I have always known that my mind was running at a fraction of its capacity. I made good grades and did well on standardized tests (over 1500 on the SAT, without coaching), but I thought of myself as stupid, because I wasn't comparing myself to other people, I was comparing myself to what I knew I could  do. Compared to what I want to do, the little that I can do is pathetic.

One day, one Sunday afternoon in September of 1982, my roomate was downstairs, smoking his bong and watching football on TV. I hadn't smoked pot for a long time. For several years I had a bad relationship with it. About once a year I would smoke a little at a party, and it would give me a headache. I would say Fuck this shit, and another year would pass. But that afternoon, somehow I knew it would be different. I knew if I went down there, he would pass the bong, and something special would happen. He did, and suddenly I found myself in the space that I always knew must exist.

My thoughts moved effortlessly. Everything was crystal clear. I could look at a picture in a magazine and see it in three dimensions, like a hologram. I could read a page in a math book and see a window into mathematics, the way Riemann must have seen it. The state of ultraintelligence that I had been striving for all those years presented itself, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

And I thought, It's all right to win. We don't have to spend our lives in the dark. We don't have to keep defeating ourselves. It's all right to go ahead and do what we are trying to do, and find what we are looking for. This insight - this realization that it's all right to stop resisting and let God fill our minds with light - is what the New Testament calls grace.

There is a paradox here. Grace requires letting the past go. It doesn't matter what you have done in the past. If you think you have to have done the right thing to be worthy of God's light, you will never be worthy. You just have to accept the light, unconditionally. And yet, it does matter what you have done, and what you are doing! You have to be looking for the light.

The thing is, I was trying to reach a state of ultraintelligence. For several years I had been bearing down hard on mathematics, trying to visualize the abstract structures I read about. In the last six months just before my breakthrough trip, I had been playing Space Invaders, which required intense visual concentration for hours on end, and which also involved eye-hand coordination using both hands (and therefore both sides of the brain). I played TI Invaders until I could reach the 14th screen routinely, and the 15th on a good day. Without that, it wouldn't have happened.

I had also been practicing a philosophical dialectic that is hard to remember (I didn't write it down at the time) and even harder to describe; that's what I'm going to try to reproduce in the on-line philosophy curriculum. Eventually this site will be an embodiment of what I saw that afternoon. It will be a passageway into that space, like Alice's rabbit hole.

Meanwhile, instead of promoting pot, or demanding its legalization, I'm just going to go ahead and use it productively. Instead of using pot as a way to get "dazed and confused," I get stoned and go in the opposite direction -- in the direction of clear thought and focused action. Pot, in combination with other disciplines, gives me strength on the physical plane. I use it not as a third world drug, but as a clarity drug.

As far as I'm concerned, marijuana isn't in the same category as opiates. It is in the same category as vitamins and smart pills. It might also be compared with microscopes and telescopes. It's like perspective drawing, or the idea of an equation, or the idea of a complete sentence with a definite subject. It's like the principle of leverage, or the principle of monotheism, or the principle of sufficient reason. Marijuana is (sometimes) an intelligence enhancer. It's one among many others.

Of course, marijuana may or may not be an intelligence enhancer. That depends on what you are trying to do. Everything I have said about it is relative to what you are trying to do. It can show you visions of God, if that's what you are looking for. If not, not. Wiggers who get stoned and listen to hip-hop have a very different experience.

Note added March 20, 2002

And in fact my own experience of it changed over the years.

The state of ultraclarity only lasted a few months. In the summer of 1983, I lost it. After that, I continued to smoke pot, but I never got back to where I wanted to be.

Even so, pot was still a positive force in my life. The late 1980's and early 90's were the most creative time of my life. Most of the ideas I'm working on now go back to that period.

Eventually, in the late 1990's, pot had less and less effect. It just got me "stoned," the way straight people think of being stoned, i.e. groggy, giggly, etc. That wasn't what I wanted. So I smoked less and less, and finally in 2000 that era of my life came to an end. It has been almost two years since I smoked pot. I'm going to wait a few years and let my brain return to the baseline. Maybe someday I can start smoking again, and it will do what it did in 1982-83.

Until then, I'm in caffeine space. It works fine for my present purposes.

Riemann, after all, saw his window into mathematics without getting stoned. So did Newton, Euler, Gauss, etc. Bach saw his window into music without getting stoned. Pot was exactly what I needed at a certain time of my life, but it isn't necessary for what I want to do. The state of ultraclarity can be achieved with or without it.

In the 915 Manifesto, I wrote

Pot makes us aware that our minds exist within a larger mind -- a mind within which we live and move and have our being (as Paul said, quoting Epimenides). Getting stoned, really stoned at the highest level, is like a note becoming aware that it is part of a chord, part of a melody, part of a symphony -- a symphony that is always there, eternally, but usually outside of our awareness.

In our ordinary consciousness, we are cut off from the source of our being. What we are trying to do is re-connect with the source, so it will animate us all the time, and make every cell in our bodies resonate to that symphony, and transform us into creatures of light.

That's still what I'm trying to do. At this point in my life, pot doesn't have that effect. Maybe someday it will. Maybe not. In any case, our minds are part of a larger mind. What marijuana showed me in the first few months after the breakthrough is still valid.

I'm adding this note on September 26, 2004.

What I wrote at the top of the page didn't tell the whole story. The day I went downstairs and took a hit from the bong was September 12. The real breakthrough, the most amazing day of my life, was two weeks later, the 26th, which was 22 years ago today.

Jon's boss (who is now a very wealthy man) had been growing some plants in his backyard in Houston. In early September, somebody started climbing over the fence and stealing buds. He figured it was time to hang it up - either the whole crop would be stolen, or he would get busted. So he went ahead and harvested the plants a little earlier than he intended. He put the males - yes, the males - in a blender and chopped them up, then baked them into breadsticks, and sent one of the breadsticks to Jon. On the morning of the 26th we cut off slices and ate them. They tasted horrible, almost as bad as peyote, but half an hour later... It was far beyond an acid trip. It was like the experience Paul hinted at in 2 Corinthians 12. That was when I knew my mind was part of a larger mind.

But now, alas, I don't even remember it clearly. I'm trying to get back to that space with visualization and pranayama. In some ways this is better. It's more controllable, and my nerves are steadier. But it's nothing like what happened in 1982. Now I see a reflection, dimly, but then I saw it face to face.

It's getting clearer all the time, though, and I'm in no hurry about going back to marijuana. I'm happy as I am, and I don't want to rock the boat. If somebody offered me another breadstick like the one from 1982, I wouldn't take it. I think it would be wasted. It wouldn't do what it did then. I don't know how long it will take to "get back to the baseline." When I'm ready, I will know, just like I knew last time. In the meantime, I have hardly scratched the surface of what can be done with visualization and pranayama. I'm going to continue on this path for many years to come.

Prospects for the legalization of marijuana

Cannabis in the Old and New Testaments

There is no loyalty among drug users

No-narc Zones

The Sanskrit Story and the Third Wave

Biocentric Transhumanism
(the main home page of the geniebusters site)

the 915 movement - We are all supposed to support the American agenda, i.e. the attempt to create a drug-free society and an integrated society. There must be a few who think, as I do, that the American agenda is monstrous. It's the exact opposite of what we should be doing.