lectures and essays by alan watts (volume 2)

8/10/2019 Lectures and Essays by Alan Watts (Volume 2)

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Table of contents:

Psychedelics and Religious Experience5

The New Alchemy19

The Cross of Cards33

Taoism41

From Time to Eternity47

A Psychedelic Experience - Fact or Fantasy?57

Alan Watts Bibliography68


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Psychedelics and Religious Experience

The experiences resulting from the use of psychedelic drugs are often described in religiousterms. They are therefore of interest to those like myself who, in the tradition of WilliamJames, 1 are concerned with the psychology of religion. For more than thirty years I have beenstudying the causes, the consequences, and the conditions of those peculiar states ofconsciousness in which the individual discovers himself to be one continuous process with God,with the Universe, with the Ground of Being, or whatever name he may use by culturalconditioning or personal preference for the ultimate and eternal reality. We have nosatisfactory and definitive name for experiences of this kind. The terms "religious experience,"

"mystical experience," and "cosmic consciousness" are all too vague and comprehensive todenote that specific mode of consciousness which, to those who have known it, is as real andoverwhelming as falling in love. This article describes such states of consciousness induced bypsychedelic drugs, although they are virtually indistinguishable from genuine mysticalexperience. The article then discusses objections to the use of psychedelic drugs that arisemainly from the opposition between mystical values and the traditional religious and secularvalues of Western society.

The Psychedelic Experience

The idea of mystical experiences resulting from drug use is not readily accepted in Westernsocieties. Western culture has, historically, a particular fascination with the value and virtue ofman as an individual, self-determining, responsible ego, controlling himself and his world by thepower of conscious effort and will. Nothing, then, could be more repugnant to this culturaltradition than the notion of spiritual or psychological growth through the use of drugs. A"drugged" person is by definition dimmed in consciousness, fogged in judgment, and deprived

of will. But not all psychotropic (consciousness-changing) chemicals are narcotic and soporific,as are alcohol, opiates, and barbiturates. The effects of what are now called psychedelic (mind-manifesting) chemicals differ from those of alcohol as laughter differs from rage, or delightfrom depression. There is really no analogy between being "high" on LSD and "drunk" onbourbon. True, no one in either state should drive a car, but neither should one drive whilereading a book, playing a violin, or making love. Certain creative activities and states of mind


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demand a concentration and devotion that are simply incompatible with piloting a death-dealing engine along a highway.

I myself have experimented with five of the principal psychedelics: LSD-25, mescaline,psilocybin, dimethyl-tryptamine (DMT), and cannabis. I have done so, as William James triednitrous oxide, to see if they could help me in identifying what might be called the "essential" or"active" ingredients of the mystical experience. For almost all the classical literature onmysticism is vague, not only in describing the experience, but also in showing rationalconnections between the experience itself and the various traditional methods recommendedto induce it: fasting, concentration, breathing exercises, prayers, incantations, and dances. Atraditional master of Zen or Yoga, when asked why such-and-such practices lead or predisposeone to the mystical experience, always responds, "This is the way my teacher gave it to me. This

is the way I found out. If you're seriously interested, try it for yourself." This answer hardlysatisfies an impertinent, scientifically minded, and intellectually curious Westerner. It remindshim of archaic medical prescriptions compounding five salamanders, powdered gallows rope,three boiled bats, a scruple of phosphorus, three pinches of henbane, and a dollop of dragondung dropped when the moon was in Pisces. Maybe it worked, but what was the essentialingredient?

It struck me, therefore, that if any of the psychedelic chemicals would in fact predispose my

consciousness to the mystical experience, I could use them as instruments for studying anddescribing that experience as one uses a microscope for bacteriology, even though themicroscope is an "artificial" and "unnatural" contrivance which might be said to "distort" thevision of the naked eye. However, when I was first invited to test the mystical qualities of LSD-25 by Dr. Keith Ditman of the Neuropsychiatric Clinic at UCLA Medical School, I was unwilling tobelieve that any mere chemical could induce a genuine mystical experience. At most, it mightbring about a state of spiritual insight analogous to swimming with water wings. Indeed, myfirst experiment with LSD-25 was not mystical. It was an intensely interesting aesthetic andintellectual experience that challenged my powers of analysis and careful description to the

utmost.

Some months later, in 1959, I tried LSD-25 again with Drs. Sterling Bunnell and Michael Agron,who were then associated with the Langley-Porter Clinic, in San Francisco. In the course of twoexperiments I was amazed and somewhat embarrassed to find myself going through states ofconsciousness that corresponded precisely with every description of major mystical


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experiences that I had ever read. 2 Furthermore, they exceeded both in depth and in a peculiarquality of unexpectedness the three "natural and spontaneous" experiences of this kind thathad happened to me in previous years.

Through subsequent experimentation with LSD-25 and the other chemicals named above (with

the exception of DMT, which I find amusing but relatively uninteresting), I found I could movewith ease into the state of "cosmic consciousness," and in due course became less and lessdependent on the chemicals themselves for "tuning in" to this particular wave length ofexperience. Of the five psychedelics tried, I found that LSD-25 and cannabis suited my purposesbest. Of these two, the lattercannabiswhich I had to use abroad in countries where it is notoutlawed, proved to be the better. It does not induce bizarre alterations of sensory perception,and medical studies indicate that it may not, save in great excess, have the dangerous sideeffects of LSD.

For the purposes of this study, in describing my experiences with psychedelic drugs I avoid theoccasional and incidental bizarre alterations of sense perception that psychedelic chemicalsmay induce. I am concerned, rather, with the fundamental alterations of the normal, sociallyinduced consciousness of one's own existence and relation to the external world. I am trying todelineate the basic principles of psychedelic awareness. But I must add that I can speak only formyself. The quality of these experiences depends considerably upon one's prior orientation andattitude to life, although the now voluminous descriptive literature of these experiencesaccords quite remarkably with my own.

Almost invariably, my experiments with psychedelics have had four dominant characteristics. Ishall try to explain them-in the expectation that the reader will say, at least of the second andthird, "Why, that's obvious! No one needs a drug to see that." Quite so, but every insight hasdegrees of intensity. There can be obvious-1 and obvious-2, and the latter comes on withshattering clarity, manifesting its implications in every sphere and dimension of our existence.

The first characteristic is a slowing down of time , a concentration in the present. One'snormally compulsive concern for the future decreases, and one becomes aware of theenormous importance and interest of what is happening at the moment. Other people, goingabout their business on the streets, seem to be slightly crazy, failing to realize that the wholepoint of life is to be fully aware of it as it happens. One therefore relaxes, almost luxuriously,


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into studying the colors in a glass of water, or in listening to the now highly articulate vibrationof every note played on an oboe or sung by a voice.

From the pragmatic standpoint of our culture, such an attitude is very bad for business. It mightlead to improvidence, lack of foresight, diminished sales of insurance policies, and abandonedsavings accounts. Yet this is just the corrective that our culture needs. No one is more fatuouslyimpractical than the "successful" executive who spends his whole life absorbed in frantic paperwork with the objective of retiring in comfort at sixty-five, when it will all be too late. Onlythose who have cultivated the art of living completely in the present have any use for makingplans for the future, for when the plans mature they will be able to enjoy the results."Tomorrow never comes." I have never yet heard a preacher urging his congregation to practicethat section of the Sermon on the Mount which begins, "Be not anxious for the morrow...." The

truth is that people who live for the future are, as we say of the insane, "not quite all there"or here: by over-eagerness they are perpetually missing the point. Foresight is bought at theprice of anxiety, and when overused it destroys all its own advantages.

The second characteristic I will call awareness of polarity . This is the vivid realization thatstates, things, and events that we ordinarily call opposite are interdependent, like back andfront, or the poles of a magnet. By polar awareness one sees that things which are explicitlydifferent are implicitly one: self and other, subject and object, left and right, male and female-

and then, a little more surprisingly, solid and space, figure and background, pulse and interval,saints and sinners, police and criminals, in-groups and out-groups. Each is definable only interms of the other, and they go together transactionally, like buying and selling, for there is nosale without a purchase, and no purchase without a sale. As this awareness becomesincreasingly intense, you feel that you yourself are polarized with the external universe in sucha way that you imply each other. Your push is its pull, and its push is your pullas when youmove the steering wheel of a car. Are you pushing it or pulling it?

