Psychedelics Will Save the World

Psychedelics Will Save the World

The psychedelic experience will play a core role in the transformation of human consciousness. In fact, they likely have been critical catalysts of conscious expansion for millennia.?

Tiny Mushroom, Big Power

I was reflecting on the power of the psilocybin-containing mushrooms recently.

I thought to myself, “Wow, if you really think about it, this simple mushroom really has the ability to profoundly alter consciousness.”

Relative to our bodies, a mushroom is a tiny little thing. These mushrooms self-propagate, and can grow and thrive on something as simple as cow manure.

Simple, but profound, is the notion that a tiny mushroom growing on cow manure has the ability to radically alter our brain function and our conscious experience.

Even deeper than that is the way that this thing that emerges from the earth can induce radical spiritual experience! A mushroom can help us to commune with God, the divine, and our deepest spirituality.

Rekindling Lost Connection

Our connection to the divine is something that is innate, but lost upon us. The greater idea that there is no God, and, thus, that there is no divinity, no spirituality, nothing greater than what we can measure or see with our eyeballs, is one that pervades culture.?

Yet, with or without a tiny mushroom, we can commune with the sacred.

Perhaps these mushrooms propel us, like a cannonball, into spiritual experience.

A Different Interpretation on Psychedelic Brain Action

At the brain level, they dim the lights of our normal ego-centric self. They quiet down the brain’s ‘default mode network’, where our inner monologue lives. Other regions of the brain concurrently light up! These other brain regions now are able to communicate, giving a whole-brain, whole-self experience of reality.

Perhaps also there is a dampening effect on the body’s experience of reality. If you take a dualistic view, viewing our souls as separate from the body, and the body as the vehicle that that soul embodies, strange hypotheses emerge.?

I wonder, for example, if we get a glimpse into what it is like for our souls to no longer live in this body. Perhaps that is central to the psychedelic experience - we get a feel for being torn slightly from our bodily consciousness, while keeping a tether to it. Thus, we get to feel what it may be like to be out of our bodies.

Near Death Experiences

Mention of Near Death Experience (NDE) is warranted here. The Near-Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF) publishes accounts of people who experience physical death, but come back to life. What happens to conscious experience when we die?

A materialist would assume that when the brain activity ceases, consciousness stops. Right? Wrong.

The thousands-and-thousands of accounts from people who have had NDEs report a somewhat-reliable experience when experiencing actual death. Most often, individuals report floating about their bodies, and witnessing what is occurring in the room. Post-experience fact checking then supports that what the individual saw outside-of-their-body is also what people in-their-bodies saw in the room!?

Sometimes there is a tunnel of light that one traverses - the classic, "Don't go toward the light!" There is then usually a connection to loved ones who have passed on. People who come back to life often report their loved ones saying, “It is not your time.” Then, the individual is carried back into their body. Notably, the individual is often given a choice to die or to come back.

Reliably, people report a deep, profound sense of love, connection, and unity in this afterlife experience. It is seen as a desirable place to enter into, although many times people also have a deep sense of gratitude for the experience of life-on-earth, and they consciously choose to return. This is despite the fact that human experience is rife with unavoidable pain and suffering. Interestingly, people who have an NDE due to suicide are extremely less likely to attempt suicide again.

NDEs and Psychedelic Experiences

My meandering mind wonders if psychedelics do not share a common component here. Some NDE researchers claim that the experiences are quite different, and I would generally agree. However, I cannot help but wonder about a possible overlap.

Does the cessation of the default mode network activity, in taking us out of our ego experience, also take us out of our bodily experience a bit? Do we flirt with the spiritual realms, while still being tethered into our bodies, into the earth, into normal waking consciousness?

A heavy dose of tiny mushrooms will make you inquire about such things.

What is Wrong

Now, as it relates to the saving of the world (and whatnot), I do think that we have profoundly lost touch with our individual spiritual natures.

We are constantly bombarded with other peoples’ agendas. Our politicians repeat their message they know to resonate with their base, e.g., “They’re criminals, they’re pouring into our country.” to rally people and manipulate their emotions. Advertising and marketing pull at our emotional strings, preying on our weaknesses to get us to buy things we usually don’t need at all.

Further, educational systems push a dogmatic agenda. The school systems enforce a hierarchical reality, whereby you are considered a worker-bee for the health of the greater system. Subliminal messaging reinforces this into the work-world. “Do what your boss tells you to do, work hard for the machine, and we will give you a modest salary to live a quiet life and not disturb the peace.”

There is no questioning of whether that workplace, or corporation, has your best interest in mind, nor the interest of the consumers of the product that the corporation is selling.

Bad Corporations

Many large corporations exist to generate money for the people at the top, who enjoy gross wealth. The rest of the workers in the corporation are given modest salaries to allow them to live and feed their families. Those that display competence and are willing to play the game are rewarded and moved up the corporate ladder, so that they, too, can enjoy a taste of the material excesses that the world has to offer.

Pay no mind to what many of these companies do to individual health and wellness. A lot of these corporations rely on the lowest possible version of people to buy their products.

Limbic Resonance

We all have deeper-level brain structures that allow us to survive. They’ve given us the tools we need, in wild and harsh conditions, to make sure that we can survive, grow, and thrive.

In our current society, many of these limbic structures are less adaptive. For example, salty, sugary, and fatty foods are highly rewarding when you’re living in the forest, woods, or jungle. You are unlikely to encounter these, and so, when you do, you’re going to want to eat a lot of them. This gives you a store of extra resources that can help tide you over if you are having a hard time killing a deer or foraging for berries.

Corporations like our fast-food industries put a ton of fat, salt, and sugar in our food to get us to consume it constantly. They pull at the strings of our limbic system to unfairly profiteer the corrupt individuals who prop up their company. Moreover, they’re happy to have chemists engineer more addictive chemicals that they can shove into this food to keep us eating it.

Meanwhile, we suffer from extremely high levels of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease that is all preventable with a healthy diet.?

Psychedelic Truth

Psychedelics can rip off the veil. They can show us the harsh truth of how F’ed up this system is. It’s not just in our food - it’s our politics, our work, our schools, everywhere.

We need a new way of being. We need to be able to have the time to step away from a desk, and to go outside. We need to be able to connect with others (P.S. - without alcohol) in meaningful and productive ways. We need money to be able to afford healthy, organic whole foods, and to be able to have the time to cook them.?

We need embodied leaders, who recognize this deep corruption, and who are fit to hold office, and make meaningful changes.?

We need people to wake up! This won’t happen if we are in food or alcohol-induced comas, constantly stressing about nonsense, and working in an office 75% of the time.?

Psychedelics offer us a better way, by showing us our true natures, and that there is a better way to live if only we are willing to walk it.

Conclusion

Psychedelics do not hold all of the answers, though. They offer us a door, if we are brave enough to go through it, they show us a better way. We must take action, following that experience, to offer something better to the world. We must fight against the constant tirade of manipulation, and choose the harder, but more fulfilling path.

Will you fight?

P.S. I took a microdose (legally!) before I wrote this. Yay, Colorado!

About the Author

Cole Butler, LPCC, ADDC, MACP is the Founder of Cole Butler Therapy and Integrative Care Collective (ICC). He writes about issues related to spirituality, health, psychedelic experiences, science, philosophy, and consciousness. In his therapy practice, he offers one-on-one counseling, psychedelic integration therapy, and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. Additionally, as a community leader at ICC, he helps to build relationships and offer support to other mental health providers. Learn more by checking out his therapy website or the ICC website.