The Psychedelics and Religion
Walter Houston Clark
Introduction by Peter Webster
In 1968 Ralph Metzner
wrote of Walter Houston Clark, (in The Ecstatic Adventure)
THERE ARE NOT too many men in their sixties,
professional academics at that, who have preserved sufficient openness to
experience and receptivity to new ideas to accept the idea of personal
experimentation with psychedelic drugs. Old age is too often synonymous with
rigidity rather than wisdom. Not so with Walter Houston Clark, Professor of
Psychology of Religion at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton,
Massachusetts, former dean and professor at the Hartford School of Religious
Education, author of The Oxford Group (1951) and The Psychology of Religion
(1958), and founder of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.
In an article on "Mysticism as a Basic Concept in
Defining the Religious Self," Professor Clark wrote that
The [psychedelic] drugs are simply an auxiliary
which, used carefully within a religious structure, may assist in mediating an
experience which, aside from the presence of the drug, cannot be distinguished
psychologically from mysticism. Studies have indicated that, when the
experience is interpreted transcendentally or religiously, chances are
improved for the rehabilitation of hopeless alcoholics and hardened criminals.
Even though observations like these mean that the psychologist can learn a
little more of the religious life, in no sense does it ultimately become any
less of a mystery. Though man may sow and till, winds may blow and the rains
fall, nevertheless it is still God that gives the increase.
Today, amid the confusion of grave problems
caused not so much by decades of "drug abuse" as by decades of increasingly
futile attempts to legislate away the use of prohibited substances by pious
decree, it is all too easily forgotten that the rediscovery of the psychedelic
drugs mid-way through the present century was as promising a find as mankind has
seen. A significant, if minority group of our best scientists, doctors,
philosophers, writers, artists, and intellectuals of every description began
explorations with the psychedelics, a search that was really only the
continuation of an age-old quest involving the great majority of peoples and
tribes of the ancient world. Psychedelic drugs have, in fact, been used as
religious and curing aids since the very beginning of human existence, and only
in the 1950's was any significant "scientific" research begun using them.
This research planted the seeds of a revolution of a kind that
science purportedly thrives upon, but the sprouting of the seeds was aborted
early on by scandal. In the following article we read about some research that
was later to be ignored not so much because it was scandalous, but because it
challenged some of the underlying paradigms of the entire scientific enterprise.
Some of the findings of psychedelic research seemed to herald a merging of the
"scientific" and "religious" or "mystical" viewpoints, despite very powerful
resistance by both sides to opposing views. The scientific viewpoint had for a
long time generally disdained religion as primitive superstition, and religious
thinkers of every denomination had tended to view the destructive uses to which
science had been put as evidence of its ultimate inability to advance the human
condition. Yet some scholars such as Professor Clark saw the rediscovery of
psychedelics as the key to the blossoming of a new view. In the words of Alan
Watts,
For a long time we have been accustomed to the
compartmentalization of religion and science as if they were two quite
different and basically unrelated ways of seeing the world. I do not believe
that this state of doublethink can last. It must eventually be replaced by a
view of the world which is neither religious nor scientific but simply our
view of the world. More exactly, it must become a view of the world in which
the reports of science and religion are as concordant as those of the eyes and
the ears. (Preface to The Joyous
Cosmology, 1962).
In retrospect, it will
be seen by historians of the 21st century that the scandal of the 1960's was not
Dr. Timothy Leary leading a generation down the road to a drugged oblivion, (for
that generation is today doing quite well!) but rather that such Puritanical
views of mere over-enthusiasm for a new discovery led a generation of scientists
and world leaders to throw away what in any other epoch would have been a Holy
Grail, a discovery of such fundamental importance that the great discoveries
that had made modern technological civilization possible would seem almost
trivial by comparison. The situation continues today unabated, despite the
continued availability of the wisdom of Professor Clark and the many other
pioneers of psychedelic discovery.
The Psychedelics and Religion
Walter Houston Clark
from: PSYCHEDELICS, edited by Bernard
Aaronson and Humphrey Osmond,
Doubleday & Company, 1970. ©1970 Aaronson
& Osmond.
The recent discovery of the religious
properties of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide-25 is not such a wholly new phenomenon
as some people seem to believe. There is some evidence to suggest that the
secret potion that was part of the ordeal of initiation into the Eleusinian
mysteries in ancient Greece contained a psychedelic drug. The somewhat
mysterious drug called soma, used in India, sometimes for religious purposes,
was psychedelic, while the Mexican mushroom whose active principle is psilocybin
has been used by the Aztecs for centuries in their sacraments. Their word for
it, significantly, meant "God's flesh."
The peyote button, the
top of a certain spineless cactus plant, has been and is now used by some
members of nearly all the American Indian tribes in cultic ceremonies. The
peyote religion goes back nearly a century in historical records and certainly
is even more ancient. At present it is represented by the Native American
Church, a loose collection of some two hundred thousand members, according to
its claim. Peyote among the Indians has had a history of controversy not unlike
LSD among whites. However, despite years of repressive laws and legal
harassment, there has been little or no hard evidence of claims made as to its
harmfulness, and some indication that it has done good. More importantly, laws
made to repress its use have been declared unconstitutional in several states on
the ground that they have violated constitutional guarantees of freedom of
religion.(1)
Perhaps the most distinguished and eloquent
advocate of the view that certain chemicals may promote religious states of mind
was William James, who some seventy years ago inhaled the psychedelic of his
day, nitrous oxide. He referred to this self-experiment, in The Varieties of
Religious Experience, in his chapter on mysticism, where he wrote the often
quoted words:
. . . our normal waking consciousness, rational
consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst
all about it parted by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of
consciousness entirely different.... No account of the universe in its
totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite
disregarded.(2)
But "religion" is an elusive
term, and whether or not we can regard states associated with the psychedelics
as religious depends on how we define it. Doubtless there are those who would
regard any state initiated by the ingestion of a chemical as by
definition non-religious. For such people, the reading of this chapter will
be an idle exercise. Tillich defines religion as "ultimate concern," while both
William James and W. R. Inge speak of the roots of religion as ultimately
mystical. Rudolf Otto, in The Idea of the Holy (1958), speaks of the
non-rational elements of the religious life in terms of horror, dread,
amazement, and fascination as the mysterium tremendum, "the mystery that
makes one tremble." Certainly, as I will point out in more detail later, the
subject who has consumed the forbidden fruit of the psychedelics will often
testify that he has been opened to his own "ultimate concern" in life and may
even speak in terms reminiscent of the medieval mystics. Furthermore, one of the
chief objections of the opponents of the psychedelics is that for many the
experience may be "dread-full," as cogent an illustration of Otto's thesis as
one could well expect to find.
Long before I took very
seriously the claims that eaters of psychedelic chemicals made as to their
religious experiences, I defined religion as "the inner experience of an
individual when he senses a Beyond, especially as evidenced by the effect of
this experience on his behavior when he actively attempts to harmonize his
behavior with the Beyond."(3) Consequently, it would be to this standard that I
would refer experiences triggered by the psychedelic drugs, in order to
determine whether they should be called religious or not.
From
the definition, it will be clear that the core of religious experience is
subjective therefore never to be fully shared with another person. Consequently
we are forced to rely to a large degree on the words of the religious person for
any determination of religion. This necessity disturbs the modern psychologist
whose too-narrow conception of his discipline as a science bars him from probing
the nature of the religious consciousness despite its cogency as a source of
profound personality change. As he observes the conventional churchgoer and
hears him glibly using such terms as "conviction of sin "rebirth" "redemption"
and "salvation," the psychologist may too hastily conclude that such terms are
mere pious language that brings a certain sentimental comfort to the worshiper
but hardly represents any marked change in his relations with his fellow men.
The psychologist has forgotten, if he ever knew, that such terms are the echoes
of experiences that, perhaps many years ago but also today, have transformed the
lives of prince and beggars enabling them to unify their lives and attain
heights that could have been possible in no other way. It is this effectiveness,
along with the subjective reports by subjects of encounters filled with
mystery and awe, for which we must be on the lookout as we try to appraise the
religious significance and value of these strange chemicals.
But before we start our survey I must say something about the place of the
non-rational in the religious life. Notice that I call it non-rational,
not irrational. The religious life involves at least three basic factors:
First is the life of speculation and thought, the expression of the rational
function of the human mind. The second is the active expression of religious
principles, the concern for others and the observance of ethics and other social
demands that grow out of one's religious commitment. Religion shares these two
functions with other interests and duties of humankind. But the third function
is unique, and without it no other function or activity can be called religious
in any but a very pale and secondary sense. This third function is the
experience of the sacred, the encounter with the holy, which not so much
logically, but intuitively, or non-rationally, the subject recognizes as that
which links him with the seers and the saints of today and of yesterday. A
non-drug example will be found in Arthur Koestler's autobiographical The
Invisible Writing (1955), in the chapter entitled "The Hours by the Window."
It is this non-rational perception of the holy that so moves the individual and
interpenetrates both his thinking and his activity, infusing them with
tremendous energy and giving to his whole life that stamp we call religious. We
must ask whether in any sense the psychedelic substances arouse this factor, to
determine whether we can characterize the result as religion.
If we can accept the direction of the argument thus far, that the essential core
of religion may be found in the mystical consciousness and the direct experience
of the holy, I can show considerable evidence that it is this aspect of the
nonrational consciousness that the psychedelic drugs release. I consider my
first example sufficiently persuasive to make the point.
Dr.
Walter N. Pahnke of Spring Grove Hospital, Baltimore, in a doctorate study at
Harvard, used twenty theological students in a double-blind study of the effects
of psilocybin. All twenty were given similar preparations; half were given the
drug and half placebos; then all attended the same two-and-one-half-hour Good
Friday service. The experimental group reported overwhelming evidence of
mystical experiences, while the control group reported next to none.(4) The
reports included intuitions and encounters with ultimate reality, the holy, and
God; in other words the "Beyond" of my definition. Furthermore, a six-month
follow-up showed much evidence that the subjects felt they had experienced an
enlivening of their religious lives, resulting in an increased involvement with
the problems of living and the service of others.
The previous
sentence supports that aspect of my definition that emphasizes the active
functions of religion, the effect of the experience of the Beyond on the
individual when he "actively attempts to harmonize his life with the Beyond."
Western prejudices in religion favor the pragmatic test, so claims of encounter
with God or ultimate reality are always more impressive when they can be
supported by concrete evidence of benefit like this. Further cogent evidence is
supplied us in studies of alcoholics treated with LSD by Osmond and Hoffer in
the early 1950S in Saskatchewan. According to Dr. Hoffer's report, of sixty
difficult cases, half were no longer drinking five years later, while there was
a very high correspondence between success and the report of the subject that
his experience had been transcendental in William James's sense of the term.(5)
Still more evidence pointing in the same general direction
comes from work done by Dr. Timothy Leary when he was at Harvard. He received
permission from the State Commission of Correction to give psilocybin to
thirty-five inmates at Concord State Reformatory. Since Dr. Leary had reported
that the convicts were having religious experiences and the work was
controversial, I persuaded him to introduce me to some of them so that I could
investigate at first hand. While unable to follow up all the subjects, I talked
with those who were still in prisonby and large those who had committed the
more serious crimes and so were serving long terms. I found that it was indeed
true that these men referred to their experiences as religious in varying ways.
One reported a vision in which he had participated with Christ in His
Crucifixion. Shortly after this, he had looked out the window. "Suddenly all my
life came before my eyes," said this man, an armed robber of nearly forty who
had spent most of his adult life behind bars, "and I said to myself, What a
wasted Since that time these men have formed, within the walls, an AA-type
organization called the Self-Development Group, to rehabilitate themselves and
others. I could not deny that there were profound religious forces at work among
these men as the result of the drug treatment (Leary and Clark, 1963).
In their book The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience
Masters and Houston present a wealth of cases illustrating psychedelic
experiences of various kinds. Though nearly all their 206 subjects reported
religious imagery of some kind, only a few demonstrated mystical experience of
what the authors consider a transforming and integrating kind at the deepest
level; but they believe that the drugs do facilitate the latter, making their
belief clear chiefly through a remarkable illustrative case in their final
chapter. The subject, a successful psychologist in his late thirties, had been
irresistibly attracted to what society regards as "evil" from his earliest
youth. He believed in nothing, was a militant atheist, was sexually promiscuous,
and to his students "preached a gospel of total debauchery." The appearance of
neurotic symptoms had led him into a process of self-analysis and therapy, which
had been only partly successful. But only three sessions with LSD led this
person, through an intricate series of shattering symbolic experiences, to an
almost total transformation of self. A year afterward, this transformation was
seen by the subject as an encounter with God that had been both religious and
lasting. This fact was attested to by those who knew him.
The
foregoing is just a sampling of many studies that report religious elements
following the ingestion of psychedelic drugs. When the environment suggests
religion, a higher proportion, up to 85-90 per cent, of the experiences are
perceived as religious by the subjects. Those who resist the religious
interpretation are much less likely to experience it, but even some of these,
much to their surprise, may "experience God."
