Drug Abuse

Six: The World of the Non-Human

In preceding chapters we have dealt with the psychedelic subject's con-sciousness of his own body and with his consciousness of other persons and of himself in relation to others. In the present chapter, we will deal with the subject's sensory level experiencing of the world of non-human phenomena. We will also discuss the eidetic images and the transition from the sensory level to a "deeper" one.

Most of the experiences described in the earlier chapters are fairly typical of psychedelic sessions and their occurrence has little to do with how the session is structured or even with whether the session is struc-tured at all. Our purpose in presenting these more or less random experiences was to further familiarize the reader with the drug-state phenomena and also to give him some notion of what the psychedelic experience may look like when considered outside the context of any particular system of guiding or overview of the essential nature of the experience. Hereafter, we will deal with the drug-state in tenms of our own discovery of its phenomenological pattern and of our methods for bringing about, or preventing blocicage of, the unfolding of that pattem. Our intention will be to demonstrate possibilities always latent in the drug experience but which up to now have been too seldom realized for the reason that the pattern was unrecognized. Thus, goals and proce-dures were imposed that were alien to and disruptive of the natural psychedelic process.

It should be kept in mind that the sensory level is the subject's first experience of the new "psychedelic consciousness." The subject is thrust into a new world, makes his adjustment to it and then is able to delight in and profit by its wonders. His now useless "real world" categories fall away before a novelty first of percept and then of con-cept. If all goes well, his non-categorical experiencing of the psychedelic "world's" phenomena prepares him to later, on deeper levels, confront the contents of his life and psyche with equally fresh and novel perspectives.

'Thus the sensory level should have as a major function the decondi-tioning of the subject. By presenting a wealth of hitherto unknown perceptual possibilities it can dissolve or temporarily suspend the effec-tiveness of those psychical mechanisms whose functions would appear to be to inhibit emergence of certain processes and contents of the mind. Once these inhibitions are dissolved, the ground has been pre-pared for the free psyche to function in such a way as to result in the beneficial transformation and self-realization of the individual. As we will see, this transformative process would seem to be entelechical and, when the conditions for unfolding are met, will move in strange but effective ways to provide the subject with that measure of fulfillment for which his past life has readied him.

The Perceptual Feast. Havelock Ellis once described the psychedelic (peyote) experience as "a saturnalia of the specific senses, and, above all, an orgy of vision." This emphasis on vision is especially appropriate when discussing the onset of the drug-state and sensory level phenom-ena. Later, the subject may go on to some almost equally exciting tactile experiences; and none of the senses need be denied its portion of novel and pleasurable stimulation.

The drug-state consciousness sometimes erupts with a spectacular hypersensate fanfare. "All at once" colors are bright and glowing, the outlines of objects are defined as they never have been before, spatial relationships are drastically altered, several or all of the senses are enormously heightened—"all at once" the world has shed its old, every-day façade and stands revealed as a wonderland.

When a period of fairly gradual transition ushers in this change, the subject may notice first of all a pulsing, vibratory excitation of the atmosphere and remark small, curved, flickering and sparkling particles of light that appear to dart to and fro, dance briefly in place, then dart away again, and disappear. This phenomenon of flickering light and atmospheric excitation is like that seen in the work of the impressionist painters and was theorized about by Seurat, who believed that all ob-jects are precisely a coalescence of these (energy) particles.

Then, as the phenomena swiftly multiply and greatly gain in rich-ness, fluid colors stream and mingle at the edges of things and colored objects stand revealed in all their characteristic drug-state vividness. When the phenomena progressively accumulate, rather than making simultaneous appearance, these color perceptions quickly may be fol. lowed by a host of other phenomena including objects shrinking and growing, leaning and displaying in bold delineation the sharpness of their angles, dissolving into whirling particles, melting, undulating, expanding and contracting, and so on. The attempt to banish from con-sciousness this new world of stimuli yields only fear and confusion, and the iame result is forthcoming when a desperate effort is made to at once impose some rigid order upon it. If, however, the subject is willing to lay aside his everyday assumptions and categorizations, then the drug-state environment becomes increasingly stable, although on its own "psychedelic" terms. A kind of order is discernible and the bombard-ment of stimuli slackens with things "presenting themselves" singly and in such a manner as to enable the subject to fully perceive, think about, and even empathize with the particular object of his attenton.

When the psychedelic experience is had out-of-doors the height ened and distorted perceptions may be somewhat different from those just described. Fairly typical of responses to the out-of-doors setting is the following peyote experience of a young woman. 'This subject, S-1, a recent university graduate, writes:

"I walked in the light of a full moon across a great meadow. . . . I became aware of almost electrical surroundings . . . (and) there was also the sense of the body's biochemical processes, rhythmically throb-bing . . . My senses became extremely acute. I could see an ant upon a tree at a great distance away. I could hear the whispering of my com-panion, with whom I had shared the peyote, far off from me. Biting into an apple, I felt the granular surface of the chunk intensely magnified. I could rarely close my eyes because of my fascination with the external stimuli, and so probably missed a number of 'visions' [i.e., eidetic images].

". . . As dawn came, my heightened ability to organize caused each cloud to take on recognizable shape. I felt a great peace. The pink sky was hyper-pink. A myriad of multicolored telephone wires hummed as they wriggled like serpents . . . When I closed my eyes there was an endless flow of dancing geometrical forms in the most magnificent com-binations of color. I could not help thinking at this time how a man in advertising might make his fortune were he able to capture just a bit of this....

"As I watched a wooded section I was surprised to find the branches of the trees flapping as a bird does, only in harmonious slow motion. Distant scenery waved gently so as almost to resemble a tapes-try gently swaying. I was amused to see the brick walls of a house tirelessly undulating. Fascinated, I drew near trees whose trunks heaved, and whose bark from afar flowed and pulsated in a manner suggesting organic growth. Close obsenration of the bark was astound-ing. I reminded myself of the mental patient one sees in films, on the lawn of the institution, drawn next to the inanimate in watchfulness. And here I was, leaning against the brick house, bound by concentra-tion on the microcosmic growth and flow of the particles. A dandelion I glanced down at grew two feet high. Everything was magnified. As I strolled, my attention was wholly grasped by a small dewdrop on the grass. It was utterly captivating."

From such aesthetic appreciation S, as is common with the psy-chedelic subjects, moved on to some philosophical reflections—in this case, a type of thinking made popular by some Eastern-oriented writers whose works have been influential with students and with the Drug Movement. She writes:

"Emotionally there is a profound feeling of oneness. . . . I was joyful to understand the concept 'all things are animate.' It is true for one who witnesses the supposed inanimate fibres of her dress, breathing and undulating . . . The proposition presenting matter as the interaction of light energy is something I feel as though I could confirm. I beheld the One and the Many emphasized in Eastern philosophy. It seemed true—the tree, my companion, and I—we were all the same thing—dying in and out. Status and classification appeared as mere superficial differentiation, in the light of the harmony I saw among all beings."

In the foregoing description we find accounts of the two major types of perceptual change encountered in the psychedelic experience—the heightening of perception and the distortion of perception. Impairment (diminished acuity) of perception also may occur, but usually is mild and has little significance for the overall experience.

That sense perceptions are heightened at all has been denied by some investigators who, administering standard tests, have found that in terms of the test there was no such heightening. But this would be a difficult finding to "sell" to most psychedelic subjects and certainly to the subject whose experience just has been described.

It is our own belief that for conscioushess a heightening of sense perception definitely occurs; but it may not occur in such a way as to be measurable by the tests now in use. We do doubt that the eye is abso-lutely seeing more (some effects of pupillary dilation possibly ex-cepted), or that the nose is smelling more. Rather, it seems likely that more of what the eye sees and more of what the nose smells is getting into consciousness. Some of this moRE doubtless results from the subject's paying greater and prolonged attention to the stimulus than he usually does; but deinhibiting factors also may be involved. That the subject firmly believes his perceptions are much more acute is not to be doubted.

That the subject is seeing "better" or "more clearly" the colors, lines, and other specific properties and parts of things appears to be often explained by the fact that the object in such cases no longer is being apperceived in terms of function, symbolism or label categoriza-tions of the object not accessible to sense perception alone and which usually work to dilute the immediacy of the perception.

In most cases, on this sensory level, the classification of the thing as box, jar, or whatever is noted but seems then to be dismissed as irrele-vant and so has little or no effect upon the perception. Occasionally, however, a subject will bypass categorical recognition altogether. 'Then a scrap of wallpaper may be perceived with such immediacy, such instantaneous and total immersion in the sensory detail, as to oblige the subject to inquire what it is he now is observing. If that question is not answered, the subject soon will be able to find the answer for himself; but it still may take as much as a minute for him to recognize and label the object when he has not done so at the outset.

The distortion of perception yields a much greater range of phe-nomena and is psychologically much more significant than the heighten-ing of perception which is only a consciousness of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, or touching "better" than before. The distortions may serve to impose a symbolism upon the environment, may be an essential component of empathic and mystical experiences, and may be an extremely important aspect of the subject's participation in the trans-formative symbolic dramas occurring on the deeper drug-state levels. We will return to the varieties of perceptual distortion from time to time in this chapter and also throughout the remainder of the book. They confront us with a highly complex interaction of perception with idea-tional, emotional and inferred unconscious factors; thus, discussion of some of the specific examples will be required.

Aesthetic Images. Few aspects of the psychedelic experience are so impressive to the average subject, or so well remembered after his ses-sion, as the eidetic images—images previously recorded by the brain or, in some cases, possibly a part of the phylogenetic (or "Racial") inheri-tance, and which emerge into consciousness during the drug experience. These images usually are seen with eyes closed, although they may be seen in a gazing crystal or on some suitable surface, such as a movie screen. They are almost always vividly colored and the colors typically are described as rich, brilliant, glowing, luminous, or "preternatural"— colors exceeding in their beauty anything the subject has ever seen before.

'The images are most often of persons, animals, architecture, and landscapes. Strange creatures from legend, folklore, myth, and fairy tale appear in wonderful surroundings. Ancient temples and castle,s are imaged, and figures and incidents from the historical past. Persons, places, and objects observed in the course of the subject's life may make their appearance, especially on the recollective-analytic level where life-historical materials are the main concern. More often, however, the images are not of specific, familiar faces, scenes, or things, but probably are synthetic creations combining elements of several recorded images. In general, whatever the subject knows about, has seen or is able to imagine may, as eidetic image, appear to him somewhat as these might be seen in technicolor still photographs or motion pictures. The uncon-scious process by which recorded images could be synthesized to result in a new creation is not explained by saying that the images and image sequences represent an unconscious act of creation; but that is about as much of an "explanation" as it is possible to give. Probably the images have a common source with the images of dreams and hypnotic states.

The eidetic images may appear as a sequence of related or unrelated single "pictures," or they may unfold as a continuous movie-like drama in which the subject may or may not play a part. The images may enter into consciousness as meaningless and so have only "entertainment value"; or they may be supremely meaningful, illumining the most im-portant areas of the subject's life.

On the sensory level of the psychedelic experience the images are almost always meaningless, or mean nothing more than what they most obviously are. Thus, an image of a grazing cow is just an image of a grazing cow, and nothing more. The cow has no discernible relevance to the subject's life; it is not a symbol or, if it is, then the symbolism does not become apparent. The image has no function for the subject and, at best, will entertain him. This type of functionless or purposeless image we have termed the aesthetic image, so distinguishing it from the highly meaningful and otherwise functional purposive images met with on the deeper drug-state levels.

Unless they are especially frightening, little emotional response is made to the aesthetic images. They may give some pleasure and so induce a mild euphoria. Some researchers have reported sexual excite-ment as a response to images with erotic content; but this is rare and, so far as we know, unimportant on this level of the guided session. Only when the images are especially hideous or in some other way menacing does the subject respond to them strongly on the sensory level. Then he may respond to the hideousness of the image as he might to a similarly hideous art work or photograph; or, he may be disturbed because it is his image.

In a representative example of the usual sort of entertaining or innocuous aesthetic image sequence a male subject, S-3 (peyote), expe-rienced the following:

"A platinum snail about twelve feet high and studded with rubies was pulled along on its wheels by a much smaller and brightly painted dwarf carved from wood. The curious couple was closely followed by a host of metallic, gem-covered insects—grasshoppers and beetles, bum-blebees, and mosquitos, all of fabulous size and brilliantly gleaming, gliding or walking or hopping with the precision of wound-up toys. These then were followed by strange creatures from some wildly imag-inative bestiary—all converging upon a lush oasis in the golden desert where the foliage seemed to have been created by Rousseau."

As regards the "twelve feet high" snail, very often the subject knows the dimensions of the imaged object although, of course, the size of an image cannot be measured. This may be true even when the imaged object occurs alone and cannot be compared with other things in the environment. Also, as in this case, the scene may be such that nothing in it offers any clues concerning the size of the object. Appar-ently, in the unconscious act of constructing the object certain specifica-tions have been made and these become conscious along with the image.

In some cases of eidetic imaging there is a transition from initial crepuscular imagery to increasingly more vivid images. Usually, there is at least some intensification of the images. But it is by no means un-known that the images appear in full vividness at the beginning or any earlier, vague images pass unnoticed. Also, such complex images as those described in the example are preceded in some cases by simple images—geometric forms, drifting "clouds" of color, clusters of "jewels," and so on.1 In the following case we are given an excellent description of the transition from simple to complex images. The sub-ject, whose peyote experience remained entirely on the sensory level, also describes a few typical perceptual responses to the environment. More importantly, this account of his experience, including a final as-sessment of it, is representative of the evaluations likely to be made by a mature and nonmystically inclined individual whose experience has re-mained on the sensory level. 'The subject, S-4, a forty-one-year-old journalist and forrner musician, writes:

"The first impressions began to appear in about an hour. With the eyes dosed I saw multicolored lines and streaks, faint at first but grow-ing stronger, in a sort of moving kaleidoscope. 'The constantly shifting patterns reminded me of Disney's visual interpretation of the Bach-Stokowski orchestral transcription in his Fantasia, which I had seen some fifteen years before. These images involving play of light, color and movement, were replaced by a static series of pattems of rich hues and abstract design, somewhat like tapestries. They followed at regular short invervals, changing automatically like a slide projector. 'There seemed no way of detaining a particularly pleasant one by concentra-tion....

"It seemed more pleasant to keep the eyes dosed and enjoy the train of inner visions than to examine the various objects in the room. Though their colors and shapes sharpened, which made an ordinary household object a thing of beauty, I did not have Huxley's feeling of perceiving the Platonic essence or Ding-an-sich of the objects in view.

"The objects seen with the eyes closed seemed unrelated to thought or experience. As they gradually became more perceptible, scenes in-volving human forrns and architecture began to emerge accompanied by play of light and color, a `technicolor' of the mind's eye. As the visions grew more interesting, I could still convey my experiences to the guide, although my engrossment in the sensations was such that I did not wish to interrupt them for too long . . . Most of the scenes were oriental—brilliantly illuminated landscapes, strange towers, pagodas, and temples, furnishing the background to exquisite lovely dancers, often with delicate breasts, who could have been Balinese maidens. 'The most vivid image appeared in a timeless setting: a Japanese girl, nude, standing motionless before a temple, her skin a lovely amber, her hair a glisten-ing black. The colors seemed to glow with an inner light. It seemed a glimpse of something timeless and primordial, a sort of breakthrough into the realm of the absolute. There were no religious or mystical associations—the vision was there, objective, eternal, and yet ephemeral—in a few seconds I moved on to another....

"We took a little stroll and outside in the warm Louisiana summer night—it then was after ten o'clock—the world was transfigured. The full moon shone so brightly it seemed like a sun, and like the sun, one could not focus one's eyes upon it any longer than an instant. The foliage appeared to be a lush tropical garden, the wax-like leaves and blades of grass taking on a deep olive hue. It seemed as if I could distinguish every leaf, every blade of grass. It was like walking through a fairyland, a tranquil, dreamlike landscape unassociated with anything I had previously known.

