Philosophical Speculations

LSD and the Mind of the Universe: An Interview with Christopher M. Bache

I began my psychedelic work in 1979 when I was 30 years old. I was just out of graduate school from Brown University where I had trained as a philosopher of religion, finishing my studies as an atheistically-inclined agnostic. I was looking for where to take my research next when I read Stan Grof’s Realms of the Human Unconscious. I immediately saw the relevance of his work to the core questions I had been trained to pursue as a philosopher–whether life has meaning or purpose, whether human beings survive death, and whether there is a conscious intelligence operating in the universe. I saw that with the advent of psychedelics, the deepest contributions to my discipline would be made by persons writing out of an experiential basis, not just an intellectual basis, and I felt a deep calling to do this work. (My Saturn Return marked a number of seminal transitions in my life: from student to professor, from book learning to experiential learning, from agnosticism to psychedelic initiation.)

I had not done psychedelics before this. Far from it. I had grown up in a middle-class Catholic family in Mississippi, entered the seminary in high school, and studied theology at the University of Notre Dame, New Testament criticism at Cambridge University, and philosophy of religion at Brown. I was about as conventional as you can get, but I also had a passionate desire to explore larger philosophical questions. Using the amplifying effects of LSD to enter the deeper dimensions of consciousness felt like a coherent extension of the philosophical and theological lineages I had internalized in graduate school.

So I began what would become a 20 year psychedelic journey–73 high-dose LSD sessions carried out between 1979 and 1999 following protocols set out by Grof. This regimen generated a repeating spiral of death and rebirth that initiated me into successively deeper levels of what I experienced to be the Creative Intelligence of our universe. These levels were so varied that they cannot be easily summarized. It was “a unified field of consciousness that underlies all physical existence,” true, but it was also much more than this.

He also published Lifecycles: Reincarnation and the Web of Life

Lou,

I've actually read this book. One thing I find interesting is the method:

Stan set out his protocols for low and high dose LSD therapy in his book LSD Psychotherapy. These include: careful attention to set and setting, working with a sitter in a protected environment with no outside interruptions, lying down with eyeshades and headphones, and listening to music that has been carefully selected to pace the stages of opening and closing. The protocol for high dose sessions is less interactive than for low dose sessions, with the sitter relating to the subject primarily through the music.

Frankly this is the sort of protocol I prefer. However, some of ayahuasca groups I've encountered have almost an exact opposite protocol that requires you to be up and engaged with the group.

I feel, in addition, one needs to maintain a little skepticism about the experience. He states this in the interview:

When one has taken the proper precautions and created a safe container for one’s psychedelic practice, we can completely trust what emerges in our sessions, however inscrutable it may be at the time.

Jim Cross wrote: ↑Mon Aug 09, 2021 7:54 pm Lou,

I've actually read this book. One thing I find interesting is the method:

Stan set out his protocols for low and high dose LSD therapy in his book LSD Psychotherapy. These include: careful attention to set and setting, working with a sitter in a protected environment with no outside interruptions, lying down with eyeshades and headphones, and listening to music that has been carefully selected to pace the stages of opening and closing. The protocol for high dose sessions is less interactive than for low dose sessions, with the sitter relating to the subject primarily through the music.

Frankly this is the sort of protocol I prefer. However, some of ayahuasca groups I've encountered have almost an exact opposite protocol that requires you to be up and engaged with the group.

I feel, in addition, one needs to maintain a little skepticism about the experience. He states this in the interview:

When one has taken the proper precautions and created a safe container for one’s psychedelic practice, we can completely trust what emerges in our sessions, however inscrutable it may be at the time.

Jim,

I'm not a high dose explorer of consciousness, so your question may be above my paygrade.

I know Grof's protocol via a three week long in-depth psychological intensive I did 25 years ago. It was led by one of his associates, Barbara Findeisen, whose focus was primarily Pre and Perinatal Psychology (rebirthing). There were no substances involved as Grof's Holotropic Breathing was used to open the doors of perception. I found the approach excellent for deep psychological work and benefited immensely from it.

My experience with this depth psychology preceded my later experiences with Santo Daime and Ayahuasca, which is a huge universe of forms of rituals and protocols. There are dance sessions, sitting contemplative sessions, lying down healing sessions and more, each serving a specific purpose and intention. Nowadays, after 25 years, lots of doses and becoming an old guy, my preference is for just a few drops of very strong well prepared sacrament and a Be Here Now approach.

About being skeptical of experience, my way is to trust my experience and hold my interpretations with a great deal of skepticism. In this fashion many experiences just fade away, while some very few remain and even grow more powerful and meaningful in my life. These few, I would now call my faith beyond belief. They were a gift, a grace, for which I'm deeply grateful. The most profound life-changing of these experiences came to me in a dream during a period when I was not using or exploring psychedelics and preceded both my depth psychology and Santo Daime experiences by 15 years. Yes, for me it's been a long winding and very rewarding journey for which I'm deeply grateful.