Not everyone resonates with Christianity – many are put off by negative experiences in childhood and/or have imbibed negative views based on the real and/or imagined atrocities committed by the Church in the past in name of God.

Never mind! The essential practice I am promoting is Meditation plus Psychedelics or Mystical Shamanism or Zen Soma working itself through the whole person. I’ve described this process with reference to six archetypes, Mystic, Shaman, Warrior, Monk, Philosopher, King, but what I’m really getting at is really very simple: Zen Soma, body, heart, mind and soul.

I happen to be a Christian and happen to find Christianity a helpful and well-suited religion to follow in tandem with my Integral Psychedelic practice, but it is by no means essential or obligatory. Anyone can benefit from this system, whether you are a card-carrying member of another religion or a “none”, whether you are an SBNR (spiritual but not religious) or a convinced atheist.

Everyone is welcome to the party. Everyone has something unique to contribute. If you’d like to get involved, drop me a line.

Half way through Brian Muraresku’s fascinating book, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name, a deep dive into the mounting evidence for an original psychedelic sacrament at the Eleusinian Mysteries and then later, via the pagan continuity hypothesis, in Christianity, I got to wondering about the essential differences between a psychedelic Christianity and a non-psychedelic institutionalized Christianity.

Muraresku makes the point that mysticism has always had a difficult relationship with institutional religion, due to its essentially subversive nature. This is most starkly illustrated within the Buddhist tradition in the famous Zen koan, If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!

He writes, “In what he [Brother David Steindl-Rast] calls the centuries-long “tension between the mystical and the religious establishment,” the technicians who yearn for real experience are always butting heads with the authorities who are trying to keep the house in working order.” He also quotes Brother David (a Benedictine monk) as saying, “Every religion has its mystical core. The challenge is to find access to it and to live in its power.”

Christianity is undoubtedly a profoundly mystical religion. However, it has in many cases become an empty shell of its former self, devoid of any trace of spiritual substance, such as is in its modern post-Enlightenment rationalist, secularist, literalist versions, “so that “live doctrine fossilizes into dogmatism” and the ethics and morality that attempt to translate “mystical communion into practical living” are reduced to moralism.”

This doesn’t mean that Christianity devoid of its mystical core is completely useless, however. It has a strong ethic of selfless service and “good works”, of what the Indian Vedic tradition calls Karma Yoga. It has a highly developed liturgical and devotional system, replete with some of the most sublime art and music ever produced, engagement with which in India is called Bhakti Yoga. It has a profound and sophisticated theological tradition, with some extraordinary deep thinkers, all practitioners of Jnana Yoga. It has prayers and sacraments which connect believers to their spiritual essence or soul, akin to the Royal Road of Raja Yoga in the Indian tradition.

Regular, exoteric Christianity, the common-or-garden church-going variety actually ticks a lot of boxes: ethical, aesthetic, intellectual and spiritual. Just like any of the mature world religions, Christianity continues to attract followers because it does indeed address the four yogas, and it does it exceptionally well. Maybe too well.

Because without the mystical core, these practices degenerate into mere empty ritual. The exoteric needs to be undergirded, supported, infused, energized, illuminated, by the esoteric, the inner spiritual essence of its very raison d’etre. The exoteric can only survive on the fumes of the esoteric for so long before it collapses under the weight of its own fossilized structure.

Just as the secular humanist Enlightenment project is running on the fumes of the Judeo-Christian tradition it emerged from, the Judeo-Christian tradition itself is running on the fumes of direct, esoteric, mystical experience. And when the fumes run out, civilization itself will inevitably collapse in on itself, as old, decrepit civilizations tend to do.

There has understandably been a passionate call for a return of the mystical element within Christianity for a long time now. Many mystically-inclined Christians now meditate, for example. However, as Brian Muraresku’s book persuasively and suggestively demonstrates, there is also the psychedelic element to consider. Christianity clearly has a mystical core, which is often lost sight of, but it also has a psychedelic core, enshrined in the central mystery of the Eucharist. And real, hard evidence is mounting that this defining sacrament was originally a psychedelic spiked wine with the power to transport its partakers into spiritual communion with God.

If the exoteric side of religion can be represented by the four yogas and their corresponding archetypes, Warrior (karma yoga), Monk (bhakti yoga), Philosopher (jnana yoga), King (raja yoga), the esoteric side can be represented by two further yogas, dhyana yoga and soma yoga, meditation and psychedelics, mysticism and shamanism.