At first, this is a very odd sensation, not unlike hearing your own voice played back to you on anelectronic system immediately after you have spoken. You become confused, and wait for it togo on! Similarly, you feel that you are something being done by the universe, yet that theuniverse is equally something being done by you-which is true, at least in the neurologicalsense that the peculiar structure of our brains translates the sun into light, and air vibrationsinto sound. Our normal sensation of relationship to the outside world is that sometimes I pushit, and sometimes it pushes me. But if the two are actually one, where does action begin and


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responsibility rest? If the universe is doing me, how can I be sure that, two seconds hence, I willstill remember the English language? If I am doing it, how can I be sure that, two secondshence, my brain will know how to turn the sun into light? From such unfamiliar sensations asthese, the psychedelic experience can generate confusion, paranoia, and terror-even though

the individual is feeling his relationship to the world exactly as it would be described by abiologist, ecologist, or physicist, for he is feeling himself as the unified field of organism andenvironment.

The third characteristic, arising from the second, is awareness of relativity . I see that I am alink in an infinite hierarchy of processes and beings, ranging from molecules through bacteriaand insects to human beings, and, maybe, to angels and gods-a hierarchy in which every level isin effect the same situation. For example, the poor man worries about money while the rich

man worries about his health: the worry is the same, but the difference is in its substance ordimension. I realize that fruit flies must think of themselves as people, because, like ourselves,they find themselves in the middle of their own world-with immeasurably greater things aboveand smaller things below. To us, they all look alike and seem to have no personality-as do theChinese when we have not lived among them. Yet fruit flies must see just as many subtledistinctions among themselves as we among ourselves.

From this it is but a short step to the realization that all forms of life and being are simply

variations on a single theme: we are all in fact one being doing the same thing in as manydifferent ways as possible. As the French proverb goes, plus ca change, plus c'est la memechose (the more it varies, the more it is one). I see, further, that feeling threatened by theinevitability of death is really the same experience as feeling alive, and that as all beings arefeeling this everywhere, they are all just as much "I" as myself. Yet the "I" feeling, to be felt atall, must always be a sensation relative to the "other"-to something beyond its control andexperience. To be at all, it must begin and end. But the intellectual jump that mystical andpsychedelic experiences make here is in enabling you to see that all these myriad I-centers areyourselfnot, indeed, your personal and superficially conscious ego, but what Hindus call the

paramatman, the Self of all selves.3

As the retina enables us to see countless pulses of energy asa single light, so the mystical experience shows us innumerable individuals as a single Self.

The fourth characteristic is awareness of eternal energy , often in the form of intense whitelight, which seems to be both the current in your nerves and that mysterious e which equalsmc2. This may sound like megalomania or delusion of grandeur-but one sees quite clearly that


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all existence is a single energy, and that this energy is one's own being. Of course there is deathas well as life, because energy is a pulsation, and just as waves must have both crests andtroughs, the experience of existing must go on and off. Basically, therefore, there is simplynothing to worry about, because you yourself are the eternal energy of the universe playing

hide-and-seek (off-and-on) with itself. At root, you are the Godhead, for God is all that there is.Quoting Isaiah just a little out of context: "I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the lightand create the darkness: I make peace, and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things." 4 This isthe sense of the fundamental tenet of Hinduism, Tat tram asi"THAT (i.e., "that subtle Being ofwhich this whole universe is composed") art thou." 5 A classical case of this experience, from theWest, is in Tennyson's Memoirs:

A kind of waking trance I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all

alone. This has generally come upon me thro' repeating my own name two or three times tomyself silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality,the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not aconfused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, the weirdest of theweirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of

personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction but the only true life. 6

Obviously, these characteristics of the psychedelic experience, as I have known it, are aspects of

a single state of consciousnessfor I have been describing the same thing from differentangles. The descriptions attempt to convey the reality of the experience, but in doing so theyalso suggest some of the inconsistencies between such experience and the current values of society.

Opposition to Psychedelic Drugs

Resistance to allowing use of psychedelic drugs originates in both religious and secular values.The difficulty in describing psychedelic experiences in traditional religious terms suggests oneground of opposition. The Westerner must borrow such words as samadhi or moksha from theHindus, or satori or kensho from the Japanese, to describe the experience of oneness with theuniverse. We have no appropriate word because our own Jewish and Christian theologies willnot accept the idea that man's inmost self can be identical with the Godhead, even though


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Christians may insist that this was true in the unique instance of Jesus Christ. Jews andChristians think of God in political and monarchical terms, as the supreme governor of theuniverse, the ultimate boss. Obviously, it is both socially unacceptable and logicallypreposterous for a particular individual to claim that he, in person, is the omnipotent and

omniscient ruler of the world-to be accorded suitable recognition and honor.

Such an imperial and kingly concept of the ultimate reality, however, is neither necessary noruniversal. The Hindus and the Chinese have no difficulty in conceiving of an identity of the selfand the Godhead. For most Asians, other than Muslims, the Godhead moves and manifests theworld in much the same way that a centipede manipulates a hundred legs-spontaneously,without deliberation or calculation. In other words, they conceive the universe by analogy withan organism as distinct from a mechanism. They do not see it as an artifact or construct under

the conscious direction of some supreme technician, engineer, or architect.

If, however, in the context of Christian or Jewish tradition, an individual declares himself to beone with God, he must be dubbed blasphemous (subversive) or insane. Such a mysticalexperience is a clear threat to traditional religious concepts. The Judaeo-Christian tradition hasa monarchical image of God, and monarchs, who rule by force, fear nothing more thaninsubordination. The Church has therefore always been highly suspicious of mystics, becausethey seem to be insubordinate and to claim equality or, worse, identity with God. For this

reason, John Scotus Erigena and Meister Eckhart were condemned as heretics. This was alsowhy the Quakers faced opposition for their doctrine of the Inward Light, and for their refusal toremove hats in church and in court. A few occasional mystics may be all right so long as theywatch their language, like St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, who maintained, shall wesay, a metaphysical distance of respect between themselves and their heavenly King. Nothing,however, could be more alarming to the ecclesiastical hierarchy than a popular outbreak ofmysticism, for this might well amount to setting up a democracy in the kingdom of heaven-andsuch alarm would be shared equally by Catholics, Jews, and fundamentalist Protestants.

The monarchical image of God, with its implicit distaste for religious insubordination, has amore pervasive impact than many Christians might admit. The thrones of kings have wallsimmediately behind them, and all who present themselves at court must prostrate themselvesor kneel, because this is an awkward position from which to make a sudden attack. It hasperhaps never occurred to Christians that when they design a church on the model of a royal


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court (basilica) and prescribe church ritual, they are implying that God, like a human monarch,is afraid. This is also implied by flattery in prayers:

O Lord our heavenly Father, high and mighty, King of kings, Lord of lords, the only Ruler of princes, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth: most heartily we beseechthee with thy favor to behold.... 7

The Western man who claims consciousness of oneness with God or the universe thus clasheswith his society's concept of religion. In most Asian cultures, however, such a man will becongratulated as having penetrated the true secret of life. He has arrived, by chance or by somesuch discipline as Yoga or Zen meditation, at a state of consciousness in which he experiences

directly and vividly what our own scientists know to be true in theory. For the ecologist, thebiologist, and the physicist know (but seldom feel) that every organism constitutes a single fieldof behavior, or process, with its environment. There is no way of separating what any givenorganism is doing from what its environment is doing, for which reason ecologists speak not oforganisms in environments but of organism-environments. Thus the words "I" and "self" shouldproperly mean what the whole universe is doing at this particular "here-and-now" called JohnDoe.

The kingly concept of God makes identity of self and God, or self and universe, inconceivable inWestern religious terms. The difference between Eastern and Western concepts of man and hisuniverse, however, extends beyond strictly religious concepts. The Western scientist mayrationally perceive the idea of organism-environment, but he does not ordinarily feel this to betrue. By cultural and social conditioning, he has been hypnotized into experiencing himself asan ego-as an isolated center of consciousness and will inside a bag of skin, confronting anexternal and alien world. We say, "I came into this world." But we did nothing of the kind. Wecame out of it in just the same way that fruit comes out of trees. Our galaxy, our cosmos,"peoples" in the same way that an apple tree "apples."

Such a vision of the universe clashes with the idea of a monarchical God, with the concept ofthe separate ego, and even with the secular, atheist/agnostic mentality, which derives itscommon sense from the mythology of nineteenth-century scientist. According to this view, theuniverse is a mindless mechanism and man a sort of accidental microorganism infesting a


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minute globular rock that revolves about an unimportant star on the outer fringe of one of theminor galaxies. This "put-down" theory of man is extremely common among such quasiscientists as sociologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, most of whom are still thinking of theworld in terms of Newtonian mechanics, and have never really caught up with the ideas of

Einstein and Bohr, Oppenheimer and Schrodinger. Thus to the ordinary institutional-typepsychiatrist, any patient who gives the least hint of mystical or religious experience isautomatically diagnosed as deranged. From the standpoint of the mechanistic religion, he is aheretic and is given electroshock therapy as an up-to-date form of thumbscrew and rack. And,incidentally, it is just this kind of quasi scientist who, as consultant to government and law-enforcement agencies, dictates official policies on the use of psychedelic chemicals.

Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap. Lack ofawareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangeroushallucination. For in a civilization equipped with immense technological power, the sense ofalienation between man and nature leads to the use of technology in a hostile spiritto the"conquest" of nature instead of intelligent co-operation with nature. The result is that we areeroding and destroying our environment, spreading Los Angelization instead of civilization. Thisis the major threat overhanging Western, technological culture, and no amount of reasoning ordoom-preaching seems to help. We simply do not respond to the prophetic and moralizingtechniques of conversion upon which Jews and Christians have always relied. But people have

an obscure sense of what is good for them-call it "unconscious self-healing," "survival instinct,""positive growth potential," or what you will. Among the educated young there is therefore astartling and unprecedented interest in the transformation of human consciousness. All overthe Western world publishers are selling millions of books dealing with Yoga, Vedanta, ZenBuddhism, and the chemical mysticism of psychedelic drugs, and I have come to believe thatthe whole "hip" subculture, however misguided in some of its manifestations, is the earnestand responsible effort of young people to correct the self-destroying course of industrialcivilization.

The content of the mystical experience is thus inconsistent with both the religious and secularconcepts of traditional Western thought. Moreover, mystical experiences often result inattitudes that threaten the authority not only of established churches, but also of secularsociety. Unafraid of death and deficient in worldly ambition, those who have undergonemystical experiences are impervious to threats and promises. Moreover, their sense of therelativity of good and evil arouses the suspicion that they lack both conscience and respect for


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law. Use of psychedelics in the United States by a literate bourgeoisie means that an importantsegment of the population is indifferent to society's traditional rewards and sanctions.

In theory, the existence within our secular society of a group that does not accept conventionalvalues is consistent with our political vision. But one of the great problems of the United States,legally and politically, is that we have never quite had the courage of our convictions. TheRepublic is founded on the marvelously sane principle that a human community can exist andprosper only on a basis of mutual trust. Metaphysically, the American Revolution was arejection of the dogma of Original Sin, which is the notion that because you cannot trustyourself or other people, there must be some Superior Authority to keep us all in order. Thedogma was rejected because, if it is true that we cannot trust ourselves and others, it followsthat we cannot trust the Superior Authority which we ourselves conceive and obey, and that

the very idea of our own untrustworthiness is unreliable!

Citizens of the United States believe, or are supposed to believe, that a republic is the best formof government. Yet vast confusion arises from trying to be republican in politics and monarchistin religion. How can a republic be the best form of government if the universe, heaven, and hellare a monarchy? 8 Thus, despite the theory of government by consent, based upon mutual trust,the peoples of the United States retain, from the authoritarian backgrounds of their religions ornational origins, an utterly naive faith in law as some sort of supernatural and paternalistic

power. "There ought to be a law against it!" Our law-enforcement officers are thereforeconfused, hindered, and bewilderednot to mention corruptedby being asked to enforcesumptuary laws, often of ecclesiastical origin, that vast numbers of people have no intention ofobeying and that, in any case, are immensely difficult or simply impossible to enforceforexample, the barring of anything so undetectable as LSD-25 from international and interstatecommerce.

Finally, there are two specific objections to use of psychedelic drugs. First, use of these drugs

may be dangerous . However, every worth-while exploration is dangerousclimbingmountains, testing aircraft, rocketing into outer space, skin diving, or collecting botanicalspecimens in jungles. But if you value knowledge and the actual delight of exploration morethan mere duration of uneventful life, you are willing to take the risks. It is not really healthy formonks to practice fasting, and it was hardly hygienic for Jesus to get himself crucified, but theseare risks taken in the course of spiritual adventures. Today the adventurous young are takingrisks in exploring the psyche, testing their mettle at the task just as, in times past, they have


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tested itmore violentlyin hunting, dueling, hot-rod racing, and playing football. What theyneed is not prohibitions and policemen, but the most intelligent encouragement and advicethat can be found.

Second, drug use may be criticized as an escape from reality . However, this criticism assumesunjustly that the mystical experiences themselves are escapist or unreal. LSD, in particular, is byno means a soft and cushy escape from reality. It can very easily be an experience in which youhave to test your soul against all the devils in hell. For me, it has been at times an experience inwhich I was at once completely lost in the corridors of the mind and yet relating that verylostness to the exact order of logic and language, simultaneously very mad and very sane. Butbeyond these occasional lost and insane episodes, there are the experiences of the world as asystem of total harmony and glory, and the discipline of relating these to the order of logic and

language must somehow explain how what William Blake called that "energy which is eternaldelight" can consist with the misery and suffering of everyday life. 9

The undoubted mystical and religious intent of most users of the psychedelics, even if some ofthese substances should be proved injurious to physical health, requires that their free andresponsible use be exempt from legal restraint in any republic that maintains a constitutionalseparation of church and state. 10 To the extent that mystical experience conforms with thetradition of genuine religious involvement, and to the extent that psychedelics induce that

experience, users are entitled to some constitutional protection. Also, to the extent thatresearch in the psychology of religion can utilize such drugs, students of the human mind mustbe free to use them. Under present laws, I, as an experienced student of the psychology ofreligion, can no longer pursue research in the field. This is a barbarous restriction of spiritualand intellectual freedom, suggesting that the legal system of the United States is, after all, intacit alliance with the monarchical theory of the universe, and will, therefore, prohibit andpersecute religious ideas and practices based on an organic and unitary vision of the universe. 11


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Footnotes

1. See W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902).

2. An excellent anthology of such experiences is R. Johnson Watcher on the Hills (1959).

3. Thus Hinduism regards the universe not as an artifact, but as an immense drama in which the One Actor

(the paramatman or brakman) plays all the parts, which are his (or "its") masks or personae. The sensation of

being only this one particular self, John Doe, is due to the Actor's total absorption in playing this and every other

part. For fuller exposition, see S. Radhakrishnan, The Hindu View of Life(1927); H. Zimmer, Philosophies of

India (1951), pp. 355-463. A popular version is in A. Watts, The BookOn the Taboo Against Knowing Who You

Are (1966).

4. Isaiah 45: 6, 7.

5. Chandogya Upanishad 6.15.3.

6. Alfred Lord Tennyson, A Memoir by His Son (1898), 320.

7. A Prayer for the King's Majesty, Order for Morning Prayer, Book of Common Prayer (Church of England, 1904).

8. Thus, until quite recently, belief in a Supreme Being was a legal test of valid conscientious objection to military

service. The implication was that the individual objector found himself bound to obey a higher echelon of

command than the President and Congress. The analogy is military and monarchical, and therefore objectors

who, as Buddhists or naturalists, held an organic theory of the universe often had difficulty in obtaining

recognition.

9. This is discussed at length in A. Watts, The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of

Consciousness (1962).

