Edited by David Jay Brown, M.A

maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

MULTIDISCIPLINARY ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHEDELIC STUDIES

S P E C I A L E D I T I O N : Psychedelics and Ecology

“Gaia Mind” by Penny Slinger Hills. www.pennyslinger.com Edited by David Jay Brown, M.A.

VOLUME XIX NUMBER 1 • $8.95 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

“Awakening to Beauty” by Michael Divine, [email protected], Acrylic on canvas, 48x32” $7,500. Half of proceeds support MAPS psychedelic research.

Front cover: “From The Inside Out” by Rick Harlow, [email protected], Oil on canvas, 60x92” ©2005, $16,000 Limited series of 25 Giclée prints on canvas, 40x25” $800, signed by artist. Half of proceeds support MAPS psychedelic research. maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 1

MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for 2 Letter from Rick Doblin, Ph.D., MAPS President Psychedelic Studies) is a membership-based organization working to assist researchers 3 Letter from the Editor, David Jay Brown, M.A. world-wide to design, fund, conduct, obtain governmental approval for, and report on 8 Treat Her Right: Lessons From a Medicine Walk, Kathleen Harrison psychedelic research in humans. Founded in 1986, MAPS is an IRS approved 501 (c)(3) non-profit 12 Psychedelics & Species Connectedness corporation funded by tax deductible donations. MAPS is focused primarily on assisting Stanley Krippner, Ph.D. & David Luke, Ph.D. scientists to conduct human studies to generate 14 Consciousness Expansion & Counterculture in the 1960s & Beyond essential information about the risks and psycho- P therapeutic benefits of MDMA, other psychedelics, Ralph Metzner, Ph.D. and marijuana, with the goal of eventually gaining government approval for their medical 21 Could Flower Power Have Saved the World?, Gregory Sams uses. Interested parties wishing to copy any portion of this publication are encouraged to do so and are 24 Ecology of the Inner Landscape: Green Burial, Valerie Leveroni Corral kindly requested to credit MAPS and include our 28 Psychedelics & the Evolution of Ecological Consciousness address. The MAPS Bulletin is produced by a small group of dedicated staff and volunteers. Your Dragonfly de la Luz participation, financial or otherwise, is welcome. 29 From the Inside Out, Rick Harlow 2009 Multidisciplinary Association 30 Decoding the Cosmic Serpent: An Interview with Jeremy Narby, Ph.D. for Psychedelic Studies, Inc. (MAPS) 309 Cedar Street, #2323, Santa Cruz, CA 95060 David Jay Brown, M.A. Phone: 831.429-6362 Fax: 831.429.6370 35 Shamanic Medicines & EcoConsciousness: A Conversation with Dennis McKenna, Ph.D. E-mail: [email protected] David Jay Brown, M.A. Web: www.maps.org 39 Salvia divinorum & Ecological Awareness: An Interview with Daniel Siebert David Jay Brown, M.A. 41 Psychedelics & the Deep Ecology Movement: A Conversation with Arne Naess

Editor: David Jay Brown, M.A. Mark A. Schroll, Ph.D. & Donald Rothenberg Design/Build: Noah Juan Juneau 44 Psychedelics Can Serve as Catalyst for Deep Ecological Consciousness ISSN 1080-8981 David Lawlor, M.A, Ph.D. candidate Visit maps.org/catalog for information about donations and purchases 46 Psychedelics, Deep Ecology, and Wild Mind, Dale Pendell MAPS Bulletin is printed on 40% post-consumer recycled paper. 48 Peyote, Ecology, & the Inspiration for the Biosphere 2 Project Free Cultural Work - John Allen, M.B.A. A Creative Commons Attribution 50 Ecology, Technology & Biosphere 2, Mark Van Thillo You are free: to share, to copy, distribute and transmit this information under the following conditions: 53 Accessing Ecoconsciousness: The Potential Role of Psychedelics *Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner Shena Turlington specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the 55 The Anthropocosmic Vision of Psychedelic Environmental Ethics work). Sam Mickey What does “Attribute this work” mean? * For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to 57 The Ecologic Niche of Psychedelic Plants, Kim A. Dawson, R.Psych. others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to our web page: www.maps.org 59 Another Green World: Psychedelics and Ecology, Daniel Pinchbeck * Any of the above conditions can be waived if you 61 Awakening the Spiritual & Mental Ecology, Michael and Violet Divine get permission from the copyright holder. * Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the 63 Conversations with an Amazonian Shaman, Louise Reitman author’s moral rights. Your fair dealing and other rights are in no way affected by the above. 65 Symbiosis of the PostHuman Identity & the Biosphere, Sara Huntley 68 To Touch Truth: Toward a Consciousness of Connection, Lily Ross MAPS Bulletin Cover Art is avaialble for purchase through the MAPS online store. Fifty percent of 71 Who We Are: MAPS Staff profits support MAPS research. For more info visit our website: www.maps.org/catalog 72 Membership Information

2 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

to welcome you research. With these studies, we hope to show the MY PLEASURE to this special, themed issue of the FDA, the European Medicines Agency, and society MAPS Bulletin focusing on psychedelics and at large that these drugs have a legitimate place in ecology, guest edited by David Jay Brown. our world. When enough individual patients in a As my wife likes to tease me, I can take prac- society have been successfully treated, there will tically any topic of conversation and relate it to be a perceptible impact on society itself. psychedelics, usually with just a few leaps of log- Aside from psychedelics’ therapeutic applica- ic. With psychedelics and ecology, the connection tions in treating illnesses, the Council on Spiri- is so direct andFrom fundamental the and sodesk inherently of Ricktual Practices Doblin, has sponsored Ph.D. research at Johns present that it requires no intellectual acrobatics Hopkins into psychedelic mystical experiences to perceive the connecting threads. Albert Hof- catalyzed by psilocybin. The articles in this Bulle-

It’smann, the inventor of LSD, spoke about the con- tin demonstrate that the link between psychedel- nection between psychedelics and ecology to psy- ics and ecology comes primarily from the long- chiatrist Stanislav Grof during an interview in term changes in attitudes and behaviors ﬂowing 1984. He said, “Through my LSD experience and from these mystical experiences, which of course my new picture of reality, I became aware of the can and do occur sometimes in therapeutic studies wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and can certainly be produced without the use of and of the animal and plant kingdom. I became psychedelics. These are core human experiences very sensitive to what will happen to all this and that psychedelics can help facilitate. The essence all of us.” According to Craig Smith, the reporter of the mystical experience is a sense of unity who wrote Albert’s New York Times obituary, woven within the multiplicity, forging a deeply- “Dr. Hofmann became an impassioned advocate felt and unforgettable common bond between for the environment and argued that LSD, besides humans, other life forms, nature and matter. This being a valuable tool for psychiatry, could be used common bond can generate respect and appre- to awaken a deeper awareness of mankind’s place ciation for the environment, for caretaking and in nature and help curb society’s ultimately self- wonder. Mystical experiences also have political destructive degradation of the natural world.” implications, as seen by Robert Muller, former Our exploration of the link between psyche- Assistant Secretary General of the United Na- delics and ecology in this special issue of the tions, who called the shaping of a global spiritu- MAPS Bulletin is part of our larger idealistic, ally to be key to humanity’s survival of the fierce yet realistic, view of the potential of psychedel- passions produced by national, religious, racial, ics to catalyze beneficial individual and social economic and gender differences in a world with change. One mechanism of individual change technologically-advanced weaponry of ever-in- is through the research that MAPS is sponsor- creasing destructive capacity. ing administering MDMA and other psychedel- This issue of the MAPS Bulletin points toward ics in a clinical, therapeutic setting. Right now the larger implications of building a society that MAPS is sponsoring research exploring MDMA- incorporates rather than suppresses psyche- assisted psychotherapy in the treatment of post- delic experiences. While MAPS’ work is most traumatic stress disorder in the US, Switzerland, frequently focused on time-sensitive details of and Israel, with more studies in development in our political, scientific, therapeutic and finan- Jordan, Canada and Spain. MAPS and an allied cial struggles to develop medical applications of organization, the Heffter Research Institute, are psychedelics and marijuana, the link between investigating the use of MDMA, LSD or psilocy- psychedelics and ecology explored in this Bulletin bin-assisted psychotherapy in people experienc- offers a refreshing glimpse of the vaster horizons ing anxiety associated with end-of-life issues available to us all. As the Beatles wrote, “And the stemming from cancer and other illnesses. MAPS time will come when you see we’re all one, and is also sponsoring a study of ibogaine in the treat- life ﬂows on, within you and without you.” ment of people dependent on opiates, and seeks Rick Doblin, Ph.D., MAPS President to overcome the suppression of medical marijuana [email protected] maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 3

From the Editor: David Jay Brown M

Merry Prankster and technophilic creator of The Whole Earth Catalog Stewart Brand once described an LSD trip that he had in 1966 where he imagined looking at the Earth from space. He thought that a photograph of the whole planet would change Photo by Dee DeBruno people’s perceptions of the world for the better, and he didn’t David Jay Brown, M.A. MAPS Guest Editor understand why NASA hadn’t released any photos of the whole [email protected] planet yet. After his LSD trip, Brand began printing buttons with the question, “Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?”–which he sent to scientists, secretaries of state, senators, people in the Soviet Union, United Nations officials, ...a number of people andAccording leading-edge to Brand: thinkers. In 1968 the Apollo astronauts sent back the first color photos of the Earth from space, and, a year believe that the modern later, Earth Day was founded by peace activist John McConnell. Those riveting Earth photos re- ecology movement was, framed everything. For the first time humanity saw itself from outside. at least, partially inspired The visible features from space were living blue ocean, living green– brown continents, dazzling polar ice by the collective use of and a busy atmosphere, all set like a delicate jewel in vast immensities psychedelic drugs of hard–vacuum space. Humanity’s habitat looked tiny, fragile and rare. and plants... Suddenly humans had a planet to tend to. The photograph of the whole Earth from space helped to generate a lot of behavior–the ecology movement, the sense of global politics, the rise of the global economy, and so on. I think all of those phenomena at least, partially inspired by the collec- were, in some sense, given permis- tive use of psychedelic drugs and plants sion to occur by the photograph of that began in the 1960s and continues to the Earth from space. this day. There is evidence that psyche- Seeing a photograph of the Earth delics played at least as vital of a role from space undoubtedly created a para- in the creation of the worldwide Green digm shift in the collective human mind, movement as Rachel Carson’s classic for the reasons that Brand points out. 1962 book about the environmental dan- However, it’s also interesting to note that gers of DDT, Silent Spring. Brand’s insight first arrived in an LSD vi- For example, Arne Naess, who founded sion, as many people have said that their the Deep Ecology movement in 1973, experience with psychedelics helped to was profoundly infuenced by his LSD increase their sense of ecological aware- experience in 1968. Mark Schroll, Ph.D. ness. In fact, a number of people believe discusses Naess’s work in the pages that that the modern ecology movement was, follow, and provides an excerpt from an 4 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

interview with Naess us in this Bulletin. about his LSD experi- This issue also includes ence. Mycology expert remarkable visual art Paul Stamets–author by Penny Slinger Hills, of Mycelium Running– Michael Brown, Luke credits his increased Brown, Rick Harlow, sense of ecological Salome Starbuck, and awareness to his expe- Sara Huntley that ad- riences with psilocybin dress the theme of ecol- mushrooms. Freeman ogy and psychedelics. House–the author of Certainly not Totem Salmon, who has everyone who has been involved with done a psychedelic a community-based becomes more eco- watershed restoration logically aware, as effort in northern Cali- anthropologist Jeremy fornia for more than Narby points out in the twenty-five years–has interview that we did said that psychedel- for this Bulletin. For ics played a role in example, early psyche- his sense of ecological delic researcher Timo- Photo of Nina Wise by Klea McKenna. www.kleamckenna.com awareness. John Allen– thy Leary was actually who conceived and opposed to the ecology organized the build- movement–at least for ing of the Biosphere 2 a time–and called the project in Arizona, the whole field “a seductive most ambitious environmental experiment of our time– dinosaur science” because he was convinced that the hu- was initially inspired by his experience with peyote. As man species would soon migrate into space. Nevertheless, psychologist Ralph Metzner points out in the following many people in the West–including myself–credit their essay, psychedelic movements and ecology movements increased sense of ecological awareness to their use of often go hand-in-hand. psychedelics, and indigenous cultures that integrate psy- Some commonly-reported characteristics of the psychedelic plants into their lives appear to live in greater chedelic experience include a boundary-dissolving sense harmony with their environment. of unity with nature, a feeling of interconnected oneness Since every life form descended from common ances- with the natural world, a sense of how sacred, fragile, tors, we are literally all related, and it’s not merely meta- and precious all life is, and a long-term evolutionary per- phorical to speak about our kinship with other organisms spective on our current historical situation–all of which and our unity of the biosphere–it’s a living truth. We are can contribute to a greater sense of ecological awareness. inseparable from the intricately interconnected web of These insights are described in exquisite poetic detail by life on this planet, and what we do to the web, ultimately, the late philosopher Alan Watts in his classic book on we do to ourselves. Psychedelics may sometimes allow psychedelic experiences in nature, The Joyous Cosmology. us to see these often-hidden connections a little more The late Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, who discovered clearly–but the connections are always there. In fact, our LSD and psilocybin, remarked that psychedelic drugs entire existence is built upon them, and unless we begin helped him to reexperience a sense of sacred oneness to pay attention to these fragile environmental connec- with the natural world, similar to the spontaneous mys- tions, humans may soon be just one more species–as most tical experiences that occurred during his childhood. are–that is lost forever to the dark void of extinction. Even without the assistance of psychedelic molecules With a massive reduction in biodiversity on the nestled in the synapses of one’s brain, often, just being planet, global warming on the rise, and other signs of out in nature can expand an urban dweller’s conscious- serious climate change growing ever more ominous, the ness into transpersonal dimensions, and there has been possibility that we can increase our ecological awareness quite a bit of nature-inspired mysticism, writings and certainly seems like a timely topic for discussion. That’s artwork–from Henry David Thoreau and William Blake, why this special theme edition of the MAPS Bulletin to contemporary poets and artists, like Carolyn Mary brings together scientific authorities and artists, from a Kleefeld, whose beautiful painting was featured on the variety of disciplines–both seasoned experts and young cover of the Bulletin that I edited last Spring, and photog- thinkers–to explore the important relationship between rapher Klea McKenna, who shares some of her work with ecology and psychedelics. maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 5

Awakening the Gaian Mind Within

awareness, hopefully, before it’s too late. There’s interest- The biosphere is a thin layer of microbes, fungi, ing evidence to support this commonly-encountered idea plants, and animals that surrounds the Earth. It is a in the psychedelic community. According to mycologist self-sustaining system that is powered almost entirely Paul Stamets, psilocybin-containing mushrooms tend to by sunlight. Through decomposition, and the recycling grow in areas that are disturbed by ecological upheav- of basic elements, the biosphere works such that the als, such as where roads are cut into a forest, the grounds waste from one group of species becomes the resources around a construction site, and landslides. They seem to for another group of species, and nothing is wasted. The especially proliferate in areas where there has been a lot life forms of the biosphere create a dynamic system so of human activity, almost as if they are a response to our delicately balanced that it appears to be self-regulated, use of the Earth. and many people have come to see the entire biosphereArne Naess,In Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World, Paul Stamets as operating in a way that is akin to a single explains: organism, a single cell, or a single intercon- Before the impact of human civiliza- nected system. The late physician Lewis who founded the tion, psilocybin species were largely re- Thomas wrote a classic book exploring this stricted to narrowly-defined ecosystems, subject in 1974 called The Lives of a Cell, and Deep Ecology and they tend to thrive after ecological NASA scientist James Lovelock (along with catastrophes. Landslides, foods, hurri- microbiologist Lynn Margulis) developed a movement in 1973, canes, and volcanoes all create supportive compelling theory that views the biosphere, habitats for many Psilocybe mushrooms. as a living, self-regulating system, called the As humans destroy woodlands and en- Gaia Hypothesis (first published in book was profoundly gage in artificial construction, Psilocybes form in 1975 as Gaia: A New Look at Life on proliferate, feeding on surplus wood chips Earth, although the idea was first put forth influenced by and refuse, especially in the interface in the mid-1960s). The Gaia Hypothesis has environments, wherever humans, forests, become a powerful meme in the psychedelic his LSD experience and grasslands struggle to coexist. Since community. human development seems inextricably Lovelock’s theory helps to explain how associated with ecological disturbance, the delicate chemical ratios in our planet’s in 1968. Psilocybe mushrooms and civiliza- oceans and atmosphere are consistently tion continue to coevolve. Today, many maintained such that life is possible. Ac- Psilocybes are concentrated wherever cording to the Gaia Hypothesis, it’s no people congregate–around parks, hous- accident that the environment on Earth ing developments, schools, churches, golf is so ideal to support life. The Gaia Hy- courses, industrial complexes, nurseries, pothesis has been extremely popular in the psychedelic gardens, city parks, freeway rest areas, and govern- community, and it is often mixed in people’s minds with ment buildings–including county and state court spiritual notions of a primordial Mother Earth goddess. houses and jails! This successful adaptation is a Many people–such as the late ethnobotanist Terence comparatively recent phenomena; in the not-too- McKenna–have speculated that the biosphere, or Gaia, distant past, these species were competing in a dif- may have a type of intelligence far and above what ferent environmental arena. Many of the Psilocybes Lovelock acknowledges, and that psychedelic fungi may are now evolving in a decidedly advantageous allow communication between human beings and the direction, parallel to human development. The way planetary mind. Many people have reported that their these mushrooms have evolved in close association use of psychedelic plants–especially ayahuasca, peyote, with humans suggests an innate intelligence on the psilocybin mushrooms, ibogaine, and Salvia divinorum– part of the mushrooms. brings them in touch with what they describe as an It almost appears as though psilocybin mushrooms “intelligence in nature.” To explore this idea further, I are a response by the biosphere, like a chemical signal- interviewed anthropologist and environmentalist Jeremy ing system within the body, to help the wayward human Narby, author of The Cosmic Serpent, for this Bulletin. species become more symbiotic with its environment. I also interviewed botanist Dennis McKenna, Ph.D., Can it really be a mere coincidence that a fungus report- coauthor (with his brother Terence) of The Invisible ed to increase ecological awareness specifically prolifer- Landscape, to discuss these ideas, and about the possibil- ates in those areas that are ecologically damaged? Once ity that the widespread use of psychedelic plants and restricted to very narrow ecosystems–thanks to human fungi around the world could be the biosphere’s decisive activity–these mind-expanding mushrooms now fourish response to human patterns of ecological destruction, all over the globe. Psilocybin mushroom and ayahuasca- and that an intelligence in nature may be utilizing psy- using cultures, also once restricted to a few areas in cen- chedelic plants as catalysts to increase human ecological tral Mexico and South America, are also now spreading 6 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

all over the planet, like a mycelium network. Carl Sagan and Lynn Margulis–builds upon Lovelock’s There are now hundreds of ayahuasca churches estab- Gaia Theory and explores the possibility that the Earth’s lished throughout the world, and the U.S. Supreme Court biosphere is an organism that’s “actually on the verge of even allows one of them to operate legally within U.S. reproduction,” and that Biosphere 2 is it’s first offspring. borders. According to anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna, In John Allen’s recently published memoir Me and the Bio- Ph.D., studies done in Brazil suggest that ayahuasca use spheres, he recounts the story of how Biosphere 2 came to tends to make people more sensitive toward ecologi- be, and he reviews the evolution of his thinking on this cal issues. Fieldwork among members of the syncretic fascinating subject. churches, for example, reveal that many of them decided In the following pages, John shares with us how his after participation in ayahuasca rituals to change their participation in a traditional Huichole Indian peyote professions so that they could work with natural prod- ritual brought him a new perspective of the biosphere, ucts or environmental issues. In the pages ...psychedelic movements which lead to the development of Biosphere that follow, Environmental Sustainability 2. Also, one of the brave “bioshpherians”– Consultant Shena Turlington reports on sev- Mark Van Thillo–who lived inside Bio- eral scientific studies that shed light on this and ecology movements sphere 2 during its first two year inaugural important connection between psychedelics mission, and presently helps run the Plan- and increased environmental awareness. often go etary Coral Reef Foundation, joins us in this As I mentioned earlier, one person who specialSpiritual issue Malaise to discuss in how the his Biosphere psychedelic was inspired by his use of psychedelic plants hand-in-hand. experiences inspired his interest in integrat- to explore new ecological frontiers was ing ecology and technology. Global Ecotechnics founder John Allen– who conceived and organized the building Some people think that the ecological cri- of the Biosphere 2 project in Arizona, the sis on this planet refects a deeper, underly- most ambitious environmental experiment ing spiritual malaise, that psychedelics help of our time. Biosphere 2 is a miniature Earth to illuminate and heal. For example, after under glass and the world’s largest laboratory for global a historical review of how psychedelic plant substances ecology ever built. It is the largest artificial, self-sustain- have come into use, and the impacts that they have made ing ecosystem, and it is truly a masterpiece of human upon different cultures throughout history, psychologist engineering. For two years and twenty minutes, inside a Ralph Metzner, Ph.D. associates the use of these sub- completely sealed, glass-enclosed 3.15 acre environment– stances with political developments that help to counter composed of miniature replicas of all the earth’s environ- the mounting environmental crisis. Metzner said: ments, and housing 3,800 species of plants and animals, Certainly, it is not difficult to see the parallels designed to function together as a single system–eight in several cultural movements that seek to correct courageous men and women had to grow all their own the dangerous imbalance in humanity’s relation to vegetables, raise all their own livestock, and live so that a nature: in deep ecology and ecofeminism, which hundred percent of their waste was recycled. call for a respectful, egalitarian, ecocentric attitude In other words, the animals and plants in Biosphere 2 towards the natural world; in the organic garden- had to produce all of their own biological resources with- ing and farming movements, which seek to return out polluting one another out of existence. Now, in larger to traditional methods avoiding chemical fertilizers sense, the same sort of process that goes on inside Bio- and pesticides; in the movement to increased use sphere 2 is going on with the planetary biosphere that of herbal, nutritional and complementary healing we call home, only it’s not as obvious. The plants and modalities with less reliance on high-tech interven- animals on this planet create all of the nutrients neces- tions; and in several other philosophical, scientific sary to sustain life from one another’s waste, and any and religious movements... chemical toxins or heavy metals that we release into our According to Metzner, the greatest environmental atmosphere or oceans quickly finds its way into the air threat that we face isn’t the depletion of ozone, or the we breath and the water we drink because the biosphere world’s natural resources, it’s the depletion of the human is a single system. This is why you find the fame retar- spirit. The global ecological catastrophe began when the dant used in American children’s pajamas in the fatty religions of Western civilization were no longer based fesh of animals that live in the Arctic Circle. on living harmoniously with the Earth. “Once Western Biosphere 2 was the most tightly sealed structure religions began to seek dominance instead of partnership ever built by human beings and no air, water, or food with nature, we created a pathology that led to a massive could be brought in from the outside once the project destruction of the human spirit and a frightening wor- began. Many scientific discoveries and new technolo- ship of consumerism to fill the void. Simply put, by disre- gies have resulted from this ambitious project. In his specting and destroying the Earth, we are disrespecting book Biospheres, science writer Dorion Sagan–the son of and destroying what sustains the human spirit,” explains maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 7

Metzner. In the pages that follow, Metzner addresses this one of the first people to start warning us about the idea further, and explains the importance of developing (now obvious) “limits to growth” back in the 1960s– a system of eco-psychology. presently sees our current ecological problems as a So far as we know, no other planet in our solar system “decision window” where we not only face the danger supports complex intelligent life. Our planet is special. of total global collapse, but also the opportunity for It’s a precious jewel foating in the empty blackness of renewal of the world. In his recent book The Chaos Point, space, and it’s all we have to call home. Reading James Lazlow points out that there is a measurable cultural Lovelock’s most recent books, Revenge of Gaia or The shift occurring around the planet, as public opinion is Vanishing Face of Gaia, or watching Al Gore’s An Inconve- changing, and societies are developing more sustain- nient Truth, can be far more frightening than watching able, environmentally-aware public policies in response. Night of the Living Dead, on Halloween night, all aloneCan it reallyComplex be a systems that approach a state of disequilibrium, on a hundred micrograms of LSD. Humans are seri- like our biosphere, are difficult to predict because small ously interfering with the fragile web of life mere coincidence that changes can quickly grow exponentially. and all of civilization is at stake. Although Lazlow believes that we’re in a race against the consequences of what we’re doing are a fungus reported to time, and that it’s not too late to turn things unknown, the scientific reports that are around–but we must act quckly! Either we coming in don’t look good. We are living reorganize ourselves into a more sustainable in a time that is marked by one of the most increase ecological equilibrium with our environment soon, widespread mass extinctions in the history or the biosphere will reorganize itself on a of our planet. awareness lower level of complexity, wiping out whole Conservation biologists tell us that human civilizations, like tsunamis crashing climate change, habitat destruction, ozone specifically proliferates against a city of sandcastles. depletion, toxic chemicals, and invasive or Personally, I’m optimistic about the future infectious species are driving biodiversity of our biosphere, and I think that we’re going on this planet back 65 million years, to the in those areas that are to make it to the next level of evolutionary lowest level of vitality since the Age of the order–largely because of my experience with Dinosaurs. The increase in green house ecologically damaged? psychedelics and my faith in the human gases, like carbon dioxide and methane, the spirit. I realize that there isn’t much time left massive migration of heavy metals into the to rescue our biosphere from serious dam- biosphere, deforestation, the loss of biodi- age, and that things look pretty grim from versity, the widespread use of pesticides, an ecological perspective, but I’ve personally the spread of radioactive waste, and other witnessed just how quickly psychedelics can environmental toxins are–according to psychologically transform people and open environmental biologists–overwhelming our precious up their eyes. I agree with the McKenna brothers, that the biosphere’s ability to maintain the cozy Goldilocks tem- planetary mind, the Gaian matrix that we’re immeshed peratures that we’ve become so accustomed to. in, is far more intelligent than we are, and this intuition If humans disappear into extinction, the biosphere helps motivate me to harmonize with it. I like refecting will go on. We’re not nearly as important to the bio- upon a message that Dennis McKenna brought back with sphere as bugs and insects, microbes and bacteria. him from one of his shamanic encounters, “You monkeys Biologist E.O. Wilson once said, “If all mankind were to only think you’re running the show.” disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich Psychedelics can help us heal the damage that we’ve state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. done to ourselves, and to the Earth. This is why I be- If insects were to vanish, the environment would col- lieve so strongly in the research that MAPS is doing. lapse into chaos.” Nonetheless, we are a uniquely cre- There isn’t much time left before our biosphere starts to ative, technological species, linking together a knowl- unravel, and we may only have a small window of op- edge-based, electronic communication system around portunity to save our fragile world. I think that MAPS– the globe. Our engineering activities have lead physicist and our sister organizations, like the Beckley Foundation Peter Russel and others to speculate that the fiber- and the Heffter Research Institute–are industrialized optic network that our species is constructing around society’s best hope for transforming the planet’s ancient the planet serves as a “global brain” in the developing shamanic plants into the respectable scientific medicines planetary organism, so Gaia may have reason to keep us of tomorrow, and, in so doing, bring psychedelic therapy around. to all who need it. This may not only help to heal a num- Despite all the blaring warning signals from clima- ber of difficult-to-treat medical disorders, and increase tologists, there are also good reasons to have hope for ecological harmony on the planet, but it may also open the human species and the future of our biosphere. The up a doorway to untold and unimagined new worlds of founder of systems philosophy Erwin Lazlow–who was possibility. • 8 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

Treat Her Right: Lessons from A Medicine Walk

by Kathleen Harrison

, I’ll go out on a limb: Nature loves it when we take To begin with psychedelics and wander around, appreciating her, in a state of respectful awe and gratitude. For the ease of language and because we don’t know otherwise, I’ll personify her—this grand, sentient, Kathleen Harrison multi-formed presence. Some call her Gaia, an ever-transforming [email protected] yet meta-stable entity who is far more than the sum of her amazing Oparts, but we’ll just call her nature here. She is embodied in all the living things, the elements, the planet and, some say, the heavens.

