CHAPTER 04

Following Instructions and Going with the Flow

to come back. One may even misuse the state to punish one's relatives or friends by forcing them to take care of one's physical self so that one can stay in that state.

Later I was to read the biography of Ramakrishna by Christopher Isherwood4 and to appreciate that staying in these special states of consciousness in India was a good deal easier than it was here in the United States. In the case of Ramakrishna, he had a temple, a sponsor, and lots of helpers around so that he could stay in a state for hours, days, or weeks without anybody interfering with it. In fact they would facilitate his state because he was known as a holy man. Thus I leamed that the duration of a special state of consciousness is limited by the society in which it is taking place, by the social surroundings, by family, and by the arrangements that one can make for the outside world while one is in these states.

In the tank LSD experiments I had been lucky. They were done in a remote part of a remote island in the Caribbean with no possibility of interference. I had complete control of the surroundings and of the people who were in those sunroundings so that there was no danger of their interfering with the states or of misusing the information of my being in those states.

I stayed at Esalen for the three days of the seminar and became acquainted with the people and with the special environment that was set up there on the Big Sur coast. I learncd something of the. other people in Big Sur and of the advantages, for certain purposes, of living there.
After Esalen, I went to Maryland, where my new job was awaiting me at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center at Spring Grove State Hospital.

4: Baraakrishna and H:s Disdples. New York: sunon & ichuster, 1965. Hollywood, Calif.: Vedanta, 1965.

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