This chapter derives from a journal in which I wrote of my psilocybin experiences over a period of about a year and a half. I cannot profess that my descriptions of psychedelic phenomenology are typical or represent what others are likely to encounter should they seek out such experience, only that psilocybin proved to me to be so profound in its psychological action that I felt I had to record my 'encounters'. Since there is precious little information pertaining to this area of experience - after all, psilocybin mushrooms have been utilised in this country for little more than two decades - then I would hope that the following accounts will prove to be useful in highlighting the fantastic changes in consciousness and reality conception that are now within our reach.

From the end of August 92 to late November of that same year, I spent my time absolutely in the grips of what I have come to call a 'mushroom fever', and it was this period which represents the bulk of the journal. Perhaps I investigated wild psilocybin mushrooms more systematically and more enthusiastically than any other British citizen before me. It certainly seemed that way.

At any rate, for a 3 month period it was as if I had found heaven, as if I had awoken from a deep slumber into a reality which was both alive and directed, as though the world were the living text of some great story. It was the most intensely rewarding and inspirational period of my life so far, of this I am convinced. It seemed as if I had uncovered a great secret which had lain buried in the English countryside, like some lost alchemical spell able to bond the human psyche with a greater entity that was all of life. True, I had always been interested in altered states of awareness, true even that this had led me to study psychology, yet I was never prepared for the explosive vision-inducing power lying latent within a humble fungus (throughout the 90's I have continued independent phenomenological research into psilocybin, although an account of these latest studies will have to await another book).

Like many others, I first learned of entheogenic mushrooms through rumour, hearsay, and other kinds of misinformation. Drugs in general seemed to be a ritual part of growing up, at least in the pop anarchical youth culture in which I grew up. I had been led to believe that a psychedelic drug was the most dramatic thing one could do with one's mind. A psychedelic drug would supposedly change you forever. Once taken, you would never be the same again. This both frightened me and made me more curious. Having read Huxley's 'Doors' and the shamanic fantasies of Carlos Casteneda, I was eager to try such 'mind expanding' substances.

The British psilocybin mushroom proved mysteriously elusive to me. It took a few years before I finally located some in London's Richmond Park circa 1986. I remember my first mushroom experience very well. It began not with ecstatic delight but with with terror, absolute disorientation, and the feeling that I was going irrevocably insane. My youthful mind became subjected to a barrage of uncontrollable noise, as if my head were inhabited by a million bickering voices. Fortunately, since I had studied Gurdjieff and other 'gurus of the mind', I was eventually able to overcome the riotous cacophony in my head by an inner act of will. In this way, I forced an objective focus of awareness to arise out of the psychical tumult, as though I had distanced myself from the psychological chaos. From that moment on, I felt as if a god, as if some enormous divine energy were pulsating through me. This was the most awesome experience I had ever had, the most extreme positive emotion imaginable. I had tasted entheogenic ecstasy, and it tasted good.

In the years which followed, I tried these mushrooms on a few more occasions, always with nervous apprehension. I soon realised that others had had similar experiences to mine, yet no-one seemed able to account for such experience in any kind of scientific way. The psilocybin experience was thus an anomaly, something one looked back on with bewilderment, an indicator of some profoundly sacred dimension close at hand, a secret place uncharted and virtually unknown to the vast majority of people.

I began to read books about altered states of consciousness, eventually going on, as a mature student, to study psychology formally since psychology seemed the only science which dealt in some way with consciousness. I soon learned that the whole area of psychedelic drugs was shrouded in mystery, that psychedelics were taboo, a phenomenon fraught with ignorance and criminal implications and, much to my consternation, conveniently sidestepped by psychological science. If you were lucky, a big textbook on neuropsychology might have the briefest of references to psychedelics, usually in regard to their hallucinogenic properties, though the matter was never elaborated upon, the phenomenon never being used to shed light upon the mutable nature of consciousness and the chemical mechanisms underlying the information processing carried out by the brain.

Such an unfortunate state of affairs could only be overcome by personal exploration. It was clear that I would have to go it alone, my sole companions in the adventure being the various writers like Terence McKenna who were still carrying the psychedelic torch, still claiming that psychedelics, particularly the naturally occurring variety, were the key to understanding both the potentially transcendental capacity of consciousness and the hidden dimensions of Nature.

As I said, my adventure really began at the end of August 92, when I encountered an abundance of Psilocybe semilanceata mushrooms in Richmond Park. This seemed unusual, since before this time I had only ever located the mushroom in the cold, wet climate of November. Yet here they were, in profusion, in the heat of summer, growing silently beneath the feet of kite-flyers and the herds of deer which roam throughout the park. Just a few months before, I had graduated and had received a first for an original dissertation on the theoretical implications of the psychedelic experience; hence I was geared up to investigate psilocybin as much as I possibly could.

So unbelievably profound were these subsequent psilocybin experiences that I soon realised that I would have to write a book about the phenomenon and do some serious academic research. The experience demanded a wider audience than those renegade factions of the youth culture who knew about psilocybin; it was something any adult would be able to benefit from should they be deeply interested in the mind and the possibility of perceptual enhancement. Nature I found, that great process we live in, had another more beautiful face which could be gazed upon through the pharmacological action of an indigenous wild plant. Incredibly, the mushroom was a metaphysical key of sorts, imbued with living mystery and promise.

In the journal entries which follow, I should point out that some are decidedly naive, some are funny, and some are downright mystical. It was only later that I would try and account for, and indeed defend, the numinous phenomenology in neuropsychological terms (see the chapters which follow). But science-speak cannot hope to capture the full spectrum of human experience. For sure scientific writing has clout. In the right hands scientific rhetoric makes a hard and formidable weapon with which to wield conjectural might and fell intellectual opponents. Yet when one comes to fully document the entheogenic experience then conventional scientific reporting must on occasion take a back seat. In fact, I had no choice but to write exactly what I was experiencing, downright mystical though it may have been. Its just that I was downright forced to comply with the mushroom's effects. These things happen.

Despite my acute embarrassment at much of their tone and style, particularly the earliest entries, I feel the reader will still be provided with a flavour of the psilocybin experience as encountered by a fairly conventional young man living firmly within the city of London, and not out in the remote valleys of Mexico or on some exotic island far from the hustles and bustles of modern life. I would also add that I learned about the eyes-closed visionary effects of psilocybin as I went along, such visions coming later rather than early on.

The entries in italics are those written whilst in the throes of the psilocybin experience (which explains their overtly quixotic style) mostly written indoors at night. As it is notoriously difficult to write whilst under the power of the mushroom, the unconventional style is therefore to be expected. It is truly a monumental effort to write in such a state; one has to wrestle free from ecstasy, then a pen has to be grasped as if it were a chisel, finally to carve out words upon paper. The rest of the entries were written after the effects had worn off, and their style is more 'normal'.

It transpires that the concept of Gaia crops up again and again in these journal notes. To reiterate, Gaia is a popular name coined by James Lovelock which refers to the living biosphere as a whole. Such a concept is a theoretical tool with which to understand the inter-related processes occurring across the planet, especially the inferred homeostatic systems embodied by various species which ensure that the Earth remains healthy and supportive of life. Lovelock, however, is never, ever, one to equate intelligence or sentience with Gaia. He deliberately steers clear of such contentious speculation. I, on the other hand, felt compelled to contemplate Gaia to its limit whether or not such enthusiastic speculation was valid. But such is the power of psilocybin. Concepts, language, ideas - they are all forced to expand in the entheogenic state of mind. Barriers to thought are jumped with ease. Perhaps too easily. Or perhaps to the benefit of our ever changing interpretations of Nature. This remains to be seen.

Having made all my excuses, we can continue. Prepare for a sudden conceptual jolt as our quest to reveal the true face of Nature now shifts up a gear. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a wild taste of perceptual enhancement, a veritable eulogy to Gaia, our living Earth, for, Goddess knows, in these times of global pollution and global deforestation, she surely deserves it.

Eventually, the magic performance came to an end and the kiwi fruit no longer remained. Indeed, it had vanished within me, eventually to become thought itself. However, the experience that I briefly describe here, lives on in my memory, testifying to the wonder of Gaia. Her love knows no limit if we but accept it. If every one of you could share in this remarkable truth, then paradise would zoom into view over the horizon like the rising sun. Eternity awaits us, for time can be stopped because experience is time. Through the effects of entheogenic flora, conscious experience is magnified, time slows down, and we realise that reality is somehow infinite in depth. The psychedelic story did not end with the 60's, rather it has just begun. Naturally.

As you might have guessed, the stream of my consciousness is even now becoming fused with the Gaian Mind. Such brilliance! As fierce as a tiger, as lofty as an elephant, as graceful as an eagle soaring through the sky, as firm as the tallest rainforest tree, this is the majesty of Gaia. My mind knows no bounds, as I now willingly succumb to holistic thoughts embracing all of Nature. And I would add that such is the breadth of the psilocybin experience, that in between the writing of these words it is as if one has time to follow the most glorious trains of thought....

The problem with gathering psilocybin mushrooms in a large wild park like that of Richmond (the largest parkland in Europe and home to wild deer, rabbits, foxes, Alexander beetles and notorious gangs of squirrels), is that one often comes up against the unnerving spectacle of Gothic black-caped horse-mounted rangers (thankfully unarmed) who constantly patrol the park. Apparently one can be reported for collecting fungi. Indeed, I checked the long list of rules displayed at the entrance to this wild site and, lo and behold, we are told that it is illegal to interfere with the plant species, along with rules against playing the guitar or a radio, or making a speech. The rules state that should I want official permission to collect plant specimens, then I should write to the Secretary of State. Has the honourable minister ever set foot in Richmond Park? The current minister, David Mellor, appears at this moment in time to be entwined in some sexual scandal or another, and I seriously doubt that he would have the time, nor the energy, to shelve his libido and consider a polite request to collect wild mushrooms. And anyway, is Richmond Park not free land? For that matter, can land really be owned? How does one purchase a piece of the space-time continuum?

I looked up the definition of 'interfere'. As it means to 'come between' or 'hinder', then clearly the mushroom picker is doing neither. Picking wild mushrooms, which, after all, are the temporary fruiting bodies of the underground fungal organism, aids the dispersal of spores (which pass through the gut undamaged), just as the picking and eating of blackberries aids seed dispersal. Whatsmore, I have yet to see one of these Batman-like crusaders gallop up to and admonish someone picking chestnuts (or blackberries) which are also to be found in great number in the park in the autumn months. Nor have I seen motorists who drive through the park being cautioned about their exhaust emissions which surely do 'interfere' with the plant life. Psychedelic fungi seem a different matter, and this irks the rangers. I fear the day will come when snipers armed with lasers will zap the innocent psilocybin mushroom picker. Or perhaps helicopters will swoop down and net any psilocybin collectors on the grounds that their behaviour is to wild and wolfish.

I was quite amazed today as I went looking for new locations for the sacred mushrooms. Living in London's sprawling metropolis this can prove to be quite difficult. Apart from Richmond Park, there is a distinct lack of untouched land here, and one has to venture out into London's peripheries in order to reach Nature in its pristine state. Anyhow, I managed to locate some wild pastures on the outskirts of north London, about a 5 mile cycle journey away from my home. This was to be a new venture, trying to discover if teonanacatl could be found in some completely new place, and, moreover, in early September.

I had walked over hills and through many fields with no luck apart from an abundance of juicy blackberries. Just as I was about to give up scanning, I discovered two specimens of the mushroom. This was an appropriately timed event for, at the very moment I spied them, I was having an involved 'inner discussion' about the complexity of the planet. In particular, I was wondering whether, in its entirety, Gaia was complex enough to possess a mindful aspect. I was thinking specifically about the immense network of telecommunications diffuse across the Earth's surface. Surely, I thought to an imaginary sceptic, at any one moment there must be literally millions of people on the phone, and this communicational phenomenon is certainly more complex than the communicational activity of neurons within a single brain, which is itself incredibly complex.

In other words, the entire system of brains and telecommunication networks was more complex than an individual brain, or at least this was how my thinking went. It thus appeared to me that as we go up the scale of size, the more complexity, organisation, and connectivity we observe. On a Gaian-sized scale, I mused, surely the system could posses an intentful and causally active aspect just as the brain possesses a mindful intent at the highest levels of cerebral organisation. And, there was no reason to limit such a Gaian intent to the here and now. The biospherical interactions between plants and animals has surely been immeasurably complex for millions of years. No organism within the Gaian system is isolated. We perceive boundaries since it has been useful to do so for survival purposes in our evolutionary past. The psilocybin experience does away with boundaries, and separate life forms melt into a bigger interactional framework. All life appears as one fluid continuum, one vast amoeba-like protoplasmic organism within which an evolutionary transformation of matter is occurring everywhere. Nothing is static, all is connected.

Thus I was once more convincing myself that Gaia was indeed a reality, when I stumbled upon two of these magical plants. Alas, I was only to find five more specimens, yet the fact that this was a regular English field provided further confirmation that the British psilocybin mushroom was a widespread phenomenon, though, it should be added, with little in the way of investigative information as to its effects. I therefore feel somewhat like a pioneer, advancing the science of natural magic by pursuing this little known English version of Gordon Wasson's sacred Mexican mushroom. Whatsmore, as I am discovering, there is never a dull moment in such a wild pursuit. The fruits of such labour always prove to be illuminating.

I have just now been 'knocked down' from beholding a poster depicting elephants which hangs upon my bedroom wall. Whilst gazing at the picture, I was seized with such bliss as to literally throw me to the floor. I felt as close as it seems possible to get to Gaia, God, or whatever the Other is. Perhaps this was a short-lived epileptical seizure of some sort, though it was definitely preceeded by what I saw in the picture, which appeared somehow holy.

The ecstatic seizure experience of last night left me utterly awestruck. In this seemingly unassuming elephant picture that I gazed into under the first wash of psilocybin, it felt as if my mind had penetrated some distinctly sacred dimension, as if I had accessed some limitless field of meaning inherent in the picture. Or, to be more precise, when one has taken a large dose of psilocybin then whatever one looks at, one seems to see more deeply as if everything, every image, is hieroglyphic-like, laden with latent meaning and connected to all else, as though one can access the interconnected vastness of reality through any object or picture.

As I looked at the herd of African elephants portrayed in the picture, the hallucinatory process took hold and my perceptual system seemed to penetrate the scene. An explosion of fractal-like detail, with a distinctly 'beyond' nature, opened up before me as I looked more closely at the majestic herd. A growing tapestry of spiritually-charged meaning began to emerge before my eyes, and I was suddenly overcome with a terrific surge of beatitude that literally flung me back from the picture and onto the floor, where I lay for about half a minute in a kind of all-over orgasmic daze. I have never felt a mystical experience of such force before, and when I got up from the floor my most immediate concern was for my life.

I presume now that I was not in any real danger, though I do feel that I had glimpsed some divine realm of being far beyond the results of my previous psychedelic endeavours. Perhaps I was attempting to see too much. Indeed, the feeling of being flung back was like a jolt of electricity or a lightning bolt, though of a joyous kind. I was most definitely 'touched' by the Other, or whatever the presence is that one encounters through the mushroom, though I now suspect that it is only after death that we can go on to these higher levels of being.

There was no pain in my body during the ecstasy, so maybe it could be described as a type of psilocybin-induced epileptic phenomenon, or more likely, it was an electrical brain disturbance as found in certain forms of migraine. Obviously, something happened in my physical brain to facilitate the mystical phenomenology. Whatever this was, the experience was most definitely valid (in that it really happened) and was thus highly important in terms of reality perception. We are not alone, rather there is some great presence or another about us, or at least there is a vast field of latent transcendental information around us, of this I am now certain. To ignore entheogenic plants is to miss out on spiritual inspiration not derived from books or discussion, but from immediate experience. With the advent of free British psilocybin, the doors of perception are now very much open.

Let it be known throughout the land that I have experienced the best morning of my life, perhaps the best morning that a young male sapiens hominid could ever hope to experience. At 7.45am I ingested about 35 almost fresh, unprocessed and thus legal (of course, for I am not one to abuse the law) mushrooms on an empty stomach. My body was thus geared up to surround and consume whatever I chose to provide it with to break my fast. And on this morning....oh boy!

After about 30 minutes the subtle psychological shift in perception began. With eyes closed, I saw appallingly vivid visions which were almost too strong to bear...I saw multi-coloured 'serpent-skin eyes', layer upon layer of gleaming eyes which appeared to cover the skin of some mythical serpentine creature. On reflection, I think they must have been eyes because eyes have a beautiful 'sensate' quality about them, eyes reveal so, so much about a person, they glisten with life and signify sentience. I noticed that in the visionary state, I still had a fovea-like visual area, that is, a centrally focused area of vision, and it was in this area of focus that I beheld the shifting pattern of these impossibly beautiful eyes.

I have to say that I interpreted these visions as being of some great Serpent. Indeed, the eyes seemed to be its scales. I should stress that I was not afraid. During these last five weeks of experience, I have attempted to tread carefully, employing as much 'objective' conscious attention as I have been able to muster, derived in all probability from my tuition in science methodology. At any rate, the visions now before me appeared as if to be a dazzling testament to the 'truth'. Even when I opened my eyes, I saw a dim after-image of the fabulous Serpent's tail slither around the space above me. Yet a voice told me to keep my eyes closed. I then saw spinning shapes, statue-like faces zoom up before me. I began to have an inner conversation with what ever the presence was. Having studied psychology, I know the clinical attitude to such phenomena, yet the experience was as real as real gets.

