Entheogens
The word was coined in 1979 by a group of ethno-botanists and scholars of mythology (Carl A.P. Ruck, Jeremy Bigwood, Danny Staples, Richors Evas Schultes, Jonathan Ott and R. Gordon Wasson)(4). The literal meaning of the word is "that which causes God to be within an individual". It was coined as a replacement for the term "hallucinogen" and "psychedelic". Ruck et al, argued that the term "hallucinogen" was inappropriate due to its etymological relationship to words relating to delirium and insanity. The term "psychedelic" was also seen as problematic, due to the similarity in sound to words pertaining to psychosis and also due to the fact that it had become irreversibly associated with various connotations of 1960"s pop culture.
Since 1979, when the term was proposed, its use has become widespread in certain circles. In particular, the word fills a vacuum for those users of entheogens who feel that the term "hallucinogen", which remains common in medical, chemical and anthropological literature, denigrates their experience and the worldview in which it is integrated.
In the Christian tradition the Eucharist plays a symbolic role in religious tradition that has occasionally attracted the label of "entheogen" or "placebo entheogen", even though it does not conform to the original definition involving the use of vision-inducing substances. It is interesting to note that our body also produces endogenous entheogens like cannabinoids and DMT.
Entheogen studies
A double blind study conducted by Roland Griffiths(5) of Johns Hopkins University on 36 volunteers revealed that psilocybin produced a self-described mystical experience in 22 of the volunteers, and 27 of them rated it as among the most meaningful of their lives, comparing it with the birth of a first child or the death of a parent. These latter-day psychonauts were participating in research designed to explore the pharmacological and psychological effects of psilocybin as compared with an active control-methyl phenidate hydrochloride, commonly known as Ritalin. In follow-ups, they continue to report positive changes in attitude and behaviour.
The Griffiths work is part of a resurgence in the exploration of the psychological and physiological effects of psychedelics that seem to mimic the neurotransmitter serotonin. Charles Grob of the Harbor – U.C.L.A. Medical center has been testing psilocybin"s effect in easing the anxiety of terminally ill cancer patients. Francisco Moreno of the University of Arizona has studied its ability to alleviate the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
This resurgence actually started in 1990, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ended a two-decade long moratorium by approving an investigation of the effects of DMT(dimethyltryptamine), a quick-acting, short lived and powerful hallucinogen – in humans, according to Rick Doblin, founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic studies, an advocacy group for such research. The FDA was willing to fund it because, as Grob puts it: "sufficient time had elapsed from the time when there was so much turmoil".
In the appropriate setting, with adequate supervision, psychedelics such as psilocybin may prove effective in treating existential angst in the terminally ill patients or even drug addiction, by providing the type of spiritual experience that programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous rely on. Already psilocybin has shown some therapeutic potential in other health areas: researchers at McLean hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, found that the compound seemed to halt cluster headache attacks. And the hallucinogenic anaesthetic ketamine proved fast and effective in alleviating depression in patients who had not responded to other treatments, according to a recent study at the NIMH.
A lifting of the government ban on psychedelic research in Switzerland between 1988 and 1993 allowed a brief recommencement of psycholytic psychotherapy using LSD and MDMA for patients with personality disorders, affective disorders and adjustment disorders. There are currently projects under development in Spain, Israel and the USA looking at MDMA- assisted psychotherapy in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and as a treatment for anxiety and depression associated with cancer. Between 1990 and 1995 extensive studies of DMT were conducted with human participants in the USA (Strassman )(6). Other research includes a double-blind placebo controlled study in Russia using ketamine in the treatment of heroin addiction, which has demonstrated improved rates of abstinence, maintained at 2 year follow-up (Krupitsky et al, 2002)(7).
Concluding his editorial in the BJP(June 2005)(8) on the role of psychedelics in psychiatry Ben-Sessa states: "Perhaps it is surprising that there remains such considerable ignorance about the potential of these substances from within psychiatry itself. As with Galileo"s telescope and Darwin"s suggestion of our ascendancy from apes, radical scientific challenges tend to take the form of an attack on the anthropocentric model of the world. In the light of this, research that explores alternative states of consciousness and then offers a viable neurobiological substrate for the very human experience of religious encounter is bound to meet with objection from a generation of psychiatrists who have been conditioned to consider such work as "mysticism". Perhaps a more dispassionate criticism based upon scientific reasoning and not influenced by social or political pressures is called for if we are truly to investigate whether, these substances can have a useful role in psychiatry today".
The difference between psychedelics (entheogens) and other psychotropic drugs is that entheogens work as "non-specific amplifiers of the psyche", inducing an altered or non-ordinary state of consciousness. [Grof, 2000)(9). Using insights from the use of LSD and holotropic breathwork in thousands of people, Grof (1975)(10) proposed an extended model of the psyche with psychodynamic, perinatal and transpersonal layers.
