Similarities and Differences Between Religious Mysticism and Drug-Induced Experiences
Abstract
Similarities and Differences Between Religious Mysticism and Drug-induced Experiences PAUL S. KURTZ Los Altos, California Overlapping the study of religious mysticism is a curious but persistent attempt to enhance the search for deity by the use of certain vegetable materials. In more than five thousand years of perilous and sometimes fatal searching, nameless and anonymous Caribs, Aztecs, Persians, Siberians, Russians, Brahmans, Africans, and American Indians have conducted their undocumented research. There are no scientific papers from which we can study their experiments with soma, hashish, cohoba, ololiuqui, peyote, Syrian rue, caapi spruce, the fungus teonanacatl, the two amanita mush- rooms-pantherina and muscaria, the iboga bean, the fierce virola snuff from a nutmeg-like tree in Amazonia, and many unknown others. Just at the turn of our century (in 1896) a more scientific inquiry began with the discovery of the synthetic form of peyote, mescalin, by Heffter. Unfortunately, mescalin research by such persons as Berringer and Kluver fell victim to popular behaviorism. A sudden revival of interest began with the discovery of LSD-25 (Lysergic acid diethylamide) in Switzerland in 1943. This is a chemical agent so potent that it has made homeopathy seem less improbable. Still a third chemical has