So, Michael Pollan — Is God For Real?

Imagining a Conversation about Psychedelics

This is not a psilocybin mushroom. I am told this pictured one is very poisonous, but pretty. The photo was taken in the mountain area of Oaxaca, Mexico, steeped for millenia in the use of plant medicine, including mushrooms.

The intriguing thing to me about Michael Pollan’s book, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence, is though it is non-fiction, there seems to be a a narrative story-line that made for a compelling read. Though it would be great to sit down and have a conversation with him, in his narrative, he pretty much answers any of the questions I would have had. I mean, with a title like that, how can anything have been left out?

As I was reading the book, certain questions that interested me seemed also to be of interest to him, and he does attempt to answer them. This is the narrative structure of the book, the quest for the truth of what psychedelics have to offer us. I would love to meet him, but I think I already know the answers to the one question I would want to throw at him. Here is a conversation I imagine with him, on the “God” question.

Me: I really like how your mind works. You knew that how you saw the world was from a materialist, scientific point of view, but you say you are sensitive to the limitations of that worldview. How it is that you could put yourself into an intellectual framework that could potentially shake your world?