CHAPTER II

WHAT I BELIEVE ABOUT LSD-25 AND PSILOCYBINE

The matter of which the human body is composed preserves the memory of its origin and evolution

§ 18 When I give an individual an intramuscular injection of 30-100 mcg LSD-25 and after about an hour that individual presents - for the first time in his life - specific S & P from the psychic sphere, I am obliged to conclude that the 30-100 mcg set into motion a biological (metabolic) mechanism which is responsible for the production (appearance) of those specific S & P. Consequently, it should be possible to interpret the S & P on a purely bioneurophysiological basis.

Many parents visited me at my surgery to relate with obvious distress the details of the Sessions described to them by their children. Indeed, one overprotective father once said to me, 'Doctor, my daughter it talking nonsense. She insists that when she was in the womb, she knew that her mother wanted her to be a boy. Now, is it possible for a foetus to feel and to understand its mother's wishes? Besides, I read in the encyclopaedia that the new-born is a small animal which at first occupies itself solely with its bodily needs - eating, expelling its waste products and sleeping - and that only gradually is it transformed into a social being which can grasp the quality of its relations with the external environment.' And he concluded by repeating, 'What my daughter says is madness.'

Yet this madness constituted knowledge with which his daughter was able to overcome the schizophreniclike symptoms which had tyrannized her for six whole years.

§ 19 The revival of any period of the past is a subjective truth for the individual experiencing it, which cannot be felt by an observer. The individual, for example, who feels that he has returned to the womb, is referring to a situation which is real for him alone and which is due to his nervous system retaining the 'memory traces' of stimuli which had acted upon it during foetal life. When these'memory traces' are reactivated by LSD-25, the conditions of foetal life are relived. In other words, we are dealing with a subjective state which an observer would call false, an hallucination. Of course, it is false only according to the judgement of the observer: for the individual experiencing it the subjective state is true, and every emotional-intellectual realization he makes, every interpretation he gives to his behaviour is for him a subjective truth.

§ 20 The laws of bioneurophysiology which govern the functioning of the neurons limit everyday consciousness. These same laws allow certain chemical compounds (such as LSD-25) to expand the 'dimensions' of consciousness.

§ 21 I believe that the matter of which the human body is composed preserves the memory of its origin and evolution. The reactivation of this memory by LSD-25 transports a person back through the limitless past, creating in him levels of consciousness corresponding to various stages in the evolution of matter (R 12's description (pp. 108-111). The revival of the very distant past which may be brought about by psychedelic drugs (as seen in the example just mentioned) is the result of reactivation of a latent memory of matter, the matter from which originated all our ancestors on the zoological scale (§. 11 and pp.71-73).

§ 22 Most of the S & P from the emotional-intellectual sphere of the 16 of Table 1, which were triggered by LSD-25, were directly or indirectly related to their psychological problems and may be interpreted on a bioneurophysiological basis.