The
Utilization of Hallucinogenic Drugs as a Way to Approach God
Another Aberration of the New Age
World
A Guest Document
by Lee Penn
It might seem inconceivable - but there are well-known spiritual
leaders who support the use of hallucinogenic drugs (enthoegens) as a
way to approach God. Some of these advocates of entheogens (1)
have had an audience at prestigious globalist meetings, such as the
State of the World Forum, in recent years.
This should not be a surprise, since the US Government and other
powerful interests fostered the spread of hallucinogens in the late
1950s and early 1960s. Since then, the US Government's seemingly
incoherent drug policy has had a three-fold effect: the spread of
soul-destroying vice among drug users, the gain of new police power by
government at all levels, and the establishment of precedents and
structures for financial globalization.
Could any mere human (or human institution) have planned policies with
such perverse results?
The
Players (for good and for ill)
The United Religions Initiative (URI)
is a syncretic interfaith movement founded in 1995 by William Swing,
the bishop of the Episcopal Church's Diocese of California. The
movement has become worldwide, and its adherents include followers of
almost all persuasions (from leftist Neopaganism to Sun Myung Moon's
rightist Unification Church) except orthodox
Christianity. (For a current story on the URI, see "The One World
Religion: The Details - Learn to Recognize Them.") (2)
Huston Smith, author of The World's Religions (a text on
comparative religion which has sold 2.5 million copies worldwide), has
taught at Washington University, MIT, Syracuse University, and the
University of California at Berkeley. (3)
He has long favored the interfaith movement - including the United
Religions Initiative (URI). In June 1998, Smith hailed the URI as "the
most significant" ongoing interfaith effort, saying that "I think it is
a much-needed move in our time." (4) In 2000, he
donated to the URI. (5)
Smith's commitment to religious syncretism goes beyond public
pronouncements. In 1999, Smith said that Christianity and his family
formed his character. "Throughout my life it has continued to be my
meal," he said, "but I am a strong believer in vitamin supplements-
spiritual insights gleaned from other religions." (6)
One of Smith's more off beat spiritual "vitamin supplements" has been
the use of entheogens to attain mystical experiences (7).
Barbara Marx Hubbard is a New
Age futurist and a prominent supporter of the United Religions
Initiative (URI). She helped write its draft Charter (8),
and said in 2002 that "I believe that URI is extremely important," and
"other interfaith organizations, I hope, will merge with them." (9)
The State of the World Forum (SWF)
is a globalist think-tank, headed by Mikhail Gorbachev. Like the URI,
it was founded in 1995. The SWF has attracted prominent politicians
[including former President George H. W. Bush (10),
Margaret Thatcher (11), James Baker, and George
Shultz, government officials during the first Bush Administration (12),
philanthropists (including George Soros (13) ),
New Age gurus, and other "change agents" - including Huston Smith (14),
Barbara Marx Hubbard (15), and other supporters
of the URI] to its luxurious meetings.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
established in 1947, was intimately involved in the LSD research scene
from the early 1950s onward. It had been testing a wide range of drugs
as interrogation tools since World War II, including "dosing" employees
and prisoners - with and without consent. (16) A
detailed history of CIA involvement in LSD and the counterculture says,
"It was impossible for an LSD researcher not to rub shoulders with the
espionage establishment, for the CIA was monitoring the entire scene." (17)
People with CIA ties "turned on" Aldous
Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, and Timothy Leary. (18)
These counter culture leaders then spread the psychedelic message to
anyone who would listen, thinking that this drug would support the
radical cultural revolution that they desired. As Leary wrote in 1970
in The Politics of Ecstasy,
"Drugs are the religion of the twenty-first century." (19)
What
Some of the Players Have Said (and done)
Huston Smith
Huston Smith became involved in use of "entheogens" in 1961 - and 39
years later, was still writing that psychoactive chemicals could bring
people closer to God. Smith acknowledges that he was "initiated to the
entheogens through Timothy Leary and psilocybin in his home in Newtonon
New Year's Day, 1961." (20) In the final chapter
of Cleansing the Doors of Perception,
Smith claims that "With the exception of peyote, which I took in the
line of duty while working with the Native Americans, it has been
decades since I have taken an entheogen." (21)
Smith still advocates use of entheogens, even though he acknowledges
that they yield diminishing spiritual returns and may open doors "onto
the demonic." He says:
"Even
among those who are religiously responsible, entheogens appear to have
(in the parlance of atomic decay) a half-life; their revelations
decline. They are also capricious. Opening the gates of heaven at the
start, there comes a time - I can attest to this myself - when they
begin to open either to less and less or onto the demonic." (22)
At the end of an essay which was published in 2000, "Do Drugs Have
Religious Import? A Thirty-Five-Year Retrospect, "Smith laid out his
current vision for better religion through chemistry:
"My personal, very tentative suggestion
is to see if the drug authorities would be willing to approve of a duly
monitored experiment on the issue. Find a church or synagogue,
presumably small, that is sincerely open to the possibility that God
might, in certain circumstances, work through selected plants or
chemicals (as I personally believe he did through Soma and Newman's
typhoid fever and continues to work through the peyote of the Native
American Church).
