LSD-My Problem Child ... Continued

The continuation of our journey from Ayautla was delayed, as
we had to wait until our boys could again bring back the
mules that they had taken to pasture on the other side of
Rio Santo Domingo, over the river swollen by intense
downpours.

After a two-day ride, on which we had passed the night in
the high mountain village of San Miguel Huautla, we arrived
at Rio Santiago. Here we were joined by Dona Herlinda
Martinez Cid, a teacher from Huautla de Jimenez. She had
ridden over on the invitation of Gordon Wasson, who had
known her since his mushroom expeditions, and was to serve
as our Mazatec and Spanish- speaking interpreter. Moreover,
she could help us, through her numerous relatives scattered
in the region, to pave the way to contacts with curanderos
and curanderas who used the hojas de la Pastora in their
practice. Because of our delayed arrival in Rio Santiago,
Dona Herlinda, who was acquainted with the dangers of the
region, had been apprehensive about us, fearing we might
have plunged down a rocky path or been attacked by robbers.

Our next stop was in San Jose Tenango, a settlement lying
deep in a valley, in the midst of tropical vegetation with
orange and lemon trees and banana plantations. Here again
was the typical village picture: in the center, a
marketplace with a half-ruined church from the colonial
period, with two or three stands, a general store, and
shelters for horses and mules. We found lodging in a
corrugated iron barracks, with the special luxury of a
cement floor, on which we could spread out our sleeping
bags.

In the thick jungle on the mountainside we discovered a
spring, whose magnificent fresh water in a natural rocky
basin invited us to bathe. That was an unforgettable
pleasure after days without opportunities to wash properly.
In this grotto I saw a hummingbird for the first time in
nature, a blue-green, metallic, iridescent gem, which
whirred over great liana blossoms.

The desired contact with persons skilled in medicine came
about thanks to the kindred connections of Dona Herlinda,
beginning with the curandero Don Sabino. But he refused, for
some reason, to receive us in a consultation and to question
the leaves. From an old curandera, a venerable woman in a
strikingly magnificent Mazatec garment, with the lovely name
Natividad Rosa, we received a whole bundle of flowering
specimens of the sought-after plant, but even she could not
be prevailed upon to perform a ceremony with the leaves for
us. Her excuse was that she was too old for the hardship of
the magical trip; she could never cover the long distance to
certain places: a spring where the wise women gather their
powers, a lake on which the sparrows sing, and where objects
get their names. Nor would Natividad Rosa tell us where she
had gathered the leaves. They grew in a very, very distant
forest valley. Wherever she dug up a plant, she put a coffee
bean in the earth as thanks to the gods.

We now possessed ample plants with flowers and roots, which
were suitable for botanical identification. It was
apparently a representative of the genus Salvia, a relative
of the well-known meadow sage. The plants had blue flowers
crowned with a white dome, which are arranged on a panicle
20 to 30 cm long, whose stem leaked blue.

Several days later, Natividad Rosa brought us a whole basket
of leaves, for which she was paid fifty pesos. The business
seemed to have been discussed, for two other women brought
us further quantities of leaves. As it was known that the
expressed juice of the leaves is drunk in the ceremony, and
this must therefore contain the active principle, the fresh
leaves were crushed on a stone plate, squeezed out in a
cloth, the juice diluted with alcohol as a preservative, and
decanted into flasks in order to be studied later in the
laboratory in Basel. I was assisted in this work by an
Indian girl, who was accustomed to dealing with the stone
plate, the metate, on which the Indians since ancient times
have ground their corn by hand.

On the day before the journey was to continue, having given
up all hope of being able to attend a ceremony, we suddenly
made another contact with a curandera, one who was ready "to
serve us." A confidante of Herlinda's, who had produced this
contact, led us after nightfall along a secret path to the
hut of the curandera, lying solitary on the mountainside
above the settlement. No one from the village was to see us
or discover that we were received there. It was obviously
considered a betrayal of sacred customs, worthy of
punishment, to allow strangers, whites, to take part in
this. That indeed had also been the real reason why the
other healers whom we asked had refused to admit us to a
leaf ceremony. Strange birdcalls from the darkness
accompanied us on the ascent, and the barking of dogs was
heard on all sides. The dogs had detected the strangers. The
curandera Consuela Garcia, a woman of some forty years,
barefoot like all Indian women in this region, timidly
admitted us to her hut and immediately closed up the doorway
with a heavy bar. She bid us lie down on the bast mats on
the stamped mud floor. As Consuela spoke only Mazatec,
Herlinda translated her instructions into Spanish for us.
The curandera lit a candle on a table covered with some
images of saints, along with a variety of rubbish. Then she
began to bustle about busily, but in silence. All at once we
heard peculiar noises and a rummaging in the room-did the
hut harbor some hidden person whose shape and proportions
could not be made out in the candlelight? Visibly disturbed,
Consuela searched the room with the burning candle. It
appeared to be merely rats, however, who were working their
mischief. In a bowl the curandera now kindled copal, an
incense-like resin, which soon filled the whole hut with its
aroma. Then the magic potion was ceremoniously prepared.
Consuela inquired which of us wished to drink of it with
her. Gordon announced himself. Since I was suffering from a
severe stomach upset at the time, I could not join in. My
wife substituted for me. The curandera laid out six pairs of
leaves for herself. She apportioned the same number to
Gordon. Anita received three pairs. Like the mushrooms, the
leaves are always dosed in pairs, a practice that, of
course, has a magical significance. The leaves were crushed
with the metate, then squeezed out through a fine sieve into
cup, and the metate and the contents of the sieve were
rinsed with water. Finally, the filled cups were incensed
over the copal vessel with much ceremony. Consuela asked
Anita and Gordon, before she handed them their cups, whether
they believed in the truth and the holiness of the ceremony.
After they answered in the affirmative and the very
bitter-tasting potion was solemnly imbibed, the candles were
extinguished and, lying in darkness on the bast masts, we
awaited the effects.

After some twenty minutes Anita whispered to me that she saw
striking, brightly bordered images. Gordon also perceived
the effect of the drug. The voice of the curandera sounded
from the darkness, half speaking, half singing. Herlinda
translated: Did we believe in Christ's blood and the
holiness of the rites? After our "creemos" ("We believe"),
the ceremonial performance continued. The curandera lit the
candles, moved them from the "altar table" onto the floor,
sang and spoke prayers or magic formulas, placed the candles
again under the images of the saints-then again silence and
darkness. Thereupon the true consultation began. Consuela
asked for our request. Gordon inquired after the health of
his daughter, who immediately before his departure from New
York had to be admitted prematurely to the hospital in
expectation of a baby. He received the comforting
information that mother and child were well. Then again came
singing and prayer and manipulations with the candles on the
"altar table" and on the floor, over the smoking basin.

When the ceremony was at an end, the curandera asked us to
rest yet a while longer in prayer on our bast mats. Suddenly
a thunderstorm burst out. Through the cracks of the beam
walls, lightning flashed into the darkness of the hut,
accompanied by violent thunderbolts, while a tropical
downpour raged, beating on the roof. Consuela voiced
apprehension that we would not be able to leave her house
unseen in the darkness. But the thunderstorm let up before
daybreak, and we went down the mountainside to our
corrugated iron barracks, as noiselessly as possible by the
light of flashlights, unnoticed by the villagers, but dogs
again barked from all sides.

Participation in this ceremony was the climax of our
expedition. It brought confirmation that the hojas de la
Pastora were used by the Indians for the same purpose and in
the same ceremonial milieu as teonanacatl, the sacred
mushrooms. Now we also had authentic plant material, not
only sufficient for botanical identification, but also for
the planned chemical analysis. The inebriated state that
Gordon Wasson and my wife had experienced with the hojas had
been shallow and only of short duration, yet it had
exhibited a distinctly hallucinogenic character.

On the morning after this eventful night we took leave of
San Jose Tenango. The guide, Guadelupe, and the two fellows
Teodosio and Pedro appeared before our barracks with the
mules at the appointed time. Soon packed up and mounted, our
little troop then moved uphill again, through the fertile
landscape glittering in the sunlight from the night's
thunderstorm. Returning by way of Santiago, toward evening
we reached our last stop in Mazatec country, the capital
Huautla de Jimenez.

From here on, the return trip to Mexico City was made by
automobile. With a final supper in the Posada Rosaura, at
the time the only inn in Huautla, we took leave of our
Indian guides and of the worthy mules that had carried us so
surefootedly and in such a pleasant way through the Sierra
Mazatec. The Indians were paid off, and Teodosio, who also
accepted payment for his chief in Jalapa de Diaz (where the
animals were to be returned afterward), gave a receipt with
his thumbprint colored by a ballpoint pen. We took up
quarters in Dona Herlinda's house.

A day later we made our formal visit to the curandera Maria
Sabina, a woman made famous by the Wassons' publications. It
had been in her hut that Gordon Wasson became the first
white man to taste of the sacred mushrooms, in the course of
a nocturnal ceremony in the summer of 1955. Gordon and Maria
Sabina greeted each other cordially, as old friends. The
curandera lived out of the way, on the mountainside above
Huautla. The house in which the historic session with Gordon
Wasson had taken place had been burned, presumably by
angered residents or an envious colleague, because she had
divulged the secret of teonanacatl to strangers. In the new
hut in which we found ourselves, an incredible disorder
prevailed, as had probably also prevailed in the old hut, in
which half-naked children, hens, and pigs bustled about. The
old curandera had an intelligent face, exceptionally
changeable in expression. She was obviously impressed when
it was explained that we had managed to confine the spirit
of the mushrooms in pills, and she at once declared herself
ready to "serve us" with these, that is, to grant us a
consultation. It was agreed that this should take place the
coming night in the house of Dona Herlinda.

In the course of the day I took a stroll through Huautla de
Jimenez, which led along a main street on the mountainside.
Then I accompanied Gordon on his visit to the Instituto
Nacional Indigenista. This governmental organization had the
duty of studying and helping to solve the problems of the
indigenous population, that is, the Indians. Its leader told
us of the difficulties that the "coffee policy" had caused
in the area at that time. The president of Huautla, in
collaboration with the Instituto Nacional Indigenista had
tried to eliminate middlemen in order to shape the coffee
prices favorably for the producing Indians. His body was
found, mutilated, the previous June.

Our stroll also took us past the cathedral, from which
Gregorian chants resounded. Old Father Aragon, whom Gordon
knew well from his earlier stays, invited us into the vestry
for a glass of tequila.


A Mushroom Ceremony

As we returned home to Herlinda's house toward evening,
Maria Sabina had already arrived there with a large company,
her two lovely daughters, Apolonia and Aurora (two
prospective curanderas), and a niece, all of whom brought
children along with them. Whenever her child began to cry,
Apolonia would offer her breast to it. The old curandero Don
Aurelio also appeared, a mighty man, one-eyed, in a
black-and white patterned serape (cloak). Cacao and sweet
pastry were served on the veranda. I was reminded of the
report from an ancient chronicle which described how
chocotatl was drunk before the ingestion of teonanacatl.

After the fall of darkness, we all proceeded into the room
in which the ceremony would take place. It was then locked
up-that is, the door was obstructed with the only bed
available. Only an emergency exit into the back garden
remained unlatched for absolute necessity. It was nearly
midnight when the ceremony began. Until that time the whole
party lay, in darkness sleeping or awaiting the night's
events, on the bast mats spread on the floor. Maria Sabina
threw a piece of copal on the embers of a brazier from time
to time, whereby the stuffy air in the crowded room became
somewhat bearable. I had  explained to the curandera through
Herlinda, who was again with the party as interpreter, that
one pill contained the spirit of two pairs of mushrooms.
(The pills contained 5.0 mg synthetic psilocybin apiece.)

When all was ready, Maria Sabina apportioned the pills in
pairs among the grown-ups present. After solemn smoking, she
herself took two pairs (corresponding to 20 mg psilocybin).
She gave the same dose to Don Aurelio and her daughter
Apolonia, who would also serve as curandera. Aurora received
one pair, as did Gordon, while my wife and Irmgard got only
one pill each.

