Could religions have originated under the influence?
A study involving two dozen clergy is investigating the effects of a drug found in psychedelic mushrooms on religious inspiration, the Washington Post reports.
Citing a commonality of mystical experiences in the origin of world religions, lead researcher and psychologist William Richards suggests that altered states, whether influenced by body chemistry or ingested substances, may inform a person’s spiritual insights.
“The deep mystical experiences are always discovered as gifts received,” Williams proposes. He says a recognition of “interconnectedness” among diverse cultures is one of the common observations made by subjects in the study, which is based at Johns Hopkins and New York universities.
Through studying psilocybin and its effects, Williams believes his research could lead the religious leaders in the study to seek out other revelations through means outside drug use, with the aspirational goal of visions similar to those produced by mushrooms.
Q. Do you agree the origin of various faiths could have stemmed from visions induced through stress, deprivation or the influence of psychedelic or intoxicating substances? What is your opinion of the study?
I am sure that many religious ecstatic experiences happened from the ingestion of ‘alien’ substances through nostril or stomach, especially if we look at Leviticus 10:9-10:
“And the Lord spoke unto Aaron, saying: ‘Drink no wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tent of meeting that ye die not; it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations. And that ye may put difference between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean; and that ye may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the Lord hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses.’”
People have been trying to expand their consciousness since time immemorial. How interesting is this prohibition for clergy. Thus we see the conflict between the two parts of religious endeavor, boundless joy and structured legalism.
God exists, both as the source of sensual ecstasy and the foundation of lawfulness. Remember the Ten Commandments are there for all to absorb, both the physical joys of Shabbat and the spiritual responsibilities of telling the truth.
Rabbi Mark Sobel
Temple Beth Emet
Burbank
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I agree that many of the world’s religions could have been founded upon the ecstatic experiences of their leaders, including those caused by ingesting drugs or by severe treatment of the body, which affected their minds. When these experiences are interpreted as spiritual reality and a group of followers form, you have a new religion. Unfortunately for all involved the only reality was that there was a hallucination in the founder’s mind.
If the study aspires to encourage religious leaders to seek out revelations through any means outside of God’s revealed word, the Bible, or by the moving of the Holy Spirit, then I would say that its only effect will be to propagate deception.
When God spoke through a prophet, He enabled that prophet to perform miracles to verify that the revelation was divine in origin. When God’s Spirit moved men to write, those scriptures stood the test of time and never contradicted each other. We have plenty of revelation from God. What we truly need most of all is the wisdom to believe and obey it.
Pastor Jon Barta
Burbank
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I imagine some pagan religions had as their genesis some hallucinogenic “inspiration,” but that would have only really given users a waking notion of a possible alternate reality. That’s about it. When people have only one way of thinking, and suddenly their perception is changed by anything — new information, new experiences, chemical substances, etc. — then that might be their one peculiar step toward God, but it doesn’t reach God, it only suggests.
If one thinks it takes a narcotic to talk to God, then what I believe they have done is only gotten in touch with their own internal thoughts and deified them. When I was in college many years ago, there was this group of actors who would get high and then record their hilarious conversations and observations, not to mention their stoned spiritual insights. The next day when everyone was once again in their right mind, they would listen to the idiocy they had taped and realize that drugs weren’t doing anything more than tickling them chemically.
No, I don’t think drugs are the pathway to God, and in the foundation of Christianity under the Old Testament, there was strict instruction for God’s ministers to not be remotely influenced by even a permitted intoxicant during sacred duty: “The Lord said to Aaron, ‘When you or your sons enter the sacred tent, you must never drink beer or wine. If you do, you will die right there! (Lev 10:8-9 CEV). It doesn’t sound as if being socially lubricated was the way to get down to business with the Lord.
As for other religions having begun from stress or other means, sure, Mohammed is believed to have had epileptic seizures from which he would recover and then start writing the Koran, but the Bible is not like that, and it is not a drug-induced vision or a psychedelic trip. The Bible is composed 66 books by some 40 different authors, spanning 1,500 years, from three continents, and yet the one binder is that they all agree as to the inspired author, the God of Jesus Christ.
No, you find God better when your mind is clear, not when it’s hopped-up and watching cartoons.
Rev. Bryan A. Griem
Tujunga