Part III – Chapter 3

In Section 3 are the statements in Part II that, in general, aren’t so much about the LSD
experience itself but facts, thoughts, opinions, and ideas about religion, philosophy,
psychology, science, history, culture, society, and other things, all of which combined can
help a person to understand LSD or develop a way of thinking that can, in turn, help a
person to better understand what LSD is about.

A belief is an opinion about the nature of reality based on a specific form of upbringing,
indoctrination, or reading of religious literature; it lacks direct experiential validation.

A chemical description of a spiritual experience is like a chemical description of a great
painting.

A concept of reality that separates self and the world has decisively determined the
evolutionary course of European intellectual history.

A confrontation with divinity, your own higher intelligence, is going to change you.
You’ll face blazing activation of your brain.

A harmonious inner awakening is characterized by a sense of joy and mental illumination
that brings with it an insight into the meaning and purpose of life.

A healthy society provides and protects the sacredness of the teen-age psychedelic
voyage. A sick, static society fears and forbids the revelation.

A holy man is someone who doesn’t care about the little chess game of power,
possessions.

A man can perform actions which are truly moral only when he is no longer motivated by
the fear of hell.

A man “comes to himself,” wakes up from the egocentric daydream when he realizes
who he is.

A man must be deeply serious to have the courage to stand against the awesome power of
organized society.

A man of true, rather than assumed dignity can play games with children without the least
loss of dignity.

A map stands in the same relationship to the territory it covers as our idea of reality
stands to reality.

A Mexican Indian told a newspaper reporter who referred to peyote as a drug, “Aspirin is
a drug, peyote is sacred.”

A new experiential language and perhaps even new metaphors for the great plan will
develop.

A new intellectual understanding of reality is an important catalyst for therapeutic
progress.

A noun can be turned into a verb because every thing is also an event. Houses are
“housing”.

A philosopher who does his job well invariably upsets the hive and has to deal with the
forces set up to preserve the old order and prevent change.

A philosophy restricted to conventional language has no way of conceiving of an
intelligence that doesn’t work according to plan.

A popular fallacy holds that there are no non-objective realities, that objective reality is
the “only” reality.

A profound transcendental experience should leave a changed man and a changed life.
Life is altered because the very root of human identity has been deepened.

A psychedelic is the solvent which dissolves the vigorous stereotypes of egocentric
behavior.

A responsible religion dare not neglect this source of wonder, for it is in this way that
God is perceived.

A revolution is currently going on in relation to sanity and madness, both inside and
outside psychiatry.

A significant danger confronting our society may lie in losing out on the values that the
responsible use of these drugs may offer.

A society in which a large percentage of the population changes consciousness regularly
and harmoniously with psychedelic drugs will bring about a very different way of life.

A successful scientific innovator who presents the species with a new technology for
changing human nature and human destiny is always in trouble with the politicians.

A tale told by an idiot or a tale told by a Calvinist? Give me the idiot every time. (That
was said by a fictional character in Aldous Huxley’s novel, Island.)

A transcendent experience can be soul-shaking—can be painful to return at once to game
reality.

A transformation will take place in human consciousness and we will emerge as a new
breed.

A universe which grows excludes the possibility of knowing how it grows in the clumsy
terms of thought and language.

A word doesn’t have the same meaning for everyone. At best, it stands for a
generalizable concept that we attach differing, specific meanings to.

Above the normal life of problems, there exists a second, higher, timeless world, a reality
more native to you.

According to the new data, spirituality is an intrinsic property of the psyche that emerges
quite spontaneously when the process of self-exploration reaches sufficient depth.

Active memory is only a small part of our normal consciousness, but our subconscious
memory registers, preserves and recalls every past impression and experience.

Activists didn’t understand that LSD was a revolutionary tool, far more powerful than the
manifestos and slogans of the political radicals.

Albert Einstein said, “…To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting
itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty…”

All behavior involves learned games but only that rare Westerner, we call “mystic” or
who has had a visionary experience sees clearly the game structure of behavior.

All boundaries in the universe are ultimately illusory, arbitrary and can therefore be
transcended.

All energy is available to him who knows that it must not be grabbed, held, possessed or
used for any other purpose except spiritual.

All of our education is predominantly verbal and therefore fails to accomplish what it’s
supposed to do.

All of our experiences are stored in the mind and under certain favorable circumstances,
may be completely recalled.

All pleasures are present and nothing save complete awareness of the present can even
begin to guarantee future happiness.

All sexual ecstasy has a quality of self-abandonment, of surrender to a force greater than
the ego.

All the movement, all the energies, all forms, all happenings we must see as those in our
one and real self in many existences.

All the religious movements that have shaped human history were inspired and
repeatedly revitalized by visionary experiences or transpersonal realities.

All who have taken LSD know that there are levels of consciousness of which we know
nothing in our normal state.

Allen Ginsberg came to Harvard and shook us loose from our academic fears and
strengthened our courage and faith in the process. (Timothy Leary said that.)

Allen Ginsberg, the celestial clown, shamelessly direct, tickles and hugs you when no one
else dares.

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

Almost without exception, religious communities, churches, temples, work to establish
social institutions and not to see through them.

Altered states of consciousness appear to be the way to development of creative and
intellectual faculties.

Altered states of consciousness seem to be doors to ways of using the mind that are better
than those most of us follow most of the time.

Although the Christian tradition does not recognize it, it seems obvious that if there is a
hereafter, then there must be a here before. And now I KNOW there is, for I was there.

American education is a highly dangerous, addictive, contracting process. (That was
Timothy Leary.)

American society is an insane and destructive enterprise. You have to sanitize yourself
internally. (That was Timothy Leary.)

An average person in our culture operates in a way that is far below his or her real
potential and capacity.

an experience or state of consciousness called moksha or “liberation”—Indian philosophy
is primarily this experience.

An immense mythology and folklore has arisen and has been crystallized around precious
stones.

An openness of attention to each other’s thoughts can be as sexually “charged” as
physical contact.

And the whole secret, power and knowledge of their own discovery is locked within
them.

Any external social action, unless it’s based on expanded consciousness is a robot
behavior.

Any individual can develop his potential and liberate these qualities which lie in
abundance within us.

Any psychologist or psychiatrist who tries to repeat Dr. Leary’s experiments will get
thrown in jail.

Anyone who has learned to pay attention to and trust his intuitions knows that his mind
contains a source of information about reality quite apart from his senses.

Anyone with philosophical ambitions and a thoughtful desire to increase intelligence
could learn how to use drugs effectively.

Are they outlawed because we fear drugs or because we fear the social effects of altered
states of awareness, religious intensity, and mysticism?

Artistic and scientific insight requires a touch of the same kind of loose thinking or
craziness that is found in altered states of consciousness.

As a liberated person walks soundlessly like a cat, he also takes himself lightly,
pomposity the folly of taking oneself seriously.

As a psychedelicist, one tries to bring fragments of the other reality back into this one, as
building blocks.

As a result of experiences of this kind, subjects can develop accurate understanding of
various complex esoteric teachings.

As children, many of us were exposed to all sorts of doctrines about God without
anybody ever encouraging us to discover God first-hand within ourselves.

As domains of experience become more alien to us, we need greater and greater openmindedness
even to conceive of their existence.

As drugs entered the scene, songwriters and musicians became interested in interior
experience, outer space and the Meaning of Reality.

As long as the person knows what’s involved, whatever he does to his own consciousness
is his own business.

As long as you’re alive, you can live however the hell you want to; to give in to what
people expect of you is to die before your time.

As the retina enables us to see countless pulses of energy as a single light, so the mystical
experience shows us innumerable individuals as a single Self.

As ultimate and infinite reality, there is no external standpoint from which to doubt it or
prove it.

Astronauts could be using these substances for preparation of altered states of
consciousness in space exploration.

At Millbrook, we wanted to develop a methodology to guide us in our journey within.
(That was Michael Hollingshead.)

At the present time, man is so sick that today it is safe to say that drugs are the specific
and almost only way that the American is ever going to have a religious experience.

Authoritarianism preys on an unaware populous and democracy requires a self-aware,
self-determined populous.

“Authoritative” articles appeared authored by those who had had no direct experience
with the drug.

Be very careful how you treat your creative minority because it we are crushed, you will
end up with a robot society. (This actually has been a robot society for a long, long time.)

Beauty is the object of our most spiritual, as well as our most material perceptions of
mystical vision and of sense and feeling.

Because it is a hoax from the beginning, the personal ego can make only a phony
response to life.

Because of the omnipresence of the infinite, any point in the universe may be regarded as
central (the center of the whole).

Because of the unique nature of the psychedelic state it is impossible to reach a real
understanding of its quality and dimensions unless one directly experiences it.

Because the ego never actually exists, those who are most captivated by its illusion are
still playing. They take it seriously and do not know that they are playing.

Because the teaching of the Buddha was a way of liberation, it had no other object than
the experience of nirvana.

Before spontaneous action can be expressed in controlled patterns, its current must be set
in motion.

Behind the apparent multiplicity of things in the world of science and common sense
there is a single reality in which all things are united.

Belief in the divinity of the Sacrament called for an act of faith, whereas the Mexican
plants spoke for themselves.

Beyond the play of the penis in the vagina lies the play of the organism in its
environment.

Buddhas are made by themselves and the Truth…not by their friends. You have to go the
final stretch on your own.

Buddhism and Taoism are concerned with changing the consciousness of normal people,
unlike shrinks concerned only with disturbed people.

Buddhists set up a whole social structure centered on the cultivation of enlightenment and
higher consciousness.

By polar awareness, awareness of polarity, one sees that things which are explicitly
different are implicitly one.

By the act of self-abandonment, God becomes all beings, yet at the same time does not
cease to be God.

Can anything be half eternal? That is, can a process which had no beginning come to an
end?

Cells of the body come and go. A human body is like a whirlpool. There seems to be a
constant form.

Certain forms of Eastern “mysticism,” in particular Taoism and Buddhism, don’t
presuppose a universe divided into the spiritual and the material.

Certain myths keep appearing and reappearing and many of them refer to the magic and
wonder of the sacred drug, the potion, the elixir of life.

Certain people are increasingly changing interests, from possessions to states of mind or
from endurance to intensity of experience.

Certainly, any view that there are grave risks to normal persons, is not borne out by the
experience of most researchers working with volunteer experimental subjects.

Childhood is not thought-ful but wonder-ful. Angels know truth and beauty directly,
intuitively, not through the mediation of ideas and therefore early childhood is angelic.

Children are in touch with paradise to the extent that they have not fully learned the ego
trick.

Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high
IQ’s if possible.

Children’s games go on and on because time has been forgotten and has reduced itself to
a single wondrous instant.

Christian imagery is very vague about the glories of heaven and amazingly specific about
the agonies of hell.

Christianity is a contentious faith which requires an all-or-nothing commitment to Jesus
as the one and only incarnation of the Son of God. (That was Alan Watts.)

Christianity is the religion of grace much more in theory than in practice. (That was Alan
Watts.)

Clarity may suggest the sense that the world confronting us is no longer an obstacle and
the body no longer a burden.

Clinging to the old, they cannot let go and be intrigued with the new, casting the new in
the old mold.

Clinical data suggested that these experiences had a unique therapeutic potential in the
treatment of various emotional disorders.

Consciousness and alteration of consciousness cannot be studied from the standpoint of
external science, from the standpoint of look-at-it-from-the-outside science.

Consciousness is infinite, rather than finite, stretching beyond the limits of time and
space.

Consciousness is much more than mere cellular activity in the brain, but rather a chain of
reactions along a continuum of mindfulness distributed throughout the universe.

Consciousness is seen as an integral part of the universal fabric, certainly not limited to
the activities contained inside our skulls.

Consciousness peers out from a center which it cannot see and that is the root of the
matter.

Consciousness uses the symbols of time, space and causality; the unconscious uses
symbols and mythic images.

Contemplation is that condition of alert passivity, the immanent and transcendent
Godhead, the state of union with the divine Ground of all being.

Control of American consciousness was and still is the issue. (No one has the right to
control your consciousness.)

“Cosmic” consciousness is a release from self-consciousness, that is to say, from the
fixed belief and feeling that one’s organism is an absolute and separate thing.

cosmic psychotherapy—To anyone whose soul has fallen to pieces, he can rearrange
those pieces.

Countless events from the past are registered in your brain and can be flashed into
consciousness.

Creative achievement requires an alert consciousness. (Ego consciousness is ignore-ance
or hypnotic, sleepwalking consciousness. As long as ego rules, there is no real creativity.)

Creative vision and mystical illumination are a function of the cortex when it is
temporarily relieved of word and ego games.

Creativity is often associated with psychosis, alienation and delinquency, the flaky artist,
the mad scientist, even Einstein as lovable, absent-minded clown.

Creeds, dogmas and philosophical systems are only ideas about the truth, in the same way
that words are not facts but only about facts.

Cultures of all times have shown a profound interest in non-ordinary states of
consciousness.

Darkness and death are by no means the mere absence of light and life, but rather their
origin.

Death and rebirth experiences are very complex and have biological, emotional and
intellectual, as well as philosophical and spiritual facets.

Death is just one episode, one transitional experience within this magnificent perennial
drama.

Debates as to whether this vision is or is not “true” seem as pointless as asking whether
my sensation of green is just the same as yours.

Deep experiences of cosmic unity have a universal healing potential of extraordinary
power.

Deep experiential work requires a vastly extended cartography of the psyche that includes
important realms uncharted by traditional science.

Deep in the flame of the central spark of all of us is the memory of the original beginning
which is also the final end.

Deep personal experiences may be significant in shaping the inner landscape of the
future. Today that landscape appears dismally flat, largely a featureless plain.

Deep religious experiences can be found only within ourselves. (LSD is the key that
opens the door.)

Deep self-exploration of the individual unconscious turns into a process of experiential
adventure in the universe-at-large which involves cosmic consciousness.

Diane Linkletter’s suicide was attributed to acid, although she was not tripping when she
killed herself.

Didn’t Christ center his teachings around the Brotherhood of Man? Haven’t all religious
leaders taught that we are all brothers, all of the same family?

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

Direct spiritual experiences are perfectly compatible with the mystical branches of the
great religions of the world.

Discovery of one’s divine nature can lead to a way of being, on both an individual and a
collective scale that is incomparably superior to what is ordinarily considered the norm.

Dismiss the Judaic-Christian-Marxist-puritan-literary-existentialist suggestion that the
drop-out is escape and that the conformist cop-out is reality.

Divine madness is described by the Greek philosopher Plato as a gift from the gods: “The
greatest blessings come by way of madness, indeed of madness that is heaven-sent.”

Dr. Suzuki has defined spiritual insight or enlightenment as “becoming conscious of the
Unconscious.”

Doctrine is the interpretation of religious experience. (Western religions mistake doctrine
for the experience.)

Don’t do what “they” say; do what you want to. Deprogram the stigma and experience
the joy.

Dramatic changes in our child-rearing and educational practices, politics, communication
will occur.

“Drug” means positive things, possible growth, opening up the mind, beauty, sensual
awareness, religious revelation.

Drug users soon came to understand that psychedelic trips are not to be embarked on
lightly.

Drugs could free man’s consciousness and bring about a new conception of man, his
psychology and philosophy.

Drugs do not merely duplicate or stimulate theologically sponsored experiences but
generate or shape theologies themselves.

Drugs have light to throw on the history, phenomenology and philosophy of religion and
the practice of the religious life itself.

Drugs, intelligently used as tools to enter other states of consciousness, are potentially
beneficial.

During any profound emotional experience, religious or otherwise, chemical or hormonal
bodily changes occur.

Each level of energy which man has discovered outside exists within his body and is
available to conscious discrimination.

Each man is Buddha. The aim of life is to discover your Buddha-hood. You must retrace
the ancient path yourself. Discover your own Christ-hood.

Each molecule is a heavenly octopus with a million floating jeweled tentacles hungry to
merge, driven by internal pressure, sexual in nature, towards union.

Each new magnification structure required a new science, a new language to deal with
the new level of reality, formerly invisible to the naked eye (microscope, telescope).

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

Each one of us may be capable of manufacturing a chemical, minute uses of which are
known to cause profound changes in consciousness.

Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him
and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe.

Each society has a vital interest in the indoctrination of the infants who form its new
recruits.

East and West, civilized or primitive, religious thought and all that flows from it almost
certainly has been importantly influenced by psychedelic drugs.

Eastern philosophy and psychology is more easily adapted to the findings of modern
science than the logic of Western psychology.

Eastern philosophical theories of 4000 years ago adapt to recent scientific discoveries of
nuclear physics, biochemistry, genetics and astronomy.

Ecstasy is the sensation of surrounding to vibrations and sometimes to insights that take
you out of your so-called self.

Education has focused almost entirely on developing the cognitive skills of our ordinary
state. We should be aware that this is a policy decision, not a necessary “given”.

Education has never been an instrument to free the mind and the spirit of man, but to bind
them. We think we want creative children, but what do we want them to create?

Ego-consciousness is a bondage to time, being essentially a complex of memories and
participations. All ego-centric action has an eye to the past or the future.

Ego death is not permanent, but the break-through to a broader awareness generally
begins the process of transformation of the personality.

Ego is the “island” of rational consciousness floating atop the great sea of the
unconscious aspects of the psyche.

Enlightenment comes when the individual self realizes it has no separate identity beyond
this Absolute.

Enlightenment is based on an ecstatic moment of realization which is supposed to imbue
all life thereafter with a certain grace.

Enriched by a consciousness perspective, liberal education can extend freedom and
mental refinement far beyond the parochialism of single-state learning.

Entities like electrons and photons can exist as waves or particles, energy or matter. (It’s
like water. If it’s cold enough, it becomes ice and if it’s hot enough, it becomes gas.)

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

Eternity should not be confused with an infinitely long period of historical time. It is a
state where linear time is experientially transcended and ceases to exist.

Even a rock contains far more space than “matter” while “matter” itself seems to dissolve
more and more into energy patterns.

Even if it doesn’t refer to anything outside itself, it’s still the most important thing that
ever happened to you.

Events can divide and merge according to the changing fashions of historical description.
The boundaries of events are conventional rather than natural.

Every being is desirous for the fruits of action so long as it remains ignorant of its true
nature.

Every cell in your body is acutely conscious and has access to wisdom which dwarfs the
mental, prefrontal symbolic aspect that you consider normal waking consciousness.

Every cell is an electro-chemical-social system more complicated than the city of New
York—with 2 billion years of accurate intelligence-energy memory built into the nucleus.

Every cell of your body is an energy torch which tracks back through millions of
generation transformations.

Every enhancement of the separate personal self produces a corresponding diminuation
of that self’s awareness of divine reality.

Every person is born divine and the purpose of life is to rediscover your forgotten
divinity.

Every person should have the experience to see what potential lies within himself. (First,
the person must be well prepared.)

Every process in the universe that one can observe objectively in the ordinary state of
consciousness also has a subjective experiential counterpart.

Every religion uses the term infinite to describe its highest conception and all mystics
have seen infinity.

Everyone says give LSD to the medical profession. The medical profession has had LSD
for 23 years and hasn’t known what to do with it. (It’s now a lot more than 23 years.)

Everything flows. The flow of water, of wind and of fire is obvious, as is also the flow of
thought. The flow of earth and rock is less obvious.

Everything that is essential is invisible to the eye, the realm of the invisible (That’s
invisible to the ego without LSD).

Everything that lives is holy. (That includes inorganic matter which is indeed alive.
Everything is alive and holy.)

Everything we experience is stored in our brains with photographic details. (So is
everything that has ever been experienced by anyone or anything.)

Everywhere we look, we imagine solid objects, but science finds only a web of dancing
energy.

Excitement was brewing in the Haight. The psychedelic city-state was having its brief
golden age. The energy was unmistakably sky-high.

Expanded consciousness extends far beyond the cultural and ego games in which men are
enmeshed.

Expecting the Second Coming of the Lord, obviously, the Church has been looking in the
wrong direction—in the outward skies and not in the realm of heaven which is “within”.

Experience life as it actually is, as beyond the ways in which it is merely measured and
described and calculated.

Experiences and values which we had believed to be contrary and distinct are, after all,
aspects of the same thing.

Experiences encountered in the process of in-depth self-exploration have intrinsic healing
potential.

Experiences of cosmic consciousness has been described in many religious scriptures
throughout history.

Experiencing one’s self as one with the universe or with God is the hallmark of the
mystic experience, regardless of its cultural context.

Experiential sequences of death and rebirth typically open the gate to a transbiographical
domain in the human psyche that can best be referred to as transpersonal.

Explicit focus on the positive potential in human beings is an important therapeutic
factor.

Expressions of mystical experience will not stand the test of logic, but the mystic doesn’t
claim to be logical. His sphere of experience is the unspeakable.

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

Far from inducing window-jumping and self-destruction, the suicide rate for young
people actually dropped during the LSD boom.

Far more people in our time experience neither the presence of God nor the presence of
his absence, but the absence of his presence.

Feeling oneself to be part of an all-encompassing cosmic network often gives a person
who has problems with self-esteem a fresh, expanded self-image.

Few people can tap universal wisdom and pass it on to others. But, deep inside, each
person possesses this wisdom.

Few people have much conception of what a religious experience really is. Few people
have any idea how the divine process presents itself.

Few therapists are capable of assessing, evaluating and integrating psychedelic
experiences in a useful way.

Flesh or plastic, intelligence or mechanism, nerve or wire, biology or physics—it all
seems to come down to this fabulous electronic dance.

For creativity and sanity, man needs to have, or at least to feel, a meaningful relation to
and union with life, with reality itself.

For many, a sense of discontinuity between nature and man and man’s loss of the
spontaneous, free energy of eternal delight, is the essential tragedy of modern man.

For many religions, the celestial realms represent the most describable goal, the
destination of the spiritual journey.

For more than four centuries, the Indians have kept the divine mushroom close to their
hearts, sheltered from desecration by white men, a precious secret.

For the divine, the real is not the construct; it is the natural, nonverbal and indescribable
order.

For the most creative research, men of science must be trusted and encouraged to let their
minds wander unsystematically without any pressure for results.

For the proper use of understanding, a wider consciousness is needed and a higher
standpoint to enlarge one’s horizons.

For those who have lived a lifetime of conformity and spiritual neglect, freedom is
impossible, that is, short of mystical revelation.

For those who have eyes to see, eternal truth and Buddhahood are manifest before us here
and now.

For thousands of years, pre-industrial societies taught that personal growth involved
visionary experiences.

For thousands of years, the greatest artists, poets, philosophers and lovers have used
consciousness-expanding substances.

Freed from conventional process, the mind can produce more vivid, more original images
and thoughts.

From 1950 to 1962, when LSD and mescaline were more freely available within the law,
there were very few reports of adverse reactions.

Full reality is awesome to contemplate. Man longs for God, but fears to meet Him. (It is
the ego that fears.)

Galileo was branded a lunatic and a heretic for suggesting that the earth revolved around
the sun.

Ginsberg’s vision of a historic movement that would transform human consciousness
struck a responsive chord in Leary.

Go beyond your secular tribal mind to contact the many levels of divine energy which lie
within your consciousness.

God has no skin and no shape because there isn’t any outside to him. Your self is that
cleverly hidden because it is God hiding.

God is dethroned and un-godded by being put in opposition to nature and the world. (If
God is infinite, then God can’t be in “opposition” to nature or the world or anything else.)

God is divided in play, in make-believe, but remains undivided in reality, so that when
the play comes to an end, the individualized consciousness awakens to find itself divine.

God is no specialist. (A specialist deals with one thing. God is ALL and way beyond even
being a specialist in everything.)

God is not dead; he is alive and close. (He’s closer than most people realize. In fact, you
can’t get away from him.)

God is “underneath” rather than “above” everything and he (or it) plays the world from
inside.

God will remain somehow remote and “out there” unless there is a complete turnabout
into which all references to the high and the beyond is translated into terms of depth.

Grof describes transpersonal experiences as those in which ego boundaries are dissolved
and awareness is extended beyond the ordinary confines of time and space.

Hallucinogenic agents throughout their long history have served primarily to stimulate
religious and spiritual understanding.

Hallucinogenic drugs do actually belong in the church, in a prominent place in the
church, for they are sacred drugs.

Harmony involves a consciousness of the interwovenness of organic life and inorganic
life.

He prays best who does not know that he is praying, for prayer is self-forgetful
absorption in God.

Hell consists not in being deprived of union with God, but in willful failure to appreciate
it.

Here, in the far-out frontier of quantum mathematics, physics and psychedelics meet
harmoniously.

Hidden behind explicit differences is implicit unity, the Self, the One without a second,
the what there is and all there is which conceals itself in the form of you.

High civilizations do not fail; they blossom. (That’s until they are crushed by fascist
force.)

Hindu philosophy has not made the mistake of imaging that one can make an
informative, factual statement about the ultimate reality.

Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths, have preached almost no
holy wars and have restrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism.

Hindus and Buddhists prefer to speak of reality as “nondual” rather than “one,” since the
concept of one must always be in relation to that of many.

Hippy is an establishment label for a profound, invisible, underground evolutionary
process.

Historically, mystical experience has filled man with wondrous awe and has been able to
change his style of life and values.

Holiness does not reside in gods outside of nature. Holiness IS nature and our attitude
toward rocks, whales, and galaxies should be one of reverence.

How can we Westerners come to see that our own consciousness is infinitely greater than
our little egos and the ego games into which we are so blindly caught up?

How do we keep alive this world of immense value which people have had during
childhood?

How do you get to live according to the real laws of science rather than the local
ordinances of Prison Earth?

How many are open to the idea that God might be easier to find with LSD in the body
than with white bread or bourbon or liverwurst in the body?

How many of our great visionaries have come from men who have gone off in the desert
or a cave or lived in solitude? (Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, etc.)

How many of the current ideas of eternity, of heaven, of supernatural states are ultimately
derived from the experiences of drug-takers?

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

Human beings have so brutalized themselves, have become so banal and stultified, that
they are unaware of their own debasement.

Human experience is determined as much by the nature of the mind and the structure of
its senses as by external objects whose presence the mind reveals.

Humans can function as infinite fields of consciousness, transcending the limitations of
time, space and linear causality.

Humor is nothing other than perfect self-awareness. It is the delightful recognition of
one’s absurdity.

Huxley after years of theorizing that each of us carries a reservoir of untapped vision and
inspiration had suddenly stumbled across it at age 58 (his first mescaline trip).

Huxley did not win a Nobel Prize, a good sign, suggesting that he made the right enemies
and was properly unacceptable to the academic politicians. (That was Timothy Leary.)

I begin to congratulate the priest on his gamesmanship, on the sheer courage of being
able to put up such a performance of authority when he knows precisely nothing.

I belong to one of the oldest trade unions in human civilization—the alchemists of the
mind, the scholars of consciousness. (That was Timothy Leary.)

I don’t think religion is, in its essence, a matter of belief at all. Reality is reality, whatever
you choose to believe about it.

I have come to think of the hippies as spearheads of evolution. They flashed across
humanity’s horizons and blazed a trail for the rest of us.

I never really felt that school was my true place or any type of ultimately enriching
experience. (That’s what LSD is.)

I think it’s no accident that in so many myths passed down from generation to generation,
there is this theme of the magic potion.

I’m more closely identified with what no longer exists than what actually is. (The ego
identity is based on selected memories of the past.)

I’ve seen this quality of childlikeness, this enlightened quality in him (comment about
Timothy Leary).

Ideas of the world and oneself which are social conventions and institutions are not to be
confused with reality.

Identification of consciousness with ego consciousness leads to confusion of mind and
intellect, to acceptance of appearance as reality.

Identification with the creative energy of the cosmos often inspires a new attitude toward
life and becomes the foundation for a new understanding of existence.

If a cop decides to give you a hard time, you’re in for trouble. What can you do? Call the
cops on him?

If a member of a typical congregation were to have a profound religious experience, its
minister would very likely send him to a psychiatrist for medical treatment.

If LSD treatment for alcoholics is allowed to resume and is expanded, alcoholism will be
dealt a crippling blow.

If God is separate from this world, then he is finite. (The Western view of God is a
contradiction in saying that God is separate from this world, but also infinite.)

If God is truly infinite and universally active, how can he be said to be more incarnated in
Jesus than in anyone else?

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

If I could turn you on, if I could drive you out of your wretched mind, if I could tell you, I
would let you know.

If Jesus could realize his identity with God, you can also, but this God does not have to
be idolized as an imperious monarch.

If no attempt is made to induce the orgasm by bodily motion, the interpenetration of the
sexual centers becomes a channel of the most vivid psychic exchange.

If one talks about experiences for which the listener has no concepts, then he is defined,
at best, as a mystic.

If organized religion decides to avail itself of LSD’s efficacy in spiritual matters, the
church may once again be a strong spiritual force.

If psychedelic drugs actually do expand consciousness, then it is socially irresponsible
not to put them into the toolbox.

If psychologists largely ignore this whole area, the students then dismiss psychology as
an academic word game of no importance.

If purified, the individual mind can identify itself with the Universal Mind, the inner
consciousness.

If religion rejects the magical side of life, it cuts itself off from the living forces of the
world.

If self and other, subject and object, organism and environment are the poles of a single
process, THAT is my true existence.

If the behavior of an organism is intelligible only in relation to its environment,
intelligent behavior implies an intelligent environment. The galaxy is intelligent.

If the mechanisms of DNA repair, immulogical defense and DNA ageing codes can be
understood, life can be extended and death postponed indefinitely.

If the religious vigor of a Westerner is enhanced by rich, mystical understanding, this is
certainly preferable to a foolish allegiance to a dead faith.

If the truth is already manifest, what’s the use of meditation and if it’s hidden, one is just
measuring darkness. Whatever you see, that is it.

If there be righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character, harmony in the
home, order in the nation, peace in the world.

If we are ever to discover how we can best cooperate with the psyche, we have to allow it
to reveal its true nature to us.

If we could translate the modern Western theory of relativity into experience, we should
have what the Chinese and Indians call the Absolute.

If you attach more importance to your beliefs than to self-understanding, you’ll probably
need an awful lot of LSD.

If you have a piece of paper and you draw a line down the middle of it, it does not make
two pieces of paper.

If you want to get the plain truth, be not concerned with right and wrong. The conflict
between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind.

Immortality is participation in the eternal now of the divine Ground; survival is
persistence in one of the forms of time. Immortality is the result of total deliverance.

In almost all cultures, there have been “mysteries”— initiations into the world behind the
scenes of both the social and the cosmic drama.

In American Indian societies, what we might call psychotic experience in adolescence, is
a sign that the individual is chosen as a future shaman.

In Buddhism, attachment or clinging to the material world is seen as the root of suffering
and releasing it is a key to spiritual liberation.

In Buddhism, liberation is called awakening (bodhi) just because it is release from social
hypnosis.

In cultures where truth-fact are tied to religious dogmas, their science wanes, practical
investigation languishes and thinking is subordinated to submissive belief.

In every age, men have struggled to perceive God directly rather than as a tenuously
grasped abstraction.

In every culture of recorded history, men have used chemicals of vegetable origin to alter
consciousness.

In every culture, the abode of the gods and of souls in bliss is a country of surpassing
beauty, glowing with color, bathed in intense light.

In every culture, there have been men who have studied consciousness. They have been
called shamans, gurus or alchemists.

In general, others have little idea of the significance of your experiences. (That’s unless
they have taken LSD themselves.)

In its freedom, its gratuitousness, its playful absence of ulterior motive, beauty is of the
essence of spiritual life.

In many cultures, visionary plants were administrated in the context of spiritual healing
ceremonies as means to diagnose and cure diseases.

In most people, there is such a deplorable disparity between the intelligent and marvelous
order of their bodies and the trivial preoccupations of their consciousness.

In order to perceive reality directly, one must learn how to abandon the intellect and
disengage oneself from the thoughts it produces incessantly.

In our emotional evolution, the missing link between the anthropoid ape and mature man
might be present-day man.

In other times and countries, men would walk barefooted 2000 miles to find spiritual
teachers.

In primary school, we fell into the hands of addictive drug pushers—teachers. (That was
Timothy Leary.)

In principle, every individual seems to have experiential access to mythological themes
of all things and all creatures. (eyes closed)

In religion and folklore, one finds, in all traditions descriptions of paradise, of the golden
age, of the future life.

In spite of our mechanical sophistication, we may well be savages, simple brutes quite
unaware of the potential within.

In Taoist and Buddhist thought, there is no conception of a God who deliberately and
consciously governs the universe.

In the absence of any understanding of truth, another man’s description of his
understanding is easily mistaken for truth itself.

In the contrast world of ordinary consciousness man feels himself to be something in
nature but not of it.

In the dawn of a new evolutionary phase, poets chirp like sparrows and are ignored like
sparrows.

In the Eternal Now, we shall find that strait and narrow gate, that needle’s eye, through
which we are taken into the infinite life of God.

In the heart of each of us, a greater potential exists for realizing truth, for experiencing
wholeness, for going beyond the shell of the ego.

In the modern world, religion is often a social activity with mild ethical rules. Religion in
primitive society was an awesome reality.

In the name of our freedom, we are prepared to blow up the other half of mankind, and to
be blown up in turn.

In the 1960’s, more people than ever before had a glimpse of a higher, happier, more
living reality. For a moment, they really SAW.

In the Tibetan tradition, dying, no less than living, is to be performed in complete
conscious awareness.

In the 20th century, mythology speaks almost a dead language, for the modern mind
knows of no order of truth higher than historical fact. Myth is therefore rejected.

In their ceaseless search for self-transcendence, millions of would-be mystics become
addicts (or drunks).

In traditional psychiatry, mystical experiences of any kind are usually treated in the
context of serious psychopathology.

In truth, the universal and infinite has no opposite at all because it is absolutely all-
inclusive.

Inherent in the nondifferentiated unity of mystical consciousness is a profound sense of
holiness and sacredness.

Inhibition and anxiety narrow perception, reduce the breadth of conscious-unconscious
awareness.

Initiations into the mysteries always represents an expansion of consciousness and an
overcoming of ignorance.

Instead of effecting the union of God and the world, which is its central purpose,
Christian sacramentalism has kept the two apart.

Instead of religion and science being two different things, we need a view of the world in
which the reports of science and religion are as concordant as those of the eyes and ears.

Intense beauty and intense pleasure are always gratuitous and are revealed only to senses
that are not seeking and straining.

Internal freedom is becoming a major religious and civil rights controversy. (Timothy
Leary wrote that in the 1960’s.)

Internal freedom people find through the drug is a personal and not a governmental
matter.

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

Intuitive flashes are transient, spontaneous altered states of consciousness consisting of
particular sensory experiences or thoughts coupled with strong emotional reactions.

Intuitive genius is often associated with daydreaming, meditation, dreaming and other
nonordinary modes of consciousness.

Irrational or exaggerated ambitions, as well as cravings for money, status, fame, prestige
and power appear in this state as childish, irrelevant and absurd.

Irrational, senile legislation preventing people from pursuing private, intimate
experiences—sexual or spiritual— cannot and will not be obeyed.

Is affluence mankind’s highest goal? The young men of this land, as they are often
called, a “lost” race—they are a race that never yet has been discovered.

It has been suggested that the resurrection of Jesus was an illusion created with the help
of mandrake (a drug)).

It is through the experience of the sacred that the ideas of reality, truth and significance
first dawn.

It makes sense to experience and study altered states of awareness to learn about the
nature of our world by directing attention to aspects of it that usually remain peripheral.

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

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

It does not happen to everyone, although the capacity for mystical experience belongs to
the essence of human spirituality.

It doesn’t matter a bit if you don’t understand, because each one of you is quite perfect as
you are, even if you don’t know it.

It is a perennial theme in literature, as in mystical religion, this distrust of the intellect,
the agency of ego, as the sole or dominant vehicle of life.

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

It is hard to imagine a more useful way to combine medicine, psychology and religion
than psychedelic therapy with dying individuals.

It is merely an academic prejudice that prevents one from recognizing that it is quite
possible to be scientific about data of the internal world.

It is noteworthy that most of the world’s highest religious and philosophical thought
originated in altered states of consciousness in individuals.

It is possible for us to become ourselves in the fullest ego-transcending form, even in this
life.

It is possible to live spontaneously without trying to be spontaneous. Indeed, there is no
alternative. (Whatever you do is spontaneous, even being uptight.)

It is prohibited in highly technological and complex civilizations to lift the reality curtain
and gaze upon the naked beyond.

It is quite urgent that we learn to perceive ourselves as integral features of nature and not
as frightened strangers in a hostile, indifferent or alien universe.

It is said that a paradox is only a truth standing on its head to attract attention. There are
certain truths which have to be stood on their heads before they can be noticed at all.

It is surely through the transformation of consciousness rather than through the gate of
literal death that we should expect to find the entrance to Heaven.

It is surely through the transformation of consciousness that we find the entrance to
Heaven.

It is the essence of scientific honesty that you do not pretend to know what you do not
know.

It is through experience of the sacred that the idea of reality, truth, and significance first
dawn, to be later elaborated and systemized by metaphysical speculations.

It is unfortunate that most of the scientific studies on creativity have been done by
psychologists who don’t have a creative bone in their body.

It seemed like the whole world was excited and aware of impending changes. It’s
growing. People are tired of the plastic bullshit conspiracy. They’re starting to think.

It was a time of magic and the gathering of the new tribe. The tribe of expanded
consciousness.

It was a time when our hearts were filled with the yearning for spiritual growth and the
desire to establish the kingdom of God on earth.

It was in the Haight that the cultural rebellion fueled by LSD happened so vividly and
with such intensity.

It was not goals that stimulated us, it was the experience of being and becoming, the
journey there rather than the end haul.

It’s a very salutary thing to realize that the rather dull universe in which most of us spend
most of our time is not the only universe there is.

It’s an unclassified experience and only a very secure society can tolerate an unclassified
experience.

Its essential meaning for the evolution of human consciousness will appear in the
spiritual Age of Aquarius.

It’s how your soul is doing in its path to eternity, not how your body is doing in its path
through this life that’s important.

It’s not that all things are in reality One because, concretely speaking, there never were
any “things” to be considered One.

It’s not that it would be good to return to our original integrity with nature, but that it’s
simply impossible to get away from it. (All one needs is to realize that.)

Jesus did not say that this higher state of consciousness realized in him was his alone for
all time. Nor did he call us to worship him.

Jesus explained that we all have the potential—the God-given right—to enter the
Kingdom, to become whole and holy.

Jesus found the companionship of publicans and sinners preferable to that of the
righteous and respectable.

Jesus showed us the way to a higher state and called upon us to realize it, to make it real,
actual—individually and as the race.

Jews and Christians think of God in political and monarchial terms, as the supreme
governor of the universe, the ultimate boss.

Journalists in general understood Leary about as well as one who might write that
Einstein discovered e=something-or-other.

Judeo-Christian-Moslem, Marxist religions glorify conquest, expansion and murder of
nonbelievers.

Jung’s psychology returns the cosmic status to the psyche and re-introduces spirituality
into psychiatry.

Just as instruments of external discovery have revolutionized society, so will the
instruments of inner discovery.

Just as the physicists have never been able to detect any spiritual stuff, they have never
found any material stuff, goo out of which forms are made.

Knowing about God is not enough. Transformation of the self is only through realizing or
feeling God.

Knowing who in fact one is, being conscious of the universal and impersonal life that
lives itself through each of us—that’s the art of living.

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

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

Labeling the innovator as “insane” has been a standard method of fighting genuinely new
ideas.

Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and
dangerous hallucination.

Lacking warmth and drive, many churches and religions have either passed out of
existence or have continued in a kind of institutional living death.

Language is a device for taking the mystery out of Reality and making it amenable to
human comprehension and manipulation.

Learning from a physics textbook about the wave structure of matter is one thing.
Experiencing it, being in it, is quite another matter.

Learning, memory, mood, judgment, identity, consciousness can be transformed by
electrical and chemical stimuli.

Learning need not be just to get a better job, or more pay. That sort of learning is not
really learning at all. Learning is its own reward.

Leary and Alpert say they shouldn’t be considered drugs at all, but should be classed with
poetry, music, literature and art.

Leary is a super-salesman of evolution who deploys his talents to sell a more advanced
state of human consciousness.

Leary links the psychedelic experience to Oriental mysticism as well as to the most up-todate
concepts of modern biology and brain physiology.

Leary saw the potential for change and we forget how constipated and self-limiting
American society was in the early sixties.

Leary saw the revolutionary possibilities of psilocybin and later LSD for psychotherapy
and religion.

Leary wanted to amend the Constitution so that there’s no law abridging the individual’s
right to seek an expanded consciousness.

Let the mind alone so that it functions in the integrated and spontaneous way that is
natural to it.

Liberating ourselves from the tyranny of words, conditioned reflexes and social
conventions, we establish direct, unmediated contact with experience.

Liberation does not involve the loss or destruction of such conventional concepts as the
ego; it means seeing through them.

Liberation does not mean changing the world, but touching its true nature. (You can’t
liberate the world.)

Liberation is from the maya of social institutions and not of the physical world. What is
meant by the real or physical world is determined by social institutions.

Liberation might be defined as the process of waking up out of the nonsense, nightmares
and illusory pleasures of what is ordinarily called real life, into the awareness of eternity.

Liberation while living is considered to be the highest experience, a fusion of the
individual with the universal.

Life flows back into us when we turn from the stale oldness of theological notions to the
newness of spiritual experience.

Like any other form of imperialism, theological imperialism is a menace to permanent
world peace.

Like breathing, music and other forms of sound technology have been used for millennia
as powerful mind-altering tools.

Literary genius is the near-magical use of words to bridge as far as possible the gulf
between the normal state of existence and the world I was then in.

Live here and now; do not be a slave of emotional memories of the past; be aware of
what is going on now.

Living experience of man’s inescapable union with the infinite abolishes the fear,
insecurity and pride underlying all evil action.

Long-buried impulses and long-stifled hopes are finding a new freedom. (That was
written in the 1960’s. If only it was true.)

Long-buried recollections appear, whole scenes and situations project into the present.
(eyes closed)

Looking at things bit by bit, we lose sight of the relationships and unities between the
bits.

Love is where the lover demands nothing whatsoever of the loved one. Love is freedom. I
want to be free in love.

Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be breakthrough. It is potentially
liberation and renewal.

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

Man as ego does not see nature at all. For man as ego is man identifying himself or his
mind, his total awareness, with the narrowed and exclusive style of attention.

Man could live in paradise “while still in the flesh”. (In other words, we could have
heaven, right here on earth.)

Man falls when he becomes entangled in his own web of words, ideas, discriminations,
thus losing sight of the one and inconceivable Reality.

Man is only dimly aware of the powers, energies, plannings and wisdom that surround
him and radiate through him.

