Felt (past tense, people talking about what they felt during their trip)

A supreme feeling of confidence flowed through me, and all doubts and fears melted
away.

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

Each color seemed to carry its own feeling tone, oranges, reds and yellows expansive and
sexual, blues and greens, cool, serene and rational.

Even when I returned to my usual state of consciousness, I had the feeling that this
experience would have a lasting effect.

Every surface of my skin could feel it. I felt like it was touching us in a physical way.
(He’s talking about music.)

Everything looked so good. I could just look at the sea and feel it on my skin and in my
bones. Touching it was ecstasy. Sensations were exquisite.

Feelings and visions alike became cold and dead in the writing, a faint account giving a
prosaic one-hundred-thousandth of the experience itself.

He emphasized that his understanding is all experienced as simultaneous visual and felt
thinking.

He felt himself move into a totally different and deeper level of consciousness, a level
that was entirely new to him.

He felt his life had been “transfigured” by the “new being” which had emerged out of the
depths of his psyche.

He felt light, ecstatic, reborn and pulsing with exuberant life energy. His senses felt
cleansed and wide open.

He felt that for the first time in his life he was experiencing the universe for what it really
is—an unfathomable mystery, a divine play of energy.

He felt that he had “cleansed his lenses”; the world looked different, like washing a
muddy car. A heightened sensory awareness stayed with him after this session.

He felt that if he could die right them, he could keep the tremendous beauty and rich
emotions for himself throughout eternity.

He felt the experience was unbelievably beautiful; he had never experienced anything
like that in his whole life.

He felt the walls of consciousness opened by an enormous thrust and he was cast out of
time.

Hoffman noticed that everything was gleaming with an extraordinary vitality the next day
and felt reborn, his senses vibrating, attuned.

I again experienced that expansion of feeling, a new mental amplitude difficult to
describe but quite intense.

I became a great variety of winged creatures, each with feelings so intense that it seemed
impossible for their small bodies to contain such emotions.

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 didn’t know what I was seeking, but I felt its immanence, and it seemed an answer to
every hunger I had ever known.

I felt a certain reunion with thoughts and sensations that were pure, as if they were being
experienced for the first time.

I felt a great, inexplicable joy, so powerful that I could not restrain it, a fit of mysterious
and overwhelming delight.

I felt a warm oneness with all that live, a marvelous unity and harmony with the very
universe itself.

I felt as if I was beyond seconds, minutes and hours and also beyond past, present and
future.

I felt as though I was remembering something I had known before I was born, but had
forgotten by identifying with the physical and mental world as total reality.

I felt as though the “essence” of me was being liberated to join the “essence” of
everything else about me.

I felt as though the fullest floods of the energies of the universal Mother were flowing
through me.

I felt endowed with all the time in the world, free to look about me as if I were living
eternity without a single problem to be solved.

I felt flooded with lights and indescribable joy and connected in a new way to the world
and the flow of life.

I felt I was ascending and passing into a new dimension, that I was expanding upward as
well as outward into an astral plane, a higher sphere of creation.

I felt I was no longer with my neck under the guillotine. This was the very feeling I have
been living under all my life.

I felt I was there with God on the day of Creation. Everything was so fresh and new.
Every plant and tree and fern and bush had its own particular holiness.

I felt in me an unshakable conviction that there is indeed a universal and God-created
energy which expresses itself as rhythm in all things.

I felt my filaments infiltrating the tangled web of their essence bodies. I surrendered to
the ancient process and felt the embracing union.

I felt my mind being stretched, as if my faculty of abstracting and conceptualizing was
being left on the surface, still capable of operating, but not interested in doing so.

I felt myself in a universal place or space where I knew that the whole universe was in
each of us.

I felt one could not get closer to heaven. (That means being in heaven, not close and
unable to get closer.

I felt so blessed to have seen what I felt was this energy of creation at its purest and
highest vibration.

I felt that I was being transported to some mysterious place where the secrets of life and
the universe were revealed.

I felt that I was going down, down, down, down and down to the infinite point of depth
within me.

