The purpose of this and the following chapters is to build upon the ideas previously introduced in order that we might understand of what 'stuff' the mind, or consciousness, is made, and how it is potentially possible for one to experience a visionary dialogue with the transcendental Other. At this juncture I can repeat that I believe mindstuff to be information, or at any rate that consciousness is an informational pattern embodied within the neuronal wetware of the brain. Moreover, it seems that entheogens like psilocybin work by enabling novel informational patterns to emerge which are not normally 'permitted' due to the normal constraints operating in the brain. This much seems clear from what has already been said about the way in which neuronal firing substantiates informational states and how such informational states are dramatically altered through the chemical action of entheogenic compounds.
In other words, mindstuff resolves itself as being informational stuff. This is perhaps not too controversial a claim, but what I eventually hope to show is that matter or physical stuff is also informational in nature. This would mean that everything, whether atoms, molecules, muscles, or thoughts could be described in purely informational terms. The mind and body could then be seen as consisting of essentially the same kind of substance i.e. as particular forms of information.
Of course the concept of what information itself is, or what information actually means, is a decidedly muddy issue, especially since we now appear to be living in an Information Age. Books carry information, as do CD's, apple seeds, bank statements, fossils, fibre-optic cables, hormones, food wrappers and the human genome. And so too do vast banks of firing neurons carry information, whether infused by psilocybin or not. As to the notion of atoms (of which the above mentioned information-carriers are all composed) being units of information also, the case is less clear. However, should I succeed in the coming chapters in accurately defining the nature of consciousness and matter in informational terms, then I should also be able to explain more clearly why psilocybin is able to generate both Other-derived visions and an altered perception of reality - all in terms of the flow and flux of information. In fact, armed with such a sweepingly new informational view of reality one might come to perceive oneself and the world as if with new eyes. Indeed, the information paradigm of which I speak yields a whole array of truly stunning conceptual consequences.
The issue confronting us - that of understanding exactly what consciousness is - is, as you probably now realise, a decidedly hoary beast, covered in thorns and about as amenable to close analysis as the wind on a very blustery day. Formally speaking, it is known in the philosophical trade as the mind/body problem. At its heart lies the seemingly inseparable gulf between the world of physical matter and the world of mind. We know much about the former, yet little about the latter. Before we go on with our quest to define consciousness in the light of the entheogenic experience, lets take a very brief look at the history of this most murky philosophical quagmire.
The 17th century French philosopher Descartes is generally credited with being responsible for fully appreciating and documenting the mind/body dilemma. Descartes came to the conclusion that there were two sorts of universal stuff - mind and matter - and that they interacted in some mysterious ghostlike way. Such a dualistic 'ghost in the machine' view of consciousness has annoyed many a philosopher and scientist alike. Especially scientists, for they do not like talk of incorporeal entities (elusive minds) not located in 3-dimensional space being somehow able to interact with matter. Perhaps this explains why most psychologists have until quite recently been content to ignore the issue of consciousness. It is such an enigmatic phenomenon and yet, as I observed earlier, it is consciousness that is the very core or ground of our being human.
It is consciousness which defines you right now for instance. This book might be physical and clearly tangible yet what are your thoughts to know this? And even more problematic is the mind's ability to act directly upon matter via the body. How can a thought which is non-weighable and not made of physical particles nonetheless be able to move the collective atoms in, say, one's fingers? How can some sort of informational pattern embodied within the brain act upon so-called matter?
To reach some understanding we should therefore either side with the old Cartesian dualist belief or launch ourselves wholeheartedly into an alternative 'informational monism' in which the reality process consists of one stuff only - information. As I hope to show, the nature of the entheogenic experience suggests we embrace the latter scenario.
Since the philosophical musings of Descartes, philosophers have had a veritable free-for-all in their attempts to either defend Descartes' ideas or do away with them and somehow unite mind with matter. Indeed, some academic philosophers make it their professional business to immerse themselves night and day in the mind/body problem. So annoyingly problematic is the existence of consciousness in an apparently physical Universe that entire academic careers have been built upon this subtle paradox. Row upon row of shelves in the philosophy section of academic libraries are given over to books dealing in some way with the mind/body problem.
Still, as far as I am aware not one professional mind/body philosopher has become seriously involved with entheogenic experimentation in order to further their knowledge and insight into the dynamic interplay between chemistry and altered states of awareness. In fact, most books purportedly dealing with the issue of consciousness patently ignore psychoactive substances altogether, as if they had nothing whatsoever to tell us. I suppose that most traditional mind/body 'specialists' balk and quiver at the very idea of psychedelic shamanism and its alchemical explorations of the mind. Or perhaps wild visionary plants are still too ill-understood or rarely encountered by armchair-bound philosophers. Whatever the case, entheogenic flora and fungi have remained a peripheral phenomenon to be studied solely by anthropologists, ethnobotanists, and a handful of adventurous mavericks. It is hoped this state of indifference be shattered soon, and that science comes to properly address the delicate interface between chemistry and consciousness.
