Drug Abuse

Five: The Guide

Up to this point it has seemed to us sufficient to define the guide only as one who conducts a psychedelic drug session, leading or assisting the subject over the unfamiliar terrain of his expanded or altered conscious-ness. Now, as a preliminary to the more complex chapters to follow, the qualifications and functions of the guide must be considered in some detail.

First of all, the work of the guide with a particular subject neither begins nor ends with that subject's psychedelic experience. There are also important pre- and post-session duties to be carried out. With regard to the former, the guide prepares the subject for the session, giving him whatever information he requires, clearing away any mis-conceptions, and establishing himself as a figure the subject will be able to trust and with whom the subject will feel at ease. Subsequent to a session, the guide continues for some time to keep in touch with the subject, answering any questions the subject may have, observing him to see that all is going well, and also gathering additional research data.

The term guide is appropriate since the subject so often conceives of his psychedelic experience as a kind of journey. Also, the term leaves open the question of the purpose of the session. 'Thus, the guide may be a therapist who directs the subject along certain paths of self-exploration intended to lead to a specific therapeutic goal. But a guide also may accompany a subject on journeys intended to have other destinations; and the term leaves the choice of the destination free and up to subject and guide to determine.

The role of the psychedelic guide is new in our society, but the newness of the role should not blind us to the antiquity of its prece-dents. Priest and shaman, after all, were the first purveyors of its tech-niques. Seer and sibyl mapped the cosmography of its domain. Perhaps the finest of its precedents is to be found in the figure of Virgil in Dante's Divine Comedy.

In the first canto of the Divine Comedy we find Dante lost in the dark woods, haunted by strange sounds and shapes. But then, when his confusion is at its greatest, he is met by the figure of the master poet Virgil, who says to "I shall be your guide to lead you hence through that eternal place. . ." It is then that Virgil proceeds to lead Dante through the ethics, the cosmogonies, and the historico-political order of the medieval universe. With time suspended, and all of life at hand, Virgil can lead Dante through all imaginable spheres of reality: through past and present, grandeur and corruption, history and legend, tragedy and comedy, man and nature. He can introduce the dramatis personae of extended reality: figures from antique mythology, fantastic demons, gods and godlings, symbolic animals, allegorical personifica-tions, mighty archetype,s, the whole hierarchy of Christianity. He can lead Dante through the vast tapestry that is the medieval universe, evoking divinity, beauty, and meaning. And so, in the Divine Comedy, we are led by Virgil through an enhanced reality wherein everything is bound up with everything else in a pattern which is absolute for the whole universe. The social hierarchy reflects the psychological hier-archy, the cosmological hierarchy and the celestial hierarchy. And the final point of the masterful guidance is to reveal how all these interre-lated orders reflect and are basic to the life and being of Dante the man.

Virgil guides Dante to a realm of changeless eternity and there shows him the manifold aspects of reality. Furthermore, all this reality does not unfold upon a single level or within a single event, but involves instead a great variety of events and several levels and these are dis-played within a near-infinite spectrum of tone and feeling.

It is thus with the psychedelic experience. Once the threshold of altered consciousness has been crossed, we are flooded with a kaleidoscopic vision of extended perceptual fields and psychological insights; a visionary torrent of cultures and contexts, myths and symbols, remnants of what may seem to be racial or transpersonal memory—that near-infinity of components that appears to constitute our being. Like Dante in the dark woods we can easily lose our way in the labyrinth of strange byvvays and unknown paths: an all-too-frequent episode in the unguided psychedelic experience. It therefore should be one of the chief duties of the guide to lead the subject through this newly exposed terrain and elicit its varied contents to lead finally to their interrelationship in the experiencing subject—much in the same way as Virgil led Dante through the medieval hierarchical cosmogony so that its parts became integral to Dante the man. It should be one of the chief tasks of the guide to assume the role of Virgil in this chemically-induced Divine Comedy and to help the subject select out of the wealth of phenomena among which he finds himself some of the more promising opportunities for heightened insight, awareness and integral understanding that the guide knows to be available in the psychedelic experience.

Background and Training of the Guide. In the absence of large num-bers of Virgilian paragons, able to do all we say the guide should do, it is necessary to settle for less; and probably the master guide will never be much more common than is the master poet. But the guide, even now, should have certain minimum qualifications; and, as our knowl-edge increases, psychedelic guide training should become far more thorough and effective and the personal qualities and talents desirable in the guide much better understood than is possible at this time.
Apart from his specialty as therapist or whatever, the guide should have a broad educational background including a good practical knowl-edge of human psychology. He should be mentally and emotionally stable and possess the capacity to stimulate feelings of security and trust in the subjects. And his experience as a guide should be sufficient to enable him to cope with emergencies and to manipulate the subject when need be vvithout, at the same time, dominating or othervvise un-duly interfering with the subject. 'This last, of course, implies that the guide have received some training in this specialty. It implies as well that the guide has himself been a subject, preferably on several occa-sions—that is, that the guide has experienced the drugs and so is able to understand the experience of the subject.
Several of these stipulations require that we elaborate upon them and some of the more important points will be enumerated as follows:

Educational background: Ideally, the psychedelic guide will have two (if not more) specialties. First, he will be a psychotherapist, edu-cator, anthropologist, or whatever. Second, he will be a psychedelic guide, and his training will be both in general guiding and in guiding for his own special purposes—in the management of a psychedelic session for therapy, for education, for explorations of primitivistic belief and ideation, or whatever. Presumably a guide-psychotherapist rarely is quali-fied to function also as a guide-educator, and vice versa. Mature, intelli-gent individuals with widely divergent interests and talents as well as different specific professional training will be needed if the psychedelic experience is ever to yield up all of the treasures it promises.

Moreover, in addition to his specialties, it is highly desirable that each guide possess a broad background especially including knowledge of history, literature, philosophy, mythology, art, and religion. Materials from all of these fields, and from others, emerge in many of the sessions and the guide must recognize the materials if he is to be of maximum effectiveness.

Mental Health: There exist, so far as we know, no psychiatric or other screening procedures for determining who will make an effective guide—or who will make a poor or dangerous one. Ordinary psychiatric interviews and diagnostic tests, even when expertly applied, may not "catch" the individual likely to succumb to the temptations and threats peculiar to the guiding situation. Since inept or exploitative rnanage-ment of a session may make it a painful and possibly damaging experi-ence for the subject, it would be very desirable to have effective tests of this type. However, to date there has been much more interest in disput-ing the matter of which profession or professional specialty is to control the use of the drugs than in screening out individuals who should not be permitted to guide drug sessions. Among other things this has resulted in guiding by psychiatrists and others who were eminently unsuited to the task and who inflicted some appalling experiences on their subjects.

Guide should have been subject: It is agreed by most persons who have worked with the psychedelic substances that the guide, to be effec-tive, must himself have taken at least one of the drugs, preferably on several occasions. We see neither the need for nor possibility of a satisfactory alternative to this, and would add that the psychedelic ex-perience of the guide-to-be should include at least two guided sessions in which he is a subject.

Since the psychedelic experience includes so many elements not a part of nondrug-state experience, the guide never will be able to under-stand the subject or communicate with him adequately unless the guide himself has first-hand knowledge of the drug-state and its phenomena. This point has become controversial, but we see no sound reason why it should be. Persons not capable of coping with a drug experience of their own are not likely to be able to cope with the experience of a subject either; and thus the sessions of the guide-to-be may serve the additional purpose of helping to eliminate from a training program candidates too disturbed or anxious about the psychedelic state. On the other hand, this should not be taken to mean that anyone who has a "good" experi-ence is thereby in any way qualified to be a guide. Neither does it mean that a single "bad" experience will in every case demonstrate a person's incapacity to function effectively as a guide. Subsequent ses-sions, for example, may be handled very well by that person; and the initial "bad" one may tum out to have been the result of faulty guiding or of the intrusion of some other element to which the subject should not have been exposed.

The argument that the person who has taken the psychedelic drugs thereby disqualifies himself as a person able to objectively view and evaluate the experience, must strike most seasoned researchers as sim-ply ludicrous. It is also unanswerable, since all who might reply to it on the basis of real knowledge are declared in advance to be unfit to deal with the question. Work done by those who refused to take the drugs does not demonstrate greater objectivity than that of persons who have had the drug experience; and doubtless refusal to experience the psy-chedelic state is a product, in some cases, of anxiety about the person's ability to cope with that state. On the other hand, the charge of dimin-ished objectivity gains force when applied to certain persons who have scores and even hundreds of times dosed themselves with psycho-chemicals over a period of a few years. Even in these latter cases, however, it is not possible to say just why the repeated experience has resulted in apparently diminished objectivity.

Here we will note that there also has arisen in connection with this work the question of whether the guide should take the drug with the subject. At one extreme of this debate we have encountered individuals who insist that the guide, and especially the guide-psycho-therapist, must always or usually take the drug with the subject or patient. This is regarded as an essential aid to subject-guide communication and to the guide's understanding of the content of the subject's experience.

In our view, there may be some genuine advantages to this procedure. However, should a guide take the drug with the subject, it then would be required that a second guide who is not taking the drug also be present for the session. 'This alone will be sufficient to override the advantages in most cases. But more importantly, any guide working regularly with psychedelic subjects would have to expose himself re-peatedly to substantial dosages of a chemical, let us say LSD, when the long-range effects of repeated dosages of that chemical upon brain and psyche remain to be determined. That no physiological damage has been shown does not, we think, warrant taking the risk; and, with respect to psychical damage, our own observation of the aforemen-tioned persons who, scores and even hundreds of times, have exposed themselves to LSD and other synthetics suggests the possibility of some mental deterioration. Whether, in these cases, mental disturbance has resulted from or rather was causal to such behavior we are unable to say. But, given the paucity of knowledge in this area, repeated exposure to LSD seems too risky and this risk should deter the guide from regular LSD self-exposure whatever the possible advantage in terms of thera-peutic gains.

Training of guides: In general, a training program for psychedelic guides should cover the whole broad area that constitutes the subject matter of this book. This area would be covered by means of lectures, reading, films, observation of sessions, and by practical first-hand experi-ence as both subject and (supervised) guide. In addition to the general training, the guide would be trained in specific methods of applying his own specialized knowledge to the drug experience.

