- 1957: The first public use of the word "psychedelic" is made in Humphry Osmond's "A Review of the Clinical Effects of Psychotomimetic Agents" for Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
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The Exploration of Experience Humphrey Osmond an excerpt from "A Review of the Clinical Effects of Psychotomimetic Agents" Annals N.Y. Acad. Sci., March 14, 1957
Our interest [in psychotomimetic drugs], so far, has been psychiatric and pathological, with only a hint that any other viewpoint is possible; yet our predecessors were interested in these things from quite different points of view. In the perspective of history, our psychiatric and pathological bias is the unusual one. By means of a variety of techniques, from dervish dancing to prayerful contemplation, from solitary confinement in darkness to sniffing the carbonated air at the Delphic oracle, from chewing peyote to prolonged starvation, men have pursued, down the centuries, certain experiences that they considered valuable above all others. The great William James endured much uncalled-for criticism for suggesting that in some people inhalations of nitrous oxide allowed a psychic disposition that is always potentially present to manifest itself briefly. Has our comparative neglect of these experiences, recognized by James and Bergson as being of great value, rendered psychology stale and savorless? Our preoccupation with behavior, because it is measurable, has led us to assume that what can be measured must be valuable and vice versa. During the twentieth century we have seen, except for a few notables such as Carl Jung, an abandoning of the psyche by psychologists and psychiatrists. Recently they have been joined by certain philosophers. Pavlov, Binet, Freud, and a host of distinguished followers legitimately limited the field to fit their requirements, but later expanded their formulations from a limited inquiry to embrace the whole of existence. An emphasis on the measurable and the reductive has resulted in the limitation of interest by psychiatrists and psychologists to aspects of experience that fit in with this concept. There was and is another stream of psychological thought in Europe and in the United States that is more suitable for the work that I shall discuss next. James, in the United States, Sedgwick, Myers, and Gurney in Britain, and Carl Jung in Switzerland are among its great figures. Bergson is its philosopher and Harrison its prophet. These and many others have said that in this work, as in any other, science is applicable if one defines it in Dingle's term, "the rational ordering of the facts of experience." We must not fall into the pitfall of supposing that any explanation, however, ingenious, can be a substitute for observation and experiment. The experience must be there before the rational ordering. Work on the potentialities of mescaline and the rest of these agents fell on the stony ground of behaviorism and doctrinaire psychoanalysis. Over the years we have been deluged with explanations, while observation has become less sharp. This will doubtless continue to be the case as long as the observer and the observed do not realize that splendor, terror, wonder, and beauty, far from being the epiphenomena of "objective" happenings, may be of central importance. Accounts of the effect of these agents, ranging in time from that of Havelock Ellis in 1897 to the more recent reports of Aldous Huxley are many, and they emphasize the unique quality of the experience. One or more sensory modalities combined with mood, thinking and, often to a marked degree, empathy, usually change. Most subjects find the experience valuable, some find it frightening, and many say that it is uniquely lovely. All, from Slotkin's unsophisticated Indians to men of great learning, agree that much of it is beyond verbal description. Our subjects, who include many who have drunk deep of life, including authors, artists, a junior cabinet minister, scientists, a hero, philosophers, and businessmen, are nearly all in agreement in this respect. For myself, my experiences with these substances have been the most strange, most awesome, and among the most beautiful things in a varied and fortunate life. These are not escapes from but enlargements, burgeonings of reality. Insofar as I can judge they occur in violation of Hughlings Jackson's principle, because the brain, although its functioning is impaired, acts more subtly and complexly than when it is normal. Yet surely, when poisoned, the brain's actions should be less complex, rather than more so! I cannot argue about this because one must undergo the experience himself. Those who have had these experiences know, and those who have not had them cannot know and, what is more, the latter are in no position to offer a useful explanation. Is this phenomenon of chemically induced mental aberration something wholly new? It is not, as I have suggested earlier. It has been sought and studied since the earliest times and has played a notable part in the development of religion, art, philosophy, and even science. Systems such as yoga have sprung from it. Enormous effort has been expended to induce these states easily so as to put them to use. Although occasionally trivial and sometimes frightening, their like seems to have been at least part of the experience of visionaries and mystics the world over. These states deserve thought and pondering because until we understand them no account of the mind can be accurate. It is foolish to