Acid Revelations
in Shambala
I had never seen a green horse before. Nor a red one. But as I walked along a wooded path in upstate New York, smelling damp lichens and ferns after fresh rain, I was met by both. It was a fitting prelude to my encounter with Timothy Leary, former lecturer at Harvard University. He had become the guru of the Acid Revolution, which was inspiring an entire generation of hip young people in the United States to turn their backs on mainstream society, throw off the shackles imposed by the anti-ecstatic establishment, and create a counterculture based on love and “Flower Power.”
Leary had started a commune, which he nicknamed “psychedelic boot camp,” in a rambling estate near Millbrook, not far from New York City, and I was meeting him there because I wanted to try LSD for myself. A friend in Paris had provided me with a contact in Manhattan who, in turn, was acquainted with Leary, so it had been relatively easy to make an appointment to see him.
The year was 1967. An article in Paris Match magazine about LSD, the hippie counterculture, and the “Summer of Love” had gripped my attention. I wanted to try LSD myself.
I knew that taking this new drug was risky. I had heard stories of people thinking they could fly and then throwing themselves out of windows. But I had also heard that LSD offered powerful experiences of mystical states, and this was enormously attractive to me. From what I had read, LSD held out the promise of inner revelation, a deeper experience of self, a profound communion with the divine.
The quest for bliss was a driving force in me, something I couldn’t really explain but had to recognize as a secret passion. I was longing to explore, or revisit, in a new and expanded way, those moments of light and spaciousness I’d glimpsed during lovemaking with Richard.
The mystical dimension has been part of our human potential for a long time, especially among seekers, including Saint Teresa de Avila, Yogananda, Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, and Sri Aurobindo, as well as Meera, the singing and dancing devotee of Krishna, not to mention John, the unknown Jewish-Christian prophet who wrote the Book of Revelation.
I was keen to access such mystical states, but also cautious, and I was hoping that Timothy Leary would give me the name of a guide who could accompany me and protect me on my first LSD trip.
Timothy met me outside the mansion and was friendly, informal, and charming. He was in his late forties at the time and had a long face with a square, prominent jaw and broad features framed by unruly brown hair. There was a lightness about him. His laughing eyes were welcoming, and it soon became apparent that he had a natural gift of the gab. No wonder he’d been a lecturer!
He introduced me to his two psychedelic horses, which, he explained had been painted during a recent acid trip. They seemed surprisingly at ease in their green and red “costumes.” Tim invited me into the mansion for tea. I told him about my desire to experience LSD and my need for a guide.
He talked at length about the importance of the drug, saying things like, “The experience of higher states of consciousness is necessary for the survival of the human species” and “LSD is the drug that can bring about this transformation.”
Then he gave me a present: a small square of blotting paper, containing a medium dose of “pure Sandoz,” or lysergic acid, which he assured me had been manufactured by the Swiss company and was free of any additives.
“LSD is a great sacrament, so treat it with respect,” he advised me. “Prepare yourself well and take time afterward to reflect on your experience.”
He gave me the number of a friend in New York City who would put me in touch with a guide for my journey. Leary’s friend connected me to someone, who connected me to someone, until eventually I contacted Asat Mitra. I was told this man was newly arrived from India and lived in New York on the Lower East Side and was “an experienced yogi.”
Returning to Manhattan, I looked up Mr. Asat Mitra and was surprised to find him in a rather derelict district with houses in poor condition lining streets that looked abandoned. I pushed open the door to his building and climbed two floors up to his apartment. The door was ajar.
I entered into an exotic den with Indian tapestries on the walls, glittering with bright colors and little mirrors sewn into the fabric, as well as paintings of Indian gods and goddesses. Incense was burning and the room smelled of sandalwood.
There was nobody there. However, I did have an appointment, so I stood for several minutes, taking it all in, feeling curious, almost expecting some kind of genie from Aladdin’s lamp to emerge out of the altar, which was adorned with flowers and candles.
I coughed to make my presence known. A door next to the altar opened and in came a slightly-built Indian man with dark skin, a rather narrow, pointed nose, and deep-set but piercing black eyes behind small spectacles that gave him the look of a university professor. He greeted me with a friendly, welcoming smile.
