Hallucinogens and God

You would probably want Huston Smith's book, Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals (New York: Tarcher/Putnum, 2000).

It was in response to just such experiences, going back to the original Good Friday Experiment of 1962, in which he was a participant, that he came up with the phrase "Altered traits, not altered states."

In other words, it is not the experience but what one does with it.

For those who don't know him, Smith is now the "grand old man" among historians of world religions, with numerous books to his credit.

Many seekers use different methods to attain a different "perspective." Vision quests, fasting, prayer, chanting, song, incense, meditation. After all it's all to effectuate some type of change, 'tis it not -- and, yes, to seek "communion" and/or "enlightenment." Let there be light.

Hey Rod,

Check out this story from last year.

Re: Stuart Buck's link/story:

Unless things have changed, while it's illegal to sell or purchase psilocybin mushrooms, it is not illegal to sell or purchase the spores, and there are mail-order places that will sell them to you (and they also, coincidentally, sell books on how to grow the spores into mushrooms). Of course, once you plant the spores, I think you have broken the law. But I suspect if one were discreet about it, one could acquire and grow the 'shrooms and have one's own meaningful psilocybin experiences. (Much less nauseous, if at all, than morning glory seeds, I hear.)

Interesting article, Stuart.

I wouldn't be averse to taking some of the Al Qaeda leaders and giving them a dose of psilocybin or LSD. Maybe if they suffered a complete ego death they'd be less prone to inflict real death on others.

Wow. Interesting topic. First--”unearned experience.” Surely you’re not implying that one can earn a mystical experience? It’s true that most religions incorporate particular practices that will change brain function and thus induce altered states of mind. Meditation over long periods of time has been shown, using brain scan technology, to alter the mind in this way. Fasting, silence, isolation, immobility, dancing to exhaustion, and other forms of extreme experience also change mind states. So, I guess in a sense these efforts could be said to “earn” an experience, whereas pharmaceuticals are a way of jumping into a state without the run-up of long practice.

As I understand it, religious use of hallucinogens also requires some kind of framing to give understanding of the experience. Peyote use, for instance, takes place within a ritual context that gives shape to the experience. (And I see that a framing context was provided in the article cited by a previous poster.)

But what could you mean by an “earned” religious experience? Like, if I pray really, really hard and go to church a lot and never break any rules, then I deserve a cosmic vision? I know some people feel this way, but that doesn’t seem to be how it works.

I would say that all mystical experiences are mediated in the same way, through our physical bodies. We have no other way of experiencing things. And thus, they are no more and no less real than any of our other perceptions. There have always been “wild” mystical experiences. Organized religions try to bring them under control, because they want to be the sole mediators of religious experience. The experience is always valid for the person who is having it--but what relation it has to the consensual reality that we live in with others, or to other sensory data, is a question that may require some counsel and interpretation.

For instance, if I saw a 30-foot Jesus who told me I have to raise more money or be taken from this earth, I’d ask myself what this really said about my state of mind. Rather than concluding that my TV audience had better pony up, I might interpret this to be God showing me what a false and inadequate concept of Her wondrous power I’d come up with, and how deep in hock to Mammon I’d gone. And if I had a vision of all the people I don’t like roasting in Hell, I would not be writing to the Pope. I’d ask God to remove this delusion and give me a more compassionate heart.

I remember being a little kid and hearing them read, at the end of Mass, what they used to call the Last Gospel--the beginning of the book of John. “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” I thought “well . . . YEAH. I know that.” There is the light of creation in everything. In people, too. It’s always there. You just can’t always remain aware of it. But I don’t ascribe this knowledge to being a saint or something. It’s just something I know that not everybody does. It’s a responsibility, like every other kind of knowledge. Worth knowing, though--by whatever method you can get to it.

LSD can be a valid opening up experience, and it can also be a devastating and horrifying experience.
Some say that drugs are "cheating", in spiritual terms;
in "The Master Game", drug use is mentioned and frowned upon.
One of the big problems is that once you've SEEN IT, and you come back to mundane reality, well, you just don't care anymore. You realize all too deeply that what's going on here is just a pale imitation of the REAL thing. That's why so many burned out on acid in the 60's.
It's a tricky thing. I don't recommend it.
The Native Americans did all sorts of prep before doing hallucinogens; fasting and purification work.
Ironically, the Boomers have turned into a very crappy, irresponsible, and materialistic generation, so I'm not sure that acid was all that helpful in the long run.

