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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
Varieties of Psychedelic Experience.
Masters, R. E. L., and Houston, Jean. (1966).
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
ISBN: None
Description: First edition
hardback, viii + 326 pages.
Contents: 9 chapters,
epilogue, notes.
Excerpt(s): S, at one
year after his session , continued to regard himself
as "transformed" and to behave as he feels he could
only behave as a consequence of an authentic transformation. These
two criteria: subjective certainty that a transformation
has occurred, and behavioral changes of a positive character
supporting the certainty of transformation, seem to us to be sufficient
evidence that the person has in fact been transformed.
This does not mean that all questions are thereby answered.
We have said that this is an authentic religious
experience. By that we can only mean that it is authentic in terms
of such criteria as we are able to devise for measuring whether
such an experience is or is not authentic. Someone else may say
that "God can't be found in a bottle" and go on from
there to say that one cannot have a religious experience without
God. Ergo, whatever else may be involved in this case,
it is not a religious experience. Definition then excludes the
possibility that we are correct and the discussion ends there.
However, anyone arguing in this way must also, we think, rule
out most of the "religious experiences" of many famous
mystics and saints, since these persons, too, induced in themselves
physiological changes instrumental in bringing about confrontation
with God and mystical union. Drugs are quicker, but the principle
would seem to be the same. (page 299)
That the "entelechical" process so often
moves toward confrontation with the most potent and beneficent
of all man's symbols-God-scarcely should surprise us. Neither
should we be surprised when we know how often the movement is
just toward this "Symbol," that the God is potent
and that the confrontation with God, the authentic religious experience,
does have the power to transform. (page 301)
This compilation by Thomas B. Roberts & Paula Jo Hruby, © 1995-2003 CSP
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