The Pentecostal minister who’s TV show I directed was definitely high on something when he came in the studio. But when he got “in the spirit” and started free associating bible passages and speaking in tongues it was pretty cool. And the morning the microwave uplink caught fire just as the Lord was speaking through him and telling us all how wonderful this technology was that let His voice be heard was a little eerie.

Perhaps the chemicals simply open up some pathways that were already there though. Maybe these guys tap in to something that’s there with the aid of some sort of poison.

And maybe there are a few people who can get to that state without psychedelics. Like JP2, who may have been honest to god old school mystic. More and more seem to be coming out about his early morning prayer sessions. And of course who could forget the lovely Jeanne D’Arc. OK, sorry ….

The guy discussed in this article took part in an experiment involving psilocybin on Good Friday in 1962. There’s a substantial section of that article that talks about the “ego death” he experienced, as well as the impact of the drug on his becoming a minister.

Considering that the psilocybin this man took was a pure extract of a chemical that is only known to affect the brain, and that toxicity from recreational doses of psilocybe mushrooms is unknown in the medical literature (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin), I don’t see how his experience could have been the result of a misconstrued physical sensation.

I think we’re talking about two entirely different things. Someone who smokes a bunch of cannabis is taking in a cocktail of different chemicals, and cannabis is known to have effects on the muscles, which I could imagine causing some chest pain and making someone panic. But what physical sensation is at the heart of the “ego death” caused by psilocybin or LSD? None that I can think of.

By the same token, how many people have a “significant” experience taking alcohol, caffeine or cannabis versus psilocybin, LSD or DMT?

I’ll leave the “ego death” bit alone – but it’s a physical sensation and not necessarily a spiritual one and I don’t believe it’s just fear or the falling away of the ego (although I think those go hand in hand).

People’s bodies have reactions to the drugs they take. If I drink caffeine, my heart speeds up. If I drink alcohol, it slows down. Push any of those to an extreme and your body will react and generally ambush you. You may not be dying, but you can certainly physically feel like it. That has nothing to do with ego-death. Inexperienced people can smoke weed and think they’re having a heart attack based entirely on physical effects (since there aren’t any psychedelic effects associated with smoking weed). Are they dying? Hell no. Do they believe it and will that belief attribute special importance to what they experience? Probably.

Some of those drugs are certainly poisonous, but a lot of people report fearing that they are going to die while on stuff like LSD, which as far as I know has never killed anybody through direct chemical action.

You have an interesting point about near-death experiences. I think any peak experience would tend to have religious connotations, but I also think drugs are a more likely vector for those experiences and are more likely to produce a stronger experience than being struck by lightning or meditating under a tree.

An old friend was on shrooms with a few friends and was frightened so much by a friend who spoke to god, that I don’t believe he ever did it again.