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Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments:
An Entheogen Chrestomathy
Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D. and Paula Jo Hruby, Ed.D.
Author Index | Title Index
- Restless Is the Heart:
- A Perspective on Love and Violence and Their Relationship.
Kimball, Robert. (1988).
Bristol, IN: Wyndam Hall.
- ISBN: 1-55605-021-6 hardcover
- 1-55605-022-1 paperback
Description: Hardcover,
viii + 173 pages.
Contents: 7 chapters,
afterword, references, about the author.
Note: The author is Professor
of Theological Ethics and Dean of the Thomas Starr
King School for the Ministry, Berkeley, California, and a member
of the doctoral faculty of The Graduate
Theological Union.
Excerpt(s): I had an
interesting day back in 1964, when Sam, Bill and I took advantage
of an offer by a psychiatrist friend to take some carefully produced
and measured Swiss LSD. It was my one experience with this powerful
drug. ...
Sam and Bill's talking began to annoy me. Then the
annoyance would pass. This happened a few times-annoyance/no annoyance.
Back and forth. Then the annoyance started to stir up more and
more anger in me, while the no annoyance turned more and more
to laughter. The back and forth rhythm continued.
As the intensity of the feeling built up (and the
quality of the emerging feeling gets more and more difficult to
report) I began to think of East and West, and of that aspect
of Eastern thought where the individual dissolves or merges into
the great Atman soul, and that aspect of Western thought where
the individual focuses more and more into the concreteness of
the individual self. Back and forth. Back and forth.
The back and forth rhythm both continued and built,
and suddenly a knowing-feeling happened, the rhythm stopped, there
was a oneness of all. Different as both ends of the pendulum rhythm
were, all of a moment, they were one and the same. There was no
distinction of East or West, thinking or feeling, laughter or
anger.
I relaxed and knew the LSD trip had begun. I followed
the psychiatrist's advice regarding the frightening. "If
something scary appears, don't flee from it, go towards it, and
it will disappear." And it did. The somethings all became
nothing to fear.
*
There is a pulse of rhythm between East and West
which can give life to our one world. There is the capacity of
East to address, not flee, Nothing; and to know, not hide from,
peace.
My hard-to-describe moment of knowing-feeling on
a king sized mattress, may not have been simply a drug induced
state. With all due respect for our differences, we may all, East
and West, be more basically human than otherwise. (pages 117-119)
Compilation copyright © 1995 – 2001 CSP
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