The rehabilitation of shamanic entheogens continues, with the latest issue of Scientific American featuring an article by Roland Griffiths and Charles Grob titled “Hallucinogens as Medicine” (restricted to subscribers unfortunately, apart from an opening excerpt). Along with that article is a companion piece by one of the participants in the psilocybin trial mentioned in the print article, which – unusually for Sci-Am – concentrates more on her experience, rather than scientific data and conclusions:
After a few minutes, instead of getting accustomed to the level of light, I realized the light was getting brighter and brighter and strangely brighter, until I understood that this light was not in the room, it was inside me. At that moment, it was as if all the cylinders in the lock somehow fell into alignment, the door swung open, and I found my consciousness being flooded with brilliant Light. Without notice or fanfare I had arrived at a transcendental state, and was awestruck at the discovery. I felt a sense of joyous expansion as it opened fully to me, like entering a splendid palace, yet the feeling was completely natural and gentle.
With my eyes closed I was overwhelmed with glorious golden light, suffused with every color, prisms and rainbows everywhere like a shining hologram. The Light itself was alive, a radiant consciousness of ultimate intelligence, perfect integrity, singularity and purity. The Light pervaded everything. It composed everything. Its presence was benevolent, calm, and intense.
It was as if the Light were revealing to me the innermost workings of the universe. Without words, It informed me that It, as the Light, was the source of every physical manifestation and that each had its purpose: “Everything is in my perfect control. With this as Cause, there can be no mistakes.” I knew It to be the substance of every particle in the microcosm and the overarching essence of the macrocosm. In that moment I intuitively understood how everything is being created anew each instant from Its emanation. Why, then, could we not see the Light completely composing and permeating all of creation? How could the shining substance of all things be hidden? Later I remembered what the sages have always told us. The only possible answer is that our sense perceptions are an illusion.
Below this personal account, in the comments, you can find one of the major reasons the general public often shy away from science when it seeks to devalue mystical or religious experiences:
Ah, the crassness of our post hoc narrator. I don’t deny the experience, just any significance it has other than as a revelation of cultural roots and our archetype wielding, metaphorical brains.
…I can explain much of it perfectly from the comfort of “my own paradigm”, which is to be open but sceptical of everything, so that I am fooled as little as possible by data.
Though the commenter maintains that he doesn’t “deny the experience”, essentially he does – in effect, saying “yes I understand some people are fooled by delusions, and they are welcome to do so, but I am more intelligent than that”. And that’s not to say that I disagree (or agree) – delusion may well be the correct description…I can’t claim to be qualified to say either way. But the account shows that this was a profoundly moving personal experience for the trial participant – I would daresay its effect would outweigh any explanation that a scientist might provide. While science may hold ‘data’ and the scientific process as being of supreme importance, for most of the general public it is all about what they experience.
