CultNEWS101 Articles: 3/5-6/2022 (Event, Cult Recovery, Cult Therapy, Drugs, Coercive Control, Natural Law Party, Yogic Flying, Transcendental Meditation)

Event, Cult Recovery, Cult Therapy, Drugs, Coercive Control, Natural Law Party, Yogic Flying, Transcendental Meditation

ICSA Annual Conference: Clinical/Therapeutic Assessment of Former Cult Members - What are other Clinician's Using in Therapy?

June 25, 2022 (4:00 pm-4:50 pm EST)

When clients/patients who have been former cult members come in for therapy, clinicians, such as counselors, social workers, and psychologists, usually assess clients utilizing psychological tests and psycho-social interviews. Clinicians utilize these tests and assessments to identify problems and issues such as trauma, depression, suicidal ideation, etc. Clinicians use the information gathered to have a baseline from which they can start therapy, plan interventions, evaluate and diagnose the client, and measure client progress during therapy. However, clinicians may not have a clear understanding of the psychological and clinical assessments/ tests that may be most appropriate when working with former cult members. Based on a research survey of 112 licensed clinicians working with former cult members (2019), the presenter will discuss the psychological assessments/tests, including psycho-social interviews, most used by ICSA clinicians/counselors. The presenter will also discuss several other assessments that have been developed by ICSA Counselors, Psychologists and Researchers, such as The Spiritual Abuse Scale (Keller, 2015), Psychological Abuse in Manipulative Groups (Almendros et al, 2011) and the Group Psychological Abuse Scale (Chambers et al, 1994). Case studies will also be utilized in discussing when different tests/assessments might be more appropriate. Participants, after leaving the session, should have a better understanding of what is available to them when working with former cult members, and which tests/assessments might be more appropriate for which clients.

ICSA Annual Conference: Drugs as a Tool for Coercive Control

Friday, June 24th (12:00 PM-12:50 PM EST)

"Description: Coercive control can be looked at from the perspective of the manipulator using drugs as a tool to control the victim. There are two spheres where the use of drugs have been used to establish coercion. In one sphere, federal prosecutors have brought human trafficking cases based upon the trafficker supplying drugs, then withholding drugs, and continuing to manipulate the victims to create a coercive environment to cause the victims to engage in commercial sex, for the perpetrator's gain. Human trafficking cases against three defendants resulted in long-term convictions: Andrew Fields (Florida), Jeremy Mack (Ohio), and Monta Croce (Wisconsin). In those cases, the prosecutors framed a human trafficking case around the theory of coercive control. They argued it was used by the trafficker to control the victims to do what he wanted for his gain. For human trafficking, an element of the crime is whether the perpetrator used fraud (lies), force (physical), or coercion. These cases were built on the theory that coercion was used. In another sphere, a victim came forward complaining of a doctor, Ricardo Cruciani, at Beth Israel Medical Center in NY, who prescribed powerful opioids to a patient, Tanisha Johnson, increased the doses, and eventually sexually abused her. The use of drugs to control and coerce the victim may be a new way to think about coercive control. It could also be applicable in cult-like organizations."

Speaker: Robin Boyle Laisure, JD, Professor of Legal Writing, St. John's University School of Law, is on the editorial board of ICSA's International Journal of Cultic Studies. She lectures on topics concerning cults and the law. In 2005, she received the Faculty Outstanding Achievement award from the President of St. John's University. Her publications relevant to cultic studies include:

With co-author Andrea Laisure, in ICSA Today (Vol. 8, no. 3, 2017): Staying Safe: Observing Warning Signs of a Dangerous Liaison.
Employing Trafficking Laws to Capture Elusive Leaders of Destructive Cults, Oregon Review of International Law (2016).
Current Status of Federal Law Concerning Violent Crimes Against Women and Children: Implications for Cult Victims, Cultic Studies Review (2002).
How Children in Cults May Use Emancipation Laws to Free Themselves, Cultic Studies Journal, (1999)
Women, the Law, and Cults: Three Avenues of Legal Recourse - New Rape Laws, Violence Against Women Act, and Anti Stalking Laws, Cultic Studies Journal (1998).

