This past week, I've received two really excellent books dealing with one and the same phenomenon. Namely, the distinguished scientific mind of Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann and his discovery LSD. Dieter Hagenbach & Lucius Werthmüller's Mystic Chemist, a biography, and Hofmann's own anthology LSD and the Divine Scientist, work wonders as two different keys to the same lock.
Hofmann's own little book is compiled from late life lectures he held within academia and it's thereby pretty basic stuff. It must have been a challenge like a two-edged sword for him. On the one hand, trying to convince the acid renegades of the 1960s to listen to scientific reason and on the other trying to convince rational scientists to listen to the cosmic and divine poetry of (inner) nature. Did he succeed? Well, certainly more than most.
There is much talk of serendipity in this book, and I can think of no other term that sums up Hofmann's life and career better.
"When the accidental discoveries in pharmacological research are examined more carefully, though, it becomes apparent that they usually have nothing to do with pure chance but rather with what we call serendipity."
"I had been looking for a circulatory stimulant and discovered a psychological stimulant: serendipity."
Hofmann explains this phenomenon that helped him not only in his LSD development and research but also on a general level: "... a researcher's secondary paths of investigation often lead to more significant results than the primary paths that were established on the basis of planning."
This is a well-known magical technique of course. Applied on one's own general life, it can work wonders too. When the mind is clinging to mere rational pushing, nothing much happens. But if it's diligently focused on achieving some kind of realistic change and that mind frame takes over in what is nowadays called a "flow", synergetic gifts will follow.
"I attribute absolute highest importance to consciousness change. I regard psychedelics as catalyzers for this. They are tools which are guiding our perception towards other deeper areas of our human existence, so that we again become aware of our spiritual essence."
Hofmann was never an overt LSD missionary, but rather a proud messenger of the gods and a fine diplomat in-between these too biased mind frames: the wild one following in the trails and trials of Tim Leary, and the subdued, causal one in the global scientific world. Hofmann's own persona showed that it was absolutely possible to merge these apparently diametric angles. He was the perfect PR-man for his own creation, so to speak, armed with a very simple message: "The ultimate meaning of life is happiness."
An avid and enthusiastic naturalist who wanted to see (and saw) connections in between everything and everyone, Hofmann early on realized that his discovery of LSD could help others see these same connections. He integrated outer as well as inner nature, and thereby created genuine holistic perspectives that 18-19th century rationalism had tried so diligently to destroy. The first half of the 20th century brought cataclysmic results of that kind of primitive scientific thinking, and Hofmann was very much aware of it. The relationship between and the coincidence/dance time-wise with the atomic bomb and LSD has been much pondered. Which phenomenon is truly "stronger than a 1000 suns"?
"Even the brain's functions are nourished by the sun's energy, and thus the human mind represents the most sublime energetic transformation of sunlight. In other words, research in the natural sciences has revealed that we human beings are "sun beings" – a truth represented in many myths."
Mystic Chemist is a grand tour of Hofmann's fascinating life and career. The book is well researched, substantial, filled with an abundance of images from his entire life and thereby constitutes an intelligent summing up of a mover and shaker whose impact on human culture we have yet to fully discover. The past decade's re-emergence of LSD within therapeutic and clinical, psychiatric environments show that there's surely more to this phantasticum than meets the (third) eye – or cheap sensationalist media.
Furthermore, Mystic Chemist is a well needed addition on the English reading market. The German sphere has had an advantage for a long time when it comes to LSD literature, so when two beautiful books like these see the light of day in English, it's a valuable addition to a global, elevated psychedelic scholarship.
LSD and the Divine Scientist – The Final Thoughts and Reflections of Albert Hofmann, foreword by Christian Rätsch, afterword by Alex Grey, Park Street Press, Rochester, 2013.
Dieter Hagenbach & Lucius Werthmüller, Mystic Chemist – The Life of Albert Hofmann and his Discovery of LSD, Synergetic Press, Santa Fe, 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment