LSD and Mystical Experiences

Abstract

WITH the publication of Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, and of R. C. Zaehner's Mysticism, Sacred and Profane, attention has again been given to the similarities between certain kinds of druginduced experiences and mystical experiences.' The student of world religions has long known of the sacramental use of such special agents as alcohol, plants, mushrooms, etc., to facilitate contact with the gods or make available spiritual knowledge or powers-as in the ancient Aryan use of soma and the still-practiced peyote sacrament of certain North American Indians. In spite of a long recognition of the use of such agents to facilitate or produce states of consciousness considered to be of the highest religious significance, psychologists of religion have given very little attention to the phenomena involved. Even psychologists in general had until recently studied very little the patterns and significance of a wide range of drug-induced states of consciousness. The last fifteen years have brought a tremendous increase in psychiatric and psychological research in drug experiences. But psychologists of religion have as yet shown relatively little concern with some of the very interesting aspects of these practices which might help shed light on certain varieties of religious experience. After a brief introduction to the known physical effects of hallucinogenic drugsprincipally, LSD-25 or, more simply, LSD -this article summarizes the characteristics of a variety of drug-induced experiences. These experiences are then confronted with various types of mystical experiences which in the author's opinion are of the same nature. In the course of the comparative confrontation several suggestions are made regarding the value of hallucinogenic drugs as potential aids to psychological studies of religion. The general standpoint of the article is that of the history and psychology of religions. In addition to data from others' reports--historical and experimental-the writer has been able to draw on his own experiences as a voluntary, normal subject in experimentations with lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).