Page Content (OCR)
THE PINEAL: MEET THE SPIRIT GLAND * 57 grown and functioning organism. This was an exciting research field, and I wanted to see how I liked laboratory science. Less nobly, I also believed a research elective would help my chances of getting into medical school. Despite the passion I had for this research, I felt guilty about killing fetal chicks. I had nightmares of chickens chasing me through vague and menacing landscapes. In these dreams, I escaped by lifting myself onto my mother's washing machine! It also did not seem as if laboratory science would provide me the opportunity to study the topics with which I was increasingly fascinated. While at Stanford, I took classes on sleep and dreams, hypnosis, the psy- chology of consciousness, physiological psychology, and Buddhism—all cutting-edge material in California universities in those days. Wanting to sort things out, I went to the student health service and talked with one of their psychiatrists. He recommended I meet James Fadiman, Ph.D., a psychologist who worked at Stanford's School of Engineering. I called Jim's secretary, set up an appointment to meet him, and got the confusing directions to the "engineering corner" of the university. After finding my way out of a few wrong turns and blind alleys, I found Jim's office. He sat with his back to the window, the sun streaming in. I couldn't see him very clearly due to the glare. The halo effect around his head added to my already moderate anxiety. I knew this would be an important meeting. To deal with my own nervousness, I began the conversation and asked him what he, a psychologist, was doing in the engineering department. He chuckled and replied, "I teach engineers how to think. They're smart, no doubt about that, but can they really solve problems imaginatively? How do they approach the creative process? I help them look at situations from different perspectives." Little did I know that Jim had worked with Willis Harman, who was administering psychedelic drugs in an attempt to enhance creativity, at a nearby research institute. The published results of this work, over thirty years old, remains the only such data in the literature and showed great potential for stimulating the creative process. I wonder how many of the