Chapter 2

iSaeramenta] Kitual
^
any years ago, on a sunny afternoon in a Cuemavaca garden, I ate seven so-called sacred mushrooms given to me by a scientist from the University of Mexico. During the next five hours, I was whirled through an experience which was, above all and without question, the deepest religious- philosophic experience of my life. And it was totally electric, cellular scientific, cinemato- graphic. Or\ a 5unny afternoon I ate
Personal reactions, ^e^^ ^^Cred mU5hroom5 and however passionate, are ^^^ Whirled through SiT^ always relative and may , ^XP^naiCe that Wa5 the have little general ^^^^ religiOU^hll050phlC
significance. Next come gxpenaice of my life,
the "Ho Hum, ques- mmmmm^^^immm
tions , "Why? " and "So what? "
Many predisposing factors — physiological, emo- tional, intellectual, ethical- social, financial — cause one person to be ready for a dramatic mind- opening experience and lead another to shrink back from new levels of intelligence. The discovery that the human brain possesses an infinity of potentialities and can
_3 Your grain Is God
operate at unexpected space- time dimensions left naive me exhilarated, awed, and quite convinced that I had awakened from a long ontological sleep.
Since my brain- activation- illumination of August 1960, 1 have repeated this biochemical and — to me — sacramental ritual several thousand times , and almost every subsequent brain- opening has awed me with philosophic- scientific revelations as convincing as the first experience.
During the 1960- 68 period 1 had been lucky enough to have collaborated with several hundred scientists and scholars who joined our various search and research projects. In our brain- activation centers at Harvard, in Mexico, Morocco, Almora, India, Millbrook, and in the California mountains we arranged transcendent brain- change experiences for several thousand persons from all walks of life, including more than 400 full- time religious professionals — about half professing Christian or Jewish faiths and about half belonging to Celtic, pagan, or Eastern religions.
Beginnings
In 1962, an informal group of ministers, theolo- gians, academic hustlers , and religious psychologists in the Harvard environment began meeting once a month to further these beginnings. This group was the original planning nucleus of the organizations that assumed sponsorship of our consciousness- expansion research — IFIF in 1963, the Castalia Foundation in 1963-66, and the League for Spiritual Discovery in 1966. That our generating impulse and original leadership came from a seminar in religious experience may be related to the alarmed confusion we aroused in secular and psychiatric circles of the time.
Timothy Leary 9
The Miracle of Marsh Chapel
The study, sensationalized in the press as "The Miracle of Marsh Chapel, " deserves further elaboration as a "serious . . . controlled" experiment involving over 30 courageous volunteers and as a systematic scientific demonstration of the "religious" aspects of psychedelic experience. This study was the Ph. D. dissertation research of Walter Pahnke, M. D. , then a graduate student in the philosophy of religion at Harvard Univer- sity, who set out to determine whether the transcendent experience reported during psychedelic acid sessions was similar to the mystical experience reported by saints and religious mystics.
As subjects, 20 divinity students were selected from a group of volunteers and divided into 5 groups of 4 persons. To each group were assigned 2 guides with considerable psychedelic experience — professors and advanced graduate students from Boston- area colleges.
The experiment, believe it or not, took place in a small, private chapel at Boston
University, about one hour before ™^^^^^"^~
noon on Good Friday, 1962. The The experiment dean of the chapel, Howard tOOk place in a
Thurman, was to conduct a ,^f ' P^^^^
public 3- hour devotional service f ^^P^' ^^ ^P^"
upstairs in the main hall of the Uni^eraty^boUt
church. He visited our subjects a ^^ ^^^ ^^^f few minutes before the start of the ^^^^ ^"iqS
noon service and gave a brief rnday, I^^Z
"inspirational" talk. ■■■■■■■■■i
Two subjects in each group and one of the two guides were given a moderately stiff dosage of 30 mg. of psilo- cybin. The remaining two subjects and the second guide received a placebo that produced noticeable somatic side
X) Youre>rar\hGod
effects such hot- cold skin flashes, but which was not psychedelic. The study was triple- blind: neither the subjects, guides, nor the experimenters knew who received psilocybin.
We Knew
If you ever run a double- blind study with these drugs , you must not have controls around experimental subjects because no one will be fooled. I knew immedi- ately that two "™™'''''™''™™''™™'^^ subjects in my
A man walked in, looked out the gj-^^p j^^d
window, and said, "Magnificent," nicotinic acid; I
then turned without lool
a5 he walked out. We all knew who ^i^^^^. ^.^j {^^^^
was placbo and who was mystical. ^nd their restless ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ "game" activity.
