One Step Beyond: The Sacred Mushroom

The episode opens with a mushroom being shown that had been discovered only weeks before in a tropical rain forest. The narrator says that the mushroom might be able to stimulate extra-sensory perception. The narrator, etc, traveled to Mexico.

The episode is basically unscripted. At the moment he is waiting for a plane to fly him to 'a remote mountain village.'

Going with him is a neuropharamcologist.

The man is a kahuna, a spiritual leader of Hawaii.

The next man is a professor of philosophy. They also have a translator going with them who has lived with the people of the target village for nine years. One other person going with them is a man who wrote a book called The Sacred Mushroom. (Looked his name up on Amazon and his book is available there. ) The guy talks very haltingly about seeing if the mushroom had any value in curing natural diseases. There are two planes going on the mission. ( I checked the name of the village and it is a real village.)

Newland, the narrator, notes that people who have been hunting the mushroom have been killed. There was also some danger in the plane's landing. If you get the book An Analytical Guide to Television's One Step Beyond by John Kenneth Muir and read the entry for this episode you will find that it nearly didn't get aired. Also, after Newland took the mushroom and an ESP test his ability was quite a bit higher than pre-mushroom testing.

The photo refers to when they were going to see if they could find a priest of the mushroom in the village.

None of the villagers wanted to talk about the mushroom so the group opened a free medical clinic and that helped ease the way.

Things move slowly but the brujo (the mushroom priest) shows up.

The brujo has a condition, though, and that is the others must also eat the mushroom. To keep things scientific,though, and set up a control one person is excused from eating the mushroom. The brujo tells one guy about an amusing event in his childhood in Indiana. There is no way, of course, that the priest/brujo could have known anything at all about the guy's past.

The brujo tells the woman scientist that she is 'sick in the chest.' She has a heart condition that the others did not know about.

The group has sat through one sacred rite (and that's exactly what is was) and they find themselves invited soon after to meet another brujo.

The second priest talks about a report of a stolen burro ( a very serious crime in the village) and is able to tell where the burro is and who stole him. Scientifically, though, this is not very significant since a skeptic would claim that the brujo knew beforehand what had happened and it was all a set-up.

Three weeks later they are at the home of the scientist who wrote the book The Sacred Mushroom. They are not in California. The scientist says that 25 people have taken the mushroom so far (I assume under controlled conditions) and have shown an increase in extra-sensory ability. Newland will basically be test subject 26.

A blindfold is put on Newland and then he is asked some questions to get a baseline on his ESP ability or lack of it.

The results reveal basic lack of his own ESP ability.

I find the first test really, really interesting. There are rows of playing cards (which seem to have dots on them like dominos.) Newland is to put his hand on the first card on one row and then, using his other hand, try to sense the matching card in the second row.

The second test is using a book with a photo in it. Newland is to try to describe what the photo is showing without, of course, being able to see it. There was also another test involving a book. He had very low scores on all three tests.

We see him on camera eating the mushrooms, establishing the fact that he actually did eat them and had not tried to fake it. Twenty minutes pass and Newland says he has a sense of well-being.

The scientist has him look at a strobe light (with his eyes closed) and Newland says he sees lots of colors. He's then given the previous tests again. Results of the card test went from 5 out of 50 to 12 out of 50. As to the pictures his first test was 0 right out of 8. Post-mushroom his score went to 6 right out of 8. Those are some rather significant score increases. The book test must have involved trying to guess page numbers correctly.

He then reunites the three scientists to get their opinions about what they had done.

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