expect a single exploration to bring back as much information as twenty of them. It is equally foolish to expect an untrained, inept, or sick person to play the combined part of observer, experienced and recorder as well as a trained and skilled individual. Those who have no taste for this work can help by freely admitting their shortcomings rather than disguising them by some imposing ascription. This may seem mere nonsense but, before closing his mind, the reader should reflect that something unusual ought to seem irrational because it transcends those fashionable ruts of thinking that we dignify by calling them logic and reason. We prefer such rationalized explanations because they provide an illusory sense of predictability. Little harm is done so long as we do not let our sybaritism blind us to the primacy of experience. especially in psychology. Psychoanalysts claim that their ideas cannot be fully understood without a personal analysis. Not everyone accepts this claim, but can one ever understand something one has never done? A eunuch could write an authoritative book on sexual behavior, but a book on sexual experience by the same author would inspire less confidence. Working with these substances, as in psychoanalysis, we must often be our own instruments. Psychoanalysis resembles Galileo's telescope, which lets one see a somewhat magnified image of an object the wrong way round and upside down. The telescope changed our whole idea of the solar system and revolutionized navigation. Psychotomimetic agents, whose collective name is still undecided, are more like the radar telescopes now being built to scan the deeps of outer, invisible space. They are not convenient. One cannot go bird watching with them. They explore a tiny portion of an enormous void. They raise more questions than answers, and to understand those answers we must invent new languages. What we learn is not reassuring or even always comprehensible. Like astronomers, however, we must change our thinking to use the potentialities of our new instruments. Freud has told us much about many important matters. However, I believe that he and his pupils tried illegitimately to extrapolate from his data far beyond their proper limits in an attempt to account for the whole of human endeavor and, beyond this, into the nature of man and God. This was magnificent bravado. It is not science, for it is as vain to use Freud's system for these greatest questions as it is to search for the galaxies with Galileo's hand telescope. Jung, using what I consider the very inadequate tools of dream and myth, has shown such skill and dexterity that he has penetrated as deep into these mysteries as his equipment allows. Our newer instruments, employed with skill and reverence, allow us to explore a greater range of experience more intensively. There have always been risks in discovery. Splendid rashness such as John Hunter's should be avoided, yet we must be prepared for calculated risks such as those that Walter Reed and his colleagues took in their conquest of yellow fever. The mind cannot be explored by proxy. To deepen our understanding, not simply to great madnesses but of the nature of mind itself, we must use our instruments as coolly and boldly as those who force their aircraft through other invisible barriers. Disaster may overtake the most skilled. Today and in the past, for much lesser prizes, men have taken much greater risks. How Should We Name Them?
If mimicking mental illness were the main characteristic of these agents, "psychotomimetics" would indeed be a suitable generic term. It is true that they do so, but they do much more. Why are we always preoccupied with the pathological, the negative? Is health only the lack of sickness? Is good merely the absence of evil? Is pathology the only yardstick? Must we ape Freud's gloomier moods that persuaded him that a happy man is a self-deceiver evading the heartache for which there is no anodyne? Is not a child infinitely potential rather than polymorphously perverse? I have tried to find an appropriate name for the agents under discussion: a name that will include the concepts of enriching the mind and enlarging the vision. Some possibilities are: psychephoric, mind moving; psychehormic, mind rousing; and psycheplastic, mind molding. Psychezynic, mind fermenting, is indeed appropriate. Psycherhexic, mind bursting forth, though difficult, is memorable. Psychelytic, mind releasing, is satisfactory. My choice, because it is clear, euphonious, and uncontaminated by other associations, is psychedelic, mind manifesting. One of these terms should serve. Epilogue
This, then is how one clinician sees these psychedelics. I believe that these agents have a part to play in our survival as a species, for that survival depends as much on our opinion of our fellows and ourselves as on any other single thing. The psychedelics help us to explore and fathom our own nature. We can perceive ourselves as the stampings of an automatic socioeconomic process, as highly plastic and conditionable animals, as congeries of instinctive strivings ending in loss of sexual drive and death, as cybernetic gadgets, or even as semantic conundrums. All of these concepts have their supporters and they all have some degree of truth in them. We may also be something more, "a part of the main," a striving sliver of a creative process, a manifestation of Brahma in Atman, an aspect of an infinite God imminent and transcendent within and without us. These very different valuings of the self and of other people's