Psychedelics: Making Atheists Believe in God, and the Religious No Longer Need Religion
One thing that has amused me over the last few years is watching psychedelics cause hardened atheists to believe in God.
This doesn’t mean worshiping Allah or practicing Christianity, but a belief in the divine. God. A supreme creator of the universe, an all-knowing, all-encompassing entity that transcends our understanding of space and time, life and death. That God.
When this happens, it is amusing to me on so many levels. Not in a judgy way, but in an acknowledgement of life’s beautiful irony.
It’s amusing because it wasn’t a sermon, a ministry, nor a pamphlet handed out on the street that did it…but psychedelic “drugs.” That stings a little if you’re a Christian evangelist. It is also amusing because most atheists aren’t casual about their beliefs. Most are hardened, resolved, and vocal. It’s gotta be so humbling when somewhere within an experience of only a few hours—after a brief connection with the divine and a mere moment of greater understanding—a whole defining piece of their reality wall shatters.
It must be hard, and it must be so cathartic.
Again, when I say I am amused, it is not from a place of judgment or mean-spiritedness. I’m genuinely sympathetic. Because I’ve been there. I know that feeling of being sure you’re right, only to be shown—in a split second—how wrong you are.
Though I believe in God, I am especially sympathetic to atheists. Most atheists came to this belief because of their observations of:
A. How terrible organized religion is.
B. How cruel the world can be. “If there was a God why would he let this kind of suffering and evil exist?”
C. Both.
These are valid observations, and I can totally see how someone would look at them and come to the conclusion THERE IS NO GOD.
Like I said, I’ve been there. I have been to the precipice and asked myself, “Does God exist?” I had these doubts and asked these questions long before I began intentional psychedelic practice.
I grew up in total, uncompromising Christianity. I was born under the rule of a father who has spent the bulk of his life in terrible fear of hellfire. The existence of God wasn’t a question that could even be asked. So naturally, as children believe what they are told, this was my belief as well.
As I got older and started pushing back on my Dad and his church’s version of Christianity (as I’ve previously discussed), I still had to reconcile those Questions that Christianity attempts/claims to answer. I call them, The Three Great Questions of the Void: “Who am I?” Why am I here?” “What happens when I die?” In addition to other critical ones like, “How did I get here?” and “Where does the world come from?”
Christianity—and all major religions—derive their power from “answering” those questions.
My problem with the religion I was raised in was its unquestionable nature. I knew that even though I didn’t have to live my father’s Christianity, in order to move forward with my life I still had to determine—for myself—what I believed or did not believe. And the core questions at the heart of it all are “DOES GOD EXIST?” and “Is this all intentional creation, or just a big, magical accident?”
And so I did. I spent my early twenties asking those questions. I was pretty sure that God did exist (in some form or another), but ironically it wasn’t until a heavy “Explorer Dose” of psilocybin mushrooms in the forest with Aziza that I became sure of it.
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Prior to that experience, I was pretty sure God existed mostly from observation and logic. Observation in the sense that I have looked at the world and life and found it to be nothing short of miraculous. It is too intricate, too complex, and too magical to be accidental or happenstance. This is why I have always had a logical problem accepting the Big Bang Theory. I have observed explosions and seen only destruction as their result. It is impossible for me to wrap my head around an explosion creating life or this beautiful bright blue planet that sits alone in the cold and dark expanse of the solar system. That idea alone is so far beyond my comprehension that I cannot imagine anything other than a divine creator capable of such a feat.
That awe of the miracle of life was proof (to myself) that God existed—until that day in the forest. It was during a time of great grief and trauma; Aziza’s father had recently passed away in a sudden and tragic manner. She desperately needed a respite so we decided to make an escape to a cabin in the woods of Oregon. Our emotional wires were already exposed and raw before we even began the session. We had no intention of connecting to the divine, we simply wanted to be together, to unplug, and to have the journey we were supposed to.
The first part of the journey was beautiful, visual and lively. We were able to see and connect with the energetic forces that exist all around us, but that we pay little to no attention to in daily life. We were in awe of the interconnected energy coursing through something as simple as a fern. It was like our senses were briefly tapped into the frequency of nature. To this day, it’s still the trip that felt the most like being in Avatar.
The next chapter involved necessary tears, release, and processing. Then, near the end of the peak, we went for another walk. We were walking on a quiet trail through the woods in the dark, an expanse of stars above us, and the pine needles on the forest floor appeared as glowing embers. We came to a small foot bridge over a bubbling creek and stopped. We didn’t speak. We had already marveled at nature and we had already cried and talked—there wasn’t anything left that needed to be said. We stood there and watched the creek bubble down a little waterfall and around the rocks.