I felt that somehow every person must be made to recognize the divine within himself
and that such a recognition would influence his every action throughout life.

I felt that something of utmost relevance had happened to me on this session day and that
I would never be the same.

I felt waves of joy and an overpowering conviction that “all shall be well and all manner
of thing shall be well”.

I had never before seen, touched, tasted, heard, smelled and felt so profound a personal
unity and involvement with the concrete material world.

I had never talked so openly about myself before in my life. And it was easy. I didn’t feel
like hiding anything about myself.

I had the keenest feeling of being out of my body, floating in the field of energy. It was
incredibly exhilarating.

I lost the boundaries of my physical body. I felt that I was standing in the center of the
cosmos. I had never known this world. I was never created. I was the cosmos.

I lost the limitations of my normal consciousness. I felt free, without the faintest trace of
conflict anywhere at all.

I never felt so clean inside in all my life. All the trash seemed to be washed out of my
mind. It seemed as if I were born all over again.

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

I thought that I was near death; when suddenly, my soul became aware of God, in an
intense present reality. I felt him. I cannot describe the ecstasy I felt.

I wanted to feel the color of a purple glass and I seemed to be one with the soft glowing
purple.

I was having the best time of my life. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a feeling of joy
that great.

In that illuminated state, I felt completely boundless and free, surrounded and filled with
brilliant light and washed by an enormous sense of peace.

It was a feeling that was deeper, more profound, more moving, more meaningful, than
any feeling I have ever had.

It was like escaping from a refrigerator into the sunshine. I could feel myself coming
alive in that light of hers, that radiating warmth.

It was much more real than what you call reality. More real than what you’re thinking
and feeling at this moment. More real than the world before your eyes.

Margaret said she felt like a monkey. Not only did she feel like one, she was a male
monkey, and she had an erection, and she felt it and she knows what it feels like.

My body was both swimming and flying. I felt gay and at ease and playful. There was
perfect connection between my body and everything that was happening.

My little ego seemed removed and I felt that I saw clearly and purely for the first time in
my life.

One felt perfect communication going on, a kind of direct interchange. It was like an
intense and overwhelming orgasmic immersion.

She felt enormous gratitude for her experience and the cosmic insights; she saw them as a
special grace and privilege.

She got in touch with what she felt was pure being and realized that it cannot be
comprehended and does not need any justification.

Suddenly I felt the presence of a strong energy field, as though I were at the center of a
vortex of sacred energy.

This feeling made me realize as never before that the need for spirituality was a universal
need of every individual who loves.

The feeling was: I was home. That’s really the feeling of it…It was a bliss state. Of a kind
I never experienced before.

The subject felt that he had been able to recapture a view of his wife that he had at the
time of their marriage and that he understood her better.

The sum total of all these emotions, feelings of ecstasy, aliveness, reverence and love,
seemed to blend into the music.

They enjoyed the feelings of supreme happiness and well-being that explain the age-old
power these “sacred mushrooms” exercise.

This feeling made me realize as never before that the need for spirituality was a universal
need of every individual who loves.

Tingling, vibrating feelings overwhelmed my nervous system and I felt myself lifted
upwards.

We all felt that we have achieved the state of ultimate fulfillment; we have reached the
source and the final destination, as close to Heaven as I could imagine.

You finally get rid of that heartbreak feeling that we carry from childhood. That was the
feeling. I was rid of my heartbreak. My heart was no longer broken.

As I wept with joy, feelings of love became so intense that I knew they could only be of
divine origin and that this feeling was actually God residing within myself and in all
other persons.

At the gas station, the men smiled at me with twinkles in their eyes, and I felt very good,
I saw smiling men’s faces in the sky and the stars twinkling in their eyes. I felt better than
I ever had in my life.

Deep emotions can be understood only after they have been felt. I knew that it was
impossible to communicate them. They must forever remain mysterious, an unsolved
mystery to all who had not had such feelings.

During the playing of the record, I felt myself being swept along by the movement of the
words, as if the meaning were coming through directly to me and the meaning itself was
a movement, a dynamic flow which carried me along as if on a journey.