selves have all been held sincerely by men and women. I expect that even what seem the most extreme notions are held by some contributors to these pages. Can one doubt that the views of the world derived from such differing concepts are likely to differ greatly, and that the courses of action determined by those views will differ? Our briefs, what we assume, as the Ames demonstrations in perception* show, greatly influence the world in which we live. That world is in part, at least, what we make of it. Once our mold for world making is formed it most strongly resists change. The psychedelics allow us, for a little while, to divest ourselves of these acquired assumptions and to see the universe again with an innocent eye. In T. H. Huxley's words, we may, if we wish, "sit down in front of the facts like a child" or as Thomas Traherne, a seventeenth-century English mystic, puts it, "to unlearn the dirty devices of the world and become as it were a little child again."** Mystic and scientist have the same recipe for those who seek truth. Perhaps, if we can do this, we shall learn how to rebuild our world in another and better image, for the breakneck advance of science is forcing change on us whether we like it or not. Our old faults, however, persisting in our new edifice, are far more dangerous to us than they were in the old structure. The old world perishes and, unless we are to perish in its ruins, we must leave our old assumptions to die with it. "Let the dead bury their dead" tells us what we must do. While we are learning, we may hope that dogmatic religion and authoritarian science will keep away from each other's throats. We need not put out the visionary's eyes because we do not share his vision. We need not shout down the voice of the mystic because we cannot hear it, or force our rationalizations on him for our own reassurance. Few of us can accept or understand the mind that emerges from these studies. Kant once said of Swedenborg, "Philosophy is often much embarrassed when she encounters certain facts she dare not doubt yet will not believe for fear of ridicule." Sixty years ago orthodox physicists knew that the atom was incompressible and indivisible. Only a few cranks doubted this. Yet who believes in the billiard-ball atom now? In a few years, I expect, the psychedelics that I have mentioned will seem as crude as our ways of using them. Yet even though many of them are gleanings from Stone Age peoples they can enlarge our experience greatly. Whether we employ these substances for good or ill, whether we use them with skill and deftness or with blundering ineptitude depends not a little on the courage, intelligence, and humanity of many of us who are working in the field today. Recently I was asked by a senior colleague if this area of investigation lies within the scope of science and, if it does not, should not religion, philosophy, or politics take the responsibility for it? But politics, philosophy, religion, and even art are dancing more and more to the tune of science, and, as scientists, it is our responsibility to see that our tune does not become a death march, either physical or spiritual. We cannot evade our responsibilities. So far as I can judge, spontaneous experience of the kind we are discussing has always been infrequent, and the techniques for developing it are often faulty, uncertain, clumsy, objectionable, and even dangerous. Our increasingly excellent physical health, with the steady elimination of both acute and chronic infections, the tranquilizers that enable us to neutralize unusual chemoelectrical brain activity, our diet, rich in protein and, especially, B-complex vitamins whose antagonism to LSD I have already discussed-all of these, combined with a society whose whole emphasis is on material possession in a brightly lit and brilliantly colored synthetic world, will make spontaneous experiences of the sort I have mentioned ever fewer. As we grow healthier and healthier, every millimeter that we budge from an allotted norm will be checked. I believe that the psychedelics provide a chance, perhaps only a slender one, for homo faber, the cunning, ruthless, foolhardy, pleasure-greedy toolmaker to merge into that other creature whose presence we have so rashly presumed, homo sapiens, the wise, the understanding, the compassionate, in whose fourfold vision art, politics science, and religion are one. Surely we must seize that chance.
*". . . the principle that what we are aware of is not determined entirely by the nature of what is out there or by our sensory processes, but that the assumptions we bring from past experience, because they have generally proved reliable, are involved in every perception we have."
** Also Francis Bacon, the father of modern scientific method, in Novum Organum, wrote, "The entrance into the Kingdom of man, founded on the sciences, being not much other than the entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven, whereinto none may enter except as a little child."
(http://www.psychedelic-library.org/)
- 1966: The Byrds release single for "Eight Miles High".
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"Eight Miles High" is a song by the American rock band The Byrds, written by Gene Clark, Jim McGuinn, and David Crosby and first released as a single in March 1966 (see 1966 in music). The single managed to reach the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 and the Top 30 of the UK chart. The song was also included on the band's third album, Fifth Dimension, released on July 18, 1966.
