Religion and drugs
"Native American groups had long used peyote to induce religious ecstasy, so it was not difficult to make a link between drugs and religion. The novelist Aldous Huxley had taken mescaline in 1953 as part of a psychological experiment, and the drug had intensified his awareness to such an extent that he was suddenly able to grasp what mystics had meant when they wrote about the beatific vision. About a previously unremarkable vase of flowers on his table he wrote that under the influence of the drug it became an object of almost unbearable fascination: 'I was not looking now at an unusual flower arrangement. I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of creation - the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.'" -Patrick Allitt, Religion in America (since 1945: a history)
"The Creator may have graced his creation with drugs, which, discovered in due time, might be instrumental in preparing people to understand the gentleness, brotherhood and peace of the gospels." -Michael Novak, "The New Relativism in American Theology"
"Warren Hinckle, who wrote an influential article for Ramparts about the hippies in 1967, noted that LSD was a drug to be shared and that Ken Kesey, its early advocate and popularizer (when it was still legal), 'handed LSD around like the Eucharist.'" -Patrick Allitt, Religion in America (since 1945: a history)
"The Creator may have graced his creation with drugs, which, discovered in due time, might be instrumental in preparing people to understand the gentleness, brotherhood and peace of the gospels." -Michael Novak, "The New Relativism in American Theology"
"Warren Hinckle, who wrote an influential article for Ramparts about the hippies in 1967, noted that LSD was a drug to be shared and that Ken Kesey, its early advocate and popularizer (when it was still legal), 'handed LSD around like the Eucharist.'" -Patrick Allitt, Religion in America (since 1945: a history)