He had shiny black hair falling in loose waves to his shoulders and was wearing a traditional Indian kurta, a knee-length silk shirt, hanging loosely over pajama-like cotton pants. We shook hands, exchanged names, and bowed to each other in the traditional Indian namaste greeting—hands pressed together in front of the chest. Then he invited me to sit on a pillow close to the altar, while serving me sweet, spicy Indian tea, which I later came to know as chai.
Asat claimed to be a devout student of yoga and Tantra, studying with Master Harish Johari, a Tantric master in India. He showed me Harish Johari’s books on the “chakras,” which, so Asat explained, were a series of energy vortexes in the body capable of “alchemical potential.” The books were beautifully illustrated, and I began to vaguely understand that Tantra—and chakras—had something to do with spiritual transformation.
I told him what I was looking for: an unobtrusive guide on my LSD journey, who would allow me to have my own experience yet make sure I wasn’t trying to morph into a bird and fly out the window.
Asat Mitra assured me he was the man for the task. He told me he possessed certain siddhis, or psychic powers, such as telepathy and reading people’s energy at a distance. He confirmed he would be willing to use these powers to protect me on my journey.
“I will always be with you,” he said, “psychically tuned in with you at all times but in the other room.”
We decided on the following scenario: I would use his Indian-style living room for my trip, while he would be meditating in his bedroom, down the corridor, in telepathic connection with me.
I had my doubts about the existence of such powers, but I wanted to believe him, trying in my mind to visualize a kind of smoky cloud of presence flowing like an umbilical cord from his brain to mine along the corridor.
On a more practical level, he said he’d give me a bell to ring if I needed him.
Asat Mitra seemed well informed and willing to help. He offered to be my guide at no charge. I accepted, somewhat surprised, wondering if he was doing this because he had ulterior motives or secret designs, perhaps, on this blonde French “bimbo” 6 who had walked into his life.
As the conversation continued, I found myself liking this man but not really trusting him. He seemed to be calculating internally while we talked, as if he had a double strategy for every situation—a public one and a private one.
However, I felt strong enough to decide to go for it. I could not see how this man might harm me. After all, Leary himself had recommended him.
Two days later, after bathing, I arrived at his apartment, bringing with me a white ceremonial dress to wear during the journey. As instructed, I had eaten nothing and was drinking only water—no tea or coffee.
By the time I showed up at Asat Mitra’s apartment, I was beyond excited. This moment felt like destiny, like something from a past life, as if I were revisiting an ancient temple and preparing for a life-changing initiation.
I was well received by a beaming Asat. We checked that everything was ready: water, fruit, no sharp objects—no knives or scissors lying around—tissues if I wanted to cry, soft shawls if I was cold, lots of pillows, incense, and a few photos of spiritual mystics, both men and women.
In the next room, I took off all constricting underwear and put on a loose-fitting white cotton dress. When I reentered the living room, Asat Mitra blessed my third eye with essential oil of sandalwood, my crown chakra with rose oil, my heart with jasmine, and my belly with lavender. He sang mantras in Hindi while I listened.
The time had come. Asat gave me a glass of water and I produced the blotting paper from Tim Leary. I blessed it with an “Aum” and swallowed. Asat bowed and departed for his room.
I dedicated my journey to receiving a deeper understanding of the true meaning of Tantra, not just for me but for all beings.
In the two days since my first visit to Asat, I’d been avidly reading books on this ancient science of enlightenment and felt powerfully drawn to it.
Tantra laid out a path for transcending the ego, or personality, by channeling vital energy through the chakras. As it rose through the body, this energy would mutate into finer and higher frequencies, eventually transforming into an experience of luminescence at the crown chakra.
Was that what had happened when I made love for the first time with Richard? My question, or rather, my quest, was: could Tantra stabilize that awakened state? Might it become a universal awakening for everyone?
Back in the here and now, I bowed to the spirit of LSD. I thanked ergot, the grain fungus from which it was derived. I thanked Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who first synthesized lysergic acid in 1938. I tuned in to my spirit and relaxed.
About forty minutes later, with my eyes closed, I began to have an inner vision of multicolored fractals of light that morphed into cellular movements within my body.
