Quotes from Albert Hofmann

We need a new concept of reality and a new set of values for things to change in a positive direction. LSD could help to generate such a new concept.

God only speaks to those who understand the language

It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature.

I was completely astonished by the beauty of nature. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings.

By observing natural scientific discoveries through a perception deepened by meditation, we can develop a new awareness of reality. This awareness could become the bedrock of a spirituality that is not based on the dogmas of a given religion, but on insights into a higher and deeper meaning. I am referring to the ability to recognize, to read, and to understand the firsthand revelations.

I know LSD; I don't need to take it anymore. Maybe when I die, like Aldous Huxley .

Outside is pure energy and colorless substance. All of the rest happens through the mechanism of our senses. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings.

I suddenly became strangely inebriated. The external world became changed as in a dream. Objects appeared to gain inrelief; they assumed unusual dimensions; and colors became more glowing. Even self-perception and the sense of time were changed. When the eyes were closed, colored pictures flashed past in a quickly changing kaleidoscope. After a few hours, the not unpleasant inebriation, which had been experienced whilst I was fully conscious, disappeared. what had caused this condition?

It gave me an inner joy, an open mindedness, a gratefulness, open eyes and an internal sensitivity for the miracles of creation... I think that in human evolution it has never been as necessary to have this substance LSD. It is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be.

el espacio interior del alma es igual de infinito y enigmático que el espacio cósmico exterior, y (...) tanto los cosmonautas del espacio exterior cuanto los del interior no pueden permanecer allí, sino que tienen que regresar a la tierra, a la conciencia cotidiana. además, ambos viajes exigen una buena preparación, para que puedan desarrollarse con un mínimo de peligro y convertirse en una empresa realmente enriquecedora.

The danger of LSD lies not in its toxicity, but rather in the unpredictability of its psychic effects.

LSD trips and the space flights of the astronauts are comparable in many respects. Both enterprises require very careful preparations, as far as measures for safety as well as objectives are concerned, in order to minimize dangers and to derive the most valuable results possible. The astronauts cannot remain in space nor the LSD experimenters in transcendental spheres, they have to return to earth and everyday reality, where the newly acquired experiences must be evaluated.

Above all, for Western people with their hypertrophied rationality, the development and expansion of a direct, emotional experience of reality, unobstructed by words and concepts, would be of evolutionary significance. (Aldous Huxley's "Human Resources")

Objective reality, the world view produced by the spirit of scientific inquiry, is the myth of our time.

Lo más importante fue para mí el reconocimiento, confirmado por todos mis experimentos con LSD, que lo que de común se denomina «realidad», incluida la realidad de la propia persona, de ningún modo es algo fijo, sino algo de múltiple significación, y que no existe una realidad, sino varias; cada una de ellas encierra una distinta conciencia del yo.

Muy sensible es la reacción de una comunidad de chimpancés en una jaula cuando un miembro de la familia toma LSD. Aunque en el propio animal no puedan comprobarse cambios, toda la jaula se alborota, porque el chimpancé con LSD aparentemente deja de cumplir con precisión las leyes del muy sutil orden jerárquico familiar.

The high sentences—ten years' imprisonment each for convictions in Texas and California concerning possession of LSD and marijuana, and conviction (later overturned) with a sentence of thirty years' imprisonment for marijuana smuggling—show that the punishment of these offenses was only a pretext: the real aim was to put under lock and key the seducer and instigator of youth, who could not otherwise be prosecuted.

How should we judge the conduct of María Sabina, the fact that she allowed strangers, white people, access to the secret ceremony, and let them try the sacred mushroom?

The fundamental importance, for the recovery of people in Western industrial societies who are sickened by a one-sided, rational, materialistic world view, is today given primary emphasis, not only by adherent to Eastern religious movements like Zen Buddhism, but also by leading representatives of acedemic psychiatry

The fundamental importance, for the recovery of people in Western industrial societies who are sickened by a one-sided, rational, materialistic world view, is today given primary emphasis, not only by adherents to Eastern religious movements like Zen Buddhism, but also by leading representatives of acedemic psychiatry

When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you don't turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist.

It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature.

After some time, with my eyes closed, I began to enjoy this wonderful play of colors and forms, which it really was a pleasure to observe. Then I went to sleep and the next day I was fine. I felt quite fresh, like a newborn.

They do not know very good Latin, these botanists.