Religious experience

There is no organized religion of LSD. The LSD experience is one of self awareness and discovery. In this context, LSD is used specifically for medical reasons/personal psychotherapy. Many individuals who occasionally take LSD may not smoke marijuana, cigarettes or use any other drugs for that matter. 

---

White, Helen Constance. The metaphysical poets a study in religious experience. New York Macmillan, 1936. ix, 444p. 

James W. (1902). The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York Longmans, Green. 

Since the same chemical in different contexts induces hallucinations of local cultural significance, there is unlikely to be a specific mechanism related to spiritual or religious experience. While most would assume visions induced by chemical hallucinogens result from released memories or associative processes. 

Nonetheless, Munsterberg did not actually invent the term as it turns out, as early as 1890 the noted American psychologist William James, a justly celebrated author of The Varieties of Religious Experience (1901), used the adjective ready-made. Most interesting in this interpretive context is the fact that James employed the term to describe the adherents of the Esoteric Tradition (one of whom later, 1913, actually used the term ready-made), especially those who believed that mediums could actually communicate with the spirits of the dead. James then scoffingly said (notwithstanding his... 

For some strictly occultist, fin de siecle discussions of dreams and the unconscious, see (among others) Blavatsky, Doctrine Secrete, vol. 1, 170 Bragdon, Four-Dimensional Vistas, chapter 6 ( Sleep and Dreams ) Carpenter, 72, 105 W. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 405, 483-85 Ouspensky, Tertium Organum, 239. 

The Varieties of Religious Experience A Study in Human Nature. London,... 

We ll discuss scientists view of parallel universes further in Chapter 6, but for now, notice how close Lovecraft s theories are to those of William James, who wrote in The Varieties of Religious Experience ... 

I have no indication that Einstein ever experimented with psychoactive drugs to test their effect on his already hypercreative brain, but, even for Einstein, a feeling of transcendence was important. He said, I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research. ... 

Various religious prophets such as Saint Paul, Ezekiel, and Mohammed may have suffered from epileptic seizures. Recently, several nuns with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) have provided evidence that TLE is the root of many mystical religious experiences. For example, one former nun apprehended God in TLE seizures and described the experience ... 

James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience A Study in Human Nature (New York Modem Library reprint edition, 1994), first published in 1902. 

CSP has a twofold mission to identify and develop approaches to primary religious experience that can be used safely and effectively, and to help individuals and spiritual communities bring the insights, grace, and joy that arise from direct perception of the divine into their daily lives. 

CSP support for master s and doctoral research on primary religious experience... 

In the third place, the capacity to hallucinate, to believe the impossible, and to experience visions and delusional thoughts all steeped in a broth of passionate emotion is, for normal persons as well as for the mentally ill, a variety of religious experience. At first glance it would appear that drug takers wanted to become psychotic. 

Timothy Leary, "The Religious Experience Its Production and Interpretation," Psychedelic Review, 3,1964, p. 324. 

When religious experiences of a certain kind are produced, those who share the experience tend to band together. From this tendency has emerged the denominations of Protestantism. The same phenomenon has taken place among those whose religious horizons have been altered by their drug... 

Prior to the experiment, the twenty subjects had been matched in ten pairs on the basis of data from the pre-drug questionnaires, interviews, and psychological tests. Past religious experience, religious background, and general psycho-... 

---