The Web of Consciousness

After having read The Doors of Perception and Be Here Now, and done a bit more academic research, I tried LSD and magic mushrooms 2-3 times each, at age 20-21 during my last year of college. These days I microdose shrooms but, once a year or so, it’s nice to have a trip—mild or heavy, depending on supplies (this year was mild, because I split my supply with a friend in need). I recommend that anyone read the above books before their first trip, and also that people with “issues” or dark family histories consult psychiatrists or therapists before even thinking about taking psychedelics/entheogens. Now 60, I’ve had only positive experiences with LSD, mushrooms, Ayahuasca and changa (or “smokable ayahuasca”). All of these experiences felt more real than reality without the effects of the drug and, the one time I successfully ingested Ayahuasca (by not vomiting within 20 minutes) I had a short, unforgettable meeting with the vine-goddess herself. All of my psychedelic experiences reminded me—in a deep, physical, experiential way—of my connection with all life, the whole cosmos, and the divine consciousness therein.

From 2010’s Hallucinogenic Plants and Their Use in Traditional Societies: “In many Amerindian societies the use of plant hallucinogens lies at the very heart of traditional life…it is essential to place the drugs themselves in proper context. For one, the pharmacologically active components do not produce uniform effects. On the contrary, any psychoactive drug has within it a completely ambivalent potential for good or evil, order or chaos. Pharmacologically it induces a certain condition, but that condition is mere raw material to be worked by particular cultural or psychological forces and expectations…the ‘set and setting’ of any drug experience. ‘Set’ is the individual's expectations of what the drug will do to him; ‘setting’ is the environment - both physical and social - in which the drug is taken…Similarly the hallucinogenic plants consumed by the Amerindian induce a powerful but neutral stimulation of the imagination; they create a template, as it were, upon which cultural beliefs and forces may be amplified a thousand times. What the individual sees in the visions is dependent not on the drug but on other factors - the mood and setting of the group, the physical and mental states of the participants, his own expectations based on a rich repository of tribal lore and, above all in Indian societies, the authority, knowledge and experience of the leader of the ceremony. The role of this figure—be it man or woman, shaman, curandero, paye, maestro or brujo—is pivotal. It is he who places the protective cloak of ritual about the participants. It is he who tackles the bombardment of visual and auditory stimuli and gives them order…The ceremonial use of hallucinogenic plants by the Amerindian is (most often) a collective journey into the unconscious. It is not necessarily, and in fact rarely is, a pleasant or an easy journey. It is wondrous and it may be terrifying. But above all it is purposeful.”

Now, for the second time since Timothy Leary almost started a collective consciousness revolution in the modern American, scientists are rediscovering what aboriginal societies knew for millennia. A 2024 study found that high doses of psilocybin led to a significant reduction in depressive symptoms, with effects observed from the first treatment and sustained over several weeks. The trial, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, investigated the effects of psilocybin for severe, treatment-resistant depression.

"Psilocybin, when administered with psychological support, may offer a rapid and durable antidepressant effect for individuals who have not responded to conventional therapies” (see https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.20231063)

"As an initial foray into psilocybin treatment for patients with MDD (major depressive disorder) that is difficult-to-treat, this study provided an early indication of safety, tolerability, and promising potential efficacy. An unexplored question concerns the durability of the antidepressant effect beyond 12 weeks and whether durability can be extended with additional dosing," wrote the authors.

From a Guardian article: “In the late 1950s, at the height of his fame, Cary Grant set off on a trip in search of his true self, unpicking the myth he had spent three decades perfecting. He tried hypnosis and yoga and felt that they both came up short. So he began dropping acid and claimed to have found inner peace: ‘During my LSD sessions, I would learn a great deal, and the result was a rebirth. I finally got where I wanted to go’. Grant’s adventures in psychedelia – an estimated 100 sessions, spanning the years 1958-1961 – provide the basis for ‘Becoming Cary Grant’, a fascinating documentary.

“Between 1950 and 1965, around 40,000 patients were prescribed lysergic acid to treat conditions as diverse as alcoholism, schizophrenia and PTSD. In the UK, Powick Hospital funded an “LSD clinic”. In the US, the CIA tested the drug as a truth serum, dosing unwitting subjects, which made many think they’d lost their minds, or worse.

