Introduction
Many indigenous peoples and religious groups place great value on what we might call “extraordinary experiences of consciousness” and actively pursue them through rituals, ceremonies, drug use and other techniques. Anthropology’s key research tool of participant observation can open us to this experiential dimension, and there are now a good number of accounts where anthropologists don’t just observe the behaviour of their informants, but weave their own experiences of consciousness into the account (Young & Goulet 1994).  This raises fundamental questions about the paradigm through which we view such data.
I here argue for the possibility of developing an experientially based, etic model of consciousness with which to make sense of the varied extraordinary experiences of consciousness that anthropologists collect in the field.  

Extraordinary experiences
For the purposes of this paper, “extraordinary experience” encompasses altered states of consciousness such as dreams, trance and out-of body experiences, as well as such variety of experiences as telepathy, premonition, perceptions of non-physical beings, poltergeist effects and even uncanny physical sensation. 
My own extraordinary experiences started during my first undergraduate summer holidays.  On the recommendation of a fellow student I spent time at a meditation center in Solo, Indonesia. The elderly Indonesian teacher taught a fairly simple meditation technique that I started to practice on a daily basis. As a result, my world started to shift.  It would be a very long story to describe all that occurred at the center or subsequently and I want to focus on the experiences that related to my later interpretation of ethnographic texts.  Some key experiences were:

• out-of-body experiences (OBEs), i.e. being conscious of myself as not in my body and my body as being asleep;
• many experiences of meeting and interacting with non-physical people during sleep states;
• auditory perceptions of voices when there was “nobody” there;
• visually perceiving, during the ordinary waking state, non-physical persons who communicate with me telepathically.

I have just summarized these events in a few words so they may not seem like much, but when they first started they were earth shattering.  As well as altering my sense about the world around me they also altered my sense of self, especially my sense of boundary between self and others.  In fact, I spent quite some time wondering about my sanity, especially as I had not reference point by which to understand them. 
 
One of the things that helped me was my anthropological reading. I developed a particular fascination with the literature on shamanism and the various spirit cults that exist around the world.  I felt I could relate to a lot of the experiences that were being described, including the seemingly neurotic behavior of some shamans (some of my own behaviour probably seemed quite neurotic at times) and people’s relationships with spirits, both good and bad.  

Anthropological Models
I could relate less well to the anthropological modeling of those experiences.  Based on my own experiences I considered informants to be describing, through cultural filters, real experiences, which the anthropologists were reducing to metaphor and symbol (Turner 1992).  Depending on the analytical model, researchers would argue spirits are actually about power relations between genders, or about the social management of neurosis or used to create social obedience.  Only one thing is certain, they can’t be real!  As anthropologists we should be the first to realize that this attitude itself is a social construct, a point made by De Martino (2001) many years ago.  
 
Of course not all anthropologists are reductionist.  Numerous have exposed their own experiences of, for example, spirit encounter (Turner 1992), guardian spirits (Schwartz 1994) or OBE (Zurfluh 1981).  Such accounts, however, usually avoid modeling of the experience, or confine themselves to the emic model of the informants.
Because of the background of the culture for which they are writing, researchers who have extraordinary experiences that they are not prepared to deny find their capacity to discuss them highly circumscribed.  Adopting the discourse of the society where the experiences emerged is the most straightforward way of circumventing this social censorship.  
 
But even authors who experietially accept spirits still maintain a resistance to etic modeling.  In a significant paper in which she clearly expresses her opinion that there are such things as spirits, Turner asks a series of questions:
“What are spirits?” And I continue with the thorny question, “What of the great diversity of ideas about them throughout the world? How is a student of the anthropology of consciousness, who participates during fieldwork, expected to regard all the conflicting spirit systems in different cultures?  Is there not a fatal lack of logic inherent in this diversity?”  And the reply: “Is this kind of subject matter logical anyway?”  We also need to ask, “Have we the right to force it into logical frameworks?” (Turner 1992:30)
 
I would suggest that spirit systems across cultures are not as divergent as Turner suggests, that the subject matter is logical, and that we not only have the right but the obligation to create a logical framework if we want to present our research as anything other than interesting, culture specific anecdotes.  If we truly want to make a contribution to a wider cross-cultural understanding of consciousness, I would argue our research must be grounded in a paradigm that allows for mutual comprehension of diverse data.

Consciential paradigm
Vieira, a Brazilian consciousness researcher, emphasizes the importance of combining personal experimentation with theoretical research.  He argues that we must accept ourselves, the human consciousness, as scientific research instrument through which to obtain data (e.g. Vieira, 1994, 1997, 1999).  Anthropologists know only too well, that our tool of participant observation is both our strength and our weakness in the eye of the harder sciences.  In Vieira’s approach we engage in participant observation not only of the world around us, but crucially also of our own microuniverse.  
 
Based primarily on a “projection interpretation” of the OBE (Alvarado 2000), Vieira proposes that any understanding of consciousness should be built on what he calls the consciential paradigm, which includes the following premises:

• Consciousness is multidimensional, i.e. it experiences and manifests in more than one dimension, both during the human, physical, experience and in an extraphysical state during the OBE and after death;
• Consciousness is holosomatic, i.e. it uses more than one body (soma), including the physical body, and the psychosoma, a double of the physical body in which we move about during OBEs and which is abundantly recorded in the ethnographic literature;
• The human experience is dominated by bioenergies; i.e. every living creature, including plants, has an energetic body and our interactions with each other and our environment are fundamentally energetic.

 
Here I can only touch very briefly on each of these highly complex, and no doubt controversial, premises.  I argue that they can allow us to discuss a host of spirit experiences and altered states of consciousness without undermining the cultural interpretation of the experience.
 
For example if we approach consciousness as multidimensional and holosomatic we can make sense of spirit possessions logically and systematically, not as psychological fantasy or a ruse to obtain social standing, but as the interaction between two individuals: one with a body and one without. We could also engage with our informants about their dreams from an understanding that includes the possibility of OBEs as real, shared, experiences beyond the physical body. The concept of bioenergies, finally, has particular relevance to Australian Aboriginal religious experiences, for example the touching and rubbing of sacred objects or natural features during ceremony.  More broadly it can provide an analytical anchor to understand a variety of healing and sorcery practices. I have explored these analytic benefits in the context of Aboriginal Australia elsewhere (McCaul 2008). 
 
One advantage of this approach is that it increases our ability to communicate with our informants from a basis of mutual understanding.  Of course we can have conversations about spirit beliefs or soul journeys without accepting the accounts as reality, but in my experience if we bring experiential and theoretical understanding to such discussions our empathetic connection to our informants is greatly enhanced and our conversations may take directions not otherwise available to us. 
Another benefit would be that we could actually feed some of the understanding we may get from working with cultures with a strong value of extraordinary experiences of consciousness into our own culture.  That way we not only improve our understanding of other cultures but enrich our own.
 
Finally we would open up whole new fields of investigation.  For example, consider the following quote by a Western Desert ngangkari, or traditional healer:
“Ananagu doctors work with the spirit of the sick person, both when he or she is awake and when he or she is asleep.  Ngangkari work at night when all is quiet, gliding among people’s sleeping spirits similar to the way an eagle soars.  Ngangkari have special tools called ‘mapanpa’. Ngangkari travel in their spirit bodies at night, meeting up and conferring with each other.  Ngangkari do not travel like this in ones and twos; they gather in large groups from extensive areas.” (Wanatjura, 2003, 15)
 
This comment suggests a potential field of nocturnal investigation, fieldwork during our sleep so to speak, but only if we are prepared to participate in this particular manifestation of consciousness, the OBE. 

Participative anthropology of consciousness
This points to a fundamental element of what I am proposing, namely that to work with the consciential paradigm we need to go beyond theory and participate in the experiences of consciousness we are discussing, including OBEs and contact with extraphysical consciousnesses (i.e. spirits).  
 
This produces a certain limitation, because this is not everybody’s thing.  In fact I would suggest that, at least for the time being, this sort of research would be limited to a small number of researchers who are that way inclined and prepared to undergo the requisite training.  Charles Tart’s work on state-specific sciences has relevance here. 
 
