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puzzleannie
Guest
As you ask on a Catholic spirituality forum the answer is, to no extent whatever does this drug or whatever explain anything in regard to Christian mysticism unless you can prove that the acknowledge mystics in the Church including those now canonized saints ingested the substance before their mystical experiences. I am sure there are a number of drugs (such as those popular during my college years in the 60s) that could induce a subject to imagine mystical experiences, but that hardly relates in any way shape or form to Christian mysticism.
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Elijah_Baley
Guest
That’s the answer I hope to hear, but this claim isn’t really helping my faith right now, and I’d want some meatier evidence.
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roveau
Guest
I don’t know why this would be trying your faith.
This article is about a South American natural drug used by some of the Indian cultures, not exactly known as a means of religious experience for Christians true to the Catholic faith.
Plus there is no evidence at all that any religious person in Europe over the first 1800 years or so used anything resembling Psilocybin… and no saint at all has been accused of using drugs to get a religious high.
This article is about a South American natural drug used by some of the Indian cultures, not exactly known as a means of religious experience for Christians true to the Catholic faith.
Plus there is no evidence at all that any religious person in Europe over the first 1800 years or so used anything resembling Psilocybin… and no saint at all has been accused of using drugs to get a religious high.
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steveb1
Guest
It might help to conceptualize the issue not as the brain having the mystical experience, but as the subject having the experience.
The brain is a physical organ. The brain is someTHING. The subject is someONE. It is a category error to mix the two and say “we are the brain”. The religious experience does not happen to the three-pound organ in our skulls. Only the neural correlates of the experience happen in the brain. The actual experience and its meaning are the direct experience of the subject. And the experience’s source can in many cases cogently be ascribed to the Spirit based on the principle that the mystically-triggered brain is observing a real, though non-material, reality.
Therefore, even if psychotropic/psychodelic drugs trigger the correlates of mystical experience in the brain, what the subject experiences happens at a different level.
So what if some drugs trigger a mystical, beatific, unitive spiritual experience? It’s not necessarily the drugs or their brain-triggering that matters. What matters is the subject’s subjective experience.
The jury is - and will probably always be - out on this issue: If mystical experience is an opening of the “doors of perception” - whether or not drug-triggered - then the question is primarily perceptual. And if it’s perceptual, then the question becomes, “What is perceived?”
Perhaps mystical drug experience opens the spiritual “door” or “eye” into a non-material realm. It is not necessary that a drug-triggered spiritual experience be by definition illusory and/or delusional. On the contrary, perhaps the triggered-brain, as a perceptual organ, actually does afford glimpses into the spiritual realm. If so, far from constituting a materialist, anti-mystical conclusion, drug-triggered spiritual states may in certain cases actually confirm mystical claims.
Therefore, just because some drugs can instigate mystical states, there is no reason to denigrate the experience or to “protect” Catholic mysticism from it. To the contrary, it would tend to support the Church’s perennial claim that mystical union with God or the Spirit is a reality. Granted, this would oblige the Church to recognize some non-Catholic mystical experiences as valid - which, in a real sense, it already does: after all, “Natural Religion”, too, sometimes conveys God and grace even to non-Catholics and non-Christians, and mystical experience has always been a powerful conduit of experience to the Natural Man and Woman
The brain is a physical organ. The brain is someTHING. The subject is someONE. It is a category error to mix the two and say “we are the brain”. The religious experience does not happen to the three-pound organ in our skulls. Only the neural correlates of the experience happen in the brain. The actual experience and its meaning are the direct experience of the subject. And the experience’s source can in many cases cogently be ascribed to the Spirit based on the principle that the mystically-triggered brain is observing a real, though non-material, reality.
Therefore, even if psychotropic/psychodelic drugs trigger the correlates of mystical experience in the brain, what the subject experiences happens at a different level.
So what if some drugs trigger a mystical, beatific, unitive spiritual experience? It’s not necessarily the drugs or their brain-triggering that matters. What matters is the subject’s subjective experience.
The jury is - and will probably always be - out on this issue: If mystical experience is an opening of the “doors of perception” - whether or not drug-triggered - then the question is primarily perceptual. And if it’s perceptual, then the question becomes, “What is perceived?”
Perhaps mystical drug experience opens the spiritual “door” or “eye” into a non-material realm. It is not necessary that a drug-triggered spiritual experience be by definition illusory and/or delusional. On the contrary, perhaps the triggered-brain, as a perceptual organ, actually does afford glimpses into the spiritual realm. If so, far from constituting a materialist, anti-mystical conclusion, drug-triggered spiritual states may in certain cases actually confirm mystical claims.
Therefore, just because some drugs can instigate mystical states, there is no reason to denigrate the experience or to “protect” Catholic mysticism from it. To the contrary, it would tend to support the Church’s perennial claim that mystical union with God or the Spirit is a reality. Granted, this would oblige the Church to recognize some non-Catholic mystical experiences as valid - which, in a real sense, it already does: after all, “Natural Religion”, too, sometimes conveys God and grace even to non-Catholics and non-Christians, and mystical experience has always been a powerful conduit of experience to the Natural Man and Woman
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MtnDwellar
Guest
Hallucinogenics? They are not what people thought that they were.
After countless experiments, Timothy Leary says that he is no longer capable of rational thought. Brain Damage!
Aleister Crowley said that any spiritual experience was temporary at best and had no effect once the drug wore off.
After countless experiments, Timothy Leary says that he is no longer capable of rational thought. Brain Damage!
Aleister Crowley said that any spiritual experience was temporary at best and had no effect once the drug wore off.
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puzzleannie
Guest
evidence of what?
evidence of a negative?
if you are trying to assert that Christian mystics achieved their experiences under the influence it is up to you to provide evidence.
Non-Christian “mysticism” is not the topic of this forum so not under discussion of course.
If it is your contention that Christian mystics did not, or do not, receive these experiences as gifts from God, but rather as hallucinations due to any natural cause, it is also up to you to provide evidence.
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Barbkw
Guest
Back in my pot head teenage years, LSD and hash were popular. Both give the mind an experience of ordinary things in a way it otherwise would not. Mental perception is falsified (what eyes actually see, the mind misinterprets).
It can be enjoyable (if you enjoy absolute stupidity) or it can be frightening to the point of absolute terror. The mind travels, without conscience or guide, with no ability to reverse the effects until the drug leaves the system.
As the drug leaves the brain - like the memory eraser on the movie “Men in Black” - the mental experiences that seemed so insightful are either forgotten or their rediculousness is reinterpreted as enjoyment.
Here’s a story about two 20 year olds in our state, who under the influence of crystal meth, froze to death in a snow storm. The story relates some of the halluncinations that were phoned into the 911 center:
copronason.com/meth.htm
It can be enjoyable (if you enjoy absolute stupidity) or it can be frightening to the point of absolute terror. The mind travels, without conscience or guide, with no ability to reverse the effects until the drug leaves the system.
As the drug leaves the brain - like the memory eraser on the movie “Men in Black” - the mental experiences that seemed so insightful are either forgotten or their rediculousness is reinterpreted as enjoyment.
Here’s a story about two 20 year olds in our state, who under the influence of crystal meth, froze to death in a snow storm. The story relates some of the halluncinations that were phoned into the 911 center:
copronason.com/meth.htm
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Barbkw
Guest
psychedelic-library.org/pahnke.htm
Multiple faiths achieve - what they classify as- a mystical experience from drug induced stupers.
American Indians use peyote, tribal Indonesias use “dimethyltryptamine (DMT), the active ingredient in the mysterious shamanic ayahuasca tea used by native cultures around the world for vision quests”.
The “vision quests” I went on in my youth, I remember vividly.
Hard to forget:
body motions resembling anesthesia
perspection of time standing still
laughing without the ability to stop
everything being histerically humorous
people turning into cartoon characters
places & circumstances become a comic strip
“reading” others thoughts & minds
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gtrenewed
Guest
Drugs open the user to the demonic realm, to false gods. Proponents of approaching God this way are false prophets.
Seeking God through worship is our spiritual duty and can result in a mystical experience as the Holy Spirit wills.
Seeking God through worship is our spiritual duty and can result in a mystical experience as the Holy Spirit wills.
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fhansen
Guest
I’m no saint and I won’t try to prove this or expect it to be believed, but I’ve been granted a couple of such experiences while fully conscious, no drugs involved, FWIW.
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RosalieM
Guest
The drug-induced experience isn’t real.
The experience is depending on a chemical substance, not on spiritual practices.
Read St. Faustina’s Diary.
The experience is depending on a chemical substance, not on spiritual practices.
Read St. Faustina’s Diary.
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