Toward a viable model of how religious literalism overshadowed entheogenic
mysticism and the entheogenic origin and vital fountainhead of myth-religion.
According to the entheogenic non-literalist theory of the origin and
development of religions, pretty much all the religions began from entheogen
use, not from a literal founder, and always retained a strong tradition of
entheogen use and purely esoteric, non-literalist thinking, though this has
consistently been obscured by the official religionists and by the
thick-headed cluelessness and shallow literalism of the modern era’s
sensibilities.
We’ve been trained to see literalist religion everywhere, but must learn to
instead see entheogenic religion everywhere.
This article defines the main outlines for an entheogenic non-literalist
theory of the origin and development of religions.
I’m committed to the axiom that religion is really about entheogenic
experiencing and entheogenic insight rather than literalism, ethics, and the
supernatural. This may seem at first to be problematic and therefore
unthinkable. However, recall that worldviews are a dime a dozen.
Nothing is easier than constructing a worldmodel that is consistent according
to its innate version of what consistency means, and logical according to its
own built-in conception of what it means to be logical, and well supported by
the evidence, according to its own, characteristic, built-in conception of
what constitutes evidential support. Every interpretive framework has
strengths and weaknesses.
Literalist Christian history, including the New Testament version of the
history of the origin of the Christian religion, is strongly accepted even
though it is deeply improbable by the standards of the skeptical minority, and
even when reasonable people scientifically discard the supernatural miracles,
they still accept the New Testament version of history overall.
So improbability, even gross improbability, has never been a serious
impediment to adopting a worldview. A battle between interpretive frameworks
is a largely even contest; both sides have elements that can be considered
strengths and weaknesses, evidence and counter-evidence.
The theory that religion is really about entheogens rather than literalism is
no different than the literalist, New Testament-based theory, that religion
originates like a big bang at a point in time from the immensely great and
innovative deeds and teachings of a founding figure, an original religious
superstar.
Literalist Christianity has had many years to explain away its difficulties
and highlight its reasonableness and put into place the standards of
assessment that are optimized to favor literalism. The entheogen theory of
the origin of religions has hardly had a year or two to begin — a strong
candidate for the start of the building of this case, as far as Christianity,
is John Allegro’s 1967 book The Sacred Mushroom & The Cross — and that was
just an isolated theory about one religion in isolation.
Who before me has made a general proposal that the real meaning and origin of
all the religions is entheogenic? McKenna seems to propose something like
that, but that doesn’t come across clearly.
I have my own particular model of entheogens and religion and myth, and am
bound to raise the question in a way that favors my own theory, but I ask:
what scholar has proposed that basically, all religion originates, and all the
religions originated, from entheogens? Did Wasson propose that? Leary? The
assertion requires qualification, of course.
No doubt, many things that can be called religions did not proceed from
entheogens directly, and many individuals who are conventionally considered
religious are oblivious to entheogens. So clarifying the assertion or
proposal is a main step in erecting this interpretive framework. The proposal
in short is that “religion and religions are really, essentially, originally
entheogenic, not Literalist”, or more tersely, “religion is really
entheogenic, not literalist”.
This proposal can be called “the entheogenic theory of the origin of
religions” and particularly applies to Christianity as well, and implies a
rejection of the default counter-proposal that currently is dominant, which
may be called “the literalist theory of the origin of religions” and takes it
for granted that Buddha started Buddhism, just like the Buddhists say, and
Jesus Christ started Christianity (together with Paul) just like the New
Testament says, and Mohammed started Islam, and Moses and Abraham started
Judaism.
Much scholarship has been done by Christians and skeptics to examine and
account for the weaknesses of the literalist theory of the origin of
Christianity. Almost no scholarship has been done to examine and account for
the weaknesses of the entheogenic theory of the origin of Christianity. First
of all, we need to start defining what these weaknesses are.
The origin, essence, inspiration, and source of Christianity is really
entheogens rather than the literalist factors such as the big bang New
Testament story, where the causal explosion event is held to be the
resurrection, Jesus’ incredible and stunning ethical innovation, or Paul’s
incredibly and unbelievably rapid proselytizing.
But why is there so much credence given to the literalist theory and so little
evidence for the entheogen theory?
Why are the predominant religions so averse to psychoactives?
Why does the typical religionist — Buddhist, Christian, and others — take
such offense to any positive role of psychoactives as the historical source of
inspiration for their religion?
We need to work to gradually clarify how entheogens may have been used as a
source of early Christianity, and how they reinvigorated early Christianity.
On the other side, we need to clarify the main varieties of the literalist
theory of the origin of Christianity: there are perhaps three main versions:
Supernatural Literalism, demythified literalism, and gradual-coalescence
literalism.
Supernatural literalism as a theory of the origin of Christianity is the
proposal that Jesus existed, and was crucified, and miraculously was raised to
life by God; the disciples became apostles and Paul did as well, as reported
in Acts. Between half and all of the Bible miracles are true, particularly
the great deeds of Jesus. The Holy Spirit descended on a particular
historical day, mysteriously and inexplicably.
Jesus will literally return and battle the forces of evil, and all souls will
be judged and sorted into heaven and hell. N.T. Wright holds this position.
Demythified literalism accepts many of the above scenario aspects, but removes
all the supernatural or miraculous elements, and soft-pedals hell and heaven,
and holds an awkward stance of accepting that some miracles could happen, that
the overall history of the start of Christianity as told in the New Testament
is true. Jesus and the other characters in the New Testament existed, but
either didn’t rise after his crucifixion, or was never fully dead, and was
resuscitated and may have gone to India.
This view normally assumes that a historical Jesus played an important and
necessary role; Christianity as we know it couldn’t have started without some
historical Jesus. This view is considered liberal, but certainly not radical
to any degree. This view tends to assume that Christianity began as a mostly
single, unified religion, though often besieged by breakaway sects and various
dissenters or deviants.
Gradual-coalescence literalism still hangs onto many of the above elements,
usually taking for granted the historicity of a single Jesus figure and of
Paul and of some of the New Testament characters. However, it doesn’t hold
the existence of Jesus to be necessary for the origin of Christianity. It
holds that the driving force behind Christianity at the start was the various
schools or sects, with various combinations of Hellenistic high philosophy,
Jewish sects, and gnostic groups.
Christianity began in extreme diversity and multiplicity, and was only brought
together into an apparently single religion around 313. This viewpoint is
promoted definitively by Burton Mack, who doesn’t challenge the assumption
that there was a single historical Jesus, but whose theory is entirely
independent of whether there was such an individual. This is considered
moderately radical.
Those are the three main frameworks that currently reign. Any big bookstore
has several books promoting each view. The gradual-coalescence view is the
most cutting-edge relative to mainstream scholarly consensus. Supernatural
literalism is a huge popular market which supports the constant publication of
many books upholding that set of assumptions about the nature of the origin of
Christianity.
Demythified literalism is mainstream in the Churches. By defining and
differentiating between these three existing, mainstream views, we have
several points of view which help to define the position of the entheogenic
theory of the origin of Christianity.
We also at the start of this project need to differentiate possible main
variants of the entheogenic theory: Jesus as an entheogenic hierophant, and
Jesus as purely a personification of the entheogen, like Dionysus. Mainstream
scholars mention Allegro’s theory by incorrectly describing the scenario as
“Jesus was the leader of a mushroom cult.”
Allegro’s theory actually held that Jesus was the mushroom, not the leader of
consuming mushrooms. Allegro assumes that Christianity was originally
singular, and later branched. The same mode of thinking happens if you assume
Buddha used mushrooms: you accept the premise of a literal founding figure
who, in big bang fashion, started a single original version of the religion,
that later branched.
The several main literalist and entheogenic views of religious origins must
also be defined for Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism. What are the three main
literalist views of the origin of those religions? What are the two or three
main entheogenic models of the origin of those religions? Was Buddha the
leader of a mushroom cult? Or was Buddha strictly the mushroom consumed?
Was Moses a user of mushrooms? Or instead, was Moses a traditional mythic
figure that was explored by mushroom users in the Jewish tradition? I see two
main entheogenic theories of the origin of any religion: either the founder
used entheogens, or the founder didn’t exist but is a personification of the
use of entheogens or of the experience-cycle resulting in the life of a
follower by using entheogens.
