The Sacred Mushroom – Andrija Puharich

At the time of the first experiment with Harry we had in our possession only a few specimens of Amanita muscaria, and because of its poisonous nature, I was not inclined to be in any hurry about human experimentation. I knew far too little about how to handle it.

On August 7, 1955, Harry was giving a demonstration of telepathy for Aldous Huxley. In the middle of the demonstration Harry spontaneously slipped into a deep trance. At the moment I felt that he had ruined my neat little laboratory demonstration. But in the presence of Aldous and myself, he entered into a dramatic sign-language demonstration whose meaning this time was quite clear.

The Ra Ho Tep personality insisted on having the golden mushroom brought to him. I could not escape the urgency of this appeal. I had to go and get one of my precious golden mushrooms. I brought it back to the laboratory and placed it in front of the deeply entranced Harry.

The Ra Ho Tep personality became ecstatic over it. Then for the first time I saw the secret details of how the mushroom was to be used. Harry applied the mushroom himself on the tongue, and on the top of his head, in ritualistic fashion. Five minutes after he had completed this remarkable demonstration he woke up…..

The symptoms became alarming….

Harry was smoking a cigarette at this time. Aldous called me urgently and pointed out that the cigarette was burning the skin between Harry's fingers. Harry was completely unaware of it. I told Aldous that this anaesthetic effect was to be expected from an overdose of Amanita muscdria, and that I would soon give him the atropine.

But before giving Harry the atropine I asked him how he felt. He mumbled that he felt very very drunk.

Then he looked straight ahead and said that he felt he could see through the wall of the laboratory.  He said that everything seemed so clear on the other side of the wall.  I asked him what he saw, and he gave me an accurate description.  But I also knew that he had prior knowledge of the other side of the wall and this could well be imagination. Therefore I delayed giving him the atropine in order to do one quick test of his seeming-clairvoyance.

I hastily blindfolded him, urging his co-operation, and placed him before the covered MAT test. I begged him to try to do one test. Aldous and I watched him closely. His hands fumbled over the picture blocks for about a minute. He just couldn't seem to make his hands follow his will power.  I spoke sharply and commanded him to begin the test. He pulled himself together and completed the entire series of matching ten sets of pictures in about three seconds.

He literally threw the two sets of picture blocks together.

I took the cover away from the blocks, and was amazed to find that he had scored ten correct matches. The statistical odds against getting this score by chance alone were such that he would have had to do this test a million times before such a result would occur once. This was the most remarkable demonstration with the MAT test that he had done up to this date.