"What happened?" I asked, my mouth agape with incredulity.
The answer was not reassuring. Out of the original ten member group of experimenters one had driven his car off a cliff and another had met an equally lugubrious end. John himself had incurred an accident that almost proved fatal. Several had found themselves prone to "robotlike" behavior carried to the point where it appeared that the body was actually taken over by alien forces.
"Didn't the medicine tell you when to stop?" I asked.
"Yes, but some of us went on anyway."
"Well, I can certainly understand not wanting to give it up."
"The problem is entities," John said. "People start thinking they are in touch with other intelligences-even with beings from outer space."
"Oh I have that all the time," I admitted cheerfully. "But it hasn't bothered me. In fact it seems kind of friendly."
Next we went on to discuss the objective reality of these intelligences.
"Whether or not these entities are generated in one's own brain is immaterial," John said.
I didn't agree. Even though subject-object distinctions are obliterated it is extremely important to me to retain some residual awareness of which is which. One can volunteer to serve as an outpost of consciousness for higher beings and still function as a self-propelling individual. In fact, as I see it, the retention of personal autonomy even while operating on the edges of the Network is the name of the game in these electrically charged regions of the universal mind. The ego may become as transparent as a glass window but can nonetheless serve a protective function. However, I did not argue the point.
Toni's main grievance against the drug appeared to be its tendency to make a person lose touch with "reality." In this discussion it didn't seem necessary for any of us to affirm what this world's consensual reality is but one of many states of being; that went without saying.
Here again I could certainly understand what Toni was driving at, albeit I felt that in my own particular case the problem of dissociation was not an issue. Thanks to ketamine I could so much better appreciate the beauty of planet Earth that my grip upon it had, if anything, been tightened. The importance of the Divine Plan for humanity and of our part in it had been so highlighted that, if anything, I had to restrain myself from overwork. Maybe, however, my case was different because I had deliberately used the substance to make connections between the worlds, not to dissolve them. There must be an enormous difference between taking a dose of ketamine and hastening to the typewriter to describe what has happened and taking a dose and then following it with more of the same.
From what the Lillys' were telling me it seemed evident that people had used ketamine for escapist purposes. "What a pity!" I thought. "It's like the way men misuse women, pollute our mother, the earth and denigrate the soft, gentle, sensuous aspects of creation. Why must they do it?" These ruminations led me to express the opinion that ketamine is a female force. Toni agreed. She had even named it Kay. However, the wife of one of their group members had seen Kay not as a goddess but as a seductress out to steal her husband.
How sad the goddess must feel about that, my mind ran on, and for a moment her sorrow was mine. What one of us is there who does not know how it feels to try to help someone and receive abuse in return. "But what about the therapeutic aspects?" I asked.
Both the Lillys strongly emphasized that the therapeutic value of ketamine depends on the synergistic interaction between the therapist, the subject and the setting. In all of this the observer can in no way be removed from the system he observes. Since this involvement of the experimenter in the experiment runs counter to the bias of modern scientific materialism it is bound to raise a problem for ketamine researchers who seek to enlist the cooperation of the medical establishment. As Toni put it, "It will heighten whatever influences and frequencies are affecting your life."
"I couldn't agree more completely," I said. "Probably that's why people are so confused about what ketamine really does. Because it will vary with each individual."
Toni nodded. "It brings out what is already there."
"Then there seem to be two rather different issues," I went on. "The first is its use for occasional consciousness raising-what Howard and I call 'samadhi therapy.' That is, we give a person twenty-five to thirty milligrams and let him talk about himself. In this way he just about always gains some insight into his own identity and motivations. And this method seems to be safe and useful in the hands of the right people.
Then the second use would involve an intensive, long-term regimen designed to produce a total reconditioning of the human biocomputer. This obviously is not so safe and is meant only for the few."
"And which of these ways are you taking?" Lynn asked.
"Both. I really want to explore this new territory."
As he rose to return to his work John Lilly's last words to me were, "You'd better be damn strong if you're going to play that game."
"Yes," I replied to myself. "At least I am getting stronger. And God willing I will ride this comet through to the end."
As Tony strolled with us back to the car she gave me an autographed copy of their recently published autobiographical work The Dyadic Cyclone. (Simon and Schuster 1976). The kindness which this famous couple had shown to two strangers on a busy morning seemed more glowing than the spring sunshine which now, at noon, was drenching the Malibu mountains, and we left with a warm light of friendship in our hearts.
"How wonderful to know that people of this caliber are involved in the field of drug research!" I remarked to Lynn Powell as we wound down the hillside. "It does so much to counteract the general shod-diness of the dope scene. Even if it didn't turn out for the best for their group, at least they have raised the standards of our work. We should be grateful for what they have done."
Needless to say, I lost no time reading The Dyadic Cyclone. The book was a revelation insofar as it showed how parallel our courses had been. Where Howard and I had envisioned our union as a double spiral they had called theirs a cyclone, saying: "The dyad, formed from two cyclones, becomes a stable entity greater than either of its partners."
As they had seen it, the dyadic cyclone is the unification of two personal centers, one male and one female, rotating respectively to the right and the left. Once the dyad is established the participants can move beyond a single private inner reality and merge the two vortices in such a way as to establish a rising quiet center shared by both.
Many of the other concepts that had come to me under ketamine were also developed in this book. Where we had spoken about being responsible for one's own archetypes John Lilly had said, "One joins the network for Creators in which the individual Self fuses with the network of those who are doing the creating continuously at very high levels. Here there is no more of one's Self or of one's Supraself. One is the ultimate creative process."
As in the book The Center of the Cyclone he admits candidly, "As far as I and others in this area can find out, our planet is subject to influences from beings far more intelligent than us, far more advanced, far more knowledgeable and not just in the consensus science of this planet, but in sciences we have yet to discover.
There is a cosmic limiting velocity to miracles. The 'miracle speed limit' is administered by cosmic traffic cops. We are not allowed to make discoveries (so-called) any faster than the stage of evolution of this planet allows."