Psychedelics and species connectedness

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THE FACT
Is it this naked existence that recon-
nects the natural environment to the
mental capacities of those psychedeli-
cally-inspired experients? This type of
experience forges a way of thought that
is lled with ethical, ecological implica-
tions, and which is reflected in the work
of shamans, alchemists, and other practi-
tioners who respected nature (Krippner,
1994/1995). The patriarch of psyche-
Psychedelics and Species Connectedness
David Luke, Ph.D.
Beckley Foundation
drdluke@googlemail.com
Stanley Krippner, Ph.D.
Saybrook Graduate School
skrippner@saybrook.edu
THEFACTthatthisissueoftheMAPSBulletin is given over solely
to ecology suggests that at the very least the consumption of psychedelic
substances leads to an increased concern for Nature and ecological issues.
On one level we can understand that this may be due to a basic apprecia-
tion of place and aesthetics that accompanies the increased sensory experi-
ence, or that since psychedelic plants come from Nature we are forced to
enter its realms when we search them out. However, on a deeper level we
can also appreciate that a communication with Nature may on occasion
occur through the phenomenological properties of the psychedelic experi-
ence, some of which have been hailed by experients as life-transforming
and spiritually renewing, even “mystical.”
With the aid of mescaline Aldous Huxley came face to face with such
a mystical experience, even though the Oxford Theologian R.C. Zaehner
(1957) denigrated his experience of “nature mysticism” as somehow infe-
rior to the “genuine” theistic mystical experience. Yet the irony remains
that the very split from Nature that some Christian theologians claim
occurred in the Garden of Eden may lie at the heart of many people’s
current sense of separateness from their ecology. Whereas, under specic
circumstances of substance, set, and setting, psychedelics are capable of
augmenting such a reunion. Despite Zaehner’s derisions, Huxley (1954)
reportedly witnessed this reunion through his experimental uses of mes-
caline: “I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of creation –
the miracle, moment by moment of naked existence” (p. 4).
delia, Albert Hofmann, demonstrated
this by reporting that a mystical nature
experience he had had when he was
young pregured his discovery of LSD.
He stated that “…my mystical experience
of nature as a child…was absolutely like
an LSD-experience…. I believe I was in
some fashion born to that” (Hofmann,
Broeckers, & Liggenstorfer, 2009, p.2).
Hofmann wrote about attaining “one-
Photo of David Luke by Jonathan Greet

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ness with Nature,” and it is this feeling
of unity that characterizes many of these
experiences described as “mystical,” no
matter how diverse they might be in
other aspects.
Throughout his long life Hofmann
increasingly drew upon the great hope
that psychedelics were the key to this re-
connection for others. When asked about
the role that LSD had played in bringing
people back to Nature, he commented,
It has given many people good
ideas, and those who have gone
back to Nature have been saved.
Many people, however, are still
stuck in technological Hell and
cannot get out. Nevertheless, many
have discovered something which
hardly exists in our society any
longer: the sense of the sacred.
(Hofmann et al., 2009, p.6)
Always vocal on ecological issues, Hof-
mann recalled that among his most sat-
isfying experiences were hearing young
people say things like, “I grew up in the
city, but once I rst took LSD, I returned
to the forest” (Hofmann et al., 2009, p.4).
Providing us with an insight into the
cause of this yearning for a return to Na-
ture, based on their extensive experien-
tial research with psychedelics, Masters
and Houston (1966) noted that,
...the [psychedelic] subject, almost
from the start, already has achieved
a kind of empathy with his [or her]
surroundings as a whole…That is
to say, nature seems to the subject
a whole of which he [or she] is an
integral part, and from this charac-
teristic feeling of being a part of the
organic ‘body of nature’ the subject
readily goes on to identify with
nature in its physical particulars
and processes.
But if a person is empathizing with
Nature in this state, whose feeling’s is
she or he feeling? The notion that there
is some entity with which to empathize
implies that the thing itself has emo-
tions, and the idea emerges that Nature
itself and the beings who inhabit it – be
they animal, vegetable or perhaps even
mineral – are also sentient.
