time or another, during the psychedelic session,
the voyager looks at his companion. Often it is an overwhelming discovery.

The wonder of LSD is that it can bring within the capabilities of ordinary people the
experience of universal love and the reality of our divine nature which was once possible
only to the mystics.

The world of separate individuals and objects is replaced by an undifferentiated pool of
energy patterns or consciousness in which various kinds and levels of boundaries are
playful and arbitrary.

The world of the LSD voyager is precisely one in which opposing ideas are true
simultaneously (non-Aristotelian), space is geodesic rather than linear (non-Euclidian)
and cause and effect are unreal (non-Newtonian).

Their visionary states tend to take them farther and farther back—through their own
history and the history of humanity, all the way to the creation of the world and the
original state of paradise. (Yes, you can go ALL THE WAY back, during an LSD trip.)

There are many reports of patients receiving meaningful insight about themselves in an
LSD experience without the intervention, participation or even the presence of a
therapist.

There can be direct acquaintance with the world’s unity. This immediate mystical
experience of being at one with the fundamental Oneness that manifests itself in the
infinite diversity of things and minds, can never be adequately expressed in words.

There is a state of consciousness in which the erotic no longer has to be sought or
pursued because it is always present in its totality. In this state all relationship and all
experience is erotic.

There is an intense feeling of compassion for those who, for whatever reason, make it
impossible for themselves to get anywhere near the reality revealed by the drug—the
reality which is always there for those who are in the right state of mind to perceive it.

There is evidence that the spiritual insights accompanying the psychedelic experience
might be subjective accounts of the objective findings of astronomy, physics,
biochemistry and neurology.

There is good reason to believe that the psychedelics are the opposite of hallucinogens
insofar as they decrease the selectivity the senses and expose consciousness to events
beyond those that are supposed to deserve notice.

There is no hurry. Here, the present is self-sufficient, but it’s not a static present. It is a
dancing present, the unfolding of a pattern which has no specific destination in the future,
but is simply its own point.

There is no way of classifying the infinite permutations and combinations of visionary
elements. The cortex contains file-cards for billions of images from the history of the
person, of the race, and of living forms. (seen with eyes closed)

There is often an experience of passing through a purifying fire; its flames destroy
whatever is corrupt in the individual, preparing him or her for the experience of spiritual
rebirth.

There is the intense feeling of compassion for those who, for whatever reason, make it
impossible for themselves to get anywhere near the reality revealed by the drug—the
reality which is always there for those who are in the right state of mind to perceive it.

There may be tremendous visions of landscapes of an extra-ordinarily brilliant and
glowing nature, of architectures often encrusted with jewels and the landscapes too are
frequently recorded as encrusted with gems. (eyes closed)

There was something different in their tone of voice—a new quality of intensity and
feeling. They were talking of ecstasy, love, and sharing in a way that was valid and
personal to them.

There was talk of change and of a peaceful, world-wide revolution of all-powerful
understanding and love. The talk was of love, all the more exciting and beautiful because
it seemed honest.

These drugs are opening possibilities and additional doors in a wide variety of fields
because they seem to provide a means to the contriving of periods of intense
concentration and examination.

These drugs promise discoveries about mind as important and far reaching in their
ultimate effects as have been the revolutionary findings of this century concerning the
physical universe.

These states of mind can be extremely beneficial, often leading to physical and emotional
healing, profound insights, creative activity and permanent personality changes for the
better.

They discovered within themselves that universal river of ecstasy from which flowed the
energy, power and refreshment to revive religious bodies tired out by too much
intellectualism, moralism and institutionalism.

They induce “levels of consciousness which are vast extensions and enlargements of
normal experience” and thus “open to conscious awareness of a wider, clearer, more
complete view of the world.”

They may have a sense of being reborn and rejuvenated; they feel very different than they
did at the start of the journey, born into a healthier relationship with themselves and the
world.

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.

This is what LSD seems to tell him. It tells him that he is still in Eden, if only he knew it.
It is only necessary to spit out the apple and look at the world through psychedelic eyes.
The apple is his intellect or way of looking at things.

This recognition of the immortality of the divine in ourselves was not an intellectual
process but rather a deep wisdom which had expressed itself through feelings so intense,
I expect to remember them throughout life.

This was the chamber of the unconscious where lay recorded all our past experiences and
feelings, race history, universal wisdom, such power and strength and the depths and
mysteries of life itself.

Those aspects of the psychedelic experience which subjects report to be ineffable and
ecstatically religious involve a direct awareness of the energy processes which scientists
measure.

Those folds in the trousers—what a labyrinth of endlessly significant complexity! And
the texture of the grey flannel—how rich, how deeply, mysteriously sumptuous! (That
was Aldous Huxley.)

Those individuals who have faced death and rebirth in their sessions show specific
changes in their perception of themselves and the world, in their hierarchies of values,
general behavior, and overall world-views.

Those psychiatrists and psychotherapists who had taken the obvious preliminary step of
trying the new chemical themselves, soon began to pursue different objectives from their
psychosis-oriented colleagues.

Thou shalt evolve to a higher state of being and ultimately return to the Godhead which is
your very self, your ever-present Divine Condition prior to all conditions, names and
forms.

Time and space cease to be limits. One can experience various historically and
geographically remote events as vividly as if they were happening here and now. (eyes
closed)

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.

To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours
the outer and inner world as they are apprehended directly and unconditionally, by Mind
at Large— this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone.

To some people, looking only at the surface, the sequence of events of my first
psychedelic experience might seem to border on madness; others will see it in a profound
logic and wisdom.

Transformative experiences associated with positive emotions, such as feelings of
oneness with humanity and nature, states of cosmic unity, encounters with blissful
deities, and union with God, have a special role in the healing and transformative process.

Transpersonal experiences can be defined as “experiences involving an expansion or
extension of consciousness beyond the usual ego boundaries and beyond the limitations
of time and/or space.”

Tripping is a very special type of activity, mentally as well as physically. It can include
moments of astonishing insight and supermellow serenity, “a peace which passeth all
understanding.”

Trust your sense organs and your nervous system. Your divine body has been around a
long, long time, much longer than any of the social games you play. Trust the
evolutionary process. It’s all going to work out all right.

Unless the LSD therapist is equally at home with both old and new ideas he may
overlook creative aspects of the patient’s thinking and label it all as merely confused or
psychotic. The therapist’s confusion may in turn confuse the patient.

Unlike the verbal approaches, deep experiential therapy has the potential to take the client
in a very short time to the original traumatic situations and thus to the roots of the
problem. (“Deep experiential therapy” means LSD therapy.)

Users often find that they can become absorbed, with a childlike intensity, in nearly
anything and that it will seem fresh, interesting, and highly pleasurable—even if it is
something they have done many times.

Various aspects of the universe from which we would expect to be separated by an
impenetrable spacial barrier can suddenly become easily experientially available and in a
sense appear to be parts or extensions of ourselves.

Various objects in the 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.

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 came to believe, as a result of our own experiences and those reported to us by others
using psychedelics, that they had the potential to facilitate for the individual the
experience of major insights and problem solutions of an intellectual-emotional nature.

We can experience ourselves as a play of energy or a field of consciousness that is not
confined to a physical container. (In other words, we are far more than an ego enclosed
by the skin.)

We can literally relive early events from our lives. We can be two months old or even
younger, once again experiencing all the sensory, emotional and physical qualities as we
first knew them.

We can perhaps see the whole course of a psychedelic experience as an effort of
consciousness to rid itself of false identifications and experience its own everchanging
identity.

We were getting turned on in so many ways, lit up to new experiences, discoveries,
adventures, music, all of which had something very tangibly related to the drugs
available.

What you are seeing and what you are hearing appear as one, the music assumes
harmonious shapes, giving visual form to its harmonies and what you are seeing takes on
the modalities of music.

When he discovers what an ample store of unhastened attention he can give to all the rich
content brought to him by eye and ear, he finds it hard not to believe that somehow time
has been stretched.

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.

When the threshold of consciousness is crossed, we are flooded with the kaleidoscopic
vision of cultures, peoples, symbols, remnants of historical and pre-historical memory.
(eyes closed)

When used with integrity, and fortitude, psychedelic substances can reveal the
unfathomed love supporting all of creation, a love that can dissolve the death grip of
Thanatos to free Eros and joyously illumine life in all of its aspects.

When we feel ourselves to be sole heirs of the universe, when “the sea flows in our
veins…and the stars are our jewels,” when all things are perceived as infinite and holy,
what motive can we have for the pursuit of power?

When you sit across the room from a woman during an LSD session, you’re aware of
thousands of penetrating messages floating from her through the air into your sensory
center, grenades of eroticism exploding.

Within a few hours, individuals gain profound insights into the nature of religion and in
many instances their purely theoretical understanding and formal belief is vitalized by a
deep personal experience of the transcendental realms.

Without losing their normal breadth of vision, the eyes seem to become a microscope
through which the mind delves deeper and deeper into the intricately dancing texture of
the world.

You are really seeing for the first time, not static, symbolic perception of learned things,
but patterns of light bouncing off objects around you and hurtling at the speed of light
into the mosaic of rods and cones in the retina of your eye.

You can relive former incidents in your life—not just imagining these incidents, but
believing that you are actually there—smelling, hearing, feeling, every little thing seems
more real than when you actually did experience it.

You cannot take LSD once a week and stay rigidly rooted in a low-level ego game. You
have to grow with the flow or you will stop taking LSD. You must hook up your inner
power to a life of expanding intelligence.

You can’t fulfill the hero’s journey if you insist on your comfort and safety. You may
have to risk your life if you seek incomparable enlightenment. (It can be a rocky ride, but
you are not really risking your life, though it can seem like that, especially for the ego.)

You can’t tell where the music ends and the emotions begin, for the whole thing is a kind
of music. All experience is just that, except that its music has many more dimensions
than sound.

You haven’t eaten, you haven’t tasted, you haven’t fucked, you haven’t seen colors, your
fingers haven’t touched rock and soil until you’ve had acid and then you know you’re
alive and you know what life is.

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.

A high does of LSD in the right circumstances brings you into contact not only with your
deep self but with other dimensions—extraterrestrial intelligence, a collective mind,
intelligent unity of life, living God, things that they don’t understand and can’t control
and don’t want free and available.

A single high-dose LSD session can frequently be of extraordinary value for those
persons who do not have any serious clinical problems. The quality of their lives can be
considerably enhanced and the experience can move them in the direction of self-
realization and self-actualization.

A trip can function as a crack of lightning, an explosion of light so brilliant that it
scorches the emotional flesh and casts deep saturnine shadows in the cavern of the soul.
Many trippers feel as if their psyches were opened up from above or from within as a
rolling wave of stimuli floods their sensorium to the point of overflow.

Adventurous painters and musicians discovered that LSD was a catalyst, an impetus to
startling new rearrangements of vision, to a bubbling, ecstatic, seemingly inexhaustible
pool of images and ideas, to a new-old kind of harmony between the artist and the
medium.

Along with light, there comes recognition of heightened significance. The self-luminous
objects possess a meaning as intense as their color. Here, significance is identical with
being: objects do not stand for anything but themselves. Their meaning is precisely this:
that they are intensely themselves.

All day, in wave after wave and from all directions of the mind’s compass, there has
repeatedly come upon me the sense of my original identity as one with the very fountain
of the universe. I have seen, too, that the fountain is its own source and motive and that
its spirit is an unbounded playfulness which is the many-dimensioned dance of life.

All of creation—people, animals, plants and inanimate objects—seems to be permeated
by the same cosmic essence and divine light. A person in this state suddenly sees that
everything in the universe is a manifestation and expression of the same creative cosmic
energy and that separation and boundaries are illusory.

Along with light, there comes recognition of heightened significance. The self-luminous
objects possess a meaning as intense as their color. Here, significance is identical with
being: objects do not stand for anything but themselves. Their meaning is precisely this:
that they are intensely themselves.

An important characteristic of collective and racial memories is the fact that the subject
experiences them as insights into the diversity of cultural groups within the human race,
illustrations of the history of mankind or manifestations of the cosmic drama and divine
play. (eyes closed)

An individual who has a transcendental experience develops an entirely new image of his
or her identity and cosmic status. The materialistic image of the universe in which the
individual is a meaningless speck of dust in the vastness of the cosmos is instantly
replaced by the mystical alternative.

An LSD trip will show the subject the manifold aspects of reality—a reality that does not
unfold upon a single level or within a single event, but involves a great variety of events
on a number of levels. As the experience becomes more profound, the spectrum of
sensations and feelings becomes almost infinite.

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).

Certain classes of perceptual images appear again and again; colored, moving, living
geometrical forms which undulate into more concrete perceptions of patterned things,
such as carpets, carvings, mosaics, transmuting continually into other forms in heightened
color and grandeur. (eyes closed)

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)

collective and racial experiences—Subjects tuned in to these realms of the unconscious
can go through brief episodes or long, elaborate sequences that take place in different
countries and/or different centuries and depict various historical or contemporary
cultures. (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.

Consciousness after the ingestion of LSD manifests a characteristic qualitative
transformation of a dreamlike nature. It can transcend its usual limits and encourage
phenomena from the deep unconscious not accessible under normal circumstances. This
is frequently referred to as expansion of consciousness.

Doors of Perception/Heaven and Hell. Aldous Huxley. Harper Collins; 1954/1956. A
demonstration of what a refined, prepared mind can do with the opportunity afforded by a
psychedelic in observing nature, art, colors, and forms in their full glory, with a profound
appreciation of the transpersonal and numinous aspects of life.

Drug experiences, like all novel experiences, can provide themes and material for the
artists’ imagination to work on. And it has also been suggested that psychedelic drug
experiences can subtly affect the faculty of insight, providing original solutions to artistic
and intellectual problems through new combinations of ideas and feelings.

Every time you take LSD you completely suspend, you step outside of the symbolic
chessboard which you have built up over the long years of social conditioning and you
whirl through different levels of neurological and cellular energy, continually flowing
and changing.

Everything seen by those who visit the mind’s antipodes is brilliantly illuminated and
seems to shine from within. All colors are intensified to a pitch far beyond anything seen
in the normal state and at the same time, the mind’s capacity for recognizing fine
distinctions of tone and hue is notably heightened.

Evolutionary memories have specific experiential characteristics; they are distinctly
different from human experiences and often seem to transcend the scope and limits of
human fantasy and imagination. The individual can have, for example, an illuminating
insight into what it feels like when a snake is hungry, when a turtle is sexually excited.

Experiences from various periods of history and from different cultures are often
associated with a vivid sense of a personal memory of our spiritual rather than biological
history. (This refers to experiencing, remembering and reliving things from long before
the person was born, even from billions of years ago.)