I felt somewhat like a child, who was receiving instruction from a wise and ancient being. This being was not evil, despite its shifting serpentine nature. Like most people, I am not too enamoured by snakes, yet this visionary Serpent was a creature beyond any simple snake, seemingly an embodiment of Gaia, a great entity wielding wisdom and power.

A small and rather pathetic voice in me asked what was in it for us people if we proclaimed the Gaian reality. Still with eyes closed, I immediately saw a bird-cage flung open, the birds inside flying free from their confines. This breathtakingly clear vision, which I interpreted as the freeing of souls, occurred so quickly, so spontaneously, that, as with other entheogenic visions I have had, I cannot infer that it was a product of my imagination. And even if we entertain the idea that that all of this experience was somehow the Unconscious, then that does not explain things. Something is going on in the psilocybin state radically different to normal conscious processes. It deserves serious enquiry. If the public and the science community were once interested in Freud's sex-obsessed theories about the Unconscious, then surely the psilocybin visionary experience merits similar attention. After all, some form of creative unconscious activity must be operating through the effect of psilocybin, though on a level far beyond anything construed by Freud.

That the visions were serpentine must be connected with my current interest in the Mayan civilisation, yet that does not detract from their significance. What I saw was absolutely not something my self or ego could have made up. They were beyond what I consider to be the products of the imagination, with an organisational consistency and detailed elaboration that defies such a simple explanation. It must instead mean that serpentine visual motifs are now symbolic to my psyche, since I know of their religious nature, and that the Other, whatever it is, is able to reform the information in my Unconscious into completely new and dramatic visionary representations.

After the visions had ceased, I wept tears of joy, this being the second time that mushroom visions have produced such a rare emotion in me. It is no small thing to cry with joy. One must be moved to do so. That the visionary trance state can do this testifies to the very real power of psilocybin.

After that, it only remained for me to dance like some wild man to the sound of loud music. No mere bachelor of science, I was fast becoming a kind of neo-native of England, a son of Gaia dancing my heart out with joy at my new found relationship to Nature. What it was to be alive! My body charged with superhuman energy, I danced on, with, it has to be said, much consternation from my flatmates.

I saw mini glass-domed spacecraft hovering and pulsating above me, whose futuristic occupants were peering down as though studying me. Then this scene shifted to the inner sanctums of some vast temple - a place where the twin forces of military might and religion fused. There were legion upon aligned legion of religious warriors clad in an ancient otherworldly attire. It was like a stylish scene from a Flash Gordon movie, a blend of earthly and not-so earthly civilisation, modern yet ancient at the same time. The sense of power, of an immanent military strike, was tremendous. Even the details such as the ornate pillars and walls of the temple were perceivable, as well as the embossed intricacies of the purple tunics worn by the amassed warriors. To say at this point that such stylish visionary phenomena are archetypes emerging out of a Jungian-type Collective Unconscious is possibly the least pathetic explanation that I am here able to offer...

It can be reasonably argued that the immense significance attached to the contents of psychedelic consciousness is merely the result of the rational part of the mind (whatever that is) interpreting abnormal neuronal activity in other parts of the brain. In other words, the sensed data are not in actuality loaded with highly significant transcendental meaning at all, rather these are embellished inferences made by the interpreting rational mind as it struggles to account for the unusual patterns of information which are manifesting.

The alternative view of course is that the experiences are significant and full of import. In fact, that is the whole point of using entheogenic plants. If we bear in mind the holistic paradigm which sees the interconnectedness of things as being paramount, then we see that no one thing is isolated or bounded. With the removal of perceived boundaries, each thing eventually connects itself with all else, in a kind of informational ocean of dynamic inter-relations. I assert that psilocybin allows one to access greater fields of meaning when looking at objects because this meaning (sets of relations) was there all along, inherent in the object so perceived. This would explain why objects can take on a distinctly holy aura when perceived psychedelically. One's perception is thus able to access the wealth of latent information inherent in objects.

One can oscillate between these two explanatory frameworks, though if one has experienced psychedelic perception, then one is more likely to opt for the latter scenario, which, it must be said, is a far more positive and optimistic interpretation than is the former view, despite its air of mysticism. Indeed, interpretation is the key word here. The nature of reality depends upon interpretation. Reality is an on-going interpretation by the mind.

At the very beginning of my blessed 'mushroom fever', I refrained from closing my eyes. I found the outside world so delightfully transformed that it was enough to revel in one's visual surroundings. It was on heeding McKenna's advice given in his book 'The Archaic Revival', that I first attempted the neo-shamanic technique with which to experience visions. McKenna had suggested that psilocybin be experienced in quiet darkness with eyes closed. At first, I thought nothing of this recommendation, though I now realise that such advice was given in all seriousness in respect of the mushroom's sacred nature. One immediately assumes that closing ones eyes would reduce the entheogenic experience in some way. Would it not be akin, I had thought, to the primitive half-hearted attempts at meditation I had once tried? Would it not be....boring?

When I first attempted to reach the visionary trance state, I was met with such bizarre sights that I thought that McKenna's advice was simply daft. I saw unexpected images, like green swaying palm trees, very clear yet strangely alien. These visions were also somewhat frightening, because the longer one remained with them, the deeper one plunged into the Unconscious or Gaian Mind as McKenna was calling it. I learned that as the visionary trance progresses, the closer one is drawn to a powerful source of intentful information. Indeed, it is this intentional and communicative quality associated with psilocybin visions that makes the enterprise so formidable.

Despite the fear one encounters in such an essentially undocumented enterprise, one can exercise some control by instantly opening one's eyes. But that is to run scared. The visions demand to be met face on and accepted no matter how painful or intense they are. Indeed, that psilocybin visions appear so alarming in their candour, suggests that one should most definitely be in possession of a 'clean' psyche.

I vividly recall one of my earliest spectacular visionary experiences. It happened early one morning, when I had once more ingested fresh mushrooms on an empty stomach, mushrooms, which incidentally, I had gathered from the new location on the outskirts of North London which was now yielding a bumper crop.

I lay comfortably in bed and waited for the psilocybin to gracefully infuse my psyche. Sometimes, if one is really alert, the first psilocybinetic wave can almost be coldly analysed as it washes over one's consciousness. This is a fantastic moment. At a certain point, you are shifted into an animate, supernormal Gaian reality. With eyes open, one's surroundings appear as if the parts of a God-creature made of living information, and reality begins to seem like a tale being told in the mind of God. Beauty radiates everything that one sets one's eyes on, as though one had suddenly woken up more. Everything appears as if alive and in fluidic connection.

I lay in my bed, arms folded, feeling rather like an Egyptian mummy since my body felt rather heavy and dead compared to my spirit or consciousness which was very much alert. When I eventually closed my eyes, I perceived a kind of dark Underworld populated with jewelled eyes. Then I began to descend deeper into this world, until I came face to face with a dark and threatening being not unlike some gatekeeper of Hades. So clear was this sight, that I was taken aback and immediately opened my eyes. I looked around me for comfort, still afraid of that hellish guardian lurking within my psyche. Then, like a brave warrior, I determined to face this being. After all, I convinced myself, had I not a clean heart, and was my conscience not clear?

When I shut my eyes again, I began to recede away from the eye-populated Underworld. With a feeling of acceleration, I shot backwards and upwards until I emerged up out of a black hole in a vast expanse of snowy white ground. As the dark hole in the ground receded, I noticed, in the new 'above-ground' scenery, a number of cheap and comical symbols of well-being, in particular, highly stylised cartoonish 'thumbs-up' signs. It felt great. More than that, I now felt in the presence of some Gaian-sized benevolent being who was all around me. Then, and I do not say this lightly, it was if I ascended into Heaven itself. Like a small child, I found myself in the presence of sacred beings that defy description. I saw spirits materialise before me, embodying themselves in flesh and blood. I saw God-like beings 'tinkering' with life forms. I felt convinced that I was witnessing 'Creators' at work.

When I finally opened my eyes, I wept. My soul had been moved by these visions. I had been carried to realms of wonder beyond imagination. And this knowledge, this divine power of the mushroom, known by native Mexicans for millennia, was now surfacing in, of all places, London, England. So, where on earth was psychological science in all this? Here was a phenomenon worthy of research, a tool for accessing the deepest depths of the human psyche. A tool even for accessing the divine.

On other occasions, the material of the visions would often be closely associated with items from my memory artfully juxtaposed so as to yield some meaning or other. It was as if the Gaian Other communicated with me in a language I alone would fully understand. For instance, once when I first closed my eyes, I saw with absolute cinematographic clarity, a close-image 'shot' of a hand holding a radio-receiver, and I soon realised, with glee, that this was a cool expression of 'contact'. On another occasion, though this seems almost absurd to me now, I saw, again in high resolution, a kind of native peasant family having a meal. What struck me most was the fact that they soon began clapping, smiling, and rubbing their stomachs vigorously. Perplexed, I opened my eyes, only to realise that the vision was indicating, in a rather humorous way, the fact that it was good that I had consumed mushrooms.

I remember also that I would frequently see visions of ancient doors being opened, ascending stairs, or I would see a multicoloured serpent tail slither behind a slightly opened door. Always, upon reflection, it was clear that the visual images were highly symbolic, that they were a kind of dramatic visual language through which the Other, the Gaian Mind, would communicate its presence.

Alien motifs would also crop up in the visions. I would often see futuristic-looking people clothed in luminescent body-hugging suits getting in and out of advanced machines, or I would see what looked like the inside of advanced alien spacecraft. And another common motif or theme was that of the suspended animation machine, a clinically clean and white plastic-looking structure within which lay humans, usually a woman and a man.

In every case, whether earthly, heavenly, or alien, I can state with absolute conviction that these visions were not made by me. They were always so intense, so spontaneous, and so rich in detail that it was rather the case that I was passively watching a film produced by some being distinct from my self and projected before my consciousness, moreover, a film whose meaning was not always immediately apparent but which required a few seconds of contemplation for the intent to be grasped, akin to the game Charades. And once I had begun to experience such visions, they became perhaps the hallmark effect of psilocybin. During the visionary trance state, one interfaces with the Other. If it sounds incredible then that is only because the psychological power of natural psilocybin is incredible.

Consider this. Feeling superconscious, you marvel at the sheer immanence of naked existence and then, with eyes closed, you are graciously permitted to glimpse an image so sacred as to radiate your soul with spiritual vitality. I saw a regal elephant, adorned in royal garments of red and gold, like some divine messenger fashioned from the imagination of an Indian seer. And surrounding this splendid beast, I perceived a breathtaking ring of fiery mandalas aflame with spiritual power. This dazzling vision, apprehended in the space of a few seconds, arrived fully formed, unbidden, as if out of nowhere, a gift from the Other. So brilliantly ablaze with sacred splendour was this inner sight, that it remains firmly emblazoned upon my store of psilocybin memories. In no way could this have been the automatic product of some insignificant unconscious brain mechanism, rather it issued from the Other, a complex source of intelligence able to construct living communications made of symbol, myth, and visual ideation - of this I am once more certain.

When such visions come, they have the power to energise one's soul, to move one to tears, to make one become like a child in the looming shadow of a divinity. These visions cannot be forced. As much as one longs for them, they often emerge when least expected, though the merest glimmer of the Other, the merest breeze as it passes through one's psyche, is enough, in that eternal moment, to convince one of Nature's numinous dimension. The psilocybin experience is 'where its at', and is the ultimate 'proof' of my psychedelic assertions. You will know of what I speak if it should happen to you.

In pursuing the psilocybin dream one is constantly being waylaid by doubt, with the feeling that one is in actuality chasing a mere chimera conjoured up by essentially worthless regions of one's psyche. If this is the case then Koestler was correct in his anti-psilocybin assertions. Thus there is no Gaian Mind, no Other, and the shamanic mushroom merely represents a rather bizarre feature of the British landscape. The presence of the mushroom's entheogenic alkaloids becomes little more than an initially random genetic expression thrown up by the mechanical systems of Nature, and the fact that these rare substances resemble a fundamental messenger chemical within the human brain is, at heart, a meaningless coincidence. True, Gaia theory might still account for the way in which Nature functions in its totality, yet there will be no special role for we conscious humans. In this scenario, Gaia becomes an unconscious non-sentient massive automatic process with no purpose whatsoever apart from possessing the emergent evolutionary properties of global self regulation and global self preservation.

The hard reductive materialist will no doubt find some comfort in such a bleak scenario. For whilst it may not be too palatable to some in terms of indicating a special role in the cosmos for humanity, at least it is a step towards fully accepting our fate at the hands of such an uncaring Universe devoid of any great intelligence above that of man and dolphin.

To doubt this negative scenario one must have compelling evidence with which to suggest some alternative view. At first blush, the psilocybin experience, or, to be more precise, the natural plant-induced entheogenic experience in general, seems to be just such a joyful indicator of an alternative scenario for it has come to generate the notions of the Gaian Mind or intelligent Other. But the evidence is admittedly elusive and highly personal. In addition, the further one is from such an emotionally charged psychedelic experience or sacred psychedelic vision, the more doubt begins to creep in. This is especially true if one's mood is somewhat down also, since then all of one's perceptions will be somewhat dull in character.

Interestingly, it is thought that depression, especially the long-term variety, might be caused by chemical mechanisms within the brain, so it is hard to disentangle valid arguments levelled against the neo-shamanic point of view from arguments stemming from an unfavourable neurochemical frame of mind....

For myself, my pursuit of this Other through consumption of the mushroom has been like searching for some great creature reputed to be living in the depths of an isolated jungle - none other than the elusive Gaiabeasty itself. Determined to find this huge creature I manage to locate and penetrate the jungle. After much searching I seem to catch a glimpse or two of a wonderfully coloured tail that twitches and then swiftly vanishes from sight before I have time to get a closer and more sure-fire look. It is like being teased along. Look there! Yes, a tail twitching in the bushes! The mythical beast does exist for I have seen it! Admittedly it was only a brief flash of its tail, yet it was an enchanting moment beyond measure and worth every micro-second, so much so that I shall savour the memory forever.......

Time passes and an ever-increasing distance separates one from the experience of the Other. Doubt invariably rears its ugly square and logical head. And so what is one to do but relocate the Other by pushing oneself nearer to it's being? Perhaps then, doubt is absolutely necessary save we lapse into a kind of inactivity. Doubt causes one to look harder and more carefully, and in this way the psilocybin journey comes to be an endless enterprise, for who knows where it will all end...

The uncertainty can become almost unbearable. Consider this; things happen on psilocybin that seem indicative that some intelligent form of communication has taken place, as if one has mind-melded with some primal source of Atlantean information. And yet the experience, if one employs a modicum of scepticism, offers only enough to keep you interested and is ethereal enough to leave room for critical doubt afterwards. You get the feeling that no more can be revealed to you in one go, that you are still like a child whilst in the presence of this Other. Enough 'contact' is made to convince you at the time yet it is all so wild and alienesque that your best friend doubt will soon be invited to pitch in with a critical appraisal of the experience.

There are never any absolutely 'solid' pieces of evidence (like, say, physical rock fossils which are evidence for evolution), but only internal flashes of visionary trance information, dramatic insights, new concepts and ways of perceiving reality, and perhaps, if you are really fortunate, an inordinate amount of external events displaying a strange synchronicity. Although these kinds of thing are intensely compelling, especially at the moment of their occurrence, it is never enough! One wants more proof, more data, more precise communication. Maybe if a letter were to suddenly materialise in front of you from Gaia, the Earth Goddess, informing you that it is all true and that all is well, then you would have your incontrovertible evidence to wave in front of the grim hard-liner sceptics. " Look!" you could cry. " Here is Her signature written in indelible ink for anyone to behold, and certainly not a forgery!"

And yet, upon reflection, is not her signature written in DNA and the marvellous evolutionary process? Is it not written in the wonderful variety of plants and animals that grace her body? All those myriad forms of life that were elicited, drawn out, from the Gaian environmental information matrix do not merely testify to the fantastic process of evolution, rather they represent the environmentally shaped products of a single unitary system - Gaia - that is self-stimulational to the point of generating evermore finer and more complex organisms out of itself, organisms and forms which were latent within the system waiting for the right conditions to facilitate their emergence.

At least one can see this kind of signature of the very earthly Other's intelligent presence if one is in the right frame of mind. But such insights free from traditional modes of awareness are all too rare, and Nature is more likely to appear as an inanimate bunch of separate things, explainable in a purely isolated reductive manner, and to be categorised in a purely utilitarian way. Hence, we are unlikely to ever wonder at why all of life including consciousness was latent and poised to emerge from primal matter given the right environmental conditions. We merely shrug our shoulders (the non-physical mind, whatever it is, somehow manages to shrug the cellular matter of the body) and accept it all as if it were no big deal, whereas, in fact, it is, I assert, a very big deal indeed and worth reflecting upon in depth.

