Entheogens — Sacramentals or Sacrilege?

(a working draft for a syllabus)

Introduction to Entheogens: Sacramentals or Sacrilege?

Are we experiencing a reorganization in Western religions now, similar in some ways to the one that occurred around 1500?  Before then religious rites were the main religious activity forthe ordinary person (not monks, nuns, or priests). Being

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To most people who are even moderately

experienced with entheogens, concepts

such as awe, sacredness, eternity, grace,

agapé, transcendence, transfiguration,

dark night of the soul, born-again,

heaven, and hell are more than

It should not be necessary to supply more proof that psychedelic drugs produce experiences that those who undergo them regard as religious in the fullest sense.

Grinspoon and Bakalar, Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered

religious primarily meant attending mass on Sunday; participating in church festivals, rites, and rituals; praying, and other religious activities and observances. 

Democratization of text. The printing press and movable type democratized access to Biblical (and other) texts. While older religious observances of the previous period sustained, new word-centered activities such as reading texts and interpreting them overlay the older religion-as- rite. New interpretations resulted, new churches flourished, and text became a standard for judging religion. Over time, the locus of Western religious activity shifted from rites to reading, from observances to Bible, from participation to verbalization. In contrast to pre-1500, we approach religion verbally — through words: language, texts, speaking, beliefs, catechisms, dogma, doctrines, theology, mission statements, etc. This overemphasis on words shows up today in the way we describe religions — by words. To us, thoughts (cognitive processes) form religion. The older rites certainly remain but lie obscured beneath a 500-year blizzard of words.

Democratization of primary religious experience. Is a similar transition going on today? Are we moving from concept-based religion to religion based on primary spiritual experience, mystical experience? Is Western religion in the early stages of adding another layer, a layer of direct experience of the sacredon top of word-based religion and rite-based religion? Just as the printed Bible democratized access to religious texts half a millennium ago, do today’s entheogens offer to democratize access to primary religious experience (sacred mystical experience)?

Research Opportunities. What opportunities for the scientific study of religion does this putative Entheogenic Reformation offer? In this course we’ll study how entheogens reclothe religious studies’ current questions in entheogenic garb: basically, all the questions get reasked; new questions appear. Just as the democratization of printing lead to word-based

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religion, are entheogens leading 21st Century religions toward a mystical experience base?

Course question: After spotting what may be early indicators of this putative trend, we’ll sample a menu of questions entheogenspresent for current and future religious studies.

Required Texts:

Roberts, B. Thomas. (editor) (2012). Spiritual Growth with Entheogens

Smith, Houston. (2004). Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious

Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals paperback

Other recommended readings are on our course website and/or on reserve in the library.

Select 1 of the following: Your choice. You may also select a book not on this list. For additional books and dissertations, check Roberts, T. B. & Hruby, P. J. (1995+) Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments: An Entheogen Chrestomathy http://www.csp.org/chrestomathy and online booksellers.

A word to the wise: it might be a smart idea to wait to select your books until after the first class so that you’ll know your study-group’s questions and so members of each group don’t overlap their selections too much.

Andresen, Jensine & Robert K. C. Forman. (2000). CognitiveModels and Spiritual

MapsBadiner, Alan Hunt. (2002). Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and

PsychedelicsClark, Walter Houston. (1969). Chemical Ecstasy: Psychedelic

Drugs andReligion

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Dobkin De Rios, Marlene. (1992). Amazon Healer: The Life and Times of an

Urban Shaman. Also see her other books. Ellens, Harold. (editor) (2014). Seeking the Sacred with

Psychoactive Substances. (2 vols)

Forte, Robert. (1997). Entheogens and the Future of ReligionFuller, Robert. (2000). Stairways to Heaven: Drugs in American

ReligiousHistory

Grof, Stanislav. (2000). The Future of PsychologyGrof, Stanislav. (1998). The Cosmic Game. Also see his

other books.Huxley, Aldous. (1954). The Doors of Perception and Heaven and

Hell Labate, Beatriz, et al. (2008). Ayahuasca Religions: A

Comprehensive Bibliography and Critical Essays

McNamara, Patrick. (2006). Where God and Science Meet: (Vol.3). The

Psychology of Religious Experience Ott, Jonathan. (1993). Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic Drugs, Their Plant Sources

and History. Also see his other books.Ram Dass. (1973). The Only Dance There Is. Several reprints

are available.Riedlinger, Thomas J. (1997). The Sacred Mushroom Seeker:

Tributes to R. Gordon Wasson.

Roberts, Thomas B. (2013). The Psychedelic Future of the Mind.Ruck, Carl; Staples, Blaise, and Heinrich, Clark.