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)

Experiences of plant identification often mediate deep understanding as to why certain
plants have been considered sacred by some cultures. (Plant identification doesn’t mean
what the name of the plant is, but experiencing plant consciousness or what it is to be a
plant. Psychedelic plants are the most sacred.)

Few of the drug-state phenomena are more perplexing, fascinating and potentially
valuable than is the subject’s participation in mythic and ritualistic dramas which
represent to him in terms both universal and particular the essentials of his own situation
in the world. (eyes closed)

Flowers, leaves, grass, trees are seen with tremendous vividness—“with the intensity that
Van Goth must have seen them” is an often-used description. They seem to pulse and
breathe; in fact, even everyday, fixed objects around the room may take on “flowing,”
“waving” shapes, as if invested with some life force of their own.

He is seeing immense zodiacal figures laid out in jeweled definition with blue and gold
stones against the heavens “on a grand cosmic scale.” He speculates that the zodiacal
signs that man has “imposed upon the stars” derive from corresponding physical
structures in the brain. (eyes closed)

He stands outside of and apart from his familiar ego, all its protective barriers having
been shed; and this can lead in some to transcendent experiences, while in others to a
deep panic. To those for whom the ego is their only possible self, the only possible mode
of consciousness, its disappearance is a kind of death.

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.

Here, the individual feels that he is experiencing the innermost divine core of his being.
His individual self is losing its seemingly separate identity and is reuniting with what is
perceived as its divine source, the Universal Self. This results is feelings of immediate
contact or identity with the Beyond Within, with God.

His drug-induced religious experience vitalizes his religious life and demonstrates the
error of those who think that only the logical and rational aspects of religion are valid.
(How logical and rational is it to think that you were born in sin because of something
from 2000 years ago which you had nothing to do with?)

I look at those leaves with their architectures of veins, their stripes and mottlings. I peer
into the depths of interlacing greenery of those living patterns, so characteristic of the
visionary world, of those endless births and proliferations of geometrical forms that turn
into objects, of things that are forever being transmuted into other things.

I see all these sensory dimensions as a round dance, gesticulations of one pattern being
transformed into gesticulations of another and these gesticulations are flowing through a
space that has still other dimensions, which I want to describe as tones of emotional color
or light or sound.

I suppose in a certain sense one can say the value is absolute. In a sense one can say that
visionary experience is, so to say, a manifestation simultaneously of the beautiful and the
true, of intense beauty and intense reality and as such it doesn’t have to be justified in any
other way. (That was Aldous Huxley.)

Identifying with the consciousness of the Universal Mind, the individual senses that he
has experientially encompassed the totality of existence. He feels that he has reached the
reality underlying all realities and is confronted with the supreme and ultimate principle
that represents all Being.

If any single theme dominated young people in the 1960’s, it was the search for a new
way of seeing, a new relation to the world. LSD was a means of exciting consciousness
and provoking visions, a kind of hurried magic enabling youthful seekers to recapture the
resonance of life that society had denied.

If I put on glasses and see details more clearly, no one can say that I am hallucinating.
But if, under the drug, I see colors and forms I did not see before, they say I am
hallucinating. But maybe I really achieved a new and better vision of external reality.
(There are no maybes about it.)

If properly handled, a psychedelic crisis has great positive potential and can result in a
profound personality transformation. Conversely, an insensitive and ignorant approach
can cause psychological damage and lead to chronic psychotic states and years of
psychiatric hospitalization.

In a great many ways a variety of objects may be used to help the subject break through
the barriers he has erected around persons and ideas and feelings; barriers which,
moreover, may block him from moving on to deeper drug-state levels, where the
inhibitions and values structure may be confronted and re-examined.

In exceptional cases the individual may have a complex and vivid experience of moving
to a specific place in the physical world and give a detailed description of a remote locale
or event. Attempts to verify such extrasensory perceptions can sometimes result in
amazing corroboration.

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)

Individuals experiencing mystical consciousness of this type have a sense of leaving
ordinary reality, where space has three dimensions and time is linear, and entering a
timeless, mythical realm where these categories no longer apply. In this state, eternity and
infinity can be experienced within seconds of clock time.

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 does help you to look at the world in a new way. And you come to understand very
clearly the way that certain specially gifted people have seen the world. You are actually
introduced into the kind of world that Van Goth or Blake lived in. You begin to have a
direct experience of this kind of world while you’re under the drug.

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 clear that psychedelics have the potential to cut through whatever blocks stand
between us and higher experiences, magically letting us enjoy, if only temporarily,
transcendent states. I hope it is not necessary to belabor the point that this potential is
realized if only set and setting support it.

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 important to realize that the subjective experience of time is radically changed in
nonordinary states of consciousness. Within seconds of clocktime, one can experience a
rich and complex sequence of events that lasts subjectively a very long time, or even
seems to involve eternity.

It is most curious to find, from Japan to Western Europe, these same images coming
through again and again, showing how universal and how uniform this kind of visionary
experience has been and how it has constantly been regarded as of immense importance
and has been projected out into the cosmos in the various religious traditions.

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.

It is not unusual 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.

It is not unusual in psychedelic sessions to experience quite 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)

It is one of the oldest and most universal practices for the initiate to go through the
experience of death before he can be spiritually reborn. Symbolically he must die to his
past, and to his old ego, before he can take his place in the new spiritual life into which
he has been initiated.

It is only after the person begins to return, begins to be reborn, that he becomes upset by
death and dying. In the earlier phase, when he really is dead, merged with infinite
oneness, there is no concern, only peace. (“Really is dead” means that the ego is dead and
if the ego is dead, then there really is peace.)

It is significant that those who have been surprised by a mystical experience seldom fail
to feel that their experience is religious. Intuitively they become aware—at least
subjectively— that their state of mind somehow links them with the saints and prophets
of the ages. This is the case even with atheists.

It may happen that the subject becomes intensely involved with a thing, then the thing
becomes a symbol and may be identified with some key person in the subject’s life.
Then, the intense involvement with the thing becomes an intense involvement with the
person.

It should be one of the chief tasks of the guide to help the subject select out of the wealth
of phenomena among which he finds himself, some of the more promising opportunities
for heightened insight, awareness and integral understanding that the guide knows to be
available in the psychedelic experience.

It will enable each person to realize that he is not a game-playing robot put on this planet
to be given a Social Security number and to be spun on the assembly line of school,
college, career, insurance, funeral, good-bye. Through LSD, each human being will be
taught to understand that the entire history of evolution is recorded inside his body.

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.

LSD subjects have, in certain special states of mind, access to information about almost
any aspect of the universe. The holographical approach makes it possible to imagine how
the information mediated by the brain is accessible in every cerebral cell, or how the
genetic information about the entire organism is available in every single cell of the body.

LSD subjects often arrive at the conclusion that no real boundaries exist between
themselves and the rest of the universe. Everything appears to be part of a unified field
of cosmic energy, and the boundaries of the individual are identical with the boundaries
of existence itself.

LSD subjects report numerous visions of archetypal forms, individual deities and demons
and complex mythological sequences (eyes closed). In the extreme form, the individual
consciousness seems to encompass the totality of existence and identify with the
Universal Mind.

LSD subjects sophisticated in mathematics and physics have occasionally reported that
many of the concepts of these disciplines that transcend rational consciousness can
become more easily comprehensible and be actually experienced in altered states of
consciousness.

Many transpersonal experiences have a strong influence on the individual’s values,
attitudes and interests. Thus, experiences of the collective and racial unconscious can
generate a sensitivity to the needs and problems of another culture and create a deep
appreciation for its religion, art and life philosophy.

Metanoia is that profound state of consciousness which mystical experience aims at—the
state in which we transcend or dissolve all the barriers of ego and selfishness that
separate us from God. It is the state of direct knowing, immediate perception of our total
unity with God.

Most of the awe and 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.

Most of the subjects felt that the psychedelic experience could sometimes supply a
guiding vision which provided direction and meaning for one’s life thereafter. They
mentioned intense emotions such as love, compassion, or empathy, and the recognition
that the mind can be and should be highly trained.

My own experiences leads me to believe that with LSD as a vehicle of transport, many
addicts could find the determination to carry them through the remainder of the journey
to freedom. (The “remainder” isn’t the rest of the LSD trip, but what happens with the
addict after the trip or as a result of it.)

Nature seems to the subject a whole of which he is an integral part and from this
characteristic feeling of being a part of the organic “body of nature” the subject readily
goes on to identify with nature in its physical particulars and processes. No drug subject
similarly identifies with a room or other artificial environment.

Occasionally, a subject will bypass categorical recognition altogether. Then a scrap of
wallpaper may be perceived with such immediacy, such instantaneous and total
immersion in the sensory detail, as to oblige the subject to inquire what it is he is now
observing.

Often, there is an actual experience of truths, they are known to be truths, which, when
presented in conceptual terms to the mind in its normal state, seem incomprehensible and
absurd. Such propositions as “God is love” are realized with the totality of one’s being
and their truth seems self-evident in spite of pain and death.

Once a person has experienced a visionary state of mind, one can no longer confuse the
lie with the truth. One has seen where one comes from and who one is, and one no longer
doubts what one is. There is no emotion or external influence that can divert one from
this reality.

One can experience and tune in to what appears to be the consciousness of animals,
plants or even inanimate objects and processes, to experience the consciousness of the
entire universe or experience the consciousness of certain parts of the body—various
organs, tissues or individual cells.

One can experience himself in a specific situation in his childhood, in the birth canal
and/or ancient Egypt. While aware of his everyday identity, he can identify experientially
with another person, another life form or a mythological being. He can also experience
himself in a different location in the world or in a mythical reality. (eyes closed)

One can transcend the limits of the specifically human experience and identify with the
consciousness of animals, plants or even inanimate objects and processes. In the
extremes, it is possible to experience the consciousness of the entire biosphere, of our
planet, or of the entire material universe.

One enters the other world by breaking a shell: or through a door: through a partition: the
curtains part or rise: a veil is lifted. The “ego” is the instrument for living in this world. If
the “ego” is broken up or destroyed, then the person may be exposed to other worlds,
“real” in different ways from the more familiar territory.

One never knows in which direction these experiences may move. Sometimes the “doors
of perception” are cleansed suddenly with a jolt; sometimes the cleansing comes
gradually with ever increasing discoveries. These discoveries may be psychological
insights or may be made through any of the senses.

One of the experiences most impressive to the subject is synesthesia—the response by
one of the senses to a stimulus ordinarily responded to by another of the senses. For
example, the subject may find himself able to taste colors or smell sounds. Occasionally
the experiencing of synthesias may prove to be a gateway.

One of the major causes of discomfort while taking psychedelics is the subject’s attempt
to maintain an image of him/herself that is not in harmony with one’s authentic self. The
greater the investment in the created image—and consequently, the greater the reluctance
to change—the greater the discomfort.

One of the things I learned about tripping very early was that we get in touch with
feelings we’ve never been able to experience before and at a depth and a level that we’ve
never been able to reach. That could be fear, it could be love, it could be ecstasy, it could
be anything.

One traumatic event can shape a life, one therapeutic event can reshape it. Psychedelic
therapy has an analogue in Abraham Maslow’s idea of the peak experience. The drug
taker feels that the self is part of a much larger pattern, and the sense of cleansing,
release, and joy makes old woes seem trivial.

Only when the ordinary perception of the material world is transcended can
consciousness connect with the heavenly regions. For those who have had the privilege
of such experience, the existence of Heaven, God and celestial beings ceases to be a
matter of belief and becomes self-evident reality.

Organized religion had little to offer. Faith in an invisible divinity was not enough. What
LSD promised was the direct, unmediated experience of self-transcendence—the
mystical enlightenment where we KNOW what the philosophers and the prophets talk
about.

Our individual consciousnesses connect us directly not only with our immediate
environment and with various periods of our own past, but also with events that are far
beyond the reach of our physical senses, extending into other historical times, into nature,
and into the cosmos.

People came out of these sessions reeling with awe, overwhelmed by experiences of
oneness with God and all other beings, shaken to the depths of their nature by the
grandeur and power of the divine life-energy processes going on within their own
consciousness.

People have experienced episodes occurring long before their own conceptions. Many
report being able to enter the consciousness of their parents during their mother’s or
father’s childhoods and to experience through their parents’ consciousness events from
that time.

People not capable of coping with a drug experience of their own are not likely to be able
to cope with the experience of a subject either; and thus the sessions of the guide-to-be
may serve the additional purpose of helping to eliminate from a training program
candidates too disturbed or anxious about the psychedelic state.

Perceptually, LSD produces an especially brilliant and intense impact of sensory stimuli
on consciousness. Normally unnoticed aspects of the environment capture the attention;
ordinary objects are seen as if for the first time and with a sense of fascination or
entrancement, as though they had unimagined depths of significance.

Plato tells us that beyond this ephemeral and imperfect existence here below, there is
another Ideal world of Archetypes, where the original, the true, the beautiful Pattern of
things exists for evermore. It is clear where Plato found his Ideas; Plato had drunk of the
potion in the Temple of Eleusis and had spent the night seeing the great Vision.

Profound religious experience is always moving and probably the most captivating and
shattering experience known to man. When I say “shattering” I mean that the experience
shatters certain fundamental assumptions about life which stand in the way of a broader
and more humane view.

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.

Psychedelic subjects regularly report experiencing events that seem to harmonize with
quantum mechanics. They speak of participating in and emerging with pure energy; of
witnessing the breakdown of objects into vibratory patterns, the awareness that
everything is a dance of particles.

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.

Psychedelics induce alterations of perception which make the nervous system aware of
itself. (It’s not that the nervous system becomes aware of itself. It’s always aware of
itself. The alterations of perception allow the person to become consciously aware of
what’s going on with the nervous system.)

Religious experience is the most profound and powerful aspect of the human personality
and is the aspect most capable of bringing out the compassionate and creative qualities of
the human spirit. Furthermore, it is the most effective agent of wholesome profound
personality change.

Repeated experiences of the transpersonal domain can have a profound impact on the
individual involved. They tend to dissolve the narrow and limited perspective
characterizing the average Westerner and make one see the problems of everyday life
from a cosmic perspective.

Some candidates, resisting the effects of the drug out of fear that their personalities or
their “selves” are being destroyed, are inclined to put up defensive barriers to nullify the
drug’s action. The subject should be aware that what is being destroyed is not his true
“self”, but the abstract formulation of values and concepts society has imposed upon him.

Some individuals become depressed after having visited the transcendent domains
because their daily life looks bleak and uninteresting in comparison to the radiance and
liberation they have tasted. (Yes, if one has been up to heaven, it’s hard to accept having
to come back down to hell.)

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.

Subjects were advised to “turn off” their analytic faculties, to relax and accept whatever
form of experience came their way, to refrain from attempting to control the sequence or
nature of the events. The declared aim was to stop using one’s cognitive and perceptual
processes in the familiar way and to heighten the likelihood of discovering new ways.

Suddenly I feel my understanding dawning into a colossal clarity, as if everything were
opening up down to the roots of my being and of time and space themselves. The sense of
the world becomes totally obvious. I am struck with amazement that I or anyone could
have thought life a problem or being a mystery.

Suddenly, the familiar view of our surroundings is transformed in a strange, delightful, or
alarming 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.

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 basic rule is to respond sensitively to the phase, intensity and content of the
experience, rather than try to impose a specific pattern on it. (This is a basic rule for the
guide or therapist, in general. In this case, it was a reference about how to choose what
music to listen to.)

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 capacity of LSD and some other psychedelic drugs to exteriorize otherwise invisible
phenomena and processes and make them the subject of scientific investigation gives
these substances a unique potential as diagnostic instruments and as research tools for the
exploration of the human mind.

The concept of time does not merely lose meaning, but, more impressively, is seen in a
new perspective. Subjects assert that they felt “outside of” time, beyond both past and
future, as though they were viewing the totality of history from a transcendent vantage
point.

The consensus among the architects interviewed seems to be that LSD, when
administered under carefully controlled conditions, does enhance creativity to the extent
that it vastly speeds up problem-solving, aids in visualizing three-dimensionality and
generally heightens perceptivity.

The current preoccupation with these latter-day mind modifiers ranges from a hedonistic
sensuality to a search for the highest of philosophical abstractions, from a tool for
deriving scientific data to a sacrament taken to achieve loss of self and union with the
All.

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 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 findings from psychedelic explorations throw entirely new light on the material from
history, comparative religion and anthropology concerning the ancient mysteries of death
and rebirth, rites of passage of various cultures, shamanic practices of various religions
and mystical traditions and other phenomena of great cultural significance.

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 function of the guide is multifold: head nurse, tutor, baby-sitter, Mother Earth,
sympathetic ear, scullery maid, priest, trouble-shooter, tourist guide, doctor, navigator,
soulmate, and blank screen. The competent guide knows that it is the subject’s session,
not his.

The Good, the True and the Beautiful are absolute values and in a certain sense one can
say that visionary experience has always been regarded as an absolute value, that it has
been always felt to be intrinsically of immense significance and importance and worth
having at a very great price.

The guide possesses enormous power to shape the experience, move consciousness with
the slightest gesture or reaction. The key issue here is the guide’s ability to turn off his
own ego and social games, to muffle his own power needs and fears. The guide must
never be bored, talkative, intellectualizing.

The individual has become relaxed, has begun to enjoy the increased sense perceptions
and has become fascinated with the world of awareness that is beginning to open to him.
The deep and profound experiences released by the LSD then flow uninterrupted in an
ever widening scope.

The individual in this state becomes deeply aware of his or her unity with other people,
nature and the entire universe and with the ultimate creative principle or God. This is
accompanied by an overwhelming positive affect that can range from peace, serenity and
bliss to an ecstatic rapture.

The individual seems to gain access to a value system that is not understandable in terms
of his or her own early history or cultural norms. It entails a sense of compassion,
tolerance, basic justice and aesthetic appreciation that has a transpersonal or even cosmic
quality.

The inner experience of the spiritual Self and its intimate association with the personal
self, gives a sense of internal expansion, of universality and the conviction of
participating in some way in the divine nature. In the religious traditions and spiritual
doctrines of every epoch one finds numerous attestations on this subject.

The most lasting value of the drug experience for me appears to be a number of
convictions, most of them religious in nature, which are so strong that it makes not one
iota of difference whether anyone agrees with them or not. (When you know the truth, no
one can talk you out of it. The truth is the truth.)

The perception of the environment can be changed in a way that bears a striking
resemblance to the pictures of famous Cubist painters. The fantasy process is usually
considerably enhanced and contributes an important creative element to these perceptual
changes.

The perception of the environment (world?) 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 person feels a deep connection with the innermost spiritual core of his or her being.
The illusion of the individual self fades away and the person enjoys reunion with his or
her divine Self, which is also the Universal Self, the cosmic source of all existence. This
is a direct and immediate contact with the Beyond within, with God.

The person is at one with the universe. In his mystic selflessness he awakens with a
feeling of rebirth, often physically felt and he is provided with a new beginning, a new
sense of values. He becomes aware of the richness of the unconscious at his disposal; the
energies bound up in and by repression become available to him.

The possibilities of reliving birth or episodes from embryonal life, obtaining accurate
information from the collective unconscious, experiencing archetypal realities and karmic
memories, or perceiving remote events in out-of-body states, were simply too fantastic to
be believable for an average professional.

The prime characteristic of cosmic consciousness is a consciousness of the cosmos, that
is of the life and order of the universe. Along with the consciousness of the cosmos there
occurs an intellectual enlightenment which alone would place the individual on a new
plane of existence, would make him almost a member of a new species.

The psychedelic experience depends upon many factors—the dosage, the circumstances
under which it is given, the knowledge of the people giving it, and, most of all, upon the
attitude of the person taking it, what he wishes to learn about himself, how much he trusts
the people working with him, and how much he trusts his own underconsciousness.

The psychic depths and time depths can be tested and explored in the psychedelic
experiences. The theoretical foundation of such a statement is that the ingestion of
psychedelic substances evokes an activation of deeply buried psychic contents and a
bringing of them to the surface of consciousness.

The reason psychedelic experiences are important and valuable is that people live their
lives by their own “chess-boards,” playing the lawyer-game, the merchant-game or some
rule-ridden ego-game, rarely if ever expanding their consciousness to the point of true
awareness and understanding of man and nature, including themselves.

The remarkable thing about the LSD experience is that you see the broad range of the
underconsciousness without losing consciousness, a state wherein you are aware of all
things in the conscious mind and at the same time aware of all things in the
underconscious mind.

The reports of LSD subjects who have experienced episodes of embryonic existence, the
moment of conception and episodes of cellular, tissue and organ consciousness abound in
medically accurate insights into the anatomical, physiological and biochemical aspects of
the processes involved.

The 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.

The sensation of leaving one’s body is quite common in drug-produced states and can
have various forms and degrees. Some persons experience themselves as completely
detached from their physical bodies, hovering above them or observing them from
another part of the room.

The spiritual experiences frequently observed in LSD sessions offered a radically new
understanding of a wide variety of phenomena from the world of religion, including
shamanism, the rites of passage, the ancient mysteries of death and rebirth, the Eastern
spiritual philosophies, and the mystical traditions of the world.

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)

The subject is caught up 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)

The subject’s own body and the bodies of the persons present in the session room show
grotesque changes; some anatomical parts can appear miniaturized, others magnified or
elongated. Similar bizarre distortions also involve the perception of inanimate objects.
(The changes can also be perceived as beautiful.)

The subjects would be treated like astronauts—carefully prepared, briefed with all the
available facts and expected to run their own spacecraft, make their own observations and
report back to ground control. Our subjects were not passive patients but hero-explorers.
(That was Timothy Leary at Harvard.)

The term spirituality should be reserved for situations that involve personal experiences
of certain dimensions of reality that give one’s life and existence in general a numinous
quality. C. G. Jung used the word numinous to describe an experience that feels sacred,
holy, or out of the ordinary.

The theoretical formulations and practical principles that LSD psychotherapy has
discovered or validated include a new expanded cartography of the human mind, new and
effective therapeutic mechanisms, a new strategy of psychotherapy and a synthesis of
spirituality and science.

The therapeutic results transcended anything I had ever witnessed. Difficult symptoms
that had resisted months and even years of conventional treatment often disappeared after
experiences such as psychological death and rebirth, feelings of cosmic unity and
sequences that clients described as past-life memories.

The training for this new profession of psychedelic guides will aim at producing the
patience of a first-grade teacher, the humility and wisdom of a Hindu guru, the loving
dedication of a minister-priest, the sensitivity of a poet and the imagination of a science
fiction writer.

The value, apart from their intrinsic value, so to say the ethical, sociological and spiritual
value of the visionary experience, is that if it is well used, it can result in a significant and
important change in the mode of consciousness and perhaps also in a change in behavior
for the good.

The various “other worlds” with which human beings erratically make contact are so
many elements in the totality of the awareness belonging to Mind at Large. Most people,
most of the time, know only what comes through the reducing valve and is consecrated as
genuinely real by the local language.

The world is now seen as an infinite diversity that is yet a unity and the beholder
experiences himself as being at one with the infinite Oneness that manifests itself, totally
present, at every point of space, at every instant in the flux of perpetual perishing and
perpetual renewal.

Their color shines forth with a brilliance which seems to us preternatural, because it is in
fact entirely natural, entirely natural in the sense of being entirely unsophisticated by
language or the scientific, philosophical and utilitarian notions, by means of which we
ordinarily re-create the given world in our own dreary human image.

There has repeatedly come upon me the sense of my original identity as one with the very
fountain of the universe. I have seen, too, that the fountain is its own source and motive
and that it’s spirit is an unbounded playfulness which is the many-dimensioned dance of
life.

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.

These experiences clearly suggest that, in a yet unexplained way, each of us contains the
information about the entire universe or all of existence, has potential experiential access
to all its parts and in a sense, is the whole cosmic network, as much as he or she is just an
infinitesimal part of it, a separate and insignificant biological entity.

This journey is experienced as going further “in,” as going back through one’s personal
life, in and back and through and beyond into the experience of all mankind, of the primal
man, of Adam and perhaps even further into the beings of animals, vegetables and
minerals.

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.

Those who prior to these experiences had various forms and degrees of emotional and
psychosomatic discomfort usually feel greatly relieved. Depression dissolves, anxiety and
tension are reduced, guilt feelings are lifted, and self-image as well as self-acceptance
improve considerably.

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.

Transpersonal experiences can involve conscious experience of other humans and
members of other species, plant life, elements of inorganic nature, microscopic and
astronomic realms not accessible to the unaided senses, history and prehistory, remote
locations or other dimensions of existence.

Transpersonal experiences involving entities and realms that are not objectively real
according to the Western worldview can convey absolutely new information. For
example, in nonordinary states, many people have encountered deities and mythological
realms specific to cultures about which they have no personal knowledge. (eyes closed)

Transpersonal experiences which involve transcendence of spacial barriers suggest that
the boundaries between the individual and the rest of the universe are not fixed and
absolute. Under special circumstances, it is possible to identify experientially with
anything in the universe, including the entire cosmos itself.

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 may encounter entities, situations, and places that bear little or no resemblance to the
realities we know in our day-to-day lives. It is here that we go beyond more familiar
experiences and enter the world known to shamans and seers, the world of deities and
suprahuman beings known from the myths and fairy tales. (eyes closed)

We often encounter the impressive but little understood phenomenon of timeless,
universal symbols and themes emerging into consciousness in a particular dramatic form
adapted to the requirements of the psychedelic drug subject who becomes the drama’s
protagonist and thereby is transformed (eyes closed).

We remain ignorant of our true nature—our eternal Self. It was that Self that I longed to
discover. In order to get in touch with the ground of my being, I had to strip away the
accretions of prejudices and preconceptions that cluttered up my psyche, making it
impossible to see what was really there.

What was once perceived as the boundaries between objects and the distinctions between
matter and empty space are now replaced by something new. Instead of there being
discrete objects and empty space between them, the entire universe is seen as one
continuous field of varying density.

When the non-ordinary states are opened up to them, even scientifically cautious and
highly intelligent people of our own time and culture find these experiences deeply
moving and personally meaningful, providing them with dramatic breakthroughs in their
beliefs.

When the shell of the ego has been cracked and there begins to be a consciousness of the
subliminal and psychological otherness underlying personality, it sometimes happens that
we catch a glimpse, fleeting but apocalypic, of that Otherness, which is the Ground of all
being.

When we enter the transpersonal arena, we can experience historically or geographically
remote events as vividly as if they were happening here and now. We can participate in
sequences that involve our ancestors, animal predecessors, or even people in other
centuries and other cultures who have no ancestral relationship to us. (eyes closed)

Your soul is free, loses all sense of time, alert as it never was before, living an eternity in
a night, seeing infinity in a grain of sand. What you have seen 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!

A new and exciting area was discovered for psychedelic psychotherapy: the care of
patients with terminal cancer and some other incurable diseases. Studies of dying
individuals indicated that this approach was able to bring not only alleviation of the
emotional suffering and relief from severe physical pain associated with cancer, but also
dramatically transform the concept of death and change the attitude toward dying.

A person in the psychedelic state can perceive much more in other human beings than he
can when he is in his everyday mind. The voyager may see his companion at different
ages of life, at different periods of history, and as different persons. At one time or
another, during the psychedelic session, the voyager looks at his companion. Often it is
an overwhelming discovery.

Altered states of consciousness enrich man’s experiences in many areas of life. The
intense aesthetic experience gained while absorbed in some majestic scene, a work of art,
or music may broaden man’s subjective experiences and serve as a source of creative
inspiration. There are also numerous instances of sudden illumination, creative insights,
and problem solving occurring while man has lapsed into altered states of consciousness.

An individual can experience scenes from famous red-light and night-club districts of the
world, participate in the most ingenious strip shows and group orgies, become part of
Babylonian religious ceremonies involving indiscriminate promiscuous sex or witness
and partake of wild primitive rituals with sensual rhythmic dances and a strong sexual
undertone. (eyes closed)

Anybody who has been into the Sainte Chapelle in Paris or into Chartes Cathedral must
realize the extraordinary visionary power which these windows have. It is possible by
means of stained glass windows, to turn the whole of a vast building into one single
jewel. One is inside a great jewel. (With LSD, wherever you are is like that and much,
much more.)

Anything in the environment—a painting on the wall, a pattern in the carpet—may
become a universe to be entered and explored; drug users say they understand what Blake
meant by “the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower.” Color seems
dazzlingly bright and intense, depth perception heightened, contours sharpened, and relief
clearer; details usually overlooked become intensely interesting.

As in the case of other transpersonal experiences, episodes of organ, tissue and cellular
consciousness can be associated with many concrete insights; various details concerning
anatomy, histology, physiology and chemistry of the body found in the accounts of such
experiences often reveal a level of information that the subjects did not have before the
session.

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.

Drugs were a passport to an uncharted landscape of risk and sensation and those who
entered the forbidden territory moved quickly into areas where most adults could offer
little assistance. The drama enacted in this zone of enchantment was totally alien to the
academic curriculum, which failed to provide the necessary tools to deal with the rewards
and pitfalls one might encounter on such a journey.

Elements of plant consciousness can be accompanied by philosophical and spiritual
ideation and insights. Several subjects, for example, have pondered over the purity and
unselfishness of plant existence and have seen plant life as a model for ideal human
conduct; unlike animals and man, most plants do not kill and do not live at the expense of
other organisms.