10. "Responsible" in the sense that such substances be taken by or administered to consenting adults only. The user

of cannabis, in particular, is apt to have peculiar difficulties in establishing his "undoubted mystical and religiousintent" in court. Having committed so loathsome and serious a felony, his chances of clemency are better if he

assumes a repentant demeanor, which is quite inconsistent with the sincere belief that his use of cannabis was

religious. On the other hand, if he insists unrepentantly that he looks upon such use as a religious sacrament,

many judges will declare that they "dislike his attitude," finding it truculent and lacking in appreciation of the

gravity of the crime, and the sentence will be that much harsher. The accused is therefore put in a "double-bind"

situation, in which he is "damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't." Furthermore, religious integrityas in

conscientious objectionis generally tested and established by membership in some church or religious

organization with a substantial following. But the felonious status of cannabis is such that grave suspicion would

be cast upon all individuals forming such an organization, and the test cannot therefore be fulfilled. It is

generally forgotten that our guarantees of religious freedom were designed to protect precisely those who were

not members of established denominations, but rather such (then) screwball and subversive individuals as

Quakers, Shakers, Levellers, and Anabaptists. There is little question that those who use cannabis or other

psychedelics with religious intent are now members of a persecuted religion which appears to the rest of society

as a grave menace to "mental health," as distinct from the old-fashioned "immortal soul." But it's the same old

story.

11. Amerindians belonging to the Native American Church who employ the psychedelic peyote cactus in their rituals,are firmly opposed to any government control of this plant, even if they should be guaranteed the right to its


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use. They feel that peyote is a natural gift of God to mankind, and especially to natives of the land where it

grows, and that no government has a right to interfere with its use The same argument might be made on

behalf of cannabis, or the mushroom Psilocybe mexicana Heim. All these things are natural plants, not processed

or synthesized drugs, and by what authority can individuals be prevented from eating theme There is no law

against eating or growing the mushroom Amanita pantherina, even though it is fatally poisonous and only

experts can distinguish it from a common edible mushroom. This case can be made even from the standpoint ofbelievers in the monarchical universe of Judaism and Christianity, for it is a basic principle of both religions,

derived from Genesis, that all natural substances created by God are inherently good, and that evil can arise

only in their misuse. Thus laws against mere possession, or even cultivation, of these plants are in basic conflict

with biblical principles. Criminal conviction of those who employ these plants should be based on proven misuse.

"And God said 'Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and

every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed- to you it shall be for meat.... And God saw every thing

that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Genesis 1:29, 31.


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The New Alchemy

Besides the philosopher's stone that would turn base metal into gold, one of the great quests ofalchemy in both Europe and Asia was the elixir of immortality. In gullible enthusiasm for thisquest, more than one Chinese emperor died of the fabulous concoctions of powdered jade, tea,ginseng, and precious metals prepared by Taoist priests. But just as the work of transforminglead into gold was in many cases a chemical symbolism for a spiritual transformation of manhimself, so the immortality to be conferred by the elixir was not always the literally everlastinglife but rather the transportation of consciousness into a state beyond time. Modern physicistshave solved the problem of changing lead into gold, though the process is somewhat moreexpensive than digging gold from the earth. But in the last few years modem chemists have

prepared one or two substances for which it may be claimed that in some cases they inducestates of mind remarkably similar to cosmic consciousness.

To many people such claims are deeply disturbing. For one thing, mystical experience seemsaltogether too easy when it simply comes out of a bottle, and is thus available to people whohave done nothing to deserve it, who have neither fasted nor prayed nor practiced yoga. Foranother, the claim seems to imply that-spiritual insight is after all only a matter of bodychemistry involving a total reduction of the spiritual to the material. These are seriousconsiderations, even though one may be convinced that in the long run the difficulty is found torest upon semantic confusion as to the definitions of "spiritual" and "material."

However, it should be pointed out that there is nothing new or disreputable in the idea thatspiritual insight Is an undeserved gift of divine grace, often conveyed through such material orsacramental means as the water of baptism and the bread and wine of the mass. The priestwho by virtue of his office transforms bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, exopere operato, by the simple repetition of the formula of the Last Supper, is in a situation notradically different from that of the scientist who, by repeating the right formula of anexperiment, may effect a transformation in the brain. The comparative worth of the twooperations must be judged by their effects. There were always those upon whom thesacraments of baptism and communion did not seem to "take," whose lives remainedeffectively unregenerate. Likewise, none of these consciousness-changing chemicals are literallymystical experience in a bottle. Many who receive them experience only ecstasies withoutinsight, or just an unpleasant confusion of sensation and imagination. States akin to mysticalexperience arise only in certain individuals and then often depend upon considerableconcentration and effort to use the change of consciousness in certain ways. It is importanthere, too, to stress the point that ecstasy is only Incidental to the authentic mystical


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experience, the essence of which might best be described as insight, as the word is now used inpsychiatry.

A chemical of this kind might perhaps be said to be an aid to perception in the same way asthe telescope, microscope, or spectroscope, save in this case that the instrument is not an

external object but an internal state of the nervous system. All such instruments are relativelyuseless without proper training and preparation not only in their handling, but also in theparticular field of investigation,

These considerations alone are already almost enough to show that the use of suchchemicals does not reduce spiritual insight to a mere matter of body chemistry. But it should beadded that even when we can describe certain events in terms of chemistry this does not meanthat such events are merely chemical. A chemical description of spiritual experience hassomewhat the same use and the same limits as the chemical description of a great painting. It issimple enough to make a chemical analysis of the paint, and for artists and connoisseurs alikethere is some point in doing so. It might also be possible to work out a chemical description ofall the processes that go on in the artist while he is painting. But it would be incrediblycomplicated, and in the meantime the same processes could be described and communicatedfar more effectively in some other language than the chemical. We should probably say that aprocess is chemical only when chemical language is the most effective means of describing it.Analogously, some of the chemicals known as psychedelics provide opportunities for mysticalinsight in much the same way that well-prepared paints and brushes provide opportunities forfine painting, or a beautifully constructed piano for great music. They make it easier, but theydo not accomplish the work all by themselves.

The two chemicals which are of most use in creating a change of consciousness conducive tospiritual experience are mescaline and lysergic acid diethylamide (known, for short, as LSD). Theformer is a synthetic formulation of the active ingredients of the peyote cactus, and the latter apurely synthetic chemical of the indole group which produces its effects even in such minuteamounts as twenty-five micrograms. The specific effects of these chemicals are hard to identifywith any clarity, and so far as is known at present they seem to operate upon the nervoussystem by reducing some of the inhibitory mechanisms which ordinarily have a screening effectupon our consciousness. Certain psychiatrists who seem overly anxious to hang on to thesocially approved sensation of realitymore or less the world as perceived on a bleak Mondaymorningclassify these chemicals as hallucinogens producing toxic effects of a schizoid orpsychotic character. I am afraid this is psychiatric gobbledygook: a sort of authoritative rumbleof disapproval. Neither substance is an addictive drug, like heroin or opium, and it has neverbeen demonstrated that they have harmful effects upon people who were not otherwiseseriously disturbed. It is begging the question to call the changes of consciousness which theyeduce hallucinations, for some of the unusual things felt and seen may be no more unreal than


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the unfamiliar forms perceived through a microscope. We do not know. It is also begging thequestion to call their effects toxic, which might mean poisonous, unless this word can also beused for the effects of vitamins or proteins. Such language is evaluative, not descriptive in anyscientific sense.

Somewhat more than two years ago (1958) I was asked by a psychiatric research group totake 100 micrograms of lysergic acid, to see whether it would reproduce anything resembling amystical experience. It did not do so, and so far as I know the reason was that I had not thenlearned how to direct my inquiries when under its influence. It seemed instead that my senseshad been given a kaleidoscopic character (and this is no more than a metaphor) which madethe whole world entrancingly complicated, as if I were involved in a multidimensionalarabesque. Colors became so vivid that flowers, leaves, and fabrics seemed to be illuminedfrom inside. The random patterns of blades of grass in a lawn appeared to be exquisitelyorganized without, however, any actual distortion of vision. Black ink or sumi paintings by

Chinese and Japanese artists appeared almost to be three dimensional photographs, and whatare ordinarily dismissed as irrelevant details of speech, behavior, appearance, and form seemedin some indefinable way to be highly significant. Listening to music with closed eyes, I beheldthe most fascinating patterns of dancing jewelry, mosaic, tracery, and abstract images. At onepoint everything appeared to be uproariously funny, especially the gestures and actions ofpeople going about their everyday business. Ordinary remarks seemed to reverberate withdouble and quadruple meanings, and the role-playing behavior of those around me not onlybecame unusually evident but also implied concealed attitudes contrary or complementary toits overt intention. In short, the screening or selective apparatus of our normal interpretative

evaluation of experience had been partially suspended, with the result that I was presumablyprojecting the sensation of meaning or significance upon just about everything. The wholeexperience was vastly entertaining and interesting, but as yet nothing like any mysticalexperience that I had had before.