(2001). The Apples of Apollo:Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist.

Schultes, R. E. & Hoffman, A. (1992). Plants of the Gods: TheirSacred,

Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers. Shanon, Benny. (2002). The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the

Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience.Stewart, Omer. (1993). Peyote Religion.

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Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Fall 1996. Topical issue on entheogens.

Wasson, R. Gordon. (1986). Persephone’s Quest: Entheogens and the Origins

of Religion. Also see also his other books. Watts, Alan W. (1962). The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of

Consciousness. Several reprinted editions are available.Winkelman, Michael.(2000). Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of

Consciousness and Healing. Also see his other books.

Finally let’s give ourselves this reminder:

There is a story, which I read somewhere to the effect that Mohammed once compared a scholar who writes about mysticism without having had any mystical experiences to a donkey carrying a load of books.

Stace, Mysticism and PhilosophyCited in Shanon, The Antipodes of the Mind

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Week 1. Easy Questions, Difficult Answers

Religion is about something, and it isn’t beliefs.

In-class videotape: Interview with Huston Smith, Thinking Allowed Series

Other sightings: Where else have you seen the things Smith and Mishlove discuss?

Churches: Buddhism (Do we find similar movements in other churches?)

Effects on current religions Native American Church, Ayahuasca churches, Rastafarian Hidden churches and individual spiritual practice Great Awakening of the 60s? Meditation, yoga, martial arts, and experiential

approaches to the spiritual quest.

Study teams: We will setup 3-person teams that will lead class discussions on questionsfrom Research Opportunities for the Entheogen Generation’s Scientific Study of

entheogen. noun. a chemical substance, typically of plant origin, that is ingested to produce a non-ordinary state of consciousness for religious or spiritual purposes.

Oxford English Dictionary, 2011

Gutenberg : words ::

Wasson : entheogens

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Religion, aka: “The Question Reservoir” at the end of this syllabus. Each team will lead discussions on several different weeks. Next week we’ll have the question draft, so between now and then meet with your group to decide its priorities.

Internet Field Trip: www.maps.org/. On psychedelics generally, not specifically entheogens

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Characteristics ofPrimary Spiritual

Experiences

Paradoxicality— opposites seem trueObjectivity — noetic quality.Transcendence— of space and/or time Transience— limited duration.

Week 2. PrimarySpiritual Experience(Mystical Experience)

Reading: This entiresyllabus. Smith: Cleansing the Doors of

Perception. All,except

chapters 4, 9 andAppendix B. Includeepigraphs, pp. vii-ix.Roberts: Humanity’sTaproot, Ch 2 in

Psychedelic Mind.

Suggested Internet Field Trip: Spiritual Experience (Mysticism) http://www.csp.org/experience/experience.html Good links.

Suggested readings: Zaehner: The Author’s Experience with Mescalin, Appendix B in Mysticism, Sacred and

ProfanePresti & Beck: Strychnine and Other Enduring Myths: Expert and User Folklore

Surrounding LSD. Chapter 13 in Spiritual GrowthStrassman: Adverse Reactions to Psychedelic Drugs: A Review of the Literature. Journal

of Nervous and Mental Disease, 1984, No. 172, pages 577-595

Juicy Questions du Jour: Question draft: Each study team will select its questions/topics. Like a draft pick in sports, each team in turn will select one question in each round. It will take several rounds to draft all the questions, and some questions may not be selected. The number of questions each teamwill select depends on our class enrollment.

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Week 3. Experimental Mysticism — From Gutenberg’s Word-centered Armchair to Wasson’s Sacred Mushrooms

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Internet Field Trip: www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd Explore “Psychedelics andReligious Experience”

Readings: Pahnke andRichards, “Introductionto ExperimentalMysticism”

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/pahnke4.htm

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Even in the universities of the Catholic ghetto in which I grew up, where metaphysical speculation was highly approved, the general assumption was that the noumenal order of things could not be perceived. One got it only by subtle arguments, by “transcendental reductions” and other such inferential, speculative acobatics. (The ordinary pious Catholic who prayed before the Blessed Sacrament may have known otherwise, but such pedestrian experience was typically ignored by professors of “natural theology” and theology.) But is metaphysics a matter of “immediate perceptions”? Without argument? The eyewitness of a hack reporter? If true, this would be first-order cultural news. Psychedelics provided the gate-opener for just this announcement.

