Doug Yurchey
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LSD: A Trip into the Future?
by Doug Yurchey
©2005 Doug Yurchey
All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted with Permission
This writer in NO WAY advocates the use of LSD for the
general public. People cannot handle the truth, let alone a stimulas that
magnifies reality. Too many people want to escape because they cannot deal
with reality as it is. LSD is an intensifier of what is real. The user
gets an enormous dose of REALITY. LSD is not for everyone or even most
people…because many people do not want to see, hear and feel.
Remember LSD? LSD is like God; it is a very controversial subject.
People have their views on lysergic acid diethylamide. Few people still
use acid. But, there are those people who have used for decades without
any harmful effects. Then, there are most people who have been programmed
against such mind alterations. Who owns a truly open mind regarding LSD or
are pro-LSD? Minds are usually made up and people are quite definite about
their feelings on the subject. Like the topic of God, people are very
opinionated.
Dr. Albert Hofmann was a research chemist at Sandoz Labs in Basle,
Switzerland.
In April of 1943, Dr. Hofmann accidently ingested a small
amount of a compound he had synthesized five years earlier from a rye
fungus ergot.
'I experienced fantastic images of an extraordinary plasticity. They
were associated with an intense kaleidoscopic play of colors. After two
hours, this condition disappeared,' Dr. Hofmann later stated. His stunning
discovery was labeled d-lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate or LSD-25. It
was soon called 'the most powerful drug yet known to man.'
In the 1950s, investigators from various scientific disciplines began
to use LSD as a research tool. Psychologists reported that LSD could
greatly facilitate the process of psychotherapy. Others declared that it
was of no positive use whatsoever and was, in fact, dangerous. The
controversy raged, but most of the general public never heard about it.
'The discovery of LSD marked one of the three major breakthroughs of
the 20th Century....In psychology, the psychedelics have provided the key
to the unimaginable vastness of the unconscious...'
- Dr. Duncan B. Blewett
EXPERIMENTS WITH LSD
In 1963, Harvard University dismissed two faculty members for their
experiments with LSD. 'LSD is more important than Harvard,' said professor
Timothy Leary. Thus began the doctor's highly publicized adventures and,
to a lesser extent, those of Dr. Richard Alpert.
In March of 1966, Dr. Leary received a 30 year jail sentence for
carrying less than a half an ounce of marijuana. This brought him national
attention on an even larger scale than previously. Because of his former
association with Harvard, his outspoken advocacy of LSD and extremely
harsh sentence...Timothy Leary became infamous. The Moody Blues wrote a
song about him.
LSD was extremely popular in underground circles; especially in
American colleges as it officially became illegal. Indiscriminate use of
LSD was the subject of thousands of newspaper and magazine articles all
over the western world. Curiously, the true properties of the chemical and
its effects are as little understood today as then.
The LSD user will find that all of their senses are simultaneously more
sensitive. Mental and emotional processes are heightened and accelerated.
The subject might feel childlike, trusting and be literal-minded. Yet the
user's thoughts will often seem enormously complex, important and of an
incredible depth. Tears, laughter, loneliness, intimacy, clarity,
confusion, love, ecstasy and despair may all co-exist. The intensified
reality experienced by the person under the influence of LSD is very
overwhelming to say the least.
Those on LSD may hear mathematics, taste colors or see music. The user
can turn inward and explore vast areas of consciousness which are hardly
mapped. By not leaving the room, journeys into other realms are possible.
A common description of the LSD experience is one where the subject
loses reality; is far removed from the external world and is generally out
of it. This is a misconception. It is not true that the tripper is unaware
of the real world. The truth is: LSD takes you so deeply INTO reality that
normalcy seems distorted.
BRAVE NEW WORLD
Aldous Huxley, author of 'Brave New World' and 'The Doors of
Perception,' does not agree with the term hallucinogen when applied to
LSD. (Huxley's book was why the music group the Doors was called 'the
Doors'). He believes that a much more appropriate description of its
effects should be 'mind-expander.' A hallucinogen causes a hallucination;
something that is not there; an unreality. Under LSD, your mind is
expanded. What you experience is not a dream or illusion, but a larger
world. The tripper dives INTO reality, not away from it.
All senses are increased. You see, hear, smell, taste and feel to such
an extreme degree that you experience new heights of perception. On LSD,
when you play your favorite song...it is like you are hearing it for the
first time. Sounds you never heard before on the CD are now crystal clear.
