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The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience – Dr Robert Masters and Dr Jean Houston

In another type of common visual distortion, the other person is perceived as surrounded by or extruding intricate patterns of wires, loops, electrical and colour wave emanations.  In a typical case of this kind S5, a male in his early thirties (LSD), first looked into a mirror and saw himself as the source of great circular loops of neon wires that entirely surrounded him.  The loops were many - “hundreds of thousands” - and consisted of his attachments to himself and to every aspect of his life - “memory loops, love loops, hate loops, eating loops, mental block loops”.  Upon re-entering the living room he saw his wife and immediately became absorbed in studying her since she, too, appeared to him to be surrounded by her loops.  He had always thought of her as being “a rather simple person” and was “altogether amazed to discover that she is every bit as complicated as I am” [sic!].  Subsequent to his session, and for about a week, the subject claimed to be able to see dimly a tangle of loops surrounding himself, his wife and almost everyone with whom he came into contact.  These were not, he emphasised, “meaningless hallucinations” but revealed to him something important about the character of the other person