Awe

Awe, Wonder, Inspiration, Excitement, Glory, Splendor, Grandeur, etc.

A man must be deeply serious to have the courage to stand against the awesome power of
organized society.

A responsible religion dare not neglect this source of wonder, for it is in this way that
God is perceived.

A thousand sensual feelings are emitted and at once sending out waves of climaxes which
thrill the mind to even greater heights.

Acid opens your door, opens the windows, opens your senses, opens your beam to the
vast possibilities of life, to the glorious indescribable beauty of life.

All the religious movements that have shaped human history were inspired and
repeatedly revitalized by visionary experiences of transpersonal realities.

An over-awing type of beauty is seen that makes people experience certain mystical
revelations.

Certain myths keep appearing and reappearing and many of them refer to the magic and
wonder of the sacred drug, the potion, the elixir of life.

Childhood is not thought-ful but wonder-ful. Angels know truth and beauty directly,
intuitively, not through the mediation of ideas and therefore early childhood is angelic.

Children’s games go on and on because time has been forgotten and has reduced itself to
a single wondrous instant.

Christian imagery is very vague about the glories of heaven and amazingly specific about
the agonies of hell.

Examining a common object, the subject will be overwhelmed by a sense of wonder and
over the complexity of the most simple items.

Excitement was brewing in the Haight. The psychedelic city-state was having its brief
golden age. The energy was unmistakably sky-high.

Feelings of awe, reverence or sacredness are the natural emotional response to the
realization of the overwhelming power and radiance of the universal energy process.

Full reality is awesome to contemplate. Man longs for God, but fears to meet Him. (It is
the ego that fears.)

He may have a deep and moving religious experience in which he understands the pattern
of all life, with awe, gratitude and total understanding.

Historically, mystical experience has filled man with wondrous awe and has been able to
change his style of life and values.

Huxley after years of theorizing that each of us carries a reservoir of untapped vision and
inspiration had suddenly stumbled across it at age 58. (his first mescaline trip)

Identification with the creative energy of the cosmos often inspires a new attitude toward
life and becomes the foundation for a new understanding of existence.

In field, forest and every garden, a reality is perceptible that is infinitely more real, older,
deeper and more wondrous than everything made by people.

In the modern world, religion is often a social activity with mild ethical rules. Religion in
primitive society was an awesome reality.

It seemed like the whole world was excited and aware of impending changes. It’s
growing. People are tired of the plastic bullshit conspiracy. They’re starting to think.

It would appear that LSD is a ticket to a wondrous time machine that transports the
tripper on a whirlwind tour of mankind’s ancestral past.

Judeo-Christian-Moslem, Marxist religions glorify conquest, expansion and murder of
nonbelievers.

LSD encapsulates an enormous amount of experience into a relatively short period.
Insights that might normally take years to acquire can burst forth in an awesome flurry.

LSD has been said to be capable of inspiring artists to new heights of originality and
productivity.

Men long ago, in ages however primeval, realized Beauty, and answered back its thrill
with gladness and hymns.

Most art springs from intense inner experiences. Passionate religious feelings, for
instance, has inspired artists to produce their most deeply felt and moving works.

New energies excite our highest aspirations and can alter our central notions of man and
his place on this planet.

No longer need man wonder with Job about God’s mysterious ways. LSD has the
answers and more. It is The Truth, The Experience, The Godhead.

One finds again and again, in the reports written by subjects after the event, the statement
that “this is the most wonderful experience I have ever had”.

Spirit shines in glory in what is beyond the world. Though spirit lies beyond the world, it
stays ever within it.

The experience may be chaotic, beautiful, thrilling, incomprehensible, magical, ever-
changing.

The doctrine will be paralyzing so long as it is doctrine only; but when it is a matter of
personal experience, it becomes impulse and energy and inspiration.

The figures are often extremely colorful and accompanied by a variety of awe-inspiring
sounds. (eyes closed)

The full splendor of sexual experience does not reveal itself without a new mode of
attention to the world in general.

The glory and wonder of pure existence belong to another order, beyond the power of
even the highest art to express.

The healthy mystical core that inspired and nourished all great spiritual systems is now
being rediscovered and reformulated in modern scientific terms.

The individual feels full of excitement and energy, yet centered and peaceful and
perceives the world as if through cleansed senses.

The keynote of the experience is the tremendous exciting sense of an intense
metaphysical illumination.

The literature on creativity clearly indicates that true artistic, scientific, philosophical and
religious inspiration is mediated by nonordinary states of consciousness.

The mystery of creation, the wonder and fascination of creation shimmers in every leaf
and stone, every thorn and bud.

The use of LSD is a ready way of stirring deeply buried sources of the religious life and
perceptions, which create feelings of awe, joy, wonder, peace and love.

The visionary and the mystic wait upon inspiration in a state of wise nonverbal
passiveness, of dynamic vacuity.

The wind is experienced as a tangible manifestation of the awesome power of the
universe, as “God’s breath” or nature’s exhalations.

Those early days at Harvard were charged with a special mystery and excitement. (This
refers to Timothy Leary.)

Through music, I am aware of an occasional surge of inspiration and insight that has
become a dynamic element in whatever creativity I may possess.

Throughout history, the alchemist has always been a magical, awesome figure. The
potion. The elixir.

Under the drug, they claim to feel the glory of God and the spiritual glory of each other—
and all of mankind.

You may feel awed, filled with wonder by the scope, immensity and quality of your
experiences.

Any point from which one sees the one-ness is a center. That one point of vision is the
eye of God, seeing, glorifying, understanding the whole. One such moment of revelation
is the only purpose of life.

Blissfully accept the wonders of your own creativity. (The visions you get are your
creation even if you don’t know how you did it or what it means. Potentially, we all have
limitless creativity. Ego blocks us off from our creativity just as it robs us of our lives.)

During some spiritual states, one sees the ordinary environment as a glorious creation of
divine energy, filled with mystery; everything within it appears to be part of an exquisite
interconnected web.

For most people, this discovery is a glorious surprise. Mystics come back raving about
higher levels of perception where one sees realities a hundred times more beautiful and
meaningful than the familiar scripts of normal life.

I think that religion will neglect the consequences of this powerful instrument and its
implications at its own peril. The experience recalls Otto’s mysterium trememdum. It was
awesome.

I unlock the secret not by hypothesis, not by processes of reasoning, but by journeying
through self-same fields of weird experience which are dinted by the sandals of the
glorious old dreamers of the East.

If you can throw off the grip of your learned mind and experience the message contained
in the computer which you carry behind your forehead, you would know the awe-ful
truth.

Imagine yourself an impressionable, brilliant college student, circa 1964-70, searching,
experimenting, dreaming the dreams of grandeur and idealism and splendor that
characterized that more utopian optimistic period.

In Nature, there is yet undiscovered glory, a spirit which gradually will interpenetrate you
as you commune with her. She is not a mockery, a sham, for a truthful essence indwells,
informs her.

In the face of the unbelievable magnitude of the Whole Show, in the face of Eternity, we
should all be continually, every second of the incredible day and night, humbly,
reverently awed and thankful for the miracle of our impossible existence.

Magic is a psychological branch of science, dealing with the sympathetic effects of
stones, drugs, herbs and living substances upon the imaginative and reflective faculties
and leading to ever new glimpses of the world of wonders around us.

My experiences with these substances have been the most strange, most awesome and
among the most beautiful things in a varied and fortunate life. (I’m surprised he indicates
that he has experienced beauty of this magnitude before trying psychedelics.)

Our so-called scientific attitude destroys faith and throttles the spiritual development.
Things of real worth can never be proved: God, love, compassion, mercy, kindness,
charity and dozens of other wonderful values.

Psychedelic, mind-manifesting drugs give promise of providing access to the great and
hitherto largely impenetrable realms—the vast, intricate and awesome regions we call
mind.

Raptures about “transcendental experiences” often focus on the visual splendors and lofty
insights into the meaning of existence and the universe and the increase in aesthetic
sensitivity.

Rocks are aware. Inorganic matter is involved in energy changes, structural excitements,
evolvings, pressured sculptings. Inorganic matter—rocks, cliffs, valleys, mountains are
alive and wise.

Science and technology have given us wonders but wisdom is languishing. Knowledge
grows and wisdom languishes. (Knowledge here means what the ego knows, not real
knowledge or wisdom.)

So astonishing will be this new insight that he may be absolutely overwhelmed and in his
excitement, laugh and cry at the same time. For many, the discoveries mean new truth
and wisdom.

The ability of the drug to connect diverse people in empathic bonds suggested exciting
social applications. Once people learned to share others’ perceptions, a higher level of
human consciousness might be possible.

The ban on emotional expression, especially in Anglo-Saxon cultures and especially
among men, makes the enthusiasm and wonder arising from drug-induced states readily
understandable.

The LSD experience is a confrontation with new forms of wisdom and energy that dwarf
and humiliate man’s mind. This experience of awe and revelation is often described as
religious.

The opening of the channel between the conscious and the superconscious levels,
between the “I” and the Self, and the flood of light, energy and joy which follows, often
produces a wonderful release.

The psychedelic mystical experience can lead to a profound sense of inspiration,
reverential awe and humility, perhaps correlated with the feeling that the experience is
essentially a gift from a transcendent source.

The sacred scriptures of the great religions—the Vedas, the Torah, the Bible, the Koran—
are inspired writings that were channeled to their authors during non-ordinary states of
consciousness.

The vast majority of individuals lose, in the course of education, all the openness to
inspiration, all the capacity to be aware of other things than those enumerated in the
Sears-Roebuck catalogue which constitutes the conventionally “real” world.

The wonder of LSD is that it can bring within the capabilities of ordinary people the
experience of universal love and the reality of our divine nature which was once possible
only to the mystics.

There was talk of change and of a peaceful, world-wide revolution of all-powerful
understanding and love. The talk was of love, all the more exciting and beautiful because
it seemed honest.

We have suggested that the divine mushroom played a vital part in shaking loose early
man’s imagination, in arousing his capacity for self-perception, for awe, wonder and
reverence. They certainly made it easier for him to entertain the idea of God.

