And then it hits me: I’m going to be struck by lightning! Every few seconds there’s another strike, here, then there, all around me. On the verge of enlightenment, I’m going to be electrocuted. This is my destiny! The whole time, I’m being washed by warm rains. I am crying now, there is liquid everywhere, but I also feel one with the universe.

Grof, who has guided thousands of LSD sessions, once predicted that psychedelics “would be for psychiatry what the microscope is for biology or the telescope is for astronomy.

By the time I got to chapter four, “The Dangers of Mistaken Identification,” I was ready to throw in the towel. “Mistakes in mushroom identification can be lethal,” Stamets begins, before displaying a photograph in which a Psilocybe stuntzii is seen growing cheek by jowl with a trio of indistinguishable Galerina autumnalis, an unremarkable little

believe that nature (including the human mind)

A psychoactive drug that produces a heightened sense of connectedness, emotional openness, and compassion. MDMA, or Ecstasy, is such a drug. Also sometimes called an entactogen.

All of the scientists doing psychedelic research today work exclusively with a synthetic version of the psilocybin molecule. (The mushroom’s psychoactive compound was first identified, synthesized, and named in the late 1950s by Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD.)

“Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance.”

Hofmann became convinced he was going to be rendered permanently insane or might actually be dying.

From here on, Jesse watched (or whatever you call it) the birth of … everything, in the unfolding of an epic sequence beginning with the appearance of cosmic dust leading to the creation of the stars and then the solar systems, followed by the emergence of life and from there the arrival of “what we call humans,” then the acquisition of language