choice but to approach and associate with violent and greedy criminals. And because the proceeds from illegal drug sales are so enormous, we are all caught up in the inevitable consequences of turf wars and murders among the gangs and cartels competing in this blackest of black markets.
It should be completely obvious to our governments, after forty years of dismal failure to suppress illegal drug use, that their policies in this area do not work and will never work. It should be completely obvious, a simple logical step, to realize that by decriminalizing drug use and making the supply of all drugs available to those adults who wish to use them through legal and properly regulated channels we could, at a stroke, put out of business the immense criminal enterprise that presently flourishes on the supply of illegal drugs.
It should be obvious, but somehow it is not.
Instead the powers that be continue to pursue the same harsh and cruel policies to which they have been wedded since 1971, ever seeking to strengthen and reinforce them rather than to replace them with something better. Indeed the only “change” that the drug warriors have consistently sought across the decades has been to demand ever more money, ever more surveillance technology, ever more arms, and ever more draconian legislative powers to break into homes, confiscate property, and deprive otherwise law-abiding citizens of liberty. In the process we have seen our once free and upstanding societies, which used to respect individual choice, conscience, and adult responsibility above all else, slide remorselessly down the slippery slope that leads to the police state. And all this is being done in our name, with our money, by our own governments, to “save us from ourselves”!
In such a climate riddled with propaganda and disinformation, overshadowed by fear and suspicion, where users of illegal drugs are vigorously persecuted by public agencies, it is very difficult, and takes courage, to speak out about the possibly beneficial, mind-expanding, eye-opening, and consciousness-enhancing effects of certain illegal drugs. That, however, is precisely what Simon G. Powell has done in
Psilocybin, Powell believes, has the power to open our consciousness to the communications of “the Other,” which he ultimately defines as the vast, guiding intelligence that underlies all of Nature and that has harnessed the entire universe to its cause—“a sentient and intentional agency made of information whose presence and teachings await us.” And he adds: “When one has encountered the Other through the visionary effects of a strong dose of psilocybin mushrooms it becomes quite evident that, whatever the Other’s ultimate intent, consciousness is an essential part of the plan.”
There’s a widespread assumption that the brain makes consciousness the way a factory makes cars. But there’s no proof that this is actually how things work. The brain could equally well be a receiver, or transceiver, that manifests consciousness on the physical plane. We simply do not know how these few pounds of jelly inside our skulls allow us to appreciate a sunset or a symphony, or experience love or joy. It’s the greatest mystery of science.
Into this mystery Powell steps with the radical suggestion that everything is information and that all the information accumulated by the universe in the fourteen billion years since the big bang is best understood as a sort of gigantic computation intentionally designed to result, somewhere, sometime, in the evolution of consciousness—just as it has done on earth. Most proponents of intelligent design focus on the apparent irreducible complexity of specific organs or organisms—a losing proposition, since evolutionary theory explains complexity quite well without having to call for a designer. But Powell focuses much more plausibly on the grand context in which evolution unfolds. That context, he contends, can only be the work of an intelligence of a far higher order than our own that wilfully endowed the universe with precursor conditions and laws of physics capable of nurturing the eventual evolution of consciousness.
These are provocative and powerful ideas that contribute to a growing debate in science and philosophy about the mysterious nature of reality. And while Powell’s thesis may be controversial, he is surely right that the targeted use of psilocybin and related entheogens offers our best hope for solving the mystery. These substances must be demythologized as the folk devils of the war on drugs and welcomed as valuable allies in our search for meaning in the universe. In precisely those areas of inquiry where science and all its instruments fail us we are fortunate indeed that “the sacred mushroom now beckons.”
Graham Hancock, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, is a British writer and journalist. His books, including
Preface
This book has passed through many hands and been subject to many revisions. To be sure, it has been a very long and laborious struggle to reach this stage. Now that the book has finally been accepted for publication, I should say a few brief words about its admittedly unusual content. Essentially, I present the reader with a series of bold ideas and concepts concerning the nature of the user-friendly Universe in which we find ourselves. In particular, I explore the significance of consciousness within the Universe, for consciousness is the very core of our being. And it is precisely the very core of our being that psychoactive fungi can so dramatically illuminate. This may explain why such fungi were more often than not venerated and deified by those historical cultures that employed them.
I have tried, to the best of my abilities, to make sense of my own personal experiences with one particular psychoactive fungus native to Great Britain (at a time, I might add, when possession of this mushroom in its fresh state was completely legal). These experiences involved dramatic changes in consciousness and the acquisition of what seemed to be a new kind of knowledge. The experiences were generally so profound as to make it difficult to integrate them into more traditional modes of thought. And yet it is undoubtedly this assimilation of what would appear to be higher knowledge that is so crucial if these kinds of experience are to have a lasting, positive effect. Hence my writing of this book. However, it would be ludicrous for me to suggest that I have written the “truth,” for truth is something that must be experienced personally. At heart, then, this book consists of a series of provisional hypotheses about the meaning of life, which have been formulated in the wake of certain extraordinary states of mind. The experiences themselves were real and were thus “true,” whereas, of course, my interpretation of them might well be in error.
One thing of which I am wholly convinced and that I should make clear at the outset is that the ingestion of traditionally deified plants and fungi can, in the long run, afford a benign change in our understanding and conception of Nature. It is evident that at the current time our relationship with the natural world is so alienated and so out of balance that only radical means may prevent global catastrophe. In this sense the sacred mushroom is, at least potentially, a very powerful eco-psychological catalyst able to heal our relations with the rest of the web of life. Of this, no one should be fearful.
PROLOGUE
A Question of Life and Death