It was not until a year later that I tried LSD again, this time at the request of another researchteam. Since then I have repeated the experiment five times, with dosages varying from 75 to100 micrograms. My impression has been that such experiments are profound and rewardingto the extent that I do my utmost to observe perceptual and evaluative changes and to describethem as clearly and completely as possible, usually with the help of a tape recorder. To give a

play-by-play description of each experiment might be clinically interesting, but what I amconcerned with here is a philosophical discussion of some of the high points and recurrentthemes of my experiences. Psychiatrists have not yet made up their minds as to whether LSD isuseful in therapy, but at present I am strongly inclined to feel that its major use may turn out tobe only secondarily as a therapeutic and primarily as an instrumental aid to the creative artist,thinker, or scientist. I should observe, in passing, that the human and natural environment in


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which these experiments are conducted is of great importance, and that its use in hospitalwards with groups of doctors firing off clinical questions at the subject is most undesirable. Thesupervising physician should take a human attitude, and drop all defensive dramatizations ofscientific objectivity and medical authority, conducting the experiment in surroundings of some

natural or artistic beauty.I have said that my general impression of the first experiment was that the "mechanism" by

which we screen our sense-data and select only some of them as significant had been partiallysuspended. Consequently, I felt that the particular feeling which we associate with "themeaningful" was projected indiscriminately upon everything, and then rationalized in ways thatmight strike an independent observer as ridiculousunless, perhaps, the subject wereunusually clever at rationalizing. However, the philosopher cannot pass up the point that ourselection of some sense-data as significant and others as insignificant is always with relation toparticular purposessurvival, the quest for certain pleasures, finding one's way to some

destination, or whatever it may be. But in every experiment with LSD one of the first effects Ihave noticed is a profound relaxation combined with an abandonment of purposes and goals,reminding me of the Taoist saying that "when purpose has been used to achievepurposelessness, the thing has been grasped." I have felt, in other words, endowed with all thetime in the world, free to look about me as if I were living in eternity without a single problemto be solved. It is just for this reason that the busy and purposeful actions of other people seemat this time to be so comic, for it becomes obvious that by setting themselves goals which arealways in the future, in the "tomorrow which never comes," they are missing entirely the pointof being alive.

When, therefore, our selection of sense-impressions is not organized with respect to anyparticular purpose, all the surrounding details of the world must appear to be equallymeaningful or equally meaningless. Logically, these are two ways of saying the same thing, butthe overwhelming feeling of my own LSD experiences is that all aspects of the world becomemeaningful rather than meaningless. This is not to say that they acquire meaning in the senseof signs, by virtue of pointing to something else, but that all things appear to be their ownpoint. Their simple existence, or better, their present formation, seems to be perfect, to be anend or fulfillment without any need for justification. Flowers do not bloom in order to produceseeds, nor are seeds germinated in order to bring forth flowers. Each stage of the process

seed, sprout, bud, flower, and fruit may be regarded as the goal. A chicken is one eggs way ofproducing others. In our normal experience something of the same kind takes place in musicand the dance, where the point of the action is each moment of its unfolding and not just thetemporal end of the performance.

Such a translation of everyday experience into something of the same nature as music hasbeen the beginning and the prevailing undertone of all my experiments. But LSD does not


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simply suspend the selective process by cutting it out. It would be more exact to say that itshows the relativity of our ordinary evaluation of sense-data by suggesting others. It permitsthe mind to organize its sensory impressions in new patterns. In my second experiment Inoticed, for example, that all repeated formsleaves on a stem, books on shelves, mullions in

windowsgave me the sensation of seeing double or even multiple, as if the second, third, andfourth leaves on the stem were reflections of the first, seen, as it were, in several thicknesses ofwindow glass. When I mentioned this, the attending physician held up his finger to see if itwould give me a double image. For a moment it seemed to do so, but all at once I saw that thesecond image had its basis in a wisp of cigar smoke passing close to his finger and upon whichmy consciousness had projected the highlights and outline of a second finger. As I thenconcentrated upon this sensation of doubling or repeating images, it seemed suddenly as if thewhole field of sight were a transparent liquid rippled in concentric circles as in dropping a stoneinto a pool. The normal images of things around me were not distorted by this pattern. Theyremained just as usual, but my attention directed itself to highlights, lines, and shadows uponthem that fitted the pattern, letting those that did not fall into relative insignificance. As soon,however, as I noticed this projection and became aware of details that did not fit the pattern, itseemed as if whole handfuls of pebbles had been thrown into-the optical space, rippling it withconcentric circles that overlapped in all directions, so that every visible point became anintersection of circles. The optical field seemed, in fact, to have a structured grain like aphotograph screened for reproduction, save that the organization of the grains was notrectilinear but circular. In this way every detail fitted the pattern and the field of vision becamepointillist, like a painting by Seurat.

This sensation raised a number of questions. Was my mind imperiously projecting its owngeometrical designs upon the world, thus "hallucinating" a structure in things which is notactually there? Or is what we call the "real" structure of things simply a learned projection orhallucination which we hold in common? Or was I somehow becoming aware of the actual grainof the rods and cones in my retina, for even a hallucination must have some actual basis in thenervous system? On another occasion I was looking closely at a handful of sand, and inbecoming aware that I could not get it into clear focus I became conscious of every detail andarticulation of the way in which my eyes were fuzzing the imageand this was certainlyperception of a grain or distortion in the eyes themselves.

The general impression of these optical sensations is that the eyes, without losing the normalarea of vision, have become microscopes, and that the texture of the visual field is infinitely richand complex. I do not know whether this is actual awareness of the multiplicity of nerve-endings in the retina, or, for that matter, in the fingers, for the same grainy feeling arose in thesense of touch. But the effect of feeling that this is or may be so is, as it were, to turn the sensesback upon themselves, and so to realize that seeing the external world is also seeing the eyes.


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In other words, I became vividly aware of the fact that what I call shapes, colors, and textures inthe outside world are also states of my nervous system, that is, of me. In knowing them I alsoknow my self. But the strange part of this apparent sensation of my own senses was that I didnot appear to be inspecting them from outside or from a distance, as if they were objects. I can

say only that the awareness of grain or structure in the senses seemed to be awareness ofawareness, of myself from inside myself. Because of this, it followed that the distance orseparation between myself and my senses, on the one hand, and the external world, on theother, seemed to disappear I was no longer a detached observer, a little man inside my ownhead, having sensations. I was the sensations, so much so that there was nothing left of me, theobserving ego, except the series of sensations which happenednot to me, but justhappenedmoment by moment, one after another.

To become the sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishingsense of freedom and release. For it implies that experience is not something in which one is

trapped or by which one is pushed around, or against which one must fight. The conventionalduality of subject and object, knower and known, feeler and feeling, is changed into a polarity:the knower and the known become the poles, terms, or phases of a single event whichhappens, not to me or from me, but of itself. The experiencer and the experience become asingle, ever-changing self-forming process, complete and fulfilled at every moment of itsunfolding, and of infinite complexity and subtlety. It is like, not watching, but being, a coilingarabesque of smoke patterns in the air, or of ink dropped in water, or of a dancing snake whichseems to move from every part of its body at once. This may be a "drug-induced hallucination,"but it corresponds exactly to what Dewey and Bentley have called the transactional relationship

of the organism to its environment. This is to say that all our actions and experiences arisemutually from the organism and from the environment at the same time. The eyes can see lightbecause of the sun, but the sun is light because of the eyes. Ordinarily, under the hypnosis ofsocial conditioning, we feel quite distinct from our physical surroundings, facing them ratherthan belonging in them. Yet in this way we ignore and screen out the physical fact of our totalinterdependence with the natural world. We are as embodied in it as our own cells andmolecules are embodied in us. Our neglect and repression of this interrelationship gives specialurgency to all the new sciences of ecology, studying the interplay of organisms with theirenvironments, and warning us against ignorant interference with the balances of nature.

