Albert Hofmann - With Opened Doors Of Perception "Fifty years is a very young age for a child, like LSD, which - as a pharmaceutical substance - will never die. We cannot say how it will develop within the next fifty, the next hundred or thousand years - with humankind in permanent change. We can only make some speculative, hopeful extrapolations about it’s future based upon what has happened within the first 50 years. I am called the “father of LSD” and the question arises “who is the mother?” Well, the mother is a fungus named ‘Ergot’, in German ‘Mutterkorn’, ‘mother-corn’. Here we have the mother ‘Ergot’. She gave birth to several of my pharmaceutical children. The first was ‘Methergin’ which is used as a medicine in child-birth. The second offspring from my relation with mother Ergot was LSD. Whereas Methergin helps in the birth of the bodily (physical) child, LSD can be helpful in the birth of the spiritual child, hidden in every human being. Whereas Methergin is effective in the material world, LSD is effective in the spiritual world, and such a connection cannot be accidental. Some higher authority must be behind that, which has thought that the human race needs help not only in the material but also in the spiritual world and therefore ordered the discovery of LSD. And it must have been this higher authority that - after I had synthesized the LSD already in 1938 – did talk to my inner ear to repeat it’s synthesis in 1943, which resulted in the discovery of it’s fascinating imprint on the human psyche. It was some years later in the 1950s, that LSD itself attracted the sacred, magical plant from Mexico into my laboratory for further research. Obviously it was the wish of LSD to show how close it is related to the Mexican healing-plant and how similar it’s own character is to that of the Teonanacatl (magic Psilocybe mushrooms) or the Ololiqui (Morning Glory) - where by LSD was able to prove it’s own holy character as a sacred drug. And by hinting towards the pre-historic, Indian cult-ceremonies it delivered an example for the proper usage of LSD and other psychedelics in a ceremonial context. There are still peoples, and we know not just a few, which believe that a psychedelic experience, which is evoked by a substance is not a spiritual or truly mystical experience. These people are not aware yet of the unity of the spiritual and the material world. These are the people who treat nature as if it would be only dead matter, existing simply to be exploited. They cannot grasp and comprehend that the material world is the gigantic sender, by which the creator is sending his message to its creatures, to us humans who can receive and realize it. All those who have ever been spiritually awakened know that the creation is the most rudimentary relation – and a manifestation – of the spiritual world. Books and texts written by human beings are no longer the base and source of our beliefs in our times. We have to look with our own eyes, feel with our own senses, with opened doors of perception – to experience the world for what it really is, in the eternal present, infinity and magical. And only if we experience the devine existence of creation first hand, only then can we understand the truth of the message the prophets, saints and mystics have told us. Therefore each method and any path that helps us to awaken our own mystical experience in us is of highest spiritual value and should be available for everyone! You, my dear friends and the millions of people all around the world, celebrating with us the 75th birthday of the Ergot-child – we all testify in deep thankfulness the great support we gained on our way to what Aldous Huxley described as the meaning and ultimate task of the human existence: enlightenment, creative vision, love. I think all these positive testimonies manifested by LSD should be enough to get to the conclusion that the prohibition of LSD and similar psychedelics is completely wrong. Dear friends, I am happy we all gather here for the 75th birthday of my problem-child LSD. I am very happy to participate from beyond with my thoughts, with my heart and all my love.”