One of the children, a girl of about ten, under the guidance
of Maria Sabina, had prepared for me the juice of five pairs
of fresh leaves of hojas de la Pastora. I wanted to
experience this drug that I had been unable to try in San
Jose Tenango. The potion was said to be especially active
when prepared by an innocent child. The cup with the
expressed juice was likewise incensed and conjured by Maria
Sabina and Don Aurelio, before it was delivered to me.

All of these preparations and the following ceremony
progressed in much the same way as the consultation with the
curandera Consuela Garcia in San Jose Tenango.

After the drug was apportioned and the candle on the "altar"
was extinguished, we awaited the effects in the darkness.

Before a half hour had elapsed, the curandera murmured
something; her daughter and Don Aurelio also became
restless. Herlinda translated and explained to us what was
wrong. Maria Sabina had said that the pills lacked the
spirit of the mushrooms. I discussed the situation with
Gordon, who lay beside me. For us it was clear that
absorption of the active principle from the pills, which
must first dissolve in the stomach, occurs more slowly than
from the mushrooms, in which some of the active principle
already becomes absorbed through the mucous membranes during
chewing. But how could we give a scientific explanation
under such conditions? Rather than try to explain, we
decided to act. We distributed more pills. Both curanderas
and the curandero each received another pair. They had now
each taken a total dosage of 30 mg psilocybin.

After about another quarter of an hour, the spirit of the
pills did begin to yield its effects, which lasted until the
crack of dawn. The daughters, and Don Aurelio with his deep
bass voice, fervently answered the prayers and singing of
the curandera. Blissful, yearning moans of Apolonia and
Aurora, between singing and prayer, gave the impression that
the religious experience of the young women in the drug
inebriation was combined with sensual-sexual feelings.

In the middle of the ceremony Maria Sabina asked for our
request. Gordon inquired again after the health of his
daughter and grandchild. He received the same good
information as from the curandera Consuela. Mother and child
were in fact well when he returned home to New York.
Obviously, however, this still represents no proof of the
prophetic abilities of both curanderas.

Evidently as an effect of the hojas, I found myself for some
time in a state of mental sensitivity and intense
experience, which, however, was not accompanied by
hallucinations. Anita, Irmgard, and Gordon experienced a
euphoric condition of inebriation that was influenced by the
strange, mystical atmosphere. My wife was impressed by the
vision of very distinct strange line patterns.

She was astonished and perplexed, later, on discovering
precisely the same images in the rich ornamentation over the
altar in an old church near Puebla. That was on the return
trip to Mexico City, when we visited churches from colonial
times. These admirable churches offer great cultural and
historical interest because the Indian artists and workmen
who assisted in their construction smuggled in elements of
Indian style. Klaus Thomas, in his book Die kunstlich
gesteuerte Seele [The artificially steered mind] (Ferdinand
Enke Verlag, Stuttgart, 1970), writes about the possible
influence of visions from psilocybin inebriation on
Meso-American Indian art: "Surely a cultural historical
comparison of the old and new creations of Indian art . . .
must convince the unbiased spectator of the harmony with the
images, forms and colors of a psilocybin inebriation." The
Mexican character of the visions seen in my first experience
with dried Psilocybe mexicana mushrooms and the drawing of
Li Gelpke after a psilocybin inebriation could also point to
such an association.

As we took leave of Maria Sabina and her clan at the crack
of dawn, the curandera said that the pills had the same
power as the mushrooms, that there was no difference. This
was a confirmation from the most competent authority, that
the synthetic psilocybin is identical with the natural
product. As a parting gift I let Maria Sabina have a vial of
psilocybin pills. She radiantly explained to our interpreter
Herlinda that she could now give consultations even in the
season when no mushrooms grow.

How should we judge the conduct of Maria Sabina, the fact
that she allowed strangers, white people, access to the
secret ceremony, and let them try the sacred mushroom?

To her credit it can be said that she had thereby opened the
door to the exploration of the Mexican mushroom cult in its
present form, and to the scientific, botanical, and chemical
investigation of the sacred mushrooms. Valuable active
substances, psilocybin and psilocin, resulted. Without this
assistance, the ancient knowledge and experience that was
concealed in these secret practices would possibly, even
probably, have disappeared without a trace, without having
borne fruit, in the advancement of Western civilization.

From another standpoint, the conduct of this curandera can
be regarded as a profanation of a sacred custom-even as a
betrayal. Some of her countrymen were of this opinion, which
was expressed in acts of revenge, including the burning of
her house.

The profanation of the mushroom cult did not stop with the
scientific investigations. The publication about the magic
mushrooms unleashed an invasion of hippies and drug seekers
into the Mazatec country, many of whom behaved badly, some
even criminally. Another undesirable consequence was the
beginning of true tourism in Huautla de Jimenez, whereby the
originality of the place was eradicated.

Such statements and considerations are, for the most part,
the concern of ethnographical research. Wherever researchers
and scientists trace and elucidate the remains of ancient
customs that are becoming rarer, their primitiveness is
lost. This loss is only more or less counterbalanced when
the outcome of the research represents a lasting cultural
gain.

From Huautla de Jimenez we proceeded first to Teotitlan, in
a breakneck truck ride along a half-paved road, and from
there went on a comfortable car trip back to Mexico City,
the starting point of our expedition. I had lost several
kilograms in body weight, but was overwhelmingly compensated
in enchanting experiences.

The herbarium samples of hojas de la Pastora, which we had
brought with us, were subjected to botanical indentification
by Carl Epling and Carlos D. Jativa at the Botanical
Institute of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
They found that this plant was a hitherto undescribed
species of Satvia, which was named Salvia divinorum by these
authors. The chemical investigation of the juice of the
magic sage in the laboratory in Basel was unsuccessful. The
psychoactive principle of this drug seems to be a rather
unstable substance, since the juice prepared in Mexico and
preserved with alcohol proved in self-experiments to be no
longer active. Where the chemical nature of the active
principle is concerned, the problem of the magic plant ska
Maria Pastora still awaits solution.

So far in this book I have mainly described my scientific
work and matters relating to my professional activity. But
this work, by its very nature, had repercussions on my own
life and personality, not least because it brought me into
contact with interesting and important contemporaries. I
have already mentioned some of them-Timothy Leary, Rudolf
Gelpke, Gordon Wasson. Now, in the pages that follow, I
would like to emerge from the natural scientist's reserve,
in order to portray encounters which were personally
meaningful to me and which helped me solve questions posed
by the substances I had discovered.



7. Radiance from Ernst Junger

Radiance is the perfect term to express the influence that
Ernst Junger's literary work and personality have had on me.
In the light of his perspective, which stereoscopically
comprises the surfaces and depths of things, the world I
knew took on a new, translucent splendor. That happened a
long time before the discovery of LSD and before I came into
personal contact with this author in connection with
hallucinogenic drugs.

My enchantment with Ernst Junger began with his book Das
Abenteuerliche Herz [The adventurous heart]. Again and again
in the last forty years I have taken up this book. Here more
than ever, in themes that weigh more lightly and lie closer
to me than war and a new type of human being (subjects of
Junger's earlier books), the beauty and magic of Junger's
prose was opened to me-descriptions of flowers, of dreams,
of solitary walks; thoughts about chance, the future,
colors, and about other themes that have direct relation to
our personal lives. Everywhere in his prose the miracle of
creation became evident, in the precise description of the
surfaces and, in translucence, of the depths; and the
uniqueness and the imperishable in every human being was
touched upon. No other writer has thus opened my eyes.

Drugs were also mentioned in Das Abenteuerliche Herz. Many
years passed, however, before I myself began to be
especially interested in this subject, after the discovery
of the psychic effects of LSD.

My first correspondence with Ernst Junger had nothing to do
with the context of drugs; rather I once wrote to him on his
birthday, as a thankful reader.


                                             Bottmingen, 29
    March 1947 Dear Mr. Junger,

    As one richly endowed by you for years, I wished to send
    a jar of honey to you for your birthday. But I did not
    have this pleasure, because my export license has been
    refused in Bern.

    The gift was intended less as a greeting from a country
    in which milk and honey still flow, than as a
    reminiscence of the enchanting sentences in your book
    Auf den Marmorklippen (On the Marble Cliffs), where you
    speak of the "golden bees."


The book mentioned here had appeared in 1939, just shortly
before the outbreak of World War II. Auf den Marmorklippen
is not only a masterpiece of German prose, but also a work
of great significance because in this book the
characteristics of tyrants and the horror of war and
nocturnal bombardment are described prophetically, in poetic
vision.

In the course of our correspondence, Ernst Junger also
inquired about my LSD studies, of which he had learned
through a friend. Thereupon I sent him the pertinent
publications, which he acknowledged with the following
comments:


                                             Kirchhorst,
                                             3/3/1948

    . . . together with both enclosures concerning your new
    phantasticum. It seems indeed that you have entered a
    field that contains so many tempting mysteries.

    Your consignment came together with the Confessions of
    an English Opium Eater, that has just been published in
    a new translation. The translator writes me that his
    reading of Das Abenteuerliche Herz stimulated him to do
    his work.

    As far as I am concerned, my practical studies in this
    field are far behind me. These are experiments in which
    one sooner or later embarks on truly dangerous paths,
    and may be considered lucky to escape with only a black
    eye.

    What interested me above all was the relationship of
    these substances to productivity. It has been my
    experience, however, that creative achievement requires
    an alert consciousness, and that it diminishes under the
    spell of drugs. On the other hand, conceptualization is
    important, and one gains insights under the influence of
    drugs that indeed are not possible otherwise. I consider
    the beautiful essay that Maupassant has written about
    ether to be such an insight. Moreover, I had the
    impression that in fever one also discovers new
    landscapes, new archipelagos, and a new music, that
    becomes completely distinct when the "customs station"
    ["An der Zollstation" [At the custom station], the title
    heading of a section in Das Abenteuerliche Herz (2d ed.)
    that concerns the transition from life to death.]
    appears. For geographic description, on the other hand,
    one must be fully conscious. What productivity means to
    the artist, healing means to the physician. Accordingly,
    it also may suffice for him that he sometimes enters the
    regions through the tapestries that our senses have
    woven. Moreover, I seem to perceive in our time less of
    a taste for the phantastica than for the
    energetica-amphetamine, which has even been furnished to
    fliers and other soldiers by the armies, belongs to this
    group. Tea is in my opinion a phantasticum, coffee an
    energeticum-tea therefore possesses a disproportionately
    higher artistic rank. I notice that coffee disrupts the
    delicate lattice of light and shadows, the fruitful
    doubts that emerge during the writing of a sentence. One
    exceeds his inhibitions. With tea, on the other hand,
    the thoughts climb genuinely upward.

    So far as my "studies" are concerned, I had a manuscript
    on that topic, but have since burned it. My excursions
    terminated with hashish, that led to very pleasant, but
    also to manic states, to oriental tyranny....

Soon afterward, in a letter from Ernst Junger I learned that
he had inserted a discourse about drugs in the novel
Heliopolis, on which he was then working. He wrote to me
about the drug researcher who figures in the novel:

    Among the trips in the geographical and metaphysical
    worlds, which I am attempting to describe there, are
    those of a purely sedentary man, who explores the
    archipelagos beyond the navigable seas, for which he
    uses drugs as a vehicle. I give extracts from his log
    book. Certainly, I cannot allow this Columbus of the
    inner globe to end well-he dies of a poisoning. Avis au
    lecteur.

The book that appeared the following year bore the subtitle
Ruckblick auf eine Stadt [Retrospective on a city], a
retrospective on a city of the future, in which technical
apparatus and the weapons of the present time were developed
still further in magic, and in which power struggles between
a demonic technocracy and a conservative force took place.
In the figure of Antonio Peri, Junger depicted the mentioned
drug researcher, who resided in the ancient city of
Heliopolis.

    He captured dreams, just like others appear to chase
    after butterflies with nets. He did not travel to the
    islands on Sundays and holidays and did not frequent the
    taverns on Pagos beach. He locked himself up in his
    studio for trips into the dreamy regions. He said that
    all countries and unknown islands were woven into the
    tapestry. The drugs served him as keys to entry into the
    chambers and caves of this world. In the course of the
    years he had gained great knowledge, and he kept a log
    book of his excursions. A small library adjoined this
    studio, consisting partly of herbals and medicinal
    reports, partly of works by poets and magicians. Antonio
    tended to read there while the effect of the drug itself
    developed. . . . He went on voyages of discovery in the
    universe of his brain....

In the center of this library, which was pillaged by
mercenaries of the provincial governor during the arrest of
Antonio Peri, stood:

    The great inspirers of the nineteenth century: De
    Quincey, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Poe, and Baudelaire. Yet there
    were also books from the ancient past: herbals,
    necromancy texts, and demonology of the middle- aged
    world. They included the names Albertus Magnus,
    Raimundus Lullus, and Agrippa of Nettesheym....
    Moreover, there was the great folio De Praestigiis
    Daemonum by Wierus, and the very unique compilations of
    Medicus Weckerus, published in Basel in 1582....

In another part of his collection, Antonio Peri seemed to
have cast his attention principally "on ancient pharmacology
books, formularies and pharmacopoeias, and to have hunted
for reprints of journals and annals. Among others was found
a heavy old volume by the Heidelberg psychologists on the
extract of mescal buttons, and a paper on the phantastica of
ergot by Hofmann-Bottmingen...."

In the same year in which Heliopolis came out, I made the
personal acquaintance of the author. I went to meet Ernst
Junger in Ravensburg, for a Swiss sojourn. On a wonderful
fall journey in southern Switzerland, together with mutual
friends, I experienced the radiant power of his personality.

Two years later, at the beginning of February 1951, came the
great adventure, an LSD trip with Ernst Junger. Since, up
until that moment, there were only reports of LSD
experiments in connection with psychiatric inquiries, this
experiment especially interested me, because this was an
opportunity to observe the effects of LSD on the artistic
person, in a nonmedical milieu. That was still somewhat
before Aldous Huxley, from the same perspective, began to
experiment with mescaline, about which he then reported in
his two books The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hett.

In order to have medical aid on hand if necessary, I invited
my friend, the physician and pharmacologist Professor
Heribert Konzett, to participate. The trip took place at
10:00 in the morning, in the living room of our house in
Bottmingen. Since the reaction of such a highly sensitive
man as Ernst Junger was not foreseeable, a low dose was
chosen for this first experiment as a precaution, only 0.05
mg. The experiment then, did not lead into great depths.

The beginning phase was characterized by the intensification
of aesthetic experience. Red-violet roses were of unknown
luminosity and radiated in portentous brightness. The
concerto for flute and harp by Mozart was perceived in its
celestial beauty as heavenly music. In mutual astonishment
we contemplated the haze of smoke that ascended with the
ease of thought from a Japanese incense stick. As the
inebriation became deeper and the conversation ended, we
came to fantastic reveries while we lay in our easy chairs
with closed eyes. Ernst Junger enjoyed the color display of
oriental images: I was on a trip among Berber tribes in
North Africa, saw colored caravans and lush oases. Heribert
Konzett, whose features seemed to me to be transfigured,
Buddha-like, experienced a breath of timelessness,
liberation from the past and the future, blessedness through
being completely here and now.

The return from the altered state of consciousness was
associated with strong sensitivity to cold. Like freezing
travelers, we enveloped ourselves in covers for the landing.
The return to everyday reality was celebrated with a good
dinner, in which Burgundy flowed copiously.

This trip was characterized by the mutuality and parallelism
of our experiences, which were perceived as profoundly
joyful. All three of us had drawn near the gate to an
experience of mystical being; however, it did not open. The
dose we had chosen was too low. In misunderstanding this
reason, Ernst Junger, who had earlier been thrust into
deeper realms by a high dose of mescaline, remarked:
"Compared with the tiger mescaline, your LSD, is, after all,
only a house cat." After later experiments with higher doses
of LSD, he revised this estimation.

Junger has assimilated the mentioned spectacle of the
incense stick into literature, in his story Besuch auf
Gotenhotm [Visit to Godenholm], in which deeper experiences
of drug inebriation also play a part:

    Schwarzenberg burned an incense stick, as he sometimes
    did, to clear the air. A blue plume ascended from the
    tip of the stick. Moltner looked at it first with
    astonishment, then with delight, as if a new power of
    the eyes had come to him. It revealed itself in the play
    of this fragrant smoke, which ascended from the slender
    stick and then branched out into a delicate crown. It
    was as if his imagination had created it-a pallid web of
    sea lilies in the depths, that scarcely trembled from
    the beat of the surf. Time was active in this
    creation-it had circled it, whirled about it, wreathed
    it, as if imaginary coins rapidly piled up one on top of
    another. The abundance of space revealed itself in the
    fiber work, the nerves, which stretched and unfolded in
    the height, in a vast number of filaments.

    Now a breath of air affected the vision, and softly
    twisted it about the shaft like a dancer. Moltner
    uttered a shout of surprise. The beams and lattices of
    the wondrous flower wheeled around in new planes, in new
    fields. Myriads of molecules observed the harmony. Here
    the laws no longer acted under the veil of appearance;
    matter was so delicate and weightless that it clearly
    reflected them. How simple and cogent everything was.
    The numbers, masses and weights stood out from matter.
    They cast off the raiments. No goddess could inform the
    initiates more boldly and freely. The pyramids with
    their weight did not reach up to this revelation. That
    was Pythagorean luster. No spectacle had ever affected
    him with such a magic spell.

This deepened experience in the aesthetic sphere, as it is
described here in the example of contemplation of a haze of
blue smoke, is typical of the beginning phase of LSD
inebriation, before deeper alterations of conscious begin.

I visited Ernst Junger occasionally in the following years,
in Wilfingen, Germany, where he had moved from Ravensburg;
or we met in Switzerland, at my place in Bottmingen, or in
Bundnerland in southeastern Switzerland. Through the shared
LSD experience our relations had deepened. Drugs and
problems connected with them constituted a major subject of
our conversation and correspondence, without our having made
further practical experiments in the meantime.

We exchanged literature about drugs. Ernst Junger thus let
me have for my drug library the rare, valuable monograph of
Dr. Ernst Freiherrn von Bibra, Die Narkotischen Genussmittel
und der Mensch [Narcotic pleasure drugs and man] printed in
Nuremburg in 1855. This book is a pioneering, standard work
of drug literature, a source of the first order, above all
as relates to the history of drugs. What von Bibra embraces
under the designation "Narkotischen Genussmittel" are not
only substances like opium and thorn apple, but also coffee,
tobacco, kat, which do not fall under the present conception
of narcotics, any more than do drugs such as coca, fly
agaric, and hashish, which he also described.

Noteworthy, and today still as topical as at the time, are
the general opinions about drugs that von Bibra contrived
more than a century ago:

    The individual who has taken too much hashish, and then
    runs frantically about in the streets and attacks
    everyone who confronts him, sinks into insignificance
    beside the numbers of those who after mealtime pass calm
    and happy hours with a moderate dose; and the number of
    those who are able to overcome the heaviest exertions
    through coca, yes, who were possibly rescued from death
    by starvation through coca, by far exceed the few
    coqueros who have undermined their health by immoderate
    use. In the same manner, only a misplaced hypocrisy can
    condemn the vinous cup of old father Noah, because
    individual drunkards do not know how to observe limit
    and moderation.

From time to time I advised Ernst Junger about actual and
entertaining events in the field of inebriating drugs, as in
my letter of September 1955:

    . . . Last week the first 200 grams of a new drug
    arrived, whose investigation I wish to take up. It
    involves the seeds of a mimosa (Piptadenia peregrina
    Benth,) that is used as a stimulating intoxicant by the
    Indians of the Orinoco. The seeds are ground, fermented,
    and then mixed with the powder of burned snail shells.
    This powder is sniffed by the Indians with the help of a
    hollow, forked bird bone, as already reported by
    Alexander von Humboldt in Reise nach den Aequinoctiat-
    Gegenden des Neuen Kontinents [Voyage to the equinoctial
    regions of the new continent] (Book 8, Chapter 24). The
    warlike tribe, the Otomaco, especially use this drug,
    called niopo, yupa, nopo or cojoba, to an extensive
    degree, even today. It is reported in the monograph by
    P. J. Gumilla, S. J. (Et Orinoco Itustrado, 1741): "The
    Otomacos sniffed the powder before they went to battle
    with the Caribes, for in earlier times there existed
    savage wars between these tribes.... This drug robs them
    completely of reason, and they frantically seize their
    weapons. And if the women were not so adept at holding
    them back and binding them fast, they would daily cause
    horrible devastation. It is a terrible vice.... Other
    benign and docile tribes that also sniff the yupa, do
    not get into such a fury as the Otomacos, who through
    self-injury with this agent made themselves completely
    cruel before combat, and marched into battle with savage
    fury."

    I am curious how niopo would act on people like us.
    Should a niopo session one day come to pass, then we
    should on no account send our wives away, as on that
    early spring reverie [The LSD trip of February 1951 is
    meant here.], that they may bind us fast if
    necessary....

Chemical analysis of this drug led to isolation of active
principles that, like the ergot alkaloids and psilocybin,
belong to the group of indole alkaloids, but which were
already described in the technical literature, and were
therefore not investigated further in the Sandoz
laboratories. [Translator's note: The active principles of
niopo are DMT (N, Ndimethyltryptamine) and its congeners.
DMT was first prepared in 1931 by Manske.] The fantastic
effects described above appeared to occur only with the
particular manner of use as snuff powder, and also seemed to
be related, in all probability, to the psychic structure of
the Indian tribes concerned.


Ambivalence of Drug Use

Fundamental questions of drug problems were dealt with in
the following correspondence.


                                             Bottmingen, 16
                                             December 1961

    Dear Mr. Junger,

    On the one hand, I would have the great desire, besides
    the natural- scientific, chemical pharmacological
    investigation of hallucinogenic substances, also to
    research their use as magic drugs in other regions....
    On the other hand, I must admit that the fundamental
    question very much occupies me, whether the use of these
    types of drugs, namely of substances that so deeply
    affect our minds, could not indeed represent a forbidden
    transgression of limits. As long as any means or methods
    are used, which provide only an additional, newer aspect
    of reality, surely there is nothing to object to in such
    means; on the contrary, the experience and the knowledge
    of further facets of the reality only makes this reality
    ever more real to us. The question exists, however,
    whether the deeply affecting drugs under discussion here
    will in fact only open an additional window for our
    senses and perceptions, or whether the spectator
    himself, the core of his being, undergoes alterations.
    The latter would signify that something is altered that
    in my opinion should always remain intact. My concern is
    addressed to the question, whether the innermost core of
    our being is actually unimpeachable, and cannot become
    damaged by whatever happens in its material,
    physical-chemical, biological and psychic shells-or
    whether matter in the form of these drugs displays a
    potency that has the ability to attack the spiritual
    center of the personality, the self. The latter would
    have to be explained by the fact that the effect of
    magic drugs happens at the borderline where mind and
    matter merge-that these magic substances are themselves
    cracks in the infinite realm of matter, in which the
    depth of matter, its relationship with the mind, becomes
    particularly obvious. This could be expressed by a
    modification of the familiar words of Goethe:

     "Were the eye not sunny, It could never behold the sun;
      If the power of the mind were not in matter, How could
      matter disturb the mind."

    This would correspond to cracks which the radioactive
    substances constitute in the periodic system of the
    elements, where the transition of matter into energy
    becomes manifest. Indeed, one must ask whether the
    production of atomic energy likewise represents a
    transgression of forbidden limits.

    A further disquieting thought, which follows from the
    possibility of influencing the highest intellectual
    functions by traces of a substance, concerns free will.

    The highly active psychotropic substances like LSD and
    psilocybin possess in their chemical structure a very
    close relationship with substances inherent in the body,
    which are found in the central nervous system and play
    an important role in the regulation of its functions. It
    is therefore conceivable that through some disturbance
    in the metabolism of the normal neurotransmitters, a
    compound like LSD or psilocybin is formed, which can
    determine and alter the character of the individual, his
    world view and his behavior. A trace of a substance,
    whose production or nonproduction we cannot control with
    our wills, has the power to shape our destiny. Such
    biochemical considerations could have led to the
    sentence that Gottfried Benn quoted in his essay
    "Provoziertes Leben" [Provoked life]: "God is a
    substance, a drug!"

