LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven

The deepest book I ever read. It gave me a great deal of clarity, focus, and inspiration. It made me realize the common theme in my life has been researching mysticism, transcendence, and the ontological mysteries. This book satisfied those cravings and makes me want to double my efforts. I know now more than ever what I want to do with the rest of my life.

With this volume, Chris Bache pulls back the curtain to reveal a Universe far more intelligent, alive, and loving than we could have imagined before its publication. Some of you, may chose to follow Dr. Bache down this road. If so, this book provides a good map of the territory. It also identifies the dangers and pitfalls, and ways to avoid them, as one travels this road. Still, one does not need to take LSD to benefit from this book.I found that just reading this book connects you to those intelligences that Bache experienced first hand. Reading this book helped my realize that some of my own personal experiences mirrored those Dr. Bache went through. For example, at times I find myself consumed by an anger that seems to arise from no where. Yet, despite my best effort, I could not identify a specific event or thought that triggered this anger. Could this anger spring from our collective psyche and not my own personal unresolved angst? Bache seems to think so. Could the same intelligence that forced Dr. Bache through a thousand deaths spring this anger on me? Following Dr. Bache’s lead instead of pushing that anger away allowed myself to feel this collective anger as deeply as I could. I then allowed the feeling to die away allowing it to dissipate.What began as an exploration of Dr. Bache’s own personal psyche jumped well beyond that small and insignificant “i” to the Diamond Luminosity and our future self. Along the way, Dr. Bache paid a very high price but also received many blessings. The Sufis have a saying that a Sufi is someone who can do today what anyone will be able to do in 10,000 years. At first, I thought that this statement was the height of self serving arrogance. But, after reading LSD and the Mind of the Universe, I’ve come to see that 10,000 years is nothing in the face of 13-billion years that this universe has existed and will continue to exist.Of course, this short review can’t capture the depth and beauty of this volume. So I suggest you buy and read it. You will find the price small, in comparison to the doors it will open for you.

The only issue I have with this book is his bias political views that he has added into the discussion. They weren’t in his sessions.I too also used LSD 4 times back when I was young. I wanted to know what “It” is all about so I know LSD can be an effective tool if used properly. Although I prefer a Buddhist method which is TWIM, aka tranquil wisdom insight meditation these days to use on my journey. .I’ve been waiting for this book for over a year to be released from when I listened to him speak on ConsciousTV in 2018, and it is fascinating.He courageously took this journey for us all and brought with him precious jewels to share with those that want them. .

I first became acquainted with Christopher Bache, on a YouTube video, when he spoke at the TimeWaver conference in Germany last year. Hearing him speak, brought me to where, by the end of his talk, I realized…wow… what a journey this man has taken, on behalf of the human race. While many people take psychedelic drugs for recreational use and reasons of pleasure, here is a man, with very serious intent, who wanted to explore the deepest layers of human consciousness… to move the human race forward… a true psychonaut! I have waited long for his book to be released, to flesh out the powerful words, I first heard him speak at the conference. Here is a true explorer, no less than Neil Armstrong who first stepped foot on the moon. While Armstrong explored the outer reality, Bache has traveled deeply inward.This man has untaken a tremendous journey on behalf of all of us and we owe him a debt of gratitude. In these 73 high-dose LSD sessions, his tremendous suffering and subsequent purifications allowed him to penetrate deeper and deeper into the Source of All Energy, or what he called Infinite Intelligence. He was taken on a 20 year guided tour of ever deepening consciousness. His story reassures us that this life we currently live is not the whole picture, but just a fragment. Consciousness precedes matter and consciousness exists independently of matter. Reincarnation was shown to him to be a tool of the Intelligent Universe to move the human race forward through time and evolve us. Like the leaves on the trees appear every spring, so do human souls return to continue our life lessons. He talks about a time that will come when “souls will wake up on earth” the veil will be rent and the conscious and unconscious mind will become One. We will fully appreciate the joy and wonder of this beautiful planet that we have never cared for properly. We will have many terrible trials and tribulations to go through on this journey to becoming higher beings. The cataclysmic episodes we humans are destined to go through are what will transform us into Wholeness. We will then no longer be fragmented and divided but will recognize our Oneness with the Divine! The “Future Human”, as he calls us will be a glorious race with great wisdom and compassion. Bache, at the end of his story, leaves us with his realization that he could not reach the end of his quest… for he saw there is no end to the Divine. He was hit by a ray of light in one of his late sessions, that showed him that the God extends on into infinity, without ending. Ending his 20 year study of deep consciousness left him with a huge inward loss and ache. He had spent so much time with what he called “His Beloved” that everyday, mundane life in body left him despondent. It took him years to recover the ability to find the immanence of God in everyday life.I can highly recommend this book if you want to know anything about the possible meaning of life and where we, as humanity, are headed!!

