ENLIGHTENING UP: Psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound found in mushrooms like this one, has been found to produce meaningful personal experiences that study subjects compare to the birth of a child.
Image: © iStockphoto.com / Laurie Knight
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Editor's Note: Maria Estevez was 62 years old in 2006 when she participated in the second psilocybin study conducted by Roland Griffiths, a co-author of the Scientific American article on hallucinogens. The inspiration she derived from these experiences prompted her to write a yet-unpublished book about how it affected her life both during the study and afterward.
In this excerpt from One Kind of Knowing, quoted with permission, she recounts what occurred during the second and most intense of four experiences with the drug. The deeply spiritual quality of her perception of an inner light reveals how a shift in brain biochemistry can enable us to enter the realm of mystics and visionaries.
Mary and Matt, my guides, sat beside me on the couch at Johns Hopkins Medical Center to look at an art book until the psilocybin took effect. In only about fifteen or twenty minutes I knew I had received an active dose rather than a placebo. "I'm going down," I told them. On went the eye mask, the headphones, the blanket, and the blood pressure cuff, and I began to sink into another world.
The descent seemed even rougher than the previous time, a rattling, lurching, high-speed roller coaster ride straight downhill through tingling geometric shapes and tunnels of textured blackness. The music on the soundtrack exaggerated the eerie atmosphere and kept me wary. Once again the abdominal spasms started up as well. Chemicals washed over me in repeated waves, bringing hot sensations and a bad taste in my mouth. As soon as I managed to get stabilized from one wave, another would follow. The sheer number of these cycles suggested that this was a stronger dose than I'd had the first time.
However, there were significant differences that tempered the experience. Most obviously, of course, I had done this before. Although I found the descent the most challenging part of the journey, with its feelings of assault and helplessness, I recognized landmarks so there was a useful frame of reference. I remembered the feeling of falling and going through tunnels, I remembered the geometrics, and I remembered the music. In fact, the two Brahms pieces I had feared so much before just flew by while I was occupied with the rapid changes, and I didn't have time to be frightened by them. If anything, noticing that part of the soundtrack offered a bit of comfort – "Ah, yes, I know those bad boys!"
I also came upon another impression that I had forgotten from the first session, the sense of emerging into "rooms" or public areas in the blackness. Sometimes I seemed to be on the periphery of a large sphere, many stories tall, with a city-of-the-future feel to it, tiers of terraces around the edge and flying objects like space cars. For all I knew, this could have been a single cell – all sense of proportion was lost. I described this to Mary and Matt for their records.
Despite the strong effects of the psilocybin, I was able to keep in mind my intention to work with what was presented to me. Whenever my consciousness regrouped into my familiar identity, I mentally reiterated, "Tell me where we are going. I am willing to go where you take me." I was determined to remain as nonjudgmental as possible and to offer no resistance, as Dr. Griffiths had advised, even though I was apprehensive.
Before the session began that morning, I had asked various sources of spiritual inspiration, ranging from the Archangel Michael to Joel Goldsmith, author of The Infinite Way, to help me through the experience. Now when I silently called on them to come and be with me, I detected a sense of wry amusement as if they had been watching. "We are already here," they responded wordlessly. "It is you who are in our territory now." I told this to Mary and she too found it surprising. I felt the truth of their message, and it heartened me. This was my first encounter with other intelligence in an altered state.
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59 Comments
Add CommentAh, the crassness of our post hoc narrator. I don't deny the experience, just any significance it has other than as a revelation of cultural roots and our archetype wielding, metaphorical brains.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn other words, Phil, this experience is outside your scientific box -- meaning, you can't explain it without leaving the comfort of your present paradigm -- and thus you dismiss it. So tiring to hear lazy "scientists" defending their lazy choices.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThose who meditate (without drugs), and/or who've studied the even older scientific traditions of the East, will recognize the writer's experience and know it is anything BUT supernatural or illusory.
Not necessarily true. The experience of all physical entities being created is not inconsistent with accepted theories. Just as the past is gone and the future not yet arrived we find that the only thing that exists is the present and that all things in this universe are being created in that Planks-time moment and moved in what we only perceive as time and direction. Essentially the Higgs boson creating mass continually on the universal scale. So describing this physics in a in a religious context such as "God is light" or "God has no the beginning and no end", is not that far removed from real science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can explain much of it perfectly from the comfort of "my own paradigm", which is to be open but sceptical of everything, so that I am fooled as little as possible by data. Indeed I gave a compressed version of an explanation. The experience is familiar too. I do not dismiss that, only the mode of its presentation in a Scientific Magazine, which is disgracefully bereft of scientific context. Supernatural is indeed meaningless as a term. I don't know why you ascribe it to me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBUT apart from the experience itself, with emotional buttons pressed left right and centre, what does one actually get to KNOW? Not a lot from one's own experience (though one will confabulate like mad if one is an innocent in matters of the brain). But comparative study reveals huge amounts of cultural substance (some of the variability) and great amounts of basic brain stuff (some of the commonality). The experience of my schizophrenic friends is quite the equal in thrilling transcendence but on other occasions, alas, also abysmal hell. Personal experience, however thrilling, is not knowledge, merely data that you can choose to work with and build into knowledge or simply take at face value. You are welcome to take it at face value, but that should have no place here.
What you are doing is writing poems. Perfectly admirable but don't mistake it for science, where words actually need to mean specific things if we are to share things at the deepest level of utility. Most of us are moved by a nice evocation, when word wooze reaches into our metaphorical brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot sure how this steaming turd made SA. Did Timothy Leary turn in to a jesus freak.... NO nor the millions of others that "tripped" during the 60's. They found peace and love. "God chooses to reveal Himself" You found jesus because you wanted to find jesus. If you would have went to a halloween haunted house on your trip, you would have seen the devil....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe get tons of data& knowledge from personal experience. Stick your hands in the fireplace and you'll get my drift. Why is this experience any different?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDecades ago at a dinner party I ate some brownies not knowing they were "those" sort of brownies. I had to be taken home in a taxi by my wife because I became hysterical. I thought a very intimate part of me was on fire...it burned like hell. There was no fire. Not even any smoke.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe misapprehend all the time. It doesn't take drugs to cause it either, just our kluged, ad hoc brain modules doing the best they can in an environment they haven't finished evolving for.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGod chooses to reveal Himself.
>
So, why does the religiously inclined person assume that the "Light" was God?
Why would God choose to reveal Himself only to people who have taken consciousness altering drugs?
If indeed the "Light" was supernatural, it seems just as likely to have been the Father of Lies. ;)
It's gods' way to encourage use of drugs and alcohol.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI couldn't agree more. Re: "The experience is familiar too. I do not dismiss that, only the mode of its presentation in a Scientific Magazine, which is disgracefully bereft of scientific context."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat in the world is this doing in a "science" magazine? I was raised in a fundamental religion and I had a few moments of "reality." Later, I understood the psychology of those experiences. The psychology is interesting but that is just what it is.
Could you all honestly tell me how many of you who replied here have experienced shroomz? Honestly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's what Galileo's critics said, too, folks. If you were keeping up with physics and math, you would know that there is much less certainty these days than there used to be between the idea of cause and effect as we were once taught in The Scientific Method. Just what does explain those statistical anomalies that fall outside the statistical range in experiments? Well,it bodes well for the scientific community to keep an open mind these days about concepts that fall a bit outside conventional Western thought. This article does that. That's what it's doing in a scientific magazine.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Don't Bogart that joint, my friend, hand it over to me ..." or so reads the lyrics (Easy Rider). Yes...anybody who has experienced with grass, acid, peyote, speed or psilocybin back in the 60s KNOWS what it feels like to take a trip (I did smoke and I DID inhale...lol!!!). The first few times might amaze one...bewilder...disorient, even. But with a little repeat experience, you begin to DOMINATE the effects and you don't allow the shit to take you where IT wants...it is YOU WHO COMMANDS the whole situation. So, if you want to play chess with Budha...dance tango with Marie Antoinette (freshly beheaded) or fly the Magic Carpet with Ali Baba... it's just UP TO YOU. You are the master of your own imagination. And that's the beauty of it: You imagine whatever YOU WANT...but it is a zillion times more beautiful, exhilarating and mirthful than what you'd imagine WITHOUT the mind-expanding stuff. Want to see Jesus? So be it...God the Father?? He's at the other end of the line... anytime for you...Ah...and Elvis??? Does anyone know where Elvis is ??? Why...THIS IS ELVIS SPEAKIN'!!!!Have I made myself clear??? Or do you need more specific examples ???
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(Picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marshmallow skies....Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds)....
Greeting, folks......!!! Peace & Love...forever !!!
