Marcia. When you're ready we have some tea for you. This is like a prelude of what it will be like when you leave the body for good. (We ended this session with the assurance that we would work together again, and that the next time we would start to look into some more personal issues in Lois' life.)
In a letter and biographical sketch submitted later Lois commented, "I feel very good about samadhi therapy and am willing to try it again. It gave me the valuable knowledge of an out-of-body experience thus raising my consciousness permanently."
This account was submitted by our friend Bill who came, not for therapy but simply in the hope of having a pleasant experience.
Bill
There is always a point (at least for me, when taking a hallucinogenic drug) at which I become slightly uptight. This happens during those first three to seven minutes when the effect begins and you realize that there is no turning back. You've done it, and the substance is starting to rush through your system.
In my first few minutes of "samadhi" I had this feeling, and then I let go. I let myself release. I could hear me telling me to flow with it…let it happen…let it happen.
I remember three things that seemed particularly notable.
First, everything around me seemed textures. The room, even my random thoughts took on this patterned effect. Colors were muted but strong. They seemed to be predominantly earth browns, muted whites and grays.
Second, everything felt like a painting. I was in the painting, but was not the picture itself.
Third, and most important, I am definitely not my body. I could feel the gravitational forces that gave mass to my body. I could look and see it spread before me. But I was not it. Whatever I am is totally separate. If I call this individualizing essence spirit, soul, energy or by any one of various other terms it is still separate unto itself; it is free of the body.
The textured feeling kept growing stronger. I tried to look at Marcia and Howard but couldn't really see them. Rather, I saw pale white thumb-print faces that were part of the same painting that I was in.
There were gaps, blanks during which I wasn't quite sure where I was. Somewhere or nowhere? It was all slightly surrealistic as though I had become a living version of a Dali painting.
The room seemed to have depth not seen before. There were no sharp edges. Everything was peaceful…very very nice. I wondered where I was going. I seemed separate from the body, yet it was there. I could see it.
Light rays were coming from the flame of the candle on the table. Then they were more than rays; they were solid rod-like shapes entering my eyes. It was fascinating to see light-rods that way. They no longer flickered or vanished. Rather, they were solid burnished gold rods that moved through me. I found them enchantingly beautiful. I tried then to focus on my third-dimensional normalcy, but couldn't. This other dimension, or whatever it was that I was in, seemed quite real. Since it was pleasant I decided to flow with it.
The room-the painting that I was in-was full of oriental designs. Shapes remained but they reminded me of a Japanese painting. I allowed myself to ask. How much longer will I be here? Howard came in from somewhere and I heard him talking of time. "How long have I been away?" I wondered. One hour. I couldn't accept his answer. It seemed more like fifteen minutes.
Then they were saying goodnight. I realized I was fading from one reality to another, drifting back and forth. I knew I was slowly coming out but it didn't matter because now I was falling into a new dimension-sleep.
I must point out that now, even after seven weeks I can easily recall this experience. For me being out of the body and seeing and feeling another reality was altogether remarkable.
As I was going to sleep I realized that the colors and texture of the sofa-bed on which I was lying were almost identical to those I had envisioned. Yet I had been lying on my back looking up at the ceiling or out into the room. Not once did I look at the fabric of the couch itself, nor did I touch it with my hands. Rather, it seemed as though the cells of my body were picking up my immediate surroundings.
In the morning the same thought struck me as I awakened. My cells had actually absorbed their surroundings. During that ho.ur every one of them must have been opened up and totally aware. Or was it my whole being that was aware? There was no doubt but that those textures and colors were completely one with me, that they and I had somehow flowed together and merged in a larger supersensory unity that constituted a single, all-encompassing design.
Marwayne Leipzig
I arrived at Howard and Marcia's home in Alderwood Manor at about 1:15 pm. It was a typically drizzly February Washington day, overcast and gray. They both greeted me warmly at the door and ushered me up the entrance steps to the main floor of their apartment. Marcia asked Howard to play Barbra Streisand's "Classical Barbra" record, knowing it to be a favorite of mine.
First, however, Howard explained that the amount of ketamine we would use would be fifty-milligrams. This is an extremely small dose compared to those used in surgery. He asked me about the operations I had had in the past and if I knew the types of anesthetics that were used. In general, he put my mind at ease about using ketamine. Then he took my blood pressure. I had told him that I have what is considered to be rather low pressure, but that for me it is normal. When he read the gauge he remarked with a chuckle, "Yes, you do have lovely blood pressure."
Then he told me to keep on talking as he injected the ketamine into the muscle of my right arm. This he did with such skill that I was hardly aware of what he was doing. Marcia placed a pillow on the couch, had me lie back and covered me with a blanket. Then I heard the first strains of the "Classical Barbra" record. I was totally relaxed and at ease; my friends had prepared me for a good experience.
My first response to the drug was a feeling of fuzziness. This was reminiscent of the times when I had been given anesthetics for surgery in years past. "Oh yes," I thought, "just like in a hospital. I do not like this." I was aware of the fullness in my ears, as though flying in an un-pressurized cabin, but heard no other sound than the music. I did not hear the crickets, nor any buzzing noises.
Colors began flowing past my closed eyes. Initially there were waves of palest, sheerest greens with floating islands of irridescent darker greens, changing shapes, waving and wafting on their way as in a stream. "Oh, yes," I thought, "Now I am ready to be cut open… This must be the time." But I knew that I was not in an operating room, that no surgery was going to be performed and that I was in fact in Marcia and Howard's livingroom. I was fully aware that I was on their couch. It was simply a fleeting thought as my mind compared what I was seeing with the only previous drug experiences I had ever had, which were all in hospitals. Then I let that thought go as my mind told me to be free and to "go with" what I was seeing
Next a phantasmagoria of color forms developed before me. I observed them like a spectator at an art show viewing one magnificent canvas after another. I was spellbound by their beauty. Each one seemed more spectacular than the last. The difference was that they were not encased in frames, but flowed and blended one into another. "So this is a drug trip," I thought rather smugly.
Then I became caught up in those undulating waves of exquisite colors. I became the color. I was it and it was me in some way impossible to explain in words. The thought occurred to me that color is vibration and I was seeing the vibratory energy of the cosmos. Going through a vertical pillar of hyacinth blue deepening into cobalt my mind began to concentrate on an eye-shaped patch of purple which floated my way. At the same time the area in the center of my forehead which in yoga we call "the third eye" felt contacted. "Am I seeing my third eye?" I wondered as the purple changed shape and flowed into a glowing triangle. I wanted to cry out, "Don't go, don't go!" and wondered if I could indeed talk.