Natural Law Party: Yogi Flyer 1995 (video)

"The NATURGEGETZ party, awakening to a new consciousness (Short name: NATURAL LAW) was a small party in Germany, which was founded in 1992 and existed until 2004."

wocomoHUMANITY: Hugo Stamm on Yogic Flying and the Guru-Cult around Transcendental Meditation

"Cult expert and journalist Hugo Stamm on Yogic Flying and the Guru-Cult around Transcendental Meditation.

The interview was shot in 2008 in Rütli, Switzerland, for the production of the documentary "David wants to Fly" by David Sieveking."

David Sieveking: "David Wants To Fly"

"David Sieveking follows the path of his idol, David Lynch, into the world of Transcendental Meditation. That leads him to the movement's founder, Maharishi. Today TM is a global conglomerate, promising world peace and yogic flying. How does this chime with the dark films of Lynch? Inspired by his idol, the young director starts to meditate, too, submerging himself deeper in the world of TM."

Michael D. Coleman, Ph. D: Lies My Guru Told Me

" ... One of the wonderful things about email on the Internet is the "democratization" of knowledge. We can compare notes with others around the world easily and quickly. No authoritarian structure can block it. Dictatorial structures hate free dialogue.

Recently I have been "listening in" to an on-going dialogue among three friends who have been sharing stories of their time with Maharishi. This made me realize that even 25 years after leaving the TM Movement, I have not come clean with myself and with others about the lies Maharishi encouraged me to believe and required me to tell others.

This is an open letter to anyone within the TM movement who is beginning to feel that they must be "crazy" because of the dissonance between what they are aspiring to and what the TM movement actually seems to be doing. It is also for everyone who has left the TM movement to validate your sanity."

News, Education, Intervention, Recovery

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Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.

CultRecovery101.com assists group members and their families make the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.

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Please forward articles that you think we should add to cultintervention@gmail.com.

ICSA Annual Conference: Drugs as a Tool for Coercive Control

ICSA Annual Conference: Drugs as a Tool for Coercive Control

Friday, June 24th
12:00 PM-12:50 PM

Coercive control can be looked at from the perspective of the manipulator using drugs as a tool to control the victim. There are two spheres where the use of drugs have been used to establish coercion. In one sphere, federal prosecutors have brought human trafficking cases based upon the trafficker supplying drugs, then withholding drugs, and continuing to manipulate the victims to create a coercive environment to cause the victims to engage in commercial sex, for the perpetrator’s gain. Human trafficking cases against three defendants resulted in long-term convictions: Andrew Fields (Florida), Jeremy Mack (Ohio), and Monta Croce (Wisconsin). In those cases, the prosecutors framed a human trafficking case around the theory of coercive control. They argued it was used by the trafficker to control the victims to do what he wanted for his gain. For human trafficking, an element of the crime is whether the perpetrator used fraud (lies), force (physical), or coercion. These cases were built on the theory that coercion was used. In another sphere, a victim came forward complaining of a doctor, Ricardo Cruciani, at Beth Israel Medical Center in NY, who prescribed powerful opioids to a patient, Tanisha Johnson, increased the doses, and eventually sexually abused her. The use of drugs to control and coerce the victim may be a new way to think about coercive control. It could also be applicable in cult-like organizations.

• Conference Information
• Agenda
• Conference Registration

Robin Boyle Laisure, JD, Professor of Legal Writing, St. John’s University School of Law, is on the editorial board of ICSA’s International Journal of Cultic Studies. She lectures on topics concerning cults and the law. In 2005, she received the Faculty Outstanding Achievement award from the President of St. John’s University. Her publications relevant to cultic studies include:

• With co-author Andrea Laisure, in ICSA Today (Vol. 8, no. 3, 2017): Staying Safe: Observing Warning Signs of a Dangerous Liaison.
• Employing Trafficking Laws to Capture Elusive Leaders of Destructive Cults, Oregon Review of International Law (2016).
• Current Status of Federal Law Concerning Violent Crimes Against Women and Children: Implications for Cult Victims, Cultic Studies Review (2002).
• How Children in Cults May Use Emancipation Laws to Free Themselves, Cultic Studies Journal, (1999)
• Women, the Law, and Cults: Three Avenues of Legal Recourse - New Rape Laws, Violence Against Women Act, and Anti Stalking Laws, Cultic Studies Journal (1998). 