I will not attempt to describe all the things that happened to me on that first LSD trip, but it began—as many people have related before me—with the deepening of colors in the room, together with a delightful vibrancy, as everything, even solid objects, were now pulsating with aliveness.
Equally important, my mind ceased its routine habit of interpreting, assessing, and categorizing what I was seeing around me, so I became innocent, open to whatever my awareness focused on, absorbed in the wonder of the most ordinary things.
What I remember most vividly is that, at some stage in the journey, I felt myself expanding beyond the boundaries of the body and slipping into an entirely different dimension.
Let’s switch to “now” on this journey …
I am alighting in a new world, a very real, sensual, palpable, visible world. A world that shines, full of colors, each particle in the air reflecting the many hues of a rainbow. I have a strong feeling of déjà vu. I have been here before. In fact, I was very happy here. I don’t know why I ever had to leave this place.
I am in a garden. You could call it the Garden of Eden. Nature here is lush and abundant and exudes aliveness. Birds, insects, and other animals are friendly. Tall trees blossom and rise over brightly colored flowers that dot the landscape, growing wild, offering their beauty and fragrance for our delight.
There are several of us here … other humans. But not the normal kind. These people seem perfectly content. I do not perceive any duality, any negativity, any unhappiness. These people seem to exist beyond ego. They are in a state of oneness. Oneness between spirit and body. Oneness with each other and with nature.
Their hearts are joyful. They have a sort of “inner shine,” a grace that is beyond human—I dare not say divine for fear of sounding too religious, but I mean it, in the sense of unity between the Creator and the created. They are both at once. They smile, they appear innocent and simple. Theirs is a world of play, with no effort.
I walk around, marveling at the possibility that such a world exists and yet somehow knowing it has always been so. For I am one of them. I know, in my soul, that I belong here, that I have been here … a long time ago. I am coming home. I have returned to this familiar place. This is my family. This is my sanctuary, my healing, my Shambala.
It is a revelation of the Tantric lifestyle, which creates no division between body and soul, the divine and the ordinary, the spiritual and the material. It offers a total yes to life in all its dimensions.
After spending a long time in the “garden,” I seem to disappear into nowhere land for a while, almost as if sleeping. Then, when I awake, still high on the LSD journey, I find myself sitting on Asat Mitra’s lap.
He is sitting quite still, in the YabYum position, legs crossed in semi-lotus posture, with me resting on his thighs, my legs around his waist. It is all fine, except I feel what seems to be “a visitor” inside my vagina, my yoni. I focus my attention there and realize his penis is inside my body. It feels rather interesting but somehow separate from my ongoing experience.
There is a vague feeling of something that is not supposed to happen, like an uninvited guest showing up at a dinner party. How do I handle this situation? It’s not dramatic, but something is amiss.
What is he doing here? Even though I’m high, I’m aware that it’s up to me how I play this: to go with it, accept it, or pull away. I close my eyes, but before deciding anything, a new dimension opens.
Fractals of emotional states present themselves in rapid succession: women being abused and raped. Is this me now? Am I being raped?
“Not really,” comes my own answer. “It doesn’t hurt.”
Well, does it have to hurt in order to be a rape? After all, no one asked my opinion here.
I am moved by the sad realization that it seems impossible, in our human world, to surrender to the perfection of Shambala without having some deviant taking advantage of the situation. Or is this, perhaps, some kind of Tantric initiation ceremony?
Perhaps I can focus my attention down there, in my sex, and enjoy myself … except that my body doesn’t really respond to this object inside me. It feels foreign and inanimate, like a cold fish floating motionless in an aquarium.
Yes, I see an aquarium down there. There are many fish in my aquarium, floating, waiting. Now they morph into penises with gills and fins—big ones, small ones, long ones, large ones—all floating in this aquarium inside my vagina.
In this moment, I am totally identified with the vision of this aquarium. I am watching these penises floating leisurely, barely moving their gills. It is so surprising and unexpected that I have to look again … and suddenly this vision is really, really funny. It is hilarious!
Unexpectedly, I burst into a laughter that grows and becomes so all-consuming that it has me shaking and trembling up and down my spine. The laughter grows even more when I see the confused expression of my visitor, whose little fish is now slipping out of me. No doubt this aquarium is becoming too agitated to allow his fish to float in peace.