Our psychedelic experience in nature action of the medicine, and that action is initiates us into the awareness that we how we are opened to seeing nature. To be able to truly see, we must truly look, Kathleen Harrison, ethnobotanist, has had as very small children, when everything was a wonder to behold; or that our we must want to see. Careful use of psy- over thirty years of fieldwork experience ancestors had, not so long ago, until they chedelics can help re-animate and liberate in Latin America and has helped estab- got so obsessively rational; or that some our de-animated and colonized psyches— lish ethnobotanical teaching gardens indigenous people still know and cherish. that’s part of why these plants, mushrooms and molecules are still largely kept in Peru, Costa Rica and Hawaii. For Psychedelics are not the only way to get there, to this state of exalted perception, underground. Animation of the psyche fifteen years she has participated in an but they are indeed a class of species and and the recognition of animate nature go exchange of nature-based knowledge related molecules that have come into our hand in hand. with indigenous people in the moun- collective Western hands at a time in his- Whenever we meet nature—in the garden, in the wild, in a dream, or under tains of Mexico. She teaches ethno- tory that desperately needs medicine for its ills. Nature needs her humans to know a starry sky, in any state of mind—we botany field courses for the University of and love her, to remember how to treat are illuminated by the effort. We don’t Minnesota (in Hawaii) and Arizona her kindly. So much of the human world necessarily understand all that we see, State University (in Ecuador). Kat is is so very far from nature now, that even but by turning our senses toward her, we glimpse the great natural mysteries and also a botanical illustrator who enjoys many of us who regularly send monetary contributions and vote to preserve or bring some realization home to savor. helping people learn to see nature. She protect nature somewhere barely give This is even truer when we explore na- is currently writing a book about what ourselves time to be immersed in it. ture while a fine psychedelic heightens she has learned. In our lengthy cultural ignorance of our senses. As a lifelong nature-girl, trav- the natural world, we’ve forgotten how eler, teacher, and as a mother, I’ve always to even look, much less see what’s there. been an advocate of outdoor education for Being in nature is an opportunity to cul- all ages. Just go outside and look around, tivate the child-eyes, the child-mind that you’ll learn something, and your troubles neither knows nor presumes to know. We may be put in perspective. But I must say have learned that psychedelics can help that my own experiences in nature with us examine complex or hidden things one of the venerable psychedelics have and come to understand them, appreciate been some of the very best educational them, or untangle them. That’s part of the moments I’ve ever had. maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 9

Learning to See

cooperate, reproduce and reciprocate, In the ongoing love letter from my even die and recirculate? And so as we heart to nature, I can say there is nothing watch with our clearest eyes, they carry like being a human nestled in the natu- on the show far beyond the described, ex- ral world, enhanced by sacred medicine, plicit form and function; beyond our slim somewhere off the beaten path, perhaps understanding of the niche each species in a glen or garden that I know well, per- fills; into the absurd, brilliant, touching haps on my favorite hike. dramas of our fellow beings. Or maybe In that state, we are really attentive, they reveal entrancing or even ominous and wide open: open to seeing with new patterns: leaves seem to be arranged like …my own eyes, open to experiencing wonder. If we beaded chevrons on undulating serpent are in that state, then nature seems to skin. experiences come forward to meet us, showing us her Can it be, they appear to be arranging sparkling day, her great soft meadows, her themselves as I watch, or is it an unfelt jeweled creeks, the birds singing in her breeze? There we see a pattern of growth in nature hair. In that state, I trust that everything unfolding before our eyes, here we rec- seen is real, and astonishingly true to ognize the eons of strata revealed across with one of the itself. The aesthetic is reliably exquisite. the canyon. Eons. Branches seeking to So let’s say we go for a walk through grow away from the winds, nestled in the venerable psychedelics the woods and over the hill on a beautiful hollows, hugging the low spots, mak- spring day, a “medicine walk” some call ing shelter for the fragile ones, the ferns it, which means the walker’s perceptions tucked into crevices. On this magical have been some are enhanced by psychedelic medicine. walk, we seek the roots too, the shade, Of course we need to know the lay of the a place to rest our backs against a big of the very land, where the path is, where it leads, trunk in deep meditative empathy. We how to find our way back, where the can feel the lifeblood of the tree running best educational shifty edges are, if there are dangers to up to the sky, fowing throughout its be aware of, and we should be supplied limbs with nourishment derived from the with warmth, water, a little nourishment, absolute miracle of photosynthesis. Later, moments a good hiker’s common sense, and the as we reach the ridge, the ocean breaks finest medicine we can come up with, in in the distance, wildfowers vibrate in I’ve ever had. a dose appropriately modest, for walk- the breeze, the sun hangs shy behind its ing, for looking, for tuning in to what we thin veil of clouds, tall grasses like fur see. (This kind of foray is not the best rise on the backbone of the hill. Aston- for melting, best save that for your inner ished, we realize that we are standing sanctum.) We must keep our bearings, on the head of some great beast lapping and most likely it’s wise to have a friend at the river curled around its haunches along. We take time to invoke vision, far below, leaning into the wind, shelter- expanded awareness, and protection. We ing its young, those hillocks behind us... honor the spirit of the place to which we “Wow!” is the appropriate comment. Foli- have come. Small, spontaneous, intuitive age softens the edges, rocky outcroppings ritual helps us cross over from our busy- round out the subtle palette. We are over- mind world, to become present. We stop whelmed with gratitude. We gaze over to thank the medicine and ask for clarity theReciprocating vista and it is clear that nature and and insight on the path. culture embroidered together form the As we come into psychedelic focus, we quilt that now lies over the world. begin to notice that the myriad designs of every member of the fora and fauna Experiencing a deep love of nature answer nature’s fundamental operational rewards us with insight and pleasure, question, “What works?” This works, and we are wisely grateful, but it also they say, and this!: See my wings, my initiates the impulse to protect and nur- bark, my skin, my roots, my seedpods? ture that which we love and recognize. See me nodding in pleasure as my pol- This principle of reciprocity is inherent linator visits me again, and again. See in traditional indigenous systems of both my spores waft away on the breath of ecological and spiritual management. the land? See how we species meet, and Everything is an exchange of energy and 10 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

awareness. Practically speaking, the wide- the next day. As I awoke the following spread psychedelic awareness of nature, morning, I became aware of simple words coming out of the Sixties, helped birth the that were waiting for me: “Treat her entire environmental movement. Many right.” They were perfect as words to live activists and key thinkers in this field by: Treat her—the planet, the plants, the have been motivated by their psychedelic feminine in all her forms—as though she experiences to embrace and expand the were your own self, your beloved. Treat notion of environmental stewardship: the psychedelic plants and their uses caring for the land and its species, keep- respectfully, and take care of the planet Experiencing a ing the wild places wild, understanding they and we live on. That means that, yes, what wild even means, learning the old we join the best environmental projects deep love of nature ways that had a lighter touch, maintain- or groups that we can find or initiate, and ing unspoiled shorelines, restoring health that we also take time to be in Nature, to damaged waterways, creating sustain- wide open so that she can heal us of our rewards us with able systems of farming that are not toxic grievous wounds. I think one of the cool- to the land and water, and educating our est causes is bringing very urban kids to insight and pleasure, young to love these places from the start. the country, the forest, or the shore, the In the arts, sciences and digital realms, kind of places they’ve never seen. They and we are experiences with these sacred medicines just open up and are amazed. They were have been the ah-ha! moment in the starving for nature. Aren’t many people evolution of a career or the solution to a starving for nature, and they don’t even wisely grateful, problem. We all know this, it’s just that know it? So, to be clear here, I’m advo- psychedelics (whatever you choose to call cating “outdoor education” for all, and but it also initiates them) are still taboo, so it’s still hard for for some of us who are mature, up to it, all those who’ve been inspired by them experienced, and oh so careful, maybe a the impulse to admit their inspirational experiences. special enhanced day in nature? Well, those psychedelic revelations— Be careful, I must warn you, watch revealed information—work the same your step! The plants and fungi have to protect way when we think about how to care been known to hijack humans! Many of for our home, our planet. People realize us! Of course, those of us who’ve been and nurture that that we must take care of her, and this hijacked seem to be pretty darn happy path of wondering can lead us to answers about it, so there’s that. But so many which we love about how to take care of her. Of course people have turned toward plants, toward the planetary stewardship meme is much growing things, from what they thought more widespread than the direct psyche- was their career, it’s laughable. In the and recognize. delic effect, but movements evolve that Amazon, a number of native groups way: Uplifted and inspired by remarkable recognize a spirit-being that appears insights, people form a dream of a better sometimes in the forest or at its edge: a way, then by tapping into ancestral mem- small man, with a club foot or something ories, weaving in indigenous views, find- that causes a limp, sometimes with a ing those elders who’ll share what they cane, a friendly enough fellow, but he’s know, and using our creative intelligence, tricky and will ask you your name, then a practical concept or a way to live ripples may ask you to come with him, to show out into widespread awareness. We’re you something, take you into the forest. Treatseeing theHer fruits Right of psychedelic thinking You mustn’t go, they say, because you may in some of the many solutions that people never come back. He takes people into are working on right now. the wild and they may be made to forget the world they came from, their families, Nature, it seems to me, also recipro- and their homes. Who is that trickster? cates, and holds us with a special sweet- Why is there a story with a warning ness when we regard her through our about wild enchantment and good judg- sacred medicine. ment? Discernment is always important, One night I went to sleep asking for whatever the endeavor, even or especially guidance, and to know a few key words when we are engaged with powerful that I could share with a crowd of psy- spiritual medicine. Who is asking what of chedelic advocates who were meeting you? Where will the unchecked impulse maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 11

lead you? The experienced people rec- Awe leads to humility. It gets you ommend that you not be fearful, just be outside yourself, and puts your story in discerning. In psychedelic investigations, appropriate perspective as an instant in a both internal and external, balance the very long saga, the one we’re all in togeth- Be careful, thrill, and the risk, with the means and er. That we humans, and human cultures, knowledge of how to get home in good are embedded in natural cycles becomes I must warn you, shape, the wiser for it. obvious. The question—and psychedelics Some of the psychedelic fora actu- certainly raise more questions than they ally show you nature, and literally teach, Whereanswer—is the how Path do Goeswe best ‘wear’ and ‘ar- watch your step! even if you are not out in it, with your ticulate’ that fact of being creatures with eyes open. Ayahuasca can facilitate vari- unusual agency in nature’s timeless epic. The plants and fungi ous kinds of learning, but one that many South American healers cite as instructive Part of tuning deeply into the natural have been known is an archetypal experience that I had world and its sentience is that one feels, when I first encountered the medicina in the roots of one’s being, the profound tradition in the Amazon in the 1970s: tragedies of species and habitat diversity to hijack humans!… While I was sitting in a traditional cer- now lost forever, and the heartbreak of emony, in a circle with savvy indigenous current teetering extinctions. We feel Of course, folks, I had a visionary experience of pain too from the fact that we humans being taken by the hand, led along a path hack away at the planet that nurtures us. those of us in the forest, stopping to examine certain Tears of grief may fow and that is fine, as plants. I was clearly told something about it should be. Part of knowing and loving each of them, their personas and their the natural world is mourning her suf- who’ve been hijacked use. The vine-and-leaf duo that make up fering and that of everyone born of her. ayahuasca are known as teachers, and To be washed in your own wise tears is a seem to be they take their job very seriously, as other cleansing that is in itself a gift. Grief inte- teacher species do too. grates and becomes compassion; informed pretty darn Years later I had taken a large dose compassion arises as conscious action. of psilocybin mushrooms on beautiful We humans have largely forgotten tropical land that I knew well. As I sat in how to let nature intimately into our happy meditation, I was led in my mind down a awareness. We have forgotten that we are familiar trail, past the marvelous plants nature, however fragmented and separate about it... that are native to that place, to a particu- we may feel, yet it has not been that long lar tree whose form I had admired. There, since we knew we were part of it. The gloriously, stood Kuan Yin, framed in the emergence of psychedelics into so-called cleft of the tree. I could barely cast my Western culture is surely an offering from eyes on her beauty. She asked me a key what’s still possible—they are a key medi- question, then sent me back up the trail, cine that we need, golden threads that can back into my sitting body. I had received at least help heal the rift, heal the world. comfort, counsel in the form of a ques- Exploring the wonders of the world, and tion, and I knew how and where to find the worlds within, is part of the reunifica- her: nature in the form of a psychedelic tion of reality. mushroom opened the possibility to me. That revelation that you had when Nature in the form of a compassionate you focused in on the single dewdrop goddess drew me to her, then offered dangling on the tip of the leaf and potent communication. Nature brought you saw the whole world in it? That’s me back up the path and back to myself, the one to carry with you as you do to my waiting body: I who am nature too, • your part. just like you. 12 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

Psychedelics and Species Connectedness

THE FACT

is given over solely THE FACT that this issue of the MAPS Bulletin to ecology suggests that at the very least the consumption of psychedelic substances leads to an increased concern for Nature and ecological issues. On one level we can understand that this may be due to a basic appreciation of place and aesthetics that accompanies the increased sensory experience, or that since psychedelic plants come from Nature we are forced to Stanley Krippner, Ph.D. enter its realms when we search them out. However, on a deeper level we Saybrook Graduate School can also appreciate that a communication with Nature may on occasion [email protected] occur through the phenomenological properties of the psychedelic experience, some of which have been hailed by experients as life-transforming and spiritually renewing, even “mystical.” With the aid of mescaline Aldous Huxley came face to face with such a mystical experience, even though the Oxford Theologian R.C. Zaehner (1957) denigrated his experience of “nature mysticism” as somehow infe- rior to the “genuine” theistic mystical experience. Yet the irony remains that the very split from Nature that some Christian theologians claim occurred in the Garden of Eden may lie at the heart of many people’s current sense of separateness from their ecology. Whereas, under specific

Photo of David Luke by Jonathan Greet circumstances of substance, set, and setting, psychedelics are capable of David Luke, Ph.D. augmenting such a reunion. Despite Zaehner’s derisions, Huxley (1954) Beckley Foundation reportedly witnessed this reunion through his experimental uses of mes- [email protected] caline: “I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of creation – the miracle, moment by moment of naked existence” (p. 4).

Is it this naked existence that recon- delia, Albert Hofmann, demonstrated nects the natural environment to the this by reporting that a mystical nature mental capacities of those psychedeli- experience he had had when he was cally-inspired experients? This type of young prefigured his discovery of LSD. experience forges a way of thought that He stated that “…my mystical experience is filled with ethical, ecological implica- of nature as a child…was absolutely like tions, and which is refected in the work an LSD-experience…. I believe I was in of shamans, alchemists, and other practi- some fashion born to that” (Hofmann, tioners who respected nature (Krippner, Broeckers, & Liggenstorfer, 2009, p.2). 1994/1995). The patriarch of psyche- Hofmann wrote about attaining “one- maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 13

ness with Nature,” and it is this feeling “attempting to dialogue with nature” of unity that characterizes many of these (p.16). In shamanism, of course, this experiences described as “mystical,” no communication is frequently achieved matter how diverse they might be in through the ingestion of psychedelic other aspects. plants, fungi, or other natural substances Throughout his long life Hofmann (e.g., Krippner, 1994). increasingly drew upon the great hope As a nature-based epistemology, that psychedelics were the key to this re- shamanism is ecological to its core. The connection for others. When asked about shaman is a caretaker of Nature and a the role that LSD had played in bringing negotiator between people and “other- Hofmann recalled that people back to Nature, he commented, than-human persons,” as Graham Harvey It has given many people good (2005) called them in his “Animist Mani- among his most ideas, and those who have gone festo.” For Harvey, it is humanity’s fungal back to Nature have been saved. friends themselves that transmit the idea Many people, however, are still of animism the best: “Maybe sometimes satisfying experiences stuck in technological Hell and the mushrooms just want to help us join cannot get out. Nevertheless, many in the big conversation that’s going on all were hearing young have discovered something which around us.” (Harvey, 2005, p.128) hardly exists in our society any Mycologist Paul Stamets speculated people say things like, longer: the sense of the sacred. that mushrooms have a hidden agenda to (Hofmann et al., 2009, p.6) bring humans into communication with Always vocal on ecological issues, Hof- other species. In studying the taxonomy “I grew up in the city, mann recalled that among his most sat- of the Psilocybe genus Stamets noted how isfying experiences were hearing young these psychoactive mushrooms proliferate but once people say things like, “I grew up in the particularly in the wake of human’s hab- city, but once I first took LSD, I returned its of “taming the land” and other interac- I first took LSD, to the forest” (Hofmann et al., 2009, p.4). tions with the natural world. Examples Providing us with an insight into the include, “chopping down trees, breaking cause of this yearning for a return to Na- ground to create roads and trails, and do- I returned ture, based on their extensive experien- mesticating livestock” (Harrison, Straight, tial research with psychedelics, Masters Pendell, & Stamets, 2007, p. 138). By this to the forest” and Houston (1966) noted that, means, Stamets believed, certain mush- ...the [psychedelic] subject, almost rooms become available to those who from the start, already has achieved most need to speak to Nature through a kind of empathy with his [or her] them. For Stamets, when this dialogue is surroundings as a whole…That is engaged, the message “…is always that we to say, nature seems to the subject are part of an ‘ecology of consciousness,’ a whole of which he [or she] is an that the Earth is in peril, that time is integral part, and from this charac- short, and that we’re part of a huge, uni- teristic feeling of being a part of the versal bio-system.” However, Stamets is organic ‘body of nature’ the subject not alone because “many people who have readily goes on to identify with taken these substances report receiving nature in its physical particulars the same message” (Harrison et al., 2007, and processes. p. 138). But if a person is empathizing with There is a body of research that backs Nature in this state, whose feeling’s is up Stamets’ assertion that it is not just she or he feeling? The notion that there he and Harvey who are receiving myce- is some entity with which to empathize lial messages from Nature. A survey into implies that the thing itself has emo- people’s exceptional experiences with tions, and the idea emerges that Nature psychedelics found that encountering the itself and the beings who inhabit it – be “spirit” of the ingested plant or fungus they animal, vegetable or perhaps even was the most widely reported of a range mineral – are also sentient. of 17 “paranormal” and “transpersonal” Such animism is at the root of all type experiences occurring with those shamanic belief systems, and, as Jeremy taking psilocybin-containing mushrooms Narby (2006) noted, shamanism involves (Luke & Kittenis, 2005). According to the 14 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

respondents this encounter also occurred It appears that the plant entities are quite frequently, and was the second not the only ones getting in on the ap- most prevalent experience with any parent conservation conversation; as such one substance, preceded only by experi- pharmacologically-induced trans-species ences of “unity consciousness” on LSD. communications also engage the animal Additionally, the encounter with “plant kingdom. Through the use of psychedel- consciousness” was the most widely ics, particularly LSD and ketamine, the reported transpersonal event for several physician John C. Lilly, M.D. (1978) other psychedelic substances too, such claimed to have began communicating But which is as ayahuasca, Salvia divinorum, and the telepathically with other species and Amanita muscaria mushroom. If Harvey’s consequently made an ethical U-turn the more “mad,” “Animist Manifesto” is to be taken seri- in his highly invasive animal research ously then these plants are clearly trying (such as dolphin dissection), to increas- to tell humanity something. ingly involving consensual peer to peer communicating with Interpreting humanity’s many dia- exchanges with nonhuman species. If logues on the mushroom experience, other species can communicate with the spirits of Nature or mycophile Andy Letcher (2007) termed humans, then perhaps the best way to these mushroom-mediated encoun- do this would be directly – in a language sitting back ters with discarnate spirit entities the that transcends physical restrictions. If “animaphany.” He warned, however, such telepathic-like communication re- that these experiences largely go ignored quires changing one’s consciousness, then while Earth’s ecology because, in a Foucauldian sense, they certain plants are expertly disposed to offer a resistive discourse to that of the begin this dialogue through their potent descends rapidly into societally legitimated explanations of psychoactive compounds. what occurs under the infuence of such Ever since Albert Hofmann (2005) the greatest wave plants and fungi, in the West at least had an out-of-body experience on his (Foucault, 2006). Being based solely on first accidental LSD journey, and Gordon the effects of mushrooms on others, these Wasson’s photographer Allan Richard- of mass extinction legitimated discourses typically take a son had an apparently predictive vision pathological, psychological or prohibitory during their seminal mushroom trip in 65 million years? stance, and so this subjective animaphany in Mexico (Richardson, 1990), such appears to transgress a fundamental psychedelic explorers as Aldous Hux- societal boundary, communicating with ley and Humphrey Osmond have been “spirits,” which subsequently becomes intrigued by the occasional stimulation of labelled as “madness.” But which is the anomalous faculties with the use of these more “mad,” communicating with the psychoactive substances. A review of the spirits of Nature or sitting back while parapsychological literature (Krippner & Earth’s ecology descends rapidly into the Davidson, 1970; Luke, in press) indicates greatest wave of mass extinction in 65 that while the issue still requires further million years? research there is good reason to consider the possibility that psychedelics might actually promote such parapsychological phenomena as telepathy. However, the kind of species centrism that Homo sapiens are prone to, tends to promulgate the view that animals, and especially plants, lack consciousness. However, given the possibility that these plants and animals Albert Hofmann and Stanley Krippner. might be sentient, direct communication Photo courtesy of Stanley Krippner with them should not be ruled out, and might be encouraged instead. Psychedel- ics, especially those involving plants, would seem well suited for that task. maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 15

The question still remains why certain the environmental need of the time” (p. plants produce highly psychedelic alka- 97). As a sense of “ethical and psychologi- loids that often have profound effects on cal continuity with the nonhuman world humans. Is it just an accident that these deepens, we have the chance to recap- plants produce exotic compounds that ture…some trace of the ancestral sensi- have no apparent benefit to the plant bility” (p. 96). This might be a clue that and yet interact so sophisticatedly with answers the question concerning human- human minds, especially given that ecosystem dialogue. Psychedelic substanc- Nature (apart from humans, perhaps) is es may have provided a hidden resource not disposed to wasting resources with- to keep Homo sapiens from becoming so out good reason? On the contrary, some estranged from Nature that the human evidence has emerged that the human species would contaminate, pollute, and brain actually developed in co-evolution ultimately destroy life on Earth. The with psychedelic plants (Winkelman, growing interest in psychedelic plants, 2008), although one may well ask for their effects, and their use coincides with what purpose? a need for what Ralph Metzner, Ph.D. Psychedelic shamanism might be (1999) referred to as “healing the planet” thought of primarily as a communica- (p. 165). If so, the task of mending this tion with Nature, for instance by asking tattered Earth can truly begin, and psy- the plants directly which ones can heal a chedelic sensibility can play an important particular illness, or by asking the plant role in helping humans devote their ef- spirit to teach them, or by using the plant forts to attaining ecological sustainability in aiding the psychological metamorpho- before the time runs out and Nature’s sis into a plant or animal “allies” (Dobkin clock winds down.• de Rios, 1996). Given that shamans have most likely been communicating with References for this essay are available Nature in this way for thousands of years on the MAPS Web site: www.maps.org (Devereux, 2008), it might well be asked what can be gained for humanity’s rela- The authors express appreciation for tionship with the ecosystem from such a Saybrook Graduate School’s Chair for the dialogue and, more importantly, how can Study of Consciousness for its support in Nature benefit from this relationship? the preparation of this essay. A survey into people’s exceptional experiences with psychedelics

found that encountering the spirit of the ingested plant or fungus was the most widely reported of a range of 17 paranormal and transpersonal type experiences occurring with those taking psilocybin-containing mushrooms. This question is of central importance to ecological psychologists who attempt to understand behavioral and experiential processes as they occur within the environmental constraints of animal- environmental systems (Adams, 2002). There are several branches of this field, but all of them criticize what they see as contemporary human separateness from the natural environment (Krippner, 2002, p. 973). Rozak (1992) postulated an “ecological unconscious” that “rises up to meet 16 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

