Complex, Intricate, Detailed, Complicated
As a result of experiences of this kind, subjects can develop accurate understanding of
various complex esoteric teachings.
Death and rebirth experiences are very complex and have biological, emotional and
intellectual, as well as philosophical and spiritual facets.
Ego-consciousness is a bondage to time, being essentially a complex of memories and
participations. All ego-centric action has an eye to the past or the future.
Events from the recent and remote past can be experienced with vividness and
complexity.
Every detail is seen and rendered as a living jewel and all these jewels are harmoniously
combined into a whole which is a jewel of yet higher order of visionary intensity.
Examining a common object, the subject will be overwhelmed by a sense of wonder and
over the complexity of the most simple items.
Experiences from the past connected with a strong emotional charge are activated,
brought forth from the unconscious and relived in a complex way.
It is prohibited in highly technological and complex civilizations to lift the reality curtain
and gaze upon the naked beyond.
LSD subjects report numerous visions of archetypal forms, individual deities and
complex mythological sequences. (eyes closed)
Memories from the first days or weeks of life can be relived with photographic accuracy
of detail.
Our natural organism performs the most marvelously complex activities without the least
hesitation or deliberation. (That’s because the ego isn’t interfering or involved at all.)
Our spontaneity is inhibited not only by the ego-complex as such but also by the Anglo-
Saxon conception of masculinity.
Our understanding of these most complex and fascinating of drugs remains incomplete,
and they represent unfinished business for psychological research and psychotherapy.
Reality is always larger and more complex than the most elaborate and encompassing
theory.
The beautiful forms of life upon the earth combine and swirl and couple and embrace in
the most incredibly intricate, divinely magnificent spectacle conceivable.
The brain is not a blind, reactive machine, but a complex, sensitive biocomputer that we
can program.
The egotistic viewpoint is so thoroughly complex that it has extreme difficulty in
recognizing the essentially simple.
The eyes have become microscopes and the texture of the visual field is infinitely rich
and complex.
The kaleidoscopic and complex world that has always been there comes dramatically into
consciousness.
The mind is a tiny fragment of the brain-body complex. It is the game-playing fragment.
(The mind in this case means the ego.)
The mysteries of outer space were child’s play compared to the complexities of inner
space.
The psychedelic drugs genuinely give some inkling of the complexity of Eastern
consciousness.
The scope of psychology is complex, dealing as it does with processes which are ever-
changing.
The universe of everyday life, which appears to us to be composed of solid, concrete
objects, is actually a complex web of unified events and relationships.
The world becomes more mysterious, being immeasurably grander, vaster, more complex
and indeed, more imaginative than we had supposed.
There is a world inside a drop of water. A drop of blood is like a galaxy. A leaf is a
fantastic organization, perhaps more complicated than our social structure.
These experiences occur in a complex psychological, philosophical, mythological and
spiritual context.
Things are complex as a result of trying to understand them in terms of linear thought,
words and concepts.
We have a universe that is an infinitely complex system of vibratory phenomena rather
than an agglomerate of Newtonian objects.
What are ordinarily dismissed as irrelevant details of speech, behavior, appearance and
form seemed in some indefinable way to be highly significant.
Ancestral experiences are multiform and complex. Sometimes they involve actual
reliving of short episodes from the life of one’s ancestors or whole sequences that are
specific and rich in concrete detail. (eyes closed)
Consciousness expansion is as equally complex a problem as the study of physics
because the nervous system and the levels of consciousness available to man are infinite
in their complexities.
Important emotional experiences from the past are relived with all the physiological,
sensory, emotional and ideational characteristics of the original reaction and frequently
with a detailed, realistic representation of the setting. (eyes closed)
Man is just beginning to catch on to the idea, just beginning to discover that there is an
infinity of meaning and complex power in the equipment he carries around behind his
eyebrows.
Phenomena perceivable directly by our senses appear on the same experiential continuum
with those that ordinarily require such complicated technology as microscopes and
telescopes to be accessible to human senses.
Psychedelic experiences are very complex phenomena which have not yet been
adequately explained and which represent a serious challenge to present theoretical
thinking.
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.