Every atom of my body and soul had seen and felt God. The world was warmth and
goodness. There was no time, no place, no me. There was only cosmic harmony. With
every fiber of my body I knew it was so.

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

I felt I had now experienced the grace of God. Truly I had been given a gift of infinite
worth. I could understand why human beings throughout history have relentlessly
pursued truth and sought enlightenment.

I felt that two people who really love can never be separated, not by space or time or
eternity. The line in the marriage ceremony “till death us to part” seemed utterly
ridiculous. (I thought the line is “till death due us part”.)

I felt totally new, as though I’d just been born. Having had so much ego burned away had
cleared and refreshed my spirit. It was a grace that profoundly changed my life by giving
me a reason to override my scientific skepticism and accept the reality of the spirit.

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

I found myself wishing that every living person might be given LSD and see beauty equal
to that which I had witnessed, have the same feelings, know the blessed nearness of God
and that these feelings might stay uppermost in all of us at all times.

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

I had the feeling that I knew what the purpose and the reason for life was. The feelings
that I had at the time could not be very well described in psychiatric terms but best
described in either religious or poetic ones.

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

It seemed to me that the feelings of joy, rhythm, appreciation of music and the many
other emotions I had experienced were all part of an intrinsic spiritual power which
pervades the universe, each of them different aspects of God.

“Know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” were the words that seemed best to
capture the nature of my experience. I felt free to be exactly who I was, free of fear and
social constraints, and filled with love and compassion for all beings.

Suddenly, without warning, I felt that I was in heaven—an inward state of peace and joy
and assurance indescribably intense, accompanied with a sense of being bathed in a warm
glow of light.

The flower’s incredibly exquisite petals opened on the room, spraying indescribable
colors in every direction. I felt the colors and heard them as they played across my body,
cool and warm, reedlike and tinkling.

The intensity of the love feelings caused sexual hungers and reactions to be markedly
heightened. Intercourse took on such depth of meaning as to have a religious
significance.

The sensation was reminiscent of the times I had inhaled nitrous oxide at the dentist’s
office. But that had been like standing at a door. This time, I was going in. It also felt like
going home.

The thought occurred to me that since every minute of our lives was ruled by our
feelings, it was tragic we had so little contact with this part of ourselves where forgotten
feelings lay hidden.

We felt ourselves get smarter, and looked into each other’s eyes and loved each other for
sharing the understanding that was making us both have these good vibes and this good
smart thing happening together. It was very strong, very high.

With great emotion, he announced that “this is of vital importance to me” and that he
“absolutely must get to the bottom” of what he felt was being disclosed to him about his
own nature.

A feeling of great peace and contentment seemed to flow through my entire body. All
sound ceased and I seemed to be floating in a great, very very still void or hemisphere. It
is impossible to describe the overpowering feeling of peace, contentment and being a part
of goodness itself that I felt.

Everything was beautiful. Everything was right. Each smallest thing was uniquely
important, yet fitted perfectly into the whole. My little ego seemed removed and I felt I
saw clearly and purely for the first time in my life. I wept with relief and joy. I felt
unworthy of such blessedness.

He started experiencing dramatic scenes that seemed to be happening in another century
and in a foreign country. They involved powerful emotions and physical feelings and
seemed to have some deep and intimate connection to his life; yet none of them made any
sense in terms of his personal biography. (eyes closed)

I could feel deeply about other people. We felt connected. The side which had been
suppressing emotions did not seem to be the real one. I was in a higher and higher state of
exhilaration and awareness. Things people said had hidden meaning. They said things
that applied to life. Everything that was real seemed to make sense.

I felt entirely in harmony with myself and the whole world… for a few seconds of such
bliss one would gladly give up ten years of one’s life, if not one’s whole life. (One who
has not taken LSD will find that hard to believe. One who has taken LSD and cannot
relate to that did not have the real LSD experience.)

I felt that I was part of some intricate, unified network that was all-inclusive and eternal
and I felt that in that place I would continue to exist in some form forever. My belief in
the finality of death was undermined by an event that was so real it could not be denied
and I could no longer believe that death was the end of everything.

