Explorations in Awareness: Finding God by Meditating with Entheogens

John Aiken and his wife Louise, both M.D.'s by profession, have a significant place in the psychedelic chronicles, but their story has been poorly documented. After both sons died by drowning in separate accidents, they retired to New Mexico for spiritual research, with and without psychedelics. Art Kleps, author of The Boo Hoo Bible, has credited their Church Of Awakening as being the very first non-Native American psychedelic church to be registered in the U.S. in 1963, predating both Klep's and Tim Leary's Millbrookers by a couple of years.

Aiken’s 1966 Explorations in Awareness, draws on a vast array of ancient and modern sources, presenting an esoteric doctrine of self-realization and ultimate transcendence, told in a pure, stripped-down style that displays self-confidence. It is a delight to read because it was a new psychedelic path with vedic-yogic along with Christian and Native American influences, and not a rehashed insight of Hippy "trips."

The book includes trip reports, including one from an Indian guru, who does a respect-worthy attempt to interpret the cosmologic-metaphysic experiences of an acid trip into plain English. Aiken's early discussion of LSD vibe is very different from what followed during the Hippy years, and deserves much greater recognition than received.

Aiken’s approach to enlightenment is rooted in meditating while using psychedelics—peyote, magic mushrooms. This derivative of Aiken’s classic Work picks up where Aiken and his wife left off back in the late Sixties—fifty years ago. While Aiken discusses meditation, he doesn’t provide specific techniques for doing so and how to get over resistance and other side-tracks. Meditation had just been introduced to Americans by The Beatles in “We All Live in a Yellow Submarine” and other pop songs that captured psychic explorers’ imagination. In this derivative, author Beverly Potter (Docpotter) will add specific how-to instructions, with illustrations, on how to meditate effectively, including how to “sit,” how to defeat “the Money Mind,” and how to handle other challenges psychonauts meet along the path to enlightenment.

The volume will include a foreword by Michale Marinacci, author of California Jesus and Weird California, about the significance of The Church of the Awakening among the early non-Native American psychedelic churches.

A second foreword by Dr. Carl Ruck, Professor of Classics at Boston University and author of Mushrooms of the Goddess and Entheogens, Myth, and Human Consciousness will address mystic self-transcendence ecstatic visions achieved with psychedelic meditation and answer the question: can psychedelics lead to God—a question Aiken posed in a 1966 article in Fate Magazine.

Dr. John W. Aiken and his wife, Louisa, were both osteopathic physicians engaged in general medical practice since 1937, moved to Socorro in 1948. In 1951 they were severely jolted by the death by drowning of their younger son, David, in the crash of a U.S. Navy plane in the Mediterranean Sea. In 1957 their older son, Don, also a physician, drowned in a sailboat accident in Lake Huron. These events stimulated the Aikens to engage seriously in the search for the meaning of life. The answers provided by Presbyterian Church failed to satisfy their deep emotional need. Subsequently the Aikens founded The Church of the Awakening, an early non-American Indian Church that predates Kelps and Leary’s churches. They used peyote as sacraments, which was challenged in court and they lost.

Dr. Beverly Potter, "Docpotter", has authored numerous self-help and spiritual books. She holds a PhD from Stanford in Counseling Psychology and a MS from San Francisco State in vocational rehabilitation counseling. She is a corporate trainer, public speaker and has authored a number of books on workplace issues like overcoming job burnout, managing yourself for excellence, high performance goal setting, mediating conflict, and more. Docpotter has created several Timothy Leary and John C Lilly derivatives.

Michael Marinacci is a scholar of religious history, spending over 25 years studying American spiritual groups and leaders, especially the unorthodox sects and figures who have emerged in the Golden State.

Carl A. P. Ruck: Professor of Classic, Boston Univ. Dr. Ruck is author of ENTHEOGENS MYTH & HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS and SACRED MUSHROOMS OF THE GODDESS.