It is the infinite for which we hunger, and we ride gladly on every little wave that promises to bear us towards it. – Havelock Ellis
Modern Westerners typically experience themselves as isolated, self-contained units of consciousness disconnected from other human beings and life itself. An intuitive sense our true self is infinitely greater than the “skin-encapsulated ego” we have been conditioned to believe we are provokes a restless searching for liberation from our cramped condition. While it can lead to counterproductive behaviours like consumerism and addiction, longing for transcendence may galvanise an authentic quest for liberating psychological and spiritual insight.
Oldest Truth
Experimenting with the consciousness-altering properties of nitrous oxide (also known as “laughing gas”), William James claimed it produced in him an authentic mystical experience characterised by a “tremendously exciting sense of intense metaphysical illumination”.
Such experiments led him to the bold conclusion human beings have the capacity to experience a variety of non-ordinary or altered states of consciousness, some of which are radically unlike our everyday waking state.
In 1902 James famously claimed “Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.”
The existence of these various states must indicate something about the nature of the human mind and existence itself, James surmised: “No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question, for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality.”
In 1953 revered scholar and author Aldous Huxley consumed mescaline, a potent psychedelic drug derived from peyote cactus, in a bold experiment he recounted in a seminal book, The Doors of Perception (its title inspired by visionary poet and artist William Blake who said “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite”).
Though it soon came to an end, Huxley believed this ethereal experience had granted him priceless glimpses of a world transformed, “where everything shone with the Inner Light, and was infinite in its significance”.
Sure he had glimpsed “the unfathomable mystery of pure being”, Huxley made an astonishing claim: “This is how one ought to see, how things really are”
Insane Utopia
In his prescient 1932 novel Brave New World, Huxley outlined a frightening vision of a pain-free, amusement-sodden future ruled by nihilistic hedonism in which people had to choose between a simple existence in a rural Indian village and an insane life in Utopia. As the 1950s wore on his fictionalised prophesy no longer appeared so improbable as people were drawn into a “rat-race” existence demanding they run ever faster to feed an insatiable hunger for possessions promoted as certain keys to happiness.
As materialism’s exorbitant promise began to prove hollow, behind a veneer of affluence and civility the 1950s in many ways became an emotional and spiritual wasteland. Little wonder this period gave birth to modern psychopharmacology: many of the mind-altering drugs that are familiar icons of modernity – sedatives, tranquillisers, antidepressants, anxiolytics, mood-stabilizers – were then invented and soon being prescribed to millions.
Artificial Paradise
In a 1958 article, “Drugs That Shape Men’s Minds”, Huxley claimed certain drugs can enhance self-knowledge by enabling people to look more deeply into their own mind. And, under ideal conditions, they may sometimes occasion visionary experience of “a world transfigured into unimaginable loveliness, charged with intrinsic significance, and manifesting, in spite of pain and death, an essential divine All-Rightness”.
Perhaps the greatest benefit of consciousness-enhancing drugs, he said, lay in their ability to bring alive familiar but often hollow religious platitudes: “These chemical mind-changers make possible a genuine religious experience”.
Through the 1960s, claims psychedelic drugs could induce profound spiritual experiences galvanised those grown disenchanted with materialism. Many experimenting with mind-altering substances had extremely positive and highly beneficial experiences. Some even had transformative experiences akin to those of religious saints, sages and mystics.
Such experiences awakened in some an abiding curiosity about the human mind and the nature of consciousness and motivated a desire to pursue a spiritual path through traditional practices like yoga and meditation. Classic spiritual writings, especially those of venerable Eastern traditions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, suddenly found a new audience of enthusiastic young Westerners.
Heaven and Hell
Though indigenous peoples had for millennia employed psychoactive plants in ceremonial rituals with spiritual or healing intent, votaries of the free-wheeling hippy era paid scant heed to their recommendations concerning proper and appropriate use.
Since inner journeys entail potential danger, the presence of experienced, knowledgeable, and trustworthy guides is necessary to ensure secure passage through the “spirit world” and safe return. Persons acknowledged as capable navigators of these fathomless realms, such as shamans, are accorded revered status in traditional communities.
While many clearly benefited from their self-guided psychedelic adventures, the longer-term impact of these drugs was mixed. Their incomparable power made them a two-edged sword. Though an invaluable tool for self-exploration when safety is assured, they could be hazardous, especially for inexperienced younger persons under sub-optimal conditions.
Numerous observations demonstrated both “heavenly” and “hellish” experiences can occur. Recognising this dual possibility, when proposing “psychedelic” as an suitable name for such drugs, psychiatrist Humphry Osmond composed a graphic ditty: “To fathom hell or soar angelic, just take a pinch of psychedelic”.
Unclassified Residuum
Certain “sacred” drugs “permit you to see, more clearly than our perishing eye can see, vistas beyond the horizons of this life”, mycologist Gordon Wasson testified. Such claims match traditional beliefs regarding an intrinsic human capacity to see beyond the surface of everyday existence by cultivating the “eye of the soul”.
The ability of psychedelic drugs to open deeper recesses of the human psyche to observation and study led pioneer Czech psychiatrist Stanislav Grof to compare their significance for psychiatry and psychology to that of the microscope for medicine or telescope for astronomy.
Experiences in which individual awareness appears to temporarily transcends the ordinary boundaries of time and space – phenomena later christened “transpersonal” – reflect the inherently limitless nature of human consciousness, Grof concluded.
These views were profoundly at odds with conventional beliefs about human nature and the structure of reality: “Transpersonal experiences have many strange characteristics that shatter the most fundamental assumptions of materialistic science and the mechanistic worldview”, Grof acknowledged; such observations are thus “a critical challenge for the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm of Western science.”
Hopes of imminent revolution proved premature as modern consciousness research met the kind of resistance William James’s iconoclastic views had met decades earlier and which led him to decry psychology’s obstinate reluctance to even acknowledge, let alone study, the bewildering variety of phenomena which made up what he termed its “unclassified residuum”.
James despaired so few of his colleagues were willing to examine such anomalous phenomena and thought it scandalous psychology chose to ignore inconvenient truths about human life and the nature of consciousness.
Lost Continent
While proponents regarded substances like mescaline, psilocybin, and LSD as psychedelic (mind-opening, consciousness-expanding) or entheogenic (revealing the divine within), the mental health fraternity viewed states induced as serious distortions of reality. Such drugs were consequently regarded as psychotomimetic (psychosis-mimicking) and classified as hallucinogens (hallucination-inducing).
Prohibition halted scientific studies of these exceptional substances. “With the new drug laws in place interest in human psychedelic research died off almost as rapidly as it had begun”, one investigator noted. “It was as if psychedelic drugs became ‘un-discovered’.”
One researcher opined: “The medical, psychological, and religious professions considered the phenomenon of psychedelic drugs and were frightened by the unpredictable transformations of perception and worldview they seemed to trigger. Thus, the dominant society’s reaction was fear, followed by prohibition, even of further research.”
For a while it seemed a new route had been found to the “mind’s antipodes”, awakening hope voyagers to these hidden realms might return with bounty that could contribute to evolution of a re-enchanted worldview. However, in defence of the dominant cultural paradigm – notably lacking a vertical dimension (Chapter Four) – powerful forces contrived to prohibit access to this route. Thus an entire domain of reality and human nature once again slipped from view.
Doors in the Wall
Use of mind-expanding drugs was gradually overtaken by others whose primary effect was to facilitate escape, either by numbing and sedating the user (alcohol, opioids, cannabis) or inducing a transient “high” of boundless euphoria (cocaine, amphetamines, ecstasy).
The so-called “war on drugs” failed to stem the rising tide of illicit drug use, nor was the ardour of consumers dampened by glib exhortations to “just say no”.
Abject failure of punitive measures gradually led to belated recognition of the constellation of factors relevant to human drug-taking behaviour. Frequently lost from view in conventional medical and psychological approaches were existential and spiritual imperatives.
William James suggested the appeal of alcohol – arguably the most widely used and abused consciousness-altering drug – was a result of its ability to induce a mystically-tinged state of mind.
“Drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness”, James said. “Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the Yes function in man.”