Consciousness Expansion and Counterculture in the 1960s and Beyond

of our collective worldview occurred in A dramatic expansion the early sixties, when astronauts and cosmonauts were launched into space on Earth-orbiting satellites, and brought back the first dramatic photographs of the whole Earth from space. Emblematic of the aspirations for space exploration, the television series Star By Ralph Metzner, Ph.D. Trek, with an alien as one of the main characters, began airing www.greenearthfound.org on NBC, and became a cult classic in American science fiction. In [email protected] 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon. As explained by astrologer-scholar Rick Tarnas in his book Cos- mos and Psyche, close conjunctions and alignments of the planetary archetypes Uranus, Pluto and Saturn characterized the revolutionary, liberating and creative energies of this decade. The boost in The boost in the exploration of outer space was accompanied by a parallel surge the exploration of in the exploration of psychic or inner space. As far as I know, the concept of consciousness expansion was outer space first used by Tim Leary and his associates at Harvard, to describe the effects of drugs like psilocybin and LSD, which were also later was accompanied by termed psychedelic (“mind-manifesting”). In a 1961 letter to Leary a parallel surge in from Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD expressed his appreciation to Leary for the concept of consciousness expansion, stat- the exploration of ing that he had been urging Aldous Huxley and others, that while psychic or the applications of LSD in psychiatry and pharmacotherapy were important, there were wider implications of these experiences for inner space. the enhancement of creativity and deeper understanding of the further reaches of the human mind. In this regard, Hofmann was far more open-minded than Huxley, R. Gordon Wasson and most psychiatrists, who tended to believe strongly that these drugs could only be used safely by psychiatric patients under medical supervision, or at best by elite intellectuals. Tim Leary’s approach was radically different, though it was not, as some believed, opposed to psychiatric research being done with psychedelics. maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 17

Leary and his associates began their something or doing something. The treat- research with psilocybin at Harvard Uni- ment of addictions and compulsions with versity in the early 1960s, carrying out psychedelic, consciousness-expanding studies with “normal” people in support- drugs was (and is again now) one of the ive, naturalistic settings that were neither most promising applications of these sub- clinics nor laboratories. Participants in stances in health care. these studies could clearly confirm that One of the studies carried out as part these substances, although called halluci- of the Harvard research, involved the nogenic by some, did not induce halluci- “experimental mysticism” study of Walter nations in the sense of seeing illusions of Pahnke, in which theology students …we emerge from things objects that weren’t “really there.” took psilocybin in a religious setting, Rather, they seemed to affect the actual and reported a high proportion of clas- the closed cocoon-like psychophysiology of perception in such a sic mystical experiences. This study of way that one would see everything that religious-mystical experience induced by was there, as ordinarily, and in addition psilocybin has recently been replicated state of dream and sleep much more: vibrating fields of subtle in research by Roland Griffiths at Johns energies, or associated thought-forms and Hopkins University. Mystical experiences to become aware of patterns that related to one’s personal involve a complete transcendence of the history, or our relationships with other usual boundaries of time, space and the our body, the bed we’re in, beings, human and non-human in the physical body and a sense of oneness with world around us. the divine and the cosmos – representing The process of consciousness expan- the ultimate expansion of consciousness. our sleep companion, sion induced (with the appropriately In my view, a second major application of favorable set and setting) by these drugs, psychedelics in the future is likely to be the room, perhaps was in some ways analogous to the in the psychological preparation of people process of awakening: when we awaken for dying, enlarging their awareness and the garden outside the from sleep, our perceptual world opens sense of identity beyond the confines of up and we emerge from the closed the body and personal ego-mind. [Pub- window, the greater world cocoon-like state of dream and sleep lisher’s Note: To learn more about current to become aware of our body, the bed research of this type visit: www.maps.org] we’re in, our sleep companion, the room, Through the discoveries of R. Gor- beyond – potentially perhaps the garden outside the window, don Wasson and others in Mexico, and the greater world beyond – potentially Michael Harner and others in South all the way to all the way to the infinite cosmos. As we America, by the late 1950s and early do, our sense of identity changes, we may 1960s, the psychological and medical remember the more limited dream world researchers who first applied LSD and the infinite cosmos. we had been in, and find that we have other consciousness expanding drugs a greatly enhanced freedom of choice – in Western laboratories and psychiatric freedom to think and see differently, to clinics, found themselves unexpectedly move and do things hitherto impossible. connected to ancient lineages of mysti- Later studies with LSD or peyote in cal, spiritual and shamanic teachings and the treatment of alcoholism, or ibogaine practices. Both the shamanistic and the or ayahuasca in the treatment of cocaine Asian yogic traditions are based on world- addiction, were based on the finding that views vastly expanded in comparison experiences of expanded consciousness to the standard materialistic paradigm could be, depending on set and setting, accepted in the West. In these worldviews associated with insight into one’s own there is a recognition of many levels of character and deeper needs, and there- reality, many dimensions of being, equal fore lead to more healthy and positive in reality to the time-space-matter dimen- choices. Addictions and compulsions, sion, which is the only one recognized whether consumptive (drugs, alcohol, as real in Western science. Furthermore, food) or behavioral (sex, gambling, shop- these Asian and indigenous traditions ping) can be understood as involving also recognize the reality of beings, called contracted states of consciousness, where “spirits” or “deities,” existing in these attention and awareness is fixated on multiple dimensions, that have their own repetitively and ritualistically taking in independent, autonomous existence, and 18 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

are not merely symbols or archetypes in important to recognize that being against human consciousness. something was not the primary intention Thus, the discovery of consciousness- behind these movements. expanding drugs in the West and the In an infant’s struggle to be born, ulti- re-discovery of the role of consciousness- mately into a larger world and way of be- expanding plants and fungi in shamanis- ing, there may be a phase of intense and tic societies, along with other modalities sometimes violent opposition to the limi- of exploring consciousness such as the tations of the existing order (represented shamanic drumming journey and yogic by the mother’s body). This kind of The process meditation practices, led to significant opposition, which may even threaten the expansions of the Western material- mother’s life, is not however the ultimate of consciousness ist scientific worldview – at least in the aim of the neonate’s struggle – which is thinking and writing of many individu- rather to emerge from a condition that als, if not the academic establishment and has become intolerable, too limiting, into expansion induced… mainstream media. an expanded world of greater freedom It is possible to apply the conscious- and possibilities for growth. Let us look by these drugs, ness expansion of concept to the forms at these movements, which continue in and patterns of collective consciousness: various ways to this day, through the was in some ways to mass-mind images and memes, to dual lens of counterculture and expand- scientific paradigms and worldviews, to ing consciousness. analogous to the ideologies of spiritual practice and religious devotion. In my book The Expan- Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, sion of Consciousness (2008), I pointed out published in 1962, raised awareness of the process that the decade of the 1960s was a time environmental despoliation and is gener- of several interconnected movements ally considered the beginning impetus of awakening… of socio-cultural transformation that for the American environmental move- profoundly changed Western society, and ment, and for major conservation and more indirectly other countries in the preservation organizations and policies world as well: the environmental move- that persist to this day. The very title ment, the women’s liberation movement, Silent Spring refers to an experience of the anti-war movement, the civil rights expanded consciousness: if we do not movement, the revolution in sexual and hear the singing birds we are accustomed family relations and an explosion of new to hear, we naturally ask – why not? This forms of expression in music and the question in turn leads us to investigate visual arts. Even though there is no evi- environmentally destructive processes dence of a direct causative connection be- caused by human technology – which we tween ingestion of psychedelics and these then engage as activists to ameliorate, for socio-cultural transformation movements, the health and wellbeing of humans and each of them represents an expansion of the integrity of the ecosystems which collective consciousness, a transcending we inhabit along with other animal and of existing limited conventions, attitudes plant species of life. and norms, similar to what is classically This process is analogous to the kind associated with psychedelic experiences of therapeutic “course-correction vision” in the individual. that drug addicts and alcoholics often report when relating their experience with The historian Theodore Roszak, in his plant-based entheogens such as peyote very infuential 1968 book The Making of or ayahuasca: under the infuence of a Counterculture, identified and described these botanical sacraments, a person may these transformation movements as report becoming clearly aware of hitherto constituting a kind of quasi-revolutionary hidden patterns of thought and behavior culture in opposition to the mainstream. that are leading them in a self-destructive Although these social movements were direction – and therefore feel empowered countercultural or even, at times, revolu- to make health preserving new choices. tionary, in that they challenged unjust, I have published several accounts of limiting or outmoded attitudes and prac- this kind of healing vision in my edited tices of the dominant social order, it is volumes on the sacred mushroom and maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 19

on ayahuasca. Also in these books are potentials in all their diversity. accounts by individuals who in the early Similarly, the civil rights movement 1960s were powerfully affected by their countered racist discrimination practices, psychedelic experiences and became com- the legacies of slavery, principally in …under the influence of mitted environmental activists for the rest schools and housing. But its ultimate in- of their lives (including myself). tention vision, as in Martin Luther King’s these botanical Many individuals and groups integrat- “I Have a Dream” speech (1963), was to ed their expanded conscious visions for see a society in which black children and a food supply free of chemical additives white children, and those of other races, sacraments, and pesticides into the development of could go to school together in freedom the organic food movement, which in the and peace. In the 19th century, waging a person may report be- ensuing decades emerged as a wide-spread war against the slave-holding South was and viable alternative to industrial factory not the ultimate intention of the abo- coming clearly aware farming. Similarly, the recognition of the litionist movement-- rather it was the industrial pollution of the atmosphere and emancipation of slaves. water supply was channeled into political of hitherto advocacy for clean air and water preserva- “Injustice anywhere is a threat to jus- tion. Thus, we see that the environmental tice everywhere” was one of the Reverend hidden patterns of thought movement counters and critiques the King’s memorable inspired sayings. And destructive and polluting effects of indus- it is probably because of King’s unshake- and behavior trial corporations and seeks to preserve able commitment to the practice and ad- and enhance the integrity of both wilder- vocacy of non-violence that the counter- ness and built environments. cultural impulse in the civil rights and that are leading them anti-war movements did not lead to more The women’s liberation movement violence than it did. Even so, the repres- in a self-destructive critiques and counters the sexist discrimi- sive forces of the established power-elites, nation of deeply entrenched patriarchal who saw their positions and wealth direction–-and therefore attitudes and institutions and seeks to threatened by the counterculture, exacted establish equality in work and pay and a heavy toll: the assassination of four dy- to protect the rights of women to make namic and popular leaders--the Kennedy feel empowered their own choices in the areas of sexuality brothers, and M.L. King and Malcolm X. and child-bearing. The 1963 publication Interestingly, at the present time of 2009 to make health of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and beyond, American society again will launched the women’s liberation move- examine the atavistic residues of slav- preserving ment, with its “consciousness-raising” ery and racial discrimination under the groups, in which women-only groups met presidential leadership of a younger, and in council to discuss issues of identity and multi-cultural African-American. new choices. relationship. Questioning themselves and The movement for increased freedom each other–who am I, besides being some- of sexual expression, supported also by one’s wife, daughter, sister, lover, secre- the women’s movement, by the inven- tary? And such consciousness expanding tion of the contraceptive pill, and by questions would naturally lead to making the books of zoologist Alfred Kinsey on new and healthier choices in life-style, human sexual behavior (1943, 1953), work and creative expression. countered and critiqued many unex- amined and prejudicial religion-bound The anti-war movement countered conventions of marriage and family; but the American war-machine, with all the ultimately aimed for wholesome, non- formidable power and resources that it patriarchal alternatives to the so-called disposes–and this opposition could and “nuclear household.” There was a wave of did result in fare-ups of public violence communitarian experimentation, as has between state authorities and counter- happened periodically in American his- cultural rebels and dissidents. But the tory. Intentional communities sprang up, underlying intention and vision of the such as the one Leary, Alpert and myself anti-war movement is to be oppositional participated in for a few years at Mill- only temporarily, and then to further the brook, New York, experimenting with peaceful unfolding of the civilization’s new forms of extended family relations, 20 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

sexuality and child-rearing. A conversa- of the revolutionary movements was more tional memoir by Ram Dass and myself connected to amphetamine use. of the Harvard and Millbrook years is Going beyond the political and eco- Their messages forthcoming under the title Birth of a Psy- nomic changes brought by the countercul- chedelic Culture (Synergetic Press, 2009). tural movements of expanded conscious- and visions have to do… The vision motivating the countercul- ness, our global human civilization may ture of the 1960s was pioneering innova- be involved in change processes at the tion, reform and liberation, based on an level of planetary evolution. Processes of with practices expanded awareness of the needs of the desertification, deforestation and the de- whole society (as in the civil rights, wom- struction of habitats have plunged planet that reduce our adverse en’s liberation and sexual revolution), of Earth into what has been called a “sixth all of humanity (as in the peace move- extinction.” At the same time, industrial impact on ecosystems, ment) and the regional ecosystem and civilization’s addiction to carbon fuels as biosphere (as in the ecology movement). energy source has brought the biosphere The innovative and pioneering aspects to the brink of catastrophic collapse with the preservation of these socio-cultural transformations through global over-heating. are particularly obvious in the break- Many individuals who have worked in of wilderness and the throughs that occurred from new discov- a respectful and spiritual way with plant eries in the sciences, and new forms of and fungal teachers, as well as working essential diversity of life, celebratory expressions in the arts. Here shamanically with animal spirit guides, we don’t necessarily see opposition to an have reported increasing communication existing order, but simply a highly ener- from the spiritual realms of Nature in and with the gized, innovative and creative “moving response to their divinatory questioning. beyond” into an expanded worldview. Their messages and visions have to do, development of as one might expect, with practices that On the other hand, the countercul- reduce our adverse impact on ecosystems, sustainable, tural and revolutionary elements in these with the preservation of wilderness and movements, especially in the political the essential diversity of life, and with the and economic sphere tends to produce development of sustainable, bioregional bioregional violent backlash and repression by the economies and communities. dominant culture, as “the empire strikes There may be a profound and myste- economies and back.” This in turn leads to intensifica- rious shift occurring in the balance of tion of the rebellious oppositional forces, life on this planet. The dominant and communities. bringing about an escalation of violence dominating role of the human in relation and destruction – all tendencies that we to the natural world has brought about can see being played out in subsequent unparalleled ecological disaster, degrada- decades, to the present day. tion of habitats and loss of species. Could Undoubtedly, an energizing and am- it be that the profound consciousness- plifying infuence in the growth of the raising and compassion-deepening effects expanding consciousness culture during of the visionary plant brews and tinctures the 1960s was the widespread availabil- are signaling an evolutionary initiative ity of inexpensive psychedelic drugs, as coming from other, non-human, intel- well as cultivated mushrooms, for per- ligences on this planet? Instead of the sonal use by increasingly large numbers usual attitude of arrogant and exploitative of people. This certainly amplified the superiority, those who have experienced innovation and creativity in the arts and mushrooms, peyote, ayahuasca and other sciences and added much larger numbers entheogens are more likely to find them- of spiritually committed individuals to selves humbled and awed by the mysteri- what before were relatively small minor- ous powers of nature, and strive to live in ity movements. Whether psychedelics a simpler way that minimizes environ- also amplified the rebelliousness and con- mental harm and protects and celebrates frontational resistance movements of the the astonishing diversity and beauty 1960s, is impossible to say. Some would of life. • argue that the greater physical violence maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 21

Could Flower Power Have Saved the World? T

appears to have been, at one time or an- The psychedelic experience other, part and parcel of human cultures throughout the world; with or without assistance from the plant world, and usually with. Today, as our civilization careens mindlessly out of control and we face rejection by the planet that is our only home, it is appropriate to ask whether the virtual absence of the psychedelic experience in modern culture might be connected with the predicament in which we find ourselves. Gregory Sams The fields of ecology and green consciousness are products of the Sixties [email protected] hippy movement, now branched and developed far beyond the first “back http://www.gregorysams.com to the land” aspirations of the time. Before then, a few select and far-sight- ed individuals primed the pump, from Rachel Carson to Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley to George Ohsawa. But it was the wholesale ingestion of psychedelics that enabled large numbers of a new generation to break out …as our civilization of a mental straightjacket that has constrained our dominant Western thought processes for far too long. careens mindlessly out Psychedelics can transport us into an degree can often appear ludicrous. unfamiliar space. The familiar world in The “alternative” culture that devel- of control and we face which we live, with houses, plumbers, oped in the Sixties was the first mass- parliaments, cellphones, cars, advertising, movement to recognize that the channel rejection by the planet restaurants and so forth is but one chan- we are tuned to is incompatible with the nel on the set of all possible channels. fostering of health, happiness or peace that is our only home, it is Because this is the reality we have cre- and goodwill among humankind. Per- ated within the world around us, we are haps we did not recognize the coming of tuned to it to such a degree that we easily climate change and the scale of the threat. appropriate to ask whether become oblivious to the deeper nature But we certainly recognized, through a of this intricately interwoven world, of new and spiritual perspective, that our the virtual absence of the which we are but a part, living upon our communal ship was in danger of sinking. little speck of dust within the Universe. The state’s natural response was to do psychedelic experience The psychedelic experience is not everything in their power to prevent us embraced as an escape from our world from building lifeboats, to stop us from but as a ticket to escape from the single tuning into new and experimental chan- in modern culture might channel; to see the bigger picture and the nels. And what may have most frightened smaller picture; to see our world from a the maintainers of the status quo was the be connected with the different perspective, even from a differ- prospect of a generation who were insert- ent dimension. It is hard to emerge from ing fowers into gun barrels; embracing predicament in which this voyage without developing a realiza- threatening concepts like love, peace, tion, amongst many others, that those ‘in one-ness and non-violence; looking inside power’ are possessed of a narrow vision themselves; and rejecting a nine-to-five we find ourselves. fuelled primarily by the desire to stay in future as tax-paying consumers in an power. Their viewpoint is of one channel untenable endless-growth economy. Who only--the one that represents the status would need Big Government any more? quo they understand, in whatever country The psychedelic experience re-connect- they control--and their efforts to control ed us with our inner self and a world of and fine-tune this channel to a micro- spirit; with concepts such as harmony and 22 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

good vibrations; practices such as medi- Perhaps we can track the original tation and yoga; values such as conser- suppression of the shamanic, psyche- vation and re-cycling; organic farming delic experience right back to Adam and The fields of and natural eating; alternative healing Eve in the Garden of Eden, described in techniques from acupuncture to herbal the Bible’s opening pages, and the most ecology and and the laying on of hands. It is diffi- commonly known Bible story of all. In cult, today, to imagine just how grey and this fundamental story, the fruit-pushing disconnected from our true reality was snake is portrayed as an agent of the dark green consciousness the pre-Sixties culture of the Western side for telling Eve that “when you eat world. Opening the doors of perception of it your eyes will be opened, and you are products in those days was a much greater surprise will be like God, knowing good and evil” than it is today. Yet it is depressing to see (Genesis 3). The snake, of course, has of the Sixties just how little has changed in the core been symbolic of knowledge and divinity mindset of those who profess to run our across many religious and shamanic tra- world; those who rely upon the power of ditions throughout the world. An angry hippy movement, coercion and propaganda to achieve their God, as punishment for being disobeyed, ends; those who ban cannabis and psy- visits toil and suffering upon the hu- now branched chedelic drugs; those who seek to restrict man race thereafter, especially targeting and even ban the expression of dissent women by promising to “greatly multiply and developed and protest; those who would drill holes your pain in childbearing” and decree- in the lifeboats. ing that men shall “rule over you.” It’s a But how did we get disconnected in peculiar story to be sure, and one that far beyond the first place--how did we get to the has impacted upon us ever since. point where things that come natu- An alternative interpretation of this the first rally would be part of an “alternative” Adam and Eve story was held by the culture--be a “movement” instead of the widespread Gnostic sects known as the back to the land mainstream? In the same way that we Ophites, who revered and recognized the would not need a nutritional supplements serpent as man’s benefactor and saw Je- industry were our food not refined and hovah as the bad guy who sought to keep aspirations denatured in the first place, there would us in ignorance by denying us knowledge be little need for ecological awareness of our potential divinity. The Ophites of the time. and a green movement had our culture were declared heretics and brutally ex- not come to be isolated and dis-connected tinguished by the spread of an organized from the world around it. and intolerant Christianity in the fourth Though our profigate consumption century. One could be forgiven for sug- of the world’s oil reserves can easily be gesting that had our species embraced the seen as a root cause of our ecological serpent’s gift, we might still be living in crisis, it is important to recognize that harmony with each other and our planet- our dis-connection from the planet was -enjoying life in the paradise that we in place long before the Age of Oil. It is inhabit. Instead, a lack of differentiation complex, bordering on the impossible, between good and evil seems to be the to conceive just how the discovery of hallmark of those in power today. cheap and transportable power would The powerful post-Constantine have impacted upon a culture that had Church claimed a monopoly on spiritu- not banned shamans and the shamanic ality, banning or destroying anything experience. Those who developed the oil they thought to be in confict with their industry were of the same stock as those religious hegemony. Witchcraft, astrol- who slaughtered herds of buffalo in order ogy, spiritualism, soothsaying, and to sell their tongues, the same who would worshipping the Sun or moon could all destroy beautiful landscapes to extract get one into serious trouble. A patent was a few pounds of yellow metal, the same effectively put upon the ecstatic state, who ardently believed in a universal god with punishment meted out to those whose prime purpose lay in producing, caught seeking a ‘religious’ experience by providing for and monitoring the human any means other than those approved by race. the Church. maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 23

The psychedelic experience and Doors opened by the psychedelic ex- shamans were out--thought control was perience allow us to blow this crippling in. A select group of people now decided mental straightjacket right out of our what we could think and how we should mind space, revealing a world more inter- Doors opened by behave, assuming a mandate from God to connected, alive and wonder-filled than do so. The natural world was not sup- we had ever realized; a world in which we the psychedelic posed to be able to teach us things and may feel like gods, but not a world that our intuition was not to be trusted in we can rule over like deterministic kings; matters which had been divinely decreed, a world that is our host and teacher as experience or decreed by those who claimed divine well as our conscious provider. We learn responsibility to do so. We could use our to respect the world, and wonder at how allow us to intellect to learn about the natural world, we could have ever done otherwise. usually for the purpose of exploiting it, For the shaman in all of us, spirit IS blow this crippling but that world itself was stupid and could out there and is as real a part of our world not inform us, and to believe it could was as the physical stuff we can see and touch. to indulge in superstitious pagan behav- When we recognize the spirit in the trees, mental straightjacket iour. That was a dangerous place to be. the spirit in the mountain, the spirit in The natural world had been provided the earth and the Sun and its fellow stars, right out of by our divine creator as little more than a “Ifwe the live doors in ofharmony perception and were respect cleansed with every our store cupboard for humanity. A common thingenvironment–it would appear tocomes man as naturally. it is, infinite. • For man our mind space, mindset believed that we were specifi- has closed himself up, till he sees all things through cally given “dominion over the fish of the narrow chinks of his cavern.” sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over –William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell revealing a world the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon Gregory Sams is the author of Uncommon Sense: the more inter-connected, the earth.” as well as “every herb bear- State is Out of Date–not recommended by leading ing seed, which is upon the face of all the politicians, (Chaos Works, London, 1997,available alive and earth, and every tree, etc.” It says it all, online at: http://chaos-works.com) and Sun of gOd – right there in the Bible (Genesis 1). the key to understanding a Universe brimming with A consequence of this assumption of intelligence and design, with no need for an Intel- wonder-filled human dominion over all was to invest ligent Designer. (Weiser Books, 2009) Western civilization with a God-given than we license to take from this planet with “Sun of gOd is simply one of the wisest, most lucid, unabashed greed, wiping out species and thoughtfully written books that I’ve ever read on had ever and blithely destroying landscapes and integrating spirituality with other disciplines. A marvel- cultures in the process of “developing” ously written, unusually insightful, and extremely well- them. Humanity was relieved of the need integrated discussion on the origins of religion and the realized... to show any consideration or thought evolution of consciousness, that radically refreshes our to the land or its other residents, except view of the world.” for their utility to the intelligent human –DJB race. Everything else in the Universe was seen as stupid or inanimate, other than creatures kind of like us, and the denizens of Heaven. It is becoming more and more apparent that this viewpoint is ungrateful, thoughtless, plain stupid and as damaging to us as it is to the planet that hosts us. Yet it has infused the culture of the so-called “developed” world for seventeen centuries. 24 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

