LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven by Christopher Bache
Synopsis: "On November 24, 1979, Christopher M. Bache took the first step on what would become a life-changing journey. Drawing from his training as a philosopher of religion, Bache set out to explore his mind and the mind of the universe as deeply and systematically as possible-with the help of the psychedelic drug LSD. Following protocols established by Stanislav Grof, Bache’s 73 high-dose LSD sessions over the course of 20 years drew him into a deepening communion with cosmic consciousness."
Credentials: Christopher M. Bache is professor emeritus in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University where he taught for 33 years. A Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, he is also adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies and on the advisory board for Grof Transpersonal Training and the Grof Foundation. An award-winning teacher and international speaker, he is the author of 3 books and lives in Poland, Ohio.
Source: https://www.amazon.com/LSD-Mind-Universe-Diamonds-Heaven/dp/1620559706
Since the release of his book two years ago, Christopher Bache interviews surrounding it have been making many rounds on YouTube channels. From the outset, let us make it very clear that our editorial that follows is based upon watching only one of these interviews- not upon reading his book. If the intention of this article was to fairly examine all the evidence presented in his book, we must candidly say it would be very far off the mark, but we have premised that such is not our task.
Our task is beyond the scope and purpose of interviewing an author on his book, but nevertheless such an interview only conveniently afforded us our starting point to ask the question: Do the ends (Diamonds from Heaven) justify the means (LSD)? We will proceed to look for guidance on this question, using an inductive approach that may become peripatetic for some as we weave a diverse basket of facts, but the getting to the heart of occult matters always requires such a bird's eye view from the "mind of the universe".
Introductory to his Online Course
If we can take for granted one fact of universal law being economy, whether or not the ends of "exploring the mind of the universe" justifies the means of using "LSD", the natural law of economy will make even the best out of the worst situations, so even in our refutations and doubts we must acknowledge and accredit the benefits of the method first, before we go on to attempt to demonstrate this method is outweighed by unseen detriments: the immediate, the gradual, and the post-dated. Only in this way can we move closer to universal objectivity, and avoid making personal judgments.
First and foremost, we must all understand and appreciate that there are different teachers for different classes of people on various stages of their journey, and Mr. Bache seems to me at least, to fairly represent that class of veteran professionals who have used psychedelics to a substantial degree, and is subsequently reaching out to older traditions and the theoretical sciences perhaps, in an attempt to build an elementary metaphysical understanding of his psychedelic experiences. He has the opportunity to teach many who are on the metaphysical or theological fence waiting to have their own epiphanies- with LSD or without it.
Subjectively it seems that Mr. Bache's experiences helped clear away at least some debris of his skepticism towards super-sensuous realms, and appears to have grounded some credulity for further speculations on theogonical possibilities. This may mark a significant victory for the conscious ego of Mr. Bache, and the spiritually-orientated should always commend the tracks being made in this direction. If this watershed moment becomes the great milestone of his life, it will only become the more important when his work not only confirms the beliefs and experiences of others, but is able to deal with a strong hand the scientific facts necessary to proselytize others who held his previous ideological persuasions without having to use LSD. It is hoped for that his work will not only suggest to many within his literary and auditory reach that there does there exist a modern gap of understanding to explicate a synthesis of physical-terrestrial experience with super-sensuous experiences -but to provide significant recognition that very gap is in desperate needs of such a bridge. These are the high hopes I have for Bache in these regards, but naturally I have very different personal dispositions regarding the immediate impact these kinds of hallucinogenic explorations, and most explicitly the greater roles these will play into the future evolution our humanity.
What began perhaps with Timothy Leary and later Terrence McKenna in the West, spread to the likes of John Hancock, Joe Rogan, and now being published by Christopher Bache, is the popular notion arising among established professionals and influencers alike, is that somehow psychedelic drug usage can offer true insights into the spiritual worlds without any work to obtain such knowledge. Using a physical chemical-drug to "achieve" "spiritual states of consciousness", beckoning instant gratification from the universe. What could be a more egotistic and materialistic an approach to the spiritual worlds than that?
