Origins of religions and hallucinatory experiences

I found this news report from the Globe and Mail (cited below) thought provoking. In essence, the author of the book seems to be saying two different things:
(1) that the origins of most organized religions can be traced back to early shamanic experiences, some of which were induced by hallucinogens;
(2) that nowadays one should be granted the right to access these experiences, even at the cost of taking hallucinating drugs, because one is the "sovereign of one's consciousness", and these experiences "cost no harm to others."

The first point is a worthy question that many scholars have explored - David Lewis Williams, for example. The second point, however, sounds more like an opinion peculiar to the author. Most countries nowadays have outlawed hallucinogens, because we believe that our "normal", "chemically-unaltered" experiences tend to be more similar across individuals (i.e., they tend to be more objective), and thus, can more easily become the basis of a consensus. Drug-induced visions or mental states, on the other hand, tend to be more subjective (in the sense that each particular vision can be wildly different from another). The modern day's sentiment of treasuring more objective experiences is at least in part due to the pervasiveness of the scientific culture, but objective experiences are perhaps also more conducive to social harmony, given the complexity of today's urban society. The author's proposal sounds like a kind of individualism pushed to the extreme: individual choices are not enough to define a person; each needs to have unique experiences, unique to the point of defying the possibility of another person experiencing them.

It should be noted that drug-induced experiences, unlike dreams, also have the peculiar power to influence one's opinion radically, precisely because it can be so unique, to the extent that it becomes inexplicable. I could not quite imagine (yet) that a president would make a decision based on his/her hallucinatory vision the night before.

A worthy exercise concerning point (2) is to provide a historical explanation of why we no longer value hallucinatory experiences, much like what Foucault has done in his "Madness and Civilisation".

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Original article:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/ ... RTGAM.20060225.wxposner25/EmailBNStory/Science/home

Globe and Mail, Feb. 25, 2006

Tune in, turn on . . . evolve?

MICHAEL POSNER

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

On the walls of dozens of caves in southern France and northern Spain lie some of the most majestic works of art ever painted. Drawn 25,000 to 40,000 years ago, the paintings have puzzled anthropologists since they were discovered more than four decades ago.

Where did this astonishing display of talent come from? Why did these prehistoric societies decide to paint these scenes in such remote locations? And what inspired them to paint the strange array of bisons, horses and therianthropes (part animal, part man)?

A scientific consensus of sorts has finally emerged on one of those questions: Although there are still dissenters, a majority of anthropologists now champion the theory that the paintings in Europe were the work of shamans, and in part the product of trance states, likely induced by psilocybin (the psychoactive ingredient in some species of mushrooms).

Similarly, South African anthropologist David Lewis-Williams maintains that the remarkable rock art of the San people of southern Africa, also painted at least 25,000 years ago, is the result of shamanic trances created by drumming and ritual ecstatic dancing.

In his new book, Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind, published by Random House, British writer Graham Hancock has taken Prof. Lewis-Williams's research as a point of departure to posit a theory as fascinating as it is provocative: If it's true that cave art derives from altered states of consciousness, then it constitutes a watershed moment in human history, marking the first visible encounter with the supernatural, the first expression of spiritual myth.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the paintings were begun just when, according to anthropologists, human civilization made a great leap forward in terms of social organization, hunting-and-gathering skills and general creativity.

Mr. Hancock (previously author of Fingerprints of the Gods and The Sign and the Seal) notes striking similarities between cave paintings produced by shamanic artists 25,000 years ago and the abundant descriptions of fairies, elves, angels and other fantastic creatures commonly reported in Europe from the medieval ages to the 17th century.

And what is their modern equivalent? Mr. Hancock suggests the myriad accounts of alien abduction. His new book devotes several hundred pages to documenting these parallels, showing a surprising commonality of visions.

Although he does not rule out the possibility of extraterrestrial encounters, Mr. Hancock says the vast majority of these accounts are more logically explained by spontaneous entrance into trance states.

Because few of the alien abductees are users of mind-altering drugs, the most likely explanation, he believes, is that the brains of a small percentage of the population contain slightly higher levels of dimethyltryptamine (DMT) than already occur naturally in humans, as well as in other mammals, frogs, grasses, barks and flowers. Such people, he says, don't need to consume magic mushrooms or any other drug in order to enter trance states: Their hallucinogenic potential is more or less built-in.

Mr. Hancock insists that just because such events and encounters may not have occurred on a physical plane, it doesn't mean they never happened. His book quotes Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD, who wrote that the brain, biochemically altered, tunes to "another wavelength than that corresponding to normal, everyday reality."

As part of his project, Mr. Hancock plunged himself into the netherworld of mind-altering drugs -- he ate psychedelic mushrooms, took the African drug ibogaine, drank ayahuasca tea 13 times and smoked DMT. His own drug experiences included multiple encounters with "spirit beings" that, he insists, have profoundly changed him.

"This life we look at is only a fragment of reality. . . . What the physicists have arrived at with the notion of parallel dimensions, through their methods, is pretty much the same as what shamans are arriving at through their methods," Mr. Hancock says. "Except shamans are ahead of the quantum physicists, because they can actually get into those dimensions."

Going a few steps further than the late John Allegro, a Dead Sea scholar who suggested in the 1970s that early Christianity was essentially a mushroom-and-sex cult, Mr. Hancock maintains that all religions are "rooted and grounded in shamanic experiences."

In Toronto recently to promote his book, Mr. Hancock said organized religion as we know it is "the attempt to account for and explain those experiences. And then the bureaucrats come in, take it over, become the priesthood, impose themselves as the sole intermediaries, and eventually lose the connection to the spiritual life that once was at the heart of the religion. We've seen that again and again.

"I don't even know if God isn't one of those things that happen after the bureaucrats step in. Indeed, many monotheistic religions are very opposed to altered states of consciousness. And so we've lost contact with the origins of religion."

The use of most hallucinogens, of course, is outlawed in most Western nations. In that context, Mr. Hancock -- a former Economist correspondent in East Africa who gave up journalism to begin writing bestselling books about lost civilizations -- says most of us live under a repressive regime.

"If you pause to think about it," he says, "the essence of a human being is consciousness. Without it, we are nothing. So it's a transgression of my sovereignty as an individual that some other individual can rule on what experiences I may or may not have with my consciousness, doing no harm to others."

Long prison terms await those convicted of experimenting with their consciousness. That, Mr. Hancock says, "tells me our society is deeply afraid of this problem and is engaged in a propaganda war to persuade us that these drugs are dangerous."

Various long-term studies show that the only people seriously adversely affected by hallucinogens are schizophrenics. Meanwhile, he says, more common risks are played down. "Look at the mass slaughter on our roads. Look at over-the-counter drugs, which also kill many people. Look at extreme sports. We don't seem to have a problem with any of that."

Even if the current prohibitions were lifted, Mr. Hancock thinks it's unlikely that millions would sign up for a psychedelic journey. "Taking ayahusaca, for example, is a scary experience. Most people would be quite happy to stay locked in their world."

Mr. Hancock himself is not finished exploring the mysteries of human consciousness. Acknowledging the gap between the lessons learned while in a trance state and applying them to life afterward, he says his experiences have made him less intolerant, less judgmental, less prone to anger. "I've really tried to take those insights and integrate them."

He intends to spend part of this summer at a retreat in Brazil, where ayahuasca is legal, drinking the tea every other day for two weeks. "I'm only certain that there's a huge mystery here," he says. "I'm not certain what the answer to the mystery is."

Michael Posner is a feature writer for The Globe and Mail.