These positions can be called the literalist entheogenic position, and the
purely entheogenic position. So at a high level we have two paradigms to
compare: literalist versus entheogenic, but at a more detailed level, we have
five paradigms to compare.
I use the words “conservative”, “liberal”, and “radical” with caution: it’s
all relative. I use the terms here in the conventional, consensus sense,
though I point out that they are tricky and full of assumptions; in general,
one man’s “radical” is another man’s “conservative”.
The most radical of the literalist theories, gradual-coalescence literalism,
is very compatible with viewing entheogens as the origin of some sects, but
probably not of all sects. That acceptance and compatibility makes the
first-order approximation, “literalist versus entheogenic”, problematic.
The most conservative of the entheogen theories, the “literalist entheogenic”
position in which the founding figure consumed entheogens, is very literalist
while being entheogenic as well, which again makes the first-order
approximation, “literalist versus entheogenic”, problematic.
We can see my two first-order groupings touching: Burton Mack could accept
that some of the earliest schools of what would become Christianity utilized
entheogens, and Jesus’ own group may have done so as one of those diverse
groups — that’s the “Jesus tripping with the Essenes at Qumran” scenario,
which is very popular with the entheogenists, who wish to gain Jesus as a
powerful political ally in the drug policy reformation movement.
Even in the entheogen camp we can see the forces of literalism at work:
gaining mundane power is often helped by a literalist rather than purely
mystic framework of assumptions.
The two groups and the five subgroups I’ve identified, as theories of the
origin of Christianity, are:
Literalist theory:
Supernatural literalism
Demythified literalism
Gradual-coalescence literalism
Entheogenic theory:
literalist entheogenic
purely entheogenic
My theory is that Christianity and the religions are really entheogenic and
not literalist. My main problem is that there is so much evidence for
religions being about literalism and so little evidence of religions being
about entheogens.
The main work, in putting forth a viable theory of the entheogenic origin of
religions, is to explain why, if religions are really about entheogen use and
originate from entheogen use, there is so little evidence of that, and so much
evidence that suggests a literal founding-figure origin and especially an
intensely literalist tradition.
Two possibilities instantly come to mind together: that there really isn’t
much evidence for a literal founding-figure, and there really isn’t much
evidence that the later tradition was so literalist as we in the modern era
have thought.
So we have a puzzle developing, with some complexity and flexibility. First
we find that there is no single literalist version of a religion or literalist
model of the start of a religion, and there is no single entheogen-compatible
model of a religion’s origin or later tradition. These latter points indicate
another distinction we must address: there are two periods to distinctly
debate: whether a religion was *originally* about entheogens or literalism,
and whether that religion was *later* about entheogens or literalism.
I am committed to defining and promoting the most extreme view, that all the
religions, in their origin and their later development, we about entheogen
use, and, they were neither started by a literal founding figure nor later
based on the assumption of a literal founding figure. All the religions began
as non-literalist entheogenic initiation rites and continued as non-literalist
entheogenic initiation rites.
This is the opposite in every way of the conservative Christian assumptions
about the religions: they assume that all the religions were founded by a
literal founding figure and didn’t involve entheogens. Literalist
anti-entheogenists have a literalist anti-entheogenic theory of what all
religions are about and how they started.
Literalist entheogenists (“Jesus and Buddha took mushrooms, and so did the
most esoteric of their later followers”) have a literalist entheogenic theory
of what all religions are about and how they started. Purist entheogenists
must now work to create an equivalent model. It’s not a matter of whether it
can be done. Any model, interpretive framework, paradigm, worldview, or
worldmodel can be constructed and defended, and it’s not that difficult.
Self-consistent systems are a dime a dozen.
Just as the most conservative literalist saves his credibility by grudgingly
admitting that some religion is nonliteralist and entheogenic, so should the
purist entheogenist admit that not all religion is purely entheogenic and
nonliteral. These two camps are arguing then about the relative size of the
two kinds of religion models, or histories.
