Special Issue: Technology and Psychedelics Edited by David Jay … · 2017. 9. 12. · ©2008...

Special Issue: Technology and PsychedelicsEdited by David Jay Brown, M.A.

Albert Hofmann: January 11, 1906 ~ April 29, 2008

See www.maps.org/albert for obituaries from around the worldVOLUME XVI I I NUMBER 1 • SPRING 2008

MULTIDISCIPLINARY ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHEDELIC STUDIESMULTIDISCIPLINARY ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHEDELIC STUDIES

“Xenolinguistics: Intense Play.”Still from LiveGlide performance.

By Diana Reed SlatterySee article by Diana Slattery on page 9

“Musical Volume” by Brummbaerwww.brummbaer.net

See article by Brummbaer on page 36.

m a p s • v o l u m e x v i i i n u m b e r 1 • s p r i n g 2 o o 8 1

MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for

Psychedelic Studies) is a membership-based

organization working to assist researchers

worldwide to design, fund, conduct, obtain

governmental approval for, and report on

psychedelic research in humans. Founded in 1986,

MAPS is an IRS approved 501 (c)(3) non-

profit corporation funded by tax deductible

donations. MAPS is focused primarily on

assisting scientists to conduct human studies to

generate essential information about the risks and

psychotherapeutic benefits of MDMA, other

psychedelics, and marijuana, with the goal of

eventually gaining government approval for

their medical uses. Interested parties wishing to

copy any portion of this publication are encour-

aged to do so and are kindly requested to credit

MAPS and include our address. The MAPS Bulletin

is produced by a small group of dedicated staff

and volunteers. Your participation, financial or

otherwise, is welcome.

©2008 Multidisciplinary Association

for Psychedelic Studies, Inc. (MAPS)

10424 Love Creek Rd., Ben Lomond, CA 95005

Phone: 831-336-4325

Fax: 831-336-3665

E-mail: [email protected]

Web: www.maps.org

This edition edited by: David Jay Brown

Design/Build: Noah Juan Juneau

ISSN 1080-8981

Printed on recycled paper

Front Cover Image:

“Dionysian Splendor”

© Carolyn Mary Kleefeld,1990

Mixed Media/Canvas 48"x72"

www.carolynmarykleefeld.com

Back Cover Image:

“Dr. Albert Hofmann”

by Brummbaer

Canvas, 24x31”

See story page 32

www.brummbaer.net

All cover art is available

for purchase through the MAPS

online store. Fifty percent of

profits support MAPS research.

www.maps.org/catalog

2 On The Other SideRick Doblin, Ph.D.

3 Letter from the EditorDavid Jay Brown, M.A.

6 Mathematics and the Psychedelic RevolutionRalph Abraham, Ph.D.

9 How I Became a XenolinguistDiana Reed Slattery

11 Networking with the Psychedelic CommunitySara Huntley

13 Technology and the Entheogenic RevolutionJeff Pappas

14 Ecodelic! Plants, Rhetoric and theCo-evolution of the NoösphereRichard Doyle, Ph.D.

19 An Interview with Kevin HerbertLouise Reitman

21 Dreaming of MAPSJosina de Bree

22 Use of LSD-25 for Computer ProgrammingDennis R. Wier

23 Psychedelic TechnologyAlexander Beiner

24 Surviving and Thinking with PsychotechnologiesThomas B. Roberts, Ph.D.

34 Transhumanism & the War on DrugsTristan Gulliford & Ken Goffman (a.k.a. R.U. Sirius)

35 Missed, MistNeal Goldsmith, Ph.D.

36 Technology Appreciated by the Psychedelic MindBrummbaer

39 MAPS Report from the World Psychedelic Forum 2008Valerie Mojeiko

42 O Nobly BornValerie Leveroni Corral

49 For Beloved Laura and FriendsCarolyn Mary Kleefeld

50 Letters to MAPS

51 MAPS - Who We Are

52 MAPS Membership Information

2 m a p s • v o l u m e x v i i i n u m b e r 1 • s p r i n g 2 o o 8

®

Letter from Rick Doblin, Ph.D.

On The Other SideI initially completed this letter on April 16, 2008–

exactly four years after Michael and Annie Mithoeferconducted their first MDMA-assisted psychotherapysession on April 16, 2004. Coincidentally, sixty-five yearsbefore, on April 16, 1943, the world’s first LSD experiencetook place when Dr. Albert Hofmann accidentally in-gested some LSD he was synthesizing. I’m now rewritingthis on May 1, to note with sadness, and in celebration ofa life gloriously lived, that Albert died on April 29, at theage of 102. All MAPS members can take great satisfactionin knowing that Albert lived long enough to see with hisown eyes the recent approval of Dr. Peter Gasser’s MAPS-sponsored Swiss LSD/end-of-life anxiety protocol–tobecome the first study of LSD-assisted psychotherapy inover thirty-six years. Albert felt that the renewal of LSD-assisted psychotherapy research was the “fulfillment ofmy heart’s desire.” It was a pleasure to tell Albert severalweeks ago that I looked forward to discussing the finalresults with him in about a year and a half.

He laughed and said that he’d help anyway he could,either from this side or the other side. Now, he’s on theother side, as it falls to us to shepherd LSD back intomedical use.

Although MAPS’ primary focus is on sponsoringresearch into the therapeutic uses of psychedelics andmarijuana–in order to develop them into legal prescriptionmedicines—we believe that these substances are multipur-pose tools. They can be used beneficially in contexts otherthan just medical use such as in religious/spiritual settings,to enhance intellectual and artistic creativity, for scientificstudies of consciousness and the mind, for celebratory/recreational purposes, to deepen emotional relationships,or for practical problem-solving tasks.

This special issue of the MAPS Bulletin is primarilyabout psychedelics and technology. It focuses on the use ofpsychedelics for intellectual and artistic problem-solvingand creativity. This issue also features an article aboutpsychedelic pioneer Laura Huxley, who passed awayrecently, by activist Valerie Corral. (Valerie was a memberof a support team that assisted 96-year old Laura in herdying process). It also includes a painting and photos ofLaura. Laura’s book, This Timeless Moment, about how sheassisted Aldous Huxley in his dying process in 1962, hasbeen a profound inspiration to many psychedelic activists.Aldous’ classic book, Brave New World, has also been aninspiration, since it highlights the need for technologicaladvancement to be matched by growth of the humanspirit. Psychedelics can help facilitate this growth.

In August of 1966 the last paper in the scientificliterature exploring the use of psychedelics for creativity

was published, “Psychedelic agents in creative problem-solving: a pilot study.” This paper, by Harman, McKim,Mogar, Fadiman and Stolaroff–which appeared in Psycho-logical Reports–concluded “Tentative findings based ontests of creativity, on subjective reports and self ratings,and on the utility of problem solutions suggested that, ifgiven according to this carefully structured regimen,psychedelic agents seem to facilitate creative problem-solving, particularly in the ‘illumination phase.’” Dosesadministered were 200 milligrams of mescaline sulfate(the approximate equivalent of 100 mcg. of LSD).

Psychedelic research at Harvard also ended in 1966.After almost forty-two years it resumed on February 23,2008, in a MAPS-catalyzed study that administeredMDMA-assisted psychotherapy to a patient with anxietyassociated with advanced-stage cancer. Perhaps therenewal of research into psychedelics and creativity isn’tall that far off.

Close at hand is the completion of MAPS’ U.S.MDMA/PTSD pilot study, conducted by Dr. MichaelMithoefer and Annie Mithoefer, BSN. This is MAPS’ firstFDA-approved psychedelic psychotherapy protocol andtop priority project. The final experimental session in thestudy is scheduled for July, 2008, when the 21st subjectwill receive his third MDMA-assisted psychotherapysession. The study will have taken more than four yearsto complete. It will end up having cost MAPS about $1million to design, obtain permission for, conduct, monitor,analyze, and write a paper for publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Most importantly, the study isgenerating remarkably promising results. We are attempt-ing to replicate these results in MAPS-sponsored MDMA/PTSD pilot studies in Switzerland and Israel. We’re also inthe development stage for additional MDMA/PTSD pilotstudies in Canada, Spain, and France.

The next breakthrough we’re working toward is toobtain FDA permission to administer MDMA to therapistswho are in training to conduct MDMA/PTSD research. Itis our view that therapists administering MDMA to theirpatients will be more effective if they have experiencedMDMA themselves. In order to prove safety and efficacy–and to obtain approval for prescription use–we need totrain about twenty to thirty new male/female co-therapistteams to conduct the two multisite Phase 3 studiesrequired by the FDA and the European Medicines Agency.

On behalf of MAPS staff and researchers, our deepestthanks to all MAPS members for your generous supportover the years. Together, we have amazing opportunitiesahead, on this side, with help from the other side.

– Rick Doblin, Ph.D., MAPS President


More than a few people have pointed out how closelytimed the discovery of LSD (April 16, 1943) was withthe first controlled atomic reaction (December 2, 1942).Others point out the close timing of the discovery ofmescaline (1897) and the development of X-ray photog-raphy (1895). Because of these near historical coinci-dences, it has been suggested that there might be somesort of relationship between the timing of these discover-ies and the development of these inventions, as thesepowerful technologies seem to mirror the discovery ofthe psychedelics in an interesting way.

An LSD experience can be subjectively viewed as an“atomic explosion” or “nuclear meltdown” of the mind.Likewise, the penetratingperspective gleaned from amescaline experience seemsstrangely similar to the see-through point of view pro-vided by X-ray photography,as both have the ability tomake normally invisibleaspects of the world visible.A number of people—includ-ing Swiss chemist AlbertHofmann, who discoveredLSD—have suggested thatLSD might have been discov-ered in 1943 as a spiritualantidote to the apocalypticdangers of nuclear weaponsthat now threaten thesurvival of our species.

Whether these specula-tions are true or not, Westernscience’s discovery of psyche-delic chemicals lead to anintimate and unusually creative relationship with tech-nology. Since psychedelics affect all aspects of the humanmind, they affect every aspect of human culture. Science,art, medicine, politics, philosophy, and spirituality have allbeen transformed by individuals experienced with thepsychedelic mind state, as has the major hallmark of ourspecies’ success—our ability to design tools. The interplaybetween technological innovation and psychedelic mindstates has substantially influenced many aspects ofelectronic media and biotechnology—including thedevelopment of new film techniques and cinematic specialeffects, personal computers, the internet, and geneticengineering.

For example, the biotechnology revolution was largely

Letter from the Editor:

David Jay [email protected]

started by two Nobel Prize biochemists—Francis Crickand Kary Mullis—who both reportedly attributed part oftheir insights to their use of LSD. Francis Crick, along withJames Watson, discovered the double helix structure ofthe DNA molecule—the genetic code—and, according to aBBC report, sources close to Crick say that he was regu-larly using low-doses of LSD at the time of the discovery.Kary Mullis—who developed PCR (the polymerase chainreaction), which revolutionized the study of genetics andmade genetic engineering possible—said, “I think I mighthave been stupid in some respects, if it weren’t for mypsychedelic experiences.”Psychedelic Technology Begins

In the Sixties and Seven-ties, the use of psychedelics bycreative people in the musicindustry helped to spawntechnologies that combinednew forms of music with laserlight shows, and magic mush-room-munching film makerswere inspired to develop newcinematic techniques that usedspecial effects to mimic theperceptual effects of hallucino-gens. For example, StanleyKubrick, who directed 2001:A Space Odyssey, was turned onto LSD by Los Angeles psychia-trist Oscar Janiger when thedrug was still legal. Manyscience fiction writers—suchas Philip K. Dick, Robert AntonWilson, Rudy Rucker, NormanSpinrad, and me—have beeninspired by psychedelics in

their thinking about the future of technology.In the early Eighties the late psychologist Timothy

Leary began promoting the idea that personal computersand Virtual Reality were the “new LSD,” and this associa-tion between psychedelics and technology was embracedby what became known as the “cyberculture” of theEighties and Nineties—largely fueled by a San Francisco-based magazine called Mondo 2000 (which was an inspira-tion for Kevin Kelly to launch Wired). The editor-in-chiefof that magazine—Ken Goffman (a.k.a. R.U. Sirius)—joinsus in this Bulletin to share with us his thoughts about thefuture of technology.

The cyberculture of the Eighties and Nineties hasmushroomed into the global internet culture that per-

David Jay Brown, M.A.


vades virtually everyone’s lives today. This history wascovered in John Markoff’s book What The Dormouse Said,and Fred Turner’s From Counterculture to Cyberculture,which are about how the sixties counterculture directlyspawned the personal computer revolution. According toPh.D. candidate Diana Reed Slattery—who also joins us inthis Bulletin—the Web-based search engine Google hasbecome the world’s first “psychedelically-informedsuperpower.” The influence of psychedelics on the massmedia has become so pervasive that it’s hard to even find atelevision commercial or a computer game that doesn’tbear an obvious psychedelic signature. Hollywood andSilicon Valley both appear to have been highly influencedby creative individuals whohave experimented with mind-altering substances.Psychedelics

and Computers

The internet and thepersonal computer revolutionare especially intimatelyintertwined with psychedelics.Many of the most influentialpeople involved in developingpersonal computers, and thesoftware that runs on them,admit to having munched onthe forbidden fruit. Bill Gates,founder of Microsoft, as well asSteve Jobs and Steve Wozniak,who founded Apple Computer,all admit to having used LSDduring their formative years inthe 1960s. Jobs in particular has talked openly about thebenefits of his experiences with LSD. He told a reporterfrom the New York Times that taking LSD was “one ofthe two or three most important things I have donein my life.”

As an early developer for cisco Systems, MAPSsupporter Kevin Herbert developed software that nowruns on millions of Internet routers worldwide, and hewas largely inspired by his use of psychedelics. Kevin joinsus in this issue to share some of his insights into howtechnological innovation can be fueled by psychedelicmind states. Another computer revolutionary whoconsiders psychedelics in a positive light is MAPS Boardof Director John Gilmore, who was the fifth employeeat Sun Microsystems, and who has also contributedsubstantial funding to psychedelic research—in additionto promoting free software, increasing the availability ofdata encryption programs to protect personal privacy,encouraging freedom of information, creating internetsecurity, and reforming drug policy.

Other computer pioneers, programmers andsoftware developers who were positively influenced bypsychedelics include Mitch Kapor, one of the founders of

the software companies Lotus and On Technology, MarkPesce, a computer programer who claims to have beeninspired by an LSD trip to produce Virtual Reality Model-ing Language, and Bob Wallace, the ninth Microsoftemployee who coined the term “shareware,” created theword processing program PC-Write, and founded thesoftware company Quicksoft. Wallace contributedsubstantial funding to psychedelic research organiza-tions—including MAPS—before his untimely death in2003. Reliable sources have informed me that there aremany more highly influential software designers who—due to the current political climate—don’t want theiruse of psychedelics to become public knowledge.

Mathematician RalphAbraham—who wrote thearticle in this issue aboutcomputers, mathematics, andpsychedelics—tells a greatstory about a computercolumnist from the SanFrancisco Chronicle who didn’tbelieve the claim made by awriter for G.Q. magazine thatmuch of the computer industrywas inspired and designed bypeople who have been influ-enced by psychedelics. So thisreporter attended a Siggraphconvention—an annualconference for computergraphic artists—and polledimportant professionals of thecomputer graphic field—180

of whom answered yes to the question, “Do you takepsychedelics, and is this important to your work?”

However, to people who have used psychedelics thisconnection appears obvious. Anyone who has ever had anexperience with LSD will instantly recognize that com-puter graphic morphing techniques, for example, wereobviously inspired by the way that people’s faces appear tosomeone under the influence of the psychedelic. Trippycomputer software graphics appeal to many young peoplewho use psychedelics, and this encourages an intimaterelationship between technology and their psychedelicexperiences. For example, a college student in Texas wroteme saying, “The MAC visualizer on iTunes makes music awhole other experience, even not on acid. But whenyou’re tripping, it takes you inside it. We think—thissoftware was made for trippin’ college kids!”

However, not everyone agrees that psychedelicsenhance technical design abilities. When I asked roboticsexpert Hans Moravec (whose mind-expanding booksabout the future of technology tend to appeal to readerswho have experimented with psychedelics) ifpsychedelics played any role in the development of hisideas about technology, he replied, “No! I was college age

Since psychedelics

affect all aspects

of the human mind,

they affect

every aspect of

human culture.


in the 1960s (and grad school in the 1970s), and quiteaware of the fads. I found the idea of mind-altering drugsabout as attractive as the idea of using woodshop tools tomechanically alter my brain...I thought, my brain is acomplicated, intricate piece of machinery, and thereare big things I hope to do with it. No way I want itscrambled! Fine machinery: handle very cautiously.For those reasons, I never took up coffee, alcohol oranything stronger.”

Although not everyone agrees about the reputedabilities of psychedelics to enhance technological creativ-ity (although there is scientific evidence that psychedelicsenhance creativity in general), it might be noteworthy tothis discussion to point out thataround a hundred years ago thephysicist Lord Kelvin declaredthat “X-rays are a fraud,” and inGalileo’s time the Pope refusedto look through his telescope. Itseems that more than a fewpeople have difficulty acceptingaspects of reality that don’t fitinto their belief systems, andthis affects their ability to beobjective. There appears to be asharp division among people asto whether or not psychedelicsenhance creativity, and thisdivision often seems to correlatewith whether or not these samepeople have actually triedpsychedelics themselves.

To explore these questions further, and to contem-plate the fascinating interplay between technology andpsychedelics, we gathered together an exceptional groupof contributors for this special edition of the MAPSBulletin. Penn State Science Technologyand Society professor, and author of Ecodelics, LSDNA, andTechnoscience, Richard Doyle, Ph.D. joins us to share hisinsights and ideas about psychedelics and the evolutionof information technologies.

Educational psychologist Thomas Roberts, Ph.D.—who has been teaching a class on the psychedelicmindview at Northern Illinois University since 1982—shares with us his ideas about the evolution of “psycho-technologies.” Computer graphic artist Brummbaer writesabout how different acoustic technologies were developedby musicians and sound engineers using psychedelics, andhow his own experience with ketamine inspired newcomputer graphic techniques.The Future of Psychedelics & Technology

A few of the contributors in the Bulletin point outthat psychedelics are a form of technology; a tool fortuning into different states of consciousness in thebrain—and like all forms of technology, they mayeventually become obsolete.

According to technology theorist and inventor RayKurzweil, our developments in technological design areincreasing exponentially, and that advances in artificialintelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, virtualreality, and robotics will soon lead to a rapid explosion oftechnological growth and a future of unprecedentedmarvels—where computers exceed human intelligence,and biology and technology merge indistinguishably fromone another. All of our present-day psychedelics mayappear crude, overly general, and too unpredictable andnonspecific for this superior race of super-beings. It willcertainly be interesting to see what sort of chemical keysthey will develop in these far-flung futures, and what sort

of technological wonders theywill in turn inspire.

Already, technologieshave been built that inducealtered states of consciousnessthrough electrical stimula-tion, light and soundbrainwave entrainment, andmagnetic fields. These newtechnologies, although stillin their early development,may someday lead to devicesthat reliably and safelybestow a full-blown psyche-delic experience upon theuser, and perhaps differentfactors could be modulated tocreate very specific typesof experiences.

