The Entheogenic Experience
An Educational Primer

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A little history

... Hallucinogens have been part and parcel of man's cultural baggage for thousands of years; moreover, as the other contributors to this volume document, hallucinogenic or psychoactive plants have been of great significance in the ideology and religious practices of a wide variety of peoples the world over, and in some traditional cultures continue to play such a role today. The native peoples of the New World, especially those of Middle and South America, alone utilized nearly a hundred different botanical species for their psychoactive properties, not counting scores of plants used for the brewing of alcoholic beverages to induce ritual intoxication. Anthropologist Weston La Barre ... attributes this phenomenon to a kind of cultural programming for personal ecstatic experiences reaching back to the American Indians' ideological roots in the shamanistic religion of the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic hunting and gathering cultures of northeastern Asia. If La Barre is right-and the cumulative evidence tends to support him-this would take the practice and, more important, its philosophical underpinnings back at least fifteen or twenty thousand years ... (page viii)

In any event, the linguistic, archeological, historical, and ethnographic evidence tends to support the view of some ethnobotanists and anthropologists, this writer included, that the widespread contemporary use of botanical hallucinogens, fermented beverages, and tobacco in New World shamanism does in fact have its remote origins in Old World Paleolithic and Mesolithic shamanism, and that the Paleo-Indian immigrants into North America came culturally predisposed toward consciousness exploration of their new environment for psychotropic plants. This view is supported by the fact that virtually all hallucinogenic plants are extremely bitter and unpleasant to the taste, if not actually nauseating, and that many species require complex pharmacological preparation in order to be effective, thus reducing the likelihood of chance discovery in the course of the everyday food quest. (page ix)

The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries.
Wasson, R. Gordon; Ruck, Carl A. P.; Hofmann, Albert. (1978).
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

...Clearly some poets and prophets and many mystics and ascetics seem to have enjoyed ecstatic visions that answer the requirements of the ancient Mysteries and that duplicate the mushroom agape of Mexico. I do not suggest that St. John of Patmos ate mushrooms in order to write the Book of Revelation. Yet the succession of images in his Vision, so clearly seen but such a phantasmagoria, means for me that he was in the same state as one bemushroomed. (R. Gordon Wasson, page 18)

In July 1975 I was visiting my friend Gordon Wasson in his home in Danbury when he suddenly asked me this question: whether Early Man in ancient Greece could have hit on a method to isolate an hallucinogen from ergot that would have given him an experience comparable to LSD or psilocybin. (Albert Hofmann page 25)

In conclusion I now answer Wasson's question. The answer is yes, Early Man in ancient Greece could have arrived at an hallucinogen from ergot. He might have done this from ergot growing on wheat or barley. An easier way would have been to use the ergot growing on the common wild grass Paspalum. This is based on the assumption that herbalists of ancient Greece were as intelligent and resourceful as the herbalists of pre-Columbian Mexico. (Albert Hofmann, page 34)

The Drug Experience: First-person Accounts of addicts, writers, scientists and others
Ebin, David. (Editor) (1961).
New York: The Orion Press.

Many people are shocked by the idea that experiences resembling religious experiences can be produced by drugs. But this fact has been well established for many years. It seems as though the same detachment from the pull of our senses which characterises religious experience can be achieved in entirely irreligious ways-through mescalin, alcohol, epilepsy and hypnosis as well as by yoga, fasting, meditation and prayer.

Does this cheapen religion and invalidate the claims of the great mystics? Surely not. The view from the top is not the true purpose of mountaineering, as every true climber knows. Nor is the view any less real and wonderful because a few people have reached the top by mountain railway instead of toiling up in the proper manner.

There is a story-I think it is Buddhist in origin-about a schoolboy who wrestled day after day with his sums without getting the answers out. After a time, he began to doubt whether the sums had answers to them at all; and finally, in despair, he consulted a "crib." Encouraged to find that there were answers, he went back to his work with redoubled vigour. This schoolboy's short cut, says the Buddhist, was justified: but education consists in working out sums, not in copying out answers. (Christopher Mayhew, An Excursion Out of Time, pages 299-300)

We are dealing here with an authentic form of the religion of primitive men. Let me repeat what I said before: that it would be an error to bracket the hallucinogenic mushrooms with alcohol, as just another drug that serves as an escape for man. . . .

