Blowing America's Mind : A True Story of Princeton, CIA Mind Control, LSD and Zen

Two well-known Princeton alumni at last reveal the true inside story of how they got caught up in and nearly done in by the CIA's LSD-laced deep hypnosis research while they were Princeton students in the late 1960's. Reminiscent in some respects of A Beautiful Mind, the Princeton setting and the artificial, hypnotically induced schizophrenic states for experimental psychological research are the basis for exploring the actual psychiatrists and psychologists involved as well as their student "guinea pigs." Princeton and the now-defunct New Jersey Neuro-Psychiatric Institute (NJNPI) were just two of 86 American institutions (incuding universities and hospitals) engaged in almost 150 top secret mind-control research projects funded by the CIA. The authors worked at NJNPI in deep hypnosis research while attending the waning days of Princeton as an all-male university before Princeton went coed. This is also an intense love story reawakening the rebellious wild spirit of those early days of the Psychedelic Revolution. The true story, which vivifies the beginning of the 'psychedelic era,' unfolds as to how the authors' naive and well-intentioned participation warped their intimate lives at a formative stage of their development and nearly cost them their personal identities. What happens when a lifelong skeptic dies and discovers he was wrong about life after death? Forrest J Ackerman (1916-2008), a luminary in the early history of science fiction and an ardent, lifelong atheist, promised that if he were wrong about the non-existence of an afterlife, he would attempt to send a convincing message to a few people he especially respected. Not only did Forrest leave a physical message for co-author Paul Davids that could not be explained by contemporary forensic science, but Forrest produced an extraordinary wealth of four kinds of converging evidence: (1) startling physical phenomena (many with clues to his identity); (2) frequent, highly improbable synchronicities; (3) relevant communications via research mediums; and (4) astonishing, measurable effects on technology, beyond anything previously documented in the history of afterlife research. Could this in fact be the ultimate evidence for life after death? The distinguished skeptic Dr. Michael Shermer wrote in Scientific American in 2015 that it is the"convergence of evidence" from different sources or domains (called "consilience of inductions" in science) that ultimately moves scientific understanding forward. The authors of An Atheist in Heaven conclude that the convergence of evidence connected to apparent post-mortem contact from Forrest J Ackerman is so comprehensive and compelling, that it is perhaps the most important case of After Death Communication-a case that offered many types of testable challenges for laboratories at Indiana University, The College of New Jersey and the University of Arizona. The results are included in this book, along with the unembellished, true personal story of why Mr. Davids was a logical candidate to receive these messages and experience these phenomena that began in 2009 How did America's CIA get caught up in things like psychedelics, deep hypnosis - and Princeton student life? This historic entanglement of the CIA, deep hypnosis, LSD and the Ivy League happened because the CIA in the 1950's and 1960's experimented with new devious ways to impact the minds of its enemies - both foreign and domestic - including its own retiring agents (to erase memories of classified information), and also supposedly-dangerous internal hostiles ... such as college kids fighting against Vietnam War atrocities. The secret program was called MK-ULTRA, and the well known Princeton alumni who co-authored this book were among the guinea pigs. For fifty years, no one has stepped forward to reveal the insider true story of how innocent Princeton students got caught up in and nearly done in by the CIA s late-sixties LSD-laced hypnotic research. Now the story's out in the open. Amazon.com