Psychedelics and the Future of Religion

We are pleased to announce that the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) is one of the recipients of a new gift from the Gracias Family Foundation to establish the Harvard Study of Psychedelics in Society and Culture. This gift will support the growth of CSWR’s existing programs under the aegis of the Transcendence and Transformation Initiative.
 
In our most recent newsletter, we highlight the CSWR’s programming on psychedelics, religion, and spirituality. This includes our popular speaker series Psychedelics and the Future of Religion, now in its third year, our new Psychedelics, Sacred and Subversive reading group, conferences, exhibits, research openings, as well as programming at our affiliated centers around Harvard.
 
The CSWR is committed to the study of psychedelics within a broader suite of tools and technologies that religious traditions, across time and place, have used to occasion extraordinary experiences. These practices, such as fasting, meditation, prayer, dancing, deep study, extended silence, and wandering, have been known to induce profound states of transcendence and transformation. They allow us to transcend our normal states of being, consciousness and embodiment, and may result in a transformation of individual, community, and society.

In the words of the CSWR’s Director, Prof. Charles Stang, “psychedelics [are] one among many ecstatic practices, what in other contexts might be called spiritual exercises, that is, practices that usher us outside our accustomed states of being and understanding. They invite us into new relationships with ourselves, our fellow human beings, and ‘more-than-human’ or ‘other-than-human’ neighbors, including the earth's plant, fungal, and animal life, but also those elusive entities we call spirits, angels, demons, and gods, visible and invisible, real and imagined, malevolent and benign. All these practices allow us to experience differently, the relationship between mind and matter, body and spirit, what is animate and what we allege is inert. [ …]
What excites me about psychedelics in this contemporary moment is that they are drawing attention to the fact that we are, individually and collectively, much more than we often take ourselves to be. In this sense, psychedelics allow us to explore ourselves and others, and to embark on an adventure into our lived reality and into other realities.”
 
Resources:
Information about CSWR’s Transcendence and Transformation Initiative
Prof. Charles Stang on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83zafzju59U&t=498s
Prof. Charles Stang on The Call of the Ancient: Psychedelic Pasts and Futures