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The Center of the Universe
William S. Moxley
3. Effects of Psychedelic Drugs
I had originally thought to write a chapter on the
history of use of psychedelic drugs, but there have already
been several excellent books and research papers published in
this area, and I have nothing new to add. (1) At the risk of leaving out an
important body of substantiating evidence for parts of my
theory, including the history of what have been thought to be
the various effects of the drugs, I will simply recommend
that the reader acquaint himself with the subject from the
already prolific selection of works, many of which are listed
in the Bibliography. The risk is that a reader who holds some
prejudice that psychedelic use has merely been the province
of a few oddball tribes, or something that could be safely
ignored when theorizing in anthropology or human biological
and social evolution, will therefore hold the same prejudice
when trying to evaluate my theory. Nothing could be further
from the truth. Psychedelic use appears to be the rule,
rather than the exception, in every corner of the earth where
man has developed. And not just in times we may safely
relegate to the stone age: I have already mentioned the
strong likelihood that lysergic acid alkaloids were important
in Greek Civilization over a period of two thousand
years. Once acquainted with the wealth of evidence concerning
early use of psychedelic drugs, the reader or researcher who
then picks up a new book on anthropology, religion, human
evolution and the evolution of consciousness and finds no
relevant entries in the index, will have immediate and
compelling reasons to question the author's scholarship!
The discontinuance of use of psychedelics for most
non-Western societies seemed to coincide with the arrival of
European "civilizing" influence, yet stubborn
traces of psychedelic use persisted widely until modern
times, as witnessed by recent studies of Central and South
American Amerindian tribes, and of course the widely known
use of peyote by members of the Native American Church. The
discontinuance of psychedelic use in Western Civilization
itself coincided with the rise of the Roman Church as the
primary political power in the world. From the early
centuries of the Christian epoch, the use of such substances
became the occupation of heretics, outcasts, witches,
primitives or other similarly uncivilized, satanic elements. (2) The Church, of
course, saw no contradiction in the wholesale slaughter of
such groups for their own good. Continuing psychedelic use
over the centuries in many parts of the world has thus been a
carefully guarded secret, and modern estimates of its
frequency and importance are probably grossly
underestimated.
The extract of Ipomoea violacea that we
had prepared radiated power, just sitting there in its flask. A
light amber, odorless syrup which, in the darkened laboratory
fluoresced brilliantly blue under ultraviolet light, it was an
extreme contrast with the series of messy, difficult to purify,
dark-colored and discouraging volumes of intermediate sludge we
had treated, and brought to mind the Curies and their arduous
separation of a few tiny crystals of glowing radium from a
mountain of pitchblende. The difficulties had, however, taught us
much about ways in which we would modify our processes for future
work. As for the extract, the following day would see the first
test of its activity, with myself as the guinea-pig. I was by
this time hardly a novice in self-administration of my own
preparations or in the estimation of what effects they might
have. I was, in fact, quite adept at taking most any supposed
substance of enlightenment and avoiding nasty complications if
the brew turned out to be bogus. On many occasions in New York,
more than a little caution had been required to avoid not only
the classic "rip-off" but also the inevitable dangers
that Prohibition naturally produced. Once, a purported sample of
magic mushroom I was offered proved to be only a few wasted
store-bought champignons laced with powdered datura seeds.
Although hallucinogenic, the experience of datura was not the
least insightful, nor did it leave me with an experience which
hinted at dimensions normally closed to everyday perception. I
spent a few unpleasant hours also with Owsley's famous STP, which
in the original dose was far too potent for human consumption.
Fortunately I took only a quarter-dose, there having been
evidence of difficult times for others with this synthetic drug.
The morning-glory extract provided not a nasty
surprise, but a powerful surprise none the less. It was by far
the most powerful experience I had yet encountered. Perhaps the
methods of our extraction had yielded a product more
representative of the shaman's recipe than the preparations
obtained by other investigators, who reported only modest
psychedelic effects. The experience of that day was hardly
modest, from the beginning moments it certainly did not fail to
inspire reverence and humility, no matter what the direction to
which I managed to guide it. The colors and geometric patterns,
the rippling waves so often seen in watching clouds in the sky,
the slowing of time and other typical effects so frequently
described in the literature had some time ago become only minor
and unattended aspects of psychedelic experience for me.
Certainly, I still noticed these effects, if I took the trouble
to pay attention to them. But the psychedelic experience had
become for me far more an arena for the Herculean task of
attempting to achieve the truly original perspective for viewing
the fundamental questions that man has posed since the beginning
of time. It was the task of freeing oneself completely from
preconceptions, from habits of thinking that affected the outcome
of seeking in unknown and unconscious ways. And of course, it was
paradoxical, if not impossible to erase these filters of
comprehension completely. To a very significant extent,
comprehension consisted of these filters. Nevertheless,
the psychedelic experience seemed to go quite a good distance in
providing this ability, if one were ready to use it. Particularly
the experience of that day.
An additional very serious question that I have
examined practically every time I undergo an experience is that
of my position in giving a psychedelic drug that I have prepared
to another person. The peyote extract, and now the morning-glory
alkaloids would be given to friends, and their friends perhaps,
and it seemed necessary to explore where the experience of these
substances might lead for others than myself. As I indicated
above, I would recommend datura for no-one, and Owsley's
invention I would strongly recommend against. In the case of
providing a psychedelic that I myself have prepared, it is a
great responsibility, not so much for any immediate risk that an
experience might entail, but rather in the sense that one thus
becomes a shaman who initiates another human being into
awareness of that mysterious something that forever remains just
out of reach. The responsibility is to ensure that the one
initiated shall see the significance of this event, of this
process of initiation. If not, the ability of a person to achieve
such insight may be stifled, if not completely eliminated from
that point on, and it is his shaman who is to blame. It is like
saving someone's life, in the way some oriental philosophies
understand it, if the initiation is successful. Many people, of
course, are capable of initiating themselves, I certainly had,
and so had many others I had known. But to manufacture
psychedelic substances and distribute them widely and at random,
as had been done recently in the United States, left something
important out of the equation describing the power of these
substances to affect important changes in those who experienced
them, and in society at large. On the other hand, I could not
ignore the argument that the Prohibition had denied man one of
his most fundamental rights, and according to the wisdom
expressed by the American Constitutional scholar Alexander
Bickel,
We cannot, by total reliance on law, escape the duty to
judge right and wrong... There are good laws and there are
occasionally bad laws, and it conforms to the highest
traditions of a free society to offer resistance to bad laws,
and to disobey them.
The details of the morning-glory experience that
day had much more to do with my personal idiosyncrasies of the
time than with issues relevant to the present narrative. At a
high point of the experience, a minor earthquake occurred which,
for the life of me, seemed to be provoked by my patterns of
thought, seeking answers to questions that had a certain air of
being forbidden, questions that no mortal could support the
weight of significance the answers would unload upon him. The
whole scene would of course be dismissed as an hallucination by
my analyst, if I had one. But the earth tremor was real, and it
did coincide with the climax of certain thoughts I was
entertaining. Although the details of such experiences may
sometimes represent battles of the self against its own quirks
and limitations, and on a personal level I have quite
satisfactorily concluded what the experiences of that day had to
teach, one still gains a cumulative and more generally applicable
knowledge from profound psychedelic experience. And I believe it
was the experience of that day which first started me thinking
about the "effects" that these substances produced,
trying to understand how they could be so different from person
to person and from experience to experience. (And the experience
of that day seemed to indicate that psychedelics might possibly
cause earthquakes!)
Some researchers had proposed that the effects
of psychedelics were more the result of set and setting than
of the drug per se. This seemed to be a useful model as
far as it went, but really it didn't go very far in my opinion.
The setting of a psychedelic experience was simply the
surroundings, the comfortable living room or beautiful garden to
be contrasted with the sterile and sometimes threatening
atmosphere of the hospital wards where some early research had
been carried out. The set was defined as the attitudes,
motivations, preconceptions, and intentions of the individual, in
combination with the introductory ideas and instructions that
were provided by the researchers or guides, if any. Here is a
short illustrative example:
Language, however, may...be used to develop a negative set
and setting. Jean Houston (1967) has described one of her
initial observations of LSD administration. The subject was
told by the psychiatrist that he would have "a terrible,
terrible experience" filled with "strong anxiety
and delusions." The drug was administered in an
antiseptic hospital room with several observers in white
coats watching him. As the effects came on, the psychiatrist
asked such questions as, "Is your anxiety
increasing?" At the end of the experiment, the subject
was in a state of panic. The psychiatrist announced to the
group that LSD is indeed a "psychotomimetic"
substance, which induces psychotic behavior. (3)
Now here is a shaman who has failed most
miserably in his responsibilities. What was so appalling about
some of this early "scientific" research with
psychedelics, was that it was structured not with just an
ignorance, but a willful ignorance of methods used by the
aboriginal practitioners of the same curing arts as the modern
psychiatrists professed to practice. Peyote shamans in the
western states of the US were very likely that same day
conducting psychedelic sessions in a somewhat different manner:
The ritual developed by the Native American Church
illustrates the use of language to produce a positive set and
setting for the ingestion of peyote. A ceremonial leader, the
head chief, initiates the singing of songs and co-ordinates
requests by individuals for special prayers. The ritual is so
arranged and so coordinated to the needs of the communicants
that the maximum possible likelihood of a positive spiritual
experience is enhanced. (4)
If the prospect of singing for his patients
would seem absurd to the modern psychiatrist, he is also
willfully ignorant of the great many psychedelic studies in which
recorded music and other aesthetic input was successfully used to
create positive set and setting. The work of Hoffer and Osmond,
or of Masters and Houston are good examples:
The LSD treatment is conducted in a comfortable,
aesthetically pleasing, spacious room, in no way suggestive
of a clinical setting...the therapist wears ordinary street
clothes or something more casual, depending on the needs of
the patient. No medical or scientific "uniform"
should be worn. The session should be presented less as
therapy than as educational and developmental experience. The
therapist steps out of his role as "doctor" and
becomes more the patient's mentor and guide, who will lead
him through the unique world of psychedelic experience and
enable him to profit from it...