At the core of true, living Christianity is mystery and magic.

The essence of mysticism is mystery. It is also secrecy. The word derives from the Greek muo, which means to close or shut, especially to close your eyes, but also to shut your mouth. Both actions are significant, the former indicating withdrawal from the outside world, and the latter a commitment to secrecy: what goes on inside, stay inside.

This vow of silence is crucial in the alchemical arts of both East and West. For example, in Neidan, the inner alchemy of ancient China, talking about your practice is compared to steaming rice in a broken, leaky pot. In other words, the alchemical process can only reach fruition in a hermetically sealed container – talking releases the pressure and dissipates the energy needed for the inner transmutation to occur.

The famous German mystic Meister Eckhart also cautions against talking about the mystery of God:

“Be silent, therefore, and do not chatter about God, for by chattering about him, you tell lies and commit a sin. If you wish to be perfect and without sin, then do not prattle about God. Also you should not wish to understand anything about God, for God is beyond all understanding. A Master says: If I had a God I could understand, I would not regard him as God.”

The practice of mysticism is meditation. Whether or not you close your eyes, or keep them open, the most important thing is shut your mouth and stop talking. After a while, you will find that not only have you stopped talking out loud, but you have also stopped talking silently to yourself in your head. In other words, you have stopped thinking. (There is an interesting parallel here to that seminal moment at infant school where we stop reading aloud and learn to read in our heads).

This state of no-thinking, or no-mind (mu-shin in Japanese) is a peculiar state of inner stillness and quiet, but it is not simple vacuity, rather a pregnant emptiness suffused with mystery, a “cloud of unknowing”.

Mysticism is therefore practically synonymous with meditation, or Dhyana in Sanskrit (transliterated as Ch’an in Chinese and Zen in Japanese). Therefore the Mystic archetype at the head of the Armour of Christ body-mantra represents meditation, or Dhyana Yoga.

The Shaman archetype represents psychedelic journeying. However, not any old psychedelic journeying. The psychedelic experience is radically different when undertaken in a meditative state. Therefore, unlike with the recreational use of psychedelics, where the attraction is chaotic hedonism and an easy high, a true shaman must have a disciplined meditation practice, and have mastered the art of mystical stillness and silence. In other words a true shaman must also be a mystic, a Mystic-Shaman.

A Mystic is a Dhyana Yogi, a master of meditation; a Shaman is a Soma Yogi, a master of psychedelic journeying. But you can’t be a Soma Yogi without also being a Dhyana Yogi – the two are inextricably linked. We might call the combined practice Zen Soma.

This mystico-shamanic foundation is a firm rock on which to build the edifice of our worldly abode, using the four yogas of the Bhagavad Gita as a guide: that is, Karma Yoga (the yoga of action and will), Bhakti Yoga (the yoga of devotion and higher feeling), Jnana Yoga (the yoga of knowledge and spiritual insight) and Raja Yoga (the yoga of Self-knowledge) corresponding to the four archetypes Warrior, Monk/Nun, Philosopher, King/Queen.

This is what an integral meditative psychedelic practice (Zen Soma) is all about: the holistic and balanced psycho-spiritual development of the human being, simply put, “character building”. Not content to stop at the otherworldly peace and tranquillity of the mystic or at the otherworldly spirit journeys of the shaman, both of which can lead to quietism and escapism, we can use these practices to establish ourselves firmly in this world, developing our bodies through martial arts, dance and other physical practices; our hearts through music and the arts; our minds through science and philosophy; and our souls through religious observances.

What better way to become the best you can become?

When you enter the psychedelic spirit world, it’s a good idea to take a couple of things with you. On Radio 4’s Desert Island Disks, you are automatically given the collected works of Shakespeare and the Bible to take with you to your imaginary desert island. In Integral Psychedelic Christianity, you are given the Armour of Christ and the Staff of Moses.

The Armour of Christ is made up of four body-mantras: Zen-Soma-Body-Heart-Mind-Soul-Spirit followed by Mystic-Shaman-Warrior-Monk-Philosopher-King (or Mystic-Shaman-Warrior-Nun-Philosopher-Queen), then Peace-Love-Goodness-Beauty-Truth-Consciousness-Bliss (the mantra of the first psychedelic revolution in the 1960’s was Peace and Love, an extremely powerful mantra, which I’ve just extended a little) and finally the Christian virtues, Humility-Chastity-Prudence-Temperance-Patience-Diligence-Gratitude.

