AN ADVENTURE IN PSILOCYBIN

STANLEY KRIPPNER1

It began with a kaleidoscope of multihued swirling shapes taking form on the inside of my eyelids. It resulted from thirty milligrams of psilocybin plus thirty minutes of antic-ipation.

I opened my eyes to find the living room vibrating with brilliant colors. My first words to the others were that I seemed to be in the middle of a three-dimensional Vermeer painting. At this point, I was still aware of "the others"— Steve, Sam, and Alice, my guides in the "trip" I was taking as part of the Harvard University Psilocybin Research Project.

My limbs were trembling. I felt a tingling sensation in my fingers. I reclined on the sofa and closed my eyes again. I lost myself in the whirling colors funneling up like a huge mushroom spreading over me.

I could now make out numbers, letters, and words in vivid colors. These symbols were billowing up, branching out, and forming a glowing canopy. I had the impression that this swirling tomado was divesting me of verbal conventions, rules, signs, and everyday boundaries, leaving me naked and open to a more basic world of feeling and direct impression. I felt overwhelmingly tuned in to "the true nature of things."

An apple brought back awareness of my physical setting. It had been placed in my hand by one of the others. I bit into it and was astounded by the extraordinarily delicious taste, the perfection of it. "This is ambrosia, the food of the gods," I declared, urging the others to sample the apple.

The process of chewing seemed to go on forever. My mouth was a mammoth cavem and I seemed to be able to visualize the mastication, the swallowing, and the descent of the apple pulp through the esophagus. Following a sudden urge to take advantage of this heightened sensory ability, I groped my way toward the kitchen. Strong waves of distinct aromas swept into my head through huge, yawning nostrils. Thyme, doves, cinnamon, vanilla, all at once and yet sepa-rately, registered themselves upon my consciousness. Im-pulsively, I swallowed some vanilla. This was a mistake. "Vanilla is to be smelled, but not tasted," I announced with profundity.

I tested my tactile sensitivity. I worked my way back to the couch and found Alice. My exploration of the softness of the sweater and the warmth of her flesh was an ecstatic sen-sual experience. However, it was devoid of sexuality, devoid of passion. While on the couch, the stimulation of touch be-came less important to me as I began to experience the dichot-omous sensation of sinking into the cushions and yet floating slightly above them.

It was at this point that I became aware of the music from the phonograph. I was hearing the music as I had never heard it before. The composer, the counterpoint, the arrangement were unimportant. Only the sheer beauty of each individual tone mattered. I was listening to the music vertically rather than horizontally.

The visual sense provided additional surprises. Virtually every item in range of my vision vvas transformed. 'The alarm clock was a work of art from a Cellini studio. Alice's gaudy jewelry was on loan from the Empress Josephine. The faces of my companions radiated light. Auras shone about their bodies. For just a moment I felt an inexpressible kin-ship with them.

Steve muttered something and broke the spell. His ut-terances seemed superficial and inappropriate. Words were useless; speech was a waste of time. I headed for an adjoin-ing bedroom. I could not walk, as my large body muscles failed to respond to my orders. I found myself creeping along the floor into the dimly lit room.

My visual perception was still astounding me. Pieces of lint on my trousers sparkled like lustrous sequins. A painting on the wall began to move. The horses in the picture were stamping their hoofs and snorting about the canvas.

On my way to the bedroom, I passed by the kitchen. Re-membering my great delight in eating the apple, I picked up a jar of cloves and some peppermint candy. I sniffed the cloves, and their fragrance seemed to envelop my whole being. I became the odor as I inhaled and exhaled. The candy was equally sensational; I became the taste.

I reached the bedroom and flopped down upon the bed. Rolling the candy about my monstrous cavern of a mouth, I held the cloves to my nostrils and let my eyelids fall.

The oriental Yin-Yang symbol emerged on the horizon of my consciousness. During this period of reverie, I felt as if I were slowly diving into the center of the Yin-Yang. Once immersed, I experienced a negation of time. Past, present, future all seemed the same—just as the Yin-Yang symbolized unity and oneness.

Now a series of visions began. The imagery appeared to synchronize with the phonograph music. To majestic orches-tral accompaniment, I envisioned myself in the court of Kublai Khan. I admired the rich brocade of the emperor's gown, noted the finely detailed embroidery of the cour-tiers' cloaks, and was impressed by the brilliant colors and textures of the nobles' clothing. At that moment, a peacock strutted by and put the emperor's clothes to shame.

