Srila Prabhupada answers a question about LSD supposedly being the means to attain liberation from all material attachments in a conversation with an American poet Allen Ginsberg.
Allen Ginsberg: Do you remember a man named Richard Alpert?
Prabhupada: Huh?
Allen Ginsberg: Do you remember of a man named Richard Alpert? He used to work with Timothy Leary...
Prabhupada: Ah.
Allen Ginsberg: ...in Harvard many years ago. And then he went to India and found a teacher, and is now a disciple of Hanumanji, or a devotee of Hanuman. And he said that... We were talking about maya and the present condition of America...
Prabhupada: Have some fruits?
Allen Ginsberg: In a while. Well, we can talk as...
Prabhupada: Accha.
Allen Ginsberg: Bite your food. I have that question I wanted to asked. Are you tired?
Prabhupada: No, no. I can talk with you whole night. [laughs]
Allen Ginsberg: So he said that his teacher in India told him that LSD was a Christ of the Kali-yuga for Westerners.
Prabhupada: Christ?
Allen Ginsberg: ...of the Kali-yuga for Westerners, in that, as the Kali-yuga got more intense, as attachment got thicker and thicker, that also salvation would have to be easier and easier, and that...
Prabhupada: [aside:] [Bengali]
Allen Ginsberg: Namaste. [to Indian lady]
Prabhupada: She is a Bengali lady recently come from London.
Allen Ginsberg: Ah!
Prabhupada: Lekha. [Bengali]
Indian lady: [Bengali]
Prabhupada: [Bengali]
Allen Ginsberg: So, as the Kali-yuga became more intense and as attachment became deeper and more confusing...
Prabhupada: Attachment for?
Allen Ginsberg: ...that salvation would also have to become easier and easier in the Kali-yuga.
Prabhupada: That is very nice statement that in the Kali-yuga salvation is very easier. That is the version of Srimad-Bhagavatam also. But that process is this kirtana, not LSD.
Allen Ginsberg: Well, it was... The reasoning there was that for those who would only accept salvation in purely material form, in chemical form finally, and completely material form...
Prabhupada: Hmm. So where is the salvation when there is...
Allen Ginsberg: ...that Krsna had the humor to emerge as a pill.
Prabhupada: No, the thing is that when it is material form...
Allen Ginsberg: Yes?
Prabhupada: ...then where it is salvation? It is illusion.
Allen Ginsberg: Well, the subjective effect is to cut...
Prabhupada: No.
Allen Ginsberg: ...attachment during the...
Prabhupada: Well, if you have got attachments for something material, then where is the cut-off of attachment? LSD is a material chemical.
Allen Ginsberg: Yeah.
Prabhupada: So if you have to take shelter of LSD, then you take, I mean to say, help from the matters. So that is... How you can... How you are free from matter?
Allen Ginsberg: Well, the subjective experience is, while in the state of intoxication of LSD, also realizing that LSD is a material pill, and that it does not really matter...
Prabhupada: So that is risky. That is risky.
Allen Ginsberg: Yeah. Now so, if LSD is a material attachment, which it is, I think, then is not the sound, sabda, also a material attachment?
Prabhupada: No, sabda is spiritual. Originally, just like in Bible there is "Let there be creation," this sound, this spiritual sound. Creation. Creation was not there. The sound produced the creation. Therefore, sound is originally spiritual, and through the sound... Sound -- from sound, sky develops; from sky, air develop; from air, fire develop; fire, water develop; from water, land develop.
(Room Conversation with Allen Ginsberg – May 11, 1969, Columbus)