Ecology of the Inner Landscape: Green Burial

to the ‘jumping off place’ Walking up the steep grade reminds me… breathe. The air is crisp. I draw in deeply filling my lungs and continue up, up, up to where the masters rest. The Oak Tree is our graveyard, home to what remains of 27 members of our family and friends, now mere dust. From here I can see the Earth’s curve, an embrace that summons the wanderer a jillion miles out across the sea to fall off the Earth’s edge or to fall into eternity. My work with the Wo/Men’s Alliance Our community is a teaching ground… As we long to be for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) has at times, a playground. A place to attend provided an extraordinary opportunity. to the work inside, then to participate in touched by love WAMM is the longest running medical a break loose gambol, weaving the dif- marijuana collective in the nation, offer- ficulties of dealing with illness into the in every part of ing medicine to seriously ill patients on gratefulness that comes when suffering a donation basis. It is the strand that has is eased. We help each other. We impro- led me to care for people who are facing vise. We lean into every utterance and we our human experience, death. 201 WAMM members have died listen deeply to the silence. And so we are since our inception in 1993. That is more instructed in the ways that are unknown it is no less so than one each month. I have been at the to those of us who are not yet “dying.” We deathbed of a majority, most of whom are being trained so that we are better in death. wanted to die at home; hence, the genesis able to serve and so that we may do well of our new sister non-profit organization, when we actually must face our own Raha Kudo, the Design for Dying Project, death. our volunteer group of caregivers who as- And when our service to the living sist dying people as they design their own body is complete we must consider what path. Every aspect is considered, from in- to do with what remains. It begins with home care during the dying process, the quiet and tranquility. It includes the gen- death, the wake, the funeral and the final tlest movement of the body, its alignment, resting place. tending to the eyes, the mouth, to the Every step we take, every joy, every fuids, all of this to achieve a natural state hardship is part of this preparation. This of peace. I bathe, anoint and dress our is the training ground for the becoming friends. On occasion I am left instructions of the master. As we long to be touched that include the most intimate details. by love in every part of our human ex- Then the room is arranged. I may hang perience, it is no less so in death. When cloth on the walls; curtain the windows, the body lies in state it is also true that making adjustments to the space, always we may enter into a profound intercon- with minimal disturbance to the environ- nectedness with our loved ones. Here I ment. The body is framed with a halo of have the great fortune to serve the ailing fowers complemented by incense and temple body when sick and the oppor- candles. Music is carefully chosen and tunity to anoint the empty temple body may be what was playing at the time of after death. death. It includes every genre; Gregorian maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 25

chants, Zen medita- ance on heavy equip- tions, jazz, metal, ment and the fuel to Klezmer, gospel, run it; the backhoes, classical, an Irish the lawn mowers, jig, R & B, ruds, tree trimmers, hedg- punk, funk, world ers and the weed eat- fusion, famenco, ers. Add to that the there is no limit to use of fertilizers and the range of compo- herbicides and you sition. This setting have a very personal inspires a com- donation to the cre- munion of emotion ation of toxic waste. from the depths of Valerie Leveroni Corral Each year Americans loss that is often [email protected] • www.wamm.org bury 827,060 gallons filled with both Photo by David Jay Brown of embalming fuid, tears and laughter. including formalde- When prayers and hyde, 30-plus million the poetry have board feet of hard- been uttered, when woods, 209 million relations have said pounds of steel for goodbye, after each visitor has shared caskets and vaults, 3.3 billion pounds of stories and asked for forgiveness, when reinforced concrete in those vaults and ceremony and smudging have ended, 5.4 million pounds of copper, lead and interment takes place. Each of us unique bronze to reinforce and decorate the We are being trained and remarkable, leaves behind some mea- caskets. It may take up to sixty years for sure of our existence when we die. an embalmed body in a coffin to decom- so that we are With baby boomers launching the pose. Investigators at the National Cancer back-to-the-land movement a sort of ex- Institute have found that embalmers tended version has emerged in the form and anatomists who are exposed daily better able to serve of green burial. Not everyone may find to formaldehyde are at increased risk for this appealing. Yet, the modern practice leukemia and brain cancer. It is listed by and so that we may of embalming, encasing and interring is the International Agency for Research on a relatively new practice. When we think Cancer as a known human carcinogen. do well when of green burials we are really talking The EPA lists formaldehyde as a sus- about embracing age-old practices in pected carcinogen and the Occupational what may be considered as expanding our Health and Safety Administration has we actually must face ecological role, returning to Earth that established a permissible exposure limit we once walked on. But even the most averaged over an 8-hour shift of 0.75 our own death. environmentally astute person may be parts per million. unaware of the impact that a dead body In the United States cremation is has on the environment. What ever you a cost-efficient alternative and often may perceive as the “beginning of the hu- thought to be “green.” But is it really? Of man race,” presently around 6.75 billion the 1,000 crematoria here in the U.S., col- of us are scurrying over the surface of lectively 500,000 cremations are conduct- our planet right now. It will take a lot of ed each year. But compared to the average space and a quick turn around in decom- funeral ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 position to make room for all of us. But the investment of $500 is an attraction most of us will end up beneath it eventu- often motivated by finances. Harm- ally. What ever you might believe hap- ful chemicals including hydrocarbons pens after death, rest assured that a body, and mercury vapor are released into the in some way or other, must be disposed atmosphere from the coffins and dental of. fillings when a body is ignited--including Each year $11 billion is spent in the hydrocarbons and mercury vapor. The funeral industry and green burial makes average burning time in a crematorium up just a fraction of that market. To main- is 5 hours at 1600 degrees Fahrenheit. tain a cemetery requires continued reli- A study conducted by the San Francisco 26 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

Public Works Department in 1999 noted someday be replaced with “composto- in their area crematoria is the third high- ria” where dead bodies are turned into est contributor of mercury. There are no organic mulch and buried in economical health codes that necessitate embalming green coffins that quickly degrade. and the law never routinely requires it. In Memorial preserves may be in open addition, there is no law that obliges the land or in underwater artificial reefs. use of a casket. Still, any decision must be The reef sites are made from concrete weighed against an individual’s personal into which the cremated ashes are mixed. or religious beliefs. Hopefully concrete is sealed so as not to What ever you might Planning to meet the responsibility leak toxins into the ocean. Such areas that is required when death comes may are marked so that divers who wish can believe happens be challenging and often families are un- visit the gravesite. They can cost be- prepared. There are institutions designed tween $900 and $3,000 before the cost to provide direction in such cases. An of cremation is included. Making these after death, inquiry into a memorial society in your choices help to keep land undeveloped. area will give literature and information Such areas include forests, grasslands, rest assured regarding what they offer and their mem- meadowlands, prairies and other natural bership fees. areas. Many of these area locales have no that a body, Once we decide that we want to be gravesite markers and rely on GPS coordi- buried green we unearth a tangle of nates as the only means of guiding loved choices. A Green Burial is a way to ensure ones to graves. in some way the preservation of open space. While Three types of cemeteries accommo- there are over 200 green cemeteries in date green burials: Conservation burial or other, Great Britain, in the United States there grounds are established as a conservation are 6,000 cemeteries, but only 6 are regis- partner, with an easement on the prop- must be tered as green. Still, in America there is a erty. These are operated, according to the burgeoning movement to deinstitutional- principles of restoration ecology. Natural ize death, encouraging families to become burial ground must engage in both land disposed of. involved. Where it is allowed, loved ones stewardship and restoration planning. are decorating the caskets and digging the While this type of cemetery does not graves themselves. Should they choose not have a conservation easement, it does to embalm, the body might be wrapped have deed restrictions or a covenant that in a simple, natural fiber shroud made of ensures its operation as a green cemetery. linen, silk or ethnic textiles. Then placed Hybrid burial grounds accommodate in a biodegradable coffin made from pine, both conventional and green burial. They wicker, cardboard, reeds or bamboo and incorporate a natural burial ground with then decorated with bumper stickers, sustainable landscape design and have painted handprints, artwork, poetry, and the option to simply allow for vaultless photos. Often bits of memorabilia are burial. included inside the coffin to accompany Should one choose to handle death on the journey; one that refects a modern privately there are precautions that must version of the tombs of ancient Egypt. be taken. Observing all state and local Since green burial eliminates embalm- regulations is necessary and while they ing, caskets and tombs, it is often pre- are not complex, a failure to comply could sented as an inexpensive alternative to be troublesome. There are only six states conventional burial. As the green burial that limit the right of families to control movement progresses so does a range the process; they are, Indiana, Louisiana, of options. A Swedish environmental Nebraska, New York, Connecticut, and biologist recommends freeze-drying. The Michigan. While Michigan has a law that process takes a few steps: freeze, followed allows such participation on the part of by an immersion in liquid nitrogen, dry, families or loved ones, the department of crumble into an odorless powder, and health is uncooperative and blocks access. place into a biodegradable coffin and There are necessary considerations voila! up to 65 pounds of pure organic that must be followed in any death. The matter is produced in just a few months. following suggests what you should know In the drollest sense, crematoria may if you do not hire a funeral director or maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 27

don’t defer to a memorial society. A death From here I can see the Earth’s curve certificate states the cause of death. It An embrace that summons the wanderer must be signed by a doctor and is filed in a jillion miles out across the sea the county or district where death occurs. In no state is it required to embalm. Dry to fall off the earth’s edge or to fall into eternity. ice or refrigeration can be used in lieu of I can hear the rumble of the ocean’s break upon the shore, embalming. Under special circumstances, I can hear a roaring inside however it may be necessary to embalm That echoes the surf at the Landing where the waves according to state law, especially if a body lay undiscovered for a time. A burial per- never forget their way back mit may be required when a burial takes And I can hear the words of the masters… place outside the county or city where They tell me to be quiet…to listen death occurs. And additional permits are To the ecology of an inner landscape required to inter a body or ashes. If no decision is made as to the final resting place The exploration of the fabric of the space of ashes no permit is required. The top of between nations, a coffin must be at least 3 feet below the between atoms and quarks, between us, soil surface. The site chosen to bury must It is unexplored, always be 150 feet or more from a water supply and never near electrical or power It is the unknown sources or lines. Before you move a body The jumping off place be certain that you possess a permit or Its immensity should silence me, but I can’t stop wondering have some form of medical permission. What is it that I do not know The local coroner or medical examiner can provide a permit-to-cremate if it is Everything, they say, nothing needed and usually only a modest fee is charged. It is legal to keep a body lying in state at home for up to approximately In the drollest sense, three days. Heat and light are contribut- ing factors to the length of time for an crematoria may someday in-home wake. Under extremely hot conditions dry ice may be used beneath the body to delay decomposition. be replaced with compostoria where These days many people are planning their own funerals. They include their dead bodies are turned into organic mulch favorite music, the readings they would like and some even write their own eulo- and buried in economical green coffins gies. One evening at a WAMM meeting I asked members if they were interested in attempting to write theirs. Most had no that quickly degrade. interest, but about 15 people chose to do so. What came from these narratives was amazing and informative. Some patients became deeply involved in the process. Some shunned the notion of the grim reaper; engaging instead in a courtship with death, embracing her as lover. In the poetry of perspective they designed their passing. Through such awareness we may become acquainted with the unknown… as all of us shall someday enter into this realm of becoming masters. References for this article are available on the MAPS Web site: www.maps.org 28 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

Psychedelics and the Evolution of Ecological Consciousness P

our sense of novelty by exposing us Psychedelics rejuvenate to things we have never encountered before. They reconnect us with the curiosity most humans lose shortly after childhood, and are not likely to find again unless they travel the world, spend loads of time in solitude, or go to Burning Man. By Dragonfly de la Luz Psychedelics give us instant access to a sense of childlike curios- [email protected] Photo by David Jay Brown ity, which reminds us that we have not seen all there is to see, thought all there is to think, dreamed all there is to dream, or know all there is to know. It seems that the human ecosystem could not progress without this awareness. Beyond giving us the awareness that we do not know more, psychedelics give us Psychedelics… the eagerness to discover more, turning experiencers into willing candidates for the evolution of human consciousness. I was on LSD when I first encoun- a mush of revery, as well. To someone reconnect us with tered the giant redwood trees of North- from elsewhere, the giant redwoods are ern California. It was nighttime as we indeed otherworldly, and who knows the curiosity most humans drove up the coast, and the sight of these how rare this species is in the galaxy or otherworldly giants compelled us to the univese. Our Earth may be as unique lose shortly after child- stop our car and have a closer look. They as a snowfake. It could be renowned as a seemed higher than the stars. When I psychedelic travel destination for psyhco- stood before them and tilted my head so nauts throughout the universe. And for hood, and are not likely far back that the back of my head touched us, it is home. my shoulder blades just to behold them in People who use psychedelics often to find again unless their tremendous entirety, I was stunned. report feelings of oneness, peace, love, joy, I felt so tiny that I lost my balance. I and gratitude. Perhaps the most fascinat- they travel the world, grabbed onto the arm of the friend standing way psychedelics impact the Earth’s ing next to me to stabilize, and physi- ecology is by engendering the thoughts, ologically reacted with what felt identical feelings, and emotions which have been spend loads of time to a fear response. But I was not afraid; I shown to have a measurable impact on was in awe. I wanted to drop to my knees the physical world. According to Dr. Ma- in solitude, or in reverence. suru Emoto’s research, which found that In that eternal psychedelic moment, thoughts change the molecular structure go to Burning Man. I saw the Earth as otherworldly, with of water, these feelings have measurable features one might expect to see on some effects on the environment around the other planet. And I realized that just as experiencer. Our negative thoughts have I was awestruck by its stunning charac- an equally impactful effect. Thoughts can teristics, a traveler from another planet create chaos as equally as they can cre- might witness this and be reduced to ate order, as evidenced in the geometric maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 29

From the Inside Out

shapes formed in the water after being exposed to thoughts of love and gratitude, and the shapeless blobs that appear in response to negative thoughts. We can only Rick Harlow created the beautiful art on the cover of this Bulletin. –DJB imagine what impact our thoughts are F having on the rest of the physical world, I have been traveling to the Colombian and our own water-based bodies. For the past 23 years Through the connection that Amazon. Much of this time I spent along the rivers Apaporis joins all things, scientists have and Mitití Paraná, living with Macuna, Yucuna, and Tanimuca shown that the ‘stuff’ that the peoples. They taught me to feel at home and at ease in the forest, universe is made of—waves and how to walk without falling down, how to hunt, fish and gather particles of energy—responds and food. They taught me about the different plants, insects and ani- conforms to the expectations, judg- mals. They showed me which ones are useful, which are dangerous ments and beliefs that we create and which are sacred. They told me their stories of how their world about our world. The key to awak- was created, stories of how they came to live there, stories that ening such an awesome power is... explain their relationship to all living things and their place and to make a small shift in the way we purpose in the web of life. Stories that contain great lessons on how see ourselves in the universe. We to live correctly, stories of the spirits that live in the rivers, in the must see ourselves as a part of ev- forest, in the underworld and in the Milky Way. They invited me to erything, rather than separate from participate in their rituals, dances and sacred ceremonies. They ini- everything. Beyond merely thinking tiated me into the tribe and gave me a new name. They introduced me to the teacher plant Yajé (Banisteriopsis caapi) or Ayahuasca as of ourselvesThis feeling from this of oneness unified view, we must feel ourselves as part of all it is more commonly known. I was taught that this sacred plant is that we experience.is one of the (Braden) most the umbilical cord that connects us to the cosmos. These experiences have served as the main inspiration for my commonly reported effects paintings. In creating these works, I do my best to paint not only what I have seen, but also what I have felt or sensed. Often, as is of psychedelics. the case with “From the Inside Out”, I combine observed landscape imagery with visions revealed to me during Ayahuasca rituals. •

Psychedelics give us an opportunity to choose the course of our own evolution, to consciously evolve--the implications of which are immense. Psychedelics pre- pare us for future realities by reminding us of our ancient connection to nature. They reconnect us to the beauty of our planet, compelling us to realize our place in nature and protect the environment. Psychedelics, moreover, engender thoughts of oneness, love, and gratitude, and can thereby be the catalyst to create positive physical effects on our planet. Indeed, psychedelics seem already to be accelerating the evolution of the human ecosystem. It is up to us, however, to de- Rick Harlow cide what we will become, and what will become of the Earth. • [email protected]

References for this essay are available on the MAPS Web site: www.maps.org

Dragonfy de la Luz is a fashion model, travel writer and psychedelic festival reporter for Cannabis Culture magazine. 30 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

An Interview with Jeremy Narby, Ph.D. by David Jay Brown Decoding the Cosmic Serpent

A Anthropologist Jeremy Narby, Ph.D. is the author of The Cosmic Serpent, Intelligence in Nature, and is the coeditor of Shamans Through Time. He received his doctorate in anthropology from Stanford University, and spent several years living with the Ashaninca in the Peruvian Amazon, cataloging indigenous uses of rainforest resources to help combat ecological destruction. Narby sponsored an expedition to the rainforest for Jeremy Narby biologists and other scientists to examine indigenous knowledge systems, [email protected] and the utility of (the hallucinogenic jungle brew) ayahuasca in gaining knowledge. Narby has said that the information that shamans access “has a stunning correspondence with molecular biology,” and that one might be able to gain biomolecular information in ayahuasca visions. Since 1989, Narby has been working as the Amazonian projects director for the Swiss NGO, Nouvelle Planète. To follow is an excerpt from a recent interview that I did with Jeremy; the complete interview will appear in my forthcoming book, Renaissance of the Mind. –DJB Ayahuasca David: What type of relationship do you Jeremy: Okay, that’s getting a bit more see between psychedelics and ecology, and precise. But, once again, I think that is known by do you see psychedelics playing a role to help by asking the question that way it does increase ecological awareness? omit who is taking the ayahuasca, what the people Jeremy: In the spirit of dialogue, I ayahuasca it is, and where they are taking would quibble with the question a little it. I think that the ayahuasca experience who use it bit, because I think that in as much as is also a function of who’s doing it, where psychedelics have a relation with ecology, they’re doing it, and how they’re doing it’s via people. So people are lacking in it--beyond set and setting, which is just to make the question. Then, I think that psyche- obvious. So, in other words, who are we delics have different effects on different talking about? For example, the indig- the invisible people. So the short answer to your ques- enous people of the Amazon and what we tion is that it depends, and if you could know about them historically? Or how visible... make your question more precise, I could ayahuasca has impacted on their eco- advance with it. I don’t just think that cosmologies? That could be a subject of psychedelics--as a group of substances-- a whole book, but it’s certainly a precise are any sort of instant ecology-awareness question. You want me to talk about that pills. precise question? David: Perhaps you could talk a little David: Yes, and maybe you could also talk about the relationship between ayahuasca a bit about the worldwide ecology movement, use in the Amazon and how this effects the and whether you think that’s in any way ecological relationships there? related to people who have used psychedelics? maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 31

“Resonance 2” by Salome Starbuck. [email protected], Oil on panel, 30x48”, $2,600 32 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

A lot of people think that psychedelic experienc- on the same planet as them. So, how the es have been an important part of the inspira- human community negotiates its relation for the ecology movement. tion with other species is precisely what Jeremy: Yes, it’s true that one runs into shamans negotiate traditionally in their quite a few people in the broad ecology visions attained using these plants. That’s movement who say that their engage- why these plants are central to their eco- ment has been souped up by ayahuasca, cosmology. and I guess I would include myself in that But I guess the reason why I object to bunch. the general nature of the question about ...one could say David: So maybe you could also address psychedelics and ecology is that it’s like a little bit about the use of ayahuasca by in- the question about psychedelics and that ayahuasca digenous people in the Amazon, and how that creativity. If only it sufficed to take psy- affected their relationship with their environ- chedelics and everybody could play the ment? guitar like Jimi Hendrix--but it doesn’t is an important tool Jeremy: I think the way that they look happen that way. Some people have at it is like this. There is a level of reality taken psychedelics and have done terrible for knowing the world, that is parallel to our own, but that we things. Likewise, there are a lot of people don’t see with our, let’s say, “normal eyes,” in the ayahuasca movement, and they as microscopes but in certain states of mind you can see may talk about this and that, but some of it. Ayahuasca is known by the people who them lead pretty un-ecological lifestyles, use it to make the invisible visible, and it seems to me. Unfortunately, there are have been first and foremost you take ayahuasca to Westerners that are demonstrating that see, and to see what you normally don’t it’s possible to turn ayahuasca into a kind for biologists. see. So, in their view, one could say that of a drug, really. So if only everyone who ayahuasca is an important tool for know- was guzzling ayahuasca became an eco- ing the world, as microscopes have been logical activist, at least it would be easy to for biologists. It’s an absolutely central tool answer the question. in approaching an otherwise invisible level David: I was just wondering whether of nature. you’ve seen a pattern of any kind. It seems to So, in their view, ayahuasca--but also me like psychedelics, in general, are basically other plant teachers like tobacco--have boundary-dissolving, nonspecific brain ampli- enabled them to have an ongoing conver- fiers. sation with the powers in nature, entities Jeremy: Exactly. So if somebody’s got or essences corresponding to the different an ecological sensitivity, then it will am- species. For them, ayahuasca is the tele- plify it. But if they’re power-hungry, then phone, but the person on the other end is it will amplify that too. So depicting aya- the whole assembly of nature. So what’s huasca as this magical thing that draws important is not the telephone; it’s the people to understand nature better, and conversation that you have with the other then to become healing-oriented, would species. It would seem that these indig- actually be misleading. It’s way more enous societies have been dialoguing--at complicated than that. One of the loops least in the visions of their shamans--with that’s missing is that it depends entirely the essences of plants, animals, and ecosys- on the individuals, and there’s a lot of tems for millennia. And they view nature variation in the individuals out there. not as an object—but as a subject, or a Another thing that I would like to series of subjects, with whom you negoti- say about this is that the more I’ve been ate if you want game and health. able to get into the ayahuasca realm with So yes, ayahuasca is central to the eco- indigenous Amazonian shamans guid- cosmology of many indigenous Amazonian ing me, the deeper my respect for their peoples. It is that which enables com- knowledge has gotten. So, obviously, the munication, but that doesn’t mean that it more you really respect people, and actu- needs to be worshipped. Once again, the ally look up to them, the more it enhanc- importance of the conversation, in their es, well, at least my desire to be useful to view, is because nature really is a bunch them. In other words, it galvanizes me as of subjectivities, and it really is important an activist. to communicate with them, because we’re David: Is what you’re describing, what maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 33

do you think is the most important thing that of the electric world. Because our world Western civilization can learn from indig- seems irremediably electric, there aren’t enous shamanism? any easy solutions. Jeremy: Well, that’s speculative. I’m en- But I think that the more of us that joying arguing with your questions; that’s can sit with, let’s say, both forms of what I think questions are for. I don’t knowledge, the better. In other words, know what Western society can learn. I technological knowledge, and let’s call the mean, for the moment, it’s had a hooligan, other shamanic knowledge, for telegraph- vampire-like behavior, and it’s sucked ic sake. We’re not going to be throwing out what it wanted to suck out--mainly out the baby with the bath water. We’re For them, for material benefit--and just spat out the not going to get rid of science and tech- rest. Look at what it did to the Inca tem- nology. On the contrary, it’s too good ayahuasca is ples. It just melted them into gold. And to throw out. But, obviously, it needs look at how it’s treated shamanism for the complementing. It needs critiquing and last five centuries. It said it was the devil’s controlling, let’s say. the telephone, work, or balderdash, and then went on to I think that, for example, one thing label shamans as psychotics. We’ve taken that’s also really clear for me--but it’s also but the person the shamanic plants like tobacco, and look a matter of opinion–is the view that na- at what we do with them, we turn them ture is just an object, or a bunch of com- on the other end into “drugs” that cause harm to health modities that we can just exploit it as we and create addiction. Look at what we’ve wish, has led us to the ecological situation done to coca: turned it into a nasty drug. that we’re in. I think that it’s been a pow- is the whole So there’s been this sort of, I don’t erful way of coming to dominate nature, know, ghoulish mercantile touch to what treating all those different beings as if assembly Western cultures have done to indigenous they were objects. One can hold that gaze cultures. Yes, it’s about time it changed, for 2,300 years, and that’s what we’ve just of nature. but let’s see some action. I don’t want to done, but that doesn’t mean that it’s right. sit here speculating on the sidelines as to You can treat beings like objects, because, what we could learn. I want to incarnate actually, beings are objects--but they’re learning. I want to see more people learn- more than just objects, and treating them ing, and I don’t want to be there saying, like just objects is nixing a whole impor- oh, if only we could do this, then maybe tant part of their existence. we could all change, and so forth. Enough So I think that getting away from the already of this telling Western people objective view of nature, and moving to- what they could benefit even more from! ward a deeper understanding of the other Let’s start thinking about reciprocity. Let’s beings with whom we share the planet, become lucid about the last five hundred would probably be a good move. And years of history, and what we’ve imposed. that would precisely be a combination of Let’s break with it, denounce our own knowledges, using science and shaman- behavior, and show something different. ism. I mean, in as much as you accept that David: What are some of the primary shamans have some kind of dialogue in things that you think people should be focus- their visions with entities that represent ing on to help restore ecological balance on our other species on this planet, one could planet? consider including them on bioethics Jeremy: I’m not any kind of expert on committees. how to re-equilibrate Western lifestyles; David: What are some of the most impor- there’s a whole bunch of people who talk tant lessons that you’ve personally learned about that. But I think that the more that from your ayahuasca experiences? we can move away from using hydro- Jeremy: Well, heck, the whole thing! carbons, and the smaller our personal I guess the first thing was that when I imprints can be, the better. The less light was a twenty-five year old whippersnap- bulbs and everything else that we use, per from the suburbs, who had studied the better. But, nevertheless, here we are chemistry in high school, and thought I having a conversation over a telephone, knew what reality was, the ayahuasca ex- using tape recorders. The very existence perience opened my eyes to the fact that of this conversation in text is the fruit there was a whole level of reality that 34 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

