This is a draft that may be used as part of the introduction to my book
on entheogens. Comments would be welcome.
I first took LSD in the mid sixties while I was an engineering student.
I dropped out of college, travelled overland to India and explored a variety
of mystical paths. An observer might well assume that I was yet another
sheep following the prevailing fashion, yet for me the experience was profound
and my motives sincere.
My first exploration of LSD was to be a scientific observation, so I equipped myself with an observer, notebook and stopwatch; but nothing happened as I had been sold a dud. This may have been a blessing in disguise as next time I was far more relaxed as I took the supposedly 300 micrograms while visiting two fellow students, and when nothing happened half an hour later, casually took another.
The first thing I noticed was that things seemed different out of the
corner of my eye, but when I turned to face them, all was normal. My caring
friends kept asking how I felt, and after a while I found I was looking
down on them; not only as though from physically above them but I also I
felt that their questions were, well, trivial. So much so that I felt it
pointless to answer, and instead I allowed myself to become absorbed in
more important things: in this case, the weave of the bedspread. I was fascinated
watching each thread weaving its way over and under in superb rhythm and
with great significance and beauty, a beauty that I knew was always there:
it was simply ignored by insensitive people such as my friends, and by myself
before then.
I was enjoying myself enormously. I felt freed from the restraints of normal
life, free to do anything I wanted. I knew that I had the power to fly or
create or destroy just by willing it, but to do so would have been to test
myself and that would have implied doubt, and as I had no doubt I was contented
to bask in the glory of my power. But the most important lesson of the experience
was the certain knowledge that this consciousness was on a higher level
and provided not just a different, but a broader perspective than normal.
I saw my world for the first time in all its glory as though my previous
view of it had lacked reality, like watching television.
The event was profoundly important for me, and certainly changed my life in spite of the fact that I found it impossible to describe or even remember with any clarity. The immediate effect was to destroy the ambitions and values I had been brought up with. We were insignificant and our lives so absurdly short that nothing was worth doing: anyone who was enthusiastic about anything was either blind to the truth or kidding themselves to avoid facing it. This made me dissatisfied and determined to find something meaningful in life, hence I got involved with one mystical group after another.
I also took LSD a few more times and had less intense but more instructive
experiences, gaining insight into how my mind worked. One occasion was at
night with about a dozen people, and when someone suggested going out for
a walk I felt extremely awkward. I justified my feeling be telling myself
that we might be conspicuous and get into trouble, but at another level
I knew that my real discomfort was over my role within the group: whether
to lead or follow the others. Later I saw this as an insight and could relate
it to feeling awkward on other social occasions.
Some thirty years later I had an even more profound experience on LSD. The
setting was perfect: I was with Anja out in the country in a beautiful secluded
place on a perfect summer's day. We had made love and were in love, felt
calm, relaxed and open to one another. At one point I felt that I was able
to let go completely, like never before, and the result was to allow my
'essence' to flow out and to rejoin its source. It was like 'coming home'
but far more so. It was incredibly 'right' and joyful, and I wept with joy.
But even with our closeness I was not able to explain to Anja what had happened. I tried, but had to use words, and I could feel that they were wrong even before I had spoken them yet there was no alternative. As a result, I spent the whole of the following night wide awake trying to make sense of the experience.
It was clear that language belongs to this 'lower' reality, and was therefore inadequate to describe the 'higher' reality. I realised that words themselves were one of the limitations that keep us on this lower plane. We use words to describe our experiences to ourselves, and in doing so we automatically censor mention of the higher plane simply because the appropriate words do not exist. I also saw that my experience could so easily be described in religious terms such as, "My soul met God", but that to avoid such distortion the only way that words could be used was to set the parameters of the experience. I decided that these were:
1. The LSD consciousness includes everyday consciousness, yet the everyday
consciousness does not include the LSD consciousness.
2. It may be impossible to prove the validity of the higher state using
tools evolved in the lower, normal, state such as logic and language. This
limitation of the normal state does not invalidate the higher state.
3. Mine was the basic spiritual experience whether induced by drugs or other
means. It is not unusual, and is just as valid however it occurs.
4. All religions stem from mankind's need to explain this experience in
terms acceptable on our normal, lower level.
©Nicholas Saunders 1996
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