Everything may seem bathed in a theatrical or lunar light or illuminated from within.
Objects change their shape and size; walls and floors undulate as if breathing; spatial
perspective is distorted into exaggerated depth or flatness; stationary objects look as if
they are in motion without seeming displaced in space; faces become younger, older or
caricatured in various ways.

In an LSD state, the old conceptual frameworks break down, cultural cognitive barriers
dissolve and the material can be seen and synthesized in a totally new way that was not
possible within the old system of thinking. This mechanism can produce not only striking
new solutions to various specific problems, but new paradigms that revolutionize whole
scientific disciplines.

In my utopian fantasy, Island, I speculated in fictional terms about the ways in which a
substance akin to psilocybin could be used to potentiate the nonverbal education of
adolescents and to remind adults that the real world is very different from the misshapen
universe they have created for themselves by means of their culture-conditioned
prejudices. (That was Aldous Huxley.)

In nonordinary states of consciousness, visions of various universal symbols can play a
significant role even in experiences of individuals who previously had no interest in
mysticism or were strongly opposed to anything esoteric. These visions tend to convey
instant intuitive understanding of the various levels of meaning of these symbols and
generate a deep interest in the spiritual path. (visions seen with eyes closed)

In sessions where the main objective is to have a religious or spiritual experience, there is
a definite tendency to deemphasize or ignore descriptive aspects, psychopathological
phenomena and traumatic personal material. The aesthetic elements are considered
important, but the major focus is on the supraindividual, transpersonal and
transcendental. To a great extent, this is also characteristic of psychedelic therapy.

In some instances, individuals enmeshed in elements of a certain culture felt a strong
need to dance. Without any previous training or specific exposure to these cultures, they
were able to perform complicated dance forms. (The person gets the vision of the
different culture, sees the people dancing in the vision and then he does the dance. Before
taking LSD, the person knew nothing of that culture or its dances.)

In the LSD state, the old conceptual frameworks break down, cultural cognitive barriers
dissolve and the material can be seen and synthesized in a totally new way that was not
possible within the old systems of thinking, This mechanism can produce not only
striking new solutions to various specific problems, but new paradigms that revolutionize
whole scientific disciplines.

In the transpersonal realm, we experience an extension of our consciousness far beyond
the usual boundaries of both our bodies and our egos, as well as beyond the physical
limits of our everyday lives. The more I have explored this realm in my own research, the
more I am convinced that these experiences in transpersonal consciousness can include
the entire spectrum of existence itself.

In this state, the subject finds it difficult to see any negative aspects in the world and in
the very structure of the cosmic design; everything appears perfect, everything is as it
should be. At this point, the world appears to be a friendly place where a childlike,
passive-dependent attitude can be assumed with full confidence and with feelings of
complete security.

Individuals feel that they have left the 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.

Individuals in nonordinary states of consciousness who tune into these experiential
realms participate in dramatic, usually brief, by occasionally complex and elaborate,
sequences that take place in more or less remote historical periods and in various
countries and cultures. These scenes can be experienced from the position of observer but
more frequently from experiential identification with the protagonists. (eyes closed)

It became obvious that the drug experiences could enhance creative potential in certain
individuals. The drug became popular among artists as a source of inspiration and many
hundreds of painters, sculptors, musicians, architects and writers volunteered for LSD
experiments. Somewhat later, scientists, philosophers and other highly creative
individuals became favorite subjects for LSD sessions.

It can dissolve or temporarily suspend the effectiveness of those psychical mechanisms
whose functions would appear to be to inhibit emergence of certain processes and
contents of the mind. Once these inhibitions are dissolved, the ground has been prepared
for the free psyche to function in such a way as to result in the beneficial transformation
and self-realization of the individual.

It has been shown that LSD experiences of death and rebirth and mystical states of
consciousness can change patients’ concepts of death and life and alleviate their fears of
dying. Psychedelic therapy has proved to be more than an important tool in the control of
mental and physical pain, it has contributed greatly to our understanding of the
experience of death.

It is amazing that people who in nonordinary states, “visit” various archetypal realms and
encounter mythological beings residing there can often bring back information that can
be verified by research into the mythology of the corresponding cultures. This led Jung to
the idea of the collective unconscious and the assumption that each individual can gain
access to the entire cultural heritage of humanity. (eyes closed)

It was possible to guide man to a world where no longer does man view himself as a
creature separated and estranged from all other creatures but rather as a participant in a
rich and fertile reality, a reality so interrelated and so full that it could only best be
described as a dynamic continuum; the new reality that unfolds in the psychedelic
experience.

Large trees known for their longevity, such as sequoias and redwoods, were experienced
in the sessions as representing timeless and centered consciousness uninfluenced by the
turmoils and upheavals in the external world. Other insights associated with similar
experiences were related to the mystical consciousness and deep religious significance of
certain plants.

Loss of self may be experienced as an actual death and rebirth, undergone with anguish
and joy of overwhelming intensity. In some cases, the culmination is a mystical ecstasy in
which for an eternal moment all contradictions seem reconciled, all questions answered,
all wants irrelevant or satisfied, all existence encompassed by an experience that is felt to
define the ultimate reality, boundless, timeless, and ineffable.

LSD is a unique and powerful tool for the exploration of the human mind and human
nature. Psychedelic experiences mediate access to deep realms of the psyche that have
not yet been discovered and acknowledged by mainstream psychology and psychiatry.
They also reveal new possibilities and mechanisms of therapeutic change and personality
transformation.

LSD subjects often consider the possibility that consciousness is a basic cosmic
phenomenon related to the organization of energy and that it exists throughout the
universe; in this context, human consciousness appears to be only one of its many
varieties and outgrowths. Episodes of consciousness of inorganic matter can be
accompanied by various insights of a philosophical and religious relevance. (nature?)

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.

Often a good part of the session would be spent on the beach or in the water. We found
that the surf, in the protected bay, proved to be an excellent way to bring someone
through a difficult phase of the trip. Simply to lie at the water’s edge, merging into the
eternal currents of air, ocean, sea, and earth, seemed to clear away much fear, suspicion,
frustration, and other emotional baggage.

One can experience himself in a specific situation in his childhood, in the birth canal
and/or in ancient Egypt. While aware of his everyday identity, he can identify
experientially with another person, another life form or a mythological being. He can also
experience himself in a different location in the world or in a mythical reality. (eyes
closed)

One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time and my impression of its truth has
ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational
consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it,
parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness
entirely different.

One frequently sees geometric patterns of multi-colored abstract lines that are visionary
in nature. Although such patterns are often more clearly visible when one’s eyes are
closed, they may be seen superimposed upon objects in the external world when one’s
eyes are open. These abstract patterns are generally three-dimensional and constantly
change in a steady, rhythmic flow, resembling the view through a kaleidoscope.

One may enter one’s visions and seem to be walking through gardens, art museums,
medieval castles, futuristic cities, etc. Archetypal imagery may appear, and one thus finds
oneself encountering mythological characters such as angels, demons, dragons, and
Grecian gods. On the boundary of mystical consciousness, it is not uncommon for
Christians to encounter an image intuitively identified as the Christ.

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

One sees the other in terms of a richness once seen, but lost through over-familiarity.
With this perception, closed-circuits are reopened and the persons communicate in ways
and on levels long inaccessible to them. Also, new circuits may be opened and new ways
of communication become possible. Or the subject may feel he is seeing the other in all
her richness and complexity for the first time.

One thing had become clear in their research with LSD. The beneficial results of the
experience were almost entirely dependent upon the person’s willingness to accept the
experience for whatever it might be. This willingness was dependent to a large extent
upon how much you trusted yourself, and how much you trusted the people administering
the program.

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 and rituals from different cultures that the subject has
never studied. (eyes closed)

Our personal boundaries may appear to melt and we can become identified with other
people, groups of people, or all of humanity. We can actually feel that we have become
things that we ordinarily perceive as objects outside of ourselves, such as other people,
animals, or trees. Very accurate and realistic experiences of identification with various
forms of life and even inorganic processes can occur in transpersonal states.

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 another dimension.

Previously, I had forgotten the childish joy of simply being alive. Tripping makes you
feel the way an infant must feel, in the absence of discomfort, simply being: energetic,
open, interested. Tripping lent to my life the grace of fairy tales, where everything is
right and appropriate and satisfying. Psychedelic drugs engender storybook experiences:
one is tremendously cozy, delighted, enchanted, lucky.

Profound transcendental experiences, such as consciousness of the Universal Mind or of
the Void, in addition to having a very beneficial effect on the subject’s physical and
emotional well-being, are usually central in creating in him a keen interest in religion,
mystical and philosophical issues, and a strong need to incorporate the spiritual
dimension into his way of life.

Psychedelic drugs had an amazing potential, not only as aids to psychotherapy but in
such areas as prisoner rehabilitation, personal growth and individual freedom,
interpersonal community structures, improved human relations, creativity, art and
entertainment, education, religion and philosophy, politics and sociology, experimental
behavioral science, to mention just a few of the practical applications we had pursued.

Psychedelic drugs released new forces into the consciousness of millions of people.
These forces might be seen as good, evil, or morally ambiguous; they might be regarded
as coming from within, as an upsurge from the unconscious mind, or from beyond, as a
revelation from other planes of existence; or some way to reconcile these interpretations
might be sought.

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.

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.

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.

Subjects repeatedly reported that they experienced consciousness of the ocean. On other
occasions, they have identified with what they felt to be the consciousness of fire. Many
LSD subjects also stated that they experienced consciousness of a particular material or
even the microworld of the atoms. (You can experience and/or identify with the
consciousness of anything.)

The action of a psychedelic often focuses on those areas in the unconscious that most
demand resolution. The willingness to surrender to the experience and allow such
resolution to proceed often results in the most valuable kind of learning about one’s
repressed feelings, hidden values, compulsions and aspirations, and inappropriate
behavior.

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 conveying and receiving of complicated messages, without the normal amount of
verbalization, is made possible by the subject’s alertness to nuances of language. Double
meanings and other word plays may be picked up instantly. Apparently simple statements
and even single words yield manifold meanings and implications that all seem
simultaneously accessible.

The ecstatic experience of a mystical nature is probably the most captivating, moving and
awesome experience known to man. It is also the most thoroughly transforming and most
enlightening of all human experiences. More than any one single facet of religion, it
constitutes the psychological foundation on which the whole enterprise known as
“religion” is built. It is the ultimate source from which the strength of religion flows.

The everyday clinical practice of LSD psychotherapy brings repeated evidence of the
powerful healing potential of the death-rebirth process. The discovery of this potent
therapeutic mechanism, as yet unrecognized and unacknowledged by Western science,
represents one of the most surprising findings of my LSD research. (That was Stanislav
Grof.)

The experience from LSD therapy and the new experiential psychotherapies clearly
indicates that exposure to another person’s deep emotional material tends to shatter
psychological defenses and to activate corresponding areas in the unconscious of the
persons assisting and witnessing the process, unless they have confronted and worked
through these levels in themselves.

The experience must come from the drug itself and the training must be specialized. No
present medical or psychological degree qualifies for the job. (A medical or
psychological degree doesn’t qualify someone to be an airplane pilot and nothing
qualifies someone to be an LSD guide if they don’t have direct, personal tripping
experience with LSD.)

The experience of cosmic consciousness provides important insights for deepening our
understanding of the highest forms of creativity. The literature on creativity is filled with
examples of extraordinary artistic, scientific, philosophical, and religious inspiration that
came from a transpersonal source and that occurred in non-ordinary states of
consciousness.

The findings from psychedelic explorations throw entirely new light on the material from
history, comparative religion and anthropology concerning the ancient mysteries of death
and rebirth, rites of passage of various cultures, shamanic procedures of all times,
aboriginal healing ceremonies, spiritual practices of various religious and mystical
traditions and other phenomena of great cultural significance.

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.

The global popularity of chemical mind-changers is due to their producing ecstasy,
perception change, fresh sensation. Ecstasy means to break out of the verbal prisons,
suspend your imprints, see things anew, perceive directly. With freshened perception
goes the feeling of liberation, insight, the exultant sense of having escaped the lifeless net
of symbols.

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 individual is flooded by light of supernatural beauty and experiences a state of divine
epiphany. He or she has a deep sense of emotional, intellectual and spiritual liberation
and gains access to breathtaking realms of cosmic inspiration and insight. This type of
experience is clearly responsible for great achievements in the history of humanity in the
area of science, art, religion and philosophy.

The individual may experience slight or drastic changes in the size, configuration,
substance, weight and other attributes contributing to the definition of the body. He may
seem to himself to assume the form of some animal or even some inanimate object and he
may be reduced to a sub-atomic particle or expanded to the proportion of a galaxy. He
may experience his body’s dissolution and the sense of having no body at all.

The individual tuned into this experiential area usually discovers within himself or herself
genuinely positive values, such as a sense of justice, appreciation of beauty, feelings of
love and self-respect as well as respect for others. These values, as well as the
motivations to pursue them and live in accordance with them, appear on this level to be
intrinsic to human nature.

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 way inside the mind-
brain.

The mystical experience was not a band-aid for my unfulfilled dreams. What I longed to
catch a glimpse of was a dimension that includes, yet far exceeds, the human world. I
hungered for the experience of the MORE without which life, to me, was not worth
living. I believed the words of the mystics and poets, but I wanted to experience them
myself.

The opportunity to vividly experience specific memories from different periods of one’s
life makes it possible to see their interrelations and discover chains of unconscious
neurotic patterns underlying specific emotional problems. This can be an important
transforming experience that results in profound changes in the personality structure,
emotional dynamics, and behavior of the individual.

The pale bluish light from the windows becomes rich with hints of color, breaking into
strips and ribbons, then brighter color within the ribbons, moving and forming glowing
patterns. Complicated medieval stories forming and unforming. I sit near the window,
watching entranced. The light is calling out to me, brighter and brighter. I raise my arms
to it and feel myself drawn out, flowing.

The reality and concrete nature of these experiences, as well as their convincing quality,
presented for a while a very serious conflict for the “scientist” in me. Then, all of a
sudden, the resolution of this dilemma emerged; it became clear to me that it was more
appropriate to consider the necessity of revising present scientific beliefs than to question
the relevance of my own experience. (That was Stanislav Grof.)

The reduction of ideational barriers by LSD permits certain kinds of creative activity. A
direct connection exists between the ability to experience prelogical, primitive-archaic
thinking and artistic creativity. (This writer, Sidney Cohen, was wrong to use the term
“primitive-archaic thinking.” The thinking of the ego is what’s primitive and archaic, not
what’s beyond the ego.)

The subject may experience slight or drastic changes in the size, configuration, substance,
weight and other attributes contributing to definition of the body. He may seem to
himself to assume the form of some animal or even some inanimate object and he may be
reduced to a sub-atomic particle or expanded to the proportions of a galaxy. He may
experience his body’s dissolution and the sense of having no body at all.

