Acid, mushrooms, ecstasy, salvia…my mind never even wandered towards anything that one would even begin to think of as spiritual/religious. But then I don’t think about that stuff to begin with so that may well have been part of it.
My sense of the passage of time became greatly distorted. I had “visions” of every pet I had ever owned sitting in a circle around the fire with me. Only one of them, a parakeet, spoke to me.
I discussed the experience with a friend who was like some kind of living caricature of a burned out 60’s hippie. He offered that it had, in fact, been my spirit guide appearing to me in a form that would not overwhelm me. “To you it was a parakeet. To somebody else it would have been f***ing Rodan, man!”
"Rodan"didn’t have anything of cosmic importance to say. Only “hello” and “pretty bird.” I have pondered this for over twenty years now, and am unable to suss out any hidden meanings.
LSD once for me, and mushrooms a few times. They were profound experiences for the most part, like going to another world, but as an atheist, I never saw it as a “spirit world” or anything religious. The only time there was any religious aspect to it was at a Mayan ruins when I got totally freaked out after the sun went down and found myself thinking like a Mayan might have back then, “I would willingly sacrifice my child to appease whatever powers are doing this to me!”
Depends what you mean by “the trancendental”? In a religious sense of “beyond the Universe”, I don’t even have time for it - it is literally a nonsensical phrase. In a strictly Kantian sense, the transcendental idel, no, I reject it utterly.
Yes. As far as I’m concerned, there are no transcendental explananda that require any explanantia. The mystical experience is a purely neuro-biological event - it is complete in itself, and entirely material-emergent.
If I were religious, there are two theories which appeal to me. One: god is a crazy woman. Two: gnosticism. I really, really like what I have read about gnosticism and gnostic mythology (which is not much). I could do without the asceticism, but what modern religious idea wouldn’t be complete without picking and choosing?
I saw Dog.
I wasn’t quite an atheist going in–close to it though–but yeah, I had powerful religious experiences on LSD and it certainly changed my outlook and I’ve believed in God hereon in.
While there are siiues that one can debate regarding the linked sources, they can be argued separately. The OP actually is looking for opinions, so this thread is moving to IMHO.
Experimenting with it now, are we? 
My one time, at an outdoor concert, I looked up and saw the Siegel-Schwall blues band playing. My reaction was, “That’s cool.”
Then there were some female art students who had taken their tops off. My reaction was, “That’s cool.”
On my way back to my dorm I encountered a guy with a pet owl with big, yellow eyes. My reaction was, “That’s VERY cool.”
No religion in any of it, unless you want to connect me with the Minerva cult. Sorry.
I’ve never seen god, or talked to god, in the sense you see a lot of trip reports describe.
Mystical experience or thoughts that would be laughed out of a scientific journal? SURE! Some end up being interesting just because I was you know intoxicated, some however have stayed with me.
I looked in the mirror in the fluorescent light of a hotel bathroom and saw deep into the pores of my own face and recoiled in horror at my never-before-seen imperfections. Then I cried great convulsive heaves. Later, I found myself running down a beach picking up rocks and shells and marveling at the precious jewels I held in my hands. I told my friend to hurry up and pick them all up before somebody caught on to us.
No mystical experience, but I did get in touch with my inner Gollum.
Funny to see this thread.
Just last night, bored, I streamed the documentary DMT: The Spirit Molecule..
Apparently DMT is an incredibly simple molecule (very close in structure to Psylocibin), derived from amino acids and found in all plant life, and nearly all animal life on earth. The documentary proceeds to tell the story of a few psychologists, psychiatrists, and chemists in neuropharmacology being granted (after decades of not being studied in a scientific method) permission to undergo DMT trials on volunteers.
I found the telling of experiences from both the doctors and the volunteers fascinating (albeit a few were quite on the side of “woo”.) But what seemed unanimous was their insistence that this compound is on an entirely different level than LSD, Mescaline, Psilocybin, etc.
They all seemed to report a transcendence from human nature, and entering a timeless, infinite void filled with light, overwhelming information and “insights”, beings, euphoria, and the feeling that layer-by-layer they shed every aspect of their corporal being, and felt like a timeless spirit.
Now, the veracity of a lot of what is claimed by the documentary is a bit dubious, but on the surface fascinating just from hearing first-hand about this altered state of consciousness from DMT, apparently so profound, that the volunteers all walked away from these experiences changed in their perspective of “what am I” in a more or less positive and intriguing manner.
The “scientist” in me sees it as a drug that is completely able to remove some filter(s) of our mind, to allow us to experience a raw deluge of data and memory our brains usually delineate and partition in a way we can make sense of the world around us, but once stripped away it becomes overwhelmingly metaphysical and wrought with the sensation of something meaningful, yet unintelligible, which lies far deeper beneath the fabric of reality as we know it.
