“The Tourists of Consciousness,” by Jeff Warren. In The Best Canadian Essays 2011, edited by Christopher Doda and Ibi Kaslik, Tightrope Books, 2011.
Article on the fashionable jungle psychedelic ayahuasca – “The Tourists of Consciousness” – is anthologized in this volume. The piece is as much about our reductive scientific attitude as it is about drugs and the mind. Does nature have an interior aspect – as we do – and if so, what is the relationship between that “mind” and ours? Whatever our intellectual authorities may tell us, this is an open question – perhaps the most important question we can ask when it comes to ecological health and wellbeing.