A Tribute to Laura Huxley

Also featured in this special edition of the MAPSBulletin are tributes to writer and psychedelic investigatorLaura Archera Huxley, who died of cancer at the age of 96on December 13th, 2007. Laura is best known for hermemoir, This Timeless Moment, about her husband AldousHuxley’s final struggles with cancer, and how she assistedhim during his dying process by administering LSD at hisrequest. Laura‘s work was a big inspiration to many of usin the psychedelic community and we will miss her wise,noble, and graceful spirit.

Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM)cofounder Valerie Leveroni Corral joins us to write aboutLaura’s life, and her experiences with Laura as she wasdying. Big Sur poet and painter Carolyn Mary Kleefeld(who did the spectacular cover art for this Bulletin,“Dionysian Splendor”), shares a farewell message andpoem for Laura, and she also did the painting of “LauraHuxley’s Departure” on the inside back cover. The backcover photo of Laura Huxley was done by Dean Chamber-lain, and the other mind-expanding art in the Bulletinwas done by Brummbaer and Sara Huntley. •

The cyberculture of the

Eighties and Nineties

has mushroomed into

the global internet

culture that pervades

virtually everyone’s

lives today.


2. Math in the 1960s

One day I was sitting in my officewith my secretary, Nina, when there was aknock on the door. Nina said, “This is afriend of a friend of mine, who wants tointerview you.” I was very busy with thetelephone and the correspondence, so hecame inside and I answered his questionswithout thinking. After a month or so,when a photographer arrived, I began torealize that I had given an interview forGentleman’s Quarterly (GQ) magazine. Icalled my children and asked them whatwas GQ magazine. They live in Hollywoodand know about such things. I was in Italywhen the magazine finally arrived on thestands. I was very proud, in spite of mystyle of dress, that I had been the first onein our circle of family and friends toactually be photographed for GQ.

But I was shocked in Firenze to openthe first page of the magazine, and see mypicture occupying a large part of the firstpage, with the table of contents, with theheading: “Abraham sells drugs to math-ematicians.” There were some other

Mathematics and the Psychedelic Revolution

1. Introduction

In 1972 I met Terence McKenna and we became close friends. Tenyears later we were joined by Rupert Sheldrake in a special triadicbond. We developed a habit of conversing on common interestsin a style that evolved into a form we called a “trialogue,” andeventually we performed public trialogues. These occurred spo-radically from 1989 until 1996. The Esalen Institute was veryhospitable and helped us organize and record these trialogueevents, which led to our two volumes of published trialogues.In a typical trialogue, one of us would lead off with a triggermonologue of fifteen minutes or so. My conversation starterfor one of our trialogues in 1996 is the basis of the next section,on my supposed revolutionary role in the psychedelic historyof mathematics in the 1960s, and the origin of chaos theory.

insulting things in the interview, that asfar as I can remember, were largely fiction.I didn’t mention it to anybody when Icame back to California, and was verypleased that nobody mentioned it. Nobodyhad noticed. There were one or two phonecalls, and I realized that nobody after allreads GQ. If they do look at the pictures,they overlooked mine. I was safe after allat this dangerous pass.

Suddenly, my peace was disturbedonce again by a hundred phone calls in asingle day asking what did I think of thearticle about me in the San FranciscoExaminer, or the San Jose Mercury News,and so on. All the embers in the fire left byGQ had flamed up again in the pen of ajournalist. A woman who writes a com-puter column for the San Francisco Exam-iner had received in her mail box a copy ofthe Gentleman’s Quarterly article,in which Timothy Leary was quoted assaying, “The Japanese go to Burma forteak, and they go to California for noveltyand creativity. Everybody knows thatCalifornia has this resource thanks to

Ralph Abraham, Ph.D.Professor of MathematicsUniversity of Californiaat Santa [email protected]

Recollections of the impact of the psychedelic revolution onthe history of mathematics and my personal story.

Ralph Abraham, Ph.D.

It all began

in 1967

when I was

a professor of

mathematics

at Princeton, and

one of my students

turned me on

to LSD.


psychedelics.” Then the article quoted meas the supplier for the scientific renais-sance in the 1960s.

This columnist didn’t believe whatwas asserted by Timothy Leary and othersin the GQ article, that the computerrevolution and the computer graphicinnovations of California had been builtupon a psychedelic foundation. She set outto prove this story false. She went toSiggraph, the largest gathering of com-puter graphic professionals in the world,where annually somewhere in the UnitedStates 30,000 who are vitally involved inthe computer revolution gather. Shethought she would set this heresy to restby conducting a sample survey, beginningher interviews at the airport the minuteshe stepped off the plane. By the time shegot back to her desk in San Francisco she’dtalked to 180 important professionals ofthe computer graphic field, all of whomanswered yes to the question, “Do you takepsychedelics, and is this important in yourwork?” Her column, finally syndicated in anumber of newspapers again, unfortu-nately, or kindly, remembered me.

Shortly after this second incident inmy story, I was in Hollyhock, the Esalen ofthe far north, on Cortes Island in BritishColumbia, with Rupert and other friends,and I had a kind of psychotic break in thenight. I couldn’t sleep and was consumedwith a paranoid fantasy about this outageand what it would mean in my futurecareer, the police at my door and so on. Iknew that my fears had blown up unnec-essarily, but I needed someone to talk to.The person I knew best there was Rupert.And he was very busy in counsel withvarious friends, but eventually I tookRupert aside and confided to him thissecret, and all my fears. His response,within a day or two, was to repeat thestory to everybody in Canada, assuring methat it’s good to be outed. I tried thinkingpositively about this episode, but when Icame home still felt nervous about it andsaid “no” to many interviews from ABCNews, and the United Nations, and otherpeople who called to check out thissignificant story. I did not then rise to theoccasion, and so I’ve decided today, bypopular request, to tell the truth.

It all began in 1967 when I was aprofessor of mathematics at Princeton, and

one of my students turned me on to LSD.That led to my moving to California a yearlater, and meeting at UC Santa Cruz achemistry graduate student who wasdoing his Ph.D. thesis on the synthesis ofDMT. He and I smoked up a large bottle ofDMT in 1969, and that resulted in a kindof secret resolve, which swerved my careertoward a search for the connectionsbetween mathematics and the experienceof the logos, or what Terence calls “thetranscendent other.” This is a hyper-dimensional space full of meaning andwisdom and beauty, which feels more realthan ordinary reality, and to which wehave returned many times over the years,for instruction and pleasure. In the courseof the next twenty years there werevarious steps I took to explore the connec-tion between mathematics and the logos.

About the time that chaos theory wasdiscovered by the scientific community,and the chaos revolution began in 1978, Iapprenticed myself to a neurophysiologistand tried to construct brain models madeout of the basic objects of chaos theory. Ibuilt a vibrating fluid machine to visualizevibrations in transparent media, because Ifelt on the basis of direct experience thatthe Hindu metaphor of vibrations wasimportant and valuable. I felt that wecould learn more about consciousness,communication, resonance, and theemergence of form and pattern in thephysical, biological, social and intellectualworlds, through actually watchingvibrations in transparent media ordinarilyinvisible, and making them visible. I wasinspired by Hans Jenny, an amateurscientist in Switzerland, a follower ofRudolf Steiner, who had built an inge-nious gadget for rendering patterns intransparent fluids visible.

About this time we discoveredcomputer graphics in Santa Cruz, whenthe first affordable computer graphicterminals had appeared on the market. Istarted a project of teaching mathematicswith computer graphics, and eventuallytried to simulate the mathematical modelsfor neurophysiology and for vibratingfluids, in computer programs with com-puter graphic displays. In this way evolveda new class of mathematical models calledCDs, cellular dynamata. They are anespecially appropriate mathematical object

By the time

she got back

to her desk in

San Francisco

she’d talked to 180

important professionals

of the computer graphic

field, all of whom

answered yes

to the question,

“Do you take

psychedelics,

and is this important

in your work?”


for modeling and trying to understand thebrain, the mind, the visionary experienceand so on. At the same time other math-ematicians, some of whom may have beenrecipients of my gifts in the 1960s, begantheir own experiments with computergraphics in different places, and began tomake films.

Eventually, we were able to constructmachines in Santa Cruz which couldsimulate these mathematical models I callCDs at a reasonable speed, first slowly, andthen faster and faster. And in 1989, I had afantastic experience at the NASA GoddardSpace Flight Center in Maryland, where Iwas given access to, at that time, theworld’s fastest super computer, the MPP,the Massively Parallel Processor. My CDmodel for the visual cortex had beenprogrammed into this machine by the onlyperson able to program it, and I wasinvited to come and view the result.Looking at the color screen of this supercomputer was like looking through thewindow at the future, and seeing anexcellent memory of a DMT vision, notonly proceeding apace on the screen, butalso going about 100 times faster than ahuman experience. Under the control ofknobs which I could turn at the terminal,we immediately recorded a video, whichlasts for 10 minutes. It was in 1989 that Itook my first look through this window.

To sum up my story, there is first ofall, a 20-year evolution from my first DMTvision in 1969, to my experience with theMassively Parallel Processor vision in1989. Following this 20-year evolution,and the recording of the video, came thestory with GQ and the interviews atSiggraph in the San Francisco Examiner thatessentially pose the question, “Have

psychedelics had an influence in theevolution of science, mathematics, thecomputer revolution, computer graphics,and so on?’

Another event, in 1990, followed thepublication of a paper in the InternationalJournal of Bifurcations and Chaos, whenan interesting article appeared in themonthly notices of the American Math-ematical Society, the largest union ofresearch mathematicians in the world. Thearticle totally redefined mathematics,dropping numbers and geometrical spacesas relics of history, and adopting a newdefinition of mathematics as the studyof space/time patterns. Mathematics hasbeen reborn, and this rebirth is an out-come of both the computer revolution andthe psychedelic revolution which tookplace concurrently, concomitantly,cooperatively, in the 1960s. Redefiningthis material as an art medium, I gave aconcert, played in real time with a genuinesuper computer, in October, 1992, in theCathedral of Saint John the Divine, thelargest Gothic cathedral in the world, inNew York City.3. Conclusion

There is no doubt that the psyche-delic revolution in the 1960s had aprofound effect on the history of comput-ers and computer graphics, and of math-ematics, especially the birth of post-modern maths such as chaos theoryand fractal geometry. This I witnessedpersonally. The effect on my own history,viewed now in four decades of retrospect,was a catastrophic shift from abstractpure math to a more experimental andapplied study of vibrations and forms,which continues to this day. •

I did not then

rise to the occasion,

and so I’ve decided

today, by popular

request, to

tell the truth.


The grand convergence of psychedelics and technologycame in the summer of 1998. I was a grad student at RPIin communication and rhetoric, fully indoctrinated in(mostly French) critical theory, semiotics, new mediatheory, and the history of communication technology.My task was to clarify my topic—the idea of a visuallanguage—for a Ph.D. proposal. Instead of starting mybibliography, or some other sensible activity that wouldcontribute to my academic progress, I began writing anovel, The Maze Game.

The fictional world had estab-lished itself well enough that Icould enter it, look around, and askquestions of the characters. I askedfor the details of how the game thatis central to the novel was played.The answer arrived as a high-speed“download”—a blast of informationconcerning a visual language, Glide.I got the whole thing in a timelessinstant: game, rules, architecture ofthe playing field, the 27 glyphs,how they behave as a visual lan-guage, and the myth of origin of thelanguage. The game was played inmazes made of the visual language,Glide, taught to the characters bythe hallucinogenic blue waterlily.

Glide presented itself in thestory-world as an alien language.The glyphs of the language formedthe patterns and physical structureson which the game was played. As the plot unfolded, itbecame evident that the Glide language was intricatelyinvolved at every level of the story: as the game mazearchitecture; as a secret code; as a literature. The forms ofthe language, especially that the signs moved andmorphed, enabled new modalities of cognition.

When summer of 1998 was over, I did not have avisual language topic framed in terms of a semiotic or newmedia theory. I had instead a model of a gesturing,transforming linguistic system, suggesting, in its grammarand syntax, that new forms of writing, of psychedelicorigin, enabled by the capability of the computer toanimate signs and symbols, could offer novel ways ofexpressing meaning. The glyphs, laid out statically, on atwo-dimensional surface (like all our natural languagewritten forms) formed webby mazes. Animated, theglyphs transform, linking and unlinking with each other.A Glide maze seemed like a new kind of circuit operating

with many points of change and connection, an abstrac-tion of the organic, constantly shifting circuitry of thebrain through which electrical and chemical signals pulse,where myriads of connections are formed and broken incomplex patterns, constructing and projecting a worldaround and inside us.

In the The Maze Game, the characters undergo aninitiation, where they find their focus, their uniquepurpose in life, by ingesting the sacrament of the psyche-delic Lily, invoking its guidance, and making their way

through a Glide maze. Taking a cuefrom the Glides, who, in thenarrative, were taught the Glidelanguage while under the influenceof the Lily, I made a consequentialdecision—to explore the languagemore deeply, I would follow theGlide’s path into the maze, ingest-ing a psychedelic sacrament insearch of knowledge about the mazeitself. At this point, I became acharacter in my own story, while ina reciprocal (or self-reflexive) move,Glide lifted itself out of the storyworld to be considered and devel-oped in “real life.” I had written astory, and the story was nowwriting me. I became a scribe and axenolinguist, deciphering a lan-guage from the ancient future.

A series of software applica-tions emerged from this process of

psychedelic self-exploration. First, the glyphs wereanimated. The Collabyrinth, an interactive glyph editor,was programmed for combining, animating, and translat-ing glyph formations.

Next was the Glide Oracle [www.academy.rpi.edu/glide], which involved the translation of approximately1100 glyph pairs, and 729 glyph transformations. Thesetranslations were useful in exposing the archetypal andpoetic dimensions of the language. It also taught me thatfuture efforts to understanding Glide needed to moveaway from natural language which provided too con-stricted a reducing valve on “language at large,” to re-toolHuxley’s metaphor.

The language asked to be confronted on its ownterms. What needed to be translated was not the language,but the brain/mind, to adapt to language constructed ondifferent sensory ratios. Whether such rewiring of ourplastic neurons is possible by exposure to new forms of

How I Became a XenolinguistDiana Reed Slattery

Diana Reed Slattery,Ph.D. candidate

[email protected]


language, is purely speculative, but would make aninteresting scientific investigation.

The next application, LiveGlide, involved the abilityto write in three dimensions interactively with continu-ously moving forms.LiveGlide interface.

States of extended perception were used in theconception, design, and implementation of LiveGlidesoftware, in practice and performance, and in learninghow to read what I was writing. Primarily, psychedelicsprovided the means to emerge from thecocoon of natural language into what couldbe understood as both a pre-linguistic stateof direct apperception of the world aroundand inside us, and as a post-linguistic (post-natural language) realm of evolutionaryforms of language, concomitant with thesense of consciousness expanded into anovel, if temporary, evolutionary state.

Glide language became, with practice, adirect readout of the process of the commu-nication with the Other. The fluidlyshifting state of the relationship, the moods,the qualities of perception and attention,the steadiness of awareness is palpablewhen I read the writing. As a deliberateexperiment in neural plasticity, trying torewire the brain-mind from the inside out,across multiple states of reality, I launchedinto ontological engineering.

Psychedelics can transport one beyondthe veil of natural language, into the un-speakable. This unspeakability is oftendescribed as a communication deficit, wherenatural language is viewed as insufficient toconvey the realities of the psychedelicsphere. I view this “bug” as a “feature,” an opportunityto become aware of the other channels of communication,both those available at baseline, such as body language,and those opened or enhanced in the psychedelicexperience.

When I have folded the maps of natural language, themindbogglingly novel territory of the psychedelic sphereshines forth, nameless, but not unknowable. LiveGlidebecomes for me a kind of biomechanical living language,algorithmic in its means, but moved and changed entirelyby my own human gestures on the interface, playing overone hundred parameters of expressive possibilities, a vastcombinatorial phase space to play in. And in turn, I’mplayed by… This sense of the vastness of possibility, whenexperienced under conditions of extended perception andcognition, parallels the vastness and complexity ofreceptor space, the chemical architecture of consciousness,as studied by Tom Ray [http://life.ou.edu/pubs/Tuc-son04/ ]

In the psychedelic sphere, epistemology’s an extreme

sport. I use LiveGlide as a noetic practice. I am learningabout knowing, but the categories of Knower and Known,Self and Other, taken for granted in our baseline (naturallanguage) grammar of first and third persons, can radicallyreconfigure themselves in extended, merged, or blendedstates of being. Knowing can be re-formed to include notonly linguistic knowledge, and gut-level feelings ofcertainty, but knowing by doing, and knowing by beingwhere I know you and you know me because we have inan experiential sense become each other. At all mind-states, the questions arise: Who writes? Who reads?

Who understands? What, for that matter,is a who? Then come the magical momentswhen communication shades into commun-ion, when Self and Other, and reading andwriting become one, in a fluid dance oftransformation.

The question of the Other’s ontologicalstatus—is this truly an Other, outside ofmyself, or is the Other an unrecognizedportion of myself, so strange, so much morethan what I think of as my Self at baseline,so wholly unexpected and so endowed withnovelty that I perceive it as alien—is moot.Either interpretation leads to conclusionsthat require considerable re-drawing of themaps of human nature and experience.With these combined technologies—LiveGlide, a language whose writing ismade possible by the CPU, and psychophar-macology that brings both the Other andnew linguistic phenomena into view—acall is placed, across the chasm betweenrealities; a response comes with consider-able joy that contact has been made. I dancetoward an unspeakable edge, willing to be

transformed by the unknowable into the unknown.As to my own research agenda with LiveGlide, I

would like to collaborate with a neuroscientist in buildinga device that would take a subset of my own brain signals,and map them to various parameters of LiveGlide. Ibelieve this could provide a more aesthetic visualizationwith which to monitor and record the changes occurringin brain states, link them to internal states, and, in abiofeedback loop, potentially develop the ability to movein and out of different brain states. This would be particu-larly interesting in studying changes throughout thetrajectory of a psychedelic experience, from onset, throughpeak, and back to baseline. The LiveGlide software is builtto take generic MIDI signals from any source. The displaytechnology and control mapping interface is already built;what is needed is a partnership with neuroscientificexpertise. •

More on Glide, LiveGlide, and Xenolinguistics canbe found at: http://mazerunner.wordpress.com andhttp://www.academy.rpi.edu/glide

At this point,

I became

a character

in my own story…

I had written a

story, and the story

was now

writing me.”


The Internet has been the single mostsignificant connection I have to thepsychedelic culture at large. From myinception as a naive, recreationalpsychonaut, the resources of the Webhave cultivated a refined experience ofsynchronicity and expansion of conscious-ness. From social networking with otherlike-minded individuals, and researchingthe scientific and cultural histories ofvarious chemical compounds, to morephilosophical endeavors, my understand-ing of the psychedelic phenomenon wouldnot be so enriched without the aid oftechnology. Though where I live is a morecondensed sample of the psychedeliccommunity at large, nationally andworldwide we are a spread out group, andthe current social climate doesn’t allow foropen communication regarding obscureand taboo subjects—such as the use ofpsychedelics.