Asat Mitra’s face creases in an artificial smile and he slowly removes himself from the room. I am alone again, still tripping. Luckily, I continue to be suffused with the beauty of my Shambala experience, with the gratitude and realization that such a place exists, that I belong there, that it is my mission to rediscover it and go back “home.”
And now back to the past tense …
Eventually, as I came out of the LSD journey, I found myself again in the living room of Asat Mitra’s apartment. All seemed to be well. As one might expect, I was slightly befuddled and confused and slowly recuperating from the intensity of the experience.
My host was kind and polite but rather impersonal. I wasn’t sure about that “penetrating visit” from his penis-fish, so I said nothing. Finally, when I felt ready to leave, he took me to a taxi. We agreed that I would see him again soon.
At home, I enjoyed a hot cleansing bath and a long, ten-hour, restful sleep. Then I awoke and started drinking liters of water and ingesting tons of vitamin C—as recommended by Leary, to help the body recover from its energy loss. I was feeling happy and refreshed and set aside the following day to debrief myself and write about the trip.
I had dedicated my journey to receiving a deeper understanding of the meaning of Tantra, not just for me but for all beings.
It felt as if I’d been through a rite of initiation into the world of Tantra, which for me had two dimensions, old and new. I saw Asat Mitra’s uninvited visit to my yoni as belonging to the “old Tantra,” the one written by men looking for young partners, preferably virgins, whom they could use to rejuvenate their minds and bodies.
In this old paradigm, women were just objects, not subjects. But there was another dimension, a new Tantra in which women, too, could claim their right to ecstatic experiences.
I wondered about my vision of Shambala. It seemed to me that I must have been there in a past life, or perhaps it was a message from the beyond, to show me that such a way of life is possible through meditation and spiritual practice—through the discipline of Tantra. Much later, I realized that I was attempting to recreate Shambala in every Tantra group I offered … giving people the space to find innocence and harmony, opening their hearts to one another.
As I regained my “normal” state of mind, it became clear to me that Asat had, indeed, come to see me at some point in my LSD journey, even though he’d promised to stay in his own space. He had visited me, then sexually penetrated me. But I was not in my normal state of consciousness. At the time, my mind had been unable to associate any “meaning” to this visit. It had just been a succession of colored fractals followed by unexpected visions of fishes. There was, in that moment, no past, no future, no rebellion, no judgment. How strange, now, to fully realize what had actually taken place.
Today, one would call such an incident a “date rape.” For me, at that moment, tripping, the feeling of his sexual visit had been almost neutral on the sensory level. There was just this unacceptable detail: he did not ask my permission. He had not been invited. Pleasant or not, it had not happened by mutual consent. This was absolutely unacceptable.
I examined this point carefully. If I went negative about it, made a big emotional fuss, played the blame game, I felt it would denigrate the beauty of my LSD journey. In truth, I was able in meditation to bring myself to feel at peace with the situation, so I consigned Asat Mitra to the category of “rascal” rather than “rapist.” And I never saw him again. I did this for me—not to avoid, but to honor my choice to let go and be at peace. Looking back, this has often been my way. When someone shows up as a fraud, I tend to cut them off from my life, while resolving the issue on my own. When it doesn’t work, I opt for the way of confrontation. Of course, when I focused on Asat Mitra and his bogus guidance, I was increasingly mad, but somehow not to the point of going public with it—not out of shame, but out of a sense of self-preservation and valuing the discovery of Shambala.
Yet this was the beginning of a slowly dawning awareness of danger on many levels. I knew now, from my own experience, that one of the beautiful gifts of LSD was that it made people innocent, childlike, vulnerable, and immensely impressionable. But this also opened the door for manipulation, control, and exploitation. Asat’s betrayal of his role as protector, his unasked-for sexual intervention, could easily have ruined my trip and turned it into an ugly nightmare—if it hadn’t been for the timely and comical rescue of the penis-fishes.