Humankind has historically used meditation, exercise, fasting, chanting, dancing,breath-control,drumming and even sex to induce transforming internal changes. What all these states have in common is the final goal of increased awareness and a loosening of the ego,facilitating personal exploration and being useful therapeutically to aid psychotherapy.
Psychosis and transpersonal states
Failure to evaluate one"s perception and experience of reality and to integrate them into a coherent worldview seems to be central to psychosis. In Psychiatry people are diagnosed as psychotics, not only on the basis of their behaviour but on the content of their experiences or what they communicate to us using the language they have. These experiences, typically, are of a transpersonal nature and in sharp contradiction to all common sense and to the classical western world view. Many of them are well known to mystics, occur frequently in deep meditation, and can also be induced quite easily by various other methods (entheogens).
The inability of some people to integrate transpersonal experiences is often aggravated by a hostile environment. Immersed in a world of symbols and myth, they feel isolated and unable to communicate the nature of their experience.
Transpersonal experiences involve an expansion of consciousness beyond the conventional boundaries of the organism and correspondingly, a larger sense of identity. This mode of consciousness often transcends logical reasoning and intellectual analysis, approaching the direct mystical experience of reality. The language of mythology, which is much less restricted by logic and common sense, is often more appropriate to describe transpersonal phenomena than factual language.
The only way to overcome the existential dilemma of the human condition, ultimately, is to transcend it by experiencing one"s existence within a broader cosmic context(11).Creative experience, religious conversion, and other peak experiences may involve much of the form of inner experience, which can accompany an acute psychotic reaction.If an individual (psychotic) does "return" and fairly completely, he is usually much better adjusted- he feels more capable, more open to the world and less defended.The "successful" schizophrenic episode (where one returns "healed") seems to be a precise example of true regression in service of the Self,in the Vedantic sense. It is a creative type of psychic readjustment and growth, a type of death and rebirth experience.
Conclusion
Schizophrenia may be considered a pre-mystical state. Some schizophrenics if guided by therapists who have experienced ASC"s and in an appropriate setting, may become mystics- the therapist as Guru. The tools of meditation and medication (entheogens) may be used but the ultimate outcome depends on the personality of the therapist. All schizophrenics may not become mystics but by changing the nomenclature, we change the way we see psychosis. Then some progress towards cause and cure may open up.
Mysticism is not regression in service of the ego, but evolution in transcendence of the ego. True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego, that false self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality: through this death a rebirth and the eventual reestablishment of a new kind of ego-functioning (12). We may conceptualise normality and mysticism as a continuum with schizophrenia/ psychosis as a creative regression, before ascending to a higher level in a spiralling evolutionary process, symbolized in many traditions as a serpent ascending the tree of life.
Implication
1. Rename schizophrenia as a pre-mystical state(PMS).
2. The personality of the therapist and the setting and context of the treatment determines the outcome.
3. Meditation, Yoga and other spiritual exercises can serve as important adjuncts and a possible preventive.
4. ENTHEOGENS may be used in the future, after controlled studies are undertaken.
5. We may have to embrace a wider theory, including the existence of a transpersonal reality.
References
1.Parnas,J.(2005).Clinical detection of schizophrenia-prone individuals.BJP,187(suppl.48) s111-s112.
2.Sass, L and Parnas,J.(2003). Self,Consciousness and Schizophrenia,Schiz.Bull,29,427-444.
3.Bleuler,E.(1950).Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias.Translated by Joseph Zinkin .New York,International Universities Press.
4.Ruck,C.A.P.Bigwood,J.Staples,D.Ott,J.Wasson,R.G.(1979).Enth-eogens, Journal of Psychedelic Drugs11,145.
5 Griffiths, RR. Richards,WA.McCann,U. Jesse,R.(2006) Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance. Psychopharmacology (Berl),187(3):268-83.
6.Strassman,R.(2001).DMT:The spiritmolecule Rochester,VT:Park Street Press.
7.Krupitsky,E.Burakov,A.and Romanova,T.(2002) Ketamine Psychotherapy for heroin addiction.Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment,23,273-283.
8.Sessa,B.(2005) Can psychedelics have a role in psychiatry once again? BJP,186.457-458.
9. Grof,S.(2000) Psychology of the Future:Lessons from Mordern Consciousness Research.Albany NY:State University of New York Press .
10.Grof,S.(1975) Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research.New York:Viking Press.
11.Capra,F.(1982).The Turning Point.London:Flamingo.
12. Wilber,K.(1980) The Atman Project. Wheaton,Ill.:Quest.
Autor:
Ravi Pisharadi
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