RALPH METZNER--Ralph Metzner was a colleague of Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert at Harvard University during the tumultuous sixties. He conducted a series of experiments with them involving the psychedelics until these experiments were suspended as a result of sensationalized publicity by the mass media.

Ralph Metzner also co-authored The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead with Timothy Leary, and Richard Alpert. Since the nature of the psychedelic experience depends a great deal upon set and setting, a guide or teacher can be of great help by providing a "road map" for someone starting a quest into inner space. This is the specific purpose of the guidebook The Psychedelic Experience. As a model it uses the Tibetan Book of the Dead more properly known in Tibetan as the Bardo Thodol which means "Liberation by Hearing on the After-Death Plane." Timothy Leary subsequently turned his hand more successfully to translating the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu into the psychedelic vernacular under the title The Psychedelic Prayers. Though less well known, this text is widely acclaimed by the cognoscenti as a superior guide to the psychedelic experience.

SET and SETTING--Set denotes the individual's state of mind and preparation while setting denotes the physical as well as the social and cultural surroundings of the individual. The rule of "set and setting" is the best guide for anticipating what the effects of a psychedelic experience will be. It has been said, "If you have a garden in your mind, then you'll be in it. If you have a garbage can in your mind, then you'll be in that". This is very useful advice .

HALLUCINOGEN--Ralph Metzner in a letter to Rick Doblin, founder and president of MAPS, has some interesting comments about the term hallucinogen:

My last point concerns the term hallucinogen, a misunderstood concept... Hallucinogen comes from hallucination, generally taken to mean seeing something which isn't really there . This would be an apt term for certain kinds of amphetamine and alcohol intoxications; but it clearly doesn't fit for psychedelics. You're seeing something that is there, that you normally don't see, because the doors of perception have been closed.

But this is not what hallucinate originally meant. According to Eric Partridge's Origins, hallucinate is derived from the Latin hallucinari or aluinari to wander in one's mind , itself derived from the Greek aluein a homeless wandering, a restless roaming , which the etymologist adds is of obscure origin . To hallucinate is to wander in one's mind, to roam restlessly in the psyche, which Heraclitus said was boundless. So a hallucinogenic plant or drug is one that generates mind wandering, mental movements, restless roaming on inner journeys -- and that, I submit, is a pretty accurate description of the effects of psychedelics.

TIMOTHY LEARY (1920-May 31, 1996)--"A Twentieth Century Galileo of Consciousness" or "The Most Dangerous Man in America"?! What can one say about Timothy Leary?

Timothy Leary, a psychologist whose expertise is personality assessment and behavior change, published The Interpersonal Diagnostic of the Personality in 1955. The Annual Review of Psychology praised Leary's book which also became a standard in its field as "the most important book on psychotherapy of the year". In 1959 Frank Barron while visiting Leary on vacation in Florence, Italy told Leary of his "mind blowing" mystical after taking the sacred mushrooms while in Mexico. Barron told Leary that these mushrooms could be the answer to their quest for something that could lead to real psychological transformation. Leary later wrote to him and "warned him against the possibility of losing his scientific credibility if he babbled this way among his colleagues." In the summer of 1960 while in Mexico, Leary took the sacred mushrooms for the first time. Leary describes his experience:

I laughed again at my own everyday pomposity, the narrow arrogance of scholars, the impudence of the rational, the smug naivete of words in contrast to the raw rich ever-changing panoramas that flooded my brain....I gave way to delight, as mystics have for centuries when they peeked through the curtains and discovered that this world--so manifestly real-- was actually a tiny stage set constructed by the mind. There was a sea of possibilities out there (in there?), other realities, an infinite array of programs for other futures.

-- from Flashbacks pp. 31-32 (1990, Jeremy Tarcher Inc.) by Timothy Leary

On returning to Harvard the enthused Leary having no direct access to the sacred mushrooms ordered psilocybin from the Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland and began a series of experiments known as the Psilocybin Project. Aldous Huxley who happened to be spending a semester at nearby MIT met frequently with Leary who had earlier sent Huxley a letter describing his experience in Mexico. Huxley recently diagnosed with throat cancer (besides himself only his wife Laura and good friend Humphry Osmond knew at this time) was working on what was to be his last novel, Island. Aldous had long considered that the political, economic, artistic, and intellectual elites should first be exposed to the psychedelics. According to Huxley "that's how everything of culture and beauty and philosophic freedom has been passed on." He advised Leary to be cautious in his experiments because there were those who would be strongly opposed to his research. Once after dinner with Leary, Osmond responding to Huxley's comment that Leary would do good things for the psychedelics asked Aldous if he didn't think that Leary was a bit square? Huxley replied, "You may be right. Isn't that after all what we want?" Having misjudged Leary as a stereotypical professor and elitist, Huxley later wrote to Osmond, "I am very fond of Tim, but why, oh why, does he have to be such an ass?". Beat poet Allen Ginsburg (1926 - 1997) served as the catalyst which would point Leary in a direction away from psychedelic elitism towards psychedelic egalitarianism. Osmond, in Boston attending a symposium of psychiatrists where Allen Ginsburg having just returned from a South American ayahuasca quest was one of the speakers, suggested to Ginsburg that he contact Leary and try psilocybin. Referring to his encounter with Ginsburg, Leary reports in his autobiography, Flashbacks, "It was at this moment that we rejected Huxley's elitist perspective and adopted the American open-to-the-public approach." The rest is history.

ISLAND--Moksha a mind liberating substance plays a central role in the education of the islanders. The teacher Dr. Roberts instructs his class awaiting their first dose of moksha:

What a timeless bliss! But like everything else...it will pass. And when it has passed, what will you do with the experience? What will you do with all the other similar experiences that the moksha-medicine will bring in the years to come? Will you merely enjoy them as you would enjoy an evening at the puppet show, and then go back to business as usual, back behaving like the silly little delinquents you imagine yourselves to be? Or, having glimpsed, will you devote your lives to the business, not at all unusual, of being what you are in fact...All that the moksha-medicine can do is to give you a succession of beatific glimpses, an hour or two, every now and then, of enlightening and liberating grace. It remains for you to decide whether you'll cooperate with grace and take those opportunities.

PSILOCYBIN PROJECT--Two of the most interesting studies to come out of the project were The Good Friday Experiment and the Concord Prison Study. As part of the project around 200 people were given psilocybin and told to take it under any conditions they wanted as long as they would fill out a questionaire at the end of the experience. These people came from all walks of life. The analysis of the questionaires showed very clearly that the reactions were a function of set and setting. In other words expectations and environment were very influential on the experience.

RICHARD ALPERT aka RAM DASS-- On the night of March 6, 1961, during the largest snowstorm of the year, Richard Alpert took psilocybin for the first time at Timothy Leary's home in Newton, Massachussetts. Late in the evening while sitting on a couch he saw a disassociated Richard Alpert standing a short distance away in the shadows. First Richard Alpert the professor appeared, then Richard Alpert the social cosmopolite, then Richard Alpert the cellist, the pilot, lover and so on. And as each Richard Alpert disappeared he became more concerned as his social identity, his Richard Alpertness, continued to dissipate. But when he witnessed his physical body slowly disappear before his eyes:

A scream formed in my throat. I felt that I must be dying since there was nothing in my universe that led me to believe in life after leaving the body.The panic mounted...[ but then]...a voice sounded inside--inside what, I don't know--...and rather jocularly, it seemed to me, considering how distraught I was...[it said]...but who's minding the store?

I realized that although everything by which I knew myself, even my body and this life itself, was gone, still I was fully aware! Not only that, but this aware "I" was watching the entire drama, including the panic, with calm compassion.

Instantly, with this recognition, I felt a new kind of calmness--one of a profundity never experienced before. I had just found that "I", that scanning device--that point--that essence-that place beyond. A place where "I" existed independent of social and physical identity. That which was I was beyond Life and Death. And something else--that "I" Knew--it really Knew. It was wise, rather than just knowledgeable. It was a voice inside that spoke truth....Fear had turned to exaltation. I ran out into the snow laughing as the huge snowflakes swirled about me.

--From Be Here Now

PREPARED?-- Exploring the limits of consciousness can be risky to those who are not adequately prepared. Before undertaking a serious walk with Isidore, a thorough examination of intent is in order. Dosage, mind set, and environment are very important to walking the path. For many the "experience" is characterized by beautiful visions of geometric patterns, breathing walls, smiling furniture, enhanced perception of the senses, etc. These experiences however beautiful, inspiring, and humorous they may be are mere window dressing for deeper revelations of Paradox, The Infinite, Life and Death, Self and Other, Matter and Energy, Heaven and Hell, and other Mysteries.

FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION--

"The government's war on drugs has become a wildfire that threatens to consume those fundamental rights of the individual deliberately enshrined in our Constitution. Ironically, as we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, the tattered Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures and now the frail Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination or deprivation of liberty without due process have fallen as casualties in this war on drugs. It was naive of this Court to hope that this erosion of constitutional protections would stop at the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. But today, the war targets one of the most deeply held fundamental rights — the First Amendment right to freely exercise one's religion."

--- Chief Judge Burciaga, United States v. Boyll (D. N.M. 1991) 774 F.Supp. 1333, 1334. as cited in Entheogens & the Free Exercise Clause from the Entheogen Law Reporter

SPACE AND TIME--

"Space is a swarming in the eyes, and Time a singing in the ears," says John Shade, a modern poet, as quoted ...in The Ambidextrous Universe, page 165. Space flutters to the ground, but Time remains between thinker and thumb...Space introduces its eggs into the nests of Time: a "before" here, an "after" there--and a speckled clutch of Minkowski's "world-points."...I cannot imagine Space without Time, but I can very well imagine Time without Space.

---from Ada by Vladimir Nabokov

THE SPACING GUILD--

"The Spacing Guild and it's Navigators..use the orange spice gas which gives them the ability to fold space, that is, travel to any part of the universe without moving."

From the novel DUNE by Frank Herbert

ALL IS LIKE A DREAM--

What does your mind seek?
Where is your heart?
If you give your heart to each and every thing,
you lead it nowhere: you destroy your heart.
Can anything be found on earth?

Do flowers go to the region of the dead?
In the Beyond, are we dead or do we still live?
Where is the source of light, since that which gives life hides itself?

Truly do we live on earth?
Not forever on earth, only a little while here.
Although it be jade, it will be broken,
Although it be quetzal feather, it is torn asunder.
Not forever on earth, only a little while here.

Do we speak the truth here, oh Giver of Life?
We merely dream, we only rise from a dream.
All is like a dream....
No one speaks here of truth....

Does man possess any truth?
If not, our song is no longer true.
Is anything stable and lasting?
What reaches its aim?

--- Nezahualcoyotl (Hungry Coyote), poet-King of Texcoco,1431-1472 AD. Nezahualcoyotl (a sort of Mexican Solomon) built a ten-zone pyramid in honor of the Invisible God as well as many other public works. All the great public buildings he had built were destroyed in 1539 by order of Zumarraga, the first archbishop of Mexico.

CHEMICALS--

Any molecule could be labelled a drug from H₂O to N₂O. In fact H₂O is quite psychoactive, just try a glass or two or three the next time you are fatigued and see how you respond. All of creation manifests as chemistry. As it happens the Fane unequivocally denies that the psychedelics are "drugs". Gifts of nature and science, these instruments of reason, intuition, and feeling may be chemical in form but they are on the whole sacramental in outcome. Although they may be beneficial as medicines, after they have served their healing function they remain as sacred keys to access aspects of human experience not otherwise as effectively or sublimely available for guidance, study, surprise, and enjoyment.

---from Fane pastoral letter (October, 1995)

THE FALL--

Arlo West: I find myself listening to Tull and Gentle Giant all year round but they seem to take on a special feel in the Fall. Do you find this to be a mere coincidence or is it that the music takes on a magical almost mystical quality during that time of the year?

Ian Anderson: I do not understand this question. Is this when the Magic Mushrooms ripen!

---From an interview with Ian Anderson regarding Gentle Giant

THE INDIGO GLASS IN THE GRASS--

Which is real---
This bottle of indigo glass in the grass,
Or the bench with the pot of geraniums, the stained mattress and the washed overalls drying in the sun?
Which of these truly contains the world?

Neither one, nor the two together.

---by Wallace Stevens

FRANK BARRON--

Frank Barron(1922-)and Timothy Leary were colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1950's where they had conducted a study of the efficacy of psychotherapy. They found that one-third of the patients who received psychotherapy improved, one-third worsened , and the remaining third stayed the same. They found the same results for the individuals in the control group who had not received psychotherapy. This started them on the search for more effective means of psychological healing which led to the development of the theory of existential-transactional analysis. It was through Barron (who, by the way, twice turned down offers to be personnel director of the CIA) that Timothy Leary received the teaching post at Harvard where they both founded the Harvard Psychedelic Drug Research Program.

FLOWERS--

...guided by the acid genie, my consciousness did, back in '63, enter--literally enter--into a daisy, and that little adventure permanently altered my reality orientations, particularly when it comes to the usual lines of distinction between animate and inanimate. The crown of the daisy is a perfect logarithmic helix. My eyes followed that spiral, around and around, until--pop!--I actually went into the flower. What was it like in there? It was a subterranean cathedral made out of mathematics and honey, and occupied--this is the amazing part--by an almost palpable intelligence.

You can't talk about something like that without sounding like a lunatic, but let me confess that when I learned that every daisy in every field possesses an identity just as strong as my own, it radically changed my life. Now, a man-made bean can is hardly a living plant, but what I've come to appreciate about inanimate objects, aside from their utilitarian beauty, is the whisper of the infinite in each and every one of them. I'd better shut up now before the woo-woo alarms go off.

---from an interview with Tom Robbins in HT, June 2000, pp. 68,70

NOTHING--

Sometimes
When nothing happens
It seems
That this nothing
Is everything

---from Les Portes d'en bas by Heather Dohollau

THE DANCING PLASTIC BAG--

Want to see the most beautiful thing I've ever filmed?

RICKY'S BEDROOM: On the wide-screen TV we are drawn by expectant, mysterious music INTO an empty parking lot on a cold, gray day. Something is floating across from us... it's an empty, wrinkled, white PLASTIC BAG. We follow it as the wind carries it in a circle around us, sometimes whipping it about violently, or, without warning, sending it soaring skyward, then letting it float gracefully down to the ground...

Jane sits on the bed. She watches the bag, her brow furrowed, puzzled.

RICKY watches, smiling. He speaks slowly, intensely, with feeling:

---from the film American Beauty