On the other hand, one of the most successful results of ingestion and clearest cases of religious experience of which I know, derived from one of the most mammon-like motives. This case is instructive since it warns us against too much reliance on set as an essential determinative in the quality of the experience. The man was an armed robber, having spent much of his life behind bars, who volunteered to ingest psilocybin, as he told me, simply in order to get some parole credit on his record. After an unexpected vision of Christ he looked out the prison window. Five years after, prison officials have confirmed my feeling that the man has now been rehabilitated.
Some people volunteer for reasons of self-interest, financial or otherwise.
I could not guarantee results as happy as that with my convict friend. But there is always a measure of unpredictability connected with any ingestion, whatever the motive. Mystical experience achieved through meditation and psychedelic drugs is basically a process I call de- automatization the undoing of autonomic processes of perception and cognition resulting in, temporarily, a capacity for perception and cognition that is less efficient but potentially of wider range. Psychedelic drugs could be used to establish, increase, or maintain faith in a particular religion. The ethics of such a use depend very much on the validity one ascribes to the experiences obtained under the drugs.