What can be done to prevent the glory and the freshness from fading into the light of
common day? How can we educate children on the conceptual level without killing their
capacity for intense nonverbal experience?

Whoever attempts the awesome task of deliberately coming into the presence of God
takes the risk, calculated or uncalculated, of experiencing madness. (Rudolph Otto called
it the mysterium tremendum.)

Certain classes of perceptual images appear again and again; colored, moving, living
geometrical forms which undulate into more concrete perceptions of patterned things,
such as carpets, carvings, mosaics, transmuting continually into other forms in heightened
color and grandeur. (eyes closed)

Colors are bright and glowing, the outlines of objects are defined as they never have been
before, spatial relationships are drastically altered, several or all of the senses are
enormously heightened—“all at once” the world has shed its old, everyday facade and
stands revealed as a wonderland.

Evolutionary memories have specific experiential characteristics; they are distinctly
different from human experiences and often seem to transcend the scope and limits of
human fantasy and imagination. The individual can have, for example, an illuminating
insight into what it feels like when a snake is hungry, when a turtle is sexually excited.

“Holy madness” or “divine madness” is known and acknowledged by various spiritual
traditions and is distinguished from ordinary insanity; it is seen as a form of intoxication
by the Divine. Revered seers, mystics, and prophets are often described as inspired by
madness.

If any single theme dominated young people in the 1960’s, it was the search for a new
way of seeing, a new relation to the world. LSD was a means of exciting consciousness
and provoking visions, a kind of unhurried magic enabling youthful seekers to recapture
the resonance of life that society had denied.

In the psychedelic ‘60’s the flower children had been lit up like living torches and
beamed out their powerful little lights across the world. For a while it looked like the
light would conquer the dark, and there would at last be peace on earth. We were filled
with wonderment, gratitude, awe, love. We had seen MORE than the everyday reality.

It should be one of the chief tasks of the guide to help the subject select out of the wealth
of phenomena among which he finds himself, some of the more promising opportunities
for heightened insight, awareness and integral understanding that the guide knows to be
available in the psychedelic experience.

It shouldn’t be this difficult to accept logically that there are many realities and that the
most exciting things that happen are not at the level of our routine perception and, for that
matter, that the most complex communications, the most creative processes, exist at
levels of which we are not ordinarily aware.

Most of the awe and reverent wonder stems from this confrontation with an unsuspected
range of consciousness, the tremendous acceleration of images, the shattering insight into
the narrowness of the learned as opposed to the potentiality of awareness, the humbling
sense of where one’s ego is in relationship to the total energy field.

The ancient and pre-industrial societies have held non-ordinary states of consciousness in
high esteem and used them for a variety of purposes—diagnosing and healing diseases,
ritual, spiritual, and religious activity, cultivation of extrasensory perception and artistic
inspiration.

The perception of the environment has a certain primary quality; every sensory stimulus,
be it visual, acoustic, olfactory, gustatory or tactile, appears to be completely fresh and
new and at the same time, unusually exciting and stimulating. Subjects talk about really
seeing the world for the first time in their lives.

Under the current dispensation, the vast majority of individuals lose, in the course of
education, all the openness to inspiration, all the capacity to be aware of other things than
those enumerated in the Sears-Roebuck catalogue which constitutes the conventionally
“real” world.

We have now learned that many species of these strange growths possess a power such as
early man could only have regarded as miraculous. Indeed they may have given to him
the very idea of the miraculous and inspired many of the themes that come down to us in
our heritage of folklore.

Weren’t the sixties, in retrospect, a decade of romance, splendor, optimism, idealism,
individual courage, high aspirations, aesthetic innovation, spiritual wonder, exploration,
and search? Weren’t we happier about each other and more optimistic when the high
times were rolling? (That was Timothy Leary.)

You are right about the hopelessness of the “scientific” approach. Those idiots want to be
Pavlonians not Lorenzian Ethnologists. Pavlov never saw an animal in its natural state,
only under duress. The “scientific” LSD boys do the same with their subjects. No wonder
they report psychoses. (Aldous Huxley wrote that in a letter to Timothy Leary.)

A new and exciting area was discovered for psychedelic psychotherapy: the care of
patients with terminal cancer and some other incurable diseases. Studies of dying
individuals indicated that this approach was able to bring not only alleviation of the
emotional suffering and relief from severe physical pain associated with cancer, but also
dramatically transform the concept of death and change the attitude toward dying.

Altered states of consciousness enrich man’s experiences in many areas of life. The
intense aesthetic experience gained while absorbed in some majestic scene, a work of art,
or music may broaden man’s subjective experiences and serve as a source of creative
inspiration. There are also numerous instances of sudden illumination, creative insights,
and problem solving occurring while man has lapsed into altered states of consciousness.

Christianity and even Protestant Christianity has remained, willy-nilly, the most
authoritarian and bigoted of all world religions. He who attempts to question or modify
any of its dogmas quickly gets into very hot water in any Christian country. There has
been one “revelation” and it is enough. He who has new ideas is probably inspired by the
Devil or has been out in the woods taking strange drugs with the witch women.

