"There's more to reality than meets a normal eye." "Behind the curtain of everyday consciousness is hidden another unutterably strange mental universe." "It's the realm of mystical experience." "And those who've been there describe the visit as the most significant event of their lifes." "Until recent times that was a world known only to holy men, to saints, or perhaps to the insane." "Then a generation ago this drug, LSD, escaped from the laboratory." "It was consumed by millions of young people." "To some it's a doorway to the mystical universe, chemical ecstasy, enlightenment in a bottle." "To others it's a dangerous and subversive poison." "The drug challenges our very conception of reality and its turbulent history raises sharp questions about the dividing line between private experience and public policy... – ...people who would benefit most of all are professors  I think it can be extremely good for almost anybody with fixed ideas," "with a great certainty about what's what to take this thing..." "..." "LSD is the most dangerous drug that we have in the world today... – Acid is good for you its goals" "– If you can reach how to righty use this fascinating, beneficent but dangerous drug..." "The remarkable effects of LSD were discovered by accident in Switzerland during the World War II" "Albert Hofmann was then a young chemist working in a laboratories of Sandoz" "– a large pharmaceutical company." "The program I was involved was to study the active principals of medicinal plants." "And one of these medical plants we were studying was ergot." "Ergot is a fungus that grows on corn." "For centuries midwifes have used it to stimulate the uterus ..." "At Sandoz, Hofmann was experimenting with ergot trying to refine its effect." "On the 16th of April 1943 he was in his laboratory preparing a fresh batch of a compound he first synthesized 5 years before." "It was LySergic acid Diethylamide – LSD" "At the end of the synthesis I've got in a very strange psychic situation - a kind of dream-world appeared quite a ... feeling of a oneness with the world – a very strange experience which reminded me to some experience I had in childhood." "Sometimes when I was in nature – in the forest, in the wood that I had some kind of I would say mystical experiences." "The feeling of oneness – to be one with nature." "The feeling to see now the true aspect of nature – the "beautience" and which filled me with happiness..." "He believed that his present dream-like state was in some way connected with the crystals of LSD that Albert Hofmann was purifying that afternoon." "He'd certainly not eaten any but his fingers might possibly have brushed against a few traces of the compound." "If so then LSD was a remarkably potent drug." "He decided to experiment on himself." "Being cautious man and I thought I would start with the smallest-smallest quantity which even it could have any effect" "Namely I started with 0.25 mg and at intention then to increase dosage get then to see that something would happen." "But this very small dose, the first dose of my experiments I've planned, was very very strong." "Feeling increasingly unwell, Hofmann was obliged to return home." "It was war time, he went by bicycle." "As a journey progressed, the external world began to look stranger and stranger." "By the time he reached home, normal reality had disintegrated." "When I entered this room I was really astonished how this room had changed." "The room itself and the objects in this room had quite a different form, different color, different meaning." "And the objects like this chair had...was..." "like if he was a living object it can moving from inside." "That was so unusual that I really got afraid of that I had became insane." "A kind next-door neighbour brought milk with an antidot." "das ich fantastich milch, doktor" "She too was malevolently transformed." "The bizarre and terrifying hallucinations continued all evening." "At times Hofmann felt that he was dead and had arrived in hell." "But at last 6 hours after taking the drug he felt himself returning to the normal world." "Two days later, now fully recovered, Hofmann reported his discovery to the head of laboratory." "One teaspoon of this new drug LSD could render 50000 people temporarily insane." "– I, myself, and also of course medical department here realised immediately that it was very important agent which could be used in psychiatry and in research." "Sandoz distributed LSD to psychiatric hospitals as an experimental drug called "DELYSID"." "No one really knew what medical use LSD might have but this extraordinary substance deserved further study." "Research soon showed that LSD closely resembles powerful natural chemicals in the brain used to exchange messages between nerve cells." "The drug acts like a false signal, disrupting the normal flow of information." "One specific effect is to disable the region of the brain that filters information arriving from the senses." "A flood of signals reaches consciousness and is experienced as an overwhelming ?" "of sensation." "The impact on a mind is profound." "It is if reality was suddenly uncensored, revealing a world exquisitly or horrificly transformed." "All the senses are affected." "Colors particularly are brighter and more vivid." "Sound, too, is strangely transformed." "Sights are smelled, and sounds are seen." "Motion becomes a (weld) of frozen moments." "And often the world is (strooming?" ") with bizarre distortions of reality." "But hallucinations and pretty colors are only part of the story." "LSD also affects the subconscious mind." "In the early 1950s psychiatrists began to investigate this aspect of the drug." "All over the world scientific papers appeared reporting the use of LSD in a treatment of psychiatric pacients." "The leading center was Powick Hospital in England" "Here in a purpose-built facility, known as the LSD Block, hundreds of mentally ill people were treated with LSD." "A consultant psychiatrist to pioneer this work was Ronald Sandison" "For decade he ran the Powick unit." "Today the LSD block has been converted into offices." "Doctor Sandison returns there to recall the past:" "– This is where we worked 30 years ago?" "– Yes it's, I don't quite remember it as being this sort of shape," "I remember something different; an entrance from the corridor." "– ... remember .... patients came there..." "We meet with Dr. John Whitelaw, a colleague from the LSD days." "– This, remember, was a trolley area where the nursing staff used to set up the LSD ampules." "They'd draw the LSD up with a syringe and you know had these (little bits) they poured it into distilled bottles, um, uh, added to it." "They just used to stand where you are and ... – Most people measures to the first effects came all after about 20 minutes and some were in the fist hour." "They would retire to their particular room which have been allocated to them." "And noted from the outside you might think there was nothing going on because LSD doesn't have a mark-effect