David ToolanFacing West from California Shores: A

Jesuit’s Journey into New Age Consciousness

In Roberts, Spiritual Growth— Hruby: Unitive Consciousness and

Pahnke’s Good Friday Experiment, chapter 6

Doblin: Pahnke’s Good FridayExperiment: A Long-term Follow-upAnd Methodological Critique,chapter 7

Hood: The Facilitation of ReligiousExperience, chapter 24 in Hood: Handbook of Religious Experience

Suggested reading: Grinspoon & Bakalar: Psychedelic andMystical Experience, pages 267-273 in Psychedelic DrugsReconsidered

Juicy Questions du Jour: to be selected from the questionreservoir

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Week 4. Inner Light and the Human Mind

Internet Field Trip: www.atpweb.org Association forTranspersonal Psychology Readings: In Roberts, SpiritualGrowth.:Steindl-Rast: IntroductionYoung: If I Could Change YourMind, chap. 1Grof.: The Potential ofEntheogens as Catalysts

of Spiritual Development,chap. 4In Roberts Psychedelic Mind:

Walsh. Psychedelics and Religious Experiences, Ch. 5

Bourguignon: Excerpt from Religion, AlteredStates of Consciousness, and Social Change in the chrestomathy

Suggested: Tymoczko: The Nitrous Oxide Philosopher (William James)Hofmann: The Message of the Eleusinian Mysteries for Today’s World. In Forte. Roberts and Winkelman (2013). Psychedelic Induced Transpersonal Experiences. Ch. 25 in

Friedman and Hartelius (eds.) Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal

Psychology.

Juicy Questions du Jour: to be selected from the question reservoir

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When we reach experiential identification with Absolute Consciousness, we realize that our own being is ultimately commensurate with the entire cosmic network, with all of existence. The recognition of our own divine nature, our identity with the cosmic

That religious experience is not merely belief, not merely emotion, not merely the interaction of belief and emotion is the organizing theme that will clarify the empirical literature on the facilitation of religious experience. …

Numinous consciousness is both compelled to seek out and explore the range and nature of the transcendent object (mysterium fascinans) and to be repelled in the face of the majesty and awfulness of this foundational object in whose presence one’s creatureness is revealed (mysterium tremendum). …

In numinous consciousness the personal nature of foundational reality is emphasized; in mystical consciousness the impersonal nature of foundational reality is emphasized. In mysticism, fascinans triumphs over tremendum.

Ralph W. Hood, Jr. The Facilitation of Religious Experience, Chapter 24 inHandbook of Religious Experience

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Week 5. The Social Gospel, Ethics, Values, and Moral Development

Internet Field Trip: The MAPS URL (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) is a general psychedelics website. Try goingto this page and searching for “religion.”

http://www.maps.org/htdig/search.html

Readings: In Roberts, Psychedelic Mind:Raising Values, Ch. 3.

In Roberts, Spiritual Growth:Jesse: Epilogue: About the Council on

Spiritual Practices: Code of Ethics

for Spiritual GuidesTart: Psychoactive Sacramentals: What

Must Be Said, chapter 5 Cairns: A Theology of Human Liberation

and Entheogens: Reflections of aContemplative Activist, chapter 17

Suggested:

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Among the predictable characteristics of mystical experience are a sense of the sacredness of all life and a desire to establish a new, more harmonious relationship with nature and with other human beings. There is a corresponding renunciation of the various forms of self-seeking, including the ethos of manipulation and control.

David WulffPsychology of Religion: Classic and

Contemporary Views

Grinspoon & Bakalar: Health, Morality, and Truth in Psychedelic Religious Experience, pages 276-280 in Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered

Suggested Internet Field Trip: Vaughan: Spiritual Development: Outcomes and Indicators http://www.csp.org/development/docs/vaughan-spiritual.html

Juicy Questions du Jour: to be selected from the question

reservoir

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Week 6. Soma, Sacred Mushrooms, and the Banker

Internet Field Trip: Do aGoogle search or for R.Gordon Wasson. Be preparedto tell our class thehighlights of what youfound.

Readings: Wasson: Seeking the MagicMushroom,

LIFE, May 13, 1957,pp. 100+Wasson, R. Gordon;Hofmann, Albert;

Ruck, Carl A.P.(1998). The Road

to Eleusis: Unveiling theSecret

of the Mysteries.Twentieth

Anniversary Edition.Excerpt in

the chrestomathy.Smith: HistoricalEvidence: India’s

Sacred Soma, chapter4 in

Smith, Cleansing theDoors of

Perception

Suggested: Grinspoon & Bakalar: Drugs and Religious Origins, pages 273-275 in

Psychedelic Drugs ReconsideredRiedlinger: (1997). The Sacred Mushroom Seeker: Tributes to R. Gordon Wasson

