Psychedelic Agents and the Structure of Consciousness - a talk with John Beresford - youtube, FULL VIDEO

^{[partial script, paraphrase] - emphasis added}

Stages in a Session Using LSD and DMT :

[20:40]

Seven central tenants of stage theory

I. - A session consists of a succession of distinct experiences, in a sequence of stages I – VI. Regularity, so stage IV does not come before stage II, etc.

II. - The transition from stage to stage is not a slow drift but abrupt. “Why not”?

III. - A session exhibits a momentum, as though the participant was pulled up to a higher stage. What’s responsible for this?

IV. - “Sessions can be rated positive or negative according to the quantity of pleasurable affect (feeling).” Ideal session might have continuously pleasurable affect. “Most sessions are interrupted by a spell of negative affect, however brief.” What causes this?

V. - The onset of the stage is marked by a particular kind of transformation. The appearance characteristic in the stage. “A normal session is one where appearance is continuously transformed. Whether this applies to the 6th stage of a session, where there may be no appearance, is contentious. What, I ask, is the anatomy of transformation--what is it all about?"

VI. - Negative or unpleasant affect may be counteracted by the use of maneuvers such as identifying on the object on which negative object is projected. “In the sessions I conducted, I found that negative affect coincides with arrest of the transforming process. Everything comes to a standstill. From a condition where the objects of appearance are continuously mobile, appearance becomes immobile. Ominously still. Rigidity replaces plasticity. What is the connection between mobility of appearance and good feeling? Why is it important in the conduct of a session to deal with the arrest of transformations expeditiously?

VII. - The factor responsible for arresting transformations and inducing anxiety is resistance to the pull, or momentum, of a session. Resistance is uniformly associated with signs of anxiety. Lower in the stages associated with lower degrees of anxiety, higher associated higher anxiety, culminating in panic. Does this suggest a new etiology of anxiety?

[note] how many hours in is this stage? What metabolites might be in the body? How does this correlate with the physiology?

"Experimental work with psychedelic agents permits a theoretical conception of consciousness unlike any posed by academic philosophy, analytic or existential. The sequence of stages revealed in a session adapts to the view that consciousness, at any rate human consciousness, possesses an inherent structure. What are the metaphysical consequences of this fact? In particular, how does the sequence of stages relate to activity in the brain? There is tension between the reality of the "LSD experience" -- for example, karmic reaching-back to a significant past life event -- and the reality of brain cells and their synapses. Speculation here may goad philosophy to explore the new paradigm we hear about.

[~20:45]

Transformations:

[...] I'm not going to discuss stage one, opinions about that differ." [...]

*"At the onset of a stage, appearance characteristic of this stage loses its customary stability. Appearance is depatterened or destabilized. "

Stage 2:

Onset characterized by "sense appearance loses its habitual stability. Lines waver, borders shift, the interior of one’s stable objects move. Released from the constraint of maintaining stable appearance, sensory imagination engages in creative play. Abstract patterns, Moorish gardens, Egyptian temples, the repertoire is endless. All these are transformations of sensory appearance. Collectively they are referred to as the transformations of sense."

Stage 3: "thought appears loses its customary stability. We live wrapped in a pattern of thought we call the history of our life. Stage 3 transformations disrupt this pattern. Thoughts appear in novel sequences, and combinations. Some forgotten in the usual way, some suppressed on account in association with negative affect. New combinations of thoughts occur with the surprise of creative discovery. Transformations of the appearance of thought are referred to collectively as 'the transformation of thought.'"

Stage 4:

*"Descriptions of stage 4 transformations are often based on Jung and his archetypes of the collective unconscious. I prefer to think in terms of transformations of form. The term is borrowed from Plato, and reminds us that existence predates our personal arrival on the planet. Transformations of form pertain to kinds of appearance not ordinarily accessible. Karmic appearance is one mode of this kind."

"Once, when lying on my back, at this stage of a session, my body separated into inner and outer sections. The inner subtle body rotated through one hundred and eighty degrees in the outer material body, landing me face down in the sand of an Egyptian desert, clad as a slave or low rank soldier, a knife in my back, and unable to breathe. I thought 'this is interesting, what do I do now?' I did nothing, and a reverse rotation brought me back face up in the material body where I lay face up, gazing at the ceiling. Letting what was happening happen, I was again pressed face down in the sand and left to suffocate, this time with consequences related to the asthma I had as a child. Now, you only have to have this kind of experience once to know that it is real, and that it has nothing to do with the central nervous system, with the brain, that it happens independently of anything going on in the Central Nervous System."

"I don't mean to play up the subtle body aspect. Like the telepathic communication and out of body experience, this can happen at any stage in a session. Also, whether you prefer a past incarnation explanation, as I do, or you think in terms of DEA DNA or cell memory, as Leary used to, or you stick with Jung's idea of collective unconscious, my slave body representing the archetype of the down-trodden, perhaps, in the long run does not matter. Stage 4 transformations extend beyond the barrier of personal existence and are felt with a sense of profound significance ('which is probably another statement...')."

"Note that these kinds of experiences so far mentioned are consistent with the fact that we are beings enclosed in space. We say that space has not lost its stability. This changes with the onset of stage 5.

Stage 5:

Stage 5 transformations do not always characterize an LSD session, but always characterize a DMT session. Which is the reason for including DMT in the experiment. And I should mention that DMT accounts in 1961 did not refer to elves or other elementals; that came later. Within minutes of an injection of DMT, a disruption in the appearance of space is felt as an outward rush of being to an infinitely distant point, where the distinction between being and space is no longer tenable. The appearance of space has been destabilized. At the end of this process which may take a minute to complete, transformations consisting of imageless, multicolored, multilevel plains grouping and regrouping occur in an ever-changing array. I should mention that an arrest in transformations in stage 5 creates a potentially dangerous situation. What happens then is a reduction of the multi-planes of transformation to a rigid, circular design, accompanied by terrifying affect, which may culminate in panic. Arrest of stage 5 transformations [...] may be the origin of the evil eye. [...] So far what has happened is loss of stability of the appearance of sense, thought, form and space, in that order. By now, the feeling of selfhood has lost all but one of the standards by which it measures its identity. Only the appearance of time remains intact."

