Consider the following three quotations:

One of the people we asked to write for this book replied that after long thought he had to decline, because he feared the effect on his ability to support himself and his family if he said what he really thought about psychedelic drugs. (Grinspoon and Bakalar, 1983)

Greeley found no evidence to support the orthodox belief that frequent mystical experiences stem from deprivation or psychopathology. His "mystics" were generally better educated, more successful economically, and less racist; and they were rated substantially happier on measures of psychological well-being.

(Tart, 1977)

Investigators examining every human behavior and experience can ask: How does (blank) vary from mindbody state to mindbody state?

(Roberts, 1989)

When laws fall behind their culture what can we expect? In the general population we find extensive socially accepted lawlessness. In commerce new opportuni-ties arise for those who cater to the newly rising illegal products and services. For the victims of the old laws, disrespect for the authorities who promulgated the mordant laws and for those who enforce it are the result. From those individuals and groups whose social, intellectual, spiritual and moral standards are illegalized by the antiquated laws, we find feelings of resentment, alienation from the government and a lack of participation in community and political life. Anger arises from those whose lives are broken by enforcement of the antiquated laws.

From the viewpoint of the orthodox, established sectors of the culture the responses are frustration that the "old ways" are not being followed in the rising culture. Self-righteous anger and increased aggression against the lawbreakers are tinged with a holier-than-thou attitude. The new constituencies and minorities are blamed. A sense of confusion emerges over the defection of old friends and allies who have fallen into the clutches of the rising culture. They seem somehow treasonous or duped by underhanded tactics or their own naive ignorance. Paranoia.

With a special emphasis on psychedelics, this essay selects some of the ideas, experiences, groups, and standards which are victims of current drug law policies. These areas include the cognitive sciences, multistate psychology, religion, mystical experiences, and personal freedom. Drug policy decisions affect constituencies from these areas, and when new policies are written, these groups have a right to significant input into the reformulation of these policies and laws.

Most of the commentary on current drug policies comes from a narrow range of selected professional constituencies. By in large, parts of the legal, political, medical, news media, and economic communities have taken the lead toward developing rational and responsible alternatives to drug policies. I hope to show that these issues are also the responsibility of the academic, religious, and cognitive science communities. Educators and human development specialists (both secular and sacred) have important stakes in the determination of drug policies.

The Multistate Cognitive Sciences

Cognitive science is a rapidly growing field which investigates mental processes such as perception, memory, thinking, and concept formation. Until recently, most cognitive scientists studied these processes almost exclusively as they take place in our ordinary awake state. 'This is still the usual case, but a new perspective on the human mind is opening up a number of new specialties.

Multistate cognitive science is the study of cognition in all mindbody states [also called "states of consciousness" or "psychophysiological states") (Roberts, 1989). Drug policy decisions are crucial to the future of multistate cognitive science. To appreciate why, it's helpful to know several things about this emerging field.

Multistate mind. First, human cognition does take place in a huge variety of states, not just our usual awake state. Whether we are dreaming, asleep, awake, hyperexcited, deeply relaxed, concentrated or diffuse in our attention, alert to the outside world or inner directed, anesthetized or even in a coma, cognitive processes continue. Each state has its own, special kinds of perception, memory, information processing routines, and so forth, and each state organizes and orchestrates these capacities in distinctive ways.
From an information-processing perspective, a mindbody state is analogous to a software program. By increasing the number of programs we use in a computer, we expand our productive use of the computer. By increasing the number of mindbody states we use, we increase the productivity of our minds. If we are to develop the most complete knowledge of human memory, perception, and thinking that we can, then we must explore these processes in as many states as we can. By needlessly restricting the accessibility of drug produced states, current laws limit what we can know about our minds and how we can use them.

Psychotechnologies. Second, in their exploration of mindbody states, multistate cognitive psychologists are using a large array of new and traditional psychotechnologies. These are methods of producing mindbody states. These include imagery, relaxation, many kinds of meditation, prayer and spiritual disciplines, the martial arts, yoga and body disciplines, breathing techniques, biofeedback, suggestion and hypnosis, near-death experiences, sensory overload and isolation, and others. Among the most important are psychoactive drugs.