Noting the existence through all historical and cultural eras of an ardent human longing for “frequent chemical vacations from intolerable self-hood”, Aldous Huxley claimed anything capable of facilitating such release – anything with the power to open a “door in the wall”, as he put it – would be eagerly sought and not readily given up.
Alcohol and illicit drugs continue to entice because of their ability to engender mental states deeply appealing to alienated, internally divided human beings, opined William James. Despite stringent regulatory sanctions, the demand for chemical “doors in the wall” – both legal and illicit – has never been greater.
Self-Transcendence
Desire for release from the stifling prison of “insulated self-hood” has always been one of the principal motivators of human behaviour, Huxley contended. “Most men and women lead lives at worst so painful, at best so monotonous, poor, and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and always has been one of the principal appetites of the soul.”
Self-transcendence can take a number of forms Huxley designated as horizontal, upward, and downward. While some types of self-transcending behaviour play a vital role in individual fulfilment and collective wellbeing, others are self-limiting and destructive of human freedom and dignity.
Identifying with various interests, activities, and causes outside themselves is the commonest way human beings pursue self-transcendence. Important as it is, such horizontal self-transcendence involves no more than a temporary expansion “into something wider than the ego but not higher”. Consequently it does not result in lasting release from the isolating constriction at the heart of ego-centric identity.
Descending Road
Drugs, both legal and illicit, have long provided human beings with their readiest means of self-transcendence. While many have tasted their potentially beneficial effects, habitual use of mind-altering drugs is a path fraught with risk.
The cost of relying on “toxic short-cuts to self-transcendence” is well known. All addictive substances are treacherous and harmful, Huxley warned.
Experiences of self-transcendence associated with prolonged substance abuse inevitably follows a downward trajectory, moving the user toward, and finally culminating in, a less than optimal human condition.
“This is a descending road”, warned Huxley, “and most of those who take it will come to a state of degradation.” Rather than facilitating genuine transcendence of the ego, prolonged substance abuse merely destroys it.
Delicious Poisons
Though substance dependency and addiction are often considered severe pathologies that only affect a small section of the population, they are in fact merely extreme instances of behaviours most now unthinkingly accept as normal. The everyday habits and routines of vast numbers of people are increasingly structured around and driven by the same kind of restless and insatiable hunger that underlies more recognisable addictions like alcoholism and substance dependence.
Drinking, over-eating, compulsive shopping, gambling, sexual promiscuity, pornography, and illicit substance use, even at clearly unsafe or unhealthy levels, are now regarded as acceptable recreational activities by millions of people. Many fail to recognise – or admit – the extent to which they have become “hooked” on their favourite indulgences.
All compulsive activities are avenues of downward transcendence. While they may be extremely popular, such “delicious poisons” (as Huxley termed them), conjure a fate similar to that of the drug addicted: less extreme perhaps, but ultimately just as shallow and unfulfilling.
Brain Hacking
Proliferation of screen-based platforms and internet-connected devices has escalated concerns about potential deleterious effects of prolonged or excessive use, which may reach the level of addiction or even mental disorder.
Industry insiders echo these concerns. Sean Parker, former President at Facebook, admits the platform’s founders knew what they were creating would be addictive since it deliberately exploited vulnerabilities in human psychology. The challenge facing developers was: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” Their solution: features such as the “like” button that gives users a little dopamine hit, thus encouraging them to upload more content.
Tristan Harris, former design ethicist at Google, shared these concerns: “There’s entire teams of engineers whose job it is to use your psychology against you.”
Few are immune: “All of us are jacked into this system. All of our minds can be hijacked. Our choices are not as free as we think they are”, claims Harris.
Former Facebook and Google engineer Justin Rosenstein stresses the personal and social dangers of what has been termed “the attention extraction industry”.
Digital visionary Jaron Lanier’s critique is profoundly unsettling. Likening modern smartphones to “the cage that goes everywhere with you”, he accuses Facebook, Google, and Twitter of utilising a “spying/manipulation model” to maintain their influence.
“We’re being tracked and measured constantly, and receiving engineered feedback all the time. We’re being hypnotised little by little by technicians we can’t see, for purposes we don’t know. We’re all lab animals now.”