Man’s apparent destiny to seek an ever greater comprehension of the nature of reality
cannot be thwarted or suppressed.

Man’s brain, its 13 billion celled computer, is capable of limitless new dimensions of
awareness and knowledge.

Man’s normal waking consciousness is always culturally conditioned and prevents us
from actualizing some of our most valuable potentialities.

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

Mankind needs to discover a new culture or humanity. (What we have is a culture of
inhumanity.)

Many are able to apply various insights from their psychedelic sessions in a creative way
in their professional lives.

Many examples of the identification of a consciousness-changing drug with God and
associated with religious ritual could be cited.

Many mainstream psychiatrists and government officials prefer to discount the opinions
of those who are truly qualified.

Many non-Western cultures provide occasions during which their people may become
familiar with a broad range of nonordinary realities.

Many of its ancient exponents were “universal individualists” who were never members
of any organization and never sought the acknowledgement of any formal authority.

Many of the phenomena occurring in psychedelic sessions could not be understood
within the context of theories dominating academic thinking.

Many of the states that psychiatry automatically categorizes as symptoms of mental
disease are actually important and necessary components of a profound healing process.

Many of the world’s greatest religious figures were once considered criminal, mad or
both.

Many people become more sensitive to the psychedelic qualities of marijuana after using
more powerful drugs.

Many states that mainstream psychiatry considers bizarre and incomprehensible are
natural manifestations of the deep dynamics of the human psyche.

Maslow suggested that such experiences might be supernormal, rather than subnormal or
abnormal and laid the foundation of a new psychology reflecting this fact.

Members of the new breed seek a culture founded in higher consciousness, a culture
whose institutions are based on love, a culture that fulfills the perennial philosophy.

Memory may exist independent of the physical body maintaining a cogent form that can
be recognized by human faculties other than the five senses.

Men have an almost universal tendency to seek relief from their own kind among the
trees and plants, the mountains and waters.

Men have pursued, down the centuries, certain experiences that they considered valuable
above all others.

Men long ago, in ages however primeval, realized Beauty, and answered back its thrill
with gladness and hymns.

Metaphorically, if reality is a movie, a snapshot provides dimensionally incomplete
information.

Metaphysical doctrines are propositions which cannot be operationally verified on the
level of ordinary experience.

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

Modern Church religion is little concerned with giving any consciousness of union with
God, mysticism.

Modern man no longer regards Nature as being in any sense divine and feels perfectly
free to behave towards her as an overweening conqueror and tyrant.

Modern psychopharmacology is written and practiced by scientists who do not take drugs
and who therefore write textbooks about events they never experienced.

Modes of consciousness different from normal waking consciousness are within the reach
of anyone.

Moral and spiritual idealism, with all their efforts and disciplines aimed at the future, are
forms of the very mode of awareness which is giving us trouble.

Most art springs from intense inner experiences. Passionate religious feelings, for
instance, has inspired artists to produce their most deeply felt and moving works.

Most naively believe that culture-hallowed words about things are as real or even realer
than their perceptions of the things themselves.

Most nonordinary states of consciousness are considered pathological and are treated
with traditional psychiatric methods such as suppressive medication and hospitalization.

Most of our culture does not recognize the significance and value of the mystical domains
within human beings.

Most of the great religions have taken this goal, the going beyond the rational as their
central program.

Most of the great world religions were based on inner exploration employing brain-
changing vegetables.

Most of us do not suspect the existence of another way of interpreting our perceptions of
the world around us.

Most people are walking in their sleep. Turn them around, start them in the opposite
direction and they wouldn’t even know the difference. (That was Al Hubbard.)

Most people go through life barricaded against every idea, every fresh and
unconceptualized perception.

Most people who use LSD and marijuana to get high don’t really know how to use it.
(That was Timothy Leary.)

Most psychiatrists still think that people they call schizophrenic suffer from an inherited
predisposition to act in predominantly incomprehensible ways.

Most truly great minds prefer nature to human society. The latter limits. The former
liberates.

Music, dancing, rhythm—all these are art forms which have no goal other than
themselves.

Must we continue to jail, execute, exile our ecstatic visionaries and then enshrine them as
tomorrow’s heroes?

My attitude toward the experience of a future life has become much more richly
rewarding.

My body and all bodies come forth from this swirl of energy as leaves come from trees
and fish from the ocean and stars from space.

My body is also my total environment and this must be measured by light-years in the
billions.

My brain is God; your brain is too. Let’s learn to practice the technologies of God with
the grace, compassion and skill which the Judeo-Christian Gods so obviously lack.

My forms are infinite and their comings and goings are simply the pulses or the
vibrations of a single and eternal flow of energy.

Myself does not reside in the ego alone, but in the whole surge of energy which ranges
from the galaxies to the nuclear fields in my body.

Mystery lies at the heart of the whole life of the universe, but it is a mystery beyond the
reach of logic.

Mystical consciousness is not primarily an emotion. It is a perception. (The perception
comes first and then there can be an emotional feeling about the new perception.)

Mystical experiences should not be considered pathological; it seems more appropriate to
view them as supernormal.

Mysticism in the broadest sense is “the experience of communion with Ultimate Reality”,
a communion that has no limits.

Mysticism in the form of realizing that one’s true self is the Godhead is something that
Western society would not tolerate.

Mystics emphasize the direct experience of cosmic consciousness that goes beyond the
scientific approach.

Mystics of all faiths teach that understanding comes only when logic and intellect are
transformed.

Mystics emphasize the direct experience of cosmic consciousness that goes beyond the
scientific approach.

Myths, on the whole, have been much less dangerous than theological systems because
they are less precise and have fewer pretentions.

Narrowed, serial consciousness, the memory-stored stream of impressions is the means
by which we have the sense of ego.

Nature “peoples” just as much as it “forests,” grows human organisms as a tree grows
fruit.

Never before had a single substance held so much promise in such a wide variety of
fields of interest.

New energies excite our highest aspirations and can alter our central notions of man and
his place on this planet.

No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of
consciousness quite disregarded.

No external interventions have a chance to create a better world unless they are
associated with a profound transformation of human consciousness.

No known religion has become mature without embracing both the spiritual and the
magical.

No less renowned a prophet than the late Aldous Huxley has suggested that humanity at
large may in fact come to avail itself of psychedelic drugs as a surrogate for religion.

No one part is more real than another. Everything at all moments is shimmering with all
the meaning.

No one who has been hoaxed into belief that he is nothing but his ego or nothing but his
individual organism can be a civilized, sensitive and intelligent member of the cosmos.

No psychological health is possible unless this essential core of the person is
fundamentally accepted, loved and respected.

No social authority can successfully arrogate unto itself the right to dictate and fix the
levels of consciousness which man may aspire.

No work is well and finely done unless it is a form of play. Life should be lived in the
spirit of play rather than work.

Nobody has yet invented a Spiritual Calculus in terms of which we may talk coherently
about the divine Ground.

Nonordinary reality can be experienced even though it cannot be understood
intellectually.

Nonordinary states of consciousness certainly change dramatically the relationship
between the conscious and unconscious dynamics of the psyche.

“Normal” ordinary consciousness and/or awareness is a state in which one is at least half
blind, deaf, and alive.

Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing. When there is no goal and no rush, the
human senses are fully open to receive the world.

Not until we could set aside the ego by recognizing its relative unimportance could we
achieve spiritual growth here on earth.

Nothing is higher than these mysteries. They have not only shown us the way to live
joyfully, but they have taught us to die with hope.

Now that this breakthrough of consciousness had occurred, a new level of harmony and
love was available.

Now the chemical messiah has come which has the ability to awaken this sleeping
realization of mind potential in even the most skeptical.

Objective reality, the world view produced by the spirit of scientific inquiry, is the myth
of our time.

Observations of the transpersonal realm are beginning to suggest that consciousness is
involved in the so-called material world in ways previously unimagined.

On the basis of these hyper-conscious moments, most of the great religions of the world
have been founded.

On the level of ultimate unity, consciousness totally awakens to its original condition,
which is also the suchness of all existence.

Once one realizes that the single authorized version of reality psychiatrists promote with
their talk of “reality testing” is a fiction, there is no going back.

Once people learned to share others’ perceptions, a higher level of consciousness might
be possible.

Once the God self was recognized and appreciated, all need for arrogance and egotism
was gone.

Once there were no words, the time will come when there will be no words, and in
actuality, there are no words.

Once they had eaten the apple of expanded consciousness, there was no going back. The
umbilical cord that tied them to the world of the mundane was irretrievably sundered.

Once we can see that consciousness alteration is not in itself undesirable, we need be
concerned only with an evaluation of methods of achieving it.

Once you’ve seen it all, experienced the divine flame, how can you play out a role in the
silly TV drama of American society?

One cannot act creatively except on the basis of stillness, of having a mind that is from
time to time capable of stopping thinking.

One is not committed by mysticism to any cut-and-dried statement about the structure of
the universe.

One of the important contributions of the drug movement to religion is that it has called
the attention of religious people to the necessity of ecstasy for vital religion.

One of the main goals of all religions is the realization of God and the transcendental
experience.

One of the real tragedies of our time is that such an extraordinarily valuable and
necessary tool as LSD should be held in such disrepute.

One should not be ashamed of wishful thinking for this is just what all inventive and
creative people do.

One will never find consciousness by looking down a microscope at brain cells or
anything else.

One would hope that society will set up places whose express purpose would be to help
people through the stormy passages of such a voyage.

One’s full potential could be realized not by suppressing signals from the inner core but,
on the contrary, by learning to listen to them.

Only that rare Westerner we call “mystic” or who has had a visionary experience of some
sort sees clearly the game structure of behavior.

Only the most naive person will ever be able to believe that the ego can cure its own
selfishness.

Only when the mind and soul is empty, like clear glass, does it let through the light of
God.

Only when this reality is attained is the true working of Suchness understood. (That
doesn’t contradict the above sentence.)

Ordinary language refers to life, but music is living. Live in the mode of music instead of
the mode of language.

Organism/environment is a unified pattern of behavior. (You are part of your
environment, not separate from it.)

Organized religion has very little to do with the non-verbal education of individuals for
spiritual insight.

Our churches feel like grim courts of law where we are all on trial for unspecified crimes
and where the Judge has to be flattered most humbly into showing mercy.

Our conventional words and thoughts are reconstructions of experience in terms of
abstract signs.

Our education, from the start, has taught us a certain range of emotions, what to feel and
what not to feel and how to feel the feelings we allow ourselves to feel.

Our fault lies not in our lack of talent or potential, but in our refusal to believe that it
exists.

Our Hebrew-Christian spiritual tradition identifies the absolute—God—with the moral
and logical order of convention. (God is not a narrow, little meaningless convention.)

Our Judeo-Christian heritage has denied the connection between sensuous life-affirming
wildness and the experience of the sacred.

Our land was founded by restless visionaries from the Old World, who decided that
anything new was better than the status quo.

Our meddling intellect (that part of the mind which uses language to take the mystery out
of reality) misshapes the beauteous forms of things.

Our moral image of God is lacking in Beauty and Beauty’s handmaidens—joy, laughter
and in its sublimest sense, playfulness, a virtue which is at the very root of creative art.

Our natural organism performs the most marvelously complex activities without the least
hesitation or deliberation. (That’s because the ego isn’t interfering or involved at all.)

Our neglect of these experiences of great value has rendered psychology stale and
savorless.

Our ordinary egocentric consciousness is a limited and impoverished consciousness
without foundation in “reality.”

Our ordinary state of awareness is merely a fragment of what is possible. The human
psyche is capable of extraordinary states that are accessible under certain conditions.

Our ordinary state of consciousness is a semi-arbitrary construction. This is true of our
perceptions as well as our thoughts and actions.

Our perception of the world is relative to ways in which social conditioning has taught us
to see.

Our perceptions of the external world are habitually clouded by the verbal notions in
terms of which we do our thinking.

Our potential is never closely approached and the mind ordinarily functions at a fraction
of its full effectiveness.

Our precious “self” is just an idea, useful and legitimate enough if seen for what it is, but
disastrous if identified with our real nature.

Our relationship to the world of nature is practically screened out of consciousness by our
present use of intelligence (or our present lack of use of intelligence).

Our reliance on habit, on words and on concepts, tends to blind us to the immediate
reality in front of us.

Our religions, our Great Society, our culture and our civilization would be without even
the pretense to greatness without ecstasy in some form.

Our senses give us only appearances—certain qualities of the essence, not the essence out
of which they rise.

Our social policy has all but ignored the extraordinary potential of psychedelic drugs for
therapeutic use and inner development.

Our society knows little of the important rites of passage and initiations provided by other
civilizations. Our society suffers from the lack of these means of growth.

Our spiritual journey will take us into ever deeper and broader aspects of ourselves and
the mystery that surrounds us.

Our spiritual progress will not consist in a development and adaptation of symbolism, but
in an increased understanding of its meaning.

Our spontaneity is inhibited not only by the ego-complex as such but also by the Anglo-
Saxon conception of masculinity.

Our subconscious memory registers, preserves and recalls every past impression and
experience.

Our understanding of these most complex and fascinating of drugs remains incomplete,
and they represent unfinished business for psychological research and psychotherapy.

Our Western culture makes virtually no use of altered states of consciousness and tends
to regard all of them as pathological states.

Out of the shell and armor of our ego, outward into a “cleaner, purer realm,” that is our
proper destination.

People are already familiar with suffering. What they need is a reminder of their true
identity which is bliss.

People committed to external power are frightened by the release of ecstasy because the
key is surrender of external power

People have an untapped potential of great love and wisdom which is too often neglected
in trying to satisfy the imperious power demands of the ego.

People of real genius or creative ability are increasingly unable to work in our
universities.

People who go to church don’t know that the power they sing to, pray to, kneel before, is
asleep within them.

Perennial philosophy sees humans as essentially commensurate with the entire universe
and ultimately divine.

Peyote-eating and the religion based upon it have become important symbols of the red
man’s right to spiritual independence.

Plants seem to represent pure being in the here and now, in full contact with the
immediate environment, which is the ideal of many mystical schools.

Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas maintained that pure bright colors were the very essences
of artistic beauty.

Poor Jesus! If he had known how great an authority was to be projected upon him, he
would never have said a word.

Primitive and “modern” man alike experience the same thing once the barriers of
attachments and shams are stripped away. (The inner being of all people is universal.)

Psychiatric propaganda creates an atmosphere of fear rather than of courage and trust. If
the psychiatrists had their way, we’d all be patients. (That was Timothy Leary.)

Psychiatrists secretly drop LSD into the water glasses of psychotic patients and report
that LSD enhances insanity.

Psychological problems may have to be encountered before a “breakthrough” into
mystical consciousness is possible.

Psychology in general has failed to keep pace with personal explorations in altered states
of consciousness.

Psychology, that discipline which treats of mind’s nature, man’s view of himself, is
always the last to adapt to a new world view.

Psychotherapy has to be significantly reevaluated in view of the observations from
psychedelic therapy.

Pursuing the religious life today without psychedelic drugs is like studying astronomy
with the naked eye.

Rational consciousness itself is seen as a tissue thin artifact easily blown away by the
slightest alteration of our biochemistry.

Rationalist intellectuals tend to scorn the psychedelic experience as antagonistic to clear
thinking if not a flight into delirium. (Have any such “intellectuals” had the experience?)

Reality, God, the Eternal Now, is entirely beyond speech, understanding and attainment,
but at the same time, is right here.

Reality is always larger and more complex than the most elaborate and encompassing
theory.

Reality may be considered as flowing and meandering, like a river or interacting like a
dance, or evolving like life itself (as compared to reality being a noun or thing).

Realization is bringing to consciousness what is true all the time in the “unconscious”, in
the Self and spirit which the ego does not know.

Realize that you are not this sad and silly abstract ego trying to run the world from the
outside.

Recognition and exploration of these dimensions is indispensable for a deeper
understanding of human nature.

Religion has become to a large extent externalized and has lost connection with its
original experiential sources.

Religion is a form of organized group activity that may or may not be conducive to true
spirituality.

Religion is in its truest sense an instrument for awakening us to the revolutionary process
of growth to Godhead.

Religion to us is ecstasy. It is freedom and harmony. Kids should not let the fake,
television-prop religion they were taught turn them off. The real trip is the God trip.

Religions teach of the eternity of man, of the greater life beyond, of the soul, of that
which is greater than this physical life.

Religious ecstasy was not discovered by the drug cults. It has been known for centuries.
(Make that millennia, not just centuries.)

Religious experience can be defined as that experience which occurs when the “depths of
our being” are touched or confronted by the “Depth of Being.”

Religious experiences are not the same as a religious life and not the same as a religious
belief.

Religious ideas are like words—of little use and often misleading, unless you know the
concrete realities to which they refer.

Religious training or metaphysical inquiry seems to provide the ideal context for these
drugs.

Ritualistic legalism does little to alter character and nothing of itself to modify
consciousness.

Ritualized and responsible use of psychedelics received social sanction in some ancient
societies and pre-industrial countries and was meaningfully woven into the social fabric.

Robert Kennedy’s wife Ethyl reportedly underwent LSD therapy with a close associate of
Hubbard.

Rock musicians are consciously and deliberately attempting by music to raise the
spiritual level of their listeners. (That was written in 1968.)

Rudolph Otto uses the term mysterium tremendum to describe the fundamental religious
emotion, that which is felt in apprehending the numinous or holy.

St. Augustine wrote volumes of treatises basic to Catholic theology, toward the end of his
life had the experience of Pure Light and never wrote a word again.

Saints and other holy men are usually disturbing to any religious organization. They are
inclined to follow their own “inner direction” rather than of temporal authority.

Sanity today appears to rest very largely on a capacity to adapt to the external world. This
external world is almost completely and totally estranged from the inner.

Sanskrit, as Heard loved to point out, was a far superior language with over 40 different
words for alteration of consciousness.

Schizophrenics have more to teach psychiatrists about the inner world than psychiatrists
their patients.

Science and philosophy have been betrayed because of our irrational rejection of
psychedelic evidence. It is a professional duty to help redress this error.

Scientific description follows the pattern of nature; it does not lay down, like rails, the
rules which nature must follow because the pattern itself is developing freely.

Seemingly bizarre and unexplained experiences sometimes have a dramatic impact on
certain clinical symptoms and problems.

“Self” is not only the body but the whole energy system which embodies itself in all
bodies.

Sensory conditioning has forced us to accept a “reality” which is a comic-tragic farce
illusion.

Shamanism is nearly universal. Shamanic cultures attribute great value to nonordinary
states of consciousness.

Shamanism is the oldest religion of humanity, reaching back tens of thousands of years. It
is also a phenomenon that is practically universal.

Shamans are equally at home in “objective reality” and the various regions of the
supernatural world.

Shamans know a dirty little secret about culture, which is that it’s show business.
Everyone else thinks it’s reality.

Since consciousness is a biochemical process, chemicals are the keys to the different
levels of consciousness.

Since earliest times, man has felt impulses to rise above his everyday self and achieve
either some higher insight or some release from mundane concerns—or both.

Since one’s true nature is already the Buddha nature, one does not have to do anything to
make it so.

Since the dawn of history, it is innovators, like Socrates and Galileo, who have been
rejected, jailed, and executed.

Since the world has no truly separate parts, the only final and fundamental “I” or “Self”
that we have is the whole thing.

So hypnotic, so persuasive is the power of convention that we begin to feel these ghosts
as realities and make them our loves, our ideals, our prized possessions.

So long as man identifies himself with the ego, he is trying to be God. It is only when he
knows that his center of being is the infinite that he is really free to be man (and God).

So now we have this drug war and other evidences of 20, 30 years of extreme reactionary
repression to what was ignited (in the sixties).

Social institutions are simply rules of communication which have no more universal
validity than, say, the rules of a particular grammar.

Some areas of brain function cannot be assessed without using these “keys” to open the
locks.

Some marijuana smokers learned from irrational condemnations and persecution to
mistrust all laws and conventions of our society.

Some of the bloodiest wars and massacres of history have involved campaigns against
groups of mystics.

Some of the highest spirits of the West have spoken through music, expressing through
sound something of the upper reaches of consciousness.

Some of the observations from non-ordinary states would require not only revision of our
ideas about the human psyche, but of the traditional beliefs about the nature of reality.

Something told me that if there was any microphone I could use to ask God a question, it
was peyote.

Spirit shines in glory in what is beyond the world. Though spirit lies beyond the world, it
stays ever within it.

Spiritual development is a movement toward wholeness, the discovery of one’s true
potential.

Spiritual experiences in psychedelic sessions usually do not take an orthodox religious
form. More frequently, they resemble what Einstein referred to as cosmic religion.

Spirituality is a legitimate dimension of existence and its awakening and development are
desirable.

Spirituality is an intrinsic property of the psyche that emerges quite spontaneously when
the process of self-exploration reaches sufficient depth.

Spirituality is seeing the world with a deeper vision that is not self-centered, a vision that
sees through dualistic views to the underlying interconnectedness of all of life.

Spontaneity is not an ego action at all. It is action which the social control mechanism of
the ego does not block.

Start using the untapped region of your head. Here is the real frontier, the real challenge,
the real opportunity.

Statements of fact and mythological images belong to two different languages and the
logic of one doesn’t apply to the logic of the other.

Step by step, spirituality is making a comeback into modern psychiatry and into science
in general.

“Store-consciousness” is that form from which the formal world arises spontaneously or
playfully.

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

Studies of human nature and the human mind which omit non-ordinary states are clearly
incomplete.

Such a tremendous potential to alter the consciousness made LSD a sure subject of heated
debate.

Such insight is intuitively felt to be of a more fundamental form of reality than the
phenomena of everyday consciousness.

Suchness or the divine Ground of all being reveals itself to those in whom there is no
ego-centeredness, either of will, imagination, feeling or intellect.

Talking to God or deliberately sitting or kneeling down to think about God only puts God
at a distance.

Terrence McKenna, among others, has speculated that the evolution from prehuman to
human was the result of synergy of mind-altering plants and the human mind.

That our research provides fierce controversy suggests that man’s accepted view of
himself is coming into collision with new concepts.

That the right kind of research will yield results of very great value seems to us
absolutely certain.

That universe within our skulls is infinitely more than the flimsy game world which our
words and minds create.

That which delights us is the peculiar essences of things, and the intangible relation of
harmony

That which in the language of religion is called “this world” is the universe of reduced
awareness.

The 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.

The ability to experience reality in unconventional ways may be an unrealized talent in
most of us and may explain the empirical correlation between psychosis and genius.

The Absolute or the Ultimate would be the experience of the Suchness of all the levels
and consciousness in its original condition.

The accepted paradigm was materialistic and mechanistic. What couldn’t be
demonstrated in the lab didn’t exist.

The activated human brain experiences the world the way it’s described by the equations
of Einstein and quantum mechanics.

The activated psyche can be called upon to remember states which seem to be
unconscious.

The aim of a way of liberation is not the destruction of maya but seeing if for what it is or
seeing through it.

The almost magical power exercised by certain works of art springs from the fact that
they remind us consciously or more often, unconsciously, of that Other World.

The ancient and pre-industrial societies have held non-ordinary states of consciousness in
high esteem.

The animality of the mystic is always richer, more refined and more subtly sensuous than
the animality of the merely animal man.

The anxiety-laden problem of what will happen to me when I die is like asking what
happens to my fist when I open my hand or where my lap goes when I stand up.

The archetypal longing for a state of harmony with self, fellow beings, and environment
seems to me to be generally programmed into us.

The archives of cultural anthropology contains countless examples of extraordinary
trance-inducing instrumental music, chanting and dancing.

The association of drugs with religious experience is so offensive to some that they will
deny that such things can be.

The atrocities of organized religion are due to mistaking the verbalized notion for the
given mystery to which it refers.

The avatar, the divine one is he who discovers and lives out this rhythm during his
earthly trip.

The average church will tend to reject any discussion of the drugs that does not damn
them.

The beauty and mystery, the gaiety and exuberance which we see in nature and art exist
supremely and perfectly in God.

The birth of any new culture from the ruins of the old will depend on the discovery of
some principle of unity.

The brain is not a blind, reactive machine, but a complex, sensitive biocomputer that we
can program.

The brain’s enormous potential is contracted. (We must expand our consciousness in
order to reach our potential.)

The breakthrough in neurology is going to come when the scientist puts his eye to the
microscope and the microscope of consciousness is your own nervous system.

The Buddha nature is “within” oneself and is not to be sought outside (like going to
India).

The cause of pain and evil is craving for separative ego-centered existence with its
corollary that there can be no deliverance from evil except by getting rid of such craving.

The changes in human consciousness spell the beginning of a new era such as has never
existed before—at least not in recorded history.

The changes of consciousness have ontological relevance through offering valid insights
into the nature of human existence and the universe.

The child is tricked into the ego-feeling by the attitudes, words and actions of the society
which surrounds him.

The Chinese have more than a hundred words expressing nuances of aesthetic experience
for which we have absolutely no equivalents.

The Christian tradition, rightly understood, seeks to have us all become Jesuses, one in
Christ.

The Church has always been highly suspicious of mystics because they seem to be
insubordinate and to claim equality or worse, identity with God.

The Church is not a creative power in the modern world because Christians have, in
general, no consciousness of union with God.

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

The concept of human life as a life-and-death struggle for survival gives way to a new
image of a cosmic dance or divine play.

The confrontation with God, the authentic religious experience, does have the power to
transform.

The conscious ego does not control, let alone understand or produce all those psychophysical
processes upon which it depends.

The conscious ego doesn’t know that it is something which that divine organ, the body, is
only pretending to be.

The cortex can be cleared. The games that frustrate and torment can be seen in the cosmic
dimension.

The cosmological awareness—and awareness of every other natural process—is there in
the cortex.

The craving for and contact with transcendental realities can be more powerful than the
sexual urge.

The creative process can only function in freedom and it can never be ordered nor can it
be denied.

The current popular method of behavior change is psychotherapy, which defines
confusion and inefficiency in game playing as illness.

The deep liason between sexuality and spirituality is acknowledged and cultivated in the
Tantric spiritual traditions.

The devil is part of your mind that wants you to cop out and sell short your timeless
divinity.

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

The discoveries that lie on the horizon are unimaginably transformative for human
society.

The discovery of mind-expanding, mind-blowing, mind-bending and mind-transcending
properties of drugs seems to go back to the New Stone Age, if not earlier.

The disease that is crushing and oppressing this planet is man’s possessive and
manipulatory symbolic mind.

The distinctions between magic, religion, and medicine have not always been so clear as
we make them, or profess to make them.

The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute, ineffable in terms of discursive
thought, but susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being.
(mind?)

The divine Ground of all existence is not merely a continuum, it is also out of time
(beyond time, eternal).

The divine process operates in time dimensions which are far beyond our routine secular
space-time limits.

The DNA code is a miniaturized time-capsule of consciousness, the invisible essence-
wisdom of life.

The DNA code that designed you is not that different from the DNA code that designed a
tree. They’re both strands of living protein playfulness that go back to a common origin.

The doctrine will be paralyzing so long as it is doctrine only; but when it is a matter of
personal experience, it becomes impulse and energy and inspiration.

The drug-induced experience has been regarded by primitives and even by the highly
civilized as intrinsically divine.

The earth could be viewed as part of a larger system—a cell in some larger body whose
connective tissue might include radio messages crackling between the stars.

The Eastern mind has no difficulty in conceiving of a consciousness without an ego.
Consciousness is deemed capable of transcending its ego condition.

The ego is a concept, a symbol, even a delusion—not a biological process or physical
reality.

The ego is a social convention, like the intervals of clock time, as distinct from a
biological or even psychological entity.

The ego is not a psychological or physical organ; it’s a social convention, like the
equator, like the clock or calendar or like the dollar bill.

The ego is only a concept, a symbol and thus can no more do anything than the word
“water” can quench thirst.

The ego is the cause of all the wars inside the human mind and by implication, also of all
the wars in the world-at-large.

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 this other world.

The ego is the social image or role with which the mind is shamed into identifying itself,
since we are taught to act the part which society wants us to play.

The ego or conscious will is an imaginary, socially fabricated self working against the
organism, the self that is biologically grown.

The ego senses the threat implied to its domain by the fact of an unconscious mind that
can perceive an internal reality.

The egotistic viewpoint is so thoroughly complex that it has extreme difficulty in
recognizing the essentially simple.

The either/or insistence of the Western mind is abandoned in favor of a both/and
approach to life.

The emotional human being is a drug addict, continuously and recklessly shooting
himself up with adrenalin and other dark ferments. (That was Timothy Leary.)

The end of human life is not action but contemplation or the direct and unitive awareness
of God.

The entire study of consciousness, the religious experience itself, remains in a state of
medieval ignorance and superstition.

The essence of metaphysical realization is the discovery that the conscious Self, the
ultimate knower in man, is substantially identical with the infinite.

The essence of you and “you-ness” is your consciousness, which is located in your
nervous system. Your consciousness is a biochemical electrical process.

The essential principle of mysticism is perception, though usually accompanied by strong
emotions which the uninformed may mistake for the perception itself.

The evangelists and social historians of the psychedelic revolution have a delightful
roster of hero-comedian-clowns available for legendary canonization.

The existence of the immanent and transcendent divine is not a matter of unfounded
belief but a fact based on direct experience.

The feeling of being the ego is itself part of the stream of experience and does not stand
outside it in a controlling position.

The formal world becomes the real world in the moment when it is no longer clutched, in
the moment when its changeful fluidity is no longer resisted.

The founders of the great religions of the world as well as their prophets, saints and
eminent teachers all had visionary experiences.

The game is about to be changed, ladies and gentlemen. Man is about to make use of that
fabulous electrical network he carries around in his skull. (That was Timothy Leary.)

The genuine Zen flavor is when a man is almost miraculously natural without intending
to be so.

The gift of union with God means that our mental and physical space-time life is given
the dimension of eternity.

The glory and wonder of pure existence belong to another order, beyond the power of
even the highest art to express.

The goal of life is “oneness” and it can be obtained only by loving. As Plato said about
2500 years ago, “The desire and pursuit of the whole is called Love.”

The God externalized in Christ exists within the center rather than beyond the outer
boundary of our consciousness. (There is no outer boundary to our consciousness.)

The God of Vengeance was one of the reasons the Christian religion did not add up for
me. I could not conceive of a God who was loving and also full of vengeance.

The government wants to settle every issue by outlawing disagreement, but that is not
how science works.

The great religious and spiritual traditions all teach that the source of wisdom lives within
us.

The greatest advances in civilization, science and learning often result from new ways of
doing things.

The greatest illusion of the abstract ego is that it can do anything to bring about radical
improvement either in itself or in the world.

The habit of analytical thought is fatal to the intuitions of integral thinking, whether on
the “psychic” or the spiritual level.

The healthy mystical core that inspired and nourished all great spiritual systems is now
being rediscovered and reformulated in modern scientific terms.

The Hindu says that the universe is God’s maya or dream, the creation of an illusion so
fabulous that it takes in its Creator.

“The hippies are dangerous.” “Why? Because they are revolutionaries?” “No. Because
they are idealists.”

The hippies raising questions about alternate realities was ontological promiscuity and
probably more threatening than their erotic looseness.

The historic role of states of consciousness in the humanities, arts, and sciences is
neglected in current education.

the hitherto unbelievable surprise: You don’t die because you were never born. You had
just forgotten who you are.

The human unconscious is a repository for a wide variety of experiences that constitute
the basic elements of the spiritual journey.

The illusion that India tried for thousands of years to unmask is the same illusion that the
West has labored to maintain and strengthen.

The image, poetic or mythic, is closer than linguistic categories to events themselves or to
what I would rather call natural patterning.

The importance of the inner subjective and meditative, as well as introspective capacities,
has been rejected by the orthodox psychologist.

the incredible immensity of that submerged continent, the unconscious—There is a vast
beyond that lies within.

The Indians know about the harmonious non-destructive utilization of the land’s
resources.

The individual is almost universally unaware that he has learned to confuse himself with
a political and legal fiction.

The infinite acts without effort; without the use of energy, it produces energy, just as it
produces the finite without being finite itself in its essence.

The infinite includes the finite in a unity, non-duality, which does not obliterate
distinctions.

The inmost self is eternal. It’s what there is and all there is. The totality of space is the
field of its consciousness.

The intellect is like the best man at the wedding. He can take the groom to the alter, but
he cannot consummate the marriage.

The intimate relationship between the experience of the inorganic world and spiritual
states can convey an entirely new understanding of ancient teachings.

The irrepressibly boisterous spirit of Tim (Leary) bequeathed to us the exhortation to be
sacred clowns who evolve into social change artists of compassionate rascalry.

The kingly concept of God makes identity of self and God or self and universe,
inconceivable in Western religious terms.

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

The law against LSD is a violation of a people’s God-given right to experience their own
divinity.

The liberated or awakened man is free from the confusion of conventional entities with
reality.

The literature on creativity clearly indicates that true artistic, scientific, philosophical and
religious inspiration is mediated by nonordinary states of consciousness.

The main obstacle we face as a species is found in the present evolutionary level of our
consciousness.

The man in whom this Self is realized is the Awake, the true man of no rank. (He is
above or beyond all classifications.)

The man who loves in the light of God is conscious neither of time past nor of time to
come but only of one eternity.

The managers of consciousness, from the Vatican to Harvard, have been in this business
for a long time and they’re not about to give up their monopoly.

The marijuana laws in this country were passed with no attempt to incorporate the
available scientific evidence on the effects of marijuana.

The mental state of the liberated or awakened man is naturally free from the confusion of
conventional entities with reality.

The mere suggestion of a connection between psychedelic drugs and authentic religious
experience will outrage many and perhaps, puzzle most.

The Mexican Indian who said, “Aspirin is a drug, peyote is sacred,” was making a
distinction that our laws do not permit.

The mind is a tiny fragment of the brain-body complex. It is the game-playing fragment.
(The mind in this case means the ego.)

The mind is the key to life, for under illusion, it creates confusion and when clarified it
reveals the Buddha nature.

The mind must stop trying to act upon its stream of experiences, from the standpoint of
the idea of itself which we call the ego.

The mind that needs to be controlled is the one that does the controlling. (The mind, in
this case, is the ego.)

The minister might become an extraordinarily helpful person if he could see through his
own religion.

The mistake of regarding men as separate egos has had disastrous consequences. (Just
look at our insane society.)

The molecular processes of life are a billion years older than the learned conceptual
mind.

The most important scientific insights or intuitions come precisely through the somewhat
reluctant use of a nonthinking mode of awareness.

The most profound recent development in psychiatry has been to redefine the basic
categories and assumptions of psychiatry itself.

The most strongly enforced of all taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you
really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent and isolated ego.

The most valuable insights come from questioning the most obvious forms of common
sense.

The most vital human need is to discover one’s own inner reality. This makes it possible
to draw on the enormous resources and wisdom of ages that lie in the collective psyche.

The mystic is able to enlarge his vision, to look more deeply into the unfathomable
miracle of existence.

The mystic knows that in some mysterious and indescribable manner, God and his
universe are one.

The mystic perceives all things as one, all men as his brothers, all creatures as his fellows
and all matter holy.

The mystical view of consciousness is based on the experience of reality in non-ordinary
modes of awareness.

The mystical world-view is surprisingly compatible with revolutionary discoveries in
modern science, such as relativity theory and quantum physics.

The natural universe has been considered apart from and even opposed to God because it
has not been experienced as one body.

The natural world is endowed with a richness of grace, color, significance and sometimes
humor for which our normal adjectives are insufficient.

The nature of creativity does not lie within the realm of natural science because science
deals only with regularities.

The negations, negativity, apply, not to reality itself, but to our ideas of reality. (Reality is
positive, but the ego’s ideas about reality are negative and all wrong.)

The nervous system can be freed of virtually every perception and reflex that makes up
our ordinary spectrum of possibility.

The nervous system and the levels of consciousness available to man are infinite in their
complexities.

The new generation doesn’t want to run away. It wants to look at the ultimates. (That was
written no later than 1969.)

The new model of the psyche shows great similarity to those developed over centuries
and even millennia by various great mystical traditions.

The new physics seem to be approaching the mystic vision of which seers and sages of all
traditions have spoken.

The new state is one in which we can reorganize or re-imprint our nervous system for
higher functioning.

The normal state of consciousness in our culture is both the context and breeding ground
for mental disease.

The nuclear exploration of solids suggests that even a rock contains far more space than
“matter” while “matter” itself seems to dissolve more and more into energy patterns.

The oceans, the air and even the solar system are as much our vital organs as heart and
stomach. We are not in nature. We are nature.

The only aspect of the LSD controversy about which all parties do agree is that the
consciousness-expanding drugs are powerful.

The open cortex produces an ecstatic state, the nervous system operating free of learned
abstractions.

The ordinary modern church service is an insufferably stogy and joyless affair. (That’s
because it’s just silly lectures and has nothing to do with celebrating the union with God.)

The phenomenal world that we observe in our ordinary state of consciousness represents
only one aspect of reality.

The physical boundaries we perceive between ourselves and the rest of the universe may
best be understood as more illusory than real, as products of our minds.

The plant sources of these drugs, the visionary vegetables, have been worshipped as gods
in many times and places.

The playfulness of the child, the saint and of God are alike in this: that they are all actions
in the mood of eternity rather than the mood of time.

The power of reason depends upon organs that were grown by “unconscious
intelligence”.

The power of substances to produce altered states of consciousness is understood by
Western scientists in biochemical rather than supernatural terms.

The present spasm of control, power and murder is not human nature (though it may be
the nature of the ego).

The prevailing attitude in traditional psychiatry and among the general public is that any
deviation from the ordinary perception and understanding of reality are pathological.

The prevalent bias of the modern industrialized world is one of excluding all forms of
spirituality as erroneous and misleading.

The principle instrument of monopoly and control that prevents expansion of
consciousness is the word lines controlling thought and feeling.

The problem of evil has its solution in the eternity which men can experience but can
never describe.

The process of neurological imprinting and the way we build up our conditioned mental
processes is resistant to change.

The processes of nature are like the arts of music and dancing, which unfold themselves
without aiming at future destinations.

The products of the goldsmith’s art, this sacred jewelry, have their place at the very heart
of every Mystery, in every holy of holies.

The psyche contains all the contents of time—extending backwards, across and through
time; history being latently contained in each individual.

The psychedelic experience has been around for a few thousand years before Haight-
Ashbury.

The public at large fails to take seriously any positive feelings of inner change through
drug experience. (That’s because they have never experienced those positive feelings.)

The Puritans killed the senses. English culture killed emotion. And now it was necessary
to dynamite the concrete lid, to “blow the mind” as the LSD followers call it.

The quest for higher consciousness had always been the province of small esoteric
mystery cults.

The question is not one of understanding transcendence; it’s of transcending, it’s
experiencing transcendence.

The question is not whether ecstasy is risky, but whether the expected gains outweigh the
risks. This is a matter which each individual must decide for himself.

The range of experiences which occurred in daily living represented only a small slice of
a vast, unlimited spectrum.

The real, unborn mind is ten thousand times more clear than a mirror and more
inexpressibly marvelous.

The real world is very different from the misshapen universe they have created for
themselves by means of their culture-conditioned prejudices.

The reality of a middle-aged American is a fabrication of mass media. (That was written
in the 1960’s and is still true.)

The reality of religion and the reality of life are one and the same. (Religion is not
opposed to life or in conflict with it.)

The reality of the infinite cannot be proved or described in terms of the finite. (Words are
finite.)

The realization of the Supreme Identity, of the truth that the Self is the infinite and not the
ego, does not involve the obliteration of the ego or finite experience.

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

The reflex reaction of society to the creative drop-out is panic and irritation. If anyone
questions the social order, he threatens the whole shaky edifice.

The refusal to admit that drugs can induce religious experiences is like the 17th century
theologians’ refusal to look through Galileo’s telescope.

The rejection of any source of evidence is always treason to that ultimate rationalism
which urges forward science and philosophy alike.

The religions of the world either worship sex or repress it; both attitudes proclaim its
centrality. To understand the mysteries, always look for what is veiled.

The religious experience is the ecstatic certain discovery of answers to spiritual
questions.

The religious systems of the world have been built up, in the main, by men and women
who were not completely selfless or enlightened.

The revolution in the study of the mind is at hand. That revolution can effect an evolution
of mind also.

The richer our picture of man and of the world becomes, the more we are aware of its
relativity and of the interconnection of all its patterns in an undivided whole.

The rift between God and nature would vanish if we knew how to experience nature,
because what keeps them apart is not a difference of substance but a split in the mind.

The root of evil is ego, the social fiction, the “Great Lie.” We are letting the “pretended
soul” gyp and deceive the “real soul.” Your own betrayer is inside you and sells you out.

The scientist of consciousness must have courage. He must embark on a course of
planfully and deliberately going out of his mind. This is no field for the faint of heart.

The scope of psychology is complex, dealing as it does with processes which are ever-
changing.

The self may know, without knowing how it knows, the single Reality. (You circulate
your blood and digest your food, but you don’t know how you do it.)

The sensation of one’s identity is a result of social conditioning and is itself a social
institution.

The sense of I as distinct from everything else in the universe is the very root of ego
consciousness.

The sexual mores of Asian cultures are in many ways far more liberal than ours and the
association of sexuality with sin is rare indeed.

The sixties represented a lot of good things—an incredible burst of creativity, of joy and
trust, a lot of decency.

The sixties scared the hell out of the culture because they showed another potential exists
for people.

The skin is an much a joiner as a divider, the bridge whereby the inner organs have
contact with air, warmth and light.

The so-called “ordinary person” is only apparently natural or perhaps his real naturalness
feels unnatural to him.

The socially conditioned role-playing ego is never a free agent. Man is free to the extent
that he realizes his genuine self to be the author and origin of nature.

The spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied
only by a change in our world view.

The story of drug-taking constitutes one of the most curious and also it seems to me, one
of the most significant chapters in the natural history of human beings.

The structure of nature is a multitude of changing patterns, not a multitude of distinct
things.

The study of psychedelic drugs has engendered an enormous emotional reaction from
society. (Will society ever wake up?)

The substitution of interminable chatter for mystical experience or immediate realization
of our union with God is the basic reason why the Church has no spiritual power.

The Tao belongs neither to knowing or not knowing. If you really understand the Tao
beyond doubt, it’s like the empty sky. Why drag in right and wrong.

The Tao doesn’t “know” how it produces the universe just as we don’t “know” how we
construct our brains.

The test of liberation is not whether it issues in good works; the test of good works is
whether they issue in liberation.

The texture of the fabric of these socially shared hallucinations is what we call reality and
our collective madness is what we call sanity.

The traditional scientific response to inner experiences is to declare them illegitimate
data.

T-he transcendence of culturally imposed imprints and of social conditioning always has
been a goal for creative persons.

