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RAM DASS: FIERCE GRACE -- ILLUSTRATED SCREENPLAY & SCREENCAP GALLERY |
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[Dr. Ralph Metzner, Psychologist] Then also did a study which then led to the famous Good Friday study of using the set and setting idea to really test whether you could induce a religious experience, by taking people who were into theology, studying to be divinity ministers, and doing it in a setting during a religious service on Good Friday, and then having a double-blind study where some half the group got psilocybin and half the group didn't.
[Dr. Huston Smith, Philosopher] Nominally, I was one of the guides as having had some experience with the substance.
But all that went by the board when it turned out that I was one of the recipients of the psilocybin.
[Dr. Ralph Metzner, Psychologist] It was, you know, the first, and to this day really the only, I think, attempt to experimentally demonstrate or verify, induce, and evaluate a religious experience in the form of a psychological experiment.
[Dr. Huston Smith, Philosopher] For me, it was the strongest experience I have had of the personal god.
[Dr. Ralph Metzner, Psychologist] And then the debate was, well, people who said, "Well, no, you could never have a mystical experience coming from an artificial substance." And the others said, "Well, why? Surely the experience itself should be the criterion of its validity rather than how it came about." And that debate went on and on and on.
[Ram Dass] When we go on and say, "Here's a pill,
here's the same experience as Moses had, you can ... |