…the ayahuasca experience one didn’t normally see, that there was investigating the indigenous approach to something that seemed associated with knowledge--but also plants and animals opened my eyes plants, animals, and the forest world--that themselves, or nature. In other words, had a mind-boggling, well intelligence thinking about what it is to be a human to the fact that about it. It taught me things, and showed being, and what it is to be a human being me how stupid I was. It showed me how in the rainforest is to be immersed in this there was anthropocentric I was. In French, one says breathing, hooting, scratching environ- to “deniaisé,” which means that it made ment that’s clearly alive. I mean, if you me less stupid--fast. think nature is stupid, all you got do is a whole level of reality It also made me see that there was go into the rainforest at night and listen. something there that the materialist-ra- “ResonanceIt sounds 2” (pagelike 25) a bybunch Salome Starbuckof loud electronic that one didn’t tionalist perspective, which thinks it’s so Oilmusicians. on Linen, 42x68”, • $16,000.00 for original painting, plus shipping smart, actually didn’t get and couldn’t get. Contact: Salomé Starbuck, 6 Loma Oriente, Santa Fe, NM 87508 normally see… That kind of defined it, and that made me Phone: 505.988.4950. email: [email protected] listen to the indigenous people even more. I just knew there was something there Giclée prints are available for purchase, contact MAPS for info. It taught me things, that few in the face of our categories, and that needed more investigating. And by and showed me investigating ayahuasca one was clearly how stupid I was. It showed me how anthropocentric I was. maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 35

Shamanic Medicines & Eco-Consciousness: A Conversation with Dennis McKenna, Ph.D. By Dennis McKenna, Ph.D. and David Jay Brown E

is one of the world’s Ethnopharmacologist Dennis Mckenna, Ph.D. experts in tryptamine hallucinogens. He received his doctorate in Botani- cal Science in 1984 from the University of British Columbia, and was a primary organizer and key scientific collaborator for the Hoasca Project, an international biomedical study of ayahuasca. McKenna has conducted extensive ethnobotanical fieldwork in the Peruvian, Colombian, and Dennis McKenna, [email protected] Brazilian Amazon, has helped to develop natural products into medicines, and is the author of more than 35 scientific papers. McKenna also coauthored The Invisible Landscape with his brother Terence. To follow are excerpts from a recent interview that I did with Dennis about ecology and psychedelics, followed by an excerpt from his essay “Ayahuasca and Hu- man Destiny.” The complete interview that I did with Dennis will appear in my forthcoming book, Renaissance of the Mind, and his complete essay, I think that along with references, is available at: www.maps.org/news-letters –DJB

David: I’m curious about what type of states. Whether, in fact, this actually what we’re seeing in the relationship you see between psychedelics and involves supernatural realms, or some sort ecology. Do you see psychedelics playing a role of super-consciousness, I don’t know, but millennia-old association to help increase ecological awareness? that is really what shamanism is about. Dennis: I do. I talk about this in my And I think that what we’re seeing in the between shamanic essay “Ayahuasca and Human Destiny.” I millennia-old association between sha- think that this is probably what’s going manic medicines, or psychedelic plants, on, and it’s not just with ayahuasca--it’s and humans is essentially a symbiosis, a medicines, or psychedelic with all of these psychedelic plants that form of co-evolution. are used in shamanic traditions. Rather This is nothing really that unusual in plants, and humans is than use the term “entheogen,” which has the plant kingdom. Plants and fungi make one kind of connotation, or “psychedelic,” a large variety of so-called secondary essentially a symbiosis, which has another connotation, I prefer molecules. There’s an enormous chemical the term “shamanic medicine.” The term diversity of these secondary compounds, hallucinogen doesn’t fully describe these and they’re not essential for life because a form of plants either, and, in fact, it kind of mis- they don’t occur in all species. But in the describes what they’re about. But I like species that do make them, they serve co-evolution. the term “shamanic medicines.” a function--and the function that they In a sense, these are plants that are at serve is basically a messenger function. In the core of a set of indigenous practices, a sense, the secondary compounds are a having to do with deliberately inducing language for the plants. It’s the way that altered states of consciousness, in such a plants communicate with other organ- way that one can learn from those altered isms in their environments and maintain 36 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

their relationships. In some cases the communication is lot of very peculiar attitudes have cropped up in Western quite simple. It can be something like a repellent, or a culture, that have now been propagated globally, which defensive compound. But when you’re interacting with I think are very unhealthy and very threatening to the organisms that have complex nervous systems, it gets a stability of the planet. little more interesting, a little more complicated, and I So if there is an intelligence resident in nature, that think that bottom line on the evolutionary scale is that communicates to us through psychedelics, it’s getting these plants are teachers. a little hysterical. It’s like, hey pick up the phone and This isn’t really a scientific theory. It’s more a per- listen! There’s important information that you need to sonal belief, I suppose--but it’s one that is verifiable to an hear. So I think that’s where the connection comes with extent. These plants are trying to teach our species about...I think ecology,that in connecting with this planetary conscious- nature, and about how we fit into that. In some ways, ness, for a number of reasons. One of the things that you could say it’s essentially a conduit to the bottom line on psychedelics do--and this has been well a community of species’ mind. Or, if you elucidated through neurophysiology and subscribe to the idea that all of the species neuroscience--is they activate (or perhaps on the planet are organized into something the evolutionary scale in some way they suppress) those parts of like a conscious being, like Gaia, then the limbic system, those parts of the brain, these are the tools that let us communi- is that these plants that are involved with defining the bound- cate directly with Gaia, directly with that aries between the self and the world. They consciousness. This is done for all sorts of are teachers… dissolve those boundaries, and we invest reasons, but partly, I think, to understand a lot of time in defining who we are and both nature, and the processes that go on what separates us from everything else out within it. These plants there--when, in fact, this is an illusion. For example, shamans use psychedelic We know that we are all part of a con- plants all the time to understand the prop- are trying to teach tinuum, and a model that’s closer to reality erties of other plants that they may use is to realize that we are all one. It’s not for curing or other types of activities. So our species simply a cliché. In some ways, that’s a more there is a library of information out there, accurate understanding of how we are and and psychedelic plants are kind of like the how we fit in the world than the idea that operating system that lets you access that about nature, we’re just individual particles separated by and understand it. So I think that’s part of barriers from everything else. And I think the purpose of these things. and about how one thing that psychedelics teach, as many I think that the other part of the mes- other spiritual traditions do, is that we’re sage--at least in my own personal experi- we fit into that. all one, and that it’s an important lesson ences with psychedelics, and in many other to learn--especially at this stage. We’re not people’s--is that Gaia, if you will, through going to save the planet, we’re not going these plants, through these substances that to fundamentally change the way that we seem so close to our neural chemistry, is relate to nature, until we take that lesson, trying to tell us to wake up, to realize the understand it, take it to heart, and try to context in which we inhabit this ecology, express it in the way that we live and the and reorder our thinking accordingly. The message is way that we think. Psychedelics teach many lessons, but that we’re part of nature, and that we have to nurture at this historical juncture I think that this may be the nature. We have to be humble, and, as a species, we’re most important one for our culture, and for our society. not particularly humble. And we have to understand that I think that back at the end of the 60s, two things did we don’t own nature, and nature is not there for us to more to change our perspective as a race, as a species--of exploit, deplete, and destroy. We have to rediscover a dif- who we are and what our place in the universe is--than ferent attitude toward nature, a different way of looking probably anything else previously. One of them was at nature, and living in nature. psychedelics. The other one was going to the moon--or, And I think that in indigenous cultures, where more specifically, that first photograph of the Earth from psychedelic shamanism plays a role, they don’t really space. I think that the first time that we were able to look have a problem with this. This is why their cultures can at ourselves, in a sense, from out there and realize what a be sustainable, and they can live in natural ecologies small planet we are--what a small part of the totality our for long periods of time without really depleting their supposedly very important affairs are--was a very hum- resources or spoiling their habitats. I think that the mes- bling experience. That helped to put us into perspective, sage, in some ways, has gotten more desperate. Or maybe or, at least, in sum they did. I really think that those two it’s our perception that it’s more desperate, as Western things were what sparked, or initiated, what we might culture has become more estranged from nature. And a call eco-consciousness. maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 37

An Excerpt from Ayahuasca and Human Destiny

we are responsible for the greatest loss of habitat and the By Dennis J. McKenna, Ph.D. greatest decimation of species since the asteroid impacts On a personal level, ayahuasca has been for me both a of the Permian-Triassic boundary, 250 million years ago; scientific and professional continuing carrot, and a plant we rip the guts out of the Earth and burn them, spewing teacher and guide of incomparable wisdom, compassion, toxic chemicals into the atmosphere; at the same time and intelligence. My earliest encounters with ayahuasca we slash and burn the woody forests that may be the were experiential; only later did it become an object of only hope for sequestration of the carbon dioxide that is scientific curiosity, sparked in part by a desire to un- rapidly building to dangerous and possibly uncontrol- derstand the mechanism, the machineries, that might lable levels. underlie the profound experiences that it elicited. ...there is a libraryFor the first time in the history of our species, and As a young man just getting started in the field of eth- indeed of our planet, we are forced to confront the pos- nopharmacology, ayahuasca seemed to me of information out there, sibility that thoughtless and unsustainable more than worthy of a lifetime of scientific human activity may be posing a real threat study; and so it has proven to be. Pursuing to our species’ survival, and possibly the an understanding of ayahuasca has led to and psychedelic plants survival of all life on the planet. many exotic places that I would never have And suddenly, and literally, “out of the visited otherwise, from the jungles of the are kind of like Amazon,” one of the most impacted parts Amazon Basin to the laboratory complexes of our wounded planet, ayahuasca emerges of the National Institute of Mental Health the operating system as an emissary of trans-species sentience, and Stanford; it has led to the formation to bring this lesson: You monkeys only of warm friendships and fruitful collabo- think you’re running things. In a wider rations with many colleagues who have that lets you access sense, the import of this lesson is that we shared my curiosity about the mysteries need to wake up to what is happening to of this curious plant complex. These col- that and us and to the planet. We need to get with laborations, and more importantly, these the program, people. We have become friendships, continue, as does the quest for understand it. spiritually bereft and have been seduced understanding. Though there have been by the delusion that we are somehow im- detours along the way, always, and in- portant in the scheme of things. We evitably, they have led back to the central are not. quest. Often, after the fact, I have seen Our spiritual institutions have de- how those apparent detours were not so far volved into hollow shells, perverted to the off the path after all, as they supplied some agendas of rapacious governments and insight, some skill, or some experience, fanatic fundamentalisms, no longer capable that in hindsight proved necessary to the furtherance of of providing balm to the wounded spirit of our species; the quest. and as the world goes up in fames we benumb ourselves Just as ayahuasca has been for me personally some- with consumerism and mindless entertainment, the thing of a Holy Grail, as it has been for many others, I decadent distractions of gadgets and gewgaws, the frantic have the intuition that it may have a similar role with but ultimately meaningless pursuits of a civilization that respect to our entire species. Anyone who is personally has lost its compass. And at this cusp in human history, experienced with ayahuasca is aware that it has much there emerges a gentle emissary, the conduit to a body to teach us; there is incredible wisdom and intelligence of profoundly ancient genetic and evolutionary wisdom there. And to my mind, one of the most profound and that has long abided in the cosmologies of the indigenous humbling lessons that ayahuasca teaches--one that we peoples of the Amazon who have guarded and protected thick-headed humans have the hardest time grasping-- this knowledge for millennia, who learned long ago that is the realization that “you monkeys only think you’re the human role is not to be the master of nature, but its running things.” Though I state it humorously, here and stewards. Our destiny, if we are to survive, is to nurture in other talks and writings, it is nonetheless a profound nature and to learn from it how to nurture ourselves and insight on which may depend the very survival of our our fellow beings. This is the lesson that we can learn species, and our planet. Humans are good at nothing if from ayahuasca, if only we pay attention. not hubris, arrogance, and self-delusion. I find it both ironic, and hopeful, that within the last We assume that we dominate nature; that we are 150 years, and particularly in the last half of the 20th somehow separate from, and superior to, nature, even as century, ayahuasca has begun to assert its presence into we set about busily undermining and wrecking the very human awareness on a global scale. For millennia it was homeostatic global mechanisms that have kept our Earth known only to indigenous peoples who have long since stable and hospitable to life for the last four and a half understood and integrated what it has to teach us. In billion years. We devastate the rainforests of the world; the 19th century it first came to the attention of a wider 38 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

world as an object of curiosity in the reports of Richard in Japan. The forces of death and dominance have been Spruce and other intrepid explorers of the primordial outwitted; it has escaped them, outrun them. There is rainforests of South America; in the mid-20th century now no way that ayahuasca can ever be eliminated from Schultes and others continued to explore this discovery the Earth, short of toxifying the entire planet (which, and began to focus the lens of science on the specifics unfortunately, the death culture is working assiduously of its botany, chemistry, and pharmacology (and, while to accomplish). Even if the Amazon itself is leveled for necessary, this narrow scrutiny perhaps overlooked some cattle pasture or burned for charcoal, ayahuasca, at least, of the larger implications of this ancient symbiosis with will survive, and will continue to engage in its dialog humanity). with humanity. And encouragingly, more and more At the same time, ayahuasca escapedSo iffrom there its is indig an intelligence- people resident are listening.in nature, enous habitat and made its infuence felt among certain It may be too late. I have no illusions about this. Given non-indigenous people, that the curtain is now representatives of “greater” that communicates to us through psychedelics, being rung down on the civilization. To these few drunken misadventure that men and women, ayahuas- it’s getting a little hysterical. It’s like, we call human history, the ca provided revelations, death culture will inevita- and they in turn responded hey pick up the phone and listen! bly become even more bru- (in the way that humans so tal and insane, failing ever often do when confronted more violently as it sinks with a profound mystery) beneath the quick sands of by founding religious sects time. Indeed, it is already with a messianic mission; happening; all you have to in this case, a mission of do is turn on the nightly hope, a message to the rest news. Will ayahuasca sur- of the world that despite its simplicity was far ahead of vive? I have no doubt that ayahuasca will survive on this its time: that we must learn to become the stewards of planet as long as the planet remains able to sustain life. nature, and by fostering, encouraging, and sustaining The human time frame is measured in years, sometimes the fecundity and diversity of nature, by celebrating and centuries, rarely, in millennia. Mere blinks when mea- honoring our place as biological beings, as part of the sured against the evolutionary time scales of planetary web of life, we may learn to become nurturers of each life, the scale on which ayahuasca wields its infuence. It other. A message quite different, and quite anathema, to will be here long after the governments, religions, and the anti-biological obsessions of most of the major world political power structures that seem today so permanent “religions” with their preoccupation with death and and so menacing have dissolved into dust. It will be here suffering and their insistence on the suppression of all long after our ephemeral species has been reduced to spontaneity and joy. anomalous sediment in the fossil record. The real ques- Such a message is perceived as a great threat by en- tion is, will we be here long enough to hear its message, trenched religious and political power structures, and to integrate what it is trying to tell us, and to change in indeed, it is. It is a threat to the continued rape of nature response, before it is too late? Ayahuasca has the same and oppression of peoples that is the foundation of their message for us now that it has always had, since the be- power. Evidence that they understand this threat and ginning of its symbiotic relationship with humanity. Are take it seriously is refected by the unstinting and brutal we willing to listen?…suddenly, Only time and will literally, tell. • efforts that “civilized” ecclesiastical, judicial, and political authorities have made to prohibit, demonize, and exter- out of the Amazon, one of the most minate the shamanic use of ayahuasca and other sacred plants ever since the Inquisition and even earlier. But the story is not yet over. Within the last 30 years, impacted parts of our wounded planet, ayahuasca, clever little plant intelligence that it is, has escaped from its ancestral home in the Amazon and has ayahuasca emerges as an emissary found haven in other parts of the world. With the assistance of human helpers who heard the message and of trans-species sentience... heeded it, ayahuasca sent its tendrils forth to encircle the world. It has found new homes, and new friends, in nearly every part of the world where temperatures are warm and where the ancient connections to plant-spirit still thrive, from the islands of Hawaii to the rainforests of South Africa, from gardens in Florida to greenhouses maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 39

Salvia divinorum and Ecological Awareness Photo of Salvia divinorum by Daniel Siebert.

the psychoactive effects of Ethnobotanist Daniel Siebert discovered salvinorin A, the primary psychoactive component of the Mexican hallucinogenic plant Salvia divinorum, which is currently being studied for a variety of medical applications. Salvinorin A is considered by a number of researchers to be an attractive compound for pharmacological development because it is a selective and potent kappa-opioid receptor agonist with unique structural properties, strong effects on human mood, and low toxicity. There has been increasing scientific evidence that the pharmacological properties of salvinorin A and/or its chemical analogs may have applications asAn an Interview antidepressant with Daniel and Siebert pain reliever,by David asJay well Brown as possibly treating some types of stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and stimulant drug dependence. 40 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

David: Do you think that Salvia divino- Unfortunately, I think that most rum helps to increase ecological awareness people experimenting with salvia these and one’s connection to nature? days are taking excessively high doses. Daniel: In some sense. I think that Most people are smoking these highly when salvia is taken at moderate doses, concentrated extracts--that are widely people often find that they do feel tre- available commercially--and are hav- mendously connected with the natural ing really brief, extraordinarily intense, world. People often describe that as a disorientating experiences that people [email protected] wonderful feeling, like an extension of are just baffed by. Often these intense www.sagewisdom.org their sense of self, where they feel that experiences are entirely internal, because the ordinary boundaries that divide their in high doses people lose all awareness of sense of self from the world at large dis- the physical environments around them. solve. They feel that their sense of self has So, when people do it that way, I don’t expanded, and they feel at one with the think that they’re connecting with the natural world--especially when people natural world at all, except with their take it outdoors in a natural setting. own internal natural world. To use salvia There’s this tremendous connection in a way that fosters a reconnection with with the natural world. Birds fy by, and the natural world, I think, it’s best to take you feel like you understand what it it orally, in an outdoor setting, away from feels like to be a bird. Things like that. cities, people, and those kinds of things. • Often people feel that there’s a sense of There’s this tremendouslife in the naturalconnection world thatwith they the were natural world. Birds fly by, and you feel like you understand what it feels like to be a bird... Often people feel that there’s a sense of life in the natural world

that they were unaware of before.

unaware of before. All of the plants seem to have an existential property. Suddenly they have the presence of individual beings, and sometimes this sense of alive- ness extends even beyond living things-- to where the mountains, the clouds, and everything seem like living entities. So, in that sense, yes it does foster a connection with the natural world, and, I think, a greater appreciation for it. But that’s not something that it does reliably for everybody. It’s something that seems to only be somewhat related. maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 41

Psychedelics and the Deep Ecology Movement: PA Conversation with Arne Naess By Mark A. Schroll, Ph.D. & Donald Rothenberg

(1912-2009) founded the deep ecology movement in 1973 Arne Naess The deep ecology with his article “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Move- movement ment: A Summary.” (Inquiry, 16, 95-100.) “Shallow” in the sense that creating new technologies, discontinuing the use of fossil fuels, practicing suggests that conservation biology, and trying to live more simply—while important and necessary—only involves treating the symptoms. Shallow approaches, the real starting point say Alan Drengson and Bill Devall, do not “go to the ultimate level in values and conceptions of the world.” (Drengson & Devall, 2008) toward healing The deep ecology movement suggests that the real starting point toward the social and healing the social and environmental crisis begins’ with self-confrontation, self-examination and examining the worldview infuencing our environmental crisis attitudes and our behavior. Many have wondered if psychedelics played a role in Naess’ vision of the deep ecology movement. I find no direct evi- begins’ with dence of this, although, as you’ll see in the following interview, he was profoundly infuenced by his psychedelic experience. Naess’ inspiration self-confrontation, for the philosophy of deep ecology primarily arose from mountain climb- self-examination ing, Spinoza’s philosophy and Gandhi’s non-violent approach to social protest (Drengson, 2005), although his psychedelic experience may also and examining have played some role. Psychedelics and ecology neverthe- 42, 2008) (Schroll, in press) the worldview less have a direct connection in Albert Naess, meanwhile, was not unfamil- Hofmann’s transpersonal experience in iar with psychedelic experience, and its nature (Hofmann ix-x, 1983), providing infuence on his ecological perspective influencing our attitudes Hofmann with the ability to recognize can’t be discounted. The following excerpt that his accidental ingestion of LSD was from an interview by Donald Rothenberg and our behavior. of similar psychospiritual origin (Schroll, is reprinted here with permission. (Naess, 2005). Likewise, through a reexamina- A. & Rothenberg, D. (1993). Is it painful tion of history from 1943 to the present, to think? Conversations with Arne Naess. Ralph Metzner illustrates that psychedel- Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of ics served as the catalyst for a new culture Minnesota Press, pp. 52-56.) of consciousness expansion. This new “Bitten by Wild Animals: A Conver- culture included the civil rights move- sation with Arne Naess” by Donald ment, the anti-war movement, the sexual Rothenberg revolution, the women’s liberation move- Arne Naess: (Describing his experiment, the ecology movement, and the ence of being introduced to LSD by a upsurge of creative innovation in music, student) I had a marvelous experience the arts, fashion and literature. (Metzner: but not overwhelming, and I said, “It’s 42 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

not overwhelming.” She was provoked, kinds. But then I must relate that there and at a new session, she ordered a really was a big crisis in the evening, because fantastic dose of LSD, and there was a the telephone rang. My guru pointed at marvelous experience of paintings, the the telephone and said, “Careful, reality room and everything. . . . First of all, the there. It’s reality.” It was my last day in room was curved and strange, and my Berkeley and I thought it might be some- own body seemed to be miles long. thing having to do with an examination Suddenly, I saw some of these paint- or with my job, and if I didn’t answer the telephone, they would come. Very few knew my telephone number, so I said I must take the phone; I didn’t understand how I could move to the telephone, but that seemed to be completely easy. So I grabbed the telephone and I listened, and there was talk about somebody being bitten by a wild animal in South America, and it was an old woman’s voice. And I said, “I am in the United States. I am not bitten. Somebody else is bitten,” I was confused. And then, suddenly, I was clear and I understood it was a student Mark A. Schroll and Arne Naess, taken at the International Transpersonal Association conference who had not delivered his final essay in Killarney, Ireland, May 28, 1994 in the Great Southern Hotel. Photo by Kit Fai, Arne’s wife. because he had been bitten and was in the hospital. This was his mother, and she asked me if he could send it later or something, and I said, “Yes!” with unnecessary joy. She probably couldn’t understand ings of Picasso. For the first time in my why I was so delighted! That was OK, but life, they made a real impact on me. I was this portion of LSD was so very powerful also myself somehow painting a Picasso. that I felt later in the night that there was I had a marvelous That was fabulous. Then my guru--she no way at all I could get out of this house was then a guru--said, “Maybe we should and make it to the airport. experience…. listen to music.” When I was about to DR: This was the last night of your stay? say yes, I said to myself, “Why should I AN: Yes. So at three o’clock in the say yes? It’s been such a long time since morning, I called up one of the real you can… she said anything.” So, you have this delightful students I had, saying, “I am time dilation, which is also interesting completely stoned and I don’t know how deeply feel philosophically. But then listening to one I can clean up the stove. Can you come at of the favorites from the time of Bach, seven o’clock in the morning?” “Yes, yes!” things in areas something Baroque, I got a very pleas- he said, and he came and arranged the ant and good feeling from the music, but house and took me to the airport. And not very different from the usual. Later I there was something strange: some kind you haven’t thought, “There’s a difference--you can, of film on the plane about the Soviets from this narcotic, deeply feel things in putting LSD into the water supply. I have felt before... areas you haven’t felt before, but where never met anyone else who has heard of you have gone there deeply before, it such a movie. . . wouldn’t help you.” It wouldn’t help me DR: Didn’t you bring some LSD back to in music, I thought, but it would help me Norway? to understand art. AN: Yes. I took it up here to Tver- Donald Rothenberg: So what do you gastein. It was impossible for the students think you learned philosophically from this? to see me go back to Norway without AN: Well, again it was a confirmation a little LSD. So I had a session with Jon of a kind of possibilist view. There are Wetlesen in the wintertime, going naked universes that are with certain chemi- around the cottage, which was a delight- cals and then there are other universes ful thing, on LSD. But I remember I was that are with chemicals of different going to cut some wood with an ax, and maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 43

Photo of Arne Naess and David Rothenberg. Photo courtesy of Mark A. Schroll.

he said, “No Arne, you shouldn’t use an deep ecology movement). Psychedelic ax, please don’t use an ax!” experience is not the culmination of ...psychedelic experience But that was an innocent time, when personal growth and transcendence; it is all the bright students used such things, instead the beginning of the questioning and they stopped using it when, for process. Psychedelic experience is the root provides us instance, they tried to get a job. They and ground from which our investigation would immediately cut their hair and of the big cosmological picture begins. direct access be completely straight for a little while. Psychedelic experience is the tree from But when weak students with problems, which the fruit of myths and metaphors to universal psychological or otherwise, started, of consciousness grow. Eliminating everything went wrong. They got hooked psychedelic experience violates the open and there were tragedies upon tragedies. scientific inquiry of radical empiricism. archetypal truths But in ‘68 it was still a thing of innocence Without psychedelic experience reli- andFinal strong Thoughts persons oncould get away with gion ossifies into ritualistic symbolism that transcend it.Psychedelics Now, of course, and we Ecologyare more cognizant without somatic significant understand- of the dangers. • ing. Psychedelic experience is the very the boundaries essence of transpersonal psychology and the primordial tradition. Recognizing this In sum, psychedelic experience provides will require us to examine our personal of culture and us direct access to universal archetypal and collective shadow and the reasons for truths that transcend the boundaries of why we are here. the limitations culture and the limitations of spacetime. Further discussion of entheogens and Psychedelic experience allows us to en- ecology can be found in: of spacetime. counter visionary mystical insights about Schroll, M. A. (2007). “Wrestling with the human condition, Gaia conscious- Arne Naess: A Chronicle of Ecopsychol- ness and/or deep community and cosmic ogy’s Origins.” The Trumpeter, 23 (1), unity. Psychedelic experience is a funda- 28-57. mental awakening to self-realization (and References for this article can be found Arne Naess talks about self-realization on the MAPS Web site: www.maps.org being an aspect of personal philosophy-- which he called Ecosophy-T--within the 44 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

Psychedelics Can Serve as Catalyst for Deep Ecological Consciousness P

no more than a half-mile from my home, Perched atop a log in the forest I decided to take a walk. Traipsing down the winding but well-manicured path back to the open meadow prefacing the forest’s entry it was impossible not to notice what a glorious day it was: the sun beamed radiant, birds recited an infinite chorus, the tops of towering redwoods swayed tenderly in the wind, and somebody was singing.