The trouble is that we are too proud to be children and appreciate the playing of God. For
sin is precisely the adult, unplayful action of taking oneself seriously.

The true religious ascetic has no particular interest in mystical religion. He is totally
under the domination of the symbol and does not actually understand its meaning at all.

The true sage rejects all distinctions and takes his refuge in Heaven, in the basic unity of
the world.

The truth that the infinite is conscious is, like its very existence, beyond any objective
proof. (The infinite is alive.)

The two worlds, the divine and the human, are actually one. The realm of the gods is a
forgotten dimension of the world we know.

The tyranny of languages assembled of words linked by clumsy, grammatical
conventions today still pervades human culture and restricts thought.

The ultimate measure of the standard of living is the quality of the experience and not the
quantity of material achievements.

The ultimate mystery of the universe is not to be found far away in some distant place in
a remote future. It’s all right here, now.

The ultimate pleasure organ is the brain, an enormous 30 billion-cell hedonic gland
waiting to be activated.

The ultimate “proof” will have to be personal experience. Without it, much of what is
described will probably remain unconvincing.

The ultimate reality is not clearly and immediately apprehended, except by those who
make themselves loving and pure in heart.

The ultimate reality remains unshakably itself and is of the same substance as the inner
light of even the most cruelly tormented mind.

The ultimate reconciliation with the universe comes from the insight that the totality of
existence forms a unified field or network which is experientially available to each of us.

The universe and the human psyche have no boundaries or limits. Each of us is connected
with and is an expression of all of existence.

The universe ceases to be a gigantic assembly of material objects; it becomes an infinite
system of adventures in consciousness.

The universe in which a human being lives can be transfigured into a new creation by
using “that other kind of seeing which everyone has but few make use of.”

The universe is a many-dimensioned pattern, infinite in extent, infinite in duration,
infinite in significance and infinitely aware, we may surmise, of its own infinities.

The universe is an arrangement or pattern in which every so-called part is a function of
the whole.

The universe is not a collection of bits and pieces, divided in time and space, but is in
reality the metaphysical “One.”

The universe of everyday life, which appears to us to be composed of solid, concrete
objects, is actually a complex web of unified events and relationships.

The use of drugs by witches appears to make intelligible to us on a scientific level many
phenomena formerly seen as involving elements of the supernatural.

The use of drugs to alter consciousness is nothing new. It has been a feature of human life
in all places on the earth and in all ages of history.

The use of mind-altering drugs as religious sacraments was not restricted to a particular
time and place, but characterized nearly every society on the planet.

The use of psychedelic substances for ritual, religious and magical purposes can be traced
back to ancient shamanic traditions and is probably as old as mankind.

The use of the senses or the enhancement of the senses comes as a shock in our puritan
American culture.

The usual Western concept of God is the conscious ruler and controller, the absolute
dictator.

The verbal and analytic mode of perception has blinded us to the fact that things and
events do not exist apart from one another.

The very fact of mystical experience belies the oft repeated assertion that human
consciousness can never rise above the level of formal religious symbolism.

The very fact that man, as an ego, can attempt to accept or know himself is the certain
sign that he is more than ego and is beginning to realize it.

The very living of any one organism is a perpetual birth, death and elimination of its own
cells.

The very use of the term “the unconscious” for the inmost depths reveals how little
Western man knows of what is actually his central consciousness.

The virtue of wisdom, more than anything else, contains a divine element which always
remains.

The visionary experience is described in the 7th book of Plato’s Republic and mapped in
the Bhgavid Gita and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. (Marco Polo also wrote about it.)

The visionary experience is so highly prized that throughout the ages of recorded history,
people have done their best to induce visions.

The vivid experiences of the mystics may be our only means of testing the truth of
religious and metaphysical hypotheses.

The way to turn off the emotions is to turn on the senses, to turn on to your body, turn on
to the electric glow within.

The ways of liberation are concerned with making mystical consciousness the normal
everyday consciousness.

The ways of liberation propose that what many, perhaps, discover in death may also be
discovered in the midst of life.

The West knows all about machines and fails to realize that all the wisdom has come
from the East.

The Western scientific view considers matter as primary. The mystical view regards
consciousness as the primary reality and ground of all being.

The Western youth today is truly seeking. (That was written in 1969. Today, hardly
anyone would even know what that means.)

The whole concept of God as universal monarch, King of kings, is of itself, provocative
and almost calculated to stir up trouble.

The whole idea of purifying the mind is irrelevant and confusing because “our own
nature is fundamentally clear and pure”.

The whole quality of consciousness is changed and I feel myself in a new world in which,
however, it is obvious that I have always been living.

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

The wisdom of sages is not in their teachings; otherwise anybody might become a sage
simply by reading.

The wise person devotes his life to the religious search, for therein is found the only
ecstasy, the only meaning.

The world around us—so often gray—is the product of our own distorted vision of our
ego-consciousness and ego-clinging.

The world of nature is neither things seen by an ego, nor things, some of which are
sensations, bundled mechanically together, but a field of “organic” pattern.

The world outside your skin is just as much you as the world inside. They move together
inseparably.

Theologians need to acknowledge the reality of other worlds, other dimensions of Being,
to which man has access

There appears to emerge a universal central perception, apparently independent of the
subject’s previous philosophical or theological inclinations.

There are billions of cellular processes in your body, each with its universe of experience,
an endless variety of ecstasies.

There are experiential-spiritual as well as secular-behavioral potentialities of the nervous
system.

There are realms of experience, modes of self, and states of consciousness far beyond the
ken of our day-to-day experience or our traditional cultural and psychological models.

There exist societies that make liberal use of drugs to alter awareness, but do not appear
to have problems with them.

There exists an abundance of evidence to indicate that mind-changing drugs have
importantly affected the course of human history.

There has always been this center of pure and unmoved awareness which never at any
time departed from present reality.

There has been no recognition of spirituality in Western psychiatry and no notion that
there might be some difference between mysticism and psychosis.

There is a close connection (association?) between the cosmology of modern science and
the cosmology of some Eastern religions.

There is a fathomless meaning, an intensity of delight in all our surroundings, which our
eyes must be unsealed to see.

There is a “magic theatre” wherever you look, if you can only relax and forget about
yourself as an actor caught in a net struggling to get out.

There is a plastic film between you and the divine process around you. It’s your
egocentricity, your deadening mind.

There is a point at which explanation comes to a full stop, a point beyond which lies only
the mystery of the divine being.

There is a realm of spiritual wisdom which religion as we know it can express by analogy
only.

There is a sort of cycle in which one’s personality is taken apart and then put together
again, in what one hopes is a more intelligent fashion.

There is a universal likening of sages to lunatics. (That’s because most people have never
understood sages.)

There is a world inside a drop of water. A drop of blood is like a galaxy. A leaf is a
fantastic organization, perhaps more complicated than our social structure.

There is about all really holy people a kind of guileless humor, a sense of one’s own
absurdity.

There is an egoism far more ghastly than that of the tyrannous individual. It is the egoism
of the flock.

There is an infinity of meaning and complex power in the equipment man carries around
behind his eyebrows.

There is hardly a single large-scale crime in history which has not been committed in the
name of God.

There is in all of us a desire, sometimes latent, sometimes conscious and passionately
expressed, to escape from the prison of our individuality, an urge to self-transcendence.

There is indeed an almost universal tendency to express the divine in terms of radiating
light.

There is love in each human heart. We must learn how to release the love in our own
hearts. The great oneness of love becomes a reality when we flow into it.

There is new hope for we now have a biochemical agent which offers us a dramatic leap
forward.

There is no doubt that chemical ecstasy, like any other kind, tends to generate
compassion.

There is no dualism of heaven and earth, natural and supernatural, Man and God, material
and spiritual, mortal and immortal.

There is no ego, no enduring entity. The ego exists in an abstract sense alone, being an
abstraction from memory.

There is no “higher religion” without mysticism because there is no apprehension of the
meaning of reality without mysticism.

There is no issue in psychology, physics, biology and theology which cannot make use of
these microscopes of consciousness.

There is no question that altered states of consciousness can heighten aesthetic
sensitivity.

There is no such thing as an abiding public morality without a general realization of
union with God. (You cannot shove morality down someone’s throat.)

There is nothing but Mind. It’s not an existence, nor is it a non-existence. It is indeed
beyond both existence and non-existence.

There is nothing that the more traditional churches fear so much as ecstatic religious
experience.

There is nothing too beautiful to believe of the soul. If its visions seem falsified by
matter, it is only because they are above matter.

There is pretty clear evidence of the religious use of psychedelic drugs among the ancient
Greeks.

There is simply energy is various intensities, durations, qualities, patterns: signals to be
received, changed, selected, filed, retrieved and harmonized.

There isn’t anything in the whole universe to be afraid of because it doesn’t happen to
anyone! There isn’t any substantial ego at all.

There was a beautiful flash to meeting another acid freak. It reminded you that you were
part of something big.

There was a long and distinguished tradition of consciousness exploration, yet it was
known to so few.

There was a time when the Jews exalted a man and made him divine and then nailed him
up when they discovered he was human after all.

These foods and drugs have always been shrouded in mystery, misunderstanding and
controversy (in Western societies).

These perceptions are permanent—any deep aesthetic experience leaves a trace, and an
idea of what to look for that can be checked back later.

These plants are found all over the world all the way back in history and probably used
and known about before the creation of any system of mind-changing exercises.

They consider me insane, but I know that I am a hero and living under the eyes of the
gods.

They shouldn’t be considered drugs at all, but should be classed with poetry, music,
literature and art.

They thought intellect was the only thing that mattered. They refused to let their feelings
live. Yet God can be found only through the heart.

They think things are all right the way they are. They don’t even think anything EXISTS
beyond the TV-bullshit-money reality production.

They’re all beautiful, brilliant, perfect people—Buddhas all. Why do they continue to
play games?

Things are brought into order through regarding them from a viewpoint unrestricted by
the ego.

Things are complex as a result of trying to understand them in terms of linear thought,
words and concepts.

Things, facts and events are delineated not by nature, but by human description and the
way we describe (divide) them is relative to our varying points of view.

Things, facts and events are names selected from the infinite multitude of lines and
surfaces, colors and textures, spaces and densities.

Think of God as the one whose spontaneity is so perfect that it needs no control, whose
inside is so harmonious that it requires no conscious scrutiny.

This expansion of consciousness can be used to increase our awareness of and sensitivity
toward mankind.

This experience was overt and conscious to people in the ancient cultures of 5000 years
ago, but today it is deeply unconscious and misunderstood.

This increased awareness has been eagerly sought by many people who have devoted
their lives to spiritual development.

This insistence on the inefficiency of symbolic religion for the ultimate purpose of union
with God has been stressed by all the Oriental religions.

This mind-body isn’t “given” a structure. It is that structure and before the structure
arose, there was no mind-body.

This other dimension of experience is understood to be of a higher order of reality than
the dualistic dimension.

This Other World could be experienced as the moment when one emerges from the
prison of “limited mind” and becomes identified with the “limitless mind.”

This spiritual craving seems to be more basic and compelling than the sexual drive, and if
it is not satisfied it can result in serious psychological disturbances.

This unprogrammed mode of attention, looking AT things without looking For things,
reveals the unbelievable beauty of the everyday world.

Those early days at Harvard were charged with a special mystery and excitement. (This
refers to Timothy Leary.)

Those who use psychedelics with religious intent are now members of a persecuted
religion which appears to the rest of society as a grave menace to “mental health.”

Those who vainly reason without understanding the truth are lost in the jungle, running
around here and there and trying to justify their view of ego-substance.

Though our individual forms come and go like waves, we are each and all the eternal
ocean.

Thoughts, even of the saints and Jesus, are hindrances to the sight of the pure God, the
mystical experience.

Through the Greek Mysteries, men became gods and celebrated their divinity in the
ecstatic light-space geometries of the great temples.

Through the psychedelics, it is possible to experience the world as many of our great
writers have experienced it.

Throughout history, most cultures had a great appreciation for nonordinary states of
consciousness. They highly valued the positive potential of such states.

Throughout history, the alchemist has always been a magical awesome figure. The
potion. The elixir.

Throughout the ages, the church institution has been the great enemy of the interior
religious spirit.

Throw off the grip of your learned mind, your conditioning and experience the message
contained in the computer you carry behind your forehead.

Time and space are inventions of the conscious mind. They are not present in the
underconscious mind.

T. Leary said-I belong to one of the oldest trade unions in human civilization—the
alchemists of the mind, the scholars of consciousness.
To adapt to the irrationalities of society requires a massive devastation of experience,
entailing constriction, repression, etc.

To be alive spiritually, man must have union with God and must be conscious of it. Apart
from this union, his religious life will be an empty drudgery.

To be awakened at all is to be awakened completely, for having no parts or divisions, the
Buddha nature is not realized bit by bit.

To be incapable of sitting and watching with the mind completely at rest is to be
incapable of experiencing the world in which we live to the full.

To be truly “in Christ” is to be less and less preoccupied with any external image of Jesus
derived from the Gospels.

To be uneasy is the original derivation of the word disease; my anxiety and worry about
my certain death was a disease.

To become a sage, one must get rid of all the rigidities of unregenerate adulthood and
become again as a little child.

To believe that God is angry at sin and that His anger cannot be propitiated except by the
offer of a certain sum of pain is to blaspheme against the divine Nature.

To clear awareness there is neither past not future, but just this one moment which
Western mystics have called the Eternal Now.

To experience directly, we must transcend the verbal-symbol imprint, experience energy-
flow directly, receive energy messages directly.

To go deeper and deeper into oneself is also to go farther and farther out into the
universe.

To have truly original thought, the mind must throw off its critical guard, its filtering
censor.

To identify with the ego is to confuse the organism with its history, to make its guiding
principle a narrowly selected and incomplete record of what it has been and done.

To “know” reality, you cannot stand outside it and define it; you must enter into it, be it
and feel it.

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

To label the experience as a symptom of illness is not accurate or helpful. (It is off the
wall to do that. Anyone using that label is revealing their ignorance.)

To lead us away from the shallow view of human nature that is still prevalent today, we
must direct our gaze to the greatness that slumbers within.

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

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

To remember is not just recalling a past event, but also to “re-collect” to gather together
what has been scattered or divided.

To say that someone has taken LSD tells little more about the content and import of his
experience than to say that he has had a dream.

To say that there is no necessity for things to happen as they do is perhaps another way of
saying that the world is play.

To the biological, physical and psychological sciences, man is a pattern of behavior in a
field.

To the cosmological eye, all things and all people are lovable, in reality, where they are
seen as of one Suchness and yet unique, incomparable.

To the degree that we do not yet know what man is, we do not yet know what human
sexuality is. (or what anything else is)

To the ordinary institutional-type psychiatrist, any patient who gives the least hint of
mystical or religious experience is automatically diagnosed as deranged.

To think of God as mere Power and not also, at the same time, as Power, Love and
Wisdom, comes quite naturally to the ordinary, unregenerate human mind.

To those for whom the ego is their only possible self, the only possible mode of
consciousness, its disappearance is a kind of death.

To those who have passed through the gate, there is no gate and everyone is inside the
kingdom of Heaven. (Yes, we are already in heaven. All one needs is to realize that.)

To understand the transpersonal realm, we must begin thinking of consciousness in an
entirely new way.

To use our heads, to push out beyond words, space-time categories, models and concepts,
it becomes necessary to go out of our generally rational minds.

Totalitarian states know that the artist is not a harmless eccentric but one who, under the
guise of irrelevance, creates and reveals a new reality.

Traditional psychiatry has never adequately explained these forms of experience, their
universality, and their cultural as well as psychological importance.

Traditional psychology makes no distinction between psychotic reactions and mystical
states.

Traditionally it was said that the devil, the embodiment of evil, opposes everything we do
towards enlightenment or tries to block our approach to the realm of Spirit, Self and God.

Transcendence is no longer a metaphysical concept. It has become reality. (It has always
been a reality.)

Transcending the ego leads to great individuality, the person no longer believing that the
rules of the game are the laws of nature.

Transpersonal psychology brings together the ancient wisdom and spiritual systems of
the world and the pragmatism of Western science.

True humor is, indeed, laughter at one’s Self—at the Divine Comedy, the fabulous
deception.

True spirituality is based on deep realization (revelation?) of the unity underlying all
humanity and the entire phenomenal world.

True spirituality is based on personal experience and is an extremely important and vital
dimension of life.

Trust your nervous system, go with the flow, the universe is basically a beautiful and safe
place.

Truth is no more the property of wise men than of fools and lunatics. (We are all the
same Self and truth is not a property.)

Truth must be the last end of the whole universe and the consideration thereof must be
the chief occupation of wisdom.

Turn off your mind. Step for a moment or two out of your own ego. Stop the robot
activity for a while. Stop the game you are in. Look within.

Turn your attention to actual first-hand concrete experience and do not be misled by ideas
and conceptions about it.

“Turned-on” people are not interested in serving the power games of the present rulers.
Looking at successful men, they see completely boring lives.

Turning on requires a change in the physiology of the human body. You have to have
something to bring about the biochemical change, a sacrament.

Ultimately, nothing is irrelevant to anything else. There is a togetherness of all things in
an endless hierarchy of living and interacting patterns.

Under the weight of mental knapsacks, receptivity to the voice of mystical or magical
thinking is limited.

Understanding relativity presupposes not only a rather special intelligence, but new sense
perceptions.

Unfortunately, most Western neuroscientists look down their noses at the Oriental
literature of consciousness.

Union with God does not have to be attained but realized because it is a present reality
from the very beginning.

Unless the statesmen of mighty nations somehow absorb this wisdom, then civilization
will become a shambles. (That’s assuming that it isn’t already a shambles.)

Until recently, it was rarely seriously considered that the descriptions of the adventures of
the soul after death could reflect experiential reality.

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

Upon examination, every substance turns out to be a closely knit pattern, this moving
pattern.

Upon the certainty of this union with God depends the entire joy, power and world-
transforming character of the mystical experience.

Verbal communication and the symbolic structure of our everyday language seems to be
a ridiculously inadequate means to capture and convey its nature and quality.

Very few people, and we Westerns call them mystics, are willing and able to admit that
the game is a game.

Victory over life and death is won by seeing the oscillating dance of energy and yielding
to it.

Virtually in every religious tradition, both civilized and primitive, use has been made of
mind-changing drugs used for the purposes of inducing visionary experiences.

Visionaries insist on the impossibility of recalling in anything even faintly resembling its
original form and intensity, their transfiguring experiences. (Using words can’t do it.)

Visionary experience plays a dominant role in the creative process in art, literature and
science.

Visionary experiences enter our consciousness from somewhere “out there” in the
infinity of Mind-at-Large.

Waiting on the other side of what feels like total destruction of the ego is a broader, more
encompassing sense of self.

Wake up! You are God! You have the Divine plan engraved in cellular script within you.
You’ll be reborn.

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

We all need to find the source of wisdom in our own inner experience and then join
together to share it with each other.

We are cut off from the great sources of our inward nourishment and renewal, sources
which flow eternally in the universe. We must plant ourselves again in the universe.

We are driving our children mad more effectively than we are genuinely educating them.
Perhaps it is our way of educating them that is driving them mad.

We are exploring a mode of experience which does not recognize the distinctions of
analogic thought.

We are ignore-ant of our real identity as members, functions, expressions and
manifestations of everything that is to be seen in the sky and much more.

We are not just biological machines and highly developed animals, but also fields of
consciousness without limits, transcending space and time.

We are not the chemicals but the pattern. (Our identity is not our bodies but the “pattern”
of the entire universe.)

We are part of an infinite field of consciousness that encompasses all there is—beyond
space-time and into realities we have yet to explore.

We are so absorbed in conscious attention, so convinced that this narrowed kind of
perception is the only real way of seeing the world.

We are so estranged from the inner world that many are arguing that it does not exist; and
that even if it does exist, it does not matter.

We are so ignorant of the basic effects of psychedelics that we can only legislate or
“educate” in ignorance and emotional hysteria at present.

We are so out of touch with this realm that many people argue seriously that it does not
exist.

We are speaking about the very experience that shows us what is true, the experience
from which we take the standard for what we mean by “real”.

We are using a very small percentage of the neural equipment, the brain capacity which
we have available.

We attempt to impose our ego-will on the ever-changing life process, a stoppage, a
blocking of life-energy flow.

We believed that it was the beginning of a spiritual revolution, a revolution of
consciousness (Human Be-In, 1967, San Francisco).

We can anticipate that normal reality without drugs will be simply one of a possible two
or three hundred realities interrelating at a given time.

We can define and feel ourselves to be the total pattern of the cosmos as focused or
expressed here.

We can find ourselves filled with a love which we have never even dreamed was
possible.

We can generalize and say that the more discriminating and acute and precise our
perceptions are, the better, on the whole, will be our general intelligence.

We can get a release from the neurological prison, come to our senses, turn off the
conditioning.

We can go further than the religious sphere and see the need for ecstasy in all of life. This
is the solid core of truth in the message of the hippies.

We confuse our systems of symbols and descriptions with the real or natural world, the
ego with the organism, the map with the territory.

We confuse the whole doctrine of eternal life when we speak of it as “future life”.
Eternity is not unending time; it is an indestructible present.

We could create the new Garden of Eden. We could become the new Adam and Eve and
begin the world again. And that’s why the powers that be must stop the “counterculture.”

We discover abruptly that we have been programmed all these years, that everything we
accept as reality is just social fabrication.

We discover that there is some superior order harmonizing what seems to be conflicts at
the level of our normal individual consciousness.

We discovered the long-sought after philosopher’s stone, the key to increased
intelligence.

We do not need a new religion or a new Bible. We need a new experience—a new feeling
of what it is to be “I”.

We don’t see that human nature and “outside” nature are all of a piece. (They are
connected and united.)

We each hold the potential for having direct and immediate experiential access to
virtually every aspect of the universe.

We firmly believe that some of the people who are labeled as psychotic are really
undergoing difficult stages of spiritual opening.

We go through torments to protect our personality; once we see through the illusion, we
laugh.

We had discovered the long-sought after philosopher’s stone, the key to increased
intelligence.

We have a universe that is an infinitely complex system of vibratory phenomena rather
than an agglomerate of Newtonian objects.

We have access to virtually unlimited sources of information about the universe that may
or may not have complements in the physical world.

We have become aware of the undiscovered universe within, of the uncharted regions of
consciousness.

We have been trying to persuade ourselves that the universe is not a mystery but a
somewhat stupid machine.

We have had a taste of what liberation really means and it informs and affects our whole
life thereafter.

We have hardly scratched the surface in understanding fully the facets and functions of
altered states of consciousness.

We have in our culture, even in the scientific and professional literature, a bias toward
reporting only the negative effects of psychedelics.

We have learned to feel our consciousness much too superficially, as if all our sensations
were in the tips of the fingers and none in the palm.

We have lost the ability to feel nature from the inside and to feel the seamless unity of
ourselves and the world.

We have lost the art of playing with our life, the joy has gone out of it. Existence has
become an affair of deadly serious.

We have much to learn from appropriate investigation of this powerful mind-altering
chemical.

We have removed a source of disturbance, at the price of denying part of our own
potential.

We have the chance to become the truth we are all yearning for. (We already are that
truth. It’s just a matter of realizing it.)

We ignore and are unconscious of the dependence of our consciousness and energy upon
the outer world.

We insist that inner conflict between ego and body, reason and instinct, is the essential
condition of civilized life.

We know relatively little about the creative spark, only slightly more than we do about
the unconscious from which it springs.

We learn as children to see the function of objects, rather than experience them in all
possible ways.

We live in the late Dark Ages, my friends and Tim (Leary) seems more than our Galileo.
I regard him as our Leonardo.

We live on the edge of the miraculous every minute of our lives. The miracle is in us and
it blossoms forth the moment we lay ourselves open to it.

We lose consciousness of and faith in the uncontrolled and ungraspable background
world which is ultimately what we ourselves are.

We maintain the illusion of living in a solid world, though in fact, a mountain range of
granite is a network of electrical energy.

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

We may not see reality except in terms of functions, which shuts out an enormous
amount of reality.

We must act not from our inflated or deflated ego but from the deepest recesses of our
being.

We must change our thinking to use the potentialities of our new instruments. (The new
instruments are psychedelic drugs.)

We must discover new mental energy sources for overcoming our society’s psychological
inertia and anachronistic state of mind.

We must learn how to be mentally silent, must cultivate the art of pure receptivity,
wordless experiencing.

We must look at reality without words to see it as it is. When we see reality as it is, we
are free to use thought without being fooled by it.

We must look much farther than personal biography and the individual unconscious if we
are to even begin to grasp the true nature of the psyche.

We must move toward a realization of the truth at the core of our being and toward the
higher consciousness that is the birthright of all of us.

We must wake up and realize we know little. There is much more and the mystery is
beautiful.

We never completely lose contact with this cosmic consciousness because we are never
fully separated from it.

We now have the means of providing the enlightenment to any prepared volunteer. (That
was Timothy Leary in the 1960’s.)

We perceive only what we can conceive, what can be incorporated into our established
frame of reference. (That’s the way it is with “normal” waking consciousness.)

We perceive things in a state of hypnosis, not as they are, but as we are told to see them.
(LSD fixes that.)

We seem to oppose any process which puts the game of here and now onto the long
evolutionary timetable.

We should not treat an experience as meaningless or demanding no explanation just
because our present explanatory powers are inadequate to it.

We were lured by the vision of a new, transformed, transfigured human race, free of hype
and materialism, and we wanted to help change the world.

We were never put out of the Garden of Eden. It’s still all around us. You only have to
learn to look.

We were seeking a clearer, purer realm. A realm of unbounded joy. The realm of
enlightenment. The pure land. Buddhahood.

We were using a new kind of microscope, one which made visible an extraordinary range
of new perceptions.

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

We wished to confront the realities of our nervous system, not in a clinical but a creative
setting.

Western civilization, since the Renaissance, is one of the few social orders that does not
provide for emotionally powerful rites of renewal and emergence.

Western culture seems at the moment spiritually disintegrated beyond hope of
reconstruction.

Western literature had almost no guides, no maps, no texts that even recognize the
existence of altered states.

Western psychology has ignored the possibilities of mind-expansion and has become
almost externally oriented.

Western psychology is so narrow as to be mostly trivial— consciousness is eliminated
from the field of inquiry.

Western psychology recognizes no methods or possibilities of getting off the imprint
board.

Western religions call any idea about an inner level at which God and man are identical,
pantheism.

Western scholars have greatly underestimated the importance of these drugs to the
cultures that use them.

Western theology has tended to be out of touch with the mystical roots of religious
experience.

Westerners see the ego-loss experience confused with schizophrenia because they can’t
label it and therefore it can’t be investigated.

What a real man or woman is remains inconceivable since their reality lies in nature, not
in the verbal world of concepts. (That’s inconceivable in terms of verbal concepts.)

What are ordinarily dismissed as irrelevant details of speech, behavior, appearance and
form seemed in some indefinable way to be highly significant.

What art was available to the great knowers of Suchness? They probably paid little
attention to art. They don’t need art if their mind can see the All in every “this.”

What education does is put a series of filters over your awareness and you experience less
and less.

What guarantee is there that the 5 senses, taken together, do cover the whole of possible
experience?

What happened to our hope of the 1960’s to be liberated from the robot aspects of the
psyche?

What historians describe as history is simply those aspects of the past which, according to
their own philosophy of life, they regard as particularly important and significant.

“What is the method of liberation?” “Who binds you?” “No one binds me.” “Why, then,
should you seek liberation?”

What is true and positive is too real and too living to be described and to try to describe it
is like putting red paint on a red rose. (That was Alan Watts.)

What kind of world was it back when LSD could be discussed scientifically, objectively,
rationally?

What lies beyond the opposites must be discussed, if at all, using the language of
analogy, metaphor and myth.

What needs to be controlled is not so much the spontaneous flow of human passions as
the ego which exploits them.

What really dies in the process of ego-death is that part of us that holds a basically
paranoid view of ourselves and of the world around us.

What we ordinarily call “reality” is merely that slice of total fact which our social
conventions of thought and feeling make it possible for us to apprehend.

What’s lacking in the Western mind is the sense of connectivity and relatedness to the
rest of life.

When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have
given him, he is at once universal and unique.

When a nation is in confusion and disorder, patriots are recognized (but not by those who
are causing the confusion and disorder).

When a person accepts God’s love, he’s too rich to be bothered with things (possessions,
status symbols, etc.).

When inner vision is ignored or obscured, one may be caught by illusions that constrict
awareness of reality.

When such experiences are taken seriously, prophets rise up, religious beliefs are
formulated, and religious institutions are founded.

When the ego is dispelled, there is insight, the perception of a whole new pattern of
relationships comparable to scientific or artistic discovery.

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

When the world is inspected directly and clearly, past and future times are nowhere to be
found. (All there is is the present.)

When there is understanding, there is an experienced fusion of the Wisdom which is the
timeless realization of Suchness with the Compassion which is Wisdom in action.

When we enter the realm of transpersonal experiences, we burst through barriers that we
take completely for granted in our everyday lives.

Where could “the mystery” be more cleverly hidden than right in the seeking or the
seeker?

Whereas the ego is your idea of yourself, the total energy system of the universe is what
you are.

Whereas the scientific comprehension of the relative universe is as yet largely theoretical,
Eastern disciplines have made it a direct experience.

Whether one is enlightened or ignorant, there is in reality no escape from the Supreme
Identity.

Who controls your cortex? Who decides the range and limit of your awareness? (internal
freedom issue)

Who wants to talk to a preacher when you know damn well they’re all working for the
establishment.

Who wrote the cosmic script? Is the big genetic-code show live or on tape? Who is the
sponsor?

Why experiences seem new: they are observed without the feeling of familiarity caused
by memory images.

Wisdom becomes available when we see things as they are. Our task is to remove the
obstacles to awareness that limit and distort perception.

Wisdom comes only to those who have learned how to talk, read and write without taking
language more seriously than it deserves.

With a few exceptions, there has been no recognition of spirituality in Western psychiatry
and no notion that there might be some difference between mysticism and psychosis.

With very rare exceptions, that which is truly subjective and interior has thus far
remained entirely hidden from Western man.

Within the course of a lifetime, we see certain signs that seem familiar and remind us of
those times when we knew.

Within the psyche, there are no boundaries; all its contents form one continuum with
many levels and many dimensions.

Within your psyche, there are no boundaries; all its contents form one continuum with
many levels and many dimensions.

Without the consciousness of God in the soul and of the soul in God, Christianity in this
age and for modern man can be no more than a superficial mimicry of spirituality.

Without the realization of God’s love for the world, we can love neither the world nor
God.

Words are uttered, but fail to enlighten. The things and events to which symbols refer
belong to mutually exclusive realms of experience.

Words break down because they always imply a meaning beyond themselves and here,
there is no meaning beyond.

Words, whether we see them or hear them, bring to us not only meaning, sensations and
emotions, but also images.

Worship of the Goddess predated worship of male deities in many cultures, East and
West.

You are more likely to find the evolutionary agents closer to jail than the professor’s
chair.

You are part of something larger than yourself, something which space and time do not
restrict.

You call the desire for utopia childish and infantile. I believe that it is part and parcel of
the human psyche and will eternally find expression.

You can link that cosmic brain and pleasure-seeking body with another or others
similarly inclined.

You can no more do research on LSD and leave out sexual ecstasy than you can do
microscopic research on tissue and leave out cells.

You cannot accept the political or spiritual leadership of anyone you cannot get high
with.

You can’t understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you
cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket.

You do not have to achieve harmony with life because you already have it. (Realizing
that is another story.)

You, your ego is trained to remember secular-game landmarks, like a prom or wedding
day, etc.

Your consciousness extends beyond the language you know and the culture in which you
exist.

Your head is 2 billion years old and it’s got every control switch GE or IBM ever though
of and a million more and it’s hooked up in direct connection to WDNA.

Your life begins when your TV game ends. The you are free to walk out of the studio, a
God in the Garden of Eden.

Your own consciousness shining, inseparable from the great Body of Radiance, is subject
neither to birth nor death.

You’ve got to laugh hard before you can get anywhere near God. (God is fun, not serious.
Lighten up and get with it.)

A Christianity which is not basically mystical must become either a political ideology or
a mindless fundamentalism. Biblical idolatry is one of the most depressing and sterile
fixations of the religious mind.

A conception of the ultimate unity in being and consciousness of man and the universe is
common to all the main religious traditions and is based on the experience of the mystics
in each tradition.

A conceptual system that could account for at least the major observations of LSD
therapy requires not just a new understanding of the effects of LSD, but a new and
expanded model of the human mind and the nature of human beings.

A deeper understanding of the transformative process, based on the synthesis of
historical, anthropological and experimental data, could have important implications for
many different areas, including psychiatry, art, philosophy, religion and education.

A dramatic change in neurology must be gently introduced in the language a culture
traditionally uses for those “mysterious, unknown higher powers” which science has not
yet explained.

A lively boost was the publication of Huxley’s books, Doors of Perception and Heaven
and Hell; his enormous erudition and lucid explanations put the whole business of taking
a drug to change your consciousness on a totally new level.

A new cultural mythic ideal is emerging: the myth of the fully developed mind. It is an
eminently democratic ideal. Only some can become adventurers on land or in space, but
in mind exploration, everyone is at the frontier.

A new deepened reality consciousness could become the basis of a new religiosity which
would not be based on belief in the dogmas of various religions, but rather on perception
through the “spirit of truth.”

A number of patients in psychotherapy could begin to paint after having been given the
drug. Most of them had not previously done any painting at all, and yet the quality of the
work was far above average for the ordinary beginning art student.

A sacrament is something that engenders in those who use it certain spiritual resonances
which defy exact analysis and can’t be accurately described to one who does not
experience authenticity in himself.

A superior religion goes beyond theology. It turns toward the center; it investigates and
feels out the inmost depths of man himself, since it is here that we are in most intimate
contact, or rather, in identity with existence itself.

A truly unselfconscious person has a kind of unaggressive but nonetheless unshakable
assurance, which at a deep level is religious faith or at its deepest level a kind of
metaphysical certainty.

A visionary will recognize the possibility of discovering from mind, in some of its
extraordinary awakened states, a truth, or a collection of truths, which do not become
manifest in his every-day condition.

According to Carl Jung, the main function of formalized religion is to protect people
against the direct experience of God. (That’s why formalized religion is a farce and a
fraud.)

According to Freud, our best and highest aspirations are merely symptoms of neurosis.
He defines genius as nothing more than sublimated sexual drives, and our subconscious
as a sewer inhabited by monsters and vile incestrous desires.

Action without wisdom, without clear awareness of the world as it really is, can never
improve anything. It could be argued that those who sit quietly and do nothing are
making one of the best possible contributions to a world in turmoil.

After such experiences, contemplation may take on new meaning for the Western man
who finds little time to ponder the meaning of his own existence and the philosophical
presuppositions upon which his religious, political, scientific, and ethical convictions rest.

After the experience of ego death, abuse of alcohol or narcotics, as well as suicidal
tendencies, are seen as tragic mistakes due to an unrecognized and misunderstood
spiritual craving for transcendence.

Alcohol is a “down” experience. It narrows consciousness and makes you a rather sloppy,
a rather messy person in thought and action. The psychedelic drugs take you in the
opposite direction.

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

All of our unconscious bodily functions, such as breathing and digestion, the beating of
our hearts, the biochemistry of our metabolism, and so on, are part of a seamless web that
does, indeed, include the whole universe.

All of us carry around in the back of our head this mysterious other world which I have
called the world of visions. The little twinkling lights of Christmas decorations remind
us of this other world; they seem in some way magical.

All of us have been censored so much, the filters have been applied for so long, that if we
want to expand our consciousness and move on to different levels of reality, we are
probably going to have to use chemical means.

Almost all mystics and visionaries have experienced reality in terms of light—either of
light in its naked purity or of light infusing and radiating out of things and persons, seen
with the inner eye or in the external world.

Americans are permitted to do almost anything in the name of psychotherapy or religion
except use disapproved drugs. (That means the U.S. is a fascist state without religious
freedom.)

Another kind of reality exists that we can call internal or nonordinary reality. It is
precisely that aspect of reality we are unconscious of when in the ordinary waking state,
and the unconscious mind is precisely that part of the mind that pays attention to it.

Any contact with divinity not subject to priestly mediation and formulation in terms of
traditional doctrines appears as a threat to the political and social order, and may be
classified as madness or vice.

Any grid we use to organize our experience of the world is a model of the world and
should not be confused with the world itself. The map is not the territory. The menu is
not the meal.

Any point from which one sees the one-ness is a center. That one point of vision is the
eye of God, seeing, glorifying, understanding the whole. One such moment of revelation
is the only purpose of life.

Any unbiased study of the transpersonal domain of the psyche has to come to the
conclusion that these observations represent a critical challenge to the Newtonian-
Cartesian paradigm of Western science.

Anything emotional, anything that might involve touching, anything that may involve
feeling, anything that involved spiritual things, was very, very frightening to academics.
Of course, Leary was doing all of that.

Aristotle is the author of the first explicit statement that full experience and release of
repressed emotions are an effective treatment for mental illness. (Full experience means
FULL experience, FULL psychedelic experience.)

Art and religion, philosophy and science, morals and politics—these are the instruments
by means of which men have tried to discover a coherence in the flux of events, to
impose an order on the chaos of experience.

As a result of the explorations of such men as R. G. Wasson, Professor Roger Heim and

R. E. Schultes of Harvard, a whole new field was opened up—the study of the
relationship between plant-induced visions and primitive mythology.
As all great musicians have insisted and as anybody who has listened to music with
understanding agrees, music has some kind of cognitive meaning. It does say something
about the nature of the universe. Beethoven insisted on this very strongly.

As long as human beings have had these kinds of bodies, living on a planet of this sort,
certain myths keep appearing and reappearing and many of them refer to the magic and
wonder of the sacred drug, the potion, the elixir of life.

As one’s head looks like nothing to the eyes, yet is the source of intelligence, the
indefinable Tao is the intelligence which shapes the world with a skill beyond our
understanding.

As soon as the ego’s act of identifying itself with the future can be seen as something
present, one is seeing it from a standpoint superior to the ego, from the standpoint of the
Self.

As soon as we can break the conservative chains around our hearts and conquer our fears,
the freedom and joy will begin again. Like Adam and Eve, we will be lovers in an earthly
paradise again.

At present, Christianity tends to demand blind faith, rote words and mechanical behavior.
This leaves people empty and unfulfilled. But the cosmic calling we humans have will
not be denied forever, despite the ignorance of religious institutions.

Awakening almost necessarily involves a sense of relief because it brings to an end the
habitual psychological cramp of trying to grasp the mind with the mind, which in turn
generates the ego with all its conflicts and defenses.

Because they know nothing of spirituality and regard the material world and their
hypotheses about it as supremely significant, rationalists are anxious to convince
themselves and others that miracles do not and cannot happen.

Become a cheerleader for evolution. That’s what I did and my grandfather before me.
These brain-drugs, mass-produced will bring about vast changes in society. (That was
Aldous Huxley speaking to Timothy Leary while both were tripping.)

Before the invention of Christianity, sex was more often identified with religion than sin.
(It is questionable whether sex was ever identified with sin before the coming of
Christianity, but there is no question that sex was identified with religion.)

Can we not see that this voyage is not what we need to be cured of, but that it is itself a
natural way of healing our own appalling state of alienation called normality? In other
times, people intentionally embarked upon this voyage. (Some always will.)

Clients who experience psychological death-rebirth and/or feelings of cosmic unity tend
to develop a negative attitude toward the states of mind induced by alcohol and narcotics.
This has proved extremely useful in the treatment of alcoholism and drug addiction.

Common sense is not based on total awareness; it is a product of convention, or
organized memories of other people’s words, of personal experiences limited by passion
and value judgments, of hallowed notions and naked self-interest.

Consciousness expansion is as equally complex a problem as the study of physics
because the nervous system and the levels of consciousness available to man are infinite
in their complexities.

Consciousness is central and primary. This reversal of the prevailing scientific view
which sees consciousness as secondary and peripheral to material reality, changes
conventional ideas of cause-and-effect relationships.

Continued penetration into the unconscious does not reveal increasingly bestial and
hellish regions, as indicated by psychoanalysis, but rather extends into the cosmic realms
of the superconscious.

Cultural institutions encourage the delusion that the games of life are inevitable givens
involving natural laws of behavior. These fixed delusions tend to rigidify behavior
patterns.

Current psychopharmacology is a superstitious form of black magic sponsored and
supported by the federal Food and Drug Administration, a government agency about as
enlightened as the Spanish Inquisition. (That was Timothy Leary.)

Deep satisfaction can now be derived from a number of things that have been available
all along but were previously ignored or barely noticed. Full participation in the process
of life becomes more important than pursuit of any specific goal.

Dependence on a narrow conceptual framework can prevent scientists from discovering,
recognizing or even imagining undreamed-of possibilities in the realm of natural
phenomena.

DNA code—It’s a living history of every form of energy transaction on this planet back
to that thunderbolt in the Precambrian mud that spawned the life process 2 billion years
ago (DNA code, the genetic blueprint within each cell of the body).

Do these drugs then 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? At the very least, the promise is so great.

Documentation of the widespread use of cannabis for medical, religious and intoxicant
purposes begins to appear about the tenth century B. C. (That’s right. The medical use of
marijuana is at least 3000 years old.)

Does it not seem possible that our efforts at peace fail because none of our present
approaches have addressed that dimension which seems to be at the center of the global
crisis: the human psyche?

Due in part to their ineffable and boundless nature, the divine domains are difficult to
describe, although poets and mystics off all ages have created beautiful metaphors to
approximate them.

During a government investigation of the use of peyote by the Native American Church,
an Indian made the statement, “You white men go to your church houses and talk about
God. We eat peyote and talk with God.”

During the next few hundred years, the major activity of man will be scientific
exploration of and education in the many new universes of awareness which have been
opened up by psychedelic drugs.

Each human being 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.

Each new magnification structure required a new science, a new language to deal with
the new level of reality, formerly invisible to the human eye (microscope, telescope,
electron microscope).

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.

Ego-consciousness must either live the world to the exclusion of God or God to the
exclusion of the world; there cannot be room for both on the objective plane. (The ego’s
doesn’t understand that God is not separate from the world.)

Ego focuses consciousness on the few immediately neighboring pieces of the game board
because ego knows that one glance across the game board or beyond it puts the whole
thing in perspective.

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

Emotional healing is combined with a movement toward a more fulfilling strategy of life
and a search for answers to the fundamental ontological and cosmological questions of
existence.

Enlightenment is the ego’s ultimate disappointment. (That’s because enlightenment
means that it’s all over for the ego, the ego being exposed for the fraud that it always
was.)

