a new outlook. Indeed, the information paradigm of which I speak yields a whole array of truly stunning conceptual consequences.
Mind and Body
The issue confronting us—that of understanding consciousness—is, as you probably realize, a decidedly hoary beast, covered in thorns and about as amenable to close analysis as is the wind on a very blustery day. Formally speaking, it is known in the philosophical trade as the mind/ body problem. At its heart lies the seemingly inseparable gulf between the world of physical matter and the world of consciousness. We know much about the structure and behavior of the former, yet relatively little about the latter. Before we go on with our quest to understand the nature of consciousness in the light of the psilocybin experience, let’s take a very brief look at the history of this most murky philosophical quagmire.
The seventeenth-century French philosopher Descartes is generally credited with fully appreciating and documenting the mind/body dilemma. Descartes concluded that there were two sorts of universal stuff—mind and matter—and that they interacted in some mysterious ghostlike way. This dualistic “ghost in the machine” view of consciousness has annoyed many a philosopher and scientist alike. Especially scientists, for they do not like talk of incorporeal entities (elusive minds) not located in three-dimensional space being somehow able to interact with matter. Perhaps this explains why most psychologists have until quite recently been content to ignore the issue of consciousness. It is such an enigmatic phenomenon, and yet it is consciousness that is the very core of our being.
Consciousness defines you right now, for instance. This book might be physical and clearly tangible, yet what are your thoughts to know this? And even more problematic is the mind’s ability to act directly upon matter through the body. How can a thought that is non-weighable and not made of physical particles nonetheless be able to move the collective atoms in, say, one’s fingers? How can some sort of informational pattern embodied within the brain act upon so-called matter?
To reach some understanding we must either side with the old Cartesian dualistic belief or launch ourselves wholeheartedly into an alternative “informational monism,” in which the reality process consists of only one stuff— information. As I hope to show, the nature of the psilocybin experience suggests that we embrace the latter scenario.
An Attempt to Exorcise the Ghost of Descartes
Since the musings of Descartes, philosophers have engaged in a veritable free-for-all in their attempts to either defend Descartes’ ideas or do away with them and somehow unite mind with matter. Indeed, some academic philosophers make it their professional business to immerse themselves night and day in the mind/body problem. So annoyingly problematic is the existence of consciousness in an apparently physical Universe that entire academic careers have been built on this subtle paradox. Row upon row of shelves in the philosophy section of university libraries are given over to books dealing in some way with the mind/body problem.
Still, as far as I am aware, not one professional mind/body philosopher has become seriously involved with psychedelic experimentation in order to further our knowledge and insight into the dynamic interplay between chemistry and altered states of awareness. In fact, most books purportedly dealing with the issue of consciousness patently ignore psychoactive substances altogether, as if they had nothing whatsoever to teach us. I suppose that most traditional mind/body “specialists” balk and quiver at the very idea of psychedelic shamanism and its alchemical explorations of the mind. Maybe visionary plants are simply too scary for armchair-bound philosophers to confront. Whatever the case, entheogenic flora and fungi have remained a peripheral phenomenon, studied solely by anthropologists, ethnobotanists, and a handful of adventurous mavericks. It is hoped this state of indifference may soon be shattered and that science comes to properly address the delicate interface between chemistry and consciousness.
Chemistry and consciousness… what do such terms imply? The important answer is that, taken together, they directly address the boundary between the physical and the psychological. Chemistry implies chemicals and substances—material things, in other words—whereas altered states of awareness lie in the realm of the intangible mind. We established in the last chapter that various types of substance, particularly those with a close molecular resemblance to the brain’s neurotransmitters, appear to elicit fairly predictable and characteristic changes in consciousness. If we consider psilocybin, we see that it bridges perfectly the conceptual gap between the two seemingly incompatible worlds of mind and matter, psychological and physical. The more we come to understand the modus operandi of psilocybin, the closer we get to divining the actual design of the bridge linking mind to matter.
A tall order then, this attempt to resolve the age-old mind/body problem. Still, no harm will have been done should I fail miserably in my theoretical endeavors. After all, untenable solutions inevitably aid the formulation of sound solutions, so the “psilocybin solution” should not have to be completely discarded. Bear with me then and judge for yourself as we embark on the next stage of the sacred mushroom mystery tour. This will take us further into informational territory as we focus more closely on the structural dynamics of psychedelic visions. Because such visions seemingly depend in some vital way on the integration and cohesion of large amounts of neuronal information, then above all else, an understanding of information is assuredly key to unlocking the mystery of consciousness, whether of the psilocybinetic kind or of the normal kind.
Symbols in Formation
We have seen that one major aspect of the psilocybin experience—the perception of vivid visions with eyes closed—appears to be the result of dreaming while awake, or at least something akin to this (this has nothing to do with daydreaming, which is something else entirely). According to our previous analysis, we can view such visions as being dynamic information patterns conveyed in the neuronal systems of the brain, information patterns that have been specifically “freed” to form themselves through the “liberating” action of psychedelic substances on serotonergic systems. Similarly, REM dreams would appear to be generated by the same “freed” neuronal systems.
The fact that psychedelic visions are loaded with powerful and often universal symbology might indicate that there are predetermined ways in which large amounts of neuronal information can be organized and integrated. This introduces an important idea. Just as elements like carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen naturally organize themselves into specific stable structures like water, carbon dioxide, and amino acids, so too may information in the brain, in the form of neuronal firing activity, organize itself in the same kind of way.
The fundamental quality that makes, say, water the same everywhere is its molecular structure—the exact way in which molecules of hydrogen and oxygen cohere. They form a specific pattern, a specific molecular expression. If my speculations are correct, information embodied in systems of neuronal firing likewise forms itself into specific structured patterns. And just as water molecules can organize themselves still further into stable macroscopic patterned structures like snowflakes, so too can more and more coherent forms of information coalesce by way of the patterning processes occurring in the psilocybin-influenced brain. Freezing temperatures (at least partly) help foster the structured patterns exhibited by snowflakes, whereas psilocybin helps foster the structured patterns of neuronal activity that come to be experienced as shamanic visions. Water molecules organize themselves according to the rules of a molecular language; neuronal firing patterns organize themselves according to the rules of a psychological language.
If specific patterns and structures emerge from expansive information-integration processes occurring within the brain, this would explain the existence of universal symbology, universal dream images, and mythical archetypes. Throughout the world, in all of the countless religions, cosmologies, and mythologies created by our
