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Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments:
An Entheogen Chrestomathy
Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D. and Paula Jo Hruby, Ed.D.
Author Index | Title Index
Through the Gateway of the Heart:
Accounts of Experiences with MDMA and other Empathogenic Substances.
Adamson, Sophia. (Editor). (1985).
San Francisco: Four Trees Publications.
ISBN: 0-936329-00-9
Description: First edition,
paperback, viii + 197 + iv pages.
Contents: Foreword by
Ralph Metzner, 57 reports divided into 3
parts: I. Individual Experiences-Women,
II. Individual Experiences-Men,
III. Guidelines
for the Sacramental Use of Empathogenic Substances.
Contributors: Contributors
are anonymous. They are identified thus: "35 year-old female,
graduate student " and "53 year-old male,
minister."
Excerpt(s): This book
is a collection of personal accounts of these kinds [MDMA] of
substance-induced states of heightened awareness, which are remarkable
for the uniformity with which people affirm their positive value,
and for the diversity and range of individual differences. The
experiences here all occurred within a context of either psychotherapy,
or serious self-exploration, or relationship communication, or
spiritual practice. (Foreword by Ralph Metzner, page 1)
Then came a flood of connections. I felt connected
with some master plan. Everything seemed to have a purpose and
a plan, a reason why, and I felt caught up in it and was thrilled.
Life seemed to have been conspiring to get me here to this moment,
to this place of love, beauty, goodness, and truth. There was
no uncertainty about any of this. "Only the fool, fixed in
his folly, thinks that he turns the wheel on which he turns."
The greatest freedom is to have no freedom but to go where we
long to be. I had been migrating for fifty-three years in order
to be home at last. I knew that I had done something as great
as the birds and fish [in their migrations]. (page 99)
Sitting at night under the stars and distant lightning
I knew that I had come into an awareness as unique as life and
into the promise of scripture, "I have come that you may
have life-and have it more abundantly." ( Peace
with Great Energy, Tangible, Expansive, by 53 year-old minister,
page 101)
The following guidelines have been compiled from
the collective experience of about twenty or thirty therapists
who have used these substances in their work, and who have based
their methods on observation of hundreds of individual sessions.
While there is by no means uniformity of approach among the different
practitioners, the guidelines offered here do represent a kind
of distillation of methods that have proven their efficacy. ...
The approach will be described under the headings
of Preparation and Set, Alchemical Catalysts, Setting and Context,
Process and Method in Individual Sessions, Ritual Structure in
Group Sessions, and Re-entry and Follow-up Factors. (page 181)
This compilation by Thomas B. Roberts & Paula Jo Hruby, © 1995-2003 CSP
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