David Lawlor, M.A., Ph.D candidate How odd, I thought, why would somebody be singing on a Saturday [email protected] morning at the forest’s entrance? I stopped and listened intently. The words being sung were impossible to decipher, but they wafted through the air with an entrancing lyrical beauty. I looked around, but failed to spot the source. A few more steps through the meadow—ears perked, eyes scanning, still nothing. Then, I stopped walking, peered down as if on command, and saw the small creek gurgling beside me. The song melded with the sound of the water until they were one harmonious tone broadcasting the poetry of the The song unified totality of nature. melded with Why I should daily walk down the “Anyone can sweep up around the street outside my home and not feel inti- ashram for a dozen years while congratu- mately connected and wholly enamored lating themselves that they are following the sound of the water with each blade of grass, every blackberry a path to enlightenment,” Terrence McK- bush and each inch of soil is difficult enna once told an interviewer. “It takes until they were to understand. After all, I have read a courage to take psychedelics—real cour- miniature library worth of books con- age. Your stomach clenches, your palms one harmonious tone cerning the deep ecology philosophy and grow damp, because you realize that this environmental psychology. I have studied is real—this is going to work. Not in 12 the sense of place phenomenon, examin- years, not in 20 years, but in an hour!” broadcasting the poetry ing why and how people feel connected It is precisely the immediacy of psyche- to the Earth. I have read The Upanishads delics McKenna notes, coupled with their of the unified totality and tried to understand quantum phys- ability to catalyze and facilitate experi- ics, both offering the notion of singular ences of a transpersonal nature, which of nature. unity—the inescapable interconnection makes them a fascinating area of study in of all entities. And yet, it was eating three terms of the relationship between human grams of tiny brown mushrooms collect- beings and what we commonly refer to as ed at a beach dune just a few miles from the environment. As my own experience my front door that facilitated my feeling in the forest illustrates, psychedelics have intimately and wholly bound up with the the potential to alter human perceptions natural world. of the natural world and consequently maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 45

transform humanity’s relationship with could psychedelics serve as a catalyst or the environment. facilitating agent? It is indeed the case The Norwegian philosopher Arne that a deep or transpersonal ecology is an Naess coined the term deep ecology when altered state of consciousness and psy- in 1972 he delivered a lecture titled “The chedelics indeed have the ability to very Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecol- quickly facilitate an altered state of con- ogy Movement.” Naess’s goal was to es- sciousness with an exceptionally high de- tablish a movement grounded in personal gree of efficacy. It stands to reason then, exploration and deep questioning about that those with the intentioned desire to the most basic tenets of what it means to achieve a deep or transpersonal ecological ...psychedelics be a human being in a world of nonhu- consciousness could benefit from the use man beings. Naess’s deep ecology philoso- of psychedelics as catalyzing agents that have the potential phy is a way of thinking about the world, facilitate transpersonal experiences and relating to it and interacting with it. As enable one to more readily maintain as such, it employs two primary principles expansive a sense of self as possible. to alter or ultimate norms: self-realization and There is no shortcut to achieving a biocentric equality. By self-realization, deep or transpersonal ecological con- human perceptions Naess does not refer to narrow, ego-real- sciousness. While psychedelics consis- ization in the traditional Western sense tently and expeditiously catalyze trans- of the natural world of the term, but rather to a realization of personal experiences, during which one the self within a greater self; or, the self can harbor as expansive a sense of self within and contained by the Self. The as possible, with the desire of realizing and consequently principle of biocentric equality espouses a deep ecological consciousness, simply that all entities on Earth possess intrin- ingesting a psychedelic and sitting in a transform humanity’s sic worth, moving away from notions of forest awaiting inspiration is unlikely to anthropocentrism or human chauvinism. affect a permanent alteration in one’s re- relationship with The philosopher and ethicist Warwick lationship with the environment. A deep Fox refined Naess’s framework in his or transpersonal ecological consciousness 1995 book Toward a Transpersonal Ecol- is arrived at through long contempla- the environment. ogy, concluding that Naess’s fundamental tion and repeated experiences with the notion of deep ecology is best articulated natural world—like walking beside a as a transpersonal ecology wherein hu- gurgling creek in a forest—a point Naess man beings realize identification and returns to again and again in his writing. unity with the natural world via trans- It is the potential for psychedelics to fa- personal experience. Identification and cilitate these contemplations and experi- unity are achieved during a transpersonal ences leading to the realization of a deep experience, Fox says, by maintaining ecological consciousness that is especially as expansive a sense of self as possible. fascinating and warrants further study. • This expansive sense of self goes beyond one’s egoic or biographical sense of self David Lawlor earned his M.A. in Social to encompass all entities on Earth, thus Science with an emphasis in Environ- forming a definition of self that includes ment and Community in 2008 from rivers, grasses, gophers, other humans, Humboldt State University in Arcata, CA. mountains, trees, banana slugs and the His master’s thesis is available online and whole lot of the natural world. Barring a titled “The Prospect of Psychedelic Use as desire for self destruction, human be- a Tool in Realizing a Transpersonal Ecol- ings who are able to realize the unified ogy.” He lives in Arcata, Calif. where he totality of nature and extend their sense works as a writer and editor. of self to include all entities on the Earth as Fox and Naess suggest, are much less likely to be complicit in its exploitation and ruination. So, if one were to maintain as expansive a sense of self as possible during a transpersonal experience with the goal of realizing a deep or transpersonal ecology, 46 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

Psychedelics, Deep Ecology, and Wild Mind

, in an essay in , Gary Snyder wrote that In 1969 Earth House Hold “Peyote and acid have a curious way of tuning some people in to the local soil.” While exceptions abound, some of the more salient characteristics of the psychedelic revolution that blossomed in the 1960s and continue to this day are an embracing of things “natural,” including natural foods, Dale Pendell natural childbirth (and breast-feeding), an easy acceptance of nudity and [email protected] the human body, and, for many, a return to Earth-centered living. Many www.dalependell.com favored the outdoors as a place to open their minds in the new way, and interest in vision quest and traditional nature-based lifestyles followed. In traditional cultures less shielded from the natural seasons and the cycles of birth and death, the powers of the wild are everyday occurrences. People lay offerings at springs, or perform dances to acknowledge these powers and to maintain an exchange. For the industrial culture of the twentieth century, it took the tremendous power of visionary plants and chemicals to open many minds to what had been obvious to most human cultures for millennia. In traditional cultures H Hard-headed rationalists and cyni- source management ethos of conservation less shielded from the cal materialists often found themselves to what has been called “deep ecology.” humbled by a looming mountain, a Being tuned in to the local soil means natural seasons and the stream fowing on bedrock, or by a wild being at home—the root of “eco.” As triv- animal that stepped out of its camoufage ial an example as orange peels highlights to say hello. Many hold these liberating the difference between the tourist and cycles of birth and death, experiences as the most important in someone who can feel that he is stand- their lives and have never returned to the ing on the bones of his mother. Anyone the powers of the wild old paradigm. In seeking to understand who has spent much time in the back such soul-moving events, people have country has seen orange peels thought- are everyday rediscovered what human societies for lessly tossed along the trail or at the base thousands of years have acknowledged: of a rock. People who would otherwise that we are a part of a great living fabric, be careful about packing out their trash occurrences. and that certain wild plants, animals, or leave orange peels because they are not places are endowed with something that “trash” (though they wouldn’t do the we might call presence, or energy, or reso- same in their own living rooms). But nance. This feeling of special resonance or “presence” has to do with what was there presence is usually glossed as “the sacred” before we came—call it power, or beauty, by Western intellectuals, though no one or suchness—it has nothing to do with is certain what that actually means. Such our ideas of what is trash and what is recognition has led many beyond the re- not-trash. maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 47

Encounters with the wild always have The true mythologies of a culture are an awe-inspiring quality—that is their the stories that everyone accepts as true, nature--but most of us are conditioned without question. While the cosmologi- from birth to block out these experi- cal systems of other cultures are easily ences. One of the great gifts of vision- dismissed as myth, one’s own never are. ary plants and substances is that these For us, that myth includes the belief that cultural filters are temporarily suspended, there is an “objective” physical world so that the wild has free access to mind. that exists wholly independently from The downside, of course, is that every- the self—from mind or consciousness. day mind, with filters back in place, may It’s even called “the Reality Principle,” as dismiss the experiences as hallucinatory, theistic an appellation as one could come forgetting that the filtered interpretation up with. To free the mind, to recover that is also hallucinatory. That is, the very wildness that is equally jaguar and peony, special and extraordinary quality of the leaf rustle and dew on a spider web, re- visionary experience itself tends to allow quires both insight and training. us to relegate the profound insights of On psychedelics, even “ordinary” that experience to the visionary realm experiences can be hair-raising. That only, as if it were separate and not a part is a clue for us to the true nature of the of “reality.” wild—that the wild doesn’t end or begin In his book A Zen Wave, Robert Aitken at a fence, and that wild mind is some- presents two haiku of the Zen poet Basho. thing that we know about from our own The first goes: experience. If psychedelics can help with that realization, they are truly, in the best and most ancient sense of the word, Wake up! Wake up! sacred. Mind is wild by nature. Present- Be my friend ing wild mind, sharing wild mind, is sleeping butterfly. benevolence. •

Basho is not on psychedelics, but he is intimate with the butterfy. There is a joy and playfulness that form a shared For the industrial culture of the twentieth century, reality—the oneness is the reality. The other poem goes: it took the tremendous power of visionary plants and chemicals

The morning glory! to open many minds to what had been obvious This too cannot be to most human cultures for millennia. My friend.

Aitken’s point is that Basho also recognized the absolute independence and separateness of the other being. That’s deep ecology! The many beings, the many rocks and crevices and waterfalls and streams, all exist in and of themselves, entirely without reference to the human world and human uses. At the same time, all of it is linked together in an indis- soluble web. 48 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

Huichole Peyote Dance and Hthe Inspiration for Biosphere 2

conceived and organized the building of the Biosphere 2 John Allen project in Arizona, the most ambitious environmental experiment of our time. Biosphere 2 is a miniature Earth under glass and the world’s largest laboratory for global ecology ever built. His memoir Me and the Biospheres was recently published by Synergetic Press. (This Spring Synergetic Press will also be publishing a new book by Ralph Metzner and Ram Dass By John Allen called Birth of Psychedelic Culture.) To find out more about John’s work see: www.synergeticpress.com www.synergeticpress.com [email protected] An incredible unification of lifestyle from the conquerors to continue their and metaphysics occurs during the an- way of life and metaphysical contact with nual peyote dance ceremonies of the the universe. Huichole Indians in the Sierra Madre I met this high morale purposeful mountains of Northwestern Mexico. I party--after making a two day walk and was allowed to participate in the annual mule ride with my two extraordinary ceremonies of this remote group that guides--under a great oak tree a couple of recur in a stone-enclosed sacred area, kilometers outside the ceremonial center, which features two stone buildings. One just as they returned from this expedi- An incredible unification building is for a fire that is kept going tion. They had rested and were changing ‘eternally’ (said by some to have been go- into their dancing costumes. They cut of lifestyle and ing for five thousand years) by banking a few branches from the mighty tree to over the coals between the ceremonial provide fuel for an economical but steady times. The other one is for a great collec- fire in the central ceremonial building. metaphysics tion of eagle feathers (under whose The dancers had been trained in a highly pervasive dream enhancing infuence I complex fast-beat choreography by the occurs during the annual was allowed to sleep). three dance masters, who had prepared Most of the hundred or so observing themselves to direct this amazing per- peyote dance Huichole who attended the dancing came formance for several months by certain from some distance away, though a few ascetic practices. lived in the immediate area with some After full costuming, this returning ceremonies of the dry land subsistence farming. Now the party made a joyous procession into the young men mostly work far away, often stone-walled enclosure. The army had Huichole Indians... on the coast. Collecting the peyote but- killed the deer throughout a vast area re- tons requires a long walking expedition cently, in an attempt to stop these events, by the participating dancers over rugged but a courageous Mexican had man- mountains and into the central Mexi- aged to restore some of the regions’ deer can plateau, their ancestral lands. This population. However, it was still small, journey links them intimately with their so calves were substituted for the actual history and extended bioregion. I was sacrifice. The deer had been maintained told by several natives of their historic and revered for millennia by this culture battle of 1738, when they won rights as a key component of their ecosystem maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 49

and ceremonies. and with similar level of participants--gave The dance continued for three days and me a physical and emotional feeling for the nights. The dancers rested at intervals of biosphere to match and augment my intel- about two hours. Buckets of peyote juice lectual and scientific vision gained from hung in strategic locations and everyone Vernadsky’s Biogeochemistry and Histori- imbibed as they wished. The dance of forty cal Geology that had led me to starting the or so dancers, plus some musicians, were Biosphere 2 adventure. Here also existed not only complex (beyond Broadway) but Biospheric teachers of equal majesty and astoundingly beautiful; they demanded truth. The Marakame understood Biosphere maximum skill and endurance. 2 and asked for a small model to store with Dust is prevalent in this bioregion, and their sacred treasures, each denoting some one aim of the dancers is to raise as much particularized understanding of the epipha- dust as possible. The three marakame sat Photo of Biosphere 2 by Gonzalo Arcila. nic wholeness in which we are privileged to still on their handmade stools in the center. Permission of John Allen. play a part. At first I couldn’t figure out how anyone Our universe Could this be achieved without peyote or breathed, but then my doors of perception equivalent real-time sacrament to raise the swung wide open and I saw pockets of air human organism to its capacity to make a drifting. Of course! Our universe is discon- is discontinuous workable synergy of reason, feeling, sensa- tinuous and miracles occur in its intervals. tion, and will that coordinates its life with What a teaching; what a way transmit it. and miracles bioregion and cosmos? Frankly, I don’t The marakame and dancers were adepts in think so. However, accomplishing this takes breathing in as a pocket of air foated by and occur in individual masters and a collective, history breathing out as the dust swirled. Impec- rich culture that exalts creating a dynamic cable rhythms of everyone’s breathing, dust harmony through dance, vision, and music, clouds, pulsating music, blood beat dancing, its intervals. to integrate these faculties into life-enhanc- alternating day and night with rests staring ing and intellect-clarifying experiences; into the fire, brilliant entrances of stars or then they clearly can be transmissible for sunshine when the dancers rested from rais- millennia. I don’t think any medical model ing up a storm of dust, produced a gorgeous can accomplish this total result though, as substantiation of this way of life. This was already proved in practice, properly formu- not ‘a trip’; as the days passed it became clear lated and practiced, they produce much good that it was, like the Eleusinian Mysteries must have been, in individual cases of repression and frustration. My best a revelation of a mystery: a workable standard of how to wishes certainly go with MAPS and its brave and thor- live a life. ough efforts to accomplish this needed work. Those who had gone to work as labor on the coast, Nor have I seen that a religious model for using these disguised heroes, visibly reintegrated during the three plants based on a Western European-Middle East system days with their bioregion, kin, and initiates. Weariness, can do as much as the Amerindian way, though certainly wariness, and grimness visible disappeared from their experiences in Brazil and the United States demonstrate faces. From standing around as somewhat disillusioned that a goodly amount of harmony and improved relation observers they became part of an active psychic-physical to bioregion can be transmitted in such synthetic faiths network of response. under a master leader. One complete regression to a psychotic state occurred My admiration for the AmerIndian masters is pro- in the sacred building, but three alert guardians and found, and for the tribes who have supported the leaders their commanding ‘war chief’ quickly and brilliantly at great cost to themselves in a material-political sense. It integrated unraveling a death hold on a young woman will take a world of much more existential freedom than into a real life dance of deliverance and redemption. This now exists in the ruling political structures for the cen- was a dangerous, brilliantly detailed, conscious action tury of hard, informed, and impeccable experiencing and that even a Paracelsus would have found difficult to experimenting to take place, needed to create an equally emulate. All participants acted as if Husserl’s bracketing thorough and effective tradition around the planet in and Gurdjieff’s self-observation with non-reacting were some modern technical surroundings. Although I never part of their normal state; in no way did their great work got the chance to participate in the Harvard and New stop its presence and its revealing bodily, bioregional, York experiments in this direction, Timothy Leary’s ac- and cosmic truths in the midst of this happening. It was counts in High Priest and Flashbacks–which were based integrated into this all inclusive reality. on physio-psychological science–show a promising start This event--as well as one in the Amazon, and one in in this direction, but that work was forcibly cut off before the high deserts of New Mexico, under similar masters it had a real chance to develop. • 50 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

Ecology, Technology, andB Biosphere 2

about the mystery of how I found my way to the building I often wonder of Biosphere 2 (a 3.15 acre miniature world under glass), and in becoming its co-Captain for the first two year inaugural mission. The mystery certainly lies in my experience at a young age with the psychedelic culture. An experience that taught me to see that there is no difference between ecology and technology. By Mark Van Thillo I was sixteen when I had my first psychedelic experience--a teenager Planetary Coral Reef Foundation roaming the streets of Antwerp, Belgium. Then and there my life changed. [email protected] The sky became me, and I realized that my home was greater than my fam- www.pcrf.org ily and country. I left Belgium shortly thereafter to travel to India, in pursuit of knowledge and to travel distant lands. That same journey--fueled with an aching desire to understand the biosphere, and the incredible capacity of the human being to become part of the biosphere--led me to the foothills of the Catalina Mountains in Arizona. There the beginning, just the dream of Biosphere 2, was unfolding. I see the biosphere and modern life cooling systems, used ecology to process I was sixteen as a combination of--a beautiful syn- our wastes, managed a half acre farm ergy between--technology and life. The with goats, chickens and pigs, supported when I had my first heightened state of awareness allowed a coral reef with mangrove marsh, a rain- me to perceive the conditioned mind at forest with cascading waterfall, and an the same time as the complex web of life. acacia savannah and cactus desert with psychedelic experience… It dissolved the separation between men primates, lizards and frogs. We commu- and nature, and, in some cases, it exposed nicated with friends and family outside Then and there parts of the invisible world. Biosphere using telephones, as well as a primitive 2 became my experimental platform to email system called dialcom. On compara- my life changed. learn about how ecology and technology tively rare occasions, we participated in work together, and to understand the role meetings through the glass window. of human beings in this total system. My responsibility was to manage the Eight of us were sealed inside Bio- maintenance of the technical systems. I sphere 2 from September 26, 1991 to could seek advice from outside experts, September 26, 1993. During that time but trouble-shooted repairs on my own our task was to remain within the sealed using a shop with tools and supplies in structure and participate as co-creating, the Biosphere 2 basement. My day-to-day intelligent stewards of this emerging life life centered around the well-being of the system. We grew our own food, lived technics. Underneath the living systems with a drastically different atmosphere, (rainforest, savannah, desert, marsh, drank water that was condensed from ocean and agriculture/farm systems), lay maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 51

a humming, noisy technical maze of pumps, controls, biosphere worked. I was fully participating within a alarms, fans, rain systems, tanks and computers. This day-to-day practice of being at one with ecology and was my world and I was right at home. technology. My life had been all about acquiring practical hands- The Biosphere 2 technosphere was designed hand- on technical skills. I learned from my grandfather about in-hand with a myriad of ecosystems. Technology was the craft of plumbing and electrical systems, and moved there to benefit and support ecology–one could not exist on from there to becoming a ship’s engineer where at without the other. This was the theory and raison d’être anytime repairs occurred far from shore and ingenuity for the biosphere 2 project. It was called by the found- was critical. During the construction of Biosphere 2, I ers, the art and science of Ecotechnics. Aesthetics was was involved from the beginning, and joined the hun- required to simulate the natural processes of wind, rain, dreds of workers to build the system--piece by piece. I currents and waves. Science/engineering had to produce could see the technological world of Biosphere 2--named the necessary functions. Together, the aim was a seam- the “technosphere”--in my minds eye. I knew the bound- less appearance of reality as we know it. All man-made aries of cement and steel, and could visualize the pipes parts and machines were integrally a part of all living, and wires and machinery involved to simulate the work- breathing, fowing movement and expression of life. ings of a natural environment. When I saw the coconut trees on the beach of Bio- I was a part of this man-made living eco-technic sphere 2 waving gracefully in the breeze, I simultane- biosphere. By participating daily in its construction and ously saw the giant air handling systems that were pow- living inside for two years, I had become part of its very ered to create these winds. When reveling in the lovely fabric. It was the greatest learning experience of my life red and yellow fowering canna lily produced using the and by the end of the eight years (1986-1994), I could byproducts of human/animal waste in our wastewater see in detail the “technosphere” inherent in the bio- recycling system, I also saw the roots of the plant acting sphere. BiosphereMark Van Thillo 2 inside had Biosphere been 2my looking teacher--it out over Biosphere had 2.fulfilled He is in the library likeat the toppumps of the tower. to bring Photo by oxygen Peter Menzel. below Permission the by surface Mark Van Thilloto break my dream at sixteen to explore the reality of how the up these waste products. The plant’s roots are designed 52 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

to act like a pump. Living systems are the best example “Dare to dream” and “dare to do.” This was a driving for efficient and productive technological innovations. ideal at Biosphere 2 that kept us going to innovatively As well, the future of our biosphere requires that we create a new world and not give up when things seemed become more intelligent and encourage an expanding impossible. I dare to dream that we can shift our mode technological world that integrates with ecology and of operating to create an intelligent future where the does not destroy the environment. By that I see a world technosphere is part of the biosphere in an evolving, where technology supports ecology, and creates systems co-creating, life-affirming new world. The psychedelic that are economically and socially viable and sound. For revolution will help us dare to step into that future and example the most successful corporations will become see the extraordinary potential that is ours to create. • those that have pioneered alternative Green energy sys- When I saw the coconut trees on the beach tems, ecological wastewater treatment systems, ecological (not petrochemical fertilized) agriculture systems, com- of Biosphere 2 waving gracefully in the breeze, puter information systems and satellites that photograph the Earth to provide real-time imagery for all people to become stewards of our Earth’s biosphere. I simultaneously saw the giant air handling systems When I look at what technology provides me in this present moment, it is always about providing life oppor- that were powered to create these winds. tunities to do more. Yet most technology is accomplished at the expense of life even though we need soil, plants and clean water and air to thrive. The psychedelic revolution expresses over and over how we are all one. Indeed, our future requires that new businesses both create technological systems that work with the environment Photo of Biosphere 2 by C. Allan Morgan. Permission of John Allen. as well as use the wisdom of nature to create intelligent eco-friendly engineered systems. maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 53