Chemistry and consciousness.....what do such terms imply? The important answer is that, taken together, they directly address the boundary between the physical and the psychological. Chemistry implies chemicals and substances - clearly 'material' things - whereas altered states of awareness lie in the realm of the intangible mind. We have already established in the last chapter that various types of substance, particularly those with a close molecular resemblance to the brain's neurotransmitters, appear to elicit fairly predictable and characteristic changes in consciousness. If we consider psilocybin, then we see that it bridges perfectly the conceptual gap between the two seemingly incompatible worlds of mind and matter, psychological and physical. The more we can understand the psilocybin modus operandi, the closer we get to divining the actual design of the bridge linking mind to matter.
A tall order then, this attempt to resolve the age-old mind/body problem. Still, no harm will have been done should I fail miserably in my theoretical endeavours. After all, untenable solutions inevitably aid the formulation of sound solutions, so the 'psilocybin solution' should not have to be completely 'poured down the sink'. Bear with me then, and judge for yourself as we embark upon the next stage of the mushroom mystery tour. This will take us further into informational territory as we focus more closely upon the structural dynamics of psychedelic visions. Since such visions seemingly depend in some vital way upon the integration and cohesion of large amounts of neuronal information then, above all else, information is our key to unlocking the mystery of consciousness, whether of the entheogenic kind or of the normal kind.
We have seen that one major aspect of the psilocybin experience - the perception of vivid visions with eyes closed - appears to be the result of dreaming whilst awake, or at least something akin to this (this has nothing to do with 'daydreaming' which is something else entirely). According to our previous analysis, we can view such visions as being dynamic informational patterns conveyed in the neuronal systems of the brain, informational patterns which have been specifically 'freed' to form themselves through the 'liberating' action of entheogenic substances upon serotonergic systems. Similarly, REM dreams would appear to be generated by the same 'freed' neuronal systems.
The fact that entheogenic visions are loaded with powerful and often universal symbology might reflect that there are pre-determined ways in which large amounts of neuronal information can be organised and brought together i.e. integrated. This is an important idea being introduced here. Just as elements like carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen will naturally organise themselves into specific stable structures like water, carbon dioxide, and amino acids, so too can we view information in the brain, in the form of co-ordinated arrays of neuronal firing, as organising themselves in the same kind of way.
The fundamental quality which makes, say, water the same everywhere is its molecular structure - the exact way in which molecules of hydrogen and oxygen cohere together. They form a specific pattern, a specific molecular 'expression'. If my speculations are correct, then information embodied in systems of neuronal firing likewise forms itself into specific structured patterns. And, just as large amounts of microscopic water molecules can organise themselves still further into stable macroscopic patterned structures like snowflakes, so too can more and more elaborate forms emerge from the patterning processes occurring in the psychedelically influenced brain. Frozen temperature acts to elicit the structured patterns exhibited by snowflakes, whereas psilocybin acts to elicit the structured patterns of neuronal activity which come to be experienced as shamanic visions. Water molecules organise themselves according to the rules of a molecular language, neuronal firing patterns organising themselves according to the rules of a psychological language.
If there are specific patterns and structures which emerge from large information-integration processes occurring within brain, then this would explain the existence of universal symbology, universal dream images and things like mythical archetypes. For throughout the world in all of the countless religions, cosmologies, and mythologies created by our species, we come across highly similar mythical images and symbols full of meaning and associative power.
The serpent (or snake) is a good example of this universal symbology. It is found in the religious mythology of the following: the Maya and the Aztecs (who worshipped Quetzalcoatl - the Feathered Serpent); the ancient Egyptians (the head-dresses of the Pharaohs incorporated the viper as a symbol of wisdom and intellect); the Australian aborigines (who worshipped the Rainbow Serpent); the ancient epic of Gilgamesh (a serpent tells of a mythical plant that can confer immortality); the ancient peoples of India (who worshipped Nagas, literally wise serpents), and even in the Eden of the Old Testament (the wise but feared serpent who offers forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge), and so on. Always, the serpent or snake appears to symbolise a wise/divine/spiritual life-force or deity.
Such universality might be due to the fact that mythical symbols represent stable, organised concentrations of information produced by the most holistic/integrative type of information processing achieved by the human brain. The symbol embodies a whole set of relations or, to be more specific, it is the point where a huge web of psychological relations converge. To fully understand the symbol is to sense at once all of its relations to other objects of perceptual experience. In other words, visual symbols play a role in a psychological language. (here, I again invoke the concept of language since language is essentially an informational system not restricted to words alone. Language, in the abstract way in which I refer to it, is a system of informational elements bearing definite relations with one another; hence a language of words, of molecules, of symbols etc).
Such universally powerful visionary symbols can be thought of as expressions in the dictionary of a 'higher' language connected with the human psyche. What I mean by 'higher' is that the visual elements in this language are far more rich in meaning and informational content than the words of our spoken language. Moreover, the direct perception of visionary symbols choreographed together in a movie-like fashion - as occurs in the entheogenic state - is to experience meaning in perhaps its purest, most informationally rich way. To partake of a visionary dialogue is to be overwhelmed by the direct apprehension of naked, unmuddied meaning, which arises as a consequence of the highly integrative informational processes liberated by shamanic compounds.
In the metaphorical and visual language emanating from the most integrated information processing of the human psyche, the serpent therefore appears to be a significant 'word' or icon, itself derived from the natural environment. There are many such universally potent icons equally derived from the natural environment. Try now, if you would, to visually imagine in glorious technicolour a volcano erupting, a butterfly emerging from its pupa, or a hand reaching into a flame. Further imagine all of the ways in which such potent symbolic images like these could be meaningfully put together by some agency dissociated from the self/ego in order that the agency convey some message or idea to us. And finally, imagine an informationally-rich creation like this being experienced directly by one's consciousness with no noise or distraction whatsoever. Here we begin to understand what the shamanic visionary experience is like, that it consists essentially of a communication transmitted in the 'higher' language expressed by the Other, a language of symbols embodied in animated imagery.
Seeing, it seems, is the most direct form of perception. This is why one comes to 'see the truth'. It also explains why art is powerful. A great painting is unworded, yet it may well speak volumes to us. Visual symbols and images can be truly effective in their capacity to inform. It is in this sense that I refer to a higher language of the psyche, a language not of words but of concentrations of information visibly beheld.
To really see something is to see what something really means, and to see what something really means is to instantly access all of it's inherent relations to other things. That is why pictures of the Earth from space are used as a powerful symbol with universal appeal; such pictures contain a wealth of informative relations, they capture a terrific amount of meaning. And yet for a new-born baby or some prehistoric Neanderthal who has never contemplated the Earth as being a finite but unbounded sphere, the symbol of the Earth from space will not be properly seen at all, rather it will represent no more than a meaningless round shape coloured in blue and green. Thus, symbols can only be understood as relative focus points for networks of informational relations. When the network of relations is accessed and understood, then the symbol has conveyed its meaning. To see powerful symbols, whether this be in a shamanic vision, a dream, or in religious/spiritual artwork, is to behold a concentration of information, a super-condensed localisation of meaning.
The idea then, is that very large amounts of information can cohere or integrate into condensed symbols, and, since all brains work in the same way, universal symbols might emerge in a language of symbols, just as universal expressions and meanings emerge in all worded languages. But, it should stressed that universal symbols are related to real objects in the shared world. Even if they are not deified, snakes, for example, are generally at least feared the world over, and for good reason since their venom can prove fatal. This automatically means that the real world snake/serpent is going to be a good candidate for playing a role as a universal symbol wherever symbol-generating processes arise.
In the case of shamanic visions (or dreams), it might well be that they contain not only universal symbols, but culturally determined symbols or icons which can only be fully understood and appreciated at the personal level. In the case of much of South American shamanism, like that practised by the ayahuasca-using Tukanoan Indians of Colombia for instance, we do indeed find culturally/environmentally determined symbology in the visions experienced by the shamans, often related to powerful and revered jungle creatures like the jaguar, as well as the ubiquitous serpent/snake. These Tukanoan shamans also experience imagery related to their particular brand of cosmology, which is known and fostered by all members of the tribe. An analysis of the varied pieces of artwork inspired by their psychedelic visionary experiences reveals a striking commonality, for the Indians invariably portray the spiritual entities encountered in the same way and in the same style. This clearly testifies to the culture-bound nature of their visions i.e. they experience one particular kind of visionary dialogue with the Other.
According to the informational approach being taken here, such culturally determined visionary dialogues still result from information-integration within the psychedelically altered brain, with the attendant fact that the information used in the visionary communication derives, in part, from the shamans' personal store of knowledge. Since native South Americans share the same culture and experience the same environmental forces, there will obviously be certain symbols and images which are highly significant to them in a way which an outsider would not be able to fully apprehend. It appears then that, in common with spoken language, there exist regional 'visionary dialects' expressed in the psychedelic visionary state, the dialect being determined by the tribe's unique physical and cultural environment.
Claudio Naranjo, a researcher who has spent many years investigating the shamanic use of ayahuasca in the Amazon, has reached a similar conclusion about the commonality of the shamans' visions. He has written of visionary symbols as follows:
"....the superimposition of the reptile, the feline's fangs and claws and the bird's wings (as well as the fish's watery environment and scales) results in the image of the dragon {synonymous with the mythical serpent}. Furthermore, through an examination of dragon myths and the content of subjects' reports, I concluded that the consciousness stimulated by ayahuasca involved an intuition of the inseparability of life and death, an apprehension of life as a self-consuming and self-devouring living-into-death or dying-into-life - and observed that just as mythical dragons may be symbols of good and evil, ayahuasca animals may be terrifying or friendly according to the readiness of the psyche to accept life-death or to reject, not only the "internal animal" but a greater Life, along with its deadliness and mortality...."