Permit this church to legally include a psychoactive as sacramental,
perhaps once a month in its Eucharist. And finally, commission
professional social scientists to observe what happens to this
congregation in respect to religious traits - notably compassion,
fervor, and service.
A variant on this proposal would be to obtain legal permission for
seminary students to have at least one entheogen experience in a
religious setting if they so wanted. I was fortunate in being
introduced to the entheogens as part of Harvard University's 1960-63
research program when they were not only legal, but respectable. I
support the effort of the Council on Spiritual Practices to afford
others the same opportunity." (23)
It's significant that Smith proposes this as an experiment that would
occur with government permission and
support - just as occurred in the 1950s and early 1960s. Smith's
essay was in a book published by the Council on Spiritual Practices, an
organization which promotes use of "plant sacraments" as a way to
obtain "primary religious experience."(24)
Barbara Marx Hubbard
In her 1998 book Conscious Evolution,
Barbara Marx Hubbard put "mind-expanding substances" on a par with the
civil rights movement as a way to foster social change:
"The environmental movement, the
antiwar movement, the Apollo space program, the women's movement, the
civil rights and human rights movements, new music, transcendental
meditation, yoga, and mind-expanding substances all encouraged a young
generation to act as instruments of social transformation- striving to
birth the still-invisible societal butterfly." (25)
The State of the World Forum
The State of the World Forum has provided a high-status platform for
advocates of "spiritual" drug use.
A 1996 Forum panel on "Drugs, Technology and the Mind in the 21st
Century" involved a nostalgic look at the drug culture of the 1960s.
The report was written by Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith
Center, a drug policy advocacy organization funded by George Soros. (26)
The Forum panel's report said:
"Robert Jesse and Jeff Bronfman focused
on the religious aspects of hallucinogenic drugs and discussed the
implications of their work for drug policy. Other participants who
included Ram Dass, Michael Aldrich, John Perry Barlow, Mitch Kapor,
Steve Kubby and Howard Kornfeld, spoke about therapeutic uses of these
drugs, their own and others' personal experiences, and the political
responses which these drugs generate in the U.S. and other societies.
The panel presented a remarkable opportunity to renew some of the
discussions which proliferated a generation ago, but which then were
lost as one of the casualties of the war on drugs." (27)
At an October 30, 1998 forum on "Rogue Nukes: The Mafia and Drug Cartel
Connection," former Senator Alan Cranston and Men's Wearhouse CEO
George Zimmer proposed that we should "legalize marijuana, and
re-examine laws on other drugs." (28)
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) involvement in LSD, as discussed
above, reflects that organization's habits from the beginning.
