Journeys into the bright world

On the whole, ketamine lends itself to an existential approach inasmuch as it demonstrates that many of our difficulties need not be "solved" as much as "resolved" by gaining a more elevated perspective. Then, even though the same conundrums may reemerge after the descent back into the valley of everday living, they seem less opaque to the sunshine of reason and love. Some remembered essence of the self remains on top.

Even the "controlled insanity" of the deeper stages of the ketamine experience can be turned to good account. In The Joyous Cosmology Alan Watts says:

No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time; he is like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of his life is rigid and brittle. The manners and mores of Western civilization force this perpetual sanity upon us to an extreme degree… There is no protected situation in which we can really let ourselves go. Day in and day out we must tick obediently like clocks, and "strange thoughts" frighten us so much that we rush to the nearest head doctor.

It is important for many people to realize that the temporary dissolution of the ego structure is not necessarily regressive. Dissociation may be a prelude to a more inclusive ordering of associations as old thought patterns are melted down to make way for the new. "Except ye become as a little child ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven."

Essentially, samadhi therapy represents a growth-motivated rather than a deficiency-motivated approach to positive mental health. We are interested in working not with people who are sick as much as with those who are chronically well, but who nonetheless are aspiring toward higher stages of personal achievement. In LSD studies the healthier subjects were less likely to view the psychedelic state as fantastic or totally dissimilar to previous experiences. Our subjects also tend to feel that they are remembering something they have always known but just temporarily forgotten-the "home again" effect. In seeking transcendence they are at the same time endeavoring to re-collect themselves, realizing that by merging with the larger life of the universe they will not lose but find their eternal identity.

Educational: The study of cosmic laws, the investigation of alternative realities, penetration into inner realms of meaning-all these can be intensely valuable learning experiences. For those who have wished to use it that way, a "course in ketamine psychology" has been like going to school again. In the university of the universe all knowledge is available. But to receive it one must be willing to travel to the places where it is kept and from whence it is dispensed. Although walking will get you there, ketamine is like a nonstop jet.

Learning to navigate the starry seas of the unseen cosmos also enables an individual to deal more directly with causative factors and to be less a slave of effects. There can be no doubt but that in the right hands, ketamine not only reveals techniques which enable us to become masters of our own destinies, it also provides the incentive to progress toward the stage where we can make proper use of what we know.

The trouble with most ordinary educational institutions is that we are not told what to do with the information gained. Disparate facts lie in heaps like building blocks that cannot be assimilated into any serviceable structure. However, in the significance-saturated empyrean to which ketamine can lift the prepared mind, knowledge, understanding and wisdom-like body, soul, and spirit-can be more readily fused into a comprehensible and comprehending unity.

Esthetic: In the higher dimensions each one of us is a gifted artist and a supremely sensitive connoisseur of visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, olfactory and kinesthetic effects. The extent to which drama, poetry, music, painting and the like could benefit from ketamine-induced flights of the imagination can hardly be overemphasized. It may well turn out that it is not the mental hospital that needs this medicine, except in the sense that the whole Earth is a kind of lunatic asylum. Rather, it will find its place in the painter's studio, the writer's study and the creative individual's most private retreat.