Whether Naranjo is essentially correct in his interpretation is not important. The point is that this kind of interpretation in which the visionary elements are considered to be symbols replete with meaning, matches the theoretical approach being taken here. Visionary symbols can be understood as deriving from the confluence of vast amounts of (psychological) information.
It really is as if individual video/computer graphic films of the utmost sophistication are made by the Other and then privately screened whilst one is in the entheogenic state. The visions well up magically from the depths of the psyche as though woven out of some undulating multicoloured dream fabric, as if one's visual cortex were directly interfaced with some mega-powerful intentional computer. Obscure items from memory are often strung together in some new creative fashion, or perhaps one will witness scenes never before encountered but that are nevertheless immediately understood. In either case, the visions fairly burst with an overwhelming amount of information (regarding the typical film-like quality of entheogenic visions, I once watched an illuminating anthropologist's documentary on the apprenticeship of a South American shaman which included a reference to 'visionary movies'. The documentary showed footage of the master shaman and his apprentice visiting a nearby Westernised town for the first time. Whilst there, they decided to try out the cinema. Although this was a completely new phenomenon for them, and arguably a great piece of Western artistic technology, both commented that the film being shown was not as good as the visions they experienced from their use of native sacred flora!).
The material basis from which personalised designer visions are fashioned, is one's store of memories and personal knowledge of the world. According to my interpretation, the Other is able to re-form such idiosyncratic information in order to communicate in a highly personal way which one will likely be responsive to. Such creative artistry represents the meta-language spoken by the Other, the visions representing a higher, more informationally-rich symbolic language being conducted deep within the innermost sanctums of the psyche.
If this is starting to sound too far-fetched, then it is only because the terminology is new. What I am calling the Other is a dynamic information-integration process given life within the entheogen-infused brain. To put it another way, the Other can be understood as an informational phenomenon that is focussed into being in much the same way that a newly cleaned lens might suddenly focus sunlight into a tight beam. It does appear to be a higher, more integrated manifestation of the human psyche, so much full of 'Otherness' and purposeful import that it can be considered to be fully autonomous and dissociated from the individual self/ego.
It is hard not to believe this when one has come to directly experience entheogenic visions. Think of the Reverend from Harvard's Good Friday experiment who had profoundly religious visions of Christ. This is the way in which the Other 'spoke' or 'introduced itself' to him. Its language is that of symbols and images and their creative juxtaposition in order to convey some vibrant meaning. In the depths of the Reverend's psyche neuronal informational patterns of incredible complexity arose informing him in a soulful way. Those particular arrangements of psychological information were generated out of the informational stores of his own personal psyche in a 'style' which would be highly meaningful to him in particular.
The Other thus represents a name or label for the kind of neuronal information processing underlying the visionary state, a kind of process which demonstrates the inherent property of neuronal information to purposefully organise itself into streams of perceived ideation laden with profound meaning. If one can conceive the mind as being a kind of informational process, one can equally envisage the Other as being an informational process. Whatever the actual neuronal firing mechanisms involved, it seems likely that concurrent information-integration of some psychological sort underlies the felt presence of the Other.
The greater the scope for informational coherence, the more will the emergent patterns be able to embrace differing fields of psychological data. This process will have to lead to the formation of mythical symbols and the like, since such symbols are the only way in which large amounts of related information can be expressed or 'captured'. A symbol is the concentrated expression of information. Since there must be limited ways in which such high concentrations of information can be so expressed - in other words there are logical constraints - then this again explains the existence of universal symbology.
But why exactly should the focused embracing of large amounts of psychological information be under logical constraints? Could not any old image or icon do? Not really. Think of some short story and imagine trying to sum up the theme in one sentence or one visual image, the moral of the story so to speak. Although there maybe a thousand and one ways of telling that story, to concentrate the moral (the point or overall pattern that connects the elements of the story) into one meaningful sentence automatically constrains us to use certain key words or certain pictorial icons.
Consider also what it is like when one searches for a word that one knows will express what one wants to convey; that frustrating.....what is it called? Ah yes, that tip-of-the-tongue moment. The word or term we look for is a logical consequence of what we need to express, and we might well be constrained into using but one word which 'captures' the exact meaning we wish to communicate.
Likewise, in the language of the Other, there will be certain types of meaning (large patterns of information) which can only be expressed in definite symbols and icons. The symbols and visual representations are highly organised fields of information. Such symbols and the drawing together of them into coherent progressing visions therefore reflects the on-going language being 'uttered' by the higher information-organising processes of the Other.
We can also refer back to Gordon Wasson's vision of a mythical beast drawing a chariot or of the colossal doors opening. These are obviously massively powerful symbols teeming with inherent meaning, especially when perceived as close as is possible - that is, directly behind closed eyes whilst under the superconscious spell of the mushroom. These visions are not like simple pretty pictures, they are more like a confrontation with ideas and symbols in their pure form issuing from some highly organised source of intelligence - like, say, the Platonic realm of pure Ideas, an inference you will recall which Wasson himself made in his attempts to come to terms with his experiences. The thing is, this Platonic Realm, if that is what one chooses to call the transcendental Other, is not static, like an archival system. Instead, it is able to inform one through a dynamic stream of intentional information in which visual symbology dominates.