Enthoegens is the currently designated name for psychedelics used for spiritual
realization, and according to Jonathan Ott, is derived from an obsolete Greek word
meaning “realizing the divine within.”

Even in our sophisticated society, the dream and the hallucination retain a vestige of their
magical powers. Many surmise that somehow they contain a more important message, a
final truth of which waking awareness is incapable.

Even the uneducated layman can experience directly what is slowly deduced by
scientists. (Actually, the scientists are poking at straws. They have to take the LSD
themselves to understand what they’re working on or studying.)

Every assertion about the basic substance or energy of reality must be meaningless.
(That’s because assertions are based on words, which are too limited to say anything
meaningful about the basic substance or energy of reality.)

Every initiation into what lies behind the passing show involves an unmasking which is
the same thing as the death of the role or identity that one has assumed in the sociopolitical
game.

Everyone who wanted to make it went to college. But now I saw it as a game I couldn’t
afford to play any longer. I wanted to start living something real. Tired of preparing for a
nebulous future, I wanted to live and learn about NOW.

Expecting scientific descriptions to discover the pattern to which nature conforms is
really assuming that law or verbal formulations precedes physical behavior. (Nature was
around long before man and his word games.)

Experiences of this kind suggest that there is a constant interplay between the inanimate
objects we generally associate with the material world, the world of consciousness, and
creative intelligence.

Experiencing the extremes of human emotion leads to a better understanding of what
there is in between, a wider acceptance of feelings and actions which would otherwise be
unacceptable and inexplicable.

Experiencing the profound psychological changes induced by LSD is a unique and
valuable learning experience for all clinicians and theoreticians studying abnormal mental
states.

Exploration of the human psyche with these powerful catalyzing agents has shown
beyond any doubt that the biographical model developed by Freud’s “depth” psychology
barely scratches the surface of mental dynamics.

For at least 3000 years, primitive tribes have had visionary orgies at feasts of certain
sacred plants, often mushrooms. (Were they primitive or is modern man, ignorant of all
of this, who is really primitive?)

For millennia, man has been involved in the ritual ingestion of substances reputed to
produce an awareness of a sacramental reality and has come to incorporate these
substances into the myth and ritual pattern of the culture in which they occur.

For persons who have been brought up to think of God by means of one set of symbols, it
is very hard to think of Him in terms of other and in their eyes, unhallowed sets of words,
ceremonies and images.

For the historians and critics of art, the LSD experiments provided extraordinary new
insights into the psychology and psychopathology of art, particularly various modern
movements as well as paintings and sculptures of native cultures.

From the standpoint of one reality, we may think that the other realities are hallucinations
or psychotic or far out or mysterious, but that is because we’re caught up at the level of
one space-time perception.

From time immemorial, plants containing powerful mind-altering substances have been
used for the diagnosing and healing of diseases, enhancement of paranormal abilities, and
for magical or ritual purposes.

Geneticists, we believe, make the chauvinistic mistake of assuming that DNA is a
process, rather than a living intelligence as old as life itself that can teach us the meaning
of existence. DNA designs and constructs the nervous system.

Goodness knows what sort of world a creature with more effective senses and a better
mind than ours would live in! (Man already has the best senses and mind, but is blocked
off from them and thus doesn’t use them. LSD opens it all up.)

Graduate students were lining up at our office doors for neurological fieldwork. Every
weekend, the Harvard residence houses were transformed into spaceships floating miles
above the yard. (That was Timothy Leary.)

Hindu philosophy has not made the mistake imagining that one can make an informative,
factual positive statement about the ultimate reality. What can be described and
categorized must always belong to the conventional realm.

How can anyone be so naïve as to imagine that an ideology, a thought system generated
by the monkey mind, would be adequate to explain the universe? (That was Terence
McKenna.)

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted
musical instruments as the ears and such a fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can
experience itself as anything less than a God?

Human beings have a profound need for transpersonal experiences and for states in which
they transcend their individual identities to feel their place in a larger whole that is
timeless.

I, as an experienced student of the psychology of religion, can no longer pursue research
in the field. This is a barbarous restriction of spiritual and intellectual freedom. (That was
Alan Watts.)

I became intrigued by the possibilities that LSD psychotherapy seemed to offer for the
alleviation of the emotional suffering of cancer patients facing the prospect of imminent
death. (That was Stanislav Grof.)

I could make a strong, if not conclusive, case for the idea that plants are more intelligent
than people—more beautiful, more pacific, more ingenious in their ways of reproduction,
more at home in their surroundings and even more sensitive.

I doubt if this can possibly be made to seem meaningful at the ordinary level of
consciousness. No wonder the mystics of all faiths teach that understanding comes only
when logic and intellect are transcended!

I entertain the hope that as the path proves more fruitful for more and more people,
increasing numbers will explore these realms and revise their narrow paradigm of
realities.

I felt strongly that the study of nonordinary states of mind in general and those induced
by psychedelics in particular, was by far the most interesting area of psychiatry and
decided to make it my field of specialization. (That was Stanislav Grof.)

“I have no peace of mind. Please pacify my mind.” “Bring out your mind here before me
and I will pacify it.” “But, when I seek my own mind, I can’t find it.” “There, I have
pacified your mind.” At that moment, he had his awakening.

I hope that religious organizations in this country will begin to understand that highs
triggered by drugs may be more relevant to spiritual development than appearances of
spirituality on Sunday mornings.

I predict that dying is a merging with the entire life process. In other words, we become
every form of life that has ever lived and will live. We become the DNA code that wrote
the entire script. Consciousness returns to the genetic code. (That was Timothy Leary.)

I realized that it was not up to us to dictate what the human psyche should be like in order
to fit our scientific beliefs and worldview. Rather, it is important to discover and accept
the true nature of the psyche and find out how we can best cooperate with it.

I think it’s time to be brave and honest. I know that if everybody who’d ever taken a
major psychedelic stood up and said “Yeah, I did that and this is how it shaped my life,”
the world would be a better place the next day.

I think that religion will neglect the consequences of this powerful instrument and its
implications at its own peril. The experience recalls Otto’s mysterium tremendum. It was
awesome.

I think the ego forms in this way: in order to behave in a way that is acceptable to your
parents, you—by necessity—suppress your intuitive reality. You behave as though you
believe that your reality is what your parents believe it is.

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

I was convinced that if we were to know peace within ourselves, the need for spiritual
development must be recognized, appreciated and stressed far more than it now is in our
culture.

If a Jesus or a Buddha were to appear in our midst today, he would be hard pressed to
convince anyone of the relevance to mankind of his teachings. (Our ignorant, sick society
would bash Jesus or Buddha just like they bashed Timothy Leary.)

If anyone brought up in a Christian culture says, “I am God,” we conclude at once that he
is insane. But, in India, when someone suddenly declares, “I am God,” they say,
“Congratulations. At last you found out.”

If drugs can change the way in which the brain sees, hears, smells and assembles
meaningful form out of the chaos of sensation, they can also radically transform the
nature of sexual feeling.

If mysticism and mystical experience can be freed of their supernatural connotations,
there is no reason why modern science cannot acknowledge and even absorb them into its
domain.

If organized religion is not sure enough of itself to face the religious issues posed by the
drugs, then it deserves the contempt with which many of the most idealistic of the rising
generation regard it. (That was written in 1969.)

If our conscious life is totally attached to our sensory perceptions of external reality, it is
very likely that we will come to equate reality with external reality, just as we tend to
equate mind with intellect, and consciousness with ordinary waking consciousness.

If people in our schools and industries were allowed to participate in LSD programs
aimed at making the most of their creative abilities and stimulating peak production, we
could anticipate a Periclean age of achievement in all fields.

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

If the answer existed within the conscious ego, the quest would never have begun. The
answer is found in those areas that were previously unconscious, those areas where the
body links and joins other bodies and the total energy continuum of life and ecology.

If the perceptions touched off by the drugs are in any reliable sense religious, then an
invaluable means of studying the dynamics and effects of profound religious experience
at firsthand is available to us.

If we can even start to move in the direction of relying on intuition and experience to
discover the positive potential of drugs, the drug problem will automatically begin to
recede. (The fight against drugs is what creates, causes or is the “drug problem.”)

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

If we had to decide to decide, we would not be free to decide. We are free to decide
because decision “happens.” We just decide without having the faintest understanding of
how we do it.

If you get with yourself, get with gravity, get with energy, following its line of least
resistance, you will discover that all the vibrations of nature are ecstatic, erotic or blissful.
Existence is orgasm.

If you can throw off the grip of your learned mind and experience the message contained
in the computer which you carry behind your forehead, you would know the awe-ful
truth.

If you made the mistake of rhapsodizing about the marvelous world that was somehow
locked up inside their minds, they treated you with the kind of disdain people usually
reserve for those who still believe the fairytales of adolescence.

If you want to get to the plain truth, be not concerned with right and wrong. The conflict
between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind. (That doesn’t mean that crime is all
right.)

Imagine yourself an impressionable, brilliant college student, circa 1964-70, searching,
experimenting, dreaming the dreams of grandeur and idealism and splendor that
characterized that more utopian optimistic period.

Immediate experience of reality unites men. Conceptualized beliefs, including even the
belief in a God of love and righteousness, divide them and as the dismal record of
religious history bears witness, set them for centuries on end at each other’s throats.

In a paradoxical, but to those who have experienced this heightening of intrinsic
significance, an entirely self-evident way, the relative becomes the absolute, the transient
particularly universal and eternal.

In academic circles, there is hardly a more cutting comment than to brand an opponent
“mystical.” (Such academic types are ignorant, hung up in ego games and have no idea
what “mystical” means.)

In advanced industrial societies, “paranormal” states of consciousness are readily
disparaged as “abnormal” or pathological, indicative of a deeply ingrained prejudice
against certain varieties of experience.

In Christian theology, the imagery of heaven implies that the saints and angels surround
God as an object of adoration external to themselves. (God is not external to anyone or
anything.)

In contrast to the incredible potentialities of the brain is the fact that we are aware of only
the millionth fraction of our own cortical signaling. (The awareness of the ego is almost
zero.)

In developing systems of communicating experience, how can we transmit energy
patterns to “turn on” the receiver—i.e., directly stimulate the nervous system, bypassing
the receiver’s symbol system?

In Europe, the persecutions of the established church drove explorers of consciousness
underground. (Sadly, in the U. S., even now, we have to hide underground. Is this not a
form of fascism?)

In its broadest sense, the term “archetype” can be used for all static patterns and
configurations, as well as dynamic happenings within the psyche that are transindividual
and have a universal quality.

In Jung’s model, many experiences that do not make sense as derivatives of biological
events, such as visions of deities, can be seen as the emergence of contents from the
collective unconscious. (eyes closed)

In light of the overwhelming evidence we have regarding visionary experiences in
virtually every area of life, it is remarkable to think that traditional Western science
continues to ignore this crucial force in human history.

In many places of the world and in different historical periods, mythological figures and
stories became the central focus of sacred mysteries in which neophytes experienced
ritual death and rebirth.

In modern physics, matter becomes interchangeable with energy. Within this new
worldview, consciousness is seen as an integral part of the universal fabric, certainly not
limited to the activities contained inside our skulls.

In Nature, there is yet undiscovered glory, a spirit which gradually will interpenetrate you
as you commune with her. She is not a mockery, a sham, for a truthful essence indwells,
informs her.

In order to become directly acquainted with God, rather than merely to know about God,
one must go beyond symbols and concepts, which are obstacles to the immediate
experience of the divine.

In our emphasis on rationality and logic, we have put great value on the everyday sober
state of mind and relegated all other states of consciousness into the realm of useless
pathology.

In our present primitive state, we have industries devoted to the production of the state of
consciousness which I call emotional stupor. (That was Timothy Leary referring to
alcohol and getting drunk and this society is still in a primitive state.)

In our society, the artist is a kind of harmless clown who can get away with a private life
that would be scandalous for a priest or a professor. (The artist is no clown. If anything,
it’s the priest and the professor who are clowns.)

In reality, all men are alike in their essential innocence— that the division of their natures
into the good and the evil is arbitrary or a decision of an independent spectator, none
other than our old friend, the isolated observing ego.

In recent decades, after centuries of domination by Newtonian mechanics, scientific
understanding of time, space and matter has converged with visions of the universe
expressed in Eastern religious texts that are thousands of years old.

In some circles of serious research into the drug’s effect, it is thought that LSD is
possibly the clue that will lead to the discovery and disclosure of man’s unconscious, its
meaning and function.

In the light of the overwhelming evidence we have regarding visionary experiences in
virtually every area of life, it is remarkable to think that traditional Western science
continues to ignore this crucial force in human history.

In the past, experiences of this kind were considered valuable and those who had them
were looked up to. That’s one reason why there were more visionaries in earlier
centuries.

In the uniform of Athens you jailed Socrates. In the uniform of Rome you jailed Jesus
Christ and in the livery of Nixon and Reagan you have turned this land into a police state.
(That was Timothy Leary. Actually, Socrates and Christ were both murdered.)

In the West, Nature has been completely isolated from the religious context in which our
ancestors used to view it. Our non-human environment and our own physical existence
have now become domains exclusively reserved for science. (What a mistake.)

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

Institutional Christianity has hardly contemplated the possibility that the whole point of
the Gospel is that everyone may experience union with God in the same way and to the
same degree as Jesus himself.

Intellectual growth often shows that we were wiser than we knew, especially in the sense
that mythological images foreshadowed ideas which, at the time of their origin, could not
be expressed in some more exact or scientific symbolism.

Intelligence is not a separate, ordering faculty of the mind but a characteristic of the
whole organism-environment relationship, the field of forces wherein lies the reality of a
human being.

Is all this one thing wiggling in many different ways or many things wiggling on their
own? Are there “things” that wiggle or are the wigglings the same as the things? It
depends on how you figure it.

Is it entirely inconceivable that our cortical cells or the machinery inside the cellular
nucleus “remember” back along the unbroken chain of electrical transformations that
connects every one of us back to that original thunderbolt (the origin of life)?

It became obvious to many practitioners involved in these explorations that we needed a
new model of the psyche whose important elements would include not only the Freudian
biographical dimension but the Jungian collective unconscious and spirituality as well.

It is an inevitability of language and thought that all ideas of God, the infinite and the
Self, suggest some object apart from other objects, some “thing” to be known from other
things.

It is important to realize that by banning psychedelic research we have not only given up
the study of an interesting drug or group of substances, but also abandoned one of the
most promising approaches to the understanding of the human mind and consciousness.

Is it possible to celebrate the union of Heaven and Earth in a religion which has
consistently held that sexual love is disgusting and sinful except between married couples
for the sole purpose of reproduction?

It became obvious to many practitioners involved in these explorations that we needed a
new model of the psyche whose important elements would include not only the Freudian
biographical dimension but the Jungian collective unconscious and spirituality as well.

It doesn’t concern me that young people are taking time out from the educational and
occupational assembly lines to experiment with consciousness, to dabble with new forms
of experience and artistic expression. (That was Timothy Leary.)

It is a very misleading confusion of words with reality to assume that what cannot be
thought cannot be experienced or to put it the other way around, whatever can be
experienced can be expressed in thought.

It is an inevitability of language and thought that all ideas of God, the infinite and the
Self, suggest some object apart from other objects, some “thing” to be known from other
things.

It is important to realize that by banning psychedelic research we have not only given up
the study of an interesting drug or group of substances, but also abandoned one of the
most promising approaches to the understanding of the human mind and consciousness.

It is not easy for the pious Christian to realize that Jesus was not an expert on the history
of religion and had probably never met anyone whose mystical vision was as deep as his
own.

It is one thing to note that civilization as we know it has depended upon the ego concept;
it is quite another to assert that it must, as if this convention were somehow in the nature
of things.

It is our conditioning which develops our consciousness; but in order to make full use of
this developed consciousness, we must start by getting rid of the conditioning which
developed it.

It is the essence of scientific honesty that you do not pretend to know what you do not
know. (Any scientist who bashes LSD but has never tried it, knows nothing about LSD or
this concept about the essence of scientific honesty.)

It is unfortunate that federal and state legislatures rush into law prohibitions based on
ignorance of the nature of psychedelic drugs and on fear fostered by psychiatrists and
newspapers.

It is very difficult for man to tolerate the mysterious as such. He has always had to put up
a smoke screen of symbols between it and himself. It may be said that language is a
device for taking mysteriousness out of mystery.

It may be that the fear of dying is in part a projected memory of birth and that what Freud
called the death instinct is also related to a desire to return to the womb. If the birth agony
is experienced as a death agony, this life is in a sense already life after death.

It seemed to Leary more and more that, in practice, the procedures of scientific
objectivity and rigor were simply an academic ritual designed to convince the university
establishment that your work was dull and trivial enough to be considered “sound”.

It seems likely that any religious use of the drugs will have to be carried on in cults,
outside traditional institutions. This is a pity, for it deprives the churches of a powerful
influx of ecstatic energy—the very element of which they are in shortest supply.

It’s easier for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of heaven. The rich man’s life is cluttered up with yachts, estates and other
things of little value. He has no time to feel.

It’s really impossible to appreciate what is meant by the Tao without becoming in a rather
special sense stupid. This special kind of stupidity is not simply calmness of mind, but
“non-graspingness of mind. (Don’t interfere with your mind. Leave it alone.)

Jesus called people to awaken, to repent. (To repent doesn’t mean asking forgiveness for
“sins.” To repent is to awaken to cosmic consciousness. Yes, Jesus was talking about the
equivalent of LSD consciousness.)

Jewish and Christian theologians will not accept the idea that man’s inmost self can be
identical with the Godhead, even though Christians may insist that this was true in the
unique instance of Jesus Christ.

Julia wasn’t even pretending to play their game on any level. They call that insane and
it’s grounds for putting you away. So, Julia went to an institution, a “hospital” and stayed
there until there wasn’t a Julia any more.

Jung and his followers brought to the attention of Western psychology the utmost
significance of all the symbolic variations on the theme of death and rebirth in our
archetypal heritage. (This is way beyond what Freud knew, wrote or talked about.)

Jung observed that there are certain primordial patterns of experience in the collective
unconscious which he termed the archetype. Archetypes are the templates from which the
individual variations of experience are drawn.

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

Lama Govinda said that the process of breathing is the connected link between conscious
and subconscious and that breath is the key to the mystery of life, to that of the body as
well as that of the spirit.

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

Leary felt that Harvard treated him in an unsympathetic, unjust and inhumane way. It
seemed that Harvard had been afflicted with a failure of nerve. When the chips were
down, institutional preservation prevailed over open-mindedness and the search for truth.

Leary was advised—“Your advertising must stress the religious. Find the God within.
This is all frightfully interesting. Your competitors are naturally denouncing the brain as
an instrument of the devil. Priceless!”

Let us try to bring about a new and glowing synthesis, a new higher consciousness that
brings together the East and West, the head and the heart, science and spirituality and
knowledge and wisdom. (Knowledge and wisdom are not the same.)

Liberation is the nervous system devoid of mental-conceptual activity. The mind in its
conditioned state, that is to say, when limited to words and ego games, is continually in
thought-formation activity.

Liberty was at stake here, freedom of access to your own body and brain and to manage
it, a right I believed was protected by the Constitution. The human mind is a frontier of
freedom. (That was Timothy Leary.)

Like sensitivity to beauty, the capacity to encounter the Holy seems to reside within
every human soul. Too often, it may sleep there eternally, but it is ready to be awakened
by the right combination of circumstances.

Love is at the core and informs all the forms. The crystal continuum is somehow love
itself shining through the various shapes, expressing itself most intensely in human
beings.

Magic is a psychological branch of science, dealing with the sympathetic effects of
stones, drugs, herbs and living substances upon the imaginative and reflective faculties
and leading to ever new glimpses of the world of wonders around us.

Man is just beginning to catch on to the idea, just beginning to discover that there is an
infinity of meaning and complex power in the equipment he carries around behind his
eyebrows.

Many great scientists who have revolutionized modern physics, such as Einstein have
found their scientific thinking quite compatible with spirituality and the mystical world
view.

Many mainstream scientists are very unsettled by the fact that among the most
outstanding experiences of psychedelics is the discovery of the presence of Divinity and
the sacredness of life.

Many of the statements made about the drug by professionals reflected a strongly
irrational emotional basis rather than solid scientific evidence. (Unfortunately, that is still
the case.)

Many traditional scientists confuse the current Newtonian-Cartesian model of the
universe with a definitive description of reality, the accuracy and truth of which has been
proven beyond any reasonable doubt. (Those scientists have it all wrong.)

Marco Polo’s book contains one of the earliest accounts of the psychedelic experience.
(Actually, that’s not true because psychedelic experiences go back to the beginning of
man.)

Maslow disagreed with Freud’s exclusive concentration on the study of neurotic and
psychotic populations. He pointed out that focusing on the worst in humanity, instead of
the best, results in a distorted image of human nature.

Matter is not inert. Whether it is organic or inorganic, we are learning to see matter as
patterns of energy, not of energy as if energy were a stuff, but as energetic pattern,
moving order, active intelligence.

Memory never captures the essence, the present intensity, the concrete reality of an
experience. (That’s wrong. Alan Watts wrote that before he knew better, before he had
ever taken LSD.)

Much of the combined efforts of psychiatrists, psychologists, neurophysiologists,
biochemists and other related professionals is one-sidedly directed toward interfering
with processes that have unique therapeutic and transformative potential.

Much of the key information about the nature of rites is usually considered sacred; it is
kept secret and transmitted within small circles of initiates. If the material is revealed to
the external world, it occurs traditionally in various cryptic forms.

My brain is God; your brain is too. Let’s learn to practice the technologies of God with
the grace, compassion and skill which the Judeo-Christian-Moslem Gods so obviously
lack.

My garden, weeded and watered tenderly, was a solace. I fertilized it with a solution of
LSD to see what would happen. The plants responded with enthusiasm, producing juicy,
sweet vegetables. (That was Timothy Leary.)

Mysticism has revolutionized, again and again, the philosophies of mankind. (In today’s
“modern” world, there is surely a need for it to happen again because we are spiritually
dead.)

Mysticism may be the ultimate source of ethics, morality and the life of righteousness,
mystical and ecstatic religious experience the sources of astonishing vitality and
efficiency in the pursuit of good works.

Mystics who believe that God is everywhere but is invisible to us due to our ego-centered
nature, will find it easy to believe that a drug that occasionally obliterates the ego can
also make God more visible.

Myths play a basic role in human existence, even for people who claim to live life wholly
“rationally”. Indeed, the myth for such people is that it is both good and possible to be an
unemotional intellect that controls everything.

Need the cortex be limited to the tribal-verbal? Must we use only a fraction of our
neurological heritage? Must our minds remain flimsy toys compared to the wisdom
within the neural network?

New scientific findings are beginning to support beliefs of cultures thousands of years
old, showing that our individual psyches are, in the last analysis, a manifestation of
cosmic consciousness and intelligence that flows through all of existence.

No authoritarian government, whether ecclesiastical or secular, can tolerate the
apprehension that each one if us is God in disguise, and that our real inmost, outmost and
utmost Self cannot be killed. That’s why they had to do away with Jesus.

Observations indicating an urgent need to transcend the limitations of mechanistic
science come not only from modern consciousness research and new experiential
techniques of psychotherapy, but also from quantum-relativistic physics.

Obviously, you must be other than God so long as you conceive yourself as the separate
ego. (To be clear, you are God whether the ego knows it or not and the ego knows
nothing.)

One of the most fascinating by-paths of the history of religion is the one that traces the
use of chemicals in various religious traditions for the purpose of changing the state of
mind and producing enthusiasm, the sense of God within.

Only in the light of these revelations of what each human being is capable of becoming,
ought to become and is ultimately destined to become, can we fully and clearly
understand what in fact we are.

Only the most static, repressive society need worry about psychedelic subversion.
Consciousness-expanding chemicals, in reality, present no threat, but rather offer hope
and encouragement to a democratically oriented social structure.

Our body contains, however small the bit, a part of that physically real primeval mud
from which we grew, through orders, classes, phyla—to what we are. Thus, the physical
reality of the evolutionary sequence of life may become available to our consciousness.

Our culture teaches you that you’re nothing but shit in a lot of ways, both obvious and
subtle. You have to discover for yourself that you’re better than that. The Psychedelic can
actually help teach this lesson, but it requires guidance and preparation.

Our famous ego is pieced together out of society’s stockpile of images and ideas,
according to our individual circumstances and this abstraction dictates what we see and
feel and think.

Our general failure to notice the inseparability of things and to be aware of our own basic
unity with the external world is the result of specializing in a particular kind of
consciousness. (Normal waking consciousness is just too narrow and limited.)

Our intellectual discomfort in trying to conceive knowing without a distinct “someone”
who knows and a distinct “something” which is known, is like the discomfort of arriving
at a formal dinner in pajamas. The error is conventional, not existential.

Our minds are all linked, yet we’ve made this consensual agreement to pretend that we
don’t know it. We all just play out this game of creating different forms and names and
individualities.

Our models of “reality” are very small and tidy, the universe of experience is huge and
untidy, and no model can ever include all the huge untidiness perceived by uncensored
consciousness.

Our rational instrumentation is principally responsible for the reduction of our total
potential of apprehension, of knowing and being. (The more one is dominated by their
ego, the further they are from reaching their Real Potential.)

Our so-called scientific attitude destroys faith and throttles the spiritual development.
Things of real worth can never be proved: God, love, compassion, mercy, kindness,
charity and dozens of other wonderful values.

Our society and our intellectuals and our scientists externalize the psychology of
behaviorism. Neurology today is poking at the brains of other people. You have to
experience what you are symbolizing.

Parts of the scientific community have difficulty accepting data from other states of
consciousness, just as our ancestors found it hard to accept observations from the
telescope and microscope.

Patterns of nature which the language screens out are, in psychological terms,
unconscious and repressed. Social institutions are then in conflict with the actual pattern
of man-in-the-world.

Paying exclusive attention to differences ignores relationships. It does not see, for
example, that mind and form or shape and space are as inseparable as front and back, nor
that the individual is so interwoven with the universe that he and it are one body.

People in the future will understand what is happening now just as we understand what
happened in Salem 200 years ago. (That was Timothy Leary and the United States still
suffers from medieval ignorance.)

Perhaps all men share the hunch that normal consciousness is a form of sleepwalking and
that somewhere there exists a form of “awakeness” from which one would not want to
return.

Perennial philosophy offers a rich spectrum of spiritual techniques through which it is
possible to recognize and experience one’s own divinity and achieve liberation from
suffering.

Physicists and mystics agree that what we call “objects” are really patterns in an
inseparable cosmic process and they also agree that these patterns are intrinsically
dynamic.

Plants seem to represent pure being in the here and now, the ideal of many mystical and
religious schools. Not exploiting and hurting other organisms, most plants serve
themselves as a source of food and bring beauty and joy into the life of others.

Pleasure, like mystical insight itself, must always come unsought. Pleasure cannot be
given unless the senses are in a state of accepting rather than taking. Pleasure as
ordinarily pursued is never a true fulfillment.

Politics, religion, economics, social structure, are based on shared states of
consciousness. The cause of social conflict is usually neurological. The cure is
biochemical.

Professionally, in relation to his chosen specialty, a man may be completely mature.
Spiritually and sometimes even ethically, in relation to God and his neighbors, he may be
hardly more than a fetus.

Professionals are in a very paradoxical situation: they are expected to give expert help in
an area in which they are not allowed to conduct research and generate new scientific
information.

Promoting their methodological ineptitude to the rank of a criterion of truth, dogmatic
scientists have often branded everything beyond the pale of their limited competence as
unreal or even impossible.

Psychedelic drugs were used for more than 15 years by hundreds of competent
psychiatrists who considered them reasonably safe therapeutic agents. (This was between
1950 and the mid 1960’s. These psychiatrists were not radicals or rebels.)

Psychedelic equals mind-opening consciousness. Psychedelic means ecstatic which is to
stand outside our normal patterns. It means going out of your mind, your habitual world
of contingencies, space-time coordinates.

Psychedelic experiences are very complex phenomena which have not yet been
adequately explained and which represent a serious challenge to present theoretical
thinking.

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

Psychedelic rebels have likened modern medicine to a state religion. This established
religion is said to treat unorthodox healing practices as heresy or pagan superstition to be
eliminated by a mixture of official coercion and missionary activity.

Psychedelic research will be of great value in such diverse areas as philosophy,
parapsychology and the creative arts and in the study of literature, mythology,
anthropology, comparative religion and still other fields.

Psychedelic research seems to offer a unique approach to the future exploration of the
process of ritual transformation. The parallels between LSD sessions and the ritual death-
rebirth process are striking.

Psychiatry has “put-down” words for every human emotion, as “euphoric” for happy,
“fixated” for interested and “compulsive” for determined. (Will psychiatrists ever widen
their scope?)

Psychologically, the psychedelics promised easier access to repressed unconscious
materials, shortcutting the years and prohibitive expense of psychoanalysis. In behavior
change, they held the promise of reducing the recidivism of paroled prisoners.

Psychologists, philosophers, and educators who are unfamiliar with consciousness
research will be as out of date as they would be today if they were unfamiliar with Freud,
Skinner.

Psychotherapy and liberation are completed in the moment when shame and guilt
collapse, when the organism is no longer compelled to defend itself for being an
organism.

Psychotherapy falls short of being a way of liberation. The weakness lies in the cultural
acceptance of the dualistic view of man. (Psychotherapy with LSD is a whole different
story.)

Religion somehow attracts those who like to lay down the law and point the finger of
accusation. (What does this silly ego nonsense have to so with real religion and
experiencing union with God?)

Religion to us is ecstasy. It is freedom and harmony. Kids should not let the fake,
television-prop religion they were taught as kids turn them off. The real trip is the God
trip.

Religions whose philosophy has been least preoccupied with events in time and most
concerned with eternity, have been consistently the least violent and the most humane in
political practice.

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.

Reports of successful marital adjustments with LSD increasingly give evidence of
restored appreciation for the partner and the partnership. It seems not unreasonable,
therefore, that one day LSD may be regarded as a strong asset to marriage counselors.

Researchers who have seriously studied and/or experienced these fascinating phenomena
realize that the attempts of traditional psychiatry to dismiss them as irrelevant products of
imagination in the brain are superficial and inadequate.

Rocks are aware. Inorganic matter is involved in energy changes, structural excitements,
evolvings, pressured sculptings. Inorganic matter—rocks, cliffs, valleys, mountains are
alive and wise.

Saying that a drug experience can precipitate a psychosis is not the same as saying that
drugs cause psychosis. We do not say that sex and college cause psychosis even though
we commonly see that both can trigger it.

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

Scientific theories are but conceptual models about reality not to be mistaken for correct
descriptions of reality itself. (There are no correct descriptions because reality is
infinitely beyond limited words.)

Scientists have no right to complain of the spread of an antiscientific mood and
pseudoscientific belief systems if they continue to regard all these matters as unworthy of
respect or attention.

Shop-worn theological and devotional cliches are not only not the same as experience of
life in its immanent and transcendent fullness; they are actually obstacles in the way of
such experience.

Since experiences with psychoactive plants have traditionally been described in mystical
or mythical language, Leary may have been the first person to recognize and identify
them as evolutionary visions or genetic memories.

Since the crisis in Christian culture is mainly sexual, we should not be surprised that
sexual elements are very prominent in the unconscious channels opened by the Drug
Revolution. These channels are a traditional part of religion outside Christianity, anyway.

So long as man feels himself to be the ego, to deprive him of freedom or the sense of
freedom is to subject him to the despair of being a mere pawn of the divine tyrant. (No
tyrant is divine.)

Social conditioning fosters the identification of the mind with a fixed idea of itself as the
means of self-control and as a result man thinks of himself as “I”, the ego. Thereupon the
mental center of gravity shifts from the spontaneous or original mind to the ego image.

Some of the observations from non-ordinary states would require not only the revision of
our ideas about the human psyche, but of the traditional beliefs about the nature of
reality.

Some part of us knows that an essential part has been lost, and culture does not provide
adequate compensation. Thus the longing for the “good old days”, for a more perfect
world.

Some researchers would hold that all phenomena occurring in altered states of
consciousness should be labeled “psychotic.” (I would hold that any researchers who
believe that should be labeled “psychotic”.)

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

Spiritual grace originates from the divine Ground of all being and it is given for the
purpose of helping man to achieve his final end, which is to return out of time and
selfhood to that Ground.

Spiritual practice begins by allowing ourselves to die to the ego’s ideas about how things
should be and to love and accept the truth of things as they are. (The ego doesn’t know
the meaning of truth.)

Spirituality is something that characterizes the relationship of an individual to the
universe and does not necessarily require a formal structure, collective ritual, or
mediation by a priest.

Talk about the mind, imagery, or consciousness, was definitely discouraged, since their
existence could not be “proved.” About that time a noted psychologist said of
psychology, “First it lost its soul, then it lost its mind, and now it has lost consciousness.”

Tao signifies the energy of the universe as a way, current, course or flow which is at once
intelligent and spontaneous. It’s your own true self, the very energy and patterning of
your bones, muscles and nerves.

Television can control consciousness. If 60 million people all watch one program, they
are being controlled. (Those with power want people to watch the idiot box rather than
become aware of how corruptly those with power use and abuse that power.)

That transpersonal experiences can mediate access to accurate information about various
aspects of the universe previously unknown to the subject requires in itself a fundamental
revision of our concepts about the nature of reality.

The ability to see patterns, far from being a psychological weakness to be treated, is a
vital capacity of the unconscious mind that must be developed and allowed to interact
with our conscious perceptions.

The aimless, empty life does not suggest anything depressing. On the contrary, it
suggests the freedom of clouds and mountain streams, wandering nowhere and of the
ocean surf.

The atom, the molecule, the cell or subordinate organ of any particular organism is what
it is by virtue of its place and its membership in the pattern of the whole. (It’s the same
with people and their place in the pattern of the universe.)

The ban on emotional expression, especially in Anglo-Saxon cultures and especially
among men, makes the enthusiasm and wonder arising from drug-induced states readily
understandable.

The Church insists on the acceptance of certain particular analogies of God which cannot
always and invariably be meaningful and helpful. The supremely important thing is God
himself and not formal religion.

the clearly mystical sensation of self-and-universe as a unified field or process. The
sensation of man as an island-ego in a hostile, stupid or indifferent universe seems more
of a dangerous hallucination.

The concept of human existence as a life-and-death struggle for survival in a world
governed by the law of the jungle gives way to a new image of life as a manifestation of a
cosmic dance or a divine play.

The concepts and practices found in the Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Islamic and other
mystical traditions, based on centuries of deep psychological exploration and
experimentation, are indiscriminately ignored and dismissed.

The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s
mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society highly values its normal man. It
educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal.

The conventional wakeful state in which awareness is hooked to conditioned symbols,
flags, dollar signs, job titles, brand names, party affiliations and the like, is the level that
most people, including psychiatrists regard as reality; they don’t know the half of it.

The detailed complexity of the genetic code and the astonishing design of intracellular
communication should caution us against labeling experiences outside of our current
tribal cliches as “psychotic” or abnormal.

The difficulty of making equations and comparisons between Eastern and Western ideas
is that the two worlds do not start with the same assumptions and premises. They do not
have the same basic categorizations of experience.

The directors of the TV studio game do not want you to live a religious life. They will
apply every pressure, including prison, to keep you in their game. (The TV studio means
the establishment and the religious life here means religion with LSD.)

The discovery of the hidden aspects of reality and of the challenges associated with them
adds fascinating new dimensions to existence. It makes one’s life much richer and more
interesting.

The DNA code is a 3 billion year old time capsule of consciousness. The DNA code is
the miniaturized, invisible essence wisdom of life. Most of the characteristics formerly
attributed to the “soul” describe the functions of DNA.

The drive for power is as prevalent in the church as in secular organizations. (That’s
because the Western “religions” aren’t real religions. They use religion as a propaganda
tool in their lust for power.)

The educational topics, philosophical issues, intellectual questions, and personal insights
which evolved from my LSD experiences and subsequent investigations are a continuing
source of growth.

The ego entirely leaves out the polar unity of the organism with the universe, ignoring the
fact that the two are a single process. (The ego doesn’t actually ignore that fact in that it
doesn’t even know that it is a fact.)

The “emptiness” of the universe signifies the fact that the outlines, forms and boundaries
to which we attach all terms are in constant change and in this sense, its reality cannot be
fixed or limited. It is called empty because it cannot be grasped.

The enlightened individual goes beyond grammar. He has what may be called a
“grammar-transcending experience” which permits him to live in the consciousness of
the divine continuum of the world and see the one continually manifest in the many.

The enlightened person is, so to speak, after the rise of language; he lives in language and
then goes beyond it. But what sort of world is there before language is introduced? What
sort of world is the world of immediate non-verbalized experience?

The existence and nature of these experiences could not be explained in the context of the
mainstream theories and seriously undermined the metaphysical assumptions on which
Western culture is built.

The “experts” are forbidden to do research in this area, while those who have done
research are criminals and hence, regarded as untrustworthy, yet they must know things
that the experts do not, since they have had the experience.

The expression “a system of teaching” has no meaning, for Truth, in the sense of Reality,
cannot be cut up into pieces and arranged into a system. The words can only be used as a
figure of speech.

The eyes see by themselves and the ears hear by themselves and the mouth opens by
itself without having to be forced apart by the fingers. (Why do we live our lives like the
mouth that won’t open without having to be forced apart by the fingers?)

The fact that visionary experiences has always, at all times and everywhere been very
highly valued, means that at all times and in all cultures systematic efforts have been
made to induce this experience.

The fact that we could not explain part of our human experience in the existing paradigm
seemed to indicate that the paradigm needed re-examination rather than to justify
dismissal of the evidence.

The failure to accept the gift of union with God and the substitution of self-conscious
moralism for the contemplation of God in the here and now, are the basic reasons for the
present weakness of the Christian religion.

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

The foundation or “ground” of our existence and awareness can’t be understood in terms
of things that are known. We have to speak of it through myth, metaphors, analogies,
what it is LIKE, not what it IS.

The function of the Church is not to be the world’s moral policeman, insisting on the
observance of various modes of conduct. The work of the Church is to share a sense of
union with God. (Will they ever wake up and realize that?)

The grasping approach to sexuality destroys its gaiety before anything else, blocking up
its deepest and most secret fountain. For there is no other reason for creation than pure
joy.

The greater the scientist, the more he is impressed with his ignorance of reality and the
more he realizes that his laws and labels, descriptions and definitions are the products of
his own thought.

The habitual egocentric mode in which man identifies himself with a subject facing a
world of alien objects does not fit the physical situation. So long as it remains, an inward
feeling is at variance with reality.

The Hindus, the Moslems, the Buddhists, the Taoists, all the major religions have had
their sexual mystics and have honored them. Christianity is alone in thinking that sex is
entirely the Devil’s business and an offense to God.

The human mind-body possesses other sources of information, makes use of other types
of reasoning, is gifted with an intrinsic wisdom that is independent of cultural
conditioning.

The human psyche has access to images and motifs that are truly universal. They can be
found in the mythology, folklore, and art of cultures widely distributed not only across
the globe but also throughout the history of humanity.

The importance and value of transpersonal experiences is extraordinary. It is a great irony
and one of the paradoxes of modern science that phenomena with a therapeutic potential
transcending what Western psychiatry has to offer are, by and large, seen as pathological.

The impressive mosaic of new observations and theories that are already available
suggest that in the future the old/new discoveries in regard to consciousness and the
human psyche might become integral parts of a comprehensive scientific worldview.

The individual’s right of access to his or her own brain has become the most significant
political, economic and cultural issue in America today. Our states will never be united
nor prosperous until the generational drug war is ended. (That was Timothy Leary.)

The insane man who has lost his mind is a parody of the sage who has transcended his
ego. (A society hung-up on ego sees the sage as insane because they have no idea where
the sage is at.)

The institutional Christian churches tell us that Jesus was the only Son of God, that he
incarnated as a human in order to die on the cross as a penalty for our sins, and thereby
save the world. But that is a sad caricature, a pale reflection of the true story.

The laws and processes of our perception are a bridge which joins us inseparably to that
which we perceive—a bridge which unites subject and object. (There is no separation
between you and what you perceive. There is simply perception.)

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

The mechanistic Newtonian model of the universe was steadily giving way to an
Einsteinian continuum. Everything in the universe, from galaxies to quarks, was seen to
be alive, evolving, sending out decipherable signals.

The members of the official religion have tended to look upon the mystics as difficult
trouble-making people. (That’s because they have no idea what the mystics are talking
about.)

The metaphysical hunger that provides one reason for the interest in these drugs is a
permanent human condition, not an aberration that is created by the drugs nor one that
can be eliminated by suppressing them.

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the source of all true
art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger is as good as dead. (That was
Albert Einstein. That’s right, Albert Einstein.)

The mystic consciousness is part of the heritage of the human race. In every religion,
creed, country and language one finds the mystics who have had this greater
consciousness.

The mystic’s subjective experience of his identity with “the All” is the scientist’s
objective description of ecological relationship, of the organism/environment as a unified
field.

The nature of the experience and of the process seemed to be incompatible with the
Freudian technique and required a more human approach, genuine support and personal
involvement.

The neural structures of the brain, upon which intelligence depends, are certainly not the
deliberate creations of any conscious ego. (The ego knows nothing at all about the neural
structures of the brain, let alone being able to create them.)

The new commandments are neurological and biochemical in essence. The 2 new
commandments are don’t alter someone’s consciousness and don’t stop someone from
altering their own consciousness.

The new emphasis was on recognition of spirituality and transcendental needs as intrinsic
aspects of human nature and on the right of every individual to choose or change his or
her “path”.

The new life for Christianity begins just as soon as someone can get up in church and say,
“Wash out your mouth every time you say Jesus.” (It means that all the talk about Jesus
has nothing to do with what Jesus himself was talking about.)

The organism, the whole pattern of nerve and muscle, is more complex and intelligent
than logical systems of arithmetic, geometry and grammar—which are in fact nothing but
inferior ritual. Life itself dances.

The outer divorced from any illumination from the inner is in a state of darkness. We are
in an age of darkness. The state of outer darkness is a state of sin—i.e., alienation or
estrangement from the inner light.

The overcoming of the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great
mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we
become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition.

The past is not something fixed and unutterable. Its facts are rediscovered by every
succeeding generation, its values reassessed, its meanings redefined in the context of
present tastes and preoccupations. (We need to rediscover a lot more.)

The point upon which orthodox theology wishes to insist is that the universe, definitively
and absolutely is not God. (How can they claim that God is infinite and at the same time,
claim that he is separate from the universe?)

The possibility of consciousness after death was rejected not because it contradicted
clinical observations, but because the concept was incompatible with existing scientific
theories.

