Magic Mushrooms and Religious Experience

Since the 1960s they've been called magic mushrooms for their hallucinogenic visions. A recent, reputable study provides evidence of their means to provide immediate and long term, mood altering experiences.

Roland Griffiths, a John Hopkins' researcher, has been experimenting with a group of 36 volunteers who've ingested psilocybin, the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms. In the July 1 edition of the Journal of Pharmacology Mr. Griffiths reports, "We have people saying these eight hours in the lab are among the most meaningful in their lives. Some rank it alongside births and deaths of loved ones."

One of the research subjects, John Hayes, a professor of pastoral counseling said, "It gave me this sense that space and time are human constructions that can collapse. The ultimate reality is something beyond those constructions, and more importantly, everything in the world is connected."

Many of the subjects not only had such profound mystical experiences, the residual effect (measured by life satisfaction) of those experiences lasted throughout the study's first year.

In my estimation this study points to the neurological basis of religious experience, especially those categorized as mystical experiences. Compare this to the experiences of Jill Bolte Taylor as chronicled in a recent book “My Stroke of Insight.” (See my May 27 posting.) Ms. Bolte had a stroke that immobilized the left lobe of her brain that resulted in a "nirvana-like" awareness of the oneness of the universe.

I've long maintained that the center of Religion is personal religious experience. I'm now persuaded that religious experience is a discrete phenomenon within the brain. Our knowledge of this phenomenon grows daily.