What Kind of Trip Do We Really Need? [Firebrand Big Read]
Photo by Elias Boberg
In a recent online article in The New Yorker titled “This is Your Priest on Drugs,” Michael Pollan reports of the intersection of psychedelics and religion—or what the piece repeatedly refers to as “spirituality”—particularly as it relates to religious leaders participating in a 2015 study sponsored by Johns Hopkins University and New York University. Early on, Pollan highlights one participant as a representative case: an Episcopal priest in a wealthy part of Washington State who increasingly found his pastoral charge to be “more about institutional administration and maintenance,” which he describes as “wrench[ing] the spirituality out of most people.” Presumably in an effort to revitalize his “spiritual” life and ministry, the Episcopal priest signed up for the study, even though he had some suspicions about it and found the subsequent process of qualifying for it to be tedious and protracted. Eventually, the participant group settled to thirty in total; most were white (97%), Christian (76%), and male (69%).
The self-reported results of these monitored, high-dose psilocybin/psychedelic mushroom trips are interesting to note. To quote Pollan, “Among participants who had two sessions, the researchers found that a striking number—seventy-nine percent—reported that the experience had enriched their prayer, their effectiveness in their vocation, and their sense of the sacred in daily life. Ninety-six percent rated their first encounters with psilocybin as being among the top five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives." In addition to referencing the language of "spirituality," the piece mentions the availability of "mystical experiences" through such trips as well, ones in which an "encounter with the divine" or "meeting God" occurs.
On one level, nothing particularly new is at work in this article, in that the use of psychedelics with the aim of having religious experiences has been a long-lasting phenomenon. Different religious traditions across the globe have explored the connection. And of course, Christians have had questions on the subject. I recall years ago when I first taught a class on pneumatology (which I define intentionally as “the study of the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit”), I had a student enquire about the use of psychedelics for experiencing the Holy Spirit, to which I responded, “The point is not to get high!”
On another level, the article can be confusing for Christians in particular since the suggestion by this study and its participants would be precisely that: For the designers and participants in the study, having a psychedelic experience was the aim, because it was understood to be a way to “experience God.” This connection raises many different questions, ones that require the kind of reasoning about divine things that is inherent to an exercise of Christian theology. As noted, most of the participants in the study were self-professed Christians, and as mentioned in another part of the article, the study tended to steer to Christian cadences. However, later in the article when the Episcopal priest describes his experiences, he does not use strictly Christian terms to frame them. Since so much confusion and contestation surround spirituality and mysticism, it is worth highlighting a few points from the realm of Christian theology and spirituality that may help Christians navigate the terrain. These points are simply “my personal take” as one who has studied and taught theology and spirituality over many years in academic and pastoral settings.
1) “God” is Too Generic
Typically, Christians use the word “God” to reference the god of their worship. However, this word is like “deity” in that it is used in reference to many entities. Zeus, Vishnu, and others are “gods” or maybe even “God” to their devotees. However, by singularizing and capitalizing the word, Christians do not necessarily make “god” a proper name, especially when speaking in a religiously pluralistic setting. For this reason, it may be important to stress that for Christians, “God” is not a “proper name” per se but a generic name. A proper name involves specificity, particularity, historicity, identity, knowability, and the like. Trinitarian Christians employ for their divinity a set of proper names, “Father, Son, Holy Spirit,” which can all fall under a larger title/name that is not found in Scripture, “Trinity.” Those with an attuned eye to the Old Testament might also utilize “YHWH” or “Yahweh,” which is referenced in English translations as “Lord” with small caps (“Lord”). For Christians, one true god exists, acts, and reveals across the two testaments. And so for them, YHWH is Trinity, and Trinity is YHWH. When Christians say "Father, Son, Holy Spirit" and/or "YHWH," they immediately think of many different things, including biblical passages that highlight covenants, promises, judgments, holiness, mercy, and love. These topics are all quite particular—they are at once both specifying and meaningful.
The importance of employing a proper divine name in these matters related to psychedelics and religion is that without some kind of tethering to a kind of specified history and particularity for the term “God,” the claim of “experiencing God” means little outside of one’s own inclinations and tendencies. Such is the case because nothing grounds or frames the experience beyond an individual’s subjectivity. Rather than being placed in a wider orbit of reference and meaning, these experiences are simply left to an individual’s selective interpretive tendencies. In these portrayals, “God” is a “thing” or an “object” to experience, much like anything else, including music, a work of art, a sunset, and yes, a mushroom. (Interestingly, the article does not stress that participants “experienced psilocybin” or “experienced mushrooms” when, from an empirical and experimental viewpoint, this is in fact what happened.)
If the “God” in question is not simply an object but also an agent—that is, One who has spoken and acted in the world as Christians profess YHWH-Trinity to do—then this One most likely has revealed how this One wants to be known. Does the Christian God, YHWH-Trinity, want to be known through psilocybin? All major witnesses of revelation do not suggest as such. YHWH-Trinity does reveal certain requirements related to knowing this One (including loving, obeying, practicing justice, and so on), and to use Anglican/Methodist language, this One has given us “means of grace” by which to know and experience this One. Psychedelic drugs are not one of these “means.”
