Tripping down religion road

Tripping down religion road
Exploring the argument for drugs as a means of spiritual enlightenment


Have you ever escaped the confines of time? Have you ever felt the presence of God in your living room? Have you ever had a moment of complete wholeness? How about a feeling peace with the universe and your role in it?

Imagine hearing what you see, smelling what you touch or seeing what you taste. If you can do this without the aid of chemicals, consider yourself up there with the likes of Moses and monks. The rest of us generally have to cut corners and take mind-altering drugs to achieve anything conceivably “beyond this world.” Without the aid of a tab of acid, a hit of DMT, a dose of mushrooms or the like, some of us would find the search for God impossible, or at least darn boring.

A battle of image?

Hallucinogenic drugs, also known as psychotropics, have been of great interest to societies for millennia because of their power to induce mystical experience. Today, we take a great interest in psychotripics for their forbidden and alien effects. Popular culture and the media have stigmatized the use of these drugs, forcing a reassessment of the validity of psychadelic experience, especially in spirituality. The idea of mystical experiences resulting from drug use has generally been shunned by Western societies, which champion the power and worth of man as a self-determining, responsible ego, entirely in control of himself. To Western society, then, nothing could be more absurd than the notion of spiritual or psychological growth through the use of drugs.

However, this is a simplistic view; no distinction is drawn between the many categories of drugs, and few studies have conclusively documented the health effects of psychotropics. At the moment, the struggle for fair and non-arbitrary prohibition laws is a battle of image not substance. The “War on drugs” and unfounded social stigma are hindering opportunities to realize and harness the positive effects of psychotropic drugs. To remove mental filters, to breakdown our psychological barriers and pursue a higher understanding should not be a crime, especially if used for spiritual or self-exploratory reasons.

Drugs and religion: a history

Hallucinogens’ relevance to mystical experience is a formative element of many religions and continues to guide the non-religious in their search for wholeness. Some have proposed that the Delphic oracle Pythia’s prophecies were a product of inhaling ethane emissions that seeped into her chamber. Shamans in South and Central America continue to use naturally growing psychadelics to communicate with their God. Peyote, for example, is a legal sacrament for the Navajo people of the Southwest. Other indigenous groups in Mexico use psilocybin mushrooms which they call teonanactl – flesh of the gods. Amanita muscaria (fly agaric) is used by shamans in Siberia to visually distort the scale of their environment. And the list goes on.

Since mescaline, magic mushrooms, salvia, and ayahuasca were and still are used religiously in Mexico and South America, couldn’t our Western synthetic-chemical equivalents induce equally valid religious experiences? Our post-modern culture coping with the hypocrisy of organized religion has quite a stock of shortcuts to “higher” states of being: phenethylamines (the 2C family, MDMA), tryptamines (DMT, psilocin, LSD, ibogaine, the 5-MeO’s), and dissociatives (ketamine, PCP, DXM, and nitrous oxide), for example. All can be subsumed under the category “psychedelics,” or ethogens – a Greek neologism meaning “God generated within.”

In an appropriate setting, the effects of these drugs can be amazingly positive; ranging from euphoria and giggling to deep reflective thought, these drugs have helped many work through alcohol abuse problems and existential concerns. Often, the success of the experience is dependent on their undertaking as a religious or mystical experience, which is not at all uncommon.

A psychedelic trip

A recent study at John Hopkins University gave a standard dose of psilocybin to participants ranging in age from 24 to 64 years old who had identified themselves as having “religious or spiritual interests.” One-third of the participants described the experience with psilocybin as the most spiritually significant of their lifetime, while two-thirds of participants rated it among their five most meaningful experiences. Further, eight out of ten reported moderately or greatly increased well-being or life satisfaction up to two months after the study. The researchers also noted no negative long-term effects from the use of psilocybin.

These results are similar to LSD icon Timothy Leary’s own studies in which psilocybin was given to theology students at a Good Friday service. Many of these devout men admitted to having had a religious experience, leading Leary to conclude that mystical experience can be induced chemically.

Here in Canada, during the fifties and sixties, Humphrey Osmond, a well known British psychiatrist, treated alcoholics with LSD. Patients reported a personal and sometimes spiritual awakening following their LSD session. Follow-up to treatment confirmed that the sessions had a lasting, positive effect on the subjects, fifty per cent of which remained sober for at least six months.