    On the other hand, it is well known that substances like
    adrenaline, for example, are formed or set free in our
    organism by thoughts and emotions, which for their part
    determine the functions of the nervous system. One may
    therefore suppose that our material organism is
    susceptible to and shaped by our mind, in the same way
    that our intellectual essence is shaped by our
    biochemistry. Which came first can indeed no better be
    determined than the question, whether the chicken came
    before the egg.

    In spite of my uncertainty with regard to the
    fundamental dangers that could lie in the use of
    hallucinogenic substances, I have continued
    investigations on the active principles of the Mexican
    magic morning glories, of which I wrote you briefly once
    before. In the seeds of this morning glory, that were
    called otoliuhqui by the ancient Aztecs, we found as
    active principles lysergic acid derivatives chemically
    very closely related to LSD. That was an almost
    unbelievable finding. I have all along had a particular
    love for the morning glories. They were the first
    flowers that I grew myself in my little child's garden.
    Their blue and red cups belong to the first memories of
    my childhood.

    I recently read in a book by D. T. Suzuki, Zen and
    Japanese Culture, that the morning glory plays a great
    role in Japan, among the flower lovers, in literature,
    and in graphic arts. Its fleeting splendor has given the
    Japanese imagination rich stimulus. Among others, Suzuki
    quotes a three- line poem of the poetess Chiyo
    (1702-75), who one morning went to fetch water from a
    neighbor's house, because . . .

     "My trough is captivated by a morning glory blossom, So
      I ask after water."

    The morning glory thus shows both possible ways of
    influencing the mind- body-essence of man: in Mexico it
    exerts its effects in a chemical way as a magic drug,
    while in Japan it acts from the spiritual side, through
    the beauty of its flower cups.


                                             Wilflingen, 17
    December 1961 Dear Mr. Hofmann,

    I give you my thanks for your detailed letter of 16
    December. I have reflected on your central question, and
    may probably become occupied with it on the occasion of
    the revision of An der Zeitmauer [At the wall of time].
    There I intimated that, in the field of physics as well
    as in the field of biology, we are beginning to develop
    procedures that are no longer to be understood as
    advances in the established sense, but that rather
    intervene in evolution and lead forth in the development
    of the species. Certainly I turn the glove inside out,
    for I suppose that it is a new world age, which begins
    to act evolutionarily on the prototypes. Our science
    with its theories and discoveries is therefore not the
    cause, rather one of the consequences of evolution,
    among others. Animals, plants, the atmosphere and the
    surfaces of planets will be concerned simultaneously. We
    do not progress from point to point, rather we cross
    over a line.

    The risk that you indicated is well to be considered.
    However, it exists in every aspect of our existence. The
    common denominator appears now here, now there.

    In mentioning radioactivity, you use the word crack.
    Cracks are not merely points of discovery, but also
    points of destruction. Compared to the effects of
    radiation, those of the magical drugs are more genuine
    and much less rough. In classical manner they lead us
    beyond the humane. Gurdjieff has already seen that to
    some extent. Wine has already changed much, has brought
    new gods and a new humanity with it. But wine is to the
    new substances as classical physics is to modern
    physics. These things should only be tried in small
    circles. I cannot agree with the thoughts of Huxley,
    that possibilities for transcendence could here be given
    to the masses. Indeed, this does not involve comforting
    fictions, but rather realities, if we take the matter
    earnestly. And few contacts will suffice here for the
    setting of courses and guidance. It also transcends
    theology and belongs in the chapter of theogony, as it
    necessarily entails entry into a new house, in the
    astrological sense. At first, one can be satisfied with
    this insight, and should above all be cautious with the
    designations.

    Heartfelt thanks also for the beautiful picture of the
    blue morning glory. It appears to be the same that I
    cultivate year after year in my garden. I did not know
    that it possesses specific powers; however, that is
    probably the case with every plant. We do not know the
    key to most. Besides this, there must be a central
    viewpoint from which not only the chemistry, the
    structure, the color, but rather all attributes become
    significant....


An Experiment with Psilocybin

Such theoretical discussions about the magic drugs were
supplemented by practical experiments. One such experiment,
which served as a comparison between LSD and psilocybin,
took place in the spring of 1962. The proper occasion for it
presented itself at the home of the Jungers, in the former
head forester's house of Stauffenberg's Castle in
Wilflingen. My friends, the pharmacologist Professor
Heribert Konzett and the Islamic scholar Dr. Rudolf Gelpke,
also took part in this mushroom symposium.

The old chronicles described how the Aztecs drank chocolatl
before they ate teonanacatl. Thus Mrs. Liselotte Junger
likewide served us hot chocolate, to set the mood. Then she
abandoned the four men to their fate.

We had gathered in a fashionable living room, with a dark
wooden ceiling, white tile stove, period furniture, old
French engravings on the walls, a gorgeous bouquet of tulips
on the table. Ernst Junger wore a long, broad, dark blue
striped kaftan-like garment that he had brought from Egypt;
Heribert Konzett was resplendent in a brightly embroidered
mandarin gown; Rudolf Gelpke and I had put on housecoats.
The everyday reality should be laid aside, along with
everyday clothing.

Shortly before sundown we took the drug, not the mushrooms,
but rather their active principle, 20 mg psilocybin each.
That corresponded to some two-thirds of the very strong dose
that was taken by the curandera Maria Sabina in the form of
Psilocybe mushrooms.

After an hour I still noticed no effect, while my companions
were already very deeply into the trip. I had come with the
hope that in the mushroom inebriation I could manage to
allow certain images from euphoric moments of my childhood,
which remained in my memory as blissful experiences, to come
alive: a meadow covered with chrysanthemums lightly stirred
by the early summer wind; the rosebush in the evening light
after a rain storm; the blue irises hanging over the
vineyard wall. Instead of these bright images from my
childhood home, strange scenery emerged, when the mushroom
factor finally began to act. Half stupefied, I sank deeper,
passed through totally deserted cities with a Mexican type
of exotic, yet dead splendor. Terrified, I tried to detain
myself on the surface, to concentrate alertly on the outer
world, on the surroundings. For a time I succeeded. I then
observed Ernst Junger, colossal in the room, pacing back and
forth, a powerful, mighty magician. Heribert Konzett in the
silky lustrous housecoat seemed to be a dangerous, Chinese
clown. Even Rudolf Gelpke appeared sinister to me; long,
thin, mysterious.

With the increasing depth of inebriation, everything became
yet stranger. I even felt strange to myself. Weird, cold,
foolish, deserted, in a dull light, were the places I
traversed when I closed my eyes. Emptied of all meaning, the
environment also seemed ghostlike to me whenever I opened my
eyes and tried to cling to the outer world. The total
emptiness threatened to drag me down into absolute
nothingness. I remember how I seized Rudolf Gelpke's arm as
he passed by my chair, and held myself to him, in order not
to sink into dark nothingness. Fear of death seized me, and
illimitable longing to return to the living creation, to the
reality of the world of men. After timeless fear I slowly
returned to the room. I saw and heard the great magician
lecturing uninterruptedly with a clear, loud voice, about
Schopenhauer, Kant, Hegel, and speaking about the old Gaa,
the beloved little mother. Heribert Konzett and Rudolf
Gelpke were already completely on the earth again, while I
could only regain my footing with great effort.

For me this entry into the mushroom world had been a test, a
confrontation with a dead world and with the void. The
experiment had developed differently from what I had
expected. Nevertheless, the encounter with the void can also
be appraised as a gain. Then the existence of the creation
appears so much more wondrous.

Midnight had passed, as we sat together at the table that
the mistress of the house had set in the upper story. We
celebrated the return with an exquisite repast and with
Mozart's music. The conversation, during which we exchanged
our experiences, lasted almost until morning.

Ernst Junger has described how he had experienced this trip,
in his book Annahenngenrogen und Rausch [Approaches-drugs
and inebriation] (published by Ernst Klett Verlag,
Stuttgart, 1970), in the section "Ein Pilz-Symposium" [A
mushroom symposium]. The following is an extract from the
work:

    As usual, a half hour or a little more passed in
    silence. Then came the first signs: the flowers on the
    table began to flare up and sent out flashes. It was
    time for leaving work; outside the streets were being
    cleaned, like on every weekend. The brush strokes
    invaded the silence painfully. This shuffling and
    brushing, now and again also a scraping, pounding,
    rumbling, and hammering, has random causes and is also
    symptomatic, like one of the signs that announces an
    illness. Again and again it also plays a role in the
    history of magic practices.

    By this time the mushroom began to act; the spring
    bouquet glowed darker. That was no natural light. The
    shadows stirred in the corners, as if they sought form.
    I became uneasy, even chilled, despite the heat that
    emanated from the tiles. I stretched myself on the sofa,
    drew the covers over my head.

    Everything became skin and was touched, even the
    retina-there the contact was light. This light was
    multicolored; it arranged itself in strings, which
    gently swung back and forth; in strings of glass beads
    of oriental doorways. They formed doors, like those one
    passes through in a dream, curtains of lust and danger.
    The wind stirred them like a garment. They also fell
    down from the belts of dancers, opened and closed
    themselves with the swing of the hips, and from the
    beads a rippling of the most delicate sounds fluttered
    to the heightened senses. The chime of the silver rings
    on the ankles and wrists is already too loud. It smells
    of sweat, blood, tobacco, chopped horse hairs, cheap
    rose essence. Who knows what is going on in the stables?

    It must be an immense palace, Mauritanian, not a good
    place. At this ballroom flights of adjoining rooms lead
    into the lower stratum. And everywhere the curtains with
    their glitter, their sparkling, radioactive glow.
    Moreover, the rippling of glassy instruments with their
    beckoning, their wooing solicitation: "Will you go with
    me, beautiful boy?" Now it ceased, now it repeated, more
    importunate, more intrusive, almost already assured of
    agreement.

    Now came forms-historical collages, the vox humana, the
    call of the cuckoo. Was it the whore of Santa Lucia, who
    stuck her breasts out of the window? Then the play was
    ruined. Salome danced; the amber necklace emitted sparks
    and made the nipples erect. What would one not do for
    one's Johannes? [Translator's note: "Johannes" here is
    slang for penis, as in English "Dick" or "Peter."]
    -damned, that was a disgusting obscenity, which did not
    come from me, but was whispered through the curtain.

    The snakes were dirty, scarcely alive, they wallowed
    sluggishly over the floor mats. They were garnished with
    brilliant shards. Others looked up from the floor with
    red and green eyes. It glistened and whispered, hissed
    and sparkled like diminutive sickles at the sacred
    harvest. Then it quieted, and came anew, more faintly,
    more forward. They had me in their hand. "There we
    immediately understood ourselves."

    Madam came through the curtain: she was busy, passed by
    me without noticing me. I saw the boots with the red
    heels. Garters constricted the thick thighs in the
    middle, the flesh bulged out there. The enormous
    breasts, the dark delta of the Amazon, parrots,
    piranhas, semiprecious stones everywhere. Now she went
    into the kitchen-or are there still cellars here? The
    sparkling and whispering, the hissing and twinkling
    could no longer be differentiated; it seemed to become
    concentrated, now proudly rejoicing, full of hope.

    It became hot and intolerable; I threw the covers off.
    The room was faintly illuminated; the pharmacologist
    stood at the window in the white mandarin frock, which
    had served me shortly before in Rottweil at the
    carnival. The orientalist sat beside the tile stove; he
    moaned as if he had a nightmare. I understood; it had
    been a first round, and it would soon start again. The
    time was not yet up. I had already seen the beloved
    little mother under other circumstances. But even
    excrement is earth, belongs like gold to transformed
    matter. One must come to terms with it, without getting
    too close.

    These were the earthy mushrooms. More light was hidden
    in the dark grain that burst from the ear, more yet in
    the green juice of the succulents on the glowing slopes
    of Mexico. . . . [Translator's note: Junger is referring
    to LSD, a derivative of ergot, and mescaline, derived
    from the Mexican peyotl cactus.]

    The trip had run awry-possibly I should address the
    mushrooms once more. Yet indeed the whispering returned,
    the flashing and sparkling-the bait pulled the fish
    close behind itself. Once the motif is given, then it
    engraves itself, like on a roller each new beginning,
    each new revolution repeats the melody. The game did not
    get beyond this kind of dreariness.

    I don't know how often this was repeated, and prefer not
    to dwell upon it. Also, there are things which one would
    rather keep to oneself. In any case, midnight was
    past....