Stage 6:

"With the onset of stage 6, this last measure of identity is lost. Transformation of the appearance of time, strips the self of the ability to maintain a consistent identity."

"The term transformation of the appearance of time may not be quite correct, that is, time as we experience it. It might be more appropriate to speak of the transcendence of time and in turn the transcendence of all appearance, landing us in a state of pure consciousness. Consciousness un--(perhaps I could say)--undefiled by appearance of any sort. The term ultimate, absolute come to mind in this connection, and I think there are perhaps three things on can say about this state:

1. The loss of the self-other distinction produces the paradox of being one with everything from the state of being nothing--with losing your identity, one is in the state of being everything, being in the state of all identity.

2. One is (as Albert mentioned this morning) immersed in a field of light, 'one is a child of light' was Albert's way of expressing it.

3. Perhaps the most important, one comes face to face with the two injunctions of esoteric religion. One being the need to extend compassion to all sentient beings without differentiation and without distinction, and not an easy thing to do, of course, but nevertheless, one is confronted by the imperative to do so and the second being to stay on top of the idea that consciousness is the origin of all appearance."

   ---

   [1:25]

Talks about how he doesn’t think that describing the action of LSD on brain anatomy covers the entire range of what effects it has on consciousness.

Suggests two approaches:

1. The logical-metaphysical-rational approach

2. The moral approach – look at people we put in prison for taking LSD (must be taken into account for understanding what LSD is doing to us and our society. i.e. what does incarcerating this kind of drug user tell us about society, specifically? That unadulterated joy is/should be frowned upon?)

Says prisoners wrote to Albert Hoffmann thanking him for his discovery

Beresford had one experience with mescaline (takes half a gram). Though he would go to Sandoz and ask for "a couple doses" (1 gram) of LSD [@ 250ug = 4000 psychedelic experiences.]

1961 – a number of experiments

First is discussed today

N=28 receive (up to) 250mcg LSD – by mouth

N=8 received (up to) 60mg DMT – intramuscular injection

[5:00]

Results: Stage theory of effect of LSD – “which, because it depends on objective findings and not on peoples' descriptions of their experiences, belongs in the category of natural science.”

Because LSD has an effect on consciousness, the theory has a place in philosophy of mind (concerned with the meaning of statements made by neuroscientists, psychologists and others about such things as the relation of the brain to consciousness.)

Ultimately, to uncover the nature of consciousness

If LSD can show us the nature of consciousness, “I would think that last frontier would happen sooner than expected.”

“LSD can be used as a scientific instrument to partition consciousness into its component levels and to show us how to combine these levels—how these levels combine to form a structure. Viewing consciousness as a structure and not as a mixture containing sensations, feelings, thoughts, intentions, desires, loves hates and the hundred and other one things that philosophers like to put into consciousness--doing so allows us to think of consciousness in a concrete fashion [says with an intonation similar to something Leary would say] and allows us to—using a structural theory of consciousness, I believe that we can now, say what it is.”*

Problem of involving scientific method

Had apartment lower east side of Manhattan led double life: Weekdays - assistant professor of pediatrics at NY medical knowledge, teaching and taking care of patients

Weekends – hung out with bohemians in Grenache village [mostly upper middle class families living in NY]

1961 story of mad Harvard prof comes to NY on weekends and drops white coated tablets on the counter of a village bar, and said to anyone who listened: “take one, you’ll learn something.” Noone knew what the white coated tablets were, they were called “sillypsybeans” [laughs] and the mad professor, of course, was Tim Leary on a jaunt from [Newton Center] before his first experience with LSD. Back then, in the village, everybody smoked. [etc]

Hoffman-Laroche was willing to supply Mescaline

Position in medical college led him to find Sandoz and request LSD. Came in 2 half gram vials.

Opened vials, examined tan-colored crystals, put some on the point of a pin, watched it dissolve in water… experience that followed told him that his life was going to change. (and it did!)-- resigned from med college, waited.

“When you have a relation to LSD, you can expect the unexpected”

[11:20]

Agora scientific trust. Agora because it would be a place where LSD could be studied and discussed, and trust (financial pun)–Stanley Craine, of Columbia university (brain scientist), Jene Hueston, just short of PhD, brimming with Greek mythology, Howard Eisenburg, ex-tax lawyer who did the legal work for Agora.

Landlord gave them a private walled in garden, perfect for doing sessions in

Anonymous benefactor donated $5000. All of this in the space of a month.

“How was a scientific inquiry into the effect of LSD possible? What would constitute the data? What would count as observations? How would observations be described?”

Says how the effect of LSD on human experience and the effect of LSD on physiological brain structure is not enough to describe the full effects.

“Experience, by definition, is not observable. What you observe when someone describes an experience is not the experience but an utterance of words and sentences. You infer what lies behind the utterance […] How someone describes an experience depends on their choice of words, their personal experience, their wish to say the right thing, to please you, or otherwise. Descriptions of experiences do not provide the data for scientific observations.”

Describing the effects of LSD through brain anatomy and chemistry did not fit the Agora agenda.

[more to come]

LSD - Problem Child and Wonder Drug

International Symposium

on the Occasion of the 100th Birthday

of Albert Hofmann

Friday, 13 January 2006 in Basel