A fascinating phenomenon happens on the stimulant that would intrigue
the physicist. The perception of time s l o w s. Time slows, during LSD's
peak, where one (normal) minute could equal 20 minutes! You literally
experience more time. A little mental exercise may explain: Suppose you
have a sensory knob that determines your level of perception. Reality is
received via the senses. This data of the world around us flows to the
brain at a particular rate. Let us say that it is like the knob on an
amplifier: 1 to 10. Let us also assume that we operate naturally in our
awake hours at a normal #3. On LSD, the rate of sensory intake is turned
up or increased to maybe #6 or #7. More of reality flows into you through
the senses; so much so, that the perception of time EXPANDS. We see the
universe going by at a slower rate because we are seeing many more frames
of reality per second.
{As I write this, a new anti-marijuana commercial just came on the TV
screen. Now, they are saying that if you smoke marijuana...your reaction
time slows. This is absolutely not true. My pinball scores are always,
always higher when I am high on hemp. In college, I often tripped and
played one particular machine called Mata Hari. This was my social life
for a few years. Numbers do not lie. Knock, knock, knock...I would win
game after game when tripping. There were times I would draw a crowd of
those who heard me hit for so many games. When tripping, I could rack up
over 20 games! Normally, the machine would be tough to win one game. This
happened every time I tripped and played pinball...without fail. All
movements seemed to go by very slowly, yet I could get myself to react
super fast; the same way my mind was working. I could play other pinball
machines and the same thing would happen. When a scientific experiment is
repeated with the same results every time, you must conclude: Reaction
time, on certain highs, can be accelerated...not slowed. If you put your
mind to it...anything you do under the influence of a mind-expanding
stimulus, you can do better. (Try making love on...). Hemp and other
mind-expanders are the opposite of the drunken state of alcoholic
intoxication}.
HUMANS ARE BLIND
Einstein spoke and wrote of the 'feebleness of the senses.' The great
thinker believed that humans were virtually blind and did not see the true
universe. Einstein knew of the Electro-Magnetic Spectrum which lay beyond
visible light. The true universe is not static or stationary. It
constantly moves.
We have all heard that people only use about one third of their brain's
potential. If we really used a third of what the brain could do, we could
levitate; we could move mountains. A much more accurate guesstimate is
that we only use a fraction of one percent of the mind's total
capabilities.
William Blake wrote: 'If the doors of perception were cleansed,
everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite.' What would it be like
if we utilized more of our mind? How would reality appear? What is the
universe to the super mind?
Using more of the mind, the view of the universe is like the LSD
experience. We would be functioning at an accelerated level. Our sensory
receptors increase. Time/space expands. Reality warps. Clocks melt. If you
think you normally see in 3D and in color...guess again. The visual
experience of LSD makes our ordinary world look 2-dimensional and black
and white.
In this heightened mind state...intricate, moving, geometric patterns
are observed in everything. We could be looking at a blank, white wall;
then suddenly we see intense colors and changing patterns. Those colors
and patterns are not hallucinations. They are really there! They lie
beyond the view of our normal, limited and narrow senses. A huge range of
mental levels exist above what we would call normal perception. Someone
operates on the higher floors of the mind.
SACRED PLANTS AND RELIGION
Religions have developed based on the ingestion of peyote buttons and
the Magic Mushroom. Centuries before LSD, higher consciousness was
achieved through sacred plants. The Indians of Mexico and the American
southwest have a long history with mind-expanding agents. In the words of
one of the Spanish visitors to the New World: 'They eat a root which they
call peyote, and which they venerate as though it were a diety.'
Mescaline is the active principle of peyote. Psychedelic mushrooms,
mescaline, psilocybin and synthetic pill-versions of these mind-altering
plants also became popular on campuses during the sixties and early
seventies.
Professor J.S. Slotkin, one of the first white men allowed to
participate in the rites of a peyotist congregation, says of his fellow
worshippers: (They were) 'certainly not stupefied or drunk...They never
get out of rhythm or fumble their words, as a drunken or stupefied man
would do...They are all quiet, courteous and considerate of one
another...Sometimes they became aware of the presence of God...'
Dr. Slotkin reported that habitual Peyotists are on the whole more
industrious, more temperate (many abstain altogether from alcohol) and
more peaceful than non-Peyotists.
Aldous Huxley wrote: Mescaline raises all colors to a higher power and
makes the percipient aware of innumerable fine shades of differences, to
which, at ordinary times, he is completely blind. The Indians who consume
peyote buttons do not seem to be physically or morally degraded by the
habit.
