VARIETIES OF EXPERIENCES IN REVIVAL SERVICES
Those who have grown up in branches of Christianity with a strong evangelical heritage, or who have visited churches often considered “fundamentalistic,” are familiar with the tradition of the altar-call. Typically at the close of a sermon or during the singing of a final hymn, people in attendance are invited, if so moved, to leave their seats, walk to the front of the worship space, and kneel, thereby “becoming saved” or “accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal savior.” The clergy and elders present warmly welcome those who come forward, often praying with them or laying hands upon their heads. Some people decisively choose to accept this invitation for the first time; others may participate periodically as a means of renewing their religious commitment. Sometimes this occurs in the context of several consecutive days of services with sermons and music called a revival or a crusade.
If somehow one could enter into the heads of each of the people who chose to come forward or, if in a religious sanctuary, who knelt at the communion rail, and then feel their experiential worlds and look out through their eyes, I suspect that one would discover a rather wide range of states of consciousness. Some probably would have responded out of social pressure alone, would be feeling quite self-conscious and awkward, wouldn’t really be sure what to expect, and couldn’t wait to escape to the parking lot when the service was over. Some others would have honestly faced up to powerful emotions that they had been avoiding, perhaps “sins” of selfishness, greed, jealousy, or guilt, perhaps coupled with behavior they regretted associated with infidelity or substance abuse problems, and earnestly prayed for forgiveness. They may well have found themselves crying, soaking up the warmth and acceptance of the congregation, and pledging themselves to new forms of behavior more in accordance with the ethical standards of the community. They would have made a courageous and conscious choice to call attention to themselves and, in the privacy of their own minds if not publicly, to confess their distress or perceived moral failings. In kneeling, they would have expressed an openness and a willingness to receive that in many ways parallel the decision to trust and the subsequent passive receptivity critical to the occurrence of constructive experiences during the action of psychedelic substances.
Some of those tearful people standing or kneeling in front of the assembled congregation might have been experiencing confession and social acceptance alone, perhaps within a belief system of “accepting Jesus.” Occasionally, however, some may also have been experiencing visionary or archetypal states of mind, perhaps accompanied by a convincing sense of a loving presence, sometimes identified as the eternal Christ, with or without actual visionary imagery. On rare occasions, mystical consciousness as defined in this book may have been encountered, complete with noetic insights and a convincing awareness of the reality of an eternal dimension. For most who experienced intense catharsis, the support of the people assembled would have been sufficient to have enabled them to leave the service with feelings of new hope and gratitude, fully capable of driving home safely. A few may have expressed more emotion than adequately could be processed within the available time, and may have needed continuing support, with or without formal mental health care.
PSYCHOLYTIC, PSYCHEDELIC, AND PSYCHODELYTIC THERAPY
Similarly, during the action of entheogens, there are usually a variety of states of consciousness, some of which may focus on personal emotions and memories without explicit religious content. When entheogens have been administered in attempts to deepen and accelerate psychotherapy, often in repetitive low dosages, the content of sessions often includes the reliving of traumatic childhood experiences and the sorting out of emotions of guilt, fear, anger, and grief. Here, instead of the presence of the minister and congregation, the acceptance and steady presence of the psychotherapist or guide provide the interpersonal grounding requisite for healing. Especially in Europe, psychedelic substances were used in mental health clinics in this manner, often labeled as psycholytic (mind-releasing) therapy.
A Dutch psychiatrist, G. W. Arendsen-Hein, integrated the psycholytic approach with the higher-dosage psychedelic form of treatment in a clinic known as Veluweland that he designed in Ederveen, a suburb of Amsterdam. There he administered a series of low-dose sessions, once or twice a week, to his patients (registered as “guests”) in small rooms until he judged that they had adequately addressed their personal, psychodynamic issues. Then he would admit them into a beautifully designed, significantly larger room, often for a single high-dose session, in hopes of facilitating a mystical type of experience. As I recall his psychedelic room, the green carpet merged with the green grass outside a large picture window, where one might well see swans gliding on a small pond. Within the room were comfortable furnishings, a fireplace, and a sculpture of the Buddha. Arendsen-Hein posited that the most effective treatment included both sessions that focused on what Carl Jung called the “personal unconscious” and a mystical encounter with the “collective unconscious” that was believed to provide a profound sense of integration and a deeper feeling of being at home in the world. Unfortunately, like most of the clinicians who used psychedelic substances with their patients in the 1960s, Arendsen-Hein had neither the resources nor the inclination to pursue carefully designed research protocols with control groups that today are expected in the scientific community in order to establish the effectiveness of a new treatment modality.
