Consciousness
A journey into this new mode of consciousness gives me a marvelously enhanced
appreciation of patterning in nature.
A society in which a large percentage of the population changes consciousness regularly
and harmoniously with psychedelic drugs will bring about a very different way of life.
A transformation will take place in human consciousness and we will emerge as a new
breed.
All forms are radically transcended and merge into the boundless radiance of Formless
Consciousness.
All visions are created by your mind. Your consciousness is creator, performer and
spectator of the “retinal circus.” (eyes closed)
All who have taken LSD know that there are levels of consciousness of which we know
nothing in our normal state.
Altered states of consciousness appear to be the way to development of creative and
intellectual faculties.
Altered states of consciousness seem to be doors to ways of using the mind that are better
than those most of us follow most of the time.
An inconceivable beyond, “without conception,” there flashes forth from its unknown
depths the state of consciousness which is called divine.
An individual tuned into cosmic consciousness usually has no doubt that he or she is
confronted with the ultimate reality.
Another striking aspect of the psychedelic transformation is the development of an
intense interest in consciousness, self-exploration and the spiritual quest.
Any external or social action, unless it’s based on expanded consciousness is a robot
behavior.
Artistic and scientific insight requires a touch of the same kind of loose thinking or
craziness that is found in altered states of consciousness.
As everything in the field of consciousness assumes unusual importance, feelings become
magnified to a degree of intensity and purity almost never experienced in daily life.
As long as the person knows what’s involved, whatever he does to his own consciousness
is his own business.
As the universe reveals its true essence as a cosmic play of consciousness, the world of
matter is destroyed in the psyche of the individual.
Astronauts could be using these substances for preparation of altered states of
consciousness in space exploration.
At the extreme, the individual consciousness seems to encompass the totality of existence
and identify with the Universal Mind.
Buddhism and Taoism are concerned with changing the consciousness of normal people,
unlike shrinks concerned only with disturbed people.
Buddhists set up a whole social structure centered on the cultivation of enlightenment and
higher consciousness.
Changes in human consciousness would make it possible for us to use the fruits of
modern science constructively and with wisdom.
Consciousness and alteration of consciousness cannot be studied from the standpoint of
external science, from the standpoint of look-at-it-from-the-outside science.
Consciousness awakens to its original condition and suchness, which is also the suchness
of all of existence.
Consciousness can be expanded or deepened so as to include vast areas of experience
entirely ignored or “screened-out” by conscious attention.
Consciousness-changing devices initiated many of the religious perspectives which,
taking root in history, continued after their psychedelic origins were forgotten.
Consciousness is infinite, rather than finite, stretching beyond the limits of time and
space.
Consciousness is much more than mere cellular activity in the brain, but rather a chain of
reactions along a continuum of mindfulness distributed throughout the universe.
Consciousness is seen as an integral part of the universal fabric, certainly not limited to
the activities contained inside our skulls.
Consciousness is suddenly released from its conditioned patterning and flung into a
flashing loom of unlearned imagery.
consciousness of the Universal Mind—This is one of the most profound and total
experiences observed in LSD sessions.
Consciousness peers out from a center which it cannot see and that is the root of the
matter.
Consciousness uses the symbols of time, space and causality; the unconscious uses
symbols and mythic images.
Control of American consciousness was and still is the issue. (No one has the right to
control your consciousness.)
“Cosmic” consciousness is a release from self-consciousness, that is to say, from the
fixed belief and feeling that one’s organism is an absolute and separate thing.
Countless events from the past are registered in your brain and can be flashed into
consciousness.
Creative achievement requires an alert consciousness. (Ego consciousness is ignore-ance
or hypnotic, sleepwalking consciousness. As long as ego rules, there is no real creativity.)
Cultures of all times have shown a profound interest in nonordinary states of
consciousness.
Deep self-exploration of the individual unconscious turns into a process of experiential
adventure in the universe-at-large which involves cosmic consciousness.
Drugs could free man’s consciousness and bring about a new conception of man, his
psychology and philosophy.
Drugs, intelligently used as tools to enter other states of consciousness, are potentially
beneficial.
During the psychedelic experience, the heavy shackles of the mind are loosened,
consciousness free to move in any direction.
During unusual states of consciousness, one can make beneficial visionary journeys to
other realms and dimensions of reality
Each one of us may be capable of manufacturing a chemical, minute uses of which are
known to cause profound changes in consciousness.
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.
Ego is the “island” of rational consciousness floating atop the great sea of the
unconscious aspects of the psyche.
Elements of animal and plant consciousness can increase an individual’s love of nature
and make him more responsive to ecological problems.
Elements of mystical consciousness can occur in psychedelic sessions of well-educated,
skeptical and scientifically oriented individuals.
Elements of the world that we would normally consider to be outside the range of our
consciousness, appear.
Enriched by a consciousness perspective, liberal education can extend freedom and
mental refinement far beyond the parochialism of single-state learning.
Every cell in your body is acutely conscious and has access to wisdom which dwarfs the
mental, prefrontal symbolic aspect that you consider normal waking consciousness.
Every process in the universe that one can observe objectively in the ordinary state of
consciousness also has a subjective experiential counterpart.
Expanded consciousness extends far beyond the cultural and ego games in which men are
enmeshed.
Experiences of cosmic consciousness has been described in many religious scriptures
throughout history.
Experiences of oceanic ecstasy and cosmic union seem to be deeply related to the
undifferentiated state of consciousness that an infant experiences.
Experiences of the consciousness of particular, stable, immutable and durable substances
are perceived as being high spiritual states involving an element of sacredness.
For the mystical consciousness, “god is love” is a self-evident truth, not a piece of
wishful positive thinking.
For the proper use of understanding, a wider consciousness is needed and a higher
standpoint to enlarge one’s horizons.
For thousands of years, the greatest artists, poets, philosophers and lovers have used
consciousness-expanding substances.
Forms of architecture may be seen to have largely originated in various forms of altered
consciousness.
Ginsberg’s vision of a historic movement that would transform human consciousness
struck a responsive chord in Leary.
Go beyond your secular tribal mind to contact the many levels of divine energy which lie
within your consciousness.
God is divided in play, in make-believe, but remains undivided in reality, so that when
the play comes to an end, the individualized consciousness awakens to find itself divine.
Harmony involves a consciousness of the interwovenness of organic life and inorganic
life.
How can we Westerners come to see that our own consciousness is infinitely greater than
our little egos and the ego games into which we are so blindly caught up?
Humans can function as infinite fields of consciousness, transcending the limitations of
time, space and linear causality.
“I” am not my body but an evolving consciousness, clothed temporarily in a body. I died
after my third toke on my first joint of grass, and when I came back.
I belong to one of the oldest trade unions in human civilization—the alchemists of the
mind, the scholars of consciousness. (That was Timothy Leary.)
Identification of consciousness with ego consciousness leads to confusion of mind and
intellect, to acceptance of appearance as reality.
If psychedelic drugs actually do expand consciousness, then it is socially irresponsible
not to put them in the toolbox.
If purified, the individual mind can identify itself with the Universal Mind, the inner
consciousness.
If this state of consciousness could become more universal, the pretentious nonsense
which passes for the serious business of the world would dissolve in laughter.
In altered states of consciousness, one gains the ability to interpret his perceptions in new
ways.
In every culture of recorded history, men have used chemicals of vegetable origin to alter
consciousness.
In every culture, there have been men who have studied consciousness. They have been
called shamans, gurus or alchemists.
In most people, there is such a deplorable disparity between the intelligent and marvelous
order of their bodies and the trivial preoccupations of their consciousness.
In the contrast world of ordinary consciousness man feels himself to be something in
nature but not of it.
In the psychedelic state, our mind seems to exist outside the scope of ordinary rational
consciousness.
In this special state of consciousness, the subject becomes aware of certain intra-psychic
processes ordinarily excluded or beyond the scope of awareness.
Inherent in the nondifferentiated unity of mystical consciousness is a profound sense of
holiness and sacredness.
Initiations into the mysteries always represents an expansion of consciousness and an
overcoming of ignorance.
Intuitive flashes are transient, spontaneous altered states of consciousness consisting of
particular sensory experiences or thoughts coupled with strong emotional reactions.
Intuitive genius is often associated with daydreaming, meditation, dreaming and other
nonordinary modes of consciousness.
It is a cosmic consciousness into which we enter as our normal consciousness expands,
and we become aware of the transcendent dimension of humanity beyond space and time.
It is a non-egotistic consciousness, a kind of formless and timeless consciousness, which
seems to underlie the consciousness of the separate ego in time.
It is easier to change behavior if you understand the learned-game nature of behavior.
This sort of insight can be brought about by consciousness-expanding drugs.
It is noteworthy that most of the world’s highest religious and philosophical thought
originated in altered states of consciousness in individuals.
It is possible to cut beyond ego-consciousness, to tune in on neurological processes which
flash by at the speed of light.
It is possible to experience the consciousness of all creation, of the entire planet or the
entire material universe.
It is surely through the transformation of consciousness that we find the entrance to
Heaven.
It offers one the chance to experience a true expansion of consciousness, an increase in
awareness, a general improvement and heightening of perception of all kinds.
It offers unparalleled opportunity to catalyze awareness of otherwise unconscious psychic
processes, to widen the area of human consciousness.
It was a time of magic and the gathering of the new tribe. The tribe of expanded
consciousness.
Its essential meaning for the evolution of human consciousness will appear in the
spiritual Age of Aquarius.
Jesus did not say that this higher state of consciousness realized in him was his alone for
all time. Nor did he call us to worship him.
Knowledge belonging to Mind at Large oozes past the reducing valve of brain and ego,
into his consciousness. It is the knowledge of the intrinsic significance of every existent.
Learning, memory, mood, judgment, identity, consciousness can be transformed by
electrical and chemical stimuli.
Leary is a super salesman of evolution who deploys his talents to sell a more advanced
state of human consciousness.
Leary wanted to amend the Constitution so that there’s no law abridging the individual’s
right to seek an expanded consciousness.
LSD, by permitting consciousness on several levels at once, becomes specifically a
tuning device for the senses.
LSD can be not just a “mind or consciousness-expanding” drug, but a “conscience-
expanding” one as well.
LSD is a key to opening up sensory, cellular and precellular consciousness so that you
flow and harmonize with these different levels.
Man’s normal waking consciousness is always culturally conditioned and prevents us
from actualizing some of our most valuable potentialities.
Man’s obsessive consciousness of and insistence on being a separate self is the final and
most formidable obstacle to the unitive knowledge of God.
Many examples of the identification of a consciousness-changing drug with God and
associated with religious ritual could be cited.
Materials not normally accessible to consciousness surge up and determine the thought
content and patterns.
Members of the new breed seek a culture founded in higher consciousness, a culture
whose institutions are based on love, a culture that fulfills the perennial philosophy.
Modern Church religion is little concerned with giving any consciousness of union with
God (mysticism).
Modes of consciousness different from normal waking consciousness are within the reach
of anyone.
More of what the eye sees and more of what the nose smells is getting into
consciousness.
Most nonordinary states of consciousness are considered pathological and are treated
with traditional psychiatric methods such as suppressive medication and hospitalization.
Mystical consciousness is not primarily an emotion. It is a perception. (The perception
comes first and then there can be an emotional feeling about the new perception.)
Mystics emphasize the direct experience of cosmic consciousness that goes beyond the
scientific approach.
Mythological materials often emerge in consciousness during a psychedelic experience.
(eyes closed)
Narrowed, serial consciousness, the memory-stored stream of impressions is the means
by which we have the sense of ego.
No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of
consciousness quite disregarded.
No external interventions have a chance to create a better world unless they are
associated with a profound transformation of human consciousness.
No social authority can successfully arrogate unto itself the right to dictate and fix the
levels of consciousness which man may aspire.
Nonordinary states of consciousness certainly change dramatically the relationship
between the conscious and unconscious dynamics of the psyche.
“Normal” ordinary consciousness and/or awareness is a state in which one is at least half
blind, deaf, and alive.
Nothing exists except undulating energy and flowing consciousness upon which the
grasping mind imposes categories which have nothing to do with the energy-flow.
Observations in the transpersonal realm are beginning to suggest that consciousness is
involved in the so-called material world in ways previously unimagined.
On the level of ultimate unity, consciousness totally awakens to its original condition,
which is also the suchness of all existence.
Once people learned to share others’ perceptions, a higher level of consciousness might
be possible.
Once the threshold of altered consciousness has been crossed, we are flooded with a
kaleidoscopic vision of extended perceptual fields and psychological insights.
Once they had eaten the apple of expanded consciousness, there was no going back. The
umbilical cord that tied them to the world of the mundane was irretrievably sundered.
Once we can see that consciousness alteration is not in itself undesirable, we need be
concerned only with an evaluation of methods of achieving it.
One can transcend the limits of the specifically human experience and tune into what
appears to be the consciousness of animals, plants or even inanimate objects.
One of the most striking effects of LSD is its ability to activate the leisurely pace of
conventional consciousness.
One will never find consciousness by looking down a microscope at brain cells or
anything else.
Our academic community is predominantly consciousness-naïve. Studies of human
nature and the human mind which omit non-ordinary states are clearly incomplete.
Our internal functions are not beyond the reach of consciousness. (They are beyond the
reach of ego or “normal” waking consciousness.)
Our ordinary egocentric consciousness is a limited and impoverished consciousness
without foundation in “reality”.
Our ordinary state of consciousness is a semi-arbitrary construction. This is true of our
perceptions as well as our thoughts and actions.
Our relationship to the world of nature is practically screened out of consciousness by our
present use of intelligence (or our present lack of use of intelligence).
Our Western culture makes virtually no use of altered states of consciousness and tends
to regard all of them as pathological states.
People repeatedly report that these states of consciousness have a brilliant, numinous,
mythical quality.
Psychedelic drugs can stimulate a breakthrough to an enlarged consciousness of a
transfigured world of the Eternal Now.
Psychological problems may have to be encountered before a “breakthrough” into
mystical consciousness is possible.
Psychology in general has failed to keep pace with personal explorations in altered states
of consciousness.
Rational consciousness itself is seen as a tissue thin artifact easily blown away by the
slightest alteration of our biochemistry.
Realization is bringing to consciousness what is true all the time in the “unconscious”, in
the Self and spirit which the ego does not know.
Ritualistic legalism does little to alter character and nothing of itself to modify
consciousness.
Sanskrit, as Heard loved to point out, was a far superior language with over 40 different
words for alteration of consciousness.
Shamanism is nearly universal. Shamanic cultures attribute great value to nonordinary
states of consciousness.
Significant aspects of mystical consciousness are felt by the experiencer to be true, in
spite of the fact that they violate the laws of Aristotelian logic.
