In May 2006, Johns Hopkins University published a paper on the effects of a single dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms.
It was controversial for a few reasons. Just 6 years earlier, the University was the first in the U.S. to receive regulatory approval to administer the psychoactive substance, and it still carries much of the stigma of when it was banned during the Nixon administration in the 1970âs.
The University acknowledged that it had been used for centuries in cultures across the world for religious purposes but up until that point, the effects of the substance were largely unknown to science.
Their discovery was incredible. When administered under the right conditions, psilocybin reliably caused experiences that were directly comparable to classic religious experiences where people encounter âGodâ.
The majority of participants rated the experience to be among the top five most meaningful experiences of their lives, next to the birth of their first child or the death of a parent.
The experiment
Participants were selected from a group of psychologically stable people who had never tried psychedelics before. They were given 30mg of psilocybin in a controlled, living-room like environment where they were asked to lie on a couch, close their eyes and direct their attention inward.
Study monitors accompanied participants and rated their behaviour throughout a session lasting eight hours, after which the participants filled out questionnaires assessing the experience. Individuals recorded some or sometimes all of the following experiences:
- A feeling of something greater than their personal self, or the fusion of this self with a larger whole.
- Experience of an encounter or unity with ultimate reality.
- Experience of oneness or unity with objects and/or persons perceived in their surroundings.
- Experience of the insight that âall is Oneâ.
- Sense of being at a spiritual height.
- Sense of reverence and of experiencing something profoundly sacred and holy.
- Experience of amazement, ecstasy, and awe. Feelings of tenderness, gentleness, peace, tranquility, and joy.
- Loss of their usual sense of time, space, and awareness of where they were.
- Feeling that they could no do justice to the experience by describing in words, and that it would be difficult to communicate the experience to others who have not had a similar experience.
Many of these experiences are analogous to classic mystical experiences. One participant told of a conversation with Godâwho had appeared as golden streams of lightâassuring them that everything that exists is perfect, even if their limited corporeal self couldnât fully understand it.
Another participant said:
I could see many spiritual beliefs that I hold/held and linked them â a more cohesive and comprehensive spiritual landscape became apparent to me.
The majority of participants believed their experience was an encounter with âultimate realityâ; that they had perceived a reality that was more real than their everyday one, and still thought so two months later.
[I experienced] a reality that was clear, beautiful, bright and joyful⊠In short, this experience opened me up (gave me a tangible vision) of what I think is attainable every day.
A similar experience was had by the British author Aldous Huxley who ingested the psychedelic mescaline under supervision, and afterwards wrote The Doors of Perception (a classic in psychedelic literature). He wrote:
I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation â the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.
For the Johns Hopkins participants, the experience caused moderate to strong lasting changes in life satisfaction, purpose, and meaning.
Following these incredible results, the study has gone on to spark a worldwide renewal in research into the profound effects of psychedelics.
Their ability to reliably cause such experiences in a laboratory setting will allow deeper scientific investigation of their causes and effects, and perhaps the mechanism of a âmysticalâ experience.
How they work
As the science is so new (and as the brain is so complex), we only have the broadest idea of how psychedelics work.
The 2017 paper Classic Hallucinogens and Mystical Experiences: Phenomenology and Neural Correlates tries to work it out.
The substances seem to reduce activity in the âdefault mode networkâ, which is a group of connections in the brain that typically lights up when youâre pointing your attention inside yourself, rather than towards the outside world.
Itâs believed to be responsible for your feeling of self; of being an individual.
When you take a psychedelic, its connections and oscillations temporarily change. You lose your sense of being an individual, and the sensation is called the âdissolution of the selfâ or âego death.â But simultaneously, you gain a feeling of connectedness to everything outside who you are.
Psychedelics may also affect long-held biases and mental filters, allowing us to see things that have always been in front of us, but that we have unconsciously learned to ignore. Huxley calls the mind on psychedelics the âMind at Largeâ.
[I]n so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet.
- Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell
This combination of ego death and the mind at large â may create this experience of seeing âultimate realityâ.
Other means
Psychedelics may be the first means to introduce the concept of âultimate realityâ to science, as they produce relatively consistent and reliable results in a controlled laboratory setting.
Psychedelics, used responsibly and with proper caution, would be for psychiatry what the microscope is for biology and medicine or the telescope is for astronomy.
-Stanislav Grof
But itâs unlikely that theyâre only way to slow down the default mode network and have psychedelic-like experiences.
After the ban in the 1970âs the study of psychedelics came to a halt, and some scientists looked for alternative ways to induce the same effects. Czech psychiatrist Stanislav Grof is one of the more prominent. He developed a set of intense breathing exercises called âholotropic breathworkâ which has had popular success.
The word âholotropicâ is a term that he coined, meaning âtowards the wholeâ, or towards ultimate reality.
In some instances faster breathing does not induce any physical tensions or difficult emotions, but leads directly to increasing relaxation, sense of expansion and well-being, and visions of light. The breather can feel flooded with feelings of love and experiences of mystical connection to other people, nature, the entire cosmos, and God.
-Stanislav Grof, Holotropic Breathwork: New Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Self-Exploration
Meditation may also be an important tool in manifesting similar experiences, like the feeling of fusion between the self and something greater, a sense of experiencing something sacred and holy, and awe of all existence.
Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania analyzed the brain scans of people in deep meditation and others that speak in tongues - people undergoing what he calls "mystical experiences".
He found that the parietal lobe, part of the default mode network, goes dark during the practice of Buddhist meditators as well as Franciscan nuns - who claim that prayer helps them feel at peace and at one with God.
- https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/what-happens-to-brains-during-spiritual-experiences/361882/
- https://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132078267/neurotheology-where-religion-and-science-collide
Historic analogues
People have been ingesting mushroom species containing psilocybin outside of science for centuries and as mentioned above, it grows naturally in most parts of the world.
Psychedelics, breathwork, and meditation may have inspired writings on concepts from different cultures around the world that may be more similar than they first appear.
One thing that is clear is that such a cognitive shift cannot come at a more important time in human history.
The reality of mass extinctions and climate change is often disconnected from our daily lives, even as our own consumption contributes to it.
Anything that builds a sense of connection and unity with the natural world is worth exploring.
Additional notes - accessing enlightenmentAdditional notes