I had come to the conclusion, with all the feelings that I had at the time, that I was
more—more than I had always imagined myself, not just existing now, but I had existed
since the very beginning, from the lowest form of life to the present time, and that that
was the sum of my real experiences.

I now felt I had had some direct experience of the ineffable realms of union with God,
and I discovered that my dissatisfaction with conventional religion was not due to the
death of God, as some theologians proclaimed, but rather to the impoverished concepts of
God, currently in vogue.

I suddenly felt that everything was so much more real than it had been before. The grass
was greener, the sun was shining brighter, and people were more alive, I could see them
clearer. I could see the bad things and the good things and all that. I was much more
aware.

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.

I’d given up even trying to talk. I just smiled at everything that was said to me, and
nodded my head up and down as the words went by. I felt beautiful and saw nothing but
beauty. I was a little child being led and protected by two wise saints. On the perfect path
to all-the-way-up now. Awake, finally, and headed for truth.

In sheer delight, I began to dance on this enchanted carpet (really a lawn) and through the
thin soles of my moccasins I could feel the ground becoming alive under my feet,
connecting me with the earth and the trees and the sky in such a way that I seemed to
become one body with my whole surroundings.

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.

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

One could “feel” his “parental heritage” and their contributions to his “cellular structure.”
I knew what in my body came from my mother and what came from my father. I could
feel my mother and father in my body. I felt I knew how my mother’s body feels like to
her and what my father’s body feels like to my father.

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

She saw the session as a very important event in her life. She felt as if she had begun a
completely new chapter: “I have been EXISTING all these years; I started to LIVE this
past Friday. I honestly feel that I am a new person, with a completely new new mind.
Even my body feels different; I am pain free.”

Slowly, I felt the physical and energetic resistance between us give way. There was still a
solid form, but it was now somewhat fluid, like mercury. Then I felt the boundary
between what was me and what was him dissipate, and I merged totally into him. I felt a
complete oneness with him and his spirit, as though I’d gone right into his body.

Somebody brought back sherbet. It was Haagen Dasz and I took one mouthful. It was
absolutely delicious. I thought it was the best thing I had ever tasted in my life. I could
taste every nuance of the flavor and also felt, really felt, the texture as I never had before
in my life.

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.

The “mechanism” by which we screen our sense-data and select only some of them as
significant had been partially suspended. Consequently, I felt that the particular feeling
which we associate with “the meaningful” was projected indiscriminately upon
everything.

There was unity and life and the exquisite love that filled my being was unbounded. My
awareness was acute and complete. I saw God and all the saints and I knew the truth. I
felt myself flowing into the cosmos, levitated beyond all restraint, liberated to swim in
the blissful radiance of the heavenly visions.

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.

We walked around the garden together. It was like walking in Paradise. Everything was
composed and harmonized. I felt I had never really seen this garden before. I was
enchanted with each plant, leaf, flower, tree trunk and the earth itself. Each blade of grass
stood up separate and distinct, edged with light. Each was supremely important.

Without rational thought, the experience had been the solution to my problem of trying to
find God. I could see that when intellectual development is overemphasized, the
subjective part of one’s self, in which religious experiences occur, is usually
undervalued; thus, the feeling of God is hindered by the worship of the intellect.

At the end of the record, I felt that I had been on a long journey and that I had come to
my destination. My guides came to me and welcomed me into this “brave new world”. I
felt that I had reached the psychedelic shore and enjoyed the wonderful things around me.
I felt joyous and deeply related to everything, as if I were part of a whole. It was a sense
of total relatedness and involvement, bringing with it a sense of joy, peace and wonder.

Feeling not that I was drugged but that I was in an unusual degree open to reality, I tried
to discern the meaning, the inner character of the dancing patterns which constituted
myself and the gardens and the whole dome of the night with its colored stars. All at
once, it became obvious that the whole thing was love-play. This single source was not
just love as we ordinarily understand it. It was also intelligence.

