50 Spirituality Studies 10-1 Spring 2024 properly integrated into a “vertical” dimension. What is not acknowledged here is that the spiritual domain transcends (while fully embracing) brain functioning, psychological dispositions, and social influences, among other factors. This corresponds to the tripartite structure of the human being, although Spirit alone can fully bring into balance and harmonize all these aspects of our human nature. It should be noted that entheogenic therapy is not immune to scientific reductionism when situated on the erroneous foundations of modern Western psychology. Pioneers within psychedelic research have discussed the limitations found in contemporary psychotherapy models (Osmond 1964, 141): Our preoccupation with behavior, because it is measurable, has led us to assume that what can be measured must be valuable and vice versa… An emphasis on the measurable and the reductive has resulted in the limitation of interest by psychiatrists and psychologists to aspects of experience that fit in with this concept. With this observed, these pioneers have not been able to provide a better-integrated model due to the desacralized roots of modern psychotherapy and its mental health treatments. By contrast, the use of entheogenic remedies within long-established spiritual traditions has roots in metaphysics, which does not depend on the scientific method for its insights. Healing and growth, rather than treatment, is something that psychedelic therapy – under the right circumstances – could offer. To achieve more effective forms of treatment, we need to acknowledge “that where there is no therapeutic intent, there is no therapeutic result” (quoted in Abramson 1960, 193). 6 Differentiating Psychic from Spiritual Realities It is often overlooked that a traditional culture, in which entheogens are used, supports the efficacy of healing. Being born and raised in the ambiance of a sacred cosmology also provides a certain measure of psycho-spiritual protection. Notwithstanding these advantages, people in such cultures can still become ill, just like anyone else, and thus require intervention that restores wholeness. Once healing has been completed, a person returns to a sacralized life with its rites and ceremonies so as to maintain their human equilibrium; something that we do not find in modern Western psychology. Whitall N. Perry (1920–2005) illustrates why psychic phenomena are so seductive and difficult to discern: “The confusion is between the psychic and spiritual planes of reality, where the unfamiliar, the strange, and the bizarre are mistaken for the transcendent, simply by the fact that they lie outside the ordinary modes of consciousness” (Perry 1996, 10). This recognition appears to be missing from the standard professional literature, and in any of the discussions related to psychedelic science and the hopes invested in it. French metaphysician René Guénon (1886–1951) elaborates on these dangers (Guénon 2001, 239–240): It is impossible to be too mistrustful of every appeal to the ‘subconscious’… in a sort of ‘cosmic consciousness’ that shuts out all ‘transcendence’ and so also shuts out all effective spirituality… but what is to be said of someone who flings himself into the ocean and has no aspiration but to drown himself in it? This is very precisely the significance of a so-called ‘fusion’ with a ‘cosmic consciousness’ that is really nothing but the confused and indistinct assemblage of all the psychic influences… these influences have absolutely nothing in common with spiritual influences… Those who make this fatal mistake either forget about or are unaware of the distinction between the ‘upper waters’ and the ‘lower waters’; instead of raising themselves toward the ‘ocean above’, they plunge into the abyss of the ‘ocean below’; instead of concentrating all their powers so as to direct them toward the formless world, which alone can be called ‘spiritual’, they disperse them in the endlessly changeable and fugitive diversity of the forms of subtle manifestation… with no suspicion that they are mistaking for a fullness of ‘life’ something that is in truth the realm of death and of a dissolution without hope of return. Although not adequately addressed within the psychedelic renaissance, the notion of “consciousness expansion” for its own sake can be spiritually dangerous. Lama Anagarika Govinda (1898–1985) writes (Anagarika Govinda 1972, 27): [T]he mere expansion of a muddled consciousness, in which the faculties of discrimination, mental balance and understanding have not yet been developed, does not constitute an improvement and will not lead to the attainment or the realization of a higher dimension of consciousness, but only to a worse confusion, to an expansion of ignorance and an indiscriminate involvement in irrelevant impressions and emotions. He goes on to add, “[t]hose who descend into the depth of this universal consciousness, without having found their inner cen-
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