How to Change Your Mind

moment that this structure represented my ego, and the landscape above
which it loomed was, I presumed, the rest of me.
The description makes it sound as though the structure were
menacing, hovering overhead like a UFO, but in fact the emotional tone
of the image was mostly benign. The structure had revealed itself as
empty and superfluous and had lost its purchase on the ground—on me.
The scene had given me a kind of overview effect: behold your ego,
sturdy, gray, empty, and floating free, like an untethered pylon. Consider
how much more beautiful the scene would be were it not in the way. The
phrase “child’s play” looped in my mind: the structure was nothing more
than a toy that a child could assemble and disassemble at will. During the
trip the structure continued to loom, casting an intricate shadow over the
scene, but now in my recollection I could picture it drifting off, leaving
me . . . to be.
Who knows what kinds of electrical signals were leaking from my
default mode network during this reverie, or for that matter what the
image symbolized. You’ve read this chapter: obviously, I’ve been giving a
lot of thought to the ego and its discontents. Here was some of that
thinking rendered starkly visible. I had succeeded in detaching myself
from my ego, at least imaginatively, something I would never have
thought possible before psychedelics. Aren’t we identical with our ego?
What’s left of us without it? The lesson of both psychedelics and
meditation is the same: No! on the first count, and More than enough on
the second. Including this lovely landscape of the mind, which became
lovelier still when I let that ridiculous steel structure float away, taking its
shadow with it.
A beep indicated the run was over. Brewer’s voice came on the
loudspeaker: “What in the world were you thinking?” Apparently, I’d
dropped way below baseline. I told him, in general terms. He sounded
excited by the idea that the mere recollection of a psychedelic experience
might somehow replicate what happens in the brain during the real thing.
Maybe that’s what was going on. Or maybe it was the specific content of
the image, and the mere thought of bidding adieu to my ego, watching it
float away like a hot-air balloon, that had the power to silence my default
mode network.
Brewer started spouting hypotheses. Which is really all that science
can offer us at this point: hunches, theories, so many more experiments