The Staff of Moses is what I’ve been calling The Ray of Creation, The Cosmic Tree or The Tree of Life. It is the hierarchy of Heaven and Earth, reaching up from Emptiness to Energy, Matter, Life, Mind, Planetary Consciousness and the entire Universe: Amun-Ra-Atum-Ka-Ba-Gaia-Jah. These seven levels of existence are associated with the seven chakras of ancient Indian Tantra along the spinal column, forming another body-mantra.

The Armour and the Staff will help you safely navigate the psychedelic experience. You should also attend carefully to set and setting and dosage.

The rest of the time, which is to say, when you’re sober, you should simply try your best to be a good Christian, or a good Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or whatever other religion you identify with. If you can’t manage religion, just try and be a good person.

Namaste.

Die before ye die Hadith attributed to Nabi

If you die before you die, you won’t die when you die Inscription over a door at St. Paul’s monastery in Mount Athos

The death and rebirth motif in religion is really the key and the sum total of spiritual experience, from pre-historic shamanism to modern-day NRGs (New Religious Groups). “Death” here clearly doesn’t refer to physical death, and neither can it refer to loss of consciousness, since the process of death and rebirth is experienced by a conscious subject. If “feels” like a death, even though nobody can possibly know what death feels like, if anything. And it “feels” like a rebirth, even though no one can remember what their birth was like.

The traditional language of death and rebirth may just be a dramatic way of describing the temporary suspension of brain activity. It’s not really death and it’s not really sleep – it’s something else – and you come back changed. You come back feeling refreshed, revived, rebooted, as if your operating system was running sluggishly until you turned it off and on again.

Why Psychedelics?

If I had never taken psychedelics, going purely on the scientific research and reports of those who had, I would be inclined to think that they might actually be a good thing. Since I am interested in mental health and spirituality, I would at least feel obliged to take them seriously. But I have taken psychedelics. My first trip was on LSD at the tender age of sixteen, over thirty years ago.

My personal experience of psychedelics is that they elicit mystical experiences, stimulate somatic energies, enhance physical dexterity and movement, produce heightened emotion and catharsis, generate psychological and philosophical insight, and lead to Self realization. Which in my view are all good things.

There are down-sides, of course. Things can go very wrong and very dark. But the extraordinary benefits have persuaded me to repeatedly reaffirm my commitment to and respect for magic plant medicines. They are not to be taken lightly, that’s for sure.

One of the important lessons of psychedelics is the integral nature of genuine spirituality. If it is not to be unbalanced and partial, spirituality must be holistic, taking in the whole human being, mind, body and spirit. The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, the Fourth Way of Gurdjieff and the Integral Psychology of Ken Wilber all point to this important truth. In fact, the essence of the New Age is its holistic integralism, which is why psychedelics are naturally associated with the New Age.

Why Christianity?

Much of my life’s psychedelic journeying has been undertaken in the context of the New Age, taking in the ideas and practices of Shamanism, Paganism and Gnosticism as well as those of the Eastern religions, Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism. But at a certain point, I decided to become a Christian. Why?

Here are five brief rational answers to that question:

1. My ancestral heritage is Christian, all the way back through many family generations in Chile to the sixteenth century, and in Spain before that, to at least the sixth century. Although my parents turned their backs on their Catholic faith, in conformity with the anti-establishment mood if the 1960’s, in the long view of the family line, this was just a break in a single link of a very long chain. On several occasions, the plant medicines have shown me how my ancestors live in me and through me, and how their religion is an integral part of who I am, at a deep cellular level, so to speak. So although my parents refused to have me christened, I was, in a mysterious, spiritual sense, born Christian.
2. Christianity has been in contact with the indigenous beliefs and practices of Latin America for centuries, both the native and imported traditions accommodating each other in different ways. There is thus already a long-standing relationship between psychedelics and Christianity in my own native Chile, as there is all over South America, from Peru to Ecuador and Brazil. These synchretic traditions are largely hidden and secret, as is often the case with psychedelic mysteries (notably the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries), but are now coming to light as a result of Western interest, through ayahuasca tourism, for example.
3. In my experience, Christianity is a better fit than other religions, such as Buddhism, when it comes to psychedelics. I agree with Rick Strassman on this point: the personal, relational nature of encounters with the plant spirits is in tension with the often abstract, philosophical, nondual traditions of the East, but is perfectly suited to a Biblical way of thinking. Although Strassman argues for an Old Testament, Jewish framework, I believe that Christianity is even more closely aligned to the psychedelic landscape.
4. Three key elements in Christianity which make it such a good fit with the psychedelic experience are: a) the central religious rite of Holy Communion, b) the central mystery of the Resurrection and c) the mysterious workings of grace through a personal Saviour.
5. Christianity also has a cosmic-historical vision of humanity coming together as one holy people of God. This is also an important part of the psychedelic mystical vision (at least in my experience). In other words, the further evolution of the species depends on a universal conception of the radical unity of humanity and possibly of the Earth as a whole. Whether or not this will turn out to be recognizably Christian in the long run, at least the vision itself is profoundly Christian: “Christian hope is concerned with eschatology, or the science of last things”.