Since consciousness is a biochemical process, chemicals are the keys to the different
levels of consciousness.
Some of the highest spirits of the West have spoken through music, expressing through
sound something of the upper reaches of consciousness.
Specialized training of the therapist, which includes first-hand experiences of psychedelic
states of consciousness, is an important element in LSD psychotherapy.
“Store-consciousness” is that form from which the formal world arises spontaneously or
playfully.
Such a tremendous potential to alter the consciousness made LSD a sure subject of heated
debate.
Such insight is intuitively felt to be of a more fundamental form of reality than either the
phenomena of everyday consciousness.
Sudden and unexpected displays of more primitive and intense emotion than shown
during normal waking consciousness may appear.
Techniques that directly activate the unconscious seem to reinforce selectively the most
relevant emotional material and facilitate its emergence into consciousness.
The Absolute or the Ultimate would be the experience of the Suchness of all the levels of
consciousness in its original condition.
The action of consciousness-expanding drugs on the cortex can be holy and intensely
educational.
The aim of all Eastern religion, like the aim of LSD, is basically to get high, that is, to
expand your consciousness and find ecstasy and revelation within.
The aim of education is to learn how to use all of these levels of consciousness (not to
memorize nonsense).
The atomic structure of matter is known intellectually but never experienced by the adult
except in states of altered consciousness.
The breakthrough in neurology is going to come when the scientist puts his eye to the
microscope and the microscope of consciousness is your own nervous system.
The cellular level of consciousness puts man in touch with the DNA chain, which goes
back to the origins of life.
The changes in human consciousness spell the beginning of a new era such as has never
existed before—at least not in recorded history.
The changes of consciousness have ontological relevance through offering valid insights
into the nature of human existence and the universe.
The Church is not a creative power in the modern world because Christians have, in
general, no consciousness of union with God.
The claim that drugs “expand consciousness” refers to changes in several dimensions of
experience.
The consciousness-changing drugs give a glimpse into the mind. One could almost say
that LSD gives a glimpse into the very soul of man, taps a universal knowing.
The consciousness is finally of universals, of essences constituting the ground of the
subject’s and of the world’s existence.
The deep contents of the psyche that we are ordinarily unaware of erupt into
consciousness in the form of images, powerful emotions and strange physical feelings.
The discovery of LSD and subsequent psychedelic research opened up new revolutionary
avenues in the study of human consciousness.
The DNA code is a miniaturized time-capsule of consciousness, the invisible essence-
wisdom of life.
The drug user feels himself to have transcended the trivial and absurd preoccupations of
his fellows—the “game world” of ordinary consciousness.
The Eastern mind has no difficulty in conceiving of a consciousness without an ego.
Consciousness is deemed capable of transcending its ego condition.
The ecstatic consciousness is an expansive consciousness, open to a profusion of new
sensations, new perceptions, new knowledge and new values.
The effect is to free the consciousness from the obstacles to true realization of universal
unity.
The effect of consciousness-expanding drugs will be to transform our concepts of human
nature, of human potentialities, of existence.
The effects seem to operate upon the nervous system by reducing some of the inhibitory
mechanisms which ordinarily have a screening effect upon our consciousness.
The entire study of consciousness, the religious experience itself, remains in a state of
medieval ignorance and superstition.
The essence of you and “you-ness” is your consciousness, which is located in your
nervous system. Your consciousness is a biochemical electrical process.
The experience of beauty is pure, self-manifested and compounded equally of joy and
consciousness.
The experience of cosmic consciousness is boundless, unfathomable, and beyond
expression.
The extension of consciousness seems to go beyond the phenomenal world and the time-
space continuum as we perceive it in our everyday life.
The God externalized in Christ exists within the center rather than beyond the outer
boundary of our consciousness. (There is no outer boundary to our consciousness.)
The guide must steer a course of gradual intensification and enhancement of
consciousness.
The high value, the meaningfulness, and the intensity reported of such experiences
suggest that the perception has a different scope from that of normal consciousness.
The historic role of states of consciousness in the humanities, arts, and sciences is
neglected in current education.
The illusions of matter, space and time have been completely transcended and reduced to
this one mode of consciousness which is their common source and denominator.
The images may enter into consciousness as supremely meaningful, illuminating the most
important areas of the subject’s life. (eyes closed)
The individual consciousness seems to encompass the totality of existence and identify
with the Universal Mind.
The ingestion of psychedelic substances evokes an activation of deeply buried psychic
contents and a bringing of them to the surface of consciousness.
The inmost self is eternal. It’s what there is and all there is. The totality of space is the
field of its consciousness.
The kaleidoscopic and complex world that has always been there comes dramatically into
consciousness.
The literature on creativity clearly indicates that true artistic, scientific, philosophical and
religious inspiration is mediated by nonordinary states of consciousness.
The main obstacle we face as a species is found in the present evolutionary level of our
consciousness.
The managers of consciousness, from the Vatican to Harvard, have been in this business
for a long time and they’re not about to give up their monopoly.
The more expanded your consciousness, the farther out you can move beyond your mind,
the deeper, the richer, the longer and more meaningful your sexual communion.
The mystical consciousness is so much more deeply rooted than any other human
impulse and is characterized by an experience that goes beyond death.
The mystical experience is the consciousness of the “living primordial cosmic fact of
Love,” “the Gratuitous Grace”.
The mystical view of consciousness is based on the experience of reality in non-ordinary
modes of awareness.
The nervous system and the levels of consciousness available to man are infinite in their
complexities.
The nonordinary state of consciousness suspends the traditional ways of thinking that
prevent a solution and allow a new creative synthesis.
The normal state of consciousness in our culture is both the context and breeding ground
for mental disease.
The observations of nonordinary states of consciousness have important implications for
many fields of research.
The only aspect of the LSD controversy about which all parties do agree is that the
consciousness-expanding drugs are powerful.
The only lasting cure for social ills lies in raising the collective consciousness. Short of
that, history is bound to repeat itself.
The original sense of the seamless unity of nature is restored without the loss of
individual consciousness.
The phenomenal world that we observe in our ordinary state of consciousness represents
only one aspect of reality.
The possibility of something originating out of nothing or of something vanishing
without any trace does not appear absurd, as it would in everyday consciousness.
The power of substances to produce altered states of consciousness is understood by
Western scientists in biochemical rather than supernatural terms.
The powerful sensations from every part of your body and the unusual connections of
thoughts and feelings that are normally ignored come dramatically into consciousness.
The present has spread out from its constriction in an elusive pin-point of strained
consciousness to an all-embracing eternity.
The principle instrument of monopoly and control that prevents expansion of
consciousness is the word lines controlling thought and feeling.
The psychedelic drugs genuinely give some inkling of the complexity of Eastern
consciousness.
The psychedelic experience is fundamentally or ideally the bursting of ego-
consciousness, with the concomitant realization of cosmic-consciousness.
The psychedelic state, and other forms of altered consciousness are worthy of serious
study if the act of human creation is to be better understood, guided, and encouraged.
The quest for higher consciousness had always been the province of small esoteric
mystery cults.
The scientist of consciousness must have courage. He must embark on a course of
planfully and deliberately going out of his mind. This is no field for the faint of heart.
The self realized in your inmost consciousness appears in its purity, which is not the
realms of those given over to mere reasoning.
The sense of I as distinct from everything else in the universe is the very root of ego
consciousness.
The state of consciousness of the Self-realized individual is characterized by joy,
serenity, inner security, a sense of calm power, clear understanding and radiant love.
The transformation of consciousness is like the correction of faulty perception or the
curing of a disease.
The universe ceases to be a gigantic assembly of material objects; it becomes an infinite
system of adventures in consciousness.
The use of drugs to alter consciousness is nothing new. It has been a feature of human life
in all places on the earth and in all ages of history.
The usual boundaries between consciousness and the unconscious have been breached
and finally in large measure dissolved.
The very fact of mystical experience belies the oft repeated assertion that human
consciousness can never rise above the level of formal religious symbolism.
The very use of the term “the unconscious” for the inmost depths reveals how little
Western man knows of what is actually his central consciousness.
The ways of liberation are concerned with making mystical consciousness the normal
everyday consciousness.
The Western scientific view considers matter as primary. The mystical view regards
consciousness as the primary reality and ground of all being.
The world around us—so often gray—is the product of our own distorted vision of our
ego-consciousness and ego-clinging.
There is a general enhancement and intensification of consciousness and at the same
time, an extension and transfiguration.
There is generally a dramatic redefinition of his or her concepts regarding the dimensions
of the human mind, the basic characteristics of consciousness and the nature of man.
There is no issue in psychology, physics, biology and theology which cannot make use of
these microscopes of consciousness.
There is no question that altered states of consciousness can heighten aesthetic
sensitivity.
There was a long and distinguished tradition of consciousness exploration, yet it was
known to so few.
These drugs have the unique effect on the human psyche of bringing into awareness
forms of consciousness that are usually hidden or unconscious.
These plants and drugs as expanders of human consciousness could revolutionize
psychology and philosophy.
These remarkable medicines temporarily dissolve our defenses and permit us to see what
separative consciousness normally ignores, the world as an interrelated whole.
This expansion of consciousness can be used to increase our awareness of and sensitivity
toward mankind.
This is what Jesus taught and demonstrated—cosmic consciousness, the direct experience
of divinity dwelling in us and all things.
Throughout history, most cultures had a great appreciation for nonordinary states of
consciousness. They highly valued the positive potential of such states.
T. Leary said-I belong to one of the oldest trade unions in human civilization—the
alchemists of the mind, the scholars of consciousness.
To those for whom the ego is their only possible self, the only possible mode of
consciousness, its disappearance is a kind of death.
To understand the transpersonal realm, we must begin thinking of consciousness is an
entirely new way.
2 commandments—Don’t alter someone’s consciousness, don’t stop someone from
altering their own consciousness.
Unfortunately, most Western neuroscientists look down their noses at the Oriental
literature of consciousness.
Visionary experiences enter our consciousness from somewhere “out there” in the
infinity of Mind-at-Large.
We are not just biological machines and highly developed animals, but also fields of
consciousness without limits, transcending space and time.
We are part of an infinite field of consciousness that encompasses all there is—beyond
space-time and into realities we have yet to explore.
We believed it was the beginning of a spiritual revolution, a revolution of consciousness
(Human Be-In, 1967 San Francisco).
We discover that there is some superior order harmonizing what seems to be conflicts at
the level of our normal individual consciousness.
We have become aware of the undiscovered universe within, of the uncharted regions of
consciousness.
We have hardly scratched the surface in understanding fully the facets and functions of
altered states of consciousness.
We have learned to feel our consciousness much too superficially, as if all our sensations
were in the tips of the fingers and none in the palm.
We ignore and are unconscious of the dependence of our consciousness and energy upon
the outer world.
We lose consciousness of and faith in the uncontrolled and ungraspable background
world which is ultimately what we ourselves are.
We must move toward a realization of the truth at the core of our being and toward the
higher consciousness that is the birthright of all of us.
We never completely lose contact with this cosmic consciousness because we are never
fully separated from it.
Western psychology is so narrow as to be mostly trivial— consciousness is eliminated
from the field of inquiry.
With his consciousness enlarged out of bounds, he may, if all goes well, find out that he
no longer feels anxiety about past or future.
With LSD, technology has produced a chemical which catalyzes a consciousness which
finds the entire civilization leading up to that pill absurd.
Within consciousness, more simultaneous mental processes operate without any one of
them interfering with the awareness of the others.
Without the consciousness of God in the soul and of the soul in God, Christianity in this
age and for modern man can be no more than a superficial mimicry of spirituality.
Your consciousness extends beyond the language you know and the culture in which you
exist.
Your own consciousness shining, inseparable from the great Body of Radiance, is subject
neither to birth nor death.
A conception of the ultimate unity in being and consciousness of man and the universe is
common to all the main religious traditions and is based on the experience of the mystics
in each tradition.
A lively boost was the publication of Huxley’s books, Doors of Perception and Heaven
and Hell; his enormous erudition and lucid explanations put the whole business of taking
a drug to change your consciousness on a totally new level.
A new deepened reality consciousness could become the basis of a new religiosity which
would not be based on belief in the dogmas of various religions, but rather on perception
through the “spirit of truth”.
Alcohol is a “down” experience. It narrows consciousness and makes you a rather sloppy,
a rather messy person in thought and action. The psychedelic drugs take you in the
opposite direction.
All of us have been censored so much, the filters have been applied for so long, that if we
want to expand our consciousness and move on to different levels of reality, we are
probably going to have to use chemical means.
Any and every shape—human, divine, diabolical, heroic, evil, animal, thing—which the
human brain conjures up or the past life recalls, can present itself to consciousness:
shapes and forms and sounds whirling by endlessly.
Awareness of all normal sense impressions and the empirical ego seems to die or fade
away while pure consciousness of what is being experienced paradoxically remains and
seems to expand as a vast inner world is encountered.
clear consciousness, seeing the world as it is—Such awareness is a lively attention to
one’s direct experience, to the world as immediately sensed, so as not to be misled by
names and labels.
Consciousness changes. Your nerve endings, neural cameras, cellular memory banks,
protein structures become broadcasting instruments for the timeless humming message of
God located inside your body.
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.
Consciousness is central and primary. This reversal of the prevailing scientific view
which sees consciousness as secondary and peripheral to material reality, changes
conventional ideas of cause-and-effect relationships.
Ego-consciousness must either live the world to the exclusion of God or God to the
exclusion of the world; there cannot be room for both on the objective plane. (The ego’s
doesn’t understand that God is not separate from the world.)
Ego focuses consciousness on the few immediately neighboring pieces of the game board
because ego knows that one glance across the game board or beyond it puts the whole
thing in perspective.
Experiences of this kind suggest that there is a constant interplay between the inanimate
objects we generally associate with the material world, the world of consciousness, and
creative intelligence.
Hallucinogenic drugs give people who lack the gift of spontaneous perception the
potential to experience this extraordinary state of consciousness and thereby to attain
insight into the spiritual world.
I can gain insight into the nature of consciousness or experience, the meaning and
essence of being and the experience of harmony, the mystery of life, communion and
sharing, the delight of ecstasy. (Anyone can gain that insight. LSD is the best way.)
I doubt if this can possibly be made to seem meaningful at the ordinary level of
consciousness. No wonder the mystics of all faiths teach that understanding comes only
when logic and intellect are transcended.
I predict that dying is a merging with the entire life process. In other words, we become
every form of life that has ever lived and will live. We become the DNA code that wrote
the entire script. Consciousness returns to the genetic code. (That was Timothy Leary.)
If our conscious life is totally attached to our sensory perceptions of external reality, it is
very likely that we will come to equate reality with external reality, just as we tend to
equate mind with intellect, and consciousness with ordinary waking consciousness.
In advanced industrial societies, “paranormal” states of consciousness are readily
disparaged as “abnormal” or pathological, indicative of a deeply ingrained prejudice
against certain varieties of experience.
In altered states of consciousness this new perception of the world becomes dominant and
compelling. It completely overrides the everyday illusion of Newtonian reality, where we
seem to be “skin-encapsulated egos” existing in a world of separate beings and objects.
In Europe, the persecutions of the established church drove explorers of consciousness
underground. (Sadly, in the U. S., even now, we have to hide underground. Is this not a
form of fascism?)
In experiences that have transpersonal dimensions, the individual has the sense of having
transcended his or her own identity and ego boundaries as they are defined in the
ordinary state of consciousness.
In modern physics, matter becomes interchangeable with energy. Within this new
worldview, consciousness is seen as an integral part of the universal fabric, certainly not
limited to the activities contained inside our skulls.
In our emphasis on rationality and logic, we have put great value on the everyday sober
state of mind and relegated all other states of consciousness into the realm of useless
pathology.
In our present primitive state, we have industries devoted to the production of the state of
consciousness which I call emotional stupor. (This refers to alcohol and getting drunk and
the society is still in a primitive state.
Internal unity occurs when consciousness merges with this “ground of being,” beyond all
empirical distinctions. Although awareness of one’s empirical ego has ceased, one does
not become unconscious.
It doesn’t concern me that young people are taking time out from the educational and
occupational assembly lines to experiment with consciousness, to dabble with new forms
of experience and artistic expression. (That was Timothy Leary.)
It is a cosmic consciousness into which we enter as our normal consciousness expands,
and we become aware of the transcendent dimensions of humanity beyond space and
time.
It is important to prepare the client for the fact that the dimensions of the experience will
probably be beyond anything that he or she has ever faced before or could even imagine
in the usual state of consciousness.
It is important to realize that by banning psychedelic research we have not only given up
the study of an interesting drug or group of substances, but also abandoned one of the
most promising approaches to the understanding of the human mind and consciousness.
It is our conditioning which develops our consciousness; but in order to make full use of
this developed consciousness, we must start by getting rid of the conditioning which
developed it.
It is possible to cut beyond ego-consciousness, to tune in on neurological processes which
flash by at the speed of light, and to become aware of the enormous treasury of ancient
racial knowledge welded into the nucleus of every cell in your body.
Let us try to bring about a new and glowing synthesis, a new higher consciousness that
brings together the East and West, the head and the heart, science and spirituality and
knowledge and wisdom. (Knowledge and wisdom are not the same.)
LSD produces an upsurge of unconscious material into consciousness and repressed
memories are relived with remarkable clarity—with therapeutically beneficial
consequences.
LSD subjects sophisticated in mathematics and physics have repeatedly reported that in
their psychedelic sessions they gained illuminating insights into a variety of concepts and
constructs that are not imaginable and visualizable in the ordinary state of consciousness.
LSD was a means of exciting consciousness and provoking visions, a kind of hurried
magic enabling youthful seekers to recapture the resonance of life that society had
denied.
Mathematicians and physicists reported remarkable experiential insights into various
problems related to astronomy and astrophysics that can be expressed in mathematical
equations, but cannot be fully intuited in the ordinary state of consciousness.
Most of the LSD experience takes place in a nonverbal region of the mind and deliberate
overintellectualization stands in the way of the free flow of the subject’s stream of
consciousness.
New scientific findings are beginning to support beliefs of cultures thousands of years
old, showing that our individual psyches are, in the last analysis, a manifestation of
cosmic consciousness and intelligence that flows through all of existence.
Nonordinary states of consciousness make it possible for unconscious material with
strong emotional charge to emerge into consciousness. This process is an expression of a
powerful spontaneous healing potential and should be supported.
Observations indicating an urgent need to transcend the limitations of mechanistic
science come not only from modern consciousness research and new experiential
techniques of psychotherapy, but also from quantum-relativistic physics.
Occasionally, the subjects can lose awareness of the actual physical setting altogether and
their consciousness moves into experiential realms and subjective realities that appear to
be entirely independent of the material world.
One of the most important changes most people experience through non-ordinary states
of consciousness involves a new appreciation for the role of spirituality in the universal
scheme of things.
Only the most static, repressive society need worry about psychedelic subversion.
Consciousness-expanding chemicals, in reality, present no threat, but rather offer hope
and encouragement to a democratically oriented social structure.
Our body contains, however small the bit, a part of that. physically real primeval mud
from which we grew, through orders, classes, phyla—to what we are. Thus, the physical
reality of the evolutionary sequence of life may become available to our consciousness.
Our general failure to notice the inseparability of things and to be aware of our own basic
unity with the external world is the result of specializing in a particular kind of
consciousness. (Normal waking consciousness is just too narrow and limited.)
Our models of “reality” are very small and tidy, the universe of experience is huge and
untidy, and no model can ever include all the huge untidiness perceived by uncensored
consciousness.
Parts of the scientific community have difficulty accepting data from other states of
consciousness, just as our ancestors found it hard to accept observations from the
telescope and microscope.
Perhaps all men share the hunch that normal consciousness is a form of sleepwalking and
that somewhere there exists a form of “awakeness” from which one would not want to
return.
Politics, religion, economics, social structure, are based on shared states of
consciousness. The cause of social conflict is usually neurological. The cure is
biochemical.
Psychedelic drugs offer new perspectives on every aspect of human thinking, human
behavior, human searching. There is no issue in psychology, physics, biology and
theology which cannot make use of these microscopes of consciousness.
Psychedelic equals mind-opening consciousness. Psychedelic means ecstatic which is to
stand outside our normal patterns. It means going out of your mind, your habitual world
of contingencies, space-time coordinates.
Psychologists, philosophers, and educators who are unfamiliar with consciousness
research will be as out of date as they would be today if they were unfamiliar with Freud,
Skinner.
Realization of the fundamental identity of the individual consciousness with the creative
principle of the universe is one of the most profound experiences a human being can
have.
Some researchers would hold that all phenomena occurring in altered states of
consciousness should be labeled “psychotic.” (I would hold that any researchers who
believe that should be labeled “psychotic.”)
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.
Talk about the mind, imagery, or consciousness, was definitely discouraged, since their
existence could not be “proved.” About that time a noted psychologist said of
psychology, “First it lost its soul, then it lost its mind, and now it has lost consciousness”.
Television can control consciousness. If 60 million people all watch one program, they
are being controlled. (Those with power want people to watch the idiot box rather than
become aware of how corruptly those with power use and abuse that power.)
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 brain replaced the genitals as the forbidden organ that must not be touched or turned
on by the owner. The only way in which consciousness-change experience could be
discussed was in terms of philosophic-religious.
The common denominator of this rich and ramified group of transpersonal phenomena is
a feeling that consciousness has expanded beyond the usual ego boundaries and has
transcended the limitations of time and space.
The DNA code is a 3 billion year old time capsule of consciousness. The DNA code is
the miniatured, invisible essence wisdom of life. Most of the characteristics formerly
attributed to the “soul” describe the functions of DNA.
The enlightened individual goes beyond grammar. He has what may be called a
“grammar-transcending experience” which permits him to live in the consciousness of
the divine continuum of the world and to see the one continually manifest in the many.
The esoteric core of the great religious and spiritual traditions could be seen as roadmaps
to higher states of consciousness, and some of the most profound material in these
traditions became especially clear and meaningful during psychedelic sessions.
The expansion of consciousness is no other than extending our visions to comprehend
many levels at once and above all, to grasp those higher levels in which the discords of
the lower levels are resolved.
The experience of the phenomenal world and what we call the usual states of
consciousness appear to be only very limited idiosyncratic and partial aspects of the over-
all consciousness of the Universal Mind.
The experiential insights from unusual states of consciousness suggest the existence of
intangible and unfathomable creative intelligence aware of itself that permeates all realms
of reality.
The first benefit was the simple recognition that there are realms of experience, modes of
self, and states of consciousness far beyond the ken of our day-to-day experience or our
traditional cultural and psychological models.
The illusion of matter, space and time have been completely transcended and finally
reduced to this one mode of consciousness which is their common source and
determinator.
The impressive mosaic of new observations and theories that are already available
suggests that in the future the old/new discoveries in regard to consciousness and the
human psyche might become integral parts of a comprehensive scientific worldview.
The linearity of temporal experiences is transcended in unusual states of consciousness.
Scenes from different historical contexts can occur simultaneously and appear to be
meaningfully connected by their experiential characteristics. (eyes closed)
The mystic consciousness is part of the heritage of the human race. In every religion,
creed, country and language one finds the mystics who have had this greater
consciousness.
The mystical experience is essentially the being aware of and being identified with a form
of pure consciousness, of unstructured transpersonal consciousness which lies, so to
speak, upstream from the ordinary discursive consciousness of everyday.
The new commandments are neurological and biochemical in essence. The 2 new
commandments are don’t alter someone’s consciousness and don’t stop someone from
altering their own consciousness.
The nonordinary state of consciousness had the remarkable capacity to select and bring
into conscious awareness contents that have a strong emotional charge and are thus
psychologically important.
The possibility of consciousness after death was rejected not because it contradicted
clinical observations, but because the concept was incompatible with existing scientific
theories.
The practical function of psychoanalysis is to get the whole psyche into consciousness.
(Shrinks don’t even know what that means because they haven’t gotten their own whole
psyches into consciousness. It can be done best with LSD.)
The reach of consciousness is not limited to the material world and to spacetime. It can
extend beyond the boundaries of the Newtonian reality altogether and access nonordinary
dimensions of existence.
The recent rapid convergence between mysticism, modern consciousness research and
quantum-relativistic physics suggests that psychedelic research could contribute in the
future to our understanding of reality.
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 scientist of consciousness must have courage, take the drug himself, the courage that
comes from faith in your body, cells, the life process, conscious faith in the harmony and
wisdom of nature.
The self reveals itself to consciousness more completely than has been possible hitherto,
with consciousness “living” the ensuing symbolic drama in terms of patterns that have
become simultaneously personal and universal. (eyes closed)
The study of psychedelic-stimulated states of consciousness is, in principle, not opposed
to science and reason. On the contrary, the refusal to study them is both unreasonable
and antiscientific.
The unusual states of consciousness induced by LSD can generate important insights,
facilitate problem-solving and lead to valid intuitions or unexpected resyntheses of
accumulated data.
The vision-producing drugs have a long history. As far back as knowledge of man exists,
there have been stories of herbs, roots, brews and potions to be eaten, drunk or smoked to
change in some way the state of consciousness.
The Western man who claims consciousness of oneness with God or the universe clashes
with his society’s concept of religion. In most Asian countries, however, such a man will
be congratulated as having penetrated the true secret of life. He has arrived.
The world of separate individuals and objects is replaced by an undifferentiated pool of
energy patterns of consciousness in which various kinds and levels of boundaries are
playful and arbitrary.
There are as many levels of consciousness as there are neurological, sensory, anatomical,
cellular, molecular and atomic structures within the human body—a galaxy of
communication systems and energy patterns, being sent and received.
There are sudden “slips” of consciousness into a wave length or dimension of this
everyday world which impress those who see them as being more real than the normal
vision
There is a state of consciousness in which the erotic no longer has to be sought or
pursued because it is always present in its totality. In this state all relationship and all
experience is erotic.
There is good reason to believe that the psychedelics are the opposite of hallucinogens
insofar as they decrease the selectivity of the senses and expose consciousness to events
beyond those that are supposed to deserve notice.
They induce “levels of consciousness which are vast extensions and enlargements of
normal experience” and thus “open to conscious awareness a wider, clearer, more
complete view of the world.”
This realization of the fundamental identity of the individual consciousness with the
creative principle of the universe is one of the most profound experiences a human being
can have.
Traditional science looks upon consciousness as an exclusively human phenomenon and
tends to treat even the highest non-human life forms as little more than unconscious
machines.
Transpersonal experiences can be defined as “experiences involving an expansion or
extension of consciousness beyond the usual ego boundaries and beyond the limitations
of time and/or space.”
Unusual states of consciousness, similar to those produced by LSD, occur spontaneously
in many dying individuals for reasons of a physiological, biochemical, and psychological
nature.
We can experience ourselves as a play of energy or a field of consciousness that is not
confined to a physical container. (In other words, we are far more than an ego enclosed
by the skin.)
We can perhaps see the whole course of a psychedelic experience as an effort of
consciousness to rid itself of false identifications and experience its own everchanging
identity.
We cannot make intuitions happen; we can only let them enter our awareness. In fact, if
we disengage our awareness from ego consciousness and intellect, we cannot stop
intuitive knowledge from bubbling up out of the unconscious depths
We have great difficulty acknowledging that mind and consciousness might not be
exclusive privileges of the human species but that they permeate all of nature, existing in
the most elemental to the most complete forms.
What is needed today is a fundamental re-experience of the oneness of all living things, a
comprehensive reality consciousness. (All living things means all things because all
things are alive, even inanimate objects.)
What truly defines the transpersonal orientation is a model of the human psyche that
recognizes the importance of the spiritual or cosmic dimensions and the potential for
consciousness evolution.
When the threshold of consciousness is crossed, we are flooded with the kaleidoscopic
vision of cultures, peoples, symbols, remnants of historical and pre-historical memory.
(eyes closed)
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe”—a part limited in time and
space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the
rest—a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. (That’s Albert Einstein. The delusion is
thinking we are limited and separate.)
ancient and Oriental religions and philosophy—It has become increasingly clear that
these systems of belief reflect profound understanding of the human mind and of unusual
states of consciousness, embodying knowledge that deals with the most universal aspect
of human existence, and thus is highly relevant for all of us
Anything which changes consciousness is a threat to the established order. This is one
issue on which the entire spectrum of political opinions, left and right, agree. Anything
which expands consciousness is out. (All politicians are right-wingers. Democrats are
liberal right-wingers. Republicans are fascists.)
Consciousness after the ingestion of LSD manifests a characteristic qualitative
transformation of a dreamlike nature. It can transcend its usual limits and encourage
phenomena from the deep unconscious not accessible under normal circumstances. This
is frequently referred to as expansion of consciousness.
Could it be that the universe is, in the final analysis, just a divine play of consciousness
where all natural laws are ultimately arbitrary, and where any one of us, at any time, can
somehow access any material that ever existed or will exist for anyone, anywhere,
unfettered by the illusions of matter, space, and time?
Each level of consciousness is inevitably produced by biochemical means, either by
natural biochemical events or by introduced chemicals that move you to these different
levels just as accurately as the magnification of a lens moves you to different levels of
external reality.