The following
case is an illustration: As part of an experiment at a mental hospital, I had
occasion to guide a young college graduate I will call Duncan Cohen. Brought up
as a Jew, he had become a strong atheist and married outside his faith. The
investigation required a number of sessions, and the study of its religious
aspects was only an incidental aspect of the experiment. The setting aimed to be
supportive, the surroundings softened with flowers and music, and the subjects
were encouraged to bring with them into their private hospital rooms anything of
significance to them, including their choice of music if desired. Duncan was
given sixteen daily doses of 180 micrograms of LSD. He was initially irritated
by me as a person who taught in a theological school; and, though he came to
trust me more and more as the sessions continued, he steadfastly resisted any
religious interpretation of the sessions, which, even from the first, he
regarded primarily as experiences of rebirth. The early sessions involved a
climactic series of symbolic encounters with various members of his family,
followed by a dramatic enactment of his own death, in which he acted both as
"corpse" and "funeral director," while I was asked to pray as the "officiating
rabbi." Still the essentially religious nature of much of these proceedings was
either denied or only dimly sensed. I tried to avoid pressing any religious
interpretation on him, though my interests doubtless acted suggestively on him.
The climax came after the fifteenth ingestion. About four
hours after taking the drug on that day, he had been sitting on the lawn outside
the hospital watching two grasshoppers maneuvering in what he interpreted as a
kind of cosmic dance. Suddenly, he felt at one with them and with the cosmos
besides. I was aware of it only after he caught sight of me and came running
over to me in great excitement calling, "Dr. Clark, I have had a mystical
experience; I have met God!"
A nine-month follow-up indicated
that Duncan regards the total experience as a most significant one. He has
continued to grow and mature, as he sees it. There have been some difficult
times. "What I regarded as the end of the experience when I left the hospital,"
he told me, "was simply the beginning of an experience of maturing which is
still continuing." He reports more tolerance and open-mindedness, and he recoils
when he thinks of what he now regards as his former narrow-mindedness. He has
reflected with increased insight on the role of religion in history, history
being a favorite subject. I do not know that he is any more hospitable to
institutionalized religion, though now he is willing to accept a view of life
that for him is more, rather than less, religious than that of the conventional
churchgoer. At any rate, psychedelic religious cults, like the League for
Spiritual Discovery, have an appeal for him that they did not have before.
Religion in a profound sense, in human nature and in history, has more meaning
to him.
In the middle 1950s Aldous Huxley published his
influential The Doors of Perception, describing an experience with
mescaline and advocating it as a means of vitalizing the religious life, with
particular emphasis on its mystical aspects. R. C. Zaehner, in his Mysticism:
Sacred and Profane (1957), takes issue with Huxley and points out that while
mescaline may be able to release pantheistic or monistic types of religion,
including those closely associated with psychosis, it cannot be said to
stimulate a theistic religious experience. He does not see its use justified by
Christian doctrine. Zaehner's reasoning is based partly on a self-experiment
with mescaline, and so he cannot be classified with those many critics of the
psychedelics anxious to make people's flesh creep without having any firsthand
knowledge of what they are talking about. But, commendable though Professor
Zaehner's effort may have been, he falls into a familiar fallacy common to all
users and non-users of the psychedelics, including Huxley, namely, that of
generalizing too widely on the basis of his own personal experience and point of
view.
It is true that the religious experience of many of the
drug users seems to them to fit more readily into pantheistic and Eastern
religious patterns. But the experience itself is essentially non-rational and
indescribable. In order that it may be described, one is forced to use concepts
of one type or another, none of which seem to do justice to the experience.
Consequently these are of great variety, and while some will agree with the
Zaehner theological typology, others have no more trouble seeing their
experiences as essentially Christian than did St. Teresa when she described one
of her mystical visions as revealing to her the secrets of the Trinity. I have
known those whose psychedelic experiences have returned them from atheism to the
Christian tradition in which they had been brought up, and I have also known
those who preferred Eastern concepts.
W. T. Stace, in
Mysticisrn and Philosophy (1960), distinguishes between the mystical
experience itself, which he finds to be universal in its characteristics, and
the interpretation of that experience, which differs from faith to faith and
from century to century. Thus the Christian will refer his experience to Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, while the Buddhist will explain an identical psychological
experience in terms of Nirvana. Stace further aids us in clarifying the nature
of a psychedelic experience in his "principle of causal indifference." This
states that what makes an experience mystical is not what touches it off,
whether drug or Christian sacrament, but its experiential characteristics. It
may then be conceptualized in any way deemed suitable by the experiencer. I may
add that, just as a Christian sacrament may or may not stimulate a mystical
experience in any given worshiper, the same thing may be said of mescaline or
LSD. Stace gives us an example of mystical experience meeting his specifications
triggered by mescaline.(6)
In another part of his book, he
discusses the experience of pantheism, which so often has gotten the mystic into
trouble. Calling the experience "transsubjective," he points out its paradoxical
character, in which the mystic may feel himself both merged with the Godhead and
infinitely the creature of God at the same time. Consequently, we can understand
how, in some sense, mysticism can be felt to be compatible with theism by one
mystic and with atheistic Buddhism by another. The same argument will help to
explain the variety of theological and philosophical concepts used to interpret
the psychedelic experience.
There would be no greater mistake
than to suppose, since the psychedelics are frequently accompanied by religious
experience, that God, when He created these chemicals, baptized them and
segregated them for religious purposes. Indeed, had this been His purpose, it
would seem that He has not kept up with His theological and medical reading, for
He might have foreseen the difficulties He was preparing for their users. As I
have already pointed out, there is no guarantee that a given person will have
what satisfies him as a religious experience. However, certain conditions will
favor this religious result, and I will indicate briefly a few of the most
important.
First of all, there is the subject himself his
nature, and the desire he may have for the religious experience. A person
already religiously sensitive is more apt to have a religious experience than
one who is not, and one who deliberately prepares himself is more apt to be
rewarded than one who is indifferent or unaware of the possibility. Vide
the case of Duncan Cohen, who had ingested LSD fourteen times without a
religious outcome; the only experimental subject in the Good Friday experiment
who failed to report a mystical experience was one who did not believe it
possible and deliberately set out to demonstrate this belief, partly by omitting
the religious preparation engaged in by the other subjects.
The setting is another factor that favors or discourages religion. If the drug
is taken in a church or the subject is surrounded by religious symbolism, he is
more apt to obtain a religious result. Appropriate readings at strategic points
during the period when the drug is active, say from the Bible or the Tibetan
Book of the Dead, particularly when accompanied by religious music, are other
favoring circumstances. If the guide is a deeply religious person and anxious to
promote a religious outcome, this will be another plus factor. Subjects have
reported feeling this with respect to Dr. Leary, and doubtless this helps to
explain the high incidence of religious experiences reported in his experiments.
It is obvious that all these factors depend for their influence on the
suggestibility of the subject. However, it would be a mistake to think that
suggestibility will explain it all, since, once the experience gets started, the
unconscious of the individual subject seems to take over the direction of
matters in large measure. But the initial suggestibility of the subject and the
manner in which it is exploited, by himself or by others, will enhance the
suggestibility that most investigators feel to be one of the salient
characteristics of the psychedelic state.
Critics, to prove
their point that psychedelic experiences are not truly religious, often cite the
fact that beneficial results do not always last. But in this respect they are no
different from other types of religious experience. Every evangelist is well
acquainted with backsliders. If personality-changes brought about through
psychedelic experience are to be made permanent, they must be followed up.
The issues that the psychedelics pose seem to most people to
be in the realm of therapy, health, and the law. They may be more importantly
religious. One of the functions of religion-perhaps its chief function-is that
of supplying life with meaning. The most luminous source of this meaning,
through the ages, has been the religious experience of religiously gifted
leaders, the dreamers of dreams and the seers of visions, prophets, converts,
evangelists, seers, martyrs, and mystics. According to their enlightenment,
these men and women have stood before the Lord, some in joy, some in vision,
some in transport, and some in fear and trembling. But however rapt, these are
the people who have made their mark on that profoundest function of man's
strange sojourn on this earth. Astonished, amazed, offended, and even
horror-stricken, the present generation of responsible defenders of the
status quo have seen many of those who have ingested these drugs present
pictures of such conditions as capture the imagination of youth with a cogency
that churches find hard to match. The psychedelic movement is a religious
movement. The narrowly restrictive laws that have been passed have made it a
lawless movement with respect to the use of the drugs, though generally it is
not in other respects.