I doubt whether artists will have much power to shape public policy on psychedelics, but
I also doubt whether illegality will ever dissuade artists from exploring all sources of
stimulation and inspiration. I hope to see a day when artists, and indeed anyone else who
wishes to explore all the possibilities of mental experience, will have the legal option to
use substances having such power and promise.

I pronounced that LSD was the greatest discovery man had ever made. It has such
enormous potential because the mind is infinite. LSD opens up the resources of the mind.
Since the mind is the most important aspect of the human being, what could possibly be
more important than a drug that revealed the awesome, infinite potential that lies within?
(That was Timothy Leary.)

In spite of our mechanical sophistication we may well be savages, simple brutes quite
unaware of the potential within. It is highly likely that coming generations will look back
at us and wonder: how could they so childishly play with their simple toys and primitive
words and remain ignorant of the speed, power and relational potential within? How
could they fail to use the equipment they possessed?

Individuals feel that they have left the past behind and that they are capable of starting an
entirely new chapter of their lives. Exhilarating feelings of freedom from anxiety,
depression and guilt are associated with deep physical relaxation and a sense of perfect
functioning of all physiological processes. Life appears simple and exciting and the
individual has the feeling of unusual sensory richness and intense joy.

Myths so not come from a concept system; they come from a life system; they come out
of a deeper center. We must not confuse mythology with ideology. Myths come from
where the heart is, and where the experience is, even as the mind may wonder why
people believe these things. The myth does not point to a fact; the myth points beyond
facts to something that informs the fact.

The experience of cosmic consciousness provides important insights for deepening our
understanding of the highest forms of creativity. The literature on creativity is filled with
examples of extraordinary artistic, scientific, philosophical, and religious inspiration that
came from a transpersonal source and that occurred in non-ordinary states of
consciousness.

The images are most often of persons, animals, architecture and landscapes. Strange
creatures from legend, folklore, myth and fairy tale appear in wonderful surroundings.
Ancient temples and castles are imaged and figures and incidents from the historical past.
Persons, places and objects observed in the course of the subject’s life may make their
appearance. (eyes closed)

The individual is flooded by light of supernatural beauty and experiences a state of divine
epiphany. He or she has a deep sense of emotional, intellectual and spiritual liberation
and gains access to breathtaking realms of cosmic inspiration and insight. This type of
experience is clearly responsible for great achievements in the history of humanity in the
area of science, art, religion and philosophy.

The work of many artists—painters, musicians, writers and poets—who participated in
LSD experimentation in various countries of the world has been deeply influenced by
their psychedelic experiences. Most of them found access to deep sources of inspiration
in their unconscious mind, experienced a striking enhancement and unleashing of fantasy
and reached extraordinary vitality, originality and freedom of artistic expression.

We may feel that we are really seeing the world for the first time in our lives. Everything
around us, even the most ordinary and familiar scenes, seems unusually exciting and
stimulating. People report entirely new ways of appreciating and enjoying their loved
ones, the sound of music, the beauties of nature, and the endless pleasures that the world
provides for our senses.

The Harvard Psychedelic Project was surrounded by a charged field of excitement,
glamour, adventure, enthusiasm, mystery, hyperbole, passion, controversy. Those who
were running the show were charismatic, distinguished, articulate and colorful. Whilst the
majority of the Harvard faculty was content to observe the world, our message was
revolutionary: if things are not right, then let’s change them. (That was Michael
Hollingshead.)

The thing that most aroused my interest was the tone and contents of what my classmates
who had taken the drug were saying. They talked to each other in stunned, excited voices
about love, sharing, identity, unity, death, ecstasy—topics not generally discussed by
psychology students except with cynical flippancy or heavy academic seriousness—but
certainly never from experienced confrontation, as was happening now. (That was Ralph
Metzner.)

All the wonders of nature are no other than oneself.
Drugs open up glorious and pleasurable chambers in the mind.
Feelings of awe and sacredness have been overwhelming.
He who has once looked upon great glories cannot but hope to behold them again.
Here is unlocked a store house of glorified memorial treasures.
His art was inspired by the visions he saw on LSD.
I can now understand the psychology of divine inspiration or of magical thinking.
I must praise and glorify this experience and all its wonder.
In many cultures, such experiences are seen as a vital source of creative inspiration.
Our insight into the divine plan becomes more awe-fully detailed.
Remember, man’s natural state is ecstatic wonder, ecstatic intuition. Don’t settle for less.
The archetype is truly awesome if not outright miraculous (eyes closed)
The artist may enter this world in search of new inspiration and improved perception.
The drug became popular among artists as a source of inspiration.
The experience can be wonderful, insightful, enlightening, and life-changing.
The glory of God is beyond all description and comprehension.
The natural state of man is ecstatic wonder. We should not settle for less.
The same old world is transfigured with the “glory of God”.
The sex act can become an event of cosmic grandeur.
The social reality misses the real excitement.
The spiritual and intellectual rewards are vivid, wonderful, inexpressible.
The vast reaches of these undiscovered wilds are awesome.
The visions may be awe inspiring in their grandeur and beauty.
The world becomes visible in its primal or actual splendor.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
There is a certain awesome beauty that makes its appearance.
This excursion into the visionary realms can be exciting, spontaneous and creative.
To lose his life in order to find it is an awesome leap in the dark.
You feel awed.

closed eyes—I see centuries and all the glory and tragedy of man. Everything is in this
music.