on behavior, more of an effect on internal mental processes." "– we used to have a little..." "um..." "little bed in the uh... – single bed..." "The point of giving patients LSD was to release suppressed memories and mental conflicts, that psychoanalysts belive are the root cause of mentall illness." "LSD was perhaps a key to unlock the unconscious mind." "– There's a curious kind of artefact in the early stages of LSD that people often have a great tendency to laugh and that seems to be a sort of side effect..." "And..." "I expressed myself when I took LSD." "I wasn't quite sure...you know, it wasn't funny..." "I wasn't laughing at anything but I just had those, those, those things." "So that, sort of, sets a scene for experiencing greater emotional intensity." "But with our patients there was very often a great deal of fear, a great deal of crying, sobbing" "And then of course one would want to move in and try and get the patient to relate that to what they were actually experiencing in themselves." "Given a reputation LSD has today it's natural to wonder whether any patients were harmed by the drug." "– We don't believe that anybody has a long term psychosis." "Although certain cases have been reported over parts of the world." "But we examine our consequences pretty carefully in that respect." "And I don't believe anybody was permanently damaged." "Extraordinary, as it now seems, thousands of people were given LSD in psychiatric hospitals during the 50's." "According to several independent studies there were surprisingly few bad side-effects." "And a second group began to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs around this time." "They were artists and intellectuals." "And the inspiration came from the British writer Aldous Huxley." "Huxley was fascinated by mystical experience and believed that a drug called mescaline might be a means to achieve it." "Mescaline is found in a cactus called peyotle used by the ritual Indians in Mexico." "They regard peyotle as a sacrament." "They consume it in religious ceremonies, receptions." "Subjectively the effects of mescaline are identical to those of LSD." "The drug precipitates a charge an overwhelming journey of the soul." "In 1953 Aldous Huxley sent an invitation to a British psychiatrist who had suggested a link between the effects of mescaline and the symptoms of schizophrenia." "– He'd ask me, ahm, (he got) there for many reasons but one of them was that he hopes I'd give him mescaline." "He'd been (keyed) by his doctor." "(Consider one way) I told I apologize." "Just concerned that he (bought a grey autograph)" "And so I had no way out really." "And so as I... ahm, on last, on second last day of my visit," "I stood staring at the mescaline which has a strange oily swell and I wondered if I would be remembered: this is a man who'd gone to California and driven Aldous Huxley mad." "(and I told him we were really in rather ?" ") reputation." "Thus it came about, one bright May morning," "I swallowed four-tenths of a gram of mescaline dissolved in half a glass of water and sat down to wait for the results." "After a while I became aware of a slow dance of golden lights." "I was looking intently at a small vase of flowers." "My eyes traveled from the rose to the carnation, to the smooth scrolls of sentient amethyst which was the iris." "I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence." "I looked down by chance, and went on passionately staring by choice, at my own crossed legs." "Those folds in the trousers – what a labyrinth of endlessly significant complexity!" "This is how one ought to see, how things really are." "Now someone produced a phonograph and put a recording on the turntable." "These voices—they're a kind of bridge back to the human world" "Through the uneven phrases of the madrigals, the music pursued its course, never sticking to the same key for two bars together." "And suddenly I had an inkling of what it must be like to be mad." "I found myself on the brink of panic, disintegrating under pressure of a reality greater than a mind accustomed to the cosy world of symbols could possibly bear." "None too soon I began to return to that reassuring but profoundly unsatisfactory state known as "being in one's right mind"." "The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out." "The world he saw that May morning in 1953 profoundly impressed Huxley." "A name was required for a substance that could provoke such revelatory experience." "Aldous suggested "phanerothyme"." "Phanero and "to reveal" and Thymos – the "soul"." "And he then wrote such a rhyme:" "To make this mundane world sublime Take half a gram of phanerothyme." "And I thought this is wonderful word but rather too difficult for (most) people ?" "Huxley was." "I wrote back to him, having looked up in a dictionary the word "psyche" of course was available and so was "deloun" – "to reveal" – and about half a dozen others." "But I fixed on psychedelic." "And wrote back:" "To fathom hell or soar angelic You'll need a pinch of psychedelic." "– In your book about mescaline recently you talked of a valuable state of heightened perception, being induced by... by drugs, by proper drugs." "Do you think imagination of writers would benefit by that?" "– Well I think the people who would benefit most of all are professors." "And this I think it would be extremely good for almost anybody with fixed ideas, with a great certainty about what's what to take this thing and to realize that the world he's constructed is by no means The Only World." "That there are these extraordinary other types of Universe which we may inhabit, and which... we should be very grateful for inhabiting I think." "Not everyone shared Huxley's enthusiasm." "A British writer Arthur Koestler responded in an essay with a parable." "He likened consumers of psychedelic drugs with those who drive to the top of a mountain instead of climbing it step by step." "The view, he concluded, may be identical but the vision of the climber is different from that of the motorist." "Such criticisms, however, only encouraged interest in Huxley's account of his mescaline experiments." "And others began to follow in his footsteps." "Well then, here I'm in my home, and before I take the drug doctor (Rosman Scott) want to ask 68 dollar questions," "I have no idea what they are, to put to me." "– All right Christopher?" "– Carry on." "– Could you tell me the date today it is?" "– The date?" "– Yes." "– It was Friday, the..." "2nd of December." "Right?" "In 1955 Christopher Mayhew, M.P. and TV presenter took mescaline under the supervision of Humphry Osmond." "BBC told the experiment this is the first time to confirm" "– I want you to repeat this sentence after me." "Now listen carefully:" ""To be rich and prosperous, a nation must have a safe secure supply of wood"" "After initial psychological tests the experiment began at noon." "– shall we go right ahead then?" "– oh I'll take it – yes, (she is)." "Well, I'm feeling (perfectly fit) at the