For the first time, I understood the meaning of “ineffable”. There seemed to be no
possibility of conveying in words the subjective truth of my experience. A veil had been
lifted from my inner vision, and I felt able to see, not just images or forms, but the nature
of truth itself. The doors of perception were so cleansed, they seemed to vanish
altogether, and there was only infinite being.

He had the feeling that his experience and analysis of it were valid and cast serious
doubts on many of his previous philosophical certainties. His doubt deepened as he began
to suspect that the experience which at first he had interpreted as a regressive preverbal
one also could be seen, because of its complexity, as a kind of evolutionary preview into
future post-verbal modes of communication.

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

I felt welcomed, as though I were becoming a part of the forest, as though it were
enclosing and caressing me as I moved deeper and deeper into it—like I was arriving at a
family reunion and being embraced by the whole brood. There were mythic and fairy-tale
overtones along the lines of Alice and Wonderland or Frodo in The Bobbit arriving at the
Court of the Elf King.

I had the feeling of going deep within myself to the self stripped bare of all pretense and
falseness. It was the point where a man could stand firm with absolute integrity—
something more important than mere physical life. The white light experience was of
supreme importance—absolutely self-validating and something worth staking your life
on and putting your trust in.

I realized, “My God, every single second is really eternity.” I felt I’d dipped into eternity
and was experiencing a glimpse of it along with a hint of its vastness. I was blown away
by the enormity of these revelations. By now, I was flying so high, I felt I was in an
exalted state, that I was having a mystical experience of the highest order, something I
always dreamed of.

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. (eyes closed)

I was struck by the thought that since I’d first seen Julia, I’d felt that I’d known her for a
long time. That sounds trite, but what can I say? How else do you describe that feeling? I
simply felt that I’d known her for a long time. I told her so. “You HAVE known me for a
long time,” she replied. “But it was a long time ago”. “In school?” trying to remember.
She laughed and put her cheek against my arm. “In a kind of school,” she said softly.

In some instances, individuals enmeshed in elements of a certain culture felt a strong
need to dance. Without any previous training or specific exposure to these cultures, they
were able to perform complicated dance forms. (The person gets the vision of the
different culture, sees the people dancing in the vision and then he does the dance. Before
taking LSD, the person knew nothing of that culture or its dances.)

It was all perfectly new again, mysterious and of great promise. Everything that had once
been could be revived and much that was new besides. It seemed ages since the day and
the world had looked so beautiful, innocent and undismayed. The joy of freedom and
independence flowed through his veins like a strong potion and he recalled how long it
was since he had felt this precious sensation.

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.

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.)

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

The acid took me directly to my lucid, “higher self.” It was as though I’d arrived at my
true nature: sincere, clean of purpose, and more useful and wonderful than I’d ever felt in
my life. I can’t fathom what it was that made me feel so “perfect” and “enlightened” or
what specific obstacle the chemical had overcome to enable me to feel so wholesomely
fabulous. I felt a sweeping reassurance that everything was all right after all.

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

The night was all joyous discoveries, many of which brought me almost to the point of
tears, to laughter and astonished wows regularly. Whole new horizons. I felt humbled and
honored to be in a room with and listening to such enlighted powers. I felt in flash after
flash that I’d never been so high before, never so aware and never—at least not since a
long, long half-remembered time ago—so hopeful and happy.

The visions were not blurred or uncertain. They were sharply focused, the lines and
colors being so sharp that they seemed more real to me than anything I had seen with my
own eyes. I felt that I was now seeing clearly, whereas ordinary vision gives us an
imperfect view. I was seeing the archetypes, the Platonic ideas, that underlie the
imperfect images of everyday life.

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.

While looking at a candle flame, tiny fragments of light began to sputter off the top like a
fountain of fireworks, filling the room with sparkles of resplendent light. It was the first
time on psychedelics that I cried for joy. Beholding such beauty, I felt I was being
welcomed to an ineffable mystery, as I’d finally come into contact with a spiritual
dimension that gave hope to humanity.

Crying and laughing are branches of the same tree—the tree of emotions. Not two of the
leaves are the same, yet all have the same roots: the capacity to feel and the need to
express those feelings. Whether I was crying or laughing was really not too important,
except on the conventional level. The important point was that the tree of my emotions
was being vigorously shaken and liberated of some withered leaves which had hung on it
too long.