Suddenly, I was at a concert being held in an immense auditorium. It struck me that I was in some futuristic Utopia. The architecture exceeded the wildest geometric for-mulations of either Eero Saarinen or Buckminster Fuller. The Utopian orchestra was playing something by Debussy. Each member of the orchestra was dressed in an ostentatious scar-let uniform with gold braid that contrasted markedly with the violet and silver walls of the auditorium.

Within an instant I was at Versailles. Benjamin Franklin was in conference with the king and queen of France. The royal couple were elaborately gowned in crowns, jewels, satins, and furs. Franklin, however, had a better sense of humor, and the members of the entourage were giving him their atten-tion.

I knew that the record on the turntable had been changed, because France yielded to Spain. I was caught up in a frenzied whirl of flamenco dancers and gypsy guitars. One girl began throwing roses into the air. They exploded like firecrackers.

The scene shifted to the New World. I was with Thomas Jefferson at Monticello as he was explaining his newest in-vention to a group of friends. The newest product of Jeffer-son's fertile mind was a four-sided music stand, so designed that all four members of a string quartet could use the same device as they performed.

A somber note was interjected as I found myself with Edgar Allan Poe in Baltimore. Poe had just lost his young bride and was mourning her death. The sad eyes of the poet haunted and disturbed me.

From Baltimore, I traveled to the nation's capital. I found myself gazing at a statue of Lincoln. 'The statue was entirely black, and the head was bowed. There was a gun at the base of the statue and someone murmured, "He was shot. The President was shot." A wisp of smoke rose into the air.

Lincoln's features slowly faded away, and those of Kennedy took their place. The setting was still Washington, D.C. The gun was still at the base of the black statue. A wisp of smoke seeped from the barrel and curled into the air. The voice repeated, "He was shot. The President was shot." My eyes opened; they were filled with tears.2

Wiping the moisture from my eyes, I again dropped my eyelids, sniffed my cloves, and chewed my peppermint candy. Almost immediately, I felt myself engulfed in a chaotic, tur-bulent sea. The waves were pounding, the lightning was flash-ing, and the rain was tumbling in a steady torrent.

There were a number of small boats tossing on the raging sea. Alice, Sam, Steve, and I were in one of these vessels. We clung to the sides of the boat as it lurched with the waves.

We had no paddles, no oars, no sail, nothing to direct our course. Our plight seemed hopeless. If the sea represented the universe, and if the boats represented life, what rational purpose could there possibly be to it all?

As our lifeboat tossed and turned from one wave to the next, we came upon a gigantic figure standing waist-deep in the churning waters. He was young, black-haired, bare-chested. His facial features were graced by an unforgettable look of compassion, love, and concern. We knew that this was the image of God.

We realized that God, too, was caught in the storm. To change the course of the storm was beyond God's power as well as beyond ours. Yet, just as he was compassionate to-ward all the passengers in all the lifeboats, so could we show concern and love to our fellow men.

We knew that, for the most part, our course could not be controlled, our destination could not be directed. However, we also knew that we were able to love, and that in the act of loving we could partake of divinity.

My eyes opened. The vision had been a vivid one, an ex-perience with deep meaning and impact. I realized that I was still "bemushroomed," because the ceiling was still swirl-ing.

I stared at the ceiling and christened it "the most beau-tiful plaster job in the world." I opened a bottle of 7-Up and became fascinated with the impact of the bubbles tickling my nose.

The phonograph was now playing a Beethoven symphony. Closing my eyes, I could see letters, numbers, and words cascading into place, once again superimposing themselves on the non-verbal world.

I returned to the everyday world with a sense of joy rather than regret. For a few hours, psilocybin (with the assistance of my guides ) had permitted me to peek beneath the cosmic curtain to see what the universe was all about.

1 The author expresses his appreciation to Robert D. Nelson for his help in the preparation of this report.

2 In 1962, when I had my first psilocybin experience, I gave this visualization of Kennedy relatively little thought, as so many other impressions came my way. However, it was the only one of my vis-ualizations that brought tears to my eyes, so I described it fully in the report I sent to Harvard. Nineteen months later, on November 23, 1963, the visualization came back to me as I moumed Kennedy's assassination.