SCIENCE, SPIRITUALITY, AND AYAHUASCA: THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND SPIRITUAL ONTOLOGIES IN THE ACADEMY

The boundary between science and religion is not fixed but arises from how consciousness, intentionality, and spirituality relate to each other. Tracing this from the dawn of modern science through the nineteenth century and into the 1960s counterculture, new schools in psychology and anthropology emerged that reshaped the divide. The psychoactive Amazonian brew ayahuasca serves as a case study: first within the broader academic field of ayahuasca studies, then through three specific cases in Spain. The author argues that science is permeable to spiritual ontologies, drawing on social and cognitive sciences to show that the demarcation problem is historically contingent and interdisciplinary.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew from Amazonas, popularized in the last decades in part through transnational religious networks, but also due to interest in exploring spirituality through altered states of consciousness among academic schools and scientific researchers. In this article, the author analyzes the relation between science and religion proposing that the “demarcation problem” between the two arises from the relations among consciousness, intentionality, and spirituality. The analysis starts at the beginning of modern science, continues through the nineteenth century, and then examines the appearance of new schools in psychology and anthropology in the countercultural milieu of the 1960s. The author analyzes the case of ayahuasca against this historical background, first, in the general context of ayahuasca studies in the academic field. Second, he briefly describes three cases from Spain. Finally, he discusses the permeability of science to “spiritual ontologies” from an interdisciplinary perspective, using insights from social and cognitive sciences.