Drug Induced Mystical Experiences Many

Drug Induced Mystical Experiences

Many have argued, ever since Timothy Lear promoted, during the 60s and 70s, the use of LSD in hope of mystical experiences, that there can be no drug-induced mystical experiences. They are, however, strongly contradicted by some of the latest scientific research and findings, most notably those provided to the public in July 2006.

According to these, a team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins University have shown that certain mushrooms, referred to as "sacred mushrooms" can "induce strikingly similar mystical experiences in different subjects." Scientifically explained, it seemed that the mushrooms in discussion here possessed a plant alkaloid referred to as psilocybin. This type of alkaloid targets and interacts with several areas of the brain, having a determined effect on brain receptors, inducing a mystical state on the person experiencing the brain receptor stimulation. 60% of the people on which the experiment was performed described having had a full mystical experience.

In the science world, it seems that the study and the experimental analysis has had a distinct impact, with many important scientists evaluating the excellent feedback provided by it in this research area. Charles Schuster, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), marked the study as an excellent continuation on the work done in the 1950s and as one of the means by which the medical society could demonstrate positive effects of hallucinogens on the human individual.

In my opinion, despite the victories obtained by science in this matter, drugs do not produce mystical religious experiences and the argumentation in this sense will be presented further below.

First of all, a definition of mystical experiences will note that these are "experiences felt or experienced beyond the realms of ordinary consciousness." The main characteristics of a mystical experience derive from this very definition. First of all, they are personal experiences, experiences which each feels in their own way. You cannot have a universal description of a mystical experience and, in this sense, the 60% that described having had a mystical experience may not have actually had one. Perhaps it is confusing in a way, perhaps they have felt it was induced by the experiment itself.

Second of all, we are referring here to a religious mystical experience and religion is again something individually subjective, something very intimate which each individual creates within his own faith. To discuss that such a state of maximum communion with the Divinity, perhaps even of a Nirvana - like state of total revelation and liberation. It is hard to believe that such a state that includes only partly the physiological elements of the brain and, much more than this, the actual spiritual encounters, can be caused by nothing more than mushrooms.

The strongest argument against the thesis of the experiment relies in the fact that a religious mystical experience is placed on a spiritual rather than medical level and that the spirit is not necessarily determined by the actions of the brain, as a human organ. The spirit includes the way the brain act and the way the heart feels or the behavior of other organs in the body.

For many scientists, including those that have performed the scientific experiment and including people like Tom Roberts, who in his book "Psychedelic Horizons" talks about the benefic effects of drugs on the brain in terms of exploring new states and experience new functions of the body otherwise hidden to the general audience.

For myself and numerous other individuals, the mystical experience cannot be related solely to the functionality of the brain or to the way the entire body is operating. If it were so, then we could sustain the idea of a drug-induced mystical experience. However, as things are, this is almost impossible, since it is less likely that the spirit and the spiritual dimension of an individual can so easily become subject to the impact of drugs.