PT520 – From the Eleusinian Mysteries to Modern Mysticism: The Role of Religion in the Psychedelic Experience, with Charles Stang
Psychedelics Today
Psychedelics Today, LLC
4.6 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 11 June 2024
⏱️ 84 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Joe interviews Charles Stang: Professor of Early Christian Thought and the Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School.
The Center was created to gain a better understanding of world religions by bringing scholars from their respective countries to study and live alongside Divinity School students. As students and Stang started to become interested in psychedelics, a zoom series, "Psychedelics and the Future of Religion," began, and the school just hosted their second conference, "Psychedelic Intersections: Cross Cultural Manifestations of the Sacred." Next year's Psychedelics and Spirituality conference will take place February 15, 2025.
He discusses:
- Harvard's psychedelic history, and why it's important to not erase the past out of the interest of presumed legitimacy
- How people are consistently having extraordinary experiences with psychedelics, but not always with religion: Are people becoming less (or more) religious?
- The Immortality Key, the Eleusinian mysteries, and psychedelic enthusiasts' need to connect Christianity with psychedelics
- Psychedelics and other mystery religions, like Hermeticism and Mithraism
- Why religion is important to so many people, and how it helps us understand the "more-than-human"
and much more.
For links, head to the show notes page.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everybody. Welcome back to psychedelics today. This is Joe Moore. I am recording from |
| 0:18.0 | Southern New Hampshire yet again. Today we bring you a recording with the director |
| 0:25.4 | of the Center for the Study of World Religions at the Harvard Divinity School. I went down to Cambridge |
| 0:33.9 | yesterday and recorded with Professor Charles Stang and had a lovely time. |
| 0:41.3 | This is such a fun interview for me. |
| 0:43.8 | We went so many places I did not expect. |
| 0:47.2 | And I think I think you guys will like this one. |
| 0:51.3 | So there was so much. |
| 0:54.0 | They recently had a conference on psychedelics. |
| 0:57.2 | They've had a series than a series, I think a year or two ago. So regular kind of webinar style |
| 1:06.4 | meetings and then a smaller conference the year before and a great interdisciplinary conference |
| 1:12.7 | this year. So that's kind of what I was most interested in. So I'm happy to report we talk |
| 1:18.3 | about much more than that event. And yeah, I go all over. So I hope you enjoy this one. |
| 1:24.6 | And we will see you on the other side. |
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... |
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