God Without God: An Atheist's Account

I should say at the start: I'm a scientist. Tenured faculty. I came to psilocybin through the published literature — Hopkins, Imperial, NYU. I trusted the data. I did not anticipate what the data was describing until I experienced it.

Three and a half grams on a Tuesday night. I was on my back on the floor with a blindfold and headphones. By hour three, something happened that I don't have adequate language for. The word that keeps presenting itself is "God," which I am deeply uncomfortable using and which I don't believe in. But the experience was of something — a presence, an intelligence, a love that was not human in scale — that I encountered as clearly as I have encountered anything in my life.

I understand the neuroscience of why this happens. Default mode network suppression, thalamic gating changes, the conditions for self-transcendence. Understanding the mechanism doesn't remove the experience.

I spent eight months after that session trying to understand what had happened. I did not become religious. But something changed that I am still sorting out — something about the certainty with which I had dismissed certain questions as settled, the way I now hold what I know.

I remain an atheist. I also remain unable to forget what I experienced. These two facts coexist in me, awkwardly and productively.