One of the authors (J. H.) served for a time as instructor in a specialized training program for guides and a few of her experiences may be of interest. This program, terminated several years ago, had as its object the instruction of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists in ways of adapting their own disciplines and methods to the peculiar requirements of the psychedelic session. The therapist, that is to say, retained his particular therapeutic approach, but was shown how that approach might best be applied within the psychedelic context. As we have remarked, no specific psychedelic psychotherapy yet has been de-veloped; and thus there exists no alternative to the rarely satisfactory imposition of standard therapeutic procedures upon the psychedelic ex-perience.

In this author's experience the psychiatrists and psychologists proved flexible and willing to adjust to the novel possibilities of the drug-state. An initial tendency, as subjects, to plunge directly into analysis and psychodynamic self-exploration was easily dealt with in most cases. A brief exposure to the range of the psychedelic phenomena was usually sufficient to persuade the trainee that special methods were called for and would be well worth the learning.

Instead of yielding to the subject-therapist's wish to immediately deal with psychodynamic aspects, the guide found it most effective to insist upon an extended exploration of the subject's enhanced sensory awareness. She would help the subject to become involved in the expe-riencing of color and light, of form and structure, of sound, smell, touch and music. The subject would be presented with stones, shells, fruit and objects of art and encouraged to contemplate these. He would be led into the experiencing of synesthesias—the hearing of color, the tasting of sound, and so on. Subjects responded to such guidance by becoming deeply absorbed in this "new world" of altered perceptions—often to the point of forgetting altogether their early concern with psychological categories and labeling phenomena in terms of pathologies.

Eventually, however the contemplation of objects would lead into discussion of psychological insights, usually of a personal nature. For example, a piece of delicately filigreed coral would finally become for the subject "the pattern of my life," which he found himself able to "read in the swirling hieroglyphics of a stone," and upon which he would elaborate in terms of the object. A sliced pomegranate became "the seeds of anguish, the wounds of discontent," which the subject then discussed in terms of a patient whose case he said was similar to his own.

Once the subject had established such a "working liaison" between the sensory and psychological realms, he was invited to explore the specifics of a detailed psychological case history—either his own or that of some one of his patients. 'These explorations, however, were not permitted to become either high-speed analytic exercises or emotional hurricanes (two poles of the psychedelic centrifugal field). Rather, the subject was directed to investigate the problems of the case by taking advantage of peculiarly psychedelic phenomena. For example, he might be urged to examine a problem in terms of his eidetic images, or per-haps from the vantage point of archaic mythological materials which often emerge into consciousness during a psychedelic experience. It would then be suggested that he analyze and compare the insights achieved through this type of exploration vvith the understanding pre-viously gained through utilization of more orthodox techniques. In this way the subject was provided with a means to discover a synthesis of methodologies employing both his usual procedures and those tech-niques of guidance which develop naturally out of the phenomenology of the psychedelic qxperience.

Subsequent to his session(s) and the post-session follow-up the psychotherapist would observe the instructor's handling of several other sessions. During the first of these observed sessions he would be permit-ted to offer suggestions; and, during the later sessions, he would function as a second but subordinate guide. Still later, the psychotherapist-trainee would guide a session of his own with a volunteer subject, the instructor standing by as observer and in order that she be able to take over the handling of the session should the need arise. Finally, the trainee's performance would be evaluated and suggestions made con-cerning possible ways to improve it.

Setting of the Psychedelic Experience. An important function of the guide is to arrange for a comfortable, pleasant setting in which the subject's experience will be favorably, and certainly not negatively, in-fluenced by his environment. Such a major role does the physical envi-ronment play in determining the course of a subject's experience that it would be difficult to overemphasize the need for this objective climate to be favorable.

One of the more clear-cut lessons taught us by scientific psychedelic drug research to date is that the hospital and other clinical settings should be avoided. When such a setting is offered in combination with the subject's expectation of a psychotic or psychotomimetic experience something along these lines will probably eventuate. And a very large amount of research now indicates that while such experiences are ter-ribly distressing to the subject, they are not of compensatory value to the researcher.

The lesson of this early research may, however, have some value apart from psychedelic work. For it teaches in stark and dramatic form that a hospital setting gives rise to all sorts of traditional fears of illness, death, and the mysterious and threatening practices of doctors. Science, the laboratory—these are alien and menacing areas for many persons. When, moreover, the setting is drab and antiseptic, and when the au-thority figures are coldly clinical, then anxiety is greatly increased and the subject's experience becomes even more disturbing and distasteful. One wonders to what extent these same reactions in less apparent form occur with all or most patients outside of the drug context and work to the patient's detriment? If setting is so extremely important to the drug subject, then it is probably also of very great importance to the ordinary patient. We are aware that a substantial amount of attention already has been paid to this point, but few hospitals have been changed sufficiently as a result and the experience of the subjects may serve to emphasize the need for more action.

The pleasant homelike setting has proved to be the indoors one most conducive to feelings of security and a good experience for the subject. It is also advantageous if the subject can be made familiar with this supportive setting in advance of his session. A good way to do this is to conduct the preliminary interviews in the session room. 'The sub-ject should at that time be encouraged to wander through the room, sit or lie on chair or couch, and handle the various objects. In short, he should familiarize himself with the environment in which his drug experience will take place. He also should be made to feel thoroughly re-laxed and at ease in this environment, so that when he re-enters it later he will more easily fall back into a state of relaxation and security.