I rejoice as if the world were applauding me. Glory, glory in the highest.

It’s glorious to be alive here.

The infinite glories of the past beam on me again.

After experiencing LSD, he went to be with his wife and found “It was like discovering
her all over again. Her body suddenly became new and fresh and exciting.”

An endless sea of glorious golden light which was in truth God, stretched into infinity. As
I watched, an overpowering feeling of reverence settled into my very depths.

Almost an endless variety of exciting colors and textures swept one after another across
the sky.

Everywhere there was godlike peace, the sum of all conceivable desires satisfied,
physical or spiritual.

“God is Love” was no mere Biblical quotation but an overwhelmingly intense burning
into every nerve of my body. The wonder of it caused me to soar with joy.

I awakened into a brilliant, overwhelmingly glorious light. It was very brief but I’d never
experienced anything like it in my life. It had quite an impact.

I looked out the window and the earth seemed to vibrate with life. It’s alive. It’s a
wonderful world. I don’t have to run anymore.

I realized the many wonderful emotions I had experienced were so rare in the lives of
most people and gratitude that such ecstasy had been mine.

I started experiencing a strange excitement that was dissimilar to anything I have ever felt
in my life.

I was overjoyed—filed with wonder and delight. I knew the reasons behind existence,
time, space, goodness, pain—and I rejoiced.

I was struck with a new sense of possibility, that I could be awakened to dozens of
wondrous phenomena.

I was wondering at one point if I was living or was this heaven that I had heard so much
about.

I wondered if all fictional characters were alive and imprisoned between a book’s covers
or on pages where they appear.

It expanded and dignified the soul with a sudden access of glories such as no earthly
kingship could give.

LSD just blew the frame right out of the picture. It gave you a sense of infinite
possibility. LSD gave us the idea that it could be different. It was tremendously inspiring.

My visual field was glowing with a spectrum of colors that had an awesome and
numinous quality.

No saint ever saw more glorious or joyously beautiful visions or experienced a more
blissful state of transcendence.

Outdoors the world was wondrous, new, alive. Everything breathed and throbbed with
vitality. .

People were the most wonderful of all; beauty in faces and nature is only the outer
expression of love, love is the inner reality, love is the whole answer.

The subtle colors of the loose earth and dead leaves were rich and wonderful. The vistas
through the shrubbery were magically intriguing.

The waves of the Dance of Creation pulsed all around me and I could no longer refuse to
join the dance.

This new knowledge did not frighten me. It excited me. There was “something very great
about it.”

We were changed forever, because we were experiencing these inspiring truths. And we
could laugh at ourselves as well, as we saw through our various ego-trips and guises.

Words can’t describe this. I feel an awe and wonder that such a feeling could have
occurred to me.

At last, it came to me that one could never find God by intellectual probing and that
spiritual wealth could be gained only by allowing rich emotions to live within one’s
heart.

I believed the time would come when each person would be in continuous contact with
the beauty, the great capacity for love, the musical and artistic talents, the spiritual
richness and all the other wealth which now lay untapped deep within himself.

I could feel each muscle in my shoulders and legs swelling, pulsing with power, feel the
hair growing on my limbs, the unspeakable delight of movement, fiber excitement, fierce
ecstatic mammalian memories, delightful tissue recollections.

I felt within me the same glorious rhythm I had experienced all day. Now I knew this
joyous rhythm to be no less than the rhythm of the universe itself. I knew that at last I
was beginning to find God.

I had not realized before to what extent such feelings as rapture, ecstasy and euphoria or
awe, devotion, reverence and holiness or any other positive emotion could reach, its
intensity.

I had traveled through all that immeasurable chain of dreams in 30 seconds. “My God!” I
cried, “I am in eternity.” In the presence of that first sublime revelation of the soul’s own
time, and her capacity for an infinite life, I stood trembling with breathless awe.

I learned a different way to be. I learned what awe, delight, blessedness, and serenity
were, and recognized them as more than platitudes. I felt as if the good news was being
whispered to me. I was in on a big secret. I was beginning to see what it was all about.

Old things have passed away, all things have become new. It was like entering another
world, a new state of existence. Natural objects were glorified, my spiritual vision was so
clarified that I saw beauty in every material object of the universe.

The city was transformed into the wonderful world I had experienced when hearing
fables as a child. The rich colors and textures, more real than real, were pure
enchantment. Walls of buildings had an added dimension to their surfaces.

The very heavens seemed to pour open and pour down rays of light and glory. Not for a
moment only, but all day and night, floods of light and glory seemed to pour through my
soul and oh, how I was changed and everything became new.

I cannot recall whether the revelation came suddenly or gradually; I only remember
finding myself in the very midst of those wonderful moments, beholding life for the first
time in all its young intoxication of lovliness, in its unspeakable joy, beauty and
importance.