The European missionaries were horrified at these practices and
attempted to stamp them out; referring to the Indian's visions as
'fantasies of the Devil.' The Europeans did not object to mind-dulling
substances as they permitted the natives to use narcotics, tobacco and
whiskey. Psychedelic plants, which stimulated mental processes rather than
dulling them, were denounced and suppressed because according to one 16th
Century friar: 'Their users see visions and are provoked to lust.' These
are precisely the same arguments being used 400 years later.
CREATIVITY - IMAGINATION
A rare book from 1967 entitled 'LSD - The Problem-Solving Psychedelic'
by Peter Stafford and Bonnie Golightly looks at numerous LSD-inspired
cases. The cover reads: 'The astonishing benefits available through the
proper use of LSD - documented by medical research and supported by
personal testimony. A positive approach to the most controversial issue of
our time.'
For example, an architect had been working on a technical problem for
years without success. After an LSD trip, the architect removed the
stumbling block and found that the solution to his impasse was child's
play. From the book:
'...the true essence of each individual can be revealed in a
mind-lighting fashion. With LSD, mankind can at last be released from an
accumulation of illogical customs and traditions, and Everyman can become
a prime problem-solver.'
Dr. Kary Mullis invented the PCR process used in DNA testing whereby a
person can be identified from a single molecule of DNA. In 1993, the
biochemist won the Nobel Prize for his discovery. Kary Mullis attended the
University of California at Berkeley. He claims the inspiration for PCR
came to him during an LSD experience. The doctor probably visualized each
and every colorful, little shape of the DNA components.
About taking LSD, Dr. Mullis said he would 'walk around in the woods
and think grandiose thoughts…and I still do it (today).'
The U.S. military has certainly tested subjects (and in many cases
without their knowledge) with LSD and LSD-like substances; hoping to
achieve a more efficient, human killing-machine. The film 'Jacob's Ladder'
concerned that idea. What our government found was that war was too much
of an effort to the tripper. He did not want to fight. It was reported
that the psychedelic BZ was used in experiments on soldiers in Vietnam.
The Pentagon, of course, denied the story.
The secret 'MK-Ultra Program' had Manchurian Candidate objectives; to
create a controlled/brainwashed human slave or assassin. The test subject
might not even be aware of his own double-life. They control the subject.
On cue, they do their every whim. LSD, and other powerful psychedelics,
were federally used to attempt to make the super-soldier. It was not quite
successful.
Dolphins have large brains that rival the human brain in size. They may
naturally function on these upper-mind levels similar to the LSD
experience. Dolphins could view the world in moving, laser-bright colors
and little (geometric) patterns...in constant motion...with an elongated
sense of time. Their doors of perception are opened very wide. Dolphins
are tripping! Why do you think they are smiling?
Aliens have been reported to possess larger-than-human-sized heads. In
some cases, people have interacted with older; more evolved; more complex
life forms. It is logical to assume that advanced ETs function mentally on
these higher levels of the mind. The way an alien sees the universe may
have a connection to the LSD experience. Is LSD a glimpse into the future?
As we improve the human condition, how much will our mental state also
improve?
In the far future, the human race will be using more of the powers of
the mind. As we naturally get more complicated and become a greater
creature, the way we ultimately view the universe could very well be
similar to the LSD experience. Reality would be seen the way it really is
with a wider sensory range: Colorful, moving patterns; an extended view of
the world; and an expanded perception of time.
This writer has spent 30 years studying our ancestors; the Egyptians,
Incas and the Atlanteans. The Cro-Magnons were not simple, ape-like
creatures. They possessed brains LARGER THAN MODERN HUMANS! This is a fact
that anthropologists do not tell us because their traditional views would
no longer make any sense. Hieroglyphs are a form of language FAR beyond
our understanding. These ancient pyramid-builders could have operated on a
mental level similar to the LSD experience. The past could be the future,
and the future might be the past. Did we once use those unused portions of
our brain and have lost this ability with the fall of technology? Also,
was this long lost mental state like the LSD experience? Food for thought?
'There is no question that LSD can precipitate psychotic reactions
among certain unstable people if used improperly. However, the dangers of
ill-advised LSD use must not overshadow the potentials of wise psychedelic
usage and careful experimentation.'
- Stanley C. Kripper, PH.D
'For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes
shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.'
- Genesis 3/5
©2005 Doug Yurchey
All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted with Permission
About the Author
Doug Yurchey is a writer, artist and inventor. He has studied
ancient mysteries for 30 years and was married to a trans-channel. He has
lectured at Carnegie Mellon University and California State at Northridge.
For two years a background artist with the Simpsons TV Show.
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©2005 Doug Yurchey
All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with Permission
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