How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics

by Michael Pollan

Shortly after the Esalen meeting, Schuster made what would turn out to be his most important contribution: telling Bob Jesse about his old friend Roland Griffiths, whom he described as exactly “the investigator beyond reproach” Jesse was looking for and “a scientist of the first order.” “Everything Roland’s done he’s devoted himself to completely,” Jesse recalls Schuster saying, “including his meditation practice. We think it’s changed him.” Griffiths had shared with Schuster his growing dissatisfaction with science and his deepening interest in the kind of “ultimate questions” coming up in his meditation practice. Schuster then made the call to Griffiths telling him about the interesting young man he’d just met at Esalen, explaining that they shared an interest in spirituality, and suggesting they should meet. After an exchange of e-mails, Jesse flew to Baltimore to have lunch with Griffiths in the cafeteria on the Bayview medical campus, inaugurating a series of conversations and meetings that would eventually lead to their collaboration on the 2006 study of psilocybin and mystical experience at Johns Hopkins.