Accessing Ecoconsciousness: The Potential Role of Psychedelics W to enter adulthood, he is sent When a Native American child is ready into the wilderness on a vision quest to connect with spirit, seek answers to problems on the physical realm, and learn his direction in life. He spends days attempting to induce altered states of awareness through fasting, chanting, meditation, and very often the ingestion of psychedelics. He returns feeling freed from the fear of death with a new understand- Shena Turlington [email protected] ing of the natural form of all things, a sense of personal purpose, divine realization, and a heightened awareness of the four elements and ecological relationships. This is one of many forms of rites of passage performed in indigenous traditions using the aid of hallucinogens to perform healing, gain insight into complex situations, and obtain guidance for moving In modern culture through life transitions. Through thousands of years of working a sense of inner purpose. Lacking a we lack the benefit ing with sacred plant medicine, the guide through the transition from child- indigenous have found numerous benefits hood to adulthood, adolescents increas- of a structured system through inducing altered states, includ- ingly feel lost, constantly searching for ing the healing of emotional and physical a personal mission and wondering what ailments, gaining knowledge from animal they want to do with their lives. One in of ceremonies, rituals, and plant guides, communicating with five teens now experiences depression, ac- nature and spirits, and increasing inner companied by feelings of apathy and pur- and rites of passage states of peace and balance. When the poselessness. The absence of opportuni- shamans are faced with difficult prob- ties to learn from nature impacts us at all to assist us in lems such as widespread drought or the stages of life, depriving us of the benefits necessity to make decisions in times of of natural therapy, deep understandings, war, they consult the natural intelligence and increased inner peace. confronting difficult which has been inscribed in the sur- In addition to the shift in cultural rounding ecology over millions of years. perceptions of how we relate to nature, situations and feeling For the American Indians sacred knowl- we are impacted by the geographical shift edge is accessed through peyote, for the away from the wilderness and into cities. a sense of Amazonians through ayahuasca, for the While today fifty percent of our global Africans Iboga, for the Mesoamericans population lives in the urban environ- psilocybin mushrooms, and for the An- ment, the United Nations estimates nine- inner purpose. dean Indians San Pedro. Throughout the ty percent of future population growth world the use of psychedelics has been will be concentrated in cities. Megacities documented in ancient traditions, from are exponentially growing in Asia, Af- Buddhism to Mayan tradition. rica, the Middle East, and Latin America, In modern culture we lack the benefit with the equivalent of a new Los Angeles of a structured system of ceremonies, predicted to appear every three months rituals, and rites of passage to assist us in over the next 25 years. With the on- confronting difficult situations and feel- slaught of rapid urbanization, how can we 54 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

attempt to stay connected to nature and have access to communicating with plant spirit, even when the physical the wealth of knowledge it provides? Without exposure access to the environment is unavailable in the densely to the natural environment we lose our understanding packed urban world. In addition to the nature-orientated of deep interconnection, awareness of a common thread, experience commonly reported by users of psychedelics- and a sense of responsibility and care for the planet. -such as interactions with plant, rock, and tree person- It is generally accepted that our current state of ecolog- alities, encounters with spirit animals, and the recur- ical crisis is a direct result of this growing lack of interring presence of the fractal patterns of nature--studies connection with, and resulting apathy for, our surround- have shown that use of psychedelics is connected with ing environment. Even with recent victories over apathy a long-term sense of expanded self-awareness, dissolv- through increased awareness, beyond awareness there ing of boundaries, concern for others, and concern for is a growing need for action. And there is something the environment. In a MAPS-funded study, Lerner and significant to be said for ‘right action’, as the modern Lyvers (2006) compared the values and beliefs of psyche- solutions of ecological control and domination through delic drug users with those of non-users, as well as users science and technology do not seem to be rectifying the of non-psychedelic illegal drugs (e.g. marijuana, amphet- situation. More vital than scientific understanding of the amines). They found that users of psychedelics had an looming global crisis is the drastic need for environmen- increased sense of oneness with God and universe (ex- tal stewards to change it. panded self boundaries), as well as increased concern for Many types of ecological philosophy, such as deep the environment, empathy, creativity, and ability to cope ecology and transpersonal ecology, discuss this co- with stress. I would conjecture that if psychedelic users nundrum, proposing that facts and logic alone cannot were evaluated on the scales used with the N.I.M. study, enlighten us on how to integrate with nature: ecologi- we would see similar correlations to the use of psychedel- cal wisdom must come through ‘deep experience, deep ics as were seen with a nature inclusive self-concept. questioning, and deep commitment’. The core belief of The psychedelic users and nature-inclusive self-iden- deep ecology is that the biosphere will not fourish along- tifiers of both studies were found to hold similar values, side humans unless we regain an ecocentric perspective such as respect and care for the environment, empathy and recognize our symbiotic relationship with the Earth. for other living beings, expanded self-awareness, in- This occurs through a dissolving of boundaries between creased sense of spirituality, and sense of intrinsic well- self and nature, and the realization that humans are a being. Following the belief that those with similar values part of the environment, rather than separate from it. would likely follow similar action, psychedelic users with This is supported by the findings of the Nature Inclusive expanded self-boundaries are likely to exhibit the quali- Measure (N.I.M.), developed by St. John and MacDonald ties of active Earth stewardship. Indeed, it is common to (2007) to assess the effects of a “nature inclusive self see individuals return from a vision quest or psychedelic concept” on the ecopsychological self. journey with an increased affinity for nature, belief in St. John and MacDonald found a significant correlation animism, and desire to care for the Earth. They often feel between a person’s degree of nature inclusiveness, mental they have been gifted with a new level of understanding, well-being, spiritual well-being, and an expanded self- ancient wisdom, and clarity in purpose, and feel empow- boundary, showing that those who identify with or feel ered to act in accordance with this new way of being. “at one with nature” scored higher on particular scales By embracing the ancient use of hallucinogenic sub- measuring these attributes. Moreover, they discovered a stances as a valuable way to access a part of ourselves second factor of “nature stewardship,” based on a person’s that is able to communicate with nature, perhaps we active pro-environmental behavior such as participation can continue to gain the gifts of wisdom and insights in environmental organizations, clean-up, and recycling, provided by the natural environment even without the emerged to also be highly correlated with the nature ability to be constantly immersed in it. We have seen an inclusiveness measure. It seems that transcending a increasing emergence of spiritual groups from within the restricted sense of personal boundaries to include nature urban environment, such as the Santo Daime, healing and the surrounding environment not only enhances a collectives, urban-based vision quests, and other commu- sense of psychological well-being, but also increases the nal groups seeking to access the elements of nature that likelihood of a person to actively participate as a care- provide insight and healing. There is no doubt that with taker of the Earth. The question that remains is how can the increasing population, destruction of nature, and loss we achieve this sense of expanded boundaries? With of valuable habitat, there is great necessity to reconnect our increasing separation from nature, where do we find with a deeper sense of purpose and to reinforce the im- the ‘deep experience’ that leads to self-realization, eco- portance of caring for our environment. By finding ways consciousness, and recognition of an interconnected state to access the eco-consciousness, inner consciousness, or of being? superconsciousness, we can become better stewards of Psychedelics perhaps offer the opportunity to regain the Earth and learn to heal the surrounding ecosystem that connection with nature and act as a conduit for while healing ourselves. • maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 55

The Anthropocosmic Vision of Psychedelic Environmental Ethics

of the global ecological crisis has risen in recent As public awareness decades, many theorists and activists have begun articulating the challenges of environmental ethics. While the field of environmental ethics has deep roots in the philosophical and religious traditions of the world, the field can be said to have officially started with Richard Sam Mickey Routley’s frequently anthologized 1973 essay, “Is There a Need for a [email protected] New, an Environmental, Ethic?” Answering affirmatively, Routley and California Institute of Integral Studies many others defended the value of nature against the narcissism and mchauvinism that pervade the destructive attitudes, beliefs, and practices with which humans relate to nature. Many environmental ethicists have Psychedelic research presents an alter- shown that the ecological crisis is due native to the dichotomy between anthro- largely to human-centered or “anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism. …anthropocosmic pocentric” ethics, whereby the human This alternative is the anthropocosmic (anthropos) has acted as if it has special vision, which sees meaning and value perspectives envision privileges and values that are absent emerging from the intimate intertwining from the plants, animals, elements, and of humans and the world (kosmos) in the a complex and flowing ecosystems of the natural world. Humans seamless fabric of Being. Whereas variet- have placed themselves at the center of ies of anthropocentrism and non-anthro- all value, and the rest of the planet has pocentrism perpetuate dualisms that dis- whole, where humans been marginalized and reduced to a mere sociate humans from the world, anthro- means for achieving human ends, a mere pocosmic perspectives envision a complex and the world are heap of objects for humans to use and and fowing whole, where humans and consume. the world are entangled with one another entangled with one To counteract anthropocentrism, in co-creative correspondences, such as many environmental ethicists have pro- the correspondences that connect the ma- posed non-anthropocentric theories and ternal womb with other manifestations another in practices, wherein the center of value is of generative openness (e.g., cave, house, not placed on the human, but on living chapel, biosphere, galaxy, cosmos). co-creative organisms (biocentrism) or on whole eco- The word “anthropocosmic” has been systems (ecocentrism). Although biocen- used by various twentieth-century schol- correspondences… tric and ecocentric environmental ethics ars of phenomenology (Gaston Bachelard, oppose anthropocentrism and its manipu- Paul Ricoeur, and Gabriel Marcel) and lative and exploitative relations to the of religious studies (Mircea Eliade, R. A. environment, these non-anthropocentric Schwaller de Lubicz, and Tu Weiming), perspectives tend to foster misanthropy and it has been applied to ecological is- and social irresponsibility by marginaliz- sues by scholars in the emerging field of ing humans and ignoring social problems religion and ecology (Mary Evelyn Tucker of poverty, sexism, racism, and injustice. and John Grim). The anthropocosmic 56 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

vision has also been articulated by Alex The anthropocosmic vision of psy- Grey in lectures on sacred art and archi- chedelic environmental ethics is not tecture, including a lecture I attended in restricted to Grey’s work, but is affirmed Psychedelic research October 2007 at an Entheocentric Salon by many others who have witnessed the held in San Francisco. power of psychedelics to amplify the in- presents an alternative to With various accounts of the profound terconnectedness of humans and nature. role of psychedelic experiences in his For example, in LSD: My Problem Child visionary art, Grey provides an indica- (2009, recently republished by MAPS), the dichotomy between tion of the way in which psychedelics can Albert Hofmann describes how his ex- facilitate experiences of anthropocosmic periences with LSD resemble his child- anthropocentrism and relations and thus transform ecological hood experiences of “euphoric moments” consciousness and conscience. For in- in nature, and how the effects of such non-anthropocentrism... stance, in a psychedelic journey in 1976, “magic drugs” happen at “the borderline Grey experienced with his wife Allyson where mind and matter merge” (pp. 30, a vision of the fundamental structure of 165). Other examples abound. In her the anthropocosmic vision, reality, which they each subsequently mushroom veladas, Maria Sabina sings of painted. His expression of this vision being a hummingbird, whirlwind, wolf, which sees meaning and appears in Universal Mind Lattice, which mushroom, Jesus Christ, eagle, water, and depicts a field of interconnectedf ows more. John Seed, a practitioner of deep value emerging from the of energy, wherein the human body has ecology, often mentions the importance dissolved, becoming a fountain and drain of psychedelics for his efforts to help through which these fows pour. Grey’s people reconnect with their ecological intimate intertwining of psychedelic journey disclosed an anthro- and evolutionary identities. Stan Grof’s pocosmic vision of the complex and fow- psychedelic psychotherapy contains humans and the world… ing unity of Being, in which the human numerous accounts of anthropocosmic and the world are intimately intertwined. identification with cells, plants, animals, in the seamless fabric Universal Mind Lattice is part of Grey’s Gaia, and the cosmos, including an ac- series of Sacred Mirrors, which refect the count in which Grof learned the evils of multiple levels that compose our anthro- fossil fuels and petrochemicals by becom- of Being. pocosmic relations, including material, ing petroleum during a series of ketamine biological, psychic, and spiritual systems, sessions (When the Impossible Happens, the underlying latticework in which these 2006, p. 262). systems are embedded, and the elemental The anthropocosmic vision overcomes void from which the lattice emerges. the narrow perspectives of anthropocen- Furthermore, Grey’s anthropocosmic tric and non-anthropocentric environ- vision appears in many other paintings. mental ethics. By catalyzing engagements In correspondences of Earth with womb, with the anthropocosmic relations that galaxies with eyes, and universal lattice- compose one’s set and setting, psychedel- work with the veins, nerves, and psychos- ics can catalyze responsibility for oneself piritual energies of humans, Grey fre- and one’s environment, responsibility quently shows macrocosm and microcosm for the entanglement of human well- in mutual refection and interpenetration. being and suffering with the well-being He conveys the ecological implications of and suffering of nature and of all beings such correspondences in his depiction of inhabiting the world. Ultimately, this the divine mother Earth in Gaia, where means that the values and practices of Gaia, represented as the tree of life, is psychedelic environmental ethics cul- connected to the grid of the universal lat- tivate a comprehensive sense of care, ticework. On one side of the tree, human which attends to the infinite multiplicity power and greed are transforming Gaia of beings dwelling in the complex and into a technological wasteland, and on fowing latticework of Being. • the other side, humans understand their roots in the natural world and have created a civilization that lives harmoniously with Gaia. maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 57 TheE Ecologic Niche of Psychedelic Plants

Plants of the Gods, writen by Richard Evans Schultes and the late Albert Hofmann is probably the best illustration of the ecological relationship between psychedelic plants and human civilizations. Of the ninety-one hallucinogenic plants beautifully illustrated and characterized in the book, the authors detail fourteen that have had profound significance for human beings. As they state, “Plants that alter the normal functions of the Kim A. Dawson mind and body have always been considered by peoples in nonindustrial [email protected] societies as sacred, and the hallucinogens have been ‘plants of the gods’ par excellence” (preface, p.7).

In his Entheogen Chrestomathy, Thomas experiences of connection are so similar Roberts notes in his review of Plants of in their root to neurotransmitters found the Gods that the early cannabis plant was in the human brain that the relation- Why is there overlapping viewed as a gift from the gods. In Indian ship is no mere coincidence. Instead, it is and Tibetan history, there were deep refective of an adaptive synergy between biochemistry between mythological and spiritual beliefs about specific plants and those humans who the plant. Bhang was thought to deter are open to the message and compelled to certain plants and human evil, bring luck, and cleanse sins. Indra, pass it along. god of the firmament, had a favourite While this is only one of many such drink that was made of Cannabis, and root similitudes, the indoleamine neuro- brains? One proposal the Hindu god Shiva commanded that hormones, such as serotonin and mela- the word Bhangi must be chanted during tonin, are best known for their role in is that there is an sowing and harvesting of the holy plant. regulating states of consciousness. They In light of the theme of this MAPS are, in addition, prime examples of the evolving ecological niche, Bulletin on ecology and psychedelics, the overlapping chemistry of psychedelic central hypothesis I want to propose is plants and the human brain. that, like DNA connects all life on Earth The basic structure of the indoleamine one that is necessitated to a common biochemical code, the psy- neurotransmitters are the same two-rings chedelic plants are a class of living beings that are found in the alkaloid d-lysergic by an ecosystem whose which have a relationship with human acid amide naturally found in morning consciousness through the common root glory seeds. These seeds are thought to survival is threatened. of psychoactive chemicals they share have been used by Aztec priests during with the human brain. These psychedelic sacrifices and by present-day Mayatec and/or entheogenic biochemicals have curanderas (healers) to discern informa- an ecological niche that is to bring the tion about their patients’ illness or as an person’s attention to the significance of aid in divination of the location of miss- the person’s intrinsic connection with ing objects. R. Gordon Wasson has pre- the natural world or cosmos in its largest sented evidence linking the indoleamine sense. psilocybin found in “magic mushrooms” The plant chemicals which evoke these to rites dating to 300 A.D. and these 58 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

mushrooms are called “fesh of the gods” very different. Once the boat has crossed by the Chichimecas of Central America the ocean, a whole new world opens (Miller, 1983). up in which plant and human environ- There are clearly many such parallels ments merge into a unified cosmos of life that can be drawn between the psyche- in which compassion for the ecosystem delic plant world and the neuronal path- shared by both old and new worlds is ways in the human brain, such as musca- greatly magnified. rine in the mushroom Amanita Muscaria The psychoactive plant substance acts and the muscarinic neuronal pathways like a synergetic key which circumvents The psychoactive in the human brain. Or, the endogenous thinking based on separateness and re- DMT in the brain and the N,N-DMT turns consciousness to biochemical unity plant substance found in Psychotria viridis, a shrub with that was familiar before the doors of the small red fruit and long, narrow leaves mind were closed by the limiting, linear that are mixed with Banisteriopsis caapi social norms of the old world. Once across acts like to make the ceremonial Ayahuasca tea. the ocean, a whole new world of adapta- What is the role of these sub- tions is needed, where compassion for all a synergetic key stances in the human brain? What is life (though overwhelming) is a sign of their role in plants? Why is there over- both helpfulness and necessity. which circumvents lapping biochemistry between certain One of these adaptations is an ap- plants and human brains? One proposal preciation for the ultimate source of is that there is an evolving ecological the psychedelic that is the sacred plant. thinking based on niche, one that is necessitated by an eco- When this adaptation is brought back system whose survival is threatened. At to the “old world,” one result can be a separateness and returns its most basic adaptive level, if the plant greater appreciation for our impact on helps the human to recognize the funda- the natural world in which we live along consciousness to mental biochemical connection of all life, with a renewed vigor for life. In this way, and the place of the human in the global through the relationship of psychedelic ecosystem, the human is more likely to plant and psychedelic brain, the old world biochemical unity... foster an environment that is more con- can transform into the new. ducive to both plant and human survival. The relationship between psychedelic From Darwin’s Origin of Species, when plants and human brains is no mere co- two populations are isolated from each incidence but is refective of an adaptive other, for example, by a mountain or body communication by specific plants with of water, they have specific niches and humans who are open to recognizing corresponding adaptations to their own humanity’s intrinsic connection with our environments. Occasionally, some indi- common and sacred home. • viduals travel across the natural boundaries, encounter new environments, and References for this essay are available on develop new adaptations in order to sur- the MAPS Web site: www.maps.org vive. If these new adaptations are passed on to the next generation, a new species Kim Alan Dawson was originally trained can evolve. as a biopsychologist and is now in private I want to propose that psychedelics are practice as a clinical psychologist in Brit- very much like a boat crossing an ocean ish Columbia, Canada. dividing neighboring and quite radically different environments. In the old world, the plant and human environments look maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 59

Another Green World: Psychedelics and Ecology

In the same way that we garden plants, teacher plants like ayahuasca seem to garden us, when we imbibe them.

the naturally occurring taking iboga, their visionary sacrament. I I tend to view psychedelics as emissaries from the larger was taken through a life review during that community of life, bearing elder-species trip. It seemed as if a benevolent spiritual wisdom. As the herbalist Morgan Brent has intelligence was guiding me, revealing proposed, it is almost as if the vegetal world how my negative and compulsive behavior assigned certain plants to be the diplomats patterns were formed by patterns set in my and teachers to our young and confused childhood. I was also given the faith that species, to help put us on a different path these patterns could be changed, that the than the one we have chosen, racing to eco- Daniel Pinchbeck splinters in my soul could be removed one logical decimation and self-extinction. How [email protected] by one, if I found the will to do so. else to explain the consistent messages re- www.realitysandwich.com Gregory Bateson famously coined the ceived in mushroom, ayahuasca, iboga, and Photo by Phillip Jones Griffiths term, the “ecology of mind.” Along with the peyote visions, of a world out of balance, of outer ecology we see in nature, there is an the need to take responsibility, of the vast inner ecology that consists of our thinking empathic sentience of the Gaian mind? process and emotional tendencies. It seems In the same way that we garden plants, that that our inner and outer ecology refect teacher plants like ayahuasca seem to garden us, when we and reinforce one another. On the macro level, our cur- imbibe them. During shamanic sessions, people often get rent society is a projection of the collective thoughts and direct messages about how to transform their lives. Some- ideas developed by past generations. times, their explorations lead to radical revelations and In order to change our society from imminent doom, of their attachment to mediocre diets, relationships, jobs, we need to clear out the old garbage and evolve new and so on. In many cases, they eventually take the advice, pathways of thinking and feeling as quickly as we can-- and purge these negative infuences from their lives. to revamp our mental and emotional ecology. Psychedelic There seems to be a link between the loss of shaman- substances--visionary plant teachers--seem to play a ism and initiatory experience in the West, and the gen- crucial role in this process. Several books have come out esis of a human culture able to treat nature as something recently revealing the importance of psychedelics in the alienated, outside of itself. The recovery of psychedelic development of the personal computer and the Internet. awareness in the 1960s coincided with the birth of the Many crucial insights in biology and physics were psy- environmental movement, and perhaps helped to inspire chedelically inspired. The almost stereotypical psyche- it. Believing in an objective world of material facts whose delic gnosis of interconnectivity, unity of all being, and apparent reality was constantly reiterated by mass media infinite fractal unfoldings may indicate the potential for and science, modernizing humanity lost access to the a quantum leap in human consciousness, to a new stage primordial and participatory modes of awareness known of awareness that transcends and includes previous levels to indigenous cultures. We denied our innate knowledge or what the philosopher Jean Gebser called “conscious- of our reciprocal relationship with the natural world that ness structures.” not only surrounds but also constitutes us, as even the in- I suspect that psychedelics play a part in the process of terior of our bodies are dense microbial environments. our species evolution – a movement from one structure My first mushroom trips in college helped to decon- of consciousness to the next. One hypothesis is that we dition me from my socialized personality and called might be on the threshold of a shift from the biological into question my naïve assumptions that the civiliza- and physical phase of our evolution to the psychic phase. tion surrounding me was enduring and inevitable, that Whatever comes next, any future for our species will be the air-conditioned nightmare of the American empire ecologically strict, and the gnosis we gain from commun- would continue forever. Later journeys confirmed this ing with our botanical elders can provide us with crucial understanding, stripping away layers of acculturation. In insights. • West Africa I underwent initiation into the Bwiti tribe, 60 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY MAPS Ayahuasca Religions: First English language editon. Originally published in Brazil. A Bibliography & Critical Essays By Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Isabel Santana de Rose and Rafael Guimarães dos Santos Translated from Portuguese by Matthew Meyer “Easy to read, concise, and multidisciplinary, “Ayahuasca Religions – A Comprehensive Bibliography & Critical Essays” is an admirable book and a valuable tool for those interested in contemporary ayahuasca uses. Packed with information and knowledge, it suggests numerous leads to follow. It marshals the literature with an internationalist spirit, and also provides a precious historical perspective on a complex phenomenon. People interested in ayahuasca will gain from using this book.” – Jeremy Narby, Ph.D., anthropologist, author of The Cosmic Serpent, DNA and the Origins of Knowledge and Intelligence in Nature, and co-editor with Francis Huxley of Shamans Through Time.

“Ayahuasca Religions – A Comprehensive Bibliography & Critical Essays” is the most extensive compilation of information available to date on the studies on the ayahuasca religions´in Brazil and around the world. This book systematizes the various research projects around the topics of history of the religions, biomedical investigations into their effects, and the contemporary dynamics. This is an essential reference work for anyone interested in these internationalizing religious traditions.” – Michael Winkelman, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the School of Human $11.95 US Evolution & Social Change Arizona State University, co-editor of Psychedelic Medicine and co-author of Supernatural as Natural.

LSD: My Problem Child Albert Hofmann, Ph.D. Third editon, published Spring 2009, includes new material by the author and 16 pages of color images.

THIS is the story of LSD told by a concerned yet hopeful father, organic chemist Albert Hofmann. He traces LSD’s path from a promising psychiatric research medicine to a recreational drug sparking hysteria and prohibition. We follow Dr. Hofmann’s trek across Mexico to discover sacred plants related to LSD, and listen in as he corresponds with other notable figures about his remarkable discovery. Underlying it all is Dr. Hofmann’s powerful conclusion that mystical experience may be our planet‘s best hope for survival. Whether induced by LSD, meditation, or arising spontaneously, such experiences help us to comprehend “the wonder, the mystery of the divine in the microcosm of the atom, in the macrocosm of the spiral nebula, in the seeds of plants, in the body and soul of people.” Now, more than seventy years after the birth of Albert Hofmann’s problem child, his vision of its true potential is more relevant, and more needed, than ever. 100% of the profits from the sale of this book will be devoted to psychedelic psychotherapy research.

