The first sip from the Grail is free. Whether as sweet nectar from our mother's breast or the bliss of our first adolescent love affair, the initial taste of ecstasy is a divine gift, naively unquestioned. Such a drink, by definition, kicks open doorways to unseen possibilities. It inspires the heart to fly, the mind to reel, the feet to dance. Once exposed, we are never quite the same. It gives us a taste of what could be, whets our appetites for possibilities, and creates a gnawing hunger that annihilates our illusion of complacent satisfaction.

Ah, but the second taste -- now that is quite costly. To drink again requires a distinct sacrifice of the familiar. Its allure beckons us into a world unkown, beckons us like a dream just beyond our reach, a dream of wholeness we had learned to live without. To pursue a further sip requires that we make generous payment with our old ways of being, ways that might be sacrificed for all time. To turn back and go without -- once we have had that initial taste of perfection -- exacts the price of perpetual dissatisfaction. As such the first taste of the Grail brings initiation. But it is the subsequent tastes that bring transformation.

The Grail first appears when we least expect it. It might be a stroke of luck that lands us a new job, or even that first seductive taste of an addictive substance or relationship. It generally comes from unsuspecting sources and appears most often in the depths of despair, when we think there is no possible way out of our situation. When we are stripped naked of our defenses, dissolved of our ego, pushed and prodded beyond our capacities to a place where there is no turning back, there comes a point where we eventually break open. In the 12-step programs designed to help people overcome addictions, it is the step where we come to admit our own powerlessness, and turn the solution over to a deeper source. In admitting we don't know, we stop trying to work from the old mind. We let go. And in letting go, we let something beyond our ordinary awareness answers our prayers. You may call it God, Goddess, Spirit, the Force, Higher Power, Fate, or Destiny, but its appearance is generally marked by an unexpected presence of Grace.

Jospeh Campbell described this experience as a stage in the archetypal Hero's Quest, which he called "Supernatural Aid." Once we have made our commitment to the quest itself, and begun to walk along the path, aid from unseen sources miraculously appears. In myths and fairy tales, it appears as a wise old man or crone, or a fairy presence who gives magical amulets to protect against future battles.

"What such a figure represents," writes Campbell, "is the benign, protecting power of destiny. The fantasy is a reassurance. . . . that protective power is always and ever present within the sanctuary of the heart and even immanent within, or just behind, the unfamiliar features of the world."

While the alteration of consciousness through chemical means is not the only way to surrender to a new perspective, it is perhaps the quickest and despite what we may have been led to believe, most foolproof in terms of something tangible actually occurring in a short, determined time span. Meditation, fasting, dancing, sexuality, singing, or other shamanic techniques do indeed produce a change over time, and it is precisely this change that is intended by these practices. They are highly recommended as tried and true methods that support exploration in consciousness or personal growth. Yet, there is never any guarantee that these methods will actually work in every case, and their effectiveness only occurs as a result of years of practice in developing these techniques. As a result there are too many people without the discipline, belief, or interest in applying them. And therefore, too many people who remain mired in a consciousness that may support their ultimate demise (and the demise of others).

Plants that alter consciousness however, do so on a far more predictable basis than the drug wars would have us believe. While the contents of consciousness that are revealed cannot be predicted (if they could, what would be the mystery?), the fact that consciousness will be changed in some way is nearly 100% guaranteed. Such is the nature and fear of the experience, especially from the perspective of a controlling paradigm that is desparately fighting to remain in control. As ethnobotanist Terence McKenna states in his manifesto from Food of the Gods:

"Our culture, self-toxified by the poisonous by-products of technology and egocentric ideology, is the unhappy inheritor of the dominator attitude that alteration of consciousness by the use of plants or substances is somehow wrong, onanistic, and perversely antisocial. I will argue that suppression of shamanic gnosis, with its reliance and insistence of ecstatic dissolution of the ego, has robbed us of life's meaning and made us enemies of the planet, of ourselves and our grandchildren. We are killing the planet in order to keep intact the wrongheaded assumptions of the ego-dominator cultural style. It is time for a change."
McKenna goes on further to sport the possibility that psychedelic mushrooms, growing in the grasslands of Africa at the retreat of the Ice Age, could have been a common element in the food our ancestors collected in the prairies. In this way, mind-enhancing plants, abundant and natural in the garden of Gaia, may have been the very key that spawned the evolution of consciousness from the instinctual mammalian brains of our forebears to the self-reflective intuitional leaps of our present evolutionary iteration. While his theory remains unprovable, it is thrown into a cauldron, occupied only by the distinct vacuum of other plausible theories for the relatively sudden leap in conscious evolution and brain development that are now part of our current apparatus. If we are on the brink of yet another evolutionary leap, as it seems that we must be at this precarious time, then perhaps this radical ally is necessary to befriend once again.

"If the ego is not regularly and repeatedly dissolved in the unhounded hyperspace of the Transcendent Other, there will always be a slow drift away from the sense of self as part of nature's larger whole. The ultimate consequence of this drift is the fatal ennui that now permeates western civilization."

In addition, research has suggested the previous use of such substances in some of the most venerated rituals of our cultural history. The Eleusinian Mysteries, practiced annually in Greece for nearly 2000 years, and boasting thousands of initiates per ritual, were suspected of using either hallucinogenic mushrooms, or ergot (from which LSD is derived) in their sacred drink, the Kykeon. The grain goddess, Demeter, in her grief over the loss of her daughter Persephone, refuses the draft of wine she is offered, and instead demands the creation of Kykeon, a recipe made of barley, water, and pennyroyal, which she gives to humans as a way of reconstituting her worship. Her worship is of the grain itself, the staff of life, from which humanity is able to learn the mysteries of life and death, and through which the continuation of life is guaranteed. Ergot grows naturally in the mold of decaying grain, and would likely have been known to the priests and priestesses of the ancient world.

And so the breaking open of the soul, the call for help, the thirst for answers, for a new way of seeing, are all necessary elements of transformation. As Einstein has said, "We cannot solve the problems we face today with the same kind of thinking that created them."

The combined questions of "Whom does the Grail serve?" and "What does the Grail contain?" integrate subject and object, substance and essence, container and contained. They provide both the lock which protects the mysteries and the key which opens them. And with that distinguished combination, the door becomes a portal to the possible.