Toward a Critique of Psychedelic Reason, #1–Introduction.

(Vervaeke, 2022)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction

2. Magic Mushrooms and Drug Use in Modern Society

3. A Preliminary Phenomenology of Psychedelic Experience

4. Elaborations

5. Conclusion

This essay will be published in five installments; this installment contains section 1.

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Toward a Critique of Psychedelic Reason

For every human illness, somewhere in the World exists the plant which is the cure. I believe that there is healing potential locked inside plants which is integral with their evolution, just as part of human evolution is to learn to tap this wonderful gift of Nature.[i]

To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled 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. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. [Every individual is its victim] in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things. (Huxley 2004: p. 11)

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. (Wittgenstein, 1953/2009: p. 52e, §109)

The philosopher’s treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness. (Wittgenstein, 1953/2009: p. 98e, §255)

1. Introduction

In pursuit of real philosophy (and following in the illustrious footsteps of Aldous Huxley), I started experimenting with taking magic mushrooms. Hallucinogenic mushrooms have been around for millennia, and there is a veritable history to be written about their symbiotic relationship with humanity. So-called “magic mushrooms” are specimens of the genus Psilocybe, which is distributed around the Old and the New World.

The genus Psilocybe produces potent species that cause hallucinogenic effects, and, if you believe the enthusiasts, they provide great existential and spiritual insights. Not all species are equally potent, depending on the concentration of psychoactive compounds they contain.

The active compounds psilocin and psilocybin affect the visual cortex, heighten peripheral vision and produce visual, tactile as well as auditive hallucinations. Some species create an introspective mood (P. tampanensis got its nickname “philosopher’s stone” from somewhere, I suppose), while other species stimulate creative abilities. Depending on one’s physical constitution, the amount of psilocybin, and the dosage, the effects range from mild to simply spectacular.

Huxley ingested a slightly different psychoactive compound for his experiment, and opted for mescalin, a far more potent drug compared to magic mushrooms. But some of the effects he describes are roughly similar. So, as a guide, The Doors of Perception makes for excellent preparatory reading.

The quotation at the beginning of this essay pre-empts something that I would like to argue here. It seems to me that we use the full capacity of our (fully embodied) brains and nervous systems only partially. The mind seems to me a far greater and deeper place than everyday experience would have us believe. Does that mean that we all should sit around, taking psychoactive compounds, as a 21^st century equivalent of the hippie community? Not necessarily. Even while the hippie community has been painted in ghastly colors by those who had an active interest in keeping the debilitating and mechanistic 9-to-5 economic system running, there are certainly drawbacks in opting-out of societal life altogether in order to explore psychic space. However, we would have achieved something here if psychoactive compounds were not by default regarded as dangerous, as unnecessary, as something keeping people from doing their (9-to-5) jobs and as a bad habit of depraved minds more generally.

NOTE

[i] Ascribed to Rudolf Steiner. Despite extensive searches in the Steiner Archive (Steiner, 2023), I have been unable to track down this quotation. It may be that it has only been orally transmitted, since Steiner taught and lectured frequently. However, many similar quotes that deal with more-or-less the same subject matter can be found scattered through Steiner’s oeuvre. Here, one can find multiple places in which Steiner freely draws connections between cosmic cycles, evolutionary processes, the (human) body, various forms of medicine, the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms and the idea that Nature always provides a cure because the entire cosmos is interconnected. Clearly, Steiner was interested in the healing properties of plants, advocating for organic farming and teaching botany to children even before this became a cultural trend; but most importantly, he attempted to integrate an systematize his insights, and thereby formulate a comprehensive (organicist) worldview. Here is a representative selection, cited using Steiner archive numbers (GA): “This is the place to use the remedies you find in the plants and minerals. For everything belonging to the plants and minerals has a profound importance for everything to do with the human etheric body. So when we know an illness has arisen in the etheric body, and it appears in a certain way in the glandular system, we must find the remedy that can correctly repair the complex of interconnections” (Steiner, 2023: GA 107, The Being of Man and His Future Evolution. Different Types of Illness, lecture delivered in Berlin, November 1910); “This rhythmical order is there in the whole of nature. In the plants one leaf follows another in rhythmical growth; the petals of the blossoms are ordered rhythmically, everything is rhythmically ordered. Fever takes a rhythmical course in sickness; the whole of life is rhythmical” (Steiner, 2023: GA 184, Three Streams of Human Evolution, lecture delivered in Dornach, October 1918); “Study, for instance, a plant which is in this respect an instructor in the realm of nature; Cichorium intybus, the chicory. From this plant we may learn a variety of facts about our human bodies, if we only take the trouble to do so” (Steiner, 2023: GA 312, Spiritual Science and Medicine, lecture X, delivered in Dornach, March 1920); “We must also see that with any process taking place in the human being in an ascending curve, let us say, we must seek outside the human being in nature for the descending curve. In this way we will be able to modify curves that are ascending too abruptly, and so forth. Medicine demands knowledge of the whole world in a certain sense. I have been able to offer only a tiny fragment, of course, but this fragment should make clear to you that there must be an entirely different understanding of the nature of Urtica dioica, Colchicum autumnale, or indeed of any other plant, the plants themselves must tell us where their descending tendency is leading” (Steiner, 2023: GA 314, Fundamentals of Anthroposophic Medicine, lecture IV, delivered in Stuttgart, October 1922).

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