The symbolic images are predominately historical, legendary, mythical, ritualistic and
“archetypal.” The subject may experience a profound and rewarding sense of continuity
with evolutionary and historic process. He may act out myths and legends and pass
through initiations and ritual observances often seemingly structured precisely in terms of
his own most urgent needs. (eyes closed)

The too-sudden opening up of the universe can induce an onslaught at what Aldous
Huxley called the “horror of infinity,” a terror of the vastness of the void within or
without, of the utter minuteness and aloneness of the soul in the cosmos. A clenching
reflex is, after all, a natural response to the floor and ceiling flying out of your mind.
(One needs to be prepared for this and understand that it’s all right.)

The work of many artists—painters, musicians, writers and poets—who participated in
LSD experimentation in various countries of the world has been deeply influenced by
their psychedelic experiences. Most of them found access to deep sources of inspiration
in their unconscious mind, experienced a striking enhancement and unleashing of fantasy
and reached extraordinary vitality, originality and freedom of artistic expression.

The world of myths, legends, and fairy tales literally comes to life. The subject can
witness numerous scenes from the mythology and folklore of any culture in the world and
visit any mythical landscapes. He or she can also experientially identify with legendary
and mythical heroes and heroines or fantastic mythological creatures. Such sequences can
emerge in meaningful connection with personal problems of the subject. (eyes closed)

These abstract, three-dimensional forms are intensely illuminated and brilliantly colored.
After a time they tend to take on the appearance of concrete objects, such as richly
patterned carpets or mosaics or carvings. These in turn modulate into rich and elaborate
buildings, set in landscapes of extraordinary beauty. Neither the buildings nor the
landscapes remain static, but change continuously. (eyes closed)

To be able to face all of the challenges of psychedelic therapy, the therapist has to have
special training that involves personal experiences with the drug. Because of the
extraordinary nature of the LSD states and the limitations of our language in describing
them, it is impossible for the future LSD therapist to acquire deeper understanding of the
process without first-hand exposure.

Transpersonal experiences, especially in psychedelic experiences, do not always occur in
a pure form. Embryonal experiences can occur simultaneously with phylogenetic
memories and with the experience of cosmic unity. These associations are rather constant
and they reflect deep intrinsic interrelations between various types of psychedelic
phenomena as well as the multileveled nature of the LSD experience.

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 find again and again this description of luminous landscapes and architectures
encrusted with gems, the whole world of landscape is filled with what Ezakiel calls the
stones of fire. These descriptions of course very closely parallel all the accounts of
paradises, posthumous worlds and fairylands which are found in all the traditions of the
world. (eyes closed)

We find drug subjects with little or no scientific training describing evolutionary
processes in some detail, spelling out the scenery of microcosm and macrocosm in terms
roughly equivalent to those used by the modern physicist, empathizing with primal states
of matter and energy and them recounting this experience in terms more reminiscent of
Heisenberg than of a hallucinatory state.

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.

We were convinced that drug effects were almost entirely determined by what people
around the tripper did. If the environment radiated safety, beauty, wisdom, then even
neurotic subjects would have experiences that were safe, aesthetic and revelatory. The
theory held that all “bad trips” could be converted to “good trips” if the environment was
intelligently managed to provide support. (That was Timothy Leary.)

We were dealing with a powerful aphrodisiac, probably the most powerful sexual releaser
known to man. The effect was sensory—contact was intensified thousand-fold but also
deeper. The union was not just your body and her body but all of your racial and
evolutionary entities with all of hers. It was mythic mating. Neurological union. Cellular
sex. Archetypes merging. It was the direct reliving of thousands of matings.

What we once perceived as the boundaries between objects and the distinctions between
matter and empty space are now replaced by something new. Instead of there being
discrete objects and empty space between them, the entire universe is seen as one
continuous field of varying density. In modern physics, matter becomes interchangeable
with energy.

When one sees God as light and beauty penetrating the whole of the universe, feelings are
far too intense and sacred to contain one iota of humor. (The writer doesn’t mean that
humor isn’t part of an LSD trip, but refers to someone insensitively revealing their total
ignorance of LSD by laughing at the person’s descriptions of some details of their
experience.)

When someone asks me to describe an experience of LSD, I try to explain: “Well, say
one has a pie of many pieces and each is of a different flavor. Someone asks you what
kind of pie it is. Because of the nature of speech, you can only speak of one flavor at a
time. To give a list of the flavors doesn’t capture the essence of the pie, which can be said
only it you could say all the different pieces at once.”

When we experience identification with the cosmic consciousness, we have the feeling of
enfolding the totality of existence within us, and of comprehending the Reality that
underlies all realities. We have a profound sense that we are in connection with the
supreme and ultimate principle of all Being. In this state, it is absolutely clear that this
principle is the ultimate and the only mystery.

When we set out to study consciousness and such elusive altered states as ecstasy, there is
the observer’s “subject matter” and there is the subject’s “reality” and usually these have
no relation. The psychiatrist may see psychosis, while the subject may be experiencing
hedonic ecstasy. The outside observer has an entirely different view from the
experiencing person. (The psychiatrist must be experienced with LSD or it’s a joke.)

Where the symbolic dramas unfold, the individual finds facets of his own existence
revealed in the person of Prometheus or Parsifal, Lucifer or Oedipus, Faust or Don Juan
and plays out his personal drama on these allegorical and analogic terms or he finds the
means of attaining to new levels of maturity through his participation in rites of passage
and other ceremonies and initiations. (eyes closed)

Within our own consciousness, there is a memory, waiting to be recalled, of every
movement, feeling and desire in our lives. This implies that everything survives in a way
more complete than just intellectually. The psychedelic experience heightens this recall,
and if handled properly, could pass through beneficial channels leading to psychotherapy
and rehabilitation.

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).

You have to take it with your patient or at least have taken it yourself in order to
empathize with and follow him as he goes from one level to another. If the therapist has
never taken it, he’s sitting there with his sticky molasses Freudian psychiatric chessboard
attempting to explain experiences that are far beyond the narrow limits of that particular
system.

You have to take it with your patient or at least have taken it yourself in order to
empathize with and follow him as he goes from one level to another. If the therapist has
never taken it, he’s sitting there with his sticky molasses Freudian psychiatric chessboard
attempting to explain experiences that are far beyond the narrow limits of that particular
system.

All patients, said Grof, apparently moved through similar levels during their sessions.
They passed first through aspects of their own life experiences—birth, childhood,
adulthood—and then into experiential realms described in mystical traditions,
experiences of ego-death and rebirth followed by “satori”—the dissolution of ego-
boundaries and the loss of duality, an unfolding awareness of cosmic unity, a sense of
Oneness.

Crying and laughing are branches of the same tree—the tree of emotions. Not two of the
leaves are the same, yet all have the same roots: the capacity to feel and the need to
express those feelings. Whether I was crying or laughing was really not too important,
except on the conventional level. The important point was that the tree of my emotions
was being vigorously shaken and liberated of some withered leaves which had hung on
too long.

Events in the sessions are part of a broad pattern, the scope of which transcends the
energy field of the individual. (Then again, the individual’s energy field is the entire
universe. We all have or share the same unlimited energy field. It transcends the energy
field of the ego which is finite and not to be confused with the individual or the
individual’s energy field which is infinite. Words can be tricky. The individual is not the
ego.)

He may feel that speech is largely superfluous since the high degree of empathic
communion has made him very communicative on even the most subliminal levels—from
one spoken word conveying a bookful of ideas and associations, on to total telepathic
communication. Also, he may feel that gestures, postures and subtle shifts of facial
expression, on the part of both himself and the other(s), can communicate volumes of
material.

Near the beginning of the experience, one frequently sees geometric patterns of multi-
colored abstract lines that are visionary in nature. Although such patterns are often more
clearly visible when one’s eyes are closed, they may be seen superimposed upon objects
in the external world when one’s eyes are open. These abstract patterns are generally
three-dimensional and constantly change in a steady, rhythmic flow, resembling the view
through a kaleidoscope.

One of the first effects noted by many persons after ingesting a psychedelic drug is a
change in spatial perception. Distances suddenly seem to be different. A person sitting
across the room may suddenly seem to be sitting only a few feet away. The ceiling may
seem to bulge at the corners of the room and the walls may undulate as though they were
breathing. It may actually seem possible to step inside a picture of a woodland scene on
the wall and walk among the trees.

Particularly valuable and promising were the early efforts to use LSD psychotherapy with
terminal cancer patients. These studies showed that LSD was able to relieve severe pain,
often even in those patients who had not responded to medication with narcotics. In a
large percentage of these patients, it was also possible to alleviate or even eliminate the
fear of death, increase the quality of their lives during the remaining days, and positively
transform the experience of dying.

Socrates tells us that there exists an ideal world above and beyond the world of matter.
“In this other earth the colors are much purer and much more brilliant than they are down
here…The very mountains, the very stones have a much richer gloss, a lovelier
transparency and intensity of hue. The precious stones of this lower world, our highly
prized cornelians, jaspers, emeralds and all the rest, are but tiny fragments of these stones
above.”

The guide must be a versatile individual. His functions may include that of nursemaid
and baby-sitter, priest and trouble-shooter, soul mate and sympathetic ear, scullery maid
and mother and any other role the situation may demand. The competent guide never
forgets that it is the subject’s session and not his. He must be adaptable to any of the
eventualities of an acid session; and he must leave his own emotional involvements
behind.

The richness of the experiential content is augmented by the fact that the process involves
an endless variety of illustrative material from biology, zoology, anthropology, history,
mythology and religion. Psychedelic sessions focusing on the death-rebirth process not
only have great therapeutic potential, but are a source of invaluable scientific,
sociopolitical, philosophical and spiritual insights. (That material is seen with the eyes
closed.)

The thing that most aroused my interest was the tone and contents of what my classmates
who had taken the drug were saying. They talked to each other in stunned, excited voices
about love, sharing, identity, unity, death, ecstasy—topics not generally discussed by
psychology students except with cynical flippancy or heavy academic seriousness—but
certainly never from experienced confrontation, as was happening now. (That was Ralph
Metzner.)

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.

