Psychedelics.com Team
PART I: Summary
📖 What’s This Paper About?
This paper examines psilocybin therapy from an Orthodox Christian perspective, exploring its use in treating cancer patients and those with severe mental disorders. The author, Hierodeacon Nathanael (Boris Gennadievich Bobylev), analyzes both the biochemical mechanisms of psilocybin and the spiritual implications of artificially induced altered states of consciousness.
Why This Matters
As psychedelic therapy gains scientific legitimacy, religious and spiritual frameworks must also address these treatments. This intersection of neuroscience, psychology, and theology raises profound questions about consciousness, personhood, and spiritual experience that transcend purely medical considerations.
- Psilocybin therapy shows promising results for treating existential distress in cancer patients
- The line between therapeutic effects and spiritual experiences is increasingly blurred
- Religious traditions must engage with these emerging treatments as they gain mainstream acceptance
Top 5 Takeaways
1. Biochemical Mechanisms of Psilocybin
Psilocybin converts to psilocin in the body, mimicking serotonin’s structure while activating multiple neurotransmitter systems including dopamine and GABA, explaining its profound effects on perception, emotion, and consciousness.
2. Transpersonal Experiences
Patients undergoing psilocybin sessions commonly report profound experiences including ego dissolution, deep empathy, cosmic love, unity with the world, and transcendence of normal space-time perception—effects that have therapeutic value but raise spiritual questions.
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3. Orthodox Christian Anthropology
From an Orthodox perspective, humans are tripartite beings of spirit, soul, and body. The author argues that chemically altering consciousness risks spiritual harm by potentially exposing the soul to negative spiritual influences when normal protective barriers are bypassed.
4. Meditation vs. Christian Practice
The accelerated ability to achieve meditation states through psilocybin (weeks instead of years) raises concerns as Eastern meditation practices seek to transcend individual personality, contrary to Orthodox Christianity’s emphasis on personal relationship with a personal God.
5. Therapeutic Value vs. Spiritual Risk
While acknowledging psilocybin’s therapeutic benefits, the author warns against confusing medical improvement with spiritual advancement, citing Christ’s words: “What profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his own soul?”
The Bigger Picture
This analysis represents a thoughtful religious engagement with emerging psychedelic science, neither dismissing potential medical benefits nor uncritically embracing chemical shortcuts to transcendent experiences. It highlights the tension between contemporary neuroscience’s materialistic framework and religious traditions that recognize non-physical dimensions of human existence. As psychedelic therapy becomes mainstream, such cross-disciplinary dialogue will be essential for integrating these treatments into cultural and spiritual frameworks.
Final Thought
The psilocybin question isn’t just about effective treatment but about what it means to be human—is consciousness merely chemistry, or is there something more that cannot be accessed through chemical means alone?
PART II: Complete English Translation
PSILOCYBIN SESSION IN THE LIGHT OF THE ORTHODOX TEACHING ABOUT MAN
Boris Gennadievich Bobylev
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Russia, Oryol region, Novosilsky district, village of Zadushnoye
The article deals with one of the topical issues of social mission related to the use of psilocybin for the mental rehabilitation of cancer patients, as well as for the treatment of patients with severe mental disorders. The biochemical mechanisms of action of psilocybin are revealed, as well as the nature of “transpersonal experiences” that arise in connection with the use of the drug. It is indicated that the therapeutic effect of psilocybin sessions is undeniable, but one should beware of the direct transfer of psychophysiological and medical results to the religious and social plane. It is emphasized that chemical agents, as a result of which control over consciousness is lost, carry the danger of disintegration, disintegration of the human personality, the highest achievement of Christianity.
Keywords: Psilocybin, transpersonal experiences, Orthodox anthropology, neurotransmitters, meditation, the spiritual essence of a person.
One of the features of psychiatric theory and practice in recent years is the reappraisal of the medical potential of psilocybin, its use for the mental rehabilitation of cancer patients, as well as for the treatment of patients with severe mental disorders. This is due to the emergence of pharmacologically “pure” psilocybin preparations and the possibility of their use under identical conditions with the application of statistical and instrumental evaluation methods, which, in turn, has made it possible to relatively accurately select a dose for the emergence of a “catharsis” effect (harmonious, joyful perception of the world). The biochemical mechanism of action of psilocybin is based on its conversion to the active molecule psilocin, which resembles the structure of the key neurotransmitter serotonin (through neurotransmitters, the electrochemical impulse is transmitted from the nerve cell through the synaptic space, where contact between neurons is made) and mimics the action of this neurotransmitter. At the same time, other neurotransmitter systems are “launched” – dopamine (associated with the production of the hormone dopamine, which is produced during the experience of joyful moments in human life) and the gamma-aminobutyric acid system, which participates in the processes of central inhibition, as well as in the activation of energy processes of the brain, increasing respiratory activity of tissues, improving blood supply, etc.