Such animism is at the root of all
shamanic belief systems, and, as Jeremy
Narby (2006) noted, shamanism involves
“attempting to dialogue with nature”
(p.16). In shamanism, of course, this
communication is frequently achieved
through the ingestion of psychedelic
plants, fungi, or other natural substances
(e.g., Krippner, 1994).
As a nature-based epistemology,
shamanism is ecological to its core. The
shaman is a caretaker of Nature and a
negotiator between people and “other-
than-human persons,” as Graham Harvey
(2005) called them in his “Animist Mani-
festo.” For Harvey, it is humanity’s fungal
friends themselves that transmit the idea
of animism the best: “Maybe sometimes
the mushrooms just want to help us join
in the big conversation that’s going on all
around us.” (Harvey, 2005, p.128)
Mycologist Paul Stamets speculated
that mushrooms have a hidden agenda to
bring humans into communication with
other species. In studying the taxonomy
of the Psilocybe genus Stamets noted how
these psychoactive mushrooms proliferate
particularly in the wake of human’s hab-
its of “taming the land” and other interac-
tions with the natural world. Examples
include, “chopping down trees, breaking
ground to create roads and trails, and do-
mesticating livestock” (Harrison, Straight,
Pendell, & Stamets, 2007, p. 138). By this
means, Stamets believed, certain mush-
rooms become available to those who
most need to speak to Nature through
them. For Stamets, when this dialogue is
engaged, the message “…is always that we
are part of an ‘ecology of consciousness,’
that the Earth is in peril, that time is
short, and that we’re part of a huge, uni-
versal bio-system.” However, Stamets is
not alone because “many people who have
taken these substances report receiving
the same message” (Harrison et al., 2007,
p. 138).
There is a body of research that backs
up Stamets’ assertion that it is not just
he and Harvey who are receiving myce-
lial messages from Nature. A survey into
people’s exceptional experiences with
psychedelics found that encountering the
“spirit” of the ingested plant or fungus
was the most widely reported of a range
of 17 “paranormal” and “transpersonal”
type experiences occurring with those
taking psilocybin-containing mushrooms
(Luke & Kittenis, 2005). According to the
Hofmann recalled that
among his most
satisfying experiences
were hearing young
people say things like,
“I grew up in the city,
but once
I first took LSD,
I returned
to the forest”

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respondents this encounter also occurred
quite frequently, and was the second
most prevalent experience with any
one substance, preceded only by experi-
ences of “unity consciousness” on LSD.
Additionally, the encounter with “plant
consciousness” was the most widely
reported transpersonal event for several
other psychedelic substances too, such
as ayahuasca, Salvia divinorum, and the
Amanita muscaria mushroom. If Harvey’s
“Animist Manifesto” is to be taken seri-
ously then these plants are clearly trying
to tell humanity something.
Interpreting humanity’s many dia-
logues on the mushroom experience,
mycophile Andy Letcher (2007) termed
these mushroom-mediated encoun-
ters with discarnate spirit entities the
“animaphany.” He warned, however,
that these experiences largely go ignored
because, in a Foucauldian sense, they
offer a resistive discourse to that of the
societally legitimated explanations of
what occurs under the influence of such
plants and fungi, in the West at least
(Foucault, 2006). Being based solely on
the effects of mushrooms on others, these
legitimated discourses typically take a
pathological, psychological or prohibitory
stance, and so this subjective animaphany
appears to transgress a fundamental
societal boundary, communicating with
“spirits,” which subsequently becomes
labelled as “madness.” But which is the
more “mad,” communicating with the
spirits of Nature or sitting back while
Earth’s ecology descends rapidly into the
greatest wave of mass extinction in 65
million years?
It appears that the plant entities are
not the only ones getting in on the ap-
parent conservation conversation; as such
pharmacologically-induced trans-species
communications also engage the animal
kingdom. Through the use of psychedel-
ics, particularly LSD and ketamine, the
physician John C. Lilly, M.D. (1978)
claimed to have began communicating
telepathically with other species and
consequently made an ethical U-turn
in his highly invasive animal research
(such as dolphin dissection), to increas-
ingly involving consensual peer to peer
exchanges with nonhuman species. If
other species can communicate with
humans, then perhaps the best way to
do this would be directly – in a language
that transcends physical restrictions. If
such telepathic-like communication re-
quires changing one’s consciousness, then
certain plants are expertly disposed to
begin this dialogue through their potent
psychoactive compounds.
