Episode 32 – New MAPS of Hyperspace #3: interviews with Stan Grof and Nicholas Sand

At the MAPS Psychedelic Science Conference 2010 with experiential journalist Rak Razam:

* Stan Grof divulges his personal history in the Checkoslovakian psychedelic scene of the 1950s and his first trip in 1956; psychedelic therapy, his LSD research in America and his disappointment at the discarding of years of scientific data; his subsequent founding of holotropic breathwork and its ability to alter consciousness; and his thoughts on the current wave of psychedelic research in some ways going over the old ground... Stan advocates the technologies of the sacred as part of healing and a network of centers to support the exploration of consciousness in a supported environment...

* Nick Sand, famed LSD chemist who developed "Orange Sunshine," tells of his part in the acid movement of the sixties and beyond in a sizzling conversation... Sand trained with Mazatec mushroom shamaness Maria Sabina and received his first illuminations in cosmic glossolalia with her, deciding to first synthesize psilocybin... When that proved too expensive to produce, he turned his hand to DMT, creating the first street use of the tryptamine in the US and turning people on, including Richard Alpert from Millbrook... Sand went on to become the Chief Alchemist for the League of Spiritual Discovery-and was prosecuted for following his religion under his constitutional rights... The rest is history and a very colorful one at that! Learn the secrets of piezoluminescent-LSD as the inner light, the sacrifice the acid chemists took personally for their work, how Sand survived life in prison, his Eckhart Tolle connection–and how Richard Milhouse Nixon was dosed with acid, and much, much more in this very provoking interview...

Additional comments by Gypsy Taub...

Stan Grof pic courtesy of Pati Lyall
Nick Sand pic courtesy of Anthony Devan
psychedelic background courtesy of Tim Parish and The Journeybook

Originally aired on: Jun 11, 2010