The song was subject to a U.S. radio ban shortly after its release, following allegations published in the broadcasting trade journal the Gavin Report regarding perceived drug connotations in its lyrics. The band strenuously denied these allegations at the time, but in later years both Clark and Crosby admitted that the song was at least partly inspired by their own drug use. Musically influenced by Ravi Shankar and John Coltrane, "Eight Miles High", along with its McGuinn and Crosby penned B-side, "Why", was influential in developing the musical styles of psychedelic rock and raga rock
History
The song's obscure lyrics are, for the most part, about the group's flight to London in August 1965 and their accompanying English tour, as illustrated by the opening couplet: "Eight miles high and when you touch down, you'll find that it's stranger than known." Although commercial airliners fly at an altitude of six to seven miles, it was felt that "eight miles high" sounded more poetic than six and also recalled The Beatles' song "Eight Days a Week". According to Clark, the lyrics were primarily his creation, with a minor contribution being David Crosby's line "Rain grey town, known for its sound", a reference to London being home to the British Invasion that was dominating the U.S. charts at the time. Other lyrics that refer to The Byrds' stay in England include "Nowhere is there warmth to be found/Among those afraid of losing their ground", a reference to the hostile reaction of the UK music press and to the English group The Birds, who had served the band with a copyright infringement writ (due to the similarities in name) upon their arrival in London. The couplet "Round the squares, huddled in storms/Some laughing, some just shapeless forms" is a description of the fans who waited for the band outside their hotels and the line "Sidewalk scenes and black limousines" refers to the excited crowds that jostled the band as they exited their chauffeur driven cars.
Although the basic idea for the song had been discussed during the flight to England, the song didn't actually begin to take shape until The Byrds' November 1965 tour of the U.S. In order to alleviate the boredom of travelling from show to show during the tour, Crosby had brought along cassette recordings of Ravi Shankar's music and the John Coltrane albums Impressions and Africa/Brass, which were on constant rotation on the tour bus. The influence of these recordings on the band would manifest itself in the music of "Eight Miles High" and its B-side, "Why".
Clark began writing the song's lyrics on November 24, 1965, when he scribbled down some rough ideas for later development, prior to a concert appearance supporting The Rolling Stones. Over the following days, Clark expanded this fragment into a full poem, eventually setting the words to music and giving them a melody. Clark then showed the song to McGuinn and Crosby, with the former suggesting that they arrange the song to incorporate the influence of John Coltrane. Since Clark's death, however, McGuinn has contended that it was he who conceived the initial idea of writing a song about an airplane ride and that he and Crosby both contributed lyrics to Clark's unfinished draft. In his book, Mr. Tambourine Man: The Life and Legacy of The Byrds' Gene Clark, author John Einarson disputes this claim and ponders whether McGuinn's story would be the same were Clark still alive.
The influence of Coltrane's saxophone playing and in particular his song "India" from Impressions can be clearly heard in "Eight Miles High", most noticeably in McGuinn's reoccurring twelve-string guitar solo. In addition to this striking guitar motif, the song is also highlighted by Chris Hillman's driving bass line, Crosby's chunky rhythm guitar playing and the band's ethereal harmonies. In a 1966 promotional interview, which was added to the expanded CD reissue of the Fifth Dimension album, Crosby said that the song's ending made him "feel like a plane landing." The song also exhibits the influence of Ravi Shankar, particularly in the droning quality of the song's vocal melody and in McGuinn's guitar playing. Despite The Byrds having appeared brandishing a sitar at a contemporary press conference, held to promote the release of "Eight Miles High", the instrument was not actually used in the song.
Earlier versions of "Eight Miles High" and "Why", were recorded at RCA Studios in Los Angeles on December 22, 1965 but Columbia Records refused to release them because they had not been recorded at a Columbia owned studio. McGuinn has since stated that he believes the original RCA version of "Eight Miles High" to be more spontaneous sounding than the better known Columbia release. This opinion was echoed by Crosby who commented "It was a stunner, it was better, it was stronger. It had more flow to it. It was the way we wanted it to be." These earlier versions of "Eight Miles High" and "Why" initially saw release on the 1987 album Never Before and were also included on the 1996 Columbia/Legacy CD reissue of Fifth Dimension.
