After a 40-year hiatus in scientific research on hallucinogenic drugs, scientists are investigating the effects of psilocybin, a psychoactive compound found in some mushrooms. Of 30 adult volunteers who received psilocybin in a recent study, two-thirds of them described the resulting experience as one of the five most meaningful experiences of their lives. Some of the volunteers reported negative feelings, but many of them found intense spiritual meaning, which in some cases seems to have had long-lasting after-effects. The researchers warn that the negative effects could be harmful outside of a controlled setting (they don’t want everyone to rush out and experiment for themselves), but the value of examining the workings of psilocybin scientifically is such that it’s too bad this has been sidelined for so long. I hope we learn a lot more in the future about how psilocybin acts to create mystical states, and also how those states occur spontaneously. I wonder what it feels like to take it, but on the other hand I have had some pretty powerful spiritual experiences while under the influence of nothing more than a beautiful place, awe-inspiring music, or an exceptionally dark and starry night sky. I wonder what mechanism in my brain is capable of such transcendence, and why certain circumstances can trigger it in some people and why certain chemicals can also trigger it. To me this seems to indicate pretty clearly that spiritual states are something that arises out of our brain chemistry and not from the presence of anything supernatural, which is no surprise. I’m just curious about how it works.
You can read about this in a number of places, but I enjoyed the coverage in the New Scientist.
