This film takes you on a journey of mystical revelations through magic mushrooms and meditations. In ‘Descending the Mountain’ psychiatrist Franz Vollenweider and Zen master Vanja Palmers create a ground-breaking scientific experiment located on the majestic Mount Rigi in Switzerland.
The film shows if and how, when united, psilocybin and meditation might expand our understanding of the nature of consciousness.

What happens when you administer psilocybin to experienced zen meditators? A neuroscientist and a zen master carry out a double-blind experiment on a sphinxlike mountain in Switzerland. Their goal: to examine the nature of consciousness.

“These substances are not for the sick only, they belong in the hands of meditation”
Albert Hofmann

Exactly fifty years after the ban on psychedelics a group of Zen meditators – who have never used any psychedelic substances before – are given psilocybin on the last day of a 5-day retreat. Half the group receives a placebo.