Why the Mantra?

My interest in psychedelics came out of an underlying dissatisfaction with the secular world I grew up in. It seemed to be missing something important. Where was the magic? Where was the spirit? Perhaps I read too many fantasy books as a child, and had unrealistic expectations of the world, but for whatever reason, I intuited the disenchantment of our secular, materialist world that was later confirmed for me in the writings of Max Weber and others.

Psychedelics seemed the perfect thing to rectify this problem. If everyone took a dose of orange sunshine, the world would erupt in a riot of colour, just like at the end of The Yellow Submarine, where the Fab Four defeat the Blue Meanies with Love, Love, Love. But then I discovered that psychedelics on their own were too chaotic and created problems of their own. The psychedelic revolution wasn’t working.

Christianity seemed the perfect thing to rectify the problem: a moral and religious framework was exactly what the psychedelic doctor ordered. Instead of wondering, “was that trip really necessary?” after another confusing mess of spiritual hedonism, we could channel the psychedelic experience constructively and meaningfully along well established lines of spiritual development, tried and tested over millennia.

However, traditional Christianity also seemed to be missing something. It wasn’t holistic enough. So perhaps what we needed was a new kind of Integral Christianity, one that fully included body, heart, mind, soul and spirit in a healthy, balanced way. A Christianity that included psychedelics was a good start, but just as my personal consciousness couldn’t help but expand under their influence, neither could Christianity itself.

At the start of this blog, I mentioned six things that I experience on psychedelics, which bear repeating: they elicit mystical experiences, stimulate somatic energies, enhance physical dexterity and movement, produce heightened emotion and catharsis, generate psychological and philosophical insight, and lead to Self realization. These six things correspond to six yogas in Hinduism: dhyana yoga, kundalini yoga, karma yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga and raja yoga associated with spirit, energy, body, heart, mind and soul. They also correspond to six archetypes: mystic, shaman, warrior, monk, philosopher, king.

If we want to maintain a truly integral spirituality, we need to remember all six of these essential aspects of human spiritual flourishing, for if we forget or neglect any of them, our development will be unbalanced. So what’s the best way to remember them? How about a mantra? Even better, how about a mantra rooted in specific energetic points in the body?

If you think about how Christians cross themselves (when they run onto a football pitch for example), from forehead to heart and shoulder to shoulder, you will see that this is in fact a mantra rooted in the body: “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”. However, compared to the Indian chakra system, this body-mantra is clearly very top-heavy. What about the lower chakras?

In order to include the whole body, we can extend the cross downwards to create a double cross with two horizontals at the hips and the shoulders. This gives us six points, at the forehead, the hara (belly), left hip, right hip, left shoulder, right shoulder. Then we can add the mantra: Mystic, Shaman, Warrior, Monk, Philosopher, King. Now, if we identify these six archetypes with one ideal “uber-archetype” personified in Christ, by bringing them (and their associated qualities, peace, love, goodness, beauty, truth, consciousness) to mind, we are in fact connecting with our spiritual essence in a way which is perfectly compatible with a broadly Christian outlook.

The mantra reminds us of these archetypes, but it also acts as a kind of talisman, a magic charm to protect us against any negative or demonic psycho-spiritual forces we may encounter on our psychedelic journeys. This is why I call it “the armour of Christ”. Just like we made the sign of the cross with our fingers to ward off vampires as children, we can make this whole-body, holistic cross to ward off all malevolent spirits as (mostly) mature adults.

Psychedelics correct for the disenchanted world of secular Modernity. Christianity corrects for the chaotic anarchism of psychedelics. The mantra corrects for the unbalanced partiality of Christianity. What we end up with is a truly Integral Psychedelic Christianity. If this isn’t the future of religion, I don’t know what is.

When it comes to drugs, patience really is a virtue. If you ingest a high dose of magic (unless you have an anti-magic antidote – which you don’t) you know that you are in it for the duration. And in the case of ayahuasca, the duration can be up to ten hours (!) Especially if things have taken a turn for the worse and the bad angels are dragging you through a bad trip backwards, you had better have a bit of patience.

The same is true of our inner drug cartels. When your partner says something that really winds you up, a certain cocktail of drugs is released from the various glandular distribution centres of your inner endocrine drug factory. If you’re really pissed off, your whole system will be flooded with adrenalin. And if it starts to get particularly stressful, it will also be flooded with cortisol. This is probably not a good time to sit down and work it out between you – probably best to just smash a few plates and slam a few doors.

Alternatively, you can patiently wait for the drugs to wear off. Which may take a while. No clicking your fingers or expelliarmus magic spells can relieve you of the hormones swilling about in your bloodstream. But if you are patient, take some time out, and stop producing more fight or flight drugs by continuing the argument in your head, you will calm down and come down soon enough. Then we can talk.

Psychedelics famously (and infamously) produce altered states of consciousness. But so do all drugs, including coffee, Red Bull and prescription psychiatric drugs. And so do our own inner pharmacies. Since time immemorial, human beings have experimented with altered states. They are kind of fun and kind of fascinating. They also seem to give us superpowers. For example, when I am perfectly level-headed, calm, relaxed, integrated and equipoised, I don’t tend to write very much. When I am manic, and my creative juices are flowing, I can write reams of (to my mind) inspired prose.

This manic state is addictive. When I’m deep in an intense conversation, firing on all cylinders, I feel great – energized, excited, intellectually stimulated. Many celebrities have built huge followings from creatively harnessing their manic energy, Kanye West, Russel Brand, Jordan Peterson, Alex Jones and Madonna, for example. But often celebrities crash and burn, or rather, burn out and crash: the other pole of mania is depression and all five examples above are excellent examples of this.

If you are addicted to mania, you are an inner drug addict. If you can manage your habit and keep it within reasonable bounds, all well and good – you can use it to your advantage as a performance enhancing drug. If it goes too far, however, the magic turns sour and toxic and begins to poison you. In excess, all drugs are poisonous. Which is to say, in excess, all altered states, and all emotional states, are poisonous.

Even love can be poisonous. If you fall head over heels in love, it’s the most wonderful feeling in the world. You want to dance and sing in the rain. But if you overdo it, it becomes obsessive and weird. Introspection and psychological self-awareness are good, but in excess, they becomes narcissistic and weird. Generosity and selflessness are good, but in excess, they becomes martyrish and weird.

Then again, you should take everything in moderation, including moderation, because the converse error to that of “excess addiction” is “excess phobia”. How many middle aged couples do you know that have settled into a placid truce of non-sympathetic-nervous-system-arousal? No raised voices, no crazy conversations, no crazy adventures. No alarms and no surprises. The discomfort of stress hormones persuades them that the benefits of arousal and excitement are just not worth the costs.

The extreme cases are those psychiatric patients who are so tortured by their emotional altered states, that they would prefer the whole thing be shut down, whether through surgical or medicated lobotomy. They would rather be a member of the walking dead than of suffering humanity. In the absence of such radical interventions, however, there is always that commonest and most time-honoured form of shut-down, self-medication with alcohol.

The point is not to avoid altered states altogether. We don’t want to be cold, rational, calculating Dr Spocks or unfeeling zombies. Neither is it to chemically excise them with some psychiatric brain suppressant. We don’t want Brave New World style regulation. Or to slowly kill yourself with booze and fags. The point is to ride the waves of alterity, but with skill and restraint. In other words, to know how and when to pull back from the brink of toxic overdose, where life-giving drugs becomes pure poison.

Drug addicts are not addicted to drugs in general. They are addicted to a specific drug. What’s your poison? Heroin? Cocaine? Love? Mania? Anger? Stress? Depression? It can get very messy of course, especially when alcohol is mixed up with the others, but generally speaking, addiction is usually associated with specializing too much in one particular direction, with poisoning yourself with one particular poison. Heroin addicts are rarely also Coke addicts and vice versa.