If I may now quote the character Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park:
"If I may, if I may. Uh, I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're, that you're using here. It didn't require any discipline to attain it. You know, you read what others had done, and you, and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility... for it."
Contrary to Mr. Bache’s statement that if he had many more PhD’s during his trips he would have had more scientific insights on the nature of reality, I would contend that the present scientific cosmologies and accepted theoretical astrophysics actually obscure more than they can ever clarify on the ancient metaphysics. Obtaining more knowledge of ancient traditions would open new horizons and offer viable perceptions, but most true occultists would argue that only natural esoteric development can offer reliable conceptions. When Bache states that in order to obtain objectivity he has excluded his subjective experiences, he exercises the most fundamental flaw of modern science when approaching the super-sensuous worlds- the notion that the observer can ever be independent of the experience. I would argue that his subjective experiences would be more of value to clinical psychology than his “objective” and his openly professed redundant nebulous theories on the universe and human destiny; admittedly, there is no new information here even for novice new-agers. Of course in such a short interview, Mr. Bache professed that his answers in overview would perhaps seem superficial to those who haven’t read the book in full, and to a large degree I am definitely selling him short in this regard. Sometimes the devil is in the details, but let's not forget we are only using his talking-points as a launch pad into distant territory.
To Mr. Bache's credit, his intuitional insights manage to grasp the fundamental shift of human consciousness that is in process, but portrays to be unaware that all the ancient sages knew that only the spirit is immortal- not the soul. Intentionally or not, Mr. Bache frames this fundamental shift of consciousness as if a spiritual evolutionary wave is going to overtake all of humanity, and the evil powers in the world will resist this change making 'things worse before it gets better', but when enough of humanity "awakens" to finally embrace this shift of consciousness to basic spiritual truths, 'things will get better', and maybe utopia will follow suit? Mr. Bache is gravely mistaken here, and his thoughts on the matter do not represent the esoteric or exoteric fundamentals of evolution at all. As a matter of fact, it is precisely this type of thinking from the good-hearted but misguided souls that inspired the creation of this platform.
Indeed, when Mr. Bache said he was unable to direct control of his experiences, describing a paralysation of will and a shattering of ego, it may be unbeknownst to him that the ego is the only partition of the soul which has the possibility of conferring immortality. The ego needs to be sufficiently strengthened in order to correctly navigate the lower worlds of the "universe" (far from Universal Mind may I add) because it is the fruits of the lower ego/self that is reaped by our higher ego/self after our earthly lives. The common negative connation given today to the ego in western culture descends from its misuse in modern psychology- a scientific field that has unfortunately not yet not deserved its etymological basis. The ego that we must strengthen is the Augoeides of the ancient Greeks, the immortal "shining garment". This has to be done in conjunction with metaphysical knowledge and esoteric development, without forcing the doors of nature open that she has kept closed for good reason.
“Know thyself... but the most dangerous thing in the realm of knowledge is to grasp these words erroneously and today this occurs only too frequently. Many people construe these words to mean that they should no longer look about the physical world, but should gaze into their own inner being and seek there for everything spiritual (Psychedelic and lesser meditative explorations). This is a very mistaken understanding of the saying, for that is not at all what it means.
We must clearly understand that true higher knowledge is also an evolution from one standpoint, which the human being has attained, to another which he had not reached previously. If a person practices self-knowledge only by brooding upon himself, he sees only what he already possesses. He thereby acquires nothing new, but only knowledge of his own lower self in the present meaning of the word. This inner nature is only one part that is necessary for knowledge. The other part that is necessary must be added. Without the two parts, there is no real knowledge."
Rudolf Steiner- (Bracket content added for editorial emphasis)
https://self-initiation.com/community/forums/topic/40136/know-thyself-it-s-real-meaning
The popularization of the medium (psychedelics) should be looked upon as part and parcel to the 1960s counter-culture revolution that continues to this very day with state sanctification of marijuana and the psychedelic media frenzy that wishes to send other more mind-altering psychedelics down the pike. The public profile of psychedelics has moved rather quickly in a few decades from being an illegal degenerate activity of the body and mind, to being lobbied as the next miracle drug of ‘public health’ deceptively used to usher in the recreational agenda. It would be short-sighted in view of these correspondences to one-sidedly claim a psychedelic trend is simply repeating itself today. Instead it should be viewed as one living impulse reaching a new growth-period in its development. But what is developing?
