LSD Experience - Revelations of the Mind

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Think of the last chapter as a brief, general introduction about LSD. There was nothing in that chapter about what actually happens or can happen during an LSD trip. As important a part of preparation for the experience as anything is to be as familiar as possible with the most unusual kinds of things that can happen, so that it won’t be such a shock if some of these things do happen. You’ll be plenty shocked enough by LSD.

If at any time during your trip things are getting so wild that you are questioning your sanity, be assured that there is nothing wrong with you, nothing at all. Always remember that unusual things are happening because you took the LSD. You knew in advance that something completely different than anything you have ever known would be experienced and that whatever it is, it’s all right. Just because you’re not used to it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong or unnatural about it. So, enjoy the show and what a show it is!

You may go into your trip somewhat worried that you might flip out in some way. Once you get into it and are having the time of your life and realizing that this is a very special experience, the only thing you’ll be worrying about is that you won’t flip out enough and will eventually have to come back down. It’s a shame when it’s over and you are back to conventional reality, which can pretty much be described as how one feels on Monday morning. It’s like “Why did I have to get kicked out of heaven and go back to hell again?” With the help of LSD, we can have heaven here on earth. Shouldn’t heaven on earth be the most important goal? The only reason it’s not happening is that virtually no one thinks it’s possible. There is no question that it’s close to impossible for the foreseeable future, but it’s not impossible later on. It will happen sometime in the new millennium, but heaven on earth won’t happen without LSD or its equivalent.

So, what specifically happens during an LSD experience? To begin with, it may be that nothing will happen. There have been people who have taken LSD, never gotten off on it and wonder what the big deal is. This was happening on my first trip, a mescaline experience. A friend was also having his first trip and he felt the effects of the drug at the expected time. I was feeling nothing different. More and more time went by and it was still nothing. Not until I smoked some marijuana did it finally happen. If an unusually long time goes by, like 2 hours or more, without any sign of the drug’s effect, then try some marijuana. That should do it. It’s as if, in your body, the marijuana is going over to the LSD, snapping its fingers and telling the LSD to wake up. When the LSD wakes up, then you will be tripping.

The odds are strong, though, that you will feel the effects of the LSD and not need marijuana to help bring it on. You will not feel anything right away. It may be a half hour, an hour, or even an hour and a half before anything happens. When you start to feel or sense something different, it will usually come on slowly and gradually so that you have a chance to adjust and get used to it while it keeps on coming. No matter how strong it gets, it’s all right. Don’t fight it. Relax, go along with it and remember that thousands, if not millions of people have done this.

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Relaxing is important. On the day of your trip, the entire day should be wide open, without a worry in the world, meaning no obligations, responsibilities or anything that you have to do. With LSD, you are going way beyond all of this kind of thing. If something happened yesterday that is bothering you or if there’s something ahead in the next day or two that you’re uptight about, then this is not the right time to take LSD. Do it another time.

You should also have the day after the trip wide open because this experience is so overwhelming in so many ways that you’ll be glad to have the next day free to absorb and think about what happened. If you are going to have a day trip, then Saturday would be the day to do it. If you take LSD at night, then Friday night would be the night because you will be up all night until well past dawn and maybe well into the afternoon. If you’re tripping when that sun comes up, it will be a new day. Calling it a new day will have meaning that it never had before. It won’t just be a new day. It will symbolize a new world and a new life
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The first effects of the LSD are likely to be physical changes in how your body feels and visual changes in what you see and how you see it. The physical and visual changes will remain a constant throughout the trip, regardless of anything else that’s happening, just like breathing is always a constant no matter what else a person is doing or not doing.

Let’s start with the physical changes involving how your body feels. People don’t realize how physical the experience will be. It will likely start with a tingling feeling, maybe in your fingertips and other parts of your body, simultaneously. It will be a tingling, vibrating, throbbing kind of feeling and you will feel sensations throughout your body that you have never felt before. These sensations are nothing new to your body. It’s only new to your conscious attention. It is the first time that you have become consciously aware of these sensations. To your body, though, it’s old hat. The body itself is not behaving any differently than usual. The body and your brain have known about this the whole time. You’re just getting more tuned in and in touch with what’s going on inside your body. There is a whole universe within your body or the body is a universe in itself and with LSD, you can not only become aware if it, but feel at home in your body in a way that you have never felt before.

You might feel like you’re all charged up with energy. It might feel like delicate threads, electrical forces or powerful currents of energy radiating, rippling, flowing, pulsing, surging or streaming throughout the body. You’ll be feeling your body in a whole new way and as time goes by and you get a chance to adjust to it, it will be an infinitely better way. It will get super sensuous and you will feel worlds better than you have ever felt before. You’ll be saying to yourself that you just didn’t know that it could be this way. You won’t believe how great you’ll feel and you will know that it just doesn’t get any better than LSD because nothing CAN be better. This is it!

It’s even possible to feel the blood moving through the veins or become conscious of your cells as alive and active. Your body can feel so light that it’s as if you’re floating in the air or your body can feel like it weighs ten tons and that it would take tremendous effort just to stand up. You know that you could get up if you had to, but there’s sure no point in doing it at the time. If someone is feeling the effects of the LSD so well that they don’t think that they can move, then why move? They’re doing just fine right where they are and might as well stay there and enjoy it. When they’re ready to get up, they’ll get up and if they spend the entire trip in the same spot, that’s great. If someone can spend about 12 hours sitting in one spot and be happy to stay right there, then you know that something amazing is going on.

There are other changes that can be happening with your body. It’s possible to feel as if your body is made of another substance. It can feel like your body is made of wood, glass, plastic, metal, marble, stone, clay, paper, leather or anything else. You can feel as if your body is made of wood, for example, but it doesn’t interfere with the physical coordination of your body parts. You can still move around any way you wish, as usual, but it just seems like the body is made of wood or whatever it is. It’s nothing to worry about and it won’t last. You are just finding out what it’s like to be made of wood or to be a piece of wood. This is an example of an unusual thing that can happen.

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You can actually become an inanimate object or even an imaginary object, a robot, a plant, an animal, pure energy, the earth, air, fire, water or anything. If you become a plant or an animal, you will be tuned into the consciousness of the plant or animal. This is even the case if you become an object, like a piece of wood. That piece of wood is alive and has a consciousness that we know nothing about. Einstein said that matter is not solid and hard, but energy in motion. Yes, the piece of wood is alive and when you are tripping, you’ll see just how alive it is. When the trip’s over and you see a piece of wood again, you’ll remember and have a different understanding, appreciation and respect for what you once saw as a dead, irrelevant, meaningless piece of wood.

