Original subtitles

I am talking to you in front of the fireplace in the main living room

of the Castelia Foundation.

I am not speaking to you from a room of the 20th century.

I am surrounded by objects and furnishings which would be more at home

to a person from more ancient centuries

or perhaps from

oriental countries of the present time.

The room is lit by candlelight.

There are no chairs or tables, but colored mattresses,

cushions. On the walls there are tapestries of faraway

events and places.

As I look out the window, I see lawns, fountains,

a meditation house shrouded by pine trees,

and behind it a meditation garden.

This is the home of the Castella Foundation, a center for research

on the scientific and religious implications.

consciousness expanding drugs.

This is a serene and beautiful place

inhabited by serene

and serious minded people who are dedicating their

lives and their energies to expanding their consciousness and

harmonizing

with the energies inside and outside of their bodies.

The situation here is not completely serene at the moment because this quiet

island is under siege for the last few days, the last few weeks, the last few

months.

This peaceful surrounding has been surrounded by government agents,

wiretappers, anxious and angry politicians.

Why should this be? The reason for this siege of serenity

is because I've gotten myself in trouble.

I'm in trouble because I know too much.

A few years ago, quite by accident,

perhaps,

I stumbled on the philosopher's stone.

I had the veil of illusion pulled back

and was confronted by

the many levels of energy, the many realms of consciousness which

are available to man. I opened the Pandora box of multiple reality.

Now these are poetic metaphors for describing an ancient

experience.

I could just as well use more modern and scientific metaphors

to describe how I got into trouble.

I could say that by using psychedelic drugs I became tuned

in

on the network of neurological signals and cellular wisdoms that

radiate hundreds of millions per second

within my body. In the last six years, I have

taken the voyage out of my mind into my head,

into my cells.

over 300 times.

Each time I have made this voyage, I have tried to communicate it to fellow

voyagers and to my fellow men.

Partly as a result of our experiences, at the present time, over

a million Americans

have had the experience of going beyond their mind

into the eerie, shifting,

pulsating world of energy systems

within their own body.

In addition to the million Americans who have taken psychedelic drugs such as

LSD,

There are hundreds of millions of other people who have heard this news.

Hundreds of millions of people in this country, in South American Europe, who

have been disturbed, fascinated, confused, irritated

by the rumors about psychedelic drugs.

their promise, their challenge, their perils.

What are psychedelic drugs?

The first thing to be said is that there's no new arrival on the human

historical scene.

Sacred plants and vegetables have been used for thousands of years, back to the

dawn of human history.

by wise men, medicine men, prophets,

to expand man's mind.

Today, in our technological society, we have produced

dozens of chemicals which perform the same

function.

LSD, mescaline, dimethyltryptamine, psilocybin.

There's a long litany of psychedelic chemicals, all

of which, interestingly enough, are based on organic or botanical

chemicals.

And the powerful drugs which we now have to expand human consciousness are not

the end.

Each few months, the biochemists come up with a new molecule

which talks directly, eloquently and powerfully

to the human nervous system, opens it up and changes it.

What do these ancient plants and modern drugs do

to the human mind?

They expand consciousness.

What is consciousness?

Consciousness is energy which is received

and decoded

by a physiological structure.

There is many levels of consciousness available to the human being

as there are structures, anatomical organs

inside the body for decoding different sorts of energies.

Specifically and statistically,

There are hundreds of levels of consciousness whirling around inside

your nervous system and your cellular systems, each one a universe

unto itself with its own meaning, its own dialect,

its own politics, its own ecstasies, its own

terrors, its own concepts of union,

and disillusion.

There are hundreds of universes of intelligent energy

inside your body.

For the beginning student in this new and bewildering science

of consciousness expansion, it's useful, I think,

to consider

five broad levels of consciousness.

And anyone who wishes to think about or learn about the psychedelic drugs must

keep something like this five-point scale in mind because each drug, each

drug experience energizes and triggers off

different levels of consciousness.

The five levels of consciousness that I suggest you learn and

eventually learn to use are sleep,

symbolic consciousness,

the consciousness of the senses directly

energized, the consciousness of cell,

and the consciousness of pre-cellular energy, molecular or atomic in nature.

Sleep, symbol, sense, cell,

molecule.

Today, we Americans live in a drug-happy culture.

Today, I would say that 90% of Americans are addicted to or

dependent on some drug which alters consciousness.

Think of the millions upon millions of Americans who depend upon tranquilizers,

pep pills, alcohol,

nicotine.

to get them through the trials and joys

of each day.

Whereas in other centuries men debated and fought

over symbols, the cross or the crescent or

which version of the Bible you read.

Today, our biggest industries and our most vicious political quarrels

seem to be generated by which drug do you use in order to make

sense of the politics of consciousness-expanding drugs

or consciousness-contracting drugs.

You must understand

how specific drugs trigger off different levels of awareness.

All of you know what happens when you take a heavy dose of a narcotic

or of alcohol.

You fall into a stupor.

You escape into sleep.

All of you know what normal symbolic consciousness is.

We think of ourselves as human beings with tangible organs such as ears and

fingers and eyes and feet.

Actually, the human body is a collection of trillions of cells.

Each cell in your body is a network of

communication

and intelligent energy much more complicated than the city of New York.

Each cell in your body is performing tasks of communication, transportation,

ingestion, elimination, defense, memory,

and learning.

Tasks which are millions or hundreds of millions of years old.

and which have not changed in many cycles of evolution.

Within the nucleus of every cell in your body is contained a

chain of protein molecules which is called the DNA code.

This is the blueprint of life.

The DNA code is a biochemical electrical architect's office

which designs and constructs every cell in your body

and the overall patterning of your organs

and tissues.

Your DNA code was created by the codes of your

mother and your father. You contain.

within every cell in your body, a living chain of molecules which is literally

the chain of life and which traces back in an unbroken sequence

to the beginning of life on this planet some two billion years ago.

If one link in this chain of life had been broken,

In over two billion years, you and I would not be here today.