In The Sky With Diamonds

RIP: Albert Hofman (January 11, 1906 – April 29, 2008)
I took note when Swiss chemist and the father of LSD passed away a few days ago. I give profound thanks for the ground he broke all those years ago which changed the face of my reality and laid a fertile foundation for the evolution of consciousness in general. That chemical agent of clarity that blows the dust off the old lenses may have been a fluke in the lab but the fruits of his discovery have yet to be fully borne. Hofman once said that LSD "wanted to tell me something. It gave me an inner joy, an open mindedness, a gratefulness, open eyes and an internal sensitivity for the miracles of creation." He considered the hallucinogen to be "medicine for the soul" and lamented the casual recreational use of something he felt should be approached with great reverence. He was also greatly dismayed when it was eventually criminalized as he was convinced that the drug offered the potential to counter psychological problems induced by "materialism, alienation from nature through industrialization and increasing urbanization, lack of satisfaction in professional employment in a mechanized, lifeless working world, ennui and purposelessness in wealthy, saturated society, and lack of a religious, nurturing, and meaningful philosophical foundation of life". Indeed.

From his contemporary, Aldous Huxley , Hofman gleaned an understanding of psychedelic agents as keys to the "new doors of perception", offering an alternative to other "proven but laborious door openers like meditation, solitude, fasting or certain yoga practices." Synthesizing lysergic acid diethylamide in the lab based on a mere hunch, Hofman considered it possible that his discovery of this powerful catalyst of expanded consciousness from a "pharmacologically uninteresting substance" was not mere chance but perhaps "predestined by some higher power to arise precisely at the time when the predominance of materialism with all its consequences over the past 100 years was being understood. LSD as an enlightening psychopharmakon along the path to a new, spiritual age!"

Aldous Huxley impressed Hofman in his consideration of human consciousness as a world resource and considered psychedelics as key to helping develop its potential and tap its power. "A humankind with highly-developed spiritual capacities, with expanded consciousness of the comprehensive wonder of being, would have to be more capable of observing and recognizing also the biological and material bases for its existence on this Earth. The development and unfolding of the ability sensually to experience reality directly, undisguised by words and concepts, would be of evolutionary significance, above all for Occidental humankind with such hypertrophied rationality."

Food for thought.

Quotes from LSD: Completely Personal a speech delivered by Dr. Albert Hofman to the 1996 Worlds of Consciousness Conference in Heidelberg, Germany

Image : Anonymous wood engraving in l'Atmosphere: Meteorologie Populaire by Camille Flammarion 1888