On Acid

Human Life. Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of the body: decaying. Soul: spinning around.

By the anaesthetic revelation I mean a certain survived condition in which is the satisfaction of philosophy by an appreciation of the genius of being.

The keynote of the experience is the tremendously exciting sense of an intense metaphysical illumination. Truth lies open to the view in depth beneath depth of almost blinding evidence.

Inert, as earth with its rocks can be — and all those crevices that run in sedimentary layers piled on top of each other. Friable of course, I was — not in places, but as a whole — from my first moment of contact with this terrible mountain.

I was forced to stop my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and to go home, as I was seized by a peculiar restlessness associated with a sensation of mild dizziness.

I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation — the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.

Had a transcendental storm of colour visions today in the bus going to Marseilles. I was swept out of time. I was out in a world of infinite number.

There is a dawning suspicion that the politics of the nervous system are such that man uses only a fragment — perhaps less than one percent — of his available brain capacity.

What distinguishes schizophrenic existence from that which the rest of us like to imagine we enjoy is the element of time. The schizophrenic is having it all now, whether he wants it or not.

The first characteristic is a slowing down of time, a concentration in the present. One's normally compulsive concern for the future decreases, and one becomes aware of the enormous importance and interest of what is happening at the moment.

Arnulf Rainer, a Viennese painter working under the influence of LSD, was alternately amazed, disturbed, and delighted to find himself turning his face into a self-portrait.

At exactly midnight, a current of blue flame rose from my spine along the backbone and shot out through the top of my skull. Like champagne bubbling from a bottle my spirit rushed out into an effervescent empyrean.