The entheogen theory of religion

[max_freakout]

This theory is deep, it is good to be aware of it. According to this theory, religion is basically all about psychedelic drugs, about taking these drugs, tripping out and blowing one's mind, and becoming psychologically transformed by the experience. But in the modern form of religion, tripping is never referred to directly/explicitly, but rather the references to drugs/tripping are expressed in the form of allegory/metaphor.

So for example in the religion of Christianity, the centrepiece is the story of a man named Jesus eating holy food at the Last Supper, then immediately afterwards being captured, put on trial then crucified, only to be miraculously ressurected 3 days later. This is interpreted as a metaphorical reference to an experience that is familiar to many entheonauts, of taking drugs and experiencing a painful bad trip, then being transformed by the experience after the trip finishes.

In Catholocism, the central ritual of the Eucharist/Holy communion involves taking a sip of wine and a piece of wafer, which is said to bring about a miraculous experience of communication with the holy spirit of God. The 'holy bread and wine' is interpreted as a metaphor for the entheogenic drugs.

And the same applies to all the other religions, they all basically consist of a collection of stories, images, rituals etc. which metaphorically convey the experience of psychedelic mental transformation. Buddha experiences enlightenment from the Bodhi tree, Moses leads the Israelites to freedom through the perilous Red sea, Mohammed has an angelic revelation in the wilderness, etc etc


The original theory is worded as follows:

The main origin and ongoing wellspring of religion is the use of visionary plants. These plants include Psilocybe mushrooms, Henbane, Cannabis, Opium, Peyote, Salvia divinorum, and Amanita mushrooms.

Visionary plants have been commonly used around the world throughout the history of religion and culture (Hofmann, Schultes, & Ratsch 1992), including in the various forms of Western Esotericism (Heinrich 1994). Greek and Christian mythic-religious systems often refer to visionary plants (Ruck, Staples, & Heinrich 2001). Leading mystics throughout the history of various religions have used visionary-plant sessions on-demand, with mystic-state experiencing that was largely rationality-oriented (Merkur 2001).

Meditation, shamanic drumming, and liturgical ritual were developed as activities to do in the plant-induced dissociative state, not as methods of inducing the dissociative state in the first place.

The Origins of Christianity in Entheogenic Initiation

The extent of entheogen use throughout Christian history has barely been considered yet (Hoffman 2007). Early Christianity involved mystical, religious, visionary experiencing, including the experience of the transformative, transcendent power of the Holy Spirit at Eucharistic agape meals (Johnson 1998). Early Christian writings show familiarity with ecstatic mania, inspiration, elevated sobriety, and ‘drunkenness’ induced by ‘mixed wine’ (Nasrallah 2003).

The Jesus figure is portrayed in the New Testament as a spirit-possessed altered-state shamanistic healer (Davies 1995). The figure of Paul the Apostle is portrayed as a shamanistic mystic (Ashton 2000), and the apostles are portrayed as adepts in altered-state mystic experiencing (Pilch 2004).

Solving the riddle of the original mystic-metaphorical meaning of Christianity requires also understanding the surrounding metaphorical altered-state initiation systems throughout Christian history. These altered-state initiation systems that were related to Christianity, include Roman religion, Neoplatonism, Western Esotericism, and astral ascent mysticism.

from www.egodeath.com

 

[biffhenderson]

Hello Mr. Freakout. I've enjoyed some of your podcasts in the past.

Descriptions of psychedelic experiences are, at least superficially, sometimes very similar to descriptions of mystical experiences from the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi has some pretty good examples of that. In 1967 this direction led the Beatles to India in search of their guru after they dropped acid. The idea of psychedelic ego-death as a kind of Christian born-again experience is a bit more of a stretch in my opinion. I think using psychedelics alone without other religious practices in pursuit of religious enlightenment can achieve some interesting placebo at first but is doomed to failure in the long run. I base that on observations that people who take psychedelics for this reason repeated over long periods of time do not end op enlightened. They just end up confused and delusional and lacking in personal hygiene. As evidence I offer the Brotherhood Of Eternal Love in their home movie they made Rainbow Bridge. Jimi Hendrix is only in about the last 30 minutes of the movie. The other 90 minutes is a bunch of pseudo-religious mumbo jumbo that is embarrassingly painful to watch.

Take what I say with two grains of salt as I am an atheist to the major dogmas but agnostic to the existence of an after-life.