Your body won’t just feel relaxed, but you’ll be thinking that this is how one should always feel. It’s as if before you took the LSD, your body was all tied up in knots. Now you feel loose and free as if the knots are all gone. It can even be a cleansing feeling, like your life is off to a new start and it is.

Another aspect of the physical changes is the sense of touch. All of the senses are incredibly intensified and we’ll get to that later. For now, just staying with the sense of touch, it becomes electric, erotic, sensual and full of pleasure. You can get a feeling that in touching something with your finger, you now know more about that finger and what it’s touching than you knew about either one of them before. The sensuousness of the LSD experience is like striking it rich. Sexual feeling takes on a new, undreamed of dimension that you won’t believe and we’ll get to that later, also.

You can have physical feelings in your body that aren’t brand new but somehow seem familiar from a long time ago when you were a child. You’ll remember that you had these same feelings as a child and never experienced them again, until now, during the LSD trip. It will be delightful to get that back again. There are no words in the language for what these physical feelings are. That’s the problem with words. Once words reach their limits, all they can do is indicate something or hint at something but can’t get at that something and describe it. In this case, all that can be said is that a person can be tripping on LSD and say that they haven’t felt this way since childhood. There will be more later about the concept of regaining what’s been lost and reliving aspects of childhood.

We’ll take a look at 2 other types of different body feelings or sensations. One is the experience of being outside your body and the other is the experience of having no body. An example of the experience of being outside your body is lying down on a bed, but it seems like you are standing up near the bed and looking down at your real body which is lying on the bed. This, like many things that can happen on an LSD trip, doesn’t seem to make logical sense, but it’s something that can happen, nevertheless.

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The experience of not having a body is a little different. Be assured that you have your body the whole time no matter what seems to be happening, even if it seems like you and your body are dissolving and disappearing. This is the one potentially dangerous part of an LSD experience. There was a brief mention in the last chapter about the terror of how one can think that they are going to die, when it’s only the ego and all the social propaganda which has been drilled into them that is dying. The problem is confusing one’s ego with their full identity so that if the ego is dying, then they think that they are dying. If one understands what is happening, then it’s not a problem, but a pleasure. There will be more on this later, especially how to deal with this problem and get out of it should it come up.

Another interpretation of having no body is to not feel the body. You know that your body is still there somehow, but it’s like you’re floating in a sensuous sea of joy, ecstasy and bliss. You aren’t just on top of the world. It’s so super that it’s like you’re on top of the universe.

It should be noted that not every physical change described here is going to happen on your trip and that also goes for everything else about the LSD experience that will be described later. Not everything that is possible to happen will happen. For example, you may not have the experience of feeling like or being a piece of wood. You can take LSD 100 times and not have that experience. Someone else may have it on the first trip.

The new physical feelings of your body will last for the entire trip. It was mentioned that the visual changes will also be there the whole time. The visual changes in what you see and how you see it are so magnificent, extraordinary and unforgettable that LSD is often referred to as a visionary experience. A separate chapter later will be devoted to how you see color and what you see when your eyes are closed. For now, we’ll just deal with what’s going on when your eyes are open, without emphasizing color.

Those who have never taken LSD have the impression that people have visual hallucinations and that this is bad. Whether or not one hallucinates depends upon how the word is defined. If hallucinations mean seeing things differently than usual, such as a still object showing some movement, then, yes, one hallucinates under LSD and it’s sure not bad. It’s very good, even great.

There is another definition or interpretation about what a hallucination is. If one is “normally” aware of only a tiny fraction of one percent of their brain or reality, is it a hallucination to become aware of more or is the hallucination to think that the tiny fraction of one percent of a pie is the entire pie? Our usual, typical, limited concept of reality has as much in common with the full, entire reality as a map has with the area it’s supposed to represent.

We spend our whole lives thinking that the map is the territory or eating the menu instead of the meal or climbing up the pole with the street sign instead of walking on the street to get somewhere. So, don’t worry about “hallucinations” during your LSD trip. That’s all part of the negative propaganda. Whatever you see, it’s all right. Whether or not it’s called a hallucination is an irrelevant word game and words often confuse when they are supposed to clarify.

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You will see objects that are usually seen as still, now moving in some way. It’s not that an object is moving to a different part of the room. It’s much more likely that the object is in the same spot, but it’s slowly vibrating or expanding and contracting or seems to be breathing in and out. Whatever it is, that thing is moving. It’s alive. You look around the room and everything is alive that way and even though you were told to expect this, you still can’t believe it. The world has become a Wonderland.

If someone isn’t prepared for this, they may see the moving, alive object and start to worry. Is the object friendly? Is it out to get me? Like with anything else unusual that’s happening, all one needs to remember is that they are getting this effect because they took the LSD. No matter how wildly that object is “behaving,” it is not a threat and never was because it’s still the same inert object, just like it always is. To be clear on this, it’s the same, still object in that the object is no problem to you, but in reality, the object really is moving and alive and LSD allows you to become aware of that.

From the LSD perspective, when you see the object, you are not thinking about or keying on what its use or function is. If you are looking at a chair, you know that it’s a chair but you are thinking about how beautiful, significant and meaningful in itself that the chair is. You’re perceiving the chair as something that’s a lot more than a piece of furniture which one sits on. A little child sees the chair with an intensity that is not the case with an adult. The little child sees the chair as big, a lot taller than they are and doesn’t see the chair as something to sit on but as a toy to play with by crawling under the chair, through the chair’s legs, etc.

You can look at a moving, alive object and feel that you “understand” the object in a way that was impossible before taking the LSD because in a very real way, you are seeing that object for the very first time and seeing it as clean, fresh and pure as if the object is brand new. The object is radiant and seems to shine from inside with its own light.

It’s like you can perceive the nature, significance or “meaning” of the object, beyond its usual function and realize that there is nothing inferior about a pencil being a pencil and not a person. The pencil has its own dignity in being a pencil. That pencil will wiggle around and flip you out. You may be so emotionally moved by this kind of revelation that you will bow to the object out of respect and honor and never take that object for granted again. You may even kiss the object, appreciating its complexity and beauty for the first time.

You can tune in to what seems to be the consciousness of an object and how it thinks and feels. This may sound to you like it’s too much or going too far if I’m saying that ordinary objects have deep significance, meaning and beauty, that they are alive with a consciousness that thinks and feels in its own way and that you can get tuned into all of this with LSD. Actually, it makes a lot of sense but it will take a lot of explaining.

Keep in mind that we use and are aware of only a tiny fraction of 1 percent of our brain and that the ego is only a tiny fraction of 1 percent of our full identity. Compare one grain of sand on a beach with the number of grains of sand on all the beaches of the world. The ego is the one grain of sand and so is what we know about our brain because what we know about our brain is based on the ego. The ego is like a locked door that is blocking a person off from their life. LSD is the key that opens the door to one’s life, brain and full identity. As explained in the previous chapter, your full identity is the entire universe or God.

