Wasson's Life story sits like a glowing spiritual ember in the tinder-dry secularity of America's 50's culture. The USA, caught up in a burgeoning but banal materialistic dream, could not fail but be ignited by such a soul-stirring otherworldly tale. Alongside Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception written a few years earlier which detailed the entheogenic effects of mescaline, both accounts were seminal in terms of their slow-fuse cultural impact. Each captured the brimming psychedelic Zeitgeist that was about to erupt upon the world's stage, Wasson and Huxley emerging as the founders of a cultural movement that would eventually blossom into the 'psychedelic sixties', with its colourful burst of artistic creativity, mind expansion, and inspired lunacy.
However, psilocybin, although initially sparking the psychedelic fire, soon left the scene of the divine crime, once more to fade underground from whence it mysteriously originated. By the mid-sixties, its synthetic rival d-Lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD/acid, a substance whose structure and psychoactivity are distinct from psilocybin, had taken over as the prime mover, demonstrating the popular appeal of laboratory produced pills and tabs.
Easily manufactured, packaged, sold, and swallowed, pills are what the public come to expect, and even demand, in a technological consumer age, and therefore mass-produced LSD was quick to fill the ever-growing market for psychedelics. More significantly, the synthesis of substances like LSD allowed the power of production to lie in our hands and not the Earth's. In this way, the natural and 'earthy' shamanic aspect of entheogenic species was lost. Which is to say that the potential of entheogenic plants and fungi to forge an informative relationship between our species and Nature was not fully realised. Thus from the discerning vantage point astride the third millennium, we can look back to the dreams and quixotic idealism of the 1960's and understand that without an appreciation for holistic theories about the planet (like Gaia theory for instance - a popular hypothesis generated by scientist James Lovelock which views the Earth's biosphere as a single living system) and without an insight into the history of psychedelic shamanism, a new world vision was unlikely to take a firm cultural hold.
What this speculation boils down to is the concept of naturalness and the intimation that Nature is smarter than we. In particular, I would argue that the realisation that entheogenic plants and fungi are part of the ecosystem inevitably effects the significance and import of the entheogenic experience. Which means that the concept of naturalness acts as an important context for the entheogenic experience should that experience derive from a natural plant or fungus.
It was precisely this natural Gaian context that was sorely lacking in the early wave of popular interest in psychedelics. For without acknowledging the botanical environment as the original supply line for the entheogenic agents which started the psychedelic sixties rolling, the acid gurus, despite their vocal enthusiasm for a positive psychedelic world revolution, were still stuck with themselves, caught in a sort of anthropocentric loop and thereby isolated from an intimate union with the natural homeostatic systems of the Earth. As I eventually hope to show, the Gaian connection to the natural entheogenic experience represents the newest phase of psychedelic history, an interesting turn of events full of profound implications for our species.
Unsurprisingly then, although the psychedelic pioneers of the early 60's were originally turned on by the psilocybin experience - most notably the members of Harvard's psychology faculty - they soon became completely embroiled in acid and the media, and never really picked up upon the Gaian shamanic pulse of the mushroom. Perhaps this is why Wasson remained highly aloof of the whole hippy counter-culture. He quietly pursued his academic research into ancient mushroom use, whilst other researchers like R.E.Schultes continued to meticulously document visionary plant use among fast dwindling native peoples. Indeed, the academic work of both these scholars remain as invaluable sources for our knowledge of native psychedelic shamanism.
Before recounting Harvard's brief scientific flirtation with psilocybin, I should like to alert the reader to a rather sinister twist to the events which led up to the isolation and naming of psilocybin in 1958. In particular, one of Wasson's trips to Mexico unfortunately carried a counter-current to psilocybin's holy mystique. Just when you thought it was safe to proclaim a spiritual renaissance of sorts, who should arrive on the scene but the CIA. These disturbing mischief-makers who so profane history with their presence, will seemingly do anything to maintain a grim state of affairs in which the dour 'we was miserable in our day' archetype is nourished.
In his Search for the Manchurian Candidate, a book describing the CIA's involvement with drugs, John Marks tells us of the CIA's covert involvement with our hero Wasson. In its relentless and arguably psychotic search for evermore effective weaponry, the CIA had, by the 50's, initiated a massive $25 million dollar long-term program called 'MKULTRA'. True to its suspicious sounding name, project MKULTRA concerned itself with finding chemical and biological materials for use in 'mind-kontrol' and other psychological unpleasantries. Despite the morally-questionable nature of such an unsavoury federal project, its dogmatic pursuit meant that it was soon to pick up upon rumours of sacred Mexican mushrooms.
After learning of Wasson's 1955 experiences with the mushroom, an unscrupulous chemist named James Moore immediately began to work undercover for the conspirational agency. Presumably dollars changed hands surreptitiously. At any rate, in 1956 Moore craftily wrote to Wasson informing him that he knew of a foundation willing to finance another Mexican trip in order that he and Wasson bring back some of the legendary mushrooms. Moore innocently claimed that, as a chemist, he simply wanted to study the chemical structure of the mushroom's active constituents. The foundation was the CIA-backed Geschwickter Fund for Medical Research and they were offering a $2000 grant. Would Wasson be interested?
Naturally he was, and so it came to pass that the CIA's secret quest for the sacred mushroom became Subproject 58 of the MKULTRA program, possibly representing the most crass approach to psilocybin to date. It was as if the CIA were throwing stones at angels.
It is not with regret to learn that the double-dealing Moore was out of his depth in Mexico and loathed the entire episode. Wasson later recalled that Moore had absolutely no empathy for what was going on. Whereas Wasson was sensitive to the customs of the native Mexican Indians and respectful of their cultural beliefs about the mushroom, Moore was there merely as a CIA pawn.