Some good points, however I don't think anyone, including myself is calling this "light" God. It is reasonable to suspect that the drug imitates the same altered state as meditation, trance or deep prayer. The resulting euphoria and feelings of peace, love, hope and altruism could easily be translated as a conversation with God which may indeed be the underlying source of all religion. This does not mean, however that, altered states, regardless of the means, does not have merit in the perception of a separate layer of reality. As bats see with echolocation and bees see in ultraviolet, it is not unreasonable to imagine an altered state in which the underlying energy behind all creation, (the continual creation of matter via Higgs boson), becomes visible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome good points, however I don't think anyone, including myself is calling this "light" God. It is reasonable to suspect that the drug imitates the same altered state as meditation, trance or deep prayer. The resulting euphoria and feelings of peace, love, hope and altruism could easily be translated as a conversation with God which may indeed be the underlying source of all religion. This does not mean, however that, altered states, regardless of the means, does not have merit in the perception of a separate layer of reality. As bats see with echolocation and bees see in ultraviolet, it is not unreasonable to imagine an altered state in which the underlying energy behind all creation, (the continual creation of matter via Higgs boson), becomes visible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOchkam's 'Unknown entities cannot be introduced to explain other unknown entities' would seem to indicate that introducing God (an unknown entity) in order to explain the ultimate unknown (why anything exists instead of nothing at all) is to introduce an unknown to explain an unknown; a known no-no for seven hundred years. A simpler explanation which avoids infinite regress (ie 'Who created the creator?) is that nothing at all is unstable and that a creator is just another theory and not a given. But even remaining aground, "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep" by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche describes adepts in the discipline who, while in REM, typically meditate while in the lucid dreaming state, but in non-REM are nonetheless aware of the 'Clear Light' (sic). Thus, these adepts no longer experience the oblivion of sleep and this without the mushroom or any other influence. This would seem to be some sort of corroboration of the experience described above.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI find it amusing that scientifically interested readers should shun articles that indeed can indeed now cast more light on the 'God Delusion' phenomenon!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAfter all, what counts in our brain is the equation:
'input is output' both visual and auditory, which can therefore easily lead to a case of 'deja vu'!
If you have never heard of Marie (Antoinette) or Saint Mary ( quite contrary), you'll never have a chance of meeting the ladies, not in your wildest dreams!
Oh God! Wouldn't it be loverly if our Superduperdad
could redeem us from annihilation!
And the last to go will switch off THAT light!
Yes
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf it is therapeutic in overcoming addictions, depression, etc. it is worthy of scientific discussion. I would find it reasonable for SA to report on research into human reaction to any pharmaceutical. As to the "touchy-feely" method of reporting this interaction, I agree, not very empirical, but it is a factual report by a subject. How else should she report her experience?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe we should give the terrorists at Gitmo a mess of mushrooms and set them free to spread love, peace, and harmony around the globe. Hey...It could happen...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHummmm!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can see both sides of this.
God lives in you, as you.
But you're not God.
You're you.
But that's just the beginning.
Not very scientific is it?
Here, have a brownie!
l
Having participated in a similar (but private) experiment, I can say that at least subjectively, the author's experience was very similar to mine. I have been a confirmed atheist my whole life and feel that whatever being I encountered (and this is an extremely common occurrence when using the drug under similar circumstances) "showed" me how it was within all life, including myself. I don't know whether this means that it is "God" or not, but the information that it passed to me was definitely not anything that I could have conceived on my own. I've come to believe that prehistoric people probably developed their own forms of spirituality after experimenting with mushrooms, or other plants, that this "being" is in fact real, and that almost all religions are a gross perversion of such spiritual feelings, and were created merely to acquire control over the masses, or property. Therefore, while I don't intend to attend any church services in the near future, I know I'll never feel truly alone again.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt isn't her "experience" that I doubt. It is her interpretation of that experience. What is "experience" anyway. I would suggest that her experience was basically changes in brain chemistry. Some day, when we have a better understanding of brain chemistry, there is a good chance that we (the royal we, meaning neuroscientists) will be able to explain such experiences in terms of brain chemistry and function.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis experience has nothing to do with religion. Where is the divinity in all this? Where is the awe? Where is the feeling of deep peace? Where is the feeling of truth and goodness? Where is the deep love?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe other thing I wanted to say is that it takes a great deal of courage to volunteer for an experiment like this. Mushrooms are not a party drug, they're closer to a "sacrament" than anything I've ever experienced.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPhysicists are now discovering things about the universe that seemed like pure fantasy a mere generation ago, i.e. proof of another dimension from CERN by next year, digital style breakup at the edges of the universe, indicating possibly what?... that the universe is part of an inconceivable hologram? (another CERN theory.) I believe that scientists who study the brain will soon have a sea change of their own. And if studying the effects of psychoactive agents can give us any new insights into the human mind as well as the machine the brain, why are we so afraid to to there? So far as I've been able to find, nobody has ever died from psilocybin mushrooms. Also, we're just beginning to understand the chemistry of DNA with a whole world of "junk" DNA waiting to be decoded. It's been my own scientific experience that evolution, with the exception of unnatural mutations, doesn't create too much "junk." Everything in nature seems to have a defined purpose, whether we understand it initially. Why did this lowly mushroom evolve to interact in such a bizarre way with the human mind? I think that this is the most interesting question.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course it is a change in brain chemistry. We accept Prozac as a product to "improve or lives".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll posts are provocative...Where do we go from here?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am appalled that-
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1) SA should not indicate the scientific relevance of the specific reported experience. Its mere reproduction is unworthy.