I salute Chris Bache for his steadfast courage. I doubt I personally would have had the guts to face so many terrifying ego deaths and re-births. I also salute his diligent account of his 73 journeys into the intelligent universe. One thing was disappointing to me: in several of his talks which I listened to he mentions that he experienced life as many women. He did not detail that in his book, and I was sorry. The book is dense, and I skipped around when I read it. I will now go back and read it sequentially. A book like this needs to be taken at a slow pace. Well worth the time.

Elegant, poetic, visionary, radical, warm, and compassionate.Thank you, Chris Bache, for writing this beautiful book, and thank God for the amazing gift of reality.

I very much enjoyed this book but would advise against anybody dosing themselves up on LSD, there are other means of delving into higher realities.I am going to add a couple of paragraphs from Jane Roberts book by Seth called The Nature of Personal RealitySeth, the personality who speaks through author Jane Roberts, has this to say about “massive doses” of LSD in The Nature of Personal Reality (Prentice-Hall). Seth’s statements refer only to LSD, used under certain conditions; there are other chemical hallucinogens that are not mentioned. “In therapy using massive doses of LSD, a condition of chemically enforced insanity takes place. By insanity, I mean a situation in which the conscious mind is forced into a state of powerlessness. There is a literal assault made not only upon the psyche, but upon the organizational framework that makes it possible for you to exist rationally in the world that you know. The ego, of course, cannot be annihilated in physical life. Kill one and another will, and must, emerge from the inner self which is its source.“Under such enforced conditions, you are literally facing egotistical consciousness with its own death in an encounter that need not occur — and while the physical body is fighting for its own life and vitality. You are bringing about a dilemma of great proportions.“The landscape of the psyche is indeed revealed, bringing good data to the psychiatrist. But the experiences undergone by the patients — and all of this applies to massive doses — represent the enactment, through terrible encounter, of the species’ birth into consciousness, and its death as consciousness falls back annihilated; followed by its rebirth as the individual patient struggles to emerge again from dimensions not native under those conditions.“The deepest biological and psychic structures are altered. I did not say they were damaged, though they may be according to the situation. Consciousness is assaulted at its roots. When periods of transcendence are felt under such conditions, they represent the psychic birth of a new personality from the sources of the old, and from the death, psychically, of the old. In some cases the genetic messages have changed, in that they are different. This is psychic slaying in a technological framework.“Under LSD you are highly suggestible. If you are told that the ego must die then you will kill it. You will telepathically follow the ideas of your guide under even the best of conditions. The psychic “rebirth” may leave you with a completely new set of problems, rising on the bed of the old and as yet undecipherable.“The new ego is quite aware of the conditions of its birth. It knows it was born out of the death of its predecessor, and for all its feelings of transcendent joy, natural enough at its birth, it fears that annihilation from which it sprang.“The natural creature-integrity is not the same. The physical world will never be trusted in quite the same way. The alliance with it is not as secure. The “self” that was born into the body, and grew with it, has gone, and another “self” has risen from that previous organization.“Such self-changes happen naturally as life progresses, and when the self modulates at any given time, it is different from what it was. When this occurs “all by itself” it is an innate reflection of the psyche’s creativity and happens with its own rhythm — connected to seasons of the mind and blood and consciousness and cells in ways that you do not as yet understand. But the whole structure and its subsidiary relationships change together, and the conscious mind is able to assimilate what is happening.“You grow and live through deaths that happen in you constantly, and travel through births within your lifetime that you do not comprehend. Such massive doses of LSD chemically activate all levels of cellular memory to such an extent that in certain terms they are no longer in charge of themselves, and the memories can then emerge unpredictably when the system is under stress. The fine biological and psychological alliance is now weakened.” “Assaults upon your consciousness in such a manner challenge the stability of your species, and insult the integrity of your creaturehood. You may say that such chemicals are natural because they exist within the reality that you know, but the body is equipped to deal with ingredients that come from the earth.