Psychomagnifiers. Third, of particular importance to multistate cognitive science are the psychotechnologies which magnify weak mental processes, making them newly available for systematic, scientific and scholarly observation. The importance and impact of these psychomagnifiers for psychology and education is parallel to the importance and impact of the microscope to biology and medicine. The most important of these is LSD.
While most drugs produce a more or less standard effect, LSD and the other psychedelics magnify external perceptions and/or what is already in the mind. This amplification was not understood in the 1960s, so the information which lawmakers had about them was misleading, confusing, and incorrect. In the politically charged atmosphere of the Vietnam War, racial unrest, and cultural revolution, it was easy to rationalize the political decision to outlaw these drugs as a public health decision.
Surveying the entire corpus of writings on psychedelics, Grinspoon and Bakalar express the professional judgment of many of today's better-informed doctors, psychotherapists, scholars, scientists, and clergy (1979, p. 293):

The interest is there, though stifled, and the problem is how to satisfy it safely and usefully. After more than ten years of almost total neglect, it is time to take up the work that was laid down unfinished in the sixties. We need to arrange a way for people to take psychedelic drugs responsibly under appropriate guidance within the law, and a way for those who want to administer them to volunteers for therapeutic and general research to do so.

Evidence about the nature of the human mind may be the most significant information possible. Just as the microscope made modern biology and medicine possible, the magnifying power of psychedelics offers to advance psychology and education into hitherto undreamed of realms. Will new drug policies and laws facilitate cognitive exploration as a legitimate use of drugs, especially psychedelics?

Mental Research Tools. Fourth, the human mind is the primary research instrument used in all research, scholarship, science, in every human endeavor. Everything we know comes from using our minds. What will we discover when we learn to use the human mind and its cognitive capacities in new ways? The evidence from hypnosis, biofeedback and meditation illustrates that we can develop additional useful physiological and cognitive capacities by accessing additional mindbody states. A scholar, scientist, student or researcher whose access to different states is restricted can draw on fewer cognitive processes than a competitor who uses a fuller range of cognitive abilities. Current drug laws are a professional handicap.

Multiple perspectives. Fifth, each mindbody state provides a unique perspective on itself and on other states. Meditative states, dreaming and our usual awake state each teach us about each other as well as them-selves. By restricting the number of states one can access, current laws limit the parts of the human mind that are open for study, limit the intellectual processes that the researcher can call on, and limit the number of vantage points a researcher has for examining a specific capacity such as perception or memory or for building an overall map of the human mind.

Practical uses. Sixth, the many cognitive states of the human mind are more than just odd curiosities. Psychologists now realize that much valuable human thinking occurs in these states. Creative problem solving is noteworthy for taking place in altered states of consciousness. Psychotherapy can be sped up in some states, and exceptional performance sometimes results from such states. To develop the fullest range of human abilities, we need to develop ways of producing these states and learning how to use them. If we are to have a complete education, we must identify the worthwhile cognitive processes in these states and learn to use them.
Psychoactive drugs are important mindbody psychotechnologies, and laws which restrict drug abuse, also damage the cognitive sciences and academic freedom. It is important to note that while some mindbody drugs may also have uses in medicine, from a multistate perspective both medical and nonmedical drugs are avenues for psychological and educational research.

Unitive Consciousness — Mystical Experience

A major change in the psychology of religion during the last two decades is ignored by current drug laws. This is the reevaluation of states of unitive consciousness. While this change is centered in the overlap among religion, psychology, and general culture, it also concerns areas of the arts, psychotherapy, anthropology, and related fields. In Western thought states of unitive consciousness are also known as mystical experiences, peak experiences, conversion states, intense religious experiences, cosmic consciousness, ego-transcendence, and transcendent experiences. They also have a host of names in Eastern thought such as samadi, satori, enlightenment, illumination, and so forth. Until the 1960s these states were generally considered to be evidence of neurosis or psychosis, and this error persists among professionals and laymen who are not familiar with the empirical research on them. Because some psychoactive drugs, as well as other mindbody psychotechnologies, can produce these states, these practices were erroneously thought to be psychologically damaging, and this error is reflected in our current drug policies.