Such types of symbol can therefore be considered elements of a higher language, a language not of the individual ego-driven mind but of the communicating Other. The symbols are amalgamated concentrations of information coming to life in a mind illuminated by visionary alkaloids. Or, to use Huxley's terminology, the informational forms are transmitted via the psilocybinetic brain. In either case, a Great Spirit, a sacred presence, or Gaian Other reveals itself as being no less than a tremendously vast system of confluential information flowing through the psychedelically enhanced neuronal hardware of the human cortex. As information 'struggles' to integrate, evermore coalescent forms emerge, and these are experienced as the felt presence of the Other actively communicating in a language of potent visual imagery. Information appears as if alive and intent upon self-organisation.
As Terence McKenna has repeatedly pointed out, it is quite common, for Westerners at any rate, to perceive UFO or alien/extraterrestrial motifs in entheogenic visions. McKenna has suggested that the UFO is the Other in the guise of a contemporary symbol. According to McKenna, the Gaian Mind or Other is so normally remote from us that it dons "the mask of the UFO" in order to express itself, its 'Otherness'.
Since the 1950's, there has been a plethora of sci-fi films dealing with alien/UFO visitations to Earth, most famously perhaps being Spielburg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The predominant theme in these sorts of entertaining fantasies is the incredible impact such an alien presence would have upon humanity. It is a modern reworking of the ancient religious idea of divine intervention. Some great alienesque force suddenly appears in the midst of our culture in a way which kind of upsets, or radically alters, human history and human destiny. Everyone would have to take notice. The banks would have to shut at the very least. People would, willy-nilly, be forced to cease their everyday business for a spontaneous alien-inspired Bank Holiday or two. Everything would have to change. UFO's and alien visitations are dramatic. They negate everything else.
Obviously then, the UFO can be understood as being a late 20th century and millennial icon, an immensely powerful Western symbol packed with meaning. It also highlights the way to think about information, for, in terms of information, the archetypal UFO is the centre of whole web of psychological relations and associations. It embodies a concentration of information. It contains or expresses a powerful set of psychological associations. As a simple word, 'UFO' embodies information in the context of the English language, whereas as something visibly beheld in an entheogenic vision, the UFO or indeed any kind of image of advanced alien technology, represents an utterance in the symbolic language of the communicating Other.
McKenna has spoken of the UFO as:
"...an autonomous psychic entity that has slipped from the control of the ego and approaches laden with the "Otherness" of the unconscious. As one looks into it one beholds oneself, one's world information field, all deployed in a strange, distant, almost transhumanly cool way, which links it to the myth of the extraterrestrial. The extraterrestrial is the human Oversoul in its general and particular expression on the planet."
Here may lie the explanation for the rampant and often far-fetched stories of actual UFO sightings and alien encounters not reserved to closed-eyes visions. Perhaps for some people the Other emerges into the perceived world of external reality, although this would more than likely represent a genuine hallucination.
McKenna's use of the term 'Oversoul' is yet another way of referring to the Gaian Mind or Other. Whereas McKenna readily assumes the Other to be the creative source of sacred visions, I am being more specific by asserting that this sort of Other/Gaian Mind experience results from an inherent property of information just as the individual mind results from an inherent property of information. Through the redemptive action of sacramental Gaian alkaloids like psilocybin, the Other is able to manifest itself and flow through the neuronal architecture of the brain. The Gaian Mind/Other/Oversoul is information, or at least it is the creative organising principle underlying brain-based information-integration and brain-based informational patterning. Its language is that of symbols and cultural images, futuristically alien or otherwise.
To sum up the far-reaching speculations presented thus far; whether personal or universal, information becomes incorporated into entheogenic visions in a novel and creative way such that a definite message or meaning is conveyed, or at least appears to be conveyed. The resulting overwhelming confrontation with a spiritual intelligence is thus the result of information-integration to the point where the integrational process appears most definitely to be 'alive', purposeful, and distinct from the self or ego. This is the supra-mundane Other, a sentient informative entity that is not us but something very closely related to us.
Alternatively, a cool, restrained, and sceptical approach might be to suggest that the self-organising patterning property of neuronal information does not reflect an information-composed Other after all, but just some incidental property of information. Just as gravity is a property of the Universe acting everywhere (on a macroscopic scale) to draw physical material together, so too might there be some inherent but incidental property of psychological material (or neuronal information) which acts to organise it. Although this organisational process can, if boosted by psilocybin or endogenous brain chemicals like DMT, result in the perception of a communicating Other, this Other will in fact be just a kind of illusory side-effect promoted by the experience.