Experimenters indicate that patients during a psilocybin session go through a stage of disintegration of the “Ego”, and also experience “transpersonal experiences”, which include: empathy – a feeling of deep connection with other people; all-encompassing love, “occurring simultaneously from all points of the universe”; disturbances in normal perception of space; unity with the world and awareness of oneself as part of the world; going beyond personality and feeling of finding oneself in a reality of another level; a sense of eternity and conditionality of time; heightened sense of beauty, etc. The therapeutic effect of psilocybin sessions is undeniable, however, one should beware of directly transferring psychophysiological and medical results to the religious and social plane. According to addiction specialist A.G. Danilin, in the culture of the 20th century, “a new unconscious stereotype has formed: no one wanted to spend effort anymore, observe fasts and rituals, overcome limitations, experience suffering, in order to experience minutes of enlightenment from a personal encounter with God at the approaches to the truth of the spirit” [2, p. 108].
It draws attention that among the results of treatment with psilocybin, along with a decrease in anxiety in cancer patients (confirmed by testing), “very quick ‘learning’ of the meditation process (2 weeks instead of 3 years)” is noted as a positive result. The latter circumstance cannot but be alarming: the technique of meditation was developed in the stream of Eastern religions, and it is fundamentally incompatible with Christian doctrine. This has been repeatedly pointed out by Orthodox elders. Meditation, according to Eastern gurus, is aimed at freeing an impersonal “divine principle”, liberating it from the power of illusory individuality, “maya”: “For us, the Impersonal includes all personality, the sum of all personalities of the Universe, and infinitely more than this sum” (Vivekananda). This idea of man and God fundamentally differs from Orthodox anthropology.
After the clothing of man as a result of his fall into sin in “leather robes,” “a gross and heavy body” (Ignatius Bryanchaninov), he lost the ability to directly communicate with the spiritual world, but at the same time, as St. Cassian the Roman writes, “the wisdom and goodness of God put a barrier between men, cast down to earth from paradise, and spirits, cast down to earth from heaven – the gross materiality of the human body” (St. Cassian’s Conference 8, Chapter 12). When the soul of a person through meditation goes beyond the limits of his body, it becomes defenseless against fallen spirits and can become their plaything and, through illusions initiated by them, fall into delusion and move away from God. In Christianity and other monotheistic religions, the depersonalizing effect of demons on rational creation is revealed as a means of its destruction.
According to Orthodox anthropology, man is tripartite and consists of spirit, soul, and body. The spirit is from God, it is the breath of God and the connection with Him. And it cannot in any way be identified with the soul and body. In some cases, psychotherapy proceeds from the postulate of the dominant importance of material causes, denying the spiritual essence of man. Thus, one of the founders of modern domestic psychotherapy, A.V. Snezhnevsky, puts forward a postulate about the exclusively material (and not spiritual) substrate of mental activity. Supporters of S. Grof’s psychedelic therapy, focused on creating “transpersonal experiences”, as a result of which pictures of prenatal and birth experiences emerge, write that they “have a positive effect on various symptoms and problems related to the emotional sphere” [11], assert that these experiences “unpack certain territories of the psyche, certain semantic spaces that exist in reality in the inner and outer universe” [6, p. 43]. At the same time, S. Grof’s positive attitude towards Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics, the teaching underlying the Scientology sect, is noted. Eric Fromm writes in relation to Scientology about “a mechanistic understanding of man, for whom the problems of values and conscience do not exist” [3]. To a certain extent, the reproach of a mechanistic understanding of man can be attributed to a certain part of modern psychotherapy, which is guided by the behavioristic principle of focusing on the result: the main thing is that it works! Meanwhile, it is appropriate in this regard to recall the words of Jesus Christ: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26). If a person acquires psychophysiological health in this earthly and transitory life, but inflicts spiritual harm on his immortal soul, destroys it for eternal life, can one agree with such a price?
In modern psychotherapy, unfortunately, there is a widespread attitude, going back to Sigmund Freud, toward religion, toward religious experience as a neurotic disorder. Modern young researchers provide a biochemical basis for this, defining religious experience as an obsessive-compulsive disorder (a neurosis of obsessive states, which “begins with an imbalance of dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine is responsible for the desire to realize needs, aggression, a state of satisfaction, and serotonin – for the control of negative emotions, the level of pain sensitivity. Their properties intersect and influence each other: if one increases, the other decreases following it. This creates an unbalanced personality, that is, with a partially split consciousness into two fighting poles” [8]). Such an interpretation of a person’s inner life is a step backward even in relation to Freud, returning psychiatry to the crude materialistic understanding of the soul characteristic of the 19th century. Thus, according to J. Moleschott, the “spiritual life of peoples” can be judged by the composition of food (Moleschott J. Physiological sketches); according to K. Vogt, “thought is in the same relation to the brain as bile to the liver or urine to the kidneys” (Vogt K. Physiological letters). The difference in this case is only that chemistry replaces mechanism.
Thus, while recognizing the therapeutic value of the psilocybin session method, it cannot, in our view, be considered as a means of healing spiritual and social ailments, as a replacement or even just a support for religion. Chemical agents, as a result of which control over consciousness is lost, carry the danger of disintegration, the disintegration of the human personality, the highest achievement of Christianity. The path of the Orthodox faith is a path of ascent, a path of communication and meeting with a personal God, a Deserving Interlocutor, according to the definition of academician A.A. Ukhtomsky.
This is informational, not medical advice.
Read the Original Russian Version
This translation is based on the original Russian academic paper. Access the source document to see the scholarly work in its native language.
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David Connell
Anne Hixon