Psychedelics and Spirituality: The Urge to Find Liberation
THEY ARE BACK
Psychedelics and spirituality are not a new phenomenon, as much as today’s medical community would like to brand it as such. Ancient cultures have used mind altering plant medicines for rituals, shamanic journeying, healing, and altered states of consciousness for hundreds of years. This post is not designed to say psychedelics are good or bad. Its intention is to ask questions and make you think deeper about what spiritual awakening truly means. That will be for you to decide.
Today, psychedelics such as LSD, DMT, ayahuasca, and psilocybin (or commonly known as magic mushrooms), are touted as modern-day miracles for those suffering from a host of mental illnesses.
There may be people who experience positive effects from these drugs in small doses, however, psychedelics are becoming the gateway to spiritual enlightenment. Is it necessary to take mind-altering drugs to have a spiritual experience? What is a spiritual experience anyway?
The 1960’s birthed an entire era of people seeking spiritual experiences through the use of plant substances. Seeking a broader consciousness, a peaceful loving experience during a time when the Vietnam war was ramping up, was exciting for people interested. Make Love Not War, a popular peaceful slogan, was used repeatedly, and some found drugs as a means to feel liberated.
This is true for many substances, whether they be pharmaceutical drugs, recreational drugs or alcohol, people have been using mind altering substances for centuries. Although they are touted for their potential to open human consciousness, eliminate boundaries, feel expansive and one with the universe, do people have the same experiences? Are all of these experiences positive? Is there any way to control what type of non-linear mystical experience someone has?
POTENTIAL EXPERIENCES USING PSYCHEDELICS
No matter your opinion or personal experience with psychedelics, there are numerous experiences someone can go through.
Whether you are taking LSD, DMT, psilocybin, ayahuasca, mescaline (which is in peyote), ecstasy, or MDMA, all of these have a varying degree of symptomology. Each person, given their own personal experiences in life, the environment they are in, and their own chemistry is going to be affected differently.
Here is a list of possible symptoms associated with psychedelics:
Cessation of time and space
Expanded states of consciousness
Clear understanding and awareness
Feeling one with everyone and everything
Hallucinations (Visual or Auditory)
Inability to rationalize
Ineffective communication with others
Mystical states
Heightened sensory experiences
Fear, terror, and panic
Purging/vomiting/nauseous
Shaking, trembling, nervousness
Dizziness, sweating, high blood pressure
Just looking at this list, does anybody want to experience vomiting, trembling, shakiness, dizziness, sweating, and lots of energy to reach a state of spiritual understanding? Why is it necessary to have an unpleasant bodily experience to feel spiritual? Is there another purpose to some of these medicinal approaches?
OTHER REASONS FOR PLANT MEDICINE IN NATIVE CULTURES
Living on the land means you are surrounded by a plethora of microbes, parasites and fungi in particular. Any of you who live in the southwestern part of the United States, the desert states, know full well there is a common flu like illness many people contract.
Often referred to as Valley Flu, this stems from fungi, or coccidioides, that when stirred from wind, farming, or moving the soil from construction, these spores are airborne and can cause flu like symptoms in some people. According to the Mayo Clinic, symptoms range from cough, fever, chills, joint pain, and fatigue to name a few. It is mild in most people; however, it can last much longer and cause chronic illness.
Indigenous cultures, having lived amongst the land, were also exposed to various forms of environmental parasites, fungi, or other toxins. Through the use of ayahuasca, and other plant medicines, a purging effect occurs clearing the body of potential toxicity. Vomiting, diarrhea, and heavy sweating are common releases of the body.
It is believed that these medicines cause elimination from the body for the spiritual experience to follow. The duration of the purging process various for each individual, anywhere from 15 minutes to hours. The Ayahuasca Purge is seen as a necessary part of the journey, much like a death and rebirthing process. The psychoactive chemicals within the plant allow this reaction to occur in the body.
Is it possible that these medicinal plants were used to keep the community physically healthy? Was it a means to eliminate harmful pathogens within the environment around them?
Other questions to think about are, is the spiritual component an actual spiritual experience, or is the mind jumping into experiences outside of normal conscious reality? Is the mind the one experiencing a deep sense of connection with the divine? Or is there something far more profound awaiting all of us, something that takes us out of consciousness altogether, that has nothing to do with psychedelic experiences?
SPIRITUAL AWAKENING = STEPPING OUT OF MIND
Although there may be benefits to having a mind-altering experience using plant medicine, whether it’s mental or spiritual, is an experience really an awakening of the greater spirit?
The experiencer is aware of something else, yes? In this there is a subject and an object, which we call consciousness, or conscious awareness. When you have a mind-altering experience, you are aware of something else, there is you, and there is what you perceive. This awareness is growing within you. You might even experience a union with all things, you feel connected with everything around you, and the divine is that connection. This union is often considered the end of the spiritual journey, the recognition that you are joined with divinity itself.
What if there is more than unity? What if there are further steps along the path that don’t get much discussion? According to the late Bernadette Roberts, a modern mystic in her own right, wrote several books about her own 25-year spiritual journey with an eventual experience of what she calls the “no-self experience.”
Roberts explains that once the inward journey to the divine center occurs, there is nowhere else to go except outwards. She explains in an interview linked here, that the center point is obliterated and there is no longer any sense of self to fall back on, no consciousness. What one experiences as union, as a self with the divine, is obliterated, leaving no self, and no divine. No sense of oneness. Everything from this point on is outward.
This is a vastly different description than many spiritual teachers describe. In fact, it might irritate some who think the unitive state of consciousness is the end of the spiritual journey. What Bernadette Roberts’s account shows is how spiritual realizations are not mind-altering experiences. She alludes to no-experience at all, and the no-self experience, as the means to our true spiritual nature.
Roberts can serve as a great guide for what it means to truly awaken without the use of psychedelics. Is it necessary to use these mind-altering drugs for spiritual experiences? And is the experience from psychedelics really spiritual, or are they simply ways in which the mind continues to explore the illusory dimension? That is for you to discover on your own unique path home.