The Psychedelic Future of the Mind: How Entheogens Are Enhancing Cognition, Boosting Intelligence, and Raising Values, 2013
Do Psychedelic-induced Mystical Experiences Boost the Immune System? We know that when our lives ... more Do Psychedelic-induced Mystical Experiences Boost the Immune System? We know that when our lives are going well, when our relationships are running smoothly, and when we are achieving in our jobs, these life contexts make us happy and strengthen our immune systems. These emotionally positive events in people's daily lives are weaker forms of similar experiences that occur during mystical states, leading to the hypothesis that psychedelic-induced mystical experiences boost the immune system. While confirmation or disconfirmation of the hypothesis needs to come from experimental research, combined observations from biology, medicine, religion, psychology, and psychotherapy point to a fascinating relationship among psychedelic plants and chemicals, the mystical states they are capable of inducing under the right psychological state and physical location, and the immune system. A tantalizing anecdote along these lines comes via Melissa Healy, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Ms. Healy reported that to reduce her anxiety about death-not to cure her underlying leukemia-a retired plant nursery worker became a volunteer in Griffiths's 2006 and 2008 psilocybin studies. Healy wrote: Every three months, she gets her white blood cells checked. With her form of leukemia, those accounts are expected to rise steadily as the disease progresses. But in June 2009, four months after her psilocybin session, they went down. Every three months since, they have retreated further, leading two of her three doctors to declare her in remission.
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Books by Thomas Roberts
… [correction] write in a book.
Question: What would:
Huston Smith, internationally renowned philosopher of religion
Brother David Steindl-Rast, Order of St. Benedict
Rev. Mike Young, Unitarian-Universalist Minister
Rick Doblin, Ph.D., President of the Multidisciplinary Association for
Psychedelic Studies
and 22 other clergy, scientists, and mental health professionals ALL agree on?
Answer: the importance of entheogens for religion and spiritual growth
Where can you find out what they all have to say?
Spiritual Growth with Entheogens:
Psychoactive Sacramentals and Human Transformation
Psychoactive Sacramentals and Human Transformation
MAPS bulletin - volume xvii - number 1 - spring/summer 2007
< Return to Table of Contents
Educating the Multistate Mind � A Review of Psychedelic Horizons Bys Thomas B. Roberts, PhD
By David Jay Brown
During the 1960s Timothy Leary predicted that college students would soon be routinely taking classes in psychedelics and that 'Psychedelics 101' would become an essential part of everyone's university education (instead of just being a clandestine extracurricular activity for particularly precocious students). Although Leary may have been a bit overly optimistic about the time-scale on which these educational upgrades would be implemented, psychedelics have become a legitimate subject for college students to study. In fact, educational psychologist Thomas Roberts, PhD, has been teaching a class on the psychedelic mindview at Northern Illinois University since 1975. His newly published book, Psychedelic Horizons, summarizes the material that he has been teaching in his popular class - as well as what he has learned from teaching this course for more than 30 years - and explores the possible role of psychedelic mind states in future scientific research, creative problem-solving, and education.
…positive emotions are known to enhance the strength of the immune system, and… this might help us to understand the spontaneous remissions and unexplained healings that are sometimes reported after powerful psychedelic, mystical, or shamanic experiences…
The central thesis of Roberts' fascinating book revolves around the notion that our educational system, as well as psychology in general, has largely ignored our species' ability to learn and solve problems in any state of consciousness other than our normal, unaltered waking state. Roberts suspects that many types of intelligence and untapped mental abilities become accessible in different states of consciousness - or through the use of different 'mindbody psychotechnologies,' such as psychedelics - and that a welleducated person should have the ability to choose which type of mindbody state would be most appropriate for solving a particular type of problem. Roberts offers some compelling examples of how psychedelic mind states have played essential roles in important scientific discoveries in genetics and critical developments in computer science.
Roberts offers a paradigm-shifting view of our educational system and suggests a vast array of mind-expanding research possibilities. The ideas touched upon in this book could serve as the seeds for a vast array of new research projects, dissertation topics, books, and late-night philosophical discussions. Roberts certainly knows how to ask lots of good questions. Psychedelic Horizons brings together a wonderful collection of fascinating ideas that can't be found easily elsewhere. The book is a bit unusual in that the writing style seems to shift between casual reflections, informal speculation, and a more academic development of ideas, which appears to be suggestive of the psychedelic mind state itself, and makes the book a great deal of fun to read.