I took my wife’s hand and it seemed to me a great force of love flowed through my hand
into hers and also from her hand into mine and that then this love was diffused
throughout our bodies. Her smile, he whole face was beautiful beyond description and I
wondered if I would be able to see her like this when the drug experience had ended.

It was as if all the warm, sunny wonderful days of my childhood had been rolled into one
and this was the day. I felt like a child looking out of the window at the beautiful,
beautiful world. Never in all my life have I seen anything that looked as beautiful as this
particular day.

People came out of these sessions reeling with awe, overwhelmed by experiences of
oneness with God and all other beings, shaken to the depths of their nature by the
grandeur and power of the divine life-energy processes going on within their own
consciousness.

Suddenly, my consciousness was lighted up from within and I saw in a vivid way how
the whole universe was made up of particles of material which, no matter how dull and
lifeless they might seem, were nevertheless filled with this intense and vital beauty. For a
second or two the whole world appeared as a blaze of glory.

“This is an experience of life itself, of existence,” I fairly shouted with unintelligible joy
at my state. It was one of exultation, wonder and awe, amazement over Being. I laughed
until tears came to my eyes. “This is fantastic! Beyond words!” That it was—and is—and
ever shall be.

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 sense
of total relatedness and involvement, bringing with it a sense of joy, peace and wonder.

I experienced a wave of extraordinary bliss, like a full-body orgasm, and the sense I was
in the presence of something absolutely awesome. Sex is nothing compared to the ecstasy
I felt at that moment. I had no awareness of my body or ego or time, only a profound
sensation of illumination and the feeling I was in the presence of ALL That Is, eternity,
God, whatever you might call something all-encompassing.

I kept getting visions of this “golden dawning” of consciousness in man which would
enable us to get things whole, to see life’s miracles, to know that indeed all is in
everything from blade of grass to man and woman. It was a vision of some ideal
existence in which there was only the sense of wonder and all fear gone, of a certain state
of being that was there not to be judged, but simply to be.

Suddenly I burst into a vast, indescribably wonderful universe. Although I am writing
this over a year later, the thrill of the surprise and amazement, the awesomeness of the
revelation, the engulfment in an overwhelming feeling-wave of gratitude and blessed
wonderment, are as fresh, and the memory of the experience is as vivid, as if it had
happened 5 minutes ago.

The feelings I experienced could best be described as cosmic tenderness, infinite love,
penetrating peace, eternal blessing and unconditional acceptance on one hand and on the
other as unspeakable awe, overflowing joy, primeval humility, inexpressible gratitude
and boundless devotion. Yet all of these words are hopelessly inadequate and can do little
more than meekly point toward the genuine, inexpressible feelings actually experienced.

A mellow glory transfused me.
A vision of celestial glory burst upon me. (eyes closed)
Aldous was looking at my hair and seeing in it the very mystery and wonder of life.
All of me seemed electrified. I felt energized, pure and glorified.
dazzling food—The salads, meat balls, vegetables all were gloriously radiant.
Feelings were those of absolute awe, reverence, and sacredness.
From horizon to horizon there flashed a glory.
I experienced the awe and mystery of the creation of life.
I felt a wonderful new optimism and a sense of peace and harmony and letting be.
I felt how lucky I was to be living surrounded by simplicity and beauty.
I felt part of an awesome primal hum.
I felt whole and full of wonder in nature as I remember feeling as a child.
I find it hopeless to describe in language the beauty and splendor of what I saw.
I had a sense of discovery, creative excitement and intense, at times mystical inspiration.
I had never known what awe was.
I kept getting these wonderful feelings, all through my body.
I lay in the grass, felt its wondrous texture.
I started noticing that the objects around me were endowed with awesome energy.
I was awed by the sexual power.
I was awed by the vast range of consciousness.
I was ready. But not for what I experienced! It was awesome!
I was suffused with feelings of excitement and pleasure.
I wondered why I had not comprehended meanings which now seemed so obvious.
In awe and rapture, I watched. (eyes closed)
It was inexpressibly wonderful.
LSD opened exciting new perspectives and interesting possibilities.
My consciousness seemed to rise into a wonderful limitless space.
Shapes glistened and sparkled with such diamonds as to be unimaginable in splendor.
The fall colors were a blaze of glory (fall meaning autumn).
The room was full of a great glory.
The stars were awesome.
The stream broadened and grew glorified.
The sun was sending a thrill of light.
What I was experiencing now was new and very exciting.

a feeling of awe, beauty, reverence, and humility, emotions characteristic of the mystic
experience

a firsthand, immediate perception of the Holy and the individual’s relation to it,
accompanied by emotion, excitement and feeling

a golden chance to tune in, to break through, to glorify, to really groove and dance with
God’s great song

a more acute awareness of color, a wonderful awareness of the almost infinite detail that
objects will yield up if only one will give them one’s attention

all joyous color and sound and magic and hope and maybe just the same old chips of
glass beads, and mirrors, but seen in a glorious new way

an entirely new outlook on life, whereby everything becomes transformed and made in
the Glory of God

an exciting adventure into new territories of the mind as yet uncharted by Western
science

an inspiration to people who still believe in the intrinsic spiritual power within the
universe

as though one had stood before the Infinite in profound humility, overwhelmed by
feelings of awe and reverence

astonishment at the absolutely incredible immensity, complexity, intensity and
extravagance of being, existence, the cosmos—Ontological shock

awe, bliss, a sense of certainty, feelings of extraordinary creative awareness or spiritual
breakthrough

awesome beyond-musical choruses that surged to holy crescendos of sound and then
receded to equally holy silence

beauty, fun, philosophic wonder, religious revelation, increased intelligence, mystical
romance, glamour, sexuality

