What? Again with the Psychedelia?

 

Perhaps I should relate (at long last) how all of my personal experience with hallucinogens matters at all to the matter of atheism. I contend that it does because much of what one who imbibes psychotropic substances experiences is similar to what mystics experience and have attributed to divine revelation. 

As quoted at the start of this unit, those who take psychedelics often attribute their hallucinations to supernatural causes; they claim that they’re visited by trans-dimensional beings or spoken to by angels or some other supposedly divine entity. Some even claim that they have witnessed the glory of ‘god’. 

My own personal experiences undermine the claim. The reported psychedelic experiences of others – such as those reports that came from the Johns-Hopkins study – further substantiate the undermining of such claims of ‘divine’ interaction.  I have also attempted to relate incidences which illustrate that one, who is experiencing the effects of psychedelics, might also maintain the appearance of sobriety. (My encounter with the Park Rangers, for instance.) 

Whether one can temporarily rein in the chemically altered brain in order to function normally could perhaps be the subject of further study. It has been my experience that it is possible. 

In the following units, it will be suggested that Saul/Paul of Tarsus was one who experienced an hallucination which he mistakenly characterized as a ‘revelation’ or a ‘vision’ of the risen Christ. I further suggest that Saul/Paul and other mystics have also been able to rein in their psychotropic mind-states to function in the ‘normal’ world. 

One need only consider that the saints of Patmos (where St John wrote ‘The Book of Revelation’) perhaps consumed psilocybin mushrooms and wrongly attributed their hallucinations with an anticipated and longed for interaction with the divine. One need only consider that the saints, mystics and visionaries may have experienced brain-states akin to the effects of the consumption of psychedelics to see a veracity of my suggestion.

 

‘Above all, realize that none of this is un-natural and, most importantly, it is NOT supernatural. There is no supernatural element to any of this. It is simply the chemicals in the mushroom (psilocin, also known as 4-hydroxy DMT) changing the normal, natural chemical make-up of the brain.  That’s all it is. You will experience hallucinations as a result of the chemical alteration of your brain chemistry.’ 

 

Chemical alteration of the brain may also entail alcohol and the various chemicals (such as dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline, endorphins, oxytocin, etc.) released by the brain and other bodily organs which effect change in brain-states. At times of stress or elation, the subsequent brain-state interprets ‘perceptory’ input in a way that is similar to the effect which the introduction of the aforementioned mind and mood altering chemicals have but in a more diminished way. 

 

It must be noted that the senses all perceive in the same way as before the introduction of the chemicals; the eyes see in the same spectrum, the ears hear the same frequencies, the skin senses the same levels of pressure and heat, for example. It is the chemically altered brain-state which then interprets the input differently. 

 

That is, for example, the eyes see a palm tree sway. The ears hear the wind through the fronds. The skin feels the pressure of the breeze and the temperature of the air in the same way as before the introduction of the mind-altering chemicals but these sensory signals are interpreted differently due to the presence of the chemicals and the effect of those chemicals on the brain-state.

 

As to a further example of the bifurcation of the mind; the observer/observed duality, the separating of psychedelic experience from reality and dealing with ‘real’ situations while under the influence of mind-altering chemicals, I offer this further example of personal experience:

One Christmas Eve, several male friends gathered in my ‘Man Cave’ to drink beer, Scotch and cannabis and enjoy each other’s company. As we spoke and joked, one member – a man in his early 30s – lost consciousness and fell from his chair to the floor. In a state of anxiety, I went to check his pulse, to check that he hadn’t swallowed his tongue, and had a clear pathway for breathing. After checking his vital signs (as I’d learned for dealing with seizure) he recovered enough to retake his seat and joke about the experience. 

 

However, in the moment of relief of what appeared to be his recovery, he fainted again and fell from his chair. Citing that once was a concern and twice was potentially a serious emergency, I directed a friend to call an ambulance. I re-checked the vitals of the passed-out friend and got him, shakily, to his feet. The ambulance arrived and we went to hospital to await the results of tests.

 

This is mentioned as an illustration that intoxication and inebriation was not an impediment to reacting to this situation with cool resolve. No conscious thought was made by me to snap out of an inebriated state. 

 

The friend I’d sent to call an ambulance remarked at the hospital that he was taken aback my cool demeanor. He thought it remarkable that I could act so rationally under the influence of mind-altering substances and the clear anxiety of what we had assumed was our dying friend.

 

I was stunned to hear this appraisal. I had given no passing thought to what the necessary response to the situation should have been; no reflection clouded by drink, cannabis or stress. I offer no explanation for this other than to cite my earlier experiences under stress and inebriates. I offer this as further evidence that the human mind need not be incapacitated by mind-altering chemicals or musings on spirituality or the supernatural. The situation would not have been precipitously addressed if such musings had predominated.

As I mentioned before; I contend that Saul of Tarsus experienced a similar falsely interpreted vision as a ‘revelation’ upon which he built the Christian Church. 

More on Psychedelic Experiences

 

Another episode of intentional chemical mind alteration was in Carbondale, Illinois during winter. As we relaxed in a well-heated living room enjoying our LSD trip while listening to music. Several people came in from the cold; their cheeks were rosy and flushed to ward of the deleterious effects of the cold weather, yet I interpreted that rosiness as being evident that they brought with them a renewal of sorts; of psychic energy, perhaps. Their presence offered a renewal of life essence, of vitality which the warm and comfortable company of acid-heads did not have. This illusion dissipated as the color of their cheeks reverted to a more normal hue in the warmth of the room. 

 

My interpretation was wrong. It was hastily made and perhaps reflected an innate boredom with the company of the acid-heads or the music we had been listening to. However, under the effect of the psychedelic, what I saw as a revelation later proved false.

 

Had I been of a more ‘spiritual’ mind, I might have retained the false interpretation the rosiness of their cheeks as a sign of a supposed ‘heightened spirituality’. This might also be taken as another scenario in which my growing philosophical naturalism was made evident. Let me state categorically that I do not attest to have some ’Jedi’ power of mind control. What served me with the park police was the former experiences I had enjoyed when being seriously in the grip of psychotropic substances. I’d been on that hill before and had stood at the precipice. I was not daunted or cowed by the sights; I knew how to separate the hallucinated wheat from the reality of the chaff.

 

To summarize, regarding psychedelic and altered states of consciousness, many if not most theists claim experiential knowledge of ‘god’ while under the influence. This is quite normally the only ‘evidence’ they offer as existence of ‘god’.  That they each had had a ‘personal revelation’ which they typically describe as a ‘feeling’ which they identify as ‘god’ can only be seen as confirmation bias. Such testimony is laughable as evidence; it is hear-say and unfalsifiable. If each had experienced mind-altering chemicals, I contend that many would understand that the ‘feeling’ or insight or vision or sense of connectedness is not due to the presence of ‘god’ but to a mental state being reached due to psychotropic substances, stress, anxiety or presupposition as a result of indoctrination.

 

The brain functions so well that when its function is affected by stress, near death or psychotropic drugs, people are amazed and cast about for supernatural causes to explain the dysfunction. This is an error as it appeals to a mystery to solve a mystery. 

‘I don’t understand what my brain is relaying to me so it must be god.’

What can be learned from psychedelics is that the ‘world of man’ (or more specifically the world as man normally experiences it) is not all that it seems. Dr. Timothy Leary was brave enough to experiment with LSD and relate it to the psychological and neurological. The first major rigorous study of psychedelics and spirituality occurred on Good Friday in 1962. In the basement of Marsh Chapel at Boston University, researchers from Harvard gave 10 divinity students LSD to see if the sacred setting, combined with drugs, would spark a mystical experience. It did. Soon afterward, researchers at other prominent universities began administering psychedelic drugs to volunteers in controlled settings. It was proclaimed that psychedelics were a ‘rocket ship’ that would take the place of meditation and prayer in reaching religious and mystical experiences.

 

Such was the age…

 

The study was not completed. Leary was drummed out of Harvard and hounded by the DEA for his proselytizing the use of psychedelics and for his possession of illicit substances. More experimentation was and is necessary. Thankfully, interest remains. Dr Solomon Snyder, chairman of the neuroscience department at Johns Hopkins states, "If we assume that the psychedelic, drug-induced state is very much like the mystical state, then if we find out the molecular mechanism of the action of the drug, then you could say that we have some insight into what's going on in the brains of mystics."

 

Numerous studies continue to be done on the apparent association between mystical and religious experience and psychedelics as well as the chemical compounds of the human brain such as serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins.

 

My own ‘trips’ revealed to me that society’s rules and the common perception of the world could be viewed with a squinted eye; meaning that the local rules of perception (in middle-America, or central Africa, for example) do not necessarily hold in other locations and social settings, especially when the observer’s brain-chemistry is altered. What is required is the ability to step apart from the experience for brief periods of reflection and re-assessment. One must become both the observer and the observed during and after the psychedelic experience. This ability is a learned one and requires an initiator to assure that the first drug experiences are not fraught with anxiety.

 

There are indigenous peoples which utilize psychedelics during initiation rituals which are used variously to find ‘Truth’ or mark ‘passages of life’ or to solve personal problems. Peyote is used. Mescaline is used. Psilocybin is used. Ayahuasca is used. The psychedelic is administered during the ritual in various ways; smoking, eating, etc. 

 

You can get a taste of this phenomena by reading the ‘The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge’ by Carlos Castaneda. It must be noted that Casteneda was a fraud; there never was a Don Juan, but the stories still impart useable information. (When seen side-by-side, the fictional Don Juan and the argument for Jesus being fictional - only a mythical, unreal, immaterial expression of the Jewish soteriological concept – gains some traction.)  

 

Dr. Timothy Leary and many, many others have made the error, in my estimation, that the psychedelic experience is a pathway to ‘deeper knowledge’ or a ‘doorway to another dimension’ or was the pathway to seeing the face of god or ‘fill-in-the-blank’.

 

Aldous Huxley was another adventurer of the mind. A brilliant futuristic novelist, Huxley wrote ‘The Doors of Perception’, published in 1954 and ‘Vintage Minis: Psychedelics’, published in 1953 based on his own psychedelic experiences. 

 

I contend that Huxley’s error and Dr. Leary’s error were to put the cart before the horse; from their experiences, they claimed that the world had changed and they had experienced a new world. In fact, it was only their altered perception which had changed; the world remained exactly the same. 

 

What I am belaboring is the suggestion that psychedelics are a pathway to knowledge or ‘enlightenment’. Quite the opposite; a psychedelic experience is NOT a pathway to anything other than simply the experiencing of how your brain functions under the influence of psychedelics. To assert that a psychotropic experience is anything more than your brain’s altered chemistry - as McKenna, Pollan, Huxley, Leary, Ram Dass and Jobs, among others have done - is to view the experience from the wrong end of the telescope.

 

The use of alcohol can also provide a brain-alerting experience when taken to extreme. The book ‘A Night of Serious Drinking’ an allegorical novel, published in 1938, by the French surrealist writer René Daumal, examines this in a humorous, Lewis Carolinian way.

 

Music, art and the passionate experiences of love, fury and empathy can also produce periods of heightened mental perspicuity. These moments might also be erroneously interpreted as ‘transcendent’ or ‘visionary’. While I do not dispute the idea that humans should transcend – should improve their daily appreciation of life and their fellow creatures, I do not think that there is another realm or dimension where such transcendence takes place. I am a philosophical naturalist in that respect: only natural laws and forces operate in the universe. There are no supernatural ones; no spiritual ones. 

 

In these days of ‘micro-dosing’, I hope that deprogramming agents of a gentle sort will spring up to act as an initiator; guide in the initiation. The initiator would calmly tell the user, ‘You will take this chemical – this mushroom – and it will alter the chemicals in your brain. This alteration will result in your seeing and hearing and thinking things that you will find unreal. Remain calm. There is nothing that will harm you. After a short time, your brain chemistry will revert to normal. It is vitally important to remember this; keep that little voice of ‘conscience’ talking to you; your ‘Jiminy Cricket’. Keep in mind, too, that you are safe and that all is well.

 

‘As the chemical alteration takes effect, you might – for example – see trees sway in the wind. This may remind of hula dancers – this in turn, will remind you of the music that hula dancers dance to. You might start to change the image of trees to the dancers so that the trees have faces and arms and legs and a hula skirt. This is your brain trying to make sense of this hallucination by filling in the gaps – supplying a sound-track of music, for instance. This is all quite normal as that is the function of the brain – to make sense of your experiences.’ 

 

‘Relax and go with it.’