During the experience, I felt I understood what mystics throughout the ages have claimed
to be the universal truth of existence. I had an academic background in philosophy and
comparative religion, but I realized that mystical teachings had now taken on an added
dimension. My perception seemed to have shifted from a flat, two-dimensional
intellectual understanding of the literature, to a three-dimensional sense of immersion in
the mystical reality.

I discovered within myself a complex inner world, rich in sensibility, symbol, feeling,
and metaphor, not only for accessible recollections of my life and those more deeply
stored in my unconscious, but also for those that transcended my own direct experience.
It was as if the events of my life the lives of my forebears and unknown people from
earlier periods of history and diverse cultures were passing through me. I was both actor
and audience in this drama.

That first experience with psilocybin had an immeasurable effect on my life. It was
radically and totally different, yet during the course of the experience I felt closer to my
true self than I had ever been and more aware of my innermost feelings and thoughts. I
had also been fully and intensely aware of people and things around me and did not lose
the reality perceptions that govern our ordinary world. Rather, ordinary perception was
enriched and enlivened beyond comparison.

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.

Thoughts spun around in my head and everything—objects, sound, events—took on a
special meaning for me. I felt like I was putting the pieces of a puzzle together.
Childhood feelings began to come back, as symbols and bits from past conversations
went through my head. The word religious and other words from other past conversations
came back to me and seemed to take on a new significance. I increasingly began to feel
that I was experiencing something like mystical revelations.