As a purist entheogenist, I argue that religion has always “really” been about
entheogens and not literalist elements. Much of the work of paradigm
definition concerns defining what exactly is meant by that “really”. This
includes addressing the question not of *whether* drugs were used in
Christianity or other religions, but only *how commonly* and how influentially
or how importantly.
A purist entheogenist theory of the origin of religion can be a purist
entheogenic theory of what all religions are about and how they started. By
“purist”, I mean emphatically and definitely rejecting the literalist
explanations of the origin of religions. “Purist entheogenist” means an
entirely entheogenic, and not at all a literalist, model of the origin of the
religions.
We need a model of how religious literalism overshadowed entheogenic
mysticism, at least overshadowing it according to the official histories.
This suggests another piece of the puzzle, the distinction between the
official histories of religions and the actual, perhaps popular or mystic or
radical histories and actualities of the religions. Certainly, Christianity
is portrayed in the great majority of books as literalist and not entheogenic.
Let’s change what we’re defining a bit:
The “purist entheogenic theory of religion” holds that a religion was *both
originally and later* really about entheogen use rather than literalist
concerns.
The “purist entheogenic theory of the origin of religions” holds that a
religion was *originally* about entheogen use rather than literalist concerns.
The “purist entheogenic theory of the development of religions” holds that a
religion was *during the main, central part of its history* about entheogen
use rather than literalist concerns.
Spelling out the first of those three theory-names, the most extreme theory is
the purist entheogenic theory of the origin and development of religions. I
may be the first to formulate such an extreme and uncompromising model. This
theory holds that generally, all the religions were originally about
entheogens, not literalist concerns, and were later about entheogens, not
literalist concerns.
It is practically easiest to formulate this extreme theory, and then later
ease back and see how much compromise must be admitted and how much ground
must be conceded to the literalist views of origins and developments of
religions.
I am willing to grant that Joseph Smith existed as a single, historical
individual who used Amanita and started the Mormon church, perhaps somewhat
like Tim Leary existed and consumed psilocybin and then LSD and started the
LSD cult, exemplified by the League for Spiritual Discovery.
There may be many combinations:
The founder did/didn’t exist. The founder did/didn’t take entheogens. The
original members did/didn’t use entheogens. The later followers did/didn’t
take entheogens.
Permutating the combinations:
0000 The founder didn’t exist. The founder didn’t take entheogens. The
original members didn’t use entheogens. The later followers didn’t take
entheogens. (Typical no-historical-Jesus position)
0001 The founder didn’t exist. The founder didn’t take entheogens. The
original members didn’t use entheogens. The later followers did take
entheogens. (The “later deviant esotericists” position)
0010 The founder didn’t exist. The founder didn’t take entheogens. The
original members did use entheogens. The later followers didn’t take
entheogens.
0011 The founder didn’t exist. The founder didn’t take entheogens. The
original members did use entheogens. The later followers did take entheogens.
(The purist entheogenic theory of the origin and development of religion,
“Pretty much all the religions began from entheogen use, not from a literal
founder, and always retained a strong tradition of entheogen use and purely
esoteric, non-literalist thinking, though this has consistently been obscured
by the official religionists and by the thick-headed cluelessness and shallow
literalism of the modern era’s sensibilities”)
0100 The founder didn’t exist. The founder did take entheogens. The original
members didn’t use entheogens. The later followers didn’t take entheogens.
0101 The founder didn’t exist. The founder did take entheogens. The original
members didn’t use entheogens. The later followers did take entheogens.
0110 The founder didn’t exist. The founder did take entheogens. The original
members did use entheogens. The later followers didn’t take entheogens.
0111 The founder didn’t exist. The founder did take entheogens. The original
members did use entheogens. The later followers did take entheogens.
1000 The founder did exist. The founder didn’t take entheogens. The original
members didn’t use entheogens. The later followers didn’t take entheogens.
1001 The founder did exist. The founder didn’t take entheogens. The original
members didn’t use entheogens. The later followers did take entheogens.
1010 The founder did exist. The founder didn’t take entheogens. The original
members did use entheogens. The later followers didn’t take entheogens.
