Psychedelic Phenomena LSD Psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs explained

   Psychedelics have been of such importance in my life. LSD helped me to feel more serene on an everyday basis. It enhanced my ability to improve emotional reactions to difficult situations. My veiws  converge with that of my grandfather who wrote: "During the psychedelic experience, one is frequently obliged to undergo such an encounter with the naked soul, robbed of its “outer-directed” pretensions and driven by the need to rationally cope with the material released from the inner consciousness. The nature of this encounter necessarily varies with the subject, but since one’s visions are but projections of the self, the self is inevitably forced to evaluate its own image, resulting in varying degrees of apprehension. Anxieties, fears, practiced deceits, and neurotic habits, all emerge under a powerful magnifying lens, along with the illusions that constitute one’s appraisal of reality. To be brought face to face with one’s own defects may be a terrifying experience, but the tru

Psychedelics, Technology, Psychedelics Bernard S. Aaronson and Humphrey Osmond The Introduction to PSYCHEDELICS, The Uses and Implications of Hallucinogenic Drugs edited by Bernard Aaronson and Humphry Osmond, Doubleday & Company 1970. Copyright Aaronson and Osmond. Any culture may be regarded as a ramification of a particular technology applied to the particular set of local conditions within which that culture is situated. The term "technology," as used here, refers to the entire set of devices, whether mechanical, chemical, or linguistic, by which adaptations of individuals to their environments are enhanced. Plows, clubs, radios, airplanes, fertilizers, drugs, breakfast cereals, grammars, and concepts are each implements and instances of technology, which influence and are influenced by one another. Some implements operate by directly altering the environment in response to the demands of the individual, as when we turn on an air cond

We are told that, in those moments immediately preceding death, the world of our earliest infancy frequently opens up to us. We are also assured that senile reason passes readily into a state of second childhood, wherein the light of rationality is obscured by the resurrected past, experienced as fully as if the intervening years had rolled away. Normal adults occasionally dream of long-forgotten events, which have otherwise passed into oblivion. These facts, together with Freud’s rediscovery of the unconscious mind, suggest that within each of us the past slumbers on, occasionally reasserting itself in the fragments of a sudden recollection, the perception of some haunting perfume, or the unexplained appearance of an ancient face in our dreams. Most striking, however, is the fact that it is this earliest layer of the human memory that persists to the moment of death, even after the adult memory and its powers of reason are gone. Knowledge recently gained disappears, while that mysteri

During the Republican and Democratic conventions, The Huffington Post did a special series entitled "Shadow Conventions" in which writers posted on topics being neglected by Romney and Obama. Among the subjects, was one that has been gaining in media coverage: The War on Drugs. I have some ideas I'd like to share. Years ago, I read a science fiction novel in which the main character indulges in a piece of toast with hash-infused marmalade. He goes on to reminisce on how drugs were legalized and that persons wishing to use drugs are required to take a drug awareness class and pass a test in order to be issued a card for purchasing drugs. This would be a sensible approach, and teens should have drug education classes in which drug use is not demonized (nor encouraged) but presented in a manner that shows the dangers of drug abuse, and offers the suggestion that if you choose to use drugs as an adult, do so responsibly and in moderation. In order to keep persons on the mo

Perhaps the most remarkable property of mescaline and LSD is their ability to compress into an afternoon the result of many years’ experience. Our entire development may be retraced in the retrospect of a few hours; indeed, one may witness the dramatization in a period of minutes of certain processes of racial consciousness, which have extended over millennia. Medieval mystics often spoke of the Dark Night of the Soul, which preceded the entry into the Unio Mystica. This climax to a long struggle with the self was a period of utter despair that finally destroyed the tyrannical ego through its own torment. When the pain of protracted suffering completely disrupted the mechanism of anxiety, there followed the blessed miracle of simple resignation; for the first time in years, the cleansed soul gazed upon primal reality, shining again with its own pristine radiance, free once more from the painful reflection of the exaggerated self. It was only after passing several times through the hal

This book is the story of how three brilliant scholars and one ambitious freshman crossed paths in the early sixties at a Harvard-sponsored psychedelic-drug research project, transforming their lives and American culture and launching the mind/body/spirit movement that inspired the explosion of yoga classes, organic produce, and alternative medicine. The four men came together in a time of upheaval and experimentation, and their exploration of an expanded consciousness set the stage for the social, spiritual, sexual, and psychological revolution of the 1960s. Timothy Leary would be the rebellious trickster, the premier proponent of the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of LSD, advising a generation to "turn on, tune in, and drop out." Richard Alpert would be the seeker, traveling to India and returning to America as Ram Dass, reborn as a spiritual leader with his "Be Here Now" mantra, inspiring a restless army of spiritual pilgrims. Huston Smith would be the teach

Durin g the late fifties there was also a growing interest amongst the intelligentsia for the newly discovered drugs LSD and Mescaline. Writers like Aldous Huxely had begun to describe the remarkableeffects which these chemicals of the brain, producing visions of beauty which he likened to beholding "The first morning of creation". The newspapers were also filled with accounts of famous personalities like Kary Grant, who had experimented successfully with them, and who reported their beneficial effects. Indeed, at the time, these substances were entirely legal, and no one tried to conceal them: and since the hippies had not yet discovered them, they were used solely by the educated and scientifically oriented.  Five of my colleagues and I thuds decided to contribute ten dollars each toward the purchase of 100 milligrams of LSD from K@K laboratories in New York City. When our tiny package arrived in the mail---in a vial no larger than a pencil stub---we took it to the chemist

The Far-Off Land   (9 photos) It has seemed to me that the well-established properties of the hallucinogenic drugs might be well employed to enable us to explore this far-off land, which is in effect our subconscious mind. Were we to learn its secrets, we would better understand our own desires and the motives that drive us through life. Still better, the secrets of human history would perhaps be discovered as the eternal patterns of imagination that have shaped our spiritual existence. But, perhaps most  ... See More