“Grant called his LSD sessions a ‘beneficial cleansing’ and, though he’d been notoriously reticent during his career, personally contacted Good Housekeeping magazine to ‘tell the world about this. It has changed my life. Everyone’s got to take it’. Timothy Leary read this interview, or was told about it…”

On May 13, 1957, Life magazine published "Seeking the Magic Mushroom", an article by R. Gordon Wasson about the use of psilocybin mushrooms in religious rites of the indigenous Mazatec people of Mexico. Anthony Russo, a colleague of Leary's, had experimented with psychedelic Psilocybe mexicana mushrooms on a trip to Mexico and told Leary about it. In August 1960, Leary traveled to Cuernavaca, Mexico, with Russo and consumed psilocybin mushrooms for the first time, an experience that drastically altered the course of his life. In 1965, Leary said that he had "learned more about ... [his] brain and its possibilities ... [and] more about psychology in the five hours after taking these mushrooms than ... in the preceding 15 years of studying and doing research".

Leary and his associates—notably Richard Alpert—began a research program known as the Harvard Psilocybin Project. The goal was to analyze psilocybin's effects on human subjects (first prisoners, and later Andover Newton Theological Seminary students) from a synthesized version of the drug. Psilocybin was produced in a process developed by Albert Hofmann of Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, who was famous for synthesizing LSD.

Beat poet Allen Ginsberg heard about the Harvard research project and asked to join. Leary was inspired by Ginsberg's enthusiasm, and the two shared an optimism that psychedelics could help people discover a higher level of consciousness. They began introducing psychedelics to intellectuals and artists including Jack Kerouac, Maynard Ferguson, Charles Mingus and Charles Olson.

Leary argued that psychedelic substances—in proper doses, a stable setting, and under the guidance of psychologists—could benefit behavior in ways not easily obtained by regular therapy. He experimented in treating alcoholism and reforming criminals, and many of his subjects said they had profound mystical and spiritual experiences that permanently improved their lives.

The Concord Prison Experiment evaluated the use of psilocybin and psychotherapy in the rehabilitation of released prisoners. Thirty-six prisoners were reported to have repented and sworn off criminality after Leary and his associates guided them through the psychedelic experience. The overall recidivism rate for American prisoners was 60%, whereas the rate for those in Leary's project reportedly dropped to 20%. The experimenters concluded that long-term reduction in criminal recidivism could be effected with a combination of psilocybin-assisted group psychotherapy (inside the prison) along with a comprehensive post-release follow-up support program modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous

In the late 1960s, Richard Alpert aka Ram Dass, who was kicked out of Harvard along with Leary because of the LSD experiments, was asked for LSD by his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, for the second time in three years. Dass hadn’t quite believed it when, three years earlier, Baba had taken a triple-dose—900 micrograms—and been unaffected; had thought that Baba must have done sleight of hand and not really taken the drug. This time, Baba very clearly swallowed 1,200 micrograms of LSD, drank some water, asked how long it would take to act, and pretended to go mad for a moment—he loved to joke around. As before, though, he remained unaffected, and explained that the key to withstanding such substances was to have unwavering focus on God. He told Ram Dass that ancient yogis in the Kullu Valley had once used similar substances in their practices but only in conjunction with deep fasting and meditation. He said, "LSD is good for the world but not spiritual. It can bring you close to Christ but, after two hours, you must leave." True spiritual transformation, he taught, comes from devotion, love, and consistent practice—not temporary chemical experiences, although they can provide a glimpse of the reality that is attainable with sincere, devoted practice.

Book review: The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name (2020) by Brian Muraresku “explores the question of whether the communion wine in early Christianity contained hallucinogens. Muraresku explores a little-known connection between the best-kept secret in Ancient Greece and Christianity. There are two and a half billion self-described Christians in the world, but very few who know how it all started.

“Before Jerusalem, before Rome, before Mecca—there was Eleusis: the spiritual capital of the ancient world. It promised immortality to Plato and the rest of Athens's greatest minds with a very simple formula: drink this potion, see God. Shrouded in secrecy for millennia, the Ancient Greek sacrament was buried when the newly Christianized Roman Empire obliterated Eleusis in the fourth century AD.

“Renegade scholars in the 1970s claimed the Greek potion was psychedelic, just like the original Christian Eucharist that replaced it. Vindication for the disgraced theory grew in laboratories—the rapidly growing field of archaeological chemistry has proven the ancient use of visionary drugs. Now, with a single dose of psilocybin, the psycho-pharmacologists at Johns Hopkins and NYU are turning self-proclaimed atheists into instant believers.“

If that’s not a strong recommendation—to believers, agnostics and atheists alike—I don’t know what is.