Journeys into the bright world

In pursuing our ketamine research my original intent had been to explore my own former lifetimes in greater depth. Having specialized in reincarnation therapy for five years this was certainly the aim that was foremost in my mind. Thus far, however, except for some pulls toward Egypt and Japan, I hadn't recapitulated anything out of my personal past. In fact there had been remarkably little emphasis on personalities, including my own. To date, my approach to the mountaintop of higher wisdom had tended to be spiritualistic. Gurus, devas, discarnates and spirit guides had been beloved inhabitants of my inner world, and I knew they existed. But thus far these comforting mentors had stayed their distance. Or were they merely biding their time?

There was a ten-year span of my life during which I had some faculty for astral projection. During this period I enjoyed many fascinating out-ot-the-body experiences which encompassed both the scenic heights and the slums of the inner planes. Under ketamine I was certainly out of my body, but the places to which I went bore slight resemblance to the dreamlike settings of my astral wanderings. Rather, they were vastly superior extensions of the conditions encountered while under the influence of such psychedelic drugs as LSD and mescaline.

The main difference between ketamine and LSD was that for me the former produced a very much higher, clearer and more veridical "trip." I also felt, and this has been verified by others, that ketamine works primarily on the "emotional body" whereas LSD is more mental in its effects. In yogic terms, ketamine works on the heart chakra and LSD on the chakras in the head. On the whole, however, the similarities between these two substances are greater than the differences.

If the etheric plane is the mezzanine floor of a building, and the astral plane the second floor, then the elevator marked psychedelic was whizzing me up to the higher levels so fast that I was scarcely conscious of passing through these first two layers.

Strangely enough, I had never been particularly intrigued with the Platonic, neoplatonic and Jungian concepts of archetypes, even though they made useful mental constructs. While I had some familiarity with oriental philosophy Sat, Chit, and Ananda were still just so many words to me. All my real passion was expended on astrology. Consequently, it seems to me that the insights gained on the "upper floors" of my building can hardly be written off as preconceived notions. It is true that my observations meshed with systems I had always assumed to be valid. In fact, any system at all may be more or less "true" if enough minds have reflected it to produce a corresponding thoughtform. In the last analysis we are probably about as responsible for our archetypes as they are for us-it seems to be a bit of both. On one plane we are matrix makers; on another we are the product created. But at the same time my "bright world" of ketamine was sufficiently different from any possible expectation to convince me that it was "for real."

As it turned out the concept of archetypes became the central feature of all our ketamine experiences. Little by little I managed to arrange these ideational building blocks into some sort of hierarchical order. At the top, like the all-seeing eye set into the capstone of a pyramid, was the circle. Projected down from this essence of circularity were the twin principles of axial and revolutionary motion-the wheel turning upon itself and the wheel spinning around another center. Forward motion then gives rise to the laws of vibratory frequencies. That is, the circle extended through time and space produces sine waves and all manner of oscillating frequencies, of which the basic form is the spiral.

Next came the sublimely austere laws of the angles, starting with triangles, moving on down to hexagons, and then down again to the squares. Astrological archetypes were certainly very high on the scale and the only reason there are not more references to astrological factors in this book is that we have deliberately pruned our jargon to avoid offending readers unversed in this most basic of all the metaphysical sciences.

Moving on down the scale I came to the archetypes relating to human endeavors-myths, legends, codifications of the law, morals, mores, traditions, rituals, formalities, and the like. There, to my pleasure, I encountered the "Great Invocation" which for more than thirty-five years has been my personal mantram. This nondenominational prayer, which was given out by the Tibetan master Djwhal Khul via his amanuensis Alice A. Bailey, runs as follows: