that some profound objective truth has been disclosed to you is a hallmark of the mystical experience, regardless of whether it has been occasioned by a drug, meditation, fasting, flagellation, or sensory deprivation.

On one side was a quartet of tall, slender, curving Psilocybe cubensis, one of the more common species of magic mushroom. On the back was a quotation from William Blake that, it occurred to me later, neatly aligned the way of the scientist with that of the mystic: “The true method of knowledge is experiment.”

In other words, perhaps psychedelics temporarily shut down dominant parts of the brain that usually suppress the hidden talents of our dormant brain centers. This new understanding is consistent with the notion that Aldous Huxley put forth in his book Doors of Perception— that the brain normally acts as a “reducing valve” for consciousness, that it