Beyond LSD, Within the Experiment

“The program I was involved was to study the active principles of medicinal plants and one of these medical plants we were studying was Ergot…At the end of the synthesis I was in a very strange psychic situation, a kind of dream world appeared, a kind, a feeling of oneness with the world, a very strange experience which reminded me to some experience I had in childhood.

Sometimes when I was in nature, with the forest and the wood, I had some kind of, I would say, mystical experiences. The feeling of oneness, to be one with nature, the feeling to see now the true aspects of nature, the beauty, and which filled me with happiness.”

- Albert Hoffman

“Could it be that this present, dream-like state was in some way connected with the crystals of LSD that Albert Hoffman was purifying that afternoon. He certainly had not eaten any but his fingers might possibly have brushed against a few traces of the compound. If so, then LSD was a remarkably potent drug. He decided to experiment on himself.”

- Narrator in "The Beyond Within"

Now, listen to Alan Watts on Drugs

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Dim metallic bursts; silvery orbs bedeck the subdued leather warm of the café tables. Northern Greece, on the western outskirts of Ioannina, the Italian heel clicks in the vibrant waters at the center of the unruly European Earth. The Euro’s devalued to the near-extinction of another ancient peoples, drowned in the eye of the storm, at the height of neo-classical disorder. Ordering a coffee is now rife with the political amalgamation of a dungeon’s dearth. No one’s blinded, caffeinated, nicotine blink minds stutter over the oblivious stupefaction of leadership burned at the seam by the public hulk, dashing their traditional dress of human mockery for a breath of mutual truth. Together with family, we wade in the swampy lighting, in darkness as thick as the Grecian café mark on the silent, burning tongue of lingering potency.

Through a multicolored crest of followers, the warehouse screams with atmospheric delight, a musical haunt for the sacred lives whose energy dreams in smokeless fire. My Love is playing in a professional contemporary Mediterranean music ensemble. A chic audience reclines leisurely over metal chairs. Inside a graffiti’d dome of unfinished concrete, though a stylish rendition of the European artist-squatter paradise. I’m especially proud to see my Love creating wildly refreshing original music within the high standard of such daring quality. A kit drummer with a rig fitting over ten cymbals begins leading a rhythmic introduction of spatial ingenuity, moving the plush sonic stream of consciousness movie of artful belief into the realm of magic. Standing beside the audience, near the well-lit stage, small spotlights injecting funnels of visible dust in the wakeful air, I see her. Gowned in her usual flowing dress, a big explosion of black hair and her glowing skin. I am a martyr of unmade art.

______

Europe

"To dream of travelling in Europe, foretells that you will soon go on a long journey, which will avail you in the knowledge you gain of the manners and customs of foreign people. You will also be enabled to forward your financial standing." (iDream)

______

now transforming
through spiritual marriage
to my near love
whose life casts a benevolent spotlight on my being,
and path
with such wind,
a gusting splash,
refreshing the outer core
that foretells the dead body laughing at me

- excerpt from "society, charities and addictions"