"With regard to time, what impressed me most was how heavily each moment weighed in the scheme of things—the incredible amount of experience a few minutes could contain. Yet, in retrospect, each of the ten or twelve hours taken up by the experiment seemed to have lasted only a few minutes. Afterwards, I felt I had gone through a powerful experience, but there was no desire to repeat the experience. In a few months, perhaps, yes; but for the moment I had had enough of such strange and uncontrollable sensations.

"I have read that certain tribes of American Indians use the peyote in religious experience. At no time during the experiment did I associate my sensations with religious or mystical feelings. To be sure, there were visions; but for me they were purely sensations. Sensation is a matter of degree; heightened through peyote or other drugs, it still does nothing for me except perhaps emphasize the mystery involved as regards sen-sory perception.

"Since the sensation is pleasurable, I suspect that some who exper-iment with psychedelic drugs for 'religious purposes' are subconsciously rationalizing in an attempt to justify the taking of drugs in a society where drug-taking is taboo. Rationalization enables them to indulge in a pleasant and guilt-free experience; even taking drugs becomes a moral act if identified with the search for the Buddha."

As suggested, very little is known about eidetic images. Even the question of an experiential ground is open to debate. Unknown, too, is why a particular image appears when it does and why it stands in its peculiar sequential relation to other, apparently unrelated images. As we progress in our discussion of the levels of the psychedelic experi-ence, the basic mystery of the eidetic images will not be solved; rather, the mystery will deepen along with the drug-state levels.

Although one cannot explain the eidetic images, there is much that can be said about them. We will say only a little at this point, and will limit discussion to a few immediately relevant items.

First of all, the image has its own space, in which the objects appear and the action unfolds. This resembles the imaginary space of the dream and is the space of an unreal as distinguished from the real world. Also, the image has its own time; or it is timeless. With most eidetic images, time is irrelevant, although in the dramatic sequences there may be experienced transitions from day to night and even from week to week or year to year. Even so, the image has a peculiarly timeless flavor, giving to the dramas of the deeper levels their curious aura of fatality.

'This fact that the image has its own space makes it immediately distinguishable from both normal percept and visual hallucination. The visual hallucination occurs in the "real world" environment and may be mistaken for a real object. The eidetic image, with its own environment, is never mistaken for a real object. Even a panic reaction to an image probably never means that the image has been mistaken for an object and event in the "real world."

Whether the eidetic image is related to the hallucination and even may stand on a kind of continuum with it, is a question to which there is no certainly valid answer. Occasionally, in a brief span of time, a subject may experience both hallucinations (apparent perceptions of real objects when no such objects are present) and images. Moreover, the images and hallucinations may seem to be ideationally and/or affec-tively related—as if both were "working to make the same point." However, we have never heard of an eidetic image evolving or develop-ing into an hallucination; or, rather, when we had heard of such an instance, investigation has tended to disprove or cast serious doubt on the occurrence.

The temporal and spatial difference between image and percept, and other distinguishing factors such as the greater vividness of the image, appear to serve as built-in safeguards against the subject mistalcing the imaged for the perceived reality. Yet, as we have noted, the images may frighten the subject and so produce anxiety reactions. Of course, the question arises as to whether the image actually produced the anxiety, or whether, instead, anxiety resulted in the production of an image which then further intensified the anxiety? That the images are, at least in some cases, "clothed affect" seems to us a plausible conclusion; but it seems highly improbable that they always are that.

When frightening images do occur they are likely to make their appearance on the sensory level of the drug experience where the image is not a recognizable symbol but is "only itself." Then, if the response is not wholly emotional, the subject may become ideationally involved in the image and begin to read meanings into it. While proper set and setting should prevent the disturbing image experience, its occurrence is always a possibility. This possibility is increased when the drug effects begin very quickly as happens when administration is by injection. In the following cases the subjects received LSD and DMT, respectively, by intramuscular injection and in both cases the onset of the drug effects was swift and the subject's anxiety wholly or mainly attributable to a lack of time to make any gradual adjustment. Both subjects, whose sessions were with other researchers,2 were "psychedelic veterans" who had had no trouble in previous sessions when the drugs were taken orally and the effects came on gradually. But on the occasion now to be described, the "hell experiences" came at the very start of the session.

The first case is especially unusual in that the subject's experience was of "simple" eidetic images or even what might be called "pre-images." Also, a rarity early in the session, the subject had a tactile as well as imagistic awareness of the tempestuous chaos of liquid and often amorphous colors which threatened to inundate consciousness. 'This forty-four-year-old author and scholar, S-5 (LSD: 300 micrograms), writes:

"I am a veteran explorer of those depths and labyrinths that are my own self, but for such an immediate and furious onslaught I was not ready. Surging wildly across the surface of my mind—even, as it seemed, across the surface of my brain, a brain now capable of intense sensations—swirled a purple sea, irresistable, angry, and teeming with clammy, serpentine shapes that I thought tried to fasten and feed, but then were swept brutally away in the seething, terrible, thick liquid. The much too suddenly deluged self reeled and trembled before the force of the tidal wave of whatever atrocious stuff had engulfed it. Unexpectedly assailed by so fierce and monstrous a turbulence, even the most seasoned voyager may come to know a new kind of dread that threatens at any instant to degenerate to panic.

"Purple, but with throbbing, bulging, vein-like masses of green and red and black, I think that sea was; and of the texture of syrup, or of blood that is congealing. Heavy, tumultuous seas, and thickening, rising up to awesome heights–rwith consciousness tossed as a lifeboat is tossed in a typhoon's onrush. Capsize seemed imminent and I longed to cry out my terror, to beg for an antidote; yet somewhere in the midst of bevvilderrnent and the fear of being swept away altogether, was my pride which insisted I ride out the storm. I hung on to this pride, once I found it, as if it were the shattered mast of the vessel of my self. Then, in the midst of a raging sea of colors I could name, but which were horrible, I saw myself clinging to that mast; and the waters gradually turned black and still; and an eerie silver sun came up; and I knew I was saved."

S's session "after this unpromising beginning, was not unpleasant except that throughout there were moments of confusion and, after-wards, 'blank spots' in the memory of the session"—something that never had happened to him before.

In the second (DMT) case the subject, S-6, a young woman in her mid-twenties, experienced "the most terrifying three minutes" of her life—three minutes that seemed, however, an eternity.' She then expe-rienced some other, less frightening images, but only one brief sequence which she regarded as pleasurable. 'The final "face of God" image seemed to her in retrospect an appropriate, mocking commentary on her "foolishness" in taking, under adverse conditions, this particular drug—she got the God that she deserved! S writes:

"I had been up for three days and two nights working on a manu-script. That was the first mistake. The room where the 'experiment' was to take place was a dirty, dingy, insanely cluttered pesthole. That was the second mistake. I was told that I would see God. That was the third and worst mistake of all.

"The needle jabbed into my arm and the dimethyl-tryptamine oozed into my bloodstream. At the same time the steam came on with a rhythmic metallic clamor and I remember thinking that it would be good to have some heat. Within thirty seconds I noticed a change, or rather I noticed that there had never been any change, that I had been in this dreamy, unworldly state for millions of years. I told this to Dr.—, who said, 'Good, then it is beginning to pass the blood-brain barrier.'

"It was too fast. Much too fast. I looked up at what a minute ago had been doors and cabinets, and all I could see were parallel lines falling away into absurdities. Dimensions were outraged. The geometry of things crashed blindly into one another and crumbled into chaos. I thought to myself, 'But he said that I would see God, that I would know the meaning of the universe.' I closed my eyes. Perhaps God was there, behind my eyeballs.

"Something was there, all right; Something, coming at me from a distant and empty horizon. At first it was a pinpoint, then it was a smudge, and then—a formless growing Shape. A sound accompanied its progress towards me—a rising, rhythmic, metallic whine; a staccato meeyow that was issuing from a diamond larynx. And then, there it loomed before me, a devastating horror, a cosmic diamond cat. It filled the sky, it filled all space. There was nowhere to go. It was all that was. There was no place for me in this—Its universe. I felt leveled under the cruel glare of its crystalline brilliance. My mind, my body, my vestige of self-esteem perished in the hard glint of its diamond cells.4

"It moved in rhythmic spasms like some demonic toy; and always there was its voice—a steely, shrill monotony that put an end to hope. There should not be such a voice! It ravaged the nerves and passed its spasms into my head to echo insanely from one dark corridor of my mind to another. Me-e-e-e-yow-ow-ow-ow me-e-e-e-yow-ow-ow-ow me-e-e-e-yow-ow-ow-ow—the incessant, insatiable staccato went on. It would not have been so bad if it had just been diabolical noise. The chilling thing was that I knew what it was saying! It told me that I was a wretched, pulpy, flaccid thing; a squishy-squashy worm. I was a thing of soft entrails and slimy fluids and was abhorrent to the calcified God.

"I opened my eyes and jumped up from my chair screaming: will not have you! I will not have such a God1 What is the antidote to this? Give me the antidote!' But as I said this I doubted my own question for it seemed to me that this was the only reality I had ever known, the one I was born with and the one I would die with. There was no future beyond this state of mind, there was no state of mind beyond this one.

'There is no antidote,' said Dr.—. 'Relax, it's only been three minutes. You've got at least twenty-five more minutes still to go.'

"I looked around the room. 'The seething symmetry had calmed down some. Instead of evoking terror it merely made one seasick now. 'Euclidian nausea,' I thought, and dosed my eyes again. I found myself on a small planet of a distant star. A spaceship built like an amoeba reached with long tentacles out to grab me. The center of the space ship was diaphanous like an embryo's head with a network of blue veins, flowing blood, and shifting cellular wastes. It pulsed and pulsed and whirred and caclded. I did not wish to be a part of this protoplasmic blob although it was far cheerier than the first vision, and so, as its tentacles were about to enclose me, I opened my eyes and escaped its interstellar plans for me. By this time I was learning how to manage—or should I say Escape from—the experience. I thought that I would start to call my own shots, find my own planet.

"I closed my eyes again to discover a world of blue horses. The land heaved gently and the necks and heads of stately blue horses rose and fell as waves on the planet's surface. It was a land of perfect peace, a blue equine paradise.

"But still I hadn't seen the face of God! I would make a final effort at ultimate visions. My eyes closed and I found myself looking through one end of an immensely long cylinder. At first, there was nothing at the other end—a trillion miles away. Then God came and peeked in at me. I burst out laughing.

"'The face of God staring at me from the other end of the cylinder was the face of a very wise monkey!"

Concerning this case it may be superfluous to remark that the sub-ject should not be told she is going to "see God" or discover "the meaning of the universe." Yet more than one researcher and therapist we know of has done this sort of thing repeatedly, and probably never with benefit to the subject or patient. Medical doctors no less than other kinds of workers with psychedelic drugs have promised visions of God, revelations of Ultimate Truth, and so on. And for the self-anointed psychedelic priest, it seems to be just a small further step to assuming the role of God Himself! Sidney Cohen and others have warned about this danger—the threat that an unaccustomed power will corrupt the guide with resulting damage to the subjects, and possibly even greater damage to the guide himself. This, as we also have observed, is a real danger; but psychiatrists have no immunity to the disease and they go astray when advancing such a hazard as a basis for restricting all work with psycho-chemicals to themselves. There exists not a shred of evi-dence to indicate that the limiting of guiding to one or a few professions will do anything at all 63 eliminate abuses of power and corruption by power.

A further point that should be made concerning the eidetic images has to do with their relation to clock-measured or "real" time. Psyche-delic subjects may feel that an image sequence has lasted "forever," for "years," or for "many hours," when in fact the sequence has been clocked as lasting only a few minutes or even a few seconds. Sometimes the subject's estimate of the time consumed is based on the imaged events. If the subject has imaged the day-long coronation of a king he may feel that the image sequence has taken all day to unfold. More commonly the estimate of the time a grouping of images has taken to unfold is based on the feeling that so much was "seen" that "hours" or "days" or "aeons" must have passed in order for "all that" to have been experienced. 'This resembles, of course, the similar phenomenon of time distortion in dreams. Such a compression of images and imaginary events also may be induced in the hypnotic trance state. As often has been demonstrated, a hypnotic subject may draw upon the contents of his memory to see again in a few seconds a feature-length motion pic-ture that is experienced as running at just the same speed as it did when first seen in the theater.

Not only images but thoughts as well are enormously compressed in time in the drug-state, although the compression may be greater at some periods than at others. It is this speeding up of the mental processes that is experienced by the subject as a "slowing down of time." The thoughts do not seem to be coming any faster, but a great deal more may be thought in any given amount of clock-measured time. It is of course because of this that "such a lot" seems to happen in the psychedelic session.

Slowed-down time produces many curious experiences. A subject lights a cigarette, smokes it for "hours," looks down and the initial ash is still only a quarter-inch in length. Walking down a flight of stairs "takes forever." The guide leaves the room, immediately returns, and the subject complains about having been left alone for "such a long time." And so on.

There are also other, more baffling experiences where it seems to the subject that events of the session are "known before they happen," so that the actual occurrence seems out of sequence (not a repetition or déja-vu phenomenon). Here, a "second" dissociated consciousness may live through events A-B-C-D-E before these events are experienced by the "first" consciousness which remains with the body, communicates with other persons, and fulfills the usual tasks of the normal conscious-ness. Then when the events experienced by the "second" consciousness are "later" experienced by the "first," the former knows exactly what will occur because it already has experienced these events. Or the sub-ject may "turn around in time" a series of events so that events A-B-C-D will exist in memory as having occurred in the order D-C-B-A. The processes governing these and some other time-out-of-joint phenomena are not understood.

Tactile Experiences. Some of the most important and interesting ex-periences on the sensory level are those involving tactile phenomena and unusual kinds of body feeling. The more pleasurable of these expe-riences are most likely to occur in a nature setting since subjects almost always prefer the natural out-of-doors environment and have a high de-gree of sensory and other openness to it. This extraordinary openness especially facilitates certain types of empathic experience rarely en-countered under other conditions.

Empathy in the natural setting may differ in several significant re-spects from that usually experienced indoors. First of all, the subject, almost from the start, already has achieved a kind of empathy with his surroundings as a whole, although not with any particular object. That is to say, nature seems to the subject a whole of which he is an integral part, and from this characteristic feeling of being a part of the organic "body of nature" the subject readily goes on to identify with nature in its physical particulars and processes. No drug subject similarly identi-fies with a room or other artificial environment, and the empathy with nature seems to be especially abetted by the warming rays of the sun, the playing of the breezes over the subject's body, his contact with the earth below him, and various other types of tactile experiencing of the environment.

This larger empathy or harmony with nature then may become particularized through the physical contact. The subject, at first subcon-sciously, becomes related in a tactile-empathic way to that stimulus with which he is effectively in contact. Then he gradually becomes aware of some part of his body as partaking of the substance of the earth or stone or grass upon which he stands, or of the air around him, the sunlight, or the wind. 'The sense of physical separateness increasingly diminishes and may be altogether lost—sometimes moving the subject towards a mystical-type experience. But what is unusual here is that the body-nature empathy or synonymity begins with a preconscious physi-cal merging with the environment so that by the time the subject be-comes aware of his "tactile-empathy," of his identity with grass or stone, the empathic state already is fait accompli. Then may follow the "psychological empathy"—the psychical at-oneness with the object which is the more commonly occurring type of indoors empathy with objects. In another sort of tactile (partial) identification with the en-vironment, the subject retains his awareness of his body's outlines and separateness from the environment, but feels that his substance now is the same as that of some part of the environment. Thus, he reports that his body or some part of it feels as if it has become the stone or clay upon which he stands, or that his hands have become like the water into which they were dipped—these "watery hands," however, retaining their form and a kind of comparative solidity. Two subjects, thrusting their hands into dusty earth, have experienced an instantaneous meta-morphosis of substance—"So, it is true! Dust into dust!"

A number of subjects, standing in the wind, have become the wind, experiencing their bodies as an amorphous, weightless movement or "dancing" in the atmosphere. However, the experience of standing against a fairly strong breeze has produced a different experience for half a dozen subjects and one that was strikingly similar for all six. Here, while word choice naturally varied, the subjects spoke of having become permeable to the wind and of feeling the wind blowing through them. There was no wish to resist this penetration by the wind. On the contrary, it was welcomed or regarded as being "in the nature of things"; and two subjects even went so far as to "molecularize" them-selves in order that the passage of the wind might be facilitated. This position with regard to the wind (which ordinarily one senses as "part-ing" and "breaking around" one's body) represents a capitulation to the phenomenon such as one rarely encounters in or out of the drug-state. Since the wind is experienced as remaining precisely itself, without any blending of its being with the subject's, all alteration is on the part of the subject and the wind is accorded a dominant status not met with when there is empathic merging or union with the phenomenon. Much more than empathy, this goes directly counter to the main tendencies found in the subject's usual encounters with non-human phenomena—encounters wherein he both attempts to negate the otherness of the thing and also imitates the thing or certain of its attributes. The nega-tion is partially effected by a sensory-ideational appropriation of the thing that blurs its otherness and so makes the thing at least to some degree an extension of the subject. The "imitation" of the thing, occur-ring as if in response to a suggestion by the thing, we see exemplified in the stiffening of the body and some other responses made by the subject when he touches a rigid substance such as metal; and, when not im-peded by countersuggestions, it culminates in the tactile empathy with the thing.

Returning to the latter, "submissive" response to the wind, some subjects have said that they felt the wind stands to the person in a kind of ruler-ruled or even God-man relationship. The wind then is experi-enced as a tangible manifestation of the awesome power of the universe, as "God's breath" or "Nature's exhalations." In the face of this expres-sion of a tremendous force benignly restrained, it is up to the person to make himself "open" to the wind somewhat as one might fall upon one's face in the presence of some Ultimate Sovereign. Such an attitude towards the wind has, of course, very ancient antecedents; and thus the phenomenon may seem in some cases to be yet another of the countless archaisms encountered in the psychedelic experience. 'That some of the subjects thus "mythicizing" the wind experience feel "cleansed" and "inwardly purified" by the wind's "clean sweep" through them, is con-sistent with the archaism.

The drug subject's experience of the sun is also of considerable interest and again, in some cases, has a distinctly antique aspect. Again there is the sense of penetration, but here by what has been frequently described by subjects as a direct life-giving principle. Some female sub-fects have experienced the penetration by the sun as sexual, speaking of the sun as a "cosmic lover," or using other words to that effect. Women much more often than men, it would seem, derive sexual stimulation from lying in the sun; and the male, in or out of the drug-state, is more likely to feel himself sapped by the sun of his sexual vitality while not experiencing any or more than a very transient erotic stimulation.

Experiences such as these with sun and wind very readily lend themselves to creation of rich mythological fantasies by the subject; and increasing involvement in the fantasy may carry the subject along to experiences on "deeper" levels, especially the symbolic. In one elabo-rate case the subject, S-7, a housewife in her mid-thirties (LSD: 150 micrograms), lay down on the grass in a field beneath a bright sun and soon was living out an epic of creation in which she identified with "the Great Goddess—Mother Earth."

S's experience of this identification began when she first became aware that "for some time" her body had "no longer existed in its usual, limited form" and that now she was "one with the earth" upon which she "had been" lying. As this vast feminine Earth, S then received the penetration of the "great Masculine Father—the Sun God," and so was fertilized by him. The effects of this fertilization were immediate, since S then felt that "out of the conjunction the world is continuously being born." "All of the things of the world" were felt by S to be streaming out of her womb, passing out of her body and into the world.

We will see later how the symbolism of such an experience may take on increasingly personal meanings for the subject; meanwhile al-ready in this experience we see the opening of a gateway through which the subject may pass to go beyond the sensory and on to other, deeper levels. It is, of course, a part of the function of the guide to help make transitional the aesthetic experience in which the potential for transition is present.

In general, to touch a thing or a person is to enter into a closer, more intimate kind of relationship than is possible when one only looks at the object. Thus, since an intimate relation with the object is the one most conducive to going beyond it, the psychedelic subject is repeat-edly encouraged to hold things, to enter into a tactile relationship with them. A few types of objects notably excepted—for instance the metal-lic, which yield negative responses—this intentional touching of the thing soon eliminates any anxiety or hostility towards the thing and, by extension, tends to improve the subject's relation to the whole of his physical environment.

When the subject is especially alienated from things, or when his mood of the moment is negative, he may be expected to respond in a negative way to the object that is offered him. Presented a stone to hold and asked to describe what he is "getting from" the stone, he is likely to mention "hardness," "coldness," "opaqueness," or "deadness"—not typical responses under other, more favorable conditions. An effective procedure for the guide is then to take the stone out of the subject's left hand, keep it for a few seconds, and then place it in the subject's right hand. Since, in the psychedelic experience, a few seconds can yield a whole new orientation, while the "attitude" of one hand may be quite different from that of the other, this shifting of the stone from left hand to right makes it possible for the subject to take up a new position with regard to the stone. However, some more help is likely to be needed, and the subject now is told not to look at the stone, but rather to feel it and to become aware of the stone as it becomes softer in his hand. "Make the stone give, press on it so that it changes its shape." When the subject announces that this has been done, he then may be urged to "Go ahead, keep on squeezing. Squeeze the stone until it becomes soft as cotton. It's soft as cotton? Good. Now look at it ag,ain and describe how it looks." Frequently, when such a procedure is em-ployed, the stone will appear to have lost its sharp definition and will have taken on a cotton-like or perhaps even gaseous appearance. By this time the subject will be sufficiently caught up in the "game" to comply eagerly with further suggestions concerning the stone. The guide then may induce an empathic relationship, telling the subject to "Let yourself go into the stone, let yourself dissolve into the stone. Be one with the stone, so that you understand it and so that it understands you." By such mean.s, experiences of empathy are made possible for per-sons who never have had even remotely similar experiences before; and once such a breakdown of subject-object boundaries has been experi-enced, the drug subject becomes a great deal more accessible and in many cases spontaneously proceeds to an examination of his own life and especially his own human relationships—so opening the way to a move-ment "down" to the deeper recollective-analytic level.

In a great many ways a variety of objects may be used to help the subject break through the barriers he has erected around persons and ideas and feelings; barriers which, moreover, may block him from mov-ing on to deeper drug-state levels where the inhibitions and values structures may be confronted and re-examined. It may happen, for example, that the subject becomes intensely involved with a thing, then the thing becomes a symbol and may be identified with some key person in the subject's life. Then, the intense involvement with the thing be-comes an intense involvement with the person, and there is a freedom to think and feel about that person such as the subject never has known in the actual relationship.

For example, a fifty-two-year-old man, S-8 (LSD: 150 micro-grams), disclosed in advance of his session that for all his apparent success in industry he usually viewed the world "like somebody looking at goods in a display window." He felt that he very early in his life had decided that "if you don't touch anything, nothing is going to touch you." For himself, he was right about that; but, as a consequence, he lived in a world he recognized to be one of impoverished emotions and even perceptions. He was ready to "smash the window" and take his chances; but he found this was "easier thought of than done" and hoped the LSD session would "help melt the ice"—ice being a term he used interchangeably with glass in describing the barrier between himself and the world.

S, an exceptionally strong-willed individual, proved himself unusually successful at resisting the effects of the drug. He displayed no anxiety, and denied the resistance, but admitted that his "iron self-discipline" was "deeply inbedded and hard to let go of." There was very little perceptual change and he wandered about grumbling over some mildly unpleasant physical sensations and wondering aloud "if this damn stuff (LSD) is just another fraud?" After more than an hour had gone by in this way, S was finally persuaded to choose from among various objects standing on a shelf. He selected, as "the silliest of the lot," a small cork of the kind that is used to cork a bottle of wine. He held it, turned it over, looked at it, and finally sat back with eyes closed and the cork enclosed by a fist. After several minutes of this he an-nounced that the cork was "coming alive" in his hand. He clenched his fist even tighter as if trying to squeeze the "life" out of the cork—what in fact he was trying to do, as he later admitted.

S now appeared to be growing more and more angry. Asked what was the trouble, he said that the cork he was holding had become identified with his son, "a spoiled brat." S then, speaking directly to the cork, launched into a bitter tirade against his son that was phrased as if the cork were his son. Then, he suddenly seemed to wilt and acknowl-edged that he had "spoiled" his son in an effort to buy from the boy an affection he could not hope to gain otherwise. Unable to "express love," S had only been able to show the love he felt for the boy by showering him with money and presents. With this, S began to experience charac-teristic recollective-analytic level phenomena, regressing to his own boyhood to find there the origins of his "stoicism."

That such an object as a cork may serve this kind of purpose for the drug subject is attributable in part to the tendency of the subjects to play with words, especially to look for double meanings and to seek in the double meaning some veiled reference to self. Thus, S recognized in the cork an appropriate object for "uncorking" all of his "bottled up" emotions. The exercise of only a little imagination will provide the guide with a host of objects useful on a similar basis—and these should be available but no particular object should be presented to the subject; he should have a chance to make his own selection. With considerable frequency the drug subject will select in advance of any conscious rec-ognition of the symbolism just that object which best affords him an analogue or metaphors for his own situation. We think that the object is selected because of its symbolic potential, not yet consciously grasped, and think it unlikely in the majority of cases that the subject simply imposes an arbitrary useful symbolism on whatever object happens to be at hand. He may, of course, do this, but he does it much less often.

Additionally, with reference to this case, we might remark that cork as a substance is especially well adapted to the psychedelic experi-ence. Soft and porous, cork as a substance is experienced as nonresist-ant and even receptive to the attempts at Einfühlung by the subject. Also, its surface is such as to easily capture the subject's attention and then draw him into the object through the customary cracks and large pores. The coloring is pleasant and the configuration either highly suggestive or sufficiently innocuous. We might mention here, too, that the large, flat slab of cork, while not so obviously offering the same verbal associations, is an object the drug subject finds especially "friendly" and rewarding to consider, its patterns lending themselves to projective idea-tion and even imaging. Other kinds of bark as well seem particularly well suited to eliciting desirable ideational and emotional responses.

Symbotizing the Environment. Visual and other perception of things or of the total environment as symbolic is largely a phenomenon of the sensory level. On the deeper drug-state levels the symbols are internal—ideas and eidetic images. The symbolizing of some particular thing is common and examples of it have been given; however, the total envi-ronment or a good many aspects of it may be simultaneously symbol-ized and, by means of perceptual distortions, be perceived as if the things are the symbols now brought into tangible existence in the world. In this situation, hallucinations also may appear. Then we are likely to have a psychosis-like experience. Again, this ought never to occur and has not occurred in well-guided sessions of which we have knowledge. However, the possibility of such experiences does exist; and the exam-ples to follow warrant inclusion on that basis.

The first case is that of a four-year-old boy, S-9, who was inter-viewed one week after his LSD (250 micrograms) "session." S's mother, recently separated from his father, was associated with a psy-chedelic drug-taking (Drug Movement) group in New York City. The boy obtained the dn.% by taking from the refrigerator an LSD-saturated sugar cube, which he ate. He began to experience almost immediately what, insofar as can be determined, were authentic hallucinations.

Among the first hallucinations to appear were a number of crusta-ceans, especially (as it could be gathered) crabs and lobsters. This very much impressed S's mother in view of the fact that the child's zodiacal sign is Cancer, represented by the crab, and she felt certain that the boy had no knowledge of this symbolism. Throughout his whole "session," which lasted some twelve hours, with reduced effects in the last several hours (after a tranquilizer had been administered), S continued inter-mittently to see crabs and lobsters coming out of the walls and crawling across the floor towards him. When first he saw these creatures he "screamed and threw a fit." Later he was reassured when his mother told him the sugar cube was responsible and the effects would wear off. He said he had been afraid "it's going to last and last."

S also hallucinated a whole array of "monsters"—apparently crea-tures such as elves, dwarfs, and other small, deforrned human-like beings. Fearful at first, he gained confidence when his mother encour-aged him to "make friends with the monsters"—probably the best sug-gestion possible and one the boy was able to carry out. After some of his anxieties were disposed of, several of the "monsters" came and sat on S's knees and in the palm of his hand and he talked with them. Others danced around him and made faces. From time to time, S's fears would return; then, with his mother's help, he would overcome his fears again and enjoy playing and talking with the hallucinated beings.

In another frequently recurring hallucination or perceptual distor-tion, the walls of the apartment would shiver, bulge inward, the ceiling would sag and seem about to collapse, and S would report himself afraid that "my house is going to fall down." This seemed a transparent symbolism, referring to the child's anxieties concerning his parents' separation and previous domestic strife—house falling down = home breaking up. However, suggestion may have played a part in this expe-rience. His mother reported having had the same hallucination or per-ceptual distortion during one of her recent LSD experiences. She had never discussed this with the child, she said, but it was possible he might have overheard her describing it to someone else. In the mother's case, the walls seemed about to buckle, they were made of wax and were melting, everything was about to crumble away, and so on.

Another of the mother's recurring drug-state perceptions also was experienced repeatedly by S: The floor seemed to be covered with water, about six inches or so deep, and he looked down at his feet as through water—a visual and not a tactile distortion.

There were also, however, tactile hallucinations besides those of touching the "monsters." Sudden "itches" would appear and S would brush away from his skin hallucinatory felt but unseen bugs that would "land on" him and "crawl around" on his bare flesh.

Seen one week after this experience, S did not give any surface indication of having been harmed by it. He is a good-looking, energetic child, apparently in robust health and of better than average intelli-gence. He said he would not like to have any more LSD; and his mother said he seemed to have lost his appetite for sugar cubes. Four months later, a good friend of S's mother said that the boy still had shown no signs of disturbance resulting from the drug experience. He was "same as always." No psychiatric or other professional examination was made.

It is of interest to compare this child's psychedelic ecperience with that of a noted philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, as described by Simone de Beauvoir in The Prime of Life.5 Sartre, it would seem, could have used someone to persuade him to "make friends with the monsters."

The psychiatrically supervised session in which Sartre was an exper-imental mescaline subject is described, along with its aftermath, by Simone de Beauvoir in her usual uninhibited way. She relates that Sartre, then engaged in a study of imagery and anomalies of perception, was told going into the session that he would be able to observe his own hallucinations (by which presumably was meant his eidetic images). He further was told that the experience might be "mildly disagreeable" and that he might "behave rather oddly" for a while; but, he was promised, the experience would not involve any dangers.

On the afternoon of the session Simone de Beauvoir called the hospital to find out how Sartre was faring. He answered the phone and told her he was fighting a losing battle with a devil fish and mentioned a number of other disturbing experiences. He reported umbrellas chang-ing into vultures and shoes changing into skeletons, faces that became hideous, and crabs, polyps, and "grimacing things" that he saw from the corner of his eye. He blamed his distressing experiences on the predic-tions of the psychiatrist.

Sartre apparently recovered from this harrowing experience but, a week or two later, fell into a deep depression that recalled his mood during much of the session. He said he now was hallucinating. Houses had leering faces and gnashed their jaws, and docks resembled owls. Still later, he described himself as "on the edge of a chronic hallucina-tory psychosis." He was being followed by lobsters and crabs (and we do not mind noting an amusing coincidence—that, like S, Sartre's zo-diacal sign is the crab); also, by assorted other monsters. The psychia-trists denied that the drug could have provoked the attack and fatigue and tension were blamed. 'The drug had only furnished Sartre, they said, with "certain hallucinatory patterns"—a rather fine splitting of hairs, it would seem. The abnormal phenomena eventually disappeared and Sartre himself attributed the whole experience to "the physical expres-sion of a deep emotional malaise." In Simone de Beauvoir's account, "Sartre could not resign himself to going on to 'the age of reason,' to full manhood."

We will mention one other case of this psychosis-like type, but one in which there were no hallucinations and the total environment was perceived in a uniformly distorted way.

The (interview) subject, S-10, age thirty, had participated in two previous peyote sessions in which "all went well." A newspaperman, he had been for some time engaged in a frustrating love affair with a girl whose mother disliked him and thus had made many efforts to break up the relationship. On the occasion to be described, S had planned to take peyote with this girl. He consumed his own portion, then sat down in his hotel room to wait for her arrival.

Time went by and the girl did not come. She was an hour, then two hours late. Since he had no telephone in his room, he went down to the hotel lobby to phone her and she told him her mother had refused to let her leave the house. She very much doubted that she would be able to come. S, "bitterly disappointed," went upstairs, lay down on his bed, and became increasingly depressed. The eidetic images were "stupid or drab," so he got up and sat on a chair in the center of a large room. By the moment, he felt more abandoned and lonely.

S became acutely aware of the distortion, the "slowing down" of time. Seconds were hours, and minutes were like days. After another "hour that was ten centuries," he went down to the lobby and called her again. This time she said she definitely would be unable to come before evening, if at all. He told her "Don't bother"—which he instantly regretted—and went back upstairs, feeling that the desk clerk and peo-ple in the lobby were looking at him "in a strange way."

S sat down once again in the chair and suddenly felt himself to be a shrunken, withered figure, while around him the room, "a surrealist nightmare," had grown enormous. All of the objects in the room seemed totally alien, as if they, too, had abandoned him. He turned over endlessly in his mind a line from Rilke: "Who loses himself by all things is let go . . ." and felt utterly alone in the world. Now, the walls of the room began to shrink. They were furrowed, somewhat like cor-duroy, and the previously white walls now seemed an ugly, dirty gray. Gray light of the consistency of glue oozed out of the walls and trickled down them. At the same time the room seemed a kind of cell, its floor space dwindled to perhaps a quarter of its actual size, while the walls towered upward to three times their normal height. And S now felt that his flesh was furrowed like the walls and resembled the skin of a dried prune, or of a mummy.

Whenever he thought of the girl, S was overwhelmed with grief. He had intended, so he now thought, to ask her to marry him; and, since this had been his intention, it was especially cruel of her not to come: How could anyone be so cruel! A minute now was longer than his "whole life up to that point"; his pain, "a thousand times more painful than any known before."

Finally, some five hours into his experience, S played some music, became interested in it, and his mood lightened. 'The remainder of the experience was "not too unpleasant." However, that night he repeatedly was awakened by terrible nightmares; and, next day, he found himself "definitely insane—the beginning of seventy-two hours of insanity."

Awakening, S found himself immediately pondering the question: "What is permissible?" He felt that he had "lost or forgotten all the rules for behaving in society." He went out, thinking he would try to go to work, but found himself "slinking along the streets like a terrified animal." The sight of a policeman produced "fear and trembling, since perhaps a way of walking in a particular place was a terrible crime." S managed to get home and phoned his office, saying he was ill. For the next three days he went out only at night, then "drifted along like a shadow, trying not to be seen." He constantly watched other people to try to "releam the rules of living, find out 'what is permissible.' " The "insanity" dissipated gradually, with S gaining confidence in his ability to "behave in such a way as to stay out of trouble." However, he was "unusually fearful for several months afterwards."

In such cases as the three just described the perceptual distortions imposed upon the environment seem very plainly to be clothed affect—anxiety acting upon the visual perceptual process to change the environ-ment which then, as percept, generates still more anxiety and also de-pression. The hallucinated monsters are the monsters of childhood, the forms fear takes when one regresses to feelings of childlike helplessness. The symbolisms are transparent as in the house falling down home breaking up, or shriveled walls and shrunken body = depression and feelings of loneliness and deprivation. Yet even such clear-cut sytnbols will usually escape recognition by the subject. He responds emotionally to what he sees—while what he sees are his own emotions, cast by perceptual distortion in appropriate symbolic form. Intellect here seems deprived by emotion of its capacity effectively to analyze these distor-tions; and ideation becomes involved in circular, self-pitying and an-xious cataloguing of the distortions and the responses made to them. This indeed is psychosis-like behavior; and many psychotics would seem to be responding in a similar way to about the same kind of perceptual distortions as those met with in the drug sessions. 'The vast majority of psychedelic subjects experience distortions and other phe-nomena for which the mechanisms seem the same as those of the psychotic experience, but which have a different content because reflecting a different emotional state; or the content is approximately the same, and the type of emotion is the same but does not, for lack of reinforce-ment by response to the percept, build to the same degree of intensity.

Many factors present in the drug experience ordinarily enable the subject to avoid reinforcing the initial negative emotion by responding in a highly emotional way to the distorted perception. The subject is able to handle the distorted data of his senses by bringing into play mental instrumentalities and knowledge not accessible to or effective for the psychotic. The subject feels himself to have guarantees of his return to the normal world. The distortions he perceives he is able to attribute to the drug. He is malleable and will accept the interpretations or sug-gestions of the guide. What all of this leaves untouched, of course, is the genesis of the emotional disturbance underlying the perceptual distor-tions to which the subject (and the psychotic) must react. But it does seem clear that where it is possible for the person to interpret to his own advantage the distorted percept, this interpretation then serves to alter in a positive way or to diminish the force of the negative emotion. That is, the emotion now responds to a conscious instead of an unconscious determinant and thus may be reached and transformed by a calculated manipulation of its effects. Then the even deeper lying psychogenetic factor is disarmed if not transformed.

Transitions. Experiences on the sensory level are of shorter duration and tend to be more numerous and more varied than those occurring on the other levels so that it would be possible to engage in an almost endless cataloguing of them. This we will not do, and will only mention a few more varieties of those transitional experiences by which the sub-ject progresses from sensory to recollective-analytic and, occasionally, to a still deeper level.

In terms of the phenomenological pattern we have outlined the sensory level always should be considered a stage along the way to deeper levels where more profound experiences await the psychedelic subject. Its purpose, as we have remarked, is to free the subject from the limitations of his old ways of perceiving, thinking, and feeling. It would seem that only when consciousness has been freed from these limitations is the unconscious free to release (and consciousness able to accept?) those materials and initiate those processes which become conscious and increasingly purposive as the subject moves from one level to the next. Thus it is the task of the guide to stimulate a wide variety of sensory level experiences and to continue so doing until the deconditioning has. been effected and the gateway to the deeper level swings ajar. Then, when this gateway phenomenon is recognized, the guide, if need be, will assist the subject to pass through it.

How many or what kind of sensory level experiences a particular subject will require may be to some extent predictable; more often, at the start of a session, it is not. Thus, the earlier phases of the session are usually to some extent experimental and the variety of experience en-couraged serves the dual purpose of enabling the subject to reach deeper levels while it provides the researcher with his best opportunity to explore, without disrupting any purposive moment, those areas com-patible with his own research objectives.

One of the experiences most impressive to the subject is synesthesia —the response by one of the senses to a stimulus ordinarily responded to by another of the senses. For example, the subject may find himself able to taste colors or smell sounds. Occasionally the experiencing of synthesias may prove to be a gateway. A subject who had "almost no sense of smell" was invited to try to smell a lemon. Even when he held it up against his nostrils, he reported himself unable to smell anything. The guide then put a recording on the phonograph and placed the lemon on a table several feet away from the subject. He was told to "smell the lemon in the music." At once, the subject declared himself able to "hear the smell." Then he said he could smell the lemon in the music. Then he was able to smell the lemon directly. He took this as evidence that, as he had suspected, his inability to smell was not due to any organic deficiency but rather was due to a functional (psychogenic) blocicage. Regarding this fact of a functional sensory inhibition as "proved," the subject began a search for its causes that soon led him "down" to the recollective-analytic level. There, he found that his prob-lem was essentially one of the negative attitude towards matter—a fear and dislike of the physical that was also less strongly manifested in an impaired ability to use his other senses. This antipathy towards matter emerges time and again as a crucial factor disabling the person for a full experience of the phenomenal world. It is also especially likely to affect the capacity for entering without inhibition into sexual relationships. The subject overcomes these blockages by seeking out, if possible, the origins of his condemnation of matter. Then, he re-examines his values and creates for himself a philosophy that does not separate mind or spirit from matter to the detriment of the latter.

We find this negative attitude towards matter illustrated too, and much more dramatically, in the case of S-11, a forty-five year-old minis-ter (LSD: 250 micrograms). This subject was known, in advance of the session, to overreact to spilled liquids and it was proposed that this reaction possibly be taken up at some point.

