Psychedelics: Tapping into the Creative Intelligence of the Universe
By Christopher M Bache, PhD
I initially chose to work with high doses of LSD because it was difficult to find days for inner journeying in a dual-career marriage and I simply wanted to make the most of each session. I knew that the sessions would be more challenging, but the spiritual literature I had read described one’s karmic conditioning as being ultimately finite, and I thought that I could work through mine faster by using this intense method of transformation, in effect biting off larger pieces of karma in each session. I thought that if I confronted my shadow conscientiously and could endure the intensity of the work, it would get me to my goal of personal liberation faster. Later, after this model had imploded, I continued working with high doses because I had developed a taste for it. It took me where I wanted to go and then further than I imagined possible.
The choice to work with high doses turned out to have enormous consequences for what unfolded on this journey. It radically expanded not only the depth of consciousness reached but also the breadth of consciousness being activated in each session. It wasn’t simply a matter of eating the same karmic meal in fewer bites, as I had naively thought. Because the web of life is an integrated whole from the very start, working with high doses of LSD activates wider portions of this web. Working at these levels changed not only how deep my experiences went but also who or what was actually having these experiences, what the “working unit” of experience was in a session. In these highly energized conditions, the size of the patient literally expands. What I mean by this will become clearer as we proceed.
Though I began this work with the goal of achieving personal liberation, over time I began to realize that there was a great deal taking place in my sessions that fell outside this project. By the third year, I was being drawn into vast purifying exercises that seemed focused on the collective psyche rather than my personal psyche, as though the target had shifted from being my personal liberation to the liberation of the entire human species. Then the sheer power of the catalytic energy unleashed by this protocol kept driving me through one experiential barrier after another, repeatedly expanding the territory of engagement. Eventually, my sessions became a periodically painful but steadfastly ecstatic journey of cosmic discovery. In this journey, I was invited to explore the universe in ways that went far beyond my original project of spiritual awakening.
It’s not that I abandoned my commitment to spiritual liberation, for this always remained part of the work, but this journey generated experiences that went far too deep to ever be converted into a stabilized “awakened state” upon my return. This was something different, a different track aimed at a different goal. One does not have to transcend time, be dissolved into archetypal reality, or return to the birth of the universe in order to realize one’s Essential Nature or rest in the condition of nonduality and emptiness. These are distinct if mutually reinforcing undertakings.
All my life I have had a passionate desire to understand how our universe works. Why are our lives the way they are? Why is there so much suffering in life? Is there a larger intelligence operating in the universe, and if so, toward what end? What is the purpose and project of existence? In our culture’s current materialist paradigm that reduces everything to physical matter, these questions are considered beyond the pale of genuine knowledge and attempts to answer them are seen as being purely speculative enterprises. In my sessions, however, I was given the opportunity to explore these questions in exercises of profound experiential instruction choreographed by a vast intelligence. I was shown things that stunned and transfixed me, was allowed to experience things that completely reframed my understanding of existence. What philosopher could turn down such an opportunity?
As this journey deepened, I found myself entering a spiraling love affair with this intelligence, a Being so vast I can only describe it using the vocabulary of the Divine even while the sessions themselves were repeatedly demonstrating how limited and childlike our historical conceptions of the Divine have been. I agree with Jonathan Goldman who in speaking of ayahuasca said, “The rituals of the Daime are not meant to be an ‘experience,’ but rather to provide a chance to interact intimately with a Divine Being of unimaginable intelligence, compassion, clarity, and spiritual power.” I do not know the limits of this Being and I hesitate to even call it a “Being” at all. As I have experienced it, it is the fabric of existence itself. I think of it as the generative intelligence of our universe, the Mind of the Cosmos—both transcendent source and manifest body of existence, beyond all categories of He or She yet infinitely more than any It.
Knowing that I could sustain the deepest intimacy with this intelligence for only a few hours on any given day and that I had no control over which session would become one of these magical days, I kept driving forward. When the communion opened, it was so intense that at the end of the day I would feel supremely fulfilled and at the same time achingly bereaved because I could not stay with my Beloved.
Everyone must choose a name for the Absolute, a title that approximates its truth, power, and beauty. Though I use many terms to describe it, in my heart of hearts I call it my Beloved. Once held in her embrace, once dissolved into her radiant splendor, I was hers forever. I will be hers until my last breath and after still. If my description tilts toward the feminine, it is because of two things—the specific story of creation that emerged on this journey and the love that reuniting with this reality awakened within me. ?
LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven by Christopher M. Bache, Ph.D. © 2019 Park Street Press. Printed with permission from the publisher Inner Traditions International. www.InnerTraditions.com
Christopher M Bache, PhD, is professor emeritus in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University where he taught for 33 years. A Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, he is also adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies and on the advisory board for Grof Transpersonal Training and the Grof Foundation. An award-winning teacher and international speaker, he is the author of 3 books and lives in Poland, Ohio.