Every human being is born with an innate drive to experience altered states of
consciousness periodically, in particular to learn how to get away from ordinary ego-
centered consciousness. This drive is an important factor in our evolution, both as
individuals and as a species.
From a cognitive perspective, different states of consciousness are, among other things,
radical reorganizations of information-processing systems and strategies. Different states
of consciousness also provide different “strategies” of perception, abilities, memory,
emotion, etc.
He stands outside of and apart from his familiar ego, all its protective barriers having
been shed; and this can lead in some to transcendent experience, while in others to a deep
panic. To those for whom the ego is their only possible self, the only possible mode of
consciousness, its disappearance is a kind of death.
He who controls the mind-changing chemicals controls consciousness. He who controls
the chemical can twist your mind, can alter your personality, can change you and your
concept of the world. (No one has the right to control your consciousness and experiences
by threatening you with jail. Your life belongs to you.)
How can we Westerners see that our own potentials are much greater than the social-hive
games in which we are so blindly trapped? Once the game structure of behavior is seen,
change in behavior can occur with dramatic spontaneity. The visionary, brain-change,
consciousness-altering experience is the key to behavior change.
How strange that we should all carry about with us this enormous universe of vision and
that which lies beyond vision and yet be mainly unconscious of the fact! How can we
learn to pass at will from one world of consciousness to the others? Mescaline and LSD
will open the door.
Human beings are born with a drive to experiment with ways of changing consciousness.
The idea that it is normal to seek changes in consciousness has never been discredited.
(No matter how strong the attempt, ignorance cannot discredit wisdom and lies cannot
discredit truth.)
I believe that the astonishing human brain is man’s most inalienable possession, his
intellectual birthright. No person or institution has the moral right to muffle or inhibit its
development. No social authority can successfully arrogate unto itself the right to dictate
and fix the levels of consciousness to which man may aspire.
I never suspected that the ancient spiritual systems had actually charted, with amazing
accuracy, different levels and types of experiences that occur in non-ordinary states of
consciousness. I was astonished by their emotional power, authenticity, and potential for
transforming people’s views of their lives.
I see consciousness and the human psyche as expressions and reflections of a cosmic
intelligence that permeates the entire universe and all of existence. We are not just highly
evolved animals with biological computers embedded inside our skulls; we are also fields
of consciousness without limits, transcending time, space, matter and linear causality.
Identification of consciousness with ego consciousness leads to confusion of mind and
intellect, to acceptance of appearance as reality, to materialistic formulations of the
interaction of mind and matter, to isolation and fear, to increasingly negative conceptions
of reality and ultimately and very logically, to disaster.
Identifying with the consciousness of the Universal Mind, the individual senses that he
has experientially encompassed the totality of existence. He feels that he has reached the
reality underlying all realities and is confronted with the supreme and ultimate principle
that represents all being.
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 hurried magic enabling youthful seekers to recapture the
resonance of life that society had denied.
If we perceive this has some sort of deep significance and we do something about it, then
it may be very, very important in changing our lives, changing our mode of
consciousness, perceiving that there are other ways of looking at the world than the
ordinary utilitarian manner and it may also result in significant changes of behavior.
If we understand that straight and stoned are descriptive terms for ways of using the mind
rather than labels for people who do or do not use a particular means of entering other
states of consciousness, we can use these terms profitably, for they indicate an important
choice between different kinds of thinking.
In the final analysis, only the creative principle of Cosmic Consciousness exists. Only it
takes physical form. From this point of view, the entire universe is a divine play of one
Supreme Being. Anyone who grasps this concept will see that karmic appearances are
just another level of illusion.
Individuals experiencing mystical consciousness of this type have a sense of leaving
ordinary reality, where space has three dimensions and time is linear, and entering a
timeless, mythical realm where these categories no longer apply. In this state, eternity and
infinity can be experienced within seconds of clock time.
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 here that we look beyond the belief that consciousness exists only as a result of our
individual lives. As we come to terms with the concept of the transpersonal realm, we
begin thinking of consciousness as something that exists outside and independent of us,
something that in its essence is not bound to matter.
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 man’s challenge to develop new symbol systems for these new levels of internal
consciousness. Just as we had to develop a new symbol system for the invisible,
uncharted world which was opened up with the microscope, the task now is to develop
symbol systems for the new invisible worlds which are opened up by psychedelic drugs.
Jesus had to die because he broke through the frontiers of consciousness, because he
broke through what it means to be religious. (Even in today’s “modern” and “civilized”
world, anyone who encourages others to be religious by expanding their consciousness is
likely to be jailed if not murdered.)
Jesus was aware of himself as a finished specimen of the new humanity which is to
come—the new humanity which is to inherit the earth, establish the Kingdom, usher in
the New Age. His mission and his teaching have at their heart the development of a new
and higher state of consciousness on a species-wide basis.
Let us try to bring about a new and glowing synthesis, a new higher consciousness that
brings together the East and West, the head and the heart, science and spirituality and
knowledge and wisdom. (Knowledge, here, means what the ego “knows” which isn’t
wisdom.)
LSD subjects report numerous visions of archetypal forms, individual deities and demons
and complex mythological sequences (eyes closed). In the extreme form, the individual
consciousness seems to encompass the totality of existence and identify with the
Universal Mind.
LSD subjects sophisticated in mathematics and physics have occasionally reported that
many of the concepts of these disciplines that transcend rational consciousness can
become more easily comprehensible and be actually experienced in altered states of
consciousness.
Mainstream psychiatry and psychology in general make no distinction between
mysticism and mental illness. These fields do not officially recognize that the great
spiritual traditions that have been involved in the systematic study of human
consciousness for millennia have anything to offer.
Mainstream psychiatry and psychology in general make no distinction between
mysticism and psychopathology. There is no official recognition that the great spiritual
traditions that have been involved in the systematic study of consciousness for centuries
have anything to offer to our understanding of the psyche and of human nature.
Man has reached a crisis in consciousness within which he has the choice to continue in
the path of the growing technicalization of human nature or to enter upon an intensive
and comprehensive investigation of mind and its creative process in the pursuit of a
greater use of human potential and a deeper understanding of the nature of reality.
Man is going to get back in harmony with his body, with fellow man and with other
forms of life on this planet. Man is going to realize that consciousness is the key to
human life and instead of power struggles over territory and possession of weapons, the
focus of man’s energies is going to be on consciousness.
Many leading humanistic psychologists exhibited a growing interest in a variety of
previously neglected areas and topics of psychology, such as mystical experiences,
transcendence, ecstasy, cosmic consciousness, theory and practice of meditation, or
interindividual and interspecies synergy.
Metanoia is that profound state of consciousness which mystical experience aims at—the
state in which we transcend or dissolve all the barriers of ego and selfishness that
separate us from God. It is the state of direct knowing, immediate perception of our total
unity with God.
Most of the awe and 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.
One can experience and tune in to what appears to be the consciousness of animals,
plants or even inanimate objects and processes, to experience the consciousness of the
entire universe or experience the consciousness of certain parts of the body—various
organs, tissues or individual cells.
One can transcend the limits of the specifically human experience and identify with the
consciousness of animals, plants or even inanimate objects and processes. In the
extremes, it is possible to experience the consciousness of the entire biosphere, of our
planet, or of the entire material universe.
Only when the ordinary perception of the material world is transcended can
consciousness connect with the heavenly regions. For those who have had the privilege of
such experience, the existence of heaven, God and celestial beings ceases to be a matter
of belief and becomes self-evident reality.
Our capacity to identify with the consciousness of plants contributed to the fact that many
cultures hold certain plants to be sacred. Plants with psychedelic properties have been
incorporated into the religions of many cultures and are considered deities or the “flesh of
the gods”.
Our individual consciousnesses connect us directly not only with our immediate
environment and with various periods of our own past, but also with events that are far
beyond the reach of our physical senses, extending into other historical times, into nature,
and into the cosmos.
Our mental functions are linked to biological processes in our brains. However, this does
not necessarily mean that consciousness originates in or is produced by our brains. This
conclusion made by Western science is a metaphysical assumption rather than a scientific
fact, and it is certainly possible to come up with other interpretations of the same data.
Our true nature is an aspect of a universal consciousness, Self, Being, Mind, of God. The
awakening to this true nature is the direct awareness that you are more than this puny
body or limited mind. It is the realization that the universe is not external to you. It is
experiencing the universe as yourself.
People have experienced episodes occurring long before their own conceptions. Many
report being able to enter the consciousness of their parents during their mother’s or
father’s childhoods and to experience through their parents’ consciousness events from
that time.
Perceptually, LSD produces an especially brilliant and intense impact of sensory stimuli
on consciousness. Normally unnoticed aspects of the environment capture the attention;
ordinary objects are seen as if for the first time and with a sense of fascination or
entrancement, as though they had unimagined depths of significance.
Professional as well as public tradition has omitted serious consideration of creativity,
religious development and problem solving during reveries, daydreaming or other
unusual conscious states. In fact, there is a basic disinterest in the fields of psychiatry and
psychology as regards the entire topic of consciousness.
Psychedelic drugs dramatically suspend the conditioned learned aspects of the nervous
system. Suddenly released from its conditioned patterning, consciousness is flung into a
flashing loom of unlearned imagery, an eerie, novel landscape where everything seems
possible and nothing remains fixed.
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.
Spiritual feelings are associated with such issues as the enigma of time and space; the
origin of matter, life and consciousness; the dimensions of the universe and of existence;
the meaning of human life and the ultimate purpose underlying the process of the creation
of the phenomenal world.
The American youngster who chooses not to buy the system is confronted with a
consciousness-control tyranny, classically Soviet in its disregard for his individuality.
Compulsory education means that if you don’t go to the state brainwashing institutions,
you and your parents are arrested.
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 critical issue here is the ontological status of non-ordinary states of consciousness—
whether we see them as pathological conditions that should be indiscriminately
suppressed or veritable alternatives to our everyday states of consciousness that can
contribute to our understanding of the psyche and have a great therapeutic potential.
The descriptions of heaven, hell and the posthumous adventures of the soul were
misunderstood—frequently not only by critics of religion, but by clergy and theologians
themselves—as historical and geographical references rather than cartographies of
unusual states of consciousness.
The emotional effects are even more profound than the perceptual ones. The drug taker
becomes unusually sensitive to faces, gestures, and small changes in the environment. As
everything in the field of consciousness assumes unusual importance, feelings become
magnified
The experiences were too positive to not want to share them with everybody. It would
appear that the time had come when this kind of experience should be made available to
large numbers of searchers, so that “the doors of perception” could be opened, so that
expanded consciousness was no longer something attainable only by rare individuals.
The exploration of ways of expanding human consciousness will occupy a prominent
position in the mainstream of contemporary psychology. We can look forward to a far
more extensive application of these powerful agents as a means of facilitating social as
well as individual potentialities.
The formless, dimensionless and intangible cosmic consciousness can best be described
as Infinite Existence, Infinite Awareness and Knowledge, and Infinite Bliss. However,
any words refer primarily to phenomena and processes of the natural reality and are,
therefore, only pitiful attempts to convey the essence of this transcendental principle.
The guide possesses enormous power to shape the experience, move consciousness with
the slightest gesture or reaction. The key issue here is the guide’s ability to turn off his
own ego and social games, to muffle his own power needs and fears. The guide must
never be bored, talkative, intellectualizing.
The historic role of states of consciousness in the humanities, arts, and sciences is
neglected in current education. A truly liberal education should teach students about this
part of themselves and our civilizations, and should also give them rudimentary
experience with selected states and their resident capacities.
The language of cultures with ancient spiritual traditions that are based on experiential
self-exploration have a rich and sophisticated vocabulary describing various mystical
states of consciousness. However, even then the terms adequately convey the meaning
only if we can relate them to a personal experience.
The most direct challenge to the principles of mechanistic science are phenomena from
transpersonal experiences, such as “the relativity and arbitrary nature of physical
boundaries, nonlocal connections in the universe, memory without a material substance,
nonlinearity of time, and consciousness associated with inorganic matter.”
The nature of consciousness is ultimately the only problem worthy of total intellectual
effort. It is the concern of all the world’s philosophies and religions. (Actually, the nature
of consciousness is not a problem. The problem is society’s lack of understanding about
it.)
The new data support quite unambiguously the view that has been held by the mystical
traditions of all ages: under certain circumstances, human beings can also function as vast
fields of consciousness, transcending the limitations of the physical body, of Newtonian
time and space and of linear causality.
The observations of the last few decades have drastically changed our understanding of
the relationship between consciousness and matter and of the dimensions of the psyche.
They show consciousness as an equal partner of matter, or possibly even supraordinated
to matter, and creative intelligence as inextricably woven into the fabric of the universe.
The prime characteristic of cosmic consciousness is a consciousness of the cosmos, that
is, of the life and order of the universe. Along with the consciousness of the cosmos there
occurs an intellectual enlightenment which alone would place the individual on a new
plane of existence, would make him almost a member of a new species.
The psychic depths and the time depths can be tested and explored in the psychedelic
experiences. The theoretical foundation of such a statement is that the ingestion of
psychedelic substances evokes an activation of deeply buried psychic contents and a
bringing of them to the surface of consciousness.
The reason psychedelic experiences are important and valuable is that people live their
lives by their own “chess-boards,” playing the lawyer-game, the merchant-game or some
rule-ridden ego-game, rarely, if ever expanding their consciousness to the point of true
awareness and understanding of man and nature, including themselves.
The remarkable thing about the LSD experience is that you see the broad range of the
underconsciousness without losing consciousness, a state wherein you are aware of all
things in the conscious mind and at the same time aware of all things in the
underconscious mind.
The reports of LSD subjects who have experienced episodes of embryonic existence, the
moment of conception and episodes of cellular, tissue and organ consciousness abound in
medically accurate insights into the anatomical, physiological and biochemical aspects of
the processes involved.
The talk was of love, and it ripped my mind time and time again to realize that it had
been said by so many prophets from the beginning of consciousness, and no one wanted
to listen. Now someone was listening, and we swore that we’d never forget. It was all so
simple. No obstacles that wouldn’t crumble under the bright light of the truth of love.
The value, apart from their intrinsic value, so to say the ethical, sociological and spiritual
value of the visionary experience, is that if it is well used, it can result in a significant and
important change in the mode of consciousness and perhaps also in a change in behavior
or for the good.
The whole world has been completely misunderstood: for it has been looked at with a
spotlight called consciousness so narrow in scope that it was all but impossible to see
how things are actually related. But only in that relationship do things have their meaning
and their beauty, as well as their existence.
Theoretical speculations in Western academic psychology and psychiatry are based
exclusively on experiences and observations made in the ordinary states of
consciousness. The evidence from the study of non-ordinary states of any kind are
systematically ignored or pathologized.
To normal waking consciousness, things are the strictly finite and insulated embodiments
of verbal labels. How can we break the habit of automatically imposing our prejudices
and the memory of culture-hallowed words upon immediate experience? Answer: by the
practice of pure receptivity and mental silence.
To the world, the alchemists were buffoon chemists looking for a way to turn lead into
gold, but that was only the cover story. The real lead that concerned the alchemists was
ordinary consciousness and the gold they sought was the golden brilliance of cosmic
consciousness
We can use music as a remembrance of the different facets of consciousness that we want
to evoke. (Music can be associated with an experience or a state of consciousness.
Hearing that same music can trigger a remembrance of that experience or state of
consciousness. Similarly, music can be associated with a person.)
We often encounter the impressive but little understood phenomenon of timeless,
universal symbols and themes emerging into consciousness in a particular dramatic form
adapted to the requirements of the psychedelic drug subject who becomes the drama’s
protagonist and thereby is transformed. (eyes closed)
We seem unable to free ourselves from preconceptions imposed on us by our culture and
by what we believe to be common sense. However, it we are to maintain these illusions,
it becomes necessary to ignore a vast body of observations and information coming from
modern consciousness research and from a variety of other scientific disciplines.
When the shell of the ego has been cracked and there begins to be a consciousness of the
subliminal and psychological otherness underlying personality, it sometimes happens that
we catch a glimpse, fleeting but apocalypic, of that Othernesss, which is the Ground of all
being.
When Western science dismissed the concept of consciousness after death as a
fabrication based on wishful thinking and superstition, this judgment was not based on
the careful study of the area in question that is otherwise characteristic of the scientific
approach.
Words like hallucination and psychosis were loaded; they implied negative states of
mind. The psychiatric jargon reflected a pathological orientation, whereas a truly
objective science would not impose value judgments on chemicals that produced unusual
or altered states of consciousness.
You have to pass beyond everything you have learned in order to become acquainted
with the new areas of consciousness. Ignorance of this fact is the veil which shuts man
within the narrow confines of his acquired, artificial concepts of “reality”, and prevents
him from coming to know his own true nature.
All the learned games of life can be seen as programs that select, censor and thus
dramatically limit the available cortical response. Consciousness-expanding drugs unplug
these narrow programs, the social ego, the game-machinery. And with the ego and mind
unplugged, what is left? What is left is something that Western culture knows little about:
the uncensored cortex, activated, alert and open to new realities.
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
session.
As knowledge of the existence of mind-expanding plants and chemicals dawned upon the
consciousness of Western man, swift re-evaluations of our attitudes toward certain so-
called “primitive” tribes became necessary. It became apparent that some of these
cultures had preserved the key to higher knowledge which the civilized world had
relegated to the status of myth.
Elements of plant consciousness can be accompanied by philosophical and spiritual
ideation and insights. Several subjects, for example, have pondered over the purity and
unselfishness of plant existence and have seen plant life as a model for ideal human
conduct; unlike animals and man, most plants do not kill and do not live at the expense of
other organisms.
How many of us now realize that space is the same as mind or consciousness? That your
inside goes with your entire outside as your front with your back? That this galaxy and all
other galaxies are just as much you as your heart or your brain? That your coming and
going, your waking and sleeping, your birth and your death are exactly the same kind of
rhythmic phenomena as the stars and their surrounding darkness?
I developed a whole theory of evolution based on psychedelics, saying that the critical
factor in moving advanced primates into being primitive human beings was the presence
of psilocybin, which improved acuity, thus improving hunting, stimulated sexual appetite,
and bifurcating consciousness, offering a choice between the static and a fantasized
alternative. (That was Terence McKenna.)
If mystical experiences are integrated into the personality, they are highly therapeutic.
Single-state scholars and theoreticians are hard-pressed to explain this therapeutic value.
Denial is easier. But if an enlarged map of reality includes altered states of consciousness,
then experiencing such states logically leads to a fuller view of reality, and therapists tell
us that a fuller view of reality is therapeutic.
In nonordinary states of consciousness, visions of various universal symbols can play a
significant role even in experiences of individuals who previously had no interest in
mysticism or were strongly opposed to anything esoteric. These visions tend to convey
instant intuitive understanding of the various levels of meaning of these symbols and
generate a deep interest in the spiritual path. (visions seen with eyes closed)
In the transpersonal realm, we experience an extension of our consciousness far beyond
the usual boundaries of both our bodies and our egos, as well as beyond the physical
limits of our everyday lives. The more I have explored this realm in my own research, the
more I am convinced that these experiences in transpersonal consciousness can include
the entire spectrum of existence itself.
In the transpersonal domain, where psychological and spiritual growth are one,
psychedelics appear to be powerful tools for the investigation of consciousness; they
could enable us to expand our understanding of the human mind and the nature of
creative consciousness. A willingness to question our assumptions and to keep an open
mind with respect to potential benefits and potential hazards is essential.
Indians experience the collective unconscious as an immediate reality, not just as an
intellectual construct. It is significant that this experience of shared consciousness holds a
most important place in the society. In fact, as a sacramental ritual, it is the basis of tribal
unity because it proves and confirms the supposition that every person in the tribe is the
same as every other person in the most fundamental way.
Individuals in nonordinary 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 observer but
more frequently from experiential identification with the protagonists. (eyes closed)
It has been shown that LSD experiences of death and rebirth and mystical states of
consciousness can change patients’ concepts of death and life and alleviate their fears of
dying. Psychedelic therapy has proved to be more than an important tool in the control of
mental and physical pain, it has contributed greatly to our understanding of the
experience of death.
It is now clear that these ancient practices were neither pathological phenomena nor the
products of primitive superstition; rather, they were legitimate and highly sophisticated
spiritual practices that acknowledged and paid homage to a much broader view of
consciousness than has been held by those who adhere to the Newtonian-Cartesian model
of reality.
Jung’s basic assumption was that the spiritual element is an organic and integral part of
the psyche. Genuine spirituality is an aspect of the collective unconscious and is
independent of childhood programming and the individual’s cultural or educational
background. Thus, if self-exploration and analysis reach sufficient depth, spiritual
elements emerge spontaneously into consciousness.
Leary believed that the human race is presently evolving to a higher level of
consciousness and a greater spiritual awareness. His research with LSD seemed to bear
out the fact that our nervous systems are equipped to receive a vastly greater spectrum of
reality than we realized; and once the veils of perception are cleansed, wars, racism,
competitiveness and violence will be seen as old, outgrown, pre-human traits.
LSD subjects often consider the possibility that consciousness is a basic cosmic
phenomenon related to the organization of energy and that it exists throughout the
universe; in this context, human consciousness appears to be only one of its many
varieties and outgrowths. Episodes of consciousness of inorganic matter can be
accompanied by various insights of a philosophical and religious relevance.
Modern consciousness research has confirmed the basic thesis of perennial philosophy
that the consensus reality reveals only one aspect or fragment of existence. There are
important realms of reality that are transcendental and transphenomenal. The impulse in
human beings to connect with the spiritual domain is an extremely powerful and
important force. It resembles, in its nature, sexuality.
Most of the colleagues in the psychology department couldn’t take the brain-change work
seriously. They couldn’t admit that our new subject matter even existed. Altered states of
consciousness simply didn’t exist as a category in the psychology of that time. It was the
familiar tunnel vision that has always narrowed the academic mind. (That was Timothy
Leary at Harvard.)
Newtonian-Cartesian science views matter as the foundation of the universe. Scientists
who adhere to this system of thought portray consciousness as a product of physiological
processes taking place in the brain. From such a perspective, each of our consciousnesses
is confined to the inside our skulls, absolutely separated from the consciousnesses of
other people. (These scientists have it all wrong, of course.)
Nonordinary experiences are vital to us because they are expressions of our unconscious
minds, and the integration of conscious and unconscious experience is the key to life,
health, spiritual development, and fullest use of our nervous systems. By instilling fear
and guilt about altered states of consciousness into our children, we force this drive
underground, guaranteeing that it will be expressed in antisocial ways.
Normal waking consciousness may be replaced by aesthetic consciousness and the world
will be perceived in all its unimaginable beauty, all the blazing intensity of its
“thereness.” And aesthetic consciousness may modulate into visionary consciousness.
Thanks to yet another kind of seeing, the world will now reveal itself as not only
unimaginably beautiful, but also fathomlessly mysterious.
One may enter one’s visions and seem to be walking through gardens, art museums,
medieval castles, futuristic cities, etc. Archetypal imagery may appear, and one thus finds
oneself encountering mythological characters such as angels, demons, dragons, and
Grecian gods. On the boundary of mystical consciousness, it is not uncommon for
Christians to encounter an image intuitively identified as the Christ.
Our ordinary Newtonian-Cartesian consciousness can be invaded with unusual power by
various archetypal entities or mythological sequences that, according to mechanistic
science, should have no independent existence. The myth-producing aspects of the
human psyche will portray deities and rituals from different cultures that the subject has
never studied. (eyes closed)
Profound transcendental experiences, such as consciousness of the Universal Mind, in
addition to having a very beneficial effect on the subject’s physical and emotional well-
being, are usually central in creating in him a keen interest in religion, mystical and
philosophical issues, and a strong need to incorporate the spiritual dimension into his way
of life.
Psychedelic drugs released new forces into the consciousness of millions of people.
These forces might be seen as good, evil, or morally ambiguous; they might be regarded
as coming from within, as an upsurge from the unconscious mind, or from beyond, as a
revelation from other planes of existence; or some way to reconcile these interpretations
might be sought.
Psychiatrists use their diagnostic jargon of mental pathology for states of consciousness
which many of them have never even bothered to experience. (They are no more
enlightened than the theologians who refused to look into Galileo’s telescope claiming
that they already knew how the universe is ordered and that if the telescope showed
anything different, it would be the doings of the Devil.)
Psychic realities experienced during altered states of consciousness are an intrinsic part of
the human personality that cannot be repressed and denied without serious damage to the
quality of human life. For the full expression of human nature, they must be recognized,
acknowledged and explored, and in this exploration, the traditional depictions of the
afterlife can be our guides.
Rather than being from two distinctly different realms with discrete boundaries,
consciousness and matter are engaged in a constant dance, their interplay forming the
entire fabric of existence. This is a notion that is being confirmed by research in modern
physics, biology, thermodynamics, information and systems theory, and other branches of
science.
The average Westerner is naive about nonordinary states of consciousness and has many
misconceptions and prejudices about some of the experiences that are potentially the
most healing. We try to convey a clear message that such phenomena as death-rebirth
sequences, archetypal visions and states of cosmic unity are absolutely normal and that
having them in no way implies pathology.
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 intensification and “deepening” of color, sound and texture lends them a peculiar
transparency. One seems to be aware of them more than ever as vibration, electronic and
luminous. As this feeling develops it appears that these vibrations are continuous with
one’s own consciousness and that the external world is in some way inside the mind-
brain.
The last thing an institution of education wants to allow you to do is expand your
consciousness, to use the untapped potential in your head, to experience directly. They
don’t want you to take life seriously, they want you to take their game seriously.
Education, dear students, is anesthetic, a narcotic procedure which is very likely to blunt
your sensitivity and to immobolize your brain and your behavior for the rest of your lives.
This transcendence of time and space is a key concept in all mystical experience. In our
present mode of mental consciousness, we experience the world in terms of space and
time; we experience everything separated in space and going from point to point in time.
It is well known that modern physics calls this whole space-time system in question, and
the transcendence of the space-time dimension is central in mystical experience.
There are people in this society who will do everything within their considerable power
to stop our research. The managers of consciousness, from the Vatican to Harvard, have
been in this business for a long time and they’re not about to give up their monopoly.
And after all, they’re the experts and we’re the amateurs. They’re the pros and we’re just
the lovers. (That was Aldous Huxley talking to Timothy Leary while both were tripping.)
This transcendence of time and space is a key concept in all mystical experience. In our
present mode of mental consciousness, we experience the world in terms of space and
time; we experience everything separated in space and going from point to point in time.
It is well known that modern physics calls this whole space-time system in question, and
the transcendence of the space-time dimension is central in mystical experience.
To understand the transpersonal realm, we must begin thinking of consciousness in an
entirely new way. It is here that we look beyond the belief that consciousness exists only
as a result of our individual lives. As we come to terms with the concept of the
transpersonal realm, we begin thinking of consciousness as something that exists outside
and independent of us, something that in its essence is not bound to matter.
Transpersonal psychology has emerged as that branch of psychology specifically
concerned with the study of human consciousness. It attempts to expand the field of
psychological inquiry to include such human experiences as those induced by
psychedelics, as well as similar states attained through the practice of meditation or other
disciplines.
We’re not just our bodies. That’s an illusion. Our physical forms are just a temporary
condensation of consciousness in material form. This one consciousness is our true
identity, and we all know this deep within us. I know that you know that we all know that
we are one. We’re all just playing this game. In ordinary reality, we’ve deliberately gone
to sleep on this knowledge.
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?)
Western scientists view their own particular approach to reality and psychological
phenomena as superior and “proven beyond a shadow of doubt,” while judging the
perspectives of other cultures as inferior, naive, and primitive. The traditional academic
approach takes into consideration only those observations and experiences that are
mediated by the five senses in an ordinary state of consciousness.
When we experience identification with the cosmic consciousness, we have the feeling of
enfolding the totality of existence within us, and of comprehending the Reality that
underlies all realities. We have a profound sense that we are in connection with the
supreme and ultimate principle of all Being. In this state, it is absolutely clear that this
principle is the ultimate and the only mystery.
When we set out to study consciousness and such elusive altered states as ecstasy, there is
the observer’s “subject matter” and there is the subject’s “reality” and usually these have
no relation. The psychiatrist may see psychosis, while the subject may be experiencing
hedonic ecstasy. The outside observer has an entirely different view from the
experiencing person. (The psychiatrist must be experienced with LSD or it’s a joke.)
Within our own consciousness, there is a memory, waiting to be recalled, of every
movement, feeling and desire in our lives. This implies that everything survives in a way
more complete than just intellectually. The psychedelic experience heightens this recall,
and if handled properly, could pass through beneficial channels leading to psychotherapy
and rehabilitation.
You are holding in your hand a great human document. But unless you are one of the few
Westerners who have experienced a mystical minute of expanded consciousness, you will
probably not understand what the author is saying. Too bad, but still not a cause for
surprise. The history of ideas reminds us that new concepts and new visions have always
been non-understood. We cannot understand that for which we have no words.
You can bring the subconscious into the realm of discriminative consciousness and
thereby, to draw upon the unrestrictive treasury of subconscious memory, wherein are
stored the records of not only our past lives but the records of the past of our race, the
past of humanity, and of all pre-human forms of life, if not the very consciousness that
makes life possible in this universe.