A calm equilibrium underlies the seeming chaos.
A good experience with the drugs heightens and intensifies all experience.
A great amount of repressed material floods the conscious mind.
A great sense of freedom and joy arises.
A heavy psychedelic experience is upheaval time for anyone.
A marvelous energy is tapped.
A minor change in the environment often creates an entirely new mood.
A new awareness of one’s relatedness to others and to the universe is strengthened.
A new consciousness is born.
A new dawn breaks.
A new heaven seems to shine upon a new earth.
A new sense of oneself appears.
A new sensitiveness, a superior acuteness manifests itself in all the senses.
A new way of thinking reorganizes existing observations.
A newer and fuller significance of individual human existence will be revealed.
A person may be brought out of his unconscious obsession to a full awareness.
A person moves from a relatively limited way of being to a new, expanded condition.
A person realizes his oneness with the Universal Consciousness.
A present event becomes charged with profound emotional significance.
A productive session usually involved total psychological surrender to the experience.
A profound transcendental experience should leave a changed man and a changed life.
A psychedelic drug may open a brave new world.
A psychedelic experience flips you out of your mind.
A red traffic light may be, not a danger signal, but an object of surpassing beauty.
A smudge on the wall is an object of limitless fascination.
A subject experiences various degrees of loosening and losing of his ego boundaries.
A timeless pulsation seems to take us across all barriers.
A tremendous emotional upsurge is produced, an upheaval of emotions.
A trip is really a journey into the unknown territories of the mind.
A whole new life is ahead of me.
A whole new world of experience opens up.
A world of color is broken into.
Acid enables you to take that leap ahead and come back ten years richer.
Acid taught us the universe inside our mind.
Acid wired in an understanding of the other side.
All body contact becomes sexual.
All colors I have ever beheld are dull in comparison to these.
All forms of matter and all living beings are seen as patterns of divine consciousness.
All is eternally present.
All is significant.
All knowledge is potentially available.
All philosophical problems become clear.
All senses are heightened.
All that you see has a pristine quality. Mystical insight is fresh and deep.
All the colors I have ever beheld are dull as compared to these.
All the senses act as one as they seem to caress and encompass whatever they perceive.
All the senses and imagination are intensified.
All things are possible, All feelings are possible.
Altered awareness of the body may involve the whole body or a part or parts of the body.
Altered states of consciousness can heighten aesthetic sensitivity.
An appearance of newness beautifies every object.
An arm may be perceived as absurdly long or short.
An episode could be both instantaneous and eternal.
An immense calm has set in. A fusion of contradictions. There are no more obstacles.
An individual comes to experience himself in a totally new way.
An individual moves into the realms of light and beauty.
An onrush of stimuli bombard and penetrate the body.
An overwhelming conviction in the value of the experience is felt.
Another state of reality is realized.
Any note of music can be sensed as naked energy, trembling in space, timeless.
Archetypal visions are genuine manifestations of the collective unconscious.
Are these biochemical visions religious? (Yes)
Around us, worlds are born and fall, images dance with us, strange shapes glow brighter.
Artists sought the experience as a means of expanding their vision.
As a result of this spiritual fulfillment, an amazingly deep new optimism has come to me. As unpredictable as the content of the LSD reaction is its intensity.
At last you know what the ineffable is and what ecstasy means. Ecstasy!
At peak experience, our being is filled with love, radiance, joy and ecstasy.
Avoid imposing the ego game on the experience.
Awareness becomes vivid.
Awareness has more levels, is many-dimensioned.
Bad trips may ultimately be good ones. Spiritual gains are never made without risk.
Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels.
Because of that mushroom experience, I never forget what’s really important.
Because so much is happening, the internal clock seems to be standing still.
Because this power is so true, within it there is confidence.
Before taking LSD, I had all but lost interest in sex.
Being high widens perspectives on the physical as well as mental well-being.
Beyond its doors are the mysteries.
Blissful divinity accompanies the ecstatic experience.
Blow the mind and you are left with God and life.
Break through and roam free out beyond symbols.
Break through the walls of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim myth into freedom.
Bright pure colors are characteristic of the Other World.
Can you float through the universe of your body and not lose your way?
Capacity for empathy seems greatly heightened.
Color is intense, luminous, objects look fresh and radiant.
Color is repetitively described in superlatives of intensity, luminescence and saturation.
Color visions began to evolve into immense vistas of enchanting beauty.
Colors and sounds gain an intense meaning.
Colors are often described as jewel-like, lit up from within.
Colors are seen with a certain movement and continuous influx of shades.
Colors are unusually bright and explosive.
Colors become brighter and more luminous.
Colors become impressive, lose their boundaries, and seem to flow.
Communal feelings of unity and brotherhood are intensely felt.
Composers given the drug discovered that they had greater insight into music.
Consciousness “ascends” to the eternal state.
Consciousness feels itself free of the body.
Consciousness is not narrowed, but enormously enlarged.
Consciousness is not obliterated but deeply changed and drastically refocused.
Consciousness is real and has connections to every part of the body.
Consciousness is timeless.
Consciousness is usually qualitatively changed and has a dreamlike character.
Consciousness will be freed from games which comprise personality.
Conversion or startling change in behavior patterns can occur.
Deep insights of a personal, social and philosophic nature take place.
Deliverance is out of time into eternity.
Depth upon depth of truth seems revealed.
Distorted time could be utilized for creative mental activity.
Divided matter and form becomes unified pattern-in-process.
Don’t rush it.
Drug-induced religious and mystical experience is unusually intense.
Drugs can be said to promote the creation of art.
Drugs change the quality of consciousness profoundly.
Drugs dramatically alter the manner in which reality is experienced.
Drugs have always been associated with the mythical, intuitive dimension.
Drugs open up glorious and pleasurable chambers of the mind.
Drugs released people from the grip of the game-world.
Drugs stimulate quiet, serene, humorous, sensual, reflective responses.
Each drug experience is a unique journey of exploration into the mind.
Each experience opens up new worlds of discovery.
Each moment can be a joyful discovery.
Each object exists in infinite perfection.
Ecstatic freedom of consciousness is the keynote of this vision.
Ecstasy is something higher or further out than ordinary pleasure, beyond pleasure.
Emotional reactivity is almost always greatly enhanced.
Emotionally, there is a profound feeling of oneness.
Emotions, feelings, and moods are intensified and disinhibited.
Enjoy every second. Don’t rush. Take it slow and easy.
Eternities are reached; infinity is known. The relation of all things is known.
Eternity manifests itself in every moment of time.
Even a bad experience can be beneficial.
Even a single psychedelic experience can have profound and lasting consequences.
Evening at last closes a day that seemed to have been going on since the world began.
Events from the remote and obscure past may come clearly to mind.
Every cell in the body is sensed as involved in orgastic creativity.
Every LSD experience is unique.
Every object seems to stand out with crystal like clearness.
Everything is happening now on a great universal scale.
Everything is more meaningful.
Everything seen is brilliantly illuminated and seems to shine from within.
Everything starts to sparkle and turn into light.
Everything that happens “down there” is the robot manifestation of the life “up here.”
Everything there shines (the other world).
Everything you see and touch can glow with radiance.
Experience the ancient cosmic myths of creation and manifestation.
Experiences of this kind are not bound by the usual special or temporal limitations.
Experiences under LSD can be overwhelmingly rich and emotionally kaleidoscopic.
Exquisite forms dance by. Objects radiate energy, brilliant emanations.
External objects dance and sing.
Fantastically vivid images appear. (eyes closed)
Feel the ecstatic energy vibrations pulsing through you.
Feel the sunset.
Feeling and perception are hardly separated in the world of visions.
Feeling interweaves with thinking and both become joined with perceiving.
Feelings of awe and sacredness have been overwhelming.
Feelings toward other people become unusually intense.
Feelings with overtones of metaphysical insight arise.
Float free. Follow the stream.
Flowers call to mind a world of innocence, transparency, light and joy.
For many, the discoveries mean new truth and wisdom.
For most people, it’s an extremely significant experience.
Free the brain to experience direct-raw-nerve-ending sensation.
Gothic churches and Greek temples were brilliantly colored.
Gratitude is heaven itself.
Great changes are taking place in this universe of myself.
Hallucinogens provide a key to the creative process.
He develops new and free energy from the unconscious to alter his life situation.
He discovers that he is not only himself but also God or that he is the whole universe.
He experiences a cosmic vision.
He experiences himself in complete harmony with a total absence of anxiety.
He explores the labyrinthine regions of his own brain.
He explores the magical place.
He finds himself entering into an identification with the evolutionary process.
He has a new and much more expanded worldview.
He has been blissfully united with the ground of the universe.
He has seen the vision and its beauty and power.
He is looking on a new creation. (eyes closed)
He may “see what has to be done” as he has “never seen it before.”
He or she discovers what real real peace of mind feels like.
He or she enters a new, radiant world.
He realizes Einsteinian relativity, senses that all is flow and evolutionary change.
He reports a “magnificent, staggeringly beautiful” sequence of images. (eyes closed)
He returns to the state of infancy. (That’s maturity, not regression.)
He said he never felt better or enjoyed food more.
He sees in his experience a glimpse of reality.
He states that this consciousness has expanded to encompass the whole universe.
He transcends his ordinary self and his ordinary mode of awareness.
He voyaged to uncharted realms of his own neurology.
He who has once looked upon great glories cannot but hope to behold them again.
Heard said, “I ascended to the top of the universe.”
Heaven is there for all to see.
Here is unlocked a store house of glorified memorial treasures.
Here is the place whence Heaven and Earth derive their being.
Here the depth of light and structure in a bursting bud go on forever.
Heretofore unimagined answers are forthcoming.
His center of experience moves from ego to Self.
His experience had brought first deliverance and then meaning into his life.
His religious and sexual interests could be combined. It’s an ancient union.
His vision has grown telescopic.
Hollingshead called LSD his daily consciousness vitamin.
How fresh the air feels as you breathe it. Fresh, pure, charged with life.
Hubbard would hand you a perfect diamond and suggest you gaze into its depths.
I am able to give my full attention to the perception.
I am alive within the living God.
I am aware that each man on the street has some spark of the divine.
I am grateful to have been able to learn that I am capable of such experiences.
I am having a ball. This is magnificent!
I am truly reaching as far as I can—beyond words—beyond me—beyond us—beyond.
I become as a little child again that I may enter into the Kingdom of God.
I blow my nose and the whole insides rushes out of me.
I can’t decide where shape ends and color begins.
I do not have to have faith that what I saw was true. I KNOW that it was.
I feel a rush of liberation.
I feel for the first time that I really know you.
I feel the music flowing uncontrollably through our bodies.
I find it hopeless to describe in language the beauty and splendor of what I saw.
I float down the torrential stream of timelessness, one with it.
I had experienced unexpected, impressive things.
I have changed my attitudes, ideas and values quite radically since my first dose of LSD.
I have just come back from seeing the world for the first time.
I had never felt this wonderful before.
I have never seen such color before.
I hold Gina’s hand as we sway with the powerful current.
I hope that some of the joy which I have felt in just existing can stay with me.
I know I could never have understood this experience had I not lived it myself.
I look at his face and see gentleness, peace, calmness, serenity.
I loosen and expand.
I must praise and glorify this experience and all its wonder.
I realize how arbitrary some of our apparently “natural” perceptions may be.
I rejoice as if the world were applauding me. Glory, glory in the highest.
I see everything in its cosmic dimension.
I seem to have a new sense of peace.
I shall wake up and recollect the infinite joy.
I take space ships to the different parts of my body. I visit my own body as a stranger.
I think it’s healthy that people should have this experience.
I voyage through the inner space between my atoms.
I will understand the mystics much better having had the experience.
I would describe the experience as a conversion experience of the most radical nature.
I’m so happy. This is utopia. It’s heaven.
I’m warm inside a glow produced by good thoughts and love.
I’ve been blinded all my life to this radiance.
I’ve been born again. There is no limitation to freedom.
I’ve been to paradise and out the other side.
I’ve been turned on to life and have never been so happy.
I’ve had the greatest experience of my life.
I’ve never listened to music like this before.
I’ve never listened to music like this before. I’ve never heard music like this before.
I’ve never, never seen it so clearly.
Ideas acquire a strong emotional component.
Ideas seem freely flowing.
If I could perpetuate this state I should have found upon this earth the joys of heaven.
If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is, infinite.
If you see anything frightening, walk toward it and it will disappear. (advice for trip)
Immerse yourself in the energy, the divine energy of creation.
In a psychedelic experience, a few seconds can yield a whole new orientation.
In LSD, we had a new chemical tool for human expression and development.
In the Kingdom of Heaven, all is in all, all is one and all is ours.
In the psychedelic drug-state, mythologies abound. (eyes closed)
In the use of LSD, there’s great potential if it’s used properly and channeled.
In their enthusiasm, they returned from the Other World with a childlike energy.
In this state of consciousness, everything is the doing of Gods.
In this state, realization of the “ultimate truth” is possible.
Incredible new physical sensations pulse through the body.
Individual consciousness can merge with the Universal Mind.
Individuals differ widely in their inner experiences and reactions.
Individuals frequently encounter ecstatic or divine domains within themselves.
Individuals gain profound insights into the nature of religion.
Individuals sometimes spend hours in overwhelming sexual ecstasy.
Individuals tend to discover meaning and beauty in ordinary objects.
Infinite joy or perpetual bliss is reached.
Insights are retained after the drug has worn off.
Insights flash into awareness.
Insights of the unfathomable abound.
Intense, unitive awareness of external stimuli can set off revelatory imagery.
Intensely deep communication occurs.
Internal biological processes may be heard.
It all has the flavor of a playful game.
It can produce an immense enrichment of one’s own existence.
It cannot be known, only experienced.
It dissolves internal barriers to feeling and insight.
It does change you inside yourself.
It frees him and encourages him to let his emotions and imagination range.
It frees us from the paranoid, defensive posture toward the world that we may have.
It frees your mind.
It gives great pleasure of a very sensual type.
It has an ontological status which seems to me to be universal.
It has changed the direction of an individual life completely.
It heightens the capacity for introspection and intimacy.
It is a certain comprehensive insight into the essence of existence.
It is a journey on which one can explore the farthest inner realms of consciousness.
It is a multipotential state.
It is a new start with the slate wiped clean.
It is an illuminating insight into the very essence of existence.
It is as if I see everything for the first time.
It is clear that the promise of LSD may be as infinite as the experience itself.
It is consciousness expansion because it expands the scope of your personal reality.
It is flowing through him, as it flows through all that surrounds him.
It is here that man actually realizes his ultimate meaning and destiny.
It is not uncommon for persons to giggle or laugh uproariously.
It is possible to feel unusual openness and closeness to others.
It is the paradise of God. It is the place of angels and the Gate of Heaven.
It looks like the ceiling opens up and God looks in.
It makes him one with truth.
It may bring about “a sudden liberation from ignorance.”
It offers possibilities of communication which we have not explored.
It opens a religious vista or fulfills a sense of meaning in existence.
It opens the doors in so many ways to so many vast dimensions.
It points directly and openly to the truth.
It provokes a more sensual or aesthetic kind of concentration.
It provides understanding of a new kind
It restores a whole dimension of value to life.
It satisfies fully.
It seems as though, for the first time you are breathing life.
It stimulates the brain.
It will be a joy inexpressible.
It’s absolutely true that the experience is in a class by itself, especially on a visual level.
It’s all natural.
It’s all right. Remember the Buddha smile.
It’s an end to the suffering. It’s the end of all confusion.
It’s glorious to be alive here.
Its impact on my life has been profound.
It’s like primal innocence.
It’s like seeing things for the first time. It’s like a renaissance, a rebirth of the mind.
It’s like the Garden of Eden.
It’s the very heart of human experience, the center that gives understanding to the whole.
Its significance is profound.
It’s the realization of all Truth.
Its therapeutic effects are truly remarkable.
It’s your own true self.
Joy is felt and unstinted loving-kindness.
Joy may be exuberant or quiet.
Language fails to convey the essence of this state.
Let everything flow through you.
Let the mind alone, trusting it to work by itself.
Life is altered because the very root of human identity has been deepened.
Light seems preternaturally intense.
Light seems preternaturally intense in all that is seen with the inward eye.
Like a computer with unlimited access to any program, the mind roams freely.
Like the sun, he will ascend again into the heavens, fulfilling the cosmic cycle.