And then there in the stream, in the moonlight and shadow, with only the sounds of the nighttime forest and the water cascading over the rocks…I saw and felt God. What I saw in the water is hard to describe. A light, a shape, a being…maybe a portal…I can’t put it into words…but what it was, and what I felt was crystal clear: a glimpse and a touch of the divine.
Aziza and I did not speak a word to each other on that bridge. Eventually we walked back the way we came, and after a while I finally said something like, “Did you…?” and she immediately responded, “Yes.”
We felt It, saw It and knew It, in the exact same moment.
We have unpacked it many times in the years since—the profound experience it had on us individually and collectively. There’s a whole essay here on that moment and the impact it had on my life, but in lieu I’ll just say it reminded me of Elijah’s experience in I Kings 19:12: And a great and mighty wind tore into the mountains and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
The still small voice.
I get it now, Elijah. I get it.
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This was before we were married—when Aziza still identified in some form as a Muslim, and I described myself as, “Not-really-religious, but sympathetic to the Ten Commandments, Buddhism and the teachings of Jesus.”
Prior to that moment, I didn’t really know God existed. I thought so. I hoped so. I figured it must be so... but I didn’t know so. But in that moment, through the power of psychedelic medicine opening my third eye, for the first time in my life I was able to truly know. I saw it, felt it, knew it, and understood it. It was just a glimpse, but it was more than enough.
That’s the thing that’s hard for people who have never journeyed on psychedelics to understand—that feeling of a greater understanding. When you’re deep in session, and your consciousness expands and taps into The Field (the Quantum Field), you sense and feel things about existence that you couldn’t possibly begin to put into words. Or explain how you know. In that moment you can see and read the previously illegible or unseen coding of the universe. “Oh, so that’s what plants breathing looks like. But of course.”
This is experience is not unique to me. It’s a universal truth of psychedelic usage; you go in deep enough…and inevitably you will face the darkness and you will touch the divine.
For me, this experience was the confirmation I’d been looking for. I had a long and fractured relationship with religion, but even as I divorced from it, I didn’t want to not believe in God. The thought of a universe without God, or that this was all one big cosmic accident, was almost as scary as ending up in the Christian version of hell. I was prepared to accept that reality, but it was a tremendous spiritual relief to find personal confirmation of the divine.
However, if I was an atheist, I can imagine that being a reality-breaker.
There’s this girl I know, an acquaintance—a hot girl in her twenties I met at a festival once, but we’ve stayed in sporadic contact via social media. She’s the opposite of me: a hardened Leftist, proud ANTIFA member, militant feminist, and vocal atheist. Thus, a little while back I was surprised to see an incredibly vulnerable post from her about a 5-MeO-DMT trip she had taken and how it had changed her belief in God. She said, “Thanks to that frog venom (5-MeO) I went from an atheist who never wanted kids, to now believing in God and wanting to have a natural birth. Just when I thought I had it figured out.”
I exchanged a few words of encouragement with her, and we agreed that regardless of what it is, there’s no way an experience like that doesn’t alter you. But man, what an ego-smasher that must have been for her. Having had my ego smashed many times before, I am sympathetic.
Disclaimer: I know that there are no doubt seasoned psychonauts that are atheists… I also know that there are no doubt psychonauts that still maintain an active religious identity…I just don’t know very many of them.
To tie it all together, the powerful nature of an experience like that is that it will show you truth. It may be a contradictory truth, or a confirming one, but you won’t get to choose—all that will matter is what you do with it AFTER. For an atheist, I imagine your life and world view may change in some way or another. For a devoutly religious person, you may decide that the trappings and structures of a religion no longer serve you, and can begin to—independently—form your own connection with God.
For the veterans reading and nodding along, I know you get it. For the curious new explorers, I wish you luck and offer one encouraging promise; you’ll be shown exactly what you need to see.
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Afterword: Despite my thoughts and observations on people’s relationship to the Divine…whether or not someone believes in God is completely irrelevant to my view of them. I judge people and choose friends based on their behavior in this life. I have dear friends who are atheists, “spiritual,” agnostic, and ones who actively practice a religion. It makes no difference to me. The Divine is absolutely something I can connect with someone on, but it is only one topic of many. Everyone has to reconcile the Questions of the Void. Those thoughts are their own, it’s how they live out in their lives in response to the Questions that matters to me.