Mystical Hedonism

Accessing Divinity through pleasure

In the beginning of the psychospiritual evolution of our species, the religious experience was not separate from sex and drugs. In fact, in the early days of religious development, it could be considered that sex and drugs were religion. Religion was characterized by use of entheogens and fertility rites; the ecstatic trance states achieved through these sacraments and rituals the ultimate goal. The ecstatic trance state is exemplified by the Mystery Cult rites; those attributed to Dionysian and Eylusian Mystery cults, Oracles of Delphi, as well as shamanic journeys.

Ceremonial performances often symbolized psychospiritual transformation; metaphoric actions representing the death of the initiate, followed by the rebirth of the same individual. The uninitiated enters the process of illumination unaware and obstructed from understanding due to a lack of knowledge. Upon undergoing initiation (involving entheogens, ritual, education on cosmology, divine purpose, and/or sexual activity) the initiate participates in ritualized death and rebirth. This process represents the death of ignorance, a breaking free from social conditioning and habitual ways of being. Following the death of the individual’s former self, they are then ritually reborn to symbolize their new state of understanding; transformed by entheogens and esoteric knowledge they now have direct awareness of the mystical energies of the universe.

This knowledge, bestowed upon them during the transformative experience, manifests while undergoing initiatory rites. These rites reveal the Secrets of the Universe during entheogenic communion. The mystical is derived from the hedonic, pleasure eroding social conditioning interfering with an individual’s ability to know the mystical.

Divinity was revealed to be within rather than above, and the human mind understood to be an expression of the consciousness of Divinity. Entheogens made it possible for humans to realize their goodness, and the godness of all existence. The individual was reborn to the next stage of psychospiritual evolution. Individual psycho-spiritual evolution was delivered, by the same route our psychospiritual evolution began; discoveries made during entheogenic journeys of the mind-spirit reality.

The Stoned Ape hypothesis, proselytized by mushroom devotees (namely Terence McKenna and Paul Stamets) postulates the likely origin of human consciousness to have been the psychedelic experience. Brain activity…