so now
This is the whole essence you see of seeing if you really see
into this secret
that
the World
Doesn't contain any serious threats in it because it's all
The basic you running up behind itself and saying boo to see if you can get yourself to jump out of your skin
If you see that be cool
That's the whole art of zen know is cool hinduism
the Hindus come on a little strong when someone like Sri Ramakrishna or
Openly pretty much Openly announces that he's the Godhead
That's a little tough and when a sRi ramana accepts the puja of all the followers [and] Sri aurobindo
Sits every day for Darshan it's coming on a little strong
well the zen people feel that that's
just a bit too much and the way they come on is they
they're ordinary and
They say when to zen Masters meet each other on the road
They need no introduction when thieves meet they recognize each other instantly
So they don't say anything don't make any claims
There's a matter of fact so far from making claims all good zen masters say they don't they have not attained anything
they have nothing to teach and
That's the truth
because
anybody who tells you that he is some way of
Leading you to spiritual enlightenment is just like somebody who picks your pocket and sells you your own watch
Course if you didn't know you had a watch that might be the only way of getting you to realize
now so then
if though the people who do
By one means or another prepared or unprepared
Disciplined or undisciplined get into this kind of interior secret about the nature of the universe
And they have Hitherto been insecure about themselves
They're going to use this secret as some way of creating trouble and of stirring things up and of boosting their own
Inadequate character structure, which is a word I prefer to use instead we go
There is trouble
Because those people who are out there on the [tightrope]
We're going to get pretty scared
and they're going to call in the police and
Say this has got to stop
So then we have a situation [right] like that now, and I want to make a few comments about
first of all
The major group it seems to me that a crying panic about LSD are psychoanalysts?
To then this sort of thing is extremely threatening
The car psychoanalysis in its theory whether it be freudian, or whether it be union?
It has [a] theory of the unconscious
Which is not unrelated to the general philosophy of science of the 19th century?
Which is that the unconscious called the Libido [by] the freudians?
is
totally
uncivilized
blind lust
For the unions it may be something even more dangerous than that
Because they have not settled for the idea that it's the sexual unconscious
It may be much more sinister than that
Deep down there is the spider mother
there are the
Screaming Mimi's at the bottom of that pit
And Esther harding in her book pSychic energy says that civilization is a mere veneer over the abysmal depths of primeval slime
Which there are the great serpents and appalling influences just waiting for a chance to get up there and raise hell?
So if you are psychoanalytically oriented you are necessarily terrified of the unconscious
But you've learned a trick is say the old-fashioned Christians. They discipline the unconscious with a club
Bible and Birch Rod see
And they knocked it down Friday and said no
This is [a] very dangerous creature
But you've got to [train] it in a different way [like] a good horse trainer doesn't use the whip but lumps of sugar
But it's still the same animal
in other words this whole philosophy of
Western man as it crystallized in the late 18th 19th and early 20th centuries. Is that what we call humanity?
consciousness
[spirituality] values is simply a veneer the real thing underneath the gutsy thing is a terrible monster
And watch out for that, so anything that happens that might let that creature loose is looked upon [by] pSychoanalysis as terrible I
Don't [I'm] not going to accuse them of worrying about LSD because they think you're going to be put out of a job I
Don't think that LSD is
An automatic psychotherapy at all. It needs if you're going to use it for that purpose
You need psychotherapy in the ordinary way along with it
LsD. Is simply an exploratory instrument like a microscope or a telescope except this one's inside you instead of outside you and
According to your capacity and knowledge you can use a microscope or a telescope to advantage so in the same way according to your capacity
and your knowledge you can use an interior instrument to your advantage or
[just] for kicks [but]
[when] these people you know really feel threatened by this thing
They start sending around messages and public utterances which sound exactly as if they had taken, LSD
and had a bad trip with it and
We're coming on paranoid
And so they are spreading subtle rumors
that this substance causes permanent brain damage [and]
utter destruction of the Super-ego
there is a
There [are] people in New York likewise who are spreading around the idea that you see once this thing has touched you?
You as if you've had a prefrontal lobotomy
You are somebody who ought to be put in the concentration camp because you've lost your conscience
You're out of order
Nothing more can be done about it. Now. Do you see how alarming that could be in our day and age think that
Your brother your aunt has got permanent brain damage. I took some LSD you
[see] what the situation is [exactly] power is any other thing that we learn from history is nobody ever learns from history
Consider just go back a few [hundred] years
to the days of the inquisition
and
Realize that the theologians of the church were in those days
accorded the same kind of respect that we now accord to the professor of Pathology at the University of California Medical school, or
to the professor of physics at Caltech
We think those people are real authorities?