But thinking they were on the verge of a mystic experience, they started winking, "Isn't this great? The poor fellows in the other room are being left out of it. " Later, after we had been in the chapel and saw other subjects reclining on the floor, obviously completely out of this world, the two called me and said, "Let's go back into the other room. " They started playing the drug game again: "How long has it been? " "Gee, I thought I had it. " "Now what did you feel exactly? "
A door banged open, and a man walked in, looked out the window, and said, "Magnificent. " He turned without looking at us as he walked out. We all knew who was placbo and who was mystical. Typically, 9% of LSD subjects reported unpleasant experiences; most of these fought the experience. In the Good Friday experi- ence, for example, one divinity student fought it all the way, repeating: "Now when is it going to get over? I'm just not in control of myself. Didn' t you say it would last four hours?"
Timothy Leary H
There is a magnificent selectivity MMMHHHHMnMH
operating here , because people Coum^e fe the
committed to controlling themselves Y&y -^q cfC9X^\V\ty
sense ahead of time that the notion ^j^^ ■\^ ^y
of ego transcendence or loss is rdinqufehing of
threatening. They don' t volunteer; ^q structure,
don't show up, or postpone it. Of ^^^^^^^^ course, courage is the key to cre- ativity or to any relinquishing of ego structure.
Expectations
Our studies, naturalistic and experimental, demon- strate that if the expectation, preparation, and setting are Protestant- New England religious, an intense mysti- cal or revelatory experience will be admitted by 40 to 90% of subjects ingesting psychedelic drugs. These results may be attributed to the bias of our research group, which has taken the rather dangerous ACLU position that there are "experiential- spiritual" as well as secular- behavioral emotional- political potentialities of the nervous system.
Five scientific studies by other investigators yield data which indicate that if the setting is supportive but not spiritual, between 40 to 75% of psychedelic subjects will report intense and life- changing philosophic- religious experiences. If the set and setting are supportive and "spiritual, " then from 40 to 90% of the experiences will be revelatory and mystico- philosophic- religious.
Philosophic Revelation
How can these results be disregarded by those con- cerned with philosophic growth and religious develop- ment? These data are even more interesting because the experiments took place in 1962, when individual reli-
^ Your grain b God
gious ecstasy — as opposed to religious piety — was highly suspect and when meditation, jogging, yoga, fasting, body consciousness, social- dropout- withdrawal, and sacramental — organic — foods and drugs were surrounded by an aura of eccentricity, fear, clandestine secrecy, even imprisonment.
The 400 professional workers in religious vocations who partook of psychedelic substances were responsible, thoughtful, and "moral, " highly moral, individuals,
grimly aware of the
controversial nature of
d\3reqavck^ by X)me& reputations and jobs concern^ with philosophic ^^^^^ ^^ undermined.
gro\vth and religious ^^^ ^^^> ^^^- ^^^^^ ^^^ de\^ebpment? "^'^^^^ read— 75% philo-
mmmmmmmmm sophic revelation. It may
well be that, like the finest metal, the most intense religious experience requires fire, the "heat" of police constabulatory opposi- tion, to produce the keenest edge. When sacramental biochemicals are used as routinely and tamely as organ music and incense the ego- shattering, awe- inspiring efiiect of the drugs may be diminished.
Like the finest metal, the most intense
religious experience requires fire, the "heat*
of police constabulatory opposition, to
produce the keenest edge.
Chapters
Ei^t Crafts ofGod
(^Ti he religious experience is the ecstatic, jolting, / wondrous, awe- struck, life- changing, -^ mind' boggling confrontation with one or all of the eight basic mysteries of existence. The goals of an intel- ligent life, according to Socrates, is to pursue the philo- sophic quest — to increase
one' s knowledge of self and __^^^^^^^^
world. Now there is an It \3 ecicnce that
important division of labor pWdUCGo the
involved in the philosophic ev^er-changing, impro\^ing search. Religion, being answers to the haunting
personal and private , questions that religi0U5
cannot produce answers to WO^dcr p05e5.
the eight basic questions. ■■■■■■■■■i
The philosopher's role is to ignite the wonder, raise the burning issues, inspire the pursuit of answers. It is science that produces the ever- changing, improving answers to the haunting questions that religious wonder poses. There are eight questions which any fair survey of our philosophic history would agree are most fundamen- tal to our existential condition.
