I took LSD in my senior year at Fordham University. I was very lucky because it was an incredibly beautiful day, in May. Because the quality of an LSD trip depends mostly on the environment in which you take it. And the grounds at Fordham University were about as great as can be. So I had an exquisitely beautiful trip.
It took about 45 minutes to take effect. I had no idea what to expect. I remember looking at the sidewalk near my feet, and suddenly the stones in the sidewalk became unspeakably beautiful jewels! Amazing! And then I looked up and I was overwhelmed by heavenly beauty all around.
I spent most of the rest of the day in awe of the beauty of reality, the beauty of my particular area of the universe.
But a few hours into the trip I remember holding my head in my hands and exclaiming, “I AM NOT ME! I AM NOT ME!”
It was not an idea. It was an experience, the experience of rising up out of everything that constituted Ben Gilberti, into the pure awareness that was outside and above my previous identity. It was one of my most important experiential realizations I’ve ever had. I’ve since been free of all the stuff that made up Ben Gilberti; Ben was still perfectly available to experience, but I’d nevermore be stuck in it.
Then the most amazing thing happened. I got the idea of giving a lecture on “The Revolution in Linguistic/Conceptual Framework Brought About by Recent Discoveries in Field Physics and Quantum Mechanics.” It was an original idea and the whole of the lecture stood before me, ready to be expressed.
So, incredibly, I went to one of my professors before his class started and asked him if I could teach his class for him that day. He asked about what. And I told him the title of the talk I just wrote above. He was intrigued and allowed me to do it. He introduced me and up I went to the front of the class and for 50 minutes delivered a stupendous lecture. And then at the very end, I told them that the talk was so good because I was tripping my ass off on LSD.
Everyone was stunned.
I gave the lecture two more times that day, and gradually the trip came to an end.