You have to go out of your mind to use your head. You have to pass beyond everything
you have learned in order to become acquainted with the new areas of consciousness.
Ignorance of this fact is the veil which shuts man within the narrow confines of his
acquired, artificial concepts of “reality” and prevents him from coming to know his own
true nature.
The richness of the experiential content is augmented by the fact that the process involves
an endless variety of illustrative material from biology, zoology, anthropology, history,
mythology and religion. Psychedelic sessions focusing on the death-rebirth process not
only have great therapeutic potential, but are a source of invaluable scientific,
sociopolitical, philosophical and spiritual insights. (That material is seen with the eyes
closed.)
Who has the right to control your mind? To explore it? To use it? With the invention of
consciousness techniques, a new kind of freedom faces a new kind of control. People
want to explore and develop their minds, and psychedelics are an efficient way to do so.
This desire is part of human nature, but law and social ignorance block the way. I propose
that we recognize a general human right: the right to explore, control, and develop one’s
mind.
A human being is an unlimited field of consciousness.
A life lived in the consciousness of ego and separateness is necessarily a life of conflict.
A new consciousness is born.
A person realizes his oneness with the Universal Consciousness.
All forms of matter and all living beings are seen as patterns of divine consciousness.
All things are within consciousness.
Altered states of consciousness can heighten aesthetic sensitivity.
Altered states of consciousness have a clear potential for positive psychic development.
Beyond the falsifications of egocentric consciousness lies the world of awareness.
Biological death is the beginning of an adventure in consciousness.
Consciousness as we know it is an act of restraint.
Consciousness “ascends” to the eternal state.
Consciousness feels itself free of the body.
Consciousness has the potential to reach all aspects of existence.
Consciousness, in so far as it feels itself to be the ego cannot stop its own shrinking.
Consciousness is a biochemical electronic network.
Consciousness is a biochemical process.
Consciousness is chemical in nature and changes as chemistry changes.
Consciousness is everywhere.
Consciousness is not narrowed, but enormously enlarged.
Consciousness is not obliterated but deeply changed and drastically refocused.
Consciousness is real and has connections to every part of the body.
Consciousness is timeless.
Consciousness is usually qualitatively changed and has a dreamlike character.
Consciousness lives.
Consciousness of this moment is pure awareness, the pure awareness of the Self.
Consciousness must be studied from within.
Consciousness Studies deserve its own place in the academic world.
Consciousness will be freed from games which comprise personality.
Contemplation is consciousness without seeking.
Distance in time is as much a phenomenon within consciousness as distance in space.
Dramatic expansion of consciousness is triggered off.
Drugs change the quality of consciousness profoundly.
Ego-consciousness involves repression.
Ecstatic freedom of consciousness is the keynote of this vision.
Everyday consciousness is maya, illusion.
Fully expanded consciousness feels an identity with the whole world.
God exists at every level of consciousness.
God is ours in the same intimate sense that our consciousness and life are ours.
Hollingshead called LSD his daily consciousness vitamin.
Huge areas of the brain are blocked off from consciousness.
Human consciousness has not adjusted itself to a relational and integrated view of nature.
Human evolution seems to be characterized by alterations of consciousness.
I exist at every form of energy and every level of consciousness. (So do you.)
Illusory egos alone bar us from the ecstatic bliss of universal consciousness.
In this state of consciousness, everything is the doing of gods.
Individual consciousness can merge with the Universal Mind.
Institutional psychiatrists are really the consciousness police.
It is a journey on which one can explore the farthest inner realms of consciousness.
It is consciousness expansion because it expands the scope of your personal reality.
LSD could reprogram nervous systems to accelerate consciousness and intelligence.
LSD is the source for the energy that is to transform human consciousness.
Man’s salvation lies in the expansion of his own consciousness.
Many of us get locked into ordinary consciousness, but no one lacks the key to freedom.
Narrowed consciousness is the means by which we have the sense of ego.
Normal consciousness is a delusion.
Normal consciousness is a form of sleepwalking.
Normal consciousness is one drop in an ocean of intelligence.
Normal everyday consciousness are faint reflections of this eternal beauty.
Nothing so eludes conscious inspection as consciousness itself.
Once “normal” modes of awareness are suspended, consciousness changes occur.
One experiences the bliss of Consciousness.
Open up consciousness and accelerate awareness.
Our normal state of consciousness is a constructed reality.
Personal religious experience has its root and centre in mystical states of consciousness.
Prior to any metaphysical knowledge, we have no direct consciousness of interior truth.
Psychedelic drugs released new forces into the consciousness of millions of people.
Realization is simply bringing an unconscious process into consciousness.
Recognize the importance and value of other states of consciousness.
Religion cannot be pompous. Religion is consciousness-expansion.
Religious experience has its roots and center in mystical states of consciousness.
Studying consciousness is the oldest subject matter of all.
Such experiences, being nonordinary, challenge the logic of ordinary consciousness.
Suddenly, there is a “turning about in the deepest seat of consciousness.
The aim of human education is to learn how to use all of these levels of consciousness.
The consciousness-expanding drugs enable one to sense, think and feel MORE.
The consciousness is free.
The content of the mystic experience reflects its unusual mode of consciousness.
The ego is a social convention foisted upon human consciousness by conditioning.
The essence is pure consciousness.
The essence of mystical religion is the consciousness of union with God.
The experiential spectrum of nonordinary states of consciousness is extremely rich.
The eternal now is a consciousness, an eternal consciousness.
The levels of consciousness available to man are infinite in their complexities.
The lure of higher consciousness has exercised a fascination across the centuries.
The memory of mystical consciousness itself is regarded as deeply meaningful.
The mind returns to perfect consciousness.
The mirror of consciousness is held up to the life stream.
The mystical consciousness is ineffable.
The mystical consciousness is the root of all religions.
The normal “set” of consciousness is broken.
The psychic knot at the back of our habitual consciousness dissolves.
The quality of individual consciousness can be changed.
The universe is seen as an ever-unfolding drama of endless alternatives in consciousness.
The university is an institution for consciousness contraction.
The university is the establishment’s apparatus for consciousness contractors.
There are endless levels of energy transformations accessible to consciousness.
There is an enormous ignorance about the science of consciousness alteration.
There is no substitute for growth to higher consciousness.
These substances dramatically alter consciousness and expand awareness.
This electrical-chemical complexity is the anatomical structure of consciousness.
Under the influence of LSD, one is not insane but is in a special state of consciousness.
Unitive consciousness is the goal of all religious and philosophers of mind development.
We are exploring extraordinary phenomena devalued by mainstream consciousness.
We awaken to the vision of unity consciousness.
We become aware that consciousness is quite separate from our bodies.
We each have an inner life of consciousness and an outer life of behavior.
We get bursts of extremely active consciousness.
We know almost nothing about the physiology of consciousness.
We ourselves are not material bodies but limitless fields of consciousness.
What dies is not consciousness, but memory.
When young, we let our consciousness expand with joy.
You can experience what you feel is the consciousness of inanimate objects.
You have to be your own researcher on consciousness.
Your consciousness becomes pure and open.
Your consciousness shines more clearly and lucidly.
Your true nature is consciousness.
I feel this whole world to be moved from the inside and from an inside so deep that it is
my inside as well, more truly I than my surface consciousness.
I have seen the greater consciousness, shining like the sun on the other shore beyond the
darkness.
The whole quality of consciousness is changed and I feel myself in a new world in which,
however, it is obvious that I have always been living.
He states that this consciousness has expanded to encompass the whole universe.
Clock time and ordinary space no longer had any meaning. Everything was happening in
infinite dimension. My consciousness swelled.
Even when I returned to my usual state of consciousness, I had the feeling that this
experience would have a lasting effect.
He felt himself move into a totally different and deeper level of consciousness, a level
that was entirely new to him.
He felt the walls of consciousness opened by an enormous thrust and he was cast out of
time.
He had broken through the boundaries of his everyday consciousness to enter a world that
he had previously not even imagined could exist.
He was convinced that this consciousness was the Creator of the entire physical universe.
(That’s not ego consciousness.)
His consciousness was providing him with amazingly detailed, complex and concrete
information that he had never dreamed possible.
I became increasingly cognizant of the sacredness of the experience I was undergoing
and felt an expansion of consciousness beyond the confines of my head and my body.
I had broken through the walls of ordinary consciousness, and what I glimpsed dwarfed
the world I had previously known.
I knew myself to be this single, encompassing Consciousness. I knew that its Identity was
my true identity.
I lost the limitations of my normal consciousness. I felt free, without the faintest trace of
conflict anywhere at all.
I realized that the seed of life is consciousness and that, as such, life essentially never
ends.
I saw deep parallels between various mathematical concepts and altered states of
consciousness.
I wondered if I would ever return to normal consciousness. Mostly I hoped I wouldn’t.
God-consciousness seemed preferable.
It became unmistakably obvious to me that my workaday mind was only the tip of the
consciousness iceberg.
It seemed more real than ordinary consciousness and all of it seemed “revisited”,
something one had known once.
It seemed to him that the walls of consciousness were opened by an enormous force and
the force thrust him out of time.
It was with this insight that I was born into a new world. A new form of consciousness
had taken over.
music—The whole body shimmered with the chords. The chords were multi-colored,
vaulting like rockets across his consciousness.
My consciousness was taking everything in on an elemental, prelingual basis. There was
no distraction.
My state of consciousness underwent a process of purification and became absolutely
pristine and radiant.
Now that this breakthrough of consciousness had occurred, a new level of harmony and
love was available.
The drug seemed to induce an effortless, absorbed and timeless power of inward-turned
consciousness.
The only way I could describe this state of ultimate cosmic ecstasy was to refer to it as
“diamond consciousness.”
The taboos of ego and superego became sufficiently weakened to allow unconscious
material to flow into consciousness.
A different quality of consciousness came with a rush. The room was suddenly
transfigured. All objects stood out in space in an amazing way and seemed luminous. I
was aware of the space between objects, which was pure vibrating crystal.
I learned that the brain is an underutilized computer, that normal consciousness is one
drop in an ocean of intelligence, that consciousness and intelligence can be systematically
expanded, that the brain can be reprogrammed.
I was no longer as I knew myself to be, a small point of awareness confined in a body,
but instead was a vast circle of consciousness in which the body was but a point, bathed
in light and in a state of exaltation and happiness impossible to describe.
LSD had flipped consciousness out beyond life into the whirling dance of pure energy,
where nothing existed except whirring vibrations and each illusory form was simply a
different frequency.
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.
My exponentially heightened awareness saw through the static, one-dimensional ego-
constricted false front which is the consciousness-contracted reality of the everyday
world.
She had merged with and had become the consciousness of the Earth. She experienced
herself as the Earth, as a living, breathing organism. (Yes, the Earth is alive and so is
everything else in the universe, including the universe itself.)
I had, on that day, entered William Blake’s Palace of Wisdom. He had been there, too.
And, I was to learn later, so had many others. And so can you. It’s our birthright. We are
all supposed to dwell in the mansion at the top of the hill. It’s our ultimate destiny. It’s
cosmic consciousness. Nirvana. Satori.
I learned that I am more—so much more than this body that walks the earth. I learned
that I’m still me, even without a name, a family, an identity, or a body. I almost think that
the body is a prison that holds my consciousness inside narrow limits, to make it possible
to function on earth. Once I was out of it, the limitless was my home.
I was amazed and intrigued. I’d learned first-hand how limited our everyday notions of
consciousness are. I knew that the experience had touched something very deep in me. I
recognized a level of reality in the experience that could not be ignored. I wanted to know
more and was willing to take the risk.
I was not I any more but a consciousness that encompassed a vastly broader spectrum of
reality than “I” had ever dreamed. I was changed, and the new vision so attracted me that
I stopped paying attention to the segment of reality that had formerly held my complete
attention, mainly, the physical plane.
I was not I any more but a consciousness that encompassed a vastly broader spectrum
than I ever dreamed of. It doesn’t last, but once you have known it, you can never forget
that it exists. When the experience becomes integrated into your life, the fear of death
disappears— and we can only truly begin to live when we no longer fear death.
It was a beautiful feeling, a verification of what I hoped would be the ultimate truth and a
hopeful view of creation: Don’t worry about your body or about dying. That’s an illusion.
Consciousness cannot die. To me, this was mind-shattering, the ultimate revelation in my
life.
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.
The following morning I felt as though the conduits of my consciousness had been
thoroughly cleansed. Stepping outside was like witnessing the dawn of creation. Every
leaf and flower was polished to a brilliant sheen, the sea sparkled and the air was dewy
fresh.
This clear-light experience, as Leary termed it, was a true communion of the soul. I felt
as if my consciousness and entire being had broken up with the brittleness of linear ego
thought, while the person that filled the vacuum bore the same body of experience with a
totally new vitality and an understanding of life’s true value.
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.
I “saw”, though that is not quite the word, the evolution of the universe. I felt the various
stages of cosmic evolution, inventoried a thousand planets, participated in the molecular
dance of life. Subjectively, I lived and experienced 10 billion years, feeling it second by
second. My Name/Address personality played no part in the pure consciousness with
which I observed everything.
I was experiencing how consciousness manifests itself in separate forms while remaining
unified. I knew that fundamentally there was only One Consciousness in the universe.
From this perspective my individual identity and everybody else’s appeared temporary
and almost trivial. To experience my true identity filled me with a profound sense of
numinous encounter.
It was as though a veil had been stripped away and certain things had become suddenly
self-evident. I realized that there was just one force in the universe. There is only one
energy and that is consciousness. And there is only one consciousness, one mind, and we
are, in fact, one with this, which means we are all one. I felt this was a revelation of the
true nature of reality.
Large trees known for their longevity, such as sequoias and redwoods, were experienced
in the sessions as representing timeless and centered consciousness uninfluenced by the
turmoils and upheavals in the external world. Other insights associated with similar
experiences were related to the mystical consciousness and deep religious significance of
certain plants.
One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time and my impression of its truth has
ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational
consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it,
parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness
entirely different.
Subjects repeatedly reported that they experienced consciousness of the ocean. On other
occasions, they have identified with what they felt to be the consciousness of fire. Many
LSD subjects also stated that they experienced consciousness of a particular material or
even the microworld of the atoms. (You can experience and/or identify with the
consciousness of anything.)
When I realized that I was being born again, that life goes on and on and on, the feeling
was overwhelming. I was filled with confidence that it was okay to die, because the
consciousness that inhabits the flesh has a higher destiny. It never began and it won’t end.
It just keeps going. Then I was struck with wave after wave of value wisdom, as though
the forms behind human spirituality were hitting me for the first time.