The patient should be exposed to a rich variety of sensory
stimuli... Objects, when touched may seem vibrantly alive,
and when looked at, may seem to breathe or undergo successive
transformations. An orange that is handed the patient may
appear to be a golden planet; from a piece of cork may emerge
a series of striking "works of art." Joyous music
usually is played to help direct him emotionally. Typically,
the patient will announce that he is hearing music as if for
the first time. All the senses are given an opportunity to
respond "psychedelically." (5)
"Psychedelic drugs, such as LSD and
mescaline, give rise to awesome and extraordinary mental changes
in which perceptions are so altered from normal human experience,
they cannot readily be described." Many similar statements
have been made, this one is by Solomon H. Snyder in his book Drugs
and the Brain. (6)
If the concept of set and setting as the determining parameter of
the content of psychedelic experience has only limited value for
understanding statements such as Snyder's, we need a new model
which not only is capable of showing what cognitive and
neurological mechanisms could facilitate such experiences, how
the drug might catalyze or initiate a chain of events the content
of which would depend entirely on the individual, but also
showing why statements about the psychedelic experience have so
far been themselves awesome and extraordinary yet decidedly
lacking in explanatory power.
I am going to propose a view that attributing
fantastic and indescribable effects to psychedelic drugs is naive
and misleading. From all we know about the complexity,
ineffability, and continually surprising nature of the human
mind, attribution of such causal power to a molecule seems a mere
projection, and a symptom of the unwillingness to contemplate
these characteristics of the mind directly. Neither can we
justify attributing such power to mere molecules in view of what
is known about the neurological effects of psychoactive drugs in
general. The primary neurological effects of psychedelics, like
other drugs which affect the central nervous system, must be
relatively simple, localized, and perhaps only minimally
connected in time with the supposed fantastic attributes which
follow. All the facts point toward a simple, quite easily
explained mechanism for the neurological action of LSD or other
psychedelics. How the mind reacts to this simple change in
nervous system operation is another matter, for here it is the
complexity of mind itself in question.
The argument is that what LSD or other
psychedelic drugs do is simple, what the mind does complex, and
if the event of ingesting a psychedelic substance is followed by
some amazing mental events, it must be the case that the mind is
capable of such events all on its own, or under a variety of
diverse influences. The drug is in no sense analogous to a
computer program, causing the brain and mind to submit to its
instructions; if it were, the effects of the drug would be far
more reproducible and typical.
Before describing what simple mechanism could
allow a psychedelic drug to catalyze the events of psychedelic
experience, let us take a closer look at what have been touted as
the "effects" of psychedelic drugs. My task will be to
show how each of these effects is not strictly an effect of the
drug itself, but one of the many things the mind may do
under various circumstances, one being a certain small yet
fundamental change in neurological routines provoked by a drug.
The choice of the word 'catalyze' is appropriate, I think, for in
chemistry the action of a catalyst is to lower an energy barrier
which prevents a reaction from happening, not to actually take
part in the reaction itself.
As a starting point in my theory therefore, let
us think of the effect of a psychedelic drug as eliminative of
some obstacle, rather than additive: the drug functions as a
facilitator of inherently possible processes, a substance which
by its neurological action allows or assists certain
natural processes to occur which might otherwise be rare or
improbable. In the following quotation, let us see if we can
understand each "effect" not as something that a
psychedelic drug does, but as something which we
might do, if only rarely, under certain circumstances. The list
below, although originally compiled as a phenomenology of ASC's (7) in general (including hypnosis, religious
trance, delirious states, various intoxications other than
psychedelic, etc.), has been widely agreed to represent the major
characteristics observed of the psychedelic state, although some
improvement in their description could be imagined. Where
applicable, I have edited the descriptions to accord with
psychedelic experience alone:
A. Alterations in thinking. Subjective disturbances
in concentration, attention, memory, and judgment represent
common findings. Archaic modes of thought (primary-process
thought) predominate, and reality testing seems impaired to
varying degrees. The distinction between cause and effect
becomes blurred, and ambivalence may be pronounced whereby
incongruities or opposites may coexist without any
(psycho)logical conflict...
B. Disturbed time sense. Sense of time and
chronology become greatly altered. Subjective feelings of
timelessness, time coming to a standstill, the acceleration
or slowing of time, and so on, are common. Time may also seem
of infinite or infinitesimal duration.
C. Loss of control. As a person enters or is in an
ASC, he often experiences fears of losing his grip on reality
and losing his self-control. During the induction phase, he
may actively try to resist experiencing the ASC...while in
other instances he may actually welcome relinquishing his
volition and giving in to the experience.
D. Change in emotional expression. With the
diminution of conscious control or inhibitions, there is
often a marked change in emotional expression. Sudden and
unexpected displays of more primitive and intense emotion
than shown during normal, waking consciousness may appear.
Emotional extremes, from ecstasy and orgiastic equivalents to
profound fear and depression, commonly occur...
E. Body image change. A wide array of distortions
in body image frequently occur in ASCs. There is also a
common propensity for individuals to experience a profound
sense of depersonalization, a schism between body and mind,
feelings of derealization, or a dissolution of boundaries
between self and others, the world, or universe. There are
also some other common features which might be grouped under
this heading. Not only may various parts of the body appear
or feel shrunken, enlarged, distorted, heavy, weightless,
disconnected, strange, or funny, but spontaneous experiences
of dizziness, blurring of vision, weakness, numbness,
tingling, and analgesia are likewise encountered.
F. Perceptual distortions. Common to most ASCs is
the presence of perceptual aberrations, including
hallucinations, pseudohallucinations, increased visual
imagery, subjectively felt hyperacuteness of perception, and
illusions of every variety. The content of these perceptual
aberrations may be determined by cultural, group, individual,
or neurophysiological factors and represent either
wish-fulfillment fantasies, the expression of basic fears or
conflicts, or simply phenomena of little dynamic import, such
as hallucinations of light, color, geometrical patterns, or
shapes. In some ASCs, such as those produced by psychedelic
drugs, marihuana, or mystical contemplation, synesthesias may
appear whereby one form of sensory experience is translated
into another form. For example, persons may report seeing or
feeling sounds or being able to taste what they see.
G. Change in meaning or significance. After
observing and reading descriptions of a wide variety of ASCs
induced by different agents or maneuvers, I have become very
impressed with the predilection of persons in these states to
attach an increased meaning or significance to their
subjective experiences, ideas, or perceptions. At times, it
appears as though the person is undergoing an attenuated
"eureka" experience during which feelings of
profound insight, illumination, and truth frequently occur.
H. Sense of the ineffable. Most often, because of
the uniqueness of the subjective experience associated with
certain ASCs (e.g., transcendental, aesthetic, creative,
psychotic, and mystical states), persons claim a certain
ineptness or inability to communicate the nature or essence
of the experience to someone who has not undergone a similar
experience.
I. Feelings of rejuvenation. ...On emerging from
certain profound alterations of consciousness (e.g.,
psychedelic experiences, ...hypnosis, religious conversion,
transcendental and mystical states), ...many persons claim to
experience a new sense of hope, rejuvenation, renaissance, or
rebirth.
J. Hypersuggestibility. …The increased
susceptibility and propensity of persons uncritically to
accept and/or automatically to respond to specific
statements...or nonspecific cues (i.e., cultural or group
expectations for certain types of behavior or subjective
feelings). Hypersuggestibility will also refer to the
increased tendency of a person to misperceive or misinterpret
various stimuli or situations based either on his inner fears
or wishes. (8)
Or consider the following list of effects:
LSD and peyote are potent psycho-chemicals that alter and
expand the human consciousness. Even the briefest summation
of the psychological effects of these drugs would have to
include the following: Changes in visual, auditory, tactile,
olfactory, gustatory, and kinesthetic perception; changes in
experiencing time and space; changes in the rate and content
of thought; body image changes; hallucinations; vivid
images—eidetic images—seen with the eyes closed;
greatly heightened awareness of color; abrupt and frequent
mood and affect changes; heightened suggestibility; enhanced
recall or memory; depersonalization and ego dissolution;
dual, multiple, and fragmentized consciousness; seeming
awareness of internal organs and processes of the body;
upsurge of unconscious materials; enhanced awareness of
linguistic nuances; increased sensitivity to nonverbal cues;
sense of capacity to communicate much better by nonverbal
means, sometimes including the telepathic; feelings of
empathy; regression and "primitivization";
apparently heightened capacity for concentration;
magnification of character traits and psychodynamic
processes; an apparent nakedness of psychodynamic processes
that makes evident the interaction of ideation, emotion, and
perception with one another and with inferred unconscious
processes; concern with philosophical, cosmological, and
religious questions; and, in general, apprehension of a world
that has slipped the chains of normal categorical ordering,
leading to an intensified interest in self and world and also
to a range of responses moving from extremes of anxiety to
extremes of pleasure. These are not the only effects of the
psychedelic drugs... (9)
The authors here do not leave any doubt about
their attribution of causes, but to be fair, it must be stated
that the more cautious researchers seemed aware, at least to some
extent, of the difficulties in such attributions, although
without taking the trouble to deny the implication. Hoffer and
Osmond put it thus:
The LSD experience is one about which there can be no
argument about priorities between chemical and psychological
factors. For there is no doubt whatever the chemical is given
first and must cause the biochemical changes which later
find expression in the psychological experience... A good
deal is known about its [LSD's] phenomenal reactivity. What
is not known is which one of its many biochemical reactions
is the most relevant in producing the psychological changes.
