Robert Forte On The Political Implications of Widespread Psychedelic Use

Simon & Schuster: 

Robert Forte, AMRS, began his work with psychedelics as a student of Stanislav Grof and Frank Barron, cofounder of the Harvard Psilocybin Project. He obtained his master’s degree under Mircea Eliade and has collaborated with many of the leaders in the field of psychedelics, including R. Gordon Wasson, Timothy Leary, and Huston Smith. A former director of the Albert Hofmann Foundation, he teaches at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Wikipedia:

Robert Gordon Wasson (September 22, 1898 – December 23, 1986) was an American author, ethnomycologist, and a Vice President for Public Relations at J.P. Morgan & Co.

In the course of work funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Wasson made contributions to the fields of ethnobotany, botany, and anthropology.

Wasson donated his personal papers as a gift to the Harvard University Botanical Museum, as part of the “Tina and Gordon Wasson Ethnomycological Collection.” The thoroughly curated array of books, papers, and artifacts contained in the collection was fully settled into its new adoptive home by April 1982.

Wasson’s obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle stated that together with his wife and co-author, Valentina P. Wasson, he had “illuminated the sanctity of psychotropic mushrooms, not only in Russia and Siberia, but also in the most ancient of Hindu scriptures, in the mystery cults of ancient Greece and among the native peoples of Mexico and Guatemala, both ancient and modern.”

Video Title: Gnosis 04: Robert Forte – MKULTRA, Michael Pollan and The Modern Marketing of Soma. Source: Sacred Geometry International. Date Published: August 3, 2022. Description:

Greetings and welcome back for the fourth episode of Gnosis. 

Today’s honored guest is Robert Forte. 

Robert Forte is a scholar and researcher of psychedelic drugs. He first studied with Frank Barron, who started the infamous Psilocybin Project with Timothy Leary at Harvard in 1963. He moved to Esalen in 1981 to study with Stanislav Grof, and then attended the Chicago Divinity School.

During this time Forte conducted an independent investigation of MDMA. Learning to synthesize the drug from Alexander Shulgin himself , he distributed this therapeutic throughout the country and turned on many household names to this psychological medicine. He obtained his master’s degree under Mircea Eliade and has collaborated with many of the leaders in the field of psychedelics, including Albert Hofman, Timothy Leary, R. Gordon Wasson, Ralph Metzner, Terence McKenna, Claudio Naranjo, and many others. Robert is the former director of the Albert Hofmann Foundation, and currently is adjunct faculty at California Institute for Integral Studies. 

I am quoting Robert’s bio here from his website alteredstatesofamerica.net as I think it clarifies best his intentions for truth and reconciliation as it relates to the wonderful potential of these substances to heal and inspire as well as the undeniable and terrifying history of the MKULTRA program which first launched them into public consciousness in the early 1950s and culminated in the psychedelic 60’s, an era which forever altered American culture.

And I quote: “For most of my career I have been interested in the esoteric and the healing potentials of these plants and drugs. Lately I’ve been more curious about the sociological and political aspects of the different psychedelic movements of our time. My research has brought me to realize another layer to the modern psychedelic scene, revealing a story that is somewhat at odds with the prevailing mainstream narrative that is now broadcast enthusiastically in contemporary media around the world.

Excerpts from Robert Forte’s interview in the video below:

“It wasn’t until just ten or fifteen years ago that I began to understand that actually their introduction into society in the 50s and 60s was I believe, and I’ve got evidence, a mind control operation to distract people from political developments in America, to kind of throw us off. And it’s been a process of recovery. It kind of backfired on them a little bit, but it’s a complicated subject and I appreciate the chance to try and talk about it.”

“So there I am, at Cambridge, in Wasson’s archives, and I realize, my god, this guy is working with these people, that was just shocking to me. I just used to think it was ironic that the psychedelic movement, this hippie anti-war thing, was kind of started by a guy who was a Wall Street banker. But he wasn’t just a Wall Street banker, he was a fascist. I mean his friends were, Wasson was cagey about his own political positions, but his associates, and how his associates deferred to him, guys like Allen Dulles, and George Kennan was another one, and I began to realize ‘huh, there’s something else going on here.’ And so I began to dig deeper. And began to realize things that were shocking and disturbing and important. And it put me in a kind of depressed place for a few years, like ‘oh my god’ but eventually I kind of pieced it together that every single person who was leading the way, introducing these substances, were connected to Intelligence, CIA. It was a social engineering operation. And I had kind of advanced that myself, and so it became kind of a duty of mine to tell the whole story.”