The Expanding Consciousness

November 5, 1966
Plainfield

The Expanding Consciousness

Reading from the Playboy interview with Dr. Timothy Leary

For almost everyone, the LSD experience is a confrontation with new forms of wisdom and energy that dwarf and humiliate man's mind. This experience of awe and revelation is often described as religious. I consider my work basically religious, because it has as its goal the systematic expansion of consciousness and the discovery of energies within, which men call "divine." From the psychedelic point of view, almost all religions are attempts – sometimes limited temporarily or nationally – to discover the inner potential. Well, LSD is Western yoga. 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."

Reading from William James, Varieties of Religious Experience as found in THE PHILOSOPHY OF WILLIAM JAMES, p. 231

The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely 'understandable' world. Name it the mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you choose. So far as our ideal impulses originate in this region (and most of them do originate in it, for we find them possessing us in a way for which we cannot articulately account), we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible world, for we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong. Yet, the unseen region in question is not merely ideal, for it produces effects in this world. When we commune with it, work is actually done upon our finite personality, for we are turned into new men, and consequences in the way of conduct follow in the natural world upon our regenerative change. But that which produces effects within another reality must be termed a reality itself, so I feel as if we had no philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal....

What the more characteristically divine facts are, apart from the actual inflow of energy in the faith-state and the prayer-state I know not. But the overbelief on which I am ready to make my personal venture is that they exist. The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our life also; and that although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous at certain points, and higher energies filter in.
-----------

There is an astonishing volume of discussion and speculation about the mind-expanding drugs – L.S.D., Psilocybin, peyote and other compounds. Furthermore, experimental services of a new religion founded by an L.S.D. pioneer, Dr. Timothy Leary, have piqued much curiosity and attracted followers.

In attempting to understand the value, reality, and morality of the drug-expanded mind, it is necessary to place LSD enthusiasm in the context of religious mysticism as well as the safety standards of the Food and Drug Administration. Therefore, consider religious mysticism before an attempt is made to evaluate the drug experience and Dr. Leary's religion. Then I would propose to you that the most healthy and productive mind-expanders may be consistently overlooked.

What is Mysticism?

By its nature, mysticism is not communicated by the usual method of conscious word and gesture. Mysticism is ineffable – that is, unspeakable in the sense it cannot be spoken. The prime conviction of the mystic is that there are many other levels of reality than our usual, conscious receptivity of experience through sight, sound, touch.

Mysticism is an immediate experience at a different level than the conscious, reasoning mind. The mystic believes he has experienced such superb and overwhelming real consciousness of God or Ultimate Reality, that no sense-bound explanation can possibly convey the beauty and power of that immediate experience.

Rufus Jones, the sensitive Quaker who died a few years ago, was considered the historian of mysticism. He concedes the difficulty of explaining mysticism to those who may have never known the experience:

"There always be in any audience, where one speaks of the mystic's way of life someone will rise ... and say appealingly, 'Will the speaker kindly tell us in two or three plain words what mysticism really is?' It is always possible to meet that demand by saying that religious mysticism is an immediate, intuitive knowledge of God or one may say it is consciousness of a Beyond or of transcendent Reality or of Divine Presence. One can pack that phrase into his mind and take it home to Aunt Jane or to Grandmother Ann but the phrase will mean much or little or nothing as it wakens or does not waken in consciousness memory of high tide moments when the Spirit flooded in and changed the old levels of life." (RUFUS JONES SPEAKS TO OUR TIME, p. 129)

Ralph Waldo Emerson's concept of the Oversoul was at core a mystical apprehension. The poet, Francis Thompson, seized both the immediate experience and the intellectual paradox of mysticism in the lines,

"O world invisible, I view Thee;
O world intangible, I touch Thee;
O world unknowable, I know Thee;
Inapprehensible, I clutch Thee."

Most mystics have practiced severe disciplines to achieve the immediate experience of marvelous realities beyond the usual conscious state. They have variously fasted, contemplated with an acute sense of concentration, tortured themselves, isolated themselves, gone without sleep and some have used drugs.

