In an attempt to find answers I began taking psychedelic drugs, to open my mind and gain insight. I also delved into Eastern religions. Such studies convinced me that we have an immortal soul that survives the death of the physical body.

Accepting this belief, I found logical the teaching of certain religions, that we have lived before as other people. Our souls, according to this teaching, have experienced a series of reincarnations. I wanted to know about my past, and I was led to believe that the use of “mind-expanding” LSD could help me to investigate.

After taking the drugs, I would be drawn to a mirror where I peered for long periods of time into the pupils of my eyes. Under the influence of the drugs, the pupils would increase in size to almost the size of the iris. After many minutes of intense observation, I began to hallucinate and see what I believed were previous incarnations of myself. For instance, I saw myself as an evil warlord and an egocentric dictator who were responsible for the deaths of thousands of people.

Once while observing such an evil person in the mirror, I heard a voice saying: “You’ll have to suffer for these evils that you have done!” It was terrifying.

As a result, I felt I was destined to suffer and die, and then suffer again and again in successive reincarnations. I wished it could be avoided! But how could I deny what I had seen and heard when peering into the mirror? Other persons I knew were also led to believe in reincarnation by such experiences, for, as they say, “seeing is believing.”

I felt myself in a terrible dilemma, with no way out. Yet I kept searching, traveling to distant places and consulting reputedly wise men. Eventually, deeply depressed, I attempted to kill myself.

After taking LSD and using marijuana for a few months I became convinced that a “high” society, a society in which everyone was under the influence of psychedelic drugs, was the solution to man’s problems. To me, the hippies were the “love” children​—full of peace and happiness.

Since I thought psychedelic drugs were a panacea, I began supplying drugs to others. Also, I vowed to deal only in psychedelic drugs, which affect the mind, and not in hard drugs that addict the body. Psychedelic drugs, I thought, could help a person to gain enlightenment.

With the money that I had made in the porcelain-repair business, I bought large quantities of drugs. Realizing that what I was doing was illegal and could cost me many years in prison, I took no chances. I hired conservative-looking girls to transport the drugs for me, and I made it a policy not to handle the drugs directly. Soon I was making about $2,000 a week.

Money was not my goal, however. I was really interested in becoming enlightened as to the purpose of life, but drugs did not seem to be helping me.

Search in Eastern Religions

I started to investigate Eastern religions, spending entire days reading about occultism, astrology, palmistry, I Ching, Buddhism and other Eastern thoughts.

Convinced by these studies that the soul survives death, I took a dose of LSD seven times as potent as the regular dose, with the hope of peering into my past. It was then that I saw the visions that I considered to be scenes from previous lives and heard the voice saying that I had been a vicious killer.

This horrifying experience marked a turning point in my life. From this time onward I felt uneasy with myself. I could not understand why I had been so wicked.