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I was convinced that the inner part of my being was in a state of total awareness with regard to the ultimate reality and oneness of all existence. There must be a way to restore my sense of oneness, I thought. I was a solitary human being once again, seeking a connection with the world. I didn't know what I believed in - certainly it was no traditional definition of god - but I knew it was something that pervaded all reality.Īs the LSD loosened its grip on my nervous system, I began to feel more and more detached from the world around me, more like normal.

That morning, I changed from a person with no faith to a person of belief. I didn't really want this awareness to end, but it was scary it somehow made me feel responsible for the whole universe. I could not shake my sense of oneness with my environment. I watched the sun rise over the city, marveling for the first time at the clockwork that seemed to govern the sun, the city and all its inhabitants. I was completely open to the world around me, sensing that identical energies flowed within and without, with no distinction. The entire city of New York and what lay beyond was an extension and direct reflection of my life. There was no distinction between what lay outside of me and what existed within me. Street lights blended with the rays of the rising sun and - how can I say this? - the light illuminated the essence of my being. It was dawn when Steve and I arrived back in the West Village. But, by late adolescence, I had become an agnostic. My suffering in those days was nowhere near as bad as many people endured, and a little worse than others. Life had already provided enough evidence to the contrary. I figured my mind was good enough to know proof of God when I saw it, but I wasn't going out of my way to look for it. My prayers came out of my pain and suffering as a lonely, damaged child-and no one could convince me that a God worth worshipping would turn a deaf ear to my agony. My father was gay my mother was troubled and, at times, abusive. The dour, vindictive God I kept hearing about, however, was not one by whom I wanted to be chosen. I had been born Jewish, but my education in that religion consisted of hearing a lot about Nazis and why people wouldn't like me because I was one of the "chosen" people. I wasn't nasty, hopeless or lost I just didn't see any purpose in religion. Nevertheless, what he said conveyed a sense of peace and oneness with the world and put me in a pleasant state of mind. I'll never know why he chose those things to say to me, since Steve was a Christian and had not shown any particular proclivity toward Eastern thought. He also recited lines from the Upanishads.

He quoted from a Beatles song, "Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream…." The lines had been borrowed from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. In his most soothing tones, Steve reminded me that I was on acid, that we would be back to our originating station in the West Village soon, and that I needed to relax. Steve restrained me again.Īfter my two suicide attempts and adrenaline rushes, some of the fight was taken out of me. When the doors at our intended stop didn't open, I slid my hands between the doors and, with adrenaline pumping, managed to open them enough so I could slip down to the deadly third rail. I didn't comprehend his syntax but I did have a sense of trust. To preempt the tremendous visual and auditory stimuli of the train, he shouted in my face: "You're on acid!" I had forgotten this fact. You wait for a train for a couple of years and suicide becomes an attractive alternative.Īs I leapt toward the oncoming car, my friend Steve grabbed me. The rush of express trains going by led to my perception that I had been standing on the platform for something like two or three years. Also, my sense of time became profoundly distorted. LSD alters the chemistry of synapses and facilitates a faster flow of sensory input to the brain on acid, I literally saw more, heard more, felt more. It had something to do with the mingling of the temperature, the sunshine, the smell of coffee harmonized with the aroma of fresh baked goods in West Greenwich Village near Washington Square as I was coming down from my ninth and worst acid trip.Ī few hours earlier, I had tried to throw myself off a subway platform into an oncoming train. I came to religion - or perhaps religion came to me - on a lovely New York City spring morning in 1967, when I was 20 years old.