A fulfilling life is one that is filled with a wide range of human experiences, which means a wide range of emotions and altered states of consciousness. If you are addicted to one or two to the exclusion of all others, you will narrow yourself down horribly, to the point where you may even appear sub-human to yourself and others. On the other hand, if you are phobic of all states other than your base-line “sober” state, you will soon become a cardboard caricature of a regular guy or gal, fine for a lifestyle magazine perhaps, but no good for real life lived deeply and fully. That’s a painfully slow and boring death.

We need to be patient with ourselves and others. And we need to be patient with drugs. We can’t live without them, but only when we learn to live with them, will we learn to truly live.

There is a long tradition of Christian meditation stretching all the way back to the early church. Sometimes it is called “contemplative prayer” or “recollection”. One of the most famous forms, developed by the desert fathers of the third century AD, is the Jesus Prayer of Eastern Hesychasm: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Simpler still is the repetition of the Holy Name of Jesus as a kind of mantra. In recent times, there has been a significant revival in Christian meditation, particularly through the work of Thomas Keating, who popularized the “Centering Prayer” and John Main, who re-introduced the mantra “Maranatha”.

Another important figure is Thomas Merton, who had a profound effect on my own prayer life. He was a Trappist monk who wrote eloquently about the Christian monastic life and calling, but who was also very interested in learning from other faith traditions, especially Zen Buddhism. One book I found particularly helpful is Zen and the Birds of Appetite, where he dissects with great skill and subtlety the human propensity to indulge the ego in spiritual materialism. A fourth important figure that deserves mention is the Benedictine monk Bede Griffiths (Swami Dayananda) who established a Christian ashram in South India where Christian practice is deeply infused with the spirit of meditation.

Jumping continents to South America, we find a plethora of syncretic Christian churches, such as the Santo Daime and União Vegetal in Brazil, which use psychoactive sacraments such as ayahuasca in their services. They use a variety of prayers, meditations and icaros, special “magic songs” for use during ceremonies, as well as a simple step dance, with the emphasis on personal and collective religious experience and the holistic integration of mind, body and spirit.

I have been interested in both the contemplative “mystical” path and the dynamic “shamanic” path for many years now. It seems to me that these crucial elements of authentic, full-blooded religiosity are sadly missing from most modern forms of Christian worship. Those who want something stronger than the somewhat diluted draught on offer at conventional churches are forced elsewhere, to Buddhism, Sufism, yoga, and to shamanism and psychedelics.

The psychedelic renaissance is upon us. So far it has manifested itself primarily in the context of secular therapeutic medicine, with clinical trials popping up all over the place, most prominently at Imperial College London and John Hopkins University in the US. The results so far are extremely promising. However, there is little movement in the religious sphere, which arguably provides a much more conducive and capacious context for the transformative spiritual use of entheogens (“generators-of-God-within”).

As a step towards the holy grail of CSPU (church sponsored psychedelic use), I am therefore offering “virgin psychedelic” meditation to any churches who are interested. The idea is to introduce the basic framework of psychedelic worship, incorporating essential elements such as meditation, music, movement and singing to create an embodied spiritual experience, but without the psychoactive component. Hopefully this will help people deepen their faith and practice, and integrate it better into their everyday lived experience.

The flyer goes something like this:

Virgin Psychedelic Christian Meditation

Two hours of meditation, music, movement and discussion

This is a non-drug “virgin psychedelic” meditation experience using the power of meditation and music to awaken our inner mystic and inner shaman.

We begin with a guided mindfulness meditation followed by the Core Mantra:

1. Amun, Ra, Atum, Ka, Ba, Gaia, Jah (corresponding to the Father)
2. Mystic, Shaman, Warrior, Monk, Philosopher, King, Friend (corresponding to the Son)
3. Peace, Love, Goodness, Beauty, Truth, Consciousness, Bliss (corresponding to the Holy Spirit)

This is followed by some simple stretching exercises, after which we settle down to listen to a piece of beautiful devotional Christian music.

After some more stretching, there is a period of guided movement and/or dance.

We end with a simple chant based on the Core Mantra and some time for questions, sharing and discussion.