CIA involvement in drug trafficking goes back to the 1940s, when they
supported Corsican mobsters to fight French Communist unions in
Marseille (giving birth to the "French Connection" for heroin
smuggling) (29). During the Indochina wars, the
CIA supported Chinese Nationalist and Hmong warlords whose income came
from opium. "The CIA protected the heroin business of its warlord
allies while its operatives distributed heroin in Vietnam." And the
US-supported anti-Communist rebel forces, the "Contras" in Nicaragua,
smuggled cocaine. (30)
Likewise, US assistance to the radical Islamic resistance to the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan came at great cost; "the rebels raised money
for arms by selling opium, with CIA complicity." (31)
And as we have since learned, some of the mujahideen Afghan fighters that
the US trained in the 1980s became the anti-US jihad warriors of the 9/11 era.
With its other hand, the US government
has passed ever-harsher anti-drug laws since World War II, laws which
(with such provisions as no-knock raids, broad search and seizure
powers, and "civil forfeiture") punched holes in the Bill of Rights and
pre-figured the Patriot Act. (32)
The US has supported similar legislation in other nations, and has
helped to place these provisions into international law. As a result:
"The United States since 1985 has propelled the rest of the world
towards co-ordinating and harmonizing controls over black-market money.
The US has sought to align all countries with the new control regime,
preferably voluntarily but ultimately under international pressure.
'The
fight against the laundering of drug-money will ultimately lead to
something that was never intended: a uniform global regulatory regime,'
a Dutch commentator noted. 'In this way, the war on illegal intoxicants
is helping to produce a far-reaching and unlooked-for integration of
the countries of the world'." (33)
Bishop William Swing and his United
Religions Initiative (URI)
Amidst all this, Bishop William Swing and his United Religions
Initiative (URI) have rejected entheogens. No URI documents have ever
endorsed use of drugs, for spiritual purposes or for any other reason -
even though, as noted above, some proponents of entheogens also support
the URI. Bishop Swing learned in late 2002 that there had been illegal
drug use and a non-fatal overdose at an all-night dance held at an
Episcopal parish in his diocese by the Rhythm Society (34),
a rave group whose leaders were suspected of promoting use of
entheogens. Swing intervened; the congregation's rector and the rave
group quickly agreed to leave the parish. (35)
Since then, Swing has issued a clear condemnation of entheogens. In
2003, he said,
"Some teaching is heard among the
theologically trained and ordained in our Diocese that certain drugs
taken in appropriate quantities can be beneficial to spiritual growth.
In former days Timothy Leary would tout the use of LSD. Today people
are touting 'Ecstasy' or 'entheogens' as the threshold that opens human
beings to supernatural realms. The Hopi Indians and their use of peyote
are cited as beneficial models. What are not mentioned in these
endorsements are the ravages of countless lives that trusted in drugs
as a path to paradise.
There are probably some very sincere pilgrims of the Spirit who have
gone on a quest for the Transcendent, and certain drugs may have seemed
to advance them. Their individual quests, as vivid as they may have
been, will not be given an official platform in the Diocese of
California.
Rumor has it that the Diocese of California is liberal about matters.
Not always so. On the use of drugs in our buildings, at our functions,
this is absolutely forbidden. No wink, wink. Drug use in our churches
will be absolutely forbidden.
There is a higher path to God, i.e., the path of Jesus Christ. The
cross is not a needle. The bread and wine are ordinary, not a
hallucinogen. Ecstasy is a path, not a pill. Our drug policy will
reflect this." (36)
In other words, some liberal globalists can sometimes say and do the
right thing.
The
Implications - Religious and Sociopolitical
We are left with several conclusions, all of which demonstrate the
workings of the "mystery of iniquity:"
--- Some liberal religious and New Age enthusiasts, who appear to have
learned nothing from the devastation that followed the drug explosion
of the 1960s, still say that people can have authentic religious
experiences by ingesting mind-bending chemicals. (Other liberals,
including Bishop Swing, reject this idea with horror.)
--- It remains for atheists and non-believers to draw a logical
conclusion from the supporters of entheogens: if people can have a
life-altering religious experience by tweaking their brain chemistry
with a hallucinogen, then any experience
of God is likewise an
artifact of brain chemistry - and God is just an illusion.
--- "Entheogens" can be a useful tool for inquisitors, torturers,
brainwashers, and cult leaders - for anyone who is willing to override
human reason and destroy liberty to obtain power. The aforementioned
drug activities of the CIA - purportedly done to defend free nations
against the Communists - are an instance of this.
--- Governments are ordained to restrain evildoers (37)
and to protect human rights. When governments promote a form of drug
use that destroys human reason, they violate their own reason for
existence, and destroy their own legitimacy. (38)
SOURCES
(1) For supporters of
"better religion through
chemistry," an entheogen is a drug that gives its users contact with
the Divine.
(2) Lee Penn, "The
One World
Religion:The Details - Learn to Recognize Them" ,as of 9/16/03.
(3) Council on Spiritual Practices,"Huston Smith", printed
09/16/03.
(4) Carolina Wolohan, "Group uses U.N. as its
model," San Jose Mercury News,
June 22, 1998.
(5) United Religions Initiative, "Honoring Our
Donors," Annual Report 2000, p. 9.
(6) Worldwide Faith News, "Inter faith Dialog
Deepens Beliefs, Say World Parliament Presenters" November 9, 1999,
printed 09/16/03.
(7) Huston Smith, Cleansing
the Doors of
Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and
Chemicals, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2000, p. 9. Smith lists
mescaline,
psilocybin, and LSD as entheogens, and describes them as "virtually non
addictive mind-altering chemicals."
(8) URI on-line archive, e-mail from Sally
Ackerly to URI leadership, February 27, 1998,
[http://origin.org/uri/txt/Org2Design.txt].Printed in 1998; no longer
on the Internet; hard copy available from the author. Barbara Marx
Hubbard confirmed her involvement in a message to Lee Penn on 11/11/02.
(9) Barbara Marx Hubbard, message to Lee Penn,
recorded and transcribed November 11, 2002.
(10) State of the World Forum, The
5th Annual
State of the World Forum, October 1-6, 1999, p. 7.
(11) State of the World Forum, "Global
Broadcasts," http://www.worldforum.org/conferences/docs.htm, printed
09/16/03.
(12) State of the World Forum, "Co-Chairs",
printed 09/16/03. Baker, US Secretary of State from 1989 to 1992, is
one of the current co-chairs, and the document lists Schultz as one of
the original co-chairs in 1995.
(13) George
Soros, speech to the State of the World Forum 2000, September 5,
2000, ,printed 09/16/03.
(14) State of the World Forum, "Toward a New
Civilization," May 1997 report on the 1995 and 1996 forums, p. 25.
Smith was on the list of those attending the 1995 conference.
(15) 1997 participation: State of the World
Forum, "Forum Program Schedule 1997," Quarterly, July-September 1997,
Vol. 2, no. 3, p. 5; 1997 State of the World Forum,
"Participants,"[http://www.worldforum.org/1997forum/1997_Participants.html],
printed in 1997; no longer on the Net. 1995-1996 participation: State
of the World Forum, Toward a New Civilization, May 1997, "1996
Participant List," p. 31, and "1995 Participant List," p. 23.
(16) Richard Davenport-Hines, The
Pursuit of
Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics, W. W. Norton and Co.,
2002,
pp. 329-330.
(17) Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams:
The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, The Sixties, and
Beyond,
Grove Press, 1992, p. 45
(18) Richard Davenport-Hines, The
Pursuit of
Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics, W. W. Norton and Co.,
2002,
pp. 328-332; the just-mentioned Acid
Dreams is a book-length discussion
of this point.
(19) Richard Davenport-Hines, The
Pursuit of
Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics, W. W. Norton and Co.,
2002, p.
333.
(20) Huston Smith, "Do Drugs Have Religious
Import? A Thirty-Five-Year Retrospect," in Thomas B. Roberts, ed.,
Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on
Entheogens and Religion, Council
on Spiritual Practices, 2001, p. 14.