$15.95 US

To add these books and other MAPS published titles to your library visit: www.maps.org/catalog/ maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 61

Awakening the Spiritual and Mental Ecology

Deep Ecology is rooted in a perception of reality that goes beyond the scientific framework to an intuitive awareness of the oneness of all Michael and Violet Divine [email protected] life, the interdependence of its multiple manifestations and its cycles of change and transformation. When the concept of the human spirit is understood in this sense, its mode of consciousness in which the individual feels connected to the cosmos as a whole, it becomes clear that ecological awareness is truly spiritual. Indeed the idea of the individual being linked to the cosmos is expressed in the Latin root of the word religion, religare (to bind strongly), as well as the To return to Sanskrit yoga, which means union. – Fritjof Capra a place of balance which we commonly refer to as “self” is but a microcosmic That is to understand the holographic echo of the grand complexity of our macrocosmic reality. In this tiny little corner of reality where we perpetu- natural world as an ally insist on carving out a space for ego, we can experience the interdependent whole interconnected, mutually dependent facets of our mental processes as they seek to find balance and harmony with all of the and to understand our other facets of our mind. Can this be considered the ecology of own minds in the same the psyche? To some extent, yes. Just as the natural harmony of the planet is dependent on all of its parts working together way and see that there in a balanced manner, a unified mind functions efficiently and healthily when it acts in harmony with its self and the body is no separation that contains it. Somehow along the course of time, the human between our minds mind/ego convinced itself that it was separate from this unified universal whole and, in doing so, has pushed the planet into and the world. extreme unbalance. To return to a place of balance is to understand the natural world as an interdependent whole and to understand our own minds in the same way and see that there is no separation between our minds and the world. By ferreting out the places where we are not in alignment with this ecological we can live healthy, balanced lives. 62 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

...to try to live As an artist, I have been granted a path to them make up our concept of a place a harmonic, whereby I can, for better or worse, spend in time and space. Similarly, each of our a fair bit of time gazing inwards. One spe- ideas and identities form an inner world ecologically balanced cifically long and heavy winter comes to and the sense of I that inhabits it. When mind in which I had immersed myself in our mental storms clear and the clouds this exploration of mental states. In doing break, perhaps, in that awakening, there life we need to take so, my appreciation for the natural beauty is some sense of enlightenment. of my surroundings had taken a back However, winter doesn’t become many small steps seat. The long rainy Southern California spring simply by the snap of a finger, winter, with its skeletons of trees and Rome wasn’t built in a day and, likewise, to get there and skies blanketed with grey, had helped me our minds generally don’t just instan- turn inwards. Yet, as spring swept in and taneously awaken. Even for those who the clouds lifted, a slew of purple, yellow claim instant enlightenment the seeds examine all of and white wildfowers sprang up across were already planted, intention was set, the fields where I lived and, in the fresh- etc. So to try to live a harmonic, ecologi- our intentions, ness of the sun, they danced and sparkled. cally balanced life we need to take many Their bright blooms had a similar awak- small steps to get there and examine all our actions, and ening effect on my own mind; acting as a of our intentions, our actions, and the mirror to my mental blossomings. After echoes of those actions all along the way. months of diving through the inner men- If we are lucky then, during that process, the echoes tal chasms--addressing what needed to be we may begin to notice just how inter- addressed, hoping to create a more uni- connected life is. Then, we can have a of those actions fied and whole mental state--the winds functioning inner ecosystem in which all changed, the sky cleared and the beauty of the parts and pieces are working to- all along the way. of the world looked me in the eye. gether in a healthy and balanced manner. Coming up for a breath of fresh air Nature has presented us with countless from the deep sea diving called “working tools to help us work with this process. on our shit” can be like taking our first From the wisdom of our own bodies, breath. Oh, we say, this is what it’s like to accessed through meditation, yoga, tai breathe. This is what it’s like to see beau- chi, and other activities to psychedelic ty. This is what it’s like to be connected. tools to the oceans of wisdom contained We tend to miss the mountains, the trees, within our minds and in the interplay the fowers, and the whole realm of natu- of our world: everything we need is here Michael Divine created the image ral phenomena when we are submersed in already, it simply takes awakening to the “Awakening to Beauty,” that underworld of mental spelunking. In possibilities and actively engaging in the see inside front cover. fact, we tend to miss this dance of inter- transformative process. • connectedness most of the time. With our lives of appointments, schedules and entertainment, we have, it seems, done everything we can to distract ourselves from the really raw truth that we are totally disconnected to ourselves and our world. When we lift our heads, taking note of all the rising and falling patterns of life, we can witness the interconnectedness--this vast system of checks and balances that is the netting of both our inner and external worlds. This is to discover the ecology of our human mind and how much a microcosm it is of the world around us. From the dirt beneath our feet to the stars in the sky, all of these interdependent bits and pieces and the identities we attach maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 63

Conversations with anA Amazonian Shaman

from New York City to an off-the-grid I recently moved mountain cabin, nestled in the redwood forests of Northern California. It’s extremely isolated, with grand vistas to behold and abundant wildlife. The beauty of the wilderness is profoundly peaceful. Minimizing the technology in my life, and immersing myself in nature, has been clarifying, relaxing, Louise Reitman nourishing, and meditative. [email protected] I’ve come to realize that a lot of the modern conveniences that most “First Worlders” take for granted (innumerable, over- fowing markets and stores, electricity, speedy transportation, and widespread technological innovation), as well as all the luxuries that are available to those who can foot the bill, are We are now afforded at the cost of disturbing ecosystems, destroying indigenous peoples‘ homes and cultures, and supporting a worldwide largely mired in system of vast inequality. We are now largely mired in the legacy of a strange and malignantly materialistic system, with a the legacy of a strange history of slavery, oppression and colonialism. I was poignantly and malignantly reminded of this fact whilst attending a meeting in San Fran- cisco that addressed the current demolition of the Amazon materialistic system, Rainforest by multinational companies. I was invited by my landlady, a social activist who has a cabin near mine; she had with a history of slavery, been hosting an indigenous Ecuadorian shaman on our prop- oppression and erty for a few weeks, who I had the chance to talk to. Flavio, the shaman, had come to the states to represent thousands of colonialism. indigenous people displaced by encroaching oil, gold and coal refineries, and was to be the keynote speaker at this meeting, which was hosted by several American-based, ecological activist nonprofits. Flavio opened his speech by playing a wooden fute that his grandfather had taught him to play. After the song, he related an all-too-familiar tale of being violently pushed off the land and relocated to slums, where he found himself impover- ished, starving and unsure of the future. Flavio told me that the jungle was his pharmacy and supermarket. He said that he used ayahuasca, which had been introduced to him by his grandfather, a skilled shaman, and it .allowed him conference with the plant world and his ancestors 64 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

Terence McKenna explained: Unfortunately, however, a majority of Shamanism is the use of the archaic the reigning government forces in the techniques of ecstasy that were de- First World aim to suppress mind-alter- veloped independent of any religious ing substances. Why are the First World philosophy--the empirically validated, governments so opposed to psychedelic experientially operable techniques that states of consciousness? The pattern of produce ecstasy. Ecstasy is the con- suppression is obvious: from the Spanish templation of wholeness. That’s why Inquisition in Mexico during the 1500s, when you experience ecstasy–when you persecuting those who ate psychedelic contemplate wholeness–you come down mushrooms, to the squabbles over peyote remade in terms of the political and use by Native Americans by the fedgling a psychedelic person… asocial arena because you have seen American government in the nineteenth the larger picture. century, to the current War on Drugs. I hope more people will embrace The revocation of peoples’ freedom, and would be apt a shamanistic, psychedelic mode of wanton waste and pollution, is preferred living, treating the Earth, its crea- over the experience of a non-ordinary to treat his or her self, tures, and other people with ecstatic state of consciousness. This is prob- reverence and compassionate consid- ably because psychedelics, when used and the surrounding eration. I, for one, want to learn from thoughtfully, empower a person to chal- Flavio--after all, Flavio and his ances- lenge authority and tradition. tors have been living sustainably since I believe that the disparity between world, with ecstatic prehistory in the jungle, passing down the lifestyles of the First World and the knowledge about how to utilize and Third World can, essentially, be attrib- reverence and appreciate the jungle’s bounty. In the uted to their differing climates. This First World, acceptable habits promote idea solidified when I asked Flavio what compassionate reckless destruction, although often he liked the least about America. His out of our immediate awareness. I feel answer--the cold, which he found nearly helpless and sad when I think about intolerable. Many Third World countries consideration. Flavio’s plight, especially in light of my are tropical in climate, with fora and privileged inhabitance in a beautiful fauna that provide plentiful and variable unmarred forest. forms of sustenance. There, psychedelic I think Albert Hofmann put it most plants grow abundantly, as compared eloquently when he wrote: to the First World countries. Although I share the belief of many of my tropical storms pose a threat, in general, contemporaries that the spiritual crisis since the weather is always warm, sturdy pervading all spheres of Western indus- shelters and provisions for harsher sea- trial society can be remedied only by a sons are not necessary. change in our worldview. We shall have For those living in inhospitable to shift from the materialistic, dualistic and cold climates, manipulation of the belief that people and their environ- environment is necessary for simply ments are separate, toward a new withstanding the elements. I think that consciousness of an all-encompassing this mindset has just gotten out of hand, reality, which embraces the experienc- or has just turned sour, or something- ing ego, a reality in which people feel -because the pursuit of materialistic oneness with animals and nature and comforts seem to monopolize most First all of creation. Worlders’ time, taking precedence over A psychedelic experience allows a preserving wildlife and cultural diversity. person to release themselves from their It’s obvious, as evidenced by the amount egocentric reality and thoroughly and of prisons, the unbalanced distribution of viscerally contemplate innumerable other wealth, increasing desertification, and the realities, including the reality of nature: cancerous leeching of the First World off animals, plants, and the elements. If more other countries, that a drastic interven- First Worlders used psychedelics, I be- tion needs to be implemented. It seems lieve our culture could halt its destructive clear to me that this intervention is the pursuit of materialistic luxury. psychedelic experience. • maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 65

Symbiosis of the Post-Human Identity and the Biosphere

of “other” is a pervading aspect of human cultures. A sense It marks the border of the self–carving out our individuality from the collective–and it haunts us with a feeling of alienation from the world around us. Throughout history, the notion of “other” has caused much suffering in the Portrait of Sara Huntley by Ariel Brown Portrait Sara Huntley world. Our separation from nature and other species–not [email protected] to mention the human distinctions of class, race, and gender–have fragmented our sense of self and our ability to empathize with one another. Our current attitude toward animal and plant life–as well as the Earth itself–is radically anthropocentric. Humanity acts as if it owns the Earth, justifying this Sara Huntley created the beautiful botanically- because it is “other,” and the intelligence of other sentient inspired artwork that appears with this article. beings has been subjugated, negated, and diminished. –DJB A whole dynamic construct of nature has been alienated from humanity as a result of this notion. However, for millennia, plant-induced psychedelic experiences–which break down cultural conditioning–have informed humanity about our relationship to the environment, allowed shamans to communicate with other species, and cleansed our lenses of perception. OOne of the many ways that ani- There have been some remarkable mals communicate with one another is instances in which scientifically-trained through chemical signals, such as phero- minds have utilized the cognitive ef- mones. I sometimes wonder, what if psy- fects of psychedelic compounds to reach chedelic plants are having some kind of creative new insights within their fields dialogue with the human psyche through of expertise. The case of Francis Crick, our brain chemistry? It appears as if our and his discovery (with the aid of LSD) sense of identity becomes connected with of the DNA double-helix structure, comes the mind of the “plant teacher,” whose to mind, as does the work of Kary Mullis. fesh we have consumed. What if our Mullis is the biochemist who won the archetypal experience of the “other” is an 1993 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his artifact of our ancient merging with these development of the polymerase chain different forms of consciousness? What if reaction (PCR), which revolutionized there is a deeper kind of biological intelli- the study of genetics. Mullis has stated gence that psychedelics have the capacity that LSD helped him to develop PCR. to bring us into communication with? I find it fascinating that both of these 66 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

“Sacred Garden” by Sara Huntley. [email protected] maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 67

LSD-inspired scientific developments were in the area of spective. When we integrate our sense of identity with genetics, which is fueling our species’ budding ability to the “other”-- whether it’s other races, species or our envi- manipulate biology--and we continue to make stunning ronment--we foster empathy, and help to forge a conduit new leaps in our understanding of the genetic language of understanding and mediation. Once we start broaden- of the biosphere every day. ing our understanding of the varieties of consciousness In some sense, we are incredible organic chemical and intelligence, we will begin a dialogue with previ- computers, and it has become evident in the past few ously alien intelligences. Alien intelligences could be as years that our aspirations on the technological level are close to us as our house pets. Making this first contact on a collision course with our current biological identity. starts right here, naturally, not out in the stars. As medical science advances, it’s becoming clear that Globalization has taught us much about human nature we will soon be able to manipulate our own biology. and culture in the past few decades; just imagine how It won’t be long before we cross over a boundary that much more there is to learn from other organisms and will redefine us as a species. Our emerging biotechnolo- the greater biosphere. Shamans have been identifying gies will help us to evolve beyond the purely biological with the spirits of various animals for millennia in their entities that we were born as, into augmented beings, mythologies, medicine, and folklore. They call upon these incorporating newly-grown organs and nanotechnologi- spirits in times of need. This is a moment in our planet’s cal enhancements. history when we urgently need to listen and learn from In modern culture it seems that whenever human- our global family of organisms. ity enters a new biological or technological terrain it is In this new age, information will be just as valuable feared, and portrayed as monstrous and evil. Mutants as material resources, and the only way to understand an and cyborgs are seen as abominations of nature and ecosystem, and distill information about it, is to preserve something that erodes the human identity. The charac- it in its natural state. Conservation is a multidisciplinary ters on Star Trek known as “the Borg” are one of the first activity, a situation where passionate opinions will have and most prominent examples that come to mind. The to force compromise. There will be good and bad ideas, so Borg are a cybernetic alien race with a hive mind, who let us not forget that evolution, by its nature, weeds out assimilate other species and cultures, and they are por- the bad ideas. In a quickly changing world, we need to trayed as being utterly void of individuality. The concept remain fexible and adaptable. To do this we have to help of loosing one’s self to their collective mind is portrayed foster diversity among ourselves and the ecosystems that as terrifying. Although this is an extreme example, it we try to steward. demonstrates the fear humanity has of the archetypal We are moving into a post-human era, and we will “other.” However, in more recent popular culture we have need a post human culture to support it. Psychedelics seen the exploration of the “other” in technological terms offer us a new perspective from which to view our own become more neutral. Though fictionalized, our culture culture, outside of the limiting constraints imposed by appears to be slowly warming up to the idea of relating the meta-program “other.” I think that psychedelics have to artificial beings. the potential to help us integrate our pre-existing quali- The dynamic between ourselves, the biosphere, and ties with our post-human identities. I also think that our technology are inescapably intertwined, and we have they can help us relate to other species, the intelligence to reevaluate, redefine, expand upon, and augment our residing within nature, and even artificial minds of our perceptual constraints in order to relate to the “other.” own creation. Unless humanity becomes more symbiotic This means putting yourself in someone else’s paws, see- with the rest of the biosphere, this new future won’t ing the world from the micro-perspective of an amoeba, be possible and our very existence is threatened. Our or empathizing with an artificial intelligence (A.I.) soft- current paradigm has proven unsustainable, and this ware program. Sophisticated A.I. software and extremely rift between humanity and the biosphere demands our realistic virtual realms will soon be in steep competition attention and our respect. There is much healing that we with external reality. There will soon come a time when are obligated to take a part in, as we cannot force eco- you will no longer be able to tell if the voice on the other logical systems to abide by our will. We must adapt our end of the phone is human or not, and your average cus- technologies, and learn to work in harmony with nature tomer service call might become a Turing test of sorts. “Sacredto survive. Garden” by• Sara Huntley. [email protected] Because this super technologically-advanced future Prisma color on archival paper. 9x12” is going to happen whether we are ready for it or not, MAPS will have the original for sale with artist to receive 50% it would probably be wise for us to use our fear of the of the $2,500 sale price. Prints available at $500 each. unknown as auxiliary energy to cope with our new evo- lutioary challenges. Although our fear is meant to protect us from the unknown, it would probably be a good idea to try and overcome our limitations, so that we can see outside the narrow confines of our anthropocentric per- 68 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

To Touch Truth: Toward a Consciousness of Connection

are forgotten even by we who build our It seems these lands homes upon this sacred soil. We do not live here, rather we re- side within the weathered walls of our wandering minds, eyes

By Lily Ross closed, not looking in, but blind. [email protected] Alive? Maybe merely breathing. And barely. Surrendered to our own invisibility, unseen and silent, we walk upon this Earth as foreigners, pioneers of destruction, the poison people. Having forgotten what it is to be whole, we stumble within the softness …we walk of our own home. upon this Earth And yet these bountiful beautiful lands beckon to us, invite us to remember that its breath and ours are one. Singing soft as foreigners, songs of Earthly insight, wind whispers a warm welcome to pioneers of destruction, the home of our hearts. With each step we are forgiven, if we can manage to forgive ourselves; open to our world as we the poison people. open exhausted eyes and remember what it is to see. The children of this Earth are witnessing a unique moment in planetary history; steeped in the magnificence of creation, it is a moment marked by our species’ struggle for survival. These times call for a consciousness of unity still unseen by this world, albeit resting within the realm of possibility, held delicately in the daring hearts of dreamers and visionaries. It is a reality veiled only by the fear that arises in such tu- multuous times. For to impact the momentum of this environmental crisis demands a conscious commitment from communities, families and individuals – a global awakening. It is an interesting challenge in a time when consumerism, war, and an ideology of separateness and domination mark the mainstream culture of the Western world. To be fully present with the overwhelming truth of these times requires that we awaken to the woven web of being, the intricate interdependence of all we have defined as separate. We must remember that we ourselves are an expression of nature, conscious creatures of constant creation, given the gracious gift of this moment to be alive and wholly experience this reality. maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 69

We must remember what it is to be source, the same whole. In that knowing whole. we are inspired in her service and our For millennia the power structures own healing, and we feel the extent to within civilization have worked to silence which those two are one and the same. and dominate the natural world. In sti- Consider the role of psychedelics as fing our connection to the wild within the key to a door that does not truly and diminishing our sense of connection exist, for the barrier between our mind and empathy to the worldly wild, civiliza- and our body, our body and our world, is tion has attempted to sustain itself in this merely an unconscious construction of an failing experiment of industrialization. overly empowered ego. To take this key This behavior is suicidal, rooted in a deep into our hands, and our hearts, empow- seeded ideology of separation and superi- ers us to step into a world we believed to ority to the natural world, and lends itself be so distant, and to realize that it is in to the exploitation of an environment our power to dissolve that door. We can experienced solely as a resource. What choose to live consciously in a timeless this moment in human history calls for is tapestry of revelations and relationships. a deep remembering that to destroy this For psychedelics are a sacred medicine environment equates to the destruction of which, when used in an appropriate con- our species. text with mindful intention, may move Let us listen and respond to this cry- us toward a consciousness of connection, ing call to consciousness; a relocating of and a remembering of the love that uni- our individual selves within the body, a fies us all. • growing sense of self-awareness. For it is through this that we may remember the Lilly Ross is a student at the Californnia power sleeping dormant within the Institute of Integral Studies We know, in that moment, that this Earth is an extension of our being

We know and that we are an extension of hers... In that knowing,

we are motivated to serve her and heal ourselves,

and we feel the extent to which those two actions dreaming creatures that we are, and intimately experience the unity of all things. are one and the same. There are songs in the stones that speak of wholeness. Let us give voice to those who have been assumed into silence so that we may know that the stones sing for us all. To touch wholeness, oneness, as many report experiencing in the cosmically rooted dance of psychedelic consciousness, and to fully feel that wholeness with the entirety of one’s being, inspires a deep caring and compassion for all that is, has been, and will be. We know, in that moment, that this Earth is an extension of our being and that we are an extension of hers; that we are of the same 70 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

A documentary film about the International LSD Symposium held on the occasion of Dr. Albert Hofmann’s 100th Birthday. Basel, Switzerland, January 11–13, 2006

In January 2006, 80 speakers and 2000 participants gathered for the three day International LSD Symposium held in Basel, Switzerland to celebrate Dr. Albert Hofmann’s 100th birthday, and to hear the father of LSD speak first hand about his life, his discovery and his thoughts on the psychedelic experience. It was also an occasion for leading doctors, researchers, artists and thinkers in the psychedelic field to present their work. By docu- menting this historic symposium, LSD: Problem Child and Wonder Drug articu- lates the scientific, medical, artistic and spiritual issues at the core of the psychedelic debate. While experienced psycho- noughts will inevitably be touched by the words and demeanour of Dr. Hofmann, the DVD is also ideal for introducing inexperienced friends, parents and col- LSD: Problem Child and Wonder Drug captures the fascinating story of leagues to the reasons why psychedelic LSD as it is eloquently spoken by Dr. Albert Hofmann, the 100 year experience cannot simply be ignored. old sage-scientist who brought it into the world. With interviews and presentations by Rick Doblin, Alex Grey, Ralph Metzner, Carl Ruck, Released on the MAPS website on Goa Gil and others, this historic message from the father of LSD is : April 19, 2009 a timeless relic and an immediate source of inspiration. Bicycle Day Purchase the DVD on the MAPS website now, “This is an important film. It is a comprehensive document and 50% of the proceeds will go toward of the various effects of LSD and of their meaning. The film is furthering what Dr. Hofmann called his a good document of the uniqueness of LSD” “heart’s desire”: psychedelic research. – Dr. Albert Hofmann www.MAPS.org/catalog “This is a very good film.” www.LSD100.com – Anita Hofmann (Dr. Hofmann’s wife for 70 years)

“(This DVD) is a valuable document about my father and about his work as scientist and philosopher.” – Andreas Hofmann (Dr. Hofmann’s son) maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 71

Rick Doblin, MAPS founder and President, earned his Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Doblin was also in Stan and Christina Grof’s first training group to MAPS: Who We Are receive certification as a Holotropic Breathwork practitioner. Rick Valerie Mojeiko, Director of Operations and Clinical Research Associate, Valerie MAPS is a membership-based organization working to coordinates projects at MAPS’ headquarters and facilitates psychedelic research around assist researchers worldwide to design, fund, conduct, the globe. Formally educated at New College obtain governmental approval for, and report on of Florida and the California Insitute of Integral Sudies. psychedelic research in humans. Founded in 1986, Josh Sonstroem, Accounting and MAPS is an IRS approved 501(c)(3) non-profit Information Technology, earned his B.A. corporation funded by tax-deductible donations in Philosophy and Religion from New College from members. of Florida and is a chef, musician, poet and technologist. He immensely enjoys the depths of existential experience. Randolph Hencken, M.A., B.S. “Most of the things worth doing in the world Josh Communication and Marketing Director, earned his Master of Arts in Communication, had been declared impossible and his Bachelors of Science in Business before they were done.” Administration from San Diego State University, where he focused all of his graduate studies – Louis D. Brandeis on drug policy issues. He was the founder and president of the university‘s chapter of Students If you can even faintly imagine a cultural reintegration for Sensible Drug Policy, and he interned for the of the use of psychedelics and the states of mind they Drug Policy Alliance in San Diego. Formerly he engender, please join MAPS in supporting the expansion was the program coordinator at the Ibogaine Randy Association in Mexico. of scientific knowledge in this area. Progress is possible Jalene Otto, Membership and Sales with the support of those who care enough to take The MAPS Bulletin Coordinator, studied philosophy and socio- individual and collective action. logy at Cabrillo College and the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a story weaver and a mother. Ilsa Jerome, Research and Infor-mation Each MAPS Bulletin reports on MAPS research in Specialist, earned a Ph.D. in psychology from Jalene the University of Maryland. She helps MAPS and progress. In addition to reporting on research both in researchers design studies, gathers information the United States and abroad, the Bulletin may include on study drugs by keeping abreast of the current literature and discussion with other feature articles, reports on conferences, book reviews, researchers, creates and maintains documents Heffter Research Institute updates, and the Hofmann related to some MAPS-supported studies, and Report. Issues raised in letters, calls, and e-mail from helps support the MAPS psychedelic literature bibliography. MAPS members may also be addressed, as may political Ilsa David Jay Brown, Guest Editor, developments that affect psychedelic earned his master’s degree in psycho-biology research and use. from New York University, and has been interviewing accomplished thinkers about their creative process for over 20 years. He is the author of Mavericks of Medicine, Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse, and five other books about the frontiers of science and consciousness. David To find out more about David’s work see: ©2009 Multidisciplinary Association Noah Juan www.mavericksofthemind.com for Psychedelic Studies, Inc. (MAPS) “Noah Juan Juneau” is the nom de guerre 309 Cedar Street, #2323, of graphic designer and long-time friend of Santa Cruz, CA 95060 MAPS, Mark Plummer, who has been providing Phone: 831-429-6362 graphic design services to MAPS since 1990: Fax: 831-429-6370 designing posters, logos, books & publications E-mail: [email protected] for MAPS & others in the entheogen tribe. You may contact Mark through MAPS. Web: www.maps.org 72 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association YES, I would like to join MAPS and receive the MAPS Bulletin! for Psychedelic Studies, Inc.) [ ] Student/Low-income $20 – $34* 309 Cedar Street, #2323 Student/Low Income members will receive the tri-annual MAPS Bulletin. Santa Cruz, CA 95060 [ ] Basic Member $35 – $49* Phone: 831.429.6362 Basic members will receive the MAPS Bulletin. Fax: 831.429.6370 E-mail: [email protected] [ ] Integral Member $50 – $99* Integral members will receive the MAPS Bulletin and their choice of one JOIN VIA THE WEB! of the books MAPS has published. www.maps.org (secure web site transactions) [ ] Supporting Member $100 – $249* Supporting members will receive the MAPS Bulletin plus their choice of one of the books MAPS has published. [ ] Patron Member $250 or more* Patron members will receive the MAPS Bulletin plus their choice of two books MAPS has published. Patrons may also request copies of back issues and research updates on matters of personal interest. * Outside the U.S. please add $15 to cover additional postage. Name & address:

NAME E-MAIL ADDRESS

ADDRESS

CITY STATE OR COUNTRY POSTAL CODE

TOTAL $ enclosed. Donations to MAPS are tax-deductible. [ ] Enclosed is my check or money order payable to MAPS [ ] Please charge my credit card: [ ] Mastercard [ ] Visa [ ] Amex [ ] Please renew my membership automatically each year.

CARD NUMBER EXPIRATION DATE

SIGNATURE PHONE NUMBER The Ultimate Journey: Consciousness and the Mystery of Death by Stanislav Grof, MD, 356 pgs, $19.95 LSD Psychotherapy by Stanislav Grof, MD, 374 pgs, 40 pgs of color plates, $19.95 LSD: My Problem Child by Albert Hofmann, Ph.D., 232 pgs, $12.95 The Secret Chief Revealed: Conversations with a Pioneer of the Underground Psychedelic Therapy Movement by Myron Stolaroff, 176 pgs, $12.95 Ketamine: Dreams and Realities by Karl Jansen, MD, Ph.D., 355 pgs, $14.95 Drawing It Out: Befriending the Unconscious (A Contemporary Woman’s Psychedelic Journey) by Sherana Harriette Frances, 128 pgs, $19.95 Ecstasy: The Complete Guide Edited by Julie Holland, MD, 281 pgs, $19.95 Shivitti: A Vision by Ka-Tzetnik 135633, 144 pgs, $15.95 Ibogaine: Rite of Passage DVD $20.00 Higher Wisdom edited by Roger Walsh and Charles Grob, 267 pgs, $24.95 TRIPPING An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures, Edited by Charles Hayes, 486 pgs, $22.00 Marihuana, The Forbidden Medicine (Signed by the author!) by Lester Grinspoon, MD, and James B. Bakalar, JD, 296 pages, $19.95 Psychedelic Medicine: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments: Vol. 1&2 Michael Winkelman and Thomas B. Roberts, 680 pages, $200.00 SHIPPING FOR BOOKS: U.S. & Canada – Priority mail (3–7 days): $6.00, add $2.50 per additional book. Overseas airmail rates (7–10 days): $12.00, add $10.00 per additional book. maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

“Salvia Dalinorum” by Luke Brown. www.spectraleyes.com maps bulletin • volume xix number 1 maps bulletin • volume xix number 1

MULTIDISCIPLINARY ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHEDELIC STUDIES

“Gaia Mind” by Penny Slinger Hills. www.pennyslinger.com