The sensation that events are happening of themselves, and that nothing is making themhappen and that they are not happening to anything, has always been a major feature of myexperiences with LSD. It is possible that the chemical is simply giving me a vivid realization ofmy own philosophy, though there have been times when the experience has suggestedmodifications of my previousthinking. (1) But just as the sensation of subject-object polarity isconfirmed by the transactional psychology of Dewey and Bentley, so the sensation of events


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happening "of themselves" is just how one would expect to perceive a world consisting entirelyof process. Now the language of science is increasingly a language of processa description ofevents, relations, operations, and forms rather than of things and substances. The world sodescribed is a world of actions rather than agents, verbs rather than nouns, going against the

common-sense idea that an action is the behavior of some thing, some solid entity of "stuff."But the commonsense idea that action is always the function of an agent is so deeply rooted, sobound up with our sense of order and security, that seeing the world to be otherwise can beseriously disturbing. Without agents, actions do not seem to come from anywhere, to have anydependable origin, and at first sight this spontaneity can be alarming. In one experiment itseemed that whenever I tried to put my (metaphorical) foot upon some solid ground, theground collapsed into empty space. I could find no substantial basis from which to act: my willwas a whim, and my past, as a causal conditioning force, had simply vanished. There was onlythe present conformation of events, happening. For a while I felt lost in a void, frightened,baseless, insecure through and through Yet soon I became accustomed to the feeling, strangeas it was. There was simply a pattern of action, of process, and this was at one and the sametime the universe and myself with nothing outside it either to trust or mistrust. And thereseemed to be no meaning in the idea of its trusting or mistrusting itself, just as there is nopossibility of a finger's touching its own tip.

Upon reflection, there seems to be nothing unreasonable in seeing the world in this way. Theagent behind every action is itself action. If a mat can be called matting, a cat can be calledcatting. We do not actually need to ask who or what "cats," just as we do not need to ask whatis the basic stuff or substance out of which the world is formedfor there is no way of

describing this substance except in terms of form, of structure, order, and operation. The worldis not formed as if it were inert clay responding to the touch of a potter's hand; the world isform, or better, formation, for upon examination every substance turns out to be closely knitpattern. The fixed notion that every pattern or form must be made of some basic materialwhich is in itself formless is based on a superficial analogy between natural formation andmanufacture, as if the stars and rocks had been made out of something as a carpenter makestables out of wood. Thus what we call the agent behind the action is simply the prior orrelatively more constant state of the same action: when a man runs we have a "manning-running" over and above a simple "manning." Furthermore, it is only a somewhat clumsy

convenience to say that present events are moved or caused by past events, for we are actuallytalking about earlier and later stages of the same event. We can establish regularities of rhythmand pattern in the course of an event, and so predict its future configurations, but its paststates do not "push" its present and future states as if they were a row of dominoes stood onend so that knocking over the first collapses all the others in series. The fallen dominoes liewhere they fall, but past events vanish into the present, which is just another way of saying thatthe world is a self-moving pattern which, when its successive states are remembered, can be


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I have not yet been able to use LSD in circumstances of great physical or moral pain, andtherefore my explorations of the problem of evil under its influence may appear to be shallow.Only once in these experiments have I felt acute fear, but I know of several cases in which LSDhas touched off psychic states of the most alarming and unpleasant kind. More than once I

have invited such states under LSD by looking at images ordinarily suggestive of "the creeps"the mandibles of spiders, and the barbs and spines of dangerous fish and insects. Yet theyevoked only a sense of beauty and exuberance, for our normal projection of malice into thesecreatures was entirely withdrawn, so that their organs of destruction became no more evil thanthe teeth of a beautiful woman. On another occasion I looked for a long time at a coloredreproduction of Van Eyck's Last Judgment, which is surely one of the most horrendous productsof human imagination. The scene of hell is dominated by the figure of Death, a skeletonbeneath whose batlike wings lies a writhing mass of screaming bodies gnawed by snakes whichpenetrate them like maggots in fruit. One of the curious effects of LSD is to impart an illusion ofmovement in still images, so that here the picture came to life and the whole entanglement oflimbs and serpents began to squirm before my eyes. (2)

Ordinarily such a sight should have been hideous, but now I watched it with intense andpuzzled interest until the thought came to me, "Demon est deus inversusthe Devil is Godinvertedso let's turn the picture upside down." I did so, and thereupon burst into laughter forit became apparent at once that the scene was an empty drama, a sort of spiritual scarecrow,designed to guard some mystery from profanation by the ignorant. The agonized expressions ofthe damned seemed quite evidently "put on," and as for the death's-head, the great skull in thecenter of the painting, it became just what a skull isan empty shelland why the horror

when there is nothing in it?I was, of course, seeing ecclesiastical hells for what they are. On the one hand, they are the

pretension that social authority is ultimately inescapable since there are post-mortem policewho will catch every criminal. On the other hand, they are "no trespassing" signs to discouragethe insincere and the immature from attaining insights which they might abuse. A baby is put ina play pen to keep it from getting at the matches or falling downstairs, and though theintention of the pen is to keep the baby closed in, parents are naturally proud when the childgrows strong enough to climb out. Likewise, a man can perform actions which are truly moralonly when he is no longer motivated by the fear of hell, that is, when he grows into union with

the Good that is beyond good and evil, which, in other words, does not act from the love ofrewards or the fear of punishments. This is precisely the nature of the world when it isconsidered as self-moving action, giving out a past instead of being motivated by a past.

Beyond this, the perception of the empty threat of the death's-head was certainly arecognition of the fact that the fear of death, as distinct from the fear of dying, is one of themost baseless mirages that trouble us. Because it is completely impossible to imagine one's


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own personal absence, we fill the void in our minds with images of being buried alive inperpetual darkness. If death is the simple termination of a stream of consciousness, it iscertainly nothing to fear. At the same time, I realize that there is some apparent evidence forsurvival of death in a few extraordinarily unexplainable mediumistic communications and

remembrances of past lives. These I attribute, vaguely enough, to subtler networks ofcommunication and interrelationship in the pattern of life than we ordinarily perceive. For ifforms repeat themselves, if the structure of branching trees is reverberated in the design ofwatercourses in the desert, it would not be so strange if a pattern so intricate as the humannervous system were to repeat configurations that arise in consciousness as veritable memoriesof the most distant times. My own feeling, and of course it is nothing more than an opinion, isthat we transcend death, not as individual memory-systems, but only in so far as our trueidentity is the total process of the world as distinct from the apparently separate organism.

As I have said, this sense of being the whole process is frequently experienced with LSD, and,

for me, it has often arisen out of a strong feeling of the mutuality of opposites. Line and plane,concept and percept, solid and space, figure and ground, subject and object appear to be socompletely correlative as to be convertible into each other. At one moment it seems that thereare, for example, no lines in nature: there are only the boundaries of planes, boundaries whichare, after all, the planes themselves. But at the next moment, looking carefully into the textureof these planes, one discovers them to be nothing but a dense network of patterned lines.Looking at the form of a tree against the sky, I have felt at one moment that its outline"belongs" to the tree, exploding into space. But the next moment I feel that the same form isthe "inline" of the sky, of space imploding the tree. Every pull is felt as a push, and every push

as a pull, as in rotating the rim of a wheel with one's hand. Is one pushing or pulling?The sense that forms are also properties of the space in which they expand is not in the least

fantastic when one considers the nature of magnetic fields, or, say, the dynamics of swirling inkdropped into water. The concepts of verbal thought are so clumsy that we tend to think only ofone aspect of a relationship at a time. We alternate between seeing a given form as a propertyof the figure and as a property of the ground, as in the Gestalt image of two profiles in blacksilhouette, about to kiss. The white space between them appears as a chalice, but it is intenselydifficult to see the kissing faces and the chalice simultaneously. Yet with LSD one appears to beable to feel this simultaneity quite vividly, and thus to become aware of the mutuality of one's

own form and action and that of the surrounding world. The two seem to shape and determineeach other at the same moment, explosion and implosion concurring in perfect harmony, sogiving rise to the feeling that one is actual self is both. This inner identity is felt with every levelof the environmentthe physical world of stars and space, rocks and plants, the social world ofhuman beings, and the ideational world of art and literature, music and conversation. All aregrounds or fields operating in the most intimate mutuality with one's own existence and


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behavior so that the "origin" of action lies in both at once, fusing them into a single act. It iscertainly for this reason that LSD taken in common with a small group can be a profoundlyeucharistic experience, drawing the members together into an extremely warm and intimatebond of friendship.

