Simon Powell - The Psilocybin Solution

A similar process to that outlined above would appear to govern dreaming, since complex and often fantastically stylized dream scenarios are something our dreaming selves confront. We literally find ourselves witness to the integrative information processes of our dreaming minds, often experiencing strange and elaborately scripted dream scenarios. But, and this is a major caveat, with dreams our dream self is not generally in a very consciously attentive state, so dreams remain ethereal and forgettable, unlike psilocybin visions, which one is highly conscious of and which are faithfully retained within memory.

It has been speculated that the reason we are unable to retain dream experience is because the normal neuronal mechanisms that underlie long-term memory are shut off during the dream state. This, however, is not the case with psilocybinetic visions, since the neuronal systems that facilitate long-term memory are still operative. Psilocybin is therefore able, perhaps, to bypass those brain mechanisms that normally serve to stop us consciously attending to information arising from the creative depths of the psyche.

The neuropsychologist and expert on sleep processes J. Allan Hobson has developed a model of dreaming that is compatible with the information-integration model outlined in this chapter. Hobson has offered an “activation synthesis” model of dreaming. He reached his theoretical conclusions after having studied in depth the neurochemical processes underlying REM sleep (also known as dream sleep), processes that include, of course, the cessation of the serotonergic raphe system.

On his activation-synthesis model, Hobson writes:

Activation is an energy concept: in REM sleep [dreaming], brain circuits underlying consciousness are switched on. Synthesis is an information concept: dream cognition is distinctive because the brain synthesizes a dream plot by combining information from sources entirely internal to itself and because chemical changes radically alter the way information is processed. So the term “synthesis” implies both fabricated (made up) and integrated (fitted together). {33} 33 4. Hobson, Sleep, 144.

Basically, then, dreams are associated with periodical bursts of firing in perhaps billions of neurons, with, of course, the attendant potential for an incomprehensibly large amount of networked communication (we should bear in mind that dreaming might be due in part to endogenous DMT). This wealth of activity is integrated in such a way that dreams emerge or are synthesized. Dreams are thus constructed of information, the information concerned being embodied in the unusual global firing state of the brain.

As we have already established, a related process appears to take hold when psilocybin is present within the brain. This “waking dream” situation takes place during the eyes-shut waking state, whereas dreaming takes place during sleep. So although the psychedelic visionary state and the dream state take place while the brain is in a different overall state (an awake state versus a sleep state), the general principle of vision generation and dream generation is the same in each case. To reiterate, this principle consists of the patterning and cohesion of vast bursts of neuronal information being generated from internal sources and not from external sources. The advantage of “waking dreams” induced by entheogenic alkaloids over normal dreams is that in the former one remains highly alert and highly conscious of the visionary dialogue, and it is generally not forgotten. Entheogenic visions also tend to be more sacred in character than dreams.

Often dreams appear to be quite mundane, containing perhaps integrated scraps of information subconsciously perceived during the waking state. By joining these disparate pieces of information, a kind of learning might be facilitated. Indeed, it has been demonstrated that if rats (please excuse the ratomorphism) are selectively denied periods of REM sleep, then they are more likely to forget information previously learned.

Lazy newborn infants spend about sixteen hours a day asleep, of which half that time is spent in REM sleep. This means that they dream about three times as much as adults. As newborns have a strong need to learn about the world, dreaming presumably facilitates certain types of information integration—and hence learning. Through dreams, information acquired through waking perceptions can be sifted, consolidated, organized, and generally “worked out,” so to speak. In short, one theoretical approach to understanding dreaming has it that dreaming allows information to become integrated within the developing psyche, a view fully compatible with my own speculations.

What of dreams not obviously connected with, say, diverse pieces of information, but that concern big themes? Especially those really vivid dreams that leave a lingering emotional impact on us? These might seem definitely to contain some meaning important to our inner wellbeing. Although we in the West do not have a cultural tradition that takes dreams, whether the mundane variety or the moving variety, too seriously, this has not always been the case with our species. It is presumably the phenomenon of significant-seeming dreams that led cultures like native Amerindians and Australian aborigines to take dreams seriously—so much so that dreams would often be discussed and acted on by the whole tribe. Such types of informative dream also led Western thinkers like Jung to conceive of a collective unconscious from which archetypal dream symbols could emerge. Although Jung’s vision of a collective unconscious might be considered fanciful, it does highlight the fact that certain dreams can act as a source of useful information should we choose to contemplate them. Indeed, if this were not the case, then presumably native cultures would never have bothered with dream analysis in the first place.

Considering these properties of dreams, we can see more clearly how the brain is literally an information-organizing device able to continually forge illustrative patterns of meaning both consciously and unconsciously. The only real difference between dreams and psychedelic visions would appear to be the extent and scale of this important process. If information integration is allowed to reach a certain threshold of activation through the catalytic agency of entheogenic compounds, then the ultimate source of the information-patterning process can be divined and we come to directly experience a symbolic and unmuddied dialogue with the Other, where the Other is precisely the self-organizing property of the information embodied in the neuronal firing activity. In this sense the Other is a latent form of information that can potentially be brought to life through the processing mechanisms hard-wired within the brain. Neuronal information, by shaping itself in constrained ways, allows definite motifs to emerge, representative of the symbolic language of the transcendental Other. This language is activated and perceived during both the lucid dream state and the psilocybin-induced psychedelic state. Both states are natural and both derive from the capacity of the brain to coalesce and organize large amounts of information.

From what has been discussed thus far concerning the psilocybin experience, it might seem as if the eyes-shut visionary state is the prime effect, yet with eyes open one encounters equal perceptual wonders. The world appears as if new, bursting with a significance and beauty that literally brushes one’s soul. One sees more clearly than one could imagine, as if an occluding cloud had been graciously dispelled to reveal the sheer unadulterated “isness” of reality. Visual perception is experienced as though it were the finest grain cinematography able to pick up upon a luxury of detail previously hidden. Objects in the environment may appear to be interconnected and part of a fluid coherent pattern. Great thoughts occur to one, unbidden yet full of profound import, as if the very secrets of existence were suddenly in one’s grasp. This is the very least that can be stated. How can such phenomenology be accounted for in our information-integration model?