moment," "(the sane) is (I've ram) and I'll take the drug now." "An hour and a half later there were definite effects." "– Could you perhaps tell us any particular color which you think...?" "– Yes." "As is/this color just behind camera ." "This is color... damn, I want you to have it ?" "on colors my vocabulary's bad." "– Are you talking about the reddish curtain behind ... – Yes, and the effect it has the most (strongly) gradations of (my own)." "And lights..." "Sorry, this just my ... vocabulary ?" "I can't describe it." "– Would it surprise you if I said it looks to me around damage red curtain which has... – Now who would you feel in the situation was..." "whose judgment would you feel sounder?" "– Ahm, now you asking me..." "this is the 64-dollar question." "Whether I'm seeing the curtain more nearly as it is or whether" "I'm intoxicated and seeing pink elephants" "– Which is of course, ?" "(the thing that pass next to about it)" "Well, like I say this is still the 64-dollar question." "– I'm looking very hard now." "– The only camera." "Today, elevated to the House of Lords, Christopher Mayhew watches the film with Humphry Osmond." "And I see that... the sentence I..." "meant to say, can't be said." "I think this is most interesting that I've ever done." "And I say that after 30 years (emits) a whole ghastly business, you know, is being depretiated, when drugs are being abused, when this is our major social problem." "I mean I do know all that, and I hope and pray it never helped anybody to experiment with drugs." "Nevertheless, the actual experience seems to me to being profoundly interesting and thought provoking." "The time is now just on fourteen hundred." "And in the last half hour or so Christopher has been preoccupied to a very great extend with time." "We had numerous discussions on this." "In the interval he tried to instruct me as to how to work his recording machine." "And unfortunately we were quite unable to work it." "He has also been listening to a certain amount of music." "Now I'm going to ask you once more to go with the ad hoc sentence as I did and also to take away seven from a hundred." "Now Christopher would you be prepared to do that for me please?" "– Well, you've got me." "As what I would call my period of time when I'm capable to do it." "– All right." "Now repeat the sentence:" ""to be reach and prosperous, a nation must have a safe secure supply of wood"" ""to be reach and prosperous, a nation must have a safe secure supply of wood"" "I've got thee too." "– Well done." "Now would you like to take away seven from a hundred again?" "– A 93, 86, 79, 72, 66, sixty-72 whatever it is 65, hm, 58, 51, hm forty-..." "I can see still... 44, 37, 30, 23, 23, now off again I'm... in my period of time I'm off again for a long period I've gone away at all." "Perhaps half a dozen times during the experiment" "I would be withdrawn from my surroundings and from myself." "And having experience, state of euphoria, for a period of time that didn't end for me didn't last for minutes or hours, but for months." "I do to show you that my point of view between the time as I perhaps begin this sentence and time that I end it." "I actually gone there's a long time something and..." "The psychiatrists afterwards and common sense they all say:" "this is nonsense; you couldn't have had these experiences, because there was no time as the film shows there is no time for you to have them." "And the psychiatrists would speak and I accept this, that I was simply showing the symptoms what they call "the disintegration of the ego"" "I accept that too." "At the same time they didn't have the experience." "And, when I look back even now after 30 years, when I remember that after experiment I remembered that afternoon... not as so many minutes spent in my drawing room interrupted by these strange excursions in time," "but as years and years of heavenly bliss interrupted by short periods in my drawing room." "When I recall it and when I recall various other symptoms," "I think the simplest explanation is that I had these experiences, that they were real, and that they took place outside time." "– I am moving at this moment from one time into another time and back again." "And I'm..." "I'm not so conscious I feel moving myself in space, but I'm extremely conscious... of moving in time." "All things have no succession." "And that there be no absolute time, no absolute space." "It is simply what we impose on the outside world." "The BBC was worried." "Could the film be broadcast?" "Mayhew himself was all in favor." "But viewing the footage it was hard to judge the true significance of this experience." "Expert advise (was called for it) and a special committee of psychiatrists, philosophers and theologians have assembled." "(Amid those) shown the film was Cannon Basset from Cambridge University." "From a religious standpoint he felt Mayhew's mystical adventure had been obtained on the cheap." "The others agreed." "And the committee had no hesitation in reaching a verdict." "When asked by the BBC whether or not Mayhew's experience was valid." "The film was never shown." "I think that the experience was valid." "I think, for the reasons I've given that you can dismiss it as a dream-like hallucination, which lasted a fraction of a second, owed to the disintegration of my ego and so on." "Or you can say with me: it was a real experience which happened outside time." "And that is my view." "And that is... and for various, sort of associated, symptoms" "I would say that, on that occasion, by shortcut," "I did visit the world known to mystics and some mentally sick people." "And, therefore, to that extend, I'd say it is valid." "Huxley, too, was attacked by theologians." "The Roman Catholic scholar Arsey Zeina wrote an article "Dismissing the doors of perception"." "He argued that wide differences in people's response (to) the drug cast doubt to an individual claims to enlightenment." "So that he could write with authority, Zeina arranged to take a dose of mescaline himself." "Overcome by hysterical laughter he found the experience to be spiritually empty." "And he concluded that Huxley's claims had no more credibility than the delusions of a lunatic." "Zeina maintained that the visions of the great Christian mystics were something entirely different." "Those who believe in a value of psychedelic drugs see no clear distinction." "I believe that the experiences one be, one has under LSD are very similar, even identical with mystical experiences." "It has been discussion along with scientists." "But if you compare the reports of mystics, of the saints, the text reports, with reports on people who had mystical experience on the LSD, you cannot find any difference." "Can the mistical experience of saints really be duplicated by chemical means?" "30 years after Arsey Zeina raised the question, his successers of the University of Oxford are still debating it." "One of them is Richard Swinburne of XXX college who is ?" "professor of philosophy of the Christian