1011 The founder did exist. The founder didn’t take entheogens. The original
members did use entheogens. The later followers did take entheogens.
1100 The founder did exist. The founder did take entheogens. The original
members didn’t use entheogens. The later followers didn’t take entheogens.
(“Jesus was secretly using mushrooms, but his followers never understood
this.”)
1101 The founder did exist. The founder did take entheogens. The original
members didn’t use entheogens. The later followers did take entheogens.
1110 The founder did exist. The founder did take entheogens. The original
members did use entheogens. The later followers didn’t take entheogens. (The
popular literalist entheogenist theory of an originally entheogenic and later
degenerated, placebo tradition – “Jesus was an entheogenic hierophant on top
of whom Christianity later developed in a distorted way, lacking the
psychoactive sacrament Jesus used with this disciples”)
1111 The founder did exist. The founder did take entheogens. The original
members did use entheogens. The later followers did take entheogens. (“Jesus
started Christianity as a mushroom cult and is has remained so among his true
followers in the esoteric semi-suppressed tradition”)
Combination 0011 is the purist entheogenic theory of the origin and
development of religion, which I advocate and am defining.
I leave it as a fun exercise for the reader to add parenthetical
characterizations of the remaining permutations of assumptions above.
The above is the top-level outline of the challenge. The detailed work
remains, to explain exactly and in detail how it was that each religion
started with entheogen use, and didn’t start with a literal founder, and
continued with a strong tradition of entheogen use and a strong tradition of
purely esoteric, mystic-state, allegorical understanding of the religion’s
mythic framework.
It remains to explain exactly how those strong entheogenic, allegorical-only
origins and traditions were not clearly reflected in the literature and
artwork that is commonly available. Books about mysticism and entheogenic
religion always have half a page explaining rather carelessly and casually
that the officials naturally wanted to retain control, so suppressed those who
sought and promoted direct experiential knowledge of the sacred realm.
But if such books want to effectively promote their view of mysticism and
entheogens, clearly a whole chapter and book are required to explain exactly
and in detail how the suppression of the mystics and the suppression of
entheogen use worked in practice.
If a huge number of original and later members of the religion were mystics
(whether literalists or anti-literalists) and entheogenist mystics (whether
literalist or anti-literalist), why is there so little evidence for the
existence of the mystic version of Christianity, and why is there so little
evidence for the use of entheogens in the beginning and later development of
the religions?
Why exactly was the mystic version of each religion suppressed so much and so
effectively, and why exactly was the common use of entheogens suppressed so
determinedly and so effectively?
To gain insight on how suppression and distortion works with regard to
mysticism and entheogens, look for comparable examples from the current era.
Consider the suppression of LSD references in rock from 1965 through the 1970s
and beyond, how it forced the creation of covert encoded lyrical allusions to
LSD phenomena instead.
Also look at how drug prohibition has distorted history, museum exhibits,
cognitive science, psychotherapy, and religious practice, making a perfectly
complete and extreme mockery of the claim to allowing religious freedom (you
can practice any fake, placebo, ineffective, nontransformative religion you
want).
Another strategy that must be used in this project is to consider the
religions both as a group and individually, striving to find and assert the
commonness of entheogenic anti-literalist features in the start and
development of every religion. By now, there are a couple books that make the
case for the presence of entheogens in each religion, and there are a handful
of good books on the mystic, psychological, symbolic, esoteric reading of
Christianity, as well as such books about other religions.
A couple of the Christian mysticism books advocate the purely mystic,
anti-literalist view of the origin of Christianity (Alvin Huhn’s book Rebirth
for Christianity, Freke & Gandy’s books The Jesus Mysteries and Jesus & The
Goddess), or assert that the later Christians were entirely concerned with the
allegorical archetypal psychological, esoteric Christ, and unconcerned with
the historical Jesus (Watts’ book on Christian symbolism).
Dan Merkur’s books Mystery of Manna and Psychedelic Sacrament reveal
entheogens in Jewish religion. This is the first time enough books exist so
that a theorist can focus on gathering their fruits to begin to formulate a
sweeping theory that all religions started and remained entheogenic and not
literalist. I’m really pushing the edge here. I really doubt that anyone
else has brought these ideas to this logical culmination point.