• Conference Information
• Agenda
• Conference Registration

CultNEWS101 Articles: 2/5-6/2022 (Religious Research, Cult Involvement, Video, Podcast, Meth, Book Launch, Dialogue and Cultic Studies)

Religious Research, Cult Involvement, Video, Podcast, Meth, Book Launch, Dialogue and Cultic Studies

Global News: Gone by 2040': Why some religions are declining in Canada faster than ever

"Religiosity in Canada is at an all-time low, with recently released data from Statistics Canada showing only 68 per cent of Canadians 15 or older now report having a religious affiliation. It's the first time that number has dipped below 70 per cent since StatCan began tracking the data in 1985.

In response, Global News has spent the past two months speaking to members of religious communities across the country and looking at historical data to determine why this is happening. This is part one of that series.

It's important to note that this decline is not across the board; the number of Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and Hindus is increasing, and StatCan predicts the number of Canadians reporting a non-Christian religious affiliation could double by the year 2036.

Christianity, however, is in sharp decline. In 2011, 67.3 per cent (about 22.1 million people) of Canadians said they were affiliated with a Christian religion. In 2019, that number had dropped to 63.2 percent. Catholicism, Canada's largest denomination, now accounts for 32 per cent of Canadians over 15, down from 46.9 per cent in 1996."

The decline is even more precarious for Canada's United and Anglican churches.

Jon Atack :  The Dynamics of  Cult Involvement

Pat Ryan and Joe Kelly have worked helping people exit and recover from cults for many years. In this week's video, they join Jon to talk about the nature of authoritarian control, the nostalgia some 

Butterflies and Bravery: Meth And Me

"In this episode Jemima bares it all and talks about some of her previous vices, focusing on her meth addiction. She holds nothing back as she takes you down the long dark road she walked. You'll be on the edge of your seat as we delve into the world of drug addiction. Find out how Jemima got clean without attending meetings or having a religious epiphany, and how she managed to stay that way. Sometimes there's not a why, there's not a way, there's just holding on."

INFORM: Book Launch – "Radical Transformations in Minority Religions", edited by Beth Singler and Eileen Barker

(February 10,  2022, 5:30 - 7:30 pm GMT, Zoom)

About the book: All religions undergo continuous change, but minority religions tend to be less anchored in their ways than mainstream, traditional religions. This volume examines radical transformations undergone by a variety of minority religions, including the Children of God/ Family International; Gnosticism; Jediism; various manifestations of Paganism; LGBT Muslim groups; the Plymouth Brethren; Santa Muerte; and Satanism. As with other books in the Routledge/Inform series, the contributors approach the subject from a wide range of perspectives: professional scholars include legal experts and sociologists specializing in new religious movements, but there are also chapters from those who have experienced a personal involvement. The volume is divided into four thematic parts that focus on different impetuses for radical change: interactions with society, technology and institutions, efforts at legitimation, and new revelations. 

Respondents will include: 

• Professor Emeritus James A. Beckford, University of Warwick 
• Michael Langone, Executive Director, International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA), USA 
• Professor Linda Woodhead, King's College London 
• Register

ICSA E-Newsletter: ICSA's Openness to Dialogue: Historical Perspective

"From its founding in 1979, ICSA strove to apply professional perspectives and research to understand and respond to the problems posed by cults. This professionalism has made ICSA open and tolerant, and, consequently, credible. Though there were and continue to be different opinions about how open ICSA should be, the prevailing view has always been that we must not be like cults, which are closed-minded and censor or refuse to engage with those who advocate dissenting views.

The reasons for and importance of openness and dialogue was formally articulated in a document written by the ICSA Board of Directors: "Dialogue and Cultic Studies: Why Dialogue Benefits the Cultic Studies Field." Historical background can be found on ICSA's history page, especially "Changes in the North American Cult Awareness Movement."

ICSA's openness to dialogue can sometimes be difficult to reconcile with ICSA's mission of helping those adversely affected by cultic involvements. Former members, especially those who have been traumatized, may feel discomfort -- sometimes revulsion -- when ICSA's openness to divergent views exposes them to people with positive views of cults or even of religion in general. Openness may also challenge parents and helping professionals who are focused on ameliorating harm. Conversely, some academicians may interpret ICSA's focus on cult-related harm as an anti-religious bias.

Because ICSA is open to diverse and conflicting views, ICSA cannot please "all the people all the time." Some degree of tension and discord, therefore, is unfortunately unavoidable. This tension can be challenging, but it can also enhance learning and thinking creatively about cult-related problems.