They know it works. They've experimented they have knowledge
they're the wisest people in our society [though] all right few hundred years ago, so [with] the theologians and
They had the same sense of responsibility
towards the community that our great scientists and physicians have today and
They knew there was a thing called heresy going around
that was not only capable once you caught heresy of
Making you damned to hell forever and ever and ever to the most unimaginable tortures that would go on without end
but that it was infectious and
One heretic would soon make other heretics
so those entirely
Humanitarian and Merciful [church] [fathers] got together said what are we gonna do to stop this?
well now they knew there is an eternal life Beyond the grave and
so perhaps
Just in the same way as if you've got a cancer and that's something terrible because it might spread and destroy the whole body cut
It out
Even burn it out if you have to and a little pain on the part of the patient in the several months on the end
Of tubes won't be too bad or if you get rid of it
So they said we've got to torture these people because they might in the middle of this this extreme experience
Recant and if they won't recant we'll burn them because it's just the chance that in the agony of burning at the stake
[they] will say at the end or God forgive me for my sins, and it'll be [alright]
Now realize the absolutely merciful intent behind the inquisitors
Perfectly responsible acting on the best knowledge that they had in their day, don't you see how that can [happen] again any time?
permanent Brain damage
People lost their sense of social responsibility utTerly destroyed by taking the wrong kind of drug
Now dear friends there is absolutely no evidence for this kind of thing whatsoever
the only Brain damage that has I've just checked this out with the most eminent authorities in this area on the subject that [the]
[earthly]
Permanent damage, that's been perpetrated and even that wasn't permanent was on some cats
Who were given doses that would be equivalent to a human being to over [2,000] micrograms of LSD?
The normal dosage for a human being being about one to two hundred
But give a cat two thousand for a human being of two thousand micrograms there will be synaptic
Defects that are called acute as distinct from Chronic that means they will disappear [after] a little while
this has been worked out carefully and
there is no evidence whatsoever of
any
serious Neurological damage
to a human being except in cases where a
They may have taken an absurdly large dose or be [taking] it in conjunction with some other form of drug
and
amphetamine a barbiturate or
something like Methadone or narcotic
Which did indeed?
cut off the oxygen supply to the brain and therefore caused some damage, so
[this] scare talk is simply without foundation
But nevertheless there are certain reasons to be cautious and for
those who understand the operation of these chemicals to issue certain clear warnings and
This I want to talk about quite seriously
Now this class of psychotropic chemicals which includes LSD
Mescaline
[and] its original form peyote psilocybin Cannabis and so on which is a very mild
psychotropic
these do not
In moderation and proper use in any way harm the physical organism
Nor form such habits that you can't get rid of them without unpleasant withdrawal symptoms
but if you take them in absurdly large doses
You are in for [trouble]. I knew a methodist minister
Who was a very violent tea totalitarian and became extremely sick from drinking too much milk?
So after all if you sit down you buy a bottle of whiskey which you can get at any store anywhere perfectly legit and you
Consume the one quart of whiskey in one hour you can expect trouble
So in the same way if you've got lSD or something of that kind and you take a thousand micrograms
Because some friend of yours took 500 and you want to one-up him
[watch] out, you're being just stupid
Furthermore you're being rather stupid if you buy the kind of LSD that is currently being circulated in the black market
Because for two reasons
You don't know what else is in it?
And you don't know how much is in it?
There are two sorts of producers of LSD on black market one is the enthusiastic graduate student in chemistry
Who wants to turn the whole world on?
And his product is apt to be pretty good, but excessive in dosage
And what says 100 micrograms may well be 300?
There is another kind of producer who wants to make a good thing out [of] it
To give you a big jazz, but he mix it with amphetamines
there's another more sinister kind of producer will either cut the amount or mix it with heroin or
anything any other substance, [maybe]
Again amphetamines or whatever he'll get you hooked on it
So you there is no control of the quality of what is being circulated none, whatever, and you just don't know what you're getting
now this situation is the result of
the fact that the United States never learns from history
This is [the] same old story of prohibition
[to] think the naive notion that you can control
Something that might turn into a social evil by handing it over to the police
Now after all who pays the police you do
and
If you can't control yourself the police won't control you either, but in lieu of controlling you they can suppress you
Now in all conscience the police have enough to do
Not only to control the traffic which is gets worse every day by virtue of Parkinson's law
But also all the possibilities of robbery violence murder and so on and so Forth which is a full-time [job]
but to ask the police
to go and look for people who have LSD or marijuana or
Heroin or opium or whatever or who are living irregular sex lives or who have a gambling [joint] or a whorehouse?