Religion:" "– Taking drugs to get into the presence of God is (bargaining) into the presence of God and if you just go and have an experience this is you're simply not equiped to recognize the experience for what it isn't to react to it in the right way" "so...for that reason, no, I wouldn't take drugs there so much to religion indeed almost everything more to religion than having experience." "It's dedication to a way of life which indeed can be very much reinforced by experience but experience isn't the point of it." "Spiritual self-transcendence was hardly the ambition of another group interested in LSD and Mescaline during the 1950s." "The american government were attracted to hallucinogenic drugs for less savory purposes." "Former intelligence officer and also John Marks has uncovered the CIA's secret research of LSD:" "– In an early 1950s the CIA and american military intelligence were funding the lion's share of the research on LSD..." "You can give the intelligence agencies an awful lot of credit for starting a field of experimentation into these sorts of drugs." "Through the Freedom of Information Act" "Marks has obtained copies of classified CIA documents that reveal why the agency was interested in LSD." "The essence of the intellegence say "Business is control"" "this was an instrument or potential instrument for breaching people's control, for making them commit acts against their will..." "In 1963 the CIA produced an internal report so sensitive, only one copy was made." "It concerned MKULTRA – the project that involved the testing of LSD on unwitting american citizens throughout the 1950s." "They wanted to know how a diplomate might react if given LSD at a party, how foreign leader might react if given LSD just before he was to get up and give a speech, how it might be used in interrogation of prisoners" "or something of that sort." "Given the fact that the CIA felt it had to do that kind of testing they had to find unwitting test participats, who, by definition, couldn't be told they were being given the drug." "And so what the CIA did is it looked for people who were ..." "let's say on whose lifes they put less value than on a life of an american scientist or businessman or someone of that sort." "The CIA turned to people like drug addicts, prostitutes, prisoners, inmates in mental hospitals and used them as test subjects..." "People who did not know what happened they believed that they became insane and the all kind of accidents happened following these kind of ingestions." "That was really crime to keep people without a knowledge with agents is a crime" "The american military was also experimenting with LSD as a potential weapon." "Here is a group of normal soldiers responding correctly to a series of routine (real) commands ." "After receiving a small dose of LSD they are confused and (undisciplined)." "The idea was to spray the drug on enemy troops." "But those, however, proved rather difficult to control." "And there was a different kind of fallout from these experiments." "One that took the Army and the CIA entirely by surprise." "Civilians (who were) exposed to LSD began to do strange things." "I believe with the advent of acid we've discovered a new way to think." "And it had to do with piecing together new thoughts in your mind, that produced people like Bob Dilan and John Lennon and William S.Burroughs." "They were using new images together in a way that (jarred) the mind and produced images that were latent in our consciousness but were not been brought about by reading [magazines like] Vanity Fair or Woman's Home Companion." "In 1960 CIA funded researches of the Menlo Park hospital in California were paying students 40$ a day to take LSD" "One volunteer was Ken Kesey." "Psychedelic ?" ", author of "One flew over the cuckoo's nest"" "And today a farmer in Oregon." "You were in a little room pretty much by yourself" "There was a window with a wire grating on it and through that window you could look out and see a lot of people out there who undestood a whole lot more what you're going through than these doctors" "And my metaphor for the thing was it's as though these people had discovered a room" "And they thought there was something in that room of value to them but they didn't wanna go in there, so they hired students to go in there and after enough of those students came out with" ""Wow..." "look on your eye!" - they said" ""Close up that room and don't let anybody else go back in that room"" "And once when I founded my key fitted doctor's office and decided that this was too important a business to live in the hands of government." "Odd, by the power of the drug, Kesey began to distribute it to his friends." "Accross America LSD was leaking out of the laboratory." "I've always thought that this is one of those things that proves that God has a sense of humor." "That if Gabriel come up and says" ""heyaa, Chief, the americans are really messed up down there we gonna have to do something strait in amount to gotta knows diet karma going on"" "and then God says well... send them some of that stuff you've been working on... that acid stuff." "And have the CIA distribute it"" "You can hear the celestial laughter when you realize it was the CIA that realy turned-on America" "In the early 1960s 20 years after Albert Hofmann's bicycle done steadily home from the laboratory his discovery was (poised) to kindle a revolution among the young of the west." "For the father of LSD it was an alarming prospect." "I knew from the use of this kinds of substances in old cultures the Indians:" "there's a taboo on these substances." "They are only used in religious...setting...and in the hands of the Shaman, not in the public." "And the Shaman in our society is a psychiatrist and they should remain in the hands of the Shaman." "And therefore I was really became immediately" "I become sceptical and I've just said that things would... could happen and did happened indeed by the unwise and uncontrolled use of this substance." "Next week in the second of these two programs every man follows the bizarre and sometimes tragic events that LSD exploded down to unsuspecting world..." "LSD is one of the strangest and most controversial substances known to science." "A dose smaller than a grain of salt precipitates a hazardous mental journey into a universe of hallucination, intense emotion and, some believe, mystical revelation." "These remarkable effects were discovered by the Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman in 1943." "During the 50's the LSD was used widely for research in psychiatric hospitals." "Than in the early 1960's LSD leaked out of the laboratory." "With bizarre and unforeseen consequences the drug was consumed by a generation of young people seeking spiritual transcendence and an escape from the conventional world." "Introducing the American way of life on the threshold of the golden 60's:" "color, style, comfort, utility and convenience." "Recreation, fun – these are the ultimate desires of