Mysticism and Drugs

Scholars of mysticism and psychological researchers have debated whether drugs can induce genuine mystical experiences. R. C. Zaehner, an expert in Eastern and Western mysticism, argued that drug-induced experiences differ from theistic religious mystical experiences. He rejected Aldous Huxley's comparison of his feeling of oneness with a chair to the Beatific Vision, and later critiqued Timothy Leary's claims about LSD. The core disagreement was not whether the experiences were real, but whether they matched the mystical states achieved through spiritual discipline. Psychological researchers like Walter N. Pahnke and R. E. L. Masters and Jean Houston pursued this question through laboratory experiments.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In recent years the issue of whether mysticism can be induced by drugs has been pursued by both scholars of mystical literature and psychological researchers. R. C. Zaehner is perhaps the best known among the scholars of religious literature who have addressed the issues of drug-induced mysticism. While on the side of empirical psychology investigators such as Walter N. Pahnke, R. E. L. Masters, and Jean Houston have pursued some of the same issues using the techniques of laboratory experimentation. Zaehner, who was familiar with both Eastern and Western mysticism, argued that drug-induced experiences are not the same as religious mystical experiences of the theistic variety. It was farcical, he argued, for Aldous Huxley to posit a connection between his preternatural feeling of oneness with his chair and the Beatific Vision. The issue between Zaehner and Huxley was not over the veridicality of Huxley's mystical experience. It was over the significance of Huxley's experience: Was it or was it not a drug-induced mystical experience of the sort attained by mystics after heroic struggles of self-discipline? This was the issue again when Zaehner came to address himself to the claims of Timothy Leary, a chief proponent of ‘the LSD experience’, and, in general terms, this has been the central issue pursued by the psychological researchers.