2013 marked the 70th anniversary of Albert Hofmann's invention - Lysergic acid diethylamide, otherwise known as LSD, a medical drug said could give users "feelings of heightened awareness and sensory perceptions" or "very deep, deep, psychic experiences". Therapists insisted "these kinds of effects provide a window into the human unconscious." One said, "After my first LSD experience I claim that this is the greatest discovery that man has ever made because after all the human mind is the most important attribute we have and this let us understand our mind and the enormous potential of mind."
In 1980, Albert Hofmann published 'LSD My Problem Child'. He reasoned, "In human evolution it has never been as necessary to have this substance LSD. It is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be." "The effect," it was said, "is like looking through a microscope. Suddenly when you look through a microscope you discover that there is an invisible world around you that you haven’t known about it before you've done it."
In an interview in 1996, Albert Hofmann emphasized LSD was created for medical use and not a pleasure drug. He believed its misuse was the result of "a very, very deep problem of our time in that we no longer have a religious basis in our lives. Even with religion, with the churches, they are no longer convincing with their dogma. And people need a deep spiritual foundation for their lives. In older times it was religion, with their dogmas, which people believed in, but today those dogmas no longer work. We cannot believe things which we know are not possible, that are not real. We must go on the basis of what we know, that everybody can experience. On this basis, you must find the entrance to the spiritual world."
He maintained, "The pathway for this is through psychiatry, but not the psychoanalytic psychiatry of Freud and not the limited scope of modern biological psychiatry. Rather, it will occur through the new field of transpersonal psychiatry. This transpersonal view takes into account both the material world, including our body, as well as the spiritual world. It recognizes that we are simultaneously part of the material and the spiritual worlds. What fits with the concept of transpersonal psychiatry is that we open our doors of perception. What transpersonal psychiatry tries to give us is a recipe for gaining entrance into the spiritual world. This fits exactly with the results of psychedelics. It stimulates your senses. It opens your perception for your own experience."
Albert made the observation, "Because many young people are looking for meaningful experiences, they are looking for this thing which is the opposite of the material world. Not all young people are looking for money and power. Some are looking for a happiness and satisfaction which is of the spiritual world, not the materialistic world. They are looking, but there are no sanctioned paths. And, of course, one of the ways young people are using is with psychedelic drugs."
He pointed out, "Aldous Huxley taught us not to simply believe the words, but to have the experience ourselves. This is why the different forms of religion are no longer adequate. They are simply words, words, words, without the direct experience of what it is the words represent. We are now at a phase of human development where we have accumulated an enormous amount of knowledge through scientific research in the material world. This is very important knowledge, but it must be integrated (with the spiritual world)...If we were to read about spiritual things, it is only words. We must have the experience directly. And the experience occurs only by opening the mind, and opening all of our senses. Those doors of perception must be cleansed. And if the experience does not come spontaneously, on its own, then we may make use of what Huxley calls a gratuitous grace. This may take the form of psychedelic drugs, or perhaps without drugs through a discipline like yoga. But what is of greatest importance, is that we have personal experience. Not words, not beliefs, but experience."
Albert argued, "I am convinced that the importance of psychedelics will be recognized. I just re-read the 12 lectures Aldous Huxley gave in San Francisco in 1959, called 'The Human Situation'. I think that everything that we are concerned about today, about the ego, consciousness, the survival of mankind, it can all be read in this book. I would like to recommend it. Everything we are now trying to say, the ideas we are formulating, has been discussed by Huxley.
Basically, all that we need to know we can learn from how the primitive people use psychedelics as sacraments, in a religious framework."