The possibility of transcending the limitations of matter, time, space and linear causality
is experienced so many times and in so many different ways that it has to be integrated
into a new world-view.

The practical function of psychoanalysis is to get the whole psyche into consciousness.
(Shrinks don’t even know what that means because they haven’t gotten their own whole
psyches into consciousness. It can be done best with LSD.)

The presupposition that one’s own religion is, even without examining others, the best
and truest of all is stupidity. Science, too, has a mythological level, which is the fiercely
held position that the physical universe, outside man, is dead and stupid.

The prevailing attitude in traditional psychiatry and among the general public is that any
deviation from the ordinary perception and understanding of reality is pathological.
(What idiocy!)

The process of self-consciousness cannot disentangle itself by itself. It has to be “tricked”
out of its predicament. You cannot surprise yourself on purpose. Something beyond
conscious control must overthrow the Devil at the right moment.

The reach of consciousness is not limited to the material world and to spacetime. It can
extend beyond the boundaries of the Newtonian reality altogether and access nonordinary
dimensions of existence.

The real world itself is real enough; it is only our way of looking at the world which is
not real. It is our mode of perception that leads us astray and it is not the senses which
deceive us but rather the mind or intellect which receives and interprets the sensory input.

The realization that nature is ordered organically rather than politically, that it is a field of
relationships rather than a collection of things, requires an appropriate mode of human
awareness.

The really important division in the world of spirituality is not the line that separates the
individual mainstream religions from each other, but the one that separates all of them
from their mystical branches.

The recent increase of interest in various forms of self-exploration, which can mediate
direct spiritual experiences, is a very encouraging trend and a development of great
potential significance.

The recognition of the healing power of emotional catharsis can be traced back to ancient
Greece and Plato. (It actually goes back thousands of years before ancient Greece and
Plato.

The recognition that the universe is not a mechanical system but an infinitely complex
interplay of vibratory phenomena of different types and frequencies, prepared the ground
for an understanding of reality based on entirely new principles.

The religion of direct experience of the divine has been regarded as the privilege of a
very few people. I personally don’t think this is necessarily true at all. I think that
practically everyone is capable of this immediate experience.

The religious “establishment” dare not avoid facing the issues raised by the drugs without
laying themselves open to the charge that they are neglecting the very roots of faith. But
it often seems that there is nothing that the churches fear so much as religion!

The root of mental disorder is that the ego-feeling as such is an error of perception. To
placate it is only to enable it to go on confusing the mind with a mode of awareness
which clashes with the natural order.

The sacred scriptures of the great religions—the Vedas, the Torah, the Bible, the Koran—
are inspired writings that were channeled to their authors during non-ordinary states of
consciousness.

The sage often appears to be an idiot or “wildman” because he doesn’t take the choosing
seriously. It’s not life or death. It’s life and death and ultimately there is nothing to be
dreaded. There is nothing outside the universe, against which it can crash.

The sensation of relationship is the impulse underlying the great religious traditions of
the world—the sensation of basic inseparability from the total universe, of the identity of
one’s own self with the Great Self beneath all that exists.

The significance of incarnation and resurrection is not that Jesus a human like us but
rather that we are gods like him—or at least have the potential to be. This is the secret of
all ages and all spiritual traditions. This is the highest mystery.

The so-called “mushroom stones” really represented mushrooms and they were the
symbol of a religion, like the Cross in the Christian religion, or the Star of Judea or the
Crescent of the Moslems.

The society always owes a great debt to the people who defy authority and force change,
and I see Leary in the tradition of Thoreau and Whitman, and the entire American
transcendental impulse.

The spiritual dimension is a key factor in the human psyche and in the universal scheme
of things. Becoming aware of this dimension of our lives and cultivating it is an essential
and desirable part of our existence.

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

The study of psychedelic-stimulated states of consciousness is, in principle, not opposed
to science and reason. On the contrary, the refusal to study them is both unreasonable
and antiscientific.

The term psychotic means a flight from reality and the reality is based upon what we all
define it to be. If we took those limitations away, a psychotic would just be someone on
another level.

The things that are most important to many young Americans are not being discussed in
academic life. The sterile formalism of much American higher education can hardly hold
a candle to the psychedelic experience.

The truly inward source of one’s life was never born, but has always remained inside,
somewhat as the life remains in the tree, though the fruits come and go. Outwardly, I’m
the apple among many. Inwardly, I am the tree.

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

The unconscious for Jung was not a junkyard of rejected instinctual tendencies, repressed
memories and subconsciously assimilated prohibitions. He saw it as a creative and
intelligent principle binding the individual to all humanity, nature and the entire cosmos.

The United States was not originally intended to be a Christian nation. The founding
fathers specifically intended a secular government with an “unbreachable wall” between
church and state.

The universe is not a collection of bits and pieces, divided in time and space, but is in
reality the metaphysical “One,” wherein everything is tied up with everything else in a
pattern which is absolute for the entire universe.

The usual definition of oneself as an independent ego is a social institution rather than a
physical reality, having therefore the same kind of reality as a minute or a verbal
definition.

The vast majority of individuals lose, in the course of education, all the openness to
inspiration, all the capacity to be aware of other things than those enumerated in the
Sears-Roebuck catalogue which constitutes the conventionally “real” world.

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

The way of liberation is by becoming stupid and rejecting the refinements of learning.
(Of course, that is not at all stupidity. Stupidity is blindly accepting what others shove
down one’s throat.)

The ways of liberation make it very clear that life is not going anywhere because it is
already there. In other words, it is playing and those who do not play with it have simply
missed the point.

the Western discovery of the creative power of “no-thought” and contemplation without
strained attention. Such a mode of awareness is essential when research is expected to
bring forth new concepts.

The Western man who claims consciousness of oneness with God or the universe clashes
with his society’s concept of religion. In most Asian cultures, however, such a man will
be congratulated as having penetrated the true secret of life. He has arrived.

The wide historical and geographical distribution of transformative rituals focusing on
death and rebirth and their psychological relevance for individuals, groups, and entire
cultures suggest that they must reflect important basic needs inherent in human nature.

The wise man has penetrated through the verbal curtain, seen and known and felt the life
process. The great writer is the wise man who feels compelled to translate the message
into words.

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

There are dedicated scientists trying to find some way in which supplies of LSD may be
made available for important research in brain physiology, psychology, theology or
mental therapy.

There exists a range of energies and awarenesses beyond the imprinted symbols of
rational thought which can work with a rapidity and efficiency beyond the workaday
conceptual processes.

Theologians and intellectuals often deprecate “experience” in favor of fact and concept.
(What they don’t understand is that fact and concept mean nothing without experience or
experience of what the facts and concepts are about.)

Theologians said to Galileo, “We will not look through your telescope because we
already know how the universe is ordered. If your telescope were to show us anything
different, it would be an instrument of the devil.”

There are as many levels of consciousness as there are neurological, sensory, anatomical,
cellular, molecular and atomic structures within the human body—a galaxy of
communication systems and energy patterns, being sent and received.

There are dedicated scientists trying to find some way in which supplies of LSD may be
made available for important research in brain physiology, psychology, theology or
mental therapy.

There are mental spaces inside our skulls as enormous as the spaces out there. The
experience of distance, of inner distance and outer distance, of distance in time and
distance in space—it’s the first fundamental religious experience.

There are sudden “slips” of consciousness into a wave length or dimension of this
everyday world which impress those who see them as being more real than the normal
vision.

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

There cannot be, in the ultimate analysis, different Gods for different religions. We may
look upon God differently, we may have different approaches to the divine, but this force
or power that we call God must be there for all, irrespective of caste or creed.

There exists a range of energies and awarenesses beyond the imprinted symbols of
rational thought which can work with a rapidity and efficiency beyond the workaday
conceptual processes.

There exists in all human beings an urge to self-transcendence. The religious man has
attributed this universal urge to the workings of an innate and deep-seated yearning for
the divine.

There exists inside the human nervous system, inside our cellular structures a tissued,
biochemical memory-bank. The person who stumbles onto this inner room sees and
knows exactly what has been seen and known by visionaries of the past.

There flows something more than and above all something different from the carefully
selected utilitarian material which our narrowed, individual minds regard as a complete
or at least sufficient picture of reality.

There have been few serious attempts to make theoretical use of the full range of
psychedelic experiences in terms that do justice to the understanding of those who
undergo them.

There is a need for dedicated scientists willing to take the calculated risk of ingesting the
psychedelics themselves, for the sake of the understanding that such an experience will
give them.

There is absolutely nothing in Catholic dogmatics or even the Bible to compel anyone to
believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the one and only incarnation of the Only-Begotten Son
in all time and space.

There is—in addition to the individual unconscious—a racial or collective unconscious
that is shared by all mankind. Jung saw comparative religion and mythology as
invaluable sources of information about these collective aspects of the unconscious.

There is indeed some analogy between the holy man and the crazy man since both may
be said to be “out of their minds,” as having “lost themselves” or as being “thought-less”
or “care-less.”

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

There is no doubt that the drugs have introduced many of the youthful generation to a
firsthand religious experience that they would have encountered in no other way. (That
was written in 1969.)

There is no non-ecstatic religious experience. (Yes, all religious experiences are ecstatic
or it’s not a religious experience. There is no such thing as a religious experience without
ecstasy. One can’t play baseball without the ball.)

There is no standing aside from the stream of events, for neurons flow along in the same
stream as events outside your skull. After all, your neurons are part of my external world
and mine of yours.

There is probably not one major rock group that has not been influenced, directly or
indirectly, by LSD and paid homage to the ecstatic experience in one or more of their
songs. (That was written in 1968.)

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

This century, the scientific understanding of reality has undergone dramatic changes, but
traditional psychologists and psychiatrists have not yet accepted the inevitable
consequences for their disciplines.

This new psychedelic style has produced not only a new rhythm in modern music, but a
new decor for our discotheques, a new form of film making, a new kinetic visual art, a
new literature and has begun to revise our philosophic and psychological thinking.

This period of my life coincided with what seemed to be a time of new hope for
humankind. The flower children in San Francisco were happily rebelling against the old
order, and a better future seemed within reach. A sense of euphoria was in the air.

This 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.

This universal tradition of the eternal moment carries the implication that there is some
very special and splendid insight to be discovered in a kind of concentration upon the
immediate moment.

This whole image of the universe as an imperial and monarchial state is a joke. The
ultimate identity of man with God is not identity with this Commander-in-Chief of the
universe.

Those who uphold the impoverished sense of reality sanctioned by official psychiatry
describe this type of awareness as “depersonalization,” “loss of ego-boundary” or
“regression to the oceanic feeling,” all of which are derogatory terms.

Those who were burned or jailed at the beginning of the 17th century (Bruno, Galileo,
etc.) were forerunners of the Revolution of Outer Technology. Those who were jailed or
beaten by cops in the 1960’s were forerunners of the Revolution of Inner Technology.

Time and space are creations of the conscious mind. It is because we do not always
understand that time and space are conscious devices that we get very confused when we
try to deal with the underconscious where there is no time and space.

To construct a more adequate picture of man and the universe, we have to redefine
science as well as demystify mysticism. (That doesn’t mean taking the mystery out of
mysticism, but waking up and respecting mysticism at least as much as science.)

To cure the junkie and the alcoholic, you must admit that he is a deeply spiritual person
and accept the cosmic validity of his search to transcend the game and you help him see
that the way is through psychedelic rather than anesthetic experience.

To lose the reality of the isolated ego is not to lose the integrity of the individual.
(Actually, the ego has no real reality and has nothing to do with the real integrity of the
individual.)

To strive to blot out the conventional world of things and events is to admit that it exists
in reality. (You don’t have to and indeed cannot blot out the conventional world. Just see
it for what it is and don’t be taken in by it.)

Tom Robbins said “Science only gives people what they need. Magic gives them what
they want.” We agree, but hasten to add that science can give people magic. (That was
Timothy Leary.)

Total awareness opens the way to understanding and when any given situation is
understood, the nature of all reality is made manifest and the nonsensical utterances of
the mystics are seen to be true.

Total awareness starts with the realization of my ignorance and my impotence. (It is
absurd to say that I, meaning ego, is master of my fate or captain of my soul because the
ego doesn’t know how food is digested, blood is circulated or anything else.)

Traditional medicine denies that the child has the capacity to record the experiences of
birth in its memory. (Do they also deny that an infant has the capacity to circulate its
blood or digest its food?)

Traditional science looks upon consciousness as an exclusively human phenomenon and
tends to treat even the highest non-human life forms as little more than unconscious
machines.

Traditional Western scientists like to assume an all-knowing position and discard any
notion of spirituality as primitive superstition, regressive magical thinking, lack of
education, or clinical psychopathology.

Twentieth century educators have ceased to be concerned with questions of ultimate truth
or meaning and are interested solely in the dissemination of a rootless and irrelevant
culture and the fostering of the solemn foolery of scholarship for scholarship’s sake.

Ultimate faith is completely letting go. (The ego has no faith in anything other than itself
and cannot let go except in ultimate desperation. LSD will allow you to see the ego for
the fraud that it is so that you are no longer taken in by it.)

Unconsciously, if not always consciously, everyone knows that this Other World is there,
inside the skull—and any news about it, any discussion of its significance, its relevance
to other aspects of life, is a matter of universal concern.

Understanding comes when we liberate ourselves from the old and so make possible a
direct, unmediated contact with the new, the mystery, moment by moment, of our
existence.

Unlike Freud, Jung was aware that his findings were incompatible with the existing
philosophy of science and required an entirely new paradigm. (Jung was a friend of
Albert Einstein.)

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

We are dealing with a human phenomenon, the kind of phenomenon which cannot be
disregarded by anyone who is trying to discover what religion is and what are the deep
needs which it must satisfy.

We are going to see many of the hypotheses of our Christian mystics and many of the
cosmological and ontological theories of Eastern philosophers spelled objectively in
biochemical terms.

We are in need of a kind of philosophy or vision, an intellectual grasp of its nature and
recognition of its value, so that the psychedelic experience may be incorporated into our
lives as wisdom.

We are liberated and enlightened by perceiving the hitherto unexperienced good that is
already within us, by returning to our eternal Ground and remaining where, without
knowing it, we have always been.

We are responsible for this planet. This is our playground. It’s our sun in the sky and this
is our Garden of Eden. We’ve never lost it. We’ve only forgotten the key to unlock the
door of perception.

We can see rites of passage as structured events in which individuals can confront,
experience and express powerful energies associated with matrices deep in the
unconscious. (eyes closed)

We cannot just talk about spirituality; it needs to be an experiential realization.
Enlightenment does not come simply from following the wisdom teachings. It comes
through direct experience.

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

We cannot wait around, dealing with energies which are so insistent and important, until
scientists or government agencies tell us that we can take that risk. (Don’t wait until the
power forces tell you that it’s all right because it won’t happen.)

We do not know what we want because we are only dimly aware of anything wantable.
We have taught ourselves to pursue goals but we have more words than experience for
what we mean.

We have at our finger tips a material and method by which we can draw back the heavy
curtain of our underconscious mind and release into the bright light of our conscious
mind many of the dark and troubling mysteries of our inner selves.

We have been taught to narrow our awareness to a fantasy world of symbol solids. But
that’s not how it really is. All matter is energy—everything is whirling change, even you!
Look at your baby pictures. Look in the mirror. You are a dramatically changing process.

We have great difficulty acknowledging that mind and consciousness might not be
exclusive privileges of the human species but that they permeate all of nature, existing in
the most elemental to the most complete forms.

We have suggested that the divine mushroom played a vital part in shaking loose early
man’s imagination, in arousing his capacity for self-perception, for awe, wonder and
reverence. They certainly made it easier for him to entertain the idea of God.

We live in a secular world. To adapt to this world the child abdicates its ecstasy. Having
lost our experience of the Spirit, we are expected to have faith. But this faith comes to be
a belief in a reality which is not evident.

We mount into the Intuitional domain, and, without the props of Sense in any way to
steady us, either by sensations perceived or suggesting relations, we know universal
principles of Being face to face.

We must come to understand the value of nonordinary experiences—to feel grateful for it
rather than guilty about it—so that we can encourage our children to express it rather than
hide it.

We need no longer be estranged from reality and from ourselves. The Eden story can now
come to its inevitable and happy conclusion; the flaming sword has been extinguished
and we are free at last to re-enter the garden.

We see on the part of young people, directly or indirectly involved with the psychedelic
scene, an affirmation of positives, not an “escape from reality”. (That was written in
1968.)

We see that there is no conflict between the mystical approach to religion and the
scientific approach, because one is not committed by mysticism to any cut-and-dried
statement about the structure of the universe.

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

We want a passionate life lived in a state of ecstasy, a life of intensity and deep emotions.
An existential life in which every moment counts. A real life. But we’re not allowed to
have that. Because if we did…we would be free.

We were amazed to witness otherwise intelligent and open-minded persons doing
everything in their power to instill fear, to cry danger, to slander the brain with negativity.
(That was Timothy Leary.)

We would have to regard prisons as concentration camps where people are being
imprisoned because of their religion. (This is in reference to those in jail for using LSD
for religious purposes.)

Western psychology and psychiatry are seriously biased. They consider their own
idiosyncratic point of view to be superior to that of any other cultural group and label as
pathological any activities that they cannot understand in their own framework.

What a boon to society—converting violent criminals to law-abiding citizens! If we could
teach the most unregenerate how to wash their brains, then it would be a cinch to coach
non-criminals to change their lives for the better. (That was Timothy Leary.)

What can be done to prevent the glory and the freshness from fading into the light of
common day? How can we educate children on the conceptual level without killing their
capacity for intense nonverbal experience?

What happens outside the body is one process with what happens inside it. This is that
“original identity” which ordinary language and our conventional definitions of man so
completely conceal.

What I learned from Tim (Leary) had nothing to do with drugs but it had everything to do
with getting high. His die-hard fascination with the human brain was not about altering it,
but about using it to the fullest.

What is needed today is a fundamental re-experience of the oneness of all living things, a
comprehensive reality consciousness. (All living things means all things because all
things are alive, even inanimate objects.)

What truly defines the transpersonal orientation is a model of the human psyche that
recognizes the importance of the spiritual or cosmic dimensions and the potential for
consciousness evolution.

What we call “normal” is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection
and other forms of destructive action on experience. It is radically estranged from the
structure of being.

What we call “respectability” whether in church or in secular society, serves in part to
protect social and ecclesiastical institutions from the explosive influence of the prophet
and the mystic.

What we ordinarily take in and respond to is a curious mixture of immediate experience
with culturally conditioned symbol, of sense impressions with preconceived ideas about
the nature of things.

What’s interesting is this intense violent reaction against things that seem purely oriented
toward freedom, pleasure, joy, and imagination, that somehow if a great many people
pursue these things they must be kept in check.

When I am in my isness, thoroughly purged of all intellectual sediments, I have my
freedom in its primary sense…free from intellectual complexities and moralistic
attachments…

When men set out for Plymouth in a leaky boat to pursue a new spiritual way of life, of
course they were taking risks. But the risks of the voyage were less than the risks of
remaining in a spiritual plague area.

When the process of the cultural conditioning has not been unlearned, the human mind
gets stuck in a perpetual self-criticism, a perpetual division against itself, which in the
end paralyzes creative action.

When the Self is no longer identified with the ego, when in certain spiritual practices, it
penetrates and realizes its own depths, it simply KNOWS that it is eternal and all-
inclusive.

When the whole human race is rocking with laughter, laughing so hard that it hurts,
everybody then has his foot on the path. In that moment, everybody can just as well be
God as anything else.

When there is understanding, there is an experienced fusion of the End with the Means,
of the wisdom which is the timeless realization of Suchness with the Compassion which
is Wisdom in action.

When they observe mystical reactions, psychiatrists employ the labels of pathology.
Psychiatrists are hung up on psychosis and think that LSD causes normal people to act
like psychotics.

What we call “respectability,” whether in church or in secular society, serves in part to
protect social and ecclesiastical institutions from the explosive influence of the prophet
and the mystic.

When we speak about mysticism as a field of investigation out there somewhere, we have
already missed the point. It is your own mysticism that we are talking about—or else it is
nothing at all.

When you cut your finger, you do not heal yourself. You don’t even worry about it
healing. You know it is going to heal because you have faith in a greater power. You trust
your subconscious then, and you must learn to trust it about other things as well.

When you look for stuff underlying the pattern of nature, you cannot find any stuff.
Instead, you just find more and more patterns because there never was any stuff. What we
call “stuff” is simply pattern seen out of focus. When it is fuzzy, we call it stuff.

Whether it is organic or inorganic, we are learning to see matter as patterns of energy, not
of energy as if energy were a stuff, but an energetic pattern, moving order, active
intelligence.

While at the cradle of all great religions are the direct visionary revelations of their
founders, prophets, and saints, in many instances a religion loses its connection with this
vital core over time.

Who would seriously suggest denying everyone the right to pilot a private plane because
some might prove incompetent and crash? We do not deny properly trained persons the
right to take X-rays just because children have been found playing with the machines.

Whoever attempts the awesome task of deliberately coming into the presence of God
takes the risk, calculated or uncalculated, of experiencing madness. (Rudolph Otto called
it the mysterium tremendum.)

William James was well aware that a deep religious conversion is the best therapy for
alcoholism. The importance of deep spiritual experiences for overcoming alcoholism was
also well known to Carl Gustav Jung.

Wisdom, in contrast to knowledge gathered by empirical or rational investigation, is an
attribute of one who, by virtue of inner vision, understands the nature of illusion and
duality.

Wise men throughout history have told us again and again, in legends and myths,
aphorisms, poems and allegories that there exists within us a source of direct information
about reality that can teach us all we need to know.

With the ego and mind unplugged, what is left? It’s something Western culture knows
little about, the open brain, the uncensored cortex, alert and open to a broad sweep of
internal and external stimuli hitherto screened out.

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

Words are not distinct packages of meaning but they tied to clouds of memories and
associations. A basic Information Age realization is that these meanings are different for
everyone.

Words such as joy, ecstasy, grace, beauty, just don’t exist in the psychiatric vocabulary.
The poor psychiatrist has been given the sad task of looking for pathology and is usually
bewildered when he comes face-to-face with the more meaningful experiences of life.

A Church, a Christianity, in which Godmanhood is fully realized will not be a preaching,
finger-wagging, Bible-banging, breast-thumping Church. It will be the Church of all
Fools, laughing like Dante’s angels. (Is laughing foolish or is the pompous inability to
laugh that’s really foolish?)

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe”—a part limited in time and
space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the
rest—a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. (That’s Albert Einstein. The delusion is
thinking we are limited and separate.)

A science which fails to address itself to spiritual goals becomes secular, political and
tends to oppose new data. A religion which fails to provide direct experimental answers
to these spiritual questions becomes secular, political and tends to oppose the individual
revelatory confrontation.

A successful scientific innovator who presents the species with a new technology for
changing human nature and human destiny is always in trouble with the politicians. A
philosopher who does his job well invariably upsets the hive and has to deal with the
forces set up to preserve the old order and prevent change.

A system of thinking that deliberately discards everything that cannot be weighed and
measured does not have any opening for the recognition of creative cosmic intelligence,
spiritual realities or such entities as transpersonal experiences or the collective
unconscious.

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

Academic psychology is concerned with conditioning humans to accept what Freud
called the “reality principle,” implying that only the artificial, conditioned games of the
current social order are real; that natural pleasure is somehow a hallucination, even a
psychotic outburst.

According to Jung, the universal and primordial patterns in the collective unconscious, or
“archetypes,” are mythological in nature. Experiences that involve the archetypal
dimensions of the psyche convey a sense of sacredness—or “numinosity” in Jung’s
terms.

After 15 years of practicing psychotherapy and after 10 years of doing research on
psychotherapy, I had come to the conclusion that there was very little that one person
called a doctor could do for another person called a patient by talking to him across a
desk or listening to him as he lay on a couch. (That was Timothy Leary.)

All the arts, though they speak about us in our relationship to the immediate experience,
at the same time, tell us something about the nature of the world, about the mysterious
forces which we feel to be around us and about the cosmic order of which we seem to
have glimpses.

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

Any serious scientific theory has to be an attempt to organize the existing facts, rather
than a product of speculative extrapolation. It has to be based on observations of the
universe and not on the beliefs of scientists as to what the universe is like or their wishes
about what it should be like to fit their theories.

Anything which changes consciousness is a threat to the established order. This is one
issue on which the entire spectrum of political opinions, left and right, agree. Anything
which expands consciousness is out. (All politicians are right-wingers. Democrats are
liberal right-wingers. Republicans are fascists.)

Apparently those in control of the instrumentation of coercive power in the U. S. had no
difficulty in recognizing a psychedelic religion as a psychedelic religion when that
religion was safely encapsulated in a racial minority group living outside the mainstream
of American life. (This refers to the Native American Church legally able to use peyote.)

As many began to experience the kinds of images and symbols Jung ascribed to the
collective unconscious, as well as episodes of a classic mystical nature, this wave brought
strong supportive evidence for Jungian ideas and a powerful validation of the mystical
traditions of the world., Eastern as well as Western.

As prime conditioner of his fellow man, the psychologist or educator must be an
exemplar—calm, serious, controlled, sensibly cynical, smugly pessimistic and above all,
rational. To study the unconditioned state, to produce pleasure in his subjects and to act
in a natural, hedonic manner would lead to his excommunication.

As Suzuki put it, “Satori may be defined as intuitive looking-into, in contradiction to
intellectual and logical understanding.” It is not interested in concepts, abstractions and a
limited perception; “It does not care so much for the elaboration of particulars as for a
comprehensive grasp of the whole, and this intuitively”.

Because Christians believed that there had been only one Avatar (Christ), Christian
history has been disgraced by more and bloodier crusades, interdenominational wars,
persecutions and proselytizing imperialism than has the history of Hinduism and
Buddhism.

Beyond the narrow boundaries of his or her perishable physical shrine and the limitations
of the individual life span, 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.

Christ was saying don’t get hungup in all the bullshit of the society and the You-game
because there’s something bigger happening. That’s dangerous talk, man. The authorities
were hip to it even back then. Jesus got the shaft for saying it too loud and too
convincingly.

Clear sight has nothing to do with trying to see. (If your eyes are open, you will see
without having to try. If you “try” to see, all you will do is strain your eyes or the eye
muscles. Just leave your eyes alone and you will see. Similarly, leave yourself alone so
that you can live to the fullest.)

Controlled research aimed at maximizing their safety, their effectiveness, and their
human value has barely begun. In addition to questions concerning the possible uses of
LSD as a therapeutic or educative device, its potential value as a basic research tool for
investigating higher mental processes has also been minimally explored.

Could it be that the universe is, in the final analysis, just a divine play of consciousness
where all natural laws are ultimately arbitrary, and where any one of us, at any time, can
somehow access any material that ever existed or will exist for anyone, anywhere,
unfettered by the illusions of matter, space, and time?

Drug use may be criticized as an escape from reality. However, this criticism assumes
unjustly that the mystical experiences themselves are escapist or unreal. LSD is by no
means a soft and cushy escape from reality. It can easily be an experience in which you
have to test your soul against all the devils in hell (the ego’s fight for its life).

Drugs is a subject that can never come under discussion without so much emotion that
rational argument becomes obscured if not totally banished. (Fascist idiots who are
ignorant about drugs and insist on forbidding them are not rational, regardless of how
much power they have. Those who abuse power lack wisdom.)

Each atom is a structure of detailed intricacy held together by energy of such speed and
power that it eludes our conception. Each atom is a space-ship of galactic proportions and
at the center of each galactic structure God places the entire staff of his atomic engineers.
Do you understand the brilliance of the design?

Each level of consciousness is inevitably produced by biochemical means, either by
natural biochemical events or by introduced chemicals that move you to these different
levels just as accurately as the magnification of a lens moves you to different levels of
external reality.

Enlightenment remains unrealized so long as it is considered as a specific state to be
attained and for which there are tests and standards of success. It is much rather freedom
to be the failure that one is. This freedom is the basis for all mental and spiritual
wholeness, provided that it seeks no result.

Even positivistically oriented scientists, hard-core materialists, skeptics and cynics,
uncompromising atheists and antireligious crusaders such as Marxist philosophers and
politicians, suddenly become interested in the spiritual quest after they confront these
levels in themselves.

Every human being is born with an innate drive to experience altered states of
consciousness periodically, in particular to learn how to get away from ordinary ego-
centered consciousness. This drive is an important factor in our evolution, both as
individuals and as a species.

For us, a proposition is either true or false, a or not-a, God exists or does not exist and
countless gallons of ink and blood have been shed in disputes stemming from this kind of
rigid either-or logic. Indian and Chinese thought, as well as mystical and psychedelic
experiences, lead one to a logic of levels, rather than of propositions.

From a cognitive perspective, different states of consciousness are, among other things,
radical reorganizations of information-processing systems and strategies. Different states
of consciousness also provide different “strategies” of perception, abilities, memory,
emotion, etc.

From the moment of birth, the baby is subjected to forces concerned with destroying its
potentialities, and on the whole this enterprise is successful. By the time the new human
being is fifteen or so, we are left with a being like ourselves, a half-crazed creature more
or less adjusted to a mad world. This is normality in our present age.

He who controls the mind-changing chemicals controls consciousness. He who controls
the chemical can twist your mind, can alter your personality, can change you and your
concept of the world. (No one has the right to control your consciousness and experiences
by threatening you with jail. Your life belongs to you.)

“Holy madness” or “divine madness” is known and acknowledged by various spiritual
traditions and is distinguished from ordinary insanity; it is seen as a form of intoxication
by the Divine. Revered seers, mystics, and prophets are often described as inspired by
madness.

How can we Westerners see that our own potentials are much greater than the social-hive
games in which we are so blindly trapped? Once the game structure of behavior is seen,
change in behavior can occur with dramatic spontaneity. The visionary, brain-change,
consciousness-altering experience is the key to behavior change.

How many of us now realize that this galaxy and all other galaxies are just as much you
as your heart or your brain, that your coming and going, your waking and sleeping, your
birth and your death are exactly the same kind of rhythmic phenomena as the stars and
their surrounding darkness?

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

Human beings are born with a drive to experiment with ways of changing consciousness.
The idea that it is normal to seek changes in consciousness has never been discredited.
(No matter how strong the attempt, ignorance cannot discredit wisdom and lies cannot
discredit truth.)

Huxley’s Island expresses hope for mankind. It dramatizes the conviction that the drugs
can be used, rather than condemned and neglected, and that finding a way to use them
well is a test for humanity. We should use our resources of intelligence, imagination, and
moral discernment to face that test.

I am not merely spinning senseless paradoxes when I say that we, the sane ones, are out
of our minds. The mind is what the ego is unconscious of. The mind of which we are
unaware is aware of us. It is we who are out of our minds. We need not be unaware of the
inner world. (That was R. D. Laing.)

I believe that the astonishing human brain is man’s most inalienable possession, his
intellectual birthright. No person or institution has the moral right to muffle or inhibit its
development. No social authority can successfully arrogate unto itself the right to dictate
and fix the levels of consciousness to which man may aspire.

I never suspected that the ancient spiritual systems had actually charted, with amazing
accuracy, different levels and types of consciousness that occur in nonordinary states of
consciousness. I was astonished by their emotional power, authenticity, and potential for
transforming people’s views of their lives.

I see consciousness and the human psyche as expressions and reflections of a cosmic
intelligence that permeates the entire universe and all of existence. We are not just highly
evolved animals with biological computers embedded inside our skulls; we are also fields
of consciousness without limits, transcending time, space, matter, and linear causality.

I see that it is actually impossible not to be spontaneous. For what I cannot help doing I
am doing spontaneously, but if I am at the same time trying to control it, I interpret it as a
compulsion. As a Zen master said, “Nothing is left to you at this moment but to have a
good laugh”.

I would not be allowed the freedom to discuss the reasons why these laws should be
changed. This is a clear violation of the American Constitution, academic freedom,
scientific openness and of all the principles upon which democratic societies are based.
(That was Timothy Leary.)

I would say that the mind is not insular, but an interconnected part of a universe of both
physical and symbolic substance, whose linkages extend throughout space and time. The
Psychedelic has helped me to feel like a part of this connection. I feel like I have a much
greater understanding of non-Western and pre-industrial mind-sets.

Identification of consciousness with ego-consciousness leads to confusion of mind and
intellect, to acceptance of appearance as reality, to materialistic formulations of the
interaction of mind and matter, to isolation and fear, to increasingly negative conceptions
of reality and ultimately and very logically, to disaster.

If certain conditions are fulfilled, human beings may cease to behave as the pathetic or
deplorable creatures they mistakably think they are and be what in fact they always have
been, if they had only given themselves a chance of knowing it—enlightened, liberated,
“godded” in God”.

If left alone by society, our International Foundation for Internal Freedom (IFIF) would
have succeeded in training several thousand neurologicians who, in their own
communities, could have trained hundreds of thousands of Americans to use their own
heads. (That was Timothy Leary.)

If one were a genuine psychiatrist and heard that something made it possible to open the
mind and get into one’s own unconscious, enabling examination of one’s own shadow
material and unconscious values, goals, anger, pain, guilt and so on, my God, wouldn’t
they be interested? One might be skeptical, but how could you not be interested?

If repression is not replaced by education and if intolerance is not replaced with
understanding, our hopes for the future and our vision of the human potential will be
gravely jeopardized. (In other words, we have no hope if dumb, ignorant, arrogant,
selfish, insensitive fascists continue to hold power and run things.)

If the history of science teaches us anything, it is that uncomfortable data cannot be swept
under the rug indefinitely. Galileo, we know, was not silenced; his manuscripts were
smuggled out and published after his death, laying the groundwork not just for the
science of astronomy, but for experimental physics in general.

If the world is play, there is no way of going against it. The most outright contradictions,
the most firm assertions that the game is serious and the most absurd attempts to
command spontaneity can never be anything but extremely “far-out” forms of play. (Yes,
world, it’s all play and not serious. So, lighten up.)

If we perceive this has some sort of deep significance and we do something about it, then
it may be very, very important in changing our lives, changing our mode of
consciousness, perceiving that there are other ways of looking at the world than the
ordinary utilitarian manner and it may also result in significant changes of behavior.

If we understand that straight and stoned are descriptive terms for ways of using the mind
rather than labels for people who do or do not use a particular means of entering other
states of consciousness, we can use these terms profitably, for they indicate an important
choice between different kinds of thinking.

If you don’t get along with your boss and your mother-in-law in your normal
consciousness, don’t think you can handle the cosmic energies you’ll encounter on a trip.
(That was a warning from Timothy Leary. Don’t take LSD if you just had an argument
and are upset. Have a clear, unhassled head going in to the trip.)

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

In spite of the frequency of these phenomena and their obvious relevance for many areas
of human life, surprisingly few serious attempts have been made in the past to
incorporate them into the theory and practice of contemporary psychiatry and
psychology.

In the course of my research, I found that in the mythology of every religions tradition I
am aware of, there’s some magic plant that talks, heals, mystifies, intoxicates, or turns
into fire, that either brings you to God, or gets you in a whole lot of trouble, or both,
depending on the context.

In the final analysis, only the creative principle of Cosmic Consciousness exists. Only it
takes physical form. From this point of view, the entire universe is a divine play of one
Supreme Being. Anyone who grasps this concept will see that karmic appearances are
just another level of illusion. (delusion?)

In the midst of our emotional turmoil about the drug problem, many of us fail to notice
that most of the authorities who are supported by public funds, quoted extensively in the
scientific and lay press, and sought out for advice by policy makers have never
themselves experienced highs in association with drugs.

In the psychedelic ‘60’s the flower children had been lit up like living torches and
beamed out their powerful little lights across the world. For a while it looked like the
light would conquer the dark, and there would at last be peace on earth. We were filled
with wonderment, gratitude, awe, love. We had seen MORE than the everyday reality.

In view of the enormous variety and scope of these phenomena, most of which lie far
beyond the conceptual framework of traditional psychology and the philosophy of
Western science, it is not surprising that Western scientists and educated laypersons alike
tend to take these claims with a grain of salt.

Introducing transpersonal experiences into psychology creates a conceptual bridge
between Western science and perennial philosophy. It also throws new light on many
problems in history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, and
comparative religion.

Is the use of LSD the initial event that will guide us to a new morality and to new patterns
of human life on this planet? Will we keep our heads straight and our bodies and minds
clear? Or will we become anti-intellectuals devoted to the culture of “big fishes eating
smaller fishes” in the holy names of religion, education, civilization, progress

It is here that we look beyond the belief that consciousness exists only as a result of our
individual lives. As we come to terms with the concept of the transpersonal realm, we
begin thinking of consciousness as something that exists outside and independent of us,
something that in its essence is not bound to matter.

It is inept and boorish to claim that a certain philosophical or theological position is “the
Truth” and still more so to attempt to prove it. (You can experience “the Truth” but not
describe it. It can’t be put into a “certain philosophical or theological position” based on
words.)

It is man’s challenge to develop new symbol systems for these new levels of internal
consciousness. Just as we had to develop a new symbol system for the invisible,
uncharted world which was opened up with the microscope, the task now is to develop
symbol systems for the new invisible worlds which are opened up by psychedelic drugs.

It is notorious that popular ideas of God’s character are of a far lower standard than that
by which we discern saintliness in men. The saint forgives, but by many accounts, the
Lord does not forgive at all unless the offender grovels before him. (God is not a
pompous ass who demands that you bow down to him.)

It shouldn’t be this difficult to accept logically that there are many realities and that the
most exciting things that happen are not at the level of our routine perception and, for that
matter, that the most complex communications, the most creative processes, exist at
levels of which we are not ordinarily aware.

It was almost impossible to conceive of the old world, the straight world, the Victorian
hangover, surviving the engulfing wave of The New Madness. It was all so simple. The
world was being turned on. The dark stumble ages were drawing to a close. The world
was going to stop, reorient itself, and start spinning in the right direction at last.

It’s a battle of lifestyles. It’s the lovers versus the salesmen of junk. It’s the poets versus
the manufacturers of crap. It’s the dancers versus the bringers of war. It’s the
songmakers, the earth tenders, the new gardeners of Eden versus the military/industrial
complex. And beware, my friends, they are relentless.

Jesus had to die because he broke through the frontiers of consciousness, because he
broke through what it means to be religious. (Even in today’s “modern” and “civilized”
world, anyone who encourages others to be religious by expanding their consciousness is
likely to be jailed if not murdered.)

Jesus was aware of himself as a finished specimen of the new humanity which is to
come—the new humanity which is to inherit the earth, establish the Kingdom, usher in
the New Age. His mission and his teaching have at their heart the development of a new
and higher state of consciousness on a species-wide basis.

Jung came to the conclusion that there is—in addition to the individual unconscious—a
collective or racial unconscious, which is shared by all humanity and is a manifestation of
the creative cosmic force. Comparative religion and world mythology can be seen as
unique sources or information about the collective aspects of the unconscious.

Kent St. University was the scene of a slaughter. The National Guard fired their rifles
into a group of antiwar demonstrators and killed four students and wounded thirty. It was
the beginning of the end of the dream of peace and love and equality. We realized that
our own fathers would kill us.

Lama Govinda says that to Tibetans, the attempts of modern psychologists, who try to
“prove” extrasensory perception by scientific methods, would appear crude and
laughable: one might as well try to prove the existence of light which is visible to all but
the blind.

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

Leary once remarked that people who believe that LSD should be illegal because some
users have committed suicide, maybe because of it, should agitate even more heatedly for
the abolition of examinations. Statistics show that the link between final exams and
suicide is true beyond any doubt. Every year the college suicide rate rises at exam time.

Let’s come on as psychologists and develop a research project that aims at producing the
ecstatic moment. Develop a science of ecstatics. Train graduate students to illuminate
themselves and others. We have statisticians who systemize the static—how about
ecstatisticians who systemize the ecstatic?

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

Like everyone else, I am functioning at only a fraction of my potential. How grateful I
should feel if someone had taught me to be, say 30 percent efficient instead of 15 or
maybe 20 percent! (That was Aldous Huxley. He had the right idea, but we actually are
at just a tiny fraction of one percent of our potential or efficiency.)

Mainstream psychiatry and psychology in general make no distinction between
mysticism and mental illness. These fields do not officially recognize that the great
spiritual traditions that have been involved in the systematic study of human
consciousness for millennia have anything to offer.

Mainstream psychiatry and psychology in general make no distinction between
mysticism and psychopathology. There is no official recognition that the great spiritual
traditions that have been involved in the systematic study of consciousness for centuries
have anything to offer to our understanding of the psyche and of human nature.

Man has reached a crisis in consciousness within which he has the choice to continue in
the path of the growing technicalization of human nature or to enter upon an intensive
and comprehensive investigation of mind and its creative process in the pursuit of a
greater use of human potential and a deeper understanding of the nature of reality.

Man is going to get back in harmony with his body, with fellow man and with other
forms of life on this planet. Man is going to realize that consciousness is the key to
human life and instead of power struggles over territory and possession of weapons, the
focus of man’s energies is going to be on consciousness.

Many leading humanistic psychologists exhibited a growing interest in a variety of
previously neglected areas and topics of psychology, such as mystical experiences,
transcendence, ecstasy, cosmic consciousness, theory and practice of meditation, or
interindividual and interspecies synergy.

Many of the experiences and observations from psychedelic sessions seemed to seriously
challenge the image of the human psyche and of the universe developed by Newtonian-
Cartesian science and considered to be accurate and definitive descriptions of “objective
reality”.

Maslow disagreed with Freud’s exclusive concentration on the study of neurotic and
psychotic populations. He pointed out that focusing on the worst in humanity instead of
the best, results in a distorted image of human nature. This approach leaves out man’s
aspirations, his realizable hopes, his godlike qualities.

Myths are not fictitious stories about adventures of imaginary characters in nonexistent
countries and thus arbitrary products of individual human fantasy. They originate in the
collective unconscious of humanity and are manifestations of the primordial organizing
principles of the psyche and the cosmos that Jung called archetypes.

No need to compete with, to fight, to drag down other small conscious beings. In the face
of the unbelievable magnitude of the Whole Show, in the face of Eternity, we should all
be continually, every second of the incredible day and night, humbly, reverently awed
and thankful for the miracle of our impossible existence.

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

Only a few rather exceptional professionals have shown a genuine interest in and
appreciation of transpersonal experiences as phenomena of their own right. These
individuals have recognized their heuristic value and their relevance for a new
understanding of the unconscious, of the human potential and of the nature of man.

Our capacity to identify with the consciousness of plants contributed to the fact that many
cultures hold certain plants to be sacred. Plants with psychedelic properties have been
incorporated into the religions of many cultures and are considered deities or the “flesh of
the gods”.

