The Dream Drugstore: Chemically Altered States of Consciousness

For all those who hold that brain is the seat of consciousness and that brain activity is largely determined by chemistry, Allan Hobson's book is a must. Elegantly and engagingly written by a Harvard professor of psychiatry it will also be of great interest to all those intrigued by the effects of drugs upon consciousness, by the relationship between different drugs, and by the similarities between drug experiences and dreams. Yet for all its scholarship and its persuasiveness it will I think preach mainly to the converted. And for all the author's admirable attempt at fair-mindedness, he does little more than patronise those who see consciousness as more than mere brain activity, and humankind as more than the sum total of biology and chemistry. His message appears to be that although he accepts that some people believe there is more to mind than brain, and appreciates that they find this belief comforting and reassuring, they really should recognise that there is no scientific support for their rather quaint and out-dated views.

Space allows me only one example of his approach, but it is a representative one. Out of the Body Experiences are dismissed as follows:

... dreaming is clearly an expression of an altered state of the brain, out-of-body experiences are likely the same kind of expression. Their association with head injury, with 'near death' states of consciousness, with anaesthesia, and with other hypnoid marginalia would seem to make the hypothesis of organic aetiology irresistible, at least to me.

He goes on to say that '... I can understand why the faithful will resist this line of reasoning ... For them, these evanescent perceptions of separation are mere glimpses of greater promises to come. For me, they are the false harbingers of a mind-body independence that I consider untenable'.

In effect, Allan Hobson takes the view that Out of Body experiences (OBEs) are essentially dream states which are then mis-interpreted as objective reality, and instances Near Death Experiences (NDEs) in support of this view (incidentally this is the only mention of NDEs in the whole book). I am left wondering how much of the literature on OBEs he has actually read. He makes no reference for example to Charles Tart's finding at the University of California at Davis that, under controlled laboratory conditions, one of his subjects while claiming to be out of her body was able to read a five figure random number (with odds against chance of 100,000 to one) invisible from her physical position at the time. Similarly - and with even more surprise - I wonder whether he has studied any of the literature on NDEs. He makes no mention of the work of Ken Ring, of Michael Sabom, of Peter Fenwick or even of Raymond Moody. I have to say that the logic of how NDEs - which have been reported even when subjects have been exhibiting no signs of clinical life - make the hypothesis that OBEs are of organic aetiology 'irresistible' to anyone escapes me.

Perhaps predictably, there is no mention at all in Allan Hobson's book of parapsychological research and of the implications that such research, impressive as much of it is in methodology and results, has for the non-local operation of mind. It is indeed as if such research has never existed. He also seems to make the common error, to which I have drawn attention several times elsewhere, of assuming that correlation demonstrates causality. The fact that certain changes in brain chemistry are correlated with changes in cognitive and affective experience does not mean per se that the one initiates the other. If mind operates through brain instead of being generated by it, with brain representing the point of contact between the non-physical and the physical, one would still anticipate changes in brain chemistry to be correlated with mental experience. And one would still expect, assuming that mind-brain interaction is a two-way process, that these changes would facilitate or disinhibit mental experience. Allan Hobson's one-sidedness is further revealed in such statements as 'When we alter our state of consciousness in the interest of spirituality, it is virtually impossible to retain the critical thinking and skepticism necessary to science'. Is it? I wonder if he has read any of Ken Wilber or of Stanislav Grof for example, or any of the many other writers pioneering a transpersonal approach not only to psychology but to biology, medicine, and even physics. I wonder if he has studied the great mystical traditions which have amassed extensive knowledge of the mind and of what are known as spiritual realms by a methodology involving the induction of transpersonal experiences, the collection of data on the nature of these experiences, and the submission of these data to intersubjective validation - all methods very similar to those of modern science. He refers admiringly to Albert Hofmann, the biochemist who first synthesised LSD-25, as a scientist who 'resisted the impulse to interpret [psychedelic} visions ... as ... a visitation from the spirit world ...'. Yet has he not heard of Hofmann's paper LSD as a Spiritual Aid in which Hofmann sets out to explain how LSD served for him 'as a spiritual aid', and in which he concludes that 'Consciousness defies a scientific definition and explanation ... It can only be circumscribed as being the receptive and creative centre of the spiritual ego'? Certainly Hobson should have heard of it, as Hofmann presented the paper six years before the publication of Hobson's book (incidentally the paper is now available in Roberts' edited volume, to which I turn shortly). Let me not conclude by appearing too critical of Hobson. His book is an excellent statement of the case for brain and brain chemistry as explicators of changes in consciousness. It will be greatly enjoyed by all those who share his views. And it should also be enjoyed by those who take a different approach to the mind-brain relationship, if only because the author demonstrates just how much relevant literature has to be ignored if one is to make out a case that mental life is nothing more than a buzz of electro-chemical energy. After reading Allan Hobson it was something of a diversion to turn to Thomas Roberts' edited volume Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on Entheogens and Religion, because it provides a hefty counter-balance to his brain-orientated approach. Roberts' book presents 25 papers from scientists, theologians and medical doctors whose task at a specially convened conference/retreat was to consider what sacramental role psychoactive substances - known in this context as entheogens - may have in spiritual development. Contributors include such luminaries as Charles Tart, Stanislav Grof, Roger Walsh, David Presti, Huston Smith, Frances Vaughan and of course Albert Hofmann. With such a list of writers it is impossible to do justice to much that is said, but Roberts' sums things up in his concluding chapter when he writes that:

To most people who are even moderately experienced with entheogens, concepts such as awe, sacredness, eternity, grace, transcendence, dark night of the soul, heaven and hell are more than theological ideas; they are experiences.

And experiences moreover that in many cases have long-term life-changing power, as Annelise Schinzinger demonstrates in her essay describing her first experience with ayahuasca (Portuguese hoasca) in Brazil 25 years ago – 'That experience at age twenty-one changed my life ... symbols and images of spiritual significance to me were engraved on my memory'. In fact Alexander Shulgin argues in his chapter on A Scientist's View of Miracles and Magic, that spirituality is part of 'the search for understanding oneself', and that there is 'a remarkable congruity between changes of states of consciousness, religious experiences, mystical experiences, and personal miracles'. Thus the decision by Western governments to use the law to rob us of entheogens, 'the sacred materials that might be used for sacramental purposes', is an inexcusable attempt to deny the individual 's right 'to explore his own mind as he chooses'. However, we should not be carried away by the possibilities offered by entheogens. As David Presti and Jerome Beck point out in a chapter which seeks to debunk many of the myths on the harmful effects of LSD, '[Although] Indigenous cultures ... [have long used] ... psychoactive plants ... in religious rituals that have served to facilitate their connection to the transpersonal ... it is a myth that the use of these substances will automatically lead to a higher degree of spiritual or religious development'. This is certainly correct. At most, such drugs appear to remove inhibitory mechanisms within the brain that prevent the mind from accessing a wider gamut of inner experience. What one makes of this wider experience is a different matter.

The best way of giving a flavour of the rest of the book in the restricted space available is to quote some of the essay titles - Do Drugs Have a Religious Import?; The Challenge of Transforming Transient Insights into Enduring Change; The Potential of Entheogens as Catalysts of Spiritual Development; Psychoactive Sacramentals: What Must Be Said; Unitive Consciousness and Pahnke's Good Friday Experiment; Unitive Consciousness and Pahnke's Good Friday Experiment; LSD as a Spiritual Aid; What is Entheology?; Consciousness and Asian Traditions; Transpersonal Counselling; The New Psychotherapy; and An Entheogen Idea-Map – Future Explorations. Together with the rest of the essays, the book is therefore broad enough to serve as the standard text on the subject of entheogens as sacred sacraments for some time to come. Nevertheless, the mere fact of positive experiences, even if those who have them are convinced they represent spiritual realities, is not enough to demonstrate that such experiences are not mere artefacts of brain chemistry as Allan Hobson believes, and it is unfortunate that the contributors to Roberts' book do not really address the question of the real meaning of drug-induced sacred experiences. For example - the same point can be made in connection with Allan Hobson's book - if these experiences are nothing more than oddities of brain chemistry, why has the brain evolved the ability to have them? How do they assist human survival if such evolution depends on no more than natural selection? (Persinger and his discovery of the so-called 'God Spot' in the frontal lobes of the brain gets no mention in either book, nor does current work on what has come to be known as spiritual intelligence). If by contrast these experiences are associated with a mind that is distinct from the brain, it is odd that there is no reference in either book to Sir John Eccles and his conclusions on the mind-brain relationship, while Wilder Penfield gets only three lines in Hobson and is conspicuous by his absence from Roberts, as is Libet and his work on the link between sensory stimulation and conscious experience. The writers involved in both books might argue that their task was not to enter the mind-brain controversy, but merely to examine the effects upon consciousness of psychoactive substances. However, it is difficult if not impossible to separate the dramatic changes in consciousness associated with the ingestion of these substances from this controversy. Implicit (and frequently explicit) in Allan Hobson's book is the belief that mind is generated by brain, while equally implicit in much of Thomas Roberts' book is the supposition that at least the spiritual dimensions of mind are distinct from brain function. Both books thus seem to miss an opportunity fully to state their case and its far-reaching implications for philosophies of mind. In spite of these omissions, on their own terms and in their different ways, both books are highly recommended.