One additional insight has been a prime contribution of Dr. Abraham Maslow, expressed in his book, RELIGIOUS VALUES AND PEAK EXPERIENCES: The experience of mysticism is not limited to persons who hold a belief in a particular God or any god, necessarily. The immediate experience of glories and terrors at a level different than the conscious can be known by believer, agnostic, or atheist; furthermore neither time nor culture provide any exceptions to the availability of the experience to those who are attuned to it or are able to tune themselves to it.

LSD – What is it and Why is it News

It is in this context of the mystic experience, which is as ancient as man himself, that we should look at the phenomenon of the L.S.D. experience and Dr. Leary's new L.S.D. religion, the "League of Spiritual Discovery."

LSD is Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, accidentally discovered about twenty-three years ago by a Swiss chemist to have properties that produce alterations in consciousness. When a person takes LSD, expanding experiences of the mind occur beyond the usual state of consciousness. Sometimes the experience is joy, harmony, peace, and unity with the basic reality of all existence. Some persons experience terror, and an ultimate, isolated loneliness that can be shattering. The same limitations apply to the experience stimulated by psychedelic drugs as to an explanation of religious mysticism. Those, like I, who have never used LSD are incapable of any accurate reporting. As a physicist remarked, "Those who have taken a psychedelic drug realize it can't be talked about, and those who haven't naively assume that it can be talked about with the current vocabulary." (p. 15, Introduction, LSD, Solomon & Leary)

The LSD experience is news, nevertheless, under its various names. Hallucinogenic drugs, mind~expanding drugs, mind-manifesting drugs, psychedelic drugs are just a few of many labels being used. In just a few years, over 1000 articles have appeared about it. Dr. Leary asserts that not only have 20% of the young people of the nation used hallucinogenic drugs, but also he predicts that in less than five years from now, between 10 and 30 million persons will have used mind-expanding drugs.

Some artists, composers and creators in various other arts believe that use of LSD, marijuana, or other forms of mind-expanding drugs has increased their creativity, opening the way to new expressions of art, literature, and music. Furthermore, some observers report that among many young people, there is prevailing belief that not only are the drugs no more harmful than liquor or tobacco, but also that the use of "pot", LSD, etc., is the "thing to do." During a recent Senate hearing, "a young lady testified about smoking marijuana, 'Everybody I know uses it except my grandmother!"

What does LSD do? Research people report that awareness is altered by use of the mind-expanders, not only LSD, marijuana, peyote, but also varieties of certain common vegetable and flower seeds. Consciousness is changed. Our usual perspectives of sight in depth, hearting in certain audio ranges, the usual sense of touch are
altered into what is described as "an eerie novel landscape in which every thing seems possible and nothing remains fixed." (LSD)

Dr. Leary explains that every one of our 13 billion brain cells is hooked up to some 25,000 other cells and everything you know comes from a communication exchange at the nerve ending of your cells. At the conscious level, our ego selves and our cultural conditionings limit drastically the potential awarenesses of these uncountable cells and nerves combinations. With LSD, says Leary, "you become aware of processes you were never tuned in to before."

Dr. Leary's Religion

Dr. Leary takes his enthusiasm for the drug-expanded mind a step beyond other scientists who are engaged in research on LSD. Dr. Leary has founded a new religion, L.S.D., "League of Spiritual Discovery." (Some of his critics charge that he is proof that LSD will cause psychic deterioration rather than inaugurating human improvement.)

It should be noted that at the time of announcement, the founder was free on bail on two narcotics charges, one of which has since been dropped. But in the other case, Leary is appealing a Federal sentence of 30 years and $30,000 fine for possession of untaxed marijuana in Texas.

Although the announced program of the League for Spiritual Discovery does not presently provide for the use of LSD in group worship, "he would test in the courts the constitutional right of the members of the sect to use the drugs in their shrines at home." He is arguing for the right to use LSD sacramentally on the grounds that many religions nave used mind-expanding drugs to achieve mental states transcending normal consciousness. This is true, of course. Sects and cults have used such drugs in wide-spread and diverse places and times, as Winston LaBarre pointed out.

The League for Spiritual Discovery has a six-word motto, "turn on, tune in, and drop out." This creed has a sort-of theology which the founder explains, "Turn-on means to go beyond your secular, tribal mind to contact the many levels of divine energy which lie within your consciousness; tune-in means to express and to communicate your new revelations in visible acts of glorification, gratitude and beauty; drop-out means to detach yourself harmoniously, tenderly and gracefully from worldly commitments until your entire life is
dedicated to worship and strength."

Recently Dr. Leary has conducted several celebrations of his psychedelic religion wherein he attempts to recreate through sound, color, movement, something of what a person would experience under LSD. I tried to attend one of these celebrations a few days ago, but discovered that the services are not only sell-outs at $3.00 per person admission charge, but also that Dr. Leary had to move the scheduled service from a 1500 seat theatre to a 500 seat night club because of financial difficulties. This seems highly inconsistent financing to me, but that may just seem so to me because I apprehend only at the dull, conscious level of simple addition, subtraction and multiplication. However, I certainly hope to be able to attend one of the psychedelic celebrations, because if he is moving people to enthusiastic worship, we Unitarians and Universalists may have something to learn.

The Potential and Actual Dangers

The difficult question with which the courts and individuals must wrestle is whether or not the use of LSD, peyote and other chemical or vegetable mind-expanders is dangerous for human use. The question of unlimited freedom on the basis of religious liberty has long since been denied. The multiple marriage system of the Mormons in the last century was claimed by the followers to be a religious right, but the Courts forbade the practice as being against the public interest.

In a time when many may have the opportunity to "take a trip" with LSD, it is of major importance to point out that not only is the use of the mind-expanding drugs illegal except for research under rigidly controlled conditions, but also, all authorities in the field, including Dr. Leary, insist on the necessity of careful screening of all persons who might take the drug for experimental or therapeutic reasons.

There is some evidence to indicate that if a person has a latent psychosis, some terrible inner disturbance which is not manifested in conscious behavior, an LSD "trip" could place such a person in a psychotic state, perhaps for months. There is general agreement on the necessity of experimentation only under conditions which would tend to prevent such occurrence. Obviously then these drug-expanders are highly dangerous when taken for "kicks" in non-scientific situations.

Sociologist Daniel Bell (AMERICAN SCHOLAR, Autumn 66) makes an interesting historical analogy which may have some application: "The Greek idea of Ekstasis (in Latin, "Superstitio"), the leaving of one's body in the mystery rites or ecstasy, was regarded by the Romans as mental alienation and as socially reprehensible."

The Romans had a point. If the LSD trip takes one to the "not self," submerging individuality in an ocean of ultimate, but non-person reality, there is great danger, potentially, at least, of a failure of concern for other human beings. The question can be raised that the mind under the chemically-triggered influence may be escaping from reality rather than uniting with reality. Rufus Jones, the Quaker mystic to whom I referred, recognized this hazard and attempted to deal with it when he wrote, (Ibid, 139), "But the most striking effect of the sense of contact with God is the immensely heightened quality of personality that goes with the experience and the increased effectiveness of the person as an organ of spiritual service."

There is no present evidence that drug-induced mystic experience can uplift personality and sharpen effective service. In addition as the late Professor J.B. Pratt of Williams, one of the most informed scholars of the psychology of religious belief observed long before LSD was making news, "If we could induce some deeply religious mystic to drug himself... we would know if the drug-induced experience is the same as the religious experience induced by more natural disciplines." (ETERNAL VALUES IN RELIGION, p. 97).

Whether or not Leary's religion is a temporary aberration, as so many unusual and bizarre seats have been, or whether it may be a real approach to truth, beauty, and goodness of enduring significance remains to be demonstrated and tested. In the newest issue of the REGISTER LEADER (Nov. 66), Edwin A. Kartman, who intends to study for our ministry, describes his experience while under the influence of LSD. (The experiment was conducted under carefully controlled conditions as part of a legitimate research program.) One sentence in his description is certainly quotable, "To adopt a familiar trinity of Unitarian Universalism, I experienced great beauty, some love, little reliable truth."

