As the intuitive choreography of experiential content in psychedelic sessions unfolds, it is often quite amazing to witness how one’s relationships with other persons and one’s readiness to experience mystical states of awareness are meaningfully interconnected. Martin Buber, a Jewish existentialist philosopher known for his focus on the sacredness of relationships, coined the term “the I-Thou relationship” (from “Ich-Du,” employing the more intimate, second-person, singular German pronoun), for relationships both between separate, individual human beings and between each of us and the “Eternal Thou,” or God. Many psychedelic experiences appear to validate Buber’s theme that the manner in which we interact with one another does really matter in terms of spiritual health and growth.
AT THE GATE BEFORE THE INFINITE ROSE GARDEN
Among the cancer patients I’ve been able to support during the effects of psychedelic substances, a tall, thin woman I’ll call Rosa comes vividly to mind. She was an African American mother of two daughters, had worked hard as a college custodian, and now was coping with the final stages of uterine cancer. At this point in her illness, she had to endure the almost constant vaginal discharge of bodily fluids, so during our preparatory and integrative appointments she sat on a portable toilet with a white blanket discretely placed on her lap. Nonetheless, she welcomed the counseling intervention that had been offered to her in hopes of preparing more fully for her death and perhaps decreasing some of her psychological distress.
After we had spent approximately eight hours together, establishing a trust-filled relationship, she was admitted to a private hospital room for her psychedelic session. There, the nurse assisting me as a cotherapist administered a moderate dose of dipropyltryptamine (DPT) to her. As her experience began, she encountered a rocky landscape through which she had to make her way, coming more fully to terms with her diagnosis and prognosis in the process. Finally, she arrived at a visionary gate, where she could hear the singing of angels and beyond which she reported “roses as far as the eye could see.” Just as she was about to step through the gate, she heard (within her own mind) the voice of one of her daughters calling her. Reluctantly, with some irritation, she turned around to “find out what she wanted.” Then, to her dismay, she discovered that the alternative states of consciousness were abruptly ending and that once again she was lying without visionary imagery in her hospital bed. She voiced her frustration in the dialect of Baltimore’s inner city: “If I evaah see that gate again” (pause, followed by loud, rushed speech), “I’m a goin’ right on through!”
Back in the everyday world, in the weeks prior to her death, Rosa did interact with this daughter, as well as other family members, manifesting an openness that was new for them. Together they addressed conflicts that had prevailed between them in ways that were profoundly reconciling. This same daughter invited Rosa to come and live with her during the final weeks before nursing home care became imperative. After the eventual transfer to the nursing home had occurred, I happened to arrive for a follow-up visit just moments after Rosa’s death, where I encountered her two daughters crying in the entry foyer. When her breathing had become markedly irregular, a very anxious nurse had ordered the daughters out of her room, closed the white curtains around her bed, and left her alone to die. At my insistence, and “only under my supervision,” the daughters and I returned to the bedside, viewed Rosa’s body, and talked some of how much their relationship had meant.
Subsequently, I received the following letter:
Dear Dr. Richards,
I had never watched anyone dying before. Thank you for giving me the chance to say and do so many things for my mother, that others like me never had the chance to do for theirs … I’m still grieving for my mother. Maybe I’m grieving and crying for all the wasted times in our lives. I was the black sheep in my family, but in the end I had a place for my mother to come and stay. We became very good friends in the end. We both asked each other’s forgiveness and we both gave it. My mother asked me not to be sad or afraid of her when she died. Thank you for telling me that the only way to conquer your fears is to face them; I didn’t know that. Out of all the sadness and pain, something good came out of it.
Although we have no way of knowing exactly what Rosa may have experienced as her death occurred, it is reasonable for me to imagine that she indeed went through the visionary gate and danced through the fields of roses and beyond while angels sang.
THE EMERALD ON THE VELVET PILLOW
Another illustration of the role of interpersonal relationships in psychedelic sessions comes from an experience facilitated by DPT of a middle-aged woman I will call Cora. Struggling with terminal breast cancer, this African American social worker was struggling with accepting the imminence of her death and leaving her husband and two sons who were in early adulthood.
As the effects of DPT began, Cora discovered a vision of a magnificent deep green emerald that was resting on a velvet pillow. During the next few hours, she experienced four approaches to this precious stone. The first time, the focus was on her relationship with her husband. She explored the many facets of their long commitment to each other, said tearfully aloud, “How could you be so many things to me?,” and finally accepted that she had to die soon and managed to let go of her desire to cling to him. With this experience of “letting go,” she reported a surge of gratitude for the quality of life they had shared.
Then the emerald reappeared and her focus changed to the elder of her two sons and her ambivalence about his intention to marry a woman who already had a child from another relationship. She sorted through her feelings and finally affirmed her acceptance of her son’s decision and also of her future daughter-in-law and granddaughter.
The emerald reappeared a third time and her mind presented her with her younger son, who had not excelled academically and who reminded her in some ways of her homosexual brother. Again she struggled through her many feelings until she finally was able to affirm her acceptance of him as he is, regardless of his academic accomplishments or possible sexual preference.
It was at this point, after resolving the emotions connected with her three most primary human relationships, that she approached the emerald a fourth time. This time, she experienced herself being drawn within the crystalline beauty of the gemstone and became immersed in mystical consciousness. Why this particular woman’s mind chose an emerald on a velvet pillow as an archetypal symbol of the Self rather than the more common image of a diamond remains unknown. (I do recall another woman who, in an experience facilitated by LSD, found herself entering mystical consciousness through a vision of a yellow topaz.) Perhaps the velvet pillow was a symbol of the approach of death and also the pillow on which her head would rest in her casket. In the wisdom of her mind, her relationships between her husband and two sons clearly had to be addressed before she was ready to experience her relationship with Buber’s “Eternal Thou.”
The intense quantity of therapeutic work within a period of approximately four hours is striking. There is no way her experience could be viewed merely as “getting high” or as escape from life. The entheogen wisely and powerfully drew her into the primary vortexes of her psychological distress and spiritual life.
THE VEILS IN THE FIREPLACE
Yet another classic example of this apparent wisdom within many, if not all, human minds is the story of the theological student who, while diligently pursuing his graduate studies, had been neglecting his wife and children. In the early days of research in Boston, he took LSD in a living-room setting and, with open eyes, saw many visionary veils superimposed before a fireplace. The veils appeared like curtains between himself and the burning logs. Intuitively, he interpreted them as barriers between himself and God. Slowly, with the expressive movement of his arms, he pulled one veil after the other aside until only one remained. He braced himself for what he was convinced would be “the great experience of seeing the Face of God.” Dramatically, he then pulled the last veil aside and found himself almost brutally confronted by a vivid vision of his three children crying for their father.
Though not validated by the usual methods in social science research, it was claimed that the powerful flood of tears he manifested at that point was shared simultaneously by his children at their home in New Hampshire, several hours away. It is also claimed that the experience facilitated a better balance between his roles as scholar, spouse, and parent.
This constitutes another example of how people often tend to experience not what they expect or want, but what they appear to require or need on their particular thresholds of psychological and spiritual development. In similar fashion, I have found myself supporting several Roman Catholic priests who asked to participate in research studies in hopes of glimpsing the mystical state Christians call “the beatific vision.” Some, though certainly not all, found themselves painfully sorting through traumatic experiences and issues in their early sexual development instead.