Comment by stared
8 months ago
I highly recommend the whole book "Sacred Knowledge" by William Richards (one of the author of the studies).
“To most people who are even moderately experienced with entheogens, concepts such as awe, sacredness, eternity, grace, agape, transcendence, transfiguration, dark night of the soul, born-again, heaven and hell are more than theological ideas; they are experiences.” - Thomas Roberts
This phrase is quoted in "Sacred Knowledge" by Richards, yet I find it the most suitable summary of this overview of scientific research on psychedelics and religion.
We hear about mystical visions from LSD ("acid"), psilocybin ("shrooms"), and DMT from many "spiritual but not religious" people and self-proclaimed shamans. But how does it relate to vision by ordinary people (ones who never tired, and wouldn't try if it weren't for legal, scientific research)?
And how does it relate to prayer, mediation, and mystical visions by Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus? How do monks and priests compare their psychedelic experience with their regular practice? Do they all turn to Zen Buddhism, or entrench in their religious background?
Regardless if you are deeply religious, or a non-spiritual atheist, I believe you will reconsider a few things after reading this book.
AS Christians we don't expect to receive mystical and transcendent visions, although they can happen it's exceedingly rare and not something the majority of people will see in their life.
Satan is far more likely to give you a mystical vision that leads you away from the faith than for you to receive a Divine vision.
I recommend reading "Sacred knowledge" even more (the author is Christian, if it makes a difference). When it comes to mystic experiences, while technically it can me "less than 50%", it is still a lot (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/12/07/spiritual-ex...). Not everyone is happy to talk about it, both is it might be very personal and as many are afraid to be considered crazy.
I cannot say much about relative Bayesian probability of getting a vision from God or Satan, though.
If we're talking about a generic "experience", sure anyone can have that. I was talking about seeing supernatural things directly.
I have taken LSD and mushrooms about a dozen times each. They’re just drugs. Drugs that mess with the way you perceive things, there’s nothing spiritual or profound about any of it. I very much enjoy hallucinogens but any ‘meaning’ or ‘spirituality’ about the experience is nonsense. I still think the experience itself has positive effects overall.
Meaning and spirituality are personal experiences, seems close minded to deny what others avowedly profess as their true first person experience.
It might be close minded, but it doesn’t mean I am incorrect. I’ve done enough varieties of drugs (multiple types of every class of recreational drugs) to know it’s just altering your brain chemistry to make you perceive things differently. There’s no higher meaning or purpose to tripping. Other people may believe there is, but I think they’re wrong and misinterpreting their experience due to what they’ve read and heard about hallucinogens.
Staying grounded when you’re doing powerful psychedelics is a good idea.
As an experiment, next time you trip, write down your ‘profound’ thoughts and then examine them after the trip is over.
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First, your experience is your experience.
Second, how do you define `meaning’ or `spirituality’?
Will do, but I can't help but being sceptical of the scepticism of those that study the world from a safe distance. Maybe I'm just too sceptically trusting in my experiences and the world as I see it.