We Do Not Use Our Unaided Consciousness Enough

Without taking one ounce of importance from the mystic experience, the unity with reality however achieved, I would like to conclude with the suggestion that quite apart from the levels of experience beyond regular consciousness, we fail to use our unaided consciousness up to its capacity. I like what Dr. S. I. Hayakawa, the pioneer in semantics said about LSD: "perhaps my reason for distrusting dependence on 'mind-expanding' drugs is that most people haven't learned to use the senses they possess. Why disorient your beautiful senses with drugs and poisons before you have half discovered what they can do for you?" (Christian Century, 7/13/66)

As developed in the UNESCO World History, (Vol. 1 p. 1056), expansion of consciousness has been the main theme of history. Nothing has greater significance than the development and exercise of combined powers than intellect and imagination, the two springs of power of human greatness.

To dissociate intellect from imagination is to throw our humanness away and choose to sink in a wild sea of fantasy. To disassociate imagination from intellect to to lose ourselves in an intellectual wasteland – abstract but colorless and sterile.

How do we combine intellect and imagination to achieve fuller use of our powers? We can discover what the senses can do. Years ago I worked on the assembly line of a furniture factory, sanding chairs as they moved by me. Continuous handling of the sandpaper blocks made the skin of my fingers so thin and sensitive that whenever I grasped an object, a whole network of sensitivity registered in my brain.

We do well to sandpaper our emotions to the end that we can identify with the emotions of others. Rejoice with their rejoicing; grieve with their grieving; understand their anguish with uneasy wishes and forbidden notions. After all when one's network is sensitive enough he knows that the morbid fancies and guilt-filled desires of others are much like his own.

In another way we may make fuller use of our conscious senses by recognizing that this experience we call religion can be more than a passing fancy or a trivial way to spend a Sunday hour. Should not religion if it deserves the name have a more total effect on all our patterns of living? How do I conduct myself in the world? Do I continually seek a higher level of adequacy attempting to match the unrelenting demand that the differential be reduced between What I Am and What I Should Be? Between what I ought to do and what I do? To encounter these alternations and wrestle with them, without either unhealthy guilt or fatuous vanity, is to make fuller use of the resources that consciously we possess.

Lastly, let there be a reminder of that which most of you know and which everyone should realize. The hot spark of Unitarianism/Universalism for those who discover it is not [an] intellectual conclusion about the worth of a religion of reason but rather the excitement of the liberation experience. I was a long time coming to this awareness because I was born in the faith and thus never felt the explosion of intellect and emotion when the free faith is discovered and chosen. It is also true whether one has "come-out" of orthodoxy or "come-out" of a churchless secularism that when one permits the experience of liberation to become too routine, too static, the hot spark of the liberation experience cools.

Currently I am aware that philosophers and theologians of all faiths are seeking new shapes for theology, a fresh stance for ritual and a better reason for religious institutions. Although it seems paradoxical, these searching thinkers are looking for theology, ritual, and justification in the secularized movements for a better humanity, particularly civil rights and peace, but not confined to these overarching issues. I am beginning to feel strongly that this search is pursued not only because such movements uphold the human values we profess, but also because shot through these efforts are the emotional sparks – the excitement of liberation experiences.

The great performers in the arts usually create excitement as well as demonstrating accomplished techniques – Picasso, Calder, Olivier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Pablo Casals, Koussevitsky. They create greatly by combining intellect (or skill) and imagination in a merger that represents high fulfillment of conscious living.

Perhaps for many, or all geniuses, mystic experience has been the deep pool for the springs of inspiration. There are unconquered worlds of the mind and its origins offering stirring adventures in a world that can become boring in spite of shiny technologies and abundant comforts. Perhaps one day we shall learn that the mind-expanding compounds are a great blessing for the human family; perhaps we shall discover the drugs to be abominable departures from what is true and good. These possibilities are open to painstaking research and the care-full treatment of human beings.

In the liberal churches, as well as others, conversations continue and procedures evolve which may have consequences of considerable change in organized religious life. In our day, much of the discussion rightfully concerns how our ethical imperatives shall be expressed and take reasonable, effective form. But we shall never do more than partially justify the religious nature of man and his religious society unless we also keep before us the kind of question the late Paul Tillich proposed several years ago:

"The question our century puts before us (is): Is it possible to regain the lost dimension, the encounter with the Holy, the dimension which cuts through the subjectivity and objectivity and goes down to that which is not world but is the mystery of the Ground of Being."

Those who resign from this quest will sustain a great loss.