Exploring Psychedelics in Religious Trauma Recovery — Part 3: The Psychological State of Openness to Expressions of Infinity
(This is Part 3 in a series of articles about exploring Psychedelics in recovery from Religious Trauma. This anecdotal experience is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.)
As I discussed in Part 2 of this series, the mental set of my first psilocybin trip included my expectation of a mystical experience. I had read so much about these psychedelic-induced visions and wondered how it would manifest for me as a PIMO Jehovah’s Witness.
After all, I no longer believe in God. Or rather, I am absent of belief in either the existence or non-existence of God. I find it very difficult to prove with either scientific evidence or metaphysical logic that God unequivocally exists or does not exist. More importantly, belief or non-belief in God is largely irrelevant to my day-to-day life. And of one thing I am certain: belief in God is not necessary for humans to act with kindness and equanimity in the world.
In fact, my experience in a high-control fundamentalist religion taught me that belief in God can at times become a roadblock to showing empathy and human kindness to others. At its worst, belief in God can cause prejudice and hatred. Copious historical evidence has shown the propensity for religion to produce large-scale violence and death. As I explored more thoroughly in A Voice from Inside, firm belief in the existence of the Abrahamic God can limit expansive cognition and cause submits their independent and critical thought to an illusory concept of ultimate love and good (God). This often restricts people from utilizing the less-praised elements of human psychology including aggression, and domination; a spectrum of qualities that must be acknowledged and embraced in order to avoid an unintentional perversion of them.
Moreover, in my religious upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness, the Watch Tower Society’s “Jehovah” was leveraged to oppress me. Yahweh was my spiritual abuser. This is, of course, a harsh reality for many who suffer religious trauma. For such ones, belief in God no longer provides warmth and security, but rather grief and anger; a trauma trigger.
As I entered my trip, knowing what I did about the implications of psychedelics upon spirituality, my biggest fear was that I would once again start believing in God. I was afraid that I would lose my naturalistic edge. I was terrified that in my psilocybin-induced state, my abusive Heavenly Father would reappear and oppress me once again.
In the previous article, I spoke about the psychological state of intellectual peace and the rather humorous drop back into lucidity that occurred when my playlist of meditation sounds ended.
I will pick up the narrative from this point…
Entrance into the Psychological State of Openness to Expressions of Infinity
I switched over to a playlist of Impressionist era classical music that I had prepared before my trip. The playlist begins with a recording of Camille Saint-Saëns’ The Swan by Yo Yo Ma and Kathryn Scott that will bring you to tears even without the assistance of psychedelics. But this time, under the influence of 4g of psilocybin and half a cannabis edible, I was about to be taken somewhere completely different.
There is no doubt that this next part of my experience was primed by Michael Pollan’s account of a mystical experience under psilocybin from How to Change Your Mind:
“Listen’ does not begin to describe what transpired between me and the vibrations of air set in motion by the four strings of that cello…Opened to the music, I became first the strings, could feel on my skin the exquisite friction of the horsehair rubbing over me, and then the breeze of sound flowing past as it crossed the lips of the instrument and went out to meet the world, beginning its lonely transit of the universe…I became the cello and mourned with it for the twenty or so minutes it took for that piece to, well, change everything” (Pollan, 2018, p.268).
My experience was similar. The opening arpeggio of the tune was immediately arresting. I gasped at the beauty and groaned out loud as I let out my breath. I could tell that I was about to experience the peak experience that I anticipated; a state that I will call the psychological state of openness to expressions of infinity.
This altered state of consciousness was not completely unfamiliar, but I had never experienced it with the intensity with which I experienced it during my psilocybin trip. As Yo Yo Ma continued to play, I suddenly became aware of an overwhelming light that came not from above, as in supernatural heavenly energy, but that burst through from the side of my visual field, as if it was passing through me and consuming me. It was a bright white light that absorbed and contained the full spectrum, even the frequencies imperceptible to my human eye.
I was part of it. So was everything else.
The burst of light was awe-inspiring; like the kind of emotional beauty that brings you to tears at the climax a moving piece of literature or a powerful film. Or perhaps it was more like familial love. Or was it the bittersweet memory of unity and love from a time passed? I felt like I was being reintroduced to a place that I knew from before but had forgotten; one that had been so often barred from consciousness by the constant vigilance of my day-to-day life. It was the state of unfettered and infinite creative expression that is so often dampened by social, financial, relational, or ideological restrictions. I yielded to the light. Suddenly, I became acutely aware that this overwhelming beauty is ever-present, existing somewhere, somehow, and for somebody in each and every moment.
Although this experience was uniquely my own, I was convinced (am convinced) that the potential of this psychological state is common to all humans, or perhaps even to all sentient beings of sufficient psychological complexity. I understood why this psychological state of openness to expressions of infinity, would cause humans to speak of, nay create, gods in an effort to communicate its brilliance and unifying power to others. How else would one describe an experience that seemed not only to absorb but also to inspire each expression of intellect and creativity from every domain of human understanding in a way that obliterates conflict, misunderstanding, and fear? How could anyone communicate this without talk of God?
In that moment, I forgave and understood everyone who ever has.
Seeing Jehovah Again
Shortly after this moment, the cognitive construct that I associated with Jehovah reappeared in my consciousness. In the clarity of my trip, I could distinctly see my old god concept for what it is, an illusion in consciousness that had been created in part by the writers of the Bible, in part by the religious community of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and in part by myself.
During my complicated passage through the inferno of Religious Trauma Syndrome and faith deconstruction, I thoroughly deconstructed my concept of God. I stopped basing my understanding of an ultimate universal power on the nuggets of theology provided me by my (supposedly) more enlightened spiritual leaders. In sum, I am no longer motivated by belief, nor do I suffer from grief or anger at the reminder of my lost belief as many do. As a PIMO interested in maintaining my psychological independence and keeping my intellectual dissent private from my religious community, I have even used God-language disingenuously to defend my religiously unsanctioned behavior and protect myself from social pressure.
But in the psychological state of openness to expressions of infinity, my deconstruction was going to go one step further.
Suddenly, a poem came to me. Imagining it to be far more profound than it appeared when I revisited it in waking consciousness, I sat up quickly to write it down:
“I see it now
It is beautiful
God cannot contain it
How could he?
How could You?!
I forgive you, jehovah
Little ‘j’
You did your best”
How could a single conceptualized god ever contain the infinite potential of individualized expression the exists within and extends out from all humans and higher beasts? It was a presumption for any man to think that he had sole proprietorship of this experience. Strangely, it even felt, presuming there is a god, that it would be presumptuous for him/her/it/they to claim ownership of such exquisite power. It would be arrogance on God’s part.
“Jehovah, how dare you?”, I thought and became mildly perturbed at the hubris of my own god concept.
For a brief moment, I thought that perhaps I was god and chuckled. I had heard of this phenomenon in other psychedelic experiences. Some people see God. Some people think they are God. It all depends on the psycho-spiritual frame of reference with which you enter the trip. In the past, during the initial stages of trauma recovery when I was under the influence of benzodiazepines, I distinctly recall experiencing a phase of sublime arrogance that, looking back, must have bordered on delusion. Surely, to be of the opinion that you are privy to a genius-level understanding of human behavior and unique powers of intuitive connection is a transcendental feeling.
I smirked as I remembered the time when I had felt like God before.
Then, caught somewhere between hallucination and dream, I saw the light of infinite expression penetrate and consume my vision of Jehovah and burst it apart, shattering it like a mirror. I saw the remains of Jehovah like shards of glass drift beneath me and off into unrecoverable space.
“I forgive you, Jehovah” I cried out loud and began to sob.
An Individualized Interpretation
Later, I interpreted the light to be an all-inclusive representation of expressions of infinity. I was still able to attain a mindful separateness from the experience; an ability I attribute to meditative practice in the months and years prior to my trip. That is to say: I did not believe in the light as if it is indeed some ever-present entity. While I was completely consumed by the experience, I didn’t, as they say, lose myself. I could clearly recognize that the psychological state of openness to expressions of infinity and the hallucinations that I experienced within it were unique to me. However, I had a distinct feeling that the potential to experience this altered state, and a vision similar if not exactly the same as the light of infinite expression that I observed is universally present in humans.
