AoC_16-1.

qxd 30/9/05 04:11 PM Page 51

From Armchair Theology to Experi-

mental Science: Entheogenic Keys
to the Doors of Experimentation
thomas b. roberts, ph.d.
College of Education
Department of Leadership, Educational
Psychology, and Foundations
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb, IL 60115
troberts@niu.edu

abstract
Today’s theology, which in the United States is primarily Judeo-Christian,
includes a variety of beliefs, rituals, social and moral imperatives that we com-
monly associate with our religious orientation. These organizational expressions
of theology constitute a variety of descriptive characterizations of how we associ-
ate our self with religion. Nevertheless, in an increasingly technological culture
based on empirical science, how do we reconcile this worldview with our theology?
Some historians of religion claim that the roots of our organizational expressions
of theology emanate from a common source of primary religious experience. In
this essay, I argue that it is possible to engage in an experimental mysticism,
which I refer to as “entheogenic keys to the doors of experimentation.”
keywords: religion, entheogens, psychedelics, experimental mysticism

entheogens
Entheogens are psychoactive plants and chemicals whose effects are felt in spiri-
tual terms and described using religious language. The same substances may also
have nonentheogenic uses such as medicine, psychotherapy, creativity, or prob-
lem solving, but in this article we will focus only on their entheogenic effects.

Anthropology of Consciousness, Vol. 16, Issue 1, pp. 51–55. ISSN1053-4202, © 2005 by the American
Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permissions to
photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and
Permissions website, www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.

51
AoC_16-1.qxd 30/9/05 04:11 PM Page 52

52 anthropology of consciousness 16.1

mystical ground of religion

Entheogenic approaches to religious studies largely build on the assumption
(some would say “observation”) that mystical experiences—primary religious
experiences (PREs)—were an experiential, historical origin of religion and a
constant though uncommon source of nourishment through the ages.1 Today,
entheogens make PREs more accessible. Entheogens can—but do not always—
produce mystical experiences, and by providing a useful mindset in the subjects
and a supportive environment, researchers can increase the likelihood of such
intense spiritual experiences.
From a mystical perspective, primary religious experiences are the ground
religion springs from, thus today’s theology and other beliefs, liturgy and rites,
social concerns and moral action, and religious organizations all have some of
their roots (not all of their roots) in primary religious experience.

RITUAL ETHICS ORGANIZATION

BELIEFS
Attempts to Expresses oneness, Houses beliefs,
Makes sense of
recreate, love, and gratitude ritual, and ethics.
PRE. Answers
celebrate, and/or for PRE in social Provides
“What was that?
commemorate action and community, social
What does it mean?”
PRE responsibility identity and support

PRIMARY RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Also called: state of unitive consciousness, mystical experience,
peak experience, intense conversion experience, sacred oneness, etc.

With both natural, plant-derived entheogens and laboratory synthesized

entheogens, it is possible to develop what Huston Smith called “experimental
mysticism.” These leads provide opportunities in the sciences, in the humanities,
and—most interesting of all—experimental procedures for linking these two.

sciences
In the sciences much (though not all) research on religion is descriptive. Activi-
ties in the nervous system during religious experiences are described. Relation-
ships among religious activities, denominational membership, demographic
variables, social values and morals, and political positions are correlated. Fre-
quency of prayer and other religious activities are associated with health, mental
adjustment, or other supposed outcomes. Psychoactive plants and chemicals
used in a spiritual context can extend descriptive scientific studies and add treat-
ment variables for the experimental study of religion, for example:
AoC_16-1.qxd 30/9/05 04:11 PM Page 53

from armchair theology to experimental science 53

▼ Evolutionary psychology: As our ancestors ate psychoactive mushrooms and

other psychoactive plants, how did this encounter affect them? Were plant-
based mystical experiences significant events in the origins and history of
religions? If so, why? Were our ancestors’ brains prewired for this experi-
ence? For Pete’s sake, why!? Was religion merely a cognitive side effect?
Is/was there survival value in these experiences? To be complete, evolution-
ary psychology needs to consider these questions. What fun!
▼ Biological-phenomenological links: Entheogens can be independent treat-
ment variables for studies of the biological correlates or markers of intense,
subjective spiritual experiences in scientific investigations of these topics.
▼ Primary religious experiences: Producing (or simulating) mystical experiences,
entheogens move these events from rare historical anecdotes to laboratory-
stimulated events, thus increasing the number and accuracy of observations,
enhancing and refining PRE descriptions, and clarifying typologies.
▼ Health: With positive relationships established between psychological state,
physical wellness, and immune functions, what effects might overwhelm-
ingly positive PRE peak experiences have on health and wellness?
Entheogenic peak experiences may help determine whether there is a ceil-
ing on this effect and discover where it is. As peak-experience treatments,
they may boost the immune system.2
▼ Synthetic states: Most mindbody psychotechnologies (for example,
entheogens, meditation, chanting) have been used alone. When combined
into new recipes, will they create new, previously undiscovered synthetic
states? What religious experiences will occur in those states? A vast experi-
mental horizon unfolds.