In controlled settings, psychedelics have been proven to amplify and alter sensory experience, often providing an unbiased and unfamiliar perspective on the everyday. Possible uses in treatment range from helping terminal ill cancer patients accept their fate, to forcing drug addicts and alcoholics to examine their own lives. Many academics conducting research on the therapeutic use and mystical experience provided by psychoactives are also optimistic about their value.

Righteousness revamped

If we are to abide by notions of cultural relativism and rational policy-making, why is the spiritual use of drugs valued in an anthropological context, yet vilified by our society and laws? Likewise, how can many credit organized religion as the only “legitimate” path to enlightenment? Whether or not you believe in other realities or alternate consciousness, recognize that for some, drug-induced moments of revelation are of value for their medicinal and spiritual worth. While they are not for everyone, drugs should be approached without prejudice for in these voluntary moments of chaos and deconstruction, many derive hope, purpose, direction, meaning and even God.

http://www.mcgilldaily.com/view.php?aid=6637

[rabit]

I like the words. I think that some of the problem is that society has nothing to do with connecting with nature; nature of course being of GOD. Society is concerned with paving over nature and controlling it. Society teaches GOD through the instruments of society not nature. This is useless because all you will reap is society and things their of; IDOL WORSHIP basically.

At this point it is so absurdely disgusting to me that I function poorely in society. It's like I'm walkin around and everyone is buyin a lie they are being served a heap of shit and thinking it is mana, you know.

I know that when I have done hombleciya I, in my knowing I am part of GOD; but then I eat and time goes by and society works it's thread on me and I forget.

Walking a spiritual path is THE HARDEST PATH, I'm really getting a good taste of it now that I have asked for it. It's hard there is a seperation between the societally correct idol worship god and the humble GOD which is ALL !!

I am willing to make sacrifices to show this to people, I take it very seriously but most dont even care because their is a 7/11 around the way !

[Karmafrog]

Originally posted by rabit@Nov 5 2007, 08:19 PM
I like the words. I think that some of the problem is that society has nothing to do with connecting with nature; nature of course being of GOD. Society is concerned with paving over nature and controlling it. Society teaches GOD through the instruments of society not nature. This is useless because all you will reap is society and things their of; IDOL WORSHIP basically.

At this point it is so absurdely disgusting to me that I function poorely in society. It's like I'm walkin around and everyone is buyin a lie they are being served a heap of shit and thinking it is mana, you know.

I know that when I have done hombleciya I, in my knowing I am part of GOD; but then I eat and time goes by and society works it's thread on me and I forget.

Walking a spiritual path is THE HARDEST PATH, I'm really getting a good taste of it now that I have asked for it. It's hard there is a seperation between the societally correct idol worship god and the humble GOD which is ALL !!

I am willing to make sacrifices to show this to people, I take it very seriously but most dont even care because their is a 7/11 around the way !

rabit, you are a scholar and a gentleman, and your words seem so infinitally true to me, even though I personally percieve "God" as being the collective consciousness, allthough there are paralells there. If nature is a construct of the "outside world", then it is clearly a construct of the conscious mind/God, if you are into the whole global skepticism point of view that is.
But yes, modern society is so afraid of finding out that the meaning to life is nothingness, that they have to try and detract people from the true path and cloud their minds with materialistic idealism. Fuck it, aslong as people have numbers in their bank accounts, then they generally don't give a rat's arse.

[Keith's Rain]

Drugs and religion: a history

this is the big point. And as societies tend to flourish with passion time it'll still continue, and I for one think that is damn-well has a right to. A GOD GIVEN RIGHT!

[infinite]

A-fuckin-men...


i love you mofos at the dv. Oh and it's been 2 weeks without dxm...i'm doing good. very tempting though.

[Metal0321]

Wow this thread truly seems to have been spawned out of the quite useless attempt at shedding some light in the IRC (which obviously ended very roughly) last night [and tonight].

It's threads like these that make me want to come back here and know that there is righteousness being seeked.

Perhaps I will keep my name on here after all.

The IRC is fucking pointless and I don't even know why I bothered with it. I'll still use it (stormbringer) to search for documents though.