“breaking through” towards the universal consciousness, inspirational impulses of
consciousness leading to breakthrough (Break on through to the other side.)

confront the awesome illumination of the metaphysical void and new energy
transformations

great moments of rapture, bliss and ecstasy, flashes of beauty, joy, sexual experience,
perfection, awe, aesthetic or creative wonder or insight

highly developed spiritual capacities, with expanded consciousness of the depth and the
incomprehensible wonder of being

landscapes which change constantly, passing from richness to more intensely richness,
from grandeur to deepening grandeur (eyes closed)

leaves of trees intricately patterned and at times resembled webs spun by God-inspired
spiders of a thread of unraveled emeralds

other kinds of knowledge, “higher” and more satisfying than the knowledge attained
through the abstract, hyper-intellectual process of ordinary science

promises new and exciting possibilities for the study and understanding of human history
and culture

revealed the glory, the infinite value and meaningfulness of naked existence, of the given
unconceptualized event

seeing the room in wonderful technicolor, raving about the beauty, the texture, the
delicate shades, the shadows on the rug, the subtle play of light on the wall

the awe and wonder one experiences when confronted with the creative forces of nature
and the many mysteries of the universal design

the awe that comes when the veil is torn from your eyes and you see the nature of the
energy process you’re involved in

the capacity to experience the physical world with some of the freshness and excitement
of childhood

the failure of the rational approach to grasp the many mysteries of nature and the awe and
wonder experienced in confrontation with the creative forces of the universe

the fine sensations which spread throughout the whole tissue of my nerve fiber, each
thrill helping to divest my frame of its earthly and material nature

the genius for knowing the Holy, the awesome knowledge that the stuff of which we are
made is also Divine

the moment of awakening, when the voyager discovers the wonder and awe of the divine
life process

the overwhelming beauty, the awe and wonder, the existential challenge, the creative and
therapeutic insights

this unique and most wonderful of experiences which transcends everything, even the
imaginable

to restore the delights of the primal Paradise, to enable men, if they will, to inhabit a
world of joy and splendor

a deep unconscious association between oceanic ecstasy and the experiences of natural
beauty, inspired artistic creations, spiritual feelings and highly satisfactory human
relationships

the capacity to stimulate powers by sweeping away the intellect’s fixed categories and
definitions, exciting new associations of ideas, and shaping abstractions into symbolic
patterns

the optimism, the intellectual and spiritual enthusiasm around those early openings of
consciousness, wonderful, passionate, excitement and interest (That was Timothy Leary
referring to his days at Harvard.)

