Observations placeholder
Cohen, Dr Sidney - The Beyond within - A patient's experience
Identifier
012220
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
This is not an experience of Dr Cohen, but he oversaw it, recorded it and helped the woman when she got into trouble.
In this observation the woman is, at one poin, overwhelmed and in mental turmoil of psychotic proportions as a result of the drug. She needed the psychiatrist's help to get her through the experience.............
A description of the experience
The Beyond within, the LSD story – Dr Sidney Cohen
Actually, I sort of expected a repetition of the freedom from self of the first session. But in reality I lived through a massive reduction of my defences and habit patterns back to the very beginning of family identifications. All of these appeared in brilliant colour, so, although I was conscious of what was going on, I might be said to have been hallucinating. I could stop the process when I wanted to, but I tried to ride the emotional and symbolic wave down to the bottom to understand the whole story.
Almost the whole process was acute agony – pure hell or purgation – and I realised it as such and spoke of it thus. It was a purgation of the spirit through self knowledge; not just insightful knowledge, but also emotional knowledge of a direct and actual and acute sort. Almost the whole time I realised that I was enclosed in a wall of defences; I could see and feel their limitation. But several times the light broke through, and at the end when I was beaten and spent I began the ascent to the light of wholeness and integration.....