Spiritual feelings are associated with the dilemma of time and space, origin of matter, life
and consciousness, dimensions and complexity of the universe and human existence, and
the ultimate purpose underlying the process of creation.
Subjects had not only past-incarnation experiences but also complex and detailed insights
into this area that were strikingly similar to those described in various religious and
occult scriptures.
The detailed complexity of the genetic code and the astonishing design of intracellular
communication should caution us against labeling experiences outside of our current
tribal cliches as “psychotic” or abnormal.
The experiencer and the experience become a single, ever-changing, self-forming
process, complete and fulfilled at every moment of its unfolding and of infinite
complexity and subtlety.
The organism, the whole pattern of nerve and muscle, is more complex and intelligent
than logical systems of arithmetic, geometry and grammar—which are in fact nothing but
inferior ritual. Life itself dances.
The recognition that the universe is not a mechanical system but an infinitely complex
interplay of vibratory phenomena of different types and frequencies, prepared the ground
for an understanding of reality based on entirely new principles.
Without losing their normal breadth of vision, the eyes seem to become a microscope
through which the mind delves deeper and deeper into the intricately dancing texture of
the world.
Characteristically there are at first flashes of light or amorphous forms of vivid color
which evolve and develop into geometric figures, shapes, human faces, and pictures of
great complexity. The depth of the color and its unusually arresting tone strike the
subject. (eyes closed)
Each atom is a structure of detailed intricacy held together by energy of such speed and
power that it eludes our conception. Each atom is a space-ship of galactic proportions
and at the center of each galactic structure God places the entire staff of his atomic
engineers. Do you understand the brilliance of the design?
If I put on glasses and see details more clearly, no one can say that I am hallucinating.
But if, under the drug, I see colors and forms I did not see before, they say I am
hallucinating. But maybe I really achieved a new and better vision of external reality.
(There are no maybes about it.)
In exceptional cases the individual may have a complex and vivid experience of moving
to a specific place in the physical world and give a detailed description of a remote locale
or event. Attempts to verify such extrasensory perceptions can sometimes result in
amazing corroboration.
Individuals who encounter transpersonal experiences of this kind in their psychedelic
sessions frequently gain access to detailed and rather esoteric information about the
corresponding aspects of the material universe that far exceeds their general educational
background and their specific knowledge of the area in question.
It is a complex revelatory insight into the essence of being and existence. This insight is
typically accompanied by feelings of certainty that such knowledge is ultimately more
real and relevant than our concepts and perceptions regarding the world that we share in a
usual state of consciousness.
It is important to realize that the subjective experience of time is radically changed in
nonordinary states of consciousness. Within seconds of clocktime, one can experience a
rich and complex sequence of events that lasts subjectively a very long time, or even
seems to involve eternity.
It is not uncommon for subjects reporting evolutionary experiences to manifest a detailed
knowledge of the animals with whom they have identified—of their physical
characteristics, habits and behavior patterns—that far exceeds their education in the
natural sciences.
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.
Psychedelics expand attention. They make the spotlight of consciousness a floodlight
which not only exposes ignored relationships and unities but also brings to light
unsuspected details, details normally ignored because of their lack of significance or their
irrelevance to some prejudice of what ought to be.
Take the sense of sight. LSD vision is to normal vision as normal vision is to the picture
on a badly tuned television set. Under LSD, it’s as though you have microscopes up to
your eyes, in which you see jewellike, radiant details of anything your eyes fall upon.
You are really seeing for the first time.
The drug can mediate access to vast repositories of concrete and valid information in the
collective unconscious and make them available to the experient. The revealed
knowledge can be very specific, accurate and detailed; the data obtained in this way can
be related to many different fields.
We can mention the Jungian archetypes—the world of deities, demigods, superheroes
and complex mythological, legendary and fairy-tale sequences. These experiences can
impart accurate new information about religious symbolism previously unknown to the
subject. (eyes closed)
Within the nucleus of every living cell lies a tiny, complex chain of protein molecules
called the DNA code. DNA is the brain of the cell, the timeless blueprinting code which
designs every aspect of life. DNA executes its plans by means of RNA molecules. RNA
is the communication system, the language, the senses and hands of the DNA.