What can one conclude? Either there is some great truth being slowly revealed through shamanic plants, a truth concerning our species and the fate of the Gaian process which is set to fully emerge when we learn how to 'call' loudly enough to invoke it; or this idea is no more than childish wishful thinking, a clutching at straws amidst an accidental mindless Universe that is going nowhere fast. This is the game then, and we are all players. Perhaps the act of taking sides influences the outcome, or is that notion itself part and parcel of the former view?

One thing is certain, and that is that the amazing Gaian scenario ought to be true. We deserve it. We are conscious creatures with a full sense of self and a painful appreciation of our mortality. We can, if we so wish, contemplate our existence and wonder at the marvel of it all. Matter has somehow conspired to bring us forth after a several billion year-old process of relentless evolution. One inconceivably long chain of creatures stretching back into the misty depths of time, one river of mutating cellular organic flesh instilled with the instinct to survive and reproduce. And after such a laborious struggle with its untold suffering, pain, and hardship, we smart big-brained hominids have arrived late upon the scene to enjoy relative peace, prosperity and happiness. Surely this one Universe that we know could not have led to all this by a 'one-off' chance occurrence in which the laws of physics, chemistry, genetics, are such that life, conscious life, had to emerge? Is that really conceivable? A simple set of brute facts to be swallowed and forgotten about?

Yes, the fantastic scenario outlined in this journal ought very much to be true, for our souls, if we so possess such a one, deserve to eventually come to know the fullness of reality, to be set free to soar through creation in the full presence of the Other, as I once saw so clearly in a beautiful psilocybin vision. As in all uncertainties, time will tell. Roll on the future then, for if there is to be some kind of Omega Point towards which the process of reality is racing, when the point, purpose, or truth of the Universe will be completed, computed, and proved, then it is something that awaits hopefully our generation. On the other hand there may be nothing as fanciful as this scenario, and we might be entirely alone in our short individual existences, doomed to wither and die in a pointless Universe itself doomed to run down and die.... Grim thoughts indeed, yet ones that arise, perhaps, from limited neurochemical processes which can be validly pushed aside and improved upon with the aid of Nature's freely available and non-taxable entheogenic plant alkaloids. Who knows?

In the first 6 or so months of my heady mushroom venture, the Serpent, or variations on this symbol, dominated my visions. Always, it was as if I were beholding some great and wise creature whose presence demanded respect and servitude. Once, I remember seeing huge serpentine coils piled up upon one another and somehow turning as if the cogs of some organic machine. Then I found myself gliding toward a flexuous off-white mass which for the life of me I could not comprehend. This rippled white 'stuff' was everywhere, and I was being drawn into it, suffocating almost as it surrounded me.

Suddenly, seeing this mass close up, I realised what it was. It was convoluted brain tissue. Spongey white cortical tissue, fold after fold of it. This was the immense brain of some mythical Serpent related, I thought, to Gaia. I felt that I was seeing a visual representation of the powerful sentience of the Earth itself, the 'Earth brain' as it were.

The scene then changed and I found myself touring a building which was made of both artery-laced flesh and conventional material. Each room seemed to have a particular biological function. It was most bizarre. I appeared to be inside a kind of visceral architecture which was breathing gases, pumping oceans of blood, and digesting vast vats of food.

In fact, such visionary motifs indicating the fusion of man-made architecture with biological structure were repeated a number of times. I often perceived stately homes and palaces - or rather I would be gliding gracefully through such palatial places - and always, the woodwork, like the bannisters, wall panels, or staircases, would reveal themselves to be made of the body of a living creature. To be precise, I perceived that these buildings were woven from the jewelled body of the Serpent. Everything was alive, all was part of one animate, constructing entity. And if I saw human figures in any of these scenes, they too were formed out of the transmutating body of the Serpent. Everything in these scenes had the stamp of the Serpent's hide upon them, in that a kind of pulsating grid of luminescent lines and scaly jewels pervaded every object.

On another occasion, I found myself being compelled upwards, destination unknown, along some dark space. Turning and twisting, my ascent seemed to be endless. Suddenly, my situation was revealed to me. With growing apprehension, I perceived that I was inside a kind of eerie lift shaft. Although I could not see where I was headed, the view downwards disappeared into thick blackness. Evidently this was one infinitely long passage reaching upwards. At some stage I felt as if I had been flipped over. I was at the top (perhaps it was the future). Before me I saw incredibly vast structures that I found difficult to interpret. They were like bloody red biological organs of enormous dimensions, beating, pulsing, straining to grow and metabolise. They were rather sickly to look at, as if I felt the tremendous strain which they appeared to be under. The organs, or whatever they were, began to split open like they were undergoing a kind of sticky, crackling, insectile metamorphosis. The sense of a struggle was disturbingly intense, so much so that my growing disgust stopped a proper evaluation of the subsequent visionary events. The scene simply became too enormously gut-wrenching to view and I ended the vision by opening my eyes.

Once, I even saw the entire Earth split apart, as if a Gaian Serpent, coiled up beneath the Earth's surface, had suddenly burst forth. This vision was apocalyptic, like some multi-million dollar epic movie portraying the end of the world. On the few other occasions in which I divined eschatological events, I would see a colossal spinning vortex, thousands of miles in diameter, into which everything, all matter, all life, all information, was being integrated, a vast spinning spiral mosaic whose centre appeared stationary and around which all else was revolving. In each case, the eschaton, whilst being explosive and all-consuming, was also radiant with sacred power and holy mystery.

I also recall a vision, at the peak of shamanic ecstasy, where I found myself floating in a decreasing spiral around the head of a enormous Serpent, in whose mouth lay a precious stone, gleaming with alluring transcendental light. The eyes of that Serpent! Fierce, and supremely wise, they were fabulous! They shone with power, their defiant gaze illuminating all that passed before them. I felt that I was approaching the Absolute, that the Absolute could only be depicted in such a way. For hours after that vision, whenever I briefly closed my eyes, I would see serpentine jaws opened, thinly curved fangs, pearly white, tipped with a drop of clear venom, a sparkle of light on each. These were symbols of power, faces of the Gaian Other as it is approached by the lone human psyche.

All this of which I speak, is but one perceptual leap away. Beyond mundane consciousness lies a world resplendent with revelation, truth, and the ultimate meaning of life, only touched on by my brief encounters. This realm is calling out to us. The mystery awaits. And to those who quake at such mystery, remember that there is nothing to fear but fear itself.

It is now some 4 weeks or so since I had what can only be described as the worst experience of my life. Since this journal is to be an honest no-barred account of the psilocybin experience, then I must here reveal the horrors which unfortunately occupy the flipside of the mystical experience. Let this be a warning, for I would wish it on no-one to undergo such anguish, terror, and torment.

It is my conviction that these nightmarish trips are no fault but one's own. I was too greedy for Gaian grace, and I paid the price. Although I had come 'close to the edge' on a few occasions before, this time I keeled right over, into the fire, and, in some sense, died a horrible death.

At the time I took the fateful dose, my life situation was, to say the least, awful. Abandoned by a girlfriend, sick of my living arrangements, and completely inactive in any creative sense, these life conditions should have led me to nourish the virtue of patience until I was fit to attempt a return to the sacred realms that I had reached the previous autumn. But, as I say, greed prevailed; I wanted instant spiritual gratification, an immediate caress from the Other.

In my naivety, I believed that a huge dose of psilocybin might wash away my melancholic stupor. How wretchedly wrong I was. To achieve a truly ecstatic experience, one's mind must be finely tuned, cleaned of psychological detritus, as though one's psyche were a pristine radio receiver set to pick up signals from the Other. This is the role of 'set', so repeatedly stressed by the psychedelic pioneers of the 60's. For me however, everything was exactly as it should not have been. My inner world in turmoil, I was psychologically unfit to channel a heavenly experience. Even so, I went ahead, mistakenly believing that I knew better. We live and we learn.

It was late evening, and, unbeknown to me, the time of the full moon. I remember taking two exceedingly large doses because after an hour or so, the first dose had not produced an effect. In retrospect, I should have waited a little longer for that first dose to come into play.

The visions, when they at first came, were poor, rather muddy and unclear. Like an idiot, I tried to force visions to come, but there was just too much 'noise', leaving me with only incoherent bits and pieces, a whirlpool of disjointed imagery. However, I did see one or two 'solid' depictions. There were futuristic-looking children and what appeared to be a long and winding tunnel through which they were travelling. I also saw images of people, plants, and places made out of a black rubber-like material. I interpreted this as meaning that all organic life was connected and part of a universal contortive substance.