After watching something like that, you really get a sense of where/how religion, mythology and spirituality may have come into being in human culture, as this drug is easily distilled from plants since ancient history. Of course prehistoric cultures from all over the world would interpret these trips as witness to the spiritual realm, then let humanities compulsion to derive meaning from the unknown do the rest.
Interesting stuff. Check out the Documentary if you have Netflix streaming.
Maybe they see an Empty Space with the sign Insert God Here
I’ve taken both salvia and shrooms at various times, while at various places on the agnostic/atheist spectrum. No religious experiences.
The thing is, while you can have some really noteworthy visual and auditory hallucinations, I was always cognizant (if deliberately ignoring) that these experiences were not real. They were, as a general rule, quite pleasant to euphoric and I did feel a general sense of peace and contentment, but no “oneness with the universe” really, whatever that means. In some cases the hallucinations were extremely vivid (particularly with salvia), but it was like dreaming (and knowing you’re dreaming) – you’re experiencing it, it’s fun, but not real.
One example. I had a particularly vivid hallucination that the Magical Bluebird of Salvia (who looked like a giant peacock made of tiny pill-like shapes that were constantly moving in swirling rotations) had arrived to take me to the Land of Salvia, a wonderful rainbow-covered, skipping-through-meadows type of place. I could still hear people talking in the room, and I remember thinking “I wish those guys would shut up because this is really cool, and I know it’s going to be over here in a second” (salvia lasts a very short time). It was a neat experience, but I never had the sensation that I was conversing with something real – just something from my own imagination, much more vivid and overwhelming than normal.
FWIW, I was not always a skeptic and I did have one religious experience when I was a teenager. In hindsight, I was under extreme strain, and under the influence of a teacher who was very New Agey and I really wanted to believe in the things she was telling me because I was depressed and angry, but it was pretty much a powerful daydream. The sense of meaning wasn’t ever replicated in hallucinogens, perhaps because I wasn’t looking to ascribe any such meaning. I was just looking for a fun experience.
I’ve done acid and shrooms many times, both “partying” and in more introspective scenarios. I prefer the latter. When I started tripping (*many *years ago), I was an atheist-leaning agnostic. I’m now more of a spiritual-leaning agnostic, by which I mean I don’t believe in a God in the usual sense of the term. I think all religions are partly right but mostly wrong. I do believe in some kind of Universal Energy, Intelligence, Love.
I do not owe my beliefs to psychedelics alone, but tripping certainly contributed to my spiritual evolution. It is important to remember that with psychedelics (like many other things), a lot depends on dosage, mindset, and environment. Some of my most deeply profound insights came while tripping. Other times, it was just silly fun with nonstop laughter.
In contrast, I’ve never had any actual “hallucinations” on hallucinogens, as in seeing things that were not there - though visual distortions a-plenty (as in, seeing the walls apparently rippling in time with the music). Mind you, I never did salvia, only mushrooms and LSD.
The “oneness with the universe” thing can best be explained by a temprorary loss of one’s sense of ego, such that the object one identifies with is not the self, but with the world as a whole. It is of course difficult to describe, because almost everyone naturally has a firm sense of selfhood at all times.
Perhaps an analogy would help. When you look at hair and fingernail clippings, they are “of you” but they are not, in a fundamental sense, “you”. In that you toss them away without regret.
When you lack a sense of selfhood, you are of course still aware that there is an animal that is “you”, but it is not what you identify with - that is the larger system of circumstances of which the animal currently considering the matter is only a part - as it were, the latest extention of a much larger “you” that embraces all of evolution, all of society, everything that went into creating that animal - and will go on existing, knowing and creating long after that individual animal is dead and forgotten.
Your individual selfhood is really of no more significance, from that greater perspective, than those hair and fingernail clippings. All of one’s individual desires and fears - so very, very important to the individual animal - are really just a part of a greater pattern.
Speaking personally, I found it a very great comfort; it is really only a matter of point of view. There is no necessity that it be in any way religious, although of course it is for many, who identify that POV as the godhead.
I took acid a few times, way back when… always a small dose, never enough to cause the sort of cosmic ego-death experience described by Leary and those guys. I’ve had more spiritual experiences while not on drugs than while on them.
Yes, that’s definitely been a part of my “mystical” experiences and the feeling was indescribably amazing and wonderful. I’ve carried those memories with me and they have helped me through some tough times in my life. That must be akin to what religious people are talking about when they say they “feel God’s presence” or “know they have a guardian angel.”
Dropped acid for the first time and after closing the bar, bartender friend, another buddy and myself went to a local National Historic Site. I’ll never forget focussing on the moss, lichens and ferns at the base of a huge tree with the normally unnoticed, extremely tiny insects busily going about their lives as the sun came up. Something I never would have zoomed in on but for the trip. It was mind opening and lasts to this day.
I was agnostic by default since checking out Sunday School for a few years to not be so different from my friends and been an Atheist for many years now.
If you’re reading this, Freddy, call me…