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Introduction
There are a variety of tools available to anyone interested in exploring altered states of consciousness. Such tools include meditation, out-of-body experiences, brain and biofeedback instruments, occult type rituals, visualization exercises, and also in this category are hallucinogenic plants. Each of these tools provides a different doorway into the inner spaces of our subjectivity and consciousness. In this article, I would like to provide a brief overview of hallucinogenic plants as one means among many for achieving altered states of consciousness. It is not my intention here to debate whether it is right or not to use hallucinogenic plants, whatever is ones motive, though I will discuss the variety of opinions that exist in this regard. My purpose here is twofold: 1. to give a broad overview of hallucinogenic plants in general, and 2. to show how hallucinogenics can provide, if used reasonably and responsibly, a valuable and substantial tool for exploring inner spaces.

History Of Hallucinogenic Substances

The history of mankind’s involvement with hallucinogens seems to go back thousands of years. Some modern scholars speculate that the soma of the ancient Hindus was indeed a hallucinogenic substance that was used for purposes of religious ritual and ecstasy. The use of opiates in China and the Far East is well documented. The religious uses of hallucinogenic mushrooms by Native Americans is also a well documented fact, as well as being a point of controversy in modern legislation. So is the use of Ayauscha used by Inidans in the Amazon well documented and today the “Vine of the Soul” forms the focal point for two of Brazil’s main Religions. Namely the Church of Santo Diame.

However, the modern West only really became involved with hallucinogenic plants after World War II. It was in 1948 that a Psychedelic chemical was man produced from rye mould by Albert Hoffman, called LSD. Hoffman was at the time looking for antibiotic substances in fungi. Also around this time, mescaline was identified as the active agent in certain hallucinogenic plants. Within a few years after being recognized, these substances began to cause severe polarization in opinions about their use and benefit.

On one hand, there were in the 1950s and early 1960s, small groups of avant garde intellectuals who began to associate religious and mystical qualities with the effects of these plants on human perception. Perhaps best known in this regard was Aldous Huxley’s “The Doors of Perception”, which highlighted Huxley’s personal experiences on mescaline. Also in this vein was Alan Watts’ “The Joyous Cosmology” which also extolled the philosophical and mystical virtues of the hallucinogenic experience.
So from the very beginning the hallucinogenic plants have been viewed from totally opposite points of view: doctors initially equated the plants’ effects with psychosis, and intellectuals equated the plants’ effects with profound religious experiences.
And here we are, some few hundred years later.

The use of Psychedelic plants (Entheogens) has not gone away, it is a subject simply not talked about anymore.

Well, with this bit of history under our belts, I’d like to discuss a little about the hallucinogenic plants themselves both in terms of what their subjective effects are and also what is known about how they react in the body.

After that, I will then go into more detail about their use as a tool for exploring inner space.

The Effects of Hallucinogenic Plants.

So doctors call it insanity, and intellectuals call it enlightenment, but really, what is it? What are the effects caused when on hallucinogenic plants?
In terms of effects, one of the most important generalizations about these plants’ effects was laid out by Terrence Mckenna when he spoke of “set and setting”. What he meant by this is that what a psychedelic user actually experienced was critically dependant on the user’s state of mind (set) and where he was at and what company he was in (setting). This fact is completely true. It is very difficult to classify the effects of hallucinogenic because they are so dependent upon set and setting. If the user is depressed and in bad company, the experience will be vastly different than if the user is relaxed, happy and in good company.

But, keeping this idea of “set and setting” in the front of our mind, we can still make some generalizations about the subjective effects of the psychedelic experience. Some of the most commonly reported effects are:


1. Visual hallucinations.
2. Audio hallucinations.
3. Sensory mixing (hearing sights or seeing sounds).
4. Weakening of ego boundaries (a weakening or loss of sense of self).
5. Enhanced ability to think abstractly.
6. The uncontrollable urge to laugh.
7. Enhanced ability to sense the emotions of others.
8. Inability to maintain focus or concentration for long periods.
9. Feelings of extreme joy
10. Feelings of extreme depression and terror.
11. A direct with the Divine.