Despite growing evidence of harm, extended periods of trance-like absorption in a variety of screens are a daily habit for many. Carrying their phone in their hand rather than stowing it in a pocket or bag when not using it is symptomatic of a peculiarly modern malady – the anxiety even brief separation from their phone provokes in many.
Servants of Having
Consumerism is Western culture’s surrogate religion. While churches stand empty, masses of devoted worshippers flock eagerly to consumerism’s glittering temples conveniently located everywhere, including the limitless reaches of cyberspace. Goaded by powerful advertising conglomerates whose sole purpose is promotion of material desire, consumption has become a defining feature of modern life.
Food was once the only thing we consumed. Now virtually anything is available to “consume” in gluttonous abundance: news, information, entertainment, fashion, sport, drugs, pornography, and much more.
The anxiety, disorientation, and uncertainty pervading contemporary Western societies render huge sections of their populations vulnerable to manipulation by venal marketeers intent on encouraging addictive consumption among those craving distraction and entrancement.
The speed and accessibility of the internet have boosted the scale of consumption to previously inconceivable levels. Online shopping has transformed the world into one gigantic emporium pandering to the “storehouse of infinite need” it eagerly promotes. People can now get almost anything they want (legal or illicit) with a few mouse-clicks and a credit card.
Those enslaved by addictive consumption lose the innocent eyes with which they once beheld the world. No longer capable of simply looking at whatever is around them, craving compels them to be always looking for – specifically, for anything that might sate their hunger. Craving and addiction lock us into the horizontal dimension of existence where size and quantity rule: “more is better”.
Hungry Ghosts
“Ordinary” addictions like those described above have become so common they readily pass for normal. Many would claim that, since “everybody does it”, such behaviours are not really serious compared to real addictions (e.g. to alcohol or illicit drugs).
Inability or unwillingness to admit the extent of a problem is a classic hallmark of addiction.
Any behaviour emphasising mind-numbing absorption and escapism can become a form of “downward transcendence” if excessively indulged. “The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing”, as philosopher Søren Kierkegaard warned.
Many who endeavour to overcome their addictive behaviour soon become aware of the subtle, ever-present craving that drives them.
“We eat and for a while feel satisfied, but the pangs of hunger always return,” explains Stephen Bachelor. “However hard we try, we will never succeed in filling an inner emptiness from the outside; it can only be filled from within.”
Distant Longing
Is there an alternative to persistent indulgence in “delicious poisons” that merely perpetuate stultifying habits of dependency and avoidance in which we lose ourselves more and more?
Those at the forefront of research and treatment identify unrequited spiritual hunger as a core motivator of addictive behaviour, whatever guise it may take.
“Our addictions down through the ages, from sugar to cocaine to television, have been a restless search for the thing torn from us in paradise” claimed visionary ethnobotanist and consciousness researcher Terrence McKenna.
This tragic loss makes everyone a potential addict scrabbling for a desperate fix: “To fill the unendurable void we become attached to things of the world that cannot possibly compensate us for the loss of who we are.”
Intimations of Immortality
The shallowness, narcissism, and self-indulgence Western consumer culture increasingly treats as normal – even celebrates – traps us in a worldview and mind-set traditional societies would regard as a recipe for unhappiness, social disharmony, and environmental disaster.
Sensing the terrible loss we have sustained, something deep inside rebels. “If we experience the urge to self-transcendence it is because, in some obscure way and in spite of our conscious ignorance, we know who we really are”, Huxley declared.
In our secret hearts we carry still an intuitive sense our true, innermost self is infinitely greater than the puny “skin-encapsulated ego” we have been culturally conditioned to believe we are. We sense we are somehow older than our bodies and will outlast them, that life is infinitely more precious than “eyes of flesh” are capable of seeing.
Many would dismiss such notions as wishful fantasies, but Huxley was adamant: experiences of horizontal and downward transcendence may provide necessary consolation, but human beings will always long for upward transcendence into those exalted realms wherein “the soul knows itself as unconditioned and of like nature with the divine.”
Recommended Reading
- William James The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature
- Aldous Huxley The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell
- Stanislav Grof Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death and Transcendence in Psychotherapy
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