The Mushroom as Medicine
In his noted book
Unable to ignore Aldous Huxley’s popular advocacy of psychedelics as cultural healing agents, Koestler opposes that kind of solution, claiming that it is fundamentally wrong and naive to expect drugs to confer free gifts upon the mind. In other words, Koestler asserts that drugs cannot put into the mind something that is not already there. He argues that the “psycho-pharmacist” cannot add to the faculties of the brain, at best we can only eliminate obstructions that might impede the brain’s proper functioning.
Koestler finally envisages a “mental stabilizer” or hormone that can integrate the psyche. He even goes as far as fearing that his readers will be disgusted by the idea of relying upon salvation through molecular chemistry rather than spiritual rebirth. This is an astonishing claim, even the more so since he refuses to advocate natural entheogenic substances as his “mental stabilizer.”
Contrary to Koestler’s beliefs, Nature and the evolutionary process have not let the human race down; rather, we have been blind to Nature’s subtle ecological solutions. Nature works in mysterious ways, one of which is the production of plants and fungi possessing vital shamanic power through which the web of life, which includes human culture, can continue to function healthily.
Although it might sound somewhat archaic to seek curative help from plants and fungi in our modern era, we should keep in mind that shamanism is perhaps the oldest form of religious psychotherapy and that the knowledge gained by visionary shamans was used precisely to help heal the tribe. There is no reason to assume that such psychedelic shamanism is now impotent or irrelevant, especially if we consider the interconnectedness of the biosphere. In ecological terms, the shamanic ingestion of plants and fungi is an entirely natural process that —when we take into account the ecological system of shaman, tribe, and plant—is essentially homeostatic in that one part of the environment acts upon another to restore balance and health; in this case certain plants and fungi yield aid through their psychological effects and the higher knowledge that they convey. This “eco-psychotherapy,” as we may call it, highlights just how much we are connected to the rest of life’s web and how the solutions to our problems are often to be found growing around us (including, of course, potential botanical cures for cancer and AIDS still to be discovered in what is left of the Earth’s great rain forests).
Entheogenic species of plant and fungus still offer us a wealth of psychotherapeutic power if we choose to look their way, not to mention the information they reveal about the chemical mutability of human consciousness and the possible transformation of our models of reality. Like most philosophers, Koestler seemed far removed from the natural botanical world, but with the advent of ecological awareness movements and a renewed interest in all things Green and environmentally friendly, our deep connection to the rest of Nature looms ever more apparent and a Green cultural ethos is already establishing itself. By radical means, Nature itself may yet cure our destructive streak.
Support for the Mushroom Grows
Another well-known writer at the time of psilocybin’s first wave of Western use was the revered author and poet Robert Graves, who also wrote publicly of his mushroom experience. Actually, Graves had been intrigued by mushrooms ever since he had licked a species of fly agaric as a young boy and had consequently experienced burning sensations on his tongue. Perhaps the incident was a symbolic biospherical kiss of sorts, or at least a taste of things to come. At any rate, as the reader will recall, it was Graves who originally notified Wasson of the secret mushroom ceremonies still extant in Mexico. It comes as no surprise then that Graves eventually went on to write speculative articles on entheogenic mushroom use in ancient Greece (his speculations remain contentious) after he tried the sacrament in Wasson’s New York apartment in 1960.
Graves was, it transpires, understandably apprehensive about his first brush with psilocybin, especially worried that he might perceive “demons” behind his closed eyes. Being the author of the acclaimed
As it was, Graves need not have worried. Unable to write during his rapture, he passively let the experience overwhelm him. Afterward he was to write that he had seen a “mountain-top Eden” and experienced the “bliss of innocence” and “the knowledge of good and evil.”{18} He had even felt capable of solving any problem in the world, as if he had access to all of the world’s knowledge.
Graves went on to predict that a once-sacred substance entrusted to an elite few would soon be sought by “jaded sensation seekers,” although they would likely be dissatisfied with psilocybin, as it was not a “drug” as such because it failed to stupefy like alcohol. He ended his descriptive account with the following warning, which still rings true today:
Good and evil alternate in most people’s hearts. Few are habitually at peace with themselves; and whoever prepares to eat hallucinogenic mushrooms should take as careful stock of his mental and moral well- being as initiates took before attending the Eleusinian Mysteries…. This peculiar virtue of
Fine and prescient words indeed, once more indicative that psilocybin should be approached cautiously and with a “good heart.” Graves’s remark about “jaded sensation seekers” is almost identical to Wasson’s emerging dismay at the hoards of “oddballs,” “thrill seekers,” and “riffraff ” who were already descending in droves upon Mexico in search of divine mushrooms. However, this type of popular reaction to a new phenomenon was surely inevitable. Although it was to cause abject consternation among the psilocybin elite, to deny the mushroom outright to the masses is an impractical, short-sighted reaction to basic human nature. I would argue that knowledge of psilocybin’s spiritual power is best laid open to all who might wish to seek it out. If this be considered by some as casting pearls before swine, then so be it. The point is that the end will justify the means, this end being, hopefully, a culture transformed with a revitalized veneration for the natural systems of the Earth and a deeper insight into the transcendental aspects of the reality process. The eco-destructive age in which we live surely demands a cure along these lines.
Moksha-Medicine Grows on the Verge of Paradise
Aldous Huxley explicitly summed up the early mood of optimism surrounding psychedelics in a speech he delivered to psychologists in 1961, and somewhat more implicitly in his Utopian novel