It has had its parallels in other ages,
and it will be instructive for us to take a brief look at history. The early
Christians were looked on with some alarm by that magnificent peace-keeping
agency, the Roman Empire. Because they refused even that insignificant homage to
the divine Emperor that would have satisfied the State, these dissenters were
persecuted and led to death in the arena, their persecutors being among the more
conscientious of their rulers. Heretics and Jews during the Middle Ages were
burned at the stake for engaging in secret rites and the holding of views
disapproved by the Church. Among the former were many mystics who had undergone
experiences very similar to, and probably often identical with, those of many of
the psychedelic hipsters of our times. Sitting in judgment on these sensitive
religious spirits (such as Meister Eckhart) were not irresponsible sadists but
sober clerics whose business it was to protect other souls from heresy. These
judges had no firsthand knowledge of the mystic's vision. They were rational and
conscientious men charged with the duty of saving their fellows from the flames
of Hell, even as conscientious judges of our time enforce the modern equivalent
of the stake as they sentence to long prison terms those whose visions and
ecstasy they have never shared. They only know that laws have been broken, and
they wish to protect society. They act according to their lights.
But religious people have never been notable for setting law above the
dictates of their consciences, and it is this stubborn habit of the human mind
that has brought us such protection as religious conviction has against the
state. It will also make laws against the psychedelic drugs almost
unenforceable. Yet it has been religious conviction hardened into legalism,
whether theological or civil, that has led to intolerable controversy,
self-righteous cruelties, and some of the most savage wars of history. This
shameful record has led to the principle of religious freedom such as that
written into the American constitution, which, nevertheless, only partially
protects religious minorities from the tyranny of the majority. In general there
is no type of religious experience for which the average American, high or low,
has so little tolerance as that type fostered by the psychedelic drugs. The
reason is that the mystical side of human nature has been so repressed that it
is little understood. It has been looked on as esoteric and Eastern, therefore
vaguely opposed to the American way of life. Society must be protected against
it, say conservative churchgoers, Daughters of the American Revolution,
respected members of the academic community, and the American Medical
Association.
In order to call attention to a neglected aspect
of the controversy over the psychedelics, I have a little overstated a case in
order to make my point clear. For certainly I recognize the fact that the drugs
have their dangers and need to be controlled, though I wish that legislators and
enforcement agencies would make greatly needed research much easier. Some of the
world's most experienced and eminent investigators in this area find the drug
denied to them. But it is not surprising that cults that see in the psychedelics
a sacramental substance of great potency have been growing apace during the past
few years, from the Neo-American Church, whose leaders militantly stand on their
constitutional right to use the substances sacramentally, to the Church of the
Awakening, which is more conservative but which nevertheless has applied to the
FDA for the right to use peyote as does the Native American Church. This right,
like other religious rights, has been hard won by the Indians through loyalty of
cult members, self-sacrifice, and the willingness of individuals to go to jail
if need be in support of their convictions. If the Indians can use peyote, it is
hard to see why white churches cannot make good their right to do likewise. In
the meantime, both legal and illegal use of the psychedelics goes on, sometimes
religious and sometimes nonreligious, sometimes with irresponsible foolhardiness
and sometimes with the highest resolution that such promising tools shall not be
lost to society, at least until their most cunning secrets be wrested from them
through careful research and responsible practice.
But there
is no doubt that the drugs and their religious use constitute a challenge to the
established churches. Here is a means to religious experience that not only
makes possible a more vital religious experience than the churches can
ordinarily demonstrate, but the regeneration of souls and the transformation of
personality are made possible to an extent that seems to be far more reliable
and frequent than what the ordinary churches can promise. LSD is a tool through
which religious experience may, so to speak, be brought into the laboratory that
it may more practically become a matter for study. It is important that
religious institutions face the issues raised so that any decisions they may
have to make will derive from sound knowledge rather than prejudice, ignorance,
and fear. I do not have the wisdom nor does anyone yet have the knowledge to say
in advance what the action of the churches will be or ought to be. But I do say
that if such decisions are to be sound, they must be based on thorough
information, freedom from hysteria, and above all, open-mindedness to what may
reliably be learned both of the great promise and the dangers of these
fascinating substances.
(1) See Aberle (1966) and Slotkin
(1956) for full anthropological accounts.
(2) P. 298.
(3) See my The Psychology of Religion (1958), Chapter
2, for a discussion.
(4) For a fuller report, see the Pahnke
article in this volume, "Drugs and Mysticism", Psychedelics, Aaronson
& Osmond; also Pahnke, "Drugs and Mysticism' (1966)
(5)
See remarks by Abram Hoffer in H. A. Abramson (ed.), The Use of LSD in
Psychotherapy (1960), pp. 18-19, 114-15.
(6) See p. 29 ff.
for his "principle of causal indifference."