Simon Powell - The Psilocybin Solution

It seems apparent that if we open ourselves to the vast cosmic mystery of existence, then we could do a lot worse than pursue the implications of the psilocybin experience. To consume the sacred mushroom is to launch oneself wholeheartedly into the mystery of being, the mystery of our short existence within this big system we call Nature. Our lives are defined by our conscious experience. We are led, prompted, and coaxed according to how we are informed. The remarkable feature of psilocybin mushrooms is that they can inform us in ways profound and sublime. To ignore their effects is to ignore new perspectives on reality.

As it is, the nature of the Universe is defined by the prevailing conceptual systems built into one’s culture. In our case, the predominately reductive and materialistic paradigm favored by most of the science community shapes our views about reality. In the traditional scientific outlook that permeates Western educational institutions and the media, there is no real room for any kind of transcendental aspect to Nature. Nature is there, Nature is eminently intelligible, we can learn how it works, and that’s really all there is to it. Suggesting that Nature has a spiritual dimension or an intentional quality is anathema to most scientists.

The entheogen advocate will doubtless have a stereotypical image of a hardnosed reductive scientist. It will be a he, and he will be old, scary, and grim faced, always waving a dry finger of admonishment at any talk of a so-called sentient and intentional Other. If psilocybin visions cannot be empirically measured in the lab, then forget it, he will say. And if one points to the few scientific experiments that have attempted to quantify the psychedelic experience in some way, our gloomy specter will doubtless pick holes in the methodology and ask for more proof. He would maintain that these experiences are simply too subjective and too personal to base any objective claims about reality on.

Still, as I hope I have demonstrated, psychedelic phenomenology flies in the face of claims that Nature lacks a spiritual side, or at least the psilocybin experience offers what I believe to be the most compelling reason to grant Nature an intent of some kind. This appears to be a neat and valid side step with which to bypass the bleak presence of the reductive materialist. Indeed, the real possibility that the reality process has a fantastically benign and purposefully smart aspect becomes readily apparent through psilocybin. Such a possibility will become ever more clear in this chapter and those that follow.

In short, psilocybin represents a catalytic agent of change in the domain of perceived reality, and this is why we shall now pursue the implications raised by the information-based propositions stated at the outset of this chapter. We are now armed and ready to re-view the “bigger picture” in the light of the psilocybin experience. This will prove to be astounding, so hold tight.

What does it really mean to say that consciousness is a form of information? We seem to have merely replaced the intangibility of consciousness with another abstract entity. The question then arises as to what exactly information is. But even if we do succeed in adequately defining information, will we not then be in danger of trapping ourselves into one of those infinite regresses of terminology? Hopefully not. What we really want is a conceptual notion of information, not just another term. What I wish to develop is a broad understanding of what information is, and, in particular, whether it can be used to describe the world of so-called “matter” as well as that of mind. If so, then reality will have revealed itself to be made of different forms of information, almost as if… well, we shall see.

Information is notoriously difficult to get a handle on. The “slippery eel” that was consciousness has now become the “slipperiest eel” that is information. Apart from my hopefully reasonable assertion that consciousness is a form of information, it would also appear that much else besides consists of information. It seems to be everywhere, all over the place in fact, yet it defies a simple all-encompassing formulation. I am reminded here of the cult 1960s British TV series The Prisoner in which protagonist Patrick McGoohan, number 6, asks his mysterious captors what they want of him. “We want… information… IN… FOR… MATION!” he is repeatedly told. Perhaps he should have asked them to carefully define it. Anyhow, whatever it was, they never got it. Let’s hope we fare better.

Someone once compared the modern status of information to that of iron in the Iron Age. The fashioning of iron lay at the heart of Iron Age material culture, yet no one knew of iron’s atomic structure, that its useful nature lay in its atomic configuration relative to other matter. Similarly, we live in an Information Age, yet, if pressed, we find it difficult to get at the nature of information, at what exactly it is that links all forms of information, whether this information be in the form of consciousness, a bar code, a book, a weather front, or the current positions of the planets.

There are, in fact, specific ways to measure specific types of information. These were developed in the 1940s and 1950s by communication engineers who were concerned with the efficient transmission of signals along media like telephone lines. But before we look at the way they conceived information, let’s first examine the commonsense view of what information means to us in its ordinary nontechnical sense. Since we use the term all the time, especially in our present culture, this must signify that we do know something intrinsic about its nature.

Take the following three deliberately evocative examples in which information is involved. They are not as trivial as they might at first appear; rather, they enable us to focus more clearly on the nature of information.

Example number one: At the end of the esteemed gangster movie Miller’s Crossing , the main character shoots a fellow gangster but makes it look as though he was shot by someone else. He does this by putting the gun involved in the hands of yet another gangster, who lies shot and dead, so that it looks like the two gangsters shot each other dead at the same time. Now, when he plants his gun, our miscreant fails to wipe off his fingerprints. Why? Maybe he was unaware of the science of fingerprinting that was likely not as advanced and as pronounced in the 1920s (when the film is set) as it is today. In any case, the man simply places his gun in the other’s hand. We know, of course, that had a modern forensic expert been around at the time, they would only have had to test the gun for prints for the real villain to become apparent. And what is the significance of said fingerprints? No one would doubt me if I said that the fingerprints contained information.

Example number two: A nervous student armed only with a fountain pen and a small bottle of ink enters an examination hall and takes an exam. After completing the exam the relieved student leaves, carrying his pen and his ink bottle, which is now empty. The ink he has left back in the examination hall is carefully distributed over the various sheets of the exam paper, and the distributional pattern of ink will, ultimately, decide whether he passes or fails the exam. Clearly, the pattern of ink set forth by the student contains a wealth of information.

Example number three: You crack open a boiled egg for breakfast. As you dip your toast into the yolk, you begin to reflect upon the nature of this tasty source of protein. In particular, you realize that if this egg were fertilized and had not been removed from beneath the warm body of the hen that laid it, then it would eventually have developed into a full-grown chicken with wings, a visual system, an innate repertoire of behavior, a digestive system, and so on. In other words, you become aware of the astonishing fact that somewhere within the soft yellow substance of an egg there must reside an inconceivably large amount of information.