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There is I think an inference that we may draw: a plant with properties that could be plausibly named the Herb of Immortality responded to one of man's deepest desires in the early stage of his intellectual development. The superb fly-agaric gave him a glimpse of horizons beyond any that he knew in his harsh struggle for survival, of planes of existence far removed and above his daily round of besetting cares. It contributed to the shaping of his mythological world and his religious life. (Epilogue, page 210)

R. Gordon WassonSoma: The Divine Mushroom of

Immortality

Meher Baba: Excerpt in the chrestomathy from The Mastery of Consciousness

Juicy Questions du Jour: to be selected from the question reservoir

In-class video: R. Gordon Wasson: Mushroom Man

It is time for scholars of religion to open their conceptual doors to a fuller range of analyses and to embrace the total phenomena of religions and religious experience. It is time to develop alternative and more inclusive paradigms that include more than social and conceptual influences. There is place for the analysis of the given, but also for the analysis of the experientially novel. There is a place for the analysis of dogma, but also of the ineffable. It is time to include more of human life in the study of religion.

Methodological Pluralism in the Study of Religion: How the Study of Consciousness and Mapping Spiritual

Experiences Can Reshape Religious MethodologyJensine Andresen and Robert K. C. Forman

Editors’ Introduction to Cognitive Models and Spiritual Maps

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Week 7. Psychointegrators: Pharmatheology, and Neurotheology

Internet Field Trip: Go to Why God Won’t Go Away on amazon.com and click around.

Readings: In Spiritual GrowthHofmann: LSD as a Spiritual Aid, chap. 12Shulgin: A Scientist’s View of Miracles and

Magic, chapter 11

Matossian: Excerpts from Poisons of the

Past: Molds, Epidemics, and History

in the chrestomathyNichols and Chemel: The Neuropharmacology of Religious Experience. In McNamara

Newberg, D’Aquili, and Rause. Chapter 6 in Why God Won’t Go Away

Suggestions: Morris: Hallucinogen Research

Inspires NeurotheologyNewberg & d’Aquili: The Neuropsychology of Religious and Spiritual

Experience, in Andresen & Forman Joseph: NeuroTheology: Brain, Science, Spirituality, Religious ExperienceBorg: The Serotonin System and Spiritual Experiences.

http://psychiatryonline.org/data/Journals/AJP/3754/1965.pdf

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[The word “psychointegrator”] reflects the integration of mind, soul, and spirit as attested to by laboratory, clinical, and cross-cultural research. The term psychointegrator does not preclude further terminological differentiation of the variable effects of these substances. “Psychointegrator” supersedes value-laden terminology and misconceptions with a neurophenomenological grounding.

Michael WinkelmanPsychointegrators: Multidisciplinary

Perspectives on the Therapeutic Effects of

Hallucinogens

Juicy Questions du Jour: to be selected from the question reservoir

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Week 8. Archeology

Internet Field Trip: http://www.sacaaa.org/

Readings: Nichols (2000). The Fly-Agaric and Early Scandinavian Religion. Eleusis: Journal of Psychoactive Plants and Compounds.

These short items in the chrestomathy sample how psychedelicsappear in the archeological record. http://www.csp.org/chrestomathy

Devereux: excerpt from The Long Trip: The Prehistory of PsychedeliaGimbutas: excerpt from The Civilization of the GoddessGraves: excerpt from Food of Centaurs Kramrisch, Stella; Ott, Jonathan; Wasson, R. Gordon.

excerpt fromPersephone's Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion

Rudgley: excerpt from Essential Substances In Society Rudgley: excerpt from The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age

Juicy Questions du Jour: to be selected from the question reservoir

[W]hich, after all, was more likely to happen first: the spontaneously generated idea of an afterlife in which the disembodied soul, liberated from the restrictions of time and space, experiences eternal bliss, or the accidental discovery of hallucinogenic plants that give a sense of euphoria, dislocate the center of consciousness, and distort time and space, making them balloon onward in greatly expanded vistas? … We have to remember that the plants were there waiting to give men a new idea based on a new experience. The experience might have had, I should think, an almost explosive effect on the largely dormant minds of men, causing them to think of things they had never thought before.

Mary BarnardThe Mythmakers

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Week 9. The Ancient Near East

Readings: Smith: The Eleusinian Mysteries, pp.

113-115 in Cleansing the

Doors of PerceptionWebster, Perrine, and Ruck: (2000)

Mixing the Kykeon. In http://

www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsa/lsa_article1.pdf Riedlinger: (2002). Polydamna’s

Drug: Egyptian Beer and the Kykeon of Eleusis. Onreserve.

Shanon: Biblical Entheogens:a Speculative Hypothesis. On reserve.