2) some here think that because QM is tough for them to get their heads round, that this is an excuse to think that human experience is made inaccessible to comprehension. Huge strides are now being made. Get an education.
3) many seem blithely unaware that personal experience, though often rich and rewarding, is always suspect. The errors and biases are well known. The US population (to many Europeans) seem particularly prone to the religio-conspiracy cognitive errors of over-active Agency Detection.
I often have powerful experiences of universal connectedness. Having now also experienced the repeated failure of my Agency Detector to deliver coherent, useful information, this experience stands more simply and reliably as a wonderful Aesthetic Experience amongst many others. It underwrites my feeling that things are or could be knowable, which I find thrilling. The raw personal experience is the stuff of art, of human artifice. Its study, however, should be undertaken with as many of the cautious and careful techniques our kluged brain has been able to contrive.
Once again, Phil, you want to separate QM and other scientific pursuits from spiritual (you use the term "aesthetic") experience -- and you seem to want to do this as a fait accompli, requiring no rationale. But it ain't necessarily so.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQM, especially, has plenty of elbow room at this juncture for spiritual experience to be more than simple aesthetics. My personal opinion is that the "unified field" question won't be resolved until the primacy of Consciousness is recognized: But the question won't even be properly addressed until more scientists are willing to question their age-old presuppositions. I may be correct or incorrect in my conclusions, but I nonetheless find much more satisfaction in exploring the connections between science and spirituality than I do in extolling their differences.
Traditional western science has, for many, become a religion: and many of its adherents have become fundamentalists unwilling to see their own limited perspectives as anything but absolute. When all the quantum physicists -- and all other scientific disciplines -- agree on their basic tenets, only then will they convince me they're dealing in realities instead of beliefs and hypotheses. And only then will their arguments carry more weight than the beliefs and hypotheses of other cultures and disciplines.
But ironically there's no need for "either-or," if one stops making chasms out of hairline cracks, and turns ones attention to the common ground. The yogis, meditators and other "mystics" have already done this and applaud the advances of modern science, and the truths that have been --as well as those that remain to be -- uncovered.
Your "dialogue" with me is very curious, inasmuch as my presence is not really required. Not a single point of mine has been addressed (e.g. the distinct and important differentiation between experience, data and knowledge) and quite spurious alternate arguments are offered as mine in which you can pose the very things you wish to knock down. So in the same spirit-
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is an interesting differentiation between types of inquisitive people. When young we will torment our parents with the endless repetition of "..but why?" any explanation merely (and properly) requiring a further explanation. Some of us stop, usually when we get to somewhere we feel comfortable, to some base belief, be it God or beautiful maths. Some of us carry on....and on. The early stoppers are often people who know where they are going. They have something to prove. I say this to the religious, who are often the earliest of stoppers, but it applies equally to those who have an untested faith in received wisdom of any sort-
If you go looking for God. you will find a god. Better to just go looking.
What if Newton lived in space station with a race of beings who did not know what it was like to live in an environment with detectable gravity? What if he could only get a mass to fall in a predictable way on the surface of a certain planet? Would he not encourage others who were interested in exploring this phenomenon to join him on the surface of the planet?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf a scientist wanted to explain the subjective experience of consciousness, he could look at neurobiology, and he would find (at this point, at least) that such studies do not provide answers. So he may decide to take a heuristic approach, and explore his own consciousness. Psilocybin or meditation both give access to an altered state of consciousness (psychedelics do not "create" this state - see Andrew Weil's _The Natural Mind_ for a detailed explanation). By experiencing consciousness differently, we can come closer to understanding what it is. We tend to filter the experience through our personal schema, and may use words like "God", "Zen", "Light", whatever. It doesn't matter much, except that people get uppity when they hear certain words. The important thing, I think, is the experience. It is nearly pointless to attempt to explain it to someone who is expecting the presentation of objectively verifiable data that will explain consciousness. Yet, once you have the experience, once you understand who you are and how you relate to the rest of the universe, nothing will ever be the same. Reports like this are scientifically valuable in that they 1) may began to build up a set of phenomenological data, which may then 2) encourage others to perform their own experiments with their own consciousness.
Phil,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI really appreciated your comments and I am glad to see that someone is approaching the article from your vantage point.