If this sounds like something your church (or a church you know) might be interested in, please get in touch at sebgsynthesis@gmail.com

But it is my habit to find motion, and therefore depth, only in my middle regions. All other planes collapse. The near (like the fast-revolving flywheel) is still because it is too swift; the far, because it is too slow. And the real hierarchical universe, inexpressibly deep and mobile, is hidden from me by my own shallowness.

D.E. Harding

Time is the measure of all things: the orbit of an electron around its nucleus, a fleeting impression, a breath, a day, a year, a lifetime, an age, the life of a planet, a star, a galaxy, a universe. We only really experience those things whose time-frames play out in our middle regions, from seconds to years. But the time range of the universe extends so much further in both directions, towards the impossibly fast to the impossibly slow. The foreground of our lived world, our near regions, are invisible to us because they too small and too fast; the background, our far regions, are invisible because they are too large and too slow. Those things that are neither too fast nor too slow to actually perceive (but are still very fast or very slow) we experience as actual foreground and background, a tingling sensation in the chest, a setting sun.

Mystics experience a slower and larger dimension of the universe. To achieve this, they employ special slowing-down techniques, classed under the general headings of “meditation” and “prayer”. The breath slows down and the mind slows down. One breath can last minutes rather than seconds, with the hiatus between breaths also lasting a minute or two. Thoughts slow down to such an extent that it seems as though the mind had stopped altogether. The very slow, the very far and the very large now come into range. Thus the mystic becomes “macro-cosmic”.

There is also the converse process: the breath can speed up to hyper-ventilation levels, as Stanislav Grof discovered through his experiments with “holotropic breathwork”, or as the pranayama yogis have known for millennia. The mind can also reach levels of activity that make the sharpest wit seem a positive sluggard. These are levels of superhuman “genius” cognition as described for example by Sylvia Nasar in A Beautiful Mind.

As well as impossibly fast, subtle and intricate mental activity, the inner workings of the body also become accessible to awareness when time speeds up. These are felt as vibrations, buzzings, tingles and surges of energy, unusual sensations, inner lights and colours experienced in specific regions of the body. Traditional shamans are adept at this inner somatic journeying, this “fantastic voyage”, by which they purportedly heal themselves. Thus the shaman becomes “micro-cosmic”.

If you are familiar with the dramatic transformations of consciousness produced by psychoactive compounds such as DMT, LSD, mescaline, psilocybin etc. this should all sound familiar. Sometimes consciousness expands out far enough that you are able to listen in on grand cosmic symphonies, the music of the spheres; sometimes it reduces down far enough that you can eavesdrop on hyper-kinetic synaptic conversations. Sometimes it seems to shrink to the size of a cell or an atom; sometimes it grows to include a universe.

Psychedelics are useful tools for reflecting on our place in our middle regions of human relations and human society, that is, for illuminating the horizontal dimension of human existence. They can provide psychological insight and emotional healing. However, their greatest gift is their magical ability to open us up to the vertical dimensions of the very large above us (the macrocosm) and the very small below us (the microcosm), thus uniting the two poles of Heaven and Earth.

The Ray of Creation presents us with a schematic picture of the hierarchy of Heaven and Earth. It has its origin in Amun, “the Hidden One”, which is absolute vacancy, nothingness, nada. How something can come from nothing is an intractable mystery, which has taxed the greatest minds of every generation and has made the God hypothesis irresistible for almost everyone who thinks about it deeply enough.

The Ray of Creation is a map of the evolution of the universe from the seemingly inauspicious beginnings in Amun through the Big Bang, Ra, the formation of the atomic elements, Atum, the arrival of cellular life, Ka, the development of intelligent soul-life, Ba, and the emergence of planetary consciousness, Gaia, and universal consciousness, Jah.

This is the Ray of Creation: seven discrete yet interpenetrating levels spanning the entire hierarchy of existence from Absolutely Nothing to Ultimate Whole. Embedded within the human organism, they correspond to the ancient chakra system discovered by the Indian yogis: Amun at the base, Ra at the sacral, Atum at the solar plexus, Ka at the heart, Ba at the throat, Gaia at the third eye and Jah at the crown. This correspondence powerfully illustrates the fact that the Ray literally passes through us, and that each one of us is a microcosm of the whole universe.

