Over the millennia, the growth of human consciousness may have been particularly favoured in a few psychically pre-disposed individuals, for example during exceptional, acute, unheard-of, literally unspeakable experiences, such as those experienced in the face of imminent death, or in the rapture of trance. These experiences, which were completely out of the ordinary, were all opportunities for unexpectedly revealing to the ‘I’ certain aspects of the unfathomable depths of the Selfi. Often repeated during individual experiences, and gradually assimilated culturally by communities during collective trances, ecstatic states of consciousness were shared very early in human history, in socialised forms (proto-religions, cult rites, initiation ceremonies). These experiences, which I would describe as ‘proto-mystical’, may have been facilitated by a number of favourable conditions (environment, climate, fauna, flora). Through an epigenesis effect, they undoubtedly also had a long-term impact on the neuronal, synaptic and neurochemical evolution of the brain, producing an organic and psychic terrain that was increasingly adapted to the reception of these phenomena, and resulting in a correlative increase in ‘levels of consciousness’. Countless experiences of trance or ecstasy, which may initially have been linked to accidental circumstances, and then melted like lightning onto virgin consciousnesses, or may have been long-prepared, culturally desired and deliberately provoked during cultic rites, enabled the mental terrain of the brains of the Homo genus never to cease sowing and budding, as if under the action of a slow psychic yeast intimately mingled with the neuronal paste. These powerful mental experiences probably accelerated the neurochemical and neurosynaptic adaptation of the brains of Palaeolithic man. To a certain extent, they revealed to them the unspeakable nature of the immanent ‘mystery’ that reigned in the depths of their own brains. The mystery was revealed to be present not only in human consciousness, just awakened from its slumber, but also all around it, in Nature, in the vast world, and beyond the cosmos itself, in the original Night – not only in the Self, but also in what could be called the Other.
Neuronal, synaptic and neurochemical evolution were essential conditions for mental, psychic and spiritual transformation. Accelerated by increasingly complex feedback loops, it involved physiological, neurological, psychological, cultural and genetic changes, catalysing the exploration of new paths. We can postulate the existence of an immanent, constantly evolving, epigenetic link between the evolution of the brain’s systemic structure (neurons, synapses, neurotransmitters, inhibitory and agonistic factors) and its growing capacity to accommodate these ‘proto-mystical’ experiences.
What is a ‘proto-mystical’ experience? The prototype is the shamanic experience of leaving the body (‘ecstasy’), accompanied by surreal visions and an acute development of awareness of the Self (‘trance’). A hunter-gatherer living in some region of Eurasia may happen to consume one of dozens of mushroom species with psychotropic properties. Suddenly he/she is overcome by a ‘great flash of consciousness’, stunned, transported, delighted and ecstatic. The psychotropic molecules in the mushroom stimulated a massive quantity of neurotransmitters, disrupting the functioning of the brain’s neurons and synapses. In the space of a few moments, there is a radical difference between the usual state of ‘consciousness’ and the sudden state of ‘super-consciousness’. The absolute novelty and unprecedented vigour of the experience will mark him/her for life. From now on, he/she will have the certainty of having experienced a moment of double consciousness. His/her usual, everyday consciousness was, as it were, transcended by a sudden super-consciousness. A powerful ‘dimorphism’ of consciousness was revealed in him/her, of a different nature from the daily alternation of wakefulness and sleep, or the ontological split between life and death. Far from being rare, this experience, however singular, would be repeated for countless generations.
Since ancient times, dating back to the beginning of the Palaeolithic, more than three million years ago, hunter-gatherers of the Homo genus have known about the use of psychoactive plants, and have consumed them regularly. Long before the appearance of Homo, a large number of animal species (such as reindeer, monkeys, elephants, moufflons and felines) also used them, as they continue to do today.ii Living in close symbiosis with these animals, the hunter-gatherers did not fail to observe them. If only out of curiosity, they were encouraged to imitate the strange (and dangerous for them) behaviour of these animals when they indulged in psychoactive substances – substances found in various plant species that are widespread in the surrounding environment all over the Earth. This abundance of psychotropic plant species in nature is in itself astonishing, and seems to suggest that there are underlying, systemic reasons at work – forms of fundamental, original adequacy between the psychotropic molecules of plants and the synaptic receptors of animal brains. Today, there are around a hundred species of psychoactive mushrooms in North America. The vast territories of Eurasia must have had at least as many in the Palaeolithic period, although today there are only around ten species of mushroom with psychoactive properties. Paleolithic Homo often observed animals that had ingested plants with psychoactive effects, which affected their ‘normal’ behaviour and put them in danger. Homo was tempted to imitate these animals, ‘drugged’, ‘delighted’, ‘stunned’ by these powerful substances, wandering in their reveries. Astonished by their indifference to risk, Homo must have wanted to ingest the same berries or mushrooms, to understand what these so familiar prey could ‘feel’, which, against all odds, offered themselves up, indifferent, to their flints and arrows… Today, in regions ranging from northern Europe to Far Eastern Siberia, reindeer have been found to consume large quantities of fly agaric during their migrations – as have the shamans who live in the same areas. This is no coincidence. In Siberia, reindeer and hunter-herders live in close symbiosis with the Amanita muscaria fungus.
