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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
Tripping down religion road
    #7597821 - 11/05/07 09:44 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Exploring the argument for drugs as a means of spiritual enlightenment
By Vincent Doyle and Jordan Gordanier
November 5, 2007 - The McGill Daily

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

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

A battle of image?

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

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

Drugs and religion: a history

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

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

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

A psychedelic trip

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

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

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

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

Righteousness revamped

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


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OfflineSkeeblix
Dave Thomas
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Registered: 01/28/07
Posts: 1,745
Loc: Wendy's
Last seen: 8 years, 3 months
Re: Tripping down religion road [Re: veggie]
    #7598173 - 11/05/07 11:44 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Good read. If only more people thought like this. :thumbup:


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This post approved by:


Premedman1 said:
:lol: I just shat my pants.


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Offlinetrippindad82
Trusted Cultivator of Trich
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Registered: 01/07/07
Posts: 1,087
Loc: down, down the hole
Last seen: 10 years, 11 months
Re: Tripping down religion road [Re: Skeeblix]
    #7598266 - 11/05/07 12:14 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Skeeblix said:
Good read. If only more people thought like this. :thumbup:




I agree with you on this. I also have much reason to believe, from my own experience and research, that the western religion that squashes the use of these substances so heavily uses a book based on mushroom use. From Mantra (come on, the jews took cows with them and ate the "bread" that formed during the morning dew), to the fact that most "visions" took place during a trance like state. I think the world would be a far better and more peaceful place if ALL psychotropics were legal and consumed on a far wider scale.


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Trying to explain a journey to someone who has never experienced it is like trying to explain what a zebra looks like to  blind person who has never seen a horse.

^^^The above matter may be a complete fantasy that I concocted out of possible boredom.^^^


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OfflineCannashroom
Smoke two Joints
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Registered: 10/25/07
Posts: 2,141
Loc: Everywhere
Last seen: 6 years, 9 months
Re: Tripping down religion road [Re: trippindad82]
    #7599243 - 11/05/07 04:49 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Wow, I love my university. I opened up this article and realized it was the McGill Daily, so i went downstairs and picked up a copy from my res common room. It makes me happy that my university newspaper prints articles like this.


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"A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe'; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest us.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.

Nobody is able to achieve this completely but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security."

Albert Einstein


Edited by Cannashroom (11/05/07 06:20 PM)


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Offlineaberrant
Stranger


Registered: 06/10/07
Posts: 53
Last seen: 14 years, 15 days
Re: Tripping down religion road *DELETED* [Re: veggie]
    #7633952 - 11/14/07 07:09 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Post deleted by aberrant

Reason for deletion: cleaning up internet identity/maintaining anonymtity



Edited by aberrant (11/14/07 07:09 AM)


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InvisibleOneMoreRobot3021
Male


Registered: 06/06/03
Posts: 61,024
Loc: the sky
Re: Tripping down religion road [Re: aberrant]
    #7634049 - 11/14/07 08:17 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Interesting article. It will be hard for people with long-held misconceptions to ever accept the validity of the psychedelic experience as a religious experience for some people because it calls into question (in their view, at least) the nature of religion. It's not organized with psychedelics. It's a personal thing. One on one with the godhead in your living room. It puts spirituality in a completely different context than we're used to seeing it.

Aberrant, you may be interested in this article if you haven't read it already:

http://www.reason.com/news/printer/119721.html


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Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake.

-Erik Davis


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