The Psilocybin Solution

lies hope for a new optimistic theory concerning the significance of human consciousness within the reality process.

The mutability of consciousness: What does such a concept imply? First of all, we should consider the fact that consciousness, whatever it is exactly, is the “stuff ” that mediates all science and, for that matter, all types of reasoning and all of our theories about the world. Whatever a person’s view on the meaning of existence, it is through conscious experience that all views are formed. Consciousness can therefore be understood as the very ground of our being, the “X factor” that makes us what we are. In order to become fully engaged in the important point I am here trying to express, consider the following simple thought experiment.

Imagine, if you will, that all scientists wore identical spectacles and that these spectacles determined the perceptual view of the things being scrutinized by the scientists. All the data amassed by these scientists would be related in some intimate way to the effects of their spectacles, since all their perceptions will have passed through the self-same lenses. Now, it isn’t pushing credulity too far to suggest that the scientists would do well at some point—possibly over their morning coffee break, or perhaps at a stage when their theories are proving to be inadequate—to reflect on the characteristics of their shared state of “bespectacledness.” In other words, it would be quite a breakthrough for these scientists to suddenly cease their traditional research in order to focus on the nature of the factor mediating their research, namely, their glasses. What they would soon come to realize is that their glasses represent a subject worthy of analysis because they are, in a real sense, the closest thing to them.

This imaginary situation is not unlike the real world, only this time it is our consciousness, or rather our state of consciousness, as opposed to glasses, through which we gain knowledge and experience. For simplicity’s sake, we can call this “normal consciousness,” a kind of shared lens through which science and scientific interpretation proceeds. Thus, it is quite legitimate to reflect on this “lens of normal consciousness” and ask whether, perhaps, it could be altered or be enhanced. In short, one might well wonder if it is possible to improve on the lens of normal consciousness and attain a state of mind in which the essence of Nature is more clearly discernible.

Although one cannot escape these rather odd facts about consciousness, science has had little to say about it, preferring to place the human mind safely outside of the theoretical picture of reality. Put simply, the phenomenon of human consciousness is a scientifically slippery and vexing anomaly that is in stark contrast to the more empirically approachable phenomena of, say, stars and molecules. Yet since we are conscious beings whose minds literally interface with the external world, then until we understand the nature of the “mind-stuff ” carried by our brains, we will not be able to fully comprehend the nature of the reality process. This must be so because, as we have just established, consciousness is itself as much a part of reality as are the things perceived by consciousness, such as the aforementioned stars and molecules. Indeed, if we were not conscious beings, we would not be in a position to seek explanations about the nature of reality in the first place. It is only because we are conscious and because we stand in a mindful relationship to the reality process that we feel compelled to account for our existence. Our conscious minds long for knowledge about the Universe so that we might understand both our place within the totality of existence and the natural forces that led to our being here. Hence the enterprise of science (which means “to know”).

Now, as I will show throughout this book, consciousness is mutable because it is mediated by chemistry, which is to say that mutable or transformable chemical processes underlie consciousness. In effect, this means that our normal ways of thinking and feeling are constrained by the brain’s chemical hardware (or wetware, as it is sometimes called in neuromantic circles). It is therefore conceivable that certain aspects of the world remain hidden because of the limitations of our everyday type of consciousness. Thus, if we truly wish to grapple with the ultimate questions concerning the nature of our existence, then it is surely worthwhile to seek out new forms of perception, forms, for instance, in which all of perceived reality is grasped at once, holistically as it were, and not in the piecemeal fashion of science, which, it must be said, tends to focus on isolated parts of the world.

Historically speaking, altered forms of consciousness in which the whole sense of reality is immediately discerned and felt in a kind of joyous flash of insight are the sole domain of mystics, those persons who claim, rather controversially and often with alarming vigor, to have directly experienced “ultimate truths.” Many mystics and religious visionaries have employed various techniques with which to foster their insights—like fasting, yoga, meditation, perceptual isolation, and so forth—and these disciplines are known to alter brain chemistry. This again testifies to the fact that the normal human brain is somehow constrained in its mindful activity and that the chemical system that does the constraining can be overcome. For most of us, such esoteric endeavors, regardless of whether they do actually yield valid knowledge, are perhaps a little beyond our normal way of life, and we might therefore wish to stick with less suspect nonmystical science for answers to the big questions about reality.

However, there is another, more immediate route to transcendental knowledge, as it is termed in philosophy. This route involves the deliberate ingestion of naturally occurring entheogenic (sacred) plant and fungal alkaloids in order to access information inaccessible to the normal mind. Traditionally, this little-documented enterprise is engaged in by shamans, or native healers, who often employ entheogenic flora to gain transcendental knowledge, which they utilize for the benefit of their culture (note that the term entheogenic, which I use throughout this book, means the “generation of the divine within”).

To this day, aboriginal shamans in places like Amazonia and Mexico still utilize the powerful effects of indigenous entheogenic plants and fungi to fulfill their shamanic healing role within their native culture. So strong can the revelational effects of such plants and fungi be upon the human psyche that they generally come to be deified. Earth’s entheogens become a sacred link to divinity, almost as if they represent an organic modem connected directly to the realm of the gods. This was what luminary Aldous Huxley was alluding to some sixty years ago in his cult classic The Doors of Perception, in which he poetically describes the fantastic perceptual enhancement that accompanied his ingestion of mescaline, an entheogenic alkaloid derived from the peyote cactus.

It is precisely because entheogenic plants and fungi facilitate states of consciousness in which Nature is perceived in a radically new way that makes them useful epistemological tools (epistemology is the study of knowledge). But, more than this, these kinds of illuminating changes in consciousness also offer us a way to understand consciousness itself, since one can analyze the subtle chemical changes accompanying the altered state of mind and then attempt to use such data to comprehend how normal consciousness works. Thus, the virtue of investigating the effects of entheogenic substances is twofold.

First, through their dramatic action within the brain we might come to perceive Nature in an enhanced way. Second, we might come to understand more about the underlying chemistry that is bound up with normal conscious processes, that is, the modus operandi of entheogenic substances reveals the delicate chemical mechanisms that govern consciousness and our perceptions of reality. If, through the use of entheogens, we can enhance our understanding of the interface between the mind and the “world out there,” then we shall know more clearly what consciousness is, how it is formed, and how it can come to experience transcendence. And if the transcendental information accessed in the altered state of consciousness has any truth value—and native shamans all testify to this—then we will be one step closer to an overall conception of what is driving reality. Only then might we apprehend Einstein’s creator and killer, for then we would have begun to establish its ultimate nature. At least it sounds promising.

It is my contention throughout this book that naturally occurring entheogenic plants and fungi are indeed the key to solving the twin mysteries of consciousness and reality. Once ingested, entheogens are intimately involved with the bridge between consciousness and the world around us. The numinous experience that entheogenic agents can induce, no matter how bizarre it might appear in the context of the mundane world and no matter what brain mechanism underlies it, is a real thing; it exists, potentially at any rate. As we shall see, the archetypal tale of transcendence reported by entheogen-using shamans results from direct and verifiable experience.

It is on the basis of such verifiable experience that this book rests. The apparent capacity of the human mind to transcend “normal” reality demands investigation, for it must surely be a tenable step toward reclaiming significance for the existence of human consciousness in the Universe. However, if such an enterprise is spurious and built of no more than ephemeral imagination, then it will only point to the fact that the human imagination under certain chemical circumstances is extraordinarily creative. But it is my belief that entheogenic agents unleash a form of consciousness better able to grapple with the ultimate questions about the reality process than our normal frames of awareness, that they truly offer us a glimpse of some great meaning hitherto the sole domain of