today, tomorrow and the years ahead of these" "Post-war economic growth and material prosperity in the West did not satisfy the desires of everybody." "Many young people lacking secure belief but living secure lives felt a spiritual dimension was lacking." "For them this bus came to symbolize psychedelic liberation." "LSD was a ticket to ride." "I believe with the advent of acid we discovered a new way to think." "And it had to do with piecing together new thoughts in your mind that produced people like Bob Dylan and John Lennon and William S. Barrows." "They were using new images together in a way that jarred the mind and produced images that were latent in our consciousness but were not being brought about by reading Vanity Fair or Woman's Home Companion" "Author and "grand prankster" Ken Kesey was a leading voice in the 60's chorus extolling the virtues of LSD." "With money from his first novel "One flew over the cuckoos nest"" "Kesey and his friends bought a second-hand school-bus painted it bright colors and loaded with LSD set off across America." "On a journey across the continent Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters sensed a nation on the edge of a revolution." "To Kesey the strange discordant effects of LSD seemed perfectly in tune with a times." "I think that something happened in the early 60's that LSD was related to, music was related to." "There was new movement in cinema and in stage." "And maybe... that once a century something goes off like a century flower." "LSD was just perhaps the pollenin that fell off of it but it didn't make it happen it was part of it." "If the value of the LSD is that it expresses the... and brings ?" "what was going on in a 60's than I think that's very strong argument against LSD." "Because what was going on in a 60's is precisely something that I think we now have to recover from." "At a time when many of his fellow students were embracing the psychedelic ideology" "Roger Scruton, today professor of philosophy in a college, viewed it all with deep suspicion." "Very difficult to summarize the 60's world, you will..." "I think one could say very briefly ?" "that it was the attempt to have rights without duties, claims without responsibilities and pleasure without cost." "And the real cost of having any peaceful enjoyment of the world is that one maintains institutions from makes a sacrifice in order to preserve one's inheritance." "This was something that I think the people of the 60's, the young people of the 60's were very reluctant to do." "And LSD ministered to that reluctance, it told them that even the most sublime experiences those of religion much people have thought in the past came through considerable sacrifice and worship and surrender." "That experience too could be had on the cheap." "Millbrook, NY." "Here in 1963 was established a group who saw LSD as a sacrament of a new religion to change the world." "They were lead by Timothy Leary, the former Harvard psychology professor, fired for giving LSD to his students." "Our aim, like the aims of any religious group, just beginning, is to transform American society." "I'm sure many of you viewers know," "America today is an insane asylum." "The american people are completely hung up on material acquisition, on power, on war making, its an insane asylum over here." "And it's our goal to lift the spiritual level of the American people." "We gonna try to bring about a religious renaissance and a spiritual revolution." "Leary's East-Coast Millbrook community had a reverential attitude to LSD that contrasted sharply with the merry pranksters' anarchic West-Coast style." "One day the two groups met." "We came through riotous and noisy, they are a more sedate group, but there was no friction, between us in fact." "I think they even gave us piece of, Baba Ramdas famous suit did you ever heard of that story?" "He was bringing across a pint of LSD in a suitcase, and it got broken in the airport, and suit soaked it up, so they chopped the suit, and put it in a deep freeze, and for some years" "whenever they wanted to get high they would cut off a little piece of the suit to eat." "The only legitimate source of LSD was a Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz" "In 1963 Leary wrote to the firm, placing an order for a hundred grams of the drug." "Enough doses for 2 million people." "The letter was addressed to Albert Hoffman who'd stumble upon the strange effect of LSD in 1943" "Already alarmed by non-medical abuse of his discovery" "Hoffman advised Sandoz against supplying Leary." "I became aware that LSD put became a problem from France and to US." "And they wrote me that it had been used on the street and that had already made lot of propaganda for use outside of the medical profession." "And I immediately realized that it could be dangerous because the substance which has such deep effect must be used carefully." "You're introduced to LSD..." "Unless you've taken some other drug, like for instance like marijuana or something well you know it's an altogether new thing!" "and you actually can have, um, a religious experience, and it can be even more important than reading the bible six times, or becoming pope or something like that, you know" "At Millbrook children as young as nine were given LSD." "The drug was freely available and everyone joined in its ritualized consumption." "LSD was not illegal." "Leary denied there were dangers and began of propaganda offensive." "The kids who take LSD aren't gonna fight your wars... middle class, middle age, whiskey drinking generals." "They not going to join your corporations... middle class, middle age, whiskey drinking corporation presidents." "Enormous crowds come out to hear me lecture." "Whenever I go to a college I always sold out." "It's not because I'm that clever it because they gave me the good lines in the show turn on, tune in, drop out." "Such an uncompromisingly antisocial attitude was not always characteristic of those interested in the spiritual potential of LSD." "In the early 60's a group of psychologists and theologians in Boston conducted a remarkable and serious-minded investigation into the religious implications of psychedelic drugs." "Hidden in the library of the Harvard Divinity School and kept for 2 decades under lock and key here is a doctoral thesis describing a research project unthinkable today: an experiment to discover the effect of psychedelic drugs on the religious experience of student priests." "The project was the brain child of the late Walter Pahnke, a Harvard theological scholar also qualified as a medical doctor." "The experiment took place in the Marsh Chapel of Boston University on Good Friday 1962." "Today two of the participants return there for the first time." "I must have been sitting down here." "It was a kind of throne" "Randal Laakko was one of twenty students studying for holy orders who volunteered." "Well we gathered that morning all probably an hour before actual service began upstairs." "And we were in