I can think of a couple of ways to account for such a phenomenon,
neither entirely satisfying. The most straightforward and yet hardest to
accept explanation is that it’s simply true: the altered state of
consciousness has opened the person up to a truth that the rest of us,
imprisoned in ordinary waking consciousness, simply cannot see. Science
has trouble with this interpretation, however, because, whatever the
perception is, it can’t be verified by its customary tools. It’s an anecdotal
report, in effect, and so has no value. Science has little interest in, and
tolerance for, the testimony of the individual; in this it is, curiously, much
like an organized religion, which has a big problem crediting direct
revelation too. But it’s worth pointing out that there are cases where
science has no choice but to rely on individual testimony—as in the study
of subjective consciousness, which is inaccessible to our scientific tools
and so can only be described by the person experiencing it. Here
phenomenology is the all-important data. However, this is not the case
when ascertaining truths about the world outside our heads.
The problem with crediting mystical experiences is precisely that they
often seem to erase the distinction between inside and outside, in the way
that Bob Jesse’s “diffuse awareness” seemed to be his but also to exist
outside him. This points to the second possible explanation for the noetic
sense: when our sense of a subjective “I” disintegrates, as it often does in
a high-dose psychedelic experience (as well as in meditation by
experienced meditators), it becomes impossible to distinguish between
what is subjectively and objectively true. What’s left to do the doubting if
not your I?
• • •
IN THE YEARS following that first powerful psychedelic journey, Bob Jesse
had a series of other experiences that shifted the course of his life. Living
in San Francisco in the early 1990s, he got involved in the rave scene and
discovered that the “collective effervescence” of the best all-night dance
parties, with or without psychedelic “materials,” could also dissolve the
“subject-object duality” and open up new spiritual vistas. He began to
explore various spiritual traditions, from Buddhism to Quakerism to
meditation, and found his priorities in life gradually shifting. “It began to