THE PSYCHEDELIC RENAISSANCE

“The urge to transcend self-conscious selfhood is, as I have said, a principal appetite of the soul.” ― Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception.

The story behind a piece of LSD consumed at a festival, or an MDMA pill consumed at a rave is extremely interesting and its roots are very old. The use of psychedelics, as this family of chemical compounds present in nature and synthesized in recent years by humans is known, is ancient; indigenous cultures throughout the American continent incorporated into their religious rituals the use of Ayahuasca (Yagé), psilocybin present in various mushrooms and mescaline, a substance found in the Peyote cactus in Mexican and American territory.

Executives and creative minds from Silicon Valley who consume small doses of LSD daily in order to intensify their creativity and medical scientists who investigate the therapeutic use of MDMA and psilocybin in psychological disorders are part of this phenomenon, as well as recreational consumers who see them as a tool to have intense and transcendental experiences around art or interpersonal relationships.

It is impossible to deny the intensity of a psychedelic experience. It is a journey through consciousness; a period of heightened sensitivity to external and internal stimuli in which the mind navigates previously uncharted territory. As human beings, we spend most of our lives functioning in a basic state of consciousness; on autopilot, you might say. Daily life and its problems, as well as survival and our own well-being, are the functions of what neuroscientist Paul D. MacLean calls the “reptilian mind.”

There are, however, rare moments when we access higher states of consciousness. Sensory deprivation, intense meditation, and artistic catharsis are all ways of accessing them, as is the use of psychedelics. When we access higher consciousness, we leave our own egos behind and ascend to a more universal and impartial perspective. In it, empathy arises as a natural feeling and we are much less likely to judge, criticize, and attack, and more likely to understand, connect, and love.

It is well known that psychedelic experiences can produce religious, aesthetic, or therapeutic experiences. Obviously, these substances do not in themselves produce the transcendental experience; they act merely as chemical catalysts, meaning that they open the mind and free the nervous system from its ordinary patterns and structures. The nature of the experience depends almost entirely on what Timothy Leary, renowned clinical psychologist at Harvard University, called the “Set and Setting” of the experience. Set refers to the internal state of the person having the experience—his or her mood, fears, and desires. Setting, on the other hand, refers to the external conditions of the experience—the physical and emotional climate of the place, the subject’s relationship to other people present, and the activities he or she engages in.

Whether at a festival, climbing a mountain, in the middle of a forest, on a majestic beach, at a rave or among close friends listening to good music, the psychedelic experience can induce mystical and beautiful states of consciousness. Of course, there is the possibility of experiencing a bad experience or “bad trip”, since going beyond our ego and our known identity; beyond everything we have learned, our notions of space and time and the barriers we usually put between people and the world with us can be very intense for some; here lies the importance of prior preparation and its proper use.

“People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about.” -Joseph Campell.

Links of interest

EL RENACIMIENTO PSICODÉLICO
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