Howard, being the good physician that he is, wished to be certain that I was quite recovered before trying the substance himself. However, I insisted that he make the journey too, since I wanted him to sense more directly what I was feeling. Hence, he injected himself with the same dose he had given me. Being a third again heavier he did not go as far "out" as I had gone. Also, being an exceedingly self-controlled person, the inevitable loss of personal volition came as a surprise. Until one becomes a seasoned voyager there can be a moment when it seems impossible to return from so great a distance. Nevertheless, he was as impressed as I had assumed he would be.
Mostly he lay back smiling and saying, "Wow, wow, wow… This is strong medicine. I mean this is really a powerful substance!"
Later, when I asked him to expound on the experience he gave me the following notes:
First, the sound of the crickets. I experienced my spirit coming out of my body and rising up. Immediately I had the thought, This is what it is like after one dies. It was a wonderful feeling and not the least bit fearful, as I had thought death to be.
I saw you and me ascending together but separately. Then suddenly our two souls came together and went on spinning in an upward spiral which was golden. There were also jubilant heavenly sounds-a roar of angels singing. I interpreted this as a cosmic marriage. I saw everything in prisms of pristine pure white and violet, and I also saw you as I had known you in that other lifetime in Egypt. I also said repeatedly, "I love you, I'll always love you." This set up a vibrational pattern that permeated my being physically to the bone marrow.
Afterward I disclosed a minute fact that you did not know about me. It wasn't necessary to bring this up but I felt as though I had to clear my conscience. The effect was that of having taken a truth serum. I wanted everything to be clean and in the light.
Since that time it has been strongly impressed upon us that ketamine has the potential to serve as a super truth tester, reaching into the caverns of the unconscious and bringing out a multitude of formerly unrecognized feelings, foibles, and complexes. At the same time, a subject will not tell tales out of school or let any skeletons out of the closet. While discretion is always possible a person could hardly take ketamine on a regular basis and live a lie.
Consequently, if there are any drawbacks to ketamine therapy they would stem less from any tendency of the drug to create illusions than from its insistence upon accentuating that which is, even though the situation revealed may not accord with an individual's preconceived notions. The places and spaces brought to light may be alternate realities, but they are nonetheless valid and relevant states of being.
Above all, this substance seems to be able to put a person in touch with the true will and intent of the "High Self" which monitors all worldly activities. In this respect it can provide guidelines for action when one comes to an unmarked fork in the road, and judgements must be rendered on the basis of insufficient evidence. Howard and I both felt that it would be right for us to blend our energies and remain together. All the same, it was gratifying to think that the Goddess Ketamine had set her seal of approval on our union.
Now that the two of us were more confident in our reactions to the medicine it seemed as though the next logical step would be to make the journey through inner space together. We were also curious to see if ketamine could be used in reincarnation therapy. Why, for example, was I so obsessed with Egypt, and at the same time so blocked in my ability to come up with memories of that period? What sort of person had Howard been in Rome? Had we known each other at one or another of these times?
"What scares me witless," I said only half jokingly, "is the thought that after all the thousands of times I have told lecture audiences that it just isn't true that every woman wants to think she was an Atlantean priestess or an Egyptian queen, I just might see myself as one of these characters. That would be a terrible embarrassment. We already have too many exotic people turning up."
At the same time I was well aware that many of the metaphysicians of today were trained in the mystery schools of Atlantis, Egypt, and Greece. Why else would they be so powerfully impelled to carry on with the work begun in those distant eras? Throughout the country regressed subjects had described the same kinds of temples, the same rituals, learning situations, and teachers. It couldn't all be purely coincidental.
By now my stay in Seattle was coming to an end. We had already moved Howard's few possessions out of "Sherwood Forest" and into the apartment where he was planning to stay while I returned to Ojai to tie up loose ends at Ananta Ashram. With all our affairs in flux it was natural to wonder if the past could shed some light on what the future might bring. On our last quiet afternoon we decided that Howard would give me the first dose of ketamine and then follow by injecting himself with a similar amount.
Session 3
Once again I was inward bound, riding the cosmic whirlwind and glad to be on my way. "Drop the body, drop the mind and fly free. There can be no real freedom except the freedom from illusions."
With these thoughts in mind I let the idea of myself as a separate self-serving complex of biological instincts blow behind me like the vaporous trail in the wake of a rocketing jet plane. How marvelous to know that ecstasy lay just around the corner, only a few molecules away from gray skies and our impending separation! The sense of liberation that came with that first lift-off seemed friendlier this time; the wheel not quite so inexorable as it spun on and on. Speech was impossible, yet there was no break in my stream of consciousness as there is in falling asleep. Indeed, I had never been more totally awake.
"Home again." This time "home" seemed to be a more palpable location than the heart of that ever-churning vortex. "Egypt. Who was I in Egypt? What had I been?"
"Look at yourself." Howard commanded. "Open your eyes and look."
To my surprise I saw that Howard was holding a round mirror in which I could see my own face. It was certainly prettier and more youthful than the face I wear in the present embodiment. Yes, it definitely was an Egyptian face. It seemed like the face of a queen and I felt pleased with it. Then the mirror's angle shifted and I saw Howard. He resembled a Hittite warrior of ancient times-but indeed he looks very much that way today, since the blood of these original Assyrian fighting men still runs in his veins. I was fascinated. Alternately I would see his face and mine. Then the two countenances became superimposed.
"How did he manage that?" I wondered, not realizing that actually I was performing the trick in my own mind. Simultaneously I felt that our two souls had flowed together, that we were now inextricably one. It was clear that Howard was feeling the same way. He too had taken his dose and was now with me under the skull-shaped dome of our fused heads.