PSYCHEDELICS - Sciencemadness.org

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____________________________________________________ Psychedelics
back . . . it was like having walked back out of the clouds
somehow and becoming solid as I did so."
G; 74th session: "... solid material such as myself and the
vase and the table ... seems to be attributed then with this
extra property of flexibility such as in its natural, fluid state.
It's almost as though we are, myself and the vase and the door,
a form which has lost its fluidity the way water loses its prop-
erty of fluidity when it is frozen ... we're without the ability
to exercise one of the properties that we have when we think
of ourselves in the conditioned state of solid matter, but if
you can remove that impediment . . . of a way of thinking
(and this is what this condition seems to do), this new ele-
ment gives the ability to recognize this validity that otherwise
I'm not aware of."
The postulated new perceptual route is possibly that re-
ferred to by the subjects when they use the term "feeling." By
this they do not mean feeling in the usual sense of touch, nor
the sense of feeling an emotion, but rather perception that
cannot be located in the usual perceptual routes of sight,
hearing, and the like. In summary, it may be that the unusual
experiences here cited are perceptions of unusual stimulus
dimensions, modified in some way by the subject, but never-
theless constituting a new perceptual experience made possi-
ble by the de-automatization of the ordinary perceptual routes
that normally dominate consciousness.
Some support for this hypothesis is present in the evidence
that there exists in us psychological capacities different from
those we usually employ or with which we are familiar. Von
Neumann has observed: "Just as languages like Greek or Sanscrit
are historical facts and not absolute logical necessities, it
is only reasonable to assume that logics and mathematics are
similarly historical, accidental forms of expression. They may
have essential variance, i.e., they may exist in other forms
than the ones to which we are accustomed. Indeed, the nature
of the central nervous system and of the message systems
that it transmits indicates positively that this is so. We
have now accumulated sufficient evidence to see that whatever
language the central nervous system is using is characterized
by less logical and arithmetical depth than what we are