ICSA is unique because it brings together in a coherent and substantial way international constituencies of victims, families, helping professionals, and researchers. The diversity within ICSA promotes an environment that is conducive to thinking broadly about the subject and to learning from those one might not ordinarily encounter. "Stress-testing" our opinions is a hallmark of critical thinking."

News, Education, Intervention, Recovery

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Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.

CultRecovery101.com assists group members and their families make the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.

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Please forward articles that you think we should add to cultintervention@gmail.com.

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CultNEWS101 Articles: 12/15/2021 (Conspiracy Theories, MDMA, Rajneesh, Influence)

Conspiracy Theories, MDMA, Rajneesh, Influence

The Conversation: How conspiracy theories in the US became more personal, more cruel and more mainstream after the Sandy Hook shootings

"Social media's role in spreading misinformation has been well documented in recent years. The year of the Sandy Hook shooting, 2012, marked the first year that more than half of all American adults used social media.

It also marked a modern low in public trust of the media. Gallup's annual survey has since shown even lower levels of trust in the media in 2016 and 2021.

These two coinciding trends – which continue to drive misinformation – pushed fringe doubts about Sandy Hook quickly into the U.S. mainstream. Speculation that the shooting was a false flag – an attack made to look as if it were committed by someone else – began to circulate on Twitter and other social media sites almost immediately. Far-right commentator and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and other fringe voices amplified these false claims.

Jones was recently found liable by default in defamation cases filed by Sandy Hook families.

Mistakes in breaking news reports about the shooting, such as conflicting information on the gun used and the identity of the shooter, were spliced together in YouTube videos and compiled on blogs as proof of a conspiracy, as my research shows. Amateur sleuths collaborated in Facebook groups that promoted the shooting as a hoax and lured new users down the rabbit hole.

Soon, a variety of establishment figures, including the 2010 Republican nominee for Connecticut attorney general, Martha Dean, gave credence to doubts about the tragedy.

Six months later, as gun control legislation stalled in Congress, a university poll found 1 in 4 people thought the truth about Sandy Hook was being hidden to advance a political agenda. Many others said they weren't sure. The results were so unbelievable that some media outlets questioned the poll's accuracy.

Today, other conspiracy theories have followed a similar trajectory on social media. The media is awash with stories about the popularity of the bizarre QAnon conspiracy movement, which falsely claims top Democrats are part of a Satan-worshiping pedophile ring. A member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, has also publicly denied Sandy Hook and other mass shootings."

But back in 2012, the spread of outlandish conspiracy theories from social media into the mainstream was a relatively new phenomenon, and an indication of what was to come.  

Vice: Did the Cult From 'Wild Wild Country' Introduce MDMA to Ibiza?

"The free-loving sannyasins from the Bhagwan movement were a "crucial bridge between Ibiza's 60s counterculture and the 90s electronic dance".

"'I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance.'

So opined the famously deity-suspicious philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This remained an oft-used saying of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh – the pseudonymous leader of the free-loving Bhagwan movement, the subject of Netflix's 2018 docuseries Wild Wild Country.

Nietzsche's quote twins nicely with a longstanding rumor that floats around the edges of drug culture: that Bhagwan's disciples (also called Rajneeshees, sannyasins or simply Bhagwans) actually introduced MDMA to Ibiza in the mid-80s. From here, the drug supposedly coalesced with the island's new Balearic sounds, played most famously by DJ Alfredo at the nightclub Amnesia, to sow seeds of many contemporary cultures – from electronic music and festivals to "the sesh" itself. But does the story stand up to scrutiny and did the Bhagwans help the world to dance and get high? I wanted to find out.

But before that, some history: In the 30s and 40s, Ibiza became a nexus of artists, musicians and beatniks escaping the vagaries of European fascism. Californian Vietnam War draft-dodging hippies were added to the melting point and the island became a common stop on the hippie trail. From the mid-70s and into the 80s, the island's horny freaks and trust fund babies nurtured an embryonic club scene, with legendary venues like Amnesia, Pacha and KU serving a pleasure-seeking crowd.

MDMA, meanwhile, had evolved from still-legal preserve of progressive 70s Californian psychotherapists to the gay nightlife scene in New York, Chicago, and Dallas – the latter sold over-the-counter of the Starck nightclub. It was finally banned by the DEA in 1985, but not before the preeminent producers of ecstasy in America, named the Texas Group, had reportedly churned out two million tables in the weeks preceding the shutdown."