However, having said that, in terms of the cultural history of the visionary shamanic experience, it is clearly so powerful and so emotionally charged that the inference of a transcendental Other is well established and seems clearly indicative that something important and hitherto unbeknown to psychological science is occurring. As many Westerners who have sampled entheogenic flora will readily attest (this includes those few brave anthropologists who have taken Amazonian psychedelic brews and experienced numinous visions), it is not all merely 'primitive' inference or hearsay that has led native shamans to invoke a perceived contact with gods or spirits, but rather that the sacred nature of the entheogenic experience appears so dramatic, so persuasive, that the inference of an Other becomes unavoidable.
Even if we did still opt for the restrained armchair-bound explanation, it is not incompatible with the notion of the Other, but merely a kind of clever avoidance and reluctance to invoke a 'big idea' that we are not accustomed to. For to reduce the Other to 'merely' an incidental organising principle inherent in information with no real purpose, is like saying that normal consciousness is 'merely' an incidental neuronal effect without any real purpose. But since we know that normal consciousness is purposeful (we have will, more or less) then it is tenable that the Other represents a kind of purposeful will above and beyond that of the individual ego. Indeed, if we also consider the many other self-organising properties of the Universe - which are deemed fundamental - then the Other might well represent a similarly fundamental aspect of Nature, one which manifests when conditions in the human cortex are appropriate.
Yet, if pushed, is it really still necessary to speak of a dissociated communicating presence when a less fanciful explanation will at least partially suffice? Aren't we in danger of becoming a trifle religious by invoking a kind of super-intelligence dissociated from the individual self?
The short answers are 'yes' and 'yes a bit'. But, if the notion of an intentional Other still seems too bizarre to the critical reader, the idea can be further defended by examining a common analogous situation in which we infer a non-self-based other. After all, do we not all assume without any doubt whatsoever that other conscious minds really exist? And yet this is also a big inference drawn based solely upon subjective experience. Let us pursue this, since it is, strangely enough, relevant to the validity of invoking other purposeful entities.
To infer a transcendental communicating Other is really no different from the tacit inference that other human minds exist. Both these sorts of other, the big 'O' and the little 'o' variety, are equally conceived of as the focus points of intentional information processing. Yet, there might not be other conscious minds apart from ourselves. Or there might be just a few. We cannot absolutely prove that others possess conscious minds like our own since we only have access to their external manifestations. Other people may in fact be, god forbid, soul-less automata, no more than mechanical zombies masquerading as conscious beings. For all you know, you might be the only conscious entity existing, for what conscious experience are you familiar with but your own? Indeed, when Descartes began his philosophical career he wanted to know what he could be absolutely certain about, with no room for doubt whatsoever. Gazing out of an ornate 17th century window, he wondered if perhaps all of reality was a cunningly designed trick played on him by some artful demon with absolute powers of trickery. Entertaining such a sinister scenario, Descartes came to the conclusion that the only thing that he knew to be real for sure was the existence of his own self - he thought, therefore he was. There could be no doubting that at least. This deceptively simple realisation became the sure-fire bedrock enabling him to develop all of his subsequent philosophy and science.
The philosophical belief that only one's own self really exists is known as solipsism. As weird as it might sound, it is a theoretical stance which many might be tempted to adopt, even for the sake of just playing with the idea in order to annoy and confuse friends. The point of raising this issue is that all of us make a big leap of faith in accepting that other minds really do exist like our own, and this way of thinking 'works', so much so that most people have not the faintest idea what solipsism is, and never come even to entertain the idea despite its being an essentially reasonable piece of personal philosophy.
Directly analogous with our tacit assumption that other conscious minds exist like our own, is the inference that an intelligent communicating Other lies at the heart of shamanic visions. This seems unavoidable if one is experiencing powerful visionary effects from entheogenic agents, and this makes it a valid and workable way of explaining the experience despite its distinct tone of grandeur.
I would therefore claim that any talk of an Other, or Gaian Mind, is a reasonable theoretical conjecture brought about because of the remarkably integrative information processing occurring in the entheogen-imbibed brain. Such chemically inspired neuronal patterning is experienced as being so rich in symbology and meaning that for all intents and purposes it can be considered the result of a living, intelligent, and communicating agency made of information, an agency whose intent can become focussed should the chemical conditions of the human cortex be so conducive. Information must indeed be in some sense alive.
A similar process to that outlined above would appear to govern dreaming, since complex and often fantastically stylised dream scenarios are something our dreaming selves confront. We literally witness the integrational information processes of our dreaming minds, often finding ourselves cast in strange and elaborately screened and scripted dream scenarios. But, and this is a major caveat, with dreams our dream self is not generally in a very consciously attentive state so that dreams remain ethereal and forgettable (unless we write them down), unlike psilocybin visions which one is highly conscious of and which are faithfully retained within memory.