Our mental functions are linked to biological processes in our brains. However, this does
not necessarily mean that consciousness originates in or is produced by our brains. This
conclusion made by Western science is a metaphysical assumption rather than a scientific
fact, and it is certainly possible to come up with other interpretations of the same data.

Our true nature is an aspect of a universal consciousness, Self, Being, Mind, of God. The
awakening to this true nature is the direct awareness that you are more than this puny
body or limited mind. It is the realization that the universe is not external to you. It is
experiencing the universe as yourself.

Our vision, and consequently our comprehension of our selves, is blocked out in many
areas by repression. Even where the aspects of the self are open to our scrutiny, our past
experience keeps our observations and interpretations bound in the ruts of conditioned
response. (LSD allows you to break through.)

Personally I find it extremely comforting to think that I have somewhere at the back of
my skull something which is absolutely indifferent to the human race. I think this is
something quite satisfying, that there is an area of mind which doesn’t care about what I
am doing, but is concerned with something quite, quite different.

Physicists and mathematicians report that after using LSD they have developed “a
feeling” for such concepts as the photon, the hypercube or imaginary numbers. Similarly,
philosophers have reported they have “understood” the meaning of existentialism, and
theologians report having “experienced” that which they had been preaching for years.

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

Psychology, man’s view of his nature, is always the last to adapt to a new world view.
From the standpoint of established values, the psychedelic process is dangerous and
insane—a deliberate psychotization, a suicidal undoing of the equilibrium man should be
striving for.

Psychotropic substances of plant origin had already been in use for thousands of years in
Mexico as sacramental drugs in religious ceremonies and as magical potions having
curative effects. (It wasn’t just in Mexico but in many if not indeed all parts of the
world.)

Real learning can take place only in a condition of freedom. (Real learning, therefore,
doesn’t happen in schools because kids are forced to go and teachers, using the power of
the grade, are like dictators. Pressurized, brainwashing propaganda is what schools are all
about, not real learning.)

Religion, I will be thinking of as the inner experience of the individual when he senses
Ultimate Reality, whether as God, a Beyond, transcendent cosmic process, a wholly
different and profound dimension of life, nirvana or however one chooses to name and
interpret this ultimate reality.

Religious art has always and everywhere made use of vision-inducing materials. The
shrines of gold, the jeweled symbol or image, the glittering furniture of the alter—we find
these things in contemporary Europe as in ancient Egypt, in India and China as among
Greeks, the Incas, the Aztecs.

Researchers who have seriously studied and/or experienced these fascinating phenomena
realize that the attempts of traditional psychiatry to dismiss them as irrelevant products of
imagination or as erratic fantasmagoria generated by pathological processes in the brain,
are superficial and inadequate.

Review of psychedelic literature shows that favorable results have been reported in a
wide variety of clinical problems, including depressions, phobias and other types of
psychoneuroses, psychosomatic diseases, character disorders, sexual deviations, criminal
behavior, alcoholism, narcotic drug addiction, and even psychoses.

Romney and Reagan may fascinate middle-aged reporters in papers, editors, advertisers
and readers, all of whom convince themselves that there is something real about the game
of Romney and Reagan. But the majority of youth don’t read these papers. (Today, the
names are different but the point is the same.)

So many practitioners of the inexact sciences (e.g., psychology, anthropology, sociology)
let it be known most clearly that they already know what reality is. For these poor
drudges, reality is the world of nonpoetry in accordance with the great Western myth that
all nature outside the human skin is a stupid and unfeeling mechanism.

Spiritual awakening is the difficult process whereby the increasing realization that
everything is as wrong as it can be flips suddenly into the realization that everything is as
right as it can be. (Alan Watts wrote that. With LSD, it’s not a difficult process at all,
except for the ego.)

Spiritual feelings are associated with such issues as the enigma of time and space; the
origin of matter, life and consciousness; the dimensions of the universe and of existence;
the meaning of human life and the ultimate purpose underlying the process of the creation
of the phenomenal world.

Spiritual literature and traditions of the world over validate the healing and
transformative power of such extraordinary states for those who undergo them. Why,
then, are people who have had such experiences in today’s world almost invariably
dismissed as mentally ill?

Stop thinking and just look, but don’t look analytically. Liberate yourselves from
everything you know and look with complete innocence. Look as though you’d never
seen anything of the kind before, as though it had no name and belonged to no
recognizable class.

That Plato had some kind of profound ecstatic experience is indicated by the famous
Parable of the Cave, found in the Seventh Book of the Republic. Ingesters of LSD have
had no trouble in recognizing and understanding the metaphysical dimensions of this
notable piece of classical symbolism.

The aim of the psychiatrist is to teach the (statistically) abnormal to adjust themselves to
the behavior of the (statistically) normal. The aim of the educator in spiritual insight is to
teach the (statistically) normal that they are in fact insane and should do something about
it. (That was Aldous Huxley.)

The American youngster who chooses not to buy the system is confronted with a
consciousness-control tyranny, classically Soviet in its disregard for his individuality.
Compulsory education means that if you don’t go to the state brainwashing institutions,
you and your parents are arrested.

The ancient and pre-industrial societies have held non-ordinary states of consciousness in
high esteem and used them for a variety of purposes—diagnosing and healing diseases,
ritual, spiritual, and religious activity, cultivation of extrasensory perception and artistic
inspiration.

The Christian message is essentially a call to be universal— a call to become cosmically
conscious. It is a call to place God at the center of ourselves, not through blind faith but
through insightful awareness, not through rigid adherence to ritual and dogma but
through graceful expression of cosmic principles. It is a call to “be as gods.”

The Church must abandon its spiritual imperialism and its craze for making converts. It
must desist from its proud and arbitrary claim to be top religion. Missionaries have ruined
many cultures and wrought incalculable harm and have nowhere succeeded in bringing
all mankind to the feet of Christ.

The craving for and contact with transcendental realities can be more powerful than the
sexual urge. Throughout human history, countless individuals have been willing to take
enormous risks of various kinds and to sacrifice years or decades of their lives to spiritual
pursuits.

The critical issue here is the ontological status of non-ordinary states of consciousness—
whether we see them as pathological conditions that should be indiscriminately
suppressed or veritable alternatives to our everyday states of consciousness that can
contribute to our understanding of the psyche and have a great therapeutic potential.

The current public taboo on any evaluation of drug-use experience that fails to be shame-
faced and remorse-laden…individually and generationally reinforces hypocricy, denial,
guilt, inhibition and repression. Like any ban on the utterance of truth, it warps public
morality and cripples the soul.

The death-rebirth cycle has been recognized as a natural and lawful pattern throughout
our history by many cultures. Just as spring reliably follows winter year after year, so the
development of a new life automatically follows a full experience of the destruction of
the old.

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

The destructive side of organized religion is certain to be prominent in a world where the
loudest appeals for a revival are made by men whose deepest loyalty is not to their
professed Christianity or Judaism or Islam, but to Nationalism and whose aim is to use
the local faith as a weapon in the armory of power politics.

The difficulty with both psychotherapy and liberation is that the problem which they
address lies in the social institutions in whose terms we think and act. No co-operation
can be expected from an individual ego which is itself the social institution at the root of
the trouble.

The discoveries of the last few decades strongly suggest that the psyche is not limited to
the Freudian individual unconscious and confirm the perennial truth, found in many
mystical traditions, that human beings might be commensurate with all there is.
Transpersonal experiences and their extraordinary potential certainly attests to this fact.

The entire range of pleasurable experiences has gone unstudied, unlabeled, undefined.
You will not find the word “fun” in the index of most psychology texts. Indeed, until the
psychedelic movement, unconditioned behavior and unconditioned experience were
considered ipso facto schizophrenic.

The experiences were too positive to not want to share them with everybody. It would
appear that the time had come when this kind of experience should be made available to
large numbers of searchers, so that “the doors of perception” could be opened, so that
expanded consciousness was no longer something attainable only by rare individuals.

The exploration of ways of expanding human consciousness will occupy a prominent
position in the mainstream of contemporary psychology. We can look forward to a far
more extensive application of these powerful agents as a means of facilitating social as
well as individual potentialities.

The fates of nations and the lives of billions of people have been profoundly affected by
the divine illuminations of spiritual prophets. We have only to remember the revelations
of Buddha under the Bo tree, Moses on Mount Sinai, Jesus in the desert, Paul on the road
to Damascus, and Mohammed during his visionary night journey for evidence of this.

The goal of psychoanalysis, Freud said, is to replace the extreme suffering of the neurotic
patient with the normal misery of everyday life. An alienated, unhappy, and driven
existence dominated by excessive power needs, competitive urges, and insatiable
ambition can still fall within the broad definition of mental health.

The great religious leaders all found the same thing when they looked within. They all
talked about the inner light, the soul, the divine flame, the spark or seed of life or the
white light of the void. Those are clumsy metaphors for what are actually physiological
processes within the nervous system.

The greatest obstacle to awareness is neurosis. Neurosis can be defined in one of its
aspects as a fixation upon a single aspect of life, a looking at the world through one
particular set of distorting lenses and hence as the inability to see a wider angle of life
and to perceive realistically what is going on around us.

The height of sexual love, coming upon us of itself, is one of the most total experiences
of relationship to the other of which we are capable, but prejudice and insensitivity have
prevented us from seeing that in any other circumstances such delight would be called
mystical ecstasy.

The historic role of states of consciousness in the humanities, arts, and sciences is
neglected in current education. A truly liberal education should teach students about this
part of themselves and our civilizations, and should also give them rudimentary
experience with selected states and their resident capacities.

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

The human mind is not limited to biographically determined elements of the Freudian
unconscious; it has no boundaries or limits and its dimensions are commensurate with
those of the entire universe. From this point of view, it is more correct to see human
nature as divine than as bestial.

The idea of drug use as a religious practice—in fact, of any connection between drugs
and religion—is one we are willing to indulge in pre-industrial cultures but violently
reject for ourselves. Orthodox religion in the West long ago abandoned the sacramental
use of drugs.

The individual identifies with only one aspect of his or her being, the physical body and
the ego. This false identification leads to an inauthentic, unhealthy, and unfulfilling way
of life, and contributes to the development of emotional and psychosomatic disorders of
psychological origin.

The information about psychedelic drugs spread by the mass media and various agencies
was mostly superficial, inaccurate and one-sided. Such distorted information, since it was
unbalanced, disproportional and frequently obviously incorrect, was regarded with
suspicion by young people, many of whom found it easy to laugh it off, reject it totally.

The kinesthetic sense tells us what is happening within our psycho-physical organism.
The other senses—sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell—give us information about the
outer world. Modern education does nothing to train the kinesthetic sense and very little
in regard to the other senses.

The language of cultures with ancient spiritual traditions that are based on experiential
self-exploration have a rich and sophisticated vocabulary describing various mystical
states of consciousness. However, even then the terms adequately convey the meaning
only if we can relate them to a personal experience.

The language of science is increasingly a language of process, a description of relations
rather than of things. The world so described is a world of actions rather than agents,
verbs rather than nouns, going against the common-sense idea that an action is the
behavior of some thing, some entity of “stuff.”

The mechanistic image of the universe created by Newtonian-Cartesian science is no
longer an accurate and mandatory description of reality. (It never was an accurate
description of reality because there is no such thing as an accurate description of reality
by using words, and not even mathematical or chemical formulas can do it.)

The mind is not limited to biographically determined elements of the Freudian
unconscious; it has no boundaries or limits and its dimensions are commensurate with
those of the entire universe. From this point of view, it is more correct to see human
nature as divine than as bestial.

The modern term for the direct experience of spiritual realities is transpersonal, meaning
transcending the usual way of perceiving and interpreting the world from the position of a
separate individual or body-ego. There exists an entirely new discipline, transpersonal
psychology, that specializes in experiences of this kind and their implications.

The most direct challenge to the principles of mechanistic science are phenomena from
transpersonal experiences, such as “the relativity and arbitrary nature of physical
boundaries, nonlocal connections in the universe, memory without a material substance,
nonlinearity of time, and consciousness associated with inorganic matter.”

The mystical teachings of all ages revolve around the idea that the exclusive pursuit of
material goals and values by no means expresses the full potential of human beings.
According to this point of view, humanity is an integral part of the creative cosmic
energy and intelligence and is, in a sense, identical to and commensurate with it.

The mystical world-view is surprisingly compatible with revolutionary discoveries in
modern science, such as relativity theory and quantum physics. Both modern physics and
the mystical world-view violate common sense and are inconsistent with what can be
called “the pedestrian consciousness and world-view.”

The mythological image is what gives sense and organization to experience. Myth
embodies the nearest approach to absolute truth that can be stated in words because the
poetic, mythical or mystical mode of vision perceives orders and relationships which
escape factual description.

The nature of consciousness is ultimately the only problem worthy of total intellectual
effort. It is the concern of all the world’s philosophies and religions. (Actually, the nature
of consciousness is not a problem. The problem is society’s lack of understanding about
it.)

The new data support quite unambiguously the view that has been held by the mystical
traditions of all ages: under certain circumstances, human beings can also function as vast
fields of consciousness, transcending the limitations of the physical body, of Newtonian
time and space and of linear causality.

The notion that the universe is gyrating stupidly in which man is doomed to frustration,
this reductionist, nothing-but-ist view with its muscular claims to realism and facing-
factuality is at root a resentment against quality, genius, imagination, poetry, fantasy,
inventiveness and gaiety. It is as superstitious as flat-earthism.

The observations of the last few decades have drastically changed our understanding of
the relationship between consciousness and matter and of the dimensions of the psyche.
They show consciousness as an equal partner of matter, or possibly even supraordinated
to matter, and creative intelligence as inextricably woven into the fabric of the universe.

The same way as the rivers and streams arise from different places but ultimately flow
into the same ocean, so do all these different religious sects and communities and
denominations arise according to historical, geographical and ethnic reasons but,
ultimately, reach the same goal.

The thought of death does not in the least disturb me, because I am firmly convinced that
our spirit is altogether indestructible and thus continues from eternity to eternity. It is like
the sun, which to our eyes seems to disappear beyond the horizon, while in actual fact it
goes on shining continuously.

The whiskey-drinking white middle class imprisons those with different cultural and
religious preferences. People who consider LSD a sacrament of their religion are being
persecuted and deprived of their religious freedom which is “guaranteed” in the First
Amendment of the Constitution.

The whole world has been completely misunderstood: for it has been looked at with a
spotlight called consciousness so narrow in scope that it was all but impossible to see
how things are actually related. But only in that relationship do things have their meaning
and their beauty, as well as their existence.

Theoretical speculations in Western academic psychology and psychiatry are based
exclusively on experiences and observations made in the ordinary states of
consciousness. The evidence from the study of non-ordinary states of any kind are
systematically ignored or pathologized.

There appears to emerge a universal central perception, apparently independent of the
subjects’ previous philosophical or theological inclinations. It is that behind the apparent
multiplicity in the world of science and common sense, there is a single reality, infinite
and eternal, all beings united in this Being.

There are energy systems, blueprinting facilities and memory systems within your cells
and your nervous system which are hundreds of million years old, which have a language
and a politics which are much more complicated than English and modern Democrat-
Republican politics.

There are gaps between the fingers; there are gaps between the senses. In these gaps is
the darkness which hides the connection between things… This darkness is the home of
the gods. They alone see the connections, the total relevance of everything that happens,
that which comes to us in bit and pieces in our limited perceptions.

There are myths of the creation of the world through the cutting up of some primordial
being, of its division into heaven and earth, into the multiplicity of things or into the 2
sexes— from which follows the generation of offspring. Thus many mythologies
envisage the goal of life as the “rememberment” of the original “dismemberment”.

There exists in all human beings an urge to self-transcendence, a wish to escape from the
prison of personality, a longing to become something other and greater than the all-too-
familiar Me. The religious man has attributed this universal urge to the workings of an
innate and deep-seated yearning for the divine.

There is apparently nothing in the Bill of Rights to protect scientific freedom. The
Constitution was written in the horse-and-buggy pre-technological era. But there was a
First Amendment protection of Freedom of Religion. After all, Catholic priests were
allowed Communion wine during Prohibition.

There is no accepted corner in our lives for the art of pure nonsense. There is no protected
situation in which we can really let ourselves go. Our difficulty is that we have perverted
the Sabbath into a day for laying on rationality and listening to sermons instead of letting
off steam.

These experiences have been known for millennia. Descriptions of them can be found in
the holy scriptures of all the great religions of the world, as well as in written documents
of countless minor sects, factions and religious movements. They have also played a
crucial role in the visionary states of individual saints, mystics and religious teachers.

These realities are an intrinsic part of the human personality that cannot be repressed and
denied without serious damage to the quality of human life. For the full expression of
human nature, they must be recognized, acknowledged and explored, and in this
exploration, the traditional depictions of the afterlife can be our guides.

They had understood for the first time what the sages of pre-scientific and anti-scientific
traditions were talking about. Psychedelic drugs opened to mass tourism mental
territories previously explored only by small parties of particularly intrepid adventurers,
mainly religious mystics.

They have put the chains inside our brains. They control our imaginings, our desires. Our
hearts are bound. Love does not prevail. And our dreams of the future are materialistic
and, therefore, mundane. The Establishment has won. The fascists have won. The
religious Fundamentalists have won. For now.

This new self has no location. It is not something like a traditional soul, using the body as
a temporary house. To ask where it is, is like asking where the universe is. Things in
space have a where, but the thing that space is in doesn’t need to be anywhere. It is
simple what there is, just plain basic isness!

To discard the extraordinary features of these experiences and the conceptual challenges
associated with them just because they do not fit the current paradigm in science certainly
is not the best example of a scientific approach. We must accept the universe as it is,
rather than imposing on it what we believe it is or think it should be.

To men and women who have had direct experience of self-transcendence into the mind’s
Other World of vision and union with the nature of things, a religion of mere symbols is
not likely to be very satisfying. The perusal of a page from even the most beautifully
written cookbook is no substitute for the eating of dinner.

To normal waking consciousness, things are strictly finite and insulated embodiments of
verbal labels. How can we break the habit of automatically imposing our prejudices and
the memory of culture-hallowed words upon immediate experience? Answer: by the
practice of pure receptivity and mental silence.

To say that the blessed shall rejoice and the damned shall be tormented “forever” refers
not to chronological measure but to the degree of intensity of an experience. (The Bible’s
language is poetic and shouldn’t be taken literally. Nothing good or bad goes on
“forever” without any end or change.)

To the world, the alchemists were buffoon chemists looking for a way to turn lead into
gold, but that was only the cover story. The real lead that concerned the alchemists was
ordinary consciousness and the gold they sought was the golden brilliance of cosmic
consciousness.

Transpersonal psychology and the mystical world-view are frequently and erroneously
referred to as unscientific. This reflects the fact that psychology and psychiatry, as well as
the general public, still adhere to the old model of the world, based on the Newtonian
image of the universe and the Cartesian dichotomy between mind and matter.

True sanity entails, in one way or another, the dissolution of the normal ego and a new
kind of ego functioning, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its
betrayer. (You are the divine and your ego should serve you and your divinity or it should
flake off, take a hike, get lost and leave you alone.)

Unbiased systematic study of this material would lead to changes in our understanding of
the human psyche and of the nature of reality that would be as far-reaching and radical as
those that were introduced into physics by the theories of relativity and the quantum
theory.

Under appropriate conditions the psychedelics could considerably speed and facilitate the
process of working through psychological blocks. Material inaccessible in an ordinary
state could be brought into awareness, sometimes producing dramatic transformations
including death/rebirth experiences and alleviation of symptoms.

Under the current dispensation, the vast majority of individuals lose, in the course of
education, all the openness to inspiration, all the capacity to be aware of other things than
those enumerated in the Sears-Roebuck catalogue which constitutes the conventionally
“real” world.

Until the government gets it bloody, reeking paws off our sacred psychedelics and ceases
to harass and persecute our members, until, indeed, every poor wretch now suffering in
prison because he preferred the mystical uplift of pot to the slobbering alcoholism of the
politicians, is set free, our attitude must be one of uncompromising hostility.

Until Western science is able to offer plausible explanations of all the observations
surrounding such phenomena as spiritual experiences, the concepts found in mystical and
occult literature have to be seen as superior to the present approach of most Western
scientists, who either do not know the facts or ignore them.

Veneration for the induced visionary experience has roots in virtually every culture on
earth, however sublimated or repressed it is today. In fact, one could argue that the use
of visionary plants and hallowed drafts has been seminal to the development of
civilization.

Wasson suggested that every major world religion had originated in the botanical
hallucinations of some early visionary. Food of the gods. Flesh of the gods. Even the
name Jesus Christ in Aramic, he claimed, was derived from the word for psychedelic
mushrooms.

We are confronted by the very real possibility that the known and unknown uses of these
drugs that could prove to be legitimate and beneficial for individual persons and society
may be suppressed until some future century when investigation will be permitted to
proceed unhampered by popular hysteria and over-restrictive legislation.

We are dealing with an issue that is not new, an issue that has been considered for
centuries by mystics, by philosophers of the religious experience, by those rare and truly
great scientists who have been able to move in and then out beyond the limits of the
science game.

We are going to have to develop, as chemistry has developed, a language that will pay
respect to the fact that our experience, our behavior, our social forms are flowing all the
time and if your language isn’t equipped to change and flow with then, then you are in
trouble, you’re hooked. You’re drugged by the educational system.

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

We are largely cut off from this Deep. The stress on ego controls, rationality, focusing
outwardly rather than inwardly, have prevented us from hearing the full range of
dissonances and harmonies of human existence. Our present lives are empty, lacking in
depth, substance and direction.

We are to become like unto a child again, not remain childish, to enter the Kingdom of
Heaven. (If it would be clearer, just take out the word “unto.” There is a big difference
between being a child or like a child and being childish. Being a prisoner of the ego is
childish and having clear vision and perception is like a child.)

We are trying to apply the concepts of an outdated world view—the mechanistic world
view of Cartesian-Newtonian science— to a reality which can no longer be understood in
terms of these concepts. (This reality never could be understood in terms of these
concepts.)

We can use music as a remembrance of the different facets of consciousness that we want
to evoke. (Music can be associated with an experience or a state of consciousness.
Hearing that same music can trigger a remembrance of that experience or state of
consciousness. Similarly, music can be associated with a person.)

We could mention many instances where a creative individual struggled unsuccessfully
for a long time with a difficult problem using logic and reason, with the actual solution
emerging unexpectedly from the unconscious in moments when his or her rationality was
suspended.

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

We hoped that fellow scientists and administrators, recognizing the power of drugs to
change behavior, would support our work. The opposite reaction developed. The more
successful our research, the more grumbling from the bureaucracies of science. (That
was Timothy Leary, referring to his days at Harvard.)

We must achieve “freedom from the known”—freedom from the unanalyzed postulates
in terms of which we do our second-hand experiencing, freedom from our conventional
thoughts and sentiments, freedom from our stereotyped notions about inner and outer
reality.

We now consider that they give us therapeutic possibilities in areas where we were
formerly powerless. In fact these drugs are of such great importance in our psychiatric
instrumentation that we can hardly think of doing without them. Indeed, this is a great
step forward in psychiatry.

We overvalue the mind, that flimsy collection of learned words and verbal connections;
the mind, that system of paranoid delusions with the learned self as center. And we
eschew the nonmind, nongame intuitive insight outlook which is the key to the religious
experience, to the love experience.

We seem unable to free ourselves from preconceptions imposed on us by our culture and
by what we believe to be common sense. However, if we are to maintain these illusions,
it becomes necessary to ignore a vast body of observations and information coming from
modern consciousness research and from a variety of other scientific disciplines.

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

We think of God as the King of the Universe, the Absolute Technocrat who personally
and consciously controls every detail of his cosmos. (God doesn’t “consciously control
every detail of his cosmos” any more than we “consciously control every detail” of our
circulatory or digestive systems.)

We were on our own. Western psychological literature had almost no guides, no maps, no
texts that even recognized the existence of altered states. We had no rituals, traditions or
comforting routines to fall back on. We avoided the sterility of the laboratory and the
sick-man atmosphere of the hospital. (That was Timothy Leary.)

Weren’t the sixties, in retrospect, a decade of romance, splendor, optimism, idealism,
individual courage, high aspirations, aesthetic innovation, spiritual wonder, exploration,
and search? Weren’t we happier about each other and more optimistic when the high
times were rolling? (That was Timothy Leary.)

What we’re doing for the mind is what the microbiologists did for the external sciences
300 years ago when they discovered the microscope and they made this incredible
discovery that life, health, growth, every form of organic life, is based on the cell, which
is invisible. (That was Timothy Leary.)

What’s the difference between being totally enlightened and being totally insane? The
only difference is who has possession of the body you leave behind. (When tripping, you
must have someone with you to make sure your body doesn’t do something you’ll be
sorry about when you come down.)

When I started taking LSD, I just saw that the academic thing was more or less a socio-
political game more than a true learning experience, in that the things that I really felt I
was learning were when I was just purely being or purely experiencing something and not
trying to read it from a stilted textbook or hearing it from a superintellectual professor.

When one properly understands the religious life, it is only the courageous man who is
willing to face it. (Western “religions” don’t understand religion and religious experience
and persecute anyone who does. It also takes courage to let the ego die during an LSD
trip.)

When there is “knowing,” grammatical convention requires that there must be someone
who knows and something which is known. We are so accustomed to this convention in
speaking and thinking that we fail to recognize that it is simply a convention and that it
does not necessarily correspond to the actual experience of knowing.

When Western science dismissed the concept of consciousness after death as a
fabrication based on wishful thinking and superstition, this judgment was not based on
the careful study of the area in question that is otherwise characteristic of the scientific
approach.

Where you have theological systems, it is claimed that these presuppositions about events
in the past and events in the future and the structure of the universe are absolutely true;
consequently, reluctance to accept them is regarded as a rebellion against God, worthy of
the most undying punishment. (What a joke.)

Which is better—to be born stupid into an intelligent society or intelligent into an insane
one? (No one is born stupid as such. The insane society will make them stupid. LSD
cures the stupidity, but the society itself remains insane. When LSD cures the society,
then it will the Age of Aquarius.)

While the religious establishment worries itself into reams of cross arguments on whether
or not God is dead, these thinkers merely smile and shake their heads. God isn’t dead; He
isn’t even lost. He is right here in the deepest recesses of the mind where he has always
been. Doubting Thomases need only allow LSD to show them the way.

While these new territories have not yet been recognized by Western academic
psychiatry, they are not, by any means, unknown to humanity. On the contrary, they have
been systematically studied and held in high esteem by ancient and pre-industrial cultures
since the dawn of human history.

Willingness to be insecure is the ultimate security. Willingness to suffer is the essence of
divine joy. Willingness to be finite is to know one’s own infinity. Willingness to be a
slave is to be truly free. Willingness to be a fool and a sinner is to be both a sage and a
saint.

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

Within the new world-view, the very creative principle of the universe is experientially
available to the individual and, in a certain sense, is commensurate and identical with him
or her. This is a drastic change of perspective and it has far-reaching consequences for
every aspect of life.

Within the nucleus of every living cell lies a tiny, complex chain of protein molecules
called the DNA code. DNA is the brain of the cell, the timeless blueprinting code which
designs every aspect of life. DNA executes its plans by means of RNA molecules. RNA
is the communication system, the language, the senses and hands of the DNA.

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

Work done by those who refused to take drugs does not demonstrate greater objectivity
than that of persons who have had the drug experience; and doubtless, refusal to
experience the psychedelic state is a product, in some cases, of anxiety about the person’s
ability to cope with that state.

You are right about the hopelessness of the “scientific” approach. Those idiots want to be
Pavlonians not Lorenzian Ethnologists. Pavlov never saw an animal in its natural state,
only under duress. The “scientific” LSD boys do the same with their subjects. No wonder
they report psychoses. (Aldous Huxley wrote that in a letter to Timothy Leary.)

You have to pass beyond everything you have learned in order to become acquainted
with the new areas of consciousness. Ignorance of this fact is the veil which shuts man
within the narrow confines of his acquired, artificial concepts of “reality,” and prevents
him from coming to know his own true nature.

Your body carries a protein record of everything that’s happened to you since the
moment you were conceived as a one-cell organism. It’s a living history of every form of
energy transformation on this planet back to that thunderbolt in the Precambrian mud that
spawned the life process over 2 billion years ago. (It’s the DNA code.)

You’ve never seen a cell. What do you think of that? Yet it’s the key to everything that
happens to a living creature. I’m simply saying the same thing from the mental,
psychological standpoint, that there are wisdoms, lawful units inside the nervous system,
invisible to the symbolic mind, which determine almost everything.

A superior religion goes beyond theology. It turns toward the center; it investigates and
feels out the inmost depths of man himself, since it is here that we are in most intimate
contact, or rather, in identity with existence itself. Dependence on theological ideas and
symbols is replaced by a direct, non-conceptual touch with a level of being which is
simultaneously one’s own and the being of all others.

Abraham Maslow urged that there was a need to “depathologize” the psyche, that is, to
look upon the “inner core” of our being not as the source of metaphysical darkness or
illness but as the source of health and as the wellspring of human creativity. It was his
belief that Western civilization had obscured the importance of this inner core by
approaching it more as a superstition than as a reality.

According to Laing, psychiatrists do not pay proper attention to the inner experience of
psychotics, because they see them as pathological and incomprehensible. However,
careful observation and study show that these experiences have profound meaning and
that the psychotic process can be healing. Laing believes that psychotics have in many
respects more to teach psychiatrists than psychiatrists do their patients.

All the learned games of life can be seen as programs that select, censor and thus
dramatically limit the available cortical response. Consciousness-expanding drugs unplug
these narrow programs, the social ego, the game-machinery. And with the ego and mind
unplugged, what is left? What is left is something that Western culture knows little about:
the uncensored cortex, activated, alert and open to new realities.

Almost all of us are still robots controlled by conditioning. We think we are conscious,
but we aren’t. We are asleep, hypnotized, sleep-walking—the metaphors vary, but they
all mean that we can’t see outside our conditioned reality-tunnel. When we begin to
awaken, we perceive the world is nothing at all like the myths and superstitions our
society has imposed on us.

Although scientific interest in psychedelic substances is relatively recent, their ritual use
can be traced back to the dawn of human history. From time immemorial, plants
containing powerful mind-altering substances have been used for the diagnosing and
healing of diseases, enhancement of paranormal abilities, and for magical or ritual
purposes.

America is an irrational, materialistic, intolerant, religious state. General Motors is a
religious institution that worships mechanical power and money. Harvard University is a
religious institution that worships intellectual power and dogmatically clings to academic
taboos and empty rituals. Science itself is a religion defending its superstitious rites. The
American government is a monolithic religious structure.

America was experiencing a quantum leap in intelligence. For the first time in our
history, a large and influential sector of the populace was coming to disrespect
institutional authority, not as members of organized dissident groups but as intelligent
individuals, highly selective political consumers who demanded responsive and effective
leadership, which no existing party, no religion, no labor union seemed able to provide.

Among Jung’s best known contributions is the concept of the “collective unconscious,”
an immense pool of information about human history and culture that is available to all of
us in the depth of our psyches. Jung also identified the basic dynamic patterns or
primordial organizing principles operating in the collective unconscious, as well as the
universe at large. He called them “archetypes.”

As an educational psychologist, I’m interested in the implications of LSD research for the
study of human learning and further human development. Through the LSD experiences I
have learned to look at myself and society in a new way. These experiences have been, in
effect, an additional higher education for me, equal in impact, effort, knowledge, beauty,
and scope to obtaining a doctorate at Stanford.

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

At first, all research challenging the dominant paradigm tends to be suppressed because
the current theories are mistaken for a true and exhaustive description of reality. (A
paradigm is what scientists believe about reality. New information leads to a new
paradigm. It used to be thought that the earth was flat. New information necessitated a
new paradigm or way of looking at it.)

Both Freud and Skinner explained creative processes in terms of their deviance from
“normality” rather than as positive, healthy processes to be encouraged and developed. It
is not surprising that most American psychiatrists and psychologists are baffled by the
reports of LSD activity, puzzled by the subjective reports of LSD users, and skeptical
about the value of LSD in man’s efforts to understand, describe and change his behavior.

Changes in point of view cannot happen overnight, for they require acceptance of painful
truths: that children daydreaming in class, for example, might be using their minds much
more profitably than children paying attention; that psychotic patients may be in a better
position to understand and experience reality than the psychiatric authorities who dose
them with tranquilizers.

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

Death is the point at which man escapes the time barrier of the conscious mind. Life does
not begin and does not end. We speak of it in this way because the conscious mind can
only express itself in terms of time and space. But we know full well that this end, this
event called death, is not all. And if there is something after death then there had to be
something before birth.

Detailed study of psychedelic phenomena would require a long-term systematic team
cooperation of experts from diverse disciplines, such as psychology, psychiatry,
neurophysiology, neuropharmacology, ethno-botany, modern physics, zoology, ethology,
genetics, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, anthropology, history of art,
theology, philosophy and comparative study of religion and mythology.

Each human being is equipped with a 120-billion-cell brain, but we haven’t learned how
to use it. Few of us are aware of our neural ineptness. The organized religions have
comforted us by providing infantile fairy tales about God and promises of discarnate
immortality. Pray and obey, keep your legs crossed, avoid orgasms, and you’ll get the
one-way ticket to heaven.

Early experiments with LSD revealed its unique potential as a powerful tool offering the
possibility of deepening and accelerating the psychotherapeutic process, as well as
extending the range of applicability of psychotherapy to categories of patients that
previously had been difficult to reach such as alcoholics, narcotic drug addicts, and
criminal recidivists.

Eighteenth century churchmen criticized experiments with vaccination as blasphemous
attempts to deprive God of his prerogative of punishing the wicked through smallpox and
it was dangerous for a God-fearing scientist to look through Galileo’s telescope. Even in
our own century, teachers have been dismissed at the instance of the pious for declaring
that creation took longer than six days!

Emotions are caused by biochemical secretions in the body to serve during the state of
acute emergency. The person in an emotional state is an inflexible robot gone berserk, a
blind crazed maniac and is turned off sensually. (This really refers to negative emotions
during normal waking consciousness, not the positive emotions which are part of the
LSD experience.

Everything that we now possess as physiological or neural equipment was built into the
original design of the first protozoan cells. Individually, too, we began as a single cell at
the moment of our conception. Only recently have we begun to understand the seed-
complexity of our beginnings. The single cell handles more transactions per day than the
9 million primates of N. Y. City.

Exploration of the human psyche with these powerful catalyzing agents has shown
beyond any doubt that the biographical model developed by Freud’s “depth” psychology
barely scratches the surface of mental dynamics. To account for all the extraordinary
experiences and observations in psychedelic states, it was necessary to develop a vastly
expanded cartography of the human mind. (psyche?)

Exploration of the potential of these substances for the study of schizophrenia, for
didactic purposes, for a deeper understanding of art and religion, for personality
diagnostics and the therapy of emotional disorders and for altering the experience of
dying has been my major professional interest throughout these years and has consumed
most of the time I have spent in psychiatric research. (That was Stanislav Grof.)

Hallucinogens are still criminal. The “food of the gods” is illegal. The keys to the doors
of perception are against the law. Using LSD therapy with convicts, drug addicts, and
alcoholics is illegal. The great therapeutic tool of LSD that was proven so effective in
case after case of psychological maladjustment has been taken away from the doctors of
the mind by the fundamentalist, fascist guardians of our public morality.

Harvard—Over 400 “subjects” shared high-dosage psychedelic experiences with the
researchers in an atmosphere of aesthetic precision, philosophic inquiry, inner search,
self-confident dignity, intellectual openness, philosophic courage and high humor. The
historical impact of this “swarm” of influential scholars has not yet been recognized by
the still-timid press, popular or scientific. (That was Timothy Leary.)

How many of us now realize that space is the same as mind or consciousness? That your
inside goes with your entire outside as your front with your back? That this galaxy and all
other galaxies are just as much you as your heart or your brain? That your coming and
going, your waking and sleeping, your birth and your death are exactly the same kind of
rhythmic phenomena as the stars and their surrounding darkness?

How odd it is that writers may sing the praises of alcohol, which is responsible for about
2/3 of the car accidents and ¾ of the crimes of violence, and be regarded as good
Christians and noble fellows, whereas anyone who ventures to suggest that there may be
other and less harmful short cuts to self-transcendence is treated as a dangerous drug
fiend and wicked pervertor of weak-minded humanity. (That was Aldous Huxley.)

I developed a whole theory of evolution based on psychedelics, saying that the critical
factor in moving advanced primates into being primitive human beings was the presence
of psilocybin, which improved acuity, thus improving hunting, stimulated sexual appetite,
and bifurcating consciousness, offering a choice between the static and a fantasized
alternative. (That was Terence McKenna.)

I do not feel that any church known to me is seeking the truth. Each is certain it has the
truth. They do not want to help me find the truth; the only want me to worship that which
they have already decided is the truth. They are not interested in my soul, except to
surrender it to some concept they have. They are more interested in making me behave in
a certain pattern which they have decided is best for me.

I doubt whether artists will have much power to shape public policy on psychedelics, but
I also doubt whether illegality will ever dissuade artists from exploring all sources of
stimulation and inspiration. I hope to see a day when artists, and indeed anyone else who
wishes to explore all the possibilities of mental experience, will have the legal option to
use substances having such power and promise.

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

I pronounced that LSD was the greatest discovery man had ever made. It has such
enormous potential because the mind is infinite. LSD opens up the resources of the mind.
Since the mind is the most important aspect of the human being, what could possibly be
more important than a drug that revealed the awesome, infinite potential that lies within?
(That was Timothy Leary.)

I was proud to know that my people had a medicine that was God-powerful. Listen to me,
peyote does have many amazing powers. I have seen a blind boy regain his sight from
taking it. Indians with ailments that hospital doctors couldn’t cure have become healthy
again after a peyote meeting. Once a Crow boy was to have his infected leg cut off by
reservation doctors. After a peyote ceremony, it grew well again.

I would suggest that ages and attitudes of man that are long gone by still survive in the
deepest unconscious layers of our mind. The spiritual heritage of archaic man, the ritual
and mythology that once visibly guided his conscious life, has vanished to a large extent
from the surface of the tangible and conscious realm, yet survives and remains ever
present in the subterranean layers of the unconscious.

If a man believes that he is happy and hilarious and grooving on everything around him,
the only sane description of his state is to say he’s euphoric, not to say that he imagines
he is euphoric. What the skeptic really seems to be claiming is that he knows what the
subject feels better than the subject knows—i.e., that the subject doesn’t feel what he
feels but feels something else.

If all this ends with the human race leaving no more trace of itself in the universe than a
system of electronic patterns, why should that trouble us? For that is exactly what we are
now! Flesh or plastic, intelligence or mechanism, nerve or wire, biology or physics—it all
seems to come down to this fabulous electronic dance, which, at the macroscopic level,
presents itself as the whole gamut of forms and “substances”.

If an experience could not be expressed in words, he told the class, it could not exist. He
was very sure of himself and obviously unwilling to be contradicted. But a few weeks
before, when I had tried mescaline for the second time, I had an experience that certainly
felt ineffable to me. There seemed to be no point in trying to convey anything of its
nature to Professor Whatnough. (That was Andrew Weil, about a Harvard professor.)

If mystical experiences are integrated into the personality, they are highly therapeutic.
Single-state scholars and theoreticians are hard-pressed to explain this therapeutic value.
Denial is easier. But if an enlarged map of reality includes altered states of consciousness,
then experiencing such states logically leads to a fuller view of reality, and therapists tell
us that a fuller view of reality is therapeutic.

If our sanity is to be strong and flexible, there must be occasional periods for the
expression of completely spontaneous movement, for dancing, singing, howling,
babbling, jumping, groaning, wailing, in short, for following any motion to which the
organism as a whole seems to be inclined. It is by no means impossible to set up sensible
contexts in which nonsense may have its way.

If the intellect by nature cannot understand life, it follows that the intellect by nature
cannot understand death. Its view of death results from the fact that it looks only at the
parts, not the Whole. If it would look at the Whole, it would see immediately that life is
immortal. The esoteric doctrine would be that it is precisely our insistence on personal
immortality which makes us blind to our actual immortality.

Immersed in the impact of this work, it seems to me incomprehensible that our society
has sunk so deeply into unconsciousness as to be unaware of such possibilities. The
general public, unfamiliar with the power of our minds, remains for the most part locked
in mass hypnotism, secured within the self-constructed walls that lock out the prodigious
possibilities of life, the joy and exuberance waiting to be claimed.

In many traditions, the notion of “dying before dying” is essential to spiritual
advancement. Coming to terms with the fact of death as part of the continuity of life is
seen as tremendously liberating, releasing one from the fear of death and opening one to
the experience of immortality. As the 17th century Christian monk, Abraham a Santa
Clara wrote: “A man who dies before he dies does not die when he dies.”

In most preindustrial societies and ancient civilizations, there have existed powerful
rituals designed to transform and consecrate individuals, groups, or even entire cultures.
These transformative events, termed rites of passage by anthropologists, are of
fundamental importance to the discussion of the experience of symbolic death and
rebirth.

In Road to Eleusis authors Albert Hoffman, Gordon Wasson and Carl Ruck present
convincing evidence that the Eleusinian Mysteries, the oldest religion in the West,
centered around a mass tripping ritual. For 2 millennia pilgrims journeyed from all over
the world to take part in the Mysteries and drink the sacred kykeon. Plato, Aristotle and
Sophicles were among those who participated in this secret ritual.

In spite of our mechanical sophistication we may well be savages, simple brutes quite
unaware of the potential within. It is highly likely that coming generations will look back
at us and wonder: how could they so childishly play with their simple toys and primitive
words and remain ignorant of the speed, power and relational potential within? How
could they fail to use the equipment they possessed?

In the field of treatment of alcoholism, there were several studies showing a close to 50
percent control rate following “LSD therapy,” a figure which cannot be matched by any
other therapeutic approach to this problem and successful beyond the wildest dreams of
Alcoholics Anonymous, to say nothing of conventional psychoanalysis, which has a
success rate of curing alcoholics of about one in every hundred, which is nobody.

In the transpersonal domain, where psychological and spiritual growth are one,
psychedelics appear to be powerful tools for the investigation of consciousness; they
could enable us to expand our understanding of the human mind and the nature of
creative consciousness. A willingness to question our assumptions and to keep an open
mind with respect to potential benefits and potential hazards is essential.

In the Western world, visionaries and mystics are a good deal less common than they
used to be. In the currently fashionable picture of the universe, there is no place for valid
transcendental experiences. Consequently, those who have had what they regard as valid
transcendental experiences are looked upon with suspicion, as being either lunatics or
swindlers.

In this day, when spiritual hungers and longings are both widespread and acute, LSD has
a great potential in the field of religious development alone. (“Alone” doesn’t mean that
LSD’s potential is just in religious development, but also many other fields. To put it
another way, even if LSD’s great potential was just in religious development, it would
still be very significant.)