Inc: Want to Be More Influential, Persuasive, and Charismatic? Science Says First Take a Look at the Clock

New research shows how to leverage your circadian rhythm to increase your charisma and be more inspiring.

" ... Some people are extremely persuasive. They influence (in a good way) the people around them. They make people feel a part of something bigger than themselves.

In fact, every successful person I know is at least somewhat charismatic. And tends to be really good at persuading other people; not by manipulating or pressuring, but by describing the logic and benefits of an idea to gain agreement."

News, Education, Intervention, Recovery

CultEducationEvents.com

CultMediation.com   

Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.

CultRecovery101.com assists group members and their families make the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.

CultNEWS101.com news, links, resources.

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Selection of articles for CultNEWS101 does not mean that Patrick Ryan or Joseph Kelly agree with the content. We provide information from many points of view in order to promote dialogue.

Please forward articles that you think we should add to cultintervention@gmail.com.

Calling all mystics: Clergy psychedelics study aims to induce spiritual experiences

By Don Lattin
Religion News Service 
October 22, 2015 

Researchers investigating beneficial new uses for psychedelic drugs have set their sights on what may seem an unlikely group of volunteer subjects — your local priest, minister or rabbi.

Scientists at New York University and Johns Hopkins University have already shown positive results in an expanding program where psychotherapists have used psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms,” to treat depression and acute anxiety in cancer patients.

Roland Griffiths, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins, is leading the new research, which stems from findings that volunteers who’ve taken psilocybin in a wide variety of research settings often report profound mystical experiences.

Griffiths wonders whether these altered states of consciousness are the same as those reported by longtime meditators or highly religious individuals. And he now has a three-pronged research project that will attempt to answer that question.

First, anyone in the world is invited to participate in an online survey about mystical experiences and “God-encounters,” whether they were inspired by Christian prayer, Buddhist meditation, a walk in the woods or a dose of LSD in the 1960s.

Second, spiritual seekers with extensive experience in Buddhist or other forms of meditation are being sought for another study that allows them to try psilocybin in a clinical setting with experienced guides. Eighteen of an anticipated 40 research subjects have gone through sessions for that project at Johns Hopkins.

Longtime contemplatives, Griffiths said, “have a vocabulary and a nuanced understanding of the nature of mind.” He hopes that insight will help scientists identify differences and similarities between mystical states induced by drugs and those induced by meditation.

Griffiths has had the hardest time getting volunteers for the third part of the research — the study involving ordained ministers. He and colleagues at NYU are looking for two dozen full-time members of the clergy in any religious denomination.

Organizers of the three studies have tried to get the word out via websites, advertisements in specialty publications and fliers — including one with the headline “Hopkins Scientists Seek Religious Leaders to Take Part in a Study of Psilocybin and Mystical Experience — Can Psilocybin Help Deepen Spiritual Lives?”

After extensive preliminary screening, including medical and psychological tests, 12 subjects will receive psilocybin in living-room-like psychedelic session rooms at NYU in Manhattan and at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Subjects wear eyeshades, listen to evocative music designed to heighten the journey inward and are monitored by two therapists, who provide reassuring support.

So far, only one ordained minister has done a session at Johns Hopkins.

“We first need to see if these religious professionals experience the same effects we’ve seen otherwise. I think we can make a good guess that yes, they will,” Griffiths said.

“Then, if so, how does this experience affect their engagement with their vocation? Clergy burnout is a very real and common phenomenon,” he added. “They may feel burdened with administrative responsibility and may be losing some of the inspiration that brought them into the ministry in the first place.

“What I would most hope to see is that this kind of experience would resonate with the reasons they were initially drawn into the ministry and empower them to engage with their congregation in renewed and exciting ways,” Griffiths said.

The researchers at Johns Hopkins and NYU hope to find clergy with no prior exposure to classic hallucinogens such as LSD, mescaline and psilocybin. Participants need to be in full-time ministry without likelihood of disruption over the next year.

“We don’t want someone about to go on sabbatical because what we are really looking for are the aftereffects,” Griffiths explained. “How are they viewing that experience a year later? How is it affecting their relationship with their congregations or their sermons? Are they more engaged or less engaged?”