About interpenetration of body and soul from one of the most amazing lifes:
(st.Maria Egyptian http://www.monachos.net/library/Mary_of_Egypt,_Complete_Life_by_Patriarch_Sophronius_of_Jerusalem ):

"...she turned to the East, and raising her eyes to heaven and stretching out her hands, she began to pray in a whisper. One could not hear separate words, so that Zosimas could not understand anything that she said in her prayers. Meanwhile he stood, according to his own word, all in a flutter, looking at the ground without saying a word. And he swore, calling God to witness, that when at length he thought that her prayer was very long, he took his eyes off the ground and saw that she was raised bout a forearm's distance from the ground and stood praying in the air. When he saw this, even greater terror seized him and he fell on the ground weeping and repeating may times, "Lord have mercy."

And whilst lying prostrate on the ground he was tempted by a thought: Is it not a spirit, and perhaps her prayer is hypocrisy. But at the very same moment the woman turned round, raised the elder from the ground and said:

"Why do thoughts confuse you, Abba, and tempt you about me, as if I were a spirit and a dissember in prayer? Know, holy father, that I am only a sinful woman, though I am guarded by Holy baptism. And I am no spirit but earth and ashes, and flesh alone."

And with these words she guarded herself with the sign of the Cross on her forehead, eyes, mouth and breast, saying:

"May God defend us from the evil one and from his designs, for fierce is his struggle against us."

Nothing mystical happens in my life :( Trying to come to belief through feeble brains by reading religious books seems to be hopless idea, maybe i should taste LSD like that man? In what shops they are sold?

It sounds like hallucinogens may enhance the experience of what has been called "natural law." That is basically wonder at the beauty and interrelatedness of nature and concluding that there must be a god behind it all. Such an impression requires little faith, it just seems reasonable. With LSD, the experience may take a quantum leap. But, to have a religious faith, one must step out on faith beyond the natural law experience to embrace a religious system of thought. As Chas. S. Clifton has already stated, Huston Smith, who has tried everything, concluded that spiritual growth was demonstrated not by altered states, but altered traits of character. The sonorous sound of that phrase helps you remember it. Smith, by the way, is closing out his illustrious life as a Methodist, which is how he started it. That said, I would never recommend LSD to help a person have a religious experience: Its too dangerous to mess with your mind like that.

Amongst pagans a recurring theme and source of much heated debate is the experience called Unverified personal gnosis (UPG) (sometimes stated with "unsubstantiated"). The use of entheogens makes this, methinks, a more general topic of interest.

The debate stems from the desire of the person to share or generalize the UPG. As one might imagine, it is often used in a pejorative sense.

Synchronistically, I'm (re)reading Carl Jung's lectures (the collection edited by Joseph Campbell). Jung's concept of collective unconscious explicitly, in Jung's own words, ignores the biological basis for consciousness. He quite rightly disqualified himself from speculation along that route.

So, the question for any person becomes: do I allow this sensory experience to inform my consciousness, or do I relegate it to chemical reactions and synaptic electrical activity? Does it have any semantic meaning, or is it just a pretty light show?

Anthropologist Michael Harner went a similar route to Carlos Casteneda (no refs for him offered), immersing himself in the experience and stepping out of the role of scientist. He uses the term "non-ordinary reality" (NOR) to describe the sensory experiences.

I use the neologism "shamanic" (a term used by others before me, I hasten to mention) to encompass techniques and experiences around NOR. I experience NOR without entheogens, as do others. I see such substances as valid, but not required. Shamanic practitioners debate this amongst themselves quite vigorously.

In the end, though, I have a simple take on the whole matter.

One must have as certain strength of ego to partake of ego-suppression without risk of it becoming permanent. It's a proportional thing: we all partake of it as a momentary compromise or acknowledgement that the ego of another is more important in that moment. As the intensity of the moment increases, and as the moment extends into minutes and hours, most people shy away from it (often violently). It's a matter of self-defense. Entheogenic substances have an importance to the process far beyond their ability to create ego-suppression: they also suppress the defense reaction.

Besides, if everyone could do it, shamanic types like me would lose all of our sex appeal and romantic veneer. ;-)

Dear masha, if you'll forgive a personal response to your last question, I would say that what might be better than LSD is trying to practice compassion over a long time period. Most mystic types agree that what's important about a vision is the effect that it has on your life.

Perhaps you've heard the quote from Buckminster Fuller, a visionary inventor: "God is a verb." I'm not sure exactly what he meant by that, but I think part of it would be that what we call divine or creative is always active, and we participate in that by doing the divinely creative work. We move, and in moving we are guided.

There's a prayer ascribed to St. Theresa of Avila that goes like this:
"God has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world.
God has no body now on earth but yours."

