Jochen Gartz - Magic Mushrooms Around the ... - preterhuman.net

moss and I saw horns. It was a kind face, yet full of
cunning, a little devil's face, like Pan's. At times,
stripes streaked across his face; I had become a
seer.
I saw a child, a young man with blond hair
cropped just above his shoulders, ca. 17th century.
He is busy writing, inside a small house located in
a city; a poet perhaps, or a scribe Germany or
Holland This was a state of infinite harmony, a
light that seemed to come from everywhere and
nowhere at all; something that had always been
there and always will be, something that simply
exists. There is no past and no future.
Consciousness beyond body and barriers, infinite,
all-consuming; an infinite, universal love that
embraces everything. I had a strong sense of
agelessness, because I embodied
a principle that had always existed. How
intensely I felt these unearthly emanations, this very
eternity. I saw through what appeared to be a
succession of many caves, through myriad
dimensions, and all of them were flooded with light
- my energy. An energy existing simultaneously at
its source as well as throughout eternity. This
was a plane of utter harmony, devoid of contrasts
such as good and evil, marked by the overwhelming
peace of a spirituality both cosmic and infinite. The
Goddess smiled. I no longer existed as a woman
and as such could not be reached by others.
After that, the effects began to subside
slowly. In the presence of my guide I felt infinite
protection and total understanding. Under his
guidance and protection, I began to ease into the
slow and gentle descent back to my earthly state of
being. In the process, I found myself able to switch
back and forth repeatedly between both states of
consciousness. I realized that even my deepest
agonies had become insignificant over "on the
other side ". Furthermore, I understood that all the
religions with their sets of rules had been created at
one time or another for the sole purpose of
providing guidelines for humanity, yet excessively
narrow interpretations of these rules have rendered
them all but irrelevant. Anyone who embarks on a
deliberate search for a higher harmony, seeking
spirituality, has no need for such rules at all. "
It is instructive to consider some of the
comments made by R.G. Wasson's wife Valentina
Pavlovna, as they appear in the second report about
Mexico's magic mushrooms in 1957,
written in the wake of experiencing the impressive
effects of her self-experiment. A medical doctor by
profession, V. Pavlovna brought up the potential
for medical applications, given successful isolation
of the active mushroom ingredient. According to
her writings from that period, she believed the
substance to become a significant new tool in the
study of psychic processes, that it would benefit
the treatment of alcoholism, drug addiction and
mental problems, and help ease the suffering of
terminally ill patients with severe pain. It was
several years later that a number of researchers,
unaware of V. Pavlovna's article, began to treat
these very same conditions with LSD, a substance
that is much harder on the patients' systems than
psilocybin!
The medical use of psilocybin, a basically
non-toxic substance, as well as mushrooms with
known active ingredients, should, in my opinion,
be permitted with terminally ill patients. The
promise of easing the suffering of dying patients
alone should be reason enough to allow the use of
psilocybin and related substances, considering the
reality of fatal illness as one of the grimmer
universals of human existence. Many psychiatrists
and pharmacologists maintain that the mystical
aspects of hallucinogenic substances should be
described more accurately as psychotic in nature,
and that repeated manifestations of these
symptoms are cause for worry and concern, since
their existence and nature cannot be explained. The
convictions behind these beliefs, however, pale
compared to the promise of being able to provide
that which strikes at the very essence of practicing
medicine: to help patients endure the ultimate
anguish of impending death, while making sure
they are not left alone to deal with pain and fear.
Scientific Research Under Fire
It was about 30 years ago that legislation
was enacted severely restricting the use and
availability of hallucinogens. It is most unfortunate
that these sweeping prohibitions dealt a crippling
blow to legitimate research efforts, forcing more
and more investigators to abandon this area of
study. Thus, despite the success of psycholytic
therapy, its practice was discontinued during the
1970's. In retrospect, a calm and pragmatic
analysis of these events can surely help us
recognize that those years of pioneering