The session room should be equipped with a variety of objects experience has shown to be useful in extending the subject's awareness and enhancing his enjoyment of his session. These will include an array of paintings, art books, flowers, stones, sea shells, a large and varied record collection, and so on. Based upon what is learned during his interview, the subject will be urged to bring with him additional objects, recordings, or whatever is likely to prove especially meaningful and pleasurable to him.

In addition to the supportive indoor environment just described, the ideal psychedelic setting will further provide the subject with an oppor-tunity to experience attractive out-of-doors surroundings. Natural set-tings such as forests and gardens, lakes and beaches are especially desirable and evocative of a sense of the world's beauty and of the subject's harmonious place in the overall "scheme of things." Few sub-jects would ever want to forget what one has described as the experi-ence of "lying on the soft rustling grass at night and seeing the pure white loveliness of stars streaming down from the incredible magnifi-cence of the heavens."

Selection and Preparation of Subjects. Because of the enormous amount of publicity given the psychedelic drugs by the various communications media, a great many persons are always eager to have the drug experience. Not all of these persons are acceptable as subjects and some must be rejected on the ground that their well-being might be endan-gered by the expeiience. Others will be unacceptable in terms of the specific needs of a particular research program.

Speaking only of research, as distinguished from therapy, the minimal requirements that must be met by the would-be volunteer will almost always include the following: his physical condition must be such that no damage is likely to result. For example, a serious cardiac condition would be a basis for rejection. With respect to mental health, a volunteer subject should not have a past history of illness and he should not be presently psychotic or otherwise severely disturbed. In general, he should be functioning successfully in his day-to-day life and should not be involved in major overt conflicts at the time of his session. Such conflict need not eliminate a subject but should be re-garded as a temporary disability warranting postponement of the ses-sion. Undue anxiety concerning the session is another basis for post-ponement as might be, for example, the menstrual period in women if depression or some other emotional or mental distress is experienced in connection with the period. Of course, some subjects will manage to conceal facts which, if known, would be grounds for postponement.

In our own work, for reasons peculiar to it, we have found it ad-visable to establish certain other requirements. With regard to age, we have with few exceptions limited our research to persons between the ages of twenty-five and sixty. However, age is not always best measured in chronological terms and we have sometimes permitted considerations of biological age and mental and emotional maturity to override the twenty-five to sixty years' rule. We also soon learned that for our pur. poses a minimum I.Q. of 105 should be required, and most of the subjects have had I.Q.s substantially higher than that. We also required, although not inflexibly, an educational level of two years of college or more, or what could be regarded as the equivalent. Most of the subjects have been college graduates and many of these have had graduate de-grees. Depending upon their purposes, other researchers might adopt considerably more "liberal" policies with respect to age, intelligence, and level of education.

One other basis for the rejection of a subject by a guide should be mentioned. In cases where the guide feels that he has failed to gain the subject's confidence, the guide should not go ahead with the session. Instead, when possible, a session with another guide towards whom the subject is better disposed should be arranged. If no other guide is available it will be better to call off the session.

Obviously, the physical and mental condition of the subject should be determined by medical and psychiatric examination whenever there are grounds for suspecting that something may be wrong or when the subject is not well known to the guide. Most of our subjects have been so screened.

Following the volunteer's initial acceptance, he begins a series of exploratory conversations with the guide. 'These talks usually vvill be spread over a period of several weeks and will serve several purposes. The guide will be able to explore the psychology of the subject and will help the subject to determine the intended goals of his session. The guide will try to learn what methods will be most effective in giving the particular subject the most rewarding and challenging kind of experi-ence. A decision will be made as to the most promising general experi-ential context—aesthetic, philosophical, psychological, religious, or what-ever. The subject's ideas about the psychedelic experience will be discussed with the aim of clearing away misconceptions, providing infor-mation, suggesting background readings, and so on. Rapport between subject and guide will be developed along with positive expectations conceming the session.

In addition to such obvious points the subject is made to understand that the value of his experience will depend in large measure on his willingness to suspend or abandon his ordinary, everyday ways of think-ing and "looking at things." During the weeks remaining before his session the subject is encouraged to practice the suspension of his usual world-view. This involves not only the suspension of the subject's rou-tine value-judgments, ways of apprehending form and color, and so on, but also the temporary surrender of his usual self-image. These prac-tices serve as an excellent preparation for a psychedelic experience wherein the subject will benefit most if he quickly and easily relin-quishes many of his usual controls and a priori constructs, and permits the possible new modes of experiencing to have a free rein.

Structuring the Session. Although it is neither possible nor desirable to impose a rigid schedule or any type of inflodble structuring upon the psychedelic session, it still is desirable for the guide to have definite goals and to have some advance idea of the guiding techniques he is going to use with the particular subject. That the goals will to some extent determine the choice of techniques is obvious; but, at the same time, the techniques will be geared to the needs and personality of the subject.

Among the goals of the session will be examination of those areas the guide thinks worthy of emphasis and which he investigates when possible with each of his subjects. These areas might, for example, include alterations in visual perception of persons, certain kinds of eidetic imagery, varieties of drug-state communication, and so on. Here, the guide, while exploring these areas, must attempt not to influence the content or ways of the subject's experiencing. In this effort he never will be completely successful—any more than, say, the Freudian analyst will be successful in eliciting from his patient dreams and fantasie,s that are not to some extent colored by the beliefs and methods of the analyst. Each guide, then, will necessarily elicit phenomena partially determined by himself, and must try to find means to keep his influence at a mini-mum when that is desirable.

Also of primary importance among the goals of the session will be such objectives as the subject may have. The subject may wish, for example, to explore the meaning that the work he is doing has for him or why his marriage has "gone stale"; or, he might want to have a "mystical experience." At the same time he pursues his own goals, the guide attempts to assist the subject to reach those goals of the subject that the two have discussed, defined and agreed upon during their pre-session interviews. Needless to say, the subject may also have other goals which he has not revealed to the guide and which will become apparent only in the course of the session. These two basic decisions, concerning the goals to be sought and techniques to be employed in the session, largely constitute the possible structuring of the session as it is planned ahead of time and—hopefully—adhered to during the subject's psychedelic experience. More particular components of the predeter-mined structure will include decisions as to the musical recordings to be played, the object-stimuli to be presented, and possibly the tests to be administered. A few of these points should be expanded upon briefly.

Although structured in greater or lesser detail, the session always should appear to the subject to be conducted mainly in terms of his personality and both long-range and immediate interests rather than the orientation and research goals of the guide. Succinctly, the subject should never be made to feel like a guinea pig. And, in line with this, the subject always should be given ample time to pursue his goals and to go into those areas he decides during the session he particularly wishes to explore.

Thus, while the session should be to some extent structured, the program should be very flexible and, importantly, should give the im-pression of some spontaneity. The majority of subjects, we have found, will develop resistances if they feel they are being too much dominated or led. On the other hand, as exceptions to the rule, a few subjects prefer to participate in sessions that appear to them to be strictly pro-grammed. This illusion (for it is always that) of adhering to a detailed schedule and experiencing only what was planned produces in these subjects feeling of security. "Nothing is left to chance," the guide is firmly in control, and the subject feels he need not fear the occurrence of unexpected—that is, unpleasant—developments. In most cases the pre-session interviews and the subject's reactions early in the session will sufficiently indicate to the guide the amounts of real and apparent autonomy required by the subject.

With regard to his structuring of sessions generally, the guide will profit from careful planning; but he must also have the capacity to quickly and intelligently restructure the session should the subject prove unwilling or unable to adhere to the pre-planned agenda and methodol-ogy. However, only in very rare cases will the guide entirely abandon his program and altogether "play it by ear" or permit the subject to determine the course of his own session in all of its details. Thus, versatility, adaptability, and an agile intelligence are characteristics of the successful guide.

If testing is to be included within the framework of a session, the tests should not be inflexibly scheduled as to time but should be admin-istered during some period when the subject is ready and able to co-operate and when some experience of importance to subject or guide will not have to be interrupted (and probably terminated) to that end. To force a testing situation upon a reluctant or otherwise resisting subject may be to mobilize feelings of hostility and/or anxiety. Subjects forced into testing situations usually either prove unco-operative or do considerably less well than they might if ready to be tested. 'Then, what we test is how the subject is able to perform under duress; and this is usually a less valid measure of how a psychedelic drug affects test performance than are tests administered to a more co-operative subject. Naturally this scheduling in terms of a subject's readiness will involve some difficulties and inconvenience when the tests must be administered by persons other than the guide who have their own schedule to adhere to. But whenever possible testing should be carried out when the subject is ready and not when it happens to fit in with the plans of the person administering the test.

It is not possible for us or for anyone else to speak at this time of some single "best" or invariably most effective method of guiding. As regards specific procedures to be employed, much will depend upon such factors as the purpose of the session, the dosage, and the respec-tive personalities of subject and guide. As we have noted, it is possible to work more or less effectively within a variety of conceptual frame-works. Psychotherapists, for instance, have drawn faute de mieux upon their respective therapeutic backgrounds, endeavoring with varying de-grees of success to apply the Freudian, Jungian, existential-analytic or other concepts to the psychedelic session. Directive and non-directive counseling methods have been used; but the former, with its authori-tarian approach to the subject, smacks of "brainwashing" and should certainly be avoided by non-therapists and probably by therapists as well. Techniques employed by hypnotherapists are particularly useful in some drug-state situations, as will be evident to anyone acquainted with these procedures. Canadian therapists working with alcoholics use very massive doses of psychedelic drugs to break down the ego defenses and induce a "transcendental experience," which seems to be almost always religious in nature. Timothy Leary and his associates make use of a manual they have adapted from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. When a religious experience is aimed for, guides may use music, symbolic ob-jects and other stimuli appropriate to that objective.

The approach to the psychedelic experience and ways of guiding it to be described in the remaining portions of this book evolved for the most part out of the efforts by one of the authors (J. H.) to take "depth soundings" of the psyche. 'This led to a method of guiding based upon an observed pattern of "descent" with four levels of the drug experience hypothesized as corresponding to major levels of the psyche. 'This ap-proach, since refined, enabled us to structure a more sophisticated func-tional model of the drug-state psyche and to develop techniques permitting easier access to those deeper levels where the more rewarding and transformative experiences occur. The four levels and stages of the psychedelic experience have been termed by us: the sensory, the recol-lective-analytic, the symbolic, and the integral. Supportive data along with discussion of some of the psychological and philosophical implica-tions of this work will be provided in the later chapters.

In the remainder of the present chapter, we will give a preliminary view of this schema, and also describe very briefly a few of the guiding techniques and procedures utilized in the "depth sounding" approach.

