Can a Skeptical Person Have a Mystical Psychedelic Experience?
Will a skeptical atheist find any mystical significance during a psychedelic journey?
I got really excited when I found out that Michael Pollan's book How To Change Your Mind would become a Netflix documentary series. The book itself is very good, but it would never reach the same number of people as the TV series. And I believe the world desperately needs to learn about the power of psychedelic substances and put them to good use. The more informed people, the better.
One of the aspects Pollan talks about is the mystical experience during a psychedelic journey. But will this happen to everyone? is everybody prone to a psychedelic mystical experience? Let me tell you my story.
My story with religion.
But first, a little of my religious background: I was raised as a Catholic, and became quite into my faith, despite my family not being super religious. I studied in catholic schools until the end of junior high. By age 10 I got religion classes twice a week for 18 months as preparation to have my first communion. I was a quite devoted kid. My first communion was a very important, deeply spiritual, experience.
Curiously enough, my first communion was also my last. My faith started to fade away right after it when I had my first Physics class at school. The possibility to explain the world using math and physical laws was astonishing, and religion, or God, suddenly became irrelevant. At age 12 I could already be considered an agnostic kid.
Getting rid of religious beliefs also brought me a huge relief: For years I was terribly afraid of the Devil. And all of a sudden it ceased existing. I can not state how free I felt.
By my early 20s, my agnosticism became full atheism, and militant atheism even. I considered religion an evil thing, something that humanity needed to overcome into a more rational and logical society.
Recently I kind of came to terms with Christianity. I relocated to a muslin country and found out that I was definitely a Christian, even not believing in God. I was simply part of who I was, much more than a religious definition.
The experience.
Four months ago I went to the Netherlands for a legal psychedelic retreat. I had a full psilocybin journey that I considered one of the most meaningful experiences of my life.
During these journeys is very common for people to “see” all sorts of supernatural beings. People get in contact with God, spirits, relatives that passed, and all kinds of entities. My theory was that these entities were already inside people’s minds, and the substance simply opened the access to it. Psychedelic literally means Mind Manifest, after all.
My journey could be best described as a Stanley Kubrick, Space Oddity, science fiction kind of trip. Flying in space surrounded by colorful forms that were dancing along with the music, carefully selected by the trip seaters. I was one with the universe, feeling the unity, understanding the meaning of holiness.
So, things were as expected. Religious people find God, and spiritualized people see entities, like motherlike goddesses and forest creatures. I, a skeptical nerd, was having my Syfy space trip. All right then.
But then the soundtrack changed to a baroque, church kind of music. I think was Da Pacem Domine, but I am not completely sure.
Suddenly I was not in space anymore but inside a beautiful Cathedral. With an old wooden alter and light coming through stained glass windows.
And he was there. I was seeing Jesus.
Jesus came to me, in a very Roman Catholic fashion: Crucified, wearing the Crown of Thornes and everything.
At this moment I felt a huge amount of love and gratitude. He was there, like he was in my childhood years. I was in communion with him again.
Thank you for being the first to show me the divine, but I do not need you anymore.
That's what I said to him, in a very gentle way. And he slowly faded away. I felt embraced, and at peace. I reconciled with my lost faith and all the grief gathered during decades disappeared.
Does it mean I suddenly became a believer? No. I am still a skeptical atheist. But I do not feel religion is an enemy anymore. I can find beauty in the idea of the divine, in the concept of a God, despite not believing in one.
The feeling of unity, of holiness, during the experience, can be extremely powerful. As one of my fellow trippers said to me in the morning after our journey: “All the priests, imams, rabbis. They all talk about honey. We tasted honey, my friend.” I couldn’t describe it better.
All the priests, imams, rabbis. They all talk about honey. We tasted honey, my friend.
So, yes, a skeptical atheist can have a mystical experience. If that is what your mind needs at that moment. The psychedelic substance will show what you need to see.
At least that was what happened to me.