What on earth makes you think scientists don't do drugs and meditate? What on earth makes you think they don't already seek to understand the experiences? How on earth do you think these experiences alone will reveal their own causes? Why do you think that Damasio, Ramachandran, Dennett, Churchland and very many other neuro-scientists, psychologists and philosophers haven't made huge strides already in understanding the nature of conscious experience?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of the most reliable and important take-aways from people like this is the sheer unreliability of experience, and the power of the unstoppable post hoc narrator that tidies away experience into the memory, pre-resolved. Until you propose a technique (eg like performing cross-cultural studies with drugs, and using fMRI) that tries to get behind the post hoc narrator you have proposed nothing novel or of value.
Much appreciated. I know this is a pretty old and dead thread, but it is a record, and the sheer ignorance of what science is, how it "knows" things, what it knows already on this topic, just appalls me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn other words, spiritual experiences are nothing more than chemical imbalances or intake.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW, it's interesting how these spiritual experiences never teach us anything about the real world, eg. how to build a bridge or what relativity is.
This article has certainly convinced me to never try these funny mushrooms. I was considering it until I read about how it caused this woman to arbitrarily assume that her ideology was correct. Deciding the nature of reality based on hallucinations is horrible and likely quite harmful over the long term. I much prefer keeping an open mind and basing my view of reality on actual experience. I wonder what she would have experienced had she watched some actual nature in action. A nice coyote eating a still living rabbit would give her a much better balance of what existence really is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I much prefer keeping an open mind and basing my view of reality on actual experience."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSounds to me like she had an actual experience.
I used to think that science could explain everything, then I realized that I was assuming that my ideology was correct.
"What on earth makes you think scientists don't do drugs and meditate?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, I know they do. You seem to be implying that I think something that I don't.
"What on earth makes you think they don't already seek to understand the experiences?"
I know they do that, too. Again, I'm puzzled about why you are asking these questions, because you seem to be reading into what I said.
"How on earth do you think these experiences alone will reveal their own causes?"
Would you agree that there are more ways of knowing than empirical observation? Ah, but that is your entire point, isn't it? This is a science magazine, so we should be sticking to scientific ways of knowing, and this article represents a very subjective interpretation of an experience. My point is that it is still data. It's not very well-controlled, admittedly, but I believe it does have value. Perhaps not in a strictly scientific sense, but at the very least it shows us the character of the experience. Seen across broad populations (as evidenced by all the trip reports out there), the commonality of the experience raises some questions about consciousness.
The point of the article may not be to provide information about the nature of "reality" or mind, but to provoke a meta-conversation about how there are multiple ways of knowing (note the title of the author's book) and does science have any space for these? Do you?
"Why do you think that Damasio, Ramachandran, Dennett, Churchland and very many other neuro-scientists, psychologists and philosophers haven't made huge strides already in understanding the nature of conscious experience?"
Because I haven't studied their work. The only one I'm familiar with is Ramachandran, and then only cursorily. How's that going? Has anybody been able to explain the subjective experience of consciousness yet?
If you are interested, you might appreciate the less woo-woo results of the Hopkins study:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://jonesthought.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/john-hopkins-psilocybin-study/
a few quotes from the article:
“We’re not entering into ‘Does God exist or not exist.’ This work can’t and won’t go there.”
"more than 60 percent of subjects described the effects of psilocybin in ways that met criteria for a 'full mystical experience' as measured by established psychological scales"
"79 percent of subjects reported moderately or greatly increased well-being or life satisfaction compared with those given a placebo at the same test session."
"How on earth do you think these experiences alone will reveal their own causes?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"blah....ways of knowing...blah."
So no process then? No output? No formulation of theories? Modelling? No testing? No corroboration? Just compiling experiences. The commonality of the experience is a commonplace. The differences are revealing. The language used.....the stories told.
"blah....to provide a meta conversation...blah" What?? You mean a talking point? So why no framing? No contrast?
Whats wrong with this quote?
"Yet, once you have the experience, once you understand who you are and how you relate to the rest of the universe, nothing will ever be the same. Reports like this are scientifically valuable in that they 1) may began to build up a set of phenomenological data, which may then 2) encourage others to perform their own experiments with their own consciousness."
No? You state the answer then pose the experiment. Very objective. State what you seek, then, of course, you shall find.
"Has anybody been able to explain the subjective experience of consciousness yet?"
Progress is accelerating, thanks to interdisciplinary approaches. You really should read up on it if you have any interest. Just out, Damasio's latest-
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9780307378750.html. You really should not complain about what is not there until you know at least a little of what is there.