It has been speculated that the reason we are unable to retain dream experience is because the normal neuronal mechanisms which underlie long-term memory processes are shut off during the dream state. This, however, is not the case with 'waking' psilocybinetic dreams/visions, since the neuronal systems which facilitate long-term memory are still operative. Psilocybin is therefore able, perhaps, to by-pass those brain mechanisms which normally serve to stop us consciously attending to information arising from the creative depths of the psyche.
The neuropsychologist and expert on sleep processes J. Allan Hobson has developed a model of dreaming which is compatible with the type of information-integration model outlined in this chapter. Hobson has offered an 'activation-synthesis' model of dreaming. He reached his theoretical conclusions after having studied in depth the neurochemical processes underlying REM/dream sleep, processes which include, of course, the cessation of the serotonergic raphe system.
On his activation-synthesis model, Hobson writes:
"Activation is an energy concept: in REM sleep {dreaming}, brain circuits underlying consciousness are switched on. Synthesis is an information concept: dream cognition is distinctive because the brain synthesises a dream plot by combining information from sources entirely internal to itself and because chemical changes radically alter the way information is processed. So the term 'synthesis' implies both fabricated (made up) and integrated (fitted together)."
Basically then, dreams are associated with nightly periodical bursts of neuronal firing in perhaps millions or even billions of neurons, with, of course, their attendant potential for an incomprehensibly large amount of inter-connected communication (we should bear in mind that dreaming might be due in part to endogenous DMT). All this wealth of activity is then organised/integrated in such a way that dreams emerge, or are synthesised. Dreams are thus constructed of information, whereby the information is embodied in the unusual global firing state of the brain.
As we have already established, a related process appears to take hold when psilocybin is present within the brain, although this latter 'waking dream' situation takes place during the eyes-shut waking state whereas dreaming takes place during sleep. So, although the psychedelic visionary state and the dream state both take place whilst the brain is in a different overall state (awake state versus sleep state), the general principle of vision generation and dream generation is the same in each case. To reiterate, this principle consists of the patterning and cohesion of vast bursts of neuronal activity being generated from internal sources and not from external sources. The advantage of 'waking dreams' induced by entheogenic alkaloids over normal dream processes is that in the former one remains highly alert and highly conscious of the visionary dialogue and it is generally not forgotten. Entheogenic visions also tend to be more sacred in character than dreams.
Often dreams might appear to be quite mundane, containing perhaps integrated scraps of information sub-consciously perceived during the waking state. By joining these disparate pieces of information, a kind of learning might be facilitated. Indeed, it has been demonstrated that if rats (excuse the ratomorphism) are selectively denied periods of REM/dream sleep then they are more likely to forget information previously learned.
Lazy new-born infants spend about 16 hours a day asleep, of which half that time is spent in REM/dream sleep. This means that they dream about 3 times as much as adults. Since new-borns have a strong need to learn about the world, dreaming presumably facilitates certain types of information integration - and hence learning - to take place. Through dreams, information acquired through waking perceptions can be sifted, consolidated, organised and generally 'worked out' so to speak. In short, one psychological approach to dreaming has it that dreaming allows information to become integrated within the developing psyche, a view fully compatible with my own speculations.
What of dreams not obviously connected with, say, diverse pieces of information, but which concern 'big' themes? Especially those really vivid dreams which leave a lingering emotional impact upon us. These might seem definitely to contain some meaning important to our inner well-being. Although we in the West do not have a cultural tradition which takes dreams, whether the mundane variety or the moving variety, too seriously, this has not always been the case with our species. It is presumably the phenomenon of significantly perceived dreams that led native cultures, like native Amerindians, to take dreams seriously - so much so that dreams would often be discussed and acted upon by the whole tribe. Such types of informative dream also led Western thinkers like Jung to conceive of a Collective Unconscious from which archetypal dream symbols could emerge. Although such a Jungian interpretation might be unwarranted, it does highlight the fact that certain dreams can act as a source of useful information should we choose to contemplate them. Indeed, if this were not the case then presumably native cultures would never have bothered with dream analysis in the first place.
Considering these properties of dreams, we can see more clearly how the brain is literally an organic information-organising device able to continually forge informational patterns both consciously and unconsciously. The only real difference between dreams and entheogenic visions would appear to be the extent and scale of this important process. If informational integration is allowed to reach a certain threshold of activation through the catalytic agency of entheogenic compounds, then the ultimate source of the informational patterning process can be divined and we come to directly experience a symbolic and unmuddied dialogue with the Other, where the Other is precisely the self-organising property of the information so embodied in the neuronal firing activity. In this sense the Other is a latent form of information which can potentially be brought to life through the processing mechanisms hard-wired within the brain. Neuronal/psychological information, by shaping itself in constrained ways, will allow definite motifs to emerge, representative of the transglobal symbolic language of the transcendental Other. This language is activated and apprehended during both the lucid dream state and the psilocybin-induced psychedelic state. Both states are natural and both derive from the capacity of the brain to arrange, cohere, and pattern large amounts of information.