[italics added]. (10)
The authors could be accused of semantic
prestidigitation here, but I think it was more a matter of the
difficulty of understanding the psychedelic experience rather
than a conscious effort to make a statement that would be right
no matter what the actual pathway of cause and effect turned out
to be. Many researchers of the time show a dawning awareness in
their published works of the unsatisfactory implications of the
application of classical cause and effect paradigms to many of
the more unusual findings in psychedelic research. But if some
researchers did not go so far as to state flatly that LSD causes
mystical experience, or that LSD causes perceptual
time distortions, or that LSD causes any number of other effects
which writers are so fond of describing, at most they seemed just
to add an additional link in the causal chain, as above. Observe,
however, the statements of some (viz., ardent critics of
psychedelic research) that LSD caused psychosis, or a
schizophrenic-like state, or even suicide. Even court-cases,
criminal and civil, were resolved on the basis that psychedelic
drugs were a logical cause of various acts or behaviors, or even
instances of "mental illness".
In the press and other popular writing, several
accounts of hellish, or trivial experiences of an absurd nature
were published by those who considered themselves agnostics,
skeptics or clear-thinkers, attempting to minimize or ridicule
the sometimes mystical-sounding claims of those such as Aldous
Huxley, Gerald Heard, or Alan Watts. These debunking attempts
uniformly portrayed the results of the reporter's psychedelic
ingestion as a kind of Hollywood movie, as if the drug were some
roll of science-fiction film forcibly projected upon his
otherwise quite understandable and controllable life. "The
drug made me do this, made me see that, caused me to think I was
a..." etc. If someone had a negative experience, especially
if he were a noted reporter or medical practitioner, then his
report left no doubt whatsoever about what the cause was, where
the blame lay.
I hope that it is now becoming clear that
although the ingestion of a psychedelic drug may be the first
event of a series of events that culminates in undeniably
profound perceptual and psychological changes, the simplistic
designation of the first event as the logical cause of the entire
chain of following events makes no more sense than my saying that
psychedelic ingestion causes earthquakes. The mind-events of
psychedelic experience, I am suggesting, are in an important
sense just as "exterior" and coincidental to the
ingestion of the drug as was the earthquake I experienced on the
roof of my little bungalow in Guadalajara. It is my view that
attribution of cause and effect along these lines must be
abandoned completely, it is a misleading model of psychedelic
experience and must be replaced. Even the idea that a psychedelic
drug causes distortions of perception must be scrapped.
The whole idea of causation as it is currently conceived relative
to psychedelic experience is a metaphor, but unlike the model as
metaphor which is a useful device to understand and predict, the
metaphor in this case is an impediment to a clear understanding.
This is a major reason why the results of psychedelic research
have been so difficult to interpret, and also a reason why it was
so easy to criticize, even ridicule both the research and the
workers who produced it.
When I took the drug myself, I found that I was suffering
from the delusion that I had been psychoanalyzed. I had spent
seven and a half years on the couch and over $20,000, and so
I thought I had been psychoanalyzed. But a few sessions with
LSD convinced me otherwise.
—Mortimer A. Hartman, Psychiatric Institute of
Beverly Hills, 1959
As a first step in my replacement of the trivial
model of psychedelic experience, I am going to reverse the
situation at hand and ask, not what causes the psychedelic
experience, but rather what causes us to be in our
"normal" state of mind most, if not all of the time? We
might say that the brain in its normal neurochemical state is
sufficient cause. The champions of reductionism of course
maintain that the mind and its experiences cannot be anything but
states of the brain's neurons; this is, of course, Francis
Crick's "Astonishing Hypothesis". (11) I, among more notable critics of such
strong reductive materialism, would call it (at best) a Premature
Hypothesis, considering the present rudimentary state of
scientific knowledge about the nervous system. If recent
criticisms and counter-arguments against the reductionist
position have been less astonishing, (12) they have been more accurate
in illustrating present limitations in understanding causation at
and especially across the various hierarchical levels of
complexity between the physics and the biochemistry of neurons at
one extreme, and consciousness and mind at the highest levels of
organization. A few paragraphs illustrating the difficulties and
paradoxes of the concept causation might be in order, although
the topic is hotly debated and I will gain perhaps as many
critics as converts from my personal observations:
If, (due to the ambiguity of causation when one
attempts to apply the concept across levels of description or
complexity), the neurochemical state of the brain is not
strictly and exclusively a cause either of normal or
extranormal states of mind, this is of course not to deny that
there are correspondences between brain processes
involving neurons, cognitive processes involving systems of brain
parts, and conscious experience involving the total organism. Nor
is it to deny the possibility of learning things about one level
from studying another. It is the attribution of causation of
events between one level of this hierarchy and another which is
fraught with difficulties. Processes at one level are simply not
strictly reducible to processes at another, in spite of their
mutual interdependence.
The distinction here is important, if seemingly
paradoxical, and may possibly be understood better by the
observation that two entirely different cognitive processes
arriving at two entirely different "states of mind",
must have the potential to occur from exactly the same original
neurochemical state of the brain. Stated a little differently:
exhaustive examination and description of a given brain state or
series of brain states (if it were possible) cannot in
principle predict the overall conscious experience of the
owner of that brain. Conversely, two different dynamic brain
states might well have the possibility of corresponding to the
same conscious experience. If these considerations were not the
case, free will would necessarily be an illusion and absolute
determinism unavoidable; only the extreme fringe of philosophy
seriously believes this to be the true state of mankind. (13) Absolute
determinism is, of course, the position that everyone, all the
time, is determined by antecedent, irresistible physical
conditions, so that free will becomes as meaningless as the idea
that my computer screen might suddenly decide to exhibit a
"P" when I tap "Q" on the keyboard. Although
computers in good repair normally mind their P's and Q's,
consciousness does not.
I see the error of attribution of causation
concerning psychedelics as representative of the same error on
the larger scale of the whole question of mind-brain
relationships. In most current models of consciousness, of which
there recently have been many, there seems to me a fundamental
ignorance of the logical repercussions of saying, for instance,
that the mind, or consciousness, must be caused by the
brain. John Searle, the author of one of the more cautious and
measured treatises on consciousness (14) nevertheless writes,
It is an amazing fact that everything in our conscious
life, from feeling pains, tickles, and itches to—pick
your favorite—feeling the angst of postindustrial man
under late capitalism or experiencing the ecstasy of skiing
in deep powder—is caused by brain processes. As far as
we know the relevant processes take place at the micro levels
of synapses, neurons, neuron columns, and cell assemblies.
All of our conscious life is caused by these lower-level
processes, but we have only the foggiest idea of how it all
works. (15)
Searle suggests that objections to brain-to-mind
causation result from a "flawed conception of
causation", and he attempts to split the concept in two:
event-causation (a causal relation "between discrete events
ordered sequentially in time"), and non-event causation
which he illustrates with the example of the collective
properties of the molecules of a table "causing" its
apparent solidity. But I would suggest that these two concepts of
causation are so radically opposed in their meaning and
properties, perhaps being logically mutually exclusive, that it
would at a minimum be best to avoid using the same term for both
processes. Event-causation rests comfortably within the same
level of description, whereas Searle's non-event causation
violates that comfort. If non-event causation is called instead
"facilitation", suggesting that in such a process there
are entities and aspects which arise mutually rather than depend
causally upon each other, we may lose the security of believing
that we know something of the underlying mechanisms of mind-brain
relationships, but gain a more pragmatic basis for further
understanding. Let us view a collection of wood molecules as
"allowing" or "facilitating" the properties
we recognize as "table", in the same sense that a
valley allows or facilitates the flowing of a river through it:
in neither case is causation meaningful if we wish this term to
retain any concrete usefulness. Does the valley cause the river?
(Actually, the river has caused the valley through the process of
erosion!) Yet without the valley: no river! Without the
molecules: no table! The table was "caused" by the menuisier
who built it: to use the same term in the attempt to see how
properties arise mutually with the object or process which
manifest those properties only confuses. Causation would
logically have to operate bi-directionally in such instances, and
thus lose its meaning entirely. Again, it is clear that
attempting to apply the concept of causation across different
levels of description becomes paradoxical at best.
Quite obviously the point of view that brain
causes mind arises from that argument of poverty, "well what
else could it be?" (In other words, "don't bring any
mystical entities into this discussion or I will dismiss your
view as unscientific"). But if brain causes mind or
consciousness, and we are to understand causation in a reasonably
logical and precise way, then mind and consciousness are
superfluous and inoperative constructs. The two theorems of
causation we must agree to are: a cause must precede its effect
in time, however briefly, and, because the brain is composed of
discrete, non-infinitesimal components, a cause brought about by
brain processes may likewise not be infinitesimal, or
differential, it must have duration and other measurable
characteristics. From here it follows that if mind is caused by
the brain, and only by the brain, it may have no properties in
and of itself. It is reduced to the status of a gargoyle, or legs
on a snake. If brain states cause mental states in
exclusivity, then consciousness and mind can have no part in
causation whatever, since whatever is proposed as an effect of
mind must actually be the result of prior causation by the brain.
And according to the great philosophers of both past and present,
the whole point of mind/consciousness is that it most definitely
does have the power of causation. In a non-trivial sense then, it
appears at least as valid to say that mind causes brain as to say
the reverse, a paradoxical result to be sure.
So we see that across the various hierarchical
levels between the physics and chemistry of neurons of the brain
and the human mind, it is very difficult if not impossible to
attribute clear-cut principles of causation. Causation seems
to enter the picture at each and every hierarchical level, and is
not wholly reducible to prior causation at another level of
organization. About all that can be said with confidence at
this point is that brain and mind facilitate and reflect each
other, like the valley and the river, but in no logical sense do
they cause each other; that they are parallel processes, and for
an analogue of this seemingly paradoxical statement I would
compare the mind-brain duality to particle-wave duality in
quantum mechanics. The wave attributes of electromagnetic
radiation do not cause the particle attributes, nor vice
versa. The two contradictory and mutually exclusive
properties always accompany each other, and whether the one is
observed or the other depends entirely on one's point of view, i.e.,
the experiment one performs. Once again we see the importance of point
of view, or levels of description. Attribution of causation
between levels is inherently meaningless. This is so far a very
rudimentary model, I admit, and gives little help for forming
testable hypotheses. But we should not feel there is some cosmic
guarantee that we can devise an understandable model in
this case. There is, after all, some paradox in the using of mind
to understand mind, and we should expect some limitations.
Thus the argument that the normal brain causes
normal mind, or that psychedelics cause expanded mind or
consciousness, are both fallacious explanations. Nevertheless, we
can, and have found changes in neural signaling in the brain
which are caused, in the classical sense, by the
psychedelic drugs. If we can combine the facts of these changes
with the vastly improved (yet still very rudimentary) knowledge
we now have of the sequential, parallel, and cybernetic cognitive
processes that occur in the various brain systems under a wide
range of conditions, and test the resulting overall model of
neural signaling against an improved cognitive or psychological
model of the psychedelic state of mind, a new theory may be in
the making. To restate some of the essentials of this theory: it
will have to be a theory of processes, parallel processes that
are complimentary ways of understanding an overall aspect of
reality, of processes of cybernetic control and feedback, of
processes in which classical cause and effect may be at best a
blurred and uncertain property. If it is objected that
inapplicability of cause and effect seems unreasonable, remember
that physics had to confront the same kind of paradoxes earlier
in this century, and succeeded admirably. There is good reason to
believe that theories of the ultimate structure of mind and
consciousness will be no less and probably more mired in apparent
paradox than theories of the ultimate structure of matter and
energy.
But I am getting ahead of myself. As for my
theory, or any theory, being a good explanation of consciousness
or mind, no author should dare such a claim today. A woven web of
guesses with a very imprecise weave would be a big claim. I shall
deal with the implications of my theory for mind, or Mind, only
near the end of this exposition, and only as sheer speculation.
Let me first deal with the cognitive and psychological models of
the psychedelic experience, for these were the aspects that I
first explored, and it was through the construction and testing
of these models that I was able to devise models of neurological
functioning which could explain the cognitive processes that I
had observed. Now the cognitive model I am going to describe will
be for the moment a "naked model" having no structure
to support it, and since the model will be a radical departure,
in some ways, from the way we currently believe our cognitive
processes to operate, it will be easy for the reader to dismiss
it. Bear with me as the pieces of the puzzle fall into place
around the chosen starting point.
Remember that above I asked that the first
consideration should be: "let us think of the effect of a
psychedelic drug as eliminative, rather than additive: the drug
functions as a facilitator of inherent processes, a substance
which by its neurological action allows or assists certain
processes to occur which might otherwise be rare or
improbable." I also mentioned above that the psychedelic
experience seems to provide a certain freedom from habits of
thinking, it almost ensures that one is more sensitive to one's
own prejudicial ways of seeing, hearing, perceiving, acting, and
most importantly, feeling, reasoning and deciding. So far I have
used the term "thinking" (as in habits of thinking),
rather imprecisely, including within its domain all sorts of
mental processes. I will presently re-define thinking to denote
two distinct categories of mental processes, the first
pre-conscious and largely automatic, the second comprising the
processes we normally think of (!) as thinking: reasoning and
deciding, for example. The necessity to provide some careful
definitions is evident simply from the number of ways I have used
"think" in this introductory paragraph, as well as the
obvious overlapping of meaning with other terms. Starting with
the common usage and understanding of such terms therefore, I
will try to provide more precise and functional meanings as I go
along.
Considering the power of psychedelic experience
to repress in some way, or at least make one more aware of habits
of thinking as they happen, I am unavoidably led to the idea that
such habits are a far more important factor in the normal
operation of the brain/mind then has been supposed. But for a
long time, something (perhaps the Behaviorist legacy that I
mentioned previously), seems to have stifled not only the study
of consciousness but also the pursuit of any technical
understanding of what a habit is, psychologically and
neurologically. The word "habit" is used only
non-technically in the literature, with few exceptions, since the
time of William James. But it seems to me that a habit, and there
is no denying that we "have" habits galore, must
consist of something more definable, more describable
technically, the concept must have a more heuristic value than
merely leaving the term to fend for itself in popular use. (16) A habit, or as I
will now call them, Habit Routines, must be something very
much like a memory, (17)
but different from a memory in that it is routinely and
automatically retrieved and employed without any awareness of its
presence or effect.
In looking for a possible site for the storage
of habit routines, analogous to the idea of memory storage, it
occurred to me that probably the "data" (18) of memory and
the data of habit routine was the same data, but that it was
accessed in different ways, perhaps by different systems in the
brain. When a memory is accessed, either intentionally or by some
random cue, what pops into awareness is a scene, a representation
in the various sense domains of a specific and time-delimited
event or series of events. We have a memory of some
specific and bounded fragment of the past, although one memory
may then cue another representing another period of time
altogether. I call this access of memory, Logical Memory
Access, or LMA. It is logical in that the specific
characteristics of the memory, the various informational
fragments from each sensory modality which are accessed, are
related in time and place and represent a sequence of events as
they appear to have happened. (19)
When a habit routine is called up for
use, a process I call Habit Routine Search, or HRS, the
elements of the routine do not seem to be bound by the same time
and place considerations: they may represent fragments of data
that were recorded at many different times and situations, but
with one or more defining parameters relevant to dealing with the
situation for which the habit routine has been summoned. LMA and
HRS are therefore two different means of accessing the data of
long-term memory for two different cognitive results. LMA yields
a tangible memory, HRS yields an unconscious evaluation pattern. (20)
I may now advance the hypothesis that the habit
routine search is a constant and primary process of cognitive
activity of the mind/brain, and furthermore that it is the main
and essential, underlying and pre-conscious process in the
activity we know as thinking. This part of thinking, (let
us call it thinking1), I will define as the unconscious
associational and evaluative process including habit routine
search which precedes, by just that fraction of a second, the
awareness of what is thought through the use of language or other
representational modalities such as the imagination and
manipulation of visual scenes, the use of gestures, the creation
of music and art; these processes are called symbolization. (21) And since the
mind/brain is cybernetic, current sensory or environmental input
must always include or be mixed with input from trains of thought
leading to the instant we are experiencing.
Thus the determining parameters for HRS consist
of the environmental moment (the total sensory input), plus
ongoing feedback generated by conscious reaction to the current
habit routine that has already been generated. We can use the
term "thinking2" to denote and include all those
secondary processes we would normally call thinking, including
symbolization, checking and logical analysis, reasoning, decision
and feedback of instructions or modifying parameters to ongoing
thinking1. Thinking2 has the properties that some would label as
consciousness, but I would, at least for the moment, like to
avoid using the word, if only to simplify my descriptive task.
The feedback of instructions and parameters to
ongoing thinking1 probably uses what is now called working
memory, a short-term limited-capacity memory buffer or store
which is the subject of much contemporary research and debate.
There are apparently several aspects or domains of working
memory: one or more short term stores for spatial and visual
information, another for auditory information, perhaps divided
between speech-based and musical functions, and perhaps working
memory stores for combinations of sensory and cognitive data as
well. I will have more to say on working memory, its various
aspects and functions, and possible brain sites for its operation
in the next couple of chapters. For the moment I will hypothesize
an "information" storage site in the brain which holds
instructions provided by one set of thinking functions
(thinking2), for the execution of another set of thinking
functions (thinking1) which provide the raw material for the
process as a whole. Thus the habit routine search of thinking1 in
the data of long-term memory is modified and guided by
instructions from the decisions of thinking2 held in working
memory. These decisions may be deliberate, or largely automatic
yet available for introspection. Figure 1 represents a simple
flow chart of the processes described.
FIGURE 1. Flow Chart of Cognitive Processes.
ENV=Environmental moment, all sensory input at the given moment.
HRS=Habit Routine Search function, projects ENV into LTM and
retrieves the Habit Routine. LTM=Long Term Memory. HR+S=Assembled
habit routine plus selected Sensory information.
ACTION=implementation of habit routine in physical action or
approval of cognitive disposition; may be rejected in
"SW", switch controlled by conscious decision. The
HABIT ROUTINE is both a template containing relevant sensory data
from ENV, and at the same time a prefabricated plan for reaction
to ENV and its WM (Working Memory) input. HR+S is delivered to
Thinking2 for Checking, Analysis, Attention, to which
Symbolization resonates. These conscious processes are then used
for Decision to accept or reject the habit routine and optionally
provide input parameters via WM affecting further HRS.
Thinking1=unconscious processes not available directly to
introspection. Thinking2=conscious processes, but may be
automatic and unattended unless Attention is active. Decision
based on either unattended processes, or processes scrutinized
with Attention and/or Symbolization. Decision may accept, reject,
supply parameters, and request further HRS. Decide has a
double-headed arrow back to other thinking2 activities to
indicate that there are cycles of thinking2 processes possible
before deciding then alters ongoing thinking1 processes. Checking
and Analysis are merely representative of all such functions
which could be said to consciously deal with ongoing cognition,
Reasoning, Calculation, etc., could also be included. Checking,
Analysis, Attention, and Symbolization could be said to
constitute components of Perception or Awareness. Note that the
process of LMA is omitted for the present.
To restate the model then, thinking1 is the
overall automatic and unconscious process of the comparison of
current sensory input plus the result of previous symbolization,
checking and decision, (thinking2), with information stored in
long-term memory accessed through the process of habit routine
search. We are not normally aware of the thinking1 processes
at all. Decision, which may be active or passive, (and is mostly
the latter), is consequently fed back into the thinking1/HRS
process as an additional defining parameter for ongoing HRS. It
may also act as a switch nullifying the implicit actions
recommended by the ongoing habit routine. This is probably a very
arbitrary and primitive attempt to formulate a schematic flow
model of some of the overall ongoing everyday processes of the
human mind. And it certainly, along with all other possible
models, must be a great over-simplification. But let us just take
it as a first faltering step in the direction we think
(thinking2!) we want to go in our understanding of psychedelic
experience.
Let me illustrate the above proposed processes
with a short cognitive story, the kind of scene that happens to
us all quite frequently, but which passes with little recognition
of just what is taking place. I live in the mountains in an area
that has seen rural subsistence farming for a thousand or more
years. During this long period, the mountainside has been divided
and maintained into flat cultivable strips separated by rock
walls put together with no mortar, but a lot of care.
Nevertheless, with every prolonged period of rain, the earth
swells and a piece of wall somewhere is bound to collapse,
needing repair. Occasionally, a rock or two will get rolling and
wind up several terraces away from the point of collapse. Thus in
my walks around the property, it is common enough to see a grey
irregularly-shaped stone, or several, in the midst of the
pathway, even when no immediate point of wall damage is evident.
Recently, walking down to the garden, in a mood
of simply passively enjoying the walk, thinking not really about
any particular topic, perhaps on the border of that state known
as day-dreaming, nothing out of the ordinary seems to be
happening when...
According to my cognitive model above, we could
say that as I am walking, thinking1 is doing its normal,
unconscious and pre-emptive job of actively using all sensory
input to compare the current ongoing activity of my walk with all
that I have learned and experienced, stored in long-term memory.
The component process of thinking1, HRS, is constantly retrieving
the simplest, most readily available, most easily employable
habit routines which match the parameters defined by the totality
of sensory environmental input and my pre-organized intention
(walking down to the garden), and these habit routines are then
supplied, firstly, as templates for the automatic regulation of
all ongoing process including the perception and reaction to the
surroundings. Secondly, the habit routine, along with relevant
fragments of the sensory data itself, is supplied to thinking2,
which at this moment of daydreaming, is doing very little
analyzing, reasoning, or deciding about the surroundings. The
component process of thinking2, symbolization, is however
representing the sensory data (most of which is merely the
information of the current habit routine) and making it available
for awareness, so that I "see, hear, smell, feel,
enjoy..." (and perhaps even explain to myself in language:
the mountains are nice today!) my entire surroundings, although I
pay no special attention to anything in particular. There is even
an ongoing, if vague internal dialog occurring, partly about the
surroundings, but also about other matters entirely. This I am
not particularly paying attention to either. Thinking2 is
relaxing, simply passively "enjoying" the stroll.
Unless thinking1 gives some extraordinary signal that something
is amiss, or unusual, thinking2 is quite content to let thinking1
supply all interpretations and responses to ongoing activity
(action). Thinking2 is therefore interfering minimally, if at
all, in the thinking1 processes through the prerogatives of
reasoning and deciding feedback via working memory.
...when suddenly, I spy a grey rock in the
pathway ahead. As I said, this is not an unusual occurrence, but
since I have not seen a rock at this spot previously, thinking2
goes into action, prodded by the novelty signaled by thinking1,
and "notices" the novelty and reviews (checking) the
actions of thinking1 which has presented the habit routine that,
there before me, just like several times in the past, lies a rock
that has rolled down from some wall up above. This is a habit
routine of interpretation of environmental data (ENV) and carries
the action recommendation to accept the novel object as
"grey rock". The cognitive processes begin to operate
fast and furiously now, even though this is no emergency, just a
minor novelty. Fleetingly I am aware of the analytical checking
process in thinking2 that indicates, yes, it rained quite heavily
last week, (22) so
here is the result. Another thread of checking goes on, seemingly
at the same time, which finds the information that there is a
wall, two or three terraces up from this point, that is known to
be in poor repair and likely to have collapsed. I am aware that
somehow this analysis happens at lightning speed, almost
instantaneously, and that the symbolization in language with
which I can "explain" these positive checks on the
habit routine comes slightly after the fact, perhaps after the
checking process has already told thinking1 that its habit
routine is acceptable, proceed with normal operation. Thus the
checking and deciding function in thinking2 seems to be
independent, and faster than the symbolization of thinking2 which
seems only to resonate to the former operation.
I am just about to approve the habit routine as
an accurate and true representation of the novelty which lies
before me when, and this happens so quickly as to be almost
simultaneous with all that has been so far described, something
seems amiss. Perhaps the color was slightly wrong, or perhaps I
detected some movement in the object, but with a sudden suspicion
like that which one feels when one realizes he has been lied to,
thinking2 sends out a strong command to thinking1 (the classic
double-take!): suspicious interpretation! Find alternate habit
routine! These commands also occur well before any symbolization
process can "explain" what is going on. And lo and
behold, with this extra prodding and data, the HRS comes up with
the more accurate suggestion that here lies a dirty, partially
crumpled plastic bag from the local supermarket. This habit
routine was probably one of several more that could be called up,
in a series of increasing complexity and unlikelihood, and
indeed, if the bag had been red, rather than dirty white (almost
grey), the "plastic bag" interpretation would have been
the first accessed, being the most likely given the ENV parameter
of the color red. (All the rocks here are grey.) (23) An interesting after-effect occurs
here: I notice that during the next few moments I can view the
object and willfully transpose its identity back to that of grey
stone, but this ability fades and finally I am unable to
interpret the object as anything but plastic bag. The dependence
of perceived reality upon preconceptions, i.e., habit
routines, is especially demonstrated by this residual if fleeting
ability to see the object as either interpretation.
Now if it takes the above amount of words to
analytically describe what occurred in probably a half-second, my
statement that there are limitations in using the mind to explain
mind takes on some relevance. And the above is certainly an
oversimplification! For instance, I believe that thinking1 and
HRS can be multitasking, to use a computer analogy. Thinking1 and
associated HRS can be interpreting the ongoing activity as
described above, and simultaneously be working on another thread
of material in reference to my internal dialog, which I mention
above as possibly being about something completely different than
my walk. I can be actively talking to myself about some subject
in which I have many severe prejudices (which are being accessed
as habit routines by thinking1), all the while noticing grey
rocks, plastic bags, or whatever, which also require the HRS
system to interpret. Whether the two threads are simultaneous or
"time-sharing", I would not yet care to say. As for
even further aspects of complexity, I have also made no mention
yet of how the factors of significance or value are attached to
the sensory data accompanying a habit routine. More on this
later.
Let me postpone further theoretical
considerations for a bit to consider how the psychedelic
experience fits with the hypotheses presented so far.
The function of a psychedelic drug, according
to my theory, is to interfere in some way with the Habit Routine
Search function of the brain, and I will call this the Habit
Suspension Model of the effect of psychedelic drugs.
Since the habit routine search mechanism has
very probably several functional neural pathways and brain parts
which support its operation, different psychedelic drugs may
affect the system by differing mechanisms yet yield very similar
overall results. All further supposed effects of the ingestion of
these substances are not direct effects of the drugs themselves,
but rather are consequences, which very probably are perpetuated
and magnified by cybernetic mechanisms, of the changes
brought about in the HRS system of the brain.
