Allan Watts (former Episcopal priest and spearhead of American Zen), participated in similar experiments after he published his Way of Zen in 1957, he states:
"When I was first invited to test the mystical qualities of LSD-25 by Dr. Keith Dirman of the Neuropsychiatric Clinic at UCLA Medical School, I was unwilling to believe that any mere chemical could induce a genuine mystical experience. At most, it might being about a state of spiritual insight analogous to swimming with water wings. Indeed, my first experiment with LSD-25 was not mystical. It was an intensely aesthetic and intellectual experience that challenged my powers of analysis and careful description to the utmost.
Some months later, in 1959, I tried LSD-25 again with Drs. Sterling Bunnell and Michael Agron, who were then associated with the Langley-Porter Clinic, in San Francisco. In the course of two experiments I was amazed and somewhat embarrassed to find myself going through states of consciousness that corresponded precisely with every description of major mystical experiences that I had ever read. Furthermore, they exceeded both in depth and in particular quality of unexpectedness of three 'natural and spontaneous' experiences of this kind that had happened to me in previous years.
Through subsequent experimentation with LSD-25 and the other chemicals ..., I found I could move with ease and less dependent on the chemicals themselves for 'tuning in' to this particular wavelength of experience. Of the five psychedelics tried, I found that LSD-25 and cannabis suited my purposes best. Of these two, the latter - cannabis - which I had to use abroad in countries where it is not outlawed, proved to be the better. It does not induce bizarre alterations of sensory perception, and medical studies indicate that it may not, save in great excess, have the dangerous side effects of LSD."
-Allan Watts (1968)
'Psychedelics and religious experience'
California Law Review
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