6 m a p s • v o l u m e x v i i i n u m b e r 1 • s p r i n g 2 o o 8

2. Math in the 1960s

One day I was sitting in my officewith my secretary, Nina, when there was aknock on the door. Nina said, “This is afriend of a friend of mine, who wants tointerview you.” I was very busy with thetelephone and the correspondence, so hecame inside and I answered his questionswithout thinking. After a month or so,when a photographer arrived, I began torealize that I had given an interview forGentleman’s Quarterly (GQ) magazine. Icalled my children and asked them whatwas GQ magazine. They live in Hollywoodand know about such things. I was in Italywhen the magazine finally arrived on thestands. I was very proud, in spite of mystyle of dress, that I had been the first onein our circle of family and friends toactually be photographed for GQ.

But I was shocked in Firenze to openthe first page of the magazine, and see mypicture occupying a large part of the firstpage, with the table of contents, with theheading: “Abraham sells drugs to math-ematicians.” There were some other

Mathematics and the Psychedelic Revolution

1. Introduction

In 1972 I met Terence McKenna and we became close friends. Tenyears later we were joined by Rupert Sheldrake in a special triadicbond. We developed a habit of conversing on common interestsin a style that evolved into a form we called a “trialogue,” andeventually we performed public trialogues. These occurred spo-radically from 1989 until 1996. The Esalen Institute was veryhospitable and helped us organize and record these trialogueevents, which led to our two volumes of published trialogues.In a typical trialogue, one of us would lead off with a triggermonologue of fifteen minutes or so. My conversation starterfor one of our trialogues in 1996 is the basis of the next section,on my supposed revolutionary role in the psychedelic historyof mathematics in the 1960s, and the origin of chaos theory.

insulting things in the interview, that asfar as I can remember, were largely fiction.I didn’t mention it to anybody when Icame back to California, and was verypleased that nobody mentioned it. Nobodyhad noticed. There were one or two phonecalls, and I realized that nobody after allreads GQ. If they do look at the pictures,they overlooked mine. I was safe after allat this dangerous pass.

Suddenly, my peace was disturbedonce again by a hundred phone calls in asingle day asking what did I think of thearticle about me in the San FranciscoExaminer, or the San Jose Mercury News,and so on. All the embers in the fire left byGQ had flamed up again in the pen of ajournalist. A woman who writes a com-puter column for the San Francisco Exam-iner had received in her mail box a copy ofthe Gentleman’s Quarterly article,in which Timothy Leary was quoted assaying, “The Japanese go to Burma forteak, and they go to California for noveltyand creativity. Everybody knows thatCalifornia has this resource thanks to

Ralph Abraham, Ph.D.Professor of MathematicsUniversity of Californiaat Santa Cruzwww.ralph-abraham.orgabraham@vismath.org

Recollections of the impact of the psychedelic revolution onthe history of mathematics and my personal story.

Ralph Abraham, Ph.D.

It all began

in 1967

when I was

a professor of

mathematics

at Princeton, and

one of my students

turned me on

to LSD.

m a p s • v o l u m e x v i i i n u m b e r 1 • s p r i n g 2 o o 8 7

psychedelics.” Then the article quoted meas the supplier for the scientific renais-sance in the 1960s.

This columnist didn’t believe whatwas asserted by Timothy Leary and othersin the GQ article, that the computerrevolution and the computer graphicinnovations of California had been builtupon a psychedelic foundation. She set outto prove this story false. She went toSiggraph, the largest gathering of com-puter graphic professionals in the world,where annually somewhere in the UnitedStates 30,000 who are vitally involved inthe computer revolution gather. Shethought she would set this heresy to restby conducting a sample survey, beginningher interviews at the airport the minuteshe stepped off the plane. By the time shegot back to her desk in San Francisco she’dtalked to 180 important professionals ofthe computer graphic field, all of whomanswered yes to the question, “Do you takepsychedelics, and is this important in yourwork?” Her column, finally syndicated in anumber of newspapers again, unfortu-nately, or kindly, remembered me.

Shortly after this second incident inmy story, I was in Hollyhock, the Esalen ofthe far north, on Cortes Island in BritishColumbia, with Rupert and other friends,and I had a kind of psychotic break in thenight. I couldn’t sleep and was consumedwith a paranoid fantasy about this outageand what it would mean in my futurecareer, the police at my door and so on. Iknew that my fears had blown up unnec-essarily, but I needed someone to talk to.The person I knew best there was Rupert.And he was very busy in counsel withvarious friends, but eventually I tookRupert aside and confided to him thissecret, and all my fears. His response,within a day or two, was to repeat thestory to everybody in Canada, assuring methat it’s good to be outed. I tried thinkingpositively about this episode, but when Icame home still felt nervous about it andsaid “no” to many interviews from ABCNews, and the United Nations, and otherpeople who called to check out thissignificant story. I did not then rise to theoccasion, and so I’ve decided today, bypopular request, to tell the truth.

It all began in 1967 when I was aprofessor of mathematics at Princeton, and

one of my students turned me on to LSD.That led to my moving to California a yearlater, and meeting at UC Santa Cruz achemistry graduate student who wasdoing his Ph.D. thesis on the synthesis ofDMT. He and I smoked up a large bottle ofDMT in 1969, and that resulted in a kindof secret resolve, which swerved my careertoward a search for the connectionsbetween mathematics and the experienceof the logos, or what Terence calls “thetranscendent other.” This is a hyper-dimensional space full of meaning andwisdom and beauty, which feels more realthan ordinary reality, and to which wehave returned many times over the years,for instruction and pleasure. In the courseof the next twenty years there werevarious steps I took to explore the connec-tion between mathematics and the logos.

About the time that chaos theory wasdiscovered by the scientific community,and the chaos revolution began in 1978, Iapprenticed myself to a neurophysiologistand tried to construct brain models madeout of the basic objects of chaos theory. Ibuilt a vibrating fluid machine to visualizevibrations in transparent media, because Ifelt on the basis of direct experience thatthe Hindu metaphor of vibrations wasimportant and valuable. I felt that wecould learn more about consciousness,communication, resonance, and theemergence of form and pattern in thephysical, biological, social and intellectualworlds, through actually watchingvibrations in transparent media ordinarilyinvisible, and making them visible. I wasinspired by Hans Jenny, an amateurscientist in Switzerland, a follower ofRudolf Steiner, who had built an inge-nious gadget for rendering patterns intransparent fluids visible.

About this time we discoveredcomputer graphics in Santa Cruz, whenthe first affordable computer graphicterminals had appeared on the market. Istarted a project of teaching mathematicswith computer graphics, and eventuallytried to simulate the mathematical modelsfor neurophysiology and for vibratingfluids, in computer programs with com-puter graphic displays. In this way evolveda new class of mathematical models calledCDs, cellular dynamata. They are anespecially appropriate mathematical object

By the time

she got back

to her desk in

San Francisco

she’d talked to 180

important professionals

of the computer graphic

field, all of whom

answered yes

to the question,

“Do you take

psychedelics,

and is this important

in your work?”

8 m a p s • v o l u m e x v i i i n u m b e r 1 • s p r i n g 2 o o 8

for modeling and trying to understand thebrain, the mind, the visionary experienceand so on. At the same time other math-ematicians, some of whom may have beenrecipients of my gifts in the 1960s, begantheir own experiments with computergraphics in different places, and began tomake films.

Eventually, we were able to constructmachines in Santa Cruz which couldsimulate these mathematical models I callCDs at a reasonable speed, first slowly, andthen faster and faster. And in 1989, I had afantastic experience at the NASA GoddardSpace Flight Center in Maryland, where Iwas given access to, at that time, theworld’s fastest super computer, the MPP,the Massively Parallel Processor. My CDmodel for the visual cortex had beenprogrammed into this machine by the onlyperson able to program it, and I wasinvited to come and view the result.Looking at the color screen of this supercomputer was like looking through thewindow at the future, and seeing anexcellent memory of a DMT vision, notonly proceeding apace on the screen, butalso going about 100 times faster than ahuman experience. Under the control ofknobs which I could turn at the terminal,we immediately recorded a video, whichlasts for 10 minutes. It was in 1989 that Itook my first look through this window.

To sum up my story, there is first ofall, a 20-year evolution from my first DMTvision in 1969, to my experience with theMassively Parallel Processor vision in1989. Following this 20-year evolution,and the recording of the video, came thestory with GQ and the interviews atSiggraph in the San Francisco Examiner thatessentially pose the question, “Have

psychedelics had an influence in theevolution of science, mathematics, thecomputer revolution, computer graphics,and so on?’

Another event, in 1990, followed thepublication of a paper in the InternationalJournal of Bifurcations and Chaos, whenan interesting article appeared in themonthly notices of the American Math-ematical Society, the largest union ofresearch mathematicians in the world. Thearticle totally redefined mathematics,dropping numbers and geometrical spacesas relics of history, and adopting a newdefinition of mathematics as the studyof space/time patterns. Mathematics hasbeen reborn, and this rebirth is an out-come of both the computer revolution andthe psychedelic revolution which tookplace concurrently, concomitantly,cooperatively, in the 1960s. Redefiningthis material as an art medium, I gave aconcert, played in real time with a genuinesuper computer, in October, 1992, in theCathedral of Saint John the Divine, thelargest Gothic cathedral in the world, inNew York City.3. Conclusion

There is no doubt that the psyche-delic revolution in the 1960s had aprofound effect on the history of comput-ers and computer graphics, and of math-ematics, especially the birth of post-modern maths such as chaos theoryand fractal geometry. This I witnessedpersonally. The effect on my own history,viewed now in four decades of retrospect,was a catastrophic shift from abstractpure math to a more experimental andapplied study of vibrations and forms,which continues to this day. •

I did not then

rise to the occasion,

and so I’ve decided

today, by popular

request, to

tell the truth.