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The researchers considered another theory. Maybe the serotonin neurons were firing a lot, and so when the radioactive tracer drug came along looking for a place to dock, the receptors were otherwise occupied. Imagine you are throwing your six-year-old a birthday party in your backyard. His friends begin to arrive, and you launch the festivities with a game of musical chairs. More and more six-year-olds arrive, and you run out of chairs. Soon, too soon, you have two dozen six-year-olds cavorting around the yard, kicking up the grass and trampling the daffodils. Such euphoria, such joy and awe! That is a transcendent moment in the serotonin system.

17 Borg et al., “The Serotonin System,” 1965.

CHAPTER 6. ISN ’T GOD A TRIP?

1 J. H. Halpern et al., “Psychological and Cognitive Effects of Long-Term Peyote Use Among Native Americans,” Biological Psychiatry 58 (2005): 624-31.

2 R. R. Griffiths et al., “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance,” Journal of Psychopharmacology 187 (2006): 268-83.

3 For the follow-up study, see R. R. Griffiths et al., “Mystical-Type Experiences Occasioned by Psilocybin Mediate the Attribution of Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance 14 Months Later,” Journal of Psychopharmacology, published online July 2008.

The Johns Hopkins study was modeled after the “Good Friday experiment” of 1962, the most famous study to attempt to plumb spiritual experience through psychedelics. On Good Friday, 1962, twenty divinity students gathered in the basement of Boston University’s Marsh Chapel. Half of them received a capsule (30 mg) of psilocybin, the active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms. The other half received a placebo. After eight hours of exploring alternative states of consciousness, the psilocybin group returned to consensus reality. Four of the ten men who had received the psilocybin had encountered a full-blown mystical experience, including transcendence of time and space, and unity with all things, a sense of sacredness. Four others experienced most of the characteristics of mystical experience. None of the control group enjoyed much of anything except profound boredom. See W. Pahnke, “Drugs and Mysticism: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Psychedelic Drugs and the Mystical Consciousness” (Ph.D. dissertation in Religion and Society, Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 1963).

Griffiths used some of the same measures of mystical experience that Walter Pahnke employed in his “mystical consciousness” experiments. M. W. Johnson, W. A. Richards, and R. R. Griffiths, “Human Hallucinogen Research: Guidelines for Safety,” Journal of Psychopharmacology, published online July 2008.

4 That serotonin receptor gene made an appearance in the previous chapter. Swedish researchers found that serotonin HT1A—which acts as a docking station to allow the chemical to enter—seemed to affect whether their subjects scored high in spirituality, or “self-transcendence.”

5 Andrew Newberg at the University of Pennsylvania has found the opposite behavior in the parietal lobes. A study of Buddhist monks deep in meditation and Franciscan nuns deep in prayer showed that the parietal lobes grew quiescent, essentially eliminating the boundaries between the subjects’ perception of themselves and the rest of the universe. This is discussed in detail in chapter 8. The research is still in its infancy: the cartographers of the brain are just beginning their work. It will take many more scouting trips, many more studies, to plot the neural landscape successfully, especially as it’s not only a physical landscape but a spiritual one as well.

6 David Nichols subscribes to another theory about chemical heaven or hell. A pharmacologist at Purdue University who has studied the chemistry of mystical experiences, he speculates that when you take enough drugs, the front part of your brain that tries to make sense of the world is working overtime. But it