In discussing the difficulty of consensual validation of states of consciousness Tart argues that such research and its validation will need to be undertaken by highly trained individuals - like in any other scientific investigation …
Public observation, …, almost always refers to a limited, specially trained public.  It is only by basic agreement among those specially trained people that data become accepted as a foundation for the development of science.  That laymen cannot replicate the observations is of little relevance. (Tart, 1998)
 
Just as the advanced mathematician will struggle to find a receptive audience among laypeople, so the advanced projector might struggle; but in neither case does it mean that what they have to say may not be useful. In the case of anthropology, the science that studies the human being, I would argue a full exploration of extraordinary experiences of consciousness really goes to the core of the discipline.
​
References
Alvarado, Carlos. 2000. Out-Of-Body Experiences.  Varieties of Anomalous Experience: 
Examining the Scientific Evidence. Etzel Cardeña, Steven Jay Lynn and Stanley Krippner, eds. Pp. 183-218 Washington: American Psychological Association
De Martino, Ernesto  2001 [1946]. Sciamanismo e fenomenologia paranormale. Metapsichica
McCaul, Kim. 2008. The persistence of traditional Aboriginal healers in the 21st century and of anthropology’s struggle to understand them. Journal of the Anthropological Society of South Australia. 33: 129-166.
Schwartz, Lisa. 1994. Being changed by cross cultural encounters. Pp. 209-236 in Young, David E. & Goulet, Jean-Guy (eds.). Being Changed by Cross-Cultural Encounters: the anthropology of extraordinary experience; Broadview Press: Peterborough
Tart, Charles 1998. Investigating altered states of consciousness on their own terms: A proposal for the creation of state-specific sciences. Journal of the Brazilian Association for the advancement of science 50, 2/3 March/June: 103-116 (accessed on internet at http://www.paradigm-sys.com/ctt_articles2.cfm?id=42)
Turner, Edith 1992. The reality of spirits. ReVision 15 (1): 28-32
Vieira, Waldo 1994. 700 Experimentos da Conscientiologia. Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Internacional de Projeciologia e Conscienciologia
Vieira, Waldo 1997. Projections of the consciousness. (2nd English edition) Alvaro Salgado, Kevin de La Tour, Simone de La Tour, trans. Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Internacional de Projeciologia e Conscienciologia
Vieira, Waldo 1999. Projeciologia: Panorama das Experiências da Consciência Fora do Corpo Humano. 4th edition (revised and expanded). Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Internacional de Projeciologia e Conscienciologia (also available in English translation)
Wanatjura, Elsie. 2003. Preface. in Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council (ed.) Ngankari Work - Anangu Way. NPY Women’s Council Aboriginal Corporation: Alice Springs
Young, David E. & Goulet, Jean-Guy (Eds.). 1994. Being Changed by Cross-Cultural Encounters: the anthropology of extraordinary experience; Broadview Press: Peterborough 
Zurfluh, Werner. 1981. Ausserkörperlich durch die Löcher des Netzes fliegen. Pp. 473-504 in Duerr, Hans Peter (ed.). Der Wissenschaftler und das Irrationale: Band 1, Beitrage aus Ethnologie und Anthropologie. Syndikat: Frankfurt am Main

​Deepen your connection with yourself
I was talking with a close relative who shared with me that he had woken from an anxiety attack a couple of nights ago. He was in the middle of an obligatory 2 weeks home quarantine after returning to his home country from overseas. He said he had not realised that he was feeling anxious up to that moment, when he found himself waking in deep panic with a racing heart and intense agitation in his body. 
 
It is very easy for us not to know how we are feeling. Especially when it comes to feelings of fear, uncertainty and anxiety, so many of us have had those running subtly in the background to various degrees long before the current crisis. We have learned to soldier on. To shut ourselves off from these challenging emotions and give control to those parts of us that can get on with things, that are achievers and that manage life despite our underlying feelings. 
And of course we can continue to allow those parts to run the show, managing our emotions with alcohol, Netflix or other distractions. But this does come with the risk of those emotions bursting through when we least expect it: through a sudden anxiety attack, a gradual slip into depression, or sudden uncontrolled temper outbursts. This risk exists always, but it is greatly amplified in a context where our usual coping mechanisms are interrupted, or we are perhaps even experiencing complete loss of our identities derived from work or our social life. 
 
Anxiety, grief, insecurity, frustration, and anger are all very natural responses to a situation where we have lost control over much of our life and are experiencing so much uncertainty. Instead of denying those feelings, we can connect with and really allow ourselves to feel and honour them as appropriate responses. If we are proactive in contacting our emotions we can do so safely on our own terms instead of having them burst out in ways that may shock and upset us or those we love. 

​Reurbanization. In its everyday intraphysical sense, reurbanization refers to the act of renovating a suburb, a city block, a public space, a disused industrial estate, or even an entire rural town. Reurbanization is usually aimed at creating a more harmonious, organised and pleasant environment. In the form of “gentrification”, it can lead to the displacement of one population of lower socio-economic status who are replaced by others of greater wealth, creating or exacerbating social tensions and inequalities. This is an unintentional yet frequent side-effect of reurbanization that highlights the challenge of creating win-win situations in the intraphysical dimension, or deficiencyland (Vieira 2003:175). 
Reurbex. Extraphysical or para-reurbanization (reurbex) refers to the renovation and improvement of extraphysical communities, in particular those that are sick and populated by consciousnesses dominated by anti-cosmoethical, pathological and stagnant thosenes (units of THoughts + SENtiments + Energy). According to Vieira (2003), there are billions of parapsychotic post-desomas around planet Earth, i.e. consciexes in a disturbed mental and emotional state, unaware of their true extraphysical condition. They have spent centuries in extraphysical dimensions without experiencing the impact of a fresh biological rebirth, and are consequently living under the biological conditioning of their last intraphysical life.
Entrenched. The pathological communities of these parapsychotic consciexes have developed rigid, entrenched, fossilized, dense holothosenes (the collective of thosenes created by the community)  that occupy the extraphysical "spaces" around planet earth. These holothosenic "spaces" are established and maintained by the accumulation of the individual holothosenes of their extraphysical inhabitants. Para-reurbanization focuses on the renovation of these thosenic “spaces” or energetic “bubbles”, which is essentially what these extraphysical communities represent.
Pressure. Such communities are found all over the planet in parallel with intraphysical life, over which their holothosenes exert subtle yet powerfully deleterious pressure and stagnating influences, because thosenic energy transcends dimensions. In other words, the presence of these dense energies surrounding planet earth impacts on the mental and emotional well-being of intraphysical consciousness and inhibits the flow of energies from more evolved, healthy, expansive dimensions to the physical. Para-reurbanization is aimed at alleviating this holothosenic pressure on intraphysical life and creating an extraphysical environment in proximity to the physical dimension that is more propitious for the presence of evolved consciousnesses. 
Removals. Consequently, extraphysical reurbanization requires the compulsory removal of the pathological consciousnesses who have been occupying and maintaining the sick extraphysical communities through their thosenes, often for centuries or even millennia. Such removals will take them either: 

• to other extraphysical dimension that are new and composed of fewer like-minded companions, making the holothosenic structure less rigid and more amenable to interventions by helpers who assist them in preparing for a new intraphysical life; or  
• to be migrated from this planet to another where the level of evolution of the intraphysical inhabitants is more aligned with that of the consreus. 

Assistance. Although para-reurbanization is a compulsory process, it is fundamentally assistential. It assists the consreus by taking them out of their trance-like states and helping them back into the evolutionary current, and it assists all other pre-serenissimi whose evolution was made harder by the thosenic influences of the consreus. Nobody is forced to evolve, even if consciousnesses are given new opportunities; whether they take them or not is ultimately up to each individual. According to Vieira, as a major assistential undertaking, para-reurbanization is facilitated by the Homo Sapiens Serenissimi (fully lucid consciousnesses in their final physical lives and of immense energetic capacity).

​Commitment. Vieira suggests that extraphysical reurbanizations have taken place throughout history, but for the most part on a small scale, sporadically and for localised purposes. They have never led to a definitive eradication of the deep-rooted parapathologies that have accumulated over the millennia. Today, by contrast, a multitude of highly evolved extra-terrestrial consciousnesses, who have never had an intraphysical life on this planet, are committed to the methodical disbandment of the morbid extraphysical communities weighing upon humanity and terrestrial extraphysical life.
Resoma. For a consreu, being reborn on intraphysical earth means being exposed to a variety of holothosenes that one has not experienced for centuries or millennia, because one has spent all that time embedded in an extraphysical dimension composed solely of those who shared the same close-minded, fixated or fundamentalist view-point and holothosene. 
Challenges. Because the energetic patterns or holothosenes in the intraphysical dimension are so very different from the one in which the consreus were immersed for long periods of human history, resoma presents a true shock. The consreus are likely to experience many challenges and events that, from the physical perspective, may look like setbacks and mishaps, but are simply the result of thosenic incompatibility between the consciousness and its environment.
Mismatch. There is a mismatch between the new intraphysical energetic fields into which the consreu-conscin has been reborn, and the holothosene of his or her long-standing extraphysical companions from the previous intermissive period, with whom he or she remains energetically entangled. This makes it very difficult to adapt to the new intraphysical reality, entailing a number of problems, including the following:
·      Accident proneness
·      Anti-social tendencies
·      Environmental vandalism
·      Escapism / Life avoidance
·      Extreme emotional instability
·      Irrational antagonism
·      Melin (intraphysical melancholy)
·      Premature desoma 
·      Social isolation
·      Suicidal tendencies
Fundamentalism. Upon resoma, a conscreu is likely to fall victim to existential self-mimicry, i.e. the conscious or (more commonly) unconscious repetition of behaviours, tendencies and resultant experiences, often painful, from previous intraphysical life-times. These same behaviours and tendencies are also likely to have dominated and been repeated ad nauseum during their last intermissive period, on a kind of mental and emotional loop. Thus, the hypothesis that there is currently occurring a wholesale rebirth of consreus provides a logical explanation for the seeming increase in adherents of fundamentalist and aggressive religions, sects of all denominations and political movements. 
Middle Ages. Some recent world events are quite literally reminiscent of the middle ages, complete with propaganda evoking the crusades and other “holy wars”. The para-reurbanization hypothesis similarly explains the hardening of narrow minded and sectarian thinking in the realms of politics (nationalism, totalitarianism), science (materialism), society (racism, anti-environmentalism) as well as the rapid population growth and dramatic demographic changes taking place on the planet.
Healing. According to the hypothesis of para-reurbanization, there will be no sudden ascension, no immediate global transformation and no Saviour as believed, prayed and hoped for by religious and spiritual movements for centuries. Yes, transformation is occurring. But it is a slow and often painful process, involving the healing, without escapism or by-passing, of the accumulated pathologies in our collective holothosene. It is a mega-assistential undertaking requiring the contribution of millions of us, both intra- and extraphysically.

Reference
Vieira, W. 2003. Homo Sapiens Reurbanisatus. Foz do Iguaçu: Editares

​A Facebook friend recently wrote a thoughtful and optimistic post about the possibility of bringing human connection and empathy into politics. He was actually focused on the English election, but the subsequent discussion took a surprising turn when some participants started talking about the current American President’s spiritual mission to save the US from socialism. Among other things it was suggested he was a reincarnation of Thomas Jefferson, an early 19th century US President, and doing the work of God. I was not aware that his supporters have beliefs about the president’s prior reincarnations. I then googled the question and discovered others believe he is a reincarnation of George Washington and others again (I don’t think they are supporters) that he was a Mexican revolutionary who became disillusioned with politics. While I have no doubt that the consciousness currently expressing itself as the 45th President of the United States has had many previous lives, including others of power, I have no insight into and no real interest in his multi-existential biography.
 
By contrast, the discussion really made me think about the people who believe their current President has been sent by a god. That is a belief I have now seen expressed on numerous occasions, both in messages on social media and in media interviews with Republican voters. It appears there are many thousands of people who genuinely believe this. And to an extreme where one such believer (in the Facebook thread) spoke about following the President to hell and back if there were another civil war in the US. These are powerful beliefs and projections on an individual leader, and they may seem completely irrational until we look at the multidimensional picture.
 
From that perspective we know that prior to our most recent birth we were in an extraphysical dimension with like-minded folks, i.e. with people whose overall patterns of thoughts, emotions and resultant energy (what conscientiology calls the thosene i.e. THOught + SENtiment + Energy) are close enough to ours to allow us to coexists in a shared consensus reality or extraphysical dimension. In other words, non-physical dimensions are based on energetic frequencies created by the consciousnesses who inhabit them. Accounts by out-of-body explorers consistently describe communities, vast cities and entire “countries” occupied by people who share common systems of belief, religious or otherwise, about the nature of their particular world. People with strongly ingrained religious or cultural patterns tend to group together, as do people with broadly open and universalistic perspectives of life. People embroiled in inter-generational conflicts or patterns of subjugation and power continue to play them out beyond the physical dimension.
 
One of the beautiful and challenging aspects of physical life is that it brings us all together. Whether we were in extraphysical “hell” (energetically really dense dimensions in which we are caught in our own suffering and pathological cycles of relating with those around us) or “heaven” (expansive and ecstatic dimensions where we feel our connection to all of life and know our creative purpose) or somewhere in between, here in physical life we can be neighbours, class mates, work colleagues and sit next to each other in a movie or on the bus. Such coexistence does not happen extraphysically, where we are largely restricted to others “like us”. It is one of the things that makes physical life such a unique learning and growth opportunity. But of course, we also gravitate to like-minded consciousnesses when we are in the physical dimension and in fact many of our friends and people we resonate with here are people we know (but have temporarily forgotten we know) from our extraphysical homes.

​The most tangible experiences of this in my own life was through my relationship with the conscientiology community. The first conscientiology book I picked up was the Existential Programme Manual by Waldo Vieira about living your life purpose. The book is full of neologisms and Waldo’s writing style is very unusual.  For a lot of people his books are hard work, but to me all the concepts in the book seemed incredibly familiar. Reading it felt like I was simply remembering things I already knew, rather than learning something new. Subsequently I spent time with various conscientiological organisations and I had frequent experiences of already knowing many of the people I was working with. Of course the same applies to all other significant relationships, but the sense is heightened when it involves a community doing energy work and focused on multidimensionality. And there is something powerful about a sense that we are engaged with a group of people around a common purpose and know, or at least have occasional insights about the fact, that we arranged aspects of this purpose before we were born into this particular physical existence. In the case of conscientiology, the overarching drive of the individuals drawn to it was around the exploration of consciousness and the creation of educational tools to help us all live with greater awareness of our multidimensional nature. 
 
From out-of-body exploration we know that any group task focused around assistance, whether it is providing food to people in need or clarifying people about multidimensional life, has a large extraphysical support team and involves intraphysical and extraphysical people, who have known each other across dimensions and life-times, working in cooperation (with the intraphysical team usually being largely unconscious of this). Whether we think about Jesus and his disciples, Ghandi or Martin Luther King and those closest to them, or any other spiritual leader and their entourage, they did not meet in the intraphysical dimension for the first time, nor by coincidence. Groups of people who make significant impacts in this dimension have prepared for this before they were born. By his own account, one of the reasons Waldo Vieira assumed his rather striking persona (big white beard and always dressed in white) was to evoke memories in people who had met him in the extraphysical dimension before they were born, because there he had had the same persona.
 
But such prior connections are not confined to so-called spiritual figures in history. They are equally true for leaders of large social, political and economic movements and their collaborators, followers and supporters, even if completely unconscious. And not just those who make positive impacts on this planet, but also consciousnesses like the leaders of Nazi Germany or any other group of people who come together to wield power over others, manipulate or divide. They too knew each other before their birth.
 
Thinking about the people who consider the American President to have been sent by God, it struck me that of course it is not just those who work closest together who have links across dimensions, but also the adoring masses, drawn into a kind of hypnotic trance by a charismatic leader. They may not have ever gotten close to the consciousness manifesting as the current leader, but there is a very high chance that they were already under the trance of such an autocratic leader before they were reborn. Because there are many extraphysical dimensions that are literally run like kingdoms and dictatorships, in which millions of consciousnesses play out some of the most ancient power dynamics on this planet where one or a few rule the many.  So this is a familiar and appealing dynamic for those of us in the physical dimension whose most recent intermissive period (period between lives) was in such a dimension.