Everything in this universe appeared to be conscious. After having had to accept the
possibility of fetal consciousness, I was confronted with an even more startling
discovery: consciousness might actually pervade all existence. My scientific mind was
heavily tested by this possibility until I realized that although many of these experiences
were incompatible with our common sense, they were not necessarily out of the realm of
science.
The perennial philosophy and the esoteric teachings of all time suddenly made sense. I
understood why spiritual seekers were instructed to look within, and the unconscious was
revealed to be not just a useful concept, but an infinite reservoir of creative potential. I
felt I had been afforded a glimpse into the nature of reality and the human potential
within that reality, together with a direct experience of being myself, free of illusory
identifications and constrictions of consciousness.
He moved into a world that existed in the deepest recesses of his consciousness.
I was awed by the vast range of consciousness.
Insights came to me like comets flashing across the dome of my consciousness.
My consciousness was overwhelmed by a kind of primordial power.
My soaring consciousness expanded.
Suddenly, his whole psychic field of consciousness erupted.
a cosmic adventure in consciousness aimed at solving the riddles of personal identity,
human existence and the universal scheme
a dream-like state marked by extreme alterations in consciousness of self, in the
understanding of reality, in the sphere of experience and marked changes in perception
a high state of consciousness in which man finds union with the ultimate reality of the
universe
a historic movement that would inevitably change man at the very center of his nature,
his consciousness
a much broader view of consciousness than has been held by those who adhere to the
Newtonian-Cartesian model of reality
a new perceptual capacity responsive to dimensions of the stimulus array previously
ignored or blocked from consciousness
a new type of consciousness, an expanded awareness stressing man’s commitment to
love, beauty, joy and truth
a radical conversion experience, a transformation of self based on a new state of
awareness, a new state of consciousness—higher consciousness
a sense of immortality, a consciousness of eternal life, not a conviction that he shall have
this, but the consciousness that he has it already
a slowing down of time, of mental hurry, allowing the contents of consciousness to
happen without interference
a state of consciousness in which he experiences directly and vividly what our own
scientists know to be true in theory
a state of consciousness without differentiation of the knower, the knowing and the
known
a transcendental state of consciousness whose impact is to trigger a release of a universal
“inner programming” of higher human potential
a trip to what spiritualists have called the Other World, which lay beyond the deceptive
boundary of everyday consciousness
a way of life in which the original sense of the seamless unity of nature is restored
without the loss of individual consciousness
alteration of the filtering mechanisms that regulate the access of perceptual and emotional
stimuli to consciousness
an altered state of consciousness in which the ordinary structures of experience are
broken down
an altered state of consciousness that focuses our awareness on something other than our
ego and intellect
an awakening of a consciousness always present in the nervous system but ordinarily
dormant
an effect of heightened interest and fascination with the panorama of experiences that
begin to come into consciousness
an evolutionary jump in consciousness that can take us as far beyond our present
condition as we now are from the primates
an experience or state of consciousness called moksha or liberation—Indian philosophy
is primarily this experience.
an illuminating insight into the transcendent and eternal spiritual nature intrinsic to
human consciousness
an intense experience of cosmic consciousness, of the vivid realization that oneself is a
manifestation of the eternal energy of the universe
an Old World of personal consciousness and beyond a dividing sea, a series of New
Worlds
an upsurge of unconscious material into consciousness, repressed memories relived with
remarkable clarity
animal and plant consciousness, past-incarnation experience, ancestral and racial
memories
awakening this level of consciousness that dissolves boundaries and offers transcendent
insight
becomes open to the possibility that consciousness might be independent of the physical
body and continue beyond the moment of clinical death
“breaking through” towards the universal consciousness, inspirational impulses of
consciousness leading to breakthrough (Break on through to the other side.)
changes in consciousness, changes in our ways of feeling our own existence and our
relation to human society and the natural world
cleanse the window of the senses, open up the lenses of cellular and molecular
consciousness
consciousness of certain parts of the body such as various organs, tissues or individual
cells
consciousness processes guided by cosmic intelligence rather than mechanical
happenings
“cosmic consciousness” in which the individual feels that his own inmost Self behind his
superficial ego, is God
“cosmic consciousness” the shift from egocentric awareness to the feeling that one’s
identity is the whole field of the organism in its environment
dedicated to the process of consciousness expansion, to the ideal of maximum
wakefulness and internal freedom
dramatic changes in human consciousness and our experience of the inner and outer
world
drugs useful for exploring perception and different possibilities and modes of
consciousness
everyday experience, that narrow, utilitarian world that our self-centered consciousness
selects from out of the infinite wealth of cosmic potentialities
expanding consciousness through the use of sacramental substances in accord with
spiritual growth and well-being
expanding one’s consciousness to the extent that it seems to encompass all of mankind
(or the entire universe)
experiences which point toward the ultimate evolutionary potential of human
consciousness
experiencing consciousness freed from the cardboard social games that comprise
“personality”
experiential adventures in the universe-at-large, which involves what can best be
described as cosmic consciousness or the superconscious mind
experiential expansion of the individual to the consciousness of all mankind (or the entire
universe)
higher levels and states of mind that lead to the realization of one’s divine nature and God
consciousness
highly developed spiritual capacities, with expanded consciousness of the depth and the
incomprehensible wonder of being
how to break out of personality into new realms of consciousness and how to avoid the
involuntary limiting process of the ego
Huxley’s thesis that altered states of consciousness included the highest forms of human
experience
hypnotized into experiencing himself as an ego—as an isolated center of consciousness
and will inside a bag of skin, confronting an external and alien world
immediate contact through chemicals with the reality of “consciousness, energy and
bliss”
inalienable rights, the freedom of the body, the pursuit of joy and the expansion of
consciousness
internal freedom, the politics of the nervous system, the right to change your
consciousness
knowledge other than the contents of our surface consciousness, which can apprehend
reality only in the form of one abstraction or thought at a time
liberation from self-consciousness (to experience Self-consciousness or Self-
Consciousness)
mapping uncharted zones of the human psyche, to resurrect a lost art or a lost knowledge
or a lost consciousness
more real than the phenomenal world as it is experienced in a more usual state of
consciousness
mystical experience, visionary breakthroughs to a deeper, more comprehensive reality
than that perceived by our rational everyday consciousness
new chemical instruments for accelerated consciousness, enhancing memory and
speeding up learning
non-ordinary states of consciousness, an area grossly neglected not just by traditional
science, but by the entire Western culture
non-ordinary states of consciousness which allow us to see the guiding forces of our lives
much more clearly
opening up the channels through which the formative and intelligent spontaneity of the
organism can at last flow into consciousness
our potential for voyaging into the consciousness of other species (as well as plants,
objects or anything else)
our technology which has done so much to narrow our consciousness and to produce this
robotlike conformity
permits entry into consciousness of certain kinds of mental activity normally excluded as
possessing no survival value
permits the entry into consciousness of experiences, visionary or mystical, from “out
there”
propel awareness out beyond normal modes of consciousness, propel us into new
dimensions of awareness
propel consciousness into an eerie, novel landscape in which everything seems possible
and nothing remains fixed
propel consciousness out beyond normal modes of consciousness, propel us into new
dimensions of awareness
psychiatrists whose proprietary claim to a revealed understanding of the mind and whose
antagonism to consciousness expansion are well known
punitive laws, the lengthy imprisonment of citizens for no other crime than the altering of
their own consciousness
pushing human consciousness beyond the present limitations and on towards capacities
not yet realized and perhaps undreamed of
real worlds revealed when the mode of consciousness has been changed from the
utilitarian to the aesthetic or spiritual
reveals a rich spectrum of dimensions of reality that are ordinarily hidden from human
awareness and are not available in the everyday state of consciousness
rich potentialities waiting to become actual, to make themselves glowingly present to our
consciousness
spiritual consciousness—a strange and almost always hitherto unexperienced awareness
carrying with it a “flavor of eternity”
state of consciousness in which the individual discovers himself to be one continuous
process with God
states of consciousness that transcend ordinary space/time limitations and operate in a
reality that is more aptly described in the language of subatomic physics
stretch his imagination to the furthest limits of time and space and to explore the inward
mystery of his own consciousness
that hallucinogens produced radical changes in consciousness that could have a profound
and beneficial effect
that Jesus was a man like ourselves who had an overwhelming experience of cosmic
consciousness in which it became completely clear to him that “I and the Father are one”
that the Beyond is within, that God is to be found in the deepest and innermost reaches of
consciousness
that union with God is a free and universal gift and that consciousness of it is presented to
us in the Eternal Now
the astounding discovery that consciousness can tune into an infinite number of organic
levels
the challenge that the research of non-ordinary states of consciousness presents to
traditional Newtonian-Cartesian science
the Clear Light of reality itself or undifferentiated consciousness which underlies all
being, knowledge and perception
the complete transformation of consciousness which is “enlightenment”, “deliverance”,
“salvation”
the consciousness of that ever-present and all-pervading harmony “which we hear not,
because the coarseness of the daily life hath dulled our ear”
“the Copernicus of Consciousness” (Terrence McKenna laughed when he said he’s been
called that and also “the New Leary.”)
the creative energy and intelligence of the universe as pure consciousness, existing
beyond time and space
the ego-loss experience being a temporary ending of game life, a passing from one state
of consciousness into another
the emotional reactions which are usually generated by the topic of consciousness
expansion
the experience of having been pure consciousness, unadulterated by the small temporal
self
the experience of oneself as a potentially unlimited field of consciousness that has access
to all aspects of reality
the goal of internal freedom, the ability to move voluntarily from one level of
consciousness to another
the greatest cosmic adventure—an experiential journey of the expansion of human
consciousness
the healing, transformative and evolutionary potential of nonordinary states of
consciousness
the idea of launching a new discipline that would combine science and spirituality and
incorporate the perennial wisdom concerning various levels and states of consciousness
the incomprehensibility of nonordinary reality from the point of view of ego
consciousness
the increased significance and meaning attributed both to internal and external stimuli
during alterations in consciousness
the irrationality that pervades much psychiatric thinking about drugs and altered states of
consciousness
the liberated and transfigured consciousness which experiences the paradox of the
absoluteness of relationships, the infinity and universality of particulars
the mental paralysis and anxiety which come from excessive self-consciousness (There is
no mental paralysis and anxiety with Self-consciousness of Self-Consciousness.)
the metaphysical realization that man’s consciousness is a particular mode of the ultimate
reality and is, in essence, identical with the ground of the whole universe
the modification of consciousness until it ceases to be ego-centered and becomes centered
in and united with the divine Ground
the need for a radical revision of our basic ideas about the human psyche and the nature
of consciousness
the new relationship between religion and science that seems to be emerging from the
study of unusual states of consciousness
the physical world of matter and the transcendent world of consciousness (Ultimately, it’s
all the same.)
the possibility of more advanced conditioning designed for more complex consciousness
and communication
the potentials—social, creative, psychological, cultural and ontological—which may be
experienced by means of the consciousness-expansion process
the realization of essential Being, of consciousness and identification with the Universal
Life
the right to achieve euphoria, the right to get “high”, the right to experience new
sensations, the right to expand and change one’s consciousness
the sage or “divine-man” whose consciousness transcends the opposites and who,
therefore, knows himself to be one with the cosmos
the select group of those who have passed through the verbal curtain into other worlds of
consciousness, the elite brotherhood of the illuminati
the sense of having transcended his or her own identity and ego boundaries as they are
defined in the ordinary state of consciousness
the sense of tuning in to the consciousness of various organs or tissues of the body (or
even individual cells)
the “straight” society of limited experience, to whom the expanded consciousness spells
anathema and fear
the subject’s feeling that his or her consciousness has expanded beyond the usual ego
boundaries and has transcended the limitations of time and space
the tendency of long forgotten or suppressed contents of experience to appear again in
consciousness
the traditional scientific framework which holds that consciousness resides solely in the
organ within our skulls (They are wrong because it doesn’t.)
the transformation of character which is the necessary pre-requisite of a total, complete
and spiritually fruitful transformation of consciousness
the unfolding possibilities of mind-free consciousness, the liberating effect of the ancient
rebirth process that comes only through the death of the mind
the unique effects of mystical consciousness upon attitudes and interpersonal
relationships
the universal Store Consciousness, on the surface of which forms arise and pass away,
like the waves on the surface of the ocean
the view of the world, not as it ordinarily appears but as it really is, when seen by human
consciousness at its greatest height and intensity
those astonishing moments of insight which Richard Bucke called “cosmic
consciousness”
those twilight realms of consciousness where the poet explored the modes of inmost
Being
to expand the consciousness by reducing or eliminating the psychological defenses that
separate the world of the supernatural from the world of everyday reality
to experience a new mode of existence and consciousness as far beyond our present mode
of existence as ours is beyond that of an animal
to experience the infinite joy of rediscovering the original and blissful state of Universal
Consciousness
to gain insight into the potentials of consciousness and different states of consciousness
of which I am capable
to go beyond what we generally consider our rational minds in order to experience new
levels of consciousness
to have one’s consciousness undisturbed by grasping desire, in such a way that the senses
do not receive a distorted and fragmentary vision of the world
to impart a superhuman knowledge which could not possibly be gained during waking
consciousness
to move consciousness from the usual objective level back to the process or energy level
found by modern mathematical physics
to overthrow the domination of the conceptual and to open up the “potential forms of
consciousness”
to reach that level of consciousness variously called liberation, illumination or
enlightenment
to seriously review ancient and non-Western knowledge about consciousness and to aim
for a genuine synthesis of age-old wisdom and modern science
transcending everyday realities and exploring realities quite outside the realm of ordinary
consciousness
very sudden and great extensions of the ordinary “field of consciousness,” the sudden
broadening of consciousness
will restore awareness of this ignored aspect of life, for consciousness is thereby led back
to its organic roots
breaking through the barrier surrounding our ordinary day-to- day, biologically utilitarian
world of consciousness and breaking through into another mode of consciousness, the
visionary mode
freedom from the learned cultural mind, the freedom to expand one’s consciousness
beyond artificial cultural knowledge, to move from constant preoccupation with the
verbal game, the social games, the game of self, to the joyous unity of what exists beyond
seems to project his consciousness away from his body and can see his body as if he were
standing off to one side of it or looking down at it from above or observing it from a
distance
the goal of internal freedom, the ability to move voluntarily from one level of
consciousness to another, just as the scientist focuses his vision from the microscopic to
the telescopic
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.)
the potentials of the drug experience for revealing new levels of consciousness and
bringing about changes in personality and behavior faster and more effectively than any
other method known to us
the “projection” of consciousness to a point some distance from the body with visual
perception appearing to be from that point and not from the actual physical location of
the organ of sight
unconscious ignore-ance, the habitual selective acts of consciousness which screen out
“separate” things from their context (Thinking that things are separate ignores the
relationship or connections between them.)