When you show love for another human being, you are as close to God as you can get, because your hands and feet become God's own. Wherever there is love, God is. I think the compassionate will come to know God sooner or later, with or without a vision. And even if it turned out that the idea of God was just a mental phenomenon, I think a lifetime of loving kindness and creativity would still be the happiest kind. Just a thought before you go shopping for LSD! And it's just my thought, so it might be completely off the wall. : )

As with a few other things you've described as new discoveries in Orthodoxy, this is completely consistent with Catholic teaching.

A fascinating take on this is given in "Occult Phenomena" written by the Trappist, Alois Wiesinger over 50 years ago. He theorizes that occult phenimena as vestigial remnants of preternatural powers enjoyed by man prior to the fall. Given that he was a Trappist, I think it safe to assume his views comport with Catholic teaching.

As to the question of whether acid trips should be considered legitimate mystical experiences, i think you have to look to the fruits of the experience. In your friends case, apparently it led to a conversion of the spirit. Good for him, but it is my understanding that such conversions from using drugs are not all that common.

sigillaris

About the concept of earned verses unearned experiences. There are techniques that can produce altered states and mystical experiences, but this is not what Orthodox Christian spirituality is about. Nor is it about the idea that we can ever, by our own efforts, make ourselves worthy of Gods compassion or Grace. Rother, it is about the idea that, while salvation is through Gods Grace, nonetheless, we co-opreate in our sanctification through prayer, fasting, reading, almsgiving, and generally learning to control our destructive passions and desires. In short, we learn to bring our will into line with Gods. This co-operation with God in our sanctification is called synergy. Sometimes, people progress along this path far enough that they become what we call Saints and miracles seem to accompany them. On the other hand, sometimes people who appear to have absolutely no spiritual life recieve life changing visions. So, no, we don't earn spiritual gifts in the sence of deserving them, but they can be freely given or aquired through ascetic effort (of course if your motivation is spiritual gifts, you may be motivated by the wrong thing and simply trying to feed your pride. In that case, what gifts you recieve bay not be from God.)

The single most influential Orthodox Christian teacher in my own life has been Bishop Kallistos Ware. Bishop Ware has written some incredible works on what is in essence Orthodox anthropology, the ancient Christian understanding of the nature of man – and thus of man’s capabilities.

Here’s a good example of the insights of Bishop Kallistos:

“Most of the time we think we know who we are. But do we, in fact, know in the full and profound sense who we are? One text that is very important for the Orthodox understanding of the human person is Psalm 64:6 [LXX 63:7]—"The heart is deep." That means the human person is a profound mystery. There are depths—or if you would like, heights—within myself of which I have very little understanding.

“Who am I? The answer is not at all obvious. My personhood as a human being ranges widely over space and time. And indeed it reaches out beyond space into infinity, and beyond time into eternity. Our human personhood is created, but it transcends the created order. As is said in 2 Peter 1:4, I am called to be a "partaker of the divine nature." I am called to share, that is to say, in the uncreated energies of the living God. Our human vocation is theosis, deification, divinization. As St. Basil the Great says, "The human being is a creature that is called to become God."

“I am reminded of the story of the Fall at the beginning of Genesis, of the promise of the serpent, who says to Eve, "You shall be as God" (Genesis 3:5). The irony behind that story is that this was exactly the divine intention. The humans were indeed called to divine life. But the Fall consisted in the fact that Adam and Eve grasped with self-will that which God, in His own time and way, would have conferred upon them as a gift.

“The limits of our personhood are very wide-ranging indeed. We should adopt a dynamic view of what it is to be a person. We shouldn’t think that our personhood is something fixed. To be a person is to grow. To be on a journey. And this journey is a journey that has no limits, that stretches out forever, that goes on even in heaven. Some people have an idea of heaven as a place where you do nothing in particular. But surely that is deceptive. Surely heaven means that we continue to advance by God’s mercy from glory to glory. Heaven is an end without end.”

You can read the full article here: http://conciliarpress.pinnaclecart.com/index.php?p=page&page_id=again_ware_what_is_man

Christ Bless,
Doug

What about perceived religious experiences cause by a chemically-altered state that is not the product of drug use but rather a brain disorder, such as epilepsy? Anyone here ever read Lying Awake by Mark Salzman?

I guess what interests me so much in this question is the Orthodox belief that the body and the spirit interpenetrate each other far more than we (read: we in the West) think. The division between mind, body and spirit is far more porous than we realize.

Kallistos Ware concisely discusses the relationship between the three in his introduction to "The Art of Prayer an Orthodox Anthology," a collection of Greek and Russian Father's hesychast teachings.

When Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden fruit, their eyes were opened and they became as God, knowing good from evil. Is partaking of an entheogenic substance such as LSD any different if the outcome is indeed elevated consciousness?