However elastic our consciousness, scaling the heights and plumbing the depths of the hierarchy, our natural resting place is the human soul, Ba. This is located at the throat chakra, about three-quarters of the way up the cosmic tree. We exist as individual souls, but also as parts of a collective entity, Humanity. One cannot exist without the other. I cannot exist without the other, in a hierarchical network of family, friends, colleagues, neighbours, compatriots, citizens of the world. This social network of communal soul-life can be pictured as a horizontal line, which, superimposed onto the Ray of Creation at Ba forms a traditional Christian cross.

Ba is the intersection point of the horizontal line of humanity that marks you out as an individual. Look down through the vertical hierarchy of existence and you will see Ka (your life-force) arising from the trillions of living cells of which you are composed, and then Atum (the All), comprising the atoms of which your living cells are composed, of which there are estimated to be around 100 trillion per cell.

Since Amun-Ra transcends the limits of the physical universe, let’s put this Nothingness and Energy to one side for the moment. We now have Atum-Ka-Ba-Gaia-Jah. You will notice that there is symmetry between the levels above and below us. At the centre of the hierarchy is the soul, Ba. Immediately below and above this are Ka and Gaia, life-force and world-soul. This makes sense if we conceive of the integrated totality of the planet as depending on the synthesis of its living, biological substrate, the biosphere. The larger whole that encompasses and embraces out little Ba is Ka-Gaia, stretching from organic cellular life below us all the way up to the Anima Mundi above.

One step lower and one step higher reveals a natural affinity between atomic matter, Atum, and the universe in its entirety, Jah. Ka-Gaia is only possible in the context of this larger reality, which spans the whole breadth of existence, from atoms and electrons to universal consciousness. But the enormity of Atum-Jah is itself necessarily contained within two further shells, Ra and Amun, Energy and Nothingness.

At the lower end of the hierarchy, Ra is simply the E in Einstein’s E=mc². A the higher end, it is the pure uncreated energy of a Creator God. Let’s call this pairing Ra-Shiva. Finally, we have the ultimate pairing of the inner, immanent emptiness at the centre of everything, Amun, and the outer, transcendent emptiness beyond everything, Parashiva. This is the coincidence of the Centre-Whole, Amun-Parashiva.

As well as expressing a linear hierarchy, the Ray of Creation also describes a series of nested pairings, Amun-Parashiva, Ra-Shiva, Atum-Jah, Ka-Gaia, at the centre of which lies the human soul, Ba. If you recall, Ba also exists on the horizontal dimension of collective humanity. Therefore, there is always the danger that we forget the vertical dimension altogether, forget the life-force that sustains us, our Mother Earth, Pachamama, that embraces us, and the deeper and higher layers beyond these, in which we live and move and have our being.

When I forget the vertical, I live as though the only thing of any significance were people and society, that is, the horizontal. When this happens, society, divorced from the vertical dimension, becomes a kind of mental prison, a Matrix, a Babylon. Ba-Babylon is the pairing of lost human souls and the man-made world of culture cut off from nature and spirit. There is no longer a Cosmic Tree (or Cross) reaching from Earth to Heaven and back again, just a flat line, fittingly representing the flat-lining of spiritual death.

It is impossible to wake up from this slumber, to rise again from this grave, to heal this sickness unto death, without realizing and embodying our unique place at the juncture of Heaven and Earth:

“As man I bisect all the Pairs and their linking processes, for I include inferior members of every Pair, but am included in the superior member. I am at home in the upper half of the hierarchy because I am the lower half. To use more familiar language, man the microcosm reflects the macrocosm – a doctrine which, in its many forms, is as ancient as it is universal. And it is generally implied that man’s business is to recognize and restore the links between what is above and what is below, between the universe without and the universe within. That is to say, while man is man because he cuts the hierarchy in half, his office is to heal that wound, to restore the unity of the Pairs, and so to realize himself as much more and much less than man. His task is to re-seat the suprahuman rider on the infrahuman horse, to join ruler and ruled, to realize the ancestral cave and the ancestral mountain imply each other, to link the nine circles of Hell with the nine circles of Heaven, to reunite the rising branches of the universe-tree with its deepening roots – and so to regain his own balance. The common-sensible part-man who is only human, and the scientific part-man who finds himself only in the bottom half of the hierarchy, and the religious part-man who finds himself only in the top half – all three need to be conjoined in the symmetrical and vertical man who is whole because his universe is whole. Such, more or less, is the suggestion of a long esoteric tradition, of the experience of mystics and poets in every time and country, and of much psychological analysis.”

D.E. Harding