Molecules of muscimoleiii and ibotenoic acid from Amanita muscaria have an intense effect on the behaviour of humans and animals. How can we explain the fact that such powerful psychotropic molecules are produced by simple fungi, elementary forms of life compared to higher animals? Why, moreover, do these fungi produce these molecules, and for what purpose? This is a problem worthy of consideration. It is a phenomenon that objectively links the mushroom and the brain, humble fungal life and the higher functions of the mind, terrestrial humus and celestial lightning, peat and ecstasy, by means of a few molecules, psycho-active alkaloids, linking different kingdoms… It’s a well-documented fact that shamans on every continent of the world, in Eurasia, America, Africa and Oceania, have been using psychoactive substances since time immemorial to facilitate their entry into a trance – a trance that can go as far as ecstasy and the experience of ‘divine visions’. How can these powerful effects be explained by the simple fact that the immediate cause is the consumption of common alkaloid plants, whose active ingredients consist of one or two types of molecule that act on neurotransmitters?
As the peoples of northern Eurasia migrated southwards, they brought with them shamanism, its sacred rites and initiation ceremonies, adapting them to new environments. Over time, Amanita muscaria, the North Siberian mushroom, had to be replaced by other plants, endemically available in the environments they crossed, and with similar psychotropic effects. R. Gordon Wasson, in his book Divine Mushroom of Immortalityiv , has skilfully documented the universality of their consumption. He did not hesitate to establish a link between shamanic practices involving the ingestion of psychotropic plants and the consumption of Vedic Soma. As far back as 3e millennium BC, the ancient hymns of the Ṛg Veda described in detail the rites accompanying the preparation and consumption of Soma during the Vedic sacrifice, and celebrated its divine essence.v
The migratory peoples who consumed Soma called themselves Ārya, a word meaning ‘noble’ or ‘lord’. This Sanskrit term has become a sulphurous one since it was hijacked by Nazi ideologists. These peoples spoke languages known as Indo-European. Coming from northern Europe, they made their way towards India and Iran, through Bactria and Margiana (as attested by the remains of the ‘Oxus civilisation’) and Afghanistan, before finally settling permanently in the Indus valley or on the Iranian high plateaux. Some of them passed through the area around the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea. Others headed for the Black Sea, Thrace, Macedonia, modern-day Greece and Phrygia, Ionia (modern-day Turkey) and the Near East. Once in Greece, the Hellenic branch of these Indo-European peoples did not forget their ancient shamanic beliefs. The Eleusis mysteries and other mystery religions of ancient Greece have recently been interpreted as ancient Hellenised shamanic ceremonies, during which the ingestion of beverages with psychotropic properties induced mystical visions.vi
During the Great Mysteries of Eleusis, cyceon, a beverage made from goat’s milk, mint and spices, probably also contained as its active ingredient a parasitic fungus, rye ergot, or an endophytic fungus living in symbiosis with grasses such as Lolium temulentum, better known in French as ‘ivraie’ or ‘zizanie’. Rye ergot naturally produces a psychoactive alkaloid, lysergic acid, from which LSD is derived.vii Albert Hofmann, famous for having synthesised LSD, states that the priests of Eleusis had to process Claviceps purpurea (rye ergot) by simply dissolving it in water, thereby extracting the active alkaloids, ergonovine and methylergonovine. Hofmann also suggested that cyceon could be prepared using another species of ergot, Claviceps paspali, which grows on wild grasses such as Paspalum distichum, and whose effects, which he called ‘psychedelic’, are even more intense, and moreover similar to those of the ololiuhqui plant of the Aztecs, which is endemic in the Western hemisphere. When these powerful psychoactive ingredients are ingested, the mind seems to be torn between two heightened (and complementary) forms of consciousness, one focused on the outside world, the world of physical sensations and action, and the other focused on the inner world, the world of reflection and unconscious feelings.
These two forms of consciousness seem to be able to be excited to the last degree, jointly, or in rapid alternation. They can also ‘merge’ or enter into mutual ‘resonance’.
On the one hand, the sensations felt by the body are taken to extremes, because they are produced directly at the very centre of the brain, and not perceived by the senses and then relayed by the nervous system.
