DON'T GET TOO EXCITED: this isn't a handbook on how to survive a boring sermon by getting out of your head, or a guidebook for raving rabbis on how to make the Torah trendy. If ever a book reflected a stodgy title, this is it: a grind through the uses and effects of 'virtually non-addictive drugs that seem to harbour spiritual potentials' and their place in a religious context. So it's not about how weird and wonderful a visit to Lucy in a diamond-studded sky can be, but about how mind-altering substances, natural or manufactured, seem to underpin the mystical experiences (seeing God in visions, for example) fundamental to almost all religions. It is a surprising spin, therefore, on where the ancients of various creeds might have been coming from when they wrote their sacred texts. But there is a problem: the book is put together without a trace of levity. The reason is partly that the essays that comprise it (written from the 1960s onwards and brought up to speed for a new generation with extended notes) have been bunched together by the Council on Spiritual Practices (whatever that is), which is 'moving cautiously towards carving out a space where serious students of the entheogens can pursue their interests carefully and lawfully'. Note that the council isn't advocating mushroom mayhem and a wild time for all. It makes Smith sound like a spoilsport, not least because from 1960 to 1963 this scholar of religious traditions and former professor of philosophy at M I T was legally exploring hallucinogenic, paranormal experiences alongside a couple of famous colleagues. He was part of Harvard University's research programme into entheogens, which gave him licence to take wacky substances and go to multi-coloured places with infinite dimensions (some of which are described). Despite all this far-outness, Smith remained a serious student himself, regretting that the programme should have 'careened off course'. Enter Timothy Leary, professor at Harvard's Centre for Personality Research. His pet topic was 'the potential of psychoactivating chemicals for correcting behaviour disorders'; Aldous Huxley, author of The Doors Of Perception and a big fan of mescaline-summoned 'mystical visions', was another cohort. Much spaceyness followed as the team did its duty, but tuning in and dropping out didn't seem to be on Smith's agenda, especially when Leary, he writes, was fired for involving undergraduates in his work. LSD had proved unreliable as a means of treating psychiatric problems, and, he adds, 'a drug culture emerged as a component of the counterculture that arose to protest the war in Vietnam', leaving him to concentrate on 'the promise entheogens hold for religion'. Which brings us back to his colourless essays. One tells how the fungus psilocybin produced disorder in a chapel as it became clear that God had announced - to those who had taken it - the dawning of the Messianic Age. Another describes the importance of the plant, peyote, in turning the minds of Native American Church members to 'the Great Spirit'. Most diverting is an account of the search for the revered plant central to the formation of Hinduism, whose identity had been lost for centuries. It turns out it was almost certainly fly agaric, the ultimate magic mushroom, which produced ecstatic visions in worshippers . . . and required 'ritualistic urine-drinking' in several associated ceremonies. Sadly, Smith fails to note that fly agaric, which also grows in central Europe, also had a more modern function: its bright red and white markings are said to have been the inspiration behind the colours chosen by St Nicholas of Romania for his cloak . . . Saint Nick having been the model for Santa Claus. Cleansing The Doors Of Perception: The Religious Significance Of Entheogenic Plants And Chemicals by Huston Smith Tarcher/Putnam $260
