Psychedelic Transcendence

“Nobody stopped thinking about those psychedelic experiences. Once you’ve been to some of those places, you think, ‘How can I get back there again but make it a little easier on myself?’” – Jerry Garcia

"In the beginning we were creating our music, ourselves, every night . . . starting with a few outlines, maybe a few words for a song. Sometimes we worked out in Venice, looking at the surf. We were together a lot and it was good times for all of us. Acid, sun, friends, the ocean, and poetry and music." – Jim Morrison

"I believe that with the advent of acid, we discovered a new way to think, and it has to do with piecing together new thoughts in your mind. Why is it that people think it's so evil? What is it about it that scares people so deeply, even the guy that invented it, what is it? Because they're afraid that there's more to reality than they have confronted. That there are doors that they're afraid to go in, and they don't want us to go in there either, because if we go in we might learn something that they don't know. And that makes us a little out of their control." – Ken Kesey

"Of greatest significance to me has been the insight that I attained as a fundamental understanding from all of my LSD experiments: what one commonly takes as 'the reality,' including the reality of one's own individual person, by no means signifies something fixed, but rather something that is ambiguous—that there is not only one, but that there are many realities, each comprising also a different consciousness of the ego. One can also arrive at this insight through scientific reflections. The problem of reality is and has been from time immemorial a central concern of philosophy. It is, however, a fundamental distinction, whether one approaches the problem of reality rationally, with the logical methods of philosophy, or if one obtrudes upon this problem emotionally, through an existential experience. The first planned LSD experiment was therefore so deeply moving and alarming, because everyday reality and the ego experiencing it, which I had until then considered to be the only reality, dissolved, and an unfamiliar ego experienced another, unfamiliar reality. The problem concerning the innermost self also appeared, which, itself unmoved, was able to record these external and internal transformations. Reality is inconceivable without an experiencing subject, without an ego. It is the product of the exterior world, of the sender and of a receiver, an ego in whose deepest self the emanations of the exterior world, registered by the antennae of the sense organs, become conscious. If one of the two is lacking, no reality happens, no radio music plays, the picture screen remains blank." – Albert Hofmann


Psychedelic Transcendence

These distorted patterns,
Floating lightly above,
Optic representations of my feelings,
My desires, my phobias and love!
Slowly swirling, slowly curling,
Then swooping down towards my feet,
Fuelling creativity, stimulating thought,
The images swim hastily and then repeat!

And then the sunlight brighter than before,
Causing unusual sly-faced expressions,
And then the birds chirping, the rhythmic chirping,
And every speck of my mind in a state of regression!
These little things, these shapes and figures,
I analyze in ways to me now so strange,
My eyes begin to observe the littlest of aspects,
All my emotions, thoughts and feelings symmetrically arranged!
And then I twist them with the tips of my fingers,
And re-arrange them with the blink of an eye,
And suddenly inside, another rush of hallucinogen,
And then lost in a distant world, where wingless I can fly!

The rhythmic flow of water somewhere nearby,
Towards which I wander, anxious, curious,
And then I see a marvelous fountain,
Surrounded by angelic women with expressions spurious!
And suddenly they swerve all around me,
Stroking my emotions, caressing my cheeks,
And then suddenly they dissolve into colorful waves,
And then my mind feels worked it has for several weeks!

Suddenly I see where really I am,
Then slowly return to the inner dimension,
Again begin the intense thoughts in my mind,
Till over them all I gain a masterful retention!

Every perception of my ears,
Induces a powerful current in me,
And then an image into which I swim,
And suddenly a realization which sets me free!
This new dimension, this incomparable discovery,
A world which offers a sense of transcendence,
A world where realizations made resemble rules being laid,
Then the state of ataraxis, and then emotional ascendance!
As the hours race by the realizations build,
A notion of wisdom captures my existence,
Then slowly it all fades away, dissolving in the wind,
Yet the sky will never seem the same again, after this Psychedelic Transcendence!

Screamjack