I am sure this will create a wide variety of responses and yet to the serious student of life it offers much food for thought and reflection. For those who are familiar with the insight gained from deep meditation it offers an attempt at articulating the experience, for those familiar with LSD I imagine it offers comfort. For me it offered the chance to reflect on my own experience of non-ordinary states and consider the nature of different perceptions of reality. It is well written in accessible language and inspires further dialogue. I have to say that at times to correspondence with my own experience brought me to the edge of further states, and maybe this may occur to other readers, but then you have choice, to enter or not, so take care. As someone who has never taken such drugs it is an interesting account, and as someone who experiences such states spontaneously it has been reassuring to know others find reality so inspiring that they seek to know and experience more.

Another reviewer wrote that this is the most important book she has every read. I feel the same - I would even say, maybe that I will ever read. In it, Chris offers us the amazing gift not just of the profound 'work' he has done in undertaking these journeys which have cost him dearly and have taken him to insights only few of us will ever realise, but of having found a way of giving us access to at least some of what he has brought back in humble words that resonate deeply. For me the book offered a retrospective 'holding' for some of my own experiences by giving me a vastly larger context, and it spoke to the longing one can be left with when seeing even a fraction of what Chris has seen. It seems synchronous that the publication of this book occurred at the beginning of one of the most serious challenges humanity has ever faced, on top of all the other global crises already mounting. It gives an inspiring context to that, too. Something I will hold on to in the days ahead. Thank you, Chris, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you.

The book provides a great insight into the use of LSD for spiritual and cosmic exploration, but I won't say it was a great advertisement. The author’s journey was difficult and rather dangerous. It is surprising that he emerged with his sanity intact.It is also a very subjective account, and rather abstract. As a professor of religious studies he is deeply familiar with various psychological and spiritual theories about the collective consciousness and uses these to guide his sessions and interpret his experiences. I have to admit though I found it hard going in places. I kept waiting for him to get onto something interesting, but it was just endless superlatives about the energy, intensity and level of his hallucinogenic experiences. It might have been fascinating for him, but they didn’t do much for me. There are more grounded approaches to spiritual development that are more reliable and insightful.There were some interesting passages about how his experiences affected his everyday life, and his attempts to integrate them more fully. It is clear this has been difficult, although perhaps with the passage of time he has managed this successfully. For me these were the most interesting parts of the book.

Chis Bache (b. 1949) is now retired, but spent his career as a professor of Religious Studies in a small university in Ohio. Between 1979 and 1999, he undertook a secret, twenty-year exploration of consciousness using very high doses of LSD. This became his life’s work, though he had to keep quiet about it until it was all over to protect his career, family and reputation. Even then, he kept quiet about it for at least another ten years as he overcame a dark night of the soul, integrated his experiences, and prepared to write this book.Bache was first introduced to the idea of psychedelics in 1978 (aged 29), when he read Stanislav Grof’s great book, Realms of the Human Unconscious. After reading that, Bache felt compelled to explore the hidden depths of consciousness and reality for himself. Having graduated in philosophy with a special interest in religion and spirituality, he saw Grof’s use of LSD as a way to discover more about reality, consciousness, and the ‘mind of the universe’ itself. LSD had been illegal for ten years, however, so it had to be a secret undertaking.The book is beautifully written; a labour of love. There are so many insightful lessons to be draw from Bache’s explorations: we suffer only in order to evolve; we are free to seek transcendence; there is no end to evolution or enlightrnment. I think what Bache has done is a great service to humanity, on a par with other great explorers. He has navigated his way beyond the horizon, found the best routes, explored the hidden continents, and drawn us a map.