During the same month that "Eight Miles High" was released as a single, The Byrds' main songwriter, Gene Clark, left the band. His fear of flying was stated as the official reason for his departure, although other contributing factors, including his tendency towards anxiety and paranoia, as well as his increasing isolation within the group, were also at work. Following the release of "Eight Miles High" and Clark's departure, The Byrds never again managed to place a single in the Billboard Top 20.
Release and legacy
"Eight Miles High" was issued on March 14, 1966 in the U.S. and May 29, 1966 in the UK, reaching #14 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #24 on the UK Singles Chart. Upon its release, the band faced allegations of advocating the use of recreational drugs from Bill Gavin's Record Report, a weekly newsletter circulated to U.S. radio stations. This resulted in a nationwide radio ban within a week of the report being published, a factor which contributed to the single's failure to break into the Billboard Top 10. The Byrds and their publicist, Derek Taylor, countered by strenuously denying that the song was drug related, with Taylor issuing an indignant press release unequivocally stating that the song was about the band's trip to England and not drug use. However, by the early 1980s both Crosby and Clark were prepared to admit that the song was not entirely as innocent as they had originally declared, with the former stating "Of course it was a drug song! We were stoned when we wrote it." Clark was less blunt, explaining in interview that "it was about a lot of things. It was about the airplane trip to England, it was about drugs, it was about all that. A piece of poetry of that nature is not limited to having it have to be just about airplanes or having it have to be just about drugs. It was inclusive because during those days the new experimenting with all the drugs was a very vogue thing to do."
The song's use of Indian and free form jazz influences, along with its impressionistic lyrics, were immediately influential on the emerging genre of psychedelic rock. The song was also responsible for the naming of the musical subgenre raga rock when journalist Sally Kempton, in her review of the single for The Village Voice, first used the term to describe the record's experimental fusion of eastern and western music. However, although Kempton was the first person to use the term "raga rock" in print, she had actually borrowed it from the promotional press material that accompanied the "Eight Miles High" single. The experimental nature of the song placed The Byrds firmly at the forefront of the burgeoning psychedelic movement, along with The Yardbirds, The Beatles, Donovan and The Rolling Stones, who were all exploring similar musical territory concurrently.
The band performed the song on a number of television programs during the 1960s and 1970s, including Popside, Drop In, Midweek, and Beat-Club. Additionally, the song would go on to become a staple of The Byrds’ live concert repertoire, until their final disbandment in 1973. The song was also performed live by a reformed line-up of The Byrds featuring Roger McGuinn, David Crosby and Chris Hillman in January 1989. The song would remain a favorite of Clark's and would often be performed live during his solo concert appearances until his death in 1991. McGuinn also continues to perform the song in his live concerts. Although Crosby has revisted the song infrequently in his post-Byrds career, it was performed during Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's reunion tour of 2000, with Neil Young handling McGuinn's complex guitar solo while the other three members sang the song's three-part harmonies.
Contemporary reviews for the single were almost universally positive, with Billboard magazine describing the song as a "Big beat rhythm rocker with soft lyric ballad vocal and off-beat instrumental backing." Record World magazine also praised the song, commenting "It's an eerie tune with lyrics bound to hypnotize. Will climb heights." In the UK, Music Echo described the song as "wild and oriental but still beaty". The publication also suggested that with the release of "Eight Miles High" The Byrds had jumped ahead of The Beatles in terms of creativity, stating "[By] getting their single out now they've beaten The Beatles to the punch, for Paul admitted recently that the Liverpool foursome are working on a similar sound for their new album and single." In recent years, Richie Unterberger, writing for the Allmusic website, has described "Eight Miles High" as "one of the greatest singles of the '60s."
In addition to its appearance on the Fifth Dimension album, "Eight Miles High" also appears on several Byrds' compilations, including The Byrds' Greatest Hits, History of The Byrds, The Original Singles: 1965–1967, Volume 1, The Byrds, The Very Best of The Byrds, The Essential Byrds and There Is a Season. Additionally, a 16-minute live version of "Eight Miles High" was included on the Byrds' 1970 album, (Untitled), and another live version was released as part of the 2008 album, Live at Royal Albert Hall 1971.
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked "Eight Miles High" at #150 on their list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and in March 2005, Q magazine placed the song at #50 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks.
Cover versions
The song has been recorded many times, notably by Golden Earring during 1969, who put a nineteen-minute version of the song on their Eight Miles High album.