There must have come a time when man, emerging from his bestial past, first grasped these possibilities, vaguely, hesitantly; when he first knew the awe that goes with the idea of God. Perhaps these ideas came to him unaided, by the light of his dawning intelligence. I suggest to you that, as our most primitive ancestors foraged for their food, they must have come upon our psychotropic mushrooms, or perhaps other plants possessing the same property, and eaten them, and known the miracle of awe in the presence of God. This discovery must have been made on many occasions, far apart in time and space. It must have been a mighty springboard for primitive man's imagination. (page 320)

The ceremony we attended in southern Mexico was a true agape, a love-feast, a Holy Supper, in which we all felt the presence of God, in which the Element carried its own conviction in the miracles it performed within us. The faithful were not obliged to accept the dogma of Transubstantiation in order to know that they had partaken of the body of Christ. (How startling it is that the ancient Aztecs called this Element by the same name that we use for the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist-God's Flesh!) May not the sacred mushroom, or some other natural hallucinogen have been the original element in all the Holy Suppers of the world, being gradually replaced by harmless Elements in a watering down of the original fearful sacrament? May this not be the explanation of the Archetypes, the Ideas, of Plato? The ancient Greeks never revealed the secret of the Eleusinian mysteries, yet many must have known it and whispered to each other about it. We know only that the initiates drank a potion and later in the night knew a great vision. The Greeks, who were the fathers of pure reason, reserved a portion of their minds for the mystical element, the mysteries of Eleusis, the oracle at Delphi, the daemon of Socrates. No one knows for sure what beverage the ancient Hindus meant by the Soma, nor what was the origin of the ling chih of the Chinese, the divine mushroom of immortality. Here is a missing element in our knowledge of these cultures, one that possibly can now be identified by the methods that we have used in our quest of the sacred mushroom. (Gordon Wasson, The Hallucinogenic Mushrooms of Mexico: An Adventure in Ethnomycological Exploration, page 321)

In our society

The Chemistry of Mind-Altering Drugs: History, Pharmacology, and Cultural Context.
Perrine, Daniel M. (1996).
Washington: American Chemical Society.

... this book of necessity explores much more than chemistry. In addressing so broadly human a topic as the mind itself and the drugs which affect it, it becomes impossible to understand the effects of such drugs outside the total context, and especially the cultural context, of their use. For instance, there is little meaning that can be assigned even to the term "drug" without specifying the cultural set and setting. An Afghan grandfather smoking a pipe of opium with the family after the evening meal, members of the Native American Church drinking peyote tea during their worship services, a once suicidal and bulimic young woman summoning the courage to live with the help of Prozac, Hasidic Jews reeling in drunkenness at Purim, or an American prostitute taking a "crack break" - all are clearly under the influence of a "drug," but just as clearly the drug effects take on profoundly different meanings in the different human settings. And so it is that the pages of this book will be found to contain much material which is not chemical or pharmacological but historical, anthropological, sociological - even literary, philosophical, theological, and religious. Chemists of an older generation may recognize that what has finally emerged is an expansive working in a genre once common but now not widely employed: the descriptive chemistry of some very interesting chemicals, in this case those that affect the human mind. (Preface, page ix)

Zen, Drugs and Mysticism.
Zaehner, R. C. (1972).
New York: Pantheon.

From what we have said in the last chapter it would seem clear why the Christian establishment should disapprove of the use of psychedelic drugs. First there is an instinctive religious reaction that it is sacrilegious to suppose that the use of drugs can produce the same transports as have been recorded in the history of Christian mysticism. This reaction is instinctive, not rational. Secondly, in circles traditionally opposed to mysticism even in its Christian form, the habitual identification by the users of psychedelic drugs of their `peak' experience with the experiences recorded in Hindu and Buddhist literature in which `God' appears not as a person but as an eternal and unconditioned state of being-what Dr Leary calls the `timeless energy process around you'-must appear doubly suspicious; for the implication is that the personal God they claim to experience in faith does not really exist because many Hindus and most Buddhists do not experience him in this way at all but claim to experience him, or rather `it', immediately in the innermost core of their being. The instinctive Christian reaction to this is one of panic, for when their `blind' faith-the usual gibe levelled at them not only by the psychedelic extremists but also by neo-Zen Buddhists and neo-Vedantins-is contrasted with the certainty the latter feel about the absolute reality of the unity of the universe in an eternal Now and an omnipresent Here, they may well feel that `seeing through a glass darkly' as they do and not `face to face', they may have to reconsider the very foundations of their faith. (Chapter 4, LSD and Zen, pages 112-113)

Psychedelic Drugs and Spirituality.
Patteson, James D. (1995).
Dominguez Hills, CA: California State University.