Suggested: Ellens, Harold (ed.). Select from chapters 3-19 in Vol. 1. Seeking the Sacred with

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The thunderbolt of Zeus was itself a mediation between the Father God’s realm and earth, as the ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson has shown in demonstrating the wide-spread belief that mushrooms appear where lightening strikes the earth. Amanita was divine food, not something to be indulged in lightly, not something to be profaned. It was the food of the gods, their ambrosia, and nectar was the pressed sap of its juices.

C. A. P. Ruck and Danny Staples

The World of Classical Myth: Gods and Goddesses: Heroines and Heros

Psychoactive Substances: Chemical Paths to Spirituality and GodRuck, Staples, and Heinrich. Select from The Apples of Apollo.

Juicy Questions du Jour: to be selected from the question reservoir

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Week 10. Native American Churches

Internet Field Trip: :Communities that useentheogenshttp://www.csp.org/communities/communities.html

Readings: Fikes: A BriefHistory of the NativeAmerican Church.

http://www.csp.org/communities/docs/fikes-nac_history.html Smith: The NativeAmerican Church

(excerptedinterviews) pages

114-125 in Cleansingthe

Doors of PerceptionSearch Goggle for“peyote” and “peyotl”and read for an hour.Be prepared to tell therest of the class thehighlights of what youfound.

Suggested:

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The [peyote] vision was not “pantheistic.” The morning star was not the object to my veneration. It was to use very traditional language, “an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace,” the standard definition of a sacrament. Was it a “mystical experience”? I don’t think so. I did not lose myself or merge with the star. I did not return as a drop of water to the great ocean or soar out of my body. I knew where I was and who I was at all times. What I felt was an Other moving toward me with a power of affirmation beyond anything I had ever imagined could exist. I was glad and grateful. No theory that what happened to me was “artificially induced” or psychotic or hallucinatory can erase its mark. “The bright morning stars are rising” as the old hymn puts if, “In my soul.”

Harvey CoxTurning East

Ellens, Harold (ed.). Select from chapters 14-16 in Vol. 2. Seeking the Sacred with

Psychoactive Substances: Chemical Paths to Spirituality and GodJuicy Questions du Jour: to be selected from the question reservoir

Huichol (Mexico) yarn painting.Approximately 6 x 6 inches onparticle board. Purchased in1993(?) in Guadalajara at thedistrict indigenous art and craftstore. Here we see a seated mara-akame (shaman) waving a muvieli(wand) over a putzee (incenseburner).

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Week 11. Judaism and Early Christianity

Readings:

Graves: chrestomathy excerpt for Difficult Questions, Easy Answers. Bush: Drugs and Jewish Spirituality: That Was Then, This is Now. chapter 7 in Grob:

Hallucinogens: A ReaderMerkur: Manna, the Showbread, and the Eucharist: PsychoactiveSacraments in the Bible,

chapter 14 in Spiritual Growth. Bennett: Kaneh Bosm: The Hidden Story of Cannabis in the Old Testament. Ruck: Was There a Whiff of Cannabis About Jesus? The Sunday Times (London), Jan. 12,

2003.

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Christianity evolved within the context of Judaic and Hellenistic healing cults, magic, shamanism, and Mystery initiations. All four of these inevitably imply a sacred ethnopharmacology, with traditions going back to earlier ages of the ancient world. …

In the Hellenized world, the Jews tended to replace their Hebrew names with Greek names that sounded similar. Hence many an assimilated Jesus was called Iason, like the Jason of Classical mythology …

In Greek, this Iao is the root for the “drug” (ios) of the “drug man” or doctor (ia-tros) who performs the act of “healing” (iasis). As a healer, Iesous was the “savior” of his namesake Iesou (Joshua): easily recognized as a male version of Iaso (or Ieso), the Greek goddess of healing. All the Gospels use the verb “to heal” (ia-sthai) of Jesus’ ministry; and he refers to himself quite often as a “drug man.”

The Apples of Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the EucharistRuck, Staples, and Heinrich, pp. 143-146

Suggested readings: Fabbro: Mushrooms and Snails in ReligiousRituals of Early

Christians at Aquileia Ruck et al J esus, The Drug Man. chapter 5 in The Apples of ApolloSee Merkur’s and Dobkin de Rio’s books in the chrestomathy

Juicy Questions du jour: to be selected from the question reservoir

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Week 12. A ‘Round-the-World Anthropological Trip

Internet Field Trip Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness — http://www.sacaaa.org/

Readings: The Role of Drugs in Prehistory. http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/prehistoricdrugs.htm Jesse: Entheogens: A Brief History of their Spiritual Use. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review,

Fall 1996, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 60 – 64South and Central America (one of these)

Penna: las noches de los ayahuasqueros, chapter 9 in Roberts, Spiritual Growth.

