Description
Modern, organized religions are based primarily on secondary religious experience - we read about extraordinary spiritual encounters with the deity that other people have had, but we don't experience them personally. And yet there are powerful sacraments that can help us experience holiness in a direct way, find the meaning of humanity and our place in the universe, and see the sacred dimension of the world around us.
In this book, more than twenty-five spiritual guides, scientists and psychedelic visionaries discuss how we can rediscover these primordial spiritual experiences - the basis of all religious systems - through the responsible use of psychedelics. The collection includes essays by such figures as Albert Hofmann, Stanislav Grof, Huston Smith, Charles Tart, Alexander Shulgin, Brother David Steindl-Rast and Rick Doblin. The authors discuss protocols for the ceremonial and spiritual use of psychedelics - including LSD, psilocybin, ayahuasca and MDMA - and the challenges that accompany the transformation of entheogenic insights into lasting change. The collection also presents the psychoactive sacraments described in the Bible, the transformative ayahuasca rituals of the Church of Santo Daime and an analysis of the famous Good Friday Experiment, in which psilocybin was administered to theological students.
The collected texts reveal the potential of psychedelics as catalysts for spiritual development and raise questions about the dawn of a new religious era based on personal spiritual experience.