In the use of psychedelic substances in psychotherapy, there are clearly two potential trajectories, both of which appear to work well. In one, the person gradually works through personal psychodynamic experiences en route to the realm of transcendental forms of consciousness. This approach is most congruent with psychoanalytic approaches to treatment. In the other, which uses higher dosage, it may be possible for some people to experience mystical and archetypal forms of consciousness in an initial session, sometimes sort of making an end-run around any personal conflicts that might eventually need to be addressed. Then, in the weeks and months afterward, in light of the memory of mystical consciousness, one addresses the issues of personal, psychodynamic import. This approach appears to work especially well with people suffering from addictive disorders, who have lived with an abundance of low self-worth, fueled by repetitive experiences of failure and shame. For them the shift in self-concept facilitated by an initial glimpse of mystical consciousness, in which they discover undeniable beauty, worth, and positive resources within their minds, appears to make it more easy to subsequently confront the abundance of negative emotions and memories within.
The following excerpt from the report of the high-dose LSD session of a man who had been addicted to narcotic drugs, imprisoned, and paroled to a halfway house for treatment in one of the research studies conducted at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center illustrates well how the insights of mystical consciousness can flow into human relationships:
It is really hard to put into words what I really experienced in my session. I don’t think there are words to express all the beauty I saw and felt. I began to flow with the music. It seemed as though I became the music and the music became me. We became one and the journey on to a universe which is full of love and divine beauty began…. I saw a Divine Being before me who had His hand out and stood alone and glowing with a radiance of love, beauty, faith, and trust. My mind left my body and my body was dead. As I touched His hands, I became Him or we become one….
I knew then that I had all these within me: beauty, faith, love, and trust. I had touched that Divine Being and became part of God. At that moment, I shouted: “Good God Almighty, what a beautiful day! Great God Almighty, I am a man at last!” … I have been cleansed of all my sins. I thought before this moment that I could see but I have been a blind man all my life.
Then I saw [my wife] and my kids and it seemed as if she and I went into each other’s arms as one…. Then I could see all the wrong and unhappiness I had caused her and the children…. I experienced all the wrong deeds I had done in life and I truly believe that I have been forgiven….
I became more aware of my blackness. I am proud that I am of black heritage. But black or white, under our skin we are all the same; we are all brothers and children of God. Through my experience, I know that I’ll never use drugs again or turn back to the slick way of life.
Another illustration comes from the report of a man being treated for alcoholism with DPT-assisted psychotherapy who encountered more struggle in letting go of usual control:
The experience began not long after receiving the injection and it seemed right away like I got into a battle of sorts, like I guess with demons and devils, and whatever. This seemed to last for quite a while and then we’d be transported into another world and kind of go from one world to another. It seemed pretty far out. There was a whole range of emotions from a lot of fear, from fear to anger to love to beauty to contentment to the fullest extent possible, I believe. At times it came to panic and became paranoid at one point, when I began to think there was a plot to steal my identity, to steal my soul, and even [my therapist and cotherapist] were in on it and I wasn’t sure. I was trying to hold on to reality. I wanted to make sure I would come back to reality but then I kept getting taken in different worlds. Time meant nothing and space really meant nothing and what was real and what wasn’t real became really confused…. I remember then at that point I seemed to be searching for who I was, who Sam Jones [pseudonym] was, and trying to find him, what he was like.
I’d go back into the past and I kept getting in touch with the past, like the eighteenth century, seventeenth century, the time of the Crusades. I kept going back there from time to time. At one point, it seemed like I was in the Far East, in China or some place and I was trying to talk in an Asian tongue, some Asian dialect. I was trying to mutter and talk in that dialect. Then I would go off again up into some dazzling white lights.
One part was like you’ve known the beauty, the utmost in beauty. The thing about the beauty was the purity of it. It was dazzling and sparkling. I couldn’t see anything but that and then we go back and dig out some more monsters, dig out some more demons as it were, and almost do combat in battle with them, an experience of intense fear and panic, and then go back to kind of a warm feeling.
I experienced death, kind of met death, and from death was like transported up into this beauty, into this white light, dazzling brilliance, and then I began to come out of it…. I still wasn’t sure I was in touch with reality. I was afraid, really at one point. I was afraid I would never get back in touch with reality and that it was all part of a plot and that I would never come back to the world as I know it. I would kind of exist out in the universe as a part of the cosmos and go from one world to another and yet I could see from time to time the people who were real in my world, like my wife and my children….
I experienced the ultimate in feeling of love and as I came out of it, eventually I gradually began to realize I was back on the couch and the panic stopped. I wasn’t afraid any more that I’d lose touch with reality…. I feel I found out something about myself. I let myself realize that there is goodness in people, and particularly in myself. And I think I found an inner strength that I didn’t have before. I kind of looked at myself really for the first time and more or less kind of found out who I was.