Psychedelics and Religion, Part Two

Bill of Health, 2020

** Note: The URL link below works better than the PDF for viewing ** https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2020/11/04/what-the-study-of-religion-can-teach-us-about-psychedelics/ This piece is part of a digital symposium on "Psychedelics and America" through Harvard Law School's Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics.

Spiritual Psychology and Counseling

The quest for more holistic forms of treatment and healing in modern psychology has been provoked by its sole focus on the management of symptoms. This has led to an alarming rise in the use of psychedelic substances. Yet the true cause behind these maladies of the mind is the burgeoning ‘crisis of meaning’ that we find in the world today. This largely undiagnosed predicament has led to religion being supplanted by psychology, and to the realm of the psyche becoming confused with that of the spiritual. Modern societies have clearly lost a sense of the sacred. To the extent that we fail to see this, the use of entheogens will never be able to replace a true “science of the soul,” which offers a more satisfying conception of reality, and a fuller understanding of what it means to be human. In this way, we may discover a properly integrated approach to healing that is grounded in the deeper wisdom to be found in the world’s time-honored spiritual traditions.

Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2003

Reviews the book, Sacred knowledge: Psychedelics and religious experiences, by William A. Richards. Richards's career of clinical research with psychedelics and professional formation in theology, comparative religion and the psychology of religion bring integrative perspectives to understanding psychedelic experiences. Clinical accounts, scientific research and his personal experiences with psychedelics enable Richards to address issues of core importance in religious studies, medicine and society in general. Clinical studies with psychedelics provide findings that contribute to assessment of issues in religious studies, providing evidence that supports a perennialist view of mystical experiences as inherent to human nature. Double blind studies establish the intrinsic ability of psychedelics to produce mystical experiences, as well as behavioral changes in the participants' lives. Similarities in mystical and psychedelic experiences across people and cultures point to their transcendental nature and basis in human biology. Richards weaves together various strands of evidence to educate professionals of many disciplines and the general public about the range of promising uses of psychedelics. Although psychedelic ingestion does not always produce mystical experiences, when they fail to do so, they generally engage the user with personal experiences related to childhood trauma or unresolved emotions, especially fears, grief, anger and guilt. This reveals another power potential of these substances to provide relief for conditions often found intractable by modern medicine. Sacred Knowledge provides a call to recognize the biases that have affected our societal evaluations of psychedelics and how current scientific research demands reconsideration of the significance of these powerful entheogens and their implications for understanding spiritual experiences and human nature.

Journal of Psychedelic Studies, 2019

An assessment of the implications of entheogenic research for understanding the origins of religion. The Table of contents with links to 12 articles that examine entheogenic bases of prehistorical, historical and world religions.

Religions, 2024

In this paper, I examine the reciprocal relationship between scholarship about religion and discourses and practices related to the "First" and "Second Wave" psychedelic movements. Following the work of Agehananda Bharati, I argue that the "First Wave" psychedelic movement was instrumental in the success of Religious Studies in the 1970s and 1980s, facilitating interest in a range of issues around religious experience and its interpretation. I postulate two key spheres of influence: scholars whose experiences of psychedelics were formative in their study of religion versus others not associated with psychedelic use but have had a major impact on thinking within psychedelic communities. To illustrate this, I draw on my experience as a participant-observer in one of the first state-approved Psilocybin Facilitator training programs in Oregon, providing examples of how scholarship on religion informs psychedelic discourse and practice and the implications of it for the future of the academic study of religion.