Later, when the full impact of the two doses began to take hold, I saw staggeringly complex sights, most of which I am unable to describe. At one stage I saw images of humans where veins and blood-red arteries were visible, rather like those pictures one sometimes sees in biology textbooks. These human forms emerged out of nowhere, taking shape before me as if they were spirits embodying themselves. I also remember passing through regions suggestive of the afterlife. I passed through a myriad flotilla of floating entities of some sort, a realm pervaded with serenity and calm. Then I saw that these drifting entities, or souls as they seemed to be, merged into a fantastically coloured machine-like pattern. This pattern, of enormous magnitude, was reminiscent of an immeasurably big rotating mandala, though the patterns within it were like whirling cogs, as if part of some immense mechanical system. It seemed as if I was witnessing some sort of spiritual recycling, where millions upon millions of departed souls, reduced to an ineffable essence, were being absorbed into another system of being. It was an awesome vision, and it left me at a loss to fully comprehend it.

When, after some time, I opened my eyes, my room had transformed itself into a hideous kaleidoscopic onslaught of colour and I think that this marked the start of my nightmare. How far removed from the divine room I had experienced the previous autumn. It was horrible. I swore and struggled to my feet. The carpet appeared grotesquely cartoonlike, its ugly red colour screaming at my senses. I felt sure then that I had awoken into an awful dream. I tore off my glasses in a futile attempt to escape the horrific visual data invading my visual cortex. But still the nauseatingly lurid hues swam about me, stifling me, choking me almost. I suddenly felt too big, like a giant lumbering around a ridiculous toy house. My clothes seemed preposterous, my reflection in the mirror an absurdity. I was a comical clown, trapped in a maelstrom of chaotic disjointed perceptions. In my mind I heard the word 'Jekyll' over and over.

I was overcome with such fear that I quickly retired to bed and darkness, in the hope that I could escape the sickly 'outsideness'. Worse was to come. Indeed, the ghastly nightmare was only just beginning to gather momentum. As I lay there in bed, my mind was teeming with horrific thoughts. I began to lose all control. In trips before, I had always been able to maintain some semblance of control and will, yet now I was fast becoming a wholly passive creature, being tossed and turned in a malevolent sea of psychological torment.

Gradually, my sense of identity, my ego to give it a formal name, began to perish. Normally such a dissolution of the ego is experienced as an ecstatic release, a harmonious blending of oneself with one's environment in which one merges with the All. Not so on this dreadful night. I was dying, at least in some symbolic kind of way.

For perhaps an hour or more, I felt with absolute certainty that I was in some process of death. The darkness about me was alive with spite, malice, and destructiveness. My surroundings were part of a hostile creature closing in on me for the kill, as though I were a captive explorer in the hands of murderous natives who were almost upon me and who were poised to tear me to pieces. I no longer had full control of my body. I couldn't move properly. Repeatedly, I tried to sit up, but found to my dismay that I could not perform any organised movement.

Thoughts of death. I am dying . No-one to help you here. You have come too far, and now you die. The sound of rushing traffic outside the house leads me to feel as if I have suffered some fatal car crash, that I am lying terminally injured on the road, my body like dead, heavy meat upon a butcher's slab. I am convinced that I have suffered a terrible accident. That thought will not go away.

At one point, I did manage to get up. Clumsily, I staggered about in the dark and somehow found the light switch. Too bright. Still the sick garish swirls of cartoon colour. My pathetic fleshy hominid body is shaking violently, hardly able to stand. I can do nothing, nothing at all. I turn off the light for the lesser horror of the dark. I make out the shape of my chess computer, and realise with abject horror that I really am in a losing game, a game about to terminate.

As my identity continues to crumble, I speak aloud, mumbling words which mean a lot to me, like the name of the woman who had so recently broken away from me. I am grasping for familiar concepts, concepts and ideas which give me my identity, which give me meaning, which keep me alive. I am even reduced to counting aloud and drumming with my hands in order to form a beat, something to focus on, some semblance of order with which to cling to, but this is useless too. Indeed, the oppression around me escalates. I am being annihilated by an external impingement of evil information. Like a dwindling flame, my soul is smothered by a blanket of malevolence.

Once, and only once, the terrifying onslaught subsided. For perhaps ten seconds it ceased, and I gasped with relief. It was just the Other wrestling with me, I thought to myself. Just a test. And then it was back. To the death, to the bitter end. Someone help me. Too late....into the fire....utter annihilation. Who am I? This is beyond terror now. I don't know who I am. Overdose, like heroin....you've had an accident. I am no more than a dying animal. Remorse wells up inside of me. In my mind I ask forgiveness. It does not come. Merciless jaws of death, cold, inky-black, consume me.

I do not recall what transpired next, though I later began to dream. I entered vivid hypnogogic dreamscapes. These were bewildering. I felt like a rural creature in Lord of the Rings or Watership Down. I became caught up in the telling of a tale. I was a character in the story, and as the story progressed it seemed that an act of Creation were unfolding. This experience marked the beginnings of a tremendous vortex in which I was a component. I remember my body making erratic movements as though I had become physically retarded. Strange guttural sounds issued from my throat. I felt slightly 'off-key', or out of balance, like I was not in time with the world, offset somehow.

The bizarre quasi-dream continued, and the feeling that I was caught up inside a spinning creative vortex grew. This vortex was all around me, it was my reality, a cyclonic process rushing around and around. The first birdsong of the morning became integrated into this vortex. The vortex had left the dreamy regions of my psyche and had moved out into the environment. It was like a self-perpetuating song or enchanting melody, gathering momentum as it spun itself out into the world, spinning itself into existence. Every external sound became incorporated into the musical vortex, each marking a new phase of the progressive, accelerating process. Then, in my mind, I heard, absurdly, the voice of some television newsreporter. What exactly he was saying, I do not recall, though he was speaking in a noble manner, as if commentating upon some event of unbelievable consequence (like England winning the World Cup!).

Faster and faster swirled the vortex, and I felt that it should explode at any moment. I was utterly overcome with its supernatural mystery and power. What it all meant I have not the foggiest idea. What I do know is that it ended abruptly. One moment I was part of this spinning psychedelic phenomenon, the next moment I was lying in a rumpled, sweat-stained bed.

I cried a lot that morning. As I showered, I vowed to abandon my psychedelic quest and destroy all my written work. I had been pursuing a phantasm I thought. It was a blind alley, leading to self destruction and isolation. All my blissful experiences over the previous autumn were meaningless, spurious hallucinations, no more than the reflections of a drug-induced fantasy to be filed under the heading of 'psychotic phenomenology'. Clearly, I had a lot of thinking and soul-searching to do.

As the days went by, I recovered and the entire episode can now be put in perspective. Recall Huxley's 'Heaven and Hell' section of 'Doors', in which both faces of the psychedelic experience are laid bare, the good and the hellish. It is clear that psilocybin should not be taken unless one's mind be free of worry, tension, and neurosis, and it is equally clear that one needs to be careful with dosage. One also needs to have a good life situation. One's immediate future should at least appear moderately rosey. When one is in such a positive frame of mind then one will be open to ecstatic revelation.

As proof of these assertions, I recently gave some mushrooms to a female acquaintance, a free-spirited Italian girl who was eager to experience them. As I watched over her on a sweltering June day in the grounds of Richmond Park, my faith was somewhat restored. For about one hour, she was in absolute ecstasy, her eyes shut, yet streaming forth tears of joy at the visions she beheld. All she could report was that "It is all so beautiful!". I know how she felt. I had been to those realms before many months before, and it is where I hope to return in the near future Goddess be willing.

Flouting convention, I had once again consumed wild mushrooms for breakfast and had decided to brave a visit to the British Library whilst still under the mushroom's spell. So, I grabbed my speedy racing bike and set off through London's congested arteries. As I zipped along, my perceptual system on full volume, I became acutely aware of the 'tightness' of the road surface beneath my wheels. It was as if I became the Earth itself and could feel the taught strips of asphalt upon me, like it was a kind of plating or casing. This sensation was most curious. I could literally feel what it was like to be bounded by concrete and tarmac, and that a newly emergent aspect of Gaia was surely set to burst forth like a chicken breaking out of an egg.

I also began to notice the tyres on all the belching cars around me. All that rubber. Endless amounts of the stuff. And whence does this rubber originate, I asked myself? Once again, Gaia provides, rubber being derived from the extruded latex produced by rubber trees, or at least a synthetic counterpart of natural rubber. With 4-dimensional thinking, I realised that natural rubber, wherever it should be used, whether in radial car tyres, condoms, or wellies, is still connected to to the rubber-producing plant, just as books are 4-dimensional extensions of the trees from which their paper is derived. Once more, I got that flash of insight in which I perceived Gaia to be one huge organism re-organising its body into evermore complex arrangements. Even the petrol in these automobiles is derived from once-living organisms - meaning that Gaia can power itself on its past endeavours like a snake consuming its own tail.