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An object is a part of the universe meaning a part of your full identity. You are different than the object but ultimately not separate from it the way arms and legs are different but not separate from the body. When you are tripping and the interfering ego is finally out of your way, then you can become aware of that connection between you and an object, that the object is a part of you and that you are a part of the object. A person and an object are a part of each other because they both have the same full identity, which is the entire universe. It’s like the person is an arm, the object is a leg and the entire universe is the body.

So, to say that an object has a consciousness is not absurd because you have a consciousness and you and the object are part of the same thing, which could be called the super consciousness of ultimate reality. Similarly, you can think and feel and in it’s own way, so can an object. With LSD, you can be in touch with all of this and when you look at an object, it’s moving, alive and can have a personality, but it’s not an independent personality. The behavior and personality of the object depends upon your personality and how you’re feeling at the time.

If someone else is tripping with you and looking at the same object at the same time, then the object can take on 2 personalities at the same time. You can see the object relating to your personality and the other person can see the object relating to their personality or if the two people tripping together are thinking and feeling the same thing, which is very possible, they can both see the same thing or the object can relate to their united personality. The object has no ax to grind. It’s your friend. It’s a part of you.

If you are a little uptight and look at an object, then the object might also look uptight which will make you more uptight and who needs all of that? If you’re feeling good and smiling, the object may seem to be smiling back. If you’re making a funny face, it may seem like the object is responding with a funny face of its own. The object is becoming your entertaining friend.

If there is music on and we will get to music soon, but if the music is on, the object may seem to be moving and dancing according to the rhythm of the music. Every object in view can be doing that. If everything is connected, are the dancing objects the music? Is the music you? Are you the dancing objects? These are silly word games. Don’t get hung up in them. Just enjoy the show and flip out all you want over it.

It can be said that objects are significant and meaningful because they are a part of you but that’s not giving the object the credit it deserves as being significant, meaningful and beautiful in itself. If you ask why an object will be seen as so very meaningful in itself, then this is another case in which words can’t go any further. When you take LSD, you will know what it means to say that a pencil is meaningful far beyond just being something to write with.

In analyzing visual changes, all that has been discussed so far are changes in how objects are seen, without any mention of the dimension of color. There has also been nothing yet about visual changes in how you see other people, the great outdoors when you’re outside or any other visual changes such as wild depth perception “distortions.” One can have great emotional reactions to changes in visual perception and we’ll get to it all later.

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The concept of time is interesting. Time is usually thought of in terms of seconds, minutes and hours or past, present and future. During an LSD experience, you are way beyond all of that. You’re no longer in clock time. You’re in real time. You can look at a clock and it might as well be on another planet because whatever the clock says doesn’t mean anything now. To be clear, you know what it means but it has no relevance now because you are now experiencing a much higher reality. Any amount of clock time will seem like it’s a much much longer amount of time.

For example, John can go outside the door and come right back in. Bob, who is tripping, may ask John what took so long or why he was gone for such a long time, when it was really just for a moment. Another example would be someone smoking a cigarette and it seems to them as if they’ve been smoking if for hours and they haven’t even needed to go to the ashtray yet. This is not an exaggeration. Hours can seem like years and even just a minute of clock time can seem longer than all the years of your life that came before you took the LSD. Nearing the end of the trip, it can seem like it’s been going on since the beginning of all existence. If someone says that they are going out for a little while, there is no such thing as a little while when you’re tripping. If they are going out, then they are gone. Even if it’s only for 5 minutes, that is a very, very long time.

What’s happening is that time is getting extended to the point that it’s irrelevant and doesn’t exist anymore. You now have all the time in the world. You are in eternity. Sometimes people think of eternity as something that goes on millennium after millennium, forever and ever. Obviously, that can’t happen because, unfortunately, you will eventually have to come down and the trip will be over. While you are tripping, though, it seems as if it will go on forever and that feeling of eternity is very real. Eternity means that you’re not in clock time, but real time or eternal time or real, eternal time or eternal, real time or simply, eternity.

It’s a very luxurious feeling to have all the time in the world and not a worry. Having this eternal, timeless feeling helps make everything that’s good about the LSD trip even better. For example, if you’re getting all those nice, new, powerful, pleasurable, physical feelings and sensations, you are enjoying it even more because it seems like you’ll feel this way forever. If you are feeling greater than ever and it’s as if it will go on forever, it’s starting to sound a little bit like heaven.

In this state, you are in no rush or hurry about anything. What is there to hurry about if you have all the time in the world? Usually, people are in a mad dash, going here, going there, doing this, doing that and go go go go go go go. Under LSD, there is no go go go go go go go. It’s here here and now now. People rush not just because they don’t feel as if they have a lot of time but also because they want to escape the here and now. They are rushing past the present, chasing a future that doesn’t exist because all there is is the present.

The past was the present when it was happening. Any thought about the past is taking place in the present. Any thought about the future also takes place in the present and when the future comes, it will be the present, not the future anymore. There is nothing but the present. When someone is tripping, it’s clear that yesterday and tomorrow are meaningless and that here and now is everything. We sacrifice the present, expecting to get a great future in return. We suffer going to school, preparing for that big job. Then, we continue to sacrifice the present going to work all those years until one can retire and finally enjoy their life in the present. The problem is that the retired person is at least 65 years old and has no idea how to enjoy the present. Their focus has always been on a distant future.

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With LSD, when time is extended and you are in eternity, the mental processes are speeded up. You are experiencing so much more in a minute of clock time than usual that it seems as if it could not possibly have been only 1 minute. The clock says that it was only 1 minute. It can’t be, but it is. If you ride on an airplane having a window seat and look out the window every 5 minutes, the view of what you see down below is different than what you saw 5 minutes ago. Under LSD, one’s perspective, outlook, mood and behavior can change in seconds. Like with every other possible occurrence during an LSD trip, it doesn’t mean that it will happen, but it can.

Along with the timeless, eternal flavor to everything, there is also a richness, radiance, magic and beauty to everything. Combining all of this with feeling physically greater than ever and it sounds a little more like heaven. The magnitude, quality and richness of LSD consciousness is genuinely magnificent far beyond compare, far beyond anything previously experienced and far beyond the wildest fantasies of anyone’s imagination before they have had LSD. What happens during an LSD experience is more real than real. What we think of as real is just that tiny fraction of 1 percent of reality. Anything more than that, even if it’s only a larger fraction of 1 percent, could be called more real than real. This “more real than real” concept is significant.