All in all, I have felt that my experiments with this astonishing chemical have been mostworth while, creative, stimulating, and, above all, an intimation that "there is more in heavenand earth than is dreamed of in your philosophy." Only once have I felt terror, the sense ofbeing close to madness, and even here the insight gained was well worth the pain. Yet this wasenough to convince me that indiscriminate use of this alchemy might be exceedinglydangerous, and to make me ask who, in our society, is competent to control its use. Obviously,this applies even more to such other powers of science as atomic energy, but once something isknown there is really no way of locking it up. At the present time, 1960, LSD is in the control ofpharmacologists and a few research groups of psychiatrists, and though there are unscrupulous

and frankly psychotic psychiatrists, this seems to me a far more reliable form of control thanthat exercised by the police and the Bureau of Narcoticswhich is not control at all, butineffective repression, handing over actual control to the forces of organized crime.

On the whole, we feel justified in using dangerous powers when we can establish that thereis a relatively low probability of disaster. Life organized so as to be completely foolproof andsecure is simply not worth living, since it requires the final abolition of freedom. It is on thisperfectly rational principle of gambling that we justify the use of travel by air and automobile,electric appliances in the home, and all the other dangerous instruments of civilization. Thusfar, the record of catastrophes from the use of LSD is extremely low, and there is no evidence at

all that it is either habit-forming or physically deleterious. It is, of course, possible to becomepsychically dependent on stimuli which do not establish any craving that can be identified inphysiological terms. Personally, I am no example of phenomenal will power, but I find that Ihave no inclination to use LSD in the same way as tobacco or wines and liquors. On thecontrary, the experience is always so fruitful that I feel I must digest it for some months beforeentering into it again. Furthermore, I find that I am quite instinctively disinclined to use itwithout the same sense of readiness and dedication with which one approaches a sacrament,and also that the experience is worth while to the precise degree that I keep my critical andintellectual faculties alert.

It is generally felt that there is a radical incompatibility between intuition and intellect, poetryand logic, spirituality and rationality, To me, the most impressive thing about LSD experiences isthat these formally opposed realms seem instead to complement and fructify one another,suggesting, therefore, a mode of life in which man is no longer an embodied paradox of angeland animal, of reason fighting instinct, but a marvelous coincidence in whom Eros and Logosare one.


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Footnotes

(1) I have often made the point, as in The Way of Zen, that the "real" world is concrete rather than abstract, and

thus that the conceptual patterns of order, categorization, and logic which the human mind projects upon nature

are in some way less real. But upon several occasions LSD has suggested a fundamental ident ity of percept and

concept, concrete and abstract. After all, our brains and the patterns in them are themselves members of the

concrete, physical universe, and thus our abstractions are as much forms of nature as the structure of crystals or

the organization of ferns. (back)

(2) Later, with the aid of a sea urchin 's shell I was able to find out something of the reasons for this effect. All the

small purple protuberances on the shell seemed to be wiggling, not only to sight but also to touch Watching this

phenomenon closely, I realized that as my eyes moved across the shell they seemed to change the intensity of

coloring, amounting to an increase or decrease in the depth of shadow. This did not happen when the eyes were

held still. Now motion, or apparent motion, of the shadow will often seem to be motion of the object casting it, in

this case the protrusions on the shell. In the Van Eyck painting there was likewise an alteration, a lightening or

darkening, of actual shadows which the artist had painted, and thus the same illusion of movement. (back)


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The Cross of Cards

It is said that playing-cards were devised by the ancients to hide a secret where those not 'inthe know' would never think of looking for it. For heresy-hunters are serious-minded peoplewho would never think of looking for religion in a game. It is curious to think how men havegambled, fought and slain one another over these unknown symbols, and it is interesting towonder whether the most accomplished 'poker face' would fall a little on discovering that hewas playing for lucre with emblems just as holy as the cross, the chalice and the crown ofthorns. Probably not, for men have done things just as terrible in the name of symbols whoseholiness they recognized. However, it is no less strange that the puritanic mind should see in

diamonds, spades, hearts and clubs the signs of vice, to be avoided at all times and moreespecially on Sundays.

Today the forms of playing-cards are very different from the original Tarot, but an ordinarymodern pack is not without significance, even though it may not be quite the same significancethat was originally intended. What that was I do not know, but the living meaning of a symbol iswhat it means for each man personally. Therefore my interpretation of this particular symbol isnot the result of research but my own intuition and has no claim to be \the\ interpretation. Like

the often-quoted Topsy, the idea 'just growed' when I laid out the four suits of the pack andbegan to wonder what it was all about. It is said that 'the ways of the One are as many as thelives of men,' and as I worked at the symbol itself but also from the many possibleinterpretations that might be given it. However, we begin by laying out the cards in the form ofa cross, thus:


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To the North are Diamonds, to the South Spades, to the East Hearts and to the West Clubs,running inwards to the centre from the two to the Ace. The first question was to decide themeaning of the four suits, and at once the four elements of Fire, Earth, Water and Air suggestedthemselves together with the four faculties of the human mind, Intuition, Sensation, Feeling

and Intellect. But which belonged to which? It was at once obvious that Spades belonged toEarth and Hearts to Feeling. Sensation is the avenue whereby we receive our impressions ofmaterial things, and so this was accorded to Earth and Spades. Feeling is a passive, femininefaculty, not usually well developed in men; we talk about 'feminine intuition' but as a rule wegenerally mean feminine feeling - a certain sensitivity to emotional values, to psychological'atmospheres' and feeling-situations where men are apt to be 'slow in the uptake.' It was thusdecided to place Hearts and Feeling under the feminine element of Water - that passivesubstance that always yields but can never be defeated. Opposite Hearts we have Clubs, and itwas not at once easy to decide whether Fire or Air should be called the opposite of Water. Fireand Water are hostile, but Air and Water are creative, for in the beginning 'the spirit of Godmoved upon the face of the waters,' and, 'except a man be born of water and of the spirit, hecannot enter into the kingdom of God.' It was therefore decided to make the figure harmoniousinstead of hostile, regarding the four suits as compliments rather than opposites. Thus as Aircomplements Water being the active agent which shaped the passive substance intot he formsof waves. Thought or Intellect, as Air, was put opposite Feeling, as Water. Feeling is passive butIntellect - a masculine quality - is active and often aggressive, and so belongs appropriately tolubs. Intuition and Fire remain to be classed with Diamonds, for intuition is the spiritual facultywhich compliments Sensation, the sensual or material faculty. Fire is not hostile to Earth, butit's lightness (in both senses) compliments the soil's darkness and heaviness. To Buddhistphilosophers the diamond (vajra) is the symbol of spiritual consciousness because of itsstrength and luminous clarity. It has been said that 'a diamond is a piece of coal which has stuckto its job,' being that which results from intense fire working upon black carbon. Therefore thefour suits are understood as follows:

Diamonds (Fire & Intuition) - Spades (Earth & Sensation)

Hearts (Water & Feeling) - Clubs (Air & Intellect)

But what about the rest of the figure? We see that there is a progression of numbers and courtcards from the extremity of each arm of the cross to the centre - four ways of approach to theDivinity as present represented by a question mark as He is unknown. Corresponding to thefour faculties, the Hindus devised four kinds of yoga for awakening man's understanding of his


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union with Brahman, the Self of the Universe: karma yoga, the way of Action, Bbakti yoga, theway of Devotion, gnana yoga, the way of Intellect, and raja yoga, the way of developing thehigher faculties of Intuition. But it will be seen that in our figure each path is of a like pattern,running:

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Knave Queen King Ace

The Progression shows, among other things, each stage of man's path to supremeEnlightenment from the child and the primitive to the sage. From 2 to 10 the path seems to begoing backwards, as will shortly be apparent, because it often seems that civilized man isfurther from spirituality than the child and the primitive. Actually this is not true, for in the

parable of the Prodigal Son it is the prodigal for whom the fatted calf is slain and not the faithfulson, for one has to be divided from union with the Father before one can truly appreciate it. Toadapt a line of Kipling's, 'He does not know Union who only Union knows.'