�our educational system �has largely ignored our species� ability to learn and solve problems in any state of consciousness other than our normal, unaltered waking state.
Roberts opens the book with a delightfully insightful chapter on Stanislav Grof's interpretation of the classic "children's" story Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, pointing out the relationship between the psychedelic experience and this cryptic archetypal tale of selfdiscovery. Throughout the book Roberts touches on the notion of utilizing the spiritual aspects of the psychedelic experience as an avenue toward developing a discipline of experimental theology, that, he says, will be explored more in a future book. One of the most interesting ideas in the book, I thought, was Roberts' discussion about how positive emotions are known to enhance the strength of the immune system, and how this might help us to understand the spontaneous remissions and unexplained healings that are sometimes reported after powerful psychedelic, mystical, or shamanic experiences that are accompanied by strong positive emotions.
MAPS volunteer Sandra Karpetas prepares a meal at Burning Man
Published by Imprint Academic, 2006
Softcover, 255 pages, $34.90
I really enjoyed Psychedelic Horizons. The book contains a bounty of wonderfully creative ideas that, I think, deserve serious consideration, and are an important contribution to our understanding of how psychedelic mind states might lead to practical applications in our future. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in improving our educational system or exploring the new and exciting research possibilities that psychedelics and other mindbody states have to offer.¥
David Jay Brown is the author of four bestselling volumes of interviews with leadingedge thinkers, Mavericks of the Mind, Voices from the Edge, Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse, and Mavericks of Medicine. He holds a master's degree in psychobiology from New York University and was responsible for the California-based research in two of British biologist Rupert Sheldrake's books on unexplained phenomena in science: Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home and The Sense of Being Stared At. David is also the author of two science fiction novels, Brainchild and Virus. To find out more about David's work, visit his award-winning Web site: mavericksofthemind.com.
Anecdotes...
Points of Light
Summer 1991 Vol. 2, No. 2 MDMA protocol development with cancer patients
Winter 1990/91 Vol. 2, No. 1 MAPS' Swiss pharmacologically-assisted psychotherapy conference
Autumn 1990 Vol. 1, No. 3 What and Who is MAPS?
Summer 1989 Vol. 1, No. 2 Switzerland Leads the Way
Summer 1988 Vol. 1, No. 1 MDMA can become a legal medicine
A Short Trail Guide to this Book
This book looks forward, not backward. Experiences beget ideas, and The Psychedelic Future of the Mind is an exploration of some ideas psychedelics engender. Based upon a collection of pieces of scientific research, case studies, anecdotes, and other information about psychedelics, this book asks, “When all these pieces are assembled, what do they tell us about what it means to be a human, about our minds, and about the future?”
Our answers will necessarily be partial, because their implications for what it means to be fully human and for what our society is are long and complicated. As researchers complete new studies, tomorrow’s findings will refine today’s tentative ones . Some future discoveries will correct our errors. Others will confirm and elaborate our current views. And yet others will give birth to ideas we have not even thought of yet.
<UNL>This is not a book about the discovery and history of LSD and all the strange and wonderful characters who are part of that story.
This is not a book about psychotherapy and the seemingly miraculous cures psychedelics sometimes produce.
This is not a book about how psychedelics plug into receptor sites on neurons and set the brain adancing.
This is not a book of the I-drank-ayahuasca-puked-and-saw-the-anaconda-goddess kind. T>In a real sense, this book follows Jacob Bronowski’s (1976) recipe in The Ascent of Man for how to speculate in order to advance knowledge: “That’s the essence of science: Ask the impertinent question, and you are on your way to pertinent science.” The questions embedded in this book are leads that deserve to be followed in more depth. The personal anecdotes and experimental findings reported here both stimulate these questions and are beginnings of answers, but we need additional evidence to answer the questions more conclusively, or even a bit more firmly.
I find it handy to think of the benefits of psychedelics as falling into two broad groups: mediating mystical experiences and revealing previously unknown aspects of our minds. Mystical experiences are powerful and overwhelming. They temporarily give a sense of setting aside one’s identification with oneself, often with the realization of being a strand woven in a complex tapestry of perception, insight, and emotions. . However, psychedelics can provide a different kind of experience, in which they give us access to the unconscious parts of our minds. They amplify events in our minds that are usually below our awareness so that we can become aware of them. I think the word psychomagnifiers fits them well.