(21) Huston Smith, Cleansing
the Doors of
Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and
Chemicals, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2000, p. 130.
(22) Huston Smith, Cleansing
the Doors of
Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and
Chemicals, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2000, p. 63
(23) Huston Smith, "Do Drugs Have Religious
Import? A Thirty-Five-Year Retrospect," in Thomas B. Roberts,ed.,
Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on
Entheogens and Religion, Council
on Spiritual Practices, 2001, p. 16
(24) Council on Spiritual Practices, "About CSP" , printed
09/16/03. The same document promotes a collector's edition of Smith's
Cleansing the Doors of Perception.
(25) Barbara Marx Hubbard, Conscious
Evolution:
Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential, New World Library,
Novato,
California, 1998, pp. 10-11
(26) Drug Policy Alliance, "The
Nation Exclusive Profiles Soros/Nadelmann Role in Drug Policy; Magazine
Article Extols Soros Funded Lindesmith Center and Its Director Ethan
Nadelmann As Center Of Drug Policy Reform Movement" ,printed
09/17/03. Soros remains on the board of directors of the Drug Policy
Alliance
(http://www.lindesmith.org/about/keystaff/boardofdirec/index.cfm,printed
09/17/03).
(27) State of the World Forum, "1996 State of the
World Forum: Creative Approaches to the Drug Crisis - Final Report by
Ethan Nadelman [sic],"
[http://www.worldforum.org/1996forum/round_drugs.html];printed in 1997;
no longer on the Internet.
(28) State of the World Forum, "1998 Schedule of
Events: Friday Round tables, October 30;" David Pasztor, "Stop the
Spread of Nukes - Legalize Dope," SF Weekly, November 4, 1998, vol.17,
no. 39, p. 14
(29) Richard Davenport-Hines, The
Pursuit of
Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics, W. W. Norton and Co.,
2002, p.
350.
(30) Richard Davenport-Hines, The
Pursuit of
Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics, W. W. Norton and Co.,
2002, p.
424, about Indochina, and p. 436, about Nicaragua.
(31) Richard Davenport-Hines, The
Pursuit of
Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics, W. W. Norton and Co.,
2002,
pp. 428-429.
(32) Richard Davenport-Hines, The
Pursuit of
Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics, W. W. Norton and Co.,
2002,
pp. 441-444.
(33) Richard Davenport-Hines, The Pursuit of
Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics, W. W. Norton and Co., 2002, p.
445.
(34) Robert Jesse, of the Council on Spiritual
Practices, is a co-founder of the Rhythm Society. (Excerpts from Rhythm
Society Friends e-mail list; item 4. Included as Exhibit N of a dossier
prepared by a member of the Episcopal Parish of St. John the
Evangelist, seeking Bishop Swing's intervention.)
(35) Lisa Leff, "Progressive
Church Finds New Age Ties Unsettling" - Washington Post, February
22, 2003, page B09; downloaded on 09/17/03. See also Don Lattin, "From
rhythm and blues: Fight over dances and drugs tearing S. F. church
apart" San Francisco Chronicle,
February 4,2002, page A-15;printed
on 09/17/03.
(36) Bishop William Swing, "A Swing Through The
Diocese: Drugs and the Diocese of California," Pacific Church News,
Spring 2003, Vol. 141, No. 2, p. 5.
(37) "For rulers are not a terror to good
conduct, but to bad. ... But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does
not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God, to execute his
wrath on the wrongdoer." (Rom. 13:3-4)
(38) "If rulers were to enact unjust laws or take
measures contrary to the moral order, such arrangements would not be
binding in conscience. In such a case, 'authority breaks down
completely and results in shameful abuse.'" (Catechism of the Catholic
Church, article 1904)
If you wish to contact the
author, please Click
Here and follow the instructions.
The M+G+R Foundation
Please Note: If the above dated image does not appear
on this document, it means that you are not viewing the original
document from our servers. Should you have reason to doubt the
authenticity of the document, we recommend that you access our server
again and click on the "Refresh" or "Reload" button of your Browser to
view the original document.