Ever since Albert Hofmann (2005)
had an out-of-body experience on his
rst accidental LSD journey, and Gordon
Wasson’s photographer Allan Richard-
son had an apparently predictive vision
during their seminal mushroom trip
in Mexico (Richardson, 1990), such
psychedelic explorers as Aldous Hux-
ley and Humphrey Osmond have been
intrigued by the occasional stimulation of
anomalous faculties with the use of these
psychoactive substances. A review of the
parapsychological literature (Krippner &
Davidson, 1970; Luke, in press) indicates
that while the issue still requires further
research there is good reason to consider
the possibility that psychedelics might
actually promote such parapsychological
phenomena as telepathy. However, the
kind of species centrism that Homo sapi-
ens are prone to, tends to promulgate the
view that animals, and especially plants,
lack consciousness. However, given the
possibility that these plants and animals
might be sentient, direct communication
with them should not be ruled out, and
might be encouraged instead. Psychedel-
ics, especially those involving plants,
would seem well suited for that task.
But which is
the more “mad,”
communicating with
the spirits of Nature or
sitting back
while Earth’s ecology
descends rapidly into
the greatest wave
of mass extinction
in 65 million years?
Albert Hofmann and Stanley Krippner.
Photo courtesy of Stanley Krippner

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The question still remains why certain
plants produce highly psychedelic alka-
loids that often have profound effects on
humans. Is it just an accident that these
plants produce exotic compounds that
have no apparent benet to the plant
and yet interact so sophisticatedly with
human minds, especially given that
Nature (apart from humans, perhaps) is
not disposed to wasting resources with-
out good reason? On the contrary, some
evidence has emerged that the human
brain actually developed in co-evolution
with psychedelic plants (Winkelman,
2008), although one may well ask for
what purpose?
Psychedelic shamanism might be
thought of primarily as a communica-
tion with Nature, for instance by asking
the plants directly which ones can heal a
particular illness, or by asking the plant
spirit to teach them, or by using the plant
in aiding the psychological metamorpho-
sis into a plant or animal “allies” (Dobkin
de Rios, 1996). Given that shamans have
most likely been communicating with
Nature in this way for thousands of years
(Devereux, 2008), it might well be asked
what can be gained for humanity’s rela-
tionship with the ecosystem from such a
dialogue and, more importantly, how can
Nature benet from this relationship?
This question is of central importance
to ecological psychologists who attempt
to understand behavioral and experien-
tial processes as they occur within the
environmental constraints of animal-
environmental systems (Adams, 2002).
There are several branches of this eld,
but all of them criticize what they see as
contemporary human separateness from
the natural environment (Krippner, 2002,
p. 973). Rozak (1992) postulated an “eco-
logical unconscious” that “rises up to meet
the environmental need of the time” (p.
97). As a sense of “ethical and psychologi-
cal continuity with the nonhuman world
deepens, we have the chance to recap-
ture…some trace of the ancestral sensi-
bility” (p. 96). This might be a clue that
answers the question concerning human-
ecosystem dialogue. Psychedelic substanc-
es may have provided a hidden resource
to keep Homo sapiens from becoming so
estranged from Nature that the human
species would contaminate, pollute, and
ultimately destroy life on Earth. The
growing interest in psychedelic plants,
their effects, and their use coincides with
a need for what Ralph Metzner, Ph.D.
(1999) referred to as “healing the planet”
(p. 165). If so, the task of mending this
tattered Earth can truly begin, and psy-
chedelic sensibility can play an important
role in helping humans devote their ef-
forts to attaining ecological sustainability
before the time runs out and Nature’s
clock winds down.•
References for this essay are available
on the MAPS Web site: www.maps.org
The authors express appreciation for
Saybrook Graduate School’s Chair for the
Study of Consciousness for its support in
the preparation of this essay.
A survey into people’s exceptional experiences with psychedelics
found that encountering the spirit of the ingested plant or fungus was
the most widely reported of a range of 17 paranormal
and transpersonal type experiences
occurring with those taking
psilocybin-containing mushrooms.