There was a period of time when I felt compelled to consume every idea, every piece of music, art, literature, and poetry possible. This led me down many paths, which all seemed to converge on my finding the philosophy of liberty. My massive, strange book collection is a testament to that time of my life, and the knowledge gained pops up in convenient places when I need context for a current event. I came across Romantic-era poet William Blake as a teenager, but read him more deeply in my early twenties, specifically his book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. There’s something hypnotic about his use of language, but the dualism between what Blake saw as two types of people: the energetic creators and rational organizers stuck with me. I won’t go any further into this aspect at the moment. What’s significant to me about Blake’s book is this passage:
“As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity, I collected some of their Proverbs; thinking that as the sayings used in a nation, mark its character, so the Proverbs of Hell, shew the nature in Infernal wisdom better than any description of buildings or garments,
When I came home: on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat sided steep frowns over the present world, I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock, with cor
roding fires he wrote the following sentence now percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth.
How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?”
Most people, especially a particularly pretentious type who’ve probably never actually read Blake, know the poet from this quote:
“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”
Both passages are from the same book, but the second is the source from which Aldous Huxley took the title for the published account of his experiment with the psychedelic alkaloid, mescaline, The Doors of Perception. And of course The Doors took their name from Huxley’s book. Huxley reported an immersive spiritual experience while under the influence and felt that there are regions of the mind that could probably only be accessed with the help of psychedelics.
Now, mescaline is the active chemical in peyote, a substance found in a small cactus, and used by Native North Americans for over 5,000 years in spiritual rituals. Most observations from those who have had experience with the psychedelic concur that it induces a spiritual, or transcendent state of mind unlike anything they’ve experienced before.
This is similar to experiences with other psychedelics, such as magic mushrooms, DMT, ketamine, ecstasy, and LSD. These compounds have been found to have almost no risk of use, particularly mescaline, psilocybin or ‘psychedelic mushrooms’, and MDMA/ecstasy, and DMT. There is also incontrovertible proof that these compounds effectively treat depression, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and a wide variety of mental disorders. And yet they remain illegal. I should note that the world is slowly waking up to their potential. In their place, however, are pharmaceutical monstrosities that are ubiquitously prescribed despite their known, devastating, side effects, and low effectiveness.
I’m of the opinion that if psychedelics were to become ‘mainstream’, where every adult had quick access to these substances, the world experience an unheard-of medical revolution. The pharmaceutical industry would collapse, having been built upon patented petri dish poisons, and truly healing medicine would be available at almost no cost to everyone.
This also brings me back to Blake’s dualism. The future of the human race depends on rare, creative individuals who theorize, create, and invent, whose originality solves the problems of the world. I believe that many of these people need psychedelics to aid the creative process. I also believe that the lack of access to these substances is why we see so many creative individuals turn to alcohol or other dangerous substances and lifestyles. Their mind is craving something that they can’t yet provide.
We now see Silicon Valley entrepreneurs experiment with LSD ‘micro-dosing’ to enhance creativity.
I believe this kind of experimentation with psychedelics should be available to everyone, not only because of the priceless medicinal value, but because our future as a species probably depends on allowing the ‘energetic creators’ the freedom to experiment with these substances.
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