Can Fasting Induce Visionary Experiences?
In 1953, Aldous Huxley was one of the few test subjects chosen to take a psychedelic drug called mescaline. The objective of the experiment was to understand the effects of mescaline on the human psyche. In The Doors of Perception, Huxley recalls this experience and offers us a rare glimpse into his mind. Or should I say his soul?
Dr. C.D. Broad was an eminent Cambridge philosopher who suggested that “the function of the brain and nervous system and sense of organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.”
Huxley proposes that this mass elimination takes place because we are animals whose prime concern is survival. For us to survive, all sensory input is funneled through a “reducing valve of the brain and nervous system.” Any information that is not useful to our survival is eliminated. “What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive.” Huxley’s language doesn’t hide his disappointment. Is this all there is in store for our species on this planet?
Is the purpose to our lives the defiance of death?
There are a number of enzyme systems in our brain that are necessary for coordination; some of which regulate the supply of glucose to our brain cells. It has been found that mescaline “inhibits the production of these enzymes and thus lowers the amount of glucose available to an organ that is in constant need for sugar.”
As the brains of the mescaline takers became deprived of sugar during the experiment, a few common observations were made:
1. There appears to be no impairment in the ability to remember and to “think straight.”
2. “Visual impressions are greatly intensified.” The innocence of perception can be compared to that of a child who sees something for the first time.
3. Interest in space and time is diminished.
4. The will to do anything of mundane nature appears to suffer significantly. Ordinary tasks that one would perform, ordinary thoughts that one would dream up, are perceived as uninteresting.
5. There are better things to do and think about, both of which can take place “in here” or “out there” (or both at the same time). There is no question about the superiority of those thoughts and actions over the ordinary ones experienced while not under the influence of mescaline.
Mescaline, thus, appears to be a temporary bypass to the “reducing valve.” It opens the gate to thoughts that are not imperative to our survival. In Huxley’s words, “When the brain runs out of sugar, the undernourished ego grows weak, can’t be bothered to undertake the necessary chores, and loses all interest in those spatial and temporal relationships which mean so much to an organism bent on getting on in the world. As [sensory input] seeps past the no longer watertight valve, all kind of biologically useless things start to happen.”
As our focus shifts from survival to unfiltered perception, we come to a point where our ego ceases to exist. What fills the void is an “obscure knowledge that All is in all — that All is actually each.”
Sat Chit Ananda. Being Awareness Bliss.
Similar to mescaline, the amount of glucose available to our brain is also reduced by periods of fasting. Fasting lowers the biological efficiency of our brain and “so makes possible the entry into consciousness of material possessing no survival value.”
By denying ourselves of the most primal need to survival, we can practice to tame the animal inside of us. The more we are in control of our reptilian instincts, the less concerned we become with our own survival. And the less we are concerned with death, the more we can allow ourselves to live as conscious beings.
What if we created more opportunities to starve our egos and feed our souls?
“[We] will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging [our] ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.” — Aldous Huxley
I am you. You are me. We are this. And this is everything.
The distinctions we make between ourselves and others greatly hinders us from creating an environment of love, compassion, and collaboration on this planet. We all come from the same source. We are all connected to the universal intelligence.
And when we “feel ourselves to be the sole heirs of the universe, when ‘the sea flows in our veins…and the stars are our jewels,’ when all things are perceived as infinite and holy, what motive can we have for covetousness or self-assertion, for the pursuit of power of the drearier forms of pleasure?”
Death is inevitable. Be mindful of your reducing valve and create opportunities for yourself to experience life through the lens of consciousness, not survival.