14
Your drar\\e> God
Eight Fundamental Questions
Category Type of Questions Examples
Origins Genesis
How, when where did life come from? How has it evolved?
Politics Security
Why do humans fight and compete destructively? What are the territorial laws that explain conflict? How can humans live in relative peace and harmony? How, when, where, and why do humans differ ( among each other and from other mammalian spe cies) in aggression, control, cooperation , affiliation ?
Epistem- Truth, fact, ology knowledge ,
language,
communications , manufacture of
objects, artifacts,
& symbol systems
How, when, where, and why does the mind emerge ( in the individual and species) ? And how, when, where, and why do humans differ in their ability to process information, learn, communicate, think, plan, and manufacture?
Ethics Good and evil,
right and wrong.
How, when, where, and why do humans differ in their moral beliefs and rituals? Who decides what is good and right?
Esthetics Beauty, pleasure luxury, sensory
reward.
How, when, where, and why do humans devote their energies to decora tion, hedonism, art, music, entertainment? And how, where, when, and why do they differ in modes of pleasure?
Timothy Leary
Ontology
Reality and its ( their) definition.
How, when, where, and why do humans differ in the realities they construct and inhabit? How are realities formed and changed?
Teleology Evolution & What are the stages and
de- evolution mechanisms of evolution? of life. Where, when, how,
and why has evolution occurred? Chance? Natu ral selection? Natural election? Creation? If life is created and evolution blueprinted, who did it? Where is life going?
Cosmology Galactic How, when, where, and
evolution, why was matter- energy
of ultimate formed? What are the basic
and basic units and patterns of
structure. matter/ energy) What are
the basic forces, energies, and plans that hold the universe together (or don' t) and determine its evolution? Where are we going?
'^ Your grain Is God
The Navigational Question
Now it is true that most human beings spend Uttle time thinking about these issues. Mundane questions about how to get fed, how to avoid irritable neighbors, which career to follow, which girl to marry, who will win the Super Bowl obsess the normal consciousness of most humans.
The religious- philosophic person is defined by hir concern for the great navigational question. The an- swers, we recall, come from the listening posts which we set up to obtain from nature the signals which will in- crease our knowledge about what nature is up to.
Scientific Answers
The 19'*^ Century was one of considerable religious disarray and confusion. On the one hand, the old creeds have obviously not succeeded in producing survivally- safe answers. When the Catholic church threatens eternal damnation for believers who do not follow St. Paul's P^ Century taboos against birth con- trol— at a time when starvation and overpopulation are endemic in Catholic countries — a certain nervousness
Ill, develops. When the
Now our 5p6Ci65 cm l > ^^^' year- old warfare between
answer the basic Christianity and Islam erupts questions as well as again in the 87^^ crusade- take OV&C the Rockefeller vs Khomeini- Khadafi technologies for —again, sensible people wonder running the Uni\/erse. what these aging religious funda- ^^^^^^^^^^^^ mentalists really have in mind for
the future of our species.
Suddenly there is an explosion of new scientific insights — nuclear physics, astrophysics, genetics, neu- rology, ethology — which produce data requiring drastic
Timothy Leary V
changes in our conceptions of human nature. We face the splendid, glorious, possibility that, now, for the first time, the planet, the genetic future. It is surely time for a global celebration! Finally our species is on the thresh- old of living, not in helpless fear and ignorance, but in confident loving hope!
Scientific Paganism
As we survey these new findings which allow us to learn and practice the eight technologies of God, we are delighted to discover that certain ancient religions, mainly the pagan, in millennia past had anticipated what our scientists are now discover- ing. And as Americans we are ^^^^g,,,,,,,,,,,,,^^
proud to point out that the The fiew Scientific
1960s drug' culture' s giddy, SO^NGCb proV'ldc
wild, confused eruption of U5 WJtll eight neW
philosophy and spiritual anarchy definitions of
played an important role in Qod aS designer/
stimulating and provoking the technologist of
new Scientific Paganism of the the UniV'erse.
2 P^ Century. The new scien- jujuui^i^i^lll^lll^^
tific answers provide us with
eight new definitions of God as designer/ technologist of the universe. And they suggest how any serious- minded intelligent person can begin to master these Eight Crafts of Divinity.