S was not otherwise especially fastidious. His office, as he had de-scribed it, was "a mess," with papers, magazines, books, and other things piled all around. This never troubled him, nor did, with rare exceptions, clothing left strewn around a room or even the stacks of unwashed dishes his wife sometimes left standing in the sink. But any liquid spilled anywhere produced in S a very strong need to immedi-ately wipe it up. On numerous occasions he had flown into what he knew was an unwarranted rage on going to the table and finding that water or soup or something of the sort had been spilled on the table top and left there. Even a drop or two could elicit this near-phobic reaction which S never was entirely able to control, although making valiant efforts to do so. Water alone could produce the response, but an even stronger response was made to viscous liquids so long as they were not sufficiently thick to seem to him more nearly solid than fluid.

About an hour into his session, S was led into a dining room where he immediately noticed that some rather slimy looking soup had been spilled on the table top and left there, seemingly by accident. His initial reaction was the usual one, and at once he began to search for some-thing with which he might wipe up the spilled soup. Finding nothing, he pulled out his handkerchief and debated whether he ought to use that. Then, however, he became aware that what he was experiencing was much less anger (as he usually considered his reaction to be) than fear. He looked closely at the droplets and turned noticeably pale. Before his eyes, as he subsequently related, those few tiny drops began to expand, rise up, bubble and seethe, take on a "horribly slimy and gelatinous" appearance, and then surge like a miniature but rapidly growing tidal wave towards the edge of the table. At the same time, he recognized as a cause of his anxiety the fear not only that the room would be flooded with the liquid but also that it would infect whatever it touched, so that everything would be dissolved into the gelatinous slime. He leaped back in horror, wiped away the drops with his handkerchief, and appeared almost ready to faint. But then he approached the table again, picked up the soup bowl, and deliberately poured a good bit of its contents on the table top. He became increasingly calm and described to the guides the visual distortions he had perceived.

S now was urged to "go deeper," to go down into the depths of his own psyche and try to find there some explanation for what he had seen. He fell silent for a minute, then spoke in a voice that sounded as if, in fact, it were coming up from the depths. The phenomenon he had just witnessed, S said, was one that occurred on a level below con-sciousness whenever he was confronted with spilled liquid. He could tap, from "some deep source," many memories of having repeatedly had such experiences before, although they never had emerged into consciousness. His "fear of inundation," he said, was but one aspect of his "fastidiousness." What the drops of liquid represented was not just "a wetness that might flood over everything." Rather, these liquids he responded to so strongly, were translated by his "unconscious into the most repulsive and terrifying kind of liquid there is—matter in its slimy, oozing, corrupt form," a viscous putrefaction so corrosive as to "rot upon contact whatever it touches." This corrupt matter with its "disintegrative force," S went on, was the material correlative of moral evil in the world; or perhaps, he thought, it was the other way arourid. Somehow it was "all bound up with death," and he seemed to remember "instantly forgotten dreams" of corpses dissolving into viscous, liquid putrefiection. It was "bound up, too, with sexuality"—a "wet, slimy, and corrupt sexuality," which simultaneously attracted and repelled, setting him in "painful conflict with moral values" which had insisted upon matter as evil with sexual union regarded as a symbolic embracing of the material in its "most corrupt form."

After a lengthy analysis of his values, S touched with his fingertips the spilled soup on the table, then rubbed it around on the table top with the palm of his hand. He licked some of the soup from his fingers and remarked that "Of course, it's just soup after all. It's messy but it's not going anywhere and nothing could be more far-fetched than to think that it could." He then walked around the room, examining objects, and announcing that finally things were "really getting through" to him. He reported that "the insights just keep coming," and that they, too, were "really getting through" and would "stick."

'The follow-up on this subject indicated a reorientation of values with an enhancement of aesthetic and sensory reponse to the environ-ment. He felt (and his wife agreed) that his relationship with his family was much improved, mainly as a result of "the loosening of a rigid puritanism." He continued to mop up spilled liquids, "but without get-ting mad." His reaction had become, he felt, a "reasonable, unemotional response, such as most anyone would make." It is natural, after all, he remarked, to clean up messes and he felt no need to resist what was now "a natural impulse, not an unnatural compulsion."

As a final example of the transition to the recollective-analytic level, we will reproduce a subject-guide interchange showing just how a suc-cession of object-stimuli might be used to lead the subject beyond aesthetic appreciation of the thing to meaningful examination of his own life. When such techniques as the following are used, the transition from an outward to an inward concern occurs smoothly and the sub-ject's feeling of autonomy is carefully preserved. He is enabled to preserve, too, his sense of spontaneity in the development of the session.

The subject, S-12, male, in his mid-twenties, was unsophisticated but intelligent and sensitive. The example is of "key" passages from the dialogue between the guide (G) and the subject (S) :
G: (Peeling a purple grape and handing it to the subject) "Here, I have a present for you."
S: (Looking at the grape in amazement as, with perceptual distor-tion, the grape is translated into something quite different) "What is it?"
G: "What do you think it is?"
S: "It's . . . it's a living brain. . . . My God, I'm holding a living brain in my hand.... See . .. there's the fine veins . . . feeding the brain . . . Now it's changing . . . Why, it looks like an embyro . . . a transparent embryo! (Laughs happily) I seem to have all of life in my hand!"
G: (Hands S an orange) "Here, live with this for a while."
S: (After contemplating the orange intensely for several minutes) "Magnificent . . . I never really saw color before . . . It's brighter than a thousand suns. . . . (Feels the whole surface of the orange with palms and fingertips) But this is a pulsing thing . . . a living pulsing thing . . . And all these years I've just taken it for granted . . . (Speaks to the orange) I promise! . I'll never take you for granted again. . . . Never! . . . You're a world . . . a whole world in itself. . . ."
G: "Then let me offer you—the world within the world." (Cuts another orange in half and hands it to S.)
S: (Says nothing but silently considers the orange for a long time.)
G: 'What are you thinking now?"
S: "I'm thinking that . . . it's a very odd thought . . . that there could be no more perfect death than to drown in an ocean of orange juice ... I'm thinking . .. that here .. . here in this orange ... there is design for living . . . the symmetry . . . and the seeds . . . My thoughts are going too fast... . I can't explain . . . I start to explain, but before I get to the end of a sentence I've had a hundred new thoughts."
G: (Tums on the phonograph and puts on Tschaikowsky's Vio/in Concerto in D) "Relax now. Put the orange down and let yourself be absorbed into the music."
S: (After listening silently with his eyes closed for about twenty minutes) "Ahhhhhhhhhhh."
G: "What is it?"
S: "I've never listened to music like this before. . . . I'm hearing so much more intensely with my outer ear .. . and yet . .. at the same time I'm listening with my inner ear . . . I hear melodies . . . and melodies in the melodies. I hear Tschaikowsky himself! And I can see it all too! The melody passes before my (closed) eyes . . . I see . . . I see centuries and all of the glory and the tragedy of man . . . Everything is in this music! . . . But especially the tragedy of man."
G: (After the music has ended, hands S a rough piece of tree bark.)
S: "Ah, roughage . . . 'The tragic side of life. But so beautiful . . . Like flying over the entire earth . . . looking down on all the mountains and valleys. I could look at this for the rest of my life . . . So much detail ... It's unbelievable."
G: "And the texture?"
S: (Running his hand over the bark) "I feel every rise . . . every crevice. I'm a giant . . . a thousand miles high . . . and I'm running my hand over this little planet."
G: "And the meaning of the bark? Does it tell you anything? Some-thing about yourself perhaps?"
S: "Yes . . . Yes, I see it does. It has so much variation in it . . . so many opportunities. If a piece of bark can have all of these opportuni-ties for differentiation, then what about me? I may have as many possi-bilities in me as this bark."
G: "Look now at your own hand. Look at the skin texture. You will find that it is just as rough and differentiated as the bark."
S: (Talcing a long look at his hand) "Yes, that's so. (Laughs) I'm a planet too . . . and I'm a giant looking down on my own planet-self."
G: "And can you identify with this planetary self? Try now to see yourself as this world of opportunity and differentiation. Become your planetary self."
S: (Continues to stare at his hand for some time and then finally begins to smile and nod his head vigorously) "All this possibility that's in me! . . . and all the time I didn't believe that it was there. Christ, what I could do!"

With this, the subject no longer is concerned with externals and exploration moves inward.

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