Journeys into the bright world

As we broaden the base of our activities we will try to keep our reading audience up to date. For now, despite our initially narrow focus, there is so much ground to cover that we are releasing this first progress report. If widespread interest is aroused the work will go forward that much faster. Presumably, we will complete our follow-up ketamine book which will be an academically acceptable clinical and statistical study. In the meantime here, hot off the fire, are our first impressions. With the hope that this Promethean offering can be utilized for the benefit of humanity, we will try to describe how we began and hope that others will profit from our experiences. 

1: You have to Die to be Reborn

Anesthetic drugs with actions at specific sites in the central nervous system have been sought for a long time as alternatives to general anesthetics which have far-reaching effects on the brain. The most successful of these to date has been ketamine.

– Introduction to Anesthesia: The Principles of Safe Practice, (5th edition) Dripps, Robert D., M.D., Eckenhoff, James £., M.D., Leroy, Vandam, D. M.D., W.B. Saunders Company.

DESCRIPTION

Ketalar is a nonbarbiturate anesthetic chemically designated dl 2-(o-chlorophy-2-(methylamino) cyclohexanone hydrochloride. It is formulated as a slightly acid (pH 3.5 to 5.5) solution for intravenous or intramuscular injection in concentration containing the equivalent of either 10, 50, or 100 mg ketamine base per milliliter and contains 0.1 mg/ml Phemerol (benzethonium chloride) as a preservative. The 10 mg/ml solution has been made isotonic with sodium chloride.

– Parke-Davis

My first ketamine-ruled flight into the Bright World that glistens behind the flashing neural synapses of the brain was launched in Big Sur, California.

It was April 1976. On this mellow spring afternoon my driving companion Isabel Buell and I were wending our way up the Pacific Coast feeling more carefree by the hour. Having left our homes in Southern California that morning we were on the first lap of a lecture tour to Seattle and British Columbia where we where scheduled to introduce people to the technique of reincarnation therapy which I have termed "hypersentience." This art of recapitulating former lifetimes has been extensively discussed in my book Hypersentience and is now widely practiced as a rapidly growing branch of modern psychotherapy as well as for the sake of spiritual self-development.

As the miles fell behind us I found myself anticipating the pleasure of introducing Isabel to my friend Jane who was to be our hostess for the night. At that time Jane, who is a distinguished writer and psychologist, was ensconced in a charming house perched on a pinnacle overlooking the sea. Because it might jeopardize her current career I am not using her real name in this book. However, everything else in this account has been set down precisely as it happened since at no time were any of us engaged in illicit practices.

I have always been inordinately proud of my friends and was already envisioning the social time ahead with Isabel with her cloud of dark hair and snapping black eyes and Jane with her serene blonde comeliness, azure gaze, and starlit intellect. How gratifying, I thought, that two such mentally superior women should also embody such an abundance of physical charm. Already Isabel and I had enjoyed an enchanted day and our long journey had only just begun.

As our loaded stationwagon wound back and forth along the serpentine coastal highway I toyed with the hope that it might be possible to experiment with a little known psychedelic delicacy about which Jane had spoken a few months earlier when she had come to my hometown of Ojai, California. She said that the substance was a synthetic compound called ketamine, that it was more potent than LSD, and produced no negative reactions. Indeed, many had found it to be the essence of bottled bliss. Naturally, therefore, I was suspicious.