    We went upstairs; the table was set. The senses were
    still heightened and the Doors of Perception were
    opened. The light undulated from the red wine in the
    carafe; a froth surged at the brim. We listened to a
    flute concerto. It had not turned out better for the
    others: How beautiful, to be back among men." Thus
    Albert Hofmann.

    The orientalist on the other hand had been in Samarkand,
    where Timur rests in a coffin of nephrite. He had
    followed the victorious march through cities, whose
    dowry on entry was a cauldron filled with eyes. There he
    had long stood before one of the skull pyramids that
    terrible Timur had erected, and in the multitude of
    severed heads had perceived even his own. It was
    encrusted with stones.

    A light dawned on the pharmacologist when he heard this:
    Now I know why you were sitting in the armchair without
    your head-I was astonished; I knew I wasn't dreaming.

    I wonder whether I should not strike out this detail
    since it borders on the area of ghost stories.

The mushroom substance had carried all four of us off, not
into luminous heights, rather into deeper regions. It seems
that the psilocybin inebriation is more darkly colored in
the majority of cases than the inebriation produced by LSD.
The influence of these two active substances is sure to
differ from one individual to another. Personally, for me,
there was more light in the LSD experiments than in the
experiments with the earthy mushroom, just as Ernst Junger
remarks in the preceding report.


Another LSD Session

The next and last thrust into the inner universe together
with Ernst Junger, this time again using LSD, led us very
far from everyday consciousness. We came close to the
ultimate door. Of course this door, according to Ernst
Junger, will in fact only open for us in the great
transition from life into the hereafter.

This last joint experiment occurred in February 1970, again
at the head forester's house in Wilflingen. In this case
there were only the two of us. Ernst Junger took 0.15 mg
LSD, I took 0.10 mg. Ernst Junger has published without
commentary the log book, the notes he made during the
experiment, in Approaches, in the section "Nochmals LSD"
[LSD once again]. They are scanty and tell the reader
little, just like my own records.

The experiment lasted from morning just after breakfast
until darkness fell. At the beginning of the trip, we again
listened to the concerto for flute and harp by Mozart, which
always made me especially happy, but this time, strange to
say, seemed to me like the turning of porcelain figures.
Then the intoxication led quickly into wordless depths. When
I wanted to describe the perplexing alterations of
consciousness to Ernst Junger, no more than two or three
words came out, for they sounded so false, so unable to
express the experience; they seemed to originate from an
infinitely distant world that had become strange; I
abandoned the attempt, laughing hopelessly. Obviously, Ernst
Junger had the same experience, yet we did not need speech;
a glance sufficed for the deepest understanding. I could,
however, put some scraps of sentences on paper, such as at
the beginning: "Our boat tosses violently." Later, upon
regarding expensively bound books in the library: "Like
red-gold pushed from within to without-exuding golden
luster." Outside it began to snow. Masked children marched
past and carts with carnival revelers passed by in the
streets. With a glance through the window into the garden,
in which snow patches lay, many-colored masks appeared over
the high walls bordering it, embedded in an infinitely
joyful shade of blue: "A Breughel garden-I live with and in
the objects." Later: "At present-no connection with the
everyday world." Toward the end, deep, comforting insight
expressed: "Hitherto confirmed on my path." This time LSD
had led to a blessed approach.



8. Meeting with Aldous Huxley

In the mid-1950s, two books by Aldous Huxley appeared, The
Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, dealing with
inebriated states produced by hallucinogenic drugs. The
alterations of sensory perceptions and consciousness, which
the author experienced in a self-experiment with mescaline,
are skillfully described in these books. The mescaline
experiment was a visionary experience for Huxley. He saw
objects in a new light; they disclosed their inherent, deep,
timeless existence, which remains hidden from everyday
sight.

These two books contained fundamental observations on the
essence of visionary experience and about the significance
of this manner of comprehending the world-in cultural
history, in the creation of myths, in the origin of
religions, and in the creative process out of which works of
art arise. Huxley saw the value of hallucinogenic drugs in
that they give people who lack the gift of spontaneous
visionary perception belonging to mystics, saints, and great
artists, the potential to experience this extraordinary
state of consciousness, and thereby to attain insight into
the spiritual world of these great creators. Hallucinogens
could lead to a deepened understanding of religious and
mystical content, and to a new and fresh experience of the
great works of art. For Huxley these drugs were keys capable
of opening new doors of perception; chemical keys, in
addition to other proven but laborious "door openers" to the
visionary world like meditation, isolation, and fasting, or
like certain yoga practices.

At the time I already knew the earlier work of this great
writer and thinker, books that meant much to me, like Point
Counter Point, Brave New World, After Many a Summer, Eyeless
in Gaza, and a few others. In The Doors of Perception and
Heaven and Hell, Huxley's newly-published works, I found a
meaningful exposition of the experience induced by
hallucinogenic drugs, and I thereby gained a deepened
insight into my own LSD experiments.

I was therefore delighted when I received a telephone call
from Aldous Huxley in the laboratory one morning in August
1961. He was passing through Zurich with his wife. He
invited me and my wife to lunch in the Hotel Sonnenberg.

A gentleman with a yellow freesia in his buttonhole, a tall
and noble appearance, who exuded kindness- this is the image
I retained from this first meeting with Aldous Huxley. The
table conversation revolved mainly around the problem of
magic drugs. Both Huxley and his wife, Laura Archera Huxley,
had also experimented with LSD and psilocybin. Huxley would
have preferred not to designate these two substances and
mescaline as "drugs," because in English usage, as also by
the way with Droge in German, that word has a pejorative
connotation, and because it was important to differentiate
the hallucinogens from the other drugs, even linguistically.
He believed in the great importance of agents producing
visionary experience in the modern phase of human evolution.

He considered experiments under laboratory conditions to be
insignificant, since in the extraordinarily intensified
susceptibility and sensitivity to external impressions, the
surroundings are of decisive importance. He recommended to
my wife, when we spoke of her native place in the mountains,
that she take LSD in an alpine meadow and then look into the
blue cup of a gentian flower, to behold the wonder of
creation.

As we parted, Aldous Huxley gave me, as a remembrance of
this meeting, a tape recording of his lecture "Visionary
Experience," which he had delivered the week before at an
international congress on applied psychology in Copenhagen.
In this lecture, Aldous Huxley spoke about the meaning and
essence of visionary experience and compared this type of
world view to the verbal and intellectual comprehension of
reality as its essential complement.

In the following year, the newest and last book by Aldous
Huxley appeared, the novel Island. This story, set on the
utopian island Pala, is an attempt to blend the achievements
of natural science and technical civilization with the
wisdom of Eastern thought, to achieve a new culture in which
rationalism and mysticism are fruitfully united. The moksha
medicine, a magical drug prepared from a mushroom, plays a
significant role in the life of the population of Pala
(moksha is Sanskrit for "release," "liberation"). The drug
could be used only in critical periods of life. The young
men on Pala received it in initiation rites, it is dispensed
to the protagonist of the novel during a life crisis, in the
scope of a psychotherapeutic dialogue with a spiritual
friend, and it helps the dying to relinquish the mortal
body, in the transition to another existence.

In our conversation in Zurich, I had already learned from
Aldous Huxley that he would again treat the problem of
psychedelic drugs in his forthcoming novel. Now he sent me a
copy of Island, inscribed "To Dr. Albert Hofmann, the
original discoverer of the moksha medicine, from Aldous
Huxley."

The hopes that Aldous Huxley placed in psychedelic drugs as
a means of evoking visionary experience, and the uses of
these substances in everyday life, are subjects of a letter
of 29 February 1962, in which he wrote me:

    . . . I have good hopes that this and similar work will
    result in the development of a real Natural History of
    visionary experience, in all its variations, determined
    by differences of physique, temperament and profession,
    and at the same time of a technique of Applied Mysticism
    - a technique for helping individuals to get the most
    out of their transcendental experience and to make use
    of the insights from the "Other World" in the affairs of
    "This World." Meister Eckhart wrote that "what is taken
    in by contemplation must be given out in love."
    Essentially this is what must be developed-the art of
    giving out in love and intelligence what is taken in
    from vision and the experience of self-transcendence and
    solidarity with the Universe....

Aldous Huxley and I were together often at the annual
convention of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences (WAAS)
in Stockholm during late summer 1963. His suggestions and
contributions to discussions at the sessions of the academy,
through their form and importance, had a great influence on
the proceedings.

WAAS had been established in order to allow the most
competent specialists to consider world problems in a forum
free of ideological and religious restrictions and from an
international viewpoint encompassing the whole world. The
results: proposals, and thoughts in the form of appropriate
publications, were to be placed at the disposal of the
responsible governments and executive organizations.

The 1963 meeting of WAAS had dealt with the population
explosion and the raw material reserves and food resources
of the earth. The corresponding studies and proposals were
collected in Volume II of WAAS under the title The
Population Crisis and the Use of World Resources. A decade
before birth control, environmental protection, and the
energy crisis became catchwords, these world problems were
examined there from the most serious point of view, and
proposals for their solution were made to governments and
responsible organizations. The catastrophic events since
that time in the aforementioned fields makes evident the
tragic discrepancy between recognition, desire, and
feasibility.

Aldous Huxley made the proposal, as a continuation and
complement of the theme "World Resources" at the Stockholm
convention, to address the problem "Human Resources," the
exploration and application of capabilities hidden in humans
yet unused. A human race with more highly developed
spiritual capacities, with expanded consciousness of the
depth and the incomprehensible wonder of being, would also
have greater understanding of and better consideration for
the biological and material foundations of life on this
earth. Above all, for Western people with their
hypertrophied rationality, the development and expansion of
a direct, emotional experience of reality, unobstructed by
words and concepts, would be of evolutionary significance.
Huxley considered psychedelic drugs to be one means to
achieve education in this direction. The psychiatrist Dr.
Humphry Osmond, likewise participating in the congress, who
had created the term psychedelic (mind- expanding), assisted
him with a report about significant possibilities of the use
of hallucinogens.

The convention in Stockholm in 1963 was my last meeting with
Aldous Huxley. His physical appearance was already marked by
a severe illness; his intellectual personage, however, still
bore the undiminished signs of a comprehensive knowledge of
the heights and depths of the inner and outer world of man,
which he had displayed with so much genius, love, goodness,
and humor in his literary work.

Aldous Huxley died on 22 November of the same year, on the
same day President Kennedy was assassinated. From Laura
Huxley I obtained a copy of her letter to Julian and
Juliette Huxley, in which she reported to her brother- and
sister-in-law about her husband's last day. The doctors had
prepared her for a dramatic end, because the terminal phase
of cancer of the throat, from which Aldous Huxley suffered,
is usually accompanied by convulsions and choking fits. He
died serenely and peacefully, however.

In the morning, when he was already so weak that he could no
longer speak, he had written on a sheet of paper: "LSD-try
it-intramuscular-100 mmg." Mrs. Huxley understood what was
meant by this, and ignoring the misgivings of the attending
physician, she gave him, with her own hand, the desired
injection-she let him have the moksha medicine.



9. Correspondence with the Poet-Physician Walter Vogt

My friendship with the physician, psychiatrist, and writer
Walter Vogt, M.D., is also among the personal contacts that
I owe to LSD. As the following extract from our
correspondence shows, it was less the medicinal aspects of
LSD, important to the physician, than the
consciousness-altering effects on the depth of the psyche,
of interest to the writer, that constituted the theme of our
correspondence.


                                             Muri/Bern, 22
    November 1970 Dear Mr. Hofmann,

    Last night I dreamed that I was invited to tea in a cafe
    by a friendly family in Rome. This family also knew the
    pope, and so the pope sat at - the same table to tea
    with us. He was all in white and also wore a white
    miter. He sat there so handsome and was silent.

    And today I suddenly had the idea of sending you my
    Vogel auf dem Tisch [Bird on the table]-as a visiting
    card if you so wish-a book that remained a little
    apocryphal, which upon reflection I do not regret,
    although the Italian translator is firmly convinced that
    is my best. (Ah yes, the pope is also an Italian. So it
    goes. . . .)