Psychedelic Guiding: The Sensory Realm. In the earlier stages of the psychedelic drug-state, and in later stages too if deeper levels are not reached, the subject's awareness is primarily of sensory experiencing. Altered awarenesses of body and body image, spatial distortions, and a wide range of perceptual changes ordinarily occur. Temporal orienta-tion is also very greatly altered and the subject, closing his eyes, may be confronted with a succession of vivid eidetic images brilliantly colored and intricately detailed.

For many subjects the emergence or eruption of this wealth of primarily sensory phenomena may constitute the first experience of the "dark woods." If the subject here attempts to maintain his normative structures of time and relationship, if he attempts to play Procrustes and fit the psychedelic flood tides to the old predrug-state frame of reference, he may be in for some unpleasant moments. A sense of confusion and chaos are the usual results of the subject's insistence on trying to preserve his normal categorical orientation. When such an effort is made, it is up to the guide to divert him.

Beginning with this initial apprehension of a world of altered per-ceptions the guide must steer the subject along the course of gradual intensification and expansion of consciousness. The first directions should be simple and familiar, geared to focus the subject's attention on the heightening of color and form perception of well-known objects. Pictures and flowers, music and such objects as stones and sea shells—these should be the things first "discovered" as the subject acclimatizes himself to the psychedelic environment.

'The guide may, for example, invite the subject to consider the enigma of a peach. He may cut a door in a green pepper and direct the subject to open it and look inside at the glorious cathedral now re-vealed. He may propose that the subject observe the quivering life of a flower, or even of a stone. A variety of sensory stimuli may be orches-trated together with profound effect.

One of the authors, for instance, has frequently created a sense of wonder and "revelation" in her subjects by what will seem a very simple technique. Placing before the subject various vegetables and flowers she instnicts him to "enter into friendly or harmonious relationship" with them. As the subject reports he has begun to achieve this she puts Beethoven's Pastoral symphony on the record player. The surging notes of this hymn to nature combine with the subject's botanical empathy to produce a euphoric intermingling of sight, touch, smell and sound. And then, when the climactic symphonic moment arrives, the guide slowly peels back the husks of an ear of corn—and the subject knows that he has witnessed a mystery. To the psychedelic non-initiate this is likely to sound funny, if not ridiculous, but it repeatedly has proved to be an effective evocation of one of the more ancient human rituals.

While the subject, left to his own devices, may continue to enjoy his sensory experiencing as an end in itself, the guide's task should be to utilize the responses to sensory stimuli as a vehicle for leading the subject beyond this comparatively trivial activity. Sensory experiencing may, for example, lead the subject on to meaningful consideration of his place in the world; and this, in its turn, may be the means of his "descent" to a "deeper" drug-state level.

The Recollective-Analytic Stage. Possibly several hours into his ses-sion, and usually after he has spent some time in the sensory realm with its altered perceptions, the subject will pass on to a stage of his experi-ence in which the content is predominantly introspective and especially recollective-analytic. Personal problems, particularly problem relation-ships and life-goals are examined. Significant past experiences are re-called and may be revivified ("lived through") with much accompany-ing emotion. A more charactistically "psychedelic" ideation appears as materials not normally accessible to consciousness surge up and deter-mine the thought content and patterns. 'The materials are sifted, analyzed, and ordered, and the unfolding self-knowledge may be ac-companied by eidetic memory images and images tending to illustrate and clarify the ideational materials. With such a wealth of helpful phe-nomena at his disposal, the subject now may be in a position to clearly recognize and formulate many of the problems confronting him and may "see what needs to be done" as he has "never seen it before."

These and certain other phenomena we will mention are usually the predominant and subjectively most important ones at this stage. How-ever, at any stage of the experience, phenomena more characteristic of and predominant at another stage also may be present.

During this psychic eruption and unfolding the guide often will remain silent for long periods, so as not to interrupt and possibly cut off the process. Only if the subject clearly needs help will the guide, in most such cases, interject himself and offer techniques and suggestions for "changing the course" or making the most of the sudden insights and startling revelations. On occasion, for example, it will happen that the subject may get into a kind of circular rut wherein some insignificant or no longer useful theme will repeat itself over and over. 'Then the guide will interrupt and begin to direct the subject, assisting him out of his rutted quagmire of warmed-over sins and damaging self-images toward some new perspective on the problem.
In discussing these and some other aspects of guiding, the question arises as to whether the guide is a therapist. It is our belief that although some of the activities of the guide may be in effect therapeutic, this no more makes him a therapist than the therapeutic by-products of educa-tion, religion, and philosophy make therapists of teachers, clergymen, and philosophers. Virgil is not Dante's psychiatrist although he effects considerable therapeutic change in the poet. And the main responsibil-ity of the guide toward the subject, as we tend to see it, is that of helping the subject to enlarge his philosophical world-view by way of general consciousness expansion and such particular means as re-examination of values and purposes, enhanced aesthetic appreciation and gaining a new perspective on a variety of other basic and universal human problems. When one considers the enormously rich and varied range of experience open to the psychedelic subject, as to Dante, it can only seem wasteful if not destructive to limit the dnig-state explorations to psychodynamic factors. Rather, the guide should be one who travels with the subject (again, we do not speak of patients) through the vast panoramic continuum of the psychedelic world; and his work then should be to point out a new dimension of experience here, a possible new interpretation there, while helping the subject toward a greater understanding of himself and his world. This journey may prove to be also therapeutic, including the remission of some symptom or symp-toms, but such a result is incidental and not the aim of the guide as distinguished from the therapeutic worker.