Once again, all those who were in Wasson's party took part in a mushroom ceremony hosted by the shaman Maria Sabina, though it was Moore alone who had a bad experience. Despite this, Moore was still able to bring back some of the fungi to the United States in the hope of isolating the active ingredient. However, he was thankfully beaten in his pharmaceutical pursuit by the infinitely more powerful GIA, the Gaian Intelligence Agency, one of whose secret unknowing members was Roger Heim, the eminent French mycologist and co-worker of Wasson, who managed to grow a supply of the mushroom from spore prints that he had taken in Mexico. He sent his newly cultivated samples to Albert Hofmann of Sandoz laboratories in Switzerland, and it was Hofmann, a highly distinguished chemist who had originally synthesised LSD, who, in 1958, first managed to isolate and thence name the hallucinogenic alkaloid within the mushroom. Psilocybin was thus officially born, a name devoid of the weaponry connotations the CIA would invariably have conferred upon the substance had they successfully isolated and named it first.
Having failed in his allotted task, Moore was not terminated but later applied directly to Sandoz for a supply of psilocybin, as the CIA still maintained their clumsy interest in using this compound as an agent for mind-control. Indeed, the CIA soon began to covertly test psilocybin on unsuspecting American prisoners, not the best of subjects when it comes to being in possession of a stable healthy psyche. As the prisoners reported some rather bizarre experiences it became clear that psilocybin could not enter the CIA's arsenal - it was just too darn unpredictable. Thankfully, the CIA then turned their belligerent attention elsewhere.
After Hofmann had begun to synthesise psilocybin from extracts of the mushroom, the door was open for properly conducted scientific investigation to commence. Apart from the rather dismal CIA attempt, it was 1960 which marked the beginning of the brief affair between the scientist and the mushroom. This occurred at no less a place than the psychology department of Harvard University, that bastion of academic respectability.
What happens when the professional psychologist comes up against the phenomenal power of psilocybin? One of two things generally result. They either experience the substance personally and divine its profound implications for humanity in terms of knowledge acquisition, psychotherapy, self-knowledge, and personal growth, or they refuse to take it and instead interpret psychotomimetic (literally psychosis-mimicking) symptoms in those who do take it. A rather sharp division therefore occurs, as it did at Harvard. On the one side stood the infamous and lanky figure of Dr. Timothy Leary heading a scholarly band of psychedelic intronauts, whilst on the other side stood the unimpressed 'establishment' who only tolerated systematic experimentation for a few years.
If one pinpoints Leary as the man-of-the-moment at the start of that turbulent decade, able to seize the media and galvanise the American youth into rebellion, then we can zoom in on the actual experience that launched his prolific psychedelic career. It was, of course, a direct mushroom experience.
For 40 year-old Leary it began, as ever, in Mexico. Already an established and respected psychologist at Harvard, he spent the summer of 1960 with some friends at the Mexican resort town of Cuernavaca. During his stay an anthropologist associate at the University of Mexico, who had come across references to sacred mushrooms whilst studying the Aztecs, suggested that Leary try some.
At noon one Saturday Leary gulped down six obnoxious-tasting local Mexican brand mushrooms which had been obtained with much more ease than those consumed by Wasson five years earlier. Through this strange lunch, Leary's fate was effectively sealed for, as he later wrote in his autobiography, whilst the psilocybin coursed its way through his 'virgin' Irish bloodstream he enjoyed the most awe-inspiring religious experience of his life.
Leary was convinced that in four hours under the influence of psilocybin he had learned more about the mind and the brain than in the fifteen years that he'd been a professional psychologist. This gives good measure to the strength and psychological impact of his first psilocybinetic encounter. Under the right conditions the mushroom is able to restructure one's culturally determined concepts about reality, and proffer an entirely different set of beliefs with which to navigate oneself through life.
Being a keen and responsive practitioner of psychological science alert to new fields of discovery, Leary immediately requested funds in order that he could set up a research program into psilocybin. In no time at all the Harvard Psilocybin Project was initiated, commencing at the end of 1960 when a handy batch of psilocybin arrived from Sandoz. Already the natural mushroom had been replaced with jars of precisely-dosed pills, thereby subtly altering the context of the psilocybin experience. How different might the implications of psilocybin have been at Harvard had the scientists had to go out into the wilds in order to pick their research material by hand....
One of the most impressive projects undertaken was the systematic study of 175 subjects given psilocybin, where the experimental emphasis was upon providing a relaxed and supportive setting. This important notion of set and setting - the subject's mental and physical environment prior to taking the psilocybin - can never be stressed enough as they are crucial factors determining the subsequent psychedelic experience. Leary and his co-workers had already established these facts amongst themselves prior to their official experimentation and they were at pains to point out how set and setting played a key role in whether the psilocybin experience proved well or ill. It is almost certain that had someone without Leary's temperament and intimate knowledge of psilocybin organised the experiments instead, then more negative experiences would have been reported.
As it was, most of the subjects reported a pleasant or ecstatic experience, that the psilocybin experience had changed their lives for the better. No psychological casualties were reported even though more moderate doses had been used than in previous experimentation. There was no evidence for psychological or physical addiction, although 90% wished to repeat the experience. No hangovers were reported and presumably no-one awoke the morning after to rooms strewn with empty bottles and cans. In a six-month follow-up study none of the subjects developed enduring psychotic or neurotic symptoms. The experiment was a success in demonstrating that under favourable conditions, ordinary people were able to have an inwardly enriching experience with psilocybin. Things on the psychedelic front were looking good. Gaia's special mushroom, albeit in pill form, was showing promise.
These findings were eclipsed however by the legendary Good Friday experiment of 1962, surely one of the most radical and far-reaching psychological studies ever undertaken. In their general approach to research and the collection of data, psychologists, particularly up until the fifties and sixties, had always had a rather special affinity for rats, more often than not placing them in specially constructed boxes where behavioural phenomena like classical conditioning (you remember Pavlov's dog salivating to the sound of a bell.....) can readily be observed. Go into any academic psychology department and you will likely find and smell a rat or three, so beloved are these furry creatures to the ardent psychologist. They are cheap, easily maintained, and behave in a remarkably reliable way (like small machines) in their reactions to the manipulating advances of experimental psychologists. Explanations about human behaviour can then be extrapolated (so they say) from the results of these rattish experiments on the reasonable but limited assumption that all mammalian brains run on similar principles.
