Journeys into the bright world

It was Toni who made us welcome and ushered us out onto the lawn where we basked in the morning sunshine, sipped mugs of Red Zinger tea and honey and admired the flowers. By the time we had made our introductions John had joined us and we turned our attention to the point of our visit.

Being still in my euphoric stage of childlike awe at the wonders of ketamine I was astonished to discover that both Toni and John considered this to be an extremely dangerous substance and that both had ceased taking it. On asking the reasons for these reservations I was flabbergasted to discover that he had been taking up to fifty milligrams an hour, twenty hours per day, for periods up to three weeks. Owing to the cumulative effects thereby induced it became possible to remain permanently stoned.

"What happened?" I asked, my mouth agape with incredulity.

The answer was not reassuring. Out of the original ten member group of experimenters one had driven his car off a cliff and another had met an equally lugubrious end. John himself had incurred an accident that almost proved fatal. Several had found themselves prone to "robotlike" behavior carried to the point where it appeared that the body was actually taken over by alien forces.

"Didn't the medicine tell you when to stop?" I asked.

"Yes, but some of us went on anyway."

"Well, I can certainly understand not wanting to give it up."

"The problem is entities," John said. "People start thinking they are in touch with other intelligences-even with beings from outer space."

"Oh I have that all the time," I admitted cheerfully. "But it hasn't bothered me. In fact it seems kind of friendly."

Next we went on to discuss the objective reality of these intelligences.

"Whether or not these entities are generated in one's own brain is immaterial," John said.

I didn't agree. Even though subject-object distinctions are obliterated it is extremely important to me to retain some residual awareness of which is which. One can volunteer to serve as an outpost of consciousness for higher beings and still function as a self-propelling individual. In fact, as I see it, the retention of personal autonomy even while operating on the edges of the Network is the name of the game in these electrically charged regions of the universal mind. The ego may become as transparent as a glass window but can nonetheless serve a protective function. However, I did not argue the point.

Toni's main grievance against the drug appeared to be its tendency to make a person lose touch with "reality." In this discussion it didn't seem necessary for any of us to affirm what this world's consensual reality is but one of many states of being; that went without saying.

Here again I could certainly understand what Toni was driving at, albeit I felt that in my own particular case the problem of dissociation was not an issue. Thanks to ketamine I could so much better appreciate the beauty of planet Earth that my grip upon it had, if anything, been tightened. The importance of the Divine Plan for humanity and of our part in it had been so highlighted that, if anything, I had to restrain myself from overwork. Maybe, however, my case was different because I had deliberately used the substance to make connections between the worlds, not to dissolve them. There must be an enormous difference between taking a dose of ketamine and hastening to the typewriter to describe what has happened and taking a dose and then following it with more of the same.

From what the Lillys' were telling me it seemed evident that people had used ketamine for escapist purposes. "What a pity!" I thought. "It's like the way men misuse women, pollute our mother, the earth and denigrate the soft, gentle, sensuous aspects of creation. Why must they do it?" These ruminations led me to express the opinion that ketamine is a female force. Toni agreed. She had even named it Kay. However, the wife of one of their group members had seen Kay not as a goddess but as a seductress out to steal her husband.

How sad the goddess must feel about that, my mind ran on, and for a moment her sorrow was mine. What one of us is there who does not know how it feels to try to help someone and receive abuse in return. "But what about the therapeutic aspects?" I asked.

Both the Lillys strongly emphasized that the therapeutic value of ketamine depends on the synergistic interaction between the therapist, the subject and the setting. In all of this the observer can in no way be removed from the system he observes. Since this involvement of the experimenter in the experiment runs counter to the bias of modern scientific materialism it is bound to raise a problem for ketamine researchers who seek to enlist the cooperation of the medical establishment. As Toni put it, "It will heighten whatever influences and frequencies are affecting your life."