Let me quote from the book that Ann and I wrote, on this very matter. This was my very first psychedelic experience, the swallowing of a capsule containing four hundred milligrams of mescaline sulfate. This is what con-vinced me that tools do exist.
"The details of that day were hopelessly complex and will remain buried in my notes, but the distillation, the essence of the experience, was this. I saw the world that presented itself in several guises. It had a marvel of color that was, for me, without precedent, for I had never particularly noticed the world of color. The rainbow had always provided me with all the hues I could respond to. Here, suddenly I had hundreds of nuances of color which were new to me, and which I have never, even today, forgotten. The world was also marvelous in its detail. I could see the intimate structure of a bee putting something into a sack on its hind leg to take to its hive and yet I was completely at peace with the bee's closeness to my face. The world was a wonder of interpretive insight. I saw people as caricatures which revealed both their pains and their hopes, and they seemed not to mind my seeing them that way. More than anything else the world amazed me, in that I saw it as I had when I was a child. I had forgotten the beauty and the magic and the knowingness of it and me. I was in familiar territory, a space wherein I had once roamed as an immortal explorer, and I was recalling everything that had been authentically known to me then, and which I had abandoned, then forgotten, with my com' ing of age. Like the touchstone that recalls a dream to sudden presence, this experience reaffirmed a miracle of excitement that I had known in my childhood but had been pressured to forget. The most compelling insight of that day was that this awesome recall had been brought about by a fraction of a gram of a white solid, but that in no way whatsoever could it be argued that these memories had been contained within the white solid. Everything I had recognized came from the depths of my memory and my psyche. I understood that our entire universe is contained in the mind and the spirit. We may choose not to find access to it, we may even deny its existence, but it is indeed there inside us, and there are chemicals that can catalyze its availability."
chemistry of god
But what does all of this, you might ask, have to do with churches and religion? Everything. You may have noticed that 1 have avoided using either of the two words, church or religion. I have the same vague discomfort about churches, and their function, that many people have about drugs. Many view the church as an entertaining experience with music and ritual but providing no profound value. To others, participation in church functions is used as a social vehicle allowing interpersonal activities to be enhanced and opened up. And yet to some, the relationship with a church offers precious insights and can provide the key to magical discoveries and personal spirituality.
It is just this quest, the search for understanding oneself, that defines, in my eyes, a religion. It is an inward quest, one that asks questions and seeks answers. I hope I do not offend too many, when I say that I believe that faith has nothing to do with true religion. The expression of faith is a statement of acceptance, acceptance of a system that is not of your own making. It is the placing of yourself in the hands of someone else, who might be anyone from a minister or rabbi to a Jesus or a Buddha.
As I continue my own personal search for my God, I am becoming increasingly convinced that He lies within me somewhere. Perhaps each person's own God lies within him; this is the meaning of the word entheogen. And if that internal God is the same God for all people, then we are all, in a sense, the same person. Perhaps the role of a sacrament in any religious practice has been, and is, to let a moment's light be shed on that part of reality. There is a remarkable congruity between changes of states of consciousness, religious experiences, mystical experiences, and personal miracles.
what is in the future?
Again, speaking as a chemist and explorer, I remember my earliest introduction to the thrill of the test-tube. I had a Gilbert Chemistry Set in the basement of my home in Berkeley. It had remarkable things in it, like logwood and bicarbonate of soda. I could make things fizzle, and there was even an occasional controlled explosion. I would go down to the University Apparatus Company on McGee street, and they would happily give me new things that had remarkable names, usually for free, and I would avidly read up on their properties from books that I accumulated as fast as I could. That basement was a smelly and magical place for me.
How many people who have enjoyed their lives as creative scientists have had their starts as mavericks in some rich learning environment such as this? I fear that this type of introduction cannot be repeated in our present generation. Today, the presence of a "basement" smelling of strange chemicals would be seen as a drug laboratory, or as an environmental hazard, or as being in some other way socially unacceptable. Today, no one would sell, let alone give, a chemical to a child. Even adults can no longer buy chemicals from the major supply houses; most will only sell to businesses. In several states, one cannot even buy a beaker or glass tubing without a state permit in hand.
And there has been an avalanche of other legal impediments to these forms of free behavior. The laws have robbed us of all the sacred materials that might be used for sacramental purposes. And robbed us of the right to explore new and unknown materials that might have potential sacred properties. The enactment of the analog substances law has made it a crime to explore any substance that might be a catalyst in opening a door to one's own psyche. The chemical induction of a change of one's state of consciousness is now illegal.
I feel saddened that what little work is being done, in our culture at least, is underground. Much of it will never be made public and will remain unavailable. It therefore cannot become part of a research process that I feel is absolutely essential for the development of humanity.
But let me close on a somewhat more upbeat note. A synthesis of religion and pharmacology lies just below the surface of this meeting. This union must be explored, with the acceptance of the personal right to believe as one chooses.
There must come a parallel acknowledgment of the individual's right to explore his own mind as he chooses. This meeting just may lay the groundwork for starting the search for a solution to this dilemma.
For someone who suffered from a K addiction, he seemed to exist with no complexes.