Schinzinger: Mysterious Tea, chapter 10 in Roberts Spiritual Growth.

O’Shaughnessy: The Strengthening Aspects of Zen and Contemporary Meditation,

chapter 19 in Spiritual GrowthAsia (one of these)

Walsh: Consciousness and Asian traditions, chapter 18 inSpiritual Growth

Tricycle: Results from the Tricycle Poll. Same issue as above.

Hajicek-Dobberstein: Soma Siddhas and Alchemical Enlightement: Psychedelic

Members of preindustrial societies in many cultures with varying epistemological perspectives have always incorporated mind-altering plants into facets of daily activity. The economic behavior, to social organization, and the belief systems have been affected by the use of mind-altering plants …

The contribution that anthropology can make to the study of the use of mind-altering plants throughout the world is to show how cultural variables such as belief systems, values, attitudes, and expectations structure one of the most subjective experiences available to humankind.

Marlene Dobkin de RiosHallucinogens: Cross-Cultural Perspectives

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Mushrooms in Buddhist Tradition. Jr. of Ethnopharmacology (1995) Vol.

48, pp.99-118.Escohotado: Islam and Inebriation, chapter 5 in A Brief

History of DrugsAfrica

Fernandez: Equatorial Excursions (Bwiti: Africa) www.ibogaine.org

Suggested: Dobkin de Rios: Hallucinogens: Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Escohotado: A Brief History of Drugs: From the Stone Age to the Stoned Age

Rudgley: Essential Substances: A Cultural History of Intoxicants in Society

Juicy Questions du Jour: to be selected from the question reservoir

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Week 13. Spiritual Intelligence, Liberty, Politics, and Policy

Readings: Vaughan: Perception and

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Spiritual Learning

The perennial philosophy and the esoteric teaching of all time suddenly made sense. I understood why spiritual seekers were instructed to look within, and the unconscious was revealed to be not just a useful concept, but an infinite reservoir of creative potential. I felt I had been afforded a glimpse into the nature of reality and the human potential within that reality, together with a direct experience of being myself, free of illusory identification and constrictions of consciousness. My understanding of mystical teaching, both Eastern and Western, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Sufi alike, took a quantum leap. I became aware of the transcendental unity at the core of all great religions, and understood for the first time the meaning of ecstatic states.

Frances VaughanPerception and Knowledge:

Reflections on Psychological and Spiritual Learning in the

Psychedelic Experience, chapter 9 in

Grinspoon & Bakalar: Psychedelic Reflections

Knowledge: chapter 9 in Psychedelic Reflections

Roberts: Academic and ReligiousFreedom in the Study of the Mind, chapter 11. In Forte,

Sterling: Law Enforcement AgainstEntheogens, chapter 13. In Forte

Boire: The Judicial Architectonics ofPsychoactive Sacramentals,

chapter 23. In Roberts, Spiritual Growth.

Bakalar: Social and IntellectualAttitudes toward Drug-induced Religious Experience. Jr of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 25, No. 4, Fall, pages 45-66.

Juicy Questions du Jour: to be selected from the question reservoir

Suggested:http://www.beckleyfoundation.org/http://www.drugpolicy.org/http://luskin.ucla.edu/mark-ar-kleiman

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Week 14. Pastoral Care and Hospice Counseling

Internet Field Trips: Pahnke: The Psychedelic Mystical Experience and the Human Encounter with Death

http://csp.org/docs/PahnkeIngersoll1969.pdf Pam Sakuda interview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCdzoJ4QRpk Heffter Research Institute. http://www.heffter.org/research-unm-alc.htm

Readings:Goldsmith: Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Spirituality, Ten Lessons

http://entheogene.over-blog.com/article-psychedelic-psychotherapy-and-spirituality-40146126.html Grob and Danforth: Psychedelic Psychotherapy Near the End of Life. Ch. 7 in Psychedelic Mind. Explore the links listed at theend.

Suggested: Winkelman & Roberts: Psychedelic Medicine (2 vols) explore In Spiritual Growth

Hansen: The Birthing of Transcendental Medicine, chapter22

Vaughan: Transpersonal Counseling, chapter 20Shulgin: The New Psychotherapy: MDMA and the Shadow,

chapter 21Grof and Halifax (1977). The Human Encounter with DeathStolaroff: The Secret Chief Revealed:

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There is a central human experience, which alters all other experiences … not just an experience among others, but rather the very heart of the human experience. It is the center that gives understanding to the whole. Once found, life is altered because the very root of human identity is deepened.