An important feature of the LSD experience is dramatically increased, expanded and widened perception and awareness, along with sharpened, heightened intensification of the senses. The senses will be operating differently than what you are used to. It will be like you are seeing for the first time or seeing clearly for the first time. It will also be like you are hearing, smelling, touching and tasting for the first time, indeed, living for the first time. That’s how incredible it all is. It’s the first time you are able to experience all of the senses simultaneously operating at full efficiency.

If you are looking, you are seeing better and more, if you are listening, you are hearing better and more, etc. The blindfolds have come off the eyes, the ear plugs are out of the ears, the nose plugs are out of the nose, the tape is off the mouth and the suit of armor is off the body. Your senses are now freely wide open and very sensitive and intensified. You might be able to see an ant crawling on a car that’s parked across the street or hear 2 people whispering to each other, across the street from where you are. You can see and hear things which would be impossible to see and hear without taking LSD.

The senses are always operating at maximum efficiency, but we are blocked off from it during “normal” waking consciousness. There is a filter that narrows down consciousness, perception and awareness. The LSD itself doesn’t do anything except get rid of the filter. The filter is the ego. The ego is the nuisance that’s always trying to shove its weight around and run your show. Once the LSD shoves the ego into the trash can, where it belongs, then your life begins. Then, you can become aware of everything, perceive everything, feel everything and know everything. Knowing everything doesn’t mean knowing what John Doe did on July 7, 1986. It means knowing everything that’s worth knowing, not the details, but the full picture and understanding the process of knowing.

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Consciousness itself becomes enlarged, widened, expanded and has a dreamlike, spacy character, but the mind is more clear and alert than ever. The senses can function in ways that sound impossible, but with LSD, nothing is impossible. During a trip, so many “impossible” things are happening that one will begin to think that nothing really is impossible. For example, it’s possible to see sounds and odors, hear colors and odors, smell sounds and colors, taste sounds, odors and colors and touch sounds, odors and colors. What? That’s right! It’s even possible to experience all the senses merging together.

What follows is an example of how this is not only possible, but even helpful in solving problems. It’s from page. 178 of The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience by R. E. L. Masters and Jean Houston. (Yes, that’s the same Jean Houston who got publicity in 1996 as a close associate or friend of Hillary Clinton. The book was written in 1966.) Here it is:

“A subject who had ‘almost no sense of smell’ was invited to try to smell a lemon. Even when he held it up against his nostrils, he reported himself unable to smell anything. The guide then put a recording on the phonograph and placed the lemon on a table several feet away from the subject. He was told to ‘smell the lemon in the music’. At once, the subject declared himself able to ‘hear the smell’. Then he said he could smell the lemon in the music. Then he was able to smell the lemon directly.”

Do you think that this guy would now have his nose screwed on right if he didn’t take the LSD, didn’t have a good guide, didn’t hear the smell and didn’t smell the lemon in the music? One may think that all of this nonsense about hearing the smell and smelling the lemon in the music is ridiculous, but the facts speak for themselves in that the man can now smell properly and he couldn’t before. Still ridiculous? It’s the ego, that dictator, which knows only a tiny fraction of one percent of what there is to know, that’s telling you that it’s ridiculous. What is really ridiculous is the ego, which is why it belongs in the trash can. Actually, the ego doesn’t even exist at all, except in one’s mind. Aldous Huxley wrote a great novel entitled Island, about a future society that’s not based on egos, but a psychedelic chemical similar to LSD which allows people to get beyond the prison of the ego. It was probably the only attempt by anyone to write a book envisioning a psychedelic society and what it would be like. One day, the brilliance of Aldous Huxley will be appreciated. He never got the kind of obituary he deserved because he died on the same day as the JFK assassination.

The example about smelling the lemon in the music was also an example of what music can do. Music can add quite a new dimension to the LSD experience. There was a brief mention before about how you can see inanimate objects seemingly moving or dancing, according to the music. The whole room and everything in it can seem to be “flowing” in relation to the music.

Like with everything else, when you listen to music, it will be like you are hearing it for the first time. No matter how many times you have heard a certain song and how familiar you are with it, with LSD it will be like you have never heard it before or never heard it like this before. Even the way you listen to music will be different. The music will take on added dimensions and you can feel that you now understand what music is all about, its essence. It might lead you to start reflecting on the history of music. It can feel as if the whole history of the world is in the music that you are listening to.

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Music can also have a strong effect on your emotions and thoughts. No matter what the music is, it can sound holy, joyous, beautiful, exciting and magical. If can feel like the music is flowing right through you in a pleasurable, sensuous way that can make all of the other new physical feelings and sensations even better, just like the timeless, eternal feeling that the experience will go on forever makes it better. With LSD, it’s as if everything makes everything else better. Even someone not interested in music can appreciate music in a new, different way. Music can bring on sudden mood changes for the better.

Here is an example of what music can do. A 40 year old professor of philosophy and father of 3 children tells this story. It’s from pages 205-206 of Masters and Houston’s, The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience:

“During the playing of the record I felt myself being swept along by the movement of the words, as if the meaning were coming through directly to me and the meaning itself was a movement, a dynamic flow which carried me along as if on a journey. I did not interpret the words. I simply heard them and they reflected back their individual meaning like sparks…I simply gave myself to the movement and to the richness of the voice. All the while I felt my mind being stretched, as if my faculty of abstracting and conceptualizing was being left on the surface, still capable of operating, but not interested in doing so. All the while new dimensions of my mind were coming into being and I was carried along by the sheer movement and rhythm of the voice. I enjoyed the
experience of being swept along.

“At the end of the record, I felt that I had been on a long journey and that I had come to my destination. My guides came to me and welcomed me into this ‘brave new world’. I felt that I had reached the psychedelic shore and enjoyed the wonderful things around me. I felt joyous and deeply related to everything, as if I were part of a whole. It was a feeling of solidity and yet fluidity, a sense of total relatedness and involvement, bringing with it a sense of joy, peace and wonder. This was the deepest and most sustaining experience of the entire session. It remained throughout, as if it were the base of all other experiences. In my estimation, it was the most valuable dimension of the entire session.”

Stanislav Grof wrote a book called LSD Psychotherapy. From page 141, here is what he has to say about the value of music in psychedelic psychotherapy:

“Music seems to serve several important functions in the context of psychedelic psychotherapy. It tends to evoke a variety of powerful emotions and facilitates deeper involvement in the psychedelic process. It provides a meaningful structure for the experience and creates a continuous carrier wave that helps patients to overcome difficult parts of the sessions and move through impasses. LSD subjects frequently report that the flow of music helps them to let go of their psychological defenses and surrender fully to the experience. Another function of music is to provide a sense of continuity and connection in the course of various unusual states of consciousness. It is quite common that clients have difficulties with the periods when the music stops and the records and tapes are being changed; they complain that they feel suspended in midair and sense a painful gap in the experience. An additional function of the music deals more specifically with its content; it is often possible to facilitate the emergence of a certain emotional quality such as aggression, sexual feelings, “psychedelic breakthrough” or a transcendental experience, by a specific choice of music. (Music also has significance for the positive structuring of the reentry period.)”

