Do Drugs Have Religious Import?

A coincidental telephone number, KISS-BIG, and the initials IFIF (International Federation for Internal Freedom) captured the euphoric, manic, life-embracing attitude of a prominent organization exploring newly synthesized consciousness-changing substances in the 1960s. The organization caused Harvard's first firings, an expulsion from Mexico, and the Marsh Chapel miracle, where ten theological students and professors ingested psilocybin during a Good Friday service and reported the deepest religious experiences of their lives. Despite such parallels, scholars of religion largely dismiss psychedelic drugs as having little religious relevance, a position the author argues is premature. Drugs may illuminate the history, phenomenology, philosophy, and practice of religious life.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Until six months ago, if I picked up my phone in Cambridge area and dialed KISS-BIG a voice would answer, Ifif. These were coincidences: KISS-BIG simply happened to be letter equivalents of an arbitrarily assigned telephone number, while I.F.I.F. represented initials of an organization with improbable name of International Federation for Internal Freedom. But coincidences were apposite to point of being poetic. Kiss big caught euphoric, manic, life-embracing attitude that characterized this most publicized of organizations formed to explore newly synthesized consciousness-changing substances, while organization itself was surely one of iffy-est phenomena to appear on our social and intellectual scene in some time. It produced first firings in Harvard's history, an ultimatum to get out of Mexico in five days, and the miracle of Marsh Chapel in which during a two-and-one-half hour Good Friday service ten theological students and professors ingested psilocybin and were visited by what they generally reported to be deepest religious experiences of their lives. Despite last of these phenomena and its numerous if less dramatic parallels, students of religion appear by and large to be dismissing psychedelic drugs which have sprung to our attention in sixties as having little religious relevance. The position taken in one of most forward-looking volumes of theological essays to have appeared in recent years (1) accepts R. C. Zaehner's Mysticism Sacred and Profane as having fully examined and refuted religious claims for mescaline which Aldous Huxley sketched in The Doors of Perception . This closing of case strikes me as premature, for it looks as if drugs have light to throw on history of religion, phenomenology of religion, philosophy of religion, and practice of religious life itself.