by Samuel Grimes
The psychoactive plant Datura metel appears across a range of traditions in premodern South Asia including the form of tantric Buddhism (Vajrayāna) located in the yoginī tantras, where the plant is most prominently used in instructions for bringing about magical acts (ṣaṭkarman). This paper explores the possibility that datura was consumed for its hallucination-inducing potential by considering how the plant was viewed and used in premodern South Asia through an ethnobotanical approach to relevant texts. It argues that the material potency of the plant as a dangerous poison gave it a magical potency that made it a favored ingredient in several hostile magic rites (abhicāra) and suggests that the line between material and magical is an inappropriate distinction to draw when examining these tantras.
February 29, 2024 | 32 pages
by Thomas Cattoi
Hesychasm is a form of monastic asceticism rooted in the tradition of the Desert Fathers and given a systematic articulation by the Byzantine author Gregory Palamas (1296–1359). This article considers how the mystical experiences described in Palamas’s Triads compare to the altered states at the center of contemporary psychedelic research, turning to the discipline of Comparative Theology as a helpful framework to bring into dialogue the hesychastic understanding of deification as a trajectory grounded in the reception of the sacraments and the therapeutic impact of psychedelic experiences.
by Peter D. Hershock
The religious or spiritual value of contemplative practices and the use of psychedelics is not intrinsic to experiences obtained through them and is instead relational—a function of how they alter consciousness. Hershock presents a nonreductive, nondualist Buddhist account of consciousness that calls critically into question the merits of both physicalist and phenomenalist reductionism, makes a Buddhist case for seeing that changes in subjective experience are at best provisional goals of these alterations, and draws some challenging inferences regarding the dynamics of contemplative practice, and more.
October 1, 2024 | 20 pages
by Stuart Ray Sarbacker
examine the relationship between the mind-body disciplines of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain systems of yoga, focusing on the use of psychoactive substances in the Indic religious context and the ways that modern cosmopolitan forms of yoga have been intersected with the use of psychedelic substances. The foundation of the study is a comparative examination of the semantic field of psychoactive substances in Indic texts related to yoga and tantra, including typologies such as soma (extract), viṣa (agent or poison), auṣadhi (herbal), amṛta (ambrosia), rasāyana (essence), and dravya (substance), and the utilization of specific plant agents such as dhattūra (datura), bhaṅgā (cannabis), and ahiphena (opium). These concepts are, in turn, connected to relevant strata of Indic religion and philosophy, from the Vedic, classical, and medieval contexts, with attention to discussions in The Yoga Discourse of Patañjali (Pātañjalayogaśāstra) and Buddhist Abhidharma literature of siddhi and ṛddhi (accomplishments) and nirmāṇacitta (constructed minds) arising from the use of herbs.
September 10, 2026 | 28 pages
