Accessing Altered States of Consciousness
An experimental account of psilocybin mushrooms
Introduction
I feel ambiguous about the use of drugs to explore our consciousness. On the one hand I do not want to advocate drugs as tools for such exploration, let alone our personal growth. On the other, I do not want to be too critical of substances that do have the potential to greatly enhance a person’s connection with themselves and with the world around them, including especially the natural world. I firmly believe that the world crisis we are currently living in requires a dramatic shift of consciousness to be addressed, and if projectiogenic drugs, i.e. drugs that induce projections or expansions of consciousness, can accelerate such a shift then their conscious and responsible use should not be discouraged.
Although I consider the experience I describe below, facilitated by psilocybin mushrooms, to have been paradigm expanding in a fundamentally healing way, I am wary of the use of such drugs as a core tool for spiritual development as advocated for example by Timothy Leary or envisaged by Aldous Huxley. I know that many people have had deeply and positively life-altering experiences with psilocybin and similar projectiogenic drugs. But I also know of people who have been traumatised by the use of these substances and lived…