Hurrah! Thanks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for the pointer to Damasio. I looked at a few reviews, and I'm trying to decide whether it's worth my time. It seems like he discusses the evolutionary origin and significance of self-reflective consciousness. But I'm wondering if he answers the question "what is this thing, this 'I', that seems to be having this experience?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo be clear, I'm talking about the Hard Problem of Consciousness. I'm wondering, Phil, if, because you referenced Dennet, if you are in the Deflationary camp.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDamasio is picked as one out of many. It provides a summary of most of his thinking and research on embodied cognition (it takes brains with the rich sensory input of bodies to have the experience of mind that so fixates us) and trys out a theory or two of an evolutionary just-so sort, creating some interesting new areas for research.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe hard problem is the fun one and the key to its understanding, I suspect, is to have a rigorous knowledge of its neural and behavioural correlates. From Libet onwards with the discovery of the unconscious decision to act preceding the apparent conscious one and yet, that conscious experience seems to map to a synchronous activation of many disparate brain areas at once, we have a torrent of new knowledge that directly informs these issues. Having these insights regarding, memory formation and its relation to conscious experience and use, Hebbian "learning" deriving from synchronicity of neural firing, the importance of establishing saliency, the catastrophe of inaction that looms with big brains with too much input and too much stored, the nature of modeling ourselves and the world, the need for self models that are fast enough to veto precipitous automatic actions, yet yield behaviours complex enough to wrong foot enemies, models whose necessary simplicity are compensated for by an almost obsessive process of moment by moment updating, we can now carry material like this (knowledge and knowledge rooted hypotheses) into our personal introspections and "test it" against the experiences.
The hard problem will become less hard as we become familiar with all of its correlates and understand the specific utility of those correlates. What is so exciting for me is that these myriad details do function often as personal revelation. Rather than deepening a mystery, they excitingly start to lay it bare.
This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. C'mon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAltered consciousness is exactly that and no one has ever demonstrated that it points to anything real. Maybe after we die... Maybe.
"God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The parable of His light is as if there were a niche and within it a lamp: The lamp enclosed in glass: The glass as it were a brilliant star: Lit from a blessed tree, an olive, neither of the east nor of the west, whose oil is well-nigh luminous, though fire scarce touched it: Light upon Light! God doth guide whom He will to His light: God doth set forth parables for men: and God doth know all things." Koran 24:35
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The parable of His light is as if there were a niche and within it a lamp: The lamp enclosed in glass: The glass as it were a brilliant star: Lit from a blessed tree, an olive, neither of the east nor of the west, whose oil is well-nigh luminous, though fire scarce touched it: Light upon Light! God doth guide whom He will to His light: God doth set forth parables for men: and God doth know all things." Koran 24:35
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was going to say something, but tim_b really just sorted everything out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm curious, Phil, if you've ever had an experience similar to the authors (not necessarily in the sense that you saw God, but in the sense that you experienced a distinctly different state of consciousness).
Lest I come off as too snarky, I should say that, admittedly, I cannot scientifically prove or disprove that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain (obviously?), and so the whole subject really fascinates me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting article. I'm glad to hear psychedelics are being studied in a clinical setting. They're too valuable a resource to be forbidden.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome data that may be useful. Psilocybin (and LSD) act as agonists at the 5-hydroxytryptamine2-a receptors. The neural net with these 5HT2-a receptors appears to be a filtering net that takes incoming sensory data and blocks it down to a level we can tolerate. Most people are aware that we are only conscious of a tiny amount of incoming sensory data. The SSRIs (antidepressants like Prozac, Paxil, and many others) also act as agonists at serotonin (i.e., 5HT) receptors, but tend to interact most strongly with others rather than the 2-a version. (The last I checked, there were about 20 known subtypes of serotonin receptors.) Occasionally, when someone is prescribed a SSRI, they will get sufficient stimulation of the subtype 2-a receptors to have a florid trip--one person I know said it was like "taking a whole bunch of mushrooms" which he said was pleasant enough but not very functional for daily life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll of this raises fascinating possibilities. The 5HT2-a receptors apparently mature around the age of 6 or 7--i.e., when we develop consensus reality. It is at least theoretically possible that children's "imaginary friends" are not imaginary at all, at least on the experiental level--there may be some sensory data getting through that will be blocked when the 5HT2-a receptors mature. As a species, we need consensus reality--it is what allows us to cooperate with each other, to form a functional society. But we may do ourselves a disservice to assume our experience of consensus reality is the appropriate (or only) basis for evaluating other experiences. Most people are so unaware that there is a constructed consensus reality that they suppress any experience that's outside it, labeling such experiences "crazy" or "hallucinations." But again, if consensus reality has a neurobiological substrate that evolved for the benefit of society, that filter may not say much about an individual's experience.