In traditional psychiatry, mystical experiences of any kind are usually treated in the
context of serious psychopathology; they are seen as indications of a psychotic process.
In his comprehensive and careful study, Maslow was able to demonstrate that persons
who had spontaneous “peak” experiences frequently benefited from them and showed a
distinct trend toward “self- realization” or “self-actualization.”

Indians experience the collective unconscious as an immediate reality, not just as an
intellectual construct. It is significant that this experience of shared consciousness holds a
most important place in the society. In fact, as a sacramental ritual, it is the basis of tribal
unity because it proves and confirms the supposition that every person in the tribe is the
same as every other person in the most fundamental way.

It is a very interesting historical fact that in the 12th century the famous Abbot of St.
Denis, Suger, says that in his time, in all the churches, there were 2 collecting boxes, one
for the poor and one for making stained glass windows and whereas the collecting box
for the poor was generally empty, the collecting box for stained glass windows was
always full, showing that people did immensely value this kind of visionary experience.

It is now clear that these ancient practices were neither pathological phenomena nor the
products of primitive superstition; rather, they were legitimate and highly sophisticated
spiritual practices that acknowledged and paid homage to a much broader view of
consciousness than has been held by those who adhere to the Newtonian-Cartesian model
of reality.

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

Jung’s basic assumption was that the spiritual element is an organic and integral part of
the psyche. Genuine spirituality is an aspect of the collective unconscious and is
independent of childhood programming and the individual’s cultural or educational
background. Thus, if self-exploration and analysis reach sufficient depth, spiritual
elements emerge spontaneously into consciousness.

Laws against mere possession or even cultivation of these plants are in basic conflict with
Biblical principles. “And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed,
which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree
yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.’ …And God saw everything that he had made,
and behold, it was very good.” (“Everything” and “every herb” includes psychedelics.)

Leary always talked about the deadening effect of the “adjust or else” brand of
psychology that had held sway over the 1950’s, but he hadn’t realized just how dead in
the water most of his colleagues were until he offered them psilocybin and they refused
to try it. My God, these were psychologists yet they lacked the slightest curiosity about
their own unconsciouses!

Leary believed that the human race is presently evolving to a higher level of
consciousness and a greater spiritual awareness. His research with LSD seemed to bear
out the fact that our nervous systems are equipped to receive a vastly greater spectrum of
reality than we realized; and once the veils of perception are cleansed, wars, racism,
competitiveness and violence will be seen as old, outgrown, pre-human traits.

Leary had always talked a great game about the deadening effect of the “adjust or else”
brand of psychology that had held sway over the 1950’s, but he hadn’t realized just how
dead in the water most of his colleagues were until he offered them psilocybin and they
refused to try it. My God, these were psychologists yet they lacked the slightest curiosity
about their own unconsciouses!

Leary stated “We see ourselves as modest heroes, an educational tool to facilitate the
development of new social forms…We’re simply trying to get back to man’s sense of
nearness to himself and others, the sense of social reality which civilized man has lost.
We’re in step with the basic needs of the human race and those who oppose us are far
out.”

Leary was joined by assistant professor Richard Alpert, a hearty band of graduate
students, and a constant stream of many of the leading intellectuals and artists of that
time. Leary and his team employed new methods in psychological research by using
themselves as subjects, reporting directly the drugs’ effects on their own minds.
Sometimes they would take psilocybin with their students. This was unheard of.

Let’s come on as psychologists and develop a research project that aims at producing the
ecstatic moment. Develop a science of ecstatics. Train graduate students to illuminate
themselves and others. We have statisticians who systemize the static—how about
estatisticians who systemize the ecstatic? (That was Timothy Leary talking to an
associate at Harvard.)

Liberal principles demand free speech, freedom of worship, and the right to privacy. The
government does not claim to know what sorts of experiences and thoughts its subjects
should and should not cultivate. But drugs are a special case. We do not admit, even to
ourselves, that outlawing psychedelic drugs could be in part an attempt to eliminate
certain kinds of experience and thinking.

Like everyone else, I am functioning at only a fraction of my potential. How grateful I
should feel if someone had taught me to be, say 30 percent efficient instead of 15 or
maybe 20 percent! (That was Aldous Huxley before he had ever tried psychedelics.
Even then, he had the right idea, but we actually are at just a tiny fraction of one percent
of our potential or efficiency.)

Many psychiatrists, even though they talk constantly of the unconscious mind and are
always speculating on the unconscious thoughts of their patients, appear to know this part
of the mind only as an intellectual construct and not as a direct experience. Furthermore,
many of them appear to be quite frightened of patients who actually live in their
unconscious minds, particularly if patients have made this contact by using drugs.

Modern consciousness research has confirmed the basic thesis of perennial philosophy
that the consensus reality reveals only one aspect or fragment of existence. There are
important realms of reality that are transcendental and transphenomenal. The impulse in
human beings to connect with the spiritual domain is an extremely powerful and
important force. It resembles, in its nature, sexuality.

Most of our colleagues in the psychology department still couldn’t take the brain-change
work seriously. They couldn’t admit that our new subject matter even existed. Altered
states of consciousness simply didn’t exist as a category in the psychology of that time. It
was the familiar tunnel vision that has always narrowed the academic mind. (That was
Timothy Leary at Harvard.)

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

Myth is obviously a kind of non-logical philosophy; it expresses in the form of a story or,
very often, in the form of some visual image, or even in the form of a dance or a
complicated ritual, some generalized feeling about the nature of the world and of man’s
experience in regard to it. Myth is unpretentious, in the sense that it doesn’t claim to be
strictly true. It is merely expressive of our feelings about experience.

Myths do not come from a concept system; they come from a life system; they come out
of a deeper center. We must not confuse mythology with ideology. Myths come from
where the heart is, and where the experience is, even as the mind may wonder why
people believe these things. The myth does not point to a fact; the myth points beyond
facts to something that informs the fact.

Newspaper headlines describing the horrors of LSD “bummers” and drug-related
accidents ignited a witch-hunting response in legislators, politicians, educators and many
professionals. Ignoring the data from almost two decades of responsible scientific
experimentation, the anti-drug propaganda presented LSD as a totally unpredictable
devil’s drug that represented a grave danger.

Newtonian-Cartesian science views matter as the foundation of the universe. Scientists
who adhere to this system of thought portray consciousness as a product of physiological
processes taking place in the brain. From such a perspective, each of our consciousnesses
is confined to the inside of our skulls, absolutely separated from the consciousnesses of
other people. (These scientists have it all wrong of course.)

No government has the right to interfere with what happens inside someone’s body or
nervous system. Anything we do behaviorally in public to hurt anybody else in any way,
that is a crime. What we do inside our bodies with our nervous systems or anything that
we say in the way of a lecture or writing cannot be punished, as per the First Amendment
to the Constitution. (Tell that to our crooked, moronic, right-wing fascist politicians.)

None of the hundreds of questions raised by the psychedelics, many of them fundamental
to the way the mind processes information, have been answered. Rather, the powers that
be have performed a holding action comparable to the one the Papal Curia tried with
Galileo, when they confined him to a house in Arceti and forbade him the right to
continue his research.

None of these people has the slightest idea of why the Indians use peyote, or what the
effects of the drug are. Since they do not know, and will not try to understand, they
presume that it can only be evil and therefore must be prohibited. Certainly, they feel, a
practice which is so incomprehensible to Christianity cannot be religious and therefore
has no right under the constitutional guarantees of religious freedom.

Nonordinary experiences are vital to us because they are expressions of our unconscious
minds, and the integration of conscious and unconscious experience is the key to life,
health, spiritual development, and fullest use of our nervous systems. By instilling fear
and guilt about altered states of consciousness into our children, we force this drive
underground, guaranteeing that it will be expressed in antisocial ways.

Once people have experienced the spiritual dimensions growing in their lives, they often
learn that their lives without it were futile and impoverished. Previously, they may have
managed adequately but unhappily, unaware of the seemingly endless realms that have
since enormously enriched their existence. They discover that spirituality is a necessary
element that enhances their lives and sense of well-being.

One can raise the question whether depriving the investigator of experience is not
tantamount to blinding him to the very area that will mediate therapeutic results. (Are
little kids the only people “objective” enough to judge sex? Any adult will say that kids
know nothing about it. It’s the same with LSD. The investigator or therapist has to take
the LSD himself in order to know what it’s all about.)

Openness to new data challenging traditional beliefs and dogmas has always been an
important characteristic of the best of science and a moving force of progress. A true
scientist does not confuse theory with reality and does not try to dictate what nature
should be like. It is not up to us to decide what the human psyche can do and what it
cannot do to fit our neatly organized preconceived ideas.

Opposing terms like psychosis vs. revelation, hallucination vs. vision, regression vs.
mystical insight, and sensory distortion vs. sensory enhancement embodied two different
attitudes toward the experience and even suggested two different world views.
Psychedelic drug users thought that the words of psychiatry and medicine were being
used as a weapon against them.

Our capacity to think, except in the service of what we are dangerously deluded in
supposing is our self-interest and in conformity with common sense, is pitifully limited:
our capacity to even see, hear, touch, taste and smell is so shrouded in veils of
mystification that an intensive discipline of unlearning is necessary for anyone before one
can begin to experience the world afresh, with innocence, truth and love.

Our difficulty is not that we have developed conscious attention but that we have lost the
wider style of feeling which should be its background, the feeling which would let us
know what nature is from the inside. Perhaps some intimation of this lost feeling
underlies our perennial nostalgia for the “natural life” and the myth of a golden age from
which we have fallen.

Our problem is that the power of thought enables us to construct symbols of things apart
from the things themselves. This includes the ability to make a symbol, an idea of
ourselves apart from ourselves. Because the idea is so much more comprehensible than
the reality, the symbol so much more stable than the fact, we learn to identify ourselves
with our idea of ourselves. Hence, the subjective feeling of a “self” which has a “mind”.

Our society classifies an intoxicated individual as criminal or noncriminal on the basis of
which drug he used to get high. It’s like living in an occupied country. I feel like I’m in
one of those old movies about Occupied Europe from the 1940’s. That is precisely how
the majority of pot smokers feel. They are the largest minority group in the country and
yet they are living in a weird scenario straight out of the French Underground.

Previously almost-depressed individuals typically emerge from a successfully integrated
LSD session with elevated mood, joyful appreciation of existence, enhanced self-esteem
and self-acceptance and greater capacity for meaningful human relationships. Their inner
life is enriched, they are more open and they show an increased appreciation of beauty in
nature and art.

Psychiatrists should listen to what their patients say about drug experiences; patients
often know more about the workings of the unconscious mind from direct experience
than doctors do from their intellects. Teachers should try to learn from students who
know more about the subject than they do. In these ways, we will come to have better
information than we now get from experts who do not know what they are talking about.

Psychiatrists use their diagnostic jargon of mental pathology for states of consciousness
which many of them have never even bothered to experience. (They are no more
enlightened than the theologians who refused to look into Galileo’s telescope claiming
that they already knew how the universe is ordered and that if the telescope showed
anything different, it would be the doings of the Devil.)

Psychic realities experienced during altered states of consciousness are an intrinsic part of
the human personality that cannot be repressed and denied without serious damage to the
quality of human life. For the full expression of human nature, they must be recognized,
acknowledged and explored, and in this exploration, the traditional depictions of the
afterlife can be our guides.

Rather than being from two distinctly different realms with discrete boundaries,
consciousness and matter are engaged in a constant dance, their interplay forming the
entire fabric of existence. This is a notion that is being confirmed by research in modern
physics, biology, thermodynamics, information and systems theory, and other branches of
science.

Reports created a witch-hunting response from parents, teachers, ministers, police
authorities and legislators. Unfortunately, many mental-health professionals participated
to some extent in this irrational approach; although the reports of two decades of
scientific experimentation with LSD were available in the psychiatric and psychological
literature, they allowed their image of this drug to be formented by newspaper headlines.

Science could make no sense of certain evidence about the world or the mind that had
been considered central in older traditions, and therefore paid as little attention as
possible to that evidence. Whole areas of experience and fields of intellectual endeavor
were relegated to the domain of religious faith or consigned to the categories of fraud,
folly, and disease.

So many practitioners of the inexact sciences (e.g., psychology, anthropology, sociology)
let it be known most clearly that they already know what reality is and therefore what
sanity is. For these poor drudges, reality is the world of nonpoetry, in accordance with
the great Western myth that all nature outside the human skin is a stupid and unfeeling
machine.(mechanism?)

Some individuals are genetically templated to live part of their time in the future. They’re
alienated from current realities. Sometimes they feel agonizingly out of step with the
“nomads” around them. Frequently, they are locked away for having visions. It helps
when mutants can recognize themselves. Then, they can view it all with humorous
insight.

Specialists from various disciplines have asked me for specific details of my
observations, because they felt that these data may have important implications for such
diverse areas as personality theory, psychology of religion, psychotherapy, genetics,
psychology and psychopathology of art, anthropology, the study of mythology,
education, psychosomatic medicine and obstetric practice. (That was Stanislav Grof.)

Spiritual experiences of this kind can occur in individuals of high intellectual caliber and
rigorous scientific training, in fact, they are fully compatible with observations
accumulated by various branches of modern research. An important illustration of this
point, for those who emphasize the scientific world-view, is the recent convergence of
quantum-relativistic physics and various mystical traditions.

That famous “revival of religion,” about which so many people have been talking for so
long, will not come about as a result of evangelistic mass meetings or the television
appearances of photogenic clergymen. It will come about as a result of biochemical
discoveries that will make it possible for large numbers of men and women to achieve a
radical self-transcendence and a deeper understanding of the nature of things.

That which, in the language of religion, is called “this world” is the universe of reduced
awareness. 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
considered as genuinely real by the local language.

The average Westerner is naive about nonordinary states of consciousness and has many
misconceptions and prejudices about some of the experiences that are potentially the
most healing. We try to convey a clear message that such phenomena as death-rebirth
sequences, archetypal visions and states of cosmic unity are absolutely normal and that
having them in no way implies pathology.

The CIA and military investigators were given free reign to conduct their covert
experimentation. Apparently, in the eyes of the FDA, those seeking to develop
hallucinogens as weapons were somehow more “sensitive to their scientific integrity and
moral and ethical responsibilities” than independent researchers dedicated to exploring
the therapeutic potential of LSD.

The discovery of brain-change drugs has been compared to the discovery of the
microscope. New forms swim into perception. It’s a truism that you cannot impose the
ethics and language of the past upon the subject matter revealed by a new extension of
the senses. Galileo was arrested for describing what he saw in his telescope. The
inquisition would not bother to look through the lens.

The effect of ecstasy is to create motivation, the longing to continue the ecstasy and
fulfill it. Critics of the drug cults complain that they retreat from life’s realities, become
passive and inert. Actually, it is not so much this aspect of the psychedelic scene but its
precise opposite to which they object. It is not the reading of Thoreau; it is the taking
him seriously to which society objects.

The human brain, we are told, is composed of about 10 billion nerve cells, any one of
which may connect with as many as 25,000 other nerve cells. The number of
interconnections which this adds up to would stagger even the astronomer and
astronomers are used to dealing with astronomical numbers. The number is far greater
than all the atoms in the universe.

The image of human nature on which this approach is based is closer to Hindu
philosophy than to Freudian psychoanalysis. Behind the barrier of negative instinctual
forces associated with early biographical traumas, there exist vast transpersonal realms of
the superconscious mind and a system of positive universal values not dissimilar to
Abraham Maslow’s metavalues.

The last thing an institution of education wants to allow you to do is expand your
consciousness, to use the untapped potential in your head, to experience directly. They
don’t want you to take life seriously, they want you to take their game seriously.
Education, dear students, is anesthetic, a narcotic procedure which is very likely to blunt
your sensitivity and to immobilize your brain and your behavior for the rest of your lives.

The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of
happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings, and
of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfaction of life are
to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their
thoughts, their emotions and their sensations.

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

The mystics continuously get in trouble with religious authorities, but often also with
political authorities. By his teaching and by the very way he lives, Jesus appeals to
common sense and blows the pretense of public opinion to pieces. Common people said,
“Wow, this man speaks with authority, not like our authorities.” You can imagine how
the authorities felt about it and how they reacted: “This man has to die!”

The new data are of such far-reaching relevance that they could revolutionize our
understanding of the human psyche. Some of the observations transcend in their
significance the framework of psychology and psychiatry and represent a serious
challenge to the current Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm of Western science. They could
change drastically our image of human nature, of culture and history, and of reality.

The process I was witnessing in others and experiencing myself had a deep similarity
with shamanic initiations, rites of passage of various cultures, and the ancient mysteries
of death and rebirth. Western scientists had ridiculed and rejected these sophisticated
procedures, believing that they had successfully replaced them with rational and
scientifically sound approaches.

The recognition of the primary and independent significance of spiritual aspects of the
psyche or of what would these days be called the transpersonal dimension, was extremely
rare among Freud’s followers. Only Jung was able to penetrate really deeply into the
transpersonal domain and formulate a system of psychology radically different from any
of Freud’s followers.

The traditional definition of sanity involves perceptual, emotional, and cognitive
congruence with the Newtonian-Cartesian image of the universe, not as a pragmatically
useful model, but as the only accurate description of reality. Substantial and critical
deviations which seriously challenge the Newtonian-Cartesian postulates are labeled as
psychosis.

There are people in this society who will do everything within their considerable power
to stop our research. The managers of consciousness, from the Vatican to Harvard, have
been in this business for a long time and they’re not about to give up their monopoly.
And after all, they’re the experts and we’re the amateurs. They’re the pros and we’re just
the lovers. (That was Aldous Huxley talking to Timothy Leary while both were tripping.)

There exists ample evidence that the transcendental impulse is the most vital and
powerful force in human beings. Systematic denial and expression of spirituality that is
so characteristic for modern Western societies can be a critical factor contributing to the
alienation, existential anxiety, individual and social psychopathology, criminality,
violence and self-destructive tendencies of contemporary humanity.

There had been previous explorations. There was a history, a tradition. There were maps
and guidebooks. Though trained in the Western methods of scientific research, Leary
(and the rest of us) felt affirmed in our spiritual approach to psychedelic experiences by
the discovery of these ancient writings. Our initial work on this text was later developed
and published as The Psychedelic Experience. (That was Ralph Metzner.).

There has arisen, in most of the great religious traditions of the world, a fantastic over-
valuation of words. Over-valuation of words leads all too frequently to the fabrication
and idolatrous worship of dogmas, to the insistence on uniformity of belief, the demand
for assent by all and sundry to a set of propositions which, though meaningless, are to be regarded as sacred.

There is a limitless range of awareness for which we now have no words. That awareness
can expand beyond the range of your ego, your self, your familiar identity, beyond
everything you have learned, beyond your notions of space and time, beyond the
differences which usually separate people from each other and from the world around
them.

There is no form of energy on this planet that isn’t recorded somewhere in your body.
Built within every cell are molecular strands of memory and awareness called the DNA
code, the genetic blueprint that has designed and executed the construction of your body.
This is an ancient strand of molecules that possesses memories of every previous
organism that has contributed to your present existence.

They’re not interested in mystical experience at divinity schools. They’re interested only
in words and in history. If someone had a mystical vision a safe 2000 years ago and left
some record of it, that might interest them. But mystical experience, the raw and vital
force that gives rise to a religion, is too much for them to cram into their semantic,
pseudoscientific endeavor to understand God.

This transcendence of space and time is a key concept in all mystical experience. In our
present mode of mental consciousness, we experience the world in terms of space and
time; we experience everything separated in space and going from point to point in time.
It is well known that modern physics calls the whole space-time system in question, and
the transcendence of the space-time dimension is central in mystical experience.

Those who argue that LSD-induced spiritual experiences cannot be valid because they are
too easily available and their occurrence and timing depend on the individual’s decision,
misunderstand the nature of the psychedelic state. The psychedelic experience is neither
easy nor a partictable way to God. Many subjects do not have spiritual elements in their
sessions despite many exposures to the drug.

Those who were previously convinced that death was the ultimate defeat and meant the
end of any form of existence discovered various alternatives to this materialistic and
pragmatic point of view. They came to realize how little conclusive evidence there is for
any authoritative opinion in this matter and often began seeing death and dying as a
cosmic voyage into the unknown.

Three hundred years ago, if I announced there was a level of reality made up of tiny
particles which seem to have a beauty, a meaning, a planfulness of their own, I’d be in
danger of being imprisoned. When I could persuade people to look through the
microscope lens at a leaf, or a snowflake or a drop of blood, then they would discover
that beyond the macroscopic world are visible realms of energy and meaning.

To interpret the visionary experience laymen use the language of ecstasy and
psychiatrists use the language which is familiar and natural to them, the dialog of
diagnosis. Now the curious thing about psychiatric language is that it’s almost completely
negative, a pompous, gloomy lexicon of troubles, symptoms, abnormalities,
eccentricities.

To understand the transpersonal realm, we must begin thinking of consciousness in an
entirely new way. It is here that we look beyond the belief that consciousness exists only
as a result of our individual lives. As we come to terms with the concept of the
transpersonal realm, we begin thinking of consciousness as something that exists outside
and independent of us, something that in its essence is not bound to matter.

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

Transpersonal psychology has emerged as that branch of psychology specifically
concerned with the study of human consciousness. It attempts to expand the field of
psychological inquiry to include such human experiences as those induced by
psychedelics, as well as similar states attained through the practice of meditation or other
disciplines.

Under conditioning, it seems impossible and even absurd to realize that myself does not
reside in the ego alone, but in the whole surge of energy which ranges from the galaxies
to the nuclear fields in my body. At this level of existence “I” am immeasurably old; my
forms are infinite and their comings and goings are simply the pulses or vibrations of a
single and eternal flow of energy.

Under the influence of Freudian psychoanalysis, the concept of the ego is associated with
one’s ability to test reality and to function adequately in everyday life. Individuals who
share this limited point of view see the perspective of the ego death with horror.
However, what actually dies in this process is a basically paranoid attitude toward the
world.

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

We felt like people who had stumbled, almost by accident, onto a possible cure for a
virulent plague that was scourging the country. Yet the majority of the inhabitants,
sufferers from the plague, were denying that there even was this condition. Hence anyone
proposing a cure for it must inevitable be seen as either as a religious nut or a depraved
fraud, or both.

We felt that we were involved in a fascinating historical event—the first research project
in which experimentally induced mystical experiences were being woven into the fabric
of daily work and play. We saw ourselves as pioneers developing modern versions of the
traditional techniques for philosophic inquiry and personal growth. (That was Timothy
Leary.)

We forgot that for thousands of years the psychedelic vision has been the rite of passage
of the teen-ager—the Dakota Indian boy who sits on the mountaintop fasting and
sleepless, waiting for the revelation. The threshold of adult game life is the ancient and
natural time for the rebirth experience, the flip-out trip from which you come back as a
man.

We have to think about the university as a place which spawns new ideas or breaks
through to new visions, a place where we can learn to use our neurological equipment.
The university and, for that matter, every aspect of the educational system is paid for by
adult society to train young people to keep the same game going, to be sure that you do
not use your heads.

We use all sorts of drugs to ease our minds but none to reveal our minds. We seem to
want change, but not understanding. Most of us have never heard of psychedelic drugs,
and those who have would never think of using one themselves. Although man has used
drugs in religious rites to discover his relationship with God since the dawn of history,
the Judeo-Christian mind cannot accept such practices.

We were not to be limited by the pathological point of view. We were not to interpret
ecstasy as mania, or calm serenity as catatonia; we were not to diagnose Buddha as a
detached schizoid; nor Christ as a exhibitionist masochist; nor the mystic experience as a
symptom; nor the visionary state as a model psychosis. (That was Timothy Leary and
Aldous Huxley agreeing.)

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

Western cultures have bred a type of human being who feels strongly alienated. He has
lost his connection with the surrounding universe. He does not know that the “ultimate
inside” of himself is the same as the “ultimate inside” of the cosmos or that, in other
words, his sensation of being “I” is a glimmering intimation of what the universe itself
feels like on the inside.

Western science recognizes as real only those phenomena that can be objectively
observed and measured. (That’s a very naive, narrow, limited scope. Cells of the body
were real before the discovery of the microscope. The earth was always round and always
revolved around the sun regardless of what Western scientists knew or could “objectively
observe and measure”.)

Western scientific disciplines have described the universe as an infinitely complex
mechanical system of interacting, discrete particles and separate objects. In this context,
matter appears to be solid, inert, passive and unconscious; life, consciousness and
creative intelligence are seen as insignificant accidents and derivatives of material
development. (Einstein understood. Will the other Western scientists ever wake up?)

Western scientists view their own particular approach to reality and psychological
phenomena as superior and “proven beyond a shadow of doubt,” while judging the
perspectives of other cultures as inferior, naive, and primitive. The traditional academic
approach takes into consideration only those observations and experiences that are
mediated by the five senses in an ordinary state of consciousness.

What is needed is the clear voice of people who have no stake in disguising the truth. The
young must be taught to distinguish between psychedelics, which hold out the promise of
religious experience and of self-transcendence, and destructive drugs like cocaine,
amphetamines, heroin, crack. They must be taught to respect the psychedelics and to be
ready spiritually and psychologically before they attempt to take them.

What we ordinarily take in and respond to is a curious mixture of immediate experience
with culturally conditioned symbol, of sense impressions with preconceived ideas about
the nature of things. And by most people the symbolic elements in this cocktail of
awareness are felt to be more important than the elements contributed by immediate
experience.

When I started taking LSD, I just saw that the academic thing was more or less a socio-
political game more than a true learning experience, in that the things that I really felt I
was learning were when I was just purely being or purely experiencing something and not
trying to read it from a stilted textbook or hearing it from some superintellectual
professor.

When the backlash against psychedelics began, the therapeutic community fell all over
itself in its eagerness to denounce the LSD work as bad science and the researchers who
had been involved in it as charlatans. A curious situation arose whereby those who knew
the most about psychedelics were relegated to the sidelines of the debate, while those
who knew the least were elevated to the status of “expert.”

When there is “knowing,” grammatical convention requires that there must be someone
who knows and something which is known. We are so accustomed to this convention in
speaking and thinking that we fail to recognize that it is simply a convention and that it
does not necessarily correspond to the actual experience of knowing. (If “a light flashed,”
the flashing IS the light.)

When we consider the activity of a modern city, it is difficult to realize that in the cells of
our bodies, infinitely more complicated processes are at work—ceaseless manufacture,
acquisition of food, storage, communication and administration… All this takes place in
superb harmony, with the cooperation of all the participants of a living system, regulated
down to the smallest detail.

While samples of psychedelic drugs of doubtful quality are available in the streets and on
college campuses, it is nearly impossible for a serious researcher to get a license for
scientific investigation of their effects. As a result of this, professionals are in a very
paradoxical situation: they are expected to give expert help in an area in which they are
not allowed to conduct research and generate new scientific information.

Will you merely enjoy them as you would enjoy an evening at the puppet show and then
go back to business as usual, back to behaving like the silly delinquents you imagine
yourselves to be? (That was Aldous Huxley indicating that once you have been
enlightened by psychedelics, you don’t just go back to business as usual with the same
outlook, as if nothing happened.)

With the advent of modern science, the notion of acceptable reality was narrowed to
include only those aspects of existence that are material, tangible, and measurable.
Spirituality in any form was exiled from the modern scientific worldview. Western
cultures adopted a restricted and rigid interpretation of what is “normal” in human
experience and behavior and rarely accepted those who sought to go beyond these limits.

With the Hebrew-Christian universe, God, the Absolute itself, is good as against bad and
thus to be immoral or in the wrong is to feel oneself an outcast not merely from human
society but also from existence itself, from the root and ground of life. To be in the wrong
therefore arouses a metaphysical anxiety and sense of guilt, a state of eternal damnation.
(This, of course, is absurd brainwashing, a vicious con game.)

Within the cosmic order, every component pattern, every object and event, is related to
each other; there is a co-varying togetherness of all things. But, by creatures like
ourselves, most of the interconnections within the general Gestalt are and will always be
unrecognized. For us, “the world is full of a number of things,” which we tend to see as
so many independent entities.

You are holding in your hand a great human document. But unless you are one of the few
Westerners who have experienced a mystical minute of expanded consciousness, you will
probably not understand what the author is saying. Too bad, but still not a cause for
surprise. The history of ideas reminds us that new concepts and new visions have always
been non-understood. We cannot understand that for which we have no words.

You can bring the subconscious into the realm of discriminative consciousness and
thereby, to draw upon the unrestrictive treasury of subconscious memory, wherein are
stored the records of not only our past lives but the records of the past of our race, the
past of humanity, and of all pre-human forms of life, if not the very consciousness that
makes life possible in this universe.

You have to go out of your mind to use your head. You have to pass beyond everything
you have learned in order to become acquainted with the new areas of consciousness.
Ignorance of this fact is the veil which shuts man within the narrow confines of his
acquired, artificial concepts of “reality” and prevents him from coming to know his own
true nature.

Young people started pouring into the Haight, propelled by a gut-level emptiness,
searching, anything that might relieve the burden of nonliving that gnawed at their
insides. They believed that at the other end of the rainbow was Haight-Ashbury, the
Capital of Forever, where beautiful people cared for each other, where all would be
provided and everyone could do their own thing without being hassled.

You are holding in your hand a great human document. But unless you are one of the few
Westerners who have experienced a mystical minute of expanded consciousness, you will
probably not understand what the author is saying. Too bad, but still not a cause for
surprise. The history of ideas reminds us that new concepts and new visions have always
been non-understood. We cannot understand that for which we have no words.

You can bring the subconscious into the realm of discriminative consciousness and
thereby, to draw upon the unrestrictive treasury of subconscious memory, wherein are
stored the records of not only our past lives but the records of the past of our race, the
past of humanity, and of all pre-human forms of life, if not the very consciousness that
makes life possible in this universe.

You have to go out of your mind to use your head. You have to pass beyond everything
you have learned in order to become acquainted with the new areas of consciousness.
Ignorance of this fact is the veil which shuts man within the narrow confines of his
acquired, artificial concepts of “reality” and prevents him from coming to know his own
true nature.

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

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

Forgotten in the later hysteria of the 1960’s was the exquisite design of the early Harvard
experiments. Rarely in the short history of psychology was such elegant, complex,
socially influential research conducted! At the same time that the CIA was furtively
dosing unwitting Harvard students for the purposes of control and destruction, we were
operating with the books wide open. No secrets. Total collaboration. (That was Timothy
Leary.)

George used to tell me about the visions and insights and perceptual fireworks. I used to
listen politely but not caring. I had no concepts, no mental hooks on which to hang his
words and no intuitive electricity to get turned-on. Like every educated savage, I
automatically discredited anything that I didn’t understand. Now it was different. The
visionary flash had come. (That was Timothy Leary looking back to before he tried
psychedelics.)

Harvard dismissed Timothy Leary without a hearing even though his contracts had
several more months to run. There had been no effective protest by the Harvard faculty
against this gross abuse of the principles of academic freedom. Previously I had put
professors on a kind of pedestal, but my views were now gradually changing. I realized
that the average university professor, like most human beings, is both sheep-minded and
chicken-hearted.

I had psychological data, thousands of test scores and numerical indices which
demonstrated with precision why psychotherapy did not work. Each laborious calculation
was proving that psychology was just a mind-game, an eccentric head trip on the part of
the psychologists and that psychotherapy was an arduous, expensive, ineffective,
unimaginative attempt to impose the mind of the doctor on the mind of the patient.
(That’s Timothy Leary.)

If the human potential that Jesus demonstrated is understood to be within us, if the
capacity to grow to godlike stature is directly experienced by all Christendom as the key
to the Kingdom, then Christianity will fulfill its purpose by encouraging people to evolve,
to transform themselves, to rise to a higher state. (This means the LSD state of cosmic
consciousness. Do phony idiots such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson understand
that?)

If the potential exists for the upheaval of a person’s “change of life flow,” then it is
unprofessional, if not criminal, to fail to advise him of this potential outcome. And if you,
yourself, as the investigator, are uncertain of the potential ramifications of such an
experiment, then you are remiss in exposing others to that which you are not personally
familiar. One must personally know the experience to understand properly another’s
experience.

In addition to the Freudian “individual unconscious,” there is also the “collective
unconscious,” which contains the memories and the cultural heritage of all of humanity.
According to Jung, the universal and primordial patterns in the collective unconscious, or
“archetype,” are mythological in nature. Experiences that involve the archetypal
dimensions of the psyche convey a sense of sacredness—or “numinosity,” in Jung’s terms.

In ordinary seeing, we are hardly ever directly aware of our immediate impressions. For
these immediate impressions are more or less profoundly modified by a mind that does
most of its thinking in terms of words. Every perception is promptly conceptualized and
generalized, so that we do not see the particular thing or event in its naked immediacy;
we see only the objective illustration of some generic notion, only the concretion of an
abstract word.

Leary the scientist, Alpert the intellectual and later the mystic, Metzner the scholar: what
held these three together was their shared faith in the power of the transcendent
experience to remove the blinders that keep us at odds with each other. A world where all
humans have access to the mystical experience would be a world transformed, they
believed. Everyone would then directly see what Jesus, Buddha, Moses and Mohammed
preached.

Mainstream science holds a very limited view of the nature of the human being.
Clarification of this situation is now being presented in the relatively new field of
Transpersonal Psychology, which recognizes those aspects of human experience in which
the sense of identity of self extends beyond the individual or personal to encompass wider
aspects of humankind—life, psyche, and cosmos—validating the spiritual foundation of
life.

Our attitudes towards psychedelic drugs involve response to certain kinds of experience
as well as certain substances. We have a mysticism problem as well as a drug problem,
and its historical causes are older and more complicated than the causes of the drug
controversy. Mystical, messianic, and shamanistic religion always comes into conflict
with established authority after social evolution has reached the stage of hierarchal state
systems.

Perhaps the most effective stratagram of the intellect is to convince the owner that it is
equivalent to the mind; if one accepts this notion, abandoning the intellect becomes
equivalent to losing one’s mind. For this reason, intellectuals tend to look upon persons
who have gone beyond the intellect as unfortunates who have suffered a mental
catastrophe, even though those persons may have greater awareness than any intellectual
can have.

Systematic study of non-ordinary states has shown me, beyond any doubt, that the
traditional understanding of the human personality, limited to postnatal biography and to
the Freudian individual unconscious, is painfully narrow and superficial. To account for
all the extraordinary new observations, it became necessary to create a radically
expanded model of the human psyche and a new way of thinking about mental health and
disease.

The Harvard Psychedelic Project was surrounded by a charged field of excitement,
glamour, adventure, enthusiasm, mystery, hyperbole, passion, controversy. Those who
were running the show were charismatic, distinguished, articulate and colorful. Whilst the
majority of the Harvard faculty was content to observe the world, our message was
revolutionary: if things are not right, then let’s change them. (That was Michael
Hollingshead.)

The old paradigms of in psychiatry have now outlived their usefulness and are impeding
progress. Instead of repressing observations because they do not conform to established
ways of thinking, we should try to formulate new paradigms. A paradigm should not be
confused with an accurate description of reality. It is a useful organization of existing
data, a temporary conceptual tool that should be replaced when it no longer serves its
purpose.

The summer of 1967 was known as the “Summer of Love” and saw a great emergence of
unstructured communal living, new found sexual freedoms, and growing interest in
eastern philosophy and religion. Displays of spontaneity, trust, non-possessiveness and
non-evaluativeness among the new arrivals were attempts to deal with what was
commonly thought to be hypocriticalness, rigid adherence to rules and a lack of
emotional spontaneity between people.

Western scientific disciplines have described the universe as an infinitely complex
mechanical system of interacting, discrete particles and separate objects. In this context,
matter appears to be solid, inert, passive and unconscious; life, consciousness and
creative intelligence are seen as insignificant accidents and derivatives of material
development. (Einstein understood. When will the other Western scientists ever wake
up?)

Who has the right to control your mind? To explore it? To use it? With the invention of
consciousness techniques, a new kind of freedom faces a new kind of control. People
want to explore and develop their minds, and psychedelics are an efficient way to do so.
This desire is part of human nature, but law and social ignorance block the way. I propose
that we recognize a general human right: the right to explore, control, and develop one’s
mind.