On the other hand, the mental, psychic and cognitive effects are also extremely powerful, because multiple neurons can be stimulated or inhibited simultaneously. For example, the action of inhibitory neurotransmitters (such as GABA) can increase massively and spread throughout the brain. Suddenly, and strongly, the action potential of post-synaptic neurons or glial cells in the brain decreases. The massive inhibition of post-synaptic neurons results, subjectively, in a radical decoupling between the usual level of consciousness, a kind of ‘external’ consciousness, dominated by the influence of external reality, and an ‘internal’ level of consciousness, turned inwards, an interior completely detached from the surrounding, immediate reality. It follows that the ‘internal’ consciousness is brutally sucked into this independent psychic universe that C.G. Jung calls the ‘Self’, and to which countless traditions refer under various names.
The complex neurochemical processes that take place in the brain during shamanic ecstasy can be summarised as follows: psychoactive molecules (such as psilocybin) are structurally very close to organic compounds (indoles) that occur naturally in the brain. They suddenly place the entire brain in a state of near-absolute isolation from the outside world, which is perceived through the five senses. Consciousness is deprived of all access to its usual, everyday world: the brain, on the other hand, is almost instantly plunged into an infinitely rich universe of forms, movements, and ‘levels of consciousness’ very different from those of everyday consciousness. According to research carried out by Dr Joel Elkes at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, the subjective consciousness of a subject under the influence of psilocybin can ‘alternate’ easily between the two states just described – the ‘external’ state of consciousness and the ‘internal’ state of consciousness. The alternation of the two states of consciousness can be observed experimentally, and can even be induced simply by the subject opening and closing his or her eyes. This establishes the structural, systemic possibility of to-ing and fro-ing between ‘external’ consciousness, linked to the world of perception and action, and ‘internal’ consciousness, inhibited in relation to the external world but uninhibited in relation to the internal world. We might hypothesise that the original emergence of consciousness, as it developed in Palaeolithic man, was the result of a similar phenomenon of ‘resonance’ between these two types of consciousness, a resonance accentuated precisely when psychoactive substances were ingested. Psilocybin, for example, causes consciousness to ‘flicker’ between these two fundamental, totally different states, and in so doing, it makes the subject himself appear as if from above, insofar as he is capable of these two kinds of consciousness, and insofar as he is capable of navigating between several states of consciousness, between several worlds, until he reaches the world of the divine.
It is a very old and universal symbol, that in the muscimoles of the Amanite, in the ergot of the weed, is hidden not only the power of drunkenness, but a pathway to the divine… We find it again in the Gospel, albeit in metaphorical form. « As the people slept, his enemy came and sowed drunkenness among the wheat, and went away. When the weeds had grown and produced fruit, then the tares also appeared. »viii
Should we uproot this weed that makes us drunk and crazy? No! the wheat would be uprooted with it. « Let the two grow together until the harvest. And at harvest time I will say to the reapers, ‘Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to consume them; but the wheat gather it into my barn’. »ix
The tares must remain mixed with the wheat until the ‘harvest’. Only then can the chaff be burnt. It must be put to the fire, because it is itself- even a fire that consumes the spirit, a fire that illuminates it with its flashes, and opens it to vision.
The spiritual metaphor of tares is similar to that of leaven. Tares make you drunk, leaven makes the dough rise. The ergot of the rye ferments the spirit and raises it to the invisible worlds. A little leaven mixed with the dough ferments it and makes it risex …
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iA sense of ‘mystery’ must have emerged long ago in Homo sapiens, in parallel with an obscure form of self-awareness – a latent awareness of an unconscious ‘presence’ of self to the Self. These two phenomena, the intuition of mystery and the pre-consciousness of the unconscious self, are undoubtedly linked; they paved the way for the gradual coming to light of the Ego, the formation of subjective consciousness, the constitution of the subject.
iiCf. David Linden, The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good. Penguin Books, 2011
iiiMuscimole is structurally close to a major central nervous system neurotransmitter: GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), whose effects it mimics. Muscimole is a powerful agonist of type A GABA receptors. Muscimole is hallucinogenic in doses of 10 to 15 mg.
ivRichard Gordon Wasson, Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich Inc, 1968
vThe Wikipedia article Fly agaric reports that the survey Hallucinogens and Culture (1976), by anthropologist Peter T. Furst, analysed the elements that could identify fly agaric as Vedic Soma, and (cautiously) concluded in favour of this hypothesis.
viCf. Peter Webster, Daniel M. Perrine, Carl A. P. Ruck, « Mixing the Kykeon », 2000.
viiIn their book The Road to Eleusis, R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann and Carl A. P. Ruck believe that the hierophant priests used rye ergot Claviceps purpurea, which was abundant in the area around Eleusis.
viiiMt 13:25-26
ixMt 13:29-30
xCf. Mk 4:33-34
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