Psi and Psychedelics - Paranthropology - Weebly

PARANTHROPOLOGY: JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO THE PARANORMAL VOL. 2 NO. 2
s i g n i f i c a n t r e l i g i o u s v a l u e i n
contemporaneous solutions such as
psychotropic drug use, although he did
agree with Huxley somewhat by
suggesting:
...by now it has become commonplace to
observe that no beneficial effect can be
expected from psychedelic drugs unless
the set and setting are right, the
atmosphere relaxed and friendly, and the
session directed by an experienced
'guide' (Zaehner,1972:99)
It was on this basis that Zaehner
contended the essential criteria of drug
induced experiences were contrary to the
practice of religious contemplatives for
whom the suppression of all sensory
impressions was the first step on the
mystic path. He contrasted the
consciousness-expanding claims of those
he describes as “drug enthusiasts and
assorted occultists” with the spiritual
discipline and principles of "real mystical
experiences" (1972:99). For Zaehner,
religious mysticism is the path leading
from this world to the eternal world – to
God or an impersonal Absolute. Nature
mystics and users of psychedelic drugs
relied for the most part, according to
Zaehner, on experiences of short duration,
on sudden flashes of illumination as
opposed to the stages towards mystic
union. According to Zaehner any
comparison between drug-induced
mystical experiences and religious
mystical experiences is bound to be:
“extremely hazardous...for just as there
are 'varieties of religious experiences' and
varieties of psychedelic experiences', so
there are 'varieties of mystical
experiences”. (Zaehner,1972:79)
Since the early 1950's
hallucinogens were thought to have some
psychological therapeutic application, yet
despite evidence that such substances
might further the understanding of human
consciousness and sensory perception,
serious scientific research into the use of
psychedelic compounds has been in
decline. One reason for this is provided
by Professor Griffiths of the Hopkins'
Department of Neuroscience and
Psychiatry and Behavioural Biology:
“...[the] gap is large because, as a reaction
to the excesses of the 1960s, human
research with hallucinogens has been
basically frozen in time these last forty
years”. (Melville, 2006:1)
However, before its criminalisation, the
psychiatrist Oscar Janiger gave d-lysergic
acid diethylamide (LSD) to an estimated
1,000 volunteers between 1954 and 1962.
He was particularly interested in its
possible enhancement of creativity and
potential tool in psychological therapy. In
one study with 194 subjects Janiger
reported 24% experienced phenomena
that could be characterised as religious.
At around the same time Keith Ditmam
and Max Hayman carried out various
studies into the effects and benefits of the
drug. In one study of 74 subjects 32%
reported experiences with religious value,
and 42% reported feeling they were left
with a greater awareness of God, of a
higher power, or ultimate reality. (Smith,
1964:522)
Perhaps the most famous study was
published as a doctoral thesis by Walter
Norman Pahnke in 1963 entitled Drugs
and Mysticism: An Analysis of the
Relationship between Psychedelic Drugs
and the Mystical Consciousness. The
research was conducted in 1962 and often
referred to as 'The Miracle of Marsh
Chapel'. The study was designed to test
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