Michael Pollan: belief

Transcript context

…LSD and some other psychedelics — they do seem, as you mentioned, correlated with the phenomenon of gurus. Do you think that’s deeply structural? If we had what (in your view) would be a more rational set of policies toward some psychedelics, that the guru would persist? Or is that an artifact of illegality or it being underground? That’s an interesting question. I think it’s probably both. William James spoke of the noetic quality of the mystical experience. To the extent that people have mystical experiences on psychedelics . . . What he meant is the authority of the ideas, the insights, the opinions that occur to you during a mystical experience is very special. It doesn’t seem subjective to you. It seems like an objective truth of the universe. That’s always a dangerous way to think. And that is a quality that people have. It may have to do with the dissolving of subjectivity. The subject-object distinction goes away for a period of time, so everything seems objective, or whatever is subjective is objective. That’s built in, I think, to the mystical experience. Will you restate your question again? The fact that gurus seem closely connected to some psychedelics — is that structural or just temporary contingency?…

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