a deep appreciation and personal identity with the total grandeur and beauty of nature
a domain where the simplest things have rich meaning, glorified by an ideal excellence
a feeling of awe, inspiration, and grandeur
a feeling of extreme well-being, exaltation, excitement and inner joyousness
a feeling of overwhelming awe for the beauty surrounding them
a field of wonders wherein I traveled in perfect ravishment
a glimpse of the splendor of ultimate reality
a glorious sunset
a means of inspiration
a mushroom-inspired Hellenic Age (ancient Greece)
a mysterious, wondrous experience
a new and exciting experience
a new expanded understanding and increased inspiration
a penetrating glory of light
a raving nostalgia for the Kingdom, the Glory, Paradise Lost
a sense of continuity with a glorious past
a sublime awe of mystery
a wonderful opportunity
a wonderfully rewarding experience
a wondrously beautiful heaven of visual imagery and music
aesthetic experience very beautiful and inspiring
alive with an awesome sensuality
an ever-lengthening vista of glories
an exciting adventure, a hero’s journey
an exciting new vision of the cosmos and human nature
an exciting ongoing adventure, filled with discovery and new learning
an expanded, awesome sensory world, hitherto unknown to him
an explosion of lights, jewels and rainbows, the glorious vision (eyes closed)
an immediate consciousness of the divine glory
an intense and glorious experience
awe-struck in this moment of my life taking place outside of time
awed by her discovery
awed by the realization
awed reverence
awesome and luminous experience
awesome, full of reverence and wonder
awesome mystical-religious experiences
becomes extremely excited
beholding the glories of the Divine face to face
can work wonders
cosmologically thrilling
could lead to a fuller and more satisfying way of existing in the world
creative inspiration
dazzling, glorious and radiantly awesome, the radiance of your own true nature
divinely inspired
ego the mask which conceals the splendor of our Original Face
enormous erotic excitement
enriching the wonder
epic grandeur
erotic and sexual excitement
excitement in their eyes
exciting new discoveries
exotic splendor and beauty impossible to achieve in this world
experience some of the wealth and reservoirs which lie within him
experience that special epic-mystery excitement
experiences of divine inspiration
experiences of the world as a system of total harmony and glory
exultant new world vision, a new thrilling freedom
eyes with a tranquil, awesome beauty that was so beautiful
filled with a renewed sense of wonder and joy and adventure
flashes of inspired awareness
gazing far beyond his eyes at the wonder of enlightenment
glorious, dazzling, radiant light
glorious opening up of heavens, revelation of the divine
glorious sensations amounting to ecstasy
glorious visions
glorious with a speechless beauty
glory which lies beyond the veil
his excited brain
how liberating and glorious it was
in a state of breathless wonderment and complete bliss
increased richness of imagery and inspiring thoughts
inspirational experiences
inspired madness
inspired magic
inspired wisdom
inspiring music
in the presence of inspiring realities
into this Mystery of Mysteries, through this Gate of all Wonder
is filled with a great sense of wonder, for everything is perpetually becoming new
joyous wonder
Leary awed by the radiance of his first trip out of the mind
looks at the outside world and it has the glory and the freshness of a dream
man’s soul in primeval grandeur
maximum excitation
my soul thrilled with a strange and unimagined ecstasy
mysterious, exotic, glamorous, unknown
mystical wonder
opens up the mind to its glorious, ecstatic depths
painters, sculptors and musicians seeking artistic inspiration
presenting a wealth of hitherto unknown perceptual possibilities
psychedelic drugs inspiring talented musicians to create new kinds of work
reflective, peaceable, intellectually exciting
religious emotions, religious awe
revealed the glory, the infinite value and meaningfulness of naked existence
reverent awe, ecstatic humility before such power and intelligence
see them shining, alive, glorified (people or objects)
shall bring the glory of the stars into the hearts of men
splendors of transcendent beauty
such an awe-inspiring adventure of the mind
sudden insights of omnipotence and glory
super-sensuous wonder
taught me experientially what awe is
that dream-like vividness and splendor which invest objects of sight in childhood
that glorious blissful shining consciousness, has seen Being itself
the aimless splendor that fills the heavens in celebration of the joy of God
the artistic splendor of the world
the awesome and amazing experience of LSD
the awesome implications of what brain research may discover
the colorful rich world of intuition, inspiration and imagination
the cosmic awe
the dance and wonder of existence
the discovery of the mystery, the wonder beyond all wonders
the divine plant/god Soma as the inspiration for the Hindu religions
the emergence or eruption of this wealth of primarily sensory phenomena
the energy of inspiration
the excitement of a sublimity which is extra-natural
the excitement of the visions
the extended wonder world of heightened and distorted perceptions
the glories of expanded consciousness
the glories of the enchantment
the glories of the purely spiritual world
the glorious ascension to heaven, the serenity of paradise
the glorious radiance
the glorious rapture of music
the glorious sky above
the glory and the meaning of the turn-on
the glory of an intense brightness
the glory of God’s process
the glory of the soul
the glory, the power and the force of love
the grandeur, splendor, romance and revelation of LSD
the high emotional content, sense of awe and reverence
the inspiration of direct experience
the inspirational phase of creativity
the inspired state in which beauty is created
the magnificence, splendor and grandeur of this experience
the most excited rapture
the most exciting educational experience of your life
the naked awe-ful truth
the nourishing and inspirational dimensions they have discovered
the novel and immensely exciting experience of infancy—the age of the non-talker
the peyote wonder-world
the power of prying open for him the gates to more wondrous glories
the prismatic, climactic, revealing experience which LSD promises and fulfills
the relationship of psychedelic states to creative inspiration
the richness and splendor of the unpremeditated surprise
the romance, adventure, idealism and excitement
the secret messages of glorious sexual liberation spread by rock and roll
the sense of awestruck discovery psychedelic artists tried to communicate
the sense of the intense sensuality of oneself, an extremely luxurious sensuality
the sense of wonder
the sky and landscape whose splendors were vivid
the source of inspiration and creativity
the whole face of earth and heaven glorified
the wonder and the beauty
the wonder of life and the glory and mystery of being
the wonder, the mystery of the divine
the wondrous glories which I had beheld
the wondrous light of the New World
the world a miracle of glory
these awe-inspiring expeditions these wonderful, magical mystical drugs
this awe-inspiring experience
this profound sense of somehow living the continuation of a glorious past in the present
this state of mind one of cosmic grandeur
this visionary world, fresh with a childlike wonder and joy
this wonderful gift residing potentially within all of us
to be in awe of beauty
to glorify the soul
to see colors in all its brilliance and absolute splendor
tremendous emotional excitement of the senses
truths seen in the splendor of their own harmonious beauty as an intuition
unexpected sensory thrills, sensory enrichment
vast serenity, elated excitement
visions that were purely inspirational
was glory enough for a lifetime
wide eyed, innocent wonder and delight
with a clearness of contour and wealth of admirable color
wonder in the presence of inspiring realities
wonder of all wonders
wonders all of us can discover for ourselves
wondrously glorious
worshipped awe

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Revelations of the Mind

LSD Experience