Such 'ratomorphism' as the writer and philosopher Arthur Koestler cynically termed it, used to dominate psychological science, and topics like mind and consciousness were banished from the scientific arena like some forbidden fruit unfit for empirical consumption. Even though, of course, the science of psychology is itself mediated through the stuff of consciousness. Today things are fortunately beginning to change and a kind of philosophical psychological approach to mind and consciousness is emerging, a topic I will later explore in much detail.
Back in 1962 the Good Friday psilocybin experiment was as far removed from rats as is possible, stretching empirical science to its limits. It was the type of experiment that our controversial psilocybin demanded and its results remain significant.
A psychology student named Walter Pahnke, working for his PhD, arranged the experiment with the help of Leary and other members of the Harvard Psilocybin Project. It was an attempt to capture the psilocybin-induced mystical experience in quantitative measures via questionnaires. Although such questionnaire studies fall foul of a number of methodological criticisms, it is the only viable scientific approach to measuring the reported subjective effects of drugs. It is not enough for someone to claim that psilocybin is a wonderful substance that elicits transcendental feelings of awe. Rather one must obtain objective measures if one wants to bring entheogens under the analytical eye of science. If, that is, you are scientist who believes science offers the best approach to psilocybin - a moot point to be sure. If you've tried the stuff yourself and you've travelled to those divine realms, then you are one who knows. Leary knew, as did the other members of the project, but though they had tasted superconsciousness they were still caught in the unenviable position of trying to document the psilocybin experience with the relatively cumbersome tools provided by the science of that era. Understandably perhaps, Leary was soon to don a kaftan, abandon academia and hijack the media instead. Yet the Good Friday experiment, or 'miracle at Marsh Chapel' as it became known, still stands out as the classic psychology experiment of that pre-LSD period.
Five rooms in the basement of Boston University chapel were reserved for Pahnke and the psilocybin project team. Twenty subjects, all of whom were theology students and therefore at home in the chapel building, took part in the study which employed a double-blind methodological approach. This meant that only half of them received psilocybin whilst the other half received a mildly psychoactive placebo. No-one knew who got what, not even the experimenters, though it soon became clear who had been given the mushroom pills.
Leary recalls that the ten psilocybin subjects began to act rather unconventionally. Some began to wander around the chapel murmuring prayer. One lay on the floor, some lounged on benches, whilst another began playing strange music on the chapel organ. The most intense effects however, were occurring in the depths of the subjects' psyches, and analysis of the subsequent 147-item psychological questionnaires completed by the subjects soon revealed what had taken place therein.
The questionnaires were designed to probe various aspects of the induced mystical experience. Parts of the subjects' reports were then rated by naive markers who had to compare this psilocybin phenomenology (phenomenology is the study of direct conscious experience) with mystical phenomenology taken from various religious scriptures, without knowing which was which.
Incredibly, the results showed that the psilocybin group had mystical religious experiences indistinguishable from those reported in religious literature. This was a decidedly controversial finding. A naturally occurring substance, although in pill form thanks to Sandoz, had been shown to be capable of generating a full-blown mystical experience within the religiously ripe minds of theology students. The implications were enormous, and, as we shall see, many a storm was to brew over the validity of chemically-induced religious mysticism. Traditionally cherished beliefs about mystical enlightenment and the religious impulse were being threatened by, of all things, a drug, and this was guaranteed to cause uproar and dissent amongst those members of the priestly elite who serve to police communion with the divine.
Despite the beginnings of heated controversy, Pahnke's thesis on psilocybin was uneasily approved, though he was not allowed to continue his line of work and his requests for government funds were denied. Something was obviously amiss. The nature of psilocybin - this wild alchemical product of Nature - was becoming a threat to long established power structures both in academia and in the realm of traditional religious beliefs about divine communion. Psilocybin's inherent power, dormant for so long, was once more on the loose, this time in the very heart of the Western establishment, an unstoppable wave of inspiration breaking over the souls of all those who willingly stood in it's way.
In one sense, it was as if the Good Friday study could be viewed as the last experiment that the scientist keen on ascertaining the nature of consciousness and reality needed to perform. The message seemed clear. Humanity could transcend its secular level of being and raise itself to a new order, an idealistic dream shared by many early Western psychedelic explorers. Psilocybin could be carefully used as a source of knowledge and wisdom, allowing people glimpses of a transcendental reality lying a mere perceptual step away.
As it was, the lofty psychedelic dream shared by so many at the time never quite materialised, although I would argue that this was mainly due to the lack of an explanatory framework for the psilocybin experience, and not because the idealism of the dream was untenable. Indeed, at this early stage in psychedelic research, almost nothing was known of psilocybin's mechanism of action, and, apart from Jung's notion of the Collective Unconscious, there were little in the way of speculative psychological theories able to capture the full import and impact of the psilocybin experience in a non-reductive way. In a real sense, language let the scientists down, or at least the lack of descriptive terminology and lack of conceptual sophistication meant that psychedelic phenomenology remained an abstruse anomaly. And such anomalies, even if they might contain the essence of some new ways of understanding the nature of reality, are more often than not deliberately buried out of sight, or at least the conceptually uncomfortable data are all too easily lost somewhere at the back of the scientific community's filing cabinet. Such a fate did indeed meet the psychedelic experience, and by the late 60's almost all of the world's known psychedelic substances had been deemed a dangerous social threat and were therefore promptly illegalised. Scientific research into psychedelics was halted, and almost all personal psychedelic experimentation became a criminal offence. However, this was not a big and final full-stop. As we shall see later, the cessation of psilocybin research was more of a comma.
As further evidence of psilocybin's vivid effect upon those fortunate theology students, and so that I can build support for my enthusiastic contention that the psilocybin mushroom represents a Goddess-send medicinal soul-food with which to reconceive the nature of reality, I can recount the follow-up study of nineteen of the twenty original subjects of the Good Friday experiment. This was undertaken by Rick Doblin, president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, in the late 1980's when, by this time, many of the subjects were practising Reverends.
