Now, however, I was no longer analyzing someone else's chart. I was actually navigating those oceans of being and seeing them with my own eyes. Moreover, these realities were being encountered at a level of truth at which preconceived notions were virtually excluded. What a relief! Never again would I have to remain content with someone else's warmed-over mysticism. I had gone avoyaging myself and walked those other shores. I knew these continents of the mind existed as surely as I knew that I had lived in Europe and India, even though my home is now in America. There was no way now that anyone could tell me that all this was merely my own imagining. It was no more "in my head" than Seattle was in my head. I was in it, to think that it was in me would have to be the sheerest egomania.
In pursuing our ketamine research my original intent had been to explore my own former lifetimes in greater depth. Having specialized in reincarnation therapy for five years this was certainly the aim that was foremost in my mind. Thus far, however, except for some pulls toward Egypt and Japan, I hadn't recapitulated anything out of my personal past. In fact there had been remarkably little emphasis on personalities, including my own. To date, my approach to the mountaintop of higher wisdom had tended to be spiritualistic. Gurus, devas, discarnates and spirit guides had been beloved inhabitants of my inner world, and I knew they existed. But thus far these comforting mentors had stayed their distance. Or were they merely biding their time?
There was a ten-year span of my life during which I had some faculty for astral projection. During this period I enjoyed many fascinating out-ot-the-body experiences which encompassed both the scenic heights and the slums of the inner planes. Under ketamine I was certainly out of my body, but the places to which I went bore slight resemblance to the dreamlike settings of my astral wanderings. Rather, they were vastly superior extensions of the conditions encountered while under the influence of such psychedelic drugs as LSD and mescaline.
The main difference between ketamine and LSD was that for me the former produced a very much higher, clearer and more veridical "trip." I also felt, and this has been verified by others, that ketamine works primarily on the "emotional body" whereas LSD is more mental in its effects. In yogic terms, ketamine works on the heart chakra and LSD on the chakras in the head. On the whole, however, the similarities between these two substances are greater than the differences.
If the etheric plane is the mezzanine floor of a building, and the astral plane the second floor, then the elevator marked psychedelic was whizzing me up to the higher levels so fast that I was scarcely conscious of passing through these first two layers.
Strangely enough, I had never been particularly intrigued with the Platonic, neoplatonic and Jungian concepts of archetypes, even though they made useful mental constructs. While I had some familiarity with oriental philosophy Sat, Chit, and Ananda were still just so many words to me. All my real passion was expended on astrology. Consequently, it seems to me that the insights gained on the "upper floors" of my building can hardly be written off as preconceived notions. It is true that my observations meshed with systems I had always assumed to be valid. In fact, any system at all may be more or less "true" if enough minds have reflected it to produce a corresponding thoughtform. In the last analysis we are probably about as responsible for our archetypes as they are for us-it seems to be a bit of both. On one plane we are matrix makers; on another we are the product created. But at the same time my "bright world" of ketamine was sufficiently different from any possible expectation to convince me that it was "for real."
As it turned out the concept of archetypes became the central feature of all our ketamine experiences. Little by little I managed to arrange these ideational building blocks into some sort of hierarchical order. At the top, like the all-seeing eye set into the capstone of a pyramid, was the circle. Projected down from this essence of circularity were the twin principles of axial and revolutionary motion-the wheel turning upon itself and the wheel spinning around another center. Forward motion then gives rise to the laws of vibratory frequencies. That is, the circle extended through time and space produces sine waves and all manner of oscillating frequencies, of which the basic form is the spiral.
Next came the sublimely austere laws of the angles, starting with triangles, moving on down to hexagons, and then down again to the squares. Astrological archetypes were certainly very high on the scale and the only reason there are not more references to astrological factors in this book is that we have deliberately pruned our jargon to avoid offending readers unversed in this most basic of all the metaphysical sciences.
Moving on down the scale I came to the archetypes relating to human endeavors-myths, legends, codifications of the law, morals, mores, traditions, rituals, formalities, and the like. There, to my pleasure, I encountered the "Great Invocation" which for more than thirty-five years has been my personal mantram. This nondenominational prayer, which was given out by the Tibetan master Djwhal Khul via his amanuensis Alice A. Bailey, runs as follows:
Now for the first time I understood my self-chosen mission of anchoring this invocation in various spots around the globe. In each new place I would make it a point to repeat those words, as though tying them to earth by one more thread. Had the need for this kind of stitchery been one of the reasons for my incessant travels, to which were added daily walks? Up to this point the procedure had been motivated by blind faith. But here on the archetypal level it was at last given to me to see those multitudes of strands raying out over the landscape like sunbeams. There was one attached to a gas station in Manitoba, Canada, one to the Blue Grotto in Capri, one to a mountain glade in the Himalayas, one to a tree on a ridge in Ojai, and so on ad infinitum.
The underlying purpose of the Invocation itself was also becoming clear. Each stanza was an affirmation of the connection between this realm and that, between the world of God and the world of men. Now that I had been there and back, even if on a small scale, the words began to shine with a new dimension of meaning. It all seemed like a great vindication.
As I continued to meditate upon the ascending and descending energy flows of the the "bright world" it struck me that a close analogy could be drawn between these gradations and the degrees to which water can be heated. At the lower earthside end of the scale matter is frozen into solid forms. At the higher heavenside end everything comes to a rolling boil. Since the temperature of water cannot rise above a given ceiling the cosmatrix seems always the same, even though it may bubble more ebulliently at the higher dose levels. Hence, anything over 75 milligrams starts to become counterproductive with regard to the gaining of psychological insight. The truly interesting effects are those which lie between the freezing and boiling points.