I had a guided Adam experience. Adam is an empathenogenic drug that my guide (a licensed psychotherapist) calls a "Gnostic catalyst," because it catalyzes a knowing which is already in the self, not in the drug. The Adam experience is one of expanded consciousness in a state of no fear, with deep compassion for self and others. Set in a therapeutic and spiritual context, a great deal of insight is possible.

It was for me a classic transpersonal experience: a profound and prolonged direct experience of myself and of the universe as a seamless whole. It marked a spiritual emergence of "Psychological Renewal though Activation of the Central Archetype" in John Weir Perry's terms, with elements of Shamanism and karmic patterns. In terms of Ralph Metzner's "Ten Classical Metaphors of Self-Transformation," the major themes were Separation to Oneness, and Fragmentation to Wholeness.

I experienced dualism in many of its various forms: Mom/Dad, Male/Female, Left Brain/Right Brain, Good Mother/Bad Mother, Devouring Mouth/Loving Mouth, God/Goddess, Death/Birth, Self/Other, Subject/Object, Twoness/Oneness.

I kept coming back to the same answer: it's not either-or, both are true: polarities collapse once again into the seamless whole.

I went through a series of birth cycles, and I experienced myself as part of the evolutionary chain, as well as caught on the wheel of samsara, life and death. In the post-Adam experience, I was able to reconnect with fear, an emotion I've been out of contact with most of my life, particularly in relation to the medical profession. This enabled me to begin to remember authentic feelings I had forgotten, and to reassociate them with facts and memories I had retained.

Most profound of all, in terms of awakening intuition, was experiencing another way of knowing myself and the world, from the inside out, by being: knowingness from beingness. I learned to know myself as a whole by experiencing myself as whole, e.g., being whole. The hole at the center or core of myself became whole!

The days following the drug experience were equally profound. It's as though having once experienced my wholeness, all the channels had opened up, as though I had suddenly grown a vast, living nervous system. Insights and memories poured through me, fragments and pieces of the puzzle all started to come together.

In this altered state, consciousness radiated through and illuminated my whole being. I saw that normal consciousness is focused, like a laser beam which I can move about, touching only one small detailed part after another. Like a searchlight in the night sky, I have to keep it moving about, with "evenly hovering attention" to get an idea of the whole picture. Adam switched my laser beam to slowing, radiant light, and I also became the light -- subject and object simultaneously, experiencing all parts of myself not separately connected, but as one. Inevitably, with such an experience, one begins to sound like a mystic, speaking in metaphor, feeling the frustration of describing such an experience from the limited, dualistic, language-making brain.

The Inner Warrior/Healer archetypes emerged kinesthetically in me as Tigress/Lioness. The Tigress with her stripes doesn't forget her past, is ever ready to savagely, if necessary, defend herself and her cubs with tooth and claw. She also hunts and kills skillfully and swiftly, feeding and sustaining life. The Lioness, color of dried savannah grasses, lies in the warm sunshine after a meal, and gently, lovingly, and tenderly licks herself and her babies, also nourishing body and soul. The same mouth, the same me, can defend and love.

Many more specifics of my Adam experience had to do with doctors and priests, and my attempt to bring them together into a true healing profession. It is possible to understand past life experiences in terms of the injuries and dangers I felt when doctors (healers) and ministers (spiritual leaders) function as intellects cut off from their hearts and bodies. My attempts to bring my body/mind/heart together in a spiritual whole has led me inevitably to the transpersonal perspective.

Finally, I brought from my Adam experience a willingness to really see myself, now that I had a larger perspective, and I knew that what I saw would have a different meaning. In fact, from that perspective, it was no longer a question of being critical or compassionate with myself. The question just never arose. What is simply is what is. I accept myself.

And I learned that in one way or another so much of what I have been struggling so long to attain already exists. One example is my desire and efforts to get my parents together. The fact is, two little packets of their essences did get together once, male and female, and I am the result. They are together in me. I am the embodiment of their wholeness. Like Morgaine at the end of her long struggles in the Mists of Avalon, when I contemplate the Whole, the Divine, I am struck with deep humility: "And I thought I could meddle in this?"

An after-effect of the Adam experience was the resolution of a problem with the state DMV. They had taken my driver's license away based on what I believed was an erroneous diagnosis of "psychomotor seizure." The drama that unfolded taught me the importance of the transpersonal perspective in medicine. I had always thought my so-called deja-vu experiences were a psychic phenomenon, in psychiatric terms, some kind of dissociation or hysterical conversion. My therapist gave me important psychiatric contacts (expert witnesses) who could corroborate my view, and psychopathology class gave me the terms to articulate it as well as the final diagnosis: Somatization Disorder, which features, among other things, pseudo-seizures. This diagnosis also provided yet another validation: a cohesive picture of my whole psycho-medical history from puberty onward.

During this experience I had to confront, in a heightened state of fear and vulnerability, various psychiatrists and neurologists (all strangers to me) in what felt like an initiation of sorts: trial by fire. I passed the test, however, and I was able to maintain my center in spite of considerably heightened stakes and a lot of fear.

I emerged whole, with my soul intact. I passed the test and was pronounced "neurologically sound." I put together a strong legal case for myself (my lawyer said I really didn't need him) and I won. I got back my driver's license!

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