Early on, way back in my earliest trips, I felt like acid was something I understood instinctively, and as good at, and was going to continue to be good at. I always knew from the very first times I tripped that I just dug it. I loved it. It seemed - not exactly easy to do, but it seemed like the only really natural thing that I'd ever done in my life. It was like someone who was a good swimmer, but had lived where there was never any water, and the first time you threw him into the water, he could swim. I loved it, and I've loved it ever since, and I'll always love it. (Stephen Gaskin, Amazing Dope Tales, p. 1-2.)


It is our belief that the sacred bio-chemicals such as peyote, mescaline, LSD and cannabis are the true host of God and not drugs as that term is commonly understood. We do not feel that the government has the right to interfere in our religious practice, and that the present persecution of our co-religionists is not only constitutionally illegal but a crude and savage repression of our basic and inalienable rights as human beings. (Art Kleps, The Boo Hoo Bible, p57.)

Since all competent bullshitters specializing in astrological matters agree on the singularly gruesome and wretched nature of the planet Saturn, competence being determined, of course, by agreement with this very definition, since any just or rational judgment is bound to fail, due to the influence of the planet Saturn. It is apparent that the only solution is to blow the big fat greasy son-of-a-bitch to smithereens.

This is the ultimate objective of the Neo-American Church, nothing less that the bombardment and annihilation of the planet Saturn. Upon the successful completion of the task, with the dispersal of the malefic energy of this gloomy orb into the cosmos (which, if too seriously affected, will be our next objective), the Millennium, or golden age of mankind, will commence without further ado, and it will be possible to dismantle, not only the apparatus of the church, but all the instrumentalities of the Divine Will, to permit Peter Rabbit free access to the garden of Farmer Brown.

The entire technical resources of the planet Earth must be marshaled in the service of the Holy War; enormous rockets designed, built and placed in orbit, fusion bombs of hitherto undreamed power prepared; a special corps of dedicated men and women recruited and trained, all Capricornians identified and watched by a secret service, and all those born with Saturn risings rounded up and interned (in opulent luxury of tropic isles, of course) for the duration. (Art Kleps, The Boo Hoo Bible, p, 157.)

The Impact of long-term use of hallucinogenic indoles on mental and physical health is not yet well understood. My own experience among the mestizo populations of Amazonas convince me that the long-term effect of ayahuasca use is an extraordinary state of health and integration. Ayahuasqueros use sound and suggestion to direct healing energy into parts of the body and unexamined aspects of an individual's personal history where psychic tension has come to rest. Often these methods exhibit startling parallels to the techniques of modern psychotherapy; at other times they seem to represent an understanding of possibilities and energies still unrecognized by Western theories of healing.

Most interesting from the point of view of the arguments made in this book are the persistent rumors of states of group-mind or telepathy that occur among the less acculturated tribal peoples. (Terrence McKenna, Food of the Gods, p. 228-9.)

I'm in a park. It's a beautiful, sunny morning. There's a sixties love-in feeling in the air, with lots of folks out and about, enjoying the day. The world itself seems fresh and still hopeful. I'm putting up these big, beautiful square posters for the Berkeley Free Clinic. I'm putting one up just outside a restaurant, where people will be able to see it as they pass by.

Now I'm talking with a young woman, one of my few remaining clients. She wants to stop working with me. I try to talk her into staying. I really need the money.

Now I'm with several people, all strangers. We're in an old house in Berkeley, on the south side, near where Karen and I had our first garage. I notice some writing on the floor in the garage here, an old sign that says "candy, cigarettes, sodas...." The rest is blurred. I'm excited about this. We look in another room and uncover a similar sign. We realize that there had originally been a store here, that the present house has been built over it. The neighborhood must have been really different back then. One of the women and I decide to work together to explore the old city. A black guy is on the phone excitedly telling his woman about it. He doesn't have it quite right, but he wants to work with us too. Several of the others do also. I'm turned on by this new adventure.

It has been fun and even beautiful being involved with the Free Clinic. It has been like being at a sixties love-in. There have been some very good folks working there too. Although I'm glad I've been able to help, I'm beginning to feel finished.

I'm also sick of worrying about my dwindling practice. I'm tired of responding with my own money worries to a patient who wanted to move on, especially sick and tired of trying to keep people working with me just because I need the money. I didn't started out like that. At first I worked because I had a gift, because I could truly help people.

I'm realizing though that I have finally found my calling. I have found my new path with heart. I'm going to use psychedelics to explore the old city - those ways of being that existed in the world before this present culture and its ways. I'm not going to spend any more time helping the Free Clinic. I'm certainly not going to spend any more time trying to keep alive my dying practice. Instead, I'm going to put all my time and energy into exploring the old city, those deeper levels of consciousness and reality that still exist everywhere, just beneath the surface of our lives. (All this is from my book, The Birth of Wanderer.)

Today, I'm still exploring the old city, still exploring the deeper levels of consciousness and reality. It's holy work.

The best way to explore these deeper reaches is with a Zen mind, with an empty head. The best way to achieve an empty head is by first working on our personal head, by first examining and cleaning out all the trash, all the repressed and rejected and projected parts of ourselves that we've stashed and stored in our "communication room," as Stephan Gaskin once called it - in our personal unconscious, as Carl Jung always called it.

Then the real work begin - becoming the experiment, letting go to the flow, walking the Tao....