Psychedelics and Entheogens:
Revealers of the Divine Within?
The observations from psychedelic therapy and other forms of deep experiential work…suggest an even more radical reformulation of the relationship between the human personality and spirituality. According to the new data, spirituality is an intrinsic property of the psyche that emerges quite spontaneously when the process of self-exploration reaches sufficient depth….The individual who connects with these levels of his or her psyche automatically develops a new worldview, within which spirituality represents a natural, essential, and absolutely vital element of existence. In my experience, a transformation of this kind has occurred without exception in a wide range of individuals, including stubborn atheists, skeptics, cynics, Marxist philosophers, and positivistically oriented scientists.
—Stan Grof 309
THE POLITICS OF DRUG USE
Having an intelligent discussion about psychedelics is hard, so great is the misunderstanding and emotion that surrounds them. As a culture we are remarkably ambivalent about drugs. The aptly titled book Overdosed America2 points out that we are bombarded by drug advertisements and each year gulp down billions of dollars worth of tranquilizers, sacrifice about 500,000 (yes, that’s half a million) people to tobacco consumption, and lose another 100,000 to alcohol. Yet we subsidize tobacco growers while imprisoning marijuana growers and make no distinction between socially destructive and sacred drug use.
Yet the use of drugs to induce sacred states of consciousness has flourished throughout human history.30 Historical examples include the Zoroastrian haoma, the Australian aboriginals’ pituri, Zen’s tea, and Hinduism’s soma, otherwise known as “the food of the gods.”345 In ancient Greece, kykeon fueled the Eleusinian mysteries and wine the ecstasies of the Dionysians.
Contemporary examples are also common. They include Native American peyote, Rastafarian ganja (marijuana), and the South American shamans’ ayahuasca.145 Clearly there has been widespread agreement across centuries and cultures that psychedelics can induce valuable religious experiences.18, 125, 126, 307, 348
However, the story is very different in the West. Psychedelics were all but unknown until the 1960s when they came crashing into a culture utterly unprepared for them. For the first time in its history, a significant portion of Western society experienced powerful ASCs. Some of these were clearly painful and problematic, while others were apparently transcendent and illuminating. Suddenly the question of whether drugs can induce genuine religious and mystical experiences morphed from dry academic debates to pitched political battles.
The very names given to these curious chemicals say it all. For naysayers these drugs are psychotomimetics (mimickers of psychosis) or hallucinogens (hallucination inducers), while for most people they are psychedelics (mind manifesters) and, for some researchers, entheogens (revealers of the divine within).
Unfortunately, careful analysis and dispassionate discussion were long ago overwhelmed by political posturing and media madness. Misinformation has flourished. All too often, apologists denied the drugs’ dangers, while opponents and governments exaggerated them. For example, drug opponents repeatedly misused shaky scientific research to bolster claims of neurotoxicity. This process continues to the present day, especially with MDMA (Ecstasy),56 though the actual nature of MDMA-induced neural effects remains moot.126, 164
The importance of psychedelics has often been overlooked by anthropologists, possibly because of lack of personal experience. Such was the case with Michael Harner. Only after ingesting yage did he appreciate its impact on the natives’ reality and shamanic practices.
For several hours after drinking the brew, I found myself, although awake, in a world literally beyond my wildest dreams….transported into a trance where the supernatural seemed natural, I realized that anthropologists including myself, had profoundly underestimated the importance of the drug in affecting native ideology.145
SHAMANIC USE OF PSYCHEDELICS
The range of drugs employed by shamans is impressive. Some one hundred different plant agents have been identified, and archeological records suggest that drug use may extend back over 3,000 years.108
It is Siberian and Latin American shamans who have most often employed psychedelics as boosters for their cosmic travels. In Siberia, the preferred substance has been the mushroom Amanita muscaria, or fly agaric, which may be the much-praised soma of early Indian religion and a drug of European legends.350 If so, then its religious and cultural impact has been remarkable.
Curiously, this red mushroom speckled with white is familiar to Western children from drawings in fairy tales. If you watch Disney’s movie Snow White, you’ll see it flourishing.308 Even more curious, it is famous for being able to inebriate several people with one dose, since it passes unchanged into the users’ urine, which Russian peasants would happily line up to drink.350
Among the many chemicals used in Latin America, two of the most powerful and popular psychedelics are peyote and yage. Peyote is a distasteful cactus that can make users nauseous, and Indians describe it as “a hard road.” The great American philosopher William James, who had powerful experiences with nitrous oxide, was sick for twenty-four hours after eating a single piece. He concluded that he would take the peyote visions on faith rather than personal experience. For those able to keep it down, the effects are much like those of its major active component, mescaline.
Yage, or ayahuasca as it is also known, is an equally nausea-producing psychedelic made from an Amazonian “visionary vine” called banasteriopsis. Yage is chemically complex, but the most important psychoactive ingredient may be harmaline.350 Of course, shamans attribute the effects not to chemicals but to the spirit that dwells within the plant.
Yage elicits strong visual experiences. Users describe long sequences of dreamlike visions that appear in a spiritually significant progression. Yage is famous for provoking specific images: jungle scenes and visions of dangerous creatures such as tigers, snakes, and naked women.350 Several Westerners, including Michael Harner, have marveled at the power of the imagery and its consistency with native reports.145 Of course, much of this consistent imagery may reflect expectations and the jungle setting.
Yage is shamanically interesting because of claims for its healing and telepathic effects. In South America it is known as “the great medicine” that can reveal remedies or produce healing by interceding with the spirits. In contrast to Western medical notions, yage is thought to be curative whether the patient or the healer swallows it.72
Yage is also famous for its supposed clairvoyant powers. Native reports abound of yage-empowered journeys and extrasensory perception. One anthropologist reported that “on the day following one Ahayuasca party, six of nine men informed me of seeing the death of my chai, my mother’s father. This occurred a few days before I was informed by radio of his death.”350
Recent reports suggest that Nepalese shamans make extensive use of psychedelics, including over twenty kinds of psychoactive mushrooms. Previous ethnographers apparently overlooked these drugs because they are used secretively.248 If so, we may have underestimated the use of psychedelics by shamans, in general, and also by other religious practitioners.
In traditional cultures that treat psychedelics as sacraments, addictive or hedonistic misuse is rarely a problem. However, with the encroachment of civilization, these traditional drugs are now being displaced in many areas by tobacco and alcohol, which are less psychedelic and far more addictive. Andrew Weil lamented that in some places alcoholism is replacing the ceremonial use of sacred drugs.402
PSYCHEDELICS AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES
In the West there is currently a strong tendency to deny religious significance to any drug experience, and psychedelic use by shamans has led people to dismiss them. Even some firm supporters, such as Eliade, regard drug use as a degenerative form of the tradition.
And yet the question—one of the most important of all concerning these drugs—still remains: Can psychedelics induce genuine mystical experiences? Stanislav Grof, the world’s most experienced psychedelic researcher, concluded that “after 30 years of discussion, the question of whether LSD and other psychedelics can induce genuine spiritual experiences is still open.”133
At the present time, both research and theory suggest an answer to this question. That answer is a very qualified “yes.” Yes, psychedelics can induce genuine mystical experiences, but only some times, in some people, under some circumstances. To evaluate this conclusion, let’s examine the arguments used against it, recent research, and a theory that may make sense of the research.
Arguments Against the Validity of Drug-Induced Religious Experiences
Five major arguments have been advanced against the idea that drug experiences can be truly religious or mystical.345, 348
1) Some drug experiences are clearly anything but mystical and beneficial.
2) The experiences induced by drugs may actually be different from those of genuine mystics.
3) A theological position argues that mystical rapture is a gift of God that can never be brought under mere human control.
4) Drug-induced experiences are too quick and easy and could therefore hardly be identical to those hard-won by years of contemplative discipline.