Now this list is by no means complete. It only states some of the more commonly reported effects. It is also important to state that not all of these are experienced by a psychedelic user. As a matter of fact it is possible that none of these effects will be experienced. It is important to be aware that: THE EFFECTS OF HALLUCINOGENIC PLANTS ARE EXTREMELY UNPREDICTABLE. The rule of “set and setting” is the best guide for anticipating what the effects of a hallucinogenic experience may be.
As a matter of fact, I have a close friend who is quite experienced at the use of hallucinogens, and his rule of thumb is the following: “if you have a garden in your mind, then you’ll be in it.
If you have a garbage can in your mind, then you’ll be in it.” This is very useful advice.

Explanations of Hallucinogenic Effects

At this point I would like to begin to discuss what it is that these plants are doing in the body. There is no question that hallucinogens cause profound effects. The really key question is: where do these effects come from?
To answer this question I would like to lay out two very different theories of what it is the hallucinogens are doing to the human being. We will see that these theories are complimentary in that they both shed light on mode of the action of hallucinogenic Plants. However, these two theories I am about to discuss are products of vastly different world-views that most people consider to be contradictory. In this article, I take the attitude that we can learn from both.
The two views of how hallucinogens affect humans that I will now discuss are the scientific view and the occult view. Both science and occultism offer reasonable and useful views about the nature of the hallucinogenic experience. However, what I intend to illustrate here is that the occult view is simply better. Let us begin with the scientific view. There are philosophical problems we must as well address as we proceed.
A Psychedelic plant such as Psilocybe Mushrooms offers a severe challenge to the conventional scientific wisdom. Science tells us that our consciousness is somehow the product of our brain; that our psychology is the software, and the brain is the hardware. At first glance, the Psychedelic experience seems to completely support this view for we have eaten a chemical that severely alters the hardware, and thus, expectedly, alters the software (i.e. our thoughts and perceptions). For the moment, let us just accept this contention and work with it.

Scientific Explanations of Hallucinogenic Effects

Modern scientific investigations into the structure of the brain shows that it is made of lots of different layers of tissues such as the cortex, cerebellum and others. These tissues in turn are, in total, made of some one trillion cells. These cells are called neurons. Neurons look a lot like tree branches, branching off in myriad directions touching many, many other neurons. And the neurons align themselves like fibres, making thick tracts of cable throughout the brain. It is well known that neurons conduct electricity along themselves. This electricity is created by salts like sodium and potassium, chloride and calcium. And these salts act in the cells, much like the salts in a battery work to make electricity.
Now it is also well known that neurons do not touch each other directly, but that there is a small space between adjacent neurons. This space is called a synapse. Now the way neurons conduct electricity from one to the next is that, the electrical impulse travels the length of the first or sending neuron until it gets to the synapse. At this point, the electricity at the synapse causes the first neuron to release chemicals, called neurotransmitters, into the synapse. these neurotransmitters float across the synapse where they then encounter the second or receiving neuron. Depending on the nature of the second neuron, once the neurotransmitters contact it, it will either continue the impulse (and this then would be an excitatory neuron), or it will not conduct the impulse (this is an inhibitory neuron). It is important to appreciate that there are two types of neurons in the brain, excitatory and inhibitory. This is important for understanding how science explains the mode of action of hallucinogenic plants.

As it turns out, the chemical structure of the hallucinogenic is very similar to the chemical structure of the neurotransmitters in the brain. Scientist therefore conclude (and quite reasonably) that what happens when you take a hallucinogenic plants is that the it gets into the brain and interferes with the normal operation of the neurotransmitters. The hallucinogenic plant fools the neurons into thinking it is a neurotransmitter and it then disrupts the normal flow of business in the neurons.

Now the specific details of how this happens do not exist. Yet, because the hallucinogens expand the activity in ones consciousness, scientists believe that whatever hallucinogens are doing in the brain, ultimately they are disrupting inhibitory synapses.

