“reconciliation”: “It is as if the opposites of the world, whose
contradictoriness and conflict make all our difficulties and troubles, were
melted into unity.” This ultimate unity, he suspected, was no mere
delusion.
• • •
ROLAND GRIFFITHS today sounds like a scientist deeply committed—or
rather recommitted—to his research. “I described to you how when I first
got into meditation, I felt disconnected from my work life and considered
dropping it entirely. I would say I’m now reengaged in a way that’s more
integrated than it has ever been. I’m more interested in the final
questions and existential truths and with the sense of well-being,
compassion, and love that come from these practices. Now I’m bringing
these gifts to the laboratory. And it feels great.”
The idea that we can now approach mystical states of consciousness
with the tools of science is what gets Roland Griffiths out of bed in the
morning. “As a scientific phenomenon, if you can create a condition in
which 70 percent of people will say they have had one of the most
meaningful experiences of their lives . . . well, as a scientist that’s just
incredible.” For him the import of the 2006 result is that it proved “we
can now do prospective studies” of mystical states of consciousness
“because we can occasion them with a high degree of probability. That’s
the way science gains real traction.” He believes the psilocybin work has
opened a whole new frontier of human consciousness to scientific
exploration. “I describe myself as a kid in a candy shop.”
The gamble Roland Griffiths took with his career in 1998, when he
decided to devote himself to the investigation of psychedelics and
mystical experience, has already paid off. A month before our breakfast,
Griffiths had received the Eddy Award from the College on Problems of
Drug Dependence, perhaps the most prestigious lifetime achievement
prize in the field. The nominators all cited Griffiths’s psychedelic work as
one of his signal contributions. The scope of that work has expanded
significantly since the 2006 paper; when I last visited Hopkins, in 2015,
some twenty people were working on various studies involving
psychedelics. Not since Spring Grove has there been such strong