I might even believe this.
The light seemed to simultaneously inspire and envelope all human expression, be it linguistic, artistic, religious, or otherwise. The light was home to exponentially expanding human intellect and collective understanding in the realms of science and academia. It even held space for what psychologists call the dark triad: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy; although these did not detract from the brilliance of the light. The light, if only theoretically, would erase the lines of demarcation that divide homo sapiens. Further, any restriction upon the manifestation of this infinite expression on humans would represent an attempt to limit the light from which it came. I understood, and further, experienced the understanding that all individually defined interpretation and inspiration is drawn from this psychological state has its place in the vastness of time and space.
My fungi-induced hallucinations distinctly reminded me of Daniel’s visions of four great beasts, Ezekiel’s vision of the heavenly chariot, and what the apostle John saw on the Isle of Patmos. Perhaps the mystical experiences of these authors (whether they resulted from psychedelic use or contemplative practices) were also drawn from the psychological state of openness to expressions of infinity. How else would one communicate the magnitude and profundity of such an experience with those who could not yet comprehend its scope?
I suppose one approach could be to keep one’s spiritual epiphanies to themself, allowing them to mature into pragmatic behavior and creative production in daily life. Paradoxically, as adequately evidenced by the reports of those victimized by spiritual abuse, talk of god can actually result in restrictions upon individual expression if not delivered with extreme care. But during my trip, I comprehended how the authoritarian nature and paternalization of religion is a very human error given the challenges of communicating an individualized mystical experience with the lay person without drawing the awe of individuals looking for spiritual guidance.
Overeager religionists may indeed be greedy for mystical experiences. I certainly am eager for spiritual enlightenment. But my experience felt given, not grasped. Not given in the sense that it was gifted from an Almighty owner. But in the sense that most successful endeavors come, when you stop trying. I was left with no insights on how to reach this state again. Of course, I could take another dose. But I have no craving to do so. The experience was somewhat exhausting. I came down from the psychological state of openness to expressions of infinity with a clear vision of the work that I had left to do. Was this mission or work that I brought back down from the God space as illusory as had been my God concept? Perhaps. But, I felt like I had a calling, at least for the moment.
The Limits of Individually Interpreted Spirituality (coming back to the cow)
This brings me back to the cow and the limits of individual spiritual experiences and about how they must be modestly accepted as individual experiences and not infrastructuralized, moralized, or indoctrinated.
As I alluded to in Part 1, during my trip I dreamed that I was having a conversation with a respected leader of the bovine community. He was a black-and-white Derbyshire cow like the kind in children’s storybooks.
I probed him about his take on vegetarianism. I had been thinking a lot about this in the months before my trip. I was conflicted. My suspicion is that higher cognition animals might actually have the potential for spirituality as do humans. But experientially, I know that my body functions well on a diet high in animal protein and fat. I was in a moral conundrum.
The great cow was quite vague in his response.
“Why would you take more than you need?” he asked. His response stunned me and silenced my cognitive dissonance.
This hallucination was nothing more than a manifestation of my mind and was not backed with any neurological research about the cognitive similarities between cows and humans. Nor was it informed by my nutritional needs or evidence-based research about the effect of cattle farming on the environment. It was just a private interaction between me and a cow in a drug-induced non-ordinary state of consciousness (NOSC).
But I haven’t eaten a lot of beef since. I have slipped unintentionally into a sort of stratified omnivorism loosely based on my nutritional intuitions and the varying levels of cognitive complexity of the animal species commonly consumed in my little corner of the globe.
I share this experience to emphasize the personal nature of psychedelic integration and the limits of extrapolating the individual insights to others.
The day after my trip, my partner and I enjoyed a salad bowl at a casual dining chain. She asked the restaurant worker for beef. As we sat down she suddenly remembered the shroom-induced vision that I had related to her just a day before.
“Oh, I’m sorry, are you offended that I got the beef?” she asked respectfully.
“No, of course not,” I said. “The cow didn’t say anything to you.”
(This article is a repost from wallisbooks.com)
References:
Pollan, M. (2018). How to change your mind the new science of psychedelics. Penguin Books.