I had been in a vulnerable position. He took advantage of it. This is what happens in date rapes. Such abuses can be very dangerous. I had been lucky that, besides the penetration, no physical violence had taken place. Today, I would never do what I did then. I would make sure that I knew the guide well and could trust the person thoroughly, and possibly I would do such a journey in the presence of “co-travelers.” Still, I consider myself lucky. With all due care and acknowledgment of the potential painful consequences of such an abusive event, my experience did not leave a deep wound. In that time, long ago, it is true that the situation with Asat Mitra was redeemed by the hilarious visions of the penis-fishes and that laughter and shaking saved the day. As you will discover, this book offers many avenues of healing from traumatic sexual experiences, because I do care about this issue. One of the most powerful healings took place in the story of chapter eight, “Awakening the Guru Between My legs.”
This date rape also marked the dawn of my understanding how Tantra can be embraced wisely as a path to bliss or, conversely, can be abused. It can be a sacred path to higher consciousness or used as a cheap “spiritual” strategy to seduce young women into sex:
“Let me initiate you into Tantra, baby. Step this way …”
These two options, and all the shades of gray in between, have been a hallmark feature of Tantra all through its introduction to the Western world.
But the story of my adventure with LSD wasn’t over. After my visit to the United States, I returned to Paris and started a career in journalism, which came easily to me, using my natural skills in writing and self-expression. Soon I was freelancing successfully for several international magazines.
If we fast-forward two years to 1969, we find this young woman again in New York, this time working for Paris Match, the popular French illustrated news magazine. The director of the magazine’s New York office had been looking for a bilingual journalist, at ease in both French and English, so he had hired me.
A few months into the job, I felt constrained by the tendency of the Paris office to edit and shorten my articles. I’d send them three pages and then—even though they liked my work—barely half a page would appear in the published version. I needed to sink my teeth into something more substantial. Brimming over with enthusiasm and a youthful sense of destiny, I sat down with the magazine’s top brass at the New York office and persuaded them to appoint me director of a new department dealing with the American counterculture.
I told them the Flower Power revolution now catching fire in the United States would impact the whole world and it should be covered in depth—and I was the one to do it.
They bought my pitch. I was given my own “department.” Alleluia! I was being paid to explore the most extraordinary cultural breakthrough of the century—a dream come true. And my first stop was the upcoming Woodstock Music and Art Fair, to be held on August 15–18, 1969, at a dairy farm in upstate New York.
I got there early, spending time at the site ahead of the festival, hanging out with organizer Michael Laing. It was through him—and my press credentials—that I was given a standing place in front of the stage for the concerts.
Everyone knows what happened: a festival that was hoping to attract a maximum of 200,000 participants brought more than 400,000 enthusiastic young people to Max Yasgur’s farm in the Catskills. The whole field and hillside were packed. An entire city mushroomed up in a matter of hours.
It was big. Big beyond belief. Bumper-to-bumper traffic. No way in, no way out. It was really an event happening to the organizers rather than by their own doing, and it became a legend. All these young people, coming together, looking so happy and colorful with their long hair, tie-dye shirts, and bell-bottom pants, were showing the world that something new and immensely exciting was happening. They were changing world cultures and values.
They showed it was possible to be together in a loving, caring, blissful way beyond the constant worry about rules, police, permits, and so on. It was possible to stop fighting against the mainstream and instead create such a flood of joyful vibes that everyone would be swept along by their contagious effect.
On the afternoon of the first day, Michael Laing and friends grabbed a loudspeaker and asked for a moment of silence and a blessing for the event in the form of the sound “Aum.”
Spontaneously, everyone got up, took their neighbor’s hand, and started to create a circle—an ever-widening circle that disappeared over the top of the hill and kept on expanding to finally stop at the festival site’s boundaries.
I felt like a participant, not a journalistic observer. I’d stashed my clothes in the car and was naked except for a flimsy sarong, which I crossed in front of my body and tied around the back of my neck. I had nothing to wear, nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep, and yet I felt absolutely delighted.
This collective Aum was a holy moment. My heart was overflowing. Tears of gratitude flowed down my cheeks. Now, in this moment, when the sound of Aum united our souls, we were one. What an honor to participate.