Now I do not mean to imply that habit routines
are destroyed by the influence of psychedelics, or that the
habits are completely suppressed or inaccessible during the time
of drug influence. It is much more a process of temporary
delay or change in significance and value of habit
routines and their consequently changed use in ongoing cognitive
processes. The strength of the effect seems dose-dependent. The
habit routines seem to arrive slightly out of phase, if I may be
allowed an electromagnetic analogy, and presented thusly to
thinking2 do not seem correct or valid recommendations for
ensuing evaluation and decision. And it is the habit routines
used for perception, analysis, reasoning and symbolization (I
will call them the cognitive habit routines) (24) that are primarily affected: habit
routines which are used to coordinate movement, such as walking
or manipulating objects, are only slightly affected, if at all.
Unlike alcohol or some other drugs, even high doses of
psychedelics have very minimal effects on physical coordination.
As Huxley noted on his first mescaline experience: although he
wondered, when it was suggested that he take a walk in the
garden, whether he would be physically able to leave his chair,
once launchedinto the act he noticed no difficulty or change in
coordination.
Now we may state something about the
"causes" of the normal state of mind and the
psychedelic state: the normal state of mind is facilitated by the
constant process of HRS which finds appropriate,
personality-typical responses for all ongoing activity. A
"response" may be an interpretation or complex
perception, an attitude, an emotional reaction, a
"prejudice", or a pilot for actual physical action.
These responses are habit routines representing the summed
totality of ways in which similar situations were dealt with in
the past, and these habit routines are presented to thinking2 as
pre-structured ways of perceiving and dealing with the ongoing
situation so as to minimize or practically eliminate the
necessity for thinking2 to doubt perception or alter the response
through analytical decision making. Unless thinking2 is signaled
of some unusual significance that warrants attention, it may not
even become aware of the decisions made on its behalf by
thinking1. The process is cybernetic, an endless loop of
causation, a process which, after a small delay, may enter
consciousness as language and other reflective activities in the
process defined as symbolization.
The normal delivery of HR's by the HRS mechanism
for use in ongoing cognitive activity is precisely what we
call a normal state of mind, a state in which the checking
ability and analysis of thinking2 does or needs to do very
little. A good analogy would be driving along a well-known road
in light traffic: practically all required actions are
automatically provided for without conscious effort or the need
for evaluation by the analysis and checking of thinking2. This
applies to all physical routines needed to steer, brake, etc.,
but more importantly to the routines of perception, judgment, and
planning needed to decide, for example, whether the child ahead
is probably going to ride his bike too close for safety. Although
everyone would accept the analogy, I will perhaps not make many
friends suggesting that the totality of life is also a simple
matter of habit routines (sometimes of somewhat greater
complexity than those dealing with highway driving!), separated
at infrequent intervals by brief bursts of creativity which may
be little more than responses to temporary emergencies.
Psychology textbooks may be full of research showing how
automatic most actions and thoughts really are, but the reader
automatically (!) takes the position that the description is
relevant to others, the objects of study, and certainly not to
him who is right then scrutinizing the phenomenon. We may deduce,
perhaps, that a very powerful habit routine is the one which
gives us the impression of being constantly and fully aware, in
an analytic, deciding, and creative sense, of our surroundings
and thought processes, that habits play only a minor,
inconsequential and optional role in thinking. (25) Again, the psychology textbooks are
filled with studies which indicate the contrary.
For the moment I must postpone showing the
distinction between physical habit routines on the one hand, (as
for example the physical, learned routines employed in the actual
driving of the car, above), and perceptual and cognitive habit
routines on the other. For now, we could say that cognitive habit
routines, among their other functions, may constitute a pilot for
the selection and implementation of motor routines used to
guide and control actual physical movement. I believe that two
quite independent systems of the brain are used to store and
implement the instructions for these activities. This would
explain why, according to my model as well as experimental
observations, cognitive and perceptual habit routines are
strongly affected by psychedelics, but physical coordination is
practically untouched.
It is the normal and pre-emptive operation of
the HRS mechanism which is the impediment preventing the normal
mind from interpreting sensory and feedback input as anything but
common, routine, normal, everyday input.
We are very much the slaves of the habit routine
mechanism, and this is to be expected from an evolutionary
standpoint. HRS is the mechanism all organisms having even
moderately developed nervous systems use to deal with any and all
situations which do not present a crisis, situations of normal
significance and value for ongoing existence. The habit routine
is a short-cut, a pre-established pattern allowing an organism to
comprehend and deal with commonly encountered situations quickly
and with a very minimum of neurological, cognitive effort. More
primitive animals with very little cognitive ability in reserve
must rely strongly upon the HRS system. The habit routine
mechanism was probably a very early evolutionary development in
the animal kingdom for it would have conferred obvious important
advantages over any animal which had to treat every single event
as unique, an animal which would not gain the benefits of
practice and learning about a wide range of everyday situations.
Let us now review the list of
"effects" outlined earlier and see how they can be
understood in terms of the Habit Suspension Model. As an
introduction to the phenomenology of ASCs, I asked, "let us
see if we can understand each 'effect' not as something that a
psychedelic drug does, but as something which we
might do, if only rarely, under certain circumstances."
Pretend, for the moment, that you have never even heard of
psychedelic drugs. This may not be easy, but for someone with
some measure of practiced control over his habit routines, in
reading the list, I think it would be quite normal to be able to
say, "Yes, I've experienced something like that", or at
least admit that someone they know had had similar experiences.
In short, the only thing that makes any of the categories awesome
or strange, is their purported causal connection with psychedelic
drugs. Take the famous alleged time-distorting power of
psychedelic drugs. If you were having a very busy and interesting
afternoon with your favorite hobby, you might look up at the
clock and remark, "holy cow, five-thirty already!".
But if you heard from some tabloid-reported source that LSD made
you feel it was only about four o'clock when actually it was
five-thirty... (or vice versa ).
I think it is obvious that we have habit
routines for dealing with the everyday perception of the passage
of time, so that when we look at a clock, it is really only to
confirm what we already sense about the time of day. If you look
at your watch, and it has stopped even twenty minutes previous,
something seems immediately wrong unless you are particularly
distracted with other tasks. Even upon awakening from a deep
sleep in the middle of the night, I quite often find that I know
the time to the nearest ten minutes, in spite of living far out
in the countryside away from hourly chimes or audible traffic
patterns. In the above case of intense absorption in some
activity, we have habit routines available such that we expect
it to actually be later than it feels, so that when we
express amazement that it's already five-thirty, the knowledge
that we have been busily engaged does more than a little to take
the edge off the amazement, so to speak.
All this is common knowledge. But where my
theory begins, is in the attempt to describe the data and systems
by which this simple everyday process is implemented, and
drastically changed by various influences including psychedelic
drugs. The hypothesis that it is installed potential habit
routines that deal with everyday perception of time gains some
credibility from the knowledge that time perception was quite
different before the advent of widespread mechanical time-keeping
devices. In medieval Europe, daylight hours were longer or
shorter according to the season, somethingthat would probably
wreak havoc with our modern sense of time until we had long
practice installing the newly required habit routines to deal
with the situation.
My theory also departs from simple common
knowledge in its attribution of such fundamental importance to
the use of habit routine; rather than a habit being an occasional
type of response to certain situations,
it is now proposed that the habit routine
search is the principal operation in thinking1, always a
precedent to awareness and thinking2, and that the habit routine
presented to awareness for decision making always constitutes
the pre-emptive or default response, seldom overruled by the
active analysis and decision of thinking2 except in cases of
emergency or particularly unusual significance of events.
Familiarity breeds indifference, as Aldous
Huxley noted, but the cognitive mechanism by which such an
aphorism might operate has until now never been proposed. All
situations for which a satisfactory habit routine may be summoned
are dealt with as automatically, and with as great a measure of
indifference, as possible. The artist, the great composer, the
creative genius in any field may succeed in seeing the
significant when presented with the merely routine, (26) but this is not
the normal state of brain operation, nor is it the type of brain
operation that evolution has caused to be predominant.
And this is why psychedelic drugs appear to be
so overwhelmingly powerful. When awareness is effectively cut
loose from the normal and reliable flow of habit routine, everything
seems changed, odd, with unusual, sometimes overpowering, but not
immediately explainable changes in significance. And as I have
indicated, this very change is actively recycled and augmented by
cybernetic feedback wherein current evaluation and checking of
awareness is fed back into the stream of thinking1 which is
seeking out further habit routines, now including parameters
which instruct it to look for the unusual, and these new habit
routines themselves are then delayed, suspended, or changed in
significance. Item C in the phenomenology of ASC's, the sense or
fear of loss of control, can be easily understood from the
foregoing. An individual's reality, what he automatically
believes to be normal and true in his estimation of the world
around him, is entirely a matter of the habit routines he has
collected, and himself installed, whether by intentional or
unconscious practice. If the individual is not prepared to
surrender his cherished notions, if he cannot overcome the
obvious implication that reality, seen without the aid of
preconceived habit routines, must appear relative and not
absolute, feelings of loss of control are the naive
interpretation to be expected. (And of course, the lesson being
taught is, "What control?")
As for the other items listed previously as
"effects" of psychedelic drugs, it should not now be
difficult to see how they are all the result of an individual's
having reduced access to his habit routines which define how he
sees, thinks, perceives objects around him, perceives his own
body and state of mind, the meaning and significance he attaches
to otherwise ordinary thoughts and perceptions, and so on.
