The Leap: The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening (An Eckhart Tolle Edition) by Steve Taylor

Author:Steve Taylor [Taylor, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: New World Library
Published: 2017-02-13T17:00:00+00:00

Indeed, a great deal of research shows that psychedelics can bring about a long-lasting shift in perspective and values. As Aldous Huxley famously writes of psychedelic awakening experiences in The Doors of Perception, “The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out.”10 This was illustrated by the theologian Walter Pahnke’s famous “Good Friday Experiment” in 1962, in which a group of theology students were given doses of psilocybin (the active ingredient in “magic” mushrooms) in a religious setting. They all had powerful mystical experiences, including feelings of ecstasy, awe, and oneness. In a follow-up study six months later, eight of ten students said that the experience had had a powerful long-term effect, deepening their sense of spirituality and enriching their lives. And remarkably, this was still the case twenty-five years later. In a follow-up study by the psychedelic researcher Rick Doblin in 1987, most of the original participants reflected that the experience had changed them permanently, giving them a deeper appreciation of life and nature, an increased sense of joy, a reduced fear of death, and greater empathy for minorities and oppressed people.11

There have been similar findings in relation to ayahuasca. The author and proponent of psychedelics Dennis McKenna found that use of the plant “may result in profound, lasting, and positive behavioral and lifestyle changes.”12 He gives the example of an ayahuasca group whose members had a history of addiction and domestic violence. These negative traits fell away with the use of ayahuasca. This recalls the findings of psychedelic therapy programs in the early 1960s, when alcoholics were given LSD. Around a half of them responded positively to the treatment and either became long-term sober or began to drink much less.13

This research makes it clear that psychedelics can have a powerful transformative effect, although not in the sense of generating full-fledged wakefulness. Nevertheless, the secondary shift generated by psychedelics may indirectly lead to a primary shift in the sense that it may encourage a person to follow spiritual practices or paths — or to generally live a lifestyle that is more conducive to wakefulness — in an attempt to recapture their experience. Like awakening experiences in general, psychedelic experiences can provide a glimpse into a new, unsuspected dimension of harmony and meaning, and ideally generate an impulse to return to that dimension on a permanent, stable basis. One of the best examples of this is Ram Dass, formerly a psychology professor at Harvard University (under his birth name, Richard Alpert) and one of the pioneers of research into psychedelics. His experiences with LSD encouraged him to investigate meditation and yoga and to travel to India to study with spiritual teachers. He began a long journey of spiritual awakening that has led him to become one of the most revered spiritual authors and teachers of our time.

The important thing to realize is that psychedelics are not a permanent means of providing us with what they offer us temporarily.

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