A renewed interest in hallucinogens—particularly the Amazonian tea ayahuasca—is giving the substances a new image that emphasises spiritual learning over hedonism and excess. Kerry Stewart talks with the researchers and spiritual seekers working to rid the drugs of their stigma and turn psychedelics into sacrament.

Taking psychedelics might conjure up images of colourful designs, trippy music and the heady and sometimes tragic hedonism of the ‘60s counterculture. But 50 years on there’s been a reassessment of what these substances can offer, and a renewed respect for ancient teachings that treat them as gateways to spiritual experience.

Scientific research about the mystical experience, and structured religions that are based on an individual’s own experience of the Divine, have reawakened interest in psychedelic drugs. And waves of spiritual seekers are travelling to places like the Amazon to learn about indigenous cultural rituals and practices. According to a recent study, well-educated professionals and university students are taking psychedelics such as LSD, mescalin, DMT (present in the South American brew ayahuasca), peyote, and psilocybin (found in ‘magic’ mushrooms).

These individuals aren’t just popping a psychedelic pill for recreational use; they are engaged in an intentional spiritual act.

The language used to describe these consciousness altering substances has changed over the last few decades. In the mid 1950s Aldous Huxley, after taking mescalin, popularised the word hallucinogen. Mr Huxley was a volunteer in experiments set up by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond, who coined the term 'psychedelic'. Its root is from two ancient Greek words meaning ‘mind manifest’.

Dr Osmond even wrote a little poem to see how it sounded:

To fathom hell or soar angelic Just take a pinch of psychedelic

Today the word entheogen is used because the other words were thought to be too closely linked to delirium, psychosis, and 1960s pop culture. Entheogen also comes from two Greek words meaning ‘full of God’ and ‘to come into being’. Rak Razam, an Australian gonzo journalist, filmmaker, and author of Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey, says the new term captures the modern approach to the drugs as spiritual aids.

‘Ayahuasca and plant entheogens in general, give us an active dynamic sacrament, and that is often what has been missing in the other mainstream world religions or the big three Abrahamic religions,’ Mr Razam says. ‘So what we’re seeing now is a rejection of religion across the world as a hierarchical business model to connect to spirit and they’re going straight for spirit.’

But Dr Bill Richards, psychologist and researcher at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Centre in Baltimore, says the effect of psychedelic substances on the mind is not always so straightforward.

‘The relation of the drug to the experience is not like taking an aspirin to get rid of your headache,’ Dr Richards says. ‘What the psychedelic substance...they all seem to be skeleton keys that open up the mind, that give you an opportunity to explore, but where you go and what happens depends on who you are, kind of who you are, your maturity, your life history, your capacity to be able to choose to trust unconditionally, your feeling of safety, your courage. So much more is involved than just taking the drug.’

Users of entheogens insist on the substances being non-toxic and not addictive, and advocate taking appropriate doses in the right mindset and environmental setting. The experience is not for everyone, particularly those with mental problems like schizophrenia and some physical conditions.

One of many paths to the infinite

In their natural form in the environment, the use of these substances has evolved alongside human development. Spiritual seekers have used them, as well as other methods, to connect directly to the infinite since ancient times. Dr Andrew Dawson, a senior lecturer in the study of religion at Lancaster University in the UK, says that the practice of developing and improvising techniques to access the divine is a constant across all societies and time periods.

‘Mystical states of consciousness have been a part of religious practice throughout the world for a long, long time,’ he says. ‘Now the thing to be reminded is that different religious traditions and sometimes different communities within the same religious tradition employ a range of different techniques to bring on these altered states of consciousness. In some traditions meditation has been absolutely central to the inducing of a mystical state of altered consciousness; in other traditions, the deprivation of sleep, or the control of diet, or particular physical regimes. In the Amazon for example, indigenous communities, as well as using psychotropic beverages such as ayahuasca also use tobacco as a key means of inducing mystical states. There’s also a certain band of thought that believes ancient Hinduism used a psychotropic mushroom to induce forms of mystical or altered states of consciousness.’