humanities
In today’s humanities, religious and spiritual beliefs are analyzed, historicized,
constructed and deconstructed, criticized, commented on, and otherwise run
through the gauntlet of humanistic concepts and philosophical wrangling. More
remarkably than in the sciences, entheogens make it possible to perform experi-
ments in the religion-centered humanities too, including experiments that
increase people’s understanding of selected religious and philosophical concepts,
notably those having to do with primary religious experience (mystical experi-
ences). By providing direct, personal experiences, entheogens allow advances in
what might be called “the experimental humanities;” such studies can inform
religious discussions with data-based information, for example:
▼ Experimental religious philosophy: For people who have experienced
mystical states, some religious and philosophical ideas become more
AoC_16-1.qxd 30/9/05 04:11 PM Page 54

54 anthropology of consciousness 16.1

credible—perennialism, a common mystical core underpinning world reli-

gions, the survival value of PREs, the roles of mindbody states in the origins
and history of religion, self-transcendence, a spiritual aspect of human
nature, a transpersonal “level” of the human mind, and so forth.
▼ Value shifts: People who have undergone ego-transcendent (transpersonal)
experiences with entheogens (or otherwise) often shift their values and motiva-
tion away from self-gain to humanity-centered values, or a cosmic orientation.
▼ Religiosity: How does religiosity—religious activities both within established
religious structures and outside of them, including attendance at ceremonies,
prayer, meditation, religion-motivated service, group or independent study—
change with primary religious experience?
▼ Qualia studies: States of unitive consciousness are experienced as sacredness,
awe, meaningfulness, portentousness, transcendence, unity, and so forth. We
might consider calling these experiences spiritual qualia. Boldly asking, are
such experiences directly perceived? Using entheogens, it becomes possible
to collect observations and experimental data on this question.
▼ Textual reinterpretations: Entheogens suggest reinterpretation of religious
texts and ceremonies—soma in Hinduism, possible references to entheogens
in Judaism and early Christianity, the ancient Greek mysteries at Eleusis;
and entheogens increase our understanding of anthropological and archeo-
logical findings on religion.
▼ Chrismation: Did the oils used in ceremonies of religious anointment
include psychoactive ingredients, particularly cannabis? Chrismation experi-
ments may provide insights into this part of religious history by allowing peo-
ple access to personal experiences of possible historical events (otherwise
known as the primordial tradition) recreated under laboratory conditions or
in religious settings and ceremonies.
How can this be? Can entheogens enable experiments that alter values and
change moral positions? Yes. Can they experimentally change people’s spiritual
activities and how they understand them? Yes. Can they increase the believabil-
ity of some theological positions and philosophical constructs and make others
less credible? Yes. Anecdotal and pilot studies claim these things have already
happened. Now the religion-and-science field needs replications and more refined
experiments.

consilience
Most remarkably, entheogens provide an opportunity to study both reductive and
emergent causation within one set of interlocking experiments. In the reductive
studies, entheogens can be administered and their effects measured on, say, receptor
AoC_16-1.qxd 30/9/05 04:11 PM Page 55

from armchair theology to experimental science 55

sites and brain structures. At a higher level of organization, we can examine their
effects on cognition, beliefs, values, and theology. In experiments designed to
examine emergent, or downward causation, researchers can examine whether
such variables as theology/beliefs influence neurological psychoactivity. Simi-
larly, how might such things as personality variables, novelty-seeking or harm-
reducing temperaments, cognitions and beliefs, theism/atheism, knowledge
about entheogens, and church acceptance/rejection affect both physiological
activity and interpretations of the subjective effects of entheogenic experimental
interventions? In parallel, other mindbody psychotechnologies from meditation
and contemplative prayer to fasting, yoga, and the martial arts provide similar sets
of variables for parallel research regimes. Thus, entheogens and their psychoac-
tive siblings provide models for interlevel studies, moving several steps toward
experimentally integrating the sciences and humanities and advancing Edmund
O. Wilson’s goal of consilience.
What are the research possibilities now that experimental PREs are a (some-
what but not 100 percent) reliable treatment variable? All the bulleted items
above lead to their own complex research agendas. With their effects ranging
from neurotransmitters to theology, entheogenic studies taken as a whole give the
sciences and humanities a natural route toward establishing links along the lad-
der of scientific-humanistic complexity. This article mentions some of these leads
and considers a broad intellectual-scientific horizon of entheogen-based experi-
ments, their interpretations, and resulting speculations. By combining science
and the humanities, entheogens give scholars up and down the ladder of disci-
plines a religious-based doorway to consilience. Thanks to plants’ and chemicals’
psychoactive keys, entheogenic doors to humanistic-scientific religious research
are unlocked. Dare we enter?3

endnotes
1. This thesis—that the historical origin of religion has its foundation in mystical expe-
rience—is taken up in Mark Schroll’s essay, Toward a Physical Theory of the Source
of Religion, this Issue.
2. A definition of peak experience, and what Maslow referred to as the more psychologi-
cally integrated plateau experience, is given in note #6 of the Schroll essay cited
above (note #1).
3. This essay will be further developed in (forthcoming 2006) Entheogens: Chemical
Input, Religion Output. In Religion and the Brain, vol 3: The Psychology of Reli-
gion. Patrick McNamara, ed. Westport, CT. Praeger Publishers-Greenwood Press.