The computer revolution has trulycreated an extension of external reality(much as psychedelics do for innerreality). File sharing networks havespawned viewer-created content as analternative source of culture, availableoutside the mass media. This has become acatalyst through which we have been ableto more openly network as a community.The Internet is a vast, highly specialized,and intangible venue that allows freedomof speech and information to flow moreeasily because it bypasses limitations suchas location, social creed, race and religion.It would only make sense that this invalu-able virtual terrain would be the groundsfor broadening the psychedelic commu-nity. All areas of expression—visionaryart, experimental music, films, pod-casts,interactive forums, blogs, event organiza-tion, chemistry, history, archival literature,and philosophy—are all tied together intothis single network available to those whoseek it.

There are several types of socialnetworking and online communities—such as Erowid.org, Deviantart.com,Deoxy.org, Tribe.net, and

Matrixmasters.com—that provide a placefor individuals to cross-reference experi-ences, opinions, knowledge, and creativecommons. Not long ago, vital informationregarding psychedelics was scarce, oftentransmuted from person to person. Nowthat we have a digital medium, thisknowledge can be pooled into massivevirtual archives. Under the scrutiny ofpeer-editing, people can make moreeducated decisions for themselves regard-ing their interactions with psychedelics.

Electronic music has played a signifi-cant role in my personal psychedelicexperiences. It has acted as a guidethrough that often bewildering landscape,reinforcing the intent of the trip; openedvistas of inspiration and awakened myauditory senses to new realms of discov-ery. Modern electronic music was largelyinspired by the use of psychedelics andnewly created synthetic compounds. Withits repetitive drumming and ambientsoundscapes, it is akin to the ancient toolof shamanism, it’s rhythm echoing theprimal heartbeat. This drumming is alsoused now to induce trance and ecstaticstates of consciousness. The resurgence ofthis archaic character is largely due to thecreation of electronic music. Being thatWestern culture had long been separatedfrom the use of entheogenic plants, it isfitting that these plants and newly createdcompounds would inspire the return ofthese timeless qualities in music.

Computer animated visual imageryfurther propels and enhances the trance-like psychedelic state. Myriads of fantasticfractals, and digital mandalas envelop themind in a cocoon of mirrors reflectinginner worlds. Along with cascadingmelodies, they blend the boundaries ofperceived frequencies, slipping the psycheinto synaesthesia. Once while I was atsuch an electronic music event, the videodisplay included a montage of goldenspirals in nature. Nautilus shells, hurri-canes, and galaxies all swirled in unison.Its juxtaposition of imagery shot at rapid-fire succession into the audience’s visual

Sara HuntleyVisual artist

www.myspace.com/[email protected]

Networking with the Psychedelic CommunitySara Huntley

Not long ago,

vital information

regarding psychedelics

was scarce…

Now that we have

a digital medium,

this knowledge

can be pooled

into massive

virtual archives.


cortex and it was one most powerfulmoments of cinema I’ve ever experienced.It hypnotized my mind with the beauty ofgeometry. It was brilliantly timed with themusic and propelled my brain into theMilky Way.

For me, personally, this nonlinearmode of thought has brought togetherfragments of information to paint anincredibly visceral portrait of our world, ofwhat our technologies have done to theenvironment. Technology was once hailedas the savior of humanity, a means of

Modern electronic music… With its repetitive drumming and

ambient soundscapes… is akin to the ancient tool of shamanism,

it‘s rhythm echoing the primal heartbeat.

attaining a better life, yet in the hands ofgreedy corrupt people technology hassown the seeds of our own destruction.

To paraphrase Einstein, our technolo-gies were created at a limited level ofawareness. The disharmonies of thattechnology in the environment will beproportional to the lack of awareness. Itwill take a new level of awareness torecognize this disharmony and to createmore efficient means of achieving equilib-rium. I think that this idea is typically toolarge to be processed on a personal level bymost people. Though I thought I had beenrelatively aware before, after the wake ofthis experience the stark reality of thesituation became inescapably urgent. Thisrealization in itself is just one step inredefining the individual in relationshipto the collective and the environment.

Leaps of human understanding havecompletely changed the way we seeourselves in the cosmos. Our minds nowpeer into realms of micro and macroperception, and exchange information andculture at a dizzying rate all across theworld. This experience is unique to ourposition in human history. Growing up insuch a technological culture, alternativelynavigating one’s existence betweenauthentic and virtual realities, is a noveland strange path for our and futuregenerations to take on. Humans have formillennia used technology in the serviceof social identity. For me, personally,psychedelics have opened a deeperunderstanding of this new multifacetedtechno/spiritual/natural relationship wehave with the global network.

Technology serves a human desire offulfilling the imagination, of creatingmagic by controlling science. Psychedelicsalso serve a human desire of exploringdreams and musing over the mystery thatis the nature of reality. These two facetsreflect dualism and a commonality; theyboth promise us new worlds. •

“Event Horizon”

by Sara Huntley & Jordan Price


Practitioners of indigenous medicine have been perse-cuted throughout the entirety of our written history. Thishas particularly been the case for Europe and her formercolonies. Europe, however, is not unique in its persecutionof indigenous practices, like the use of entheogens. Evenas early as the Song dynasty in China, 960 to 1279 AD,imperial edicts were printed and distributed condemningcertain Buddhist sects, such as the White Lotus and hermany incarnations, for “gathering at night, dispersing atdawn, wherein men and women intermingled freely, atevegetables and served devils.” The punishments even thenwere severe and included fines, banishment and evendeath.

Prior to prohibition in the United States it was quiteeasy and socially acceptable to obtain a vast array ofnatural psychoactive substances. For the past sixty toseventy years, however, it has been quitedifficult to obtain natural plant psychoac-tive chemicals without a prescription.Even on the ‘street’ it is easier to obtainheroin than opium which is virtuallynonexistent in this country.

The internet has changed this statusdramatically. By taking advantage of legal-loopholes, Americans are now able topurchase virtually any natural psychoac-tive or at least the means for productionand preparation. Examples include: thecannabis seed trade, psilocybin spores andsyringes, coca leaf tea and extracts, poppypods and seeds, mescaline containing cacti,ayahuasca analogues, seeds containingergot alkaloids, absinthe kits, etc. The list goes on and on.The only exceptions that I could find were peyote andiboga.

This market is a potentially valuable resource for acountry which has fifty million uninsured citizens. Withsome guts, a credit card, a mailbox and a little educationfrom sites like erowid.org, one is empowered to the samedegree if not higher than those medical physicians stillchoosing to practice amidst this social medical crisis.Natural online products can also serve as a very potentalternative to the toxic FDA-approved pharmaceuticals,whose adverse effects account for the third to fourthleading cause of death in this country.

Another technological innovation which cannot beignored is that of using glass and ceramic heating ele-ments for vaporization of plant products instead ofsmoking. Vaporization is an important way of ingestingpotentially toxic compounds without the severity and

danger of direct gastrointestinal ingestion. Research inthis area may be the floodgates which can be released towash away the social stigma associated with smoking byproviding a safer more effective alternative.Personal Reflection

I have been researching entheogens online since1996, but my genuine intimate experience occurred inJanuary of 2005. I had purchased lotus and water-lilyextracts upon learning that their flavonoid content andcirculatory stimulating properties even rivaled gingko. Asa result of my purchase being over fifty dollars, I was ableto choose a free sample of some of their products. I chosethe salvia divinorum enhanced leaf extract. I was familiarwith salvia, had read about it, and had even tried smokingthe leaf. I was rather skeptical of the effects reportedonline claiming that it had to be done in a dark environ-

ment and that the slightest distractionwould end the experience. I abruptlyfound out that this was not the case at all.

Salvia has given me and continues togive me the most introspective experi-ences of my life and has sparked a renewedsense of wonder and amazement of themystical intricacy of this existence. Noteven my ‘heroic’ doses of indole alkaloidscan compare to the intense humilitywhich this plant specifically initiates. As aresult, salvia has become my key ally andis most definitely a child of this techno-logical age. It has gone unnoticed by theworld, with the exception of the Mazatecof Mexico. But, even the Mazatec do not

utilize the power of pyrolizing or vaporizing this plant.This technique for consuming salvia would not have beenpopularized had it not been for the online community, inparticular, Daniel Siebert of sagewisdom.org.

I would personally like to see MAPS take more of aninterest in salvia and take advantage of this precious timein which it is still legal to conduct more research with lessrestrictions than researching schedule one drugs likemarijuana, psilocybin, and LSD. Outside of its meditativeproperties there exist specific pain-relieving, psychothera-peutic, and probable antimicrobial and antiviral proper-ties, which have been reported but not adequately re-searched. If salvia gets further restricted or placed inschedule one, Great Spirit forbid, this research may bedelayed for years. The opportunity to research and utilizethis most powerful plant, the most potent naturallyoccurring substance in the known world, exists nowand must be taken advantage of. •

Technology and the Entheogenic Revolution

Jeff PappasEthnobotanical Researcher

www.myspace.com/shennong7

Jeff Pappas


“Instructions emphasized that the experience could bedirected as desired. Subjects were told that they would notexperience difficulty with such distractions as visions, involve-ment with personal problems, and so on.” “Psychedelic Agents inCreative Problem Solving”, Willis Harman et al., 1966 —

Before its possession became a criminal offense in theUnited States, the psychedelic compound LSD-25 wasgiven to engineers and designers to help break “creativelogjams” and promote innovation in the Cold War UnitedStates. In the late 1950’s and early1960’s, for example, Stanfordengineer Myron Stolaroff of theAmpex Corporation (inventor of theVideo Tape Recorder) studied theeffects of LSD on engineers, and theresult was a growing body of litera-ture and data on psychedelic regi-mens and their effects on technicalinnovation.

These regimens included preciseand intensive recipes for psychedelicexperience such as the epigraphabove – although essentially inef-fable, psychedelic experience wastreated as fundamentally andnecessarily ‘’programmable’’ throughcollective human attention. In aforthcoming book, I offer an evolutionary and ecologicalframework for comprehending and evaluating recentclaims by innovators such as Mitch Kapor, Mark Pesce,and Kary Mullis that psychedelics played an integral rolein the invention of their breakthrough informationtechnologies. Given the importance of programming topsychedelic experience, the book argues that psychedelicadjuncts were useful to engineers and scientists lessbecause they “expanded” consciousness than because theytrained subjects in practices of focused attention, enablingthe perception of forms embedded within larger scalestructures, the “pattern that connects”(Bateson) perhapsmeasured in the Witken Embedded Figure tests, a percep-tual assay on which psychonauts seem to have excelled.One More Time With Feeling?!

“Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” Revisited

The biological science of attention could be said to beborn in Charles Darwin’s model of sexual selection, whereDarwin studied the “information technologies” (such as apeacock feather, or human speech) through whichorganisms signal sexual difference and orient attentiontoward likely reproductive and survival success. This

evolutionary search for attention—the original “flowerpower”, as flowering plants lured insects with theirblossoms—acts through what the biologist V.I. Vernadksylater dubbed the “noösphere”. While the biosphereirreversibly and undeniably altered the lithosphere fromwhich it emerged, the noösphere transforms the biospherevia the gathering and application of attention by allorganisms. While many contemporary designers andengineers seek to “evolve” designs and programs throughevolutionary processes, an expanded model of evolution

integrating sexual selection and itsattention economy, the noösphere—not to mention psychedelics—islikely to be even more fruitful for thedevelopment, integration andtransformation of informationtechnologies.

Indeed, the famous but oftmisunderstood mantra “Turn on,Tune In, Drop Out” suggested that intheir own way, psychedelics ‘’are’’information technologies for honingand focusing the attention. AsStolaroff put it many years after theoriginal studies, reflecting on the useof low doses of psychedelics: … it iseasier to focus attention under theirinfluence, which permits developing the

attributes for good meditation practice. As one develops profi-ciency in entering the desired state, it is found that the advan-tage of one compound over another diminishes. The appropriatedose (found by experiment—generally equivalent to 25-50micrograms of LSD) of most any long-acting psychedelic ishelpful.

http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-ADM/stolar.htm

The ancient discipline of rhetoric—the sometimesshamanic practice of learning and teaching eloquence,persuasion, healing and information architecture bypracticing and revealing the choices of expression orinterpretation open to any given composer, poet, viewer,listener, singer, patient or reader using what Aristotlecalled “all available means”—has also always been adiscipline for managing and modulating attention.Mantra—the rhythmic repetition of words, meaningful ornot, in order to capture or steer the attention—areperhaps the simplest and yet most powerful techniques inthe rhetorical traditions of our planet, so in order to sharewith you my thoughts on how we might best focus ourattention in the midst of what hints at a renaissance of

Richard Doyle, Ph.D.

Penn State [email protected]

Psychedelics and the Evolution of Information Technologies

Richard Doyle, Ph.D.

Just Say Yes to the Noösphere!


psychedelic research fostered by organizations such asMAPS, I want to begin with a rhetorical analysis of amantra to see how it might, like the epigraph above, shapeand reshape psychedelic experience.TURN ON

This problem of attention tuning is an old one, hackedwith practices of mantra in the Buddhist tradition, theeloquence and song of Mazatec curandera Maria Sabina,and the icaros of Upper Amazonian ayhuascera wellbefore anybody thought to synch The Wizard of Oz withDark Side of the Moon. Why did modern psychonauts, inthe thick of the Cold War and, evolutionarily speaking,barely out of the trees, so favor this language of the “turnon” for all things psychedelic? The favorite analogy for thenovelty and seemingly infinite potential of psychedelicexperience was a machinic one: if psychedelic experiencerevealed itself to be extremely programmable, somepsychonauts scripted themselves asinformational machines both digitaland analog open to yet furtherprogramming, what Leary comparedto the practically infinite “glass beadgame” found in Herman Hesse’s novelof the same name. For John Lilly this“turning on” meant “turning off” thesensory world in a flotation tank inorder to “turn on”, program andmetaprogram the humanbiocomputer. “Turn on” was digital,announcing a discrete state of “on” or“off.” So Timothy Leary’s oft quotedbut perhaps misunderstood mantra begins with anexperimental mapping of ourselves as Boolean machineswith two states: on and off. Which one would you choose?TUNE IN

Clearly, though, what was “turned on” was more thana machine. “Set and Setting” was a mantra, too, and “Set”includes our glorious status as embodied beings meshedwith a pharmacopeia dynamically connected to our ownminds, and “setting” includes the entire (often cosmic)context of psychedelic experience. For many this meantinvestigating what scholar Jeffrey Kripal has dubbed “theenlightenment of the body”, an investigation of “the bodyand its pleasures.”(Foucault) As the ethnobotanist GiorgioSamorini points out, animal use of psychedelics abounds,particularly in the context of courtship display, wheretechniques of ecstasy (such as birdsong) can be as impor-tant to evolutionary success as fitness for survival. Andhumans are indeed (in part) animals using psychedelics,with big brains that likely evolved, biologist GeoffreyMiller argues, as a “courtship device.” Miller’s analysisechoes Leary’s claim that “intelligence is the ultimateaphrodisiac,” especially when it was deployed in the“programming” of psychedelic experience.

“Tune in” resounds with the suddenly enormousfreedom to metaprogram in pleasure and joy this obvi-

ously interactive “wetware” ( Leary) aspect of humanembodiment that LSD seemed to reveal to many after theoften puritanical 1950’s, which featured the publicburning of sexologist Wilhelm Reich’s writings by theFDA. Microsoft’s old slogan “Where do you want to gotoday?” was perhaps but a simulacrum of this olderexploratory hedonic —and, Kripal argues, tantric—zeal ofcollective psychedelic exploration. ‘Heads”, exploring thecapacities of these seemingly new technologies whichturned on the “13 billion cell computer”, saw and felt theillusion of the officially scientific body/mind objective/subjective separation dissolve blissfully into its tantric,sexually selected evolutionary interface. According toLeary, it was Richard Alpert (now Ram Dass) who toldhim to “face the facts” of life:

It’s true you can access any circuit in your brain and changeyour mind. But it’s time you faced the facts, Timothy. We’returning on the most powerful sexual organ in the universe! The

brain. ( Leary, p. 131)Properly tuned, “turn on” re-

minded psychonauts of the remark-able sexual aspects of the LSD experi-ence, which was now, like the TuringMachine with which it was beingcompared, a place for exploring notonly the space of all possible compu-tations and states of mind, but thespace of all possible ecstasies. AlbertHofmann writes that with LSD “thesensual orgy of sexual intercoursecan undergo unimaginable enhance-

ments” (LSD: My Problem Child, p. 116). Yet so too,Hofmann writes, could LSD lead to “ a purgatory or evento the hell of frightful extinction…” In short, like theengineers with which we begin, LSD needed a script tofocus the attention and tune the experience towards thebest of all of the (practically infinite) set of possibilities forany given “set and setting.” So too can the very name ofthese plants and compounds script our experiences ofthem, as the coinage of “entheogen” by Jonathan Ott,Gordon Wasson, Carl Ruck and Albert Hofmann makesclear. In the vertigo of this “internal freedom”, Learyoffered a programming script toward the highest Bliss ofAnanda: Emptiness.DROP OUT

Complete dedication to the life of worship is our aim,exemplified in the motto “Turn on, Tune In, Drop Out.(Legal Papers, “League of Spiritual Discovery” Leary, 1966)

As a third order cybernetic operation, (a script of ascript of a script of psychedelic experience) “Drop Out”tunes the program toward the most proximate bit of orderavailable to any psychonaut: a “sample” of the self isexamined and then subsequently dropped, released,remixed. Drop Out asked psychedelic experimentalists(“renunciants”) to query any aspect of themselves for anygame other than the divine one, “the life of worship.” This

…psychedelic adjuncts

were useful to engineers

and scientists less because

they expanded consciousness

than because they trained

subjects in practices

of focused attention…


penchant for letting go of accrued habit structure(“Gelassenheit’’ as Eckhart dubbed it) resonated with pastseekers in what Aldous Huxley entitled ( mistakenly afterLeibniz) “the Perennial Philosophy”, and seemed toinitiate a practice of re-imagining self in the light of Self,embedding the part (ego) within a whole (Self) which itrepeated on a different scale.

In this sense psychedelic investigation repeated a longstrand of heterodox science and alchemy which treatedthe refrain of the Corpus Hermeticum “As Above, SoBelow” as the ‘’achievement’’ of alchemical practice as wellas a principle fundamental to it. (Terrence McKenna’srighteous love and enthusiasm for all things fractaled isperhaps another case in point.) DROP OUT was above alla disciplining and focusing of the attention on any givenmoment: Was it divine? So according to Leary’s script,“dropping out” was anything but a “giving up”, but wasinstead an intensification of personal, yes spiritualinformational rhetorical evolutionnecessary to the next scale of thehuman and transhuman adventure,the discovery of what Albert Hoffmancalled “The most worthwhile spiritualbenefit from LSD Experiments...theinextricable intertwining of thephysical and spiritual. “Christ inmatter” ( Teilhard De Chardin)”. ( LSDMy Problem Child, 188) Teilhard, ofcourse was the theologian and anthro-pologist most associated with the nextscalar jump for human consciousness:The noösphere.Turn in, Turn in, I Beseech you

To help each member to use the Sacraments to discoverthe divine within and then express this revelation in anexternal life of harmony, beauty and, particularly, to helpeach member to devote his entire consciousness and all hisbehavior to the glorification of God. Complete dedicationto the life of worship is our aim, exemplified in the motto“Turn on, Tune In, Drop Out.” (Legal Papers, “League ofSpiritual Discovery” Leary, 1966)

As a rhetorical practice, dwindling any non divineaspect of self almost by definition brings out larger scalestructures within which we are embedded, and suddenly,the scale shifts to the ecosystem and our awareness of it—the noösphere. Working with mantra as algorithms,Metzner and Leary’s “Programming the PsychedelicExperience” (www.maps.org/psychedelicreview/n09/n09005met.pdf) offered a linguistic, visual and sonicreorientation of the self through inquiry that let go oflinguistic phenomena as anything but labels for ourbenefit and conscious evolution, echoing that otherinfluential mantra from Count Korzybski, “The Map is notthe territory!”

Letting go of any particular formulation about the self,the incessant inner speech of Who I Habitually Am,

something larger scale came into relief, the Upanishad’s“Tat Tvam Asi”, rendered in Victorian English as “ThouArt That” but perhaps equally well rendered for the 21stcentury as “Thou art that Fractal!” For Leary it was an“inner light” fusing the individual with that multiplicity,“internal life processes”: “In the introverted state, the selfis ecstatically fused with internal life processes (lights,energy waves, bodily events, biological forms, etc.)”

This unification with “life processes” could not havecome at a better time, arriving at the same moment whenscientific models of living systems were overwhelminglyfocused on the molecular scale of life. Understandablyentranced by the discovery of the genetic code and itsprotein messages, researchers sometimes seemed to forgetthe embodied, ecological and often symbiotic scalarcontexts for the evolution and expression of DNA. So toodid LSD itself both strengthen the reductionist biochemi-cal model of mind—you can hack your “13 billion cell

computer” with as little as 50 micro-grams of a molecule - and focuspsychonautical attention on the largerscale structures —”your” body, theecosystem, the cosmos—discoveredthrough the withering of the ego andscripting the daily erasure of the ego’sincessant news broadcasts aboutitself. This “liberation” occurredthrough erasure, the production of a“void.”

Liberation is the nervous systemdevoid of mental-conceptual redun-

dancy. The mind in its conditioned state, limited to wordsand ego games, is continuously in thought-formationactivity. The nervous system in a state of quiescence, alert,awake but not active, is comparable to what Buddhists callthe highest state of dhyana (deep meditation). Theconscious recognition of the Clear Light induces anecstatic condition of consciousness such as saints andmystics of the West have called illumination...The firstsign is the glimpsing of the “Clear Light of Reality, theinfallible mind of the pure mystic state”—an awarenessof energy transformations with no imposition of mentalcategories.

“Inner” and “outer” were some of the mental catego-ries that were no longer imposed, and this language andvisualization of “light” echoes with many earlier practitio-ners of the Perennial Philosophy such as the QuakerWilliam Penn. In his youth, the founder of Pennsylvaniadiscovered an inner light revealed through silence - theactive removal and erasure of information “informing” themind in “mental-conceptual redundancy.” Like manypsychonauts, Penn tried hard to describe this light:

That blessed principle, the Eternal Word... is Pythagoras’sreal light and salt of ages; Anaxagoras’s divine mind; Socrates’good spirit; Timaeus’ unbegotten principle and author of alllight; Hieron’s God in man; Plato’s eternal, ineffable and perfect

…the famous but oft

misunderstood mantra

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out

suggested that in their own

way, psychedelics “are”

information technologies

for honing and focusing

the attention.


principle of truth; Zeno’s maker and father of all; and Plotin’sroot of the soul.... www.universalistfriends.org/quf-elc.html

In this context, Penn urges us, like Leary, to drop outfrom the ego chatter of self and media, and to behold theinner light common also to meditative and, yes, psyche-delic conditions. In an uncanny resonance with Leary’sphrasing, the Pre-Cybernetic Penn asks us to “Turn in”rather than “on”:

“Therefore, O friends, turn in, turn in, I beseech you…”Turn on, Tune in, Get Epic

But it was not only Perennial Philosophers who wereinvestigating this “inner” realm that gave way to the scaleof the divine, “Hieron’s God in man; Plato’s eternal,ineffable and perfect principle of truth; Zeno’s maker andfather of all...” Researchers Jay Stevens and Steven Markshave helped remind us of the important roles played bythe intelligence community in the emerging science ofpsychedelics. Initial CIA interest in ‘’psilocybe mexicana’’,for example, focused on the possibilitythat “magic mushrooms” could be apotent “truth drug.” In other words,psychedelics were seen as aids torhetorical practice—in this case,interrogation. This history repeats thehorror of Dachau, where mescalinewas investigated as an interrogationdrug. But in their indigenous context,mushrooms were a kind of informa-tion technology of healing anddivination. Maria Sabina, thecurandera made famous by (sometimeCIA funded) mycologist Gordon Wasson offered her ownrefrains, rhythmic chants with that hallmark of informa-tion: redundancy

You are a green Father, a Father of clarityYou are a green Mother, a Mother of clarityYou are a budding Mother, a Mother of offshootsYou are a green Mother, a Mother of clarity(www.ubu.com/ethno/soundings/sabina.html)Maria Sabina’s eloquence, as poet and theorist Jerome

Rothenberg points out, was not simply a result of themushrooms; an entire shamanic and poetic tradition wasreferenced and reworked by Maria Sabina in her healingchants. But nor can her eloquence be rigorously separatedfrom the ecology of psilocybe mexicana. Rothenberg: “Thesacred mushrooms are considered the source of Languageitself—are, in Henry Munn’s good phrase, “the mush-rooms of language.” So despite our sense that “informationtechnology” is a modern invention and catalyst of theglobalizing economy, Maria Sabina and Stolaroff remindus that human speech and the attention minding it, andits poetic, rhetorical and healing effects, can be amplifiedand modulated by plants and fungi.

In the case of Maria Sabina, her use of the classicalrhetorical form of “repetitio’’ - a form certainly older thanthe tradition that named it - helps to paradoxically empty

our minds by crowding it out in repetition. In this repeti-tion was epic creativity. She did not merely chant from the“dictionary” of motifs and themes of Mazatec healing, inRothenberg’s good phrase, “she rewrote that dynamicaldictionary throughout her life.” www.ubu.com/ethno/discourses/yepez_review.html

Munn, who sometimes translated for Maria Sabina,called the rhetorical state achieved by Maria Sabina‘ecstatic signification”, implying a simultaneous detach-ment and participation: “ecstasis” means literally a “being-besides-oneself” (Rotman) Psychologist Roland Fischer, incollaboration with the literary critic Colin Martindale,mapped the effects of this “ecstatic signification” inducedby psilocybin on writers, and found that writing influ-enced by psilocybin contained more “primary processcontent” - content associated with the unconscious—thanwriting without. Perhaps most intriguing, Martindale andFischer found that the pattern of primary process content

produced by psilocybin inducedwriting was isomorphic to the pri-mary process content of epic litera-ture. By 1973, Fischer was ready toargue that this epic structure ofpsilocybin discourse bore the hall-marks of an information compressionor optimization technology: “Thus far,our studies suggest that certainhallucinogenic drug induced transfor-mations in visual space may beregarded as an optimization ofinformation.” Roland Fischer, 1973

Just Say Yes to the Noösphere

The noösphere is the feedback effect of collectiveattention on our environment. Writing in 1943,Vernadksy was amazed at the sudden circulation of“cultural minerals”, compounds and alloys made possibleonly by the transduction of human consciousness, such asAluminum ( which is very rare in its native state), and, wemight add, LSD-25, first intentionally synthesized thatsame year in Switzerland by Albert Hoffmann.

The attention focused on Maria Sabina and herhealing mushrooms and chants by Wasson’s 1957 Lifemagazine article indeed had a feedback effect on the SierraMazateca. With the news of ‘’psilocybe mexicana’’ ,thousands of travelers headed in search of Maria Sabina,and the result was the (partial) destruction of the verycontext that sustained the mushrooms and the healingpoetics associated with them. So too did media attentionintentionally and unintentionally garnered by Wasson,Hofmann, Leary and others seem to amplify the difficul-ties always inherent in any attempt to communicate aboutpsychedelic experience, let alone any attempt to commu-nicate about psychedelic experience to millions of peopleat a distance, reading Life magazine or a MAPS Bulletin…Vernadksy conceived the noösphere, after all, in the midstof war, and was amazed at the mass mobilization and

Why did modern psychonauts,

in the thick of the Cold War

and, evolutionarily speaking,

barely out of the trees,

so favor this language

of the turn on for

all things psychedelic?


transformations of the planet induced by a war conscious-ness with which we are all too familiar. Might thenoösphere harbor that “purgatory or even . . the hell offrightful extinction…”? Or, listening to Maria Sabina’schants, was this perhaps yet another prophecy of themushroom, an early symptom of a post modern globaliza-tion which, if not meshed with awareness, extinguishesmore than it enlivens? Maria Sabina wrote:

Before Wasson, I felt that the saint children elevated me. Idon’t feel like that anymore. The force has diminished. IfCayetano hadn’t brought the foreigners. …the saint childrenwould have kept their power…From the moment the foreignersarrived, the saint children lost their purity. They lost their force;the foreigners spoiled them. From now on they won’t be anygood. There’s no remedy for it.

Wasson struggled with the effects of his mass mediastory on his conscience and the Sierra Mazateca. Wassonwrote that he shared news of the magic mushroomsbecause of it’s certain “extinction”: “If I did not do this,“consulting the mushroom” would go on for a few yearslonger, but its extinction was and is inevitable.”www.csp.org/chrestomathy/maria_sabina-estrada.html

Yet, happily, Wasson was wrong about this extinction.Years later, the noösphere brought Maria Sabina’s littlechildren to the labs of John Hopkins University, where anew, highly technical but alliterative chant emerged:“Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences, havingsubstantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritualsignificance. Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experi-ences, having substantial and sustained personal meaningand spiritual significance.” Global warming, fossil fueldepletion, colonialism and post colonialism continuetransforming the planet in globalized war, and by allaccounts our attention must finally become focused onglobal survival of biodiversity in response to climatechange and extinction events. So too did the noöspherebring an awareness, like Wasson’s, of our responsibility toand for these extinctions through Life magazine, eventuallybringing psilocybin and its effects to mycologist andbioremediator Paul Stamets. Stamets compares the mycelialnetwork covering the planet to that avatar of thenoösphere, the Web:

I believe the earth’s natural Internet is the mycelial net-work,” he says. “That is the way of nature. If there is anydestruction of the neurological landscape, the mycelial networkdoes not die; it’s able to adapt, recover and change. That’s thewhole basis of the computer Internet. The whole design patternssomething that has been reproduced through nature and has beenevolutionarily successful over millions of years. www.new-chapter.com/media/article/stamets_saloncom.html

Perhaps this is our epic, to open to and accept thetragedy of that nightmare from which we, like visionariesfrom James Joyce to Terrence McKenna, are trying toawaken and, yes, evolve. And we might evolve precisely by

focusing our attention along with Stamets on those“design patterns” such as the noösphere and its scalardifference. When it comes to naming the plants andcompounds that can help us re-scale our collectiveattention, clearly a mixture of terms is called for, and intothe mix I want to whorl “ecodelic”, a name that bothsamples from tradition and highlights an important butless discussed effect of these plants and compounds forinducing sudden bouts of interconnection, the perceptionof being enmeshed by the terrestrial and extraterrestrialecology. Biologist Theodor Dobzhanksy ended his epic ofhuman evolution, __Mankind Evolving__(sic) with whathe called the “poetry” of Teilhard De Chardin:

A harmonized collectivity of consciousness, equivalent to akind of superconsciousness. The Earth is covering itself notmerely by myriads of thinking units, but by a single continuumof thought, and finally forming a functionally single Unit ofThought of planetary dimensions. (Mankind Evolving, 347-348)

Working with the mantra “harmonized collectivity ofconsciousness” is no simple feat, tending as it does towardthe idea of “homogeneity” and de-individuation for many,as in “hive mind” ( Leary) or the Borg of Star Trek: TheNext Generation. Yet imagining the noösphere, asVernadksy did, as a scalar level of living systems (notunlike Gaia) that incorporates rather than excludeshuman consciousness, requires that we wither the ego anddiscover not our homogeneity, but our unique, finiteurgent role in the emergent ecology capable of focusingcollective attention on the planet as a whole. For thepsychonaut engineers, who did so well on the WitkinEmbedded Figure Test, did well indeed when it came toremembering both part and whole, “finding commongeometric shapes in a larger design…,” and at our lab atPenn State we are testing Harman et. al’s claim thatresponse to the Witkin Embedded Figure test is indeedimmune to alteration through the use of a flotation tank.That’s one of our roles. What’s yours? For the “largerdesign” is now planetary in scale:

For we are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown toself-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins:starstuff pondering the stars, organized assemblages of tenbillion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms;tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousnessarose. (Sagan, Cosmos, p. 345)

Yes, it seems as though consciousness could extin-guish just as it arose. Many contemporary narratives ofapocalypse, such as 2012, sometimes augur Hofmann’s“hell of frightful extinction,” perhaps scripting us towarddespair, and, as Buckminster Fuller put it, we face an“inexorable evolution.” Evolution is never easy, so here’sa mantra to get you through the rough patches: Just sayyes to the noösphere! •


Use of LSD-25 for Computer Programming

Dennis R. [email protected]

Executive DirectorTrance Research Foundation, Inc.

Paris, France

At one point in the project I could notget an overall viewpoint for the operationof the entire system. It really was too muchfor my brain to keep all the subtle aspectsand processing nuances clear so I could geta processing and design overview. Afterstruggling with this problem for a fewweeks, I decided to use a little acid to see ifit would enable a breakthrough, becauseotherwise, I would not be able to completethe project and be certain of a consistentoverall design. Overall design consistencywas important to reduce program anddesign errors.

I used only seventy-five microgramsbecause I was not interested in tripping, asI had a specific, limited and definitepurpose for the use of LSD. While stimu-lated by the LSD I was able to get theentire system wholly in my mind at thesame time. I spent some time mentallyvisualizing various aspects of the compiler,the language and the processing whichwould take place. I did discover three orfour design inconsistencies while beingstimulated by the effect of the LSD, and Imade notes for later checking.

After twenty-four hours when theeffect of the LSD was completely gone, Iwent over my notes. I needed to have ameasure of ‘faith’ that the design changessuggested by my notes would produce thebeneficial effects they seemed to imply;that is, I was again in the condition ofbeing not able to conceive of the entiresystem at the same time in my mind.

Once all the changes were made, I wasable to successfully complete the program-ming of this huge system. The designchanges I made reduced future programmodification errors and contributed to theelegance of the design. The system was acommercial success for my employer andwas used for many years by them. Al-though the use of LSD was an importantcomponent of the success of the system,no one knew of its use except me. •

Here is a way I used LSD-25 for a complex programming project

in 1975. I was working in New York developing a compiler for an

application language called “MARLAN”. This application was for

the then popular IBM 360 and was written in 360 Assembler

Language. There were six large phases for this application, and

I was the responsible chief architect and programmer for the

project. There were approximately eight hundred subroutines

in the entire system.


The entheogenic experience has swum through ourcollective consciousness for tens of thousands of years. Itmay well have made us who we are, guided our hands aswe painted onto the moist walls of underground caverns.However, this essential experience was all but forgotten inthe Western world until the twentieth century when itmade an explosive return that shook the ground beneathour feet once again. The growth of psychedelic thinking inthe Western consciousness has been problematic anddifficult; its most promising seeds often held by a smallgroup of passionate academics while thousands try towrestle with the experience in a distinctly un-shamanicworld.

To understand the relationship between psychedelicsand technology, it is necessary to understand the chasmthat exists between this Western world andthe psychedelic realm. One is staunchlymaterial, one immaterial. One promotespeace and unity, the other aggression anddivision. It is no surprise, therefore, thatcontemporary governments rally so fer-vently against psychedelics. It is equallyunsurprising that we have been unable tocreate a paradigm shift that will enableanyone who wants to to take entheogens ina safe and productive environment. This is afundamental spiritual right, one beingblocked by fear and imposed ignorance.

Ironically, some of the best tools wehave at our disposal to create the aforemen-tioned paradigm shift are psychedelics.While meditation and other spiritualpractices are also hugely important and, in my opinion,bring one to a similar awareness, there doesn’t seem to bea substitute for the barrier-busting, consciousness-expanding explosion of energy that defines a trip. It is thisenergy that leads thousands of people who approachentheogens as recreational drugs to eventually understandthem as spiritual sacraments or psychiatric tools.

So where does technology come into it? Coincidenceor not, psychedelics were rediscovered in the West at atime when technology was expanding at an unprec-edented level. Much has been made of this connection;psychedelics have been juxtaposed with virtual reality and3-D imaging software and there is a sense of somethingtechnological in the almost machinelike characteristics ofsome LSD and DMT experiences. However, while theseconnections may be valid and ultimately useful, there is afar broader union between what we term ‘technology’ andpsychedelics.

In my opinion the question of how psychedelics relateto technology is problematic in itself. This is not because Isee no connection, or that the shamanic realms we explore

are simply too different from the neon glow we return to.It is problematic because psychedelics are a technology.Much as an automobile brings you from A to Q, so toodoes an entheogenic sacrament bring you from one stateof awareness to another. This transition allows you accessto gnosis that seems to exist within everyone and cru-cially, bring it back and integrate it into your life.

Technology facilitates our interaction with thematerial world. Dams create electricity, a toothbrushallows you to clean your teeth more efficiently than afingernail would. Entheogens, I would suggest, connect uswith an immaterial reality so that we have the choice tolose our anxiety and live free from imposed barriers in thematerial world, thereby facilitating our interaction with it.Not only this, but they aid in problem solving and en-

hance creativity with often phenomenalresults. Francis Crick unlocked the double-helix during an LSD trip. Later, the samesubstance helped to shift consciousnessand stop the Vietnam War. One only hasto listen to the mesmerizing voice of thelate great Terence McKenna speak of themyriad of ideas and imagery inherent inthe psychedelic experience to understandthe sheer amount of information that lieswithin those realms.

Whether the entities we encounterthere, and the truths we feel lie coded inour DNA, are the essence of our souls, orexist completely independently of ourconsciousness, is uncertain. What I dobelieve is that there are few avenues of

research on this planet that are more important thanpsychedelic research. I feel we’re on the brink of some-thing, perhaps a breakthrough that will enable us toutilize entheogens to their full potential. Safely, responsi-bly, courageously. Rick Strassman’s DMT study was a hugestep on this path. The words of one volunteer on comingout of the DMT realm ring in my head as I think about thissubject:

“Suddenly, beings appeared… They were glad to seeme…They seemed pleased that we had discovered thistechnology… They told me humans exist on manylevels…” 1

The message of this technology isn’t straightforward,nor is it absolute. However, even the most rudimentaryglance into trip reports, internet psychedelic forums andthe dance ground of a rave suggests some common themes.Love, understanding, tolerance, freedom. This is whatmany psychonauts are seeking; it’s what we seek to be.The question then becomes how to convince everyone elsethat what we’ve found with our technology is real. •1. Strassman, Rick. DMT: The Spirit Molecule. (Vermont: Park Street Press, 2001) page 214

Alexander Beiner,University student/writer

[email protected]

Psychedelic Technology Alexander Beiner


When we think about a technology,what usually comes to mind are electroniccomputers and other digital devices,electrical machinery, chemical processes,biotechnologies, and other ways ofmanipulating and engineering physicalmaterial. The word technology, however,means a standard technique, method, way,or craft-skill for producing goods or forefficient ways of solving problems. Thismeaning allows us to extend technologyto psychological techniques—psycho-technologies. With attention focusedon psychedelics, in this essay we’ll con-sider (1) the idea of “psychotechnology”and what psychotechnologies are (2)how they enhance abilities, (3) the waythey form one of the three foundationalconcepts of a multistate model of thehuman mind, and (4) a proposal forpromoting psychotechnology researchand development via dedicated mindbodyinstitutions and/or foundations.Psychotechnologies

Psychotechnologies are ways of usingpsychological processes for a desiredoutcome and/or to select psychologicalprocesses such as perception, cognition,emotion, and their biological substrates.They include the mostly nonmaterialpsychotechnologies such as hypnosis,meditation, contemplative prayer, sleepdeprivation, and dreamwork; they includepsychotechnologies that blend the nonma-terial with material including bodyoriented techniques such as yogas, themartial arts, and breathing techniques;and they extend to psychotechnologiesthat are largely material such as sensoryoverload, sensory isolation, and psychoac-tive drugs. Within this wholepsychotechnological population, MAPSbelongs to the psychoactive drug tribe,especially the tribe’s psychedelic family.A Unified View.

One benefit of using the concept“psychotechnology” is that it allows us tosee all these diverse techniques as relatedto each other in meaningful ways becauseeach of them contributes to a larger, more

inclusive view of the human mind. Thesepsychotechnologies are not merely acollection of scattered unrelated psycho-logical oddities, as has been the case untilrecently; each takes its place contributingto a larger, multistate view of the humanmind. So people who are interested in, say,psychedelics, meditation, and the martialarts come to realize we are all workingtogether to draw a complete view of thehuman mind and to put the singlestatefallacy to rest.Overcoming the Singlestate Fallacy.

Psychotechnologies help us overcomethe thinking error I call the singlestatefallacy. This is the erroneous assumptionthat all worthwhile psychological pro-cesses occur in our usual awake mindbodystate. One origin of this error is a hangoverfrom Freudian psychology. To Freud,almost all worthwhile thinking (second-ary process thinking) occurred in ourordinary, awake, rational mature adultstate. Exceptions were sleeping anddreaming, but they were primarilyimportant because they were necessarysupporters of secondary process thinking.All altered-state thinking, Freud main-tained, occurred in the cesspool of theunconscious. Psychedelics and their sisterpsychotechnologies give overwhelmingevidence that overturns this bias. (Theenhanced abilities discussion below willgive evidence of this.)Completing the map of the human mind.

In Altered States of Consciousness,Charles Tart made one of my favoritepoints in psychological theory.

The most important obligation of anyscience is that its descriptive and theoreti-cal language embrace all the phenomenaof its subject matter; the data from [alteredstates of consciousness] cannot be ignoredif we are to develop a comprehensivepsychology. (page 5)

For example, by providing ways toexplore the “antipodes of the mind,” asBenny Shanon called them, ayahuasca(and other psychotechnologies) help usdiscover, describe, and develop these other

Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D.Northern Illinois University

[email protected]/lepf/edpsych/

faculty/roberts/index_roberts.html

Surviving and Thriving With PsychotechnologiesThomas B. Roberts, Ph.D.Northern Illinois University

Psychotechnologies

help us overcome…

the Singlestate Fallacy…

the erroneous

assumption that

all worthwhile

psychological processes

occur in our usual

awake mindbody

state.

continued on page 29


Laura Huxley Portraitby Dean Chamberlain11”x14” Pigment Print


Laura Huxley watching a recorded teleconference with Aldous Huxley. Summer, 2007.Photos © Stacy Valis, www.stacyvalis.com & www.elementalphotoart.com

See tribute to Laura Huxley by Valerie Leveroni Corral on page 42 .


“Laura Huxley’s Departure” 2007, Acrylics/Canvas 48"x48" © Carolyn Mary Kleefeld, www.carolynmarykleefeld.comSee article on page 49. Original painting for sale, with fifty percent of the profits going to help raise funds for MAPS research.


psychological lands and the fullest poten-tials of our minds. As with exploring theearth, there are psychological dangers too,and experienced mind-explorers learn tobe alert to these problems as well as theirpayoffs.

When we apply Tart’s intellectualstandard to psychology, old assumptionsgive way, and a new paradigm emerges:(Psychedelic Horizons, Roberts, 2006, page110):

Spotting and accepting newpsychotechnologies.

The people I know in the multistateworld were all invited to join this world-view via a specific psychotechnology and/or the mindbody state it produced. Somestayed with their original psychotech-nology, and others realized that their firstpsychotechnology experience could leadto many others. (It’s a bit like sex in thisway.) In addition to psychedelics’ variedbenefits, perhaps their greatest long-term

…what will we learn

from a recipe that

combines hypnosis,

psilocybin and

deep breathing,

while listening to

Morten Lauridsen’s

transcendent

O Magnum Mysterium?

cultural impact will be that for manypeople they asked the key questions: Whatother psychotechnologies are out there?How do we find them? What can we learnfrom them?

In discussions of diversity, an oftenmissed aspect is how psychedelics helppeople look for and accept thepsychotechnologies of other cultures.

Just as there is globalization of trade,communication, and finance, there is

worldwide trade in psychotechnologies—various types of meditation, yoga, martialarts, psychoactive drugs, prayer, breathingtechniques. These are parts of the culturalimport-export trade in psychotechno-logies. Jeffrey Kripal, a professor ofReligious Studies at Rice University,describes how Esalen Institute (as prob-ably the best known explorer ofpsychotechnologies) imported mindbodypsychotechnologies and hybridized themand Americanized them (Esalen: American

H U M A N N A T U R E

R E A L I T Y

I N T E L L E C T U A L C L I M A T E

P E R S O N A L E X I S T E N C E

K N O W L E D G E

MULTISTATE ASSUMPTIONS

A significant human trait is the abilityto produce and use a variety of

mindbody states.

The experiences of time, space,and matter depend on the MBSin which they are experienced.

The major intellectual error of our time isthe failure to recognize the fundamental

primacy of mindbody states.

Personal existence may go beyond theusual limits of body-based identity,

time, and space.

Reason and perception differfrom one MBS to another

SINGLESTATE ASSUMPTIONS

Mindbody states other than our ordinarystate are interesting curiosities, but oflittle professional or practical interest.

Time, space and matter are real.Only experiences in our usual

MBS are real.

Altered MBSs are not worthy ofserious intellectual attention.

A person exists within a material body,specific place, and at particular times.

All knowledge comes through senseperception and reason.

A Comparison of Singlestate and Multistate Paradigms— General Assumptions —

(MBS = mindbody state)

continued from page 24


and the Religion of No Religion, 2007). Byshowing that Tart’s admonition to psy-chology should also be applied to acomprehensive study of religion, heimplies a still larger point: all scholarly,scientific, and practical fields would bestrengthened by considering howpsychotechnologies can enrich them.Inventing new psychotechnologies.

But expanding the options open tothe human mind and fulfilling itsmultistate potentials are not limited tousing the mindbody psychotechnologieswe now have at hand or limited to new,imported ones. We can move beyond onlydiscovering current psychotechnologies,only exploring them, and only developingthe states they produce: we can inventnew ones. The simplest example isinventing new psychoactive drugs.The Grofs’ Holotropic Breathwork™ isa nondrug example.

So far, most people use onepsychotechnology at a time, but beyondthis await psychotechnological inventorsand engineers who will sequence existingpsychotechnologies in novel ways andcombine them into new recipes. Forexample, what will we learn from a recipethat combines hypnosis, psilocybin anddeep breathing, while listening to MortenLauridsen’s transcendent O MagnumMysterium? Obviously, the constructionand design of new mindbody states shouldbe approached cautiously and exploredcarefully; I am a fan of our ordinary awakestate because I suppose it has evolved overthe years for our survival, and I find iteminently useful for day-to-day functioning,but it would be an example of the singlestatefallacy to suppose (wrongly) that it is theonly useful state. Like synthetic chemicalcompounds, innovative materials, hybridplants, and transgenic animals, mind designis derived from natural processes but movesus beyond the givens of nature. We canbuild novel kinds of perceptions, emotions,and cognition—new ways of using ourminds. Psychedelics and other psychotech-nologies provide systematic ways of think-ing outside the box.Possibling the impossible.

Grof’s When the Impossible Happens(2007) illustrates that some previously“impossible” events may be impossible inour ordinary mindbody state, although not

in other states. When we say something is“impossible,” we should qualify that byadding “according to what we know of ourordinary, awake state.” By restricting us tolook only in our ordinary mindbody state,the Singlestate Fallacy restricts our idea ofwhat is possible in other states. Possible,impossible, rare, unusual, paranormal—allthese words need to be reexamined whenwe realize that our normal awake statedetermines how we use them now. I expectthat mind explorers will discover newkinds of human capacities in other mind-body states and that mind designers willinvent or construct new kinds of thinkingand other abilities. Additionally, thesestates may contain enhanced currentcapacities.

By boosting us past the singlestatefallacy, the psychotechnological paradigmgives us a fuller, multistate view of ourminds. Thanks to psychotechnologies, webecome more realistic about the vasthuman possibilities lying in (residing in)other mindbody states, about what itmeans to be a human, and they give usmore realistic expectations of what ourminds may be able to do. Not limited to ourcurrent psychotechnologies, these includespotting new psychotechnologies fromother cultures and importing them,inventing new ones, and combiningpsychotechnologies to build newmindbody states and the enhanced abilitiesthat lie within those states.Enhancing Our Repertoire

of Abilities

By increasing the repertoire of cogni-tive processes in our minds, psychotech-nologies empower our mental processes.In a very real sense, installing additionalcognitive processes (and emotional,perceptual and biological ones too), issimilar to installing a new program in acomputer. In our minds, as in computers,to use them fully, we need many programs.

programs : computers ::psychotechonologies : minds

The singlestate error of supposing thatall useful information processing takesplace only when we are in our ordinaryawake state’s program, while denying thatother states have any use, is like claimingthat there is only one good program to runon a computer. In this section we’ll briefly

…some previously

impossible events

may be impossible

in our ordinary

mindbody state,

although not

in other states.


sample some innovations that psychedelicprograms have brought. Except for thefirst item, they are more fully referencedand described in my book PsychedelicHorizons.Cognitive enhancement.

As I was writing this, I heard thepostman delivering my mail and took abreak to open it. There on page B4 in theJan. 11, 2008, number of The Chronicle ofHigher Education [higher in the sense ofcolleges and universities, not higher in theMAPS meaning] is a brief article about“pill-popping professors” using modafinil(Provigil) to strengthen their cognitiveprocesses. The article includes sevencomments about chemical enhancement,but none of the comments considers theproblem of choosing not to function atone’s highest ability, as modafinil alleg-edly supports.

Suppose for a moment that modafiniland/or other drugs do improve cognitivefunctioning. Service to humanity makesan occupation a profession rather than justa way of earning income. With a profes-sional duty to serve to the best of theirability, don’t educators, health profession-als, scientists, and other professional havea duty to do the most they can forhumanity’s sake? Is failure to perform atthe top of one’s ability, say by not takingmodafinil, a failure to live up to the ethicalstandards of one’s field, a dereliction ofprofessional duty? As this questionillustrates, mindbody psychotech-nologies open a jungle of complexitiesfor bioethicists.A Nobel Prize, maybe 2.

Kary Mullis, winner of a Nobel Prizefor inventing the PCR technique, at-tributes his main insight to his ability tovisualize cellular molecular processes, andhe says he learned that cognitive skillthanks to his experiences with LSD. He isquite clear about the connection. A lessclear example of using psychedelics toprovide scientific insights is the reportthat Francis Crick, co-discoverer of thestructure of DNA, had his insight thanksto LSD. In a newspaper obituary, reporterAlun Rees claims that when he challengedCrick to attribute his insight to his use ofLSD, Crick did not deny the idea but didthreaten to sue Rees if he printed it. Likemodafinil now, LSD was a 1950s

cognitive enhancer.Problem solving in business.

As the age of personal computersbegan, there was intense competitionamong programs to be accepted as thestandard for the field. “The big quandaryfor software companies was getting intothe market place, finding shelf space,” saidBob Wallace in an interview for BBC-TV.Bob came up with the idea of shareware,and he says that idea occurred to himthanks to altered states—micrograms forMicrosoft. In an earlier study of creativeproblem solving, Stanford professor WillisHarman gave LSD to 27 people who werestuck with unsolved problems in engi-neering, design, academic, and similarwork. During the carefully structured andmonitored sessions, they relaxed, listenedto music, ate snacks, and discussed theirproblems in small groups, then workedindividually for 3 to 4 hours. Here again,they were successful by using psychedelicpsychotechnologies to solve practical workproblems.Intelligence and metaintelligence.

Cognitive psychologist HowardGardner is best known for his theory ofmultiple intelligences; he defines intelli-gence as the ability to solve problems orproduce goods of value in a society. Theexamples above meet these criteria, so dowe have evidence that the cognitiveprocesses installed by psychotechnologiessometimes can boost intelligence? If weuse psychologist Robert Sternberg’sdefinition of intelligence as “mental selfmanagement,” then increasing the degreeof mental self management increasesintelligence, and psychotechnologiesincrease the number of mental informa-tion processing programs we can selectfrom, so they increase intelligence.

However, like most specialists onintelligence, Gardner and Sternberg limitthemselves to problem solving and mentalself management in our ordinary awakestate. To me, the skill of selecting whichstate to use is a higher order mental selfmanagement operation that is prior tousing any selected state, so I think thiscognitive process deserves the namemetacognition

Clearly, this is not to say that allmindbody psychotechnologies alwaysmake us more intelligent. Just check out

Is failure to perform

at the top

of one’s ability,

say by not taking

modafinil, a failure

to live up to the ethical

standards of one’s field,

a dereliction of

professional duty?


the nearest drunk. What we do see,however, is that learning to select theright psychotechnology for the rightpurpose, at the right time can benefithumanity at large and individuals.Enormous amounts of metaintelligenceresearch need to be done to answer:Which psychotechnologies? Taken bywhom? For what purposes? Under whatcircumstances? We have vast storehousesof information about how people learn tobe intelligent in our ordinary mindbodystate, thanks to psychedelics and othermindbody psychotechnologies. Now weneed to ask similar questions of otherstates. Expanding intelligence to includeother states leads us to expanding othertopics too.The major intellectual opportunityof our times.

Just as additional problem solvingabilities and new kinds of mental self-management reside in other mindbodystates, other psychological skills have theiranalogs in other mindbody states too. Inpsychology, for example, we can ask howlearning and sense of self vary from onestate to another. In biology, we canexamine the underlying neuronal pro-cesses and immune system functioningdifferently. In theology we might ask howreligious experiences vary from one stateto another. The arts and sciences can bothstudy other mindbody states and use them,as in Mullis’s example, to think freshlyabout their topics. We can take almost anytopic and ask what I call the CentralMultistate Question: How does/do _____vary from mindbody state tomindbody state?

Remember all the psychotechnologiesthat exist and the states they produce,then insert your favorite topic(s) into thequestion. All the knowledge and all theresearch and all the questions we haveabout these topics as they exist in ourordinary, normal, awake state get reaskedmultiple times for all other states. Thisquestion blows the roof off currentsinglestate limitations in the sciences,social sciences, arts and humanities, law,medicine, education, and other fields thatuse the human mind and study it—nowour multistate mind. This is practicallyeverything we do.

While psychotechnologies’ enrich-

ment of music and the arts is widelyacknowledged, it is time to recognize theirbenefits in advancing science and problemsolving in business. Psychotechnologiesprod us to extend the study of intelligenceto include how to select the rightmindbody state for various purposes, andthey challenge us to explore the multistateprospects of other abilities includingintelligence but not limited to it. Buthow do we learn to use the full rangeof psychotechnologies, particularlypsychedelics, for their beneficial effectswhile reducing their damaging effects?Multistate Theory

Psychotechnology is one of three ideaswhich weave together into multistatetheory. (See Psychedelic Horizons.) We’vealready run into the other two. Mindbodystate is the second. Residence is the third.Mindbody state or state ofconsciousness.

Here I have simply substitutedmindbody for consciousness as Charles Tartuses it “an overall pattern of biological andmental functioning at any one time.” Isubstitute mindbody because the wordconsciousness has too many meanings, andI’ve found that people who are talkingabout quite different things all use theword consciousness and think they aretalking about the same thing but areactually talking at cross purposes.

For example, in common language, wemight say someone is now conscious, butlast night was asleep or in a coma. Some-one with a political bent will speak ofwomen’s consciousness or worker’s conscious-ness; here they mean the thoughts andfeelings that result from their places insociety. If someone has environmentalconsciousness, we are likely to mean thatperson habitually thinks about environ-mental issues. A saint or holy person mayhave a higher level of consciousness; indicat-ing a degree of spiritual development.And, of course, there are psychobiologicalstates such as Tart means them, overallpatterns of functioning.

The word mindbody also has theadvantage of explicitly emphasizing thatwe are taking about a unified combinationof mind and body taken as a whole.Mindbody makes the meaning clearer andnot so ambiguous; although it begs thequestion: When does one mindbody state

…learning to select

the right

psychotechnology

for the right purpose,

at the right time

can benefit humanity

at large and

individuals.


change to a new one? I expect this willremain difficult to resolve and thatdifferent definitions will be useful fordifferent purposes.Residence.

The third term of multistate theory isresidence. Residence expresses the idea thatall human abilities, experiences, thoughts,emotions, and so forth take place inmindbody states, are expressions of thosestates. When a psychotechnology pro-duces a mindbody state, then we canexplore that state to discover its residentabilities. Again an analogy helps: just asdifferent musical instruments producetheir distinctive sounds, differentmindbody states produce their distinctabilities, experiences, etc. Just as an oboeand a violin express the note C in theircharacteristic voices, various mindbodystates express intelligence, thinking, andother potentials in their distinct ways.

Psychotechnologies, mindbody states,and residence help us recognize thesinglestate fallacy and overcome it. Theyintegrate the enormous variety ofpsychotechnologies and states into anoverall multistate theory. They promotespecific research hypotheses and formulatebroad-scale agendas. They promoteexperimentation using psychotech-nologies and mindstates—sometimes asindependent and sometimes as dependentvariables. Like electronic, chemical,biological, material, and other technolo-gies before them, psychotechnologies offerbroad horizons for unknown discoveriesin the future of human development.

Most important, as the quotationfrom Charles Tart implies, withoutpsychotechnologies, we cannot havea complete view of the human mind.Because we use our minds in everythingwe do, our view of our minds determineswhat we expect of ourselves and ofhumanity—what we can learn, what wecan do, who we are. It determines what wethink are possible and impossible. If ourview of our minds is wrong—rather toorestricted—then our accomplishments arerestricted and our human future is boundto the singlestate fallacy. Psychotech-nologies free us from a limited view of ourminds and encourage us to develop theirfull multistate future.Institute for Mindbody Studies.

How can we achieve these goals mosteffectively? Until now much mindbodydevelopment—especially psychedelic—has been informal and outside our currentinstitutions. In Psychedelic Horizons, Iproposed an Institute for MultistateStudies. But given the large number ofpsychotechnologies and the larger numberof topics to be looked at in each of them, itnow seems to me that a large number ofsuch institutes would be needed. Perhapsan Institute for Psychedelic Studies wouldfocus on that specific psychotechnology.Others on the implications for a profes-sional field or academic discipline—say,an Institute for the Law and MindbodyStudies.Multistate grants and fellowships.

In addition to organizing new centersand institutes, a large foundation couldfund research using existing universities,research institutes, and study centers.Grants and fellowships would empowerexisting fields away from their singlestatelimitations and toward more complete-ness: health, law, education, politics,religion, arts, sciences, humanities—theseand others. They would be fulfillingCharles Tart’s injunction: “The mostimportant obligation of any science is thatits descriptive and theoretical languageembrace all the phenomena of its subjectmatter.”Summary: Surviving

and Thriving

Solving practical problems, inventingscientific ideas and instruments, develop-ing and using our complete range ofthinking programs, becoming morerealistic about our minds’ cognitiveabilities and learning to use their fullrepertoire, recognizing the full ecology ofhuman brains and bodies and adaptingwith new skills—to anthropologists,evolutionary biologists, and developmen-tal psychologists, these are the characteris-tics of successful cultures, species, andindividuals: they survive and thrive. Usedskillfully and carefully, psychotech-nologies promote surviving and thriving. •

…without

psychotechnologies,

we cannot have

a complete view

of the human

mind.


Ken Goffman (a.k.a. R.U. Sirius) is a well-known cultural commentator, author,editor, and internet talk show host,probably best known as cofounder andoriginal Editor-In-Chief of Mondo 2000magazine. He is the author of True Muta-tions, Counterculture Through the Ages,and six other popular books about thecutting-edge of cyberculture. To listento Goffman’s radio show visit:http://rusiriusradio.com

This interview was conducted byTristan Gulliford. To find out more aboutTristan’s work see: www.myspace.com/djdreamcode

Gulliford: Some people have notedthat the “War on Drugs” is actually a waron certain states of human consciousness.If this is true, then how can anyone everhope to “win”?

Goffman: There are a lot of cracks inthe drug war façade. For example,spokespeople for the War on Drugs nowlike to deny that people actually go toprison for mere drug possession. It’s a lie,but it’s a lie that speaks of a tremendouschange in our social attitude towards druguse. And certainly, casual drug use is sortof winked at as an optional part of adult(and teenage) life in America today.

There was a period during the ReaganAdministration’s big drug war escalationwhen the media was intimidated and drughumor was virtually eliminated from TV.Now John Stewart and Colbert and BillMaher get cheers from the audiencewhenever they mention pot; you’ve gotshows like “Weeds”, the kids on “That 70sShow” have smoked pot, and even TonySoprano had a sort-of-meaningful peyoteexperience. Most of the major Democraticcandidates say they’ll leave medicalmarijuana alone. And, of course, startingin the ’90s, the FDA began allowing somepsychedelic research and there have beenall kinds of positive news reports. I wasparticularly amused by the New York Timesheadline a few months back that wasbased on some John Hopkins studies withpsilocybin. It read, “Mushroom Drugs

Produce Mystical Experiences.” Wow!Scientists Discover Ass Not Elbow!

So yes, I think there’s some hope. Onthe other hand, there’s a huge drug warindustry and the prison-industrial com-plex is one of America’s biggest businesses,so those are powerful forces for maintain-ing the drug war. And hysteria about teenstaking drugs is something politicians canstill demagogue about. I think those arethe reasons why the drug war continues. Idon’t think the powers that be are thatconcerned about altered consciousnessitself anymore. That cat is already out ofthe bag and it’s a market that they cater to.Realistically, it doesn’t threaten the powerall that much.

Gulliford: One of the topics coveredin your book True Mutations, and also inMondo 2000, is transhumanism. This is afield of futuristic study and speculationthat can be defined in many ways. How doyou describe its basic tenets?

Goffman: I don’t know that I wouldclaim to describe its basic tenets, but I’llsay what the intrigue is for me. I see it interms of hacking. One of the basic ideasbehind hacking is that you take a techno-logical system or object and you get it to dothings beyond what it was apparentlyintended to do or was capable of doing. SoI like to think of the transhumanistmovement as an ongoing project to hackthe human body and the brain, and thesocial and material worlds outside ourbodies and brains, and get them to dothings that they can’t do now—includingthings that humans up to this point wouldhave perceived as being in defiance of“nature.”

That has, of course, been the story oftechnology, technique, science, andhuman ingenuity since day one. But nowwe’re looking at hacking our biologies forextended lifespans, hacking our brains forincreased intelligence, hacking moleculesfor material abundance, building intelli-gences that are greater than ours—ordifferent from ours—and so forth. We alsomight be looking at engineering our level

Ken Goffman (a.k.a. R.U. Sirius)[email protected]

Transhumanism & the War on DrugsTristan Gulliford & Ken Goffman (a.k.a. R.U. Sirius)

Tristan Gulliford

[email protected]

John Stewart…

Colbert and Bill Maher

get cheers

from the audience

whenever they

mention pot…

even Tony Soprano

had a

sort-of-meaningful

peyote experience.


of happiness or bliss, engineering outpainful forms of insanity, hacking our skinpigmentation color or our physical design.As Debbie Harry put it in our Mondo 2000interview back in 1990, “A tail might benice.”

By the way, this is all terribly ambigu-ous and potentially “Brave New World.” Insome ways, I’m less interested in arguingabout whether it’s socially responsible topush forward with all this, and am moreexcited by the sense that it’s an irresistiblemanifestation of a human impulse that hasbeen expressed in various adventure mythsinvolving grail quests, magick, religiousimaginings, science fiction imaginings, andso on. So it pleases me to imagine thathuman beings could win the prize, eventhough I’m not quite sure what the prize is.I don’t think long life, in and of itself, is ahuge value. I’m interested in how all of thismight open out into something extraordi-nary and profoundly psychedelic.

This interface between the literalexpansion of human possibilities in thematerial realm and the expansion ofconsciousness through drugs and other

One of the basic ideas

behind hacking is that

you take a technological

system or object

and you get it to do

things beyond what it

was apparently intended

to do or was capable

of doing.

techniques is very complex and it comeswith no guarantees. But a number oftechno-visionaries have suggested thatafter the bio-age comes the neuro-age.With nanotechnology and a greatercomprehension of neurology, we may beable to target chemicals—in the words ofZack Lynch—”to… deliver and regulatespecific neurological pathways in specificregions of the brain without disturbingnearby processes.” In other words, we maylearn to play this instrument—thebrain—like Yo Yo Ma plays the fiddle. Theimplement for playing it will be chemicalbut the choices regarding how to use theinstrument will be ours... well, it hadbetter be ours or we’ll be locked into theperfect control system.

I hope people will check out my bookTrue Mutations for ideas and debates aboutthis potential trans/psychedelic future. •

I feel in a mistSleepwalking through lifeSleeptalking with other sleepwalkersTriggering out my insides.

On the other hand...

I float down to my groundAnd on the way downI cry my childhood into completionOn the groundA glowing mound throbsEmanating peace

I touch the glowing orbAnd my sleeping seed awakensReigniting the unfolding frozen so long agoUnfolding unto the sunUpward to the warmth of loveFrom the glow to the warmth

– Neal M. Goldsmith, Ph.D.February 6, 2008

Missed, Mist

Neal M. Goldsmith, Ph.D.

[email protected]


Precisely how psychedelic the sacra-ments of ancient religions were, we’llprobably never know, but they appear tohave used psychedelic technologies toinstill spiritual states in their believers.We can tell because many of theirbuildings are still standing, and produceechoes, or have mysterious whisperingcorners. (You whisper in a hidden corner,but the sound is amplified across thebuilding, where you can hear it loud andclear. At times the effect would be usedfor espionage.)

The echo/reverb, a popular effect,probably originating in caves, was soonutilized in temples and churches. Thelong echoes, the returning sound seem tohave calming, meditative effects on thehuman brain, preparing it to meet itsmaker. (Haha!) In fact, there was a timewhen churches were built around organs,the church being the sound body of themost sophisticated musical instrumentof the time.

Carefully placed, colorful churchwindows, like vibrating mandalas, a littleincense, and a reverberating choir, almostguaranty a religious or psychedelicexperience. From singing in the shower tolistening to endless reverb/feedback loops,everybody has experienced the uniqueeffect of such acoustic manipulation.

When electronics came around,introducing the first reverb features,and “Telestar”, the first pop-song usingfeedback, hit the public, it became clearthat the echo-monopoly of the churcheshad been broken and now everybodycould do it with a little gadget. It wasJimi Hendrix, who first understood whatit meant that music, while being transi-tionally electronic (between the instru-ment and the loudspeaker) could be man-ipulated any which way he wanted, whilethey were in the pliable, electronic state.

He understood that now the speakerswere the sound bodies, while the instru-ments themselves, hardly made a peep.The “Soundbender” and the “Wa-wa-pedal” were the first electronic gadgets

for the electric guitar, which allowed toplay the sounds between the notes.(Mind you, Jimi Hendrix was knownto just violently bend the neck of his“fender” for similar effects.)

From here on it didn’t take long formusical synthesizers to be built, eventhough there had been attempts byThaddeus Cahill, who around 1890built the first synthesizers, the gigantic“Telharmonium.” (His Mark II versionweighed almost 200 tons!) And not toforget the mysterious Mr. Leon Theremin,the Russian, who 1919 invented the“Theremin,” of which a few are stillaround and used, mainly for “Scary FilmMusic.” The invention of transistors in theSixties brought us the “Moog-synthesizer,”the “Mini-Moog,” the “Synthy,” the “Fair-light,” etc…

Visually, the psychedelic mind trad-itionally feasted on ornamental, colorfuldesigns. The posters, the album coversand the fashions of the Sixties clearlydemonstrate this aesthetic preference.

But the lightshows arrived as acompletely new medium—a mixture ofsunsets on alien planets, multicoloredrainbows, microphotography, unexpectedglimpses into faraway galaxies, and bub-bling, blubbering semi-biological events,in constantly changing colors, solarized,polarized, and kaleidoscopic. We projectedoutrageously beautiful, luminous visualsthat never repeated and left no tracesexcept a few burned slides. Art without aresulting, sellable object, created just forthe moment, just for your divine eyes.

Not to forget the stroboscope, anoriginally industrial tool invented toobserve the mechanics of machines thatmoved faster than the human eye, bycreating very fast, very bright flashes oflight. It worked particularly well withacid, because of the already highlyexaggerated persistence of vision, dueto the drug.

Sound amplification with reverb, aswell as stroboscopes, have a similar,liberating effect on people. I have seen the

[email protected]

www.brummbaer.net

Technology Appreciated By the Psychedelic MindBrummbaer

Once I knew

how it worked

on Ketamine,

it was relatively easy

to copy the process

in my visual cortex.


stuffiest of all people (for example, fiftyyear veterans of the Communist Party)sing and dance for the first time in theirlife, staring fascinated at the multitude oftheir waving hands.

Then there was Brion Gysin’s“Dream-machine,” a primitive strobo-scopic device that, when projected onyour closed eyelids, would create psyche-delic patterns, supposedly because therhythm corresponds to your brain’s alphawaves, creating a hypnagogic state, or–with other predisposed people–causeepileptic seizures.

Today they are available in the handysize of large sunglasses, and are even wornby some people in the isolation-tank–another important technical deviceinvented by Dr. John Lilly–to experiencethe mind on, or off drugs, sensory de-prived, without the interference ofoutside stimuli.

In the early eighties computersbecame almost affordable, and I had theprivilege to learn and work with the“Fairlight CVI,” one of the first real-timedigitizers, which meant that you could addall kinds of effects to a real-time recordingor any other prerecorded video-material.You could change the colors, solarize, addcolor trails, strobe and mirror, etc…

At the same time I was seriouslyexploring Ketamine and understood thatthe way the computer puts together animage is the reversed process by which thebrain analyzes it, to give meaning to whatit is that one sees. It didn’t take long until Icould apply all kinds of “Fairlight–effects”to my sober vision – like color trails,multiple images, and kaleidoscopic effects.Once I knew how it worked on Ketamine,it was relatively easy to copy the processin my visual cortex. It was an interestingexercise, but I could not see any otherpractical application, besides braggingabout it.

In the meantime, computers haveachieved unrivaled abilities in sampling,modeling, and manipulating virtualreality, be it visual or acoustic. Some oftoday’s screensavers could have boughtyou a psychedelic kingdom in the Sixties.The Future of Psychedelic

Technology

There always comes the momentwhen the shaman has to take the phone

away from his trustee, and tell him thatit’s not a good idea to call his mother, toexplain that now he understands every-thing and he wants to forgive her, or beforgiven, or whatever.

Then again, there used to be a timewhen we were communally tripping everySaturday, as did other communes in town.We’d call our tripping friends and leavethe receiver lying around for anybody totalk and, of course, you never knew whomight be on the other end. This resulted ininteresting meetings between people, whomight have never known each other.Occasionally somebody would give theother group a description of what wasgoing on at his location, while everybodyelse was listening, and utterly amazed howthey were being described, and howcompletely different everybody saw thesame situation.

These days the cellular is ubiquitous,and everybody’s umbilical cord. Now Iwonder how sessions might work if theparticipants are connected via cellular orcomputer (with camera!)? Tripping astelepresence! Spontaneous raves, orches-trated by cellulars and coordinated byGPS-data!Technology as a Result of the

Psychedelic Experience

I’ll start with a question: Is theretechnology as a result of psychedelicexperiences? (Or is it all retro-engineeredalien tech?) This is hard to answer evenwith the testimony of people like SirFrancis Crick, who reportedly often tooksmall amounts of LSD to increase hismental abilities, while discovering thestructure of DNA.

Or Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak,who, before inventing the PC, built thelegendary “Blue box” that allowed you tophone anybody else with such blue box,free of charge. It was distributed illegallythrough underground channels. Jobs tookLSD at the time and he called it: “…one ofthe two or three most important things hehas done in his life.”

Mitch Kapor (Lotus, spreadsheets),Mark Pesce (Virtual Reality MarkupLanguage), and Kary Mullis (PolymeraseChain Reaction) claimed that psychedelicsplayed an instrumental role in theircreation of breakthrough technologies.

Now, if you imagine how many

Some of today’s

screensavers

could have

bought you a

psychedelic kingdom

in the Sixties.


psychedelic drugs have been taken by howmany millions of people, and this was allthe technology derived from their use, Iwould say “not all that impressive,” andwe might have to admit that technologicalinventions don’t seem to carry the stron-gest argument for the use of such sub-stances. On the other hand, where wouldwe be without the knowledge of DNA orthe PC?

Still, it is obvious that mind-alteringsubstances do increase creativity, whichhas been shown many times over the lastfifty years. “Thinking outside of the box!”But people might argue that maybe LSDactually decreased Jobs’ creativity, andonly God knows what he could haveinvented had he stayed sober?

Then again, not every user will admitto the use of a mind-expanding drug,understandably for legal reasons, but alsobecause scientists and artists are a vainbunch and want the whole credit of theircreation for themselves, and they don’twant to pass, let’s say, five percent of thecredit on to Dr. Albert Hofmann. Even

Sir Francis Crick admitted his drug useonly late in life, and then threatenedthe interviewer, “Print a word of it andI’ll sue.”

In the mid-eighties I took a lot ofKetamine with Dr. John Lilly at his ranchin Malibu. He developed the theory thatwe should be able to simulate a TV-receiver with the neurons of our brain—all we needed was a transmitter with shortenough waves, so the simulated, neuronalantenna would fit inside a brain. He had ayoung technician build a converter and weset up a video-recorder to feed into thetransmitter. We had no idea what tapewas in the recorder, and to verify, weneeded a monitor, which I procured fromthe main house.

John’s wife, Tony, had cancer, and wasdying, surrounded by dozens of people,mostly New-Agers from Mill-Valley toEsalen. They occupied the main house andwere appalled by John and me experi-menting with Ketamine, while Tony wasdying. I carried the monitor through theunfriendly crowd, but then, at the spur ofthe moment, turned around to say: “I hopeyou will remember this moment, when infive years you will drive down SunsetBoulevard, while receiving the traffic-report in your head…”

Since John was a bona fide genius, itscared everybody into silence. What if?

Back with John, we attached themonitor without turning it on, started thetape, and we each injected a hundredmilligrams of Ketamine intramuscularly.And we waited. Forty minutes later, wetook another shot. The results: nothing!

We leaned into the transmitter’santenna, hovered above the contraption,but just the usual Ketamine visuals,nothing remotely similar of what we laterchecked, was a National Geographic tape.So, to my greatest disappointment, I willhave to drive down Sunset and use acellular or another smart GPS-gadgetinstead of my brain… (Or maybe it didwork; we just didn’t think mankind wasready for it yet!) •

To find out more about Brummbaer’swork visit his Web site:www.brummbaer.net

…Dr. John Lilly…

developed the theory

that we should be able

to simulate a TV-receiver

with the neurons

of our brain…

“Timothy's Last Journey”by Brummbaer


MAPS Report from the World Psychedelic Forum 2008

Valerie [email protected]

MAPS President Rick Doblin, Ph.D.was prominently featured on the confer-ence lineup. During the opening keynotepanel he gave a critique of The GoodFriday experiment. Doblin spoke about hisvision of nonprofit drug developmentduring a group session with MAPS-sponsored researchers Michael MithoeferM.D., Ann Mithoefer R.N. and Psycholo-gist Sameet Kumar, Ph.D. He spoke aboutthe past, present and future of LSDresearch in Switzerland on a panel withMAPS-sponsored Swiss researchers PeterOehen, M.D. and Peter Gasser, M.D. Andthat was all on the first day! He alsoappeared on a question and answer panel

In recent years we have seen the beginning of a reemergenceof psychedelic research. A social change of this sort creates aneed for community, a place to gather with others who havesimilar opinions and to build and strengthen alliances so thatwe—as a movement—can reach out and present our ideas tothe world. The World Psychedelic Forum (WPF) has arisen andestablished itself as that global gathering. Growing out of theLSD Symposium 2006, this event, also hosted by the Gaia MediaFoundation, was held in the same location and with a similarlineup of speakers. Held in Basel, Switzerland—a small art andculture-rich city, where most of the people I encountered seemedto speak at least three languages—this year the WPF drew acrowd of 2000 psychedelic intelligentsia from 37 countries.

There is an almost sensual longing for communionwith others who have a larger vision. The immensefulfillment of the friendships between those engaged

in furthering the evolution of consciousness hasa quality almost impossible to describe.–Teilhard de Chardin (found on WPF Web site)

titled “Everything You Always Wantedto Know About Psychedelics” along withDennis McKenna, Dale Pendell andKathleen Harrison.