Doblin administered the same questionnaire used in the original experiment and found that there was still a significant difference between the two groups as to the reported effects of the experience. After 25 years, the psilocybin group's characterisation of their mystical experiences had actually strengthened (or matured). Also, whereas the control subjects who had received the placebo could barely remember the day in question, the psilocybin group still had clear memories of that eventful day. For instance, Reverend K.B. remembered:
"It left me with a completely unquestioned certainty that there is an environment bigger than I am conscious of. I have my own interpretation of what that is, but it went from a theoretical proposition to an experiential one."
Reverend Y.M. recalled:
"I closed my eyes and the visuals were back.....it was as if I was in an ocean of bands, streams of colour, streaming past me. The colours were brilliant and I could swim down any one of these colours."
More from Reverend K.B. who is more specific:
"....with my eyes closed I had an unusually vivid scene of the procession (from the Passion of Christ). A scene quite apart from any imagining or anything on my part.....kind of like watching a movie or something, it was apart from me but very vivid."
And further:
"I've remained convinced that my ability to perceive things was artificially changed, but the perceptions I had were as real as anything else."
That this Reverend viewed psilocybin as an artificial catalyst is to be forgiven. Careful consideration reveals that psilocybin is a legitimate natural product of Nature; an unusual piece of Gaian fabric to be sure but no more artificial than the oxygen we breathe. Rarer perhaps, and not absolutely essential, yet certainly not artificial.
The Reverend's description of the visionary experience as a kind of movie issuing from somewhere apart from his sense of self is one of psilocybin's hallmark effects and could not be put more clearly. This is the overwhelming impression gained whilst in the psilocybinetic trance-like visionary state that arises with eyes closed. One is confronted with a powerful communicatory flow of organised symbolic information that compels one to infer an intelligent presence of some kind as the issuer of the information. Although after such a profound experience one might question the grounds for inferring such an 'Other', during the visionary trance itself one might well be utterly overwhelmed by a sense of intentional communication, leaving no room for doubt.
In a way, these animated superdreamscapes, charged as they are with almost blinding metaphorical imagery, are akin to those vivid everynight dreams we occasionally experience and which leave us momentarily in awe as we recall them before they invariably fade away. However, during psilocybin-induced visions one is still very much conscious - more conscious and attentive in fact than normal - so that the visionary scenes are not forgotten, or at least their overall message, impact and urgency are not forgotten, though words usually fail to fully convey such an experience.
Remarking upon the sense of eternity that often accompanies the effects of psilocybin, Reverend S.J. remembers:
"....all of a sudden I felt sort of drawn out into infinity....I felt that I was caught up in the vastness of creation....I did experience that ....classic kind of blending....the main thing about it was a sense of timelessness."
Again, these quite simple reminiscences show that psilocybin carries epistemological value as it seems to elicit a special kind of knowledge not ordinarily available but which is of immeasurable value to us in terms of spirit and soul. Even the most dogged sceptic must concede that, at the very least, psilocybin taps deep realms of the Unconscious or imagination that reveal a hitherto unknown creative potential.
My bold claim is that an organised source of intelligence and wisdom is indeed accessed through the mushroom. Whether this source issues from some non-personal Unconscious, that is, that deep within the psyche lie vast realms of highly organised fields of information that are 'released' into personal consciousness during the psychedelic state, or whether this information arises from a communicating sentient presence - the numinous Other as we can call it - is open to question, although both suggestions might be linked in some way.
For the time being, whatever we suspect that it is that underlies the visionary state, we can see that the psilocybin experience reveals itself as a compelling area of study since consciousness and perceived reality, the very ground of our lives, have the potential to exfoliate like some new exotic flower. Our everyday awareness is seen to be constrained and bounded, as if we were sub-routine prisoners in some vast computation that surges ever onward. Psilocybin temporarily dissolves these constraints, conferring upon the experiencer an increased set of degrees of cognitive freedom, facilitating new directions of thought that are not normally available. The inner world becomes subject to pictographic myth, whilst the outer world reveals itself as the living structure of some divine being, even the most mundane objects suddenly acquiring a holy aura. This is the latent promise of the mushroom; to reveal psychological realms that can enrich our collective existence as living, breathing hominid creatures bound up within the Gaian system. Natural psychedelic agents like the psilocybin mushroom enable a particular type of knowledge to come to an individual, a type of knowledge that science and philosophy can barely approach, but which nonetheless bears heavily upon our most inner nature.
The Good Friday experiment took science as close as it is likely to get to mysticism apart from analysing the actual brain during the mystical state. Yet even this latter hi-tech approach will dodge the main issue which is the experience itself and what it tells us about consciousness and reality. One has a choice. One can wander off and try and map the psilocybinetic brain to the n'th degree or one can simply plunge into a direct confrontational experience. The mushroomic miracle at Marsh Chapel indicates the latter endeavour as being the most attractive, rewarding, and adventurous option befitting the human spirit. At least to start with....
Objectivity forces me to disclose a mild downside to the aforementioned study. The long-term follow-up showed that eight of the ten psilocybin subjects reported some negative aspects to their experiences in the way of 'psychological struggles' . Indeed, such struggles are somewhat inevitable if one has engaged with the psychedelic experience. One sees oneself clearly without the superficial trappings of a contrived image and personality. Psilocybin also seems to force one to confront bad habits and neuroses. Nothing remains hidden to the mushroom and this will often lead to a psychological 'shake-up' to persons hitherto blind to self-knowledge. After all, the tenet 'know thyself' is bound up in some way with all spiritual disciplines, suggesting that one must come fully to terms with oneself before one can begin to inwardly develop one's state of consciousness. Psilocybin and other entheogens would seem to highlight this timeless truism to such an extent that further psychedelic experimentation will prove to be of negative value unless one has dealt adequately with one's state of self-knowledge.