Anything in the environment—a painting on the wall, a pattern in the carpet—may
become a universe to be entered and explored; drug users say they understand what Blake
meant by “the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower”. Color seems
dazzlingly bright and intense, depth perception heightened, contours sharpened, and relief
clearer; details usually overlooked become intensely interesting.
As in the case of other transpersonal experiences, episodes of organ, tissue and cellular
consciousness can be associated with many concrete insights; various details concerning
anatomy, histology, physiology and chemistry of the body found in the accounts of such
experiences often reveal a level of information that the subjects did not have before the
sessions.
Detailed study of psychedelic phenomena would require a long-term systematic team
cooperation of experts from diverse disciplines, such as psychology, psychiatry,
neurophysiology, neuropharmacology, ethno-botany, modern physics, zoology, ethology,
genetics, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, anthropology, history of art,
theology, philosophy and comparative study of religion and mythology.
Individuals in nonordianry states of consciousness who tune into these experiential
realms participate in dramatic, usually brief, but occasionally complex and elaborate,
sequences that take place in more or less remote historical periods and in various
countries and cultures. These scenes can be experienced from the position of an observer
but more frequently from experiential identification with the protagonists. (eyes closed)
One sees the other in terms of a richness once seen, but lost through over-familiarity.
With this perception, closed-circuits are reopened and the persons communicate in ways
and on levels long inaccessible to them. Also, new circuits may be opened and new ways
of communication become possible. Or the subject may feel he is seeing the other in all
her richness and complexity for the first time.
Specialists from various disciplines have asked me for specific details of my
observations, because they felt that these data may have important implications for such
diverse areas as personality theory, psychology of religion, psychotherapy, genetics,
psychology and psychopathology of art, anthropology, the study of mythology,
education, psychosomatic medicine and obstetric practice. (That was Stanislav Grof.)
We find drug subjects with little or no scientific training describing evolutionary
processes in some detail, spelling out the scenery of microcosm and macrocosm in terms
roughly equivalent to those used by the modern physicist, empathizing with primal states
of matter and energy and then recounting this experience in terms more reminiscent of
Heisenberg than of a hallucinatory state.
Western scientific disciplines have described the universe as an infinitely complex
mechanical system of interacting, discrete particles and separate objects. In this context,
matter appears to be solid, inert, passive and unconscious; life, consciousness and
creative intelligence are seen as insignificant accidents and derivatives of material
development. (Einstein understood. Will the other Western scientists ever wake up?)
When we consider the activity of a modern city, it is difficult to realize that in the cells of
our bodies, infinitely more complicated processes are at work—ceaseless manufacture,
acquisition of food, storage, communication and administration… All this takes place in
superb harmony, with the cooperation of all the participants of a living system, regulated
down to the smallest detail.
Forgotten in the later hysteria of the 1960’s was the exquisite design of the early Harvard
experiments. Rarely in the short history of psychology was such elegant, complex,
socially influential research conducted! At the same time that the CIA was furtively
dosing unwitting Harvard students for the purposes of control and destruction, we were
operating with the books wide open. No secrets. Total collaboration. (That was Timothy
Leary.)
Cellular activity is infinitely complex.
Existence is basically a kind of dancing or music, an immensely complex energy pattern.
LSD subjects can relive elements of their biological birth in all its complexity.
Our insight into the divine plan becomes more awe-fully detailed.
Reality is infinitely more complex than any scientific theory or ideological system.
The complexity of nature is a dance.
The experiences of death and rebirth are rich and complex.
The eye as such does not see things; it sees the total visual field in all its infinite detail.
The images are marvelously detailed and complex. (eyes closed)
The images intensify and get more complex. (eyes closed)
The whole is a pattern, a complex wiggliness which has no separate parts.
This electrical-chemical complexity is the anatomical structure of consciousness.
This incredibly rich and complex experience lasted for what seemed to be an eternity.
Universal symbols refer to complex transcendental realities.
We lost our vision of the universe in the overwhelming complexity of its details.
Those folds in the trousers—what a labyrinth of endlessly significant complexity! And
the trousers of the gray flannel—how rich, how deeply, mysteriously sumptuous. (That’s
Aldous Huxley.)