These two categories parallel the two aspects of psychedelic psychotherapy identified by Stanislav Grof (1975, 1980): 1) powerful, emotionally positive, peak-experience psychedelic psychotherapy; and 2) less-powerful emotion-exploring psycholytic psychotherapy. The first uses large doses of psychedelics with the intent of producing a mystical experience. The latter uses lower doses to help people bring emotionally-charged hidden events up into consciousness.
Unlike many quieter mindbody* states, mystical experiences shout so loudly we cannot ignore them. Part 1 of The Psychedelic Future of the Mind examines mystical experiences, with an emphasis on psychedelic effects, and listens to their message.
<FN>*In this context the one combined word mindbody is preferable, because it conveys the concept of mind and body as one, combined, unified whole.
<T>Part 2 is a rough parallel to psycholytic psychotherapy, but it pays more attention to the cognitive aspects of lower dose sessions rather than to their intensely emotional affects, seeing psychedelics as tools to think with rather than focusing on their psychotherapeutic potential. Emotions and thinking constantly affect each other, of course. They are not divided by a wall but are twins from the same womb of our unconscious, albeit not identical twins.
In part 3, we will explore how the experience that alters all others can lead to a new business and also consider how it expands what it means to be well educated.
<A>Part 1: The Experience That Alters All Others
<TNI>Part 1 begins our idea-journey into psychedelic mystical experiences. We will stop along the way to:
<BL>• compare psychedelic mystical experiences with non-psychedelic ones
• look at how these experiences affect values
• recognize a new religious era based on direct personal experiences, rather than words
• speculate that they may boost our immune systems
• be relieved to know that they can reduce our fear of death
<A>Part 2: High-Yield Ideas
<TNI>Mystical experiences are only one instance of many overall shifts in the ways we perceive, think, feel, and act—many other mindbody states. In part 2, our path takes us to a bluff overlooking a wider prospect, and we see other paths into the psychogeography of our minds. This wider vision embeds psychedelics in a more general Multistate Theory, which helps organize how we think about our mind while it guides us to new ideas. Relying again on psychedelic examples, the path through part 2 shows us psychedelics can—but do not always:
<BL>• enhance cognition and raise intelligence
• guide us toward new intellectual frontiers
• produce new ways to interpret history, philosophy, and movies
• even suggest that we can design new thinking processes
<T>Stretching the visionary sense even more, the last chapter of part 2 speculates about improving the brains of future generations.
<A>Part 3: From Lab to Life, From Clinic to Campus
<TNI>In part 3, our psychedelic idea-hike leads us into a town of the future. How can society benefit from the ideas we have discovered along the psychedelic trail? We will glance at planning-stage, hopeful ideas for:
<BL>• raising $1 billion or more for psychedelic research and development
• recruiting the public to support uses of psychedelics
• founding a new business to provide safe, professionally guided psychedelic sessions
• reframing “well educated” to include learning to access useful abilities that reside in various mindbody states
• enriching academia with new research questions, specialties, methods, and courses and course content
[line space]
<TNI>I hope every chapter will sprout fresh ideas in your mind.
"
… [correction] write in a book.
Question: What would:
Huston Smith, internationally renowned philosopher of religion
Brother David Steindl-Rast, Order of St. Benedict
Rev. Mike Young, Unitarian-Universalist Minister
Rick Doblin, Ph.D., President of the Multidisciplinary Association for
Psychedelic Studies
and 22 other clergy, scientists, and mental health professionals ALL agree on?
Answer: the importance of entheogens for religion and spiritual growth
Where can you find out what they all have to say?