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What he means by the reentry period is when the peak of the experience is ending and you are starting to come down. You don’t come right down, suddenly. It’s a gradual process that takes hours. It’s a philosophical stage. During that time, you’re thinking about what has happened, it’s given you a whole new perspective for the better on your life and you are considering where you want to go from here with your life. Grof  is dealing not with “normal” people but with people who have psychological problems of some sort. He well understands how valuable LSD can be for treating people and helping them overcome their problems. For those interested in the use of LSD as a key part of psychotherapy, Grof’s book, though difficult and with small print, is the best.

If you thought that smelling the lemon in the music was pretty wild, perhaps you should fasten your seatbelts because now we’ll get into possible visual “distortions” of perception seen with the eyes open. None of the examples for now will involve changes in how one sees other people or anything involving nature or aesthetic aspects of being outdoors. All of that will come later. We’ll focus here on how you might see your body differently when looking at it, depth perception changes and some more detail and flavor about how inanimate objects can be seen. None of the situations in the following examples will necessarily happen and maybe none of them at all will happen on a given LSD trip, but any of these “impossible” things is possible.

A person might look at their fingers and instead of 10 fingers, they see hundreds of them. It’s nothing to worry about. You know that it’s just 10 fingers. The fingers or any part of the body can be seen as getting bigger or smaller, growing or shrinking. One finger might be getting bigger and another finger getting smaller. One hand may be a lot bigger than the other. An arm or a leg may become very very long or get so small that it’s hardly there. If you stick your arm way out and make a fist, it can look like the fist is a mile away or it can look as if your nose is a fraction of an inch away the fist. Even without LSD, if you stick your tongue out, you can see a little piece of it like you can see some of your nose. When you are tripping, with your tongue sticking out, it can get so long that it will seem impossible to get it back in your mouth, but you’ll be able to do it, just like the person whose body feels as if it weighs ten tons can stand up, though it doesn’t seem possible.

There are other kinds of body perception changes that involve not just body parts but the entire body. One mentioned earlier was how the body can feel like it’s made of any substance and that a person can even experience being that substance or being any object, such as a piece of wood. Another was how the body can feel as if it has no weight or weighs ten tons. The entire body can feel as if it’s small and getting smaller or big and getting bigger.

One may perceive themselves as only 3 inches tall and try to hide behind a pack of cigarettes. If someone is experiencing being 3 inches tall, they might “worry” that someone will step on them and they will get crushed. Trying to cross the street can be too “dangerous” and the person will ask a companion to pick them up and hold them in their hand. If you see yourself as only 3 inches tall, then the room you’re in and the other people will seem gigantic. It could be that you and the other people all seem to be 3 inches tall and everything else is the same or that 1 person stayed the same and you and the rest are 3 inches tall. The body image can get down to microscopic proportions where you are among the atoms and “worried” enough about falling through the spaces
between them to want to cling to someone for physical balance and stability.

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If it’s the other way and the body seems to be getting bigger, the person may be “concerned” that their body will burst through the walls and crush everything, including the other people. It may be that you are the giant and everyone else is 3 inches tall. It may seem like your body has expanded into the size of a galaxy. It could be that your body gets small and then gets big and then back to small again, etc. Any of these kind of things are possible but, again, it doesn’t mean that any of them will happen on your trip. The point is to be as aware as possible of what can happen, not to worry about anything because you know that the LSD is responsible and to just enjoy the show, whatever happens.

If you are lying down on the floor, looking up, a chair will seem to go very high up, the way a little child sees it as it crawls underneath and through the legs. An adult who is tripping might crawl underneath the chair and through the legs and relive all of that. If the adult’s body is too big to fit through easily, then substituting a table for the chair will have the same effect.
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If you are on an elevated platform looking down at the other people, it can seem like you’re standing on the floor with the others even though you are still up there on the platform. This is somewhat similar to the example of someone lying down on a bed and it seems to them like they’re standing by the bed, looking down at their body which is lying down on the bed the whole time.

Don’t waste time and energy trying to make logical sense out of these things. LSD is way beyond limited logic. Logic says that something is a pencil or it’s not a pencil. The truth is that something can be a pencil and at the same time, not be a pencil. Reality is not either-or divisive logic. It’s more like both-and unity. When tripping, it makes perfect sense to look at a pencil and say that it’s a pencil, but it’s a lot more than a pencil. As explained earlier, a pencil is a whole lot more than just a pencil.

There are other possible depth perception changes. If you’re in a room, the distance between you and objects can change. As explained earlier, an object will move, but most likely stay in the same spot, the way someone doing Chubby Checker’s dance, the twist, will twist back and forth, but the feet are in the same spot. The movements are also likely to be slower than the movements a person makes when dancing the twist. If the object doesn’t stay in the same spot, it can seem like it’s coming towards you, not in a threatening way, or it can seem as if the object is moving further away. Even if an object is against a wall that is facing you, it can still seem like the object is moving further away. Simultaneously, some objects may be coming towards you and others moving away. It’s like anything goes.

The whole room itself can seem to be expanding or contracting or be breathing in and out, just like a single object can seem to be doing that. The objects and the entire room can be doing all of this according to how you think and feel. If your mood or thoughts change, the “action” in the room and of the room can change and if music comes on, then the objects may start singing and dancing, with the room vibrating or flowing to the music.

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Another example of possible depth perception changes involves looking down a hallway. You may seem to be 10 feet tall, your regular height, 3 inches tall or any height and be in the hall and the hall can be the right size, very big or very small where you are, but it can be tiny at the other end to the point where it will seem impossible for an ant to fit through the hallway down there at the other end. It can also be the other way in which at the other end, it looks so big, tall and wide that an airplane could go down the hall like the hall is a runway, take off, reach full altitude and still be in the building and the hallway.

Going into more detail and some of the flavor of how objects can be seen and perceived, there are many fascinating examples. You can look at a painting of mountains and snow and start feeling the snow gently hitting your face and might feel the wind and feel that the room is getting colder, the way it would be in the painting. It could be the summer, but you might want to put your winter coat on. If you’re really getting cold, just look away from the painting, think about something else and the room will probably be comfortable again.

