Spirituality Studies 10-1 Spring 2024 51 Samuel Bendeck Sotillos tre, will be swallowed by it or will be swept away to their doom, like a rudderless ship that is lost in the immensity of the ocean” (Anagarika Govinda 1972, 30). Through traversing a spiritual path, we can learn to clearly recognize these realms. The Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa (1940–1987) referred to psychedelic experiences as a “double illusion” or “super samsara” (Chögyam Trungpa quoted in Fields 1986, 309) which could, nevertheless, be helpful in better understanding the unillumined dimension of our consciousness. A traditional healer or shaman has the ability to “leave his body and ascend to the sky or descend to the underworld” (Eliade 1974, 5); however, secular approaches cannot access these transcendent realms of consciousness and their corresponding healing modalities. Secular psychotherapy, as offered through conventional forms of mental health treatment, can only discern the lowest aspects of the psyche. The religion of the First Peoples present us with a sacred symbolism that sustains entheogenic therapy – “the purpose of taking yagé is to return to the uterus, to the fons et origo of all things, where the individual ‘sees’ the tribal divinities, the creation of the universe and humanity, the first human couple, the creation of the animals, and the establishment of the social order” (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1974b, 102). According to the First Peoples of Africa who belong to the Bwiti religion (which also uses entheogens): “Joy, joy the ancestors give joyful welcome and hear the news. The troubled life of the born ones is finished… All the misfortunes are shorn away! They leave… Everything clean… All is new… All is bright… I have seen the dead and I do not fear” (quoted in Fernandez 1982, 488–489). According to the Hindu tradition, “[w]e have drunk Soma and become immortal; we have attained the light, the gods discovered” (Ṛgveda 8:48:3). Pata jali points out that “the psychic powers may be obtained either by birth, or by means of drugs, or by the power of words, or by the practice of austerities, or by concentration” (Pata jali 4:1). When it comes to the study of extraordinary states of consciousness, modern psychology has scant insights to offer (Bendeck Sotillos 2023c, 12–21). The myopic outlook of the post-Enlightenment is still trapped within the confines of “consensus reality” (Tart 1975, vii) and struggles to see beyond its truncated foundations; however, “anomalous phenomena” (Grof 2006, xx) within consciousness studies are gradually calling into question the validity of modern science’s premises. There is a widely cited passage within the psychedelic literature from Andrew Weil: “[T]he desire to alter consciousness periodically is an innate, normal drive analogous to hunger or the sexual drive” (1986, 19). Through metaphysics, we can make sense of the compulsion to transcend ordinary consciousness. This is not about attaining exalted states per se but, rather, reclaiming who we really are: namely, human beings who are inseparable from the Absolute. Leary once wrote about the lack of understanding of non-ordinary states of consciousness within present-day mental health treatment: “We were on our own. Western psychological literature had almost no guides, no maps, no texts that even recognized the existence of altered states” (1990a, 42). Hence, it was declared that “[c]onsciousness eludes any scientific explanation” (Hofmann 2013, 57) and that, thus far, “there is no good theory of consciousness. There is not even agreement about what a theory of consciousness would be like” (Hofstadter and Dennett 1982, 8). Beyond the corporeal and psychic realms, traditional forms of wisdom maintain that human beings are able to occupy multiple states of consciousness. Buddhist writer Marco Pallis (1895–1989) explains that “Man is but one of an indefinite number of states of the being” (1949, 127). William James (1842–1910), the “father of American Psychology,” appears to concur (1985, 388): [O]ur normal waking consciousness… is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness… No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question… At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality. The sacred psychologies of humanity’s diverse cultures provide us with a key for understanding these other states of mind. Due to their limited scope, empirical epistemologies fail to grasp them, as they can only take into account “horizontal” dimensions of reality. Perhaps the closest that modern psychology comes to acknowledging unconventional states of consciousness is through the notion of “unhabitual perception” [8]. Psychotherapists need an adequate metaphysical-spiritual framework in which to situate the myriad phenomena that arise when dealing with psychic forces; however, this possibility cannot be admitted by mainstream psychology, as the
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