Listening to the music and seeing the visions, you know a soul shattering experience.
LSD-assisted analysis could deepen, intensify and accelerate the therapeutic process.
LSD can be used to harness creativity and put it to use in problem-solving.
LSD can create affection and end alienation.
LSD can deepen and intensify the therapeutic process.
LSD can “facilitate focusing on anything”.
LSD can produce enormous changes in our sensory and emotional systems.
LSD can provide very therapeutic experiences.
LSD connected us to the Great Spirit.
LSD could greatly facilitate the processes of psychotherapy.
LSD could reprogram nervous systems to accelerate consciousness and intelligence.
LSD experiences were often deeply spiritual.
LSD gave a sense of bliss and oneness with life.
LSD gave access to aesthetic, poetic, transcendental or mystical awareness.
LSD gives people appreciation of nature.
LSD grants an 8-12 hour period of both clarity and “transcendence.”
LSD has revolutionized my life.
LSD helps you find divinity and helps you discover yourself, discover God and meaning.
LSD in the right hands intensifies, deepens and shortens psychotherapy.
LSD “inhibits the inhibitors” in the psyche.
LSD is a tool of extraordinary power.
LSD is perfectly in tune with the wisdom of Buddha or the great philosophies of the past.
LSD is the electron microscope of psychology.
LSD is the most precious substance the world has ever known, a million dollars an ounce.
LSD is the source for the energy that is to transform human consciousness.
LSD is the spiritual equivalent of the hydrogen bomb.
LSD is uniquely flashy.
LSD is to treat illness rather than produce it.
LSD is Western yoga.
LSD might have undreamed of therapeutic potential.
LSD offers vast possibilities for accelerated learning and scientific-scholarly research.
LSD opened exciting new perspectives and interesting possibilities.
LSD opened mental and emotional horizons for conscious inspection.
LSD opens some window in the mind.
LSD opened up paths of thinking that I never knew existed.
LSD permits the mind to organize its sensory impressions in new patterns.
LSD produces rapid, even sudden cures for emotional disorders.
LSD releases stored hidden programs
LSD, say these latter-day mystics, is the most powerful sacrament of them all.
LSD seemed to herald an alternative, a new way of life. A new sense of oneself appears.
LSD short-circuits the mental stranglehold that society imposes on its members.
LSD should be administered not with authority but in the spirit of brotherhood.
LSD subjects can relive elements of their biological birth in all its complexity.
LSD suspends conditioned reflexes.
LSD swirls the voyager into unknown regions.
LSD takes you out of the normal space-time ego.
LSD tends to intensify the actual psychic state.
LSD trips led to an astonishing intensification of her inner life.
LSD unplugs the ego, the game machinery and the mind, that cluster of game-concepts.
LSD users have entered the unknown land of psyche.
LSD was a catalyst in the evolution from beat to hippie.
LSD was a powerful agent in overcoming resistances in psychotherapy.
LSD will intensify, deepen and accelerate the therapeutic process.
LSD would awaken appetite for spiritual meaning.
Magnificent, I never really saw color before.
Magnificent! I see it all! Incredible!
Maintain faith and trust in the potentiality of your brain.
Make contact with that ultimate source of intelligence: DNA.
Making love under LSD is really where it’s at.
Many insights carry over after the drug effects have worn off.
Many of us are profoundly grateful for the vistas opened up by the drug experience.
Meaningful connections appear between seemingly unrelated objects.
Memories race by the mind’s eye with the clarity of film.
Mind and matter have together disappeared into process. Things have become events.
Mood changes abruptly, often in response to awareness of some perceptual stimulus.
Most radical of all, the very ontological foundations are shaken.
Most subjects find the experience valuable.
Most subjects find the experience valuable and many say that it is uniquely lovely.
Music can assume a previously inconceivable emotional and aesthetic intensity.
Music can develop into a euphoric experience.
Music frequently becomes an absorbing delight, even to the nonmusical.
Music has added dimensions.
Music intensifies and deepens the process.
Music is an essential part of psychedelic psychotherapy.
Music is heard with increased fidelity and dimension.
Music may produce visions of color.
Music produces emotional states.
music—That passage is so sweet that I can taste it. That stream sounds like orange.
My awareness had moved beyond our ordinary so-called real world.
My body begins to disintegrate, flow out into the river of evolution.
My companions have changed. They are supernaturally beautiful.
My life has new savor, new meaning—and new mystery.
My LSD episodes have opened my mind and enabled me to look upon life with new eyes.
Mystical insight is fresh and deep.
Mythical superhuman figures are aspects of your self. (seen with eyes closed)
Mythology abounds in images of heavens and paradises. (eyes closed)
New dimensions of human relationships are revealed.
New dimensions of oneself break through.
New forms of sexual experience are reported.
New illuminations and revelations from the collective unconscious arise.
New relationships and patterns emerge.
New sights and sounds, new meanings, and new feelings come together.
Next to this state, ordinary reality is like a cheap parlor trick in a grimy hotel.
No camera can show this experience because it is inside the nervous system.
No matter how universal the experience is, it is unique for each individual.
No words can adequately communicate the intensity of an LSD experience.
Nothing is more deeply felt than an intense LSD experience. (Nothing else is even close.)
Now I am in the lap of eternity.
Now I know what I only suspected before.
Now I know what Leary means by the “energy” liberated under LSD.
Now I know why the fairy tales are full of jewels.
Now I not only understand that matter is energy—I can FEEL it!
Now I understand what is meant by being a part of everything.
Objects can be perceived as larger or smaller than they actually are.
Objects attain a heightened personal significance.
Objects radiate energy.
Objects recede and approach.
Objects ripple and breathe.
Objects suddenly come alive.
Oh, God, I didn’t realize it would be this physical.
Old things have passed away, all things have become new.
One became acutely aware of facial details.
One can sense it, but not describe it.
One can’t speak these teachings, one can only BE them.
One experiences the bliss of Consciousness.
One feels as though one were part of the chair and the floor.
One feels or responds emotionally with more intensity.
One gets to one’s nature and to one’s basic roots in Nature.
One has the feeling of certainty.
One is embarked on the oldest voyage in the world.
One is full of a sense of joyous well-being.
One is fully tuned in. One lives in one’s senses.
One is organically connected with reality as a whole.
One moment of clock time can be an eternity of ecstasy.
One of the great purposes of an LSD session is sexual union.
One often experiences the Divine as eternal and timeless.
One often finds a sense of mental clarity and serenity.
One reaches the deep levels of the unconscious self.
One sees the old and familiar in a new and strange way, often as though for the first time.
One session can be an important turning point in one’s life.
One subject of Janiger claimed that a single acid trip was equal to four years in art school.
One will describe himself as infinitely enriched.
Only paradise could teach such wisdom.
Open eyes see vibrations in the visual field.
Open the door to visions of unimaginable richness and significance.
Open up consciousness and accelerate awareness.
Our eyes become open, and our senses.
Out of it comes creative thought.
Outside, everything is so vast. An inch is a million miles of space.
Paradises abound in gems of self-luminous, magical flowers.
Participate in the heart of the great vibration dance.
Patients who have had vivid experiences of this type have tended to value them highly.
Patterns and designs begin to distinguish themselves and take on significance.
Pay attention to the body’s energies and messages.
Peculiar boundary shifts enter into men’s awareness.
People and objects become as fascinating as if they were the first of their kind ever seen.
People did immensely value this kind of visionary experience.
People experience a rich spectrum of emotional and bodily manifestations.
People reported “insights” and breakthroughs in emotional blockages.
Perceived forms swim into focus out of the swirling, unformed wave process.
Perception is enormously improved.
Perception is extremely vivid and clear.
Perceptions change from moment to moment with intensive decidedness.
Perceptual changes can occur in any sensory area.
Personal memories from the deep recesses of the subject’s mind will come into focus.
Personal problems are put in cosmic perspective, which tends to minimize them.
Physical tensions which are built up by our anxious and ego-centered life are released.
Play behavior increases.
Precious stones give us a kind of visual image of eternity.
Preparation is the key to a serene passage through the visionary territory.
Profound emotional bonds can develop as a result of an LSD session.
Psilocybin brings out the truth of all around you.
Psychedelic agents could facilitate creative problem-solving.
Psychedelic art is expressive of an inner rhythm like that of music.
Psychedelic chemicals are the microscopes of internal biology.
Psychedelic chemicals have religious properties.
Psychedelic drug use can change the direction of people’s lives.
Psychedelic drugs allow transcendence of inhibitory societal conditioning.
Psychedelic drugs are capable of producing the whole range of religious experiences.
Psychedelic drugs bring you into levels of reality which your mind can’t structure.
Psychedelic drugs can deepen the grasp of philosophic systems.
Psychedelic drugs can produce a sense of the holy.
Psychedelic drugs changed my feelings about being alive.
Psychedelic drugs enhance mysticism.
Psychedelic drugs enlarge the realm of the conscious.
Psychedelic drugs not only enhance sexuality but transforms it.
Psychedelic drugs provide creative experience.
Psychedelic drugs released new forces into the consciousness of millions of people.
Psychedelic drugs slow and magnify the sex act.
Psychedelic experience had given them greater depth as people and as creators.
Psychedelic experience is by nature private, sensual, spiritual, internal, introspective.
Psychedelic experiences can play an important role in the creative development of artists.
Psychedelic experiences create an opportunity to grow and to learn.
Psychedelic feelings are profound.
Psychedelics act as keys or tools to give a person access to his dormant potentialities.
Psychedelics can be extraordinarily intense.
Psychedelics can “trigger” a new sense of identity.
Psychedelics do take us fast and far beyond our normal conceptual framework.
Reality is penetrated more deeply.
Recognize the wisdom.
Relax and allow the forces to flow though you.
Relax and swing with the wave dance.
Relax, float downstream, trust your divinity, trust your energy process.
Respect the psychological space of the experient.
Return to nature is an important aspect of the psychedelic experience.
Returning to my miraculous home, this familiar home is where I began so long ago.
Seeing loses the conventional meanings imposed upon the object seen.
Sensations are tremendously heightened by LSD.
Sensory input in this new state feels very fresh and intense.
Sex under LSD becomes miraculously enhanced and intensified.
Sexual arousal can reach an unusually high degree.
Sexual communion has a strongly spiritual and mystical character when spontaneous.
Sexual experiences and behavior can be deeply influenced by the LSD experience.
Sexual relations are religious, social, metaphysical and artistic.
Sexuality is a radiance.
She gained emotional freedom.
Some subjects can experience a total and complete relaxation of all muscles in the body.
Sounds appear to be tremendously magnified.
Sounds you normally can’t hear, now you can hear them.
Space may be broadened and near objects may appear far distant.
Space perception may be distorted in a number of ways and there is no particular pattern.
Spiritual lives have been deepened by peyote.
stained glass—Inside the church, one is inside an immense gem of jeweled vision.
Staring out the window, Ginsberg found himself staring into the depths of the universe.
Stolaroff said that LSD was the greatest discovery that man had ever made.
Subjects report that the viewed object has enhanced beauty and meaning.
Subjects see new dimensions in the universe.
Such an experience can be felt as a turning point in the life of one who experiences it.
Such experiences, being nonordianry, challenge the logic of ordinary consciousness.
Such experiences have a great healing potential and therapeutic value.
Such experiences may enrich and illuminate theological concepts.
Such real experiences, being nonordinary, challenge the logic of ordinary consciousness.
Suddenly, there is a “turning about in the deepest seat of consciousness.”
Surrendering can be greatly facilitated by music.
Take LSD and wipe the slate clean.
Taking of the drug is in fact essential to a true understanding of the experience.
The activity of every sense organ was intensified.
The actual experience of this state is not of nothingness but of everythingness.
The adult recovers what he had as a child.
The aim of LSD is to develop yourself spiritually and to open up greater sensitivity.
The air is so clear that it seems to act as a lens.
The air seems extra clean and clear.
The aphrodisiac effect is astounding in its intensity.
The appearance of the world takes on a sweet and beautiful oneness.
The archetype is truly awesome if not outright miraculous. (eyes closed)
The artist may enter this world in search of new inspiration and improved perception.
The Aztec priests used the plants to commune with their gods and to induce visions.
The basic questions of ontology and cosmology seem answered, once and for all.
The Being inside is seen.
The borders of the universe I live in seem to have expanded.
The boundary which was at once our fortress is removed.
The brilliantly colored patterns change incessantly.
The climate on this level is intensely emotional.
The colors become finer.
The concept of infinity could be grasped on an emotional level.
The confrontation with divinity is going to change you.
The consciousness is free.
The consciousness-expanding drugs enable one to sense, think and feel MORE.
The content of the mystic experience reflects its unusual mode of consciousness.
The content of realization is eternal.
The cortex is tuned in on molecular processes which are completely new and strange.
The cortex is washed clean. The empty mind.
The currents of the universal Being flow through you.
the dance of energy transformations—All is one dance of electrical energy.
The days of my life had been mostly death! Was I now alive?
The degree of mental freedom increases.
The depth, scope and intensity of these experiences can reach extraordinary proportions.
The discovery of LSD might rank with the Copernican revolution.
The Divine Comedy. All things dissolve in laughter.
The divine sight is opened.
The drug appears to bring out latent potentialities.
The drug became popular among artists as a source of inspiration.
The drug can be seen as a means of passage to the inmost self.
The drug can help to uncover one’s “essential self.”
The drug experience could enhance creative potential.
The drug induced experience has been regarded as intrinsically divine.
The drug vision can be astonishing.
The drugs appear to give an enormous impetus to the creative intuition.
The drugs “free” the mind for creative activity that would otherwise be beyond reach.
The drugs induce valuable states of self-transcendence and mystical unity.
The drugs make an end run around Christ and go straight to the Holy Spirit.
The drugs produce valuable states of self-transcendence and mystical unity.
The earth can be perceived as Mother Earth or a divine being.
The effects of LSD are unique.
The ego dissolves.
The emotional responses of the subject are dramatically enhanced.
The emptiness of universal space can contain the myriad things of every shape and form.
The engravings are rich with imagination.
The enhanced impact of emotion is most striking.
The essence of mystic awareness is a sense of ultimate belonging.
The essence of mystical religion is the consciousness of union with God.
The essence of reality is self-awareness, selfhood, not egohood.
The essence of the authentic mystical experience is insight.
The essential hostility of the ego to the physical organism and world is dissolved.
The essential insights are universal.
The eternal is experienced.
The experience called hallucinogenic will play a role in leading us into the future.
The experience can be intensely gratifying.
The experience can be very liberating and widening.
The experience can be wonderful, insightful, enlightening, and life-changing.
The experience goes “beyond the conflict of the opposites.”
The experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, music.
The experience holds out the promise of rewards of incalculable value.
The experience is emotional and deeply felt.
The experience is multidimensional.
The experience is one of accelerated un-learning and re-learning.
The experience is powerful, intense and meaningful.
The experience is profoundly significant.
The experience is so fantastic in both its novelty and power.
The experience is somehow a grace.
The experience of awakening is timeless and universal.
The experience of the organism/environment field is a revelation.
The experience transcends our ordinary concepts of causality.
The experiencer may live through the whole spectrum of human feelings.
The experiences are relived exactly the way they happened before.
The experiences cover a wide spectrum of depth and intensity.
The experiences emerging from the unconscious are valid, important and meaningful.
The experiences make him much more open emotionally.
The experiences of death and rebirth are very rich and complex.
The experiential spectrum of nonordinary states of consciousness is extremely rich.
The external world doesn’t change, but your experience of it becomes drastically altered.
The external world takes on a radiance.
The extraordinary character of light and color is unbelievable.
The extraordinary experience allows the patient a new look at his old values.
The eye as such does not see things: it sees the total visual field in all its infinite detail.
The eyes have a vision of Eternity.
The face of someone becomes a dancing mosaic of impulses on one’s cortex.
The feeling of reality and truth in such experiences can dominate a whole life.
The final term I would apply to the experience is enriching.
The flow of thoughts has speeded up tremendously.
The freedom to get high represented for her a victory of the spirit.
The gates of heaven swing open.
The general atmosphere is one of liberation, salvation, redemption, love and forgiveness.
The general understanding of the effects of LSD is poor, even among experienced users.
The gentle world around one is radiant and sparkling.
The gleam of the divine ravishes me.
The glimpse of a larger reality that such experience affords may change a person’s life.
The great kick of the mystic experience is the sudden relief from emotional pressure.
The harmony of heaven will come upon you.
The head becomes the universe, infinitely expansive or contractible.
The heavens have opened.
The heavy shackles of the mind are loosened.
The images are marvelously detailed and complex. (eyes closed)