Standing there, holding my neighbors’ hands, I decided then and there to leave Europe and drop out of its ancient history and arrogant culture. Instead, I chose to drop into—in fact, I was already dropping into—this brand-new American counterculture. It felt new, fresh, innocent, benevolent. Here, everything could be tried and experimented.
The concert began, and the musical lineup was stunning: Richie Havens, Jefferson Airplane, Joan Baez, The Who, Janis Joplin, Carlos Santana, Jimi Hendrix … The list of bands and singers is the stuff of legends now.
But as the music played, I was waiting for Philippe, a professional photographer sent from Paris to cover the story. Eventually I managed to secure a phone and talk to him. He was beyond late. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“I can’t come,” he said. “The only road is blocked for three miles by cars, bumper to bumper. Nobody can get in or out anymore. I’m working on securing a helicopter, but it’s complicated, because every magazine on the planet is trying to get a helicopter! Where shall I meet you? How about outside the festival somewhere?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I told him. “I’m also stuck. But I’m stuck on the happening side! If you manage to get here, go to the press office and get accredited. It’s a trailer halfway up the hill, on the left of the stage—I gave them your name there. Then come down to the standing area in front of the stage. I’m in a bright yellow sarong and I have a tape recorder hanging on my shoulder. Good luck!”
I didn’t see Philippe until the end of the festival, but he did manage to take some sensational photos.
Remembering I was a journalist who was supposed to gather information and write an article, I wandered up the hill to a big tent set up by the Hog Farm, a New Age tribe of some eighty people who lived and traveled together mostly in large buses painted with multicolored, day-glo, psychedelic patterns.
I was introduced to Wavy Gravy, aka Hugh Romney, the leader of the tribe and a no-nonsense peace activist. We took a moment to hang out. I learned that, in his long career, he’d been through different incarnations as a radio anchor and newsman, a group leader, and a community leader. Here at the Woodstock Festival, he had become the “security chief” in charge of making sure everyone was okay.
He did well. Everyone knows that Wavy and the Hog people saved the day at Woodstock by providing a free kitchen and feeding the multitudes, since it was impossible to go in and out of the site.
Late that Friday night, I slept in a corner of their tent, on a carpet, and Wavy even had an extra blanket to give me.
Next day, I kept meandering between the stage and the Hog Farm tent. The music was mostly sensational. I interviewed people. Everyone wanted to celebrate the coming of an age of love and freedom. I felt like I was part of it and relished the feeling that we were among those who might just “turn the culture around.”
Was this festival going to become a gigantic Shambala? Had my acid journey been a premonition? Were we now entering into a Tantric world of love and harmony without end?
Then Wavy Gravy asked me to help at the tents set aside for people suffering from bad LSD trips. People came to these tents in droves. The main cause, it seemed, was “brown acid,” so-called because the LSD had been soaked into brown-colored blotting paper.
Wavy had to go onstage and warn people about it. At first it was thought that this brown acid had been cut with bad stuff, but the truth—so I learned afterward—was that the hits were just too strong. Young first-timers who had never dropped acid before were hallucinating like crazy and some were freaking out.
I helped as best I could. It was like being in a Hieronymus Bosch painting: people wailing, hallucinating that they were turning green and purple, regressing to another age, to another time or incarnation, no longer knowing where they were, or who they were, looking at my face and seeing a monster, a devil, a dragon.
A young woman in her early twenties, completely disheveled, appeared lost in the underworld of her own private hell. Wavy asked me to help, so I gently held her hand and looked in her eyes, but she did not see me; she saw only her personal movie unfolding in front of her inner eyes.
She was mumbling, “You can’t leave me now. You can’t leave me now. …”
Confronted with her delusion, I remembered that Ronald Laing, the pioneering psychiatrist I’d met in London, had told me one has to go deep down into the world of a mentally disturbed person and join her there, in her private hell.
“Act and talk as one of them,” he’d advised. “Be one of them. Become part of their world.”
Dr. Laing felt his approach was far better than giving a patient drugs. So down I went with this mad woman. I held her close and talked to her continuously, reassuringly, using the same language:
“I am here for you. It is you who is leaving me. Please don’t leave me,” and so on, repeating her discourse in reverse, as if she were the one originating the actions that were causing her grief.