Most of the time such states are likely to indicate psychological health rather than illness, and responsible social attitudes rather than irresponsibility. The second opening quotation which began this paper (Tart, 191-7) summarizes the early empirical findings: people who have had these experiences tend to be better educated, more successful, less racist, and happier on measures of psychological well-being. Supportive evidence continues to pile up (Wuthnow, 1987; Noble, 1987; Lukoff and Lu, 1988): they also have more meaningful lives, less attachment to material possessions or to fame and power, less authoritarianism and dogmatism, higher ego strength, and are more imaginative, self-sufficient, intelligent, and relaxed. Walsh (1988, p. 549) lists the best researched psychotechnologies for producing unitive states:

... the thought of harming "others" therefore makes no sense whatsoever. Rather, the natural expression of this state are said to be love and compassion or agape.
Similar unitive experiences have been reported in the West among contemplatives (Wilber at al, 1986), subjects in exceptionally deep hypnotic states (Tart, 1975), patients in advanced therapy (Bugental, 1978), experimental psychedelic sessions (Grof, 1988), and as spontaneous peak experiences (Walsh and Vaughan, 1980). These experiences are under significant voluntary control only in contemplatives, either Eastern or Western, but interestingly, enduring positive after effects on personality have been reported for all these conditions and the approaches that induce them have therefore been collectively named "holotropic therapies," i.e.,growth toward wholeness (Grof, 1988). of unity. (emphasis added)

Where is the recognition of this in drug policy? Nowhere. With their historical bias rooted in single-state ignorance and outdated assumptions about the human mind, our current policies particularly toward
psychedelics, are actually antitherapeutic and destructive of psychological growth. There have been over 1000 scientific research reports on psychedelics (Grinspoon & Bakalar, 1979), yet our drug policies are uninforrned of these and are, in fact, politically motivated rather than based on scientific, medical, or psychotherapeutic evidence.

The Kingdom of Heaven Is within You

While Walsh concentrates on the psycho- therapeutic aspects of unitive states, they are even more important from a religious perspective. Within all the world's major religious traditions, the direct experience of God (or the Absolute, the Sacred, the Ground of Being, or Cosmic Oneness) is seen as the highest state of spiritual development. This occurs in states of unitive consciousness (James, 1902; Huxley, 1945; Smith, 1976). Given the right set and setting, some illegal drugs (particularly LSD) can help facilitate these experiences. This is certainly not to say that all drugs always produce deep religious experience. Clearly this is not the case. But as Grinspoon and Bakalar report, "It should not be necessary to supply any more proof that psychedelic drugs produce experiences that those who undergo them regard as religious in the fullest sense," (1979, p. 267).

I am one of these believers. In my life the most important steps in my spiritual development have occurred as a consequence of psychedelic sessions. As a parent, I believe it is my sacred duty to nourish spiritual development in my child. Current drug laws would make me a criminal for doing so. The United States Congress acting through the DEA and NIDA, has determined that I cannot practice the most important part of my religion in America. If my case were unique, it might be all interesting curiosity, but of little importance. I personally know several dozen parents who are similarly situated with respect to the law. I believe there are tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands similarly situated.

Within the theological and philosophical communities, there is disagreement about whether a drug-induced religious experience is a fake or genuine experience of unitive consciousness. To those who believe it is genuinely sacred, banning the use of psychedelics is a government-sponsored attack on their religions. Those who believe these are not genuinely sacred experiences use the power of drug laws to enforce their religious views. For those who are skeptical but would like to investigate the issue further, drug laws prohibit their investigation along the path of spiritual development.

A fourth position on the use of psychedelics in religious and philosophical education also exists. This is the view that whatever side one takes on the genuineness issue, the experiences are educational. They may or may not be "the real thing' but as an approximation, they are a valuable teaching-learning experience. Just as pretend roads, stop signs, and traffic lights help kindergartners learn safety rules, simulated religious experiences give a taste of the genuine experience and can be valuable in religious education. Do Americans want to give William Bennett, NIDA, the DEA and their ilk power to exercise control of over religion, philosophy, psychotherapy, parental responsibilities and education?
Freedom of the Mind

Who has the right to determine what thoughts you may or may not think? Many Americans believe that they as individuals have the right to determine what goes on in their own minds, that thought control is not the right of a government. But drug control is a kind of thought control.

I propose we recognize a new freedom, freedom of the mind. Freedom of the mind is the right to choose how one will think, to select one's cognitive processes. This means selecting one's mindbody state, provided, of course, it does no harm to others.

A major watershed in American culture has occurred. In the last thirty years, many segments of American culture have learned of the enormous variety of psychotechnologies for choosing mindbody states. Some of these come from other cultures, both ancient and modern. Others are new psychotechnologies based on the scientific advances of our times such as biofeedback and the newer psychoactive drugs. These new and rediscovered psychotechnologies open up a new kind of freedom, which is opposed by a new kind of control. The right to select one's mindbody state is opposed by anachronistic laws and legislators whose concepts of freedom were formed before freedom of the mind was as generally possible as it is now.