    Possibly this little work will interest you. It was
    written in 1966 by an author who at that time still had
    not had any shred of experience with psychedelic
    substances and who read the reports about medicinal
    experiments with these drugs devoid of understanding.
    However, little has changed since, except that now the
    misgiving comes from the other side.

    I suppose that your discovery has caused a hiatus (not
    directly a Saul- to-Paul conversion as Roland Fischer
    says . . .) in my work (also a large word) - and indeed,
    that which I have written since has become rather
    realistic or at least less expressive. In any case I
    could not have brought off the cool realism of my TV
    piece "Spiele der Macht" [Games of power] without it.
    The different drafts attest it, in case they are still
    lying around somewhere.

    Should you have interest and time for a meeting, it
    would delight me very much to visit you sometime for a
    conversation. W. V.


                                             Burg, i.L. 28
    November 1970 Dear Mr. Vogt,

    If the bird that alighted on my table was able to find
    its way to me, this is one more debt I owe to the
    magical effect of LSD. I could soon write a book about
    all of the results that derive from that experiment in
    1943.... A. H.


                                             Muri/Bern, 13
    March 1971 Dear Mr. Hofmann,

    Enclosed is a critique of Junger's Annahenngen
    [Approaches], from the daily paper, that will presumably
    interest you....

    It seems to me that to hallucinate-to dream-to
    write,stands at all times in contrast to everyday
    consciousness, and their functions are complementary.
    Here I can naturally speak only for myself. This could
    be different with others - it is also truly difficult to
    speak with others about such things, because people
    often speak altogether different languages....

    However, since you are now gathering autographs, and do
    me the honor of incorporating some of my letters in your
    collection, I enclose for you the manuscript of my
    "testament" - in which your discovery plays a role as
    "the only joyous invention of the twentieth century...."

                                                     W. V.


    dr. walter vogts most recent testament 1969 I wish to
    have no special funeral only expensive and obscene
    orchids innumerable little birds with gay names no naked
    dancers but psychedelic garments loudspeaker in every
    corner and nothing but the latest beatles record [Abbey
    Road] one hundred thousand million times and do what you
    like ["Blind Faith"] on an endless tape nothing more
    than a popular Christ with a halo of genuine gold and a
    beloved mourning congregation that pumped themselves
    full with acid [acid = LSD] till they go to heaven [From
    Abbey Road, side two] one two three four five six seven
    possibly we will encounter one another there

    most cordially dedicated to Dr. Albert Hofmann Beginning
    of Spring 1971


                                             Burg i.L., 29
    March 1971 Dear Mr. Vogt,

    You have again presented me with a lovely letter and a
    very valuable autograph, the testament 1969....

    Very remarkable dreams in recent times induce me to test
    a connection between the composition (chemical) of the
    evening meal and the quality of dreams. Yes, LSD is also
    something that one eats.... A. H.


                                             Muri/Bern, 5
    September 1971 Dear Mr. Hofmann,

    Over the weekend at Murtensee [On that Sunday, I (A. H.)
    hovered over the Murtensee in the balloon of my friend
    E. I., who had taken me along as passenger.] I often
    thought of you-a most radiant autumn day. Yesterday,
    Saturday, thanks to one tablet of aspirin (on account of
    a headache or mild flu), I experienced a very comical
    flashback, like with mescaline (of which I have had only
    a little, exactly once)....

    I have read a delightful essay by Wasson about
    mushrooms; he divides mankind into mycophobes and
    mycophiles.... Lovely fly agarics must now be growing in
    the forest near you. Sometime shouldn't we sample some?
    W. V.


                                             Muri/Bern, 7
    September 1971 Dear Mr. Hofmann,

    Now I feel I must write briefly to tell you what I have
    done outside in the sun, on the dock under your balloon:
    I finally wrote some notes about our visit in
    Villars-sur-Ollons (with Dr. Leary), then a hippie- bark
    went by on the lake, self-made like from a Fellini film,
    which I sketched, and over and above it I drew your
    balloon.

                                                     W. V.


                                             Burg i.L., 15
    April 1972 Dear Mr. Vogt,

    Your television play "Spiele der Macht" [Games of power]
    has impressed me extraordinarily.

    I congratulate you on this magnificent piece, which
    allows mental cruelty to become conscious, and therefore
    also acts in its way as "consciousness-expanding", and
    can thereby prove itself therapeutic in a higher sense,
    like ancient tragedy. A. H.


                                             Burg i.L., 19
    May 1973 Dear Mr. Vogt,

    Now I have already read your lay sermon three times, the
    description and interpretation of your Sinai Trip.
    [Walter Vogt: Mein Sinai Trip. Eine Laienpredigt [My
    Sinai trip: A lay sermon] (Verlag der Arche, Zurich,
    1972). This publication contains the text of a lay
    sermon that Walter Vogt gave on 14 November 1971 on the
    invitation of Parson Christoph Mohl, in the Protestant
    church of aduz (Lichtenstein), in the course of a series
    of sermons by writers, and in addition contains an
    afterword by the author and by the inviting parson. It
    involves the description and interpretation of an
    ecstatic-religious experience evoked by LSD, that the
    author is able to "place in a distant, if you will
    superficial, analogy to the great Sinai Trip of Moses."
    It is not only the "patriarchal atmosphere" that is to
    be traced out of these descriptions, that constitutes
    this analogy; there are deeper references, which are
    more to be read between the lines of this text.] Was it
    really an LSD trip? . . . It was a courageous deed, to
    choose such a notorious event as a drug experience as
    the theme of a sermon, even a lay sermon. But the
    questions raised by hallucinogenic drugs do actually
    belong in the church-in a prominent place in the church,
    for they are sacred drugs (peyotl, teonanacatl,
    ololiuhqui, with which LSD is mostly closely related by
    chemical structure and activity).

    I can fully agree with what you say in your introduction
    about the modern ecclesiastical religiosity: the three
    sanctioned states of consciousness (the waking condition
    of uninterrupted work and performance of duty, alcoholic
    intoxication, and sleep), the distinction between two
    phases of psychedelic inebriation (the first phase, the
    peak of the trip, in which the cosmic relationship is
    experienced, or the submersion into one's own body, in
    which everything that is, is within; and the second
    phase, characterized as the phase of enhanced
    comprehension of symbols), and the allusion to the
    candor that hallucinogens bring about in consciousness
    states. These are all observations that are of
    fundamental importance in the judgement of
    hallucinogenic inebriation.

    The most worthwhile spiritual benefit from LSD
    experiments was the experience of the inextricable
    intertwining of the physical and spiritual. "Christ in
    matter" (Teilhard de Chardin). Did the insight first
    come to you also through your drug experiences, that we
    must descend "into the flesh, which we are," in order to
    get new prophesies?

    A criticism of your sermon: you allow the "deepest
    experience that there is" - "The kingdom of heaven is
    within you"-to be uttered by Timothy Leary. This
    sentence, quoted without the indication of its true
    source, could be interpreted as ignorance of one, or
    rather the principal truth of Christian belief.

    One of your statements deserves universal recognition:
    "There is no non- ecstatic religious experience." . . .

    Next Monday evening I shall be interviewed on Swiss
    television (about LSD and the Mexican magic drugs, on
    the program "At First Hand"). I am curious about the
    sort of questions that will be asked. . .

                                                     A. H.


                                             Muri/Bern, 24
    May 1973 Dear Mr. Hofmann,

    Of course it was LSD - only I did not want to write
    about it explicitly, I really do not know just why
    myself.... The great emphasis I placed on the good
    Leary, who now seems to me to be somewhat flipped out,
    as the prime witness, can indeed only be explained by
    the special context of the talk or sermon.

    I must admit that the perception that we must descend
    "into the flesh, which we are" actually first came to me
    with LSD. I still ruminate on it, possibly it even came
    "too late" for me in fact, although more and more I
    advocate your opinion that LSD should be taboo for youth
    (taboo, not forbidden, that is the difference . . .).

    The sentence that you like, "there is no nonecstatic
    religious experience," was apparently not liked so much
    by others for example, by my (almost only) literary
    friend and minister-lyric poet Kurt Marti . . . . But in
    any case, we are practically never of the same opinion
    about anything, and notwithstanding, we constitute when
    we occasionally communicate by phone and arrange little
    activities together, the smallest minimafia of
    Switzerland.

                                                     W. V.


                                             Burg i.L., 13
    April 1974 Dear Mr. Vogt,

    Full of suspense, we watched your TV play "Pilate before
    the Silent Christ" yesterday evening.

    . . . as a representation of the fundamental man-God
    relationship: man, who comes to God with his most
    difficult questions, which finally he must answer
    himself, because God is silent. He does not answer them
    with words. The answers are contained in the book of his
    creation (to which the questioning man himself belongs).
    True natural science decipher in of this text. A. H.


                                             Muri/Bern, 11
    May 1974 Dear Mr. Hofmann,

    I have composed a "poem" in half twilight, that I dare
    to send to you. At first I wanted to send it to Leary,
    but this would make no sense.

      Leary in jail Gelpke is dead Treatment in the asylum
      is this your psychedelic revolution? Had we taken
      seriously something with which one only ought to play
      or vice-versa . . . W. V.



10. Various Visitors

The diverse aspects, the multi-faceted emanations of LSD are
also expressed in the variety of cultural circles with which
this substance has brought me into contact. On the
scientific plane, this has involved colleagues- chemists,
pharmacologists, physicians, and mycologists-whom I met at
universities, congresses, lectures, or with whom I came into
association through publication. In the
literary-philosophical field there were contacts with
writers. In the preceding chapters I have reported on the
relationships of this type that were most significant for
me. LSD also provided me with a variegated series of
personal acquaintances from the drug scene and from hippie
circles, which will briefly be described here.

Most of these visitors came from the United States and were
young people, often in transit to the Far East in search of
Eastern wisdom or of a guru; or else hoping to come by drugs
more easily there. Prague also was sometimes the goal,
because LSD of good quality could at the time easily be
acquired there. [Translator's Note: When Sandoz's patents on
LSD expired in 1963, the Czech pharmaceutical firm Spofa
began to manufacture the drug.] Once arrived in Europe, they
wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to see the
father of LSD, "the man who made the famous LSD bicycle
trip." But more serious concerns sometimes motivated a
visit. There was the desire to report on personal LSD
experiences and to debate the purport of their meaning, at
the source, so to speak. Only rarely did a visit prove to be
inspired by the desire to obtain LSD when a visitor hinted
that he or she wished once to experiment with most assuredly
pure material, with original LSD.

Visitors of various types and with diverse desires also came
from Switzerland and other European countries. Such
encounters have become rarer in recent times, which may be
related to the fact that LSD has become less important in
the drug scene. Whenever possible, I have welcomed such
visitors or agreed to meet somewhere. This I considered to
be an obligation connected with my role in the history of
LSD, and I have tried to help by instructing and advising.

Sometimes no true conversation occurred, for example with
the inhibited young man who arrived on a motorbike. I was
not clear about the objective of his visit. He stared at me,
as if asking himself: can the man who has made something so
weird as LSD really look so completely ordinary? With him,
as with other similar visitors, I had the feeling that he
hoped, in my presence, the LSD riddle would somehow solve
itself.

Other meetings were completely different, like the one with
the young man from Toronto. He invited me to lunch at an
exclusive restaurant-impressive appearance, tall, slender, a
businessman, proprietor of an important industrial firm in
Canada, brilliant intellect. He thanked me for the creation
of LSD, which had given his life another direction. He had
been 100 percent a businessman, with a purely materialistic
world view. LSD had opened his eyes to the spiritual aspect
of life. Now he possessed a sense for art, literature, and
philosophy and was deeply concerned with religious and
metaphysical questions. He now desired to make the LSD
experience accessible in a suitable milieu to his young
wife, and hoped for a similarly fortunate transformation in
her.

Not as profound, yet still liberating and rewarding, were
the results of LSD experiments which a young Dane described
to me with much humor and fantasy. He came from California,
where he had been a houseboy for Henry Miller in Big Sur. He
moved on to France with the plan of acquiring a dilapidated
farm there, which he, a skilled carpenter, then wanted to
restore himself. I asked him to obtain an autograph of his
former employer for my collection, and after some time I
actually received an original piece of writing from Henry
Miller's hand.

A young woman sought me out to report on LSD experiences
that had been of great significance to her inner
development. As a superficial teenager who pursued all sorts
of entertainments, and quite neglected by her parents, she
had begun to take LSD out of curiosity and love of
adventure. For three years she took frequent LSD trips. They
led to an astonishing intensification of her inner life. She
began to seek after the deeper meaning of her existence,
which eventually revealed itself to her. Then, recognizing
that LSD had no further power to help her, without
difficulty or exertion of will she was able to abandon the
drug. Thereafter she was in a position to develop herself
further without artificial means. She was now a happy
intrinsically secure person-thus she concluded her report.
This young woman had decided to tell me her history, because
she supposed that I was often attacked by narrow-minded
persons who saw only the damage that LSD sometimes caused
among youths. The immediate motive of her testimony was a
conversation that she had accidentally overheard on a
railway journey. A man complained about me, finding it
disgraceful that I had spoken on the LSD problem in an
interview published in the newspaper. In his opinion, I
ought to denounce LSD as primarily the devil's work and
should publicly admit my guilt in the matter.

Persons in LSD delirium, whose condition could have given
rise to such indignant condemnation, have never personally
come into my sight. Such cases, attributable to LSD
consumption under irresponsible circumstances, to
overdosage, or to psychotic predisposition, always landed in
the hospital or at the police station. Great publicity
always came their way.

A visit by one youn American girl stands out in my memory as
an example of the tragic effects of LSD. It was during the
lunch hour, which I normally spent in my office under strict
confinement-no visitors, secretary's office closed up.
Knocking came at the door, discretely but firmly repeated,
until eventually I went to open it. I scarcely believed my
eyes: before me stood a very beautiful young woman, blond,
with large blue eyes, wearing a long hippie dress, headband,
and sandals. "I am Joan, I come from New York-you are Dr.
Hofmann?" Before I inquired what brought her to me, I asked
her how she had got through the two checkpoints, at the main
entrance to the factory area and at the door of the
laboratory building, for visitors were admitted only after
telephone query, and this flower child must have been
especially noticeable. "I am an angel, I can pass
everywhere," she replied. Then she explained that she came
on a great mission. She had to rescue her country, the
United States; above all she had to direct the president (at
the time L. B. Johnson) onto the correct path. This could be
accomplished only by having him take LSD. Then he would
receive the good ideas that would enable him to lead the
country out of war and internal difficulties.

Joan had come to me hoping that I would help her fulfill her
mission, namely to give LSD to the president. Her name would
indicate she was the Joan of Arc of the USA. I don't know
whether my arguments, advanced with all consideration of her
holy zeal, were able to convince her that her plan had no
prospects of success on psychological, technical, internal,
and external grounds. Disappointed and sad she went away.
Next day I received a telephone call from Joan. She again
asked me to help her, since her financial resources were
exhausted. I took her to a friend in Zurich who provided her
with work, and with whom she could live. Joan was a teacher
by profession, and also a nightclub pianist and singer. For
a while she played and sang in a  fashionable Zurich
restaurant. The good bourgeois clients of course had no idea
what sort of angel sat at the grand piano in a black evening
dress and entertained them with sensitive playing and a soft
and sensuous voice. Few paid attention to the words of her
songs; they were for the most part hippie songs, many of
them containing veiled praise of drugs. The Zurich
performance did not last long; within a few weeks I learned
from my friend that Joan had suddenly disappeared. He
received a greeting card from her three months later, from
Israel. She had been committed to a psychiatric hospital
there.

For the conclusion of my assortment of LSD visitors, I wish
to report about a meeting in which LSD figured only
indirectly. Miss H. S., head secretary in a hospital, wrote
to ask me for a personal interview. She came to tea. She
explained her visit thus: in a report about an LSD
experience, she had read the description of a condition she
herself had experienced as a young girl, which still
disturbed her today; possibly I could help her to understand
this experience.

She had gone on a business trip as a commercial apprentice.
They spent the night in a mountain hotel. H. S. awoke very
early and left the house alone in order to watch the
sunrise. As the mountains began to light up in a sea of
rays, she was perfused by an unprecedented feeling of
happiness, which persisted even after she joined the other
participants of the trip at morning service in the chapel.
During the Mass everything appeared to her in a supernatural
luster, and the feeling of happiness intensified to such an
extent that she had to cry loudly. She was brought back to
the hotel and treated as someone with a mental disorder.

This experience largely determined her later personal life.
H.S. feared she was not completely normal. On the one hand,
she feared this experience, which had been explained to her
as a nervous breakdown; on the other hand, she longed for a
repetition of the condition. Internally split, she had led
an unstable life. In repeated vocational changes and in
varying personal relationships, consciously or unconsciously
she again sought this ecstatic outlook, which once made her
so deeply happy.

I was able to reassure my visitor. It was no
psychopathological event, no nervous breakdown that she had
experienced at the time. What many people seek to attain
with the help of LSD, the visionary experience of a deeper
reality, had come to her as spontaneous grace. I recommended
a book by Aldous Huxley to her, The Perennial Philosophy
(Harper, New York & London, 1945) a collection of reports of
spontaneous blessed visions from all times and cultures.
Huxley wrote that not only mystics and saints, but also many
more ordinary people than one generally supposes, experience
such blessed moments, but that most do not recognize their
importance and, instead of regarding them as promising rays
of hope, repress them, because they do not fit into everyday
rationality.



11. LSD Experience and Reality


      Was kann ein Mensch im Leben mehr gewinnen Als dass
      sich Gott-Natur ihm offenbare?

      What more can a person gain in life Than that
      God-Nature reveals himself to him? Goethe


I am often asked what has made the deepest impression upon
me in my LSD experiments, and whether I have arrived at new
understandings through these experiences.


Various Realities

Of greatest significance to me has been the insight that I
attained as a fundamental understanding from all of my LSD
experiments: what one commonly takes as "the reality,"
including the reality of one's own individual person, by no
means signifies something fixed, but rather something that
is ambiguous-that there is not only one, but that there are
many realities, each comprising also a different
consciousness of the ego.

One can also arrive at this insight through scientific
reflections. The problem of reality is and has been from
time immemorial a central concern of philosophy. It is,
however, a fundamental distinction, whether one approaches
the problem of reality rationally, with the logical methods
of philosophy, or if one obtrudes upon this problem
emotionally, through an existential experience. The first
planned LSD experiment was therefore so deeply moving and
alarming, because everyday reality and the ego experiencing
it, which I had until then considered to be the only
reality, dissolved, and an unfamiliar ego experienced
another, unfamiliar reality. The problem concerning the
innermost self also appeared, which, itself unmoved, was
able to record these external and internal transformations.

Reality is inconceivable without an experiencing subject,
without an ego. It is the product of the exterior world, of
the sender and of a receiver, an ego in whose deepest self
the emanations of the exterior world, registered by the
antennae of the sense organs, become conscious. If one of
the two is lacking, no reality happens, no radio music
plays, the picture screen remains blank.

If one continues with the conception of reality as a product
of sender and receiver, then the entry of another reality
under the influence of LSD may be explained by the fact that
the brain, the seat of the receiver, becomes biochemically
altered. The receiver is thereby tuned into another
wavelength than that corresponding to normal, everyday
reality. Since the endless variety and diversity of the
universe correspond to infinitely many different
wavelengths, depending on the adjustment of the receiver,
many different realities, including the respective ego, can
become conscious. These different realities, more correctly
designated as different aspects of the reality, are not
mutually exclusive but are complementary, and form together
a portion of the all-encompassing, timeless, transcendental
reality, in which even the unimpeachable core of
self-consciousness, which has the power to record the
different egos, is located.

The true importance of LSD and related hallucinogens lies in
their capacity to shift the wavelength setting of the
receiving "self," and thereby to evoke alterations in
reality consciousness. This ability to allow different, new
pictures of reality to arise, this truly cosmogonic power,
makes the cultish worship of hallucinogenic plants as sacred
drugs understandable.

What constitutes the essential, characteristic difference
between everyday reality and the world picture experienced
in LSD inebriation? Ego and the outer world are separated in
the normal condition of consciousness, in everyday reality;
one stands face-to-face with the outer world; it has become
an object. In the LSD state the boundaries between the
experiencing self and the outer world more or less
disappear, depending on the depth of the inebriation.
Feedback between receiver and sender takes place. A portion
of the self overflows into the outer world, into objects,
which begin to live, to have another, a deeper meaning. This
can be perceived as a blessed, or as a demonic
transformation imbued with terror, proceeding to a loss of
the trusted ego. In an auspicious case, the new ego feels
blissfully united with the objects of the outer world and
consequently also with its fellow beings. This experience of
deep oneness with the exterior world can even intensify to a
feeling of the self being one with the universe. This
condition of cosmic consciousness, which under favorable
conditions can be evoked by LSD or by another hallucinogen
from the group of Mexican sacred drugs, is analogous to
spontaneous religious enlightenment, with the unio mystica.
In both conditions, which often last only for a timeless
moment, a reality is experienced that exposes a gleam of the
transcendental reality, in which universe and self, sender
and receiver, are one. [The relationship of spontaneous to
drug-induced enlightenment has been most extensively
investigated by R. C. Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane
(The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1957).]

Gottfried Benn, in his essay "Provoziertes Leben" [Provoked
life] (in Ausdnckswelt, Limes Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1949),
characterized the reality in which self and world are
separated, as "the schizoid catastrophe, the Western
entelechy neurosis." He further writes:

    . . . In the southern part of our continent this concept
    of reality began to be formed. The Hellenistic-European
    agonistic principle of victory through effort, cunning,
    malice, talent, force, and later, European Darwinism and
    "superman," was instrumental in its formation. The ego
    emerged, dominated, fought; for this it needed
    instruments, material, power. It had a different
    relationship to matter, more removed sensually, but
    closer formally. It analyzed matter, tested, sorted:
    weapons, object of exchange, ransom money. It clarified
    matter through isolation, reduced it to formulas, took
    pieces out of it, divided it up. [Matter became] a
    concept which hung like a disaster over the West, with
    which the West fought, without grasping it, to which it
    sacrified enormous quantities of blood and happiness; a
    concept whose inner tension and fragmentations it was
    impossible to dissolve through a natural viewing or
    methodical insight into the inherent unity and peace of
    prelogical forms of being . . . instead the cataclysmic
    character of this idea became clearer and clearer . . .
    a state, a social organization, a public morality, for
    which life is economically usable life and which does
    not recognize the world of provoked life, cannot stop
    its destructive force. A society, whose hygiene and race
    cultivation as a modern ritual is founded solely on
    hollow biological statistics, can only represent the
    external viewpoint of the mass; for this point of view
    it can wage war, incessantly, for reality is simply raw
    material, but its metaphysical background remains
    forever obscured. [This excerpt from Benn's essay was
    taken from Ralph Metzner's translation "Provoked Life:
    An Essay on the Anthropology of the Ego," which was
    published in Psychedelic Review I (1): 47-54, 1963.
    Minor corrections in Metzner's text have been made by A.
    H.]

As Gottfried Benn formulates it in these sentences, a
concept of reality that separates self and the world has
decisively determined the evolutionary course of European
intellectual history. Experience of the world as matter, as
object, to which man stands opposed, has produced modern
natural science and technology- creations of the Western
mind that have changed the world. With their help human
beings have subdued the world. Its wealth has been exploited
in a manner that may be characterized as plundering, and the
sublime accomplishment of technological civilization, the
comfort of Western industrial society, stands face-to-face
with a catastrophic destruction of the environment. Even to
the heart of matter, to the nucleus of the atom and its
splitting, this objective intellect has progressed and has
unleashed energies that threaten all life on our planet.

A misuse of knowledge and understanding, the products of
searching intelligence, could not have emerged from a
consciousness of reality in which human beings are not
separated from the environment but rather exist as part of
living nature and the universe. All attempts today to make
amends for the damage through environmentally protective
measures must remain only hopeless, superficial patchwork,
if no curing of the "Western entelechy neurosis" ensues, as
Benn has characterized the objective reality conception.
Healing would mean existential experience of a deeper, self-
encompassing reality.

