CHAPTER 16 VARIETY OF RELIGIOUS PATHS IN PSYCHEDELIC LITERATURE Robert Dickins INTRODUCTION: THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION In the mid-to-late 1950s, after the publication of Aldous Huxley's The Doors if Perception (1954) and Heaven and Hell (1956), a debate ensued as to whether hallucinogens, soon to be coined "psychedelics" by Dr. Humphrey Osmond in a letter to Huxley, could be used in order to facilitate a religious/ mystical experience. Although Huxley did not go so far as to equate the vi- sionary experience of mescaline with the mystical in those texts, as described in various works of scripture, the question of their relationship, as it were, was put out into the open. He wrote: Visionary experience is not the same as mystical experience. Mystical experience is beyond opposites. Visionary experience is still within that realm. Heaven entails hell, and "going to heaven" is no more liberation than is the descent into hell. Heaven is merely the vantage point from which the divine Ground can be more clearly seen than on the level of ordinary individualized existence. (Huxley 1994, 102) However, Huxley's literary approach offered a mechanism for the action of psychedelics that would allow for a visionary or religious experience based on a state of ego-loss. He did this by developing a Bergsonian reducing-valve model in order to describe the action of mescaline on consciousness: that mescaline removes certain filters in the brain that gear consciousness to- ward individualized biological necessity. However, rather than saying that one becomes less conscious once these biological definitions are removed, 366 Seeking the Sacred with Psychoactive Substances one, in fact, becomes privy to a wider spectrum of data, a less limited form of consciousness that Huxley described as "mind-at-large." Mind-at-large, in this sense, is equated with a form of "divine Ground," and thus Huxley propounded an ontological pathway from personal consciousness to increas- ingly universal consciousness, which could be induced, partially or other- wise, by facilitated sessions with a psychedelic substance. Furthermore, Huxley couched his approach heavily in the language of scripture, particularly Eastern scripture, which equated the expanded forms of consciousness religiously, and can be aptly described therefore as a psy- chospiritual approach. This becomes even more stark in his final novel Island (1962), wherein an hallucinogenic mushroom described as the "moksha- medicine," facilitates a religious experience for the protagonist based on ego-liberation-moksha is derived from the Sanskrit word for "liberation." That Huxley, and numerous other writers, employed Eastern religious language in order to describe the psychedelic experience has been a bone of contention for some comrnenters and, as a result, raised the question of whether, and which, existing religious systems most appropriately described the experience therein. David Lenson, writing in On Drugs (1995), says the following concern- ing the proliferation of Eastern religious discourse and psychedelics in the mid-soth century: "What would have happened if psychedelics had entered directly into the West without a prejudice generated from the scripture of a distant religion? There is a chance that they might have led to that rarest of moments, a purely Western mysticism" (Lens on 1995, 14<3).This chap- ter contends Lenson's comment on two points. First, it argues that psyche- delics directly entered the Western culture, at the time, through its own disciplines of psychiatry and psychoanalysis and not Eastern scripture; sec- ond, while this scripture was used descriptively by authors, it was not the only religious outlook to mediate people's experience, and did not wholly supersede the psychiatric facilitation and its own mediatory functions. Interestingly, Lenson does not question whether or not the relationship between psychedelics and mysticism is in itself valid, he only laments that it was Eastern approaches that were used to describe it. Yet, contextually speaking, it is important to address this question before proceeding. In his essay "The Anaesthetic Revelation" (2013), Dr. William Rowland- son notes that the partial definition of a mystical experience as "ineffable" means that any textual definition is a debate "between linguistic systems rather than a perceived consensual reality" and therefore writes: "Can one encounter the divine with psychedelic? It depends on your moral, ethical and theological assumptions, and on your understanding of the divine and of'psy- chedelics"(Rowlandson 2013, 239). In this respect, this chapter does not seek to give a definitive answer to whether a genuine mystical, or religious, expe- rience can take place under the influence of