The modern antipsychotics, like Zyprexa, are antagonists at 5 HT2-a receptors. One possible way of looking at schizophrenia is to consider it a failure of maturation of the 5HT2-a system--like being permanently on mushrooms without knowing you took them. Schizophrenics also tend to be filled with grandiose spiritually, but often on the negative side. There may be something important here about whether or not one chooses the experience or has it seemingly forced on oneself.
I have no doubt the experience described in the article is important, and deserves scientific scrutiny.
Richard, thanks for sharing that info. Very useful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also wanted to point out that the importance of this type of experience, in the context of psychotherapy. As long as these experiences don't interfere with the healthy functioning of an individual post-trip, they can be valuable regardless of the "reality" of the experience. It doesn't matter if God exists or not: if I have an experience that allows me to form mental constructs that put me at ease and allow me to live a happier life and die a more peaceful death, then the mission was accomplished. (Of course, some people may have a desire to have their experiences objectively verified and may therefore have a hard time forming a narrative that helps them move toward a happier life.)
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. -Albert Einstein
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. -Albert Einstein
Einstein's insights above, especially the first one, concisely explain why this belongs in SA and it's importance to scientific study. What if we had a printout of every neuronal exchange and activity of this experience, a perfect objective scientific picture, but we did not have this person's subjective description of her experience? What meaning would that objective data have?
The search for meaning is what drives us to ask scientific questions. Those scientific answers change our subjective perceptions which drive us to ask more scientific questions, ad infinitum.
One without the other is meaningless. Science is useful for identifying commonalities and differences in a systematic way while art and religion are useful for making that information relevant to the subjective experiences of our lives.
By her own admission, the experience communicating with this "light" was so convincing that after the session she found that her chronically poor eyesight had not improved. I'm not a religious nut but recall from Sunday school that 2 Corinthians 11:14 warned, "And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also recall of how Jeremiah spoke of prophets having "delusions of their own minds" (Jeremiah 14:14).
Drugs open a gateway to another realm of awareness alright, but here is a woman whose heightened consciousness from drug induced awareness caused her to communicate with "light" that convinced her that healing was taking place in her body! I recall how in the 1960's those who had taken LSD believed similarly their bodies possessed such powerful regeneration they could jump through a window many storeys above street level... and not sustain injuries (or perhaps rapidly heal from such).
I wonder if the psilocybin study at Johns Hopkins Medical Center collated these drug induced hallucinations with the effects of various forms of living fungi, bacterium and viruses on the human brain? For example, how do they explain how some forms of fungi and bacteria cause humans to become pathologically aggressive to the point of risking harm to themselves and others? Not a fungus, various strains of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy produce chemicals that alter the brain. "Kuru is an incurable degenerative neurological disorder (brain disease) that is a type of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, caused by a prion found in humans," according to an article in Wikipedia.
Without digressing further, my point is that mind altering chemicals can prove completely unpredictable. Look at hallucinogenic fungi (i.e. "magic mushrooms") and its effect on the mind. A living organism, fungi evolves. Google the new strain known as VGIIc of the fungus Cryptococcus gattii. In April of 2010, MSNBC.com reported that "treatment requires months to years of antifungal medications, and even surgery to remove the large masses of the fungus known as cryptococcomas that can develop in the body. So far it cannot be prevented, as there is no vaccine." This fungi is airborne and spreading from Oregon to California and other states.
The reality is inescapable that hallucinogenic fungi like psilocybin and inhalable nightmare fungi like VGIIc of the fungus Cryptococcus gattii can mutate with unpredictable and potentially widespread effects on humans, animals and even aquatic life.
From a spiritial perspective under the effect of shrooms, you feel in the presense of a altered stage of intellegene that can seem other then your own. It dives deep into your own physche making you face your fears and ambitions to contest your own reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI meditate and can never come as close as I get when under the effects of Psilocybin. The aww inspiring light comes from a part of your brain that percieves colors. Under the effect of Psilocybin all colors seem more intense and bright, even the effect of what I call the Psilocybin screen saver where you have complicated images rotating in beautiful patterns of bright colors. Mostly the color is influenced by the mood that you surround yourself in, Music can even change the tone of this color you see when you shut your eyes.
Our brains are more complicated then we will know anytime soon. If a non-deadly Psilocybin can offer something that takes years of deep meditation to achieve I feel that everyone should try it atleast once. To get a good view of the man in the mirror and see past your physical limitations and connect to something higher then yourself. Even if its not God, and its just a ego stripped version of yourself that is responding to you. Atleast the answers will give you truth, and help you along your life journey.
