Drugs and Mysticism

The claim has been made that the experience facilitated by psychedelic drugs, such as LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline, can be similar or identical to the experience described by the mystics of all ages, cultures, and religions. This paper will attempt to examine and explain this possibility. There is a long and continuing history of the religious use of plants that contain psychedelic substances. Scholars such as Osmond (1957b), Schultes (1963), and Wasson (1961) have made valuable contributions to this intriguing field. In some instances, such natural products were ingested by a priest, shaman, or witch doctor to induce a trance for revelatory purposes; sometimes they were taken by groups of people who participated in sacred ceremonies. For example, the dried heads of the peyote cactus, whose chief active ingredient is mescaline, were used by the Aztecs at least as early as 300 B.C. and are currently being employed by over fifty thousand Indians of the Native American Church as a vital part of their religious ceremonies. Both ololiuqui, a variety of morning-glory seed, and certain kinds of Mexican mushrooms (called teonanacatl , "flesh of the gods") were also used for divinatory and religious purposes by the Aztecs. These practices have continued to the present among remote Indian tribes in the mountains of the state of Oaxaca, in Mexico. Modern psychopharmacological research has shown the active chemicals to be psilocybin in the case of the mushrooms, and several compounds closely related to LSD in the case of ololiuqui. Amanita muscaria , the mushroom that has been used for unknown centuries by Siberian shamans to induce religious trances, does not contain psilocybin. The most important psychologically active compound from this mushroom has not yet been isolated, but promising work is in progress. Other naturally occurring plants, which are used by various South American Indian tribes in a religious manner for prophecy, divination, clairvoyance, tribal initiation of male adolescents, or sacred feasts are: cohoba snuff, made from the pulverized seeds of Piptadenia ; the drink vinho de Jurumens , made from the seeds of Mimosa hostilis ; and the drink caapi , made from Banisteriopsis . These last three products contain various indolic compounds that are all closely related to