This is a paradigm shift, in that a minority hold the New Testament to be all
fictional, a minority holds the Old Testament to be all fictional, a minority
holds that entheogens are present at the start of some religions, a minority
holds that entheogens were present at the start of most religions including
Christianity, and a minority hold that entheogens have always been
significantly present in all religions.
It’s time to combine and resolve these epicyclic corrections or Newtonian
spacetime incongruities into a theory that can better accommodate all of them.
Another element in this framework formation is to examine the ongoing dynamic
tug-of-war between official literalism and mysticism, including entheogenic
mysticism. Look at the relations between official literalism and mainstream
mystics, and consider that relationship to be present even more pronouncedly
between the official religionists and the entheogenic mystics. Was there
really such a thing as non-entheogenic mystics, or does it finally turn out
that basically all mystics used entheogens?
Something similar happens with regard to the debate about the freedom of the
will in both philosophy and religion, as well as in quantum mechanics and
artificial intelligence or consciousness research. Treat this as a related
distinct case of suppression and distortion and potential paradigm shift, a
hot, ever-contested pivot point of concern to mystics and officials.
Free will is discussed so much but yet so little, and always so contentiously.
Concern with the subject of the freedom of the will always turns out to be as
central in theology as the Eucharist, and is a standard concern of mysticism,
but it still isn’t discussed in popular religion. It is truly amazing that no
one has written a book on the history of determinism — it is a subject so
hot, so widespread, so close to us that it doesn’t occur to look and see that
the subject is very common and widespread.
The strong entheogen theory of religion requires seeing something everywhere,
in the center of the picture, where before we kept seeing it scattered here or
there as isolated heresies or deviance off to the side.
It is a revolution in perspective to stop painting literalism in the middle of
the religious scene, with mystics and magic plants off to the side demoted to
scattered heresies, and instead start painting the historical picture with the
literalists demoted to the role of annoying deviants and scattered minor
cults, with entheogenic mysticism in the middle.
I am concerned that many would-be progressive scholars do themselves a
disservice by taking too many conventional assumptions for granted, and
questioning one piece in isolation. These baby steps won’t go anywhere; they
are band-aids and stopgaps. Let’s begin from the maximal postulate that all
religion is really about entheogens rather than literalism. A wholesale
paradigm shift is much faster than incremental change, and there are now
enough books to begin making the maximal theory viable.
Any paradigm can be built up and supported; let’s try this one and see how
much ground were are forced to conceded when looking through this lens and
using this framework’s standards of assessment of what’s plausible and what’s
implausible. From the vantage point this system entails, it is implausible to
have a religion in which entheogens aren’t central, both in the origin and
later development.
Entheogens are powerful, reliable, and widespread; people have every reason to
make entheogens the center of religion, and no reason not to, except for
reasons that are outside religion, such as moralism, social convention, and
political contention.
The latter suggests some useful main categories for explaining how entheogens
have been largely suppressed from the official, false history of religion.
Religion appears literalist rather than entheogenic because of reasons that
mainly include (bad and distorting) reasons in various domains such as
political, social, moral, and psychological.
McKenna provides an example in the latter field: he expressed clearly the
proposal that popular spirituality rejects entheogens because people are
afraid of the very intensity and religious experiencing that they think they
are seeking.
Most popular religion functions mainly as a substitutive protection against
actual religious experiencing: “actual religious experiencing is too strong
and upsetting, yet you naturally desire transcendence — the solution is to
kid ourselves by using a harmless substitute, like playing violent video games
or watching violent movies instead of beating on each other with sticks.
Popular religion is a harmless substitute for real religion, which we desire
but are apprehensive of. This may help to explain more convincingly the
puzzling question of why people go to church even though it is in fact so
obviously completely untransformative. Theology books are packed from cover
to cover with talk about Christianity as a religion of powerful inward
transformation, yet nothing could be less transformative, obviously, than
sitting listening to a sermon and eating crackers and drinking grape juice.