More recently, Dr Richards with his colleague Dr Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins Medical Centre has been conducting research into the mystical experience by giving volunteers a capsule of psilocybin. The test subject will have spoken to the researchers for at least eight hours before to build a relationship of trust. A feeling of safety is crucial so they are seated in a comfortable room with eye shades and headphones playing classical music. The results are very similar to the experiences of ancient mystics from traditional religions, Dr Richards says. And a mystical experience isn’t something vague, he says—it’s a specific form of human consciousness.

‘When it’s expressed through questionnaires you can find evidence of six categories, which [are]: unity; transcendence of time and space; intuitive knowledge (what William James called the noetic quality); a sense of sacredness or awesomeness; deeply felt positive mood, such as joy, peace, love, purity; and claims of ineffability and what we call paradoxicality—that it’s very hard to put these experiences into words and when people try to express it they keep contradicting themselves, that’s the paradoxicality: 'I died but I’ve never been so alive, the ultimate reality was one but it was many, it was beyond time but it included time'—ultimately the Buddhist claim of the nothingness that contains all reality. And it seems contradictory, but mystics would say the problem isn’t in the experience; it’s in our ability to express the experience within language, at this point in the development of language. And that the answer, the truth is always "both and" rather than "either or".’

English author Aldous Huxley described this experience as ‘Mind at Large’. This concept is born from his belief that the human mind is able to perceive all time and space, but we use filters to protect it from sensory overload and confusion. He believed that taking psychedelics disabled these filters, exposing Mind at Large.

Alternative religions

And this mind is growing at a considerable rate. There is a global trend towards spiritual tourism to South America to experience shamanic rituals and ‘spiritual healing’ by taking ayahuasca, which has both purging and hallucinogenic effects. Mr Razam describes the experience as one that emphasises interconnectedness, helping to remedy the selfish and short-sighted aspects of modern culture.

‘Underneath the labels and skin of things is this feeling individual, this feeling creature, and that we are all connected on that underlying level,’ Mr Razam says. ‘[W]e shouldn’t need a substance to remind us, but it’s how we have become clouded in our culture.’

Dr Dawson has been looking at religious groups that use ayahuasca as a sacrament—in particular the spiritual practice Santo Daime, founded in the Amazonian state of Acre in the early 20th century. Santo Daime is influenced by indigenous cultural beliefs as well as local popular Catholicism and since the 1980s has spread from Brazil to Europe and North America—eventually making its way to South Africa, the Middle East, and Australasia.

‘I’m fully aware that people will look upon Santo Daime and say "that’s not religion", when really what they mean is "that’s not religion as I understand religion to be",’ Dr Dawson says. ‘And Santo Daime for me is a particular barometer or bellwether of the changes taking place in modern society... Individuals increasingly regard themselves as a source of authority.’

'Within traditional religious settings, often individuals are required to accept what the religious authorities tell them to accept. In new religious forms, in new spiritualities, such as Santo Daime, the individual is absolutely central to forming the religious beliefs that the individual holds.'

New uses in medicine and education

Beyond spiritual adventurism, there are also other modern uses of entheogens that are evolving as the substances lose their stigma and are picked up again by research groups.

Dr Richards has been working with cancer patients who are suffering with depression, and has found that psilocybin has been helpful for them to live more fully, get rid of their anxiety and deepen their interpersonal relationships. Indeed, Aldous Huxley asked his wife Laura to inject him with LSD on the day of his death from cancer in 1963.

Dr Richards also thinks these substances have great promise in education, in particular the training of religious professionals.

‘One of my dreams is that the day might come where there could be an elective seminar for healthy theological students where they might be able to legally receive a psychedelic and experience some of these profound states of spirituality,’ Dr Richards says. ‘I think that would enrich their education and certainly make the literature come more fully alive. I also think it would promote tolerance of other religious traditions by realising what Paul Tillich called "the really real God" is bigger than any one religious system.’

‘And though there may be many roads up the mountain, and you are dedicated to your particular road you can honour the truth that is to be found in the other roads as well. So we might have less religious wars if there were more enlightened theologians in the world.’

Listen to Kerry Stewart's full audio broadcast Mind at Large— which contains a wider discussion of the topic—using the links above.