Returning to this recollective-analytic stage of the psychedelic expe-rience, the guide here feels that he is something of an "open book" to many of his subjects. It has been our experience that even vague stir-rings in the mind of the guide often cause immediate interest and concern on the part of the subject who then may go on to identify with surprising accuracy the specific and often esoteric feeling or thought that had just occurred to the guide. When the guide has inquired of the subject as to the source of her information the usual response has been that she was not telepathically reading his thoughts but rather "reading" his face. And the subject might then inquire of the guide: "Why do you react so much to your thoughts?" Thus it appeared that even slight and subtle shifts of facial expression were as meaningful to the subject as if the guide were an actor conveying his message by means of theatrical pyrotechnics. Moods may be conveyed in similar fashion, and thus a transient depressing thought or moment of anxiety on the part of the guide has been observed to trigger much stronger feelings of depression or anxiety in the subject. Because of this non-verbal potency of the guide, it is up to him to try to maintain a state of positive awareness and calm and to try to avoid any gestures, sounds, and facial expressions that might be interpreted in a negative way by the subject.

Communication between subject and guide is also affected by other peculiarly "psychedelic" factors. For example, many subjects will tend to assume that the guide is equally as "sensitized" as they, and go on from this to decide that verbal communication is not at all necessary. Some subjects, as we have seen, feel certain that telepathic and even spoken communications of considerable length have taken place; and only the playback of a tape, if that, will convince the subject that no such conversation ever was held.

On the verbal level the "psychedelic" conversation may include a mutual awareness of nuances rarely encountered in ordinary conversa-tion. There is often, for example, a simultaneous grasping by subject and guide of multiple meanings and shades of meanings all attached to a single word or brief phrase. It can be of very great importance if the guide, in pre-session interviews, is able to learn some of the "key" or "pivotal" words of the subject. These personal key words together with recurrent words employed by the subject in the session may be em-ployed with great success to lead the subject into deeper levels of awareness.

The "loaded" psychedelic conversation, in which a few words suffice to "speak volumes," sometimes yields in a minute or two insights capable of effecting a valuable shift of perspective in the subject. We will reproduce such a brief conversation, including a rather typical "psychedelic pun," that the subject felt served to "illumine" his "whole view of matter and attitude towards it."

S: (to G) "You smile."
G: "The earth smiles."
S: (Accepts a stone G hands him and examines it) "The smile in the heart of matter. But does it matter? Does anything ... matter?"
G: "Go into the stone and find out."
S: (Studies the stone for several seconds and speaks without taking his eyes away from it) "Yes, I matter . . . Deeply, I matter . . . In the very heart of creation I . . . matter."
G: "And your 'nothingness' that you were complaining about a while ago? Where is it now?"
S: (Looking up and weeping tears of joy) "When Being begins, Nothing matters."

Some extremely valuable insights may be had on this recollective-analytic level and these may be sufficient to enable the subject to revise his thinking and self-image and to alter his behavior in desirable ways. However, much greater gains are possible when the subject uses this level to effectively formulate his problems and goals and then "carries" this material "down" with him to the experimental level and stage of descent we have termed the symbolic.

The Symbolic Level. On the symbolic level of the psychedelic experi-ence profound self-understanding and a high degree of self-transforma-tion may reward the subject who is properly prepared. Since our later discussion of this level, reached by some forty percent of the subjects, is extensive, here we will be brief. We will also be very brief as concerns the integral level to which an even more extensive chapter is devoted.

The eidetic images become of major importance on this symbolic level as does the capacity of the subject to feel that he is participating with his body as well as his mind in the events he is imaging. Here, the symbolic images are predominantly historical, legendary, mythical, ritualistic, and "archetypal." 'The subject may experience a profound and rewarding sense of continuity with evolutionary and historic process. He may act out myths and legends and pass through initiations and ritual observances often seemingly structured precisely in terms of his own most urgent needs.

If the subject before reaching this symbolic level has been able to see his life in terms of some universal myth or legend, or if he has recognized his readiness and need to pass through a certain rite, then the mythic acting out or ritual passage will be powerfully experienced by him. He will image and feel himself totally into the rite or into a myth involving a figure with whom he is able to identify because he has come to see his life in its broad outlines or even in many particulars as repeating the life of the legendary figure. In this latter case, should the myth be one that ends in some unfortunate way, the subject is helped to restructure it along more positive lines or else to go beyond the myth to a new one or drop the mythic identification completely.

Since our society offers so little in the way of the important rites of passage and initiations provided by other civilizations, these experiences provide in many cases means for growth and maturation apparently not possible for some persons when no rite is provided. That our society suffers from the lack of these means of growth has been noted by others, but the psychedelic experience affords some important documen-tation in behalf of this belief.

When the subject does not become a participant in a symbolic drama of myth or ritual, he still may achieve the aforementioned sense of continuity with historical and evolutionary process, and this may be of considerable value. He may feel in his body his continuity with these processes and may witness by means of the eidetic images many of what he believes to be the details of evolutionary and historical unfolding. But unless he is able to participate directly in and respond emotionally to the mythic and ritualistic re-enactrnents he will be unable to descend to the deepest level of the psychedelic drug-state. Neither will he reap the very great benefits already possible on the level he has reached.