Spiritual Growth with Entheogens:
Psychoactive Sacramentals and Human Transformation
Psychoactive Sacramentals and Human Transformation
MAPS bulletin - volume xvii - number 1 - spring/summer 2007
< Return to Table of Contents
Educating the Multistate Mind � A Review of Psychedelic Horizons Bys Thomas B. Roberts, PhD
By David Jay Brown
During the 1960s Timothy Leary predicted that college students would soon be routinely taking classes in psychedelics and that 'Psychedelics 101' would become an essential part of everyone's university education (instead of just being a clandestine extracurricular activity for particularly precocious students). Although Leary may have been a bit overly optimistic about the time-scale on which these educational upgrades would be implemented, psychedelics have become a legitimate subject for college students to study. In fact, educational psychologist Thomas Roberts, PhD, has been teaching a class on the psychedelic mindview at Northern Illinois University since 1975. His newly published book, Psychedelic Horizons, summarizes the material that he has been teaching in his popular class - as well as what he has learned from teaching this course for more than 30 years - and explores the possible role of psychedelic mind states in future scientific research, creative problem-solving, and education.
…positive emotions are known to enhance the strength of the immune system, and… this might help us to understand the spontaneous remissions and unexplained healings that are sometimes reported after powerful psychedelic, mystical, or shamanic experiences…
The central thesis of Roberts' fascinating book revolves around the notion that our educational system, as well as psychology in general, has largely ignored our species' ability to learn and solve problems in any state of consciousness other than our normal, unaltered waking state. Roberts suspects that many types of intelligence and untapped mental abilities become accessible in different states of consciousness - or through the use of different 'mindbody psychotechnologies,' such as psychedelics - and that a welleducated person should have the ability to choose which type of mindbody state would be most appropriate for solving a particular type of problem. Roberts offers some compelling examples of how psychedelic mind states have played essential roles in important scientific discoveries in genetics and critical developments in computer science.
Roberts offers a paradigm-shifting view of our educational system and suggests a vast array of mind-expanding research possibilities. The ideas touched upon in this book could serve as the seeds for a vast array of new research projects, dissertation topics, books, and late-night philosophical discussions. Roberts certainly knows how to ask lots of good questions. Psychedelic Horizons brings together a wonderful collection of fascinating ideas that can't be found easily elsewhere. The book is a bit unusual in that the writing style seems to shift between casual reflections, informal speculation, and a more academic development of ideas, which appears to be suggestive of the psychedelic mind state itself, and makes the book a great deal of fun to read.
�our educational system �has largely ignored our species� ability to learn and solve problems in any state of consciousness other than our normal, unaltered waking state.
Roberts opens the book with a delightfully insightful chapter on Stanislav Grof's interpretation of the classic "children's" story Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, pointing out the relationship between the psychedelic experience and this cryptic archetypal tale of selfdiscovery. Throughout the book Roberts touches on the notion of utilizing the spiritual aspects of the psychedelic experience as an avenue toward developing a discipline of experimental theology, that, he says, will be explored more in a future book. One of the most interesting ideas in the book, I thought, was Roberts' discussion about how positive emotions are known to enhance the strength of the immune system, and how this might help us to understand the spontaneous remissions and unexplained healings that are sometimes reported after powerful psychedelic, mystical, or shamanic experiences that are accompanied by strong positive emotions.
MAPS volunteer Sandra Karpetas prepares a meal at Burning Man
Published by Imprint Academic, 2006
Softcover, 255 pages, $34.90
I really enjoyed Psychedelic Horizons. The book contains a bounty of wonderfully creative ideas that, I think, deserve serious consideration, and are an important contribution to our understanding of how psychedelic mind states might lead to practical applications in our future. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in improving our educational system or exploring the new and exciting research possibilities that psychedelics and other mindbody states have to offer.¥
David Jay Brown is the author of four bestselling volumes of interviews with leadingedge thinkers, Mavericks of the Mind, Voices from the Edge, Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse, and Mavericks of Medicine. He holds a master's degree in psychobiology from New York University and was responsible for the California-based research in two of British biologist Rupert Sheldrake's books on unexplained phenomena in science: Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home and The Sense of Being Stared At. David is also the author of two science fiction novels, Brainchild and Virus. To find out more about David's work, visit his award-winning Web site: mavericksofthemind.com.
Anecdotes...
Points of Light
Summer 1991 Vol. 2, No. 2 MDMA protocol development with cancer patients
Winter 1990/91 Vol. 2, No. 1 MAPS' Swiss pharmacologically-assisted psychotherapy conference
Autumn 1990 Vol. 1, No. 3 What and Who is MAPS?