 

[Ismene]

I think it's forcing twentieth century ideas about tripping onto primitive people 2000 years ago and assuming they would have felt the exact same thing. I don't believe they would.

While a hippie taking LSD in 1967 would have known psychedelics were harmless and just an enjoyable experience, an uneducated primitive taking them in the desert 2000 years ago would almost certainly have thought he was losing his mind and, probably, destroying his health. Not to mention letting "Satan" into his life. It would have been an absolutely terrifying, unpleasant, life-destroying experience.

I think the entire theory is false. Even today in the 21st century the number of people who enjoy or get anything "visionary" out of psychedelics is vanishingly small. That number would have been an order of magnitude smaller 2000 years ago.

There's plenty of things primitive people could have got ecstatic, visionary experiences from - a sunrise, hunting, sex etc etc.

I think the key notion that all thesebullshit religions share is that they propagate the fantasy of surviving your own death. Which to primitive people is an incredibly powerful fantasy.

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

I think there is merit to the idea that many religions were founded by people who have mystic, or at least visionary experiences. There is no reason to assume that these experiences were caused by the ingestion of psychedelics, it seems more like the psychedelic-obsessed grasping at straws in a search for legitimacy, outside of primitive shamanistic traditions and the like (which aren't taken seriously by Big Religion or society).

 

[Quantum Perception]

What else can elicit a visionary experience with that much dynamic depth as the psychedelic experience? I really think religion is the basis of culture, visionary experience is the basis of religion, and psychedelics are the origin of visionary experiences.

 

[Ismene]

What else can elicit a visionary experience with that much dynamic depth as the psychedelic experience?

You'd be surprised. I've heard people talk about golf as an ecstatic experience.

Just because we like to think psychedelics are something special doesn't mean everyone - or even the majority agree with us.

And again - the idea that someone 2000 years ago is going to take mushrooms and think it was great rather than demonic possession is something else. I think pretty much all of them would consider it demonic possession/madness and be frightened of it rather than having an educated response like someone living today.

 

[max_freakout]

What else can elicit a visionary experience with that much dynamic depth as the psychedelic experience?

Nothing else (ie no drug-free technique) comes anywhere near to the mindbending intensity and also the reliability/repeatability that psychedelic drugs provide. Only with the drugs can a person guarantee immediate access to powerful altered states of consciousness whenever they want to

I really think religion is the basis of culture, visionary experience is the basis of religion, and psychedelics are the origin of visionary experiences.

This is very much in line with the theory, religion centers around the process of psychedelic mental transformation, the religious stories/myths describe the phenomena that are encountered in psychedelic trip experiences using metaphor such as 'Jesus' crucifixion and ressurection'

 

[porkstock]

i don't go to church often, but the couple times i have went recently i can't help but think of psychedelics during the eucharist.

And again - the idea that someone 2000 years ago is going to take mushrooms and think it was great rather than demonic possession is something else. I think pretty much all of them would consider it demonic possession/madness and be frightened of it rather than having an educated response like someone living today.

have you ever heard the story of how people learned about the psychoactive nature of Amanitas muscaria? apparently they observed deer eating them and frolicking around. maybe that's just a fairly tale though.

i could see an early human eating a couple mushrooms while foraging. maybe he gets a stomach ache and thinks he ate bad mushrooms. but maybe that just slowly becomes a good feeling and he has a smile on his ape-like face?

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

^And yet the earliest (or closest to Jesus' life in time of original authorship, I should say) works of the New Testament are St. Paul's epistles, where he exhorts the faithful to be sober*, among other things. But I guess in ~20 years after Christ's death everybody already forgot about the Eucharistic entheogens. And there were no other possible mystic traditions in that area of the world at that time accessible to the Greek speaking authors of the New Testament books...oh wait, there were.

You cannot relate to profound spiritual experiences outside the context of drug-use, and assume that this necessitates major spiritual traditions all being derived from the same kind of experience that value? This doesn't strike you as incredibly hypocritical?

The world denies your experiences, and would point to drug-induced spirituality just resulting in shamanistic superstition and New Age malarky. You deny sober spirituality as inferior, and some of you as entirely invalid as far as the deeper depths of mysticism go. Does a man have any wisdom that considers his subjective experiences as absolute truth? Who would make the world fit his theories rather than his theories fit the world? (Also, do some research into the claims of the opposing faction, all parties involved).

Here's Saint Francis of Assisi's prayer, I think it encapsulates the Christian ethos pretty well. Your superior psychedelics haven't taught y'all values as simple as this it seems:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.