Two things have thus been indelibly impressed upon my mind: psychedelic drugs can act as catalysts for religious experience; and a sudden spiritual experience at this depth can be psychologically very dangerous. Most drug counselors, teachers, and parents are unaware of the spiritual dimension of psychedelic drugs and most users are unaware of their dangerous side. The former group needs to know about the religious implications so they can effectively help someone who is going through the sudden emergence of unconscious elements into consciousness; what Stanislav Grof terms a Aspiritual emergency@. The latter group, those who use these drugs, need to know about the dangers so they can avoid a spiritual emergency they may not be prepared to handle.

These drugs should be studied for the light that they may shed on the history and phenomenology of religious experience, but because of their power and danger, they should not be used randomly and carelessly. With these considerations in mind, it seems that a good example of the sensible use of a psychedelic is the peyote rituals of the American Indian. Portions of the peyote cactus are used as a sacrament, in a controlled and serious manner, to induce spiritual visions in a religious context.

Another promising use of these drugs is in psychotherapy. Stanislav Grof and others have demonstrated this potential in their work with thousands of patients. Given the therapeutic and religious value of psychedelic drugs, they should be controlled but available for research, and to serious adults seeking spiritual experience or psychological help.

My personal spiritual path has taken me from psychedelic drugs to Zen Buddhism. I no longer use any psychedelic, including marijuana. I might not have studied Zen if not for my experiences on psychedelics, and in this sense I am grateful for their part in my life. On the other hand, I was very fortunate to escape serious harm, and I do not think they are necessary for the spiritual path. For this reason and because they can be dangerous, I do not recommend their use. On the other hand, I am not critical of their use by those who are mature, serious spiritual seekers; those who study the whole issue of psychedelics and the spiritual path in depth before beginning any experimentation. (pages 28-29).

The Seduction of the Spirit: The Use and Misuse of People's Religion.
Cox, Harvey. (1973).
New York: Simon and Schuster.

I don't believe for a minute that all those terrifying "drug education" spots on TV will scare kids out of trying drugs. In fact, they may have the opposite effect. Everyone longs, sometimes secretly, to experience altered states of consciousness. Adolescents are intrigued by death and danger, not repulsed. How can people lure them into movies with the same symbols they somehow think will repel them from drugs? Our drug epidemic may or may not be a serious one. But I believe it is a symptom of a deeper cultural disease-the disappearance of legitimate occasions for ecstasy, trance, emotion and feeling, and the erosion of traditional rituals. When I was a kid, people got "high" at revivals and during other religious events. Everyone needs to experience that special kind of mental elation now and then. If we don't do it one way we will do it another. We won't outgrow drug abuse until those needs too, not just our needs for bread and housing, are cared for. Man does not live by bread alone. (page 41)

Drugs, Rituals, and Altered States of Consciousness.
du Toit, Brian M. (Editor). (1977).
Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema.

But it has really been within the last decade that many social scientists have forsaken the traditional ethnological field and turned increasingly to focus on drug use and drug abuse. This interest in part flows from the need to understand the use of mind and mood altering substances in the community setting, to view them as a part of community life, and to fathom the importance of these various substances in ritual, social, and interpersonal contexts. But we should never loose sight of the important fact, as Sorenson in this volume points out, that the concept 'mind altering' is in part culturally defined. What is more, it may also be situationally defined. A matter which is very closely related to this definition is that of social acceptability and cultural patterning. It is well known that cannabis use is accepted much more readily in East Indian and African communities than in Euro-American communities. In addition to being acceptable there are long standing patterns of use which show up in studies of first drug use and justifications for use. Harding and Zinberg, in this volume contrast the misuse of alcohol by American Indians while they have used jimson weed and peyote in controlled forms. Also in this volume du Toit shows how in the multi-ethnic South African situation the African and Indian ethnic groups have a clear historical pattern of cannabis as the most important substance used. But the research reports presented here do not only show the traditional emphasis.

Along with the broadening of focus on the part of research workers has also come a shift away from necessarily studying other societies and an increasing concentration on their own modern urban society. ...

