To such skeptics we can say only, why not try the substance yourself before passing judgment? Or at least, speak with those who have made the effort to gain such knowledge. People who have adopted this open-minded attitude have not been disappointed.
In the interim, we can assure you that our "samadhi sessions" will be safe and agreeable. Indeed, ketamine is such a well-tested anesthetic that it is commonly prescribed for the fragile patients at both ends of the medical spectrum-for young children and for senior citizens. Even in these cases, the amounts given for anesthesia are six or more times the dosages we have used and are administered intravenously rather than intramuscularly.
The fact that for the most part ketamine has no negative aftereffects has been exhaustively documented over more than a decade of impeccably conducted scientific research. Its demonstrated safety is particularly remarkable, because to date it has been used mainly under distressing hospital conditions in conjunction with narcotics and tranquilizers. By now, enough conscientious and reliable people have taken ketamine "trips" to justify the conclusion that hangovers, depressions, and that "freaked-out" feeling are conspicuously absent.
"Yes," some objectors declare, "I would like to expand my consciousness, but I feel that I must do it for myself."
To this, our usual reply is that doing everything for oneself can be an unbearably limiting factor as well as an exercise in egotism. What if we had to weave all our own clothes, grow our own food, make our own paper and so forth? In actuality we accomplish hardly anything without external instruments, tools or technological aids. Our manifest interdependence attests to nature's determination to force us to overcome isolationist tendencies. Even our two most essential physiological functions, eating and breathing, serve as constant reminders that in every respect we are obliged to use what lies outside of the confines of the bodily organism.
In the end, we do nothing alone and everything by our selves. Let us remember, however, that these myriad intermeshing "selves" are composite facets of the one transcendent Self in all. If we serve one another, if we accept help from outside agencies, that merely shows our faith in the supreme Identity that constitutes the sum and substance of creation.
People have also objected that spiritual development should not be hastened by "unnatural" means. But what really is natural? If it is permissible to harness physical forces such as steam and electricity, why should we not utilize the heretofore untapped powers of mind and soul? Directing the evolutionary energies of human consciousness need not contravene natural law. Indeed, there may be a spiritual mandate that impels homo sapiens to overcome the inertia of animal instincts through a deliberate, self-willed forcing process.
It would indeed be gratifying if nature automatically raised us up the evolutionary escalator. Instead, climbing requires hard work. For the most part, we have to ascend on our own legs, slowly, painstakingly, against a multitude of resistances. At the same time, there is an Intelligence that lends a helping hand. We believe that ketamine can be an instrument of that great redemptive cosmic principle that makes us want to move on. The wholemaking impulse called synergy is as natural as the disintegrative impulse called entropy. Curiously enough, however, laziness, dogmatism and conservatism often masquerade as compliance with God's will, while the determination to better oneself provokes howls of protest from those who do not wish to see the old order disturbed.
We know how much drugs can do to enchance sexual behavior. Why then, shouldn't they be used to enhance our moral and spiritual behavior? Why do we insist on the dichotomy between matter and mind, making it permissible to take vitamins for the body but not for the soul? A hormone that enables a man to make love more effectively is touted in medical journals. But what would be the public reaction to a hormone that simply made him a more loving human being?
It has been amply demonstrated that some psychedelic substances can be therapeutically effective. In cases of alcoholism, depression and terminal disease, LSD has precipitated psychological breakthroughs after all other methods of treatment failed. Rightly and responsibly used, consciousness-altering substances have earned an esteemed place in modern medicine's ever-growing pharmacopoeia. Why then, are the "mind-manifesting" drugs still regarded with so much fear? Can it be because modern science still lingers on the threshold of the unconscious, hesitating to knock too loudly for fear of what might be revealed if the door should open?
The politicians of the nervous system have good reason to mistrust the Pandora's box of psychedelia that was opened up in the 1960s, for the universe thereby revealed bears little resemblance to the reassuringly solid world of objects that can be collected, manipulated and controlled. If the arbiters of the various bureaucratic establishments that keep us in our places were to acknowledge the validity of the psychedelic experience, they would have to rethink the entire foundation of their sciences, religions and their moral and ethical systems. People whose most intimate personal experiences have convinced them that everything is interrelated are hardly likely to support the armaments race or to wax enthusiastic over the production of bigger and better neutron bombs.
It is true, as many will point out, that the psychedelic repertoire has been sadly debased. What was once a sacrament has been profaned, delivered over to the gods of the gutter and consigned to the votaries of oblivion. Ironically, some of the worst drug abuses were perpetrated by academicians in legal experiment. When LSD was first being studied, volunteers, attracted by the promise that they would be paid ten dollars for their time, were left unsupervised in ugly laboratory settings and summarily dismissed when the experiment was finished. Both the Army and the CIA were quick to look for any destructive potential in the hallucinogens, but they soon lost interest, because the effects produced obviously did not lend themselves to warfare. On the whole, underground consumers handled the situation more sensitively, except for the unfortunate circumstance that many of the bootleg drugs weren't pure. Possibly the most disastrous effect of the whole psychedelic fiasco was that a generation of inquirers became conditioned to the necessity of breaking the laws of the land in order to study the laws of their own inner being.
Although ketamine falls into the category of the psychedelic substances, it is qualitatively different and, we believe, superior. It need not be misused, and probably will not be, unless it is summarily outlawed. However, to be a worthy servant of mankind, it will have to be accepted, not just as a way of getting high, but also as a valuable aid to self-understanding. In this respect it seems noteworthy that many of the critics who have labeled the psychedelic substances "unnatural" have made no objections to lobotomies, shock treatments and the widespread practice of drugging mental patients into a catatonic stupor. It may be that these drastic procedures have been condoned, not because they are natural but because the dispensing of uppers, downers, stimulants and tranquilizers has become the norm. Actually, the effects of the various psychedelic agents have rarely been objectionable, except when misused by people whose behavior is objectionable. Rather, what has been hard for conservative people to deal with has been the spiritual implications of the experiences produced by psychedelic drugs.