*I'd have to reread and check to see if the ones scholars think to actually have been written by Paul to be among those containing this, but the sentiment was based off Jesus' parable of the thief, and it is in that context that I am sure psychs would apply as something covered by the injunction. (It's not held as like a legal statute among Christians, just advice since this was a personal letter of some dude, certain protestant groups of more recent invention notwithstanding)

That Jesus was a man who had a powerful mystic experience at some point in his life before his ministry I do not doubt, but I see no reason why it couldn't have just been one of the spontaneous variety, or brought about by fasting, or his encounter with John the Baptist just bringing on a life-changing epiphany based off of his emotional state and thoughts at the time, or somesuch. Overall the man strikes me as hippy-ish, and having no having proper context to place his experience in, went a bit off kilter from what is acceptable in a Judaic perspective (and certainly the contradictory accounts of his life to fulfill prophecy regarding the moschiach in the Tanakh read like they were made up to make them apply). And I'm not fond of his theories on the afterlife which developed the world-denying-to-the-point-of-masochism tendencies in Christian thought, from the Judaic perspective concerned with living this life well. This gets into my inherent distrust of religions with monastic traditions (Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism), but I'm digressing.

 

[Ismene]

Nothing else (ie no drug-free technique) comes anywhere near to the mindbending intensity and also the reliability/repeatability that psychedelic drugs provide. Only with the drugs can a person guarantee immediate access to powerful altered states of consciousness whenever they want to

That's not true - people can work themselves up into a frenzy with no drugs very easily. Keep an eye out for the next time you see those muslims walking through the streets whipping themselves into a bloody pulp. They are utterly frenzied - they're in a mental state far beyond anything I've ever experienced from any psychedelic.

Look at the crowd when they were burying the Ayatollah - again, these people were in a state of absolute religious frenzy. No drugs needed whatsoever.

the religious stories/myths describe the phenomena that are encountered in psychedelic trip experiences using metaphor such as 'Jesus' crucifixion and ressurection'

Which psychedelic are you thinking they were using in Palestine back in Jesus's day? I can't see it being mushrooms, cactus or morning glories. Syrian rue? Is that really a psychedelic?

And don't you think giving someone a psychedelic 2000 years ago would be like giving your cat a psychedelic today? What frame of reference would he have go think "This is a religious epiphany" rather than "This is demonic possession"?

 

[Ismene]

i don't go to church often, but the couple times i have went recently i can't help but think of psychedelics during the eucharist.

Isn't that because you like psychedelics tho? If you look at everything with psychedelics in mind you can find some connection can't you. I mean, look at that halo around Jesus's head in some paintings - doesn't that look like the head of a magic mushroom to you?

i could see an early human eating a couple mushrooms while foraging. maybe he gets a stomach ache and thinks he ate bad mushrooms. but maybe that just slowly becomes a good feeling and he has a smile on his ape-like face?

Maybe, it's not beyond possibility. But you have to agree that it could just be an early human worked himself into a frenzy because he believes doing so will protect him and his loved ones from death. And that they'll meet again in the afterlife "if he believes with all his heart and soul" like his religious masters tell him to.

 

[Quantum Perception]

You'd be surprised. I've heard people talk about golf as an ecstatic experience.

Just because we like to think psychedelics are something special doesn't mean everyone - or even the majority agree with us.

And again - the idea that someone 2000 years ago is going to take mushrooms and think it was great rather than demonic possession is something else. I think pretty much all of them would consider it demonic possession/madness and be frightened of it rather than having an educated response like someone living today.

Golf may give one a feeling of pleasure. But it doesn't provide the out-of-everyday culture insight that psychedelics do, which is necessary for what i said.

 

[Quantum Perception]

The social revolutions in the 60s where an unseen kind of phenomenon up to that point in time; this was only possible with the mass release of psychedelics into the population. This just shows how psychedelics are capable of uprooting social and existential norms; the necessary ingredients for this theory.

 

[Ismene]

Golf may give one a feeling of pleasure. But it doesn't provide the out-of-everyday culture insight that psychedelics do, which is necessary for what i said.

You don't think people can feel intense mystical revelations from Golf or watching football etc?

this was only possible with the mass release of psychedelics into the population.

I don't think the release of psychedelics into the population resulted in the 60s. There are far many more people using psychedelics now than there ever were in the 60s. I think the 60s were just a creative time in music which happened to coincide with a few famous people saying they'd taken LSD.