groups of four..." "there were five groups of four twenty people who were subjects." "And we were all handed an envelope that we were asked to open and to consume the capsule that was inside." "Of course none of us knew who had the drug and who had the placebo." "And I don't know how many minutes transpired before we all began," "I believe, feeling a reaction the placebo in fact was a form of stimulant that would create a sensation." "I think at that point I was very much aware that something very unusual is beginning to happen to me." "A sound recording was made of the service which by good fortune still exists today." "He came to me with his eyes and asked for water." "But his eyes were ageless and deep as well-shafts." "They unroofed my brain with their profound grazing." "Robert Kirven also received the psychedelic drug." "For him the experience was initially unpleasant." " I tried hard to concentrate and remember were I was." "Because ?" "that." "At the moment I couldn't picture my family or what I did outside this place." "And then as I concentrated it occurred to me that this was supposed to be an experiment." "I remembered that it was to be an experiment and/in mind expansion." "Then I kind of went back and thought ok lets see what expands." "And he said:" "Go about the world." "Tell every one that you meet Man on The Cross." "Tell everybody..." "There was a poem which I can't recall in detail but it had to do with hearing a cry and finding a man on a cross and not being able to help him down." "But receiving instructions to going to all the world and tell everyone you meet:" "there is a man on a cross." "And I felt that I had to get out of there and go find somebody and tell him:" "there is a man on a cross." "But there were people in appeal and I felt I couldn't get out and that's when" "I felt a failure as though I wasn't doing what I had to do" "To determine if the volunteers' experiences were spiritually valid, Walter Pahnke submitted their written accounts to a panel of theologians." "The experts score the report for authenticity and after careful statistical analysis Panky concluded that the drug had induced mystical states indistinguishable from traditional religious visions." "Many of the participants themselves agreed, but could they be certain their experiences were genuine?" "I don't know if I can be sure, other than to know that it something that happened to me." "And, I realize that's a very subjective appraisal of that, but" "I don't know what else I can go with." "I know that was deeply meaningful and moving to my life." "Impressive the psychedelic drugs may seem to individual there are nonetheless many reasons for questioning the experience." "Whatever the actual intensity of the experience, to call it religious is not... has nothing to do with how intense it is..." "is to interpret it ?" "a meaning." "And when you administer to yourself a drug which you know is affecting you by giving... producing a chemical transformation in the brain." "And you are deliver the engineering that." "It's strait difficult sincerely to interpret this is a visitation of the divine spirit or is a revelation of a transcendental world." "It simply is an act of self deception to put that kind of religious interpretation on out of thought." "But as the 60's progressed mind expansion became a craze." "In Switzerland the directors of Sandoz began to hear of the wide spread and uncontrolled abuse of their product." "Aurelia Chialetty was responsible for the production and distribution of LSD." "Like kind of an explosion." "LSD suddenly was on the street and was manufactured by a lot of people." "Because immediately when it had high market value." "I remember my first experience in NY in Greenwich Village where I was handed over, aaa, so called cube – a sugar cube with a few drops of an LSD solution on it." "It was handled for 5–6 dollars a piece, late perhaps for 10 dollars." "Well that was a value that 1 gram of LSD suddenly had a value of few hundred thousand of of dollars." "And this element which changed dramatically the whole situation was for the firm the moment to say:" "now we have to stop it." "Sandoz withdrew the LSD from sale but it was already too late." "Black-market suppliers of the drug were everywhere including Britain." "If you haven't heard of LSD – you will." "It's a safe bet that this drug will make headlines in this country as it has for some years in America." "– How do you mean, perception?" "– Well you had it drunk." "– Has it done anything to you yet?" "– Oh, yeas, yes, yes, it's affecting me" "– In what way?" "– Colors have become quite a lot brighter." "effect in the sky." "– What do you mean by that?" "– Hm, well ?" "..." "Excuse me.... pink ...." "The young of the educated middle classes particularly were attracted by the instant liberation LSD seemed to offer." "Among them – Rosy Boycott, co-founder of the feminist magazine "Spare Rib"." "Incredible looking back to think how people... just took it like candy." "And in fact we were told it was candy, it had names that were like candy." "You know – sunshine and yellow, orange and everything that sounded like children's sweets." "And you tended to do it a bit I mean it became... lots of people who would say do it every Saturday night – it became part of their life." "They might go to a job in the city during the rest of the week in ?" "which may call very normal, what we would call then a strait way of life." "And at weekend they would metaphorically let the head on." "– Now, is so far are these visual things the only effects you find?" "– No" "– What are the other effects?" "It's ... it's ..." "It's round..." "It's was shape..." "Everything is colored, everything, you know is," "Ah it must be to do an orange..." "Not only orange..." "Oh..." "I haven't seen color." "I live in a monochromatic world..." "I can't use color..." "I can do everything..." "The romantic view of psychedelic drugs as the road to personal and social liberation was not shared by all." "Politically inclined members of the counter-culture soon discovered contradictions." "Certainly in my case the whole idea of having anything to do with the drug culture ran up against a very big brick wall was when I started to get involved in feminism... and, as I say, it didn't work at all." "The LSD was for the thinkers and it wasn't for the doers." "And it was a real unreality in the drug culture, which was logically made up by the fact that it was totally easy to get buy with very little money." "That you could be sort of hovering on the edge of a quite a twilight world in that you went up against any such a breach of commas..." "Any money definitely no never paying taxes or bothering by any things like that which were The Real World." "That was the real strait world which you wanted to overthrow." "And yet of course you were living on it." "And that was the ultimate irony that it was that world." "And that huge consumer boom that we were all experiencing in America and in England." "That we're