The images intensify and get more complex (eyes closed).
The immediate experience of the One and the Holy is the supreme gift.
The impact of mood upon perception is greatly increased.
The individual can see many spiritual dimensions to human life.
The individual is illuminated by the eternal.
The individual may relate feelings without any emotional display.
The individual seriously questions the meaning of his or her life and existence in general.
The individual transcends himself and experiences spontaneity.
The individual’s appreciation of natural beauty is greatly enhanced.
The infinite glories of the past beam on me again.
The Infinite One is communing with this illimitable soul of yours to lift it higher.
The inmost Self awakens from its dream.
The insight of LSD leads you to concern yourself more with internal or spiritual values.
The intellect in the drug state remains unimpaired.
The intense reality experienced by the person under LSD is often overwhelming.
The intensity and magnitude of the LSD experiences are so great.
The intensity of psychedelic states deserves notice.
The intrinsic beauty and significance of the thing (object) seen is enormously magnified.
The journey has a universal and timeless dimension.
The journey is a return to paradise lost.
The key is inaction, passive integration with all that occurs around you, acceptance.
The kingdom is no longer above but within, no longer future, but present.
The knowledge acquired in altered states demands new kinds of scientific theory.
The laughter frees me.
The liberated one is at last free to love with all his might and to suffer with all his heart.
The light and dark are transcended through being seen in terms of a dramatic unity.
The light intensifies.
The LSD ecstasy is the joyful discovery that ego is only a fraction of my identity.
The LSD experience heightened intellectual appreciation and curiosity.
The LSD experience is a deeply spiritual event, a religious pilgrimage.
The LSD experience is a manifestation of the psychic unconscious.
The LSD experience is a revelation of something outside of time and the social order.
The LSD experience is not conceptual manipulation.
The LSD experience puts you in touch with the wisdom of your body.
The LSD experiences do not fit any existing theoretical system.
The LSD session is an overwhelming awakening of experience.
The LSD trip is the classic visionary-mystic voyage.
The memory of mystical consciousness itself is regarded as deeply meaningful.
The mind becomes pure.
The mind clears up.
The mind comes to rest.
The mind discovers its natural and unconfused state.
The mind-doors burst open.
The mind is open and clear.
The mind returns to perfect consciousness.
The mirror of consciousness is held up to the life stream.
The most brilliantly colored patterns change incessantly.
The most important rule is that the tripper decides what behavior change is desired.
The most ordinary things, the most trivial events, are seen as jewels and miracles.
The motion of ocean waves harmonizes with our very breathing, the breathing of eternity.
The music seems to play in you.
The mystic experience can be ecstatic, profound, therapeutic.
The mystical effects of LSD transcending ego barriers may lead to creativity.
The mystical experience may help to lead a less self-centered and more creative life.
The mythology of a certain culture can come to life for you. (eyes closed)
The nature of LSD phenomena is holographic, multileveled and multidimensional.
The nature of the one reality must be known by one’s own clear, spiritual perception.
The nature of these visions is often paradisal. (eyes closed)
The nature of things become clearer and clearer.
The new mind changers will tend in the long run to deepen the spiritual life.
The normal “set” of consciousness is broken.
The normally unconscious backdrop of experience emerges into the foreground.
The object focused on assumes a profound significance.
The object is invested with a profound significance.
The object is to draw closer to a oneness with God.
The ocean is an environment in which the awareness of our roots can awaken.
The odor of an orange is simply overwhelming.
The only way out is in and the way to find the wisdom is to turn on.
The “other world” opens up.
The outside world may be experienced in a highly intensified manner.
The patient remains intellectually alert and remembers the experience vividly.
The patient’s basic way of relating is intensified.
The peak experience is a view of the whole and words can’t express the whole.
The perceptions seem more real than the ordinary state.
The perceptual experience would be outside of customary verbal or sensory reference.
The person has had what he regards as an enormously impressive experience.
The person has lost his own ego boundaries and has flowed into the world outside.
The person is “dead,” yet can think and answer questions.
The physical pleasure is just immense.
The potential of LSD seems to be quite extraordinary and unique.
The promised land was in sight.
The psychedelic experience can release learning blocks.
The psychedelic experience is an intimate, personal and sacred one.
The psychedelic experience is one of looking deep within yourself.
The psychedelic experience is so powerful that it far outstrips game ambitions.
The psychedelic experience signified the reality and the beauty of the flower of the spirit.
The psychedelic guide is a liberator who frees men from their life-long internal bondage.
The psychedelic liberation is so powerful that it far outstrips earthly game ambitions.
The psychedelic voyage changed the traveler.
The psychedelic voyage, like many adventures, changed the traveler.
The psychedelics triggered the switch that allowed me a glimpse—an instant of eternity.
The psychic knot at the back of our habitual consciousness dissolves.
The radiance of her face is almost unearthly.
The recollection of the intoxication is particularly clear (after the trip is over).
The room is alive, undulating, rhythm.
The same old world is transfigured with the “glory of God.”
The scope and content of the experience is limitless.
The self feels free, cleaned out.
The Self finds itself in its original unity and bliss.
The sense of cleansing, release and joy makes old woes seem trivial.
The senses are heightened.
The senses are made available for the world as it is.
The senses are wide open and the taste and smell of a fresh orange are unforgettable.
The sensory manifestations of awakening can be very rich and varied.
The sequences of dying and being born or reborn are frequently very dramatic.
The sex act can become an event of cosmic grandeur.
The sensual orgy of sexual intercourse can undergo unimaginable enhancements.
The setting should be comfortable, familiar and beautiful.
The silhouette of the mountains looks quite mysterious.
The similarity of all religions is realized.
The soft breeze is the breath of God.
The soul becomes radiant and pure.
The soul begins to float upward toward the restoration of primeval unity and peace.
The spectrum of visionary experiences is very rich.
The speed of thought and association is increased astonishingly.
The spirit is transported high above all the faculties.
The spiritual and intellectual rewards are vivid, wonderful, inexpressible.
The spiritual search and philosophical quest become important new dimensions of life.
The stars are as big as huge diamonds—gleaming, sparkling, singing.
The state of mind is a delightful calm of complete significance.
The stream of sensation flows.
The stroboscope tends to enrich and intensify the visions. (eyes closed)
The subject becomes acutely aware of a powerful emotional “atmosphere” or “climate.”
The subject experiences a deep sense of spiritual liberation, redemption and salvation.
The subject experiences the world as transfigured and unified.
The subject experiences various degrees of loosening and losing of his ego boundaries.
The subject listening to music may become completely absorbed in the experience.
The subject often conceives of his psychedelic experience as a kind of journey.
The substance which produces the change of mind is regarded as divine.
The taking of a drug should be a carefully thought-out and purposeful religious act.
The transcendence of the space-time dimension is central in mystical experience.
The transcendent process lies at the core of the therapeutic use of the psychedelics.
The transcendental experience may open up avenues of creativity.
The trees dance and everything is alive.
The trip becomes introspective, past experiences “lived through” with emotion.
The trip is so powerful, so different, so shattering to one’s illusion of a single reality.
The truth reveals itself in its eternal tranquility.
The ultimate change is the “you” that you imagine and the real “you” merging into one.
The ultimate Experience is the Self.
The unconscious content is experienced consciously in its original form and full intensity.
The universe becomes a mystery to be experienced, not a riddle to be solved.
The universe is perceived as indescribably beautiful and radiant.
The universe is seen as an ever-unfolding drama of endless alternatives in consciousness.
The universe seems to be exploding.
The usual boundaries which structure thought and perception become fluid.
The use of psychedelics was a search for meaning, not an escape from life.
The various perception changes are extraordinarily rich.
The vast reaches of these undiscovered wilds are awesome.
The veil of routine perception will be torn from your eyes.
The very root of human identity has been deepened.
The visions aren’t random visions, but follow patterns that are logical internally.
The visions bring images of an ideal new world. (eyes closed)
The visions may be awe inspiring in their grandeur and beauty.
The walls change color with the music.
The whole fantastic comedy takes place within you.
The world becomes visible in its primal or actual splendor.
The world is beautiful and I’m on top of it.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
The world is felt to be an extension of the flesh.
The world is now seen as an infinite diversity that is yet a unity.
The world is seen as a place of indescribable radiance and beauty.
The world may be seen in its unclassified “suchness.”
The world seems sublimely pure and cleansed.
Their general effect is to sharpen the senses to a supernormal degree of awareness.
Their minds were enlightened in an immediate experience of eternal life.
There are no “little while’s” in this place.
There can be direct acquaintance with the intrinsic strangeness of existence.
There can be this joy which comes from our ability to open ourselves to the truth.
There is a certain awesome beauty that makes its appearance.
There is a hidden truth or statement in each acid session.
There is a much richer perception.
There is a need for a proper study of original thinking and artistic creativity under LSD.
There is a new peace in my life, as well as an appreciation for the beauty of existence.
There is a sparkle in the night.
There is a third dimensionality to color.
There is a touch of death, a preparation for the big one.
There is greater sensitivity to significant background sounds.
There is no goal to be attained.
There is no longer fuzzy or gooey stuff. It is crystal clear.
There seems to be a pulsation, vibration, within all objects.
These are not escapes from but enlargements, burgeonings of reality.
These drugs cause intense self-reflection.
These drugs have present value and an enormously greater potential value.
These drugs hold a potential of evolution and education.
These drugs increase society’s range of human experience and human knowledge.
These drugs offer a means for enhancing spiritual sensitivity.
These drugs tremendously intensified bodily sensations.
These experiences can get extraordinarily powerful.
These experiences can mediate accurate information about various aspects of nature.
These experiences seem more direct and immediate, more real than ordinary reality.
These great trees have a kind of mythological quality.
These mystical experiences had an enormous relevance.
These new mind changers will tend in the long run to deepen the spiritual life.
These states have a tremendous evolutionary and healing potential.
These are substances capable of profoundly affecting human consciousness.
These substances dramatically alter consciousness and expand awareness.
They activate our capacity for the miraculous.
They are at once unique and eternal, men and women but also Gods and Goddesses.
They contact a potential greater than those afforded by ordinary means.
They discovered that good can be even better (and it doesn’t get any better than LSD).
They experienced a deep inward change in their spiritual awareness.
They forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality.
They have acquired new and profound insight.
They have seen beyond the separateness of the ego’s shell.
They have tapped a universal reality that is potentially available to everyone.
They need to feel the security of companionship in the new environment.
They’ve seen the truth.
Thinking and feeling become hardly separable as powerful feelings are joined to thought.
This can jar people loose, this can break people through, this can do all kinds of things.
This can’t be true. So beautiful. Heaven. Great.
This chemical could ultimately help man in his search for the ultimate truths.
This discovery will be the birth hour of the cosmic history of the human species.
This electrical-chemical complexity is the anatomical structure of consciousness.
This emergence is always so miraculously unexpected.
This eternal present is the “timeless” unhurried flowing of the Tao.
This excursion into the visionary realms can be exciting, spontaneous and creative.
This experience gave his life purpose.
This experience is boundless, unfathomable and ineffable.
This experience is such a very different dimension.
This ineffable experience cannot be described, being at other than the verbal level.
This inner letting go would ultimately liberate him.
This inner world is what I call the world of visions.
This is a new venture and an important one.
This is a non-game process. You are going within.
This is definitely an “end-in-itself” experience and phenomenon.
This is how one ought to see, how things really are.
This is magic.
This is pure being in eternal actuality.
This is the extraordinary experience.
This is the ultimate luxury, the flawless wisdom-pleasure hit.
This is the ultimate state.
This is true greatness.
This is truly a wonderful world of infinitely variable colors, forms, music.
This is what I’d been seeking, communion with a higher reality.
This is what religion is all about.
This paradise gets lost as the child grows up.
This primordial state is characteristic of the deeper levels of the psyche.
This reality is the “suchness” of our natural nonverbal world.
This return to the source is a matter of immediate experience.
This sense of oneness is a natural state, the only true natural state for man to be.
This stone is love. God is in this pebble.
Those depths are a dimension of myself not usually recognized.
Thou has lifted thyself above humanity to peer into the speechless secrets.
Thoughts come with amazing rapidity and clarity when one is under LSD.
Thoughts dart quickly in and out of awareness and associations become freer.
Time is drastically altered.
Time is extended because you see more into each minute. (expanded?)
Time’s thin current slides away, but eternity remains.
Touch becomes electric as well as erotic.
Transcendental experience is the only escape from the prison imposed by the ego.
Transcendental experience can open up avenues of growth.
Transcendental states are the very gist of religion.
Transpersonal experiences can be of great therapeutic value.
Transpersonal experiences have a definite religious and mystical emphasis.
Trust in the unity of life and in your companions.
Trust in the universal energy.
Trust in the wisdom and spontaneous healing potential of the psyche.
Trust the intrinsic wisdom of the body.
Trust the tide-force pulling you into unity with all living forms.
Trust your divinity. Trust your brain.
Trust your Higher Self.
Tune in on the internal and external energy accessible to the human nervous system.
Turn off the fidgety, rationalizing mind.
Turn on to your body, senses. Turn on to the electric glow within.
Two seemingly incompatible feelings may be experienced at once.
Under LSD, childhood memories emerge which are relived with intense emotion.
Under LSD, music seems to have an immediate and powerful impact on one’s emotions.
Under LSD, the universe is perceived in its entirety as eternal, natural and perfect.
Under LSD, the world becomes a world of miracle and beauty and sublime mystery.
Under the influence of LSD, one is not insane but is in a special state of consciousness.
Unforgettable revelations about the nature of reality occur.
Uninhibited release of emotion can be immensely liberating.
Unitive awareness of external stimuli can set off revelatory imagery.
Unlike psychotherapy, psychedelics work.
Unrecognized sources of wisdom did seem to be set free by the drug.
Use the senses to find inner meaning, divinity.
Users often say they lose defensive anxiety and feel more emotionally open.
Visionary experience is preternaturally brilliant.
Visionary states can provide valuable information about the self and reality.
Visual scenes have more depth, sounds are heard with more dimension.
Wasson told of giving the mushroom to a mute who thereafter was able to speak.
We awaken to the vision of unity consciousness.
We become aware that consciousness is quite separate from our bodies.
We could see with the miracle of LSD vision.
We discover our true self to be the Self of the universe.
We discover that there is a real liberation that is possible for every human being.
We laugh in joy and amazement.
What a miracle this is!
What a timeless bliss!
Whatever you see, just accept it. Don’t stop your experience to try to understand things.
When a soul sails out on that unmarked sea called Madness, it has gained release.
When I’m high, I can penetrate into the past, recall memories.
When sex and LSD converge, the experience is said to be indescribably ecstatic.
When the body is removed, the barrier to the Past goes also.
When the ego controls dissolve, the world within is glowing, serene and meaningful.
When the mind is stilled, psychological time ceases to exist.
When the vase changes shape, I feel this in my body.
Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream.
With glass, a whole building could be turned into something magical and transporting.
With LSD, every moment is eternity.
With LSD, every moment is eternity and there is no rush or hurry.
With the cognitive mind suspended, the subject is in a heightened state of suggestibility.
With the experience of rebirth, all our sensory pathways are suddenly wide open.
With the mind opened, we look into a new world, as new as on the first day of creation.
With your ego left behind you, the brain can’t go wrong.
Would a musician “hear” the revelations which, for me, had been exclusively visual?
You are a spiritual voyager furthering the most ancient, noble quest of man.
You are no longer encapsulated in the structure of ego.
You become aware of processes you were never tuned into before.
You can become an astronaut of yourself.
You can come out of a session with changed emotions.
You can enter heaven and see how the universe works.
You can experience what you feel is the consciousness of inanimate objects.
You can learn how to alter your brain function to experience in novel ways.
You can read the Vedas and Vedantas in your own tissues and understand.
You can recapitulate personally the entire evolutionary sequence.
You can see what’s going on in your psyche.
You can tap God’s power line.
You can’t get out of the mind by using the mind. A catalyst like LSD is needed.