From what has been discussed thus far concerning the psilocybin experience, it might seem as if the eyes-shut visionary state was the prime effect, yet with eyes open one encounters equal perceptual wonders. The world appears as if new, bursting with a significance and beauty that literally brushes one's soul. One sees more clearly than one could imagine, as if an occluding cloud had been graciously dispelled to reveal the sheer unadulterated 'isness' of reality. Visual perception is experienced as though it were the finest grain cinematography able to pick up upon a luxury of detail previously hidden. Great thoughts occur to one, unbidden yet full of profound import as if the very secrets of existence were suddenly in one's grasp. This is the very least that can be restated here. How can such phenomenology be accounted for in our information-integration model?
Regarding psilocybin's radical enhancement of visual perception, it seems logical to surmise that a change in the functioning of serotonergic systems facilitates a greater 'absorption' of the external information impinging upon the eyes. More information inherent in light flows through the visual system and into the brain, and is experienced as breathtaking visual clarity and enhanced consciousness (super alertness if you like). Since we humans are effectively embedded in an ocean of photic information, by subtly altering brain chemistry we can allow a tidal influx of this informational sea of light to sweep over the visual system, leaving us awash with perceptual data.
All objects, whether organic or inorganic, possess an intrinsic meaning or set of relations to other objects. They possess informational content, linked as they are to a network of relations with other objects. As discussed earlier, to 'see' an object is not merely to apprehend its shape or colour, but to access its meaning. After all, the retina of the eye only records an inverted 2-dimensional myriad pattern of light intensities, much as computer vision records arrays of light intensity values. This is not seeing. Real seeing, as we know it, involves the perception of what the object signifies. To see an object is to apprehend, all at once, its role, function, and relations - i.e. its meaning - within a vast network of objects.
Under the spell of psilocybin, I suggest that one is able to penetrate deeper into the informational content of objects. This a bit like looking up a word in a dictionary and noting all of it's meanings, thus coming to understand the word in its fullest sense. Normally we might not perceive the entire meaning of a word, accessing maybe only a fraction of its true semantic content, yet, in theory at least, we might come to ascertain more. This is what psychedelic perception involves, the accessing of latent information normally occluded to us by the normal information processing constraints of the brain (my comparison to the comprehension of words is useful as, in the next chapter, I hope to show further how 'material' objects in various domains - like the domains of physics, chemistry and biology - are themselves elements within a nested hierarchy of language-like systems, playing functional roles just like words).
As to the wealth of revelatory thoughts and ideas which erupt into consciousness during entheogenic ecstasy, these would appear to be, as with visions, a manifestation of the Other, in that they represent the holistic patterning of neuronal-mediated information. This may often be experienced as a kind of internal dialogue with a wise being. Profound thoughts take on a rapidly flowing life of their own, generating further thoughts and insights. It is impossible not to once more invoke language here as a conceptual explanatory tool, though this type of inner psychedelic language involving complex thoughts and ideation works far more efficiently than the language system of the spoken word. Everyday language appears sluggish and cumbersome in contrast to the language of shamanic contemplation which moves at a profoundly different pace. Indeed, the sheer fluency and dramatic insightfulness of shamanic contemplation explains its emotional impact and ineffability.
If we start to conceive of language in whatever mode as a communicatory information system, then we see that its modes are many and varied, all operating at different speeds and with differing properties. The principle however is the same. There is a flow of information and a natural progression which yields further information, just as in the case of a spoken dialogue. When we communicate with one another in conventional language, whether written or spoken, we initiate a dialogue in which information is exchanged. Regardless of whether this dialogue is one-sided or not, the process is dynamic in that information flows from one system to another, from one person to another, from one brain to another, from one mind to another.
With entheogenic contemplation an internal dialogue ensues in which there proceeds a flow of ideas between the self and the Other, where the Other is a dissociated or higher level informational source acting as one component in the dialogue process. Through entheogens, the individual psyche manages to open itself to the realm of the Other thus facilitating a dialogue of thought in which radical knowledge is received. An incredible idea to be sure, yet, as I hope I have made clear, the psilocybin experience, to do it any sort of justice, demands these kinds of incredible explanation.
We are now equipped with a model of consciousness which views it as a particular pattern of information embodied in the flowing electrochemical state of the brain. And we also have an informational entity which we can call the Other able to communicate its intent through the agency of entheogenic alkaloids like psilocybin. Both can be better understood as processes (or verbs) as opposed to things, moreover processes involving the patterning, or focussing, or coalescing, or even orchestration, of vast amounts of information.
Now we must turn to the nature of information itself. In particular, we shall look at information outside of the brain and see if it too can be understood in the same 'integrational' way. Does an informational language underlie Nature itself? Can molecules and atoms be interpreted as being informational elements in a molecular or physical language? And if so, does the reality process ultimately consist of a flow of language-like information? Is everything information? Did our man Einstein emerge out of, grow up in, become famous in, and eventually die in an essentially informational reality process? Read on then, for my psilocybin mushroom tale has hardly even begun. Information, it seems, cannot be stopped.