You can also join the painting as if you are there. It doesn’t have to be a painting. It can be a picture, a slide or even what’s seen on television, if the set is on. If you are watching a football game on TV, it’s can be as if you are at the game, hearing the crowd noise, etc. It can also be that you are watching the game on TV and in between plays, when the offensive team is in their huddle, you will see a play that didn’t happen because they are still in the huddle.

If you are looking at a picture of two people talking on a street corner, you can be there talking to them and as always, you better watch out for the traffic whether the traffic is seen in the picture or not. Even though it seems as if you are in the picture or at the football game, you still know that you are in a room looking at a picture or looking at the television, that you aren’t really in the picture or at the game and that you can get out of the picture or the game by looking away from the picture or the TV set.

Without entering the picture, you can look at a picture of a person and see them waving to you or smiling at you or motioning for you to come over, etc. You can seem to be talking to them, with them in the picture and you looking at the picture. It’s even possible that they’ll leave the picture as if they’re coming to join you in the room where you are. If you want to get rid of that person, like in the previous examples, just look away and they’ll be gone. The reason that looking away should work in each case is because you are in timeless eternity. If you turn your head away for a while, it can seem like so much time is going by that you don’t remember what was happening before and your attention is on something else. Later in the trip or when it’s all over, then you might remember about looking at the picture, joining in on it, etc.

It should be noted that many of these things mentioned throughout the book that can happen, if they happen at all on your trip, will probably happen fairly quickly and then be gone. If it seems as if you’re 3 inches tall or that you’re entering the “action” in a painting, you might get the effect for only a few seconds or even just an instant. It won’t go on and on but because you are in eternity, it can seem like it’s a long time. If you are enjoying the experience of being 3 inches tall, you may not be able to control how long you get that effect. It can go away, you can wish it was still there and you won’t be able to get it back by trying. The only way you can get that effect back, if you do get it back, is the way you got it the first time. It will have to happen on its own. When these special effects come and go, it will not be a disappointment to lose any one of them because there are so many others and you will be continuously amazed.

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You might look at the floor and the shape of the floor has changed as if it’s now mountains. To walk across the floor will mean climbing up and sliding down each mountain and this might be too big of a deal to bother with. By the time you have decided not to do it, the floor may have flattened out again so that you can walk across more easily. It’s like waiting until the getting is good. Instead of mountains, the floor may seem like an ocean with waves and in this case, you’ll have to swim your way across the room. You might not always want to wait until it’s easy, when the getting is good. You might feel adventurous and want to do the mountain climbing or swimming or whatever it is, the way that the person who feels like their body weighs ten tons may want to get up when it’s harder to do it. It’s all up to the person. They do what they want to do.

The floor may look like a miniature city with “buildings,” “people” and everything else. For the “people” in that “city,” if you were standing up or even sitting down, you would be like a giant that would make King Kong look like an ant. In this case, you can walk across the floor without having to climb mountains or swim, though wearing shoes might seem like a good idea because of “concern” that the sharp points of the “buildings” could cut your feet. It’s easy to do the walk in this case, but you won’t want to do it because the “city” is so beautiful. Why step on the “buildings” or kill the “people?” If you did, you would be like a mindless, maniac monster to just barge across the room, through the “city,” destroying everything in sight. If a small part of the floor is the “city,” then all you have to do is walk on another part of the floor and the “city” can remain intact.

With LSD, your vision is very fine tuned. You can look at a painting and notice the thickness of the paint or look at something written in ink and see the thickness of the ink. You may not be able to read, though, because the letters of the words might jump around, change shapes, merge into each other, etc. Even if the letters and words are not “behaving” so wildly, so that it’s possible to read, you are way beyond all of this. You won’t want to interrupt the flow of what’s happening with the trip just to read something because there is nothing worth reading that means anything now, not even books like this. When you are having a great time tripping, you will look at the books you read in preparing for the experience and you’ll laugh because whatever these books are about is what’s happening right now. All of the books about it, including this one, are hopeless attempts to use words to explain something that’s way beyond words and way beyond anything that a person has ever known or imagined.

The inanimate objects are alive and if you hold something in your hand, you can feel the aliveness of the object. It can even be unclear where the skin of your hand ends and the object begins, as if they are merged with each other. This is part of the feeling mentioned earlier about touching something with your finger and it being as if you know more about your finger and what it’s touching than you knew before about either one.

If you are sitting on a chair, it can feel as if you and the chair are breathing together as one body. It can also feel as if you are breathing as one with the entire universe because your real Self, your real, full identity is the entire universe. If you are lying down on a bed, the bed can come alive and it can feel as if you are sinking down into the bed, down to the center of the earth.

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The clothes you are wearing may come alive especially if you look at the pattern of the texture of the material the clothes are made of and the moving designs in the patterned texture. This leads us into another kind of visual perception change when looking at things and objects. You can clearly see the texture of cloth, fabrics, linens, etc. You can even sense that you see or feel the ultimate texture of all reality and the universe.

You can look at an object and see everything down to the finest details that you never noticed before, as if your eyes are almost microscopes. If you look at a piece of wood, you can see the texture and the grain patterns of the wood will wiggle wildly. If you keep looking, you can see intricately detailed little exotic scenes, faces and designs of beauty moving, changing, merging, appearing and disappearing all at that one spot that you are looking at. Sometimes, you can see these kind of things at one spot on a wall or ceiling or even anything that you look at.

If you look at a table that has nothing on it except for a tiny crumb that you “normally” wouldn’t notice, with LSD, you will not only notice that little crumb, but it can stand out as an outstanding feature of the room, with star quality. It might even shine and sparkle like a diamond. This leads us to another type of visual perception change when looking at things and objects. Every object and the whole environment itself can shine, sparkle and be radiantly dazzling, glowing and beautiful. Even dust, dirt and especially trash cans can sparkle like jewels. You might see the streets as paved with gold and see pebbles and rocks as diamonds.

This rich, gemlike quality of everything makes the world a mystical Wonderland. You are feeling greater than ever physically and emotionally, you have the timeless, eternal feeling that it will go on forever, you see dazzling beauty everywhere and if music is on, it can really rock the soul. It’s all sounding more and more like heaven, but there is still more before it’s heaven and we’ll get to it later.

So far there hasn’t been any emphasis on being outdoors. The outdoors is like a different world than the one that is indoors. You are out in the open, in nature and with LSD,  you can feel yourself near your roots. Many people have preferred natural, outdoor settings for their trips. Beaches, rivers, lakes, streams, mountains, forests and gardens are all good settings.