Whilst cycling, I also found that by briefly blinking (I do not condone my actions here) a complete 3-dimensional retinal image lingered in my visual cortex for some few seconds. This after image was an almost faithful representation of the reality, and it was strange to see it gradually blend into an equally colourful visionary dreamscape, like a photographic image of the real world transforming itself into a synthesised computer animation.

After what seemed like a marathon bike ride, I reached the British Museum wherein lay the library I sought. Oh no! Crowds of regular people swarming around the entrance. Could I feign normality? People, especially their faces, appear extraordinary under psilocybin, as though one were seeing someone's tribal heritage etched into their face, like those Mauri people of New Zealand whose faces bear symbolic tattoos. Thus, one must constantly struggle not to stare too much at strangers.

A ridiculous-looking crowd of Australian tourists were amassed in front of me, each a clone dressed in khaki shorts, wide brimmed corked hat, long socks, and boots, as though part of a Crocodile Dundee appreciation society. Before entering the British Museum, I had to actually mingle through these odd hominids, and this proved to be a distinctly anthropological few seconds.

At last I was inside the museum, and I made my way to the library. Now, the main reading room of the British Library is a spectacle to even the normal mind, since it has a huge dome reminiscent of the dome in St. Pauls cathedral (though without the ornate paintings and stain-glassed windows of course). It is certainly not like your average local library. As I entered, I almost gasped in amazement. This was no library! This was a mini-cathedral unto itself! The centrally situated book-issuing desk was no less than a raised altar, presided over by a middle-aged African woman whose noble face spoke of royal blood. And the acoustics! I became entranced with the ambient sound. Because of the architecture, one can hear a stream of amplified sounds gently echoing around the dome. I was mesmerised by this acoustical phenomenon. My brain seemed to holistically process the varied sounds so that a kind of flowing music emerged. All vibration became patterned within my brain as one composition. So, I sat down enthralled by the spontaneous music of the British Library - a veritable symphony no less, naturally orchestrated, of which I, with my supercharged perception, was the sole audience.

The jacket of a middle-aged man sitting opposite me grabbed my attention. It was alive. And covered in serpentine patterns. Aha! Once again, the mark of the mushroom is displayed before me. The subtly hued rippling rainbow creases of this man's jacket are the stuff of living art. And I bet he doesn't even know it. He and his garments should be on show in the museum outside the library, I think to myself, after all, the museum is strong on holy relics.

As I sat there, contemplating in profoundly Gaianesque ways, a singular and most dramatic piece of synchronicity occurred, the nature of which still baffles me now. A small balding man had quietly approached me from behind and had placed a book on my desk. He briefly nodded toward the book and then hurriedly left. Now, I had not ordered any book, and it is usually the case that should library staff bring a book to you then it is because you have explicitly ordered it and have given them your seat number. And after the book has been delivered to you, it is customary for a copy of the book order to be handed over also. In short, this staff member had made an error, and given me a book destined for some other reader. And what was this book that had accidentally landed before my bemushroomed self? Of all the countless millions of books stocked by the British Library, which one should mysteriously reach me on such an auspicious occasion? Would you believe that it was none other than a book by Robert Graves, the very man who had first prompted Wasson to investigate the Mexican mushroom!

I gingerly picked up the book. It was entitled 'Five Pens in Hand' and was completely unfamiliar to me. I proceeded to skim through it, my mind racing to comprehend this strange turn of events. I thought that, since it was there in front of me, I ought to read at least some of it, or at least try (reading can be difficult on psilocybin).

I decided to read a transcribed talk he had delivered to university students concerning his famous book 'The White Goddess', and how he had come to write such a book. Graves' recounts a series of remarkable coincidences which surrounded the writing of 'The White Goddess'. These coincidences were so blatant and frequent, says Graves, that he is reminded of a relevant witty story, which, for reasons of good humour, I retell here in its essence:

DEFENDANT - Sir, if you were to pass by a certain house at a particular time of the day and a brick should fall on your head, then what would you call such an event?

JUDGE - I should call it an accident.

DEFENDANT - And what sir would you say if the next day you should be walking past that same house at the same time when another brick fell on you?

JUDGE - Why, I should call that a coincidence.

DEFENDANT - And now sir, if this exact same train of events were to take place the next day also, then what would you call that?

JUDGE - Sir, I should call that a habit.

Having told of the numerous 'habitual' coincidences accompanying his writing of 'The White Goddess', Graves goes on to tell of the fate which met the first two publishers who rejected the finished book. Both died not long after their refusal, one of whom was reputedly found hanging from a tree dressed in women's underwear. Graves wryly states that these two deaths were surely an act of Goddess...

Like the synchronicity involving Koestler, this chance arrival of Graves' book possessed a kind of fractal depth. Not only was there a juxtaposition of meaningfully related events, in each case the very subject of coincidence and synchronicity was involved also. Conclusion? Reality can be damn provocative sometimes.

Seeking supernormal inspiration, I determined to visit the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in Richmond, south of the Thames, and do some perceptual fieldwork there. This glorious plant sanctuary provides a wonderful opportunity to confront some of Gaia's more exotic creations housed safely within Kew's splendid Victorian greenhouses.

Once I had arrived, I discreetly downed several mouthfuls of recently gathered mushrooms, and awaited the dimensional translation of my perception. I was, it must be said, a little apprehensive, especially since I was in a public place.

The effects began to emerge whilst I was walking around Kew's vast and resplendent grounds. As ever, my senses were suddenly open to a surge of external reality as if I had woken up from the sleep of normal consciousness.

I came across a yew tree, upon which a sign declared it to have been worshipped as sacred in pre-Christian times. I carefully plucked one of its numerous reddish berries and begun to almost stagger in awe at the dark seed sitting curiously loosely inside. I marvelled at the natural design, for the seed looked as though it were the softly embedded occupant of a refined space vessel cunningly designed to deliver it to fertile ground where its genetic legacy, or crew, could disembark.

As I continued to stroll through the gardens, I came across some pine trees whose sweet aroma welcomed my alert senses. Then I confronted an altogether different kind of tree whose soothing green-leafed branches announced the full eruption of perceptual clarity that awaited me. I furiously began to scribble the following notes, no small feat since it is well nigh impossible to write during the full ontological throes of the entheogenic experience. Indeed, I had not done so for quite some time. At any rate, I managed the following:

As I sit upon the steps outside the Palm House, an incredible landscape unfolds even here. Spiders scuttle across the seemingly monumental and 'memory-laden' stone steps....yet more lichen and other tenacious expressions of light-driven life. But I must not get waylaid! I must venture within....

What transpired within, remains highly personal and largely incommunicable bound as I am to the limits of the English language, suffice it to say that I was under the uncanny impression that some communication of information occurred between myself and the tropical plantlife. It was as if the dense green slowly moving plant network around me was a place where occult aspects of the Gaian system 'flowed' strongly, a good place to 'tune in' so to speak, to the Ultimate Organism. I must be somewhat coy here, and state that I entertained this idea whilst under the effects of psilocybin, knowing full well that it would appear, in sober retrospect, to be a fantastical and fanciful interpretation. Nonetheless, it really seemed as though the unfamiliar exotic plants were a living manifestation of intelligence, albeit of an almost static kind, somehow conducting a diffuse intentionality of some sort.

The informational communication definitely stemmed from outside my ego, in that I encountered streams of revelatory thought. As ever, I cannot possibly infer that this phenomenon was a production of my Unconscious, for I cannot believe that such diverse, creative, and intelligible information can arise from a personal Unconscious unless of course the Unconscious is itself part of some intelligent presence connected with Gaia.

That a vivid communication of information can flood the psilocybinetic brain is the goal of the neo-shamanic enterprise, for it rests upon this experience of contacting the Other, an organised intelligence of some kind that is not 'us'. If for the sake of argument, we still maintain that this Other is identifiable with the Unconscious, then entheogenic plants demonstrably suggest that the Unconscious is not confined to the individual, but rather that its informational creations are indicative that the Unconscious transcends the dimension of the personal psyche. When you talk to someone, read a book, or see a movie, then you know for sure that the information being accessed could in no way have come from your own psyche, that it was put together from some other source of intentful intelligence. This is exactly the feel of the psilocybin experience, that a transcendental Other has been accessed.

At first, a rush of 'unfinished business' surged up from the depths of my psyche, and for perhaps half an hour I fought these psychological obstacles until I actually managed to resolve the problems. I learned that without a clear, unblocked mind, one cannot attain wisdom and knowledge. One's psyche must be cleaned of neurotic detritus and of all the worries and petty concerns which normally vie for our attention. And the only way to do this psychical cleaning is to engage in a prolonged period of active mentation, a process which the mushroom seems to aid.

