Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments:
An Entheogen Chrestomathy
Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D. and Paula Jo Hruby, Ed.D.
Author Index | Title Index
Boundaries of the Soul:
The Practice of Jung's Psychology.
Singer, June. (1973).
Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
ISBN: 0-385-06900-6
Description: Paperback,
xxxvi + 479 pages.
Contents: Introduction,
14 chapters, notes, list of works cited, index, the collected
works of C. G. Jung.
Excerpt(s): No wonder
the present-day "alchemists" have come into prominence
on the college campus. And, like the medieval adepts and their
feminine partners, called "soros," who proclaimed Aurum
nostrum non est aurum vulgi (our gold is not the common gold),
the turned-on generation in speaking of its magical elixir similarly
announces that "our panacea is not the common (medicinal)
drug." The priest-sociologist, Andrew M. Greeley,
in an article titled, "There's a New Time Religion on Campus"
described various groups which combine "the put-on and the
serious, the deliberately comic and the profoundly agonized, ...
the bizarre and the holy," as manifestations of a neo-sacred
movement now observable around the country. (page 131)
In the end, psychedelic chemistry at best becomes
less than the means for exploring what Aldous Huxley
called the "perennial wisdom." It tends to become an
end in itself, a source of boundless lore and contemplation, of
conversational elaboration; in short, it is the whole show. The
way back to that wisdom which persists through the seasons and
returns year by year is not an easy or quick way. It requires
the individual to look at himself with the clearest and most critical
eye, and not only at that which appears on the surface, but at
whatever can be exposed of the hidden aspects within. (page 146)
... Growing out of the concept within certain churches
of "koinonia," an intimate spiritual communion and participative
sharing in common religious commitments and in a spiritual community,
the group left the church behind, and found new bases for their
community. Drugs were, of course, one of the first sacraments
of the new community to be mutually shared, and not so much for
the sake of the drugs themselves, although the protection of the
group was a factor here, but more than that the sharing of the
experience of seeing the world in an exciting new way.
True, the vision was frequently distorted, but it broke through
the bind of conventionally superficial appearances and offered
the possibility of seeing into, rather than just looking
at. (page 148)
Compilation copyright © 1995 – 2001 CSP
|