The experience of such a comprehensive reality is impeded in
an environment rendered dead by human hands, such as is
present in our great cities and industrial districts. Here
the contrast between self and outer world becomes especially
evident. Sensations of alienation, of loneliness, and of
menace arise. It is these sensations that impress themselves
on everyday consciousness in Western industrial society;
they also take the upper hand everywhere that technological
civilization extends itself, and they largely determine the
production of modern art and literature.

There is less danger of a cleft reality experience arising
in a natural environment. In field and forest, and in the
animal world sheltered therein, indeed in every garden, a
reality is perceptible that is infinitely more real, older,
deeper, and more wondrous than everything made by people,
and that will yet endure, when the inanimate, mechanical,
and concrete world again vanishes, becomes rusted and fallen
into ruin. In the sprouting, growth, blooming, fruiting,
death, and regermination of plants, in their relationship
with the sun, whose light they are able to convert into
chemically bound energy in the form of organic compounds,
out of which all that lives on our earth is built; in the
being of plants the same mysterious, inexhaustible, eternal
life energy is evident that has also brought us forth and
takes us back again into its womb, and in which we are
sheltered and united with all living things.

We are not leading up to a sentimental enthusiasm for
nature, to "back to nature" in Rousseau's sense. That
romantic movement, which sought the idyll in nature, can
also be explained by a feeling of humankind's separation
from nature. What is needed today is a fundamental
re-experience of the oneness of all living things, a
comprehensive reality consciousness that ever more
infrequently develops spontaneously, the more the primordial
flora and fauna of our mother earth must yield to a dead
technological environment.


Mystery and Myth

The notion of reality as the self juxtaposed to the world,
in confrontation with the outer world, began to form itself,
as reported in the citation from Benn, in the southern
portion of the European continent in Greek antiquity. No
doubt people at that time knew the suffering that was
connected with such a cleft reality consciousness. The Greek
genius tried the cure, by supplementing the multiformed and
richly colored, sensual as well as deeply sorrowful
Apollonian world view created by the subject/object
cleavage, with the Dionysian world of experience, in which
this cleavage is abolished in ecstatic inebriation.
Nietzsche writes in The Birth of Tragedy:

    It is either through the influence of narcotic potions,
    of which all primitive peoples and races speak in hymns,
    or through the powerful approach of spring, penetrating
    with joy all of nature, that those Dionysian stirrings
    arise, which in their intensification lead the
    individual to forget himself completely.... Not only
    does the bond between man and man come to be forged once
    again by the magic of the Dionysian rite, but alienated,
    hostile, or subjugated nature again celebrates her
    reconciliation with her prodigal son, man.

The Mysteries of Eleusis, which were celebrated annually in
the fall, over an interval of approximately 2,000 years,
from about 1500 B.C. until the fourth century A.D., were
intimately connected with the ceremonies and festivals in
honor of the god Dionysus. These Mysteries were established
by the goddess of agriculture, Demeter, as thanks for the
recovery of her daughter Persephone, whom Hades, the god of
the underworld, had abducted. A further thank offering was
the ear of grain, which was presented by the two goddesses
to Triptolemus, the first high priest of Eleusis. They
taught him the cultivation of grain, which Triptolemus then
disseminated over the whole globe. Persephone, however, was
not always allowed to remain with her mother, because she
had taken nourishment from Hades, contrary to the order of
the highest gods. As punishment she had to return to the
underworld for a part of the year. During this time, it was
winter on the earth, the plants died and were withdrawn into
the ground, to awaken to new life early in the year with
Persephone's journey to earth.

The myth of Demeter, Persephone, Hades, and the other gods,
which was enacted as a drama, formed, however, only the
external framework of events. The climax of the yearly
ceremonies, which began with a procession from Athens to
Eleusis lasting several days, was the concluding ceremony
with the initiation, which took place in the night. The
initiates were forbidden by penalty of death to divulge what
they had learned, beheld, in the innermost, holiest chamber
of the temple, the tetesterion (goal). Not one of the
multitude that were initiated into the secret of Eleusis has
ever done this. Pausanias, Plato, many Roman emperors like
Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, and many other known personages
of antiquity were party to this initiation. It must have
been an illumination, a visionary glimpse of a deeper
reality, an insight into the true basis of the universe.
That can be concluded from the statements of initiates about
the value, about the importance of the vision. Thus it is
reported in a Homeric Hymn: "Blissful is he among men on
Earth, who has beheld that! He who has not been initiated
into the holy Mysteries, who has had no part therein,
remains a corpse in gloomy darkness." Pindar speaks of the
Eleusinian benediction with the following words: "Blissful
is he, who after having beheld this enters on the way
beneath the Earth. He knows the end of life as well as its
divinely granted beginning." Cicero, also a famous initiate,
likewise put in first position the splendor that fell upon
his life from Eleusis, when he said: " Not only have we
received the reason there, that we may live in joy, but
also, besides, that we may die with better hope."

How could the mythological representation of such an obvious
occurrence, which runs its course annually before our
eyes-the seed grain that is dropped into the earth, dies
there, in order to allow a new plant, new life, to ascend
into the light-prove to be such a deep, comforting
experience as that attested by the cited reports? It is
traditional knowledge that the initiates were furnished with
a potion, the kykeon, for the final ceremony. It is also
known that barley extract and mint were ingredients of the
kykeon. Religious scholars and scholars of mythology, like
Karl Kerenyi, from whose book on the Eleusinian Mysteries
(Rhein-Verlag, Zurich, 1962) the preceding statements were
taken, and with whom I was associated in relation to the
research on this mysterious potion [In the English
publication of Kerenyi's book Eleusis (Schocken Books, New
York, 1977) a reference is made to this collaboration.], are
of the opinion that the kykeon was mixed with an
hallucinogenic drug. [In The Road to Eleusis by R. Gordon
Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl A. P. Ruck (Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, New York, 1978) the possibility is discussed
that the kykeon could have acted through an LSD- like
preparation of ergot.] That would make understandable the
ecstatic- visionary experience of the Demeter/Persephone
myth, as a symbol of the cycle of life and death in both a
comprehensive and timeless reality.

When the Gothic king Alarich, coming from the north, invaded
Greece in 396 A.D. and destroyed the sanctuary of Eleusis,
it was not only the end of a religious center, but it also
signified the decisive downfall of the ancient world. With
the monks that accompanied Alarich, Christianity penetrated
into the country that must be regarded as the cradle of
European culture.

The cultural-historical meaning of the Eleusinian Mysteries,
their influence on European intellectual history, can
scarcely be overestimated. Here suffering humankind found a
cure for its rational, objective, cleft intellect, in a
mystical totality experience, that let it believe in
immortality, in an everlasting existence.

This belief had survived in early Christianity, although
with other symbols. It is found as a promise, even in
particular passages of the Gospels, most clearly in the
Gospel according to John, as in Chapter 14: 120. Jesus
speaks to his disciples, as he takes leave of them:

    And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you
    another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever;

    Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive,
    because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye
    know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.

    I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.
    Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but
    ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also.

    At that day ye shalt know that I am in my Father, and ye
    in me, and I in you.

This promise constitutes the heart of my Christian beliefs
and my call to natural-scientific research: we will attain
to knowledge of the universe through the spirit of truth,
and thereby to understanding of our being one with the
deepest, most comprehensive reality, God.

Ecclesiastical Christianity, determined by the duality of
creator and creation, has, however, with its
nature-alienated religiosity largely obliterated the
Eleusinian-Dionysian legacy of antiquity. In the Christian
sphere of belief, only special blessed men have attested to
a timeless, comforting reality, experienced in a spontaneous
vision, an experience to which in antiquity the elite of
innumerable generations had access through the initiation at
Eleusis. The unio mystica of Catholic saints and the visions
that the representatives of Christian mysticism-Jakob
Boehme, Meister Eckhart, Angelus Silesius, Thomas Traherne,
William Blake, and others describe in their writings, are
obviously essentially related to the enlightenment that the
initiates to the Eleusinian Mysteries experienced.

The fundamental importance of a mystical experience, for the
recovery of people in Western industrial societies who are
sickened by a one-sided, rational, materialistic world view,
is today given primary emphasis, not only by adherents to
Eastern religious movements like Zen Buddhism, but also by
leading representatives of academic psychiatry. Of the
appropriate literature, we will here refer only to the books
of Balthasar Staehelin, the Basel psychiatrist working in
Zurich. [Haben und Sein (1969), Die Welt als Du (1970),
Urvertrauen und zweite Wirklichkeit (1973), and Der finale
Mensch (1976); all published by Theologischer Verlag,
Zurich.] They make reference to numerous other authors who
deal with the same problem. Today a type of "metamedicine,"
"metapsychology," and "metapsychiatry" is beginning to call
upon the metaphysical element in people, which manifests
itself as an experience of a deeper, duality-surmounting
reality, and to make this element a basic healing principle
in therapeutic practice.

In addition, it is most significant that not only medicine
but also wider circles of our society consider the
overcoming of the dualistic, cleft world view to be a
prerequisite and basis for the recovery and spiritual
renewal of occidental civilization and culture. This renewal
could lead to the renunciation of the materialistic
philosophy of life and the development of a new reality
consciousness.

As a path to the perception of a deeper, comprehensive
reality, in which the experiencing individual is also
sheltered, meditation, in its different forms, occupies a
prominent place today. The essential difference between
meditation and prayer in the usual sense, which is based
upon the duality of creator/creation, is that meditation
aspires to the abolishment of the I- you-barrier by a fusing
of object and subject, of sender and receiver, of objective
reality and self.

Objective reality, the world view produced by the spirit of
scientific inquiry, is the myth of our time. It has replaced
the ecclesiastical- Christian and mythical-Apollonian world
view.

But this ever broadening factual knowledge, which
constitutes objective reality, need not be a desecration. On
the contrary, if it only advances deep enough, it inevitably
leads to the inexplicable, primal ground of the universe:
the wonder, the mystery of the divine-in the microcosm of
the atom, in the macrocosm of the spiral nebula; in the
seeds of plants, in the body and soul of people.

Meditation begins at the limits of objective reality, at the
farthest point yet reached by rational knowledge and
perception. Meditation thus does not mean rejection of
objective reality; on the contrary, it consists of a
penetration to deeper dimensions of reality. It is not
escape into an imaginary dream world; rather it seeks after
the comprehensive truth of objective reality, by
simultaneous, stereoscopic contemplation of its surfaces and
depths.

It could become of fundamental importance, and be not merely
a transient fashion of the present, if more and more people
today would make a daily habit of devoting an hour, or at
least a few minutes, to meditation. As a result of the
meditative penetration and broadening of the natural-
scientific world view, a new, deepened reality consciousness
would have to evolve, which would increasingly become the
property of all humankind. This could become the basis of a
new religiosity, which would not be based on belief in the
dogmas of various religions, but rather on perception
through the "spirit of truth." What is meant here is a
perception, a reading and understanding of the text at first
hand, "out of the book that God's finger has written"
(Paracelsus), out of the creation.

The transformation of the objective world view into a
deepened and thereby religious reality consciousness can be
accomplished gradually, by continuing practice of
meditation. It can also come about, however, as a sudden
enlightenment; a visionary experience. It is then
particularly profound, blessed, and meaningful. Such a
mystical experience may nevertheless "not be induced even by
decade-long meditation," as Balthasar Staehelin writes.
Also, it does not happen to everyone, although the capacity
for mystical experience belongs to the essence of human
spirituality.

Nevertheless, at Eleusis, the mystical vision, the healing,
comforting experience, could be arranged in the prescribed
place at the appointed time, for all of the multitudes who
were initiated into the holy Mysteries. This could be
accounted for by the fact that an hallucinogenic drug came
into use; this, as already mentioned, is something that
religious scholars believe.

The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the
boundaries between the experiencing self and the outer world
in an ecstatic, emotional experience, makes it possible with
their help, and after suitable internal and external
preparation, as it was accomplished in a perfect way at
Eleusis, to evoke a mystical experience according to plan,
so to speak.

Meditation is a preparation for the same goal that was
aspired to and was attained in the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Accordingly it seems feasible that in the future, with the
help of LSD, the mystical vision, crowning meditation, could
be made accessible to an increasing number of practitioners
of meditation

I see the true importance of LSD in the possibitity of
providing material aid to meditation aimed at the mystical
experience of a deeper, comprehensive reality. Such a use
accords entirely with the essence and working character of
LSD as a sacred drug.