“Okay. Good. So I’m trying to arrange a session at Marsh Chapel for twenty students from the Andover seminary, who presumably are more attuned to religious experience than students of psychology or history or whatever discipline. What I’m interested in is the religious aspect of the psychedelic experience—that is, whether or not these drugs, psilocybin in particular, can facilitate the kind of transcendence or agape the saints and mystics experience. Sadhus, yogis, priests, the Vedantists, Joan of Arc. I mean, Tim goes so far as to claim all religion derives from pharmaceutically assisted visions, whether it be from ergot, peyote buttons or psychoactive mushrooms.”

“But I’ve—I’m not qualified, really. I’ve only had two experiences, two trips, and you saw, well”—he felt the color rise to his face—“what happened the other night.”

Walter wasn’t listening. He was staring past him now, focused on the wall, as if working through a problem. “What I’m saying is people claim this is a shortcut to religious awakening, as if God is just a function of the neurons, a presence in our own brains and not some overarching deity, and if that’s the case, what does it say about our world religions, all our gods, our need for them, for explanation, for purpose?”

The Light, that was what this was about. After that first session, Tim had asked him if he’d seen the Light. But of course he hadn’t, because there was no Light and there was no God. “Listen, Walter, I’d like to help but I’m really just an amateur at all this—I’m following Tim’s lead, is all, and I’m curious, I am—”

“That’s just why I want you. You’ve had the experience but you’re not biased one way or the other, am I right?”

“You want the truth? God is the least of my concerns.”

“Okay, good. That’s just what I want to hear because, after all, this is my thesis, not yours. And the fact is I’ve never taken the drug myself, though Tim keeps pressuring me, insisting that I absolutely have to in order to know what it’s like for my subjects, that somehow I’d be inauthentic, even dishonest, if I didn’t. But I disagree, absolutely. I want to go into this—and it’s going to be a double-blind experiment, so neither the subjects nor I will know who’s getting the psilocybin and who the placebo—without even the slightest hint of bias for or against, you understand?”