Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments:
An Entheogen Chrestomathy
Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D. and Paula Jo Hruby, Ed.D.
Author Index | Title Index
Authentic Knowing: The Convergence of Science and Spiritual Aspiration.
Baruss, Imants. (1996).
West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press
| ISBN: | 1-5573-085-8 paperback |
| 1-55753-084-X hardcover |
Description: Hardcover, xii + 228 pages.
Contents: Figures, acknowledgments, 7 chapters, glossary,
Appendix: Selected Biographies, notes, references, index.
Excerpt(s): Existential questions are rationally coherent.
However, satisfactory answers may not be available
through empirical or rational means. The effort, then,
becomes one of trying to determine if there is a latent mode
of understanding superior to rational thought and, if it
exists, to bring it into activity. How does one go about
doing this? In this section let us develop one line of
speculation about this effort.
While it is the discursive aspect of the mind that
allows for explicit formulations of existential questions, at
the same time it is that aspect of the mind that prevents the
surfacing of superior modes of understanding. The normal
functioning of the mind obliterates the transcendent. “The
mind is the great slayer of the Real. ... Let the disciple slay
the slayer.” The task thus becomes one of eliminating the
barrier created by the discursive mind. This can be done in
one of two ways, through regression or transcendence.
(page 64)
There are a number of ways in which attempts have
been made to discount the noetic value of transcendent
experiences. For example, given that people who score
higher on absorption are also more likely to have had more
mystical experiences, could it be that these experiences are
just the product of an overactive imagination? Perhaps one
becomes so involved in transcendent ideas that one loses
the power of discrimination and comes to regard them as
real.
Based on a comprehensive review of the relevant
neuro-physiological literature, mostly concerning the
effects of psychotropic drugs, Arnold Mandell has given an
account of transcendence in physiological terms. Drugs
such as hallucinogens, amphetamines, and cocaine disturb
the activity of the neurotransmitter serotonin in such a way
that it fails to inhibit excitation of hippocampal CA3 cells
— a sector of cells in the hippocampus of the brain. Such
an effect would also be created by prolonged activity,
stress, sensory deprivation, or meditation. Because of this
hyperactivity of the hippocampal CA3 cells, the
hippocampus cannot properly compare information coming
from the outside with information that is already stored in
the temporal lobes. In effect, internal information is
unchallenged by external data, leading to a sense of unity
with the universe and the conviction that one already
knows everything. Hippocampal CA3 cell hyperexcitability
leads to “hippocampal-septal flooding and may be
variously interpreted — for example, as ecstasy. These
cells become “progressively excited and die,” resulting in
permanent personality changes, such as “religious
conversions, hyposexuality, transcendent consciousness,
good nature, and emotional deepening,” which are
characteristic of psychomotor epileptics with hippocampal
cell death. Mandell has speculated that in the absence of
external explanations, the source of the experience of
ecstasy, as CA3 cells fire furiously, followed by “empathic
beatitude” once they are dead, gets erroneously attributed
to God.
Does this mean that transcendent experiences are nothing
more than the hyperactivity and death of brain cells? An analogy
may be helpful for putting this information into perspective. If I
am watching a hockey game on television and
somebody comes along and puts a sledgehammer through the
screen, this does not mean that the hockey game has ceased to
exist. In other words, the existence of physiological correlates of
some experiential events does not rule out the possibility of
experiences at another level of reality. Death of hippocampal cells
may be the source of transcendent experiences, or it may simply
be one possible physiological mechanism through which
such states of consciousness can manifest themselves.
Physiological explanations cannot discount the possibility of
transcendent consciousness. (pages 74-75)
Compilation copyright © 1995 – 2001 CSP
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