The Psilocybin Solution

to erupt amid the mundane and oft-profane trudge of human history.

Armed with modern data on serotonin receptors, we can see that Huxley was correct in his pioneering conjectures. Once entheogenic compounds have entered the brain, an increase in neuronal activity (that is, an increase in neuronal excitation and electrochemical information processing) takes place—hence more information does indeed become accessible to the mind. In particular, the parts of the brain that become more activated are involved with novelty detection, arousal, emotions, the relaying of sensory information, and making sense of it all.

But what exactly does it mean that there is an increase in neuronal informational activity? Just how valid and “real” are the novel patterns of neuronal firing galvanized by psilocybin? Indeed, how can novel patterns of neuronal firing actually be conscious thoughts? From here on, the ground gets more uncertain, mainly because the brain is such an astonishingly complicated organ. However, before we go on to speculate and deal further with what has been said thus far, there is one more piece of information we should consider, namely the role of serotonergic neurons in the process of dreaming.

Sleeping Dreams and Waking Dreams

REM sleep, or rapid eye movement sleep, is that part of the sleep cycle in which we dream the most vividly. Sleep, let alone dreaming, is a peculiar thing, especially since we spend about a third of our lives succumbing to it. Despite such a dramatic nightly encumbrance, science has yet to reach a universal consensus regarding why we sleep, for one can come up with plenty of arguments that counter explanations that view sleep as a purely restorative process. Proneness to attack comes to mind, for when else are we so passively oblivious to our surroundings? As for our need to dream, there are again numerous theories, from odd theories that we dream to forget, to theories that we dream to consolidate information.

Although we might not remember our dreams, it is vital that we engage in REM sleep each night. Sleep researchers have found that if periods of REM sleep are selectively disrupted, it results in a rebound effect whereby the next night, barring any more selective interference from researchers, there will be an extra amount of REM, or dreaming. We absolutely must dream, and therefore dreaming has to be related to some very important informational process of the brain.

Neuroscientist B. L. Jacobs has carried out experiments that show that a suppression of serotonergic neuronal activity elicits dreaming. If cats (unfortunately these most loveable creatures are often used for questionable brain-meddling sleep experiments) are injected with a chemical called PCPA, which is known to deplete serotonin supplies in all parts of the brain, the cats exhibit brain-wave patterns consistent with the onset of dreaming, despite the fact that they are fully awake. In other words, argues Jacobs, the cats are experiencing waking dreams. Therefore, waking dreams are somehow associated with low levels of serotonin. Indeed, during dream sleep, serotonergic cells in the raphe system turn off completely so that they cease having a depressant effect on other parts of the brain, a process that echoes the effects of psilocybin upon the raphe system.

The conclusion reached is that dreaming is associated with a form of neuronal firing normally kept at bay by inhibitory serotonergic neurons until the onset of sleep. More important, the visions produced by psychedelic agents like psilocybin might be the result of waking dreams, or at least they might emerge from self-organizing neuronal processes that are similar to those processes occurring while we dream. The essential principle appears to be the coalescing of information into meaningful patterns. This idea is not only compelling, it also seems intuitively correct; the psilocybin mushroom allows one to experience dreamlike consciousness while awake, which takes the form of intensely moving visions behind closed eyes.

According to the various documented cases of the shamanic visionary state, psychedelic visions are indeed dreamlike, the only difference being that one is immeasurably more conscious during visions than in dreams (even lucid ones) and one is able to remember them vividly, unlike dreams, which often fade quickly. Whereas most people cannot, offhand, recall most of the thousands of dreams that they all must have had, psilocybin visions remain fairly emblazoned upon the memory like favorite movie clips.

To be sure, the suggestion that psilocybin visions are dreamlike is theoretically useful, yet it seriously downplays their dramatic impact and “Otherness.” But because there is clearly some similarity in the chemical basis and phenomenological quality of dreams and psychedelic visionary episodes, their relationship—in terms of neuronal processes—demands further exploration, and so this is where we head, in part, in the next chapter. We must bear in mind though that the vision-generating side of the mushroom experience is only the half of it, since the altered perception of reality with eyes open is of equal interest. However, as stated, both these phenomena are intimately related to the processing of information within the neuronal systems of the brain, and we therefore need to begin thinking more deeply about the relationship between billionfold patterns of neuronal firing and consciousness. I have already introduced the idea that vast patterns of orchestrated neuronal firing are conscious experience, yet this concept is so profound that I shall repeatedly return to it in order to fully explore its worth as an explanatory model for understanding the nature of the brain and mind.

Whether it be a vivid dream or an entheogenic vision, the normal perception of an object or a psychedelic perception, the underlying structure of such experiences can now be discerned. The common mediating factor is information, and the way that information is transmitted, organized, and substantiated by the neuronal firing activity of the brain. Information, the “currency” of the brain, emerges as the key concept in explaining the normal conscious mind, the entheogenic mind, and the dreaming mind. We continue our avid investigations in the next chapter, as we spiral in toward the secret of the sacred mushroom.

SIX The Stuff of Consciousness

The purpose of this and the following chapters is to build on the ideas previously introduced to further get a handle on the mind, or consciousness, and how it is possible for one to experience a transcendental communion with a seeming Other. At this juncture I repeat that I believe mind stuff to be information, or at any rate that consciousness is an informational pattern embodied within the neuronal firing system of the brain. Moreover, it seems likely that psilocybin works by enabling novel patterns of information to emerge that are not normally “permitted” due to the default constraints that usually operate in the brain. This much seems clear from what has already been said about the way in which neuronal firing substantiates informational states and how such informational states are dramatically altered through the chemical action of entheogenic compounds.

In other words, mind stuff resolves itself as being informational stuff. This is perhaps not too controversial a claim, but what I eventually hope to show is that matter, or physical stuff, is also informational in nature. This would mean that everything, whether atoms, molecules, organisms, or thoughts, could be described in informational terms. The mind and body could then be seen as consisting of essentially the same kind of substance, that is, as particular forms of information.

Of course the concept of what information itself is, or what information actually means, is a decidedly muddy issue, despite the fact that we now live in the Age of Information. Books carry information, as do DVDs, apple seeds, bank statements, fossils, fiber-optic cables, hormones, food wrappers, and the human genome. So too do vast networks of firing neurons carry information, whether infused with psilocybin or not. As to the notion of atoms (of which the above-mentioned information-carriers are all composed) being units of information also, the case is less clear. However, should I succeed in the coming chapters in defining both consciousness and matter in informational terms, then I should also be able to explain more clearly why psilocybin is able to generate both Other-derived visions and an altered perception of reality—all in terms of the flow and flux of information. In fact, armed with a sweepingly new informational view of reality, one might come to perceive oneself and the world with