Last but not least, Doblin moderateda panel with Russian ketamine researcherEvgeny Krupitsky, M.D. and me. This wasone of the more diverse panels in itssubject matter. The theme of the panelwas “From Problem Child to WonderChild”. It included a very scientific (butplayful) presentation by Dr. Krupitsky onhis promising research results, usingketamine-assisted therapy in the treat-ment of heroin addiction. I gave a presen-tation titled, “Psychedelic Emergency


Services: Lessons from Burning Man toBoom to Beyond,” in which I spoke aboutthe history of MAPS work in this area, andshared tips and techniques for workingwith people who are having a difficultpsychedelic experience.

I also presented preliminary resultsfrom MAPS’ exploratory outcome study ofibogaine-assisted therapy in the treatmentof opiate addiction. This was on a panelwith study coordinator John Harrison,Psy.D. candidate and Iboga Therapy HouseProgram Director Sandra Karpetas.

Programmatically, one thing that wasunique to this event, and which workedout really well, was the “Rising Research-ers” lecture series, held simultaneously inone of the side rooms. This series consistedof ten minute presentations from a varietyof fresh voices in the psychedelic scene—from the evolution of salvia divinorum, to‘xenolinguistics,’ to a forty year follow-upstudy of psychiatrists who formerly usedLSD in their practices.

MAPS staffer Josh Sonstroem, alongwith volunteers Judith, Jonah, Joey, John,and Martha staffed a MAPS exhibit boothtwelve hours a day Friday throughSunday, and kept the Euros, Swissfrancs,and dollars flying. Thanks to all of theirhard work, and the generosity of the table

visitors, we came home with thirty newmembers, over $6000.00 in donations andsales, and over two hundred new emailaddresses.

In between presentations and tablestaffing, we still found time for manymeetings during the weekend. In a worldwhere most of our communication is donethrough the computer or on the phone, itis rare to get so many of our allies togetherin one place. We have to make the most ofour time together whenever these occa-sions arise.

We took the opportunity to hold someplanning meetings with Boom Festivalorganizers and volunteers about thepossibility of MAPS continuing to providepsychedelic emergency services at theevent. No decision was made at theconference, but we did gather lots ofinterest and email addresses from poten-tial European volunteers. I also held asmall training session on the principles ofpsychedelic emergency services workalong with Sandra Karpetas, who hasmuch experience in this area throughorganizing a similar service at events inCanada and at past Boom festivals.

Not only the days, but also theevenings were packed with activities, witha special program guide for “Psychedelic

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MAPS President Rick Doblin, Ph.D. filled the conference hall with eager listeners.


Nights.” Many attended a dance party at“Das Schiff” (a docked boat on the riverRhein) on Sunday night that continueduntil noon on Monday. On Monday nighta select group of MAPS researchers, donorsand associates attended a birthday partyfor MAPS patron donor Robert Barnhart,held in the hotel restaurant. Dr. PeterGasser, who is conducting our Swiss LSD/end-of-life anxiety study, was the specialguest and came to meet with Barnhart,who has donated $75,000 to his study.Other donors to our LSD study were alsoat the dinner, including Kevin Herbert,Vanja Palmers and Amanda Fielding,as well as MAPS Board of Director JohnGilmore. Dr. Stan Grof, Ralph Metznerand Caroline Garcia also joined thedinner celebration.

After the conference was over, Rick,Josh, and I took the train to Paris whereRick and I presented on the first day ofanother conference, conveniently sched-uled the following week. “Hallucinationsin Philosophy and Cognitive Science” wasa free symposium that drew a smaller, yetvery engaged audience of about thirtypeople, and took place in a conferenceroom tucked away in the Université RenéDescartes. Our goal was to try to catalyzeefforts to start psychedelic research in

France. We are now working with severalpsychiatrists to explore the possibility ofconducting an MDMA/PTSD pilot studyin France.

I boarded the plane home from Parisfeeling exhausted and inspired from thedizzying amount of conversations andinteractions that had taken place. In acommunity this large, even though we areall on the same side, it was humanizing tosee how many differences arose—slightlydifferent opinions, hopes, dreams, fears.What held us all together though was ashared amazement for the wonders ofpsychedelics, and a desire to come to-gether for the benefit of the movement.

Overall in this trip, I feel that—as anorganization—MAPS accomplished a lotmore than what was on the agenda or inthe lecture series. I’ve often found withthese types of events that it is the conver-sations over hotel breakfast, or the smilein the elevator, that can long after turnout to be the most rewarding or impor-tant. It’s too early to say now, but I lookforward to witnessing the aftereffectsof the butterfly wings that were flappedin Basel that week as the psychedelicresearch renaissance makes its wayinto history. •

MAPS Staffer Josh Sonstroem,tables at the World PsychedelicForum, bringing in over $6000,30 new members and nearly200 new email addresses


O Nobly BornValerie Leveroni Corral

Valerie Leveroni [email protected]

www.wamm.org

In a few short pages I shall attempt a summation of ahundred years; a life led with grace and charm, and thepower to encourage in others—and to discover in herself—the “possible human.” Were I Laura or AldousHuxley, I would be able to do this with elegance and style,but I am not so clever or skilled. I am, however, Laura’sdevoted friend and humble accomplice, and—with all myheart—I long to share her insights, in some of which Iwas able to participate. What I have come to know ofLaura during these last years deepened our relationship.It could fill a tome. In many ways the measure of ourfriendship is what is revealed to me about myself.As our bond became more interdependent, so much ofmy own nature was reflected, not all aspects particularlybecoming. Yet, the dying process can engage us in anindescribable dance as we are invited to participate inthat profoundly intimate relationship with anotherhuman being. If every moment is life’s most important,then there is none that compares to this practice.There may not be any better way to fall in love.

The Huxleys became

pioneers of the

psychedelic movement

forging a

scholarly approach to

the development of

the human

potential.


Laura Archera was born in Turin, Italy on November2, 1911. She possessed a commanding sense of self. Laurawas a child prodigy and she practiced her violin six hourseach day. She played before the Queen of Italy at fourteen,shortly before she came to America, spurred by the war.Suspicions grew with Fascist rule and her father, FeliceArchera, whose mother was Jewish, was put underinvestigation during Italy’s odious racial decrees of 1938.He wired her from Italy not to return. Laura stayed inAmerica and made her debut performing Mozart’s violinconcerto n.5 at Carnegie Hall. She then moved to Califor-nia and, as a virtuoso, performed with the Los AngelesPhilharmonic. Mozart andBeethoven were her constantcompanions; their work filled herhouse daily playing on the stereobox in her living room. When herbeloved and longtime friend,Virginia “Ginny” Pfeiffer becameill, Laura put her musical studiesaside to become a therapist anddonated her Guarneri violin toYehudi Menuhin. She began topursue a lifelong interest in health,nutrition, psychotherapy, and theadvance of the human potential.Laura became accomplished in herundertakings and professions,among the many, as author andvisionary.

Laura was hired on as a filmeditor at RKO Studio. In 1948 sheset out to meet Aldous Huxley andhis wife Maria. She had an idea fora film. After thumbing throughBrave New World—and at the suggestion of Director JohnHouston—she schemed to persuade Aldous to pen ascreenplay about Palio, the horse races in Siena. Nothingever came of this; but their meeting fostered a legendaryrelationship. The three of them became good friends. In1955 Maria died of breast cancer. The following yearLaura and Aldous were married when he obliquelyproposed to her, soliciting, “Have you ever been temptedby marriage?’ Then, “Do you think it might be amusing totravel to Yuma and get married at a drive in?” She agreedand they went to Arizona and were married at a drivethrough chapel.

In 1953 Aldous sought out Humphry Osmond whohad gained some notoriety for his observation of thechemical similarity between adrenaline and mescaline.Aldous wanted to be the subject for a mescaline study.Humphry was reluctant to administer the drug, statingthat he did not “relish the possibility, however remote, offinding a small but discreditable niche in literary historyas the man who drove Aldous Huxley mad.” In correspon-dence between Aldous and Humphry Osmond, they

entertained a discourse on the appropriate terminologyfor drugs used in the intentional evolution of conscious-ness. In 1957 Humphry reported to the New YorkAcademy of Sciences, “I have tried to find an appropriatename for the agents under discussion: a name that willinclude the concepts of enriching the mind and enlargingthe vision… My choice, because it is clear, euphoniousand uncontaminated by other associations, is psychedelic,mind-manifesting.” Humphry regarded psychedelics as“mysterious, dangerous substances, and must be treatedrespectfully.” By 1959 Al Hubbard introduced Aldous toLSD. Both Humphrey and Aldous regretted the trend that

would eventually lead to the lossof scientific research and medicalapplication caused by the ban inthe late 1960s.

The Huxleys became pioneersof the psychedelic movementforging a scholarly approach “tothe development of the humanpotential.” Laura was Aldous’muse, constant companion and hispartner in its unfolding. Duringtheir marriage they workedseparately on novels—Aldous onIsland and Laura on You Are Notthe Target, a condensation of herongoing fascination with thegrowth of emotional health.Aldous tempted Laura with LSD.They took it while they listenedto Bach’s fourth Brandenburgconcerto. Of that experience theyreflected on having “aestheticrevelations.”

About their years together Laura wrote, “As for therest of our lives, we would speak of everything under thesun. I was very active in psychotherapy. We discussedthat; we listened to music, experimented with cooking…One evening Aldous played a recording of Time Must Havea Stop. ‘It is my favorite book of Aldous’, Maria had toldme the previous summer. It was a passage that has anextraordinary transporting quality. Now we would call ita psychedelic quality, but at the time the word had not yetbeen coined. The most amazing fact is that Aldous hadwritten Time Must Have a Stop some ten years before hehad taken mescaline, yet in the passage describing thetransit between two states of consciousness the samepreternatural qualities of certain aspects of the psyche-delic experience is conveyed. The door which later openedwide was already ajar. As mystics and poets had done forcenturies before him, Aldous had written of psychedelicslong before he had partaken of the psychedelic plant.”

The words that Laura used to describe Aldous, speakof the conscious lover who witnesses the presence of thehighest form within the beloved, the divine. Laura

Laura often

conducted interviews

while she strolled on

her walking machine,

or while balanced

atop one of

the many huge

exercise balls

scattered throughout

the house.


understood the importance of Aldous’ work and itspotential to influence our world. She dedicated herself tothe certainty that as a luminous scholar and author hewould be widely published. In fact, one of her last andmost challenging efforts was to bring Brave New World tofilm. Dan Hirsch—Huxley archivist and Laura’s longtimefriend and confidant—assisted the project. She said shehoped instead to make the film of Island; that especiallyduring this dark time, of the two, Island was the moreimportant book. However strongher attempts to persuade, this didnot come to fruition. Perhaps itwill be the next film, she hoped,although she did not think it likelythat she would live to see thathappen.

Laura and Aldous were marriedfor seven years before his deathfrom cancer in 1963, the same dayof John F. Kennedy’s assassinationand the death of C.S. Lewis. Themanner in which Aldous greeteddeath is noble. Laura read to himfrom the Tibetan Book of the Dead ashe opened to the possibilities andset forth on his adventure. Of thisshe said, “Doing his best to developfully in himself one of the essen-tials he recommended to others:Awareness.” He requested thatLaura give him LSD. She compliedby providing him with two injec-tions, each a few hours apart.Following the second dose, Aldous died, while Laura softlyurged him to let go, to move toward the light. Peacefully,his breathing stopped, “as a piece of music just finishingso gently in a sempre piú piano, dolcemente.”

I often arrived at Laura’s late in the night, enteringpast the open iron gates of the driveway that led into aflurry of grasses; mutiny in the garden, still alwayssomething blossomed. The door was never locked; insideher house a continuous spray of orchid flowers bloomed asalutation to every visitor. I recall Laura saying thatorchids possessed a quality that could rouse even thedullest caller.

On one late night arrival Laura left me a note at thetop of the stairs, “Goodnight, Dearest Valerie. Maybe I amawake.” I went to her room and knocked lightly on herdoor. “Tonight we will speak of everything,” she said. Wespent hours discussing the past, her present situation andhow her health was declining. She said that she had toldher most trusted companion, her nephew, Piero Ferrucci,that she must make a choice between life and death andthat she had chosen life. But as these options becamefewer, discussion turned to sitting, to waiting and toobserving. ‘Idleness is the greatest sin. But then one is

forced to idleness. When you cannot use your body youthink and think of this good thing and that bad thing. Somany thoughts. But I can do nothing by myself. Beforethoughts would come and I would act. But now I must askfor everything.” She couldn’t tolerate chemo, even thevery small amount that she and her oncologist hadbargained she would take. The side effects were dauntingand she wanted to feel vital again. Chemotherapy left herexhausted, her gums burning, her lips scorched and

cracked, a fire raged in her mouth.The rest of that night I half slept.But in the morning Laura was upand moving through the housewith a note of her usual vigorregained.

Aldous and Laura moved intoGinny’s Hollywood Hills homeafter theirs was destroyed by fire.Those flames consumed manymanuscripts and letters, makingashes of literary history. I slept inwhat Laura, as a favor to me, Isuspect, referred to as “my room,”but really it was Ginny’s bedroom.Ginny adopted two children, thefirst single-woman adoption tooccur. Ten years after Aldous’death, Ginny died of cancer. Laurathen took legal guardianship ofGinny’s granddaughter, KarenPfeiffer. Ginny’s room was locatedacross the hall from Aldous’ andlooked out onto a grand old

swimming pool. That pool, an invitation to bathe in anenduring record of cracked tile and gnarled trees, whis-pered tales of a collection of guests, including GeraldHeard, Krisnamurti, T.S. Elliot, D.H Lawrence, HumphryOsmond, Ram Dass, Buckminster Fuller, Bertrand Russell,Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and Christo-pher Isherwood—just a few of the illustrious personalitiesto call on the Huxley’s. Many of Hollywood’s extraordi-nary intellectuals and most noted characters joined Laura,Aldous and Ginny for conversation. Laura reportedlyexcused herself on more than one occasion. She told methat she never considered herself an intellectual and oftenshe would find these talks too esoteric. I found her to befathomless about so many things.

Another night Laura explained her first encounterwith earphones. Aldous had come across a pair andbrought them for her to try. He placed them on her headand put Mozart on the phonograph. She lay on her bedlistening, after some time she felt herself being shakenfrom her reverie, hearing Ginny’s voice asking why shewas yelling. Laura said she had no idea she had made anysound and that for the first time she truly heard the musicof Mozart. She had been transported from this earthly

…when asked

why she had never

had children of her own,

Laura responded,

“I never thought

I was

old enough.”


Laura Archera Huxley

Photo courtesy of the Laura Huxley Trust


realm and she was transformed. Many nights Mozart’sspell would wander from Laura’s bedside CD player intomy room to lull me into sleep.

The phone seldom stopped ringing. Beginning earlyeach morning and unceasingly throughout the day,someone called to ask Laura for an interview, her counsel,and always to feast hungry eyes on her profound beauty.A constant throng of visitors, laden with chocolates orbouquets, kept the days busy when she wasn’t setting outto accomplish any number of otherprojects. She was pursued for herperspicuous viewpoint, with aneditor’s keen eye she would ripthrough the clutter of language,her writings or that of anyone else.Laura could be brutally honest.A quality that was both charmingand harsh. She would say betweenthe two of them, Ginny possessedthe true talent of editing; but allI ever knew of Ginny was whatLaura told me.

Laura often conducted inter-views while she strolled on herwalking machine, or while bal-anced atop one of the many hugeexercise balls scattered throughoutthe house. Her home was all light,perfectly accented with whitefurniture, arching windows cast sunlight across the lengthof her living room. “Light is everything,” she remarked.Many academics had been enticed to explore the yoga ofinner balance while visiting her, sometimes being com-pelled to accept a ball in place of a chair at her diningroom table. She moved constantly and knew more abouther body than anyone I have ever met. She would informher practitioners and her doctors, who were also her mosttrusted friends, of any ailment and they listened intently,making house calls, providing care and any treatment athome. Everyone came to call on Laura.

Besides developing her own narratives, on which sheworked judiciously with Pierro; two other of Laura’spassions were: to maintain the legacy of Aldous and thedevelopment of environments for children. The latter wasspurred by the arrival of Ginny’s granddaughter into herlife. Laura said that when Karen first visited she “threwme into a state of expanded consciousness. I wanderedaround the house feeling great love and compassion.” Thisprocess of self-discovery offered a revealing insight, forwhen asked why she had never had children of her own,Laura responded, “I never thought I was old enough.”

In 1977 Laura founded Our Ultimate Investment(OUI), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the nurtur-ing of the possible human. Two of the programs set inmotion are mentioned here: The first is the CaressingRoom Project, where seniors are encouraged to simply

hold tiny babies. Several rooms were successfully estab-lished. The second program is Teens and Toddlers. Todaythis program continues to foster success in Los Angeleshigh schools and pairs young people with toddlers. Theidea, as Laura once said, “If you want to teach teenagersabout pregnancy and parenting, put them in the sameroom with toddlers.” In England in just a few years Laura’slong time friend, Diana Whitmore, propelled this workinto brilliantly successful government supported curricu-

lum in schools.In April 1994, marking the

centenary of the birth of AldousHuxley, Laura’s Foundationsponsored the highly successfulfour day Conference entitled,CHILDREN: OUR ULTIMATEINVESTMENT, addressing theissues of children’s conditions inour present society. “The predica-ment of the human situation,” shesays, “begins not only in infancy,not only before birth, but also inthe physical, psychological andspiritual preparation of theparents before conception.” Thename of the organization has sincebeen changed to Children: OurUltimate Investment(www.children-

ourinvestment.org/Laura.htm). Karen Pfeiffer overseesthis project.

Laura’s work with her foundation led her to successand widespread recognition in humanistic achievement.She is an Honoree of the United Nations, a Fellow of theInternational Academy of Medical Preventics, she pos-sesses an Honorary Doctorate of Human Services fromSierra University, and in 1990 she received the PeacePrize as an Honoree of the World Health Foundation forDevelopment and Peace. Laura became the 2003 recipientof the Thomas R. Verny award presented by the Associa-tion of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health forher outstanding contributions to the field of prenatal andperinatal psychology.

Every weekend Laura’s home teemed with laughter,dance, mountains of wholesome fruit and vegetables, anda bounty of love when Karen’s young daughter, Kaya,came to stay. To compliment the long evening meals ofdelectable conversation, Laura and Kaya would adjourn tothe living room to share in a pas de deux, always encour-aging guests to join. Abandon ensued. Laura was indefati-gably nurtured by this relationship, and it is this specialbond that contributed to the pure, youthful joy that sheembraced since the day of Kaya’s birth.

In July Laura took a fall in her bedroom and broke herhip. She still lived alone and lay for hours unattended. Shehad much time to think. She asked me to come when the

I commented,

“Laura, I thought that

you had surgery

on your right hip.”

She quickly answered,

“…Yes, I did,

but I mustn’t forget

my yoga.”


procedure was done. I arrived in LA the night of hersurgery. The following day I went to fetch her from thehospital. Everything was ready for her arrival home.When I walked into her room she was stretching, pullingher knee to her chest. Surprised, I commented, Laura, Ithought that you had surgery on your right hip. Shequickly answered, “Oh, Darling it is lovely to see you.Thank you for coming. Yes, I did, but I mustn’t forget myyoga. Now take me home.” Laura was always her besthealer. She never neglected herhealth. Following surgery shedeclined taking pain medication.Her physical therapist observed herdetermination and commented thatregardless of age, he had neverencountered a patient so driven toquickly recover. He had never metLaura Huxley.

