Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics edited by Roger Walsh and Charles S.  Grob.  Albany, NY:  SUNY Press, 2005.  Illus.; index; 268 pp.; $81.50 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

Reviewed by Charles Hayes. Reprinted from Shaman's Drum, Number 72.

Psychological wellness and the skills required for a meaningful life are venerable goals pursued through both spiritual and scientific paths.  Unfortunately, the two perspectives are usually depicted as antithetical.  Progressives and religious conservatives alike decry the overarching scientism (science as religion) that stifles the soul, while even pious academics legitimately kvetch about recent intrusions into the scientific culture by fundamentalists with an extremist theological agenda.  The split is articulated in Laura Huxley’s comment:  “I don’t know who should be entrusted with the [psychedelic] toolbox—priests or psychiatrists?” 

If there is an architect of the universe, the use of mind-expanding plants and chemicals in medical practice, on the one hand, and in shamanic rituals, on the other, may furnish a model for the complementary, symbiotic relationship between reason and mysticism that such an intelligent designer may have intended.  Perhaps no one understands this better than the twentieth-century modern masters of psychedelic exploration—the chemists, doctors, psychologists, and scholars who first demonstrated the medical and spiritual benefits of entheogens (divine-engendering agents) within modern settings, prior to the indiscriminate proscription of such psychoactives some two generations ago. 

In Higher Wisdom:  Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics, Charles Grob, a leader in the new generation of hallucinogen researchers (who are working diligently to disperse the Learyian fumes from the 1960s psychedelic hangover), and Roger Walsh, an award-winning author interested in shamanic spirituality, have gathered the voices of a near-extinct breed of pioneers, namely: Ram Dass, Betty Eisner, James Fadiman, Gary Fisher, Peter T. Furst, Stanislav Grof, Michael Harner, Albert Hofmann, Laura Huxley, Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, Alexander and Ann Shulgin, Huston Smith, and Myron Stolaroff.  These figures, now elders in a rarified field, produced a compelling record of how these tools can help to dilate perspective, ease fear, and otherwise promote mental health and spiritual growth.   Their transformative work, astonishing in its magnitude and invaluable in its own right, also contributed significantly to the creation of transpersonal psychology, a watershed integration of spiritual dynamics into clinical psychology. 

Dialogues within this community of healers and researchers continue to yield sparks in the night that may illuminate ways to resolve perceived conflicts between science and religion and interweave their helical threads.  Just such a forum can be found in Higher Wisdom, which offers a folksy oral history of the early days of LSD and the great awakening to the Western sensibility of holotropic (“moving toward wholeness”) states, as well as their potential for positive transformation, be they chemical- or mind discipline-induced.  It may be that the cause of psychedelic medicine, just now regaining momentum, might be better served by a more formalistic, hard-facts delineation of their manifold successes in the treatment of alcoholism, autism, depression, and other mental disorders, but this chatty, anecdotal narrative of their revolutionary work will duly suffice for now.  

Quaint historical moments in the psychedelic saga are recalled.  Veteran therapist Stan Grof remembers the day he opened an unsolicited parcel of Delysid^® (hint: unscramble the phonemes) sent to his Prague laboratory from Sandoz Pharmaceutical in Switzerland.  Inventor of the stuff Albert Hofmann (who turned one hundred in 2006 and was celebrated in a recent Basel symposium on LSD; see www.lsd.info) worries that progress in the field of psychedelic research won’t occur until young people stop misusing the materials.  Several elders reflect on the genesis of transpersonal psychology as a legal avenue for psychedelics—acquired wisdom following the reactionary, baby-with-the-bath-water ban on their use even in controlled medical studies.    

Former engineer Myron Stolaroff, founder of the International Foundation for Advanced Study (IFAS)—an organization created to investigate LSD’s use in problem-solving and creativity—still exhibits a mild case of acid evangelism, and he misses the point by a tad when he says, “It’s the dishonest ones that suffer and have the bad trips, because they don’t want to accept the painful psychological material that comes up.”  It might be more accurate to say that it’s dishonesty itself, not the dishonest individual, that doesn’t fare well under the glare of the soul-manifesting agents—after all, our need for such interventions stems in part from the fact that, psychologically, we’re all less than honest. 

World religion expert Huston Smith confesses his difficulty in transforming his potion-induced “flashes of illumination into abiding light,” and Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, a founder of the Jewish Reform Movement, reminds us how hard manifesting revelations can be—less than forty days after the collective revelation of God at Mount Sinai, His chosen people were worshipping the golden calf!   We  still have much to learn about the proper administration of psychedelics’ potent force and how to best integrate their often delicate and elusive gifts.  As a historical memoir, Higher Wisdom imparts worthy, hard-won sagacity on such issues, but it remains a friendly farewell wave from a passing pantheon of innovators. 

In the end, I concur with the comments of transpersonal psychology founder James Fadiman, who suggests that it’s time for new blood to supplant the old guard and shake off the mist of outlaw nostalgia that clings to the dream of psychedelic research.  Let’s salute our forebears, but let Grob and his clinician colleagues get on with their critical work, which may produce imminent, profound changes in our medical paradigm and enhance our understanding of spiritual awareness as preventative, curative, and prosthetic for our holistic well-being.

Charles Hayes, whose work has appeared in Tikkun, Oxford American, and other publications, is the author of Tripping: An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures (www.psychedelicadventures.com).