So-called perceptual distortions are merely ordinary perception
divorced from the normal pre-emptive preconditioning of the habit
routine complex through which such perceptions are symbolized. To
those who wish to believe that psychedelic drugs cause
hallucinations and bizarre perceptual effects, the proposal that
perception under the influence of the psychedelic experience is
in fact closer to actual reality than normal perception (which is
heavily "distorted" by our habit routines) will appear
absurd. But the "habit of thinking" (as in Margolis'
analysis, see footnote 16) which prevents a paradigm shift
necessary to understand the psychedelic experience may well be
just this: the whole of our experience has established the
conviction, in reality a lie, that what we perceive is
automatically and without doubt, reality. Although most current
theories in psychology recognize the lie, as individuals we still
carry on as if this were a mere scientific technicality which
appears in certain laboratory experiments. The example
illustrated by the grey stone anecdote shows how misinformed we
are in this conviction.
Some of the items in the phenomenology of ASC's
may be understood as secondary or cascade effects of the more
primary results of suspended habit routine: hypersuggestibility
might be interpreted as a result of the feelings of loss of
control, sense of ineffability, and change of significance
wherein the suggestions of the guide or researcher are given
greater weight in the vacuum of normal comprehension of ongoing
cognition. Change in emotional expression would likewise be a
secondary effect derived from perceived alterations in thinking,
feeling of loss of control, etc. The suspension of the normal
framework of habit routine for interpreting and symbolizing
ongoing experience should obviously result in the sense of
ineffability. Feelings of rejuvenation may result from suspension
of personality habit routines that have become contradictory or
self-destructive, their temporary suspension leading the
individual to realize that they are mere routines, and capable of
being reformed once seen for what they are. Here we are led to
the hypothesis that the personality itself can be understood as a
malleable and alterable collection of habit routines; some early
psychedelic research suggested as much, and made use of the idea
by successfully treating many personality disorders with
psychedelic therapy.
Indeed, the very existence of what we call
"personality" as such a strong, pervasive property of a
human being argues for the prevalence, importance, and
predominance of habit routines and the HRS as the primary
cognitive process. Personality, world view, beliefs, desires,
opinions, are all understandable as complex assemblies of habit
routines. What the Freudians have for so long called the
unconscious, may simply be the totality of potential habit
routines that can be accessed! (27) A memory is not a memory until it is
accessed, therefore an unconscious memory is an oxymoron. But a
habit routine, (whose elements consist of the very same data), is
not only an unconscious potential pattern for perception,
comprehension, and behavior, it is in addition and quite
normally, accessed and employed unconsciously, and the process is
not available to introspection.
To return to the pathway for just a moment, from
my own personal experiences with psychedelic drugs, the grey
stone in question would probably have appeared, at first and very
briefly, as an object of some significance (it was new to its
location) but without an habit routine to immediately
identify it. The first thing my thinking2 would sense would be
mystery, the object seen as an unknown. Very quickly
thereafter, I think it is common during psychedelic experience
for the HRS of thinking1 to present multiple
interpretations of the object (hence one or more interpretations
would logically have to be an "hallucination"); I might
have sensed two or more possible identifications at once,
whereupon the relativeness of its novelty and significance might
stimulate further fundamental changes in my interpretation, and
so on. As this process is cybernetic, it can quite run away with
itself, so to speak, and the ordinary become fantastic through
successive interpretations and alterations of meaning and
significance.
The multiple interpretations, the multiple habit
routines appearing simultaneously, might be the mechanism whereby
it has been noticed by researchers that psychedelic experience
can assist in the "recovery and eliciting of vast quantities
of unconscious material." It is as if thinking2 is
signaling, in the absence of a dependable habit routine,
"quick, send me all the habit routines you've got, there's a
big mystery going on here." And then the habit routines that
do arrive are also out of whack... (but also potentially very
revealing of the personality and the "unconscious"). At
this stage there is little to be done except to relax and observe
the process as it unfolds. It is instructive to the personality
to be shown how dependent it is on normal and perhaps quite
artificial automatisms, and it is instructive concerning the
underlying nature of reality to observe first hand how its
interpretation is also totally dependent on preconceived
structures of the mind which may be more or less arbitrary, if
not outright deception. If this be madness, schizophrenia,
psychosis, or folly, a moderate dose of it is certainly more than
a homeopathic remedy for the far greater sickness which quite
obviously afflicts modern man "in this century of
holocaust."
To conclude this chapter, I will quote at length
another account of psychedelic experience and the
"effects" as noted by the experiencer. The narrative is
that of Aldous Huxley, probably the most famous and widely-read
account of psychedelic experience to date.
I took my pill at eleven. An hour and half later I was
sitting in my study, looking intently at a small glass vase.
The vase contained only three flowers—a full-blown Belle
of Portugal rose, shell pink with a hint at every petal's
base of a hotter, flamier hue; a large magenta and
cream-coloured carnation; and, pale purple at the end of its
broken stalk, the bold heraldic blossom of an iris.
Fortuitous and provisional, the little nosegay broke all the
rules of traditional good taste. At breakfast that morning I
had been struck by the lively dissonance of its colours. But
that was no longer the point. I was not looking now at an
unusual flower arrangement. I was seeing what Adam had seen
on the morning of his creation - the miracle, moment by
moment, of naked existence... [I was seeing] a bunch of
flowers shining with their own inner light and all but
quivering under the pressure of the significance with which
they were charged...[And] the books, for example, with which
my study walls were lined. Like the flowers, they glowed,
when I looked at them, with brighter colours, a profounder
significance. Red books, like rubies; emerald books; books
bound in white jade; books of agate, of aquamarine, of yellow
topaz; lapis Lazuli books whose colour was so intense, so
intrinsically meaningful, that they seemed to be on the point
of leaving the shelves to thrust themselves more insistently
on my attention...
At ordinary times the eye concerns itself with such
problems as Where?—How far?—How situated in
relation to what? In the mescalin experience the implied
questions to which the eye responds are of another order.
Place and distance cease to be of much interest. The mind
does its perceiving in terms of intensity of existence,
profundity of significance, relationships within a pattern...
From the books the investigator directed my attention to
the furniture. A small typing-table stood in the centre of
the room; beyond it, from my point of view, was a wicker
chair and beyond that a desk. The three pieces formed an
intricate pattern of horizontals, uprights and diagonals - a
pattern all the more interesting for not being interpreted in
terms of spatial relationships. Table, chair and desk came
together in a composition that was like something by Braque
or Juan Gris, a still life recognizably related to the
objective world, but rendered without depth, without any
attempt at photographic realism. I was looking at my
furniture, not as the utilitarian who has to sit on chairs,
to write at desks and tables, and not as the cameraman or
scientific recorder, but as the pure aesthete whose concern
is only with forms and their relationships within the field
of vision or the picture space. But as I looked, this purely
aesthetic Cubist's-eye view gave place to what I can only
describe as the sacramental vision of reality. I was back
where I had been when I was looking at the flowers—back
in a world where everything shone with the Inner Light and
was infinite in its significance...
Mescalin raises all colours to a higher power and makes
the percipient aware of innumerable fine shades of
difference, to which, at ordinary times, he is completely
blind... Visual impressions are greatly intensified and the
eye recovers some of the perceptual innocence of childhood,
when the sensum was not immediately and automatically
subordinated to the concept. Interest in space is diminished
and interest in time falls almost to zero... Though the
intellect remains unimpaired and though perception is
enormously improved, the will suffers a profound change for
the worse. The mescalin taker sees no reason for doing
anything in particular and finds most of the causes for
which, at ordinary times, he was prepared to act and suffer,
profoundly uninteresting. He can't be bothered with them, for
the good reason that he has better things to think about...
'This is how one ought to see,' I kept saying as I looked
down at my trousers, or glanced at the jewelled books in the
shelves, at the legs of my infinitely more than Van-Goghian
chair. 'This is how one ought to see, how things really
are'... for the moment, mescalin had delivered me [from] the
world of selves, of time, of moral judgments and utilitarian
considerations, the world (and it was this aspect of human
life which I wished, above all else, to forget) of
self-assertion, of cocksuredness, of over-valued words and
idolatrously worshipped notions...
[T]he investigator suggested a walk in the garden. I was
willing; and though my body seemed to have dissociated itself
almost completely from my mind—or, to be more accurate,
though my awareness of the transfigured outer world was no
longer accompanied by an awareness of my physical
organism—found myself able to get up, open the
French-window and walk out with only a minimum of hesitation.