I think the 60s were more a result of the power of rock n roll rather than the power of psychedelics.

 

[max_freakout]

You don't think people can feel intense mystical revelations from Golf or watching football etc?

people wont start tripping during a game of golf, you need the drugs for that. Psychedelic tripping is a specific, temporary alteration in a person's state of consciousness which typically people only experience when they take drugs

Roland Griffith's recent scientific study of magic mushrooms concluded that psilocybin mushrooms cause classic mystic-type experiences in the majority of the test subjects:

"Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences
having substantial and sustained personal
meaning and spiritual significance"

 

[Ismene]

people wont start tripping during a game of golf

True, but you can experience ecstatic and out of body feelings while watching Man City win the league championship for example. My guess is if you gave a Man City fan mushrooms and then said "Was that as good as winning the league?" he would look at you as if you were insane.

Roland Griffith's recent scientific study of magic mushrooms concluded that psilocybin mushrooms cause classic mystic-type experiences in the majority of the test subjects:

No-ones arguing they can't max. What they're saying is mushrooms arn't the ONLY way of achieving classiv mystic-type experiences in the majority of the test subjects. You fly 30 people to the Grand Canyon at sundown and most of those will find a positive spiritual benefit to it as well.

Getting a positive spiritual benefit/mystical experience isn't that difficult. Swim with a dolphin, help a disabled kid, go to a beautiful part of nature, take part in a sport you enjoy, exercise, see a wild animal, get blown by Olivia Newton-john etc etc.

 

[Asante]

"Psychedelics are awesome, therefore everything that is awesome came from psychedelics."

 

[max_freakout]

That's not true - people can work themselves up into a frenzy with no drugs very easily. Keep an eye out for the next time you see those muslims walking through the streets whipping themselves into a bloody pulp. They are utterly frenzied - they're in a mental state far beyond anything I've ever experienced from any psychedelic.

Look at the crowd when they were burying the Ayatollah - again, these people were in a state of absolute religious frenzy. No drugs needed whatsoever.

they werent tripping though, getting highly emotional and frenzied isnt the same thing as what happens when you take a large dose of psychedelic

Which psychedelic are you thinking they were using in Palestine back in Jesus's day? I can't see it being mushrooms, cactus or morning glories. Syrian rue? Is that really a psychedelic?

entheogenic plants occur everywhere, there wouldnt be any cactus in Palestine, but there is mushrooms, morning glory, datura, and syrian rue is a powerful psychedelic when it is combined with either mushrooms or with DMT-containing plants like acacia.
A scholar from an Israeli university recently published a paper saying that Moses could have been tripping on an ayahuasca analogue made with Syrian Rue, when he saw a magical 'burning bush', see here:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/hebrew-university-researcher-moses-was-tripping-at-mount-sinai-1.240589

And don't you think giving someone a psychedelic 2000 years ago would be like giving your cat a psychedelic today? What frame of reference would he have go think "This is a religious epiphany" rather than "This is demonic possession"?

anyone who takes a psychedelic will experience the trip, and then they can draw their own conclusions about the experience, both "religious epiphany" and "demonic possession" are both religious/mystical type interpretations, the bible contains many stories about people being possessed by demons

 

[Ismene]

they werent tripping though

But they were in a state perfectly comparable to religious ecstasy. Isn't your argument that only psychedelics can produce this state?

but there is mushrooms, morning glory,

Is there any history of these being used in Palestine?

A scholar from an Israeli university

Benny Shannon - he's written a book on Ayahuasca so presumably that's why he's willing to see ayahuasca in the burning bush. As he himself says "I have no proof of this".

This is if you accept the story of the burning bush in the first place - if the story is just a load of old bollocks like 99% of the other stories in the Old Testament then we're just going down the rabbit hole with bullshit on top of bullshit.

We could just as well say the apple in the gardne of eden was a mushroom - even tho there never was any adam and eve or apple or garden of eden.

anyone who takes a psychedelic will experience the trip, and then they can draw their own conclusions about the experience

They can nowadays yes, now they know it's a harmless drug and that the Devil isn't coming for them. 2000 years ago it was a completely different situation - back then they would have thought the drugs were dangerous and that they were being possesed by the Horned one. I don't belieive they would have sat down discussing it like the subjects at John Hopkins.

 

[whataboutheforests]

What frame of reference would he have go think "This is a religious epiphany" rather than "This is demonic possession"?

are these not one in the same? How can one exist without the other? I think they are both essential to religion.