Introduction to the Survey
During September and October of 1994, I posted a survey to various newsgroups on the Usenet (alt.drugs, alt.rave, alt.psychoactive and alt.drugs.psychedelic) asking people about their experiences with hallucinogenic drugs. Here I would like to share, as was promised, the results of this survey.
This Web site contains the content of all survey respondents. Therefore, this site provides a unique opportunity for others to evaluate the raw textual data first hand in an organized format. This will allow the reader to come to their own conclusions, which may be very different than those I have come to which are stated in the Discussion section of this site.
At the time of posting the survey I stated that my intention was to show that there is more to the effects of psychedelics than merely inducing hallucinations and delusions, as is currently believed in the medical and psychiatric community (many notable exceptions notwithstanding!). Thus, I will now state that the purpose of this survey was to test the following hypothesis:
The effects of psychedelic drugs (e.g. LSD, mescaline, peyote, etc.) are similar to the effects of a phenomena known in esoteric literature as the Awakening of the Kundalini.
The idea of kundalini derives from Tantric yoga and refers to a supposed "energy" that lies latent in average people at the base of the spine. By practicing specific yogic exercises, one supposedly can "awaken" this kundalini, which in turn leads to severe alterations in consciousness including the onset of psychic abilities and possibly conferring enlightenment. These Tantric ideas have also been adopted by certain Western occult traditions throughout this century.
However, what strikes me is the overwhelming similarity between reports by people who have undergone kundalini awakening and what occurs to people who have taken psychedelic drugs. According to Tart and others, both of these states can be considered altered states of consciousness (ASC). However, accounts of the subjective nature of both these ASC show that the phenomenology of both states overlap to a considerable degree. (see Background). The logic of the survey design was to recruit respondents experienced in psychedelic drug usage and determine if they have experienced some of the effects, listed in the Table Effects of Kundalini, associated with kundalini awakening when under the influence of psychedelic drugs. Therefore, all survey respondents were psychedelic drug users. No attempt was made to recruit people who may have experienced bona fide kundalini awakening because of the relative rarity of this occurrence here in the West.