psychedelic substances.Rather, Variety of Religious Paths in Psychedelic Literature 867 it seeks to outline the different religiously mediated paths used to describe the psychedelic experience as a textual body of evidence that entered into a discourse post Huxley's texts. However, while not explicitly entering into the debate equating tradi- tional forms of mystical experience with the psychedelic, this chapter does intend to argue for the emergence of a psychiatrically contingent form of religious observance. While not "pure," to use Lenson's term (but what is for that matter?), a combination of psychiatric method and various textual religious descriptions, developed a psychospiritual approach to religion, and religious experience: albeit, at this stage in the 1950s and early 19608, in a deeply experimental form. So while the comparison between psychedelic states and religious/mystical states remains moot due to ineffability, a reli- gious state with its own particular signifiers was being explored and articu- lated through psychedelic literature and practice. This chapter does not claim to be exhaustive in its exploration of the rela- tionship between psychedelics and religious experience in literature, instead it will take into account a number of type-specimens of certain forms of reli- gious discourse. For instance, Jane Dunlap's Exploring Inner Space, in which the author hopes to find a "chemical Christianity," will be a type-specimen for a Christian approach. For each type-specimen there is two objectives: First, to examine and contextualize the content for symbol sets that are associated with the particular religious path in question (the image of Jesus Christ or a cross, for example); second, to relate this to the narrative structure, un- derstood to be contingent to psychiatric methodologies, in order to ground the path within the wider psychospiritual approach. Before looking at these type-specimens more closely, however, it is necessary to first outline psychos- pirituality in terms of method and narrative form, which will be achieved by examining the role of set and setting in psychedelic and psycholytic therapy. PSYCHOSPIRITUALITY: METHOD AND NARRATIVE During their research heyday, before the scheduling of numerous psyche- delic substances in the mid-1960s, set and setting emerged as a first prin- ciple for managing experiences with hallucinogens. In this chapter, this emergence is understood specifically within the context of psychiatry, psy- chotherapy, and literature, as an interdisciplinary dialogue that allowed re- searchers, therapists and writers to approach the experience elicited by these substances through a controlled, experimental method. According to prolific LSD researcher Dr. Stanislav Grof: It has been a puzzling problem since the early years of experiments with LSD to understand how a single drug can produce such an enormous range 368 Seeking the Sacred with Psychoactive Substances of different experiences appearing in various combinations and seemingly on the same continuum. It "vas obvious that the long-term systematic in- vestigation of the LSD procedure in a large number of individuals would be required in order to develop a typology of experiential patterns and sequences. (Grof2010, 14) Un mediated, the effects were uncontrolled and highly variable. As a result, researchers (and therapeutic practitioners) began conducting their work within the confines of increasingly directed aims-such as those contingent to psychotherapy. Indeed, it was made explicit that this was a necessity. In the first British journal article on LSD, by Dr. Ronald Sandison et al., for ex- ample: "\Ve cannot emphasize too strongly, however, that the drug [LSD] does not fall into the group of 'physical' treatments and that it should be used only by skilled psychotherapists and their assistants" (Sandison et a1. 1954, 50S). Thus, through this method the "set" ofa patient could be directed toward the goals of therapy, by what some researchers came to describe as a "guide." Indeed, the psychedelic guide, noted Robert Masters and Jean Hous- ton in their 1966 book The Varieties if Psychedelic Experience should, ideally, be educated in two specialties: psychotherapy and the use of psychedelics (Masters 2000, 132). Moreover, the "setting" of experiences was deemed to have an important effect. Dr. Oscar Janiger, for instance, conducted numerous LSD experiments in naturalistic settings (a small house in Los Angeles) in order to determine the substance's characteristic effects. All settings, he recognized, would have some degree of influence, thus Janiger "concluded one could not conduct any study in a vacuum, nor eliminate all external influences. He decided to keep his set and setting as consistent as possible so that, at the very