LSD and the Enlightenment of Zen Wilson Van Dusen

Grof: LSD Psychotherapy Also see his other books.

In-class videos: LSD: The Spring Grove Experiment and follow-up excerpt on Otz from LSD: Still With Us

Juicy Questions du Jour: to be selected from the question reservoir

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The ego has problems:the ego is a problem.

Week 15. The 60s and the Future

Internet Field Trip: www.erowid.com

Readings: The Psychedelic Future of theMind, pages 119-190

Suggested: The Psychedelic Future of the Mind,pages191-234Grinspoon & Bakalar: The Future ofPsychedelic

Drug Use and Research, chapter8 in

Psychedelic Drugs ReconsideredStrassman: Biomedical Research withPsychedelics:

Current Models and FutureProspects,

chapter 12 in Forte: Entheogens and the Future of Religion

Roberts: double book review of Newberg et al: (2001)Why God Wont Go Away and ofFuller (2000) Stairways to Heaven. https://www.academia.edu/505070/

double_book_review_1_Newberg_Andrew_and_Eugene_DAqiuli._Why_God_Wont_Go_Away_Brain_Science_and_the_Biology_of_Belief_2_Fuller_Robert._C._Stairways_to_Heaven_Drugs_in_Religious_History

In-class video: Psychedelic Science (BBC-TV)

Juicy Questions du Jour: to be selected from the question reservoir

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I am willing to prophesy that fifty theo-botanists working for fifty years would make the current theories concerning the origins of much mythology and theology as out-of-date as pre-Copernican astronomy.

Mary BarnardThe God in the

Flower PotAmerican Scholar 1963

Week 16. Final

Demonstrating your knowledge of the topics, readings, questions,and discussions we’ve considered this semester, use one of thesequotations as a theme for an essay.

Indeed, isn’t religion, above all—before it is doctrine and morality, rites and institutions—religious experience? Under the influence of Protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher in nineteenth century Europe and philosopher-psychologist William James in early twentieth-century America, many Westerners have come out in support of the priority of religious experience. And isn’t religious experience in its highest form mystical experience, as in India, where it seems more at home than anywhere else?

Kung, van Ess, von Stietencron, and BechertChristianity and the World Religions: Paths to Dialogue with Islam,

Hinduism and BuddhismOught it to be assumed that in all men the mixture of religion with other elements should be identical? Ought it, indeed, to be assumed that the lives of all men should show identical religious elements? In other words, is the existence of so many religious types and sects and creeds regrettable?

To these questions I answer “No” emphatically. And my reason is that I do not see how it is possible that creatures in such different positions and with such different powers as human individuals are, should have exactly the same functions nor should we be expected to work out identical solutions. Each, from his peculiar angle of observation, takes in a certain sphere of fact and trouble, which each must deal with in a unique manner.

William JamesThe Varieties of Religious Experience

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Research Opportunities for

The Entheogen Generation’s

Religious Studies

aka: “The Question Reservoir” and “Juicy Questions

du Jour”

First, a prior question: As you consider the questions below,ask yourself: “Who has the

knowledge, right, and responsibility to decide the answers?”

a) each individual personb) churches and clergyc) medical doctors and health agenciesd) politicians, police, and legislaturese) mental health professionals f) members of SSSR g) all of the above

What evidence do entheogens already provide about thesequestions and topics?

To move from armchair philosophy to experimental evidence, how would you design entheogen experiments that could provideempirical evidence on these questions?

Can you think of additional questions to help fill the

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The rejection of any source of evidence is alwaystreason to that ultimate rationalism which urges forward science and philosophy alike.

reservoir?

1. Innate spiritual nature: Do humans have an innate spiritual nature? What parts do biology and culture play in this? If humans have an innate spiritual nature, can entheogens activate and/or develop it?

2. Authenticity: Are entheogen-assisted primary religious experiences authentic? What criteria should be used?

3. Qualia: Is sacredness a qualé? Is it a quality like red or C-sharp? During some entheogenic states, sacredness seems to reside in any number of objects, thoughts,

or emotions; or, sacredness may be perceived simultaneously with them. Are

meaningfulness, portentousness, adoration, self, and awequalia? How do

recognized qualia vary from one mindbody state to another? Do different qualia

reside in various mindbody states?

4. Typology: As these experiences become more readily accessible, will theologians and others develop clearer descriptions and more complex typologies of them? For example, will Wilber’s typology of nature, deity, and formless/nondual mysticisms become further elaborated?

5. From state to trait: While entheogenic peak experiences are only temporary states, can they be converted into permanent personal traits, recalled in our ordinary state, and become enduring steps of spiritual development?