This is to ask the police to act as officers of the state in service of the church
uniformed ministers
And that's not their job and when the police are asked [to] do that
they are
Put by lawmakers into a position which brings them into public
Disrespect as it did in the days of prohibition it is not fair to the police
Because if you send the police to hunt out, LSD it is a far more tough job than looking for a needle in a haystack
LSD can be disguised as anything whatsoever
It can be mixed with [Garman] put on an envelope. It can be entirely absorbed vast quantities of it into a piece of Kleenex
the alcoholic base is then allowed to evaporate and
Nobody would know it from any other dirty piece of Kleenex that somebody stuck away in his pocket it can then be reactivated
It can be made into lacquer to coat pins with
Anything it can be disguised as peanut butter orange juice aspirin
just sugar anything you want and
It's very difficult indeed to detect
So when you try to suppress that sort of thing by law you leave the gates wide open for every kind of blackmail
You want to get rid [of] your wife?
Or your unfortunate business competitor
Just slip them some and then arrange by a roundabout way to tip off the cops
The senator you don't like political riving
You see any law of this nature any law which in the way tries
To enforce by the power of the state private morals or your own business in looking after your own nervous system
Is in fact an unenforceable law and all unenforceable laws?
lead to blackmail and public demoralization
The only way to handle a thing of this kind is to bring it all out into the open
Nothing can be controlled when it's driven underground. It ought to be controlled
Just in the same way [as] we have learned how to control automobiles we license people to drive them
So in the same way [we] don't sell liquor to minors
[we] expect them to have some kind of education and grown-up responsibilities before they go boozing around
So in exactly the same way society has got to face in fact that it's going to have to license people
for
Certain spiritual Adventures, or perhaps just plain pleasures if that's what you want to call it
After all you can't even join some churches without can't join the catholic church without taking a course of instruction that
Takes a few weeks, and then they put you [through] an initiation
and
You may say when you get through that well, what was all that preparation for I didn't feel anything
But so in exactly the same way with this it is completely urgent in other words that we
prevent the Occurrence of a very serious socially destructive criminal situation
Created by law you've heard of yeah, tro. Genic diseases. That means disease is caused by Physicians
There are no more [genic] diseases or shall we say no more genic crimes
Like somebody said the only serious side effect of marijuana is that you may go to jail
This is an Ama genic crime in other words
It is a ritual crime
in exactly the same way that when the early Christians
Refused to burn incense in front of the roman gods in whom the Romans themselves didn't believe
They were guilty of a crime. It was a ritual crime and they refused a
Reasonable man like the Emperor Marcus Aurelius said to the Christians now. Come off it really do you have [to] refuse the burn incense
They said yes, we're serious about it
so these are ritual crimes and
so in the same way
Various ritual crimes exist and our police poor devils are supposed to enforce it
and if they don't they're going to get it from the politicians
Because the politicians have made all the old ladies
up in Glendale scared and Pasadena, and so on they're all just terrified about this and
So the politician gets the votes of those old ladies
Now the police have to do what the politician tells them to do and you know the police there is people
[it's] a terrible thing to put the police in a position where they're going to earn public disrespect
By enforcing or trying to enforce unenforceable laws
So I would say in [general] to sum up
Substances like LSD which give away a secret
about
The Nature of the social game the Human game and what underlies it
Are potentially dangerous?
of course
Like any good thing is electricity is [dangerous] fire as dangerous cars are dangerous planes are dangerous
But not so dangerous as driving on the freeway
The only way to handle danger is to face it
If you start getting frightened of it
Then you make it worse because you project onto it all kinds of bogeys and threats which don't exist in it at all
So this is also a rule and please anybody here. Who's a [fight] psychotherapist if he doesn't know this already take note
If you get someone thrown on your hands who as a result of taking any psyChotropic drug
Is in a pSychotic state?
Don't be frightened
because the moment you're afraid your patient will pick up your fear by kind of Osmosis and
Get worse
The rule about all terrors going back to where I started from the dweller on the threshold
The rule for all terrors is [head] straight into them
when you are sailing in a storm
You don't let a wave hit your boat on the side you go bow into the wave
And ride it
So in the same way old folklore says
This is an old wives tale with a lot of truth in it whenever you meet a ghost don't run away
because the Ghost will capture the substance of your fear and
materialize itself out of your own substance and
Will kill you eventually because it will take over all your own vitality
So then whenever confronted with a ghost walk straight into it and it will disappear
And so in the same way when people
stir up the depths of the unconscious and
Are confronted with their own monsters?
Or with the terrors [of] discovering that they're in a relativistic world where black implies white and white implies black, so who's in charge you?
[know]
grandfather's Dead
Father's Dead too this leads me who who's the authority?
See when you get that that sense of terror
Go right at it. Don't run away
Explore feel fear as completely as you can feed it [head] straight in group
And just it so happens that these things give you the property on the opportunity let me put it that way the opportunity
to go into some of your very very most closely kept skeletons and
The result of that is invariably beneficial