I sometimes stayed with Laurafor extended periods. I had beengone only few days when, onDecember 6th, Laura left me amessage; her voice was strained andquiet. She asked me to “come home”.I caught the 5:40 flight and arrivedat her house shortly after 7:30. Irubbed her feet, gave her water, readsome of the letters that Aldous hadwritten to Humphrey. The nightwore on and we briefly discussed a possible bit of innerwork with the Moksha medicine on Saturday. I offeredmore water; I asked if she would like a smoke. I blew a fewpuffs across her lips and under her nose. She coughed,asked for more water, then another fluff of smoke. We saidgood night, and I asked if there was anything she neededbefore retiring, she smiled deeply, but remained quiet. Isthere something? “Yes,” she spoke strongly with a cer-tainty of force, “I need,” she began, “to live well or to die,”she softly smiled again. Hmmm, I thought for a moment.Yes, my friend, I promise you that either one or the otherwill happen. Laura laughed heartily.

We often teased Laura about being the “conductor.” Itwas the one thing, she said, that she regretted not havingaccomplished. Her full participation in every aspect of herlife was an extension of the practice she had engageddaily. She absolutely became the conductor. A few daysbefore she died we were talking about the process and theway that she wanted me to attend to her needs. She said,“Valerie, you will ask me everything before you do it, and Iwill tell you yes or I will tell you no.” So—at her instruc-tion, and under her tutelage—I ask everything, everyintention to move her body, to touch her, to bathe her, todress her, to give water. Water, water, water, always morewater…one drop at a time. I ask even if I think she maynot hear; even if I know she will not respond. But whenlistening in silence, the subtle energy presents a powerful

message. And she informs me of what to do and whom shewould see.

She had planned to take LSD, as Aldous did, prior to,or as she was, dying. But each time I inquired, she re-sponded with a faint shake of her head. On the daysleading up to her death she would say, “Well, maybetonight.” As the evenings passed, she made no request.Her state of consciousness was changing swiftly. Sheentered into a realm of exploration of her body’s function

and its discomfort, of her loss ofsight, of the advance of the cancer,of her thoughts, of allowing andof letting go. She asked me to posther door with several messages tothose who might approach. Onemessage read, “However my bodymay appear, remember that I amsoul, just like you.” Once Lauratold me to ponder and to speakthese words often, “The sensualityof the spirit and the spirituality ofthe senses.” Then they took on aneven deeper meaning, “I will havea difficult time dying, I think. Ilove my body so much, thesensuality, all the senses, themagnificence; I think I will not letgo easily.” In the end she did, witha quiet, peaceful breath, she

opened to the possibilities and she did a master’s work.She died perfectly.

Two days before, she called for Diana and me to sitwith her. By then I rarely left her side. She was trying tofind a comfortable position. I sponged her; we dressed herin cut velvet and silk. We smoked a small amount ofmarijuana. She closed her eyes. We sat in that vast silence.Suddenly Laura spoke. “Emptiness, emptiness, emptiness.It is emptiness.” Laura laughed with weakened enthusi-asm. With that smile still on her face she looked at me,“Tell Ram Dass, it’s all brand new. It Is All Brand New,” ina soft, rich laugh. She began to speak about the things weall must face, uncertainty, longing, pain. But there was noremorse or sorrow, only peace and luminosity. She wasstunningly beautiful.

Laura cried out from her sleep raising her right handskyward, “Help I’m falling, I thought I was falling.”

You are perfectly safe, perfectly safe.Stay nearby.I am right here. You are perfectly safe.She lay quietly. The she called Michael Frederick to

her bedside. Michael is an Alexander master. She told himhe had a short time, less than an hour to instruct me in theAlexander technique. He was surprised, but he did as shesaid, coaching me to properly hold and lengthen her. ThenLaura thanked Michael, he left and she took over instruct-ing me. I understood from that lesson that I am the tool,

She had planned

to take LSD,

as Aldous did, prior to,

or as she was, dying.

But each time I inquired,

she responded with

a faint shake

of her head.


the only work I was to do, was with myself. From herdeathbed I received this teaching. I held Laura, feeling myhands, feeling her head.

She asked, “Whose hands are these?”Mine.“Right hands, right hands, right hands,” she kept

repeating. “Right hands, right hands. Massage my heart.” Idid as she instructed.

A few years ago Laura showed me the shroud that shehad adorned Ginny’s body with when she died. Sheshowed me the photographs she had taken. Ginny wasstunning. She asked me to be certainthat when I lay out her body to usethis same fabric. She wanted to becremated in it. No make up she toldPiero and me. That same night shesaid that both Aldous and Ginny hadcommented on love. Aldous spoke toher, “We can never love enough.”Then later in a letter written byGinny, “We must love more than wecan love.” This amused her. She toldme that while Aldous died peace-fully, Ginny’s pain was great. WhenMaria was dying of cancer in 1955,Aldous used hypnotic techniques totalk her through the memory ofecstatic experiences she had earlierin life. It was 1973. Laura did notknow what she could do to helpGinny. Finally, Ginny was quietly released.

Aun Aprendo - “I am still learning,” I read aloud froma commencement speech by Aldous, “The process goes onfrom the cradle to the grave and doubtless, beyond.” ThenLaura responded, “This is a unique line – it shows hebelieves in the survival of life, because we learn after weare dead. Very, very extraordinary.”

The interdependent relationship between the dyingperson and caregiver is revealed when we sit with aware-ness and observe the becoming of the master. We werehonored guests, participants really. In the hush of thatnight a nocturne drifted from the hearts of each who loveher, up the stairs from the living room, across the distance,through this timeless moment. Our promise was to repeatthe message of her life’s work, to recall attention to alertpassivity and awareness, to read what Aldous had spokento Maria and what Laura had spoken to Aldous, to promptwith language that which continues beyond words.

In Los Angeles when a person dies at home the policemust come to make a report. When they arrived I waspreparing Laura’s body for honoring; washing, anointingand dressing her. I was grateful for many things. Laura,cloaked in Ginny’s shroud, looked exquisite, beautifulreally. Two officers arrived at the house. They were young,a woman and a man. Under the man’s turtleneck, sneak-ing above his collar and only slightly visible were tattoos.He was handsome and kind. Laura would have appreci-ated him. He asked me what I was doing when she died.I told him that she was an author and that I was reading

from her book, This TimelessMoment and from The TibetanBook of the Dead. I said that wehad been reading the samepassages that she had read to herhusband when he died in 1963.I also said that I needed to getback to tending to Laura. Helooked me squarely in the eyes,“My grandmother is dying. I amgoing back to see her in a fewdays and I don’t know what tosay.” Ah, let me send you with acopy of Laura’s book. I will markthe passages for you to look at.Perhaps you will find themhelpful. She would like that.He eagerly took the book inhand and then asked if I wouldn’t

mind if he peeked in on Laura again. “Oh, she looks sobeautiful,” he said. Yes, eternally beautiful.

That era of women who possess such grace and style isconcluding. We have surrendered our i più nobili e donneeleganti del nostro tempo. What remains is a courtshipwith death; it is All Brand New, built from the wisdom ofthe aged, of the timeless masters. “Emptiness, emptiness,emptiness. It’s all brand new.”

(sempre piú piano, dolcemente– more and more plainly, softly, sweetly)

(i più nobili e donne eleganti del nostro tempo- the most noble and elegant women of our time)

Once Laura told me

to ponder and

to speak these words

often, The sensuality

of the spirit and

the spirituality of

the senses.


There are so many feelings that can’t beexpressed. Perhaps the most importantones must go unsaid. It seems that puttingwords to the soul’s tremors can destroytheir delicacy. When a beloved is dying,how intimate is our heart’s embrace. Inthe midst of these raw tides, we can onlycherish the poignancy of every moment.

We are all “dying” and being con-scious of this sobering truth gives themoment its rightful wings. The passion ofintimacy that we can share with another,in crisis and otherwise, seeds our beingsand changes us forever beyond what wecan imagine. A mysterious exchange ofgifts flows between the caregiver and therecipient, as they become one.

The roles we play are interesting toexamine. Often it is possible to see thekarma or seeds of being a caregiver earlyon in one’s life. To quote Mephistopheles:“In the end we all create the creatures weourselves depend on,” which is a thought-provoking statement. Certainly theshadows we cast are ourselves reflected, asare the rainbows.

As always, Laura made the impossiblepossible. I say this because the nobilityand courage she lived in her dying offeredme an undying strength that will live onforever as a blazing torch. I am everfortunate to have been inspired by themuse of Laura, and to share her beamsof light with you.

October 2007Laura Archera Huxley; 1911-2007;

beloved friend; violinist;therapist; author; founder of

Children: Our Ultimate Investment

O eternal flower(for beloved Laura Huxley)

O eternal flower,how fragrant your scent,and how far-reaching your stem.

Although you’ve come and gone,you’re still here, nevertheless.Somehow, concepts of life and deathare too limitedfor your present formlessness

No, it’s not real to methat you’ve diedIt’s no more real thanlife’s other illusions.

My truth is, O eternal flower,that you still exist — outside of timelike a scent that forever lingers.

How infinite your spirit,as it travels the universeand mocks the smallnesswe dote upon.

O eternal flower,how fragrant your scent,and how far-reaching your stem.

No, it’s not real to methat you’ve died.

It’s no more real thanlife’s other illusions

February 10, 2008Carolyn Mary Kleefeld

To find out more about Ms. Kleefeld’swork see: www.carolynmarykleefeld.com

Carolyn Mary Kleefeld

www.carolynmarykleefeld.com

The passion

of intimacy

that we can share

with another,

in crisis and otherwise,

seeds our beings

and changes us forever

beyond what we can

imagine.

For Beloved Laura and FriendsCarolyn Mary Kleefeld

Carolyn Mary Kleefeld will be having an exhibit at The Frederick R. Weisman Museumof Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California from August 23rd to December14th, with an opening reception on Saturday, September 13th from 6:00 to 9:00 PM.

Her paintings “Dionysian Splendor” and “Laura Huxley’s Departure”– as well as the artby Brummbaer and Dean Chamberlain, which also appear in this issue of the Bulletin–

are for sale, with fifty percent of the profits going to help raise funds for MAPS research.For more information visit: www.maps.org/catalog


Dear MAPS…I chose to send my support because

we in the scientific community need toknow more about all of these substances.Their use continues to grow, yet ourknowledge about them remains fossilized(i.e. LSD-1970s, MDMA-1980s).Ignorance is not bliss. It is my hope thatMORE researchers WILL be permittedaccess to these drugs that are LARGELYonly available on the black market.

– John Gianoli, M.D.

Having received the latest (MAPS)Bulletin, I felt like a lost sailor spottingland after drifting at sea. The human mindis a miraculous thing. Coupled with spirit,it has the capacity to endure and overcomesome of the most trying of circumstances.I look forward to seeing this place in myrear view mirror, and swimming in a sea of peaceful, good vibrations. Keep up thegood work.

– Solo

Lettersto MAPS

By no means am I a rich benefactor,but I do a fair amount of charitable givingnevertheless, primarily to environmentalorganizations, including my own non-profit, since I think that, without a viableplanet, all else means little to humanity.However, I believe that people are themain problem for the environment andnothing less than a psychedelic revival hasthe potency to awaken the masses enoughfor us to collectively stop industriallydefecating on our own habitat. Ergo,MAPS deserves more support and I willsee what I can do.

– Research Professorat a Major University

I donate more to MAPS than anyother group because the research thatMAPS supports is a vital part of the radicaltransformation that humanity mustexperience to survive and flourish. Anymethods that help people to see beyonda limited worldview and embrace a moreauthentic, primal, and loving life areworth pursuing.

– Glenn Smith,Santa Cruz, CA

This classic text is once again available… in a revised edition, published this

Spring by MAPS. The new edition includes a new introduction from Albert

Hofmann, Ph.D., a foreword by Andrew Weil, M.D. and new afterword with

contributions by L. Jerome, Ph.D., Valerie Mojeiko, and Rick Doblin, Ph.D.

Also included are 40 pages of color images created by study subjects

recording their LSD experiences. Printing of this new edition was made

possible by generous grants to MAPS from Kevin Herbert and the Helios

Foundation. Available for $19.95 (plus shipping) from MAPS, visit our

website www.maps.org/catalog

Now Back in PrintLSD Psychotherapyby Stanislav Grof, M.D.

The Healing Potential of Psychedelic Medicine


Rick Doblin, MAPS founder andPresident, earned his Ph.D. in PublicPolicy from the Kennedy School ofGovernment at Harvard University.Doblin was also in Stan and ChristinaGrof’s first training group to receivecertification as a Holotropic Breath-work practitioner.

Valerie Mojeiko, Director ofOperations and Clinical ResearchAssociate, coordinates projects atMAPS’ Love Creek office and facilitatespsychedelic research around the globe.Formally educated at New College ofFlorida and the California Insitute ofIntegral Sudies.

Ilsa Jerome, Research andInformation SpecialistIlsa earned a PhD in psychology fromthe University of Maryland. She helpsMAPS and researchers design studies,gathers information on study drugs bykeeping abreast of the current literatureand discussion with other researchers,creates and maintains documentsrelated to some MAPS-supportedstudies, and helps support the MAPSpsychedelic literature bibliography.

Josh Sonstroem, TechnologySpecialist and Events Coordinator,earned his B.A. in Philosophy andReligion from New College ofFlorida and is a chef, musician, poetand technologist. He immenselyenjoys the depths of existentialexperience.

David Jay Brown, Guest Editor,earned his master’s degree in psycho-biology from New York University, andhas been interviewing accomplishedthinkers about their creative processfor over 20 years. He is the author ofMavericks of Medicine, Conversationson the Edge of the Apocalypse, andfive other books about the frontiersof science and consciousness. To findout more about David’s work see:www.mavericksofthemind.com

Jalene Otto, Membership and SalesCoordinator, studied philosophy andsociology at Cabrillo College and theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz.She is a story weaver and a mother.

Rick

Valerie

Josh

MAPS IS A MEMBERSHIP-BASED ORGANIZATION working

to assist researchers worldwide to design, fund, conduct, obtain

governmental approval for, and report on psychedelic research

in humans. Founded in 1986, MAPS is an IRS approved

501(c)(3) non-profit corporation funded by tax-deductible

donations from members.

“Most of the things worth doing in the world

had been declared impossible

before they were done.”

– Louis D. Brandeis

If you can even faintly imagine a cultural reintegrationof the use of psychedelics and the states of mind theyengender, please join MAPS in supporting the expansionof scientific knowledge in this area. Progress is possiblewith the support of those who care enough to takeindividual and collective action.

THE MAPS BULLETINEach Bulletin reports on MAPS research in progress.In addition to reporting on research both in the UnitedStates and abroad, the Bulletin may include feature articles,reports on conferences, book reviews, Heffter ResearchInstitute updates, and the Hofmann Report. Issues raisedin letters, calls, and e-mail from MAPS members may alsobe addressed, as may political developments that affectpsychedelic research and use.

MAPS: Who We Are

©2008 Multidisciplinary Associationfor Psychedelic Studies, Inc. (MAPS)

10424 Love Creek Road,Ben Lomond, CA 95005Phone: 831-336-4325

Fax: 831-336-3665E-mail: [email protected]

Web: www.maps.org

Ilsa

David Jay Brown

Jalene


YES, I would like to join MAPS and receive the MAPS Bulletin!

❏ Student/Low-income $20 – $34*

Student/Low Income members will receive the tri-annual MAPS Bulletin.

❏ Basic Member $35 – $49*Basic members will receive the MAPS Bulletin.

❏ Integral Member $50 – $99*Integral members will receive the MAPS Bulletin and their choice of one ofthe books MAPS has published.

❏ Supporting Member $100 – $249*Supporting members will receive the MAPS Bulletin plus their choice ofone of the books MAPS has published.

❏ Patron Member $250 or more*Patron members will receive the MAPS Bulletin plus their choice of two booksMAPS has published. Patrons may also request copies of back issues andresearch updates on matters of personal interest.

* Outside the U.S. please add $15 to cover additional postage.

CARD NUMBER EXPIRATION DATE

SIGNATURE PHONE NUMBER

TOTAL $ enclosed. Donations to MAPS are tax-deductible.

❏ Enclosed is my check or money order payable to MAPS

❏ Please charge my credit card: ❏ Mastercard ❏ Visa ❏ Amex

❏ Please renew my membership automatically each year.

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A L S O A V A I L A B L E F R O M M A P S

MAPS (Multidisciplinary Associationfor Psychedelic Studies, Inc.)10424 Love Creek RoadBen Lomond, CA 95005Phone: 831-336-4325Fax: 831-336-3665E-mail: [email protected] VIA THE WEB!www.maps.org(secure web site transactions)

SHIPPING FOR BOOKS: U.S. and Canada – Priority mail (3–7 days): $6.00, add $2.50 per additional book.Overseas airmail rates (7–10 days): $12.00, add $10.00 per additional book.

The Ultimate Journey:Consciousness and the Mystery of Death by Stanislav Gof, MD, 356 pgs, $19.95LSD Psychotherapy by Stanislav Gof, MD, 374 pgs, 40 pgs of color plates, $19.95LSD: My Problem Child by Albert Hofmann, PhD, 232 pgs, $12.95The Secret Chief Revealed: Conversations with a Pioneer of the Underground PsychedelicTherapy Movement by Myron Stolaroff, 176 pgs, $12.95Ketamine: Dreams and Realities by Karl Jansen, MD, PhD, 355 pgs, $14.95Drawing It Out: Befriending the Unconscious (A Contemporary Woman’s Psychedelic Journey)by Sherana Harriette Frances, 128 pgs, $19.95Ecstasy: The Complete Guide Edited by Julie Holland, MD, 281 pgs, $19.95Shivitti: A Vision by Ka-Tzetnik 135633, 144 pgs, $15.95Ibogaine: Rite of Passage DVD $20Higher Wisdom edited by Roger Walsh and Charles Grob, 267 pgs, $24.95TRIPPING An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures, Edited by Charles Hayes, 486 pgs, $22.00Marihuana, The Forbidden Medicine (Signed by the author!)by Lester Grinspoon, MD, and James B. Bakalar, JD, 296 pages, $19.95

NEW– Psychedelic Medicine: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments: Vol. 1&2.Michael Winkelman and Thomas B. Roberts, 680 pages, $200.00

“Xenolinguistics: Intense Play.”Still from LiveGlide performance.

By Diana Reed SlatterySee article by Diana Slattery on page 9

“Musical Volume” by Brummbaerwww.brummbaer.net

See article by Brummbaer on page 36.

Special Issue: Technology and PsychedelicsEdited by David Jay Brown, M.A.

Albert Hofmann: January 11, 1906 ~ April 29, 2008

See www.maps.org/albert for obituaries from around the worldVOLUME XVI I I NUMBER 1 • SPRING 2008

MULTIDISCIPLINARY ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHEDELIC STUDIESMULTIDISCIPLINARY ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHEDELIC STUDIES

Special Issue: Technology and Psychedelics Edited by David Jay … · 2017. 9. 12. · ©2008...

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