6. Origins of religion: Historically, did entheogens spark the religious imagination and play a significant role inthe origins of religions — shamanic, ancient, and modern? Did the 1960s include a “Great Awakening”?

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7. Pastoral counseling: Can entheogens be useful in pastoral counseling, say with alcoholics or in a hospicesituation? There are strong leads, which suggest they might be useful here as well as in specialized mental health treatment.

8. Experimental mysticism: Do entheogens make it possible to study mysticism experimentally? How might they informthe professional education of advanced students of the scientific study of religion and others? Do entheogens move the scientific study of primary religious experience from the descriptive stage to the experimental stage? What religious questions move from arm-chair theology to experimentation? What methodological questions need to be answered, and what methods of inquiry need to be developed?

9. Continuing spiritual education: Might entheogen-inducedprimary religious experiences help selected and preparedseminarians, advanced students of religion, and those inreligious professions rededicate themselves to their callings? Might they be instructive to carefully selected and prepared seminarians, members of religious orders, and students of advanced religious studies?

10. Spiritual healing: Do entheogen-induced mystical experiences boost the immune system or have other healthful effects? How do these topics relate to reports of spiritual healing?

11. Selection and preparation: Clearly, entheogens are not right for everyone. Who is most likely to benefit from entheogens, and who isn’t? How should people be screened and prepared for their sessions, and what kindsof follow-up are best?

12. Constitutional and religious liberty issues: In a country that is dedicated to freedom of conscience and

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in the separation of church and state, what policy and legal hurdles do entheogens

present? Who has the right to determine what is or is not a legitimate religion or

religious practice? How might current laws accommodate entheogens?

13. Moral development: Has the entheogen revival uncovered a hidden path of moral development?

14. Increasing spiritual intelligence: Have we — unintentionally and unknowingly — discovered (perhaps rediscovered) a way to increase spiritual intelligence by using entheogens? How could we measure and research this?

Gardner: Intelligence is the ability to solve problems or provide goods and services of value to a

society. Do entheogens do this for spiritual knowledge and development?

Sternberg: Intelligence is mental self management.

Entheogens commonly produce states that enhance our ability have spiritual experiences – for example, the primary religious experiences that Brother David describes in the Foreword to this book. Remembering that Sternberg’s definition of intelligence is “mental self management,” I find myself stunned by the implications of this question: since entheogens open the door to increased mental self-management in the spiritual domain, have we actually discovered a way to increase spiritual intelligence? With proper selection, preparation, teacher training, and follow-up, could we design a program to increase spiritual intelligence? I believe it is a moral, spiritual, intellectual, and social duty to examine the feasibility of this idea. Psychoactive Sacramentals (page 237)

15. Current influences: What effects have entheogens already had on current religious practice, ritual, ethics, and the religious community? Consider:

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A recent poll of over 1,300 Americans engaged in Buddhist practice showed that 83 percent had taken psychedelics … and 71 percent believed that psychedelics can provide a glimpse ofthe reality to which Buddhist practice points. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review (1996) (pp. 86-87).

16. Science and religion: Can we build a strong bridge between science and religion if we omit the entheogen girders?

17. Futures: Might entheogens democratize unitive states and access to primary religious experience? If so, what might religion become? If so, how can we document this process?

18. Inventing and constructing new spiritual knowledge:What will happen when entheogens are combined with meditation, contemplative prayer, ascetic practices, chanting, or other mindbody spiritual practices? Might 21st Century mindbody inventors sequence several mindbodypsychotechnologies or combine them into new recipes? Might they actually be able to design new, previously unknown mindbody states? What spiritual experiences will reside in these states? What will we learn about the human mind and religion? What will we learn about the varieties of religious experience?

19. Entheology: What ideas and interpretations gain credibility for entheogen-informed people? Entheology is that branch of theology which deals with the experience and/or knowledge of the divine, and of the revelation of that divine, through the

agency of psychoactive substances (used as sacraments), be it a revelation of the divine within

and/or without the individual. Aline Lucas, Psychoactive Sacramentals, p. 147

20. Experimental mysticism: How will experiences of experimental mysticism change the research agendas of those who have primary religious experiences? What

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questions will they ask? What entheogenic methods will they use?

21. New Religious Movement: Although seldom organized into religious communities, do entheogenists qualify as a New Religious Movement?

22. Liturgy: Mother Goddess of the Earth,Father Ruler of the Sky,What name shall we call the GodThat lives in mind, beyond the I?

What religious rituals and practices will evolve fromentheogens?

24. The above questions are:a. Religiousb. Spiritualc. Legald. Biological/medical e. Politicalf. All of the above

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