Along with actual field studies of mind altering substances, has come a growing attempt at understanding exactly what is involved in this process. What meaning does it have, and to what extent are we dealing with new forms of cultural patterning, new regularities, new rituals. But we are frequently reminded that altered states of consciousness need not be drug induced, that hallucinations are extremely common both in normal dreaming and thinking , as well as in religious fervor, even though religious ecstasy may be drug induced.

It was a combination of these various interests which lead to the compilation of this volume. We hope it raises as many questions as it answers and that international scholarly communication will flow from its publication. (Brian M. du Toit, Introduction, pages 2-4)

Some plants more dramatically affect human neurophysiological response. Variously called psychedelic, psychopharmacological, psychotomimetic, hallucinogenic, etc., they are often considered 'mind altering' by Western observers. However, it is important to recognize that the concept, mind altering is, at least in part, culturally defined. For example nonwestern peoples who use plants considered to be mind altering by Westerners may not necessarily think of them as such any more than we Westerners usually think of coffee or cigarettes as mind altering (or, for that matter, a church service or a violent TV program), although upon reflection, the effect of these upon mood and thought is obvious. (page 254)

Initial observations indicate that Huichol children are rather casually introduced to sub-hallucinatory doses of peyote at an early age, both in ceremonial settings and occasionally during daily life around the house where it may be ground into the tortilla batter. Hallucinatory doses, sometimes very large ones, are more typically provided in deeply religious or initiation ceremonies.

A little physiology

Psychology and Religion: An Introduction to Contemporary Views.
Spinks, G. Stephens. (1965).
Boston: Beacon Press.

If drugs produce experiences which seem to be pseudo- transcendental in character then the experiences which follow the self-inflicted tortures of ascetics, Christian and non-Christian alike, are by the same token, open to the same objection. There is psychologically and chemically very little difference between taking a drug and submitting oneself to such masochistic mortifications as those endured over many years by the Blessed Suso, except that the former is pleasurable and the latter horrifyingly painful. The nervous system is always being affected chemically. When the Lenten fast is observed with strictness for forty days, the chemistry of the body is strongly affected. Many of the most vivid visions of the medieval mystics seem to have occurred during periods of prolonged fasting. When ascetic practices include such mortifications of the flesh as flagellation the effect of such beating is the equivalent of fairly extensive surgery without anaesthetics'. As a result large quantities of histamine and adrenalin are released into the blood stream and when, as usually happens among ascetics, the self- inflicted wounds begin to fester, they release other toxins which further affect the action of the brain. (page 172)

The chemistry of the physical processes does not necessarily invalidate the quality of the result. It is the quality of the result that is to be judged and not the physical or psychological processes by which it is obtained.

Relevance to religious experience

From Religious Experience to a Religious Attitude.
Godin, A. (Editor). 1965.
Chicago: Loyola University Press.

There are bound to be people who will raise the question whether an experience stimulated by a drug properly can be called religious. Here again we run into the problem of definition. Of course any person has the right to define a drug mediated experience as nonreligious. Presumably the grounds would be that such an experience is "artificial," and therefore not of supernatural origin. However, it may be argued that the attempt to mediate religious experience through the use of music, architecture, instruction, fasting, or ritual is just as artificial, if not more so, as the ingestion of products of naturally growing plants created by God. Furthermore never do we see the drugs acting alone producing the alleged religious experience. Other variables include the preparation of the subject, the setting, the follow-up, and the inner personality structure of the subject himself. The drugs are simply an auxiliary which, used carefully within a religious structure, may assist in mediating an experience which, aside from the presence of the drug, cannot be distinguished psychologically from mysticism. Studies have indicated that, when the experience is interpreted transcendentally or religiously, chances are improved for the rehabilitation of hopeless alcoholics and hardened criminals. Even though observations like these mean that the psychologist can learn a little more of the religious life, in no sense does it ultimately become any less of a mystery. Though man may sow and till, winds may blow and the rains fall, nevertheless it is still God that gives the increase. (pages 40-41)

Chemical Ecstasy: Psychedelic Drugs and Religion.
Clark, Walter Houston. (1969).
New York: Sheed and Ward.

It is the terror, the joy and the risks of the religious life that are in some way inseparable from its effectiveness. Man approaches those most intimate concerns buried deeply within himself with dread, although he faces almost any danger that is open and plain to see with intrepid courage. It is not so much the statistical chance of things going wrong in the use of the psychedelics that produces the witch hunt, the hue and cry against those who misuse them. It is the fear of the unknown, of the "forms that swim and the shapes that creep under the waters of sleep" that so terrorize the ordinary man, both educated and uneducated.

This does not mean that there are not true risks, but that one must properly calculate them, then have the courage to act on the calculation. This has always been a large element in the progress of science, and it is always present in some form when high religion is involved, whether this religion is to be approached through the psychedelic drugs or in some other way. It is the only kind of religion for which brave men have any respect, and it is the only kind that works. A great deal of society's refusal to grant sufficient freedom for experimenting properly with the psychedelics can be blamed, not so much on knowledgeable caution relative to their dangers, as to this failure of nerve in the face of the unknown. (pages 127-128)

"Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God," said Jesus to the bewildered Nicodemus. This is exactly what some favored spirits have reported through the drugs. They found their lives by losing them. It is for these reasons that neither scholarship nor religious study, neither the university nor the church, not the scientist , nor the artist, nor the mystic can neglect informing himself of the opportunities for personal growth available through chemical ecstasy. At the very least, the inquiry requires a careful weighing of the facts, an unwillingness to be satisfied by social or scientific cliches about the matter. In a time of such hysteria over a controversial subject, the true intellectual and religious inquirer cannot rely on information from others, not even the most scientific hearsay. He dare not refuse to look himself through Galileo's telescope. (page 156)

Current Perspectives in the Psychology of Religion.
Malony, H. Newton. (Editor) (1977).
Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

What further supports many psychedelic experiences as being religious is that, when the subject reports a religious experience, therapeutic results are often more marked. This was the case with pioneer experiments in which massive doses of LSD were given to hopeless alcoholics in Saskatchewan by Humphrey Osmond and Abram Hoffer. After five years, half of the sample of 60 cases were still found to be nonalcoholic. "As a general rule," Hoffer reported, "those who have not had the transcendental experience are not changed; they continue to drink. However, the large-proportion of those who have had it are changed."

There also has been experimentation with criminals in Europe and the United States. In order to find out for myself what the results had been, I studied several convicts to whom Dr. Timothy Leary had given psilocybin and who, according to his report, had encountered religious experiences of a life-changing nature. Some of these convicts definitely had fallen by the wayside - through lack of follow-up after the controversial Leary project collapsed.

But I discovered a rather remarkable phenomenon. Those who had remained in jail had started what they called the "Self-Development Group," a very successful AA type of self-rehabilitation that continued on a nondrug basis. One middle-aged armed robber, serving a twenty-year term, in a drug session had seen a vision of Christ. Shortly afterward, he said, "All my life came before my eyes, and I said, 'What a waste!'" Now, five years later, this man, a group leader, is considered by the authorities to be completely rehabilitated.

The point of these experiments is that not only do subjects, after psychedelic therapy, talk like religious people but religion for them has had the effect of radically changing their values and attitudes. The drugs seem to do what the churches frequently only say they do in their talk of salvation, redemption, and rebirth. All this is not to minimize the real dangers and problems of the drugs, but to call attention to certain facts that have not appeared often in the news media and to point out the connection of the drugs with religion. (The Psychology of Religious Experience, Walter Houston Clark, page 230)

The Religious Experience: A Social-Psychological Perspective.
Batson, C. Daniel, and Ventis, W. Larry. (1982).
New York: Oxford University Press.

What, then, does our review of the available research suggest about the effect of psychedelic drugs on religious experience? Although the research is not conclusive, we believe it suggests that psychedelic drugs can and do facilitate religious experience. Moveover, it suggests that they facilitate religious experience in the way we proposed, by disrupting the individual's current way of thinking about one or more existential concerns (the self-surrender stage of creative religious experience) and by stimulating the imaginal process, making cognitive reorganization more likely (the new vision stage). (page 114)

If this analysis is correct, two implications follow. First, drugs can facilitate but cannot produce creative religious experience. They can facilitate it if they are used in the context of an ongoing intrapsychic process that includes not only self-surrender (incubation) and new vision (illumination) but also a preceding struggle with one or more existential questions (preparation) and a subsequent new life (verification). If the individual is not already wrestling with existential concerns, psychedelics are not likely to evoke a creative transformation. This point is underscored by the findings of Masters and Houston, of the Spring Grove project, and of Pahnke; in each study religious insight seemed limited to those actively addressing existential questions (preparation). At the same time, if the experience is to be more than psychic "fireworks," there must be positive consequences for one's everyday life (verification). (page 115)

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