The idea here is that inhibitory synapses serve a filtering function in the brain and that unwanted or unnecessary stimuli are inhibited. If hallucinogens disrupt this filtering function, then one would expect an increase in the “noise” level of the brain leading to such activities as hallucinations or even delusions. Thus, the effects of hallucinogens are generally seen by scientists to be “noise” (similar to static on a radio, for example).

There is no question a certain degree of merit to this hypothesis. However, one could ask as well: are there perhaps latent functions in the brain that are turned on by hallucinogens? This point of view has not been well addressed by scientific research for the simple fact that, how can you look at something if you don’t know it exists? If there are functions turned on by hallucinogenic plants in the brain that do not normally operate in our usual states of consciousness, then scientists have nothing to compare these states to, and thus are affected by a blind spot. Still, though this question of turning on latent functions is not easily addressed in terms of scientific thinking, we shall see below that occult views provide us a basis to reasonably address this question.

In spite of any hypothesis scientists may provide as to the operation of hallucinogens in the nervous system, we must put this discussion in its proper perspective. Whatever scientists may profess to know about the activity of hallucinogenic plants is colored strongly by the fact that the current scientific understanding of how the brain and nerve cells work is highly incomplete.
And this point leads us back to philosophy. Because, on one hand, scientists like to believe that the brain creates consciousness, but on the other hand, scientist have only a partial and incomplete understanding of how the brain works. This seems like putting the cart before the horse to me. It is possible that science will come to understand in very full detail how the operation of the brain leads to memory formation and other psychological phenomena. But the point is, they only have a partial understanding at this point. If you took a brain scientist (a neurologist, or neurochemist, or whatever) and sat them down and asked; “How does the brain create consciousness?”

They’ll either B.S. you with a bunch of details and never directly answer your question, or they will out right honestly admit that this question simply cannot be answered with current knowledge (if you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with bullshit!). So, the bottom line is, that science’s contention that the brain creates consciousness is more belief and dogma than it is cold, hard, provable fact.

Now it’s important to appreciate this situation, because what it does is leave the doorway open for alternative explanations. And in this quest for alternative explanations, we do not have to take an attitude that science is wrong and the alternatives are right, or vice versa.
We can take a more balanced and reasonable attitude and realize that different explanations will give us a broader scope on the issue and therefore, in the end, make our understanding fuller than if we defensively or dogmatically cling to only one view of things.
So having said this, let us turn to an alternative explanation of the Psychedelic effects (and any other hallucinogen for that matter), and this is the explanation given by occultists.

Occult Explanations Of Hallucinogenic Effects

Now occultists have a much different world-view than scientists, but as a world-view it is no less complex. For our purposes here what we must realize is that occultism teaches the opposite of science and that is that our consciousness is independent from our body. According to occultists, our body (and therefore our brain as well) is but a temporary vehicle that houses our consciousness in the span of our life in the physical world. Occultism also teaches that there are worlds other than the physical and these worlds are called “planes”. Only four of these planes are significant to humans. These are the physical, astral, mental and buddhic planes. According to occultists we also have vehicles or bodies for each of these planes. Thus each of us has an astral body and mental body and a buddhic body.
It is by this theory that occultism explains the plain facts of our lives. Occultism teaches that our emotions are our astral body, that our mind is our mental body, and that our soul or conscience is our buddhic body. Thus, right from the start, occultism does not bother with the idea that our physical body creates our mind, emotions or soul (and this idea of “soul” incidentally, is something science likes to deny). Instead, occultism claims that all of these vehicles overlap and interact and create our life and experience as we know and understand it.

Now it is not my intention here to judge occult theory, or the validity of these ideas. To an explorer of inner space (especially one who frequently experiences out-of-body states) this theory is perfectly obvious. For someone with no comprehension of inner realities or experiences with altered states of consciousness, all I can say is, this article is not for you. Go read Carl Sagan or something.




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