A belief in miracles is indispensable to the survival of any spiritual life.
A cosmos that wasn’t joy and bliss would have committed suicide.
A few adventurous and courageous intellectuals have made the psychedelic voyage.
A genuinely religious image is always intrinsically meaningful.
A God not seen as fully beautiful is less good and true and above all, less living.
A God to be grasped or believed in is no God.
A human being is an unlimited field of consciousness.
A life lived in the consciousness of ego and separateness is necessarily a life of conflict.
A life of adventures passes. (eyes closed)
A new language will develop to communicate the new aspect of experience.
A new neurological imprint can be made because all the old imprints are suspended.
A new spirit was born in the ‘60’s.
A psychedelic system of education would result in a true utopia.
A religion that doesn’t produce the ecstatic high becomes secular.
Above the normal life of problems, there exists a second, higher timeless world.
Absence of rush gives a very new and different approach to sexual relations.
After insight comes the deeper question as to the meaning of life.
All ancient and pre-industrial societies held these states in high esteem.
All beings are the masks of the one, divine Self.
All creatures have existed eternally in the divine essence.
All doctrines about God are ultimately false because doctrines are forms of words.
All existence is merged in the present.
All force is tension against the stream.
All is energy, all energy flows, all things continually transform.
All matter, all structure is pulsating energy.
All matter is energy in temporary states of change and there’s no structure.
All parts of the organism regulate themselves spontaneously.
All religious traditions start from mystical experience.
All scientific revolutions have had this quality of being revelations.
All sensation and perception are based on wave vibrations.
All sensations are in their essential agency, one.
All the wonders of nature are no other than oneself.
All things are in reality the Tao or the Buddha nature.
All things are within consciousness.
All things are without independent reality since they exist only in relation to other things.
All types of dualistic philosophy are ultimately unsatisfactory.
Altered states of consciousness have a clear potential for positive psychic development.
An extensive new area of knowledge of mind is waiting to be opened.
An imperial or kingly concept of the ultimate reality is neither necessary nor universal.
An inhibitor of visionary experience is ordinary, everyday, perceptual experience.
An understanding of death is the key to liberation in life.
Any language limits thinking to the bounds of what is expressible in the language.
Any true change would have to be based on a different concentration from that of reason.
As adults, we have forgotten most of our childhood, not only its contents but its flavor.
As aids to learning about being, psychedelics are of great potential value.
As egos, they do not know the ultimate reality at all.
As our field of action widens, our intuitional eyesight shall be increased also.
As the mystics of all traditions say, “Those who have seen KNOW.”
As the sound “water” is not actually water, the classified world is not the real world.
At root, being is vibration.
At root, you are the Godhead, for God is all that there is.
At that time, there was a spirit of camaraderie (the sixties).
At the level of cell, God is the DNA code.
At the point where I am most myself I am most beyond myself.
Awareness is a view of reality free from ideas and judgments.
Because the world isn’t going anywhere, there is no hurry.
Before psychedelics, she had no sense of fulfillment.
Beyond the falsifications of egocentric consciousness lies the world of awareness.
Biochemical mysticism is a demonstrated fact.
Biological death is the beginning of an adventure in consciousness.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Books are not life. To idolize scriptures, even the Bible, is like eating paper money.
Brainwashing is mind-rape.
Buddha “never said a word.” His real message remained always unspoken.
Buddha smiles his knowing Buddha smile.
Bursting through the barricades redefined you as a new person.
By driving LSD use underground, we multiply its dangers while minimizing its benefits.
By intuitive wisdom, he sees into the nature of reality.
Can we summon the courage to receive true knowledge?
Cellular activity is infinitely complex.
Certain states are real attainable, and worth spending time in.
Change your lenses and look at life in a new way.
Childlikeness is the ideal of the sage and the artist.
Chronic LSD users tend to be above average in intelligence.
Church religion almost completely ignores the interior life.
Church religion is spiritually dead.
Cleanse your own heart.
Clear perception of the limitations of the ego will awaken you to the Self.
Compassion leads to higher awareness.
Concepts are not experiences.
Concepts we use in our rational description of reality are relative, limited and illusory.
Conceptual thinking is a barrier.
Conscious attention cannot see the whole for the parts.
Conscious attention is narrowed perception, ignore-ance.
Consciousness as we know it is an act of restraint.
Consciousness has the potential to reach all aspects of existence.
Consciousness, in so far as it feels itself to be the ego cannot stop its own shrinking.
Consciousness is a biochemical electronic network.
Consciousness is a biochemical process.
Consciousness is chemical in nature and changes as chemistry changes.
Consciousness is everywhere.
Consciousness lives.
Consciousness must be studied from within.
Consciousness of this moment is pure awareness, the pure awareness of the Self.
Consciousness must be studied from within.
Consciousness Studies deserve it own place in the academic world.
Contact the ancient energies and wisdoms that are built into your nervous system.
Contemplation is consciousness without seeking.
Cosmological mysticism is an experience of really illuminated from within.
Courage and truthfulness accelerate the process of evolution.
Courage is the key to creativity or to any relinquishing of ego structure.
Creeds and doctrines are ideas about truth and not truth itself.
Cultural conditioning is a process of gradually narrowing your tunnel-reality.
Dante described the song of the angels in heaven as “the laughter of the universe.”
Death is the ultimate equalizer.
Deep down our minds are all connected.
“Die and come to life.”
Discover and nurture your own divinity.
Discover your atomic, cellular, somatic, sensory divinity.
Distance in time is as much a phenomenon within consciousness as distance in space.
Divine grace does not obliterate nature but perfects it.
Divine realms come into a person’s life, the heavenly inner realms.
Divinity is a do it yourself proposition, located somewhere inside your body.
Divinity is our birthright, our inheritance, nearer to us than hand and foot.
Dogma divorced from experience often leads to absurd and rational excesses.
Dogs and cats are high all the time.
Don’t worry about external logic when you are metaphorically describing experience.
Drug-induced mysticism is an expression of grace in modern form.
Drugs are the first and last frontier of human freedom.
Drugs are the religion of the 21st century.
Drug-taking, it is significant, plays an important part in almost every primitive religion.
Duality arises only when we classify, when we sort our experiences into mental boxes.
Each cell is a universe.
Each cell is intelligent.
Each experience opens up new worlds of discovery.
Each human being is born divine. The social system robs him of his divinity.
Each of us is potentially Mind at Large.
Each of us labors under the illusion that our imprint board is reality.
Each one of us is a manifestation of the total energy of the universe.
Each organism is the universe experiencing itself in endless variety.
Each person has to learn to decode their own internal road map.
Each person is born divine and the purpose of life is to rediscover your forgotten divinity.
Ecstasy is a legitimate human need.
Ecstasy is something higher or further out than ordinary pleasure, beyond pleasure.
Education prepares you for the future instead of showing you how to be alive now.
Egg is ego and the bird is the liberated Self.
Ego-centric activity implies that one is still ego-conscious and not at all Self-conscious.
Ego-consciousness involves repression.
Ego discovers that ego is a fraudulent actor in a fake show.
Ego is a small aspect of the totality of the psyche.
Ego is a social fiction, pure hypnosis.
Ego is indeed a fake, a wall of defense around a wall of defense…around nothing.
Ego sweats to maintain a tenacious grasp on the ungraspable.
Ego was never anything but an abstraction.
Each organism is the universe experiencing itself in endless variety.
Earth is in heaven, not opposed to it.
Einstein—Structure becomes process. Matter becomes a transient state of energy.
Einstein’s E=MC2 is a very powerful, psychedelic thing.
Emerson took drugs with David Thoreau.
Enchanted rain. It wears away rock and yet you can walk in it unharmed.
Energy flows.
Energy itself is eternal delight.
Energy was never created and can never be destroyed.
Enlightenment, as a goal of the spiritual path, is partly a result of awakening vision.
Enlightenment, as distinct from doctrine, is alive.
Enlightenment awaits you.
Enlightenment is the discovery of our own true nature.
Enlightenment or awakening is the recognition of what always is.
Establishment controls vision, vision bursts establishment.
Eternal life is the realization that the present is the only reality.
Eternity does not involve the cessation or obliteration of events in time.
Eternity is the mode of unrepressed bodies.
Events themselves are timeless, in that they are always in the present.
Every atom contains the “brain” of the whole universe
Every end is a new beginning.
Every energy is divine.
Every insight has degrees of intensity.
Every living creature plays an evolutionary role.
Every man contains the essence of all men and every woman has within her all women.
Every so-called part of the universe is a function of the whole.
Everyday consciousness is maya, illusion.
Everyone is potentially a creative genius. Every psychotic is a potential sage or healer.
Evolution is not through and man is not a final product.
Existence is basically a kind of dancing or music, an immensely complex energy pattern.
Existence is no longer a riddle to be solved but a mystery to behold.
Expanded awareness extends beyond the limits of the verbal and conceptual.
Experiential self-exploration is an important tool for a spiritual and philosophical quest.
Explore an inward universe.
Explore the tremendous worlds which lie within.
Face truth fearlessly. (Ultimately, there is nothing to fear.)
Facts and events are terms of measurement, rather than realities of nature.
Faith is, above all, openness—an act of trust in the unknown.
Find the wisdom within.
For oriental theologians, there is no eternal damnation.
For us, the planet was without Original Sin.
Freedom comes through complete acceptance of reality.
Freedom is to eternity, to oneness.
From the conscious mind comes intellect; from the unconscious, wisdom.
Fully expanded consciousness feels an identity with the whole world.
Get in touch with your cellular wisdom. Get in touch with the universe within.
Get into the channels of your mind.
Glimpses into alternative realities can shed light on this one.
Go out of your mind and into your head.
God and brotherhood become living, palpable realities.
God dwells within all of us.
God exists at every level of consciousness.
God is a singing, swinging energy process who likes to laugh and make love.
God is an essence without duality.
God is everywhere.
God is here with each single one of us, but wholly within.
God is infinite in the sense of being at once indefinitely immense and indefinitely minute.
God is nearer to you than you are to yourself.
God is ours in the same intimate sense that our consciousness and life are ours.
God is the deepest inside of everything.
God is within us, within our hearts.
God knows how to produce the universe just as I know how to breathe.
God produced LSD.
God’s creative activity is not his labor but his play.
Godmanhood is to be discovered here and now inwardly, not in the letter of the Bible.
Gothic churches and Greek temples were brilliantly colored.
Great beings of every tradition had their inner energy awakened.
Great truths do not take hold of the hearts of the masses.
Greater knowledge brings with it an awareness of ignorance.
Growth towards wholeness means growing beyond ego.
He answered a question as to the nature of nondual reality with a “thunderous silence.”
He not busy being born is busy dying. (That was Bob Dylan.)
Heard called them intranauts as opposed to astronauts.
Heaven is union with God. Hell is separation from God.
Heaven need not wait for the grave.
His spirituality was of the kind that doesn’t announce itself, yet is profound.
Holiness is the life of spontaneity and self-abandonment with humor.
Holy humor is the discovery of the ultimate joke on oneself.
How can we find our way back to ourselves again?
Huge areas of the brain are blocked off from consciousness.
Human consciousness has not adjusted itself to a relational and integrated view of nature.
Human evolution moves in many directions, not along a single path.
Human evolution seems to be characterized by alterations of consciousness.
Humanity is estranged from its authentic possibilities.
Humanity was making a giant leap forward in evolution.
Huxley called for a recognition of the non-verbal humanities.
Huxley saw the urge for self-transcendence as “a principle appetite of the soul.”
“I” am not my body but an evolving consciousness, clothed temporarily in a body.
I can now understand the psychology of divine inspiration or of magical thinking.
I can’t see the back, much less the inside of my head.
I exist at every form of energy and every level of consciousness. (So do you.)
I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.
Ideas and words are more or less fixed, whereas real things change.
If discipline altogether controls spontaneity, grace is entirely lost.
If he has any solitude, it is the solitude which inevitably attaches itself to great wisdom.
If it rejects the spiritual, religion becomes a mere weapon to dominate the world.
If life has a meaning for you beyond the TV-studio game, you are religious.
If people become spiritual, they will no longer differentiate between the religions.
If people could only see their inner beauty, they’d have no need to criticize anyone.
If reality is to be understood in its fullness, there must be total awareness.
If we are true men, Truth is brother to us all.
If you can’t capture the world, then try to capture the heavens.
If you come to know the nature of the mind, then you also come to know the truth.
If you want to be a machine, go to college.
Illusory egos alone bar us from the ecstatic bliss of universal consciousness.
Images sway our emotions more deeply than conceptions.
Immediate experience is timeless.
Improvement in therapy involves a basic change in the patient’s core belief system.
In each human being dwells an infinite power, the root of the universe.
In his deepest being, man is spirit.
In its essence, the experience is a liberation from conventions.
In literatures of different religions, heaven is always a place of gems.
In many cultures, such experiences are seen as a vital source of creative inspiration.
In order to change behavior, it is necessary to change your inner experience.
In reality, the infinite remains undivided.
In school, we never go to know things, we only go to know words.
In terms of human evolution, people not on psychedelics are not fully human.
In the pure present, there is no egotism.
In the West, we are a cult of the ego.
In this universe, there is one great energy and we have no name for it.
Increasing intelligence and awareness is a team sport.
Indians and peyote—Communal feelings of unity and brotherhood are intensely felt.
Indians believe peyote to be of divine origin.
Indians called the magic mushroom God’s flesh.
Indians use peyote as a means of communion with the divine world.
Individual humans evolve at different rates.
Inner dynamics are best explained through metaphors and parable.
Innocence isn’t the absence of the erotic, but its fulfillment.
Insight, when clear enough, persists.
Institutional psychiatrists are really the consciousness police.
Intelligence evolves when the occult and magical become the objective-scientific.
Internal reality is of a different order of reality that is self-validating.
Into the energy which exists before Matter and there in pure Energy, was All-Knowledge.
It is a question of being aware of what is truly valuable and to be prized.
It is ignorance that causes us to identify ourselves with the ego.
It is increasingly clear that our society cannot be both drug-free and free.
It is not an organism in an environment, but a unified field or process, a single behavior.
It is not man but his method of thought which fails to find fulfillment in experience.
It is not the mystics who have trashed the planet.
It is our own inmost selves which are doing the living.
It is possible to become ourselves in the fullest ego-transcending form, even in this life.
It is surely absurd to seek God in terms of a preconceived idea of what God is.
It is the Self and not the ego which realizes.
It is the very ground of mysticism that God and man are at essence one.
It is the world of your soul that you seek.
It is thought processes which prevent realization.
It is time to use new senses, new perceptions.
It is useless to talk about my ego. That only means that I have made up an idea of myself.
It takes courage to go out beyond your mind.
It would show a serious lack of Christian humility to lay claims to superior righteousness.
It’s time to wake up. It’s time to really use our heads.
It’s your trained mind which prevents you from learning.
Jesus was one of the great Buddhas.
Join the holy dance of the visionaries.
Junkies are just sick straight-people who happen to take drugs.
Just as my brain sees with my eyes, the universe feels with my body.
Just as your heart knows its job, your brain is ready to do its job.
Knowledge of the universal and infinite is man’s true end.
Learn how to guide high-flying internal aircraft.
Leary has consolidated ancient psychic wisdoms and cast them in modern-day terms.
Leary sought to find a common ground on which both science and religion could meet.
Leary was one of the perceptive prophets of the age.
Leave the realm of word-symbols.
Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die.
Let your brain become a receiving set for the experience.
Liberate the mind.
Liberating knowledge of God comes to the pure in heart.
Liberation from social time is emotionally encompassing.
Liberation is called awakening because it is a release from social hypnosis.
Liberation is from social rather than physical or metaphysical conditions.
Liberation is from the maya of social institutions and not of the physical world.
Liberation never comes without the realization of the Oneness of Self.
Liberation requires that the individual find out the truth for himself.
Life ceases to seem problematic when it is understood that the ego is a social fiction.
Life is a mystery to itself.
Life is a position of time. Death is a position of time. They are like winter and spring.
Life is a song. Life is beautiful. Life is the golden dream.
Life itself dances.
Life should be lived in the spirit of play rather than work.
Light has no need to shine upon itself since it is luminous already.
Light is intelligent.
Linear time is an illusion.
Living organisms move according to inner spontaneity rather than objective principle.
Look at man as process rather than entity, rhythm rather than structure.
Loss of ego may be confused with physical death.
Love-ins were not to protest but to manifest joy.
Love is a magic potion.
Love is the only hope for mankind.
Man and his present experience are one (not separate).
Man can become conscious of each level of energy defined by scientists.
Man can change and become divine in this lifetime.
Man cannot define the ultimate.
Man creates in transcending himself, in revealing himself.
Man has received from heaven a nature innately good.
Man is blind to the world inside himself. Acid is to help us see.
Man is capable of communion with the supreme spirit.
Man is, in essence, eternal and infinite.
Man is one with nature in a seamless unity.
Man, nature and God are one reality, are of one Suchness.
Man wakes up from his egotistical daydream and discovers himself.
Man’s brain is capable of limitless new dimensions of awareness and knowledge.
Man’s salvation lies in the expansion of his own consciousness.
Man’s skin is more like a thoroughfare than a boundary.
Man’s unconscious is a storehouse of his complete range of emotions.
Many Eastern concepts are subject to different levels of interpretation.
Many of us get locked into ordinary consciousness, but no one lacks the key to freedom.
Many people have never experienced full spontaneity.
Many people take LSD in an attempt to find a solution to their emotional problems.
Many problems are rooted in the ego’s conceptions of reality rather than in reality itself.
Many religious people reported that their spiritual sensitivities have been expanded.
Many things which we feel to be basic realities of nature are social fictions.
Margaret was always a dramatic tripper.
Maybe, at last, we’ll swim in the ocean of relativity as joyously as dolphins in the water.
Men do not become what by nature they are meant to be, but what society makes them.
Millbrook is really a transcendent therapeutic community.
Modern American man is completely out of rhythm with nature.
Modern society is founded on denial of self and of experience; it is dangerously insane.
More and more, it seems that the ordering of nature is an art akin to music.
Most of human history is still a nightmare from which we are seeking to awake.
Most people searched for the deeper meaning of life while under the drug.
Music became a language of heads. (potheads and acidheads)
Music is pure play.
Must our minds remain flimsy toys compared to the wisdom within the neural network?
Mystical religion is in no sense superficial.
Mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge.
Mystical teachings all agree that the source of wisdom is within.
Mysticism belongs to every human being. It is universal.
Mysticism is a frontier experience.
Mysticism is the “exploration into God.”
Mysticism is the heart of all religion.
Mystics call the highest knowledge unknowing.
Mystics have declared their experience ineffable.
Myth is the report from the cellular memory bank.
Mythic reality exists!
Narrowed consciousness is the means by which we have the sense of ego.
Nature, instead of conforming to a pattern is a pattern.
Nature is, at the very least, a volume and at most an infinitely dimensioned field.
Nature is differentiated unity, not unified differences.
Nature is eternal, but not static. It is eternally dynamic.
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity.
Nature is much more playful than purposeful.
Nature is not pursuing any purpose.
Nature will always be the enemy to the man who has lost God.
No thought or ideal or image can contain reality.
Nobody is truly sane until he feels gratitude to the whole universe.
Non-duality is the “dimension” in which explicit differences have implicit unity.
Normal consciousness is a form of sleepwalking.
Normal consciousness is delusion.
Normal consciousness is one drop in an ocean of intelligence.
Normal everyday consciousness are faint reflections of this eternal beauty.
Not knowing how near Truth is, people seek it far away.
Nothing dies, it merely moves into another manifestation of the whole.
Nothing exists except God.
Nothing is outside the All.
Nothing so eludes conscious inspection as consciousness itself.
Occupying neither space nor time, the eternal Now contains the whole universe.
Once “normal” modes of awareness are suspended, consciousness changes occur.
One can discard all traces of ego awareness and be more than one was before.
One doesn’t cure the headache by cutting off the head.
One’s chemistry changes one’s perception.
Only absorption in the loving and knowing Ground can rid the mind of all fears.
Only doubtful truths need defense.
Only in measured reality are we limited by the laws of physics.
Only repressed life is in time and unrepressed life would be timeless or in eternity.
Only the body dies and the Self is eternal.
Only the pure in heart can see God.
Only when this reality is attained is the true working of Suchness understood.
Open your eyes! Get those stupid blind eyes open! Don’t you see what’s happening?!
Order, beauty and discipline, harmony and cooperation, exist already in nature.
Ordinary psychotherapy brings out a person’s shortcomings and not his assets.
Organic pattern is another name for intelligence.
Orgasm is boundary-dissolving.
Other forms of intellectual development may await us in other states.
Our academic community is predominantly consciousness-naive.
Our brain works with a velocity and scope which far surpasses our mental operations.
Our education should surely teach us how to search for meaning.
Our educational process is an especially dangerous narcotic.
Our ego spins around inside the mind compelling us to be tied to its field of gravity.
Our finding of God is hindered by the worship of the intellect.
Our future evolution lies as much in our minds as in our genes.
Our insight into the divine plan becomes more awe-fully detailed.
Our intellectual essence is shaped by our biochemistry.
Our normal perceptions of the world is a type of hypnotic illusion.
Our “normal” state of consciousness is a constructed reality.
Our own bodies are functions or behaviors of the whole external world.
Our present mental machinery cannot possibly handle the cerebral potential.
Our sanity is not “true” sanity.
Our self-concept conditions our thinking.
Our senses are innocent.
Our sensory experiences are states of our nervous system.
Our social realities are so ugly if seen in the light of exiled truth.
Our species has overrun the material-spatial possibilities of this planet.
Our spotlight, narrowed attention must be opened to the full vision.
Our thoughts and ideas ARE nature. The mind grows thoughts as the field grows grass.
Our true identity is the total process of the world.
Our true self is the natural man, the spontaneous Tao.
Our universe, including ourselves, is wiggling.
Our view of nature is largely a matter of changing intellectual and literary fashions.
People can greatly expand their experiential horizons.
People did not first “believe in” God: they experienced His Presence.
People discovered the key to where it was all at.
People have awakened to the reality of the spirit.
Perhaps what they call living is really dying and dying is our liberation into true life.
Personal religious experience has its root and centre in mystical states of consciousness.
Physical union can be one expression or manifestation of cosmic union.
Play is an end in itself, everlastingly purposeless.
Playfulness is the very nature of divine wisdom.
Potentially, all of us are “infinite in faculties and like gods in apprehension.”
Precious stones resemble things which are seen with the inner eye.
Primeval Nature bears a strong resemblance to that inner world.
Prior to any metaphysical knowledge, we have no direct consciousness of interior truth.
Prose is talk. Poetry is music, musical-emotional more than conceptual-mental.
Promising methods may be developed which will assist in releasing potential talents.
Psychedelic drug therapy was killed by the law.
Psychedelic drugs greatly affected the ‘60’s as a whole.
Psychedelic drugs have a long history of giving rise to cults and belief-systems.
Psychological labels have been put on all great prophets and sages.
Psychology textbooks have no chapters on fun and gaiety.
Psychotherapy interprets confusion and inefficiency in game-playing as illness.
Punishment or the fear of it has no creative result by itself.
“Pure science” and religion address themselves to the same basic questions.
Real knowledge is nonverbal and beyond the reach of concepts.
Real religion has nothing to do with words.
Reality in itself is neither permanent nor impermanent; it cannot be categorized.
Reality is a cosmic circulation, a network of relations in process.
Reality is a curtain for people who haven’t got the courage for acid.
Reality is infinitely alive.
Reality is infinitely more complex than any scientific theory or ideological system.
Realization is simply bringing an unconscious process into consciousness.
Realization liberated them.
Reason is not the same that it shall be when we know more.
Recognize the importance and value of other states of consciousness.
Rejection of the new and unknown is a standard human response.
Religion cannot be pompous. Religion is consciousness-expansion.
Religion grows from within.
Religion means being tuned into the natural rhythm.
Religious doctrines and ideas are quite distinct from mystical experience.
Religious experience can be said to reveal truths about the universe.
Religious experience has its roots and center in mystical states of consciousness.
Religious experience is closely associated with the best therapeutic results.
Remember, man’s natural state is ecstatic wonder, ecstatic intuition. Don’t settle for less.
Research in the psychology of religion can utilize such drugs.
Rhythm lies at the heart of play.
Rightly understood, a single instant is as long as a century.
Ritual is anything done with loving awareness and reverence.
Ritual is the province of renewal and emergence—emotionally powerful.
Sacredness is that which a person feels to be of special value.
Salvation, liberation or enlightenment is possible for us at every moment.
Science without wisdom can destroy the world.
Seen from Spirit, nothing is heavy; it takes all things lightly.
Sensuality and spirituality are not truly opposed.
Sex is a matter for laughter.
Sex is sacred.
Silence, like space and emptiness, is a natural symbol of the divine.
So let us pray: Almighty ego, set I free!
So long as attention is fixed on the delinquent ego, it cannot be fixed upon God.
So long as there is something to prove, some ax to grind, there is no dance.
So long as we are confined within our insulated selfhood, we remain unaware.
Soar into uncharted realms of the brain.
Socrates said, “Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness.”
Somehow, do everything with passion, but with detachment.
Space is just as real as anything solid.
Space is the relationship between bodies and without it, there can’t be energy and motion.
Spicing up the chemistry of the cortex will alter the entire nature of human experience.
Spiritual freedom is just that capacity to be as spontaneous and unfettered as life itself.
Spiritual insight reveals a mystery and magic.
Spirituality appears to be an intrinsic property of the deeper dynamics of the psyche.
Spirituality is an important dimension of existence.
Spontaneity is total sincerity.
Stars teach us lessons nightly, speaking both of Beauty and Truth.
Step into the light of freedom and divine responsibility.
Studying consciousness is the oldest subject matter of all.
Subjects experienced religious exultation and sensations of being one with God.
Suffering and death are problematic for the ego rather than the organism.
Suicide is the escape from ego. Only ego contemplates escape.
The active intellectual style is replaced by a receptive perceptual mode.
The “activity” of the Void is playful because it is not motivated action (karma).
The aim of human education is to learn how to use all of these levels of consciousness.
The aim of religion is to become what you are.
The answer lies in nothing less than species-wide enlightenment.
The beauty of the real God, like so much other beauty, is rarely seen.
The body is a whirlpool, constant only in appearance, but actually a stream of changes.
The boundary between self and universe is not necessarily fixed.
The brain is an almost unspoiled wilderness; its exploration and charting have just begun.
The Buddha nature is “within” oneself and not to be sought outside (like going to India).
The Buddha was one of the first dropouts.
The cells of their bodies are billions of gods.
The center of man’s being is not the ego but the Self.
The center of the mind’s activity is not the conscious thinking process, not in the ego.
The chain of DNA remembrance, it’s all there in your cellular diaries.
The chicken-in-the-egg transformation is one variety of the experience of rebirth.
The church shouldn’t dismiss anything that has the power to deepen faith.
The complexity of nature is a dance.
The controllers censor anything that gives the power to change reality to the individual.
The course of nature flows of itself.
The creative activity of God is playful.
The deepest center of man is the deepest center of the universe.
The depths of reality can be opened.
The devil is he who controls external power.
The Divine is not “out there,” but present within each of us.
The divine state simply IS, here and now and does not have to be attained.
The ecstatic and unitive states represent the very essence of true healing.
The ego cannot see the reality of nonordinary reality.
The ego is a false and impotent image.
The ego is a social convention foisted upon human consciousness by conditioning.
The ego is merely a convention.
The ego is the principle stumbling block to favorable changes in personality.
The elimination of the false ego helps us to develop a more realistic image of the world.
The enlightened ones in any religion have pointed to the God within.
The entire spectrum of transpersonal experiences is commensurate with existence itself.
The entire system is oneself in its full and only true sense.
The entire universe exists nowhere but in this sizeless and timeless present moment.
The entire weight of American education is engineered to crush the religious impulse.
The essence is pure consciousness (uncontaminated by ego)..
The essence of ecstasy, religion and orgasm is that you give up power and swing with it.
The essence of life is its fluidity, its ability to change, to flow and to take a new course.
The eternal is the transcient.
The eternal now is a consciousness, an eternal consciousness.
The eternal present is the “timeless” unhurried flowing of the Tao.
The eternity, whose realization is the ultimate good, is a kingdom of heaven within.
The eternal now is a consciousness, an eternal consciousness.
The eternal Self needs no memory because it has no past.
The fact of union with God simply is, whether realized or not.
The fate of almost every cult is to fall away from the spirit of its early followers.
The First Amendment guarantees the right of spiritual exploration.
The free-thinking enlightened individual is the highest ideal of humanity.
The full and real self is not the willing and deliberating function but the spontaneous.
The fullest kind of maturity has its core in the experience of personal transcendence.
The fundamental realities of nature are not, as thought construes them, separate things.
The galaxy itself and every structure within it is an oscillating dance.
The galaxy was a seed inside a person.
The general American culture lacks a tradition in visionary experience.
The genetic code is infinite in its variation and wisdom.
The glory and wonder of pure existence belong to another order.
The glory of God is beyond all description and comprehension.
The goal of the spiritual path is transcending the ego.
The gold of the alchemists is not money but that golden experience of unity and totality.
The government remains steadfast in its curtailment of meaningful psychedelic research.
The great Awakening is found in the interval between two thoughts.
The ground of the being of all beings is the relation between them.
The Greeks frequently referred to mushrooms as the “food of the Gods.”
The heart of God is absolutely, divine joy, colossal gaiety.
The highest mystical awareness comes only when there is freedom from the known.
The historian is basically an artist, selecting things from the past to fit a pattern.
The human psyche appears to be essentially commensurate with all of existence.
The human psyche is filled with wonderful potentials waiting to be awakened and used.
The human unconscious is not limited to contents derived from individual history.
The Indians called the magic mushroom God’s flesh.
The individual experiences only part of the reality “available” to him.
The individual is separate from his universal environment only in name.
The individual organism and its environment are a continuous stream or field of energy.
The individual perceives only part of the reality “available” to him.
The infant has a sense of omnipotent oneness with all that it sees and feels.
The infinite, as living reality, can never be grasped in any fixed form.
The infinite is God. (So are you.)
The infinite is life rather than inertia, absolutely complete rather than empty.
The infinite moves things without either moving or being moved itself.
The inmost Self of each person is central to all persons.
The inner life of God is meaningful and playful (as opposed to purposeful).
The inner sphere is the real self, unknown to the conscious ego.
The intellect is a beautiful servant, but a terrible master.
The intellect is only one component of the mind.
The issue at stake is the human mind and its potentialities.
The key to the mystery of life is chemical, the Elixir, the magic potion.
The Kingdom of God is already here, if we would only allow ourselves to see it.
The kingdom of heaven is within you.
The laboratory equipment for experimental theology, for internal science, is chemicals.
The laws of nature are not discovered but invented.
The levels of consciousness available to man are infinite in their complexities.
The levels on which we exist are infinite.
The life of worship and meditation is not the getting but the enjoyment of union.
The limits we perceive are in our minds.
The lips of knowledge are closed except for the ears of understanding.
The lure of higher consciousness has exercised a fascination across the centuries.
The man of deep spiritual wisdom, like the artist is looked at as irrelevant to this society.
The map is not the territory. Myth and mythology are maps not to be taken literally.
The meaning is divined rather than defined.
The meaning is within.
The mentally ill in the future will be those who get addicted to symbols, power.
The mind is like an eye that sees but cannot see itself.
The mind’s pure Essence is Highest Perfect Wisdom.
The mind’s still unknown potential is our future.
The most important experiences are those I am at least able to talk about.
The most intense darkness is itself the seed of light.
The mysterious is always an essential element in the creative.
The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
The mystic experience is the measure, the standard for what is real.
The mystic or visionary is always in opposition to or outside of social institutions.
The mystical consciousness is ineffable.
The mystical consciousness is the root of all religions.
The mythic folk heroes of our times will be the psychedelic drug outlaws.
The natural state of man is ecstatic wonder. We should not settle for less.
The nature of the infinite is not to annihilate limitations but to love them.
The nervous system can be changed, expanded.
The nervous system has an infinity of possibilities.
The new generation doesn’t want to run away. It wants to look at the ultimates.
The new society will be one of mythic integration where magic will live again.
The next evolutionary step will occur within the human cortex.
The only purpose of life is the spiritual quest.
The only true atom is the universe.
The ordinary world may be transcended.
The paradigms of science should not be confused with reality or truth.
The parts of the universe are not separable, but fully interwoven.
The path that leads there is not a path to a strange place, but the path home.
The pattern itself is intelligence and love.
The people who had trouble in school were usually more intelligent, so they got bored.
The perception of the infinite in a finite particular is a revelation of divine immanence.
The personal ego is a hallucination.
The Phenomenal is at first all that we know. (Infants don’t have egos yet.)
The physical world is basically vibration.
The possibilities for individual transformation and cultural change are enormous.
The potential for a mystical experience is the natural birthright of all human beings.
The power of reason depends upon organs that are grown by “unconscious intelligence.”
The present is the point at which time touches eternity.
The present spasm of control, power and murder is not human nature.
The price of the leap into Paradise is the loss of one’s ego.
The psyche is governed by unconscious forces of an instinctual nature.
The psyche is without boundaries and has seemingly infinite resources and creativity.
The purpose of life is to look within and without and to decode the purpose of life.
The pursuit of truth can be dangerous.
The pursuit of truth is akin to the creation of beauty.
The quality of individual consciousness can be changed.
The rare treasure is the capacity to see Truth.
The rational mind is anti-ecstasy.
The real self exists on after the death of the body.
The real world is actually timeless.
The reality of opposites is that “between” for which we have no words.
The realization of union with God is the only source of creative virtue.
The realization process is eternal.
The river of life flows toward the mouth of God.
The rules of grammar are not the rules or patterns of nature.
The road to God comes through the senses.
The sacred is not in the conceptual and conventional order of things.
The sacred truths are always there…waiting for us to remember them…and reapply them.
The saint sees that doing the will of God is joining in the play of God.
The scientific approach views changed behavior negatively.
The secular psychologist is often in the role of the blind leading the half-blind.
The seed of God is in us.
The sexual impulse is not simply a biological drive, but also a divine, spiritual force.
The sexual orgasm has lost much of its mystical meaning in the West.
The shaman truly has “eyes that see and ears that hear”.
The shape of a leaf is its color.
The significance of each thing is identical with its being.
The skin is as much a bridge as a barrier.
The social drama and its conventions are confused with reality.
The “social ego” is trivial compared to the “atomic I,” the DNA I.”
The social reality misses the real excitement.
The soul of the living organism is its genetic code.
The spirit of the times and customs dictate what will and will not be science.
The spiritual awakening amounts to a real resolution.
The spiritual realms are not found in the past and the future.
The stakes are high, but the prize the ultimate.
The stamp of the intuition remains so indelibly upon my soul.
The state of liberation is not away from the state of nature.
The state of mind associated with dying can be experienced during life.
The static, normal mind is the source of “dis-ease.”
The subatomic structure of the universe is not absolutely static or solid.
The subtleties of the mind defy simple categories.
The Supreme Self is always just beyond its own control of itself.
The surrender of the will to Jesus is all too easily a blind acceptance of patriarchal mores.
The Tao which grows the world is within it.
The terms of time and space are not applicable to the infinite.
The therapeutic promise of psychedelic drugs is still unfilled.
The True Man is every man. (Sadly, too few realize that.)
The true mind is “no mind”, “original mind”, “Buddha mind.”
The true Self is not an idea, but an experience.
The truth is revealed by removing things that stand in its light.
The truth is standing before our eyes every moment of the day.
The turned-on mind is cosmic in dimension.
The ultimate basis of our world is in question.
The Ultimate Ground of Being is you, that inmost Self.
The “ultimate inside” of himself is the same as the “ultimate inside” of the Cosmos.
The ultimate reality cannot be described in terms of any finite or known category.
The ultimate reality is alive, conscious and intelligent.
The ultimate reason for human experience (existence?) is unitive knowledge of the divine
Ground.
The uncluttered intellect can experience what astrophysics confirms.
The unconscious is a region in which time is not a dimension.
The unconscious is at root creative and intelligent and thus ultimately trustworthy.
The unconscious is the source of creativeness, art, love, humor, play.
The undifferentiated energy process is real.
The unfamiliarities of foreign cultures are nothing to those of one’s own inner workings.
The universal process acts freely and spontaneously at every moment.
The universe is comprised more of energy frequencies than of matter.
The universe is full of invisible intelligence.
The universe is in essence a vibratory dynamic system.
The universe is, in fact, friendly.
The universe is not made out of stuff, but patterns, patterns of relationship.
The universe itself is an energy system which vibrates.
The university is an institution for consciousness contraction.
The university is the establishment’s apparatus for consciousness contractors.
The use of LSD may have signified and started a revolution.
The utmost peak of man’s being touches the infinite.
The very nature of inwardness is to be mysterious, immeasurable and unpredictable.
The way in which various disciplines divide reality is ultimately arbitrary.
The ways in which we ordinarily interpret the reports of our senses are learned.
The Western world has been on a bad trip, a 400 year old bummer.
The Western youth today is truly seeking. (That was written in 1969.)
The whole is a pattern, a complex wiggliness which has no separate parts.
The whole man is a great deal more than the ego.
The whole universe of multiplicity is the play of a single energy, the Supreme Self.
The wisdom of the East is not physical, but psychic and spiritual Science.
The world beyond the skin is actually an extension of our own bodies.
The world beyond the world of appearances is this world seen in a different way.
The world does not point to a meaning beyond itself. It is like pure music.
The world first-hand—that’s where the beauty is.
The world is intelligible only as a revelation of the mind of God.
The world is a mirror of Infinite Beauty.
The world is simply an extension of the body or the mind.
The world of color is infinite as is the world of sound.
The world was changing and we sat at the hub of the wheel.
The world wears a constantly changing expression on its face.
Theological controversies and their dualities are far removed from experience.
Theory is the articulated vision of experience.
There are dimensions of the brain yet to explore.
There are endless levels of energy transformations accessible to consciousness.
There are genuine and valid levels of perception unavailable to us without drugs.
There are going to be new social forms. There are going to be new methods of education.
There are many levels of energy within and around us.
There are no books written by scientists about ecstasy and cosmic orgasms.
There are no limits to your mind.
There are other realities more conducive to ecstasy, happiness, wisdom.
There are resources of courage, creativity and higher intelligence in all of us.
There are vast untapped potentialities in the human psyche.
There are very few great philosophers, literary giants and thinkers of genius.
There can be no political revolution without a sexual revolution.
There can be nothing away from the infinite and nothing can move towards it.
There exists a second, higher timeless world, a reality more native to you.
There is a central experience which alters all other experiences.
There is a central human experience which alters all other experiences.
There is a deep positive potential in every human being that is hidden.
There is a hierarchy of the real.
There IS a light at the end of the tunnel.
There is a lost reality, a reality lost long ago.
There is a magical kind of beauty which we say is “transporting.”
There is a need of unsleeping awareness.
There is a potential contemplative dimension in music.
There is a single reality, infinite and eternal.
There is a world around us which we barely sense.
There is a world beyond appearances.
There is a world far better than the one we have always known.
There is an energetic aspect to awareness.
There is an enormous ignorance about the science of consciousness alteration.
There is an essential unity underlying all of humanity and the material world.
There is an inside to experience as well as an outside.
There is hope of a better growth, a grander life.
There is little conjunction of truth and social “reality.”
There is no compromise with truth. Truth is.
There is no death, his true self being as eternal as the universe.
There is no future beyond this state of mind, no state of mind beyond this one.
There is no language for describing states of awareness.
There is no monarchist or imperialist tyranny of God over the human puppet.
There is no problem love cannot solve.
There is no space except space between things, inside things or outside things.
There is no substitute for growth to higher consciousness.
There is no such thing as a saint without joy. One cannot have true holiness without joy.
There is no ultimate conflict.
There is no ultimate threat to the universal order.
There is nothing deeper, nowhere else to go.
There is nothing intrinsically pathological in the experience of ego-loss.
There is order, pattern and meaning in nature.
There is simply no problem of life. It is absolute purposeless play.
There is such a thing as music therapy.
There’s nothing more satisfying than turning somebody on to themselves.
Things which grow shape themselves from within outwards.
Think of religion not as something about life, but as a form of life, a way of life.
Throughout the ages, visionary states have played an extremely important role.
Time and space are ultimately arbitrary.
Time is a relative and arbitrary concept that can be transcended.
Time perception is a socially reinforced response.
Timothy is a political prisoner in a religious war.
To awaken really means to see what is true.
To be a holy man, you have to be a funny man.
To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it.
To be more evolved is to know more joy, not less.
To cherish the ego is to cherish misery.
To discover your soul, withdraw your thoughts from outward and material things.
To go beyond the insulated self is such a liberation.
To go beyond the limits of the insulated ego is such a liberation.
To Him we shall return.
To legislate against sensation seeking is to legislate against one of our strongest drives.
To live means to be aware, joyously, serenely, divinely aware.
To lose his life in order to find it is an awesome leap in the dark.
to make the best of both worlds—Most people didn’t know what Huxley meant.
To see it all as serious, taken-for-granted reality is to miss the point.
To see the world as it really is means to understand that life is immortal.
To seek enlightenment in words is like expecting the sight of a menu to satisfy hunger.
To the intellect, intuition is a mystery.
To think of religion as confined to church attendance was a mockery and a hypocrisy.
To turn on means to come to your senses.
Too much evil and too much suffering can make it impossible for men to be creative.
Total deliverance comes only through unitive knowledge.
Traditional approaches tend to pathologize mystical states.
Transcendence of mind makes possible new realms of insight.
True identity is indivisible oneness, beyond negativity and dualities of any kind.
True insight takes me beyond the intellect.
True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego.
Truth is alive, truth is life.
Truth is beauty.
Truth is to be lived, not merely pronounced with the mouth.
Truth lies beyond all power of words.
Ultimately, I hope, all religious dogma will be replaced by direct, personal experience.
Ultimately it is possible to regain the ground that has been lost.
Under sway of the egotistical delusion, we may feel cut off.
Underneath the inharmonious and trivial particulars, is a musical perfection.
Understanding comes through awareness.
Understanding is primarily direct awareness, an immediate experience.
Unitive consciousness is the goal of all religions and philosophers of mind development.
Universal symbols refer to complex transcendental realities.
Urban living is spiritually suicidal.
Very few people in the U. S. know how to use marijuana.
Visionary foods were used by witches from 1450-1750.
Wasson theorized them (mushrooms) to be at the origin of religion.
We actually see or hear infinitely more than we attend to or think about.
We all share this potentiality.
We are all gods in disguise.
We are all mystics. (Too few people realize that.)
We are all one, intimately united in our eternal energy.
We are all one. We are all leaves on the tree of life.
We are all organically related to God, to Nature and to our fellow men.
We are exploring extraordinary phenomena devalued by mainstream consciousness.
We are forced into becoming acceptable egos.
We are gifted with an intrinsic wisdom that is independent of cultural conditioning.
We are largely hunter-gatherers of the mind. Its civilization has just begun.
We are multi-dimensional beings, yet we are One.
We are not aware of how we are conditioned to think and act as we do.
We are part of that great dance.
We are ready for a new page in the story, the next evolutionary step.
We are strangers to our true selves, to one another, and to the spiritual world.
We can all change and love each other.
We can become aware of God manifest within us.
We can begin the creation of the New Time…and the New Man…And the New Garden.
We can discover that the divine impulse is everywhere.
We can explore mythological and other realities that we previously did not know existed.
We can have emotional responses without verbal responses.
We can leave our present identity and move throughout our nervous system.
We can no longer assume that such a voyage is an illness that has to be treated.
We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves.
We can speak of a healthy unconscious.
We cannot know reality directly through intellectual activity.
We cannot measure true reality; in fact, the very essence of reality is its immeasurability.
We copy emotional reactions from our parents.
We die, creatively speaking, when we cling too fast to the definite.
We do not have to seek for God; he is already here and now.
We do not need theories so much as the experience that is the source of the theory.
We don’t have an experiential vocabulary.
We each have an inner life of consciousness and an outer life of behavior.
We get bursts of extremely active consciousness.
We have a poor image of ourselves as egos in bags of skin.
We have a ready tool at hand for intensifying religion and making it more effective.
We have been conned into the illusion that we are separate “skin-encapsulated egos.”
We have but to open the eyes of the mind wide enough and “the truth will out.”
We have given little serious consideration to the aesthetic aspect of our image of God.
We have lost touch with our original identity.
We have scrubbed the world clean of magic. We have lost even the vision of paradise.
We have taken leave of our senses. We have been robbed blind.
We have to be selfless. This creates freedom.
We have to realize that we are as deeply afraid to live and to love as we are to die.
We have to rediscover God from within.
We know almost nothing about the physiology of consciousness.
We know how to move our hands or how to breathe though we can’t explain it in words.
We learn to identify ourselves with a conventional view of “myself.”
We live in a frozen world, cut off from the flow of life and energy.
We look not up but down into our galaxy.
We lost our vision of the universe in the overwhelming complexity of its details.
We must change our thinking to use the potentialities of our new instruments.
We must come to feel what we know to be true in theory.
We must first transcend parochial cultural contexts to truly understand reality.
We need a clean heart to be able to see God in each other.
We need new rituals, goals, rules and concepts to give the brain back to the species.
We need to contact the universal Self within our hearts in order to find the wisdom.
We ourselves are not material bodies but limitless fields of consciousness.
We possess higher notions of the spiritual.
We saw the multiple facets of our potential.
We see things intellectually, but we won’t let go and feel them spiritually.
We spend a good deal more on drink and smoke than we spend on education.
We use the mind as a spotlight rather than a floodlight.
We were young and idealistic with energy and ready to change the world.
We will attain new realms.
We’re Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise…and we’ve forgotten it.
We’re all one, but not the same.
We’ve all come out of the same light and we’re all going back into the same light.
Western psychology has ignored the possibilities of mind-expansion.
What can be described and categorized must always belong to the conventional realm.
What death negates is not the individual, not the organism/environment, but the ego.
What dies is not consciousness, but memory.
What is empty is not reality itself but all that seems to block its light.
What is important is less the reason for the experience than the experience itself.
What is man? He is within His body. His body is the universe.
What is not maya is mystery.
What is separate in terms, in words, is not separate in reality.
What is serious and terribly important is at root nothing but play.
What we call reality is a shadow upon an imperfect screen.
What we call “things” are no more than glimpses of a unified process.
What will the neighbors think is the beginning and end of modern psychology.
What you see is how the inside of your head “looks” or “feels.”
What’s going on up here is the true meaning of it all and it always has been.
When action is felt to be motivated, it expresses the hungering emptiness of the ego.
When all lesser things and ideas are transcended, there remains a perfect state.
When defenses are down, we begin to see customarily ignored aspects of reality.
When “He” appears, we know it.
When it really comes down to it, what do any of us know?
When body and mind achieve spontaneity, universal mind can be understood.
When dogma enters the forum, all intellectual activity ceases.
When the game has run its course, the Self awakens to its original identity.
When we discovered euphoria—rediscovered euphoria—I thought it was here to stay.
When we keep our emotions on the surface, we never see the beauty of the depths.
When we teach kids in school, we teach them not to learn.
When will the veil be lifted? When will the charade turn to carnival?
When young, we let our consciousness expand with joy.
Where are all the laughing Christians? Mystics, prophets, holy men are all laughers.
Where the organism is intelligent, the environment is also intelligent.
Who are you? You are boundless. Where are you? Here, there, and everywhere.
Whoever loses his ego finds his life, but it cannot be done on purpose.
Wisdom can only be transmitted by someone prepared to receive it.
Wisdom is spontaneous.
Wisdom is the spontaneous immediate knowledge of the Suchness of things.
Wisdom takes Science in its stride and goes a stage further.
With a universal feeling like this, wars will become a thing of the past.
Without—in its true sense—the lustiness of sex, religion is joyless and abstract.
Without realization of God’s love for the world, we can love neither the world nor God.
Without the miracle, nothing has happened.
Without thoughts, there are no “things,” there is just undefined reality.
Without understanding yourself, you have no basis for thought.
Wordless contemplation can persist even in the midst of thinking.
Words are far removed from the speed and flow of experience.
Words are the meshes of the net and the experience is of the water that slips through.
Words can only fail to fully reflect the essence of the experience.
Why should I go back to school and interrupt my education?
You are going to learn little of value and meaning in high school and college.
You are God, but only you can discover and nurture your divinity.
You are in fact just as much an incarnation of God as Jesus.
You are made in the image of God.
You are part of an ancient and holy process.
You are the owner and operator of your brain.
You don’t die because you were never born. You had just forgotten who you are.
You don’t get there. There comes to you. Or rather, there is really here.
You…the ego-you can never enter the Void.
You wish to be relieved of your so-called personality. That is the prison where you lie.
Your brain is your own.
Your “ego” is to your brain what the planet earth is to our galaxy.
Your enjoyment of the world is never right until every morning, you awake in heaven.
Your “I” inside your skin and my “I” inside mine are pockets of the same stream.
Your own heart is your guru.
Your true and basic selfhood is divine.
Your true nature is consciousness.
You’re going to learn little of value and meaning in high school and college.