Once my mind was free of distraction, I begun to study the plant forms in the Palm House. I cannot begin to convey the holy beauty pervading these dynamic organisms, these muscular green organs of Gaia, standing around me like benign light-munching triffids. I oscillated between an instinctual fear of being 'noticed' by the plants, as though I were amidst a den of vipers (many of the plant species were poisonous) and that they knew that I knew....and a feeling of reverence for them. It was certainly the greatest display of vital energy I have ever had the good fortune of apprehending; a rich, diverse, living testament to naturally refined biomolecular engineering, far more impressive than any man-made creation. It is as if psilocybin temporarily lifts a veil and we see the miracles of life in all their infinite glory, a glory normally hidden to us perhaps because of our predominately utilitarian approach to Nature.

As for the unusually elaborate tropical flowers in bloom, well...I have to admit that observing them at close range was nothing short of perceptual intercourse, a kind of abstract intellectual sex with plants to the point of unabashed rudeness. Indeed, I had to constantly check that my intimate perceptual encounters with these plant's sexual organs were going on unseen lest I be thrown out of the Palm House for botanical perversion.

I perceived the complex coloured intricacies of design in the various flowers (particularly the various species of Hibiscus) with such depth and with such clarity that it was as if my mind were penetrating a higher dimension of the plant, as if my soul were being drawn into and enveloped by the beauty that the flowers seem to embody. The closer I dared to look, the more alluring the flowers became, revealing a wealth of living, growing detail that appeared fractally infinite.

The flowers seemed to represent great intellectual or mathematical statements that, through psilocybin, I could apprehend and blend with, as if I were partaking in a higher perfected language that proceeded without the slightest hindrance or ambiguity. The sensation of being drawn into these floral designs through a resonance between the subtleties of design and my perceptions thereof, was overwhelming to the point of ecstasy.

Forcibly freeing myself from the cunning grasp of the flowers, I next came across a decidedly unusual species of plant. What do I mean unusual? It was more like something futuristic, as though its particular genetic code were immeasurably sophisticated compared with other plants. At first I was convinced that it must have been artificial. Its many protruding branches all possessed a perfect new leaf unfurling at the very tip, and these appeared to be identical....and plastic. So, I thought, I had been taken in like a fool. This plant was obviously a latest example of those appalling pseudo-plants one unfortunately finds dotted about banks and shopping centres.

Adopting the persona of Sir David Attenborough, I carefully grasped a leaf and made a minuscule incision, an action defendable on the grounds of empirical enquiry and....well, psychedelic suspicion. Immediately, thick white latex sap began to ooze out of the cut, and I realised with relief that it was the presence of latex infused throughout this astonishing (rubber) plant which was causing the plastic look of the leaves.

Here then was the origin of rubber itself. I suddenly began to conceive of rubber tree plantations as being contemporary biotechnological organs of Gaia, their exudation of rubber being indispensable for our technology. And as the plaque in front of one of the Palm House's other rubber trees pointed out, it is also the case that synthetic rubber cannot match the qualities of natural rubber. Indeed, I later discovered that scientists have been unable to exactly synthesise natural rubber. Whatsmore, such a unique natural substance (this time a combination of carbon and hydrogen in the ratio C₅H₈) defies a satisfactory explanation for its fortuitous existence in the rubber tree. For to argue that it serves to seal up wounds on the tree is to ignore the fact that all trees possess protection in the form of bark. And even if the function of latex was protection, it does not explain why rubber molecules should be present within it. Rubber is simply a unique and invaluable expression of Nature, embodying a remarkable set of technologically-useful material qualities found nowhere else in the natural world.

I stood before the rubber tree as if I were before some holy output device for Nature's inherent information processing intelligence. I wondered at the complex genetic sequences of DNA which must lie buried within each and every cell of the rubber tree in order that it forge such a rare compound impossible to manufacture in the lab. And yet I realised that most of us are unlikely to conceive of items such as condoms as being the handy population-restricting extensions of the rubber tree. Nor are we likely to marvel at its extended presence in the motor industry. With the enhanced perception granted through the mushroom, the Plant Kingdom, although normally operating behind the scenes, suddenly loomed up before me as if it were an alienesque organism symbiotically entwined within our mammalian species and our technology.

I met some coffee plants also. A plaque declared the coffee plant to be one of the world's most important trade items (second only to oil in fact). It also noted the reason why i.e. that coffee beans contain the alkaloid drug caffeine, a stimulant of the human central nervous system. This obvious fact became a revelation to me as I studied the plant itself. Here was an organism, akin to the psilocybin mushroom already working miracles in my brain, also able to directly improve the function of my nervous system through a simple act of ingestion. I saw the process holistically. We natural entities, myself and psychoactive plants, were not in fact separate or rigidly bounded at all. There was continual chemical communication between organisms, a dynamic interplay in which substances mingle, flow, and interchange. Once again, I had that brief 'Gaian flash', in which I perceived the biosphere to be one being, constantly stimulating itself into more and more integrated patterns of activity. Language-like combinations of elements like carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen were being continuously churned up and organised over immensely long periods of time, as if Gaia were gradually writing itself into existence.

I reached out and plucked a handful of beans from one of the nearest coffee plants. After all, why go looking for a coffee shop when fresh beans were on offer? Since the plaque stated that coffee beans were originally eaten raw in the form of a paste, I readily popped a few of the red beans into my mouth. Knowing that the lethal dose of caffeine in humans is in excess of 200 cups of coffee, I ate about 8 of the surprisingly tasty beans without worry. I then imagined my body slowly absorbing the caffeine, and the subtle stimulation the coffee plant would then be granting me. Along with the mushrooms I'd consumed, I was partaking in an endless dance of innervating Gaian alchemy.

Later, a moment came as I sat in hyper-contemplation of life's Mystery, when I felt a perfect state of being wash over me. It was, I believe, a brief flash of enlightenment, a blissful state of mind when everything, absolutely everything, was as it should be. My psyche was charged with superconsciousness, as glistening crystalline thoughts flowed into one another with mathematical precision and clarity.

I sat gazing at a small shallow pool of water at my feet, in which I discerned a perfect reflection of the blue sky beyond the glass roof of the Palm House above me. As I considered this perfect and infinitely deep reflection, I thought it remarkable that light could be so reflected without loss of information. Then, a drop of water fell into the shallow pool from above, having originally condensed from the periodic fine sprays of water that serve to keep the greenhouse humid. This single drop of water temporarily shattered the perfect reflection of light, and instantly there appeared a series of expanding circular ripples that flowed out from the minute splashes. These ripples flowed into one another causing a series of unique interference waves which were eventually absorbed by the pool as equilibrium was restored. Once more the water was still, the disruption lasting no more than a second. Yet the psilocybin allowed me to experience the process as being drawn out in time, as if the grain and depth of my perception had increased, providing me with more 'room' to perceive. As the water stilled, the reflected light resolved itself into a coherent whole, but just as I perceived this holistic reflection, another drop of water fell creating another interference pattern. Again the rings were absorbed and again the perfect reflection emerged.

I sat mesmerised by this process, particularly at the point where the whole image resolved itself. I felt convinced that here, at work, was some important universal principle or process. This impression was very strong, though it was an intuitive feeling, as though the idea of interference waves temporarily veiling a perfect reflection was such a powerful metaphor symbolising life and our quest for understanding, that it would only be fully graspable at a much later time.

Each time the pool stilled itself, an holistic pattern of reflection seemed to 'click' into being at a precise moment, rather akin to those dot pictures which appear, on first sight, to be merely random disconnected dots, but which suddenly emerge as a coherent depiction of some object when the pattern is discerned. As the holistic pattern of reflected light coalesced again and again, I felt an ecstatic sensation of wholeness as if I too were merging with the whole picture....As interference melted away, all was revealed as connected, and this process left me awash with awe and exultation.

It was also apparent that the small reflective pool was itself formed from the drops of water, these same drops ultimately interfering with the reflective process. A self reinforcing paradox then, like some cosmic dance of information that expressed the riddle of existence.... or was it all some imaginative trick of my intoxicated mind?

My conclusion on this matter, based upon similar experiences, is that the mushroom allows one to listen to Nature as if she were a powerful teacher, a notion commonly held by native American peoples. Although such a belief might appear foolish and primitive, I have come to suspect that it contains some profound wisdom and insight that predates our modern Gaia theory and further, that psilocybin fungi can be used to help us recover this wisdom.

Time passes, psilocybin is metabolised into inactive by-products, and one finds oneself back in the profane world of traffic, vat-laced gas bills, and ubiquitous advertisements selling the consumer dream. The psilocybin mushroom, temporarily at least, launches one into realms of experience both sublime and illuminating, and many would claim that the knowledge acquired in the entheogenic state of mind provides a valuable insight into the human condition with respect to our relationship to the Earth and the rest of Nature. Such a neo-shamanic option remains to be explored.

 Simon@biocom.demon.co.uk