We begin with the 2, for with every one of the four faculties the first thing of which we areaware, the very foundation of our experience, is the difference between that which we call ourself and that which is not the self, between the thing which we call 'I' and the outer universe.This is the first of all the pairs of opposites of which life is composed, the subjective and the

objective. But these two things do not exist in our consciousness without a third factor, namelythe relationship between them, which is shown by the 3. That relationship may be attraction orrepulsion, of love or fear, or of balance between the two which is called indifference. Withouttrinity, duality has no more meaning than man and woman without child, and unless there is arelationship between ourselves and the universe we can have no consciousness of ourexistence - indeed, we could not even exist. To some things in the universe we react with loveor attraction, and to others with fear or repulsion, and this is as natural as that fire should makeus warm and ice make us cold.

But here the difficulties begin, because man does not stop with that basic reaction to life. It isnot just that he likes some things and dislikes others; ha has also decided feelings about thestate of liking and disliking, and so from 3 we proceed to 4. This stage marks the beginning ofself- consciousness and civilization, for man becomes attached to loving or liking and wishes tohave about him only those things in the universe which arouse attraction. At the same time he


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becomes afraid of fear because it makes him ashamed, being a menace to his pride and self-esteem. But this does not get rid of his fear; it only adds one fear on top of another. Thus assoon as man becomes self-conscious and self-esteeming and fully aware of his reactions tothings, he starts trying to interfere with the processes of his soul. And this is called civilization.

He is not content to be the primitive who just loves and fears things without shame, thinking nomore about it. He must now control his reactions and shape them in accordance with somepreconceived pattern of character development. Fear must not exist in his vocabulary and so-called 'love' must be cultivated under such names as ambition and happiness. But thisinterference with the natural processes of the soul (psychologists call it repression) removes usfurther and further from basic realities, precipitating us into a sort of tail chasing procedure.Like dogs trying to catch their tails, cats runnign after their own shadows and lunatics trying tolift themselves up by their own belts, men try to make themselves what they think they oughtto be - a form of self-deception which receives rude shocks when the surface of civilization isremoved. This regression from basic realities is represented by the cards from 4 to 10, the latterbeing the point where man has completely forgotten his union with life, where his self-consciousness has reached the stage of utter isolation and where he is hopelessly bewilderedby what the Chinese call 'the ten thousand things' - or the manifold and apparently separateand chaotic objects and events of the universe.

This is the moment of crisis in human evolution. Man becomes acutely aware of hisunhappiness and insufficiency, and realises, appropriately enough, that he is a Knave. What is

he to do about it? Look at the next card, the Queen - the feminine, passive principle - and if youlook carefully at the card you will see that each of the four Queens holds an open flower. TheKnaves hold swords, spears and daggers, emblems of their hostility to the life from which theyhave so estranged themselves, but the flower which is open to sun and rain alike is the symbolof acceptance. The Knave has estranged himself from life by his pride and false morality, byfighting the natural processes of the soul and trying to make out that he is greater than he is.('Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature!') But the Queen acceptsthose processes, both the love and the fear and all the other opposites by which those feelingsare aroused - life and death, pleasure and pain, good and evil. She knows that man must acceptall the aspects of life if he is to be happy, and that if he would see the god in himself he mustnot deny the demon. 'Demon' runs the Hermetic aphorism, 'est deus inversus' - the demon is agod upside-down. Therefore the Queen stands for that acceptance and spiritual love which, likeHis sun, God 'maketh to shine upon both the just and the unjust.' As yet, however, thisacceptance is incomplete, for the Queen is only the female or passive aspect of acceptance. Thecomplete union and harmony with life which is the goal of all these four paths is not simply aquietistic state of spiritual laisser-faire in which man just allows life to live him. That is, indeed,


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a step on the way, but the very idea of allowing life to live you, of submitting to your destiny, tothe will of God, or whatever it may be called, still implies a distinction between yourself andlife, nature or God.

When this distinction is overcome there is no longer any question of yourself being ruled by lifeand destiny or of yourself ruling your life and destiny; the problem of fate or free will thendisappears, for the ruler and the ruled are united, and you do not know whether you are livinglife or whether life is living you. It is as if two dancers were dancing together in such perfectaccord that the lead of one and the response of the other were one and the same movement,as if action and passivity became a single act. In our figure this is symbolized by the King. Intheir hands the Kings hold swords and axes like the Knaves; in fact, the Kings are Knaves butwith this difference: that the Knaves are compelled to be Knaves and cannot help themselves,

whereas the Kings are free to be Knaves. This is the difference between the man who is moral(who fights the dark side of life) because he fears evil, and the man who is moral because heknows he is perfectly free to be immoral. In the stage of the Queen we discover our freedom tobe moral instead of our compulsion. For when you feel that you are free to be as evil as you likeyou will find the idea rather tedious.

Thus in the Queen and the King we have the free, royal pair, symbols of spiritual liberty - libertyto love and to fear, to fight and the yield, to resist and to accept and - yes - to be free and to be

compelled, for freedom is not absolutely free unless it is also free to be bound! Therefore thecombination of these two is represented in the Ace, symbol of the union between oneself andlife which arises from this complete acceptance of life. Here the four paths meet, but anuncomfortable empty space is left in the middle of the cross and something seems to beneeded to tie the whole figure together - shall we say to make it holy? We have reduced themany, represented by the 2, to the One, represented by the Ace, but the Buddhist problemasks, 'When the many are reduced to the One, to what shall the One be reduced?' For as thefigure stands it would seem that there is a difference between the many and the One, that ingoing along the path from the 2 to the Ace you have actually acquired something which you did

not have before. Spirituality, however, is not acquired; it is only realized, because union withlife is something we have all the time even though we do not know it. Our seeming loss ofunion in the civilized, self-conscious world is only apparent, only something which occurs inTime but not in Eternity. From the standpoint of Eternity, every stage in the path is bothbeginning and end and middle; there is neither coming nor going, gain nor loss, ignorance norenlightenment.


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What shall we put in the middle? I think we have forgotten a card - the one we usually leave inthe box. What about the Joker?

A profane symbol? Not at all. For the joke about the whole thing is that, wherever we stand onthe paths, we are really at the Goal - only we do not know it. It is like looking all over the housefor your keys only to find that you are carrying tham in your hand, whereat you sit down andlaugh at yourself.

But the Joker makes an appropriate centre for another reason: in games he is allowed torepresent any other card in the pack. So also in this figure he is the 2 and the Ace and all thatlies in between - Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending . . . the first and the last.

Indeed, as Chesterton said, there is a closer connection between 'cosmic' and 'comic' than themere similarity of the words!


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Taoism

In order to go into Taoism at all, we must begin by being in the frame of mind in which it can beunderstood. You cannot force yourself into this frame of mind, anymore than you can smoothdisturbed water with your hand. But let's say that our starting point is that we forget what weknow, or think we know, and that we suspend judgment about practically everything, returningto what we were when we were babies when we had not yet learned the names or thelanguage. And in this state, although we have extremely sensitive bodies and very alive senses,we have no means of making an intellectual or verbal commentary on what is going on.

You are just plain ignorant, but still very much alive, and in this state you just feel what iswithout calling it anything at all. You know nothing at all about anything called an externalworld in relation to an internal world. You don't know who you are, you haven't even the ideaof the word you or I-- it is before all that. Nobody has taught you self control, so you don't knowthe difference between the noise of a car outside and a wandering thought that enters yourmind- they are both something that happens. You don't identify the presence of a thought thatmay be just an image of a passing cloud in your mind's eye or the passing automobile; theyhappen. Your breath happens. Light, all around you, happens. Your response to it by blinking

happens.

So, on one hand you are simply unable to do anything, and on the other there is nothing youare supposed to do. Nobody has told you anything to do. You are completely unable to doanything but be aware of the buzz. The visual buzz, the audible buzz, the tangible buzz, thesmellable buzz-- all around the buzz is going on. Watch it. Don't ask who is watching it; youhave no information about that yet. You don't know that it requires a watcher for something tobe watched. That is somebody's idea; but you don't know that.

Lao

lectures and essays by alan watts (volume 2)

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