supporting that dream, say, lived in a place where you thought" ""I'm really changing the world" but in fact you were escaping it." "LSD is a....far worse even than err.. heroine, I think because of its action on certain people again." "And now we've had experience where people who have taken LSD have gone in through plate-glass windows." "We have people who were inside, with LSD coming out through plate-glass windows." "So I don't know what direction these people are moving in." "By 1967 a strong public reaction against LSD had set in." "The medias and the government were busy pointing out the dangers." "Any stress in this rising face will trip this man into a bad trip." "He will have the same effect as the man who was given a material and doesn't know he's getting it." "He will be terrified." "He's not seeing pretty visions he's seeing monsters he's loosing his mind and he feels it going." "He is intensely, extremely, terribly uncomfortable." "If he is alone, if it's possible for him, there's only one escape from this discomfort a suicide...this man will kill himself." "Exaduration was commonplace as public debates about the dangers and value of LSD intensified." "Scores of books and hundreds of scientific articles appeared." "And for a while psychedelic drugs became a "cause celebre"" "At the center of the storm was a distinguished psychiatrist Sidney Cohen" "One of the US government's chief advisors on psychedelic drugs." "Well, LSD can do many adverse things the they are done almost never under control in supervised conditions, they happen when people take it casually and randomly." "And when this happens this is news." "And news is what has given LSD its current reputation" "Particular concern was caused by a widely publicized but subsequently descredited report that LSD might damage chromosomes." "Lurid parrallels were drawn with ?" "celidimite Other dangers however were real enough 20 years on we may be able to assess the true risks of LSD." "A coordinator of the government funded "Standing Commitee On Drug Abuse"" "is David Terner." "There's no no doubt that there are exadurations about LSD." "But there are very real risks which are increased when you got a "LYSID" manufacture." "The risks are around people having bad trips that's they experience very unpleasant and very intense feelings." "That they have accidents because they believe they can do things which they really can't do." "The happening cases people trying to fly out of windows" "The happening instances of people thinking they could cross the road or cross a railway track because they didn't believe that what was coming towards them was a car or a train and in those circumstances that's people risk damaging themselves" "and damaging other people." "There are also risks for some people because use of LSD can actually precipitate a mental breakdown wich otherwise would not ?" "And finally when you take LSD it is a drug more than any other that I know which is dependent upon your own expectations of it and the setting that you're in when you take it" "By 1968th a million of americans were estimated to have tried LSD." "Many found its mental effects overwhelming." "The Bad Trip – an unpredictable unpleasant reaction to LSD is a horrifying vortex of panic and fear that can cause long term psychological damage" "1 in 4 who tried LSD without supervision encountered its darker side." "Ronald Baldoon, an actor, was one of them." "Attracted by descriptions of visual distortion and mystical revelation he took a large dose of LSD with a friend initially the experience was as advertised..." "It was a beautiful day, one of those rare days we happen to be in ?" "of all places which, if anybody knows, is full of ammonites and ancient fossils." "now became a life which it hadn't been for millions of years and you could look at any perspective of anything." "You could do closeup or you could look wide-angled." "And sure now you would see something different you haven't seen before - a new green, a new blue, a new sun light, a new shape, it was all there and were possible" "But then things went wrong." "A normally manageable event assumed terrifying proportions under the influence of the drug." "We went back to our campsite and we were greeted by this irate woman whose farm it was who we somehow camped wrongly in her field and it turned out the customs." "And she called me and then she started to shout at me and press me down." "I tried to be apologetic perhaps I've been even silly but she hated me her eyes pass through me, she thought I was a slob, she thought, possibly, that I was the real worst type of punk as" "that could ever come down from London and camp in her feild." "She hated me and it really affected me bad." "And I went back to where our camp was and we tried to cook some bacon on our completely used-up calogas" "And there to my horror were ten or twelve slices of dead pig." "I've never seen it like this before but there it was sliced up dead ?" "pig" "And I was horrified and shocked and And we got in a car and we tried back to London" "And all the way back I was hunted by green monsters celtic monsters, cartoon kind of monsters not real monsters." "Who were in my head but out of control and laughing at me pointing their faces at me and going haaa-haaa-haaa-haaaa we've got you." "It put me off forever." "I had this negative horrible feeling that behind everything there was something horrible..." "I didn't want that experience ever again." "As the 60s were on, more and more reports of people damaged by LSD reached Albert Hofmann in Switzerland." "The substance that he once hoped might unlock the secrets of the mind had become a monster." "I did not feel me guilty because it is not LSD which is... bad it's just its use its misuse and the wrong use which is bad and which caused all these problems." "And therefore people, many people told me - "Are you not feel errr... feeling guilty about whole story which you have... created here?" "And I said no, it's really not... and this must theee..." "in the ray... right way use the proper the LSD not dangerous compound..." "It is very very dangerous if used uncautiously and without respecting its very very deep influence on the psyche even on consciousness" "But LSD was being used incautiously by very many people." "Legislation became inevitable." "Here I'll propose a drug control away to provide stricter penalties for those who traffic an LSD and other dangerous drugs with our people" "In 1968 president Johnson took stern measures." "The time has come to stop the sale of slavery to the young!" "Laws were passed in America and around the world banning LSD and determing it to have no medical value." "There's 27000 people a year killed here in alcohol-related deaths." "You don't see any big thing about alcohol being evil." "There's ... how many people smoking and dying of it." "How many of all of these and yet nobody's been killed." "Why is it that people think it's so evil, what is it about it that is..." "scares people so