Transformative experiences of an intense inner light are more widespread than most of us would suspect. Drugs, fasting, trauma, and other assaults on the mind-body system can act as keys, though they certainly aren’t the door or the landscape they open toward. The experiences are difficult to put into words, and are filtered through the temperament and cultural background of the experiencers. Though rare, they can happen quite spontaneously to anyone anywhere, under the most mundane conditions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI’ve long been intrigued how languages across the world associate light with consciousness. In English, we seek "illumination," or "see the light" when a problem is solved. We call intelligent people "bright," and the geniuses among us, "brilliant." Astounding beauty or brilliance is referred to as "dazzling." Thinking itself is referred to as "reflection." Is there some relationship between light of metaphor and the light of science? I believe there is an opportunity for science to address the epistemological divide between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ by examining this connection, and perhaps discover something deep about human beings in the process.
I have a book in the works on this topic, and have given several public talks on my research, viewable online.
From Light to Enlightenment:
http://www.youtube.com/user/pensivepencil#p/u/0/yafmM75jPNU
An earlier version, with better sound but less content, is here:
Light-Time: A Natural History of Illumination:
http://www.youtube.com/user/pensivepencil#p/u/18/2mf7ES5YUJ4
There’s also my article that coincides with the first part of the talk, from Common Ground magazine:
http://geoffolson.com/page5/page11/page112/page112.html
Geoff Olson
www.geoffolson.com
March 5, 1959
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this11:25 am
Took 75 mcg. Lysergic acid diethyl amide.
11:45
Slight withdrawal beginning,
rather definite euphoria noticable.
12:00
Very intense euphoria.
12:05
Rapid onset of symptoms.
Slightly intoxicated feeling.
Narrowed vision.
12:20
Waves of elation and pure bliss.
Euphoria has grown steadily since taking drug.
little change in perception
12:30
Euphoria almost overwhelming.
Great tension and elation,
Physical sensation one of ecstasy.
12:40
hyperreflexia, even greater pleasure.
First notice that lights are slightly brighter.
Ate lunch.
1:00
Took an additional 25 mcg. of LSD.
Feel peak of elation, euphoria.
Colors beginning to play their fantastic illusory images around
a periphery of vision when I quickly cast eyes across field.
Stroboscopic patterns on occasion.
Listening to music, note that the contrapuntal lines are more acute.
Intricacies of music in clearer detail than ever able to notice before,
as if 'hi-fi' were in even greater fidelity.
Warm, rich bliss.
I have needed reassurance of this sort,
for some time,
that pleasure and happiness is indeed this possible.
Pencil begins to act by itself.
As yet, little alteration of consciousness,
only heightened enjoyment of present mode of reality.
1:35
Withdrawal tendencies alternate with perfect normality.
Colors are now rich, deep and lovely.
the textures of surfaces seem richer than ever before.
A face on a magazine on a magazine seamed real,
changing, variously smiling.
1:40
First signs of hallucinated dreams and visions with eyes closed.
Daylight seams splendid and pulsating.
First physical euphoria going into psychic effects.
All colors in room are vivid, deep, full of subjective richness,
especially wood-grains, carpentry furniture.
Mood would be pensive,
were it not for elation and nervous stimulation.
2:00
Confusion and bustle in house keeps me constantly in touch with reality,
dispels tendency to savor experience.
Could be seeing visions now, if were allowed.
Note perspiration for first time.
Waiting for caller to arrive and leave--due in half-hour.
Intolerable urge to have visit done with so as is to enjoy experience.
2:20
According to previous accounts,
I should now be at peak of experience,
which would be so,
were it not for waiting out this damn interruption!
Mood to now intensely euphoric,
all bright, pleasant; here I sit,
waiting for opportunity to enjoy it!
Have been up and about through out.
2:30
Sat down in retirement for a while--ability to dream is pronounced.
Kaleidoscopic fancies very subdued,
due to anxiety of expected visit.
2:50
Can now have a while to myself!--
3:00
Too late!
Height of syndrome passed while unable to enjoy it.
No color heightening, synesthesia, visions, ect.
Euphoria mild now,
pleasant,
but has no particular novelty.
3:45
Thank god!
There is something left in nervous system!
When I lay alone on couch,
I had splendid dreams and scintillations
(though not as striking as they would have been earlier).
Felt if I was solid rock lying on bed,
bursting with atomic energy.
Matter-and-energy-image all splendid and luminescent.
Saw self hurled by atomic explosion out into the cosmos,
past uncountable galaxies of light and beauty.
Geometric patterns of color fluttered past in unbelievable profusion and delicacy.
Feel very withdrawn, intoxicated.
4:00
Light! Pure light!
Just to sit and stare into translucent being!
New interruption on phone.
4:10
The Far-Off Land.
1959,
Eugene Seaich
http://www.facebook.com/groups/faroff/members/