The shared experience of mystical awe transforms our individual selves in ways that make for stronger groups. For example, empirical studies involving thousands of participants find that feeling a sense of spiritual engagement is associated with increased well-being, a reduced likelihood of depression, and greater life expectancy. And greater humility, collaboration, sacrifice, and kindness that spread through groups. Groups that cultivated these tendencies through forms of religion, a new line of theorizing contends, fared better in competition with other tribes that did not, over the course of our evolution. More intelligent design.
The toxicities of communities that revolve around mystical awe are also well chronicled, and have given the world tribalism, genocide, and the subjugation of those outside of the favored group—historically women, people of color, and Indigenous peoples in more than ninety countries. Extractive and authoritarian forms of power, as well as charismatic sociopaths, often find revered places in communities of mystical awe. This is a truth Reverend Jen Bailey, Malcolm Clemens Young, and Yuria Celidwen know all too well, given their life stories and cultural backgrounds. They are composting religion in ways to allow for the decay of such tendencies, and to distill something essential to power the growth of beliefs and practices that unite rather than divide.
Psychedelic Awe
Bob Jesse used to be an engineer at Oracle. Shortly after arriving at UC Berkeley, I would learn over lunch that Bob had been transformed by experiences with entheogens: chemical substances, typically of plant origin and with deep origins in Indigenous cultures, that include, among many others, psilocybin, ayahuasca, peyote, and the synthesized drugs LSD, MDMA, and DMT. Knowing of my interest in awe, in 2004 Bob invited me to a retreat focusing on the scientific study of psychedelics.
My own psychedelic experiences were fast tracks to mystical awe, attempts to redeem William James’s “something really wild in the universe.” As if inspired by Emerson’s Harvard Divinity School speech, Rolf, our friends, and I threw ourselves into wonders of life while experiencing psychedelics, moving in a throbbing unison in the mosh pit of an Iggy Pop show, marveling at movements of grains of sand amid the loud roar of the Pacific, hearing the sounds of Mozart outdoors merge with the light and scent of eucalyptus trees, wandering through an exhibit of kindergarteners’ art in Golden Gate Park, witnessing a shorebird die from an algae infection and move through what we perceived to be the dance of death.
One experience of psychedelic awe stays in the cells of my body to this day, a trip Rolf and I made in our early twenties in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, where Timothy Leary escaped to when on the run from the law. We went on a journey to “El Faro,” the lighthouse, a fitting direction for us: my mom taught Virginia Woolf’s transformative
On the trail, we walked several miles with a precipitous view of the ocean to our left. The Pacific Ocean was illuminated. Magenta bougainvillea pulsated. Arriving at the lighthouse, sweaty and sun warmed, we stood inside in a small circular space with two windows peering out. The ocean’s horizon vanished into pure, refracting light. The room’s white walls glowed in the brilliant sun of Mexico. A roar of wind and waves surrounded us, echoing, hovering, moving, repeating. On the windowsill sat a piece of pink soap and some rusty nails.
What decayed for me that day was “the interfering neurotic, who . . . tries to run the show.” I experienced inexplicable and at times extraordinary sensations—a wind; the embracing, powerful sun; the porous boundaries between Rolf and me; entrained rhythms of breathing, side-by-side strides, and the regular crunching of footsteps. And a sublime laughter about life’s absurdities breaking into fragments of sound that vanished in the wind. The distilling of transcendent feelings of brotherhood.