If you have been inside the whole time since taking the LSD, when you go outside, the air will be fresher than it’s ever been, clear, clean and pure. We have not gotten into color yet, but I’ll say here that the grass will be the greenest that you have ever seen and the sky the truest blue it can be. The atmosphere outside is rich, sensuous, exotic and enchanting. It doesn’t matter if it’s raining or snowing. The rain or snow can add to the beauty and mystery of everything. With LSD, a rainy day is just as good as a sunny day, if not better. Raindrops are very cute as they hit the pavement. The rain can be so good that you won’t want an umbrella. It can be a pleasure to feel the rain hitting you and getting yourself all wet. Even if you don’t want to get wet, just watching the rain can be very fulfilling and so can watching the snow come down. It’s like someone who goes to the ocean, looks out at the water and thinks things over.

You might be able to feel the wind blowing right through you and it will seem like God’s breath. It can make you feel like your insides have been cleaned out and that you have a brand new, fresh start to your life, with a clean slate and you do.

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If you go outside, it’s like seeing the world for the first time. With LSD, anything that you see is like seeing it for the first time because if you haven’t seen it while tripping, then you haven’t seen it, for all intents and purposes. Before LSD, what you see is that tiny fraction of one percent of what the eye can see. Believe it or not, the eyes, at full capacity, can see a lot more when they’re closed than when they’re open. We will get to all of that in the next chapter, about color and what’s seen with the eyes closed.

When you have seen something many times, you don’t see it with the same intensity and vividness as when you see it for the first time. LSD will not only bring back the perception of seeing it for the first time, but everything you see will shine and sparkle as if it’s brand new, beautiful, clean, fresh and pure. This feeling and perception of newness can increase as the trip goes on. In other words, logic says that as time goes on, the newness must fade in that how can something be newer than new? With the expanded perception made possible by LSD, new can become newer and newest possible. When you are outdoors, you can really feel it. The world and the universe will look brand new because you are now brand new, with a new life.

You can now see the great, big world the way a child sees it, with one major difference. The child doesn’t know what being an adult means. The child only sees things they way they can see it. You are an adult. When you are tripping, your perception can have the innocence, wonder, novelty, freshness and newness that a child’s perception has, but you have your adult mind and intellect the whole time. That’s the big difference.

As mentioned in the last chapter, we were all conceived in orgasm and born tripping. The infant is tripping, but doesn’t know that it’s tripping. When an adult takes LSD, they can get back that real, original, natural consciousness that the baby has and the adult mind and intellect can appreciate what’s happening. It is even possible to relive your own birth and there will be more about reliving the past, later in the book.

When you are inside, everything comes alive. When you are outdoors, it’s even more so in that no one will argue that a tree isn’t alive. People may question whether objects are alive, but not plants, flowers or trees. With LSD, when you see a tree, you are not only seeing it for the first time for real, but you are also seeing for the first time just how alive it really is. There can be no wind at all, but the branches of the trees will become like leafy arms that move around slowly.

The trees love you. They have all their arms spread out wide as if to greet you. They may wave for you to come over. If you look closely enough, you will find a happy face a part of every tree. If you want to play with a tree, you’ll have to go to the tree because the tree can’t come to you. The tree wants to play also, but all it can do is try to entice you to come over. Trees are very alive and with LSD, you can also realize how spiritual they are. It may sound insane, like so many other things in this book, but the trees know that you are there. So do all the plants, flowers, insects and animals. They all know that you are there and in harmony, they can all seem to be welcoming and serenading you.

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You may have heard stories about people taking LSD and kissing trees. When you really get down to it, is there anything wrong with kissing a tree? It is only the social conventions which say that this is crazy behavior. In other words, the ego, a tiny fraction of 1 percent of your brain, is saying that kissing trees is off the wall. To the whole rest of your brain, which LSD is putting you in touch with, kissing a tree is a natural thing to do. This also shows how joyous and emotionally arousing the LSD experience is. There will be more on that later.

You can put your arms around the tree trunk, like you are giving it a hug and all the leafy arms (branches) of the tree, from higher up, may sweep down low to where you are as if the tree is also hugging you. When you touch a tree, you feel the life of the tree. If you take a close look at the bark, it can be going wild like the grain patterns of wood. It’s all right to break off a little piece of the bark. The tree won’t mind. It’s like you cutting off a tiny piece of an individual hair on your head. You might even chew on a piece of bark and that’s all right, too, but I don’t recommend swallowing it.

It was mentioned earlier that the perception of depth and space can change to the extent that you can be in a hallway and it seems so big that an airplane could take off, reach full altitude and still be in the hallway. When you are outside, it’s infinite. A tall tree can look like it goes right up to the sky or past the sky so that when the tree hugs you, it’s like it’s leafy arms are coming down from out of the sky. It’s one way of realizing how spiritual and benevolent trees really are.

If you look at the leaves, each one is unique and expressive. The vein structure of a leaf is complex, intricately detailed and mysterious and you will see how alive a leaf is. The veins of the leaf will wiggle with life like the grain of wood does. All these wiggles and movements of whatever you are looking at seem to have a similarity or something in common. The movements seem to be in the same flow or the same rhythm or the same pattern, whether it’s the veins of leaves, the grain of wood or anything else and you are in harmony with it all.

Flowers are also enlightening, mysterious, expressive and magically intriguing. You see the flower expanding and contracting, breathing in and out. When you look down into the center of the flower, it can be like looking down deep into the meaning of all meaning, the significance of all significance and the beauty of all beauty. You can get this effect and feeling from looking at anything, but flowers are really good for this. The flower children of the 1960’s didn’t wear flowers for nothing.

With LSD, being outside for sunsets and sunrises can be breathtaking. As mentioned earlier, seeing a sunrise is a new day symbolizing a new life. When it’s daytime, walking in a garden is walking in the Garden of Eden. When you are outside at night, there is an excitement and sparkle in the air that’s a little different and mysterious. The stars can shine like diamonds. In ancient days, before modern science, there were people who would look at the stars but didn’t know that they were stars. They thought that the lights in the sky were windows of heaven, where a little of heaven’s light could get out. It’s an interesting concept and when you are tripping, you can relate to this.

When you are outside during the daytime, the plants, nature and the Garden of Eden effect will capture your attention ahead of streets and buildings. At night, nature is still very stimulating, but if you are on the streets, the bright lights and colors can make any buildings look like ultimate, exciting palaces, giving you fantasy thoughts about ultimate good time tripping parties going on inside the buildings. This effect is that of a wild, paradise party in heaven as compared to the calmer, more serene heaven of the Garden of Eden.

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Part of the wild excitement of the night may be due to our conditioning. The daytime is associated with doing things that we don’t want to do, like going to school or work. The nighttime is associated with fun things, things that we do want to do. With LSD, whether it’s day or night, inside or outdoors, it’s all Eden, heaven and paradise. We still have not gotten to everything that makes it all of that.