Slowly, it seemed to be working. She became so perplexed that she stopped grieving for the absent partner and instead tried to make sense of what was happening to her here, now, in this tent.
This was the beginning of her healing.
Ah, madness! Who is to say who is really deluded and who is sane in this crazy world of ours?
Finally, I was able to let the young woman go. Stepping outside the tent, I looked at the huge crowd and only then realized how idealistic and blind I had been. I had interpreted the festival’s good vibes as a natural expression of the perfection of human nature, imagining that, when left alone in nature to groove to music under an open sky, people would get naturally high.
I hadn’t realized that the festival was awash with LSD, marijuana, and cocaine, and everyone was on some kind of drug. Even Janis Joplin, I found out later, was on heroin and whiskey—a very bad combination. Little innocent me, who hadn’t taken anything at the festival, was riding the wave of a “contact high.”
Shocked though I was by the scenes in the bad-trip tents, I readily acknowledged that these people were only a small percentage of the gathering. If 400,000 people were ripped and the entire hillside was one gigantic acid trip, they were mostly handling it well.
Yes, there was confusion and chaos as the organization strained and cracked under the impact of so many people, but there were no fights, no crimes, no arrests, no police. Stoned or not, we made it. We showed the world what love can look like.
What I Learned
After Woodstock, I found myself wondering: Would Shambala be as ideal if everyone stayed straight? Would it be possible to create a harmonious society without the aid of drugs?
I realized that drugs are, or can be, treacherous. It’s a strange coincidence that, only a few days before the Woodstock Festival began on the East Coast, a series of macabre killings on the West Coast shocked America. It would be another two months before Charles Manson and his disciples were arrested and charged for those crimes, and during the trial it would become clear that Manson used LSD to keep his young followers deluded and compliant.
But the lure of controlling others through LSD didn’t begin with Manson. It had been thoroughly explored during the fifties and early sixties by the CIA, who, according to a Congressional report in 1975 (by the Church Committee), covertly financed “mind control” experiments at more than thirty universities and institutions. These experiments, known collectively as Project MKUltra, focused on using LSD. The drug was administered to hundreds of subjects, often without their knowledge, sometimes in damagingly high doses.
So at the end of this particular chapter in my life, I was left with a mixed bag of impressions. LSD had proved to be a mind-opener and an important platform for me to discover hidden dimensions. But with LSD, or, indeed, with any drug that takes people away from “normal” reality and into sensitive and delicate spaces, it is tricky to find situations in which you can relax and be vulnerable with people you trust.
The opportunities for abuse are rampant. At the time, my personal episode with Asat Mitra planted a deep-seated belief in me that men could not be trusted. It took me a long time to remember that I was the source of this prejudice and I could change it. It was up to me. It all depends on the lens through which we look at reality.
The final upshot of my drug experiences was that I wanted to find out if I could reach those expanded states naturally. And so it was that I embarked on many methods of self-inquiry, moving ever onward in my quest to rediscover and recreate Shambala. This is what led me to create my Love and Ecstasy Training,7 described in chapter ten.
But, above all, I wanted to find ways of healing sexual trauma. The most radical and profound method I discovered was the session described in chapter eight, “Awakening the Guru Between My Legs.” It became the first weeklong cycle of the Love and Ecstasy Training. I believe that it is important for all of us to “clean our basement,” to confront and release the trauma left by sexual abuse. I believe it is possible to do so by balancing the released traumatic memory with the cultivation of joyful and ecstatic states. It is possible. That is the good news. I have worked with thousands of women victims of sexual trauma, and I have experienced that healing is possible.
The Practice: Exploring Natural Highs
Today, in affluent countries, one person in ten consumes antidepressants, freely prescribed by our medical profession. So it’s okay to take drugs to stop feeling depressed, but it’s illegal to take drugs that allow us to feel ecstatic.
Which makes me wonder: if people were allowed and encouraged to feel ecstatic, would there be any demand for antidepressant drugs?
In ancient Hindu texts, such as the Rig Veda and the Kama Sutra, an ecstatic potion called Soma was praised and widely used. It is said that people were using Soma as an aid for everything from making love to meditating to going into battle.