Griffiths’ new round of research builds on an early study he led giving psilocybin to 36 “hallucinogenic-naive” adults. Fourteen months after their psychedelic sessions, well over half of those volunteers said the psilocybin trip was among the five most personally meaningful (58 percent) and spiritually significant (67 percent) events of their lives.

The new work with clergy and psilocybin harks back to a famous study by a Harvard researcher in 1962 called the “Good Friday Experiment.”

During an Easter-season worship service, 10 seminary students were given psilocybin and 10 received a placebo drug, in order to compare the nature and extent of whatever mystical experiences they had during the liturgy.

One of the seminarians who got the psilocybin, the Rev. Mike Young, went on to a 50-year vocation as a Unitarian-Universalist minister in California, Hawaii and Florida.

Young said it took more than a year for him to understand and appreciate the effect his psychedelic journey had on his life and ministry.

“What the psilocybin did for me was reframe what I thought mystical experience was all about,” he said. “I expected it to involve the basic symbols and language of religion, but it had more to do with the garbage that was going on inside me at the time. It reframed my values and perceptions.”

It also helped inspire him to work in the 1960s and 1970s with young people who had drug problems, and later with social justice and interfaith ministries.

“For me, there was a leap in imagination that saw that the same human experience lies at the back of all religious images and stories,” Young said. “It opened me up and allowed me to go beyond narrow sectarian notions, including those I was identifying with at the time.”

More than a half-century later, Young is not surprised that Griffiths is having trouble finding clergy to volunteer for his research project.

“It’s still the kind of thing clergy are scared to death to get close to,” he said. “We’ve portrayed drugs as demonic for so many decades. ... It’s still toxic.”

Private funding for the studies of religious leaders and longtime meditators is being provided, respectively, by the California-based Council on Spiritual Practices and the Heffter Research Institute in Santa Fe, N.M. Both are nonprofit organizations that are funding a new wave of research into the use of otherwise-outlawed psychedelic drugs to promote psychological healing and spiritual integration. The new research has been approved by federal regulators and the review boards at NYU and Johns Hopkins.

Bill Richards, a veteran psychedelic therapist working with the team at Johns Hopkins, did LSD research with alcoholics and depressed cancer patients in the mid-1960s and early 1970s, before the government put an end to the first wave of psychedelic science, a field of inquiry that has re-emerged over the past decade.

“Profoundly spiritual alternate states of consciousness, often called revelations, are touchstones in the histories of most world religions, and may even be found in their very origins,” he said. “There’s Moses and the burning bush, Isaiah’s temple vision, the vision on the road to Damascus that transformed Saul of Tarsus into St. Paul.

“We now know that such sacred experiences also can be occasioned with a high degree of reliability in many people with psychedelic substances when they are wisely administered,” said Richards, author of the new book “Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences,” published by Columbia University Press.

Richards said it’s ironic but perhaps not surprising that clergy would be hesitant to go off on a mystical mushroom ride.

“Could it be that a factor is fear of encountering what the theologian Paul Tillich called ‘the really real God’? ‘Revelatory experiences may have been fine for Isaiah and St. Paul, but for me?’ ”

Stephen Warres, a semiretired psychiatrist who has practiced Zen meditation for 30 years, is one of the 18 subjects who has volunteered so far for the Johns Hopkins study of longtime meditators.

Warres, who never tried psychedelic drugs when he was in college back in the 1960s, found his recent psilocybin session to be “quite an ecstatic experience.” The music was “unbearably beautiful.” He felt, paradoxically, like he was “in a vast void that was completely filled.”

At one point during the trip, his guide handed him a single rose. “It felt like I was looking at the rose, and the rose was looking at me.”

Now, two months later, Warres feels like he’s become less rigid, less compulsive and a little less irritable.

“It was a wake-up call,” he said. “I had the sense I had been passing roses and people and trees and all kind of stuff all my life without really looking and really connecting. I saw that I have the opportunity to have more intense and beautiful connections to everything in my life.”

(Don Lattin is the author of five books, including “The Harvard Psychedelic Club” and “Distilled Spirits.”)

Copyright: For copyright information, please check with the distributor of this item, Religion News Service LLC.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/calling-all-mystics-clergy-psychedelics-study-aims-to-induce-spiritual-experiences/2015/10/22/2db974ba-78f3-11e5-a5e2-40d6b2ad18dd_story.html