THE BEYOND WITHIN: The LSD Story

by Sidney Cohen ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

This should be compared with David Solomon's LSD: The Consciousness- Expanding Drug also in this issue (see p. 800). Solomon's is a symposium of highly gifted scholars, scientists and writers who come out four-square for 4-D, that extra dimension of LSD that stops time and circumscribes the universal flux so that it becomes as comprehensible as one of those glass balls full of snow. Dr. Cohen's study, if less fiery than the remarks of Solomon's contributors, lends both authority and credibility to the claims made for LSD. Longtime users rise above the ""games"" of society and become attuned to infinite beauties and ecstatic verities and, with LSD as their Instant Zen, become models of self-assurance here on the razor's edge of existence. While under the drug's immediate influence, as one user describes the sensation, ""sight, touch, taste, smell, and imagination are intensified like the voice of someone singing in the bathtub."" A falling leaf becomes a cosmic ballet. But after such dreamy bemusement may come mile-a-minute thinking, Cohen says, thoughts in ""a shifting, coalescing, elaborating network. To do more than contemplate the composition is futile."" On the evidence presented, LSD does appear to be less of a crutch or a drug than a new mental tool. And its users are as dedicated as Peace pickets. This is a straightforward, formal study covering LSD's origins, research thus far, and is quite learned.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1964

Categories: NONFICTION