“Democratizing Primary Spiritual Experience-Around the Year 2000” by Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D. asked why entheogen’s, a psychoactive substance that is primarily used in a religious or spiritual context, offer religions? The article states that the application is not simply ‘dropping acid’ rather they are developed in a manner that paralleled medical research practices. The research required demographic data to obtain a firmer understanding of psychoactive drugs and the cultures surrounding their religious use. In order to achieve his goal the author performed experiments using experience’s as they present themselves to consciousness.  The author analyzed this data using quantitative analysis.  I believe that the research provided a unique insight into our religion and its subjectivity in part due to varying mental faculties. These experiments despite subjectivity yielded incredible results including that 1/3 of all participants in the experiments experienced on of the five most meaningful experiences of their life. In addition, psilocybin mushrooms increased participant’s altruism and senses of well-being. The issue that I found with the research methodology is that it failed to examine the cultural aspect of regions that use psychoactive drugs to experience spirituality. For instance, drugs like Ayahuasca are conducted in large spiritual ceremonies which last several hours, with little frequency and are often heavily emotionally taxing. The areas of the research that I found myself most interested in are the fields like drug induced contemplation, and his deep analysis of religious texts that observe various levels of religious understanding the deepest being one’s primary religious experience. This claim argues that even though primary experience provides a deeper understanding they also do not dilute the importance of habitual religious activity.

Roberts, Thomas. Democratizing Primary Spiritual Experience-Around the Year 2000” Association for Transpersonal Psychology 48. 1 (2016): 28-32.