A deep “cosmic confidence” pervaded my being. I felt liberated and wholly secure.
A feeling of great antiquity filled the room.
Afterward, I felt I had gone through a powerful experience.
An increasing feeling of liberation came over me.
As I looked at the rose, it began to glow and suddenly I felt that I understood the rose.
Closing my eyes, an increase in the intensity of the peaceful feeling would occur.
Extraordinary joy overcame me, a strong, a beautiful feeling of eternity and infinity.
Feelings were those of absolute awe, reverence, and sacredness.
He felt “At that instant, I had contacted the universe”.
He felt certain that something extremely important had happened to him.
He felt clean and marvelously refreshed.
He felt during the experience that he “knew” the other as he had never known her before.
He felt that he was achieving both openness and self-awareness.
He felt the evolutionary process in his body.
He felt there was “a classic quality” in some of the shapes which he saw.
He said he never felt better or enjoyed food more.
I began to become aware of a growing euphoria; I was flooded with feelings of goodwill.
I bit into a pear and it felt like a storm inside my mouth.
I could feel objects in the room without touching them.
I could feel the depth of my love for life itself.
I don’t really fear death because I feel like I experienced it.
I felt a deep union with God.
I felt a great heart-rending yearning rising from the depths of my soul.
I felt a great peace.
I felt a new connection with myself and with the world around me.
I felt a strong presence of a good spirit.
I felt a vast peace all through me and a sense of secret knowledge.
I felt a whole new dimension of love and compassion.
I felt a wonderful new optimism and a sense of peace and harmony and letting be.
I felt an amazing array of emotions with an intensity I did not know was possible.
I felt as if I could penetrate directly to everybody’s soul.
I felt as if my soul had just been spread all over the universe.
I felt as if ten tons had fallen from my shoulders.
I felt blessed and exalted.
I felt both serene and exhilarated as never before in my life.
I felt buoyed up to a higher spiritual level by some intense mystical force.
I felt clean and strong and peaceful.
I felt ecstatic, saturated with delight, security, joy and especially a marvelous energy.
I felt energized, pure and glorified.
I felt freer than I had ever felt before.
I felt healed, as though I were suddenly touched by God.
I felt His presence. It was so overwhelming.
I felt how lucky I was to be living surrounded by simplicity and beauty.
I felt I could capture the secret of life.
I felt I was home or in true Reality.
I felt I’d tapped into the rhythm all around us.
I felt in touch with a sense of divinity within.
I felt like a surfer riding with great joy the wave of life.
I felt like I love everybody.
I felt like I might come to heaven if I die…I was there.
I felt like I’d arrived at my true self.
I “felt my body” in a completely new way.
I felt my perceptions were being sorted in terms of new and different categories.
I felt myself lifted up and carried off on a current that held the very essence of the future.
I felt overwhelmingly tuned in to the “true nature of things”.
I felt part of an awesome primal hum.
I felt profound empathy with life, strong ecological awareness.
I felt reborn in a transcendent fountain of All Energy.
I felt so great, so free and relieved.
I felt that I had made a great discovery or as if another personality had been born.
I felt that I had uncovered a truth.
I felt that in a second I had lived through a century.
I felt that my energy was somehow merged with the universe.
I felt the bell of truth ring in me.
I felt the blood moving through my veins.
I felt the great oneness of all things.
I felt the life in the earth.
I felt the tingling in my fingertips (often the first sign of getting off).
I felt the warmth radiate from him.
I felt there was a fundamental validity and reality to the experience.
I felt us uniting at the roots.
I felt very good in the deep and profound knowledge of my eternalness.
I felt whole and full of wonder in nature as I remember feeling as a child.
I had a feeling of colored musical notes floating around.
I had a funny feeling that I wanted to run across the lawn and play.
I had an amazing mixture of feelings.
I had ideas and experienced feelings entirely new to me.
I had never felt as close to nature before.
I had never felt myself to be so liberated.
I had never felt this wonderful before.
I had the feeling that I had reached infinity.
I hadn’t felt so at home in the world since I was a little child.
I heard, saw, felt, smelled and tasted more than ever before.
I kept getting these wonderful feelings, all through my body.
I lay in the grass, felt its wondrous texture.
I looked into endless depth and felt the powerful pull of eternity.
I surrendered to the ancient process and felt the embracing union.
I was enjoying a new feeling of love.
I was so exalted by life that I felt I was not touching the ground.
I was suffused with feelings of excitement and pleasure.
It cleaned me like a bath in my mind. I felt clean and good.
It had to be seen and felt to be believed, to be understood.
It was a great warm and glowing feeling.
My body felt elastic and full of energy.
One could not only see the beauty of the natural landscape but also feel it.
One felt one’s body to be super charged with energy.
Sensations were acute. I heard, saw, felt, smelled and tasted more fully than ever before.
She felt a new emotional freedom.
She felt like she was being carried upward and held by the music.
Suddenly, I felt my entire spirit come up out of the inside of me.
The air was clean and crystalline. He felt cleansed and reborn.
The emphasis was on experience and feeling (not verbal talk).
The feeling I received was so true I couldn’t deny it.
The music became very profound, or my feeling became so.
The substance of a thing was both seen and felt through the visual perception.
There was raw emotion in the room. Suppressed feelings came to the fore.
They felt keener and more refreshed.
They had felt themselves to be in a rare state of accord and understanding.
They said that they felt themselves “reborn” to a new sense of unity and harmony.
Things felt more sacred, more intense and indescribably wonder-filled.
When the experience ended, he felt that some of his conflicts had been resolved.
experienced that expansion of feeling, a new mental amplitude difficult to describe but quite intense
felt that this experience was a stage that everyone would have to go through one way or another in order to reach a higher
had unitive states in which you melted into the cosmos and felt yourself to be part of an interconnected web of consciousness
said to himself, at that second, that for the infinite happiness he had felt that second really might well be worth the whole of life
experienced that expansion of feeling
felt a clear-headed tranquility
felt as a powerful mystical opening and reconnection with the divine
felt cleansed
felt his mind go lifting up through the layers of consciousness
felt immersed in a warm, golden glow and experienced herself as loving and being loved
felt overflowing energy
felt she became electric with fantastic energy going through her
felt with an intensity a thousand times greater than when it happened (a memory)
saw beautiful scenes and colors and felt rich emotions
the full conviction that all I heard and felt was real
the “layerness” I felt in myself
the possibility of freedom I felt
the profound depth of what I felt
this greatness of beauty and goodness that I saw and felt