Make it start, make it stop! Religious and spiritual experiences in the future

Abstract

INTRODUCTION From the earliest traces of human history to the present there have been technologies of religious and spiritual experience. This chapter is about the form these technologies are likely to take in the near and longer-range future, assuming continuous growth in scientific and cultural understanding rather than civilizational collapse and reversion to less technologized forms of life. Whether we welcome it or fear it, the era in which we can induce, prevent, and effectively control many kinds of religious behaviors, beliefs, and experiences is fast approaching. This presents us with an ethical quandary of enormous proportions. What does this level of control say about the authenticity of religious behaviors, beliefs, and experiences? In relation to some forms of religiously relevant experience, this era is already upon us. We are able to measure such experiences, describe them, distinguish them, and evaluate their social functions, behavioral consequences, and health effects. We are also more and more able to start them, stop them, alter them, and even exert control over the way people interpret them. For example, religious experts have long known that bright lights, emotional passion, and repetitive motions make people vulnerable to suggestion, which is often a key component of religious conversion (as well as health changes; see McClenon 2001, 2006). In addition, certain entheogens reliably produce experiences that seem suffused with profound existential significance for those who ingest them.