deeply" "Even the goddamn ....." "what is it ?" "Because they are afraid that there is more to reality than they have confronted." "That there are doors that they are 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." "Did the establishment proscribe LSD because it revealed to the young a truth better concealed" "Lord William Deeds former M.P. – an editor of the Daily Telegraph - sat on the committee that advised the British government to ban LSD" "He denies metaphysical paranoia was involved." "We are talking on the 60s, when all this things were" "?" "sought and thought and shared." "And exact the same arguments were ?" "on the habbit?" "of cannabis." "in the sence the illi.... it was part of an attack on youth culture." "That the middle-aged people drank and smoked and young people of a ?" "use LSD and other.... all the different ?" "the dangers to society that their subjects respectively pose." "And in our mind then and in my mind now LSD posed an element of risk which exceeded any other the indulgences which civilizations were taking on board." "It was never attack on young people, it was never a political measure - it was ?" "on medical advice." "As well as the medical dangers the committee in their report considered and then dismissed the possible spiritual benefits of LSD" "I find it very hard to accept, that LSD offers what we could seriously call a religious or spiritual experience." "It can offer a transcendental experience, it can take you outside the sphere which you normally can think in, or you live in." "But to relate that directly to religious belief, to religious revelation, if you like, should be taken with a pinch of salt." "Few deny the reality of the psychedelic vision but many doubt its worth." "Is there anything of value to be found in a hallucinatory irrational realm of LSD intoxication ?" "The common way we think about the nature of human mind is that it is either sane or insane." "LSD hints to us that there is a... an area of the mind which could be called "unsane" – beyond sanity, and yet not insane." "Think of a circle with a fine split in it at one end is insanity, you go around the circle to sanity, and on the other end of the circle close to insanity but not insanity is "unsanity"." "This is perhaps where all the superlative effects of humanity come from." "Not only of art but of science." "And it may be that we are... we could approach it by a thoughtful wise study of LSD." "Today the suggestion that there may be a good side to LSD could hardly be less fashionable." "The drug has an appalling public reputation." "Epitomized by this image of a naked girl deranged by LSD, which opened the recent TV dramatization of the operation "Juli" police rades." "The romantic appeal drugs had in Aquarian age has gone." "It's been replaced by sorted association with criminal exploitation and wasted lifes." "Some blame LSD for glamorising drug taking paving the way for today's more deadly addictions." "Heroine..." "I don't know what all this fuss is about." "I can handle it." "ok, so I do heroine a bit now." "I can control it" "I could stop if I wanted too." "This not how I become an addict I just do heroine slight problem look..." "I've this thing under control... just gonna touch a flinger-time?" "Everyone thinks "I can control heroine"" "until it starts to control them." "I can give up tomorrow, good night." "We could make a distinction between heroine, which is drug which creates physical dependence, and LSD, which is drug which has no physical dependence." "And I don't believe you can make link between the use of LSD in 1960th and 1970th with the use of heroine and other drugs like that in the 1980th." "In the 1960th and 70th people were using drugs like LSD believing that it was a means of gaining greater self-awareness, greater insight into their own being." "In the 1980th people are using drugs like LSD as means of escaping reality, of avoiding the unpleasantness of life." "Of couse, in a sense, it doesn't really matter what reasons people have for using it." "What does matter, is that LSD is an extraordinaly powerful drug." "Whose effect we can't really control and we can't control when we take it" "It creates so many risks for both those who use it and for society generaly that I believe we've gotten no choice, but to retain legal controls on its use." "Aldous Huksley, who's early experiments with mescaline influenced popular interest in LSD, never lost faith in the value of psychedelic drugs." "On the day he died from cancer in 1963" "Huxley asked his second wife Lora to inject him with LSD." "That was the same day that the president Kennedy was assassinated." "And we were right here in this room, it was then a soon end... and he was getting very weak and he said to me:" ""Give me big-big peace of paper" and he wrote intermuscular one under a miligram of LSD intermuscular and I've filled the syringe with it and I gave it to him." "It was very quiet..." "And at certain point I said:" ""If you hear me squeeze my hand", and he did... very weakly..." "Then I thought..." "I had an impression that may be it was neccessary to give a second shot and I asked him and he has indicated" "So.." "I've given him second shot and that... well... then it was about 4–5 hours there was absolutely no jolt, no agitation, nothing, except this very very quiet..." "like a music that becomes less and less audible, like... going.... fading away." "There was no jolt when he died it was just ... that .... his breath stopped, and there was a beautiful expression in the face there was a very beautiful expression in the face." "When Huksley died in 1963," "LSD was already beginning its descent to denaturati" "And the advocates of Albert Hofmann's discovery were claiming for it the status of a religious sacrament." "I think that many of the intellectuals of the 60th were really – failed priests." "The're people who are looking for a priestly role in society, and in another age they would perhaps would join the church and subjected themselves to the discipline of the church." "But they of course didn't have the necessary transcendental belief, or a necessary ability to sacrifice themselves." "So that they took up LSD... as a religion in order to preach something to the multitude, and they had to have something to offers to the multitude, which in a consumer society means offering something quick, easy, and satisfying." "And I think that in that way LSD was extremely dangerous in enhancing the ambitions of those people to preach when they should've actually been staying silently in their studies getting on with something respectable." "The most important what I gained from LSD experience was the inside that, which commonly is believed to be the reality, is not something fixed, but rather ambiguous." "I experienced another reality under LSD, and before I had always thought there is only one reality – a "true" reality and... but then I..." "I realized there are the dimentions of reality... subtitles performed by Rajaka Dharma Group"