Such popular religion is essentially safe placebo substitute religion,
providing an inert placebo to temporarily gratify one’s innate desire for
transcendence and awakening of the higher mind, while protecting from the
travails of actual psychic death and rebirth.
Popular religion is a make-believe to satisfy one’s higher drive while safely
avoiding paying the price and experiencing the downfall — a way to have your
religious drive satisfied, somewhat, for awhile, while keeping your egoic
worldmodel safe and sound and comfortable, at the same time. It’s a religion
of comfortable substitute gratification for drives that would otherwise lead
to uncomfortable actual transformation — because real initiation does have
aspects that are deeply uncomfortable.
Such safe, comfortable, placebo substitute religion staves off that annoying
inner drive toward actual transcendence. Ken Wilber’s early book The Atman
Project explains this drive and futile, temporary substitution. I would
define Boomeritis as being exactly this placebo religiosity, rather than some
nebulous psychology-speak like Wilber’s vague label “narcissism”.
Most spirituality is placebo religion, a substitute to protect the egoic mind
from ego death which would happen in actual, real, genuine religion. The
issue or right move isn’t one from “religion” to “spirituality”. The way
those are contrasted usually means rejecting the lowest form of religion and
embracing a somewhat higher (middle) level of religion.
We could describe this more accurately as progressing from substitute religion
to substitute spirituality to real religion. Today’s “spirituality” is
nothing but substitute, literalist, supernaturalist religion minus the
supernatural and authoritarian elements; it doesn’t have anything more
positive to contribute than the official/literalist/supernaturalist versions
of the religions.
Like Protestantism was created largely by subtracting from an often-empty
Catholicism, so was today’s “spirituality” created largely by subtracting from
Protestantism, and then sprinkling on some decoration. Today’s “spirituality”
isn’t significantly more transformative than official literalism; at best, it
is less inauthentic, rather than more authentic.
Even mysticism, as officially portrayed in the regular Christian books,
wouldn’t be significantly more transformative than the official religion of
supernaturalist literalism, ceremonies and sermons. I don’t intend to
disparage people who have used entheogens and respect them as fully legitimate
and chose to meditate without them.
It’s a lie that non-augmented meditation is more legitimate than entheogens.
It’s a false history to claim that entheogens were deviant rather than
essential and central within the best part of a religious tradition. The
official literalists would claim that entheogens are the worst part of their
religious tradition, contributing only negatively; but actually, entheogens
are the best and most definitive part of a religious tradition.
To gain one degree of authenticity, leave the literalists and go to the
mystics; to gain two degrees, leave the anti-entheogen mystics and go to the
entheogenic mystics. Then you will have arrived at the heart, origin, and
foundation of the religion, joining the true hidden Church of which the
literalist church is a poor imitation.
Someone told me that he liked Jewish mystic contemplation until it actually
started to succeed at producing cognitive changes — then it was uncomfortable
and frightening, so he quit.
I’d be satisfied if today’s spiritualists would admit that they are
apprehensive of the negative effects of the actual transformative religious
state of cognition, and are knowingly and intentionally settling for a lite,
safe, comforting, denatured, domesticated, neutered, ersatz, make-believe,
cargo-cult, placebo, substitute version of religion — one designed to satisfy
one’s natural thirst for transcendence, without providing any actual
transcendence, which includes uncomfortable aspects.
As usual, prohibition complicates and distorts the picture — some people
would like to use entheogens or wish others would be allowed to use them, but
are forced to settle like Grof for far less effective and reliable triggers of
the mystic state, such as meditation. Prohibition promotes disparagement of
entheogens and treating them as isolated, unfortunate deviations within
religious traditions.
Prohibition, official literalist religion, and popular spirituality all work
together to distort and suppress the role of entheogens in religious history
and to strongly disparage their use.
This widespread systematic distortion and suppression helps to explain how
we’ve ended up with the opposite of the truth, bolstering the literalist
theory of the origin and development of religions, which only serves to
obscure history and block actual religious transformation, when we should be
uncovering the entheogenic theory of the origin of religions.
— Michael Hoffman
http://www.egodeath.com — simple theory of the ego-death and rebirth
experience
The Egodeath theory 