Western culture’s preference for consensus reality, lack of a genuine understanding of
altered states of consciousness and strong tendency to pathologize all such states without
discrimination (It is “consensus reality” based on ego that is really pathological.)
the Primordial Tradition: an age-old wisdom of humanity, neglected only where modern
science and secularism rule, its truths revealed to the interior eye in altered states of
consciousness and now, finally, in natural science itself as it reaches its limits and begins
to glimpse something beyond
a blissful, undifferentiated, oceanic state of consciousness
a broadening and deepening of reality consciousness
a complex change in consciousness
a consciousness clear as crystal and open to truth, reality or God
a consciousness of perfect harmony
a consciousness of the Pure Truth
a consciousness stripped naked, as though newborn
a consciousness which is not that of the ego
a conversion of the mind or revulsion in the depths of consciousness
a deepened and thereby religious reality consciousness
a different plane of consciousness
a dreamy state of altered consciousness
a field of consciousness, consciousness as an infinite field
a fluid, undifferentiated state of consciousness
a fully expanded consciousness
a journey into new realms of consciousness
a lack of real understanding about nonordinary states of consciousness in Western culture
a living journey to other realms of consciousness
a long tradition linking the nature of femininity with special states of consciousness
a mystical intuitive wisdom inherent in visionary states of consciousness
a mystical unitive consciousness
a new consciousness of a all-encompassing reality
a new mode of consciousness
a new order of consciousness
a positive leap of consciousness
a powerful influence on culture and consciousness
a profound experience of “cosmic consciousness”
a pushing back of the frontiers of consciousness, on the verge of something new and great
a return to the oceanic consciousness of the womb
a revolution in consciousness
a sense of contact with the creative power of cosmic consciousness
a sense of identification with consciousness of inorganic matter or processes
a single infinite reality which is consciousness itself
a spiritual, expansive conception of consciousness
a state of clear consciousness
a state of cosmic consciousness in its totality
a state of primordial or unmodified consciousness
a stimulation of the mystical consciousness
a superior kind of consciousness
a transformation of consciousness that would sweep the world
a wider state of consciousness
accelerated and expanded consciousness opened up by psychedelic drugs
accelerated learning by the use of expanded consciousness
acute consciousness
After-Death, where there is a survival of consciousness, but not of the body as we know it
alchemists—the transformation of material consciousness into “spiritual God”
allowing repressed material to pass easily into consciousness
amazing states of expanded consciousness
an absolutely direct and full consciousness
an adventure in the growth of consciousness
an evolutionary trend toward an entirely new level of human consciousness
an expansion of consciousness from within
an experience in which consciousness itself undergoes a remarkable change
an explosion of consciousness
an immediate consciousness of the divine glory
an innate human drive to experience periodic episodes of nonordinary consciousness
an instantaneous “turning about” within the depths of consciousness
an intense consciousness
an intense superhuman consciousness
an undifferentiated state of consciousness
accelerated learning by the use of expanded consciousness
aesthetic visionary and mystical consciousness
After-Death, where there is a survival of consciousness, but not of the body as we know it
awakening consciousness
awakening from conditioned, mechanical consciousness to true, objective consciousness
awakening of my social consciousness
breaking free of mechanical consciousness
brings into consciousness truths long hidden in the unconscious
Buddhism, a series of language and methods for discovering levels of consciousness
can push someone over the edge of his consciousness into a greater awareness
changing the quality of consciousness
chemical expansion of consciousness
clarity of consciousness and self-understanding
clear consciousness
concentrating the energies of consciousness in a state of acuteness, of total awareness
consciousness both the object and instrument of change
consciousness education
consciousness evolution
consciousness exploration
consciousness in its fullest development a vast sea itself
consciousness released from imprinted statics
consciousness revolution
consciousness, that essence which pervades all our actions in life
consciousness when freed from the mental chessgame
crossing over to a new order of consciousness (Break on through to the other side.)
crossing the planes of consciousness
deep ecological consciousness and awareness
deeper layers of consciousness
diamond consciousness
different dimensions of consciousness
direct and nonverbal means of revelation and consciousness expansion
direct awareness of the eternally complete consciousness
discovering levels of consciousness
discovering the truth about processes of deep consciousness
discovery of how consciousness can grow
dissolved all normal barriers of consciousness and flowed off into the well of infinity
divine consciousness
drugs that have triggered a firsthand awareness of the religious consciousness
ecstatic freedom of consciousness
enlarged consciousness
enlightened consciousness
entered dimensions of consciousness that permanently altered their concept of reality
eternal consciousness
evolved into higher modes of consciousness
existing on higher planes of consciousness and higher energy levels
expanding consciousness beyond the game limits
expanding one’s consciousness to the extent that it seems to encompass all of mankind
experiences of “cosmic consciousness” in which the sense of life becomes perfectly clear
experiences so overwhelming, so incomprehensible to normal waking consciousness
exploration into consciousness
exploration of human consciousness (and all consciousness)
explorations of consciousness
explore the frontiers of consciousness
exploring the frontiers of human consciousness and spiritual experiences
exploring their own consciousness
feelings of joy, love, blessedness and peace inherent in mystical consciousness
felt his mind go lifting up through the layers of consciousness
fuller and fuller consciousness
fusion with the Absolute, generating bliss-consciousness
heightened consciousness
heightening our consciousness
higher levels of consciousness
higher planes of consciousness and higher energy levels
higher states of consciousness
how to expand consciousness, how to get into your brain
identification with the Universal Mind, Cosmic Consciousness, or with the Absolute
infinite fields of consciousness—transcending time, space and linear causality
information that was usually screened out to flow freely into consciousness
insight into the transcendent nature of human consciousness
intellectual surface consciousness, intuitive depth consciousness
intense, desired states of consciousness
into the depths of consciousness to become one with the Self
intuitions that come to us when we leave ordinary consciousness behind
knowledge other than the contents of our surface consciousness
less intellectual control over the stream of consciousness
liberation not from the physical world but from the egocentric style of consciousness
limited ego-oriented consciousness mistaking itself for the whole
LSD a method of changing consciousness and brain function
LSD permitting consciousness on several levels at once
LSD the source of the energy that is to transform human intelligence and consciousness
make the spotlight of consciousness a floodlight
moving across both physical and temporal boundaries in their consciousness
moving into a new area of consciousness
my newfound divine consciousness
my plodding mind, duly recording the doings of a consciousness far beyond itself
mystical unifying consciousness
naked consciousness, the “Clear Light of the Beginning”
new chemicals that exhilarate learning, expand consciousness and enhance memory
new conceptions of consciousness and its alteration
new experiences of the reaches of consciousness
new insights provided by consciousness expanding experiences
new realms of consciousness, the exilir of wisdom
no longer an insular ego-consciousness, but a cosmic consciousness
nondualistic consciousness
nonordinary states of consciousness that mediate access to all other aspects of existence
open up consciousness and accelerate awareness
opening the doors of perception and widening the area of consciousness
other planes of consciousness
otherwise inaccessible ranges of consciousness
our consciousness, the innermost essence of our being
our neglect and misunderstanding of the whole consciousness area
out beyond normal consciousness
pass through the verbal curtain into other modes of consciousness
people who are changing their consciousness, who are pursuing the eternal quest
profound archetypal and transcendental forms of consciousness
profound alterations of consciousness
profound consciousness-altering effects
provides new means for altering consciousness
psychic realities experienced during altered states of consciousness
pure consciousness, full consciousness
raising consciousness to a sharper awareness
regions of the mind and states of consciousness hitherto inaccessible
removing blocks and awakening consciousness, a process of purification
restores the original state of unitary consciousness
sexual mysticism, a form of consciousness expansion
speed up and drastically expand consciousness
spiritual consciousness
states of consciousness that point to the existence of another kind of reality
states of consciousness where there is no basic separation between the ego and the world
stimulated areas of consciousness not usually brought to the surface
that altered states of consciousness included the highest forms of human experience
that death is not the end of consciousness but rather an expansion of it
that dimension of consciousness opened by the psychedelic drugs
that essentially infinite and omniscient consciousness which is the ultimate reality
that glorious, blissful, shining consciousness, has seen Being itself
that our next evolutionary step would be “a change of consciousness”
that the apple Adam ate was consciousness expanding
that universal ground of consciousness from which all beings take their source
that Universal Reality is pure consciousness which is experienced in perfect bliss
the ancient knowledge of nonordinary states of consciousness
the arrogance of the power-holders who labeled altered states of consciousness as disease
the bias of our culture against nonordinary states of consciousness
the birth of a new kind of consciousness and a new apprehension of man’s identity
the bringing to consciousness of an eternal state
the broadening of human consciousness
the change-over from self-consciousness to cosmic consciousness
the clarity of consciousness
the complex levels and dimensions of human consciousness
the consciousness behind creation itself
the consciousness of a quickened perception
the consciousness of all living matter
the consciousness of mankind raised to a spiritual level
the consciousness of union
the consciousness-altering effects on the depth of the psyche
the consciousness-expansion experience—the pre-mortem death and rebirth rite
the continuity of the consciousness in man with the divine
the Cosmic Mind, a wider consciousness
the cosmos of consciousness
the deep intuitive consciousness that transforms the whole person
the divine consciousness
the divine ground of human consciousness
the dreamlike quality of consciouisness
the dynamic totality of consciousness
the ecstatic bliss of universal consciousness
the ecstatic process initiated by the consciousness-expanding drugs
the ego a limited, finite center of consciousness
the egocentric contraction of consciousness
the enhanced awareness and extended consciousness of the transcendent experience
the everyday neurosis of ordinary consciousness
the evolution of consciousness and the awakening of the human potential in everyone
the evolution of man’s consciousness and the human brain
the expansion and exploration of consciousness
the expansiveness of psychedelic consciousness
the experience of consciousness localized in some part of the body, like a fingertip
the existing vacuum in the study of consciousness
the extended state of transcendent consciousness
the extension of human consciousness
the extraordinary depths of human consciousness
the flash beyond time into the depths of consciousness
the floating consciousness of the new-born
the flow of consciousness, microscopically clear and intense
the free consciousness
the frontiers of the new consciousness
the full flower of consciousness
the further realms of human consciousness
the gift of illumination received through an altered state of consciousness
the glories of expanded consciousness
the goal of all human existence…cosmic consciousness
the great flash of lightning which comes with these openings of consciousness
the higher paths of consciousness
the Hindu and Buddhist judgment that everyday consciousness is maya, illusion
the immensity of hyper-brain consciousness
the incredible complexities of consciousness
the infinite consciousness
the infinite consciousness to which all that was, is and shall be is eternally present
the infinite openness of psychedelic consciousness
the infinite reality in whose consciousness and being we live and move
the inner graciousness of consciousness
the intensified enlargement of consciousness
the interior realms of consciousness
the intuition and immediate spiritual consciousness of God
the inward consciousness of the ecstatic
the isolated social patterns which have isolated man from his consciousness
the limitations of ego-consciousness
the mystical consciousness of being at one with the infinite Oneness
the mystical nature of many experiences in nonordinary states of consciousness
the new awakening, the new consciousness, freedom
the new frontiers of consciousness
the new insights provided by consciousness-expanding experience
the new realities of expanded consciousness
the new world of consciousness which these substances reveal
the newly acquired consciousness˜
the non-material realm of consciousness
the nonverbal world of culturally uncontaminated consciousness
the obsolete social patterns which have isolated man from his consciousness
the ocean of consciousness
the oceanic consciousness
the potent consciousness-altering qualities of LSD
the “psychedelic consciousness”
the pure consciousness of the Self
the quality of consciousness which these drugs induce
the raising of consciousness to new realms
the rapid succession of ideas and impressions which cross the field of consciousness
the realm of higher consciousness
the religious consciousness
the remarkable transformative potential of nonordinary states of consciousness
the revolutionary aesthetic consciousness I sought in order to become an artist
the richness and breadth of expanded consciousness
the search within one’s consciousness for the Self, which is life
the sense of tuning in to the consciousness of various organs or tissues of the body
the spiritual implications of a science of consciousness
the state of being in pure consciousness
the state of fluid expanded consciousness
the stream of consciousness which is recorded in the brain
the study of consciousness which Leary calls religion
the supreme consciousness
the therapeutic and transformative power of nonordinary states of consciousness
the therapeutic potential of experiences of mystical consciousness
the transformation of consciousness
the translation of consciousness into an eternal present, not into an everlasting future
the truth within your consciousness
the ultimate consciousness
the ultimate trip to higher realms of consciousness
the unfamiliar altered consciousness induced by LSD
the unfamiliar terrain of his expanded consciousness
this brilliant new world of consciousness expansion
this ecstatic consciousness
this flash beyond time into the depths of consciousness
this God consciousness
this heightening of consciousness
this new brilliant world of consciousness expansion
this new consciousness, this new freedom
this new dimension of consciousness
this new mode of consciousness
this new state of consciousness
this newly acquired consciousness
this remarkable transformation of consciousness
this truth within your consciousness
this wider, less ignore-ant consciousness
to accelerate consciousness and intelligence
to appear before our consciousness in all its richness
to awaken to joy, light, bliss, universal understanding and higher consciousness
to break out of personality into new realms of consciousness
to deepen the consciousness of reality by way of a total mystical experience
to expand consciousness at all levels
to expand consciousness beyond the learned mind
to expand their consciousness, to find deeper meaning inside themselves
to experience the consciousness of the entire universe
to explore mystical realms or higher states of consciousness
to explore our own minds and consciousness and thereby the universe
to explore the remote regions of their consciousness
to free Western man from the limitations of consciousness as we know it
to get out beyond your routine robot consciousness
to know the true meaning of an expanded consciousness
to learn how to explore the rooms of his own consciousness
to observe the neuroelectric nature of consciousness
to pass beyond ordinary consciousness and see things as they are in Reality
to penetrate into the deeper reality below the externals of egocentric consciousness
the psychedelic experience of mystical consciousness
to relax and clear his consciousness of irrelevancies
to relax the mind and clear the consciousness
to search for the Absolute, generating bliss-consciousness
transcendent consciousness
transformation of consciousness and character
transformations in consciousness that effect thought, perception and feelings at once
truths revealed to the interior eye in altered states of consciousness
understandings beyond the grasp of our normal consciousness
unique states of consciousness
unitive consciousness
universal consciousness, the universal consciousness
universal divine consciousness
unusual adventures in consciousness
unusual states of consciousness of extraordinary intensity and clarity
vivid cosmic-consciousness experience
when consciousness spins out beyond symbols
I was wondering what happens to my consciousness when I die. It seems as if my consciousness is completely created by my brain, so that if the brain dies I will no longer exist. It will just be nonexistrnce after death. But if everything is consciousness maybe there will be some sort consciousness beyond death. What is your take on this??