This last point raises an interesting question: If nothing in Scripture and church tradition suggests that the Christian God can and ought to be known through psychedelics, then why do people make that connection in the first place? What leads self-professed Christians to believe that the particular God of their worship and confession, YHWH-Trinity, can be experienced in such ways?
2) We Have a Transcendence Deficit, but We Want to Address It on Our Terms
A plausible answer to the above question has to do with one of our cultural maladies. Some of the participants in the study indicate that they feel and sense what I am going to call a “transcendence deficit”; they want something to give their lives meaning and vitality. Such is the case for the Episcopal priest noted above. This longing for meaning is very much part of living in our current Western society in which so much of our lives is exceedingly cast in material (and materialistic) ways. The feeling of a transcendence deficit is not necessarily and inherently bad; quite the contrary, it can occasion any number of productive outcomes. The rub, of course, is how people go about addressing such a deficit.
Addressing a transcendence deficit through the use of psychedelics is very much an expression of control. Like so many other parts of our lives, this approach to transcendence fits well within a culture of possession and consumption. At the end of the day, those who use psychedelics to experience altered states that they deem “religious” or “spiritual” control what they use (psilocybin, LSD, and so on), when they use it (on weekends, holidays, retreats, and so on), and how much they use. To put the matter crassly, these efforts are tantamount to a kind of self-control or even self-manipulation (given that one chooses to subject one’s brain to highly impactful substances). The self is front and center in determining the conditions (and one could argue, the outcomes) for everything that ensues in these experiential forays. Such an approach may indicate an uncomfortable truth for many of us: We want transcendence, but we want it on our terms. And let us be clear: If the experience is on our terms, then it is less about transcendence and more about us.
Unfortunately, what is missing in this approach to transcendence is any kind of questioning of the self’s constitution—its wants, its desires, its ferocious “need” for control. In fact, the approach is an exercise of glaring contradiction: We want to hold on to the self even as we implicitly know that features of the self are actively contributing to the emptiness and deficit that we so strongly feel.
One matter that comes across repeatedly in Scripture and church tradition related to knowing the Christian God is that this One does not particularly care for “our terms.” Such may be an affront to our sensibilities, but Jesus’s words “not my will, but yours be done” are fairly clear in their direction. Repeatedly in Scripture and church tradition, encounters with the Christian God resulted not simply in experiences of transcendence but ones of transformation, not because the self was affirmed on its own terms, but because it was called into question in powerful, life-altering ways. Recall Moses, Jacob/Israel, Isaiah, the twelve disciples, Paul, and others. Given the powerful force of socialization we all experience, the self is often entangled with all kinds of idols. The disentangling of those idols from the self is a process that Christian mystical writers sometimes refer to as “mortification.” It is part of Christian tradition to say that certain things have to be “put to death” in order that we can come “more fully into life” (“vivification” or “renewal”). For those of us who benefit from many kinds of privilege, “mortification” is the last thing we want to hear in relation to addressing the perceived needs that we have, including transcendence deficits. However, perhaps a mortification/vivification dynamic is precisely what we need, because transcendence is not enough. What we truly long for and need is transformation.
3) The Christian God Wishes Us to Get Outside of Ourselves
Especially in pre-modern Christian depictions, the self was understood to be on a journey: created by God and returning to God in love and praise. The self was understood to gain its coherence and meaningfulness not by going internally deeper, but by going externally wider. Notice that the latter approach fits much better with notions of “awe” and “wonder” than the former approach. The idea was to join, to cleave to God in a form of delight and beauty that is resplendent of the very being of YHWH-Trinity. It is this understanding that undergirds one of the most famous sayings from one of the church’s great Western mystics: “restless are our hearts until they find their rest in you” (Augustine, Confessions, Book 1, Chapter 1).
A related notion is also available and feasible: As one grows closer to the Christian God, one grows closer to that which the Christian God loves, including this One’s creation. Such is the logic of the Great Love Commandments: Loving YHWH-Trinity with one’s whole being is of a piece with loving one’s neighbor. When one truly engages one aspect of these commandments, one will necessarily engage the other. Why? Because that is the logic determined for us by YHWH-Trinity. Experiencing this particular God involves loving this One, and in experiencing/loving this One, we are brought to loving this One’s creation. And the corollary applies as well: As we come to love this One’s creation, we come to experience and love this One more and more as well. Notice that in these depictions, the self is not eradicated or lost, but it has a specific role within a wider orbit of generativity and meaningfulness. The point is not to lose yourself; the point is to encounter this One wherever this One is present, active, and at work. And as the Scriptures teach us repeatedly, our God is to be found in life and service among the poor, the needy, the downtrodden, the hurting, and the lost. This dynamic is beatitudinal to the core.
“For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matt 16:25, NRSV). These words do not simply indicate the pattern of self-negation within Christian discipleship; they also point to the journey—to the “trip” so to speak—not of transcendence, but of transformation.
Daniel Castelo is the William Kellon Quick Professor of Theology and Methodist Studies at The Divinity School of Duke University. He also serves as the Associate Dean for Academic Formation and the Director of The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition.