"The mind—that seven inches of in ner space between the root of the nose and the occiput— our prized possession; its study on every level is most important," says Los Angeles Psychiatrist Sidney Cohen. The newest and most controversial way of carrying on that most important study is with the aid of drugs that produce hallucinations or illusions. But the responsible hopes raised by serious and cautious research have been matched by wildly visionary claims. Irresponsible misuse of the drugs has led to both scares and scandals.
For all that has been published about the pros and cons of LSD and other hallucinogens, there has been no impartial appraisal by a competent scientist writing in lay language. Now, in The Beyond Within: the LSD Story (Atheneum, $5), Dr. Cohen has done the job with commendable skill. Man's drive to find out what his mind is like, says Cohen, besides "including a search for release from the painful realities of' disease, disaster and death . . . also at tempts to find an answer to the question of how one human should relate to an other, and how man should understand his own impermanence. [It] ranges from a hedonistic sensuality to a search for the highest philosophic abstractions, from a tool for deriving scientific data to a sacrament taken to achieve loss of self and union with the ALL."
"A Bit of Death."LSD (D-lysergic acid diethylamide) has so far proved no cure for any disease. The overriding interest of both scientists and pseudo scientists in LSD (and, to a lesser extent, in the other hallucinogens) is in its effects on the mind. And these are so fantastic that most experimenters insist words are not the right medium for describing them, but they have devised no better tool for communication.
The all-pervading, almost universal effect is incredibly intensified perception. This may be pleasurable or not, depending on the individual's emotional state. Most people seem to float, and often to be outside themselves, so that they are really two selves. A common feeling is that there is "a little bit of death" in the LSD experience, but usually it is not frightening because the subject is dissociated from himself and can observe the situation dispassionately.
The Smell of Music. One of the unique qualities of LSD, says Dr.
Cohen, is its capacity to bring back temporarily the vividness of newness.
Subjects who get a lift from the drug describe all colors as bright and gay—a traffic light may become an object of surpassing beauty. If the subject be comes depressed, the colors darken or bleach out. Highly colored geometric tapestries flow past the closed eyes.
Time stands still. Hearing becomes in tensified; listening to music is a tremendous esthetic experience. Changes in taste and smell are relatively uncommon. But synesthesias—crossovers from one sense to another—are common, so that subjects "hear" colors or "smell" music. Ideas become visible. Thought and emotion are inseparable. Memory is oddly affected: the ability to repeat a set of numbers backward, or do simple tests, is grossly impaired, but long-ago events may be recalled accurately in minutest detail.