When I am in my isness, thoroughly purged of all intellectual sediments, I have my
freedom in its primary sense…free from intellectual complexities and moralistic
attachments…
eyes closed—One of the fabulous aspects of this microfilm was the clarity of color and
form, from the facial expressions to the most minute details of the background.
He experienced a comprehensive familiarity with the complex network of his being such
as he had never known before.
His consciousness was providing him with amazingly detailed, complex and concrete
information that he had never dreamed possible.
I looked down at the leaves and discovered a cavernous intricacy, pulsing with
undecipherable mystery.
I remembered detail that under ordinary conditions I could not possibly have
remembered.
When I closed my eyes, fantastically beautiful and intricate geometric depth patterns
were interweaving behind my eyelids, washing, colliding, streaming by at great speed.
As barriers dissolved, it became apparent that we are and always have been part of an
infinite family in an interdependent universal order—a complex web of interconnected
and interpenetrating relationships.
I could see that the intricate organization both of the plants and of my own nervous
system, alike symphonies of branching complexity, were not just manifestations of
intelligence, as if things like intelligence and love were in themselves substances or
formless forces. It was rather that the pattern itself is intelligence and is love.
I felt that I was part of some intricate, unified network that was all-inclusive and eternal
and I felt that in that place I would continue to exist in some form forever. My belief in
the finality of death was undermined by an event that was so real it could not be denied
and I could no longer believe that death was the end of everything.
I looked down below as if from a very high place and saw a rough square of pavement
which had laid out all of Manhattan in miniature, including people. The proportions, the
infinite detail were perfect. The city within the city. We could have swooped down like
gods and lifted up the Empire State Building.
I looked in Paul’s eyes, and every edge, every line, every detail became electric and alive
with threads of color running through it, until the entire environment was neon
psychedelically pulsing crawlingly alive and lit. He looked into my eyes and smiled
inscrutably, as he lit up the environment.
It seemed that my senses had been given a kaleidoscopic character which made the whole
world entrancingly complicated, as if I were involved in a multidimensional arabesque.
Colors became so vivid that flowers, leaves and fabrics seemed to be illuminated from
inside.
The essence of what I received that night was a recognition that reality, in its totality, is
something much larger and more complex than will ever fit through the tiny keyhole of
human perception. Technological amplification we might invent, will never begin to
encompass it.
Every plant became a kind of musical utterance, a play of variations on a theme repeated
from the main branches, through the stalks and twigs, to the leaves, the veins in the
leaves and to the fine capillary network between the veins. Each new bursting of growth
from a center repeated or amplified the basic design with increasing complexity and
delight, finally resulting in a flower.
He had the feeling that his experience and analysis of it were valid and cast serious
doubts on many of his previous philosophical certainties. His doubt deepened as he began
to suspect that the experience which at first he had interpreted as a regressive preverbal
one also could be seen, because of its complexity, as a kind of evolutionary preview into
future post-verbal modes of communication.
To my utter astonishment, I relived my own conception and various stages of my
embryological development. While I was experiencing all the complexities of the
embryogenesis, with details that surpassed the best medical handbooks, I was flashing
back to an even more remote past, visualizing some phylogenetic vestiges from the life of
my animal ancestors. (eyes closed)
I discovered within myself a complex inner world, rich in sensibility, symbol, feeling,
and metaphor, not only for accessible recollections of my life and those more deeply
stored in my unconscious, but also for those that transcended my own direct experience.
It was as if the events of my life the lives of my forebears and unknown people from
earlier periods of history and diverse cultures were passing through me. I was both actor
and audience in this drama.
The leaves of the trees and shrubs were arabesques of marvelous complexity and clarity.