The Integral Level. Only eleven of our 206 psychedelic subjects have reached the deep integral level where the experience is one of psycho-logical integration, "illumination," and a sense of fundamental and pos-itive self-transformation.' In each of these cases the experience of the integral level has been regarded by the subject as a religious one; even so, we see no reason why this level and its effects could not be experi-enced in other than religious terms.

On this level, ideation, images, body sensation (if any) and emotion are fused in what is felt as an absolutely purposive process culminating in a sense of total self-understanding, self-transformation, religious en-lightenment and, possibly, mystical union. The subject here experiences what he regards as a confrontation with the Ground of Being, God, Mysterium, Noumenon, Essence, or Fundamental Reality. The content of the experience is self-validating and known with absolute certainty to be true. Further a kind of post facto validation is forthcoming in the forrn of the after-effects: the behavioral and other changes.

The climate on this level is intensely emotional. It is felt that this intense affect serves to synthesize the experimental components and to effect a lasting, positive integration of the restructured psychical organi-zation. Many of what the subject regarded as ineffectual and self-damaging behavioral patterns seem to have been effaced, cut tbrough or overlaid in a kind of imprinting or reimprinting process. The subject knows with perfect conviction that he will in the future respond in terms of the new insights and new orientation instead of making the old, painful and non-productive responses he has made in the past.

The subjects who achieve this kind of experience are always very well prepared for the psychedelic drug-state. They have exceptional self-understanding, usually achieved after long hard effort, although the ways of arriving at this self-understanding have been various. Some have achieved it mainly through psychedelic drug experiences. Some have worked with techniques of self-development including yoga and mysticism. One had largely conquered a severe anxiety neurosis through self-analysis alone. Several had been analysands. All at the time of their sessions were comparatively very mature, developed personalities who, at least in their public lives, would be generally regarded as functioning in a superior way in the world.

The after-effects of these "transforming experiences" are remark-able in those cases where the subject is not already so well-adjusted and so far advanced toward his personal goals that "great leaps forward" no longer are possible for him. The subject may be strengthened, energized, made more serene, creative, and spontaneous. There is a much-heightened sense of being in harmonious relation with other persons and with things—with the world generally. Sense perceptions may be sharp-ened with a consequent enhancement of aesthetic response to a wide variety of stimuli. 'The mirror image and also the felt body image may seem to have undergone changes for the better; and, along vvith this, the person may feel lighter and better co-ordinated, generally more "fit."

Following such an experience the subject usually expresses himself as having no need or wish for another psychedelic experience in any near future. He feels that enough has been achieved and that the experi-ence was a fulfillment, taking him as far as he is able to go by this means at this time and at the present stage of his development.

While the effects we are describing resemble, for example, the effects described by A. H. Maslow as resulting from varieties of the (nondrug) "peak experience," we believe that the change is more pro-found and fundamental in the case of the psychedelic subject. If this is true, then the reason for it probably lies in the much greater duration of the experience on the integral level as compared to the duration of the usual "peak" experience which, whether mystical, religious, aesthetic or whatever, is almost always very brief—rarely more than a minute or so at the most. The psychedelic subject, as distinguished from the person having the nondrug-state "peak experience," ordinarily remains in the intensely affect-charged climate of the integral level for from fifteen minutes to two hours—and on two occasions, for as long as four hours. The integration of the eidetic imagery into a purposive ideation-image-sensation-affect complex also is of great importance in achieving the transformation of the person. But the extended duration of the experi-ence of the integral level's powerful affective climate is probably the final and "clinching" factor producing a deeper, more permanent "im-printing" than usually occurs in the more familiar "peak" and "conver-sion" experiences of a very brief duration.

Before dosing this discussion we would add that our criteria for determining whether the subject has reached this integral levp1 and undergone profound transformation are strict. 'Thus, while some ninety-five percent of the subjects claim to have been benefited and changed in some positive way by their sessions, and while about forty percent have declared themselves profoundly and positively transformed, we evaluate only slightly more than five percent of the cases as involving radical transformation of the person on the integral level. As remarked, this percentage would be doubled if we limited consideration to the last 60 cases—cases handled after our schema had been considerably re-fined and elaborated. Probably it would go higher still with further work; but, even so, we doubt that the very high percentages of profound transformation reported by some other workers in this field ever could be achieved in terms of our criteria, even if the criteria were consider-ably loosened.

Finally, we would like to say that we are about as uneasy with such terms as "transformation," "self-understanding," "illumination," "reali-zation of potentials," and so on, as some of our professional readers will be. We, too, would "feel much better about all this" if a more scientific terminology could be effectively employed. Unfortunately, however, we deal here, and especially when discussing the integral level, with areas psychology has tended to ignore and with which neither science nor philosophy has done much better.

As concerns participation by the guide, his activity stops at the threshold of the integral level and the subject experiences the final integration unassisted and alone. Somewhat as Virgil had to leave Dante at the portals of the "realms of bliss," so must the guide with-draw and do no more than bear witness to the culmination of the process he has launched and directed to this point. The state of being we call integral, like Dante's Paradise, is an intensely subjective and private one and there the guide may not follow.

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