Lying down on the grass outside is different than lying down on a bed inside. The grass and the bed are both alive, but when you are outside, you can be lying down on Mother Earth and feel that you belong and are at home in the universe, instead of a lonely ego, enclosed by skin and separated from everything else in the universe. This realization of unity, the realization of your full identity is liberating and it’s what the LSD experience is all about.

With LSD, your perception of other people can be as radically different as the way you see objects and plants. If objects and plants are expressive, responsive and can bring on emotional changes in you, just imagine how people can effect you on your trip. The proportions of other people’s bodies can change beyond belief. You might see someone whose body is now proportioned like that of a midget. A person’s most obvious physical features can become emphasized as you look at the person. For example, if the other person is heavy, they may look very much heavier or if they are thin, they can look rail thin. If you were looking at Ross Perot, his ears could become larger than the rest of his body. A person can be seen as having one ear a lot bigger than the other. A person might have a tiny birthmark that you never noticed before and now it will stand out, similar to the example earlier about seeing a tiny crumb on the table and now it’s seen as an outstanding feature of the room. A person can be seen as any size or height, with the head being most of the body or with the head very small in relation to the rest of the person’s body.

If you look at someone, you can get a puppet image of the person, as if they look like a puppet of themselves. You might see the person as a caricature of themselves, as a cartoon figure of themselves or even animal, plant or inanimate object figures of themselves. You might also see combinations of these things. For example, the person may now be seen as half human being and half cow, with one part of their body looking like a person and the other part looks like a cow, a human cow if you will. It could be that the person has a cow’s body with the human face or the human body with a cow’s face. Any kind of combinations like this is possible. You might also see a person as any historical figure from the past or as any stereotype and they may swiftly change from being Julius Caesar to Napoleon to Mickey Mantle to Bozo the Clown to Jesus Christ to Lassie to Joan of Arc to Abe Lincoln, etc. You can see the person as anyone, male or female, or see them as plants, animals or objects and they can change from one to another to another, but you still know that it’s the same person the whole time.

There are other kinds of visual perception changes involving looking at other people. You can look at someone and to your amazement, they are getting younger, right before your eyes. You can see them as a child and all the way back to when they were a baby and maybe even to when they were a single cell. Then, the person may start getting older again, all the way to old age or to even looking as if they are 1000 years old. The person can have their adult body, but the face of a child. It will look like a little kid with a giant body or even a baby with a giant body.

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Even if you aren’t getting such radical perception changes, there are other possible perception changes that you can get while looking at other people. When you are tripping, you have super awareness and perception. Things that usually go unnoticed will now stand out. You can take one glance at a person and know their feeling and mood and if it’s someone who you are tripping with, you will each know just what the other is thinking, all without any words being said. The very slightest change in a person’s facial expression, gestures or mannerisms can take on great meaning. A person can say something and it can have many different meanings, depending upon how it is said. Linguisitc nuances and the tone of someone’s voice become significant. Certain aspects of a person’s appearance or behavior, normally unnoticed, will now be relevant.

If someone is acting phony in some way, you’ll be able to see right through them like glass. A person’s intentions are written all over them and will be reflected by their mannerisms, gestures, expressions, etc. Eye contact communication is on a much deeper and penetrating level than one is accustomed to. The eyes will say everything. Two people tripping together can just look at each other and be communicating more deeply than 2 people talking to each other in usual circumstances. One person might say just 1 word and the other person knows just what it means and that it says a lot, though the other people there who aren’t tripping may not have a clue as to its meaning.

You can get insights into people that would be impossible without LSD. What you may find out is that someone who you thought knew a lot, doesn’t at all know what you thought they knew. What’s better is seeing someone and appreciating their complexity for the first time or seeing them in a positive way for the first time or the first time in a long time. You may feel that someone who you have known for years, you are now first getting to really know them, as if it was all superficial before and now it’s for real. With LSD, communication is deep, meaningful and significant and it gets people as close as people can get to each other.

On page 43 of Ralph Metzner’s book, The Ecstatic Adventure, Rolf Von Eckartsberg says:

“Physical distance was not experienced as such. A glance or visual impression felt like a reaching out and amoeba-like engulfment. One lived in one’s glance, one extended oneself in one’s visual projection, one lived and traveled with one’s eyes and view.

“One became acutely aware of facial details, like quivering lips and vibrating noses which signaled the experience of orgasm and ecstasy and which gave testimony of the universality of one’s feeling and the harmonious and parallel of simultaneous resonance in this experiential community. One became aware of teeth, cheeks, the falling of hair and eyes which had the most remarkable depth and radiation. Faces became mysterious, stylized, angelic, transfixed, idealized.”

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Concerning how other people are seen, Alan Watts in his book, The Joyous Cosmology says on pages 50-51:

“The people with me are no longer the humdrum and harassed little personalities with names, addresses and social security numbers, the specifically dated mortels we are all pretending to be. They appear rather as immortal archetypes of themselves without, however, losing their humanity. It is just that their differing characters seem to contain all history. They are at once unique and eternal, men and women but also gods and goddesses. For now that we have time to look at each other we become timeless. The human form becomes immeasurably precious and, as if to symbolize this, the eyes become intelligent jewels, the hair spun gold and the flesh translucent ivory.”

In this chapter, we took a look at some of the perceptual possibilities that LSD offers, without yet getting into perception of color and light and what’s seen with the eyes closed.

We’ll close this chapter with a repeat of my favorite sentence from the previous chapter. This time, when you read that sentence, it may be more meaningful than the first time you read the sentence. It said that LSD is an electrifying, fascinating, beautiful, sparkling, dazzling, radiant, glowing, glorious, awesome, divine, heavenly, joyous, sensuous, euphoric, ecstatic, majestic, magical, magnificent, miraculous, sensational, spectacular, exciting, intense, dramatic, overwhelming awakening of experience.

One thought on “Chapter 2”

  1. Hello, I just wanted to say that during my first trip, I was outdoors in nature and trees became the center of my attention immediately. I stayed with about 20 trees, hugging them, watching them and touching them. I was able to understand they are alive, complex and beautiful. In particular, one tree kept me coming back to it. After touching it for a while, I hugged it and closed my eyes. I could feel its heartbeat entering inside of me. Sexual arousal followed. I opened my eyes and I saw the trees vagina. I licked it and this brought me to climax. I am not ashamed, it felt so natural and also I feel like there is a sexual aspect everywhere in life. Actually it was not even sexual, it was like sexuality was there only to complete the connection I felt with this tree. Like I had to feel it with all of my senses. One of the most beautiful experiences of my life. Your text reminded me of it. Thank you.

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Revelations of the Mind

LSD Experience