Michael Rose

“Being included in a ceremony wasn’t easy, for it was only permitted to enquire about the mushrooms ‘when evening and darkness come and you are alone with a wise old man or woman whose confidence you have won, by the light of a candle held in the hand and talking in a whisper’. The mushrooms themselves had to be picked”
― J.M.R. Higgs, I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Timothy Leary

“The following day, Wilson was still feeling the disorienting effects of the drug. He hallucinated twice, seeing a polar bear wearing a black-turtleneck sweater walk past his house, and then seeing a green, flute-playing Pan, the goat god of nature, in his vegetable garden.139 He did not let such wild sights stop him from going to the movies with Arlen that night, but while watching the film he was hit with an intense wave of anxiety strong enough to immobilize an elephant. He barely made it out of the theater to get some air. Was he still tripping? Belladonna has had terrible effects on people for hundreds of years, giving credence to the old legend that witches and sorcerers used belladonna as a poison and a weapon. The deadly nightshade, to use another of its names, would cause terrible hallucinations and drive people to insanity. Luckily, on the following day, Wilson was fine but again at night the panic hit. This time it lasted for half an hour. To help calm himself down, he concentrated on reciting the plots of old movies to Arlen. By the time he’d finished describing the plot of the film The Third Man, the anxiety attack had passed. Wilson saw the positive in this terrifying dance with Lady Nightshade, as he wrote that the whole experience brought with it an insight into his anxiety which he realized “was sexual excitement.”140”
― Gabriel Kennedy, Chapel Perilous: The Life & Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson

“Many centuries after the Buddha, the Chinese Chan (Zen) patriarch Yunmen (c. 860–949) was asked: “What are the teachings of an entire lifetime?” Yunmen replied: “An appropriate statement.”6 For Yunmen, what counts is whether your words and deeds are an appropriate response to the situation at hand, not whether they accord with an abstract truth.”
― Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age

“Wilson’s early trip reports with peyote and belladonna are valuable artifacts from a first-generation psychedelic explorer's point of view. Five years before the “summer of love,” when LSD hit America's consciousness, Wilson was engaged in the bohemian tradition, in the manner of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Fitz Hugh Ludlow, author of The Hasheesh Eater (1857), of exploring one’s mind with psychotropic drugs. Wilson’s article took an unexpected turn, however, when he reported that several weeks after his first peyote trip he started having sexual feelings for “a young boy.” He continued that the attraction was so intense that he’d get an erection just driving past his house. Wilson knew that the boy was heterosexual and wouldn’t be into being hit on by an older guy, so he went no further than observing the gay fantasies as they arose and then drifted away. He didn’t panic at the thought that he may have suddenly turned gay, nor did he let the fantasies of being with a “young boy” overwhelm him. He wrote that he observed his thoughts and feelings with self-compassion as they moved through his consciousness. The article concluded with his report that a few weeks later, just as suddenly as it arrived, his attraction to this young person abruptly ended.141”
― Gabriel Kennedy, Chapel Perilous: The Life & Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson