Posts tagged "spirituality"
A Reverend’s Moving Sermon About Psychedelics and Religion
“If I Could Change Your Mind,” preached by Reverend Mike Young at The First Unitarian Church of Honolulu on 5 November 1995. If, on some Sunday morning, I would step up here into the pulpit and announce to you that I had an experience available to you, that you could come to the church on a given Saturday afternoon and spend with me between six and eight hours and I guarantee — virtually guaranteed at least almost guarantee; well, pretty certainly guarantee; oh, a good chance — that you would experience a total transformation of your own mind,...
My Share of Sacramental LSD Wiccans Celebrate a Lunar Eclipse
My first experience with taking LSD in a ritual context took place in 1980 in a Wiccan community in Northern California. But the event, an observance of the eclipse of the full moon, was by no means my first experience with psychedelics. For the previous 14 years, I had used such psychedelics as LSD and psilocybin as part of a spiritual practice, often during the four years when it seemed to elevate my marriage into a cosmic union; and less often after my 1970 divorce, when I attempted — with very limited success — to reach acid light...
Religious Leaders Tripping on Magic Mushrooms for Science
Among traditional cultures, psychedelic plants and fungi have long been viewed as spiritual medicines. Indeed, why partake of sacraments such as mushrooms, ayahuasca, or peyote cacti if not for their spiritual power? Yet in the West, where “spirituality” has long been conflated with religion — and where few sacraments aside from communion wafers and a bit of wine are acknowledged — these visionary plants have been viewed with suspicion. That’s all changing. Among progressive scientists, psychedelics are now all the rage. Psilocybin, the active component of “magic” mushrooms, has shown promise in pilot studies for a wide range of applications,...
Psychedelics in American Religious Experience
How important are psychedelics in the religious experience of the United States? We know drugs like LSD and psilocybin can occasion powerful, life-changing experiences of awe and renewal. We also know psychedelics have been used by millions of people since the 1960s. But no one has ever tried to count the number of people who’ve had psychedelic-related mystical experiences. I ran a survey of over 6,000 people to get an answer. Background: Walter ‘Wally’ Pahnke and psychedelic mysticism Fifty-one years ago, a massive 9.2 Richter scale earthquake shook Alaska. At the same time, Wally Pahnke was experiencing another...
New Video from Jason Silva: ‘Drugs As Tools For Spirituality’
“The new space is inner space,” says Jason Silva in his new video. It’s the latest edition in his series of thought-provoking short-films called Shots of Awe, which continues to live up to its name. This episode focuses on MAPS — the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies — and the importance of set and setting in maximizing the potential of a psychedelic session. He name-drops Timothy Leary, who stressed the importance of preparing a positive tripping environment for yourself. “You are immediately plunged into a dialogue with your own subconscious,” Silva says. Meanwhile, “The world becomes like a sensurround system. The...
How a Banker Introduced ‘Magic Mushrooms’ to the West
In 1955, banker and amateur mycologist R. Gordon Wasson traveled to Mexico with a friend, where they became “the first white men in recorded history to eat the divine mushrooms.” Seeking the Magic Mushroom, published two years later in Life magazine, introduced psilocybin mushrooms to the West. Wasson wrote about his personal experience eating the mushrooms, and their ceremonial use by the Mazatec people as a healing agent. The essay came at a perfect time, exposing a whole generation of young people to a natural, non-toxic, and easily grown psychedelic agent that had long been overlooked in the West. Wasson’s...
Moksha Medicine: Powerful Excerpts from Huxley’s “Island”
One of my favorite books is Island by Aldous Huxley, a book often prized by psychonauts and others who enjoy looking at society from the outside in. In Island, Huxley lays out the structure for an ideal society while making piercing criticisms of modern Western culture. As the title indicates, Huxley’s utopia is set on a small island, far removed from modern technology and divisive global politics. Some have criticized the book’s characterization and plot, but in Island these are secondary. This book’s main strength is in elaborating a great thinker’s vision of a truly civilized society. I want to share a couple excerpts...
Moving Into the Sacred World of DMT, by Nick Sand
Nick Sand is one of the most prolific and well-known underground chemists in history. From 1966 to 1996, he produced huge amounts of LSD, as well as MDMA, synthetic mescaline, DMT, and other psychedelics that were distributed around the globe. Along with Tim Scully, Nick Sand was responsible for producing over 3 million hits of Orange Sunshine, a brand of LSD that was renowned for its quality and purity in the Sixties. Sand has a particular fondness for DMT. In fact, it was a DMT vision quest in the 60s that convinced Sand to dedicate his life to...
Life Versus Entropy Tripping on Fractals, God, and the Mystery of Existence
Setting: Early morning at a lakeside cabin in the woods of Vermont. Chemical lens: 25I-NBOMe, a research chemical with effects resembling LSD. (25I-NBOMe is a very new chemical, its safety profile is largely unknown, and lethal overdoses have been reported. Consuming 25I-NBOMe or other research chemicals is risky and I do not recommend it.) I walk outside as dawn arrives. Fog rolls across the lake and wraps the trees in a gauzy shroud. The silence is punctuated only by the chatter of birds and my own footsteps. My breathing takes its cue from the lake, gentle and unhurried. Where...
Free Book: The Psychedelic Experience by Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass) literally wrote the book on tripping. In 1964, they published The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which captured the imagination of psychonauts everywhere and laid the groundwork for all psychedelic literature to come. As the title indicates, this guide was inspired by the Bardo Thodol, re-interpreting the classic Tibetan text as a guide for ego death. As the first spiritual guide to using psychedelics, The Psychedelic Experience was revolutionary, and continues to influence all aspects of psychedelic culture. It’s hard to imagine the wide variety of...
How to Prepare a Spiritual DMT Ceremony in 5 Steps
This is the first guest post by Lee, who put a great deal of effort into crafting his DMT technique and is excited to share it with you! Note: we do not encourage you to take DMT or any other drugs. This information is presented in the interest of harm reduction and education, to promote the safety and mental health of those who are already committed to using the drug. For more information, please see the Disclaimer. Hello friends. So you’ve decided it’s time to embark on a great adventure. Maybe some colorful friends turned you onto DMT. Or...
Entheogenic Spirituality as a Human Right
The following essay by Martin W. Ball is an edited excerpt from his book, The Entheogenic Evolution: Psychedelics, Consciousness and Awakening the Human Spirit, published by Kyandara Publishing in 2008. It was previously published on Reality Sandwich. For more information, visit martinball.net. The true heart of any religion or spiritual tradition is direct spiritual experience. It is from the immediate experience of the sacred that traditions arise, grow, and take on a life of their own as institutions and systems of belief. Yet without that initial spiritual experience, the inspiration that originally gave rise to the tradition, there is very...