“Both [psychonauts and Christians] could teach the other something. Mark Juhan, a lay chaplain and psychonaut — rare hybrid — suggests that psychedelics can rescue Christians from an over-heavy dependence on Scripturalism at the cost of a personal encounter with the Divine. They can also teach Christians a greater reverence for God’s creation in nature, which could include such extraordinary plants. I also think the psychedelic community is admirably tolerant of difference.
Psychonauts, on the other hand, could learn from Christians how to turn altered states into altered traits (as the theologian Huston Smith put it). They could learn how to ground ecstatic experiences in community, and in charitable work. They could also learn from Christian mysticism how to practice discernment of spirits, how to avoid ego-inflation, how to practice a theology deeper than simply saying ‘well that was far out’. And they could learn, perhaps, to overcome a fetishization of substances and experiences (Leary’s ‘religion of LSD’) and a more mature confrontation with the givens of suffering and death.”
Jules Evans, brittisk filosof, författare och (inte så lång tid, ett par år kanske, som jag uppfattat det, efter en trip till Amazonas där han testade ayahuasca) ambassadör för sinnesutvidgande droger. Psykiatrins mediciner, å ena sidan, och de vanliga drogerna i samhället, å den andra, hör man mycket om. För och emot. Vill man orientera sig på Evans (ett tredje?) område – mystiska upplevelser/andlighet & substanser – då är han en bra introduktör.