Appendix: The Psychedelic Evidence

There is reason to question whether it is wise to even mention the psychedelics in connection with God and the Infinite. The goal, it cannot be stressed too often, is not religious experiences: it is the religious life.  And with respect to the latter, psychedelic "theophanies" can abort a quest as readily as, perhaps more readily than, they can further it. It is the potential for the drug LSD as a resource for enlarging our understanding of the human mind and self that concerns us in this book.  The view of man that was outlined in Chapter 4 presented him as a multilayered creature and work with LSD points to the same conclusion.

I. Description of the three stages LSD experiences

A. The first stages of its use provide experiences of a distinctly personal character.

B. In the second stage the theme of death and rebirth frequently recurred and was characterized by an absence of the individually and biographically determined material.

C. Two features define the third stage of use:

1.Profound religious and mystical experiences

2. Transpersonal experiences; ones occupied with things other than oneself. They are cosmic, having to do with the elements and forces from which life proceeds.  The subject is less conscious of himself as separate from what he perceives. To a large extent the subject-object dichotomy is itself transcended.

II. Interpretation and explanation.

A. The three stages as explained by psychiatry in terms of the life history of the individual

1. First stage experiences result from the individual's infancy and childhood experiences.

2. Second stage experiences result from experiences attending birth; an experience common to us all.

3. The Third stage taps the earliest memories of all: before the womb grew crowded , when the fetus blended with its mother in mystic embrace.

B. The three stages as explained by the common vision of the world religions:  The self is composed of body, mind, soul and spirit. LSD is a seeing-eye probe that penetrates progressively toward the core of the subject's being.

1. In the first stage the events that were most important in the subject's formation are the ones that rush forward for attention.

2.In the second stage chemicals enter the region of the mind that outdistances the brain and swims in the medium of the psychic or intermediate plane with the following consequences:

a. Biographical data  - events that imprinted themselves on the subject's body, in this case the memory region of his brain - recede.

b. Their place is taken by the "existentials" of human existence in general.

c. In the death and rebirth experience that climaxes this phase, the self has entered the intermediate plane through the soul's assumption of - compression into - mind. Mind must be dissolved (die) for the soul to be released (reborn)

3. In this third stage, the sense of release from the imprisoning structures of mind signals the fact that the probe has reached the level of soul. The phenomenological consequences being:

a. The experience is now beatific, identification with the universe, cosmic consciousness, the intuitive insight into the essence of being, the approximation to God.

b. The experience maybe abstract: blinding light or beautiful colors or associated with space or sound.  Or if more concrete tends to be archetypal, with the archetypes seeming to be limitless in number. The soul level is the plane of God and the archetypes.

c. The God who is encountered is single and so far removed from anthropomorphism as to elicit the pronoun "it".  This is in contrast to the gods of the second stage which tend to be multiple, Olympian, and essentially titans.

 

Beyond the soul lies only Spirit, an essence so ineffable that when the seeing eye strikes it, virtually all that can be reported is that it is "beyond" and "more than" all that had been encountered theretofore.

The idea that the "three-dimensional world" is only one of many experiential worlds created by the Universal Mind appears much more logical than the opposite alternative that is so frequently taken for granted, namely that the material world has objective reality of its own and that the human consciousness and the concept of God are merely products if highly organized matter, the human brain. When closely analyzed the latter concept presents at least as many incongruences, paradoxes and absurdities as the described concept of the Universal Mind. The problems of finity versus infinity of time and space: the enigma of the origin of matter, energy and space; and the mystery of the prime impulse appear to be so overwhelming and defeating that one seriously questions why this approach should be given priority in our thinking.

[ Home ] [ Up ] [ Preface ] [ 1. The Way Things Are ] [ 2. Symbolism of Space: The Three-Dimensional Cross ] [ 3. The Levels of Reality ] [ 4. The Levels of Selfhood ] [ 5. The Place of Science ] [ 6. Hope, Yes; Progress, No ] [ 7. Epilogue ] [ Appendix: The Psychedelic Evidence ]