As to the other negative and unpublicised fact about the experiment, it transpires that one of the psilocybin subjects had to have a shot of chlorpromazine (an anti-psychosis drug) to combat some unwelcome symptoms. It seems that the student took the words to a sermon about the Christian need to spread the word rather too literally, a struggle ensuing as he tried to leave the chapel. I would point out that such impractical messianic zeal can be countered by administering some self-control rather than chlorpromazine, though we must bear in mind that these theology students were essentially naive to psilocybin's psychological effect.
At the end of his follow-up study, Doblin concluded that:
"....all of the psilocybin subjects still considered that their original experiences contained genuinely mystical elements and that psilocybin had made a uniquely valuable contribution to their spiritual wellbeing."
And there you have it, straight from the mouths of once-bitten practising Reverends. Psilocybin doth work, and it doth work well. Human consciousness is positively mutable and reality is up for re-interpretation. Amen.
During the early days of the psilocybin project Leary actually got to meet Wasson. Although both had received the sacred mushroom vision and had come to value the experience as highly significant, their attitudes to its use were glaringly opposed. According to Leary, Wasson tried to come across as the authority on mushrooms, more interested in his own experiences than those of Leary and his associates. He was also vehemently against the current trend of widespread psilocybin use, informing Leary that disclosing the secret of the mushroom to the modern world had destroyed its power. Indeed, he would later write of his abject remorse at publicising the Indian's sacred ceremonies.
Leary, however, was soon to prove Wasson wrong on the potency of the mushroom. Psilocybin cannot fail to empower those who explore its magical effects, and, having taken it over 50 times within the first year of the Harvard project, Leary was by this time a much inspired man on the verge of attempting world revolution.
With his constant supply of mushroom pills, the heavily armed Leary soon began extending his influence to various contemporary American poets, writers, and artists, in particular, luminaries like Jack Kerouak, Neil Cassidy, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Dizzy Gillespie to name but a few. Leary began to realise that whilst many were enthralled by the experience, others were overtly disinterested. Youth emerged as a salient factor in attitude toward psilocybin and this led Leary to propose that:
"The older the person, the more fear of the visionary experience. Race, religion, and caste were also important predictors. The more the person {has} to lose, the less willingness to go joyously beyond the Judeo-Christian linear mental structure."
I would surmise that this fear was the same fear that led the Spanish friars to denounce the Aztec's mushroom use as devil-worship and that lead to the witch burning by the medieval Inquisitors. Once a person has a rigidly established mental model of reality then any tearing asunder of that model, any kind of incompatible data that threaten its existence, will produce a negative and often violent reaction to the perceived threat. An open-minded approach to psilocybin is therefore essential if it is to have a beneficial effect. One must tread slowly and carefully and familiarise oneself with the new territory since pitfalls lie in wait of the unwary and hasty explorer. The experience must then be somehow integrated into life in a way which minimises social disharmony.
1962 saw the ominous arrival of LSD at Harvard and the entire cultural psychedelic momentum was to change. Leary was so struck by this new synthetic alternative to psilocybin that it fast became the focus of attention and the mushroom faded almost into obscurity. Leary claimed that LSD was superior in effect to psilocybin and his high priest standing at this time was such that others were likely to follow his recommendations. Conversely, Terence McKenna, today's leading advocate for the shamanic use of psychedelic plants and fungi (he has also popularised the term Other to refer to the intelligible presence accessed through psilocybin), argues that natural psilocybin is a far more visionary substance and ranks its worth far above synthetic LSD. McKenna holds a more contemporary organic view that links the mushroom with the natural homeostatic systems of Gaia. As mentioned, in the 60's there was no Gaia theory and ethnobotanical investigations of plant-using shamans had yet to gather much popular publicity.
At the same time that LSD flooded Harvard, opposition to psychedelic experimentation began in earnest partly due to the omnipresent influence of the CIA who still wanted a monopoly on psychedelic drugs, and partly because of the alarming growth in popular experimentation with LSD which was still legal and fast becoming available everywhere. In 1963 Leary was forced to resign from Harvard and so he duly took his 'acidic' interests out into the big experimental arena of mainstream culture where he found himself to be quite adept in the role of psychedelic revolutionary. It is unfortunate that his clarion call "Turn on, tune in, drop out" was only two-thirds commendable. Drop out? Such a negative phrase could only serve to condemn Leary. Why not 'learn', or 'listen carefully'? Still, the pop psychedelic insurgency instigated by Leary ensured that the 60's got underway, and despite the mass drop-out by the youth populous, the resulting counter culture was to spawn a wealth of innervating art, literature, and music. That the 60's ended with the Beatles bravely singing 'All you need is love' is surely proof that some benign vision had been generated within the collective psyche. I guess you had to be there.
Leary's anarchic adventures went on to include the formation of the League for Spiritual Discovery (yes, thats LSD), major court cases, his brief role as the most dangerous man in America, incarceration, a dramatic jailbreak, and his kidnapping by the Black Panthers in the early 70's. Interested readers can read of Leary's enthralling escapades elsewhere, in particular, within the pages of his autobiography Flashbacks or in Jay Steven's lively book on LSD and American culture; Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream.
Unbeknown to virtually anyone at this time, mushrooms containing psilocybin were to be found growing throughout Europe and North America, and not just in Mexico. The Earth, Gaia, a far more efficient and ubiquitous supplier of entheogens than the lab-men at Sandoz, was secretly churning out millions of psilocybin mushrooms across its skin, an extraordinary fact which did not reach public attention until the late 60's and early 70's (since then it has been speculated that psilocybin was known about by prehistoric Europeans, and that its use influenced the dreamy spiral icons carved on rocks in places like Ireland. Interested readers should consult Paul Devereux's 1997 book The Long Trip for more information on this incipient subject).
At this point in our journey I should like to examine the main objections which were often levelled against the use of psilocybin when it first became available in the wake of Wasson's discovery, Such objections were expressed precisely and clearly by various writers and social commentators, most notably the writer and philosopher Arthur Koestler whom I briefly mentioned earlier. Koestler, who had written numerous acclaimed books on science, philosophy, and the paranormal, tried psilocybin on at least two occasions at the start of the sixties. Leary, a fan of Koestler's work, had written to him about psilocybin's miraculous properties and invited him to come out to Harvard to try it for himself.
As it happened, Koestler's first psilocybinetic encounter occurred at the psychology department of Michigan which, unfortunately, was another hotbed for covert CIA experimentation and therefore not the best of places in which to start one's psychedelic journeying. His second taste occurred at Leary's apartment as Leary had originally intended. Both encounters convinced Koestler that psilocybin was basically worthless, an opinion dramatically at odds with Leary and most others who had tried it.
In March of 1961, Koestler published a polemic article in the Sunday Telegraph denouncing the psilocybin experience. Entitled Return Trip to Nirvana, Koestler recounted his personal psychedelic experiences and concluded in no uncertain terms that psilocybin had nothing whatsoever to offer humanity. He wrote:
"Chemically induced hallucinations, delusions and raptures may be frightening or wonderfully gratifying; in either case they are in the nature of confidence tricks played on one's own nervous system."
He offered even harsher words about his second trip at Leary's apartment. When an American writer and acquaintance talked of 'cosmic awareness', 'expanding consciousness', and 'Zen Enlightenment', Koestler thought this "downright obscene, more so than four-lettered words". Clearly, here was a man a trifle irritated by the blossoming psychedelic culture. Koestler was no hip hippy.
Koestler went on to argue that psilocybin gave rise to 'pressure-cooker mysticism', and no more. Discussing Huxley's pro-psychedelic observation that many mystics and religious visionaries employed various physiology-changing techniques like breathing exercises and fasting in order to facilitate altered states of awareness, Koestler countered with a parable about mountain-climbing, claiming that the view obtained when one has slogged for hours on foot up the mountain is far superior to the view obtained at the end of a cable-car journey. In other words, the laborious toil undertaken by the fasting, self-flagellating, cave-dwelling ascetic leads to a qualitatively different revelation than the armchair mystic who merely pops down a handful of Sandoz pills.
This is the classic philosophical objection laid against the potential transcendental effects of substances like psilocybin. It is too easy. Where is the relentless sweat and toil? Where are the physical scars of the tortuous journey that preceded the mystical illumination? How can one possibly have access to realms of the spirit without undergoing years of suffering? Are we to admit that any Tom, Dick, or Leary can achieve transcendence without experiencing untold pain, misery and self-mortification?
Koestler, at least, was convinced that there were no short-cuts to the divine, and he stated this clearly to Leary and in the article. Significantly, he admitted to Leary that he was in the wrong state of mind when he tried the psilocybin at Leary's apartment, that he had been awoken to painful memories of being a political prisoner during the war. Similarly, on the night before his first unpleasant brush with the drug, he'd had disturbing dreams which lingered on long enough to pervade the psychedelic state. In fact, Leary himself had second thoughts in inviting Koestler to try psilocybin as he came across as being too "controlled and rational". Although these factors go a long way to account for Koestler's negative encounters, the criticisms he raised still stand strong and the advocate for the continued investigation of psilocybin must perforce respond to the allegations.
I can offer two lines of defence to parry Koestler's objections. Firstly, it is almost certain that he did not dwell upon the fact that psilocybin is a natural product of the environment, and not an unnatural, alien synthetic. Had he actually gone out and picked psilocybin mushrooms for himself perhaps his experiences might have been more rewarding, since the actual act of mushroom collection leaves an indelible earthly mark upon the memory. This fact of psilocybin's naturalness, which I consistently remark upon, deserves a still more detailed examination and this is a good opportunity to begin doing so. I will return to answering Koestler's criticisms after this brief diversion.
As we shall see in much more detail later, psilocybin is believed to cause its effects by acting upon nerve cells, or neurons, within the brain. In particular, it acts upon those neurons which utilise a substance named serotonin. Serotonin is a chemical messenger, or neurotransmitter, which allows individual neurons to communicate with one another in order that information can be transmitted and processed. Now, the various compounds employed by brains in order that they are able to process information have evolved over millions of years and they are determined by the chemicals available in the environment, in particular, from the raw materials available in food. Serotonin has emerged as a key neurotransmitter, or chemical messenger, because it can be produced from these raw materials. You cannot just have any old chemical compound acting as a neurotransmitter; it has to have arisen through evolution under the deterministic constraints set by the laws of chemistry and the further constraints set by food/raw material availability.
Hence, serotonin is bound up with the chemistry of the environment. If the chemical constituency of the natural environment were radically different, Nature, or Gaia, would have had to have evolved completely different neurotransmitters complementary to the constraints set by that environment. In this sense, we are indeed what we eat and the notion that consensus reality is a popular serotonergic hallucination yields a formidably uncanny wisdom. Our minds, our very consciousness, depends upon the hardware of the brain, which in turn depends upon chemical structure, which further depends upon diet. Natural psilocybin mushrooms can enter ones diet, and the new chemicals subsequently operating within the brain will alter awareness so that consensual serotonergic reality shifts to a rare psilocybinetic reality.
Having said this much it should now be absolutely clear that the psilocybin experience is wholly natural, and that it arises out of an environmentally driven alteration in brain chemistry in so much as the psilocybin mushroom is part of the environment. There is nothing artificial about this process at all. Just as we can selectively pick wheat in order to make bread for our physical well-being, so too can we selectively consume natural psilocybin mushrooms for our spiritual well-being. Both wheat and mushroom are legitimate natural expressions of the Gaian system within which we are embedded. I think it unlikely that Koestler considered these environmental facts before making his negative judgements.
The second line of defence against Koestler's classic objections is that it is not certain that technological short-cuts - as he called them - are necessarily bad. Is not the Earth viewed from space satellites not beautiful? Viewed thus, is it really any less beautiful than if we were to build a really large ladder and thence clamber up to get the same view? Should we abandon all labour-saving technology and make things as hard as possible for humanity?
I think not. Huxley's vision in the Doors of Perception of a mass-marketed psychedelic that enlightens the world cannot be faulted on its technological methodology. If technology, pharmaceutical or otherwise, can hasten some form of Utopia then the only thing stopping this is a sense of distrust and guilt, arguably instilled more often than not by dogmatic religion. Indeed, Leary surmised that Koestler's mountaintop parable arose from a deep-seated Catholic guilt, a guilt that arises all too easily in the face of pleasure, ecstasy, and the limits of human freedom.
Having defended the idea of humanity-saving technology, I would once more remind the critical reader that psilocybin is not a technological product anyway. Koestler perceived it so because his psilocybin came in the form of a Sandoz pill, the perfect symbol of a modern technological fix. This is in direct contrast to the very earthly symbol of the wild mushroom.
When Koestler left Leary's company to return to New York, it was wryly noted that he did not walk back but got a plane. Leary concluded that to ignore psilocybin as a psychological tool would be akin to rejecting the microscope because it made seeing too easy, a good analogy since both tools uncover the hidden riches of Nature.
I think it safe to conclude that Koestler's negative attitude stemmed principally from his painful store of POW memories and the unresolved conflicts lying in the depths of his psyche. In particular, I would suggest, as did Leary, that Koestler's Catholic guilt played a large part in his rejection of the mushroom.
This same type of traditional religious guilt, which seems to have plagued man for time immemorial and which easily transforms itself into an oppressive drive against other people's freedom, was also displayed, amongst others, by the 19th century French poet Baudelaire who eventually came to be vehemently opposed to the use of psychoactive substances. Like other 19th century poets and writers such as Byron, Shelley, Balzac, De Quincey, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (who reputedly wrote Kubla Khan after an opium reverie), Baudelaire had once used 'trendy' psychoactive plant products like opium and cannabis for creative purposes. Yet he later came to utterly despise them, as if they were the root of all that is evil and misleading, no less than the most cunning of the Devil's tools for thwarting mankind from reaching God.
The point is missed, almost deliberately it seems. These plant substances are not inherently evil, rather they become destructive if used in excess or for the wrong reasons, much as any benign substance can become harmful if used beyond sensibility. Had Koestler been in the possession of the right frame of mind and received the ultimate gift of the psilocybin mushroom, that is, had he perceived a direct communion with the transcendental Other and realised that this was a wholly natural phenomenon, then perhaps he would have embraced psilocybin's cultural healing potential.
It seems then, that if the potentially spiritual effects of the mushroom are likened to a torrent, or stream, then the stream can 'hit' the wrong human mind, or at least the wrong state of mind, causing the stream to be blocked. Where it cannot flow on and blossom, psilocybin's gloriously numinous potential will remain unrealised. God's flesh is clearly not everyone's 'meat'. Such an unfortunate fact must be considered at length before any kind of non-trivial psychedelic investigation be commenced.
In his noted Ghost in the Machine, written in 1967, Koestler had a wonderful opportunity to praise the virtues of entheogenic agents. Amongst other things, the book is concerned with mankind's violent, paranoid, destructive streak and how such an evil can be overcome. After documenting the awful historical effects of our 'schizophysiology' as he terms it, Koestler argues that our only hope for survival is to develop techniques which supplant biological evolution. He reminds us of all the ways in which we have tampered with Nature - like birth control, disease prevention, artificial environment creation etc - in order to simulate and control the process of evolution for our own adaptive advantage. So, asks Koestler, can we not invent a remedy for man's destructive tendency?
Unable to ignore Aldous Huxley's popular advocacy of psychedelics as cultural healing agents, Koestler is opposed to such a solution claiming that it is fundamentally wrong and naive to expect that drugs can confer free gifts upon the mind, that is, Koestler assumes that drugs cannot put into the mind something which is not already there. He argues that the 'psycho-pharmacist' cannot add to the faculties of the brain, at best he can only eliminate obstructions which might impede the brain's proper functioning.
Koestler finally envisages a 'mental stabiliser' or hormone that can integrate the psyche. He even goes as far as fearing that his readers will be disgusted by the idea of relying upon our salvation through molecular chemistry rather than spiritual rebirth. This is an astonishing claim, even the more so since he refuses to advocate natural psychedelic plant substances as his 'mental stabiliser'.
Contrary to Koestler's beliefs, Nature and the evolutionary process has not let the human race down, rather we have been blind to its solutions. Nature works in mysterious ways, one of which is the production of plants and fungi possessing vital shamanic power through which the evolutionary process, in all its domains, can continue to function healthily.
Although it might sound somewhat archaic to seek global help from plants and fungi in our modern era, we should keep in mind that shamanism is perhaps the oldest form of religious psychotherapy and that the knowledge gained by visionary shamans was used precisely to help heal the tribe. There is no reason to assume that such psychedelic shamanism is now impotent or irrelevant, especially if we bear in mind the Gaian paradigm. In Gaian terms, the shamanic ingestion of plants and fungi is an entirely natural process which - when we take into account the ecological system of shaman, tribe, and plant - can be seen as being essentially homeostatic in that one part of the environment acts upon another in order to restore harmony; in this case certain plants and fungi yield aid through their psychological effects. Such Gaian psychotherapy highlights just how much we are rooted to the rest of life's web, and how the solutions to our problems are often to be found growing around us (including, of course, potential botanical cures for cancer and AIDS still to be discovered in what is left of the Earth's great rainforests).
Entheogenic species of plant and fungus still offer us a wealth of psychotherapeutic power if we choose to look their way, not to mention the information they reveal about the chemical mutability of human consciousness and the possible transformation of our models of reality. Like most philosophers, Koestler seemed far removed from the natural botanical world, but with the advent of Gaia theory and a renewed interest in all things Green and environmentally friendly, our deep connection to the rest of Nature looms ever more apparent and a Green philosophy is already establishing itself. By radical means, Nature itself may yet cure our destructive streak.
