Journeys into the bright world

At this point my feelings about chemical mind trips were mixed. I have always avoided drugs of all sorts and did not even keep aspirin in my medicine cabinet. Even now, although I am married to a physician, vitamin pills and some burn salve constitute my entire therapeutic repertoire. In our household anyone who gets sick can expect to be dosed with herb tea and encouraged to do yoga exercises.

I have always opposed the taking of barbiturates, amphetamines, and all forms of uppers and downers, except in cases of real medical need. Resorting to such artificial aids is like borrowing money from a bank. Sooner or later whatever has been taken out has to be paid back with interest. In the meanwhile, the circadian rhythms of the body are disrupted and addictive tendencies have been encouraged. The current trend toward cocaine sniffing is to me a loathsome development. However, when it comes to the therapeutic potential of certain psychedelic drugs it appears that there are still many subterranean veins of gold to be explored within the human mindfield. If religion is the opium of the people, then the hallucinogenics may be the inside dope.

As a longtime metaphysical student I felt duty bound to cultivate some first-hand acquaintance with the magic potions that so strongly stimulated the occult revival of the last part of this century. After all, much of my literary success stemmed from the coincidence of having returned from a two-and-a-half year sojourn in India to set up shop as a yoga teacher in 1961, just in time to ride the rising wave of interest in Eastern philosophies. While observing the successive crests of the Zen-Beatnik-Macrobiotic-Psychedelic-Hippie movement it was gratifying to fancy that I played a small role in advancing the causes of yoga, astrology, and reincarnation therapy. At the same time, those of us who were in the vanguard need to remember that the cocks who crow at daybreak have not thereby made the sun come up. For sure, the light of a new age was ready to dawn.

Although I had smoked some grass, experimented with mescaline twice and LSD once, and even ingested two tablespoons of heavenly blue morning-glory seeds, none of these substances had been totally satisfactory. Marijuana was no special "turn on." Mescaline produced some intriguing hallucinations along with a few real spiritual insights but left the body ravaged. The morning-glory seeds, choked down via a cup of viscid tomato soup, resulted in the same kind of "high" but tasted and felt so nauseus that for years I couldn't stand the smell of tomato soup. All these endeavors left me with the tantilizing sensation of having caught a few sneak previews of a show that never came to town.

My single LSD trip was painful but well worth the risk. At eight o'clock on an evening of undisturbed solitude I swallowed the small white capsule supplied by a hippie friend. During the next two hours of waiting nothing happened except for an increasing malaise. By ten o'clock, my mind was a churning miasma of misery. Demonic flames danced behind my eyes and there appeared no doubt but that insanity was pressing in. An hour later there seemed little chance of surviving the night. Surely I was dying! What would happen when my lifeless corpse was discovered?

After still another wretched hour my body was suddenly compelled to sit bolt upright. Glancing at my watch I noticed that both hands pointed straight up. It was exactly midnight. At that moment a current of blue flame rose from my spine along the backbone and shot out through the top of my skull. Like champagne bubbling from a bottle my spirit rushed out into an effervescent empyrean in which the entire cosmos resembled a gloriously scintillating multi-petaled lotus. This had to be the primordial, eternally flowing fountainhead of creation, the supremely effulgent core of all that which is!

This awesome peek through the rent veil of space and time probably lasted less than ten seconds. At that point the thought occurred that if I didn't somehow contrive to squeeze back into the cramped contours of the body it would be impossible ever to return. Reluctantly my untrammeled mind funneled back down into the dimly lit container of normal awareness, and like a genie returning to his bottle, submitted once again to the bondage of the brain.