Altered states: different ways of seeing and thinking about reality and consciousness, and of actually “being” in the world in Daydreaming on the Porch

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.

William Blake

These days I can much more fully understand why people take drugs or mind-altering substances. Why, for instance, Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World experimented with hallucinogens (mescaline) and wrote his book “The Doors of Perception.”

It’s always been true that for many people throughout history, (extra)ordinary “real” life is not quite enough, it seems. In their own eagerness to know more about the mind and its infinite complexities, they stimulate their brains with chemicals that alter consciousness in profound and sometimes very disturbing ways. Often it’s because the pain of coping wth life is unbearable, and drugs offer a way out, temporarily, and time being the mysterious and transient thing it is, brief episodes of self-prescribed, enhanced reality change the perception of time and space so that things are no longer as they seem or should be. The world becomes multi-dimensional, multi-layered. New doors are opened to strange and wonderful places, as have been described over and over in the literature of such experiences.

It seems strange to me, however, that drugs and altered states of mind would be so sought after and abused by the young, who have fresh eyes and senses, and expanding minds capable of perceiving the newsness and unexpected in those scenes, places, objects, literature, art, media, etc. that older persons such as myself have to struggle at times to be amazed or even moved by. We think we’ve seen it all before, but we haven’t seen that much, really, in the grand scheme of things, and sometimes youth has to drag us into the light again. The people who really know what’s going on don’t say much or give away their secrets easily. Or they try and fail to do so because how can mere words describe those mind-altering experiences?

So, sometimes I understand why we age so painfully and so wistfully, filled with recollections and nostalgia for our own youth, no matter how awful a lot of it was. We long to understand how we came to be as we are, and we see youth making all our mistakes and feel helpless as they go about their self-destructive ways. Not that we aren’t still doing the same self-destructive types of things. Just that we know better, or should.

I don’t know what cocaine, Ecstasy, LSD, today’s powerful marijuana, psilocybin, LSD, mescaline, peyote, and other hallucinogens make people feel like. And I don’t want to know, yet. It’s so far out of my realm of experience that I can only read about the effects on others in first person, autobiographical accounts, such as Michael Pollan’s book, “How to Change Your Mind.”

Also, furnaces of those kinds of highs have to be continually stoked with more drugs/fuel/hallucinogens for the brain to keep the fires of fevered and mind-blowing insights burning and dopamine receptors flashing. At least, this has been the conventional view.

As I look at a photo of majestic pelicans flying over the sea oats at a nearby beach, I have enough hints of what is sublime on this wondrous Earth to keep me guessing and reaching higher for more knowledge and other kinds of experiences that will teach me what I need to know, and help me further along the road.

I don’t have the fiery passions of youth anymore, although my passions can still be good and aroused in anger, I discovered recently. I don’t feel that same intensity that young minds feel, the same levels of dread and hostility and cynicism (although I feel cynical enough). I don’t have the anxiety and fearfulness I once dragged about with me, worried about what I was to become or what I was to make of my life. I remember at various times when I was younger, say at age 20 or 25, thinking to myself, with some degree of trepidation and unknowable fear, “What I will I be like at 45?” Indeed the very thought of it was enough to send me fleeing back into the present.

Now, more than ever, I’m the observer, the thinker who knows a thousand avenues to explore to gain more knowledge to continue on a spiritual path or journey, if he chooses to explore any of them, and I have done so throughout my life. There is no end to this, and my experiences in this life have led me through storm-tossed inner turmoil to calm shores and quiet refugee in the deepest corners of my being, my soul.

Whether we realize it or not, constant discovering, knowing and pure living and experiencing life, lead to new and different paths , hinting of mystery and intellectual and spiritual adventure. If this ceases we will also cease.

Drugs can only assist you in cracking open the door to existential realities or ecstatic spiritual states, or they can allow you to knock it down in a state of desperation and fury. You then become dependant on some outside force, in this case, a substance or chemical agent that is often frighteningly abused by people running from the light, even as they desperately seek it.

Postscript: The doors are starting to open now to new research and discoveries in the use of psychedelics, not just for mind enhancement, but in a wide range of therapeutic uses, including treatment of depression and other mental illnesses, as well as e anxiety, as with end-of-life encounters with death and the unknown.

Much of the popularization of this expanding field of research into therapeutic use of substances such as LSD, once sadly prohibited by law, has come through the 2018 publication of Michael Pollen’s book, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

From the book jacket’s description: …the true subject of Pollan’s “mental travelogue” is not just psychedelic drugs, but also the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both suffering and joy, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives.

Lots to think about.

Last updated August 26, 2022