In the 1960s psychedelic subjective experiences coincided with a collective religious identity crisis in the west with the birth of the “new-age”. Following the template given by Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Message, these individual psychedelic experiences and religious shifts are inconsequential compared to the resultant pragmatic changes within the social environment. Now let’s ask ourselves, what message did psychedelics and the new-age movement acting as mediums indirectly facilitate in western society as a whole in the 1960s? Precisely that materialistic academic reductionism without any secular religious convictions or mystical insights is all that is required to interpret the world’s religious records; that historical religious figures of similar narratives never existed; that at best they must be philosophical inventions or Jungian archetypal saviors of the collective unconscious, etc. In short, religion was substituted for academic psychology, and mysticism was reduced to chemical activities of the brain that could be replicated using psychedelics without the nuisance of pious asceticism.
Is there a message that is being foreshadowed with the medium of psychedelic exploration? Yes. But before we use his template as a provisional gauge to lift a corner of the psychedelic veil, we must examine its metaphysical mechanism, not its materialistic correlations.
The Medium is the Message metaphysically relates to a hierarchy of manifestation. In the Platonic sense (not Jungian) Archetypal Beings that guide the evolution of humanity, influence faculties, and generally steer the direction of Earthly affairs, leading humanity in turn to manifest, invent, or utilize various mediums (religions, technologies, psychedelics) that actively disseminate these spiritual forces to come into physical expression. When humanity participates in the various mediums brought forth, the majority are not consciously aware of the objective higher purpose, but are only goaded along subjectively. This is why the Medium is the Message- of spiritual beings, that is. The good and the bad ones.
In order for real meaning to come across clearly, we will now provisionally classify two mediums (or messages) emanating from these spiritual beings as ‘hot’ or ‘cool’. The two mediums that will suit our purposes of examination will be religion (cool) and psychedelics (hot). Our distinct designation of temperament between these two mediums will create a contrast that will become apparent as we continue.
“McLuhan argues that a cool medium requires increased involvement due to decreased description, while a hot medium is the opposite, decreasing involvement and increasing description. In other words, a society that appears to be actively participating in the streaming of content (psychedelics) but not considering the effects of the tool (psychedelics) is not allowing an "extension of ourselves." (conscious ego)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan#Hot_and_cool_media
“Hot media...are usually, but not always, those that provide little involvement (conscious ego) with substantial stimulus (psychedelics). They require more active participation (sensory) on the part of the user, including the perception of abstract patterning (psychedelics) and simultaneous comprehension of all parts.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media
(Most bracket content added for editorial context.)
So what discoveries can we hope for from the “scientific” psychedelic explorers of the 21st century? Their individual psychedelic explorations such as Mr. Bache’s according to McLuhan are immaterial. The pivotal changes of social attitudes formed as the result however, and the scientific consensus thereby reached in society is of sole importance. If the psychedelic postulations of the 21st century foster the same logic of the comparative religionists of the 20th century, it will not be enough for the same materialistic academic reductionist methods to profane deities of religious texts, but they must advance to desecrate their lofty abodes! With psychedelic empericism they will simply reduce the activities of the divine beings on higher planes to an objective theory of dead metaphysical energies "they discovered". To a certain extent today we see this when the pagan gods are claimed in new-age “progressive” circles as merely caricatures or embodiments of “natural forces”. Do they fear to enter the inner sanctum of the gods because they are unworthy, or do they hang out in the proverbial outer court with tongue-in-cheek to maintain good standing with the materialists? Give unto Caesar what is his!
When the boundaries of the spiritual worlds reach an unprepared humanity through psychedelic experiences, it will be helpful for us to realize this as foreshadowing humanity’s future, when the boundaries between the physical and spiritual worlds will naturally be more tenuous in the course of Earth evolution, granting a certain unilateral “spiritual awareness”, but not a general “spiritual awakening” touted by new-agers. The premature misstep of looking into this psychedelic window of the cosmos is much like looking into Sauron’s palentir. The forewarned ignorant ones always want to have a gander and marvel, but the true initiates will not touch it, and it will the task of initiates to interpret the enemy’s plans by the follies of “exact science”.
Pippin and Palantir- The Lord of the Rings
Concrete conceptions of mind are the necessary reflections for the human ego to experience in order to gain a sense of selfhood. From one perspective, that is the mission of the physical world: to develop the ego. Psychedelic experiences subdue the ego by immersing the soul in the energy of the lower planes of the cosmos. This brings about abstract perceptions, but no real concrete conceptions; except pre-existing conceptions of the mind brought into the experience. To naively believe that correct mental conceptions could be formulated using psychedelics without proper organization of the subtle vehicles in conjunction with great wisdom to anchor the mind in the vast dynamics of the spiritual world, not only lays a deceptive and merely subjective foundation for amateur “spiritual explorers” risking genuine soul-growth, malignant cases thereof will become scientific munition for material proofs that spiritual beliefs are founded upon mental illness.
Both psychedelics and the digital world artifically stimulate the ego to be submerged in subjective microcosmic energies, not objective macrocosmic energies. We see both synthetic realities becoming addictions that give a false sense of self-hood. These "universally" personal abstractions cannot be objectively conceptualized by the mind, resulting in fragmentation or disassociation of self. This will eventually lead a vast amount of souls to fail to pass the Earthly initiation of the ego, possibly leading the soul to a synthetic “nirvana” prepared by higher malevolent beings for their own purposes.
The human ego must continue to develop in a healthy way by exercising in itself an earnest reach for objective morality and active engagement in intellectual disciplines. Progression in these two domains is paramount to fortify the ego, and to simultaneously develop the necessary internal soul-organs to objectively navigate the super-sensuous worlds with such an ego. We must unfold the full human potential of the ego if we are not to abandon the human possibility of immortality. This trial period of sorts will be the turning point and true demarcation line for the two kinds of humanity at the evolutionary forks: those souls who are well-prepared to pursue their spiritual immortality in both the physical and spiritual worlds, and those souls who were not adequately prepared. This will happen over ages in conjunction with the gradual convergence of the spiritual worlds with the physical world.
These failed egos of the future are foreshadowed today in a preliminary stage by the very subjective nature of psychedelic experiences. During the future spiritual transition, without mental and spiritual preparedness, naive natural clairvoyants will be misled further into spiritual worlds by nefarious spiritual beings. It is no surprise that today it is these same spiritual beings that are guiding the psychedelic explorers into further “scientific objectivity”. Due to the poor composition of unorganized and unpurified spiritual vehicles, this will make only subjective experiences possible that will become the target of very deceptive "objective" inspirations. Inspirations that will be brought back into the physical world to further undermine the objectivity of the physical world, and the egos that rely upon it. These preternatural visions will become the ring of power, but "don't tempt me...I dare not take it. Not even to keep it safe. Understand...I would use this ring from a desire to do good. But through me, it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine."
Don't tempt me Frodo!- The Lord of the Rings
Superficially if we view the upcoming year of 2030 as an ominous repetition of 1960 seventy years later, we can easily see the parallels of a sexual and narcotic counter-culture revolution in the West. However, at the outset I hinted that these eras must be qualified and not simply quantified, viewed as an organic growth or impulse that reaches more complex stages not mere repetitions, and by doing so we gain more clarity. The notable difference between 1960s and the upcoming year of 2030 is that the former was led by a counter-revolution of young people based upon misunderstood idealist principles that the state largely opposed. But the sexual, narcotic, political, migrational, and even medical movements of today leading up to 2030 have instead been crafty agendas enforced by government, industry, and media to suppress the people for their own elite technocratic cultural reformation- the objective of which is only spoken in shadows.
Human "spiritual awareness" to higher consciousness will come as promised upon us in progressive waves over the next several millennia, but this must not be mistaken with “spiritual awakening”, because without a proficiently developed human ego the dream of freedom and immortality will surely drown.
Luke 19:26 applies more than ever to human evolution. "‘I tell you,’ he replied, ‘that to those who have something, even more will be given; but those who have nothing, even the little that they have will be taken away from them."
