Haven’t read an article this refreshing in a while. Here’s a quote to contextualize:

[Aldous] Huxley posited that ordinary consciousness represents only a fraction of what the mind can take in. In order to keep us focused on survival, Huxley claimed, the brain must act as a “reducing valve” on the flood of potentially overwhelming sights, sounds and sensations. What remains, Huxley wrote, is a “measly trickle of the kind of consciousness” necessary to “help us to stay alive.”

A new study by British researchers supports this theory. It shows for the first time how psilocybin — the drug contained in magic mushrooms — affects the connectivity of the brain. Researchers found that the psychedelic chemical, which is known to trigger feelings of oneness with the universe and a trippy hyperconsciousness, does not work by ramping up the brain’s activity as they’d expected. Instead, it reduces it.

Some have argued, for example, that the geometric visual hallucinations commonly seen by people on psychedelics (and by some sufferers of migraines) help reveal the architecture of the brain’s visual processing mechanism. “One hypothesis is that what you’re actually seeing is the functional organization of the visual cortex itself. The visual cortex is organized in a sort of fractal way [it repeats the same patterns in different sizes]. It’s the same way that fractals are everywhere in nature. Like tree branches, the brain recapitulates [itself],” says Carhart-Harris. “You’re not seeing the cells themselves, but the way they’re organized — as if the brain is revealing itself to itself.”

I really want to do shrooms right now.

I was directed to a great article this morning: it’s both intelligent and lucid, and especially near the end, hints at some really cool ideas that the author—the renowned neuroscientist Sam Harris—will apparently be addressing in his future writing.

In the spirit of my generation, I’ve cut it up into a few mangled and context-less pieces for you to glance at, having bolded what struck me as particularly cool.

Be sure to read the whole thing if it suits your fancy:

The problem is that we refer to all biologically active compounds by a single term—“drugs”—and this makes it nearly impossible to have an intelligent discussion about the psychological, medical, ethical, and legal issues surrounding their use.

The “war on drugs” has been well lost, and should never have been waged. While it isn’t explicitly protected by the U.S. Constitution, I can think of no political right more fundamental than the right to peacefully steward the contents of one’s own consciousness. The fact that we pointlessly ruin the lives of nonviolent drug users by incarcerating them, at enormous expense, constitutes one of the great moral failures of our time.

But if [my daughter] does not try a psychedelic like psilocybin or LSD at least once in her adult life, I will worry that she may have missed one of the most important rites of passage a human being can experience.

As a general matter, I believe we should be very slow to make conclusions about the nature of the cosmos based upon inner experience — no matter how profound these experiences seem.

Many people wonder about the difference between meditation (and other contemplative practices) and psychedelics. Are these drugs a form of cheating, or are they the one, indispensable vehicle for authentic awakening? They are neither. Many people don’t realize that all psychoactive drugs modulate the existing neurochemistry of the brain—either by mimicking specific neurotransmitters or by causing the neurotransmitters themselves to be more active. There is nothing that one can experience on a drug that is not, at some level, an expression of the brain’s potential.

I have visited both extremes on the psychedelic continuum. The positive experiences were more sublime than I could have ever imagined or than I can now faithfully recall. These chemicals disclose layers of beauty that art is powerless to capture and for which the beauty of Nature herself is a mere simulacrum. It is one thing to be awestruck by the sight of a giant redwood and to be amazed at the details of its history and underlying biology. It is quite another to spend an apparent eternity in egoless communion with it. Positive psychedelic experiences often reveal how wondrously at ease in the universe a human being can be—and for most of us, normal waking consciousness does not offer so much as a glimmer of these deeper possibilities.

But as the peaks are high, the valleys are deep. My “bad trips” were, without question, the most harrowing hours I have ever suffered—and they make the notion of hell, as a metaphor if not a destination, seem perfectly apt.

As I discussed in The End of Faith, I view most psychedelic experiences as potentially misleading. Psychedelics do not guarantee wisdom. They merely guarantee more content. And visionary experiences, considered in their totality, appear to me to be ethically neutral.

As I will discuss in future essays, the form of transcendence that appears to link directly to ethical behavior and human well-being is the transcendence of egoity in the midst of ordinary waking consciousness. It is by ceasing to cling to the contents of consciousness—to our thoughts, moods, desires, etc.—that we make progress. Such a project does not, in principle, require that we experience more contents.  The freedom from self that is both the goal and foundation of “spiritual” life is coincident with normal perception and cognition—though, admittedly, this can be difficult to realize.

The power of psychedelics, however, is that they often reveal, in the span of a few hours, depths of awe and understanding that can otherwise elude us for a lifetime.

(Source: ikevan)

I don’t know why, but something about artists under the influence of drugs really amazes me. Perhaps because my own efforts are so difficult and contorted, whereas others’ seem to occupy such a broad range of expression. Or perhaps regardless of my own attempts, I’m in simple awe really of the diversity and uniqueness that so often seems to result. It’s like it’s not so much the communication (process itself) that breaks down but the barriers that usually shape or manipulate said communication.

And I can’t decide if that’s a good thing—in any field outside of art, that is.

The study’s thesis: “very bright” people seem to seek out and do more evolutionary novel things. Makes sense.