Summer 1989 Vol. 1, No. 2 Switzerland Leads the Way
Summer 1988 Vol. 1, No. 1 MDMA can become a legal medicine
A Short Trail Guide to this Book
This book looks forward, not backward. Experiences beget ideas, and The Psychedelic Future of the Mind is an exploration of some ideas psychedelics engender. Based upon a collection of pieces of scientific research, case studies, anecdotes, and other information about psychedelics, this book asks, “When all these pieces are assembled, what do they tell us about what it means to be a human, about our minds, and about the future?”
Our answers will necessarily be partial, because their implications for what it means to be fully human and for what our society is are long and complicated. As researchers complete new studies, tomorrow’s findings will refine today’s tentative ones . Some future discoveries will correct our errors. Others will confirm and elaborate our current views. And yet others will give birth to ideas we have not even thought of yet.
<UNL>This is not a book about the discovery and history of LSD and all the strange and wonderful characters who are part of that story.
This is not a book about psychotherapy and the seemingly miraculous cures psychedelics sometimes produce.
This is not a book about how psychedelics plug into receptor sites on neurons and set the brain adancing.
This is not a book of the I-drank-ayahuasca-puked-and-saw-the-anaconda-goddess kind. T>In a real sense, this book follows Jacob Bronowski’s (1976) recipe in The Ascent of Man for how to speculate in order to advance knowledge: “That’s the essence of science: Ask the impertinent question, and you are on your way to pertinent science.” The questions embedded in this book are leads that deserve to be followed in more depth. The personal anecdotes and experimental findings reported here both stimulate these questions and are beginnings of answers, but we need additional evidence to answer the questions more conclusively, or even a bit more firmly.
I find it handy to think of the benefits of psychedelics as falling into two broad groups: mediating mystical experiences and revealing previously unknown aspects of our minds. Mystical experiences are powerful and overwhelming. They temporarily give a sense of setting aside one’s identification with oneself, often with the realization of being a strand woven in a complex tapestry of perception, insight, and emotions. . However, psychedelics can provide a different kind of experience, in which they give us access to the unconscious parts of our minds. They amplify events in our minds that are usually below our awareness so that we can become aware of them. I think the word psychomagnifiers fits them well.
These two categories parallel the two aspects of psychedelic psychotherapy identified by Stanislav Grof (1975, 1980): 1) powerful, emotionally positive, peak-experience psychedelic psychotherapy; and 2) less-powerful emotion-exploring psycholytic psychotherapy. The first uses large doses of psychedelics with the intent of producing a mystical experience. The latter uses lower doses to help people bring emotionally-charged hidden events up into consciousness.
Unlike many quieter mindbody* states, mystical experiences shout so loudly we cannot ignore them. Part 1 of The Psychedelic Future of the Mind examines mystical experiences, with an emphasis on psychedelic effects, and listens to their message.
<FN>*In this context the one combined word mindbody is preferable, because it conveys the concept of mind and body as one, combined, unified whole.
<T>Part 2 is a rough parallel to psycholytic psychotherapy, but it pays more attention to the cognitive aspects of lower dose sessions rather than to their intensely emotional affects, seeing psychedelics as tools to think with rather than focusing on their psychotherapeutic potential. Emotions and thinking constantly affect each other, of course. They are not divided by a wall but are twins from the same womb of our unconscious, albeit not identical twins.
In part 3, we will explore how the experience that alters all others can lead to a new business and also consider how it expands what it means to be well educated.
<A>Part 1: The Experience That Alters All Others
<TNI>Part 1 begins our idea-journey into psychedelic mystical experiences. We will stop along the way to:
<BL>• compare psychedelic mystical experiences with non-psychedelic ones
• look at how these experiences affect values
• recognize a new religious era based on direct personal experiences, rather than words
• speculate that they may boost our immune systems
• be relieved to know that they can reduce our fear of death
<A>Part 2: High-Yield Ideas
<TNI>Mystical experiences are only one instance of many overall shifts in the ways we perceive, think, feel, and act—many other mindbody states. In part 2, our path takes us to a bluff overlooking a wider prospect, and we see other paths into the psychogeography of our minds. This wider vision embeds psychedelics in a more general Multistate Theory, which helps organize how we think about our mind while it guides us to new ideas. Relying again on psychedelic examples, the path through part 2 shows us psychedelics can—but do not always:
<BL>• enhance cognition and raise intelligence
• guide us toward new intellectual frontiers
• produce new ways to interpret history, philosophy, and movies
• even suggest that we can design new thinking processes
<T>Stretching the visionary sense even more, the last chapter of part 2 speculates about improving the brains of future generations.