5) Aftereffects of drug-induced experiences may be different, less beneficial, and less long-lasting than those of contemplatives.
There are possible answers to each of these concerns. Let’s consider them in sequence.
1) There is no doubt whatsoever that some, in fact most, drug experiences are anything but mystical. According to Huston Smith:
There are, of course, innumerable drug experiences that have no religious features; they can be sensual as readily as spiritual, trivial as readily as transforming, capricious as readily as sacramental. If there is one point about which every student agrees, it is that there is no such thing as the drug experience per se….This of course proves that not all drug experiences are religious; it does not prove that no drug experiences are religious.345
2) Are drug and natural mystical states experientially the same? Smith concludes that “descriptively drug experiences cannot be distinguished from their natural religious counterparts.”345 In philosophical terms, drug and natural mystical experiences can be phenomenologically (experientially) indistinguishable.
The most dramatic experiment affirming this was the “Harvard Good Friday study,” also known as “the miracle of Marsh Chapel.” In this study, divinity students and professors were placed in a highly supportive setting—Harvard University’s Marsh Chapel during a Good Friday service—and given either the psychedelic psilocybin or a placebo. Several psilocybin subjects reported “mystical experiences” that researchers could not distinguish from those of mystics throughout the centuries.73
Perhaps the people best equipped to decide whether drug and contemplatively induced mystical experiences might be the same are those who have had both. Such people are obviously few and far between. However, several spiritual teachers and scholars concluded from their personal experience that they can be identical.388, 396
3) The third argument—that mystical rapture is a gift from God that could never be brought under human control—will only seem plausible to people who hold very specific theological beliefs. It would hardly be regarded as valid by religions such as Buddhism, for example, that do not believe in an all-powerful creator god. Nor, presumably, would it appeal to those theists who believe more in the power of good works than of grace.
4) The complaint that drug experiences are too easy to be genuine is readily understandable. After all, it hardly seems fair that a contemplative should labor for decades for a sip of what the drug user may effortlessly swim in for hours. However, unfair or not, if the states are experientially identical, then the fact that they are due to different causes may be irrelevant. Technically, this is called “the principle of causal indifference.”349 Simply stated, this means that subjectively identical experiences can be produced by multiple causes.
5) The final argument against the equivalence of drug and natural mystical states is that they can have different long-term effects. Specifically, drug experiences may result in beneficial transformations of personality and behavior that are less enduring. Once again Huston Smith put the case eloquently: “Drugs appear to induce religious experiences: it is less evident that they can produce religious lives.”345
Theoretical Understandings
So it seems that drug and natural mystical experiences can be subjectively similar or even identical, yet still differ in their aftereffects. But still the debate continues over whether psychedelically induced mystical experiences are “really genuine.”
One reason the debate continues unabated is that there has been no theory of mystical states that could resolve it. What is needed is a theory accounting for the induction of similar or identical states by such different means as LSD and meditation, followed by possible different aftereffects.
Charles Tart’s systems model of consciousness is helpful here.360 Tart suggests that any one state of consciousness is the result of the function and interaction of many psychological and neural processes, such as perception, attention, emotions, and identity. If any one process is changed sufficiently, it may shift the entire mind-brain system and state of consciousness. For example, a yogi might focus unwaveringly on the breath, a Christian contemplative might cultivate the love of God, or a Sufi might recite the name of Allah (dhikr).392 Yet despite their different practices, all might eventually be rewarded with mystical experiences, though not necessarily identical ones.z
A specific altered state may be reached in several ways via altering different processes. For example, states of calm may be reached by reducing muscle tension, visualizing restful scenery, repeating a pacifying thought, focusing attention on the breath, or taking a tranquilizer. In each case the brain-mind process used is different, but the resulting state is similar, a convergence that systems theorists call “equifinality.”
A similar phenomenon may occur with mystical states. Different techniques might affect different brain-mind processes, yet still result in a similar ASC. A contemplative might finally taste the bliss of mystical unity only after years of cultivating qualities such as concentration, love, and compassion. Yet a psychedelic might affect chemical and neural processes so powerfully as to temporarily induce a similar state.