Reflections
As stated in the introduction, I interpret the perceptions I had during the experience as relating to an objective reality. The experience itself was of course subjective, in the sense that another person taking the same drugs (my friend in this case) did not perceive the world in the same way as I did during our “trip”. The psychological filters and state of the energetic system of the experimenter will have a significant impact on the way the experience unfolds. But as I interpret what occurred, both of us were perceiving different slices of a complex, multidimensional reality. So from a multidimensional, i.e. multi-frequency or multi-vibratory perspective, the fact that our perceptions were subjective does not mean that the objects of my perception were created by my mind. Rather it means that the psilocybin affected my energetic system in such a way, that my perceptions were temporarily tuned to a multitude of frequencies we do not normally register. The drug had shifted my consciousness from the physical body, its usual point of focus during the waking state, to my more subtle extraphysical bodies, which meant my perceptions included and on brief occasions were confined to, the energetic frequencies of those bodies. The effect of these drugs to shift consciousness in this way, is why they are appropriately called projectiogens, i.e. substances that induce projections of consciousness from the physical to other dimensions of existence.  

Such projections or shifts of consciousness require energy; the kind of energy referred to as chi / qui in Asian cultures and as bioenergy in conscientiology. Expansions of consciousness in the mentalsoma often involve the intense energetic rush described as a kundalini experience. The less dramatic shift of awareness to our psychosoma are often accompanied by vibrational sensations referred to as the vibrational state. In ways we do not yet understand, projectiogenic drugs like psilocybin seem to alter our energetic system and thereby shift our consciousness very rapidly from its usual focus on the physical dimension, to our more subtle bodies of manifestation.

The activation of the pineal gland early on after consuming the mushrooms is indicative of the so-called kundalini energy. I have elsewhere written about a mentalsomatic projection and cosmic consciousness experience I enjoyed without the use of drugs. That also involved intense activation of the pineal gland. Parts of this mushroom induced experience also took place in the mentalsoma. This included the experience of being a disembodied ancient being and the perception of an indescribable infinity to existence with which I and my friend (and all living beings) were intrinsically connected. These are classic mentalsomatic experiences.

At other times the awareness seemed to shift back to the psychosoma, such as when I was moving my body about and probably also the visionary experience of seeing and feeling my body die, disintegrate and being reabsorbed by a tree. A vision that brought with it a deep sense of peace regarding my mortality as I felt myself truly a part of the cycle of life. 
At all times, though, my perception was firmly resting outside of the physical body, which seemed like a mere appendage. As such the materialist suggestion that the body creates consciousness seems completely implausible. 

The intensity with which these drugs can propel us beyond our body to me is both the beauty and the danger of such experience. It was beautiful and uplifting to know myself so clearly as a timeless being beyond the confines of this life. This has not been my only experience of this nature, and paradoxically each time this sense further motivates and inspire me to make the most out of the very life it seems to be transcending. With the transcendence of the ego-identity comes the inner knowing that there is a deep purpose to everybody’s existence and that my and everybody else’s ego-identity are precious expressions of life. This means, this kind of expansion has filled me with a feeling of responsibility towards myself and this life. And from that perspective I can understand why some people are advocating the conscious use of these projectiogens – to help us reconnect with ourselves and the world and inspire us to express our purpose.

On the other hand, for some time after the experience I was very tempted to repeat it. I longed to recreate the dissolution of the ego and return to that state of transcendent bliss. I have seen this urge in other experimenters. I feel lucky that part of me knew that such an attempt would have been unsuccessful and that the desire was motivated by a wish to escape the more challenging aspects of my life, my inner pains and unresolved psychological issues. Whether achieved through meditation or the use of drugs, transcendent experience always carry the risk of alienating us from our current life and leading us down the spiritual by-pass route. In other words, they can simply end up as yet another form of escapism, albeit disguised as a meritorious spiritual endeavour and truth seeking. Transcendence is only one side to the evolutionary coin. The other is to address our unresolved psychological material. By doing both we will truly grow as multidimensional beings, with our feet firmly planted on the ground while keeping the mentalsoma connected to the cosmos. 
​
The key to both is energy. It is through bringing energy into our body and our emotional body that we start integrating our traumas and hidden emotional content and it is through energy that we access the cosmic consciousness expansions of the mentalsoma. Projectiogenic drugs, used respectfully and in the right frame of mind and energy, may play a role in our healing and in giving us a glimpse of our wider reality. But to integrate ourselves, psychologically and holosomatically, we need to bring energy gradually and consistently under our own steam, using tools such as breath-work, movement-based practices, deep psychological inquiry and developing a conscious relationship with our energy body.