<A>Part 3: From Lab to Life, From Clinic to Campus
<TNI>In part 3, our psychedelic idea-hike leads us into a town of the future. How can society benefit from the ideas we have discovered along the psychedelic trail? We will glance at planning-stage, hopeful ideas for:
<BL>• raising $1 billion or more for psychedelic research and development
• recruiting the public to support uses of psychedelics
• founding a new business to provide safe, professionally guided psychedelic sessions
• reframing “well educated” to include learning to access useful abilities that reside in various mindbody states
• enriching academia with new research questions, specialties, methods, and courses and course content
[line space]
<TNI>I hope every chapter will sprout fresh ideas in your mind.
"
"First, by the superhumanities, I mean something that already exists. I intend a loving homage to the humanities as they already are and have long been. I mean to point to a fantastic but forgotten dimension of the humanities, which consists of the catalytic presence of altered states of mind and energy that have driven the creative processes of some of our most revered authors, artists, and activists." p. 55
Have scholars of the humanities and their tangential disciplines short-changed their students and the intellectual world at large?
We sit down with Thomas B. Roberts, a prominent professor in the field of Psychedelic Studies, to continue our series on the profound potential of psychedelics in end-of-life healing – including how they can ease our fears and anxieties surrounding death. Roberts discusses the four stages of the Psychedelic Renaissance and how he got into this field, despite the risk to his career before diving deep into death and dying research.
Join us as we explore the place of psychedelics in end-of-life healing and discuss the current research being conducted in this field. Don't miss it!
52 minutes, auto closed-captioned
Presents 4-stages of the Psychedelic Renaissance, using mindapps to design new brain-mind complexes, psychedelics as ideagens, uses in religion/spirituality and the humanities, and more.
The Hamilton College Alumni Association
Presents 4 stages of the psychedelic renaissance and examples of how psychedelics can enrich religion, the humanities, and mind development.
Slide lecture Aug. 11, 2021 for the British Psychedelic Association
56 minutes, auto closed caption
1 hour 33 minutes.
Interviewed by Tyler Burger
Alex and Alyson Grey
Tom Roberts
Rick Doblin
Julie Holland
Amanda Sage
Just as we can write apps for digital devices, we can invent mindapps for our mind-brain complex. Installing them (both psychedelic and nonpsychedelic) increases our repertoire of mental abilities, thus increasing intelligence.
As an “ideagen,” mindapps produces Multistate Theory, which (1) identifies the singlestate fallacy, (2) replaces “state of consciousness” with “mindbody state,” (3) blows the roof off the social sciences and humanities by asking the Central Multistate Question, “How does/do _____ vary from mindbody state to mindbody state?” We will highlight samples from science, the humanities, social sciences, philosophy, and cognitive enhancement.
Can mindapps be combined into new recipes that invent previously unknown mindbody states — ones that have never existed before? Might they contain rare and/or previously undiscovered human abilities that reside in those states?
Multistate Theory provides the greatest intellectual opportunities of our time and seeds a new kind of artificial intelligence —Neuro AI.
Claims that a neuro-baed artificial intelligence is developing along side digital artificial intelligence.
14 slides
Four Stages of the Psychedelic Renaissance
1. neurosciences and psychotherapy
2. entheogen/spiritual/religious
3. ideagen/humanities/intellectual
4. mindapps/mind design
2 New Higher Ed Psychedelic Programs: Baylor launches program focused on bioethics and health policy. Exeter UK university launches postgraduate course in clinical use of psychedelics
Stage 1. Psychotherapy and the Neurosciences Stage. Will psychedelics do for mental health what antibiotics have done for physical health? This expresses a hope of our dominant stage now. This is where most of our current research, funding, publications, and pracrical translations lie.
During the dark decades when the psychiatric community rejected clinical reports, when aggressive politicians and the press ridiculed his and others' evidence, when rampant irresponsible use frightened the public, when the scientific community refused to even consider the evidence or to publish it, Stan Grof carried the psychedelic torch.