They were shocked by the power and complexity of LSD.
a beautiful column in the majestic corridor of a visionary castle, covered with mosaics of
intricate design (eyes closed)
a drama complete with such a richness of historical and anthropological detail (eyes
closed)
a flowing series of richly detailed, colorful, constantly changing images and emotional
transformations
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 the world so strange and multi-level intricate, but so perfect, so beautiful, so fine, so
good, so perfect
astonishment at the absolutely incredible immensity, complexity, intensity and
extravagance of being, existence, the cosmos—ontological shock
combinations of details and objects that at first seem unrelated but have some intellectual
and visual connection
complex images involving groups of persons, various animals and specific scenery (eyes
closed)
discovery of the world within, a world infinitely more complex and rich than the artificial
structures of the outer world
ever more complex and more personally significant realms of symbolic experience (eyes
closed)
eyes closed—mosaics, temples, sacred objects, patterns of great intricacy and profoundly
meaningful
had a very real insight that their existence is part of an intricate, interconnected cosmic
order
increased vividness of color, visual harmonies, change in depth perception, sharper
definition of detail, changes in time sense, especially listening to music
incredible power and complexity operating at speeds and spatial dimensions which our
conceptual minds cannot register
leaves of trees intricately patterned and at times resembled webs spun by God-inspired
spiders of a thread of unraveled emeralds
multiple levels of reality which differ in their complexities and are mutually interacting
and interdependent
the Jungian archetypes—the world of deities, demigods, superheroes and complex
mythological, legendary and fairy tale sequences (eyes closed)
the landscapes, the architectures, the clustering gems, the brilliant and intricate patterns,
these in their atmosphere of preternatural light, color and significance (eyes closed)
the mysterious process which enables us to regulate the incredible complexity of our
bodies without thinking at all
the possibility of more advanced conditioning designed for more complex consciousness
and communication
the relatively crude and rigid structure of verbal rules and the infinitely more fluid and
complex structure of the brain, the organism and the field in which they live
very complex situations from different cultures and centuries which may be visualized in
considerable detail (eyes closed)
visions of archetypal forms, individual deities and complex mythological sequences (eyes
closed)
visions of archetypal forms, deities and demons, and complex mythological sequences
that seem to have a life of their own (eyes closed)
visions of archetypal personages and themes, encounters with deities of various cultures,
and complex mythological, legendary and fairy tale sequences (eyes closed)
vivid and complex sequences from other cultures and other historical periods that have all
the qualities of memories, a reliving of episodes from previous lifetimes (eyes closed)
image after image after image, flowing in succession more rapid than I would have
wished, but all exquisitely detailed and with colors richer and more brilliant than those
either nature or the artist has yet managed to create (eyes closed)
a complex change in consciousness
a fine and intricate set of patterns
an enormously complex continuum of realities
close eyes—a succession of vivid images brilliantly colored and intricately detailed
complex and detailed scenes in the form of vivid clairvoyant visions (eyes closed)
complex experiential pattern of oceanic ecstasy
complex feelings
complex inner experience
entered a world of fantastic shapes, colors and visual detail
experiences so rich and complex in physical sensations and emotions
eyes closed—details of forms more minute and miraculous than anything upon earth
increased detail and sensation
infinitely complex
intricate flashes
intricate patterns
intricately detailed
marvelously rich and intricate
new levels of complexity and awareness
noticing in every small simple thing a universe of complexity
that infinitude of harmonious complexity
the complex, detailed, well-formed, “realer than real” hallucinations (eyes closed)
the complex levels and dimensions of human consciousness
the complexity of color patterns
the complexity of psychedelic drug effects
the complexity of the LSD experience and all the major variables involved
the complexity of the mental alterations
the forest with all its bewildering intricacy of leafy detail
the increase in attention, the detailed attention possible
the incredible complex unity of the evolutionary process
the incredible complexities of consciousness
the infinite complexities of inner space
the intricacy of geometric patterns (eyes closed)
the leaves a cavernous intricacy, pulsing with undecipherable mystery
the potential depth and complexity of psychedelic experience
the potentialities of the nervous system, the complexity of the human cortical computer
the rhythmic beauty of detail which the drugs reveal in common things
the rich and complex content of LSD sessions
the rich and complex content of the unconscious
the rich and complex phenomena of the psychedelic death-rebirth process
the sensory experience more vivid and more detailed
these most complex and fascinating of all drugs
this complicated experience
this infinitely complex and eternal cosmic drama
unbelievable complexity and beauty
unsymmetrical, fluid and intricate patterns
vivid, complex reliving of emotionally relevant memories
what they reveal of the complexity and wisdom of the human mind at its best