Historians, ethnobotanists, 8 and other researchers have widely differing opinions about Soma’s ingredients. But one thing is not in doubt: Soma was socially acceptable in those days and its use was encouraged. So why not adopt those ancient values? Why not look for modern forms of Soma in today’s world?
LSD may be illegal. The drug called Ecstasy may be banned. But there are many plants that can be used to explore altered states of consciousness.
Why not visit the countries and cultures where such plants are available? Once you are there, in the countries where these natural drugs are used as a sacrament, once you have created a safe environment for your internal exploration, ask the spirit of the plant to reveal to you the answer to your personal quest, to guide your vision.
I tried it. It works. Nature is our friend and healer.
We are not born to be “normal.” It is not our ultimate destiny to conform to mundane social paradigms. These are collective psychological prisons, keeping us trapped in convenient illusions.
We are being distracted from experiencing a higher truth by television, social media, movies, computer games, etc.
We are trapped in the technosphere, the Internet web of electromagnetic emissions, in which we forget our ecstatic potential and become addicted instead to virtual information—imagining, somehow, that these distractions will fulfill us.
Meanwhile, we forget that bliss is naturally available. We forget that the entire body-mind system has a biological capacity for pleasure that can be stimulated in many ways. We are, in fact, a walking laboratory, with millions of chemical exchanges happening every minute.
With this in mind, I invite you to examine how the drugs occurring naturally within your own body can influence your moods. For example, in terms of chemistry, making love is like walking into a drugstore and taking every “feel good” pill on the shelf.
As a general motivator, testosterone fuels sexual drive and aggression. This is the hormone that makes men seek, hunt, and want to penetrate. It is essential to the male libido and sexual arousal—in short, it turns men on—but to a lesser degree, it does the same for women.
Adrenaline kicks in when a male-female connection is made and flirting begins. Up goes your heart rate, increasing blood flow. Meanwhile, adrenaline is also sending wake-up alerts to activate your nervous system and its stress response. Now you begin to buzz with excitement: you start to sweat, your heart races, and your mouth goes dry—byproducts that, as we all know, make the strategy of “playing it cool” a little difficult.
At this stage, you may fall in love. If you do, high levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine will be released in your brain, triggering an intense rush of pleasure. Researchers say this has an effect on the brain similar to morphine, as endorphins such as dopamine bind to opiate receptors, reducing pain and enhancing bliss.
Not surprisingly, this suppresses those brain areas that allow us to think rationally and calmly. That’s why two people falling in love are often regarded by others as suffering from some kind of madness—the couple can’t think straight and it shows!
There is increased energy and less need for sleep or food. Drugged by their own brain chemistry, the lovers tend to focus their attention exclusively on each other, delighting in the smallest details of this novel relationship.
Moving into lovemaking, dopamine is joined by the neurotransmitter serotonin, which gives an extra shot of well-being and happiness, especially during orgasm. By the way, almost all antidepressant prescriptions handed out these days contain serotonin as part of the mix.
Oxytocin is known as the “cuddle hormone” and is released by men and women during orgasm. It deepens the feelings of attachment, making partners feel closer to each other after they have had sex, which helps them drop their defenses and trust each other more. Some findings suggest that the more sex a couple has, the deeper their bond becomes.
When lovemaking becomes a conscious Tantric practice, it can open the door to bliss through all these biochemical compounds that are flooding into our minds and bodies. When we consciously channel this energy back to the brain, particularly to the pineal gland, it is possible to stabilize this ecstatic feeling into a quiet, free, peaceful, expanded state of meditation.
There is a world of natural substances, both within us and without, that is available to help us on our journey toward self-illumination. With responsibility, care, and intelligence, we can explore this world.
When sipping some ambrosia,
Raise your glass,
Close your eyes,
Toast the universe—
The Sun and Moon and Earth
Danced together
To bring you this delight.
Receive this nectar on your tongue
As a kiss of the divine.9
6. Italian slang for “chick.”
7. See www.skydancingtantra.org.
8. Ethnobotany is the scientific study of the relationship between plants and humans. A good resource on this topic is Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers by Richard Evans Schultes, Albert Hofmann, and Christian Rätsch (Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press, 2001).
9. Lorin Roche, The Radiance Sutras (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2014), Sutra 49.