It was odd, of course, to feel that 'I' was not the same as
these arms and legs 'out there,' as this wholly objective
trunk and neck and even head. It was odd; but one soon got
used to it. And anyhow the body seemed perfectly well able to
look after itself. In reality, of course, it always does look
after itself. All that the conscious ego can do is to
formulate wishes, which are then carried out by forces which
it controls very little and understands not at all. When it
does anything more—when it tries too hard, for example,
when it worries, when it becomes apprehensive about the
future—it lowers the effectiveness of those forces and
may even cause the devitalized body to fall ill. In my
present state, awareness was not referred to an ego; it was,
so to speak, on its own. This meant that the physiological
intelligence controlling the body was also on its own. For
the moment that interfering neurotic who, in waking hours,
tries to run the show was blessedly out of the way. (28)
What a wonderfully poetic way of describing the
normal collection of habit routines that rendered the world
ordinary, plain, of merely routine significance: Huxley calls his
habit-routine governed personality "that interfering
neurotic who, in waking hours, tries to run the show." He
notes that his awareness "was not referred to an ego",
i.e., that the habit routines of personality that preserve
self-image, self-importance, selfness, were no longer available,
his awareness "was, so to speak, on its own." And the
following line: "All that the conscious ego can do is to
formulate wishes, which are then carried out by forces which it
controls very little and understands not at all," is nothing
but a poetic description of the operation of checking and
decision of thinking2 feeding back instructions as parameters for
further habit routine search operations via working memory. If we
do not control them, at least we may now understand them somewhat
better. And note the number of times that increased
"significance" is mentioned...
... for the moment, mescalin had delivered me [from] the
world of selves, of time, of moral judgments and utilitarian
considerations, the world (and it was this aspect of human
life which I wished, above all else, to forget) of
self-assertion, of cocksuredness, of over-valued words and
idolatrously worshipped notions...
In a word, mescaline had delivered him from
habit routines. If the Habit Suspension Model of psychedelic
experience is correct, we may begin to see the enormous power of
the HRS mechanism to shape our every impression, our every word
and deed, for if the profound changes of psychedelic experience
are nothing but reduced access to acceptable habit routines, we
would have to say that habit routines are the cognitive water we
swim in, omnipresent and supportive of our every intellectual
movement, yet (until now) perfectly transparent and undetectable
to ordinary scrutiny.
At the risk of seeing habit routines everywhere,
for a new theory often incites such excesses in its newly
acquired adherents, I think it safe to say that most of the
"effects" noted by Mr. Huxley, and in the preceding
examples as well, can be adequately understood in terms of the
Habit Suspension Model. In Mr. Huxley's case, considering his
great personal interest in art, the Perennial Philosophy and
mystical and spiritual matters, his compassion for the human
situation, and his humility, the effects he describes demand such
an interpretation.
References
(1). An excellent and recent entry,
complete with 121-page bibliography: Pharmacotheon:
Entheogenic Drugs, their Plant Sources and History, Jonathan
Ott, 1993, Natural Products Co., Kennewick WA. (back)
(2). see for example "The Role of Hallucinogenic Plants
in European Witchcraft" by Michael J. Harner, in Hallucinogens
and Shamanism, Michael J. Harner, editor, Oxford University
Press, 1973. This overall if brief survey is a classic of the
psychedelic literature, not to be overlooked. (back)
(3). "The Effects of Psychedelic Experience on Language
Functioning", Stanley Krippner, in Psychedelics,
Aaronson and Osmond, Doubleday & Company 1970. (back)
(4). Ibid. (back)
(5). "Toward an Individual Psychotherapy", Masters
& Houston, Psychedelics, (Ibid.) (back)
(6). Drugs and the Brain, Solomon H. Snyder,
Scientific American Library 1986, p2. (back)
(7). Where the author refers to an ASC, it is an Altered
State of Consciousness. (back)
(8). edited excerpts from "Altered States of
Consciousness", Arnold M. Ludwig, in Altered States of
Consciousness, Charles T. Tart, Doubleday & Company 1972
pp15-19. (back)
(9). The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience, Masters
and Houston, Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1966, p5. (back)
(10). "How does LSD Work" in The Hallucinogens,
Hoffer and Osmond, Academic Press 1967 p211. (back)
(11). Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis,
Charles Scribner's Sons 1994, see page three for example. (back)
(12)> See for example Stairway to the Mind, Alwyn
Scott, Springer-Verlag 1995 (back)
(13). I am for the moment ignoring the hypothesis that
quantum indeterminacy may be the source of the brain
indeterminacy necessary for philosophically-real free will. (back)
(14). The Rediscovery of the Mind, John R. Searle,
Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992. (back)
(15). "The Mystery of Consciousness", in The New
York Review of Books, November 2, 1995, p60. (back)
(16). In The Oxford Companion to the Mind for
instance, although "instinct" and other terms frowned
upon by Behaviorists have generous entries, "habit" has
no entry whatsoever. On the other hand, Howard Margolis, a
student of Thomas Kuhn, has written two admirable books
concerning "habits of mind" and how they govern
perception, judgment, and even scientific beliefs. See Patterns,
Thinking and Cognition, 1987, and Paradigms and Barriers,
How Habits of Mind Govern Scientific Beliefs, 1993, both
University of Chicago Press. (back)
(17). When speaking of memory here, I refer to what is now
generally called "long-term memory." (back)
(18). I enclose the word in quotes to denote my
dissatisfaction with the current computer-oriented models of much
of cognitive science. In using such words as data, information,
computation, etc. when speaking about mind and consciousness, one
does less of explaining than "conjuring away the barriers
between man and machine, between consciousness and
mechanism." (Raymond Tallis in Psycho-Electronics).
But it is very difficult not to use such terms today, so
ingrained is the idea of some equivalence between mind and
machine. I hope that the reader will see that as my theory
develops, along with new ways to understand the important differences
between man and machine, the use of such terms will slowly be
replaced by new concepts which obviate their need. Thus I will
from this point in the text suspend the tediousness of quotation
marks provided the reader will keep in mind the limitations I
have expressed. (back)
(19). Recent terminology as well as theory in the field of
memory research has blossomed. The process of LMA which I define
here would be said to access autobiographical or episodic
memory; additionally there have been proposed the terms procedural,
semantic, implicit and explicit, short-term, long-term, and
working memory to describe other aspects of memory. I shall
define and use these terms as the model develops. (back)
(20). Perhaps an analogy would be helpful here. We might
think of a unit of memory as like a single frame of a motion
picture. In LMA, a sequence of frames is called up, and
experienced as a sequence or "film clip," in temporal
order, and with conscious reference to the time and conditions
where the frames were recorded. This is not to say that the
process may not become degraded, with loss of data, loss of
reference to time and place, erroneous mixing of different
memories, etc., the ideal expressed merely illustrates the type
and mechanics of the process to be understood. HRS, however,
would access a variety of single frames recorded at different
times and places, a sort of collage of single frames, associated
not as a temporal sequence, and not consciouslyexperienced, but
unconsciously selected and employed according to a thematic
agenda specified by subject content corresponding to current
perception. Thus if stopped on the highway by a "law
enforcement officer" for no apparent reason, we may be
rather hurriedly accessing, in the data of all memories of
dealings with the police (our own and knowledge of such dealings
by others gleaned from friends, newspapers, etc.), for every
possible habit routine that might assist in estimating what is
going on. Specific memories of similar scenes might appear
fleetingly, but far more important would be the unconscious
evaluation patterns supplied by habit routine search that would
allow and assist our judgment to calculate just how to react to
any eventuality, given the particular parameters of the current
situation. Thus if he has just gotten off an excessively chromed
Harley, has black ray-bans, razor-sharp creases on his shirt and
a penetrating snarl we will automatically react somewhat
differently than if he was a school-crossing patrolman, tips his
hat and says he thinks our signal light might be out. No
deliberate calculation or access of actual memories via LMA is
necessary, yet the "data" of many memories is obviously
being employed, unconsciously and automatically, to guide our
reaction to the situation. (back)
(21). The model described here has parallels to ideas
suggested by C.H. van Rhijn, see "Symbolysis: Psychotherapy
by Symbolic Presentation" in The Use of LSD in
Psychotherapy, Harold A. Abramson, editor, Josiah Macy, Jr.
Foundation, 1960. (back)
(22). This process must also use a habit routine, thinking2
feeding instructions to thinking1 to search for justification
that its previous interpretation of "grey rock ahead"
is possible. A habit routine is then found which relates the
cause and effect pattern learned previously about rain and
out-of-place rocks. I do not specifically remember as memories
the rainy days and the displaced rocks encountered, but use only
"frames" of these memories to obtain the fact that rain
has recently occurred on a scale which is known from experience
to produce grey rocks in pathways. (back)
(23). This knowledge must also have been retrieved and used
through HRS as a parameter ensuring that a grey object be
interpreted as probably a stone, and an object of decidedly
non-grey hue as not-a-stone. (back)
(24). And here I think that we are dealing with two classes
of habit routines, some simple habit routines of perception are
probably called up by the arrangement of sensory environmental
data itself, i.e., in thinking1, whereas habit routines of
analysis and symbolization must be habit routines that are called
up by thinking1 on behalf of thinking2. I will therefore
sometimes refer to a habit routine complex, signifying a
composite habit routine comprising multiple aspects and multiple
interlocking recommendations for action. (back)
(25). This might be understood as a habit routine which
thinking2 installs in memory through the process of constantly
seeing its power to alter the surroundings. The habit routine is
that thinking2 is in control, while the reality is that, most of
the time, it is on vacation. (back)
(26). The question presents itself:
Who can be best trusted to decide what is, and what is not
routine, the creative genius or the bored assembly-line worker? (back)
(27). Warning! The reaction to such
ideas must also be primarily a matter of habit routines
representing one's investment in previous theories. (back)
(28). Aldous Huxley, The Doors of
Perception, 1954, Chatto & Windus. Quotation assembled
from various sections of the essay. (back)
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