Forms of Psychedelic Life Conference, UC Berkeley, 2023
Forms of Psychedelic Life Conference at UC Berkeley (April 14, 2023). church (as well as the rece... more Forms of Psychedelic Life Conference at UC Berkeley (April 14, 2023). church (as well as the recently founded church in the Mormon home state of Utah: The Divine Assembly). I also address the cultural dogma regarding spiritual experiences and embodiment. The early Mormon church was an amalgamation of Native American lore, masonic musings, occult practices, folk magic, the cultural milieu, the religious environment of the Burned Over District, and Joseph and his family's personal visionary experiences. 2 Undergirding much of that for Joseph was his (and his father's) quest for wisdom, to which I will return to in a moment. The early Mormon cosmology was one engulfed in the otherworld. This otherworld was routinely accessed and explored. The experience of this otherworld, sometimes via psychedelics, shaped their epistemology and their reality. The history of Mormonism is riddled with visions, encounters with angels and demons, bodily contortions, attempts to raise the dead, and altered states everywhere. Much of this gets shrugged off as a weird cultural thing by LDS church members today if it is addressed at all. It seems weird because they, the early church members, not the present ones were navigating the otherworld. As the LDS church has evolved and changed since Joseph Smith's death, it has maligned many of the visionary and otherworldly experiences to the margins. The emphasis has been shifted from communal visions, co-creative revelations, and the building of a literal Zion community to individual belief and accountability. They have shifted from the self being the product of semiotic thinking, as Eduardo Kohn describes, to the self being the foundation of semiotic thinking. 3 In the process, the LDS church has neglected the larger forest, the larger connection to the community around them. Psychedelics are allowing people to return to that cosmology, a non-materialist otherworld of interrelations and visionary experiences, emphasizing the communal, interrelational nature of both human beings and the world around us. They are putting the spirit(s) back into the plants and into the world itself. 4 They are emphasizing that humans play a role in co-creating our reality just as many of the early theological developments and revelations within Mormonism were co-revealed. Joseph's Quest for Wisdom The Joseph Smith Sr. family existed within the milieu of the Second Great Awakening, Lucy Mack Smith, his wife, was partial to Methodism and later Presbyterianism while Sr. preferred to remain aloof after a brief stint with the Universalists. 4 Early Mormons viewed plants, the earth, the moon, and the sun among other things as having spirits and some agential capacity.
Users of psychedelic drugs frequently report various types of healing effects after the experienc... more Users of psychedelic drugs frequently report various types of healing effects after the experience has completed. How these substances actually do the healing work is still being understood. I argue that the phenomenology of the psychedelic experience is relevant to and doing at least some of the healing work. This occurs in part via the phenomenon of transformative experiences. Psychedelic experiences provide insight into first and second order desires of an individual. They alter an individual’s self-narrative and provide an ideal to aim for in addition to the motivation to achieve that ideal. Additionally, psychedelic experiences foster feelings of connection to other people and nature. This heals through altering an individual’s in-group/out-group perceptions and provide a sense of oneness which increases accurate perspective taking. The experience of ego-dissolution had under psychedelics can be compared to the ultimate transformative experience—death—which facilitates the healing process. These experiences promote social healing and serve as a reopening of previously closed possibilities due to trauma or mental illness.
Forms of Psychedelic Life Conference, UC Berkeley, 2023
Forms of Psychedelic Life Conference at UC Berkeley (April 14, 2023). church (as well as the rece... more Forms of Psychedelic Life Conference at UC Berkeley (April 14, 2023). church (as well as the recently founded church in the Mormon home state of Utah: The Divine Assembly). I also address the cultural dogma regarding spiritual experiences and embodiment. The early Mormon church was an amalgamation of Native American lore, masonic musings, occult practices, folk magic, the cultural milieu, the religious environment of the Burned Over District, and Joseph and his family's personal visionary experiences. 2 Undergirding much of that for Joseph was his (and his father's) quest for wisdom, to which I will return to in a moment. The early Mormon cosmology was one engulfed in the otherworld. This otherworld was routinely accessed and explored. The experience of this otherworld, sometimes via psychedelics, shaped their epistemology and their reality. The history of Mormonism is riddled with visions, encounters with angels and demons, bodily contortions, attempts to raise the dead, and altered states everywhere. Much of this gets shrugged off as a weird cultural thing by LDS church members today if it is addressed at all. It seems weird because they, the early church members, not the present ones were navigating the otherworld. As the LDS church has evolved and changed since Joseph Smith's death, it has maligned many of the visionary and otherworldly experiences to the margins. The emphasis has been shifted from communal visions, co-creative revelations, and the building of a literal Zion community to individual belief and accountability. They have shifted from the self being the product of semiotic thinking, as Eduardo Kohn describes, to the self being the foundation of semiotic thinking. 3 In the process, the LDS church has neglected the larger forest, the larger connection to the community around them. Psychedelics are allowing people to return to that cosmology, a non-materialist otherworld of interrelations and visionary experiences, emphasizing the communal, interrelational nature of both human beings and the world around us. They are putting the spirit(s) back into the plants and into the world itself. 4 They are emphasizing that humans play a role in co-creating our reality just as many of the early theological developments and revelations within Mormonism were co-revealed. Joseph's Quest for Wisdom The Joseph Smith Sr. family existed within the milieu of the Second Great Awakening, Lucy Mack Smith, his wife, was partial to Methodism and later Presbyterianism while Sr. preferred to remain aloof after a brief stint with the Universalists. 4 Early Mormons viewed plants, the earth, the moon, and the sun among other things as having spirits and some agential capacity.
Users of psychedelic drugs frequently report various types of healing effects after the experienc... more Users of psychedelic drugs frequently report various types of healing effects after the experience has completed. How these substances actually do the healing work is still being understood. I argue that the phenomenology of the psychedelic experience is relevant to and doing at least some of the healing work. This occurs in part via the phenomenon of transformative experiences. Psychedelic experiences provide insight into first and second order desires of an individual. They alter an individual’s self-narrative and provide an ideal to aim for in addition to the motivation to achieve that ideal. Additionally, psychedelic experiences foster feelings of connection to other people and nature. This heals through altering an individual’s in-group/out-group perceptions and provide a sense of oneness which increases accurate perspective taking. The experience of ego-dissolution had under psychedelics can be compared to the ultimate transformative experience—death—which facilitates the healing process. These experiences promote social healing and serve as a reopening of previously closed possibilities due to trauma or mental illness.
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