Spirituality of Psychedelics

 Overview of the Spirituality of Psychedelics

Can using psychedelic substances cause long-term changes in philosophical beliefs? While it is widely assumed that they can, this question has never been fully tested. We used a large sample from prospective online surveys to investigate whether and how ideas about the nature of reality, awareness, and free will change following psychedelic use. Results showed significant movements away from 'physicalist' or'materialist' attitudes and towards panpsychism and fatalism after use. With the exception of fatalism, these changes persisted for at least 6 months and were associated with higher levels of previous psychedelic use and better mental health outcomes. Path modelling revealed that impressionability at baseline affected the belief alterations, which were then mediated by perceived emotional synchrony with others during the psychedelic experience. 

The observed belief alterations following psychedelic use were supported by findings from an independent controlled clinical trial. These findings suggest that psychedelic use may have a causal influence on metaphysical views, changing them away from 'hard materialism'. We discuss whether these apparent effects are context-independent.

Psychedelics, Spirituality, and a Culture of Seekership

Now, psychedelic research at Harvard was nearing the end of what could be considered the first act of academic interaction with these plants and chemicals. This isn't a new story. During the tragic early 1960s, media ventures multiplied, ending in the departure of psychologists Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert from Harvard and their respective missions as gurus on the American spiritual landscape. But, perhaps, we will arrive at a sense of continuity with the present, and that the Marsh Chapel Experiment was just one point in a long history, with an open future for psychedelics and religion.

The story of psychedelics such as Köp lsd and Comprar heroína, which began as an academic inquiry and finally led to their arrival at Harvard, is linked to colonial projects. From the first chemical synthesis of a psychoactive plant, the peyote cactus, which is sacred to many Indigenous communities in Mexico and the United States, to Gordon Wasson, a banking executive turned spiritual seeker, who published a sensational story in Life magazine about his trip to Mexico to find psychoactive mushrooms. These tales read like so many accounts of rationalistic science plundering Indigenous peoples and customs in order to revitalise modernity's clinical lens.

While psychedelic research at Harvard in the 1960s had some problematic periods, frequently with orientalist overtones, Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary brought psychedelics into an open dialogue with religion and religious practice. In April 1962, Leary and Alpert aided a PhD student at Harvard Divinity School with his objective of determining if psychedelic substances cause spiritual experiences.

Dr. Christian Greer, a post-doctoral associate at Harvard's Centre for the Study of World Religions and scholar of religion and psychedelic culture, discusses Leary and how the Marsh Chapel Experiment came about.