Other artists who have recorded the song include:
* The Ventures on Go With The Ventures (1966) * Leathercoated Minds on A Trip Down to Sunset Strip (1968)[33] * Leo Kottke on Mudlark (1971) * Roxy Music on Flesh And Blood (1980) * Hüsker Dü as a bonus single released with their Zen Arcade LP (1984) * The ELP spinoff group 3 covered the song on To the Power of 3, altering the lyrics (1988) * Ride on Through The Looking Glass - 1966 (1990) * Stewart/Gaskin on Spin (1991) * Robyn Hitchcock on his Greatest Hits album (1996) * Rockfour on the Wild Animals EP (2000) and ...For Fans Only (2003) * Chris Hillman on The Other Side (2005) * Les Fradkin on his album 12 (2006) and as part of Timeless Flyte: A Tribute to the Byrds - Eight Miles High (2007) * The Postmarks on By the Numbers (2008)
Quotes and film appearances
The Doors' 1968 song "Spanish Caravan", itself based on the classical piece "Asturias" by Isaac Albéniz, has a part, 27 seconds in, which is similar to the opening chord progression of "Eight Miles High".
Don McLean's song "American Pie" makes reference to "Eight Miles High" with the lines "The Birds [sic] flew off with a fall-out shelter/Eight miles high and falling fast."
The First Edition name checked the song's title in the lyric "I tripped on a cloud and fell a-eight miles high" from their song "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)".
The independent rock band Okkervil River reference "Eight Miles High" in their song "Plus Ones" (from the 2007 album The Stage Names). The song, which mentions several classic numerical lyrics but alters their original intentions by adding one, includes the line, "You would probably die before you shot up nine miles high."[citation needed] Two songs on Bruce Springsteen's 2009 album Working on a Dream make production homages to "Eight Miles High".
The Byrds' version was featured in the 1983 film Purple Haze.
B-side "Why" Released March 14, 1966 Format 7" single Recorded January 24, January 25, 1966, Columbia Studios, Hollywood, CA Genre Psychedelic rock, raga rock, psychedelic pop Length 3:33 Label Columbia Writer(s) Gene Clark, Jim McGuinn, David Crosby Producer Allen Stanton
(https://en.wikipedia.org)
Quote:
Ralph Metzner (May 18, 1936 – March 14, 2019) was a German-born American psychologist, writer and researcher, who participated in psychedelic research at Harvard University in the early 1960s with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later named Ram Dass). Metzner was a psychotherapist, and Professor Emeritus of psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he was formerly the Academic Dean and Academic Vice-president.
Metzner was involved in consciousness research, including psychedelics, yoga, meditation and shamanism for over 50 years. He was a co-founder and President of the Green Earth Foundation, a non-profit educational organization devoted to healing and harmonizing the relationship between humans and the Earth, and a signatory to the 9/11 Truth Statement. Metzner was featured in the 2006 film Entheogen: Awakening the Divine Within, a documentary about rediscovering an enchanted cosmos in the modern world.
He conducted workshops on consciousness transformation and alchemical divination, both nationally and internationally. He was also a poet and singer-songwriter and produced two CDs with Kit Walker: A spoken word CD ("Spirit Soundings," with music by Kit Walker) and one music CD of original songs ("Bardo Blues").
He received his Ph.D in Psychology from Harvard.
(https://en.wikipedia.org)
Erowid Character Vaults
Ralph Metzner
May 18, 1936 - Mar 14, 2019
Summary
Ralph Metzner, who was born and spent his early years in Germany, explored altered states of consciousness for over fifty years. He earned his B.A. from Oxford University and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Harvard in 1962. In 1964 he co-authored The Psychedelic Experience with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass).
He served as the academic dean at the California Institute of Integral Studies from 1979 through 1988. He was then Professor Emeritus at CIIS, available for consultations as a psychotherapist, and taught private seminars on alchemical divination eco-psychology. He was co-founder and president of the Green Earth Foundation, an educational organization devoted to the healing and harmonizing of the relations between humanity and the planet. Dr. Metzner also composed and performed a music CD of visionary balads, titled Bardo Blues (see link below).
He died in March 2019 after suffering from pulmonary fibrosis.
(https://erowid.org)
Edited by Learyfan (03/13/21 07:42 AM)
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