A double censorship is occurring. In selectively censoring cognitive processes by prohibiting access to them via its drug laws, our government also indirectly censors ideas which are credible in other states and in favor of ideas which are more credible in our ordinary awake state. In former times governments, churches, and other powerful groups thought that seditious and heretical beliefs came from being exposed to harmful ideas in writing, speaking or other forms of communication. They censored books. In our enlightened times, we recognize that heretical ideas also may come via direct experience. So we censor unorthodox experiences.

The claim that drug-induced experiences lead to ideas which might not otherwise be seriously considered is well illustrated in the lifetime works of R. Gordon Wasson. As a vice-president of J. P. Morgan & Co., Wasson was hardly the stereotype of a 60s flower child. He and his Russian-born wife Valentina became interested in why some peoples are "mycophiles" and others "mycophobes" during their honeymoon in 1927. This resulted in their joint study of mushrooms as an intellectual hobby, but did not result in any publications of scholarly or scientific note until after 1955 when Wasson discovered psychoactive mushrooms in Mexico. This experience so stimulated them that they (particularly R. Gordon Wasson) produced a steady stream of lively scholarly books on the probable influence of psychoactive plants on human culture, especially religion. Wasson's broad intellectual scope and depth, his painstaking documentation, detailed analyses, and intriguing speculations rank among the richest contributions to the world of ideas made this century, and are particularly notable as contributions by a nonacademic. These are documented in Riedlinger's recent book The Sacred Mushroom Seeker: Essays for R. Gordon Wasson.

Certainly any theologian, philosopher, indologist, or anthropologist wanting to examine Wasson's claims should look at the best evidence, should ingest psychedelic mushrooms to see if his ideas are plausible. Because the use of drugs in academic and scholarly research is made illegal by current law, this method of intellectual inquiry is forbidden, and academic censorship is an unintended and unfortunate byproduct of current policies.

Recommendations

A major problem in drug policy (perhaps the major problem) is the fact that drugs have both medical and nonmedical purposes. In this paper we have looked at the importance of drug policy for the cognitive sciences, religion, and academic freedom. Much of the current morass of drug laws is due to the fact that culturally legitimate, nonmedical uses of drugs are increasingly recognized in society, but not recognized in law. One reason for this is that most drug policies are made by the medical, political, legal, and law enforcement communities acting in collusion and excluding other constituencies.

Drug laws are a peculiar institution. Within broad limits, we allow external freedoms such as freedom of the press and freedom of speech; these freedoms have to do with our outer, social, external behavior. But we regulate the freedom to select one's inner, mental, mindbody state, and it is even more personal, more individual, and more intimate than the external freedoms.

It can hardly be expected that academic, religious, psychotherapeutic, and intellectual constituencies will support laws which they see as contrary to their own best personal and professional interests. In fact, as more members of these groups are coming to understand the multi-state aspects of human nature, they decrease their respect for existing laws. When many of our drug laws were written, there was less popular recognition of the nonmedical uses of drugs. Now, however, large segments of American culture have become more sophisticated and recognize both medical and nonmedical uses for drugs.

Is there any hope out of this morass? I think two national commissions would help. A National Commission for the Study of Marijuana Policy and a National Commission for the Study of Drug Policy should be formed. They both should study all the issues surrounding these drugs and should base their recommendations on evidence from a wide range of sources. They should try to stimulate a national debate on drug laws, and they should be composed of citizens from a wide range of constituencies, not just those from the legal, medical, and political arena.

There are some difficult questions for these commissions to consider:

Who has the right to determine what an American citizen can do with his or her own mind?

Will the legal, governmental, and medical communities continue to monopolize drug laws?

Will the right to determine one's own cognitive processes be recognized?

Will academic freedom be restored in the cognitive sciences?

Will freedom of religion be reestablished by approving in use of drugs for sacred purposes?

Will the psychotherapeutic effects of mystical experiences be considered?

If the medical community reserves the right to determine drug usage for medical purposes, does the religious community have a parallel right for spiritual purposes? Will other professions enjoy similar rights?

Can laws be written which discourage destructive uses of drugs and encourage their beneficial uses, particularly nonmedical uses?

Thomas B. Roberts is a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology, Counseling and Special Education, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Ill. 60115-2854. (815) 753-0659.

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