So Tart’s theory of consciousness may provide an explanation for the finding that “chemical mysticism” and natural mysticism can be experientially identical. But what of the claim for differing long-term effects? This claim is also compatible with the theory. But first we need to consider whether the claim that the long-term effects of chemical mysticism are less beneficial and enduring is actually true.
Long-Term Effects
Contrary to common arguments, psychedelic mysticism can sometimes have an enduring impact. For example, Huston Smith348 described just such an impact on himself, as did the psychologist Frances Vaughan,379 while Sherana Harriette Frances101 portrayed hers in a series of exquisite drawings. Research studies also suggest possible long-term benefits. Significant numbers of Buddhist retreatants were drawn to spiritual practice following the use of psychedelics.357 Likewise, the Harvard Good Friday subjects, when interviewed more than twenty years later, reported that their psilocybin experience had contributed to their spiritual lives.73
But even if we were to assume that the drugs have relatively little long-term benefit, is this so surprising? Or is it so different from other powerful experiences? After all, the stabilization of transient experiences and insights into enduring change is one of the great challenges facing all transformative disciplines. Psychoanalysts say “insight is not enough,” while clinical psychologists speak of breakthroughs, regressions, and the “problem of generalization,” i.e., the problem of getting insights on the couch to generalize to daily life. Likewise, learning theorists describe “spontaneous recovery,” whereby newly learned behavior fades and old patterns recover.229 It is true that powerful experiences can sometimes induce dramatic, enduring “quantum change.”242 Yet, most people suffer from “false hope syndrome” and underestimate just how hard it is to change ingrained habits.289
The same is true of religious disciplines. Profound experiences can sometimes effect enduring changes, but all too often these fade unless stabilized by further practice, as Phillip Kapleau made clear for Zen:
Even the Buddha continued to sit. Without joriki, the particular power developed through zazen [seated meditation], the vision of oneness attained in enlightenment in time becomes clouded and eventually fades into a pleasant memory instead of remaining an omnipresent reality shaping our daily life. To be able to live in accordance with what the mind’s eye has revealed through satori requires, like the purification of character and the development of personality, a ripening period of zazen.348
A single spiritual experience is certainly no guarantee of a spiritual life or an ethical lifestyle.21, 266 However, long-term practice and multiple experiences can have a cumulative impact.380, 392 Major enduring change usually requires long-term practice.211, 222
So the limited long-term effects of psychedelic mystical experiences are far from unique. Rather, they reflect one of the central problems of psychological and spiritual growth: the “problem of stabilization.”394
But let’s assume the critics’ position. Let’s assume for the moment that chemical mysticism is less transformative than contemplative mysticism, as well it might be. Why might this be so?
Both psychological and social factors may be involved. Psychedelic users may have dramatic experiences, perhaps the most dramatic of their entire life. However, a single experience, no matter how powerful, may be insufficient to permanently overcome mental and neural habits conditioned for decades to mundane modes of functioning. A shaman or contemplative, on the other hand, may spend decades deliberately working to retrain habits along more spiritual lines. Thus, when the breakthrough finally occurs, it visits a mind already prepared for it. The shaman probably has a belief system to make sense of the experience, a tradition that values it, a discipline to cultivate it, a social group to support it, and an ethic to guide it. As Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” The contemplative’s mind may be prepared, but there is no guarantee that a drug user’s is.
Therefore, different long-term effects of chemical and contemplative experiences could occur, even if the original experiences are identical. Consequently, none of the five common arguments against psychedelic experiences being genuinely mystical seem to hold.
CONCLUSION
In summary, it seems that some drugs can induce genuine mystical experiences in some people on some occasions. However, they may be more likely to do so, and more likely to produce enduring benefits, when used as part of a long-term spiritual practice. This is exactly how shamans use psychedelics, and therefore it is not surprising that many shamans value them as aids to spiritual life and healing work.aa