Spirituality Studies 10-1 Spring 2024 61 Samuel Bendeck Sotillos moksha-medicine can do is to give you a succession of beatific glimpses, an hour or two, every now and then, of enlightening and liberating grace. In his earlier novel Brave New World (1932), a medicine known as soma is used to control people by making them happy and complacent within a dystopian status quo. Prior to his death, Hofmann expressed his entheogenic idealism as follows: “It is my wish that a modern Eleusis will emerge, in which seeking humans can learn to have transcendent experiences with sacred substances in a safe setting” (Hofmann 2008, 8). Dare we conclude that this utopian wish is being fulfilled through the emergence of PAT? According to Grof (1980, 74), “psychedelic therapy… represent[s] a twentieth-century version of a process that has been practiced through millennia in various temple mysteries, rites of passage, secret initiations, and religious meetings of ecstatic sects”. A chemical utopia is characterized by the coming together of psychedelic research, the nascency of Silicon Valley, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), and a burgeoning transhumanism (Markoff 2005). Utopian discourse may give the impression that global tech elites are planning, through such means, to save the world by ending poverty, curing all disease, solving the ecological crisis, and establishing idyllic working conditions – with the ultimate aim of achieving immortality through a grotesque fusion of humanity and technology that promises to liberate us from the constraints of the flesh. Despite this techno-optimism, the contrary appears to be the case in that the fruits of these dystopic measures will not in fact deliver increased material prosperity, comfort, and leisure but, rather, unimaginable forms of bondage. It is here that we can discern the true goal of the post-Enlightenment movement, which is none other than to radically redefine human beings as the monstrous creation of a depraved subversion of spirituality – the very antithesis of the Divine image that we are in reality (Kurzweil 1999). 15 Conclusion Entheogens and PAT defy all simplistic constructs and cannot fit into a Procrustean bed. To do so only serves to reinforce the pernicious supremacy of the Western medical model and its myopic approaches to mental health. Some might suggest that having recourse to psychedelics in a world that is in such disarray could be seen as upāya or “skillful means,” as the Buddhists would say – precisely because they offer some kind of psychological salve for the abnormal conditions spawned by our desacralized environment. Entheogens can be useful if we understand them in the way indicated by the Buddha; namely, as a finger pointing at the moon. They provoke an experience larger than ourselves to support healing and wholeness, but they are not the liberating reality itself. In other words, entheogens can undoubtedly be used to restore a basic level of equilibrium in certain people. While certainly helpful, this is not an end in itself, for what is called for is a further dimension of healing that involves the spirit and its rehabilitation. Perhaps as a saving mercy in these end times, psychedelic medicine may now prove beneficial – not only to the religiously faithful, but also to secular society at large; in other words, the traditional restraints on the use of these substances may, providentially, be set aside in extremis, so to speak. With that in mind, we recall the following “saying” (Ar. ḥadīth) of the Prophet Mohammed: “At the beginning he who omits one-tenth of the law is condemned; but at the end he who accomplishes one-tenth of the law is saved” (quoted in Glassé 2002, 129). Whether the psychedelic experience is comparable to the spiritual realization promised in the world’s religions is not really the issue here. What is central is living in accordance with a revealed tradition and doing so with steadfast commitment and sincerity. A wholehearted reliance on what transcends the human condition as a way to secure lasting health and well-being is confirmed across the sapiential traditions: “Man shall not live by bread alone” (Matthew 4:4); this counsel also extends to entheogens! At its best, entheogenic therapy undertaken with the right “set” and “setting” can facilitate an opening to a realm beyond our fleeting world that affords a passing glimpse of Reality. Some might compare this to the vision of English poet and theologian Thomas Traherne (c. 1637–1674; 1908, 20): You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. In this context, we may turn to the following prayer dedicated to the use of sacred medicines: “We humbly ask Our Heavenly Mother the Virgin Mary, help of all who call upon Her, to aid us to know and understand the true qualities of these psychedelics, the full capacities of man’s noblest faculties, and
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