Another well-known writer at the time of psilocybin's first wave of Western use was the revered author and poet Robert Graves who also wrote publicly of his mushroom experience. Actually, Graves had been intrigued by mushrooms ever since he had licked a species of fly agaric as a young boy and had consequently experienced burning sensations on his tongue. Perhaps the incident had been a symbolic Gaian kiss of sorts, or at least a taste of things to come. At any rate, as the reader will recall, it was Graves who originally notified Wasson of the secret mushroom ceremonies still extant in Mexico. It comes as no surprise then that Graves eventually went on to write speculative articles on entheogenic mushroom use in ancient Greece (such speculation remains contentious) after he had tried the sacred sacrament in Wasson's New York apartment in 1960.
Graves was, it transpires, understandably apprehensive about his first brush with psilocybin, especially worried that he might perceive 'demons' behind his closed eyes. Being the author of the acclaimed The White Goddess, a book about an historical cult of goddess worship, was no guarantee that Gaia's mushroom would shower him with grace (Gaia was originally the name of the Greek Earth Goddess).
As it was, Graves need not have worried. Unable to write during his 'rapture', he passively let the experience overwhelm him. Afterwards he was to write that he had seen a "mountain-top Eden" and experienced the "bliss of innocence" and "the knowledge of good and evil". He had even felt capable of solving any problem in the world as if he had access to all of the world's knowledge.
Graves went on to predict that a once sacred substance entrusted to an elite few would soon be sought out by "jaded sensation seekers", although they would likely be dissatisfied with psilocybin as it was not a 'drug' as such since it failed to stupefy like alcohol. He ended his descriptive account with the following warning which still rings true today:
"Good and Evil alternate in most peoples' hearts. Few are habitually at peace with themselves and whoever prepares to eat hallucinogenic mushrooms should take as careful stock of his mental and moral well-being as initiates took before attending the Eleusinian Mysteries....This peculiar virtue of psilocybin, the power to enhance personal reality, turns 'Know Thyself' into a practical precept; and may command it as the sacramental food of some new religion."
Fine and prescient words indeed, once more indicative that psilocybin be approached cautiously and with a 'good heart'. Graves' remark about "jaded sensation seekers" is almost identical to Wasson's emerging dismay at the hoards of "oddballs", "thrill seekers", and "riff-raff" who were already descending in their droves upon Mexico in search of the divine mushrooms.
However, this type of popular reaction to some new fashion was surely inevitable. Although it was to cause abject consternation amongst the psilocybin elite, to deny the mushroom outright to the masses is an impractical short-sighted reaction to basic human nature and I would argue that knowledge of psilocybin's potentially supra-mundane power is best laid open to all who might wish to seek it out. If this be considered by some as like casting pearls before swine then so be it. The point is that the end will justify the means, this end being, hopefully, a culture transformed with a revitalised veneration for the natural systems of the Earth and a deeper insight into the ultimate nature of the reality process.
Aldous Huxley explicitly summed up the early mood of optimism surrounding psychedelics in a speech he delivered to psychologists in 1961, and somewhat more implicitly in his Utopian novel Island published in 1962. In the speech Huxley predicted that psychological science would inevitably be confronted with more and more data on the visionary experiences induced by substances like psilocybin. Although these experiences might be valueless - no more significant than a trip to the movies - it might be the case that if the visionary experiences be co-operated with, if some deep meaning be ascertained and acted upon, then this could be crucial in changing the lot of humanity. Huxley conjectured that our mode of consciousness could be altered by psychedelics, unleashing a psychological force that enables us to perceive reality through non-utilitarian eyes. Huxley was convinced that the visionary experience could lead to a change in behaviour for the good, therefore reinforcing the maxim of the eminent psychologist William James that a 'spiritual' or 'mystical' experience be judged pragmatically through its consequences upon the life of the experiencer. If the psychedelic visionary state can enrich one's life, then, by definition, it is for the good.
In Island, which was Huxley's final novel, his fictional Edenic islanders use 'moksha-medicine', an entheogenic mushroom, as part of their religious rites. Indeed, the mushroom supports the islanders' paradise. This invented mushroom was almost certainly based upon the psilocybin mushroom, as Huxley had tried psilocybin on a number of occasions.
The issues raised in his earlier work Doors are discussed by his islanders, in particular, whether the effects of moksha-medicine are illusory or real. Through one particular piece of fictional dialogue we are asked to consider the idea that perhaps the brain transmits consciousness rather than producing it. In other words, perhaps moksha-medicine allows a larger volume of what Huxley refers to as 'Mind at Large' (Mind with a big 'M') to enter one's individual mind (mind with a small 'm'). Later, I will have much to say on this deceptively simple remark as it bears heavily upon the whole notion of the stuff of consciousness.
As the islanders who champion the moksha-medicine assert, even the bottom line places value upon the experiences engendered by their mushroom. For if there is no objective content at all in the experience, it is still life-enriching and provides a "blessed transformation".
At one point in the story, the archetypal sceptic and disbelieving character Murugan is told:
"You've been told that we are just a set of self-indulgent dope-takers wallowing in illusion and false samadhis. Listen Murugan - forget all the bad language thats been pumped into you. Forget it at least to the point of making a single experiment. Take 400mg of moksha-medicine and find out for yourself what it does, what it can tell you about your own nature, about this strange world you've got to live in, learn in, suffer in, and finally die in. Yes, even you will have to die one day - maybe 50 years from now, maybe tomorrow. Who knows? But its going to happen, and one's a fool if one doesn't prepare for it."
Arguably the greatest, most eloquent, and most passionate spokesmen for the intelligent use of psychedelics during the 50's and early 60's before his unusual death in 1963, Aldous Huxley was unaware that his beloved moksha-medicinal fungi were, even as he wrote 'Island', spreading their mycelial networks throughout the wild unfarmed soil of most of the planet's Temperate Zone, their presence stretching across vast tracts of unspoilt land. In the autumn months, this secret underground arrangement was yielding countless psilocybin mushrooms and Huxley never lived to discover this most astonishing of truths. Forgotten by the mid-sixties, the psilocybin mushroom was eventually to rise and fruit again....